Posts on Monday, January 2, 2023

The time has finally come for Nancy Pelosi to hand over the Speaker’s gavel and be relegated to the Democrats’ backbench of normal rank-and-file members. At precisely noon local time, the 118th Congress will convene and Republicans will officially take over, with a very slim 222-212 majority (one seat in Virginia remains open following the death of Democrat. Don McEachin of Virginia). Birds will sing and joyous rays of light will descend from the heavens, but there’s just one problem: Who exactly will be taking the gavel from Pelosi’s hands? As RedState has been reporting, Kevin McCarthy, once thought to be a shoo-in

In new polling, Rasmussen asked Americans about their perceptions of COVID-19 vaccine safety. Among respondents, 71% report receiving at least a portion of the vaccine series. It is easy to see how partisanship has impacted COVID shot uptake. While 85% of Democrats report receiving the shots, only 63% of Republicans and 64% of unaffiliated voters report the same. Yet, despite a majority reporting that they have taken the shots, almost 50% believe it is at least somewhat likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. All men and people between 18 and 39 agree with the statement at the highest rates.

The Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals game Monday was temporarily suspended in the first quarter after Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed with 5:58 remaining in the first quarter. A second-year player out of Pittsburgh, Hamlin tackled Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins after a 13-yard gain. Hamlin stood up but collapsed to the ground. An ambulance was brought onto the field and ESPN reporter Lisa Salters said medical responders were “working on him” for more than nine minutes.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and new owner of Twitter, started 2022 as the world’s richest man but has since become the first person in history to lose $200 billion in personal wealth. Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk has become the first person to lose $200 billion in total wealth. Despite this, Musk still remains the world’s second-richest person even as his investments have drastically decreased in value.(Photo) Elon Musk’s net worth reached a record high in 2021, as Tesla stock experienced significant growth. Much of Musk’s personal fortune is tied to his ownership and founding of various businesses, including Tesla and SpaceX.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters Tuesday would be a 'good day' after his staff spent Monday morning moving his office furniture into the Speaker's chambers. Looking somewhat stressed on Monday afternoon, the California Republican was rushing out of the US Capitol when reporters asked him about the following day's House-wide vote to elect their chamber's leader. McCarthy's campaign for the gavel has been somewhat bumpy for weeks, but the pressure has ramped up in the final 48 hours with as many as 15 GOP members allegedly ready to vote against him. He can only lose four votes to still clinch victory.

The former Capitol Police chief forced to resign following Jan. 6 is set to release his side of the story in a new book warning nothing has been done to put the “agency into a better position” and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) fault has remained unaddressed. The day after the Capitol was breached and the narrative of a failed insurrection was being circulated, then-Capitol Police chief Steven Sund was singled out by the speaker for the breakdown in security with a public call for his resignation. Tuesday, nearly two years later, Sund’s account is slated for release in the book titled “Courage Under Fire” in which he recounts how

The Department of Justice is trying to prevent disclosure of 400 pages of sensitive documents on Hunter and Jim Biden's dealings with China, Russia and Ukraine – by pretending they don't exist. Colorado lawyer Kevin Evans sued the department in March after it failed to comply with his request for records on the Bidens' dealings under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Evans, a FOIA expert, asked for documents pertaining to 'any relationship, communication, gift(s), and/or remuneration in any form' between the president's son Hunter or brother Jim, and China, Russia or Ukraine.

Former President Donald Trump launched a redesigned 2024 campaign website at the start of the new year, declaring that America’s comeback “starts right now.” “The American Way of Life is under attack while career politicians destroy our economy and sabotage our nation’s incredible potential,” the website declares, outlining Trump’s commitment to “take our country back from the corrupt Washington establishment and return power to the American people, where it belongs.” It continues: We will achieve a future of prosperity, security, and peace — creating once again the greatest economy in the history of the world,

Distrust in the justice system over its refusal to stop voter disenfranchisement is spiraling after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissedKari Lake’s lawsuit challenging the results of Arizona’s botched midterm election, where Democrat Katie Hobbs was declared the winner. Hobbs was losing in almost every MSM poll and didn’t bother to debate Lake, prompting one of the most prominent progressive journalists in the state to denounce her hiding in her basement as “political malpractice.” Hobbs was such an unremarkable candidate that she has only 177k Twitter followers to Lake’s 834k followers, over 400% fewer.  The Republican Party has a 4% voter registration over Democrats in both Maricopa County and statewide.

I have a feeling that the 81 million people who voted for Joe Biden in November of 2020 are thrilled with the new taxes Scranton Joe and his fellow Democrats helped usher in. #Rubes Following on the heels of my colleague Mike Miller‘s post, earlier today titled: The Government Wasn’t Intended to Be a Charity, Much Less to Take Money From You and Give It to Others, in which he wrote this nugget which should entice you to check out his article:Democrat elites have understood the above since at least the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, and it’s far more front-and-center today than it’s ever been. A quick trip through Chicago’s Southside,

Suspected Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger spends his days ranting and singing lyrics from violent rap songs inside the Pennsylvania jail where he is being held. And several times the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students tried to expose himself to a female inmate who was held in a cell close to him. Now that inmate, 50-year-old Valerie Cipollina, has revealed exclusively to DailyMail.com how Kohberger taunted guards, saying they were too scared to go in his cell. 'I cut them, I'll cut you,' Kohberger yelled repeatedly, said Cipollina, who was held at the Monroe County Jail for six hours on a New Year's domestic violence charge.

2022 wasn’t the year The Walt Disney Company’s descended into wokeness, but it was the year the media giant fully embraced it. From the legacy-character emasculations of “She-Hulk” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” to the variety of children’s movies pushing LGBT ideology, Disney decided to go all in. Unfortunately for their shareholders, that wasn’t a great strategy. The company had its worst year since 1974, seeing $123 billion in value wiped out. According to Discern Report, Disney lost 44% of its market value in 2022 and is showing no signs of changing its corporate direction

Joe Biden, despite his dodderiness, insists he's up for a second term as president, but the record shows he's a man of semi-retired status. According to the Daily Caller: President Joe Biden spent nearly 40% of 2022 in Delaware, Camp David and vacation destinations. A Daily Caller analysis of Biden’s 2022 public schedule shows that the president spent 92 days or partial days at one of his Delaware properties, and 32 days or partial days at Camp David. Biden also vacationed seven days in South Carolina, five days in Nantucket, and five days in the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing his total getaway

Even to a jaded journalist, the New Year inspires hope that anything is possible. In that spirit, here are my three wishes for 2023. No. 1 is Joe Biden announcing he won’t seek re-election. It would be the first thing he’s done to fulfill his pledge to unite the nation, with a decision to retire worthy of bipartisan celebration. Biden is a bumbler, and always was, even before cognitive decline turned his appearances into spectacles. The big achievement of his tenure has been to prove the wisdom of two warnings about him.

The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted on Friday to uphold a Florida school-board policy requiring students to use the bathroom of their biological sex. In a vote that was perfectly split down party lines, seven Republican justices ruled that the St. Johns County School Board transgender bathroom ban was constitutional, while the remaining four Democratic justices all dissented. Top Stories Illinois Supreme Court Halts Elimination of Cash-Bail Ari Blaff Scotland’s Contemptible Gender Reform Bill Madeleine Kearns NRPLUS Do You Want Fries with That Shakedown? Will Swaim NRPLUS “A policy can lawfully classify on the basis of biological sex without unlawfully discriminating on the basis of transgender status,” the Trump-appointed judge Barbara Lagoa wrote for the majority.

The opening day of the 118th Congress is poised to feature a historic fight on the House floor over who will serve as the next speaker under new Republican leadership that will put a halt to one-party rule and the Democratic agenda. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said he‘s ready to govern a House Republican majority that will put the brakes on President Biden’s agenda and hold the government accountable under GOP-controlled committee investigations. He’s even weighing the impeachment of top Biden administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Across the Capitol, Senate Democrats will keep control of the majority with 51 votes,

Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, John Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio have something in common: They are the last Democrats to hold statewide elected office in states that have realigned Republican in the last decade. These endangered species are up for reelection in 2024 and will have massive targets on their backs as Republicans seek to take advantage of a more favorable Senate map. Of the 33 seats up for grabs, Senate Democrats and independents who caucus with the party hold 23 of them. Republicans need to defend only 10 seats.

  ST. LOUIS   — Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003. McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending. The clemency request focuses on several issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard in her trial.

Biden and his family of grifters last week traveled to St. Croix for another vacation. Biden has spent 280 days – or 40% of his presidency on vacation. Biden is vacationing in sunny St. Croix while Americans freeze to death. The island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands has been one of the Bidens' favorite vacation destinations, a spot he traveled to when he was the Vice President serving under former President Barack Obama, Caribbean Journal reported.  But this is his first trip to the US territory as President. They even decide to send a cringe New Year's message!

American intelligence agencies gave highly sensitive data to the Ukrainian armed forces that allowed them to track and kill a dozen Russian generals and sink the Russian flagship Moskva, a new book reveals — despite strident administration denials. A “furious” President Joe Biden gave “presidential tongue-lashings” to CIA chief Bill Burns and other top aides in May after leakers told NBC News and the New York Times that Ukrainians had been given real-time intelligence from US sources.

President Joe Biden plans to appear with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in Kentucky on Wednesday, to promote infrastructure. The president will use his appearance with McConnell to signal bipartisanship with establishment Republicans even as they take control of the House of Representatives. Biden and McConnell are expected to celebrate the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021, which McConnell and establishment Republicans worked with Democrats and the White House to get passed.

What do all our notable fabricators—George Santos, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama—have in common? Well, quite like the Ward ChurchilIs or Rachel Dolezals of the world, one way or another, they lied about their identities. Or they sought fraudulent ways of suggesting their ancestries were marginalized. Or they had claims on being victims on the theory their constructed personas brought career advantages. George Santos claimed, apparently in search of a victimized status, that he was an “American Jew” and a “Latino Jew,” and a descendent of Holocaust survivors. Joe Biden lied that he went to “shul” as well

One of the silliest myths in TV newscasting is that objectivity is still a lodestar. As PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff was wrapping up her last show in the anchor chair on Friday, pundits David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart both pretended Woodruff exemplified neutrality. Do they think Republicans never watch this show? NewsBusters has the truth on this. You can watch her trash Trump's COVID record with Vice President Mike Pence. It's nothing like the softness Woodruff has offered Hillary Clinton. Or Joe Biden. Or Adam Schiff. 

California’s SB 1327 went into effect on January 1, 2023, allowing private residents in the state to file suits against gun manufacturers who violate the state’s “assault weapons” ban or ban on gun sales to anyone under 21. The Los Angeles Times reported that supporters of the new law view the lawsuit option as a way of “enlisting an army of grass-roots enforcers” to safeguard the state’s “assault weapons” ban and minimum age requirement. SB 1327 was passed in reaction to the Texas heartbeat law, which allows abortionists to be sued for terminating pregnancies beyond six weeks of pregnancy.

Ukraine says around 400 Russian soldiers have died in a missile attack on the occupied Donetsk region. Russian officials have contested the figure, admitting to only 63 of their troops being killed in the blast. Neither claim has been verified. The attack hit a building in the city of Makiivka, where Russian forces were thought to be stationed. Meanwhile in Kyiv, air raids sounded on Sunday night, as the latest wave of strikes from Russia continued. In a statement on Monday, Russia's defence ministry said Ukrainian forces fired six rockets using the US-made Himars rocket system at a building housing Russian troops. Two of them were shot down, it added.

Almost two years after the January 6, 2021, Washington D.C. protests that Democrats and the mainstream news media call an “insurrection,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) is still asking for the public’s help in identifying more people to arrest.  Of the 964 individuals charged with crimes for their participation in the protests of January 6, 2021, “hundreds” are still in Washington D.C. prisons today.  The conditions in these prisons are so horrific that 34 January 6th (J6) prisoners asked for a transfer to the military terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo). In their letter pleading for a transfer, the J6 prisoners said that Gitmo would provide what they are lacking

New York lawmakers are now officially the highest paid state legislators in the land after they awarded themselves a massive pay raise. Members of both houses, 63 senators and 150 Assembly members, are getting a pay boost of $32,000 for a new base salary of $142,000, under a bill Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a day before her inauguration Sunday. That’s just shy of a 30 percent lift over their previous salary of $110,000, AP reports. The Democratic Party holds supermajorities in both houses of the New York State Legislature.

President Joe Biden spent nearly 40% of 2022 in Delaware, Camp David and vacation destinations. A Daily Caller analysis of Biden’s 2022 public schedule shows that the president spent 92 days or partial days at one of his Delaware properties, and 32 days or partial days at Camp David. Biden also vacationed seven days in South Carolina, five days in Nantucket, and five days in the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing his total getaway days to a total of 141, or 38.6% of his first full calendar year.

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism in a people has been by way of medicine.” — Ronald Reagan President Ronald Reagan made those remarks back in 1961. Sixty years later, the response to COVID-19 was proof positive that he had it exactly right. Rather than focus on policies that would protect the most vulnerable from COVID, the left seized on public fear of the disease to impose draconian controls nationwide. Previously unthinkable lockdowns became the norm. Mandates that people wear masks and get experimental vaccines became routine. The size of the federal government

A mother has filed a lawsuit against an Ohio school district after the school nurse’s aide allegedly strip-searched her 8th-grade daughter. The mother filed a federal lawsuit against the Willoughby-Eastlake Schools Board of Education and three Eastlake School Middle School employees on December 28. The incident allegedly took place on September 27, when the Eastlake Middle student was asked by another student to put a vape pen in her gym locker. The lawsuit says that the student “begrudgingly agreed.” ABC News reports, “Just before lunch the same day, the school’s principal Colleen Blaurock pulled the eighth grader out of class and questioned her about the vape pen, according to the lawsuit.”

Big rigs and buses made before 2010 are now banned from operating on California roadways. The law, which went into effect on New Year’s Day, was part of a set of clean air regulations the California Air Resources Board passed nearly 15 years ago. According to truck lobbying groups, the new law will prohibit about 10 percent of the commercial motor vehicles that are operating in the state. “The rule applies to diesel vehicles that weigh at least 14,000 pounds. The air resources board said there are an estimated 200,000 vehicles that have yet to comply with the rule just days before the new year, including roughly 70,000 big rig trucks,

The Democrats and the Fourth Estate have finally found, in congressman-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), a Republican who is genuinely guilty of lying to the voters. Having thus discovered themselves — for once — in possession of the moral high ground, they have made the welkin ring with cries of outrage and calls for his resignation. However, if he ignores those calls, it may be difficult to stop him from being seated in the House and even harder to expel him once he takes office.

Jeremy Renner is in “critical but stable condition with injuries suffered after experiencing a weather related accident while plowing snow earlier today,” his spokesperson told Deadline on Sunday. Renner, a two-time Oscar nominee, is the star of the returning Paramount+ series The Mayor of Kingstown and Marvel’s Hawkeye series on Disney+ as well as the Avengers and Captain America films. Deadline had heard word of an accident and that Renner had been airlifted earlier Sunday to the hospital. His spokesperson said his family is with him now and he is “receiving excellent care.” We will let you know more when we hear it.

Why did Republicans underperform during the 2022 mid-terms? That question has become a near-constant point of contention on the right. Was it a candidate quality issue? I’d argue that was certainly the case in several high-profile races, but that’s obviously not the only thing that plagued the GOP. There was also a lack of coherent messaging from leadership, and in many important races, Democrats were simply able to outspend their opponents by large margins. The RNC’s inability to harvest votes and bank early votes didn’t help either. Donald Trump is looking elsewhere for an explanation, though. In an eyebrow-raising rant on Sunday, he appeared to blame pro-lifers for GOP woes.