On Monday, during his last Group of 20 summit, the departing American president showed up for a family photo with other world leaders—only to discover that someone else had taken the shot.
A number of world leaders, including Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India, and Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom, were present and took part in the customary summit set piece, which included smiling and linking hands, as Breitbart News reported.
The blunder in Rio de Janeiro, according to a high-ranking American official, was due to problems with logistics.
“Due to logistical issues, they took the family photo early before all the leaders had arrived. So a number of leaders weren’t actually there when they took the photo,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Before the shot was taken, Biden was nowhere to be seen. Reporters and photographers started scrambling to find him.
Along with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he was caught by one cameraman hiding behind a palm tree close by. Meloni and Trudeau were also absent from the picture.
The insider said, "It was just simply logistical issues" when asked if Biden purposefully avoided posing next to Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, for the photo.
During Sunday's opening session of the summit, Biden discussed his upcoming resignation as president.
“As you know, this is my last G20 summit. We’ve made progress together, but I urge you to keep going -- and I’m sure you will, regardless of my urging or not,” he told fellow leaders.
On Monday, a senior aide said many nations were expecting President-elect Donald Trump's different global leadership, but Biden remains in charge.
“We have a system, fundamentally, that’s predicated on one president at a time,” said Jon Finer, deputy national security adviser. “President Biden is that president; he will be handing off power in January, and it will be up to a new administration to decide what to do with it.”
In his own words, Biden acknowledged the limited time he has left in office on Sunday.
“It’s no secret that I’m leaving office in January,” he said. “I will leave my successor and my country a strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so.”
Attendees at the G20 conference include the top officials from 19 member nations and two regional organizations: the EU and the African Union.
The member nations comprise over two-thirds of the global population, about 85% of the global GDP, and over 75% of global trade, as stated by the forum.
In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1999, the G20 was formed to provide a platform for central bank officials and ministers of finance to deliberate on ways to stabilize the global economy.
Over time, it transformed into a summit of world leaders.
The House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) said over the weekend that it is likely to release its report on the investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), which could potentially throw a monkey wrench into his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump to be Attorney General.
Gaetz stepped down from the House as soon as Trump nominated him, meaning that technically, he is no longer under the purview of the committee.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) opposed releasing the report and personally conveyed this sentiment to Guest over the weekend, to no avail.
“I appreciate Mike reaching out,” Guest told Politico. “I don’t see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide.”
A decision on whether to release the report will happen Wednesday when the committee meets.
The investigation involved in part whether Gaetz paid women for sex, and paid for them to travel across state lines for sex. One of the women allegedly involved said she was 17 at the time of some of the encounters.
The Justice Department investigated the allegations for several years and declined to press any charges against him.
The Trump transition team spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer said of the allegations against Gaetz,
Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He's the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration. The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing.
At this year's CPAC convention, Gaetz was vocal about the need to stop members of Congress including Guest, from trading individual stocks.
"For the same reason you don’t let the umpire bet on the game, members of congress should not be allowed to trade individual stocks,” he said. “How about the Ethics Committee take up those reforms?"
“He has become a brilliant stock trader while in office, and I admire the obvious genius,” Gaetz said of Guest. “He knew exactly the right time to buy online gambling stocks. His purchase in Evolution Gaming Securities netted him a hefty 36 percent gain — not too shabby. Now, I’m not saying this is insider trading, but this monetary affair is perhaps the most suspicious I’ve seen since Fani Willis and Nathan Wade."
Gaetz posted on X in February about the ethics probe, “Word is, I now have problems with the Ethics Committee — which seems really odd to me because I’m the one screaming loudest for actual ethics reforms.”
“Word is, I now have problems with the Ethics Committee — which seems really odd to me because I’m the one screaming loudest for actual ethics reforms.”
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) at CPAC rails against House Ethics probe into him and the panel’s chair, Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) pic.twitter.com/XHRwJPyPnw
— The Recount (@therecount) February 23, 2024
It's possible that Gaetz is the only Republican congressman not to take money from PACs, for whatever that's worth.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday took up a case that will decide whether top election official Meagan Wolfe can remain in her position despite not being reappointed by the commission or confirmed by the Senate after her term ended in 2023.
Wolfe has been Elections Commission Administrator since 2019, and her reappointment was deadlocked in a 3-3 vote by the commission.
This means it was never sent to the Senate, which could vote to confirm or fire her from the role.
Republicans have been trying to remove Wolfe since 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state by 21,000 votes.
There were numerous challenges to the 2020 vote count, but none of them were successful. Republicans seem to think that Wolfe, who is supposed to be non-partisan, favored Biden at the time.
Because no new administrator was appointed, Wolfe has remained in the role, but Republicans argued that she shouldn't be allowed to do so because she didn't go through the confirmation process.
The Senate in particular is upset about being left out of the process. Senate Republicans did vote to fire her, but it didn't mean anything because procedurally, it was out of order.
“Here the question is, can three commissioners essentially cut the Senate out entirely forever?” Misha Tseytlin, attorney for the Republican-controlled Legislature, argued Monday.
Liberal Justice Janet Karofsky didn't think much of the Republicans' argument.
She pointed out that the court already ruled, albeit when conservatives were in charge, that it was perfectly legal for state Natural Resources Board member Fred Prehn, a Republican nominee, to remain in his role when no one else was appointed.
“You are trying to thread a needle here that has no eye,” she said after hearing their arguments.
But Tseytlin pointed out that Prehn's position did not require the appointment of a replacement, while Wolfe's did.
The court has a narrow liberal majority, which occurred when Karofsky was elected in 2023.
The case could have long-reaching effects for Wisconsin electoral politics.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is opening investigations into a reported flurry of political actions taken by President Joe Biden's lame-duck Department of Justice.
Jordan did an interview with Just The News on Friday and he raised the alarm about Biden's DOJ going wild with the limited time they have left before President-elect Donald Trump comes through to clean house.
One example that Jordan pointed out was the DOJ's targeting of Elon Musk and his companies after his overt support for Donald Trump’s campaign.
In fact, Biden's DOJ may have broken the law by sending a letter to Musk that essentially amounted to a threat from a federal agency against someone who was campaigning on behalf of a presidential candidate.
There are numerous other accusations of abusive antitrust inquiries as examples of potentially abusive DOJ behavior that may be the last gasp of the Biden administration to punish their political opponents.
Biden's DOJ has engaged in thuggery and intimidation against red states and conservatives for years but now they only have a couple of months before Trump is sworn into office and it will be game over for nearly everyone working there.
Jordan told JTN that, "This pattern of turning these agencies on the very people they're supposed to serve -- we the people, the taxpayers -- has been a concern from the get-go. We're concerned now with what they may be doing with the antitrust issue, going after companies as they're heading out the door."
Biden's DOJ was busy trying to stop Republican states from combating voter fraud and most notably tried to prevent non-citizens from being purged from voter rolls.
Jordan touched on this saying, "Of course, right prior to the elections, we saw the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department going after Virginia for simply keeping noncitizens from voting in our elections. Imagine that we got the same thing in Ohio, our Secretary of State was sent a letter three weeks before Election Day saying they were concerned about the good work he was doing. So we're always concerned about this. We're going to keep working.”
Jordan also wrote a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter warning him and the rest of Biden's DOJ that there political actions in the wake of the presidential election were inappropriate and would be punished.
Jordan stated, "We have received allegations that the Division sent demand letters to numerous businesses indicating an intention to start enforcement actions in the final days of the Biden-Harris Administration. With the American people clearly rejecting the failed policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, the Division's actions are inappropriate and inconsistent with the will of the American people."
With Trump making his return to the White House, federal agencies will be purged of leftists and other anti-American individuals who have targeted conservatives. Former Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) will be leading that effort.
Trump nominated Gaetz, who promptly resigned from his position in Congress, this past week and the announcement has already incited panic among both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
Gaetz himself has been hounded by Biden's DOJ and has a personal stake in clearing out leftists that used the Justice Department's power to target a political opponent.
Conservatives have been living in fear of Biden's DOJ for years and now that will be coming to an end. The leftists who corrupted our law enforcement systems for political gain will finally be held accountable for their actions.
A federal judge overseeing the exonerated Central Park Five’s defamation lawsuit against President-elect Trump has recused himself after it was discovered he had close ties to the plaintiff's lead attorney.
The Hill reported that U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson was asked to recuse himself by Trump's lawyers after it was discovered that Baylson and Shanin Specter, the Central Park Five’s lead attorney, had close ties.
Baylson and Specter have been friends since childhood and Specter had represented Baylson and his wife in legal matters.
This represented a serious conflict of interest and Baylson could not be trusted to function as an impartial judge in this matter and as such has recused himself from the case.
This led to a motion from Trump's attorney which read, "Defendant respectfully submits that a reasonable person would question the Court’s impartiality in this matter, and therefore seeks recusal."
Baylson, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, quickly stepped aside but interestingly he first consulted plaintiffs who declined to oppose his recusal.
This begs the question of what Baylson would have done if the plaintiffs had opposed his recusal. Would Judge Baylson have stayed on the case despite his close relationship with his plaintiff's lead attorney if the plaintiffs wanted him to?
However, thankfully this situation was avoided and the case will be assigned to a different judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The case was filed against Trump by the Central Park 5 in response to comments made by Trump during September’s presidential debate about the circumstances around the group’s wrongful conviction.
The Central Park 5 were found guilty of the 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogging in New York City’s Central Park in a case that shocked America for its brutality and violence.
Their conviction was overturned later but the circumstances around both their overturned conviction and the original case are still being debated. Trump pointed out how all five teens had "pled guilty” and they “killed a person ultimately” in a brutal rape.
Trump has long been vocal about the Central Park 5 and believes their conviction was wrongfully overturned thanks to political reasons. Now the Central Park 5 are doing their best to drag Trump into court on defamation charges.
The Central Park 5 are going to have serious issues dragging Trump into court now that he is the President-elect and will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States in January.
Like the other legal actions against Trump, his ascendency to the presidency all but crushes any hopes that his opponents had. Democrats launched multiple indictments against Trump all of which are in the process of winding down now that Trump is back in the White House.
Nonetheless, as the Central Park 5's case is a civil lawsuit not brought by the Department of Justice, this case could carry on for a while but is unlikely to be of consequence.
It didn't turn out well for Democrat nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to back out of the Joe Rogan podcast, which was hugely successful for President-elect Donald Trump.
It turns out that she pulled out because she feared a backlash from her woke constituency, according to Jennifer Palmieri, the advisor to second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash,” Palmieri said Wednesday at a conference organized by The Clearing House.
The Harris campaign originally said she was pulling out of the agreement to do the podcast due to a scheduling conflict.
Unfortunately for her, the decision led to speculation that she could not handle a long-form interview that did not allow a teleprompter or prepared questions.
The speculation was founded on her history of gaffes and vapid comments, so it's very possible that she might have flubbed the interview, had she done it.
President-elect Donald Trump did a three-hour interview with Rogan, which eventually got 50 million views and may have helped him get more of the single male vote.
Rogan, who was not a typical Republican voter, ended up endorsing Trump on the eve of the election.
Trump has since credited son Barron Trump, an 18-year-old freshman at NYU's business school, for advising him about which podcasts to do, including Joe Rogan's.
Trump got 5% more of the youth vote than he did in 2020, making Barron rather successful in the advice he gave his dad.
It's not the first time Trump has used his family members as advisors.
His oldest daughter Ivanka Trump advised him in 2016 and served in the campaign. Her husband Jared Kushner was also a trusted advisor, but neither one of them was involved in the campaign this time around after they relocated to Florida.
Lara Trump, the wife of his son Eric, also served as a campaign advisor in 2020 and 2024.
Trump has big plans for his second term, including fixing the border mess and reviving the economy.
The conservative talk show host and prolific author, Dennis Prager, was recently hospitalized due to a severe back injury sustained in an accident, as Barrett Media reported.
PragerU, his nonprofit advocacy group and media organization, initially disclosed his medical emergency on November 13 through the social media platform X.
On Tuesday morning, PragerU founder and our dear friend, Dennis Prager, suffered a serious back injury following a fall. He's resting in a local Los Angeles hospital as doctors assess treatment options. We will keep you informed of his condition. In the meantime, Dennis welcomes…
— PragerU (@prageru) November 13, 2024
Afterward, the news was also announced on his official X account through a video statement from his employer, The Salem News Channel, which was read by his colleague and guest host, Mark Davis.
“Join us in praying for Dennis's quick recovery from a back injury!” the November 14 post was captioned.
In the video, Mark Davis reiterated the information that was previously shared on the PragerU post and stated that he had already extended his best wishes for the host.
He encouraged his friends, admirers, and listeners to join him in "praying" for Dennis Prager's "quick recovery."
Davis also announced a roster of guest presenters, including Jennifer Horn, Bob Frantz, and Carl Jackson, who will be temporarily taking over the hosting duties of his designated program, which is broadcast from noon to 2 PM ET.
Dennis Prager is a renowned American conservative author, radio talk show presenter, and commentator, known to have supported conservative causes, nationwide.
He is a co-founder of PragerU, an online platform that creates brief educational videos with the objective of promoting conservative values and ideas. Since 1999, he has been a nationally syndicated radio presenter, broadcasting from Los Angeles.
Prager's syndicated program addresses a diverse array of subjects, such as politics, religion, and culture.
He has made appearances on approximately 400 stations nationwide, actively promoting conservative ideology.
The Rational Bible, Still the Best Hope, and Happiness Is a Serious Problem are only a few of his nine published books.
Along with producer Allen Estrin, Dennis started PragerU in 2011 to make five-minute films that taught students about a variety of topics, including economics and politics.
Those films have been instrumental in teaching teens and young adults about issues surrounding civics and politics in a way that has been frequently overlooked in the public education system in recent years.
Special counsel Jack Smith and his staff intend to resign prior to the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
The Justice Department's longstanding stance is that it is prohibited from charging a sitting president with a crime, as The New York Post reported. Consequently, Smith's office has been assessing the most effective approach to conclude its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against president Trump.
Smith's resignation was initially reported by The New York Times.
The imminent question in the weeks ahead is whether Smith's final report, which delineates his prosecution decisions, will be disclosed prior to Inauguration Day.
According to rules set down by the Justice Department, the office of the special counsel must submit a confidential report to the office of the attorney general, who has the option to make it public.
During a radio interview in late October, Trump stated that he would promptly remove Smith from his position as special counsel if he were to be re-elected.
“It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said, adding that he got “immunity at the Supreme Court."
It is also possible for the incoming attorney general to opt not to make public Smith's final report.
Smith and his colleagues had continued to advance their case against Trump for election involvement prior to his re-election last week. However, a federal judge presiding over the investigation granted the special counsel's office an extension until December 2 to determine the next steps following Trump's victory.
Last year, Trump was indicted by the Justice Department for his attempts to revoke the 2020 presidential election.
However, the Supreme Court's decision in July of this year that Trump enjoys immunity for certain activities he committed as president and the early appeals from Trump's legal team both worked to hinder Smith's case.
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in the case after Smith's team reworked the indictment in August, excluding certain material that the high court had deemed off-limits.
In Florida, the DOJ had also filed charges against Trump for allegedly keeping secret records after leaving office and refusing to return them.
In July, however, the case was dismissed by a federal court that ruled that Smith's appointment was unlawful. We are still reviewing that matter.
In response to the former president's initial indictment, Smith promised a speedy trial. However, in both instances, Trump's legal team managed to postpone proceedings, and during his campaign, Trump frequently criticized Smith in public and on social media.
President-elect Donald Trump has big plans for border security when he takes office in January, and at least one expert thinks he may temporarily shut down the border while he gets his plans set into motion.
"He could probably shut down the border, declare that there’s an emergency… stop the entry of people until further notice," Alfonso Aguilar, a former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship and the Director of Hispanic Engagement at the American Principles Project, told Fox News Digital. "That I think in some shape or form, will be one of his first actions."
Unchecked illegal immigration is a big part of what got Trump elected, and voters are counting on him making good on his promises to get things back under control after record numbers of illegal immigrants were let into the country by the Biden administration.
Immigration became more important to voters after ICE began to bus migrants by the thousands to major cities and small towns across the country, where taxpayers paid to put them up in hotels and provide food and medical care.
Local resources in many jurisdictions were strained in dealing with the problem, and illegal immigration was also blamed for rumors that FEMA was running out of money after Hurricane Helene.
These may have been factors in why 75% of voters said border security was an important issue to them.
Trump could also implement procedures to deport large numbers of the illegal immigrants, especially if they have committed crimes.
"If you identify people who have criminal records, who have committed a crime, you have somehow find a way to expedite their removal," Aguilar said. "I would imagine that they have in place an expedited procedure to remove those individuals involved in crime."
Trump can also end the CHNV parole program that allows migrants from certain countries--Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela--to get Advance Travel Authorizations into the U.S. and be paroled into the country pending a court date, often with work authorization privileges once in the country.
"They can end that on Day 1," Aguilar said.
He also said catch-and-release policies would probably end.
Workforce raids, which have not been conducted for years, and the resumption of the Remain in Mexico policy may take longer to implement, but are likely to be on the table.
Hiring more immigration judges and resuming the building of the border wall may take legislation or action from Congress, but Trump has majorities in both houses for now.
A Minnesota man who ranted about the election of Donald Trump killed his wife, ex-partner, and two sons before taking his own life on Thursday.
Police said that 46-year-old Anthony Nephew had a “pattern of mental health issues,” according to Duluth Police Chief Mike Ceynowa.
They found Nephew’s ex-partner Erin Abramson, 47, and their son, Jacob Nephew, 15, dead in Abramson's home with gunshot wounds.
After identifying Nephew as a suspect, they then found 45-year-old wife, Kathryn Nephew, and their 7-year-old son, Oliver Nephew, shot dead inside the family home along with Nephew.
As far back as July, Nephew had been ranting online against Trump based on comments that he made but were taken out of context.
“My mental health and the world can no longer peacefully coexist, and a lot of the reason is religion," he wrote in July.
“I am terrified of religious zealots inflicting their misguided beliefs on me and my family. I have intrusive thoughts of being burned at the stake as a witch, or crucified on a burning cross.
“Having people actually believe that I or my child are Satan or, the anti-Christ or whatever their favorite color of boogie man they are afraid are this week.”
“Not that anyone cares, but as an Independent voter, I would really like to see both the political parties in our country pick better candidates,” he wrote at the time. “We can do better than a binary choice between fascism and not fascism.”
As far back as 2021, and somewhat prophetically, he wrote in an op-ed for the local Duluth news, "For millions of Americans, a breakdown leads to suicide — or homicide before suicide.”
“Mental health in this country is stigmatized, ignored, or treated as a burden for the individual to bear alone, with little help and less understanding,” he wrote.
“Americans deny they have mental health struggles. Because they have to, because they’re told to, or because they don’t realize their mind is broken," he added.
Sadly, Nephew's rants did not give any clues about what he would go on to do.
Certainly, Democrats' contentions that Trump was a "threat to democracy" and that all kinds of horrible things would happen if Trump was elected did not help anyone in a fragile mental state maintain their stability after he was elected.