Jones has called these pro-life policies ‘draconian…’
Doug Jones/IMAGE: YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) When a constituent tried to ask Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., about whether abortion restrictions were necessary, Jones laughed off the question and called it “stupid.”
“Do you think abortion should be banned after five months?” the man asked Jones as he walked across a parking lot.
Apparently not hearing the initial question, Jones responded, “What stupid question do you have for me today?”
The man then repeated the question, and Jones said, “Should abortion be banned after … as I said, what a stupid question.”
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Constituent: “Do you think abortion should be banned after 5 months?”
Jones is supposed to vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act next week, which would impose a federal ban on abortions conducted after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which is when most experts believe infants can feel pain. The last time this bill was proposed in 2018, Jones voted against it. And it’s likely he’ll do so once again.
“Yeah, and I’ll vote on it next week,” Jones told the constituent as he walked away, “just like I did the last time.”
Jones’s positions, however, are still unclear. Last year, he was one of the only Democrats in the Senate to vote in favor of the GOP’s born-alive bill, which would have protected children who survive attempted abortions. The vote was likely an attempt to win favor with his constituents, though, since the state of Alabama has passed and supported abortion restrictions for years.
In fact, Alabama’s abortion restrictions are some of the most limited in the country. Jones has called these pro-life policies “draconian,” “extreme,” and “callous.”
‘Changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the budget situation…’
Mick Mulvaney/IMAGE: Fox News via YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney called out Republicans for being “a lot less interested” in the federal deficit under President Trump than they were under former President Barack Obama.
The GOP is “very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House,” Mulvaney said during hs speech at the Oxford Union, according to the Washington Post. “The worst thing in the whole world was deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party.”
Mulvaney said he finds the $1 trillion deficit “extraordinarily disturbing,” but added that he seems to be one of the only D.C. politicos who still cares.
The GOP is still “evolving” under Trump, he said, and fiscal conservatism is not a priority anymore.
“This has been a growing problem because spending continues to rise,” said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs for limited-government advocate FreedomWorks. “Sadly, both parties in Congress have irresponsibly allowed discretionary spending to grow while ignoring mandatory spending, which is the driver of budget deficits. If Congress continues to ignore this problem, it will result in higher borrowing costs, larger budget deficits, and, very likely, a painful sovereign debt crisis that will harm Americans.”
Under Obama’s presidency, the U.S. faced a similar crisis.
Now, the economy is thriving, which makes “the large and growing deficit all the more noteworthy,” said Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel.
“Changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the budget situation, because our debt is growing on an unsustainable path,” he said in the CBO report.
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., slammed a Glens Falls, New York journalist for his “false and shameful attacks” after he alleged she “cheers on those who threaten” reporters.
Liberal Post-Star editor Ken Tingley used the opportunity of a routine fundraising letter Stefanik’s team had sent to write a snarky column attacking her for allegedly failing to rebuke a citizen’s threats against his newspaper.
Her donor letter urged supporters to help her “fight back” in typical political rhetoric, claiming the Democratic Party has been coming after her with “everything they’ve got” (Stefanik was one of the Republican House defenders of President Trump in the Senate impeachment trial).
Except Tingley, to serve his own agenda, sarcastically treated the fundraising letter as though it was a personal missive from Stefanik to him, instead of the form letter plea for donations that it actually was.
Tingley had previously criticized Stefanik for supporting “a local man who shouted threats against the newspaper at a public rally,” despite the fact that Stefanik contemporaneously denounced threats against the media:
I unequivocally condemned violence of any kind, specifically violence against the press, at a public community event in Hudson Falls. The @poststar editor @KenTingley was in attendance but refused to publish my answer. WATCH ? pic.twitter.com/iFEOgpk5Kv
Instead of accurately reporting Stefanik’s response, Tingley accused her of trying to raise money off of “violence.”
“By the end of the [fundraising] letter I wasn’t sure whether she would be buying campaign ads or bullets,” he wrote. “I thought about the ‘elite’ media in our newsroom who cover late-night fires, dutifully sit through long and often tedious town and county meetings and report the stories of unscrupulous landlords to save some of our citizens a few hundred dollars while they struggle to pay their own bills. All the while, Elise cheers on those that threaten us.”
Stefanik demanded an apology from Tingley for his deception.
THREAD: Today’s @poststar column by @kentingley ends with a dangerous allusion to gun violence and has no place on the pages of a serious community newspaper. This news editor is well aware of the impact of his words, and is completely unacceptable.
“We can all respectfully and passionately disagree on policies, but allusions to threats of violence — as Tingley does today — have no place in our community discussions or in print. Readers of our community papers deserve better, and Tingley should apologize for this unacceptable error in judgement,” she said in a statement.
‘We understand just how important it is that we get this right…’
People wait in line to vote early at the Culinary Workers union in Las Vegas/AP Photo
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines, & Associated Press) Democrats won’t commit to releasing the unofficial results of Saturday’s Nevada caucuses on the day of the vote, as they emphasize accuracy over speed in the aftermath of the chaos surrounding the Iowa caucuses.
Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told The Associated Press that several factors, including early voting and potentially high turnout, could affect the tabulation and timing of results. In addition, Nevada, like Iowa, will be reporting three sets of data from the multistage caucus process.
Perez said he doesn’t know when results will be released. “We’re going to do our best to release results as soon as possible, but our North Star, again, is accuracy,” he said late Tuesday after touring an early voting site in Las Vegas.
“We’re as low-tech as humanly possible while still preserving efficiency,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez says about preparations in Nevada to avoid a repeat of the Iowa caucuses. “I’m very confident that we will be able to carry out a successful caucus.”https://t.co/wm04SZOnROpic.twitter.com/nIDeaJzA2p
Nevada Democrats are hoping to avoid a repeat of the chaos that ensnared the Iowa caucuses this month. Unlike the November general election and state primaries that are run by state and local election officials, the caucuses are administered by state parties.
Election officials, in general, have been raising concerns about public expectations to report results quickly, noting that totals reported on Election Day are unofficial. It takes weeks for votes to become official, after the results are checked and any irregularities are investigated. Election experts say it’s better to slow down reporting if problems surface to ensure results are accurate.
“If they set up expectations now, that’s a lot better than bungling the reporting like they did in Iowa and have everybody question what happened,” said Lawrence Norden, an elections expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s Law School.
A rushed effort by Iowa Democrats to deploy a mobile app to caucus organizers for sending in results ended in failure, with some volunteers unable to download it to their personal cellphones or access it and a coding error muddying the data that was sent in.
Nevada Democrats were going to use the same mobile app developer as Iowa, but quickly sidelined those plans. Instead, they will deploy party-owned, internet-connected iPads to precincts that will come with a Google form that will be used to access early vote totals, perform calculations during the caucus process and, ultimately, submit results electronically to the party.
Tom Perez/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
“I have a lot of confidence in Nevada, a really, really strong party,” Perez told CNN. “We have gone to school on the lessons of Iowa. We’re as low-tech as humanly possible while still preserving efficiency.”
The Google app and iPads are trusted commercial tech tools, but election experts have warned that developing and deploying any technology late in the process increases the risk of problems. Hundreds of volunteers need training, and the technology must also be field-tested.
In addition, Nevada Democrats offered early voting for the first time — another layer of complexity that Iowa didn’t attempt.
Party officials have emphasized that a multistep process will be used to verify results that will include calling in results to a secure hotline and a paper worksheet that will be completed at each precinct and delivered to a party office. They have also been holding numerous trainings, with 55 sessions before Saturday.
“We understand just how important it is that we get this right and protect the integrity of Nevadans’ votes,” Shelby Wiltz, caucus director of the Nevada state Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Tuesday was the first time any in-person training for volunteers was held involving the iPad and the Google form, according to Seth Morrison, a volunteer who will be leading a site with six precincts on Saturday. Morrison attended the training in Las Vegas and said two of the three iPads at the location failed initially to power on. Only four other volunteers were present.
Morrison said he thought the Google form was easy to use but expressed concern for those who may not be able to attend the training and for those who may not be tech-savvy.
“I’m glad they are making an effort and that we finally have more training materials and information,” Morrison said. “I am still concerned but committed to do the best I can.”
Precinct chairs will have a passphrase to access the Google form, party officials said. In addition, data transmissions will be encrypted to boost security. The iPads will be connecting to the internet by cellular network or local WiFi, the party said.
Nevada’s process is “much more user friendly,” Perez explained.
Not everyone shares Perez’s confidence. Several Nevada caucus volunteers warned Politico that even without the app the caucus will be “a complete disaster.”
“There were old ladies looking at me like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have iPads,’” the volunteer told Politico. “And there are voters that don’t even know that early voting is happening.”
Volunteers and campaigns have raised concerns about how early voters will be integrated into the multistage caucus process. Jeff Weaver, senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, said this was a top concern, despite assurances.
Paper records of the early vote will be available to precinct chairs if the iPads or Google forms fail, but the math formulas may prove complicated when incorporating the early votes into the in-person results.
Perez said Nevada Democrats were working on contingency plans in case something goes wrong. He noted that the DNC’s tech team has “been helping for some time, and they’ve been on the ground since shortly after Iowa.”
“We learned some hard lessons in Iowa,” Perez said. “I think one of the values that we add here is putting those lessons to bear.”
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., claimed this week that canceling all student loan debt is not just a “social right,” but a “racial justice issue.”
“Even though some middle class and wealthier families have lots of student debt, lower-income earners, especially black and brown people have higher balances and are more likely to leave school because they can’t pay. Canceling all student debt would restore access to education as a right,” she explained at an event at Wayne State University.
Tlaib recently agreed to co-sponsor legislation that would wipe out the more than $1 billion in debt students have accrued, and she said that she did so in part because of the “corporate socialism” that benefits the few and ignores the many.
“College for all and student debt cancellation would be transformative for my residents,” she said. “It would completely give them access to opportunities and that form of government — helping and being a partner, making sure that people have access — I think is key in transforming these structures that I believe are racialized and are very much oppressive to so many of our folks.”
Several other leftist Democrats have made similar remarks about student loan debt cancellation.
Several legal scholars have pointed out that ignoring Congress’s authority would be unconstitutional.
But Tlaib said during her panel that progressives shouldn’t “let the haters control the narrative.”
“Government is supposed to be about the people. No matter much how much they say this is never going to happen, the majority of our neighbors, of people across the country don’t think it’s radical. They know it is the right thing to do,” she said.
In contrast, had demanded Trump release all his tax records…
Bernie Sanders / IMAGE: NowHearThis News
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — a 78-year-old who suffered a heart attack four months ago — said his campaign will not be releasing any more medical records, arguing the information he has already released should suffice.
“We have released, I think … quite as much as any other candidate has. We released two rather detailed letters from cardiologists and we released a letter that came from the head of the U.S. Congress medical group, the physicians there. So I think we have released a detailed report, and I’m comfortable with what we have done,” Sanders said during a CNN town hall on Tuesday.
Before his heart attack in October, however, Sanders vowed to release his medical records in their entirety because “the American people have the right to know whether the person they’re going to be voting for for president is healthy.”
Sanders’s lack of transparency is ironic given his constant criticism of President Trump, who has not released his tax records or medical records.
“I pay the taxes that I owe.” Sanders said during a Fox News town hall last year. “And by the way, why don’t you get Donald Trump up here and ask him how much he pays in taxes.”
Sanders claimed that the only proof voters need of his physical wellbeing is his ability to campaign: “If you think I’m not in good health come on out with me on the campaign trail and I’ll let you introduce me to the three or four rallies a day that we do,” he told CNN.
‘We shouldn’t let those who breached the public trust off the hook…’
Rod Blagojevich/IMAGE: CBS News via YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on multiple corruption charges for attempting to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat, thanked President Trump for commuting his sentence on Tuesday and declared himself a “Trumpocrat.”
“I want to express my most profound and everlasting gratitude to President Trump,” Blagojevich told reporters after being released from prison. “He didn’t have to do this. He’s a Republican president, I was a Democratic governor. My fellow Democrats have not been very kind to him. They’ve in fact been very unkind to him.”
Rod Blagojevich: “He’s [Pres. Trump] got a obviously a big fan in me. If you’re asking what my party affiliation is… I’m a Trumpocrat.” pic.twitter.com/ztVuNuCQYq
Illinois Republicans, however, are not pleased Trump allowed Blagojevich, who they see as the “public face of corruption,” to walk free seven years early.
Illinois’s entire House Republican delegation said in a statement they were “disappointed” with Trump, arguing that Blagojevich “not once has he shown any remorse for his clear and documented record of egregious crimes that undermined the trust placed in him by voters.”
“As our state continues to grapple with political corruption, we shouldn’t let those who breached the public trust off the hook. History will not judge Rod Blagojevich well,” Republican Illinois Reps. Darin LaHood, John Shimkus, Adam Kinzinger, Rodney Davis and Mike Bost said.
Trump dismissed the GOP’s criticism and insisted that Blagojevich had been wrongly targeted by “Comey and gang.”
Rod Blagojevich did not sell the Senate seat. He served 8 years in prison, with many remaining. He paid a big price. Another Comey and gang deal! Thank you to @LisaMarieBoothe who really “gets” what’s going on! @FoxNews
“I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them by the way — that have said a lot worse over the phone,” Trump said back in August.
Returning home to Chicago early Wednesday, Blagojevich landed at O’Hare airport hours after walking out of a Colorado prison where he served eight years, promising to work for judicial and criminal justice reform while maintaining his innocence.
“I didn’t do the things they said I did and they lied on me,” Blagojevich, a one-time contestant on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice,” told WGN-TV as he walked through the airport greeting travelers who welcomed him home.
Information from Associated Press was included in this report.
‘It is high time that…the race card by politicians of all stripes be made to cease and desist…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) George Zimmerman is suing Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg for making defamatory comments about him regarding Trayvon Martin’s death, according to Newsweek.
In his lawsuit, Zimmerman says Warren and Buttigieg falsely tied him to “white supremacy” and “racism,” pointing to two tweets the candidates released on Martin’s birthday.
My heart goes out to @SybrinaFulton and Trayvon’s family and friends. He should still be with us today.
We need to end gun violence and racism. And we need to build a world where all of our children—especially young Black boys—can grow up safe and free. https://t.co/9lXXlRnvzL
Though the details of the case still remain unclear, the jury sided with Zimmerman, who said 17-year-old Martin had attacked him in Miami Gardens after Zimmerman reported him to the police as a suspicious figure.
By attributing Martin’s death to “fear” and “gun violence,” Zimmerman’s lawyers argued that Buttigieg and Warren attempted to push a “political agenda to garner votes in the black community.”
“The only ‘fear’ Zimmerman experienced, as established in the 2013 trial and well-covered in the media, was in the context of Zimmerman believing he might go unconscious and die from the repeated beating of his head against the sidewalk pavement or by choking to death from the blood going down his throat due to his broken nose during the beating by Martin,” the lawsuit states.
Zimmerman’s attorney, Larry Klayman, said it’s time Democratic candidates stop using “despicable ‘race tactics,’’ which cause “great harm” to individuals like Zimmerman and “image relations between black and white Americans who are all brothers.”
“It is high time that the cheap and harmful use of the race card by politicians of all stripes be made to cease and desist,” Klayman said in a statement. “The nation should applaud Mr. Zimmerman for taking a strong stand and pushing back against hack politicians like Buttigieg and Warren, who know no bounds of decency and frankly could obviously care less about whom they hurt in their quest to dishonesty use and manipulate black voters to win the 2020 Democrat presidential primary.”
Uber drivers lobby for ’employee’ designation in California. / IMAGE: Sacramento Bee via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The repercussions of California‘s union-backed legislation to regulate the emerging “gig economy” are starting to show, less than two months since the law took effect.
According to City Journal, a quarterly publication from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, freelancers in the state are now starting to revolt against AB5.
The sweeping bill that claimed to advance the interests of independent contractors working for companies like Uber and Lyft, but in reality—whether intentionally or not—it forced many smaller employers to scale back their reliance on stringers.
Now, some of those newly jobless, living in one of the country’s most expensive and over-taxed regions with an already rampant homeless problem, are starting to blame the left-wing nanny state for their escalating financial woes.
“I’m seeing a lot of people like me who are either going Independent or Republican, myself included,” said Gloria Rivera, a San Diego-based, Peruvian-born translator and interpreter who became a U.S. citizen and was previously registered as a Democrat.“The Democrats are not listening to us.”
The AB5 legislation seems, in fact, to impact Democratic fields disproportionately, harming people like artists and musicians who rely on session work, and blogger–journalists who no longer have the assurances of a staff position at a newspaper.
The bill also has harmed low-wage workers in industries like hospitality and health-care.
“Clients with whom they fostered valuable relationships are gone—as are their successful careers and incomes,” wrote City Journal.
“An overwhelming majority … identify as liberals and have generally voted along the blue line,” it continued. “Today, however, many are so disillusioned with their representatives that they’re changing political loyalties.”
Some are even going so far as to demand the law be repealed and confronting one of its major advocates, San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who authored the bill.
“Lorena Gonzalez is doing a great job turning everybody red,” Rivera said.
Fueling their outrage is that Gonzalez, herself, along with other top California Democrats, continue to deny the unintended consequences of their folly.
“I understand that that’s what you’ve been told by some folks, but there’s absolutely no data indication to suggest that thousands of people have been put out of work,” she claimed in an interview with KUSI.
Gonzalez is seeking to become California’s secretary of state—and given the Left’s stranglehold on state politics, she normally would be a shoo-in.
However, the outrage over the AB5 bill is casting doubts on her political future, and possibly even might help Republicans gain further inroads in coming elections.
“I see a revolution on the horizon,” said musician David Mills, of Lake Elsinore.
“This may be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back. But I think it’s leading to something good,” said Mills, who created the Facebook group Freelancers against PRO Act.
“The American people on all sides are waking up,” he continued. “We’ve gotten too caught up in partisan support. Now we’re paying attention. There is a huge uprising. People had to lose their jobs to find out what it was.”
‘He’s not buying solar company stock or buying into an organic cattle farm. He is buying Fortune 500 companies…’
Bernie Sanders / IMAGE: The Young Turks via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Conservative investigative journalist Peter Schweizer has been most cited for his research into the Biden family‘s corrupt business deals.
But his new research has also brought intense scrutiny to current Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders and others in the still-crowded primary field.
As Biden, now trailing in fourth or fifth place, fades into the background, Schweizer recently appeared on “Fox and Friends” to discuss ways in which the socialist senator from Vermont has used his position to enrich himself.
It began as far back as the 1988s, when Sanders and his new bride, Jane Driscoll Sanders, returned from their Soviet honeymoon to his post as the mayor of Burlington, Vt.
There, he appointed her to several influential positions, as well as offering her a big pay raise—over the objections of the city council, Schweizer told Fox News’ Steve Doocy.
“Bernie ignored them, and that began this pattern of sort of steering money—taxpayer money and campaign money—to his family,” Schweizer said.
Jane Sanders continued to exploit legal loopholes while skirting ethical standards as Bernie’s stock began to rise. She took in an estimated $150,000 by setting up a media-buying business to support her husband’s campaigns.
“The dirty little secret here is, Steve, when you do a media buy, the buyer is entitled to a commission of between 10 and 15 percent,” Schweizer said. “So, it can be quite lucrative.”
He added that candidates who ran for governor and lieutenant governor in Vermont had only received Bernie Sanders’s endorsement after hiring his wife for her media services.
“He clearly seems to be leveraging his position for her business as well,” Schweizer said.
Schweizer also delved into the Sanders’ surprising financial portfolio. Despite his professed disdain for corporate America, it seems the senator has no problems profiting from it.
“He’s not buying solar company stock or buying into an organic cattle farm. He is buying Fortune 500 companies,” Schweizer said.
“So, he attacks Wall Street, he attacks big pharma, he attacks big oil,” but at the same time, Schweizer added, “he is invested in those companies; that’s where he is actually putting his assets.”
The result is a crisis of credibility between his words and actions that would surely call his expensive tax-and-spend proposals into question.
“It’s a major problem for Bernie,” Schweizer continued, “this gap between the image he portrays and the reality of how he actually conducts his own affairs.”
That, in turn, caught the attention of President Donald Trump’s consigliere, former federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, who began pressing for deeper investigations into Ukraine and the Burisma natural gas company.
Just over a year after the March 2018 publication of Schweizer’s book, Hunter Biden resigned his lucrative “consulting” post as a board member at Burisma.
Within months, partisan House Democrats lashed out by impeaching Trump for “abuse of power.”
Schweizer’s latest book, Profiles in Corruption, was released in January, picking up where Secret Empires left off with a recap of even more shady deals involving the Sanders and Biden families’ pay-to-play operations.
It also delves into scandals involving other past and present 2020 hopefuls—among them: Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar.
