Left Flips Out over Trump’s Embrace of Red-Pilled BLM Leader

Jacob Bruns
-
0
Left Flips Out over Trump’s Embrace of Red-Pilled BLM Leader

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Among the growing number of African Americans to voice their support for former President Donald Trump was Mark Fisher, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter’s Rhode Island chapter, who spoke out in support of Trump last month.

After word of Fisher’s endorsement spread, Trump himself met with the red-pilled BLM leader recently and thanked him afterward in a message via Truth Social.

Trump said he was “very honored to have his and BLM’s support” before highlighting some of the specific things he did during his presidency to address the needs of the African American community.

“I have done more for Black people than any other President (Lincoln?), including 10 year funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where they had none, Opportunity Zones, Criminal Justice Reform, and much more,” he said.

Predictably, the announcement sent the Left into hysterics, according to a Washington Post report.

Rather than celebrate the fact that blacks, as free-thinking individuals, might have a diversity of opinions, some of Fisher’s former associates instead tried to invalidate his views.

Gary Dantzler, who cofounded the BLM Rhode Island chapter with Fisher, said he was “disgusted” by the remarks, suggesting that Fisher’s opinions did not “represent Black Lives Matter.”

The BLM Rhode Island political action committee–a separate group–suggested that Fisher was a fraud who must be excised from the movement due to his support of Trump.

“Anyone can start an organization and add the words Black Lives Matter to it in an attempt to muddy the waters of our movement, as Mark Fisher did,” the group claimed.

They also suggested that Fisher’s group was “illegitimate” and not tied to “the righteous BLM community fighting to protect and save Black lives.”

Fisher previously made the case that Trump was “the best candidate we have” during an interview with podcaster Kim Iversen.

“We’re not stupid,” he said. “We understand when someone’s for us and when someone is not, and it’s obvious that the Democratic Party is not for us.”

But not only did Fisher support Trump; he also slammed current President Joe Biden: “I think right now, who we have sitting in the Oval Office is just a deep disappointment.”

He also suggested that the Left, in pandering to black people while not truly helping them, has enacted “basically racist policies.”

LGBT Activists Seethe over Daily Wire’s Feature-Length Transgender Sports Comedy

Molly Bruns
-
0
LGBT Activists Seethe over Daily Wire’s Feature-Length Transgender Sports Comedy

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Daily Wire was debuting its first feature-length comedy film, Lady Ballers, at 8 p.m. on Friday, via its streaming platform, DailyWire+.

Already the movie—which the conservative-leaning Nashville media company calls “the most triggering comedy of the year”—has left-wing activists up in arms over its ridicule of the LGBT community as it tackles the controversial topic of biological men competing in women’s sports.

Company cofounder Jeremy Boreing starred in and directed the film, alongside Daily Wire sports commentators known as “Crain & Co,” according to the Washington Times.

It tells the story of Rob, a disgraced high-school basketball coach, who teaches his team of men to embrace modern gender theory in order to regain his winning streak and dominate women’s sports.

Several prominent Daily Wire personalities—including Boreing’s fellow cofounder, Ben Shapiro, and What Is a Woman documentarian Matt Walsh—appear in the film. Former presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also makes a cameo.

Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who tied with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, also appears in the trailer.

“Today, Cultural Marxists enforce their ideology through not only the government, but also through education, journalism, Big Tech, Big Business, sports, music, and Hollywood,” Cruz said in a statement. “… I am proud to join the Daily Wire and support their effort to break through Hollywood’s woke toxicity and expose the comedic irony of Leftist ideology.”

Cruz pointed out that the absurdity of left-wing politics almost made lampooning it a bit too easy.

“They’re so out of control, the regular news headlines are starting to read as if they were written by the Babylon Bee,” he said.

Nonetheless, he praised the movie for being ” funny as hell.”

Leftists, on the other hand, were enraged by the film, as it emphasizes the total absurdity of their ideology.

LGBT-friendly publication Out railed against the film calling it “completely unfunny” and “transphobic,” while implying that it was also sexist for claiming men were superior to women at sports.

“Based on the trailer, it’s not clear if [Boreing] has ever written or acted before, or if he has ever met a woman in real life,” wrote Out critic Mey Rude. “Every joke falls flat, the trailer mocks women athletes, feminists, Dylan Mulvaney, and indigenous people, it claims that being ‘trans-age’ is a thing, and it just makes very little sense overall.”

Pioneering Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Dies at 93

Editor 1
-
0
Pioneering Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Dies at 93

(Headline USA) Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an unwavering voice of moderate conservatism and the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, died Friday. She was 93.

O’Connor died in Phoenix, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness, the Supreme Court said in a news release.

Chief Justice John Roberts mourned her death. “A daughter of the American Southwest, Sandra Day O’Connor blazed an historic trail as our Nation’s first female Justice,” Roberts said in statement issued by the court. “She met that challenge with undaunted determination, indisputable ability, and engaging candor.”

In 2018, she announced that she had been diagnosed with “the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease.” Her husband, John O’Connor, died of complications of Alzheimer’s in 2009.

O’Connor’s nomination in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan and subsequent confirmation by the Senate ended 191 years of male exclusivity on the high court.

A native of Arizona who grew up on her family’s sprawling ranch, O’Connor wasted little time building a reputation as a hard worker who wielded considerable political clout on the nine-member court.

The granddaughter of a pioneer who traveled west from Vermont and founded the family ranch some three decades before Arizona became a state, O’Connor had a tenacious, independent spirit that came naturally. As a child growing up in the remote outback, she learned early to ride horses, round up cattle and drive trucks and tractors.

“I didn’t do all the things the boys did,” she said in a 1981 Time magazine interview, “but I fixed windmills and repaired fences.”

On the bench, her influence could best be seen, and her legal thinking most closely scrutinized, in the court’s rulings on abortion, perhaps the most contentious and divisive issue the justices faced.

O’Connor balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that said women have a constitutional right to abortion.

Then, in 1992, she helped forge and lead a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the 1973 ruling. “Some of us as individuals find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that can’t control our decision,” O’Connor said in court, reading a summary of the decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

Thirty years after that decision, a more conservative court did overturn Roe and Casey, and the opinion was written by the man who took her high court seat, Justice Samuel Alito. He joined the court upon O’Connor’s retirement in 2006, chosen by President George W. Bush.

In 2000, O’Connor was part of the 5-4 majority that effectively resolved the disputed 2000 presidential election in favor of Bush, over Democrat Al Gore.

Bush was among many prominent Americans offering condolences Friday. “It was fitting that Sandra became the first female appointed to our highest court, because she was a pioneer who lived by the code of the west,” Bush said in a statement. “She was determined and honest, modest and considerate, dependable and self-reliant. She was also fun and funny, with a wonderful sense of humor.”

Former President Barack Obama, who awarded O’Connor the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, praised her for “forging a new path and building a bridge behind her for all young women to follow.”

O’Connor was regarded with great fondness by many of her colleagues. When she retired, Justice Clarence Thomas, a consistent conservative, called her “an outstanding colleague, civil in dissent and gracious when in the majority.”

She could, nonetheless, express her views tartly. In one of her final actions as a justice, a dissent to a 5-4 ruling to allow local governments to condemn and seize personal property to allow private developers to build shopping plazas, office buildings and other facilities, she warned that the majority had unwisely ceded yet more power to the powerful. “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property,” O’Connor wrote. “Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing … any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

O’Connor, whom commentators had once called the nation’s most powerful woman, remained the court’s only woman until 1993, when, much to O’Connor’s delight and relief, President Bill Clinton nominated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The current court includes a record four women.

The enormity of the reaction to O’Connor’s appointment had surprised her. She received more than 60,000 letters in her first year, more than any one member in the court’s history.

“I had no idea when I was appointed how much it would mean to many people around the country,” she once said. “It affected them in a very personal way. People saw it as a signal that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for women. It’s important to parents for their daughters, and to daughters for themselves.”

At times, the constant publicity was almost unbearable. “I had never expected or aspired to be a Supreme Court justice,” she said. “My first year on the court made me long at times for obscurity.”

Following her retirement, O’Connor expressed regret that a woman had not been chosen to replace her. O’Connor remained active in the government even after she retired from the court. She sat as a judge on several federal appeals courts, advocated for judicial independence and served on the Iraq Study Group. She also was appointed to the honorary post of chancellor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

O’Connor cited her husband’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease as her primary reason for leaving the court. After moving into an assisted living center, John O’Connor struck up a romance with a fellow Alzheimer’s patient, a relationship experts say is not uncommon among people with dementia. The retired justice was relieved that he was comfortable and happy at the center, according to her son, Scott.

On the bench, O’Connor generally favored states in disputes with the federal government. She often sided with police when they faced claims of violating people’s rights. In 1985, she wrote for the court as it ruled that the confession of a criminal suspect first warned about his rights may be used as trial evidence, even if police violated the suspect’s rights in obtaining an earlier confession.

A 1991 decision written by O’Connor said police do not violate the Constitution’s ban against unreasonable searches and seizures when they board buses and randomly ask passengers to consent to being searched.

In a 1994 decision, O’Connor said police officers need not stop questioning and seek clarification when a criminal suspect makes what might have been an ambiguous request for legal help.

O’Connor wrote for the court in 1992, when it said prison guards violate inmates’ rights by using unnecessary physical force even if no serious injuries result, and in 1993, when it ruled that employers may be guilty of illegal sexual harassment even in the absence of any psychological harm.

In 2004, O’Connor wrote the majority opinion that went against the Bush administration in ruling that an American citizen seized on the Afghanistan battlefield can challenge his detention in U.S. courts. “We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens,” O’Connor wrote.

O’Connor once described herself and her eight fellow justices as nine firefighters: “When [someone] lights a fire, we invariably are asked to attend to the blaze. We may arrive at the scene a few years later.”

O’Connor announced her retirement in a one-sentence written statement. She cited her age, then 75, and said she “needs to spend time” with her family.

Her official resignation letter to Bush was similarly succinct. “It has been a great privilege indeed to have served as a member of the court for 24 terms,” the justice wrote. “I will leave it with enormous respect for the integrity of the court and its role under our constitutional structure.”

“For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good,” Bush told her in a private call not long after receiving her letter, an aide said. Then, in the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office, he praised her as “a discerning and conscientious judge and a public servant of complete integrity.”

O’Connor was 51 when she joined the court to replace the retired Potter Stewart. A virtual unknown on the national scene until her appointment, she had served as an Arizona state judge and before that as a member of her state’s Legislature.

The woman who climbed higher in the legal profession than had any other woman did not begin her career auspiciously. As a top-ranked graduate of Stanford’s prestigious law school, class of 1952, O’Connor discovered that most large law firms did not hire women.

One Los Angeles firm offered her a job as a secretary. Perhaps it was that early experience that shaped O’Connor’s professional tenacity. While workweeks typically stretched to 60 hours or more, she found time to play tennis and golf. Before her husband developed Alzheimer’s, they danced expertly and made frequent appearances on the Washington party circuit.

O’Connor’s survivors include her three sons, Scott, Brian and Jay, six grandchildren and a brother.

In late 1988, O’Connor was diagnosed as having breast cancer, and she underwent a mastectomy. She missed just two weeks of work. That same year, she had her appendix removed.

O’Connor was embarrassed in 1989 after conservative Republicans in Arizona used a letter she had sent to support their claim that the United States is a “Christian nation.” The 1988 letter, which prompted some harsh criticism of O’Connor by legal scholars, cited three Supreme Court rulings in which the nation’s Christian heritage was discussed.

O’Connor said she regretted the letter’s use in a political debate. “It was not my intention to express a personal view on the subject of the inquiry,” she said.

Funeral plans were not immediately available.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Wake Forest Prof. Resigns after Feeling Unsupported for Pro-Hamas Post

Jacob Bruns
-
0
Wake Forest Prof. Resigns after Feeling Unsupported for Pro-Hamas Post

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A Wake Forest University professor has resigned her post after complaining that she felt unsupported for publicly endorsing Hamas on social media, the College Fix reported.

Laura Mullen, a creative writing professor who reportedly arrived two years ago from Louisiana State University, penned a Twitter post supporting the Hamas terrorists soon after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“So it’s kind of a Duh but if you turn me out of my house plow my olive grove and confine what’s left of my family to the small impoverished state you run as an open air prison I could be tempted to shoot up your dance party yeah even knowing you will scorch the earth,” Mullen wrote in the since-deleted tweet.

The self-declared poet, then resigned on Oct. 31 for “personal reasons.”

When she later explained the tweet, she suggested that it was meant to be “raw, direct, poetic” by pointing to the “results of oppression.”

According to the academic, sometimes terrorists are the real victims.

“I don’t believe in clear lines between victims and perpetrators, that terrorism comes out of a vacuum,” she noted, adding that she does not “condone terrorism” but cares “deeply” about “people everywhere.”

Two weeks later, however, Mullen suggested that she resigned because she felt unsupported by the university’s administration in the wake of her pro-Hamas tweet.

“Like if you watch animal films and you isolate one gazelle, that’s the one that gets eaten,” she said, noting that “they kind of threw me to the wolves.”

Although she predictably received backlash from the viral tweet, which received at least 27,000 views before its removal and elicited an angry response from some parents and donors in the school community, there are no indications that Mullen was punished or asked to resign.

Santos Becomes 1st GOP Lawmaker Ever to Be Booted from House

Editor 1
-
0
Santos Becomes 1st GOP Lawmaker Ever to Be Booted from House

(Brett Rowland, The Center Square) Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., became the sixth lawmaker ever—and the first Republican—to be booted from the House of Representatives, closing the New York Republican’s fraught 11-month tenure in Congress.

Three Democrat Confederates were previously expelled from Congress in 1861 following the South’s secession, and more recently two Democrats have been removed following criminal convictions of bribery: Michael J. Myers of Pennsylvania in 1980 and James Traficant of Ohio in 2002.

Santos’s Republican colleagues opted to throw him under the bus on the strength of a damning internal ethics report that said he had been uncooperative with investigative efforts rather than wait for a guilty verdict in a pending federal fraud trial.

It immediately winnows the GOP’s razor-thin majority to eight, with the likelihood that Santos’s seat will now flip blue again and make it a margin of only seven.

And yet, his expulsion seemed to be one of the few things on which the gridlocked Congress has been able to reach a strong bipartisan consensus.

Santos had survived two previous expulsion votes led by fellow New York Republicans. However, in the third vote on Friday, 105 Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in the vote to remove him.

In November, a House Ethics subcommittee issued a scathing report that concluded Santos likely committed campaign fraud and other ethical violations.

The panel said its investigation determined that there is “substantial evidence” that Santos filed “false or incomplete reports” with the Federal Election Commission, used campaign funds for personal purposes and engaged in fraudulent conduct in violation of House rules.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the subcommittee said in its report.

Santos’s conduct “warrants public condemnation, is beneath the dignity of the office, and has brought severe discredit upon the House,” it said.

“Representative George Santos cannot be trusted. At nearly every opportunity, he placed his desire for private gain above his duty to uphold the Constitution, federal law, and ethical principles,” according to the Ethics Committee report.

The committee unanimously voted to refer the evidence of Santos’s alleged violations to the Justice Department.

Santos also faces federal charges on 23 counts of fraud, including money laundering and identity theft. Federal prosecutors in New York allege that Santos and his former campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, submitted false financial reports to the Federal Election Commission, inflating his fundraising numbers.

They also allege he fraudulently collected over $24,000 in unemployment insurance benefits. A previous indictment filed in May against Santos charged him with embezzling money from his campaign and lying to Congress about his income, among other allegations.

Santos previously admitted faking his résumé and lying about his educational background but said that he hadn’t broken the law or crossed any ethical lines.

Santos also faces a Federal Elections Commission complaint alleging his campaign engaged in a “straw donor scheme” to conceal the sources of a $705,000 personal loan to his campaign.

Judge Orders FBI to Produce Documents about Alleged CIA Asset Involved in 9/11

Ken Silva
-
0
Judge Orders FBI to Produce Documents about Alleged CIA Asset Involved in 9/11

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A military judge has ordered the FBI to produce 3,000 pages of documents about Omar al-Bayoumi, an alleged Saudi and CIA intelligence asset who acted as the handler for two of the 9/11 hijackers.

First reported by the national security blog SpyTalk, the order was issued by a judge overseeing proceedings against 9/11 defendants, including alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohamad, at Guantanamo Bay.

“The accused [9/11 defendants] are charged with a conspiracy, so existing evidence from the criminal investigations into that conspiracy is relevant to this case,” wrote Air Force Col. Michael McCall in his order, according to SpyTalk.

“It is notable that the prosecution has not argued that additional materials do not exist, nor has it asserted a privilege over the information.”

As SpyTalk noted, Bayoumi was a subject of FBI investigations for more than 20 years because he was the handler for two of the plane hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

Shockingly, SpyTalk also published earlier this year a sworn statement from Office of Military Commissions investigator Don Canestraro, who said that Bayoumi was a CIA asset.

According to Canestraro, at least two FBI agents told him that the CIA had attempted to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. The CIA was directing its recruiting efforts through Bayoumi, Canestraro said.

One of the FBI agents, identified as “CS-3” in the court filing, said Bayoumi allegedly set up bank accounts and rented apartments for the two hijackers in San Diego, at the behest of the CIA.

“According to CS-3, prior to the 9/11 attacks, the CIA was under pressure to recruit informants within al-Qaeda,” Canestraro said. “Responding to this pressure, [an unidentified CIA official] and his/her colleagues at the CIA were attempting to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar via a liaison relationship with the Saudi GID.”

Another FBI agent, identified as CS-23, made similar statements, according to Canestraro.

“CS-23 told me that the attempt to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar was an operation directed by the Central Intelligence Agency. CS-23 told me that the CIA used their liaison relationship with the Saudi intelligence services to conduct an operation on U.S. soil,” Canestraro said.

Along with the FBI agents, Canestraro spoke with former Deputy National Security Advisor Richard Clarke, who has spoken about the CIA-recruitment theory publicly.

Clarke reportedly told Canestraro that the reason the CIA was recruiting the hijackers was for a “false flag operation.”

“According to Mr. Clarke, this ‘false flag’ operation would have involved al-Bayoumi befriending the two hijackers by attempting to convince them that he was sympathetic to their cause,” Canestraro said in the court filing.

“At the same time, al-Bayoumi would have been reporting on the hijackers’ activities to Saudi intelligence and ultimately to the CIA.”

A CIA spokesperson reportedly denied the abovementioned allegations.

Meanwhile, families of 9/11 victims lamented that alleged terrorists at Gitmo are being able to access more information about the incident than they are.

“The defense counsel for those accused of mass murder on 9/11 is getting more access to documents than the terror victims themselves,” Eagleson, who lost his father after al-Qaida operatives commandeered commercial airlines and crashed them into the World Trade Center, told SpyTalk.

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

Rep. Higgins Lobs Another Bold Jan. 6 Claim: ‘200 Agents Embedded in the Crowd’

Ken Silva
-
0
Rep. Higgins Lobs Another Bold Jan. 6 Claim: ‘200 Agents Embedded in the Crowd’

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., has alleged that there were hundreds of undercover FBI assets embedded with protestors on Jan. 6, 2021, and that the bureau helped plan and promote the event for months in advance.

“They had, I suspect, over 200 agents embedded in the crowd, including agents—or as they would call it, human assets—inside the Capitol dressed as Trump supporters before the door was opened,” Higgins told Newsmax on Thursday.

“Beyond that, the FBI had infiltrated online chat groups and websites and social media accounts across the country, with any group that was discussing objections to COVID oppression. The FBI effectively infiltrated those groups,” he said.

“When you track the text threads and the communications within those groups, and you find the origins of suggestions of potential violence or an act of occupation of the Capitol, you’ll find those messages were led by members of the groups that ended up being the FBI agents who infiltrated the group.”

Higgins’s claim follows him stating in Congress that at least two busloads of FBI informants that were sent to Washington DC on Jan. 6 to storm Capitol Hill with the other rowdy protestors.

So far, Higgins has produced zero evidence to support his claims.

However, what Higgins described about the FBI infiltrating chat rooms is exactly what happened in the 2020 conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In that case, it was revealed that an FBI informant created Facebook pages used by the Michigan and Wisconsin III%er militia groups.

And there is plenty of evidence that informants participated in the Jan. 6 event.

One such informant who stormed the Capitol was recently given “time served” for a felony gun charge due to his infiltration of the Proud Boys ahead of Jan. 6.

“He has changed his thinking and actually worked as a paid FBI informant who infiltrated the Charlotte chapter of the Proud Boys and gave agents valuable information about the organization,” the Capitol-storming informant’s lawyer said in a separate case in September, pleading for a lenient sentence.

During the Proud Boys sedition trial, the DOJ disclosed at least another 10 to 12 undercover DC Metropolitan Police Department officers who participated in Jan. 6.

The defense in that case estimated that there were at least 50 law enforcement assets in the Jan. 6 crowd, adding that “there are reasons to suspect the true number [of informants] is higher.”

Not even most FBI offices involved in the Jan. 6 investigation know how many informants were in the crowd, according to FBI whistleblower George Hill, who alleged in May that officials in DC withheld such information from other offices.

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

Rep. Loudermilk: Evidence Missing from Dems’ Jan. 6 Committee

Ken Silva
-
0
Rep. Loudermilk: Evidence Missing from Dems’ Jan. 6 Committee

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., said Thursday that videotaped depositions have gone missing from the hundreds of interviews the Democrat-controlled Jan. 6 Committee conducted during its politicized investigation of the Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot.

“All of the videotapes of all depositions are gone,” Loudermilk told Just the News.

“We found out about this early in the investigation when I received a call from someone who was looking for some information off one of the videotapes, and we started searching, and we had none,” Loudermilk reportedly explained. “I wrote a letter to Bennie Thompson asking for them. And he confirmed that they did not preserve those types. He didn’t feel that they had to.”

But according to Loudermilk and others, Thompson was required to preserve any data and information and documents that are used in an official proceeding, as per House rules. Given that excerpts of some of the depositions were played during the Jan. 6 Committee’s show trial, they should have been preserved, he said.

According to Just the News, other evidence from the Jan. 6 Committee has been heavily redacted. And House Republicans have no records of who the witnesses were, what they said or why it is being used by the federal prosecutor in their case against Donald Trump, he said.

Loudermilk’s statements follow District Judge Tanya Chutkan denying Trump’s lawyers access to the videotaped depositions—asserting that written transcripts were just as good for his defense.

Reporter Julie Kelly surmised that Chutkan, the Biden administration and the Jan. 6 Committee are all working to conceal exonerating evidence from the former President.

“She clearly knows the videos are missing and will concoct any farfetched excuse to protect J6 committee and DOJ,” Kelly said.

Loudermilk’s statements also corroborate claims Fox News host Jesse Watters made in August, when he said the Jan. 6 Committee destroyed approximately half of its evidence.

“The Democrat-run Jan. 6 committee is missing one and a half terabytes of data,” Watters said at the time, noting that such a volume likely includes critical records of security failures on Capitol Hill, as well as video depositions from Trump’s Cabinet members.

The missing data will likely include emails and text messages, as well, according to Waters.

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

GOP Secs. of State Ask Colo. Supreme Court to Dismiss Trump ‘Insurrection’ Case

Editor 1
-
0
GOP Secs. of State Ask Colo. Supreme Court to Dismiss Trump ‘Insurrection’ Case

(Joe Mueller, The Center Square) A group of Republican secretaries of state argue a case involving former President Donald Trump’s appearance on the Colorado primary ballot should be dismissed and that a judge shouldn’t have described him as an “insurrectionist.”

Earlier this month, Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace ruled the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow Trump to be removed from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

However, Wallace wrote Trump’s remarks on Jan. 6, 2021, “incited imminent lawless violence” and described him as an “insurrectionist.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the organization filing the lawsuit to remove Trump, acknowledged the case would probably end up at the Colorado Supreme Court after Wallace’s ruling.

On Wednesday, Republican secretaries of state Chuck Gray of Wyoming, Jay Ashcroft of Missouri and Frank LaRose of Ohio filed a 14-page brief with the Colorado Supreme Court requesting the District Court’s final order be thrown out, arguing it “should have decided this matter on a motion to dismiss, rather than declare President Trump an ‘insurrectionist.'”

LaRose is running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Ashcroft is running for the party’s nomination for governor in Missouri as Republican Gov. Mike Parson is term limited.

Similar lawsuits arguing Trump violated the 14th Amendment were filed in Minnesota and Michigan. The Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a case seeking to remove Trump and ruled the state doesn’t have the authority to prevent the Republicans from placing a candidate on the ballot. The group Free Speech for People is appealing a ruling in favor of Trump in Michigan.

“I have been and will continue to work to protect the right of the voters to decide who represents them,” Gray said in a statement. “The weaponization of the Fourteenth Amendment with frivolous lawsuits like the one in Colorado undermines the sanctity of the Constitution and our entire election process.”

District Court’s finding of Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, could possibly prejudice cases involving Trump “when this issue inevitably arises in other jurisdictions,” the brief states. “Cases such as this one have been filed in over half of the states in the United States, with more possible to follow.”

The secretaries of state argue what happens in one state will affect all primary elections.

“Such removal not only affects that state’s election but also has far-reaching ramifications in other states, by artificially altering momentum in relation to primaries and caucuses; therefore, affecting the entire process,” the brief states. “Thus, the District Court’s decision threatens the integrity of the electoral process the undersigned Secretaries undertook to defend.”

The brief contends the District Court ruling could “justify excluding a presidential candidate from the ballot, thereby directly impinging upon the electorate’s freedom to choose their leader.”

The brief also criticizes the District Court for allowing the Congressional January 6th Report from being entered into evidence. It contends the committee had no appointed Republicans and its “bias has become increasingly clear as more security camera footage of January 6th continues to be release to the general public.”

Newsom and DeSantis Duke It Out in ‘Red vs. Blue State’ Debate

Editor 1
-
0
Newsom and DeSantis Duke It Out in ‘Red vs. Blue State’ Debate

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom sparred over every issue brought up during their debate Thursday night hosted by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

DeSantis is fighting to gain ground against former President Donald Trump in the race to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. Newsom, a Democrat, has made several moves that hint at a presidential run but maintains his support for President Joe Biden as his party’s nominee.

“There are profound difference[s], but there’s one thing that we have in common: neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024,” Newsom claimed during the debate.

Many, however, have speculated that the Democratic National Committee could pull a last-minute bait-and-switch during or after its convention next August.

As for DeSantis—whose stock has plunged considerably due to a lackluster, low-energy campaign—his best hope is to be the default choice if Trump becomes ineligible. However, many of the early NeverTrump backers he was counting on have recently flocked to pro-Establishment neocon Nikki Haley instead.

DeSantis opened by saying, “You have to try to mess California up, and yet that is what Gavin Newsom has done since he’s been governor. He’s the first governor to ever lose population. They actually, at one point, ran out of U-Hauls.”

A 2022 report from U-Haul stated their out-migration numbers from California in 2021 would have been higher had they not run short on trucks to meet demand.

Referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, DeSantis said Newsom “imposed restrictions on his own people while exempting himself from those restrictions. He led the country in school closures, locking kids out of school while he had his own kids in private school [receiving in-person instruction].”

Newsom said he was at the debate to “tell the truth about the Biden–Harris record and compare and contrast Ron DeSantis’s records and the Republican Party’s record as a point of contrast that’s as different as daylight and darkness.”

He said DeSantis wants to “reverse” American policies to a pre-1960s era “on voting rights, on civil rights, on LGBTQ rights, on women’s rights—it’s not just access to abortion but also access to contraception.”

He went on to bash DeSantis for what has been one of the governor’s signature issues, his hardline stance in the culture-war struggle against corporations like Disney, which has theme parks in both states and scuttled its plans for a major relocation from California to Florida after clashes with DeSantis over the state’s anti-grooming law for public education.

“You are focusing on false separateness,” Newsom said in his attack on DeSantis.

“You are on a banning binge a cultural purge intimidating and humiliating people you disagree with,” he continued. “You and President Trump are trying to light democracy on fire.”

On the issue of pandemic-era lockdowns, Newsom said DeSantis passed an emergency declaration before California did and closed down Florida beaches and restaurants, which DeSantis refuted.

“You had quarantines, you had checkpoints, all over the state of Florida,” Newsom said. “By the way, I didn’t say that. Donald Trump laid you out on this.”

“That’s not true,” DeSantis countered.

“Why did everyone leave California to come to Florida,” the Republican asked, adding that Newsom’s in-laws even went to his state. “They were coming to Florida because we were open. We were open, you were closed.”

On the issue of the border, DeSantis called it, “déjà vu all over again with that flurry of lies,” referring to Newsom when he stated the administration wasn’t lying to the public about the border.

“Gavin Newsom is lying to you about what it’s going to take to solve this problem,” DeSantis said. “California is a sanctuary state. They thumb their nose at federal immigration law. This has real consequences.”

DeSantis cited an example of an illegal foreign national who was released by Los Angeles authorities who wouldn’t cooperate with ICE. The man in question went on to murder the mother of a 3-year-old.

“California policies do not work,” DeSantis said. “Liberal elites [like Newsom] like to impose burdens on you … who want open borders who lecture everybody else about it. Then the minute they have to deal with any of the consequences, oh man, all hell breaks loose, and they get upset.”

Newsom referenced DeSantis’s program that bused asylum seekers from Texas to different locales, including Martha’s Vineyard and Sacramento, California.

“I’m the only guy here that’s a border state governor,” Newsom said. “You’re trolling folks and trying to find migrants to play political games to get news and attention so you can out-Trump Trump. By the way, how’s that going for you? You’re down 41 points in your own home state.”

DeSantis said the odds that Biden’s border policies have enabled terrorists to enter the U.S. are a certainty.

“Of course, our enemies will take advantage of this,” he said. “Joe Biden is sitting on his hands. He refuses to take care of the border. He refuses to hold the drug cartels accountable. This is the vision of Biden, Harris, Newsom: open borders. There will be a terrorist attack at some point that we’ll be able to trace back to our southern border.”

Newsom countered that “Joe Biden put a $14 billion immigration package in front of Congress,” that lawmakers refused to act on, adding that DeSantis wanted to “demagogue this issue.”

Newsom also said Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee and “in a matter of weeks, [DeSantis] will be endorsing Donald Trump as the nominee for the Republican Party.”

The governors also sparred over topics including migration from blue to red states, taxation policies, education outcomes, crime rates, and abortion while talking over each other.

Hannity pointed out several times that Newsom refused to answer questions about his record, specifically on the issue of why people were leaving California, higher taxes, worse education outcomes, among others.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report. 

1...1,6071,6081,609...3,875Page 1,608 of 3,875