Psaki Retracts Claim: Biden DID Disrespect Gold Star Families at Kabul Ceremony

Luis Cornelio
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Psaki Retracts Claim: Biden DID Disrespect Gold Star Families at Kabul Ceremony

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary turned MSNBC mouthpiece, faced intense backlash after attempting to assert that President Joe Biden never glanced at his watch during a ceremony for the soldiers killed in Kabul. 

Gold Star family members took the lead in criticizing Psaki during interviews with the New York Post, with many directly highlighting the demonstrably false assertion in her new book, Say More.

The pushback forced Psaki to concede that her misleading statement would be removed from all future reprints of the book, including their electronic versions. 

In what appeared to be an effort to salvage her credibility, Psaki stated that her (false) anecdote was “about the importance of delivering feedback even when it is difficult told through my own experience of telling President Biden that his own story of loss was not well received by the families who were grieving their sons and daughters.”

Darin Hoover, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, said that the false claim needed to be removed from the book.

“To go and put this in the book and memorialize it for all to see is nothing short of disgusting. I mean, it’s reprehensible to me,” Hoover stated, as reported by the New York Post. 

Coral Briseno, the mother of Marine Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, said that by highlighting Biden’s act, she is pursuing justice. 

“We are not liars,” she told the New York Post. “We’re just seeking for justice for our kids. And we are not trying to make this up. We’re not trying to make anybody look bad. We don’t care if it was Trump or if it was Biden.” 

On Aug. 26, 2021, less than eight months into his presidency, Biden witnessed the Taliban’s deadly seizure of Afghanistan, culminating in the terrorist bombing at Kabul International Airport.

This attack resulted in approximately 183 fatalities, including the lives of 13 American servicemen. 

During that period, many Americans held Biden responsible for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and voiced criticism after he was observed glancing at his watch during a ceremony on Aug. 29, 2021, honoring the fallen soldiers. 

The backlash against Psaki coincides with her former boss trailing former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.  

Many polls suggest that Biden’s presidency could be limited to a single term, fueled by never-ending scandals including the Kabul debacle, rising inflation and escalating conflicts in Ukraine and Israel among other issues. 

San Francisco Spending $5M Every Year to Give Free Booze to the Homeless

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San Francisco Spending $5M Every Year to Give Free Booze to the Homeless

(Headline USA) San Francisco reportedly is spending $5 million on a program that provides free alcohol to homeless people.

The “Managed Alcohol Program” has been in place for four years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, and works to dispense “controlled doses” of vodka and beer to homeless people at specific times of the day.

The program is run out of a former hotel in the city’s seedy Tenderloin district and has 20 beds available.

Tech CEO Adam Nathan—founder of Blaze, a small business marketing tool—drew attention to the program over the weekend.

“Where’s the recovery in all of this?” Nathan tweeted.

“Inside the lobby, they had a kegs set up to taps where they were basically giving out free beer to the homeless who’ve been identified with [alcohol use disorder],” he added. “It’s set up so people in the program just walk in and grab a beer, and then another one. All day.”

Nathan went on to blast San Francisco officials for using taxpayer dollars on programs such as this and keeping it hidden from the public.

“I’m no doctor or ‘expert’ on issues of drug policy,” he continued. “But I am a taxpayer. When did this Managed Alcohol Program get approved? Where were the public hearings? Why is it hidden away in an old hotel?”

Tom Wolf, founder of the Pacific Alliance for Prevention and Recovery, agreed as a recovering heroin addict who once lived on the street that the program makes no sense.

“I don’t really see what the benefit is of all of this, and I’m glad it was exposed,” he said.

“It’s not a good idea, not when you consider the fact that, over the last four years, San Francisco spent $20 million to basically service a total of a couple of hundred people… by giving them free vodka and beer,” he added. “For that amount of money, we could have funded 60 drug treatment beds instead.”

Mayor London Breed came under fire for attempting to put stipulations on a similar program the city has set up for drug addicts.

Facing a massive uptick in violent crime, homelessness and other major issues that have driven businesses and residence from the once picturesque city, turning it into something of a hell hole, Breed, who faces re-election in November, has said she plans to require welfare recipients be tested for drugs before receiving their government checks.

WABC Radio Suspends Giuliani for Flouting Censorship of 2020 Vote Fraud

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WABC Radio Suspends Giuliani for Flouting Censorship of 2020 Vote Fraud

(Headline USA) Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was suspended Friday from WABC Radio and his daily show canceled over what the station called his repeated violation of a ban on discussing the stolen 2020 election.

Giuliani said the station’s ban was overly broad and “a clear violation of free speech.”

Giuliani issued a statement saying he had heard of WABC Radio owner John Catsimatidis’s decision through “a leak” to the New York Times.

Catsimatidis confirmed his decision in a text message to the Associated Press.

Giuliani “left me no option,” Catsimatidis told the Times.

The former New York City mayor had been warned twice not to discuss “fallacies of the November 2020 election,” added the Republican businessman, who has fundraised for Donald Trump and given to many other GOP candidates and causes. “And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.”

Catsimantidis’s moratorium likely stems from sheer risk aversion given the history of costly libel lawsuits surrounding the topic—including a nearly $150 million verdict against Giuliani himself that forced him into bankruptcy.

During the case, the former Trump lawyer, who has been rumored to have a drinking problem, wavered between defiantly insisting that leftist judge Beryl Howell’s predetermination of guilt was a perversion of justice and undermining his own argument by seeming to concede guilt at other times.

In a statement, Giuliani disputed that he had been informed ahead of time of the ban.

“John is now telling reporters that I was informed ahead of time of these restrictions, which is demonstrably untrue,” Giuliani said in a statement.

Later Friday, in a video stream on social media, Giuliani noted that he has talked repeatedly, for years, on his show about claims the election was stolen, maybe even on every program, or every other program.

“If there was such a policy, I’d be crazy to keep doing it,” Giuliani said. “You think I’m a fool?”

A letter obtained by the AP from Catsimatidis to Giuliani and dated Thursday said Giuliani was prohibited from engaging in discussions relating to the 2020 elections.

“These specific topics include, but are not limited to, the legitimacy of the election results, allegations of fraud effectuated by election workers, and your personal lawsuits relating to these allegations,” the letter said.

Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s spokesperson and adviser, said Giuliani had not known of the directive before Thursday.

“WABC’s decision comes at a very suspicious time, just months before the 2024 election, and just as John and WABC continue to be pressured by Dominion Voting Systems and the Biden regime’s lawyers,” Giuliani said in his statement.

Late last month, Giuliani was one of 18 people indicted as part of an Arizona lawfare attack—the latest one waged by Soros-backed prosecutors to prevent any challenges or scrutiny of their corrupt efforts to manipulate the election.

Goodman lambasted the effort by state Attorney General Kris Mayes—whose own 2022 election was among those dubiously won by a very narrow margin under suspicious circumstances— as part of “the continued weaponization of our justice system.”

Giuliani filed for bankruptcy in December, shortly following a jury’s verdict requiring him to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers suspected of double-scanning ballots in Fulton County, Ga., after having sent election watchers and media home from the State Farm Arena.

A recent review by the Georgia Board of Election revealed that some 3,000 ballots had been double-scanned in the county and that county officials could not account for roughly 300,000 ballots.

Biden “won” the state by less than 12,000 votes after RINO Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused to do a full investigation into the allegations of vote fraud.

Howell, an activist Washington, D.C., judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, did not weigh the actual evidence as to whether election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter could meet the typical defamation standard by proving the falsity of Giuliani’s claims.

Despite the predetermined verdict against him, Giuliani continued to repeat his stolen election claims, insisting he did nothing wrong and suggesting he’d keep pressing his claims even if it meant losing all his money or being jailed.

In early April, a New York bankruptcy judge allowed Giuliani to remain in his Florida condo, declining to rule on a motion from creditors that would have forced him to sell the Palm Beach estate. But the judge hinted at more “draconian” measures if the former mayor did not comply with information requests about his spending habits. The next hearing in the case was scheduled for Tuesday.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Wisconsin’s Corrupt, Billionaire-Bought Court May Reinstate Illegal Ballot Drop-Boxes

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Wisconsin’s Corrupt, Billionaire-Bought Court May Reinstate Illegal Ballot Drop-Boxes

(Headline USA) After out-of-state billionaires and activist organizations successfully secured a radical leftist majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, newly elected justice Janet Protasiewicz and her colleagues have acted with deliberate speed to help shift the battleground state’s landscape permanently blue.

Thus far, that has included controversial decisions on abortion and gerrymandering—the latter essentially assuring that the Republican backstop in the state legislature, which has been the only remaining check against the overreaching authority of Democrat Gov. Tony Evers, will flip blue in the next election.

Now, in order to seal the deal, the court aims to reinstate some of the dubious election policies that were illegally enacted during the 2020 race, even after the court’s earlier iteration ruled them unconstitutional.

Most of the arguments for again allowing ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin hinged on what the state’s absentee voter law did and did not say.

The new far-left-majority court heard oral arguments Monday on whether it should overturn a 2022 decision from the then moderate-conservative-majority court that outlawed ballot drop boxes.

“[The 2022 court] read a restriction into the statute that simply is not there and in doing so made it harder for municipal clerks to carry out their duties and for Wisconsin voters to return their ballots for no adequate legal reason,” David Fox, attorney for Priorities USA told the court Monday morning.

Changing the ruling now “threatens to politicize this Court and cast a pall over the election” and unleash a new wave of legal challenges, attorneys for the Republican National Committee and Wisconsin Republican Party argued in court filings.

There have been no changes in the facts or the law to warrant overturning the ruling and it’s too close to the election to make changes now anyway, they contend.

However, Fox claimed the 2022 decision was “unworkable” and unconstitutional.

“It is very important for clerks and voters to know what the statutes, in fact, require,” Fox told the justices.

Although the Obama-linked super-PAC leading the case is funded by many of the same dark-money oligarchs who underwrote Protasiewicz’s 2022 campaign, there is no indication that the justice planned to recuse herself from voting.

Conservative Chief Justice Rebecca Bradley, however, was quick to point out that Wisconsin law doesn’t specifically allow for ballot drop boxes or anything like them.

“The law in the state of Wisconsin is that there is a right to vote, but there is not a right to vote absentee. That is a privilege that was granted legislatively,” Bradley said.

She added that lawmakers intended to have absentee voting be “heavily regulated.”

“So, is it your argument—you’re asking this court to give municipal clerks absolutely free rein to disregard the carefully regulated regime established by the people’s representatives in the legislature, and they can do whatever they want as long as it’s workable?” Bradley asked.

Fellow conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn pushed Fox on a different angle of the legal theory behind voting at unmanned drop-off sites.

“My understanding is that you are arguing that it is unconstitutional to not have drop boxes as a method of returning absentee ballots,” Hagedorn said. “I don’t understand that at all.”

However, the leftist judges focused more on dismantling the last ballot-drop-box decision than what Wisconsin’s absentee-voting law says.

Democrats claim the court misinterpreted the law in its 2022 ruling by wrongly concluding that absentee ballots can only be returned to a clerk in their office and not to a drop box they control that is located elsewhere.

Clerks should be allowed “to decide for themselves how and where to accept the return of absentee ballots,” attorneys argued in court filings.

“What if we just got it wrong?” Justice Jill Karofsky asked. “What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?”

In the spring of 2022, just before the old court outlawed ballot drop boxes, there were nearly 600 ballot drop boxes in use.

The court’s ruling will come within three months of the Aug. 13 primary and within six months of the November presidential election. A reversal could have implications on what is expected to be another razor-thin presidential race in Wisconsin.

President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin by just under 21,000 votes in 2020, four years after Trump narrowly took the state by a similar margin.

However, evidence—including that turned up by a special-counsel investigation that the state legislature commissioned—turned up serious indications of vote fraud in the six biggest urban areas, including parts of Milwaukee where there were more votes than registered voters, an illegal ballot-harvesting operation in nursing homes in Racine County, and a Green Bay election office that was essentially being run by an outside left-wing activist.

Election officials from four counties—including the two largest and most heavily Democratic in the state—filed a brief in support of overturning the ruling.

They claimed absentee-ballot drop boxes had been used for decades without incident as a secure way for voters to return their ballots.

More than 1,600 absentee ballots arrived at clerks’ offices after Election Day in 2022, when drop boxes were not in use, and therefore were not counted, Democratic attorneys noted in their arguments. But in 2020, when drop boxes were in use and nearly three times as many people voted absentee, only 689 ballots arrived after the election.

Drop boxes were used in 39 other states during the 2022 election, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

The popularity of absentee voting exploded during the pandemic in 2020, with more than 40% of all voters in Wisconsin casting mail ballots, a record high.

Much of that was due to the promotion of their use by Democrats during the pandemic, including Mark Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech and Civic Life, which dedicated nearly half a billion dollars nationwide to what it claimed were pandemic-friendly to facilitate the election.

However, reports later showed that the money was a de-facto campaign donation to Democrats, principally in the urban centers of red battleground states, for get-out-the-vote operations.

The so-called Zuckerbucks came with certain demands, including that leftist operatives be installed in the election offices themselves, a clear violation of standard election-integrity practices. Wisconsin has since joined other states in banning outside funding of elections, although it remains to be seen whether the leftist court attempts to roll back that law.

Resulting in part from the CTCL stipulations, more than 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee, the state’s two most heavily Democratic cities.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Biden Calls Illegals ‘Voters,’ Says They Are Country’s ‘Future’

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Biden Calls Illegals ‘Voters,’ Says They Are Country’s ‘Future’

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Joe Biden accidentally referred to Hispanic illegal aliens as “voters” during an interview on a Spanish-speaking radio show that was released on May 7, 2024.

“It’s even a bigger influx now in terms of Hispanic voters, or Hispanic citizens, who want to become citizens,” Biden said about the current invasion of illegals from both the southern and northern borders of the United States, Fox News reported.

Additionally, Biden stated on the show that these Spanish-speaking illegals are the “future” of the United States, implying that Americans would need to learn Spanish to adapt.

“The Hispanic community is part of the future of America. Twenty-eight out of every 100 students in school speak Spanish, the idea that you’re gonna ignore that? That’s our future,” he said.

Biden also argued that the current wave of immigration is “a little bit like back in the 1840s and the great exodus of Ireland” because of the “famine and the way Irish Catholics were treated,” adding that the American government didn’t want to take any more of Irish immigrants because there were too many of them coming to the country.

“One of the reasons [why] we’re growing so much is we have a significant influx of immigrants coming into our country, [which is] the only reason our economy’s so good. We’re not a xenophobic nation. Other nations are. We’re not. That’s why our economy is the best in the world,” he said.

Conservatives criticized Biden, adding that his latest remarks are an example of a Freudian slip.

“Oops! Freudian slip,” the New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor Miranda Devine wrote.

Other critics said that allowing illegals to enter the country was always the Democrats’ plan to get more votes in the upcoming 2024 election.

“Breaking: Biden accidentally confirms he’s importing millions of illegal immigrants because he thinks of them as future Democrat voters,” radio personality Tara Servatius said.

Snopes Reverses ‘Fact Check’ after Ashley Biden Confirms Diary Is Real

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Snopes Reverses ‘Fact Check’ after Ashley Biden Confirms Diary Is Real

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Snopes has reversed its previous “fact-check” which claimed that Ashley Biden’s diary was fake, after Biden herself confirmed the diary’s authenticity in a letter provided by her to a court during the sentencing of those convicted for allegedly stealing the diary.  

The diary, which resulted in criticism of Joe Biden over a quote in the book that said he had taken “inappropriate” showers with his daughter, was found to have been taken away by two people who then sold the diary to Project Veritas, an investigative journalism organization that went downhill after it fired James O’Keefe, its founder, the Post Millennial reported.

Ashley wrote the letter to Judge Laura Taylor Swain during the sentencing hearing for Aimee Harris, who was convicted of the diary theft and distribution. After that, Snopes published another fact check, in which the “fact-checking” organization stated that the diary was authentic.

“I am deeply saddened that I even have to write this letter because my personal private journal was stolen and sold for profit,” Ashley wrote in the letter, adding that the diary will be used to “peddle grotesque lies by distorting my stream-of-consciousness thoughts.”

In the diary, Ashley asked herself whether she was molested, while also stating that she had been “hyper-sexualized” as a child and had taken “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, Joe.

“After being the victim of a crime in my early twenties, I developed PTSD. The journal that was stolen was part of my efforts to heal. I am a private citizen, targeted only because my father happened to be running to be President,” Ashley wrote in the letter.

She then continued presenting herself as a victim.

“In other words, the extensive work I have done to move past my trauma was undone by Ms. Harris’s actions. The defendant’s actions have created a constant environment of anxiety, fear and intimidation in which my innermost thoughts are constantly distorted and manipulated,” Ashley wrote.

Hamas Activists Humiliate Schools w/ Commencement Walkouts as Protests Languish

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Hamas Activists Humiliate Schools w/ Commencement Walkouts as Protests Languish

(Headline USA) While increasingly presented with the consequences of their actions, including forceful police responses of protests, college students have largely abandoned the George Soros-funded efforts to disrupt campus proceedings with protests that interfered with the educational pursuits of others—particularly Jewish students. 

However, in schools where the graduation exercises were not cancelled—thereby depriving some students who missed out on their high school ceremonies due to COVID of yet another opportunity to walk the stage—pro-Hamas activists did take one more opportunity to embarrass their learning institutions before classes adjourned for the summer by staging walkouts during several high-profile commencement speakers.

At Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond—where rioters had previously attempted to take over a portion of the campus and refused to disperse peacefully, resulting in the arrest of 13 people, including six students—activists unsurprisingly organized a walkout during the speech by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

What was more surprising may have been Youngkin accepting the invitation to deliver the address at the far-left institution in the first place, where activist students needed little pretense to show their worst selves publicly.

Undeterred, Youngkin continued onward with his speech, emphasizing the importance of family.

In a follow-up tweet, he touted the “bright futures” of the Rams’ graduates, although some may already be closing doors on the “countless opportunities” available to them by establishing criminal histories and other blemishes that will leave them little choice but to continue to burden society with their utter uselessness and inability to pay back student loans in years to come.

In neighboring North Carolina, meanwhile, a tiny contingent of Duke University graduates opposed pro-Israel comedian Jerry Seinfeld speaking at their commencement Sunday, with about 30 of the 7,000 students leaving their seats and chanting “free Palestine” amid a mix of boos and cheers.

Some waved the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag. Seinfeld, whose namesake sitcom was one of the most popular in U.S. television history, was there to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.

The stand-up comic turned actor, who stars in the new Netflix movie Unfrosted, has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza to dismantle Hamas after the organization attacked the country and killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The small student protest Sunday at Duke’s graduation in Durham, was emblematic of campus events across the U.S. Sunday after weeks of student protests resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests at 57 colleges and universities.

Students and others on campuses whom law enforcement authorities have identified as outside agitators have taken part in the protests from Columbia University in New York City to UCLA.

Police escorted graduates’ families past a few dozen pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to block access to Sunday evening’s commencement for Southern California’s Pomona College.

After demonstrators set up an encampment last week on the campus’ ceremony stage, the small liberal arts school moved the event 30 miles from Claremont to the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Tickets were required to attend the event, which the school said would include additional security measures.

In April, police wearing riot gear arrested 19 protesters who had occupied the president’s office at the college with about 1,700 undergraduates.

Demonstrator Anwar Mohmed, a 21-year-old Pomona senior, said the school has repeatedly ignored calls to consider divesting its endowment funds from corporations tied to Israel in the war in Gaza.

“We’ve been time and time again ignored by the institution,” Mohmed said outside the Shrine on Sunday. “So today we have to say, it’s not business as usual.”

At the University of California, Berkeley, on Saturday, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waved flags and chanted during commencement and were escorted to the back of the stadium, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. There were no major counterprotests, but some attendees voiced frustration.

“I feel like they’re ruining it for those of us who paid for tickets and came to show our pride for our graduates,” said Annie Ramos, whose daughter is a student. “There’s a time and a place, and this is not it.”

This weekend’s commencement events remained largely peaceful.

At Emerson College in Boston, some students took off their graduation robes and left them on stage. Others emblazoned “free Palestine” on their mortar boards.

One woman, staring at a camera broadcasting a livestream to the public, unzipped her robe to show a kaffiyeh, the black and white checkered scarf commonly worn by Palestinians, and flashed a watermelon painted on her hand. Both are symbols of solidarity with those living in the occupied territories.

Others displayed messages for a camera situated on stage, but the livestream quickly shifted to a different view, preventing them from being seen for long. Chants during some of the speeches were difficult to decipher.

Protests at Columbia University, where student uprisings inspired others at campuses across the country, led the school to cancel its main graduation ceremony in favor of smaller gatherings.

The University of Southern California told its valedictorian, who publicly backed Palestinians, that she could not deliver her keynote speech at its graduation ceremony because of security concerns. It later canceled its main graduation ceremony.

At DePaul University in Chicago, graduation is more than a month away. But as the academic year closes, school leaders said they had reached an “impasse” with the school’s pro-Palestinian protesters, leaving the future of their encampment on the Chicago campus unclear.

The student-led DePaul Divestment Coalition, which is calling on the university to divest from economic interests tied to Israel, set up the encampment nearly two weeks ago. The group alleged university officials walked away from talks and tried to force students into signing an agreement, according to a student statement late Saturday.

With tensions running high, at least one school was forced to cancel its commencement ceremonies for reasons unrelated to political activism. At Washington, D.C.’s Howard University, a prominent historically black school where President Joe Biden last year delivered the commencement address, overcrowding forced the cancellation of a nursing school graduation event mid-ceremony.

Angry parents pounded on the auditorium chanting “Let us in” after it reached capacity, resulting in a glass door being shattered.

The entire ceremony was halted after there was an injury reported, according to the New York Post.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Blinken Confirms Biden Admin’s Break from Israel: ‘Get Out of Gaza’

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Blinken Confirms Biden Admin’s Break from Israel: ‘Get Out of Gaza’

(Headline USA) The Biden administration confirmed its break from Israel over the Jewish state’s continued military campaign against Hamas, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning Israeli officials to “get out of Gaza” completely.

White House officials have become increasingly critical of Israel’s killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks as backlash from leftist activists and student protesters in the U.S. has grown. And while President Joe Biden has insisted that Israel still has the support of the U.S., recent comments and policy decisions from his administration say otherwise.

Blinken, for example, said over the weekend on Face the Nation that the U.S. wants Israeli forces to “get out of Gaza,” calling Israel’s campaign “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians.”

He also confirmed that the White House decided to withhold munitions shipments from Israel over the Jewish state’s planned invasion of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians have been living.

“We believe two things. One, you have to have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen. Second, we also need to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over,” Blinken claimed. “As we look at Rafah, they may go in and have some initial success, but potentially at an incredibly high cost to civilians, but one that is not durable, one that’s not sustainable.”

Blinken also warned that Israel’s continued campaign against Hamas could result in a power “vacuum” that’s “likely to be filled by chaos.”

When asked for an explanation of the sudden about-face in regards to Israel’s military campaign, Blinken said, “We treat Israel, one of our closest allies and partners, just as we would treat any other country, including in assessing something like international humanitarian law and its compliance with that.”

Newsom Blames Budget Shortfall on Climate Change, not Policy Failures

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Newsom Blames Budget Shortfall on Climate Change, not Policy Failures

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) When confronted with the state of California’s disastrous financial situation, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom cited climate change in a recent interview as the reason for the state’s lack of funds.

“Can we explain to Californians how we move from a $100 million surplus to such a significant deficit in just a matter of a few years,” a reporter asked the governor.

After giving a rundown of some of the state’s spending, Newsom continued on to blame climate change, including heavy rains, as the cause of the state’s recent poverty.

Citing “atmospheric rivers,” Newsom suggested that the rain caused California to be late on its tax collections, therefore damaging the state’s bank account.

According to the governor, the “atmospheric rivers” even “had an impact” on the federal IRS.

Newsom used the occasion to sermonize about climate change at greater length:

“If there was any indication that climate change has impacts well beyond those that are often promoted,” he said, “I would consider our financial delays as just another example of why we need to tackle [climate change].”

Of course, Newsom did not mention the numerous absurd policies that his branch of the state government has enacted, signed off on, or permitted at various points in the past several years.

For one, beginning in 2024, 700,000 illegal immigrants began receiving free healthcare on the state dime.

Newsom called that program “a transformative step towards strengthening the health care system for all Californians.”

The governor has attempted to use the mechanisms of the state to resolve the homelessness crisis, which has been reframed as a housing shortage.

“The crisis of homelessness will never be solved without first solving the crisis of housing— the two issues are inextricably linked,” Newsom said, announcing a plan last year for the state of California to begin constructing homes to give for free to homeless people.

Meanwhile, Newsom has taken into consideration issuing reparation payments to the ancestors of slaves, signing off on the creation of a task force in 2020 to investigate the issue.

Although the governor ultimately appears to have deemed the committee’s astronomical proposals, exceeding $800 billion, to be too impractical to implement, the cost of operating the task force alone cost the state more than $1.5 million in wasted funds.

Aside from the numerous issues that Newsom and state Democrats have caused, California’s tax base has also been shrinking, particularly due to the ongoing mass exodus of working people from the state following Newsom’s vigorous COVID lockdowns, leaving mostly destitute residents to pay the bills.

“All people should aspire to that California dream regardless of their income level and regarding their lot in life,” Newsom said in 2021 while inviting the nation’s homeless to his state.

Judge Strikes Down NY County’s Ban on Trans Athletes after Roller-Derby League Sues

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Judge Strikes Down NY County’s Ban on Trans Athletes after Roller-Derby League Sues

(Headline USA) A New York judge on Friday struck down a Long Island county’s order banning female-identifying transgender athletes after a local women’s roller derby league challenged it.

Judge Francis Ricigliano ruled that Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman didn’t have the authority to issue his February executive order, which denies park permits to any women’s and girl’s teams, leagues or organizations that allow transgender athletes to participate.

He wrote in his 13-page decision that Blakeman’s order was aimed at preventing transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s athletics in county parks, “despite there being no corresponding legislative enactment” providing him with such authority.

“In doing so, this Court finds the County Executive acted beyond the scope of his authority as the Chief Executive Officer of Nassau County,” Ricigliano wrote.

Amanda Urena, president of the Long Island Roller Rebels, which challenged the order, said the decision sends a “strong message” against discrimination.

“Today’s decision is a victory for those who believe that transgender people have the right to participate in sports just like everyone else,” Urena said in a statement. “County Executive Blakeman’s order tried to punish us just because we believe in inclusion and stand against transphobia. Trans people belong everywhere, including in sports, and they will not be erased.”

There is considerable evidence showing that biological males have an unfair advantage due to the testosterone levels and other hormones present during their development, even if they have since begun estrogen treatments and other processes intended to “feminize” themselves.

For girls playing at the competitive level, this often flies in the face of Title IX protections, ruining their chances at athletic scholarships and other opportunities to perform at a higher level due to mediocre male players arbitrarily deciding to switch identities.

In other situations, co-ed competition may pose a greater danger of injury. Such was the case for Payton McNabb, a North Carolina high school volleyball player who suffered a concussion after being injured by a transgender athlete.

McNabb, along with former college swimmer Riley Gaines, has become one of the prominent public faces in opposition to transgender participation in female sports.

With at least one lawsuit likely to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next session, some sports leagues are beginning to revisit their initial blind support in the face of mounting backlash.

However LGBT activists still have ample resources of their own to wage a counterattack using friendly judges and leagues such as the Long Island Roller Rebels, in which co-ed participation is something of a moot point since getting hurt is one of the main objectives.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit on behalf of the league, said the decision overturned a harmful policy that attempted to “score cheap political points by peddling harmful stereotypes about transgender women and girls.”

The attack is an ironic one considering the widespread criticism that transgender “women” do little more than perpetuate stereotypes of womanhood.

Blakeman dismissed the judge’s decision as one that didn’t address the merits of the case. The ruling doesn’t delve into the civil rights arguments raised by both sides, instead focusing on the limitations of the county executive’s powers.

“Unfortunately girls and women are hurt by the court,” he wrote in an emailed statement.

Blakeman had maintained the ban was meant to protect girls and women from getting injured if they are forced to compete against transgender women.

It impacted more than 100 athletic facilities in the densely populated county next to New York City, including ballfields, basketball and tennis courts, swimming pools and ice rinks.

But the roller-derby league, in its suit, argued that the state’s human rights and civil rights statutes explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.

The league’s lawsuit cited the state’s Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, or GENDA, as well as guidance from the state Division of Human Rights, which confirms that public accommodations cannot deny transgender people access to programs and activities consistent with their gender identity.

The league filed suit after it applied for a permit to host a slate of games at roller rinks in various county parks this summer that it’s used in previous years for practices and other events.

The Nassau County-based league, which was founded in 2005, said it welcomes “all transgender women, intersex women, and gender-expansive women” and has at least one league member who would be prohibited from participating under the county’s order.

A federal judge, in a separate legal case, rejected Blakeman’s bid to prevent the state attorney general’s office from taking action against the ban after it issued a cease-and-desist letter warning him that the order violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

LGBT advocates say bills banning trans youth from participating in sports have passed in 24 states.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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