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Like John, it would be hilarious to observe the left’s sudden obsession with “Christian nationalism” if it weren’t based on an abysmal ignorance that is itself a grim threat to the continuation of our republic. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a Christian nationalist for the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, although in fairness to stupid leftists, they don’t believe in “self-evident truth” either, because they are unable to grasp the meaning of “self-evident” as Thomas Aquinas, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln learned from Euclid. (One of my core lessons in the classroom is the continuity of thought between the “Two Tommys”—Tommy Aquinas and Tommy Jefferson. Hardly anyone ever notices this.)
Or how about John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But you know who else turns out to be a “Christian nationalist”?
Joe Biden, Christian Nationalist:
"My rights are not derived from any government…they're given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our Creator."
— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) February 23, 2024
Gosh—I wonder whatever became of that guy?
Yesterday in San Francisco President Biden held what the White House termed a press gaggle. In the event it seemed more of a gag than a gaggle. This is the White House transcript of his remarks:
Hello, folks. This morning, I had the honor of meeting with Aleksey Navalny’s wife and daughter.
As to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage. And it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are — are emulating that. And we’re going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.
And — but the one thing I’ve made — that was made clear to me is that
Yulanda[Yulia] is going to — she’s going to continue to fight (inaudible) the way. So, we’re not letting up.
You say Yulanda, I say Yolanda. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Today, Biden said he "had the honor of meeting with" Alexei Navalny's widow, who he called "Yolanda."
Her name is Yulia. pic.twitter.com/ecBgLtZdn0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 23, 2024
Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia. Thursday morning, she went for a run and didn’t return. Her body was found on the campus of the University of Georgia. Riley was murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela:
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, who was arrested Friday in connection to the murder of the 22-year-old Augusta University student, crossed into El Paso, Texas, from Venezuela in September 2022, NewsNation reported Saturday, citing Department of Homeland Security sources.
He had been released due to a lack of detention space, the sources added.
Laken Riley
Ibarra is one of millions of illegals whom Joe Biden has deliberately welcomed into the United States, in violation of federal law, the Constitution, and Biden’s oath of office. Biden’s motives are hard to understand. But in the law, one is held to have intended the natural and inevitable consequences of one’s actions. Occam’s Razor, like the common law, implies that Biden is trying to bring chaos and destruction to the United States.
Having entered America with no problem, Ibarra set out for New York. I don’t believe it has been reported how he got there, but he spent a year or so in New York City before relocating to Georgia. His social media accounts suggest that he was living it up:
In September 2022, however, the Venezuelan native looked carefree, smiling in Times Square and Rockefeller Center in New York City, posts on a Facebook account linked to his name showed.
Of course, he got into trouble in New York, too:
Police sources in New York confirmed to NewsNation that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested in the Big Apple for endangering a 5-year-old child last year.
But illegals who commit crimes are rarely punished. Ibarra eventually joined his older brother Diego, who I assume is also an illegal although I haven’t seen this reported, in Athens. The older brother is a criminal, too; he was arrested three times between September and December 2023. Ho hum. Liberals refuse to enforce our laws, until a known criminal commits a crime so heinous that it attracts national attention. Like this one.
So, because Joe Biden opened our southern border, Jose Ibarra waltzed in from Venezuela, spent a year or so hanging out in New York, where any crimes he committed went unpunished, then joined his brother in Georgia. Where, day before yesterday, he saw Laken Riley jogging on the University of Georgia campus and decided it would be fun to kill her. Congratulations, Joe. This one’s on you.
A postscript: the U.S. isn’t the only country dumb enough to admit large numbers of illegal aliens, often referred to in the press as “asylum seekers.” Western Europe has problems even worse than ours, as exemplified by this case:
Police in Vienna launched a criminal investigation after three women were found dead in a brothel, authorities said Saturday.
A witness discovered traces of blood outside the building, located near the Danube River, and alerted police on Friday evening. The bodies of the three victims had “cuts and stab wounds,” police spokesperson Philipp Hasslinger told The Associated Press.
A 27-year-old man was soon arrested in the vicinity of the brothel while carrying a knife, the supposed weapon. Police said the suspect is an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan and will be questioned by police later on Saturday.
The Vienna brothel was legal, but apparently the “asylum seeker” disapproved of it. Hey, some of us may disapprove of it, too. But we wouldn’t murder the women who work there. Open-borders immigration policies have been a disaster wherever they have been implemented.
UPDATE: It turns out that Jose Ibarra had a “wife.” Sort of:
“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”
So, just another species of immigration fraud. Honestly, though, Ibarra and his “wife” needn’t have bothered. Joe Biden’s welcome mat is out, and everyone is here to stay–especially those who will degrade our country.
President Biden spoke at the Governors Ball Dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House on Saturday evening (video excerpt below). The White House has posted the transcript of his brief remarks here.
After the introductory blather, Biden referred to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln behind him — you can see it here — as he attempted to follow his text. This is how the White House transcript of the fourth paragraph reads:
And, you know, standing here in front of this portrait of the man behind me here, he — he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right. He said, “We — the better angels” — he said, “We must address the counsel — and adjust the better angels of our nature.” And we do the — and we do well to remember what else he said. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends.” This is in the middle of — this is in the — in the part of the Civil War. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends. We must not be enemies.”
“The [unnamed] man behind [him}” was Lincoln. Remember him? The attempted quotation comes from the famous passage that concludes Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The Daily Mail reports on Biden’s senescent ramble in “Biden completely butchering lines from Lincoln’s inaugural address – and then gets laughs when he jokes about his age after telling audience: ‘I wanna get this quote exactly right.'” However, I’m not sure that this was the worst of Biden’s brief remarks. He also took an incoherent stab at his phony remembrance of things past:
And, you know, it seems to me that — I’ll conclude by saying, I — I’ve spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping — someone whom I have a great deal of difference with. And I was — when I was vice president, President — my — my president was — told me that he wanted me to get to know Xi Jinping because it was clear he was going to be the head of Russia — of — of China and that he — we had a — we were having problems with Russia at the time and other countries as well. And so, what he said was, “Get to know him. He’s going to be there.” I — and he couldn’t because he was the president, and he couldn’t travel. So, I traveled 17,000 miles with him throughout the country — our country and — and in — in China, as well.
We were in the Tibetan Plateau. And he turned to me, and he said, “Can you define America for me?” And I — given this has been documented, and it’s real — I looked at him, and I said, “Yes, I can. In one word.” And he looked at me. And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “Possibilities.” Possibilities.
You say president, you say vice president. You say Russia, you say China. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Biden has reached the stage of life described by Mark Twain. His faculties have decayed to such an extent that he cannot remember any but the things that never happened. This 17,000-mile shtick has been debunked many times. Glenn Kessler devoted one of his Washington Post Fact Checker columns — this one — to it in February 2021. He awarded it 3 Pinocchios.
However, it’s the substance of the story that is most absurd. Biden says it has been “documented.” That means he has told the story many, many times. According to Matt Viser’s 2022 Washington Post story, aides who were with Biden say that they do not recall that exchange. It has been “documented” by his repetition of it.
We can go this far with the story. When Xi observes an Obama or a Biden, he wonders how he can exploit the “possibilities.”
The White House transcript specifies the time of Biden’s remarks at 7:40 P.M. EST. He wound up at 7:44. It was past the guy’s bedtime. Fortunately, the State Dining Room is located in the Executive Residence of the White House. He only had a few pitty-pat steps to go before his head hit the pillow for the evening.
Biden completely malfunctions as he tries — and fails miserably — to read a quote from "the man behind me here" pic.twitter.com/anLx6NEAPx
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2024
The Michigan primary was held yesterday. President Biden defeated Uncommitted, Marianne Willison, and my cousin Dean Phillips on the Democrat side. Dean commented on Twitter for the benefit of his former friends in the party: “If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!”
President Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley on the Republican side. Here are the current results posted by RealClearPolitics. Note the differential in turnout.
One can infer that Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s presidential nominees, but the results seem slightly more surprising than expected. Axios managing editor/politics David Lindsey offers a brief take on the results that I found helpful:
There wasn’t much doubt that President Biden and former President Trump would romp to victories in the Michigan primaries Tuesday. But Biden’s win in particular revealed his vulnerability in a crucial swing state that could decide the presidency in November….Arab American and young voters — key to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 — turned out by the tens of thousands on Tuesday to vote … not for Biden, but for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
• The protest vote, driven by anger over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, had drawn more than 77,000 supporters with 70% of the ballots counted — several times more than organizers expected.
• That took some of the glow from a victory in which Biden got more than 80% of the vote, and confirmed that Biden has some serious persuading to do between now and November.
• “We need more than just nice words and hope. We need a permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, told CNN. The group was behind the “uncommitted” vote effort.
Other takeaways from Michigan:
1, Biden has other problems, too.
• Another jolt for the president’s campaign Tuesday: A jarring enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican primaries.
• Nearly 40% more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic contest — despite the protest campaign that aided turnout on the Democratic side.
• Trump, who once again defeated former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, got more votes on the GOP side than the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary between Biden, “uncommitted” and two other candidates.
2. It wasn’t all good news for Trump.
• That surge in GOP voters was driven in part by about 27% of Republicans voting for Haley, whose support continues to be not nearly enough to win the Republican nomination — but enough to show that a sizable chunk of the GOP may never be on board with Trump.
• Haley’s campaign might not last beyond Super Tuesday next week, when Trump is expected to score hundreds of delegates and put a virtual lock on the GOP nomination as 16 states hold contests.
• But Haley’s level of support suggests that many of her backers may stay home in November — or even vote for Biden, if Trump is on the ballot.
Whole thing here.
We seek to read the tea leaves in the results. As some sage has famously observed, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch puts it this way: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” To read the tea leaves we have to project ahead to next November. How will the candidates look at that time? Our crystal ball is cloudy. Both Biden and Trump are hobbled by weaknesses that will be magnified over the next eight months.
For Democrats this is the Weekend At Bernie’s election. It has become increasingly difficult to keep Biden upright during business hours. His brain is fried. His managers have to keep him under wraps. He is an embarrassment. Playing to his party’s activist base, he has left undone what should have been done and he has done that which should not have been done.
For Republicans this is the “In the Jailhouse Now” election. The electoral impact of the Democrat lawfare on Trump are particularly difficult to predict, but they can’t be good for him. They impose their own limitations on Trump in terms of time, money, and who knows what else. That’s what it’s all about. Anyone can see storm clouds ahead.
I absolutely hate the clichéd last resort of scoundrel pundits as the election approaches. You know, “it depends on turnout.” With respect to what should be the insuperable problems each candidate confronts, let’s just say “it depends on how it turns out.” They can’t both lose. One of them is going to prevail.
AEI’s Danielle Pletka is not a fan of President Trump, so I take her pulling on the fire alarm about President Biden at face value:
What we hear from members of congress is … terrible. Democrats too. Those who talk the president tell of a man who can’t go beyond the words on the page in front of him. He can’t converse on matters of substance. He can deliver talking points, but can’t negotiate with any seriousness. That’s one of the reasons — though far from the only one — why Congress can’t move forward on an emergency supplemental. Republicans are in complete turmoil, but talks with the White House are not helping.
Then there are the foreign leaders. Among themselves — and an open secret in DC’s embassies — they talk about a president who is confused, unsure of the subject matter under discussion, distant, disconnected, and all too often incomprehensible.
This is the man with the nuclear football. The man who commands our armed forces. It doesn’t matter whether you like the Democrats or hate them. The office is critically important, and it is almost vacant.
See Pletka’s What the Hell Is Going On? post “What we hear about Biden’s decline.”
James Biden has now admitted that he paid his brother Joe $40,000 out of funds he received from CEFC China Energy, which is generally regarded as a front for the Chinese government.
“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James during the Feb. 21 interview.
“CEFC,” James conceded — following an extended back-and-forth in which the first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman tried to argue that “money’s fungible” before being reminded by a House staffer that James “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”
Of course, the goalposts in the Joe Biden bribery scandal have repeatedly been moved:
Democrats have defended the alleged loan repayments as evidence of nothing more than Joe Biden being a supportive brother. But Republicans say it makes clear that the president benefited from his relatives’ dealings as he repeatedly interacted with their business associates, including in the CEFC venture.
I think Republicans have made a mistake in seeming to go along with the Democrats’ theme that money has to be traced to Joe’s bank accounts in order to count. Under federal bribery law, Biden is guilty if he “demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value” not just for himself, but for “any other person or entity” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act.” People who bribe politicians are rarely dumb enough to make checks payable to the politicians themselves. Most often, they go to family members.
Republicans also shouldn’t fall for the Democrats’ spin about Joe not being involved in “his son’s overseas business dealings.” So, what business was Hunter in? Did he own or run a company that produced any products or provided any services? No. Hunter’s only business was peddling Joe’s influence. And for that to work, it had to be plausible that Joe was in on the deal, and would use his influence to benefit CEFC, or whoever. This is why Hunter would bring his father in on the telephone when he was meeting with Joe’s customers.
Notwithstanding the ever-moving goalposts, I think this is an instance where the Democrats’ control over the news media actually works to their disadvantage. They have been lulled into thinking that they can get away with their candidate’s having turned his power as vice president into tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains for his family and himself, because the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the usual gang of suspects try to run interference.
But in their blundering way, Republicans have managed to convey to a large majority of voters that Joe Biden is a corrupt pol. It is one of several reasons why, in spite of Donald Trump’s grave defects as a candidate, I don’t think Joe Biden can be re-elected.
President Biden announced today that the United States will airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza in the coming days. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have been following the line traced by the Biden administration, but this may strike some as a bridge too far. The mission will purportedly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, but all sentient observers understand that the it will necessarily make the “assistance” available to Hamas.
Politico reports Biden’s remarks here. The White House has not yet posted a transcript. To add insult to injury, even though he was reading off note cards, Biden confused “Ukraine” with “Gaza.” The guy’s brain is fried in more ways than one.
Biden announces the U.S. is “providing air drops of additional food and supplies” into Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ZZt7LV1EMg
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 1, 2024
STEVE adds: Curious thing, though. A spokesman for Oxfam America has issued a Twitter statement opposing the relief air drop, because the narrative needs to be preserved. At least that’s how I read this:
The New York Times is out with its latest poll today, and they can’t sugar coat the bad news for Biden (and good news for Trump) that it contains. The headline says it all:
The poll has Trump with a five-point lead.
Some internals from the article are even more devastating than these headline numbers:
The poll offers an array of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, Black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has better unified his party, even amid an ongoing primary contest. . .
Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump. . .
One of the more ominous findings for Mr. Biden in the new poll is that the historical edge Democrats have held with working-class voters of color who did not attend college continues to erode.
Mr. Biden won 72 percent of those voters in 2020, according to exit polling, providing him with a nearly 50-point edge over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Biden only narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not graduate from college: 47 percent to 41 percent. . .
Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. A full 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to only 18 percent who said the same of Mr. Biden’s.
The gender gap, for instance, is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now equally split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point edge. The poll showed Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the Black vote is shrinking, too.
Memo to Trump: Don’t blow it.
As is now more widely reported, President Biden relies on cue cards for just about everything, but it looks like even this extreme measure is failing. Here in reading from a prepared statement on a notecard about getting food to Gaza, at the 30-second mark Biden twice says we’ll be opening up more corridors to “Ukraine.” Italian PM Meloni looks around the room wondering if someone is going to help this poor doddering old man.
Biden: “We are concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza
Look at Italian PM trying hard not to laugh
pic.twitter.com/FJFFusvYWM— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 2, 2024
Just a guess, but I think the word has gone out from the Obama redoubt in Martha’s Vineyard and/or his shadow White House in Kalorama that the New York Times needs to lead the push this week to force Biden out of the race. The Times is doom-scrolling its latest poll showing Biden on his way to certain defeat to Trump. Yesterday’s installment gave the raw numbers—Biden is eroding across the board.
Today the Times is out with another headline of doom, whose contents could have been part of yesterday’s story, except the Times wants to mile their poll for maximum effect. Biden’s own voters think he is too old:
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. . . Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent expressed a belief that he could not do the job. . .
This unease, which has long surfaced in polls and in quiet conversations with Democratic officials, appears to be growing as Mr. Biden moves toward formally capturing his party’s nomination.
I’m guessing those “quiet conversations” will start to be less quiet fairly soon. Gavin Newsom has his phone programmed on speed dial.
Here’s one of the graphics:
In case Democratic elites aren’t getting the message, the Times director of polling Nate Cohn offers his own separate “analysis” of the matter:
The Big Change Between the 2020 and 2024 Races: Biden Is Unpopular
Why is President Biden losing? There are many possible reasons, including his age, the war in Gaza, the border and lingering concerns over inflation. But ultimately, they add up to something very simple: Mr. Biden is very unpopular. He’s so unpopular that he’s now even less popular than Mr. Trump, who remains every bit as unpopular as he was four years ago.
President Biden’s unpopularity has flipped the expected dynamic of this election. It has turned what looked like a seemingly predictable rematch into a race with no resemblance to the 2020 election, when Mr. Biden was a broadly appealing candidate who was acceptable to the ideologically diverse group of voters who disapproved of Mr. Trump. . .
That’s gotta hurt. Then there’s this:
We didn’t ask whether Mr. Biden should drop out of the race. We considered it — in fact, we discussed it for days — but many respondents may not know the complications involved in a contested convention.
Subtext: “Doctor” Jill: Get your husband to do the right thing for the interest of the Party. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment.
P.S. It was the suddenly plummeting polls that prompted LBJ to drop out of the 1968 race at the end of March.
Today’s third NY Times installment about their most recent poll piles on the bad news for Biden: not only are you losing to Trump head-to-head, and are unpopular, but today we learn that more voters like Trump’s policies and record better than Biden’s.
Here’s the graphic depiction:
Some excerpts from the Times:
And despite holding intensely and similarly critical opinions both of President Biden and of his predecessor, Americans have much more positive views of Donald J. Trump’s policies than they do of Mr. Biden’s, according to New York Times/Siena College polls.
Overall, 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s policies. . .
Women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them than Mr. Biden’s have, despite the fact that Mr. Trump installed Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned the right to an abortion and that about two-thirds of women in America think that abortion should be legal in all or most instances.
In a separate Times story, the Biden message to doubting Democrats is—drop dead. Well that’s the headline the NY Daily News would have used. Instead the Times headline is:
“For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It.”
. . . The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. . . Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern.
Digging deep into the Super Tuesday primary results, I foresee President Biden facing off for a rematch against President Trump. Can you feel the excitement? The two candidates represent juggernauts within their respective parties.
Let’s take the Democrats first, courtesy of RealClearPolitics. What we have here is one full boatload of results. They raise the question: who is Marianne Williamson and what is she doing here? She is the best-selling author of a variety of books including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course In Miracles, A Woman’s Worth, Illuminata, The Healing of America, and Illuminated Prayers. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Williamson continues to inspire audiences on a global scale as she lectures internationally in the fields of spirituality and new thought.
I infer from the results that Democrats resist the light. They resist new thought. Also, we don’t have a prayer. We need a miracle.
Biden’s presents himself as a throwback to the old-fashioned Democratic Party, yet he has adopted the policies of party’s far left. Most prominent among these policies is the opening of our borders and the implicit rejection of the sovereignty of the United States. Over the past three-plus years these policies have wrought great damage. Biden wants to test the outer limits of Adam Smith’s proposition that “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” One can’t help but wonder if we can put ourselves back on track.
It’s not Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. It’s the woke left’s Democratic Party. It’s the party of those who say the things which are not.
Biden made an appearance during the narrow window of his waking hours yesterday. He appeared to have dropped in from outer space. He sounded like he had not been briefed since he blasted off from his homeworld. J.B., phone home.
FULL VIDEO:
REPORTER: "What's your message to Democrats who are concerned about your poll numbers?"
BIDEN: "My poll numbers? The last five polls you guys don't report. I'm winning — five! Five in a row!" pic.twitter.com/Mz5gWQMRSA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 5, 2024
On the Republican side of Super Tuesday (also courtesy of RCP), President Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination. Nikki Haley will suspend her campaign later this morning.
This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. If President Trump were to keel over and leave us with an open convention in Milwaukee next July, I assess the odds that the delegates would turn to Haley at zero. It would be a politician in the mold of Trump — probably Ron DeSantis, or perhaps J.D. Vance or Vivek the Mistake. Trump has transformed the Republican Party. By contrast with Biden and the Democrats, he has stamped the party in his image.
I am surprised by the not insubstantial fraction of votes that Haley pulled yesterday. Some portion of the Haley represents Democrats voting in open primaries. Haley won Vermont, but even if she were the nominee she would lose it in November. Vermont is a socialist state. I’m not talking about Vermont. Assuming Trump can survive the Democrats’ lawfare, he cannot win without a united Republican Party. He has some work to do to put the Republican house together. His choice for vice president could help.
It is difficult to project the state of play in the coming months. My crystal ball is cloudy. Much depends on the course of the Democrats’ lawfare against Trump and, to a lesser extent, the nature of the campaign Trump runs. I think he best serves his own interests at this point when he is out of the news and provides the alternative to Biden. If the election can be reduced to a binary choice, Biden should lose. The Democrats’ lawfare means to preclude that.
Yesterday brought more news of the illegal immigration that Biden has invited, inflicted, facilitated, fostered. Biden’s derelictions in office are historic in nature. The Daily Mail reports, for example, “Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities.'” The New York Post reports “Elon Musk says Biden flying 320K ‘unvetted’ migrants into the US sets stage ‘for something far worse than 9/11.’” Elon Musk — he’s no dummy.
The true numbers involved in the invasion that Biden invited are staggering, whatever they are, as are the secondary effects. As I say, we need a miracle, or something like it.
Tonight is the State of the Union speech. I know it’s hard to contain your excitement. Many Bingo and drinking games suggest themselves.
We all know that Joe Biden is a pretend president, so just who in the White House thought it was a good idea to have him have a Zoom call with actual pretend presidents—Hollywood actors who have played the president, soliciting their advice on how to approach his speech tonight. And what we get it this:
You may’ve heard I’ve got a big speech coming up.
So, I thought I would hear from some folks who have done the job before – sort of. pic.twitter.com/7wFYVQm7Xm
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 7, 2024
Maybe Biden’s staff came up with this exercise just to distract him from doing anything today. Or to make him feel good about himself. If all these Hollywood pretenders say he’s doing a great job, it must be true.
Missing from this roster: Dave. Kevin Kline, that is. Maybe they didn’t want the subtle reminder of an imposter in the Oval Office. Too close to the current truth.
Joe Biden is delivering his State of the Union speech tonight. Apparently he will chide Americans for not appreciating his wonderful economy; declining real wages will not be mentioned. He will denounce “shrinkflation,” as though people are too stupid to know inflation when they see it. Nor will Biden mention the eight million or so illegals who have streamed across the border, wreaking havoc, since he opened it.
Biden has always been mean-spirited. He is a nasty person, and always has been. Take, for example, his recent interview in the New Yorker. The interview is replete with Biden’s trademark classlessness, but take just one example: his smearing of Justice Thomas:
In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the legal rationale for overturning Roe could be applied to “correct the error” in cases on same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and access to contraception. I asked Biden if he thought that the Justices would undo those protections. “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” he said, but added, “I think that a couple on the Court would go considerably further”—specifically “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”
“Thomas?” I asked.
Biden grinned.
Those familiar with Thomas’s history will appreciate the absurdity of describing him as a yachtsman. He is better known for driving around America in an RV. But in any event, it is Biden–not Thomas–who has enriched himself and his family to the tune of many millions of dollars through influence peddling. Worst of all, he peddled his influence to powers hostile to America. It takes a lot of nerve for Joe Biden to sneer at the Court’s foremost intellectual for accepting a ride on a boat.
But that is Joe Biden: mean-spirited, through and through.
The comedian Richard Lewis, of blessed memory, is credited with the formulation “the x from hell.” Having watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address last night in order to comment on it this morning, I found it to be the SOTU from hell. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
The White House has posted the text of the speech “as prepared for delivery.” That isn’t exactly how he gave it. You have to see it to get the full flavor. I have posted the White House video at the bottom.
Herewith are my impressions of Biden’s delivery and my observations on the speech in the form of bullet points:
• The Democrats in the audience broke out in cheers of “Four more years.” You have got to be kidding. Let me begin with a prediction. Even if Biden wins reelection to another term this coming November, he will not be giving four more State of the Union addresses. No way no how.
• Esquire used to pose a rhetorical question as a caption on a photograph of Richard Nixon that it published in its annual Dubious Achievement Awards edition: Why is this man laughing? The question to be posed for this speech is Why is this man shouting? He is an angry old man.
• This was a terrible speech terribly delivered. It’s a good thing no drug test was required before the address. Biden sounded hopped up. He spoke too fast. He slurred his words. He was frequently difficult to understand. He shouted a variety of clichés and shibboleths as though we might otherwise miss their depth and meaning. The disparity between the shibboleths and the shouting was almost funny.
• Biden sounded like a 45 rpm record playing at 78. It was an old record — it had scratches at several places that caused it to skip the groove.
• To whom was this speech addressed? The opening reflected the poor judgment of Biden’s daycare minders in the White House. As I heard it, the country needs to be protected from two threats: Russia and Donald Trump (“my predecessor”).
• This SOTU was a nakedly partisan campaign speech. I have to think that viewers lacking the persuasion of Democratic partisans were quickly turned off. In any event, the speech was a disgrace.
• And that’s not all. The speech was also disjointed and telegraphic. It covered everything from potato chips to computer chips. If it conformed to the laundry list mode of bad State of the Union addresses, this was a laundry list in Morse Code. You had to know the lingo of the proposed laws on Biden’s list. I had no idea what he was talking about when he got to his list.
• TCM counterprogrammed last night’s SOTU in part with Casablanca. You may recall that Humphrey Bogart responds to a comment with one of the movie’s many great lines: “I was misinformed.” Despite its thematic incoherence, anyone who took Biden’s speech at face value last night was misinformed. The misinformation gave it the thematic unity it otherwise lacked. A serious student of politics and the economy could write a dissertation exposing the misinformation conveyed in the speech.
• In his Russia/Ukraine remarks at the top of his speech Biden vowed, “We will not walk away.” Trisha Yearwood, call your office. Walk away, Joe — please. (I’m referring to Biden himself, not Ukraine.)
• The justices of the Supreme Court who chose to attend must have been thrilled to find themselves the villain of Biden’s condemnation of the Dobbs decision. The Supreme Court has returned the legality of abortion to the states. Biden both condemned the decision and celebrated its electoral impact. Abortion is not only a positive good on its own terms, it’s good for Democrats on the hustings. Wrapping it in the mantle of IVF, as he did last night, seemed to me a cruel joke.
• Biden wants to raise taxes on those not paying paying their “fair share.” Who isn’t paying his “fair share”? Billionaires aren’t. Corporations aren’t. That’s the bad news. We must be paying our “fair share.” That’s the good news, assuming we can draw that inference. Maybe someone can ask Karine Jean-Pierre about it at the next White House press conference.
• Biden wants more price controls on pharmaceutical products. When the AMA opposed the dangers of socialized medicine in days of yore, they were on to something.
• “Trickle down economics” came in for a beating. Does anyone who didn’t live through the Age of Reagan know what he was talking about? It was what Democrats condemned as “trickle down economics” that gave us the seven fat years of the Reagan boom. It was “trickle down economics’ that gave us the Trump boom — the boom for which so many voters are nostalgic today.
• Biden actually decried “shrinkflation” in the potato chips portion of his remarks. Some translation is required. “Shrinkflation” = inflation = Bidenomics.
• Biden implied that corporate shenanigans account for “shrinkflation.” Does anyone not understand why “shrinkflation” has broken out under the Biden administration?
• Biden decried “junk fees” and proclaimed his good works in saving us from them. This is “junk politics.”
• Biden reiterated his claims to have “cut the deficit.” He failed to mention that the decline occurred because pandemic spending from President Donald Trump’s tenure expired as scheduled. Biden didn’t do a damn thing. As CNN puts it, “Biden’s own actions, including laws he has signed and executive orders he has issued, have had the overall effect of worsening annual deficits, not reducing them.”
• By the way, in fiscal year 2023 total government spending amounted to $6.13 trillion and total revenue to $4.44 trillion. The resulting deficit amounts to $1.70 trillion, an increase of $320 billion from the previous fiscal year.
• Biden promoted many more federal spending programs I had never heard of. He apparently means to “cut the deficit” even faster and deeper.
• Biden bragged about his continuing student loan giveaways in the face of the Supreme Court ruling that found him to have exceeded his authority (in Biden v. Nebraska). One would like to see the thought bubbles over the heads of the Supreme Court justices.
• Biden talked about illegal immigration. He campaigned in support of it last time around. He invited it during the 2020 campaign. He facilitated it from his first day in office. Yet it’s not his fault. When it comes to the flood of illegal immigrants and related burdens, his theme song is Bob Dylan’s “It ain’t me, babe.”
• Biden saved his remarks on Israel and Hamas for the end of his speech. He won’t walk away from Ukraine, but he will walk away from Israel. He announced his Gaza rescue plan as advertised. It’s his plan to rescue himself in Michigan and rescue himself from his party’s pro-Hamas wing.
• Biden acknowledged: “Israel has a right to go after Hamas.” Thanks, big guy.
• Biden also toed the Hamas line in implicitly attributing responsibility to Israel and omitting the relevant facts: “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned.” See Abraham Wyner’s Tablet column “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.”
• Biden peddled “the two-state solution.” What’s wrong with this picture? As Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer puts it: “Anybody talking about Palestinian state right now is living on another planet.”
• I enjoyed and appreciated Speaker Mike Johnson’s slight shakes of his head to express his disagreement with Biden’s misinformation. He did it just right.
• Although I could say more, these observations are already too long. I will conclude here. The competition is stiff, but this must have been the worst SOTU of all time.
Whatever Doctor Feelgood is operating in the White House these days injected Joe Biden with whatever cocktail that enabled him to yell nonstop for over an hour last night. And that is a good thing.
Before the speech, my wife, with her usual knack for getting at the heart of things, said that we should be rooting for Biden to get through the speech. Because if he collapsed midway in, the Democrats would be able to replace him on the ticket. And in truth, the only question last night was not whether Biden would give a good speech, or whether he would convince anyone not already committed to voting against Donald Trump, but whether he would remain upright.
We conservatives should be glad that he did, as he now continues his march toward the nomination as one of the very few Democrats Donald Trump might actually beat. So thanks, Doc.
As Scott notes, while Biden delivered the “SOTU from Hell,” Turner Classic Movies ran Casablanca. Those who tuned in witnessed fearful symmetry on the current state of America, with Joe Biden starring in the role of Philippe Pétain.
Back in 1940, the French WWI veteran, already in his 80s, struck an armistice with the German National Socialist invaders, then in alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Nazis made Pétain head of their puppet government in Vichy, allowing him to govern parts of France under their supervision. Casablanca shows a mural of Pétain, with his famous slogan, “Je tiens mes promesses, meme celles des autres,” – “I keep my promises, even those of others.” That’s Joe Biden all over.
The Delaware Democrat is the puppet of a globalist-leftist-woke axis, and their every wish is Biden’s command. As he showed in his September 1, 2022 speech, like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl, Biden regards those who want the nation to be great as the enemy. In the openly partisan FBI, Biden deploys his own Gestapo.
In Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) asks Louis Renault (Claude Rains) if he’s pro-Vichy or Free French. In similar style, Americans must decide if they support the constitutional republic they have known or its steady demolition by the Biden Junta. In Casablanca, Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) welcomes Rick back to the fight, and Laszlo is sure “our side will win.” In America, things aren’t so clear.
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” said Joe Biden in 2020. That includes mail ballots, election laws changed by judges instead of legislators, elimination of ID requirements, ballot harvesting, massive voting by illegals, and so forth. That extensive organization remains in place for access by the eight million settlers Biden has brought into the country, with no criminal background checks, health records or job skills. In 2014, vice president Biden said those who enter the country illegally are “already American citizens.” All they want is a chance to contribute so “let people vote.”
As David Horowitz (Radical Son) has often noted, Democrats are good at voter fraud and Republicans are poor at preventing it. If that doesn’t change, as Rick told Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), “you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
Earlier today, I posted the official GOP response to Joe Biden’s SOTU hate-fest, by Senator Katie Britt. Britt’s speech was an impressive performance in its own way; if I were a Democrat, I think she would scare me.
But for us data guys, Stephen Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline has the numbers:
A lot of tall tales and a few outright fabrications in the Biden speech last night – and far too many to enumerate here. But we will revisit three here.
“My administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion.”
This isn’t just a little bit false, it’s an extraordinary and audacious misstatement of fact. The baseline deficit over 10 years, as measured when Biden came into office versus the latest forecast, shows nearly $6 trillion added to the debt since Biden arrived on the scene.
So how does a $6 trillion addition of red ink possibly equate to a $1.7 trillion reduction in the deficit. Someone didn’t pass his basic math exam in high school.
“We will make the rich pay their fair share.”
The top 1% of American tax filers now pay an all-time record high 46% of taxes. This is according to Biden’s own IRS. Does he think the rich should pay ALL the taxes?
That is actually a good question. I think that for many Democrats, the answer may be Yes. But within reason, experience shows that lower rates mean higher collections, especially from high earners.
“I inherited an economy [from Trump] that was on the brink…”
Actually, the economy grew by – ready for this? 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and 4.1% in the 4th quarter of 2020. The economy was in a full-scale COVID recovery when Biden came into office.
Oh, and Inflation was 1.4%.
Gas prices were $2.39 per gallon.
If you think of it as a relay race, Trump handed the baton to Biden in first place, with a rapidly growing lead. But Biden tripped over his own feet–both literally and figuratively–and turned the strong position that he inherited (and not only economically) into a fiasco. That I why I don’t see how he can be re-elected, despite Trump’s manifest flaws.
If you don’t get the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, you should. You can sign up for its frequent and always informative emails here.
President Biden displayed a monumentally misguided animus against Israel in his State of the Union address this past Thursday evening. (The White House has posted its transcript of the speech as given here.) In a column behind NRO’s paywall Philip Klein characterized the address as “the most anti-Israel presidential speech in history.” I’d have to compare and contrast it with the presidential speeches of Barack Obama to be sure, but Biden’s hostility was patent.
Following the speech Biden had the opportunity to fraternize with the guys. He seized the opportunity to yuk it up outside the control of his daycare handlers in the White House. This is how it went down.
BIDEN: "I told him, Bibi — don't repeat this — you and I are going to have a come to Jesus meeting."
HANDLER: Sir, you're on a hot mic pic.twitter.com/slevQZPDap
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2024
What if Biden is senile like a fox? The senility came in especially handy in his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. It gave Hur a rationale to recommend non-prosecution of Biden’s offenses in the mishandling of classified documents.
Miranda Devine comments on the video below: “Not ‘confused,’ slyly denying. If Republicans keep underestimating Biden they will lose again.” I anticipate that they’re going to lose again regardless, but point taken.
Q: “Why does Mr. Netanyahu need a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting?”
BIDEN (confused): “I didn’t say that in the speech.”
Q: “What about after?”
BIDEN: “You guys eavesdropping on things!” pic.twitter.com/804aXMmBmQ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2024
In his State of the Union speech, Joe Biden correctly referred to Jose Ibarra, the alleged murderer of Laken Riley, as an illegal alien. Democrats aren’t at all concerned about the murder of a 22-year-old girl, but they were horrified that Biden didn’t use their preferred term, “undocumented.” Which implies, I guess, that the guy was perfectly legal but maybe misplaced his driver’s license.
Biden has now apologized for telling the truth–perhaps the only time he did so in the SOTU. He chose MSNBC to recant:
President Biden apologized Saturday for using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
“An undocumented person. I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart in an excerpt from an interview airing Saturday — which did not show him addressing or acknowledging that he referred to Riley as “Lincoln Riley” during the same speech.
Lincoln Riley is the head coach of the Southern Cal football team.
“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do.
So the simple factual characterization as “illegal” is in the same category as “vermin” and “polluting the blood.” And what Biden is most concerned about here is not being like Trump, which is why he reversed all of Trump’s successful border policies.
“I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country.
Illegal immigrants built the country? What the hell is he talking about?
The reason our economy is growing.
Illegal immigrants are responsible for a tepidly growing economy? Why?
We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all,” continued Biden.
“So, you regret using that word?” Capehart asked.
“Yes,” Biden responded.
What a sad performance. And, by the way, what was the point of Biden’s throwing in “[w]e have to control the border”? The border was mostly under control until he took office and deliberately opened it so as to allow millions of illegals to flood into the country. He did it on purpose. It is you, Joe Biden, who have to control the border. Only there is zero chance that you are going to do so.
Referring to an illegal alien as “illegal” in unscripted remarks during his State of the Union Address this past Thursday, President Biden inadvertently offended a core Democratic constituency (i.e., illegal aliens). That could not stand and it didn’t. As John notes nearby, Biden recanted and apologized within 48 hours.
Illegal or undocumented — which is the correct term. As a matter of fact, “Illegal alien” is the correct term.
When we got married, my wife was an illegal alien. Having graduated from law school and been hired by Hennepin County District Judge Robert Bowen as a law clerk, she applied for a work visa. In response she received a letter from the INS apprising her that her student visa had expired and that she was out of status. She applied for legal residency.
We went down to the local INS office for an interview. We had been advised that we would be asked a few questions to establish that our marriage was bona fide — not a fraudulent exercise undertaken solely to allow an illegal immigrant to escape deportation. As it turned out, we appeared to be the only bona fide couple of the four or five with us in the waiting room. And this was early in the Reagan years.
In the course of the interview, the INS officer asked me what toothpaste “the alien” used. It seemed funny because “the alien” was sitting next to me at the time, but we took no offense. We thought it was funny and I was happy to ace the quiz.
Today a question in that form would probably get the guy fired. Today the prescribed term is “undocumented.” Today that is the term on which the Democrats insist. Today it is the term that every mainstream media outlet (including Fox News) uses. What’s happening here?
What’s happening is the blessing of illegal immigration and the destruction of citizenship. The left seeks to break down our resistance to illegal immigration by means of a mandated euphemism. It’s an Orwellian device. The phenomenon of illegal immigration is not even to be described with tolerable accuracy. The underlying distinction is to be rendered meaningless.
As I say, illegal aliens have become a core constituency of the Democrats. To illegal aliens the left requires that the knee must be bent. I’m not sure why Fox News is compliant. It is frankly disgusting.
Here I speak for my wife and me. We support enforcement of the law. We oppose illegal immigration. We do not seek to accommodate it. We do not respect it. We desire the return of illegal immigrants to their home country or deportation to some other place. We do not want to support them with our tax dollars. We are sickened by the invasion of illegal aliens promoted by Biden and the Biden administration. The abuse of the English language that accompanies it is the least of it, but it deserves at least to be noted.
In the video clip from his interview with Jonathan Capehart below, President Biden explains why Hamas wants a ceasefire. He forgets that he’s not supposed to explain how it promotes their goals. He seeks to backtrack but can’t figure out how, except by falsely implying that Israel is violating the laws of war. What a disgrace.
Watch Biden say the quiet part out loud. This is actually kind of amazing. Perhaps Prime Minister Netanyahu will find it of use in the “come to Jesus” meeting with which Biden is threatening him.
Biden makes the blunder of answering whether and why Hamas would want a ceasefire.
He then notices his terrible blunder in saying the truth, and goes off on a tangent. pic.twitter.com/ypqX7H8D6o
— David Shor (@DYShor) March 10, 2024
It turns out that President Biden has a red line. It applies to Israel. In an unlocked story, the Wall Street Journal reports that “Biden Warns Netanyahu an Assault on Rafah Would Cross ‘Red Line.’”
Biden apparently seeks to depose the Netanyahu government. He thinks that Netanyahu is the problem. He also seeks to preserve Hamas. He finds them easier to deal with than Netanyahu. Biden’s daycare minders in the White House may indeed be malevolent or stupid enough to believe these propositions. They certainly explain a lot. They explain what Biden meant about having a “come to Jesus” meeting with Netanyahu. The animus behind that statement is patent. Now we see what Biden had in “mind,” so to speak. Israel does not fit comfortably inside what the Democrats are pleased to refer to as “our democracy.”
Biden and his minders purport to understand Israel’s national security interests better than the Israelis. The Daily Mail reports “Biden Administration consulted Israel expert on how to ‘force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse’ as president accuses the prime minster of ‘hurting Israel more than helping’ and insists Rafah invasion is ‘red line’ that must not be crossed.” The headline says it all.
Politico reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu sees things slightly differently. When asked whether Israeli forces would move into Rafah in an interview on Sunday, Netanyahu replied: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is, that October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.”
It may be time to revisit Robert Gates’s assessment of Biden’s foreign policy chops: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Gates made that assessment in 2014. It therefore predates Biden’s Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran and other debacles. We can now revise Gates’s assessment to the past five decades.
The Biden administration now distinguishes between Israel’s democracy and the people who elected it. While I cannot defend all of our government’s policies, I will absolutely defend the democracy that elected it. Our democratic ally must respect that. https://t.co/8z5MJQgqIz
— Michael Oren (@DrMichaelOren) March 10, 2024
In his SOTU Thursday, Joe Biden used the term “illegal” but failed to mention or condemn Antonio Ibarra, the Venezuelan national charged with murdering University of Georgia student Laken Riley, whom Biden twice misnamed as “Lincoln Riley.” On Saturday, Biden apologized for using the term “illegal,” and took it to another level.
“I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect,” Biden told MSNBC. “Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing.” Such nonsense is nothing new for Joe Biden.
“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens,” said Vice President Biden in 2014. According to Delaware Democrat, all the 11 million wanted was a chance to contribute, so “let people vote.” Biden is not going to disrespect “any, any, any” of those he has brought in, even the criminals, because they add to his imported electorate. When criminal illegals murder Americans, Biden isn’t going to “disrespect” the murderer.
In 2014, false-documented Mexican national Luis Bracamontes gunned down Sacramento deputies officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. During his trial, Bracamontes said he wished he killed more cops, and yelled “black lives don’t matter” at Danny Oliver’s wife, Anthony Holmes, whom he shot five times, and members of the jury. Vice President Biden never mentioned the case, not even to denounce “gun violence.”
In late 2018, a gang-affiliated criminal illegal calling himself Paulo Virgen Mendoza shot dead Newman, California, police officer Ronil “Ron” Singh, a legal immigrant who came to the United States to work in law enforcement. Seven other illegals aided the killer’s flight before the fugitive murderer was apprehended. Joe Biden ignored the case. He is not going to disrespect “any any, any” member of his imported electorate, not even the criminals who murder innocent Americans.
By shunning the term “illegal,” Biden effectively cancels immigration law. The Delaware Democrat also renders meaningless all the procedures people such as Scott Johnson’s wife go through to become American citizens. For Joe Biden, legal immigrants and legitimate citizens are non-persons, and it was the “undocumented” who actually “built the country,” and are now the reason “the economy is growing.”
Conrad Black has called Joe Biden “a pallid effigy unable to utter complete sentences without requesting the approach of the teleprompter,” and a “wax-works effigy of a president.” Legal immigrants, legitimate citizens, and parents of those slain by illegals can be forgiven for regarding Joe Biden as a wax-works effigy of a human being.
President Biden’s animus against Israel was patent in his State of the Union Address this past Thursday evening. The White House has posted the text of his remarks as given here.
JNS editor Jonathan Tobin sets forth a rounded view of “the moral failure” of Biden’s remarks on Israel. Tobin separately addresses and elaborates on Biden’s demands on Israel, the floating harbor for Hamas, the two-state final solution, the lack of any statement on the explosion of anti-Semitism in the United States, and the appeasement of Israel haters. We have noted these deficiencies in our own way, but nothing said here does justice to the points that Tobin makes.
NRO’s Philip Klein characterized the SOTU as “the most anti-Israel presidential speech in history.” Klein posted his comments in a hot take on the evening of Biden’s speech. Among other things, he notes that “[a]fter a perfunctory mention of October 7 and the hostages, Biden then launched an extended attack on Israel’s response to the war and the conditions in Gaza that accepted, whole cloth, Hamas casualty figures that his own administration had previously questioned as unreliable.”
We have noted this point as well. Biden and others in the administration have adopted the numbers retailed by the Gaza Ministry of Health — i.e., Hamas. It represents their adoption of the Hamas point of view.
What’s wrong with this picture? Hamas is not known for the accuracy of its statements of fact. Hamas, for example, does not distinguish between the deaths of civilians and Hamas genocidaires. The Gaza Ministry of Health promotes a line that supports Hamas’s war aims.
Biden hectors Israel. He repeatedly implies that Israel violates the laws of war. This is another lie that promotes Hamas’s war aims. As Israel sacrifices the safety of its soldiers to protect civilians intentionally placed in harm’s way by Hamas, it is perversely false.
In the State of the Union Biden asserted: “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed — [AUDIENCE MEMBER: Says who?] — most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands of innocents — women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned.”
Abraham Wyner homes in on the casualty numbers in the Tablet column “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.” Subhead: “The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures.”
Wyner, by the way, is Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative. He knows what he is talking about. His column is worth your time, but Biden et al. don’t need his analysis. As Klein implies, they know it’s true. They lie without a conscience.
Wyner introduces his analysis this way (emphasis in original):
The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”
Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.
If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.
The first place to look is the reported “total” number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals….
Wyner persuasively establishes that “the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily.” See Figure 1 and other graphs along with the rest of the column here (data posted here).
JOHN adds: Abraham Wyner testified as an expert witness on behalf of the defendants in the Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn case. We saw his testimony when we were in D.C. for the trial. Wyner presented a statistical analysis that showed that Mann’s famous hockey stick graph was, in fact, fraudulent. His analysis was persuasive and Wyner was a great witness, but unfortunately neither his testimony nor the other evidence presented by defendants was enough to overcome the decades of propaganda that underlie climate hysteria. At least, not with a D.C. jury.
A final (I hope) footnote to Joe Biden’s disgraceful SOTU performance: he referred to Jose Ibarra as an illegal, which was, as I said here, perhaps the only true statement in the entire speech. But Biden met with blowback from Democrats who don’t seem to mind that Ibarra is an (alleged) murderer, but were horrified by Biden’s admission that his presence here is illegal.
So, as recorded at the link above, Biden apologized on MSNBC for using the word “illegal.” (The correct legal term is “illegal alien.”):
President Biden apologized Saturday for using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan migrant accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
“An undocumented person. I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart in an excerpt from an interview airing Saturday….
***
“So, you regret using that word?” Capehart asked.“Yes,” Biden responded.
I, and everyone else, called that an apology. But the White House is now backtracking on its backtrack:
The White House on Monday pushed back against claims President Biden apologized for using the term “illegal” to describe the migrant accused of killing Laken Riley — just days after the president said he had “regret” for using the loaded term.
***
White House deputy spokesperson Olivia Dalton attempted to clarify on Monday, telling a reporter that “the president absolutely did not apologize” despite his expression of regret.“There was no apology anywhere in that conversation,” Dalton told reporters on Air Force One. “He did not apologize. He used a different word. I think what we should be really clear about is the facts.”
“He used a different word.” All right, then! Biden said that he “shouldn’t have used” the word illegal, and he “regrets” doing so. Talk about a fine distinction. So, why did the White House bother to walk back, at least partially, Biden’s MSNBC comments? I suppose because if you apologize, you have to apologize to someone. In this case, who is that someone? The (alleged) murderer, Jose Ibarra. Many have criticized Biden for apologizing to a murderer for calling him an illegal. Hence his handlers’ most recent spin: it wasn’t an apology, it was only an expression of regret for something he shouldn’t have done.
Got it, Joe.
And, finally, for a spokesman for the Biden White House to say that “what we should be really clear about is the facts” is, in its own way, a classic of dark comedy.
Joe Biden unveiled his 2025 budget proposal earlier today. In general, presidents’ budgets are hardly worth discussing. They project revenue and spending over the next ten years, and if you go back and look at them a few years later, they usually bear no relation to reality. And, in this instance, there is zero chance that Congress will pass anything resembling Biden’s budget, which can best be seen as a campaign document.
But, for what it is worth, this is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about it:
President Biden proposed Monday a $7.3 trillion budget for the next fiscal year that would raise taxes on wealthy people and large corporations, trim the deficit and lower the costs of prescription drugs, child care and housing.
Other than spending $7.3 trillion and raising taxes, it wouldn’t do any of those things. For purposes of comparison, federal spending in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, was $1.79 trillion. So Biden wants to spend almost exactly four times that much.
The fiscal 2025 budget would cut the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade, and it would raise taxes by a net total of $4.9 trillion, or more than 7% above what the U.S. would collect without any policy changes.
Those hypothetical deficit cuts depend on economic forecasts in the out-years that won’t come true. The only meaningful fact is that Biden wants to raise taxes by nearly $5 trillion.
Biden’s purported budget is largely an exercise in fantasy:
The budget leaves some blank spaces. It lists principles for shoring up Social Security, without specifying a plan. It calls for paying for extensions of tax cuts for most households after 2025 but doesn’t detail how that would be paid for. And it calls for restoring the expanded child tax credit, but only temporarily, lumping that into the broader 2025 tax debate.
Biden’s budget proposes absurd taxes on corporations and “the rich”:
The budget repeats many past Biden tax-increase proposals, including higher tax rates on corporations and high-income individuals along with minimum taxes on the wealthiest Americans’ unrealized capital gains.
Which is insane. If the government taxes unrealized gains on unsold securities when the market goes up, will it write checks to investors when the market is down? Logically, it would have to, but of course that is not part of Biden’s proposal.
Biden rolled out several new tax increases last week, such as raising his new corporate alternative-minimum-tax rate to 21% from 15% and denying deductions when corporations pay any workers, not just top executives, more than $1 million.
The net effect of Biden’s proposals would be to give the United States one of the heaviest tax burdens in our history, equaled only once since World War II.
Is that because people are dying to give the federal government more money to waste? No, it is because many people are too naive to understand that, as has been said a million times, corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them. Those taxes are actually paid mostly by customers (i.e., all of us) and secondarily by employees (i.e., most of us). But Biden’s budget is not about economics or, for that matter, mathematics, as the numbers will never add up. Rather, it is about politics:
Biden’s advisers are betting that a focus on lowering costs for families will help push the president to re-election.
Needless to say, Biden’s budget, if actually enacted, would raise costs for families, not lower them. Fortunately, there is zero chance of that happening.
Politico Playbook previews the testimony later this morning of Special Counsel Robert Hur before the House Judiciary Committee. Hur is to testify on the report of his investigation of Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents (i.e., the report submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland). The Playbookers have obtained and posted Hur’s opening statement here. These are the operative paragraphs:
My report reflects my best effort to explain why I declined to recommend charging President Biden. I analyzed the evidence as prosecutors routinely do: by assessing its strengths and weaknesses, including by anticipating the ways in which the President’s defense lawyers might poke holes in the government’s case if there were a trial and seek to persuade jurors that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the President’s memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information “willfully”—meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids.
I could not make that determination without assessing the President’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial. These are the types of issues prosecutors analyze every day. And because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report to the Attorney General.
The evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue. We interviewed the President and asked him about his recorded statement, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” He told us that he didn’t remember saying that to his ghostwriter. He also said he didn’t remember finding any classified material in his home after his vice presidency. And he didn’t remember anything about how classified documents about Afghanistan made their way into his garage.
My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly. I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.
This is confused and confusing. Did Hur base his non-prosecution decision on his putative inability to prove the mental element of the possible offenses? Hur implies it is “willfulness,” although “gross negligence” would have sufficed to prove the offense under 28 U.S.C § 793. Or did he base his non-prosecution decision on a jury’s anticipated pity for a senile dolt? I trust that some members of the committee will home in on this issue this morning.
Special Counsel Robert Hur testified for some five hours before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on his investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents over his too long career in public life. I have posted the Washington Post’s YouTube video of the hearing at the bottom. At the same time, transcripts of Hur’s interview of Biden in the investigation were released: October 8 (99 pages) and October 9 (157 pages).
Mr. Techno Fog provided his hot take on the transcripts here (“confusion, evasion, and outright lies”). David Harsanyi cut to the chase in the Federalist column “Turns out Biden lied.” The Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reviews both Hur’s testimony and the Biden transcripts in “Interview Transcript, Congressional Testimony Shed Light on Biden’s Memory Lapses During Classified Doc Investigation.”
Hur confined his testimony to the four corners of the lengthy report he submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Whenever he was asked about the facts of the case, he referred to the report’s findings. He demonstrated perfect poise and complete mastery of the case as set forth in his report.
It should go without saying that Hur knew his case, but contrast Hur’s grasp of the case with Robert Mueller’s failure to launch at the comparable hearing held following his Russiagate investigation. To put it charitably, Mueller appeared to be a figurehead who performed at best as an innocent bystander to an investigation run and conducted by others (e.g., Andrew Weissmann). Trump fans who harbor lingering animosity against Attorney General William Barr don’t understand that Mueller’s investigation would still be alive if it weren’t for Barr.
The House Democrats sought to impute a finding of “complete exoneration” of Biden to Hur. Hur begged to disagree. Hur was admirably noncompliant in the face of the Democrats’ efforts to put words in his mouth. The Free Beacon’s video of highlights (below) shows that “complete exoneration” misses the mark. As Hur put it in his opening statement, Hur “identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency, when he was a private citizen.” This evidence contradicted everything Biden himself has said in public about the case, although lying to the public is not a crime. It is standard operating procedure.
Hur was criticized for resting his recommendation of non-prosecution on Biden’s senility. Hur explained that he was required to “show [his] work” supporting his recommendation of non-prosecution. Hur reminded me of how I showed my work in solving high school physics problems. I began with the answer and worked back from there.
In Hur’s case, the answer was non-prosecution. A voice in his head from the film Network must have counseled caution: “Don’t do it, buddy! You’re a young man! You got your whole life ahead of you!” Hur’s explanation of the difficulty of obtaining a guilty verdict in the case was little more than absurd (as was his distinction of the Biden case from the Trump case).
In the course of his overlong political career, Biden has been a serial violator of the national security law. He is heedless to it. His misconduct is egregious. And he is a senescent dolt with the possible reservation that in some instances he may be senile like a fox. I don’t recall when “I don’t recall” was ever so plausible.
I would like to include one positive observation in these remarks. I was impressed by the demeanor of two congressmen whose names I had not even heard before. I don’t know anything else about them except what I saw yesterday. I am referring to Republican Ben Cline of Virginia and Democrat Glenn Ivey of Maryland.
However, yesterday’s hearing was incredibly depressing. It represents the dire condition of our politics. We have clownish Democrats volubly insisting on the things which are not. We have the exhibition of the two-tiered system of justice that Democrats have fashioned to resolve the problem of Donald Trump and other annoyances. We have the continuing exposure of the mental incompetence of the president of the United States. We have the mainstream press acting as the Democrats’ public relations arm.
Special Counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden willfully mishandled documents subject to the Espionage Act provision set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 793(e). However, Hur clouded the “willfulness” element of the offense by resting his non-prosecution recommendation in part on Biden’s present senility. Hur presents his analysis of the element of “willfulness” under section 793 in Chapter Nine of his report.
The relevant question is whether Biden committed the acts “willfully” at the relevant time. Hur had a smoking gun or two to prove the “willfulness” element of the offense. Among other things, however, he suggested that a jury would be reluctant to convict someone as out of it as Biden is and imputed the jury’s likely reluctance to Biden’s present inability to act “willfully” beyond a reasonable doubt. See, for example, Chapters Eleven and Twelve of the report.
Just to give an idea of the evidence Hur compiled, the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman highlights a few passages from Hur’s report. Freeman quotes this from Chapter Twelve:
As with the classified Afghanistan documents [discussed in Chapter Eleven], there is evidence that Mr. Biden kept his notebooks after his vice presidency knowing they were classified and he was not allowed to have them.
The evidence shows convincingly that Mr. Biden knew the notebooks, as a whole, contained classified information. For eight years, he wrote in his notebooks about classified information during classified meetings in the White House Situation Room and elsewhere. He was familiar with the notebooks’ contents, which included obviously classified information. When reviewing the notebooks with [Biden ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden sometimes read aloud classified notes verbatim, but he also sometimes appeared to skip over classified information, and he warned Zwonitzer that the material in the notebooks could be classified. Mr. Biden also stored the notebooks in a classified safe in the White House for a time as vice president because the notebooks were classified.
In Mr. Biden’s written answers to questions from our office, he called into question whether he knew the information in his notebooks was classified. In those answers, Mr. Biden explained that when he described material in his notebooks to Zwonitzer as “classified’’ he did not actually mean “classified.” According to Mr. Biden, “I may have used the word ‘classified’ with Mr. Zwonitzer in a generic sense, to refer not to the formal classification of national security information, but to sensitive or private topics to ensure that Mr. Zwonitzer would not write about them.” Mr. Biden qualified this answer by explaining, “I do not recall the specific conversations you reference with Mr. Zwonitzer, which took place more than six years ago.”
This explanation-that “classified” does not mean “classified”-is not credible. At the time Mr. Biden met with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden had nearly fifty years of experience dealing with classified information, including as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Vice President of the United States. It is not plausible that a person of his knowledge and experience used the term “classified” in this context as a euphemism for “private.”
Hur discusses the existence of grounds for reasonable doubt regarding Biden’s willfulness at the time of the acts (i.e., evidence that Biden thought the notebooks were his personal property), but falls back on Biden’s subsequent incompetence (my word, not Hur’s). If Biden thought they were his personal property, why did he lie about the meaning of “classified”? As I wrote yesterday, Hur’s analysis has the quality of a student working backward from the known answer to a question. Hur thus concludes Chapter Twelve:
Given the intelligence and military officials present and the topics discussed at the meetings Mr. Biden recounted for Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden should have realized that his notes did or were likely to contain classified information. But taken as a whole, the evidence will likely leave jurors with reasonable doubts about whether Mr. Biden knew he was sharing classified information with Zwonitzer and intended to do so. For these jurors, Mr. Biden’s apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer’s interview recordings and in our interview of him. Therefore, we conclude that the evidence does not establish that Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to Zwonitzer.
I thought someone would press Hur on the “willfulness” issue at the hearing. Rep. Ken Buck, who declared he’s outta here next week, came the closest to getting at it toward the tail end of the five-hour hearing (video below). Even within the five-minutes limiting each round of questions — Buck could have omitted his introductory remarks and gotten to the point — Buck almost got there, but this ain’t horseshoes.
Last week the mainstream press ranked President Biden’s State of the Union address up there with the Sermon on the Mount. I reviewed it in detail and found it to be “The SOTU from hell,” but then I wasn’t the target audience. My assessment might have been unreliable.
In my comments I asked to whom the speech was addressed. That wasn’t clear to me. I guess it was addressed to all the Democrats who’d loved him before. He didn’t want them to walk out on him.
Taking a look at the polls after one week, the Hill reports that, ahead of the State of the Union, Biden’s approval rating in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll was 40 percent. In a new survey released on Tuesday by the same team Biden’s approval rating had fallen to 39 percent.
That does not appear to be an outlier: “Other polls also show the president failed to moved the needle following his address to Congress. FiveThirtyEight’s calculation of Biden’s approval rating showed him with just more than 37 percent Tuesday. On March 6, the day before the State of the Union, he had just under a 38 percent approval rating from the ABC News pollster.”
Trump and Biden have each secured his party’s respective nomination and are running neck and neck. The lack of excitement is almost palpable. It is same as it ever was before Joe got hopped up last week to shout into the void.
Via Rich Lowry/NRO.
Here we have the video of the day. It depicts a horde of illegal aliens breaking through the razor wire (mounted, I assume, by Texas authorities) and overrunning Texas National Guard soldiers seeking to resist them in El Paso. The video raises many questions, among them how many many “migrants” does it take to mount used to be known as an “invasion”?
We have now entered year four President Biden’s open borders program. Why does Biden refuse to see that the law is faithfully executed? Why does he support the invasion of the United States? When do we get to defend ourselves? How long can this go on?
This is the moment when TX National Guard became overrun by migrants rioting to get across the border here in El Paso today
We were there and saw it all happen. Absolute chaos here. pic.twitter.com/VN6Kf663ie
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) March 21, 2024
The Times of Israel provides updates on Palestinian casualties according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, but suggests that skepticism is warranted. Indeed, the Ministry of Health is best understood as the functional equivalent of the Ministry of Truth (“Minitrue”) conceived by George Orwell in 1984, i.e., the ministry of propaganda.
In its update on Palestinian casualties in Gaza today, the Times of Israel states the numbers of dead and wounded according to “the Hamas-run health ministry,” but adds: “The terror group’s figures are unverified, don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and list all the fatalities as caused by Israel — even those believed to have been caused by hundreds of misfired rockets or otherwise by Palestinian fire.”
These are obvious points, yet the numbers are taken (or repeated) at face value by President Biden and others. Here is Biden performing his Big Brother shtick earlier this month: “You can’t have another 30,000 Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after [Hamas]. There are other ways to deal with Hamas.”
In his invaluable March 6 Tablet column, Professor Abraham Wyner explains “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers” and even Biden must “know” this. It’s yet another sign of Biden’s turn against Israel and/or support for Hamas.
Let me add today’s sign, per Vice President Kamala Harris: “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake. Let me tell you, I have studied the maps — there is nowhere for those folks to go. So we’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any kind of military operation.”
VP Kamala Harris takes a tougher line against Israel (re: going after remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah) on ABC’s “This Week”:
“We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake. Let me tell you, I…
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) March 24, 2024
During an interview with CBS on Monday, White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby responded to a question on Iran attacking Israel despite American warnings to not do so and what that says about American influence in the region
The post White House on Iran Striking Despite U.S. Saying Not To: ‘Another Way of Looking at This Is, They Didn’t’ Succeed appeared first on Breitbart.
The ruling socialist regime in Venezuela documented an 18-percent increase in oil output in the first trimester of 2024 when compared to the same period in 2023, according to information published by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in its latest April 2024 report.
The post Venezuela Oil Production Grew 18% After Biden Sanctions Relief appeared first on Breitbart.
On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby defended the waiver of sanctions that allow Iraq to purchase energy from Iran “to make sure that the Iraqi people have the
The post White House: We’re Not Ending Sanctions Waiver for Iranian Energy Purchases by Iraq appeared first on Breitbart.
Historian Jon Meacham said Monday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he believed former President Donald Trump was a "tyrant who rose among us."
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President Joe Biden is suffering dismal approval ratings on a range of key issues, the latest survey from the Economist/YouGov found.
The post Poll: Biden Suffers Dismal Approval Ratings on Key Issues appeared first on Breitbart.
The prosecution in former President Donald Trump's criminal trial is attempting to "stack the deck" against Trump in the selection, Jesse Binnall said.
The post Exclusive — Trump Lawyer: Prosecution Seeks to ‘Stack the Deck Against’ Trump in Jury Selection appeared first on Breitbart.
Voters' view of former President Donald Trump's presidency improved nine points after President Joe Biden assumed office, a New York Times/Siena poll found Saturday.
The post NYT Poll: Views of Trump’s Presidency Improves After Three Years of Joe Biden appeared first on Breitbart.
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's New York criminal case, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, is a Biden donor, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
The post Exclusive – Trump Lawyer: ‘Extremely Improper’ that Judge in Trump Criminal Case Is a Biden Donor appeared first on Breitbart.
The judge reportedly allowed a juror who celebrated Donald Trump's 2020 election loss on social media to stay in the jury pool.
The post Report: Judge Allows Juror Who ‘Celebrated Trump’s Loss in 2020’ to Stay in Pool appeared first on Breitbart.
Polling from the Heritage Foundation shows that swing-state voters are increasingly tired of America's endless funding of Ukraine.
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Republican House members have delivered their articles of impeachment against pro-migration DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate.
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During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) stated that “there should be criticism of administrations on both sides of the aisle” over how they handled Iran, and Iran has
The post Dem Sen. Bennet: Iran Has More Power Than Before, But There’s Blame on Trump, Obama Too appeared first on Breitbart.
Attorney General Merrick Garland received a final warning Tuesday to comply with subpoenas for the audio of President Joe Biden's interview with the special counsel Robert Hur.
The post Garland Gets a Final Warning to Comply with Biden Audio Subpoena or Face Contempt appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden, 81, "has no impairment," Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed in the octogenarian's defense on Tuesday.
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Data shows that Joe Biden faces a "real threat' from Latino voters abandoning him in favor of Donald Trump, the Hill acknowledged.
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ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith blasted liberals for trying to destroy Donald Trump by launching an avalanche of nuisance lawsuits
The post Stephen A. Smith Blasts Liberals for ‘Lawfare’ Against Trump: ‘Scared You Can’t Beat Him’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Actor John Leguizamo isn't happy that former President Donald Trump is gaining ground with Hispanic voters.
The post John Leguizamo Whines that Trump Is Gaining with Hispanics, Admits Inflation Is ‘Bad Right Now’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The Senate begins the trial of President Joe Biden's impeached border chief Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eastern — but Democrats are expected to shut down the process to minimize public recognition of the many harms caused by Mayorkas's pro-migration actions.
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Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom" that he will support Donald Trump in November.
The post Barr: I’ll Vote for Trump Because Continuing Biden Is ‘National Suicide’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Wednesday, during an appearance on Fox Business Network's "Mornings with Maria," House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) expressed his frustrations with trying to get answers from President Joe Biden and his administrations about potential wrongdoing and whether he and his associates were selling access to foreign adversaries.
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President Joe Biden announced he “strongly” supports the House foreign aid package as Republicans rapidly turn on Speaker Mike Johnson over efforts to combine several supplemental bills into a single rule with a lack of border security legislation in the package.
The post Biden ‘Strongly’ Supports Johnson’s $95 Billion Foreign Aid Package appeared first on Breitbart.
Peter Schweizer, the author of Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, dismissed President Joe Biden's plan to call for raising tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum during a campaign speech to American steelworkers in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
The post Exclusive–‘Blood Money’ Author Peter Schweizer Dismisses Sincerity of Biden’s China Tariff Tough Talk appeared first on Breitbart.
Venezuela's socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro attempted to issue a message in English to U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss the upcoming expiration of Biden's generous oil and gas sanctions relief package to his regime.
The post Venezuela’s Maduro Sends Devastating Message to Biden in English: ‘I You Want I Want I You to Want I Do Want’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Biden's border chief has killed thousands of migrants and rewarded Mexico's cartels with many billions of dollars, a GOP impeachment manager said.
The post GOP Impeachment Manager: Mayorkas Has Killed Thousands of Migrants, Aided Drug Cartels appeared first on Breitbart.
The bills in the House's foreign aid package, which will be up for a vote Saturday, would appropriate a combined $95 billion for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific, with a lion's share of $60.84 billion for Ukraine.
The post Breakdown: Foreign Aid Bills Would Send $95 Billion to Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific appeared first on Breitbart.
As President Joe Biden visited Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, he called for an increase in taxes on the rich.
The post Biden Calls for Increase in Taxes on the Rich appeared first on Breitbart.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) slammed President Joe Biden for vowing not to back an Israeli response to Iran.
The post Exclusive — Rep. Tenney Slams Biden for Boosting Iran: Israel ‘Fighting for the West Against Islamic Terrorism’ appeared first on Breitbart.
During an interview with Nexstar Media that took place on Tuesday and was released on Wednesday, President Joe Biden stated that inflation “is being stubborn and not going down to the 2% we need. But, it’s significantly different,” than where
The post Biden: Inflation ‘Is Being Stubborn’ — Things Like Junk Fees Are What ‘Really’ Impact People appeared first on Breitbart.
White House aides have reportedly been referring to former President Donald Trump as "Hitler Pig" in their private discussions.
The post Report: Joe Biden’s Aides Call Donald Trump ‘Hitler Pig’ in Private appeared first on Breitbart.
A Brazilian national is accused of raping a child in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts after being released into the United States.
The post Sanctuary Massachusetts: Illegal Alien Accused of Raping Child After Being Freed into U.S. appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald Trump has grown his lead against President Joe Biden nationally, as three in four voters say the cost of living is on the rise, according to an Emerson College poll.
The post Poll: Donald Trump Leads Biden Nationally, as 3 in 4 Say Cost of Living Rising appeared first on Breitbart.
Democratic officials are throwing billions at California high-speed rail projects that have yet to be built, funding thousands of jobs specifically for union members.
Despite funding initially being approved by a referendum in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail project currently has less than a quarter of its expected length under construction and was initially supposed to have connected Los Angeles and San Francisco by 2020, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents 48 local unions and more than 150,000 members in California, boasted of the creation of 13,000 unionized construction jobs due to continued funding of California’s high-speed rail project.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority, in its community benefits agreement regarding the construction of the rail, lays out that it will exclusively bargain with union representatives for craft labor and that no employee will be required to join a union, but workers who are at the site for more than eight total days will be required to pay union dues.
The agreement outlines that union members will be the primary source of labor and that the local unions will be given the opportunity to refer employees for the job.
“The project has been a windfall for the union workers who’ve been on the job,” Kerry Jackson, William Clement fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By some counts, as many as 13,000 have been hired. The California High-Speed Rail Authority itself even brags about the ‘steady union jobs that provide union wages and benefits’ they get. That’s not to mention the benefits the union bosses everywhere always enjoy when they have more dues-paying members supporting their salaries and perks.”
The Biden administration announced $3 billion in federal funds for the project in December to push along the first phase of the project connecting Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield, adding to the $9 billion already appropriated by the state and the approximately $3.5 billion in grants given by the Obama administration.
The project has been estimated to need between $88 billion and $128 billion to be fully completed, and the rail authority told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it is aiming to be operational from Bakersfield to Merced between 2030 and 2033.
“Of course, project costs are affected by higher, nonmarket wages,” Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “When you have so many workers making these wages over the years, it adds up. The unions are a force behind the rail and one of the reasons, if not the main one, that this project has not been halted even though it’s far behind schedule, way over initial cost projections, and looks like a failed enterprise.
“The community benefits agreement that serves as the Project Labor Agreement requires unions to be the primary source of all craft labor.”
The California High-Speed Rail Authority told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, so far, 22.5 miles in the Central Valley have reached substantial completion, but that efforts are underway to design stations and track systems, complete environmental reviews and procure trains.
“The project is very much happening and continuing to make progress with our commitment unwavering as we remain active and aggressive in moving the project forward while actively pursuing federal funding,” the authority told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Big News: Today, President Biden announced funding to build the first high-speed rail projects in our nation’s history.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 9, 2023
These investments will get people and goods where they need to go more quickly, reduce emissions, increase passenger safety, and create good-paying union jobs. pic.twitter.com/zxR6SQawIw
“Even if we didn’t have the Project Labor Agreement, there would be prevailing wage and benefits on this project, both because of state requirements and federal funding requirements,” Anne-Marie Otey, communications and editorial director at the LA/OC Building and Construction Trades Council, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “So, they’d be there no matter what, so we might as well make the best of it. I think it is better for the workers when there’s also a union agreement on the project.”
Otey pointed to the Davis-Bacon Act, which is a federal law that requires the government to pay at least the local rate to workers when constructing public projects, as the reason why using union workers on the project would not raise labor costs.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that if the Davis-Bacon Act were repealed in 2020, it would have reduced government spending outlays by $10.7 billion by 2030.
“It’s benefiting workers,” Otey told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And these workers are represented by unions, but no, we didn’t look at it as ‘What can we do for unions?’ We said, ‘What can we do for workers in the state?’ Especially again, in areas like the Central Valley, where they can’t just drive to San Francisco, Sacramento or L.A. for jobs, they live in the great heartland of our state.
“So, we wanted to figure out a way to keep them employed and keep them working at least somewhat near where they live. So, we think it’s a positive.”
Around $3 billion in federal funding was also announced in December for a high-speed railway between Las Vegas, Nevada, and Rancho Cucamonga, California, with Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., claiming that 35,000 union jobs would be created as a result. The funding for the project comes from the $1.2 trillion in new spending that was approved by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021.
“We disagree that the California high-speed rail project has yet to make substantial progress,” a spokesperson for the California State Transportation Agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Quite the contrary. There are 119 miles currently under construction, with one construction package already substantially complete, and preconstruction work is underway to complete the initial 171-mile operating segment between Merced and Bakersfield. The nation’s first high-speed trains will be tested by the end of the decade, and we expect service to begin between 2030 and 2033.”
California is one of the more unionized states in the U.S., ranking sixth in terms of the share of workers in unions, exceeded only by five other blue states (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Washington), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The share of California workers who were members of unions declined from 16.1% in 2022 to 15.4% in 2023.
The Biden administration’s push for high-speed rail funding in California is part of a larger national push for increased passenger rail access for Americans. President Joe Biden announced in November that $16.4 billion would be given to Amtrak, the national passenger railroad of the U.S., to fund 25 passenger rail projects along the East Coast.
“Although in California, public works projects are always union labor, so I think their biggest reason they like high-speed rail is that it’s just such a long-term project,” Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The unions get behind these projects because they’re big. The other reason, though, that they get behind these projects is because these are projects that the environmentalist community won’t vehemently oppose. They ought to be building things that are more practical; they ought to be upgrading freeways. But the environmentalists want us on a road diet.”
Biden has also boasted of new train sets for the California rail project being all-electric, resulting in zero emissions and powered through renewable energy, according to a White House fact sheet.
The president claims that all of his proposed rail projects will create “tens of thousands” of union jobs. As of September, the state of California had spent more than $600 million on environmental reviews for the rail project, not including a 78-mile stretch out of 500 miles that had not yet been evaluated.
“The environmentalists are so powerful that the unions go, ‘Well, if we’re going to get our guys working, we’re going to have to play ball with the environmentalists,’” Ring told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And so, the environmentalists will buy off on projects that really have no practical value. High-speed rail has no practical value in California. You could also argue that it has no environmental value, and I think you could argue that very convincingly.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post California’s High-Speed Rail Project Far From Finished, but It Is Putting Money in Unions’ Coffers appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Joe Biden's DHS approved a work permit for Jose Antonio Ibarra, who is accused of murdering Laken Riley, knowing he had a criminal history.
The post Federal Docs: Joe Biden’s DHS Gave Work Permit to Laken Riley’s Accused Killer Knowing He Had Criminal Record appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden appeared to confuse the Israeli port city of Haifa with the Palestinian town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip during an interview on Wednesday in his home town Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The post Biden Claims He Prevented Israel from Invading Haifa — an Israeli City appeared first on Breitbart.
A Haitian migrant, reportedly released into the United States via President Joe Biden's parole pipeline, is now accused of double homicide.
The post Report: Joe Biden’s Migrant Mobile App Freed Haitian, Now Accused of Double Murder, into U.S. appeared first on Breitbart.
Among this age group, Joe Biden’s job approval rating sits at just 31 percent. Her Vice Fraudulency Kamala Harris has a job approval rating of just 32 percent.
The post Nolte: Donald Trump Enjoys Double Digit Gains with Voters Aged 18-29 appeared first on Breitbart.
A Whole Foods shopper shared her frustration at reportedly paying $7 for an apple as people across America struggle with inflation.
The post WATCH — ‘Guess How Much’: Whole Foods Shopper Claims Apple Costs $7 Due to Soaring Inflation appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are virtually tied in the key swing state of Wisconsin, the latest League of American Workers/North Star Opinion Research survey found.
The post Poll: Trump and Biden Virtually Tied in Key Swing State of Wisconsin appeared first on Breitbart.
On Thursday’s broadcast of ABC’s “The View,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated that “we’re going to be doing what we can” to address the uptick in gas prices and said that the tools to do so are releasing from the
The post Granholm: We’ll Do ‘What We Can’ on Gas Prices, We Have SPR, Telling Companies to Lower Price as Tools appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden “misstated key details about his uncle’s death," the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
The post Joe Biden Claims His Uncle Was ‘Shot Down’ Where There Were Cannibals: ‘Never Recovered His Body’ appeared first on Breitbart.
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari stated that stimulus spending was “a contributor to the high inflation that we’ve seen.” And “the spending on infrastructure, the spending on new chip
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On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) called for the Biden administration to expand the use of Title 8 and use it for people in the Alternatives to Detention program and that “we
The post Cuellar: Biden Can End Catch and Release of Migrants Through Alternatives to Detention Under Current Law appeared first on Breitbart.
The Biden administration on Friday formally endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) scheme to fund Ukraine's border defense.
The post Joe Biden Formally Endorses Speaker Mike Johnson’s Ukraine Funding Scheme appeared first on Breitbart.
Joe Biden's Department of Education has revamped Federal Title IX rules to eliminate much of Donald Trump's additions and strengthen protections for LGBTQ students, but took a pass on including new language to address the issue of states banning transgender athletes.
The post Biden Dumps Trump Title IX Changes, Stiffer Protections for LGBTQ Students, but Bypasses Trans Issue appeared first on Breitbart.
Former Minnesota Reform Party Gov. Jesse Ventura said Thursday on CNN's "OutFront" that he could beat bothident Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical match-up.
The post Jesse Ventura: I Could Beat Both Biden and Trump appeared first on Breitbart.
On Friday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that President Joe Biden “strongly urged Israel to avoid any response” to Iran’s attack on Israel, but “the fact that both Israel and Iran are downplaying” Israel’s response
The post Kaine: Things Seem to Be De-Escalating After Israel Launched Strike Biden Urged Them Not to appeared first on Breitbart.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) celebrated Democrats seizing the House by unprecedentedly relying on the opposition party to force President Joe Biden's priority of Ukraine border defense funds toward a full House vote on Saturday.
The post Speaker Mike Johnson Celebrates Democrats Seizing House: ‘We’re Happy’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Karine Jean-Pierre refused to confirm Joe Biden's suggestion that his uncle was "shot down" and eaten by cannibals.
The post White House Refuses to Confirm Joe Biden’s Suggestion that Uncle Was ‘Shot Down,’ Eaten by Cannibals appeared first on Breitbart.
Enthusiasm for President Joe Biden on the 2024 campaign trail appears to pale in comparison to the enthusiasm for former President Donald Trump.
The post Joe Biden Faces Enthusiasm Gap on Campaign Trail appeared first on Breitbart.
On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Washington Post Associate Editor and MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart said he believes that “there are no political considerations involved” in President Joe Biden’s policy towards Israel, but left-wing critics of the administration’s approach are putting pressure
The post Capehart: Lefty Protests Are Putting Pressure on Biden ‘To Get Something Done’ on Israel, But He’s Not Thinking Politics appeared first on Breitbart.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) reversed his months-long pledge to never advance foreign aid without first securing America's border.
The post Betrayal Complete: Mike Johnson Passes $61 Billion Ukraine Aid, Violates Hastert Rule Again appeared first on Breitbart.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implied that if former President Donald Trump wins the upcoming 2024 presidential election, he would go to violent extremes regarding his opponents and journalists.
The post Hillary Clinton: ‘What Trump Really Wants’ Is to ‘Kill’ and ‘Imprison’ Opposition, ‘Exile’ Journalists appeared first on Breitbart.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Eva Edl turned 10 years old in a World War II-era death camp.
She believes she may die in a United States prison.
Charged by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, Edl faces up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines. She is about to turn 89 years old.
“When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said thoughtfully in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get ready. Haven’t talked to a funeral director yet.”
“I’m just being sensible,” she added. “There’s no guarantee that I survive it.”
Drawing on her brutal experiences with communism in what was then Yugoslavia, she refuses to underestimate those who have the power to oppress her, recalling how her mother couldn’t believe they were in danger until it was too late.
“We haven’t done anything wrong! Who would harm us?” she remembered her mother saying.
“Then our whole people was destroyed,” Edl said. “We hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as I know.”
As Danube Swabians, an ethnic German-speaking group, Edl and her family were rounded up in the aftermath of World War II by soldiers under the direction of Yugoslavia’s communist leader, Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito.
She described how she was shipped off in cattle cars to a concentration camp in Yugoslavia at age 9: “We were packed body to body, and being a small child, I could hardly breathe. We had no food, no water … .”
The camp (named Gakowa, or Gakovo, according to Edl) was “primitive,” she said, and its purpose was the extermination of the Danube Swabians. Many of those in Gakowa with Edl died from starvation or disease and were buried in mass graves.
She slept on straw. She had her one dress. Very little food.
“You couldn’t wash your clothes because all you have is that one dress,” she explained. “So, you were filthy. And then we had diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and rats and anything you could imagine, and we had no toilet facilities to contain all that. We had an outhouse. Well, how do you have masses of people with diarrhea just go to one outhouse? So, you know what happened. And filth and disease went rampant.”
Her mother, forced to work as a slave laborer in the fields, escaped and smuggled herself into the camp in a wagon full of corn, determined to find her young daughter among the thousands of prisoners, Edl says. Soldiers poked through the load of corn with bayonets, just barely missing her mother.
Edl’s mother finally found her young daughter lying on a pile of rancid straw, starving, too weak to walk, “festering” with lice and other creatures.
The scene was so horrific that it caused Edl’s mother to rush outside and vomit, although Edl did not learn this until years later. At the time, she was so weak she could barely register her mother’s presence, and she could scarcely recognize her mother, thin and emaciated as she was. But it seemed to Edl a miracle that they had been reunited—even in a concentration camp.
“I just couldn’t believe it was her,” she explained. “It took a while.”
Edl’s stories of her time in the death camp feature many brave women: her grandmother, who voluntarily chose to go to the concentration camp with her in order to protect her; her mother, who repeatedly risked death to reunite her children and get them safely to the United States; and her sister, who, forced by a soldier to dig her own grave, looked him in the eye and dared him to kill her. (He didn’t, according to Edl.)
So, it should come as no surprise that Edl, after she came to the United States in 1955 and was exposed to a human rights crisis she had never before heard of, decided that she must do whatever was in her power to save lives.
Edl took an English course around 1968, and during the course, someone brought up whether or not the United States should legalize abortion. (Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that there was a constitutional right to abortion, did not come about until 1973.)
“I didn’t know what [abortion] meant,” Edl said. She was blown away by the explanation she received. As she spoke with The Daily Signal, she reflected that an unborn baby is not a tumor, but a life. No one should have the ability to just end a baby’s life, she said.
“I tried to speak up in that subject, but I must have done a very bad job because I don’t think I convinced the person that I was speaking with. And after that, I just brought the subject up all the time because it bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children.”
During the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, she first learned that abortions don’t take place in a secretive, underhanded fashion; rather, that unborn babies are aborted within abortion clinics, places that openly advertise their gruesome services. Edl was shocked.
Hundreds of pro-life protesters demonstrated outside the convention beginning in July 1988. In October 1988, police arrested about 400 protesters in connection to those demonstrations, The New York Times reported.
It was during that time period, after discussing the matter with her husband and getting his blessing, that Edl joined the protesters as they prayed outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta and attempted to dissuade women from going inside and aborting their babies.
“We are doing what we are condemning others for,” Edl says she told her husband at the time. “This is what people should have done for us.”
She was arrested that day with many others, led by Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry.
Edl says the police treated them brutally, dislocating the arms of many of the protesters arrested. The pro-life activists had been warned that police were prepared to be brutal, she explained, and to avoid any appearance of accosting police, the activists crawled on their knees rather than walked.
“I was weeping the whole time,” she said. “I must have left a trail of tears … .”
She was inconsolable that America would even consider aborting its unborn.
“America, in my eyes, was this country of justice and opportunity and everything that is good,” she said. “A beacon for us, over there, that didn’t know what all that meant, because we had nothing but oppression from whoever was ruling us at the time.”
When an officer put his hand on her shoulders, she froze, as she had been instructed.
“I heard somebody say, ‘Just use your nightstick,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, here they come. They’re going to club me.’ They just put the club, the nightstick, behind my arms. They hung me on it and nearly dislocated my shoulders, and just threw me on the bus. Other people got their shoulders totally dislocated; others got their heads bashed in. Some ended up in the hospital.”
That was her first “rescue”—the term that pro-life activists use for their attempts to stop abortions from taking place at an abortion clinic. Under the FACE Act, such activity is considered a crime.
The FACE Act prohibits use of force, obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with “reproductive health care services.” Though it theoretically protects houses of worship and pregnancy resource centers, as well as abortion clinics, the Biden administration’s Justice Department has largely used FACE to prosecute pro-life activists like Edl.
Since 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department has hit a total of 40 pro-life activists with FACE-related charges at five different rescues, or “blockades” as the DOJ calls them.
Edl describes a rescue in the following way: “We would put our bodies in front of the entrance of the abortion clinic, which I call the ‘death camp,’ so nobody could come in and kill the babies.”
Since that October 1988 incident, Edl says, she has been part of more than 50 rescues throughout the United States. She also says that she has been arrested about 50 times.
Now, she faces prison time.
“To the best of my knowledge, I am facing around 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines,” she said.
The Justice Department has thrice charged Edl with violating the FACE Act, first for an “August 2020 blockade” of a Sterling Heights, Michigan, abortion clinic; second for an April 2021 “blockade” in Saginaw, Michigan; and third for a March 2021 incident at a Nashville, Tennessee, abortion clinic. The DOJ charged eight defendants in the Sterling Heights incident and 11 defendants in the Nashville incident.
Edl maintains that she never committed any violence against those at the abortion clinics. (The DOJ would not respond to requests for comment about its charges against her.) She says that her actions are completely justified, given that she is trying to save the lives of babies about to be aborted.
“Let me liken it to something,” Edl explained thoughtfully as we discussed her arrests around the country. She referred back to her time in Gakowa. “When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear, and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train? The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did.”
She has heard stories that people stood by the roadside and wept as the cattle cars went by. “But that didn’t help us any,” she said.
“So, when we place our bodies between the woman and the clinic, we buy time to get our sidewalk counselors the opportunity to speak with women, and hopefully open their hearts with love for their babies and let their babies live,” the death camp survivor said.
“After all,” she added, “we offer them everything there is, including adoptions. I’ve offered to adopt babies on the spot … we’re standing between the killer and the victim.”
Congress passed the FACE Act in 1994, and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law that same year. Spearheaded by the now-deceased Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., the legislation was a response to attacks on abortionists and abortion clinics. Pro-life advocates made sure that the legislation included clauses stating that it also protects churches and pregnancy resource centers.
In recent months, some conservative lawmakers and activists have called for the legislation to be repealed, arguing that it has been weaponized against pro-life activists.
They point to the large number of DOJ FACE charges against pro-life activists, noting that hundreds of churches and pregnancy resource centers have been attacked by pro-abortion vandals since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned. The DOJ has charged only five pro-abortion vandals in connection with attacks on Florida pregnancy centers and an Ohio pregnancy center.
It appears that no vandals have been charged with FACE for attacking churches.
Edl, who has followed the FACE Act and its application since its inception, said she was arrested in Kennedy’s office when she went to talk to him about it in the 1990s.
“Instead of talking to us, he had us arrested,” she said of Kennedy.
She believes that she and her fellow pro-life activists are being targeted through the FACE Act because they “are in the way of [the Biden administration’s] agenda.” She has lived through 13 presidents in her lifetime, and she says that Biden is the worst of them.
Edl and the other defendants accused of violating the FACE Act have said that they are not allowed to show images or pictures in their trials. They are not allowed to say that they acted in order to save lives—the lives of unborn babies.
At the end of the day, however, she seems very at peace about the possible penalties. She’s getting her affairs in order. She had a bench trial in federal court in Nashville, where a federal judge found her and several others guilty of violating the FACE Act.
Edl and the other three defendants face a maximum of six months in prison, five years of supervised release, and fines of up to $10,000 in this case, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.
She will be sentenced July 30, she said. And her next trial is in federal court in Detroit on Aug. 6.
“I feel very strongly, because of my background, that human life is sacred,” she said simply. “Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids.”
“And murder is forbidden by God.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: She Survived a Death Camp. Facing Biden DOJ Charges, She Is Prepared to Die in Prison appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Most Americans are "more enthusiastic" to vote in the 2024 presidential election in November than in previous years, a Gallup survey found.
The post Gallup Survey: Most Americans ‘More Enthusiastic’ to Vote in 2024 Election than Previous Years appeared first on Breitbart.
The Biden administration's reported decision to sanction a religious unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for alleged past human rights abuses will come back to haunt the U.S. as other countries do the same to American units.
The post Analyst: Biden, Blinken Endanger U.S. Soldiers with Sanctions on IDF Troops appeared first on Breitbart.
Governor JB Pritzker (D-IL) said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that he was concerned about a presidential debate because former President Donald Trump "lies and lies and lies."
The post Pritzker: Not Sure if Biden Should Debate Trump Who ‘Lies and Lies and Lies’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Fatah, the "moderate" ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, has admitted on live television that Hamas steals humanitarian aid and kills aid workers in the Gaza Strip.
The post Palestinian Ruling Party Admits: Hamas Steals Aid, Kills Aid Workers in Gaza appeared first on Breitbart.
The White House issued a statement in response to the ongoing anti-Israel protests and encampment taking place at Columbia University, describing them as being, "Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous."
The post White House Responds to Anti-Israel Protests at Columbia University: ‘Antisemitic, Unconscionable, Dangerous’ appeared first on Breitbart.
U.S. President Joe Biden's claim his uncle — an American World War II pilot — had been eaten by “cannibals” in Papua New Guinea after crashing on the Melanesia island chain was firmly rejected Sunday by Prime Minister James Marape.
The post Papua New Guinea PM Angrily Slams Joe Biden over ‘Cannibals’ Claim appeared first on Breitbart.
In a significant shift from its previous approach to elections, Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is distancing itself from politics, which could have a profound impact on the 2024 U.S. presidential election. An analysis of posts by the Trump and Biden campaigns show both have faced a 60 percent drop in engagement between 2020 and 2024 on Facebook.
The post Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Plans for You to Not See Donald Trump on Platforms Before Election appeared first on Breitbart.
President Biden's Title IX rules are being interpreted as protecting transgenderism, especially in the use of specialized "pronouns."
The post Biden’s Title IX Rules Force Schools to Use Transgender Pronouns appeared first on Breitbart.
Actor Michael Douglas said Sunday on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS that people say President Joe Biden is as "sharp as a tack" while discussing the president's age.
The post Michael Douglas on Biden’s Mental Acuity: People Say He’s Sharp as a Tack appeared first on Breitbart.
Former President Donald Trump characterized his criminal trial in Manhattan as among the "Biden trials" in "coordination with Washington."
The post Trial Day 5 — Donald Trump Rips Case as ‘Election Interference’: ‘Coordination with Washington’ appeared first on Breitbart.
The already insane cost of purchasing a home has hit a new high, thanks to the ongoing horror show that is Bidenomics.
The post Nolte: Bidenomics Drives House Prices to Another Record High appeared first on Breitbart.
The Supreme Court will decide if the Biden-Garland Justice Department’s “Ghost Gun” Rule violates the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
The post Supreme Court to Tackle Biden DOJ’s ‘Ghost Gun’ Rule appeared first on Breitbart.
Matthew Colangelo, a former Biden DOJ official, delivered the prosecution's opening statement on Monday in the Trump criminal trial.
The post Trump Trial Day 5: Matthew Colangelo, Ex-Biden Admin Official, Gives Prosecution’s Opening Statement appeared first on Breitbart.
Biden's steamroll of Johnson is a sore reminder of how Republicans often decline to use their capacity to push conservative policies popular with the base, perhaps fearing they will lose reelection. Democrats, in contrast, often use their power without qualms.
The post Report: Joe Biden ‘Winner’ of 118th Congress After Steamrolling Speaker Johnson appeared first on Breitbart.
An organization representing the ethnic Tutsi survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide condemned Antony Blinken.
The post Antony Blinken Angers Rwandan Genocide Victims, ‘Retraumatized Many Survivors’ appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden condemned antisemitism on college campuses on Monday -- but equivocated, saying that he also condemned those who did not understand the Palestinians' point of view.
The post Biden Sees Very Fine People on Both Sides of Campus Antisemitism appeared first on Breitbart.
Colorado communities have transformed schools into welfare agencies as tens of thousands of children of illegal immigrants enroll.
The post Colorado Turns Schools into Welfare Agencies as Thousands of Needy Migrant Children Enroll appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden condemned "antisemitic protests" happening on college campuses, while attempting to see the perspective of Palestinians, during an Earth Day event on Monday held at Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia.
The post Joe Biden Condemns ‘Antisemitic Protests’, Also People ‘Who Don’t Understand’ Issue ‘with the Palestinians’ appeared first on Breitbart.
On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz stated that President Joe Biden’s response to antisemitism on college campuses is “the same kind of moral equivalence he complained about in Charlottesville,” and won’t
The post Dershowitz: Biden Made ‘Same Kind of Moral Equivalence He Complained About in Charlottesville,’ He Wants Mob’s Vote appeared first on Breitbart.
President Joe Biden faces a much "tougher" path than his opponent to obtain the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidential election, longtime Democrat adviser Doug Sosnik wrote in the New York Times.
The post Democrat Adviser: Two Reasons Biden Faces ‘Tougher’ Electoral College Path to 270 appeared first on Breitbart.
The only two states that apportion Electoral College votes in presidential races by congressional district are poised to scrap what makes them unique.
In these systems, presidential candidates get one electoral vote for each congressional district they win in the state. Unlike in other states, the Democratic, Republican, and other party candidates could end up splitting a state’s electoral votes among them.
The usually blue Maine and generally red Nebraska each had one battleground congressional district that would sometimes draw presidential candidates.
But the Maine Legislature moved to give its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote—regardless of who carries the state.
Nebraska lawmakers are considering becoming like 48 other states with winner-take-all elections, meaning the candidate who captures the majority of the state’s popular vote takes all of the state’s electoral votes. Nebraska’s change—if adopted—would affect the 2024 presidential election, while the Maine change likely wouldn’t.
Last week, Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills announced she would let a bill making Maine the 18th state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact become law without her signature after it narrowly passed the state Legislature.
Maine Joins National Popular Vote Compact https://t.co/e6tvfYRH6H via @democracynow
— NationalPopularVote (@NatlPopularVote) April 21, 2024
Under the multistate compact, Maine agrees to give its four electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. The states that make up the compact thus far represent a combined 209 electoral votes. Those votes will only activate when the compact reaches the required 270 electoral votes needed to elect a president.
Meanwhile, Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen is considering calling a special session of the state Legislature, which already adjourned on April 18, to adopt a winner-take-all system for the state’s five electoral votes.
Pillen said he would only call a special session “when there is sufficient support in the Legislature to pass it.”
Prominent conservative commentators such as Charlie Kirk and Mark Levin have supported the change in Nebraska.
JUST IN—The Great One, Mark Levin, gets behind turning Nebraska into a winner-take-all electoral college state.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 9, 2024
The coalition is growing. Listen to @marklevinshow break down why this is critical ahead of November? pic.twitter.com/97PbsKAp3P
Maine enacted its rule to divide its electoral votes by congressional district ahead of the 1972 election. It took another 20 years for Nebraska to follow suit, which it did ahead of the 1992 election.
However, split votes have been rare.
The first time Nebraska had a split came when Democrat Barack Obama won the swing Nebraska district in the Omaha area in the 2008 election, the first time since 1964 that a Democrat won an electoral vote in the state.
In 2016, Republican Donald Trump won Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of the state outside of Portland or Augusta, netting one electoral vote from the state. He was the first Republican since 1988 to win a Maine electoral vote.
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden captured Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District and its electoral vote.
The post These 2 States Are Poised to Scrap Fractured Electoral College System—in Different Ways appeared first on The Daily Signal.
A hybrid political action committee (PAC), focused on messaging through music and culture, is launching to target groups of Americans previously chilly to the Republican Party and get them to vote for Donald Trump for president.
The post PAC Using Music, Culture to Target New Voters for Trump appeared first on Breitbart.
Vaunce News 
