A Democrat North Carolina Supreme Court justice now faces an ethics complaint filed by top Republicans in the state.
According to Breitbart, the complaint was filed by multiple North Carolina GOP state senators primarily due to candidate Allison Riggs' pro-abortion campaign.
Riggs released a campaign ad that made it clear she's running on a pro-abortion ticket, which the state Republicans believe is a violation of ethics, to say the least, given that judicial candidates are not supposed to take a side on political topics.
The three state senators, Republican Sens. Buck Newton, Amy Galey, and Danny Britt, said Riggs' ad "blatantly violated" the ethics code set forth by North Carolina’s Judicial Standards Commission.
Riggs' bizarre and obviously pro-abortion ad attacked the state's Lt. Governor, and in it she proclaimed she would "fight" for women's reproductive rights.
The stakes in this election are high, especially for women like me. Since Roe was overturned in 2022, state courts now make critical decisions about access to healthcare.
I’m sharing my new ad, “Stakes,” because I want you to know I will always protect our freedoms. Pls. share! pic.twitter.com/6yGKUENZu4
— Allison Riggs (@AllisonJRiggs) October 23, 2024
The ad or her campaign in general obviously didn't sit well with the Republicans who filed the ethics complaint.
"As attorneys who value the integrity of our judicial process, it has become clear that Justice Riggs is guided more by the politics of winning an election rather than honoring the Code of Judicial Conduct," the three state senators wrote.
They added, "The Code prohibits any judicial candidate, regardless of the office they seek, from taking a position on any issue that may appear before their court."
"However, Justice Riggs is blatantly violating the Code," the GOP state senators continued. "She is currently running attack ads against Judge Jefferson Griffin, outlining her position on specific issues that may appear before the court while stating what she perceives to be her opponent’s position."
In the letter, the Republican state senators demanded a "full investigation" take place.
"If judicial candidates are allowed to run campaigns on legislating from the bench, then we legislators will need to take action in the upcoming session to prevent such a breach of judicial conduct from ever happening again," they wrote.
They urged the commission to monitor her actions during her campaigning.
Only time will tell if the state's judicial commission will take action, as she's seemingly violating the state's ethics standards.
Washington D.C. is preparing for political violence as a divided nation faces another intense presidential election on Tuesday.
According to polls, most Americans expect at least some unrest after the election.
Images of businesses boarded up in downtown D.C. are making the rounds on social media.
Work crews have begun covering up the windows of buildings and stores near the White House as the election comes down to the final week. pic.twitter.com/d29CAEq0QS
— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) October 31, 2024
Police in Washington D.C. will have the entire police force working 12-hour shifts, chief Pamela Smith said this week.
“We will not tolerate any violence of any kind,” said Smith at a news conference. “We will not tolerate the destruction of property. We will not tolerate any unlawful behavior. Offenders will be arrested and will be held accountable.”
The nation's capital was rocked by the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, as violent leftists surrounded the White House and clashed with Secret Service.
A pro-Trump election protest on January 6, 2021, evolved into unrest at the Capitol that injured many police officers and left one Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, shot dead by a cop.
President Trump's 2017 inauguration also was met with a violent response as rioters clashed with police, lit fires, and smashed storefronts.
While the media are stoking fears of another January 6th-style event on the right, a violent reaction from the left is also a possibility, as Democrats paint Trump as a "fascist" bent on destroying American democracy in a second term.
Democrat Kamala Harris has compared Trump to dictators like Adolf Hitler, and President Biden dismissed Trump supporters as "garbage" just days before Election Day.
This comes after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer. Another would-be assassin was arrested in September while trying to kill Trump at his Florida golf course.
Trump has blamed the extreme rhetoric of his opponents for the threats against his life, but Democrats have shown no signs of toning things down.
Anti-Trump incitement continued to build Friday when Trump was falsely accused of calling for the execution of Republican critic Liz Cheney.
Trump's critics pounced on out-of-context comments in which Trump suggested Cheney, an infamous war hawk, should be given a rifle and sent to fight overseas.
Facebook expected to win favor with a potential Biden White House by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, according to a new report from Congress.
For months before the 2020 election, the FBI had warned social media companies like Facebook to expect Russian propaganda targeting the Biden family.
The FBI's "pre-bunking" influenced Big Tech companies to censor the New York Post's legitimate reporting about Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, according to a report from the House Judiciary's Committee on the Weaponization of Government.
Starting in early 2020, the FBI held over 30 meetings to warn social media companies about a foreign influence operation targeting Hunter Biden and his ties to the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings.
Internal communications show that Facebook believed the Post's October 2020 reporting fulfilled the FBI's "exact" warnings about "content expected for a hack and leak."
“Right on schedule,” one Facebook employee wrote on October 14, 2020.
"Is this the Oct surprise everyone was waiting for?” wrote another.
Facebook’s then-vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote that the company's response to the Post's reporting would impact Facebook's relationship with a hypothetical Biden administration.
“Obviously, our calls on this could colour [sic] the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else…” Clegg wrote to vice president of global public policy Joel Kaplan.
Around the same time, dozens of intelligence agents signed a misleading letter suggesting Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation." Then-candidate Joe Biden cited the letter to dismiss the Post's reporting as bogus during a presidential debate with Donald Trump.
The FBI had in fact obtained the laptop's hard drive in late 2019 from a Delaware computer repair man.
After the 2020 election, Biden's laptop was gradually acknowledged as authentic by the legacy media. The Justice Department used the device as evidence in Hunter Biden's trial on felony gun charges in June.
In a rare mea culpa, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg issued a public apology this year for censoring content about COVID-19 to please the Biden White House. Zuckerberg also acknowledged the Hunter Biden laptop story was "not Russian disinformation and in retrospect, we should not have demoted the story."
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
The man who brutally assaulted Paul Pelosi during a break-in has been sentenced to life in prison without parole, ABC News reported.
David DePape learned his fate Tuesday in California state court, where he was found guilty in June of assaulting Pelosi and trying to kidnap his wife Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.).
DePape was already sentenced to 30 years in federal prison over the violent 2022 break-in at the Pelosis' San Francisco home.
The assailant struck Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer as police confronted the burglar at the Pelosi home in October 2022. The brutal attack was captured on policy bodycam.
DePape apologized during his federal trial, saying he snapped when his "plan" to kidnap then-Speaker Pelosi was "ruined." Nancy Pelosi was away in Washington at the time.
Pelosi had testified in court about the harrowing experience of waking up to find a strange man in his bedroom.
"He seemed very intent on what he was going to do," he recounted.
In June, DePape was convicted of false imprisonment of an elder by violence or menace, residential burglary, threatening a family member of a public official, dissuading a witness by force or threat and aggravated kidnapping.
Paul Pelosi described the ongoing impact of the assault in a letter to the judge pleading for the maximum punishment. Pelosi said the family is "traumatized" and he still has headaches and balance issues from the assault, which fractured his skull.
Judge Harry Dorfman, who oversaw the state case, refused a request from DePape's lawyers for a new trial. The Pelosi family said the new life sentence sends a message that political violence is never acceptable.
"Today’s sentence of life without parole gives our Pop same measure of legal justice and, we hope, a message to others that political violence against elected officials or their family members will not be tolerated, minimized or condoned. We must each do our part to build a peaceful democracy," the family said.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the state conviction ensures that DePape "will face consequences for his heinous crimes against the Pelosi family and our democracy."
DePape was resentenced in the federal case because he did not receive a chance to speak to the court. He received the same sentence of 30 years after resentencing.
Donald Trump has called for "deranged" Jack Smith to be "thrown out" of the country - Trump's latest warning to the federal prosecutor behind his stalled January 6th case.
Trump has long argued that Smith is a partisan agent of the Democratic party. Smith, a private citizen, was appointed by the Biden Justice Department to prosecute Trump after he launched his 2024 campaign.
While discussing immigration with New York City radio hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby, Trump suggested Smith should be classified as insane and sent out of the country.
“Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged, and he should be thrown out of the country,” Trump told WABC 770 AM’s Cats and Cosby show.
“You have to let people in, but they have to come in legally...And you have to get the killers, the murderers, and mentally deranged, you have to get them out. And we should throw Jack Smith out with them, the mentally deranged people," he continued.
Smith brought charges against Trump over January 6th and classified documents last year.
While Smith had furiously pushed to prosecute Trump before the election, both cases ran into obstacles. The documents case was tossed by the judge, who found that Smith, a private citizen, was improperly appointed Special Counsel.
The January 6th case was originally set for March, but the case was delayed by Trump's appeals on the issue of presidential immunity. The Supreme Court's July ruling, which mostly favored Trump, forced Smith to reshuffle his indictment, drawing things out further.
With the possibility of Smith's January 6th case collapsing altogether if Trump wins the presidency, Smith has sought to convict Trump in the court of public opinion.
Smith was widely rebuked for releasing an "October surprise" filing full of allegations against Trump this month, with many, including Trump, accusing Smith of trying to tip the scales in the presidential election.
In a separate interview Thursday with Hugh Hewitt, Trump pledged to fire Smith "within two seconds" of returning to the White House.
Trump's lawyers have asked Chutkan - who has ruled consistently in Smith's favor - to dismiss him, arguing his appointment poisoned the January 6th case from the beginning.
“The proposed motion establishes that this unjust case was dead on arrival — unconstitutional even before its inception,” Trump’s legal team said.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has issued a major ruling on early voting in the state.
The top court ordered election officials to hold early voting at two churches in West Memphis, in a victory for the city's mayor and self-described voting rights advocates.
The dispute pitted a pair of residents and the mayor of West Memphis against the Crittenden County Board of Election Commissioners, which voted against having early voting in the city.
The board voted to allow early voting in the city of Marion instead, but a lower court judge ordered officials to hold early voting at the Seventh Street Church of Christ in West Memphis, the biggest city in the county. A lone Democrat on the board voted in favor of early voting at the church.
The state's Republican attorney general, Tim Griffin, joined the board's appeal to the top court. Griffin accused County Clerk Paula Brown of stepping on the elections board, but mayor Marco McClendon says it's a black-and-white issue of voter access.
“This is a major victory for our city, ensuring greater access to voting for our community,” McClendon said in a statement.
The top court upheld a ruling from Circuit Judge Chris Thyer which held that Brown had the authority to designate Seventh Street Church of Christ as an early voting location.
The court reversed part of Thyer's ruling that said the board did not have to hold early voting at the First Baptist Church.
The Supreme Court differed, ruling the board must continue to allow early voting at First Baptist because the site was already established in 2022, and the board did not vote to change it.
The ruling came down before early voting began on October 21.
“I’m just thrilled that we got a fair and reasonable decision and that the court followed the law and that the voters in West Memphis are the ones who are going to benefit from it,” said Attorney Jennifer Standerfer, who represented two West Memphis voters in the case.
Early voting is underway in states all across the country, as polls show President Trump tied with Kamala Harris in the presidential race. Arkansas is not considered competitive, as the state has consistently for Republican presidents for decades.
A protracted post-election legal battle is possible, although some predict a more decisive result as soon as Election Night.
As former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris enter the final stretch in the last week before Election Day, both candidates have been asked tricky questions.
According to reports, one of those questions was with regard to whether or not either candidate would consider a pardon for President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
Unlike Harris, who has worked overtime to dodge anything resembling a difficult political question, Trump's reply to the possibility of pardoning Hunter Biden was not surprising, but a little shocking for many.
But at least he was honest about it. Harris simply dodged the question by saying she didn't want to get into hypothetical situations.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt posed the question to Trump regarding the possibility of offering Hunter Biden a pardon.
“I wouldn’t take it off the books. See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone after me so viciously, despite what – and Hunter’s a bad boy. There’s no question about it. He’s been a bad boy," Trump said.
NBC's Hallie Jackson posed the same question to Harris, even pressing her on the issue as Harris tried to squirm out of it. Her reply was not surprising, whatsoever.
“I’m not going to get into those hypotheticals. I’m focused on the next 14 days," Harris said.
Hunter Biden's father, the sitting president, had vowed that he would not pardon his own son, though many believe that could change because he said that while he was a Democratic presidential candidate up for reelection, as opposed to his status now as a lame duck.
Reports noted:
In June, Hunter Biden was convicted of three federal felonies related to lying about his drug use while purchasing a firearm. He now faces up to 25 years in prison, though he is expected to receive a lighter sentence due to his lack of prior convictions.
Users across social media reacted to the news that Trump is at least leaving open the possibility of pardoning Hunter Biden.
"No...let Hunter be the start of something great! Lock them all up for the crimes they have been committing for the last 25 years," one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote, "I believe Hunter will be pardoned by his father before Trump gets sworn in."
Only time will tell if Trump ever makes that call, which some believe could be the ultimate power move.
With just a little over a week until Election Day, former President Donald Trump's momentum across the country is surging at just the right moment.
According to the Daily Caller Trump just gave Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign another set of nightmares as he has taken the lead in a national poll.
The Wall Street Journal poll gave Trump a narrow lead on Harris, with 47% to Harris' 45%. While the number is small, it's profoundly significant.
As recently as August, the same iteration of the poll had Harris up by two points, which like the latest version, is within the margin of error.
Trump has surged in a number of key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan -- two states that are must-wins for either candidate if they want to sit in the Oval Office.
Not only is Trump doing quite well in swing states, but making his campaign smile even bigger is the fact that Harris' numbers are headed downhill, especially in key categories.
Exclusive: Trump has taken a narrow lead against Harris in the final weeks of the presidential race https://t.co/fUBlHlSvDb
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 24, 2024
The Daily Caller noted:
Harris’s favorability and job performance numbers have dropped since August while Trump’s job performance numbers has risen. In August, half of voters viewed her favorably. Now, as of late October, 45 percent view her favorably compared to 53 who view her unfavorably, according to the poll.
Making matters worse for Harris are new numbers that show her job performance numbers are at their worst since WSJ began asking respondents to weigh in on it.
According to the data, 54% of voters disapprove of her job performance while only 42% approve.
Republican pollster David Lee offered his thoughts as to why polls seem to be overwhelmingly trending toward favoring Trump.
"Voters are finally getting to know her," Lee said. "The definitional period is coming to an end, and more people are unhappy with what they have learned about her than what they know about President Trump."
After dodging the media for weeks, Harris has had a series of poor interview performances from a number of networks, including some that have otherwise been extremely friendly to Democrats.
Only time will tell if the numbers shake out like they are in the polls.
In the final days before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris gave her closing remarks in Pennsylvania during a CNN town hall event hosted by Anderson Cooper.
The problem is that instead of selling potential voters on her policy visions and legislative priorities, she spent most of the time forming word salads to easy questions and attacking former President Donald Trump.
According to Breitbart, she also called for a radical overhaul of the U.S. Senate by calling for the elimination of the filibuster rule.
The rule is used in Congress sometimes to delay or prevent a measure from passing during a full Senate vote.
Her suggestion of getting rid of the Senate filibuster came after CNN's Cooper asked her about previously mentioning codifying Roe v. Wade, noting that it would be all but impossible because of the filibuster rule.
"Let me ask you, you’ve talked about codifying Roe v. Wade, that would obviously require 60 votes in the Senate, a majority of the Senate … If that’s not possible, to codify it in the house, what do you do?” Cooper asked.
The vice president's response was easy to interpret, for once.
“I think we need to take a look at the filibuster, to be honest with you," Harris replied, implying that she's not a fan of the rule and would rather get it out of the way as a potential obstacle.
KAMALA HARRIS HINTS AT ELIMINATING THE FILIBUSTER: “I think we need to take a look at the filibuster to be honest with you.” pic.twitter.com/xYcMByWVGp
— The Conservative Patriot (@ConservPatriot_) October 24, 2024
Harris has made calls to end the filibuster in the pass for various reasons, including when Democrats were trying to pass the Green New Deal through Congress.
Users across social media reacted to Harris' suggestion that the filibuster be quashed.
"Wow. Kamala Harris says she will gut the filibuster. Right after she does that, Democrats would make DC and Puerto Rico states, pack the Supreme Court, and pass unrestricted and taxpayer-funded abortion up until the moment of birth," Steve Cortes wrote on X.
Another X user wrote, "Once the filibuster is gone, they will force one-party rule on an evenly divided nation. It will be the end of our republican experiment."
It's clear that Harris is running out of things to say at this point.
Police in Wisconsin pulled over a drunk driver who came close to hitting Kamala Harris' motorcade.
The vice president was rushed off unharmed after Wayne Wacker, 55, drove in the wrong direction on I-94.
While details are still pouring in, Wacker drove onto the highway using the off-ramp and proceeded to come within feet of the motorcade.
Harris was leaving an event in Milwaukee's Brookfield suburb Monday night when the close call happened after 8:20 p.m.
Sheriff’s deputies made a traffic stop and found an open container in the car. Wacker had no recollection of how he got there and said he did not intend to harm the vice president.
A video of the incident was obtained by local news station WISN, showing a white vehicle drive past the motorcade in the wrong direction. It wasn't made clear how fast the car was going.
Wacker works in Milwaukee Public Schools as a special education teacher, WISN reported. He has not been charged yet, but police are considering a felony charge for recklessly endangering safety.
New reporting tonight from @NickBohrWISN: The Secret Service is looking into how a suspected drunk driver, driving the wrong way on the interstate, came this close to VP Kamala Harris' motorcade in Milwaukee last night after her event in Waukesha County pic.twitter.com/VEclfwEQVR
— Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) October 22, 2024
A retired Milwaukee officer told WISN that ramps are usually blocked off for a motorcade. It's not clear why the off-ramp was left open.
The Secret Service has been tight-lipped about the incident, telling WISN that it "cannot disclose specific details about operations and procedures pertaining to motorcade safety. The incident in Milwaukee did not compromise the integrity of our protective movements."
"The U.S. Secret Service is aware of the incident involving a motorist traveling in the opposite direction on the highway while the Vice President was in her motorcade. We are grateful to the Milwaukee Sheriff's Office for their response which allowed them to stop the motorist and take the driver into custody for DUI," Secret Service Spokesperson Joe Routh told WISN.
This is not the first traffic incident involving the Harris campaign to occur in Milwaukee. The back of the motorcade carrying running mate Tim Walz was rear-ended in September, injuring some staff and journalists covering the campaign.