Thursday, May 1, 2025

Project Veritas Exposes Google Exec Discussing Efforts to ‘Prevent’ Another Trump

Ben Sellers
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‘They’re going to redefine a reality based on what they think is fair and based upon what they want, and what and is part of their agenda…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) While tech mega-corporation Google has persistently ducked accusations of systematic bias, whistleblowers continue to derail the narrative and embarrass the company with revelations of its extreme-left-wing internal deliberations.

Project Veritas is the latest to cast light on the search platform’s overt hostilities directed at conservatives when its staff members think they are in friendly company.

A new video and report from the conservative undercover watchdogs levied an array of accusations against Google’s alleged efforts to suppress the Right—and possibly to interfere illegally in next year’s presidential elections.

The exposé caught Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, tipping her partisan hand in what appears to be a casual restaurant conversation caught by hidden camera.

Gennai’s department, with a quasi-Orwellian-sounding name, oversees the development and implementation of Google’s artificial-intelligence technology—meaning that if androids and cyborgs are ever given the right to vote, they will definitely swing socialist.

Gennai, upon hearing that Google’s monopolistic trust could be broken up by Congress, offered her own unique rationale for why it should continue to operate as a corporate monolith with unprecedented powers to surveil and censor its users according to its own whims.

“Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google,” Gennai said. “And like, I love her, but she’s very misguided—like, that will not make it better; it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation—it’s like, a small company cannot do that.”

Gennai also candidly acknowledged that the company had been making efforts to reprogram its systems with a specific political agenda in mind.

“We all got screwed over in 2016—again it wasn’t just us [Google]; it was the people [who] got screwed over, the news media got screwed over—like, everybody got screwed over, so we’ve rapidly been like, ‘What happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again?'” she said.

“We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have—would the outcome be different?” Gennai added.

Previous accusations against Google have presented evidence of the site’s anti-conservative biases—showing, for example, that 96 percent of its search results for President Donald Trump came from sites that were hostile toward conservatives.

In the past, Google engineers have used the cover of algorithms as a scapegoat, saying that their development helped to eliminate the human biases that would otherwise result.

However, it long has been suspected that its engineers were actively manipulating the algorithms themselves.

A report last September on a leaked e-mail thread at the company revealed its internal discussions on how to tweak the messaging related to Trump’s ban on travel to and from countries that provided safe harbor to terrorists, as well as terms related to illegal immigration.

More recently, the Daily Caller reported earlier in June, based on information provided by a whistle-blower, that the company maintained programs that effectively blacklisted many mainstream conservative news organizations from surfacing in certain search results.

The Project Veritas video further explored the way a program at Google called Machine Learning Fairness systematically suppresses the viewpoints that the company disagrees with.

An anonymous insider with the company provided documents that it said outline many of Google’s policies, sometimes using coded or euphemistic language to mask their true intent.

“They’re going to redefine a reality based on what they think is fair and based upon what they want, and what and is part of their agenda,” said the source.

The source revealed that one of Google’s top sites, video platform YouTube, had manipulated the way it recommended similar results after someone had viewed specific content in order to bury conservative-oriented influencers.

The insider, who also provided documents with titles such as “Fair is Not the Default” suggesting Google sought to further rationalize its systematic pursuit of biased perspectives, said Project Veritas was the only investigative operation currently capable of handling the revelations against Google.

The organization—headed by James O’Keefe—has also conducted recent investigations into bias at Facebook and Pinterest.

“The reason why I came to Project Veritas is that you’re the only one I trust to be able to be a real investigative journalist,” said the informant.

“Investigative journalist is a dead career option, but somehow, you’ve been able to make it work,” the source said. “And because of that, I came to Project Veritas—because I knew that this was the only way that this story would be able to get out to the public.”

Mainstream Media Finally Probing Biden Corruption Scandals

Ben Sellers
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‘Why were these foreign governments and these foreign corrupt oligarchs stuffing money into Hunter Biden’s pocket?’

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Joe Biden / IMAGE: America Rising ICYMI via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As he attempts to solidify his front-runner status in the Democratic primaries, former Vice President Joe Biden faces greater scrutiny from the mainstream media than ever before.

In fact, reporters at ABC News recently came around to addressing a concern, long raised by opponents, that Biden used his influence during the Obama administration to financially benefit his son, Hunter—while possibly violating one of the same laws for which Democrats have attempted to impeach President Donald Trump.

Supporters recently have tried to turn many of Biden’s liabilities into assets—claiming, for instance, that his indecent liberties with women and young girls are a benevolent throwback to the era before political correctness defined politics.

Meanwhile, Biden’s waxing nostalgic over two segregationist senators from his early days in Congress was spun as the ultimate hallmark of bipartisanship.

These faux scandals seem a calculated effort to roil his liberal opponents and define his “moderate” claim, despite also embracing increasingly radical, borderline-socialist positions on issues like abortion, free college tuition, healthcare, infrastructure and the environment.

Yet, Biden’s greatest danger may rest not in a carefully engineered gaffe, but in a long buried corruption scandal that has taken new significance in light of the Left’s incessant attacks on Trump.

‘Cancer of Corruption’

House Democrats, based on little more than a hunch, have sought to examine the president’s tax returns, claiming he has repeatedly violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which prevents U.S. office holders from accepting gifts or titles from foreign entities.

Applying the same standard, however, Biden’s dealings with in Ukraine and China while his son was involved in major business ventures there raise grave concerns as to whether his conflicts of interest crossed the line into corruption.

ABC News said Biden refused to specifically answer questions about the scandal at multiple campaign stops recently, although he released statements through his campaign claiming he had always followed prescribed ethical guidelines and that, if elected, he would issue an executive order to clearly address ethics policies.

Ironically, Biden was sent to the Ukraine in 2014 to assist in its own efforts to clean up government following a populist revolution.

“You have to fight the cancer of corruption that is endemic in your system right now,” he preached at the Ukrainian parliament. “And with the right investments and the right choices, Ukraine can reduce its energy dependence and increase its energy security.”

Shortly thereafter, one of the investments the country made was that the its largest energy producer, Burisma, appointed Hunter Biden to be a paid member of its board of directors.

Hunter Biden had recently been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine and had little to no experience with Ukrainian politics or affairs, ABC News reported.

From Bad to Worse…

Hunter Biden / IMAGE: CNN via Youtube

In March 2016, Joe Biden returned to Ukraine, again to pressure it to deal with a major corruption scandal.

During that visit, the vice president threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that the U.S. would pull a $1 billion loan guarantee if he didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

The issue, on its face, was that Shokin was not bringing enough corruption prosecutions, according to Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff.

However, one prosecution Shokin was looking into at the time was that of Hunter Biden, who appeared to be funneling regular monthly deposits in excess of $160,000 from a Burisma account into that of his American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.

After leaving office, Joe Biden would go on to brag about flexing his authority with Ukraine at an event for the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recounted. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Ukraine has since come under scrutiny for having exerted considerable lobbying efforts with both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Those efforts ultimately resulted in Trump adviser Paul Manafort being charged during the course of the Mueller investigation for failing to register as a foreign agent due to his his Ukrainian business dealings.

No Democrats are known to have been indicted, though investigations into the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee are ongoing.

Unfortunately, for the Biden campaign, the Ukraine episode was not an isolated incident. ABC News also noted that Hunter Biden was involved with an earlier conflict of interest involving China in December 2013.

At that time, Hunter accompanied his father on a state visit to Beijing that involved meetings with high-ranking officials. Weeks later, Hunter had secured a contract with Bohai Harvest RST, a joint American–Chinese investment firm that sought to raise $1.5 billion.

The Left’s Double-Standard

Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is among the outspoken conservatives who raised the issue of Biden’s conflicts of interest, at one point planning a trip to Ukraine to investigate it himself.

The scandal also figured prominently in the book Secret Empires, released in March by investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer, who called on Hunter Biden to testify before a Senate committee.

“Why were these foreign governments and these foreign corrupt oligarchs stuffing money into Hunter Biden’s pocket?” Schweizer asked during a Breitbart podcast.

But even Biden defenders acknowledge that the appearance of impropriety is strong.

“At absolute minimum there’s a huge appearance of conflict, and there’s every reason to think that the investors that he‘s working with want him partnering with them because he’s the son of the then-vice president and now presidential candidate,” said Robert Weissman, president of progressive watchdog group Public Citizen, according to ABC News.

“[Joe Biden] should have encouraged his son to not take these positions,” Weissman said.

Hunter Biden remained defiant and expressed no regrets in a statement to ABC.

“The narratives that have been suggested and developed by the right-wing political apparatus are demonstrably false,” he said.

“These distortions of reality will not distract my father, nor make me question my judgment in my initial decision to join the board of Burisma to do the good work necessary for the benefit of the company and Ukraine.”

However, following the attention brought to the scandal, Hunter Biden announced his decision not to continue on the Burisma board.

“In this political climate, where my qualifications and work are being attacked by Rudy Giuliani and his minions for transparent political purposes, I have decided not to renew my directorship,” he said.

Acosta Gloats over Trump Compliment, Unaware It Is a Common Behavior-Correction Technique

Ben Sellers
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‘We are here not just to report the news now, we’re here to defend the truth…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) During an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta bragged about once receiving a compliment from President Donald Trump.

Acosta and Kimmel appeared to be trying to psychoanalyze Trump while relating one of the anecdotes contained in Acosta’s new tell-all book about his experiences as a frequent nemesis to the president.

“I feel like, deep down, maybe he kind of likes you even though he hates you,” Kimmel mused. “Of course, he mostly hates you—but sometimes he begrudgingly compliments you.”

Acosta then recounted a time when, after a press conference where Trump had referred to him as “very fake news,” then-Communications Director Hope Hicks had followed up and offered him some kind words.

“Jim, I just want you to know the president thought you were very professional today, and he said ‘Jim gets it,’” Acosta recalled Hicks saying.

“And I thought to myself, ‘Wait a minute, I was just very fake news five minutes ago, and now I’m very professional,'” he continued.

After accusing Trump of running the presidency like a reality television show, he and Kimmel settled on another theory: that the White House was sucking up so that Acosta would go easy on Trump.

“He loves the coverage but he hates the scrutiny,” Acosta said, “and one of the things that we find out, when we call him out on some of these falsehoods—some people call them lies—uh, you know, that’s when it gets under his skin, and his folks get very upset about it.”

In reality, what Acosta may have neglected to see was his own role in the exchange and how the Trump administration truly views him.

As many a parent or teacher has discovered, positive reinforcement—like the method Hicks used—is a frequent behavior modification technique when dealing with unruly children.

In the eyes of the White House, Acosta, and other members of the liberal media, have conducted themselves accordingly.

At no time was this more apparent than in April, when Press Secretary Sarah Sanders—having abandoned daily press briefings in January, due to the rude and disruptive conduct of Acosta and others—held a rare briefing with the children of the White House press corps to underscore the point.

Following frequent interruptions and a physical altercation with a White House staffer, Acosta had his press pass revoked in November, but CNN successfully challenged the decision in court, using an activist liberal judge to file an injunction.

The White House ultimately chose to abandon the case after issuing new guidelines for conduct. However, as often happens in elementary school classrooms, Acosta’s abusive conduct wound up losing the privilege of daily media briefings for the entire class.

The CNN correspondent groused over the unfairness of it during his appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel.”

“You know, this used to be when the press secretary would go and answer all of our questions. We don’t do that anymore,” Acosta said.

“Now Sarah Sanders, she goes out to the Fox News Live position on the North Lawn of the White House, takes questions from them, and then if she has time she’ll stop and talk to us for a few minutes in the driveway,” he said. “It’s not what the taxpayers are expecting from the press secretary. We pay their salaries, we should be getting our money’s worth.”

Ironically, while complaining about the lack of access, Acosta immediately followed up by relaying another story about how Trump had begrudgingly taken a question from him shortly after reinstating his press pass.

“They were saying, ‘We’re never gonna talk to Jim Acosta again, we’re never gonna take questions from him again,'” Acosta said. “The next day, after I got my press pass back, he took a question, he took a follow-up question…”

A picture of that occasion became the cover of Acosta’s book, Enemy of the People.

Acosta was quick to cite other hostile, liberal media outlets, like The Washington Post, claiming that Trump had issued 10,000 false or misleading statements during his presidency.

However, despite his own network’s frequent fixation on coverage of debunked conspiracies and sensationalist headlines, Acosta was steadfast in his insistence that by attacking Trump he was embarked on a noble and heroic quest.

“We’re there to hold their feet to the fire, and it doesn’t matter what they call us, what they try to do to us—we’re here to work on behalf of the American people and get answers to these questions.”

While he claimed many of those within the White House had lost sight of the fact that they worked for the people and not the Trump Organization, Acosta maintained that he, himself, was the truest public servant of them all.

“We are here not just to report the news now, we’re here to defend the truth,” he said.

GOP Congressmen Ask Why Al Jazeera Not Registered as a Foreign Agent

Ben Sellers
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‘Al Jazeera and its media subsidiaries act as alter egos of the Qatari government in ensuring dissemination of the government’s viewpoints…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As tensions flare on a variety of fronts in the Middle East, a coalition of seven Republican congressmen on Tuesday sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr questioning why one of the Arab world’s foremost propaganda mouthpieces, Al Jazeera, was not registered as a foreign agent.

The group—led by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Tom Cotton of Arkansas—asked the Justice Department to provide all unclassified material pertaining to the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Al Jazeera, which was chartered and continues to be funded mainly by the Qatari government.

“As such, one can reasonably infer that Al Jazeera is a messaging tool for the Qatari government, and, on its behalf, has engaged in inherently political activities and sought to influence public opinion in the United States,” they wrote.

Although a cable channel called Al Jazeera America, in coordination with former Vice President Al Gore, ultimately shuttered in 2016, the Al Jazeera Media Network, the network now maintains a U.S.-based digital syndicate called AJ+, with a strong presence of followers on social media and Youtube.

“Clearly, Al Jazeera has established and is building a significant reach within the United States,” wrote the congressmen.

They noted that the Al Jazeera sites had released a number of videos promoting anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli views, as well as some that were anti-American.

The network has previously lent its support to Hamas, the pro-Palestinian group that regularly engages in violent conflict with Israel.

“Qatar has not only allowed U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas to operate within the country but also has regularly hosted Hamas supporters and its leaders on Al Jazeera,” the congressmen said.

Qatar also maintained support for the Muslim Brotherhood, once deemed a stabilizing and democratizing influence on the region—although the role Al Jazeera played in driving that perception through its global reporting was likely considerable.

More recently, the Muslim Brotherhood’s authoritarian, militaristic influence on governments like Egypt’s has raised questions about whether its interests align with those of the U.S.

The group’s use of violence to enforce Islamic law prompted President Donald Trump to consider formally naming it a foreign terrorist organization in April, after a meeting with current Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

“When the available evidence is taken as a whole, it appears that Al Jazeera’s broadcasts, including AJ+, mirror the policies and preferences of the Qatari government,” wrote the congressmen, “which, together with the state funding and other indicia of agency, demonstrate that Al Jazeera and its media subsidiaries act as alter egos of the Qatari government in ensuring dissemination of the government’s viewpoints.”

Grassley recently introduced a bipartisan bill, the Foreign Agents Disclosure and Registration Enhancement Act of 2019, that he said would help to strengthen the 1938 FARA law, originally passed to stem the spread of Nazi propaganda.

Sen. Grassley says FBI Had Double Standard in Clinton, Trump Probes
Chuck Grassley/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore (CC)

The act, although rarely used since the 1960s, figured prominently into some of the prosecutions during the now-debunked Russia-collusion investigation led by Robert Mueller.

Grassley, the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who now heads the Finance Committee, raised alarms during the Obama years over the links between members of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign with the governments of Georgia and Ukraine.

Grassley also called attention to the ties between Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort and the Ukrainian government. Manafort ultimately was charged and found guilty under the FARA law as part of the Mueller investigation.

“Long before Special Counsel Mueller’s team sparked a renewed interest in enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, I was raising concerns about undisclosed foreign lobbying and a lack of FARA enforcement,” Grassley said in a recent statement.

“This bill gives the Justice Department new tools to detect and deter secret foreign lobbying and ensures policymakers and the American public know when influence campaigns are being pushed by foreign interests,” he said.

NC Sheriffs Hold Pity Party over Bill that Would Force Cooperation w/ ICE

Ben Sellers
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‘It’s not about making our communities safe. House Bill 370 is clearly about attacking a select group of sheriffs…’

Urban Areas Nix ICE Partnerships for Criminal Aliens, As Rural Areas Join Up
Charlotte Sheriff Gary McFadden/IMAGE: Garry Mcfadden 4Sherrif via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After campaigning on platforms of refusing to uphold federal immigration law—risking the safety and security of citizens by releasing dangerous criminals for political reasons—North Carolina sheriffs are now throwing a pity party as state legislators remind them who is in charge.

The political turmoil began when Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, whose district includes the Charlotte metropolitan area, twice released a Honduran national following a series of violent domestic disputes—the second one involving a nine-hour standoff with a SWAT team.

After the illegal, Luis Pineda–Ancheta, again made his way back out on the streets, it prompted denunciations from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Attorney Andrew Murray, and state representatives—including NC Sen. Dan Bishop, currently the Republican candidate running for the open U.S. House seat in the 9th Congressional District.

Bishop last week publicly condemned the sheriff’s actions and called on his opponent, Dan McCready, to join him in demanding McFadden’s resignation.

“Sheriff McFadden was charged with protecting the safety of our citizens, but instead he put them at risk in favor of his radical liberal agenda,” Bishop said in a statement last week. “He needs to resign, and other sanctuary sheriffs like him must be stopped.”

Meanwhile, in Raleigh, the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee—of which Bishop is a member—scheduled debate over a proposed bill already passed by the House that would force the sheriffs to cooperate with their federal counterparts over immigration.

On Wednesday, McFadden joined the sheriffs from two other left-wing metro areas in the state—Raleigh and Durham—to stage a press conference casting themselves as the victims of the political maneuverings.

“House Bill 370 is not about protecting our communities,” McFadden said at the press conference, according to WRAL. “It’s not about making our communities safe. House Bill 370 is clearly about attacking a select group of sheriffs.”

The bill would force the sheriffs in all 100 counties to cooperate with ICE on its 287(g) program—which essentially deputizes local law officers to perform tasks related to immigration enforcement—as well as the use of detainer agreements to hold criminals in jail on behalf of federal immigration authorities.

It would give a judge or magistrate in the state authority to order an illegal immigrant held for up to 48 hours after the individual would otherwise be eligible to be released on bond.

It would also empower judges to remove any sheriff or law officer who refused or failed to comply with the immigration agreements.

“They’re on a fast track to remove us,” McFadden said, according to WRAL. “… House Bill 370 is now mixing politics with our policies.”

McFadden complained that the legislators were being disrespectful to the sheriffs for their refusal to uphold the law of the land.

“The disrespect that we have received, no matter how you say it, to sit here like we’re not in the room and say things about us is unacceptable, and I don’t think we’ve ever had that when you’re talking about sheriffs,” McFadden said. “Just respect us as sheriffs.”

Although the sheriffs contend that cooperation with ICE damages their relationships in communities where illegal immigration is widespread, making people more mistrusting of local law enforcement, ICE and other supporters of the programs maintain that the lack of local cooperation actually results in an increased federal presence.

“The federal government is going to enforce immigration law, regardless of what any state does,” said Rep. Destin Hall, one of the bill’s sponsors, who noted that it was safer to detain illegal immigrants from within the jail than having to arrest them in the community, according to WRAL.

Although it initially opposed the bill, the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association has now thrown its support to it—much to the chagrin of rogue sheriffs like McFadden—provided the section about removing sheriffs is not included in the final bill.

However, some activists have called on Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to veto the bill. As neither chamber of the state General Assembly currently holds a three-fifths Republican super-majority, it is unclear that they would have the votes to override it.

Calif. Gov. Newsom Issues Formal Apology for Exterminating Native Americans

Ben Sellers
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‘California must reckon with our dark history…’

Calif. Gov. Wants Nationwide Background Checks on Ammo Purchases
Gavin Newsom/Photo by XPRIZE Foundation (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Long before companies like Google and Twitter were pricing out San Francisco Bay natives with escalating real-estate costs, forcing people to flee their homes, Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, and a slew other land speculators were doing the same to groups such as the Yelamu tribe.

Now—perhaps as prelude to a broader push from the radical Left to make restitution for its historical sins through slavery reparations—California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a formal apology for Califorina’s past wrongdoings against Native Americans while decreeing the establishment of a new Truth and Healing Council.

“California must reckon with our dark history,” Newsom said in a statement. “… We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that Newsom planned an in-person apology Tuesday during a blessing ceremony at the future site of the California Indian Heritage Center in Sacramento, where more than 100 tribal leaders had gathered for an annual meeting.

According to a press release issued by the governor’s office, the new Truth and Healing Council will be convened by the governor’s tribal advisor and include an array of stakeholders—among them, tribal representatives and government agencies.

Its goal will be to seek ways “to more closely explore the historical relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans in the spirit of truth and healing.”

Although what, precisely, that entails remains unclear, the new council will report its draft findings annually to the governor’s tribal advisor beginning in January 2020, with a final written report on the findings submitted on or before January 2025.

Unfortunately, those most aggrieved by the cesspool of evils that became California are no longer around.

Starting during the Gold Rush era of the 1850s, the state formally began what its then-governor referred to as a “war of extermination” with the Indian populations, reducing them to about 20 percent of their former size, with many being sold into indentured servitude.

The Yelamu tribe of the San Francisco Bay area / IMAGE: CoyoteWoman Creations via Youtube

The Yana, or Yahi, tribes, mostly eradicated by what was known as the California Genocide in the late 19th century, are believed to have become extinct when their last known member, Ishi, died in 1916 after living out his final years as an object of curiosity in Berkeley.

However, Newsom was able to find at least one token Native American with a claim better than that of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to commend his latest efforts.

The decree will “go a long way to start the healing process between the state and Native American communities throughout California,” said James Ramos, a Democrat in the State Assembly and former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in San Bernardino County.

“This historic acknowledgment by the Governor marks the beginning of a new relationship between the state and the more than 700,000 Native Americans who make the State of California their home,” Ramos said.

The governor’s order did not specify how much money the state intends to spend in funding its research.

Currently, despite claiming a recent budget surplus, California is afflicted by considerable expenses—among them the cost of rebuilding after recent wildfires and other natural disasters, a forestalled light-rail project that once was intended to link San Francisco with Los Angeles, and Newsom’s recent plan to provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants.

Those expenditures have recently resulted in another state-sanctioned, forced migration of indigenous Californians: the exodus of both middle-class workers and wealthy Silicon Valley millionaires to areas like Nevada and Texas with more favorable tax shelters.

Left-Leaning Pollsters Remain Unchastened by 2016 Lessons

Ben Sellers
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‘Things could—and probably will—change dramatically after the debates begin later this month…’

Trump Fires Back at Biden's Potshots in Likely Preview of General-Election Brawl
Joe Biden and Donald Trump / IMAGES via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With the official launch of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign Tuesday and the first debates of the protracted Democratic primary season occurring next week, there is, once again, a renewed focus on polling data.

Of course, the lessons and disasters of the 2016 election will not be easily forgotten or dismissed, but a spate of recent numbers suggesting Trump trailing in head-to-head match-ups against several Democratic contenders have raised questions about how well the pollsters themselves have learned those lessons.

On Tuesday, just before the major Trump rally and Democratic debates set to take place in Florida, Quinnipiac University released a poll that suggested Trump was trailing significantly behind Democratic front-runner Joe Biden in the battleground state—despite other clear indicators showing that support for the president, who won Florida in 2016, had grown recently.

“Florida Republicans have won the last five major statewide elections, all by very close margins, but Sunshine State Democrats see these very early numbers as a sign that their losing streak might be coming to an end,” crowed Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a press release.

Trump’s 44–51 percent approval rating from the poll is the best since he was elected, and the majority of Floridians acknowledge that they are better off, financially, than they were in 2016.

Moreover, voters still resoundingly disapprove of impeaching the president—one of the central preoccupations of the Democratic party since Trump took office—by a 2:1 margin.

And Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ranks high in popularity, with 54 percent approval, according to Morning Consult.

In contrast with the QU results, a Florida Atlantic University Poll in May found that the two front-runners, Trump and Biden, were neck and neck in the Sunshine State, with Trump leading all other contenders.

The QU methodology seems sounder than many—random sampling using live telephone interviewers, equal breakdowns based on ideology—but it admits to using statistical weighting “to account for deviations in the survey sample from known population characteristics, which helps correct for differential survey participation and random variation in samples.”

In other words, after painstakingly trying to establish balance in their ideological sampling, they then go out of their way to skew the data, weighing some responses more than others to account for demographic factors.

Curiously, the polls provide the raw numerical count for only two figures: the total number of respondents (1,279) and the number of registered Democrats who answered a separate question about the primaries (417).

Other numbers are left to percentages—with some tables adding up to more than 100 (presumably due to rounding).

One interesting breakout detail from the analysis, however, was the fact that Trump has actually gained on Biden by a few percentage points since the last time QU asked the question, in October 2015.

In another reminder of just how premature it is to form conclusions based on the polling data—something on which the pollsters themselves would no doubt agree—Ballotopedia’s Scott Rasmussen issued a release Tuesday noting that four years ago this month, on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump formally announced his candidacy, and entered into the primary pool of GOP candidates polling around 1 percent.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll a few days later found that 66 percent of Republican voters said they could not support him.

“Things changed dramatically in the course of the months that followed, particularly after the presidential debates began,” Rasmussen said. “Candidate Trump captured attention during the debates and dominated much of the media coverage on his way to the White House.”

Biden’s 41 percent lead over Democrats in QU’s Florida poll is considerably greater than what then-Republican front-runer Jeb Bush had (22 percent) at this point in 2015, but Rasmussen cautioned against thinking that the candidate with the most name-recognition or fundraising prowess (Bush was able to raise $150 million off his family legacy) would translate to later success.

“This data provides an important and cautionary reminder about reading too much into Democratic primary polling at the moment,” Rasmussen said. “Things could—and probably will—change dramatically after the debates begin later this month.”

Dems Panic as Trump’s News-Cycle Dominance Eclipses Their Candidates

Ben Sellers
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‘Donald Trump has managed to control the media cycle on a daily basis in ways that have made it difficult to communicate our message…’

Trump Renews Calls for Unity and Greatness in SOTU Address
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi celebrates as Trump recognizes the women in Congress. / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Ignoring the fact that their own preoccupation with President Donald Trump was the principal source of their woes, Democrats on Monday bemoaned the lack of equal attention.

“Donald Trump has managed to control the media cycle on a daily basis in ways that have made it difficult to communicate our message,” whined Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, although it was unclear what message he was referring to that was unrelated to the president.

Resistance to Trump’s political agenda and efforts to censure, impeach or indict him have been a signature part of nearly every legislative action taken by the Left in some way during the current 116th Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s personal vendetta with the president has resulted in an overall aversion to any compromise that would signal a victory for the White House.

Consequently, the House has focused on passing bills that stand no chance of clearing the Senate, creating an overarching sense of gridlock on anything but the partisan Democrats’ incessant efforts to investigate Trump administration.

Recent data compiled by The Washington Post said the result was that, through May, Trump had generated three times as much Google search traffic in the U.S. this year as all his Democratic rivals combined.

He also saw 75% more interactions on the three leading social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Rather than acquiesce to Trump, the knee-jerk reaction of the Left often has been to ratchet up its own rhetoric, resulting in the party’s ideological drift to the fringes.

As younger firebrands like Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez draw comparisons with Trump on their rhetorical style, older Democrats—including current Democrat front-runner Joe Biden—have reluctantly shifted their policies away from center to placate the rabid base and compensate for a lack of pizzazz.

“You will find yourself jerked around on Donald Trump’s chain unless you are creating fights,” said Brian Fallon, a former strategist for Democrats including Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton who now oversees the organization Demand Justice.

Fallon played a pivotal role in the resistance efforts against Justice Brett Kavanaugh and in helping to engineer the uncorroborated rape accusations against Kavanaugh by California woman Christine Blasey–Ford.

Despite the nation-rending clash over Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Trump ultimately emerged victorious when the FBI investigation into the accusations yielded nothing, further eroding confidence in the Democratic opposition that had staked much of its own credibility in the fight.

Trouble for Perez

Ignorant DNC Chairman Perez: Electoral College Is Not Part Of The Constitution
DNC Chairman Thomas Perez/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

According to Politico, the blowback from the Left’s internal rift is starting to reach Perez, just as he scrambles to prepare for the first round of Democratic primary debates taking place over two nights next week.

Some old-guard Democrats are openly expressing aggravation with the DNC chair’s capitulation to the more clamorous voices on the party’s outer reaches—including the clumsy job of determining which candidates made the final cut in a field of more than 20 for the upcoming debates.

“It’s got to be the biggest nightmare Perez ever possibly imagined,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Politico.

Among those who didn’t make it was Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat in a deeply red state who said he got a late start due to his state legislature still being in session and failed to gain ample traction in the polling and fundraising metrics that were used.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., also criticized Perez’s handling of revamped rules addressing the role of superdelegates in the DNC—a major point of contention in the 2016 rivalry between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

In what was seemingly an effort to tilt the balance more toward the electorate and less to party elites, Perez diminished the role of the lawmakers, leading Connolly to complain that those in Congress had become ““second-class citizens in our convention,” according to Politico.

Connolly said the complaints could spell trouble for Perez, who ascended into the role after internal scandals during the last election forced out his predecessors, Debbie Wasserman–Schultz and Donna Brazile.

“I don’t think he has a reservoir of goodwill here among my colleagues in the Congress. And I think he’s lost a lot of stature,” Connolly said of Perez. “… That puts him in a very exposed position that is one problem away from being terminal.”

In Search of a Scapegoat

Top 12 brands in Your Home That Facilitate Porn, Sex Trafficking
Photo by clasesdeperiodismo

Perez, who was widely criticized for blacklisting ratings leader Fox News from the DNC debate schedule, pointed fingers at national media outlets for the recent woes.

Despite the pervading liberal biases of many news institutions, Trump’s success at dominating the headlines was their fault, he claimed.

“I think the media needs some soul-searching,” Perez told The Washington Post.

“Too many media outlets and journalists wake up in the morning look to his Twitter feed and that dictates their day,” he said.

Some media sources agreed with Perez that Trump’s persona was simply more television-friendly, appealing to viewers’ penchant for the sensational.

“Trump’s sound bites are more incendiary, more unseemly, more crudely insulting—and therefore spicier for TV news to use,” network news analyst Andrew Tyndall told The Post.

Democrat critics put it more bluntly.

“We have a culture that rewards the clown show at the expense of real issues,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of the superPAC Priorities USA.

Although Democrat dark-money groups like Priorities USA intend to spend heavily attacking Trump, however, that could ultimately feed into their problem.

Not only does the president have the advantages of a bigger bully pulpit and a well-amassed campaign war-chest of his own, but he also has a well-primed base that is inured by the years of “witch hunts,” “fishing expeditions” and “cry wolf” attacks against conservatives that have since been discredited.

With Trump functioning as a lightning rod for Democrats’ wrath and attention, the result is a party that is far more coalesced around the the president than its diffuse counterpart is in opposition.

Still, some Democrats continued to put their trust in the process—that the large field of primary contenders on the Left would ultimately concentrate all its energies on a single candidate best equipped to take on Trump and unify the disparate voices in the party.

“The field will winnow. And I don’t think that it’s worth it for the DNC to be involved in the winnowing,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Politico. “I don’t find it concerning or alarming to have 20 people running for president. I think it’s great.”

As Trump formally kicks off his own campaign Tuesday, there will likely be a greater sense of urgency to do so sooner than later, lest the gap continue to widen.

Leftists HIDE Their List of Activist Judges for When They Reclaim Power

Ben Sellers
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0

‘They want to pack the Court, and aren’t even willing to tell the American people who they are going to pack the courts with…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Already, radical leftists have put forth the idea of packing the Supreme Court with additional justices to tilt the balance next time they have an opportunity.

Now, at least one coalition has begun compiling its wish-list of activist prospects, taking a page from President Donald Trump’s own playbook.

“It is essential to be ready on Day 1 of a new administration with names to fill every vacancy,” Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice,  told The New York Times. “This is to start identifying people so the new president won’t waste a minute in addressing this need.”

AFJ announced last week that it was spearheading the new Building the Bench initiative, complete with its own Twitter hashtag.

The Times said nearly 100 federal judges were part of the judicial resistance movement, waiting for Trump—or any conservative—to leave office so that they may retire and be replaced by a like-minded (or even more radical) alternative.

Unlike Trump, though, AFJ is remaining tight-lipped about who is on its list—and with good reason, considering the smear-campaign against Justice Brett Kavanaugh began in 2012, when he already had been identified as a possible nominee if Obama had lost re-election.

AFJ spokeswoman Laura Kinney said that her group would make its list available only after a Democrat won, and then would leave it to that person to determine how to use it, according to RealClear Politics.

“Names will be shared with an incoming administration, not the nominee,” she told RCP. “And it would not be our prerogative to disclose any names.”

AFJ’s website gives a good indication, however, of the type of judges it would seek to push through.

“It would be nice to see more people who have experience outside the three big pots,” Peter Shane, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University and a member of the Building the Bench advisory committee, told The Times, referring to the tendency to appoint sitting judges, prosecutors or senior law partners to many federal benches.

The website describes Building the Bench as “collaborative effort with many organizations that represent workers’ rights, women’s rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and more.”

Left wing protestors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court / IMAGE: Wall Street Journal via Youtube

Specifically, the effort is targeting prospective judges who have been involved in things like social-justice advocacy, hoping to further entrench the role that judicial activism has played in supplanting and undermining the legislative power of elected representatives.

“We’ll be looking for individuals who have dedicated their legal careers to public interest, civil rights, and criminal justice causes, or who have done significant pro bono work in those areas,” said the AFJ website.

Among the groups it is partnering with in the effort are Planned Parenthood, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, People For the American Way and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Aron told Bloomberg.

Many of the current Democratic primary candidates declined to say whether they would commit to using a list compiled by the Building the Bench coalition if they were elected, according to RealClear Politics.

But critics on the Right were quick to weigh in on the lack of transparency.

While AFJ and its media partners claim the Trump presidency has successfully hijacked the judiciary, “furiously installing conservatives” as The Times said, to fill the spots that Republicans had succeeded in blocking during the Obama years, judicial overreach from leftist radicals has, in fact, been one of the most alarming developments in recent political history.

Using injunctions, federal judges have taken the unprecedented step of attempting to delay or block executive action on an array of issues, from immigration to transgenders in the military.

Ironically, many of the actions being blocked by liberal judges were first implemented by executive order from the Obama administration with no underlying legislative foundation.

Judges also have increasingly played a role in the Left’s efforts to establish a permanent electoral majority through means such as gerrymandering districts under its “Sue til Blue” campaigns.

The Supreme Court this week declined to rule on one such case in Virginia, determining that the state legislature lacked legal standing to challenge the court decision forcing it to redraw its districts.

Two other cases in Maryland and North Carolina are currently pending before the high court.

Colo. Secretary of State Ignores Her Own Preaching on Election Transparency

Ben Sellers
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‘Coloradans deserve to know who is trying to influence their vote and how they are trying to do it…’

Jena Griswold / IMAGE: Denver7 – The Denver Channel via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After talking up the importance of transparency in her public statements, Colorado‘s secretary of state is now being sued for attempting to skirt the state’s open record’s laws regarding a recent push to ban the Electoral College.

In March, the once battleground Colorado, newly radicalized, joined other blue states in passing legislation that would support the “national popular vote” movement.

In theory, should the number of states in accord pass the 270 mark needed to win the majority of electoral votes, the states would all agree to support the winner of the nationwide popular vote rather than their statewide winner.

Critics have noted that the discrepancies in rules between various states over matters such as ballot harvesting and how elections are administered would almost certainly result in court challenges and disfranchisement.

The more cynical have observed that it appears to be a clear ploy by sour-grapes left-wingers to re-write the rules since they cannot be elected through the constitutionally established means.

While Colorado’s General Assembly was considering the NPV bill—which it ultimately passed and was signed by Gov. Jared Polis—newly elected liberal Secretary of State Jena Griswold testified before the state legislature in favor of it.

That testimony prompted the Washington Free Beacon to request the communications between Griswold and other state officials with organizers of the national movement under the state’s open records act, known as CORA.

Griswold’s office only released the records selectively, however, and upon prompting acknowledged through a legal analyst that it had retained some of them, citing “work product” protections, which would apply to materials prepared in anticipation of litigation.

On Thursday, Judicial Watch announced that Griswold’s office would, indeed, be getting the litigation it sought, in the form of an open-records lawsuit.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the Left had good reason for wanting to suppress the behind-the-scenes mechanisms and motives of its play at the national electoral system.

“Leftists in Colorado and other states want to undo the Electoral College and the U.S. Constitution in the hopes of guaranteeing control of the presidency,” Fitton said.

“This attack on the Electoral College would give large left-leaning states and voter fraud an unconstitutionally outsized impact on the outcome of our presidential elections,” he said.

Ironically, the Free Beacon reported that, prior to her own office coming under fire, Griswold had given considerable lip service to the need for greater transparency in government and elections.

Citing testimony published on her own office’s website, the paper said Griswold had previously denounced “secret political spending,” declaring that “Coloradans deserve to know who is trying to influence their vote and how they are trying to do it.”

Ironically, she called for a consistent and unified set of election rules to be established—the opposite of what would result if the NPV compact were to take effect.

“There will be some Democrats and some Republicans who will say they have concerns about more transparency,” Griswold said.

“But I believe that the majority of us here can agree that transparency is good for democracy and we can do more,” she said. “Campaign finance reform is about making sure that everyone plays by the same set of rules; it’s about giving voters the facts.”

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