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Amid the fiscal babble of an earning report, the parent company of Folgers coffee has a message coffee drinkers may find difficult to swallow.
The J.M. Smucker Co., which sells Folgers, Café Bustelo and Dunkin brand coffee, reported on the company’s earnings last week, with CEO Mark Smucker offering a sobering prediction of what was coming in terms of coffee prices.
“The coffee category continues to experience commodity volatility and overall meaningful inflation,” he said in the remarks posted online.
“In response to recent higher green coffee costs that we will begin to incur during the first quarter, we are taking a list price increase across parts of our portfolio in early June,” he said.
In trying to say the bite won’t be too bad, he added that the company seeks “a balance between recovering inflationary input costs, while providing consumers with attractive options ranging from value to premium.
“We expect the coffee category to remain resilient, despite recent inflationary pressures and volume declines, given consumers’ love of daily coffee rituals and continued strength in at-home consumption,” he said.
Bloomberg noted that “futures for robusta beans used in instant coffee have soared more than 50% this year to fresh highs as production in key grower Vietnam buckles under drought.”
Prices for the arabica coffee bean are also climbing.
Imported coffee prices have risen 65 percent January 2021, according to an article in Food Manufacturing penned by Cobank.
Consumers are now paying 20 percent more for their ground coffee than in April 2023.
CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange says that trend will continue.
“Following the pandemic when restaurants were closed, people have gained some experience trying to replicate their favorite dining-out experiences at home,” said Billy Roberts, senior food and beverage economist for CoBank.
“It wouldn’t be surprising if, due to sharply higher coffee prices, some consumers turn to recreating their favorite coffee or espresso drinks at home with store-bought flavorings or inclusions,” he said.
With supply issues in nations such as Brazil and Colombia, as well as Vietnam, prices will not be falling any time soon, he said.
Bidenomics! Soaring Coffee Prices Force Folgers’ Owner To Increase Supermarket Prices#coffee #inflation #bidenomics
https://t.co/oEiATAXBy6— KAG3-CO (@Kag3C) June 8, 2024
“Nearly all of the coffee consumed in the U.S. is imported, so higher prices are likely until the production challenges subside,” said Roberts.
“While it’s highly unlikely U.S. consumers are going to significantly curb their consumption due to high prices, they may get creative with at home coffee drinks and lean on store-bought flavorings to replace more expensive specialty drinks from coffee shops,” he said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Folgers’ Management Announces Imminent Price Increase appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A wind turbine project off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, is whipping up some trouble for local homeowners.
Dominion Energy is in the process of developing a 176-turbine project off the coast of the vacation community.
But residents say the project is not making life any better.
“It’s interfering with our lives every day—2 a.m. the other morning, I was awoken by the room shaking,” Julie Brown of Virginia Beach said, according to WTKR-TV.
“It wasn’t the noise, it was the shaking,” Brown added. “You think is there an earthquake. I go over and look out the window and can see the lights and they’re working on it.”
Dominion Energy officials have said they will try to keep the noise down as the $9 billion project moves forward, telling residents in a recent town hall they were working on ways to blanker of buffer the noise.
Brown says it’s not working.
“The wind blanket right now is a joke,” Brown said. “There’s a wind blanket. It’s literally like a piece of paper hanging.”
Homeowner John Knight said he has installed soundproofing on his bedroom window, and has to deal with a crack in a wall he blames on the project, according to WTKR-TV.
“We’ve been having a lot of problems in the neighborhood with houses shaking, walls cracking, tiles cracking,” Knight said.
He said the project is nothing but “24-hour-a-day work that’s waking us up at night. We’re really worried about the long-term damage to our home.”
“Dominion is trying to mitigate this disruption,” Virginia Beach Vice Mayor Rosemary Wilson said. “I called Dominion and said, ’24/7, are you kidding? That’s too much for anybody to take.'”
But the noise is not all. The new turbines will be visible from the shore, which residents have said was not in the cards when the project was sold as a great idea, according to WAVY-TV.
“[Citizens] feel misled,” Wilson said. “They didn’t know you’d be able to see the turbines.”
“The citizens and us as leaders felt misled by Dominion … about the appearance of the wind turbines,” Councilman Worth Remick said.
Although Dominion has had turbines in the region for years as a pilot project, the new ones are 200 feet taller, a detail that WAVY reported was not fully spelled out to the community.
It noted that a 2018 comment from Dominion Energy said the turbines “will not be visible from the Virginia Beach shoreline.”
Project representative Jeremy Slayton said residents were told the pilot turbines were shorter than the ones for the full project, but when WAVY noted that the visibility issue was not linked to the height issue, “Slayton did not point to any specific presentation where visibility was addressed outside the pilot turbines.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post After Being ‘Misled’ by Appearance of Wind Turbines, Seaside Residents Awake to Nightmare as Houses Begin to Shake appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Three people were arrested after a so-called “pride” crosswalk was damaged in Spokane, Washington, on Wednesday.
The LGBT symbol had been repainted recently after liquid was poured upon it and it was set on fire in mid-May, according to KREM-TV.
But on Wednesday, four people riding Lime scooters were seen riding over the mural repeatedly. Lime is a company that rents electric bikes and scooters.
Pride mural in Spokane, WA faces repeated vandalism, including arson a few weeks ago, skid marks made by a 19-year-old teen and two minors, and further damage by young children on scooters while a news reporter is on the scene reporting on its repair.
Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/OkBMfuDQ3n
— AF Post (@AFpost) June 7, 2024
When confronted by witnesses, the scooter riders refused to stop and cursed at the witnesses, according to court documents.
One witness said the teens were intentionally making marks on the mural with the scooters they were riding.
“Officers observed widespread damage as black scuff marks consistent with scooter wheels were observed across the entirety of the mural,” Spokane police said in a statement on the department’s website.
“The area is clearly marked to keep traffic away as it was just re-painted to repair previous damage,” the statement said.
At least 14 black skid marks had marked the mural, according to WTGS-TV.
Lime condemns and takes action on the vandalism of the Spokane Pride mural, with scooters from the company being used to create skid marks on the mural.https://t.co/jJOCBXd5v0
— KHQ Local News (@KHQLocalNews) June 7, 2024
Police used witness accounts and video surveillance to arrest three suspects about 34 minutes after they were summoned, KREM reported.
Ruslan V.V. Turko, 19, and two minors were charged with first-degree malicious mischief.
Turko was freed on his own recognizance after a Thursday hearing in which prosecutors called for a $15,000 bond.
One condition of his release was that he not go near the mural or those arrested with him.
On Friday, Lime released a statement condemning the incident and said it will make the mural area a no-ride zone.
Lime said on its website that what that means is that when a rider enters a no-go Zone, the vehicle comes to a forced, automatic stop.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Teens Arrested After Scooters Leave Marks on ‘Pride’ Crosswalk appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Former President Donald Trump is — often frivolously — accused of a long and varied list of things.
One critique you don’t hear nearly as often from the peanut gallery, however, is that Trump is not a good performative speaker.
(The man is in the WWE Hall of Fame, and professional wrestling is a modern-day vaudeville act, after all.)
That’s no longer the case after acclaimed actor Sir Ian McKellen, perhaps best known to worldwide audiences for his portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings” movies, took a random potshot at the 45th President of the United States in an interview.
Speaking about a wide range of topics with The Times of London, McKellen blasted the oratory skills of Trump.
“Trump is an absolute bewilderment,” McKellen said, with The Times noting that the thespian likes to watch CNN.
That proclivity toward CNN does explain a bit of why McKellen is so inclined to blast Trump, but that’s hardly unique to the British actor.
“I haven’t seen him live,” McKellen continued. “But he’s one of the worst public speakers there has ever been. Whether he’s reading a script or not, it’s so patent what he is.”
McKellen levied one last potshot at Trump by recounting his personal childhood: “I remember leaving my school [in Bolton] in the sixth form and cycling down to the town square to see [Welsh Labor Party leader] Aneurin Bevan on the hustings without a microphone.
“There aren’t any great orators like that around, are there?”
The 85-year-old actor discussed a great number of other topics with The Times, including the inevitable end of his acting career looming. But the shots against Trump stick out in the interview like a sore thumb, simply due to comparative optics.
Whatever one may think of Trump’s oratory skills, it’s virtually inarguable that Trump is a better speaker — by a rather large margin, mind you — than incumbent President Joe Biden.
Trump and Biden will be inextricably linked to each other as they go head-to-head in the November general election, and all manner of comparison between the two will be inevitable.
When it comes to matters of the economy, world relations or fundraising, Trump pretty easily clears Biden — hence why every critique you hear about the former president these days is about the bogus 34 charges he’s been convicted of in a so-called hush money trial in New York.
And that’s what makes McKellen’s comments so odd.
If you concede the actor’s point and accept his premise that Trump’s a terrible orator … what does that make the highly correctable Biden?
Unintelligible? Incoherent? Undecipherable?
Given that every American (even Democrats, deep down inside) knows the answer to the above question, critics of Donald Trump would do best to steer away from any mention of oratory skills, at least until November.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Legendary ‘Lord of the Rings’ Actor Takes Bizarre Shot at Donald Trump appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Criminals have slowly gotten bolder and bolder about their crimes, moving away from the silent heists of the past and opting for grab-and-runs.
Unfortunately, despite their lack of stealth, many times these individuals never get challenged.
Some stores enforce policies where employees are ordered not to stop thieves for their own safety.
But that doesn’t mean every store is going to be an easy target. During a recent instance at a Tennessee outlet mall, shoppers rallied together in an attempt to hold a group of alleged thieves captive until police could arrive.
On June 1 at the Tanger Outlets in Antioch, Tennessee, four suspects entered a Perfumania wearing hoodies and face masks, intending to shoplift, according to The Tennessean.
While inside ransacking the store, bystanders began to stand in front of the door in an attempt to barricade the suspects inside of the establishment while they awaited a police response.
Much of the incident was captured by a TikToker who uses the handle “ptodropout,” who said she had been inside the store shopping with her son when the four arrived.
@ptodropout This really just happened! Tanger outlet, nashville #robbery #caughtoncamera #crazy #cops ♬ original sound – Girl Boss
The captured video shows the four young people looking for a way out of the store while continuing to grab merchandise from the shelves.
At one point, one of the suspects rushed at the door in an attempt to force it open, but the defenders held firm.
In the end, police took 30 minutes to arrive at the scene, allowing the four hooligans to escape after forcing open the back door, bashing a hole in the wall in the process.
Smash-and-grabs are nothing new, but the boldness of some criminals is undoubtedly beginning to irk more people.
Americans can’t even go on shopping trips without seeing brazen criminals ruining the peace.
It won’t be surprising if more onlookers begin to take action like the good citizens in Tennessee, especially when peaceful means of resistance such as holding a door closed are available.
Of course, no person should put themselves in harm’s way to stop petty theft, but that doesn’t mean that we should permit such outrageous acts of lawlessness.
Sometimes, Americans need to take matters into their own hands when law enforcement isn’t able to fulfill their duties.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Punks Try Stealing from a Tennessee Perfume Store – Plan Falls Apart When Fed-Up Shoppers Hold the Line appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Charles Barkley’s time on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” might be coming to an end, meaning fans of professional basketball will be without the banter between him, fellow legendary players Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith, as well as iconic TNT host Ernie Johnson.
But the expected end of the beloved program will not stop the 1993 NBA MVP from sharing his thoughts on sports and especially from sharing criticism of those who cover them – particularly basketball.
Friday morning, ESPN drew the ire of Barkley, which aired Game 1 of the NBA Finals on ABC between the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday night and will also air the Stanley Cup Finals on ESPN throughout the next week or so.
The first game from Boston game wasn’t close from the jump (the Celtics drubbed the Mavs 107-89, and the game wasn’t as close as that score indicates), but that wasn’t what irked Barkley.
The basketball analyst and former NBA great joined Outkick host Dan Dakich on Friday, where he called those who run ESPN “idiots” for spending an inordinate amount of time talking about everything but the game before tipoff.
Barkley’s complaints centered on a lengthy discussion on the network about who could become the new coach of the Los Angeles Lakers after the May firing of then-coach Darvin Ham.
According to reports and endless speculation, UConn Huskies men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley is the favorite to take over in L.A.
ESPN spent a lot of time discussing the potential hire Thursday while the first game of a series that will decide the NBA championship was set to begin.
Barkley told Dakich he was not at all pleased by ESPN’s unrelenting coverage of the Lakers’ coaching situation during the game.
Charles Barkley turned off ESPN because of their coverage pic.twitter.com/iosxFy7hCT
— OutKick (@Outkick) June 7, 2024
“I was so pissed with Game 1 of the Finals and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals coming on, for them to spend the first hour talking about, ‘What if Danny Hurley goes to the Lakers,’ I was so pissed yesterday I had to turn my TV off,” he said.
Barkley added, “This is how stupid they are. Y’all got the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals, and y’all talking about a team that is currently irrelevant.
“Whoever’s doing that program has to be the stupidest, most boneheaded people in the world,” Barkley added.
He concluded, “Who in the hell is running their programming over there?”
Barkley savaged the coverage of Hurley as “speculation” and said he asked himself Thursday, “What kind of idiots are running this network?”
He explained that he was fond of Hurley and that there was a time and place to discuss coaching vacancies.
But he said the lead-up to the NBA and Stanley Cup Finals was not that time for such a discussion, especially when it involves a team that meekly exited the playoffs in the first round.
“That was crazy,” he said. “I just thought it was so stupid of ESPN yesterday, Barley added. “Ya’ll got the biggest game of the NBA season coming on tonight and ya’ll spend the first hour talking about if Danny Hurley goes to the Lakers.”
Barkley concluded his remark with one of his trademark “Come on, man” reactions.
ESPN will have the chance to discuss the Lakers more or to actually discuss Game 2 of the NBA Finals before it tips off on Sunday.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Charles Barkley Says He Got Fed Up and Turned Off ESPN: ‘What Kinda Idiots Are Running This Network?’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce said thoughts of being hit with a stun gun were with him after he received an impromptu invitation to speak during the team’s meeting with President Joe Biden last week.
The revelation came during the Kelce brothers’ “New Heights” podcast on Wednesday as a grinning Travis told brother Jason about his moment of fame during the Super Bowl champions’ White House visit on May 31.
During the Chiefs’ visit last year, Travis Kelce’s version of being on his best behavior at the White House meant that during a moment when the podium was unguarded, he moved to the mic there and began, “So, I’ve been waiting for this …”
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes gave Kelce a good-natured push from the podium before whatever message Kelce hoped to deliver could be said.
Travis Kelce wanted to get on the mic at the White House pic.twitter.com/RYmGqPvDuZ
— Ari M (@AriMeirov) June 5, 2023
This year, Biden summoned Kelce to finally get it off his chest.
“My fellow Americans, it’s nice to see you all yet again. I’m not going to lie. President Biden, they told me if I came up here, I’d get Tased. So I’m going to go back to my spot, all right?” the tight end said.
As he laughed about the moment, Travis Kelce said he did not think he was the favorite of the Secret Service detail.
“The Secret Service that’s all over the White House, they weren’t too happy with me. They weren’t too happy with me on my time visiting,” he said.
“When I walked in, we had about four or five Secret Service members come up to me and tell me, ‘You know, if you go up to that podium, we’re authorized to Tase you,'” he said.
“That’s all that was going through my head,” Kelce said in explaining his short speech.
“I had no idea President Biden was going to ask me to come up and let me have my moment … and he walks right up … gives me the floor, and I felt Taser aimed at me when I was up there the whole time,” he said.
Kelce noted that he was very proud of himself as he arrived this year, having come with an expired ID to the event last year.
“I made sure because of what happened last time and how embarrassed I was for going to the White House with an expired ID, I made sure that I brought my passport this time so that it showed that I was a citizen in Missouri.”
The Secret Service noted that all the tasing talk was all in fun.
“Our agents and officers were happy to support Travis and the Chiefs’ official visit to the White House, even presenting him with a Secret Service pin,” Secret Service representative Nathan Herring said, according to People.
“As for the Taser comment, Travis and our personnel were having some friendly banter as we have passionate football fans throughout our organization,” Herring said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Travis Kelce Says Secret Service Threatened to Tase Him During White House Visit: ‘They Weren’t Too Happy with Me’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
History never actually repeats itself, but it sure does reveal some interesting patterns.
In an opinion piece published on Friday by Fox News, historian Craig Shirley, author of “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America,” credited former President Donald Trump with following the same “genius” strategy that helped Reagan win New York state en route to a resounding victory over President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
In fact, Shirley described deep-blue New York as “ripe for picking by Trump in this fall’s election.”
A prolific author who once worked for Reagan, Shirley based his conclusion on recent polling. He cited, for instance, an Emerson College poll last week showing Biden with only a 7-point lead over Trump in New York.
And that revelation came on the heels of a Siena College poll in which Biden held only a 9-point lead.
For context, in the 2020 presidential election, Biden scored a 23-point victory over Trump in New York.
No Republican has won that state since Reagan’s historic landslide re-election victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984. Reagan won New York by 8 points that year. He also won California by 16 points and Connecticut by 22 points.
In other words, the country has changed in 40 years.
Nonetheless, as the Biden-led establishment works to transform the United States into a “1984“-style Orwellian dystopia — complete with censorship, perpetual war and persecution of political enemies — Shirley sees a tremendous opportunity for the presumptive GOP nominee.
In fact, the historian identified meaningful parallels between Reagan’s 1980 presidential bid and Trump’s current campaign.
For instance, Reagan viewed New York as a chance to “expand the [electoral] map to achieve a mandate,” Shirley wrote. In light of polls coming from New York and other blue states, Trump has this same chance ahead of him.
Likewise, in 1980, the liberal Republican John Anderson ran as an independent. In New York, Anderson earned nearly 468,000 votes. Reagan, meanwhile, won the state by a relatively narrow 165,000-vote margin.
Anderson, therefore, played the spoiler role that could go to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this fall.
Moreover, as a former Democrat with a strong anti-Communist message, Reagan appealed to millions of Americans regardless of party affiliation. Trump, also a former Democrat, has denounced authoritarian elites and led a successful working-class insurgency from within the Republican Party.
One can hardly imagine any president this side of James Buchanan sowing more disastrous chaos than Biden has, but by 1980, Carter had come close. Inflation, American hostages in Iran and a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan all testified to the failure of the sitting Democratic president, Shirley observed.
Furthermore, Reagan actively campaigned in New York City, including the South Bronx. Last month, Trump held his own South Bronx rally that helped illustrate his growing support among black and Hispanic voters.
In sum, Shirley found meaningful parallels that bode well for Trump in November.
“Now Trump is wisely taking a page out of the Reagan playbook,” the historian wrote, “campaigning in non-traditional areas, staying on offense, keeping Biden on defense, making new news, raising the morale of his campaign, lowering the morale of Biden’s campaign and paving the way to an historic win in this fall’s election.”
1980 ALL OVER AGAIN? “The people empathize with Trump and are lining up against Biden.” Read Craig Shirley’s full piece on the parallels between Reagan’s historic victory and the 2024 election: https://t.co/UGM41bVA6L pic.twitter.com/0vpseAiJcj
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 7, 2024
History might never actually repeat itself, but for the purposes of prediction we have nothing else to guide us.
Let us pray, therefore, that Shirley knows the future as well as he knows the past.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump Is Echoing Reagan’s ‘Genius’ New York Strategy, and the Results Could Be Similar, Prominent Historian Says appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Vanna White bid Pat Sajak an emotional farewell on Thursday night’s “Wheel of Fortune,” as the longtime host is set to retire following Friday’s show.
In an emotional, pre-recorded video, White nearly broke down while explaining to her “Wheel” partner of more than four decades just how much he has meant to her over the years.
“I can’t believe tomorrow is our last show together,” White said with a smile at the beginning of the two-minute message. “I don’t know how to put into words what these last 41 years have meant to me, but I’m gonna try.”
Try she did, and the TV mainstay delivered a message that came straight from the heart.
“Eight thousand episodes went by like that,” White, 67, said with a snap of her fingers.
White said she was “green” when she joined the show in 1982 and that Sajak had helped her grow up. (Sajak started on “Wheel” in 1981 with co-host Susan Stafford.)
Through a montage of older photos, White said to Sajak, 77: “You’ve made me so comfortable and so confident, Pat. You made me who I am.”
She further explained that while she and Sajak spent four decades doing the show together and enjoyed it, she would enjoy their off-camera memories the most.
White began to hold back tears as decades of images of the two were shown – including personal photos of their families growing up together.
“We’ve laughed, we’ve cried. We’ve celebrated,” White told Sajak. “What an incredible and unforgettable journey we’ve had, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it with you.”
“As this chapter of our lives is coming to an end, I know you’ll still be close by,” she added. “You’re like a brother to me, and I consider you a true lifelong friend who I will always adore.”
White concluded, “I love you, Pat.”
Thursday’s live audience at the syndicated game show reacted to the remarks with applause.
Sajak, the lovable and often sarcastic host, appeared at a rare loss for words, but he and White shared an embrace.
Sajak will sign off one final time Friday before walking away from the show with decades of fans, especially White, who will never forget his presence as an American staple.
Sajak said farewell in a segment before Friday night’s broadcast.
“Well, the time has come to say goodbye,” he said, per NBC. “I have a few thanks and acknowledgments before I go. And I want to start with all of you watching out there. It’s been an incredible privilege to be invited into millions of homes night after night, year after year, decade after decade. …
“Thank you for allowing me into your lives.”
When “Wheel of Fortune” returns for the 2024-25 season, White will be back, but Ryan Seacrest will be the host.
White will remain on the show through the 2025-26 season.
______________________________________________
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Watch: Vanna White Breaks Down in Tears as She Says Goodbye to Pat Sajak appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Texas continues its rise to prominence when other states are falling short.
Plans are in motion for a new Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange to officially launch in 2026, CNN reported.
The TXSE group will file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission later this year with over 24 investors and $120 million in capital. Chairman and CEO of TXSE James Lee posted on his Linkedin that investors will include names like BlackRock and Citadel Securities.
TXSE is expected to have the most capital at launch of any exchange to file with the SEC, according to CNN and Lee’s post.
According to the TXSE website, “Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant of the U.S. lead the nation in economic expansion and population growth, making Texas the clear choice for the establishment of a new national securities exchange. For decades, Texas has been the nation’s leader in attracting business relocations and expansions. It’s home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and more than 5,200 private equity-sponsored companies, many of which are preparing to access the public markets. In addition, there are more than 1,500 publicly traded companies throughout the region.”
While there is plenty to speculate on regarding markets, investments and the potential for private equity companies to go public, there is a notable trend with TXSE’s creation that’s been playing out now for several years: money leaving blue states and going to red states.
It’s not exactly a well-kept secret that New York has not been the most welcoming or pro-business state in recent memory.
From 2020 to 2023, New York lost nearly $1 trillion in asset management companies as 158 companies moved out of the state.
The Tax Foundation’s “2024 State Business Tax Climate Index” ranked New York 49th for its tax system, only beating New Jersey.
New York City’s vacant storefronts have nearly doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic.
New York Mayor Eric Adams seemed more occupied with providing free food, free housing and pre-paid debit cards to illegal aliens than he is with fighting the state’s precipitous downfall.
The city had plans in motion to give illegals spending money via cash cards in March as they threw out free food they didn’t want.
The streets aren’t welcoming, either. Whether you’re a regular New Yorker at church or a famous actor like Steve Buscemi, it’s not out of the ordinary to be the victim of a vicious assault while having the audacity to keep to yourself.
While the regular person will surely make an exodus to greener pastures, companies are taking note as Texas now has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state, according to a July 2023 report by Texas Real Estate Source.
While we shouldn’t kid ourselves about TXSE’s creation, as there are around 13 stock exchanges in the country, it does fit well in the broader trend playing out.
Wall Street is a hallmark of New York as the financial heartbeat of the country.
With its prosperity at stake, Texas’ move should motivate the state to change its tune and flourish once more.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post End of Wall Street? Texas Stock Exchange to File SEC Paperwork – Report appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
After President Joe Biden issued an executive order to tighten illegal immigration at our southern border, Republicans criticized the language of the measure, arguing it would do next to nothing to stop the flood of migrants pouring over into the United States from all corners of the world.
That turned out to be inaccurate. Instead, it appears that the executive order has done absolutely nothing, full stop.
Don’t just ask me, though. Ask Bill Melugin, the national correspondent for Fox News whose on-the-scene reporting at the nation’s southern border has been an invaluable resource for those who don’t just want sugar-coated statistics about the border crisis spoon-fed to them by the Biden administration.
In a series of posts on Thursday, Melugin said there had been “zero impact” at the California border site he was covering, and he brought the receipts.
So, in case you’d missed it — what with the media chattering about one rigged trial that reached a verdict last week and another trial Biden’s Department of Justice appeared to wish it could have rigged starting this week — on Tuesday, the president announced he was temporarily shutting down asylum requests due to a heavy illegal immigrant influx, NBC News reported.
The order is part of Biden’s promise to shut down asylum seekers at the southern border if the number of encounters tops 2,500 a day.
Considering that millions of illegal immigrants have already crossed the border under Biden’s watch, this isn’t just closing the barn door after the horse has left the stable, this is closing it when he’s already galloped four states over.
Administration officials said Tuesday that “individuals who cross the southern border unlawfully or without authorization will generally be ineligible for asylum, absent exceptionally compelling circumstances, unless they are accepted by the proclamation,” and that those who don’t meet the “credible fear” threshold for applying for asylum will be removed “in a matter of days, if not hours.”
Again, this is what they should have been doing in the first place, so no plaudits for suddenly realizing it’s an issue — and just five months out from the election. Imagine that!
And, as it turns out, the effect on border crossings seems to be a solid zero, as Melugin noted on X.
“Mass illegal crossing of approximately 200 from around the world just happened here in Jacumba, CA,” he posted Thursday, along with a series of photos that Biden and his retinue definitely don’t want voters to see.
“Day number two of Biden’s executive order – & we see zero impact here at the border. Large groups continue to cross without fear here in San Diego sector,” Melugin said.
BREAKING: Mass illegal crossing of approximately 200 from around the world just happened here in Jacumba, CA. Day number two of Biden’s executive order – & we see zero impact here at the border. Large groups continue to cross without fear here in San Diego sector. pic.twitter.com/iQiqvoIxyb
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 6, 2024
Also, as we’ve come to expect, these weren’t just Mexicans or Guatemalans taking a quick hop over the border.
“Just talked to some of them. Countries include China, Mauritania, India, Peru, & many others,” Melugin said in a subsequent post:
More: pic.twitter.com/3ogHgmD6B1
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 6, 2024
Another “mass crossing” he and his team witnessed included “many Egyptians, Chinese, & Turkish,” he said in a post:
NEW: We just witnessed yet another mass illegal crossing into Jacumba, CA. It’s been crazy busy in San Diego sector this morning. This group has many Egyptians, Chinese, & Turkish. Meanwhile, we have a camera crew in San Diego where BP is mass releasing migrants to city streets. pic.twitter.com/3fEZpv5hdj
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 6, 2024
And, lo and behold, the Border Patrol was apparently “mass releasing migrants to city streets,” Melugin wrote.
Apparently, everyone has a credible fear of something. Who would have thunk it?
In a remote appearance on Fox News from the border, Melugin said there had been “no change whatsoever” since Biden issued the order.
“Again, there is no fear of this new executive order which bans asylum for most illegal crossers with certain exceptions,” Melugin said.
As he pointed out, “more than 70 percent of them are released,” and the ones Melugin talked to “are not here to claim asylum.”
As to the number of encounters by Border Patrol, that hadn’t slowed either, with Melugin citing reports that 4,000 crossings had taken place on Wednesday — the first day the order took effect.
In other words, this is every bit the farce that we’ve come to expect from this president.
What more does this man need to say or do to prove to Americans that he has no intention of enforcing border security?
Do the millions of people who have crossed into the United States illegally not speak for themselves?
Are we to believe that, once border crossings hit the magic 2,500 number, the administration is finally going to do something?
Of course not. This is a play-pretend president. He pretends to fix the problems he’s caused, and his chums in the establishment media pretend to believe him.
If only Democrats would just pretend to vote for him instead of actually casting a ballot for this impotent, senescent figurehead, maybe the problem would finally get solved.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Fox News Cameras Show the Real Impact of Biden’s Border Executive Order appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Thursday marked 80 years since an estimated 160,000 soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy to begin what would be the knockout blow to Hitler’s iron-clad grip over Europe.
If you were looking for Google to acknowledge the event through one of its trademark “doodles,” you were let down by visiting the far-left company’s search engine.
No mention was made of the paratroopers who dropped in during the overnight hours before what was deemed “Operation Overlord” by Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Google did not mention those who died, those who lost limbs, and those who to this day have never been found after fighting tyranny.
However, the company did honor Jeanne Córdova, a woman whose claim to fame was being sexually attracted to other women and then writing about it.
Google spent the anniversary of D-Day “Celebrating Jeanne Córdova” with a cartoon image of the lesbian author and activist who died in 2016 at the age of 67 — far from German machine-gun fire and in peaceful Los Angeles, according to the Wikipedia page the company pushed as its top result for her.
Google noted on the “doodle” that it chose Córdova because of its embrace of LGBT “pride” for the month of June.
This is how Google is celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Some random LGBTQ+ feminist author. pic.twitter.com/tr7DJ0Gy1W
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 6, 2024
“In honor of Pride Month, today’s Doodle celebrates lesbian Chicana activist, feminist, and author Jeanne Córdova, who is widely known for her leadership in the LGBTQ+ rights movement,” the company announced.
Google invited people who clicked on its celebration of the far-left political activist to “learn more” about her.
The company noted she once said that “It’s the job of the young to push the societal envelope” and that before she died, comfortably and away from mortar and artillery fire, she said, “It is wonderful to have had a life’s cause.”
Apparently, screaming loudly about one’s sexual desires is as brave or braver than exiting the ramp of a Higgins Boat and meeting the MG 42 and its 1,500-rounds-per-minute firing rate.
Google further noted of Córdova:
“Jeanne cherished her families — both family of birth and family of choice — and got great joy from bringing people together around our dining room table, wherever we lived. Whether it was to celebrate holidays or to organize political actions!”
The sacrifices of young men who quite literally ended the largest campaign of suffering known to mankind, or at least to the West, evidently don’t measure up to Córdova’s writings about lesbianism, in Google’s estimation.
On June 6, 1944, 4,426 men who also loved family and who would today mostly not be old enough to buy a beer, died where they stood — mowed down by German gunfire and bombs.
Those men stormed beaches held by a well-armed and entrenched enemy that had taken advantage of more than three years of preparation to pre-sight every grain of sand for the inevitable return of the allies to a continent that was killing on an industrial scale.
Those who did not die were scarred physically, psychologically or both for life, and many of them would go on never to discuss what they saw.
They selflessly enlisted, fought, ended tyranny and came home to lead quiet lives and spark the most prosperous age in history.
They ended the mass executions of Jews and gays. Those young men cornered a tyrant in less than a year, forcing him to choose to eat a bullet over being captured and facing justice.
The actions taken by brave young men on June 6, 1944, altered world history and ended fascism in Europe — forever connecting the ideology to large-scale death.
They were honored by Big Tech eight decades later with a slap across the face, as Google chose on June 6, 2024, not only to snub them for a woman who liked other women, but with a banner that read, “8 ways to ‘Find Pride’ with Google.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Google Snubs 160,000 Men Who Landed at Normandy 80 Years Ago, Instead Celebrates ‘Lesbian Chicana Activist’ on D-Day appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Thank goodness, after fumbling border security for almost his entire administration, President Joe Biden is finally ready to take control and protect Americans.
Well, kind of. And only because he’s desperately trying to improve his image before the November election.
The Biden administration has had an infamously bad border, allowing millions to cross illegally into the country since he took office.
Worse yet, the massive issue is entirely his fault as when he first took office in 2021, he undid nearly everything that former President Donald Trump had done to secure the southern border.
So after millions of illegal immigrants poured over our border under his watch, on Tuesday he finally signed an executive order to handle the border issue.
Well, again, not really.
What President Biden signed on Tuesday shuts down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters tops 2,500 between official ports of entry, according to NBC News. But it’s far too little, and far too late.
He talked big talk whenever appearing before news reporters, proudly proclaiming that “The border is not a political issue to be weaponized.”
But the weaponization of the border is exactly what this order is really all about. Biden is trying to turn an obvious weakness for the president into a projection of strength for American voters Democrats hope are gullible enough to be fooled by it.
What it really does is give Biden a Band-Aid on the bleeding wound his illegal immigration policies have caused to his re-election campaign.
While the executive order and what the senile politician says certainly paints a picture that it will solve the issue of border security, everyone who is capable of basic thought processes has already seen through this desperate ploy for approval.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed Biden for waiting so long before taking any measure to tackle the issue, deciding to only act when it benefited his image.
“This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire, and the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little too late,” the long-time senator said.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz had similar sentiments on the matter, noting how the United States is “facing the worst illegal immigration our nation has ever seen.”
And he blamed Biden squarely for the problem.
At the start of his presidency, Biden inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.
All he had to do was NOTHING — just sit and leave the border alone.
Instead, he deliberately broke the system. pic.twitter.com/70UDcaj736
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 4, 2024
“When Joe Biden came into office, he inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years. All he had to do was nothing,” Cruz added.
“But instead, he deliberately broke the system.”
House Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican from Lousiana, called out Biden for claiming that he’s done “all [he] can do.”
“He was asked why he wouldn’t use his extensive executive order to address the border catastrophe that he created and 126 days ago he looked into the camera and said ‘I’m out of options, I’ve done all I can do.'”
126 days ago, Biden said “I’ve done all I can do” via executive action on the border.
Today, he’s making invasion-level illegal immigration PERMANENT. @SpeakerJohnson pic.twitter.com/ZFPM19oBgW
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 4, 2024
Of course, now that the election is coming up, Biden appears to have more options on what he can do.
It’s abundantly clear that Biden is only issuing this weak executive order for the sake of saving face.
He has meticulously crafted the disaster that pushed Americans to the edge and is now attempting to do the bare minimum to cash in on some quick approval points.
The country will see in November if it works.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Don’t Be Fooled, Biden’s New Executive Order Does Not ‘Secure the Border’ – Here’s What It Really Does appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Terrorism has already marred two Olympic games. Will it affect a third?
Unfortunately, even with perspicacious law enforcement, that’s looking increasingly likely. At the very least, officials in France say that they’ve headed off one terror plot before it got to the critical stage: on Friday, The Associated Press reported, an 18-year-old was charged with planning to target spectators at the soccer tournament at this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, which open on July 26.
The man, unnamed by authorities, was supposedly looking to carry out a “violent action” on behalf of the Islamic State group at Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in Saint-Etienne, the home of several matches during the tournament.
The man, police said, was motivated by the wish “to die and become a martyr.”
It’s unclear what tipped security off to the man, but Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a statement that the suspect, who is from Chechnya, was detained on May 22 on suspicion of plotting the terror attack.
The committee organizing the games said it was aware of the man’s arrest.
“Security is the highest priority of Paris 2024. We are working daily in close coordination with the Interior Ministry and all stakeholders — and will continue to be fully mobilized,” the organizing committee said in a statement, which praised France’s intelligence and security services for their response.
The coach of Canada’s women’s soccer team, which is scheduled to play at the stadium where the attacks were supposedly planned, said she trusted the organizers to keep her safe
“That’s a concern to hear, but I think a little bit like in Tokyo, the Olympic Committee, I would imagine that they’re going to step in and I think our faith and trust will be in making it a secure and safe environment for our players,” coach Bev Priestman said.
However, there are numerous worries before the games, particularly given the high profile of the event at a time of heightened global political tension.
“Security concerns are notably high for the the exceptional opening ceremony, which brings more than 100 world leaders to the French capital,” the AP noted. “It involves boats carrying athletes along the Seine River on a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) open-air parade and huge crowds watching from the embankments.
“In April, French President Emmanuel Macron said the July 26 opening ceremony could be moved instead to the country’s national stadium if the security threat is deemed too high.”
Two prior Olympic games have been affected by terrorist attacks.
In 1972, the Summer Games in Munich, Germany were overshadowed by the death of 11 Israeli athletes at the hands of Palestinian militant group Black September. In 1996, a white supremacist involved in the Christian identity movement planted a bomb at the Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia, killing one.
Perhaps more worrying, however, is that Iran — arguably the world’s most dangerous state terrorist actor at the moment — is reportedly increasing support of its proxy groups throughout Europe in the run-up to the games.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s Mossad released a report on Thursday which “highlighted in particular the activities of two criminal groups — FOXTROT and RUMBA” in the lead-in to the games.
These two groups, which receive funds from Iran, are “directly responsible for a violent activity and the promotion of terrorism in Sweden and throughout Europe,” Mossad said in the statement.
Mossad’s report also alleged that Tehran was behind the actors responsible for violence outside of two Israeli embassies in Europe, one in Belgium and one in Sweden, in the past month alone.
“FOXTROT, known for its murders and large-scale drug trafficking, is the largest criminal organization in Sweden and operates in other European countries,” the Post reported.
“It alleged that FOXTROT head Rua Majid, a Swedish citizen of Kurdish origin nicknamed the “Kurdish Fox,” had been arrested in Iran for criminal activity and then recruited for terror activity and released to carry out terror for Iran.”
“FOXTROT’s rival gang RUMBA, headed by Ismail Abdo, was behind the May 17 gunshots near Israel’s embassy in Sweden, the Mossad said.”
Mossad’s report also alleged that Tehran was looking to expand its proxy groups via the heightened anti-Semitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent response of the Israeli government.
While the Islamic State group is hardly an ally of Iran’s, it’s worth noting, they also have fewer resources than the Iranian government does and a diminished reach compared to the terror group’s mid-’10s peak. Given the environment and the openness of Europe, then, it’s not a question of if but when and where the attacks are planned and whether authorities are quick enough to step in to stop them.
That fact — combined with the willingness of a state actor to get stuck in with these terror cells — is something that should give every athlete, spectator, and world leader pause.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Apparent Olympics Terror Plot Foiled with Only Weeks to Go Before Games appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Sheriff Chad Bianco has spent a lifetime working in law enforcement — and likely never expected that he’d be rallying behind a felon in a presidential election.
During a 30-year career with the sheriff’s office of Riverside County, California — elected to the top spot in 2018 — Bianco has had many different encounters with criminals — and built a national reputation as a law-and-order conservative.
However, the felon that Bianco intends to support isn’t the kind of common criminal selling drugs or committing violent offenses that Bianco sees so often in the crime-loving state of California.
The convict who has this sheriff “changing teams” is a much more monumental figure: Former President Donald Trump.
The outspoken Californian released a video on social media Saturday informing followers that despite Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, Bianco fully intends to put his support in the presumptive Repubican nominee.
He opens by lamenting how Californian Gov. Gavin Newsom and the other Democrats in power have been actively making the law harder to enforce through numerous pro-criminal decisions.
“For the last five years I’ve been very critical about our governor for slashing our budgets from corrections, for letting prisoners out early, for closing our prisons,” Bianco said in the Instagram video.
“I’ve been critical of our state legislature for passing laws to make it harder to put people in prison. I’ve been critical for their changing laws that let prisoners out early. And I’ve been critical of our attorney general for seemingly not caring about crime.”
Bianco, who holds an office that’s officially nonpartisan, said the “love affair” that leaders within the state have for criminals all stems from the “belief that criminals are not responsible for their own actions.”
Those in power then blame different systems such as law enforcement for being “systemically racist” and let criminals run free to atone for it, he said.
Bianco then admitted that he’s “getting tired” of it all and that maybe it’s time to “change teams.”
“I know it’s going to make some of you angry, I know that you’re going to be mad at me but I’m going to change teams. I think they’re onto something but I don’t think they’re doing enough,” he said.
He said Americans need to go big and rather than simply giving criminals drugs, booze and housing.
We need to “put a felon in the White House,” he said.
“Trump 2024, baby. Let’s save this country and make America great again.”
Of course, the jokes from Bianco about changing sides are more a jab at California’s progressive politicians — but they don’t change his message.
Americans intend to vote for Donald Trump, regardless of a trumped-up criminal conviction.
Even law enforcement agents like Bianco will vote for him despite his newly acquired “felon” tag.
Last week’s conviction in Judge Juan Merchan’s kangaroo court is not the major win that Democrats hoped it was.
If anything, the jury’s verdict has boosted former Trump to even higher levels of popularity than ever before — and that’s saying something.
So, as Bianco said so elegantly in his video, “Trump 2024, baby. Let’s save this country and make America great again.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post California Sheriff ‘Changing Teams,’ Going All-In for Trump appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
There’s a very simple fact in life: normal people want to enjoy things without some political agenda being shoved down their throats.
If I go to McDonald’s, I don’t want to hear leftists whine about how the company supports a foreign nation they don’t like.
If I drive my car, I don’t need climate zealots screeching about how a three-minute trip to CVS is going to kill the polar bears.
And by all that is good, if I want to watch some American football, I absolutely do not want homosexuals shoved in my face so the team can fit their marketing quota for “pride month.”
Every year when June rolls around, every company throws out the most generic and invasive possible ads for “pride month” that have absolutely nothing to do with the company the advertisement represents.
Of course, 2024 is not going to be an exception.
The Arizona Cardinals wasted no time this year, putting out an Instagram post with the LGBT rainbow alongside the caption, “Football is for everyone. Happy Pride Month.”
Another safe little ad so they can remind leftists throughout America that they love homosexuals and that they should be marked safe from cancel campaigns.
But what the Cardinals may not have expected is how many individuals are beginning to get incredibly frustrated with LGBT values being forced into places they don’t belong.
“This is embarrassing,” one commenter said.
“Sad world we live in. These poor children shouldn’t be knowing what this is,” another user noted.
“Thanks for the reminder Cardinals that I need to cancel my season tickets,” a possibly former fan wrote.
“As a Cardinals fan I lost respect for the team,” replied another annoyed onlooker.
While of course some comments on the post were thrilled with having LGBT values forcibly pushed into football, the vast majority of comments were negative.
And why shouldn’t they be?
“Pride month” has absolutely nothing to do with football.
Imagine if every NFL team made a post about how they supported Israel and condemned Palestine and Hamas.
Leftists would be up in arms, gathered outside headquarters with pitchforks and torches, repeating actions similar to what they’ve done on college campuses.
But because this ad celebrates what they happen to like, it’s A-OK.
The Cardinals and the NFL as a whole, not to mention almost every major institution in American life, are taking sides on issues they really shouldn’t be.
The simple reality is football should be about football. Keep everything else out.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post NFL Team Hit with Major Backlash, Leaves Fans Disgusted by ‘Pride Month’ Post – ‘This Is Embarrassing’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A former college lecturer on “criminal justice issues” is going to get some first-hand experience in the subject after he was sentenced to spend five years and three months in prison on Thursday.
Gary Stephen Maynard had pleaded guilty in January to starting a number of fires in California that could have had much more disastrous results than they did.
Maynard, 49, had formerly lectured at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, KCRA reported.
The former lecturer admitted to starting at least four fires in July and August of 2021, according to a Justice Department news release, and pleaded guilty to three counts of arson.
One count of arson was dismissed as part of a plea agreement, according to court records cited by The New York Times.
Maynard was charged with starting fires behind firefighters who were working to contain the Dixie Fire, which eventually destroyed more than 1,000 homes and spread over 1,500 square miles, according to KCRA.
“He intentionally made a dangerous situation more perilous by setting some of his fires behind the men and women fighting the Dixie fire, potentially cutting off any chance of escape,” Phillip A. Talbert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said in a statement (available in full below).
It eventually grew to become the second-largest fire in California history, according to the outlet.
“Maynard faced the possibility of up to 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine,” KCRA reported. “Besides the prison sentence of more than five years, he was ordered to pay $13,081 in restitution.”
His attorney argued that Maynard was “suffering from untreated and significant mental health issues when he set the fires and has sought treatment since then,” according to Fox News.
“A Santa Clara University colleague of Mr. Maynard, who was not identified, told the police in October 2020 that Mr. Maynard was struggling with anxiety, depression, split personality, and wanted to kill himself, the complaint said,” according to The Times.
You can read the news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California below in its entirety.
Gary Stephen Maynard, 49, of San Jose, was sentenced today to five years and three months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $13,081 in restitution for three counts of arson on federal property, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced.
“Maynard went on an arson spree on federal land while California faced one of the worst fire seasons in history. He intentionally made a dangerous situation more perilous by setting some of his fires behind the men and women fighting the Dixie fire, potentially cutting off any chance of escape,” said U.S. Attorney Talbert. “It is only because of the quick response by the U.S. Forest Service — and the actions of civilian witnesses — that those fires were extinguished as quickly as they were. Today’s sentence underscores the danger that Maynard’s fires created and serves as a reminder that federal law enforcement takes seriously the threats to life, property, and our national forests caused by arson.”
U.S. Forest Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tony Magarrell praises the actions of his Agents and fellow cooperating law enforcement agencies who identified Maynard early in the investigation, “These actions led to the quick arrest of Maynard before more damage was done to Forest Service lands and increasing the threat of firefighter lives. This is a great example of how cooperation between law enforcement agencies serves our public and makes us safe.”
According to court documents, Maynard set a series of fires in the Shasta Trinity National Forest and in the vicinity of the then-ongoing Dixie Fire in the Lassen National Forest. Maynard set some of his fires behind firefighters who were actively fighting the Dixie Fire, effectively surrounding these firefighters as they responded to one of the largest wildfires in California history. Maynard admitted to setting the following fires during this arson spree: the Cascade Fire (July 20, 2021), the Everitt Fire (July 21, 2021), the Ranch Fire (Aug. 7, 2021), and the Conard Fire (Aug. 7, 2021).
This case was the product of an investigation by the U.S. Forest Service with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CalFire, the California Highway Patrol, and the Lassen County Sheriff’s Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shea J. Kenny and Sam Stefanki prosecuted the case.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Disgraced Professor Sentenced for Action That Could Have Trapped Firefighters in Deadly Blaze appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Steve Perry didn’t reunite with Journey for this week’s episode of “America’s Got Talent,” but an unassuming middle-school janitor named Richard Goodall did a phenomenal job of filling in for him.
Goodall stunned the audience and the show’s judges and even earned a rare “golden buzzer” from model and judge Heidi Klum.
The 55-year-old custodian from Terre Haute, Indiana, joined the NBC show for its 19th-season premiere and crushed a rendition of Journey’s smash 1981 hit “Don’t Stop Believin.’ ”
When introducing himself to the show in a pre-taped interview, Goodall explained that he spent his time belting out songs while keeping a school in the Midwest clean for students, staff and administrators.
The shy man, who said he was waiting to call his fiancee after his performance, told show host Terry Crews in an interview that he lived a simple life.
“I’m not a fancy person. I take out the trash, I wipe off the tables, I sweep the floors. I’m just having fun, and I’m trying to make people happy,” Goodall said.
He said he loved to entertain people, especially kids who attend the school that employs him.
Once he took the stage, the tension was palpable. Goodall humbly told judge Simon Cowell he was glad to be there and that his dream was to become a singer.
“I love to sing,” he said.
After Goodall said that very few people knew he had traveled to the Los Angeles area to audition for the show, the iconic piano intro for what is perhaps Journey’s most recognizable hit began to play while a “nervous” Goodall waited to deliver the opening line.
His voice sounded as though it was borrowed from Perry.
Goodall’s opening line — “Just a small-town girl” — earned immediate applause and elicited shocked looks from judges.
After nailing the song, Goodall stood on stage and waited for feedback from judges Cowell, Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara.
The show’s live, studio audience also chanted his name and gave him a standing ovation.
After Cowell explained that Goodall’s performance was “genuinely special” and designated him a “hero,” Vergara also praised him.
“This was an amazing surprise,” the former “Modern Family” star said.
Mandel then opined that the humble janitor from Indiana had “cleaned up.”
Klum put an exclamation point on the moment when she said Goodall moved her, or as she put it, “You knocked me off my feet.”
“Now, this is what I’m going to do for you because I love you,” she said as she smashed her golden buzzer – signifying an amazing performance that elevated Goodall directly from auditions to the live shows.
As she embraced him on stage, Klum told Goodall, “I can’t wait to see what you’re gonna sing next.”
Goodall explained that performing for the show’s audience and judges was not only a dream come true but that to achieve it, he had to board an airplane for the first time to get to California.
______________________________________________
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post 55-Year-Old Janitor Shocks ‘America’s Got Talent’ Judges with ‘Genuinely Special’ Performance, Earns Rare Golden Buzzer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Ivanka Trump had a very special message for her dad, former President Donald Trump, following the Thursday guilty verdict from a Manhattan jury on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Ivanka Trump posted an Instagram story of a picture of herself as a young child being held by her father, along with the caption, “I love you dad” and a heart emoji.
The picture was perhaps 40 years old, but the message was timeless.
According to the New York Post, the message represented the first public remarks Ivanka Trump had made since her father’s conviction Thursday.
The paper also said it had been told by unnamed sources that “Ivanka is fully supportive of her dad and loves him very much despite his conviction.”
The 12-person New York City jury found Donald Trump guilty on the second day of deliberations.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president with the 34 felony counts relation to a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels through his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen before the 2016 presidential election.
The jury indicated to Judge Juan Merchan that its had reached its verdict shortly after 4:30 p.m.
The jury had requested testimony from publishing executive David Pecker be read back to it, as well as testimony from Cohen. The jurors also wanted portions of its instructions read back to it on Thursday by the judge.
Trump was expected to appeal the verdict. His attorneys cited multiple rulings Merchan made that they argued unfairly prejudiced the trial.
One was denying testimony from former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, who said he would have testified that the payments to Daniels did not qualify as campaign expenses or donations.
Another decision legal experts have honed in on was Merchan’s instructions to the jury that they did not have to agree on what crime Trump committed in relation to allegedly falsifying business records.
Trump has consistently asserted his innocence.
Following the verdict Trump told reporters, “This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.”
“The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people,” he added.
“It’s OK. I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our Constitution,” Trump said. “This is long from over.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Ivanka Breaks Her Silence, Posts Emotional 4-Word Response to Trump’s Guilty Verdict appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Joe Biden will be the odd man out in a series of town halls focused on the presidential election, according to a new report.
Cable news network NewsNation and social media giant X have secured an agreement “in principle” of former President Donald Trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to participate in live town halls, according to Axios, which cited sources it did not name.
“The Biden campaign has not agreed to take part,” Axios said in an article published on Thursday.
The Trump-Kennedy project is not a debate, but separate live interviews in what is being billed as “The People’s Town Hall.”
Dates and locations have not been determined, but the concept is that users can submit questions to moderators both before and during the events, Axios said it was told.
The final slate of questions will be determined by the moderators, who have not yet been picked.
Axios said X CEO Linda Yaccarino instigated the concept and reported that the goal “is to make X the destination in which everyday people can have a greater voice in the political process.”
Biden and Trump are scheduled for a debate hosted by CNN on June 27 in Atlanta, but Kennedy has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over the event, according to Fox News.
“The violations occurred when, based on the available evidence, CNN colluded with the Biden committee and the Trump committee to schedule and did schedule a debate with criteria that were designed to result in the selection of certain pre-chosen participants, namely Biden and Trump,” the letter of complaint said.
The alleged collusion means CNN is “in a clear breach of federal campaign finance law,” the letter said.
In a news release, Kennedy said: “By demanding our campaign meet different criteria to participate in the debate than Presidents Biden and Trump, CNN’s debate violates FEC law and is a large prohibited corporate contribution to both the Biden and Trump campaigns.”
Commission on Presidential Debates co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf said several details still need to be resolved before the June 27 event, according to CBS.
“There are a lot of things that have to be worked out,” Fahrenkopf said this week. “There’s a lot of questions … that aren’t to my knowledge worked out yet. That could prevent it from happening.”
The issues include how the candidates will stand or sit and how much time each will get to speak or reply, he said, noting that details were the reason debates foundered for years before the commission was set up.
“That’s the reason that we were created,” Fahrenkopf said. “The history of two campaigns sitting down and arguing and arguing and arguing.
“Little things can get in the way. I don’t know whether that’s as true here, but there are a lot of things.”
Fahrenkopf said he still hopes proper debates take place.
“If they’re able to succeed with these two debates that they’re planning, if they’re done right (and) they educate the American people, I will give them a salute. The only reason we exist is to make sure debates take place,” he said.
“If they crash and burn, we’ll still be there and hopefully be able to fill what’s empty.”
______________________________________________
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump and RFK Jr. Agree to ‘The People’s Town Hall,’ But Biden Will Be Missing: Report appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Is the destruction of the temporary pier President Joe Biden ordered erected on the coastline of the Gaza Strip just the latest example of God judging this administration for its push to have Israel divide its land?
Less than two weeks after its completion, the pier broke into pieces and much of it submerged “[d]ue to high sea states and a North African weather system,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Tuesday, according to Stars and Stripes.
Four vessels holding the pier in place broke free from the moorings Saturday, with two washing up on the Israeli coast near Ashkelon, and two others beaching near what was the pier site.
BREAKING:
The humanitarian pier that Biden made to deliver aid in Gaza has washed away.
If this doesn’t sum Biden up idk what does… pic.twitter.com/f3LAL0xPOY
— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) May 25, 2024
The Biden administration plans to rebuild the pier.
The weather-induced destruction of the structure, coupled with a deadly string of tornadoes in the American heartland, not seen in years, appears to fit a pattern: Whenever the U.S. has pressured Israel to divide its land, bad and often catastrophic things have happened.
Bible scholars have pointed to the Bible’s book of Genesis, Chapter 12 as an explanation for this phenomenon in which God says to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.” More on this momentarily.
The Biden pier in Gaza is sinking into the sea….
($320m sinking along with it…) pic.twitter.com/mMAM5AjT6w— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) May 27, 2024
During his State of the Union address on March 7, when Biden announced that he was directing the U.S. military to build the temporary Gaza pier, he immediately thereafter said in his remarks, “As we look to the future, the only real solution is a two-state solution.”
“There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and democracy,” he added. “There is no other path that guarantees Palestinians can live with peace and dignity.”
So Biden’s answer to the Hamas terrorists breaking the peace and invading Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking over 240 hostages, is to reward the conduct with a Palestinian state?
Keep in mind, Israel had pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, so this was the first opportunity for the Palestinians to show they could govern themselves and live in peace with Israel. That’s not what happened.
The Palestinians elected a Hamas majority to run their government and have been using Gaza as a base to attack Israel ever since.
The $320 million dollar pier appears to be sinking off the Gaza coast. This comes days after waves swept away 4 vessels supporting the operation and parts of the pier broke off and floated towards Ashdod. Via @AP https://t.co/OI8vtaypZc pic.twitter.com/oiLzUZdysE
— Eretz Yisrael 24 (@EretzYisrael24) May 27, 2024
A Gallup poll published in December showed 65 percent of Israelis opposed the two-state plan, while 25 percent supported it. In January, Politico reported, “The two-state solution is dead,” citing that polling.
The clear concern is that if more territory is ceded to the Palestinians, it would just offer more opportunities to strike Israel.
Yet on May 19, Biden reiterated during his commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, “I’m working to make sure we finally get a two-state solution, the only solution for two people.”
That same day, Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, having just come from talks with Crown Prince and Prime Minster of Saudi Arabia Mohamed bin Salman “focused on a comprehensive vision for an integrated Middle East region,” the U.S. Embassy in Israel said in a news release.
That “comprehensive vision” includes “a two-state solution that meets the aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” the administration said, according to Politico.
So rough seas destroying the pier came the same week that the Biden administration was negotiating with Saudi Arabia and no doubt trying to pressure Israel to give up more of its land.
The timing of the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor last month came in even closer proximity to an adverse action taken by the U.S. toward Israel.
On March 25, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Rather than exercise its veto power, as the U.S. has done consistently in the past to protect the Jewish state from the U.N.’s pronounced, long-standing anti-Israel bias, the Biden administration abstained from voting.
“The U.S. declining to protect Israel from a resolution it passionately objects to by not providing a veto is an extraordinary thing,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told CNBC.
The following morning at 1:30 a.m., a cargo ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse and killing six workers, as well as shutting down the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest in the country, for the foreseeable future.
NTSB releases preliminary report on the March 26 contact of the containership Dali with the Francis Scott Key Bridge and subsequent bridge collapse in Baltimore: https://t.co/qjMPGI9zK4 pic.twitter.com/3byTzQbTWP
— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) May 14, 2024
The bridge is named after the writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” so it has very symbolic significance for the nation.
Dallas Theological Seminary professor Mark Hitchcock argued on his podcast at the time that there was a connection between the bridge collapse and the Biden administration’s action toward Israel.
“One of the key factors of God’s blessing … on our country is our support for Israel. And as that support begins to quickly deteriorate, this could be another contributing factor to America’s demise,” he asserted.
Hitchcock cited Genesis 12, in which God instructs Abraham to go to the land of Israel.
“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” God said.
Hitchcock — author of many books about biblical prophecy, including most recently “What’s Next? Israel-Gaza War,” which he co-authored with Jimmy Evans — argued that the U.S. has not been blessing Israel of late.
“There’s a very open, very public breach right now between the United States and Israel,” Hitchcock said.
Additionally, he cited William Koenig’s book “Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel,” in which the author chronicles the catastrophic events that have happened each time the U.S. has tried to push Israel toward a two-state solution.
In an online newsletter, Koenig also made the connection between the Key Bridge collapse and America’s recent actions toward Israel.
In a recent video posted on YouTube, Koenig laid out the premise of “Eye to Eye” (originally published in 2007 and updated in 2017).
“The Lord showed me as I observed news that when we applied pressure on Israel to divide their covenant land, given by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Genesis 15:18, we’d have enormous, record-setting catastrophes that happened the same day or within 24 hours,” he said.
“I noticed, the greater the pressure on Israel to divide their land — or in other words, to create an Arab state in the biblical heartland of Israel, Judea and Samaria — the greater the corresponding catastrophes,” Koenig said, listing the Perfect Storm (1991); Sept. 11, 2001; Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Ian (2022) as examples, as well as a large tornado outbreak.
Hurricane Katrina came after President George W. Bush pressured Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to hand over control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians.
The evacuations of Jewish settlements in Gaza were completed on Aug. 23, 2005.
“I want to congratulate Prime Minister Sharon for having made a very tough decision,” Bush said that day, adding, “The prime minister made a courageous decision to withdraw from … Gaza.”
The same day, what would become Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas.
The Category 4 storm, with winds as high as 140 mph, was the costliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S., causing $198.8 billion in damage and killing over 1,800 people.
Koenig pointed out, “It came right on the heels of the final Jews being forced from their home. The parallels in Israel, the parallels with what was happening in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast, was amazing. Evacuees and refugees being forced from their home in Gaza. Evacuees and refugees being forced from their home in New Orleans.”
Additionally, in 2002, the Bush administration joined Russia, the European Union and the U.N. in the so-called Quartet to facilitate Middle East peace negotiations, Koenig noted in a presentation about his book in 2007.
The Quartet’s plan for Israel, officially released on April 30, 2003, called for a two-state solution.
“The day after the Quartet roadmap was delivered was the beginning of the biggest tornado outbreak in U.S. history,” Koenig said. There were 434 tornadoes sighted in the Midwestern states in the first 10 days of May 2003, he said.
WISH-TV reported that six of the tornadoes reached F4 strength, meaning winds of 207 mph and stronger. The storms killed 42 people and injured over 600 more.
“This was in the heartland of America, the Midwest, as the heartland of Israel was being negotiated,” Koenig highlighted, referring to the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, which Israel captured from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967.
He further noted that in the summer of 2003, Europe experienced its hottest temperatures going back to 1540, resulting in at least 30,000 deaths, according to the U.N. In other words, the E.U. and Russia experienced what appeared to be judgment, too.
As the Biden administration continues to push a two-state solution, the U.S. has gone through one of its worst tornado seasons in years, USA Today reported Wednesday.
“Since April 26, the U.S. has experienced 18 killer tornadoes in which 36 people have died,” the news outlet said.
“We’ve had a lot of tornadoes and several ‘big’ days,” Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, told USA Today.
“Preliminarily, the U.S. has seen four days with at least 30 tornadoes rated EF1 or stronger,” Brooks told the news outlet. “The average is two a year. That likely puts 2024 in the top 10% of years.”
Between April 25 and May 27, tornadoes touched down on all but two days, The Washington Post noted.
Further, during that time period, 17 of those days “had PDS [particularly dangerous situation] tornado warnings, the most on record for that stretch” of time.
Divine judgment, or just coincidence?
Only God knows for sure, but there has been a pattern going back decades that makes one believe He’s seeking to communicate to America’s leadership: “Stop trying to force Israel to divide its land.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Divine Judgment? Before/After Pics of Biden’s Gaza Pier Look Like God Wiped It from Face of the Earth appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signed a disaster proclamation on Tuesday for one of her state’s counties as public health officials prepare to euthanize more than 4 million chickens exposed to a highly contagious bird flu.
The order comes after a case of avian influenza was confirmed among a large flock of egg-laying chickens in Sioux County on Tuesday by state and local agriculture officials, according to a report from CBS News.
As a result, the animals will be destroyed and their remains will be isolated in an attempt to prevent the further spread of the contagion.
In total, some 4.2 million chickens will be put down.
Iowa is the nation’s largest exporter of chicken eggs and the economic effects of the culling are expected to be felt far and wide.
Reynolds signed a disaster proclamation for Sioux County that will last until June 27, her office announced in a Tuesday statement.
“Today Gov. Kim Reynolds announced the signing of a disaster proclamation for Sioux County, Iowa effective immediately,” the governor’s office said. “This proclamation allows state resources from Iowa Homeland Security, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, and other agencies to assist with tracking and monitoring, rapid detection, containment, disposal, and disinfection.”
“The proclamation also waives regulatory provisions related to commercial vehicles responding to affected sites,” the statement continued. “The recent HPAI detections in birds do not present an immediate public health concern, and it remains safe to eat poultry products. If producers suspect signs of HPAI in their flocks, they should contact their veterinarian immediately.”
When responding to the news on her X account, Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said she has full confidence in her state’s farmers.
“This is serious, but our Iowa farmers know how to mitigate the spread!” she wrote.
I’m in touch @IADeptAg about avian flu being detected in Sioux County.
This is serious, but our Iowa farmers know how to mitigate the spread!
I will continue my work to ensure @USDA has a more coordinated response on HPAI outbreaks.
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) May 28, 2024
The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that the discovery of illness among the flock of chickens in Sioux County was the first reported in the state this year.
Other infections have been detected in neighboring Minnesota.
It is believed that avian influenza cases are spread between farms by migrating birds.
According to the Dispatch, 23 million birds have been culled and their carcasses have been isolated in Iowa over the past two years.
Sioux County has been one of the most severely affected counties during that time horizon.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Governor Signs Disaster Proclamation as Officials Order Killing of 4.2 Million Chickens appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Americans will gather this weekend to celebrate Memorial Day in memory of those who gave their last full measure in service to this great nation. But each American will also find the costs for cookout staples soaring, thanks to the policies of President Joe Biden and his administration.
For those spending the day cooking at home, Americans are finding that the costs of supplies and foods have soared since Biden entered office thanks to his disastrous “Bidenomics” policies.
According to a report by Fox Business Network, prices are on the rise, jumping more than ten percent over the cost to feed an average family in 2023.
FBN added that, “Burgers jumped from $7.04 in 2023 to $8.07 in 2024, or a change of 14.63% in cost. Hamburger buns cost two cents more, from $3.04 on average to $3.06.”
The news outlet added that ketchup costs ten cents more than 2023, mustard is up eight cents, and pickle relish soared 50 percent over a year ago.
FBN also noted that Americans are being socked with a 20 percent rise for their average trip to the grocery since 2023.
As it was, the costs of a Memorial Day barbecue in 2023 was itself a jump over the previous years. At the time, Politico reported that the Consumer Price Index found food prices were up 7.7 percent.
Even more concerning, The Western Journal actually went in and crunched some numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and found stark price increases for two key Memorial Day staples.
Looking at the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers data provided, uncooked ground beef rose in price by 22 percent since 2021, while hot dogs shot up by 20 percent since 2021.
Those are not insignificant figures, especially as many Americans already feel suffocated by Bidenomics.
This is far from the first time that holiday costs are swamping us all, forcing us to pay more for less.
During the Fourth of July last year, for instance, the costs of our Independence Day also soared.
For instance, The American Farm Bureau Federation reported that the average cost to feed 10 people rose to $67.73 last year. In fairness, that was down three percent from the $69.68 seen in 2022, when inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022. Still, both 2022 and 2022 were up significantly up from 2021.
At the time, Wells Fargo reported that the cost of beer was up 8 percent; soft drinks, up 14 percent; bread, up 22 percent; ice cream, up 9 percent; processed cheese, up 10 percent; and potato chips were up 15 percent that year.
Later that year, the costs of Thanksgiving were also seen to cost far more under Biden than it had under Donald Trump.
The American Farm Bureau Federation recorded higher prices in 2023 over those seen in 2019 when Donald Trump was in office. The organization reported at the time that the cost of Thanksgiving prices soared by 25 percent under Biden.
The costs of buying candy for the costumed kiddies during last Halloween also scared Americans.
Costs soared 7.5 percent between Sept. of 2022 to Sept. 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as KOMU-TV reported last year.
Of course, it isn’t just the costs of our holidays we are seeing on the rise. Everything we do, buy, and need is soaring under Biden. After all, Democrats ruin everything they touch.
Unfortunately, it does not seem that Joe Biden has much of a handle on what inflation is or what it is doing to us all. In fact, he keeps going around saying that the inflation rate was at 9 percent when he took over from Donald Trump, even though his absurd claim has been debunked time and again. It was actually only 1. 4 percent when he took office.
Even Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has admitted that his confidence has been shaken by the persistent inflation that is dogging the economy.
Biden has been costing us all more every year since he took office, but we do have a chance in Nov. to put an end to the soaring costs of everyday life.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Impact of Bidenomics on Your Memorial Day Weekend: Prices Skyrocket Since 2021 appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Have you been witness to a popular social-media scam? If you’ve been in an airport and seen a suspicious number of travelers in wheelchairs, you might have.
According to CNBC, the CEO of a major ultra-low-cost carrier was the latest airline executive to call out what he says is a common practice: Able-bodied individuals using wheelchairs meant for the disabled.
Thanks to the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act, airlines are required to provide wheelchairs for those who need them. However, according to the CEO of Frontier Airlines, plenty of travelers are faking disability or injury to get someone to wheel them to or from their flight.
“There is massive, rampant abuse of special services. There are people using wheelchair assistance who don’t need it at all,” Biffle said Thursday during an industry event in New York City, CNBC reported.
Biffle told the crowd that he’d seen some flights with 20 wheelchairs present at departure, with only two or three upon arrival at destination.
“We are healing so many people,” he quipped.
Frontier Airlines CEO urges crackdown of ‘rampant abuse’ of airport wheelchair service.
“We are healing so many people,” he joked.
CNBC: https://t.co/dTz9v7vKXj pic.twitter.com/95u8ntwEdU
— Greg Angel (@NewsGuyGreg) May 23, 2024
Now, there might be legitimate reasons for the disparity between wheelchair use at different ends of a flight, as John Morris — a triple-amputee who founded WheelchairTravel.org — noted to CNBC.
For instance, at bigger airports like New York City’s LaGuardia or Dallas Fort-Worth, it may be daunting for those with disabilities to make it through the airport. Smaller cities or airports may not present the same challenge, he said. So, for passengers taking off from a major airport and landing at a much smaller one, a wheelchair might not be necessary at the destination.
“Disability impacts people in a lot of different ways,” Morris told the outlet.
“I think there’s a good case to be made that abusers should face some consequence, but I’m not sure how we do that in a society when our disabilities aren’t [always] visible,” he added.
But that isn’t what Biffle was talking about. And he’s not the first person in the industry to remark on the trend.
Back in 2022, for instance, London Heathrow Airport CEO John Holland-Kaye told a British radio outlet, as the U.K. Mirror reported, that travelers were “using wheelchair support to try to get fast-tracked through the airport.”
“If you go on TikTok, that is one of the travel hacks people are recommending,” he told LBC Radio. “Please don’t do that. We need to protect the service for people who need it most.”
And, as he pointed out, this is something that’s gone viral on social media as of late:
A friend shares a not-uncommon sight from Puerto Rico:
55 “handicapped” during pre-boarding, including 25 wheel chairs
On his return flight, 15 used wheelchairs to board, only 1 to deboard pic.twitter.com/gHgIsnzsq7
— Bachman (@ElonBachman) February 19, 2023
Disability may impact different people in different ways, but not that differently.
This is the sign of a sick society — the idea that taking advantage of a wheelchair meant for the disabled is a “travel hack,” not shamefully dishonest behavior.
It’s sad that we should be such a low-trust society that we start to consider asking those in wheelchairs for their credentials and banning those who have a history of faking it.
Yet, that’s exactly what one is tempted to do here. Perhaps a goodly dose of shame heaped upon these malingerers thanks to Biffle’s comments — combined with the reminder that getting on a wheelchair won’t get a traveler to the destination any quicker — will be all it takes for TikTokkers to take their pathetic wheelchair-hack videos down.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Sign of a Sick Society: Many of the People in Airport Wheelchairs Could Be Part of a Disgusting Scam appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A social media manager who thought the way to punish someone with opposing views was to endanger him and his family is now looking for a new job.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas announced during a Thursday interview with conservative talk radio host Pete Mundo that the city has “separated” from the employee who shared the city of residence for Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker on social media after his viral commencement speech at Benedictine College, according to the Kansas City Star.
During his speech, Butker criticized abortion, referred to “pride month” as a celebration of “deadly sin,” and promoted traditional gender roles, sparking backlash from leftists.
Four days later, the city’s official X account revealed that Butker resides in the city of Lee’s Summit, which is on the outskirts of Kansas City, before quickly deleting the post.
The social media post stated: “Just a reminder that Harrison Butker lives in the City of Lee’s Summit.” Despite the deletion, the post induced backlash for “doxxing” Butker in relation to his beliefs.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey vowed to pursue action, accusing the city of retaliating against Butker for expressing his religious beliefs.
Bailey announced in a statement that his office “will not tolerate religious discrimination from City officials” and said he was prepared to use his authority under Missouri’s Human Rights Act to defend religious expression.
“Missourians of faith deserve to know why Kansas City officials decided to attack Mr. Butker for his deeply held religious beliefs,” Bailey wrote. “The mayor needs to immediately turn over his office’s communications relating to this post.”
Apparently, in response, the employee was subsequently fired.
Lucas called the social media post “clearly inappropriate” and said he hopes the city can move forward, according to the Kansas City Star.
“I think there has been accountability from the city of Kansas City,” he said. “We all look forward to moving on. Letting the Chiefs play. Letting the city do what it’s supposed to do in delivering basic services.”
While the city did not identify the employee, a spokesperson for the mayor said the post was “outside the scope” of authorized communications but that there would be no additional comments about the post “or individual employees related to it,” the Kansas City Star reported.
The City of Kansas City tweeted and then deleted a dig at Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker on May 15.
That employee has now been fired. https://t.co/vHSaoHlkYf
— KCTV5 News (@KCTV5) May 23, 2024
Should have happened day one, but glad it was finally done.
— Bundy (@albundyretired) May 25, 2024
Doxxing someone because you disagree with their views essentially wields harassment and fear of physical harm as a weapon to chill speech you don’t like.
It is a severe violation of privacy and personal safety, as well as the antithesis of acceptable conduct in a free society.
If the social media manager disagreed with Butker, he or she should never have used the official social media account to exert pressure against him over his views.
Traditional Christian values seem to incense leftists to such a degree that they will resort to inciting violence or harm.
And when that happens, as the city rightly did in this case, they need to go.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Brutal News for Kansas City Employee Who Doxed Harrison Butker: Mayor’s Final Word Ends Her Career appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A day after former rival for the Republican presidential nomination Nikki Haley said she would vote for him for president, former President Donald Trump said there would be a place for Haley on his team.
“Well, I think she’s going to be on our team because we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts,” Trump said in an interview with News 12.
“I appreciated what she said,” Trump said, referring to her support for his candidacy.
“You know, we had a nasty campaign; it was pretty nasty. But she’s a very capable person, and I’m sure she’s going to be on our team in some form. Absolutely,” the former president added.
During the interview, Trump was asked to name his top three picks for his potential running mate.
In response, Trump, who previously said he would not provide a list of his top names, cited Ben Carson, Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and J.D. Vance of Ohio and added the Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York is “doing a fantastic job.”
He said he would make his announcement during the Republican National Convention.
On Wednesday, Haley said she would support the president under whom the former South Carolina governor served as ambassador to the United Nations.
“Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump,” Haley said at the Hudson Institute in Washington, according to ABC.
Eric Levine, a Haley fundraiser, noted, “What was her alternative?” per the outlet.
He said supporting Biden is not possible when America needs to “support Israel, confront our enemies and support our allies.”
“I think this gives a lot of people permission to not just not vote for Joe Biden, but to vote for Donald Trump. I think this is a very important statement that she made,” he said.
“Republicans need to be united as best we can,” Haley ally David Wilkins said.
Ozzie Palomo, a GOP fundraiser, said scars from the primary need to heal.
I was asked today at @HudsonInstitute whether I would vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden, here’s my answer: pic.twitter.com/fSgPCuz3do
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) May 22, 2024
“All the statements she made about Trump was during the primary; primaries are over and I think the world has dramatically changed, probably faster and more significantly than anyone anticipated over the last five, six months,” Palomo said.
“Her saying she plans to vote for him probably gives cover to a significant portion of those that remain on the fence to feel comfortable enough to do the same,” Palomo added.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump Brings Nikki Haley Into the Fold, Announces Former Rival Will Likely Be on His Team appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A group of academics has identified a planet that could potentially support life.
They’re describing Gliese 12 b as a planet within the habitable zone of its own solar system.
The planet orbits a red dwarf star 40 light years away from the Earth in the Pisces constellation.
University College of London scientist Larissa Palethorpe co-led the research into the planet with University of Southern Queensland astrophysicist Shishir Dholakia, according to Space.com.
The team used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to identify the world.
Using NASA’s TESS telescope and other facilities, astronomers discovered a new temperate, Earth-sized world that could unlock key questions about habitability and our solar system’s evolution. Learn more about Gliese 12 b, which is well-suited for further study by @NASAWebb:… pic.twitter.com/Lkb8qC1v2T
— NASA Astrobiology: Exploring Life in the Universe (@NASAAstrobio) May 24, 2024
The planet orbits a red dwarf star, a celestial body far smaller than the Earth’s sun, according to NASA.
As a result, scientists view the “habitable zone” of red dwarf stars as far closer to them than that of Earth’s sun.
One year on Gliese 12 b lasts just under thirteen days, but it’s thought the world could have a surface temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit — comparable to a summer day in Arizona or Texas.
These conditions could be amenable to the existence of liquid water.
Palethorpe spoke of the discovery’s significance.
“To find it to be such a similar size to Earth was kind of a lovely surprise.”
“So that was a really nice thing to be able to nail down, but I think especially knowing that, in terms of habitability, it could lie between Earth and Venus, is really exciting.”
In spite of the planet’s potential for supporting life, mankind has no way to accurately survey the distant world yet, according to Palethorpe.
“I think Gliese 12 b will teach us a lot about life, but we can’t say anything for certain.”
“It’s not a bad place to start on a hunt for life.”
The team of academics behind the research are affiliated with numerous universities and institutions across the globe.
They published their research in a monthly notice of the Royal Astronomical Society on Friday.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Report: Scientists Find Earth-Sized Planet That Could Hold Life appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
New Jersey and the Senate may not have seen the last of Sen. Bob Menendez.
The Senator faces ongoing federal corruption charges after 19 years of sitting in the upper chamber.
The politician has been accused of accepting cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz, and payments on a home mortgage among other potential bribes.
Nonetheless, Menendez maintains his innocence and a firm belief that he will be found innocent in court.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that running for office with bribery charges is like running a marathon with ankle weights (perhaps made from gold bars).
“Unfortunately, the present accusations which I am facing, and which I am innocent and I will prove so, will not allow me to have that dialogue and debate with opponents that have already made it the cornerstone of their campaigns,” said during a YouTube video in March.
“Therefore, I will not file for the Democratic primary this June,” he shared at the time.
“I am hopeful my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in the general election.”
For Menendez to file as an independent he needs 800 registered voters to sign his petition before the June 4 filing date.
The filing will permit him the chance to maintain his position or at a minimum provide him more time to consider his options before the August 16th withdrawal date.
But things haven’t been so simple for the long-time Democrat.
According to the New Jersey Globe, the senator has spent nearly $5 million since his indictment to aid his campaign.
He’s also begun to rely on a group of old friends to circulate petitions for him, friends such as Matteo Perez Sr., a furniture store owner in the town where the three-term politician launched his career.
How many signatures he’s garnered so far is unknown but the clock continues to tick.
Additionally, while attempting to get his petition signed he’s also dealing with his trial which is currently on a one-week break.
The break began on Tuesday, allowing Menendez time to deal with personal matters and observe the Memorial Day weekend, but it will resume once again on May 28 and is expected to last at least through the end of June.
Whether the New Jersey senator is innocent or not is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that just the accusations have done massive damage to his political career.
If he can get this petition signed it will undoubtedly put him in a better position as it threatens to siphon votes from the Democrat candidate, putting the seat at risk of being stolen by a Republican.
While it’s a better position, it’s still far from good.
Past the politics proper of the situation, voters should ask how Menendez ended up where he is – accused of serious crimes stemming from serious (again, gold bars) greed – how likely it is that other politicians are doing similar things, and whether any of them are likely to pay a significant price.
Corruption is endemic to the human condition, but for most of its history the US, as part of the English speaking, Christianized West, has been able to boast remarkably upstanding leaders – at least as far as leaders go. But as situational ethics infect absolute values and the postmodern virus spikes our vital organs, America and the West are beginning to rot from the inside.
Bob Menendez isn’t the actual problem. He’s a sign of the problem – an elite class convinced that because of its superior liberal morality (found in philosophy, not history) that it has no obligation to niggling things like traditional right and wrong. And after all, they says to themselves, given how hard the work of fundamentally transforming a country is, don’t they deserve a few off the books bonuses here and there?
This virus infected Americans as we slept, enjoying dreams of prosperity, impregnable safety from without, endless entertainment within, and drugs everywhere. Now if we don’t wake up and begin to purge the poison, we’re done for.
If we really are sick (and we are), hopefully Bob Menendez and the societal rot we’re seeing everywhere else will wake us like that horrible nausea that only comes in the middle of the night, and we then purge ourselves of him, those like him, and the viral stew of godlessness that got us to this point in the first place.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Sen. Bob Menendez Is Collecting Signatures in Last Desperate Bid appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
After dim predictions from the establishment media, and mocking social media posts from certain New York Congresswomen, Donald Trump’s South Bronx rally was, by most metrics, a smashing success.
Despite the dreary rainstorms in the morning portending a muddy rally, the sky cleared in time for Trump’s arrival, and a crowd estimated to number in the thousands, far exceeding expectations, congregated to support the former president.
(Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that the crowd numbered anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 strong.)
Granted, several of those attendees came from out of state — or at least, out of the immediate area — but not nearly as much as the establishment media predicted.
Even CNN, as seen in a clip of the coverage shared to the social media platform X, had to acknowledge the truth about the rally’s demographics.
CNN reporter on Trump’s huge rally in the Bronx tonight: “It was certainly a bigger crowd than I think Democrats would like to see, particularly given this is one of the bluest counties in the entire country!” pic.twitter.com/z94ofqSg80
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) May 24, 2024
Kristen Holmes, the reporter on the scene, was speaking to Anderson Cooper as she covered the rally live.
The clip began with Cooper asking, “What was the crowd like, and what kind of response did he get?”
“Well certainly a bigger crowd than I think Democrats would like to see, particularly given this one of the bluest counties in the entire country,” Holmes responded.
She continued: “Now, one of things that was interesting to me is that the Trump campaign said that they were going to microtarget to get people from the community to come to this rally.”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Holmes added. “I’ve gone to a lot of these rallies across the country, and there are often people who travel hundreds of miles to see Donald Trump, and they’re not necessarily part of the community.
“However, one of the things that I found was that there were a lot of people here that were actually from the Bronx.”
Now, there’s an astounding, if unexpected, admission from a CNN reporter.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the inept Democrat Representative for this region, and other Democrats had tried to spin a narrative that Trump and his allies would exclusively bus people in from other cities and states to boost the numbers.
And, while there were many people from outside the local community — which isn’t unusual for any political rally — CNN’s Holmes effectively dispelled the idea the South Bronx wouldn’t care about Trump.
CBS News, as seen in a clip shared by conservative speaker Charlie Kirk, even noted that the rally “did look a lot like America.”
CBS on Trump’s Rally in the Bronx:
“This rally did look a lot like America. There was a lot of Asian voters there. There were a lot of Hispanic voters, a lot of black voters there…”
These clips must scare the hell out of Dems. pic.twitter.com/zj9ptTXvUk
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 24, 2024
Granted, it has not been possible to tell exactly how many people truly were from the Bronx and surrounding areas, and even with this unexpected turnout, Trump still faces a massive uphill battle to flip the deep blue New York.
As Fox News noted in their story on the event, Trump won less than 16 percent of the vote back in 2016, and about 20 per cent in 2020.
However, this election cycle Trump has been gaining more support from Black and Hispanic voters, who have historically been a reliably Democrat voter block.
Moreover, even Axios had to note that this rally was a sign of the “realignment” in the Democrat and Republican parties.
This election cycle, the Democrat party has gained more support from white suburbanites than the minority base they have heretofore counted on.
Regardless of whether or not Trump wins this state, it was certainly an astonishing sight to see a predominantly Democrat locale show up in droves for the Republican candidate.
If even CNN had to admit that, then you know the Democrats are in trouble.
The real question is, how long will it take for Sleepy Joe Biden and his administration to wake up to that fact?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post CNN Reporter Admits the Truth About Trump’s Bronx Rally, and It’s Not What Democrats Want to See appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
There are questions but no answers as of yet regarding an early May shooting that involved a member of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and a native of Chechnya.
What is certain is that on May 3, Ramzan Daraev, 35, of Chicago was killed in Moore County, North Carolina, after a trespasser was reported, according to WNCN-TV.
The shooter is part of Army Special Operations Command, according to Army representative Jacqueline Hill, although his name and rank are not being disclosed.
Daraev was shot multiple times and was found on private property near a power line. He is alleged to have been a subcontractor with New Jersey-based Utilities One.
However, the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said Daraev had no utility equipment, utility clothing or identification on him when he was killed.
Agencies including the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration and FBI are all involved.
“Investigators are diligently working to gather all relevant information prior to concluding the investigation, including autopsy reports and findings from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office,” a news release from the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said.
“Once all facts have been collected and reviewed, the case will be presented to the District Attorney’s Office for a determination on whether criminal charges will be pursued. The Moore County Sheriff’s Office is committed to conducting a thorough and impartial investigation,” the statement said.
The shooting took place at about 8:15 p.m. in Carthage, according to the Fayetteville Observer.
The Observer said the alleged shooter is stationed at Fort Liberty, North Carolina.
The U.S. Army Special Operations Command had no comment on the incident.
“Per policy, we do not comment on active investigations to protect the process’ integrity. We appreciate the dedication of the Moore County Sheriff’s Department as they investigate,” the USASOC statement said.
Did a stateside kill of a Russian asset just slide by under the radar?
The headlines say that a Spec Ops soldier is under investigation for shooting and killing a utility worker “from Chicago, Illinois”
Except that “utility worker” was 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev, a Chechen… pic.twitter.com/A31kd6kA7v
— Arynne Wexler (@ArynneWexler) May 23, 2024
There was comment by way of an accusatory Change.org petition that said the victim was a native of Chechnya and was “killed in cold blood.”
“Ramzan was not armed and did not show any aggression towards the killer,” the petition said.
“We are Ramzan’s family, we ask you to support this petition so that the culprit in Ramzan’s death receives the deserved punishment. The police, after a short interview with the killer, released the killer home,” the petition said.
The petition said the victim was hit four times. “One of the bullets hit the hand, two in his back and one, which we see as ‘the last one’ was made in the face,” the petition claimed.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Chechen Man Shot Dead Outside Home of US Spec Ops Command Member: FBI, Army Investigating appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
California Assemblyman Vince Fong appears to have handily won California’s special election yesterday, bringing the Republican Party’s slim majority in the House up to five.
With 87 percent of the votes in, The New York Times had Fong up over opponent and fellow Republican Mike Boudreaux 60.2 to 39.8, making it essentially impossible for Boudreaux to win unless something happens to change that math.
Fong won the special election to replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned at the end of 2023 after being ousted from the speakership and endorsed Fong in the race.
Fong had also been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who quickly celebrated Fong’s victory on social media.
Fong and Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux were the top two vote-getters in California’s March primary, which pitted them against each other in the run-off according to California’s election system, which is unlike most other states.
Fong, a former aide to McCarthy according to NBC News, will now serve out the remainder of his former boss’s term as the representative for California’s 20th Congressional District.
Once he’s sworn in, Republicans will enjoy a five-vote majority in the House, giving House Speaker Mike Johnson a little more breathing room in the contentious political body.
The timing of that ceremony has not yet been set, according to The Associated Press, and will be scheduled by Johnson, but one presumes he’d like that to happen as soon as practical.
Fong will face Boudreaux again in November’s general election, the outlet noted.
“The 20th District contest was the first of three House special elections taking place for vacant GOP seats over the next five weeks,” CNN reported late Tuesday.
“The next is on June 11 in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District. Voters there will decide on a successor to former Rep. Bill Johnson, who resigned to become the president of Youngstown State University,” the outlet noted. “Then, on June 25, Colorado’s 4th District will hold a special election to succeed former Rep. Ken Buck, a hard-line conservative who clashed with his own party at times. Following his resignation announcement in March, Buck told CNN in March that Congress had ‘devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.'”
Fong also celebrated his victory on social media, saying that the early voting results filled him with “humility and gratitude.”
“With the campaign over, the real work begins,” he added. “In Congress, I will remain focused on solving the tough issues facing our community — securing the border, supporting small business, bringing investment in water storage and infrastructure, unleashing our energy industry, and keeping the United States safe amidst the grave security threats facing our nation.”
— Vince Fong (@vfong) May 22, 2024
“Now is the time to unite and work together to fight for our way of life,” he added.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump-Backed Candidate Wins House Special Election in California, Adding to GOP’s Majority appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
If you want a TL;DR description of the to-do over the upside-down flag at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house, I can sum it up for you in one sentence: Same old witch-hunt, different witch.
As those who’ve followed the news over the past year or so know, that the left has been engaged in a secular jihad against Justice Clarence Thomas, part of which has to do with the statements of his wife in regards to the outcome of the 2020 election. Somehow, liberal pundits seem genuinely shocked that Americans have mostly tuned them out, believing that husbands and wives can have differing opinions. The nerve of the right-wing ghouls!
So Clarence-Thomas-as-traitor was a bit like “fetch”: despite leftists trying to make it happen, it wasn’t going to happen. But suppose they tried the same tactic on a different conservative justice? That’s the ticket!
A headline from The New York Times last week brings critical news about Justice Samuel Alito’s exterior home decor just three years after it happened:
“At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display; An upside-down flag, adopted by Trump supporters contesting the Biden victory, flew over the justice’s front lawn as the Supreme Court was considering an election case.”
The Thursday story by Jodi Kantor was what we’ve come to expect from the Times when it comes to a story about a supposed misdeed allegedly committed by a conservative: A touch of truth larded up with slanted conjecture and pull-quotes obtained from sympathetic scholarly types recruited to say whatever the reporter can’t if a patina of objectivity is to be maintained.
So first, the basics, as per Kantor: “After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag,” she wrote.
“One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.”
Indeed, a photo published by the Times indicates the flag was present outside the Thomas home on Jan. 17, 2021, just days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The upside-down flag is a violation of U.S. federal flag code, which notes the stars and stripes “should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
The New York Times obtained a photo of an American flag being flown upside down at the home of Justice Samuel Alito in the days leading up to President Biden’s inauguration. Alito denied any “involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag”, and instead blamed his wife. pic.twitter.com/LzZG0JW5sT
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) May 17, 2024
Now, a few paragraphs into the story, you get a plausible explanation from Alito as to why it was displayed that way: “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” he wrote in an emailed statement to the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
Given that Alito and the rest of the Supreme Court were pretty busy around that time, this is a plausible explanation. That said, the “judicial experts” the Times was able to scrounge up told them “that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.” Because of course it could.
“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost told the Times. She added that it was “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases.”
“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” said former federal judge Jeremy Fogel, currently the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute.
“The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”
It’s somewhat ironic that, in the selfsame week the left is having a meltdown over Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker suggesting to female graduates at a Catholic college that their most fulfilling role might be as a wife and a homemaker, the Times manages to scrape together enough legal scholars who suggest a conservative Supreme Court justice ought to be in complete control of managing his wife’s opinions.
If you’re searching for ideological consistency, you couldn’t find less of it than the faux outrage over the upside-down flag, which no real evidence ties to the justice himself.
In fact, those the outlet talked to seemed to indicate it was Mrs. Alito who was responsible for it: “In recent years, the quiet sanctuary of his street, with residents who are Republicans and Democrats, has tensed with conflict, neighbors said. Around the 2020 election, a family on the block displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive. It apparently offended Mrs. Alito and led to an escalating clash between her and the family, according to interviews.”
But leave it to the left-wing media to seize upon Alito’s upside-down flag as the new witch-hunt du jour. Take Newsweek, which had this article the day after the Times’ piece: “Republicans Slam Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.”
Make that “Republicans” — in very prominent quotation marks.
First, Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former Trump administration aide who’s become a NeverTrumper since her exodus to “The View,” wrote in a social media post that “a SCOTUS Justice would allow this to be displayed at his home days before a peaceful, lawful transition of power is deeply disturbing.”
“My conservative friends: imagine for a minute if Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor displayed an upside down flag at her residence when Trump won in 2016. There would outrage & calls for her resignation,” she wrote in another.
Then there was anti-Trump former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee. He called it “a huge issue.”
Newsweek also cited a former adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and the American Enterprise Institute, none of which are major players in the Republican Party of May 2024. So two (2) big-name kinda-sorta Republicans — who are best known for bashing former President Donald Trump — are pretending to be aggrieved over the fact Alito’s wife maybe violated the flag code. Whoop dee doo.
And tucked away in between these quasi-Republicans going off on Alito was this little disclaimer: “An upside-down flag has been used to protest the results of a U.S. election before. On January 20, 2001, a demonstrator was photographed waving an inverted flag in the streets of Washington, D.C., in protest of then-President-elect George W. Bush who was being sworn in that day after a contested election between him and former Vice President Al Gore.” (Emphasis added.)
In fact, a People magazine article published roughly two months before the Times dug up the 3-year-old Alito smear chronicled “How Flying the American Flag Upside Down Became a Bipartisan Act of Rebellion.”
“These days, however, hanging the Stars and Stripes upside down is seen as more of a symbol — a symbol Republicans and Democrats alike are beginning to use more and more,” the article stated.
“Since June 2022, progressive activists have begun flying their flags upside down, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade,” the article noted. “Months later — amid fury over the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8, 2022 — it became a symbol used by the former president’s most loyal allies.”
There may be Timesian hand-wringing over the latter, of course, but not the former — another signal that, if it weren’t for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.
In fact, if those flying the flag upside-down were merely supporting the causes the Times usually does, nobody would be giving them lectures on flag code or seeing whether their husbands had high-profile positions in the world of governance or corporate America.
That’s the real point here.
The rest, as Dan McLaughlin noted in a piece at conservative outlet National Review, is much ado about nothing.
In the reaction piece, published the day after the Times launched its unlikely crusade against flying upside-down American flags, McLaughlin wrote that conservatives “can freely acknowledge that this response to profane provocation and personal invective is disrespectful to the flag and a display of injudicious temperament on the part of Mrs. Alito, but then, Mrs. Alito is not a judge or the holder of any political office whatsoever.”
Alas, if the invective aimed at Clarence Thomas is any indication, this isn’t going to stop anything anytime soon.
The witch hunt lives on, in search of a witch leftists can finally burn to somehow nullify the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
We can at least take solace in the knowledge that, if this moves the needle on Alito as scantly as it did with Thomas, it’s a big fat waste of time.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Liberals Are Smearing Alito with Upside-Down Flag Story – Here’s the Real Point appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A Chicago woman experienced firsthand the consequences of the city’s failures to ensure its citizens have police protection.
The woman, only identified as “Michelle,” waited for hours for a police response Wednesday after experiencing a home invasion, according to WMAQ-TV, the NBC station in the Windy City.
The suspects entered the home in the upscale Wicker Park district after Michelle let her dog out about 12:30 p.m., WMAQ reported.
When she saw two men wearing masks inside her home, she screamed, “I am calling the police,” she told WMAQ.
“And they bolted,” she told the station.
She was lucky they did.
Michelle called 911 after the incident, with a dispatcher telling her to wait for officers outside.
However, the cops didn’t show up, according to WMAQ.
She repeatedly called back, the station reported. On the sixth call back, she asked to speak to a supervisor.
“A gentleman got on and said, ‘sorry to say we have no units to send you’,” Michelle told the station. “Then there was an awkward pause.”
The man, apparently a 911 supervisor, even went so far as to ask Michelle to lobby her city alderman to provide the Chicago Police Department with adequate funding.
“He also recommended I call my alderman and I said, ‘why?’ and he said encourage him to hire more police,” Michelle told WMAQ.
When officers finally arrived, they expressed apologies for the lack of a timely response, Michelle said.
It had taken no less than four hours and six different 911 calls to yield an on-scene law enforcement response.
“The officers who did show up cared and were apologetic it took so long to get them there,” she told WMAQ.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has had an adversarial relationship with the city’s police department since his inauguration last year.
The mayor declined to attend the funeral of slain Chicago Police Department officer Luis Huesca — after the family of the deceased asked him to stay away.
JUST IN: Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson will *not* attend the funeral of Officer Luis Huesca. We’re told the family asked Johnson and other politicians who they don’t feel adequately support the police to stay away.
Statement from the mayor’s office… pic.twitter.com/2WrjEfmuvp
— Ben Bradley (@BenBradleyTV) April 29, 2024
Michelle told WMAQ she has contacted her local alderman’s office and is awaiting the chance to meet with him in person.
She was also adamant that she was not blaming the cops in the case.
“I don’t think it is the police department’s fault they are [understaffed] and overwhelmed,” she said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post ‘No Units to Send You’ – Woman Terrified After 911 Call Goes South, Leaves Her with No Help During Home Invasion appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Last week, Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas had a little go ’round with Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as the two exchanged words during a House committee hearing. Now, Crockett is raising campaign funds off the feud with a t-shirt sale, only she missed one (major) problem with her shirt design.
Crockett claims that Greene is a “racist” for a snide comment tossed off referring to the Texan’s false eyelashes during Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland.
It all started when Rep. Crockett interjected during Greene’s time at the mic when she asked Greene why she brought up liberal New York Judge and Democrat donor Juan Merchan and his daughter during her comments about Garland. Merchan is the judge currently overseeing the Donald Trump business records trial in New York City.
Greene shot back at Crockett, saying, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
That retort sparked several minutes of back and forth between the Georgia Republican and Democrat Reps Crockett and New York “squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during which the three traded barbs.
Greene eventually agreed to have her comments stricken from the record, but even with that, Crockett interjected a personal attack, and said, “I’m just curious. To better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleached blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
Now, Crockett is trying to raise campaign funds off that last personal attack on Greene.
Crockett is peddling a new t-shirt design reading “bleached blonde, bad built, butch body” and ending with a pseudo signature from the Rep.
So we are going to drop “A Crockett Clapback Collection.” This collection will feature various swag that includes random things I’ve said. The money will go to ensuring that we have a Democratic House! Give me a little time to really get the swag online etc., but B6 will drop… pic.twitter.com/7RnPQ4jVHs
— Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) May 18, 2024
Only there is one tiny little problem with that t-shirt design she is advertising in the wake of the heated exchange on the Hill.
Her own name is misspelled. Somehow an extra “r” was inserted instead of an “e” in her last name.
Who’s Crockrtt??? pic.twitter.com/ngHR2mES3j
— Bryan McNally (@BryanDMcNally) May 18, 2024
Many others noticed the same tiny little problem.
You might wanna start by spelling your own name right, dumbass. pic.twitter.com/sbpH2gDRlE
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 18, 2024
This is why nobody will ever take you seriously.
The left may applaud you, but inside, nobody considers you a serious lawmaker.
— Abel (@BangerangRufio2) May 18, 2024
Another X user pointed out hypocrisy of Crockett using a homophobic slur (butch) to attack someone, given that most far-leftists call that a sin.
Body shaming & using “butch” as an insult. Homophobic much?
This is verboten by woke libs. Jasmine may be cancelled by her own people.
And to put it on a shirt. This is the very epitome of hypocrisy. Rules for thee and not for me.
Carry on baby girl. It shows the world what… pic.twitter.com/Ih6nINOBKj— Dale Plemons (@DalePlemons) May 18, 2024
In the end, many X users are accusing Crockett of doing the same thing she is accusing Rep. Greene of doing — identity politics-based discrimination.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you think Greene or Crockett was “more” in the wrong for the exchange, you can’t argue that misspelling your own name is a rather egregious error for the Texas representative.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Rep. Crockett Tries to Cash In on Feud with MTG, Fails to Notice a Big Problem with New Merchandise appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Colin Kaepernick should take note.
The (retired?) San Francisco 49ers quarterback has become a household name for all of the wrong reasons, thanks to his insipid national anthem protests in 2016, but it’s his utter disdain for law enforcement that really left a lingering bad taste in the mouths of many fans.
From threatening police to supporting cop killers to just generally bad-mouthing law enforcement, Kaepernick has made it abundantly clear that he despises police with just about every fiber of his being. That hatred overflows despite those very same police maintaining the law, order and safety around the erstwhile quarterback and his loved ones.
It also can’t be overstated that Kaepernick has no real direct issue with police, apart from his perceived racial grievances and his own sense of self-righteousness — unlike the world’s top-ranked golfer.
Scottie Scheffler — who is actually atop his sport, unlike Kaepernick — actually had every right to be annoyed or peeved with police after the disastrous Friday morning he dealt with.
A quick bit of background: Scheffler was arrested en route to the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky on Friday. On his way to the second round of the PGA Championship, Scheffler encountered suffocating traffic due to a tragic pedestrian death earlier that morning near the golf course. While trying to navigate that traffic muck, a seeming bit of miscommunication between Scheffler and a police officer ultimately led to the star golfer’s arrest.
Breaking News: World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler has been detained by police in handcuffs after a misunderstanding with traffic flow led to his attempt to drive past a police officer into Valhalla Golf Club. The police officer attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car,…
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) May 17, 2024
“World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler has been detained by police in handcuffs after a misunderstanding with traffic flow led to his attempt to drive past a police officer into Valhalla Golf Club,” ESPN’s Jeff Darlington reported at the time of the incident.
“The police officer attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car, and Scheffler then stopped his vehicle at the entrance to Valhalla. The police officer then began to scream at Scheffler to get out of the car.
“When Scheffler exited the vehicle, the officer shoved Scheffler against the car and immediately placed him in handcuffs. He is now being detained in the back of a police car.”
Here is video that I took of Scheffler being arrested: https://t.co/8UPZKvPCCf pic.twitter.com/9Tbp2tyrJh
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) May 17, 2024
Due to the chaotic misunderstanding, Scheffler was actually booked (orange jumpsuit and all) before ultimately being released by Louisville Metro Police.
Again, this was all over a wild misunderstanding, and Scheffler could’ve launched into a Kaepernick-like tirade about the need for police reform.
Scheffler didn’t do that.
(And unlike Kaepernick, Scottie Scheffler has earned his notoriety, thanks to actually winning at the highest level in his sport. The best Kaepernick can claim is almost winning — or, in other words, losing — Super Bowl XLVII.)
Instead, the star golfer offered a magnanimous and gracious response that was a powerful reflection of Scheffler’s character.
While speaking to reporters after hitting 5-under 66 in the second round, Scheffler took the highest of high roads while discussing the genuinely rattling incident with the police.
OutKick’s Dan Zaksheske captured the poignant remarks, and you can watch them yourself below:
Scottie Scheffler was extremely complimentary of the police, despite being arrested on Friday morning. He said one officer even offered him a sandwich.
“I’m grateful that we have such strong police, and they’re our protectors out there.” pic.twitter.com/u0GkqYzMxy
— Dan Zaksheske (@RealDanZak) May 17, 2024
“Yeah, I was pretty rattled, to say the least,” the 27-year-old Scheffler said. “The officer that took me to the jail was very kind. He was great. We had a nice chat in the car that helped calm me down.
“And I was sitting there, kind of waiting to go in, and I asked him, ‘Hey, excuse me, can you just come hang out with me for a few minutes so I can calm down?’
“You know, I was never angry. I was just in shock. And I think my body was just — I was shaking the whole time. I was shaking for like an hour.”
Mind you, this harrowing incident happened just days after Scheffler became a new father for the first time.
“It was definitely a new feeling for me,” the star golfer continued. “And [the officer] came out, and we had a nice chat.”
Scheffler further elaborated that the officers in the jail also treated him well, and even joked about the incident once they realized who Scheffler was.
(On an aside, it’s a shame Scheffler didn’t bust out the line, “Don’t you know who I am?” the one time in history it actually may have been warranted.)
“I’m grateful that we have such strong police,” Scheffler added. “They’re our protectors out there.”
In a world full of Colin Kaepernicks out there, screaming “ACAB!” and “Defund the police!” while not thinking of the consequences, try and be a Scottie Scheffler. The world needs far more of the latter than the former.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Top Golfer Not Bitter After Arrest, Releases Powerful Statement on Police appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
While younger folks are typically expected to lean left — given their long history of voting for Democrats in the 20th and 21st century — the abysmal administration of President Joe Biden may be turning the tides on that historic trend.
The youngest voters have long been infamous for both their love of liberalism and disdain of conservatism.
Whether it was the hippie movement that heavily involved protests against the war in Vietnam or the modern anti-Jewish protests at colleges, the young minds of America lean toward the blue party.
The youth are also far more likely to buy your standard Democrat lie — untruths like student loan forgiveness and universal healthcare.
Data supports this as well, as an April report from the Pew Research Center found that nearly double the amount of 18- to 24-year-old voters leaned Democrat rather than Republican.
It wasn’t until getting to the 50- to 59-year-olds that they became more right-leaning than left.
Despite this inherent advantage with younger voters, other data shows that Biden may not want to bank on those votes for the 2024 general election.
Research group Blueprint conducted a poll to find what issues voters found most important ahead of the November election.
The poll was conducted from April 27 to April 29, and an online sample of 943 voters aged 18-30 were surveyed by Blueprint. The margin of error is 5.8 percentage points.
Unsurprisingly, the youth widely leaned towards the sitting president when it came to handle issues such as healthcare and corruption, but there were two major exceptions.
When it came to lowering prices and securing the border, most young voters were on the side of former President Donald Trump.
“As we’ve already talked about, young voters are much closer ideologically to Joe Biden than they are to Donald Trump,” Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, said, per Washington Examiner.
“But, the two biggest issues of this election, inflation and immigration, it’s very notable that with young voters — those are the only places Donald Trump has an advantage.”
To make matters worse for Biden, when asked what they considered their top issues, topics like inflation and the economy ranked near the very top.
When asked specifically what they wanted to see changed about the economy, the overwhelming majority of respondents (50 percent) said they wanted to see lower prices on goods.
Only 13 percent of those same respondents believe that was something Biden was focused on compared to 32 percent who believe it was something Trump was focused on.
While Trump is still far from popular among the youth, especially those in college, taking away two major issues from Biden is a massive deal in what will assuredly be a competitive general election.
As America continues to edge closer to the election, every vote becomes more and more important.
Any number of voters that typically vote Democrat flipping to the Republican option can easily be a feather in the cap of Trump, and a costly loss for a deeply unpopular incumbent president.
It makes perfect sense this would happen as well.
In 2020, many disenfranchised young people were told (by the media and the left) that they wanted something different from the Trump administration, and that “something different” was Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
But now those same young people have lived through the Biden administration and seen that it is objectively worse in every metric compared to the Trump years.
President Biden no longer has the benefit of the doubt and the youth can see that.
When major issues like the economy and border security are present, Americans of all ages need to vote for the candidate who will take a step in the right direction.
That is not Joe Biden.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Shock Poll: Young Voters Break for Trump on Two Top 2024 Issues appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The Mirage hotel is closing in July, ending a 34-year run as a landmark on the Las Vegas Strip.
Hard Rock International said the hotel, which it bought in 2022, will close July 17, according to ABC.
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and Guitar Hotel Las Vegas will take the place of The Mirage.
“The property will be reimagined and developed into a new integrated resort featuring a nearly 700 ft. guitar-shaped hotel prominently in the center of the famous Las Vegas Strip,” the company said, noting that the new hotel is scheduled for opening in 2027.
The signature design of the new Hard Rock Las Vegas will be a 660-foot-tall hotel tower shaped as guitars, which will be built on the site of Mirage’s iconic volcano that has been a popular attraction since the hotel opened in 1989.
READ MORE: https://t.co/njOqdZkddO pic.twitter.com/vTHtfIxP3o— Las Vegas Review-Journal (@reviewjournal) May 15, 2024
“We’d like to thank the Las Vegas community and team members for warmly welcoming Hard Rock after enjoying 34 years at The Mirage,” Chairman of Hard Rock International Jim Allen said.
In April, the Strip lost another icon when The Tropicana Las Vegas closed just before its 67th anniversary. The Tropicana is supposed to be the site of a baseball stadium that will be the future home of the Oakland A’s.
END OF AN ERA: The iconic Mirage hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip will shut its doors this summer, the end of an era for a property credited with helping transform Sin City into an ultra-luxury resort destination. https://t.co/Xbrj2IL5XT pic.twitter.com/c3H83SrdxW
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) May 15, 2024
The Mirage was opened in 1989 by casino mogul Steve Wynn, according to CNN.
MGM Resorts bought the hotel from Wynn in 2000. In 2022, Hard Rock International bought the property for over $1 billion.
The closing will cost more than 3,000 people their jobs, according to the Associated Press.
The Culinary and Bartenders Union accounts for about 1,700 workers, the Los Angeles Times reported. Union members will have a choice between taking a severance package of $2,000 for every year of service plus six months of pension and health benefits or a lower payout that preserves seniority rights for new jobs in the new hotel.
“Culinary Union members at The Mirage have a strong union contract, ensuring that workers are protected, even as the property closes its doors entirely for three years from July 2024 – May 2027,” said Ted Pappageorge, Culinary Union secretary-treasurer.
The new hotel expects to hire almost 7,000 people.
Resort President Joe Lupo told the staff Wednesday about the closing, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“We really are encouraged about not only the future of Las Vegas, but how Hard Rock and Seminole Tribe can play a role in helping to develop that and grow the market,” Lupo said. The Seminole Tribe owns Hard Rock International.
“But today is a tough day for a lot of people. Our priority is the well-being of those individuals,” he said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Landmark Las Vegas Casino Closing, Demolition Scheduled for This Year appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
After her verbal lashing courtesy of Mumford & Sons banjo player Winston Marshall in April at Oxford, Rep. Nancy Pelosi is not excited about President Joe Biden’s decision to debate former President Donald Trump before the two square off in November.
In an interview with CNN‘s Manu Raju posted to X on Wednesday, Pelosi explained her disapproval of Biden’s choice to debate.
“I myself would never recommend going on stage with Donald Trump, but the president has decided that’s what he wants to do,” Pelosi began before proceeding to offer her own method for how CNN should spotlight the two candidates, albeit in a format where they aren’t in the same room.
“I think you all [CNN] should have separate townhall meetings with them. Let them, challenge them with questions about the future, and let the public make its decision.”
Nancy Pelosi on Biden-Trump debates: ‘I myself would never recommend going on stage with Donald Trump.’ pic.twitter.com/EWBBhLIlfl
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 15, 2024
You couldn’t blame Pelosi for her cynicism for Democrats taking the debate stage.
Just last month, Pelosi debated Marshall at Oxford University where she took the stance that “populism is a threat to democracy” and Marshall argued the contrary.
Although her side received a favorable vote of 177-68, it was Marshall who made the most memorable quotes while she appeared to babble with the usual left-wing rhetoric.
Marshall told the audience, “Mainstream media elites are part of a class who don’t just disdain populism, they disdain the people,” while Pelosi countered, that populism is “the misrepresentation of people who exploit the populist attitude of ‘I want to have my say’ and then use it to get elected and then hurt those people the most.”
Such dialogues prove that Pelosi is not equipped to handle discussions of political theory, and that the Democrats don’t really have much ground to stand on when it comes to views on democracy — considering their suppression of it.
That all being said, you can see why Pelosi would not be elated with Biden’s choice of taking the debate stage.
Putting her recent experience aside, there are two more explanations for her apprehension towards Biden’s decision.
Obviously, the president is in a state of severe cognitive decline.
He did not handle his debates with Trump in 2020 well. Four years later, his state continues to worsen as countless examples show a man who repeats easily disproven lies, slurs his words together, wanders around aimlessly, and appears lost, tired, and totally incapable of the nation’s highest office.
While even sympathetic voices would not accuse Trump of being the most eloquent speaker, his energy is even higher now for the executive officer than it was in his first re-election bid.
Trump has plenty to attack Biden for during the last four years, and the president will surely struggle to keep pace.
This leads to the other reason why Pelosi does not want a Biden-Trump debate.
Biden’s presidential record has been absolutely abysmal by every measure. The border crisis continues while rampant inflation and reckless spending hamstring the American voter. The list of Biden’s problems — the problems the Democratic party must juggle before November — seem endless.
If Democrats hope to hold their own in November, Biden must not debate. The American people are already familiar with his many shortcomings in office, but Biden trying to defend that record is only going to salt the wound.
Pelosi knows this and couldn’t be more worried about Biden’s decision.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Nancy Pelosi, Fresh Off Her Own Debate Humiliation, Is Not Happy with Biden’s Debate Decision appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
After a Nashville hotel got cold feet and sought to cancel a pro-Israel event, Christian finance expert and syndicated radio host Dave Ramsey stepped in to be sure the event went on.
The Sonesta Nashville Airport hotel was scheduled to host the pro-Israel event until an anti-Israel group made noise. The group Palestine Hurra Collective Nashville claimed on Instagram that the purpose of the event was to “celebrate the death of civilians and recruit new Zionists!”
“Call relentlessly until this event is shut down!” the post urged.
The pressure worked. The hotel canceled the event.
“I think that the hotel jumped the gun and decided that they were going to just sort of dump this Israel event a week before it was going to happen, which is very unfortunate for the hotel because that’s in violation of Title II of the Civil Rights Act as well as Tennessee state law,” Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said, according to Fox News.
But Ramsey, who runs Ramsey Solutions in nearby Franklin, is not among those giving in to fear.
“Dave Ramsey reached out and said, ‘You’re going to have it at my place and we’re going to take this event to a whole new level and make it 10x what it was before. All of the details have come together and the event is skyrocketing in numbers.” Joshua Waller, a host of the Israel Guys podcast said, according to The Daily Wire.
The podcast and HaYovel, a ministry that connects Christians who want to volunteer with farmers in Judea and Samaria, are among the sponsors of the event.
“Ramsey Solutions is proud to stand beside our friends from Israel by providing them a safe place to hold their event as our gift to them,” Ramsey Solutions said in a statement.
“We will move forward with this event at a different venue and show these thugs that they will not be rewarded for their unconstitutional, hateful actions,” HaYovel announced, according to the Daily Wire.
NEW: Dave Ramsey Steps In To Rescue Pro-Israel Conference After Nashville Hotel Cancels
“You’re going to have it at my place and we’re going to take this event to a whole new level”https://t.co/4vD967l8zX
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) May 16, 2024
“Now, more than ever, it is important that America stands unconditionally with Israel and that we publicly show that we cannot be intimidated by pro-Hamas thugs.”
A news release on the First Liberty website said the hotel told HaYovel, “We have received credible threats regarding the safety of your group, our guests and employees, our hotel and sister property, and to businesses in our neighborhood. Those threats were confirmed by law enforcement officials in the last 24 hours.”
The release said hotel officials said police told them the cancel the event.
Nashville police said that is not true, according to WZTV-TV.
“The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department did not advocate, in any shape or form, for the cancellation of the conference at the Sonesta Hotel. Any inference to the contrary is false. Equally false is the assertion in an on-line article that this police department voiced concerns about persons being in physical danger,” the statement said.
“In fact, members of the police department did, indeed, meet with hotel management at its request to talk about the conference. We let it be known that we were absolutely prepared to help the hotel create a safety and security plan, as we would with any of our city’s hotels, and offer additional support if needed.
“At the same time, I am aware that the Sonesta was receiving a number of external messages urging that it not host the event. In the end, the Sonesta Hotel made a corporate decision to cancel. This police department was in no way a party to that decision,” the statement said.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville sent a statement saying “Harassment and intimidation are unacceptable and have no place in our community. We have registered our concerns and are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and continue to focus with determination and vigilance on keeping our community safe.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Dave Ramsey Saves the Day When Venue Pulls the Rug Out from Under Pro-Israel Conference appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
As the 2024 election nears and the destruction Joe Biden is visiting on the country gets worse, some who may have felt they were NeverTrumpers are now finding themselves becoming Never Bidens instead.
The first ripple in this wave of Never Bidens is of Joe Biden’s own doing, according to Eli Lake of The Free Press.
Many who may have found their way clear to vote for Biden are now reconsidering their support in the wake of his sudden turn against helping Israel in its fight against Hamas.
Last week, news broke that Biden was working quietly to prevent the shipment of planned aid and weapons that had already been approved for the Jewish nation.
With this hanging over him, many otherwise NeverTrumpers and erstwhile Biden supporters are turning against him. As Lake noted, some of these virulent NeverTrumpers are now seeing Biden as the bigger threat to both America and Israel.
Former Nikki Haley supporter Cliff Asness, the co-founder of AQR Capital Management, told the paper that things have changed. “My ‘Never Again’ is trumping my ‘Never Trump’ these days,” he said.
“Biden is a huge disappointment, really a moral outrage with this arms embargo being only the latest and greatest outrage,” he continued.
“Despite my long opposition to him, this makes me more likely, though I haven’t quite gotten there yet, to see Trump as the better of two bad alternatives.”
Democratic supporters are also turning against Biden. Democrat and hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, jumped to X to blast Biden’s recent CNN interview, saying, it was “crazy,” and adding, “This is one of the worst acts against an ally of a sitting president ever. Hopefully, this means he won’t be sitting for much longer.”
Crazy. This is one of the worst acts against an ally of a sitting president ever. Hopefully, this means he won’t be sitting for much longer. https://t.co/PFQXpNwjpn
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 9, 2024
Ackman donated cash to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Al Gore, but Lake noted that Ackman recently reposted a message from Donald Trump, who was blasting Biden as “crooked” for helping Hamas instead of Israel. The fact that Ackman would repost anything written by Trump is notable.
Michael Granoff, a managing partner of venture capital firm Maniv, told the Free Press that he voted for Biden in 2020, but the president’s anti-Israel policies are forcing him to reconsider. “I am not voting for Biden. I’m not saying I’m voting for Trump, but it’s a nonzero chance now,” he said.
Even as far back as October, NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol noted how alarmed he was over the enthusiasm gap between the popular Trump and the floundering Biden, Breitbart News reported.
Lake quoted several other high-profile Democrats and Republican NeverTrumpers, but Lake is not the only one noting that Biden is in deep trouble only six months ahead of the election. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York noted that as things stand today, Biden’s campaign is “dead in the water.”
York added that the campaign is already entering into the stage where voters are hardening their feelings on the candidates — “particularly with respect to the economy” — and with polls still showing that Biden is in trouble on so many metrics, it is less and less likely that he will be able to regain their confidence in him.
Donald Trump should keep his nose to the grindstone on the issues that are cleaving Biden’s voters away from him. He should focus on Israel, the economy, and illegal immigration — all areas where the president is extremely vulnerable. Forget the personal vendettas for now. Stay laser focused on these issues, and he will both continue to pull voters away from Biden and maintain his own base.
If Trump can keep the campaign discipline he has shown so far, we might just be able to see him make a triumphant return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Are NeverTrump Donors Having a Change of Heart and Becoming Never Biden Voters? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Donald Trump may be in line to receive a major congressional award, and the Democrats will likely not be very happy if it comes to pass.
Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is hoping to give former President Donald Trump a major congressional award “in recognition of his exceptional leadership and dedication to strengthening America’s diplomatic relations during his presidency,” Fox News reported.
Rep. Luna is leading a group of other GOP representatives who want to give Trump the Congressional Gold Medal. Joining the Florida congresswoman is fellow Floridian Mike Waltz, Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, and Randy Weber of Texas.
“President Trump’s fearless leadership reestablished America as a respected and admired global power,” Luna said.
“It is time we recognize a president who put our country first and secured global peace through bold diplomacy,” she added.
“Despite the liberal media’s attempts to spread fear, America and the world were undoubtedly safer under President Donald Trump. One of our duties in Congress is to honor those who have contributed significantly to our nation, and that’s why I’m introducing this legislation,” she said.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal are the two highest civilian awards in the U.S.
Despite endorsing Ron DeSantis earlier this year, Republican and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good is also supporting Luna’s proposal.
“President Trump did more in four years on behalf of the American people than any president in my lifetime. He secured our border, achieved historic peace in the Middle East, and implemented policies that helped our economy prosper,” Good said of the medal proposal.
“The last three years of a failed Biden administration have only served as a stark contrast to President Trump’s record,” he added.
Other recipients have included the Dalai Lama, members of the Tuskegee Airmen, golfer Jack Nicklaus, and many others, Politico added.
If Trump were to be awarded the medal, he would be the first former president to receive the award since Ronald Reagan was honored in 2000, the Washington Examiner wrote.
Before Reagan, other presidents honored by the medal include George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford.
Still, it seems unlikely that Trump will receive the honor. While it is likely the House of Representatives could agree to the measure and pass it onto the Senate, it seems far less likely that the upper chamber will agree and add their imprimatur to the proposal.
GOP House members have tried a number of ways to show their support for the former president. Rep. Reschenthaler, for instance, proposed that Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia be renamed as the Donald J. Trump International Airport.
Embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson also showed up to support Trump when he appeared in Manhattan during the former president’s corporate records trial.
Donald Trump most certainly deserves an award such as this, far more than the man currently occupying the White House. As every move Biden makes seems to make life more difficult — and even more dangerous — for Americans, Trump is trying to put America back on the right track.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump Could Get Major Award After Republican Congresswoman Introduces Huge Resolution appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker really hit a nerve with his commencement speech for Benedictine College’s 2024 graduation.
Chronically online leftists had a bone to pick with every word in his speech besides “the” and “is,” calling him “misogynistic, “homophobic,” and “hateful” for proclaiming truths all Christians believed until about five minutes ago.
But, for the left, the most “offensive” part of the speech came in a clip shared to the social media platform X by the account Christian Nightmares.
Jesus Christ… pic.twitter.com/bY9bE2XwUm
— Christian Nightmares (@ChristnNitemare) May 14, 2024
In the clip, Butker addressed the graduating ladies of Benedictine College, congratulating them on their “amazing accomplishment.”
He directed his attention to them because “it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you.” He continued, saying that, while many of them were probably thinking about their potential careers, more of them were likely “most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
And here came the part that made leftist social media start melting in rage like the Wicked Witch of the West: “I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage, and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.”
Choking up as he thought about his beloved wife, he concluded, “It cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”
Now, for most Christians, especially of a conservative bent, what he said was not only uncontroversial, but wonderfully refreshing.
But for the left, he couldn’t have provoked more rage than if he advocated for indiscriminate puppy-murder.
USA Today, reporting on the speech, decried Butker’s use of the word “vocation” as a 1950’s throwback, before castigating his views as “antiquated,” “extremist” and “Neanderthalic.”
Podcaster and former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann led the charge on X, disparaging Butker by saying, he “isn’t even considered an actual football player by other football players and he’s going to spew his bulls*** religion-based misogyny without consequences?”
Others quickly followed suit, with one user contending that “Colin Kaepernick was threatened, blacklisted, condemned for peacefully taking a knee in protest against racial injustice/police brutality, but Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gives a misogynistic, bigoted, homophobic speech and it’s fine? Racism.”
Let me understand this, Colin Kaepernick was threatened, blacklisted, condemned for peacefully taking a knee in protest against racial injustice/police brutality, but Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gives a misogynistic, bigoted, homophobic speech and it’s fine? Racism.
— Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) May 15, 2024
Another user asked rhetorically, “So, have the @Chiefs fired this incel yet? #Boycott #Chiefs until they do. Women and LGBTQ hater —-> Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker unleashes on Pride month, Biden during commencement address.”
So, have the @Chiefs fired this incel yet? #Boycott #Chiefs until they do. Women and LGBTQ hater —-> Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker unleashes on Pride month, Biden during commencement address https://t.co/jQAm9EVEZm
— Nicole L. Augenti, Esq. (@Nicole1515) May 15, 2024
Now, one of the odd things about this extreme backlash to Butker’s words was that, for one, many forgot or never bothered to learn the context of the speech.
This was at a conservative, Catholic college — what did they expect a commencement speaker at a Catholic college to say?
For another, Butker has never made any secret regarding his faith.
At the commencement speech for Georgia Tech last year, he encouraged the young women there to marry and have children, and his social media bios proudly proclaim “Christus Regnat” (or, Christ reigns).
A quick look at his twitter feed shows him praising God and quoting a saint or Scripture with almost every picture he posts.
“The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for what He is sending us every day in His goodness.” – Saint Gianna Beretta Molla pic.twitter.com/MR2FeFeOPs
— Harrison Butker (@buttkicker7) November 26, 2021
And, contrary to all the haters on social media, he never said women shouldn’t pursue a career — he never once told women they should “get back in the kitchen.”
Instead, he praised the inherent goodness of a vocation denigrated by feminists and those on the left and pointed out how this important role has been demeaned by the lies that women need a career to be “fulfilled.”
But, clearly, Butker’s words hit a raw nerve, almost more so than his anti-LGBT and pro-life messages he also proclaimed at the commencement address.
Perhaps some of the left knew what he was saying was true and hated the reminder, lashing out accordingly.
Hopefully, Butker will not only stand firm in the face of all this unmerited backlash, but also continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel and the roles of men and women, with even more fearlessness and tenacity.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Irate Leftists Wage War on Chiefs’ Star Kicker for Being Too Conservative appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Wednesday sure has been a day of unpredictable developments regarding the 2024 presidential election.
From Joe Biden finally challenging Donald Trump to a debate, to Trump accepting despite the Biden team’s stringent requirements, the day has been a whirlwind of a dizzying news cycle.
And now, Trump has issued Biden a challenge of his own.
Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump told Biden, “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.”
As reported in the The Guardian, Biden has yet to directly respond to, or accept, Trump’s invitation.
Though, considering the laundry list of demands Biden’s campaign presented before accepting any debate — including removing the audience, moving up the date historically early, and, crucially, only accepting moderators from friendly left-wing networks — it would seem only fair for Biden to join Trump for a debate on Trump-friendly territory as well.
However, Deadline noted that, while Biden himself has not answered directly, his campaign has.
Characterizing Trump’s offer as “playing games,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon declared, “No more chaos, no more debate about debates.”
“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” she said.
Of course, why it was Biden who could create the terms and not any opponent has yet to be explained.
Typically, the only terms presidential candidates followed for debates were those set by the Commission for Presidential Debates, but the two bypassed the commission.
Why Biden has been allowed to call for all manner of historically unprecedented concessions for his degenerating health and mental state would probably be a question not even his campaign could answer.
As The Federalist noted in their story on this whole saga, Biden’s demands were “laughably transparent,” bespeaking of a man who was only agreeing to a debate under the necessity of his ghastly poll numbers and striving to minimize any possible chance of embarrassment.
Unlike Biden, Trump’s mind is clear as ever, and he has no fear of speaking or being seen in public.
Trump wants to torch Biden and has capitalized on every opportunity to take him on.
Trump is as fiery as ever.
Biden might not accept Trump’s offer of a Fox News debate, but it only serves to make Biden look bad.
At this point, the only thing Biden is better at than Trump is shooting himself in the foot.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump Dares Biden to Leave Home Turf to Debate Him, Adds New Challenge to 2024 Race appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
According to a notice from the Federal Aviation Administration, former President Donald Trump’s Boeing 757 “clipped” an unoccupied private jet Sunday while taxiing after landing at West Palm Beach International Airport.
“AIRCRAFT TAXIING AND WINGLET STRUCK THE REAR ELEVATOR OF A PARKED VISTAJET,” the notice reads, as cited by WFLA (emphasis original).
The outlet noted that the FAA included the plane’s registration number, N757AF, which FAA records show belonging to DJT Operations I LLC.
The report indicated that any damage that might have occurred in the incident was as yet unknown, but that no one had been injured.
Also unknown was whether the former president himself was on his 757 at the time of the incident, but the FAA told the station that it was still investigating.
“A privately owned Boeing 757 landed safely at West Palm Beach International Airport around 1:20 a.m. local time on Sunday, May 12,” an FAA spokesperson told WFLA in a statement. “While taxiing, its winglet contacted a parked and unoccupied corporate jet.
“The incident occurred in an area of the airport where the FAA does not direct aircraft,” the statement added.
The news came out Tuesday amid what the Trump campaign must have seen as more positive reports of the former president’s polling ahead of November’s presidential election.
CNN, for example, Trump is leading President Joe Biden in three battleground states by such wide margins that a CNN analyst called the numbers “an absolute disaster” for Biden’s campaign.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said the latest polls showed Trump beating the president in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, and within the margin of error of polls conducted in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Frankly, for the Joe Biden campaign, these numbers are an absolute disaster,” Enten said Monday. “The smallest lead is in Arizona for Donald Trump. He’s up 6. Look at this, 9 in Georgia.”
The New York Times/Siena College polls of 4,097 registered voters were conducted in the six battleground states from April 28 to May 9. (The Philadelphia Inquirer contributed to the Pennsylvania poll, the Times noted.)
The Nevada survey had the presumptive GOP nominee over Biden by 13 points.
The CNN reporter noted that Trump’s smaller leads in Pennsylvania (3 points) and Wisconsin (1 point) were within the margin of error.
However, Biden’s 1-point lead in Michigan was also within striking range for Trump.
“My goodness gracious. … That is a huge lead,” Enten said. “No Democrat has lost that state since [former Sen.] John Kerry lost it back in 2004.”
Here’s my deal on the NYT polling out this AM. The Sun Belt battlegrounds are an abject disaster for Biden, & NYT is not the first to show that.
The Great Lakes battlegrounds are something Biden’s campaign can work with. It leaves him a (narrow) path to 270 at this point pic.twitter.com/gkM7pppR3K
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) May 13, 2024
When asked why the former president was outperforming the incumbent so dramatically, Enten said it’s because “the Trump coalition is changing” and getting more racially diverse.
He pointed out that the Republican candidate has gained ground with nonwhite voters even though he has lost some traction among white voters.
“The sense that Mr. Biden would do little to improve the nation’s fortunes has helped erode his standing among young, Black and Hispanic voters, who usually represent the foundation of any Democratic path to the presidency,” The New York Times wrote Monday of its survey.
The left-leaning Times argued that the poll results suggest that Americans perceive a nation in turmoil under the Biden administration.
“The findings reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the country and serious doubts about Mr. Biden’s ability to deliver major improvements to American life,” the Times said. “Nearly 70 percent of voters say that the country’s political and economic systems need major changes — or even to be torn down entirely.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Trump’s Private Jet Involved in Incident with Another Plane at Florida Airport appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday that his confidence has weakened that inflation is under control.
His comments made at a bankers’ conference in Amsterdam came the same day that the Labor Department reported that wholesale prices jumped 0.5 percent in April, the largest increase since April 2023.
Wholesale prices are tracked by the Producer Price Index, which measures the selling prices producers of goods and services receive.
CNBC: Wholesale inflation rose MUCH more than expected in April.
That’s Bidenomics! pic.twitter.com/NbVUyS3zVP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 14, 2024
Powell first told the bankers that the U.S. economy is performing well, seeing strong growth of just over 3 percent last year, as unemployment remains below 4 percent and inflation has come down from its peaks in 2022 and early 2023.
“Core inflation got as high as 5.6 percent and is now at 2.8 percent, so it’s down by half. That progress though really happened over the course of last year, particularly the second half of last year,” the fed chief said.
Core inflation measures the change in prices of goods and services, but does not include food and energy costs, which have gone up considerably during President Joe Biden’s time in office.
Food prices are up over 21 percent since January 2021. Meanwhile the price of gasoline averaged $2.40 per gallon that month, and is currently $3.61, or a 50.42 percent increase.
“The first quarter in the United States was notable for its lack of further progress on inflation. We had higher readings in the first quarter, and higher than we expected,” Powell conceded.
“We did not expect this to be a smooth road. But these [inflation readings] were higher than I think anybody expected,” he continued. “What that has told us is that we’ll need to be patient and let restrictive policy do its work.”
CNBC reported that the Federal Reserve has increased interest rates 11 times in recent years in its efforts to combat inflation.
The purpose of raising interest rates is to make borrowing more expensive, which is designed to slow consumer spending and business investment, lowering demand and thereby bringing prices down, according to Chase Bank.
“I expect that inflation will move back down on a monthly level, on a monthly basis to levels that were more like the lower readings we were having last year,” Powell predicted.
But he added the caveat, “I would say my confidence [in that forecast] is not as high as it was, having seen these readings in the first three months of the year.”
“We’re just going to have to see where the inflation data fall out,” Powell said.
What the fed chairman did not get into is how Biden’s and the Democrats’ big government, high spending policies are a primary driver of inflation.
Former Trump and Reagan administration economist Larry Kudlow explained in May 2022 as price spikes were hitting their highest, “Look, you had prominent Democrat economists and Republican economists a year ago predict rising inflation because of huge social spending, aggregate demand increasing, deficit financing, too much borrowing and too much money printing.”
“And then you had the war against fossil fuels at exactly the wrong time,” he added, referring to Biden’s policy of greatly restricting oil production on federal lands and offshore.
In a February 2021 opinion piece for The Washington Post, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote that passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as the economy was already well on its way to recovery would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”
After it passed the following month, Summers called it “the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”
Further, former Obama administration Treasury Department official Steven Rattner in a November 2021 article for The New York Times identified the American Rescue Plan as the “original sin” leading to the current high inflation rate.
He pointed to Summers’ warning, as well as “many others.”
“We worried that shoveling an unprecedented amount of spending into an economy already on the road to recovery would mean too much money chasing too few goods,” Rattner wrote.
The Democrats have since passed the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, with costs on green initiatives alone expected to exceed $1 trillion, and the $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill, pouring more Federal Reserve printed money into the economy.
Kudlow said the answer for the nation’s current fix is to implement the policy President Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s — known as supply-side economics.
In other words don’t just try to decrease demand through Fed interest rate hikes and less spending, work on increasing the supply of goods and services through pro-growth tax and regulatory polices.
“The tax hikes and the environmental restrictions [under Biden] are suppressing the supply side of the economy — not enough goods. And the spending increases the demand side of the economy — too much cash,” Kudlow said.
“If you are going to spend more than you can produce, well, prices have to go up. And the obvious solution is to spend less and produce more.”
The proof is in the pudding. Inflation dropped from 13.5 percent in 1980 before Reagan took office to 4.1 percent in 1988.
Powell of course does not have the power to make these policy changes, but the American people do by re-electing former President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, who implemented Reagan-style economic policies in Trump’s first term and promise to do so again in his second.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Federal Reserve Chair Admits His Confidence Is Rattled as Wholesale Inflation Unexpectedly Surges appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Hospitals are changing the way they operate — no pun intended — and it’s putting some patients’ health at risk.
It used to be common practice for hospitals and other medical facilities to calculate costs and send bills to patients after they’d completed the important part, i.e. treating the patient.
That’s less true today than it used to be, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Collecting payment in advance is more and more common at medical centers, and while that saves hospitals time and money collecting on bills later, it means that some patients don’t get the care they need when they need it, because they can’t come up with the cash up front.
“Those who can’t come up with the sums have been forced to put off procedures,” the Journal reported Thursday in an article titled “Hospitals Are Refusing to Do Surgeries Unless You Pay In Full First.”
The newspaper also noted that patients are sometimes overcharged, which puts them in the position of having to “fight” a large corporate entity to get a refund of the overpayment.
“Among the procedures that hospitals and surgery centers are seeking prepayments for are knee replacements, CT scans and births,” the Journal reported.
The report also noted that federal law requires hospitals to provide medical treatment in emergency situations. Of course, what a hospital considers an emergency may differ from how the term might be defined by someone experiencing severe pain.
“We need those patients who are able to pay to do so,” Leslie Taylor, a spokeswoman for University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which owns one general hospital in Arkansas, told the Journal.
That hospital has in the past rescheduled some patients’ procedures until after they pay up, although they say they only do so with the approval of doctors.
Health care consulting company Kodiak Solutions told the Journal that 23 percent of patient bills are now being paid before treatment is provided, up from 20 percent only two years ago.
That may not seem like a huge increase, but considering that about half of American adults say they don’t have more than $500 available to pay for sudden medical issues, according to the Journal, it’s a trend that could cause serious problems for many.
The Journal spotlighted two cases of people affected by pay-in-advance policies, both of which had happy endings.
The first was that of Heather Miconi, whose daughter needed adenoid and tonsil surgery to help her breathe — not an emergency, but obviously important.
Miconi already works three jobs and has a high-deductible insurance policy, so she needed $2,000 to pay for the procedure in advance. She had to start a GoFundMe to raise the funds.
The good news in Miconi’s case is that the fundraiser has already brought in nearly $10,000. Miconi wrote on the site that she’ll use the extra to pay down medical bills that have been accumulating interest since her daughter’s 2021 hospitalization.
“This has lifted a huge burden from our lives and I am forever grateful,” she wrote.
The other example cited by the Journal was that of Blake Young, who needed a heart screening last November. He paid $3,600 in advance, only to find out later that he’d been overcharged by almost 200 percent, and the hospital owed him $2,546.
It took Young over six months to get his money back, and he had to involve the Better Business Bureau to do it.
The hospital, CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, did eventually offer Young an apology — and, eventually, a check.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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In a stunning display of irony and contradiction that borders on the absurd, an associate dean tasked with upholding gender equality at Columbia University cut off and muted a fellow professor during a faculty senate meeting earlier this month when the latter professor warned her colleagues that the Ivy League school had been infiltrated by outsiders with “known ties to terrorist organizations.”
And yes, these are groups that literally support terrorists and who are known for their oppressive attitudes towards women.
The irony of a gender equality dean silencing warnings about groups with known oppressive attitudes towards women was not lost on anyone who observed the incident, which took place via Zoom on May 3, mere hours after Hamilton Hall was overrun by a mob of Hamas-supporting students.
NEW from me
A meeting of the Columbia University faculty Senate was derailed after a professor warned that terrorists had infiltrated the campus https://t.co/GwnmeYk86m pic.twitter.com/foUlLnmhGZ
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) May 11, 2024
“I do want to emphasize that there really is a need for good security on campus and it was very clear prior to Tuesday night that the university was unable to do that given the number of people from outside who were able to pass through our tight security to get onto campus,” Professor Carol Ewing Garber said.
Seconds into her remarks, Associate Dean for Gender Equity and Career Development Jeanine D’Armiento began to cut Garber off. But not before Garber was able to say, “and we do know that there are groups who are supporting terrorists,” according to coverage of the incident by the New York Post.
Instead of addressing these serious allegations, D’Armiento responded by silencing Garber, muted her microphone, dismissed her concerns, and claimed they “have no evidence” of what Garber said.
The Senate meeting then descended into chaos, reflecting deep divisions within the faculty about the handling of such sensitive issues, as other faculty members came to Garber’s defense.
Mind you, these groups that Garber was referring to, beyond their political impact, are known for practices that violently oppress women—actions that should naturally concern anyone dedicated to gender equity.
Yet, when Garber attempted to bring these legitimate security concerns to light, D’Armiento interrupted and muted her, dismissing these concerns due to an alleged lack of evidence and deemed the discussion “unfair.”
Moments after D’Armiento was shut down by fellow faculty, Garber was able to emphasize the need for a thorough investigation into these groups and to, once again, factually point out that “there is evidence that there are groups who are influencing student groups on campus in this country… to behave in certain ways. And there is evidence about those things… And many individuals feel afraid because of that.”
D’Armiento’s response to silence Garber not only raises questions about the role and effectiveness of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion positions but also starkly highlights the contradictions inherent in a gender equity dean dismissing concerns about groups known for gender-based violence.
This could potentially make her the absolutely worst “Dean of Gender Equality” in the history of education.
Furthermore, D’Armiento’s management of the meeting, where she repeatedly asserted “this is my meeting,” only added to the tumult, displaying a troubling approach to governance and dialogue within the university.
This event has ignited a broader discussion on campus about the actions of anti-Israel protesters and the response of the university’s administration, which has been seen as feeble and not doing nearly enough.
In fact, Columbia University groveled to the woke mob and even canceled its main commencement ceremony, scheduled for May 15 in New York City, due to security concerns amid ongoing anti-Israel protests.
The atmosphere at Columbia remains both charged and toxic, as evidenced by subsequent events, including a controversial campus appearance by individuals linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a group widely recognized as a terrorist organization.
These developments have only intensified the scrutiny on Columbia’s handling of security and ideological conflicts on campus.
The Zoom incident also underscores the critical need for DEI roles to not only enforce policies but to do so in a manner that genuinely upholds the values of equity and justice they are meant to champion.
With her comments, D’Armiento revealed the truth about DEI positions like hers — they exist not to help minorities but to rigidly enforce whatever the latest leftist orthodoxy or shibboleth happens to be. After all, a genuine advocate for gender equality would not dismiss concerns about entities that perpetuate severe human rights abuses.
And they certainly wouldn’t run interference for those supporting roving packs of sexual abusers (or worse) and silence such a debate.
The Western Journal has asked D’Armiento if she believes running interference for those supporting what amounts to violent rape gang, among other things, on Oct. 7 promotes gender equality. As of publication, she has not responded to our question.
To think, this is what tuition dollars are going to support: a “Dean of Gender Equality” who runs interference for terrorists who brutally tortured women on Oct. 7 and afterward.
The irony of a gender equality dean, tasked with protecting the vulnerable, potentially disregarding the implications of hosting groups on campus that have been infiltrated by entities with oppressive ideologies towards women, should prompt a reevaluation of how DEI initiatives are implemented and perceived in academic settings.
If this pattern of neglect and complicity continues unchecked, America must confront a stark reality: The very institutions meant to foster a just and safe environment are failing in their duty.
Should this persist, unchecked by rigorous oversight and genuine commitment to upholding the principles of equity and justice, the consequences could prove dire for the safety and moral integrity of not just universities, but the nation itself.
The peril of these oversights and explicit interference lies not just in the immediate threats they present, but in the insidious decay of our nation’s foundational values, putting America’s future in grave danger for generations to come.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Sunday accused President Joe Biden of taking the side of Hamas in an effort to end the war in Gaza, which was started by Hamas when it slaughtered Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
“Joe Biden’s position is de facto for Hamas victory at this point. Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas, which committed the worst atrocity against Jews since World War II. Hamas’s goal is to survive,” Cotton said on the CBS show “Face the Nation.”
“If Israel does not go into Rafah and destroy Hamas in Rafah, Hamas will survive,” he said.
Biden has said he would go so far as deny Israel the tools of war needed to attack Rafah.
Cotton denounced the current policy comments of the Biden administration on Hamas as a “bunch of weaselly, mealy-mouthed politics.”
Comments from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that paint both sides as having done wrong are “some magic talisman to help them walk the political line they want between the pro-Hamas wing of their party and the vast pro-Israel majority of the American people.”
Cotton said despite international condemnation for bombing the terrorists of Hamas, “Israel is doing more than any military in history, in all likelihood, to prevent civilian casualties.”
“If Hamas did not hide behind and under civilians, there would no – there would not be civilian casualties. For that matter, if Hamas simply surrendered and turned over all these hostages, there would be no more civilian suffering in Gaza,” he said.
Cotton accused Biden of imposing “a de facto arms embargo on Israel and sanctions on Israelis, noting that he just said last week that he’s not going to send offensive weapons.”
“We have no idea what he’s going to withhold,” he said.
Cotton noted that if America changes presidents after the November general election, the nation’s policy toward Israel would change as well.
“President Trump said just last night that he would absolutely provide Israel with the weapons they need to finish the job. This would have never happened on President Trump- Trump’s watch, it didn’t happen on his watch,” he said.
“And if he were president, this war would have probably already been over with much less civilian suffering in Gaza because he would have backed Israel to the hilt from the beginning,” Cotton added.
A report in The Washington Post said that U.S. intelligence agencies are working with Israel to pinpoint the locations of key Hamas leaders as a way to avert a broad-based attack.
A report in the Times of Israel quoted Biden as saying if the hostages taken Oct. 7 are released, there could be a cease-fire.
“There would be a ceasefire tomorrow if Hamas would release the hostages,” Biden said at a fundraiser.
“Israel said it’s up to Hamas; if they wanted to do it, we could end it tomorrow. And the cease-fire would begin tomorrow,” Biden said.
Last week, Hamas admitted that in offering to exchange 33 hostages as part of a deal, not all the hostages exchanged would be alive, according to The New York Times.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Tom Cotton: Biden’s Position Is for a ‘Hamas Victory’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Staying in the middle class takes a lot of work, according to a new analysis.
A look at the numbers from the website GOBankingRates.com found that it took a nearly 42 percent increase in income to remain in the middle class from 2012, the midpoint of the Obama administration, to 2022, the middle of the Biden administration.
The site published a state-by-state listing of what it takes to be in the middle class, defining the term as people with an income no less than two-thirds of the median income and no more than double that figure.
Although the national minimum to be in the middle class was $50,099 as of 2022, the numbers vary widely. For example, a Mississippi household earning $35,323 is considered middle class. In Maryland, however, the qualifying income is $65,641, according to the site’s calculations.
The middle class is shrinking. In 1971, 61% of American households were considered to be middle class. That number has dropped to 50% three decades later, a Pew Research found.
“The creation of the middle class was based on factories and jobs.” Grant Cardone told GOBankingRates.… pic.twitter.com/uZIXcPAAEU
— Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone) March 3, 2024
Over the decade-long period, Alaska had the smallest increase in income to stay in the middle class at almost 23 percent.
In Oregon, however, the bar to call oneself in the middle class rose by over 53 percent.
A report from Investopedia published in February said the middle class is shrinking, equating middle class with middle income.
That meant annual incomes of between $30,000 and $90,000 per year for single Americans, as well as $42,430 to $127,300 for a couple and $67,100 to $201,270 for a family of four.
What? The economy has already crashed, and it has not finished crashing either. The middle class is shrinking again, as opposed to expanding during the Trump era. Biden is returning to the Obama era, in which the middle class was decimated, and growth was slowed to a crawl: pic.twitter.com/R3juAgj3yh
— Jatslo (@Jatslo) January 28, 2023
As of 2021, the report said 50 percent of Americans were in the middle class, a drop from 1971 data that put the figure at 61 percent.
A study by SmartAsset found that in a large American city, a middle-class income can fall anywhere between $52,000 and $155,000.
That analysis listed New Jersey, with a minimum middle class income of at least $64,224, as the state with the highest income needed to be in the middle class, followed by Maryland at $63,321 and Massachusetts at $62,986.
At the other end comes Mississippi, where $35,142 is required to be in the middle class. Mississippi is followed by West Virginia at $36,216 and Louisiana at $36,940 as the states with the lowest incomes necessary to be middle class.
Some cities have sky-high upper limits for placement in the middle class. For example, in Sunnyvale, California, a household earning $339,562 is at the upper bound of middle class income, followed by Fremont, California; San Mateo, California; Santa Clara, California; Bellevue, Washington and Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
On the low end, there is Detroit, where a household making $24,299 would be middle class.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Revealed: How Much You Have to Earn to Be ‘Middle Class’ in Your State appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The NBA has fined Jamal Murray $100,000 for his antics during Monday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals.
Murray — a talented guard for the Denver Nuggets — received the fine for “throwing multiple objects in the direction of a game official during live play,” according to the NBA on Tuesday.
The objects in question were a towel and heat pack tossed on the court late in the second quarter as Denver was on its way to a lopsided 106-80 home loss against the Timberwolves.
Officiating crew chief Marc Davis stated post-game that officials were unaware anything was thrown from the bench, had they known, “we could have reviewed it under the hostile act trigger. The penalty would have been a technical foul.”
The incidents swiftly went viral:
Jamal Murray throws a heat pack pic.twitter.com/JDADMojQgp
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) May 7, 2024
Jamal Murray threw a towel onto the court during Game 2 pic.twitter.com/luj2mKryID
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 7, 2024
After Murray threw the heat pack, he was seen throwing the towel in Davis’s direction which landed at his heels. Luckily for Murray, fellow Nuggets guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope retrieved the heat pack and someone else swept the towel aside before Davis noticed.
Wolves coach Chris Finch said after the game, “We tried to impress upon (the officials) that there’s probably not many fans in the building that have a heat pack. So, it probably had to come from the bench,” before further calling Murray’s actions, “inexcusable and dangerous.”
While Murray left after the game without commenting, it’s hard to disagree with Finch as there is no justification for throwing a temper tantrum, no matter how badly you are losing (if anything, that makes it even worse). These are professional athletes with the eyes of millions on them closely observing their conduct.
These types of outburst only tell fans — especially young ones — that at the height of the sport, raw outbursts towards officials are fine.
A fine of $100,000 is pocket change to Murray, whose salary — According to Sporting News — for the 2023 – 24 season amounts to $33.8 million.
Perhaps adding to the consternation, many fans and pundits expected Murray to be suspended for at least one game for his actions. Murray was not suspended, and scored 24 points in the Nuggets’ big 117-90 road win against the Timberwolves.
Additionally, there is a real worry that the young and impressionable fans who will never make it as professional athletes — the kids who will grow up and try to find actual jobs to earn a living — will still glean something from this tantrum.
In seeing that type of behavior, they’re led to believe this is what success looks like.
Don’t bother getting along with the people who make the rules. Act out when you feel slighted, take the hit, and move on.
Murray’s overall message here is blaming someone else for your shortcomings. In Denver’s loss, players should’ve look inward with a sense of responsibility, instead of lashing out like a toddler.
Murray is by no means alone. This mentality exists broadly in our culture.
To no surprise, people who think like this don’t go far in life.
Murray and the Nuggets will try to even up their second round series when they play the Timberwolves in Minnesota tonight.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post NBA Star Learns Punishment for On-Court Tantrum appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
It’s not quite to the point where the hashtag “OscarsSoBroke” will be trending, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is passing the hat around the globe.
A $500 million fundraising campaign was launched Friday with the goal of reaching the target by the 2028 Oscars, which would mark the 100th Academy Awards.
This news comes just a few months after a generally poorly received 2024 Oscars, as well.
Although Academy officials talked about its global future in announcing the drive, it comes at a time when TV viewership of the annual awards show has been trending downward, according to an Agence-France Presse report posted on Barron’s.
The Academy’s contract with ABC to broadcast the show is up for renewal, and the show will face the reality that ratings are down from historic levels.
This year, for example, viewership of the show was about 21 million people, down from about 40 million viewers a decade ago.
The “global revenue diversification and outreach campaign” is dubbed Academy 100, according to Deadline.
“The future of the Academy is global, and Academy 100 will deepen our worldwide reach and impact,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer said.
“The Academy will soon enter its second century, and we want to ensure that we continue to be the preeminent leader of our international film community. Like all healthy organizations, the Academy needs a sustainable and diverse base of support, and we are deeply grateful to Rolex and all of our partners for helping us launch this important and forward-looking initiative.”
The Academy said it has commitments for more than $100 million from sponsors that include Rolex and Delta Air Lines.
The Academy said the money will “endow and fund programs that recognize excellence in cinematic artistry and innovation; preserve our film history; enable the creation of world-class film exhibitions, screenings, and publications; train and educate the next generation of diverse global film artists; and produce powerful digital content.”
The aim of the event, held in Rome, was to highlight the Academy’s global purpose in its campaign, according to the Associated Press.
Writing for USA Today, Kelly Lawler noted that the 2024 show “started five minutes late, and it was only downhill from there.”
“The Oscar broadcast didn’t feel like anybody’s biggest night. It felt small, unimportant, skippable. It didn’t get anywhere close to the urgency or relevancy of the nominated films,” she wrote.
Lawler opined that “90 percent of Sunday’s broadcast could have happened at any Oscars (or really, any awards show) any year. The gently jabbing jokes, the expected winners, the overlong and overwritten bits, the dull speeches − they are so generic as to be soporific.”
“For some producers and hosts, a boring Oscars is far preferable to a bad one, and especially better than a trainwreck of a ceremony with say a slap or a wrong best picture winner announced,” she wrote.
“But as ratings for awards shows dwindle, it’s worth trying just a little harder to try to persuade people to spend their Sunday nights watching the rich and famous hand each other golden trophies,” Lawler continued.
She added: ‘This is Hollywood, after all. These people are supposed to know how to put on a show. Otherwise, why are we watching?”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Bad News Delivered After Oscars, Motion Picture Academy Forced to Launch $500 Million Fundraising Drive appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is suing progressive nonprofit the Tides Foundation for allegedly defrauding the BLMGNF and holding back around $33 million in donations, according to documents filed Monday in California Superior Court.
BLMGNF accused Tides of refusing “to honor its promises” to the network and alleged that Tides “continues to commandeer BLMGNF’s donations” in the lawsuit.
Instead, BLMGNF alleged, Tides was handing out money that was supposed to go to BLMGNF to what the New York Post called a “radical BLM breakaway group run by anti-police activist Melina Abdullah.”
Abdullah had previously lost a “frivolous lawsuit” against the BLMGNF, the Post reported.
Tides is a left-leaning donor-advised fund that disburses money from anonymous contributors to other organizations. The organization notably has received close to $14 million from billionaire George Soros and his son, Alex Soros, through their Open Society Foundations, according to the Post.
The fund reportedly functions as a clearinghouse, collecting donations on behalf of organizations that may be lacking a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The organization also acts as an incubator for startup progressive groups, the Washington Examiner noted.
The organization, the Post reported, takes a cut of three to nine percent from the donations it manages on behalf of other groups.
Tides has been a major bankroller of pro-Palestinian organizations that have been instigating the pro-Palestinian riots and encampments on campuses across the country, according to the Post and the Examiner.
“Tides has engaged in deceptive business practices and has operated in a quasi-banking capacity without appropriate regulatory oversight of licenses,” the BLMGNF alleged in the lawsuit.
The organization further alleged that “Tides operates with a level of autonomy and minimal regulatory scrutiny that is starkly at odds with the regulatory framework imposed on traditional financial institutions.”
The relationship between the two non-profits dates back to 2020, according to the lawsuit, when BLMGNF began receiving millions of dollars in donations following the death of George Floyd, which sparked political activism throughout the United States.
Lacking tax-exempt status at the time, BLMGNF went to Tides, asking the organization “for support in managing and holding millions of dollars in donations based on Tides’ representations that Tides would return the donations to BLM GNF upon BLM GNF’s request.”
The lawsuit alleged that Tides even committed to paying all the money due to BLMGNF “to a particular donor.”
BLMGNF ended its relationship with Tides in 2022 upon receiving tax-exempt status, the Post reported. However, Tides, the lawsuit alleged, failed to hand over the funds — an estimated $33 million — it owed to BLMGNF, according to the news outlet.
Although the organization, on June 9, 2022, claimed to have handed $7.4 million from the collective fund to BLMGNF, it instead disbursed around $4.75 million to a BLM chapter in Oklahoma City that was not affiliated with BLMGNF, the Post reported.
“Resources in the Black Lives Matter [collective action fund] were never intended to be granted to large, well-funded national organizations like Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and were always intended to be granted to local Black Lives Matter chapters,” Tides said in a statement shared with the Post. “BLMGNF’s lawsuit seeks to circumvent the intent of the Fund’s donors and deprive grassroots Black Lives Matter chapters critical resources, for its own benefit.”
“This lawsuit against the Tides Foundation is not just about financial discrepancies but the principle of rightful ownership and transparency that should govern partnerships in social justice funding,” BLMGNF’s attorney Byron McLain said Wednesday, the Post reported.
“There is an expectation for Black Lives Matter to challenge systems, break barriers and uphold the truth, no matter how uncomfortable,” BLMGNF said in a statement shared with the Examiner. “Today, that extends into non-profit operations as we call out Tides Foundation and other so-called ‘fiscal sponsors’ who exploit their role.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post BLM Global Network Starts a War with Pro-Palestinian Group Funding College Protests, Files $33M Lawsuit appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Fear-mongering climate activist Greta Thunberg has apparently expanded her disruptive protesting activities.
While most already know Thunberg as one of the first to mainstream shame people into reducing their to carbon footprints, she has apparently graduated to shaming people for not supporting a genocidal terrorist group.
Since reaching adulthood, the erstwhile climate alarmist ramped up her disruptive protesting tactics and obnoxious virtue-signaling, up to and including getting herself arrested.
Now, though, she has started using those same tactics in favor of the “Free Palestine” movement.
The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, held this year in Malmo, Sweden, has proven the perfect place for her to publicly demonstrate her newfound commitment to terrorists.
As reported in Reuters, Eurovision has become a hotspot for more pro-Palestinian protests after they allowed Israel to compete in the contest, with 20-year-old Eden Golan representing the beleaguered nation.
While Golan was rehearsing her song “Hurricane” for the contest’s semifinal, Sky News noted that an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 marched against Golan and in favor of “Palestine.”
Complete with protesters carrying signs depicting Gazan citizens hurt in the conflict, smoke canisters in the colors of the Palestinian flag, and a Eurovision style banner with the anti-Israel smear “genocide” written on it, protesters had ample chance to signal their virtuous stance while ganging up on a lone young woman.
And among the mass of protesters was the now-21-year old Greta Thunberg, who, practically since the moment of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has focused almost all of her efforts on radically pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism.
She was filmed in November of 2023 chanting “crush Zionism” at a rally, and co-wrote an op-ed in the U.K.’s The Guardian spreading lies about the death toll and proportionality of Israel’s response to Hamas, and accusing Israel of “war crimes.”
And, as reported in The Times of Israel, Thunberg has been seen carrying signs at protests reading “Stop the Holocaust” and “Jews for the liberation of Palestine.”
Of course, even though in her op-ed she insisted that this was consistent with her previous climate alarmism and environmental messaging, this move to pro-Palestinian advocacy has clearly been an attempt to keep herself relevant.
Despite Just Stop Oil and other radical climate activists continuing to make themselves public nuisances, “Palestine” has increasingly become the social justice movement of the moment.
Attendees at the Oscars this year sported pins advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, while pro-Palestinian protesters delayed the ceremony, while other celebrities have used their platforms to spread their ill-informed opinions on a war that doesn’t concern them.
And innumerable college students have had their school year completely derailed by increasingly violent anti-Israel demonstrations, with some Jewish students being counseled to go home for their own safety.
Even the president of the United States has been attempting to appease Hamas at the expense of Israel, in a transparent attempt to pander to the radical youth among his voter base.
With as radical and, honestly, easily swayed Thunberg has been in the past, it was inevitable that she would hop on the pro-Palestinian bandwagon as soon as it began gaining traction.
It would be impossible to judge her true intentions from a distance — she might be genuinely sincere in jumping on the pro-Palestinian bandwagon.
Still, it seems that Thunberg’s newfound passion for “Palestine” has come more from a desire for attention and relevance than a sincere sense of justice.
History would suggest as much.
The real question now is, what other radical opinions will Thunberg form in the future, in the quest to maintain her dwindling relevance?
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Greta Thunberg’s Back and This Time Her Tantrum Has Nothing to Do with Climate appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, asked financial institutions to use search terms like “TRUMP” and “MAGA” to comb through customer data on purchases of items like bus tickets, books or subscriptions looking for indicators of “extremism”
FinCEN also provided slides instructing banks to flag customers making purchases at stores like Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods as “potential active shooters” or terrorists, according to The New York Post.
While the Capitol incursion happened on one day and was over in a matter of hours, the protests on college campuses have continued for weeks.
The coordination between campuses, the professionally created signs, and the matching tents show clear evidence that these protesters, unlike the ones on Jan. 6, were being funded by outside, anti-Semitic and anti-American forces.
Some 2,200 people have been arrested or detained on at least 49 college campuses in 26 different states, according to Fox News.
So, where are the FBI and the IRS now? Where is FinCEN?
A group of 15 Republican senators, led by Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, has sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, demanding an investigation into whether several nonprofit organizations have violated their tax-exempt status by providing financial support to groups backing Hamas, which is a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to Just The News.
Only Republican senators requested the Educational Foundation (AJP), the Tides Foundation, the Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC Foundation), and “and other benefactors of NSJP” all be investigated by the IRS for funding hatred of Jews. https://t.co/clipjaXbZW
— Lance Wallnau (@lancewallnau) May 11, 2024
The letter specifically named the National Students for Justice in Palestine, the AJP Educational Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation as entities that should be scrutinized.
“We write to demand you open an investigation to determine if the supporters of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), including the AJP Educational Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation (WESPAC Foundation), and other benefactors of NSJP have engaged in conduct warranting revocation of their tax exempt statuses on the basis of their financial support of NSJP,” the letter said.
“It is long-established precedent that when 501(c)(3) organizations have ‘planned activities that violate laws’ or engage in activities designed ‘to induce the commission of a crime or if the accomplishment of the purpose is otherwise against public policy,’ the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has grounds to revoke their tax-exempt status,” the senators wrote.
“We should not need to remind you of the heinous support NSJP chapters across the country have voiced for Hamas, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Within 12 days after the October 7th attack, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented that ‘the national leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and many of the organization’s campus chapters explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas [emphasis added] and their armed attacks on Israeli civilians and voiced an increasingly radical call for confronting and ‘dismantling’ Zionism on U.S. college campuses,” the letter continued.
The letter pointed out that at NSJP chapter-led demonstrations, such as those at Columbia University, protesters “were reportedly chanting “We are Hamas” and “Al-Qassam [in reference to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing] you make us proud, kill another soldier now!”
“In light of this abhorrent support for an FTO, we call on you to initiate an investigation to determine whether financial supporters of NSJP, including but not limited to AJP, the WESPAC Foundation, and the Tides Foundation, have engaged in conduct warranting their tax-exempt status to be stripped,” the letter stated.
Tax-exempt nonprofits are forbidden from supporting terrorism or illegal activities. If groups like AJP, the Tides Foundation and others have been funneling money to NSJP chapters that openly embrace Hamas’s terrorist tactics and ideology, then they have violated the terms of their 501(c)(3) status.
According to The Washington Examiner, The Tides Center, one of the organizations mentioned in the letter, has been a clearinghouse for dark money donations to progressive initiatives, including anti-Israel initiatives, that has long drawn scrutiny from conservatives.
Between 2006 and 2023, the Tides Center — directly or through sub-awards — received at least $81.2 million from agencies like the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, State, Education, the Interior, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to The Washington Examiner.
It also has the support of far-left billionaires Bill Gates and George Soros.
In response to the reports that the Tides Foundation was supporting the pro-Hamas protesters, conservative commentator Glenn Beck posted on social media, “Wow, who could have guessed that George Soros and the Tides Foundation have been funding the pro-Palestine protests taking over colleges? It’s almost like they’re — gasp —NOT GRASSROOTS.”
Wow, who could have guessed that George Soros and the Tides Foundation have been funding the pro-Palestine protests taking over colleges? It’s almost like they’re — gasp —NOT GRASSROOTS. pic.twitter.com/VA9SbrxgVr
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 6, 2024
There cannot be two standards of justice in this country — one for protesters backing U.S.-designated terrorist groups and another for those fighting for election transparency.
It’s time that organizations which have been actively funding pro-terrorist groups not just lose their tax-exempt status, but face accountability and careful scrutiny about the money trail, both to and from the organizations.
The letter from the senators to the IRS is a good start, but it is only scratching the surface.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Groups Behind Protests Seizing College Campuses Get Bad News as Senators Send Letter to IRS appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Coming this summer to a city near you: taxpayer-funded identification cards for thousands of illegal immigrants.
Well, maybe to a city near you; Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials insist that some aspects of the plan are “pre-decisional,” and though both Atlanta and Houston have been named as possible locations, things are still subject to change.
The source who told Fox News that went unnamed in the report, but Fox called him or her “familiar with the program,” and I’m very willing to believe that the source is at least a federal government employee. Only a professional bureaucrat would use a term like “pre-decisonal.”
Fox said that ICE was able to confirm that the program was headed for a limited roll-out in “three or four locations in the U.S.” that would issue cards to about 10,000 illegals.
People have been talking about the “ICE Secure Docket Card” for a couple of years, and now the talk is slated to become reality, but ICE says the card will not be an official form of federal ID, according to Fox, and that it will “indicate it is for use by DHS agencies” on the card itself.
Again, only a government bureaucrat could claim — presumably with a straight face — that a card issued to someone by an agency of the federal government on the basis of who the individual is should not be considered “an official form of federal identification.”
To quote the philosopher Douglas Powers (more commonly known as Dr. Evil): Riiiiiiight.
That is, however, what the agency claimed, at least according to Fox.
“While the specifics of the card and pilot are under development, it is important to note the secure card will not be an official form of federal identification,” Fox quoted the agency as saying.
“The secure card will indicate it is for use by DHS agencies and would be provided only after national security background checks have been performed,” the ICE statement added.
Here’s the part that makes sense: Illegal aliens are often given documents when they’re released from custody, such as information about when to appear in court for a hearing about their immigration status. Those documents are on paper, and therefore can get damaged or lost.
ICE Secure Docket Cards can presumably get lost as well — at least, I haven’t seen anyone proposing that they be glued to the recipients’ forearms or anything — but at least they’re less likely to be damaged.
Instead of having to secure and protect their personal paperwork, cardholders will be able to use the card to access information specific to them — specific, that is, to their identity.
“Moving to a secure card will save the agency millions, free up resources and ensure information is quickly accessible to DHS officials while reducing the agency’s FOIA backlog,” the ICE spokesperson told Fox. “For provisionally released noncitizens, the digital modernization will provide ongoing access to important immigration documents through the secure card and connected portal.”
“Provisionally released noncitizens,” of course, means illegals. Just in case you’re not fluent in bureaucrat.
Guess what else the “not an official form of federal identification” cards will be used for, though, according to Fox?
“It would also allow for an easier verification of identity through DHS systems via officials,” Fox reported. But it’s not an official federal ID, oh, no. It’s just an ID used by federal officials, which, obviously, is something completely different.
You can decide for yourself how much of that double-speak you want to believe, of course, but personally, I’m withholding judgment.
I guess you could say I’m pre-decisional.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Biden Admin Planning to Roll Out ID Cards for Illegal Immigrants This Summer: 10,000 Cards in First-Round Issue Across US appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The death of a renowned outdoorsman in a Wyoming ski accident is being described as a homicide.
Teton County Coroner Brent Blue made the determination in the death of 71-year-old Peter Wuerslin, according to Fox News.
Wuerslin was mortally injured in a collision with an unidentified 34-year-old skier on the slopes of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort last month.
Wuerslin had served as a ski instructor at the resort since 1978, according to the Jackson Hole News & Guide.
The instructor was skiing with a group of friends when the other party collided with him, according to Ski Magazine.
In a surprising—but not unheard of—determination, the Teton County Coroner ruled the death of Jackson Hole, Wyo., ski instructor Peter Wuerslin a homicide. Click below to read the full story. #SKI https://t.co/dMLu4wVB3p
— SKI Magazine (@skimagonline) May 4, 2024
The exact nature of the collision is unclear, with one source described by Ski Magazine as a member of the ski patrol saying that the younger skier “failed to maneuver” around Wuerslin on his way down a mountain slope.
Wuerslin died three days later of injuries sustained from the crash.
The other skier was released from an area hospital the same day.
Wuerslin was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, according to Snow Brains, but the person he collided with apparently was not.
Blue described Wuerslin’s cause of death as an “intracranial hemorrhage.”
The coroner’s assessment is independent of any law enforcement investigation.
The Teton County Sheriff’s Office indicated last moth that it was investigating the collision.
Potential witnesses to the crash are being asked to call Detective Bret Bommer at 307-733-4052.
Wuerslin’s outdoor accomplishments include a six-year global bicycle ride that spanned six continents and 45,000 miles.
Friends of Wuerslin shared tributes to the ski instructor on social media, with some pointing to his extensive bicycling experience.
“We will miss Peter, who died yesterday after another skier ran into him,” Jackson, Wyoming local Angus Thuermer said of the deceased.
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort President Mary Kate Buckley described the organization as “devastated to have lost a beloved member of our community” in a statement provided to Fox.
“This is obviously very sad for the organization and the community and our heart goes out to the family.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Icon’s Death Ruled Homicide by County Coroner appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
On Friday, the social media director for the Miss USA organization, Claudia Michelle, stepped down, announcing her decision in a post to Instagram.
Three days later, the reigning Miss USA, Noelia Voigt, also posted on Instagram that she had resigned from the title of Miss USA 2023, citing her mental health.
Two days after that, UmaSofia Srivastava, who had been crowned Miss Teen USA 2023, also announced on Instagram that she was giving up her title.
What, one might ask, is going on at Miss USA?
According to the New York Post, a source who knows all three said they had coordinated their resignations.
“The decision was not easy. Noelia and UmaSofia are extremely dedicated people who worked incredibly hard for the pageant. The decisions were not taken lightly. They all decided to do this together,” the insider reportedly told the Post.
“They are afraid of speaking out more at this time because of the organization,” the anonymous source added. “They don’t want this to have any lasting harmful effect on their futures.”
Details about what, specifically, was at the root of the problem at Miss USA were somewhat sparse, and almost universally sourced anonymously, making their verification all but impossible.
Michelle, however, hinted at serious dysfunction at the highest levels of the organization.
Michelle, who said in her post that she had not signed a non-disclosure agreement as had Voigt and Srivastava and was therefore more free to speak openly, wrote of Voigt that she’d seen a “decline in her mental health” while working closely with her at the organization, and that she’d also “seen firsthand the disrespect towards Uma and her family.”
She said both title-holders had been “threatened” by the organization’s “social media rules and guidelines” — rules and guidelines that Michelle herself, as social media director for Miss USA, hadn’t even seen.
“I feel the way current management speaks about their titleholders is unprofessional and inappropriate; I disavow workplace toxicity and bullying of any kind,” she wrote.
“This toxic atmosphere is a serious concern,” a source close to the situation reportedly confirmed to the Post. “There is an urgent need for intervention at the leadership level.”
You can read their statements regarding their resignations below.
“How have we not prioritized mental health among title holders in light of what happened to Cheslie Kryst?” Dani Walker, a former Miss Montana and pageant coach, asked in a YouTube video posted Wednesday, speaking of a former Miss USA who committed suicide in 2022. “For me there is no valid excuse as to why Noelia should be resigning because of her mental health.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Miss USA and Miss Teen USA Resign Their Titles Within Two Days of Each Other Amid Reports of ‘Toxic Atmosphere’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A competitive runner from Fountain Valley, California, was stripped of his title as the men’s winner of Saturday’s Hoag Orange County Marathon in California after he was found to have violated the race’s rules.
Esteban Prado, 24, was disqualified after he accepted water from a his dad during the race, in what has been reported as a breach of the event’s regulations, according to KABC-TV.
“I know I won,” Prado said.
Esteban Prado, who spent months training for the marathon and won it, received water from a spectator. And that’s a no-no. https://t.co/a3rglm81wH
— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) May 7, 2024
According to the rules, marathon participants are only permitted to hydrate at official water stations.
OC Marathon’s Race Director Gary Kutschar explained that they were “forced to disqualify a participant” after it was verified that the runner received “unauthorized assistance from an individual on a bicycle, in violation of USA Track & Field rules and our race regulations.”
“We take these rules seriously to ensure fairness and the integrity of our event for all competitors,” Kutschar concluded.
Prado had reportedly trained for approximately four months for the marathon and finished, with a time of 2 hours, 24 minutes, and 54 seconds.
“About like a three- to four-month period of just 100-mile week trainings,” Prado said, according to KNBC. “Just kind of balancing that with work, and also just including that in the weekend.”
He was informed of his disqualification via a call from the race director on Sunday.
A father sees that his son is thirsty. So he hands a bottle of water to his offspring, who takes a slug.
Is that wrong?
Well, yes, it’s a rules violation during a marathon, and it resulted in Esteban Prado being disqualified as the O.C. Marathon winner.https://t.co/9p3OJxgGA9 pic.twitter.com/58N07pwiP3
— David Carrillo Peñaloza (@ByDCP) May 7, 2024
Prado did acknowledge his ignorance of the specific rule against receiving water from spectators, and following his disqualification, Jason Yang of San Pedro was declared the winner with a running time of 2 hours, 25 minutes, 11 seconds.
Prado told KABC that he has no interest in contesting the decision, emphasizing that the victory held no tangible benefit for him: “I don’t want to argue over something that’s 15 minutes away from you. You get no money or anything.”
He also stated his belief that Yang had ratted him out to the race’s administrators, telling KABC, “The only person that could see me within range was second place.”
He then took a direct shot at Yang: “You know, if he wanted that congratulations for that first place, if he really felt like he needed it, it’s just for him at the end of the day.”
California marathon winner Esteban Prado disqualified for accepting cup of water from his dad during race: ‘I know I won’ https://t.co/3CfmG6lMoO pic.twitter.com/f5W4xgcB6L
— New York Post (@nypost) May 8, 2024
Unfortunately, this disqualification means Prado cannot use his finishing time to qualify for future races, though he plans to compete again in the fall.
This time, he will be adhering to all regulations.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Marathon Winner Disqualified After He’s Caught Receiving ‘Unauthorized Assistance’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
An Israeli businessman who also held Canadian citizenship has been murdered in Egypt.
Some media accounts said that a terrorist group that had been previously unknown claimed credit for the attack, video of which was widely shared on social media. There were also reports the incident began as a robbery.
The Times of Israel reported that Egyptian authorities had taken a man into custody.
Ziv Kipper was shot to death Tuesday in Alexandria.
His widow, Oksana Kipper, said she was told the attack took place because her husband was Jewish.
“He wasn’t robbed,” she said.
Israeli-Canadian businessman murdered in Egypt in apparent antisemitic attack https://t.co/1tofxqAsS6
— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) May 8, 2024
Reuters reported that an Egyptian security source claimed the incident was a robbery, not a terrorist attack.
Egypt has launched a criminal investigation into the shooting, the BBC reported.
Kipper was the CEO of the Egypt-based OK Group LLC, which exports frozen fruits and vegetables, according to the Times. The company has offices in Israel and Ukraine.
A post on Telegram from a group calling itself the Vanguard of Liberation Group for Martyr Mohamed Salah said it killed Kipper because he was a Mossad agent, according to The Jerusalem Post.
“Wait for the next,” the group said in a statement. “Shalom from the children of Gaza.”
Reuters reported that Egyptian security sources said they had nothing to share about the group.
Kipper’s death was “a step on the path of the Egyptian people’s struggle against the Zionist enemy,” the group said, according to the Times.
A group calling itself “Vanguards of Liberation – Martyr Mohammed Salah Groups” claims it murdered an Israeli “agent” in Egypt today.
Mohammed Saleh was an Egyptian police officer who murdered three IDF soldiers near the Israel-Egypt border in June 2023. pic.twitter.com/K7ucUbrLlo— Aleph א (@no_itsmyturn) May 7, 2024
Mohammed Salah Ibrahim killed three Israel Defense Forces soldiers in a June 2023 attack along the Egyptian border.
Global Affairs Canada said that it was “aware of the reports of the death of a Canadian Citizen in Egypt,” according to the Post.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Islamic Terror Group Says It Has Murdered Israeli-Canadian Businessman as Revenge for Gaza appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Nothing can shock an MSNBC analyst like the idea that the American people are paying attention.
On the leftist network on Wednesday, host Ana Cabrera brought up the findings of a poll last week that found independent voters think President Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump.
Considering what Biden’s Justice Department and his political party have been up to lately, that would be a fairly easy conclusion to draw — but not so easy for Cabrera’s guest.
Cabrera cited a poll by NPR/PBS NewsHour (hotbeds of right-wing thinking) that found that 53 percent of independent voters think Biden’s re-election would “weaken our democracy.”
Only 42 percent said the same thing about Trump’s return to the White House.
“I find it shocking, honestly. I can’t make sense of that number. I wish I could,” analyst Susan Del Percio told Cabrera, appearing to be completely baffled.
[ffad_ic1]
“I wish I could have some really great insight to it, but I don’t know if it’s an outlier or not, because the other numbers with independents and Biden are going in the right direction,” she said. “So, that may be it.”
MSNBC panel in utter disbelief that more independent voters think Biden is a greater threat to democracy than Trump pic.twitter.com/x1qK9QCfCK
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 9, 2024
Now, first, it’s worth noting that Del Percio is billed as a “Republican strategist” — so Republican that she took a $160,000-a-year job as a “special advisor” to New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014-15, as the New York Post reported at the time. (She publicly repented of it after Cuomo’s sexual harassment problems got too big to ignore.)
Second, it’s worth reiterating that this is MSNBC, a network that has dedicated itself to attacking Trump ever since he rode down the escalator in 2015 to announce his campaign for the presidency.
This is the network of “Morning Joe” Scarborough and his Trump-hating wife; the television home of the racist Joy Reid and the rabidly anti-Trump Rachel Maddow.
So, it’s clear that lucid objectivity isn’t exactly a hiring point — not for MSNBC anchors, hosts or contributors.
Del Percio is looking for some “great insight” into the poll’s findings? Maybe this will help.
It’s fair to say that Biden himself — with the assistance of the establishment media — has made the “defense of democracy” line his biggest talking point. Virtually since taking office, his administration has claimed that Trump supporters and elected Republicans who support the “Make America Great Again” agenda are a threat to the American system of government.
It’s been a theme of coverage of the 2024 campaign in liberal media outlets since Biden’s re-election effort began in earnest in 2022, when The New York Times, for example, headlined a report “Biden Puts Defense of Democracy at Center of Agenda, at Home and Abroad.”
The hard reality, obvious to even a mildly objective observer, is that for all its talk about “saving democracy,” it’s the Biden administration that has spent three years proving it’s the real danger to American freedoms.
It’s the Biden administration that has used its ties to Big Tech to squelch dissent and that has used law enforcement powers against American citizens exercising their rights of free speech.
And it’s the Biden Justice Department and the Democratic Party that supports it that are, in real time, engaging in an unprecedented act of political persecution under cover of law in the form of trumped-up criminal charges against the country’s leading opposition figure.
Progressives who love to preach about the dangers of Russian President Vladimir Putin are doing a bang-up job following his lead when it comes to power politics.
And social media users noticed:
Maybe, just maybe, trying to stop your opponent using the court systems is the biggest threat.
— RDS (@RDS7500) May 9, 2024
They need to get their heads out of their bubble and actually do their job and find out why. Real journalists would investigate, but I think we know they aren’t real! #propagandapress
— Cathy Boote (@cboote) May 9, 2024
How are they shocked? The Biden administration has weaponized the judicial system to try and eliminate the leader of the opposition.
Trump-no wars, low inflation, secure borders
Biden-2 wars, high inflation, open borders
Americans can’t afford another 4 years of the last 4…
— TyraMuch? (@tyfavara) May 9, 2024
The absurdity of Del Percio’s point is even more evident when she ended by telling Cabrera that Trump’s ongoing criminal trial in Manhattan should be televised to increase its impact on voters.
It was an admission that the Democratic Party needs its criminal cases against the former president to win over the average American. And maybe, if Del Percio could put her thinking cap on, she might see that voters can see what’s happening, too.
What Democrats, the mainstream media and the hack leftists at MSNBC refuse to acknowledge is that when they’re prosecuting Trump, they’re persecuting his supporters, not only battling them politically — which is understandable — but bringing in the powers of federal and state governments to smother them legally.
That’s not democracy, it’s authoritarianism, and it’s a festering weed that’s growing in the rank shadows of the Biden administration.
Republican voters can see that, of course. What the poll showed is that a majority of independents can see it too.
And an MSNBC analyst is shocked?
She must not be paying attention. Americans are.
The election in November is going to prove how much.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post MSNBC Analyst Shocked as Independent Voters Turn Biden’s Biggest Talking Point Against Him in New Poll appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Another day, another piece of bad election-year news for proponents of Bidenomics.
The Department of Labor on Thursday released its weekly report of seasonally adjusted data on new unemployment claims through May 4, reporting a total of 231,000 jobless claims.
That number was both up from the previous week’s 209,000 and higher than the 214,000 claims Dow Jones had anticipated, according to CNBC.
In fact, it was the highest number since August, spurring CNBC to label the report “a potential sign that an otherwise robust labor market is changing.”
Continuing jobless claims were up 17,00o from the week prior, while the four-week moving average of claims also showed an increase, up 4,750 week-to-week.
“Weekly jobless claims are one of the timeliest indicators of when the economy is starting to undergo serious deterioration, and the magnitude of new layoffs this week looks worrisome,” Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS, told CNBC.
“One week does not a trend make, but we can no longer be sure that calm seas lie ahead for the US economy if today’s weekly jobless claims are any indication,” he added.
Nonfarm payrolls were expected to rise by 240,000 in April, but only increased by 175,000, the report also said — the smallest month-to-month rise since October.
Not all the news was bad, however. The unemployment rate “inched up” from 3.8 to 3.9 percent, for example, meaning that it has stayed below 4 percent for over two years — “the longest such streak since the 1960s,” according to The Associated Press.
Also, as Reuters noted, a slowing labor market makes additional interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve somewhat more likely.
The outlet reported that a “handful of economists” expect to see the first rate cut in July, but most don’t think the Fed will act before September.
Some of the numbers should probably be taken with a grain of salt at this time of year, according to one expert who talked with Reuters.
“Given that the varied timing of school spring breaks, and holidays like Easter and Passover, makes the seasonal adjustment process very complicated, we often see volatile readings in the seasonally adjusted data around this time of year,” JP Morgan economist Daniel Silver told the outlet.
Over 10,000 of the new claims came from New York alone, prompting speculation that much of that volume could be attributed to Citigroup employees who had been laid off in January but paid 90 days of severance finally becoming eligible for unemployment insurance benefits in April.
Reuters noted that California, Illinois, Indiana and Texas also saw large increases in new unemployment claims, but only one state — Iowa — saw claims drop by more than 1,000.
Stocks initially fell after the report, but by late morning had more than rebounded. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly half a point by about 11:30.
The AP said strong consumer spending was responsible for preventing a recession and keeping American jobs “plentiful.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Weekly Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Shoot Up to ‘Worrisome’ Level appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Big Pharma giant Pfizer confirmed on Wednesday that it will settle more than 10,000 lawsuits over allegations that the company failed to warn people about possible cancer risks caused by their Zantac product.
Zantac is the company’s once-popular anti-heartburn medication featured in a multitude of television commercials, many of which featured an animated fireman character.
But in 2020, the Food and Drug Administration warned that Zantac and its generic version, called ranitidine, should be pulled from the shelves after a cancer-causing substance called NDMA was discovered as a contaminant linked to the medication.
Now, the company has agreed to settle the thousands of cases filed in state courts all across the nation over the substance, according to Bloomberg News.
Terms of the Pfizer settlements have not been disclosed.
“Pfizer has explored and will continue to explore opportunistic settlements of certain cases if appropriate, and has settled certain cases,” the company said in a statement.
Pfizer and other companies began developing the generic version of ranitidine in 1997 once Glaxo’s patent for the ingredient expired, according to the New York Post.
“The company has not sold a Zantac product in more than 15 years and did so only for a limited period of time,” the statement from Pfizer added.
After the FDA made its recommendation to pull the product, thousands of lawsuits were filed against pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim.
Sanofi already settled about 4,000 lawsuits last month.
Bloomberg reported that Sanofi will pay $100 million in its settlement, marking an average of $25,000 for each plaintiff.
But Sanofi still faces more than 20,000 lawsuits in the state of Delaware.
Indeed, there are up to 70,000 cases in Delaware courts against Sanofi and the other Big Pharma companies.
“Sanofi is settling these cases, not because we believe the claims have any merit, but rather to avoid the expense and ongoing distraction of the litigation,” the company said in a statement.
Like Sanofi, GSK has settled some of the suits leveled against the firm.
According to the Daily Mail, NDMA is a common byproduct of many industrial processes, including the making of rocket fuel.
“NDMA is a ‘‘forever chemical,’ meaning that it doesn’t degrade, or break down, naturally in our bodies and is believed to cause DNA damage,” the outlet reported.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Pfizer to Settle 10K Lawsuits Over Drug Linked to Cancer, Costing Company Millions appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Having been a university professor, I’ve been to a lot of commencement ceremonies.
With our campus in a poor, semi-rural area, it was especially moving to see students who were not only the first in their family to get a college degree, but the first to have even graduated from high school.
Sometimes it was boring, but it never got old. It was routine for me, but for some graduates and their families, it was an event of a lifetime.
Which makes what happened with the speaker at The Ohio State University’s recent spring commencement especially grievous.
You see, Chris Pan thought it was all about only him. Perhaps he hoped to promote himself as a professional speaker or guru.
Worse, Pan wrote his speech while high on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, according to The Columbus Dispatch. He reportedly said he also sought help from ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence.
It showed.
Beginning the university’s commencement address, Pan — an OSU graduate and Harvard MBA who worked for PepsiCo and Facebook before launching a jewelry business — noted the usual things about hard work, late-night studying, achievement and such.
He led students in applauding the support of their families in their accomplishments.
I’ve heard all this before — many times. It’s standard commencement fare, but meaningful for those graduating and their loved ones.
But then the crowd at Ohio State — and the rest of us via X — heard things that were novel.
No, not novel. Bizarre. And completely inappropriate.
The worst commencement address in the history of commencement addresses.
Chris Pan, 05/05/24 | The Ohio State University pic.twitter.com/UlX16R4yuZ
— Kevin McMahon (@Kevin__McMahon) May 7, 2024
Pan called on the crowd to stand and join with him in a song, complete with prepared lyrics projected on a screen.
And hand motions. Lots of hand motions. And breathing exercises — got to have breathing exercises at graduation.
Having, he said, properly gotten everyone in the right state of mind, Pan then gave the old parable about blind men perceiving different aspects of an elephant (trunk as a snake, side as a wall, tail as rope).
No problem with that to make a point.
Then Pan said (and imagine the uproar if he did this in a Christian context) “My goal today is to share new perspectives that will lead you to financial, emotional and spiritual freedom.”
He then talked about money and government policies. In promoting Bitcoin, he called on university President Walter Carter to be his assistant, and did a magic trick, changing quarters into Bitcoin.
Ba-da-BOOM.
Pan explained his self-therapy on emotional health through singing, and talked of spiritual aspects of making one’s soul grow.
As music began to play, he led the crowd in a meditation session/TED talk about a person they might admire and how one can change one’s life.
He then told the crowd he would make a free bracelet from his company available to each of them “as an apology for listening to me talk about Bitcoin,”) the Dispatch reported.
Pan finally moved to what might be considered a traditional commencement speech, with admonitions on learning forgiveness, compassion, resilience and tolerance.
He hearkened back to the elephant parable to talk about how tolerance allows people to hold multiple perspectives, especially in gatherings among those of different cultures, and how inner peace results in world peace.
Usual commencement topics.
But then, back to the music (Pan drank from a coffee cup with the price tag still on it), more on breathing, and an encouragement to learn from others with different perspectives.
Overall, Pan provided some appropriate statements about perspective and harmony.
Despite Pan’s talents and creativity, there are some ways of presenting material that don’t fit at something like commencement. Especially if they come from being high and from using artificial intelligence.
Earlier versions of his speech posted online talked of the current conflict in the Middle East and called for him to remove his shirt. Thankfully, he did neither.
And perhaps Pan’s motive for his little production was contained in his statement that he would be willing to be your teaching assistant for life.
Followed, of course, by a slide of his contact information and website.
Meaning, it seems like Pan’s little show was really about him.
And of it, Kevin McMahon of Townhall posted on X: “The worst commencement address in the history of commencement addresses.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Ohio State Graduates Suffer Through ‘The Worst Commencement Address in the History of Commencement Addresses’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Most people have at least a vague notion of the virtue of self-sacrifice.
But considering how few people in the developed world face life-or-death situations on a daily basis, how many of us could truly embody that virtue if it came down to it?
How many people would be able to put aside their self-preservation instinct and give up their own life for the people they love?
One North Carolina father, when presented with this situation, was able to rise to that calling, sacrificing his own life when his children fell into a river.
According to local news outlet WGHP, Benny Bowers Jr., a native of Surrey County, North Carolina, was out fishing with his children on April 28 when three of his four sons fell into the Yadkin River.
WGHP reported that, although the family called 911 immediately, the strength of the current forced Bowers to make that fateful, split-second decision.
He jumped in, rescuing his struggling children, but Bowers himself never resurfaced.
Rescue crews quickly came on the scene, The Charlotte Observer noting that they searched the entire day with no success, suspending the search once it grew too dark.
They ended up finding his body around 11 a.m. on April 29, near the juncture of the Yadkin River and the Ararat River in Siloam, where he originally vanished.
Tragic as the loss of this loving father was, Bowers’ children had only glowing praise for the heroic actions of their father, who wen by the name Benji, according to the Observer.
His 10-year-old son, Benny Bowers III, told WGHP “He was a brave man. And if you wanted him to help, he would be there for you.”
Bowers’ sister, Angela Stewart, told WGHP about how much her brother loved the Lord, and Bowers’ son called his father “the greatest dad I could ever have, and he’s a hero. A real-life hero.”
Friends and family shared their own tributes on Facebook, with Bowers’ cousin, Jason Johnson, writing, “I’ve been thinking about all the things I could say about Benji Bowers. If I could put it all in one word it would be Love. To know him was to love him. Always the jokester. The life of the party. God, Family, friends and fishing were what matters most.”
And Bowers truly lived up to the praise of his son, his sister and his cousin.
While too many Christians in the secular culture of the West see their commitment to the Lord as more of a social thing, Bowers clearly took his commitment to God seriously, up to and including sacrificing himself for the sake of his children.
In doing so, Bowers personified the words of Christ, who said in John’s Gospel that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
Every child deserves a father like Bowers, who was devoted to God first, and then put his family before everything else.
Benny Bowers Jr. was, as his son said, a real-life hero, animated by the words of Christ and his love for the Lord.
Bowers had that “greater love,” to “lay down his life” for his children. If America had more fathers like him, maybe that would be enough to turn the nihilistic, atheistic culture of the West back to God.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post ‘A Real-Life Hero’: Father Sacrifices His Life to Save Three Children appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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