This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A former government mouthpiece, now using the bully pulpit of a talk show on the leftist MSNBC, says America's laws need to be changed so that censoring what Americans read, and learn, online is easier.
This is from Jen Psaki, who now talks on MSNBC.
She formerly was the White House press secretary for Joe Biden, a deputy press secretary for Barack Obama, a spokeswoman for the Department of State, and White House communications director.
A video posted by Libs of TikTok, a team that provides "News you can't see anywhere else," reveals her comments.
One social media commenter reacted to her agenda with, "She's pushing for a law that would force everyone to get their information exclusively from the news. I stopped watching mainstream media back in 2012, and I've become ten times more informed than she is about what's really happening in the world as I'm not stuck with morons."
Psaki complains, "One of the things that's changed even since I got involved in politics is, uhm, just the rise in the percentage of people who get their information off of platforms that have no fact-checking mechanism. And no accountability for having disinformation spread. Right, uhm, as you know well, when I, when I got started in Democratic politics, you know, most of it was like local TV ads, that was what it was about. Obviously national TV, local print. Those local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms in terms of having accurate information on their platform. That is crazy."
She said, "Uhm. And so it is how to the change. How is it how are people held to account. Laws have to change."
Over recent years, Democrats and other leftists repeatedly have insisted on "fact-checking" and truthfulness in online comments and reporting. However, the version of the truth that they endorse largely is nothing more than their opinion, and they've condemned as disinformation, misinformation and even malinformation as anything with which they disagree.
Libs of TikTok added, "She also claims there's no fact checking mechanism. False. Community Notes isn't perfect but it does a far better job than the MSM 'fact checkers.'"
Community notes is a social media platform feature that allows readers actually to correct misstatements online. And legacy media "fact-checkers" have established a reputation for attacking every statement from someone like President-elect Donald Trump, while allowing leftists like Kamala Harris to escape without comment when they blatantly lie.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
With renewed vigor and the 2024 election behind him, President-elect Donald Trump is set to take on the Deep State, and one of his proposals is strongly resonating with service members and veterans alike.
In a video shared on X on Nov. 8, Trump can be seen offering a 10-step "plan to dismantle the Deep State." At the 1:46 mark, making his sixth point, he states: "We will make every inspector general's office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee, so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State."
For many former and current members of the U.S. military, Trump's point powerfully resonates and is a welcome departure from the past. Lt. Col. Ryan Sweazey (USAF-Ret.), a former F-16 fighter pilot and founder of a Walk the Talk Foundation (WTTF), spoke to WorldNetDaily about Trump's new proposal. Having once served as inspector general in the Air Force and thus possessing a clear, first-hand understanding of exactly how government can fail in oversight, Sweazey has been advocating for an independent Office of the Inspector General outside of the Department of Defense for quite some time.
In November 2023, he launched a petition, calling upon others to support revamping the current Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) system that "consistently fails in its role to protect military members from reprisal and fails to impartially investigate complaint allegations which are brought forward at high risk by members of the DOD." To date, over 2,800 have signed the petition.
In June 2024, Sweazey's Walk the Talk Foundation offered a proposal to various members of Congress to form an independent Inspector General entity outside Defense Department influence. Pointing out the failures of the current DODIG system and those involved in it, the report was "referred to as the Lapdog Report," a reference to the widespread view that the current inspector general system plays the role of lapdog to the military institution it's supposedly investigating.
Most recently, Sweazey and his team have drafted an executive order that could be enacted by Trump when his new administration starts in January. He describes the order as a "formalized reiteration of what [the Walk the Talk Foundation] has been pitching all along, in both the petition drive and the 'lapdog report' on the failure of the IG system." WTTF's proposed order not only outlines the problems within the Department of Defense Inspector General system, but also offers remedies for them.
For example, Section 4 reveals, "The ultimate aim of this Order is to establish an independent entity through which members of the Department of Defense can attain recourse in a fair and timely manner free from the threat of retribution and/or reprisal."
According to Sweazey, "That aim is just as the president said in his video: The inspector general, for so long, has been a protectorate of the institution and that's got to stop." In order for the current corrupt system to come to an end, he agrees with Trump that "you've got to separate them from the organizations they allegedly oversee, and inspect, and investigate."
The former fighter pilot is hopeful, having been reassured by "friends who are in the inner circle" that a draft of the executive order has indeed made it to the Trump administration. "For too long," he argues, "the system has been wrought with this seething conflict of interest, in which your 'independent' investigative entity is subordinate to the commander/boss of the organization they supposedly oversee."
But as a hopeful Sweazey told WND, "With the president's proposal to remove that conflict of interest, you're going to have an investigative entity that now is able to carry out its duty and uphold its loyalty to the truth."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An outgoing member of Congress, Rep. Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., has proposed the formation of a "shadow government" through which Democrats can fight all the advances they perceive President-election Donald Trump likely will achieve.
Listen to Nickel's address on the floor of the U.S. House.
Social media commenters wondered, "This sounds like a threat to our democracy," and "Just start your own damn country why don't ya?"
Also, "Treason," and "This guy needs to be arrested for inciting division in Congress."
A report at the Gateway Pundit, which reposted the Nickel comments, said, "Democrats and Trump-haters in the DC Swamp went to great lengths to hide their efforts to destroy President Trump, his family, individuals associated with his campaign, his top administration officials, and eventually, his supporters from 2016 to October 2024. This time around, Democrats apparently aren't going to hide their plans to thwart the President and his administration."
It called the video, previously posted by independent journalist Kyle Becker, "disturbing."
Nickel proposed Sen. Adam Schiff as a shadow attorney general, Rep. Jahanna Hayes as shadow education secretary, Rep. Greg Meeks as shadow secretary of state, and more.
Becker explained, "Democrats are denying the results of the 2024 election."
The Gateway Pundit said, "They are trying to form a "shadow government" to defy and undermine President Trump's authority. The Democratic Party is trying to lead an unconstitutional 'insurrection' against Trump."
Nickel did not run for re-election this year, and his seat quickly was snapped up by a Republican.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A coalition of many groups, organizations and states is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a school's decision to apply its own political ideology to students' speech, and censor by ejecting from class those with other perspectives.
It's all over a student who wore a T-shirt stating "There are only two genders," and was tossed from his school. Then he tried to wear one that said "There are CENSORED genders" and he got the same result.
The fight revolves around the ideology that has become prominent under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration's activism for the LGBT lifestyle choices that focuses on the simple definitions of words.
"Sex" and "gender," according to Merriam-Webster, for some 500 years referred to biology, "Phrases like 'the male sex' and 'the female gender'" were commonly understood to mean those with DNA containing XX or XY chromosomes.
"Gender," now, according to progressives and other leftists, can mean "a person's internal sense of being male, female, some combination of male and female, or neither male nor female," the dictionary alleges.
"Sex" often now is used to refer to biology while "gender" means "behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits," it says.
"But in nonmedical and nontechnical contexts, there is no clear delineation, and the status of the words remains complicated," it explains. "Usage of 'sex' and 'gender' is by no means settled."
Then came student "L.M.," Liam Morrison, and his shirts.
One of the supporting briefs, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, pointed out that the lower courts couldn't even agree on why they were attacking the student's rights.
"The district court denied L.M.'s request for a preliminary injunction and later entered final judgment against him, reasoning that the shirt constituted an impermissible 'invasion of the rights of others'… The First Circuit affirmed on alternative grounds, adopting a novel test that would allow schools to censor speech that neither targets nor harasses a specific student," the brief charges.
That precedent, FIRE said, allows schools to target "passive, silently expressed speech that targets no student in particular if the student's expression (1) is reasonably interpreted to demean one of those characteristics of personal identity, given the common understanding that such characteristics are unalterable or otherwise deeply rooted and that demeaning them strikes a person at the core of his being, and (2) the demeaning message is reasonably forecasted to poison the educational atmosphere due to its serious negative psychological impact on students with the demeaned characteristic and thereby lead to symptoms of a sick school – symptoms therefore of substantial disruption."
Essentially, such a ruling would allow virtually unlimited censorship based on the reaction of others to the speech involved, long described as a "heckler's veto" which has been disapproved at the Supreme Court level.
The ADF, representing the student, applauded the support for the student from education experts, free speech advocates, and 18 states.
It explained, "In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit affirmed the school's decision, prompting Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, who represent the student, to ask the high court to review the case and rule that Nichols Middle School in Middleborough violated the First Amendment when it stopped the student from wearing his shirts to school."
"Students don't lose their free speech rights the moment they walk into a school building," said ADF lawyer David Cortman. "This case isn't about T-shirts; it's about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn't allowed to express a view that differs from their own. The school actively promotes its view about gender through posters and 'Pride' events, and it encourages students to wear clothing with messages on the same topic—so long as that clothing expresses the school's preferred views on the subject. Our legal system is built on the truth that the government cannot silence any speaker just because it disapproves of what they say. We appreciate the many states and organizations that have joined us in urging the Supreme Court to take this critical free speech case."
A brief filed by South Carolina and West Virginia explains, "By silencing L.M., the First Circuit created a speech-hostile standard that—contrary to [Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District]—allows schools to restrain even silent, passive displays of speech that cause no actual disruption. …It split from other circuits on issues like what facts a school must show to justify a restriction on student speech. And it effectively sanctioned viewpoint discrimination in public schools."
The FIRE warned, "If the First Circuit's broad expansion of Tinker's 'invasion of the rights of others' exception is allowed to stand, school administrators nationwide will wield it to censor unpopular or dissenting viewpoints—miseducating students about their expressive rights in our pluralist society."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Facing a promise from President-elect Donald Trump that he'll be fired within "two seconds," special counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted two of the Democrats' lawfare cases against Trump, is looking for an exit door.
It is Fox News that said Smith, who was tasked with prosecuting a government documents case and an election interference case against Trump, "is expected to resign before President-elect Trump is inaugurated in January."
Smith saw his documents case against Trump dismissed because he never was confirmed by the Senate, meaning he had no powers to bring the case, and he was trying to get it reinstated by an appeals court at the time of the election.
His election interference case claimed it was criminal for Trump to have expressed the opinions he held, and in it Smith was battling a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
Fox reported, "Smith has been evaluating how to wind down both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case before Trump takes office. That's a result of longstanding Department of Justice practice that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office."
Just days ago, Smith asked the court to cancel all deadlines in the election interference case, falling just short of requesting that the case be dropped altogether.
The report noted Smith is required under DOJ rules to provide a report on his work and an explanation of all charges – even without having either case go to trial.
The report said he's already told "career prosecutors and FBI agents" who were being paid by taxpayers to work on the Democrats' lawfare to plan their own exits.
The Washington Examiner explained Smith's goal is to not "leave any significant part of his work for others to complete."
The DOJ's stunts in the cases included an FBI SWAT raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in which agents allegedly rifled through the belongings of Melania Trump.
"Since Trump's win last week, Smith has been in the bull's-eye of Trump allies who view him as part of the establishment and the head of their idea that Democrats have weaponized the justice system against the former president," the report said.
WND reported only days ago that members of Congress have ordered Smith to preserve and protect all documentation and communications regarding his cases.
For examination by Congress.
It was House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who leads the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, who ordered Smith to protect and provide all documents and communications "relating to meetings between FBI and Justice Department officials sent to or received by Jack Smith prior to the execution of the search warrant on President Trump's private residence."
They also want documents and communications referring or relating to the hiring and selection of current and former Office of Special Counsel staff members and the same regarding the "Office of Special Counsel, the Office of the Attorney General, or the Office of the Deputy Attorney General referring or relating to the investigation and prosecution of President Donald Trump."
"The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing its oversight of the Department of Justice and the Office of Special Counsel. According to recent public reports, prosecutors in your office have been 'gaming out legal options' in the event that President Donald Trump won the election. With President Trump's decisive victory this Counsel may attempt to purge relevant records, communications, and documents responsive to our numerous requests for information. The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions," the letter warned.
"This letter serves as a formal request to preserve all existing and future records and materials related to the Office of Special Counsel's investigations and prosecutions of President Trump. You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry. This instruction includes all electronic messages sent using official and personal accounts or devices, including records created using text messages, phone-based message applications, or encryption software."
Reports have confirmed already that Smith has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on his agenda against Trump.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
CNN, the network started by Ted Turner, an activist for leftist ideology before it was a thing across America, is looking to lay off hundreds of employees, possibly including some stars, following President-elect Donald Trump's landslide election victory over Kamala Harris.
CNN has leaned left for years, and in the recent times with Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House, has moved far into that agenda.
Now, it may become part of what one anonymous television executive told NYMag just days ago, when he said, "If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they're not reading any of this media, and we've lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form."
It is a report in the Gateway Pundit that explained, "Top stars at fake news CNN are on the chop as the network mulls firing hundreds after Trump won the 2024 presidential election."
The report cited Nielsen ratings for CNN, and also MSNBC, that revealed the networks' audiences have vanished. They're down by 40% or more.
"Insiders told Puck the new round of firings will likely see on-air talent like them affected, as the network's new CEO looks to free up finances amid waning ratings," the Gateway Pundit said, citing Puck News.
It was the Daily Mail that explained, "CNN is reportedly set to nix some of its top talent in a round of post-election layoffs. The rumblings, first reported by Puck News, come as high-paid personalities like Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer were reportedly recently denied raises."
Those personalities are getting millions now, and CNN star Anderson Cooper takes home "an annual $20 million."
It's following a decade or more of legacy media choosing to adopt one political position and support one political ideology rather than reporting neutrally on issues and candidates.
That media attitude saw publications and broadcast outlets both having a party boosting the "Russia collusion" stories during President Trump's first campaign, claims that were fabricated from opposition research funded by Trump's opponent, twice-failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Then the media plunged head first into ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's campaign to blame Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, protest-turned-riot at the Capitol, even though he sent his supporters to protest "peacefully."
The media also played a huge role in trying to build public sentiment against Trump by the hours of reports on Democrats' lawfare cases against Trump heading into the 2024 election.
WND previously reported how the media has acted as part of Democrats' campaigns back to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
It was Elle Purnell, the elections editor at the Federalist, whose work also has appeared in Fox Business, Real Clear Politics and many other publications, who pointed out that television executive's conclusion.
It was just part of the reaction exhibited by media personalities when Trump won.
Purnell's analysis detailed how while Kamala lost, the "biggest loser is the corporate media industrial complex" in the 2024 results.
"Her media shills are nursing wounds that will take far longer to recover from," she explained.
CNN's Jake Tapper exclaimed "holy smokes" when he realized the depth of the Harris failure.
MSNBC's Joy Reid now has started calling the entire state of Florida "fascist" for voting for Trump.
One CNN panel was "stunned into silence," according to published reports, by the results.
Purnell noted, "Since the last presidential election, the media have screeched incessantly about Trump 'inciting an insurrection' at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They made documentaries comparing Trump to the Ku Klux Klan. They portrayed Trump as the ringleader of a terrorist attack and not as a president who gave a speech and urged his supporters to protest peacefully."
The problem is, she said, that Americans "didn't buy it."
Now the public apparently is turning off some of the purveyors.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
With North Korean troops poised to join Russia in its war against Ukraine, the threat could compel the U.S. into military action against North Korea, say some U.S. leaders. But would that be a wise, or even a sane, move?
According to a Daily Mail report, thousands of North Korean troops could enter the war between Russia and Ukraine in the days ahead. As many as 10,000 North Korean troops are currently training in Russia. Will the U.S. get involved? Despite the landslide election of Donald Trump as America's 47th president, who has promised to extricate America from foreign wars as much as possible, Joe Biden is still the commander in chief of America's armed forces for the next two and a half months. And he has proven more than willing to involve the U.S. in foreign conflicts, particularly Ukraine.
WorldNetDaily spoke to Army Lt. Col. (Ret.) Darin Gaub, a former UH-60 Blackhawk pilot and co-founder of Restore Liberty. According to Gaub, should Donald Trump regain the presidency, "Trump would respond by reinforcing his statement that this war should never have started, that it needs to end, and that he will make sure it ends within days of his taking office." For Gaub, "the war continues with no end in sight, and people are dying for no reason."
What does Congress think? For Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, the current predicament warrants that America must "seriously consider taking direct military action against the North Korean troops."
This is nothing short of preposterous, Gaub argues. "For a congressman to weigh in like this," he told WND, "it continues to prove to me that the experts in geopolitics and global strategy in military are not our politicians."
"Just because you're the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence doesn't mean you have any real idea of how to respond to this," Gaub argued. "The people who voted for Turner should be flooding his office after a statement like this, questioning his comment."
"I'm not sure what gives him the right to tell people on a mass scale that the U.S. should get involved in taking military action against North Korean troops that might invade Ukraine," Gaub said. Consider the U.S. involvement thus far, he said: "The entire Ukraine action is a testimony to America's lack of the ability to define a strategy with an end state that the American people can get behind and understand."
Gaub added: "Since we haven't been able to do that for over two and a half years now in Ukraine, why would the American people suddenly expect we can now do that? With the thought of adding another adversary nation like North Korea to the mix," he said, "[Rep. Turner] would struggle to convince me that there's a strategic value to expanding America's role in this conflict."
What's more, he continued, "That role sure sounds a lot like some sort of boots-on-the-ground moment, and that's just simply something the U.S. doesn't need to be involved in." Of equal concern to Gaub is the amount of funding and resources sent to Ukraine when "there's a complete lack of accountability, lack of strategy, and the lack of defined purpose."
For Gaub, "Every artillery shell signed off by Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania that goes to Ukraine is an artillery shell that's not in the hands of an American combat soldier training or otherwise." He lamented, "We're hurting our own readiness by shipping our readiness to foreign nations."
"America may be a good ally to some nations around the world," Gaub concluded, "but the closer we bring ourselves to not being able to fight and win our own conflicts when we have to, we're really not helping anybody."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
There's been victory for a pastor in a Massachusetts town where officials first denied him the use of public rooms in a library and then ordered a newspaper to shut down his advertisement for an open-air Bible study in a public park.
It is the American Center for Law and Justice that confirmed the win for its client, a pastor whose identity was not released immediately.
"Our client requested the use of the community meeting room in his town's library. He wanted to host Bible studies and grief support meetings for his church. Initially, the library welcomed his requests; but later, the library director sent an email claiming that, according to 'the Town Administration and Legal Counsel,' the meeting rooms of the library could only 'be used for occasional events but not for recurring events like bi-monthly Bible studies,'" the ACLJ reported.
"In the meantime, the pastor also tried to meet for a Bible study in the open area of a public park. He published an ad in his local newspaper regarding the Bible study, but town officials reacted by maliciously demanding that the newspaper pull the ad, claiming that 'proper approval' had not been obtained," it said.
The attacks were unconstitutional, the legal team explained, so it intervened with a letter to the town and its officials.
The ACLJ "sent a demand letter stating that our client should be immediately permitted to use meeting rooms under the same terms and conditions that apply to anyone else. We also demanded that the pastor and his church no longer be excluded from public parks because of their religious activity and that the town immediately cease threatening the newspaper for sharing information about a constitutionally protected event."
Negotiations with town officials produced several results, including a letter to the paper admitting that the publication is a private entity and can publish what it chooses, not only what town officials want. And they admitted people are free to use public parks and open spaces.
"Second, the town entered into an agreement allowing our client to use the library's meeting room regularly. The pastor can use the room twice a month to hold meetings according to the generally applicable rules for the room. Anti-Christian local bureaucrats will no longer impede the church's ministry," the ACLJ reported.
The fight arose when the ACLJ found the town's actions "flying in the face of decades-old Supreme Court precedents. The library violated the First Amendment by prohibiting our client from regularly using the library meeting room, even though the library policy expressly allows people to do so."
The ACLJ pointed out it fought the Lamb's Chapel case to the U.S. Supreme Court more than 30 years ago over similar issues.
"In Lamb's Chapel, the U.S. Supreme Court explained that the 'government violates the First Amendment when it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point of view he espouses on an otherwise includible subject.' The Court ruled in our favor and held that a public school's decision to exclude a church from using its meeting spaces to show a Christian film certainly violates the First Amendment."
The legal team said the park fight is the same issue, as the Supreme Court has said "streets and parks, which have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. . . . In these quintessential public forums, the government may not prohibit all communicative activity."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The election of Donald Trump is giving the Islamic Republic of Iran fits.
On Nov. 6, immediately after the electrifying U.S. election, Iran's state-affiliated Setareh-Sobh newspaper lamented the lost opportunities during President Biden's four-year term. Citing a regime-affiliated expert, it wrote: "Iran had good opportunities over the past few years. … We should have made gains during the Democrats' term. The problem, however, is not with the U.S.; the unresolved issue lies within the country itself (read: the regime); Why did four years of a Democratic administration in the White House yield no results for Iran?"
Israel-Hamas war
After the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, questions immediately surfaced about how Hamas' assault on Israel was financed. The vast network of underground tunnels – stretching, as Iranian media claim, farther than Tehran's metro – and the logistical support for such an operation could not have been executed by Hamas alone. There was little doubt that Tehran was the main financier, and as a result, the Israel-Hamas conflict and its tragic outcomes intensified calls to halt this financial flow.
This increased pressure on President Biden to curb Iranian oil exports, even if it meant risking a politically sensitive rise in global oil prices.
Despite U.S. sanctions targeting Iran's nuclear ambitions, its support for terrorism and its military aggression in the region, Iranian crude oil exports have risen significantly during Biden's tenure. Some U.S. lawmakers have criticized this trend as "appeasement" of Iran.
While the Biden administration has publicly claimed it was committed to enforcing sanctions, energy analysts report that Iran's exports have actually increased four- to five-fold since 2020, with China emerging as Iran's largest buyer. According to a Nov. 6 report by the state-run newspaper Etemad, "Iranian oil exports in recent years have returned to pre-sanctions levels, while during Trump's presidency, they had dropped below 500,000 barrels per day, significantly impacting Iran's oil sector."
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimates that the increase in Iranian oil exports since Biden's term began has brought Iran an additional $32-$35 billion. Though the calculations are complex, the reasons behind Iran's windfall are clear: As part of President Biden's quiet diplomacy with Iran, the U.S. has relaxed sanctions enforcement. Buyers and intermediaries have concluded that the risks are low, and the discounts on Iranian oil are too enticing to pass up, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 10, 2023.
As a result, Iranian oil sales in 2025 will be a politically sensitive issue, highlighting a stark contrast between President Biden and President-Elect Donald Trump. As state-run newspaper Etemadi reported: "Trump's approach emphasizes maximum pressure sanctions that can quickly impact Iran's oil sector, which is why, if he wins the election, the dollar rate may increase by around 10%. Under Trump, Iranian oil exports fell below 500,000 barrels per day, creating significant pressure on Iran's oil sector."
In stark contrast, the Biden administration, in addition to its facilitation of Iranian oil sales, also allowed Iran access to $6 billion in frozen assets as part of a prisoner-release deal.
Absolute poverty for two-thirds of Iran's population
Following the 2015 nuclear deal (the so-called "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action" or JCPOA), over $150 billion of Iran's frozen assets were made available to the regime. Over the last four years, Iranian oil sales to China, offered at substantial discounts, have returned to pre-sanctions levels.
Meanwhile, however, absolute poverty has spread to two-thirds of Iran's population, according to state-affiliated newspapers, despite the country's wealth in oil, gas and mineral resources. The proceeds from oil sales are either embezzled or redirected toward the Iranian regime's terrorism and warmongering efforts.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Jack Smith, the Democrats' "special counsel" who has brought multiple charges and cases against President Donald Trump as part of the party's lawfare against him, now wants a delay.
Smith has brought several cases against Trump, some relating to his opinions about the 2020 election results, and handling of paperwork as he left the White House after his first term.
But he's hit a complication: The fact that Trump won the presidential election in a landslide, and federal Department of Justice policy prohibits cases against a sitting president.
Just the News reports now that Smith signaled on Friday he may end the Jan. 6 election interference claims, when he asked the judge to delay any action in the case so he can consider options.
His submission said the DOJ "respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance."
He said he wants to review "the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy."
Just the News explained the DOJ has had a long-standing policy against any prosecution of a sitting president, and "sources told multiple news outlets this week DOJ was looking for a way to wind down the prosecution."
Smith most recently claimed to Tanya Chutkan, the leftist judge hearing the case, that a Supreme Court decision confirming immunity for many actions while presidents are in office didn't apply to Trump.
Trump's response was typically blunt: "Deranged Jack Smith, the hand picked Prosecutor of the Harris-Biden DOJ, and Washington, D.C. based Radical Left Democrats, are HELL BENT on continuing to Weaponize the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power."
Trump also has said Smith won't have his job more than "two seconds" after Trump becomes the 47th president, in January.
Specifically, Smith asked that the court "vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule."
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel to investigate whether criminal charges should be filed against Trump in November 2022 just one day after Trump announced a 2024 White House run. But Smith never obtained Senate confirmation as would have been expected for that post.
Reports confirm he has spent some $50 million of taxpayer money to claim that Trump committed offenses.