Kamala’s Medical Report Includes Skin Rash, Highly Contagious Disease

Julianna Frieman
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Kamala’s Medical Report Includes Skin Rash, Highly Contagious Disease

(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Concern over the fitness and welfare of Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris grew following reports that she was afflicted several medical conditions, including chronic rash and another disease known for being highly contagious.

Harris has a “notable” history of urticaria, according to the report, which is another word for hives. Urticaria is a rash consisting of itchy, red bumps on the skin. It can be triggered by food, medications and other irritants, according to Mayo Clinic.

Her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, highlighted the issues after obtaining a copy of her medical report, which was publicly released on Saturday.

Despite the conditions, the vice president’s physician, Joshua R. Simmons, wrote and signed a letter saying Harris was in “excellent health,” which she leveraged as a political attack against Trump.

Simmons wrote that wrote that the hives were “sporadic and transient” and were not triggered by one particular irritant.

However, the GOP nominee dug into the vice president’s medical report and revealed his findings in a series of Truth Social posts late Tuesday.

“I have just seen Kamala’s Report, and it is not good,” Trump wrote. “According to her Doctor’s Report, she suffers from ‘urticaria,’ defined as ‘a rash of round, red welts on the skin that itch intensely, sometimes with dangerous swelling.’”

Trump also drew attention to Harris’s “allergic rhinitis and allergic conjunctivitis,” which he referred to as “a very messy and dangerous situation.”

The latter condition—better known by its household name, “pink eye”—is considered to be highly contagious.

“These are deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning,” Trump wrote.

“Maybe that is why she cannot answer even the simplest of questions asked by 60 Minutes, and others,” he added. “What’s that all about? I don’t have these problems….”

Trump’s counterattack about Harris’s conditions followed recent efforts by the Democrat campaign and its media allies to turn the 78-year-old president’s physical fitness into its talking point du jour.

Harris has been sinking in several recent polls and now finds herself even with—or trailing—Trump, according to many of the key indicators, with just weeks until Election Day.

She has failed to gain traction on articulating key policy distinctions between herself and President Joe Biden, and has been losing key demographics, such as black males.

NBC News’s Kristen Welker bombarded House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday’s Meet the Press with a barrage of questions relating to Trump’s health, including one about his cholesterol levels.

Trump addressed this in his Truth Social post by saying, “she is dying to see my Cholesterol (which is 180!).”

“I am far healthier than Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, but especially, Kamala,” Trump wrote in another post.

Trump wasn’t the only one pushing back on the Harris campaign and leftist media for its sudden concern over a president’s health report.

CNN’s Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and former adviser to George W. Bush, slammed the campaign for its hypocrisy after Democrats spent three years gaslighting the public about President Joe Biden’s physical and mental capabilities

“If I were Harris, I wouldn’t be leaning too heavily into who’s hiding what kind of medical conditions of people who are wanting to be the president given her role in lying about the condition of Joe Biden for the last four years,” Jennings said.

Jennings said Harris’s health report strategy was a dud as she keeps “punching” Trump the same way Democrats have done for years.

Trump made another Truth Social post about his health hours later, saying “there is a real question as to whether or not [Harris] should be running for President!”

“MY REPORT IS PERFECT – NO PROBLEMS!!!” Trump wrote.

Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer also published by the Daily Caller and The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.

Report: Liz Cheney Secretly Pressured J6 Committee’s ‘Star Witness’ to Dump Attorney

Ken Silva
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Report: Liz Cheney Secretly Pressured J6 Committee’s ‘Star Witness’ to Dump Attorney

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Then-January 6th Commission Vice Chair Liz Cheney secretly communicated with the committee’s “star witness,” Cassidy Hutchinson, pressuring her to change lawyers in a possible ethics violation, according to a new report from Just the News.

 Just the News reported on Tuesday that Hutchinson fired her attorney, Stefan Passantino, in 2022, just days after she began communicating with Cheney over the encrypted app Signal. Just the News’s source is the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, which also published a press release on the matter.

Passantino told Just the News that he never authorized Cheney to talk to his client without him present.

“I absolutely had no knowledge at the time that Congresswoman Liz Cheney was communicating with my client behind my back—either directly, through her staff, or through cutouts,” Passantino told Just the News. “I filed suit against Congress over a year ago on these matters and had absolute confidence in my claims at the time I filed them.”

According to Just the News, DC Bar rules state that “a lawyer shall not communicate or cause another to communicate about the subject of the representation with a person known to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the prior consent of the lawyer representing such other person or is authorized by law or a court order to do so.”

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., whose committee uncovered the Cheney-Hutchinson communications, told Just the News that he finds Cheney’s actions unethical—and possibly illegal.

“Not only is communicating with a witness without their attorney present unethical, it undermines the integrity of an investigation,” Loudermilk reportedly said.

“As a licensed attorney, Liz Cheney would have known the ethical and legal issues with this communication,” he said.

“Clearly, Cheney did not want Stefan Passantino representing Hutchinson; as shortly after Cheney and Hutchinson began communicating, Cheney convinced Hutchinson to fire Passantino, and arranged for a new attorney to represent Hutchinson pro-bono. “

Hutchinson would also change her testimony, as has been widely documented.

Specifically, Hutchinson testified on June 28, 2022, that Trump tried to control the steering wheel while being driven to the White House following his Jan. 6 speech. Additionally, she claimed that the former president lunged at another agent.

However, in her previous three transcribed interviews on February 23, 2022, March 7, 2022, and May 17, 2022, she did not mention that interaction, according to a later investiatino from Loudermilk’s committee.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

SELLERS: As ‘Brat Summer’ Fizzles, Kamala-Shilling Media Can Expect an Awful Fall

Ben Sellers
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SELLERS: As ‘Brat Summer’ Fizzles, Kamala-Shilling Media Can Expect an Awful Fall

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) When you step back and look dispassionately at the patterns of behavior, it isn’t hard to see that the Left, as a whole, may be in the throes of a collective mental-health breakdown.

There simply is no parallel to their level of intolerance with exposure to any sort of competing ideas or worldviews.

You don’t see Republicans, for the most part, out destroying the yard signs of Kamala Harris supporters or confronting people angrily over their apparel, no matter how objectionable the Biden–Harris policies may be.

You don’t see Trump officials trying to jail their rivals, ban them from the ballot or censor their speech as a threat to “democracy.”

Nor to assassinate them, for that matter.

And you certainly don’t see Republicans practicing self-immolation to get their point across.

Yet, no matter how many times leftists may be called out on their coquettish, narcissistic tendencies and their crash-and-burn, hubristic impulsivity, there is never any comeuppance.

In fact, it only seems to make them more irrational—and much of that has to do with a mainstream media that has now grown utterly schizophrenic with its cry-bully persecution complex.

In one breath, it can cheerlead horrifying leftist proposals from the likes of Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and others to make serious threats against fundamental First Amendment rights in America.

Meanwhile, the leftist press wants everyone to know about the so-called PRESS Act, which basically gives it the legal blessing to use anonymous sources—a technique often weaponized by corrupt media institutions working in tandem with intelligence agencies and other government entities to selectively launder phony or misleading information like the Russia-collusion hoax and the Hunter Biden laptop hoax into the public.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE

As noted in the past, my own relationship with the values and principles of journalism has been an uneasy one: In a perfect world, I would buy into big ideas like objectivity, transparency, truth-seeking and independence with every ounce of my being. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

I even spent several years teaching students at the high-school and college levels how to do it by the book, hoping that my efforts would help keep alive the embers of a dying practice.

But from very early on in the industry, which I entered into more than two decades ago, it quickly became clear that there was a deep fissure between what those stated values were and the unspoken code of the newsroom.

The field has been infiltrated by radical idealogues who have actively—and in bad faith—subverted those values to undermine them for their own ends, effectively limiting freedom of thought to their own toxic groupthink.

In such a reality, the only way to remain committed to the values of intellectual honesty, fairness and balance is to actively position one’s self as a counternarrative to debunk the dishonesty and reframe the warped perspectives.

That is no easy task, considering these corrupt forces now maintain institutional control, and fancy themselves the arbiters of “truth” and gatekeepers of “ethics.”

In recent lawfare cases, we have seen just how pernicious—and, indeed, evil—this system of two-tiered justice driven by a distorted partisan narrative can be.

That includes the unprecedented prosecution of Tina Peters—a gold-star mother and election whistleblower who sought to expose the manipulation of voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado, during the 2020 election and received an eight-year prison sentence for her efforts.

A MENACE TO SOCIETY

Another shining example of how far overboard purported “watchdog” institutions have gone in failing to regulate their own conduct played out recently with the Society of Professional Journalists, which has fallen into ill-repute in the era of DEI by comically ignoring and undermining its own ethical code on countless occasions.

SPJ’s newly elected president, Emily Bloch, does not inspire confidence that the organization is making any effort—as some journalistic institutions have attempted recently—to right their course after humiliating public setbacks, loss of credibility and, most obviously, industrywide financial failures.

To be sure, the SPJ is still trying to peddle its vaunted Code of Ethics (which has stealthily become woker in recent years) for a few quick dollars wherever it can.

But the SPJ itself has repeatedly ignored those precepts, openly embracing its leftist identity in social media posts, whether through a myopic lack of self-awareness, a brazen lack of shame, or sheer ignorance about what those ethical obligations even mean.

In one particularly egregious post, it recently began promoting stickers with the word “journalist” using the same font and puke-green color palette used by the Kamala Harris campaign—both having been borrowed from a marketing campaign by British pop-star Charli XCX.

When called out on the impropriety, two commenters—both of whom claimed “journalist” in their LinkedIn job titles—coyly attempted to brush off the connection to the Harris campaign.

“This guy doesn’t know about Brat Summer,” wrote Halie Brown, a self-described freelance “journalist” and media “professional” in Orlando.

“Charli XCX did it first, my guy,” wrote Rachel Schneider, a self-described multimedia “journalist” and broadcast personality who has now moved into PR work, in Knoxville, Tenn. 

Most alarming of all, however, was the reaction of Marco Cummings, a digital content producer with the Denver Gazette and SPJ board member—who likes to crow about his “nonpartisanship,” despite being a former Bernie Sanders supporter, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.

Rather than attempt to justify the SPJ’s decision to align itself with the Harris campaign, Cummings simply opted to attack the messenger.

“[I]t seems like there’s a disconnect here,” he sniped.

“It’s ironic to see you questioning journalistic ethics while missing the mark on both research and trends like ‘Brat Summer,’ which any modern journalist with digital and research competencies should be familiar with,” he added. “Bias doesn’t substitute for fact-based analysis. I’d recommend brushing up on SPJ’s Code of Ethics yourself, especially the parts about accuracy and fairness.”

The implications of journalism’s failure—to hold itself ethically accountable either in maintaining any sort of objective independence or any truth-seeking function—have been at the heart of the unraveling we currently are witnessing in western civilization. Whether they are a cause or the symptom of an even larger disorder, it is difficult to say.

However, if the first stage of recovery is acceptance, the Trump-Deranged Left still has a long way to go before it can heal itself, if it ever does.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.

Report: 2nd Failed Assassin Stalked Trump w/ Flight Tracker App

Ken Silva
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Report: 2nd Failed Assassin Stalked Trump w/ Flight Tracker App

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The man who allegedly attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at his Florida golf course last month was able to stalk the former president via a flight tracker app on his phone, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The new detail about Ryan Routh’s alleged assassination plot was tucked in the middle of an NYT article about how Trump is relying on federal agencies for his protection amidst purported threats from Iran.

“Mr. Routh used a flight tracker app on his phone to try to keep abreast of Mr. Trump’s whereabouts, and the evidence collected to date suggests Mr. Routh was more or less stalking the former president,” NYT reported, citing people familiar with the investigation.

Cellphone records cited by the Justice Department indicate Routh traveled to West Palm Beach from Greensboro in mid-August, and that he was near Trump’s golf club and the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence “on multiple days and times” between August 18 and the day of the apparent attempted assassination.

He was arrested on Sept. 15 after a Secret Service agent who was scoping the Trump International Golf Club for potential security threats saw a partially obscured man’s face, and the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle, aimed directly at him. The agent fired at Routh, who sped away before being stopped by officials in a neighboring county.

The Secret Service has said Routh did not fire any shots and never had Trump in his line of sight.

The Justice Department also said that authorities who searched his car found six cellphones, including one that showed a Google search of how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico.

They also found a list with dates in August, September and October and venues where Trump had appeared or was scheduled to, according to prosecutors. A notebook found in his car was filled with criticism of the Russian and Chinese governments and notes about how to join the war on behalf of Ukraine.

The detention memo also cites a book authored by Routh last year in which he lambasted Trump’s approach to foreign policy, including in Ukraine. In the book, he wrote that Iran was “free to assassinate Trump”—and him—for having left the nuclear deal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Pelosi Hasn’t Spoken to Biden Since White House Coup

Ken Silva
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Pelosi Hasn’t Spoken to Biden Since White House Coup

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said on the Politics Weekly America podcast that she hasn’t spoken to President Joe Biden since helping force him to drop out of the 2024 election in July.

“Not since then, no,” she reportedly said when asked if she had spoken to Biden since. “But I’m prayerful about it.”

Pelosi also defended her decision to pressure Biden from running for reelection.

“I think his legacy had to be protected. I didn’t see that happening in the course that it was on, the election was on. My call was just to: ‘Let’s get on a better course.’ He will make the decision as to what that is. And he made that decision. But I think he has some unease because we’ve been friends for decades,” she said.

Pelosi was one of several top Democrat leaders who reportedly met with Biden in the weeks following his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump.

According to Politico, she gave Biden three weeks to decide whether he would withdraw “the easy way or the hard way,” the latter of which entailed having his Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment to declare him unfit for office.

Pelosi, however, denied that she had any direct role in the pressure campaign against Biden.

“I wasn’t asking him to step down,” Pelosi claimed during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. “I was asking for a campaign that would win. And I wasn’t seeing that on the horizon.”

Pelosi also denied that she encouraged others in the party to speak out against Biden.

“People said I was burning up the airwaves. No, I wasn’t,” she claimed.

“The only person that I spoke to about this was the president,” she continued. “Other people called me about what their views were about it, but I rarely even returned a call, much less initiated one.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

N.C. Lt. Gov. Robinson Sues CNN for ‘Malicious Hit Job’

Ken Silva
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N.C. Lt. Gov. Robinson Sues CNN for ‘Malicious Hit Job’

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson announced a lawsuit Tuesday against CNN over its recent report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.

The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a television report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. Robinson announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh.

“CNN and Louis Love Money are responsible for a new low in digital lynching,” the lawsuit stated.

“In a malicious hit job so well timed as to be uncanny, they have published disgusting lies about Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson in what appears to be a coordinated attack aimed at derailing his campaign for governor, and has already inflicted immeasurable harm to his family, his reputation, and his good name.”

CNN based its reporting on data linked to Robinson, including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address. But Robinson said that data had been compromised by multiple breaches.

Therefore, “Any person could have purchased and/or used Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data to create accounts all over the internet,” the lawsuit said.

“As CNN is aware, people who create accounts on websites like NudeAfrica, and AdultFriendFinder prefer not to use their own names and identities for obvious reasons,” it added.”

CNN declined to comment, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.

Robinson, who was trailing Democrat Attorney General Josh Stein in the polls before the CNN piece, pledged last month to fight on following the scandal, reiterating that projections had “consistently underestimated Republican support in North Carolina for several cycles now and with a large portion of the electorate still undecided as we continue to ramp up our efforts across the state.”

Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and well over 50,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

‘DJ’ Trump Holds Impromptu Concert After Town Hall Cut Short

Julianna Frieman
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‘DJ’ Trump Holds Impromptu Concert After Town Hall Cut Short

(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump became “DJ” Trump when he held an impromptu concert Monday evening in Oaks, Pa. after two medical emergencies cut his townhall short.

Trump queued up his playlist and interacted with the crowd as nine songs filled the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds following two unexpected health-related incidents.

The GOP nominee, alongside South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, took questions from audience members on topics including the economy and illegal immigration until he noticed one attendee suffered a medical emergency roughly 30 minutes into the event.

Attendees patriotically sang “God Bless America” as Trump waited patiently for first responders to help his ill supporter, harkening back to the former president’s Oct. 5 do-over rally in Butler, Pa., when Trump and his audience broke out into song after a rallygoer was escorted out for treatment by medical personnel.

While the wait continued at Monday’s townhall, Trump called for “Ave Maria” by Luciano Pavarotti to be played from the loudspeakers. But perhaps it was the late tenor’s soul-rending vibrato in Franz Schubert’s operatic masterpiece, from The Lady of the Lake, that led a second swooning spectator to suffer a medical emergency.

“Let’s not do anymore questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump told the crowd. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right? Isn’t that beautiful?”

Trump kept his audience upbeat as he bobbed and swayed to the tunes of “Time To Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli, “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown and “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People.

“Nobody’s leaving, what’s going on?” the Republican candidate commented as the jam session continued.

Security opened the doors to alleviate the heat inside the venue, Trump said.

The music played for more than 30 minutes, with additional songs including Rufus Wainwright’s rendition of the Leonard Cohen classic “Hallelujah,” Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of the Prince hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Elvis Presley’s “An American Trilogy,” Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” and “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses.

“Something very rare is happening in Pennsylvania right now at the Trump townhall,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung wrote on X. “@realDonaldTrump is unlike any politician in history, and it’s great.”

The Harris campaign quickly jumped on an out-of-context clip of Trump enjoying the music, calling the former president “lost, confused, and frozen on stage” in a post on X.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who previously branded herself as the candidate of “joy,” reposted the same video on her own account implying Trump was the one having a cognitive health episode.

“Hope he’s okay,” she wrote

Left-leaning media outlets ran headlines in lockstep, characterizing Trump’s musical bonding with the audience as a “bizarre town hall episode,” per the Washington Post, or an “odd town hall detour,” per the New York Times.

However, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt countered that the impromptu dance party was what real joy looked like.

ABC News correspondent Terry Moran further debunked claims that Trump had a senior moment, calling the GOP nominee’s musical interlude “almost intimate” and a “good time.”

He noted that the former president mingled with the audience to sign autographs and shake hands.

The episode bore similarities to Trump’s appearances at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he has been known to preside over the dancefloor, according to firsthand accounts—including former North Carolina congressional candidate Bo Hines, who has met Trump on several occasions at Mar-a-Lago, and at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

“The most interesting part of our first meeting was that we got to play DJ with him for about 25 minutes,” Hines said in an exclusive August 2022 interview with Headline USA. “As he likes to tell you, if you’re going to run the greatest club in the world you have to pick the music out that people listen to.”

Harris has tried to incorporate music into her campaign, as well, by using big-name artists to draw crowds when she herself cannot. She was accused in one early rally of busing in homeless residents in Atlanta for a free Megan Thee Stallion performance, during which she functioned as the opening act.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, organizers faced criticism following allegations that they had floated the false rumor that former Destiny’s Child star Beyoncé Knowles would be performing on the final day.

Much to the chagrin of attendees, the event ended after Harris’s acceptance speech, leaving many wondering why they had stayed to endure the long waits at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

Like several other left-wing performers, Knowles did endorse Harris—and, in truly petty form, issued a cease-and-desist order for the Trump campaign to prevent it from using her music. Several other artists have tried doing so, only to find that they do not have the authority to make such demands as the campaign has legally licensed the rights to their songs from the publishing companies that own them.

Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer also published by the Daily Caller and The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Report: House Democrats Holding Secret ‘Tabletop Exercises’ for Jan. 6, 2025

Ken Silva
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Report: House Democrats Holding Secret ‘Tabletop Exercises’ for Jan. 6, 2025

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) CBS reported Tuesday that House Democrats are secretly “gaming out” various scenarios that could take place when Congress meets on Jan. 6, 2025, to certify the winner of the upcoming presidential election.

“I don’t want to get into a lot of specifics because it’s pretty sensitive. And frankly, I don’t want to give people ideas,” Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., told CBS.

CBS painted the Democrats’ secret plans as election fortification efforts—reporting that they’re working to prevent “any attempt to interfere with the Electoral College certification.” One such scenario Democrats are game-planning is if the House doesn’t have a Speaker, CBS reported.

“Keeping in mind the memories of the violence and chaos that engulfed Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and the worsening political fractures that followed, the committee’s Democrats have researched and discussed plans to ensure security is tight, and they’ve begun efforts to debunk emerging conspiracy theories about undocumented migrants voting in federal elections,” CBS reported.

“One vulnerability is proving particularly difficult to measure: What happens if the U.S. House fails to select a speaker by Jan. 6, 2025? … the panel’s Democrats are researching precedent and undertaking tabletop exercises to prepare for efforts by supporters of former President Donald Trump to use such a scenario to overturn election results,” CBS added.

However, CBS’s report should be read in the context of what top House Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said earlier this year, when he remarked that “it’s going to be up to us on Jan. 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified.” He then claimed that lawmakers who refuse to certify Trump’s Electoral College win would need “bodyguards” afterwards.

Raskin was quoted in CBS’s Tuesday report: “The House rules cannot override the constitutional directives. And we just need to make sure that the Constitution is being followed.”

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has designated the upcoming Jan. 6 as a “National Special Security Event” for the first time ever, allowing for significant resources from the federal government, as well as from state and local partners, to be utilized in a guarding the Capitol. The Secret Service will be in charge of security for that day, as per Mayorkas’s order.

Mayorkas’s move follows the Pentagon announcing on Aug. 29 that it will assist the Secret Service for the presidential and vice-presidential campaigns through Inauguration Day 2025.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Poland Now Holds More Gold Than Great Britain

Money Metals News Service
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Poland Now Holds More Gold Than Great Britain

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Poland has joined an elite club. The country has increased its gold reserves to over 400 tons.

According to National Bank of Poland Governor Adam Glapiński, the county holds 420 tons of gold “on behalf of all Poles.”

Glapiński noted that Poland “has thus entered the exclusive club of the world’s largest gold reserve holders.”

Only 10 countries hold more gold than Poland. As Glapiński noted, Poland holds more gold than Great Britain.

The central bank governor has set a goal of increasing the country’s gold holdings to 20 percent of its total reserves.

“Once we achieve this, we will join the ranks of the world’s top economies.”

Poland was the biggest central bank gold buyer in the second quarter. In the last five months, the Polish central bank has accumulated an additional 39 tons of gold. It now holds about 15 percent of its reserves in the yellow metal.

The Polish central bank began aggressively increasing its gold reserve in 2021 when Glapiński announced a plan to buy 100 tons of the yellow metal. The National Bank of Poland reached that goal last fall and continued its buying spree.

When he announced the initial plan to expand its gold reserves, Glapiński said holding gold was a matter of financial security and stability. 

“Gold will retain its value even when someone cuts off the power to the global financial system, destroying traditional assets based on electronic accounting records. Of course, we do not assume that this will happen. But as the saying goes – forewarned is always insured.

“And the central bank is required to be prepared for even the most unfavorable circumstances. That is why we see a special place for gold in our foreign exchange management process.”

Glapiński also pointed out that “Gold is free from credit risk and cannot be devalued by any country’s economic policy. Besides, it is extremely durable, virtually indestructible.” 

Poland’s affinity for gold comes as no surprise, given its history. The county serves as a crossroads between Eastern and Western Europe, and it has seen more than its fair share of war and strife. Memories of German occupation during World War II and Russian domination in the years that followed linger in the Polish psyche.

Mint of Poland head of precious metals trade Marta Bassani-Prusik said gold sales skyrocketed during the pandemic, and the war next door in Ukraine juiced gold sales again “because everybody was afraid of what was happening.”

Many families remember stories about gold coins and jewelry, meaning the difference between life and death during World War II. It bought food and sometimes an escape.

Bassani-Prusik said stories from WWII and the communist occupation make a big impression on many of her clients. 

“They say that they are alive only because of the gold because their grandparents had a gold bar or a gold coin.”

Poland also repatriated 100 tons of gold back in 2019, bringing it home from the Bank of England.

Glapiński said there are “a dozen or so places in Poland … where our reserves are safe.”

Continue

Is the Inflation Monster Still Hiding Under the Bed?

Money Metals News Service
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Is the Inflation Monster Still Hiding Under the Bed?

(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) The so-called grownups tell us everything is fine. The inflation monster is gone now.

Or is it?

Sure, most people don’t believe it’s there, but I think the inflation monster is hiding under the bed. The adults in the room say it’s not there. But kiddos, there are signs — if you look close enough.

The headline number in last week’s September Consumer Price Index (CPI) report provides a false sense of security. Annual price inflation dropped to 2.4 percent, the lowest since February 2021.

Sounds as if we’re perfectly safe lying in our bed, right?

But look and listen a little more closely.

Prices rose 0.2 percent on a monthly basis. That was 0.1 percent higher than expectations and equaled the rate of price increases in August.

Still, not too concerning.

But the core CPI should raise eyebrows.

For the second straight month, core CPI (stripping out more volatile food and energy prices) rose by 0.3 percent, and the annual core inflation number ticked up from 3.2 percent in August to 3.3 percent in September. And if a 0.3 percent increase in core prices becomes a trend, that annualizes to 3.6 percent.

Core CPI has been above 3 percent for 41 months. That’s the longest span since the early 1990s.

Falling energy prices have provided a welcome downward tug on CPI, but they also obscure the reality of inflation. Energy prices dropped -1.9 percent on a monthly basis after falling 0.8 percent the previous month. Gasoline prices plunged -4.0 percent last month and have dropped -15.3 percent over the last year.

This explains why the core CPI rose last month even as the overall inflation rate dropped.

Keep in mind that the CPI doesn’t tell the entire story of inflation. If we simply rely on these government numbers, the monster will remain safely obscured. The government revised the CPI formula in the 1990s so that it understates the actual rise in prices. Based on the formula used in the 1970s, CPI is closer to double the official numbers. So, if the BLS was using the old formula, we’re looking at CPI closer to 6 percent. And using an honest formula, it would probably be worse than that.

Money Supply Is Growing – That’s Inflation!

Properly defined, inflation is an increase in the supply of money and credit. Price inflation is one symptom of this monetary inflation.

And the money supply is growing.

In other words, we are already back in an inflationary environment.

The M2 money supply bottomed one year ago at $20.60 trillion. Since then, it has crept upward. As of August, it was at 21.17 trillion. That’s the highest level since January 2023.

The money supply has grown on a year-over-year basis for five straight months.

M2 is just $548 billion from an all-time high.

As the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and shrunk its balance sheet, the money supply contracted sharply. In fact, it was the largest decline in the money supply since the Great Depression.

While this might seem impressive, it barely put a dent in the massive expansion of the money supply in the years after the 2008 financial crisis and during the pandemic. As Mises Institute senior editor Ryan McMaken noted, the recent contraction of the money supply “only puts a small dent in the huge edifice of newly created money.”

In other words, as aggressive as the Fed’s rate-cutting and balance sheet reduction was, it was a teardrop in the ocean compared to the amount of inflation created during the pandemic, not to mention in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.

The Kobeissi Letter summed it up.

“After a brief decline, the quantity of money in the financial system is surging again, raising concerns about another inflation wave. Is inflation set for a comeback in 2025?”

It’s also notable that drops in the money supply usually precede recessions, but as McMaken pointed out, “Recessions tend not to become apparent until after the money supply has begun to accelerate again after a period of slowing. This was the case in the early 1990’s recession, the Dot-com Bust of 2001, and the Great Recession.”

The resurgence of money supply growth is, by definition, inflation. We are already seeing the result as stock market values increase. Whether this new round of inflationary activity finds its way into consumer prices remains to be seen, but the uptick in core CPI is cause for concern.

The Federal Reserve Has Surrendered to Inflation

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has effectively surrendered to inflation. Money supply growth will likely accelerate further after the central bank’s supersized 50 basis point rate cut in September.

This is a return to looser monetary policy. That means more credit expansion and more money flowing into the economy.

In other words, by declaring victory over price inflation and easing its monetary policy, the Fed is effectively committing to creating more inflation.

Even before the rate cut, the Fed was already winding down the inflation fight.

The central bank loosened monetary policy when it quietly announced that it would begin to taper balance sheet reduction in June.

The balance sheet serves as a direct pipeline to the money supply. When the Fed buys assets – primarily U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities – it does so with money created out of thin air. Those assets go on the balance sheet, and the new money gets injected into the economy.

Again – I can’t emphasize this enough – the expansion of the money supply is, by definition, inflation.

The inflation monster is alive and well. He’s snug as a bug in a rug under the bed, just waiting for the right time to come out and wreak more havoc.

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