This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Joe Biden, out of office as of next January 20 when a new president is inaugurated, then most probably will be a retiree.

He'll have government-paid protection, multiple government pensions, the millions of dollars he's made over the years, his primary home and a massive vacation home, a long list of other government perks, all to sustain his "senior" years.

Many American seniors aren't so privileged.

And many of those seniors have been staying in the workforce longer, or actually are giving up on their retirement and returning to the workforce, because of Biden's economic policies – Bidenomics.

That would be the agendas Biden has pursued that have given Americans inflation of more than 20% since he took office, that have priced food and fuel up by 20%, 30%, even 40% since Biden's reign in the Oval Office began.

A study from caring.com reveals the tragic situation facing America's seniors because of Biden's tenure:

"1 in 3 working seniors 'unretired,' returning to work after retirement."

"52% of unretired seniors cite inflation as a primary reason they had to return to work."

"Almost half of working seniors don't plan on retiring in the next 5 years."

"14% of retired seniors say they are likely to return to work."

"1 in 15 seniors fear they could become homeless."

The survey, with the help of Pollfish, took the opinions of 1,500 Americans ages 62-85.

It found that one-third of respondents now are working either part of the time or fulltime.

The report said, "Inflation is unpleasant for nearly all consumers, but it hits especially hard when you're on a fixed income. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in May 2024 that consumer price indices for shelter and food continued to rise. According to the Senior Citizens League, adults who retired in 2000 have lost 36% of their buying power to inflation. Put another way: Retirees need over $500 more a month to maintain the lifestyles and buying power they had when they first retired."

Faced with drastic lifestyle changes, including possibly selling their homes, the seniors instead have returned to work.

"Retirement plans for many seniors have been impacted by inflation — both due to a desired timeline for retirement and a less clear template for success with their investments amid inflation's impact. These problems only compound for seniors relying on fixed income," noted John Farrell, of Caring. "This has caused seniors to stay in the workforce longer, or come out of retirement to maintain their existing lifestyle or cover growing needs such as medical expenses."

Other reasons cited by working seniors included paying medical debt, other debt, not enough savings, to learn a new skill and even to battle boredom.

Many also reported cutting back on leisure activities (60%), food (47%), and travel (57%) to cope with inflation.

And those seniors back at work report cutting back on the same items, "primarily to maintain their current living situation."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Amid reports that Kamala Harris will announce her first policy position on Friday – an attack on "greedy" grocery companies with a plan for price limits – there's bad news for American consumers about their grocery costs.

Harris's plan, reported by multiple outlets on Thursday, said her idea is to pursue a "price control" scheme, a tactic that repressive governments often pursue to try to make their economies look better.

It is the Post-Millennial that documented, "Americans are experiencing the consequences of increased grocery prices under the economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration. The cost of food has not been this high since the Carter administration."

The report said the cost for "basic," "food at home" products is up 21% since Biden and Harris took over the White House.

Inflation also remains a top concern among voters this election year, with 77% seeing it as a "very important issue."

"Grocery prices have risen significantly under Harris's time in the White House, despite the White House's attempts to minimize the impact of recent price increases. Harris was instrumental in the legislative agenda that resulted in this outcome. Her tie-breaking votes in the Senate were instrumental in the passage of trillions of dollars in expenditure, which many economists believe contributed to the inflation crisis, Breitbart News reported."

The report noted food inflation has up more over the first 42 months of the Biden-Harris tenure "than it has under any other president since Jimmy Carter, and is the third-largest increase over the first three and a half years of a presidential term behind Nixon's second term and Carter's record.

In contrast, the grocery costs rose only 6.3% during the first 42 months of President Donald Trump's first term.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced in a statement on Thursday that a 43–year–old Jordanian citizen currently residing in Florida has been charged with four counts of threatening to use explosives and one count of destruction of an energy facility.

The accused – Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen – threatened local businesses in the Orlando area for their perceived support of Israel, and will be detained pending his trial.

According to court documents, in early June 2024, Hnaihen targeted and attacked these businesses, leaving behind "warning letters" addressed to the U.S. government that made political demands, and threatened to "destroy or explode everything here in whole America. Especially the companies and factories that support the racist state of Israel."

By the end of June, Hnaihen had broken into a solar power generation facility in Wedgefield, Florida, and proceeded to destroy solar panels, wiring, and other critical electronic equipment, which is estimated to have inflicted more than $700,000 in damage.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Hnaihen threatened to carry out "hate-fueled mass violence in our country," and deliberately targeted businesses who support Israel.

"Such acts and threats of violence, whether they are targeting the places that Americans frequent every day or our country's critical infrastructure, are extremely dangerous and will not be tolerated by the Justice Department," Garland said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Hnaihen caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage to the power facility and local businesses.

"Violence and destruction of property to threaten and intimidate others will never be tolerated. The FBI and our partners will work together to pursue and hold accountable those who resort to violence," Wray said.

Hnaihen was arrested July 11, and could face a possible sentence of 10 years in federal prison for each threat he made, and a possible 20-year sentence for destroying a power facility, if convicted. A final warning letter was discovered at a propane gas distribution center in Orlando.

The case will be prosecuted by the Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Varadan for the Middle District of Florida, with assistance from the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section.

WND reached out to Gov. Ron DeSantis' office about the attacks, but did not receive an immediate response.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Joe Biden has, in the past, stated flatly that he did not share any classified information with ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer while he was helping the Democrat assemble a book that was released some years ago.

But that now has been contradicted by evidence: Joe Biden's own words in a transcript of his conversations with Zwonitzer.

"There do exist written transcripts of President Biden's interviews with his ghostwriter where they discuss classified material, and that Special Counsel Hur relied upon those written transcripts in coming to his conclusions [that Biden was a 'well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory']," explained Kyle Brosnan, counsel to the Oversight Project, in an interview with Fox News.

The revelations about the documents were made during a court hearing on the organization's freedom of information case involving the federal government.

The confirmation came from the Justice Department, which told the court the documents were found.

The case is pursuing records from Special Counsel Robert Hur's investigation into Joe Biden's mishandling of classified government documents. Those documents were found in Biden's private offices, in his home, and in his relatively unsecured garage stashed next to a collectible car.

Biden repeatedly has denied any such conversations, but the whole issue has taken on a political perspective since no charges were recommended by Hur against Biden – who cited Biden's status with a diminishing mental ability – but the same federal laws were used to trigger a long list of charges against President Donald Trump for his possession of government documents.

The cases were not, in fact, identical. Trump held the power as president to declassify what he chose; Biden, as senator and vice president then, did not.

The DOJ confirmed it had found 117 pages of transcriptions.

"The ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, was previously subject to a March subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee, which sought any documents, contracts and recordings of interviews and conversations with Biden," the report said.

"However, Oversight Project counsel Kyle Brosnan said on Wednesday this particular revelation is both new and further animates the need for transparency with questions about Biden's competency."

Brosnan pointed out that the discovery of the documents has been the subject of discussion with the DOJ over the next step in the process.

Federal officials earlier had claimed that there was not a verbatim transcript of those recordings, which now are being pursued by GOP members in Congress who say they are needed to continue their review of Biden's' mental competency, and whether impeachment is the proper remedy to the problem.

Trendingpoliticsnews explained, "The investigation stemmed from a 2022 discovery of classified documents found in the garage of President Biden's Delaware home and came shortly after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in search of equally top-secret documents in former President Donald Trump's possession. Trump for months has called the incident an example of hypocrisy by a two-tiered Biden Justice Department. Last month U.S. Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Trump case citing problems with the unlawful appointment of special counsel Jack Smith."

Smith, however, is insisting that an appeals court overlook questions about his suspect appointment and restore his case against Trump.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A new legal war is looming over a series of attacks by officials in a Massachusetts town on a pastor who wanted to arrange a time and location for some of his church's members to meet for a Bible study.

Many of the details, including the town, the names of the officials, and the pastor, are not being released immediately because the American Center for Law and Justice explains it has written a demand letter in the hope that the dispute can be resolved short of formal court action.

But the ACLJ charged that some of the town's actions were "utterly unthinkable."

Including officials' demand that a local newspaper remove an ad promoting a meeting time and place in a park for the study.

The ACLJ explained the local government not only "blocked a church from using a public library's community meeting room" but also ordered the newspaper to drop a church ad promoting a Bible study.

"Our client is a pastor. He requested the use of the community meeting room of his town's library to conduct Bible studies for his church and to hold gatherings for grief support. The Massachusetts town policy for the meeting room makes clear that the meeting room is open for the public for informational, educational, cultural, and civic benefit. The meeting room rules also allow people to reserve the room for regular use, for example, a monthly reservation," the ACLJ documented.

At first, the library director agreed to a pastor's request for biweekly meetings, but then abruptly reversed course in an email, insisting that "legal counsel" said the rooms were NOT available for "recurring" events.

"Her statement directly contradicted library policy. Our client sent follow-up letters trying to reserve the room and to figure out whether the library would let him use it at all. But he received no response. At this time, he has still not received any confirmation of any ability to use the space, whether for occasional use or recurring events," the legal team explained.

So the pastor wanted to meet with five or six others for a Bible study in an open area of a local public park, a meeting that does not require a fee for a formal "social function" in the park.

"Our client sent an informational ad to the local newspaper, which agreed to publish the ad about his Bible study in the grass. His ad made clear that this Bible study would not be inside a building like a park gazebo that required a reservation; rather, it asked people to bring chairs and indicated that the regular Bible study would only occur if the weather permitted."

Town officials then ordered the newspaper to pull the ad.

"Both these acts are egregious constitutional violations, flying in the face of decades-old Supreme Court precedents. The library violated the First Amendment by prohibiting our client from regularly using the library meeting room, even though the library policy expressly allows people to do so. The library told him that the rules only allowed occasional use of the library meeting room, even though the meeting room application itself allowed him to select that the use was not a one-time use. And then, further evidencing animus, the library stopped even responding to our client's requests to reserve a room, whether occasional or not," the ACLJ said.

Regarding the park meeting, "The Supreme Court has emphasized that 'streets and parks, which have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. . . . In these quintessential public forums, the government may not prohibit all communicative activity,'" the legal team said.

"Requiring a permit before a small group gathers on the grass of a public park is antithetical to the First Amendment. And ordering a newspaper to remove an ad for a private event is utterly unthinkable."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

An official with the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has been subpoenaed by Congress to come to the Capitol and provide details on a $500,000 grant of taxpayer dollars delivered to promote atheism.

It is House Foreign Affairs Committee chief Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who called for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce documents for the congressional investigation into a grant from the State Department.

That went to a group called Humanists International and handed over $500,000.

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida is stepping down over a corruption scandal that has plagued the nation's ruling party.

Elected in 2021 to a three-year term, Kishida resigned ahead of new leadership elections for the Liberal Democratic Party.

Corruption scandal

The Liberal Democratic Party has dominated Japan for most of its post-war history.

The party lost popularity over ties with the controversial Unification Church that came to light after the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an LDP member.

The party was later rocked by a scandal over unreported funds from ticket sales at party events. Multiple LDP members were indicted, although prosecutors backed off of charging Kishida, citing a lack of evidence.

Prime minister resigns

In his resignation announcement, Kishida said that stepping aside would help rebuild public trust.

“We need to clearly show an LDP reborn,” Kishida told reporters Wednesday. “In order to show a changing LDP, the most obvious first step is for me to bow out.”

“I will not run for the upcoming party leadership election,” he said.

“Once a new leader is decided, I hope to see everyone unite and form a dream team to achieve politics that can gain public understanding,” he said.

Kenta Izumi, the leader of Japan's primary opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, dismissed Kishida's resignation as a face-saving maneuver.

“Whenever the party is in crisis, LDP, for its own survival, has repeatedly changed prime minister and party leader to reset and have voters forget the past,” Izumi said. “It’s their strategy and people should not be tricked by it.”

Biden reacts

President Biden, who months ago called Japan "xenophobic," praised Kishida for strengthening the U.S.-Japan relationship.

“Guided by unflinching courage and moral clarity, Prime Minister Kishida has transformed Japan’s role in the world,” Biden said in a statement, adding his "courageous leadership will be remembered on both sides of the Pacific for decades to come.”

U.S. Ambassador to Japan and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel also praised Kishida's diplomacy in the Pacific region.

"Prime Minister Kishida helped build a latticework of security alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific region that will stand the test of time," Emanuel said.

The LDP's new leadership elections are in September. Because the party controls both houses of parliament, the winner of the leadership election will become the new prime minister.

After three years on the bench, it's becoming clear that Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett is much more moderate than many anticipated.

In her first two years on the court, Barrett voted with the right over 70% of the time. But by her third year, she was voting with conservatives 56% of the time, Newsweek reported.

Barrett showcased her independence particularly during the court's most recent term, which involved explosive controversies about Donald Trump, presidential power and January 6th.

Barrett new "swing" vote

Barrett has sided with the conservative wing on some pivotal rulings, particularly the Dobbs ruling that ended Roe v. Wade. But she has often beat to her own drum, leaving many court watchers surprised.

In oral arguments during Trump's presidential immunity case, Barrett suggested that Special Counsel Jack Smith could continue prosecuting Trump by separating "official acts" from the indictment.

When the court rendered its opinion, Barrett disagreed with the majority's view that "official acts" cannot be used as evidence.

"She wants to be the swing vote," Alison LaCroix, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek. "And that might lead her to issue opinions that seem to be more moderate than the conservative majority."

Barrett has also differed with conservatives on the use of history and tradition as interpretative tools. Conservatives have emphasized that methodology in Second Amendment cases.

"Evidence of 'tradition' unmoored from original meaning is not binding law," she wrote in a Second Amendment case this year. "Historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold."

Liberal fearmongering

Republicans rushed to confirm Barrett prior to the 2020 election after the surprise death of liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At the time, liberals portrayed Barrett as a dangerous ideologue.

But the most extreme predictions about Barrett's appointment have not come to fruition. Barrett's move to the middle has won praise from the left, but it likely to cause disappointment among those who hoped she would be a more reliable conservative voice.

President Biden, who has pushed for sweeping Supreme Court reform, brought up Barrett's "outrageous" appointment recently, accusing Republicans of a brazen power grab.

Biden noted that Republicans blocked Merrick Garland when Barack Obama nominated him in 2016, with Republicans arguing at the time that it was an election year. Four years later, Republicans confirmed Barrett over howls of protest.

Looking back, some are probably wondering - what was all the fuss about?

A former police deputy in California has been charged with carrying out a cruel extortion scheme on behalf of a Chinese businesswoman that involved raiding the home of her former business partner. 

Retired Los Angeles deputy Steven A. Lankford was still working part time when he orchestrated a fake immigration raid to intimidate the victim, a Chinese immigrant and legal U.S. resident, with phony threats of deportation.

Lankford and three others raided the victim's home and coerced him into signing away his business rights to the tune of $37 million.

Charges in fake immigration raid

The four co-conspirators were paid $400,000 to carry out the 2019 raid on behalf of an unnamed businesswoman from China.

“At some point, this wealthy Chinese national decided to hire these mercenaries to go carry out what they did," U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said.

"The goal was to get this person to sign a contract to give away his business rights. That’s what he ended up doing, but he did it by force, intimidation and extortion," Estrada said.

Two of the men charged, 68-year-old Steven Lankford and 63-year-old Glen Louis Cozart, are former LA County Sheriff's deputies. Also charged were a former British solider, 39-year-old Max Samuel Bennett Turbett, and a 41-year-old former Australian soldier, Matthew Philli.

The indictment charges the four co-conspirators with conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion, and deprivation of rights under color of law.

Cop abused the badge

According to prosecutors, Lankford used his authority as a sheriff's deputy to plan and execute the raid. Lankford also tried to shut down a probe into the raid when the victim reported it to police.

“He used his badge to gain entry into the home. He used his authority as a Sheriff’s deputy to intimidate the family and to threaten the businessman with deportation," Estrada said.

The victim's wife and two sons were home during the raid, which lasted about two and a half hours. They threatened to separate the victim from his family if he did not agree to their demands.

“The defendants in this case allegedly believed they could carry out vigilante justice by using official police powers to enter the home of vulnerable victims and extorting them out of millions of dollars,” Akil Davis, who leads the Los Angeles FBI field office, said.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

For years already, Democrats and other leftists in America have orchestrated a multi-level lawfare campaign against President Trump.

Even while he was president they made wild claims that he orchestrated an "insurrection" against the nation even though the events were just a protest that got out of hand, and even though those charges weren't filed. Nor did they succeed in their two failed attempts to impeach him and remove him from office, even once after he had left office.

But they made claims about business records misdemeanors that were now felonies for Trump, there were paper custody violations that generated a host of felonies against Trump even though almost identical violations by Joe Biden and Mike Pence were dismissed as not worthy of prosecution. They've even alleged he ran a corrupt criminal organization to overturn the 2020 election.

They've run into headwinds with valid arguments that their special prosecutor was appointed illegally, and the Supreme Court ruling presidents are immune to many claims based on their actions in office.

But now a commentator at Fox News is warning they're about to ramp up their war against Trump to the nuclear level, ordering him to jail.

It is commentator Andrew McCarthy who is warning that the judge in the business records case, characterized by Trump critics throughout as a "hush money" complaint, already has signaled his intent to impose a jail sentence.

The case involved Trump's payments to a woman to keep quiet about an "affair" the two were alleged to have had – even though both have denied it.

Those payments were characterized as legal expenses, since the payments were made through a lawyer. Much like Hillary Clinton characterized as legal expenses her payments during the 2016 race to a legal team which in turn hired someone to make up salacious allegations against Trump in what has become known as the Steele dossier, a series of debunked claims.

The judge, Juan Merchan, has refused to step away from the case even though there's an obvious appearance of a conflict of interests as his daughter, a Democrat campaign activist, has been making money off the decisions her father makes in the courtroom against Trump.

"To the surprise of no one, Judge Juan Merchan has yet again denied former President Donald Trump's motion that the judge recuse himself. I am speaking, of course, about the case in which Manhattan's elected progressive Democratic district Attorney, Alvin Bragg, is prosecuting Trump. In early June, a jury found the former president and current GOP presidential nominee guilty on 34 counts of business-records falsification " the commentary started.

"It is not just that Judge Merchan had previously denied the recusal motion. The judge has signaled that, come hell or high water, he intends to sentence Trump on September 18. If you're keeping score, that would be two days after early voting in the 2024 election begins in Pennsylvania," he said.

Trump's lawyers have ammunition for their requests but McCarthy said this is no ordinary case.

"On July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court held that presidents (including former presidents) are (a) presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken as president, and (b) absolutely immune if the official acts are core constitutional duties of the chief executive. The Court instructed that this immunity extends not only to charges but to evidence. That means prosecutors are not just barred from alleging official presidential acts as crimes; they are further prohibited from even using such acts as proof offered to establish other crimes," he explained.

He explained there is no doubt Bragg's case used "Trump's official acts" to support their claims.

"Unsurprisingly then, Trump's lawyers moved post-trial to have the guilty verdicts thrown out based on the high court's immunity ruling," he noted.

Merchan has said he'll issue his ruling soon.

"Most importantly, though, Merchan admonished the parties to prepare for the court to move ahead with the imposition of sentence on September 18. He instructed the lawyers to submit promptly any arguments they intend to make on that subject," McCarthy said.

The logical conclusion is that Merchan already has decided to reject Trump's immunity arguments, and there is "a high likelihood that he will impose a prison sentence against Trump right after that."

McCarthy explained, "I suspect that Merchan will rationalize that Trump (a) was not charged based on official presidential acts, and (b) would have been convicted even if Bragg's prosecutors had not introduced arguably immunized evidence. Such a ruling might be wrong, especially on the latter point (at trial, prosecutors described some of the testimony from Trump staffers as 'devastating'); but Merchan made so many outrageous rulings in the case that it would be foolish to expect him to change course now."

Additionally, he said there's another defense Trump's lawyers can use on appeal: that Merchan refused Trump the right to a unanimous jury decision on the evidence.

McCarthy noted the Supreme Court has affirmed "in criminal cases, important proof elements affecting the potential sentence must be found unanimously by the jury," a right that Merchan refused to allow Trump.

That's critical because "a unanimous verdict on the supposed crime (conspiracy to influence the election by illegal conduct)" was what "Bragg alleged Trump was trying to conceal by falsifying his business records. That crime is what turned a misdemeanor into a felony, and what allowed Bragg to get around the two-year misdemeanor statute of limitations."

He said the main point is that Bragg's prosecution was politics.

"That's why we call it 'lawfare.' The prosecutors and judge are not concerned about whether convictions ultimately get thrown out on appeal. And it's not like Merchan is actually going to put Trump in prison; it is virtually certain that Trump will get bail pending appeal, so Merchan can appear to impose a stiff incarceration sentence without any real incarceration – at least for now, and probably ever."

He said what the Democrats want out of their potpourri of wild claims is "to enable Vice President Harris and the media-Democratic complex to label Trump 'a convicted felon sentenced to prison' just weeks before Election Day."