The vast majority of the objections to Harris’s cameo argued the appearance violated the agency’s “equal time” rule, which requires major broadcast networks to provide equal air time to competing political candidates.
“I think it’s unconscionable for SNL to have only invited a single candidate onto their show this past Saturday,” a viewer from Austin, Texas, wrote in one complaint, according to The Hill. “It shows an extreme political bias and does not offer any other candidate the same opportunity to deliver their message.”
Another letter from a viewer in North Carolina called the Saturday Night Live stunt straight “propaganda.”
Yet another viewer in Nevada argued the cameo was clearly meant to sway the election in Harris’s favor.
“What a crock of crap that NBC pulled on the American people. That was a cheap shot by NBC and SNL to try and influence the presidential race,” the viewer wrote, urging the FCC to punish NBC.
Another viewer in Texas wrote, “The public airwaves belong to the people, and it is unacceptable for a major network to manipulate the political landscape to serve the interests of one candidate over others.”
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, whom Trump has since tapped to chair the agency in his new administration, raised concerns about Harris’s appearance as well.
In an apparent effort to avoid a crackdown, NBC News then aired a short video message from Trump the following day to provide him “equal” airtime.
Notably, the FCC publicly dismissed Carr’s concerns at the time, saying the agency had not “received a complaint from any interested parties.”
Carr’s concerns “do not represent those of the agency,” Jonathan S. Uriarte, the commission’s director of strategic communications, added.
(Headline USA) The Illinois Supreme Court overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax conviction this week, arguing the conviction was based on a faulty second prosecution by the state.
Smollett was found guilty in 2021 of staging an attack against himself in Chicago and then lying about it to authorities.
The charges against him were initially dropped in 2019 when Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx reached an agreement with Smollett’s attorneys to drop the case if Smollett paid $10,000 and did community service.
A special prosecutor with Cook County, Dan Webb, then intervened to continue the case, charging him again after finding “substantial abuses of discretion” and a “major failure” of operations in Foxx’s office’s handling of the Smollett case.
An Illinois appeals court upheld the verdict last year, siding with Cook County.
However, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down that decision this week, acknowledging that while many people were “dissatisfied” with the original settlement, it was “unjust” for the state to continue to pursue the case.
“What would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the state was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied,” the court wrote. “We hold that a second prosecution under these circumstances is a due process violation, and we therefore reverse defendant’s conviction.”
Smollett’s attorney Nenye Uche praised the decision for “restoring order” to Illinois’s criminal justice system.
“This was not a prosecution based on facts, rather it was a vindictive persecution, and such a proceeding has no place in our criminal justice system,” Uche said in a statement. “Ultimately, we are pleased that the rule of law was the big winner today.”
Smollett was sentenced in 2022 to 150 days in jail but served only six days before getting out.
The actor was also given 30 months of probation and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution.
(Headline USA) The Biden administration is reportedly rushing to undermine President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation strategy through various policy changes.
Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the plans said the app is already “glitchy and unreliable,” and that it will just make it easier for illegals to evade federal authorities, especially as they ramp up deportation efforts under Trump.
During in-person check-ins, ICE officials review an illegal immigrant’s record for past arrests and outstanding warrants.
Illegal immigrants are also required to provide proof of their current address at this time. The new mobile app does not include features for either of these processes, the Post reported.
Moreover, the mobile app reportedly is not compatible with Android phones, and it is only able to collect location data when the app is accessed by phone.
And even then, the app is only allowed to gather that location data for seven days, officials alleged.
“We need that information that if these people don’t go to court, they have absconded, they have a final order of removal,” an immigration official explained. “We need that data … to go start looking for people.”
But the Biden administration is moving forward with the program anyway, with plans to extend access to the app to up to 100,000 illegal aliens.
Another policy change the Biden administration plans to implement would give illegal aliens the ability to dispute federal government orders for electronic tracking via location monitoring devices, such as ankle bracelets, while they are awaiting immigration hearings.
“What they’re trying to do in the last final day, they’re going to try to put up as many roadblocks and obstacles and throw as many grenades as they can on their way out,” former acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told the Post.
(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) Could the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution boost gold demand? According to a report by the World Gold Council, the answer is yes.
Gold’s excellent conductivity and its malleability make it an important component in the manufacture of electronic devices. Gold can be formed into extremely thin wires, making the metal ideal for use in small computer chips.
Demand for gold in the electronics sector peaked in 2010 at 328 tons. But as the cost of gold skyrocketed (rising from $250 to $1,800 an ounce between 2001 and 2011), manufacturers scrambled to reduce their gold usage. In 2023, the electronics sector used 249 tons of gold. Through the first three quarters of this year, demand for gold in electronics stood at 245 tons.
Electronics manufacturers decreased their use of gold by using alternatives such as silver and copper, along with thrifting.
The World Gold Council notes that retooling and process development don’t happen overnight. It is a multi-year process.
“This shift coincided with consumer demand for ever more powerful, functional, and reliable devices powered by advanced electronics and increasingly complex chips – think the proliferation of now-ubiquitous smartphones and the vast growth in laptops, smart TVs, and electric vehicles. … Manufacturers had to balance cost reduction with gold’s indispensable role as they addressed the growing need for high-end, durable components during this unprecedented period of ‘electrification.”
According to the WGC analysts, gold’s superior performance limits the extent of substitution, and the advent of AI may begin driving demand higher.
AI requires a significant electronics infrastructure, and gold is an essential component in the manufacturing of AI-enabled devices. Gold’s conductivity makes it ideal for transmitting data at extremely high speeds with minimal energy loss, a crucial requirement for AI systems. Gold’s resistance to corrosion also extends the life of electronic components. This is critical for continuous and intensive AI operations.
The World Gold Council projects that the demand for more sophisticated hardware will rapidly increase with the advancement of AI.
“This, in turn, is likely to drive demand for gold as manufacturers seek to enhance the performance and reliability of their AI-enabled devices. Meanwhile, sectors such as healthcare and finance are looking to AI in order to improve efficiency and innovation, and this can only further amplify demand.”
Manufacturers of AI hardware will continue to face price pressures as gold scales record levels. However, the WGC believes the environment is different than it was a decade ago.
“Most of the ‘easy’ thrifting and substitution has already been implemented; there is a limit to how thin wires and coatings can be, and it is highly likely that they are already close to – if not at – that point.”
The World Gold Council noted several other areas in the tech sector that could boost demand for gold, including its use in medical devices, aerospace applications, and “clean” technologies.
The WGC concluded that “gold will continue to be a critical component in the electronics industry, with AI applications bolstering its demand in the near term.” However, it cautions that in this cost-driven sector, manufacturers will continue to innovate.
“This will inevitably impact how gold is used in certain applications. Beyond electronics, gold’s unique properties make it a valuable resource across multiple areas, ensuring its continued relevance in the ever-evolving technology landscape.”
Industrial and tech demand for gold is a very small percentage of overall demand. However, it underscores an important point – gold is a valuable metal with a multitude of applications, undercutting the notion that it is “a useless metal” you’ll sometimes hear bandied about by commentators on mainstream financial networks.
This is absurd. From jewelry to tech, gold is in high demand.
And fundamentally, gold is money. Everybody wants to have money – especially real money.
After meeting with senators on Wednesday, Gaetz decided not to continue his efforts to be confirmed to avoid “becoming a distraction” from the Trump-Vance transition.
I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback – and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance…
“I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday,” Gaetz wrote on X. “I appreciate their thoughtful feedback—and the incredible support of so many.”
Gaetz added that he felt being considered for attorney general took away from more important issues.
“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz added. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General.”
He said it is important the new administration is ready from the start.
“Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” he added.
Gaetz’s nomination triggered a pressure campaign by Democrats to release a House Ethics Committee report detailing sexual misconduct allegations, all which Gaetz has denied.
CNN reported Thursday that unnamed sources said a woman told the ethics committee she had two sexual encounters with Gaetz when she was 17 years old.
This came one day after the panel’s Republicans voted Wednesday not to make public the report.
“I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history,” Gaetz wrote. “I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”
Trump responded to Gaetz’s withdraw on Truth Social by saying his ex-nominee has a “wonderful future.”
“I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General,” he Republican president-elect wrote. “He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect.
Trump added he looks forward to seeing what Gaetz will accomplish in the future.
Some in his orbit have speculated that he could defer to his pick for deputy attorney general, his personal attorney Todd Blanche, but that remains to be seen.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported shortly after the announcement that Trump “does not have a new name in mind” for attorney general.
She suggested he could defer to personal attorney Todd Blanche, his pick for deputy attorney general—but made clear she has not yet heard this would occur.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
Ramaswamy said he will put his own weekly podcast on hold as he and Musk join forces to dismantle the bloated U.S. bureaucracy.
In doing so, Ramaswamy and Musk will record what the former presidential candidate called “DOGEcasts” to disclose their progress.
“As part of that process, I’m now all in. I’m focused on making sure that we actually accomplish the goal rather than just talking about it,” Ramaswamy said. “So, to that end, for the next little bit, I’m gonna put a pause on the weekly Truth podcasts.”
Ramaswamy said the purpose of DOGEcasts will be to “provide transparency in what is a once in a generation project.”
JUST IN: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to launch "Dogecast" podcast for the Department of Government Efficiency. pic.twitter.com/RPHyqUcwri
“We want to bring the public along with us to lift the curtain, to take us behind the scenes of what actually that waste, fraud and abuse in government looks like,” he explained. “However bad you think it is, it’s probably worse.”
The DOGE co-leader said he and Musk will provide more information about “DOGEcasts” as President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches.
“We don’t want to do this to just expose the problem,” Ramaswamy added. “We want to do it to solve the problem.”
The president-elect set a deadline of July 4, 2026—America’s 250th birthday—for the team to make “drastic change” by dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing access regulations, cutting wasteful expenditures and restructuring federal agencies.
Musk announced that all actions of DOGE will be posted publicly for the sake of transparency.
He said the agency will also keep a leaderboard of the “most insanely dumb” wastes of taxpayer dollars as it works to reform the federal government.
DOGE will soon begin crowdsourcing examples of government waste, fraud, & and abuse. Americans voted for drastic government reform & they deserve to be part of fixing it. https://t.co/iRXmgT6ZuQ
Ramaswamy also said that DOGE would “soon begin crowdsourcing” to determine what waste the American people want the agency to target.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
Outraged by X owner Elon Musk’s increasingly close ties to Trump, and the promotion of free speech on the social-media platform, mainstream media outlets instead attempted to create buzz over Bluesky.
But after roughly 12 million left-wingers, following the cues of their celebrity thought-leaders, tearfully fled to the new site—ostensibly fearing Musk’s persecution and censorship—they immediately began making demands that Bluesky revamp its policies to accommodate their delicate snowflake sensibilities, ZeroHedge reported.
The mass migration of wokes from X to Bluesky is already impacting "safety" culture and censorship on that platform. pic.twitter.com/QE6HA0Shcw
In a single day’s time, the platform’s “safety” team disclosed that it had received some 42,000 “reports,” equivalent to nearly 12% of all the censorship demands it had received in the previous year.
The site claimed it was prioritizing the removal of “CSAM,” or child pornography, although doing so risked alienating the robust “MAP” community that may have been seeking refuge there.
Subtly letting all their perv users know that CP is readily available on Bluesky
Ironically, the platform’s original purpose was to effectively recapture the halcyon independence of social media’s salad days—on an invite only basis.
Bluesky was first conceived and developed by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey in 2019, while he was still CEO of Twitter.
Although nominally in charge, the free-spirited Rasputin cosplayer increasingly found himself chafing under the yoke of responsibility.
Supplanting his original vision of Twitter as a virtual public square, the site had rapidly morphed into the vanguard of the global thought-police, quietly colluding with intelligence agencies like the FBI and CIA to influence Americans’ political opinions and second-guess their decision-making abilities on matters such as personal health choices.
First, we’re facing entirely new challenges centralized solutions are struggling to meet. For instance, centralized enforcement of global policy to address abuse and misleading information is unlikely to scale over the long-term without placing far too much burden on people.
Unable to please either the Right or Left, Dorsey departed from Twitter in November 2021, subtly signaling his frustration over the board’s growing demands for content regulation and the platform’s waning profitability due to conservative boycotts.
After Musk purchased the platform 11 months later, at a cost of $44 billion, Dorsey reaffirmed his frustration regarding the board-driven censorship in more direct terms.
“The board has always been a problem at that company, and I was happy to see it end,” he said.
“But there was only one way for it to end, which is going private,” he continued. “And I think that’s the greatest act.”
A few months before Dorsey bowed out of Twitter, his side project, Bluesky, made its first move toward spinning off into its own platform by hiring CEO Lantian “Jay” Graber.
Graber promptly incorporated the company and took it public in October 2021. Nonetheless, the platform remained “invitation only” until last February, when it first began to capitalize on the Left’s desperate attempts to cancel Musk.
As of Wednesday, Bluesky boasted around 20 million users, according to USA Today, up from around 12 million in October.
But at least one user has left the platform: Jack Dorsey.
Even though many mainstream media articles have used Dorsey’s name to promote it as a throwback to the pre-Musk Twitter, Dorsey long ago deleted his account, according to a September 2023 post on a Reddit board dedicated to the Bluesky community.
A search of Dorsey’s name produced the following summary of the Redditors’ conclusions via Google’s AI-generated fact-finder: “Jack Dorsey left Bluesky because he’s a racist, that supports racism and lost interest when moderation tools were created to manage racist accounts on Bluesky.“Meanwhile, crestfallen though they may have been on the inside, X users endured the mass exodus of their online comrades with a stoic determination to carry onward.
— 🔴♦️ ULTRA-MAGA Lori 🇺🇸 Patriot♦️🔴 (@LiberatedCit) July 5, 2023
Others pointed out that leftists already tried—and failed—to create a hyper-regulated Twitter alternative.
While an estimated 275 million worldwide users have signed up for the Meta-backed Threads (compared with X’s more than 600 million), data from September indicated that only around 33 million were active, and users spent, on average, 3 minutes daily on the platform.
I thought threads was the big competitor to @X ? What does blue sky have that threads doesn't?
Conservative Twitter alternatives likewise languished during the Dorsey era. After Twitter canceled the account of then-President Donald Trump in early 2021, citing the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol, the site Parler saw a massive surge in new users, only to find itself deplatformed on the servers and app stores run by Amazon and Apple.
Trump’s own Truth Social network has, at times, seen strong investor interest, with its stock value attached in many ways to Trump’s own political capital. However, the company itself has remained largely unprofitable. Trump continues to use it as the primary platform for his posts, but he has once more reactivated his iconic Twitter account since kindling his friendship with Musk.
Johnson planned to attend Officer Enrique Martinez’s funeral, which was held earlier this week.
Darion McMillian is accused of killing Martinez during a traffic stop on Nov. 4, according to CBS News.
Martinez’s family asked Johnson and other politicians not to attend the funeral, according to the New York Post.
“The family of Officer Enrique Martinez continues to be in my prayers as they prepare to lay him to rest,” Johnson’s office told the media. “I heard from the family and am honoring their request and will no longer plan to attend the honors funeral services.”
The family of another slain cop, Luis Huesca, also had asked Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker not to attend that funeral in April, according to Law Enforcement Today.
At the time, Johnson claimed he had to attend.
Johnson has a history of adopting anti-police views.
In June 2020, during nationwide riots over the killing of George Floyd, Johnson introduced legislation to cut funding to the Cook County police.
At the time he was a commissioner on the county board, which includes Chicago under its jurisdiction.
“There is no correlation between the money spent on the criminal justice system and the safety of our residents,” Johnson said at the time. “In fact, as spending on police and incarceration has gone up over the last decade, black and brown people actually feel less safe.”
Johnson issued a policy to move funds away from the police department.
“Cook County should engage in efforts to redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement that promote community health and safety equitably across the County,” the resolution stated.
Running for mayor in 2023, he tried to backtrack on that position, claiming he wanted to decrease the role of the police in non-emergencies.
“As mayor of city of Chicago, I’ve made it perfectly clear, I’m not going to defund police, but what I am going to do is make sure we have smart police,” he said in March 2023, according to ABC 7.
However, since taking office, he has pushed for cutting police. For example, he wants the Chicago Public Schools to remove school resource officers from buildings.
He also has proposed millions of dollars in cuts to different police training units, which drew a rebuke from the state’s Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan teared up Wednesday evening on The Ingraham Angle over the murder of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
Jose Ibarra, an illegal migrant from Venezuela, was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday after he was found guilty on all 10 counts of brutally killing Riley.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Why are you getting so emotional?’” Homan began. “Because I’ve seen so much tragedy. I’ve talked to hundreds of angel moms and dads who’ve buried their children because they’re killed by illegal aliens.”
Homan recalled interactions with 9-year-old girls who were raped, visibly affected by the memories.
“When you look in her eyes, everything innocent and pure has been ripped from her soul,” he said.
Homan said he is “tired” of such tragedies occurring in the U.S., blasting the Biden-Harris administration for allowing Riley’s murder to happen.
He said Ibarra would have been in Mexico via the Remain in Mexico program if Trump were president.
JUSTICE FOR LAKEN RILEY! The Illegal who killed our beloved Laken Riley was just found GUILTY on all counts for his horrific crimes. Although the pain and heartbreak will last forever, hopefully this can help bring some peace and closure to her wonderful family who fought for…
“So, this is purely—it could have been prevented,” Homan said. “This young lady is dead, and I want every mayor, every governor of a sanctuary jurisdiction to listen to that tape, listen to this young girl fight for her life, for for her breath, trying to survive, terrified.”
Homan urged leaders of sanctuary cities and states to understand what Riley went through as she was beat to death by Ibarra, which could be heard in video footage played during the trial.
“You need to listen to this tape. And for those governors and mayors saying they’re gonna stop Tom Homan or stop President Trump: Shame on you,” he said. “Your responsibility is to protect your community, and that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna protect your community.”
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
O’Reilly told host Chris Cuomo, formerly of CNN, that Comcast likely made Morning Joe co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough disclose on Monday their Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trump to preface Wednesday’s announcement separating MSNBC from NBC News.
Cuomo argued that Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, moved to spin off MSNBC among other channels like CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and the Golf Channel—but O’Reilly dismissed the News Nation host’s claim.
HOLY SMOKES: Bill O'Reilly reveals Comcast wants to throw MSNBC “overboard” because their hateful rhetoric is tanking NBC's views.
“They're not putting anything into MSNBC. They want to sell it… You can get MSNBC for nothing.”
“Why would you believe what’s being reported? You want the real story? Here is Comcast. So, they’re ‘uncoupling,’ their word, MSNBC from NBC News,” he told Cuomo. “That means MSNBC has no resources at all. None.”
O’Reilly explained that MSNBC will not be able to afford to multimillion dollar salaries of top talent like Rachel Maddow.
“NBC News is saying, ‘We don’t want you around,’” O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly called NBC News’s ratings catastrophic due to the network’s association with MSNBC.
“NBC’s desperately trying to save the mothership of information, and they have to throw MSNBC overboard,” he added. “They’re not putting anything into MSNBC. They want to sell it.”
O’Reilly suggested leftist billionaire George Soros, who recently acquired more than 299 radio stations, buy MSNBC because he could get it for free.
He said Comcast is ready to break from MSNBC because their rhetoric is “hateful.”
O’Reilly predicted ABC would inevitably decide to cut ties with The View due to the same Trump-hating personalities inhabiting the show.
“It is over for these far-left networks. Done. Never coming back. Dracula’s stake in the heart,” he said. “Who benefits? News Nation may. But CNN, which is on the ropes too, will probably get some MSNBC viewers.”
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and The American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
