(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Former New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, has issued a stern warning to President Joe Biden, emphasizing that the recent Bronx rally by former President Donald Trump should serve as a wake-up call for him and the Democratic Party.
“This is a wake-up call to the Democratic Party, who just seems to think that you can criticize what Trump did four years ago and that that will be enough,” Paterson said during an interview on 77 WABC radio’s The Cats Roundtable with host John Catsimatidis.
“Or that you can try to claim that inflation isn’t as high as it is. All these little things that aren’t going to change people’s minds,” he added.
Paterson’s remarks, first reported by the New York Post, came after Trump held a massive rally in the Bronx, drawing an estimated 25,000 attendees.
“It’s a brilliant political move. You can’t argue with it,” Paterson said, referring to the Trump rally.
Paterson also noted that Trump is within “striking distance” of winning New York. According to the New York Post, the former governor’s comments were about a Siena College poll showing Biden with 47 percent support, compared to Trump’s 38 percent.
While Biden holds a nine-point lead, this is a relatively small margin compared to his 23-point victory in the state in 2020. In Long Island, New York, voters prefer Trump over Biden by a margin of 43 to 40 percent, according to the same poll.
“Political advisors tell you, ‘The public, you have to treat them like geniuses.’ And the geniuses right now are trending where Trump is only 9% behind Biden in New York,” Paterson said. “This is quite an interesting turn of events.”
(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) – Nineteen Republican attorneys general filed a Bill of Complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court, taking legal action against five Democratic-led states.
They argue these five Democratic-led state governments have “brought unprecedented litigation against the nation’s most vital energy companies for alleged ‘climate crisis,’ and they demand billions of dollars in damages. As litigation proceeds in their state courts, California and the other states threatened to impose ruinous penalties and coercive remedies that would affect energy and fuel consumption and production across the country.”
The Republican coalition raises constitutional issues “especially with California’s tactics” and asks the Supreme Court to intervene.
The coalition, led by Alabama, includes Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
They are taking action against California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island, they argue, because of state tort actions these states have taken under their state laws in their state courts that will impact the economies of the 19 states suing. Because the Democratic-led states are using state law to “dictate interstate energy policy,” the Republican AGs asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
“The theory advanced by these states is truly radical: A small gas station in rural Alabama could owe money to the people of Minnesota simply for selling a gallon of gas,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said. “The customer might even be liable too. These states are welcome to enforce their preferred policies within their jurisdiction, but they do not have authority to dictate our national energy policy. If the Supreme Court lets them continue, California and its allies will imperil access to affordable energy for every American. That would threaten our national security and harm millions of Americans already struggling to pay for gas and groceries. To protect Alabama citizens and our constitutional order, we had no choice but to sue.”
The Democratic-led states “want a global carbon tax on the traditional energy industry,” the complaint states. “Citing fears of a climate catastrophe, they seek massive penalties, disgorgement, and injunctive relief against energy producers based on out-of-state conduct with out-of-state effects. … If Defendant States are right about the substance and reach of state law, their actions imperil access to affordable energy everywhere and inculpate every State and indeed every person on the planet. Consequently, Defendant States threaten not only our system of federalism and equal sovereignty among States, but our basic way of life.”
The coalition’s filing with the high court includes a motion, complaint, and brief, which cite examples of how oil, natural gas, and coal “are essential for American prosperity.” They also emphasize the constitutional system of federalism that prevents one state from exerting more power over another.
It also notes that the Supreme Court has “consistently held that lawsuits over interstate air (and water) pollution, including emissions from the use of oil and gas, must be decided under federal law. Application of federal law to these fundamentally interstate matters prevents overreaching States from weaponizing their laws to impose their policy agendas on sister States and ensures that national policy remains sensitive to the interests of the whole Nation.”
The AGs argue the Democratic states’ actions “exceed state authority, flout the horizontal separation of powers, usurp federal authority over a federal issue, and violate the prohibition on extraterritorial regulation embodied in the Commerce Clause. Plaintiff States and their citizens rely on traditional energy products every day. The assertion that Defendant States can regulate, tax, and enjoin the promotion, production, and use of such products beyond their borders—but outside the purview of federal law—threatens profound injury.”
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said they were filing the lawsuit “to protect states from unconstitutional lawsuits filed by Green New Deal states targeting interstate emissions.”
She also took aim at California, saying, “California has destroyed itself with reckless and costly Green New Deal policies that have weakened their state and put them on the brink of financial ruin, and I refuse to allow California, and other states like it, to tell Florida how to govern itself.”
The AGs are asking the Supreme Court to accept their motion and ultimately declare unconstitutional and enjoin any attempts by Democratic led states to impose their energy policies on other states.
(Alan Wooten, The Center Square) – Citizenship in the United States by those voting in North Carolina is being sought in a constitutional amendment.
The proposal was filed Thursday by Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, chairman of the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives.
“Tightening our elections laws so that only U.S. citizens are voting in this country ensures that those making decisions about our country’s future have a vested interest in its well-being,” Hall said in a release. “Voting is a fundamental right and privilege reserved for citizens of the United States, and I am proud to support this effort to ensure the integrity of our elections.”
House Bill 1074 would amend Section 1 of Article VI of the North Carolina Constitution to read, in part, “Only a citizen of the United States who is …” Today, the section on who may vote begins, “Every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized …”
The proposal comes as American borders become more porous and people from dozens of countries around the world flood into the continental 48. Through government data, sourced reporting by The Center Square, and acknowledgments of lawmen and inclusion of gotaways, an estimated 11 million people have entered or are living in the country illegally since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
In a release, House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, said, “Preventing noncitizens from voting in our elections also helps maintain national sovereignty, as it prevents foreign influence from affecting the outcomes of American elections, and this amendment to our constitution would further strengthen election integrity in North Carolina.”
A federal proposal requiring the count for apportionment in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College include only U.S. citizens earlier this month passed the House 206-202.
The legislation was authored by U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., and had no Republicans against it and no Democrats for it.
(Headline USA) Progressive civic groups have challenged how four congressional districts and seven state House districts in South Florida were drawn by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature, claiming they were racially gerrymandered for Hispanics who are too diverse in Florida to be considered a protected minority.
The groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday, claiming the districts are unconstitutional and asking a federal court in South Florida to stop them from being used for any elections.
Named as defendants were the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd.
A message seeking comment was left Saturday at the Secretary of State’s office.
According to federal and state law, race can be considered during redistricting to protect minority voters if the minority group is cohesive and if majority-white voters are able to keep the minority group from electing their preferred candidates.
However, the lawsuit asserts that Florida Legislature wrongly assumed that South Florida’s Hispanic voters are cohesive when that’s no longer the case since the white majority in Florida regularly votes in coalition with the Hispanic voters in South Florida.
“Rather, it is nuanced, multifaceted, and diverse with respect to political behavior and preferences,” the lawsuit said of South Florida’s Hispanic community. “The Legislature was not entitled to draw race-based districts based on uninformed assumptions of racial sameness.”
More than two-thirds of the residents of Miami-Dade County — where the districts targeted by the lawsuit are concentrated — are Hispanic.
“In drawing these districts, the Florida Legislature subordinated traditional redistricting criteria and state constitutional requirements to race without narrowly tailoring the district lines to advance a compelling government interest,” the lawsuit said.
The congressional districts being challenged — 19, 26, 27 and 28 — stretch from the Fort Myers area on the Gulf Coast across the state to the Miami area and down to the Florida Keys.
The House districts under scrutiny — 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, and 119 — are concentrated in the Miami area.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A major network’s news anchor couldn’t hold back her laughter after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tried to explain a significant failure involving President Joe Biden’s radical green agenda.
CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan burst into laughter after asking Buttigieg why the Biden administration has managed to build only seven or eight electric vehicle charging stations despite a $7.5 billion investment.
“The Federal Highway Administration says that only seven or eight charging stations have been produced for the $7.5 billion investment the taxpayers made back in 2021,” Brennan stated on the Sunday edition of Face the Nation, before asking, “Why isn’t that happening more quickly?”
In response, Buttigieg said, “So the president’s goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a- a small device into the ground, there’s utility work, and this is also, really, a new category of federal investment.”
Brennan quickly interjected, laughing, “Seven or eight, though.”
Buttigieg retorted that these are the “beginning stages of the construction to come.”
The CBS host highlighted the issue of insufficient charging stations, saying, “But that gets to the point about not being able to make long-distance travel possible quickly, if you don’t have the infrastructure there to support it.”
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion for EV charging, $10 billion for “clean” transportation and over $7 billion for EV battery components.
This initiative is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to force Americans into buying electric vehicles.
(Headline USA) A jury has awarded more than $1.1 million to an Idahodrag queen who accused a blogger of defaming him during a Pride event in June 2022.
The Kootenai County District Court jury unanimously found Friday that Summer Bushnell defamed Post Falls resident Eric Posey when she posted a doctored video of his performance with a blurred spot that she claimed covered his “fully exposed genitals,” the Coeur D’Alene Press reported.
“The judicial system did what needed to be done,” Posey said after the verdict.
Jurors awarded Posey $926,000 in compensatory damages for defamation.
Because Posey ‘proved’ that Bushnell knew her allegations were false when she made them or that she made the accusations with reckless disregard for the truth, the jury awarded $250,000 in additional punitive damages.
Posey, a grown man who uses the stage name Mona Liza Million, performed three times at the Pride in the Park celebration wearing a long-sleeve leotard, black shorts and tights, with a shiny metallic boa around his waist.
Bushnell posted a video that day of herself discussing a mass arrest as well as footage from Posey’s performance.
“Why did no one arrest the man in a dress who flashed his genitalia to minors and people in the crowd?” she said. “No one said anything about it, and there’s video. I’m going to put up a blurred video to prove it.”
The next day Bushnell published the edited version of the video, which she obtained from a local videographer. It garnered many thousands of views, sparking national news coverage and a police investigation.
Bushnell’s attorney, Colton Boyles, told jurors that his client’s allegations were “close to the line” but not defamatory. He maintained that Bushnell’s “honest belief” was that Posey exposed himself.
After hearing the verdict, Posey burst into tears and embraced his lawyers and friends.
In a statement the North Idaho Pride Alliance, which organized the event where Posey performed, expressed gratitude to the jurors and affirmed its commitment to “ensuring the safety and well-being” of North Idaho’s LGBTQ+ community.
Amid some boos and chants from the crowd, Trump quickly countered by mocking the Libertarians.
“You should nominate me or at least vote for me. Only do that if you want to win,” Trump said. “If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your three percent every four years.”
Later in his speech, Trump reiterated his point.
“I’m asking for the Libertarian Party’s endorsement, or at least for your votes—lots and lots of libertarian votes,” Trump said as some in the crowd jeered.
“Or you can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get your three percent, and then meet again, get another three percent. It’s time to be winners,” he added.
Following the Libertarian Convention, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., defended Trump, noting the former president’s growing support.
“Well, I saw a wave of red hats at the Libertarian Convention,” Scott said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union.
“Donald Trump’s popularity continues to increase, but then he’s not just going to the Libertarian Convention,” he added. “He’s also doing rallies in Bronx. He’s doing something, what I consider a 50-state strategy.”
The tense exchange comes as Trump pursues the Republican nomination for president and prepares for the 2024 general election, where he is set to face President Joe Biden.
Current polls show Trump leading the incumbent president, whose policies are widely viewed as leftist and draconian.
Support for Trump continues to grow despite several Democrat-led criminal indictments and the legacy media’s constant attacks and mischaracterizations of his remarks.
Speaker Vivek Ramaswamy said it was the first time he and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, currently the GOP gubernatorial candidate, had become personally acquainted—although he had long been aware of Robinson, who has himself been a keynote speaker at several high-profile national events.
Both men have become particular targets of left-wing wrath due to the perception that their conservative politics are inconsistent with their minority identities, exploding the leftist trope that the GOP represents a party of racism.
“The party is expanding exponentially,” noted Robinson in his brief remarks.
“Despite what the mainstream news media says, this is not just a party of old, rich white guys. This is a party of true inclusion and true freedom in all examples,” he appeared to say over thunderous applause.
Fresh off Donald Trump's historic Rally in the Bronx, two of the GOP's biggest rising stars, both minorities, told the North Carolina GOP convention that we are "not just a party of old, rich white guys." #2028previewpic.twitter.com/tqcQmVVNgP
Following shortly after Ramaswamy’s introduction by Republican National Committee co-chair Michael Whatley, in which he referred to the businessman and former presidential candidate (whom Trump has hinted might be the Homeland Security secretary in a future administration) as an emissary for the youth vote, there was a palpable sense that the GOP’s post-Trump future was revealing itself.
The 38-year-old entrepreneur said the key to securing the youth vote—and a broader voting base in general—was to offer up a greater sense of purpose.
He pointed to recent Soros-backed violence on college campuses, where activists had been caught mispronouncing the word intifada while protesting Israel’s military strike on Hamas.
“It’s not that young people are against us actually,” he argued. “It’s that they’re lost—hungry for direction.”
Ramaswamy laid out a bold vision that offered his complete support for the Trump agenda and candidacy while also seeming to look even beyond that toward the need to reclaim a sense of national identity that transcended campaign politics.
His speech came two days after former President Donald Trump roiled the Left with a rally in the Bronx that drew thousands, including a large swath of traditionally Democratic black and Hispanic voters.
Self-aware of what he and Robinson represented to Republicans as part of Trump’s bold efforts to expand its demographic and truly embrace the GOP’s “big tent” legacy, Ramaswamy emphasized that the end objective was not simply to win the votes of minorities but to win their hearts and minds by articulating a shared sense of collective identity that stood in stark contrast to the identity politics of the Left.
“Diversity can be a beautiful thing if there is something that unites us across that diversity,” he said.
“But without that—think about it—what are we?” he continued. “A bunch of different looking two-legged higher mammals with a bunch of different shades of melonin, walking some geographic space that we call a country, doing what our iPhones tell us to do on a given day?”
The real purpose for the lives of individuals and families lay in seeing themselves as part of something bigger, as the Trump campaign has succeeded in doing with its “America First” mantra, Ramaswamy argued.
However, “to put America first we’ve got to rediscover what America is,” he added. “That’s the moment we live in, and you know how we’re going to do it—it’s going to be by all of us—not just me, not just Mark Robinson, not just Donald Trump, but all of us starting to speak the truth in the open again.”
Ramaswamy’s call for candor did not happen in a vacuum entirely. The night before his speech at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, he had been heckled at the Libertarian national convention in Washington, D.C.
Trump, himself, was due to appear at the Libertarian convention that same night, and indeed he too was to be met with a mix of cheers and jeers from the audience—a point that leftist media predictably spun into their own narrative.
Ostensibly, Trump’s purpose was to make his appeal to the party diehards that they should nominate him rather than throwing away their votes on a third-party candidate likely to secure around 3% of the total. He cited a Friday op-ed piece from Deroy Murdock (whose weekly syndicated column runs most Saturdays on Headline USA) making a libertarian case for his candidacy.
Some suggested that going into hostile territory, particularly knowing the reception that Ramaswamy had received, was an ill-advised strategy on Trump’s part.
BREAKING: Trump implies it might not have been a good idea to speak at the Libertarian Convention in Washington DC. WATCH
"A lot of people ask why I came to speak at this libertarian convention. And, you know, it's an interesting question, isn't it? But we're gonna have, but… pic.twitter.com/ZvV1cpmU7B
Yet, others lauded the former president’s daring gambit, noting that beyond the b-roll of booing Chase Oliver supporters, the overarching perception of Trump as a uniter—a president for all of the people—would prevail, and perhaps shave off a few votes from libertarian fence-sitters who were not in the audience.
As Ramaswamy observed, one of the most unhealthy trends in society was the aversion to civil disagreement and debate in favor of censorship and cancel culture.
“There is a culture of fear that has spread across this country like an epidemic—fear of losing your job, fear of your kids getting a bad grade in school, fear of becoming an outcast in your own community—and that culture of fear has totally replaced the culture of free speech in America,” Ramaswamy said.
“If you ask me, ‘What is the best measure of the health of American democracy?’ … It isn’t the number of green pieces of paper in our bank account,” he continued. “It isn’t the number of ballots we cast every November. It is the percentage of people who feel free to say what they actually think in public. And right now we’re doing poorly.”
The key to solving America’s identity crisis and securing a better future, he said, was for more people to have the courage and conviction to speak, even at the risk of getting booed by a hostile audience.
“When you are the only person in a room who believes what you do, you have an obligation to say it,” Ramaswamy said.
“Say it with a spine. Say it with conviction. Say it with respect. But part of respect is that you respect your neighbor enough to tell him what you actually think,” he added. “That is what we actually stand for as conservatives, as Americans. We stand for truth, and we do not apologize for it.”
Emhoff’s weak condemnation of Trump came in a video shared by the Biden campaign on Twitter, under the caption, “Second Gentleman @DouglasEmhoff responds to Trump attacking Jewish Americans.”
In the video, shared on May 21, Doug Emhoff claimed: “The last person I’m going to take advice from as a Jewish person is a known antisemite who’s had dinner with antisemites, who said there was ‘good people on both sides’ after Charlottesville.”
The second gentleman’s attacks against Trump seem contradictory, especially considering his daughter’s troubling association with fundraising for radical pro-Palestinian groups, some of which have direct ties to Hamas, the terrorist organization ruling Gaza.
Ella Emhoff has faced scrutiny not once, but twice, for her involvement in fundraising for extremist groups suspected of supporting Hamas terrorists.
In a now-deleted Instagram post, Ella Emhoff shared a link to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The post was removed only after the New York Post raised questions about UNRWA’s connections to Hamas, prompting action from the Biden administration, which halted U.S. funding to the Hamas-tied group.
Ella’s involvement in promoting Hamas-linked organizations doesn’t stop there.
In November 2023, she was part of an $8 million fundraiser for the Gaza Strip, currently under the control of Hamas terrorists.
Critics noted that the fundraiser conveniently omitted any mention of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff is helping raise money for a Gaza fundraiser that could end up in the hands of Hamas,” wrote Collin Rugg, a Twitter personality at the time. “Not surprising considering her step-mom is one of the most incompetent people in Washington DC.”
NEW: Vice President Kamala Harris' stepdaughter Ella Emhoff is helping raise money for a Gaza fundraiser that could end up in the hands of Hamas.
Not surprising considering her step-mom is one of the most incompetent people in Washington DC.
“I can’t wait for Uncle Donny to win,” shouted social media personality Daniel Chalet, known online as Danny Boy Hustle Hard. Chalet shared the original video on Instagram.
The video is captioned, “Had to give this clown @morningjoe a piece of my mind real quick New York shit.”
Scarborough is seen looking shocked, holding a backpack and wearing a blazer, tie and sunglasses.
“I can’t wait. He’ll get rid of all f**king liberals,” Chalet shouted at Scarborough. “You liberals are done when he f**king wins. You f**king blowj**s liberals are done when he f**king wins.”
He added, “Uncle Donny is going to take this election landslide!”
A woman is seen assisting Scarborough as Chalet shouted, “F**k out of here, you scumbag.”
Scarborough, a former U.S. representative, hosts Morning Joe on MSNBC. The show has been known for its vitriolic criticism of former President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Scarborough said that if he were Judge Juan Merchan, he would jail Trump. Merchan is the judge overseeing the trial against Trump led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“I don’t care who the defendants were,” Scarborough said, according to the Media Research Center. “If I were the judge, they’re going to jail. I would bring them in shackles day in and day out. I don’t care if it were a Democrat, a Republican, whether it was a steel worker, at teacher, or the President of the United States.”
Also this week, Morning Joe harshly criticized former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for endorsing Trump for president.
“Nikki Haley — in many ways, this is peak Nikki Haley,” said Charlie Sykes, an MSNBC columnist during an episode of Morning Joe, according to the Media Research Center.
“She turns out to be a very, very, cheap date for Donald Trump. But this is a choice that she made. It is a very different choice than Liz Cheney made, Adam Kinzinger made, Chris Christie made. It’s a different choice than Mike Pence made.”
