If you aren't concerned about freedom of speech yet, perhaps what is happening in Brazil will wake you up to the fact that the elite do NOT like it when normal citizens have a chance to make their voices heard:
According to TheHill.com, "A Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered the immediate suspension of social media platform X throughout the country Friday, after the platform refused to name a new legal representative amid an ongoing feud."
Justice Alexandre de Moraes has officially instructed internet service providers and app stores in Brazil to completely shut down servicing X in Brazil within FIVE DAYS of his ruling.
To prove he's serious on this issue, it would appear as though he's also introducing a fine of up to $9,000 per day to anyone caught using the site formerly known as Twitter on a VPN. The judge's order will remain in place until Elon Musk's company complies with all court orders and pays all fines, according to Brazil's Supreme Court's website.
Elon Musk had been ordered on August 28 to "appoint a legal representative within 24 hours or face a ban in Brazil." Musk did not comply.
The platform formerly known as Twitter seemed to know what was coming:
X's Global Government Affairs team said on August 29 that "it expected the justice to 'soon' order the platform to be shut down in the country 'simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.' The site formerly known as Twitter started having problems in Brazil a short while ago, when Judge de Moraes ordered X to suspend certain accounts from the site.
Brazil was so serious about censorship on Twitter that if the social media giant failed to comply with de Moraes' orders to censor certain accounts, "the judge said he would levy a daily fine of $3,650 against the company and order the arrest of its representative, Rachel Nova Conceicao."
Elon Musk said in a statement that this was NOT acceptable:
"Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purpose."
He then added another post on social media:
"The oppressive regime in Brazil is so afraid of the people learning the truth that they will bankrupt anyone who tries."
It is unclear how this battle between X and Brazil will ultimately shake out. Elon Musk has indicated that free speech is very important to him, but there have also been reports that X may eventually comply with Brazil's government's requests in order to keep operating in the country.
What do you think Elon Musk should do in this situation?
The controversy surrounding Tim Walz's claims about his military service is not dying down.
In fact, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), a retired National Guard member with four decades of service, has challenged Walz to release his emails and documents about his military service and deployments publicly to show that he has nothing to hide.
"He should just release them if he is proud of his service [and] if he is proud of the things.....all of us, generally speaking, are proud of our uniform service......our military service, and [if] he is proud of those conversations and his decision making thoughts at that moment," Perry said Thursday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Accusations that Walz lied about his service have ramped up in recent weeks since Vice President and Democrat Presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose the Minnesota Governor as her running mate in 2024.
Walz claimed in his autobiography and initially on the Harris campaign website that he retired from the military as a "command sergeant major," but the campaign site later changed this to reflect the fact that he was demoted before his retirement.
"He essentially just lied about the rank that he achieved because he never achieved that rank. He didn't retire at that rank," Perry, who retired in 2019 from the National Guard as an Army brigadier general and flying combat missions in Iraq, said.
Walz was also accused of suddenly retiring when his unit was called up to be deployed to Iraq in 2005 to avoid having to go to the war zone.
Perry suggested that his avoidance of military deployment would be reflective of his service as vice president.
"He's going to be willing to accept the good parts of service, but when it comes to the sacrifices that come with service, he's going to cut and run," Perry said. "You know how we know that? Because we've seen him do it."
Republican veterans--50 of them--signed a letter on Wednesday blasting Walz for lying about his military service.
“The Office of the Vice President is a position that requires the trust of the American people and a solemn commitment to duty on behalf of the United States of America,” the letter stated. “As veterans who have served our nation, we feel compelled to address your egregious misrepresentations and urge you to come clean to the American people.”
“You have stated that you are ‘damn proud’ of your service, and like any American veteran, you should be,” it continued. “But there is no honor in lying about the nature of your service. Repeatedly claiming to be a ‘Retired Command Sergeant Major’ when you did not complete the requirements was not honorable."
The House Oversight Committee noted that it is investigating Walz for having connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
"Mr. Walz has visited China 30 times, served as a fellow at a Chinese institution that maintains a devotion to the CCP, and spoke alongside the President of a Chinese organization the State Department exposed as a CCP effort to influence and co-opt local leaders," the House Oversight Committee wrote on the social media platform, X.
Former President Barack Obama still has jokes from the sidelines as he weighs in on the political climate, seeming to attempt to tip the scales in the DNC's favor.
The former president, pushed by his party as a bastion of charisma and Democrat ideals, had his image glued together with the racial diversity that served as a dog whistle to all the guilty feelings of the left-wing Democrat voters.
Case in point, despite the plethora of social and international issues that grew increasingly worse during the two terms Obama spent in office, Democrats call "tan-gate" one of the most controversial issues in his time in office.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the tan suit controversy, former President Obama praised Vice President Harris in a social media post.
Last week, he shared side-by-side photographs of himself wearing his tan suit from 2014 and Harris wearing a tan suit at the Democratic National Convention.
Ten years ago, his decision to don a tan suit while discussing ISIS in Iraq and Syria and Russia's intervention in Ukraine sparked an online outcry.
“How it started. How it’s going. Ten years later, and it’s still a good look!” Obama wrote in a post on social media platforms X and Instagram.
How it started. How it's going.
Ten years later, and it's still a good look! https://t.co/NKXRGNgJPv pic.twitter.com/KeI1gn7HSg
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 28, 2024
Additionally, he provided a hyperlink to IWillVote.com, a website that is funded by the Democratic National Committee and is designed to motivate Americans to verify their voter registration status.
In 2014, Obama's fashion choice prompted controversy among some pundits for not being serious enough, resulting in the suit becoming an iconic item as numerous social media users shared memes of the ensemble.
Since that time, social media users and other politicians have continued to ridicule the online uproar that Obama's tan suit has sparked.
During the former president's birthday week in 2021, President Biden appeared to pay tribute to Obama by wearing a tan attire.
Harris was seen at the venue in a tan suit one day before Obama's address at the Democratic National Convention last week.The New York Times observed that Harris's decision to wear a tan suit on Day 1 of the convention deviated from the conventional colors of red, white, and blue.
Harris's decision to wear a tan suit was compared to Obama's decision from approximately a decade earlier by a significant number of social media users. Some have speculated that Harris was attempting to align himself with popular culture.
Americans have been waiting with baited breath to hear how Vice President Kamala Harris will perform when being interviewed, and those questions (and hopefully others) could soon be answered.
While the Harris campaign wasn't in any way deluded enough to put Harris in front of an interviewer who was likely to do anything beyond pitch her softballs the entire interview, she is, finally, going to be interviewed, as Breitbart News reported.
Alex Marquardt, the host of CNN's "Situation Room" and the Chief National Security Correspondent, made the announcement on Tuesday that the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate will be conducting her first interview as a candidate a joint interview with 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) with CNN on Thursday.
This will also be the first time that the two candidates have conducted an interview together as a ticket.
According to CNN Political Director David Chalian, Harris and Walz will be interviewed by CNN Chief Political Correspondent and anchor Dana Bash in Georgia on Thursday. The interview will be shown as a primetime special at nine o'clock Eastern time on Thursday.
Following this, Marquardt stated that Chalian, in his capacity as Political Director, will have a part in assisting Bash in the formulation of questions, and he inquired about the problems that Bash will concentrate on.
The response from Chalian was that although the economy is unquestionably the most significant problem, there are a great deal of other problems for which "we just haven't heard from her, yet, in this capacity, as the Democratic nominee."
The interview comes as Harris faces the pressure of being the Democrat nominee without actually being voted in by the American people.
It is no doubt not lost on the Harris campaign that she is only leading the ticket because her name was on the Biden-Harris ticket, and the campaign would have lost tens of millions of dollars of already pledged donations if Democrats had put forward any other candidate to be the Democrat nominee.
This has spread fear among many and prompted a dreary forecast from Fox News’ Karl Rove, who said during a recent segment for the station that the optimism seen by the Harris campaign could be misplaced.
The analyst cited polling from earlier this week that suggested Harris is performing worse than both President Joe Biden at this time in 2020 and former first lady Hillary Clinton in 2015.
Fox anchor Brett Baire cited a warning that has been offered to Harris where she was told that the practice of avoiding the media and keeping her policy plans close to the vest could be a move borne out of "conceit and foolhardiness."
Rove responded, saying “She [Harris] needs to be more specific. Let’s not be critical of her by saying she has to have a Democrat Congress and a Democrat Senate in order to get these things done.
"Because the same can be said for Donald Trump; he has to have a Republican Senate and a Republican House to get everything done. But people want to know where you’re coming from, and they want to know enough about the specifics to get their hands around it."
The Supreme Court has struck down large portions of the Biden agenda this summer, making it more difficult for Vice President Kamala Harris to make claims about what she helped accomplish as his second-in-command.
Biden and his administration's habit of using executive orders to get around a divided Congress is coming back to bite him now, when Harris needs to rest on those laurels if she has any hope of rallying the Democrat base to her side.
Here are some of the rulings and their implications.
The Chevron doctrine allowing non-elected officials from government agencies to make laws and rules was struck down after 40 years, and could bring an end to what conservatives call the deep state without having to fire anyone.
The statute of limitations for challenging federal regulations was removed, allowing more of those challenges to go forward.
The ability of agencies to use internal judges to settle disputes was stripped away.
Whether Harris gets elected or not, the Democrat power base will be greatly curtailed by these three rulings.
The rulings could further decimate Biden's efforts to shift student loan burdens to taxpayers and
In addition, lower courts are busy starting the process of striking down even more of Biden's executive overreach.
A Texas judge blocked Biden's ban on noncompete clauses, and a Mississippi judge refused to go along with enshrining special treatment for transgender Americans in health care.
Leftist officials are up in arms over the changes.
“We have an extremist Supreme Court with a very political agenda that is willing to overturn decades of precedent,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the House Progressive Caucus chair, said during one interview. “It has changed the legal strategy.”
Biden has trampled on the Constitution with impunity and bragged about it for the last three-and-a-half years, but it's all beginning to catch up to him now.
No doubt they'll continue to lie about what they've done and how, but those paying attention will know the truth.
A Michigan judge on Saturday overruled a decision to keep independent presidential candidate Cornel West off the ballot in that state.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge James Robert Redford ordered the Michigan Bureau of Elections to qualify West and his running mate for the ballot if they show they have obtained the correct number of valid signatures.
Michigan’s secretary of state and the director of the Bureau of Elections “misapplied the law in finding otherwise," he wrote in his opinion.
The director of the Bureau of Elections notified West's campaign earlier in the month that he was disqualified for the ballot because of “defects in the notarization” of his affidavit of identity (AOI), but Redford said the AOIs filed “cannot serve as a mechanism to exclude them from the ballot.”
West celebrated the ruling, saying,
This ruling is not just a legal victory—it is a moral victory for everyone who believes in the sanctity of the democratic process. Our campaign submitted over 26,000 signatures, significantly more than required, which the court recognized as a legitimate expression of the people’s will.
“We are grateful for this affirmation and promise to continue championing the rights of all voters,” he added.
He announced in June that he had enough signatures to get on the ballot, and has since also qualified in Maine and other states.
West is currently polling around 1% of the vote, but some state races in 2020 were decided by less than that margin.
Michigan is a swing state that could have a very close finish in 2024.
The state and Rosa Holliday are filing appeals in the case.
West is a far-left activist whose candidacy is more likely to hurt Vice President Kamala Harris than former President Donald Trump.
Democrats have a 4-3 majority on the court, which shouldn't, but might, help to determine whether Redford's ruling will stand.
The ballot will be down one candidate after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last week he was suspending his candidacy to support Trump.
While Trump had a decent lead nationally against President Joe Biden, Biden's exit from the race and the insertion of Harris have tightened it to something of a dead heat at the moment.
Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has passed the 34th day of not giving an unscripted press conference on Saturday since replacing President Joe Biden.
Ever since President Biden endorsed her as his replacement following his forced exit from the presidential race, Harris has been emulating her predecessor and has spent the entire time hiding from the media.
Despite having a friendly mainstream media, Harris has refused to give interviews or speak with the media outside of specific exemptions.
Aside from rally speeches and a speech at the DNC formally accepting the nomination, Harris has been completely radio silent and for good reason.
Harris's campaign is all-in on the "Vote for me I'm not Trump" strategy as Harris represents the failures of the past four years and her own ideas are so radical and dangerous that Democrats don't want them revealed.
The Harris campaign has been so airtight that they haven't even posted a policies page on the Harris campaign website advertising the stances that Harris holds.
It's been over thirty days since Harris accepted Biden's endorsement to replace him but its actually been months since she last had any kind of interview.
Harris was last interviewed on television on June 24, 2024. She has not faced questions from the press at a solo news conference since December 2, 2023.
Harris has always been hidden away by the Biden administration because she was a liability. But she is running to be the President of the United States now so hiding her away is unacceptable, just like it was with Biden before her.
She can't hide from the media forever and speculation has been building about an interview happening soon. Axios claimed "She has committed to one interview by Aug. 31,” but there is no such interview scheduled and that is less than a week away.
When Harris eventually does do her interview, her campaign has two challenges to overcome: how to keep Harris from going off script, and how to make her agenda palatable for angry and economically defeated voters.
Americans got a glimpse of what to expect out of Harris last week when during a speech at a rally, Harris proudly advocated for Soviet-style price controls to combat "price gouging" by greedy corporations.
Harris refuses to acknowledge that it is the policies of the Biden administration that has created extreme inflation, not corporations greedily raising prices at the same time the Biden administration printed trillions.
The backlash from Harris's communist proposals was swift and explains why Harris has avoided interviews or questions so far.
Her agenda is completely beyond the pale and Americans will reject her outright if they knew her plans. However, with Harris hiding, she can be portrayed as a normal Democrat vs. the bogeyman that the mainstream media has created to represent Donald Trump.
Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced Friday that she was dropping out of the U.S. House of Representatives race to consolidate support behind fellow Republican Nick Begich, the Washington Examiner reported. Dahlstrom had received the backing of former President Donald Trump.
Incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) had flipped its single House of Representatives seat in 2022. The ranked-choice voting system caused in-fighting between GOP candidates that helped Peltola get elected, and Dahlstrom was determined not to let that happen again.
"I entered this race because Alaskans deserve better representation than what we have received from Mary Peltola in Washington. At this time, the best thing I can do to see that goal realized is to withdraw my name from the general election ballot and end my campaign," Dahlstrom said in a statement.
Thank you to the people of our incredible state for believing in me and standing with me. I’m so grateful to be an Alaskan and will continue to fight for our great state. pic.twitter.com/co9XrtoaIn
— Nancy Dahlstrom (@nancyforalaska) August 23, 2024
According to Fox News, Alaska changed its elections from a straight majority to a ranked-choice system in 2020. Voters are asked to rank each candidate from first to fourth rather than casting a vote for a single person.
The top four then battle it out in the general election. This creates a situation where multiple candidates from a single party compete instead of one Democrat versus one Republican, like in most other states.
It also means that the person who received the most votes isn't necessarily the winner. If a single candidate does not receive more than 50% of the vote in the first round of tallying, the ranked-choice system comes into play.
The tallying eliminates the candidate with the fewest votes and awards the vote to the second-choice candidate for people who ranked that now-eliminated candidate first on the ballot. The tallies continue until only one candidate remains and is deemed the winner.
This is how Peltola flipped a seat occupied by a Republican for more than 50 years. Peltola beat out both Republican candidates, including former Gov. Sarah Palin and Begich, despite their receiving more votes.
Democrats will likely attempt to spin Dahlstrom's exit as a strike against Trump because she was the candidate he endorsed. However, her exit was a clever move that cut the opponents' strategy off at the knees.
Earlier this month, Politico revealed the strategy one Democrat-backed political action committee employed that exploited the ranked-choice voting system for the primary. Vote Alaska Before Party poured over $1 million into promoting three Republican candidates in Alaska.
They also used radio, television, and digital advertising to drive the conversation of the election to abortion and where the candidates stand. Peltola is a pro-abortion Democrat, while all of the Republicans support restrictions.
Jim Lottsfeldt, the organization's treasurer, said that Vote Alaska Before Party wanted "all Alaskans to know that all of the Peltola challengers" were pro-life. "Our state has lots of pro-choice Republicans — and Peltola’s commitment to freedom and choice stands her apart from the so-called MAGA crowd," Lottsfeldt claimed.
Dahlstrom's choice will ultimately give her party a fighting chance at winning back Alaska's lone seat in the House this November. She made the move that was best for Alaska, which demonstrates her character and commitment to the state.
Didier Borotra, the mayor of Biarritz on the Basque Coast of France and a member of the French Senate, died on Wednesday at the age of 86 from a stroke.
He was mayor of the famous seaside resort in the Basque Country for a total of 23 years (from 1991 to 2014) and was a builder who shaped the Basque Coast during that time.
Borotra was struck by a massive stroke after giving a tribute to his childhood friend and renowned art collector Pierre Levai, who died in June in New York.
He was a strong centrist during his time as mayor.
Borotra was an industrialist and builder before he entered politics, and he brought that ability to his time as mayor.
He was a senator for Pyrénées-Atlantiques until 2011. He served as a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces.
After becoming Mayor, he got major credit for taking the sleepy town and revitalizing it into a modern marvel.
His tenure saw new top-notch cultural and conference facilities including the Media Library, the Maison des Associations, the renovation of the municipal casino and the Bellevue, the Cité de l'Océan, and the Halle d'Iraty.
He also established a heritage protection zone in the city, which gave government help to property owners to preserve their buildings in that zone.
Borotra apparently didn't have a crystal clear reputation.
In 2017, he was sentenced on appeal to a fine of 30,000 euros for canceling thousands of parking tickets while he was a municipal official.
In 2019, he was prosecuted for "illegal taking of interests" for his part in a consultancy missions project entrusted to his daughter Sophie.
In that case, Borotra was acquitted by the Pau Court of Appeal.
These two court actions don't negate the influence Borotra had on his city and the legacy he will leave behind.
The heat continues to increase for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, this time in the form of criticism for her running mate, someone who has feigned more public service than he actually participated in.
Democrat vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz (MN) was sharply criticized for lying about his military experience in a letter sent on Wednesday by fifty Republican veterans sitting in the United States Congress, as Breitbart News reported.
As Walz prepared to speak at the Democratic National Convention, the letter was leaked, in which they stated:
The Office of the Vice President is a position that requires the trust of the American people and a solemn commitment to duty on behalf of the United States of America. As veterans who have served our nation, we feel compelled to address your egregious misrepresentations and urge you to come clean to the American people.
This pushback is hardly something unexpected among Republicans, who are known for being a highly military-involved group.
Those who served in the military often run on their record, which is a tradition Walz seemed to be attempting to do as well, before it was discovered that he was blowing his service out of proportion.
According to some, his exaggeration was growing to the point of stolen valor.
"There is no honor in lying about the nature of your service," the Republican members stated, while stating that Walz should be proud of his service in the National Guard:
Repeatedly claiming to be a ‘Retired Command Sergeant Major’ when you did not complete the requirements was not honorable. Nor was it honorable to claim to carry weapons ‘in war’ when you had not served in war, and abandoning the men and women under your leadership just as they were getting ready to deploy was certainly not honorable either.
Although Walz was really a retired master sergeant, he made the bogus claim that he was a former command sergeant major, the highest enlisted position in the Army.
Furthermore, he made an unfounded assertion about having guns "in war" despite never having been deployed to a combat zone.
The former military members didn't pull any punches, saying, “To be blunt, when you falsely claim military service that did not happen and abandon your post, you diminish the real sacrifices made by veterans who did serve in combat,” they wrote.
The excruciating diatribe went on to describe what many experience through service, saying "The honor of wearing the uniform is earned through dedication, bravery, and an unwavering sense of duty.
"You have displayed none of these characteristics as you have lied your way through a political career launched on the foundation of a title you did not earn and combat deployments you did not take part in."
Their deep concern, they said, originated with the fact that he was seeking the office of vice president, which is "one heartbeat away" from commander-in-chief.