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Memorial Day Weekend in the City
By John F. Di Leo
New York Equal Rights Amendment Off the Ballot
Equality under the law is a noble pursuit – but is that really what this ERA offered?
by James Fite | May 25, 2024
The Equal Rights Amendment has been removed as a ballot initiative for the November elections in New York. The proposed change to the state’s constitution easily and quickly passed through the legislature in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. And the many progressive voters of the Empire State no doubt looked forward to enshrining it in their constitution just as decisively. But according to the judge who struck it down, the speed with which the amendment was approved is the problem. The process was rushed, making the ballot initiative unconstitutional.
“They put forth this amendment to the constitution. There was no open debate. There was no public hearings, there was nothing,” explained Bobbie Anne Cox, the attorney who sued the legislature to stop the referendum. “They referred it to the AG that day, but then they voted that same day. They didn’t even wait one day,” Cox added.
The New York Constitution requires that a proposed amendment must be presented to the attorney general to determine that it isn’t in conflict with other parts of the constitution, and the AG has 20 days to respond. New York Supreme Court Justice Daniel J. Doyle declared the amendment null and void because the Democrats didn’t give the attorney general the required time – or, really, any time at all.
Equal Rights or Progressive Ideology?
Opponents and supporters alike recognize that this Equal Rights Amendment would enshrine in the New York Constitution a legal right to abort. Indeed, many would argue it’s the whole point of the amendment. But that isn’t all that has conservatives concerned about this ERA. Some fear it threatens parental rights, as it would guarantee “gender-affirming” care for kids, including gender reassignment surgery or puberty blockers, without need for parental consent. Some also argued that it would require sports programs to allow biological males who identify as female to compete against girls and women. “Any decent lawyer will take one look at the Proposition One language and say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” said Greg Garvey, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect Kids – New York. “This ballot initiative is written so broadly and so poorly that it could cause irreparable harm to children and families,” he continued.
The amendment would have modified the New York State Constitution Article 1, Section 11. The text of the proposed amendment reads:
“1. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof. No person shall, because of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability creed, or religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy, be subjected to any discrimination in their civil rights by any other person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state pursuant to law.
“2. Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section, nor shall any characteristic listed in this section be interpreted to interfere with, limit, or deny the civil rights of any person based upon any other characteristic identified in this section.”
What makes this stand out from the usual talk of equal rights, which classically evokes the civil rights movements against racism and sexism, is the addition of “gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy” to the list of classes protected from discrimination.
What’s in a Name?
The New York State Bar Association published an article in March titled “What the Equal Rights Amendment Will Mean in New York,” written by Kimberly Wolf Price. The article, which clearly endorses this ERA, makes the point that 29 states have some sort of equal rights amendment in their constitutions but that New York doesn’t.
New banner Liberty Nation Analysis 1“This means that judicial review of any alleged discrimination under the categories of gender, gender identity, sex, age, disability, et al. is based on intermediate scrutiny, a lower standard than that provided to constitutional protections,” Price wrote. “And while laws can be altered each legislative session, any amendment to New York’s Constitution must follow the constitutionally mandated complicated path the ERA has traveled to the ballot.” Notice how Price didn’t mention the abortion protection in that statement, choosing rather to include it in the “et al.” bit?
What the author of this article and the NY Bar Association – or, for that matter, most LGBTQ or abortion advocates – don’t highlight is that not all equal rights amendments are created equal.
“False equivalence is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone incorrectly asserts that two or more things are equivalent, simply because they share some characteristics, despite the fact that there are also notable differences between them,” wrote Dr. Itamar Shatz of the University of Cambridge Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. The simple example he gave after that explanation paints a good picture: “For example, a false equivalence is saying that cats and dogs are the same animal, since they’re both mammals and have a tail.”
Sometimes, however, one must dig a little deeper to find the false equivalence. In this case, the shared characteristic is the name. Many states have equal rights amendments, but how many match the wording of what Empire State progressives hoped to add to the New York Constitution?
Florida’s 1998 amendment reads:
“All natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property. No person shall be deprived of any right because of race, religion, national origin, or physical disability.”
“Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. This amendment is self-operative,” reads the 1972 ERA of Texas. Montana has, since 1973, protected people from discrimination based on “race, color, sex, culture, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.”
Notice how none of these equal rights amendments constitutionally protect abortion or declare it a crime to insist there are only two genders? These cats and dogs may all be mammals, but they’re far from the same animal.
https://www.libertynation.com/new-york-equal-rights-amendment-off-the-ballot/
COVID Cover-Up: Ex-Fauci Aide David Morens Opens Pandora’s Box
“I learned from our Foia lady here how to make emails disappear …”
by Leesa K. Donner | May 25, 2024
Secret back channels, ways to make emails disappear, and dark jokes about kickbacks were explored during the testimony of former Anthony Fauci aide Dr. David Morens, who appeared before a House Select Subcommittee regarding the Coronavirus Pandemic this week. Under intense questioning from both sides of the political aisle, Morens statements raised “serious questions of whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] to hide official records regarding the origins of COVID-19,” according to a subcommittee memo penned by Republicans.
But there was plenty of fire coming from Democrats, as well. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) said the quiet part out loud when he addressed Morens, saying: “Do you want to take the Fifth Amendment? I mean, you don’t seem to remember anything.” Then he added: “Sir, I think you’re going to be haunted by your testimony today.”
David Morens Private Work Emails Made Public
A FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request seeking the private emails of Morens and NIH (National Institute of Health) employee Gerald Keusch brought forth 155 pages of subpoenaed communications. These documents are a veritable treasure trove of what went on behind the scenes in the early days of the pandemic.
The emails occurred mostly between Morens and Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, whose project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded by NIH is at the epicenter of the controversy surrounding the origins of the deadly virus. The congressional subcommittee alleges that Daszak used money from NIH for gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
David Morens, who worked under Fauci but apparently was friends with Daszak, came under questioning regarding several emails he had written, including this one:
“Peter, from Tony’s [Fauci] numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you, which also protects their own reputations.”
On Feb. 24, 2021, Morens wrote to an undisclosed recipient the following:
“You are right, I need to be more careful. However, as I mentioned once before, I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia’s [sic] but before the search starts, so I think we are all safe. Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail. D.”
Then there’s this one from Morens to co-worker Gerald Keusch under the subject heading “Conspiracies are winning here”:
“I had a long off the record chat with PBS Newshours’s Nick Schifrin this morning. The craziness is receding at least a bit.
“I forgot to clarify in my email yesterday that BOTH my gmail and phone calls are now safe. Text is NOT, as it can be FOIA’d, as can my govt email.
“So you and Peter and others should be able to email me on my gmail only …”
Then to Peter Daszak, Morens wrote:
“Peter have a stiffdrink before you read. But do not worry, this is the new normal and there will be no ‘there’ there …. D”
Another gmail from Morens to Daszak regarding FOIAs read:
“We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them.”
The Washington Examiner reports that EcoHealth Alliance has denied any wrongdoing, saying that “all allegations of misconduct are misunderstandings of the circumstances and that the organization has not engaged in misconduct.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has called for the Department of Justice to investigate the use of private emails for public business purposes.
https://www.libertynation.com/covid-cover-up-ex-fauci-aide-david-morens-opens-pandoras-box/
Saturday's Energy Absurdity: 17 Million Scottish Trees Lost to Big Wind
David Blackmon
May 25, 2024
I’m old enough to remember when haughty people who call themselves “environmentalists” at least pretended to care about the actual environment. Those were some good times, weren’t they?
But those times started to fade when the climate alarm movement succeeded in convincing craven and gullible Western policymakers and judges that carbon dioxide, i.e., plant food that forms the very foundation for all life on Planet Earth, simply must be regulated as a “pollutant.” This obsession with using CO2 as the means to pursue a worldwide authoritarian form of socialism quickly led to the death of what reasonable people used to refer to as true environmentalism.
As a result, we end up with stories like this one from the Scottish Daily Express:
“Anger as 17 million trees chopped down in Scotland to clear way for wind farms.”
That’s right: The Scottish government has approved the destruction of more than 17 million trees in this century to make way for their being replaced by Big Wind industrial developments, including more than 1 million in just the past year.
Here is an excerpt from that story:
The Scottish Government has been blasted after it was revealed that more than one million trees have been chopped down on publicly owned land in just a year to make way for wind farms. This mass cutting down of trees came despite the SNP and Scottish Greens claiming environmental credentials.
Communities in rural Scotland have complained about massive turbines blighting their landscapes, with even more planned in areas such as Aberdeenshire and Moray. And now it has been revealed that a SNP quango is getting rid of healthy trees in order to make space for them.
According to new statistics, more than one million trees were chopped down on public land, which is the equivalent to 2,700 per day. Critics described this as "appalling" and warned that the rising number of wind farm developments are causing “irreparable damage” to the countryside.
[End]
This obsession with destroying whatever scenic or arable lands necessary to put up ugly, intermittent, unreliable, and hugely costly developments of dozens of gigantic wind towers with less than a 20% efficiency rate is what has replaced the “environmental” movement in the Western world today.
It is one of the saddest and most ruinous social developments in modern times, and it simply must be stopped.
That is all.
https://blackmon.substack.com/p/saturdays-energy-absurdity-17-million?publication_id=712558&post_id=144967786&isFreemail=true&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true
Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick: Trump's N.Y. Judge 'Absolutely Corrupt'
By Mark Swanson | Friday, 24 May 2024 07:29 PM EDT
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York is "absolutely corrupt," adding that the business records case is nothing more than a "show trial."
Patrick made a four-minute video he posted to X on Friday after "spending a day with President Trump at trial."
While the trial is in the midst of a recess for the Memorial Day holiday, Patrick took aim at Judge Juan Merchan, beginning with his ruling on Monday that, according to Politico, sharply limited the testimony of defense witness and election law expert Brad Smith.
"He's doing everything in his power to help the jury find a pathway to convict the president," Patrick said in the video. "The judge kept an expert witness on campaign finance from testifying that the president did not break any campaign finance law."
He added: "The president's lawyers asked the judge to give the jury an instruction that there is no campaign violation by the action the president took. The judge said no. In fact, this corrupt judge virtually granted every jury instruction the Biden prosecutors asked for and virtually none of the instruction the Trump team asked for."
Patrick's observation mirrored that of Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law professor emeritus, earlier this week.
"[Merchan] had already denied the defendant's Sixth Amendment rights over and over again by keeping evidence out that should have come in, although he let everything in in the prosecution's case," Dershowitz told Newsmax on Thursday.
Patrick slammed the trial as something you'd see in a "tin-pot dictatorship in a Third World country."
"No one would ever imagine that this would happen in America," Patrick said. "Remember, there is no crime; there is no evidence of any wrongdoing. But they are persecuting and prosecuting President Trump because they know they can't beat him in November."
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/texas-dan-patrick-trump/2024/05/24/id/1166129/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM627335_05252024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010104qyn8ru
Washington Update From the US Oil and Gas Association - 5.24.2024
David Blackmon
May 25, 2024
Let's Get This Party Started...
May 24, 2024
Memorial Day Weekend – Let’s Make This Short….
Summer Driving: Think CNN wants to hear about the 200+ things the Biden administration has done to increase the price at the pump?
Congressional Democrats are trying to get the pressure off President Biden and his attack on the oil industry and instead are trying to blame oil companies for higher gasoline prices. CNN reports:
Congressional Democrats are investigating whether leading U.S. oil companies have illegally colluded with one another and with OPEC to inflate prices at the pump, CNN has learned.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., the ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter Tuesday night to ExxonMobil, Chevron, Hess, BP America and three other fossil fuel companies demanding a trove of documents and communications.
Just wait until they learn about Joe Biden. Bet they will be cheesed to hear what he has done to try to reduce oil and gas production in the United States and make it more expensive. But then again, probably not…
Numerous stories this week trumpeted that the Biden Administration was working to lower gasoline prices. For example, a headline from the AP stated, “Biden releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from Northeast reserve in bid to lower prices at pump.” This headline is only true in an aspirational/marketing sense.
The article itself contains all of the important information. First, Biden is selling off the Northeast gasoline reserve because he was mandated by Congress. In the article, the AP explains, that the mandate to close the gasoline reserve "was included in a spending deal Congress approved in March to avert a partial government shutdown.” That sounds a bit different than Biden is doing this because of gasoline prices.
This is especially true because 1 million barrels of gasoline is not that much. At the end of the article, the AP states:
Patrick De Haan, an analyst for GasBuddy, said sale of the Northeast reserve would have little impact on gasoline prices nationally, although there “may be a slight downward pressure on prices” in the Northeast. The million-barrel reserve only amounts to about 2.7 hours of total U.S. gasoline consumption, he said.
This is one more example of Biden trying to say he is trying to reduce the price at the pump when, in reality, there are hundreds of examples of him working to increase the price at the pump.
Ford apparently enjoys losing $100k per EV sold but as a shareholder – I can’t say that I enjoy it as much as they do….
Last week the news reported that Ford lost over $100,000 per EV it sold in Q1 and that it was cutting battery orders. You might think that would mean that Ford would say publicly that maybe this forced transition to EVs is not something American consumers really want—but you would be completely wrong. Here’s Reuters explaining why Ford wants to continue to lose billions of dollars on a forced transition to EVs by supporting Biden's EV mandate:
Ford Motor Co, opens new tab said on Monday it backs the Biden administration's moves to dramatically cut vehicle emissions through 2032, rejecting Republican arguments the new climate rules are bad for business.
The second largest U.S. automaker said it supports the Environmental Protection Agency's regulations announced in March to cut passenger vehicle fleetwide tailpipe emissions by nearly 50% by 2032 over 2027 levels.
"Complying with emissions regulations requires lengthy advance planning, and Ford has taken steps to transform its business to ensure compliance with stricter emissions standards," the Dearborn-based automaker said.
Why would Ford support regulations which are costing it billions of dollars a year? I think there are two reasons. The first possible reason is that Ford knows the majority of car buyers don’t want EVs, but Ford believes EVs are the future, so it’s good to have the federal government harm consumers by limiting the choices of the car-buying public. Then it’s not Ford’s fault it is losing billions on switching to EVs too quickly.
The second possible reason is power politics. The Biden administration likely told the Detroit car companies that if the car companies supported Biden’s regulations, Biden would impose massive tariffs on Chinese EV imports to protect American car companies—which Biden did.
Regardless of what is motivating Ford, supporting Biden’s forced transition to EV is bad for their business and bad for America. The majority of Americans do not want to buy EVs. According to a recent Gallup poll, in 2023 43% of people said they might consider buying an EV, but that number fell to 35% this year. Just as Biden is starting to mandate EV sales, fewer people want to buy EVs.
Ford needs to get on the side of the American people. Until then they will continue to lose billions of dollars a year on an attempted forced transition to EVs.
Now start your weekend a bit early. Happy Memorial Day!
https://blackmon.substack.com/p/washington-update-from-the-us-oil-d20?publication_id=712558&post_id=144958008&isFreemail=true&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true
Attention, media lapdogs — It’s NOT “loan forgiveness!” This is shifting loan costs to the national debt, pure and simple. It’s income redistribution, taking money away from some college graduates, who are likely to earn higher income, to people who will never go to college or who already paid off their debt. Biden is not some magician who is suddenly making debt costs disappear with fairy dust. Stop pretending this is anything except transparent vote-buying of a demographic he desperarately needs to to sway. After all, the vote has to be close enough that he can steal another election.
GM bbotcs-
I have little faith in repubs doing anything to help. Trump is the only one with balls enough to point things out and do something. That's why he is hated by the left.
...............al
Big Silicon Valley Investors Abandon Biden in Droves – And Many Are Embracing Trump
by Paul Serran May. 24, 2024 5:20 pm
One does not need to be a visionary investor or a savvy venture capitalist to understand that Joe Biden is a disastrous President – in fact, many of these supposedly most well-informed business leaders kept voting for their own demise, supporting the Democrat party and its failed policies.
But this seems to be rapidly changing, as some relevant Silicon Valley venture capitalists turn against President Joe Biden, and – shocker – openly support former President Donald Trump.
That’s a tidal change for this industry.
Prominent Wall Street leaders such as David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Marc Andreessen, and Shaun Maguire have expressed their dissent against Biden policies.
Some will even say ‘It’s impossible to support Biden’.
Marc Andreessen, the founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, has “real issues” with the Biden administration.
The New York Post reported:
“A second Trump administration would be staffed by ‘very different kinds of people’ particularly at the SEC and FTC, Andreessen said in a recent podcast interview.”
Entrepreneur and investor, former chief operating officer at PayPal, David Sachs plans to host a fundraiser for Trump and interview him on his ‘All In’ podcast.
He says he has bigger disagreements with Biden than with Trump.
“Sacks cited Biden’s tax proposal, which would penalize startup founders who are wont to offer stock options to employees. ‘It’s a good reason for Silicon Valley to think really hard about who it wants to vote for’, Sacks told tech investors at the conference.”
Sacks was at a prominent tech moguls’ ‘anti-Biden’ dinner alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.
“Palihapitiya, the venture capitalist who was Mark Zuckerberg’s vice president of user growth shortly after the founding of Facebook, has also flipped from backing Democrats in the past to endorsing Trump. [He] plans to co-host the fundraiser for Trump alongside Sacks.”
Shaun Maguire, an investor at Sequoia Capital, criticized Biden on social media, though he has refrained from directly supporting Trump.
“After Biden indicated that the US would withhold certain weapons to Israel in the midst of the war in Gaza, Maguire accused him of ‘getting away with double standards his entire career’ — a reference to the Democrats’ drive to impeach Trump for threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine during his presidency.”
Needless to say, these expressions of support for Trump have been unheard of in Silicon Valley in many election cycles.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/big-silicon-valley-investors-abandon-biden-droves-many/
Federal Agents Found Out During 2016 Election That Joe Biden Met with Hunter’s Chinese Business Partners – But Kept It a Secret
by Cristina Laila May. 24, 2024 4:20 pm
Federal agents found out during the 2016 election that Joe Biden met with his son Hunter’s Chinese business partners during a trip to Beijing in 2013, but they kept it a secret.
According to Secret Service travel records obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, Hunter Biden took 411 trips across 29 countries between 2009 and 2014 while his father was US Vice President. On several of these trips, Hunter Biden was hidden from public view or was already waiting in the car before Joe Biden departed the plane.
Notably, Hunter Biden traveled to Beijing with then-VP Joe Biden in 2013 to meet with Chinese banker Jonathan Li.
Hunter Biden received a $1.5 billion loan from the Bank of China 13 days after traveling on Air Force Two with his father back in 2013. The Secret Service has redacted documents related to that trip.
How a Faith-Based Company is Changing the Way Americans Protect Their Retirement
Joe Biden has repeatedly denied being involved in Hunter’s overseas business deals.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden previously said to reporters.
However, newly released documents reveal Hunter Biden connected Joe Biden to his Chinese business associates in a Beijing hotel after Joe Biden met with President Xi Jinping.
“They got to meet Dad. All very good. Talk later,” Hunter Biden said in a December 2013 email to his Rosemont Seneca business partner Devon Archer.
Hunter also said his dad was “in love” with Xi Jinping.
“I think they are in love with each other,” Hunter Biden said in emails, according to Just The News. “They all most kissed on departure.”
THE FEDS KNEW ABOUT THE BIDENS
New reported emails from a 2015-2016 federal investigation show agents were looking into Hunter Biden’s communication with business associate Devon Archer leveraging Joe Biden’s trip to China in 2013.
ARCHER: “Did you end up meeting Jonathan… pic.twitter.com/sTC3MiKwox
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 24, 2024
Per RNC Research, Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business associates over at least a dozen times:
1. November 2010: Joe Biden had a sit-down meeting with Eric Schwerin — the president of Hunter’s private equity firm — in the West Wing.
2. November 2011: Joe Biden met with Chris Heinz — a co-founder of Hunter’s private equity firm — in the West Wing.
3. March 2012: Joe Biden met with Andres Pastrana Arango — the former president of Colombia who Hunter was doing business with — at his personal residence.
4. December 2013: Hunter flew with Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two to China where he introduced him to Jonathan Li, a Chinese businessman.
5. February 2014: Joe Biden had lunch with Hunter and two of Hunter’s Mexican business partners and was pictured giving them a tour of the White House.
6. April 2014: Joe Biden met with Devon Archer — another co-founder of Hunter’s private equity firm — in the White House a week before Archer joined the board of Burisma.
7. June 2014: Joe Biden met Manuel Estrella — Hunter’s Latin American business associate. After the meeting, Estrella emailed Hunter: “Hunter, I just met your father! So exiting! [sic]” Hunter replied: “I’m glad it all finally came together.”
8. August 2014: Pictures show Joe Biden golfing with his son, Hunter, and Devon Archer while they were both serving on the Burisma board.
9. April 2015: Joe Biden attended a dinner in Washington, D.C. with Hunter’s business partners from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.
10. November 2015: Joe Biden hosted his son’s Mexican business partners — Carlos Slim, Miguel Aleman Velasco, and Miguel Aleman Magnani — at his personal residence.
11. February 2016: Biden flew Hunter and Jeff Cooper — a family business partner — to Mexico City for a business trip aboard Air Force Two.
12. May 2016: Joe Biden met with Eric Schwerin — the former head of Hunter’s private equity firm — for dinner in Washington, D.C.
13. September 2016: Joe Biden attended a fundraiser for Francis Person — a business associate of Hunter’s and a former advisor in Biden’s VP office.
14. May 2017: Joe Biden met with family business partner Tony Bobulinski TWICE.
15. June 2018: Joe Biden texted Hunter saying that he was with Jeff Cooper — a family business partner — and that Cooper wanted to “do some work” with him.
In addition to meeting with Hunter Biden’s associates, Joe Biden has also received dirty money from China and other countries.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Monday released subpoenaed bank records revealing Joe Biden received direct monthly payments from Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/federal-agents-found-during-2016-election-that-joe/
Weird: Soros-Funded D.A. Declines To Prosecute Soros-Funded Campus Protesters
NEW YORK, NY — In what analysts have labeled a shocking turn of events, a district attorney whose career had been funded by global powerbroker George Soros declined to prosecute a group of violent university campus protesters who had also been funded by global powerbroker George Soros.
The surprising development came unexpectedly following college campus protests in various places across the country, with district attorneys strangely choosing to not prosecute lawbreakers who had been financed by the same person who had put the district attorneys themselves in office.
"I have chosen to not pursue charges," said New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg. "This decision has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my ascent to the office of the district attorney and the activities of these protesters were bankrolled by the same person. I have just chosen not to. And that's ok. I very much like my job and wish to keep it."
Political experts determined the link between Bragg and campus protesters both being funded by George Soros as a mere coincidence. "One has nothing to do with the other," said one observer. "Having a public official who accepts money from a global boogeyman decline to prosecute lawbreakers who were funded by the same boogeyman is purely happenstance. Any claims to the contrary would be wild conspiracy theories with no basis in reality."
At publishing time, District Attorney Bragg had released a subsequent statement denying that the personal letter he received from Soros ordering him to refrain from prosecuting protesters had anything to do with his decision.
https://babylonbee.com/news/weird-soros-funded-da-declines-to-prosecute-soros-funded-campus-protesters
DOJ Authorizes Postal Workers To Use Deadly Force On Trump When Delivering His Mail
U.S. — Unsealed documents from the Department of Justice reveal that postal workers were formally authorized to use deadly force while delivering mail to Mar-a-Lago.
"This is standard procedure," confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland. "We are in no way secretly targeting Donald Trump. We are merely authorizing mail carriers to fire on Donald Trump if he shows up to collect his mail. This is for the safety of our postal workers and is nothing out of the ordinary."
To date, no mail carriers have been harmed while visiting Mar-a-Lago, but experts warn it's only a matter of time before Trump is caught eagerly waiting for a package. To prepare for this eventuality, the United States Postal Service will require all its employees who deliver to Mar-a-Lago to pass a gun safety course in which they fire on targets made to look like Donald Trump.
"This totally standard and not at all unusual protocol saves lives," Deputy Postmaster Milton Farmland said. Then, speaking through an intercom to trainees, he shouted, "Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill!"
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor Trump shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," said Postmaster General Benjamin Connell, quoting the United States Postal Service creed as he adjusted the sights on his SVD Dragunov.
Asked to comment on the matter, President Biden explained he had no knowledge of what the DOJ does, or what his name is. "What is mail?" asked Biden. "This sounds like a trick. Did Jill put you up to this? Where's my ice cream?"
At publishing time, outraged congressional Republicans vowed to hold the administration accountable by writing a strongly worded letter to the DOJ.
https://babylonbee.com/news/doj-authorizes-postal-workers-to-use-deadly-force-when-delivering-trumps-mail
Prosecution Offers Michael Cohen $130,000 Hush Money To Stop Talking
NEW YORK, NY — Prosecutors in the trial against former president Donald Trump offered star witness Michael Cohen $130,000 if he would keep his big mouth shut for a while.
"Every time Cohen talks, it totally ruins our case…" Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger told the press. "I mean, he's totally legitimately trustworthy, completely. Totally. But sometimes he sort of has this knack for completely undermining the entire credibility of our totally and completely airtight case against Trump. So we're just going to go ahead and slide him a little ‘please shut up' money."
Cohen admitted in court this week he stole $60,000 from Trump when he was serving as the presidential candidate's attorney. Legal analysts say the admission further lampoons the prosecution's very well-thought-out case against Trump and makes them look a little like "low-IQ donkeys."
"We're going to pay Michael some money if he'll promise to just go away and stop all the blah blah blah for a bit," Hoffinger said. "When we do it, it's to protect democracy."
At publishing time, Trump had been indicted for failing to condemn the prosecution's hush money payments.
https://babylonbee.com/news/prosecution-offers-michael-cohen-130000-hush-money-to-stop-talking
Biden Placed In Presidential Weeble-Wobble To Keep Him From Falling Down
WASHINGTON, DC — According to sources in the White House, President Biden has been given his very own Weeble-Wobble to help keep him occupied and upright in the months leading up to November's election.
According to White House staffers, Biden's new bottom-heavy outfit was custom-made by Fisher-Price and is completely bullet-proof in addition to being impossible to knock down. It also sports a spiffy new presidential seal on the front.
Sources confirmed that if knocked over, Biden will quickly bounce upright due to the state-of-the-art weeble-wobble design.
"The president is taking a stand for democracy," said Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as Biden weebled and wobbled behind her. "The right-wing conspiracy theorists who claim that the president is falling down on the job are literally wrong. This is just another example of President Biden bringing stability to our government in these topsy-turvy times."
"After I signed the packandelempackatlackact into law, my staff gave me this wbegbbobbler - PAUSE," Biden said when asked for comment. "And it only cost four hundred million billion - if you don't like it, yer a... a... well, anyway..."
At publishing time, former president Donald Trump had criticized Biden's Weeble-Wobble, demanding the pear-shaped contraption be removed for the debates.
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-placed-in-presidential-weeble-wobble-to-keep-him-from-falling-down
AOC Demands To Know Where Alito Bought An Upside-Down U.S. Flag
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As controversy continued to swirl around Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded to know where Alito bought an upside-down U.S. flag.
After reports surfaced that an inverted American flag had been spotted flying over Alito's home, AOC issued a statement calling for the source of Alito's offensive flag so that the vendor could be reprimanded appropriately.
"Where does someone even get an upside-down American flag, anyway?" Ocasio-Cortez asked reporters. "Every store that sells flags should know how offensive an inverted U.S. flag is and should never manufacture or sell them to anyone. I think we all deserve to know where Justice Alito was able to purchase an upside-down American flag, don't you?"
AOC even went as far as to threaten legislative action to hold Alito accountable. "Don't even think I won't get to the bottom of this," she said. "Anyone who is selling inverted American flags should be publicly outed as un-American and a threat to democracy itself! As a Supreme Court judge, Justice Alito must be held to a higher standard. If there is some type of black market for upside-down U.S. flags, the American people deserve to know about it."
AOC expressed concern that more people would begin purchasing upside-down American flags if they were made easily attainable. "The next thing you know," she warned, "everyone will be able to have an inverted flag."
At publishing time, AOC was unable to be reached for further comment due to getting her head stuck between the spindles of the U.S. Capitol staircase banister.
https://babylonbee.com/news/aoc-demands-to-know-where-alito-bought-an-upside-down-us-flag
‘Balancing’ the new marching orders for America
By George Shuster
Well, the American voters have just gotten their marching orders from an unexpected source. Reacting to the testimony of prosecution witness Michael Cohen in the New York show trial wherein he admitted stealing from Trump, MSNBC's Lawrence O’Donnell announced that it was not stealing. Oh, no, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t illegal. Nor criminal. Nor unethical. None of that. It was just natural and fair. Cohen was just “rebalancing.” Despite being paid millions, he was just evening things up by helping himself to some more compensation, as his due.
Apply that thinking to what all Americans can see for themselves. The Biden regime has weaponized all of government and its accomplices to steal the 2024 election before it even takes place. They have committed massive resources of money, persons, and time trying to, or succeeding in, having Trump:
tied up in court;
indicted with 91 counts in four venues;
confiscated of his money;
forced to pay massive legal fees;
prevented from campaigning;
gagged from speaking;
forced to focus his time, energy, and resources elsewhere;
subjected to numerous hoaxes and lies;
attacked by corrupt judges and prosecutors;
denied due process, as in the Pelosi-selected committee;
falsely impeached;
removed from the ballot.
What should the American voters do in response to these blatant efforts to tip the scales of the election? The answer is obvious. We must all “rebalance” these outrages by electing Trump with the largest margins in electoral history.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/balancing_the_new_marching_orders_for_america.html
Video: Ted Cruz demonstrates for a leftist-activist judicial nominee why he's Supreme Court material
By Monica Showalter
MSBNC’s Ruhle says the poors need to quit cryin’ about the economy and focus on a new ‘American dream’
By Jack Hellner
Bidenflation eats into the working poor's fast food -Axios
By Monica Showalter
Joe Biden is losing working-class voters across racial lines based on his Bidenomics economy, and one of the reasons is the rise in fast-food prices, Axios writes.
Why it matters: Fast food restaurants have had some of the sharpest price hikes during the Biden administration, higher than both grocery bills and gas prices.
Biden relied on working class voters to win in 2020, but high prices and high interest rates are hitting the poorest Americans the hardest.
Biden is now either losing, or splitting, lower income voters, according to survey after survey.
Nearly three in five Americans believe (incorrectly) that the U.S. is in recession, according to a new Harris poll for the Guardian.
Zoom in: The average price of "meals at limited services eating places" has outpaced wage gains for workers since before the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Prices are up 31%, vs. average hourly earnings up 25%.
That's Bidenflation for you, eating into your fast-food hamburger, along with your groceries and your gas prices.
Axios doesn't prove this anywhere in its piece, but it stands to reason that its writer's argument is probably right. Poor and working-poor people have less disposable income, so expensive restaurant dining is usually out, but fast-food historically is less costly as well as quite available in inner cities, and more accessible.
It's also a bit more than just food. Anecdotally, I've spoken to women on public assistance who have told me taking their kids out to have fast food is a special occasion experience they value being able to give their kids, given their limited incomes. Taking their kids out to have fast food is the treat they save up for.
Fast food historically has been the least-expensive restaurant option, so it makes sense that more poor people might use it more, though people of all ages and social statuses like fast food.
Is it the least expensive option now?
Well, to get back to more anecdotes, yesterday I tried Applebee's, a fast-casual restaurant chain in San Diego, California for the first time with two other people and the tab came to $42. The atmosphere was pleasant, the service attentive, and the food, while probably out of some freezer, was fresher and more carefully made as well as delicious. In contrast, I tried El Pollo Loco, a fast-food chain, a few weeks ago, with the same two other people, and the tab for three salads and an extremely tiny order of chips going for $6 came to $45. This was before California's famous fast-food wage hike to $20 for fast-food workers, so all I can conclude is that it's even more now.
Obviously, it's cheaper to go fast-casual, or better still, ethnic food truck, than to dine out on fast food, and if that's the treat you give your kids for special occasions, well, there won't be any more treats.
Of course you'd hate Joe Biden for that kind of inflation: It doesn't just hit you, it hits your ability to do something special with your kids. Things like that have got to make voters angry.
Axios adds that the problem doesn't significantly affect the rich, either:
Zoom out: Five months before the election, America is a tale of two economies.
For wealthier households, smirking about their low fix-rate mortgages, the Fed's aggressive rate hike just doesn't sting that much, if at all.
The S&P is up 12% on the year, frequently flirting with new record highs.
And just as the poorer Americans are moving towards Trump, wealthier Americans are heading in Biden's direction.
By the numbers: In 2020, Biden beat Trump 55%-44% in households earning less than $50,000. In households between $50,000-$99,000, Biden had even bigger margins, at 57%-42%.
What's significant here is that while Biden is responsible for Bidenflation, Biden's union pals, particularly the Big Labor SEIU, have been the bedrock force driving fast food costs even higher than other costs, which Axios has a chart on.
The wealthy leaders of the SEIU, such as its newly elected leader, insist that they're doing this to help the working class. The irony is, they and Joe Biden are driving working people to President Trump more than anyone else is. Take away poor people's small remaining pleasures and they will turn on you.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/joe_biden_has_a_big_mac_problem_axios.html
California hemorrhages its law enforcement officers to a red state
By Olivia Murray
Here’s the report, from Fox News today:
Blue line getting thinner in West Coast states as police take refuge in Idaho
High concentration of retired and active first responders in Idaho not a coincidence, says former California High Patrol officer[.]
California is losing its law enforcement officers to a red state—imagine that! Men and women whose job may require them to lay their lives on the line, who handle some of the scummiest and darkest realities in the history of humanity, want to be respected and supported by their employers and community? No kidding.
And it’s not just a few cops here and there—deep blue pro-crime cities are hemorrhaging law enforcement officers:
Cities large and small across the country suffered severe staffing shortages on the heels of anti-police protests in 2020. Four years later, some departments still can’t stop the bleeding.
Seattle’s police staffing is at its lowest level since the 1990s, according to a March KING 5 report. Earlier this year in California, the Alameda Police Department offered a $75,000 signing bonus — the highest in the nation — on top of a six-figure starting salary to try to entice new officers.
Of course the lawlessness of the “defund the police” agenda, which isn’t really an accountability movement in bureaucratic policing (like I’d like to see) but a pro-crime and anti-law enforcement agenda, is obnoxious (and unacceptable) enough, because the citizens and the people suffer tremendously, especially the most vulnerable people us: minority communities which are pervaded by violent crime that’s already high enough, and the children in such communities who are subjected to terrible abuses. But, what I find doubly obnoxious is that instead of implementing policies that work, like the tough-on-crime policies of red states, the government uses taxpayer dollars—like the $75,000 bonus in Alameda, California—to woo new officers.
The people responsible for this don’t pay, in the slightest, and it’s enraging.
And, with the staffing crisis being what it is, how much have standards been lowered? This is extremely concerning for all of the obvious reasons; I distinctly remember being in the Chicago airport during the Trump years, and seeing a female Chicago police officer literally waddle through the airport because she was so overweight, and that was years ago. How much worse has Chicago gotten? L.A.? Seattle? Portland? Baltimore? Philadelphia?
Now, I really don’t like citizen initiatives, ballot measures, or any other roundabout ways in which the people directly vote on policy, but perhaps I might make a exception for this:
A ballot measure that forces all mayors and city council members in deep blue cities to serve in the local law enforcement agencies, for a considerable amount of time; I assume the crime problem would be solved quickly, if their own skin were in the game.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/california_hemorrhages_its_law_enforcement_officers_to_a_red_state.html
A border so wide open even the illegals are warning us
By Monica Showalter
How wide open is too wide a wide open border?
Well, when you've got illegal immigrants themselves warning about it, it's too wide.
That was what one illegal immigrant coming into the U.S. from Turkey at the Jacumba, California, non-port-of-entry border crossing told Fox News's Bill Melugin:
NEW: A Turkish man who crossed into Jacumba, CA illegally w/ a group of other Turkish men told me he paid $10k to a cartel, & expressed shock at how easy it was to cross the U.S. border with no resistance, telling me Americans should be “worried” about security & who is crossing. pic.twitter.com/Qb1a9BiDuV
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 23, 2024
He seemed like a nice enough fellow, someone who could assimilate and become a successful and grateful U.S. immigrant. Assuming he's never lived in the U.S., his English was remarkably good, as Turkish is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and the reverse is also true.
He was traveling with four other single young men and explained to Melugin what he was seeing with the border situation with his own eyes:
MELUGIN: Did you have to pay a cartel?
MIGRANT: Yes.
MELUGIN: How much?
MIGRANT: Around $10,000.
MELUGIN: Ten thousand?
MIGRANT: Yes. In fact, American people is right, completely true. Who comes into this country? They don't know. O.K., I'm good, but how if not good? How if they're killers, psychopaths, else? No guarantee of that. Why? Like no security, no security check, no background check.
MELUGIN: No security check, no background check, you're worrying about who's crossing the border?
MIGRANT: Yes, yes, yes. Of course, because people are not normal.
What an impressive analysis, basically saying the quiet part out loud about an open border and unvetted immigrants, the part that Joe Biden, the NGO industrial complex, the bishops, the media, the sanctuary cities, the politicians and others will never say nor admit as they seek to keep the migrants rolling, or more specifically, the dollars they bring in through government spending and their capacity to pad Democrat voter rolls.
He appears to be someone who would make a good immigrant here, though, empathetic with Americans, perhaps because Turkey, too, has seen some fearsome illegal immigration waves in recent years as a Mexico-like highway state for migrants on the way to Europe.
Melugin noted to a commenter that actually, he had tried several times to enter the U.S. legally, but the legal process logjam was too jammed up and he was rejected.
That highlights where the real problem is, that it's easier to get into the U.S. as a niece than a nurse who can contribute and become a classic immigrant success story. But coming here illegally was very easy, and he also likely understood that if he invested $10,000, he would likely be allowed to stay. Nobody invests that kind of money with a cartel on spec.
When it takes an illegal immigrant who's never been here to lay the situation down as Americans see it correctly, the biggest thing it demonstrates is that our elites are grossly out of touch.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/a_border_so_wide_open_even_the_illegals_are_warning_us.html
Huge pro-Trump crowd in the Bronx shows something profound happening in America
By Andrea Widburg
And the taxpayers all went out of Massachusetts
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
Let’s add another state to the list of blues losing people and taxpayers. It’s Massachusetts, or one of the original 13, but another one bites the dust, proving the reality that going blue has consequences.
This is the story:
Massachusetts is in danger of losing nearly $1 billion in annual revenue over the coming years as high state taxes trigger an exodus of wealthy residents.
Since 2013, migration out of Massachusetts has seen an ‘alarming’ 1,100% increase to more than 39,000 people, according to new findings published by Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. If the trend continues, more than 96,000 residents making a cumulative $19.2 billion in adjusted gross income will leave the state by 2030.
The study estimates those departures would cost Massachusetts about $961 million in income tax revenue each year.
The Bay State has already lost $821 million in income tax revenue since 2011.
That’s a lot of outflow as I remember a stand up comedian once saying. It’s a lot of money and a lot of the people who make the money happen.
According to the story, people are leaving because of three reasons: a high tax burden, expensive housing, and health care costs. There goes Obamacare again!
Another reality is that remote work policies have made it easier for “prime age” workers to leave. Why does that matter? Prime age workers buy homes and cars, and pay taxes.
Will things change? I hope so because necessity is often the mother of change. At some point, even liberals realize that driving away taxpayers is a bad idea.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/and_the_taxpayers_all_went_out_of_massachusetts.html
Good vs. evil? ‘Fake news!’ say leftists
By Eric Utter
SD firefighters fly in fire experts to tackle lithium battery fire still blazing from last week
By Olivia Murray
Climate Stupidity
By James T. Moodey
Tyranny by Any Other Name Still Stinks
By J.B. Shurk
Climate Change ‘Solutions’ Are Harming the Environment
By H. Sterling Burnett
U.S. Intelligence Deserves the Distrust It Is Generating
By John A. Gentry
On May 16, Foreign Policy magazine published an article by three experienced intelligence officers, including one who has chronically politicized U.S. intelligence, who argued that the U.S. intelligence community (IC) is getting a bad rap at a critical point in history for unfortunate, unjustified reasons. Only the first part of the assertion is correct. Far more accurate would have been a judgment that the declining respect for the IC reflected in polls is a direct result of the recent partisan political activism and dishonesty of ostensibly respectable senior former intelligence officers and many inaccurate “leaks” by current intelligence officers, mainly against candidate and then President Donald Trump.
This activism is new. For many decades the organizational culture at the CIA, most importantly given its role of supporting presidents, was that intelligence officers inform all presidents as best they can in apolitical ways, whatever the receptivity of presidents to intelligence or the accuracy of their complaints about intelligence. People believed politicization of any sort -- from the political Right or Left -- damages the usefulness of intelligence and agency interests. Insightful intelligence officers such as the CIA’s Martin Petersen knew that intelligence had to perform well constantly to maintain presidential confidence and that errors in judgment and lapses in integrity had severely negative, long-term consequences. There was no need for an intelligence norm equivalent to the military’s normative prohibition on political activism by former generals and admirals because intelligence officers rarely were politically active. There had never been a General Douglas MacArthur-like challenge to presidential authority.
But President Obama sought to change the demographics and the political complexion of the federal work force, and intelligence leaders such as CIA director John Brennan (2013-2017) made clear that they intended to change the organizational cultures of agencies in politically significant ways. They succeeded brilliantly, with overt activism in defense of Obama/Brennan changes beginning in 2016, when Trump emerged as a potential threat to the “progress” that Obama’s policies allegedly had achieved.
This radical change became glaringly obvious when former CIA deputy director Michael Morell invoked his CIA credentials in a New York Times op-ed to rationalize endorsing Hillary Clinton for president while harshly criticizing Trump. Morell then became one of the “talking heads,” along with Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and several dozen less-senior people whom the mainstream liberal press promoted as legitimate observers of everything relevant to their anti-Trump campaign. In 2018, senior CIA officer Peter Usowski noted that partisan activism by former CIA officers, whose last titles always precede their names in public discourse, was likely to be seen widely as activism by the agency proper. Usowski’s insightful observation was ignored.
It got worse. Among the worst ways, Morell admitted to the House Judiciary Committee that he and former CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos connived in October 2020 with the Joe Biden campaign in the person of Antony Blinken to debunk an accurate New York Post story that Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, abandoned at a repair shop, contained information suggesting that he and Joe Biden may have corruptly sold influence abroad. Morell and Polymeropoulos wrote a prospective open letter suggesting that the laptop’s contents, which the FBI had already determined were genuine, had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Fifty-one former intelligence officers signed the letter. The insinuation worked. Politico, which had published earlier politically-oriented open letters, obligingly converted the linguistic obfuscation of the letter into a definitive statement of Russian culpability in its headline. With intelligence help, Joe Biden won his election, averting an “October surprise.” One recipient of a Morell-Polymeropoulos pitch told me the explicit goal of the solicitation was to help Biden, not recruit expertise about Russian disinformation techniques.
Brennan was nearly as bad. In op-eds and tweets, he repeatedly bashed Trump, charging that Trump was a dupe of Russian President Vladmir Putin, calling him treasonous, and comparing him to swindler Bernie Madoff. Brennan also, while still CIA director, urged CIA employees to be politically active, arguably coming at least close to violating the 1939 Hatch Act that prohibits political activities by serving government employees.
Hayden, who published a fine book in 2016, published an emotional anti-Trump diatribe in 2018 that is riddled with errors. Titled The Assault on Intelligence, it documents no such thing. Trump largely ignored intelligence and the federal workforce generally. In October 2023, Hayden tweeted that Senator Tommy Tuberville should be removed “from the human race,” which led Tuberville to report Hayden to the U.S. Capitol police and others as an assassination threat.
The list of outrageous claims is long. Some, like many of Brennan’s, were simply outlandish. Many others were untrue. Many activist partisans, who accurately noted Trump’s casual respect for facts, wantonly misrepresented Trump and their own motives and actions. Several prominent critics, including Brennan, Clapper, and the FBI’s James Comey and Andrew McCabe, were accused pointedly of lying. Use of favorable versions of “truth” became a frequent tool of the politicization of intelligence. Chronic, blatantly obvious dishonesty is not conducive to public confidence in people who claim to speak “truth to power.”
Serving intelligence officers politicized in different ways. Unable to appear on MSNBC or write op-eds, they leaked often incorrect information -- falsehoods designed to damage Trump. Leaks surged early in the Trump administration and evidently remained at lofty levels. These included incorrect reports that Trump received briefings in early 2020 about the dangers of COVID and did nothing to address the problem. The Defense Department refuted the assertions. More significantly, the IC’s analytic ombudsman reported that China analysts in the IC withheld information from the White House that they believed might help Trump administration officials -- a potential national security threat.
Given this history, intelligence partisans of recent years unsurprisingly are again misrepresenting the legacy of activism of recent years. But it is hard to know how much is purposeful dishonesty and how much is self-delusion. National Intelligence University faculty incongruously argued in 2021 that Hollywood fables were to blame in part for growing public distrust of intelligence and that intelligence should better tout its value.
Hence, public confidence in intelligence, rationally, is declining. A Rasmussen poll released in October 2023 found that only 36% of American voters believed that intelligence agencies behaved in an impartial manner, while 51% said the agencies have their own political agendas. And 65% believed it likely that the agencies are influencing corporate media’s coverage of political issues. Another Rasmussen poll released in March 2024 showed that most Americans think the IC is trying to influence the 2024 presidential election. Per Peter Usowski, this is an understandable fear given the actions of Morell, Brennan, Comey, and many others since 2016, whether senior intelligence executives now orchestrate politicization directly or not. While many intelligence professionals lament the activism quietly, some have spoken against the politicization. For example, former CIA counterintelligence chief Mark Kelton observed that widespread worry in 2015, when Brennan was director, about “fraying professional discipline” of the workforce turned into a “tsunami” of leaks in the Trump years.
It is axiomatic in many walks of life that trust is earned slowly but can be destroyed easily. Hard, honest work done consistently over a long time is the only way to rebuild trust in intelligence. Restoration of the longstanding norms of apolitical public service and establishment of new norms of civil-military-like conduct are essential to restoring trust. But current and former intelligence officers first need to recognize that they caused the problem and accept that the task of rebuilding confidence in intelligence is theirs alone. There is, however, no evidence that many of them yet see the problem. Instead, the ideology and interests that led intelligence officers to oppose Trump in 2016 seem likely to reappear, especially given that Trump seems to recognize that he ignored management of the federal workforce in 2017-2021 and appears determined to remedy his error if he wins in November. Many of the activist former officers have irreparably damaged their credibility, but others seem likely to emerge.
In another election year, citizens should remember that intelligence activism of any sort by current or former intelligence officers reflects gross violations of longstanding, effective norms that intelligence people well understand. Citizens should remember, too, that the politicizers try to deflect responsibility for their actions and are practiced in doing so.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/u_s_intelligence_deserves_the_distrust_it_is_generating.html
The Trump Jury and the ‘Had It Coming to Him’ Factor
Will the verdict in a politically motivated trial also be decided by politics?
by Tim Donner | May 24, 2024
As the nation holds its collective breath for a few more days waiting for a verdict in the trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, the right appears more confident of a Trump acquittal than the left does about a conviction of their archenemy. But all of the collective opinion to date is based on millions of individual views of a trial based largely on reporting and pre-conceived notions rather than a live feed on TV. Those following the story have drawn their own varied conclusions, but of course, the only opinions that matter are those of the 12 jurors who likely feel the weight of the world on their shoulders as they prepare to decide a case that could have a profound effect on the presidential election – no matter their verdict.
So, what criteria will prevail in the minds of the jurors? The judge will provide specific instructions to guide their deliberations when the final stage of the trial commences on Tuesday, May 29. But will that prevent the seven men and five women deciding Trump’s fate from going rogue when they know an acquittal would make Trump’s return to the White House more likely? In fact, the jury has not been sequestered, and thus are free to watch and read coverage of the trial. And they are well aware that finding Trump not guilty on all counts might effectively render the left’s entire lawfare strategy a dead letter, given that the three other trials Trump faces now appear likely to be delayed past the election.
While even some pundits on the left have stipulated that government prosecutors have not proven their flimsy case, the greatest danger for Trump is what we will call the HITCH factor – a “had it coming to him” verdict. After all, with the 45th president now wildly unpopular in his hometown, and with over 90% of Manhattan residents registered as Democrats, will the jury require substantial hard evidence to convict a man many or most of them probably dislike or even hate? Some legal analysts argue that when a juror or witness takes an oath, they become more objective and less opinionated than they were when first entering the courtroom. But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, and just how are these jurors going to explain to their friends and neighbors that they let the evil orange man off the hook?
Throw Enough Charges Against the Wall …
That brings us to the volume of felony charges – 34 in total. This piling on is understood to be a common practice among prosecutors seeking any kind of conviction who prefer not to put all their eggs in one or two baskets. Put simply, taking 34 bites of the apple is better than one or two, as it gives the jury great latitude to pick and choose between the charges. And with the presumption that some version of HITCH will enter their judgment, wouldn’t the easiest solution be to find him guilty on one count or more? At the same time, the indictment is for 34 separate instances of the same crime, falsifying business records, not for separate or different crimes, so it would make delivering a guilty verdict on just some of the charges more complicated. Liberty Nation Legal Affairs Editor Scott Cosenza elaborates:
“I do not believe the number of crimes alleged will affect the jury’s decision here. No one can say a guilty verdict is probable. Mr. Trump’s motivation for reimbursing Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels was hardly proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It is possible, however. Any time a person is in criminal legal jeopardy, a conviction is possible, which is why the grand jury was instituted. Sadly, that check on prosecutorial power is functionally deceased. Also, we should expect some jurors successfully hid their hatred for Trump and relish the thought of sending him up the river.”
Then there is the potential for jury nullification, a practice many claimed jurors employed in the infamous trial of the late O.J. Simpson, which fittingly ended with one of the jurors doing a black power salute as he left the courtroom. Was the mountain of evidence against Simpson predominant in the minds of the jury? Apparently not, for they reached a not-guilty verdict in short order. The Trump trial is the most high-profile case in the three decades since the O.J. fiasco, and it seems just as likely to render a biased or subjective judgment.
There are also two lawyers on the jury. Being professionally versed in the law, will they stick to a faithful interpretation of the relevant statute(s) or find reasons to warp their judgment, considering the identity of the defendant? It is impossible to know, but on balance, Trump likely prefers to have attorneys on the jury who can explain the intricacies of the law to their fellow jurors. Will one of the lawyers, or another member of the jury, be willing to stand alone and ultimately convince the rest to go along with their judgment, as in the iconic movie 12 Angry Men? Not likely. That was fiction, and something that rarely happens in real life.
Would a Successful Trump Appeal Change the Narrative?
There have been so many instances in the proceedings so far that would seem ripe for appeal in the event of a guilty verdict, not the least of which is the transparent animosity of Judge Juan Merchan towards Trump reflected in instantly sustaining prosecutors’ ubiquitous objections and severely limiting the scope of testimony by key defense witnesses – including one from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) who was reportedly prepared to testify that Trump’s actions did not violate election law. Incredibly, there is still open debate about what exactly was the underlying crime related to an expired misdemeanor, as it has yet to be specified by the government, even with closing arguments set for the coming week.
But would even a successful appeal erase the label of convicted felon in the court of public opinion? When the conviction of Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein was recently overturned on appeal, it hardly changed the public’s opinion of a man vilified by almost everyone. Once again, we will not know whether a potential conviction has already been “baked in” to people’s perception of Trump and this trial – or whether a guilty verdict would turn current public opinion on its head.
For reasons more political than legal, the best-educated guess here – and it’s just a guess – is a hung jury. It is hard to envision every single juror agreeing either that the government proved its case or, on the other hand, that Trump is not guilty on all counts. The question that hangs over the trial is whether an indictment brought for nakedly political purposes will be decided on the same basis by the dozen jurors who hold Donald Trump’s fate in their hands. Will there be a HITCH in the works?
https://www.libertynation.com/the-trump-jury-and-the-had-it-coming-to-him-factor/
Fani Willis Whistleblower Claims Misuse of Grant Money Was Part of ‘Madame’s Vision’
By Tom Ozimek
May 23, 2024
A former staffer at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office told a Georgia Senate hearing Thursday that she was wrongfully fired after blowing the whistle on plans by Ms. Willis’s office to misuse a federal grant worth nearly half a million dollars that was meant to help at-risk youth but was instead earmarked for ineligible expenses like travel, computers, and “swag.”
Amanda Timpson, former grant project manager at Ms. Willis’s office, told the Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations on May 23 that in the course of her work supervising the administration of federal grants, she became aware of “irregularities” and “problems” in the way the grant money was going to be spent.
The $488,594 grant was earmarked for intervention strategies that could dissuade youth from joining gangs in Fulton County, specifically for the establishment of the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention. The grant remains open and the center has not been built.
Ms. Timpson testified that when Ms. Willis took office in 2021, her then-supervisor Michael Cuffee, a former campaign aide to Ms. Willis, told her he planned to use the grant money in a way that was explicitly prohibited by the rules governing grant administration.
“He articulated that he wanted to spend the grant on computers, travel, and swag,” Ms. Timpson said, adding that Mr. Cuffee said he wanted some of the money to be spent on promotional items like pins, coffee mugs, and T-shirts as part of the Fulton County DA’s office “rebranding” after the election of Ms. Willis.
Ms. Timpson said she quickly interjected and clarified to Mr. Cuffee that the grant funds could only be used on expenses that were specific to programming requirements, namely to help at-risk youth.
Investigative committee chairman Sen. Bill Cowsert asked about Mr. Cuffee’s reaction when Ms. Timpson told him the way he wanted to spend the grant funds “was illegal.”
“Initially, he let me know that it was, um—the employees in the DA’s office called Ms. Willis ‘Madame’—so he let me know that it was ‘Madame’s Vision’ and I basically said ‘I understand that but it’s not what the grant says,'” Ms. Timpson testified.
A request for comment on Ms. Timpson’s allegations sent to the Fulton County DA’s office was not returned.
‘Madame’s Vision’
The hearing was part of the special committee’s investigation into Ms. Willis and allegations of impropriety after it was revealed she engaged in a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to help prosecute an election interference case against former President Donald Trump.
Previous hearings before the GOP-controlled committee revealed that there was, as Mr. Cowsert said, “very little control” and oversight of Ms. Willis’ $36 million budget.
President Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, has alleged that the charges are politically motivated and has called for Ms. Willis to be removed from the case.
During her testimony on Thursday, Ms. Timpson said that she persisted in her opposition to what she described as planned misuse of the grant funds at weekly meetings. In retaliation for flagging the intended misuse of the grant funds, she said she was shut out of the weekly meetings, intimidated, and subsequently fired for what she suggested was retaliation.
As resistance built to her objections about the planned misuse of grant funds, Ms. Timpson testified that she notified Ms. Willis of the situation by email—but that the email was ignored.
Ms. Timpson then said she had a meeting with Ms. Willis on July 26, 2021, during which she notified Ms. Willis that her objections to the grant appropriation were meant in good faith to protect the integrity of the grant allocation and that of Ms. Willis’s office itself.
The whistleblower added that, when she articulated her objections to the way Mr. Cuffee planned to spend the grant money, she was cut off by Ms. Willis and demoted—effective immediately—as punishment for persisting with her view that the grant funds should not be used in line with Ms. Willis’s vision.
‘Funny Style Business’
During Thursday’s testimony, Ms. Timpson said that she had another in-person meeting with Ms. Willis on Nov. 19, 2021, to discuss the grant fund appropriation.
She said she decided to record the meeting on her phone, fearful of what type of retaliation bringing up the intended grant fund misuse would trigger, because the last time she did so she was demoted.
Ms. Timpson said that she wanted to make Ms. Willis aware that there was more “funny style business” going on with grant appropriation that she became aware of. Ms. Willis told her that she “didn’t disagree” with her and that she “wasn’t necessarily wrong,” adding that sometimes things take a long time to get to her, per Ms. Timpson’s testimony.
A copy of this recording was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Ms. Timpson is heard telling Ms. Willis at the Nov. 19, 2021, meeting, per the recording. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”
“I respect that is your assessment,” Ms. Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
Ms. Willis apologized to Ms. Timpson later in the conversation, saying that Mr. Cuffee had “failed” her administration.
During Thursday’s testimony, Ms. Timpson said she had a meeting on Jan. 14, 2021, with her new supervisor, Ramona Toole, during which she said she told Ms. Toole “everything” about the matter, including her allegation that she was intimidated and demoted for whistleblowing.
Ms. Timpson then said that she believes the conversation she had with Ms. Toole, whom she described as a close ally of Ms. Willis, went directly to Ms. Willis, while suggesting that Ms. Willis then ordered for her to be fired.
Ms. Timpson said she was abruptly terminated, ostensibly because she was an at-will employee and her services were no longer needed, and escorted out of the building by seven armed investigators.
An official separation didn’t come until two months later, she said, adding that it just stated “employee discharged.”
She also alleged that Ms. Willis made “completely slanderous and libelous statements” about her that affected her ability to find a new job because prospective employers could find those remarks relatively easily and viewed her as “a gamble.”
Ms. Timpson, who has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit that is pending, said that she applied for over a thousand jobs until landing in her current position.
While Ms. Willis’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Timpson’s allegations, her office provided a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August 2022 in response to the lawsuit, calling Ms. Timpson a “holdover from the prior administration” and that “all of her supervisors found her performance to be inadequate.”
Ms. Timpson testified on Thursday that her performance on the job never drew any objections from any supervisors—with the exception of her whistleblowing.
https://www.ntd.com/fani-willis-whistleblower-claims-misuse-of-grant-money-was-part-of-madames-vision_994923.html?src_src=ntddailynoe&src_cmp=ntd-2024-05-24
Washington Post Lost $77 Million, 50% of Subscribers
By Mark Swanson | Thursday, 23 May 2024 10:49 PM EDT
The Washington Post lost $77 million over the past year, stemming from a 50% decline in audience since 2020, with the outlet's publisher telling staff that "we are in a hole."
Further, staffers were told in a strategy announcement Wednesday that moving forward, artificial intelligence will be "everywhere in our newsroom," Semafor reported.
Post Publisher Will Lewis presented the dire financial report to employees Wednesday morning, countering that with the announcement of new tiers of subscription offerings called Post Pro and Post Plus.
"To speak candidly: We are in a hole, and we have been for some time," Lewis told employees.
The Post's announcement of Lewis' presentation didn't mention the use of AI as part of the newspaper's revenue-boosting efforts moving forward, saying only that the Post "will begin experimenting with the new offerings over the next few months."
Regardless, Lewis outlined the three pillars of the Post's new strategy: great journalism; happy customers; and making money.
"If we're doing things that don't meet all three … we should stop doing that," Lewis told employees, according to Semafor.
"I hope in the future you see this day as a significant day in the history of our company," said Lewis, who joined the Post in January.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/washington-post-publisher-revenue-losses/2024/05/23/id/1165956/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM627413_05242024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010104vbaefb
Many Border Patrol Agents Leaving Under Biden: 'So Bad for Morale'
By Charlie McCarthy | Thursday, 23 May 2024 11:16 AM EDT
Some U.S. Border Patrol agents blame President Joe Biden for the agency losing nearly a quarter of its workforce since the 2020 presidential election, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Border Patrol, which is comprised of more than 19,000 agents, lost 4,281 federal law enforcement agents who left the agency between October 2020 and April 2024. Biden won the White House in November 2020.
That number includes agents who quit, were forced to retire due to their age or number of years on the job, or who chose to retire as soon as they became eligible, the Examiner reported. Early retirements have soared under Biden.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows many more agents are choosing to leave than normal. For example, twice as many agents have chosen to retire early compared to retirement rates during the Obama and Trump administrations.
In the seven years leading up to fall 2020, the agency lost an average of 996 agents annually.
"The [Biden] administration is so bad for morale," one senior Border Patrol official told the Examiner. "I'm not trying to be political. I'm just speaking facts. It's become so political. Catch and release is demoralizing for agents."
Matthew Hudak, recently retired second-in-command of Border Patrol, said agents had taken an oath to protect the country have become humiliated by arresting migrants and then releasing them into the U.S.
"Under Biden, things are the worst they have ever been by far," one agent based in Arizona told the Examiner. "Agents are calling in all the time. You always hear, 'It doesn't matter,' or, 'What's the point?' in reference to doing our job. Agents are afraid of ending up on the news for doing their job or getting in trouble for doing their job. There is no morale."
"Our agency is half Hispanic, so we're not a bunch of raging racists," the senior Border Patrol official told the Examiner. "We just want to enforce the law. What really motivates them is being able to stop bad people and narcotics from coming in."
Dissension in the ranks of CBP was shown in full view in a leaked January 2022 video from a meeting with Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Laredo, Texas.
"You're getting bogged down in the policies and the politics," Ortiz shouted at agents in front of Mayorkas, as they objected to the Biden administration's open border policies, with one saying, "you keep releasing criminal aliens into this country."
https://www.newsmax.com/us/border-patrol-border-agents/2024/05/23/id/1165871/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM627326_05232024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010502a6hib6
Revelation of secret Obama-era program casts doubt on stated reason for Trump Mar-a-Lago raid
'The law protects only those who follow the norms of one party,' America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein says
By Emma Colton
Published May 23, 2024 3:12pm EDT
FIRST ON FOX: A purportedly never-before-seen Department of Defense memo from the Obama era appears to indicate the federal government already may have had original copies of the documents seized at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in 2022, raising serious questions about the pretext for the raid, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned.
America First Legal (AFL), a conservative legal group, released Thursday what it says is a newly unearthed memo from the Obama administration Department of Defense "confirming the government may have already had originals of the alleged classified documents involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sham prosecution against President Trump."
The document, titled Memorandum of Understanding Entered into by Presidential Information Technology Community Entities, is from 2015, and followed an October 2014 Russian breach of the Executive Office of the President’s network. Then-President Barack Obama took executive action to create the Presidential Information Technology Community (PITC) to better protect the executive branch from such attacks, according to AFL.
The PITC, which includes representatives from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, effectively established that the president controls information he receives through the PITC network.
The executive action was made public at the time. However, AFL said it obtained a never-before-seen memo confirming the Department of Defense has been "operating and maintaining the information resources and information systems provided to the President, Vice President, and Executive Office of the President."
The memo could mean that the federal government has stored and retained Executive Office of the President documents, including "a substantial amount, if not all, of President Trump’s classified documents," AFL said in its press release.
"What America First Legal has uncovered after months of investigative work paints an unfortunate picture of the rule of law in Washington. A former President of the United States — the most democratically accountable officer under our Constitution — was subject to a politicized referral concocted by the Biden White House that led to an armed FBI raid of his home — where his wife and youngest child live — and is now subject to prosecution," America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein said.
"And to now realize that the Biden Administration could have avoided an illegal referral process to recover records the government already possessed, that it could have used normal means to ensure that records the former president believed should be housed in his presidential library (not yet built because of the hordes of investigations aimed at silencing him) were subject to a temporary hold for purposes of Archives’ review — yet didn’t — speaks loudly to America: the law protects only those who follow the norms of one party," Epstein added.
AFL obtained the documents through litigation against the Department of Defense, the press release said.
The DOD told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the department has "nothing to offer" when asked about the memo. The White House and DOJ did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
The FBI agents seized 33 boxes of documents in August 2022 from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, spurring another legal battle that Trump has called a "scam." The investigation is overseen by special prosecutor Jack Smith, whom Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed to the job, and has charged Trump with 40 felony counts, including allegedly violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The FBI at the time told a judge there was "probable cause to believe" that classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were being improperly stored and that investigators would find "evidence of obstruction."
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and slammed the case as an "Election Inference Scam" promoted by the Biden administration and "Deranged Jack Smith."
The case was slated to head to trial on May 20, but has since been put on ice until presiding Judge Aileen Cannon sets a new date. Cannon did hold hearings this week to address the defense team’s motion for dismissal.
Trump's classified documents case also opened the doors to investigations regarding classified documents in the possession of President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. Special Counsel Robert Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, citing that Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote in his report.
The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime but could serve as president. Trump has meanwhile slammed the disparity in charges as a reflection of a "sick and corrupt, two-tiered system of justice in our country."
Earlier this month, the White House asserted executive privilege over audio and video recordings related to Hur's interviews with Biden, sparking condemnation from Republicans. Biden met with Hur for about five hours last year, when he was grilled about his handling of the classified documents.
Republican House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., responded to the executive privilege by arguing there's "a five-alarm fire at the White House."
"Clearly President Biden and his advisers fear releasing the audio recordings of his interview because it will again reaffirm to the American people that President Biden’s mental state is in decline. The House Oversight Committee requires these recordings as part of our investigation of President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents," Comer told Fox News Digital last week.
"The White House is asserting executive privilege over the recordings, but it has already waived privilege by releasing the transcript of the interview. Today’s Hail Mary from the White House changes nothing for our committee. The House Oversight Committee will move forward with its markup of a resolution and report recommending to the House of Representatives that Attorney General Garland be held in contempt of Congress for defying a lawful subpoena."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/revelation-secret-obama-era-program-casts-doubt-stated-reason-trump-mar-a-lago-raid
DC Board of Elections trains illegals and ‘non-citizens’ how to vote in US elections
By Olivia Murray
For anyone who thought 2024 was going to be free and fair, please disabuse yourself of that idea immediately.
The progressive Democrats constantly tell us that illegal aliens are not voting in our elections, because of course it’s illegal. Well, so is crossing the border illegally, but we’ve seen how that has gone—how many tens of millions of illegals are actually living here? (I suspect Ann Coulter is right when she puts that number around 50 million.)
Yet, those very same progressive Democrats have been teaching “non-citizens” how to participate in what should be, American elections. The District of Columbia Board of Elections (DCBOE) recently held two events in which government officials taught illegals how to vote; the first was the “Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training” event in early April, and according to Wendi Staunch Mahoney at UncoverDC, the second was a “town hall” type training on April 30th. From Mahoney:
During the April training sessions, non-citizen voters learned about the February 2023 D.C. Law 24-242 (Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022) that enables them to vote in local DC elections. In February 2023, the Council of the District of Columbia amended the D.C. Election Code of 1955 to qualify illegal aliens and non-citizen residents as ‘qualified electors for the purpose of local elections.’
The Act allows noncitizens to vote for Mayor, Council members, Attorney General, Member of the State Board of Education, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, or any initiative, referendum, or charter amendment on a District ballot. Notably, the amended law also extends voting to undocumented immigrants. The bill was opposed by congressional Republicans, but they failed to overturn it. Appeals, however, are ongoing.
Here’s a link to the DCBOE website that details how non-citizens can participate in “American” elections.
Oh, and see what Congress is attempting to do below too:
The Left: *Undocumented immigrants* (aka, illegal aliens) don’t vote!
Also the Left: We have to waive inadmissibility for illegal voting in all our amnesty bills because *undocumented immigrants* vote! 🤔@chiproytx @SenMikeLee @SpeakerJohnson
Just one example: pic.twitter.com/eUvLxZqPY0
— Immigration Accountability Project (@I_A_Project) May 9, 2024
While D.C. encourages illegals to vote in local elections, other jurisdictions encourage illegals to vote in federal elections (Congress and the presidency).
I actually sounded the alarm on illegals voting in “American” elections years ago when I ran into what I could only describe as attempted voter suppression—on August 4, 2020, I was still living in Tucson, and when I went in to my local precinct voting center (El Camino Baptist Church), I was handed a ballot that did not include local and statewide races, but only had the federal options. At that point in time, I was unaware that Arizona had what was called a “federal only” ballot, which is legalized illegal voting; the Secretary of State website says this:
A person is not required to submit proof of citizenship with the voter registration form, but failure to do so means the person will only be eligible to vote in federal elections (known as being a ‘federal only’ voter).
When I told the poll workers that something was amiss because there were a whole host of local statewide races in which I should be voting, they insisted I was wrong, and the ballot they handed me was the only one they had. I then spoke to the man in charge, and he gave me the same answer. I then directed their attention to a graphic on the wall, listing out the candidates for legislative and statewide races, telling them that those offices are the ones about which I was speaking—this did nothing to convince them, at least that’s what they idiotically feigned. At this point, I left the polling station, went home, and grabbed the mail-in ballot that I’d not wanted to use, and drove back to the voting center to show them. Upon my return with my mail-in ballot, the workers magically discovered that they did in fact have piles of ballots that included the Republican local and statewide races. I wonder how many times the poll workers successfully passed off “federal only” ballots to Republicans who should have had the opportunity to vote in state and local elections?
In fact, telling this story on video was what I assume got me banned off of Twitter the first time. After the story was widely shared, I found I was “temporarily” suspended, and the followup email informing me that my suspension would be permanent did not give me a reason.
Now, Arizona has mostly partisan primaries, unlike completely open primaries, and as a registered Republican, when I walked in and acknowledged that I was in fact a Republican, I was directed to the Republican “side” where workers seemingly “verify” that I am on the voter rolls. (I say “mostly” because there’s a provision that allows voters who aren’t registered as Republican or Democrat to pick the primary in which they’d like to vote.) At the time, I wondered if Democrats had run into similar issues.
And, imagine my surprise when I found out it was an issue that only affected Republicans! Turns out I wasn’t the only one who experienced this, and a day or so later, the local propaganda media ran a story on what had happened; it was all just an unfortunate error, of course:
Nothing to see here folks!
Just mainstream media running clean-up for Pima County elections after poll workers “accidentally” suppressed Republican voters in 2020. pic.twitter.com/i6PnOLmuZM
— Olivia Murray (@americaliv1) May 22, 2024
“Nothing purposely done, just an accident.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/dc_board_of_elections_trains_illegals_and_non_citizens_how_to_vote_in_us_elections.html