Air Force One has been grounded a second time by the Los Angeles wildfires, as President Biden cancels his last foreign trip to focus on the deadly inferno.
Biden was planning to leave the country Thursday to meet the Pope, but the president scrapped his plans as the blaze continued to rage in Los Angeles County.
The fires erupted Tuesday as high winds and dry conditions turned Los Angeles into a tinderbox - and whole neighborhoods into scenes of Biblical destruction.
The dangerous winds also caused Biden, who was in the area, to cancel a planned speech announcing a pair of national monuments near Joshua Tree National Park.
The windstorm also kept Biden's plane on the ground for a day, delaying his departure back to Washington D.C., where he gave a eulogy at Jimmy Carter's funeral on Thursday.
Before leaving California, Biden attended a briefing on the wildfires where he was criticized for making some flippant comments, including sharing the "good news" that he had become a great-grandfather.
"We're prepared to do anything and everything as long as it takes to contain these fires and help reconstruct, make sure that we can get back to normal," Biden said.
Biden declared a major disaster declaration Wednesday on his way back to the nation's capital, unlocking federal money for the recovery effort.
The Catholic president was planning to visit Rome to meet with Pope Francis on a three-day tour of Italy, but those plans were scuttled.
“After returning this evening from Los Angeles, where earlier today he had met with police, fire and emergency personnel fighting the historic fires raging in the area and approved a Major Disaster declaration for California, President Biden made the decision to cancel his upcoming trip to Italy to remain focused on directing the full federal response in the days ahead,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
The wildfires are already considered the most expensive in American history with an estimated cost of up to $150 billion.
After days of making little progress, firefighters had started to contain the two largest and most destructive fires - the Palisades fire and Eaton fire - as of Friday.
At least 10 people have died, and thousands of structures have been destroyed.
Biden has blamed the devastation on climate change, while President-elect Trump has targeted poor leadership from Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom (D).
President-elect Trump's return to the Oval Office has brought a flurry of speculation about his use of the pardon power - and whether he might try to pardon himself.
Trump was indicted four separate times by Democrat-aligned prosecutors as he sought to reclaim the presidency, but only one of the cases made it to a trial - and Trump won re-election anyway after his conviction.
In a past interview while campaigning for re-election, Trump told NBC News that he was not likely to pardon himself because he is innocent.
“I think it’s very unlikely. What, what did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said at the time. “You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?”
The efforts to prosecute Trump ended with a whimper on Friday as he was sentenced to an "unconditional discharge" in New York. That means Trump will not face jails, fines, or any other concrete punishment - but it cements the liberal talking point that Trump is a "convicted felon."
Trump swiftly vowed to appeal, while again denouncing the case as a political sham.
"Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump wrote.
Trump has little use for a self-pardon, since his only criminal conviction is at the state level and presidents can only grant pardons for federal offenses.
Both of Trump's federal cases have been dismissed by the prosecutor, Jack Smith, in the wake of Trump's comeback victory.
A separate state prosecution in Georgia is in limbo after the district attorney, Fani Willis, was removed for misconduct in December.
Of course, if Trump had a reason to pardon himself, there would be little Democrats could say against him after Joe Biden's selfish decision to let his own son Hunter off the hook for federal crimes.
Biden said in an exit interview this week that he is still considering pre-emptive pardons for people like Anthony Fauci, as Trump's critics accuse him of harboring plans for retribution.
Some have cautioned Biden against offering pre-emptive pardons, warning they could make the people he is trying to help look guilty.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
President-elect Donald Trump's influence over world, national, and state affairs has been on display ever since his landslide victory, in both the Electoral College and popular vote numbers, in November.
He openly challenged Canada's leadership, and the prime minister's resignation followed shortly after. He promised action on illegal immigration and Mexican officials began diverting those caravans of would-be illegal aliens heading to the U.S.
Suddenly, too, there are comments that perhaps the Russia-Ukraine war might reach a settlement.
Now Trump's agenda is hitting at the state level.
He already has set up his appointees in a "Department of Governor Efficiency," or DOGE, assigned to crack down on the hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars in wasteful spending by the government. X's chief, Elon Musk, is one of his leaders in that campaign.
Now the Washington Examiner is reporting that Kelly Ayotte, a Republican governor in New Hampshire, is following suit, with a state Commission of Government Efficiency.
"Signed my first Executive Order to create the Commission on Government Efficiency – or as I like to call it, 'COGE'! We're going to roll up our sleeves and find ways to streamline government, cut spending, and create value for our taxpayers," she told her state's residents in a social media post.
"New Hampshire is moving in the right direction, and no one deserves more credit for that after four terms at the helm than Gov. Chris Sununu. Thank you, Governor," she added.
Democrats and other leftists in the state already are in an uproar, accusing Ayotte of "laying the groundwork for massive budget cuts to services that people rely on," according to state Democrat chief Ray Buckley.
The governor is scheduled to propose her budget to the legislature soon, and lawmakers are faced with state agency requests for nearly $17 billion.
Republicans held a differing perspective.
"I think it's a brilliant approach," Republican Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais told Fox News. "Appointing a commission like this to go after any kind of bloat, I think, is a perfect approach and certainly going to be really beneficial for state government and also certainly helps us downstream at the local level as well."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg previously has admitted in a letter to Congress that the Joe Biden administration pushed and coerced his company in order to get ideas the leftist Democrats didn't like censored.
And he's said he regretted his company didn't push back harder on censorship schemes that attacked Americans' First Amendment rights to discuss alternative COVID-19 treatments, their doubts about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and much more.
Now he's confirmed in an interview that Biden administration officials screamed and swore at his employees in order to bully and bludgeon them into complying with Biden's agenda.
The Daily Mail reported details about the horrific behavior of Biden officials was detailed in Zuckerberg's interview with Joe Rogan.
Zuckerberg, chief of Meta which is the parent company of Facebook, said he "was stunned" when the White House contacted Facebook "to demand a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV in his movie 'Once Upon A Time in Hollywood' was taken down."
The Democrats, he explained, were upset by the caption, which said, "10 years from now you're going to see an ad that says if you took a Covid vaccine you'd be eligible for a payment."
Zuckerberg has moved away, politically, from the Democrats in recent weeks, with the admission about the coercion from the White House, followed by his decision to eliminate the team of left-leaning "fact-checkers" his company long has used, and replace them with a "community notes" option to enhance free speech.
He also confirmed that Biden's staff "would demand the platform censor information that was accurate, including that COVID vaccines can cause side effects."
Biden's staff "pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly true," he confirmed.
In fact, the mRNA shots mandated by many governments and corporations during the pandemic do, in fact, have the possibility of causing side effects, up to and including death through myocarditis and more.
Zuckerberg said a "turning point for his approach to censorship under Biden came when the president publicly said social media memes combatting his pandemic narrative were 'killing people.'" He said "all these different agencies and branches" of government started investigating him.
Zuckerberg questioned whether the Biden threats were legal.
The Washington Examiner reported Zuckerberg noted he wasn't on the receiving end of the coercion directly, as the calls went to his company.
But he confirmed Biden staff members would call Meta workers and "scream at them and curse."
Meta's decision to stop content moderation is not supported by the First Amendment.
But it is a threat to our democracy and a dangerous capitulation to an authoritarian President.
My full statement below pic.twitter.com/7n1qzxYlD9
— Rep. Dan Goldman (@RepDanGoldman) January 9, 2025
The confirmation was coming from Zuckerberg just as Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, wildly claimed that allowing free speech on Facebook violated the Constitution's First Amendment.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A new report reveals that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who already is being blamed for contributing to this week's fire hellstorm that hit the city and destroyed thousands of homes by cutting some $17 million from the fire department's budget, did much worse.
In fact, the Daily Mail report accuses her of ordering another $49 million in fire department budget cuts only a few days before the city's world turned smoky as blazes erupted amid 100 mph winds, costing at least ten lives and literally uncountable home losses.
The report said the demands were found in a "leaked memo."
"The extra cuts, requested just days before fires broke out and devastated swathes of Los Angeles, would have shut down 16 fire stations and crippled the department's ability to respond to emergencies, sources said," according to the report.
The publication said current and former senior officers in the department were briefed on the "shocking" plan.
The memo comes from January 6, just hours before the Palisades Fire erupted.
The Daily Mail said the memo was sent by fire department officials at city hall to division chiefs and captains.
It threatened, "The LAFD is still going through an FY [financial year] 2024/2025 $48.8million budget reduction exercise with the CAO [City Attorney's Office]. The only way to provide cost savings would be to close as many as 16 fire stations (not resources, fire stations); this equates to at least one fire station per City Council District."
This week, an estimated 54 square miles of the city have been reduced to dirt, concrete, and rubble by five separate fires.
"The billionaire and celebrity-inhabited neighborhood of Pacific Palisades was almost completely wiped off the map," the report said.
There have been multiple calls for Bass, as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom, to leave as they failed to address a long list of issues that impacted the fires' lethality. Among them was a failure to make sure there was water for fire hydrants, and a long-standing problem with a failure to create fire breaks in the region.
The firestorm was aggravated by Santa Ana winds, which pushed the sparks and flames from neighborhood to neighborhood in literally seconds.
There also are charges the city had shipped some of its equipment to Ukraine.
The report said the damages, so far, have been estimated at $49 billion in homes, businesses, schools, and churches lost to the 120-foot-tall flames.
Reports Friday said the Palisades Fire in 8% contained, the Eaton Fire uncontained, the Kenneth Fire and Hurst Fire 35%, and the Lidia Fire 75%.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The judicial system in the state of New York once was "considered the premier legal system in the country."
Not anymore, according to constitutional expert "Jonathan Turley, a Fox contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
He cited the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump on Friday on wild business records claims by Juan Merchan, a sentence of no jail or probation or fines under a "discharge" standard.
"With the sentencing of Donald Trump on Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole," Turley explained.
"Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes.
"Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day. The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total 'b—s–t.'"
He explained the New York system was unable to "handle the truth."
It was a "case based on a non-crime. DA Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory," he explained.
In fact, Bragg, who campaigned for office on the idea of prosecuting Trump, for something, anything, claimed that a "long-dead misdemeanor" actually was a live felony "by using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried."
Then the judge, who has been known to financially support Democrats, and whose daughter was raising money for Democrats off her father's courtroom rulings against Trump, joined in.
Merchan "not only allowed those charges to be brought to trial but then added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trump at any cost," Turley explained.
In the court of public opinion, the New York agenda failed, as Trump got 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election.
"Many polls showed that the public saw the Manhattan criminal case for what it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal and media establishments in one of our nation's most historic elections," Turley explained.
He said the state system still has a chance to redeem itself, but few "are holding their breath."
It still could toss James's "equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Engoron's use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision."
He said the Merchan agenda now will end up before the Supreme Court itself, after the judge's "lack of seriousness in the case" was on display.
In the case, Bragg claimed business reporting errata by Trump's companies amounted to felonies, even though they ordinarily would have been misdemeanors for which the statute of limitations had expired.
Bragg said they were felonies because they were in pursuit of some other, unidentified, crime. In fact, jurors failed to identify that crime, and Merchan inexplicably said their verdict didn't have to be unanimous in the case that was just one prong of Democrats' multi-jurisdiction lawfare campaign, a failed effort to use various created civil and criminal cases to keep him from running for president again..
Bragg brought to court, and Merchan allowed, salacious testimony from a former porn star and a discredited lawyer in order to convince jurors in the leftist enclave of Manhattan, which repeatedly has voted by vast majorities against Trump, to convict Trump of 34 counts.
The issue was that Trump's lawyer paid the porn star for silence about an alleged affair both denied happened. The payments made to the lawyer were labeled as legal expenses.
In a shocking reversal, two death row inmates who were spared capital punishment by Joe Biden say they don't want clemency.
Shannon Agofsky and Len Davis are challenging Biden's move, which they fear could undermine their efforts to overturn their convictions on appeal.
Both men are on death row at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, and each maintains their innocence.
They fear that having their sentences reduced to life without parole will lower the level of scrutiny courts must apply to their cases.
Agofsky was convicted for stomping another inmate to death while incarcerated in Texas for a separate murder and kidnapping of a bank president. Davis, a former New Orleans cop, was found guilty of hiring a hitman to kill a woman who filed a complaint against him.
In one of his last actions as president, Biden commuted the sentences of nearly every federal death row inmate, sparking furious backlash from the families of victims. But Biden also blindsided Agofsky and Davis, who say they do not want - and never asked - to be taken off death row.
"The defendant never requested commutation. The defendant never filed for commutation," a filing from Arofsky's lawyers says. "The defendant does not want commutation, and refused to sign the papers offered with the commutation."
“He doesn’t want to die in prison being labeled a cold-blooded killer,” his wife, Laura Agofsky, told NBC News.
Meanwhile, Davis "has always maintained his innocence and argued that federal court had no jurisdiction to try him for civil rights offenses," his filing says.
Other beneficiaries of Biden's clemency have responded by demanding even greater relief than Biden provided. Brandon Council, who was convicted of murdering two bank tellers in cold blood, has asked for a "compassionate release" since Biden's announcement.
The lame duck president made exceptions for three of the most infamous criminals on death row: Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Tree of Life synagogue killer Robert Bowers.
Biden's critics have accused him of moral hypocrisy, arguing he drew an arbitrary distinction between those he spared and those he did not - while opening up old wounds for victims just before Christmas.
"I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level," Biden said at the time. "In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted."
A 1927 Supreme Court ruling found that a convict's consent is not needed for a president to grant pardons. Unfortunately for the victims, Biden's pardons cannot be reversed by President-elect Trump, either.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito accepted a request to speak with Donald Trump on the phone, one day before the president-elect asked the top court to halt his criminal sentencing.
"William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position," Justice Alito confirmed to ABC News Wednesday. "I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon."
Trump's petition asks the court to block his Friday sentencing in his New York criminal case, citing the Supreme Court's own landmark ruling on presidential immunity last year.
Alito says he did not discuss any court business with Trump during their call, and he was not aware of Trump's emergency application, which had not been filed yet.
One of the court's most reliable conservatives, Alito has been a regular target of criticism from Democrats and reformists who want to discredit and overhaul the Supreme Court.
The justice was drawn into a firestorm last year over flags displayed at his home that critics tied to the January 6th riot. Alito responded with a fiery letter making it clear he had no intention of stepping aside from any cases.
Alito's phone call with Trump has given critics fresh fodder. They say it represents an unusual level of communication between a Supreme Court justice and an incoming president, and damages trust in the judiciary.
"No person, no matter who they are, should engage in out-of-court communication with a judge or justice who's considering that person's case," Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonpartisan group Fix the Court, said.
The trial judge in Trump's criminal case, Juan Merchan, has set the sentencing for Friday, January 10th - just 10 days before Trump's inauguration.
The same reasons that presidents enjoy immunity from prosecution also apply to a president-elect, Trump's lawyers said, noting his victory has already been certified by Congress.
"President Trump is currently engaged in the most crucial and sensitive tasks of preparing to assume the Executive Power in less than two weeks, all of which are essential to the United States’ national security and vital interests," they wrote.
Meanwhile, Alito's defenders say the backlash over his phone call is overblown - and just more evidence the Supreme Court is facing a leftist assault.
Carrie Severino, of the Judicial Crisis Network, dismissed the backlash over the phone call as "the newest manufactured 'ethics' scandal over a simple reference check."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – The new year has brought no respite for the United Nations and its various agencies – especially UNRWA – with regard to the hits, which keep coming, emphasizing its deep ties with Islamist terrorist organizations, according to a recently published report by U.N. Watch.
The explosive report reveals years of coordination and close collaboration between Islamists and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, up to and including the collusion of at least its two most recent commissioners-general – current head Phillippe Lazzarini, and previous chief Pierre Krähenbühl, who held the role from 2014-2019.
The report starts strongly, arguing how despite its claims to be a humanitarian agency, UNRWA "has forged an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations." It continues that this relationship has allowed Hamas unprecedented influence in the policies and practices of a "UN agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states." Indeed, UNRWA is the largest of all the U.N. agencies.
U.N. Watch called for UNRWA's dismantlement, describing the organization as "a conduit for terrorism and a facilitator of violence in the Middle East." "UNRWA's failure to maintain neutrality, combined with its susceptibility to influence from terrorist groups, undermines its credibility as a humanitarian agency and perpetuates conflict in the region," the group said. "It is time for donors to reconsider their support, dismantle the Agency, and seek alternative frameworks to provide effective aid to Palestinians in need."
And U.N. Watch's report was not mere speculation, it also brought the receipts. It listed dozens of instances – with images obtained from open sources – of senior UNRWA officials meeting with terrorist leaders.
Examples included Lazzarini meeting with Fathi al-Sharif, a teachers' union chief and Hamas leader in Beirut. He had for years openly glorified Hamas terrorist attacks, including on his personal Facebook page. It was only after an unnamed government protested to UNRWA about al-Sharif's activities did the U.N. body suspend him. Hamas and other terrorist organizations immediately shut down UNRWA in Lebanon, prompting Lazzarini to fly to Beirut in June 2024 to smooth out the situation. The IDF eliminated al-Sharif in a missile strike on Sept. 30.
Krähenbühl, who was forced to step down from his UNRWA position in 2019 following a corruption and sexual abuse scandal – and who was absurdly appointed to head up the International Red Cross in 2024 (are you seeing a pattern yet?) – met with terrorist leaders from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in February 2017, where he emphasized the "spirit of partnership" between them and UNRWA.
In June 2021, former deputy commissioner-general Leni Stenseth went cap-in-hand to Gaza to kiss the ring of Oct. 7 terrorist mastermind and Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. Hamas had been angry with UNRWA after its then Gaza Director Matthias Schmale, an ardent supporter of the Palestinian narrative, unwittingly admitted in a TV interview that Israeli strikes on Hamas, during the May 2021 war, were "very precise." While supporters of Israel routinely shared the footage, Hamas was furious, declaring Schmale persona non grata in the Strip. Stenseth, who is now director-general of Norway's foreign ministry – and it cannot be a coincidence this is the nation which most ardently supports the Palestinian cause – threw Schmale under the bus calling his interview "indefensible."
"People need to understand that UNRWA isn't the firefighter, it's the arsonist. The U.S. and other Western nations who have given billions to UNRWA need to wake up.. Your money is being used to employ terrorists, indoctrinate children, and build the infrastructure of hate and violence. The U.S. alone has given more than $1 billion to UNRWA over the past four years. This is a betrayal of your taxpayers and your values," Neuer said.
The report paints a picture of a symbiotic relationship, and one in which UNRWA officials cannot bend over backward enough to facilitate the whims and wishes of Gaza's various terrorist organizations. The report concludes, "While it was created by the United Nations and has 'U.N.' initials in its title, it is essentially a Palestinian-run organization whose purpose is to perpetuate Palestinians as refugees with the aim to one day dismantle Israel."
UNRWA is the only refugee agency dedicated to solely one people, the Palestinians. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is responsible for all the others, and yet only has a workforce around two-thirds that of UNRWA. Indeed, the report accuses UNRWA of perpetuating and enshrining the idea of the "right of return," which does not apply to any other group of refugees on the planet. Also, UNRWA schools point to the example of Oct. 7 as how their aims can be achieved by "resistance."
And there is yet another twist in the tale. On Tuesday, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters in a briefing, that the world body's officials "appreciate information being given to us directly, instead of done through the media." This take, albeit extraordinary, is unsurprising.
Neuer, who personally tried to meet with Lazzarini at least twice while the latter was in Europe last summer, and hand over evidence of UNRWA's terrorist ties, was surgical in his dismantlement of the U.N. position. "The audacity of the U.N. in refusing to respond to our detailed report, while dismissing our efforts to engage directly, is staggering… It's a shameful abdication of accountability, especially given the serious nature of the allegations."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear, over and over, that he's intending to make changes in government as soon as he's inaugurated.
That same day. Jan. 20.
After all, Trump repeatedly has pointed out the failings in the Joe Biden border policies, his economic policies, his transgender politics, his foreign affairs policies and much, much more.
For some changes, he'll need congressional action. For others, he will use his executive order authority to change some of Biden's executive order actions.
Now a report from the Washington Examiner says Trump and his advisers have informed Republican senators there is work being done on 100 orders for action as soon as he is sworn in.
"The orders will focus on immigration, a topic Trump has been adamant about fixing while campaigning for the presidency," the report documented.
"He says he has almost 100 executive orders that will go a long way to securing the border again and also put the energy sector back in play," Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said Thursday on a Fox network broadcast.
The senator did say some of the orders will need congressional action eventually, so they cannot later be reversed.
"I'd like reconciliation so we can start making this up into legislation, so we can move forward," the senator said.
Among actions that are expected are the restoration of Title 42, a Trump plan to expel migrants arriving at the southern border. Trump used this during his first administration, but the national security action was abandoned by Joe Biden.
Also expected to return is Trump's "Remain in Mexico" plan.