I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody … If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it … We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible.
On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. President @realDonaldTrumpand First Lady @MELANIATRUMP want to Make America Healthy Again. @michaelpconnett
Bo French, chair of the Republican Party in Tarrant County, Texas, has made several foul comments in the months leading up to the election. He last month called one Democratic advertisement featuring men voters "the gayest ad in history," writing on Twitter/X: “Guarantee every one of these ‘dudes’ is a homo. There is literally nothing manly about any of them.”
The conservative also around the same time used a slur for people with developmental disabilities against former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, responding to her remarks at a Harris campaign rally in Wisconsin with: "Never go full retard."
In a poll posted for his followers, French asked if those who "believe Harris’ policies are better for Americans than Trumps’ policies" are “Ignorant,” “A liar,” “Retarded,” or “Gay.” He most recently wrote under a video from the recent World Series: “Retard strength."
In response to a post from Harris telling voters to "trust women" to make their own decisions about their health care, French wrote: "There are just some things where you can't trust women TBH."
French has previously said that he aims to “make Tarrant County inhospitable for Democrats," who he has also accused of trying to “rid the earth of the white race.” He came under fire in August after trying and failing to pressure local Republican election officials to close college polling locations, explicitly stating that it was because young voters historically have "voted with Democrats."
“These people are dishonest,” Gingrich responded. “And so, for them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption. I mean, how do you run a country where you’re walking around saying, ‘Wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives’?”
Gingrich, who cheated on his second wife, then held Democrats responsible for America's moral degeneration. “I mean, what kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed? If you think about it at that level, it is astonishing, the decay," he said, before claiming that the "decay" is why Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who reportedly maintained at least three romantic liaisons outside of his marriage with Cheryl Hines, left the Democratic Party and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Long before the [Julia] Roberts ad aired, Gingrich had been using extreme rhetoric to describe the supposed Democratic unraveling of American society. During the 1990 midterm elections, a group led by Gingrich issued pamphlets among Republicans encouraging them to label their opponents with words like "destroy," "collapse," "traitors," "decay" and "sick" as a key mechanism of persuasion. In his interview with Hannity, Gingrich pulled out "sick" three times in less than 10 seconds.
“Instead of having a dignity and patriotism and a sense of morality, these are really sick people,” Gingrich continued. “And the more you watch them, to say, ‘Oh, why don’t you lie to your husband?’ as a publicly advocated ad? That is sick! And I think we ought to have the courage to say this is a sick, dishonest party.”
Former President Donald Trump is suing CBS for $10 billion over an interview with Kamala Harris that aired on "60 Minutes" earlier this month.
The 19-page lawsuit filed Thursday alleges that the network committed “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” by editing down a handful of Harris’s responses to interview questions. In addition to the massive sum, Trump's team is requesting an order that the network release the unedited interview in full.
Trump has fumed over the "60 Minutes" interview for most of this month, alleging foul play after the network aired two different portions of an answer to a question about the war in Gaza on "Face The Nation" and their flagship newsmagazine program. In the lawsuit, his attorneys claimed that CBS deceptively edited the vice president's "word salad" to harm Trump's election chances.
“CBS’s distortion of the '60 Minutes' interview damaged President Trump’s fundraising and support values by several billions of dollars, particularly in Texas,” Trump’s attorneys argued in the lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Texas [Amarillo Division].
(Emphasis added)
Donald Trump on Tuesday declared himself the “father of IVF,” a fertility treatment that has come under threat following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It’s unclear what precisely the former president meant when he made the comment at a Fox News town hall in battleground Georgia that was billed as focusing on women’s issues and had an all-female audience. But he has repeatedly returned to the issue – talking up his support for IVF – on the campaign trail, where he has given a long series of confusing or contradictory answers about his stance on abortion.
“We really are the party for IVF,” Trump told moderator and Fox News host Harris Faulkner on “The Faulkner Focus.” “We want fertilization, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favor.”
About an hour into the event, someone asked a question about a state bill addressing discrimination. The candidates were each given two minutes to answer, and when it was Carter-Goodheart’s turn, she pushed back on earlier comments that suggested discrimination is not a major issue in Idaho.
She said state hate crime laws are weak, and noted that the neo-nazi group Aryan Nations made northern Idaho its home base for many years. She also talked about being the only candidate there who was a person of color.
“I pointed out that just because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” she said. “I was making my statement, and then he shot up out of his seat and said, ‘I’m so sick of your liberal (expletive). Why don’t you go back to where you came from?’”
The Nez Perce Tribe has lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest for more than 11,500 years, including the area where Kendrick is located. The northern edge of its reservation, while only a small fraction of the tribe’s historical territory, is less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall where the forum was held.
“It was like slow motion,” Carter-Goodheart said. “I just remember thinking, ‘Go back to where you came from’? That’s within miles of where this forum is taking place. We have literal plots of land that are being leased out to family farms nearby.”
In his Facebook post, Foreman called the incident a “quintessential display of race-baiting” and said the Democratic attendees made personal attacks and “proclaimed Idaho to be a racist state.”
“Well, here is a news flash for the lefties out there. There is no systemic racism in America or Idaho,” Foreman said. “Idaho is a great state — the best in the Union!”
He then added an attack on supporters of abortion rights, saying: “And furthermore, it is immoral and against the law of God to kill unborn babies in the womb. You do not have any right to murder the unborn. There is no such thing as your self-proclaimed ‘Women’s Reproductive Rights.’ There is no such body of rights in the state or federal constitutions. And we don’t do designer rights in Idaho.”
“This is about a culture clash,” Rabbi Cary Kozberg, who leads Temple Sholom, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We, as the citizens of Springfield, are being disenfranchised.”
Like Trump, J.D. Vance and others who have taken aim at Springfield’s immigrant population, Kozberg says he believes the new arrivals — most of whom are in the country legally — are changing the city’s character for the worse.
“Haiti is not known for its, shall we say, adherence to Western civilized values,” Kozberg said.
The comments might sound jarring coming from a rabbi ordained by the Reform movement. Reform Jewish congregations and rabbis have been among the most outspoken opponents of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies stretching back across the more than nine years since he entered politics. During Trump’s presidency, Reform Jews protested against his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, rallied across the United States in support of refugees and lobbied to support “Dreamers,” young adults who as children were brought to the country illegally by their parents. Many cited their own families’ immigrant histories as a reason to oppose Trump.
Trump has for years made the claim that American Jews who mostly vote for Democrats are mentally ill, and this year, he has taken to saying that Jews who vote for Democrats need to “have their head examined.” He has also repeatedly said Israel will be destroyed if he loses the election, a prediction he repeated Thursday.
But in this speech, he also said Jews would be at fault if he loses, citing the low percentage of Jewish voters who have historically supported him. He referenced a poll he said he saw showing that he could receive 40% of the Jewish vote — which itself would be a marked increase for him from 2016 and 2020.
“I will put it to you very simply and gently. I really haven’t been treated right, but you haven’t been treated right, because you’re putting yourself in great danger, and the United States hasn’t been treated right,” he said. “The Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss if I’m at 40%. Think of it, that means 60% are voting for Kamala.”
The speech was one of two Trump gave to Jewish audiences in Washington on Thursday. He also spoke at the Israeli American Council’s conference following the “Fighting Antisemitism” event.
Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he wrote.
Those reports are largely based on social media postings that were picked up by national figures including Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk over the weekend.
“He’s definitely going to interfere in this election,” the Fox News host claimed, pulling rhetoric often used by Trump.
“That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny [producer on The Five] to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate,” Watters told viewers. “This time we will dig deep and find out what really happened.”
Co-host Greg Gutfeld intervened saying that the producer must get his passport, before Watters retorted: “To go to Kenya.”
“I meant to Hawaii, just to see him do it. Ask him what the exchange rate is for the Hawaiian dollar,” Gutfield sniggered.
Biden’s latest push for Supreme Court “reform” is merely an extension of this liberal frustration at an independent judiciary that follows the Constitution and applies the laws as written.
Reparations from slavery and black victimization is about to be shoved down our throats for the most wretched holiday in America," said Gomez in the video. "BLM raised millions. And what did they do for Black lives? It is outrageous to see people ask you for reparations, even though they never went through slavery. These ungrateful people should be celebrating because they were born in the greatest nation to ever exist.
Here's a tip; If you don't like America, kindly, get the f[uck] out.
The notion that tariffs are a tax on US consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party.
School officials in Florida have banned a book about book banning.
The Indian River County School Board voted to remove "Ban This Book" by Alan Gratz from its shelves in a meeting last month, overruling its own district book-review committee's decision to keep it.
The children's novel follows a fictional fourth grader who creates a secret banned books locker library after her school board pulled a multitude of titles off the shelves.
Indian River County School Board members said they disliked how it referenced other books that had been removed from schools and accused it of "teaching rebellion of school board authority," as described in the formal motion to oust it.
The book, which had been in two Indian River County elementary schools and a middle school, was challenged by Jennifer Pippin. She's the head of the area's local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national conservative group that has become one of the loudest advocates for removing books they deem inappropriate.
The Colorado GOP’s mass email titled “God Hates Pride,” read, in part, “The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children.”
The message to Colorado Republicans was headlined with an image reading “God Hates Flags,” a nod to the anti-gay slur on the picket signs of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.
The party’s message was signed by chairman Dave Williams. A post from the Colorado Republican Party on X, formerly Twitter, read simply, “Burn all the #pride flags this June.”
Speaking outside the Manhattan courthouse where his trial unfolded over several weeks, Trump blamed Jewish billionaire George Soros, invoking a trope that Jewish organizations have denounced as leading to antisemitic violence.
Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, said the real verdict would come on Nov. 5, Election Day.
Voters “know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here,” said Trump, who is the presumptive Republican candidate for president. “You have a Soros-backed D.A. and the whole thing, I didn’t do anything wrong, I am a very innocent man.”
Similar concerns are raised by a Monday report in the Law Dork newsletter, which published a disclosure form documenting two stock transactions that Alito made on Aug. 14, 2023. On that day, per the form, Alito sold between $1,000 and $15,000 of stock in Anheuser-Busch and bought between $1,000 and $15,000 of stock in Molson Coors. Why is this significant? Because Anheuser-Busch makes Bud Light beer, and August 2023 was the height of the backlash against Bud Light for having engaged in a promotional transaction with social media personality Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman. Molson Coors makes Miller Light and Coors Light, Bud Light’s competitors.
Selling BUD and buying TAP at the time would not have had much value as an investment decision. (As it stands today, it would have been a money-losing move, with Molson Coors having lost about $10 per share in value while Anheuser-Busch has gained the same amount.) Your correspondent is not a registered financial adviser but understands that it is generally not considered advisable to rack up transaction fees selling and buying relatively modest amounts of stock in individual companies; the justice’s other disclosures do not portray him as a particularly active trader.
What seems more likely is that Alito—or the enigmatic Mrs. Alito—made the beer conglomerate swap in order to make a political point about an issue that had become a controversy thanks to the furious viral efforts of right-wing media figures like Kid Rock and “Libs of TikTok” proprietor Chaya Raichik.
US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decried “the nastiness and the lies” he and his wife Ginni have “had to endure” in recent years.
“There’s certainly been a lot of negativity for my wife and I in the last few years,” Thomas said Friday at a conference of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Point Clear, Alabama. “But we choose not to focus on that.”
Thomas was the focus of controversy over Supreme Court ethics in 2023, after reports emerged that he accepted luxury travel via yacht and private jet from billionaire businessman and conservative political donor Harlan Crow without disclosing the gifts publicly. The justice also sold real estate including his childhood home in Georgia to Crow and failed to include those deals in his annual financial disclosures. ProPublica received a Pulitzer Prize on May 6 for its role in uncovering the financial connections.
On Friday, Thomas recounted a conversation with a friend during a walk around his neighborhood years ago. “That’s before they started attacking my friends,” Thomas said. “I hope I still have some.”
Thomas also described Washington as a place where “people pride themselves in being awful.”
“It is a hideous place as far as I’m concerned,” Thomas said.
“It’s one of the reasons we like RVing,” he added. “You get to be around regular people who don’t pride themselves in doing harmful things merely because they have the capacity to do it or because they disagree.”
Many of Truth Social’s investors say they’re in it for the long haul. Todd Schlanger, an interior designer at a furniture store in West Palm Beach who said Trump had been one of his customers, said he’s invested about $20,000 in total and is buying new shares every week.
Schlanger said he now watches his stock performance every day hoping for positive signs. In a Truth Social post last week, he encouraged “everyone who supports Donald Trump and Truth [Social to] buy a share everyday” and asked, “Do you think we have hit bottom?” (The stock has slid about 25 percent since that post.)
He suspects the recent drops in share price have been the result of “stock manipulation” from an “organized effort” to make the company look bad. There’s no proof of such a campaign, but Schlanger is convinced. “It’s got to be political,” he said, from all the “liberals that are trying to knock it down.”
In written dissents, Alito and Thomas said the case presents important questions of free speech that have divided lower courts. “There is fierce debate over how best to help minors with gender dysphoria,” Thomas wrote…
In Thomas’s five-page dissent on Monday, he said Washington’s ban [on conversion therapy for minors] had “silenced one side of this debate” by restricting the First Amendment rights of medical professionals. “Licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment. The Ninth Circuit set a troubling precedent by condoning this regime,” Thomas wrote.
Lee quoted a post from former Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney that contained footage of the Capitol attack, writing, “Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that—and nothing else. It’s the other stuff—what you deliberately hid from us—that we find so upsetting. Nice try.”
He then added, “P.S. How many of these guys are feds? (As if you’d ever tell us).”
Then on Saturday, Lee quoted a post from a Republican former West Virginia legislator Derrick Evans who asked if an image from a Jan. 6 video inside the Capitol shows a rioter “flashing a badge?”
“If so, this would prove there were undercover federal agents disguised as MAGA,” Evans wrote.
Lee quoted Evans’ post and wrote, “I can’t wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing. I predict that, as always, his answers will be 97% information-free.”
You might pause and wonder, is the person behind the account with the handle @BasedMikeLee really a U.S. senator? But it is. Lee confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune in 2022 that the account is his.
The man pictured with the alleged badge is Trump supporter Kevin Lyons, who is shown in a separate photo carrying a vape in his hand. Twitter appended two fact checks to the tweets, writing that Lyons “is not a police officer and is not holding a badge. He is carrying a vape and a photograph and wallet stolen from Pelosi’s office.”
Even if Lyons were a federal agent, he would certainly be going to great lengths to disguise his affiliation. Lyons is currently serving a four-year prison sentence for his actions in the Capitol, which include stealing a wallet and taking a framed photo of the late Rep. John Lewis from then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
And when the Washington Post reached out to the Trump campaign to respond to criticisms that these comments echoed the rhetoric of Nazi and fascist leaders, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, replied defiantly, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” [Note [[in original]]: In a puzzling move, the Trump campaign later tried to amend the statement to replace the phrase “entire existence” with “sad, miserable existence.”]
I will not bow to the vile and disgusting liberal McCarthyism that seeks to destroy the supreme court simply because it follows the constitution rather than their political agenda
“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it for a reason,” Trump told am amped-up crowd of supporters at a sports complex in Derry, New Hampshire. ”We’ve got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with. They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country.”
North Carolina’s new $30 billion state budget contains a provision that gives extraordinary investigative powers to a partisan oversight committee co-chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R).
The Joint Legislative Committee on Government Operations — or Gov Ops for short — is empowered to seize “any document or system of record” from anyone who works in or with state and local government during its investigations. The rule applies to contractors, subcontractors, and any other non-state entity “receiving, directly and indirectly, public funds,” including charities and state universities.
Moreover, Gov Ops staff will be authorized to enter “any building or facility” owned or leased by a state or non-state entity without a judicial warrant. This includes the private residences of subcontractors and contractors who run businesses out of their homes, lawmakers say.
Alarmingly, public employees under investigation will be required to keep all communication and requests “confidential.” They cannot alert their supervisor of the investigation nor consult with legal counsel. Violating this rule “shall be grounds for disciplinary action, including dismissal,” the law reads. Those who refuse to cooperate face jail time and fines of up to $1,000. In the event that Gov Ops searches a person’s home, these rules mean that the person 1) must keep the entry a secret, 2) cannot seek outside help (unless necessary for fulfilling the request, the law says), and 3) could face criminal charges if Gov Ops deems them uncooperative.
Moore and Berger claim these new rules are benign and necessary to exercise oversight of state funds. But Democrats and other critics say the changes turn Gov Ops into a “secret police force,” warning that the new policies have far-reaching implications.
While much of America enjoyed a relaxing Labor Day weekend of cookouts and beach trips, X (formerly known as Twitter) owner Elon Musk was doubling down on his absurd claims that the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish nonprofit, had somehow tanked the website he personally ran into the ground.
The accusations began last week, after ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt had a meeting with X CEO Linda Yaccarino to discuss the prevalence of hate speech on the platform. This kicked off a trending hashtag campaign, #BanTheADL, predicated on the groundless idea that the organization has stifled free speech on X (and should therefore have their account removed). But the tag, promoted by known antisemites and white supremacists, generated a slew of hateful content. When Musk proved receptive to the movement and chimed in to allege that “ADL has tried very hard to strangle X/Twitter,” he did so in reply to Keith Woods, an antisemitic YouTuber affiliated with notorious racists Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes.
By Saturday, Musk was mulling a poll on whether to suspend the ADL and tweeting that it had been “hijacked by the woke mind virus.” He returned to the topic on Monday, once again interacting with Woods and escalating his rhetoric against the group, blaming them for the preponderance of antisemitism on X and insisting that they were out to destroy the website. “Since the acquisition, The @ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic,” he complained.
From there, Musk began spinning out even more outrageous claims of sabotage, tweeting that a 60 percent plummet in U.S. advertising revenue for the site was “primarily due to pressure” from the ADL. (In fact, brands have tended to blame Musk himself for their departure.) Multiple times, he threatened a defamation suit against the organization, at one point calculating that they had cut his company’s value in half, making them liable for a loss of some $22 billion. This back-of-the-envelope math, dubious on its face, also seems to derive from the $44 billion price tag of Musk’s Twitter acquisition, and even he has said he was “obviously overpaying” at that price.
In one of the most striking tangents of the night, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy even advocated for reopening “mental health institutions” that have closed over the decades as the country sought to cut costs (starting in the Reagan administration) and tried — but has largely failed — to invest in more humane home- and community-based services. He framed putting more people with mental health problems into those institutions as one of the most important ways to address crime.
“Just over the same period that we have closed mental health institutions, we have seen a spike in violent crime. Do we have the spine to bring them back?” he said. “I think we should. As president, I will.”
I have interviewed people who were subjected to the cruel treatment that was often commonplace in the mental health asylums of old. The new mental health paradigm is focused much more on treating people where they are. While the US has struggled to erect a sufficient mental health system given the scale of the country’s needs, few people who work in the field would argue that a return to the institutions of that era is the recipe for fixing our mental health crisis.
But Ramaswamy, the biggest non-Trump sensation of the GOP primary so far, does. He even implicitly allowed that “drugging up people in those psychiatric institutions with Zoloft and Seroquel” would be part of the program (but not the only part; he also wants a return to the patriotism, faith, and family that he believes constitutes the American character).
At a dinner, Ramaswamy told the audience that the public could handle the “truth” about the Capitol riot. Hendrickson later asked him what that “truth” was, obviously understanding that Ramaswamy was generally winking at conspiracy theories like those elevated by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Ramaswamy shrugged, offering a just-asking-questions response about the unsupported idea that government agents were involved.
“Then, suddenly,” Hendrickson wrote, “he was talking about 9/11.”
“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” Ramaswamy said. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 Commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.” Hendrickson pressed him on this, asking the candidate if he was actually uncertain about culpability for the attacks. “I mean, I would take the truth about 9/11,”
Ramaswamy replied. “I am not questioning what we — this is not something I’m staking anything out on. But I want the truth about 9/11.” He was going to say he wasn’t just asking questions, but, of course, he was.
“I’m pissed at these over and over and over again, if they’re indictments, it’ll be the fourth indictment of Donald Trump” Mr Cruz, who lost the Republican nomination for president to Mr Trump in 2016, said. “This is disgraceful. Our country’s over 200 years old. We’ve never once indicted a former president, or a candidate or a leading candidate for president and this is Joe Biden and this is the Democrats weaponizing the justice system because they're afraid of the voters.”
Fielding a series of conspiratorial rapid-fire questions from from Stein, Ramaswamy declared of the 1969 Apollo moon landing “I have no evidence to suggest it was fake, so I’m gonna say it was real.”
He was less sure, however, when Stein asked if 9/11 was an “inside job, or exactly what the government tells us.”
Ramaswamy’s reply delighted Stein:
I don’t believe the government has told us the truth. Again, I’m driven by evidence and data. What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government does tell us. I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary, but do I believe everything the government told us about it? Absolutely not. Do I believe the 9/11 Commission? Absolutely not.
“Yeah, 9/11 Commission lied,” agreed Stein.
Ramaswamy, who professed to form his opinions on the basis of evidence before expressing an opinion he said he had no evidence for, explained his answer later to Semafor’s Shelby Talcott.
“I think there have long been unanswered questions about who knew about it in the Saudi government. That’s what I was getting at,” said Ramaswamy who told Talcott that he doesn’t believe the attacks were an “inside job.”
To explain the discrepancy in his answers, Ramaswamy cited the fact that “Some guy who is a comedian was spouting off questions about the moon landing not being real before that.”
Ramaswamy is presently in third place in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls of the GOP primary.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has appeared to suggest that an announcement about the fate of the missing Titan submersible was somehow planned to distract from accusations against the president’s son Hunter Biden.
“If the U.S. Navy suspected that the Titan Submersible imploded just hours after it began its voyage, why did the Coast Guard wait until Thursday—the same day the IRS whistleblowers testified before Congress—to make their announcement to the public?” asked the senator in a Friday night tweet.
Authorities searching for the Titan said Thursday afternoon that the vessel seemed to suffer a “catastrophic” failure not long after launching into the North Atlantic on Sunday, killing all aboard. It took several days to mobilize high-tech equipment and locate any sign of the sub. After a debris field on the ocean floor turned out to be remnants of the Titan, the U.S. Navy revealed that it had detected what was likely the sound of the vessel imploding Sunday, although the Navy said it could not be sure at the time.
Also on Thursday, the GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee convened behind closed doors and voted to release IRS whistleblower testimony criticizing a federal investigation into Joe Biden’s son.
The interviews with the two whistleblowers had taken place weeks ago, not the same day as the Titan announcement, as Blackburn suggested.
US Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana recently advocated for libraries to be replaced with “church-owned” alternatives. “Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding,” he tweeted. “We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”
Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.
In an interview with Swiss journalist Darius Rochebin, Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye said that former Soviet countries "have no effective status in international law."
“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the effective status because there is no international agreement to materialize their status of a sovereign country,” he said.
“He denies the very existence of countries like Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, etc.,” Antoine Bondaz, a China expert at the Paris-based think-tank Foundation for Strategic Research, wrote on Twitter.
Also, when asked whether he thinks Crimea belongs to Ukraine, the ambassador said, "it depends on how you perceive the problem," adding that "it's not that simple." He also said Crimea was "Russian at the beginning," without specifying what he meant by beginning.
Ukraine has not yet commented on the issue.
On the other hand, Sen. Mike Lee has loudly defended Thomas from criticism, calling the Justice a “hero” and saying he has done nothing wrong.
Lee is now attempting to fundraise off the Thomas scandal. Last week, Lee sent a fundraising email titled “Stand with Clarence Thomas.”
“The hypocritical woke Left is at it once again with their latest smear attacks against Justice Clarence Thomas,” the email reads.
The email accuses Thomas’ critics of targeting him because he stands in the way of “advancing their radical agenda” before making his fundraising pitch about protecting the Supreme Court.
“The need to retake the Senate majority and protect the Court from being manipulated, warped, and taken over by radical leftists is greater than ever,” the message says. The email then directs recipients to a landing page where they can show their support for Thomas by providing their cellphone number and email to the Lee campaign. After signing up, users are asked to donate to Lee’s campaign.
Both Lee and [Mitt] Romney have taken campaign donations from Crow. The Texan gave Lee $16,800 for his 2016 and 2022 reelection bids. He kicked in $5,400 to Romney’s 2018 Senate campaign. For his 2012 presidential run, Crow donated $5,000 directly to Romney’s campaign and gave $2.3 million to super PACs that supported his White House bid.
The top Republican in Tennessee’s House called Thursday’s protests over gun violence at the Tennessee Capitol an “insurrection,” drawing comparisons to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, made the comments during an appearance on the Hal Show on 98.7 FM.
“Two of the members, Reps. (Justin) Jones and (Gloria) Johnson, have been very vocal about Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., about what that was,” Sexton said. “What they did today was at least equivalent, maybe worse, depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the capitol.”
House Democratic leaders on Friday said Sexton is trying to “change the narrative” and demanded Republicans issue an apology for referring to parents and children who went to the Capitol as “insurrectionists.”
More than a thousand people, including many teenagers, showed up to the Tennessee Capitol calling for lawmakers to address gun violence after six people were killed — including three children — in a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
Protesters started their rally in front of the State Capitol at War Memorial Plaza at 8 a.m. They then proceeded to the statehouse shortly afterward, entering in an orderly manner and passing through a security point operated by Tennessee State Troopers.
The demonstrations in Nashville on Thursday were not violent, and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security said no arrests were made, no use of force incidents were reported and no property was damaged.
A public service video featuring a Uyghur actor who portrays a “black-hearted drug dealer” preying on Chinese women recently went viral in China.
But researchers and activists have criticized the choice of a Uyghur for the role, saying it plays on old racist tropes about Uyghur men, who have historically been victims of drug trafficking rather than perpetrators.
“I’m a black-hearted drug dealer, but I’d never tell you this,” the actor, Turghunjan Mehmet, says to the camera from a dimly-lit room.
“I’d never tell you that I’d package methaqualone as candy and give it to you,” he says. “Its street name is ‘Buddha’s Virtue.’ It can trigger severe coma and lethal respiratory failure.”
The camera shows him giving the candy to an apparently Han Chinese woman in a coffee shop.
[Squaw Valley, California was renamed Yokuts Valley]
Nathan Magsig, Fresno County Supervisor for District 5, was none too happy about it. By 1 p.m. he issued a “clarification” to readers of the Facebook group “Squaw Valley: The Original 93675” that, in actuality, muddied the waters. After reporting that the [United States Board of Geographic Names]’s decision about Yokuts Valley, Magsig stoked white grievance and anger with falsehoods:
▪ Magsig claimed that the USBGN “decided to ignore the comments and resolutions by my office and the residents of Sq— Valley.” Not true! The USBGN carefully considered everything that Magsig had submitted (at the board’s request) — and weighed them with considerations from all interested parties. Carefully considering is not “ignoring.”
▪ Magsig claimed the USBGN “does not have the authority to name recognized locations” that are not on federal land. Not true! In September of this year the USBGN renamed over 650 places, not just federally owned lands, that previously had had “squaw” in their names. Furthermore, the USBGN worked closely with the California Advisory Council on Geographical Names, which had plenty of local input. The implication that the USBGN’s decision was arbitrary and without local input is manifestly false.
▪ Magsig claimed that he expected the California Legislature also to “ignore” his office’s comments and resolutions. Not true! While the Legislature does have the authority to change place names, in the case of Sq— Valley, this is not a future decision. AB 2022 already became law (past tense) in November. And the CACGN has already selected “Yokuts Valley” as the replacement name. It is ironic that Magsig complained about being “ignored,” while for two years he blocked requests from the local Indigenous community (and others) to get a hearing on this issue; he has dismissed the statements of Indigenous leaders that the word “squaw” is a derogatory and racist slur; and he has refused to acknowledge the fact that genocide cleared the way for white settlement of this region.
"I'm fine with Trump not tweeting. The important thing is that Twitter correct a grave mistake in banning his account, despite no violation of the law or terms of service," Musk said in a tweet. "Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America."
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted Saturday night. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Security chief Chris Tang told lawmakers that 517 people under the age of 18 had been prosecuted in connection with the 2019 protests by that date, adding that youths judged to hold "extreme ideological views" had been sent for "re-education."
"At present, all young persons in custody are required to receive Chinese-style marching training," Tang told the Legislative Council on Oct. 26.
"The Correctional Services Department emphasizes strict discipline training for young persons in custody, hoping to make them understand the importance of discipline and abiding by the law," he said.
"Juvenile inmates trained under the Rehabilitation Centres Ordinance are ... subjected to strict disciplinary training and hard physical training, to enable them to understand the cost of crime, and to reflect on their own misdeeds," he said.
Inmates are also required to undergo patriotic education and activities to "enhance their national identity, to instill the correct values ... and to help them rediscover meaning in life," Tang said.
They also take classes in "moral and civic education" and "national security law education," programs that have been imposed on children and university students across Hong Kong since the National Security Law sparked a citywide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition from July 2020.
"The Correctional Services Department will assign a dedicated case manager to assess these persons in custody to identify the special rehabilitation needs of each person in custody, and match each person in custody according to the three principles of the above-mentioned rehabilitation program," Tang said.
Some 160 property owners have signed a petition opposing this Rogerdale Place stop, claiming it would destroy their quality of life. They assert that a bus stop would draw strangers into their close-knit community who would then park illegally, litter their roads, create hazardous conditions for their children and pets, and lower their property values. What is making them really angry and frustrated, they've said, is that the the county transit and commuter services division is moving forward with their plan to keep this stop without considering the feelings or the input of the affected neighborhood. They say a county survey carried out in 2019 was flawed and should be redone. That survey elicited 56 responses for a bus stop of which two explicitly called for a bus stop outside the community, that got positive responses for a bus stop asked whether a bus stop should be located within or without a community.
That message was delivered forcefully and vociferously at an Oct. 26 community meeting that Supervisor Matthew Letourneau, R-Dulles, called to assuage their concerns. His explanations were largely drowned, and met with disdain and jeers, especially when he said "We are at this point where we can't undo [the service]."
Letourneau's explanation that the bus service would get more cars off the road and alleviate congestion also were ignored. His assertion that some residents told him that they were pressured to sign out of fear of angering their neighbors was greeted with booing.
The Dulles district supervisor, who also sits of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro), was joined by Scott Gross, manager of Loudoun County government's commuter and transit services division, whose explanations and rationale for why this bus stop would not pose safety concerns to the community also were shouted down.
Shouts of "skip the stop" and "we don't want a bus stop in our community" peppered the hour-long meeting that at times seemed more like a market brawl. Calls for holding another survey of the residents were turned down by Letourneau who said "we can't redo every survey for every community. That's not how it is done."
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is the latest Republican politician to insist that kids are using litter boxes in schools as part of a rant attacking transgender youth.
During a recent tele-town hall event, Johnson was questioned by a caller who claimed that his niece told him that her school had provided litter boxes for students who believe they are cats. The caller, who identified himself as a former Democrat, wanted to know whether the senator had heard about things like that happening and whether Johnson would support a federal law similar to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
One of the things that COVID did was that parents were looking over their kids’ shoulders and they became aware of the indoctrination of our children by radical leftists within our education system,” he said.
He went on to claim that he’d heard “on a radio talk show” that England’s National Health Service (NHS) has declared that “transgenderism” is “just a phase for children” and that we shouldn’t “accommodate the phase.” Johnson continued his misinformed rant saying that children should not be given “gender-blocking drugs” or receive “sex change operations.” In reality, gender-affirming genital surgeries are not performed on minors.
Johnson concluded by claiming that teachers are “pushing this stuff on our kids.”
Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event, Alito said the release of his draft opinion made the justices presumed to be in the majority “targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
The draft from Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was published by POLITICO on May 2.
“It was a grave betrayal of trust by somebody,” Alito, who authored both the draft and the final majority opinion, told the Heritage Foundation’s John G. Malcolm.
The draft proved substantially similar to the final majority opinion that was issued in June. That ruling overturned the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which had established a right to abortion throughout the country.
“It certainly changed the atmosphere at the court,” Alito said of the unauthorized disclosure of the draft.
Saturday’s Donald Trump rally in Nevada naturally featured some extremist comments, chief among them a false—and racist—tirade from Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who claimed that Democrats are in favor of “reparations” because they are “pro-crime.” Tuberville’s speech also called for an end to food stamps, education reform, and closing the border. “No, they’re not soft on crime, they’re pro-crime. They want crime!” Tuberville said to the fringe crowd. “They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!” The remarks at an event intended to promote Stop the Steal loons like Adam Laxalt, a Senate candidate, drew the ire of an army of critics on social media. Among them was MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who likened the Alabama senator’s comments to the rhetoric of segregationist figures like George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
“It goes without saying that everyone is free to express disagreement with our decisions and to criticize our reasoning as they see fit,” Alito, who penned the decision reversing Roe v. Wade last term, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “But saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday defended hosting a Saudi-funded tournament at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, by casting doubt on any connection between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Asked to respond to harsh criticism from families of Sept. 11 victims who are urging Americans to protest the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament, Trump suggested there was still uncertainty surrounding the attacks.
“Well, nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have,” Trump said.
"If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can't get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand," Cruz said on his Verdict podcast.
"Maybe you weren't gonna vote in November," he added, "and suddenly you just got 20 grand, and if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station, or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people."
[Belarus is allowing Russia transit its territory to attack Urkaine]
The official message to Ukraine was posted on the President of Belarus’ official website, stating:
“Congratulations to the people of Ukraine on Independence Day.”
“President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has congratulated the people of Ukraine on Independence Day.”
“I am convinced that today’s contradictions will not be able to destroy the centuries-old foundation of sincere good-neighborly relations between the peoples of the two countries,” the message reads.
“Belarus will continue to stand up for the preservation of accord, development of friendly and mutually respectful contacts at all levels.”
“The Belarusian head of state wished Ukrainians peaceful skies, tolerance, courage, strength and success in restoring decent life.”