Boebert Switches Districts as Dem. Challenger Amasses Dark-Money Warchest

(Headline USA) Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., announced Wednesday she was switching congressional districts to avoid a likely rematch against a Democrat who has far outraised her with support from dark-money leftists.

In a Facebook video Wednesday evening, Boebert announced she would enter the crowded Republican primary in retiring Rep. Ken Buck’s seat in the eastern side of the state, leaving the more competitive 3rd District seat she barely won last year after the far-left Colorado Supreme Court added bluer regions into the redistricted map.

Boebert hinted that, apart from their Aspen vacation homes, many of Adam Frisch’s donors appeared to have few ties to the district itself but were on a crusade to bring down one of Congress’s most outspoken conservative women.

“I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me personally to steal this seat,” she said.

“It’s not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories,” she continued. “The Aspen donors, George Soros and Hollywood actors that are trying to buy this seat, well they can go pound sand.”

Boebert called it “a fresh start,” acknowledging the rough year following a divorce with her husband and video of her misbehaving with a date at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice in Denver.

The scandal in September rocked some of her faithful supporters, who saw it as a transgression of conservative, Christian values and for which Boebert apologized at events throughout her district.

She already faced a primary challenge in her district, as well as a general election face-off with Frisch, a former Aspen city council member who came within a few hundred votes of beating her in 2022.

A rematch was expected, with Frisch raising at least $7.7 million to Boebert’s $2.4 million.

Frisch’s campaign had revived its 2022 slogan “stop the circus” and framed him as the “pro-normal” alternative to Boebert’s pro-MAGA conservatism.

If Boebert wins the primary to succeed Buck she will run in the state’s most conservative district, which former President Donald Trump won by about 20 percentage points in 2020, in contrast to his margin of about 8 percentage points in her district.

While it’s not required that representatives live in the congressional districts they represent, only the state the district is in, Boebert said she would be moving—a shift from Colorado’s western Rocky Mountain peaks and high desert mesas to its eastern expanse of prairie grass and ranching enclaves.

The Republican primary candidate who has raised the second most behind Boebert in the 3rd District, Jeff Hurd, is a more traditional Republican candidate.

Hurd has already garnered support from prominent Republicans in the district, first reported by VailDaily.

In a statement after Boebert’s announcement, Frisch said he’s prepared for whoever will be the Republican candidate.

“From Day 1 of this race, I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life, and offering common sense solutions to the problems facing the families of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.” he said. “My focus will remain the same.”

Boebert rocked the political world by notching a surprise primary win against the incumbent Republican congressman in the 3rd District in 2020 when she ran a gun-themed restaurant in the town of Rifle, Colorado.

She then set the tone for being one of the more controversial—and headline-grabbing—GOP lawmakers after trying to enter the U.S. Capitol carrying a pistol and feuding with far-left “Squad” members like Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Pro-Hamas Rioters Block Airport Access, Snarl Holiday Traffic in N.Y., L.A.

(Headline USA) Pro-Hamas rioters briefly blocked entrance roads to airports in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, snarling traffic as U.S. airlines contended with a rush of holiday travel.

The protests stopped cars on the outskirts of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where some travelers set off on foot to bypass the jammed roadway, as well as Los Angeles International Airport. A total of 62 people were arrested during the two protests, police said.

In New York, activists locked arms and held banners demanding an end to the Israel–Hamas war and expanded rights for Palestinians, bringing traffic to a standstill on the Van Wyck Expressway leading up to the airport for about 20 minutes.

Video posted to social media showed passengers, some carrying suitcases, leaving vehicles behind and stepping over barriers onto the highway median.

Twenty-six people in the protest were arrested for disorderly conduct and impeding vehicular traffic, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey dispatched two buses to help travelers caught in the backup reach the airport, agency spokesperson Steve Burns said.

Around the same time as the New York protest, a major thoroughfare leading to the Los Angeles airport was shut down by another group of protesters, who dragged traffic cones, trash bins, scooters and debris into the lanes, according to news helicopter footage.

In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department accused protesters of throwing a police officer to the ground and “attacking uninvolved passerbys [sic] in their vehicles,” without providing further details about either incident.

The group appeared to flee when police arrived, though the LAPD said traffic around the airport remained impacted roughly two hours after the demonstration was declared unlawful.

A spokesperson for the LAPD said 35 people were arrested for rioting and one person was arrested for battery of a police officer. No officers were injured, according to the spokesperson. An estimated 215,000 passengers and 87,000 vehicles were expected to pass through the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday.

Since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7, near nightly protests have broken out in cities across the United States.

In New York, pro-Palestinian organizers have responded to the growing death toll in Gaza with escalating actions aimed at disrupting some of the city’s best-known events, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the annual tree-lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center.

At a news conference Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticized some of the protest organizers’ tactics and suggested police may need to ramp up their response.

“I don’t believe that people should be able to just take over our streets and march in our streets,” he said.

“I don’t believe people should be able to take over our bridges,” he continued. “I just don’t believe you can run a city this complex where people can just do whatever they want.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

In Trump’s J6 Case, DOJ Seeks to Suppress Records of Election Fraud and Undercover Agents

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion Wednesday to exclude a wide swath of evidence from Donald Trump about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot—arguing that Trump would use that evidence to “turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation.”

Specifically, Smith seeks to suppress records about possible undercover provocateurs at the Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as evidence of foreign election-interference efforts ahead of November 2020.

When it comes to possible undercover agents, Smith argued that they had no effect on Trump’s actions.

“There is certainly no evidence that the defendant here had contact with or knew of any undercover actor anywhere on January 6—and certainly not at the Capitol, where the defendant promised his supporters he would join them,” Smith said.

Smith then raised concerns that admitting evidence of undercover agents could confuse the jury.

“Allowing the defendant to introduce evidence about undercover actors would inevitably lead to confusing minitrials on collateral issues, such as the identities and intentions of the alleged undercover actors,” he said.

“For example, it may require the Government to introduce evidence to show that people whom the defendant alleges were undercover actors actually were his vehement supporters.”

As for election interference, Smith said that “such evidence should be excluded as an irrelevant and confusing sideshow.”

“Shifting attention to purported false claims made by unspecified foreign actors poses the acute risk of jury confusion and for that reason, too, should be excluded,” he said.

Reacting to Smith’s motion, conservative journalists such as Julie Kelly noted the irony of Smith attempting to suppress Jan. 6 evidence in a Jan. 6 case.

However, Smith has successfully suppressed evidence about undercover agents in other Jan. 6 cases.

For example, Jan. 6 defendant Ryan Zink unsuccessfully motioned in June for the DOJ to disclose all undercover law enforcement actors in the Capitol crowd.

Zink had argued that agent provocateurs may have fomented violence on Jan. 6. In denying Zink’s motion, Judge James Boasberg acknowledged that it would be important if Zink interacted with undercover informants in the J6 crowd. However, Zink didn’t provide any compelling evidence of this, the judge said.

Contrary to strategies used by Zink and other J6 defendants, Trump’s attorneys have explicitly stated that the former President isn’t looking to argue that Jan. 6 was an entrapment operation.

“President Trump is not seeking to establish that he was induced to engage in the charged conduct,” Trump’s lawyers said in a motion earlier this year.

“Rather, in this case, information regarding individuals who were present in an official capacity is favorable to President Trump because it suggests that there were adequate controls in place and that the violence at issue resulted from a failure of those controls and/or failed sting operations rather than any directions from President Trump.”

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

Jacksonville’s Dem. Mayor Cancels Monument to Southern Women

(Headline USA) Crews removed a Confederate monument from a Jacksonville, Florida, park Wednesday morning following years of public bickering.

Mayor Donna Deegan, a Democrat, ordered the removal of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument, which has been in Springfield Park since 1915.

“Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be,” Deegan said in a statement.

“By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity,” she claimed. “That we are all created equal. The same flesh and bones. The same blood running through our veins. The same heart and soul.”

Serious discussion of the monument’s fate began in 2020 after Deegan’s predecessor, Mayor Lenny Curry, ordered the removal of another monument, a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier that had been in a downtown park for more than 100 years, amid a spate of 2020 race riots and a reactive wave of cancel-culture virtue-signaling, driven in large part by the corporate ESG movement.

The mass, nationwide protests, which took place for months in the lead-up to the 2020 election, were ostensibly inspired by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. However, some of the funding for radical groups like Black Lives Matter was traced to China, and BLM has been open about its pro-Marxist agenda, including efforts to erase U.S. history, thereby diminishing American’s sense of cultural identity and patriotism.

A proposal to remove the Confederate women tribute was introduced to the Jacksonville City Council in 2021, but the Republican-controlled board never moved on it. Earlier this month, Jacksonville’s Office of General Counsel determined that city council approval was unnecessary because city funds were not being used for the work.

As the city’s top executive, Deegan had the authority to order the statue’s removal, city attorneys said. The $187,000 bill is being covered by a grant that the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors made to 904WARD, city officials said.

Florida Rep. Dean Black, who is chair of the Republican Party of Duval County, posted on social media that the monument’s removal was a stunning abuse of power.

“This action, undertaken in the middle of the night, during the holidays, without consultation of city leaders or a vote by the council, is another in a long line of woke Democrats obsession with Cancel Culture and tearing down history,” Black said.

The monument will remain in city storage until members of the community and the city council can determine what to do with it, officials said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Biden’s Carefree Christmas: Donor’s Beach Villa Post-Camp David

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) President Joe Biden touched down in St. Croix Tuesday, set to ring in the New Year at a beach-front villa owned by some of his campaign donors, alongside the first lady and other family members, the New York Post reported Wednesday. 

The villa, described by the NY Post Post as featuring “an in-ground pool, lush landscaping and sweeping views” comes with a price tag of zero for the Bidens.

The visit marks a return to the same villa where the Bidens celebrated the arrival of 2022. 

The White House announced Biden’s plans to spend New Year’s at the villa owned by Bill and Connie Neville, both of whom were alleged exclusive attendees at the taxpayer-funded White House state dinner in 2022.

The Nevilles, significant donors to Biden’s presidential campaign, funneled $10,000 to the Biden 2020 campaign.

C-SPAN Footage captured the Biden family boarding Air Force One amidst heavy rain bound for the Virgin Islands. 

The news of this Caribbean vacation surprised many, given Biden had just spend the Christmas holiday at Camp David. 

“Biden just got off Christmas vacation and now he’s off for a second, more tropical vacation in St Croix,” conservative Twitter page Citizens Free Press commented. “Heck of a gig if you can steal it.” 

Podcast host Monica Crowley echoed similar sentiments on Twitter, questioning if Hunter Biden was part of this trip. 

“The puppet ‘president’ just returned from Christmas vacation at Camp David and is now off on another vacation on St Croix,” she said. “Living his best life while his puppeteers destroy the country. PS: Is Hunter on this trip??” 

Similarly, RedState columnist Buzz Patterson joined the chorus of criticism: “Joe Biden just left a vacation at Camp David to go on a vacation in St Croix. Sleep well, America.” 

Chicago Mayor Slams Biden over Sanctuary Cities’ Neglect: ‘Not Sustainable’

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke candidly on Wednesday about President Joe Biden’s lack of attention to American cities amid rampant illegal immigration.

During an interview on CNN This Morning with Poppy Harlow, Johnson was asked if he echoed the dire concerns of the Democrat mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas that Biden is turning a blind eye to the surge of illegal immigration in the U.S. 

In response, Johnson said, “What I have said repeatedly is that we have to have coordination. Since taking office, we have had an uncoordinated approach. What I have worked to do instead of having chaos is provide structure and calm around the situation and without significant federal support, this is not sustainable.”

Earlier in the interview, Harlow aired Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas’s remarks criticizing the federal government’s lack of decisive action on the border. 

“Our city here in Eagle Pass we have been getting slammed with two to 3,000 people a day and it’s just an unfair, unethical situation what’s going on here in Eagle Pass. We feel ignored by the federal government,” Salinas said on Wednesday.

Johnson echoed Salinas’s sentiments regarding the immigration strain affecting both Chicago and Eagle Pass. “This certainly has been a remarkable challenge that my administration has had to face, and quite frankly, a challenge that we are experiencing all over the country,” he said.

The Chicago mayor revealed that approximately 15,000 illegal aliens live in taxpayer-funded shelters. He also said that about 4,500 immigrant children were enrolled in the Chicago Public School system.

However, Johnson pointed to Gov. Gregg Abbott, R-Texas, claiming he contributed to the immigration chaos in Chicago by sponsoring buses that transport undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities.

”What I called for repeatedly is a coordinated approach between state and local municipalities so that we can address this crisis. As far as what the federal government is doing, I have said we need more resources,” he said.  

He continued, “Without real significant investment from our federal government, it won’t just be the city of Chicago that won’t be able to maintain this mission. It’s the entire country that is at stake. In no way what the state of Texas is doing is helping the cause.” 

Johnson’s remarks followed widespread, yet bipartisan, criticism aimed at the Biden administration for allowing uncontrolled illegal immigration in the country. New York City has similarly faced the impact of the influx of illegal aliens. 

“The federal government said to New York City: ‘We’re not going to do our job — you do our job. You take care of 4,000 people a week, Eric, you and your team,’” Adams said about border crossing, according to the New York Post.

Trump Jr. Says He Would Intervene If Father Picks Nikki Haley as VP

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Donald Trump Jr. recently said that he would “go to great lengths” to stop Nikki Haley from becoming the Vice President, in case his father would choose her.

The eldest son of Donald Trump explicitly said that he doesn’t approve of Haley becoming the right hand of his father during a recent interview on Newsmax, adding that he would ensure that Haley would not get the position.

“I wouldn’t have her and I would go to great lengths to make sure that that doesn’t happen. Nikki Haley wants never-ending wars. She’s a puppet of the establishment in Washington, DC. She’s the new favorite candidate of the billionaire class because they want control — no different than academia and Harvard and using their billions to exercise influence,” he said.

As was reported by the New York Post, Trump has asked some of the people close to him what they think about Haley serving as vice president in recent weeks.

Haley herself, however, said that she doesn’t even consider becoming the vice president.

“I don’t run for a second,” she said.

In addition to that, she criticized Trump, saying that “chaos and drama” follow him.

While opposing Haley, Trump Jr. also acknowledged that she recently has risen in the polls.

“Ron DeSantis has proven that he doesn’t have what it takes to be on that stage. He’s embarrassed himself that way. She is now the preferred candidate,” he said.

When asked about Haley potentially becoming Trump’s vice president, Lara Trump, Trump Jr.’s sister-in-law, said that it is possible.

“Crazier things have happened. I would never say never with Donald J. Trump,” she said.

Donald Trump’s son was not the only person who became concerned about the possibility of Haley becoming the vice president.

“MAGA would revolt if Nikki Haley were to even be given an internship in Trump’s next administration. She represents the neocon establishment ‘America last’ wing of the Republican Party that we are absolutely done with,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said earlier this month.

Impeachment Investigators Launch Probe after Major White House Admission

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) House Republicans, leading the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, have initiated an investigation into the president’s potential role in orchestrating Hunter Biden’s dramatic refusal to comply with a Congressional subpoena. The White House notably acknowledged Joe Biden’s familiarity with this potentially criminal defiance.

In a Wednesday letter addressed to the White House, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio., requested documents linked to potential communications between the president’s team and his embattled son before the latter refused to testify to be deposed by Republicans.

“In light of an official statement from the White House that President Biden was aware in advance that his son, Hunter Biden, would knowingly defy two congressional subpoenas, we are compelled to examine as part of our impeachment inquiry whether the President engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding of Congress,” the lawmakers said. 

Initially set for a deposition on Dec. 13, Hunter Biden wanted a public hearing due to partisan claims that House Republicans would leak potentially damaging testimony. Republicans contested Hunter Biden’s claims, highlighting that all subpoenaed individuals subpoenaed had testified behind closed doors.  

On Dec. 13, Hunter Biden arrived at the Capitol but instead held a press conference where he defended his father. On the same day, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that Joe Biden was “familiar” with his son’s plan to defy a subpoena seeking his testimony.

Comer and Jordan argued in their letter that Jean-Pierre’s admission prompted them to investigate the extent of Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s potentially criminal defiance. 

“In light of Ms. Jean-Pierre’s statement, we are compelled to examine the involvement of the President in his son’s scheme to defy the Committees’ subpoenas,” they added. “The Committees have accumulated substantial evidence that Hunter Biden’s business endeavors have improperly included his father, and the President has made false claims about his knowledge and involvement in these schemes.” 

Despite mounting evidence implicating Joe Biden in the contentious business dealings of his family members, the president has consistently asserted that he was never involved in business with Hunter Biden. Initially, Biden falsely claimed he never discussed business with his son. Most recently, Biden dismissed damning evidence as a “bunch of lies.”

However, Comer and Jordan contested this. They continued, “In fact, just days before Mr. Biden was scheduled to appear for his deposition, the President claimed he had not interacted with any of his son’s business partners. This is false. The President has met with, spoken to, and received money sourced from his son’s foreign business partners.” 

White Teens Stabbed in NYC by Black Man Who Wants ‘All White People Dead’

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A black man with a criminal history stabbed two white teenage girls on Christmas morning while they were eating their breakfast with their parents at a Grand Central Terminal restaurant in New York City — after ranting that he wanted “all white people dead.”

The 14- and 16-year-old tourists from Paraguay were attacked at Tartinery in the Grand Central Dining Concourse around 11:25 a.m. on Dec. 25, 2023, and suffered non-life-threatening stab wounds, police and other sources told the New York Post.

“I want all the white people dead. I want to sit next to the cra**ers,” the attacker, Steven Hutcherson, 36, yelled, police sources said.

After that, he attacked the teenagers, plunging a knife into the older sister’s back, nicking her lungs, and stabbing the younger sister in the thigh, the sources said.

Hutcherson — a mentally ill person who was previously arrested 17 times, according to law enforcement sources — popped up at the restaurant and said he wanted a table but wasn’t going to order anything, staffers informed the Post.

The staffers then added that when they told him that they wouldn’t serve him at the restaurant, he became irate and pointed to the victims’ family, arguing that they weren’t eating anything at the time. The attacker then grabbed a knife and attacked the girls.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority [MTA] said that nearby transit police officers rushed over in less than a minute, with Hutcherson dropping the knife as soon as they arrived.

“Everyone was just running,” a veteran MTA employee who witnessed the “chaotic” incident said on Dec. 26, 2023.

The Post reported that Hutcherson was booked on felony counts of attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.

Hutcherson was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Dec. 26, 2023.

The New York City Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services took the girls, who were staying at a nearby Midtown hotel, to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for their injuries.

One of the hotel workers said that the girls were released from the hospital later on the same day when they were stabbed, adding that they now “are OK.”

DOJ Rejects Menendez’s Attempt to Delay Trial Past 2024 Primary

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Federal prosecutors in Manhattan urged a judge on Tuesday to shut down Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.,’s request to delay his trial past his June 4 primary, the New York Post reported. 

In a scathing federal filing addressed to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams defended the scheduled trial on May 6, 2024, calling it “expedited, but reasonable”  

Williams declared, “Nothing in the defendant’s request for an adjournment, made more than two months after the schedule was set, justifies a material deviation from this considered schedule.” 

The federal government’s response was prompted by a Menendez plea to postpone the trial to July. In contrast, the defense claimed that the trial should be postponed due to the “volume and timing” of the investigation’s disclosures. 

“Contrary to the government’s overheated statements to the press, this is far from an open-and-shut case,” Menendez’s attorneys countered, according to the NY Post. 

However, federal prosecutors swiftly countered Menendez’s claims on Tuesday. “If there were a right to have multiple months to digest discovery prior to filing motions, as the defendants appear to suggest, practice in this district would look quite different,” Williams responded. 

The battle between federal prosecutors and Menendez began after the DOJ leveled damning criminal charges against the New Jersey senator for an alleged bribery scheme.  

According to the indictment, Menendez allegedly illegally used his power as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to shill for the Egyptian government through generous policies.

In return, Menendez allegedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. Menendez received included cash, gold and a Mercedes Benz as part of the scheme, federal prosecutors said. 

Following the indictment, Menendez stepped down as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman to focus on the criminal charges and his 2024 re-election campaign. 

In September 2023, the DOJ hit Menendez with one criminal count of conspiracy to commit bribery, one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. A month later, the DOJ charged Menendez with conspiracy to act as a foreign agent for Egypt.

Menendez’s wife and three New Jersey businessmen also face charges connected to the alleged scheme.