John Fetterman’s Neck Lump Has Disappeared

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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John Fetterman’s Neck Lump Has Disappeared

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A lump that Sen. John Fetterman, D-PA, used to have on the back of his neck is no longer there anymore.

Last year, before the midterm elections, Fox News host Tucker Carlson highlighted the bump on Fetterman’s neck and noted that Fetterman, instead of contacting a doctor, decided to continue his campaign while covering the bump by wearing hoodies, scarves and neck gaiters to conceal it, according to the Daily Wire.

Photos on Getty Images show the last time when the bump was visible was in mid-November after Fetterman beat Republican challenger Dr. Mehmet Oz.

This week, Fetterman was hospitalized while attending a Democrat Senate retreat because he wasn’t feeling very well, a health scare that happened less than a year after he suffered a stroke that nearly killed him.

Fetterman has been left with “serious mental health” issues and often cannot understand the words that others are saying to him as a result of the stroke, the New York Times reported. To do everything as a senator, he needed to use live audio-to-text transcriptions.

The report says Fetterman struggles even more under any kind of stress.

Fetterman himself said that when is under stress, trying to understand what other people are saying is like “trying to make out the muffled voice of the teacher in the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon, whose words could never be deciphered,” according to the report.

After he was hospitalized this week, Fetterman’s staff claimed that doctors said that the senator did not have another stroke and that they were checking for signs of seizures.

“A few minutes ago, Senator John Fetterman was discharged from The George Washington University Hospital,” according to the statement. “In addition to the CT, CTA and MRI tests ruling out a stroke, his EEG test results came back normal, with no evidence of seizures.”

“John is looking forward to spending some time with his family and returning to the Senate on Monday.”

The Navy Quietly Reshuffled The Super Bowl Flyover Team to All-Female Aviators

Molly Bruns
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The Navy Quietly Reshuffled The Super Bowl Flyover Team to All-Female Aviators

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The U.S. Navy pushed out the original team of aviators for the annual Super Bowl flyover, instead replacing them with an all-female group of flyers.

The final roster will feature 11 female pilots and flight officers. Seven of the pilots will perform the opening ceremony. According to the Daily Caller, The purported reason for the sudden change was to more adequately celebrate the 50th anniversary of women being allowed to fly in the Navy’s aviation program.

“The flyover also commemorates 50 years of women flying in the U.S. Navy. In 1973 the first eight women began flight school in Pensacola, Fla., and one year later six of those eight women, titled “The First Six,” earned their Wings of Gold,” a press release regarding the change stated. “Since then, women have served, operated and led at every level of Naval Aviation.”

The original group of 15 officers had three women on the team, and received several angry responses on social media for the lack of diversity in a lineup put together to honor female navy pilots.

A formal plan was released on social media for the new lineup, detailing positions for the flyers as well as a description of the aircrafts.

“To commemorate 50 years of women flying in the U.S. Navy, the service will conduct a flyover of State Farm Stadium during the national anthem with female aviators as part of the formation,” the document says. The plan also details the biographies of the flyers, standby pilots and ground crew follow, sorted by gender.

A spokesperson for the Naval Air Force said the initial team was “released before [they] had settled on the final lineup.”

The intent of this year’s flyover was always to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the female Navy flyers; however, the small number of female aviators made the process more difficult.

“There are several challenges involved in gathering aviators from several different squadrons, and with women as 20% of the population in the Navy, it makes it harder,” Cmdr. Zach Harrell said.

“The whole focus for us is to really put out a lineup that helps us reinforce the message that we are commemorating the women that are serving in naval aviation,” he continued.

WATCH: Super Bowl Ad Crowns Gutfeld ‘King of Late Night’

Mark Pellin
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WATCH: Super Bowl Ad Crowns Gutfeld ‘King of Late Night’

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Fox network is putting a super wager on its superstar during its Super Bowl, allotting some of media’s most precious and coveted advertising space to promote the cable network’s smash hit late night show.

The quick-hitting ad pays homage the network’s show Gutfeld! and its skyrocketing ratings, compared to the floundering dreck peddled by late-night alleged comics Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

Networks that host the Super Bowl usually reserve the few available slots for “house” ads, which tout their own offerings, for their top programming or high-profile events, according to the Hollywood Reporter. At a price upwards of $7 million for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, the network is betting big on Gutfeld!, crowning its host “The new king of late night.”

The tagline plays off Greg Gutfeld’s meteoric ratings, which last year and the first month of this year topped NBC’s Tonight Show and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, trailing only CBS’ Late Show with Stephen Colbert in total viewers, which Gutfeld beat in ratings from August to December last year.

Gutfeld, bedecked in royal wardrobe and crown, makes the most of the quick spot, goofing on the ad being cut short with an off-camera voice quipping, “Sorry, these ads are pricey.”

Gutfeld pulls it off with his usual combination of snark and smarts, even landing a shot mocking so-called cultural appropriation.

“So funny,” raved TV icon and rare Hollywood conservative Chuck Woolery.

“This is absolutely hilarious!!” agreed Trump’s former deputy assistant Sebastian Gorka.

The network also plans to slightly modified, 20-second spot that puts more focus on some of Gutfeld’s regular guests, which will air on Fox News.

U.S. Takes Action Against Chinese Companies Linked to Spy Balloon

Molly Bruns
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U.S. Takes Action Against Chinese Companies Linked to Spy Balloon

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The U.S. government is in the process of sanctioning several Chinese aerospace companies over their alleged involvement in the recent rash of spy balloons floating through American airspace.

“The PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] use of high-altitude balloons violates our sovereignty and threatens U.S. national security,” Alan Estevez, undersecretary of commerce for industry and security for the Commerce Department, said in a statement. “Today’s action makes clear that entities that seek to harm U.S. national security and sovereignty will be cut off from accessing U.S. technologies.”

According to the Daily Wire, there are six companies being placed on the Entity List: Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Techonogy, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation 48th Research Institute, Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology, Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, and Guangzhou Tian-Hai-Xiang Aviation Technology.

Several of the companies have a history of working with the Chinese military, and one of them specialized in creating stratospheric airships.

“The Commerce Department will not hesitate to continue to use the Entity List and our other regulatory and enforcement tools to protect U.S. national security and sovereignty,” Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said.

Government officials are arguing that these steps will make it more difficult for Chinese companies to manufacture and launch spy balloons.

“Today’s action demonstrates our concerted efforts to identify and disrupt the PRC’s use of surveillance balloons, which have violated the airspace of the United States and more than forty countries,” said Matthew Axelrod, who works in the Commerce Department.

The sanctions follow the shooting down of a second object over Alaska, just a week after the first spy balloon was spotted.

The recent object was flying around 40,000 feet, which effected the flight patterns of civilian aircraft.

“We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose, or origin,” said Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. “The object was about the size of a small car, so not similar in size or shape to the high-altitude surveillance balloon that was taken down off the coast of South Carolina.”

Pentagon Announced Drone Swarm ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ in Development

Molly Bruns
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Pentagon Announced Drone Swarm ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ in Development

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The Department of Defense announced the development of “swarms” of autonomous land, sea and air drones in order to overwhelm enemy defenses.

According to the Post Millennial, the documents say that the research and development of “massive autonomous vehicle swarms” will be managed by the Stragetic Technology Office of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

While the program is not formally announced yet, DARPA confirmed that they are moving forward with the project which is officially titled the “Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms,” or AMASS, program.

“AMASS will create the ability to dynamically command and control (C2) unmanned, autonomous swarms of various types (i.e., swarms-of-swarms) with a common C2 language for Theatre-level counter-Anti-Access / Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities,” according to the documents.

The drones will reportedly be equipped with many tools, from thing as benign as radar jamming to lethal attacks.

DARPA officials said the swarms will be assigned “through an optimization process that considers mission objectives, priorities, risks, resource availability, swarm capabilities, and timing.”

Humans will be in charge of the decisions of AMASS drones as mandated by U.S. defense policy.

AMASS is one of the first programs of its kind, taking drone warfare to completely new levels despite reportedly being in the “planning stages.” However, DARPA is working on the OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics Program—which would only require 250 drones, as opposed to thousands—for several years

The organization is currently collecting bids for the AMASS project, which totals out at $78 million.

Israel was the first nation to use a drone swarm in conflict, but it was nothing compared to what AMASS could be.

Experts on drones are concerned about the efficacy and management of a swarm of such massive size.

“As the swarm grows in size, it’ll become virtually impossible for humans to manage the decisions,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a “drone swarms, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction analyst and policy fellow at George Mason University. “In theory, AMASS could be entirely non-lethal, carrying out jamming or other non-kinetic attacks in support of other platforms that actually destroy the defenses; I think that’s unlikely though.”

“A massive drone swarm prone to errors would be a terrifying thing — a new weapon of mass destruction,” Kallenborn added.

Biden Exploits Black Viewers to Dodge Super Bowl Interview w/ Fox News

Mark Pellin
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Biden Exploits Black Viewers to Dodge Super Bowl Interview w/ Fox News

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Ensnared by a classified documents scandal that keeps growing worse and embattled on all fronts for grossly mishandling the China spy balloon fiasco, President Joe Biden weaseled his way out of a Super Bowl Sunday interview and a chance to reach a national audience of millions by using an alleged outreach to black voters as a disingenuous dodge.

As of the day before the big game, the on-again, off-again interview with Fox News was headed for the sidelines.

Biden had originally agreed to a pre-game interview with Fox News, in keeping with tradition of former presidents and the network hosting the Super Bowl. The White House’s position reportedly changed sometime between the initial agreement and the president’s disastrous State of the Union address, which saw Biden’s rating plummet to historic lows.

Biden operatives reportedly tried to move the goalposts, negotiating an alleged agreement with Fox Soul, a streaming service of Fox geared toward a black audience, ABC News reported.

After reportedly being blindsided by news that the White House had arranged for Fox Sports host Mike Hill to do the interview for Fox Soul, network executives worked to accommodate, Fox claimed, but were rebuffed by a White House that broke off all communication.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre obfuscated. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp. has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”

Fox News claimed the White House was spewing pure disinformation and confirmed that the network, after “some initial confusion,” had agreed to use Fox Soul to host the interview. At which point the Biden regime totally ghosted Fox News for any follow-up. 

“Every president has done pre-Super Bowl interviews with the host network going back to 2004,” wrote The Hill columnist Joe Concha. “Trump, Obama, Bush. Joe Biden — the most protected and least accessible president of the TV era — continues to run from any Q&A that is remotely challenging.”

Oregon Alcohol Regulators and State Legislators Under Investigation for Corruption

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Oregon Alcohol Regulators and State Legislators Under Investigation for Corruption

(Headline USA) The Oregon Department of Justice is opening a criminal investigation into allegations that senior officials in the state’s alcohol regulatory agency violated ethics laws by diverting rare, sought-after bourbons for personal use, the state attorney general said Friday.

The officials said they were paying for the whiskey, which can cost thousands of dollars a bottle, but they allegedly used their knowledge and connections at the commission to obtain the products, according to an internal investigation by the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.

The practice had purportedly been going on for many years and involved not only state employees but also members of the Oregon Legislature, the OLCC investigator was told.

The practice consequently deprived well-heeled whiskey aficionados among the public of the tiny-batch boutique bourbons.

It also violated several Oregon statutes, including one that prohibits public officials from using confidential information for personal gain, according to the commission’s investigation.

Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek was triggered by the findings. On Wednesday she asked the OLCC board of commissioners to fire Executive Director Steve Marks and others who have been implicated.

Kotek also asked Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to conduct an independent civil investigation. Instead, the justice department’s criminal division opened an investigation, Rosenblum announced, adding that a civil probe would come later.

“The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission will comply fully with the criminal investigation announced today by the Oregon Attorney General,” commission spokesman Mark Pettinger said in an email.

Chris Mayton, distilled spirits program director, who was one of the people accused of abusing his position, told the OLCC investigator that he had served as a “facilitator” for commission employees and legislators hundreds of times in acquiring the whiskeys as part of his work duties. He did not name any lawmakers.

The officials purportedly had bottles of top-shelf bourbon routed to a liquor store, often in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie where the commission headquarters is located, and would reserve them for pickup later.

The board of commissioners is appointed by the governor and in turn selects the executive director, according to a commission spokesman. The commissioners’ next regular meeting is Wednesday. The agency is the state’s third-largest revenue generator.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

GOP Presidential Candidates Focusing on School Reform

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GOP Presidential Candidates Focusing on School Reform

(Headline USA) President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are both seeking to reform American education while maneuvering against each other.

In the opening stages of the GOP presidential primary, the parents’ rights movement and school curriculum are emerging as a critical flashpoint.

Ahead of what could be a bruising Republican presidential primary, the focus on issues related to critical race theory, grooming and indoctrination is emerging as a way for potential White House hopefuls to distinguish themselves by reforming America’s corrupt education system.

Nowhere is the drive to save American education more visible than in Florida, where DeSantis has made an aggressive push against woke policies.

He gained national attention last year for signing the anti-grooming bill into law.

He also signed the “Stop WOKE” act in 2022, a law that restricted the teaching of critical race theory.

DeSantis has also extended his political influence to local school board races flipping at least three boards from a liberal majority to a conservative majority.

More recently, he blocked high schools from teaching a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies because it was a violation of a state law and historically inaccurate. Beyond K-12 schools, he appointed six conservative trustees to the board of a small liberal arts college and he has announced he will reform other public universities as well.

As DeSantis emerges as the most formidable potential challenger to Trump, the former president has staked out his own positions on the same issues and recently released a nearly 5-minute video outlining what his campaign called a “Plan to Save American Education and Give Power Back to Parents.”

Declaring that “public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” and warning about “pink haired communists teaching our kids,” Trump pledged, if elected president again, that he would cut federal funding for any school or program promoting “critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on to our children.”

Trump said he planned to create a national credentialing organization that would certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children” and would set up favorable treatment for states and school districts that adopt reforms such as allowing parents to directly elect school principals.

“If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should have the right and be able to vote or to fire them and to select someone else that will do the job properly,” Trump said at a campaign appearance in South Carolina.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

US Jets Shot Down Another ‘Unkown’ Floating Object

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US Jets Shot Down Another ‘Unkown’ Floating Object

(Headline USA) A U.S. military fighter jet shot down an unknown object flying off the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday on order from Joe Biden, White House officials said.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the object was downed because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights.

Asked about the object’s downing, Biden on Friday said only that “It was a success.”

Kirby described the object as smaller than the other Chinese balloon downed by Air Force fighter jets Saturday off the coast of South Carolina.

The twin downings in such close succession are extraordinary, and reflect heightened concerns over China’s surveillance program and public pressure on Biden to take a tough stand against it.

The Pentagon on Friday declined to provide a more precise description of the object, only saying that U.S. pilots who flew up to observe it determined it didn’t appear to be manned.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Friday that an F-22 fighter aircraft based at Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson shot down the object using an AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missile, the same type used to take down the balloon nearly a week ago.

After the object was detected Thursday, NORAD — North American Aerospace Defense Command —sent F-35s to observe it, a U.S. official said, adding that the military queried U.S. government agencies to make sure it did not belong to any of them, and had confidence it was not a U.S. government or military asset. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive national security matters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The mystery around what exactly the flying object was lingered late into Friday night. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement saying it was “not a National Weather Service balloon.”

“They do not hover,” said NOAA spokesperson Scott Smullen.

The development came almost a week after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after letting it traverse sensitive military sites across North America.

The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

MURDOCK: Biden Sets Stage for Future Crisis by Relying on Chinese Exports

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MURDOCK: Biden Sets Stage for Future Crisis by Relying on Chinese Exports

(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) Imagine what would Joe Biden (or a future president of the United States) would do if Chinese dictator Xi Jinping dispatched another spy balloon toward America and declared: “If America destroys our peace-loving balloon, we will have no choice but to suspend immediately and until further notice all US-bound exports of Chinese-made antibiotics and antibiotic precursor chemicals. We eagerly await the White House’s response.”

This chilling hypothetical and the all-too-real spy-balloon fiasco should make it excruciatingly clear that America urgently needs to repatriate critical industries from China back to the USA.

If, God forbid, the Chinese Communist Party attacked Taiwan, it’s hard to imagine that Beijing would not use antibiotics and other vital drugs to extort U.S. neutrality while China conquers and communizes that nation.

America could face this rotten choice: Defend Taiwan and, before long, watch helplessly as strep throat, gonorrhea, meningitis and other bacterial infections go untreated—perhaps fatally so—or keep the life-sustaining antibiotics flowing as Beijing strangles Taipei.

Letting the CCP crush its island neighbor would trample the Taiwan Relations Act, America’s de-facto commitment to the integrity of that prosperous, free-market, constitutional republic. American military and diplomatic prestige would plunge even as atrocities and bloodshed in Taiwan soared.

“Right now, the U.S. has virtually no capacity to manufacture antibiotics,” healthcare expert Rosemary Gibson wrote in Market Watch. “That’s because China currently controls roughly  90% of the global supply of inputs needed to make the generic antibiotics that treat bronchitis, pneumonia, pediatric ear infections, and life-threatening conditions such as sepsis.”

Congress should pass and Biden should sign robust incentives to entice U.S. pharmaceutical, strategic-mineral, and other concerns in China to come home.

Specifically, eligible companies that repatriate their operations should face a federal corporate tax rate of 0% for the first five years after they leave communist China and return to the Land of the Brave.

This massive shot in the arm would help lure these organizations back and entice them to erect U.S. facilities, employ American workers, etc. Similar incentives should be available to domestic start-ups and business expansions in this life-and-death sector.

Democrats also must stop being bipolar about electric vehicles.

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Biden touted “tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles.” Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act teems with EV subsidies.

California, Oregon and Washington have banned sales of new gasoline-powered cars as early as 2035. If this seems comfortably distant, 2035 is nearer into the future than the 2008 financial meltdown was in the past.

Love or hate this new largesse and these new laws, if the Left insists on EVs, then why are they making it harder to build them?

“Joe Biden banned mining in 225,000 acres of Minnesota’s Iron Range, and locked up development of taconite, copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum-group elements, and more,” Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., lamented on Jan. 26.

Democrats blocked the Twin Metals mine, home to 34% of US copper, 88% of American cobalt and 95% of domestic nickel reserves. Thanks to Team Biden, this is all remains underground.

If Democrats shutter domestic sources for EV-component minerals, where else would they be?

China!

A typical EV’s 1,000-pound battery requires 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 90 pounds of copper and 110 pounds of graphite.

Naturally, China possesses or processes 60% of Earth’s lithium, 80% of cobalt,  5 % of nickel, 43% of copper, and up to 80% of graphite.

It is theatrically absurd for Democrats to seal the mines whose contents compose the EVs that they insist Americans purchase.

Instead, to hand Red China a giant stick made of these minerals and wait for it to blackmail the U.S. is either the nadir of bone-headedness or the zenith of self-sabotage.

America must in-source these lifesaving, technology-driving materials before it’s too late. If not, nosy balloons will be the least of our worries.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor. Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.

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