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Biden’s rumored stand-in, Gavin Newsom, sees record low approval ratings at home

By: JOSEPH MACKINNON | NOVEMBER 08, 2023

Pressure is mounting on Democrats to sideline President Joe Biden as a candidate and bring in new blood ahead of the 2024 election. After all, confidence in the octogenarian president’s ability to lead continues to plumb new lows. A New York Times/Siena Poll published Sunday revealed that 71% of respondents agreed he is too old; 54% of 2020 Biden voters similarly indicated he should pack it in, having likely taken note of his mobility troubles, apparent difficulty completing sentences, and tendency to repeat himself.

The trouble for Democrats is that the individual widely regarded to be a viable stand-in for Biden is apparently also deeply unpopular. A new UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times revealed Tuesday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval dropped to an all-time low last month: 49% of the 6,342 California registered voters polled said they disapproved of Newsom’s performance as governor.

Newsom’s approval rating was 44%, down 11 points from February.

By way of comparison, the latest Economist/YouGov poll had Biden’s approval rating at 43% and his disapproval rating at 54%.

“He’s kind of taking on a new persona,” Mike DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley poll, told the Times. “He’s no longer just the governor of California. He’s a spokesperson for the national party and basically voters are being asked to react to that.”

Newsom has long been suspected of harboring ambitions of taking the White House in 2024 despite his public denial and rhetorical support for Biden. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) suggested this week that Newsom is running a shadow campaign, even if he doesn’t have the “guts” to admit as much. The 56-year-old Democrat has ostensibly been working to elevate his national profile in recent months. In addition to renting billboards in red states criticizing conservatives’ support for the unborn and the Second Amendment, he has been making noise about climate change and glad-handing with foreign dignitaries, including the dictatorial leader of the world’s greatest national polluter.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Newsom has seen a drop in popularity among every major voter category. Whereas 12% of Democrats disapproved of his performance in February, 25% of Democrats have now soured on him.

While Newsom may have chased away some support by flouting his own draconian pandemic restrictions during the pandemic, dining out at a fancy restaurant while masked Californians struggled to make do, Republican political consultant Rob Stutzman told the Times that concerns about the economy, crime, and homelessness are likely the major drivers of Newsom’s growing unpopularity.

Whereas FBI crime statistics for 2022 showed violent crime dropping nationwide, it spiked sharply in California, reported the Center Square. The violent crime rate per 100,000 jumped from 481.2 to 499.5 under Newsom’s watch, whereas it dropped from 387 to 380.7 nationwide.

According to Neighborhood Scout, the likelihood of becoming a victim of a property crime in Newsom’s California is 1 in 43 and the chances of falling victim to a violent crime are 1 in 227. In the cities, the outlook is far bleaker. The chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime in Sacramento are 1 in 148; in Los Angeles, 1 in 135; in San Francisco, 1 in 186; and in Oakland, 1 in 80.

California streets are not only dangerous, but often crowded by homeless encampments. Despite spending $17.5 billion to combat homelessness between 2018 and 2022, the state’s homeless population grew, such that there are now over 170,000 homeless people on the streets, reported CNN.

As for economic concerns, the unemployment rate in California as of July was roughly 4.6%, leaving Newsom’s state ranked 49th in the country.

“I think the real wake-up call is how dramatically Democrat voters seem to be shifting underneath him,” Stutzman told the Times. “I’m not surprised his numbers are down. I’m surprised his numbers are down that far. He’s clearly upside down.”

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JOSEPH MACKINNON

Joseph MacKinnon is a staff writer for Blaze News.@HeadlinesInGIFs →

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Grassley’s Bombshells Show House Investigators Exactly Where to Aim Their Next Biden Subpoenas

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | NOVEMBER 09, 2023

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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The chair of the House Oversight Committee issued a slew of subpoenas on Wednesday, including to Hunter Biden and James Biden. Additional subpoenas, as well as requests for transcribed interviews, were served on other Biden family members and business associates. These investigative steps are solid, but the House committees charged with the Joe Biden impeachment inquiry need to issue subpoenas for the witnesses and documents Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, not-so-subtly suggested late last month.

“I’ve obtained the names of 25 DOJ and FBI personnel to interview at a future date,” Grassley wrote in a late-October letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray concerning the latest details the Iowa senator uncovered related to obstruction of the Biden-family corruption investigation. While the House Oversight Committee is understandably focused on unraveling the extent of foreign influence-peddling, the House should not ignore the second half of the scandal: the DOJ, FBI, and now the Biden administration’s cover-up of the scandal and their cover-up of the cover-up.

Grassley has been focused on that aspect of the scandal for several years, raising concerns “about political considerations infecting the decision-making process at the Justice Department and FBI.” Having heard from several whistleblowers about the scope of the obstruction, Grassley has said that if their allegations are true, it would establish the DOJ and FBI have been “institutionally corrupted to their very core.”

The House has followed several leads Grassley developed. The most significant was related to the FD-1023 summary of a “highly credible” confidential human source’s (CHS) reporting that Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes, which Grassley released earlier this year.

More recently, Grassley revealed that the Foreign Influence Task Force used an assessment opened by FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten to mine FBI field offices for derogatory information related to the Bidens. The FBI then falsely branded the derogatory information as Russian disinformation, closing out the sources. That revelation was but one of many contained in the seven-page letter the Iowa senator penned to the AG and FBI director on Oct. 24, noting he had a list of some 20-plus agents to interview.

The House committees charged with overseeing the impeachment inquiry need to dissect that letter for leads relevant to the investigation into Biden-family corruption and also to unravel the DOJ and FBI’s corruption.

Foreign Influence Task Force

Among other things, that letter revealed the complicity of the Foreign Influence Task Force in falsely branding the reporting of confidential human sources from several different field offices as Russian disinformation. As Grassley noted, it was also the Foreign Influence Task Force that “improperly briefed” him and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., about their investigation into the Biden family. That briefing served solely as a precursor to a media leak to spin the Republican senators’ investigation as contaminated by foreign disinformation.

Every member of the Foreign Influence Task Force should be questioned by the House, and every communication between the Foreign Influence Task Force, Brian Auten, and the various FBI offices involved in wrongly closing out sources should be subpoenaed. The House should likewise subpoena the materials made part of that assessment and especially any sources or reporting closed out as Russian disinformation.

FBI Field Offices

Here, Grassley helpfully highlighted in his letter several relevant field offices. In noting that the FBI tried to improperly shut down the FD-1023, Grassley emphasized that the claim that the CHS’s bribery report was Russian disinformation was “highly suspect and is contradicted by other documents my office has been told exist within the Foreign Influence Task Force, FBI Seattle Field Office, FBI Baltimore Field Office, and FBI HQ holdings.”

The House should focus its investigative efforts there first. The FBI Seattle field office is a new thread to pull, as it has not been previously raised as relevant to the Biden investigation. A review of the underlying FD-1023 also suggests the Cleveland FBI field office merits attention, as the CHS who reported on the alleged bribes to the Bidens noted that he was introduced to the Burisma executives by Alexander Ostapenko. And the FD-1023 included a notation that the CHS’s reporting on Ostapenko was maintained at the Cleveland field office.

In seeking materials from these field offices and the Foreign Influence Task Force, the House should ask for all records using the terms “Russian disinformation” or “foreign disinformation” from January 2019 to the present. Why? Because that is what Grassley asked the AG and FBI director to provide. And when the Iowa Republican asks for something, he usually knows precisely what the DOJ has secreted away.

DOJ and FBI Documents

Likewise, the House should seek the other documents Grassley identified in his October 2023 letter because the Republican-led House can follow up with subpoenas if the DOJ refuses to comply, whereas Grassley can’t. In total, the Iowa senator named 15 different categories of materials he sought from the DOJ and FBI, and the House should mirror those requests.

Of particular importance are the communications between the U.S. attorneys’ offices for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the Eastern District of New York relating to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and the FD-1023, as the Eastern District of New York had apparently concluded the FD-1023 did not match any known Russian disinformation. Subpoenaing FBI reports dating to Jan. 1, 2014, and referencing Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden, or Joe Biden will likely also turn up relevant information.

Naming Names

In addition to subpoenaing these witnesses and the related documents, Grassley’s letter provides the names of several other individuals deserving of questioning. Significantly, the letter indicates that the individuals named had knowledge of Joe Biden’s potential complicity in his son’s money-laundering scheme. But Grassley also named individuals from FBI headquarters, the Washington field office, the Baltimore field office, Delaware FBI agents, and FBI management personnel.

Finally, the House should take note of Grassley’s repeated references to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault and the various documents he requested that connect to Thibault. Those references should give House investigators pause because Grassley’s apparent focus on Thibault strikes an odd note given the tune Thibault played in his transcribed interview: that he was new to the job and was only on the periphery of decisions to close out sources.

Why then, would Grassley seek “[a]ll records derived from reporting on derogatory information linked to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden, and their foreign business relationships that was overseen under the approval, guidance, and purview of ASAC Thibault from January 1, 2020, to his last day at the FBI”? And why would Grassley ask for a copy of “[a]ll opened and closed cases initiated by the Washington Field Office under the purview of ASAC Thibault that were ordered closed by ASAC Thibault and/or denied for opening by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, and/or the United States Attorney Offices in the District of Columbia and Eastern District of Virginia”?

Grassley may not be able to force the DOJ and FBI to provide answers or those documents, but the House can — and it should, stat.

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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Gov. Rick Perry Op-ed: Biden’s latest plan to wipe out fossil fuels should raise alarms with every American

By Gov. Rick Perry Fox News | Published November 9, 2023 5:00am EST

As crude oil approaches $100 a barrel amid turmoil in the Middle East, the Biden administration continues its war on fossil fuels by hamstringing federal offshore drilling leases to the bare minimum required by law. Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and other adversarial oil producers are the only winners of such a nonsensical decision, while the biggest loser may be America’s energy security.

The Interior Department’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing includes a mere three auctions in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years — by far the lowest since World War II. In comparison, the Trump administration proposed a plan in 2018 for 47 lease sales, located in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Alaska. Even the Obama administration held two auctions most years.

After the plan was announced, Sen. Murkowski, R-Alaska, rightly pointed out, “The Biden administration’s long-delayed five-year plan for offshore oil and gas has no lease sales in Alaska waters – even though they acknowledge that will result in higher energy prices and higher emissions.”

BIDEN’S WAR ON OIL DRILLING THREATENS TO KILL HIS OWN GREEN ENERGY GOALS: ‘A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY’

This decision is not surprising given the president’s campaign promise to fully ban new oil and gas leases on public lands. President Biden has consistently bowed to radical environmental groups that want to ban all fossil fuels, and this decision was a clear signal that he’s trying his best to comply with their demands after courts rejected prior attempts.

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In fact, the Biden administration was obligated by law to offer this bare minimum as a prerequisite for holding offshore wind auctions – a deal Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., negotiated before signing off on the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”). Manchin didn’t mince words in response to this newest development:

“To be clear – three lease sales is more than the zero we would have gotten had it not been for the IRA. But it makes no sense at all to actively be limiting our energy production while our adversaries are weaponizing energy around the world. This is a failure of leadership, and I will continue to do everything in my power to hold this Administration accountable.”

While Interior Secretary Haaland boasted about the plan being the “smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history,” she had nothing to say about the fate of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (“LWCF”), which is fully funded from offshore oil and gas leasing.

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Since Congress created the LWCF in 1965, it has provided $5.2 billion for roughly 45,000 conservation projects across the country. It funds everything from maintaining national parks to local trails to wildlife refuges. Still, the LWCF estimates a backlog of conservation projects totaling upwards of $57 billion. A recent study estimated that if no lease sales occurred over the next five years, we’d expect LWCF funding to decrease by 28 percent by 2036. As a result, we should expect the backlogs to keep piling up.

Katmai National Park Alaska — Katmai National Park in Alaska, United States (Jean-Erick PASQUIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Draining LWCF funding will be catastrophic to our public lands, yet “environmental” organizations are adamant we cancel its funding source. I’m not surprised, frankly. Opposition groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Just Stop Oil have long proven their dogmatism toward their preferred technologies blinds them from actually caring about the planet.

Covering large swaths of the Mojave desert with solar panels is more important than the rich habitat and Indigenous sites which occupy them. But if there’s an opportunity to mine uranium or drill for oil, Biden’s Interior Department will squash it and green NGOs will applaud.

Just last year, President Biden urged oil companies to drill more. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm correctly asserted that it’s “not a binary choice” between increasing reliable energy supply to global markets and deploying new clean energy. So American oil and gas stepped up and delivered when the world needed it.

Now is not the time to stop.

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Rick Perry is the former governor of Texas and 14th secretary of energy.

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House GOP Spending Plan Hits New Snag as Shutdown Looms

Thursday, 09 November 2023 03:40 PM EST

Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives had to delay another fiscal 2024 government funding bill on Thursday, as their slim majority struggled to overcome internal differences on spending levels and so-called “culture war” policies a week ahead of a possible government shutdown.

The delay on a bill to fund the White House, Treasury and other agencies poses a headache for new House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is expected to unveil over the next two days a stopgap spending measure aimed at keeping federal agencies open after current funding expires on Nov. 17.

Lawmakers said they expect the Louisiana Republican to unveil a continuing resolution or “CR” to avert a partial government shutdown as late as Saturday. A House vote is tentatively expected on Tuesday.

“I wish the House would just get to work,” President Joe Biden told reporters as he departed Washington on Thursday.

“The idea we’re playing games with a shutdown at this moment is bizarre,” Biden added. “There’s no need for any of this.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a procedural step to allow his Democrat-led chamber to pass its own stopgap measure to avert a shutdown.

Johnson can afford to lose no more than four Republican votes from his slim 221-212 House majority on legislation opposed by Democrats. But he is under pressure from staunch Republican conservatives to address spending cuts and policy riders Democrats uniformly reject.

“If there’s any kind of CR, there has to be spending reductions,” Rep. Chip Roy, a prominent conservative, told reporters.

But Rep. Tom Cole warned that Johnson may need a “clean” CR at current funding levels to steer well clear of a shutdown.

“We don’t have a lot of time to fool around with failure,” Cole said. “You may stumble into a shutdown without meaning to do it at all.”

Hardline demands for steep spending cuts and policy riders including abortion restrictions have split Republicans for much of 2023, with Republican centrists pushing for a more bipartisan approach that can win support in the Senate.

House Republicans are trying to pass a full slate of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal 2024, which began on Oct. 1. They have succeeded on seven, but the remaining five have proven to be problematic.

Johnson had to pull a Thursday vote on legislation to fund the White House, Treasury, Internal Revenue Service and market regulators after as many as eight centrists objected to language denying the District of Columbia funding over a local law that bans employer discrimination against women who seek abortion or contraception.

“We’ve got a handful of members that have some concerns,” said Rep. Steve Womack, who had shepherded the bill through the House Appropriations Committee.

Republican infighting has already led the House to reject an appropriations bill for agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration in September. In recent days, Johnson also pulled a vote on legislation to fund transportation, housing and urban development after several Republican centrists objected to an absence of funding for the U.S. passenger rail service Amtrak.

Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in May set a $1.59 trillion discretionary spending budget Congress passed as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, or FRA. Hardline Republicans, who later removed McCarthy as speaker, had been pushing for an additional $120 billion in cuts.

But on Thursday, hardliners said they had abandoned their $1.47 trillion top-line number.

“That’s out the window. I would like that. It’s probably going to go to $1.52 (trillion) or $1.58 (trillion) or something like that,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

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‘Everybody else sucks’: Black Lives Matter leader endorses Trump for 2024

By: ANDREW CHAPADOS | NOVEMBER 08, 2023

Mark Fisher, a co-founder of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Rhode Island and founder of a new BLM-related organization, is on a media tour advocating for Donald Trump to be president in 2024.

“Everybody else sucks,” Fisher told host Kim Iversen in a recent interview.

After Iversen asked if he thought Trump was simply the best of the worst and “not that great either,” Fisher clarified his views.

“I like Trump, you know. Personally, and I think right now who we have sitting in the Oval Office is just a deep disappointment, you know? I deeply have disdain for him, and I really dislike the vice president, as well.”

Fisher was the co-founder of BLM Rhode Island but has appeared to hold the same views in his new role as the founder of Black Lives Matter, Inc. In January 2022, he told a black business association website that his vision was “to see a world where Black people are no longer subjugated to and oppressed by a white supremacist ideology in any form or facet and at any level, and wherever it may rear its ugly head that it be swiftly eradicated.”

For his new company, the about page lists a nearly identical vision. In the text, the term “black people” is simply replaced by “African American people.”

“We want to create wealth,” Fisher told Iversen. “We want to gain wealth, leave something for our children, you know.”

Being anti-capitalist wasn’t Fisher’s only reasoning for condemning Democrats. He also said their stance on abortion went “against the laws of nature” and the “laws of procreation.” Fisher also claimed that black Americans have been “mental slaves” to the Democratic Party, who have “abused” them for so long. He added that Trump is “the opposite.”

“He’s gonna tell you how it is. He’s gonna give it to you straight. He’s not gonna [be a] hypocrite and stab you in the back like the Democratic Party loves to do.”

At the same time, Fisher recently made headlines for defending those who were jailed following the events of January 6, 2021.

“They’re lambs led to slaughter to be sacrificed as an example for all who might want to dissent in the future,” Fisher told the Epoch Times. “This is what the government does to those who express independent thought and want to stand up for what they believe.”

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House Republicans Subpoena Biden Family For Transcribed Interviews

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | NOVEMBER 08, 2023

House Republicans on the Oversight Committee issued subpoenas for members of the Biden family and several of the family’s business associates. As part of the committee’s investigation into the family’s influence-peddling operations, GOP Oversight Chairman James Comer of Kentucky announced subpoenas for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and the president’s brother, James, on Wednesday.

“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said in a statement. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”

House Republicans officially opened an impeachment inquiry into the president in September following months of controversy over the family’s corporate ventures with new evidence implicating Joe Biden in a criminal bribery scheme. In addition to Hunter and James Biden subpoenaed Wednesday, House Republicans are also seeking testimony from James Biden’s wife, Sara, Joe Biden’s widowed daughter-in-law, Hallie, and former Biden family business partners Rob Walker and Tony Bobulinski. Hallie’s older sister, Elizabeth Secundy and Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen, were also asked to answer questions from House lawmakers. Only Walker, Hunter Biden, and James Biden were given formal subpoenas.

[READ: James Biden’s Role In The Biden Access-For-Hire Operation Shows It Was A Family Affair]

Financial records reviewed by the House Oversight Committee show the Biden family laundered money through more than 20 shell companies, most of which were established while Joe Biden was vice president.

“Unlike the many lies President Biden told the American people about his family’s business schemes, bank records don’t lie,” Comer said Wednesday. “These records reveal how the Bidens sold Joe Biden around to the world to benefit the Biden family, including Joe Biden himself, to the detriment of U.S. interests.”

House Republicans held their first impeachment hearing at the end of September, just before the lower chamber came to a weeks-long standstill to elect a new speaker.

“So far, the evidence suggests the Biden family ‘business’ is exactly what it appears to be: an influence-peddling scheme on a scale never before seen in American history,” reported Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson.

Based on what we already know, it’s hard to see how Joe Biden couldn’t have been involved or couldn’t have benefited from his son’s corrupt dealings. Consider just a few items of evidence mentioned during Thursday’s hearing. In one text exchange with his uncle in June 2017, Hunter refers to his father as his “family’s brand” and “only asset.” That echoes something Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, said in his July testimony to the House Oversight Committee, that the value of adding Hunter to the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma was “the brand” — clearly a reference to then-Vice President Joe Biden. (Hunter had no experience in the energy sector and brought no value to the company other than access to his father.)

[READ: Yes, The Biden Impeachment Hearing Presented Evidence Of Corruption — Lots Of It]

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

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Texas voters overwhelmingly approve measure greenlighting more fossil fuel development

By Thomas Catenacci Fox News | Published November 8, 2023 11:47am EST

Texas voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot proposition Tuesday establishing a billion-dollar state-managed energy fund to bolster natural gas power plant infrastructure.

Proposition 7 to create the so-called Texas Energy Fund passed in a 65% to 35% vote with more than 2.5 million ballots cast, according to the latest data compiled by the Texas Secretary of State’s office. The ballot measure — which was supported by the energy industry, but opposed by environmentalists — sets aside $5 billion to guarantee low interest loans for new dispatchable power generation in the state.

“TXOGA is pleased to see infrastructure propositions to expand water, electricity and broadband pass with overwhelming support from voters,” Todd Staples, the president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, said in a statement Tuesday evening. “By voting to approve these propositions, Texans are ensuring that the Lone Star State continues to be the best place to live, work, play and raise a family.”

He added that Proposition 7 will help “strengthen the reliability of our electric grid by ensuring it performs no matter the weather as well as increase the supply of electricity by encouraging additional generation.”

TEXAS GOVT PUSHING ACTION THAT COULD ‘KNEECAP’ NEW FOSSIL FUEL GENERATION, DESTABILIZE GRID, EXPERTS WARN

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation teeing up the vote Tuesday. After the measure passed, he applauded the action, saying it will “strengthen our state power grid.” (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The measure is the final step to enact Senate Bill 2627, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in July.

Under the bill, loans financed by the Texas Energy Fund must have a 20-year term and interest rate of 3%, and can be used either to upgrade existing dispatchable power generation increasing capacity by at least 100 megawatts (MW) or to construct new power generation with a capacity of at least 100 MW. A natural gas power plant with a capacity of 100 MW can power tens of thousands of homes.

MICHIGAN DEMS, GRETCHEN WHITMER ARE PURSUING A GREEN NEW DEAL, THREATENING FUTURE GRID STABILITY

The effort to create incentives for power companies to expand natural gas power generation was designed to address growing concerns that the state’s power sector doesn’t have an adequate energy generation that can be quickly dispatched to provide electricity during emergency peak periods.

According to former Public Utility Commission Chair Peter Lake, the state’s dispatchable power supply grew only 1.5% between 2008 and 2020, while, in that same timeframe, the Texas population grew 24%, meaning demand is outpacing supply. The concern is particularly elevated because of Texas’ growing reliance on green energy sources like wind and solar, which aren’t dispatachable, and are intermittent, meaning they are reliant on weather conditions.

A power generating station during a heatwave outside of Austin, Texas, US, on Monday, July 11, 2022. Texas residents and businesses, including the biggest names in oil, autos and technology, are being asked to conserve electricity Monday afternoon during a heat wave that's expected to push the state's grid near its breaking point. Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg — A power generating station near Austin, Texas, on July 11, 2022. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“The urgency to move forward with meaningful electric market reforms that will incentivize the development of dispatchable generation remains extremely high,” Pablo Vegas, the current president and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said earlier this year.

In 2022, Texas generated 26% of all U.S. wind-generated electricity and has led the nation in that category for 17 consecutive years, federal data showed. Natural gas, though, still produces by far the largest share of electricity generation in the state.

In addition to the Texas Oil and Gas Association, ConocoPhillips, Texas Association of Manufacturers, Texas Pipeline Association and Valero Energy Corporation supported Proposition 7. The Sierra Club, Environment Texas, Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance and Texas Consumer Association opposed it.

“We need, and Texans want, more clean energy, not less. There is strong support for more wind and solar energy, more battery storage, more energy efficiency, and more interconnection with the national grid,” said Luke Metzger, the executive director of Environment Texas. “Unfortunately, the Legislature ignored these solutions to strengthen our electric grid while protecting consumers and the environment.”

Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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

A.F. Branco cartoon – Enemy Within

A.F. BRANCO | on November 8, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-enemy-within/

Not White Supremacists — Cartoon by A.F. Branco.

For the past three years, Biden has been beating the “white-supremacy-is-the-greatest-threat-to-our-Homeland” drum with virtually no evidence that it’s happening. While ignoring Black-on-Black crime and murder, and multiple threats and assaults on Jews, etc.

Though Biden tried to sound strong on the side of Israel, but in typical Biden fashion, he appears to be waffling toward a cease-fire and pushing for humanitarian aid that will eventually be spent on more weapons to be used to kill more innocent Israelis.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – 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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Biden DOJ Dispatches Feds to Polling Places to Interfere in an Election Near You

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 07, 2023

citizens voting in voting booths on Election Day

In its latest attempt to interfere in state and local elections, the Biden administration is deploying federal agents to monitor polling places in several states during Tuesday’s off-year elections.

The U.S. Constitution charges states — not the federal government — with primary oversight and administration of elections. But according to the highly politicized Department of Justice, state and local election officials can’t be trusted to uphold the law. Thus, the agency has decided to forcibly inject itself into the process.

According to a Monday press release, the DOJ is dispatching federal observers from its Civil Rights Division to “monitor for compliance with the federal voting rights laws” in numerous jurisdictions throughout the country. Among those listed are Union County, New Jersey; Pawtucket and Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Madison County and Panola County, Mississippi; and Prince William County, Virginia.

Regarding Union County, a U.S. district court approved a consent decree proposed by the DOJ earlier this year that forces local election officials to provide “a comprehensive Spanish-language election program for voters” during the state’s Nov. 7 elections. The consent decree — which also authorized federal observers to monitor polling places throughout the county — was filed in conjunction with a DOJ lawsuit, which claimed that a failure by Union County officials to provide such materials constituted a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

“The Civil Rights Division enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot,” the DOJ claimed. “The division regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with the federal civil rights laws in elections in communities all across the country.”

Okay, I’ll say it. This is the closest we, as a nation, have come to pure Socialism.

In addition to New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and several other states will decide the outcome of critically important elections on Tuesday.

This is hardly the first time the DOJ has concocted this type of election meddling. In fact, the agency carried out this same scheme during last year’s midterm elections. As Victoria Marshall wrote in these pages, most of the 64 jurisdictions the DOJ “monitored” during the 2022 elections are “Democrat strongholds or swing districts in states with key midterm contests such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.”

Much like last year, the jurisdictions being surveilled by the DOJ on Tuesday are mostly Democrat strongholds. During Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, for example, Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe won Prince William County by nearly 15 points over now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. Similarly, Union, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket Counties all went to Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.

The DOJ’s increasing efforts to “monitor” local and state elections appear to be aimed at curtailing GOP poll watchers’ legitimate right to oversee U.S. election administration. After it became clear more conservatives were going to partake in this legal form of election oversight, legacy media began running hit pieces leading up to the 2022 midterms warning that so-called “election denying” MAGA Republicans volunteering as poll watchers were plotting to disrupt elections throughout the country.

While the left’s doomsday predictions (unsurprisingly) never came true, that hasn’t stopped regime-approved media from furthering the lie that election workers are under constant threat from Republicans. Even the Biden DOJ’s own data shows that there is no widespread threat to election workers. Nonetheless, so-called “journalists” continue to parrot their Democrat allies’ falsehoods without a second thought.

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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Government Censorship Op Targeted The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, Sean Davis During 2020 Election

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 07, 2023

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The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis were among several prominent conservatives targeted by a federal censorship operation carried out during the 2020 election, according to a new bombshell congressional report.

Released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday, the interim report documents how the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Global Engagement Center (GEC), which fall within the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, respectively, colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed to be “disinformation” during the 2020 election.

According to the analysis, this operation aimed to censor “true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions,” with prominent conservatives such as Hemingway and Davis being among the prime targets. Other notable targets include the social media accounts of former President Donald Trump, Newsmax, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Harmeet Dhillon, and Charlie Kirk, to name a few.

As The Federalist previously reported, CISA, which is often called the “nerve center” of the federal government’s censorship operation, “facilitated meetings between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address ‘mis-, dis-, and mal-information’ on social media platforms.” Ahead of the 2020 contest, the agency ramped up its censorship efforts by flagging posts for Big Tech companies it claimed were worthy of being censored, some of which called into question the security of voting practices such as mass, unsupervised mail-in voting.

Meanwhile, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported, GEC “funded the development of censorship tools and used ‘government employees to act as sales reps pitching the censorship products to Big Tech.’” One of these GEC-funded nongovernmental entities is the Global Disinformation Index, a so-called “disinformation” tracking organization “working to blacklist and defund conservative news sites,” including The Federalist.

At the heart of the federal government’s censorship apparatus, however, was the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), “a consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory” that coordinated with DHS and GEC “to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech in advance of the 2020 presidential election.” According to House Republicans’ Monday report, the initiative was developed “at the request” of CISA during the summer of 2020 and effectively allowed federal officials to “launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”

During the 2020 election, federal agencies and government-funded entities submitted so-called “misinformation reports” to EIP. Once acquired, EIP misinformation “analysts” would take posts flagged by the aforementioned entities, find similar examples on other Big Tech platforms, compile them into reports, and forward them to these same platforms “with specific recommendations on how [they] should censor the posts.” These EIP reports, which were known as “Jira tickets,” were hidden from the public and “accessible only to select parties, including federal agencies, universities, and Big Tech,” according to the report.

Among the posts flagged by EIP is a Nov. 4, 2020, tweet from Hemingway, in which The Federalist editor-in-chief reported claims from Georgia insiders who said it was “ridiculous [the] media are refusing to admit Trump has won the state.” The tweet also included a link to an Insider Advantage article calling Georgia for Trump. Another Hemingway post classified as “misinformation” by EIP is a Nov. 8, 2020, tweet linking to a Federalist article titled, “America Won’t Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated.”

Meanwhile, EIP flagged a Nov. 4, 2020, tweet thread by Davis reporting how Pennsylvania’s Democrat-controlled Supreme Court “gave Pennsylvania Democrats a license to print post-election ballots, fill them out for Biden over the next three days, and record them without a postmark.” The censors also flagged another Nov. 4, 2020, tweet, in which Davis claimed “The absolute best evidence right now that Democrats, media, and Big Tech are conspiring to steal the election is Big Tech censoring anyone and everyone who observes that Big Tech is using corrupt censorship to steal the election for Democrats.”

But it’s not just reporting and claims about the 2020 election that EIP censors were flagging as so-called “misinformation.” Several examples highlighted in House Republicans’ report demonstrate the willingness of federal officials to censor users posting other truthful or satirical information.

In one instance, EIP analysts requested that Twitter, which has since been rebranded as X, censor a Nov. 4, 2020, tweet from Tillis thanking his supporters for propelling him to victory because EIP “deemed his declaration of victory to be premature” despite Tillis winning reelection. In another case, EIP censors flagged an Oct. 24, 2020, tweet from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who jokingly claimed he filled out and submitted mail-in ballots on behalf of his deceased relatives.

“The suppression of conservative politicians and media resulting from this censorship operation deprived countless American voters from exposure to a range of perspectives on the most important political issues in the days and weeks surrounding a general election,” the report reads. “Critically, the EIP conducted its censorship operation at the direction of, in collaboration with CISA, a federal government agency actively seeking to undermine free expression and the sitting President. The significance of these facts cannot be overstated.”

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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Mike Pompeo says State Dept has an ‘AOC, Rashida Tlaib wing’ after leaked memo blasts Biden’s Israel policy

By Fox News Staff Fox News | Published November 7, 2023 4:00pm EST

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined “The Faulkner Focus” Tuesday to call out the State Department under the Biden administration, stressing that there is a “wing” of officials aligned with pro-Palestinian “Squad” Democrats. On Monday, a leaked memo showed State Department staffers blasting the administration’s policies toward Israel.

STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL WHO RESIGNED OVER MILITARY AID TO ISRAEL DECRIES ‘WILLINGNESS TO ABANDON OUR VALUES’

MIKE POMPEO: I wish I could tell you I’m surprised, but having led that organization, the State Department, this is the AOC, Rashida Tlaib wing of the State Department. These are classic appeasers who don’t understand that the Israelis are acting in self-defense. They are taking out a terror threat that killed 1,400 of their citizens. They have not only the right to do it, but an obligation to do it. And so, I saw this at the State Department during my thousand days as Secretary of State. There is a progressive element that sits inside that organization that pulls and pulls and pulls. And we’ve already seen apparently one senior person quit. You know, frankly, I hope folks who don’t understand how to act in America’s interests, I hope they’ll all decide that they no longer want to be part of an important institution, the United States diplomatic corps.

Tony Blinken — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the 2023 Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, 2023 in Munich. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

State Department staffers wrote a scathing internal memo urging the Biden administration to change its public stance toward Israel and support a ceasefire, Politico has reported. The leaked memo was submitted to the department’s Dissent Channel, where employees are invited to express policy disagreements, the outlet said. It is the latest incident showing internal strife within the department over the U.S. support for its closest ally in the Middle East.

The message reportedly demands the U.S. support a ceasefire and be willing to publicly criticize “Israeli military tactics and treatments of Palestinians,” the outlet reported.

Fox News’ Kristine Parks contributed to this report

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Finger-wagging Dem voter loses it on GOP poll worker in curse-laden rant: ‘Unhinged’

By Aubrie Spady , Cameron Cawthorne Fox News | Published November 7, 2023 3:05pm EST

Finger-wagging Dem voter loses it on GOP poll worker, Matthew Hurtt, in curse-laden rant where he accuses Hurtt of stealing the election, supporting lynching, and being a religious bigot. CREDIT: Matthew Hurtt

Unhinged! Who wants to bet he has a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in his yard? 95 percent chance. https://t.co/AsRY81Wf6q
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) November 7, 2023

A Virginia Democrat accosted and cursed out a Republican poll greeter in an “unhinged” Election Day confrontation that has gone viral. Video footage shows a progressive voter approaching Matthew Hurtt, a poll worker and director of professional services at the Leadership Institute, in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday.

“You guys tried to overturn the election, you might as well have been walking up to my head on the way to the polling station and putting a gun to my head and try to tell me not to vote,” an unidentified man wearing an “I voted” sticker said.

OHIO, VIRGINIA AND OTHER KEY STATES, RACES THAT WILL GIVE YOU A PREVIEW OF ELECTIONS IN 2024

Unidentified Virginia voter — Voter in Arlington curses out GOP poll greeter. (Matthew Hurtt)

The unhinged individual then accused the GOP poll worker of “trying to overthrow elections with violence” as he greeted people on their way to vote.

“You try to steal my vote next year, I’m going to f—ing remember you personally,” he said, before pulling his phone out and taking a photo of the Republican greeter.

MEET THE HISTORICAL CANDIDATES FACING VOTERS ON ELECTION DAY

The GOP greeter continued to film the man as he welcomed passersby, racking up over 5 million views in a viral video on X, formerly known as Twitter.

confrontational voter — Democrat voter in Arlington confronts polling greeter. (Matthew Hurtt)

The Democrat then approached a bystander and advised him not to be “buddy, buddy with these people because they put on a face of a good neighbor” before accusing Hurtt of being racist, supporting lynching, and being ” f—ing Bible-beating bigots and freaks.”

“And they’re not good neighbors,” the man said as he finally walked away from the scene toward his Prius.

“The guy started before he went in, and I assumed he would keep it going when he came out… so I hit record,” Hurt said in response to a reply on his video.

Voters are casting ballots in Mississippi, Kentucky and Virginia on Tuesday, in several key races that could make a huge impact that reverberates into next year’s presidential election cycle. Voters in Virginia will determine which political party controls its state legislature in elections experiencing record amounts of cash that could serve as a barometer for the 2024 presidential contest.

Republicans currently hold a slim 52-48 majority in Virginia’s House of Delegates, while Democrats control its Senate 22-17. Voters will decide all 40 of the state’s Senate races and all 100 delegate contests in Tuesday’s elections.

Fox News’ Matteo Cina and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.

Aubrie Spady is a Freelance Production Assistant for Fox News Digital.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Op-ed: Why people are leaving California for Arkansas

By Sarah Huckabee Sanders Fox News | Published November 7, 2023 5:00am EST

Ask people why they’re leaving blue states like California, and they’ll give you a lot of answers: more freedom, a lower cost of living, a more family-friendly quality of life. But a lot of them are just tired. Tired of the lockdowns, tired of the crime, tired of the preening politicians who won’t do anything to address the real issues they’re facing.

As governor of Arkansas, I’ve had my chance to ask that question a lot of times. That’s because our state has received a steady influx of new residents for years. Today, there are thousands of California refugees – and thousands more from other states – in our state.

Govs Newson and Sanders — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Getty Images)

This year alone, about 32,000 new people moved to Arkansas, about 10% of them from California. Arkansas is now one of the top five states for inbound migration. And the flow isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

SARAH SANDERS WADES INTO ‘CRUCIAL’ KENTUCKY GOVERNOR RACE AS REPUBLICANS LOOK TO FLIP SECOND SEAT FROM DEMS

That’s because my administration is focused on the reforms that will make Arkansas the best state in the country to live, work and raise a family.

Just in my first few months in office, we passed the boldest education reforms in the country, including universal school choice, cut taxes not once, but twice, and are making historic investments in outdoor recreation. We’re cracking down on crime, getting woke nonsense out of our schools, and keeping kids safe online.

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I think these changes will be the icing on the cake for those who are already looking at how good we have it in Arkansas. Take our cost of living, for example. It’s nearly 40% cheaper to live in Little Rock than in Los Angeles. Housing is about 60% less expensive; health care is 15% cheaper. Imagine a family struggling to eke it out in California. For $500,000 – no small sum – they could afford a tiny fixer-upper in East LA. With that money in Little Rock, you could get a modern, 4,000-square-foot, custom-built home in one of our best neighborhoods.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS TO SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDER ELIMINATING ‘WOKE, ANTI-WOMEN WORDS’ FROM STATE GOVERNMENT USE

Taxes are another way we beat our coastal competition. Already this year, we cut the top individual income tax rate twice and built the groundwork to phase out the state income tax entirely. Our tax rate is about a third of that in California and going down.

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We’re able to slash taxes so heavily because our economy is booming, creating billion-dollar surpluses. As taxes continue to fall, our economy will continue to rise – the opposite of the Left Coast’s downward spiral.

But moving to Arkansas isn’t just a pocketbook decision – it’s about quality of life as well. As 48 million people discovered for themselves in 2022, Arkansas is, for good reason, the Natural State. From world-class duck hunting to fly-fishing, there are outdoor adventures for everyone – many of which are located just minutes from our urban centers.

ARKANSAS HIGH COURT SIDES WITH GOV. SANDERS, STATE LAWMAKERS IN EDUCATION OVERHAUL CASES

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Arkansas’ 52 state parks are free to residents and visitors alike and offer a host of outdoor opportunities right at your doorstep. Four of Arkansas’ state parks – Mount Nebo State Park, Hobbs State Park, Pinnacle Mountain State Park, and Devil’s Den State Park – host a collection of world-class mountain biking trails known as the Monument Trails that Outside Magazine just named the best in America.

Arkansas is God’s country. I firmly believe that you haven’t lived until you float the clear, free-flowing waters of the Buffalo River through the Ozark Mountains or watch a sunrise on a duck hunt in flooded timber.

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Arkansas is also the land of opportunity, where Sam Walton grew a little five-and-dime store into the most successful business on the face of the earth.

Arkansas is the home of legends like Al Green and Johnny Cash who pioneered a new American sound. It’s where Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine struck a blow against racism and blazed a trail for civil rights.

Arkansas is my home, and we’d love to welcome you here too, as a tourist, as an investor, and even as our newest neighbor. Come and see what we have to offer. I promise you won’t regret it.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the 47th governor of Arkansas.

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Senate Democrats Block GOP Bid to Aid Israel, Not Ukraine

Tuesday, 07 November 2023 03:16 PM EST

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a Republican effort to win quick approval for a bill providing emergency aid to Israel that passed the House of Representatives last week, but that provides no assistance for Ukraine’s war against Russia.

Republican Senator Roger Marshall said: “Time is of the essence and it’s imperative that the Senate not delay delivering this crucial aid to Israel another day,” he said.

Democrats objected, stressing the importance of providing aid to Ukraine as well as Israel, in addition to humanitarian aid, border security funding and money to push back against China in the Indo-Pacific that was in a $106 billion funding request President Joe Biden sent to Congress last month. They also accused House Republicans of playing politics with the crisis in Israel, delaying aid for the Jewish State by tying support to cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, a favorite target for Republicans, rather than writing a bipartisan bill.

The House bill would provide $14.3 billion for Israel as it responds to a deadly Oct. 7 attack by Islamist Hamas militants, but also cut the same amount of money from the IRS. The funds would include $4 billion for procurement of Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems to counter short-range rocket threats as well as some transfers of equipment from U.S. stocks.

“Our allies in Ukraine can no more afford a delay than our allies in Israel,” said Senator Patty Murray, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The House vote was largely along party lines. Democrats called the proposed IRS cuts a politically motivated “poison pill” that would increase the U.S. budget deficit by cutting back on tax collection. They also said it was essential to continue to support Ukraine.

To become law, legislation must pass the Democratic-controlled Senate as well as the Republican-majority House, and be signed into law by Biden, a Democrat. The White House had said Biden would veto the House bill.

Senate leaders are writing their own supplemental funding bill and hope to introduce it as soon as this week.

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Report: Feds Coordinated Broad Censorship of Americans on Election, COVID, More

By: Casey Harper / @CaseyHarper33 / November 07, 2023

“The federal government, disinformation ‘experts’ at universities, Big Tech, and others worked together through the Election Integrity Partnership to monitor & censor Americans’ speech,” Rep. Jim Jordan, pictured Oct. 20, posted on X. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The federal government coordinated with an array of entities to censor Americans’ speech online, a newly released report from the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government shows. In particular, the report shows that the Department of Homeland Security worked with Stanford University and the Global Engagement Center, which works across agencies but sits under the State Department, to create a streamlined process for identifying and censoring posts.

These groups formed the Election Integrity Partnership, which the report shows worked to censor and limit certain posts going into the 2020 presidential election. The report argues the federal government was “heavy handed” with universities and social media companies and censored conservative viewpoints far more often than liberal points of view under the guise of combating disinformation.

“Created in the summer of 2020 ‘at the request’ of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the EIP provided a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny,” the report said.

The report lays out how EIP analysts searched social media sites for undesirable content.

From the report:

The EIP’s misinformation ‘analysts’ next scoured the internet for additional examples for censorship. If the submitted report flagged a Facebook post, for example, the EIP analysts searched for similar content on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and other major social media platforms. Once all of the offending links were compiled, the EIP sent the most significant ones directly to Big Tech with specific recommendations on how the social media platforms should censor the posts, such as reducing the posts’ ‘discoverability,’ ‘suspending [an account’s] ability to continue tweeting for 12 hours,’ ‘monitoring if any of the tagged influencer accounts retweet’ a particular user, and, of course, removing thousands of Americans’ posts.

This report is the latest in a series of reports, including the “Twitter Files,” which show the federal government pressured private and nonprofit organizations to quiet certain viewpoints. Much of this push for censorship was fueled by concerns that former President Donald Trump was propelled to the White House by misleading news and content on social media sites.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sparked headlines last month when he said that Twitter was an “FBI subsidiary” before billionaire Elon Musk took over. Johnson raised concerns again after this latest report.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., pointed to the report as well, pushing for his legislation, the Free Speech Protection Act. Paul said that under this legislation, which he co-wrote with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the government “will be stripped of its ability to shroud its actions in secrecy and infringe upon the First Amendment rights of the American people.”

This latest report includes documents obtained from Standard that show examples of the censorship and the coordination between federal and private entities.

“The American people deserve to know if they were targeted by their own government and so-called ‘disinformation’ experts,” Jordan, who leads the weaponization committee, wrote on X.

This article was originally published on The Center Square.

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Playing the Middle

A.F. BRANCO | on November 7, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-playing-the-middle/

01 O Response AC 1080 — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

Cartoon – Obama is trying to play the middle in the Hamas-Israeli conflict by taking a position that seems to give leniency to Hamas in spite of their subhuman bloody attacks on innocent Israeli citizens. Obama has a lot of blood on his hand from when he gave Iran pallets of cash to Iran in an effort to get a ridiculous nuclear deal that has quite possibly been used in this attack or ones similar to this.
At least when Trump eluded that there are “Very fine people on both sides,” he wasn’t referring to the Nazis or white supremacists’ part of the crowd and made that very clear. However, the media leaves that part out.

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Court: Democrats Have No Evidence To Challenge New Hampshire’s Voter ID Law

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | NOVEMBER 06, 2023

A citizen on their way to vote in Minneapolis, MN

A New Hampshire court dismissed Democrat-backed lawsuits contesting the legality of the state’s voter ID law on Wednesday, marking a major win for Republicans and election integrity advocates.

Writing for the Hillsborough Superior Court, Justice Charles Temple ruled that a series of challenges filed against New Hampshire’s voter ID law lacks legal standing because plaintiffs failed to provide evidence showing their ability to vote was impeded by the law in question. In their original lawsuit against New Hampshire’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general, several state voters, along with 603 Forward and Open Democracy Action (two leftist organizations), claimed SB 418 violated provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution.

The Republican National Committee, New Hampshire Republican State Committee, and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) PAC were intervenor-defendants in the case.

Signed into law by GOP Gov. Chris Sununu last year, SB 418 altered the process by which voters verify their identity when casting their ballot. Under the law, voters who fail to present an approved form of ID would be instructed to fill out an “affidavit ballot,” at which point he or she must then fill out and submit a series of documents proving he or she is eligible to vote. If a voter does not return a copy of the required information within seven days of the election, that voter’s ballot will not be certified.

In his Wednesday ruling, Temple noted how plaintiffs were unable to document any evidence proving their rights were, “or will be,” violated by the law.

“In sum, it seems abundantly clear to the Court that the ‘rights’ at issue in this litigation are the constitutional rights of New Hampshire’s voters, which the organizational plaintiffs maintain have been (or will be) violated by SB 418,” Temple wrote. “However, under long-standing case law, the organizational plaintiffs may only challenge the constitutionality of SB 418 based on an invasion of their own rights. … For the reasons stated above, the plaintiffs have failed to identify the necessary ‘present legal or equitable right’ belonging to them ‘to which the [defendants] [are] asserting an adverse claim.’”

Temple furthermore granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ requests that SB 418 be declared unlawful and an injunction prohibiting its enactment and enforcement.

“Voter ID laws do not harm eligible voters, instead, they identify those people ineligible to vote, including non-citizens,” RITE President Derek Lyons said in a statement celebrating Wednesday’s ruling. “Every case rejecting activists’ attempts to upend state election law helps restore voters’ confidence in the ballot box.”

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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Mary Katharine Ham Op-ed: Could Virginia be a blueprint for a Republican red wave in 2024?

By Mary Katharine Ham | OutKick | Published November 6, 2023 2:59pm EST

Editor’s note: The following column was first published on OutKick.

On a sunny, brisk weekday in Sterling, Va., state senate candidate Juan Pablo Segura is on a world tour of sorts. Andres Ruiz, a pastor who works with Segura’s campaign on Latino outreach, gestured to a block of strip-mall of restaurants with a grin. “See? You can go from Peru to Bolivia, Mexico, and around the corner is Venezuela!”

Segura, a Republican entrepreneur vying to be Virginia’s first Latin-American state senator, is courting the immigrant community in the competitive 31st Senate District, a bid to earn both new and disaffected voters in a population he says Democrats have taken for granted. Last week, it was working.

5 REASONS VIRGINIA IS THE STATE TO WATCH ON ELECTION NIGHT 2023

Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

It could also be a chance to capitalize on President Biden’s losses among Hispanic voters, where the president’s lead has fallen from 12 points in NYT battleground polling to single digits since September. It’s part of a larger shift among all nonwhite voters since 2020, where Biden has seen almost a 20 percent drop in support. If Republicans can attempt to woo them, it would happen in swing districts like the one where Segura is pounding the pavement.

Twenty-year-old Katie Rivas, working the register at her father’s small Loudoun County market, said she was excited to cast her very first vote for Segura next week at her former high school. Edgar Martinez, an administrator at a local church, said he’s been in Virginia more than 30 years, but this will be his first vote for state senate.

HISPANIC VOTERS SAY THEY’RE ‘RUNNING AWAY’ FROM BIDEN: ‘BIG CUP OF JOE OVERFLOWING WITH INFLATION’

“Republican principles are in a lot of ways immigrant principles,” Segura said, referencing the newly redrawn district’s 14% Latino population, along with double-digit Asian and multiracial segments. “This race is really a microcosm for what the coalition can look like.”

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Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

Every state seat is up for grabs, but the competitive universe is about seven Senate seats (either party must win 4 for control) and 10 Delegate seats. Republicans currently hold the House and Democrats, the Senate.

Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

As Segura walked the district, he chatted in his fluent Spanish with a pair of women enjoying Peruvian chicken as a telenovela played on the restaurant TV, and a group of 20-somethings at a Mexican restaurant’s bar. These voters shared with him a mix of economic concerns, wariness of Democrats on social issues and public safety, particularly among church-going Latinos, and pride in potentially electing a member of the Latin community. Segura is a native Virginian whose family hails from Argentina.

Youngkin on stage — Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin addresses the Economic Club of Washington’s luncheon event at the Marriott Marquis on September 26, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In 2022, national issue polling showed Republicans with commanding leads in what voters cared about, but the party couldn’t overcome candidate quality issues and a top-down aversion to early voting. The expected red wave never washed ashore.

VIRGINIA’S ELECTIONS A KEY 2024 BAROMETER AND A HUGE TEST FOR RISING GOP STAR GLENN YOUNGKIN

This year in Virginia, “top issues for Republicans and Independents…are the economy and inflation, at 41% and 30% respectively, while Democrats said abortion is their highest concern, at 25%.”

On a recent weekend, door-knockers with Americans for Prosperity walked pumpkin-dotted porches in Northern Virginia, politely crossing paths with activists for Segura’s Democratic opponent, Russett Perry. Reaching people on the economy, education, and public safety with “policy leaders who believe in freedom and opportunity,” is what voters want, said C.J. Sailor, state director of AFP, who says the organization tallied more than 700,000 voter contacts in the cycle. “It’s so important to connect with voters about what’s at stake.”

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Youngkin’s state operation has done three things to prevent a repeat of 2022 and preserve the term-limited executive’s chance at expanding his legislative agenda. They worked on candidate quality, going 10-for-10 in contested primaries where Youngkin backed a candidate.

“We really focused on finding good candidates that could run good campaigns, that could effectively communicate what they want to do in Richmond and who would be good public servants,” said Dave Rexrode, a senior adviser to Youngkin.

HISPANICS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM DEMOCRATS. BIDENOMICS IS MAKING THINGS EVEN WORSE

The state party rolled out an early-voting effort in July they say got buy-in from candidates, the state party, and local activists. The push has ruffled feathers in Segura’s district, where the area’s liberal prosecutor cease-and-desist letter over having a mariachi band and a taco truck at one of his “early-vote fiestas.” Segura said such events have been attracting hundreds of new and infrequent voters, which is what Republicans must do to win these uphill-climb districts.

“We’re certainly seeing a lot of good progress, and I think it’s gonna pay dividends for us in these targeted races where the margins are going to be incredibly close,” Rexrode said.

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Finally, the party’s operation spent money early defining candidates positively while Youngkin himself staked out a “compassionate consensus” position on abortion— a 15-week limit with exceptions— that gave Republican candidates a position to embrace, making it harder for Democratic opponents to claim they want the kind of early bans that risked swing and suburban voters in 2022.

“One of the big lessons learned from 2022 is we can’t just let Democrats get way with their fear-mongering on the issue,” Rexrode said. “We have to clearly articulate where we stand on the issue but also explain where they stand on the issue,” which he said represents only a very small minority of Virginia voters.

Segura and the rest of the battleground candidates also hope to be buoyed by Youngkin’s popularity. Youngkin’s approval rating has been above 50 percent all year and goes as high as 60% with Independent voters. Notably absent from the constant attack ads on Virginia TV and radio are attacks on the governor himself. Instead, many Democrats are running on promises to work across the aisle with the governor.

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Youngkin was propelled to the governor’s mansion in 2021 on his own political savvy and a normie-dad vibe, bolstered by a series of missteps by Virginia Democrats. Most notably, former Gov. Terry McAulliffe threw in with teachers’ unions to keep schools closed for more than a year during the pandemic, and pooh-poohed parents’ concerns, making parental rights an issue that still resonates in a place like Loudoun County, which became ground zero for education fights. Joshua Raimundo, strategic director with the LIBRE initiative in Virginia, said education is a top issue for Hispanic voters in the state, who favor school choice in large numbers.

“They (Democrats) have forgotten the Latino,” Martinez said as he showed Segura out of the church lobby and back into the autumn sun. “We are traditional values. I don’t see the Democrats support that anymore at all. We want to see you at the state to help Glenn Youngkin!”

Next week, we’ll find out whether new messengers, a popular governor, and a conversion on early voting can improve on the GOP’s 2022 performance and lay the groundwork for this battleground state in 2024.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM MARY KATHARINE HAM

Mary Katharine Ham is an OutKick columnist. She is a writer, speaker, and Georgia Bulldog who built patience and resilience waiting 41 years for a national championship and now uses those skills to parent four children. She hosts a podcast called “Getting Hammered.”

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Rasmussen Poll: Trump Expands GOP Support to 50 Percent

By Eric Mack | Monday, 06 November 2023 01:42 PM EST

Some GOP pollsters have considered former President Donald Trump having all but won the Republican presidential primary, and now his support in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll has reached a majority 50% among likely voters.

Trump now leads the field by 38 points after having pulled 45% support in September’s edition of the Rasmussen poll.

The full GOP primary results:

Trump 50%
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 12%
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley 9%
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 5%
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy 3%
Former Vice President Mike Pence 3%
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. 2%
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson 1%
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum 0%
Undecided 14%

Notably, Pence has since officially ended his campaign, saying, “it is not my time.”

When the nationwide poll expands to include Democrat and third-party voters for those with open primaries, the also-rans pick up a little bit of support against Trump.

“In states with open primaries — allowing voters to choose which primary they vote in without regard for their party registration — Trump’s advantage could be diluted by the potential ‘crossover’ vote,” according to the Rasmussen Reports analysis.

“While Trump gets 63% of the vote among self-identified Republican voters, the former president is supported by only 33% of Democrats and 46% of unaffiliated voters who say they’re likely to vote in their state’s 2024 GOP primaries.

“Several of Trump’s primary rivals — including DeSantis, Haley, and Christie — draw a significant share of their support from Democrats and unaffiliated voters.”

Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,344 likely Republican primary voters and 2,015 likely U.S. primary voters Oct. 26-31 and Nov. 1-2, 2023. The margin of error for GOP primary voters is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Eric Mack | editorial.mack@newsmax.com

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

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IRS Targets Conservative Group Exposing the Biden Admin

By: Tyler O’Neil / @Tyler2ONeil / November 06, 2023

IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel in a suit wearing glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard — The Internal Revenue Service opened an audit into the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has exposed the Biden administration. Pictured: Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 19. (Photo: Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)

The Internal Revenue Service has moved to audit a conservative group that has exposed the radicalism of some of President Joe Biden’s nominees to senior administrative posts, and in so doing, led him to withdraw their candidacies.

The American Accountability Foundation has exposed numerous Biden nominees, and it published emails showing that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had encouraged the IRS to target conservative organizations, including AAF, for extra scrutiny and investigation.

“Senator Whitehouse has repeatedly called for the IRS to investigate AAF—by name,” AAF President Tom Jones told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Monday. “Attacking groups like ours has been a priority for Senator Whitehouse and it appears the Biden admin has heeded his calls.”

“We’re auditing your organization’s Form 990 for the tax year ended December 31, 2021,” an IRS revenue agent wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to AAF. The organization provided a copy of the letter to The Daily Signal.

The IRS insisted it does not launch audits for partisan reasons. A spokesman said he could not confirm the audit.

“Under the federal tax law, federal employees can neither confirm nor deny that a particular organization is or is not being audited,” IRS spokesman Anthony Burke told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Monday. “We’re precluded from disclosing tax return information.”

Burke directed The Daily Signal to IRS Publication 556, which explains the examination of returns.

“AAF is being attacked because it is successful,” Jones said. He mentioned a few of the Biden nominees AAF criticized whose nominations Biden later revoked.

When Biden nominated David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Jones unearthed allegations that Chipman, who had served as a special agent at ATF until 2012, had remarked that “African American agents … must have been cheating” because they passed an exam. Biden withdrew Chipman’s nomination after AAF revealed the alleged comments.

When Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to join the Federal Communications Commission, AAF purchased billboards and ran newspaper and digital ads opposing her nomination. AAF highlighted the Fraternal Order of Police’s opposition to Sohn, which noted her statements indicating “serious animus towards law enforcement officers.” Sohn withdrew her nomination following the scrutiny.

AAF also warned that Saule Omarova, then a nominee for comptroller of the currency, had apparently joined a self-declared Marxist group on Facebook in 2019. Biden also withdrew her nomination.

“Whether it is Gigi Sohn at the FCC, David Chipman at the ATF, Saule Omarova as Biden’s bank czar, there are numerous people who have been exposed because of AAF’s work,” Jones told The Daily Signal. “Apparently, the administration has decided they want to stop that by weaponizing the IRS against us.”

In 2010, conservative groups reported waiting longer than usual to receive verification for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Groups claimed the IRS had targeted them for their political and ideological stances, but the Obama administration denied any ideological discrimination. In October 2017, the Department of Justice settled two cases in the IRS targeting scandal. In a class-action lawsuit involving 428 conservative plaintiffs, the IRS agreed to pay $3.5 million.

AAF_IRS-Letter_2023.09.14_Redacted Download

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Op-ed: Time for Scrutiny of DEI Policies of Administrative Office of US Courts, Judicial Conference

Zack Smith / @tzsmith / Matthew Turner / November 06, 2023

Chief Justice John Roberts—seen here receiving the Henry J. Friendly Medal at the American Law Institute’s 2023 annual dinner in Washington on May 23—needs to rein in the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. (Photo: Sarah L. Voisin/ The Washington Post/Getty Images)

Federal courts have their own administrative state, and that’s a problem. Like many of its executive branch counterparts, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts came into existence during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal push to establish supposedly expert administrators. Established in 1939 after FDR’s failed court-packing plan, the “AO” (as it has come to be known) nominally has a narrow mandate—“to provide administrative support to federal courts.”

In fact, two federal appellate courts that have examined the relationship of the AO vis-a-vis the federal judiciary have said that the AO “was created to perform, and historically has performed, a limited ministerial function.” It was not, they said, “intended to govern or make policy for the Judiciary.”

It would raise serious constitutional concerns for it to do so, since the AO itself is a not an entity under Article III of the Constitution. That job instead has been assigned to the Judicial Conference of the United States, which serves as the “Judiciary’s principal policy-making body.”

The chief justice presides over the Judicial Conference, which is “comprised of the chief judge of each judicial circuit, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each regional judicial circuit, who is elected for a term of not less than three nor more than five successive years as established by majority vote of all circuit and district judges of the circuit represented.” Still, the chief justice appoints the AO’s director, who is under “the supervision and direction of” the Judicial Conference.

Today, the AO maintains a sprawling portfolio and has engaged in actions that have directly injected the courts into hot-button political controversies. Worse still, the AO’s actions seem to contradict the Supreme Court’s own recent precedent in the area of racial preferences. For instance, an article published earlier this year highlighted just a few of the AO’s problematic diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, where the AO has been touting its work to promote “diversity” in the profession, particularly along “racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual-orientation dimensions.”

While the Judicial Conference should rein in these problematic policy decisions, it has unfortunately allowed some of these same pernicious themes to creep into its views, too.

As part of its 2020 Strategic Plan for the Federal Judiciary, it emphasizes that “Judges must be encouraged to give special attention to diversity in their law clerk hiring process.” Of course, that diversity lies largely along racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation dimensions.

And the reports of the Judicial Conference’s various committees are rife with references to programs under consideration to increase the diversity of staff and employees and among members of the bankruptcy and magistrate benches.

At its next meeting, the Judicial Conference should engage in a serious discussion about whether these various initiatives and programs undermine confidence in the judiciary. They give the impression that the courts themselves are not being colorblind in their actions and are instead relying on something other than merit when making hiring and firing decisions.

And the Judicial Conference (again, headed by the chief justice) must grapple with whether these programs can still pass muster in light of the Supreme Court’s decision this past June (written by the chief justice) striking down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action programs.

There’s some precedent at the state level for reviewing such programs being implemented in our court systems around the country.

The Florida Supreme Court, for example, exercised its administrative oversight to prohibit programming that required certain diversity quotas from qualifying for continuing legal education credit. Other state high courts should similarly exercise their oversight authority, and the Judicial Conference must do the same here.

Our Constitution is colorblind, and our courts must be colorblind, too, in all of their actions. To do otherwise undermines the very foundations of our court system—and our country.

COMMENTARY BY

Zack Smith@tzsmith

Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Matthew Turner

Matthew Turner is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

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‘The media CANNOT stop lying’: Mark Levin blasts several media outlets for running hit piece on his Holocaust remarks

By: PAUL SACCA | NOVEMBER 05, 2023

Mark Levin skewered the media for publishing articles against him regarding his comments about the Jewish heritage of a CNN anchor.

On Thursday, far-left outlet, Media Matters, ran an hit piece castigating Levin for comments he made on his radio show earlier this week. CNN published an article on Friday echoing the sentiments of the Media Matters story. The writer of the piece, Oliver Darcy, requested a comment from the White House – which also condemned Levin and Fox News.

“Not only is Fox News aligning with those who fan the flames of hate – Fox is paying their salaries,” said Andrew Bates – deputy White House press secretary. “Lying to insult the pain that families suffered in the Holocaust has absolutely no place in America. None. Sadly, this is not the first time in recent months that a Fox News host made sickening remarks about the Holocaust.”

Several other media outlets ran with the story – including the Washington Post, the Times of Israel, and the Daily Beast, Mediaite, the Washington Examiner. The media outlets took a quote from Levin from the Wednesday episode of “The Mark Levin Show.” During the episode, Levin slammed CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, and said CNN is “filled with a lot of self-hating Jews.”

The media outlets ran stories from the following quote from Levin:

Wolf Blitzer, as I understand it, his parents weren’t victims in one way or another, of the Holocaust. But certainly his family comes out of that background — but you wouldn’t know it. Because the ideology of the left is very attractive. It’s very compelling, particularly if you’re in media.

Blitzer’s parents came to the United States as refugees from Poland after surviving the Nazi era and all four of his grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust.

A CNN spokesperson framed Levin’s quote as “wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful,” “dangerous,” and “anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

However, Levin clarified his wording on Thursday’s episode of his show and pointed out how the word “weren’t” doesn’t make sense in the context of his commentary:

Let’s stop for a second. When I take a breath, when I’m saying something and I’m passionate. I take a breath. Now you can hear that they say worth it if you’re really listening and you want it to say where it is so that you can hear it to say weren’t. I barely even remember saying it. So we’ve played it. We’ve got the audio you can twist it to say weren’t. But obviously, why would I say his parents weren’t in one way or another. Victims in the Holocaust. How can that even be logical? Why would I say somebody’s parents were or were not victims of the Holocaust? If they weren’t victims of the Holocaust, why would they say his parents weren’t victims of the Holocaust? Or why would I intentionally say that I didn’t? I didn’t. In the second sentence, but certainly as family comes out of that background. Clarifies exactly what I’m talking about. So, they take that and say Levin denies. They’re Wolf Blitzer’s parents. We’re in the Holocaust, which I’ve since looked up, and they were at Auschwitz, and it’s the grandparents were killed there. Which is a horrible, horrible thing. In fact, some of the people who’ve been taken back into Gaza. We’re Holocaust survivors in Israel. Some of the people murdered were Holocaust survivors. And of course, my point is you have a background like that. And you might and you ask Hakeem question. Hakeem Jeffries a question like this. It’s shocking to me, especially as a Jew. It is shocking to me. And so that now, ladies and gentlemen, causes CNN, which was contacted by, I think, The Daily Beast, another leftist Marxist operation. And here’s what CNN said. Quote. And by the way, it’s anonymous. We don’t even know who at CNN said it.

Levin – who is Jewish – blasted the media for citing Media Matters – the progressive outlet that targets conservatives and has received funding from George Soros.

“NEVER AGAIN, MEDIA, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT,” Levin wrote on the X social media platform. “The media CANNOT stop lying, using Soros’s Media Matters as their source and using their spin, the sickening statement from an anonymous CNN spokesman, then, of course, the Washington Post (which was silent during most of the Holocaust), and now, to top it off, a Biden regime propagandist.”

Levin continued, “It won’t work as they hang on the words ‘were’ and ‘weren’t.’ The media have been horrendous in their coverage of the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israeli Jews and their subsequent use of Hamas lies, including the notorious reporting about the Gaza hospital, which they blamed on Israel, the use of Hamas statistics, the regurgitation of Biden administration talking points, and relentless insinuations and worse about Israel and its military killing civilians.”

The host of “The Mark Levin Show” said, “The New York Times and Washington Post essentially covered up the Holocaust as it was occurring. The Times issued a quasi-apology in 2001 (the Post still has said nothing to the best of my knowledge, some 80 years later).”

The Blaze Media personality declared, “I will not allow the corporate media, and their numerous propagandists, to get away with their hate and lies. Never again will the media be free to push a hateful narrative without pushback from me and conservatives like me. They can try and use the words were’ or weren’t’ to distract from what is really happening, and ask a Biden lapdog staffer for his input, but it will not work.”

He said all the media does is “twist, spin, deceive, false narratives, and lies.”

Levin proclaimed, “I will not be intimidated, and neither should any of you!”

Levin blasted the Washington Post by saying:

Washington Post reporter, Jeremy Barr, cited Media Matters when regurgitating a smear on yours truly even though he knew that the president of Media Matters is an anti-Semite and his own newspaper had reported on it in the past. And Barr works for the Washington Post Corporation even though he knows it helped cover up the Holocaust. What does that make Jeremy Barr?

The host of “LevinTV” on Blaze Media also slammed the Washington Examiner:

Shame on the Washington Examiner for pushing this crap 3-days later. Perhaps the Examiner will link to these real stories about CNN’s grotesque anti-Semitism, including by several of its hosts, and its anti-Israel propaganda over the years. Apparently, their reporter was too lazy to provide full context, so I have included just a few of the stories about CNN’s horrendous antisemitism, including several of its hosts. Their pattern and pro-Hamas propaganda are not secrets.

You can listen to Levin’s original comments from the Nov. 1 episode below.

PAUL SACCA

Paul Sacca is a staff writer for Blaze News.@Paul_Sacca →

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Antisemitism 101

A.F. BRANCO | on November 5, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-antisemitism-101/

Minnesota Teachers who Support Hamas Terrorists — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2026.

A Cartoon that hits Minnesota Teachers who are supporting Hamas terrorism in schools and other evil social topics when they should be teaching things like math, English, and real history in class. This is what happens when students of higher learning graduate and enter our society. They create more woke monsters turning our world upside down.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – With Friends Like These

A.F. BRANCO | on November 6, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-with-friend-like-these/

Hamas Rooftop Party — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

So many left-wing groups are supporting Hamas terrorists, like Gay and Lesbian groups, LGBTQ+, Transgenders, Liberal Democrat Jews, etc., but don’t seem to understand that if any of them ventured to Gaza, they would be thrown off the top of a building to their death for the lifestyle or politics they have.
DEI groupthink and American universities have warped and brainwashed our kids minds to the point they can’t see who is actually on their side—the side of freedom and democracy.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF OCTOBER 3, 2023

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Operation Deplorable: A Who’s Who Of The ‘Get Trump’ Crusade

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | NOVEMBER 03, 2023

Author Tristan Justice profile

TRISTAN JUSTICE

VISIT ON TWITTER@JUSTICETRISTAN

The 2024 Republican presidential front-runner is faced with 91 state and federal charges one year from Election Day. After a series of failed attempts to capture the criminal conviction of Donald Trump, Democrats have charged their primary political opponent with nearly 100 crimes to thwart the former president’s triumphant return to the Oval Office. Here’s a “who’s who” of the key players in the Democrats’ latest crusade to achieve the top item on their policy agenda.

Alvin Bragg

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first prosecutor to land the coveted indictment of Democrats’ Public Enemy No. 1. In April, the New York prosecutor unveiled a 34-count indictment against Trump, carrying a maximum 136-year prison sentence. The charges stem from 2016 hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a case prosecutors previously declined to pursue.

The Manhattan charges, however, marked the fulfillment of a campaign promise Bragg made two years ago to prosecute the former president. Prosecuting Trump was apparently the top issue of his platform in 2021.

“Bragg often reminded voters on the campaign trail that he helped sue the Trump administration ‘more than a hundred times’ as a deputy in the New York state attorney general’s office,” Reuters reported that year.

The 50-year-old prosecutor’s own supporters pointed to his ability to pursue Trump in court as a reason to back him. The New York Times reported on Bragg’s endorsement from a former U.S. attorney in July 2021.

“Preet Bharara, a former United States attorney in Manhattan who supervised Mr. Bragg and endorsed his candidacy, said Mr. Bragg had varied experience as a prosecutor, and that his work on white-collar crime and public corruption cases could come into play in the investigation into Mr. Trump,” the Times read.

Bragg was also promoted to his current office with financial support from left-wing billionaire financier George Soros. The super PAC backed by Soros, Color of Change, pledged to bankroll Bragg’s campaign with a seven-figure sum in the spring of 2021. Soon after the cash infusion, the committee pulled back $500,000 of the donation when Bragg faced allegations of sexual misconduct of his own.

Bragg’s record in New York, meanwhile, has been one of unleashed crime while prosecutors pursue politicized investigations against the most popular Republican in the country. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Soros admitted to backing candidates who promised to be soft on crime, branded as “reform prosecutors.” Bragg has held up to the pledge by prioritizing Trump instead of dangerous criminals. According to The New York Times, major crime spiked 22 percent during Bragg’s first year in office.

Letitia James

While Bragg pursues criminal charges against the former president, New York Attorney General Letitia James has Trump in civil court on allegations of fraud. In September last year, the attorney general filed a $250 million fraud suit with the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing the former president of inflating corporate assets to obtain financial benefits.

“We found that Mr. Trump, his children, and the corporation used more than 200 false asset valuations over a 10-year period,” said James at a press conference.

James, 65, won in a partial summary judgment a year later, and in October, the trial began after the judge found the Trump family, including Trump himself, liable for fraud. The judge in the case ordered the termination of Trump’s New York business license and will now examine charges by James to determine additional penalties. In October, an appeals court put a hold on the judge’s mandate to dissolve Trump’s business in the state.

The aggressive effort against the Trump family’s New York business empire marks another campaign promise fulfilled by the state attorney general. Similar to Bragg, James ran for office in 2018 on a platform to prosecute the president. When first campaigning for the statewide job five years ago, James railed against the Republican president as “illegitimate” and an “embarrassment.”

“NY Attorney General Letitia James has a long history of fighting Trump and other powerful targets,” headlined an Associated Press profile of James in September.

“Letitia James fixated on Donald Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, branding the then-president a ‘con man’ and ‘carnival barker’ and pledging to shine a ‘bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings,’” the AP reported. “Five years later, James is on the verge of disrupting Trump’s real estate empire.”

James was reelected last fall just more than a month after she unveiled the $250 million lawsuit against the Trump family. Now James is on the cusp of capturing Trump’s corporate exile from the Empire State.

Arthur Engoron

The state-friendly judge presiding over James’ civil lawsuit against Trump is a Democrat who held the former president in contempt last year over subpoena violations. Arthur Engoron is a judge in the New York Supreme Court’s 1st Judicial District who ran unopposed for the seat in the 2015 general election.

In September, Judge Engoron devalued the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate from between $426 million and $612 million, as estimated by the Trumps, to a mere $18 and $28 million.

[READ: N.Y. Judge Cherry-Picks Lowball Mar-a-Lago Appraisal To Find Trump Guilty Of Inflating Property Values]

The stunning devaluation stands in contrast to smaller properties at Palm Beach, which sold for far more. Rush Limbaugh’s former residence, for example, sold for $155 million despite a $51 million appraisal. Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile, is the only property at Palm Beach to face the waterfront on both the ocean and the waterway.

Last month, Engoron also implemented a gag order to prevent Trump from even speaking out against the accusations against him. Trump was fined twice over violations of the gag order for a combined $15,000.

Jack Smith

Jack Smith, 54, a veteran prosecutor with years spent at the Justice Department, was appointed last November to lead two of the federal efforts seeking Trump’s conviction. Now special counsel in a pair of cases prosecuting Democrats’ top political opponent, Smith was previously head of the DOJ public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015. Among his most notable cases was the prosecution of former Virginia Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell, whom the Supreme Court exonerated of a bribery conviction in 2016. Smith was also involved in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax scandal targeting conservative nonprofits.

Now Smith is spearheading the federal government’s criminal efforts against Trump regarding classified documents and the events related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. In June, Trump was indicted with 37 counts of mishandling classified information, with three more charges handed down in the case about two months later. Smith indicted Trump with an additional four charges in a separate case this summer over objections to electoral certification, such as Democrats have made for decades.

Tanya Chutkan

Smith’s team at the Justice Department could not have landed a more friendly judge in the government’s Jan. 6 case against Trump than U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. An activist judge with an obvious animus against the former president and his supporters, the Obama appointee was assigned to preside over the politically fraught Jan. 6 case after building a reputation as “a tough punisher of Capitol rioters.”

“Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors,” the AP reported. “Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.”

When Trump complained the federal charges against him amounted to election interference by the DOJ, Chutkan shrugged off the accusations, saying, “That’s how it has to be.” Chutkan previously condemned comparisons between the Capitol turmoil and the far-left riots that characterized the summer of 2020 in other rulings of pro-Trump demonstrators. The fiery riots, she claimed, were actually “the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights.” Chutkan said comparisons between the two “ignore[] a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

In September, Chutkan predictably denied Trump’s request to recuse herself from the Jan. 6 trial. In October, Chutkan handed down another gag order to prevent the president from speaking publicly and openly about the case. On Nov. 1, Chutkan handed down an order allowing Smith’s team to conceal evidence from Trump’s attorneys that the DOJ has identified as “classified.”

Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia upset a six-term incumbent when she defeated her former boss, Paul Howard, three years ago. Willis, who beat Howard in the primary runoff, carried the general election unopposed after no Republicans qualified for the November contest.

Willis’ investigation of Trump and the former president’s campaign team was one of her first acts in office and will define her legacy. In August, the DA for Fulton County, which covers most of Atlanta, charged Trump with 13 counts related to the former president’s efforts to protest aspects of the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor also indicted 18 Trump allies, several of whom have taken plea deals. Trump adviser Jeffrey Clark, however, filed a motion on Oct. 31 to dismiss the “massive and grotesque abuse of prosecutorial power.”

A September report from The Federalist revealed Willis possesses evidence exonerating Georgia’s alternate electors but continues to pursue criminal convictions anyway.

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

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Black voters in Milwaukee list complaints on Biden, Democratic Party ahead of 2024: ‘We’re damned anyways’

By Jeffrey Clark Fox News | Published November 3, 2023 10:46am EDT

Black voters and activists in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired to vote for President Biden with one year to go before the election, according to a CNN report. Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report Friday.

Joanna Brooks, who owns a yoga studio in Glendale, said that the Democratic Party has taken Black voters for granted.

“Black people in general, I think, tend to be pretty loyal to the Democratic Party,” Brooks said. “Sometimes I wonder, just based on how that party has performed thus far for people so far, if they should continue to be.”

DEMOCRATS ‘FAILING EPICALLY’ TO REACH BLACK MALE VOTERS HEADING INTO 2024, ACTIVIST WARNS

Black Milwaukee voters, President Biden — Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report. (CNN screenshot | Getty Images)

“I hear people saying [that] they’re not gonna vote,” Milwaukee voter Eric Jones said of the 2024 presidential election. “That’s my fear. They see [Biden and former President Donald Trump], and they’re gonna say, ‘Screw it. We’re damned anyways.'”

“When the factories and the manufacturing left, jobs left,” he told CNN. “When jobs leave and opportunities leave, then you have certain things that are domino effects.”

Jones said that the recipe for popularity as a political candidate was simple: “You bring opportunities, you bring jobs, you get votes. Plain and simple.”

When asked who he would choose between Trump and Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC), admitted that would be a difficult choice to make.

“That’s a tough one,” he said, smiling.

LONG-SHOT BIDEN CHALLENGER DEAN PHILLIPS SCOLDS DEM LEADERS CALLING HIS CAMPAIGN DISRESPECTFUL TO BLACK VOTERS

Donald Trump and Joe Biden — When asked who he would choose between former President Donald Trump and President Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, admitted that would be a difficult choice to make. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Other community and statewide organizers said that the stakes were high for winning the Black vote in Wisconsin.

“There’s no way to win a statewide election that doesn’t run through the Black community,” BLOC executive director Angela Lang said. “What happens in Milwaukee can impact the rest of the state, which ultimately can impact the rest of the country.”

“I don’t want the world the Democrats are offering.”

Based black man gives you the most real straight talk you’ll ever hear about the way Dems are wrecking big cities and how people are getting FED UPpic.twitter.com/tyiRhOg43n
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 30, 2023

Some Democrats are worried about Black male voter turnout as they campaign for 2024 and argue the party is “failing” to reach Black males and younger Black voters, The Washington Post reported.

Internal party analysis reportedly showed that Black male turnout and younger Black voter turnout were much lower in certain states in the 2022 midterms.

So Many People Regret Voting For Biden pic.twitter.com/HdxZeAVzuB
— Trumps Nephew (@ForgiatoBlow47) August 28, 2023

“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of Black men — and that’s sad to say,” W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told the Post. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”

IM SICK OF THIS BULL Sh****

A lot of people won’t like this video but I’m tired of holding back. Yes I said what I said. Judge me all you want

WE DONT GIVE A FLYING F*** about President @realDonaldTrump being indicted.

We will vote for him and there is nothing the Democrats… pic.twitter.com/3kNTXWrQmH
— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) August 15, 2023

Robinson told the outlet that Black men are “sporadic or non-voters” in multiple battleground states.

Black voters in Milwaukee told CNN they weren’t sure about supporting President Biden in 2024. (Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)

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Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.

Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.

Story tips can be sent to jeffrey.clark@fox.com.

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Report: Obama Advised Biden on AI Strategy

By Nicole Wells | Friday, 03 November 2023 01:53 PM EDT

For the past five months, former President Barack Obama has discreetly advised President Joe Biden’s administration on its artificial intelligence strategy (AI), aides for both men told NBC News. At Biden’s request, his former boss has been working in the background, talking with tech companies and meeting with senior West Wing aides via Zoom, with the joint effort culminating in an executive order Biden signed on Monday that sets up some government oversight of AI.

“You have to move fast here, not at normal government pace or normal private-sector pace, because the technology is moving so fast,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said, recalling Biden’s words. “We have to move as fast, or ideally faster. And we need to pull every lever we can.”

Aides told NBC it’s the first time the president has asked for Obama’s input on a key policy initiative and he requested it because he and Obama think alike on the matter. The former president’s involvement could also help speed the process, they said.

According to Zients, the current and former presidents see AI as an urgent priority, given the great promise, and potentially catastrophic consequences, attached to it. During a phone call in June, Biden and Obama agreed that the goal should be to maximize the technology while limiting the risk, aides to both men said.

Biden then asked Obama to collaborate with his team to develop a policy that addresses the dangers of AI, while encouraging innovation. Over lunch at the White House, aides said, they agreed they have a “shared vision” and that the federal government should act quickly.

As summer turned into fall, Obama kept in touch regularly with Zients, deputy chief of staff Brue Reed and national security adviser Jake Sullivan to help shape the executive order, Biden and Obama aides told NBC. According to the aides, the two teams communicated about a dozen times, including as the order was finalized prior to Monday’s announcement.

Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time” at the executive order signing ceremony on Monday and voiced fears about AI-enabled cyberattacks and AI-formulated bioweapons. If used properly, however, the technology could help develop new pharmaceuticals and lead to breakthroughs in cancer research.

In a statement released earlier this week, Obama said he hopes to see more AI-related action from the Biden administration.

“If we want AI to be a force for good, we have to be able to stand for something bigger — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the smart thing to do,” he said. “I applaud the Biden administration for taking this important step and hope it’s just the beginning.”

According to NBC, the White House is particularly concerned about the role AI could play in spreading misinformation about elections.

Nicole Wells | editorial.wells@newsmax.com

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

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Bad Seed

A.F. BRANCO | on November 3, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-bad-seed/

Woke are the Offspring of Democrat’s — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

The Woke culture infecting our society today is the direct offspring of the Liberal Democrat party and the radical left. Woke has permeated our government institutions, Universities, and corporate America, Mainly because of the radical left that have become professors in higher learning, brainwashing students to believe it’s okay to mass-murder, rape, and torture innocent people in Israel and attack the Jews in America.

Although many Democrats try to separate themselves from the Wokesters, they are directly responsible for this Diversity-Equity-Inclusion that plants the seed for division and the balkanization of our country.

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Judge overturns results of Democrat primary in Connecticut mayoral race after allegations of voter fraud

By: CORTNEY WEIL | NOVEMBER 02, 2023

A judge has overturned the results of the Democrat primary for the mayoral race in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after viewing compelling evidence of voter fraud. His ruling creates chaos for the general election that is scheduled to take place in just a few days.

On September 12, incumbent Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim narrowly edged out challenger John Gomes by a mere 251-vote margin in the Democrat primary. Primary election day ballots favored Gomes, but after absentee ballots were tallied later that evening, Ganim prevailed over Gomes, 4,212 to 3,961.

Within days, the Gomes camp cried foul, posting a video to Facebook that appeared to show Wanda Geter-Pataky, a city employee and a long-standing supporter of Mayor Ganim, stuffing a ballot box outside City Hall with absentee ballots. The Gomes campaign later issued similar allegations against Eneida Martinez, a former city council member who also supports Ganim.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=319589457411701

Gomes then filed a lawsuit in Fairfield Judicial District Superior Court to contest the results of the primary election, naming Ganim as well as city clerk Charles Clemons, Bridgeport Democratic registrar of voters Patricia Howard, and Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas as defendants.

On Wednesday, Judge William Clark sided with plaintiff Gomes, citing “significant mishandling of ballots by partisans” such as Geter-Pataky and Martinez. In fact, the sheer volume of evidence was “perhaps unprecedented in the State of Connecticut in an election case,” the judge said.

“The evidence here has involved hundreds of applications and ballots, thousands of hours of video of drop boxes, testimony of partisan actors, assertion of privilege against self-incrimination by Ms. Geter-Pataky and Ms. Martinez, and analysis of ballot numbers, particularly in the voting Districts linked to Ms. Geter-Pataky and Ms. Martinez,” Judge Clark wrote in the 37-page ruling.

Mayor Ganim was also called to testify in the case and said he was “shocked” by the evidence, including an 18-minute video of possible absentee ballot fraud committed by his supporters. “Mr. Ganim was … correct to be ‘shocked’ at what he saw on the video clips. … The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” Judge Clark concluded.

The judge, however, was not convinced that improperly stamped absentee ballots from the primary election should have been tossed, as Gomes’ attorney, Bill Bloss, had recommended. An assistant town clerk testified that the official stamp with city clerk Charles Clemons’ signature on it had broken, and while Judge Clark indicated that the city should have taken steps to rectify the issue of the broken stamp more quickly, he added that “the court recognizes the practical realities on the ground.”

Though Clark refused to nullify the absentee ballots without Clemons’ stamped signature, he did rule that a new Democratic mayoral primary election was warranted. He then gave attorneys 10 days to confer with state and local officials regarding a new primary election.

While Gomes is celebrating Clark’s ruling as “a victory for the people of Bridgeport,” that victory complicates the general election for Bridgeport mayor scheduled for November 7. Ganim will still be listed as the Democratic nominee on the ballot, while Gomes will be listed as an independent candidate. David Herz will be listed as the Republican.

Lamond Daniels is also running for mayor of Bridgeport, and his campaign website refers to him as a Democrat. It’s unclear what party affiliation he will have on the ballot, if he appears on the ballot at all.

Bloss, Gomes’ attorney, speculated to the CT Examiner that the city will likely host another primary election in December if and only if Mayor Ganim wins re-election. If one of the other candidates prevails in the general election, the city will likely scrap the primary election do-over.

Bloss also suggested that Geter-Pataky and Martinez may even face criminal prosecution at some point. That would hardly be a first for Geter-Pataky. She already will likely face criminal charges for alleged voter fraud in connection with the 2019 Bridgeport mayoral primary race, a race that Ganim barely won after a significant absentee ballot dump late in the evening pushed him over the top.

“I got your back, Mayor,” Geter-Pataky once assured Ganim in a video of a mayoral campaign event.

And Ganim himself, who was first elected Bridgeport mayor in 1991, served seven years in prison for accepting bribes and kickbacks while in office. After he was released, he won his old mayoral seat back in 2015, followed by re-election four years later.

Ganim is still considering whether to appeal Clark’s ruling. In the meantime, he is encouraging local residents to get out the vote in the general election next week.

The following is a video from primary day back in September, before Ganim was declared the winner. Gomes was leading in the vote count at the time this news report aired.

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CORTNEY WEIL

SR. EDITOR, NEWS

Cortney Weil is a senior editor for Blaze News.@cortneyweil →

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‘Canceling’ People Who Celebrate the Wanton Murder of Women and Children Is Also Free Expression

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | NOVEMBER 02, 2023

Author David Harsanyi profile

DAVID HARSANYI

VISIT ON TWITTER@DAVIDHARSANYI

“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.

“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative.

Interesting technique. https://t.co/4x9FEEQEg0
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 2, 2023

Because people who walk around ripping down posters of kidnapped children and women aren’t pondering the future of a “two-state solution” or the Gazan refugee situation, they are moral degenerates. In the same way you wouldn’t hire the guy who stands in front of Disney World waving around a swastika flag, you shouldn’t hire someone who marches with a sign that reads “from the river to the sea.” Both convey the same sentiment. The ethical line is bright and obvious. If you don’t see it, something is broken in you.

Yet, a bunch of Hamas apologists are calling out conservatives for their alleged hypocrisy on “cancel culture” when it comes to “pro-Palestinian” advocates.

Though I’m not a fan of mobs, I’ve never been a big critic of cancel culture, either. Looking back, I could find only one piece I’ve written on the topic — and it concerned itself with double standards. It’s a slippery term. And there is facet to the debate that’s often overlooked. Americans have no obligation to associate with those who attack their deep-seated values. To hire someone who signs a pro-Hamas petition can be an endorsement of that outlook. Your company is not an open social media platform which exists as a forum for debate, it has a reputation and customers. (Not that I believe the state should be able to compel social media companies to host opinions, either.)

And it’s not as if you asked these people to give you their opinion on genocide. They did so by their own volition. The Harvard petitions blaming Jews for their own murders were signed and released for public consumption. They were released before Israel had even counted the dead, much less invaded Gaza. If law students were celebrating 9/11 on 9/12, would New York firms have a responsibility to provide them with gainful employment? No, they would be rejected in the real world and compelled to get jobs in academia, where such views are welcome.

Of course, the contention that “pro-Palestinian” advocates, or even those who talk about Israel as if it was some authoritarian proto-Nazi state, are being mass canceled is a myth, anyway. They fill the op-ed pages of major newspapers and cable news. They dominate campuses. They aren’t canceled. They are rewarded. When someone like “porn star” Mia Khalifa was “canceled,” it is because she was quite literally rejoicing in the murder of innocent people in real time.

Ibrahim Bharmal, who one suspects is dumber than the average internet prostitute, is the editor of the Harvard Law Review, not some rando trying to wind people up on the internet. He is out there physically and verbally abusing a Jewish student during a pro-Hamas rally on campus like some kind of Brownshirt. Does Harvard have a responsibility to have him on campus? Why should a firm with Jewish partners — or any decent people — hire him?

Harvard, by the way, has assembled a special task force to help students who signed pro-Hamas statements deal with the blowback. Apparently, some people are under the impression they’re the only ones allowed to speak.

The notion that anti-Israel pundits are concerned about double standards, by the way, is risible. You might recall that Harvard rescinded its offer to pro-Second Amendment Parkland kid Kyle Kashuv, ostensibly over things he tweeted as a 16-year-old. No one cared. Today, Georgetown thinks it’s fine to cancel Ilya Shapiro for a single inarticulate tweet, but it will not cancel a professor who complains online about “Zio bitches.” The New York Times cancels an editor for running a column from a sitting senator but hires a writer who praises Hitler (true story).

When I say I’m a free-speech absolutist, I mean it. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.

Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.

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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Sen. Cruz: Biden’s Call for Israel Pause ‘Obscene’

By Mark Swanson | Thursday, 02 November 2023 04:26 PM EDT

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took aim at President Joe Biden’s sudden push for a pause to Israel’s military action in Gaza, calling it “obscene.” Cruz was reacting to Biden’s response to a heckler on Wednesday in Minneapolis. A self-proclaimed rabbi interrupted Biden’s speech at a fundraiser and demanded that Biden push Israel for a cease-fire, in response to which Biden said, “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”

The White House later clarified that Biden meant hostages, not prisoners.

“Obscene,” Cruz posted to X. “Biden poured hundreds of millions of dollars toward Hamas, which then massacred 1,400 Israelis and dozens of Americans. Now he’s pressuring Israel to stand down so Hamas can regroup. He’s even pressuring Israel to send more fuel to the Gaza Strip, which Hamas will seize and use to attack Israel.”

Cruz’s assertion about fuel came amid Israel Defense Forces releasing audio Wednesday of a conversation it says is proof that Hamas is taking gas from hospitals in Gaza.

On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will “urge” Israel on Friday to pause military operations in order for aid to get into Gaza and hostages to get out. The Biden administration is going to great lengths to define a “pause” as vastly different than “cease-fire,” but both involve Israel putting a halt to its military operation — something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed not to do until Hamas is eliminated.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby tried to peddle those semantics last week, but then said multiple pauses over more than one day might be required for aid.

“If that’s what it requires, then we absolutely will try to get such pause or pauses in place.”

Lior Haiat, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said last Friday, “Israel is opposed to a humanitarian pause or cease-fire at this time.”

Mark Swanson | editorial.swanson@newsmax.com

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

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5 Democratic Mayors Plead with Biden for Help With ‘Asylum Seekers Being Brought to Our Cities’

By: Virginia Allen / @Virginia_Allen5 / November 02, 2023

Illegal aliens sit and stand by a black wall outside a hotel in New York City. — Five Democratic mayors wrote to President Joe Biden calling for a meeting to discuss the illegal alien crisis their cities are facing. Pictured: Illegal aliens line up outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Aug. 2. (Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Five Democratic mayors have asked President Joe Biden for a meeting to discuss the illegal alien crisis their cities are facing. The mayors of Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York City sent a letter to Biden on Saturday “requesting an urgent meeting with you to directly discuss ways we can work with your administration to avoid large numbers of additional asylum seekers being brought to our cities with little to no coordination, support, or resources.”

mayors-letter-to-biden-congressional-leadership_oct2023 Download

The mayors, all of whom lead sanctuary cities with the exception of Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, told the president they need four things. First, they are asking for additional federal funding.

Mayors Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Mike Johnston of Denver, and Eric Adams of New York City, and Turner begin the letter by thanking Biden for the $1.4 billion in federal funding for food, shelter, and additional services for illegal aliens. But that’s not enough, according to the Democratic mayors.

“Cities have historically absorbed and integrated new migrants with success, but the challenges brought by the new border arrivals are due not only to the high numbers, but also the diversity of nationalities, the large share arriving as families, and the overwhelming number who seek asylum,” the mayors write. “Given the impact this crisis has had—and continues to have—on state and local budgets, we respectfully advocate for additional funding.”

According to the five Democrats, Denver is spending about $2 million a week on shelter for illegal aliens, New York City has spent more than $1.7 billion, and Chicago has spent more than $320 million.

In order to help the illegal aliens arriving in their cities while still providing services to citizens, the mayors have asked Biden for “$5 billion to cover the expenditures our cities have already incurred and to continue serving the growing number of people arriving in our communities.”

$5 Billion. Hey, I think I have a better plan. SHIP THEM ALL BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM. That ought a cost a few thousand dollars.

Isn’t it interesting that all these Leftist loves to get in front of a camera, with a microphone, virtue signaling how much they love illegal aliens. However, when it comes actually take care of them, they scream unfair, and “send more money.” SHIP ‘EM BACK AND SEAL THE BORDER!

Additionally, the mayors have asked Biden to “[a]ccelerate approval of work authorization and adjudication for eligible applicants.” Specifically, the leaders are asking Biden to remove barriers to work authorization so applicants can receive approval to work within a 30-day window. Furthermore, the Democrats have asked the president to “increase access to work authorization.”

“Our strong request is that anyone who has arrived in this country and is approved with an Alien Registration Number, or A-Number, has the ability to work,” they write.

Finally, the five mayors have asked Biden to “[a]dopt a collaborative federal approach around coordinated entry.”

The mayors say they are “confident that we could lead a coalition of cities that could identify shared available capacity, welcome newcomers in a way that would set them up for success and relieve the burden on border cities and destination cities receiving far greater numbers than can be supported.”

The mayors of Denver and Chicago met with senior Biden administration officials at the White House on Thursday to discuss the current crisis their cities are facing. Adams, the New York City mayor, was originally slated to attend the meeting, but canceled his trip to Washington unexpectedly Thursday morning.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the two mayors met with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and senior adviser to the President Tom Perez, along with other officials from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. Jean-Pierre described the meeting as a “constructive conversation.”

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Some Standout Tweets on X

November 2, 2023

This man is proving the point again that a lot of people jump on “band wagons” without knowing what that “band wagon” actually stands for. The mob is usually wrong.

Interesting technique. https://t.co/4x9FEEQEg0
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 2, 2023

Just when you think that America’s children have been lost in the pits of woke, this happens. Students demanding the school, and district, go back to gender correct bathrooms.

High school students in Loudoun County gathered today to ask the Loudoun County School Board to restore girls only and boys only locker rooms and bathrooms in schools. @7NewsDC pic.twitter.com/EKUj18Hnsf
— Nick Minock (@NickMinock) November 1, 2023

Two posts. Don’t know who this is, but it is funny. Sad funny? Yes.

https://twitter.com/ClownWorld_/status/1719553719539273771?s=20

NEW: One of the Halloween trends this year was children dressing up like President Biden surrounded by their friends who were Secret Service.

In this video for example, 'Biden' is seen stumbling around while the other kids direct him down the street.

Once 'Biden' saw a woman,… pic.twitter.com/ab5MyRUs2J
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 1, 2023

MUST WATCH!

Must watch👇👇👇

"You are public enemy number 1. "

He should have started the video with a baby puppy with a duck in his mouth to grab the attention of those who don't pay attention. He is wrong on one issue,only a select view voted for this. Stealing an election has… pic.twitter.com/JKgZ2cB0PM
— Sassafrass84 (@Sassafrass_84) November 1, 2023

This is why the rest of the world is laughing their backsides off. Supposedly, 81,000,000 people voted for this mess.

👌🏼 LOL… 81 million votes pic.twitter.com/Tpby9s0EhA
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 1, 2023

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Political

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Liars in Wait

A.F. BRANCO | on November 2, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-liars-in-wait/

Many in the Democrat party think that Biden hasn’t the mental capacity or physical ability to make it through another election but are afraid to let their feelings known publicly. So some are running covert presidential campaigns to be ready for what they feel is the inevitable—people like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. There are even rumors that Hillary Clinton may be eyeing that spot again, and there are also rumors that Michelle Obama could be entertaining the idea of running in 2024.

There are no limits to what the desperate Democrats will do to keep Trump from becoming president again, going as far as using lawfare and creating multiple frivolous indictments and legal maneuvering to keep him off the ballot. Knowing that Biden isn’t capable of winning the next election, many Democrats are looking at other possible candidates other than Kamala Harris, who most feel is a total train wreck.

So, you have Gavin Newsom, Hillary, and Michelle Obama, waiting around like buzzards for Biden to drop out.

Waiting In The Wings — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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Speaker Mike Johnson fights back after liberals attack his Christian faith, compare him to terrorists

By: CHRIS ENLOE | NOVEMBER 01, 2023

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) responded on Tuesday to liberal critics who have personally attacked him for being an unapologetic Christian. After winning the speakership last week, Johnson told Fox News host Sean Hannity that his Christian faith is central to his personal identity.

“I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, “It’s curious, people are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?” I said, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview.” That’s what I believe, and so I make no apologies for it.”

The comments set off a flurry of disgusting attacks against Johnson and his faith.

Bill Maher, for example, compared him to the mass killer who murdered 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, last month. MSNBC host Jen Psaki labeled Johnson a “religious fundamentalist” and mocked his faith, while the Daily Beast compared Johnson to the “Taliban and the mullahs in Iran,” claiming Johnson wants to “institutionalize” his Christian faith.

Speaking with Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany, Johnson condemned the personal attacks on his faith as “disgusting” and absurd.”

“Our religion is based on love and acceptance,” Johnson pointed out. “So to compare that worldview with the Taliban, who seek to destroy their enemies, or with, you know, some deranged shooter who murders people is absolutely outrageous.

“And I think everyone who follows and believes in a Judeo-Christian worldview should be just terribly offended by that,” he said.

Johnson acknowledged that character attacks come with his job and said he’s willing to “take the arrows.”

“But what really hurts me,” he continued, “is that it really is a statement about everyone who believes in this that the country was built upon. Our Judeo-Christian foundation is the heritage of our country.”

Importantly, Johnson also dispelled the accusation that he wants to institutionalize Christianity or establish it as the national religion.

“I just wish they would get to know me. I’m not trying to establish Christianity as the national religion or something,” he said.

“If you truly believe in the Bible’s commands and you seek to follow those, it is impossible to be a hateful person, because the greatest command in the Bible is that you love God with everything you have and you love your neighbor as yourself.”

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SPLC Finally Responds To Hamas Terrorism With Stealth-Edited Accusation That Israel Targets Kids

BY: JORDAN BOYD | NOVEMBER 01, 2023

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

Three weeks after Hamas brutally murdered more than 1,400 Israelis and two dozen Americans during a sneak attack, Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang published a 779-word statement lamenting “all acts of hate violence” in the Israel-Hamas war. A few days later, the activist group that made a brand out of tarnishing organizations with Christian missions or conservative ties covertly edited the statement to modify language that insinuated Israel intentionally attacked children in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In her statement posted on Oct. 28, Huang acknowledged that “Hamas led an unconscionable attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,000 people and kidnapping hundreds,” but couched the SPLC’s response by condemning Israel’s retaliation against the terrorists.

“The tragedy has only continued as Palestinian civilians in Gaza — many of whom are children — have been killed by airstrikes and cut off from food, clean water, medical care and life-saving supplies,” Huang wrote. “It is a humanitarian crisis of unspeakable proportions that has already left thousands dead. Our hearts are with all those who are suffering.”

An earlier version of Huang’s words, Daily Signal Managing Editor Tyler O’Neil reported, suggested that children in Gaza were “targeted” by Israel.

The SPLC made no mention of Israel’s widespread effort to convince civilians in Gaza to evacuate ahead of its retribution against Hamas. The organization that prides itself on being “internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups and other domestic extremists” also left out Hamas’ track record of blowing up its own, storing weapons in or near hospitals, schools, and other populated areas, and using women and children as shields.

Instead, Huang reiterated that “we reject any attempt to prejudice or persecute communities pushed to the margins.”

The leftist organization claims to “monitor hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States,” including many of which it says are “far right” antisemitic organizations.

Huang, however, hardly mentioned the rising antisemitism Jews all around the world faced after Hamas’ attack. Instead, she joined her concern about “a dramatic increase in the targeting of Jewish” communities with her worries that “Muslim communities” are also suffering.

[READ: After Hamas Attack, Biden’s ‘Islamophobia’ Concerns Show Who He Thinks The Real Victims Are]

The SPLC statement also claimed to “denounce all acts of terrorism.” Still, it invoked language such as “ongoing systemic injustice,” which pro-Hamas demonstrators and Palestine activists have used for years to scrutinize Israel, to describe the ongoing Middle East conflict. SPLC previously refused to tell The Federalist whether it had plans to designate the left-wing organizations like Black Lives Matter and Democratic Socialists of America that responded positively to Hamas’ massacre in Israel as “hate groups.”

Huang attempted to justify the SPLC’s delayed response to the Israel-Hamas war and the extremism that manifested in the U.S. shortly after by claiming that “international events” are “outside of our purview and expertise.” Her excuse is overshadowed by the SPLC’s vigilant response to overseas events like the 2019 New Zealand mosque attack.

It was also minimized by the fact that the SPLC Union flatly accused Israel of genocide last week, in a statement which went publicly unpunished or condemned by the SPLC, and a lead attorney for the organization allegedly participated in the pro-Palestine takeover on Capitol Hill.

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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Democrats Send A Corrupt, Inexperienced Hyperpartisan Iran-Booster To ‘Help’ Israel

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | NOVEMBER 01, 2023

Architects of Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran giveaway deserve plenty of blame for empowering terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East, including the one that murdered 1,400 Jews — over 30 Americans. At this point in history, they should have nothing to do with our Israel policy.

And yet, welcome our new ambassador to the Jewish State, Jack Lew.

Sen. Ben Cardin, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations, ludicrously claimed during Lew’s confirmation hearing that the former Treasury Secretary was “eminently qualified to serve in this post. He has extensive experience.”

Lew’s only experience in foreign policy is championing pro-Iran policies. During the Iran deal debate, Lew predicted the giveaway “will make our country safer, it will make our allies safer, and it will make the world safer.” Not once, in his Washington Institute speech praising Obama’s foreign policy, incidentally, did Lew mention the word “Israel.” What the deal — and subsequent support for Iran — did was reward the Revolutionary Guard for murdering around 600 Americans in Iraq and incentivize that regime to take more American hostages.

Our allies certainly aren’t any safer. Israel not only has to deal with Iran-funded Hamas but also the Iran-funded Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iran-funded Houthis in Yemen and Iran-funded Islamic terror groups still operating within Judea and Samaria.

The Obama administration, which refused to show any solidarity with the Green Revolutionaries, rarely had a bad word to say about Iran. Not so Israel. Because of his Jewish background, Lew was recruited by the administration to publicly rebuke duly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being critical of the deal. It was “beyond the pale,” said Lew in 2015, the man now being sent to pressure that same man into letting Hamas off the hook.

Then again, it should not be forgotten that Lew went above and beyond for Iran. As Treasury Secretary, he oversaw the $400 million “pallets of cash” transfer to the mullahs (we later learned it was much worse.) For over 37 years, through five administrations, both Democrat and Republican, the United States’ position was that those funds were not “Iran’s money.” Yet, rather than handing the funds to the families of American terror victims who were still owed $53 billion in court decisions against the terror state, Lew sent it to Ali Khamenei.

It got worse. After telling Congress that the mullahs wouldn’t be granted access to the American financial system, Lew secretly helped Iranians convert nearly $6 billion into dollars and then euros. (Apparently, Iran likes their blood money in $6 billion cuts.)

There was no stipulation in the Iran deal compelling the United States to license the exchange of mullah blood money in American banks. But, as usual, Lew lied. “Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit,” he said in 2016, without explaining how the transaction was legal. Iran, of course, hadn’t upheld its end of the deal. Nor was it in the “spirit” of the deal to covertly circumvent sanctions that were intentionally left standing. Though to be fair, Lew does know a thing or two about shady banking.

In 2006, Lew had parlayed his Clinton-era administration experience into a job heading up a Citigroup hedge fund that bet against the housing market. And still, somehow, under Lew, the fund lost nearly all its value. More than 50,000 employees at Citigroup were fired. For all his good work, however, Lew was cut a $940,000 bonus check right after Washington gave his company a $301 billion federal guarantee taxpayer-funded bailout and right before he became Budget Director for Obama.

Now, “Lew will have to take up Washington’s call to protect civilians in Gaza amid the widening human suffering,” according to CNN. Indeed, the myth that Israel isn’t engaged in a proportional response and hasn’t gone out of its way to warn Arab civilians to get out of the way is a kind of blood libel Democrats like to engage in to placate its pro-Hamas wing. Lew will likely incentivize Hamas to use more civilians as shields, as he did Iran, since it is obviously an effective tactic.

Virtually every instinct of the contemporary Democrat about this conflict has been disastrously wrong. And few of them have been more wrong than Lew.

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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Report: US Intel Disregarded Hamas After 9/11

By Charlie McCarthy | Wednesday, 01 November 2023 01:28 PM EDT

U.S. intelligence agencies virtually disregarded Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the years following the 9-11 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, the focus was on leaders of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.

Mainstream media reports in the past several weeks have asked how Israeli and U.S. intelligence failed to discover what Hamas had planned for Oct. 7, when the group’s terrorists attacked Israel. More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, and more than 200 others were taken to Gaza as hostages. AP reported that the death toll among Palestinians has exceeded 8,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Current and former U.S. officials said intelligence agencies had a handful of analysts tracking events in the Gaza Strip before the attacks, but the U.S. ceded the responsibility for monitoring Hamas to Israel, the Journal reported Wednesday.

“In terms of intelligence failures, which really do lie mostly on Israel, I think we should also share some blame for missing this event,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA operations officer with extensive counterterrorism experience, told the Journal. “Ceding the target to the Israelis now looks to have had consequences.”

Israel’s intelligence services have relied on human intelligence, eavesdropping, and other technical means throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” Polymeropoulos told NBC News.

Soon after the Hamas attack on Israel, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an opinion column under the headline, “Hamas attack is an intelligence failure that may take Israel years to unravel.”

“True intelligence failures result not simply from a lack of information but also an inability to understand it,” Ignatius wrote. “Israelis knew the malevolent hatred that animated Hamas and its backers in Iran. What they didn’t appreciate was the creativity and competence of their adversaries. This was a level of organized malice that was, literally, unthinkable.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a comment Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, blamed the security failures on the country’s defense and intelligence services. However, he soon deleted the post and apologized. Members of Netanyahu’s Likud party have said Israel needs to focus on defeating Hamas before analyzing what went wrong.

Neither Hamas nor Gaza were mentioned in the U.S. director of national intelligence’s Annual Threat Assessment, which was issued in February.

Jonathan Schanzer, who tracked Hamas as a U.S. Treasury terrorism finance analyst, now is at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He said the Oct. 7 attacks should prompt a review of U.S. policy toward Iran-backed proxy groups.

“There should be one. If there isn’t, it’s foreign policy malpractice,” Schanzer told the Journal.

Charlie McCarthy | editorial.mccarthy@newsmax.com

Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – 2024, Trick or Tweet

A.F. BRANCO | on October 31, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-2024-trick-or-treat/

Will the choice in the 2024 election be Tick(Biden) or Treat(Trump)? This is just a thought that came to me this Halloween season after all the damage that Obama 2.0 has done to our country under Biden.

This disaster isn’t just Obama/Biden policies. This is Democrat policy, and unless we get Trump in Office along with taking over the Senate and the House, we will have no hope to save this country.
Illegal immigrants Hordes of thousands are coming across our border every day. This is going to destroy our Republic as it was founded based on freedom and justice under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Trick Or Tweet — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

A.F. Branco Cartoon – At Your Service

A.F. BRANCO | on November 1, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-at-your-service/

Governor Gavin Newsom, in an effort to look presidential, takes a trip to Communist China to lick their boots and kiss their ring while ignoring their human rights atrocities and the genocidal slave labor treatment of the Uyghurs.

Governor Newscom is running a covert not-so-stealthy campaign for president, smelling blood in the water with Joe Biden’s failing poll numbers and cognitive decline. Still, he’s not fooling anyone but possibly the mainstream media and a few sycophant followers.

Gavin Newsom Bows to China — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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House GOP Unveils Israel Aid Bill That Would Take Back Funds from Biden’s Massive IRS Funding Surge to Pay for it

By: ARJUN SINGH, CONTRIBUTOR | October 30, 20236:55 PM ET

House GOP Leadership Hold News Conference On Fiscal Year 2023 Appropriations — Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker

The House Republican Conference has drafted a bill that would provide military aid to Israel funded by redistributed funds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

On Oct. 19, President Joe Biden delivered a speech from the Oval Office calling on Americans to support his administration’s proposed legislation that sends $100 billion of military aid to both Ukraine in its war against Russia and Israel in its conflict against Hamas, with some money being appropriated for border security and immigration processing. Amid widespread opposition among Republicans regarding aid to Ukraine, the House Republican Conference unveiled a bill that would allocate $14.3 billion for military aid only to Israel, offsetting the cost with repurposed funds from a portion of the $80 billion to the IRS enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act. (RELATED: ‘The Worst Thing For Israel’: House Republicans Quickly Dismiss Biden’s Latest Aid Package For Israel And Ukraine)

The bill, known as the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, calls for the spending of money to procure weapons, ammunition and missiles, according to its text. It also allocates $1.2 billion to support Israel’s efforts to develop a laser-based missile defense system against rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza, known as the “Iron Dome” program, which is also a priority that the administration’s proposed legislation would fund.

Text of Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2023 by Daily Caller News Foundation on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/681155548/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-OfhzfSDxzTV94aAnAw00

The bill was reportedly introduced by Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas’ 12th District, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, according to the New York Post. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and J.D. Vance of Ohio.

The bill would also allocate $100 million to increase security for U.S. diplomatic missions in Israel and the surrounding region that have faced threats following the United States’ declaration of support for Israel after the attacks. It would further allocate $5o million to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country during hostilities.

The demand for a single bill regarding Israel, aid to which enjoys bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, has been a refrain of Republican members of Congress since Biden announced his package. However, the reduction of funds from the IRS, which has been a target of House Republicans during the 118th Congress, is likely to be opposed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The White House and the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Callista L. Gingrich Op-ed: Catholic university becomes safe haven for Jewish students escaping antisemitism

Callista L. Gingrich Gingrich360.com | Published October 31, 2023 2:00pm EDT

As the carnage in the Middle East persists, an America’s New Majority Project poll recently found that more than 75 percent of Americans are closely following the news about the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East. While a majority of voters agree that Israel must do what is necessary to destroy Hamas, and that Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian casualties, the outlandish defense of Hamas’s atrocities across the United States– particularly on university campuses – raises great concern.

American universities ought to be centers where ideas, debates, and opinions are freely exchanged, but many, instead, have fostered hateful, antisemitic ideology among the student population. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 48 percent of voters between 18-24 support Hamas in the current conflict. According to Steven Davidoff Solomon, a corporate law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “Universities have been engaging for far too long in moral equivocation, and terrorist attacks against innocents should be condemned and not justified.”

Amidst escalating tensions on college campuses, 20-year old Melanie Schwartz, a junior at Cornell, told The Washington Post, “Jewish students are fearful and isolated.”

Video

To help students facing hostility on college campuses, Franciscan University of Steubenville, a private Catholic university in Ohio, has created an expedited transfer process.

“[W]ith too many universities preaching tolerance but practicing prejudice, we feel compelled to do more. We are witnessing a very troubling spike in antisemitism and serious threats against Jewish students. We want to offer them the chance to transfer immediately to Franciscan,” Father Dave Pivonka, president of Franciscan University, said.

Although Franciscan achieved record-high enrollment this academic year, university administrators are committed to accommodating and creating a safe haven for Jewish transfer students.

JEWISH STUDENTS AT GEORGETOWN LAW FEAR VIOLENCE AMID HEATED RHETORIC FROM CLASSMATES

“Our community will welcome them with generosity and respect,” Father Pivonka said. “Our religious differences will not cause any conflict. On the contrary, at Franciscan, our radical fidelity to Christ and the Catholic faith demands of us fraternal charity toward our Jewish brothers and sisters, as it does toward all people.”

In recognition of the need to combat antisemitism in the U.S., Franciscan University recently partnered with The Philos Project, a community of Christians who seek to promote positive Christian engagement in the Near East, to cosponsor a joint conference, Nostra Aetate and the Future of Catholic-Jewish Relations at a Time of Rising Antisemitism. The conference focused on addressing antisemitism, “one of the biggest social problems that we’re facing,” according to President of The Philos Project Robert Nicholson.

Video

Additionally, the conference discussed the significance of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Relation of the Catholic Church to Non-Christian Religions, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965. The Declaration marked a turning point in relations between the Catholic Church and Judaism by emphasizing the Jewish roots of the Christian faith and the condemnation of antisemitism.

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In the aftermath of World War II, the Catholic Church under Pope Pius XII faced criticism that not enough was done to support our Jewish brethren. In March 2020, Pope Francis opened the Vatican Archives and made the documents of Pope Pius XII’s wartime pontificate accessible for study. Recent discoveries prove, according to German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann, that Pope Pius XII’s efforts “did more to save Jews and to stop the killings, than any politician or religious leader of his time.”

According to Dr. Hesemann, “What has to be rewritten is the ‘black legend’ of the silent and disinterested Pope… Today, we know that Pius XII not only mentioned the horrible fate of the Jews in three public speeches but also tried to save as many as possible.”

Protester shouting at Israel side — An anti-Israel protester in Cambridge on Monday shouted slurs at the pro-Israel counter-protesters, calling them “pigs” and “Nazis.” (Kassy Dillon/Fox News Digital)

As Dr. Hesemann explained to Vatican News, “[I]n 235 monasteries and convents, 4,205 Jews were hidden, plus 160 in Vatican City. Of 3,200, we know the names, thanks to the newly discovered list. Eventually, about 6,400 of the Roman Jews, or 80 percent survived the Holocaust, more than anywhere else where a SS-razzia happened.”

Today, we see this same fervor among the faithful to bring peace and aid to those affected by the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Amid the current war in the Middle East, Pope Francis has ardently called for an end to the violence and noted that “terrorism and war bring no solutions, but only to the death and suffering of many innocent lives. … Let us pray for peace.”

As the brutality of the Israel-Hamas war wages on, we must eradicate antisemitism and offer our prayers for peace in the Middle East.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM CALLISTA GINGRICH

Callista L. Gingrich is the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

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FBI’s Wray: Hamas Greatest US Terror Threat Since ISIS

Tuesday, 31 October 2023 12:07 PM EDT

The attack by Hamas on Israel will inspire the most significant terror threat to the U.S. since the rise of ISIS nearly a decade ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing Tuesday. Wray said that since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza earlier this month, multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West, significantly raising the threat posed by homegrown U.S. violent extremists.

“The actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago,” Wray said.

The remarks came during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee focused on threats to the United States. The U.S. government has seen an increase in threats against Jews, Muslims and Arab Americans since fighting broke out in Gaza, officials have said. The number of attacks on U.S. military bases overseas by Iran-backed militia groups have risen this month, Wray said. Cyber attacks against the U.S. by Iran and non-state actors will likely worsen if the conflict expands, he said.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that hate directed at Jewish students in the U.S. following the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has added to an increase in antisemitism. The White House expressed alarm this week at reports of anti-Jewish incidents at U.S. universities as tensions have prompted university officials to tighten security.

At a ransomware summit organized by the White House on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had directed the U.S. Justice Department to assist Israeli investigators probing financial flows to Hamas, including those involving cryptocurrency. (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

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Mayorkas Can’t—or Won’t—Say How Many Illegals Biden Admin Has Released Into US

By: Jennie Taer / @JennieSTaer / October 31, 2023

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., speaks at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, “Threats to the Homeland,” on Tuesday. Johnson was highly critical of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. (Photo: Tom Williams/ CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)

During a Senate committee hearing Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas couldn’t answer a question about how many illegal immigrants federal authorities have released into the U.S. interior under the Biden administration.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., pressed Mayorkas on the issue, but the DHS secretary couldn’t provide a number at Tuesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. Illegal immigration at the southern border of the U.S. has surged past 2 million in both fiscal year 2022, the highest year on record, and 2023, according to federal data.

An Inspector General report in September found that DHS lacks the ability to track all illegal immigrants released from their custody into the U.S. interior, partially because of the overwhelming surge at U.S. borders.

“I’ve asked you this in the past, what numbers are represented here? How many people has this administration let in by encountering, processing, dispersing or that come in as a known or an unknown got-away? Approximately, I don’t need an exact number, so what do we got?” Johnson asked Mayorkas.

“Senator, let me say,” Mayorkas responded before being interrupted by Johnson.

“I need numbers. Don’t filibuster me. How many people has this administration let into the country?” Johnson continued.

Mayorkas began speaking before Johnson again interrupted him for not providing a clear number.

“Let me say at the outset that our job would be a lot easier if the broken immigration system … ” Mayorkas responded.

“Mr. Secretary, I want a number. How many people will have you let into this country? I’ll give you the number, it’s about 6 million, about 1.7 million as known got-aways. Now, again, we don’t know who these people are. We just know that they’ve come to this country and that they’re residing somewhere. Where are all these people residing? Where did the 6 million people go?” Johnson asked.

Border Patrol doesn’t have the ability to always collect migrants’ addresses, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t always validate the addresses before they’re released into the country, the inspector general previously found. Between March 2021 and August 2022, Border Patrol collected 981,671 migrant records, but more than 177,000 migrant records “were either missing, invalid for delivery, or not legitimate residential locations.”

Mayorkas began to attempt to answer Johnson again, but still could not provide a direct response.

“Senator, you speak of encounters, and let me share,” Mayorkas said before Johnson interrupted.

“Would you answer my questions? Where did these 6 million people go? Are you keeping track of them? To what extent [do] we have a handle on where are these 6 million people are in America?” Johnson asked.

Mayorkas continued to attempt to answer Johnson’s questions.

“As you well know, when an individual is indeed released, they are released into immigration enforcement proceedings and are subject to removal if they do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States,” the DHS chief said.

“You’re not answering that question. Where do these people reside?” Johnson asked.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – All Trick No Treat

A.F. BRANCO | on October 31, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-all-trick-no-treat/

We are living in scary times, especially with a Democrat at your door taking away your rights, gas stoves, plastic straws, Guns, gas cars, secure borders, energy independence, 401Ks, the worth of the dollar, excellent economy, education, etc. and they’re not “Trick or Treating” in the traditional sense—more like Trick No Treat.

Democrat policies, both foreign and domestic, are responsible for all that’s going wrong in America. What could be scarier than that? Not to mention the threat of horrific terrorist attacks on our homeland due to the thousands of military-age males coming across the border from places that hate the U.S.

Democrat Halloween — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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Biden Administration: War Is Very Good For Business

BY: JOHN LUCAS | OCTOBER 30, 2023

Joe Biden getting help from Antony Blinken

Has a single member of the White House staff ever held a dying American soldier in his arms as he bled out, calling for his mother? Have any of them ever loaded the blood-soaked bodies of his wounded and killed onto a medivac helicopter and then endured sleepless nights thinking about the visits their families are about to get and the ensuing destruction of their lives and dreams?

These were the first questions that popped into my mind when I saw the report from Politico that the Biden administration is promoting the war in Ukraine because it is good for American business. I think the members of the administration could not have experienced these things because, if they had, and if they had one ounce of humanity in them, they could not possibly have promoted war on the “it’s good for business” rationale.

Apparently, multiple White House aides have been involved in this abomination because Politico is quite specific:

The White House has been quietly urging lawmakers in both parties to sell the war efforts abroad as a potential economic boom at home.

Aides have been distributing talking points to Democrats and Republicans who have been supportive of continued efforts to fund Ukraine’s resistance to make the case that doing so is good for American jobs, according to five White House aides and lawmakers familiar with the effort and granted anonymity to speak freely.

The Biden administration is fearful that it cannot sell its most recent aid package on the merits and on national security grounds, because “The talking points are an implicit recognition that the administration has work to do in selling its $106 billion foreign aid supplemental request — and that talking about it squarely under the umbrella of national security interests hasn’t done the trick,” Politico states.

The reprehensibility of these comments cannot be overstated. Biden’s administration is peopled with a number of “elites” who probably are familiar, at least in a theoretical, intellectual sense, with John Stuart Mill’s dictum, “War is an ugly thing.” But, hey, if it’s good for business, particularly in electoral swing states, let’s go for it.

I am old enough to remember how the left tarred George Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in the GOP with the argument that they wanted war because it was good for their supporters in big business. I never put any stock in these arguments because I thought no American could be so evil as to support war as a sop to big business. The Biden administration has changed my mind.

My contempt and revulsion for these people knows no bounds.

John Lucas is a retired attorney who has tried and argued a variety of cases, including before the U. S. Supreme Court. Before entering law school at the University of Texas, he served in the Army Special Forces as an enlisted man, later graduating from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1969. He is an Army Ranger who fought in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader. He is married with five children. He and his wife now live in Virginia. John also is published at johnalucas6.substack.com.

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Joe Biden Isn’t ‘Managing’ Or Confronting Problems. Joe Biden is the Problem.

BY: EDDIE SCARRY | OCTOBER 30, 2023

There’s a simple pattern that the media follow when covering each new crisis that pops up during Joe Biden’s catastrophic presidency: A calamity occurs either domestically or abroad, and rather than examining the cause, the media instantly frame Biden as a hero at battle.

Hyperinflation? “A glaring liability that looms” (The New York Times).

War in Ukraine? “Joe Biden Marshals U.S. Allies Against Russia” (Newsweek).

Obscene gas prices? “Biden’s frustration with soaring prices” (Washington Post).

War in Israel? “Why this Israel-Gaza conflict is so complicated for Biden” (CNN).

Folks! He’s frustrated, folks. It’s complicated for Biden, folks.

The New York Times’ David French offered up that same spa treatment for the president this week under the headline “Joe Biden knows what he’s doing.” In the piece, French implored his readers to “consider” all it is that Biden “confronts”: a war in Ukraine, another one in the Middle East, plus the ever-present threat from China. “And keep in mind,” he said, “Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact.”

Folks! Keep it in mind, folks. Biden is trying, folks. He’s managing lots of complicated problems, folks. It’s frustrating to the president, too, folks.

Honestly, I felt the same way under President Trump when he was confronted by two hot wars, record inflation, and impossible energy prices. He did the best he could to manage the challenges he faced — the struggles he endured.

Wait, that’s not right. There were neither wars nor inflation during Trump’s term. The U.S. was energy independent, and gas was cheap precisely because he flooded the market with oil for the taking. My mistake!

Actually, now that I think about it, I recall that despite a remarkable period of global calm and even a historic peace deal reached between Israel and the Arab world, the Trump era was marked by nonstop hysterics from the media about our supposedly shaken allies and emboldened foes. (i.e., Trump demanded that Western Europe live up to his part of the NATO bargain and made it known that the U.S. cannot solve all of the world’s problems, especially when large parts of the world don’t see them as such.)

But back to Biden. He’s not confronting or managing a series of events that happened to him. He and his party actively created them. Or, at minimum, they created an environment that anyone could have predicted would lead to them.

Russia has long insisted that NATO stop expanding along its border. The second Biden got into office, he pushed for Ukraine’s membership. Israel had its country under relative control for years right up until Biden’s team gifted Iran, the Jewish state’s greatest threat, $6 billion worth of goodies. We were energy independent until Biden said we couldn’t be. The economy was working itself out until Biden and his party thought it would be a good idea to pump hundreds of billions of dollars more into Covid-era welfare (“childcare” and “living assistance”). And let’s not start on the electric vehicle scheme, wherein car companies grabbed another round of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer funds, courtesy of Biden, for a product that barely works (and for which manufacturers are now rolling back their production of).

Biden isn’t a knight of the kingdom off to slay a dragon. He’s a dunce screwing up everything. He doesn’t get to turn the economy and international stability into ruins and then get credit for saying he takes it all very seriously.

He’s not “struggling” or “managing,” and it’s not “complicated.” Biden is the struggle. He is the thing to manage. He is the complication.

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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Texas gets major win in battle to secure border despite Biden admin’s attempts to stop it

By Brianna Herlihy Fox News | Published October 30, 2023 2:00pm EDT

A federal judge on Monday ordered the Biden administration to stop cutting razor wire on fences along the southern border in Texas meant to stop illegal migrant crossings.

Judge Alia Moses of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on Monday ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to stop “disassembling, degrading, tampering” miles of razor wire running along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. The temporary order is a result of a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that federal officials said they had the authority to destroy state property “to allow [illegal] aliens to enter & be processed.”

Paxton asked the court for an immediate injunction last week, noting in his request to the court that “federal agents escalated matters, trading bolt cutters for an industrial-strength telehandler forklift to dismantle [Texas’] border fence.”

SENATOR URGES BIDEN, DHS TO DISCLOSE INFO ON TERRORIST ENCOUNTERS AT SOUTHERN BORDER AMID ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

Migrants cross the Rio Grande River to enter the American Border — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in the lawsuit that “federal agents used hydraulic-powered pallet forks to rip [Texas’] fence … out of the ground, holding it suspended in the air in order to wave more than 300 migrants illegally into Texas.” (Benjamin Lowy for Fox News Digital)

“Federal agents used hydraulic-powered pallet forks to rip [Texas’] fence – concertina wire, fencing posts, clamps, and all – out of the ground, holding it suspended in the air in order to wave more than 300 migrants illegally into Texas,” the motion for a temporary injunction reads.

Last week, DHS released a statement that said border agents “have a responsibility under federal law” to protect migrants from being injured regardless of their legal status.

GOP SENATORS DEMAND ENHANCED BORDER SECURITY PLAN FROM BIDEN OVER THREATS BY ‘GLOBAL TERRORIST GROUPS’

In an 11-page document filed in with the federal court in Del Rio, Moses found that the state of Texas had met the required four-part test needed to be granted a temporary halt to the federal government’s action, but the judge noted one exception.

BORDER PATROL AGENTS RELEASED OVER 900,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS INTO US LAST FISCAL YEAR

bulldozer cutting razor wire in Texas border — Federal agents used a forklift to lift Texas’ razor wire fence. (The State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security)

“The Court shall grant the temporary relief requested, with one important exception for any medical emergency that mostly likely results in serious bodily injury or death to a person, absent any boats or other life-saving apparatus available to avoid such medical emergencies prior to reaching the concertina wire barrier,” the judge wrote in the court filing.

The temporary restraining order will remain in place until the parties have an opportunity to present evidence at a preliminary injunction hearing before the court, which is scheduled for Nov. 7.

The Department of Justice, which is handling the litigation, declined to comment.

Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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Rep. Donalds to Newsmax: DOJ, FBI Blocked Federal Prosecutors Probing Bidens 10 Times

By Charles Kim | Monday, 30 October 2023 02:22 PM EDT

Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds told Newsmax Monday that recent testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee proves officials from both the Department of Justice and FBI “blocked” federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania from investigating President Joe Biden and his family.

“What we’ve learned now from the Judiciary Committee in the testimony it received last week, was that there were at least 10 times when special federal prosecutors in the Pennsylvania district were stopped from looking into issues of the Biden family business dealings,” Donalds said during “Newsline” Monday. “They were stopped by people at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at [the] main [Department of] Justice.”

Donalds also pointed to the recent discovery of a check from President Joe Biden’s brother James to Joe repaying a $200,000 loan, which Donalds said is a direct link between the president and the business deals carried out by James and his son Hunter with foreign entities.

“We now see a check paying Joe Biden directly from his brother, James Biden,” Donalds said. “Most people are focused on Hunter Biden, and they should, but James Biden has been involved in the Biden family scheme this entire time, so the check that was actually released last week demonstrates the flow of $200,000 from James Biden to Joe Biden referencing a loan repayment.”

Donalds said that the money, absent any written loan agreements between the president and his brother, could demonstrate tax evasion.

“One of the key ways that wandering money actually occurs, or evading taxes occurs, is when you treat them as loan repayments and not just as payments,” he said. “So, the key questions now are, what were the loan documents from Joe Biden to his brother, Jim, to demonstrate the need for $200,000 repayment. Our investigation is going to continue. We’re going to get to the bottom of this and hold this administration accountable.”

The White House has been striking back at the committee, particularly since Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in September.

“Extreme House Republicans are running a not-so-sophisticated distraction campaign to try to cover up their own actions that are hurtling America to a dangerous and costly government shutdown,” CNN reported the White House saying in September. “They cannot even pass a military funding bill … so they cranked up a circus of a hearing full of lies and disinformation with the sole goal of baselessly attacking President Biden and his family. Don’t be fooled: they want to distract from the reality that their own chaos and inability to govern is going to shut down the government in a matter of days. … These sideshows won’t spare House Republicans from bearing responsibility for inflicting serious damage on the country.”

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Charles Kim | editorial.kim@newsmax.com

Charles Kim, a Newsmax general assignment writer, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years in reporting on news and politics.

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Israeli President: Shani Louk Beheaded by Hamas

By Theodore Bunker | Monday, 30 October 2023 02:59 PM EDT

Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman who was thought to have been kidnapped by Hamas during the attack on a music festival on Oct. 7, was killed at some point during that attack and possibly beheaded, according to Israel’s president.

Louk, 22, came to international attention after she was seen being paraded half-naked and apparently unconscious in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza after Hamas attacked a music festival in Re’im on Oct. 7. Louk was initially believed to be kidnapped, but Israeli officials recently informed her family that human remains were matched to her DNA.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told the German newspaper Bild that Louk’s “skull was found,” and added, “This means that these barbaric, sadistic animals simply chopped off her head as they attacked, tortured and killed Israelis.” Though Israeli officials have not publicly revealed Louk’s cause of death or confirmed many details, some reports state that she was shot in the head and that her head was later found but not the rest of her body.

German and Israeli media report that the Israeli Defense Forces and Zika, an organization of volunteer emergency responders, informed Louk’s family that a bone from the base of her skull had been located and matched to her DNA and that medical experts determined a person could not live without this bone, and therefore there is no possibility that Louk is still alive.

“For me, this news is terrible,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters while on an official trip to Africa. “This shows all the barbarism that lies behind Hamas.”

Theodore Bunker | editorial.bunker@newsmax.com

Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.

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Large Migrant Caravan Sets Off for US From Southern Mexico

Monday, 30 October 2023 04:08 PM EDT

A large migrant caravan comprising many Central Americans and Venezuelans left southern Mexico on Monday for the United States, organizers and officials said, as Washington grapples with renewed pressure on its southern border.

Officials in the southern state of Chiapas said some 3,500 people set off on foot from the city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border, while one of the caravan’s organizers, Irineo Mujica, said there were around 5,000 in the group.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection next year, is under pressure to curb the number of people crossing illegally into the United States from Mexico. Most of the latest caravan are from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela, according to Mujica. Escorted by civil protection officials and ambulances, the migrants were walking on a coastal highway around midday, planning to spend the night in the municipality of Huehuetan, about 16 miles (25 km) north of where they started.

Mujica said the migrants opted to leave Tapachula due to frustration about not being able to obtain humanitarian visas. Some migrants even offered to help recovery efforts in the port of Acapulco, which was devastated by a hurricane last week, but did not get a response from the authorities, he added.

The government’s National Migration Institute did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Many migrants are fleeing poverty and political instability in their homelands, and this year has seen record numbers crossing the Darien Gap region connecting Panama and Colombia. Millions of Venezuelans have left home due to the economic crisis plaguing the once-prosperous oil producing country.

“In Venezuela things are very tough, we can’t live with the money we get, it’s not enough for us, and that’s why we’re going to the United States,” said Oscar Gutierrez, a Venezuelan migrant traveling with his wife and two daughters.

Tropical storm Pilar formed off Central America in the Pacific on Monday, and threatens to dump heavy rain on the region and parts of southern Mexico.

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