This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Constitution's concept of free speech has won in Arizona, where the Goldwater Institute fought a requirement by the bar association that lawyers pay for its lobbying activities, even if it involved speech with which they disagreed.
The institute has announced it has "scored a victory for attorneys' First Amendment rights."
The Arizona State Bar had been "forcing its members to pay for lobbying activities as a condition of practicing law."
However, a campaign was launched and just days ago the state supreme court said it was amending the rules "to eliminate the State Bar's authority to levy membership dues for non-regulatory functions—i.e., activities that have nothing to do with the regulation of the legal profession."
The institute said it had launched a petition to the court urging the justices to bring their rules in line with constitutional speech protections.
"After all, both the U.S. Constitution and Arizona Constitution protect the freedom of association, ensuring the government cannot compel anyone to fund ideologies they oppose as a condition of earning a living," the institute said.
"Yet numerous states force lawyers to join bar associations and to pay dues that subsidize the bar's activities, which often are politically slanted and unrelated to the practice of law. For example, the State Bar of Arizona spends significant time and money on a magazine called Arizona Attorney, which publishes issues dedicated to the arts and general wellness. The Bar has also engaged in lobbying activities and has taken positions on legislative proposals."
The new provision now will ban the bar association from "engaging in any lobbying activities," the report said.
"It may only conduct activities 'necessarily or reasonably incurred to regulate the legal profession or improve the quality of legal services available to people of the State of Arizona,'" according to the court's changes.
The institute noted, "Focusing the bar on regulatory functions will help improve the quality of legal services and access to justice for all Arizonans."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The FBI has been at the pinnacle of the years-long scandal over the Biden-Harris administration's weaponization of the federal government against Republicans, conservatives and Christians.
And Christopher Wray has been at the top of the FBI's power structure over that time.
Now he's departing his government position, according to an announcement he made when incoming President-elect Donald Trump promised he would be fired immediately.
And a legal team that has fought Wray's agenda over the years, and continues to do so even now, has assembled a top five list of his "most horrifying abuses."
It is the American Center for Law and Justice that explained in a new report, "The nightmarish reign of FBI Director Christopher Wray is over. With his firing imminent, Wray offered his resignation before President Trump could do the honors. No longer will Wray's lawless FBI trample the Constitution or target Christians and conservatives."
In honor of his "being shown the door," the organization, the list was produced.
First is the FBI's "shocking abuse of authority" when 20 agents "brazenly arrested – with guns drawn – Mark Houck, the co-founder of a men's ministry."
That happened back in 2022, and he was arrested because he "protected his son from a radical pro-abortion activist outside a Planned Parenthood" abortion business.
Local police said there was no case, but the DOJ, under Biden and Harris, launched a full-scale attack on him.
Then came the Senate hearing when Wray was asked, by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whether Americans' rights were being violated.
"Wray outrageously declared that he couldn't 'be sure' that the FBI was unconstitutionally intercepting private email messages. The exchange between Wray and Paul also occurred when the FBI was caught lying about using spy software (Pegasus) on Americans," the ACLJ documented.
Then Wray's words got him into trouble again. This was when he "lied about undercover agents in churches."
The ACLJ said, "Most would lose their jobs if caught lying before Congress, but not Wray. After the Deep State FBI was exposed in April 2023 for putting undercover agents in churches to spy on Christians, Wray testified that a field office had gone rogue. Of course, the truth came out that multiple field offices across America had undercover agents keeping tabs on what pastors were teaching their congregations."
At No. 2 on the list was the FBI's 2020 election interference.
That happened when the FBI told media organizations to suppress details about Biden family scandals documented in Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop computer.
A subsequent survey showed that suppression likely cost Trump his re-election bid at that point.
The suppression agenda was confirmed by none other than Mark Zuckerberg, who confirmed that Facebook quashed the scandals "at the FBI's request."
And atop the list of Wray wrongdoings, according to the ACLJ, was the decision to authorize the use of "deadly force" when agents raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in a SWAT-type stack.
"Even though the FBI knew from the onset that the Russian hoax was completely fabricated, it never stopped trying to take down President Trump. And during the DOJ's endless political prosecution of Trump, the FBI flexed its muscles while raiding Mar-a-Lago, with agents showing up fully armed and using highly questionable tactics as it searched the property for government records," the report said.
It suggested comparing that to the "search" the FBI conducted at Joe Biden's home when he was found to have similar government documents in his possession.
The agenda went beyond the FBI in that situation, as Biden was given a free pass on possible criminal actions, while the DOJ went to a full-court press pursuing criminal counts against Trump, a case that only recently collapsed on Trump's election.
"And the FBI's shenanigans haven't stopped in the days since the 2024 presidential election. Just last week, the FBI recognized a 'State of Palestine' at the FBI National Academy graduation ceremony. And we found out the FBI tried to cover up the incident by deleting the video of the ceremony and quickly filed two FOIA requests. We can't let Biden's Deep State FBI delete records before the Trump team takes office," the report said.
The ACLJ noted it right now has almost 25 lawsuits pending against the Biden-Harris regime, including the "Deep State FBI."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Xaver Becerra, when he was pulled out of the position of attorney general for California to become Joe Biden's Health and Human Services chief, widely was known for one thing: his ardent advocacy for abortion for all.
Now the choice Biden made in appointing someone with the qualifications of Becerra is coming back to sting, as a congressional report is warning that billions of dollars of federal biomedical and public health research funding could be jeopardized because of his technical failure.
It seems that, the report said, 14 directors of some of the largest of the National Institutes of Healths' 27 individual organizations and centers needed to be reappointed to their positions by Dec. 12, 2021, under requirements of the law and the appointments clause of the Constitution.
Only they weren't.
The Washington Examiner explained the report said a two-year investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee found no evidence that Becerra signed the required paperwork by that deadline to "fulfill the legal requirements to legitimize the respective directors of the 14 institutes and centers."
Without a legitimacy in their positions, anything they adopted or voted for could be in jeopardy. Including programs they funded and grants they approved.
The report explained, "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It is one of 13 subcabinet agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with an annual budget of more than $40 billion. As noted by the National Academies of Science (NAS), 'Founded in the late 1870s, NIH has produced extraordinary advances in the treatment of common and rare diseases and leads the world in biomedical research. It is a critical national resource that plays an important role in supporting national security.'"
The report continued, "No component of HHS 'is subject to greater statutory control with respect to its internal organization than the NIH.' The NIH was established by the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), which specifies the statutorily named national research institutes and national centers. Title IV of the PHSA sets forth in detail the mission, programs, and grant authority of each of the institutes and centers of NIH. It also provides that the director of the National Cancer Institute shall be appointed by the President (no advice and consent) and the directors of the remaining institutes shall be appointed by the HHS secretary, acting through the NIH director. Selecting and retaining the leadership of the NIH's institutes and centers is vital to the success of the NIH. Since at least 1985, the Secretary of HHS has had the statutory responsibility, in accordance with the Appointments Clause power, to appoint these leaders."
The report warned, "Based on various documents and responses produced in response to congressional inquiries, it is apparent that HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra failed to re-appoint the Institute and Center Directors in a timely fashion and then engaged in a campaign of misinformation and obstruction in an attempt to cover it up."
The report noted that Republicans, during Becerra's confirmation, questioned whether he was, in fact, even qualified for the position.
"Skeptics were concerned about his lack of health care experience as well as his ability to manage a sprawling Department responding to the then-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic," the report said.
In fact, the report said, "Secretary Becerra's first visit to the NIH, an agency prominent in the pandemic response, came eight months into the job. In light of these press reports, Republican leaders raised concerns in January 2022 about Secretary Becerra's visibility and availability during the administration's response to the COVID-19 response and requested that the secretary voluntarily provide his calendar and work schedule."
"Secretary Becerra, an attorney by trade, failed to sign the basic legal documents and follow the process required by the Constitution and federal law necessary to reappoint key NIH officials, putting their jobs, the decisions they've made, and the billions in funding they've approved in legal jeopardy," charged Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., Subcommittee on Health Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Morgan Griffith, R-Va.
The report said improper reappointments "could expose the actions of the directors to substantial legal challenges, ranging from the administration of research funds to personnel changes or decisions. Some of the largest individual branches of the NIH, including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, are in jeopardy."
The report said it wasn't until June 2023 when Becerra signed affidavits for the reappointments of institute and center directors, more than a year after the committee began the initial inquiry in March 2022.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The death of George Floyd while in police custody in May of 2020, fueled by the hateful rhetoric of racial activists, led to extensive civil unrest and violence across the country. The massacre of 1,200 Israelis during the Oct. 7, 2023, raid by Hamas, initiating Israel's war into Gaza, has led to the hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric we now hear on college campuses, also causing endless waves of civil unrest and violence across the country.
We are living in a time when we must examine whether existing limits on free speech while sufficient are simply being ignored, preventing us from snuffing out the anger, violence, death and destruction fuse that has proven to be easily lit by such hateful rhetoric – or whether additional restrictions need to be applied.
Let us take a brief look at where the law of the land stands on this issue.
A great jurist in American history was Oliver Wendell Holmes – an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States for three decades (1902-1930). A committed defender of the First Amendment, he was known for formulating the "clear and present danger" doctrine in the 1919 Schenk v. United States case that held the U.S. government could only restrict free speech when it posed such a danger to the national interest.
In a nutshell, the focus of the case was whether socialist Charles Schenk had a right to violate a U.S. law (Espionage Act) during World War I by distributing leaflets claiming the draft violated a constitutional ban against involuntary servitude, encouraging peaceful insubordination and seeking to obstruct recruitment. Schenk defended his actions, asserting he had a First Amendment right to do so. In a unanimous opinion, Holmes denied Schenk's defense.
Holmes rationalized that the Espionage Act was an appropriate exercise of congressional wartime authority, even though constitutional rights were at stake, and that courts owed greater deference to our government in times of war.
Articulating the doctrine for the first time, he concluded that the First Amendment does not protect speech that seeks to create a "clear and present danger" of an evil Congress has the power to prevent. Schenk's leaflet distribution effort sought to disrupt the conscription process necessary for the U.S. to fight a declared war. Holmes famously compared Schenk's effort to one who falsely shouts "Fire!" in a crowded theater – an act which, also, is impermissible under the First Amendment.
Even Holmes acknowledged later that a stricter standard should be developed to ensure adequate First Amendment protections. It would take 37 years after Holmes retired from the high court at age 90, for that standard to be found, abrogating the Schenk standard.
The 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio case involved a KKK leader speaking at a Klan rally who made numerous derogatory racial slurs, adding, "It's possible that there might have to be some vengeance [sic] taken."
What is now known as the Bradenburg test found the government may ban speech promoting force or criminal actions only if it meets a two-part test:
1. The speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action," AND
2. The speech is "likely to incite or produce such action."
What this two-part test tells us is that the government may forbid certain speech aimed at inciting listeners but only if it meets the two-part test above. Thus, inciting a mob to act imminently to attack a nearby target can be banned but inciting it to take action at some future unspecified time is not.
In light of the Brandenburg decision, it would seem the administration of President Joe Biden overstepped its limits with its persecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The focus of the FACE Act is to protect those seeking access to reproductive health care clinics, and the providers therein, from force, threats of force and physical obstruction. It has been used – and abused – by Biden to charge those simply standing in front of such facilities peacefully praying for those seeking access to an abortion, hoping, in the end, they will choose not to abort their unborn children.
It is hypocritical that while free speech enables purveyors of hatred and violence to do so simply because their content lacks immediacy of action, peaceful prayer in front of an abortion facility can trigger federal prosecution. Thus, a legal loophole for hateful rhetoric still exists as long as one promotes violence by not encouraging the mob to do today that which it can do tomorrow.
Holmes once noted, "A man's mind, stretched by new ideas, may never return to its original dimensions." It is something we need to reflect upon today. In bestowing the First Amendment upon us, the "original dimension" of our Founding Fathers' collective mind was to ensure that, by exercising it, we would never fall victim to those seeking to harness their power over us. However, that original dimension of mind concerning the First Amendment is stretched by the reality today it is being used aggressively by some activists to impose violence upon society.
Holmes recognized a government ban on speech was in our national interests as deference had to be given to the fact that America was at war. While we are not at war today, with all the domestic divisiveness we see, major fears exist we may be on the brink of another civil war.
Consideration needs to be given to tightening up the Brandenburg test, perhaps by deleting the immediacy requirement. Despite a speaker's call for future violence, as we witness today, it takes little to create an unsafe environment in which the mob opts to act now rather than later – effectively yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The full repercussions of a decision by San Jose State to allow a male to participate on a women's volleyball team over the last year still haven't hit.
But the next wave is just developing, as a long list of players on that team have confirmed they are planning to transfer to other schools.
Fox News reports that a "wave" of players announced their exodus from San Jose State's team after a "controversy-riddled" season.
"Student athletes have the ability to make decisions about their college athletic careers, and we have the utmost respect for that," the school conceded in a statement.
The report said the San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that already seven of the players are leaving, after a season that provoked some reality-defying circumstances, such as the New York Times description of biological women on the women's team as "non-transgender women."
The San Jose season was marred by eight forfeited matches by teams whose players refused to subject themselves to possible injury from the volleyball slams of a stronger, male, opponent.
There also was regular police presence for the team and fights among players and coaches.
The team ended its season with a loss in the conference final to Colorado State, and at the time head coach Todd Kress called it "one of the most difficult seasons" he'd ever had.
The male player, Blaire Fleming, has used up his collegiate eligibility after finishing a fourth season.
The report explained some of the issues that remain: "In September, co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit against the NCAA alleging the program withheld knowledge about Fleming's birth gender from her and other players on the team. Slusser alleged she was made to share changing and sleeping spaces with Fleming without knowing that Fleming was a biological male."
Slusser and other Mountain West Conference players also launched a separate lawsuit against the conference and San Jose State, and that has included testimony from former San Jose State volleyball players Alyssa Sugai and Elle Patterson alleging they were passed over for scholarships in favor of Fleming, the report said.
Revealed in court papers was an alleged scheme by Fleming "to have Slusser spiked in the face with a volleyball in a game against Colorado State on Oct. 3. Slusser was not spiked in the face in that game, and an investigation by the Mountain West concluded without finding sufficient evidence of the alleged plot," the report said.
And an assistant coach, Melissa Batie-Smoose, was suspended last month after filing a Title IX complaint against the school for showing favoritism toward Fleming.
WND had reported during the season when teams from many other schools simply refused to play San Jose State because of the presence of Fleming.
Among the schools that simply walked away from matches were Boise State, the University of Wyoming, Southern Utah and Utah State.
Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who was among the first to launch a revolt against males on women's sports teams, applauded the latest developments in the social and moral contest over adopting the ideology that men can simply call themselves women, and be on women's teams.
Some of the legal actions already in play charge the NCAA with violating Title IX by allowing men on women's teams.
"The suit asserts that including male-to-female trans players not only disadvantages women but also presents a safety hazard…as highlighted in this video shared by Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn:"
A governor even joined the conversation:
And the Cowboy State Daily reported, "U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican and Wyoming's only delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, voiced support for UW's ultimate decision in a Tuesday statement."
"I am proud of UW volleyball standing up to this nonsense," wrote Hageman. "We must do what it takes to protect our girls! I hope everyone will go support the team this season."
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon also voiced support of the decision, saying, "It is important we stand for integrity and fairness in female athletics."
Lawmakers in that state warned their school: "The Legislature has been very clear that the University of Wyoming, being a publicly funded land grant institution, should not participate in the extremist agenda of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed. We all know it cannot."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center
JERUSALEM – Sitting at Jerusalem's First Station, a gentrified update of the city's literal first train station for the locomotives that connected the ancient city to the almost equally antiquated port of Jaffa, one is struck by just how much archaeology has added to our understanding of civilizations.
A newly updated website called Israel in Their Land seeks to allow its visitors to viscerally connect ancient fragments of clay and stone, with more recent documents, which describe the millennia-long Jewish presence in the land of Israel.
AnaRina Kreisman, the director of Align with Zion, who was instrumental in working with philanthropist George Blumenthal in developing the site, is excited about how it can be used as a powerful tool to explain the irrefutable evidence of a celestial plan.
In fact, the site is broken down into three principal time periods; from Abraham to the Second Temple; from just before the destruction of Herod's temple until the 1800s; and finally the initial waves of 19th century Aliyah until the present day.
"The site itself takes in approximately 3,500 years of history of the Jewish people – or we can say the Israelite presence in the Jewish homeland, the Land of Israel. There is a lot of ignorance in the world at the moment, it includes everybody, and in a world where facts are being generated as you go along, you don't always know what's true and what's not. But you can get into history – we show archaeological proof, as well as lots of documents – and if you consult your Bible you will see the biblical narrative being correlated. So, the fact that a number of people now claim that we are settlers, this site shows you the continuous presence of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel … even after the Bar Kochba Revolt."
Kreisman explains that this shows the Jewish people's ancient enemies were present in the land, and recorded their impressions of the Jews they encountered there for posterity in clay and stone. The emphasis on non-Jewish sources backing up the ancient Jewish claims to the land is key.
"After the Bar Kochba revolt, people thought the Jews were exiled, but there has always been a Jewish presence in the land. After all the empires that have tried to annihilate the Jewish people, yet the Jews have always remained in their traditional homeland. Indeed, this knowledge comes with tremendous gratitude that we're still here. What's behind it? It's a covenant that God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He said, 'this is your land.' And it is that connection and covenant, which means many Jews are returning from exile."
The use of non-Jewish sources continues in the middle period the site covers, as it shows how Christian and Muslim pilgrims documented the Jewish presence in the land. It is their sources, which help explain how the land and the people, and Torah are one.
"That's why Jews who are outside of the land, always pray toward Jerusalem as did Daniel in the lions' den, toward the Temple Mount – so Jews are reminded wherever they are," Kreisman said.
"In the 1800s, just like in the Babylonian exile the Jews left in stages, so, now at this point they return in waves. All those things are documented in a timeline. Every find or document has a shareable link, and you can share it with people. What's beautiful about the site is that the Bible comes alive. Through archaeology it helps us to understand and interpret the Bible."
One of the ways in which the site does this is to highlight characters, such as King David, about whom chapters of the Bible are devoted. However, despite descriptions about the exploits of his life and the extent of his kingdom, he was always a somewhat tantalizing figure, because until relatively recently there was essentially no documentary proof he existed.
Some Bible minimalists charged he was only a local chieftain whose tribal lands were only modest. However, their maximalist opponents – taking the words of the Bible at face-value declared he was a mighty warrior, the head of an impressively large kingdom. Then in 1993, the entire framework of that narrative was flipped on his head by an astonishing discovery.
Archaeologists uncovered the Tel Dan Stele, which contains an Aramaic inscription which mentions the "House of David." "And again, it's not a Jewish source," Kreisman insists. "We don't have to prove anything. As people of faith, we believe it. This site can help anyone who wants to get the truth out there to actually show it."
Furthermore, the Israel in their Land site shows how political disagreements and maneuvering has been a part of communal life for centuries – and is not just relevant to the modern day.
"Ezra and Nehemiah get into deep political difficulties; and we can learn about these things within a greater context. People lobbied hard against them, and they really had their work cut out to complete the construction of the Temple in Ezra's case, and the Broad Wall in Nehemiah's. And it is not something we should be afraid of, because we can see God's hand at work. God's name is not directly mentioned in the Book of Esther, for example, but even in this seeming hiddenness, His presence is overwhelming."
A fascinating comparison is the people who built the wall were described as holding a "sword in one hand and a brick in the other." This resonates deeply with the situation modern-day Israelis find themselves in; trying to maintain a semblance of a normal life, while also fending off genocidal enemies from all directions.
She also sees God's hand in helping to unearth more of Jerusalem's long-buried secrets.
"Those ancient seals from Jeremiah and Isaiah were supposed to disintegrate after a hundred years or so because they were made of softish clay. However, they were buried during the city's destruction and it was the heat created by fires used to accomplish this, which allowed archaeologists to dig them up – complete – centuries later.
"Truly, one of the most awesome aspects of the site is that people can see these great discoveries like the Seal of the Prophet Isaiah, and also that of King Hezekiah. Finding them and making them available for users really makes the Bible come alive. We've worked in things so that people can connect the dots, which allows them to see a totally different world. And if you're part of it, you want to know how you can align with it."
Studying them has completely changed our understanding of things. God has a way of revealing important facts and helping bring them to light." And the verification of the Biblical narrative is certainly a thorn in the side of organizations such as UNESCO, the World Heritage Foundation. Backed by the Obama administration, it asserted there was no connection between Jerusalem and the Bible, and that the city only belongs to the Islamic faith. Why else would the same organization be calling for a cessation of archaeological digs in and around Jerusalem? Could it be due to the fact too much evidence of a Jewish presence long predating anything Islamic or Arab is constantly being turned up?
"The site shows there is a time and a sign for everything; and if we learn to acknowledge the signs then we can be on the right side of history. After the destruction of Jerusalem she slowly got lost and as it says in Isaiah 49:6, God explicitly says he will not forget Jerusalem. 'See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands. Always in my mind is a picture of Jerusalem's walls in ruins.' One thing happens and there is a domino effect, and we're in the midst of that. New things are being discovered every day and we're starting to get a bigger and clearer picture.
Jerusalem sits on a timeline, which can be broken down into accurate segments and begin to make a lot of chronological sense.
"In 1867 Charles Warren discovered the City of David. In 1917 General Allenby liberated the Old City having driven north following the fall of Beersheeba. In 1967 the IDF liberated the whole of Jerusalem following Israel's lightning victory in the Six Day War. And in 2017, President Trump declared Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel. The timeframe of the 'Yovel' or 'Jubilee' – a 50-year cycle after which there is a massive shift – is very clear."
King Cyrus – to whom U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has been compared – didn't specifically say to the Jews they could go back and build their Temple, although this was effectively the outcome. When he came to the throne, Cyrus utilized the help of the priests of Marduk during Nabonidus' reign, gaining their support – after earlier aiding them – to assist him in dethroning Nabonidus in a peaceful transition of power. He repaid them by allowing them to rebuild their temple. He saw what worked for him and decreed similarly for all the lands under his control. In this way he permitted the Jews to follow their own specific religious practices, which included a rededication of their previously destroyed Temple.
An obvious question, given the amount of evidence tying Jewish history to the land, is why despite it, do people still question Judaism's connection, and try to minimize it at best, while others attempt to erase it completely.
"There has been an anti-Semitic dynamic for centuries," Kreisman notes. "It always gets to the point when Jews 'become a problem.' I think that when Jews come back to the land of which they were created – to be a light unto the nations. We can sometimes occupy a gray area, which is where we can often be misunderstood – such as the need to physically defend ourselves after being attacked, as well as fending off the criticisms. And you can see after Oct. 7 Jewish people have become stronger in their identity and the site has received much more traffic. If you follow history; in every generation people want to find a reason to annihilate the Jews."
"I believe archaeology is connected to the consciousness of the world," says Kreisman. "People want the truth no matter what the propaganda is. The more we uncover the secrets of Jerusalem's past, the more knowledge grows in the world as well."
According to Kreisman, "Jerusalem calls back her sons; her destiny is entwined with the Jewish people. Her only comfort is for her sons to return. The more Jewish people return and the more we uncover about the city, the more people will return. Nothing is happenstance, it's all correlated. The more you support Israel, the more you support the truth of Israel, the more you are bringing the bigger truth about. We have ambassadors who are fighting for the truth and it means something; it does something."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
One of the more salacious messaging tidbits that came out of ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's partisan J6 committee which was set up to investigate the Capitol riot, but actually tried to rearrange evidence to blame President Donald Trump for the events, was that Trump tried to commandeer the presidential limousine.
That claim came from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who has come under scrutiny for not just the content of her testimony to Pelosi's committee, but changing it, and then allegedly working at the behest of former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., to orchestra her statements.
Hutchinson had claimed at the time Pelosi's committee was holding hearings that Trump had insisted that his Secret Service driver take him to the Capitol that day.
Lacking a positive response, Hutchinson claimed, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of the limo.
Her claims immediately were refuted by the Secret Service, which pointed out the incident simply did not happen.
Now a report in the Federalist documents how newly released testimony from the Secret Service pushed back on the wild claim.
It was House Administration's subcommittee on Oversight that released the transcripts of a Secret Service driver for President Donald Trump, the report said.
"I did not see him reach. He never grabbed the steering wheel," the driver told Cheney at the time. "I didn't see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all."
The Federalist noted that "flew directly in opposition" to Cassidy's claims that an irate president took after agents to try to drive himself to the Capitol.
Hutchinson had testified Trump said something like, "I'm the f'ing president, take me up to the Capitol now."
With her testimony, the report said, "she was celebrated by Trump's opponents as a heroine of the Jan. 6 saga to smear Republicans as complicit in the violence at the Capitol. Lawmakers on the partisan panel appointed by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi aggressively pursued that narrative to the point of releasing select testimony and riot footage with a series of made-for-TV hearings produced by professional broadcasters."
The Federalist noted it months ago had documented how Cheney suppressed evidence "that Trump pressed Democrats to accept 10,000 National Guard troops ahead of Jan. 6, 2021."
He was refused.
House investigators now are calling for the Department of Justice to investigate Cheney's actions for allegedly tampering with a congressional witness.
She is accused of circumventing Hutchinson's lawyer just as Hutchinson was changing her testimony.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Americans were witnesses during Joe Biden's tenure as president to his verbal and mental stumbles, his memory lapses and awkward gaps that moved far beyond his legacy of gaffes and verbal bumbles, even his physical trips and falls.
None of which is out of the ordinary for an octogenarian who now has been described by a federal prosecutor as an "elderly man with a poor memory," who apparently even forgot when he was vice president to Barack Obama.
But the Wall Street Journal has released a report charging that there was an unprecedented conspiracy to hide Biden's failings from the public, even as his shortcomings were evidence at the outset of his presidency.
Republican pundit Scott Jennings has described the situation, of presidential aides withholding press access to Biden, of withholding information from the president, and more, a "scandal of epic proportions."
Reportedly a vocal coach had been hired to try to make Biden's voice better, and aides "scrapped meetings on Biden's 'bad days' and even kept him away from his own Cabinet appointees and congressional Democratic allies," according to a multiple reports.
"It's the biggest scandal in America," Jennings said during an interview this week.
"And the level and volume of people who dedicated themselves to lying to everyone at home about this man's condition for four straight years – up through this summer – is breathtaking."
Fair would be the question, he said, "Who is running this country?"
"And his staff and the White House lied about it and kept it from the American people. It's an absolute scandal what's going on."
The White House has rejected the charge there was a large scale coverup of Biden's failings.
But a report from the Daily Caller News Foundation explained Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky is warning Democrats could face their own "tea party" movement after the revelations about administration appointees concealing the truth about Biden's condition.
The report said the Wall Street Journal reporting charged White House aides "insulated" Biden, even from Cabinet members, from the first year of his presidency. Roginsky said that the "lying" about Biden's health would have consequences for Democrats, the report warned.
"There is a bigger problem here, and that is that I think Democrats are at the point where Republicans might have been right after the Bush election or after the Bush term was up, which is that I think Democrats are starting to mistrust their institutions. And this goes back to a bipartisan effort to lie us into the Iraq war, not just by George Bush, but also by a lot of Democrats."
Roginsky said, "I think you have a lot of Democrats now, me included, who are pretty sick of the institution and trusting people in the institution and this is just one example, the most recent example, I think of people institutionally lying to the American people and what you're ultimately going to see. And I don't have a problem saying this as a Democrat, is that you're going to see a tea party version rise up in the Democratic Party based on the fact that this is yet another marker of people just not trusting our leaders anymore. And I'm sorry to say that, but I think we brought this on ourselves."
Biden's blunders long have been documented in media reports and there's even been a book written about them. But during his presidency he several times claimed to have spoken with people who were dead at the time.
The report said that includes when he claimed "to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996. In September 2022, Biden asked for Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana at a conference on hunger that took place several weeks after Walorski and two staffers were killed in a car crash."
The real world ramifications now are appearing, too. The Daily Mail said Kamala Harris "abruptly" canceled a scheduled Christmas vacation after the revelations of Biden's decline.
Social media did not miss the connection, as "Her announcement came hours after a bombshell Wall Street Journal investigation exposed how frail the president has been throughout the last four years."
The public saw evidence of Biden's decline when he appeared in a presidential debate with now President-elect Donald Trump last summer. Only days later, Biden dropped out of the race, and endorsed stand-in Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in a landslide in November.
Evidence showed up multiple times over Biden's presidency, including when he was given written instructions by his staff on where and when to sit during a meeting with press, and when to leave. He also was seen wandering around on stages at various times, seemingly unable to find stairs to get down.
The New York Post said the campaign to hide Biden's "apparent mental decline" began on Day 1 of his presidency.
"The lack of access to the nation's oldest-ever president has been well known in Washington — with Biden hosting the fewest large press conferences in modern history and frequently descending into gaffes at the podium when he appeared — but how much the White House made up for the haziness had until now been hidden, according to aides, Democratic lawmakers and donors who spoke with the Wall Street Journal," the report said.
Further, staff members "removed negative reports from Biden's stack of news for the day, misleading him about the public's opinion of his job performance — which reached a 70-year low in 2024," the report said.
He frequently "relied on notecards," was seen carrying "large directions printed for him," and often "missed up the names of foreign dignitaries."
Mediaite listed the "five biggest bombshells" from the report on Biden, including that there were concerns even during the first part of his tenure, that Democrats noticed a leadership vacuum, that meetings were strictly scripted, that Biden struggled to prepare his thoughts when interviewed by special counsel Robert Hur and campaign donors were "shocked" by his performance on calls.
But the Daily Mail post a list of dozens of events that should, to an observer, cause alarm about a sitting president.
For example. Biden repeatedly stumbled while walking up steps to Air Force One. And fell off bicycles.
He also mislabeled the Royal Air Force the "RFA." And he fell asleep while listening to speakers at a climate conference.
Several times he mispronounced the names of other nations' officials.
And, the report said, he "tripped as he walked down the stairs of the Itsukushima Shrine in May 2023 in his rush to greet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida."
And he fell while making an appearance at the Air Force Academy.
And he repeated an inaccurate story about a "white supremacist rally" – twice at the same event.
At a meeting with Brazil's president, he walked off the stage and into a flag. And he called the Congressional Hispanic Caucus the "black caucus."
He claimed to have ridden a train over a collapse bridge that never had train tracks, and called Ukraine's president by the name of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
When Biden forgot the name of his own Defense secretary he simply labeled him a "black man."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
It is the Gateway Pundit that has assembled a list of what innocuously is called "a handful of Joe Biden's accomplishments."
Those include:
And for those accomplishments, Biden says, he has no regrets.
He's asked by an interviewer: "Any other regrets or anything you wished you would have done differently?"
"Well, I guess if I thought a lot about it there'd be something specifically, not generically," Biden said.
Social media commenters weren't at a loss for words:
"I can think of some!" said one.
And, "It is only a disaster from our point of view. From his point of view it was perfect."
And another offered Biden an excuse: "He doesn't remember any of it. Poor guy."
The report explained Biden was being interviewed by Ben Meiselas, whose visit was posted on YouTube:
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Now that longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime has fallen at the hands of an Islamist group, experts and news pundits – along with the people of Syria – are all speculating about what will happen next.
Indeed, since Assad's ouster, Syrians are experiencing "a lot of hope and a lot of fear … at the same time," says U.N. Special Envoy Geir Pedersen. Overthrown by the Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the future of Syria remains very uncertain.
For some informed perspective on not just the future of Syria, but on what role – if any – America should play, WorldNetDaily interviewed Army Lt. Col. Darin Gaub, a former UH-60 Blackhawk pilot and co-founder of Restore Liberty.
"Syria," Gaub told WND, "had been a proxy state of Russia and Iran for quite a while, both of whom for a variety of reasons lost their grip on control in Syria." The most obvious reasons, he said, were the fact that Russia is heavily involved in a war with Ukraine, and Iran is consumed with Hamas and Hezbollah being "largely ineffective" in their war against Israel.
And without restraint from either Russia or Iran in Syria, Gaub said, "It's going to be hard to keep the lid on all these different insurgent-type of groups that have exploded in a search for power over the country."
So who will win the power struggle? "It remains to be seen whether it will be either of these two nations, an insurgent group, a caliphate, or an autocracy," he said, while noting that regardless, "the brutality will be steep" with the infighting that will ensue.
Iran is currently in a state of chaos, reeling from its own infighting over a mandatory hijab law, the economic deprivation of its people, and more. Plus, with the weakening of its anti-Israel proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is losing its "axis of resistance." Couple all this with the watchful eye of a second Trump administration and the potential for heavy Iran sanctions over its development of nuclear weapons, and "the Iranian regime may collapse, as well," says Gaub.
Should that happen, "it would put an end to running arms and ammunition and various things from Iran through Iraq into Syria, and ultimately into Hezbollah." In that case, Gaub added with regard to post-Assad Syria, "Turkey will be quick to fund the terrorist-style cells that are dominating in the region."
Regarding Turkey, America's supposed NATO "ally," Gaub asked pointedly: "How do you deal with that fact that you'll have a nation that's funding terror cells fighting against the Kurds, while attempting to be friendly to the West and serving as a member of NATO?" He added, "Would they be removed as a member of NATO?"
Regardless of what happens, Gaub stressed: "What we don't want is some sort of expansion of violence, where people in America begin to think we need to be involved in Syria." For Gaub, "There's no reason to suck ourselves into a continuing, ongoing, perpetual war in a place that very few people understand and can identify who the terrorist factions are and who's on whose side, when they're all dressed the same."
"It's not our fight," he said.