Trump Administration Starts Cleanup of Mexican Sewage Flowing into California

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Trump Administration Starts Cleanup of Mexican Sewage Flowing into California

(Associated Press) Work has begun to stop a decades-old problem of millions of gallons of sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, flowing into the United States and polluting San Diego County beaches, the Trump administration’s top environmental protection official said Wednesday.

For more than 40 years, wastewater from Tijuana’s dilapidated system has spilled across the border and polluted the waters off Imperial Beach, a city of about 30,000 south of San Diego. The pollution has posed health risks to surfers, Border Patrol agents and even Navy SEALs who train near there, officials said.

Last week, a $10.6 million project was completed and will keep 4.5 million gallons of sewage per day from entering the Tijuana River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean in front of Imperial Beach, said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler at a news conference in San Diego.

His agency contributed $3.9 million to that project.

This follows Wheeler’s pronouncement that the EPA will focus on keeping air and water cleain in the nation, not virtue-signaling about climate change.

A second, $6 million project will pay for improvements to Tijuana’s pumping and collection system to prevent further spills from entering the United States. Mexico is also doing work on the system, and pollution flows are already being reduced, Wheeler said.

The agency is also funding work in coming months that will replace a mile of old, leaking pipes that should further stop the sewage from overflowing, Wheeler said.

In addition, two other short-term projects funded by $25 million in federal grants will help by diverting 10 million gallons a day of Tijuana wastewater to an international treatment facility, and by capturing trash and sediment with a new system on the border.

The projects are short-term solutions being put in place while the federal government designs a more permanent fix that it will fund with $300 million allocated for environmental border projects from Congress under President Donald Trump’s revised NAFTA agreement, now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, an avid surfer, told reporters Wednesday he already is seeing a difference: His city has been able to open its beaches, which had been closed since November, ahead of the the Labor Day weekend.

He said his city had faced a “sewage apocalypse” and noted that 160 days this year the beaches there had to be closed because of the pollution.

He said a permanent fix is vital and Mexico must continue to make improvements and ensure that there is “zero flow from Tijuana going anywhere near the ocean.”

The actions come after Imperial Beach and other local governments sued the agency in 2018 to demand the EPA do something about the problem. They agreed earlier this year to put the legal action on hold for a year after the EPA indicated it would help.

Oregon Bars GOP Voter Statement; Says It Was 29 Seconds Late

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Oregon Bars GOP Voter Statement; Says It Was 29 Seconds Late

(Associated Press) The Oregon Republican Party’s statement for the state voters’ pamphlet arrived 29 seconds too late and won’t appear in the guide mailed to voters for the November election, officials say.

Laura Fosmire, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bev Clarno, said deadlines apply equally to everyone.

“Anyone wishing to submit information to the Voters’ Pamphlet has several weeks to do so and we recommend avoiding waiting until the last minute for this reason,” she said in a statement.

But Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that Kevin Hoar, the communications director for the state GOP, insists the party did get its statement into an online filing system by 4:59 p.m. on Aug. 25, the final day for filing.

He said the party filed a lawsuit in Marion County demanding that the statement be included in the voters’ guide before it goes to print later this month.

“We can’t quite explain the interpretation and decision here” by state elections officials, Hoar said.

State Republican Chairman Bill Currier said the failure to include his party’s statement from the voting guide “reeks of partisan discrimination.”

He added, “If a bureaucrat in some decision-making role simply didn’t like what our statement said, this doesn’t give them the right to silence us.”

Clarno, the secretary of state, is the only Oregon Republican in statewide office. A former Oregon House speaker from Deschutes County, she was appointed to the job by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to serve the rest of the term after Secretary of State Dennis Richardson died in 2019.

The statement submitted by the Republican Party was headlined “Had enough? Vote Republican!” It attacked Democratic leadership in Oregon on issues ranging from “Unrestrained rioting” in Portland to mismanagement of the pandemic resulting in “catastrophic small business losses.”

Hoar also said that Currier was locked out of the online filing system for several hours, delaying the party’s ability to file its statement.

Fosmire said there were “no problems or glitches” with the online reporting system. “(W)e simply received the statement after the filing deadline,” she said.

The Democratic Party of Oregon and six other political parties are included in the voters’ pamphlet for the Nov. 3 election.

EPA Chief Pledges Clean Water & Air, Less Single-Issue ‘Virtue Signaling’

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EPA Chief Pledges Clean Water & Air, Less Single-Issue ‘Virtue Signaling’

(Headline USA) Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s record on protecting the nation’s air and water.

He said Trump’s second term would bring a greater focus on pollution cleanups in disadvantaged communities and less emphasis on climate change.

In a speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the EPA’s founding, Wheeler said the agency was moving back toward an approach that had long promoted economic growth as well as a healthy environment and drawn bipartisan support.

“Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, some members of former administrations and progressives in Congress have elevated single issue advocacy – in many cases focused just on climate change – to virtue-signal to foreign capitals, over the interests of communities within their own country,” he said.

In his remarks, Wheeler said that if Trump is re-elected EPA would support “community-driven environmentalism” that emphasizes on-the-ground results such as faster cleanup of Superfund toxic waste dumps and abandoned industrial sites that could be used for new businesses.

He pledged to require cost-benefit analyses for proposed rules and to make public the scientific justification for regulations, saying it would “bring much needed sunlight into our regulatory process” and saying opponents “want decisions to be made behind closed doors.”

Critics say a science “transparency” policy EPA is considering would hamper development of health and safety regulations by preventing consideration of studies with confidential information about patients and businesses.

Wheeler spoke at the Richard Nixon library in Yorba Linda, California.

The Republican president established the EPA in 1970 amid public revulsion over smog-choked skies and waterways so laced with toxins they were unfit for swimming or fishing.

Some of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, were enacted during his administration.

Wheeler, an EPA and Senate staffer in the 1990s and a former coal industry lobbyist, said the agency had accomplished much. Lead gasoline, paint, asbestos and dioxins and hundreds of hazardous chemicals and compounds have been banned, he said.

“America’s environment today is cleaner than it’s ever been in our lifetimes,” he said, adding that during the Trump administration, air pollution has fallen while Superfund cleanups have accelerated and EPA programs have pumped $40 billion into clean-water infrastructure upgrades.

But the agency has become too bureaucratic and confrontational, he said — delaying permits needlessly, issuing conflicting orders to businesses and communities, and backing policies that worsen some environmental problems to solve others.

East Coast governors have blocked natural gas pipelines in the name of fighting climate change but the result has been more gas imports from Russia, Wheeler said.

He blamed California’s support of greater reliance on renewable energy and less on gas for rolling power blackouts that had resulted in sewage spills.

“Instead of confusing words with actions, and choosing empty symbolism over doing a good job, we can focus our attention and resources on helping communities help themselves,” Wheeler said.

McCarthy and five other former EPA chiefs whose terms date as far back as the Reagan administration issued a statement this month saying Trump had abandoned the agency’s “core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

“Actions during the Trump administration have further decreased public confidence in the agency’s credibility, undercut its historic dedication to high ethical standards, and affected employee morale,” they said in a joint statement.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Trump Orders Administrative State to Cease Woke Anti-Racism Training

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Trump Orders Administrative State to Cease Woke Anti-Racism Training

(Headline USA) President Donald Trump has directed the Office of Management and Budget to crack down on federal agencies’ anti-racism training sessions, calling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

OMB director Russell Vought, in a letter Friday to executive branch agencies, directed them to identify spending related to any training on “critical race theory,” “white privilege” or any other material that teaches or suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is “inherently racist or evil.”

The memo comes as leftist groups riot across the country, a phenomenon the media has portrayed as a response to system racism. The leaders of Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other militant leftist organizations admit the violence is for the purposing of sparking a Marxist revolution or a coup against Trump.

Trump has argued against the toppling of America’s historical monuments, saying that they are vital to preserving our nation’s heritage.

Meanwhile, he has rejected comments from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and others that there is “systemic racism” in policing and American culture that must be addressed.

Vought’s memo cites “press reports” as contributing to Trump’s decision, apparently referring to segments on Fox News and other outlets that have stoked conservative outrage about the federal training.

Vought’s memo says additional federal guidance on training sessions is forthcoming, maintaining that “The President, and his Administration, are fully committed to the fair and equal treatment of all individuals in the United States.”

“The President has a proven track record of standing for those whose voice has long been ignored and who have failed to benefit from all our country has to offer, and he intends to continue to support all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed,” he added. “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Campaign Week One: Trump Offers Jobs, Normality, & Security, While Joe Talks New Normal & Racism

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Campaign Week One: Trump Offers Jobs, Normality, & Security, While Joe Talks New Normal & Racism

(Headline USA) On the campaign trail with President Donald Trump, the pandemic is largely over, the economy is roaring back, and murderous mobs are infiltrating America’s suburbs.

With Democrat Joe Biden, the pandemic is raging, the economy isn’t lifting the working class, and systemic racism threatens black lives across America.

The first week of the fall sprint to Election Day crystallized dizzyingly different versions of reality as the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger trekked from Washington and Delaware to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and back.

A new divide erupted Friday over the military.

Trump passionately denied libelous allegations reported late Thursday that in 2018, he described U.S. service members killed in World War I and buried at an American military cemetery in France as “losers” and “suckers.”

The report, sourced anonymously by The Atlantic comes as Trump tries to win support from military members and their families by highlighting a commitment to veterans’ health care and military spending.

“I’ve done more for the military than almost anyone else,” Trump said Friday from the Oval Office, after describing the allegations on social media as “a disgraceful attempt to influence the 2020 Election.”

At roughly the same time at a podium in Delaware, Biden leaned into the damaging reports about his opponent.

“Let me be clear: My son Beau, who volunteered to go to Iraq, was not a sucker,” Biden declared, pounding the podium. “The men and women who served with him are not suckers, and the service men and women he served with, who did not come home, are not losers.”

Trump and his allies have accurately stated that the coronavirus poses an insignificant threat to the vast majority of healthy, young to middle-aged Americans.

Biden on Friday linked the pandemic and Trump’s push to revive the economy: “You can’t have an economic comeback when almost a thousand Americans die a day from COVID.”

Earlier in the day, the government announced that the unemployment rate dropped sharply in August from 10.2% to 8.4%. That means roughly half of the 22 million jobs lost to the coronavirus outbreak have been recovered.

“It’s another great day for American jobs and American workers,” Vice President Mike Pence said on CNBC. “This president’s advanced policies … have laid a foundation for this great American comeback. Joe Biden and the Democrats are advocating policies that would turn us back.”

ABiden drew on the data to paint a dire portrait of the U.S. economy in line with the message he has delivered for much of the last year.

“We’re still down 720,000 manufacturing jobs,” Biden said. “In fact, Trump may well be the only president in modern history to leave office with fewer jobs than when he took office.”

“Talk to a lot of real working people who are being left behind,” he added. “Ask them, do you feel the economy is coming back? They don’t feel it.”

Less than two weeks after a white police officer shot alleged sex offender Jacob Blake, a black man, after he resisted arrest, Trump reaffirmed his support for the police and businesses affected by the violent protests that followed.

Trump did not meet with Blake’s family while in Wisconsin, as Biden did Thursday when he visited the area for the first time.

Instead, the president focused on the threat posed by rioters, telling reporters he does not believe systemic racism is a problem in America’s law enforcement agencies.

Trump described protest-related violence as “domestic terror” and decried “violent mobs” threatening to rape and murder local residents.

Two days later, Biden condemned the violent protests during his own visit to Kenosha, but first he met privately with Blake’s family and later criticized what he described as centuries of systemic racism.

Biden addressed head-on the Democratic frustration with Trump’s final-weeks message.

“He doesn’t want to talk about anything, anything at all about the job he hasn’t done,” Biden said Friday of Trump, suggesting the president is far more eager to exaggerate the threat posed by those protesting police brutality.

“And so it’s a conundrum,” Biden said. “And in a sense, every time I speak about it I feel like I’m playing in his game.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

1.3 Million Women Have Exited Labor Force Since February as Shutdowns Continue

Joshua Paladino
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1.3 Million Women Have Exited Labor Force Since February as Shutdowns Continue

(Headline USA) Research is increasingly pointing to a retreat of working mothers from the U.S. labor force as the government shutdowns leave parents with few child care options and the added burden of navigating computer instruction.

Thousands of school districts are starting the school year with remote instruction, including most of the largest ones.

At least half the country’s child care providers are closed and may not survive the crisis without financial help to cope with implementing safety standards and reduced enrollment.

Negotiations for a bailout of the industry have stalled in Congress.

In August, the federal jobs reports showed that women in their prime-earning years — 25 to 54 — were dropping out of the work force more than other age groups.

About 77 percent of women in that age group were working or looking for work in February, compared to 74.9% in August.

The decline is most pronounced among black women of that age range, whose participation rate is down 5 percentage points since February, compared to 4 percentage points for Hispanic women and 2 percentage points for white women.

Overall, the drop translates into 1.3 million women exiting the labor force since February.

“We think this reflects the growing child care crisis,” BNP Paribas economists Daniel Ahn and Steven Weinberg wrote in recent report. “It is hard to see this abating soon, and if anything could become worse as we move into fall.”

Women also comprise nearly half the U.S. labor force, making their inability to work a potential boost for workers who remain in the tighter labor market.

More mothers than fathers have exited the labor force since the shutdowns began, according to research published in August by Sage Journals, which analyzed data from the Current Population Survey.

Between February and April, labor force participation fell 3.2% among mothers with children younger than 6, and 4.3% for those with children 6 to 12.

Fathers of children under 12 also left the workforce, but at lower rates, said Landivar, who co-authored the report.

In a separate study, the same researchers found mothers are cutting back on working hours more than fathers.

Mothers of children under 12 were working more than six fewer hours a week than fathers in April, compared to less than five fewer hours in February, according to the study, which looked at sub-sample of heterosexual married men and women from the CPS, a monthly survey of 60,000 households sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We already knew there was a large gender inequality in the labor force, and the pandemic just makes this worse,” Landivar said.

Women make up a majority of the country’s teachers, nurses, child care workers, social workers, librarians, bookkeepers, waitresses, cashiers and housekeepers, according to federal labor figures.

Mothers in particular are the majority of the country’s teachers, nurses and child care workers.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Nov. Election Polls to Feature Stadiums, Drive-Thrus, and Movie Theaters

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Nov. Election Polls to Feature Stadiums, Drive-Thrus, and Movie Theaters

(Headline USA) Voting will look a little different this November.

States are turning to stadiums, drive-thrus and possibly even movie theaters as safe options for in-person polling places amid virus hysteria and fears about fraud surrounding mail-in ballots.

The primary season brought voters to an outdoor wedding-style tent in Vermont and the state fairgrounds in Kentucky. The general election on Nov. 3 is expected to include voting at NBA arenas around the country.

Large venues and outdoor spaces allow for social isolation, though there are questions about keeping people warm as the weather gets cold and the possibility that fewer traditional neighborhood polling places could lower voter turnout.

Election Day is expected to bring a surge in mail-in voting, but some people may feel more comfortable casting their ballots in person.

Several states conduct their elections almost entirely by mail, and mail-in voting is well established in others.

In June, Utah broke voter turnout records despite not opening traditional polling places because of the virus. In-person voting will be back in November, but rather than only using schools, churches and public buildings like usual, clerks also are permitted to set up drive-thru or outdoor polling places.

The family that owns the NBA’s Utah Jazz also has a chain of movie theaters and offered three as voting sites in November.

One suburban Salt Lake City county ran a primary polling place where voters drove through an indoor convention center to pick up their ballots, completed them in their cars and then dropped them off in an outdoor parking area.

Davis County Clerk Curtis Koch said the system will be in place for the general election, too.

Chad Berbert, a 46-year-old Republican, said he’ll probably vote by mail in the fall, but he’s glad officials are offering alternative voting methods.

“The more options for voting in terms of mechanisms or ways that people can exercise their franchise I think is helpful,” said Berbert, who lives in Layton, Utah.

Less than 1% of Utah voters chose in-person options in June, according to election officials.

In Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium will be used as a vote center as part of a joint effort with More Than A Vote, a voting rights organization launched by LeBron James that’s dedicated to maximizing black turnout in November.

Many black voters — one of the Democratic Party’s most important voting groups — are wary of voting by mail.

Several teams, including the Milwaukee Bucks, Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks, had already committed their arenas to be voting sites prior to the NBA’s announcement last week. Madison Square Garden also will be among the sports stadiums used.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

Facebook Blocks Chronically Ill Man’s Live Broadcast of His Death

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Facebook Blocks Chronically Ill Man’s Live Broadcast of His Death

(Headline USA) Facebook on Saturday blocked live broadcasts from a chronically ill bed-ridden man who appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron for a medically-assisted death.

Alain Cocq wanted to show what he expects will be a painful end to his life after he announced that he was stopping all food and drink.

Prostrate on his bed, he posted video of himself Friday after taking what he said would be his last liquid meal.

“I know the days ahead are going to be very difficult,” he said. “But I have taken my decision and I am serene.”

In a letter this week, which Cocq also posted, Macron said that French law forbade him from granting his request for the “right to leave with dignity,” with a medically-assisted death.

“With emotion, I respect your approach because it speaks to the very intimate relationship that each of us builds with the end of our life and our death,” Macron said in the letter dated Thursday, sent after one of his aides spoke at length with Cocq by telephone in August.

But Macron added that “because I am not above the law, I am not in a position to grant your request.”

In a handwritten addition at the end, Macron signed off the letter with the words, “With all of my personal support and my profound respect.”

French media have reported that Cocq, a 57-year-old former plumber, suffers from a long-term and incurable degenerative illness. He says that he has lived in great pain for 34 years and that after multiple operations, he prefers to die.

In his Facebook post on Friday evening, he said the alternative would be “the degradation of my body.”

“I am going to stop hydrating myself when I turn off the lights,” he said. “Given my general condition, it’s likely to be quick, which is what I hope for, because I’m not a masochist.”

He said he would keep taking painkillers.

“The path to my deliverance is starting and, believe me, I am happy about it,” he said. “To those I won’t see again, I say goodbye. Such is life.”

Cocq had planned to subsequently live-broadcast the end of his life that he expects will follow within days of his decision to stop all food and liquids and most medicines. But a message Saturday on Cocq’s account said that Facebook has blocked him from posting videos until Tuesday.

Facebook confirmed that it had blocked Cocq’s live broadcasts.

“Our hearts go out to Alain Cocq and those who are affected by this sad situation,” it said in a statement. “While we respect his decision to draw attention to this complex and difficult issue, based on the guidance of experts, we have taken steps to keep Alain from broadcasting live, as we do not allow the depiction of suicide attempts.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.

MURDOCK: Dems’ Mail-In Voting Push May Lead to Domestic Abuse, Intimidation

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MURDOCK: Dems’ Mail-In Voting Push May Lead to Domestic Abuse, Intimidation

(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) A voting booth should be as confidential as a confessional.

A mail-in ballot is wide open to filial force, peer pressure and workplace bullying.

Crooked Democrats demand this seventh-inning rule change nationwide.

Back in March 2018, Hillary Clinton speculated that she lost for president because nasty men, who hate her, forced women to support Donald J. Trump.

Democrats “don’t do well with married, white women,” Hillary said.

“And part of that is an identification with the Republican Party, and a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

Hillary’s claim generated derisive laughter and a well-deserved sense that she believes women cannot think for themselves.

But Hillary’s point is not entirely baseless.

Just as some men beat women, others tell them how to vote. (And some henpecked men surely suffer likewise.)

As long as local precincts let people vote in secret, however, such embattled Americans can escape such relationship woes and privately endorse the candidates and causes they choose, not those inflicted upon them.

Alas, universal mail-in ballots bomb this safe harbor to smithereens.

“Unfortunately, survivors of intimate partner violence may be unable to make their voices heard in November due to barriers in the voting process, including fear of potential retaliation,” the liberal Center for American Progress’s Danielle Root wrote in 2018.

“And for survivors who vote absentee and thus complete their ballots at home, voter privacy may be more difficult to guarantee, as abusers may have greater ability to access and monitor a survivor’s vote selection.”

Imagine that Mr. Jones tells his wife, “Your mail-in ballot better say Biden, or I’ll smack you.”

Mrs. Jones cannot go to the polls and cast her ballot as she wishes. Instead, that woman’s right to choose will be crushed.

She will have no choice but to complete her ballot, let her live-in monster inspect it, confirm that she voted as he wanted, and then let him post it.

Mrs. Jones could so little but lament her disenfranchisement.

Ditto Mr. Smith, whose wife insists on seeing if he voted “for The Donald” before grabbing his mail-in ballot, screaming, “You better have!” and then marching down to the Post Office to send it in—complete with the decisions that her suffering husband would have negated, had he voted in person.

Political harassers likewise could prey upon the elderly.

Unscrupulous caregivers and cruel family members could perpetrate this on an individual level (“OK, Grandpa: Before you get your insulin, let’s see your ballot.”)

This already happens on an industrial scope at nursing homes. This electoral elder abuse is called “granny harvesting.”

How about America’s thoroughly politicized campuses—where Cancelistas shout down or shut down conservative speakers?

Leftist dorm-mates could corner outnumbered conservatives and command them to display their votes.

Far-Right paranoia? Try to visualize a dozen College Republicans ganging up on a lone liberal for an impromptu ballot inspection. No, I cannot picture that, either.

Mass mail-in ballots also invite heavy-handed workplace tactics.

Bosses or labor bosses could organize office- or factory-wide pow-wows where employees must arrive with their ballots and learn how to vote “the right way.”

And for those who resist? “I was considering you for that promotion, Maria. But your ballot gives me doubts.”

Coercion aside, universal mail-in ballots threaten to silence millions. The U.S. Postal Service aspires to deliver 96 percent of political mail accurately.

USPS would consider itself mission-compliant if as much as 4 percent of mail-in ballots went astray and never got tabulated.

With some 80 million mail-in ballots expected in circulation, up to 3.2 million could go missing before USPS fretted.

This Democrat formula for mass disenfranchisement easily could throw the race for the presidency one way or the other.

Couple this terrifying reality with mass-mail-in ballots’ War on Voter Privacy, and this entire scheme becomes yet another defective product from the Democrat bad-idea factory.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.

Drudge Biographer: Site’s Far-Left Shift a Bad ‘Business Calculation’

Ben Sellers
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Drudge Biographer: Site’s Far-Left Shift a Bad ‘Business Calculation’

The author of a newly released biography on enigmatic “Drudge Report” founder Matt Drudge dismissed speculation that the longtime right-wing icon—whose influence is credited with helping both Barack Obama and Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton—had sold out.

Drudge himself, who has grown increasingly reclusive since his site exploded in the late 1990s after breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal, refused to be interviewed for journalist Matthew Lysiak’s The Drudge Revolution.

But Lysiak, in an e-mail interview with Headline USA, said he’s convinced that the fedora-doffing kingmaker is still very much at the helm, despite a discernible leftward shift in the site’s political orientation over the past year.

“Matt’s leftward shift is a business calculation,” Lysiak said. “And by the looks of his page views, not a very good one.”

Drudge’s page views are now half what they were at the site’s zenith, around 2015, when he was averaging 30-35 million views per month.

Lysiak said the spread of social media has cut into traffic. However, he still credited Drudge’s “genius as a businessman” for his decades of media dominance and profits to the tune of $100 million.

Moreover, Drudge has proven he still has the power to drive a media narrative, including his recent, uncorroborated suggestion that the president may have had a mini-stroke.

Lysiak said he did not have any information on whether Drudge—who worked closely with Trump advisors Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon during the 2016 presidential campaign—had a falling out with the president.

But he was certain that even facing the possibility of waning influence, Drudge would never offer up the controlling interest his eponymous brainchild.

“Matt will continue to do what he believes is best for his website, and his desire to stay relevant, whether that means shifting back to the right or going more to the left,” Lysiak said. “But he has been successful in at least one measure, everyone is talking about Matt Drudge again.”

Lysiak also seemed confident, based on Drudge’s past tendencies and the accounts of those who know him best, that the current political realignment will not last forever.

“Matt’s leftward shift is temporary,” he said. “Matt knows the writing’s on the wall.”

Even without the added intrigue of Drudge’s massive reach in the political realm, Lysiak’s portrait reads like a compelling page-turner.

Using more than 200 firsthand interviews and hundreds more primary source records, from yearbooks to court documents, he delves into Drudge’s troubled childhood in suburban Maryland, the “open secret” of his sexuality, his salad days as a Dumpster-diving Hollywood gossip-slinger, and his personal friendships with a who’s who of conservative thought leaders including Andrew Breitbart, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.

Although Drudge previously had written a memoir of his own, 2000’s Drudge Manifesto, the book offered woefully little insight into his fascinating life, opting instead to publish poetry and fan mail.

Yet, one of the few things to remain consistent in the intervening 20 years has been Drudge’s own aversion to the spotlight, which has gone from Walter Winchell to full-blown Howard Hughes.

“There isn’t a single individual in our generation who has had more of an impact on the way we consume news than Matt Drudge and no one knew anything about the guy,” Lysiak said. “Barely had a picture taken in the past ten years.”

Filling in the past two decades of Drudge’s media reign was something of a personal challenge for the veteran New York Daily News reporter-turned-biographer.

“I wish I could tell you I wrote this book to illuminate the world,” Lysiak said.

“I didn’t,” he continued. “I wrote this book because I needed to personally know how this one man, who came from a highly dysfunctional family and with no formal education, was able to completely revolutionize how we gather information and usurp the media establishment of the day.” 

And while he may not have received a nod yet from the site of the man who inspired all the effort, it has opened considerable doors for him on the other side of the dictaphone, where Lysiak has been a featured guest of prominent media personalities like Tucker Carlson (who also makes cameo appearances in the book).

Lysiak said the big-screen could be in the near future … with or without the OK from his subject, who once told George Clooney he could not feature the “Drudge Report” in the background of the HBO series K Street.

“The movie is on the way,” Lysiak said. “The rights have been sold. Stay tuned.”

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