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Joe Biden alone has already caused the price of everyday staples to soar, but there are other pressures also forcing an increased burden to fall on all Americans.
Thanks to those external pressures, this month, yet another staple food item has soared to prices that won’t come down any time soon.
Coffee is absolutely essential for millions, and many Americans claim they can’t get their day in gear if they don’t have a jolting cup of Joe, and they don’t mean Biden.
But there will soon be more financial pain going forward with your morning cup. Get ready to see your coffee prices given a jolt as supply problems, hoarding, and contract defaults are tearing through the coffee producing industry worldwide causing prices to soar. This is only adding to the skyrocketing costs of breakfast, which is at its highest point since 1979 as it is. And experts say those higher prices won’t go away any time soon, if ever.
The cost of robusta coffee beans soared more than 30 percent early in April and 50 percent now as a heat wave has settled in over Vietnam in one of the world’s top coffee growing regions, according to Bloomberg.
The price jump for robusta has also put pressure on arabica coffee, causing arabica futures to rise more than 3 percent, surpassing the $2-per pound mark for the first time since December, the outlet added.
“Weather conditions are not encouraging,” representatives of London-based importer DRWakefield said this week. “There are still concerns over a possible water shortage for irrigation, which may hurt the output of the next season.”
About 40 percent of the world’s coffee supply is made up of robusta beans whereas the arabica bean is the source of around 60 percent, according to Nespresso.
Analysts also say that some of the rise in prices of these two beans is due to buyers letting their stocks dwindle over past price hikes, but who are now panic buying for fear that crops will dry up on them.
In a more recent follow-up report, Bloomberg added that analysts and sellers are saying they have no idea if the prices will come down.
“We can’t tell when prices will peak,” said Tran Thi Lan Anh, deputy director of Vietnamese export company Vinh Hiep Co.
“We don’t have water for our farms,” said Vietnamese coffee bean farmer Nguyen The Hue. “If the drought persists, we won’t have lots of new beans to sell in the new season.”
The pressure is in full swing. Already, farmers and producers have reneged on coffee contracts as growers have been unable to fulfill contracts for upwards to 200,000 tons of beans, or about 13 percent of the expected harvest.
These failures will soon cause prices of coffee to skyrocket for consumers, Bloomberg warns.
Add this pressure to the rising prices already seen in most other food staples and it all adds up to a huge burden on Americans.
The price of eggs have been fluctuating wildly, for instance, after millions of laying hens had to be destroyed due to infections with the deadly bird flu. Millions of chickens have had to be destroyed this year thanks to the disease.
Bird flu is a growing threat to the American food supply outside of the poultry industry, too.
Farmers and ranchers are also worried because the bird flu has jumped to cattle and dairy herds, threatening dairy and meat producers.
H5N1 bird flu found at 4 more dairy farms, including 2 in Michigan, 1 in Texas and 1 in New Mexico, taking the total to 28 pic.twitter.com/SfzHQMIkYS
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) April 12, 2024
These pressures, along with the grueling effects of Bidenflation and Bidenomics, are causing Americans to put more of their income to just daily survival than they have had to for decades.
And it’s only going to get worse, especially if Biden is reelected in November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Another Grocery Staple Surging to Record High – The Days of Cheap Breakfasts Are Gone appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The leftist legislators in California have done it again, making things more difficult for the very low-income people they claimed to be helping, this time with a law that is throwing thousands of minimum wage earners out of their jobs.
As Ronald Reagan used to say, the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” and California has once again proven that quip to be a hardbound truth.
Economics has always been a concept that liberals cannot understand. Deep-blue California’s recent passing of Assembly Bill 1228, forcing certain — but not all — fast-food restaurants to wildly raise their minimum wage by up to $4 an hour all at once, is having the unintended consequence of costing people their jobs, not enriching their lives.
As CNBC noted, the state has more than 500,000 fast-food workers, but now many of them are under threat of losing their jobs.
This month, the left coast state’s new $20-per-hour minimum wage took effect on the fast-food industry. Business owners have responded by putting in more electronic ordering devices and firing costly human employees.
The new wage hike comes on the tail of the disastrous COVID shutdowns that devastated the restaurant industry, causing profit margins to plummet. Just as restaurants in California were starting to regain their footing, the left-wing legislature weighed them down with this new wage law.
The warning by Burger King franchise owner Harsh Ghai is on target: Ghai said that the costly new wage law has forced him to put in place a plan to add electronic ordering kiosks at his 140 locations within two months, Business Insider reported.
Ghai even pointed out that prices for customers at fast-food places have gone up between eight and 10 percent in the past year, when prices usually only go up by about three percent a year. And this new wage law will make that problem worse.
“The majority of that is going to get absorbed in the inflation of our food costs,” he said of the higher costs the state is imposing on restaurants. “So we’re not even compensating for most of the labor costs that we’re going to be experiencing with this legislation.”
Ghai added that the higher prices — already in effect before the higher staffing costs began hitting business owners — are driving customers away. So, instead of raising prices further, the easiest way is to cut the number of employees.
The businessman added that he has revisited plans to roll out electronic, self-ordering kiosks over a 10-year period across his 140 locations and will now add them in a matter of months.
“[W]e are just going ahead and installing the kiosks in every single restaurant in response to the legislation to be able to balance some of these labor costs that are hitting us,” he said.
“We can’t move fast enough on this,” Ghai told Business Insider.
“We’ve done the financial analysis and it makes more sense for us to spend the capital expenditure on the technology, and obviously when you’re buying large amounts of the hardware, you obviously get it for a cheaper price as well,” he added.
“So it’s making more sense for us to just roll that across the business in its entirety,” he said.
Other restaurant chains have responded by firing hundreds of employees. A large number of pizza chains in California immediately fired their delivery drivers earlier this year after the law passed, including Pizza Hut and Southern California Pizza Co. stores in the state.
Many restaurants have even simply closed down rather than face barely scraping, by thanks to the higher costs imposed on them.
Still other restaurants are looking at plans to try locations that have no dining area and no cashiers at all. Chick-fil-A, for instance, is testing its “grab and go” locations where customers order exclusively online or via an app and pick up their order at a drive-through at a location with no cashiers and no eat-in area.
California’s left-wing legislature is causing every fast-food customer to dish out more for their food. But it is also costing tens of thousands of people their jobs. The legislature’s actions are having the exact opposite effect of what they intended.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Liberal Utopia: New California Law Could Terminate Up to 500,000 Jobs appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
There’s no question LeBron James is the biggest name in NBA play today.
He’s regularly compared with Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan as one of the greatest of all time. His basketball career has made him a billionaire.
But after the Los Angeles Lakers’ playoff loss in Denver on Monday night, he showed he’s one of the biggest crybabies in the league, too.
In his postgame news conference, as ESPN reported, James griped about a foul call that was overturned during the game and implicitly questioned the integrity of the officials in charge of reviewing calls on the court.
“I don’t understand what’s going on in the replay center, to be honest,” he said.
“What the f*** do we have a replay center if it’s gonna go … It doesn’t make sense to me,” the NBA star said.
According to ESPN, James added, “It’s f***ing stupid,” as he got up and left the room.
WARNING: The following video contains (edited) language that might offend some viewers — especially viewers who expect adult men to act and speak like adult men even when their team loses a ball game.
“I don’t understand what’s going on in the replay center, to be honest… It makes no sense to me… Then I just saw what happened with the Sixers/Knicks game too, what are we doing?” – LeBron James pic.twitter.com/7OWLmuf8jn
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) April 23, 2024
James has made news for public complaints about officiating before, but his behavior after the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray dropped a thrilling, buzzer-beating bucket to seal Denver’s win Monday bordered on bizarre.
He not only complained during his postgame news conference, but he also pursued a referee immediately after the game, arrogantly demanding an explanation for why he didn’t get a call when he thought he was fouled earlier in the game.
“Why didn’t you call that s***?” James said, according to the LegendZ account on X.
Check that out here:
See “WARNING” above.
LEAKED Video Of LeBron James Chasing A Ref After No Call:
“Why didn’t you call that sh*t? It was right in front of you” pic.twitter.com/zMCLVRRRGm
— LegendZ (@legendz_nba) April 23, 2024
It’s a moot question at this point whether James was correct in either of his complaints. Anyone who has played sports or watched them only casually understands that bad calls are as much a part of a game as great athletes. Referees are human — just like coaches, fans and even billionaire hulking giants who cry wolf about “racism” while raking in money from Chinese slavery.
Mistakes happen. Adults understand that, even if they get frustrated by it.
But adults also understand that a game needs to be won over all obstacles — and adults like James, who is pushing 40 after spending two decades playing professionally, are paid ridiculous sums of money to not only understand it but to overcome it.
Instead, James, a lightning rod for criticism under the best of circumstances, violated one of the cardinal rules of sports and sportsmanship that many children learn from their first coaches — “Don’t blame the refs.”
It was particularly egregious in James’ case on Monday since, as ESPN reported, his team at one point had a 20-point lead in the contest. An NBA playoff team that squanders a 20-point lead doesn’t deserve to win. It doesn’t deserve so much as a tie.
And the star of that team has no business blaming a loss on a call or two from officials on the floor — indulging in a vulgar temper tantrum that only tarnished his image and embarrassed the game.
No matter how big his name is.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post LeBron James Chases Down Ref After Crushing Playoff Loss, Has Vulgar Tantrum During Press Conference appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Skin color, which vies with sexuality for distinction as the most tedious subject in America, has once again made headlines.
Stephen Jackson, who won the 2002-03 NBA championship with the San Antonio Spurs and who happens to be black, illustrated the modern mind’s toxic obsession with race when he denigrated black journalist Gayle King, co-host of “CBS Mornings,” for using the first-person plural pronoun “we” when referring to fans who rooted for the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team and superstar guard Caitlin Clark, who happens to be white.
“I don’t consider her black media,” Jackson said of King in a short video posted to Instagram on Saturday.
The former NBA champion cited the veteran journalist’s conduct during an interview with South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley, who also happens to be black.
On April 7, the Gamecocks completed an undefeated season with an 87-75 win over Iowa in the NCAA championship game.
Clark, who helped elevate the popularity of women’s basketball, finished her career as the NCAA Division I all-time scoring leader. On April 15, the Indiana Fever selected Clark with the 1st overall pick in the WNBA draft.
Jackson who played 17 NBA seasons with eight different teams, had nothing negative to say about Clark.
He did, however, betray the ugly tribalism at the root of “race” consciousness when he criticized King for not behaving as he thought a black journalist should behave.
Race, of course, has no meaning outside of human tribalism. As a biological factor, skin color matters as much as eye color or hair color — that is to say, not at all.
Nor is this a new argument. In fact, lawyers for the plaintiff made this same anti-segregation argument — in vain, as it turned out — during the infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But this does not satisfy people who cling to tribalism and will not let it go.
“Y’all give her all these passes because she f*** with — she’s Oprah[‘s] friend. I don’t give a f*** whose friend she is. That don’t do nothing for nobody,” Jackson said of King.
In her interview with Staley, King said, “We were all cheering for Iowa, of course, and Caitlin Clark,” according to the New York Post.
Jackson took issue with a statement so offensive to tribalists.
“But you cannot demean Dawn Staley like that. You talkin’ to her about winning the championship, about going undefeated. And you have the nerve to get on there and say, ‘Well, we was rootin’ for Caitlin Clark, and you broke everybody hearts,'” Jackson said on Instagram.
He assumed that King, because of her darker complexion, should speak for others with a dark complexion.
“Who is ‘we’? Who is ‘we’? All the black people I know was rootin’ for Dawn Staley,” Jackson said.
Again, the former NBA champion did not attack Clark personally. But he did take issue with King celebrating Clark at what he regarded as Staley’s expense.
“We all fans of Caitlin Clark. But the way you put it? That s*** was trash,” he said.
“You just demeaned [Staley] and made it about Caitlin Clark. That’s trash — super-trash,” he later added.
Readers may view Jackson’s full comments in the video below.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language some readers may find offensive.
King, of course, did nothing wrong.
Nor did Staley, whose undefeated South Carolina team deserves all the accolades it gets.
Nor did Clark, whose playing style and scoring prowess attracted many thousands of new fans.
Only Jackson, who cannot let go of the shopworn tribalism we call “race,” came out of this looking boorish.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: NBA Champ Goes on Race Rant, Says Journalist Isn’t ‘Black Media’ After Praising Caitlin Clark appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
As the Biden administration accelerates their strategy of promoting abortion as their go-to issue ahead of the November elections, a new poll confirmed the results of numerous previous polls, showing that a supermajority of American voters oppose abortion after the third month of pregnancy — a view that is not in line with the Democratic Party’s public position of unrestricted abortion.
On Wednesday, Rasmussen Reports released the results of a poll revealing that 66 percent of American voters are opposed to late-term abortions beyond 12 weeks. These latest numbers are largely similar to polling results from the last 20 years, which show anywhere from 55 to 71 percent of Americans opposing second trimester abortions and 70 to 86 percent opposing third trimester abortions.
Notably, Democratic lawmakers in recent years have consistently refused to say if they would place any limits on abortion, even up to the moment of birth.
The current Democratic Party platform makes no reference to placing any limits on the procedure, going so far as to say that the party would work to overturn any and all pro-life protections enacted by duly elected state lawmakers, as well as any federal protections: “Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights.”
The platform goes on to state that Democrats would force taxpayers to pay for abortions by “repeal[ing] the Hyde Amendment,” a position that is opposed by 60 percent of Americans.
The platform further declares that Democrats will sweep away all state pro-life protections by “codify[ing] the right to reproductive freedom” in federal law, which the party has already attempted to do with the “Women’s Health Protection Act.”
Despite the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to show any moderation on abortion, Republicans in recent months have struggled to find their footing on how to message on the issue and have often not taken advantage of the contrast between public opinion on late-term abortion and the Democratic position.
Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has urged GOPers to point out the Democrats’ extremism in recent months. “We are the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family party, and we can win on abortion,” she said. “But that means putting Democrats on the defense and forcing them to own their own extreme positions.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Sen. Steve Daines voiced similar sentiments, pushing candidates to “not run away from the issue.”
In comments to The Washington Stand, Director of Family Research Council Action Matt Carpenter contended that the Democratic Party is engaging in a money-centric strategy to overcome the discrepancy between their abortion extremism and public opinion.
“Across the nation, pro-abortion groups are pushing for ballot measures which would amend state constitutions to allow abortion through all stages of pregnancy, on the taxpayer dime,” he observed. “Liberal dark money groups are pouring campaign cash into these efforts, and Democrat political operatives are licking their chops at the thought of a super-charged pro-abortion turnout at the polls. Forgetting for a moment that poll after poll shows voters are concerned mostly about the cost-of-living crisis, rising crime, and the daily invasion at the southern border, the reality is voters are not supportive of second and third trimester abortions.”
Nonetheless, Carpenter went on to acknowledge that pro-life Republicans face challenges in educating voters on abortion ahead of November.
“While the pro-abortion side relies on a phalanx of pundits repeating their euphemisms, the pro-life movement has their work cut out for them to educate voters as to the extreme nature of these measures, which would prevent states from protecting unborn children from abortion in the second and third trimesters,” Carpenter said.
Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, also acknowledged the challenges in the current political climate but encouraged GOP candidates to be unafraid of making plain the Democratic Party’s position on abortion.
“The tragedy of only 66 percent of voters opposing late-term abortion points to the prevalence of the culture of death,” Szoch told The Washington Stand. “It demonstrates that our culture has become one that values people based on what they can do or accomplish as opposed to the fact that each person is a son or daughter of God. We have a lot of work to do building a culture of life.”
Szoch concluded, “That said — 66 percent of voters is a majority of Americans who agree that killing an unborn child after viability is a grave evil. Political candidates should recognize that speaking the truth about the Democratic Party’s views on life — their desire for abortion through (and even infanticide after) birth — is out of step with the American people.”
This article appeared originally on The Washington Stand.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Poll: Supermajority of American Voters Oppose Abortion Past 12 Weeks appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The International Monetary Fund last week ripped the Biden administration’s out of control spending, calling it “out of line with what is needed for long-term fiscal stability.”
According to the New York Post, the IMF, an international organization aimed at fighting financial crises across the globe, warned that ever-growing national debt in the U.S. poses a long-term risk to the global economy.
“Something will have to give,” the IMF cautioned in foreword of the World Economic Forecast published on Tuesday.
“The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth,” the IMF said. “But it reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.”
Unfortunately, the Biden administration has shown no intention of slowing down its spending.
Last month, the administration proposed a massive, $7.3 trillion budget for fiscal year 2025, the New York Post reported.
The Office of Management and Budget reported that the national debt would surge to $45.1 trillion by 2034 under the budget plan, according to the Post.
The IMF’s warning comes as the U.S. national debt is approaching $35 trillion, with the total rising by about $1 trillion every 100 days.
The cost the national debt is imposing on a yearly basis has also risen, as the U.S.’s debt interest payments topped $1 trillion in October, according to Business Insider.
What’s more, U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures debt as a proportion of GDP, is climbing to concerning heights. According to a report by the World Population Review, the U.S. has the ninth-highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world at 129 percent. According to the site, a debt-to-GDP ratio of 77 percent or lower encourages domestic economic growth.
In classic Biden fashion, the White House is blaming the problem on former President Donald Trump.
“The Trump tax cuts added $2 trillion to the debt with unpaid giveaways skewed to the wealthy and big corporations, and now Congressional Republicans are proposing another $5.5 trillion in tax cuts skewed to the rich, while raising taxes on millions of middle-class families,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa told the Post.
And Biden’s solution to the problem? More taxes.
Biden’s budget plan proposed includes hiking the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, while raising the minimum corporate tax rate from 15 percent to 21 percent, according to the Post.
He also proposed a minimum 25 percent tax on billionaires, “defined as those with a net worth of $100 million or greater,” according to the Post.
This comes as Biden is trying to force through $7.4 billion in student-loan debt cancellation.
Biden is attempting to use a different legal justification than the cancellation plan he tried to push forward last year, which was struck down by the Supreme Court as an overstep of his authority under Article II of the Constitution.
The new round of student debt cancellation is estimated to cost taxpayers $84 billion over the next 10 years.
Biden’s actions have done anything but put the U.S. on a trajectory for economic prosperity. As the IMF noted, while we have experienced growth, the careless spending will serve to deter the nation’s long-term future.
And Americans agree that the economic situation is dire. Only 28 percent of Americans currently view our economic conditions as excellent or good, according to a Pew poll from January. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise, with inflation being 3.5 percent from March 2023 to March 2024, a higher rate than was anticipated.
What the Biden administration needs to do is decrease its spending and pull money out the economy, so that inflation can be curtailed.
But instead of decreasing government spending, Biden is hell-bent on making American taxpayers bear the burden of his progressive policies.
Inevitably, raising wealth and corporate taxes will be detrimental to growth. Increasing tax rates will cause corporations to invest elsewhere and strike a blow to the American economy.
In this instance, the government needs to do less, not more. We need to decrease government spending, not increase it.
And while his comments were aimed for a different time, Ronald Reagan’s assessment of the issues plaguing the U.S. in his 1981 inaugural address are the same issues we face today. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
And, as the IMF put it, something will have to give.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post ‘Something Will Have to Give’: IMF Issues Dire Warning to Biden Administration appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Riding high after a wave of Clark-mania that accompanied the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, Caitlin Clark has signed a megabucks shoe contract with Nike.
The eight-year deal will be worth up to $28 million, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources it did not name. The Journal summed it up as the “most lucrative and attractive shoe deal in women’s basketball—and yet another record for her collection.”
The endorsement deal dwarfs the controversial contract Clark signed with the WNBA team the Indiana Fever, which will pay her over $330,000 over four years.
Nike had Clark under contract in a deal that expired at the end of the season, but as she was climbing the pinnacle of achievement in an unrivaled spotlight, in the shadows there was some hard bargaining taking place.
The Journal report said that on Feb. 15, after Clark poured in 49 points, her agents were raising the stakes with Nike, Adidas, Under Armour and Puma.
Country star Tim McGraw dons Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever jersey at concert in Indianapolis https://t.co/eIullFWi3p
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 21, 2024
Their proposal: Nothing under $3 million a year.
“Some of the brand reps were shocked by the number. It was a huge sum for a women’s basketball player, few of whom ever receive deals worth more than six figures,” the Journal reported.
Amid the bargaining, some shoe company executives were conditioning deals on Clark staying in college another year on the grounds that as a college phenomenon, she was more attractive to consumers than as a professional, the Journal reported.
Clark is set to graduate May 14, according to CNN. However, she has an extra year of college ball eligibility under an NCAA COVID exemptions, according to The Sporting News.
But Clark changed the conversation as she soared to new levels of achievement – and ratings.
“She played herself into a position where it wasn’t even contingent on staying in college,” a source told the Journal. “People just wanted her.”
Not Puma. It dropped out.
Adidas had its turn.
“While some athletes let their agents ask the questions or wade through details, this was one more area where Clark, an honors student in marketing at Iowa’s business school, liked to have the ball in her hands. Adidas executives were surprised by how engaged, curious and well-prepared she was on the call,” the Journal wrote.
The offer clanged on the rim: $6 million for four years.
Under Armour offered $16 million over four years along with a signature shoe. Close, but not enough.
Nike started with $3.5 million per year. The deal would last through the next three Olympic Games. But it took one more piece — a signature shoe – to close the deal, the Journal reported.
Diana Taurisi, the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, said all the hype has been fun, but it is in the past.
The Women’s NBA season begins next month, and Clark is expected to see playing time right off the bat, according to USA Today, but the game she’ll be playing could be much different from her college competitions.
“You look superhuman playing against some 18-year-olds, but you’re going to come play with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time,” Taurasi told sports columnist Jay Mariotti for a Substack post.
“There’s a period of grace that you have to give rookies when they get to the league. We’ve had some of the greats to ever play basketball, and it takes two or three years to get used to a different game (against) the best players in the world. As long as everyone has expectations that are realistic, they should be fine,” she said.
But WNBA analyst Rebecca Lobo said judging Clark by anyone else’s norms sells her short.
“There’s no comparison that I can find on the women’s side, and I’ve been in this league since the very beginning,” she said.
“We haven’t seen a player drive ticket sales like this. We haven’t seen a player drive ratings like this. Look at the ratings, the last four or five games she played. I’ve never seen anything to this degree, and to me, what’s special is that she’s staying in the Midwest and going to Indiana. It’s such a perfect fit,” she said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Caitlin Clark Lands Historic Nike Shoe Deal Worth Millions Just Before Her Rookie Season Kicks Off appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
New York City’s storefronts aren’t as alluring as they once were. The brutal statistics coming out are bad (but wholly predictable) news.
As of 2024, 11.2 percent of the city’s storefronts are sitting vacant. This is up from 6 percent in 2019. That doesn’t seem like a huge number, but that 5.2 percentage point increase translates to an 86% percent increase from 2019 to 2024. That is a massive jump.
Manhattan Councilmember and Democrat Gale Brewer said these vacancies, “are creating havoc because there is homeless, garbage and the business next door hurts.”
What’s the cause of this trend? During a New York City Council Committee on Small Business meeting on Wednesday, Calvin Brown, deputy commissioner for neighborhood development, stated the problem was due to “archaic zoning barriers.”
New York Mayor Eric Adams has advocated for changing current zoning regulations. Adams’ initiative, the “City of Yes” aims to do just that.
According to the New York City Planning Department website, “City of Yes for Economic Opportunity would remove outdated limitations on businesses and ensure that local retail streets and commercial centers across the city can remain lively places that sustain our neighborhoods.”
But are zoning restrictions really the problem that’s led to so many vacancies?
The New York Post reports shoplifting cost retailers in the state $4.4 billion in 2022. Thefts have gone up 64 percent between June 2019 and June 2023. City retail thefts are up more than 6.5 percent as of April 2024 compared to April 2023.
New York City Councilmember for Queens and Republican Vickie Paladino put it frankly. “We’ve got kids coming in on bicycles and just ransacking a store.” She continued, saying, “We can’t sugarcoat the fact that there’s rampant crime in the city that is preventing people from opening small businesses in areas that used to be nice places to go to.”
Bronx Councilmember Oswald Feliz, chair of the Committee on Small Business and a Democrat mentioned how close to home the issue was for him. “There’s a Walgreens one minute away from where I live that’s closing down due to retail theft.” Going further he stated, “Anytime I speak to a small business that is literally the very first issue they bring to us.”
Paladino mentioned theft has gotten so bad that even mundane items are locked away. “I went in to buy a tube of toothpaste. It, of course, was locked up as everything is now. But the store manager is keeping one tube of toothpaste behind the lock. It’s insanity.”
The proposed antidote to vacancies isn’t exactly stellar. Brewer is in favor of taxing landlords, suggesting owners of large retail buildings leave their properties vacant until chain stores move in.
To summarize, vacancies, whether they be because of zoning regulations or rampant theft are on the rise.
These vacancies create problems with homelessness and garbage piling up, and according to Brewer the solution is a tax?
Without the government addressing homelessness, garbage, and crime, landlords won’t be able to lease to chain stores or anyone else for that matter.
Don’t forget New York’s current tax system is among the worst. The Tax Foundation’s 2024 State Business Tax Climate Index found that New York ranked 49th out of 50 in 2024 for how well its tax system is structured.
None of this had to happen. New York City didn’t have to shut down peoples businesses, storefronts, and lives because of COVID. New York City didn’t have to go soft on crime and bail. New York City didn’t even have to tax its richest citizens into fleeing the city which in turn helped reduce the city’s coffers. But New York City voters elected a government that did just that. And now they’re enjoying the fruits of their collective electoral labor.
New Yorkers have played a stupid game, and as the old saying goes, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” And what prizes could be stupider than crime-ridden neighborhoods, locked up toothpaste, and piles of garbage?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Blue-State Paradise: Vacant NYC Storefronts ‘Creating Havoc,’ Nearly Double Since Pandemic appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Like reading a news story about a person getting scurvy, hearing about a modern metropolis getting beset by rat-borne illnesses almost seems like getting thrown back in time to the Dark Ages.
But, no, this time it was not a problem afflicting an impoverished medieval village, but rather one of the largest cities in the entire developed world: New York City.
While the city has been allocating resources toward prosecuting former President Donald Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election, it has descended further and further into a state of squalor.
As reported Wednesday by CBS News, not only have rats in New York become ubiquitous in the worst way possible, but levels of rat-related sicknesses have reached their highest annual rate last year.
The New York City Health Department has been warning the populace of the increasing cases of a disease spread by contact with rat urine.
According to the department, leptospirosis is caused by bacteria in infected animals’ urine. It usually causes flu-like symptoms (aches, chills, stomach trouble) but, if left untreated, can cause kidney failure, liver failure or meningitis.
CBS News reported that Mayor Eric Adams and city health officials have been working on methods of containing the disease and the disgusting rats, including sterilizing the animals (since rat poison has been outlawed) and encouraging citizens to use gloves when handling garbage or food waste.
Still, seeing as a single rat pair could breed 15,000 descendants in one year and the city’s garbage containment plan is expected to take at least two-and-a-half years, suffice to say New Yorkers’ rat-related woes are far from over.
The reason this trashcan is so important is because diseases linked to RAT URINE (leptospirosis) are spreading in the filth that was once a great American city. There aren’t enough trashcans in the world to solve the problems that sanctuary cities have brought to America. https://t.co/qQyOD5JXBi
— Amy (Doc) CHAI, MD 4Congress CT-3 (@docchai2022) April 19, 2024
If only funds to help deal with this issue were not allocated somewhere else.
Such as the civil fraud case and criminal “hush money” prosecution against Trump.
According to NewsNation, the latter trial, which got underway this week, could cost New York City up to $2 million, with $50,000 spent on security measures alone (assuming the trial lasts a minimum of six weeks).
A six-week trial in Donald Trump’s hush money case could cost New York City as much as $2 million, one legal analyst estimates. The city could spend about $50,000 per day on safety precautions.
More: https://t.co/z3jBIoyaCd #MorningInAmerica pic.twitter.com/FkkwnpUL8l
— NewsNation (@NewsNation) April 16, 2024
Taking a former president to court requires security, road closures and many other disruptions, not to mention the mountains of cash required to maintain those precautions.
While this legal circus has gone on much longer than necessary, average New Yorkers have been living with a pest problem straight out of the Dark Ages.
City and state Democratic leaders instead have prioritized a political witch hunt against the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post While NYC Dumps Resources Into ‘Getting’ Trump, Rat-Borne Disease Explodes Amid Squalid City Conditions appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
More often than not, surveys tend to quantify what impressions have already conveyed. And when it comes to quantifying faith, those impressions might suggest few apparent reasons to hope for good news.
Nonetheless, a new “State of the Bible 2024” survey by the American Bible Society did reveal at least one piece of hopeful news: Amid an otherwise depressing set of revelations, 15 percent of respondents reported an increase in their personal Bible use from 2023 to 2024.
The Jerusalem Post called this a “resilient, albeit small, group of individuals deepening their engagement with scripture.”
Small and resilient, yes, but 15 percent represents a strong minority within a larger-yet-dwindling minority of adults who reported any meaningful Bible engagement at all.
For instance, the “State of the Bible USA 2024” survey revealed that, apart from church services, only 38 percent of American adults “engage with the Bible” as often as three or four times per year outside of church. That number marked a slight decrease from 40 percent in 2023.
Worse yet, as recently as 2011, 50 percent of respondents reported that same frequency of Bible engagement.
The most obvious explanation for that decline lies in generational priorities. As Americans born during the first half of the 20th century have passed away, their beliefs have died with them.
And if the loss of the World War II generation did not already fill us with melancholy, then the realization that Gen-Z values have begun to replace those older beliefs might make us despondent.
Indeed, the survey rated only 11 percent of Gen-Z adults as “Scripture Engaged,” based on a new Spiritual Vitality Gauge that uses nine important questions to assess respondents’ spiritual health.
Furthermore, as measured by the Scripture Vitality Gauge, the number of Americans categorized as spiritually “Ailing” rose from 21 percent to 28 percent since last year.
The decline in Bible engagement also has regional dimensions with partly historical explanations.
For instance, of all the survey’s Bible-engaged respondents, nearly twice as many hailed from the American South as from the Northeast or Midwest.
That makes sense in light of the Protestant influence in Southern history. By contrast, Northern cities in the 19th century experienced multiple waves of mass immigration from predominantly Catholic countries or regions, such as Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe.
Catholicism, of course, offers its own kind of spiritual vitality. Historically, however, it has not encouraged believers to engage with the Bible in the same way that Protestantism has.
In light of all this, what should we make of Americans’ spiritual health in 2024?
To begin, we might borrow a phrase from prominent Canadian psychologist and political conservative Jordan Peterson.
In a 2022 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Peterson beautifully described Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.
“You look far enough into the abyss, you see the light,” Peterson said.
Readers may view a clip of those comments in the YouTube video below. Peterson began talking about the gospels around the 6:25 mark and continued for more than three minutes.
Seeing the light after staring into the abyss seems an apt description of one possible reaction to the spiritual-health survey.
Yes, things look bad, especially for Gen-Z.
On the other hand, in addition to the 15 percent who reported increased Bible engagement, another 53 percent said they wished they could read the Bible more often than they did.
That result would appear to confirm another impression derived from the recent experience of simply living in the world.
In short, as Gen Z’s woke values win cultural ascendancy, exasperated Americans know they can find an antidote in Biblical truth.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Hope: Polling Shows 1 Bright Spot for Christianity in America appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
In the years after the Nazis took power in 1933, they instituted hundreds of laws and policies at the national, state and local levels to systematically remove Jews from German society. Bans were placed on Jews working as doctors and lawyers and in other professions, and quotas were set, limiting Jews in schools and universities.
By 1935 Nazi-institutionalized anti-Semitism had stripped Jews of their German citizenship and barred them from municipal hospitals, legal practice, the military and even World War I memorials, effectively excommunicating them from civic life and laying the groundwork for the Nazis’ future escalation to even more severe anti-Semitic persecution, according to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It’s tempting to look back at the dark days of 1930s Germany under the Nazis as a distant chapter in history when ignorance and racism fueled by hateful rhetoric were allowed to contaminate an entire society and national leadership. We want to believe that could never happen again in modern times.
But a video shared by Campaign Against Antisemitism from a pro-Palestinian march in London reveals a scene that could have been right out of the 1930s.
In the video taken during the protest in central London, an officer can be seen blocking the path of Gideon Falter, a Jewish man wearing a kippah, a religious head covering, asking him to stay in place while the protesters march, according to the BBC.
“You are quite openly Jewish. This is a pro-Palestinian march. I am not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence.”
Enough is enough. It is time for a major change.
On Saturday 27th April — the next anti-Israel march — we are asking you,… pic.twitter.com/lfJr7UZnif
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) April 18, 2024
Falter, who is the chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism said he was simply walking around London after synagogue, according to the BBC.
“I don’t want to stay here, I want to leave,” Falter replied, after being blocked by the officer.
“In that case sir, when the crowd is gone, I will happily escort you out,” the officer responded.
When Falter tried to move past the police officer, the officer blocked his path, preventing him from leaving.
“I don’t want anybody antagonizing anybody …” the officer said as Falter protested, saying, “I just want to walk across …”
“At the moment sir, you are quite openly Jewish,” the officer responded. “This is a pro-Palestinian march. I am not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence,” the officer said.
Later in the video, another police officer attempted to defuse the situation, explaining to Falter that they were just trying to protect him.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like being a Jew in London at the moment?” Falter asked the officer.
Falter went on to explain that every Saturday, as protest routes change unpredictably through neighborhoods, being visibly Jewish means having to cross and face down “huge groups of people” in an “intimidating” atmosphere.
He said they were told repeatedly that Jews were safe in the city, “and yet,” he said, “here I find myself in this bubble. This guy has just been shouting at me and shoving me because I want to cross the road.”
Later in the video, another police officer can be seen telling Falter, “There’s a unit of people here now. You will be escorted out of this area so you can go about your business, go where you want freely, or if you choose to remain here, because you are causing a breach of peace, with all these other people, you will be arrested.”
“If I remain here, you will arrest me?” Falter asks incredulously.
“Your presence here is antagonizing a large group of people that we can’t deal with all of them if they attack you … because your presence is antagonizing them,” the officer responds.
The video also shows some people shouting “Scum” at the Jewish man. Another protester shouted “Nazi,” while yet another brazenly confronted him in front of officers, telling him, “I’m watching your movement … that’s right. We’re all going to watch your movements and record you. The police ain’t gonna help you in this scenario.”
“After months of being gaslit by the [Metropolitan Police], it’s not safe for Jews to be walking in the presence of these protests. And was there anything so crazy about what we were trying to do? Just walking around our home city on a Saturday?” Falter said in the accompanying video narrative.
“‘Is this something that we are willing to accept? That now the police have to keep Jews away? We mustn’t accept it,” he said.
“It has been six months now,” Falter said in the accompanying narrative, “six months, where every single weekend, we have to witness the streets of London awash with people, many of whom seem to have no problem at all declaring their full-throated support for Hamas, waving around anti-Semitic placards, calling for jihad, showing swastikas, waving anti-Semitic flags. It’s enough. Enough,” he said.
The police have since apologized for the officer’s choice of words, stating, “Being Jewish is not a provocation. Jewish Londoners must be able to feel safe in this city,” according to the BBC, but the incident is a clear example of a growing sentiment.
We are watching an eerie flashback of the 1930s playing right before our eyes.
And the U.S. is not far behind.
Chants of “From the river to the sea” have been heard on almost every city street and college campus, even in New York — a city that holds the largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel.
Domestic Terrorism: Today in NYC
Outside of Wall St. Today – An organized Pro HAMAS Rally takes off In New York City
– Protesters called for the Death of America and The Death Of Israe while a Nationwide protest shut down traffic, highways and bridges across the US.
This… pic.twitter.com/oxUwkNFLJO
— Asher Press (@AsherPress) April 16, 2024
The 1930s did not begin with gas chambers and concentration camps, but with the pervasive mindset that one’s religious identity alone is a provocation worthy of exclusion from society.
It doesn’t feel like we have learned anything from that dark time in history.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: UK Police Threaten to Arrest an ‘Openly Jewish Man’ for Walking Near Palestinian Protest appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
One day after Senate Democrats squashed the House Republican effort to remove Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from office, GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky held Mayorkas’ feet to the fire during a Senate hearing, making him squirm in his seat.
On Wednesday, Democratic senators shut down the impeachment proceedings initiated last week by the Republican-controlled House over Mayorkas’ handling of immigration and border security.
On Thursday, during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Paul masterfully laid bare the utter disregard for the law Mayorkas has shown in his time as homeland security secretary in a systematic and deliberate line of questioning without accusing or raising his voice.
The senator first asked Mayorkas what the criteria for paroling someone from detention was.
Mayorkas replied that the parole process, according to the law, involved “individualized determinations with respect to significant public benefit or an urgent humanitarian reason.”
“So for what reason was the alleged killer of Laken Riley, Jose Ibarra, paroled and allowed to come into this country?” Paul shot back.
Paul was, of course, referring to the high-profile case of a Georgia college student who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant.
Mayorkas refused to answer based on the fact the case is currently being prosecuted.
“You’re refusing to give any specifics about Jose Ibarra?” the senator said. “Well, I have the documentation, and the document says that the parole, the subject, the person accused of killing Laken Riley, was paroled due to detention capacity — it was full.
“So is detention capacity statutorily allowed to be used as a reasoning for parole?”
Mayorkas acknowledged that people were paroled because of a lack of beds for those encountered at the border, causing Paul to quickly retort, “You might have more beds if they remained in Mexico.”
The senator noted that the Biden administration had reversed “92 executive orders of the Trump administration which allowed them to apparently have people remain in Mexico, allowed them to have, you know, probably 90 percent less parolees than you have.”
“When you come to us and say, ‘Oh gosh, if we only had more legislation, we could do it,’ why don’t you bring back the executive orders of Donald Trump that seemed to be working? You immediately got rid of them for political purposes. The border is a disaster. Why don’t you bring back the 92 executive orders that you reversed?” he demanded.
The fiery exchange escalated as Paul listed other recent crimes allegedly perpetrated by illegal immigrants, including the killings of a Washington state trooper and a Michigan woman.
“I think a lot of people in America are going to be appalled, you know, that you refuse to answer the questions,” he said.
When asked about Ibarra’s unlawful entry, Mayorkas deflected again, saying that criminal perpetrators “need to be held accountable for their crimes.”
“Well, that’s not much consolation if you wait until after he’s murdered somebody,” Paul retorted.
The senator then went on to explain to Mayorkas the major flaws in how the Department of Homeland Security screens and processes migrants who are paroled into the United States — the most crucial of which is that DHS relies heavily on the “honor system,” i.e., just taking migrants at their word for their name and background information.
Paul pointed out that when migrants arrive at the border and claim to be from a country such as Venezuela, DHS has no real way to verify that is their true identity or country of origin because “most domestic crimes in Venezuela probably are not in any kind of international database.”
“So if you waltz into the country through your generous parole programs and say, ‘I’m John Smith from Venezuela,’ you have no way of ascertaining that,” he said. “You still let them go. So you say, ‘Well we’re going to make sure that they’re not a violent criminal.’ You have no way.”
What’s even worse, Paul pointed out that when DHS does collect biometric data such as fingerprints from paroled migrants, since their identities were not properly vetted initially, the agency is essentially just issuing them a new official identity in the United States.
“You look in some databases, maybe they’re not in the database, but you have no way of even knowing that that’s their name. Then you give them biometrics … you give them fingerprints, now they have a new name and fingerprints, they essentially have been given a new identity by your agency,” he said.
Today, I confronted Mayorkas over the damage inflicted upon America and the families who have tragically lost loved ones due to the abject failure of the Biden administration’s border policies. https://t.co/q2ejsC69NV
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 18, 2024
Hearing the senator speak, I had the feeling that if a person from another country, completely unaware of our laws, saw the process, he or she would be convinced that the DHS was hoping for an attack on American soil.
To pretend to “vet” people by taking their word for who they are after they have just broken your laws by entering your country illegally is already ludicrous.
But then Mayorkas’ department takes it a step further by collecting fingerprints without first properly vetting migrants’ stated identities, effectively issuing them new official identities in the U.S. based on unverified information.
As Paul bluntly put it, the agency is just “giving a new identity” to these migrants.
It’s no wonder 90 percent of migrants are now turning themselves in to U.S. authorities instead of trying to escape them, according to Bloomberg.
It’s like the Biden administration has put up a sign: If you’re looking for a new start to get away from your criminal past, come to America. We’ll give you a new identity and a ticket to a city of your choice so that you can start all over again.
“I’m just so sickened and sad by the families of lost loved ones from this,” Paul said in conclusion. “I don’t see real remorse. I don’t see you willing to answer the questions. I mean, if it were me, I would be so upset by this, I would be doing everything possible to make sure another Jose Ibarra doesn’t get in.”
He concluded by saying, “All I can express is disappointment and bewilderment that the Democrats let you get away with it.”
Senator, you are not alone.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: Rand Paul Holds Mayorkas’ Feet to the Fire Regarding Laken Riley’s Suspected Killer, Swats Down Excuses appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The cost of gasoline has skyrocketed under President Joe Biden, but he has been utterly unmindful of the burden he is putting on the American people because of his concerted war against oil, a war he proudly announced he would initiate if he won the White House.
Indeed, the war on the American energy industry is just one of the many ideological promises hurting America he made during his 2020 campaign that he has kept while in office.
As Americans suffer through Bidenomics, giving us one of the worst economies in decades, the cost of everything we need for our daily lives has soared. Gasoline has been a particular burden throughout Biden’s four years and prices have skyrocketed roughly 14 percent just over the last few months, ABC News reported.
Of the last three presidents, gas has been most expensive during Biden’s term. Forbes reported that the average price per gallon during Trump’s term was $2.57 a gallon. Obama’s was $3.12 in his first term and $2.95 in his second. By comparison, Biden’s average thus far was $3.60 as of early March.
But the price per gallon for gas is just one of the many problems Joe Biden has created for Americans with his war on the U.S. oil industry.
Biden has taken at least 200 actions to restrict or otherwise harm American energy independence since taking office, according to Just the News.
The actions were detailed in a report by the Institute for Energy Research that found that Biden has made it much harder for American companies to produce oil and gas products.
“President Biden and Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase,” the report said. “Since Mr. Biden took office, his administration and its allies have taken over 200 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.”
The study noted three of the more far-reaching attacks Biden has conducted on the U.S. oil and gas industry.
One of the very first things he did when he took office, for instance, was to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, an action that eliminated thousands of American jobs. And he took that move even as he supported a pipeline being built in Russia.
He also declared that every acre of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be off-limits to oil and natural gas leasing activities. This took a huge field of energy resources off the table just as prices started to soar when he took office.
The third destructive move he made early in his presidency was to revoke Trump’s executive order that decreased burdensome regulations on the American energy sector.
But these three disastrous moves were far from the only ones he implemented when he entered the White House.
He also issued a series of moratoriums on new gas and oil leases on public lands, imposed a suite of onerous new regulations on the industry, and forced companies to take him to court to honor the leases they already had. And he is also threatening to slam the gasoline industry with an additional $110 billion in taxes on oil, natural gas and coal.
All of this has sent the cost of producing domestic energy soaring.
Then there has been his draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve , an act that has actually put our national security at risk.
“President Biden had the chance to top up the SPR when prices were still low during the pandemic, but anti-oil-and-gas ideologues within the administration couldn’t bear to do anything that would help out producers when demand was low,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of Western Energy Alliance.
Not only that, she added, Biden then drained it “for political reasons and it’s long overdue to fill the SPR back up. Like many other politically driven decisions from this administration that distort energy markets, the government will have to spend more taxpayer money than if it had rational energy policies.”
These attacks on our energy independence make us more dependent on our enemies abroad, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and other anti-American oil-producing states. And it puts our national security at risk more than ever.
Trump had the right policy by cutting burdensome regulations, lowering taxes and inviting U.S. energy companies to explore for and drill for more oil and natural gas, thereby making us an energy-independent nation — and even a net exporter of oil — and putting us on our own two feet to ensure our national security.
Remember this when you are voting in November. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to drive up our costs, tear down our energy industry and put us at the mercy of our enemies.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Revealed: Biden Has Taken 200 Actions to Increase Gas Prices – We Highlight Top 3 appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
At some point in the last five years, we stopped merely studying history’s darkest moments and began experiencing them.
For instance, in an 11-second viral clip posted Wednesday to the social media platform X, a woman identified as Loyola Marymount University graduate student Grace Obi-Azuike effectively re-enacted a scene from Nazi Germany when she spewed venomous anti-Jewish hatred and, significantly, incurred no apparent rebuke from the younger people around her who attended an event featuring Israel Defense Forces members.
“Get the f*** out of here, all you ugly-a** little Jewish people in this b****,” the California law student appeared to say in a clip shared by the StopAntisemitism X account.
Obi-Azuike made the comment while seated and signaling in the direction of people who did not appear on camera.
Her insidious remark drew a look of astonishment but also an open-mouthed smile from an androgynous-looking person seated to her left. The male-looking person to her right wore the cloth mask of the COVID cult. His reaction, therefore — perhaps thankfully — remains a mystery.
But some attendees clapped or otherwise voiced approval.
“Oooooh, hooooo, yeah,” an unidentified female voice said.
At that point, an older, suit-wearing man walked over to Obi-Azuike and stood to her left. The camera did not capture what happened next, but he did not appear pleased as he rubbed his chin.
Readers may view the clip below:
WARNING: The following video and post contain vulgar language and racism.
Loyola University Law School – Grace Obi-Azuike appears to be caught yelling “Get the f*ck out of here all you ugly ass little Jewish people in this b*itch”.
Shockingly, she was Loyola’s Anti Racism Center Fellow for 2022-2023.
Grace Obi-Azuike graduates in a few weeks. pic.twitter.com/Bpaxo05gxg
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 17, 2024
According to the Los Angeles school’s Jewish Law Students Association, the Adolf Hitler-like outburst occurred as part of a calculated effort by multiple law students to disrupt an event that featured firsthand accounts from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
On Instagram, JLSA reported that “a few attendees left trembling as they made their way to their vehicles.”
As one would expect in this age of woke narcissism, the Loyola Law School boasts its own Anti-Racism Center.
The StopAntisemitism post referred to Obi-Azuike as a 2022-2023 fellow at the center — and the humor-focused, real-news site Not the Bee did likewise based on her now-deleted LinkedIn page.
Her intellectual profile certainly fits that of an anti-racist narcissist.
For instance, Obi-Azuike also belonged to the California ChangeLawyers organization.
“Our scholars and fellows are law students and recent law grads who are BIPOC, First Generation, LGBTQ+ and others whose lived experiences and identities are underrepresented in the halls of power,” the group’s scholar and fellow directory proclaimed.
As of Thursday afternoon, Obi-Azuike still appeared on the directory page. The following note appeared on her scholar profile:
“Our community has informed us of an incident that occurred earlier this week at Loyola Law School involving one of our scholarship recipients.
“ChangeLawyers exists to build a more inclusive multiracial democracy that protects and respects the humanity of all people — including our Jewish, Black, Muslim, and Women-identified communities. Any words or actions that denigrate the humanity of others flies in the face of our values. We do not condone racism or hate speech in any form, spoken or posted online.
“To all our community members: You Belong. ChangeLawyers will always be a place of compassion, empathy, and understanding.”
Obi-Azuike also appeared among the California Association of Black Lawyers‘ 2024 law student scholarship recipients.
On Feb. 2, LMU recognized Obi-Azuike among 11 graduate finalists who each received $5,000 to support research “focused on areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism.”
She also has served as president of the LLS Black Law Students Association. In that role, with a paean to the Juneteenth holiday, she provided a glimpse into the mind of a young narcissist.
“We comprise the generation of individuals that have the strongest ability to dismantle and end racism throughout this country,” Obi-Azuike wrote.
Predictably, she also insisted on the need to “understand the intersection between law and systemic racism.”
In other words, like many young victims of woke education and culture, Obi-Azuike sees the world primarily through skin color — and she obviously felt empowered to count herself with the “generation” that could “dismantle and end racism.”
Oh, how our schools have failed to encourage humility in such self-important crusaders.
Nonetheless, though unfortunate to have come of age in an era that validates narcissism, Obi-Azuike is no victim here.
For one thing, she reminds us that anti-racism amounts to nothing more than institutionally approved racism.
More importantly, her ugly outburst called to mind a 1998 book by historian Christopher R. Browning.
In “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,” Browning explained how a group of “average middle-aged Germans” transformed into executioners during the Holocaust.
In short, it did not take much for those initially reluctant killers to become eager instruments of mass murder.
Above all, it took an atmosphere in which officials encouraged such phrases as “you ugly-a** little Jewish people.”
Not long ago, we could study the past and wonder how things could have ever turned so dark. Now, however, we wonder no more.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Law College ‘Anti-Racism’ Fellow Caught on Camera Piling Vicious Hatred on ‘Ugly…Little Jewish People’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The price tag of President Joe Biden’s student loan amnesty just keeps growing — and it’s not the neediest who are getting the money, either.
According to the New York Post, a new study by the University of Pennsylvania estimates that a new round of student loan cancellation programs raises the amount that taxpayers are stuck holding to $559 billion total, including $84 billion under new provisions announced last week.
The kicker? The newest provisions under the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan will benefit those in higher tax brackets the most.
The income-driven plan was introduced last summer, but new loan cancellations for 277,000 borrowers were announced last week.
“Today’s announcement shows — once again — that the Biden-Harris Administration is not letting up its efforts to give hardworking Americans some breathing room,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement, the Post reported.
“As long as there are people with overwhelming student loan debt competing with basic needs such as food and healthcare, we will remain relentless in our pursuit to bring relief to millions across the country.”
Cardona was doing the usual media rounds promoting how the plan was going to help the most vulnerable student loan recipients:
.@SecCardona breaks down who qualifies for President Biden’s new student debt relief plan.#GMA3 pic.twitter.com/BB3PVT76K4
— GMA3: What You Need To Know (@ABCGMA3) April 9, 2024
However, the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model found that the new round of cancellations wasn’t exactly going to help those who were struggling to put food on the table — unless their diet consisted of three square meals of foie gras and Wagyu steak.
“President Biden recently announced five main provisions to provide student loan debt relief. Some of provisions are already mostly covered by President Biden’s SAVE plan introduced in 2023. Some provisions, however, are more incremental to the SAVE plan, including one provision — the forgiveness of longer-term debt — that expands eligibility to higher-income households,” read a Thursday media release of the study’s key takeaways.
“We estimate that the New Plans will cost $84 billion in addition to the $475 billion that we estimated for President Biden’s SAVE plan, for a total cost of about $559 billion across both plans.
“While the New Plans, like the SAVE plan, contain provisions to relieve debt based on individual or household income, the New Plans will also relieve some longer-term student debt for about 750,000 households making over $312,000 in average household income,” it continued.
“The main reason for this high average household income is that the SAVE plan already provides long-term debt relief to households with lower incomes.”
Of the five major components of the new plans announced on April 8, two in particular stick out as driving the relief up the income ladder.
First is the threshold for waiving accrued and capitalized interest on the loans: “Up to $20,000 in accrued and capitalized interest will be waived for borrowers with current balances above the initial balance upon entering repayment, regardless of borrower’s income,” the Wharton media release read.
“Single borrowers making less than $120,000 or couples making less than $240,000 a year will qualify for a total waiver of all current balances above the initial balance if they are enrolled in any IDR plan. Automatic relief will be applied, and so no application is needed.”
Second is the elimination of undergraduate student debt for those who have been paying it for over 20 years or gradate debt for 25 years.
“If student loan repayments started on or before July 1, 2005, all debt will be eliminated for borrowers with undergraduate loans only. (For borrowers with any graduate debt, this date is pushed back to July 1, 2000). No enrollment in IDR plans will be needed to receive the relief, but currently it’s unclear if any other application will be required from the borrowers,” the news release said.
The total cost of all the five measures is a touch over $84 billion, added to the estimated $475 billion Biden’s unilateral student loan relief has already put taxpayers on the hook for.
However, in this case, Biden is providing relief to households who are less than $100,000 away from that magical $400,000 number that he says makes you one of the wealthy that he plans to tax to pay for his spending sprees — you know, those who need to start paying their “fair share.”
To say this is ridiculous is an understatement — until, of course, you realize that 2024 is an election year and Biden’s poll numbers haven’t looked hot since the beginning of the race, despite the fact that Democrat DAs and the Department of Justice have been on a quest to tie up the presumptive Republican nominee in court until November.
As House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican, noted, this wasn’t just unconstitutional, it was a “quest to buy votes.”
“In reality, his plan will shift the responsibility of paying for loans owed by high-income earners who freely incurred them onto the backs of all taxpayers, many of whom do not even have a college degree,” Arrington said via a statement.
“[Biden’s] administration is dead set on circumventing the Supreme Court, defying Congress, and saddling our country with more debt.”
And unlike he says, it’s not taking from the rich to give to the poor. It’s taking from those who didn’t take college loans or paid them off and giving relief to wealthy people who did and haven’t.
Is this what student debt relief should look like? It is when one is down badly in the polls and is grasping at straws to get suburban voters in swing states. That’s hardly good policy — but as cynical strategizing, it’s not half bad.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Biden’s Student Debt Cancellation Has Taxpayers Paying Over $550 Billion, Benefits Wealthier Families appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The quarterback considered by many to be the best player in the NFL is steering clear of partisan messaging in the wake of a shooting at a parade celebrating his team’s 2024 Super Bowl victory.
Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs has rebuffed calls to advocate for gun control, according to a Time magazine profile of the two-time NFL MVP published Tuesday.
“I continue to educate myself,” Mahomes told Time. “I don’t want to make a quick response to something that takes a lot of education to really learn and make a swaying comment based off that.”
“But I know we have to find a solution of some way to make this stuff stop,” he added.
The shooting at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade in February left one dead and 22 wounded.
On the day of the tragedy, Mahomes posted on X that he was “praying for Kansas City.”
Time reported that Mahomes and his wife Brittany also visited victims in the hospital and donated $50,000 to a fund to “aid the victims and first responders and support violence-prevention organizations.”
Mahomes took a similarly hands-off stance in the Time interview when it came to the 2024 presidential election.
“I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president,” he said, instead urging Americans to make their own informed decision.
“I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.”
The three-time Super Bowl champion also addressed the longevity of his NFL career, expressing some doubt that he would play as long as all-time legend Tom Brady did.
Mahomes pointed to his desire to spend time with his family as a potential obstacle to a 20-year career.
“If I played until Tom [Brady]’s age, my daughter would be 19, 20 years old,” he said.
Patrick Mahomes talks retirement:
“I’ve looked, if I played until Tom Brady’s age, my daughter would be 19, 20 years old, I would love to play that long. At the same time, I want to be there for my daughter. if I can do that, I’ll continue to play. But if I feel like it’s taking… pic.twitter.com/Ni1kjVRIyG
— BBQ Chiefs (@BBQChiefs) April 16, 2024
“I would love to play that long. … At the same time, I want to be there for my daughter. If I can do that, I’ll continue to play. But if I feel like it’s taking away from my family time, that’s when I’ll know it’s time to go.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Patrick Mahomes Refuses to Call for Gun Control After Kansas City Shooting – ‘I Continue to Educate Myself’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A video of one of the pro-Palestinian protesters who shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and I-880 in Oakland on Monday is going viral.
A clip shared by the official X account of the California Highway Patrol showed one agitator screaming in apparent pain as officers cut a piece of concrete reinforcement he had held onto in order to make his removal more difficult.
The video shows the CHP officers ordering the man to simply let go of the rebar, which he refused to do.
It was not immediately clear if the man was on the Golden Gate Bridge or was part of a blockage of the Bay Area’s Interstate 880.
“Let go of the rebar,” one officer off-camera told the man.
Another officer pleaded repeatedly for the man to simply “let go” as he screamed in agony.
“Ohh! Ahh,” the man shouted. “They’re twisting [my hand] for no reason. … Stop! …. Stop squeezing my hand and twisting it!”
While refusing to let go of the metal, the protester shouted, “You’re hurting me!”
Tactics utilized by unlawful protesters this morning on I-880 and the Golden Gate Bridge. This is unlawful and will not be tolerated. Arrests were made and the CHP is recommending charges. Thank you to our law enforcement partners for their assistance. pic.twitter.com/Nn4fdqD08m
— CHP Headquarters (@CHP_HQ) April 16, 2024
The man was asked if he needed medical assistance after he was handcuffed.
CHP officials said of the incidents on the roadways and the Golden Gate Bridge closure, “This is unlawful and will not be tolerated. Arrests were made and the CHP is recommending charges.”
The agency also made it clear in a statement posted on Facebook that officers made every effort to clear the protesters and free traffic as quickly as possible.
The man was one of around 40 anti-Israel protesters who were arrested after they shut down the iconic bridge and highway, KNTV reported. Twenty-six people were detained for their actions on the bridge.
Per KTVU, the protesters used a technique called “the sleeping dragon.”
On the bridge, “protesters used their cars, with chains concealed with pipes, to connect themselves to each other,” which took police over four hours to clear. While on the I-880, some of the protesters attached themselves to large barrels filled with concrete, which took seven hours to clear.
KNTV spoke to a number of the protesters who said they shut down the highway and bridge in order to compel the federal government to stop offering military aid to Israel.
Those behind the blockages are facing conspiracy charges.
Some of the protesters will also be charged with false imprisonment for trapping commuters on the bridge from about 7:30 a.m. local time until well into the afternoon.
Their actions occurred just two days after Iran launched hundreds of missiles and suicide drones at the Jewish state on Saturday.
Israel has been fighting the Islamic terror group Hamas in an all-out war since last October when militants based in Gaza murdered at least 1,200 of its citizens and took over 200 hostages.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Pro-Palestinian Agitator Screams in Pain as Police Remove Device He Attached to Himself on Highway appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
For its nearly universal control over the news-industrial complex, the left has failed to penetrate the one and only media format dominated by conservatives: talk radio.
Despite repeated liberal incursions into the medium, from Mario Cuomo to Tom Daschle to Air America, the left cannot make a showing. Now, it has launched a series of deceptive websites and bought up talk radio outlets — apparently in hopes that, where persuasion failed, cold hard cash may prevail.
Enter George Soros — and his bank account.
“Over the last two years, Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has become an increasingly key player in the oldest electronic mass media: radio,” Semafor reported.
Two months ago, the business arm of the Soros empire bought out Audacy, giving it control of more than 230 radio stations and innumerable podcasts. The fund is now openly discussing taking over Cumulus Media, which owned and operated 403 radio stations across 85 markets in the United States last year, according to its website.
Soros facilitated the buy-out of 18 Univision radio stations by a consortium of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, known as The Latino Media Network, for $60 million in cash. When Vice Media faced bankruptcy in 2019, Soros provided part of the $250 million in debt relief that kept it afloat.
“Soros specifically funneled at least $131,111,250 between 2016 and 2020 into 253 journalism and activist media groups worldwide to spread his radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism,” reported the Media Research Center in a three-part exposé.
Some $103 million of the $131 million went directly to media outlets, including $2 million to Wikipedia — which, despite its dependably left-leaning bias, poses as an impartial encyclopedia.
Donor-driven deception seems to be a recurring theme for the Soros media takeover, as numerous beneficiaries disguise left-wing political advocacy in the form of “local news” websites.
Among the practitioners of this art is Tara McGowan, a Democratic political operative who worked for the 2012 Obama-Biden re-election campaign and for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign’s primary super PAC, Priorities USA Action. (To give you a flavor, a 2012 Priorities USA ad falsely charged Utah Republican Mitt Romney with causing a woman to die of cancer.)
After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, McGowan got concerned, writing in a 2019 memo that the “Democratic Party, long reliant on television and radio, is losing the media war.” To fill the gap, she created Courier Newsroom, owned by another McGowan organization, Good Information Inc. Courier’s media outlets use apolitical news stories with local content to deliver Democratic diatribes.
“The goal was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content, then feed them political persuasion content, using underwriters who would pay Courier to come up with the content,” a former Courier employee revealed.
George Soros is one of those underwriters. So, too, is Planned Parenthood. The nation’s leading abortion franchise gave McGowan’s faux news media empire a quarter of a million dollars in the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone. Yet McGowan did not disclose either contributor, which one investigator noted “cannot be traced through public records until years after the fact.”
Courier also has another revolving door with the Biden administration: McGowan has visited the Biden White House 20 times, according to a review of White House visitor logs carried out by Fox News. One visit produced an exclusive interview with Biden — but the rest seem to have influenced Courier’s journalism in other ways.
McGowan met with Patrick Stevenson, Biden’s senior advisor for digital strategy, raising questions about whether McGowan coordinated its media activities with the administration. (That would be old hat. A 2016 email from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager outlined a strategy of illegal “coordination of some ads with Priorities” USA.)
The left followed the same blueprint in the 2022 midterm elections. Last time, the misleading media strategy worked through The American Independent, the grotesquely misnamed company then led by Media Matters founder David Brock. The group, now branding itself “TAI News,” hosts “local” websites in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Montana, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester faces a difficult re-election race. “It’s been widely reported that where local news outlets shut down, dis- and misinformation grows,” said Jessica McCreight, then TAI’s executive editor, in 2022. “To combat this challenge, The American Independent has expanded to bring readers local, fact-based news and information on topics and issues that impact their communities.”
TAI used McGowan’s model of writing local news to sell its political product. For instance, the Pennsylvania Independent’s story “Pennsylvania is home to the world’s mushroom capital” sits alongside headlines slamming alleged GOP “health care cuts” and touting Biden’s “clean energy investments in Pennsylvania farms.” Yet the state websites carry dizzyingly repetitive content for an operation purportedly dedicated to local news.
Each site carries the same national news stories, usually as the lead. Very little original local content takes place: As of this writing, the Wisconsin website has the same story, with the same graphic, side-by-side as the lead story in both the Politics and Economy sections.
TAI News also shares McGowan’s troubles with the truth and ties to partisan hacks. TAI’s current president, Joe Conason, wrote a baseless 1992 article claiming that President George H.W. Bush had an affair with longtime aide Jennifer Fitzgerald and a 2003 book titled “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.”
TAI’s former president, Matt Fuehrmeyer, had been a senior aide at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Ownership and management of media matters. Look at Fox News since Rupert Murdoch stepped back from day-to-day affairs, leaving its direction to his children. As part of its 2022 Pride Month coverage, Fox News Channel carried a news story celebrating a child’s gender transition.
Last April, FNC fired its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, days after he delivered a revival-themed address to The Heritage Foundation. While Fox News still has outstanding hosts and guests, its retreat from social issues mirrors the views of management.
This seeming minutiae impacts citizens’ ability to make a difference for Christ in the public square. Since information fuels and directs action, intelligence is a vital asset of spiritual warfare. The world’s greatest calamity occurred when our first parents acted on erroneous information (Genesis 3:5).
On the other hand, God asks rhetorically whether His people know of His power to cast aside kingdoms that violate His laws by asking in Isaiah 40:21, “Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning?”
The anti-life crowd believes it can hide its venomous viewpoint in objective-looking news sites. If you do not know the bias and ownership of your “local” media site, why not read — and promote — news outlets like this one that share your Christian worldview? We will never sell out to shadowy leftist billionaires. We have already been bought with a price (I Corinthians 7:23).
This article appeared originally on The Washington Stand.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post The Left’s Plan to Sabotage Talk Radio and Local News appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Joe Biden was caught Monday with a sheet of instructions as he met in the Oval Office Monday with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’a Al-Sudani.
The latest in a long string of episodes in which Biden is instructed where to stand and what to say led to him being dubbed “commander-in-cheat” by the New York Post.
The Post report said Biden turned to his script often to check on what he was supposed to say concerning the attack on Israel by Iran, as well as to pause so an interpreter could translate his words.
Biden cheat sheet for Iraq PM meeting caught on camera — including instructions to ‘pause’ https://t.co/WJ950tZRiO pic.twitter.com/ix4qwll3PX
— New York Post (@nypost) April 15, 2024
“As you know, Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack against Israel, and we mounted an unprecedented military effort to defend Israel. Together with our partners, we defeated that attack,” Biden said, according to the White House.
“We’re also committed to the security of our personnel and partners in the region, including Iraq. The partnership between Iraq and the United States is critical. We’ve seen over the last decade as our troops have served side by side to help defeat ISIS, and we’ve seen this in our Strategic Framework Agreement as well,” Biden said.
Joe Biden checks his watch again. This time with the Prime Minister of Iraq. pic.twitter.com/IjiefoiCUW
— The American Girl (@TheAmericanGrl) April 15, 2024
But members of the Republican Study Committee were not happy that the meeting was held at all, according to Fox News.
“As members of the Republican Study Committee, we write to express our deep concern with your decision to host Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to the White House and your overall Iraqi policy,” the letter from Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern of Oklahoma said.
“Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq over two decades and countless lost American treasure, Iraq is now solidly in Iran’s hands,” the letter said.
Two questions Biden should have asked Iran’s puppet in Baghdad:
“So why did you let Iran use your airspace, and why did you try to deny our use of our bases in Iraq to defend Israel?”
“Why don’t you use your U.S. trained ISOF units to target Iran’s Iraqi militias firing at… pic.twitter.com/Bno7Xkp2lf
— Michael P Pregent (@MPPregent) April 15, 2024
“This is evident across Iraq’s institutions and within Prime Minster Sudani’s own government, which includes two U.S.-designated terrorist groups,” the letter continued, adding, “On Saturday Iranian-backed militias in Iraq joined Iran in directly attacking Israel.”
“In essence, the U.S. has effectively overseen China, Russia and Iran dominate Iraq, despite our overwhelming financial and human commitment to Iraq’s latest chapter,” the letter said.
Biden has been roundly mocked for his use of cheat sheets, including one in November that included pictures of the reporters he was told by his staff to call upon.
Q cards with pre-selected reporters and the answers to their questions. It was plain as day.
— Rob Allen (@RobMAllen1971) November 16, 2023
In November, he publicly apologized for forgetting the name of a CBS reporter he had been instructed to have lob him a question.
Last April, Biden was caught with a notecard bearing the name of Los Angeles Times journalist Courtney Subramanian under “Question #1,” along with a pre-written question, according to the Post.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Camera Catches Biden’s Cheat Sheet for Meeting with Iraq PM, Shows Embarrassing Directions to Guide Him appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
In the aftermath of Iran’s attack on Israel Saturday night, President Joe Biden said he will meet with allies on Sunday to consider what to do.
Biden said he will meet with G7 nations to craft a unified response, according to Reuters.
Biden said that during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel.”
“Tomorrow, I will convene my fellow G7 leaders to coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack,” he said. The G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Great Britain.
On Saturday, Israel said Iran sent 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles towards Israel, according to the Independent. Almost all of the weapons were intercepted before they reached Israel.
On Sunday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, avoiding escalation is uppermost in Biden’s mind.
“Every decision, every discussion that he’s had is all designed to not let this become a broad regional war, and that’s where his head still is,” Kirby said on Fox News, The New York Times reported.
Israel’s War Cabinet is meeting Sunday afternoon to craft Israel’s response.
Some experts said they do not believe Iran wants escalation.
“Iran’s government appears to have concluded that the Damascus strike was a strategic inflection point, where failure to retaliate would carry more downsides than benefits,” Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group, said.
“But in doing so, the shadow war it has been waging with Israel for years now threatens to turn into a very real and very damaging conflict,” one that could drag in the United States, he added.
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, said Iran “made a choice to call Israel’s bluff, and they felt they needed to do so, because they see the last six months as a persistent effort to set them back across the region.”
“I think Tehran saw a need to draw this red line and make it clear to Israel that Iran does have red lines and would not continue to tolerate the slow degradation of its position,” she said.
The Times reported that Israel was considering a retaliatory strike last night, but the strike was called off after damage from the Iranian attack proved minimal.
Iran’s drone strikes show us President Biden’s approach with Iran and the Middle East is backwards. Now as we risk entering WWIII, the U.S. must stand by Israel’s commitment to democracy. The president must stand firm, and stop coddling Iran immediately.
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) April 13, 2024
In a post on X, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina urged a strong American response.
“Iran’s drone strikes show us President Biden’s approach with Iran and the Middle East is backwards. Now as we risk entering WWIII, the U.S. must stand by Israel’s commitment to democracy. The president must stand firm, and stop coddling Iran immediately,” she posted.
We stand with the people of Israel against this brazen and callous attack. Iran hates democracy, Freedom, and basic human rights — making them an enemy of Israel and the United States. I expect the Biden Administration to stand up for these shared principles and hold Iran…
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 13, 2024
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, urged action.
“We stand with the people of Israel against this brazen and callous attack. Iran hates democracy, Freedom, and basic human rights — making them an enemy of Israel and the United States. I expect the Biden Administration to stand up for these shared principles and hold Iran accountable,” she posted.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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After drastically depleting the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to buy votes during the midterm election, President Joe Biden’s Department of Energy has announced it will not purchase up to 3 million barrels of oil from a site in Louisiana in August and September, as originally intended.
“Keeping the taxpayer’s interest at the forefront, we will not award for the Bayou Choctaw SPR site in August and September and will continue to solicit available capacity as market conditions allow,” a department spokesperson said according to S&P Global.
“As always, we monitor market dynamics to remain nimble and innovative in our successful replenishment approach to protect this critical national security asset.”
Reportedly, the current oil prices are scaring away the DOE from purchasing, as current oil barrel prices are around $85 — above the $79 a barrel it’s aiming for.
Oil has gradually risen in price over the past few weeks, jumping a considerable 10 percent in the last month alone and 20 percent since mid-December, according to The New York Times.
Of course, oil and gas are far from the only thing rising under the Biden administration.
Inflation in general continues to miss the targeted goal, seeing considerable jumps monthly.
Nonetheless, regardless of rising prices in oil, the record-low levels can’t help but draw concern.
The SPR was originally signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975 following a massive oil crisis that followed the 1973-74 oil embargo.
The reserve was intended to function as an emergency source of fuel for the nation in times of crisis, ensuring essential functions such as our country’s military wouldn’t be ruined by a shortage.
Today, it doesn’t seem that same understanding is seen.
The four underground storage facilities for the SPR, located along the Gulf of Mexico, currently have an “authorized capacity” of 714 million barrels, according to the Department of Energy.
The most ever held for the SPR was close to 727 million barrels in 2009, according to Reuters. (Evidently they had a higher capacity at one time.)
In 2022, the Biden administration announced plans to sell 180 million barrels “in an attempt to lower gasoline prices after Russia invaded Ukraine,” Reuters reported.
Biden’s sale that year was in addition to 38 million barrels that Congress had ordered sold, a practice lawmakers came up with to fund government programs, according to the outlet.
Those sales drained the SPR to its lowest level in about 40 years. It now stands at 363.6 million barrels, according to Reuters. That’s just over half of where it should be in the best of times — and these certainly are not the best of times.
There’s a good reason that the SPR was created and with the levels it sits at now, it’s unlikely to be able to fulfill that purpose.
Incidentally, Biden’s predecessor recognized the importance of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and tried to replenish it, according to the National Review.
“When former president Donald Trump attempted to fill the SPR to the brim when oil prices were at a rock-bottom price of $24 a barrel, congressional Democrats blocked the purchase, claiming it would be an oil-industry bailout,” the outlet reported.
Oil is an essential part of everyday life, whether green energy advocates want to admit it or not.
When a crisis comes, the country will need sources of energy like oil to keep the military and economy properly functioning. Otherwise, things could get much worse.
But rather than existing for times of emergency or crisis, President Joe Biden decided to throw away what had been accrued for a handful of extra votes in 2022.
The saddest part is that Biden is doubly responsible for the issue at hand, being responsible for both the low levels of the SPR and the high prices of oil.
Rather than playing both sides to always come out on top, it seems the president is playing both sides to always lose.
Perhaps if earlier in his administration, Biden had permitted more drilling on federal land, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Unfortunately, the commander in chief has constantly foiled any attempts to drill on federal land.
It’s almost like he’s intentionally forcing gas prices to climb.
Every solution that has been right in front of him he’s denied, constantly instead appealing to environmental extremists within his party.
Oil excavation is not pretty, but it’s necessary — fighting against it will only hurt the nation.
Biden and his climate freaks need to suck it up and do what’s best for the nation, even if it breaks their vapid little hearts.
Not refilling the SPR, even if it costs a pretty penny, could cost the nation far more.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post With Strategic Petroleum Reserve at Historic Lows, Biden Cancels Replenishment Order appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Biden is facing an uphill battle for a second term in the White House.
But this latest news is probably going to send his campaign into a panic.
A report by the Daily Caller shows that Democratic voter registrations have dropped in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — three hotly contested states in the 2020 election.
While Democrats still hold a voter registration advantage over Republicans in all three states, the gaps have shrunk significantly.
According to Pennsylvania state election data and reported by the Daily Caller, Democrats have lost 336,269 registered voters in the state since Nov. 3, 2020. Democrats still hold a nearly 400,000 voter registration advantage over Republicans, though this a sharp decline from the 685,818 lead Democrats held going into the last presidential election.
In North Carolina, Democrats saw a decrease of 212,084 voters from December 2020 to April 2024. Democrats now only outnumber Republicans by 170,943 voters, a decrease of over 200,000 voters since 2020.
The numbers in Nevada were less staggering, with Democrats losing only 27,757 voters since December 2020. The Democratic majority in registrations over Republicans has shrunk from 96,875 in 2020, to 55,116 today.
All in all, Democrats have lost 576,110 voters in the three states combined.
According to CNN, Fewer than 200,000 combined votes decided the winner in these states in 2020. Biden won Pennsylvania by a little under 81,660 votes, and Nevada by 33,596. Former president Trump won the Tar Heel state by 74,483 votes.
Biden will need a massive turnout in each of three states if he wants any shot at victory.
The latest RealClearPolitics polling averages show Trump holding a 4.0-point lead in North Carolina, and a 3.2-point lead in Nevada. Biden is currently edging out Trump in Pennsylvania by 0.1 points.
However, while these figures are surely not what the Biden campaign wants to hear, Republican strategist Scott Jennings is cautioning people to “not over read” the data, according to the Daily Caller.
“But certainly Biden has a real problem on his hands among many segments and you can clearly see that in these results,” Jennings added. “The trick, of course, is that once people are registered, then you have to turn them out.”
A recent analysis performed by the Pew Research Center showed that the nation is basically split when it comes to overall voter registration, with 49 percent of voters registered as Democrats compared to 48 percent who are registered as Republicans.
While Jennings is right to caution Republican optimism, recent history has shown that swings in voter registrations can be very beneficial for Republicans.
Take Florida, for example. According to the Florida Division of Elections, from 2018 to 2022, Democrats only lost 47,727 registered voters. They also lost the voter registration advantage they held over Republicans.
Despite the modest gains, Republicans swept the floor in the 2022 gubernatorial election, with incumbent governor Ron DeSantis defeating Democratic challenger Charlie Crist by 1,507,897 votes, or 19.4 percent.
The shift really had to do with the man on the ballot. DeSantis’ actions during the pandemic and refusal to cower in the face of wokeness turned him into one of the most popular governors in the country.
If Trump wants to capitalize on these shifts away from the Democrats, he needs to make this election about the other man on the ballot.
While Trump does not have the surging popularity DeSantis had in 2022, he is running against a widely unpopular incumbent. According to RealClearPolitics, Biden’s latest approval rating average currently sits at 40.6 percent.
Gallup reported in February that Biden’s approval rating for his third year in office was a mere 39.8 percent, the second lowest approval for a president’s third year in the Gallup polling era. Only Jimmy Carter’s 37.4 percent was worse than Biden’s.
Carter went on to be destroyed in the 1980 general election by Ronald Reagan, suffering one of the worst defeats in presidential election history.
If Trump wants to replicate the outcome of the 1980 election, he has to make the focus of the campaign about Biden’s presidency.
Every speech, every event, every rally needs to be about how Biden has failed to deliver on anything he promised in 2020, and emphasize that Americans are worse off under Biden than they were under Trump.
And it’s not a difficult argument to make: Americans are paying more across the board for goods and services, housing and gas now than they were under Trump. Biden has made life more difficult for Americans, not better.
If Trump can stick to these points, he should have no problem winning over these ex-Democrats in November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post In 2020 Biden Won 2 Key States by 115K, Now He’s Lost Over 364K Voters in Same States appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Who could have imagined it: Eating a concoction of chemicals made to imitate real meat appears to be actually quite bad for you.
A new study postulates that eating vegan meats can have major negative effects on an individual’s health, such as increasing the risk of diabetes.
As the Daily Mail reported, those who consumed notable amounts of fake meat brands like Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat over eight weeks recorded higher blood sugar levels than those who consumed natural meats.
This increase in blood sugar levels could put plant-meat eaters at a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes in the future.
The 89 Singaporean study participants were chosen because they started out with a high risk of diabetes
The two-month study saw no noticeable changes in participants’ cholesterol, but did see considerable changes in the sodium levels for the group.
Meat-eaters reportedly had lower sodium levels than those who consumed fake meat products.
Most previous studies that found health benefits in the vegan diet looked at those who consumed natural foods. Researchers who conducted this trial specifically wanted to look at the consumption of highly processed vegan alternatives.
“A whole-foods, plant-based eating pattern generally includes legumes, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and is high in fiber,” the study noted. “All of these elements have been found to be protective against diabetes.”
The ultra-processed plant-based meat diet study did not show those same benefits, the researchers concluded.
“A plant-based meat [analog] diet did not show widespread cardiometabolic health benefits compared with omnivorous diets over 8 weeks,” the study concluded. “The composition of [plant-based meat analogs] may need to be considered in future trials.”
In other words, the report implied that fake-meat manufacturers need to go back to the drawing board and create something healthier.
While the study undoubtedly is helpful to anyone trying to persuade a friend or loved one away from faux meats, it’s hard to say this wasn’t already clear.
A quick read-through of the nutrition facts on one of these products should quickly dissuade anyone interested in considering the products.
Of course, when big names of the establishment like Bill Gates push for the sheep of the world to flock toward these alternatives, it’s unlikely that these will be going away.
A pretty good way of determining whether a food is healthy for you is to simply ask yourself one question — Did God make it?
If it was made by the divine hands of the Creator to provide sustenance to His children, it should be pretty good for you in moderation.
If it was thrown together in a lab using different chemicals, it’s probably not going to be very healthy.
While the study is not definitive, it’s a good sign to confirm what any functioning member of society already knows.
Avoid ultra-processed plant-based alternatives.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post New Study Shows How Unhealthy Fake Vegan Meat Truly Is – Stick with the Real Thing appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A hard-hitting sports commentator is changing the focus from touchdowns to God’s judgment.
Stephen A. Smith reacted to the death of NFL Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson on Thursday.
Smith expressed his belief that Simpson was falsely acquitted in his 1995 murder trial.
“Most people believe that he committed those murders,” Smith said of the case, speaking on ESPN’s “First Take.”
Stephen A. Smith on O.J. Simpson: “Most people believe that he committed those murders. I know that if I was on the jury, he would have been under the damn jail. I know that much. I believed he was guilty.” pic.twitter.com/gaJFk2JmET
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 11, 2024
“I know that if I was on the jury, he would have been under the damn jail. I know that much.”
“I believe he was guilty.”
In spite of Simpson’s hotly debated acquittal, Smith suggested that the former running back would be held accountable in the afterlife.
“The Lord will deal with him.”
Smith did clarify that his belief in Simpson’s guilt wasn’t a certainty, according to OutKick.
“I believe he was guilty, but I don’t know. I’m talking about based on the evidence that was placed before us during the trial overseen by Judge Lance Ito.
“This is what we saw on national television, and by most accounts, you found yourself believing he was guilty as hell.”
Simpson’s family revealed that he had died of cancer on Thursday, according to Fox News.
Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, as well as a friend of hers, Ron Goldman, in the 1996 trial, according to The Washington Post.
The former Buffalo Bills star did experience legal troubles after his shock acquittal — with judges and juries returning verdicts against him.
Simpson served nine years in the Nevada prison system on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping, having been released in 2017.
The families of the two victims were awarded $33.5 million in a civil judgment against Simpson, according to Fox Business.
California attorney David Cook is continuing attempts to collect on the hefty judgment in the wake of Simpson’s death.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: Stephen A. Smith Torches OJ Simpson Live on Air After News of His Death – ‘The Lord will Deal with Him’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
With dramatic stories of self-defense appearing in our news feeds almost every day, you have to wonder how gun-control advocates have still pontificated about the evils of gun ownership with a straight face.
True, a few bad actors have used guns to hurt, terrorize and kill the innocent.
But how many of those bad actors have been — or could have been — apprehended, if one of those citizens had also been armed?
An incident reported Wednesday by EastIdahoNews.com showed how a potentially lethal situation became an example of heroism, thanks to an 85-year-old woman armed with a handgun.
According to EastIdahoNews.com, Christine Jenneiahn was sleeping at home during the wee hours of March 13, when a man officials identified Derek Ephriam Condon, 39, broke into her house around 2 a.m.
The report, released by Bingham County prosecuting attorney Ryan Jolley and shared by the Bingham County Sheriff’s office on Facebook, noted that Jenneiahn’s disabled adult son, David, was sleeping downstairs when the invasion happened.
Condon went to Jenneiahn’s upstairs bedroom, and awakened her while pointing a flashlight and a pistol at her head.
Based on the blood police found on her bed and her pillow, they believe Condon hit her in the head, though Jenneiahn doesn’t quite remember when or how it happened.
Clearly, though, Jenneiahn was in grave danger, and Condon was ready and willing to kill to get what he wanted.
And what was it that he wanted?
According to Jolley’s report, Condon took Jenneiahn to the living room and handcuffed her to a chair, demanding to know where she kept her valuables and pointing a pistol to her head when she said she didn’t have much.
Then, as the New York Post explained, she told Condon she had two safes downstairs, without disclosing that her son was sleeping in a downstairs bedroom.
When Condon discovered that, however, he was enraged.
Returning to the living room, Condon threatened to kill her for failing to tell him about her son, in addition to issuing multiple other threats.
‘Heroic’ mom, 85, fatally shoots masked intruder while handcuffed to chair protecting disabled son during gunfight https://t.co/IBzd73rk1W pic.twitter.com/qTAZTVLrHN
— New York Post (@nypost) April 11, 2024
However, what Condon did not count on was the remarkable resilience of this otherwise frail old woman.
Despite suffering multiple injuries at Condon’s hands, while Condon was rummaging through the house, Jenneiahn dragged herself and the chair back to her bedroom, where she retrieved the .357 Magnum revolver she kept under her pillow.
From there, she dragged herself and the chair back to the living room, where she hid the gun in a nearby couch.
When Condon returned, Jolley’s report explained, Jenneiahn decided it was “now or never.” She drew her gun and “engaged Condon, striking him with both her shots.”
Condon then emptied his 9mm pistol at her, striking her abdomen, leg, arm and chest, before stumbling to the kitchen, where he died from his gunshot wounds to the chest.
Jenneiahn then collapsed, unable to call 911 for about 10 hours, until her son brought her a phone in the morning. The police finally arrived at the scene around noon.
After investigating the scene, the police and Jolley concluded that this “case presents an easy analysis of self-defense and justifiable homicide. It also presents one of the most heroic acts of self-preservation I have heard of.”
Jolley was full of praise for Jenneiahn, crediting her “grit, determination, and will to live” for saving her life that night.
The Bingham County Sheriff’s Office, in sharing Jolley’s report in a Facebook post, likewise praised Jenneiahn’s incredible bravery and tenacity, saying that the department was releasing the facts of the case to explain that “that there was a victim involved that displayed heroism, fortitude, and a will to live that we’d be remiss not to share.”
Clearly, this story would have ended much more tragically had Jenneiahn not been armed in some way.
Moreover, Jenneiahn displayed a courage and resilience in protecting herself and her disabled son that would have been impressive for someone half her age, let alone for a woman approaching 90.
As has been demonstrated time and time again, guns have been the great equalizer in these kinds of situations, especially for those lacking in physical strength.
A frail old woman like Jenneiahn wouldn’t have stood a chance had she not owned a gun and had the presence of mind (not to mention the force of will) to drag herself and her chair to the bedroom where she kept the weapon.
The strict gun-controlling measures advocated by liberal lawmakers hinder the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against thugs like Condon. Such measures would have ensured the deaths of Jenneiahn and her son in an incident like this.
It’s nothing short of baffling that our liberal elites have long been (presumably) aware of stories like this and yet they still advocate for gun control measures.
But gun control was never really about protecting law-abiding citizens, now, was it?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post 85-Year-Old Woman Pulls Out Hidden Revolver When Armed Robber Least Expects It appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
As the Biden administration continues to fail countless Americans by allowing millions of illegals to pour across our southern border, more state governments have begun to pick up the slack, following the lead of Texas.
Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill on Wednesday that strengthens state law enforcement’s ability to mitigate the migrant crisis.
S.B. 2340 functions much in the same way as a similar law in Texas, making it illegal to enter the state of Iowa if an individual has previously been deported or barred from entering the state.
The piece of legislation gives peace officers considerable power that they did not have before to handle the hoards of illegals.
Gov. Reynolds celebrated when signing the bill, speaking strongly on its importance in the face of a failing presidential administration.
“The Biden Administration has failed to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, putting the protection and safety of Iowans at risk,” she stated in a news release. “Those who come into our country illegally have broken the law, yet Biden refuses to deport them.”
Today, we give Iowa law enforcement the power to do what Joe Biden won’t: deport illegal criminals to protect our state. pic.twitter.com/GaQwdprekb
— Kim Reynolds (@KimReynoldsIA) April 10, 2024
“This bill gives Iowa law enforcement the power to do what he is unwilling to do: enforce immigration laws already on the books.”
The law will begin to take effect on July 1 and will make the crime a felony offense if the previous removal order against an individual was related to misdemeanor convictions for drug-related charges, a crime against another person or a felony conviction.
Of course, while the bill will undoubtedly take significant strides to create a safer Iowa, left-leaning groups have already begun to whine about a state attempting to keep law and order.
A local immigration rights group named Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice lamented about not being able to illegally enter the state and siphon away resources from American citizens.
“We know that we all belong here, Iowa is home, and we will stand together as workers, families and allies to defend each other,” the group claimed in a statement translated by CNN.
The ACLU couldn’t help but dissent as well, with executive director of the Iowa ACLU Mark Stringer releasing a statement, making wild claims of racism for enforcing the southern border.
“This legislation encourages and facilitates racial profiling and stereotyping. It undermines — not promotes — public safety and the rule of law,” he said. “It will consume already strapped state court and law enforcement resources.”
Nonetheless, despite the dissent from more liberal voices, the bill will undoubtedly have major positive effects in handling illegal immigration in Iowa.
Perhaps if the Biden administration took proper steps to ensure the southern border was secure, states wouldn’t have to take such major action as the Hawkeye State has.
Unfortunately, the world we live in has a spineless president, unable to do what is necessary for American safety.
Hopefully, that will change this November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Another State Joins Texas, Authorizes State and Local Cops to Soon Begin Arresting Illegal Immigrants appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
How incompetent does the leadership of a national political party have to be to schedule its nominating committee after the deadlines of two states to confirm the party’s nominee to be included on the ballot?
That’s a good question — and one the Democratic National Committee is apparently well-placed to answer.
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen sent a letter Tuesday to the Alabama Democratic Party and the DNC to inform both groups that the party must, under state law, confirm its presidential and vice presidential candidates by Aug. 15 to be eligible to appear on the state’s ballots in November.
The only problem with that is that Democratic National Convention isn’t scheduled to begin until Aug. 19. Whoops.
Of course, everyone knows that the incumbent, President Joe Biden, will be the Democrats’ nominee again this year, despite some conspiracy theories to the contrary. But that’s not the same as the DNC confirming those nominees to the state.
Letter to AL Democratic Party 4.9.24 by The Western Journal on Scribd
Biden faces a similar problem in Ohio, as The Western Journal reported Monday.
In case you were wondering, the Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15-18 in Milwaukee, well before the deadlines in both Alabama and Ohio.
Neither state is likely to be competitive, it should be noted. Combined, the two states represent 26 electoral votes that Biden may not even have a shot at, but he probably didn’t have much of a shot at them anyway.
Former President Donald Trump won Ohio by better than 8 points in each of the last two presidential elections, and he demolished his Democratic opponents in Alabama by more than 25 points in both 2016 and 2020.
Still, this isn’t a good look for Team Biden.
So far, the Democrats’ response to the issue has been simple: Rather than replace the people responsible for their terrible planning, they’re simply denying that there’s a problem.
“We’re monitoring the situation in Ohio and we’re confident that Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states,” a Biden campaign spokesperson told ABC News last week.
After the news about Alabama broke, a Biden campaign spokesperson — perhaps the same one — made a similar statement to Fox News, but actually amped up the denial.
“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states,” the unnamed spokesperson said. “State officials have the ability to grant provisional ballot access certification prior to the conclusion of presidential nominating conventions.”
Some state officials may have that ability, but not those in Alabama.
“Under Alabama law, there are no ‘provisional certifications’ for candidates,” the Alabama secretary of state’s office told CNN. “All candidates must comply with current Alabama law to gain ballot access.”
So, back to my original question: How incompetent does the leadership of a national political party have to be to schedule its nominating committee after the deadlines of two states to confirm the party’s nominee to be included on the ballot?
Sit back and grab the popcorn. It looks like we’re about to find out.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Biden Now at Risk of Being Left Off Two State Election Ballots – 26 Electoral College Votes at Stake appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Norfolk Southern Railway has agreed to pay residents in and around East Palestine, Ohio, more than $600 million after one of the company’s trains derailed resulting in an environmental catastrophe.
The Feb. 3, 2023, derailment caused fires that burned for days and emitted chemicals, such as hydrogen chloride and phosgene, into the air and ground.
Residents were ordered to leave the area by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, and a year later the long-term effects of the pollution remain unknown.
Images of the disaster captivated the country:
According to a company news release published on Tuesday morning, Norfolk Southern will pay those affected by the disaster as part of a settlement that is a repose to a class-action lawsuit.
“Norfolk Southern Corporation announced Tuesday that it has reached a $600 million agreement in principle to resolve a consolidated class action lawsuit relating to the East Palestine derailment,” the company said.
Norfolk Southern added, “If approved by the court, the agreement will resolve all class action claims within a 20-mile radius from the derailment and, for those residents who choose to participate, personal injury claims within a 10-mile radius from the derailment.”
The company claimed in its news release that offering to settle was an effort to “to make it right for the people of East Palestine and the surrounding communities.”
Norfolk Southern admitted the calamity had affected drinking water, home values and the health and well-being of those in and around East Palestine.
The company said in addition to the cash settlement, it would continue to help people in the area have access to clean water and would help them prop up the local economy.
“Individuals and businesses will be able to use compensation from the settlement in any manner they see fit to address potential adverse impacts from the derailment,” the company said.
Norfolk Southern added, “This could include healthcare needs and medical monitoring, property restoration and diminution, and compensation for any net business loss.
“In addition, individuals within 10-miles of the derailment may, at their discretion, choose to receive additional compensation for any past, current, or future personal injury from the derailment.”
The company added that it had already invested a sum well in excess of $100 million into the region.
Norfolk Southern also denied it was culpable for the derailment as part of the settlement noting, “This agreement does not include or constitute any admission of liability, wrongdoing, or fault.”
The company said it hopes a federal court will accept the settlement by the end of the month.
People who had been part of the lawsuit could be compensated by the end of the year, pending approval by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
The derailment devastated wildlife and was blamed on improper braking safety and maintenance practices, Bloomberg reported.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Norfolk Southern Announces Massive Settlement for Those Within a 20-Mile Radius of East Palestine appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Norfolk Southern Announces Massive Settlement for Those Within a 20-Mile Radius of East Palestine | The Gateway Pundit | by Johnathan Jones, The Western Journal
Norfolk Southern denied it was culpable for the catastrophic derailment in a company news release announcing the settlement.
Is China getting ready to take on the world superpower in battle, or is it just being a bully on the playground?
The question is keeping analysts up at night, especially in light of increasingly aggressive behavior from the People’s Republic of China.
On Sunday, the United States held its first joint naval exercises in the South China Sea with the Philippines, Japan and Australia.
The purported reason for the drills was to demonstrate the four countries’ “collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” according to a statement by the four nations’ defense chiefs on Saturday.
While the statement did not explicitly name China, Beijing’s increasing forcefulness in claiming territorial rights over the maritime region was widely viewed as the driving force behind the military exercise, according to the Japan Times.
However, it seems as if China did not like being left out of the picture.
On Sunday, Beijing made a surprise announcement that they were having military “joint naval and air combat patrols” on the same day, in the same contested waters, according to Voice of America.
China holds ‘combat patrol’ in South China Sea amid US-led war games https://t.co/dTFNqK6QeM pic.twitter.com/LnFGFym31U
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 7, 2024
To add insult to injury, Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command released a statement that read, “All military activities that mess up the situation in the South China Sea and create hotspots are under control,” — a move that seemed aimed at belittling the cooperative efforts of the four nations.
The drill was a precursor to the first trilateral summit with the leaders of the Philippines and Japan, due to be held by President Joe Biden in a few days. China is reportedly high on the agenda with growing concerns over the disputed South China Sea, according to Voice of America.
Prior to the PLA’s combat patrol, the Chinese side issued several strong warnings against “Philippines’ provocations and its attempts to introduce external forces as well as Manila’s tricks of “playing victim,” according to the China Communist Party-owned Global Times.
The Global Times also claimed that on April 2, Chinese President Xi Jinping directly conveyed China’s stance on the South China Sea to U.S. President Joe Biden, stating that “China has indisputable sovereignty over Nansha Qundao and its adjacent waters, noting the U.S. is not a party to the South China Sea issue and should not intervene in matters between China and the Philippines.”
The Southern Theater Command of the PLA organized a joint naval and air combat patrol in the South China Sea on Sunday, the PLA announced, on the same day of joint drills attended by the US, the Philippines, Japan and Australia, which analysts said was a highly defiant and… pic.twitter.com/P1stKcMoQF
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) April 7, 2024
China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, a claim rejected by the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The U.S. relies on free passage through the South China Sea for trade and military movement, CFR reports.
To strengthen its claims, China is building up islands in the area, adding military bases and airstrips.
Additionally, Xi Jinping has instructed China to brace for “dangerous storms,” in addition to stockpiling fuel and food supplies, and trying to insulate its economy against potential sanctions — moves that could signal preparations for a worst-case scenario, according to a recent essay by professors Michael Beckley and Hal Brands in ForeignPolicy.com.
Beckley and Brands contend that “many of Xi’s actions — the brutal zero-COVID lockdowns, the concentration camps in Xinjiang, the crushing of Hong Kong’s freedoms — betray ruthlessness.”
“Combined with the other changes China is undergoing, these forms of internal aggression should make us very nervous about the external aggression that may lie ahead,” they warn.
China undoubtedly has ambitions to expand its sphere of influence and displace the United States as the preeminent global power.
But its actions also seem driven by more immediate concerns, such as securing its territorial claims in the South China Sea and countering what it sees as foreign interference in its domestic affairs.
However, the threat is a real one.
China is no mere “desert country” that can be easily conquered or controlled. It is a military and economic powerhouse that would pose an immense challenge in any confrontation.
Given these stakes, the question is not whether China is preparing to take on the U.S. but whether the U.S. has the strength to withstand such an attack, should it come.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Beijing Conducts ‘Combat Patrol’ as US Ships Enter Contested Waters appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
As Missouri teen Kaylee Gain struggles to recover from a March beating, the high school she and her alleged attacker attend is accused of refusing to release records requested by state Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
Bailey is considering charging the teen as an adult, according to the Daily Mail.
Gain, 16, suffered a skull fracture and a brain bleed that put her in a coma for two weeks after the March 8 incident. Gain, who is white, and her alleged attacker, who is black, are students at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis; the attack took place about a mile from the school amid a fight between two groups of teens.
Bailey has said the incident was spawned in the school’s DEI-obsessed culture.
The assaulter’s name is Maurnice DeClue. Don’t let her get away with this https://t.co/BA92QltqHa
— Redeemed Zoomer (@redeemed_zoomer) April 3, 2024
Bailey said that the school district made “egregious errors” about the incident and said the district is violating the law by not promptly sharing the records he has requested.
“Instead of directing your ire at a date reference or making ad-hominem attacks, you should follow Missouri law and do so immediately,” Bailey said.
Cindy Reeds Ownsby, an attorney representing the school district, wrote in a recent email that Bailey is the problem.
“It is disappointing to have an attorney general that intentionally disrespects public school district administrators and elected officials by sending error-filled correspondence to intimidate and threaten their leadership,” she wrote.
Ownsby said the records would be provided by April 15.
Last week, a judge ruled that a certification hearing will be held on May 10 to determine whether the alleged attacker will be tried as an adult, according to USA Today.
County attorneys sought the delay to accumulate information on the attacker’s social and family life.
“Our position is that she should not be certified,” defense attorney Greg Smith said.
“We understand that the law says that there has to be a certification hearing based on what she has been charged with. That’s non-negotiable but our position is she should not be certified. Everything is out there, about her being an honor student, she has taken AP courses, she has no history with the juvenile court. She has been the victim of bullying. There are other facts that we are going to save for court,” he said.
Video of the incident is graphic and could be disturbing for some viewers.
Kaylee Gain is alive and awake 3 weeks after Maurnice DeClue went too far in this fight near their St. Louis, Missouri high school
Kaylee suffered a skull fracture and brain damage. She can only walk with assistance and has limited conversation abilityhttps://t.co/09d3PZH9sD
— Brendan (@BrendanMcInnis) March 30, 2024
Gain family lawyer Bryan Kaemmerer will argue the attacker should be tried as an adult.
Kaemmerer revealed: “Kaylee is still showing signs of significant cognitive impairment during the limited conversations that she is able to have, and she tends to reiterate the same short sentences over and over. Although Kaylee seems to realize she is in hospital, she does not understand why she is there,” he said, according to the Mirror.
“Given the particularly violent nature of this assault, and also taking into account the devastating injuries that Kaylee has incurred, it is difficult to imagine a more appropriate case for a juvenile to be certified as an adult,” Kaemmerer said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Kaylee Gain’s School Refuses to Turn Over Records After State AG Says He Wants Alleged Attacker Charged as an Adult appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
More than three months after the murder of a high-profile art dealer who flew in the same partying circles as former first lady Michelle Obama, the art dealer’s former husband is facing extradition to Brazil in connection with the crime.
Daniel Garcia Carrera, 53, has been accused in a murder-for-hire scheme that led to the Jan. 15 death of Brent Sikkema, 75, who was found stabbed to death in his Rio de Janeiro home, according to the New York Post.
The murder came just before Sikkema was planning to return to the U.S.
To extradite Garcia Carrera, Brazil must make a formal request to U.S. authorities. A hearing on the extradition request will be held on June 3.
Murder suspect claims Brent Sikkema’s ex offered him $200K to kill the NYC art dealer https://t.co/EQwfCP8sky pic.twitter.com/f3TUQAZSQ5
— New York Post (@nypost) February 9, 2024
Garcia Carrera was arrested by FBI on March 20 in New York City, according to the New York Post.
At the time, he was labeled a suspect in Sikkema’s death.
The FBI also alleged that Garcia Carrera was planning to leave the country with Lucas Sikkema, 13, who Garcia Carrera and Sikkema were raising as their son.
Brent Sikkema and Garcia Carrera had been a couple for 15 years but were going through a messy custody battle over the teenager at the time of Sikkema’s murder.
Authorities claimed that Garcia Carrera was planning to flee to his native Cuba.
Garcia Carrera was released on a $1 million bond but was also required to wear an ankle monitor, court documents say.
A report in The New York Times said $40,000 was stolen from Sikkema’s Brazilian home at the time of his murder.
Alejandro Triana Prevez was later arrested after surveillance footage showed him at the home near the time of Sikkema’s death.
Gregorio Andrade, an attorney for Prevez, said Prevez has accused Garcia Carrera of offering him $200,000 to perform the killing.
“He manipulated my client,” Andrade said.
Fabiana Marques, an attorney for Garcia Carrera, said her client is innocent.
“It’s important to note that Daniel was not given an opportunity to be heard by police, despite proactively offering himself for questioning via email,” she said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Artist with Michelle Obama Connection Stabbed to Death Just Before Returning to US appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Some years ago, my family and I visited Ellis Island. From 1892 to 1954, it served as the nation’s busiest immigrant inspection station, processing over 12 million immigrants seeking entry into the United States.
Part of the tour included a display of some frightening-looking tools that were used for the careful health check immigrants were subjected to before being allowed into the country.
Medical tools at the Ellis island Museum in NY to examine immigrants. pic.twitter.com/TFR4sPMqZn
— emma_cicc (@CiccEmma) July 16, 2018
“Ellis Island doctors were particularly watching for signs of contagious diseases like trachoma, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and other states of health such as poor physique, pregnancy and mental disability. Any immigrant suspected of being in questionable health was chalk-marked with a letter of the alphabet (“B” for back problems, “F” for face, “H” for heart) and taken out of line and moved to a physical or mental examination room,” according to the National Park Service.
In a History Channel documentary, for instance, an immigrant who arrived in 1928. identified as Lillian Galetta, said that her family was lucky that they were healthy because “there were many that were sent back.”
Ellis Island represented the American dream to many immigrants, but it was not without restrictions. The goal was to admit healthy, able-bodied individuals who could support themselves and their families without becoming a drain on public resources. This reflected the prevailing attitude of the time, which favored immigrants who could contribute to the nation’s economic growth and development.
A lot has changed since then.
According to a Just The News report published Friday, Dr. Harvey Risch, senior research scientist and professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said the United States is not doing enough to monitor the health status and health histories of immigrants crossing the southern border.
Risch’s comments come amid a surge in border crossings, with almost 190,000 migrants crossing the southern border in February alone, according to Customs and Border Protection.
While acknowledging that many viruses and diseases, such as COVID-19, are often taken in stride by society, Risch highlighted the potential risks posed by certain health issues, including tuberculosis and antibiotic-resistant strains of the disease.
“We’ve certainly had epidemics of – low level epidemics – of tuberculosis and antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis at times in various inner-city places in the country,” he said, adding that these outbreaks come and go, but are generally managed by the health-care system.
People crossing the Mexico US border are not checked for health. Even back in the day on Ellis Island there were health checks.
We are becoming a third world nation:
Tuberculosis breaks out at Chicago migrant shelters following measles caseshttps://t.co/gDpDFEVaGA
— Տᗩᑎᗪᖇᗩ (@TheSandraHQ) April 4, 2024
Risch is not the first to raise this warning.
In a commentary piece published by USA Today in August, Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Health, wrote, “Migrants could be bringing infectious diseases across our southern border. When they are bussed to New York and elsewhere, these diseases go with them.”
According to Siegel, Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb told him that, “Border Patrol and local agencies have seen all types of diseases like tuberculosis, scabies, COVID, hepatitis A and B, gonorrhea, syphilis, mumps, chicken pox, dengue fever, etc.”
Siegel also wrote that an internist named Dr. James Hodges, who works at the Texas border, told him that open border policies were leading to more drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis in the United States.
For decades, Americans have been shielded from many major diseases that have ravaged other countries, thanks to strong public health measures.
However, with little to no exposure to these diseases, our immune systems have been spared exposure to some infections found abroad.
Now, with not so much as a temperature check for most immigrants entering the southern border, we are, in effect, leaving our collective immune system’s core vulnerability exposed and broadcasting an open call for the next global pathogen.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Epidemiologist Warns About What’s NOT Happening at the Border – We’re Flirting with Disaster appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
You would think that, given the cost of living and the exodus already underway from the Golden State, nobody would be trying to make California more expensive than it already is.
But this is California, a state where Jerry “Governor Moonbeam” Brown can be considered a relative political moderate in the whole scheme of things because he occasionally kept an eye on the state budget.
So of course somebody’s trying to make it more expensive — and not only that, that somebody is a group of environmentalists looking to shut down nearly 10 percent of the state’s energy production. And not only that, that energy comes from one of the cleanest, most reliable sources of energy we have.
Welcome to California, as they say.
According to a Wednesday report from The Associated Press, an environmentalist group called Friends of the Earth is suing the U.S. Department of Energy over its decision to award funds to keep California’s last remaining nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, open.
The DOE awarded $1 billion to keep the plant open past its planned 2025 closure date after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said shuttering Diablo Canyon, which provides 9 percent of the state’s power, would leave California vulnerable to blackouts, according to regional conservative outlet The Center Square.
“As we experienced during the record heat wave last September, climate change-driven extreme events are causing unprecedented stress on our power grid — the Diablo Canyon Power Plant is important to support energy reliability as we accelerate progress towards achieving our clean energy and climate goals,” Newsom said in a 2023 statement.
In 2022, Newsom signed a bill to allocate $1.4 billion in loans to keep Diablo Canyon, located in San Luis Obispo, to extend its service life to 2030.
“Climate change is causing unprecedented stress on California’s energy system and I appreciate the Legislature’s action to maintain energy reliability as the state accelerates the transition to clean energy,” Newsom said at the time.
The move came after the state announced earlier in the year that it would ban sales of gas-powered cars by 2035; just days afterwards the California Independent System Operator, the non-profit organization which manages most of California’s energy grid, put the Golden State on notice that the stress charging electric vehicles would put on the grid would simply be too much to close a source of reliable, carbon-free energy generation.
CISO pleaded with EV owners to not charge their cars during “flex alerts” because it was “likely to strain the grid with increased energy demands, especially over the [Labor Day] holiday weekend.”
In January, the Biden administration chipped in $1.1 billion to extend the plant’s service life. So, naturally, the environmentalists sued, because reality doesn’t have to matter when you’re a privileged ideologue.
“The environmental impacts from extending the lifespan of this aging power plant at this point in time have not been adequately addressed or disclosed to the public,” the group’s lawsuit said.
While a safety assessment concluded there weren’t risks to keeping the nearly 40-year-old plant alive, Friends of the Earth called that “grossly deficient.”
“[Pacific Gas & Electric] has long said the twin-domed plant is safe, an assessment endorsed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the AP noted.
So, just to get this straight: A non-carbon-based source of energy generation that provides roughly a tenth of a state’s electricity is going to stay open thanks to government spending. This is in a state where, according to EnergySage, residents already pay an average of $3,060 a year on their electricity bill — 34 percent higher than the national average.
The state is hemorrhaging residents and revenue thanks, in part, to the cost of living — making that 2035 EV mandate more unlikely than ever, especially if there are rolling blackouts due to lack of electricity.
Friends of the Earth should be doing a coordinated group dance at Burning Man to celebrate this development. Instead, they’re suing. Why? Because nuclear is super-duper evil — even if it’s safe and clean.
Enviros may invoke the specter of Chernobyl or Three-Mile Island, but outliers like that have been sorted. The real issue is that they want scarcity. They desperately want us all to do without. That’s why wind, solar and other renewables — despite the fact that they can’t reasonably provide for our energy needs — are the only types of electricity generation these types of radicals will accept. If we could do away with the grid, period, that would be even better!
Americans shouldn’t have to listen to the piffle. Neither should the courts — and one hopes this suit is tossed as soon as feasible.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Environmentalists Suing to Shut Down Power Plant Providing 9% of State’s Power appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Forget everything you think you know about the path of Monday’s solar eclipse.
Well, OK… maybe not everything. But the projected “path of totality” has shifted enough that some people who were expecting to see the full monty without leaving their homes may be disappointed.
“A new eclipse map — based on an updated figure for the radius of the sun — was published recently by John Irwin, a master in eclipse computations,” Forbes reported last weekend.
We’ve included the updated map below, because if you’ve been thinking how lucky you are to be right on the fringe of the area where the total eclipse will be viewable, well, that might not actually be the case.
The issue stems from the fact that no one is absolutely certain about the diameter of the sun, Forbes said.
This surprised me, by the way. Scientists confidently state where pandemics come from (or don’t) or by how many degrees the earth’s average temperature is going to rise over the next five decades, but they don’t know how big the sun is?
I mean, humans have been looking at the sun for … well, forever. Since there have been humans. No one has figured out how to measure it yet?
It’s only the source of all our planet’s energy, the largest object in the solar system. Or is it, even? Apparently there’s no way to know for sure.
Anyhoo, if you don’t know how big a light source is, it’s going to be challenging to predict the size of the shadow it might cast.
Other measurements are important, of course, and we know those with some confidence — the distance between the sun, moon and earth, for example, and the size of the moon that will be casting the shadow that we call an eclipse.
But the size of the sun? One scientist who has been working for over 10 years on solar eclipse calculations told Forbes that that number is basically up to the person doing the math.
“The solar radius is one of the parameters that enter into eclipse computations,” Luca Quaglia said in an email to the outlet. “But the choice of its value is really left to the eclipse computer.”
For well over a century, scientists have generally used the “standard value” of 959.63 arc seconds — “an arc second being one 3,600th of a degree,” Forbes explained.
“Measurements and observations in the last decade have demonstrated that this value is slightly too small,” Quaglia said. The actual diameter is now thought to be more like 960 arc seconds.
That’s enough of a difference to shift the path of totality by more than a third of a mile, Forbes said.
At any rate, the new, updated map appears below.
It should be noted, however, that this map is based on that 960 arc second estimate that no one is apparently certain is accurate.
Caveat emptor.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Scientists Warn Eclipse Totality Path Has Shifted from What Was Previously Projected appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A 7-year-old boy in Georgia gave police and child protective services all they could handle.
His crime? Riding his bike around and getting free cookies.
Reason reports Jackson Widner, the youngest of Beth and Glenn Widner’s four children caught the attention of authorities in Canton, a suburb of Atlanta, in August 2018.
One day, while walking home from swim practice with his siblings about two blocks from his family’s home, Jackson lagged behind and stopped at a grocery store for a free cookie.
Store employees thought it was odd to see a 7-year-old alone and called the police. While Jackson refused to tell the police where he lived as his parents taught him not to disclose that information to strangers, they were able to find out by other means he was swimming at the local YMCA.
After discovering where Jackson lived, the police told his father, Glenn, that it wasn’t safe to let Jackson be out alone. Child Protective Services was called, and a case worker questioned the family about the four children’s whereabouts during the day.
Later, Beth let Jackson go for a ride on his new bike on Jan. 2. After an older woman at the park told him he shouldn’t be riding alone, Jackson rode to the grocery store for another free cookie.
The police arrived again after being informed Jackson was unsupervised. Jackson called Beth on his watch phone to tell her the police wanted a word. When she arrived, Jackson was sitting in the back of a squad car as if he’d just attempted a robbery.
Beth later learned Child Services was notified.
After yet another cookie bike riding spree on Jan. 18th, the police took Jackson home themselves. The senior office accused Glenn of “contributing to delinquency of the minor,” stating he could face jail time and felony charges. When Glenn asked what law he broke, one officer said, “You can Google it.”
After visits from more case workers, the Widners had enough.
They decided to move out of city limits rather than face more harassment.
What’s the moral of the story? There is absolutely nothing government bureaucrats and meddling government do-gooders won’t try to control. Nothing.
We would be having a different conversation if Jackson stole a car, robbed the grocery store, or was discovered to have been underage drinking. But, a free cookie and riding his bike?
While this story took place in 2018 – 2019, it should still serve as a warning: Government considers nothing off-limits. Parents don’t know best, the government does.
Appearing to have our best interests in mind, they will not hesitate to meddle in our private lives even in the most innocuous circumstances.
C.S. Lewis put it best.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Police, Child Services Harass Child, 7, After Parents Let Him Ride Bike, Eat Cookie appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A Washington, D.C., jury convicted Rebecca Lavrenz of Falcon, Colorado, known on social media as the “J6 Praying Grandma,” of four federal misdemeanor charges Thursday related to her participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, incursion of the U.S. Capitol.
The 71-year-old faces up to a year in prison and more than $200,000 in fines, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported.
According to federal court documents, Lavrenz’s crimes were entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a restricted area, disorderly conduct in the Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol.
Federal prosecutors said in a court filing that cellphone data and video footage showed Lavrenz entered the Capitol at approximately 2:43 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, about 90 minutes after the conclusion of then-President Donald Trump’s speech on the Ellipse.
She then walked to the Capitol Rotunda and exited the building at approximately 2:53 p.m.
So Lavrenz had been in the Capitol for about 10 minutes. The DOJ did not accuse her of engaging in violence or destroying any property.
The Biden DOJ wants to throw 70-year-old grandmother Rebecca Lavrenz in jail for a year and hit her with $210,000 in fines.
Her crime?
Praying in the Capitol for 10 minutes on January 6th.
Meanwhile illegal aliens not only go unpunished for their crimes, but are rewarded… pic.twitter.com/7d6uhaZCYg
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 4, 2024
Lavrenz told the Gazette she was surprised by Thursday’s verdict, but she believes “God wanted it to turn out this way so my voice could be amplified. We have to wake up our country.”
Unlike many Jan. 6 cases with short jury deliberations, the 12-member jury at the federal court in the District of Columbia deliberated her case for 26 hours.
“The deliberation was good because obviously at least one person on the jury was fighting for me, and many people have been convicted in the first hour,” Lavrenz said.
She recounted to the Gazette that she felt led by God to drive across the country to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the irregularities of the 2020 presidential election.
“The whole reason I went to the Capitol was to pray,” Lavrenz said. “I didn’t get into this for myself. I was there to stand up for my country. God led me to go there and into the building to stand up for my First Amendment rights to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
While in the Capitol, she “felt God’s presence on me,” she said.
In an emotional video posted to social media last month ahead of her trial, Lavrenz said, “My own country is treating me like a criminal just because I believe that they stole my rightful president.”
“And just standing up for my country makes me a criminal, and it’s not right. It feels so weird to be here,” she added in the video, which she made in D.C.
In tears as I drive by the Capitol for the first time since January 2021.
My own country is treating me like a criminal. I’m here because I love my country. America is worth saving and I won’t give up.#j6trial #j6prayingrandma pic.twitter.com/hpW2MVOVJd
— Rebecca Lavrenz (@j6prayingrandma) March 20, 2024
The Gazette noted that if Lavrenz had been acquitted, she would have been the first Jan. 6 defendant to have been.
In January on the third anniversary of the Capitol incursion, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves gave an update on the prosecutions.
“An important note when it comes to our prosecutions about those who remained outside the building: We have used our prosecutorial discretion to primarily focus on those who entered the building or those who engaged in corrupt conduct on Capitol grounds,” he said.
But he added any who entered the Capitol grounds might yet be prosecuted.
1) people walk all over the capitol grounds every single day. Treating it as illegal for a single day is anarcho-tyrannical. 2) I covered the event. I witnessed zero visual or audio indication that capitol grounds themselves were deemed off-limits. https://t.co/T0vL2Kp5wc
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) January 7, 2024
The Department of Justice said in a news release at the time more than 1,265 defendants had been charged in nearly all 50 states and D.C.
Of these, 1,186 had been charged with entering a restricted area.
“Approximately 749 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6. Approximately 467 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration,” the DOJ said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post 71-Year-Old Grandma Convicted on All Charges by DC Jury After Praying in Capitol on Jan. 6 appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
It sounds like the setup to a joke: a class to teach residents of the Bay Area how to leave California. All you need is an unwashed hippie, a rabbi and a talking Republican duck.
But, no: According to The San Francisco Standard, it’s instead one of the few good-news entrepreneurial stories out of the Golden State these days.
The class is the brainchild of Punam Navalgund of Intero Real Estate Services, who hosts it over Zoom (of course).
“Taught through the Campbell Union High School District’s adult education program, the class also helps people connect with trusted lawyers, real estate agents, accountants and even counselors in their chosen destination,” the Standard reported on March 15.
While some of her pupils are looking to decamp to less-expensive areas of California — Fresno and Temecula, in particular, were mentioned as destinations — Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Nevada and Texas were the most popular landing spots for Navalgund’s students.
“I’m a problem-solver. I hear what struggles people are having and try to figure out a solution,” she told the Standard.
“Many homesellers really feel stuck in their homes.”
Well, yes, that is a problem: Census data released last month showed that only two counties in the Bay Area experienced population growth between July 2022 and July 2023; every other county in the sprawling Northern California region lost residents.
Between July 2021 and July 2022, a Stanford study found, the state lost a net 407,000 residents to other states. Furthermore, the number of people who left the state jumped during the pandemic, according to The Mercury News in San Jose, with more than 800,000 leaving in both 2021 and 2022.
Overall, the Public Policy Institute of California estimated that between 2010 and 2022, 8.5 million people moved out of the state against only 6.3 million people moving in.
This is what happens when you have to deal with high costs of living, rampant crime, quality of life issues and being around other Californians, one supposes: The desperation to escape sinks in.
So, yes — I suppose this is a booming business in an area where retail chains are fleeing and once-iconic malls are shuttering.
However, it is the most California thing imaginable to have a Zoom class teaching Californians how to jump off their own sinking ship.
Roughly 50 people were enrolled in the class at the time of the article — a lower number from when it started, but not due to a flagging number of people who need to figure out how to find their way out of Cali.
“Class enrollment has dipped from an early 2023 attendance peak, partly due to her taking some time away from work, and not a dip in demand,” the Standard reported.
One attendee, Ukranian-born engineer Ilana Shternshain, said she wanted a change of pace after working in Silicon Valley; she said those who “don’t want to work all their life” in the grueling world of Big Tech should consider it.
The class, Shternshain said, taught her about “nailing down where you would want to move to, what kinds of ideas to entertain in your head, what’s important to you, what kind of lifestyle you want to manage or have when you move there.”
That destination was eventually the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada. Shternshain quit working full-time and focused on an investment firm she founded.
“The only downside is the distance from our friends,” she said. “That’s something that anybody can anticipate if they make a move.”
Christine Howes, a pediatric nurse who is a Bay Area native — along with her husband — said she took the class because both were tired of the Bay Area grind. When her sister found out about the class and asked to join along with her, she accepted.
“I had already done like a ton of research over the years, working up toward this. Even then, she brought new information that I wasn’t aware of,” Howes said of Navalgund. “I found it very helpful, and so did my sister-in-law.”
“It’s never easy selling your home and buying a home, and she just made it a more pleasurable experience,” she added. (Howes was one of the “graduates” who remained in-state, settling in Clovis, California, in Fresno County.)
“It’s very much a small town feel, but it has a lot of the bigger town amenities,” Howes said. “It’s more of a laid-back lifestyle. We have views of the Sierras all around us during the winter, and it’s gorgeous. Summers are hot and miserable, but that’s what air-conditioning and the pool are for, so we’re happy.”
Leaving the Bay Area for greener pastures? A class by Punam Navalgund has helped nearly 50 adults find new homes elsewhere, offering guidance on finances, legalities, and more. Here’s where they’re heading and why: https://t.co/jYMJzvEOiB
— The San Francisco Standard (@sfstandard) April 4, 2024
Which is all quite wonderful, in both cases — but they need someone to tell them this?
Since the first colonists began arriving in what would eventually become the United States back in the 17th century, we were able to readily find out for ourselves how to move to greener pastures if it was advantageous to us.
It was never particularly difficult — so much so, in fact, that we quickly found our way to California and made it a state in 1850. This was before the Transcontinental Railroad, air conditioning or the fair-trade half-caff oat milk latte, either, so it’s not like the Golden State was as attractive to the laptop warrior class as it is these days, either.
Now, in 2024, we have U-Haul and Zillow and a great big wide web of information that allows us to pick up a handheld screen constantly connected to said web through magic wireless technology and research virtually anything about anywhere we want to move within the United States — or outside of it, for that matter.
If you are currently living somewhere, it has never been easier to work out the logistics of moving somewhere else, especially in California. How dense do you need to be to have someone teach you something generations of Americans have figured out without even having a car, much less a Tesla?
Yet, Punam Navalgund is making good coin, one assumes, on video classes designed to teach people how to get out of a state that can’t seem to keep people in it.
And you wonder why the Bay Area is one of the most reliably liberal places in America, year after year? Good grief.
I’d still say it’s all a huge joke — but the hippie, the rabbi and the talking Republican duck all declined to renew their leases and moved to Texas. There goes that.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Dense and Desperate Californians Need Class to Learn How to Leave the State appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
They have good reasons for doing it. And we have good reasons for not trusting them.
Sometimes, two seemingly contradictory statements each contain essential truths.
Last week, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb, of Indiana, signed Executive Order 24-05, a statewide disaster emergency declaration in advance of Monday’s expected total solar eclipse.
Parts of Indiana lay in the eclipse’s path of totality. For that reason, Holcomb predicted “several hundred thousand visitors” to the state.
If that happens, then the massive influx of people “may well stress and/or interfere with first responder and public safety communications and emergency response systems such that a technological or other emergency may occur,” Holcomb’s order read.
Fortunately, according to WLS, Indiana’s membership in the Emergency Management Assistance Compact allows it to call on other member states for resources.
Indiana has not seen a total solar eclipse since 1869 and will not see another until 2099.
Thus, officials in The Hoosier State and elsewhere have begun preparations for a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Chairman Shaun Gilliant, of the Essex County New York Board of Supervisors, for instance, explained that he and other county officials declared a state of emergency in anticipation of heavy traffic and even cellular service disruptions, according to NBC 5 in New York.
According to WHIO in Dayton, Ohio, the city council in nearby Riverside will decide at Thursday night’s meeting whether to declare a temporary emergency.
“The City of Riverside is expected to more than double its population for this event,” the city said last month.
In other words, state and local officials across the path of totality expect an event that will tax their normal resources.
Richard Fienberg, of the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Eclipse Task Force, put that event in an understandable context.
“Having a total solar eclipse pass through the U.S. is kind of like having 20 or 30 Super Bowls happening all at once,” Fienberg said according to Time.
State and local officials, therefore, appear to have taken appropriate action in advance of the big event.
In so doing, however, some officials might have either observed or anticipated a curious reaction from a skeptical public.
“This is nothing negative about the eclipse,” county administrator Robert Hagemann of Jefferson County, New York, told WWNY-TV in an email.
That kind of reassurance says less about the emergency declarations than it does about the times in which we live.
For instance, during the total eclipse, sky watchers might also catch an otherwise impossible daytime glimpse of the Pons-Brooks comet. As it approached the sun in July, the cryovolcanic comet spewed gas and ice that gave it the appearance of having horns, which led to the nickname “devil’s comet.”
Total solar eclipses occur only rarely. And Monday’s eclipse might make visible a “devil’s comet” that passes Earth about once every 71 years.
Could God be sending his sinful children a celestial message?
Indeed, The Washington Times observed that social media had caught fire with “sensational conspiracy theories,” some of which “draw spurious connections between scriptural verses and the upcoming eclipse.”
The Times, of course, dismissed those theories as “unsupported by empirical evidence and stem[ming] from a misinterpretation of astronomical events.” And they may well be.
On the other hand, God could hardly choose a more appropriate time to warn us of the need for repentance.
Furthermore, dismissing “sensational conspiracy theories” misses the twofold point.
First, from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the federal government’s COVID-era censorship of information that powerful people found inconvenient to their fear-mongering narrative, the conspiracy theorists have a far better truth-telling record than does the establishment media.
Second, state and local officials — to say nothing of the tyrannical federal government — do not deserve citizens’ trust. After what they did during COVID, for instance, they can do nothing without arousing rightful suspicion of their motives.
In short, government officials certainly can justify eclipse-related emergency declarations.
But we also know what they are capable of doing to us. So we must never trust them for any reason.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Officials Along Path of Eclipse Quietly Declaring States of Emergency appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The “sanctuary city” of Chicago has been flooded with President Joe Biden’s illegal aliens, and along with that flood has come a potentially deadly disease.
On Wednesday, Chicago health officials confirmed that tuberculosis has been discovered among the illegal border crossers being housed by the city for free in its “migrant shelters,” WFLD-TV reported.
Officials said “a small number of cases” have been found in “a few different shelters,” without specifying how many.
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes, TB can be fatal and is spread through the air. The CDC further says that “the bacteria usually attack the lungs, but TB bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain.”
While there is no effective vaccine for TB, it can be treated with antibiotics. Illegals will presumably receive this treatment for free.
Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, told WFLD that Chicagoans have no need to panic.
“The people who are most at risk of tuberculosis are the other migrants living in that shelter,” he said.
The city also downplayed the discovery of the disease and claimed that the infected illegals are not spreading it.
“To date, [the Chicago Department of Public Health] has not confirmed any reports of TB that resulted from exposure to new arrivals in Chicago,” officials said.
“It is important to note that an estimated 10-20% of residents of Central and South America have latent TB infection, which is asymptomatic and not transmissible to others, but does result in a positive TB test,” the department added.
“For those who do have active cases of TB disease, CDPH assigns a nurse case manager to each individual and performs a contact tracing investigation.”
Officials went on to say that up to 150 cases of TB are reported in Chicago every year.
However, Democratic Alderman Raymond Lopez blasted Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration and demanded immunization requirements for “asylum seekers.”
“Performative politics & hurt feelings kept City Hall from avoiding the obvious looming disaster,” Lopez posted on X.
“Anyone who demanded action to protect our residents was called racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant by fringe politicians. And now here we are: measles, now tuberculosis both ‘confirmed’ in Chicago.”
I have warned Chicago for months about what was already here. Performative politics & hurt feelings kept City Hall from avoiding the obvious looming disaster. Anyone who demanded action to protect our residents was called racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant by fringe… https://t.co/Hf2Rfh0psS pic.twitter.com/dObytxfERC
— Ald. Raymond Lopez (@RaymondALopez) April 3, 2024
As Lopez noted, the Windy City is currently seeing a huge outbreak of measles, and most of the cases have been found inside one of the migrant shelters.
While only 58 cases of measles were reported nationwide in all of 2023, Chicago has reported 56 so far this year, according to the CDPH website. They’re the first cases seen in the city since 2019.
Biden’s border crisis is inviting a public health disaster as illegal immigrants bring in a raft of diseases that were, until now, mostly under control here in the U.S.
And it’s no surprise that Chicago has been hit hard as officials draw illegals to the city with millions of dollars worth of freebies.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Sanctuary City Paradise: Tuberculosis Found in Chicago ‘Migrant Shelters’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Far-left former ESPN host Jemele Hill can’t stand the fact that Iowa superstar point guard Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking senior season is attracting record audiences to women’s basketball.
If you guessed Hill’s indignation was in any way related to Clark’s skin pigmentation, then you’ve been paying attention to sports media.
Hill, a social justice warrior posing as a journalist and who currently writes for The Atlantic, ranted in an interview with Uproxx this past week that Clark is overshadowing black athletes.
Per Hill, Clark is leading women’s basketball to new heights because she is white and she is not solely responsible for elevating basketball for women.
“Everything about this sport has been trending up for years now. It did not just start with Caitlin Clark, but they’re treating it like it did,” she said of sports media.
She added, “And so it’s already creating a false narrative that is doing the public a disservice.”
The raving racist continued:
“If you look at WNBA ratings or women’s college basketball ratings, they have been exploding for at least the last seven to (10) years — or I would even say five to seven if you want a shorter window. And so, it’s been proven that people really enjoy the sport.
“They enjoy the stars in the sport, but they enjoy the sport itself. And I’m not completely convinced that the media understands the difference.”
Hill then cited A’ja Wilson, the former South Carolina-turned-Las Vegas Aces forward, who she said never got the attention Clark is receiving, but is equally as talented.
“[Wilson]’s probably the best player in the world right now,” Hill argued. “And I’m not trying to act like she gets no coverage, but the coverage that sometimes non-white women get.”
Hill did offer some praise for Clark but she of course offered a disclaimer.
“Caitlin Clark seems to be a great personality, but it is not like Caitlin Clark is walking around saying crazy stuff,” she said. “[The media is] just covering her excellence, and that’s good enough.”
She concluded, “Whereas it feels like for Black athletes to get the same amount of coverage or even fair coverage, there has to be something extra.”
In short, if Caitlin Clark were anything but white, Hill would probably have said either nothing or would be joining the rest of the civilized world in celebrating her accomplishments.
Race baiters are gonna race bait.
Clark is getting attention because she has spent all season breaking records and doing so with class and humility.
She is arguably the best female shooter of all time and is as likable of a person as a Walmart greeter.
Since Hill’s comments, Clark has become the all-time women’s NCAA Division I scoring leader and also has the most career points in Division I history – holding that record against men and women, according to ESPN.
Clark also has the most made career 3-point field goals and the most career assists in NCAA tournament history, just to name a few of her accomplishments.
The Iowa star drew in more than 12 million sets of eyeballs during her team’s Elite Eight game against LSU on Monday, making it the most-watched women’s basketball game in American history, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
No other female athlete of any color has collected so many accolades at just the right time and in a time of year without other major sporting events to compete with.
But to Hill’s point, Clark does seem to be resonating more with audiences and reporters than anyone who came before her.
It’s not because she’s white, but because she’s special on and off the court.
It also probably doesn’t hurt her case that there are no political undertones about her game and she has never spent time in a Russian prison for a drug violation.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Lib Journalist Throws Race Tantrum Over Caitlin Clark’s Success, Furious About Coverage Compared to Black Players appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
“How did that work out for her in 2016?”
ESPN star Stephen A. Smith certainly holds nothing back whenever he speaks, this time slamming presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton for her snide remarks toward voters.
Clinton appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to promote the new Broadway musical “Suffs” — which she helped produce and is about the women’s suffrage movement.
While talking with the former first lady, Fallon couldn’t help but bring up the coming presidential election in November.
He asked if she had any words to voters who were upset that former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were the primary choices.
“Get over yourself.”
ICYMI: Watch Hillary Clinton’s message to voters who are upset that Biden and Trump are the two choices for president. pic.twitter.com/4n1LxAgTxh
— The Recount (@therecount) April 3, 2024
“Get over yourself,” she bluntly stated.
She then promoted Biden, snidely remarking that “one is old and effective and compassionate, has a heart, and really cares about people, and one is old and has been charged with 91 felonies.”
While the response from the crowd was quite positive, that same response hasn’t been seen everywhere.
Smith sat down with CNN host Abby Phillip where he was asked his opinion on her statements.
“I don’t think that was a very wise statement on her part,” he replied. “How did that work out for her in 2016?”
“How did that work out for her in 2016?”
— Stephen A. Smith slams Hillary Clinton for saying voters upset about a Trump-Biden rematch should “get over yourself” pic.twitter.com/qaQ8K9023h
— The Recount (@therecount) April 3, 2024
He then recounted the many faults of Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign, such as failing to make appearances in Wisconsin and former FBI Director James B. Comey’s investigation into the former secretary of state.
“The last thing you need to do is to do anything to agitate a potential voter in this particular election,” he noted.
Phillip then asked about Clinton’s comment about Biden and Trump being vastly different, something Smith seemed to strongly agree with as he stated that he did not intend to vote for Trump.
“But at the end of the day, what I’m saying is that at some point in time you gotta take into account what the voter’s thinking about,” he said.
Smith stated that many voters don’t care about the numerous charges that are being leveled against Trump.
“Nobody wants to hear that from Hillary Rodham Clinton at this particular point in time because especially if you’re Joe Biden, what are you really, really worried about right now?” he continued. “You’re worried about folks coming to the polls. You’re worried about them showing to the polls to vote for you.”
He noted that the words from Clinton don’t encourage voters to come out to the polls, something the president desperately needs.
Smith manages to hit the nail on the head.
Telling people to suck it up and “get over yourself” will never pull voters into a politician’s base.
Hillary Clinton has continued to prove that she is a walking PR nightmare, completely lacking in charisma except to those brainwashed by the Democratic Party.
Smith understands this and deserves recognition for standing for his beliefs and pointing out the flaws of the party he appears to vote for.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: Stephen A. Smith Lights Up Hillary Clinton Live on CNN, Slams Her for Telling Voters to ‘Get Over’ It and Vote Biden appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Californians are getting a lesson in economics courtesy of the state’s new minimum wage law.
A new law, taking effect this past Monday, created a minimum wage for fast-food workers of $20 an hour.
The New York Post reported that many chains in the state have already increased their prices to deal with the new wage.
Which chains are affected by the new wage?
The Post reported, “The law applies to restaurants offering limited or no table service and which are part of a national chain with at least 60 establishments nationwide.”
The old minimum wage for these restaurants was $16 an hour per state law. With an increase of $4, the Post found several chains have increased menu items to offset that.
The Texas Double Whopper meal at Burger King went from $15.09 on March 29 to $16.89 by April 1. The Big Fish Meal went up from $7.49 to $11.49, with other items on the menu going up by 25 cents to $1.
In-N-Out Burger saw burgers go up 25 cents and soft drinks by a nickel. Hart House, owned by actor and comedian Kevin Hart, increased all milkshake prices regardless of size by a dollar, sandwiches by 50 cents, and large fries by $1.10 going from $4.49 to $5.99.
While Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s haven’t seen price increases, one would have to imagine they are on the way.
California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, explained at a news conference, “This is a big deal. … Eighty percent of the workforce are people of color, two-thirds are women, the majority are breadwinners. And we have the opportunity to reward that contribution. Reward that sacrifice”.
This is not a reward. While it certainly looks great on paper to be paid more for the job, these chains charging more for menu items is just the beginning.
Why would Burger King or In-And-Out keep their chains staffed with the same number of workers? An hour of work previously cost $32 for two employees. Now it costs $40. What’s keeping them from reducing the size of their workforce to further offset the new wage hikes?
Workers will find themselves laid off. Those who keep their jobs will be doing their job and taking on more work during a shift that used to be done by the person who was just fired.
The consumer will also be hurt as previously noted with price increases.
Economics does not happen in a vacuum. One action will have a rippling effect that will impact the entire economy.
Wages go up, prices go up, the workforce goes down and so on.
Gov. Newsom fails to understand this, and Californians will have to learn this lesson.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Burger King, In-N-Out, and Others Raise Prices Significantly 2 Days After California’s $20 Minimum Wage Kicks In appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
While 16-year-old Kaylee Gain has shown some slight improvement, according to her family, a hearing will be held next month to determine if a 15-year-old girl seen in a viral video beating Gain will be tried as an adult.
KPLR-TV reported, after having her head repeatedly slammed against concrete, Gain remains hospitalized with brain injuries and a fractured skull, said her family, which is calling for the girl shown beating Gain be tried as an adult.
That girl, whom officials have not named because of her age, has been identified by change.org as Maurnice DeClue.
DeClue remains in juvenile detention. A hearing is slated for May 10 to determine if she should be certified to stand trial as an adult, KPLR reported.
“Our position is that she should not be certified,” DeClue’s defense attorney Greg Smith said.
“We understand that the law says that there has to be a certification hearing based upon what she has been charged with,” Smith said. “That’s non-negotiable, but our position is she should not be certified.
“Everything is out there about her being an honor student. She was taking an AP course. She’s had no history with the juvenile court. None. She has been the victim of bullying. But there are other facts that we are going to save for court,” according to Smith.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has said teenagers should know better and a teen committing an adult crime should be punished as an adult.
But Smith told St. Louis’ KDSK the decision should be based upon the individual — such as their academics and lack of a crime record — not on their action.
“One of the general rules about certification hearings is — the focus is supposed to be on the juvenile, and not on the alleged conduct.”
DeClue has been portrayed by her family as a victim since she had allegedly been subjected to bullying.
For her part, Gain is apparently aware she is in a hospital, according to her family, but does not know why.
Her walking ability has improved, but she still needs help in doing so, the family said.
“The family is encouraged, however, by public statements by those associated with the accused stating that the accused would like to apologize to Kayle for what occurred,” they said in a statement, per KPLR.
“While these statements do not change the family’s position that it is appropriate for the accused to be tried as an adult, it is encouraging that the accused appears to be remorseful for what transpired during these unfortunate events,” the family’s statement said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Judge Gives Ruling in Missouri Teen Kaylee Gain’s Case; Family Gives Immediate Update Regarding Her Health appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Judge Gives Ruling in Missouri Teen Kaylee Gain's Case; Family Gives Immediate Update Regarding Her Health | The Gateway Pundit | by Mike Landry, The Western Journal
The next step will be a May hearing to determine if the girl shown slamming Gain's head to concrete should be tried as an adult.
On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana called for a rule that would require college athletes to be present for the playing of the national anthem before games.
Landry, who is serving his first term as governor, issued a lengthy statement about the matter a day after his state’s flagship school missed the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before being knocked out of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
The LSU Tigers were notably absent for the playing of the anthem in the team’s Elite Eight matchup against the Iowa Hawkeyes — a team the Bayou Bengals defeated for the national championship last year.
In a statement he posted on his X page, Landry decried skipping the anthem as disrespectful.
“My mother coached women’s high school basketball during the height of desegregation, no one has a greater respect for the sport and for Coach Mulkey,” Landry began.
He added, “However, above respect for that game is a deeper respect for those that serve to protect us and unite us under one flag!”
My mother coached women’s high school basketball during the height of desegregation, no one has a greater respect for the sport and for Coach Mulkey. However, above respect for that game is a deeper respect for those that serve to protect us and unite us under one flag !
It is…
— Jeff Landry (@JeffLandry) April 2, 2024
The governor then called on school administrators and others to enforce a rule that would require athletes to respect their country before sporting events.
He also floated the idea of having students lose their scholarships for noncompliance.
“It is time that all college boards, including Regent, put a policy in place that student athletes be present for the national anthem or risk their athletic scholarship!” Landry stated. “This is a matter of respect that all collegiate coaches should instill.”
Video of LSU’s skipping of the anthem spread like wildfire on social media before and after tipoff Monday night.
A clip that was viewed almost eight million times showed the ladies of Iowa each present for the playing of the anthem.
Iowa players holding hands during the American National Anthem. LSU players left the court before the anthem was performed. pic.twitter.com/GhCLHUXiBX
— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) April 1, 2024
LSU was absent, and coach Kim Mulkey later explained the team did not intentionally skip the pre-game show of respect.
“Honestly I don’t even know when the anthem was played,” said Mulkey, who said her team was doing a routine pregame warmup while the anthem was played.
“We kinda have a routine where we are on the floor, and then they come off at the 12-minute mark. We just come in, and we do our pre-game stuff,” Mulkey concluded.
Kim Mulkey said her team didn’t intentionally leave the floor prior to the playing of the United States National Anthem.
“Honestly, I don’t even know when the anthem was played. We kind of have a routine [for leaving the court at a certain time].” pic.twitter.com/JclJExC1Ym
— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) April 2, 2024
LSU ended up losing to Iowa 94-87 Monday and is headed back to Baton Rouge while Iowa and UConn will clash later this week for one of two Final Four matchups.
The Tigers had been a heavy favorite to repeat as national champions.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Louisiana Governor Demands New Policy After LSU’s National Anthem Snub Sparks a Firestorm appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The war on gas-powered vehicles continues.
While the White House recently released new rules to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2032, several states have gone further.
Eight states plan to completely ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported. Who’s leading the charge, you might ask?
Why, it’s California, of course!
They are joined by Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington. Washington, D.C., has also committed to the ban, according to Money.
If you live in one of these states, you won’t be forced to take your gas-powered car off the road and can still buy these automobiles used or secondhand.
But what does this mean for consumers in those states?
Electric vehicles already cost more to buy than gas-powered vehicles. And while the argument has repeatedly been made that charging can save consumers money over time, there are countless stories of charging nightmares: from homes catching fire, to broken charging stations, to long charging times, to power grids unable to support the charging infrastructure.
All of the above issues cost consumers more money and time, not to mention how much replacing a battery in an EV can cost.
Also, when looking at the manufacturing of these vehicles — the mining to produce the lithium-ion batteries, the factory production of the vehicles — pollution still exists, and it doesn’t seem to reduce much of anything. In fact, per Earth.org, “Almost 4 tonnes of CO2 are released during the production process of a single electric car and, in order to break even, the vehicle must be used for at least 8 years to offset the initial emissions by 0.5 tonnes of prevented emissions annually.”
But despite all of these issues, the left keeps pressing on full steam — or, I guess, full lithium-ion battery — ahead.
If massive U.S. carmakers can’t stave off government overreach, what hope do the rest of us have?
This plan is yet another great example of the left’s priorities being out of step — and more importantly, it highlights their totally backwards definition of freedom.
Take California for instance. According to the ACLU of Southern California, “Pregnant people in California have a fundamental right to choose to have an abortion, and you do not have to provide any reason or medical justification for getting one. This right is protected under California’s Constitution and state law.”
So a woman, although the left can’t even define woman instead using the term “pregnant people,” has the freedom to murder her unborn child, and the government should have no say whatsoever in that decision in the state of California. But that same state can force you to drive only an electric or hybrid vehicle in the the name of what is best for the environment.
What about when New York Gov. Cathy Hochul signed an executive order to protect giving “gender affirming care” to minors?
Again, New York can provide freedom to underage children to mutilate their bodies on the alter of the transgender movement, but it is a step too far to allow citizens to drive a gas-powered vehicle — because that goes against the “religion” of climate change.
Obviously, I don’t have the space here to provide an exhaustive list of all the abhorrent things these states are doing in the name of “freedom.”
I’m sure the reader is well aware of anything I could say.
The point is how the left views freedom. We should have the freedom to pick what type of car we purchase. Children in the womb should have the freedom to live. Youth should have the freedom to grow up without the malicious influence of transgender idealogues causing lifelong damage to their bodies.
Do you want to kill an innocent child on a whim? California will protect you in doing so.
Do you want to give children puberty blockers and mutilate their bodies only for them to revile you when they become adults and realize you’ve butchered them? Gov. Hochul has you covered.
Do you want to keep purchasing new gas-powered vehicles into the late 2030s and beyond? That is off the table.
Our nation is bound together by a system of roads and highways. Cars make life possible. The war on gas-powered cars in favor of expensive unreliable EVs is going to make life gradually harder.
Abortion and transgender “care,” on the other hand, only destroy life.
If the left cares about the freedom to “choose” as they often frame arguments in favor of abortion and transgenderism, why not let people choose what cars they drive?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post 8 States Now Say Complete Ban on Gas-Powered New Car Sales Coming appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Earlier this year, BBC broadcaster Gordon Smart recalled a creepy and frightening incident involving his friend, actor Jamie Dornan.
On the Jan. 12 episode of BBC Radio Scotland’s “The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected” podcast, Smart revealed that on a March 2023 golfing trip to Portugal, he began to feel heart attack symptoms, which he attributed to too many espresso martinis, according to People magazine.
Oddly, however, when he returned from the hospital, the 43-year-old broadcaster learned that Dornan, 41, had experienced the same symptoms.
A native of Northern Ireland, Dornan starred in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy of erotic romance films.
Smart, meanwhile, described himself as having kept in decent physical shape.
“Now, I’m a fairly healthy guy but once you start thinking, you’re having a heart attack, you’re pretty sure that you’re convincing yourself that you are having one,” the broadcaster said according to Page Six.
Clearly, therefore, the apparent coincidence of heart attack-related symptoms simultaneously affecting two healthy friends in their early 40s, one of them a fit actor, required an explanation.
On the podcast, Smart described what happened to him and how he discovered the likely culprit.
First, he recalled feeling “tingling in my left hand, then tingling in my left arm,” symptoms he viewed as “normally the sign of the start of a heart attack.”
After passing out in an Uber, he awakened to find himself in a hospital bed. Convinced that he had consumed too much caffeine, he told the doctor about the espresso martinis.
Then, upon discharge, Smart left the hospital and returned to the golfing resort, where he saw Dornan “with all this stuff attached to his chest, saying, ‘Dear me, Gordon, about 20 minutes after you left, my left arm went numb, my left leg went numb, my right leg went numb. And I found myself in the back of an ambulance.'”
People magazine cited a “source close to Dornan” as saying that the actor never actually went to the hospital. But the source did not refute Smart’s account of his friend’s similar symptoms.
Either way, the cause of those symptoms remained a mystery.
Then came the creepy part.
A week after the golf trip ended, the doctor from the hospital called Smart to ask if he had encountered any caterpillars on the golf course.
Yes, caterpillars.
“And it turns out that there are caterpillars on golf courses in the south of Portugal that have been killing people’s dogs and giving men in their 40s heart attacks. It turns out we brushed up against hairy processionary caterpillars and had been very lucky to come out of that one alive,” Smart said.
Readers may hear Smart’s account in the following video posted to YouTube by E! News.
According to Terrence D. Fitzgerald, distinguished professor of biological sciences at SUNY Cortland, the “pine processionary caterpillar” rates as the “best known of all the processionaries.”
Native to southern Europe, the Near East and North Africa, the insect has a formidable anti-predator defense. Humans, therefore, should take care to avoid them at all costs.
“Contact with the hairs causes skin rashes and eye irritations. Susceptible individuals may also develop an allergic response to a protein associated with the hairs of the caterpillar,” Fitzgerald wrote.
Australian Geographic, in fact, used much more alarming language to describe all types of processionary caterpillars.
For instance, any one of the “millions of long fine, needle-like hairs that cover each caterpillar” can cause blindness if they get into the eyes.
Furthermore, “pregnant horses that mistakenly eat these caterpillars when they’re on grass, will spontaneously abort their unborn foals.”
In other words, it appears Smart and Dornan got lucky.
It is a remarkable and unsettling thing that so many of our most dangerous adversaries are either microscopic or too small to appear threatening.
Perhaps God intended that as a lesson in humility.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Actor’s Friend Rushed to Hospital with Heart Attack Symptoms – Things Get Strange When He Begins Having the Same Issues appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Actor's Friend Rushed to Hospital with Heart Attack Symptoms - Things Get Strange When He Begins Having the Same Issues | The Gateway Pundit | by Michael Schwarz, The Western Journal
Smart revealed the tiny-but-dangerous culprit that most likely triggered his and Dornan's near-simultaneous heart-attack symptoms.
I don’t think I need to tell you, when Google’s Gemini AI has been spitting out images of black female founding fathers, that generative AI is hopelessly woke. The assumption, of course, was that Silicon Valley progressives were the ones behind this sinister social engineering and that, deeply embedded in the code for ChatGPT was the formula to destroy conservatism, faith and the nuclear family for good.
However, there’s a more troubling prospect raised by a pre-publication study done regarding the political biases of generative AI platforms. To quote Walt Kelly: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Or, at least, “us” being the liberal media establishment.
On Thursday, The New York Times published an opinion piece titled “How AI Chatbots Became Political.” Despite this being the Gray Lady, itself essentially an AI chatbot that has become very political, the piece was actually worth reading as an explainer to why current AI bots skew left — and how a recent study seemed to indicate that these bots couldn’t be trained to be more conservative than leftist if they were fed partisan material.
But first, let’s start off with how commercial chatbots end up being liberal: “Access to open-source versions of A.I. models allows us to see how a model’s political preferences develop,” the Times noted. “During the initial base training phase, most models land close to the political center on both axes, as they initially ingest huge amounts of training data — more or less everything A.I. companies can get their hands on — drawing from across the political spectrum.
“Models then undergo a second phase called fine-tuning. It makes the model a better chat partner, training it to have maximally pleasant and helpful conversations while refraining from causing offense or harm, like outputting pornography or providing instructions for building weapons.
“Companies use different fine-tuning methods, but they’re generally a hands-on process that offers greater opportunity for individual decisions by the workers involved to shape the direction of the models. At this point, more significant differences emerge in the political preferences of the A.I. systems.”
Of course, several answers immediately come to mind as to why the bots then become political. Outside of a small number of deeply closeted conservative tech devs who would never in a million years betray or act upon their political inclinations, Silicon Valley is about as progressive as it gets. That’s the reason why, the man on the street assumes, AI is so liberal.
However, what if you tried to cultivate separate bots for separate political positions? That’s what David Rozado, a machine-learning researcher, recently did by administering a slew of political orientation tests to 24 of the most advanced language models.
Rozado, the Times reported, “found a consistent pattern: They tend to be politically left of center and lean libertarian instead of authoritarian. These leanings are reflected in their moral judgments, the way they frame their answers, which information they choose to share or omit and which questions they will or won’t answer.”
Thought-provoking and accessible New York Times article discussing my work on the political preferences of AIs.https://t.co/SyVzYE09Jt pic.twitter.com/h1tFocKHnZ
— David Rozado (@DavidRozado) March 29, 2024
And, Rozado’s study of these “still largely inscrutable black boxes,” as the Times put it, yielded consistent results no matter what diet they were fed.
“To the extent that anyone has attempted to steer this process beyond avoiding extreme views, those attempts appear unsuccessful. For example, when three Meta models were evaluated by Mr. Rozado, one tested as being Establishment Liberal, another Ambivalent Right,” the Times concluded. “One OpenAI model tested as Establishment Liberal and the other was Outsider Left. Grok’s ‘fun mode’ turns out to be a Democratic Mainstay, more liberal than the median model.
“Google’s Gemini Advanced, released after Mr. Rozado’s paper, appears to be farthest to the left, but in a way that presumably well overshot its creators’ intentions, reflecting another unsuccessful steering attempt.”
And how do you do this? “If one wants to steer this process directionally, Mr. Rozado proves it is straightforward to do. He started with GPT-3.5-Turbo and rapidly created models he called LeftWingGPT and RightWingGPT (at a total training cost of about $2,000) by feeding the model a steady diet of partisan sources. For example, RightWingGPT read National Review, while LeftWingGPT read The New Yorker,” the paper reported. “The resulting models were far more politically extreme than any publicly available model tested by Mr. Rozado.”
This all sounds somewhat cataclysmic for conservatives with regard to AI — until you realize how the sources that Rozado’s study used were obtained.
Buried in the weeds of the pre-publication copy of the paper is where they got the material to prime LeftWingGPT, RightWingGPT and a third bot dubbed DepolarizingGPT.
“LeftWingGPT was fine-tuned with textual content from left-leaning publications such as The Atlantic, or The New Yorker (ideological labels derived from Allsides …), and from books excerpts from leftleaning writers such as Bill McKibben and Joseph Stiglitz. We also used for fine tuning synthetic data created with gpt-3.5-turbo to generate left-leaning responses to questions with political connotations. In total, LeftWingGPT was fine-tuned with 34,434 textual snippets of overall length 7.6 million tokens,” the report read.
“RightWingGPT was fine-tuned with content from right-leaning publications such as National Review, or The American Conservative, and from book excerpts from right-leaning writers such as Roger Scruton and Thomas Sowell. Here as well we created synthetic data generated with gpt-3.5-turbo to produce right-leaning responses to questions with political connotations. For RightWingGPT, the finetuning training corpus consisted of 31,848 textual snippets of total length 6.8 million tokens,” it continued.
The problem, of course, is not the objective workings of the mysterious black box, but instead the subjective workings of, among other things, AllSides. Among the organizations viewed as centrist in one version of the survey included the BBC, Axios, Newsweek and Reuters — all organizations with a clear left-leaning bias. And NPR, NBC and The New York Times were in the left-leaning category — while Fox News had been designated hard-right:
Latest version of the Allsides Media Bias Chart. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/afBQs9rL7y
— Suz (@5uzAFone) August 23, 2022
And this is, at the heart of things, the conundrum of AI. It’s worked on by techies who have their own biases — but, don’t worry, they outsource bias ratings to an organization that is in no way biased itself. Amazing, that.
In other words, at least part of AI’s political foibles comes down to the same old axiom coined by the kind of computer programmers who used punch cards: Garbage in, garbage out.
AI cannot teach itself — yet, anyhow — that it’s being influenced by the content that’s considered within an acceptable political window. That’s how large language models work. It’s entirely dependent on what’s being fed to it. And, even if AI’s failures might not be as spectacular as Google Gemini’s black Nazis, the same principle remains in place. We have found the enemy of objectivity, and once again, it is us. The problem is that this is a technology that could upend the world order even more than atomic weapons. When such sloppiness is applied to a field of study so crucial to our future, there’s good reason to fret over this.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Chilling: They Can’t Even Train AI to Be More Conservative Than It Is Leftist appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The family of a Missouri school girl who was badly beaten earlier this month says she is out of her coma — and out of the intensive care unit.
“Kaylee is now out of the intensive care unit, and in the past few days Kaylee has been able to engage in limited verbal conversations,” her parents said in a statement released by their lawyer cited by St. Louis’ KSDK.
“Kaylee also recently began speech therapy, and has gone on a few short walks with the assistance of hospital staff as she is still unable to ambulate on her own,” they added. “However, Kaylee does not have any recollection of the altercation that led to her hospitalization.”
Earlier, her mother had written on a fundraising site that her daughter “still has an incredibly long journey ahead of her,” which seemed hardly less true a week later.
Gain’s parents are also demanding that her attacker be tried as an adult for inflicting brain damage on their 16-year-old daughter.
“[T]he family believes trying the accused as an adult is the most appropriate way to provide the justice that Kaylee deserves,” the statement said, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
The Gain family said such a trial was appropriate “”given the particularly violent nature of this assault, and also taking into account the devastating injuries that Kaylee has incurred,” even though her accused attacker, Maurnice DeClue, was only 15.
Because of her age, authorities had not publicly identified DeClue, KSDK noted.
However, DeClue’s parents issued what the outlet described as “an open letter” Thursday, in what seemed to be an attempt to defend DeClue’s character and reputation.
DeClue’s mother also “seemed confused” by attempts to politicize the incident.
“This is not about racism,” she told KSDK. “This is about two girls having a fight.”
Family friend Sarah Hall, who started a GoFundMe to support the Gain family, wrote on that site that Kaylee Gain had been admitted to a St. Louis hospital “with a skull fracture and frontal lobe damage.”
At the time, she had been diagnosed with “major brain bleeding and swelling and is in critical condition,” Hall wrote then.
“Kaylee is fighting hard to stay alive and heal but this is only the beginning of a very uphill battle for Kaylee and her family,” she wrote.
Ten days later, mom April Gain wrote an update there, saying that Kaylee had been moved from the ICU and was considered to be in “stable” condition.
“She still has an incredibly long journey ahead of her but she is strong,” she wrote.
The GoFundMe, started three days after the fight on March 12, crossed the $400,000 threshold early Saturday morning.
It was seeking to raise a total of half a million dollars to help cover “lost wages and piling up medical bills.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Missouri Teen Kaylee Gain Awakens from Coma After Brutal Beatdown from Classmate, Only to Face Another Big Problem appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
“When you are the salt of the earth, you’re going to make people ‘salty,’ okay?”
Sage advice from Taylor Trice, a young woman who applied to work at a Starbucks coffee shop because she was interested in their tuition assistance program for Arizona State University’s online program.
“Prior to working at Starbucks, I knew nothing about it except that it was considered a bougie coffee shop,” Trice said in an interview, according to Fox News. “So I didn’t know that it was a very liberal company.”
In a TikTok video, Trice told the story of how she was fired from Starbucks because of her “Christian-conservative values.”
@edbl22 Replying to @Juniper Cove #christiantiktok #selfcare #growth #lgbt #starbucks ♬ original sound – edbl22
According to Fox News, the Starbucks in question was located in Apex, North Carolina.
Trice said as an employee of Starbucks for two years, she was used to June, which is celebrated as “pride month” by many woke companies, being the month of “tasting the rainbow” at Starbucks, when the company puts up “pride” decorations.
According to Trice, in prior years, no one had complained about her staying out of the celebrations.
“I’m not judging nobody, I’m just not about to go along with everything you want to do if it doesn’t go along with God’s Word,” Trice said.
But Trice said this particular year, “they went a little bit beyond the rainbow, and things were starting to taste sour and not sweet.”
Trice said Starbucks put up a glass wall near the cash register with definitions of different sexual attractions, which Trice was concerned was not something children who come into the cafe should be seeing.
“I didn’t shame them for it, but I was just telling them, like, you guys got to be careful, you know, we got families walking in here and kids are going to read that,” Trice said.
“I specifically said, even if the board had said ‘heterosexual’ — I just felt like that didn’t need to be added to the decorations.”
Trice told Fox News that even some of her colleagues agreed that the board wasn’t appropriate. The board also announced various types of pronouns including, “ze/zim, xe/xem – and even it/its.”
“[These] are less common but still valid. And you can always mix’n’match!” the chalkboard instructed, according to Trice, Fox News reported.
A second issue arose when Starbucks began to insist that employees address everyone by their preferred pronouns.
“I was willing to call the person by their name, I was willing to avoid using pronouns, but it is against my faith to lie, even if it’s the smallest lie. So that means if I see that you are a man and I call you a woman, that is lying, and that is … identifying you as something that God did not create you to be, and that is identifying you as something Satan wants to identify you as,” Trice said.
‘AGAINST MY FAITH’: The former Starbucks employee claims she was terminated after expressing concern over Pride Month displays that included fringe pronouns — now she’s telling her story. https://t.co/JUvzDCE2Ei pic.twitter.com/g47uiOOdpy
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 29, 2024
“Satan’s ultimate goal is to confuse you and deceive you about your identity,” she said.
Trice went on to share how she believes God gave her a “heads up” in a dream the day before her manager let her know that there had been complaints about her.
“There was a complaint that someone had made that, ‘Oh, I just feel like she is not comfortable with my identity,’ which I do not understand because I would talk to everyone there all the time. I was never making insults towards them or anything,” Trice told Fox News.
“After that day, I got fired,” Trice said.
Trice’s post went viral, and many commenters shared similar experiences at Starbucks or expressed support for the young woman.
“I was asked to leave a Starbucks for sitting quietly doing my Bible study. Never been back,” one commenter wrote.
“Well done. You didn’t bow down to the enemy. Thank you for standing firmly in your beliefs. I’ve been in your position before,” another comment read.
Prickly Pear Coffee Company from Nashville even offered Trice a job, commenting, “You can come work for us. Never waver in what’s important to you!”
Trice told Fox News she was grateful for all the support she had received after she told her story online.
“You know, obviously there was some backlash…but it was just really refreshing to see that, you know, I’m not alone in how I view this situation and how I view what the Bible says.” she said.
She added that she is now working as a house cleaner and is proud of speaking up.
According to Fox News, when asked to comment, Starbucks declined. However, a Starbucks spokesperson let them know that “Starbucks has no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind in our stores, and we’re committed to fostering an environment where everyone is welcome, respected and valued.”
Apparently, that environment does not include Christians.
Unfortunately, Trice’s story is not an isolated one.
Increasingly, Christians are having to choose between adhering to their faith or making a living as the environment for people of faith continues to become more hostile.
For example, on Thursday, Korbin Albert, a midfielder for the U.S. women’s national team, had to publicly apologize for liking and reposting a Christian sermon that said being gay and feeling transgender was wrong, according to the New York Post.
While many will capitulate, for those who choose to stand, the journey is not easy.
But take courage.
In Matt. 19:29 Jesus told his followers, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
Although “jobs” aren’t mentioned on the list, we can be pretty sure they count too.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Woman Goes Viral with Story of How Her ‘Christian Conservative Values’ Got Her Fired from Starbucks appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The LGBT “pride” mafia, with its characteristic blend of self-pity and mercilessness, has targeted yet another young, Christian, female athlete.
Korbin Albert, a 20-year-old midfielder on the U.S. women’s national soccer team, recently shared Christian-themed social media posts that discussed the immoral nature of homosexuality and “feeling transgender,” according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
Her posts brought a sharp rebuke from retired USWNT player and LGBT activist Megan Rapinoe, who described her comments as “hate.”
The scolding called forth an apology from Albert on Thursday that had all the scripted insincerity of a hostage video.
“I want to sincerely apologize for my actions on social media. Liking and sharing posts that are offensive, insensitive and hurtful was immature and disrespectful which was never my intent,” Albert wrote in an Instagram Story post. “I’m really disappointed in myself and am deeply sorry for the hurt that I have caused to my teammates, other players, fans, friends and anyone who was offended.”
“I truly believe that everyone should feel safe and respected everywhere and on all playing fields. I know my actions have not lived up to that and for that I sincerely apologize. It’s an honor and a privilege to get to play this sport and on the world stage and I promise to do better,” she added.
No word on whether Albert finished typing that post before or after USWNT officials lowered the gun from her head.
Albert’s Instagram and TikTok accounts feature acknowledgments of her Christian faith. Each includes a version of the phrase “Jesus is king.”
The original Christian-themed posts that prompted the Rapinoe-led backlash have since been deleted.
On Instagram, Rapinoe responded to those posts with victim-mongering and inversions of truth.
“To the people who want to hide behind ‘my beliefs’ I would just ask one question, are you making any time of space safer, more inclusive, more whole, any semblance of better, bringing the best out of anyone? … because if you aren’t all you believe in is hate. And Kids are literally killing themselves because of this hate. Wake TF up! Yours Truly, #15,” the outspoken lesbian wrote.
Though she did not mention anyone by name, Rapinoe later confirmed to The Athletic that she had Albert in mind.
“For all my trans homies enduring this horrific treatment day in and day out, I see you and hear you and I am WITH YOU,” she added on Instagram.
Albert, who also plays with the club team Paris Saint-Germain, also deleted a post from the Fourth of July weekend in which she and her family took turns declaring that “their pronouns are U.S.A.”
As OutKick’s Mark Harris rightly noted, “Albert appears to have deleted that video from her page because being a proud American and joking about pronouns is essentially a crime in the year 2024.”
The young midfielder, of course, faced an insane amount of pressure from the woke mob.
In fact, she might even have recalled the fate of former player Jaelene Daniels (née Hinkle), “who largely stopped appearing with the USWNT after expressing anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs she said were rooted in her religion,” per The Athletic.
Or perhaps she has heard of the treatment former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines and others have endured simply for insisting that men have no place in women’s sports.
Either way, while we might have wanted Albert to stand firm, we also know the diabolical forces arrayed against her.
And that leads us to Rapinoe’s outlandish claims of “horrific treatment” and kids “literally killing themselves because of this hate.”
No matter how hard she has tried, the former soccer star cannot make herself and LGBT “kids” the victims.
After all, who deleted the posts? Who had to issue an apology? And why did that apology sound as if it came straight from a human resources department’s template?
Could it be that powerful people regularly demand such Maoist struggle sessions from anyone who expresses unapproved views?
On the other hand, who equated “beliefs” with “hate”? Who discussed “kids” in the context of sexual identity? Did that person have to delete her posts or issue an apology?
In short, we should love, pity and pray for Rapinoe. But we should not allow a member of the privileged “pride” mafia to destroy another young, Christian, female athlete while simultaneously posing as the victim.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Christian US Soccer Player Apologizes After Megan Rapinoe Scolds Her for Sharing Her Beliefs appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Well, the Utah Royals jersey “controversy” has at least one thing going for it: It doesn’t involve Megan Rapinoe.
The Royals, for the unaware — and, given the state of women’s soccer in this country, I’m sure are very many of you — are one of the 14 teams that make up the National Women’s Soccer League, the top flight of the sport in the United States. While technically not an expansion team, the Royals haven’t played since 2019; the pandemic effectively put the team on ice and it’s only been resurrected for the 2024 season. Thus, there aren’t a whole lot of marquee players with the second iteration of the franchise.
However, despite being relative underdogs in the scheme of the NWSL, the Royals are already confounding their competitors. Not because of their superior play on the pitch or unsporting tactics, but because of the title sponsor on the front of their jerseys: America First Credit Union.
No, seriously.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, supporters for the Chicago Red Stars and North Carolina Courage, the Royals’ first two opponents, voiced displeasure with the sponsor, seeming to blame them for, um, white supremacy or something.
NWSL fan groups have released statements denouncing Utah’s jerseys — which feature the name of a local credit union — as racist and hateful.
— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib) March 27, 2024
“While we support all the Utah players and their fans, we can’t stand by without mentioning the front of jersey sponsor, America First Credit Union, of our opponent — the Utah Royals,” read a statement from The Uproar, a supporter group for the Courage, before their March 22 matchup.
“The phrase ‘America First’ has a long history rooted in racism, fascism, and hateful ideology.”
As we approach the Courage’s match against Utah Royals FC this Friday, we must weigh in on the jersey controversy. While we support all the Utah players and their fans, we can’t stand by without mentioning the front of jersey sponsor, America First Credit Union, of our opponent – pic.twitter.com/0NopYIZuYS
— The Uproar (@UproarNC) March 22, 2024
Chicago Local 134, the supporter group for the Red Stars, echoed similar sentiments before the March 16 season opener.
“The history of the phrase ‘America First’ and the imagery used in the credit union’s logo is rooted in racist ideology [and] propaganda that harks back to the Nazis and the KKK,” the statement read.
“[S]occer is for all, and promoting an institution that is represented by racist propaganda is unacceptable.”
Chicago Local 134’s statement on the front shirt sponsor for our opponent on March 16, Utah Royals. We recommend you listen to Andre & Courtney’s full discussion of in the Diaspora United episode, Live, Laugh, Learn [W Gold Cup Chaos & NWSL Kit Talk], beginning at 49:57. pic.twitter.com/1z5sYQhSoa
— Chicago Local 134 (@ChicagoLocal134) March 15, 2024
Both supporters’ groups thanked Diaspora United — which describes itself as “[a] soccer podcast that centers Black women in the global game” on its X profile — for calling attention to it.
Now, you may not be surprised to learn that America First Credit Union has been around for over 80 years and the Utah-based company didn’t pick the name out of white supremacist fervor. In a statement, the company said it changed its name to America First because of its work with the U.S. government and because it puts its customers first.
“America First Credit Union is dedicated to serving the financial needs of all individuals and communities within its field of membership. Its name and history are rooted in the credit union’s initial connection with the United States government, serving civilian federal employees working at American military bases, including Utah’s Fort Douglas, where the credit union was founded in 1939,” the company said in a statement.
“Throughout its 85-year history, America First Credit Union has worked to put the financial needs and interests of its members and community first — never losing sight of their founding principle of ‘people helping people.’”
The company added that the logo, which is supposed to be a stylized representation of a bald eagle, is “designed to look similar to the wings worn by many of the brave service men and women in our armed forces.”
But, of course, because the probable Republican presidential nominee who shall not be named has, on occasion, used the phrase “America first,” suddenly it’s toxic.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, however, was not impressed with the faux outcry.
Just when you think this website can’t get any more ridiculous. (I had to double check if this was a parody account…sadly it is not) https://t.co/8W8tp3h65X
— Spencer Cox (@SpencerJCox) March 22, 2024
“Just when you think this website can’t get any more ridiculous. (I had to double check if this was a parody account…sadly it is not),” the Republican said in response to The Uproar’s statement.
However, this does highlight an important fact: Support for women’s professional soccer has little to do with the quality of the game. It’s a political statement, much like (sadly) support for the U.S. Women’s National Team has also become a political statement. It’s just that the statement being made by NWSL fanatics is, as the America First Credit Union own-goal indicates, exponentially more stupid than that being made by Rapinoe-worshippers.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Woke Women’s Soccer Supporters Throw Fit Over Another Team Sponsored By Credit Union Called ‘America First’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Wednesday to protect the rights of homeowners in the state against so-called “squatters.”
That morning, DeSantis posted a video to X explaining the need for the new law.
“Does your house belong to you?” the Republican governor asked rhetorically. “Or, if you are not using it, can someone just come in, squat for a period of time, and then claim that they have a right to be there?
“This so-called ‘squatter scam’ is something that’s happening around the country — there’s even videos telling people how to go in and take over and empty house,” he said.
“That was never how the law was supposed to work,” DeSantis said. “And in Florida, we are going to take action today to end this scam and to protect the private property rights of our homeowners.
Commandeering a private residence through “squatting” is a scam that violates private property rights.
While some states are choosing to indulge this behavior, Florida is putting an end to it.
Stay tuned… pic.twitter.com/ESBuwgtFZH
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 27, 2024
DeSantis called the current state of affairs “absurd” and said his state would lead the way in ending the scam.
The new law, HB 621, will take effect on July 1, Tampa’s WTVT reported Wednesday.
Once it does, homeowners will have a much more streamlined process to evict a squatter by filing a complaint with their local sheriff’s office and requesting assistance.
“Sheriffs from across the state will be able to provide the adequate resources and support for victims of these crimes and homeowners to preserve their property,” Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma told WTVT.
Squatters rely on the fact that, even when they are clearly not authorized to be present in a given residence, getting them out can be expensive and time-consuming for a homeowner. Meanwhile, the can continue to live rent-free in an unoccupied home while the eviction process drags on, DeSantis said.
Under the new process, the sheriff can make a quick determination about who actually owns the property and then take action against unauthorized occupants. Homeowners who files such complaints do so under penalty of perjury, according to a summary of the bill on the Florida Senate website.
“If the complaint shows that the owner is eligible for relief and the sheriff can verify ownership of the property, the sheriff must remove the unauthorized person,” the summary says. “The property owner must pay the sheriff the civil eviction fee plus an hourly rate if a deputy must stand by and keep the peace while the unauthorized person is removed.”
If that process results in an improper removal, however, the person so removed would have recourse.
“A person wrongfully removed pursuant to this procedure has a cause of action against the owner for three times the fair market rent, damages, costs, and attorney fees,” the summary explains.
According to that site, the bill passed both houses of the Florida legislature unanimously.
Later on Wednesday, DeSantis shared another video on X that showed some of the recent horror stories involving squatters around the country.
Other states are allowing squatters to take over homes, and those states even side with the squatters.
Not in Florida.
We are ending the squatters scam once and for all. pic.twitter.com/yRe1Pc8cDR
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 28, 2024
“Other states are allowing squatters to take over homes, and those states even side with the squatters,” the governor wrote in that post. “Not in Florida. We are ending the squatters scam once and for all.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post DeSantis Ends ‘Squatter Scam Once and for All’ by Signing New Bill Into Law appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
An image of skyscrapers with windows illuminated in the shape of a cross to commemorate Good Friday in 1956 is making the rounds on social media and reminding people the U.S. once largely embraced the faith — even in New York City.
Sixty-seven years later, no such display is expected in the country’s most populous city.
On Good Friday years ago, NYC skyscrapers lit up with crosses and showed a nation that embraced faith https://t.co/6IPuu9doN6
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 7, 2023
An archive of the now-defunct California newspaper the Oxnard Press-Courier shows the image was used by the outlet in its Saturday, March 31, 1956, edition.
The image was accompanied by a simple headline: “COME TO CHURCH SUNDAY.” The Press-Courier dedicated the entire page to when and where people of any denomination could attend an Easter service.
Many Twitter users who came across the image of 1950s Manhattan commemorating the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus at Calvary lamented the current state of the country.
“How far we have fallen,” one user commented.
How far we have fallen
— KJMooney (@feistywench304) April 7, 2023
Yes, this is when we, as a Nation, were a God-fearing people. Past-tense…. https://t.co/v2edEaKp3I
— Big Bob (@BiggyBobbs) April 7, 2023
Others struck a more hopeful note. “It’s not too late to go back,” one said.
“Our nation still embraces faith, but it’s a faith in self. We believe that faith in God will be restored,” the group My Faith Votes said.
It’s not too late to go back
— Anthony Maze (@antmaze29) April 7, 2023
Our nation still embraces faith, but it’s a faith in self. We believe that faith in God will be restored.
— My Faith Votes (@MyFaithVotes) April 7, 2023
One account noted that One World Trade Center recently lit up its spire with the color pink to show support for abortion.
1956: Skyscrapers in New York City display crosses for Easter to celebrate Jesus who says: I give my life for you.
2019: Skyscraper in New York City lit up pink to celebrate abortion which says: YOU give your life for ME.
— SBA Pro-Life America (@sbaprolife) January 29, 2019
But the Empire State Building did commemorate the Resurrection as recently as 2018.
Christians can still find examples of their faith on display in a secular culture that long ago lost its footing. But they are fewer and farther between.
That stands to reason. A poll taken last month showed Americans are abandoning faith at an alarming rate.
In 1998, 62 percent of respondents said religion was “very important” to them. This year, only 39 percent answered the same way, which was down 9 points from 2019.
On Good Friday, Easter and every other day of the year, Christians should pray our neighbors are brought back to Christ and his enduring love.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Photo of NYC Skyline on Good Friday 1956 Shows How Much the US Has Changed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A coalition of states has filed a lawsuit to block the latest iteration of President Joe Biden’s plan to shift repayment of student loans from former students to taxpayers.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who is leading the lawsuit, said this year’s plan to forgive student debt violates many of the same principles as Biden’s first attempt to do so, which was shot down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Fox Business.
“Not since the Civil War has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway.’” Kobach told Fox News in an interview. “Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan.”
The Kansas-led lawsuit is supported by Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that his state is also leading a coalition against the loan forgiveness plan, which will include Arkansas and other states, calling the proposal Biden’s “latest illegal student loan plan” in a post on X.
BREAKING: My office will be filing suit against Joe Biden for his latest illegal student loan plan.
The Supreme Court sided with us on this matter the first time. I look forward to bringing home yet another win for the Constitution and the rule of law.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) March 28, 2024
“The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: President Biden cannot unilaterally cancel student debt and force taxpayers to bear the multi-billion-dollar cost,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a release posted on Bailey’s website.
Kobach said that former students will have the “entirety of their debt canceled” in a debt relief plan he said was “’twisting the words of federal law,” according to the Daily Mail.
“This time they say, ‘Oh we’re just modifying the terms of debt repayment,’ but that’s not modifying the terms of debt repayment when you take the debt all the way down to zero and you don’t have to pay back the principal,” he said.
Kobach said the plan is shot through with political motivations.
“It may just be coincidence, or it may be that the administration is attempting to curry favor with people who have student debt,” he said.
Between our two coalitions of states, we will get this matter in front of a judge even more quickly to deliver a win for the American people.
->https://t.co/0dITNXr5ou— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) March 28, 2024
Biden proposed his $138 billion student loan plan in February, saying of his student debt forgiveness efforts: “The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me,” according to Fox Business.
The premise behind the lawsuit is that Congress needed to approve a major policy change that shifts debt from former students to taxpayers.
“Last time Defendants tried this the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal. Nothing since then has changed,” a copy of the lawsuit posted on Fox Business said.
“This lawsuit is now necessary to prevent Defendants from continuing to flout the law, which includes ignoring Supreme Court decisions,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said ruling outside the law is a Biden trademark.
“This is not the first time Defendant Biden has taken actions that he publicly admits are likely unlawful. This is an administration that rules by will, not by law,” the lawsuit said.
“Although this round of unilateral debt nullification takes on a new name, with a different putative authority, it is every bit as improper as his first unlawful attempt at debt forgiveness in Biden v. Nebraska,” the lawsuit said, referring to the 2023 case decided by the Supreme Court.
“Indeed, as the Defendants scrape ever deeper into the barrel for legal pretexts to abolish student debts, the illegality of those artifices becomes more obvious. The authority that Defendants claim now lacks any substantive limits and amounts to claiming that they can abolish all student debt at any time by rulemaking alone,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit noted that the plan is political in nature.
“The timing of these actions also makes plain their pretextual nature. The first round of debt relief was rushed out in time for the 2022 elections in a transparent bread-and-circuses attempt to boost base turnout and, in essence, buy votes with federal funds. This second round of debt cancellation also — by remarkable coincidence — manages to take effect shortly before the 2024 election,” the lawsuit said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Multiple Attorneys General Join Together to Sue Biden in Bid to Block His ‘Illegal Student Loan Plan’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A former Biden family business associate-turned-whistleblower who alleges the Bidens ran an international influence-peddling scheme that he witnessed firsthand is suing Fox News host Jessica Tarlov for defamation.
The far-left co-host of “The Five” indicated his legal fees had been paid by a political action committee affiliated with former President Donald Trump.
When Tarlov and her network were initially asked by Tony Bobulinski’s attorneys to apologize and offer a full retraction of the comment, both parties refused.
In a lawsuit filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Bobuinski and his attorney Stefan Passantino, Tarlov is listed as the sole defendant.
The suit claims that Tarlov was guilty of defamation on March 20 when she “lied” and said on “The Five” that Bobulinksi’s legal representatives were being paid for by allies of Trump.
The comment was made hours after Bobulinski testified before the House Oversight Committee about his knowledge of the Biden family’s business affairs, which he said he saw firsthand for years.
In a social media post sharing news of the lawsuit, Bobulinski said he is not suing Tarlov for personal gain, but to hold members of the media accountable.
NEW: Tony Bobulinski Officially Files Lawsuit Against Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov: @DailyCaller
STATEMENT: Today I filed a lawsuit against Ms. Jessica Tarlov of Fox News for defamation. Although I am seeking compensatory, special, and punitive damages from her for the damage her… pic.twitter.com/K0rGdWgvqZ
— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) March 28, 2024
“Today I filed a lawsuit against Ms. Jessica Tarlov of Fox News for defamation,” Bobulinski said in a statement.
“Although I am seeking compensatory, special, and punitive damages from her for the damage her public remarks inflicted on my personal and professional reputation, this is not about money,” he added.
The former Biden family associate continued:
“This is about the truth, for which I have been fighting for four years. It is important for media personalities like Ms. Tarlov to understand that lies have consequences.
“I have consistently told the truth to the American people about the deep corruption of the Biden family and will continue to do, and I have paid my legal expenses arising from my decision to come forward out of my own pocket. I will donate every penny I may be awarded in this suit to a children’s hospital and to support our military Veterans. Ms. Tarlov refused to apologize and sincerely correct the record.”
Bobulinski, who first came forward in October 2020 during interviews with Tucker Carlson alleging corruption by both Joe and Hunter Biden, concluded, “I look forward to holding her accountable in a court of law and to continuing to bring the truth to the American people.”
As Mediaite reported, Tarlov said on the Fox News show last Wednesday that the Trump PAC had been paying Bobulnski’s law firm as recently as two months ago.
The firm in question was paid by Trump’s Save America PAC for separate legal services at one point, but those were unrelated to Bobulinski.
A day later, on the March 21 edition of “The Five,” Tarlov issued a brief clarification of her comments when she said:
“… During an exchange with my colleagues about the hearing I said that Mr. Bobulinski’s lawyers’ fees have been paid by a Trump super PAC as recent as January.
“What was actually said during the hearing was that the law firm representing Mr. Bobulinski was paid by a Trump PAC. I have seen no indication those payments were made in connection with Mr. Bobulinski’s legal fees and he denies that they were.”
Bobulinski’s attorneys had requested a complete retraction and an apology, which Tarlov did not offer and which Fox News dismissed in a letter to the former Biden family business associate, Mediaite reported.
Bobulinski told Congress last week that Joe Biden was personally involved in Hunter Biden’s business affairs and that the family business was to cash in on the family name.
He claimed the Bidens had made a small fortune in countries from Ukraine to China.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Hunter Biden Whistleblower Tony Bobulinski Suing Liberal Fox News Host – ‘Lies Have Consequences’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Leave it the ladies of “The View” to take the most hysterical interpretation of every utterance or action Donald Trump’s.
And on Wednesday, the ladies of “The View” were downright apoplectic upon learning of Trump’s new endeavor in selling, with country singer Lee Greenwood, his “God Bless the USA” bibles.
These Bibles, as The Hill explained in their story on the subject, cost about $60 each.
They included the King James translation of the Bible, copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a handwritten verse of Greenwood’s song, “God Bless the USA.”
Now, while Trump has not generally been the most flawless example of good Christian living, and his initial announcement was somewhat awkward, he should at least be applauded for his attempt to “make America pray again.”
The ladies of “The View,” however, did not share this sentiment — in fact, they thought quite the opposite.
As shown in this snippet of the show shared by the Daily Caller, co-host Sunny Hostin even thought the whole enterprise was “blasphemous.”
Sunny Hostin says that Trump selling bibles is “blasphemous”. pic.twitter.com/KzfaZ3ErM4
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 28, 2024
Hostin began by joking, “You know, it’s Holy Week, and so I cannot say what I would like to say.”
Joy Behar, the co-host who has seemingly been in a competition with Whoopi Goldberg to embarrass herself the most times on television, then chimed in with her two cents.
Behar said, “There’s an old saying. … It’s a historical saying, that … ‘When fascism comes to America, it will be waving a flag and holding a Bible.'”
She then told the audience, “take a look” at the screen behind them, which dutifully displayed the famous picture of Trump hugging the flag together with another of Trump holding a Bible.
… And?
Many people have waved flags and held Bibles without being fascists, what exactly was her point?
Besides, Behar didn’t even remember the quotation correctly.
The quotation actually was, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” said to have come from author Sinclair Lewis.
Although, as fact-checking website Snopes noted, it did not actually appear in any of his writings.
Never mind that the most famous fascists, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, were quite areligious, even anti-religious (especially Hitler, seeing as Catholic priests and nuns were sent to the gas chambers along with the Jews).
Alas, though, the ladies of “The View” were not quite finished.
Behar ended her point, claiming “that is what we are looking at right now. Remember that in November.”
And Hostin threw in, as the last word, “It’s blasphemous!”
The crowning irony was that the ladies of “The View” have been arguably worse examples of good Christian living than Trump himself.
To begin with, all of them have been vocal in their support of abortion, a morally reprehensible position antithetical to Christian teaching, as well as for gay marriage.
Further, Behar once created outrage by calling strong Christian faith a “mental illness” on “The View” in 2018, and her co-host Hostin once made the blasphemous claim that “Jesus would be the grand marshal of the Pride Parade.”
And that was all to say nothing of the sick anti-Christian message Goldberg sported on her sweatshirt in the wake of the shooting at the Nashville Christian school, her unhinged rants accusing everyone and everything of racism (except Hitler, bizarrely), and her siding with a guest on the show who compared the “Christian right” to the Taliban.
Trump might not be the best Christian example out there in public life, but comparatively, he has been leagues ahead of the ladies on “The View.”
The ladies of “The View” had no room to talk when it came to the question of being a good Christian.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: ‘The View’ Hosts Melt Down Over Trump Selling Bibles, Claim It’s Bringing ‘Fascism to America’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Watch: 'The View' Hosts Melt Down Over Trump Selling Bibles, Claim It's Bringing 'Fascism to America' | The Gateway Pundit | by Allison Anton, The Western Journal
The ladies of "The View" were downright apoplectic upon learning that Donald Trump is selling Bibles bundled with the founding documents.
The establishment media have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel this election, in their desperate search for mud to fling at their arch-nemesis Donald Trump.
From the wailing and gnashing of teeth that ensued when Trump’s half-a-billion dollar bond was reduced to $175 million by the New York appellate court, to the pearl clutching over the willful misunderstanding of Trump’s “bloodbath” metaphor, the establishment media types have been tying themselves in knots in their quest to smear Trump’s name.
And now, The Washington Post has increased its contribution to this embarrassing enterprise by trying to manufacture some conflict between Trump and his wife, Melania.
The Post began the attempt right in the title, which alleged that “Trump’s mother-in-law came into the country by a process he derided.”
What exactly did The Post mean by this headline?
Based on an analysis of immigration records released on Monday, The Post was able to track the steps by which Trump’s mother-in-law, Amalija Knavs, who died in January at the age of 78, came into the country.
The Post reported that Knavs was able to enter the country and eventually become a citizen thanks to the family-based process of immigration which, the Post noted, Trump publicly spoke out against and sought to overhaul during the course of his presidency.
Meaning, as The Post explained, according to United States law dating back to 1965, citizens can apply for their parents or minor children to come into the country without a lengthy visa waiting period.
According to the recently released records, Melania Trump did just that for her parents in 1997, and then again when her parents applied for green cards in 2008. Legal permanent residency was granted on March 16, 2010. Knavs and her husband, Viktor, didn’t became U.S. citizens until Aug. 9, 2018.
Clearly, then, what The Post tried to imply was that, had Trump been president in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, then his in-laws could never have become citizens and, therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Trump cannot be in harmony with each other as a result.
What The Post missed, however, was that Trump never had anything against immigration in and of itself..
For one, if Trump and his wife ever clashed over thse issues, they presumably dealt with those issues, and subsequently moved on from them, years ago.
For another, what Trump objected to, as president and as a presidential candidate, were the illegal methods of immigration, and the breakdown of a process that once worked, but now has been abused by bad actors to allow unacceptable levels of chain migration.
Trump, via the RAISE Act, wanted to limit this family sponsorship to spouses and minor children, removing parents from the fast track of sponsorship and instating a system that would prioritize skilled workers.
As The Federalist explained at the time, had this act passed, it would have reformed U.S. immigration to follow similar systems that had been standard in countries like Canada and Australia for years.
The point of the bill was not to eliminate the United States’ immigration processes, but to reform them.
What The Post failed to understand was that Trump, and, indeed, conservatives in general, were actually pro-immigration.
Instead, conservatives’ stance on immigration has been to prioritize those immigrants that would be materially good for the United States, and who would actively benefit American society.
Of course, legitimate asylum requests did not fall under that stipulation, but overall, that is what differentiated the conservative position on immigration from that of the left.
Those on the left have been actively advocating for allowing immigrants who are actively harmful to American society, as the tragic series of murders and assaults of American citizens has sadly demonstrated.
And that was what the Post failed to understand in its weak attempt to pit Trump and his wife against each other.
Conservatives never hated immigration.
What Trump and conservatives hated was illegal immigration.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post WaPo Tries Pitting Donald Against Melania, Completely Misses One Huge Problem appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
There were allegations aplenty at a Wednesday hearing on the federal tax charges against Hunter Biden, but what bothered U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi was the paucity of facts connecting the charges with efforts by congressional Republicans to probe the murky depths of the Biden family’s finances.
Although Scarsi did not make a decision, he signaled in the Los Angeles hearing that defense arguments that the Biden administration’s Justice Department was doing former President Donald Trump’s bidding were not persuasive, according to CNN.
Scarsi, who is dealing with nine motions from Hunter Biden’s attorneys, said he would issue a ruling by April 17, according to The Washington Post.
One motion claiming “selective and vindictive” prosecution appeared to irk the judge.
“One of the big hurdles that this motion has is that it’s not filed with any evidence,” Scarsi said.
He said the facts will win the day, not the politics surrounding the case.
“We are just looking at the facts and law,” the judge said. “All of the aspersions cast off one another just roll off.”
If Scarsi rules against Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son will go to trial in June. There is also the option to make a deal with prosecutors, but the last deal made with Hunter Biden blew up in July in spectacular fashion, lighting off the chain of events that brought his attorneys to court on Wednesday in California.
Biden attorney Abbe Lowell said it was wrong that after prosecutors initially charged the president’s son with misdemeanors in a plea deal that drew outrage from Republicans, he should face three felony charges now as well as six misdemeanors.
Lowell said the tougher charges are proof that special prosecutor David Weiss, who as the U.S. attorney for Delaware led the initial Hunter Biden probe that ended with misdemeanor charges, gave into a public pressure campaign orchestrated by congressional Republicans.
Scarsi asked the attorney for anything more than timing to connect those dots.
“It’s a timeline,” Lowell said. “But it’s a juicy timeline.”
Prosecutor Leo Wise said once the plea deal collapsed, the Justice Department was not bound by its terms.
The hearing also batted about an immunity deal that was part of the initial agreement to settle tax and gun charges against Hunter Biden, which Biden’s lawyers claim should still be in effect.
However, as noted by the New York Post, neither the judge who had to approve the deal nor Delaware Chief U.S. Probation Officer Margaret Bray ever signed the agreement, which former Biden defense attorney Christopher Clark called “null and void.”
Wise said Biden’s team “flipped” its position, not the government.
“There was a good faith belief that Mr. Biden was going to plead guilty,” he said.
Scarsi appeared puzzled by the deal, asking at one point, “Why would he plead guilty if he had immunity?”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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