DeSantis Appointees Begin Reshaping Disney World’s District

(Headline USA) New supervisors leading Disney World’s revamped governing body said Wednesday that they had good intentions about collaborating with the company after they were appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis but felt betrayed when Disney signed agreements with their predecessors stripping them of most of their authority.

“Our board wanted to work with Disney, but Disney decided they didn’t want to work with us. It was Disney’s way or the highway,” Martin Garcia, chair of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said at the start of a board meeting.

In response, he had a warning about what the DeSantis-appointed supervisors who now oversee Disney World’s vast Florida holdings might try to achieve in an evolving showdown between the governor and Disney: “Nothing is off the table at this point.”

Among the changes board members made Wednesday were eliminating a planning agency and making the board responsible for future planning. They also said that in the future, they might consider acquiring more land under eminent domain, monetizing the district’s assets, banning COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates, asserting the board’s “superior authority” over the district and exploring the construction of affordable housing for Disney workers on Disney World property.

Disney World required masks and had social distancing protocols in place in 2020 when it reopened after closing for several months in an effort to stop COVID-19’s spread. DeSantis has been a fierce opponent of ineffective and authoritarian virus mask and vaccine mandates and has petitioned the state Supreme Court to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all wrongdoing” with respect to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Wednesday’s meeting continued a battle pitting prospective presidential candidate DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers against Disney that started last year when the entertainment giant publicly opposed the state’s anti-grooming legislation barring school instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. In retaliation, Florida lawmakers passed, and DeSantis signed, legislation reorganizing Disney World’s company-controlled government, allowing the governor to appoint the five members of the Board of Supervisors. Disney previously had controlled the board for its 55-year existence.

Last month, the new DeSantis-appointees claimed their Disney-controlled predecessors pulled a fast one by stripping the new board of most powers and giving Disney control over design and construction at the theme park resort before the new members could take their seats.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Garcia said the new supervisors last week discovered another “11th-hour agreement” between Disney and the previous supervisors that allows the company to set its own utility rates.

DeSantis and state lawmakers ratcheted up the pressure on Disney on Monday by proposing upcoming legislation that would require state inspections of Disney rides, which would be an unprecedented move since Florida’s largest theme park operators have been able to conduct their own inspections. The lawmakers also plan to consider legislation that would revoke the agreements between the previous board supervisors and Disney.

Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia said he had a message for Disney: “You are not going to win this fight. This governor is.”

Disney has said all agreements made with the previous board were legal and approved in a public forum.

Disney CEO Bob Iger earlier this month said that any actions against the company that threaten jobs or expansion at its Florida resort was not only “anti-business” but “anti-Florida.”

The new supervisors have hired a team of high-powered lawyers that includes a former Florida Supreme Court justice to possibly challenge the agreements between Disney and the old board. At Wednesday’s meeting, the attorneys outlined their arguments for why the deals were illegal, claiming they weren’t properly noticed and were self-dealing. They also said a district can’t confer governmental powers to a private entity.

“Disney engaged in a caper worthy of Scrooge McDuck,” said David Thompson, one of the attorneys.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Twitter Revises Woke Policies Including Punishment for Trans ‘Deadnaming’

(Headline USA) Twitter has removed a policy against the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” raising concerns among radical activists pushing their own agendas that the Elon Musk-owned platform is becoming what they claim is less safe for marginalized groups.

Twitter enacted the policy against deadnaming, or using a transgender person’s name before they transitioned, as well as purposefully using the wrong gender for someone as a form of harassment, in 2018.

On Monday, Twitter also said it will only put warning labels on some tweets that are “potentially” in violation of its rules against hateful conduct. Previously, the tweets were removed.

It was in this policy update that Twitter appears to have deleted the line against deadnaming from its rules.

“Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of the activist advocacy group GLAAD.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a message for comment Tuesday.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

New IG Report Hammers Biden Admin. for Disastrous Afghan Withdrawal

(Headline USA) A new government watchdog report blasted the Biden administration’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, revealing that efforts to rescue and resettle the thousands of Afghan allies left behind in the region are failing due to “bureaucratic dysfunction and understaffing.”

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released its 2023 High-Risk List report on Wednesday. The report identified a number of problems caused by President Joe Biden’s sudden exit from Afghanistan, including the “humanitarian catastrophe” that resulted from the Taliban’s subsequent takeover and the mismanagement of financial aid that the U.S. has sent to the Afghan people.

Inspector General John Sopko said in the report that one of the biggest failures of the withdrawal has been the Biden administration’s inability to aid Afghan allies who partnered with the U.S. military.

“The U.S. promised to resettle its allies in safety, but the United States is failing,” the report read. “However, the United States has left most of its allies behind, and it will take a year, on average, until each family reaches safety.”

There are still about 175,000 Afghans waiting for the U.S. government to process their Special Immigrant Visas, or refugee applications, the report added. As of late September 2022, the Biden administration had only processed about 20% of all Afghan SIV claims. It could take more than three decades to relocate and resettle all of them, the report said.

Moreover, those Afghans who have been admitted into the U.S. have not been adequately screened, the inspector general said.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General documented problems with vetting Afghans admitted to the United States in the fall of 2021, including two Afghans who were later determined to be national security threats and put into removal proceedings,” the report stated. 

The report also found significant waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement of the more than $8 billion in aid that the U.S. has sent to the Afghan people since August 2021.

The White House has downplayed the consequences of the Afghanistan withdrawal, opting to blame the Trump administration.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House gaslighted earlier this month.

DEA Chief Faces Probe into ‘Swampy’ Hires, No-Bid Contracts

(Headline USA) A federal watchdog is investigating whether the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration under chief Anne Milgram improperly awarded millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to hire her past associates, people familiar with the probe told the Associated Press.

Among the contract spending under scrutiny by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is $4.7 million for “strategic planning and communication” to hire people Milgram knew from her days as New Jersey’s attorney general and as a New York University law professor – at costs far exceeding pay for government officials.

At least a dozen people have been hired under such contracts, including some in Milgram’s inner circle handling intelligence, data analytics, community outreach and public relations — work often requiring security clearances and traditionally done by DEA’s own 9,000-person workforce.

Also under scrutiny is $1.4 million to a Washington law firm for a recent review of the DEA’s scandal-plagued foreign operations that was widely criticized for giving short shrift to agent misconduct and how to prevent it. That review was co-authored by Boyd Johnson, former right-hand man to one of Milgram’s closest friends, Preet Bharara, when he was U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. Bharara himself landed at the firm, WilmerHale, even as the review was being conducted.

“Some of these deals look very swampy,” said Scott Amey, general counsel of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, noting that federal contracting is not intended to bypass the government hiring process and should be conducted with no preferential treatment and avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Contractors are also prohibited from performing “inherently governmental functions” such as directing federal employees.

“Contracts should never be awarded based on who you know,” Amey said.

WIDENING INQUIRY

Details of the widening inquiry, which began several months ago in response to employee complaints, came from several people interviewed by the Inspector General’s office who discussed the ongoing probe and provided contracting documents on the condition of anonymity. If misconduct is found, the Inspector General can recommend anything from administrative sanctions to criminal prosecution.

The probe comes as the DEA is struggling with repeated revelations of agent misconduct that have rocked the federal narcotics agency and a fentanyl crisis claiming more than 100,000 overdose deaths a year that Milgram has called the “deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced.”

The DEA declined to make Milgram available for an interview or to discuss the investigation and specific contracts, instead releasing a statement.

Anthony Coley, a former Justice Department spokesman who has known Milgram for 15 years, said the investigation may stem from employees who aren’t happy with such organizational change and are seeking ways to “push back or undermine it, even if the underlying allegations aren’t true.”

“But that’s what inspectors general are for,” he said, “to call balls and strikes.”

MANDATE TO CLEAN HOUSE

With a tough New Jersey bravado and data-driven “Moneyball” approach to the war on drugs, the 52-year-old Milgram came to the DEA nearly two years ago with a mandate to clean house.

But the Biden appointee quickly ruffled feathers by pushing out several career DEA officials she viewed as part of a cliquish culture that allowed misconduct to flourish. Instead, she favored the counsel of newly installed attorneys and data crunchers who work with her in an isolated part of the 12th floor of DEA headquarters known as “the bubble.”

Milgram has also made a point to show zero tolerance for sexual misconduct and racism in the ranks, warning agents they may now be fired for certain first offenses — a departure from previous administrations.

One of her first actions was ordering an external review of the DEA’s sprawling foreign operations, which spans 69 countries. It came in the wake of the high-profile arrest of José Irizarry, a disgraced agent now serving a 12-year federal prison sentence after confessing to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and skimming millions from asset seizures and informants to fund an international joyride of fine dining, parties and prostitutes.

‘STUNNINGLY VAGUE’

But those selected to carry out the review raised eyebrows. One, John “Jack” Lawn, is a DEA legend but the 87-year-old’s insights date from his tenure leading the agency in the 1980s. After leaving government, Lawn headed the Century Council, a beverage industry group, which funded research into campus alcohol abuse that was conducted by Milgram’s mother, a Rutgers University expert in the field.

Lawn’s co-author, Boyd Johnson, worked as a prosecutor on international drug cases before becoming a partner at WilmerHale. Both Johnson and Milgram have close ties to Bharara, who after being fired as U.S. attorney by President Donald Trump joined the NYU faculty alongside Milgram and together hosted the legal issues podcast “Cafe Insider.” Last year — as the foreign operations review was being conducted — Bharara joined WilmerHale. And this year, DEA hired away from the firm Milgram’s former NYU research assistant to become her deputy chief of staff.

Competitive bidding rules for the review were sidestepped by the DEA’s argument of “unusual and compelling urgency,” saying the “threat of illicit foreign drugs to the health and safety of the American public has never been greater.”

But instead of the projected six months to get the review out, it took nearly three times that long.

“It’s a complete waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Matthew Donahue, who led DEA’s foreign operations until he butted heads with Milgram and was transferred to Colombia, a demotion that prompted him to retire.

Donahue said he and several other DEA overseas veterans were never interviewed as part of the review, which scarcely mentioned Irizarry or other scandals, and borrowed heavily from publicly available audits and DEA operating manuals.

“It’s something that could’ve been written in three days,” he said.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, a longtime voice against government waste and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, ripped WilmerHale’s review as “stunningly vague” and recently sent Johnson a letter requesting a range of records, background on his relationship with Milgram and asking whether she or anyone else at DEA requested edits of the report.

“Though DEA originally billed this report as a ‘comprehensive review’ of DEA’s foreign operations strategy, the report glosses over or ignores serious shortcomings at the agency and spends much of its 49 pages quoting from publicly available documents that one could have pulled off a web site,” Grassley wrote in the letter last week.

Neither Lawn, Johnson, Bharara nor WilmerHale responded to requests for comment.

NEW JERSEY TIES

Another no-bid contract under scrutiny went to Jose Cordero, a longtime New York City police official whose ties to Milgram go back to 2007 when as attorney general she named him New Jersey’s first statewide director of gangs, guns and violent crime.

Together they overhauled the police department in Camden — then under state control due to soaring crime and corruption — by crunching crime stats and intelligence data in real time to deploy resources as needed. The approach won national praise as the homicide rate in what was then the country’s most dangerous city was slashed by nearly half.

“We have a lot of culture to change,” Milgram said in a 2014 TED talk on applying statistics to crime fighting. “But the great news about all of it is that we know it works.”

Less than three weeks after taking the top job at DEA, Milgram awarded Cordero what has become a nearly $400,000 contract to conduct data analysis of crime stats.

But Donahue said Cordero’s expertise in urban policing has less value to the DEA, which processes a flood of intelligence from foreign and domestic wiretaps, as well as informants, to dismantle cross-border criminal networks.

Cordero didn’t respond to requests for comment.

THE CLEARING

Several of the hires in question joined DEA through The Clearing, a Washington-based federal contractor that provides outsourced administrative services to the DEA and other federal agencies.

The Clearing’s $4.7 million in billings to the DEA for “strategic planning and communication consulting services” over the past two years have accounted for 30% of its federal contracts during that period, records show.

Among those from The Clearing under scrutiny is Lena Hackett, a former Democratic congressional staffer and founder of Community Solutions, an Indianapolis consulting firm focused on public health and criminal justice. Milgram described her as her main partner in a policing reform project she established in Indianapolis while teaching at NYU.

Internal records show Hackett regularly briefs field offices, prepares policy statements and memos for Milgram and meets with families affected by the fentanyl crisis. For her services, the DEA budgeted $257 an hour — more than triple the hourly rate earned by the agency’s top civil servants, including the head of community outreach.

Another brought in through The Clearing is Julia Pacetti, a New York City publicist who has led media campaigns for prominent public figures and authors.

According to documents, Pacetti’s firm JMP/Verdant collected $11,500 a month plus expenses to write news releases, handle interview requests and arrange news conferences— work some DEA employees viewed as redundant given the agency’s existing staff of public relations employees.

Several recent DEA news releases – including those announcing fentanyl busts as part of the agency’s “One Pill Can Kill” enforcement surge – came not from the DEA’s official email account but from “Julia Pacetti-Verdant.”

Neither The Clearing, Hackett nor Pacetti responded to requests for comment.

“This looks terrible to taxpayers,” said Don Fox, former acting director and general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics. “The appearance is awful.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Pentagon Sending $325 Million MORE in Military Aid to Ukraine

(Headline USA) Despite damning stories—such as the revelation in a classified document leak that U.S. special forces are actively on the ground fighting in a never-authorized war; or that the Biden administration was aware of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy having embezzled some $400 million in U.S funds—the U.S. continues to double down on its unfettered spending in the region. 

Indeed, the de-facto shadow war between the U.S. and Russia has become increasingly unpopular both at home and abroad, where Czech protesters are calling for a withdrawal from NATO and French President Emmanuel Macron is attempting to broker a deal with China to broker a peace agreement.

Nonetheless, Democrat warmongers are determined to protect whatever unspecified interests they have in the country—be it the Biden family’s Burisma holdings or secret bioweapons labs—by any means necessary, so long as U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill.

The Pentagon said Wednesday it is sending Ukraine about $325 million in additional military aid, including an enormous amount of artillery rounds and ammunition as the launch of the spring offensive against Russian forces approaches.

The U.S. has declined to say exactly how much munitions will be sent to Ukraine, but the latest package resembles other recent deliveries, which included rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and howitzers, as well as an array of other missiles and anti-tank ammunition. It will all be pulled from Pentagon stocks, so it can go quickly to the front lines.

A Ukrainian official warned on Monday that it is only a matter of time before his country is militarily prepared to begin its counteroffensive. Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told The Associated Press in an interview in Kyiv that the offensive against Russian troops will start when Ukraine’s troops are ready. And he said deliveries of armored vehicles and ammunition are key to the launch.

The recent leak of classified information included a number of documents detailing the timeline for weapon deliveries to Ukraine and previously unreleased assessments about how quickly the Ukrainian military could run out of critical air-defense munitions. They included projections that missile stocks could be exhausted as soon as late this month or May, which would provide greater opportunities for devastating Russian air and artillery strikes.

Danilov echoed other Ukrainian leaders who said they didn’t see the leak as gravely damaging future offensives, stressing that Ukraine doesn’t share highly sensitive information with anyone.

The announcement of the new U.S. aid comes before Friday’s meeting in Germany of defense and military leaders from more than 50 countries to discuss and plan for future Ukraine security assistance. The Ukraine Contact Group was formed about a year ago by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to better coordinate the military aid, weapons and training for Ukraine. Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, will both attend the meeting.

The new U.S. aid package includes demolition munitions to clear routes, more than 9 million rounds of small arms ammunition, four logistics support vehicles, spare parts, and equipment for harbor security and maintenance and repair.

Officials have said the weapons and other equipment will help as Ukraine prepares to shift from what has been a long and bloody winter stalemate, focused on heavy fighting in Ukraine’s east, particularly around the town of Bakhmut in the Donetsk province.

While the fighting has been brutal, not much territory has changed hands. Moscow controls about half of Donetsk, and capturing Bakhmut would be a stepping stone to seizing the remaining half.

This is the 36th package of Pentagon stocks to go to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022, and it brings the total U.S. military aid to nearly $36 billion.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

DeSantis Triggers Leftist Mob by Visiting Congress

(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Radical leftists in Washington D.C. melted down because Ron DeSantis attended a meeting regarding his prospects for the 2024 election with Congressmen on Tuesday.

Over a year ago, in March of 2022, Florida passed its anti-grooming bill, and the Left is still triggered about it. Indeed, referencing the media propaganda about the bill, the protesters shrieked, “We say gay!” according to Breitbart News.

The protesters at the original bill signing screeched the same phrase.

The protesters maintained their obnoxious whining for the entirety of the two-hour event. They bore gay rights and transgender flags, and were from the leftist group ShutDownDC.

A public presentation by DeSantis seems to nearly always attract homosexual protestors, unlike President Trump who held a party to honor homosexual republicans at Mar-A-Lago.

Police were forced to maintain a barrier between the unhinged leftists, Gov. DeSantis and the Congressmen for the entirety of the event.

The event took place inside The Heritage Foundation’s building, which is close to the capital and the den of vipers that is the D.C. press.

DeSantis was in D.C. to attend an event hosted by the group “And to the Republic.” The event was billed as a “meet and greet and policy decision.”

The group, reportedly named after the Pledge of Allegiance, is working with several high profile Republican governors, and has worked with DeSantis before, according to Politico.

Most of the congressmen who attended the event had not endorsed a presidential candidate, according to Breitbart.

Several notable conservatives were seen exiting the meeting of over 36 legislators including:

  • Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah
  • Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas
  • Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.
  • Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind.
  • Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
  • Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla.
  • Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.
  • several other House members were also present.

In addition to these attendees, DeSantis has also secured the endorsements of Chip Roy, R-Texas, Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Laurel Lee, R-Fla., who also attended the meet and greet.

Though impressive, DeSantis is behind President Trump who has amassed over 50 congressional endorsements, according to NBC News.

Montana Legislature Tables Effort to Block 3rd-Party Senate Candidates

(Headline USA) A proposed change to next year’s Montana U.S. Senate primary that could have hurt Democrat Sen. Jon Tester’s reelection chances is likely dead after a state legislative committee shelved the GOP-backed measure Wednesday.

Some Republican lawmakers wanted to alter Montana’s 2024 Senate primary so that only the top two candidates, no matter their party, would advance to the November election.

That would have effectively blocked out third-party candidates, who Republicans blamed for draining away potential GOP votes during past attempts to unseat Tester.

Control of the Senate will be in play during next year’s election. Tester’s seat is one of several that Democrats are defending in Republican-leaning states.

The race’s national importance helped fuel outrage over the bid to change the primary rules. Critics, including Democratic lawmakers and representatives of the Libertarian party, blasted it as a blatant attempt to rig the election.

After Rep. Gregory Frazer moved to table the bill during a Wednesday meeting of the House State Administration Committee, all but one of the committee’s 12 Republicans joined the panel’s six Democrats to vote to shelve the measure.

“I have had a lot of my folks from back home reach out to me and ask me to vote no on this — a lot more than what I thought. It’s actually been pretty interesting,” said Frazer, a Republican from Deer Lodge.

It’s considered unlikely the bill could be revived given Wednesday’s definitive House committee vote.

The state Senate approved the 2024 primary change earlier this month by a 27-23 vote. Seven Republicans joined all of the chamber’s Democrats in voting against the measure.

The bill’s Republican sponsor said he wanted to stop the GOP and Democrats alike from trying to manipulate elections by stealthily promoting third party candidates.

But emails included in the legislative file for the bill show that longtime Republican lobbyist Chuck Denowh helped shape the measure.

In late March, Denowh suggested that an early version of the proposal be changed so it would apply only to the U.S. Senate and would sunset after the 2024 election, the emails show. The bill was changed accordingly.

State Rep. Kelly Kortum, a Democrat from Bozeman, said the bill had been pushed onto Montana by outside interests. He called it “an irresponsible way to change Montana’s election laws.”

“A broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, and others across Montana publicly spoke out against the bill,” Kortum said.

The bill’s Republican sponsor, Sen. Greg Hertz of Polson, did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment.

Both major parties in Montana have sought to use third parties to their advantage in past elections.

During one of last year’s U.S. House elections, a Democratic-linked group in Washington, D.C., sent mailers promoting Libertarian candidate John Lamb as the race’s “true conservative” in an effort to peel away conservative votes.

In the 2020 race, the Republican Party bankrolled a $100,000 signature-gathering effort to put the Montana Green Party on the ballot and hurt Democrats’ chances. The state Supreme Court removed the Green Party after hundreds of people sought to withdraw their signatures upon learning the GOP was behind the effort.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

OKC Bomb Anniversary: First Responder Recalls Seeing Suspect Who Remains At Large

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Oklahoma City police officer Steve Vassar was leaving the scene of a stabbing the morning of April 19, 1995, when he saw a Ryder truck with two occupants driving past him towards the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Minutes later, Vassar felt an explosion that would change his and countless other lives forever. The Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, including 19 children, making it the deadliest domestic terrorism attack in American history.

Vassar kept quiet about what he saw that morning for more than 25 years, but recently broke his silence for a CNN investigation into the bombing—telling the outlet that “as God is my witness, there were two people” in the Ryder truck that exploded minutes later.

The significance of this statement is that it undermined the U.S. government’s claim that bomber Timothy McVeigh was alone when he positioned and detonated the truck bomb.

With the two other accomplices who helped assemble the bomb out of the state that morning, McVeigh being seen with another person on April 19 implies that someone involved in the attack remains at large—possibly a federal informant or undercover agent, according to numerous researchers of the subject.

On Tuesday, Vassar participated in his first broadcast interview about this subject on the No Way Jose! show. Headline USA participated in the interview, questioning Vassar more about what he saw that fateful day.

“I watched them drive by. I saw the driver, I saw a passenger,” Vassar said of his sighting the man who became to be known only as “John Doe 2.”

“But because it was inside the cab, I couldn’t make out a face or anything.”

Vassar is far from the only person to see McVeigh with an unidentified accomplice.

According to former FBI official Danny Coulson, who investigated the case, at least 24 witnesses saw John Doe 2 the morning of April 19. These witnesses were used to positively identify McVeigh and make a composite sketch of John Doe 2, but they were never called to testify during McVeigh’s trial.

The FBI initially launched a massive manhunt for John Doe 2—at one point baselessly accusing accomplice Terry Nichols’s son as being the culprit—but later said the mystery accomplice never existed.

But federal records also reference John Doe 2, including a Secret Service document that says “suspects” were seen on surveillance footage exiting the Ryder truck. This surveillance footage is the subject of a decades-long FOIA lawsuit that’s still ongoing.

Moreover, the sitting U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland, directly received evidence about John Doe 2 when he helped prosecute McVeigh. During the preliminary hearing, an FBI agent testified in front of Garland that witnesses saw “two” suspects in the Ryder truck.

“The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or 100 people in that truck,” Garland said in response to this revelation, according to the court transcript from the hearing.

All this and more lends Vassar to believe that the Oklahoma City bombing may have been a botched sting operation, he said.

“Everything that I know about police work and investigations, is my gut feeling says John Doe 2 is real, he was there, and for some reason or another, they’re saying he wasn’t. And in my personal opinion, I would say the reason for that is this was possibly a sting operation that went bad,” he said.

“I haven’t done the undercover side myself, but as a patrol officer and an investigator, I’ve worked closely with the undercover units. And I’ve seen sting operations go bad.”

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

Psychology Prof Demonizes ‘Wealthy White Men’ on Exam

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Deceitful, irresponsible and remorseless “wealthy white men” constitute the socio-demographic group most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others, including to the point of violence.

That was the “correct” answer in one section of a now-retracted, multiple-choice quiz reportedly given to the University of Texas at Austin students that posed a question about diagnosing antisocial personality disorder.

Middle-class Latino families, Asian men of all economic groups and female dentists were the obviously incorrect answers on the test question in Prof. Kirsten Bradbury’s Personality Psychology course.

Dr. Bradbury — who was named as an outstanding teacher in 2017 by the University  of Texas Board of Regents  — kind of gave the game away because the question included this hint that the culpable group holds “the most social power and because of that can get away with the most wrongdoing.”

The question also claimed that antisocial personality disorder has been applied in a racist and sexist manner and acknowledged that “neither race nor gender is determinative.”

According to the syllabus, the Personality Psychology class requires no real-time sessions; all the lectures are available on video on demand. In terms of academic rigor, quizzes are open book and writing assignments are self-graded.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the entire quiz has apparently since been withdrawn because it has perhaps suddenly become outdated.

“After distributing the quiz to students, Bradbury…then backtracked, telling students that ‘given the current rate of sociocultural and scientific change’ the quiz had ‘grown too stale to use,'” the outlet wrote. “She did not indicate what scientific changes had rendered the quiz obsolete or what scientific research had at one point served as the basis for the question.”

The syllabus also includes a diversity statement in which the professor pledges to create “a learning environment that is safe and supportive of the identities and perspectives of all marginalized or minoritized people,” and to use students’ desired pronouns.

Bradbury, who earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Virginia Tech, has apparently not responded as yet to requests from media outlets for comment on the test question.

UT Austin Dean Ann Huff Stevens, however, told the Daily Caller that “The College of Liberal Arts is committed to the principles of equality and anti-discrimination in all of its teaching, and as such takes this potential violation of those principles seriously. We are following university policy when it comes to issues of potential discrimination. The material in question has been removed.”

This news item appears to be yet another example of the Left politicizing everything, a phenomenon hardly found only in institutions of higher learning, the latter venues where indoctrination has often replaced education.

In such situations generally, the irony is that self-described anti-racists often promote bigotry, while diversity and inclusion advocates typically demand conformity and exclusion.

The medical school at UT Austin was named as one of the Texas defendants that America First Legal sued in January over sex and race preferences in the admissions process.

Disney to Host Gay Raves at ‘Disneyland After Dark: Pride Nite’

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Disney announced it will be hosting its inaugural a “Pride Nite” as part of their lineup of “Disneyland After Dark” events at its California theme park.

The event—which requires the purchase of separate tickets—will celebrate “the LGBTQIA+ community and allies” with a series of late-night raves, photo ops with classic Disney characters in themed outfits and gay-themed food and drink options.

The event, which is slated to start on June 13, will kick off with a pre-party “Pride Nite Cavalcade,” followed by a private party slated to go until 1 a.m., where paying guests will be allowed to attend the “Ohana Dance Party in Tomorrowland, a Pride Night Dance Club at the Rivers of America and a country line dancing event at the Golden Horseshoe.”

Only a limited number of tickets are available for the event.

The statement announcing the party does not expressly forbid the attendance of minors or provide an age range for attendees.

As of now, the “After Dark” event will take place only at Disneyland, the park just south of Anaheim, California. The company has not announced the planning of a similar event for Disney World in Florida, as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to fight groomer culture in his state.

Twitter reacted to the news of the adult-themed party taking place at a purportedly family-friendly theme park.

“We’re gonna need a bigger mousetrap,” user Gamma’s Badnick said.

“How about families stop attending their theme parks?” Another user asked. “That’s quite literally their only source of income now. Talking to you fellow millennials—the things you watched as a kid [are] no longer valued, time to stop pretending.”

“I think it’s time we put nostalgia aside and abandon this company,” WaningSon proclaimed. “As best we can anyway. I mean, you basically have to stop watching television, but that’s probably not a bad thing.”

Several users jokingly asked if Budweiser agreed to sponsor the event as the embattled beer company attempts to backpedal on its own bellyflop into the transgender culture-war.

Despite cratering profits, massive layoffs and a rushed internal reorganization, catering to the whims of wokeists took priority for Disney.

Recently, the company has even gone as far as openly pushing for reparations and advocating for a transgender princess in content for children.