EXCLUSIVE: Club for Growth Head Supports Jim Jordan in Contentious Speakership Race

Ken Silva
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EXCLUSIVE: Club for Growth Head Supports Jim Jordan in Contentious Speakership Race

UPDATE: Shortly after the publication of this article, Rep. Jim Jordan secured the Republican nomination to become Speaker of the House.

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Club for Growth President David McIntosh has added his voice to the growing support for Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to become the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In an exclusive interview Friday with Headline USA, McIntosh stressed that his organization isn’t actively campaigning for a particular candidate to fill the role.

That said, Jordan’s fiscal responsibility and his ability to work with moderate Republicans make him the man for the job, he said.

“We’re hoping Jordan’s able to pull together the votes to secure it, especially since Steve Scalise pulled out,” McIntosh said.

“As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim worked with [former Speaker Kevin] McCarthy and the more moderate leadership team,” he added. “I think everyone trusts him, so he could be that unifier to emerge.”

McIntosh’s comments come amid a quickly changing landscape in the House.

Scalise, R-La., the current House majority leader, was initially nominated by his colleagues, but withdrew Thursday night as it became clear he wouldn’t have enough votes to seal the deal.

Rumors were flying that a vote on Jordan could come by the end of Friday, though nothing had been announced as of the publication of this article.

McIntosh said this latest speakership scrum differed from the previous contest won by McCarthy, R-Calif.

Earlier this year, 17 of the 20 holdouts against McCarthy were supported by the Club for Growth. McIntosh said those members were encouraged to stand by their principles and to push to ensure that McCarthy would preside over the House as a fiscal hawk.

Despite his differences with McCarthy, McIntosh said he thought the former speaker “did a good job” in his short tenure. However, he dropped the ball in allowing the Democrats to shape the latest funding bill, the Club for Growth leader said.

This time around, McIntosh said it seemed like various House members had their own individual reasons for replacing McCarthy—from moderates such as Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., to pro-MAGA maverick Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Meanwhile, the raft of concessions achieved by the Republicans who opposed McCarthy earlier this year appears to be in limbo.

Part of the negotiations entailed Club for Growth getting McCarthy’s super-PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, to refrain from challenging conservative candidates in critical primary races.

“That’s a huge change, because he had spent about $40 million in primaries—that group did—that could have been used in the fall to win more seats,” McIntosh told Headline USA in February, after securing that win.

“So, they’ve agreed to that and we’ve agreed that we’ll continue to be able to get the best conservative into those primaries,” he said. “And it will make it a stronger Republican House.”

McIntosh said Friday that he believes the deal with the Congressional Leadership Fund will remain intact.

“Will that survive now that Kevin’s not the speaker? The real answer is: I don’t know where that deal would be,” he said.

“I’d hope we still have our incentives aligned,” he continued. “Their incentive is to keep and build the majority, and our incentive is to try to get more conservatives in the primaries. And so, there’s a good chance the deal will continue.”

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

Judge Tosses Case against Patriot Front Leader

Ken Silva
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Judge Tosses Case against Patriot Front Leader

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) An Idaho judge dismissed on Friday the state’s case against Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau after prosecutors flaunted rules that required them to provide the defendant with possibly exculpatory evidence, according to the Idaho Tribune.

“My client is thankful that he had a fair day in court, and was unsurprised that the court saw things the way we presented them, and he believes this is a fair outcome to an unjust situation,” Rousseau’s attorney told the Tribune.

Reporter Casey Whalen said prosecutors may appeal the decision, but that such an effort will likely fail.

The judge’s dismissal stems from the incident in June 2022, when 31 members of the right-wing nationalist group were arrested after someone reported seeing people loading into a U-Haul van like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene. The members were accused of planning to riot at a nearby LGBT event.

Five of the Patriot Front defendants were convicted of misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot in July.

But in August, a judge dismissed the case against Patriot Front member Richard Jessop after finding that the government had acted in “bad faith.” The judge’s decision about Rousseau on Friday was presumably based on the same facts that led to the dismissal of Jessop’s charges.

“The Court concludes dismissal is the only way this Court can instill some sense of justice back into this matter. There is no confidence the State has even yet complied with its discovery obligations,” Judge Destry Randles said in her Aug. 18 order, which was directed towards Coeur d’Alene’s deputy city attorney, Ryan Hunter.

“The State has engaged in bad faith in its dilatory disclosures, non-disclosures, failure to comply with Court Orders, failure to appear in Court when required, all the while insisting it has provided everything to Defense Counsel and is prepared for trial.”

According to Judge Randles’s order, the prosecution didn’t inform Jessop what he was criminally charged with for 102 days after his initial arrest.

Then, the prosecution engaged in what Judge Randles described as a “14-month-long drip of discovery,” including the “dumping” of 3.5 terabytes of data on the defendant seven months after he was charged.

Prosecutor Hunter continued to ignore his discovery obligations, even after a judge ordered him to comply, Randles said.

Hunter, for his part, apparently tried to blame the FBI, telling the judge that the bureau possessed much of the evidence. But the judge rejected this excuse.

“This Court disagrees with the prosecutor’s assertion that the FBI’s possession of the phones prevented that information from being imputed to the State. The phones were turned over to the FBI, not seized by the FBI, these devices were seized by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department,” the judge said.

“Mr. Hunter told the Court that the FBI was not involved in the initial investigation. The Court has no information about how the FBI became involved, and the only information the Court has is that Detective Welch turned the phones over to the FBI while a warrant was being drafted,” the judge said, suggesting that the state was “partnering with a federal agency and playing a shell game with that evidence.”

“It should be noted that during the Motion to Suppress testimony, there was a statement that the FBI was present at the Command Center,” Randles added.

Randles further said that she considered a lesser sanction against the prosecution: simply disallowing the evidence that the prosecution failed to provide in a timely matter. But this route would unduly delay a trial for a misdemeanor crime that should have already been settled, she said.

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

U.Va. Prof. Offers Extra Credit to Attend Anti-Israel Rally, Sparks AG Probe

Jacob Bruns
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U.Va. Prof. Offers Extra Credit to Attend Anti-Israel Rally, Sparks AG Probe

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) As the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to develop, U.S. university students and professors continue to use their platforms to engage in political activism.

This time, a University of Virginia professor, Tessa Farmer, offered extra credit to her students if they would attend an anti-Israel rally, Fox News reported.

Farmer, who teaches “global studies” and “anthropology” at the college, prompted her class to attend a Students for Justice in Palestine rally for additional “points.”

The rally was advertised as a “[teach-in] and demonstration about the current situation in Gaza, the events and history that led to this moment, and a discussion about how we can [stand] in solidarity with Palestinians resisting occupation.”

Farmer’s attempt to transform her students into activists could the eye of Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who, according to a spokesman, is “very concerned” and is “looking into it.”

After coming under fire, Farmer attempted to explain away her extra credit assignment, suggesting that it was meant “for students to attend events around grounds that are applicable to the global studies course topics, recognizing that important issues will have a diversity of perspectives.”

The professor noted that she is guilty of nothing more than “posting the information provided by the organizers about the event that is happening today.”

The “cultural event,” she argued, was simply meant to help students “critically engage with the content presented.”

On Thursday, Miyares penned a letter to the school’s faculty and students, expressing a “deep concern for the rhetoric of some student groups that are sympathetic to Saturday’s terrorist attacks in Israel.”

“The right to freedom of speech does not include violent acts against persons or property. Individuals who commit crimes as part of demonstrations are subject to arrest and prosecution. Similarly, students remain, of course, subject to student codes of conduct,” he said.

He specifically warned against “threats of violence,” such as calling for “physical confrontations.”

One potential solution, according to the AG, is to “provide counseling resources to affected students and to make arrangements to assist students who have had family members impacted by the violence.”

Notorious School Where ‘Gender Theory’ Began Pushes Advocacy of Child Prostitution

Molly Bruns
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Notorious School Where ‘Gender Theory’ Began Pushes Advocacy of Child Prostitution

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, considered America’s first research university, has many dark and seedy secrets in its storied past.

The school, opened in 1876, had early ties to Yale University’s notorious Skull and Bones society, and it was where progressivist John Dewey—who, for better or worse, developed the framework for America’s current public-education system—first got his ideas.

Thus began its sordid connection with the modern-day groomer movement, which has overtaken public education in parts of the country.

Several blue states are now actively choosing to forgo emphasis on academic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic, instead using their platforms and authority in an effort to indoctrinate their captive audiences as part of a social-engineering experiment.

That includes controversial topics such as “gender theory”—another idea that emerged from Johns Hopkins in one of its darkest periods, during the 1950s and ’60s, when sexologist John Money attempted the first failed gender transition experiment on an infant boy, David Reimer, following a botched circumcision.

Recently, the university redefined the term “lesbian” to exclude any mention of women.

After being on the cutting edge of disturbing pedagogical trends for more than a century, Johns Hopkins may also offer a clue as to where progressives intend to lead it in the coming decade, when one radical professor hopes to see schools replaced by brothels.

Johns Hopkins associate history professor Jules Gill-Peterson—a so-called transgender scholar—recently advocated for underage sex workers while participating in a panel discussion at the Socialism 2023 Conference in Chicago.

In audio captured by undercover journalist Karlyn Borysenko, Gill–Peterson answered a question about the “children’s liberation vision,” according to Campus Reform.

An audience member claiming to be a “sex work activist” alleged that the “child sex panic” and “child sex trafficking conspirac[ies]” of the 1990s had raised questions about what role children could play in the “utopia.”

“I don’t know if I’d even ask this question if this was being livestreamed,” the groomer, going by the name “Chanel,” admitted.

“You are rolling into a lot of trouble when you start talking about the rights of young people in the sex industry,” added Chanel. “But young people in the sex industry deserve and need rights at a minimum actually liberation and justice.”

Gill–Peterson insisted that children in foster care and living on the streets should be able to provide for themselves by prostituting themselves, and acknowledged that people who are against child prostitution were “impossible to reckon with.”

“If you’re part of a project trying to think about the young people’s role in the sex industry, one of the ways you might feel like you’re going to be able to lend time and energy to that effort is if it doesn’t feel like you could be hung up to dry alone for it. Right?” Gill–Peterson responded.

The panel also addressed the possibility of eradicating the age of consent.

Borysenko, who wrote about the panel on a Substack blog, said that the rest of the discussion concerned liberating children from their parents, and the rights of children as if they were capable of making informed decisions.

The same socialist conference also included an appearance by Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association, who said classrooms and public libraries both should be used as gathering spaces for radical subversives to promote “socialist organizing.”

Two of the other “luminaries” in attendance were former Weather Underground domestic terrorists Angela Davis and Bill Ayers, now both considered by the Left to be prestigious academics.

Davis, who also was affiliated with the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s, made headlines recently after it was revealed that she had ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower.

Ayers, meanwhile, is best known for having groomed one young man in particular: future President Barack Obama.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Biden’s Latest Far-Left Primary Challenger is Likely Ineligible to Serve as President

Jacob Bruns
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Biden’s Latest Far-Left Primary Challenger is Likely Ineligible to Serve as President

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) As the primary for the clown show that is known as the Democratic Party heats up, another far-left challenger has joined the field hoping to take down incumbent, President Joe Biden, Axios reported Wednesday.

Joining the field of Biden and celebrated self-help author Marianne Williamson will be Cenk Uygur, the founder of the far-left news media outlet, The Young Turks.

According to Uygur, he has been compelled to run because the Democratic ticket is so weak.

“It should not have been me,” he said. “It should have been somebody else, but unfortunately it was not anyone else.”

For the naturalized citizen, time is running out on Biden, and the Democrats have yet to put forward a viable candidate.

“There’s only four months left. We must change course. He has at best a 10% chance of winning. I’m running as a proxy. I am running to win.”

With respect to Williamson, Uygur added that he respects her “courage” as well as her “policies,” but said that there is little sense in framing the upcoming election as “progressives versus establishment.”

For Uygur, “things must change; otherwise, we’re almost definitely going to lose to Trump.”

Unfortunately for Uygur, he is not a natural born American citizen, meaning that he cannot hold the office of President of the United States according to the Constitution, which says that only a “natural born citizen” is eligible for the presidency.

But, following standard leftist practices of ignoring laws, Uygur believes that, despite the fact that he was born in Turkey and immigrated to America in 1978, he would still be allowed to become President even if it meant taking his case to the Supreme Court to make it happen.

“I have lawyered up,” he said, telling the press that the high court would likely side with him.

“Now this case is on our side. The precedent is definitely on our side.”

Newsom Looks to Reinstate Loony Bins to Address California’s Homeless Crisis

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Newsom Looks to Reinstate Loony Bins to Address California’s Homeless Crisis

(Headline USA) Having previously failed to solve his state’s homeless problem by inviting more of them to move there, California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom continued his gradual shift toward the center as he seeks to hide his record of failure in the event of a last-minute presidential run should President Joe Biden drop out.

Instead, Newsom appeared to back the solution that many conservatives have advocated: a return to the sorts of state-run institutions—colloquially known as insane asylums—that offered treatment and shelter for mentally-ill patients until they fell out of vogue in the 1970s and ’80s.

Newsom signed two major pieces of legislation Thursday to transform the state’s mental health system and address the state’s worsening homelessness crisis, putting them both before voters in 2024.

The Democratic governor needs voters’ approval because he wants to borrow billions of dollars through a bond to pay for the proposals.

They would allow the state to borrow $6.38 billion for 11,150 new treatment beds, housing and 26,700 outpatient treatment slots to serve up to 100,000 people a year. The measure also would overhaul how counties pay for mental and behavioral health programs.

Newsom spoke to state and local leaders at an event Thursday in a historic hospital in Los Angeles, cheered by those present as he signed the measures. The mostly vacant General Hospital is being converted into roughly 1,000 affordable units.

Newsom said the proposals will transform the outdated system, adding he understands why residents in California have grown increasingly frustrated with the crisis. If voters approve of the plan in March, the proposals would also give the state $2.4 billion in the next five years to help train 65,000 workers.

“Today, again, is about holding ourselves to a higher level of accountability and higher level of expectation,” Newsom said before he signed the two pieces of legislation. “It’s about creating a framework where we actually can deliver.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined Newsom at the event, appearing to underscore that the new loony bins would offer a kinder, gentler version of the type of treatment that lost support after fictional portrayals like the 1975 Oscar-winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (based on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel) about an Oregon asylum; and Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 exposé of Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York.

“Here in L.A. and throughout our city and state we know that we are facing a crisis,” Bass said. “We are going to transform the system, but we’re also doing something that should’ve been done 50 years ago, and that is build the beds and facilities to make sure that people can get the treatment they need.”

The proposals will appear together as one item on the March 2024 ballot, when voters will also be weighing in on the state and presidential primaries.

Newsom and supporters said the spending would help the state make a dent in its growing homelessness crisis. It would mark the first major update to the state’s mental health system in 20 years.

“It’s a crisis that we have turned away from for too long,” said Democratic Sen. Susan Eggman, who authored the bill that would reform how mental health services are funded. “The days of looking away are gone.”

Voters in 2004 approved a special tax on millionaires that has been used to fund mental health programs. Newsom wants to add more restrictions to how local governments can spend that money.

Under his proposal, two-thirds of revenue from the tax would pay for housing as well as services for people who are chronically homeless and have severe mental illnesses, and drug and alcohol addiction. The changes would also help the state better assess programs’ outcomes by requiring counties to provide uniform reports of how they spend the money.

“Today we don’t get a clear sense of what’s actually happening,” Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, told reporters Thursday.

“That changes with this,” he continued. “We’ll get to establish statewide measures that matter for Californians to see that difference.”

The proposals won overwhelming support from state lawmakers, some of whom said the reforms are “long overdue.” But local counties said the new spending requirements would result in a loss of more than $1 billion, which could be detrimental to existing programs such as mental health outpatients, crisis, recovery and peer-supported services.

Some Republican lawmakers also criticized Newsom’s plan to borrow more money when the state faces budget shortfalls.

It’s one of several efforts by Newsom to reform California’s mental health system. Last year, Newsom signed a law that created a new court process where family members and others could ask a judge to come up with a treatment plan for some people with specific diagnoses, including schizophrenia.

That law would let the judge force people into treatment for up to a year. The program launched in seven counties in early October.

Newsom signed a law earlier this week that would make it easier for authorities to compel treatment for people with untreated mental illness or addictions to alcohol and drugs, many of whom are homeless.

California is home to more than 171,000 homeless people—about 30% of the nation’s homeless population. The state has spent more than $20 billion in the last few years to help them, with mixed results.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Judge Scolds Prosecutors, Delays Hearing for Co-Defendant in Trump Classified Docs Case

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Judge Scolds Prosecutors, Delays Hearing for Co-Defendant in Trump Classified Docs Case

(Headline USA) A judge on Thursday scolded federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump as she abruptly postponed a hearing to determine if the lawyer for one of the former president’s co-defendants had a conflict of interest.

“I admonish the government for wasting the court’s time,” U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon told prosecutors, saying they had presented arguments during Thursday’s hearing that had not been properly raised in earlier court filings.

She said she would set a hearing for a later date for Walt Nauta, a Trump valet charged with conspiring with Trump to conceal classified documents from investigators.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team had asked for hearings to ensure that Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira were aware of potential conflicts because their lawyers have represented other key figures in the case.

Both men were charged alongside Trump with obstructing government efforts to recover classified documents hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s Florida estate.

Prosecutors have said in court filings that the multiple representations could create a conflict by causing a lawyer to betray the confidences of a current or former client, or “pull punches,” during cross-examination.

In Nauta’s case, his attorney, Stanley Woodward, has also represented at least seven other witnesses in the probe, prosecutors say, including a Mar-a-Lago information technology worker who the Justice Department says was asked to delete the surveillance video.

That individual retracted “prior false testimony” after switching lawyers, struck a cooperation deal and provided information that incriminated Trump and helped produce a new indictment in July against the former president, Nauta and De Oliveira, prosecutors have said.

During Thursday’s hearing, prosecutor David Harbach, a member of Smith’s team, said that worker would be called as a government witness and questioned—and also cross-examined—about his change in testimony.

He said that could create a conflict for Woodward, who as the worker’s former lawyer would presumably would be privy to the confidences of his one-time client.

Woodward has denied any conflict and said the prosecutors had no way of knowing what he knows or doesn’t know about what his client communicated to him.

During an earlier hearing, De Oliveira said during questioning from Cannon that he understood the concerns arising from his lawyer’s former representation of three government witnesses. Nonetheless, he wanted to keep his attorney, John Irving. Cannon ruled that he could.

Irving told the judge he did not foresee a conflict, saying there was nothing the witnesses—who are now represented by a new lawyer—could reveal that is not already known by the government or that would be problematic for De Oliveira.

De Oliveira is accused of lying to investigators when he claimed—falsely, prosecutors say—he hadn’t even seen boxes moved into Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House.

They say he conspired with Trump and Nauta to try to delete surveillance footage from the property to prevent it from being turned over to the grand jury. De Oliveira has pleaded not guilty.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

AOC Appears to Break Wind While Accusing Israel of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

Ben Sellers
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AOC Appears to Break Wind While Accusing Israel of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Editor’s note: Story contains subject matter that may be unsuitable for some audiences.

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Perhaps Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y. was trying to send a dogwhistle of solidarity with Australian hatemongers who recently held a rally in Sydney shouting “Gas the Jews.”

Or maybe the “Squad” leader simply had too much hummus while celebrating the brutal massacre orchestrated last weekend by Hamas.

Either way, Twitter followers could not help but notice that during a 45-second livestreamed social-media broadcast, the socialist lawmaker unmistakably appeared to break wind around the 38 second mark.

It came at a particularly awkward moment, during which “AOC” happened to be accusing Israel of genocidal war crimes after it struck back for the slaughter of more than a thousand innocent civilians—including the rape and torture of many—and the kidnapping of roughly 150 others whose fate remains unknown.

“[T]he United States has a responsibility to ensure accountability to human rights to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and to ensure that horrors do not happen in the names of victims who do not want their [fart] tragedy used to justify further violence and injustice,” she said.

There was some minor dispute on Twitter as to which orifice the flatulence may have originated from.

But while few would have predicted it to be the next development in a story that has shocked the world and fueled global anxieties like never before about the outbreak of World War III, it is not the first time farts have become an unwanted diversion for AOC.

One of her first acts as a freshman lawmaker was to draft the “Green New Deal,” a multi-trillion-dollar framework for revamping the entire U.S. economy in order to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, the plan was widely ridiculed for its outlandish proposals—not the least of which was its fixation on regulating cow farts.

Despite the popular rejection of it at the time, leftists and globalists have continued to push the Green New Deal agenda under different labels, including President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan and the “smart city” initiatives being coordinated by the World Economic Forum.

And at least one nation—New Zealand—has attempted to impose a tax on cow farts—although it is unclear how they are assessed.

In all likelihood, Ocasio–Cortez, who let the video remain up on her Twitter site as of Friday morning, felt no sense of shame over her own methane emission.

She has performed other acts of public humiliation before, including dancing to bongos while enraged citizens jeered her at a town-hall meeting.

However, the Bronx boofer may have doomed her future presidential aspirations if history offers any indication.

At least two past Democratic presidential candidates who have publicly cut the cheese went on to bomb in the ballot box.

Hillary Clinton left the normally loquacious Sens. John Edwards and Barack Obama practically speechless after a burst during a November 2007 CNN debate ahead of the Democratic primary.

Although Clinton was by far the better known name and widely considered to be the frontrunner at the time, Obama wound up closing the gap and going on to win the election—and two terms in office—while Clinton would go on to win the nomination in 2016 only to lose the general election.

In 2019, while conducting an on-camera interview with then Hardball! host Chris Matthews, Rep. Eric Swalwell, considered to be a serious political upstart with a bright future and a formidable political adversary for then-President Donald Trump, appeared to shift a bit in his seat.

Shortly thereafter, Swalwell let out a ripper that reared back his shoulders, but continued to make his point without missing a beat.

At that point Swalwell already had launched and failed a short-lived presidential campaign, which lasted only about three months. However, the fart—and subsequent news of an affair with a Chinese honeytrap spy named Fang Fang—not only raised serious concerns about Swalwell’s judgment and integrity, but also made it hard to take him seriously.

In January, Swalwell was one of three Democrat lawmakers who was stripped of his committee assignments due to concerns that he was unfit to serve on the House Intelligence Committee since he was potentially a compromised Chinese asset.

Finally, current independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was caught in a fart scandal in July, but not one of his own making.

While attending a private dinner with several members of the New York media at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, RFK Jr. was upstaged by the evening’s host, literary agent Doug Dechert, who began to argue about global warming while several cups deep into the evening’s libations.

When the debate with his friend across the table became too tiresome, Dechert shut it down with a “loud, prolonged fart,” wrote Page Six reporter Mara Siegler, “while yelling, as if to underscore his point, ‘I’m farting!’”

The moment apparently left many at the table shell-shocked, but perhaps not RFK Jr.’s campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich, who had dealt with public flatulence at least once before.

Kucinich also was a candidate in the 2008 Democratic primary and was onstage during the Hillary Clinton incident.

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

Schweikert Introduces Bill to Repurpose Iran Funds for Israel

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Schweikert Introduces Bill to Repurpose Iran Funds for Israel

(Cameron Arcand, The Center Square) Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., introduced a bill Wednesday that would divert $6 billion in Iranian funds to Israel if passed into law.

The United States and Qatar governments agreed to no longer allow Iran to access the $6 billion that was part of a prisoner-swap agreement, according to the Washington Post on Thursday.

Schweikert’s bill, which is dubbed the Fortify Israel Act, was introduced prior to that development, but it takes the extra step of helping Israel’s military efforts instead.

“With each passing hour, the details of the barbaric and unconscionable assault against Israel coordinated by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists become increasingly horrific,” Schweikert said in a statement. “The United States must stand firmly and offer unwavering support to our strongest ally in the Middle East by any means necessary.”

Even prior to Hamas’s massacre of more than a thousand innocent Israeli civilians in a surprise attack over the weekend, Biden’s hostage exchange had garnered controversy for being exceedingly one-sided at best.

Few suspected the rogue Islamic regime would abide by the stipulation that it use the funds for “humanitarian” purposes as it not only routinely backs regional terrorism but also relentlessly pursues its own development of nuclear weaponry.

Schweikert said he hoped his bill would help to restore the balance by reallocating the regime’s contraband funds to the nation devastated by its stealth terrorist attack, believed to have been two years in the making.

“The legislation ensures any current or future foreign assets frozen by the Treasury Department, including the $6 billion in Iranian funds recently unfrozen, be used to support Israel’s right to defend itself,” Schweikert  said. “The Iranian regime and other state sponsors of terrorism can no longer be permitted to fund Hamas’ terrorist activities against the people of Israel.”

The bill states that until the conflict in Israel concludes and the Israeli government has been compensated, or there is an international agreement forcing Iran to pay Israel, they will not be getting any of their assets seized by the federal government.

Several Republican congressmen have co-sponsored the bill, including Reps. Dan Crenshaw, Byron Donalds, Matt Rosendale, Keith Self, Zach Nunn, Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Carey, Rich McCormick, Clay Higgins and Randy Feenstra.

It’s unclear what the timeline for the bill could look like, as all business in the House of Representatives is on pause because there is no permanent speaker of the House.

“I think there would be support from the left, but we right now have a mechanical issue where nothing is moving,” Schweikert told the Center Square Thursday.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was vacated from the position last week, when 8 Republicans and the Democrats united to remove him from the job.

It’s the first time a speaker has been voted out in American history. Just days later, the terrorist group Hamas began attacking southern Israel, triggering a war in the region.

The Israeli government estimates 1,200 deaths so far, including 27 American citizens, according to CBS News.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Gaslights Followers as Inflation Continues to Rise

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Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Gaslights Followers as Inflation Continues to Rise

(Casey Harper, The Center Square) Using heavily cherrypicked data on Thursday, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman once again proved why neither the Nobel Prize nor the New York Times caries any sort of intellectial heft among people who actually know things.

“The war on inflation is over,” Krugman declared. “We won at very little cost.”

However, keen observers noted that the accompanying chart showing steady declines in the Consumer Price Index since May 2022 excluded food, energy, shelter and used cars.

It was not immediately clear what the data actually included.

Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2008, stood to be proven doubly wrong as actual government data released Thursday in fact showed that consumer prices rose significantly in September, further undoing a trend of slowing inflation that had begun earlier this year.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday released the latest CPI data, a key marker of inflation that tracks the cost of a range of consumer goods and services. That index rose 0.4% in September alone, a notable increase that is higher than months earlier this year.

“The index for shelter was the largest contributor to the monthly all items increase, accounting for over half of the increase,” BLS said. “An increase in the gasoline index was also a major contributor to the all items monthly rise. While the major energy component indexes were mixed in September, the energy index rose 1.5 percent over the month.”

Food prices rose as well.

“The food index increased 0.2 percent in September, as it did in the previous two months,” BLS said. “The index for food at home increased 0.1 percent over the month while the index for food away from home rose 0.4 percent.”

The rate of CPI had begun to slow until August, when it rose 0.6% in August, more than expected and the highest increase so far in 2023. Those figures flew in the face of hopes that inflation was on a steady trajectory to continue slowing, thus ending the recent years of high inflationary increase.

This increase comes after a series of interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, which have put interest rates on mortgages well over 7%. Those hikes, which have been paused at least for now, are meant to rein in inflation.

The price increases varied across different goods and services.

“The medical care index rose 0.2 percent in September, as it did in August,” BLS said. “The index for hospital services increased 1.5 percent over the month, and the index for physicians’ services was unchanged. The prescription drugs index fell 0.7 percent in September. The index for used cars and trucks fell 2.5 percent in September, after decreasing 1.2 percent in August. The apparel index declined 0.8 percent over the month, and the communication index was unchanged.”

The federal pricing data comes one day after the BLS released its Producer Price Index, another inflation marker that rose 0.5% last month. That increase was driven in large part because of gas prices, according to BLS.

Leaders in Washington, D.C. have taken fire for the increased inflation since federal debt spending, which has soared in recent years, is offset in part by printing money.

Experts now say that gas prices could rise because of the conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, especially if other world powers get involved in the fight.

“Historically, any tensions in the Middle East cause market volatility, and I don’t see this being any different especially if Israel takes direct action against Iran,” Daniel Turner, executive director of the energy workers advocacy group, Power the Future, told the Center Square.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

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