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Posts tagged ‘Media’

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

Branco Cartoon – Anti-Trump Authoritarian

A.F. Branco | on August 19, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-anti-trump-authoritarian/

Newsom The Authoritarian — A Political Caroon by A.F. Branco 2025

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Newsom calls Trump an authoritarian for trying to interfere with his own authoritarian policies.

BRANCO TOON STORE

Newsom Warns “Trump Will Be Running for a Third Term” — Says He Received ‘Trump 2028’ Hat in the Mail (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Aug 14, 2025

California’s far-left Governor Gavin Newsom is back in front of the cameras and back in full meltdown mode.
On Thursday, the Democrat governor held a press conference in Downtown Los Angeles to hype the Democrats’ latest “redistricting effort,” but the event quickly devolved into an unhinged tirade aimed squarely at President Donald Trump.
Newsom accused Trump of plotting to “rig the system” and vowed to push forward with a Democrat power grab disguised as redistricting reform.
The governor even went so far as to claim his scheme would “end Trump’s presidency.”… READ MORE

Branco Cartoon – Attack the Peacemaker

A.F. Branco | on August 20, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-attack-of-the-peacemaker/

Dems attack Trumps Peace Efforts — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – No matter what Trump does, the Democrats and the legacy media work overtime to put a negative spin on it.

BRANCO TOON STORE

WATCH: Karoline Leavitt SHREDS Leftist Media and “Clueless Pundits” for Dishonest Coverage of Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Negotiations, “Actively Rooting Against the President”

By Jordan Conradson – The Gatewaypundit – Aug 19, 2025

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a scathing rebuke of the media on Tuesday during a press briefing after President Trump brought the world to the verge of solving the years-long war between Russia and Ukraine.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European Leaders to negotiate a peace agreement after meeting with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
During the meeting, Trump revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a deal that would involve security guarantees for Ukraine, which Ukraine has made as one of its central demands to end the war… READ MORE

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

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

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HUMOR, Political

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The Reveal: The Public is Finally Learning How Democrats Pulled Off the Greatest Political Trick in History

By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2025

Below is my column in Fox.com on the release of the last declassified material on the origins of the Russian collusion investigation. After the release, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in the New York Times insisted that they never relied on the Steele dossier. The column only reaffirmed the level of dishonesty and duplicity that marked their tenures in office. (The Times still printed this claim despite being demonstrably untrue).

The documents quote Brennan in overruling career analysts and intervening to include the dossier in the intelligence assessment. Moreover, the column echoes the media spin that the investigation was about an attempted Russian interference while dismissing the collusion claim that consumed much of the first term. (Even after leaving office, Brennan continued to push the false collusion claim). Both countries routinely hacked each other’s emails — that is why we have the most recent incriminating evidence on the Clinton campaign’s funding and spreading the false collusion claims. We hacked their emails. We have also regularly tried to influence the elections of other nations. The key to the dossier and the Russian investigation was the allegation of collusion and the central role of the Clinton campaign in creating the narrative that Trump was a Russian asset.

Here is the column:

This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics. There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy. This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump Administration.

What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.

The effort closely followed the three steps of the classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.

The Pledge

The trick began with the pledge, the stage where the public is set up by showing ordinary events with the suggestion that it is about to transform into something extraordinary. The key is to make something seem real that is actually not.

The Clinton campaign delivered the pledge by secretly funding the Steele dossier, using Fusion GPS and a former British spy named Christopher Steele, to create a salacious account of Trump being an agent of Russia. New emails state that Hillary Clinton personally approved the operation.

It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)

During the campaign, a few reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. After the election, journalists discovered that the payments for the Steele dossier were hidden as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie under Elias.

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

Later, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, appeared before Congress for questioning on the Steele dossier. Podesta emphatically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

The FEC ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm.

The Turn

The next step is the turning point when the ordinary becomes something extraordinary. This required the involvement of the government. The Clinton team worked behind the scenes to feed the dossier to the FBI. It would be the criminal investigation that would transform the ordinary accounts, like Carter Page speaking in Moscow, into an elaborate Russian plot. Even though the FBI was warned early on that Page was a CIA asset, not a Russian asset, the Clinton team found eager officials in the Obama Administration to assist in the illusion.

The newly disclosed evidence shows how the turn was made. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing.

Months later, it would be Brennan who overruled his own CIA analysts in his ordering of a second last-minute assessment at the end of the Obama Administration in support of the Russian allegations. It would help make the turn with the all-consuming Russian investigation that would follow.

Career analysts were not buying the turn. They objected that the reliance on the Steele dossier “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”

That is the key to the turn; it needs only to be enough to fool the audience.

The Prestige

The final stage is called the Prestige, where the magician faces the toughest part of the trick. As explained in the 2006 movie “The Prestige,” the viewer is “looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.” However, “making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.”

The difference is that this trick was designed to derail Trump and it worked. In the end, however, the Special Counsel and Inspector General both rejected the Russian collusion claims. The public then reelected Trump. Now, the prestige may be revealed by the CIA.

Reports indicate that the CIA is about to declassify material showing that foreign sources were also in on the trick. The information reportedly indicates that foreign sources were aware of the move to create a Russian collusion scandal and expected that the FBI would play a role in the plan. That was before the bureau launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe. One source said the foreign intelligence predicted the move “with alarming specificity.”

The most recently declassified material shows that the Russian actors in 2016 hacked emails from the Open Society Foundations, formerly known as the Soros Foundation. The emails reveal a broader network of activists and allies who were aware of the Clinton conspiracy.

Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”

Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.

It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Crime, Law, Political

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Silence of the Lambs: The Media Ignores Declassified Documents on the Manufacturing of the Russian Conspiracy

By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

Consider this story: An outgoing president and his top officials are told that there is no evidence of Russian collusion or influence in the national election. The White House then moved to suppress the intelligence assessment and reverse the conclusions, while false claims were leaked to the press.

That is not just a major but a Pulitzer-level story, right?

Apparently not. The legacy media has largely ignored the declassified evidence and possible criminal referral on the Obama administration seeding the Russian collusion narrative just before the first Trump Administration. It supports allegations in the real Russian conspiracy: the conspiracy to create a false Russian collusion scandal to undermine the election and administration of Donald Trump in 2016.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested last week that intelligence was “manufactured and politicized” despite countervailing conclusions from American intelligence that there was no collusion or influence on the election. Critics have noted that CBS only covered the story to refute it.

The release of this information is historically significant, as it finally allows the public to see how this effort began with the Clinton campaign and was then actively cultivated by Obama officials. We previously learned that the Clinton campaign spent millions to create the infamous Steele dossier and then hid their role from the public.

Attorney Marc Elias, the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign, pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.) During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff.

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

Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

Not only did Clinton reportedly spent over $10 million on the report, but Obama was briefed that she was going to create a Russian collusion narrative as part of her campaign. Aware of that Clinton effort, these new documents suggest that Obama and his aides actively sought to affirm the allegations just before Trump’s inauguration. The FBI then ramped up its own efforts despite also being told that the Steele dossier was unreliable and contradicted.

I disagree with the use of the charge of treason being thrown around with this release. Based on this evidence, it would be hard to make a criminal case against Obama, let alone the specific charge of treason. However, there are good-faith allegations raised about prior congressional testimony of key players in the Obama Administration. There may be viable criminal allegations ranging from perjury to obstruction to making false statements to federal investigators.

It is too early to gauge the basis for possible criminal charges. However, the release of this new evidence is both historically and legally significant. There is now a legitimate concern over a conspiracy to create this false narrative to undermine the incoming Administration. It proved successful in derailing the first Trump Administration. By the time the allegations were debunked, much of the first term had been exhausted. That is worthy of investigation and the public has a right to expect transparency on these long-withheld documents.

The silence of the legacy media is hardly surprising, given the key role the media played in spreading these false claims. Most media outlets find themselves in an uncomfortable position, having fostered an alleged conspiracy for years. Most reporters are not keen on making a case against themselves in spreading of these false claims.

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Crime, Law, Political

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The State Media is Dead — Long Live the State Media?

By: Jonathan Turley | July 21, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on the termination of funding for National Public Radio. Now that we have ended government-sponsored media, the question is whether the media will cease acting like a state media. The good news is that the market could force a correction that the media has largely refused to make.

Here is the column:

With the final elimination of public funding for National Public Radio as part of a $9 billion savings package, the era of the American state media will technically come to an end. However, what makes for state media is not state support alone.

So, the state media is dead — long live the state media.

That variation of the traditional mourning cry of the British monarchy will be heard more in whispers than proclamations this week in Washington. The government subsidy for NPR has long been a subject of controversy. Many opposed NPR for its open bias in reporting news, a record that thrilled the left and outraged many on the right. Just before the final vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave another interview that left many agape. She denied any such bias and asked whether anyone could point to a single story that showed a political or ideological slant.

Ignoring a myriad of such examples, Maher then went from defiant to delusional, insisting that NPR was trying hard to “understand those criticisms.”

It was a bit late for Maher to feign surprise or confusion, particularly as a CEO whose selection to take over the struggling NPR many of us opposed. Her glaring and overt bias did not seem like the antidote to NPR’s shrinking audience and revenue. In 2024, NPR had a window to actually “understand” the criticism and make adjustments. Instead, it treated the government subsidy as an entitlement, backed by Democratic members in Congress. The board would have done better to select a neutral journalist. Instead, it doubled down, hiring a candidate with a long record of far-left public statements against Republicans, Trump, and others.

This is the same CEO who attacked respected senior editor Uri Berliner when he tried to get NPR to address its bias and restore greater balance on the staff. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

Maher slammed the award-winning Berliner for his “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Berliner resigned after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.

But I have argued that NPR’s well-established bias and publication of baseless conspiracy theories are not the real reasons for taking away its federal funding. The truth is, NPR represented an embrace of a state media model used in other countries that Americans thoroughly reject.

Maher bizarrely tried to rally support for government funding by insisting that we must “keep the government out” of the media. Congress just did precisely that by clawing back NPR’s funding.

The government has occasionally supported the media, but generally to benefit all media outlets. For example, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, giving newspapers reduced postage rates.

Notably, those same Democrats in Congress who decried the reduction of funding for NPR would have revolted over funding for more successful radio outlets, such as Fox Radio. Indeed, some of the same members had previously pushed cable carriers to consider dropping Fox News, the most popular cable news channel.

What Congress did with prior funding of a single preferred media outlet was wrong. Liberals and Democrats fought to protect the funding even though NPR’s shrinking audience is now overwhelmingly white, affluent, and liberal.

However, the end of government subsidies will not necessarily mean the end of an effective state media. As I noted in my book “The Indispensable Right,” we have seen how the media can create the same effect as state media by consent rather than coercion. For years, media outlets have echoed the same party line, including burying negative stories and repeating debunked stories. Actual readers and listeners abandoned the mainstream media in droves. “Let’s Go Brandon” became a national mantra mocking journalists for their inability even to see and hear if the sights and sounds don’t fit their preconceived narratives.

Just as Maher has expressed utter confusion on how anyone could view NPR as biased, these editors and journalists will cling to the same advocacy journalism, rejecting the principles of objectivity and neutrality. However, there is still one hope for restoring traditional journalism: the market.

Now that NPR is off the public dole, it will have to compete fairly with other radio outlets for audiences and revenue. It is free to alienate most listeners who have center-right viewpoints, but it will have to sustain itself on a smaller share of the market.

Other outlets are facing the same dire choice. Recently, the Post encouraged writers and editors to leave if they were unwilling to get on board with a new direction at the newspaper. Previously, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis had told his writers that the newspaper was experiencing massive losses in readers and revenues because “no one is reading your stuff.” It triggered a revolt on the staff, which would have rather run the paper into insolvency than return to objectivity and neutrality.

The same preference was seen with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. What had been David Letterman’s formidable program had become a shrill echo chamber for the far left as Colbert engaged in nightly and mostly unfunny diatribes against Trump and Republicans. As its ratings and revenues fell, Colbert was unmoved. At the same time, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld continued to crush the competition as viewers abandoned CBS and other broadcast networks.

The year’s second-quarter ratings showed Fox News’s “Gutfeld!” drawing an average of three million viewers. Gutfeld’s more conservative takes on news remain unique among these late-night shows. In comparison, “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert came in second last quarter with an average 2.42 million viewers, despite being a far more costly program.

As liberals expressed outrage over the cancellation and alleged that CBS’s owner, Paramount, was seeking to garner favor with the Trump Administration, even CNN admitted that the show under Colbert had become “unfortunately unprofitable.” Colbert’s show was reportedly losing $40 million a year with a bloated staff and declining audience.

Paramount issued a statement insisting that Colbert’s cancelation was “not related in any way to the show’s performance.” Perhaps, but media companies are hardly in the habit of cancelling profitable, high-performing programming.

Ultimately, the market is correcting what the media would not. Roughly half of this country is center-right, and 77 million people voted for Trump. They are turning to social media and new media rather than remain a captive audience to a biased legacy media committed to advocacy journalism.

As media outlets fail, there may also be more pressure on journalism schools to return to core principles rather than crank out social justice warriors no one wants to read or hear from.

In the meantime, Maher and NPR can continue to stay the course and try to make up in pledge drives what they lost in public subsidies. However, the whole thing will now have to pay for itself without passing along costs to the rest of the non-listening country.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Media, Political

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Fact Checking Claims About Texas Floods

By: Jarrett Stepman | July 07, 2025

A Texas flies in front of a property wrecked by flooding. — A Texas state flag flies in a yard filled with debris on July 6 in Hunt, Texas. (Jim Vondruska via Getty Images)

Heavy rainstorms caused widespread, deadly floods in Texas over the Fourth of July Weekend.

According to the latest estimates, 94 people have been confirmed dead due to the flooding of the Guadalupe River and elsewhere in Central Texas. This number includes 27 young girls and counselors from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp in Hunt, Texas.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who represents a district affected by the flooding, spoke about both the tragedies and acts of heroism in the wake of the flood.

Rep. Roy: “There's a there's a lot of pride and the people of Texas rising to the occasion.“ pic.twitter.com/SETsgDsyHT
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) July 7, 2025

Unfortunately, some media commentators took this tragic moment and wrongly twisted it to make it an indictment of President Donald Trump, the Trump administration, and conservatives in general. Many claimed that Department of Government Efficiency budget cuts are specifically to blame for the casualties.

This was CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein on Saturday in the 5pm Eastern hour, speculating about DOGE cuts having possibly played a role in the deadly Texas floods (with dozens still missing):

“But there are two important notes here. Number one, the President has been deeply… pic.twitter.com/YzKBibYJle
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 7, 2025

“MAGA and [right-wing] media seem very upset today as a chorus of us experts discuss the impact of cuts to weather forecasting,” wrote CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem on X. “This is the world of disaster information wars. I say this: a total tragedy in Texas and we owe those young girls the willingness to learn from it.”

The following is a fact check of these claims.

National Weather Service

Critics of the Trump administration have directed most of their ire at the National Weather Service, saying that after funding “cuts” the organization failed to do its job in Texas.

When experts warned for months that the NWS “is being destroyed” by Trump’s personnel cuts, Howard Lutnick assured Congress that forecasting won’t be affected. Now TX officials are blaming a faulty forecast by NWS for the deadly impact of a storm. https://t.co/zQZmKq7553
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 5, 2025

A Huffington Post White House reporter said that Trump “imposed significant cuts to the National Weather Service, degrading its ability to do its job.”

He imposed significant cuts to the National Weather Service, degrading its ability to do its job.

Also he has not visited the site of a single disaster that has occurred on his watch.

However, he has managed close to 50 days of golf, including today, right now. pic.twitter.com/dJfbDKcThF
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) July 5, 2025

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said on Sunday, “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.”

George Stephanopoulos on @ThisWeekABC: “We’re also learning there were significant staffing shortfalls to the National Weather Services offices in the region.” pic.twitter.com/1xwf7DkQuq
— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) July 6, 2025

Even the Democratic National Committee got in on these accusations Monday.

INBOX: Democratic National Committee doubles down on blaming Texas flooding deaths on Trump admin staff cuts to the National Weather Service.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt just called such claims a "depraved lie that serves no purpose during this time of national… pic.twitter.com/YDLvNfBwif
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 7, 2025

However, not only have there been no cuts to NWS or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but it appears that those agencies were well and properly staffed on the eve of the floods.

The Associated Press reported that the NWS office in New Braunfels “had extra staff on duty during the storms.” Whereas during normal times two forecasters would be on duty, the office had five forecasters on duty ahead of the storms, according to AP.

But most evidence points to NWS fulfilling its duty and providing warnings well ahead of the floods.

The Department of Homeland Security posted its own accounting of events and said that the “mainstream media is deliberately lying about the events leading up to the catastrophic flooding in Texas.”

The GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025.

Anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) July 6, 2025

After posting a timeline of the actions the NWS took, DHS concluded, “The National Weather Service provided over 12 hours of advance notice via the Flood Watch and over 3 hours of lead time for Flash Flood Warnings, with escalated alerts as the storm intensified.”

Some media outlets have also concluded that NWS was not to blame for what happened in Texas. A Wired article acknowledged that NWS “did its job in Texas” based on interviews with meteorologists.

Wired reported that NWS “did send out adequate warnings as it got updated information. By Thursday afternoon, it had issued a flood watch for the area, and a flash flood warning was in effect by 1 a.m. Friday. The agency had issued a flash flood emergency alert by 4:30 a.m.”

Some commentators on the Left didn’t buy the narrative that the Texas flood deaths were caused by budget cuts and the Trump administration.

Nina Turner, a former national co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, wrote on X that the “GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro on the deadly Texas flooding:

"I think climate change is obviously a part of it. These floods are happening more often."pic.twitter.com/iNFu8rx8MH
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 6, 2025

Turner said that, while she disagrees with the budget cuts, “anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.”

Climate Change

Another common narrative of the Texas flood deaths is that they were caused by climate change.

More Pielke: "The flooding was certainly extreme but it should not have been historically unexpected. The documented record of extreme flooding in “flash flood alley” goes back several centuries, with paleoclimatology records extending that record thousands of years into the… pic.twitter.com/QdwJXCqJ3k
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 7, 2025

The Texas flood occurred in an area that suffers regular, extreme flooding. Some have called it “flash flood alley.”

But according to a meteorologist on X, citing numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency, the number of floods in the affected part of Texas has actually decreased since 1965.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger explained on X that flood deaths in the United States have declined sharply in the last century because better systems are now in place to save lives.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) denies that DOGE cuts to National Weather Service staffing led to delays in warnings about the deadly floods in Texas.

He says it's "reasonable over time" to look back at "what could have been done better," but "immediately trying to use it, for either side,… pic.twitter.com/DQ8UY5CwcC
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 7, 2025

The problem, according to Shellenberger and others, was not with the National Weather Service or with DOGE cuts. The problem is that there wasn’t a sufficient local flood warning system in place to ensure that people in the affected areas could escape harm.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a news conference that it is “reasonable over time” to look back at “what could have been done better” during the Texas floods, but “immediately trying to use it, for either side, to attack their political opponents—I think that’s cynical and not the right approach.”

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disaster, Media, Political

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‘Hit Us, Please’ — America’s Left Issues a ‘Broken Arrow’ Signal to Europe

By: Jonathan Turley | July 7, 2025

Below is my column in The Hill on calls from the left for other countries to hit the United States with sanctions and other measures as a “bad actor.” After losses in elections and Congress, some are sending out a “broken arrow” signal for other nations to crack down on the United States.

Here is the column:

“Broken arrow” is arguably the most chilling and desperate order that an American military commander can issue. When faced with an enemy about to overrun a surrounded force, a commander uses it to call in an air or artillery strike on his own position.

This month, many on the American left are issuing their own “broken arrow” signals, including calling on globalist allies to hit the U.S. with sanctions and other measures. They are seeking to achieve through sanctions what they could not achieve through elections. The most recent such call came from commentator Elie Mystal on “The Joy Reid Show” this week.

“Our country needs to be sanctioned,” he said. “We are the bad guys on the world stage. We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point, and I’m not even going to say that we’ve only been a menace for the past three or four months.”

Mystal’s call was hardly a surprise for those familiar with his writings. A regular commentator on MSNBC, he previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.” Yet, he is not alone in signaling that his position is being overrun by his fellow citizens.

After Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to dismantle its censorship system, former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called upon Europe to use its infamous Digital Services Act to force him to censor fellow Americans.

Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, appeared recently before the European Parliament. She called upon the 27 EU countries to fight against the U.S., which she described as a global threat.

To the delight of globalists, she declared, “Before I describe the details of Russia’s recent online influence campaigns, I would like to call upon you to stand firm against another autocracy: The United States of America.”

This year, I spoke in Berlin at the World Forum and was surprised to see many Americans joining European leaders in support of the forum’s slogan, “A New World Order with European Values.” Attended by figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, the conference heralded Europe as key to countering the threat posed by the U.S. Others denounced America as the world’s villain with boycotts and protests during Fourth of July celebrations. One leading influencer declared that “this country is beyond f**ked” and encouraged citizens to “walk away from the illusion that they built” around this country.

Democratic politicians and pundits have fueled the anger by claiming fighting the current U.S. government is like fighting against the Nazis, including most recently former Vice President Al Gore. Others like Rep. Pramila Jayapal have called ICE agents “terrorists” for enforcing immigration laws.

The crisis of faith on the left often seems to be triggered by any adverse decision or election. In 2022, the Pima County, Arizona Democratic Party tweeted “F–k the Fourth” after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

This year, Fourth of July celebrations were canceled in Los Angeles under the claim that officials feared a mass arrest by ICE — rather implausible, considering that protests against ICE will be held as planned.

Others are organizing protests this week, declaring “F**k fourth of July. We have a king that we need to get rid of first.”

The problem for those calling on the EU to fight the U.S. is democracy itself, something of a headache for the global elite in Brussels. European governments are cracking down on conservative and other groups, which are soaring in popularity, with calls for stronger borders and reversing mass immigration trends. Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and other countries have experienced a similar surge in the popularity of conservative parties.

The fact is, many of the triggers for these “No Kings” protests are the product of the democratic process from the “Big Beautiful Bill” to changes in immigration policy. Citizens voted for change and successfully secured it, and some people are angry about it.

At the same time, our courts continue to function as designed in reviewing these orders and policies. Trump has won some and lost some before the Supreme Court, as constitutional limits are defined and enforced.

In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore the future of American democracy in the 21st Century in light of economic and political movements, including the current crisis of faith of many on the left over our fundamental values and institutions.

The irony is that this crisis is largely centered among the most privileged classes. Yet recent Gallup polling shows patriotism is at an all-time low. However, the drop is found almost entirely among Democrats. Only 36 percent of Democrats reported being extremely or very proud to be American, compared to 92 percent of Republicans.

Some are simply moving to foreign countries. The New York Times has fanned the flames of those claiming that the U.S. is a new fascist regime. Recently, it featured the declaration of three Yale professors fleeing American fascism for the free nation of Canada. In their piece, titled “We study fascism and we are leaving the United States,” the professors explain that “the lesson of 1933 is that you get out sooner rather than later.”

But what these professors call fascism looks a lot like the democratic process to others. The problem with democracy is that it does not always produce the outcome you want.

For some, support for democratic choice seems to extend only to fellow citizens who make the “right” choice, from their own perspective, of course. So faced with losses in elections and in Congress, many are shouting “broken arrow” and hoping for external help in crushing the opposition.

Yet the fact is, this country is not being “overrun.” Those are fellow citizens who are calling for these policy changes and rejecting far-left policies. Just as many in Europe are calling on the EU to block far-right democratic victories, many in this country are advocating for the trashing of the Constitution or transnational interventions to reverse political voting trends.

The fact is, the far left is not truly surrounded. They have simply retreated into smaller and smaller echo chambers rather than engage the rest of the country on these issues. Viewed from within the protected spaces of MSNBC or BlueSky, you can feel surrounded, but it remains a type of self-isolation. It is like watching wagons frantically circling on the plains without a hostile in sight. The problem is that most of America has moved on.

In the end, the calls for a globalist intervention are a final desperate call of America’s self-isolated left.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”

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International Politics

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

Branco Cartoon – Media TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

A.F. Branco | on June 17, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-media-tds/

Democrats and Media call for Violence — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Legacy media calls the Riots incited by Democrat leaders a peaceful protest. They called Trump’s “march peacefully and patriotically” speech a call for violence at the Capitol. Bias much?

BRANCO TOON STORE

6 Reasons the ‘No Kings’ Riots Are Far Worse Than January 6 — But the Media Still Calls Them ‘Mostly Peaceful’

By Guest Contributor – The Gateway Pundit – June 16, 2025

Late last week, we came across a commentary video by the gamer Asmongold on YouTube. The topic of course was the unrest surrounding the LA ICE raids. The commentary triggered some back-and-forth with users in his chat one of whom tried to dismiss what was going on in LA by comparing it to the protest on January 6, 2021. This prompted another user to comment that the Left “Always brings up Jan 6.”
To which, Asmongold responded, “Because they don’t have any other examples.”
From the very start of the January 6 saga, it’s been a constant struggle to get the truth out over the mountain of lies spread by the media and the Biden administration about what actually happened that day. The frustration is compounded by the fact that even among those on the Right who… READ MORE

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

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HUMOR, Media, Political

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

Branco Cartoon – Rooting for Failure

A.F. Branco | on June 5, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-rooting-for-failure/

Media Economic Bias — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The legacy media are gleefully rooting for the economy to fail while ignoring the incredible improvements in Unemployment, Inflation, energy, etc., due to Trump’s policies.

BRANCO TOON STORE

TRUMP ECONOMIC UPDATE: Inflation Drops to 2.3%, Lowest Since 2021, and US Treasury Records Second Biggest Surplus in History Thanks to Trump’s Record Tariff Revenues

By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – May 13, 2025

On Tuesday, the monthly inflation numbers came in below expectations for the third straight month.
The inflation rate for April came in at 2.3%.
Grocery items saw their biggest decline in FIVE years! — Gee, what happened between five years ago and now?
Gas prices are also down.
But that’s not all.
On Tuesday, as Zero Hedge reported, we discovered why the US government borrowing need was shockingly lower than previously expected.
The latest Treasury Monthly Statement revealed that in April, the US Treasury generated a $258.4 billion surplus after last month’s $160.5 billion deficit; this the second biggest surplus on record, with just the $308 billion bumper surplus in 2021 bigger…
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Today’s TWO Politically INCORRRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

Branco Cartoon – Frauding Our Future

A.F. Branco | on June 1, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-frauding-our-future/

Minnesota Fraud schemes — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco cartoon – Minnesota’s “Feeding Our Future” program has turned into “frauding our future” out of millions of dollars meant for hungry children.

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Lawmaker calls for reform after Feeding Our Future suspect tries to flee amid fraud charges

By Jenna Gloeb – AlphaNews.org – May 30, 2025

“The woman arrested this week has been involved in MDH-licensed businesses for nearly 20 years,” said Rep. Dawn Gillman, warning that the lack of guardrails in Minnesota has created a “nauseating” breeding ground for fraud.
A Minnesota lawmaker says the arrest of a woman tied to the Feeding Our Future scandal highlights years of systemic failures and the urgent need for reform in how the state oversees taxpayer-funded care programs.
Hibo Daar, 50, was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this week as she allegedly tried to flee the country. Prosecutors say she orchestrated a massive fraud through her business, Northside Wellness Center, under the sponsorship of Feeding Our Future — the nonprofit behind the largest COVID-19-related fraud case in U.S. history.
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Branco Cartoon – Death by Lies

A.F. Branco | on June 2, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-death-by-lies/

Live By The Lie, Die By The Lie — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Legacy Media credibility (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, NY Times, WAPO, etc) are in the toilet, or, as some would say, in the grave. The Democrat party isn’t far behind them.

Branco Toon Store

Trump Scores Another Legal Win in Lawsuit Against NYT and ‘Washington Compost’ in His Case Against Pulitzer Board and Their Award for Fake News Reporting

By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – May 29, 2025

President Donald Trump has secured another victory in his ongoing battle against “fake news” and “the Russia collusion hoax.”
On Wednesday night, President Trump cheered the news that the Florida Appellate Court “viciously rejected” the defendant’s attempt to halt the case.
The suit challenges the legitimacy of the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes awarded to fake news, The New York Times and The Washington Post, for their coverage of the debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
The roots of this narrative trace back to July 2020, when the Senate Judiciary Committee released damning documents that debunked the New York Times’s story of the Trump team’s alleged “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials.” READ MORE

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Inflation Numbers Showed Trump Was Right About Egg Prices and CNN Isn’t Taking It Well

By: Brianna Lyman | May 15, 2025

eggs — That’s one of the propaganda press’ favorite things to do: dismiss or discredit the truth, but then claim credit for discovering it themselves later

Author Brianna Lyman profile

Brianna Lyman

Visit on Twitter@briannalyman2

Data released Tuesday shows that egg prices dropped 12.7 percent last month — the “biggest monthly decline since 1984.” The report follows weeks of President Donald Trump telling Americans that egg prices were falling — welcome news after the cost of eggs rose for 17 out of the past 19 months, according to CNN. But the left-wing legacy outlet is scrambling to process the eggcellent news.

CNN’s David Goldman wrote Tuesday that “For months, President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that egg prices are tumbling. It wasn’t true then, but it’s true now.”

Goldman continues:

“Despite Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ far more conservative estimate that egg prices would normalize in the summer, Trump last month said, ‘as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94% since we took office.’ Those percentage declines Trump stated are not close to accurate – but we now know that consumer egg prices were, indeed, falling sharply when Trump made those remarks (the Consumer Price Index data wasn’t out yet to confirm or deny Trump’s claims).”

CNN admits egg prices “were, indeed, falling sharply when Trump made those remarks,” but a few sentences later bizarrely still claims the “timing of his claim” was wrong.

Translation: Trump said something that turned out to be true (egg prices fell), but because we didn’t have the same data at the exact moment Trump said it, he was wrong.

That’s one of the propaganda press’ favorite things to do: dismiss or discredit the truth but then claim credit for discovering it themselves later and grant permission to everyone else to acknowledge it. Goldman’s piece is hardly an outlier. It’s the norm. Take the propaganda press’ coverage of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson are awaiting the release of their new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, which details Biden’s decline over four years. The excerpts released thus far read more like a confessional of sins long known to anyone with a set of eyes and ears.

But the book and discussions amongst the left are all happening well after Tapper and the legacy media themselves engaged in the cover-up. The media decided that Biden wasn’t cognitively declining and essentially painted anyone who questioned the narrative as a far-right “conspiracy theorist” not acting “in good faith.”

[READ: 9 Times Jake Tapper Dismissed Biden’s Decline, Claimed He’s ‘Sharp Mentally’]

The examples are endless. But now that Tapper, Thompson, and the rest of them can make a few bucks off telling the truth, they’re willing to do it.

Or take the coverage of masks during Covid. The New York Times’ Zach Montague said in September 2020 it was a “dangerous assertion” to state that wearing masks during the pandemic had “little to no medical value.” Fast forward just over two years when Bret Stephens, writing for The Times, declared, “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” Stephens highlighted a report that found there was “no evidence” masks made “any difference.”

To be clear, it was a “dangerous assertion” to say masks did nothing until the propaganda press decided it was okay to make that same assertion. As the Federalist’s Elle Purnell wrote, outlets like the New York Times “played a significant role in defending the officially sanctioned [Covid] narrative” and “chok[ed] dissent.”

[READ: No Amount Of Crocodile Tears Can Erase Corporate Media’s Complicity In Covid Scandal]

And then, of course, there’s the alternative — where something is true until the media says it no longer is, like the case of the propaganda press running cover for Kamala Harris’ devastating management of the border as vice president.

As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd wrote last year, “Years after acknowledging and even praising President Joe Biden for naming Vice President Kamala Harris ‘border czar,’ corporate media claimed the presumptive 2024 Democrat nominee was never charged with overseeing the logistics of the record-breaking invasion.”

In each case, one pattern remains the same: The truth never changed, only the media’s willingness to acknowledge it. Whether it’s egg prices, Biden’s cognitive decline, mask mandates, or who was in charge of the southern border, the facts don’t seem to matter to the propaganda press.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2

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The Baby Hoax: Reporters Repeat False Narrative Over Child Deportations

By: Jonathan Turley | May 1, 2025

For years, the mainstream media has been criticized for open political bias, including repeating false narratives and claims. There is little evidence that that will change despite falling revenues and audiences. That was evident this week as leading journalists continued to raise a dubious claim about the Trump Administration deporting children, including cancer patients.

The media has been promulgating a false claim that children as young as four are being deported. The Administration immediately stated that the decision rested with the mothers on whether they would take the children or leave them in the United States with family.

Many of the same figures accused of promulgating false stories quickly picked up the spin from the Washington Post.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker pursued the narrative with Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

KRISTEN WELKER: Let’s talk now about some new reporting that came in overnight. I want just to go through it with you and for our audience. Three U.S. citizen children have been deported with their mothers. Now this is according to The Washington Post. The family’s lawyer says one of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer, deported without medication or ability to contact doctors. The family’s lawyers are also saying their clients were denied communication with family and legal representatives before being deported, and it’s raising concerns about the issue of due process. That it’s being violated. So let me ask you, is everyone on U.S. soil, citizens and non-citizens, entitled to due process?

MARCO RUBIO: Yes, of course. But let me tell you, it looks- in immigration standing, the laws are very specific. If you are in the country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed. That’s what the law says. Somehow over the last 20 years, we’ve completely lost this notion that somehow- or completely adopted this idea that yes, we have immigration laws but once you come into our country illegally it triggers all kinds of rights that can keep you here indefinitely. That’s why we were being flooded at the border, and we’ve ended that. And that’s why you don’t- you see a historically low number of people not just trying to cross our border, trying to cross the border into Panama, all the way down in the Darien Gap. I mean- i it’s been a huge help for those countries as well. On the headline- that’s a misleading headline. Okay? Three U.S. Citizens, ages 4, 7 and 2 were not deported. Their mothers who were illegally in this country were deported. The children went with their mothers. Those children are U.S. citizens- they can come back into the United States- there’s- their father or someone here who wants to assume them. But ultimately who was deported was the mother- their mothers who were here illegally. The children just went with their mothers. But it wasn’t like- you guys make it sound like ICE agents kicked down the door and grabbed the 2-year-old and threw them on an airplane. That’s misleading. That’s just not true.

That would ordinarily leave a journalist looking at their shoes in embarrassment, but Welker decided to double down and add the claim that children are being denied “due process”:

WELKER: Just to be clear, because I do want to get to the overhaul at the State Department. Is it the U.S. policy to deport children, even U.S. citizens, with their families- and I hear what you’re saying- without due process? Just to be very clear there.

RUBIO: Well- no, no, no. No, no. Again, if someone is in this country unlawfully, illegally, that person gets deported. If that person is with a 2-year-old child or has a 2-year-old child and says “I want to take my child with you- with me,” well then you have two choices. You can say yes, of course, you can take your child whether they’re a citizen or not because it’s your child or you can say yes, you can go, but your child must stay behind. And then your headlines would read, “U.S. holding hostage 2-year-old, 4-year-old, 7-year-old, while mother deported.”

There is a great deal of litigation working through the courts on the level of due process required for deportations. The public overwhelmingly supports the deportation of unlawful immigrants and elected Trump based on his pledge to carry out such deportations. Unlawful immigrants often spend years in this country despite orders of deportation or removal. The level of review depends on their status. If they have previously entered unlawfully, they are subject to expedited removal.

The critical point, however, is that the children were the ones being deported. If they were born in this country, they are still treated as U.S. citizens (though the Administration is challenging birthright citizenship in the courts). Having a child in the United States does not make parents immune from removal or afford them special legal status over other deportees.

Over at CBS, Margaret Brennan (who was criticized for her “fact checks” in the presidential debate) also jumped on the narrative in interviewing Border Czar Tom Homan on Face the Nation:

MARGARET BRENNAN: On Friday, there were three American citizen children, born here, who were deported along with their mothers from Louisiana down to Honduras. And according to advocates, one of them is a 4-year-old child with Stage Four cancer. A rare form of metastatic cancer who was sent back to Honduras without getting to talk to a doctor and without medication. I understand this child’s mother entered this country illegally. But isn’t there some basis for compassionate consideration here that should have allowed for more consultation or treatment?

TOM HOMAN: Well, it certainly is discretionary. I’m not aware of this specific case. But no U.S. citizen child was deported. Deported means you gotta be ordered — reported by the immigration judge. We don’t deport U.S. citizens.

BRENNAN: The mother was deported along with the children.

HOMAN: These children- Children aren’t deported. The mother chose to take the children with her. When you enter the country illegally and you know you are here illegally and you choose to have a U.S. citizen child, that’s on you. That’s not on this administration. If you choose to put your family in that position, that’s on them. But having a U.S. citizen child, after you enter this country illegally, is not a “get out of jail free” card. It doesn’t make you immune from our laws. If that’s the message we send to the entire world, women are going to keep putting themselves at risk and come to this country. We send a message: you can enter the country illegally, that’s okay, you can have due process at great taxpayer expense, get ordered to move, that’s OK. Don’t leave, but have a U.S. citizen child and you are immune from removal? That’s not the way it works.

BRENNAN: So, you don’t think there should be compassionate consideration for a 4-year-old child undergoing treatment for cancer?

HOMAN: I didn’t say that. I said ICE officers do have discretion-

BRENNAN: That was the question.

HOMAN: ICE officers do have discretion. I’m not familiar with the specific case. I don’t know what facts surround this case. I was just made aware of this when you mentioned it this morning. I was not aware of that case.

Brennan correctly noted that a court recently found a lack of due process in a child’s case. However, Holman had a reasonable response in citing the mother’s election in this one case to leave with her child.

BRENNAN: On Friday, a federal judge who was appointed by President Trump said a 2-year-old American citizen child had been sent to Honduras with the mother. But the judge said, quote: “there was no meaningful process.” So again, this is another similar situation and dynamic. Shouldn’t there be special care when the deportation cases involve small American-born children?

HOMAN: First of all, I disagree with the judge. There was due process. That female had due process at great taxpayer expense and was ordered by an immigration judge after those hearings. So she had due process. Again, this is Parenting 101. And you can decide to take that child with you or you can decide to leave the child here with a relative or another spouse. Having a child doesn’t make you immune from our laws of the country. American families get separated every day by law enforcement- thousands of times a day. When a parent gets put in jail, the child can’t go with them. If you are an illegal alien and you come to this country and you decide to have a U.S. citizen child, that’s on you. You put yourself in that position.

BRENNAN: Well, when it came to this particular case, you just pointed out that they could have made arrangements. The father tried, actually, to make arrangements as we understand it through our reporting. But he and the mother who were separated, since she was in detention after showing up for her appointment, was only allowed a very brief phone call. The father tried to petition to get the child handed over to an American citizen relative. So the mother had to make this decision and took the child with her. It just seems like there could be some more time frame here around due process allowed. That’s what the judge is saying, is saying- there should have been more of a process here.

HOMAN: There was due process. The 2-year-old baby- the two year old baby was left with the mother because the mother signed a document requesting her 2-year-old baby go with her. That’s the parent’s decision. I don’t think the judge knows the specifics of this case. The 2-year-old went with the mom. The mom signed a paper saying, “I want my 2-year-old to go with me.” That’s a parent’s decision. It’s not a government decision; it’s a parent’s decision.

BRENNAN: The father wrote a note. Anyhow, we have to leave it there, Director. Thank you for your time today. We’ll be right back.

It is important to note that these are two very different cases that were blended into the coverage. In the second case, the government insists that there was no prior arrangement for the child to be left with the family and that the mother made this decision.

ICE should endeavor to accommodate such requests and there should always be an inquiry into allegations that these women were prevented from making arrangements for their children to remain in the country. However, there will also be practical limits in addressing those issues in the midst of a removal.

If Holman is correct, the mother was in the system long before the actual removal. The father “sending a note” at the end of that process is worth looking into, but it is hardly surprising that the removal proceeded with the mother’s consent.

The same narrative was playing over at ABC as Martha Raddatz had this exchange with former DOJ spokesperson Sarah Isgur:

MARTHA RADDATZ: Sarah, I want to turn here to some information that has been in The Washington Post about deportations of very young children who are American citizens. A 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 7-year-old sent back to Honduras. Is that legal?

SARAH ISGUR: This is something our immigration system deals with nearly every day. U.S. citizen children have to make that decision with their parents of whether they’re going to stay. The parent has the decision. We do not allow illegal alien parents to stay just because they have custody over U.S. citizen children, and at least one of these cases with the 2-year-old, the mother was the one who made the decision to take her daughter with her. The father is the one saying he wanted the daughter to stay here. Often times, it’s going to look more like a custody dispute than an immigration question.

Again, as Isgur correctly points out, this is the election of the parents who are being removed.

Critics have pushed back on these interviews, noting how the media seemed only marginally interested in thousands of children lost in the system under the Biden Administration as millions poured over the border. Thousands of unaccompanied children were pushed over the border and then lost by the government, according to the Trump Administration. Many may have ended up with sex traffickers or criminal gangs. The coverage suggested that children were being thrown on planes to be dumped in some foreign land.

The Washington Post, which is cited for the story, has been repeatedly accused of pushing misleading or false narratives. There was a recent riot in the newsroom when owner Jeff Bezos demanded that the newspaper return to more balanced coverage.

The most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Bump has been repeatedly accused of false claims and previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by stating that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

We have previously discussed the sharp change in culture at the Post, which became an outlet that pushed anti-free speech views and embraced advocacy journalism. The result was that many moderates and conservatives stopped reading the newspaper.

In my book on free speech, I discuss at length how the Post and the mainstream media have joined an alliance with the government and corporations in favor of censorship and blacklisting. I once regularly wrote for the Post and personally witnessed the sharp change in editorial priorities as editors delayed or killed columns with conservative or moderate viewpoints.

Last year, that culture was vividly on display when the newspaper offered no objection or even qualification after its reporter, Cleve Wootson Jr., appeared to call upon the White House to censor the interview of Elon Musk with former President Donald Trump. Under the guise of a question, Wootson told White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue…it’s an America issue.”

The baby hoax shows that little has (or likely will) change. In the meantime, the public is moving on. New media is rising as mainstream media audiences shrink. Journalists and columnists are increasingly writing for each other as polling shows trust in the media is at an all-time low.

Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

It simply does not matter. The media continues to vigorously saw on the branch upon which it is sitting.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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4 Admissions of Social Security Fraud in April Alone Show Waste and Abuse Are Real

By: Beth Brelje | April 23, 2025

While media cries about Trump eradicating fraud, and protesters punish Musk over DOGE findings, Social Security cons are plentiful.

Beth Brelje

Visit on Twitter@BethBrelje

When Elon Musk announced in February that there were 10 million Social Security numbers belonging to holders apparently aged 120 years and older, instead of acknowledging the great potential for fraudulent activity, the corporate media downplayed the concerns. They insisted that Social Security fraud is “not very common” and maligned the Trump administration’s efforts to purge the federal government of waste and abuse. However, multiple instances of Social Security fraud confirmed in April alone are a reminder that the system has enabled abuse for years.

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

In late March, DOGE announced that, following a “major cleanup” of records, 9.9 million number holders listed with ages 120 years and older “have now been marked deceased.” (While people do live past 100, the oldest person who ever lived in modern times was Jeanne Louise Calment, of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years old.)

Corporate media and so-called experts have claimed that the listed ages of these centenarian number holders may be the result of “coding quirks” in the system and that efforts to mark these number holders as deceased could lead to more errors. But this does not change the fact that unused Social Security numbers marked as live are ripe for fraud.

What can you do with a spare Social Security number? You could register to vote again or sign up for social welfare, like housing, health insurance, cash assistance, and SNAP. Noncitizens can get a job, and of course, collect Social Security retirement or disability benefits.

Last month, a White House fact sheet, citing an inspector general report from 2024, noted how “The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.”

Social Security Fraud Is Alive And Well

Last week, Wendy Stone of Rochester, New York, pleaded guilty to “conversion/unlawful conveyance of government money, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine,” according to U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo’s office.

Back in 2022, Stone went to the home of an acquaintance and found that person had died a few days earlier. Stone didn’t report the death to authorities. Instead, she moved the body to the basement of the home, stuffed it in a storage bin, and covered it in bleach, occasionally topping off the bleach to keep the body covered. It remained there from December 2022 to September 2023, the DOJ release explains. Stone, 63, “improperly collected” $7,900 of the victim’s Supplemental Security Income money, which is administered by the Social Security Administration, and used the victim’s Social Security number “to activate a new debit card.” Stone also later falsely claimed the victim lived with her to receive $1,070 in SNAP benefits, according to the release.

On April 9, Mavious Redmond of Austin, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to committing Social Security fraud for 25 years, roughly half her life. Redmond, 54, “collected more than $360,000 in Social Security payments intended for her mother,” who died in 1999, the DOJ said in an April 14 release.

“On multiple occasions, Redmond impersonated her deceased mother to keep her fraud scheme going,” reads the statement from Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick’s office. “For example, on June 4, 2024, Redmond personally visited the SSA office, posing as her deceased mother, and submitted a fraudulent SS-5 Application for Social Security Form using her mother’s name, date of birth, Social Security number, and forging her deceased mother’s signature.”

Deborah Bailey, 68, from Piscataway, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to theft of public money after claiming her dead mother’s Social Security retirement money for eight years after her death. After Bailey’s mom died in 2016, she didn’t tell the Social Security Administration, and an investigation revealed she withdrew more than $150,000 “in retirement benefits” from her mom’s bank account between 2016 and 2024. She faces sentencing in August, according to a DOJ release from U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s Office.

Reynaldo Martinez of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, admitted to getting his mitts on 40 SNAP cards using “stolen identities and stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers.”

“Court documents reflect that Martinez appeared in person at multiple Rhode Island Department of Human Services offices and filed applications for SNAP benefits,” according to a DOJ release from April 2. “He did this by presenting fraudulent drivers’ licenses in various names but depicting his own photograph, and using Social Security numbers assigned to others, including that of a deceased individual, living adult citizens, and at least one juvenile.”

He admitted to receiving more than $33,000 in SNAP free food benefits. Martinez also admitted to cashing “altered” U.S. Treasury checks, which can be tax refunds, Social Security, or other benefits. Martinez pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in July, according to the DOJ. He was arrested and convicted multiple times in the past on other fraud and criminal charges, “dating back to 2012.”

Still, the desperate media really want the Trump administration to stop looking for fraud.

Last week, President Trump signed a memorandum aimed at “preventing illegal aliens from obtaining Social Security Act benefits.” Without missing a beat, Axios’ Jason Lalljee wrote under the headline: “Trump aids Musk’s Social Security fraud hunt, despite lack of evidence.”

[READ: Five Ways Non-Citizens With Social Security Numbers Can Scam America]

But while the media cry about Trump eradicating fraud, and protesters key Teslas to punish Musk over DOGE findings, there are plentiful examples of Social Security fraud. The above are just a few admissions from April alone.

Not every mismarked 150-year-old Social Security number is connected to fraud, but for those and others that are, one person can bleed years of funding from the program, threatening its solvency and the security of those who truly need it.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.

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corruption, Crime, Law, Political

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Biden’s Administration May Have Suppressed COVID Evidence Contradicting Chinese Claims

Commentary by Jonathan Turley | April 14, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on recent disclosure that the Biden Administration may have withheld evidence contradicting the Chinese on the origins of COVID. Millions of Americans lost loved ones and would like to know who was responsible. It appears that our government and many experts were less motivated to find that answer.

Here is the column:

Imagine a world war that left more than seven million dead, hundreds of millions became ill, wrecked the global economy, and left a generation with lasting psychological and developmental injuries. We have seen such wars in history. What is different in this circumstance, however, is that all of that happened, and yet, years later, we still have no agreement on the original cause or possible culprits behind a pandemic that ravaged the world.

Worse yet, many politicians, experts and journalists do not seem inclined to find the answers. This is like fighting World War II and then shrugging off the question of what actually started it.

New questions are being raised over long-withheld evidence on the origins of COVID, information that contradicted the accounts of not just the Biden administration but also allies in academia and the media.

The Chinese first reported the outbreak in December 2019 and insisted that it came from a wet market in Wuhan — a natural or “zoonotic” transfer from bats sold at the market. Others were skeptical and pointed to the nearby Wuhan government virus lab, known to have conducted coronavirus studies with bats. This lab had a history of safety and contamination concerns.

The “lab-leak theory,” which was always the most obvious explanation, was further reinforced by scientists who saw evidence of possible manipulation of the virus’s genetic code, particularly the “spike protein” that enables the virus to enter the human body in a “gain of function” operation. There was (and still is) a serious controversy over the origins of the virus, but any debate was quickly scuttled in favor of the natural theory.

The Chinese immediately moved to crush any speculation of a lab-leak. Wuhan scientists were gagged and the Chinese refused to allow international investigators access to them or the lab in question. The Chinese also used their considerable influence over the World Health Organization and other groups to dismiss or downplay the lab theory..

Now, a long-withheld military report has finally been released by the Trump administration. It appears to confirm what was once denied by the Biden administration: U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms after participating in the World Military Games in October 2019 in Wuhan.

That contradicts China’s timeline. It suggests a longer cover-up in that country, which allowed the virus to spread not only to the U.S. but to countries around the world. Other nations also reported that their military personnel had fallen ill after attending the same games, suggesting that the virus was not only spreading but already raging in the area at that time.

The most disturbing aspect of this report is not the alleged conduct of the Chinese government, but that of our own. Rumors of U.S. military personnel coming down with the virus had long been out there. Republicans in Congress repeatedly asked the Biden administration about any report on the outbreak. Then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told The Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of COVID-19 infections among the troops participating in those games.

Even as the illness associated with the games became known, the Biden administration repeatedly refused to confirm the U.S. cases, and a 2022 report was withheld from both Congress and the public. If true, the level of duplicity and dishonesty is shocking. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.2 million died and more than 111 million were made sick by this virus. Yet the Biden administration is accused of withholding this information from the world. Why?

This disclosure follows an equally troubling disclosure that scientists in the Biden administration actually found support for the lab theory but were silenced by their superiors.

Last December, the Wall Street Journal released an alarming report on how these scientists supported the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.

As scientists were being attacked publicly and blacklisted for supporting the lab theory, experts at both the FBI and the Energy Department found the lab theory credible. Although no theory could be proven conclusively, it was deemed a more likely scenario than the natural-origin theory. The CIA also found the lab theory credible.

What the public was hearing was entirely different. They were hearing the same narrative laid out by the Chinese government in December 2019. The Chinese relied upon western scientists to form a mob against anyone raising the lab-leak theory as a possible explanation. Many were enlisted to sign letters or publish statements denouncing the idea. It became an article of faith — a required virtue signal among university scientists. The western media were equally primed to quash the theory.

After President Trump embraced the lab theory, the Chinese had the perfect setup. The media was on a hair-trigger in opposition and denounced his comments as not only unfounded but also racist. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified.”

MSNBC’s Joy Reid called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum.” Over at CNN, reporter Drew Griffin criticized the “widely debunked” theory and host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.

The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. After Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) raised the lab-leak theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”

The Post’s “fact checker” Glenn Kessler mocked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for entertaining the theory. “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab,” he posted. “Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”

Even in 2021 when countervailing evidence was surfacing, the unrelenting attacks continued. New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli urged journalists not to mention the “racist” lab theory. Social media companies also enforced the narrative and, with the coordination of the Biden Administration, experts raising the lab theory were targeted, censored, and blacklisted.

It now appears that the COVID outbreak may have occurred months before the alleged wet market release — months that could have been used to contain the virus. Instead, China is accused of suppressing the news and allowing the virus to spread worldwide. Our military personnel alone went home from the Wuhan games to 25 states, potentially carrying it with them. When information on these infections connected to the games was reported around the world, China even suggested that the U.S. used the games to release the weaponized virus.

In 2020, I wrote a column on why China seemed poised to avoid any liability for what might be the greatest act of negligence in history. The sheer size of the disaster somehow seemed to insulate China. As Joseph Stalin had once said, “a single death is a tragedy” and “a million deaths is a statistic.”

Try more than seven million, and you have a statistic that was not worth confronting the Chinese over. What was done was done.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Education, International Politics, Media, Political

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mob Leader

A.F. Branco | on April 6, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-pack-leader/

MobLeader Walz — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Gov Walz is the leader of the vile left-wing pack attacking Tesla as a way to destroy Elon Musk as he uncovers waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.

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White House slams Walz’s ‘sad existence’ after he cheers Tesla stock drop

By Jenna Gloeb – AlphaNews.org – Mar 19, 2025

As of Dec. 31, 2024, the Minnesota State Board of Investment (SBI) had invested in Tesla through both its U.S. Stock Actively Managed Fund and U.S. Stock Index Fund.
Gov. Tim Walz appeared to relish the declining stock price of Tesla, Inc. during a recent town hall event—held not in Minnesota, but in another state.
Speaking to a Wisconsin audience, Walz referenced Tesla’s stock price in real time.
“On the iPhone they’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day. 225 and dropping!” he said, appearing pleased by the company’s declining market value on that day. READ MORE

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Demoted

A.F. Branco | on April 7, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-demoted/

Moving Chairs At The WH Press Room — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Big changes are happening at the White House press room. Safe to say the legacy media is getting a long-overdue demotion, allowing the alternative media to have a larger voice.

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PATHETIC: Journalists of White House Correspondents Association Considered a ‘Sit-In’ Protest Over Changes in Seating Chart

By Mike Lachance – The Gateway Pundit – April 2, 2025

As the Gateway Pundit recently reported, the Trump administration is planning to take over the seating chart in the briefing room, a power once held by the far-left White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA).
Members of the WHCA, who are apparently a bunch of toddlers throwing a tantrum over the change, considered doing a 1960s style ‘sit-in’ protest in order to object to the changes.
The left views the entire world as a liberal college campus. This is just more proof of that. READ MORE

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HUMOR, Political

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NPR’s CEO Just Made the Best Case Yet for Defunding NPR

By: Jonathan Turley | March 31, 2025

Below is my column in the Hill on the effort to end the federal subsidy for National Public Radio, an effort that was greatly advanced by the testimony of its Chief Executive Officer. After imploding at a House hearing, NPR’s Katherine Maher even lost HBO’s Bill Maher who now supports defunding NPR. The Democrats hope to peel off a couple Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to continue to fund the outlet. The pitch is to again mouth “assurances” that NPR will adopt more balanced coverage, the same assurance given for over a decade as the liberal bias at the outlet only became more pronounced.

Here is the column:

“This is NPR.”

Unfortunately for National Public Radio, that proved all too true this week. In one of the most cringeworthy appearances in Congress, Katherine Maher imploded in a House hearing on the public funding of the liberal radio outlet. By the end of her series of contradictions and admissions, Maher had made the definitive case for ending public funding for NPR and state-subsidized media.

Many of us have written for years about the biased reporting at NPR. Not all of this criticism was made out of hostility toward the outlet — many honestly wanted NPR to reverse course and adopt more balanced coverage. That is why, when NPR was searching for a new CEO, I encouraged the board to hire a moderate figure without a history of political advocacy or controversy.

Instead, the board selected Katherine Maher, a former Wikipedia CEO widely criticized for her highly partisan and controversial public statements. She was the personification of advocacy journalism, even declaring that the First Amendment is the “number one challenge” that makes it “tricky” to censor or “modify” content as she would like.

Maher has supported “deplatforming” anyone she deems to be “fascists’” and even suggested that she might support “punching Nazis.” She also declared that “our reverence for the truth might be a distraction [in] getting things done.”

As expected, the bias at NPR only got worse. The leadership even changed a longstanding rule barring journalists from joining political protests.

One editor had had enough. Uri Berliner had watched NPR become an echo chamber for the far left with a virtual purging of all conservatives and Republicans from the newsroom. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.

Maher and NPR remained dismissive of such complaints. Maher attacked the award-winning Berliner for causing an “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.”

Berliner resigned, after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.

For years, NPR continued along this path but then came an election in which Republicans won both houses of Congress and the White House. The bill came due this week. Much of NPR’s time to testify was exhausted with Maher’s struggle to deny or defend her own past comments.

When asked about her past public statements that Trump is a “deranged, racist sociopath,” she said that she would not post such views today. She similarly brushed off her statements that America is “addicted to White supremacy” and her view that the use of the words “boy and girl” constitute “erasing language” for non-binary people.

When asked about her past assertion that the U.S. was founded on “black plunder and white democracy,” Maher said she no longer believed what she had said.

When asked about her support for the book “The Case for Reparations,” Maher denied any memory of ever having read the book. She was then read back her own public statements about how she took a day to read the book in a virtue-signaling post.

She then denied calling for reparations but was read back her own declaration: “Yes, the North, yes all of us, yes America. Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations. Yes, on this day.” She then bizarrely claimed she had not meant giving Black people actual money, or “fiscal reparations.”

When given statistics on the bias in NPR’s hiring and coverage, Maher seemed to shrug as she said she finds such facts “concerning.”

The one moment of clarity came when Maher was asked about NPR’s refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story. When first disclosed, with evidence of millions in alleged influence-peddling by the Biden family, NPR’s then-managing editor Terence Samuels made a strident and even mocking statement: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

Now Maher wants Congress to know that “NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.”

All it took was the threat of a complete cutoff of federal funding.

In the end, NPR’s bias and contempt for the public over the years is well-documented. But this should not be the reason for cutting off such funding. Rather, the cutoff should be based on the principle that democracies do not selectively subsidize media outlets. We have long rejected the model of state media, and it is time we reaffirmed that principle. (I also believe there is ample reason to terminate funding for Voice of America, although that is a different conversation.)

Many defenders of NPR would be apoplectic if the government were to fund such competitors as Fox News. Indeed, Democratic members previously sought to pressure cable carriers to drop Fox, the most popular cable news channel. (For full disclosure, I am a Fox News legal analyst.)

Ironically, Fox News is more diverse than NPR and has more Democratic viewers than CNN or MSNBC.

Berliner revealed that according to NPR’s demographic research, only 6 percent of its audience is Black and only 7 percent Hispanic. According to Berliner, only 11 percent of NPR listeners describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative. He further stated that NPR’s audience is mostly liberal white Democrats in coastal cities and college towns.

NPR’s audience declined from 60 million weekly listeners in 2020 to just 42 million in 2024 — a drop of nearly 33 percent. This means Democrats are fighting to force taxpayers to support a biased left-wing news outlet with a declining audience of mainly affluent white liberal listeners.

Compounding this issue is the fact that this country is now $36.22 trillion in debt, and core federal programs are now being cut back. To ask citizens (including the half of voters who just voted for Trump) to continue to subsidize one liberal news outlet is embarrassing. It is time for NPR to compete equally in the media market without the help of federal subsidies.

If there was any doubt about that conclusion, it was surely dispatched by Maher’s appearance. After years of objections over its biases, the NPR board hired a CEO notorious for her activism and far-left viewpoints. Now, Maher is the face of NPR as it tries to convince the public that it can be trusted to reform itself. Her denials and deflections convinced no one. Indeed, Maher may have been the worst possible figure to offer such assurances.

That is the price of hubris and “this is NPR.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Free Speech, Political

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Covid Taught Americans to Stop Trusting a Government That Puts Them Last

By: Elle Purnell | March 12, 2025

grayscale photo of people walking street in masks — The reaction to Covid showed Americans the system wasn’t going to save them. They were going to have to do it themselves.

Author Elle Purnell profile

Elle Purnell

Visit on Twitter@_ellepurnell

When Donald Trump first sailed into the Oval Office, his detractors shrieked that his blunt rhetoric was dividing the country. His supporters pointed out that Trump wasn’t so much creating division as he was revealing divisions that had been growing in America for a long time.

The reaction to the novel Wuhan coronavirus did the country a similar service, by revealing a new fault line: two sets of rules, which were applied differently to Americans depending on their membership in certain political cliques. For the average American who assumed his political leaders still shared the belief that all men are created equal, it was a cruel betrayal.

Coronavirus lockdowns alerted Americans to an uncomfortable reality: the institutions to which they’d entrusted their liberties were no longer trustworthy. If the 2024 election is any indication, they got the message.

In the Covid times, hardworking people were deemed “nonessential” and lost their jobs while watching Tony Fauci’s net worth climb. They were banished from church while thousands gathered in the street to worship George Floyd. They watched their kids fall behind in school while Nancy Pelosi and Lori Lightfoot broke the rules to get their split ends trimmed. Their dying loved ones left this world alone, while Obama danced with Hollywood stars at his 60th birthday bash. To add further insult, those loved ones were denied proper funerals, while 10,000 people gathered to eulogize a drug-addicted criminal in a gold casket on television. Only some Americans were authorized to print their opinions online, while others were punished and censored.

The delusion that we were “all in this together” didn’t survive for long. A certain set of rules applied to the BLM protesters, the Democrat politicians, and the Hollywood elites, and another set of rules applied to everyone else. Americans started to realize they were being had.

When Covid vaccine mandates rolled out, the dichotomy was even clearer. For the vaccinated class, there were jobs, service academy appointments, college acceptances, and social acceptance. For the unvaccinated, there was talk of denying them entry to airplanes, restaurants, and stores, or even putting them into camps.

Once the double standard was exposed, it became visible everywhere. The Bidens got away with selling White House access because of their last name, while Trump was relentlessly prosecuted for made-up crimes because of his. Peaceful pro-life protesters were dragged to prison while abortion supporters got away with firebombing pregnancy clinics. Ukrainian oligarchs got billions while we watched the buying power of each paycheck shrink. Our government seemed more interested in caring for citizens of other countries who broke our laws than in looking after its own. Our president was more interested in apologizing for using the term “illegal” to describe Laken Riley’s murderer than he was in apologizing to Riley’s family for inviting her killer across the border. Our speech was muzzled as a “threat to democracy” while partisans gleefully dismantled our republic.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans told Trafalgar Group pollsters in 2022 that they felt they were living under a two-tiered justice system.

If Covid brought the double standard into focus, the racial turmoil of 2020 confirmed leftists’ belief that it was a good thing. Americans were given different rules to live by, depending on the color of their skin. White Americans were expected to engage in public spectacles of guilt and self-hatred for their own inherent racism, examine their white fragility, pay “reparations” to their black friends, and accept fault for all of society’s ills. Black Americans were encouraged to celebrate their “black pride” and demand preferential treatment. The Smithsonian released an infographic saying traits like being “polite” or on time were hallmarks of “whiteness,” with the overly racist implication that black Americans should not be expected to do either. Hiring quotas were installed to reflect the principle that black and white people should be treated differently.

The ideology represented by the shorthand “DEI” turned this discrimination into a $9 billion industry. DEI didn’t just institutionalize racial discrimination, it also implemented discrimination based on sexual preferences. While white guys got blamed for society’s faults, white guys who dressed up as women got special victim status and Bud Light brand deals!

Americans who still believed God created each man and woman with equally valuable souls were offended at the creation of artificial hierarchies that turned true equality on its head, doling out special privileges based on a person’s race, politics, or sexuality. As institutions — from media to academia to government — led the way in imposing those hierarchies, Americans stopped trusting them.

Like Trump’s uncovering of deep-rooted political divisions in 2016, that loss of trust was as necessary as it was uncomfortable. It almost certainly played a role in Gen Z’s rightward swing. It was a huge step in shrinking the power of the leftist-dominated corporate press, which beclowned itself by uncritically repeating the government’s talking points about masks, vaccines, lockdowns, and Covid’s origins. And it laid the foundations for Americans, after four years of the Biden regime, to embrace Trump’s swamp-draining attitude more enthusiastically than ever.

The years of Covid paranoia and power-grabbing were an experiment in trusting The System, and whether Americans accepted or rejected it revealed as much about them as the 2016 election did. But it also revealed a lot about The System — and all the institutions of power that comprise it — to Americans.

They realized the system wasn’t going to save them. They were going to have to do it themselves.

Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.

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Health, Political

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Blowin’ Em’ Away

A.F. Branco | on March 12, 2025 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-blowin-em-away/

Alternative Media — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The legacy Media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY Times, etc.) have lost all credibility among most of America because of the outright lies and bias toward the left they have shown over the past few decades. The new Alternative media, such as Warroom with Steve Bannon, Dan Bongino, The Gateway Pundit, and many others, are being turned to as reliable sources for information.

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Mark Halperin and Guest Slam Tone Deafness and Bias of Media Outlets Like MSNBC: ‘Utterly Broken’ (VIDEO)

By Mike LaChance – The Gateway Pundit – Feb 27, 2025

Mark Halperin recently had a conversation with Marc Caputo, formerly of Politico, and they tore into MSNBC for the outlet’s inability or flat out refusal to course correct after the outcome of the 2024 election.
They make some great points, especially about the hiring of Jen Psaki at MSNBC and how no one in the mainstream media seemed to have a problem with it.
MSNBC is in the process of imploding. Joy Reid was just fired and Rachel Maddow has lost a significant portion of her staff and yet they show no signs of trying to fix the problems that are killing the network… READ MORE

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censorship, Free Speech, Media, Political

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Dems Scripted Their Response To Trump’s Speech Before Hearing It And They Don’t Care If You Know

By: Elle Purnell | March 04, 2025

Senate Democrats — Senate Dems are doing roughly the equivalent of those ‘copy and paste this or something bad will happen to you’ emails from middle school.

Author Elle Purnell profile

Elle Purnell

Visit on Twitter@_ellepurnell

Remember when the Biden administration recruited a bunch of kids on TikTok to repeat canned pro-Biden propaganda, and we all laughed at what an obviously disingenuous op it was? Now imagine if those kids were older, uglier, and members of the U.S. Senate. (Haven’t you always wanted to GRWM with Chuck Schumer and see Liz Warren’s OOTD?)

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress, Democrats have been whispering to their media allies that their messaging strategy surrounding Trump’s speech matters because “tonight marks the first moment since the election that much of America will actually pay any attention to the Democrats.”

The Democrats have landed on their messaging strategy, and it is, in their own words …

Tuesday morning, two dozen Senate Democrats posted their honest, genuine, heartfelt thoughts about Trump’s first 43 days. Those straight-from-the-heart perspectives just happened to all follow the same, word-for-word script, which Sen. Cory Booker took credit for writing.

Booker, along with Senators Angela Alsobrooks, Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, Tammy Duckworth, Dick Durbin, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, Tim Kaine, Mark Kelly, Andy Kim, Ben Ray Lujan, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Alex Padilla, Gary Peters, Brian Schatz, Chuck Schumer, Chris Van Hollen, Mark Warner, Elizabeth Warren, Peter Welch, and Sheldon Whitehouse each recorded a video rattling off the same lines about how Trump is evil for cutting government bloat and not undoing Bidenflation yet.

Democrats cared nothing about the prices of Americans’ groceries, gas, and housing for four years under Biden. As for government spending cuts, a Harvard-Harris poll just last month found Americans “overwhelmingly support cutting down government expenditures,” so that’s a weird choice of martyr to patronize.

The weirdest choice, though, is being so transparently obvious about the fact that all of Democrats’ outrage about Trump is scripted and fake. It’s not a surprise that Warren, Schumer, and their ilk don’t have original thoughts, but usually their comms staff try to keep that hidden, not broadcast it in a coordinated media blitz.

Democrats are doing the congressional equivalent of copying and pasting fake Amazon reviews. It’s “Can I get 10 REAL friends to copy and paste these five paragraphs onto their own Facebook pages?” but for U.S. senators — a plan someone looked at and thought, “this is exactly the rebrand Democrats need!”

It’s not the first time Dems have manufactured their mania, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more succinct example. Even the left-wing media, who have the same habit, are conceited enough to change up the words a little when they all turn in the same assignment about things like Joe “sharper than ever” Biden or “No one is above the law” or “no evidence” Biden made money off of the family influence-peddling business.

pic.twitter.com/uMPXtJGemB
— Elle Purnell (@_ellepurnell) March 4, 2025

It’s foolish enough for grown adults whose salaries are paid by tax dollars to stare into an iPhone camera and screech vulgarities, like an out-of-touch grandparent trying to earn points by using Zoomer slang. (Just adding expletives doesn’t make you cool, guys.) When those words are fresh off some social media intern’s copy machine, the effect is even more clownish.

One of the things that neutered Democrats’ 2024 campaign to defeat Trump was the dwindling effectiveness of their manufactured panic. In 2017, thanks to their control of the media establishment, they convinced a sizeable portion of the country that the sitting president was a Russian asset who had colluded with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election. In 2018, they orchestrated a manic smear campaign to convince the country that Brett Kavanaugh had helped run a gang rape operation in the Washington suburbs. In 2020, their mass-produced panic about the Coronavirus literally shut down the country. In 2021, they said Trump had tried to overthrow the government.

In a last-ditch effort to kill his 2024 campaign, they called him and his supporters fascists and Nazis and Hitler-lovers and threats to democracy, and couldn’t understand that the name-calling had lost its oomph after nearly a decade of Trump repeatedly turning out to not actually be Hitler.

Clearly, Democrats on the Hill still aren’t willing to learn that lesson. They’ve marked Tuesday as the day they’ll set the tone for the Resistance^TM for the next four years, and they’ve chosen the same tone of faux horror that they’ve taken for Donald Trump’s entire political career.

Can’t wait to see how it works out for them!

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Political

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“Which Country is he Loyal to?”: Democrats Go Full McCarthy in Attacks on Musk

By: Jonathan Turley | March 3, 2025

Below is my column in The Hill on the disgraceful Democratic attacks against Elon Musk over his status as a naturalized citizen. For years, some of us have raised concerns over the adoption of McCarthyite tactics and rhetoric by the left to demonize those with opposing viewpoints, including critics of the massive censorship system under the Biden Administration. Those attacks are now reaching a dangerous crescendo after the 2024 loss in the presidential election.

Here is the column:

This month, 75 years ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) gave his infamous speech denouncing disloyal Americans working at the highest levels of our government. It was the defining moment for what became known as McCarthyism, which attacked citizens as dangerous and disloyal influences in government.

Some of us have criticized the rising “rage rhetoric” for years, including that of President Trump and Democratic leaders, denouncing opponents as traitors and enemies of the state.

In the 2024 election, the traditional red state-blue state firewalls again collapsed, as they had in 2016. The response among Democrats has been to unleash a type of new Red Scare, questioning the loyalty of those who are supporting or working with the Trump administration in carrying out his promised reforms.

Elon Musk is the designated disloyal American for many on the left. That rage has reached virtual hysteria on ABC’s “The View.” This is the same show before the election on which hosts warned that, if Trump were elected, journalists and homosexuals would be rounded up and “disappeared.”

After the election, democracy seemed to stubbornly hang on, so the hosts had to resort to attacking as disloyal anyone joining the government or supporting Trump’s policies.

This week, co-host Joy Behar followed many others in questioning Musk’s loyalty and attacking him over being a naturalized American citizen: “The guy was not born in this country, who was born under apartheid in South Africa. So, [he] has that mentality going on. He was pro-Apartheid, as I understand it.”

Behar was then forced, perhaps by panicked ABC lawyers, to walk back the comment — such retractions having become a regular feature on “The View“. What came out was the type of jumbled confusion that results when you interrupt a lunatic on the metro in mid-rave.

Behar stated: “I’m getting some flack because I said that Musk was pro-apartheid. I don’t really know for sure if he was … He was around at that time, but maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t—he might have been a young guy, too. So, don’t be suing me, okay Elon?”

This anti-immigrant attack on Musk, however, has worked its way into many Democrats’ talking points, even though their party had previously claimed to defend immigrants against racist Republicans seeking to close the Southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) launched a xenophobic tirade that should have shocked the conscience of the nation. She warned citizens that Musk could not be trusted because he is an immigrant who has been a citizen for only a couple of decades: “Mr. Musk has just been here just 22 years and he’s a citizen of three countries. I always ask myself the question: With the damage he’s doing here when push comes to shove, which country is he loyal to? South Africa, Canada, or the United States? And he’s only been a citizen, I’ll say again, 22 years.”

Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney was another joining in to attack Musk for being an immigrant. “You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen,” she wrote on Musk’s social media platform, X.

These attacks are straight out of McCarthy’s playbook. It was McCarthy who insisted that “there are no degrees of loyalty in the United States — a man is either loyal or he’s disloyal…” Of course, McCarthy (and the earlier Red Scare) attacked government employees, writers and others on the left. It is now the left that is employing the same tactics, including censorship, blacklisting and public vilification.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, the Democrats, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, painted Republicans as either aspiring or actual fascists. That continued recently with Minnesota Gov. and former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz (D), who referred to Republicans as “fascists and Nazis.”

Even journalists and civil libertarians have been reviled using the same terms. After a hearing on censorship two years ago, MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) attacked journalists and members who had spoken in favor of free speech. She denounced the member witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin-lovers.

Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate representing the Virgin Islands in the U.S. House, even suggested arresting respected journalist Matt Taibbi, who, along with Michael Shellenberger, testified on their investigation into a massive censorship system developed under the Biden administration.

The attack on Musk is particularly disgraceful, given his contributions to his adopted country. Ironically, filmmaker Michael Moore denounced the deportations of criminal illegal immigrants last week by noting that Trump was deporting someone who might cure cancer or be the next Steve Jobs. Well, this is a naturalized citizen who not only could be the next Elon Musk. He is Elon Musk.

As politicians and pundits question Musk’s loyalty, Space X is moving to rescue two astronauts stranded in space. Musk has volunteered his time and skills to achieving a record reduction in the size and waste in government. One can disagree with his priorities or the means he uses to achieve his goals, but he has nobly stepped forward to serve his country despite death threats from the left.

Musk is also facing such attacks in Canada, where thousands have signed petitions to strip him of his citizenship. The left did not seek to revoke the citizenship of figures who have eviscerated free speech and other individual rights in that country. It is Musk who is persona non grata.

This is nothing new for Musk, whom the left has targeted since he announced an intention to buy Twitter and restore free speech protections on that site.

The concern is not for Musk, who has the intestinal fortitude (and financial means) to stand up to a global mob. Moreover, with polls showing overwhelming support for reducing the size of government and the budget, the campaign to obstruct these efforts is unlikely to resonate with voters.

The danger is more acute for the country as disagreements over policy are transformed into attacks over loyalty. It is the most dangerous form of rage rhetoric, an effort not to debate but to demonize those with whom you disagree.

When you have members of Congress standing in front of the Capitol, denouncing naturalized citizens as untrustworthy after a mere 22 years as a citizen, it is a moment that would have made McCarthy blush.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.

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Bravo, Mr. Bezos: Post Owner Calls for Newspaper to Champion Individual Freedom and Free Markets

By: Jonathan Turley | February 27, 2025

There was another meltdown at the Washington Post after owner Jeff Bezos moved again to moderate the newspaper’s message, which has plummeted in readership. Bezos told the editors that he wanted the newspaper to advocate for individual liberties and the free market. The message sent the left into vapors and led to the resignation of Washington Post opinion editor David Shipley. Outside the paper, another round of calls for boycotts and subscription cancellations followed.

In the announcement below, Bezos declared, “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

He added that a newspaper should be a voice for freedom — “is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.” He noted that:

“There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

For those of us in the free speech community, the return of the Post as a champion of free speech and other individual rights would be a welcomed change. Notably, staff did not object when prior owners aligned with their views on editorial priorities. Obviously, we will need to see how this new directive is carried out. I would be equally opposed to the Post purging liberal views in the way it moved against conservative and libertarian views for the last decade. I do not see such a directive in this announcement. Bezos wants his newspaper to be a voice for individual freedom and free market principles. That should not mean that the newspaper will not run any dissenting views on policies and programs. It does mean that the newspaper will continue to be an outlet for voicing extreme views calling for the curtailment of free speech and other individual rights.

What is striking is that many on the left expect Bezos to run the newspaper like a vanity project, losing millions of dollars to bankroll a far-left agenda. This is an announcement that goes to the position of the newspaper, not any intrusion into reporting. It also does not bar a diversity of opinion on the op-ed pages which still have a vast majority of liberal writers.

The thought that the Post would now focus on advocating for individual rights and the free market led Jeffrey Evan Gold, who posts as a legal analyst for CNN and other networks, to declare that it was the “last straw” and post his cancellation.

Jeff Stein, the publisher’s chief economics reporter, denounced Bezos as carrying out a “massive encroachment” that makes it clear “dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.” For many moderates and conservatives, it was a crushingly ironic objection given the virtual purging of conservative and libertarian voices at the newspaper.

Amanda Katz, who resigned from the Post’s opinion team at the end of 2024, offered a vivid example of the culture that Bezos is trying to change at the Post. Katz said the change was “an absolute abandonment of the principles of accountability of the powerful, justice, democracy, human rights, and accurate information that previously animated the section in favor of a white male billionaire’s self-interested agenda.”

Just as a reminder, Bezos simply stated that the newspaper would advocate for freedom and free markets. However, the most telling condemnation came from Post columnist Philip Bump, who wrote “what the actual f**k.” Not surprisingly, Bump wrote the condemnation on Bluesky, a site that promises a type of safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views.

Bump previously had a meltdown in an interview when confronted about past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that it stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

In my book on free speech, I discuss at length how the Post and the mainstream media has joined an alliance with the government and corporations in favor of censorship and blacklisting. I once regularly wrote for the Post and personally witnessed the sharp change in editorial priorities as editors delayed or killed columns with conservative or moderate viewpoints.

Last year, that culture was vividly on display when the newspaper offered no objection or even qualification after its reporter, Cleve Wootson Jr., appeared to call upon the White House to censor the interview of Elon Musk with former President Donald Trump. Under the guise of a question, Wootson told White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that censoring its leading political opponent is “an America issue.”

During a press briefing, the Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson Jr. flagged the interview and said, “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue…it’s an America issue.”

There was a time when a reporter calling for censorship of a political opponent would have been a matter for immediate termination in the media. Instead, the newspaper that prides itself on the slogan “Democracy dies in Darkness,” was entirely silent. No correction. No qualification.

The call for censorship for disinformation is ironic given the Post’s publication of a series of false stories and conspiracy theories. When confronted about the columnist’s demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged.

The Wootson controversy was consistent with the embrace of advocacy journalism at the Post. We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

The former Post editor, Downie, recounted how news leaders:

“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision.

Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Other staffers could not get past the gender and race of those who would oversee them. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.

So, let’s recap: The Washington Post’s owner has been pushing the newspaper to shift back toward the middle and restore greater balance on its pages. He is unwilling to bankroll a far-left echo chamber of advocacy journalism. Washington Post opinion editor David Shipley resigned in protest rather than agree to emphasize individual rights and free markets in editorials that speak for the newspaper.

Shipley previously fought to reverse Bezos’s decision not to endorse presidential candidates in 2024 or later elections. Some of us have long argued that newspapers should end such endorsements as inimical to journalistic neutrality and objectivity. The editors reportedly encouraged Bezos that, if he wanted to end such endorsements, he should wait until after endorsing Harris in this election cycle — a remarkable position devoid of any cognizable or controlling principle.

There was a time when advocating for editorials to champion freedom would not have been controversial. The staff’s hyperventilation only reinforces the need for such an intervention. These same voices supported the Post adopting “Democracy dies in Darkness” to oppose what they viewed as an attack on democracy from Trump or the right. However, advocating for freedom in editorials is simply unacceptable.

Perish the thought that a newspaper would commit itself to advocating for individual rights and the free market. (Warning foul language below)

Perhaps the Post could adopt a new slogan: “Freedom dies in Silence.”

Here is the announcement from Jeff Bezos:

I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning: I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.

I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision.

We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction. I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

Jeff

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Making of Elon Musk: How the Left Makes Monsters of Us All

By: Jonathan Turley | February 10, 2025

Below is my column in The Hill on Musk-mania gripping Washington. Democrats are using Musk to double down on rage rhetoric and rallying supporters to “fight in the street” in a declared “war.” It is a familiar pattern for many of us.

Here is the column:

Across the Internet, politicians and pundits are in a monstrous mood. The same people who spent the last year declaring the imminent death of democracy if Donald Trump were elected are now insisting that the real threat is the “monster” he has unleashed upon the federal bureaucracy. It is the thing of legend, a Beltway monster that you told your children about around campfires late at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets. Part Frankenstein, part Bigfoot, that creature never had a name, but would be beholden to no one and uninterested in the status quo. The monster now has a name, and it is Elon Musk.

Democratic politicians are now claiming that reducing government is equivalent to destroying government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yelled dramatically to an outdoor crowd this week that Musk’s government efficiency efforts are “taking away everything we have.”

For decades, both Democratic and Republican presidents have run on reducing government and making it more efficient. But everyone knew that such campaign pledges would be quickly discarded after each election. What is so terrifying this time is that Musk means it. We know that because he has done it before.

When Musk bought Twitter with the promise of dismantling its censorship system and culture, he started by firing virtually everyone. Critics immediately declared that he was a fool and did not understand how to run a social media company. Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich said that Musk’s firings meant the death of Twitter and triumphantly declared, “You break it, you own it.”

It did not exactly work out that way. Musk fired as much as 90 percent of his staff and the company survived. Liberals only grew more determined, seeking even to boycott his other companies and bar Space X from needed national security missions. As liberal media and pundits raged, Musk stayed firm and survived. Now Amazon has increased advertising on X, which is now the sixth most popular social media site. It has reportedly hit 500 million subscribers and a reported 40-plus percent profit margin. It is set to make billions with a greatly reduced overhead due to the firings.

Musk’s model has been watched — and to some degree replicated — by other companies. The only way to change a culture is sometimes to change the people. Take the U.S. Agency for International Development, where Musk led an effort to freeze operations at the agency and move it to within the State Department. Notably, they are not shutting down the agency, and Trump has said that he wants to continue foreign aid needed for core missions like clean water and disease prevention, for example.

There are good-faith reasons to be concerned that vital programs must not be abruptly ended. However, the complaint is that USAID is the ultimate example of a bloated agency with a high percentage of funding going to administrative costs over field operations.

The State Department reportedly plans to reduce the USAID workforce from over 10,000 to less than 300. It is vintage Musk. It is easier to take the trauma upfront and then rehire the employees needed to fulfill the mission with a leaner workforce.

That process is easier if you can get people to leave voluntarily. Part of it is performative like Musk showing up at Twitter with a sink — to let reality “sink in” for the thousands of employees.

It appears to be working. Many employees are taking an offer to leave with a generous severance package. The idea is simple: If you throw a badger into a crowded car, people will get out. Musk is that badger.

As for Musk being a democracy-devouring Frankenstein, the rhetoric is again outstripping reality. The fact is that liberals rarely hunt monsters, they create their own monsters.

The making of “Muskenstein” can be found in the cancel campaign launched against him as soon as he pledged to restore free speech on Twitter. An unprecedented alliance of government, corporations, media, and academia were arrayed against him.

This same alliance has worked countless times to get corporations and CEOs to comply with its demands for censorship. But Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, was unbowed. Liberals correctly saw Musk’s defiance as an existential threat. For years, they had exercised virtual total control of social media, legacy media, and academia. Opposing views were denounced as dangerous disinformation.

The key to their system was that you maintain orthodoxy by coercing people into silence. During the COVID pandemic, scientists who challenged the enforced view of masks, COVID-19 origins, and other issues were banned or fired. Others remained silent as they watched colleagues exiled for expressing their opinions.

Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink.

The problem is that intolerance for opposing views creates thousands of renegades and outsiders. I was one of them. I was once associated with liberal academia, which frankly worked to my advantage in favorable media and academic opportunities.

I then began to question the growing orthodoxy in academia over the loss of free speech and viewpoint diversity, including the purging of faculties of conservative and libertarian voices. I was quickly targeted for it. But that campaign gave me an even greater understanding of the dangers of the anti-free speech movement from outside the system.

On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.

They are now doing the same thing with Mark Zuckerberg. After the head of Meta announced that he was going to end the robust censorship system on Facebook and other sites (as well as downsizing staff), the left went after him with the same unhinged hatred.

Like Musk, Zuckerberg had been celebrated as an industry icon, but is now condemned as a grotesque abomination. Politicians such as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — who once threatened Zuckerberg not to restore free speech values like Musk — are now set against him. There is talk of boycotts as many liberals retreat into the safe space of BlueSky, a site that essentially protects liberals from opposing views.

BlueSky’s appeal is that it stays close to shore, where the waters are safe and shallow. The problem for many on the left is that more and more people want to venture beyond those navigational buoys. Like Musk, they want to consider new horizons and possibilities.

In Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Hector Barbossa warns Captain Jack Sparrow, “You’re off the edge of the map, mate! Here there be monsters!” For liberals, we are now off the map where creatures of mythological shapes dwell.

They found them exactly where they thought they would be. After all, they created them. They have made monsters of everyone who challenges the confines of their known world.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Nazispolozza: The Left’s Third Reich Mania Collapses into Comedy

By: Jonathan Turley | January 23, 2025

Below is my column in the New York Post on the latest attack on Elon Musk from the left. There is a mania on the left in calling people with opposing views “Nazis” and referencing the Third Reich. The left has jumped the Nazi shark in this rhetoric as the public tunes out these increasingly hysterical voices.

Here is the column:

One of the least successful efforts of the left and many in the media this election was to paint Republican voters as “Nazis” hellbent on destroying democracy. While once verboten as a political comparison, liberal politicians and pundits have developed something of a Nazi fetish, where every statement and gesture is declared a return of the Third Reich. It seems like each news event presents a Rorschach test where every inkblot looks like a Nazi.

That mania reached absurd, even comedic, levels with the attack on Elon Musk over an awkward gesture during the inauguration celebration. An exuberant Musk told the crowd, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” As he gave those words, he placed his right hand on his chest and stretched his arm outward, his palm facing the floor. He then repeated the gesture before putting his hand on his chest again. It was all done in a matter of seconds, but it was enough for the usual mob to erupt in faux outrage.

Pundits insisted that Musk had chosen the moment to come out as a Nazi on national television. The Washington Post breathlessly reported this week how the “Nazi-style salute” had “invigorated fans on the far right.” The usual liberal professors were rolled out to offer a patina of authority to the ridiculous claim.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, declared, “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”

Mike Stuchbery went on X (the company owned by the man he now suggests is a Nazi reenactor) to declare, “I studied the Nazis at university, taught the history of Nazi Germany on two continents and wrote for major newspapers about Nazi Germany. I am internet famous for fact-checking chuds [gross people] on the history, ideology and policy of Nazi Germany. That was a Nazi salute.”

Well, that settles it.

As the outrage continued, any doubt or dissent was denounced as evidence that you are obviously a Nazi as well. That became a bit embarrassing when the leading Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, stated the obvious: This was not a Nazi salute but rather an “awkward gesture.”

The core principle of liberal mob tactics is that there can be no divergence, even by a group like the ADL. The way to deal with opposing ideas or writings is by making someone persona non grata. If you do not cancel others, you will be canceled.

So, the ADL was effectively declared soft on Nazis by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.”

We’ve reached a level of absurdity where Jewish advocates are treated like they are virtual Nazi sympathizers.

This is not the first time the Democrats have labeled Trump and his supporters “Nazis.”

It started years ago as Democrats repeated analogies of Trump to Hitler and his followers to brownshirted neo-Nazis. Defeating Trump has been compared to stopping Hitler in 1933, and media personalities like Rachel Maddow went on the air with a hysterical claim that “death squads” were authorized by the Supreme Court.

When Trump held a massive rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden before the election, the media were apoplectic and immediately declared it … you guessed it … akin to a Nazi rally. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, the media formed an affinity group meeting to fret over “echoes of 1939.” In case anyone missed the message, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz emphasized “a direct parallel” with the Nazis.

Over at the Nation, David Zirin treated Madison Square Garden (known for everything from cage fights to dog shows) as an almost Vatican-like space: “With his fascist New York City rally, Donald Trump has befouled what many believe to be a sacred space: Madison Square Garden.”

So Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Half the country are Nazis. The problem is that, if you say everyone is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi. It loses its meaning.

That includes Ocasio-Cortez, who appears to have joined the ranks of the Reich after critics posted her making a Musk-like gesture during a speech.

There was no torrent of media fretting about how the gesture reflected the extremism of AOC’s questioning need for a Supreme Court, seeking to bar Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots, or supporting censorship. AOC is a certified Nazi hunter, a license that seems only to be available to figures on the left.

Of course, labeling political opponents as diabolically evil fanatics and seeking to bar candidates from ballots sounds a lot like … well … it sounds familiar.

There is an alternative. We can put the rage rhetoric aside and have honest debates over differences on politics and laws. In other words, we can fight over policy … and leave the Nazis out of it.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Sting: Joe Biden Delivers the Final Blow to Mainstream Media

By: Jonathan Turley | January 21, 2025

Below is my column on the Biden family pardons in Fox.com. President Joe Biden merely confirmed the worst expectations of his critics. The true condemnation rests with those in the media who enabled the Biden influence-peddling operation.

Here is the column:

At 11:45 am, the media felt the final sting of the Biden scandal. It was delivered by President Joe Biden, who shattered any pretense of principle in pardoning family members allegedly implicated in the influence-peddling corruption scandal.

According to an old fable, a scorpion convinced a leery frog to carry him across a river, noting that he could not sting him since they would both drown. Halfway across, the scorpion struck and the frog asked why he would doom them both. The scorpion replied “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”

For those of us who have written about the corruption of the Biden family for decades, the pardons were crushingly predictable. The President simply couldn’t resist the urge. In a city where corruption is a cottage industry, the Bidens have long been in a league of their own, from nepotism to influence peddling to illicit lobbying. In the influence-peddling scandal, millions were generated from foreign sources in virtual plain view.

There were the luxury hotel rooms, a diamond, a sports car, and massive payments called “loans. In the summer of 2019, one Chinese businessman wired Hunter Biden $250,000 using Joe Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address.”

The sense of absolute impunity came out in shake-down communications. For example, there was the WhatsApp message to a Chinese businessman openly threatening the displeasure of Joe Biden if money was not forked over without delay. In the message, Hunter warned:

“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

That sense of impunity was due to mainstream media forming a protective shell around the family. The media refused to pursue the scandal despite the Hunter Biden laptop and clear evidence of influence peddling.

In 2020, CBS News’s Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens. (Yet Stahl still recently expressed confusion and alarm that people were abandoning legacy media for new media.)

Reporters assured citizens that the laptop was presumptive “Russian disinformation.” Even after the media belatedly acknowledged that it was authentic, MSNBC and Washington Post analysts were still making the claim last year.

After Republicans in the House detailed millions in payments, the media shifted to claiming that there was no real scandal unless it was shown that Joe Biden actually received money directly. It was a ridiculous claim since courts have long treated money going to family members as the same as going directly to a principal as criminal conduct.

The media continued to protect Biden, as evidence showed that Biden had repeatedly lied about not meeting with Hunter’s clients or not having knowledge of his foreign dealings.

As the media narrative continued to collapse, it latched on the promise of Biden that he would never pardon his son – proof that the President was willing to let the criminal justice system run its course. Biden then was shown to be lying about the pardon promise. After he was forced out of the election, Biden signed a pardon for any crimes over a decade committed by his son.

The media gave muttered “harrumphs” and moved on. Many said that it was understandable for a father of a son who struggled with drugs.

Now, in the final minutes of his presidency, Biden pardoned his other allegedly implicated family members, including James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden. James Biden was previously referred for criminal charges for lying under oath to Congress as part of its investigation into the corruption scandal.

The pardons were clearly timed to avoid media scrutiny and questions. While he described the act as one of “conscience,” it was an almost mocking act of corruption.

In a strange way, it passed in Bidenworld as an honest moment. There were no claims of supporting an addicted son or dealing with a pending case. It was done in the final minutes because it was raw and obvious. There is no pretense or apology. Just good old-fashioned corruption Biden-style.

It was as honest a moment as when Biden told a friend that “no one f**ks with a Biden.” There was nothing revealing in this about Biden. He could shrug and say, “It’s in my nature.” The sting instead fell on the media, which trusted Biden not to demean it further with such an unethical and disgraceful final act.

The funny thing is that Biden made it across the river. He boarded his final flight with his family (and himself) protected by the misuse of his presidential authority. However, if he looked out the window, he could see his media allies slipping stunned beneath the waters.

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).

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“Your Credibility with Me is about None”: CNN Trial Goes From Bad to Worse

By: Jonathan Turley | January 16, 2025

In following the defamation trial against CNN by veteran Zachary Young, we have previously (here, here, and here) marveled at how bad things were going for the network. It appears that they are getting even worse. This has been a brutal week as CNN figures, including host Jake Tapper, took the stand. If “this is CNN,” the judge (and possibly the jury) are not liking what they are seeing. The report at the heart of the case aired on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Nov. 11, 2021, and was shared on social media and (a different version on) CNN’s website. In the segment, Tapper told his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered that “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.” Marquardt piled on in the segment, claiming that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee the country. He then named Young and his company as an example of that startling claim. The evidence included messages from Marquardt that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mf**ker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” Likewise, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan described Young as “a shit.” As is often done by media, CNN allegedly gave Young only two hours to respond before the story ran. It is a typical ploy of the press to claim that they waited for a response while giving the target the smallest possible window. In this case, Young was able to respond in the short time and Marquardt messaged a colleague, “f**king Young just texted.” In the last week, Tapper was seen on video by the jury and was mocked for claiming under oath that he “doesn’t pay attention to ratings,” a claim that could make him unique as a network host. While Tapper can argue that he was referencing the following of daily numbers, critics hammered him by showing repeated clips where he discussed ratings. However, the most damaging testimony may have come from top producers who told the jurors that they opposed the modest apology given to Young on air. Since Young seemed to do well before the jury, the testimony of senior editor Fuzz Hogan, CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt, CNN producer Michael Conte, CNN’s executive vice president of editorial Virginia Moseley, and CNN supervising producer Michael Callahan undermined any effort to portray the network as seeking to amend a wrong or reduce damage to Young.

Arguably, the worst moment came with an argument by CNN’s lead attorney, David Axelrod. Axelrod introduced a document that he claimed was a smoking gun and showed that Young was a liar. Pointing dramatically at Young and waiving the document in the air, Axelrod declared that he had the proof:

“Plaintiff’s entire case, sitting right there, is that after the publications, he couldn’t get any work…Mr. Young knew, when he filed this lawsuit that he had entered into a new consulting agreement with a government contractor one month after CNN’s publication. This entire lawsuit was a fraud on this court. It was a fraud on CNN. This man knew it. I don’t know what they know. But when this came up in discovery, CNN’s counsel asked Mr. Young about the Helios connection, and he completely lied in his deposition. Over and over again, he made up some incredible ruse that Helios just had his security clearance because it was a company that held security clearances. It makes no sense. He knew at that time that he had a consulting agreement with Helios Global and he didn’t disclose it. It was an outright lie.”

However, it turned out that the document merely was Young’s application to maintain his security clearance.

Young’s attorney, Vel Freedman, later laid waste to CNN. He told the court that Young had lost his security clearance back in 2022 and that he hadn’t been aware of that until he double-checked after his testimony in the case. Freedman asked for the right to present a witness who would testify on the issue and Axelrod objected. Judge Henry had had enough and blew up at CNN. He read back Axelrod’s comments and said “You called him a liar multiple times there.” He told Axelrod that he owed an apology to the plaintiff. After telling CNN that “this isn’t Kindergarten,” he added “Right now, your credibility with me, Mr. Axelrod, is about none.”

That is never a good thing to hear from a judge.

Axelrod apologized but the damage is clearly considerable.

The most chilling aspect from a litigation perspective? Axelrod replaced the earlier lead counsel who also imploded in court over ill-considered arguments.

None of this bodes well for the network. Alienating the judge is obviously never good, but it also could have a material impact if there is an award that CNN wants reduced by a order of remittitur. In addition, having top producers expressing a lack of regret and even opposition to the on-air apology could push such damages higher for a jury. Both sides are arguing that “this is CNN,” but these moments are building a more negative view of what that is.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Meta Culpa: Zuckerberg Joins Musk in the Global Fight for Free Speech

By: Jonathan Turley | January 8, 2025

Below is my column in Fox.com on the potentially historic change in policy at Meta to restore free speech protections. As one of the longest and loudest critics of the company over its censorship history, it is admittedly hard to trust. However, an alliance of Mark Zuckerberg with Elon Musk could prove the most important development for free speech

Here is the column:

“Faithful friends are hard to find.” For the free speech community, those words from Shakespeare have long been tragically true. Indeed, until Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X), we were losing ground around the world to an unprecedented anti-free speech coalition of government, corporate, media, and academic interests. Now, Musk may have added a major new ally that could help turn the tide for free speech: Mark Zuckerberg.

In a new video, Meta’s CEO announced that the company would adopt X standards and restore free speech protections across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms. Meta will also end its third-party fact-checking program, introduce a ‘community notes’ system, and focus on removing criminal and fraudulent material—the very guidelines proposed by some of us in prior years.

For the free speech community, it was like the United States entering World War II to support Great Britain. Where Musk stopped the progress of the global anti-free speech movement, Zuckerberg could actually help us regain ground around the world.

As one of Zuckerberg’s most vocal critics over free speech, it is admittedly hard to trust. We all love redemptive sinners, but it would be more impressive if the redemption preceded the apprehension.

So allow me a brief cathartic moment…

In the last few years, a mix of House investigations and litigation has forced more of the censorship system under the Biden Administration into public view. That is expected to draw even greater attention with the continued discovery in Missouri v. Biden, showing years of false statements about the extent of this government-corporate alliance across social media platforms.

In my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I wrote about Zuckerberg and Meta’s record on censorship, including their failure (until recently) to release the Facebook files.

Meta resisted efforts to uncover this evidence for years, even after Musk released the Twitter Files and revealed a censorship system described by one court as perfectly “Orwellian.”

While Zuckerberg portrayed Meta as an unwilling partner in this censorship system in his video, he and the company ignored many years of objections from many of us regarding the critical role the company plays in targeting and censoring opposing viewpoints. Facebook even ran a creepy ad campaign to try to convince young people to embrace what they call “content modification” as part of their evolution with technology. It did not work.

When the anti-free speech movement targeted Musk, Zuckerberg did nothing for years. Fearing that other companies might restore free speech protections, members of Congress, including now Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sent a chilling letter to Facebook stating that it should not even consider such a move or risk becoming “part of our ongoing oversight efforts.”

In a November 2020 Senate hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), D-Conn., warned Zuckerberg and other CEOs that he and his Senate colleagues would not tolerate any “backsliding or retrenching” by “failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.”

While Musk defied those threats, the pressure seemed to work with Zuckerberg. It was not until the Republicans won both houses and the White House that Zuckerberg and Meta decided that free speech was worth fighting for.

In his exclusive interview with Fox News, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, admitted that the Trump election changed the situation for Meta: “We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression.”

It is a chilling statement if one thinks of what might have happened if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, arguably the most anti-free speech ticket in history, had won. The suggestion is that the new spring at Meta would have turned into a frozen tundra for free speech.

Around the world, free speech is in a free fall. Speech crimes and censorship have become the norm in the West. A new industry of “disinformation” experts has commoditized censorship, making millions in the targeting and silencing of others. An anti-free speech culture has taken root in government, higher education, and the media.

We will either hold the line now or we will lose this indispensable right for future generations. Zuckerberg could make this a truly transformative moment but it will take more than a passing meta-culpa.

We need Zuckerberg now more than ever. So, with that off my chest, I can get to what I have longed to say: Mr. Zuckerberg, welcome to the fight.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Three Reports from Jonathan Turley

January 6, 2025

The Trump Sentencing: Curtain to Fall on Merchan’s Hamlet on the Hudson

Below is my column in the Hill on the sentencing this week of President-Elect Donald Trump in Manhattan. Judge Juan Merchan waited to schedule the hearing for just ten days before the inauguration, limiting the time available to appeal. His order suggests that, if there is any interruption or delay in his sentencing, he might follow the advice of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and suspend sentencing for four years, a terrible option that we previously discussed. One could call that passively aggressive, but it seems quite actively aggressive.

Here is the column:

At 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 10, 2025, the curtain will fall on the longest performance of “Hamlet” in history. Acting Justice Juan Merchan will finally decide whether “to be or not to be” the judge to sentence Trump to jail. (Spoiler alert: He appears set to avoid a jail sentence and likely reversal.)

Since Trump’s conviction in May 2024, Merchan has contemplated his sentencing options. This was to be the orange-jump-suit moment many longed for over years of unrequited lawfare. They will likely be disappointed. As some of us noted after the verdict, this type of case would often result in an unconditional discharge or a sentence without jail time. That prediction became more likely after Trump was reelected in November. Limits on Trump’s freedom or liberty would likely result in a fast reversal, and Merchan knew it.

While various pundits predicted that Trump “will go to jail” after the trial, more realistic lawfare warriors had other ideas. The next best thing was to suspend proceedings and leave Trump in a type of legal suspended animation. Merchan would hold a leash on the president as a criminal defendant awaiting punishment. But the whole point of a trophy-kill case is the trophy itself. Merchan will not disappoint. While indicating that he is inclined to a sentence without jail or probation, he will finalize the conviction of Trump just 10 days before his inauguration. In so doing, he will formally label the president-elect a convicted felon.

It will be punishment by soundbite. Trump will become the first convicted felon to be sworn into office, a historical footnote that will be repeated mantra-like in the media. Merchan seems at points to be writing the actual talking points for the talking heads. In his order, he states grandly that the jurors found that this “was the premediated and continuous deception by the leader of the free world.” He then adds that he could not vacate the conviction because it would … constitute a disproportionate result and cause immeasurable damage to the citizenry’s confidence in the Rule of Law.”

Of course, this did not work out as many hoped. That apparently includes President Biden. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Biden was irate over the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute Trump more quickly to secure a conviction before the election. He also reportedly regretted his appointment of Attorney General Merrick Garland as insufficiently aggressive in pursuing Trump. It appears Garland was not sufficiently Bragg-like for Biden’s lawfare tastes.

The sentencing, however, will have another impact. Trump will finally be able to appeal this horrendous case. It has always been a target-rich opportunity for appeal, but Trump could not launch a comprehensive appeal until after he was sentenced.

Those appellate issues include charges based on a novel criminal theory through which…..

Continue reading “The Trump Sentencing: Curtain to Fall on Merchan’s Hamlet on the Hudson”→

“Does the Gentlelady Have a Problem?” : Yes, Delegate Plaskett Most Certainly Has a Problem

“This body and this nation has [sic] a territories and a colonies problem.” Those words from Del. Stacey Plaskett echoed in the House chamber this week as the delegate interrupted the election of the House speaker to demand a vote for herself and the representatives of other non-states. The problem, however, is not with the House but with Plaskett and other members in demanding the violation of Article I of the Constitution.

After her election in 2015, Plaskett has often shown a certain disregard for constitutional principles and protections. Despite being a lawyer, Plaskett has insisted in Congress that hate speech is not constitutionally protected, a demonstrably false assertion. Where there is overwhelming evidence of a censorship system that a court called “Orwellian,” Plaskett has repeatedly denied the evidence presented before her committee. When a journalist testified on the evidence of that censorship system, Plaskett suggested his possible arrest. (Plaskett suggested that respected journalist Matt Taibbi had committed perjury due to an error that he made, not in testimony but in a tweet that he later corrected).

However, ignoring the free speech or free press values pales in comparison to what Plaskett was suggesting this week in nullifying critical language in Article I.

Article I, Section 2, states:

“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch in the States Legislature.”

The ability to vote in the House is expressly limited to the elected representatives of “the several states.” Nevertheless, as the vote was being taken on the eventual election of Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), Plaskett rose to demand recognition and to know why she was not allowed to vote:

“I note that the names of representatives from American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia were not called, representing, collectively, 4 million Americans. Mr. Speaker, collectively, the largest per capita of veterans in this country.”

The presiding member asked a rather poignant question in response: “Does the gentlelady have a problem?”

The answer was decidedly “yes.”

Plaskett responded, “I asked why they were not called. I asked why they were not called from the parliamentarian, please.”

The response was obvious:

“Delegates-elect and the resident commissioner-elect are not qualified to vote/ Representatives-elect are the only individuals qualified to vote in the election of the speaker. As provided in Section 36 of the House rules and manual, the speaker is elected by a majority of the members-elect voting by surname.”

Plaskett then declared “This body and this nation has a territory and a colonies problem. What was supposed to be temporary has now, effectively, become permanent. We must do something about this.”

As Plaskett’s mike was cut off, she objected “But I have a voice!” as Democrats gave her a standing ovation………

Continue reading ““Does the Gentlelady Have a Problem?” : Yes, Delegate Plaskett Most Certainly Has a Problem”→

MSNBC’s O’Donnell: Veterans are a Greater Threat of Terrorism Than Those Crossing Over Border

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell is under fire this week for using the terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans to attack the United States Army as a greater threat than those crossing our Southern border. The statement is a vintage example of why many are turning away from legacy or mainstream media, including MSNBC (which has lost nearly half its audience since the election).

O’Donnell has long maintained his show as something of a safe space for the left, including declaring that no Trump supporter would be allowed to speak on his show because they are all “liars,” a label that now applies to a majority of American voters in the last election.

Yet, this statement stands out for many in its unhinged effort to spin the tragedy into a more favorable liberal talking point.

O’Donnell declared:

“The simple fact is, this country has suffered more deadly terrorism at the hands of American-born citizens who are veterans of the United States military than people who have crossed into this country at the southern border. It is very clear from the evidence that if you want to worry about terrorism in this country, the United States Army is a much bigger problem than the southern border.”

There are two curious elements to O’Donnell’s comment. The first is that Army training somehow makes veterans greater threats of terrorism. The military also tends to instill patriotism and public service in its members. Moreover, O’Donnell was referencing the fact that Shamsud-Din Jabbar served in the Army, even though he was largely trained as a human resources and information technology expert. His attack was not a McVeigh-like truck bomb, but the use of the truck itself — an unfortunately common terrorist method that hardly speaks to any Army training.

Second, O’Donnell makes reference to those crossing the Southern Border as opposed to others who have either crossed any border or have entered this country legally. Again, the suggestion is that there is something about military training worthy of special concern. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Colvin Reid, James T. Hodgkinson, Thomas Matthew Crooks, Darrell Edward Brooks Jr., and others may beg to differ.

O’Donnell made specific reference to Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist behind the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995:

“Timothy McVeigh parked a truck outside that building loaded with explosives in an act of homegrown American terrorism. Timothy McVeigh’s hatred of the American government was not tamed in any way by his service in the American military. So, too, with America’s latest terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve, with an American military veteran driving a pickup truck through a crowd to murder 14 people.”

Ok, McVeigh and Jabbar became extremists after they served in the military. However, all terrorists make such ………

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“He has Good Days and Bad Days”: The Journal Exposes the Concerted Effort to Conceal Biden’s Mental Decline

By: Jonathan Turley | December 29, 2024

In an explosive exposé, the Wall Street Journal has revealed how the mental decline of President Joe Biden was pronounced from the start of his term. However, cabinet members and other Democrats lied to the public about his declining levels of acuity and engagement. That effort succeeded largely with the help of an alliance with the media, which showed little interest in whether the President was actually running the government.

After President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the solid wall of media and staff shielding his declining mental state collapsed. Even after Special Counsel Robert Hur declined criminal charges against Biden due to his diminished state, Democratic pundits and the press covered for him, claiming that he was sharp and effective. With the debate, the public was able to see what many in the media and the White House had been hiding for years.

After interviewing roughly 50 insiders, the Journal found evidence of a knowing effort to hide Biden’s mental state. For many, Biden’s refusal to leave his home for much of the 2020 campaign was evidence of the insecurity of staff about his ability to engage with reporters. It only got worse during the term as staff virtually tackled anyone trying to ask him a question. Biden was routinely shuffled off stage after reading briefly from a teleprompter.

Behind the scenes, cabinet members reportedly stopped asking for meetings with Biden after staff conveyed that such requests were not welcomed. He held far fewer cabinet meetings and was often considered “down” for any discussions. That included a period during the calamity of the Afghan withdrawal.

One official is quoted as admitting on one occasion in 2021 that Biden “has good days and bad days and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.” That was just after he was elected. Yet, Biden was kept within the protective cocoon of media that did not press the issue and was infamous for ignoring scandals while asking Biden about his choice of ice cream on a given day.

Now, some media outlets are re-positioning on the issue as they prepare to resume hard questioning and investigations in the new Trump Administration . . . after a four-year hiatus. Suddenly, everyone is shocked to learn that Biden was mentally diminished and blaming nameless staff for misleading them.

One exception this week was Chris Cillizza, who served as CNN’s editor-at-large before leaving the network in 2022. On YouTube, Cillizza stated, “As a reporter, I have a confession to make” and admitted “I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.”

Now, everyone likes a redemptive sinner, and I give Cillizza credit for admitting his own failure to pursue the story despite many critics objecting for years over the lack of such inquiries. However, Cillizza only confessed to failing to pursue the story due to a fear of being accused of “age shaming” Biden. The suggestion is that identity politics chilled journalism, not the overwhelming media support for the President and countervailing opposition to Trump.

The “age shaming” excuse is difficult to square with the failure to pursue an array of other scandals during the term from influence peddling to policy debacles. Nevertheless, Cillizza was remarkably frank that he was only able to push on the story after leaving CNN:

“I didn’t really push on it, if I’m being honest. Now, once I left CNN and once it became a little bit clearer to me about Biden’s age, I think I did write pretty regularly and talk pretty regularly about how I wasn’t sure that this guy was up to it. And then obviously, after the June 27 debate, everybody, including me, was writing and talking about it.”

Putting Cillizza’s statement aside, there is a notable effort by some in the media to retroactively resume journalism after years of docile coverage on issues such as Biden’s incapacity.

The belated interest in the story reflects not only the limits of modern journalism but the limits of the 25th Amendment. From the outset, there was concern over Biden’s acuity and stamina within the White House. It was hidden from the public. His cabinet members like DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and others quashed claims of any diminishment with first-hand testimonials about how sharp and impressive the President was in meetings. Vice President Kamala Harris echoed those claims.

The Vice President and the cabinet are essential to the removal process under the 25th Amendment. Section 4 allows the removal of a president. One option is what I have called the “mutiny option.” It requires a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Kamala Harris could get eight Cabinet officers to go along with a letter to Congress, her status as the “Acting President” would likely be short-lived. Joe Biden would only have to declare to Congress that “no inability exists.” Biden would then resume his powers. That would then trigger a congressional fight.

In reality, the Biden term shows how they can often be part of the cover-up.

The 25th Amendment also does not define incapacity and having “good days and bad days” is unlikely to suffice. As I previously discussed, the issue of “disability” of a president was briefly raised in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a delegate from Biden’s home state of Delaware who asked how they would respond to a disability, “and who is to be the judge of it?” John Dickinson’s question was left unanswered in the final version of the Constitution.

What followed were persistent controversies over succession. This issue came to a head after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Congress finally addressed the issue in the 25th Amendment. The amendment addresses the orderly succession of power as well as temporary disabilities when presidents must undergo medical treatment or surgeries. This process is even more unlikely to occur when the media has formed a protective line around a president.

The problem was never “age shaming,” it was a shameless effort to shield this president from tough questions and public exposure.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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

A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Unpopular Vote

A.F. Branco | on December 19, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-unpopular-vote/

Media Credibility Way Down — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Mainstream legacy media is no longer mainstream due to their years of left-wing bias, lies, and outright leftist propaganda. More people than ever aren’t buying what they’re trying to sell, so folks are turning to alternate media sources that are killing their viewership numbers.

Mollie Hemingway Slams ‘Corrupt’ Propaganda Media, Says Trump is Showing Republicans How to Lead (VIDEO)

Mike LaChance – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 19, 2024

Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has become one of the strongest voices on the right when it comes to calling out the liberal media.
During a recent appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show on FOX News, Hemingway pointed out that we have not had a functioning media for years, accusing them of being corrupt and regime propagandists.
Later in the segment, she suggested that Trump is showing the Republican party how to be an effective leader… READ MORE

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President Biden and Others Renew Calls for Gun Control After Wisconsin Shooting

By: Jonathan Turley | December 17, 2024

The shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, immediately prompted renewed calls for gun control from President Joe Biden and others. As I have previously written, these calls often appear entirely disconnected from the actual crime or the constitutional protections afforded gun owners, including President Biden demanding a ban on assault weapons after a shooting with a handgun.

President Biden’s call for greater background checks and enforcement was a bit incongruous after he pardoned his own son on gun charges. More importantly, the Wisconsin case only highlighted why these standard demands for gun control would not have impacted that case.

This was a juvenile who is believed to have used a 9mm handgun in the attack. Natalie Rupnow, 15, was not supposed to have a gun and would not have gone through background checks. While both Biden and Kamala Harris have raised limiting or banning the popular 9mm, Harris admits that she is one of millions with the weapon and it would not be subject to any of these proposals.

The president once again denounced the availability of what he collectively calls “assault weapons,” a common reference to such popular models as the AR-15. Efforts to ban this model have already failed in the courts on constitutional grounds, though litigation is continuing on that issue.

In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court further strengthened the right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen.

The AR-15 is the most popular gun in America and the number is continuing to rise rapidly, with one AR-15 purchased in every five new firearms sales. These AR-15s clearly are not being purchased for armored deer. Many are purchased for personal and home protection; it also is popular for target shooting and hunting. Many gun owners like the AR-15 because it is modular; depending on the model, you can swap out barrels, bolts and high-capacity magazines, or add a variety of accessories. While it does more damage than a typical handgun, it is not the most powerful gun sold in terms of caliber; many guns have equal or greater calibre.

That is why laws to ban or curtail sales of the AR-15 run into constitutional barriers. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California ban on adults under 21 purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.

After past tragedies, some of us have cautioned that there is a limited range of options for gun bans, given constitutional protections. There also are practical barriers, with an estimated 393 million guns in the United States and an estimated 72 million gun owners; three out of ten Americans say they have guns. Indeed, gun ownership rose during the pandemic. When former Texas congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke declared, “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15,” he was widely celebrated on the left. However, even seizing that one type of gun would require confiscation of as many as 15 million weapons.

These calls for greater gun controls remain either factually ambiguous or legally dubious. For example, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe declared after the Wisconsin shooting that it is time to “change the context of gun ownership.” While admitting that he did not know all of the facts, McCabe said:

We’re [going] nowhere because it keeps happening. We know it’s going to happen again. It’s happening today. It’s going to happen again in the near future. I can guarantee you that and every time it happens, we do just about nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can’t do. We could do things. We could — we could support and enact legislation that changes the — the — the context of gun ownership in this country and emphasizes gun safety and responsibility with the firearms that you own and keeping them out of the hands of children and doing — and really vigorous, consistent background checks across the country. We could stop selling people — stop — you — eliminate the ability to purchase guns without a background check.

It is unclear what “changing the context” means, particularly when the context is first and foremost constitutional.

Likewise, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called for his House colleagues to “stand up to gun manufacturers” but stopped short of explaining what that would actually mean:

Thoughts and prayers without action means more school shootings, more dead kids.

More ACTION is needed by our elected officials.

And more BACKBONE to stand up to gun manufacturers.

This is uniquely a United States problem that doesn't have to happen.
— Rep. Mark Pocan (@RepMarkPocan) December 16, 2024

Pocan has previously called for “common sense” laws without tackling the more difficult question of how to produce the sweeping changes given the narrow scope of constitutional limits for an individual right.

Wisconsin has robust gun control laws that did not prevent this shooting because Rupnow was not subject to the background checks and other regulations. She was not supposed to have the weapon and 9mm is not one of the guns that Democrats are calling to ban.

None of this means that people of good faith should not work on new initiatives and measures to combat gun violence. However, politicians like President Biden have misled the public for years about the narrow range of constitutional options for gun control legislation. The suggestion is that “this did not have to happen” despite the fact that none of these proposals would have stopped this from happening.

In a tragedy of this magnitude, our leaders have a duty, first and foremost, of honesty in speaking with the public.

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Digging Out of a Mousehole: The Disney/ABC Settlement Reflects a New Reality for Media

By: Jonathan Turley | December 15, 2024

Below is my column on Fox.com on the settlement of ABC News of the defamation case brought by President-elect Donald Trump. The settlement has enflamed many on the left as well as reportedly some at ABC News. However, ABC likely saw this as a no-win situation as it faced potentially embarrassing depositions.

Here is the column:

The late Richard J. Daley famously declared that “we as Democrats have no apologies to make to anyone.”

That doctrine seems still to be alive and well with many in the party when it comes to President-elect Donald Trump. After ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos apologized to Trump this week to settle a defamation lawsuit, many Democrats were apoplectic.

Marc Elias, the controversial lawyer involved in the funding of the infamous Steele dossier by the Clinton campaign, denounced ABC News for bending a knee to Trump. He then trolled for contributions for his own organization as “unapologetically pro-democracy.”

Of course, ABC was not apologizing for advancing democracy but for alleged defamation. The network and the anchor expressed “regret” for stating that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a New York civil case. (The jury found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. J. Carroll). While Trump was never convicted of rape, Stephanopoulos repeated the claim ten times in his interview with Re. Nancy Mace, (R., S.C.).

What made the settlement interesting is that ABC was previously relying on the statements of the judge in the New York case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who declared that the charge of rape was “substantially true…as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

Stephanopoulos played up his defiance of Trump with CBS’s late-night host Stephen Colbert. To the delight of Colbert, who regularly attacked Trump on his show and openly supported both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Stephanopoulos proclaimed that he wouldn’t be “cowed out of doing my job because of a threat.” He added, “Trump sued me because I used the word ‘rape,’ even though a judge said that’s in fact what did happen. We filed a motion to dismiss.”

So what happened?

Well, two things and both are related to the timing of the settlement.

First, the settlement came just before ABC and Stephanopoulos were to be called for depositions, as ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid. That discovery was likely to prove more embarrassing for the network than it would Trump and could have revealed internal messages on the controversy.

The danger is on full display in another courtroom where CNN has been losing critical motions in a defamation case where punitive damages could result. Anchor Jake Tapper and CNN are being sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young after falsely suggesting that he and his organization were exploiting desperate Afghan refugees. Discovery uncovered malicious and unprofessional emails from producers promising to “nail” Young and making the segment his “funeral.” Disney was not eager to put its matinee personality, Stephanopoulos, through a similar meat grinder.

Second, the settlement occurred after an election in which Trump won the trifecta of the White House, Congress, and the popular vote.

Like most media, ABC was known for its unrelenting attacks on Trump and favorable coverage toward his opponents. The network’s iconic show, The View, has become an unhinged, partisan rave session against Trump, Republicans, and the majority of American voters. The show’s hosts now regularly read retractions or corrections to blunt allegedly defamatory screeds from its hosts. It has gotten to the point that the ABC General Counsel may soon need a chair at the table.

Disney is trying to adopt a more neutral stance after years of opposition for its stances on political issues and accusations of ultra-woke products. It is still struggling to appeal to over half of the country, including the most recent controversy involving the star of its soon-to-be-released remake of Snow White.

After the election, actress Rachel Zegler declared herself “speechless” over the results. That would have been a welcomed state for Disney, but the actress then found her voice in the most polarizing way, publicly praying “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Zegler was clearly miscast in the film. It was the evil Queen that was supposed to harken “a blast of wind to fan my hate.”

On top of these controversies, ABC News was attacked by many over its handling of the Trump debate with Vice President Kamala Harris and it’s biased “fact-checking.” With networks like MSNBC and CNN in a ratings and revenue free fall after the election, Disney clearly wants to start fresh with the new administration. Both are facing possible sales at potentially bargain basement prices. The media echo chamber against Trump failed spectacularly in this election. With record levels of distrust of mainstream or legacy media, the public has increasingly shifted to new media.

In the meantime, Trump has been running the table on lawfare with the dismissal of the two federal cases and a victory on presidential immunity in the Supreme Court. The Georgia prosecution is falling apart over the conduct of the prosecutors rather than that of the defendant. The New York civil case faced a highly skeptical court over the grotesque award against Trump and his corporation. Even Democratic politicians like Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) now feel comfortable admitting publicly that the New York hush money prosecution was “bullsh*t.”

For many politicians and pundits, the election seemed to flip the magnetic poles of the country. We now have ABC News giving millions to the Trump Presidential Library as democratic donors move toward a boycott of the Biden President Library.

With networks like MSNBC and CNN struggling for their very existence, ABC is intent on having a chair when the music stops. While the ABC settlement may not be an admission of guilt, it is a recognition of the reality after this historic election.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Former Stripper Admits that She Lied About Gang Rape by Duke Lacrosse Players

By: Jonathan Turley | December 13, 2024

Almost twenty years ago, the country was outraged by allegations of an African-American stripper that she was hired and then gang raped by white Duke Lacrosse players. The story followed an all-too-familiar pattern. The media, professors, and pundits immediately treated the allegations as true and declared the crime as a manifestation of our racist society. Many demanded immediate suspensions of all of the students as the racial and class conflicts were emphasized in the media. As I wrote previously, Duke University joined the mob against its own students and discarded any semblance of due process or fairness. Now, the accuser Crystal Mangum has admitted that she made the whole thing up in an interview on the independent media outlet “Let’s Talk with Kat.” The problem is that little was likely learned in higher education from the experience.

The students found themselves in a nightmare as the media flash mob formed to call for their punishment. They were arrested and subject to the unethical and unprofessional treatment of former Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong pandered to the press and the community in public speeches despite criticism from some of us that he was fueling the rage against the students despite serious questions over this account. He declared publicly:

“The information that I have does lead me to conclude that a rape did occur. The circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done. It makes a crime that is by its nature one of the most offensive and invasive even more so.”

From the outset, there were obvious problems with the account, including a lack of supporting forensic evidence that would ordinarily be found at the scene.

Nifong was later disbarred for his misconduct, including withholding exculpatory evidence. Even after the allegation was shown to be a hoax, former North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper took the easy way out and declined to charge Mangum despite her ruining the lives of these students. She was later arrested and convicted of murdering her boyfriend.

Now, Mangum is admitting, “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me…[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”

It is heartening to see Mangum come to grips with what she did and ask for forgiveness. However, there remains a lack of such remorse from many in the press and higher education who helped lead this mob against these students. Years later, many continued to resist efforts to afford due process protections to those accused in higher education.

The media followed its usual pattern of dispensing with countervailing facts to fuel the racial elements or play up the class differences. Nancy Grace declared, “I’m so glad they didn’t miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape!”

Former prosecutor Wendy Murphy, who praised Nifong’s handling of the case, said publicly that “I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.”

Feminist and journalist Amanda Marcotte writes for publications such as Salon and Slate. She captured the blind rage even after ethics charges were raised against Nifong, stating:

“I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f**king god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f**ked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”

Marcotte later deleted the statement and criticized Nifong.

The greatest unfairness to these students came not from such extreme voices but mainstream media, which showed little interest or comfort in exploring contradictions and gaps in the account.

As is often the case, the hoax was later revealed and there was a collective shrug from most in the media as we await the next cathartic case or controversy.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Warren’s “Warning”: Democratic Senator Explains Thompson was Murdered Because “You Can Only Push People So Far.”

By: Jonathan Turley | December 12, 2024

Sen. Elizabeth Warren D-Mass. is under fire for her statement to Joy Reid on MSNBC explaining why Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Warren explained that this was a “warning” that “you can only push people so far.” After a public outcry, Warren walked back her statement. Yet, the statement captures the growing radicalism on the left, particularly among anti-capitalist, Democratic Socialists, and other groups. It is also notable how many of the same political and media figures who were apoplectic and unrelenting over the false claim about Trump’s “fine people on both sides” statement are largely disinterested in this and other extreme comments on the left.

Reid has long been criticized for racist and extremist commentary. Warren seemed eager to play to the far-left audience after first noting that “Violence is never the answer,” but then adding the warning to others that “you can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands.”

The senator explained that “the visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system.‘

“Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”

The comments came after various pundits and citizens celebrated the killing, including the former Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz, who expressed “joy” over the murder (only to walk that back like Warren). Some have defended Lorenz and explained how, while they may not express joy, they understand where “she is coming from” in celebrating the murder of a healthcare executive.

Wanted posters have appeared throughout New York with the images of other CEOs (and of Thompson with a red X across his face). It is the same moral relativism that we have long seen in higher education on the left where violent rhetoric against conservatives or capitalists is common.

As previously discussed, such statements include professors writing about “detonating white people,” abolish[ing] white people, denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.

We also discussed the free speech rights of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis, who has written for the New York Times, was later made Director of Graduate Studies of History at Rhode Island).

It is unclear if Mangione’s anti-capitalist views brought him into contact with known violent groups on the left, including Antifa. Just days before the murder, I wrote about how a liberal media site was selling Antifa products in celebration of the anti-free speech, violent group.

The different treatment given the statements of Trump and Warren are striking. Notably, the false claim received endless coverage and is still reported by the media despite being debunked. The Charlottesville controversy occurred at the start of Trump’s presidency and showed how the media was not interested in whether stories were true in the shift to open advocacy journalism.

What was evident to many of us listening was that Trump was referring to the debate over the removal of controversial historical statutes and noting that there were “very fine people on both sides.” As Snopes belatedly recognized years later, “while Trump did say that there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ he also specifically noted that he was not talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists and said they should be ‘condemned totally.’”

None of that mattered (or continues to matter to some) in the media because the narrative was better than the facts. Many in the media did not even acknowledge that Trump denied the spin given by his opponents and said that he was referring to the underlying issue of the protest. The statement was treated as demonstrably and unequivocally endorsing violence. It is the same reason why the statement of Warren and many on the left have not been given the same level of public condemnation even in the face of an actual murder. It does not fit the narrative.

Many celebrated Warren’s warnings and the implied rationalization for the murder. Others praised her gutsy take. The far-left publication The New Republic reported the Warren statement in positive terms in an article titled “Senator Elizabeth Warren had an awfully real reaction to the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.”

TNR has been one of the promulgators of this story and attacked Trump in 2024 in what it called a “new” defense over his comments despite the fact that he has always maintained that he was referring to the overall protest over the monument. TNR also attacked Snopes for its fact check and “helping Trump.”

As I discuss in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” politicians use rage rhetoric to ride waves of public anger and garner supporters on the extremes of our political system. The same motive has led some Democratic leaders to embrace Antifa in the past. However, these establishment figures often find that being embraced as a revolutionary today often means that you are viewed as a reactionary tomorrow by the same radical allies in these movements.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Pardon Envy: Democrats Vie to Make the Biden Pardon List

By: Jonathan Turley | December 9, 2024

Below is my column in The Hill on the calls for “blanket pardons” for hundreds and even thousands of people. Despite Trump’s ill-considered statement about how the J6 Committee members should go to jail for what they did on NBC this weekend, Trump has also insisted that he wants “success” to be his revenge. Many in the media are also omitting that Trump immediately said “no” to whether he would direct either the Attorney General or the FBI director to indict or investigate. While I have been a vocal critic of the J6 Committee, I know of no crime that could be credibly pursued against the members, as I have written. More importantly, presidents do not just send people to jail. There will be no round-up of opponents and democracy will survive. We have an entire constitutional system designed to prevent arbitrary prosecutions or authoritarian measures. These White Knight pardons are meant to preserve a collapsing narrative of how Trump wants to round up his enemies and end democracy. It has resulted in a strange and uniquely Washington phenomenon: pardon envy.

Here is the column:

Liberal pundits and press in Washington are facing a growing nightmare in Washington. No, it is not the victory of President-elect Donald Trump or the Democrats’ loss of both houses of Congress and the popular vote in this election. It is the possibility that democracy may not collapse as predicted, and Trump might not even round up his opponents en masse.

For months, liberals have been telling voters that this will likely be their last election and that democracy is about to end in the U.S. ABC host Whoopi Goldberg declared on “The View” that Trump will immediately become a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.”

Many predicted they would be on the top of the enemies list and the first to be rounded up.

Now, the moment is nearly here, and pundits are dreading that the public may notice there is no line of democracy champions being frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. Faced with such a scenario and a further loss of credibility, many are coming up with the next best thing — pretending they stopped the roundup by having Biden pardon everyone. The spin will be that Trump would have gone after rivals but was prevented from doing so by Biden.

The idea is to portray yourself as a white knight, riding down to protect the vulnerable and timid from the coming hoard.

Even if democracy inconveniently survives, Biden can preserve the narrative with sweeping pardons. The White House is reportedly exploring giving preemptive pardons to figures ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

Cheney previously declared that this “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.” A pardon would preserve her persona as a modern-day Joan of Arc who avoided being burnt at the stake only by the grace of a Biden pardon. Others seem to be panicking that there may be a list of pardoned people, but they will be left off. Call it “Pardon Envy.” The only thing worse than not being on a Trump enemies list is not being on a Biden pardon list.

Before the election, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and regular Donny Deutsch warned viewers that they would likely be added to an “enemies list.” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow ominously told her viewers that, “Yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin seemed apoplectic that she and others might be omitted from both lists. One has to be somewhat sympathetic to Rubin. To be left both unpardoned and unarrested is to lose all standing among the “save democracy” social set.

Rubin, once dubbed the Post’s Republican columnist, has called for the Republican Party to be burned down and recently advised people how to keep panic alive despite the election: “You can’t talk broad themes. You have to boil it down to nuts and bolts, and you have to be pithy. What do I mean by pithy? How about this: Republicans want to kill your kids. It’s true.”

In a podcast, Rubin explained that Biden should pardon “thousands” to blunt Trump’s “initial round of revenge” from journalists to the “little guy and gal” counting votes. She advised that he should pardon whole “categories” of people to pardon anyone Trump may have “identified by name or type” to offer “protection from a maniac.”

In her most recent column, Rubin repeated the call for Biden to pardon “scores of Americans” due to a “reasonable fear that a weaponized FBI directed by a vengeful president will carry out threats to pursue his enemies.”

The key is to issue broad pardons to suggest that, absent such extraordinary action, “this maniac” would have purged whole areas of blue states. It is like telling everyone that you are wearing a tin-foil hat to prevent aliens from snatching you. When someone points out that they have not seen any aliens, you can respond, “See, it worked!”

The Biden White House is considering the use of such white-knight pardons to claim that the president did not protect just his son (and himself) with the pardon power but many others. Biden wants to remove the stain of his abuse of the pardon power to benefit his own family by turning it into a literal party favor for other Democrats and Trump critics. Even though Trump has denied any interest in retribution, saying that “my revenge will be a success,” preemptive pardons leave the impression that they did in fact preempt something that would have occurred.

A white-knight pardon can also work when you are protecting someone who does not want to be saved. That is the case with a Trump pardon. Such a pardon is absolutely not needed and would constitute the most hostile pardon in history. The federal cases against Trump are effectively dead. Even though they were dismissed without prejudice, it is extremely unlikely they would be resumed. Moreover, the cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith were riddled with constitutional problems and unlikely to be sustained even with a conviction.

The only ongoing legal threat to Trump is from Democratic prosecutors on the state level, such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. A pardon would not apply to such cases anyway.

Yet, to pardon Trump for nonexistent federal cases would be to suggest that Biden saved him from prosecution. This is the same president who did nothing for years until the cases collapsed. He would now claim that he worked to bring the nation together after calling Trump a virtual Nazi and his supporters “garbage.”

Trump may be the only one who is not interested in a trophy pardon. What is the value of being part of the resistance if you are not being pursued, persecuted or pardoned?

It seems like some of the same people who had hoped to be on the list for the Biden Inaugural balls are now making calls to make the Biden pardon list. If Biden were to yield to calls for hundreds or even thousands of pardons, the loss of political standing for those not making the list could become intolerable. For any self-respecting armchair resistance fighter in 2025, a Biden pardon could become the latest status symbol.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Jake Tapper and CNN Lose Major Motions in Defamation Case by Navy Veteran

By: Jonathan Turley | December 9, 2024

We previously discussed the defamation lawsuit brought by Navy veteran Zachary Young against CNN and anchor Jake Tapper. Young has been doing well in court and last week he won on additional major issues against CNN. In a pair of orders, the jury will be allowed to award punitive damages, and his experts would be allowed to be heard by the jury on the damages in the case. It also found that the Navy veteran was not a public figure and thus is not subject to the higher standard of proof associated with that status.

The punitive damages decision is particularly interesting legally. It could prove financially onerous for the struggling network, which has plunging ratings and has reduced staff.

The court found that CNN’s “retraction” was insufficient to remove punitive damages from the table. In my torts class, we discuss retraction statutes and the requirements of time and clarity. I specifically discussed the CNN case.

The report at the heart of the case aired on a Nov. 11, 2021 segment on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and was shared on social media and (a different version) on CNN’s website. In the segment, Tapper tells his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.”

Marquardt piled on in the segment, claiming that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee the country. He then named Young and his company as an example of that startling claim.

The damages in the case could be massive but Young was facing the higher New York Times v. Sullivan standard of “actual malice,” requiring a showing of knowing falsehood or a reckless disregard of the truth. Judge Roberts previously found that “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages.”

The evidence included messages from Marquardt that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” Likewise, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan described Young as “a shit.”

As is often done by media, CNN allegedly gave Young only two hours to respond before the story ran. It is a typical ploy of the press to claim that they waited for a response while giving the target the smallest possible window. In this case, Young was able to respond in the short time and Marquardt messaged a colleague, “fucking Young just texted.”

That record supports a showing of actual malice. However, CNN wanted to avoid punitive damages with a claim of retraction. Under Florida’s Section §770.02(1), a publication seeking this protection must publish a “full and fair correction, apology or retraction.” While the statute does not define “full and fair” it does specify that the retraction shall be “published in the same editions or corresponding issues of the newspaper or periodical” where the original article appeared and ‘in as conspicuous place and type’ as the original, or for a broadcast “at a comparable time.”

In this case, Jake Tapper made the following statement on March 25, 2022:

“And before we go, a correction. In November, we ran a story about Afghans desperate to pay high sums beyond the reach of average Afghans. The story included a lead-in and banner throughout the story that referenced a black market. The use of the term black market in the story was in error. The story included reporting on Zachary Young, a private operator who had been contacted by family members of Afghans trying to flee the country. We didn’t mean to suggest that Mr. Young participated in the black market. We regret the error and to Mr. Young, we apologize.”

However, the court noted:

“The retraction/correction was not made during the other television shows in which the Segment aired. No retraction, correction or apology was posted on any online article or with any social media posting. Defendant’s representatives referred to the statement made on the Jake Tapper show as a correction rather than a retraction.”

Not only did the court find that insufficient, but it menacingly added, “the Court finds that there is an issue of material fact as to whether Defendant published a full and fair retraction as required by §770.02 for the televised segment and no retraction for the social media and online article postings, which could be additional evidence of actual malice.”

This is relatively new ground for the Florida courts and will undoubtedly be appealed in time. For now, punitive damages will remain an option for the jury. The message to news organizations is that minimizing retractions can produce a critical loss of the coverage of the common statutory provisions protecting the media.

It is also worth noting that Young was found to be a private individual and not a “public figure.” After the Supreme Court handed down New York Times v. Sullivan, it extended the actual malice standard from public officials to public figures. In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 345 (1974), the Court wrote:

“Hypothetically, it may be possible for someone to become a public figure through no purposeful action of his own, but the instances of truly involuntary public figures must be exceedingly rare. For the most part those who attain this status have assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society. Some occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures for all purposes. More commonly, those classed as public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved. In either event, they invite attention and comment.”

The Supreme Court has held that public figure status applies when someone “thrust[s] himself into the vortex of [the] public issue [and] engage[s] the public’s attention in an attempt to influence its outcome.” A limited-purpose public figure status applies if someone voluntarily “draw[s] attention to himself” or allows himself to become part of a controversy “as a fulcrum to create public discussion.” Wolston v. Reader’s Digest Association, 443 U.S. 157, 168 (1979).

In creating this higher burden, the Court sought to create “breathing space” for the media by articulating that standard for both public officials and public figures. Public figures are viewed as having an enhanced ability to defend themselves and engaging in “self-help” in the face of criticism. The Court also viewed these figures as thrusting themselves into the public eye, voluntarily assuming the risk of heightened criticism. I have previously written about the continuing questions over the inclusion of public figures with public officials in tort actions.

However, the court found that Young did not trip this wire.

“Young’s limited posts do not constitute him thrusting himself ‘to the forefront’ of the Afghanistan evacuation ‘controversy.’ In total, Plaintiffs worked for four companies and evacuated 22 people from Afghanistan. Per Defendant’s Segment, ‘[t]here [were] fewer than Page 13 of 34100 American citizens in Afghanistan who [were] ready to leave’ and ‘countless Afghans, including thousands who worked for or aided the US . . . who are frantically trying to leave.’ While Young was clearly trying to advertise his services, it can hardly be said that he played a sufficiently central role or was at the forefront in being able to influence the resolution of all those unable to escape Afghanistan. He was not going to get all these thousands of people out, nor was he ever intending to as he (according to his posts and testimony) was only assisting those with sponsors. He also was not going to convince the Taliban to let these folks leave the country. As such, Plaintiffs do not meet the test for this second suggested controversy to be labeled as limited public figures.”

The court also ruled that Young would be allowed to keep his economic damages expert witness, Richard Bolko, a ruling that, in conjunction with the punitive damages matter, could spell real trouble for CNN.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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“This is Not the Time for Balance”: LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary

By: Jonathan Turley | December 9, 2024

When now President-Elect Donald Trump was convicted, the thrill-kill atmosphere around the courthouse and the country was explosive, but no one was more ecstatic than liberal columnist and former prosecutor Harry Litman. The then L.A. Times columnist told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was a “majestic day” and “a day to celebrate.” A lawfare advocate, Litman excitedly laid out how Trump could be barred from office, declaring that the raid in Mar-a-Lago was the “whole enchilada” in ending Trump’s political career. Now, Litman has resigned from the L.A. Times because the owner wants more diversity of opinion in the newspaper. Litman went on MSNBC to declare that “this is not a time for balance.”

Those seven words sum up much of what has destroyed American media with millions turning away from the echo chamber created by the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and other publications. Litman is not alone. Many liberals are dispensing with the pretense of declaring opposing views “disinformation” and are now openly fighting to preserve ideological echo chambers and media silos.

In my new book, The Indispensable Right, I write about the decline of newspapers as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement. Opinion pages became little more than screeds for the left, including legal commentators who have been consistently wrong and misleading on merits of challenges or cases.

Last year, Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Litman has been one of the most unabashed lawfare warriors. Even when the Justice Department was seeking to dismiss the Flynn case, Lipman wrote an L.A. Times column advising Judge Emmet Sullivan how to “make trouble” for the administration. Litman admitted there is “very little leeway to reject the government’s decisions to dismiss charges” but encouraged Sullivan to “accomplish what Congress, multiple inspectors general, and a majority of the electorate have not been able to do — hold the president and his allies accountable for their contemptuous disregard for the rule of law.”

On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Litman declared to Nicolle Wallace that Trump’s victory is “an absolute five-alarm fire.” He called the effort to restore a diversity of viewpoints as little more than an attempt “to curry favor with Trump.” He then added:

“And I just think this is not a time for balance when you have someone who’s not telling the truth on the other side. And it’s a deep responsibility. And instead, I think they cowered and are worried about their personal holdings and just being threatened by Trump. And that’s a really shameful capitulation, I think. So, I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it and had to resign.”

It was a telling moment. Litman appeared on a network that has lost half of its viewership and is fighting for its existence in an effort by NBCUniversal to unload it. Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country. Yet, these figures would rather lose their jobs and media platforms than their bias.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Naughty List: Former Obama Aides and Liberal Influencers Sell Antifa Line of Holiday Gifts

By: Jonathan Turley | December 6, 2024

It appears no liberal Christmas is complete without the ultimate stocking stuffer: an actual stocking to wear over your face while rioting. While not yet selling face coverings for anonymous violence, Crooked Media, co-founded by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, is selling a line of Antifa items for liberals wanting to make a statement against any “Peace on Earth.” (As of this posting, Antifa items were still being sold on the “Crooked Store” site). You can now proudly wear your “Antifa Dad” hat to signal your support for political violence and deplatforming. It is the ultimate naughty gift list for putting the slay back into your Sleigh Bells.

These liberal hosts and their “POD SAVE AMERICA” show have been featured on various shows and courted by figures like Hillary Clinton. There is no apparent backlash for their support of one of the most violent groups in the world, which routinely attacks journalists and anyone who holds opposing views. Imagine the media response if a conservative site started selling “Proud Boy” items. Yet, Crooked Media is now offering liberals the chance to buy “ANTIFA” onesies for babies, a T-shirt for toddlers reading “ANTIFA” and other items.

Just to make sure that everyone understands the support for the violent group, a spokesperson for Crooked Media told Fox News Digital that the clothes it has listed on its website “are not a joke.” The spokesman added that “all toddlers are antifa until their souls are broken by capitalism.”

As discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore the history of Antifa as a movement that began in Germany:

“Antifa originated with European anarchist and Marxist groups from the 1920s, particularly Antifaschistische Aktion, a Communist group from the Weimar Republic before World War II. Its name resulted from the shortening of the German word antifaschistisch. In the United States, the modern movement emerged through the Anti- Racist Action (ARA) groups, which were dominated by anarchists and Marxists. It has an association with the anarchist organization Love and Rage, which was founded by former Trotsky and Marxist followers as well as offshoots like Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. The oldest U.S. group is likely the Rose City Antifa (RCA) in Portland, Oregon, which would become the center of violent riots during the Trump years. The anarchist roots of the group give it the same organizational profile as such groups in the early twentieth century with uncertain leadership and undefined structures.”

Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally. As I have previously written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association. Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated, “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country, including attacks on journalists.

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence, and its website was banned in Germany.

Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

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

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

Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists… From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Now, liberal families can bring a small part of that political violence into their homes for the holiday to pledge that there will be no peace or silent nights so long as opposing views are heard. Antifa has gone retail, and there is no better way to celebrate political violence and rage than your Antifa onesie.

With tensions rising after the election, the embrace of organizations like Antifa will only fuel calls for violent action. Liberal figures like ex-Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz have even conveyed support for the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan.

It is not the time to go full naughty list to celebrate a group that regularly beats reporters and others with opposing viewpoints. While this may appeal to your own special smash-mouth Santa, tis the season for political violence.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Take Two Puberty Blockers and Call Me in the Morning? Justice Sotomayor Under Fire for Aspirin Analogy in Oral Argument

By: Jonathan Turley | December 5, 2024

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is under fire today for seemingly dismissing medical concerns over the risks of puberty blockers and gender surgeries for minors with a comparison to taking Aspirin. In the oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, Sotomayor pointed out that there are risks to any medical procedure or drug. However, the analogy belittled the concerns of many parents and groups over the research on the dangers of these treatments. It also highlighted how the Biden Administration and liberal justices were discarding countervailing research inconveniently at odds with their preferred legal conclusion.

The Biden administration is challenging Tennessee’s law banning gender-changing drugs and procedures for minors. That state cites studies that indicate serious complications or risks associated with the treatments for children.

While the conservative justices acknowledged studies on both sides of the debate over risks, the liberal justices seemed to dismiss studies that were inconsistent with striking down the law as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. That issue produced a difficult moment for Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito confronted her about statements made in her filing with the Court.

Alito quoted Prelogar’s petition to the Court that claimed that there was “overwhelming evidence” supporting the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments as safe with positive results for children. Justice Alito, however, cited extensive countervailing research from European countries showing significant risks and potential harm. The World Health Organization has recognized these risks and lack of evidence supporting these procedures and researchers in Finland recently published a study showing that suicides among kids with gender dysphoria are extremely rare in contradiction to one of the common arguments made for adolescent treatment.

Alito also cited the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, released shortly after her filing. The Cass study found scant evidence that the benefits of transgender treatment are greater than the risks. He then delivered the haymaker: “I wonder if you would like to stand by the statement in your position or if you think it would now be appropriate to modify that and withdraw your statement.”

🔥🔥🔥Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito presses Elizabeth Prelogar on the experimental nature of "gender-affirming care."

He's exposing the massive scandal of gender experiments on children.https://t.co/btX8lAG0LM pic.twitter.com/kQJsBT06Ud
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 4, 2024

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio (who has previously argued that children as young as two years old can identify themselves as transgender) seemed to later acknowledge that very few gender-dysphoric children actually go through with suicide but insisted that the procedures reduce suicidal inclinations.

Justice Sotomayor seemed intent on defusing the problem with the opposing scientific research in her exchange with Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice. In his argument, Rice stated that “they cannot eliminate the risk of detransitioners, so it becomes a pure exercise of weighing benefits versus risk. And the question of how many minors have to have their bodies irreparably harmed for unproven benefits is one that is best left to the legislature.”

That is when Sotomayor interjected: “I’m sorry, counselor. Every medical treatment has a risk — even taking Aspirin. There is always going to be a percentage of the population under any medical treatment that is going to suffer a harm.”

According to studies, aspirin can have potential side effects that are largely quite mild. The studies cited by the state are raising far more serious risks and medical changes, including irreversible double mastectomies, genital surgeries, sterilization and infertility. There can also be long-term effects in bone growth, bone density, and other developmental areas. Those risks have led European countries to change their policies on the treatments pending further study.

Rice: "How many minors have to have their bodies irreparably harmed for unproven benefits?"

Sotomayor: "Every medical treatment has risk. Even taking Aspirin." pic.twitter.com/I4k8ujr5Hl
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 4, 2024

The point is not that the justices should resolve this medical debate, but that it is properly resolved elsewhere, including in the state legislative process.

Sotomayor’s aspirin analogy seemed gratuitously dismissive for many and reminiscent of the response to scientists who questioned Covid protocols and policies from the six-foot rule to mask efficacy.

Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (who is now nominated to lead the National Institutes of Health) and others were vilified by the media over their dissenting views on the pandemic and efforts to show countervailing research. He and others signed the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration that called on government officials and public health authorities to rethink the mandatory lockdowns and other extreme measures in light of past pandemics.

All the signatories became targets of an orthodoxy enforced by an alliance of political, corporate, media, and academic groups. Most were blocked on social media despite being accomplished scientists with expertise in this area.

Some scientists argued that there was no need to shut down schools, which has led to a crisis in mental illness among the young and the loss of critical years of education. Others argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.

Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — both positions were later recognized by the government.

Others questioned the six-foot rule used to shut down many businesses as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did the rule result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, the media further ostracized dissenting critics.

Again, Fauci and other scientists did little to stand up for these scientists or call for free speech to be protected. As I discuss in my new book, “The Indispensable Right,” the result is that we never really had a national debate on many of these issues and the result of massive social and economic costs.

For scientists attacked and deplatformed for years, Sotomayor’s statements were painfully familiar. They also cited European and countervailing studies that the media dismissed as fringe views or conspiratorial viewpoints. In the same way, Justice Sotomayor’s analogy seemed to treat those raising these concerns (including parents) as akin to questioning the risks of aspirin. The import seemed to be that stopping taking aspirin based on minor concerns would be ridiculous and so too are objections to gender changing treatments and procedures.

The fact is some analogies are poorly chosen or misunderstood. However, the thrust of the comments from the justice were dismissive of the science supporting Tennessee and the 23 states with similar laws. That is roughly half of the states which want to adopt a more cautious approach. No one was arguing against adults being able to opt for such treatment, but these states do not want children to be subject to the treatments in light of this ongoing debate.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Media Meltdowns Over Trump’s FBI Pick Prove Kash Patel Is the Perfect Man for the Job

By: Jordan Boyd | December 03, 2024

Author Jordan Boyd profile

Jordan Boyd

Visit on Twitter@jordanboydtx

Contrary to what corporate media want you to believe, President Donald Trump’s decision to name Kashyap “Kash” Patel as his choice to replace current FBI Director Christopher Wray is a good one — perhaps one of the best he could have made.

When Trump announced over Thanksgiving weekend that Patel was his pick to “bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI,” journos lost their minds. Some outlets framed Trump’s choice as frowned upon by the president’s aides and Republican legislators. Others published lists of bureaucrats who they claimed could fall prey to “Patel’s crosshairs.” ~~for partisan reasons.~~ Those did not compare to the hordes of corporate media coverage dedicated to tarnishing Patel and quashing his nomination.

Even before the election, the Associated Press painted Patel as a conspiracy theorist while noting how he was “poised to help lead a Trump administration.” Shortly after Trump made it official, MSNBC claimed that “Kash Patel could be Trump’s most dangerous pick yet.” The New York Times took it further by besmirching the pick as “concretely dangerous.”

In the NYT article lead, the author deems Patel “supremely unqualified to direct the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.” He warns that if Patel takes over, his “directorship would probably corrupt and bend the institution for decades, even if he served only a few years.”

“He wants to bend and break the bureau and weaponize it against those he sees as his political enemies and domestic critics,” the article continues, without mentioning how the FBI under Christopher Wray has done exactly that.

These descriptions of Patel suggest Trump pulled a random guy off the street to weaponize the agency on his behalf. In reality, Patel is familiar with both the bureaucracy and intelligence agencies, having worked as a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor, the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s chief of staff, a U.S. National Security Council official, and principal deputy to the acting Director of National Intelligence. Most importantly, Patel had a front-row seat to the deep state’s ploy, aided heavily by the propaganda press, to overthrow Trump when he served as a senior aide to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes. Patel and Nunes’ efforts to blow open the Russia collusion hoax made them victims of the DOJ’s spying and targets of a years-long corporate media smear campaign. Patel even sued multiple outlets and reporters, including the NYT, for smearing him as a criminal who acted as a “Ukraine Back Channel” for the Trump White House.

The problem with the NYT article and every other outlet fearmongering about Patel’s nomination is they refuse to acknowledge that the FBI is already corrupt to its core and weaponized beyond belief. Polling indicates that more than half of the nation, 63 percent, want to see the FBI reformed or “shut down” and “rebuilt from scratch.”

Naming another deep-state swamp creature like Wray to run the FBI would guarantee that would never happen. Nominating someone like Patel, who promises to make ridding our constitutional Republic of the people trying to destroy it priority number one, however, puts the Trump administration in a much better position to accomplish those goals.

As Patel noted in his 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference speech, he saw firsthand how the “government gangsters” in the DOJ, DOD, and FBI are “crippling” the nation by weaponizing themselves against Americans. He told The Federalist last year, after corporate media accused him of trying to “target journalists for prosecution,” that a second Trump administration would have no choice but to address the corruption swiftly and effectively.

“We’ve been saying the DOJ and FBI need [to] be fixed. We’ve been saying prosecutors and judges shouldn’t weaponize justice. We’ve been saying you shouldn’t leak information for media to rig political elections and curry favor with the American electorate. We’ve been saying it the whole time and we’ve been saying anyone that breaks the law in doing those things … should be prosecuted, whether it’s government officials, civilians, and the media,” Patel said. “Our position has never changed. We’ve been saying to use and restore the Constitution, to follow and enforce the rule of law, not to violate it. That’s what they do.”

The only reason the propaganda press oppose Patel as Trump’s FBI pick is because he is a threat to their ability to continue colluding with the deep state to advance their partisan agenda. Every new article or TV segment corporate media outlets devote to complaining and criticizing Patel’s nomination proves to the Trump team that he is the perfect man for the job.

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

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The Democratic Diaspora: Liberals Seek Safe Spaces After Democracy Prevailed in 2024

By: Jonathan Turley | December 2, 2024

Below is my column in The Hill on how some Democrats are joining a diaspora of the disgruntled and despondent in leaving the country or finding safe spaces away from opposing viewpoints. It appears that nothing succeeds like secession when you lose an election.

Here is the column:

Race to vote in time..pic.twitter.com/gXzTSnhY4V
— Sandfort (@Sandfort_) October 30, 2024

Democrats who campaigned on the need for “joy” and “saving democracy” are strikingly unjoyful about the results of the democratic process in 2024. Before the election, slips like the one of President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” were immediately denied or deflected. But once voters had given the Republicans control of both houses of Congress, the popular vote and the White House, leading Democratic figures and celebrities dropped all pretense of civility. They are now being open about their contempt for voters, calling them “f—-ing morons” and “arrogant, ignorant” adolescents.

After calling for Americans to come together for Kamala Harris, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sent out a heart-warming holiday message to those who voted for the GOP to “make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears.”

My neighborhood just voted Trump/Vance! pic.twitter.com/0QrQeiiq40
— Silenced 🐴🐭 Ms. Information (@C19VaxInjured) October 30, 2024

Those not wallowing in Reid’s anger are increasingly voicing themes of isolation, insurrection and secession.

For years, the contempt for Trump voters has been open and obvious in much of the media. The “Let’s Go Brandon” movement captured the lunacy of the press and politicians simply denying what citizens could see, hear and experience for themselves.

When asked for answers on issues like the economy and immigration, Harris paraded an army of celebrities to tell the public how to vote — shiny objects that they thought would be enough for shallow American voters.

They were wrong. Now that the public has made its choice, leading figures are condemning the majority of voters as a mix of misogynists, self-haters and fascists. Whoopi Goldberg, 69, even joined the “4B” sex strike against men. Others seem to be morphing into exactly what they said Trump would become as president: isolationist and insurrectionist.

Some have responded to the losses by retreating further into echo chambers protected from opposing views. Many dumped X in favor of BlueSky, a new social media safe space for liberals who fear being triggered by opposing views. Notably, censorship advocates such as Nina Jankowisz have fled to BlueSky. The site is portrayed as a return to the good old days when liberals controlled all of the social media and maintained a massive censorship and blacklisting system over political discourse.

New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote a column last week that offered the familiar “I can breathe again” account: “After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.”

It is the ultimate irony. This election shocked many on the left precisely because they were writing and commenting on each other within their hardened media and political silos. They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America.

Other Democratic politicians have moved beyond the chest-pounding of leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to pledges of more direct obstruction or inflammatory rhetoric.

Denver mayor Mike Johnson (D) declared that he was preparing the Mile-High City for its “Tiananmen Square moment” to fight the federal government in any attempt to deport unlawful migrants. Johnson warned that he would have not only Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep [ICE] out” but also “50,000 Denverites.”

Not long ago, Democrats were calling similar protests an “insurrection.” Johnson later walked back his remarks but insisted that his city would fight federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws.

Rather than such trench warfare, most Democratic governors and mayors are simply pledging not to cooperate with federal authorities, which is a lawful choice. The concern, however, is how others will react to the overheated rhetoric for months that this will be “our last election” and that Trump is the new Hitler. Such rage rhetoric gives people license to say and do things they would not ordinarily say or do. Leaders calling on citizens to “fight” ICE and the “fascists” can easily inspire violence, as we have seen in past years. Indeed, that was the very premise of the criminal case against Trump supported by many of these same leaders, alleging that his calls to “fight” against certification was a call for insurrection.

Some liberals are very publicly fleeing the country. Sharon Stone (who called American voters “uneducated”) is reportedly off to Canada. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are off to a mansion in Cotswolds in England. Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman is also reportedly exploring a departure from the country after his millions of dollars failed to produce a victory for Kamala Harris.

Some, however, want to take part of the country with them. New York State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Upper East Side) has received praise for her call for New York to join Canada. Where Alexandre Dumas believed that ‘Nothing succeeds like success,” some believe that, after losing an election, nothing succeeds quite like secession.

Krueger previously sought to block Trump from the ballot in the name of protecting democracy. That would have barred the 45 percent of New Yorkers who voted for the president-elect, but those voters would find themselves either Canadians or refugees under her proposal.

Krueger suggested that secession simply makes sense when the majority of the country disagrees with you. She believes New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont could form a new Canadian province.

“I got back some unofficial responses and heard this is probably sellable in Ottawa,” she said. “And look, if we were Europe, in the length of time we’ve been a nation, for Canada, if we were European countries, our borders would have moved around 20 times by now, right?”

She explained that this is all just “thinking outside of the box.” The box that she and other liberals find themselves in is called “democracy,” and they don’t like it.

Just for the record, the last time people thought “outside the box” and seceded, we got a war with roughly 700,000 people killed.

Yet, assuming New Yorkers can get used to milk in a bag and cheese curds as a snack, there may be an obvious appeal for the left in the True North. Formerly “strong and free,” Canada has become a nightmare for free speech with the ever-expanding criminalization of political speech. One professor, who said that Trump’s plans to combat censorship has left many frightened, said that if free speech protections are restored, “I will be on a plane [out of America].”

For New York Times reporters and officials alike, they will be able to “breathe again” in the controlled, regulated air of censorship countries like Canada.

The only challenge for our displaced and disgruntled diaspora will be that Canadians tend to be nice.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Police Report About Pete Hegseth’s Alleged Sexual Assault Vindicates Him of Criminality

By: Eddie Scarry | November 21, 2024

Author Eddie Scarry profile

Eddie Scarry

Visit on Twitter@eScarry

Disclaimer: This article discusses explicit sexual acts.

What you’re going to hear now and in the coming days from the national media is that there are “graphic” details in a police report related to an alleged sexual assault involving Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming nominee for Defense secretary. It’s certainly graphic, but the media will bet you won’t bother reading the report, which in reality looks really bad for the alleged victim and effectively clears Hegseth of criminality.

The 22-page report details an incident from seven years ago when in 2017, Hegseth, then a Fox News celebrity, attended an event for a Republican women’s group as a featured speaker. The way the media have relayed the event so far is that a woman in attendance has accused Hegseth of drugging her at an afterparty before raping her in his hotel room. Outside of the alleged victim’s admittedly incomplete recollection, none of the testimony or evidence included in the police report supports that claim. In truth, all of it indicates that the accuser lied to her husband, who was in her hotel room, while she galivanted at night with Hegseth and other attendees before voluntarily joining him in his room to have consensual sex.

The report’s events took place in early October 2017, and it includes multiple eyewitness testimonies and text message evidence of what took place before and after the alleged assault. The alleged victim is identified only as Jane Doe. After a night of moderate drinking, during which Doe says she at some point felt she may have been surreptitiously drugged, Doe said she remembered few details but that she recalled inexplicably finding herself in Hegseth’s hotel room, that he ejaculated on her body, and that she thereafter went to her own room to join an unnamed person in bed. Text messages she shared with police indicate the person was her husband and that there were other parties in the room, likely children.

Doe ended up in contact with police after she saw a medical provider to administer a sexual assault exam. The provider was required by California law to tell police of the allegation that was shared by Doe. Doe told police she didn’t recall drinking heavily that day but then later said she did and that at some point she confronted Hegseth by the hotel pool about the way he had behaved with other women that night, which she found “inappropriate.” She would also later tell police that she recalled asking Hegseth in his hotel room if he had a condom.

And that’s the exact point you know things have taken a turn out of her favor.

The rest of the report is an overwhelming refutation of that version of events. Included are text exchanges with her husband, wherein she repeatedly mentions Hegseth, but omits that she was spending time with him at the after-parties; testimonies from other women in attendance who said Doe never appeared overserved and in fact seemed completely coherent throughout; surveillance video footage that showed Doe and Hegseth walking around with locked arms; and a hotel staff member who recalled engaging Doe and Hegseth by the pool, at which time Hegseth was belligerent and Doe guided Hegseth away from the conflict.

The report ends with Hegseth’s version of events, in which he admits he only initiated sex with Doe after she took him to his room and says that the two of them repeatedly expressed reservations about the intimacy. He said that the two of them agreed the affair needed to remain secret. If there’s one corroborated piece of Doe’s story, it’s that Hegseth also recalled that she asked him if he had a condom.

Some key moments in the report:

— “JANE DOE stated she used a condom when she had sex with” her husband after the alleged assault. The explanation for that is redacted, but thereafter the report says, “JANE DOE stated she had a vaginal discharge and was diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis,” a condition that “can be caused by having multiple sex partners.”

— Text messages with her husband, who was at the conference, show Doe asking him if he was familiar with Hegseth, referring to him as “TDB lite” and “Mini TDB,” which appear to be meant as insults. Doe’s husband replies, “Oh you mean the man who tried to have sex with my wife?” and “Not a good first impression for Pete.”

— Doe’s husband told police it was 4 a.m. when his wife returned to their shared room. “JANE DOE arrived at their hotel room, accessed the room on her own and had used the key card reader to get in,” the report said. “JANE DOE told [her husband] that she ‘Must have fallen asleep.’ JANE DOE was apologetic.” Her husband “noticed that JANE DOE did not have a hard time walking and was not slurring her words.”

— A hotel staff member told police he encountered Doe and Hegseth at the pool and “JANE DOE placed her hand and arm on the back of HEGSETH” and “escorted him” away. The staffer described Hegseth as “very intoxicated.” By contrast, he said Doe was “not intoxicated” and in fact “standing on her own and was very coherent.”

— Of the hotel surveillance video, the report said, “The video showed JANE DOE and HEGSETH walking together, with arms locked together.”

Hegseth’s testimony also goes into detail about what happened in his hotel room, and he maintains it was consensual. No charges were ever brought, and Hegseth paid the woman a settlement fee at the time to make the drama go away.

Nobody should be left with questions about what happened here. All of the evidence indicates Hegseth was pursued by a married woman who then regretted her decision. (I’m sure the vaginal discharge didn’t help.)

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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The Layaway Presidency: How Alvin Bragg Would Create a New Constitutional Creature

By: Jonathan Turley | November 20, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the effort of Alvin Bragg to suspend the criminal case against President-Elect Donald Trump for almost five years. It would be a terrible choice for the court and for the country.

Here is the column:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pushed Tuesday to create a new constitutional creature: the layaway president. It was once common for stores to hold expensive items that you really wanted but could not make the payment. So, they were tagged and kept on the shelf until you were ready to redeem your item.

For Bragg, that leaves Donald Trump tagged until 2029.

In a filing before Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, Bragg suggested that the court should stay the pending criminal case and defer any sentencing “until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term.” That would allow a city prosecutor to put a leash on a sitting president for four years. Trump would govern by the grace of this local judge and district attorney. In the meantime, pundits and politicians could portray the president as free on a type of work release program.

The suggestion is appalling to most of the people in the country, including the majority of voters who voted for Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats ran on this and other cases in the election. The result was arguably the largest jury decision in history.

That being said, I do not believe that the mere election of a president negates jury verdicts on 34 criminal counts. But ample reasons exist to overturn those verdicts or to dismiss this case. For example, after the verdict, the Supreme Court rendered its immunity decision barring the use of certain evidence against a president. Some of the evidence used in the Manhattan case likely fell within one of the protected categories. The prosecutors not only elicited testimony from Trump aides in the White House but then doubled down on the significance of that evidence in their closing arguments. Merchan could declare that the court cannot rule out the impact of such testimony on the final verdict.

Even if Merchan, as expected, does not dismiss the case on the basis for the immunity decision, the trial was rife with reversible error. This was a raw exercise of lawfare, and Merchan did little to ensure fairness toward the defendant. Yet none of those errors can be likely addressed until Merchan reaches final decisions on the motion to dismiss as well as the sentencing question.

While that will mean that Trump could, upon possible sentencing, formally become a convicted felon, the matter can then be finally pried out of the hands of Merchan and taken to higher courts for review. The worst possible option is the one suggested by Bragg, who would adopt the popular persona of Trump’s turnkey.

The President would be seen by many as governing on a type of conditional status from one of the most politically compromised prosecutors in the country. For Bragg and other Trump opponents, that may be far more satisfying than a sentencing now given the unlikelihood of any jail component.

After the years and millions spent on the case, it would be the ultimate buzz kill to have Trump sentenced to some fine or other non-carceral penalty. Many Democrats want to have Trump govern with an asterisk of a “President pending sentencing.” Instead, Trump would govern with the clock ticking toward a sentencing date.

It is a dangerous precedent. Such pending sentences can have a coercive impact on a president in dealing with given officials, including a state governor who might be willing to pardon a president.

Consider the effort of the governor of New York in restoring the lucrative state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. There is no reason to believe that Trump would succumb to such leverage (and he has already indicated that he would consider the change).

However, any decision on policies like SALT would be the subject of speculation of whether a reduction in taxation was made in the hope of a reduction in incarceration.

Critics would suggest that New York is yanking on the leash to achieve policy advantages. This is the same judge and prosecutor who gagged the leading candidate for the presidency in discussing aspects of the case in the months leading up to the election. Now, they would allow him to govern pending their own suspended decisions on his future.

The Trump case was always a thrill kill for Bragg. Under Bragg’s proposal, his supporters would prolong that thrill for four more years. The cost, however, would be devastating for the country.

This country needs a president, not a president on layaway from the Manhattan District Attorney.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Crime, Law, Media, Political

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Ha, Ha, Thump: Why the Last-Minute SNL Pitch for Harris is No Laughing Matter

By: Jonathan Turley | November 5, 2024

Below is my column in USA Today on the controversy at NBC after Vice President Kamala Harris was given a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live just days before the election. It was the latest push by media companies to put a thumb on the scale of the election.

Here is the column:

Will Rogers said, “Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”

Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign can attest to the truism after the vice president appeared on “Saturday Night Live” three days before the presidential election. Make no mistake, there is nothing funny about an apparent violation of federal law by NBC and “SNL.” With Harris and Trump locked in a close race, the appearance was a bonanza for the campaign. It also was presumptively unlawful.

Lorne Michaels said candidates wouldn’t appear on SNL

A month ago, The Hollywood Reporter quoted “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels saying it was implausible that either Trump or Harris would appear on the show given the clear federal rules: “You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions. You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”

The “SNL” cast and crew appeared to take the opposite meaning from Michaels’ warning. They decided to broadcast a virtual campaign commercial for Harris and later ask for forgiveness rather than permission. The skit was hardly subtle in jettisoning comedy for sycophancy. Former “SNL” cast member Maya Rudolph, impersonating Harris, said she wished she “could talk to someone who’s been in my shoes. You know, a Black, South Asian woman running for president. Preferably from the Bay Area.”

Harris responded, “You and me both, sister.”

“SNL” used a faux comedic skit to echo the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign themes. Harris assured her doppelgänger, “I’m just here to remind you, you got this. Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors.” Rudolph even mouthed the campaign theme for Harris, declaring, “The American people want to stop the chaos and end the drama-la.” Both then espoused their “belief in the promise of America.”

NBC lawyers were clearly among the viewers who were not laughing Saturday night. On Sunday, Trump was given a chance to speak on NBC after a NASCAR race.

FCC’s rules try to ensure equal time for candidates

Since 1934, the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule has required radio and television broadcast stations to give competing political candidates the same amount of time. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Republican, denounced NBC’s move as a premeditated and gross violation of the equal-time regulation. He said that the federal rules were designed for this very purpose, and that NBC discarded the rules to trawl for undecided voters for Harris, particularly young voters who have been a challenge for the vice president.

“NBC has structured this in a way that’s plainly designed to evade the FCC’s rules,” Carr told Fox News on Sunday. “We’re talking 50 hours before Election Day starts, without any notice to other candidates, as far as I can tell.”

The Trump campaign has confirmed that an offer was not extended to appear.

“SNL” discarded any semblance of restraint and also featured Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who is in a race with Republican challenger Hung Cao.

“In the 2016 cycle, President Obama’s FCC Chair made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on SNL,” Carr tweeted Saturday night.

So, the producers of “SNL” were not only warned by its creator as the new season began but also were warned by the FCC in 2016. They decided to ignore the warnings. On Sunday, NBC seemed to acknowledge the violation by filing an FCC notice under the equal-time provision acknowledging that it gave free exposure to Harris and Kaine − only days before voters went to the polls.

The true joke is on the public. With virtually all the news media supporting her, Harris has fielded a united front of celebrities from Hollywood to New York. By claiming that democracy is about to die, violations of FCC rules likely seem a trivial concern. To save democracy, there is little time for legal niceties.

Indeed, some Democrats appear to be morphing into the very people they are vilifying. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., appeared on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday to declare that Democrats will accept the result of a Trump victory only if they believe it is a “free and fair election.”

Trump was widely criticized for the same position when he said, “If everything’s honest, I will gladly accept the results.”

On Maher’s show, Raskin said, “We’re not going to allow them to steal it in the states, or steal it in the Department of Justice, or steal it with any other election official in the country.”

Whether on “SNL” or “Real Time,” it is always funnier if it happens to someone else.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Dumpster Fire: White House Press Office Faced Internal Criticism Over the Rewriting of President Biden’s Garbage Comments

By: Jonathan Turley | November 1, 2024

Since the “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident, the media has been repeatedly accused of reframing news or rewriting words to benefit the President or the Biden-Harris Administration. This week, the White House Press Office and various media outlets like Politico and MSNBC have been ridiculed for denying that President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” It has created a weird dissonance as Democratic politicians denounced what the White House and many in the press denied was said. Now, the White House Press office is being criticized from a new quarter for the clean up on aisle three: the Director of White House Stenography, Amy Sands. The White House stenographers objected to the rewriting of the transcript by the Biden White House staff to suggest that the President was condemning Trump’s rhetoric, not his supporters.

The President’s attack on Trump supporters was nothing new. Leaders like Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and Biden himself has described their views as a return of the confederacy and the rise of fascism. Democrats have called the movement a modern form of Nazism and an effort to destroy democracy, round up homosexuals, and create internment camps.

The problem was the timing. As Harris was denouncing Trump for name-calling and insisting that Democrats are bringing the country together (while condemning Trump as a modern version of Hitler), Biden was literally behind her in the White House, calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.”

Fox News reportedly obtained an email in which the supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Sands went on to say that

“if there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff…After last night’s process, our team would like to reiterate that rush drafts/excerpts the Stenography Office sends to assist the Press Office are not intended for public distribution or as the final version of the transcript. Please avoid sharing rush drafts/excerpts, which are subject to review and might create confusion among staff, media, and the public while our Stenography Office completes a thorough review process.”

The White House was criticized for adding an apostrophe to the President’s comments to change the meaning of the key line.

After the statement, there was an immediate clean-up effort by Politico White House bureau chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, who was accused of changing the language by saying that “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.”

Lemire was widely ridiculed. For many, it sounded like another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment. He later turned to the apostrophe spin: “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context.” Accompanying the text is a screenshot of a transcript that has Biden saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The spin would have been more convincing if many of these pundits were not at the same time insisting that a line from a comedian delivered at a Trump event should be attributed to Trump (despite his later condemnation of any such view). It would also be more credible if Biden had not spent much of the last four years portraying the Trump movement as a new confederacy (before it was reframed as the new Third Reich).

When asked about the internal objections, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates only repeated the prior statement: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”

However, Fox noted that it remains “unclear … whether the transcript the White House cites is the one that was altered and released to the press or the final transcript that was sent to the National Archives.”

Other reporters now admit that Biden said what he said but describe it, as did CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, as “a gaffe by President Biden where he, in his explanation, inadvertently called Trump supporters garbage.” The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.

While various Democratic politicians have denounced Biden’s statements and Harris has said that she strongly disagrees with them, diehards like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocked those who were critical as “some of the worst” or just ungrammatical journalists:

“To do so, they had to refuse to listen to the actual sentence Joe Biden spoke. They had to refuse to look at the written words of that sentence. They had to refuse to understand English grammar. They had to refuse to understand what a singular possessive is. They had to refuse to understand what apostrophe ‘s’ means. They had to refuse to remember what they learned in elementary school about the English language.”

It appears that the non-partisan, career stenographers who recorded the interview contemporaneously are also on that “worst” list of ungrammatical morons.

The mainstream media is now dismissing the entire matter as just the placement of an apostrophe. Yet, many of these same voices were supporting a full-fledged investigation into the transcript of the Ukraine call during the Trump Administration over “the use of ellipses.”

I was critical of that call and supported calls for an accurate transcript, particularly on such a weighty issue. However, back then, the accuracy of such transcripts was accepted as of paramount importance. Whether it is a matter of foreign or domestic policy (or an apostrophe or ellipses), the public should be confident on the accuracy of White House transcripts, as stressed by Sands in her internal objections to the White House Press Office.

One of those objecting to the use of the ellipses was Lawrence O’Donnell.

It appears that one person’s punctuation is another person’s punch line.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Media Musk? Why the Cancel Campaign Targeting Jeff Bezos Could Backfire

By: Jonathan Turley | October 31, 2024

Below is my column on Fox.com on the expanding boycott of the Washington Post by Democratic politicians, pundits, and members of the press. The reason? Because owner Jeff Bezos wants to stay politically neutral and leave the matter to the public. In an age of advocacy journalism, the return to neutrality is intolerable. The reaction is itself revealing. In a heated meeting this week at the Post, writers were apoplectic with attacks on Bezos and alarm over the very notion of remaining neutral in an election. One declared to the group: “One thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.” The immediate and reflexive call of the left for boycotts and canceling campaigns is all too familiar to many of us. The question is whether the targeting of Bezos could backfire in creating a major ally for the restoration of American journalism.

Here is the slightly altered column:

It is not every day that you go from being Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in twenty-four hours. However, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of his “democracy dies in darkness” newspaper as the daily of the Darkside.

Figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney announced she was canceling her subscription as a boycott movement led a reported 200,000 people to give up their Post subscriptions. Some like George Conway even seemed to target Bezos’ company Amazon. It is a familiar pattern for many of us (on a smaller scale) who used to be associated with the left and faced cancel campaigns for questioning the orthodoxy in the media or academia.

Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground.

The left has made an art form of flash-mob politics, crushing opposition with the threat of economic or professional ruin. Most cave to the pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg. That record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the immovable object of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure his advertisers over his refusal to restore the prior censorship system at X, formerly Twitter.

Now, the left may be creating another defiant billionaire. This week, Bezos penned an op-ed that doubled down on his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us have argued for newpapers to stop all political endorsements for decades. The encouraging aspect of Bezos’s column was that he not only recognized the corrosive effect of endorsements on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but he also recognized that the Post is facing plummeting revenues and readership due to its perceived bias and activism.

I used to write regularly for the Post, and I wrote in my new book about the decline of the newspaper as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement. As Bezos wrote, “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”

Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself. Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors, and many called for Lewis to be canned. Bezos stood with Lewis.

Now, resignations and recriminations are coming from reporters and columnists alike. In a public statement, Post columnists blasted the decision and said that while maybe endorsements should be ended, not now because everyone has to oppose Trump to save democracy and journalism. The statement produced some chuckles, given the signatories, including Phillip Bump and Jen Rubin, who have been repeatedly accused of pushing false stories and reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later denounced Bezos for his “Bulls**t explanation” and said that he was merely “bending a knee” to Trump.).

Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech. He could create a bulwark against advocacy journalism in one of the premier newspapers in the world. Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.”

After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Few can stand up to this movement other than a Bezos or a Musk. However, the left has long created their own monsters by demanding absolute fealty or unleashing absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Bezos wants his newspaper to restore neutrality, the left is calling for a boycott of not just the Post but all of his companies. That is precisely what they did with Musk.

A Bezos/Musk alliance would be truly a thing to behold. They could give the push for the restoration of free speech and the free press a real chance to create a beachhead to regain the ground that we have lost in the last two decades. The left will accept nothing short of total capitulation and Bezos does not appear willing to pay that price. Instead, he could not just save the Post but American journalism from itself.

If so, all I can say is: Welcome to the fight, Mr. Bezos.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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“Why We Influenced the 2020 Elections”: Facebook Files Reveal the Coordinated Effort to Bury the Laptop Story

By: Jonathan Turley | October 31, 2024

Recently, I spoke at an event about my book, “The Indispensable Right,” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Appearing on the panel with me was a New York University professor and one of the Facebook board members directing “content moderation.” We had a sharp disagreement over the record of Meta/Facebook on censorship, which I described as partisan and anti-free speech. Now, Congress has released the internal communications at Facebook, showing an express effort to appease Biden officials by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.

In a new report released by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, Facebook executives are shown following the lead of the FBI, which gave them prior warnings to prepare to spike such stories before the election. The FBI knew that the laptop was authentic. They had possession of the laptop, and American intelligence concluded that it was not Russian disinformation.

One Microsoft employee wrote, “FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge,”

However, these communications also show a knowing effort to appease Biden and Harris and effectively assist them in their election efforts. Facebook’s then-Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg reportedly wrote to Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan, “[o]bviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else.”

One of the most interesting communications came from a Facebook employee who recognized that they would be accused of seeking to influence the election: “When we get hauled up to [Capitol] [H]ill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. government] to plan for it.”

The Facebook files go beyond influencing the election. At one point, Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, asked, “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made.” The Vice President in charge of content policy responded, “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.”

Notably, Democrats opposed every effort to seek this information, and Facebook only recently relented in turning over its files years after Elon Musk ordered the release of the “Twitter files.” I raised this issue during the NCC event to counter the glowing self-appraisal of Meta over its record. Despite its claims of transparency, it refused calls from many of us for years to release these files. When finally forced by the House to do so, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a perfunctory apology and moved on. As shown at the NCC event, it is now spinning its record as a defense of free speech.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Will The Corrupt News Media Accept Election Results If Trump Wins, Or Will They Start a War?

By: Eddie Scarry | October 28, 2024

It was such a fun time last week watching the perpetual drama queens that make up our national news media boil with rage over two newspapers declining to issue meaningless campaign endorsements. But it also revealed something unsettling about the unhealthy degree of emotional investment they have in this race.

Will the media accept the outcome of the election if Donald Trump wins? It’s far from a foregone conclusion that they will. There’s a strong argument they didn’t the last time Trump won. Why should anyone expect them to accept it this time around?

It’s a question these homely nerds are inclined to ask every elected Republican in the shallowest way possible — some variation of, “Will you accept the outcome of this election no matter what?” (I think every restaurant server from now on should ask Jake Tapper the moment he’s seated, “Will you accept the way your food comes out no matter what? It’s a yes or no question.”)

After the appalling behavior they displayed last week, now is a very crucial time to ask them the same thing. If they were this hysterical over management at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times deciding, there would be no endorsement of Kamala Harris this campaign cycle — the type of endorsement that hasn’t mattered for decades — how can they be expected to acknowledge a Trump victory? And if they won’t, what will it mean to the people who are still influenced by them? They will have essentially been told their elections and their government are invalid. These are the things civil wars are made of.

As silly as the media have made themselves look, they’re dead serious. That a major news publication wouldn’t throw its weight behind the non-Trump candidate means nothing to normal people, but reporters in Washington and New York aren’t normal people. Look how they talk. They say things like “Democracy dies in darkness,” and we laugh because it’s corny. But they believe in earnest it’s a sacred oath binding their entire life’s meaning to a cause: maintaining the Washington and corporate power structure to their financial benefit. To hell with everyone else.

If in 2016 the news media eagerly went along with an absurd hoax that Trump won that election in large part because he conspired with the Russian government, what won’t they say when he wins again? They just spent the past three months telling voters that up is down, black is white, and Kamala is popular. They moved on from the attempt on his life like it was a standard news cycle that had run its course.

How could we expect them to concede defeat after everything they’ve done? And yes, a Kamala defeat will be theirs, too. Her campaign is theirs.

It’s a question they’re not ready to answer because, for them, it’s unthinkable.

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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Panic Politics: The Press and Pundits Face Devastating Polls on the Threat to Democracy

By: Jonathan Turley | October 24, 2024

Below is my column in the New York Post on the growing hysteria among press and pundits proclaiming the imminent end of democracy if Kamala Harris is not elected. The predictions of mass roundups, disappearances, and tyranny ignore a constitutional system that has survived for over two centuries as the oldest and most stable democracy in the world. More importantly, the public appears to agree that democracy is under threat but appear to hold a very different notion of where that threat is coming from.

Here is the column:

“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Washington Post’s slogan, but can it handle the light?

The Post has been doggedly portraying the election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris as a choice between tyranny (Trump) and democracy (Harris). Yet when it commissioned a poll on threats to democracy shortly before the election, it did not quite work out.

Voters in swing states believe that Trump is more likely to protect democracy than Kamala Harris, who is running on a “save democracy” platform. The poll sampled 5,016 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When asked whether Trump or Harris “would do a better job” of “defending against threats to democracy,” 43% picked Trump while 40% picked Harris.

Notably, this was the same result when President Biden was the nominee. While over half said that threats to democracy were important to them, the voters trusted Trump (44%) more than Biden (33%) in protecting democracy.

Even with the slight improvement for Harris, the result was crushing for not just many in the Harris campaign but the press and pundits who have been unrelenting in announcing the end of democracy if Harris is not elected.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has declared with authority that either you vote for Harris, or this “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.”

I have long criticized the apocalyptic, democracy-ending predictions of Biden, Harris and others as ignoring the safeguards in our system against authoritarian power. Nevertheless, Harris supporters have ratcheted up the rhetoric to a level of pure hysteria. Recently, Michael Cohen, a convicted felon and Trump’s disbarred former lawyer, told MSNBC that if Trump wins the election, he will “get rid of the judiciary and get rid of the Congress.”

Recently, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and regular Donny Deutsch warned viewers that they will likely be added to an enemies “list” for some type of roundup after a Trump election. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow also joined in the theme of a final stand before the gulag: “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was quick to add her own name to a list that seems to be constantly updated by the media. She told podcast host Kara Swisher, “I mean, it sounds nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail.”

On ABC’s “The View,” the hosts are becoming indistinguishable from tinfoil-hatted subway prophets. Whoopi Goldberg even explained how Trump is already committed to being a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.”

Of course, assuming that Cohen is wrong that there will be no courts after a Trump victory, this would require federal judges to sign off on the rounding up of MSNBC personalities, all gay people, all reporters, and, of course, Whoopi Goldberg. All that is required is for over two centuries of constitutional order to fail suddenly, and for virtually every constitutional actor in our system to suddenly embrace tyranny.

Those pushing this hysteria often curiously cite the January 6 riot as proof that the end is near. Yet that horrible day was the vindication, not the expiration, of our constitutional system. The system worked. The riot was put down. Congress, including Republicans, reassembled and certified Biden as the next president. In the courts, many Trump-appointed judges ruled against challenges to the election. Our system was put through a Cat 5 stress test and did not even sway for a moment. Nevertheless, the same voices are being heard on the same media outlets with doomsday scenarios.

Former Acting US Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ominously, “We are looking at a very possible constitutional crisis and one that’s going to make January 6, 2021, look like a dress rehearsal. And this year, the rogues have had four years to go pro and perfect the big lie.”

In other words: Be afraid, very afraid.

Then, in a New York Times column, Katyal lays out scenarios premised on a complete breakdown of the oldest and most stable democratic system in history. It is like telling passengers on an ocean liner that we will all drown and then whispering that this is “assuming the crew intentionally scuttles the ship, all bulkheads and sealed departments fail, and every lifeboat and life preserver is discarded.”

But then we are all going to die. The only way to avoid that watery grave (with the death of democracy itself)? Vote Democratic.

There is, however, some good news in all of this: Despite years of alarmist predictions from Biden, Harris, the press, and pundits, the public is not buying it. It is not because they particularly like Trump. Many of his supporters seem poised to vote for him despite viewing him as polarizing and, at times, obnoxious.

No, it is because the American voter has a certain innate resistance to being played as a chump. Many of the same figures claiming that democracy is at stake supported ballot cleansing to remove Trump and others from the ballots. They supported the weaponization of the legal process in New York against Trump. Likewise, as Harris insists that she is the only hope for fundamental rights, many cannot fail to notice that she is supporting an unprecedented system of censorship that one court called “Orwellian.”

None of this means that the choice between Trump and Harris is easy. However, Harris’ claim to be the only hope for democracy is proving as tin eared as running on pure “joy.”

Voters are clearly demanding more than a political pitch of abject fear mixed with illusive joy.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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The Mark of Kaine: The Biden Administration Under Fire for Virginia Lawsuit over Non-Citizen Voter Removals

By: Jonathan Turley | October 22, 2024

Call it the Mark of Kaine. The heated dispute between the Biden Administration and the State of Virginia just took a curious turn after Virginia lawyers released support for the effort to remove alleged noncitizens from the voting rolls ahead of the presidential election. The main witness against the Biden Administration may prove to be Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) who is on the ballot this election.

The Biden Administration sued to stop the removal of 6,303 alleged noncitizens from Virginia’s voter rolls before the election, which is expected to be close in the state. It relies on the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), or the “Motor Voter Law,” which bars “systemic” removal of voters from the rolls less than 90 days before an election.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered compliance with existing laws, citing Virginia code 24.2-439, requiring the removal of noncitizens whose names were added under false pretenses. It also cited Virginia Code 24.2-1019, requiring registrars to immediately notify their county or city prosecutor of such situations.

The NVRA has exceptions for removals within what the Justice Department calls the “quiet” period before an election, including the removal of individuals who are “ineligible to vote because of a criminal conviction or mental incapacity, or for “correction of registration records pursuant to this chapter.” However, the state argues as a threshold matter that these are not systemic removals. The state argues that these are individual actions triggered automatically by citizens identifying themselves as noncitizens but then joining the voting rolls. It is a crime for a noncitizen to vote in the election.

The state notes that the voter is notified of the problem and allowed to correct any errors to remain on the rolls. If they do not correct the problem, they are removed from the rolls. However, they can still vote on election day with a “provisional” ballot to challenge any removal.

Virginia is not targeting any group and does not know how these voters might vote. It is responding to a notice coming from the Department of Motor Vehicle of a possible ineligibility and potential criminal act if the person actually votes, which is admittedly rare for noncitizens.

While the Justice Department insists that some of these individuals are actually citizens, the system allows for those citizens to remain on the rolls by simply correcting the DMV record.

I understand concerns over changes close to the election, but there seemed to be a host of options for the Justice Department short of this lawsuit, including working with the state to be sure that this relatively small number of voters are given ample opportunity to correct their records.

This weekend, Virginia added a new wrinkle in the litigation. The Virginia law has been on the books since 2006. The bipartisan legislation was signed into law by then Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. It has been used without any objection for all those years. However, it now appears that Kaine’s administration specifically asked the Justice Department to determine if the law was compliant with federal laws, including an express inquiry about the NVRA. On December 16, 2006, the Justice Department completed its review and found no objections to the Virginia law though it added that it reserves the right to object in the future to any such laws.

Gov. Youngkin further told Fox News that past governors continued to use the law within the 90 days period without a peep of objection from the Justice Department. These facts distinguish the Virginia case from the Alabama case where a court enjoined removal of names of suspected non-citizens.

Now, Kaine is on the ballot and there is a close election for the presidency. The Biden Administration is suddenly claiming to be “shocked, shocked” that there are alleged noncitizens being removed from the ballot.

In July, in an interview with WJLA-TV , Kaine insisted that “voting should be reserved for U.S. citizens.” When pressed recently, his campaign issued a non-statement statement that, again, insisted that “it is illegal for noncitizens to vote” while adding that “just as we want to block noncitizens from voting, we need to keep eligible voters from being purged from voting rolls, particularly just weeks from an election.”

Youngkin agrees that the state must “block noncitizens from voting” and is using the very law Kaine signed (and the Justice Department approved) for that purpose.

In the end, these votes are unlikely that to change any electoral outcomes. However, there is a broader fight building over a variety of election integrity efforts. States have complained that the Biden Administration has harassed and sued them at every turn as they sought to require voter identification or other laws.

Florida is now suing the Biden administration for allegedly obstructing the verification of immigration records so the state can remove any non-citizens. The state alleges that the Biden Administration has simply refused to supply required verification information.

These are just a few of the over 165 election-related lawsuits filed in the days before the election by the federal and states authorities and various public interest groups.

Some local officials are sparring with state officials. Fourteen states do not require voter identification. Despite the opposition from the Administration and many Democratic leaders, Gallop and other polling show Americans overwhelmingly support voter identification laws. In California, the state actually made it illegal for local election officials to ask for identification from voters.

The key about the lawsuits filed close to the election is the first round is often the last round. Whoever wins these fights for injunctive relief is likely to remain the prevailing party in the final days before the election.

There is now a virtual army of lawyers deployed by both parties to secure or to protect the expected small margin of victory in the election. Indeed, lawsuits like the Virginia action constitute a type of “harassing fire” to push back on states on identification and eligibility efforts.

The Biden Administration’s move against Virginia shows how one person’s voter integrity is another’s voter suppression. Indeed, the man who signed this state law is now supporting the Administration seeking to limit its use.

Yet, the mark of Kaine on this law is an indelible reminder of how even long-standing practices are now being challenged in this hair-triggered environment. For voters, they will have to be careful when picking their line at their polling place. The longest line is likely the lawyers waiting to get inside.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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Political

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

A.F. Branco cartoon – Genital Madness

A.F. Branco | on October 22, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-genital-madness/

Dem Outrage at Trump — A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democrats, the party of child genital mutilation and late-term abortion, are outraged at Trump for his comments alluding to Arnold Palmer’s private parts.

HILARIOUS: Jake Tapper Asks Mike Johnson “Why is [Trump] Talking About Arnold Palmer’s Penis?” – Johnson Responds, “You Seem to Like That Line A Lot” and Leaves Tapper Embarrassed

By Jordan Conradson – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 20, 2024

In a hilarious exchange, White Dude for Harris and CNN correspondent Jake Tapper was embarrassed by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday when he asked, “Why is [Trump] talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis?”
Johnson joined CNN’s State of The Union on Sunday morning, where he was asked about Trump’s humorous locker room talk at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Saturday evening. In response, Johnson said, “Jake, you seem to like that line a lot,” which flustered the far-left host.
Tapper’s question comes after President Trump’s rally at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he cracked a joke about his late friend Arnold Palmer, whom he called “all man.”
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Political

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“I Will Follow the Law”: Harris Adopts a Purely Pedestrian View of the Presidency in Fox Interview

By: Jonathan Turley | October 17, 2024

Last night, millions tuned in to watch Fox’s Bret Baier interview Vice President Kamala Harris in a brief but substantive exchange. One of the most interesting aspects of the interview was the purely pedestrian view of the presidency that Harris presented in the interview. Harris repeatedly responded with “I will follow the law” while refusing to say where she personally stands on immigration, transgender athletes, and other issues.

After confining interviews to largely softball forums like The View, Harris faced a serious journalist who pushed for actual answers on policies. While confined to a short time by the Harris campaign, Baier kept pulling Harris back to these questions to cut off the evasions that have characterized past interviews. Baier noted that she has previously campaigned on some of these issues and publicly declared that she worked for such things as gender transitioning operations for undocumented persons. Harris now refuses to state her position on such issues and says “I will follow the law.”

Yet, Harris is not adopting that pedestrian model in other areas like abortion rights where she is pledging to use executive powers to resist pro-life laws. The Biden-Harris Administration has used such orders to negate both constitutional and statutory authority. That includes orders that were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on issues like the national eviction moratorium.

Notably, Harris did flip her position on decriminalizing unlawful entries. Despite running on that pledge in her earlier unsuccessful run for the White House, Harris now says that she is against such decriminalization. As with her past opposition to fracking and gun rights, the change is likely to draw criticism that Harris is adopting a new persona for a close race.

The refusal to give her position on these issues is reminiscent of Joe Biden’s last campaign where he simply refused to say if he opposed packing the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority. What is different is that Harris previously stated strong and public positions on these questions but is now refusing to confirm that she continues to support those policies, including some that rank near the top of issues for voters.

Baier did a heroic job in trying to prevent the filibustering of the interview and push for answers on these questions. It was the first such interview where Harris faced a dogged interviewer. Given the frantic effort of the staff to end the interview (after showing up late), it is likely to be the last.

The mantra of “I will follow the law” ignores that a president plays a major role in the legislative process and has considerable executive powers in determining how such laws are enforced. The presidency is more than a promise of “joy” and compliance. It is about leadership on issues that matter to voters.

The interview had a seasonal feel with Halloween approaching like a political reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven where every question is answered by “Nevermore.”

That could well be the theme of the Harris campaign. When pressed on contradictions or controversies, Harris seemed to declare “Nevermore Trump” over and over again. We will see if that is enough in a matter of a few weeks.

In the meantime, real journalists will be left seeking answers that never come, exclaiming like Poe’s protagonist “tell me—tell me, I implore!” However, “Quoth the [Harris] ‘Nevermore.’”

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Media, Political

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Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘Media’

Branco Cartoon – Anti-Trump Authoritarian

Newsom Warns “Trump Will Be Running for a Third Term” — Says He Received ‘Trump 2028’ Hat in the Mail (VIDEO)

Branco Cartoon – Attack the Peacemaker

WATCH: Karoline Leavitt SHREDS Leftist Media and “Clueless Pundits” for Dishonest Coverage of Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Negotiations, “Actively Rooting Against the President”

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By: Jonathan Turley | August 1, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | July 21, 2025

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By: Jarrett Stepman | July 07, 2025

National Weather Service

Climate Change

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By: Jonathan Turley | July 7, 2025

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Branco Cartoon – Media TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

6 Reasons the ‘No Kings’ Riots Are Far Worse Than January 6 — But the Media Still Calls Them ‘Mostly Peaceful’

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Branco Cartoon – Rooting for Failure

TRUMP ECONOMIC UPDATE: Inflation Drops to 2.3%, Lowest Since 2021, and US Treasury Records Second Biggest Surplus in History Thanks to Trump’s Record Tariff Revenues

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Branco Cartoon – Frauding Our Future

Lawmaker calls for reform after Feeding Our Future suspect tries to flee amid fraud charges

Branco Cartoon – Death by Lies

Trump Scores Another Legal Win in Lawsuit Against NYT and ‘Washington Compost’ in His Case Against Pulitzer Board and Their Award for Fake News Reporting

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By: Brianna Lyman | May 15, 2025

Translation: Trump said something that turned out to be true (egg prices fell), but because we didn’t have the same data at the exact moment Trump said it, he was wrong.

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By: Jonathan Turley | May 1, 2025

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By: Beth Brelje | April 23, 2025

Social Security Fraud Is Alive And Well

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Commentary by Jonathan Turley | April 14, 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Mob Leader

White House slams Walz’s ‘sad existence’ after he cheers Tesla stock drop

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Demoted

PATHETIC: Journalists of White House Correspondents Association Considered a ‘Sit-In’ Protest Over Changes in Seating Chart

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By: Jonathan Turley | March 31, 2025

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By: Elle Purnell | March 12, 2025

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Blowin’ Em’ Away

Mark Halperin and Guest Slam Tone Deafness and Bias of Media Outlets Like MSNBC: ‘Utterly Broken’ (VIDEO)

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By: Elle Purnell | March 04, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | March 3, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | February 27, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | February 10, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | January 23, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | January 21, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | January 16, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | January 8, 2025

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By: Jonathan Turley | December 29, 2024

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Unpopular Vote

Mollie Hemingway Slams ‘Corrupt’ Propaganda Media, Says Trump is Showing Republicans How to Lead (VIDEO)

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By: Jonathan Turley | December 17, 2024

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By: Jonathan Turley | December 15, 2024

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

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