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Putin orders temporary ceasefire Russian President Vladimir Putin has allegedly called for a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine on Thursday. The Russian Orthodox Bishop had urged Vladimir Putin to call a truce over Orthodox Christmas so that “Orthodox people can attend services on Christmas Eve and on the day of the Nativity of Christ.” Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has also backed the Bishop’s request in a call with Putin, urging the Russian president to also find a “vision for a fair solution.” Following this request, Vladimir Putin had reportedly called on Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to order a 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine. “Given the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire regime along the entire line of contact between the parties in Ukraine from 12:00 on January 6 to 24:00 on January 7,” a statement from the Kremlin chief said. Ukraine has appeared to reject the proposal as Ukrainian officials are skeptical of the ceasefire saying that it is a trap. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnkyy has not yet commented on the decision. Only two days before, the Ukrainian president had said that Russia will “throw everything they have” at the Ukraine to try and turn the tide of the war. This comment made by Zelenskyy was in preparation for retaliation following the deadly strike that took place on New Year’s Day against the Russian military. In December, Putin had also ordered his military officials to overhaul their war efforts, and reinforce the troops with the equipment and supplies they need on the front lines. Additionally, the Russian president has said that he wanted his missile stockpiles bolstered and to have Russia’s “nuclear triad” combat ready. President Joe Biden was also skeptical of the order by Putin, explaining that the Russian president was ready to “bomb hospitals and nurseries and churches” on December 25th and that that he thinks Putin is only “trying to find some oxygen.” Russia expert and former DIA Intelligence Officer for Russian Doctrine & Strategy Rebekah Koffler had said that this ceasefire by Putin is a set-up. “Putin knows that Ukrainians would be suspicious of the ceasefire and would continue operations,” she said. “Once Ukrainians reject the ceasefire, the Russians will portray them as Godless. It’s a classic checkmate by Putin – Zelenskyy would lose either way.” This ceasefire order is the first one that the Kremlin leader has called for since the beginning of the war back in February of 2022.

The visit Biden should’ve taken already President Joe Biden has announced that he will be traveling to El Paso, Texas on Sunday. According to officials, the trip’s purpose is for the President to “address border enforcement operations and meet with local officials.” The announcement came just before Biden was set to deliver a speech in which he would unveil a new humanitarian “parole” program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In his speech, Biden revealed that in exchange for allowing up to 30,000 people per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba who have sponsors and pass background checks into the country, the United States will send migrants from those countries back to Mexico. According to Biden, he and the Mexican government have agreed to accept the migrants’ return. He added that the U.S. will admit 20,000 refugees from Latin American and Caribbean nations over the course of the next two years, more than tripling the number of migrants accepted from that region. In addition, “expedited removal” and a five-year prohibition on re-entry will increasingly be used for migrants who seek to enter the United States without authorization and who cannot be expelled under the Title 42 pandemic policy. The President is anticipated to ask Congress to adopt legislation to restructure the immigration system and fully fund his budget request for border security in light of his visit. This comes as there continues to be a surge of illegal migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and still, the Democrat has still not visited the southern border since he came into office. Republicans have placed a high priority on border security, so Biden is under pressure to explain his strategies for coping with the influx of migrants. Following his visit to the border, Biden will visit Mexico on Monday to talk with Mexican PresidentAndrés Manuel López Obrador the most significant migration to the U.S. since World World II.

New evidence in Idaho slayings The suspect accused of murdering four college students in their own home appeared in court in Idaho for the first time. Brian Kohberger’s extradition to Idaho had also allowed authorities to release the affidavit which revealed evidence linking him to the brutal killings. The 28-year-old is the suspect accused in the brutal killings of Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves and Ethan Chapin. Kohberger is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary, and a judge had denied his lawyer’s request for bail on Thursday. “I am going to leave the bail set at this case as no bail at this point in time and until I have additional and further information at a later date and time,” the judge said The newly released probable cause arrest affidavit revealed chilling new details about the crime. One of the surviving roommates had told investigators she heard crying coming from Kernodle’s room the night of the murders, and heard a male voice say “It’s ok, I’m going to help you.” The roommate had exited her room to check and saw a figure in black clothing and a mask walking towards her. Investigators say she “stood in a frozen shock phase” as the male walked towards the back sliding glass door, to which she then went back in her room and locked the door. The affidavit also described how investigators linked Kohberger to the crime through DNA and cell-phone tracking. Police had discovered a knife sheath at the scene, which provided the DNA that matched a DNA profile agents recovered from the trash from Kohberger’s home in Pennsylvania. Evidence shows the suspect’s phone was also used at least 13 times near the victims’ homes before the killings. His cell-phone records were consistent with that of the white Hyundai Elantra investigators were tracking the night of the murder. That is until 2:47 a.m., when Kohberger’s phone was turned off and did not report back to the network until 4:48 a.m. Investigators believe the killings took place between 4:00 and 4:25 a.m. and concluded Kohberger’s movements are consistent with him attempting to conceal his location during the quadruple homicide. His next preliminary hearing is scheduled for January 12th.

Senator Bob Casey announces cancer diagnosis 62-year-old Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) announced that while the diagnosis came as a shock, he has an “excellent prognosis.” “Last month, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. While this news came as a shock, I can report that I have an excellent prognosis, as well as the benefit of exceptional medical care and the unwavering support of my family,” Casey said. “In the coming months I will undergo surgery, after which I am expected to make a full recovery.” The Democrat has said that his course of treatment will allow him to continue his work. “I am confident that my recommended course of treatment will allow me to continue my service in the 118th Congress with minimal disruption, and I look forward to the work ahead,” he said. The Democratic Senator had been elected to the United States Senate in 2006 after serving as State Treasurer in Pennsylvania. He had graduated form the College of the Holy Cross in 1982 and received his law degree from the Catholic University of American in 1988. During his time in congress, Casey has been a member of the Intelligence Committee, and is the chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Elon Musk endorses Kevin McCarthy SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday that Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “should be Speaker” as the House has entered its third day of voting. On Thursday, the billionaire endorsed Republican lawmaker and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for Speaker of the House. McCarthy and Musk have regularly supported each other. According to Federal Elections Commission records, Musk has contributed to both Republican and Democratic causes. It is reported that since 2011, he has contributed five times to McCarthy’s congressional campaigns. McCarthy is now in the third day of voting after receiving insufficient support on 6 ballots. Members of the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) are among the Republicans who have split off. The day prior, Donalds had supported McCarthy, but now has changed his mind and is opposed to McCarthy. Despite the fact that Republicans now possess a majority in the House, McCarthy has faced opposition from a group of less than 20 GOP representatives who feel that he does not sufficiently represent their Conservative views. The Minority House Leader requires the support of 218 members, but on Wednesday, he could only muster 201 votes thanks to 20 votes against him and one absentee ballot. His Tuesday total was 203. Regardless, following Tuesday’s unsuccessful votes, 45th President Donald Trump, is still one of McCarthy’s allies. Trump called on the GOP to come together behind McCarthy in a message posted on his Truth Social web platform. “The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes. I committed my support to him publicly and for two votes on the House Floor. 218 is the number, and currently, no one is there.” He added. “Some really good conversations took place last night, and it’s now time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to VOTE FOR KEVIN,” Trump tweeted.

El Chapo’s son arrested Mexico’s Defense Secretary has confirmed the arrest of Ovidio Guzman on Thursday. Sinaloa Cartel Capo Ovidia Guzman also known as “El Raton” was officially arrested by the Mexican Army and National Guard. He had risen through the ranks in the Sinaloa Cartel after his father’s arrest in 2019. The arrest happened during a night of extreme violence in the Sinaloan city of Culiacan on Thursday. Residents of the city had been warned to remain indoors after cartel members were reportedly carjacking residents and setting vehicles ablaze throughout the city, blocking several exits. The wave of violence was in response to the arrest of Guzman. He had been previously arrested in 2019. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had decided to release him at the time after his cartel had mobilized and started attacking law enforcement and military members throughout the city and surrounding area. The arrest of Guzman reportedly happened during a major operation in the village of Jesus Maria. Mexican President Obrador had confirmed that an operation was taking place in Culiacan but did not provide further details. Ovidio’s mother reportedly owns a house in the village of Jesus Maria where he was arrested. According to the United States State Department, Guzman and his brother oversee 11 drug labs in Sinaloa. Each lab is reportedly producing 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of methamphetamine per month. Guzman has reportedly already been Transferred to Campo 1, which is a top military base in Mexico City, as violence has continued to escalate between the Mexican authorities and the Cartel. President Joe Biden is set to visit Mexico City on Monday and Tuesday to attend the North American Leaders’ Summit, along with visiting the El Paso Texas border.

Trump for House Speaker GOP Representative Matt Gaetz has voted for Donald Trump as the next Speaker of the House. On Capitol Hill Thursday, Gaetz (R-Fla.) voted for Trump in the seventh ballot in the election for House Speaker. The Republican, an avid supporter of the 45th President, is one of 20 GOP lawmakers who have continued to split with the rest of the Republican Party and refuses to support House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his bid to become Speaker. The action was taken in response to a Wednesday night comment made by Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a member of the anti-McCarthy group, that she could propose Trump for the position. Republicans have been unable to reach a consensus as voting has entered its third day. Trump has not commented on the vote by Gaetz, but he did acknowledge it on Truth Social.

Exclusive: Kevin McCarthy Demanded Jim Jordan Swear Off Speakership Role; Jordan Refused Jim Jordan could be more receptive to assuming the speakership than he’s publicly indicated, National File has exclusively learned. A high-ranking staffer on Capitol Hill tells National File that Freedom Caucus Rep. Jim Jordan rejected a request from Kevin McCarthy and members of the GOP establishment to swear off the speakership for himself when he nominated McCarthy on the House floor on Tuesday, but Jordan refused, indicating his receptiveness to the speakership. National File can exclusively report, per a high-ranking, well-sourced Hill staffer, that Rep. Jim Jordan rejected a request from Kevin McCarthy and his closest supporters to publicly swear off the speakership when he stood to nominate McCarthy for the role. Despite Jordan’s public media comments, indicating that he isn’t running for Speaker of the House and is backing Kevin McCarthy, the Freedom Caucus leadership member received 19 votes of his own after standing to nominate McCarthy. This news blows the lid off of the corporate media narrative surrounding the speakership vote, in which hardline establishment supporters, like Fox’s Sean Hannity, have toed the line for McCarthy, and have insisted that Rep. Jordan isn’t interested in being elected speaker. Related: Conservatives Grill Sean Hannity Over Continued McCarthy Support, Hostile Boebert Interview As the speakership vote has progressed and Kevin McCarthy has failed time and time again to reach the 218 votes he needs to take the gavel, public discussions about alternative candidates and alleged McCarthy blackmail operations have become commonplace. Related: Top McCarthy Henchman Threatening to Vote for Jeffries Advises Epstein-Tied CCP Influence Operation After phony media reports indicated that McCarthy had brokered a deal to make himself Speaker, Freedom Caucus members took to Twitter Thursday morning, ahead of the third day of speakership voting, to reaffirm their opposition to McCarthy’s campaign. Among the top disqualifying issues that McCarthy’s opponents are pointing to, is his use of big tech FTX cash to sabotage America First campaigns, and his embrace of Nancy Pelosi’s left-wing House rules.

Pressure Mounts on Florida Delegation to Withdraw McCarthy Support Florida voters are urging the state’s U.S. Representatives to withdraw their support for Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) after the longtime GOP House leader fell short on yet another ballot. Through seven ballots, three Florida Republicans have voted against McCarthy in Reps. Gaetz, Paulina Luna and Donalds. Pressure is mounting on the state’s remaining pro-McCarthy Republicans to change course, however. Freshman U.S. Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) appeared at a press conference comprised of Republican military veteran House members on Wednesday, at which the group lobbied for Kevin McCarthy and called for an end to the ongoing standoff. The members framed the issue as a national security matter, arguing that they do not have access to key briefings and other tools as it continues to unfold. Also at the press conference was U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who has drawn significant backlash after referring to anti-McCarthy Republicans as “terrorists.” Amidst outrage over Crenshaw’s comments among the Republican base, Mills condemned the remarks despite appearing with Crenshaw just hours before. “In my short stint in Congress I can understand the frustration and tensions that can elevate,” Mills wrote in a tweet Thursday. “However, as a combat veteran who has fought terrorists abroad, it’s not acceptable to call our colleagues ‘terrorists.’ This choice of wording only further divides.” Mills has remained behind McCarthy to this point, though the replies to his tweet overwhelmingly urged him to change course. Two Florida Republicans — Anna Paulina Luna and Matt Gaetz — have voted against McCarthy on all seven ballots. Byron Donalds, also of Florida, voted for McCarthy on ballots one and two before voting for Jim Jordan on the third. He has since emerged as a Speaker candidate himself and has been the anti-McCarthy choice on the past five ballots. Rep. Kat Cammack — a close friend of Donalds — has remained behind McCarthy despite calls to do otherwise from her constituents. After nominating McCarthy on Wednesday, Cammack’s Twitter feed was filled with angry conservatives and Florida voters who called on her to join her dissenting colleagues. “Polling is not favorable for McCarthy, perhaps is time to listen to the people and choose someone else,” wrote one Twitter user. “Biggest Swamp creature in the Florida congressional delegation is @Kat_Cammack.Total pawn for the corrupt Establishment GOP,” wrote former Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who unsuccessfully ran against Mills this past cycle. “McCarthy’s little puppet. Disgraceful that she represents the FL district once held by legendary Congressman Ted Yoho. N. Central FL can do MUCH better!” Sabatini has been highly critical of McCarthy after significant dark money contributions — some of which received FTX donations — were funneled to pro-Mills PACs through McCarthy allies. An eighth vote for House Speaker is expected to take place on Thursday afternoon, though anti-McCarthy Republicans have stated that they intend to keep going.

Steve Bannon Backs Trump for Speaker After Gaetz Vote On the eighth ballot for U.S. Speaker of the House, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) nominated former President Donald Trump for House Speaker. A non-House member can be selected as Speaker, though the practice is very uncommon. Still, a number of high-profile conservatives have called for Trump to be voted in as Speaker, including Steve Bannon and General Michael Flynn. Gaetz had previously stated that he would nominate former President Trump for House Speaker while speaking beside him at a Florida rally. The Florida congressman again voted for Trump on the ninth ballot, on which McCarthy was once again defeated with no defections. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert also switched things up in nominating Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK). In response to the vote, “#TrumpForSpeaker” began to trend on Twitter. The proposal, while seen by many as a long shot, has indeed received support from a number of key conservative figures, including former Trump White House strategist and War Room host Steve Bannon. “It’s all about money and power. That’s why right now we have to stand up and say ‘no, it can’t be McCarthy. If it can’t be McCarthy, then who’s it gonna be?’” Bannon said Thursday. “My vote, is Trump. Bring him in for 100 days, let’s start the negotiations, let’s do the debt ceiling, spend less. Get it up front, do it now. Let’s lance the boil, let’s get down to what’s really important and stop playing games.”

Arizona House Reps. Tell Lesko, Schweikert, Ciscomani to Oppose McCarthy Several Republican members of the Arizona House of Representatives have signaled support for the 20 U.S. House Reps. who continue to vote against Kevin McCarthy. Of the six Republican members of Arizona’s federal House delegation, Reps. Biggs, Crane and Gosar have voted against McCarthy on all eight ballots, while Reps. Schweikert, Ciscomani, and Lesko continue to support McCarthy. Arizona Rep. Cory McGarr had called on the Arizona delegation to reject McCarthy weeks before the Speaker battle formally began on January 3, arguing that a change to the status quo was needed. “The next Speaker of the House needs to be somebody who conservatives can trust and must be openly committed to ending two of Nancy Pelosi’s corrupt rules of the House,” then-State House-elect McGarr said last month. “Pelosi’s changes to the rules are more reflective of a dictatorship than a representative Republic, and it’s time we restore order in the House. Any candidate for Speaker who refuses to accept these terms should be disqualified from consideration, and I am calling on Representatives Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Debbie Lesko, and David Schweikert to vote against McCarthy for Speaker on January 3.” Biggs had long indicated that he would oppose McCarthy for Speaker on January 3. He was later joined on day one of voting by Rep. Paul Gosar and freshman Rep. Eli Crane. McGarr has continued to call on the remaining Arizona Republicans to abandon McCarthy as voting continues through its ninth ballot. “I am so proud of @EliCraneAZ for fighting for his constituents and not falling in line with the party bosses,” McGarr wrote on January 3. In addition to McGarr, a number of Arizona Freedom Caucus members have called on pro-McCarthy members of the federal delegation to change course. “It’s a horrific disgrace that there are only 20 Congressmen who are not bought & paid for by the swamp,” wrote Arizona Rep. Jacqueline Parker in a tweet Thursday. In an additional tweet, she thanked Andy Biggs for keeping his word and encouraged Republicans challenging McCarthy to continue. Seems like the country is better off the longer Congress is paralyzed… Thank you for holding the line @andybiggs4az,” Parker wrote on January 4, tagging Biggs in the tweet. “If Kevin McCarthy was just better ‘candidate quality’ he would have won today,” wrote recently elected Arizona Rep. Austin Smith in a tweet. The tweet was in reference to a statement from GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who, like McCarthy, withheld key funding from America First/MAGA candidates. “Everyone wants to drain the swamp till it’s time to do drain the swamp stuff,” he continued in an additional tweet. “McCarthy wins Speaker if he promises to: 1 ) Release ALL documents related to Epstein 2) Stop all Ukraine money & use it to protect our own border 3) Release all documents in relation to the Hunter Biden laptop 4) Stop spending $ we dont have = Stop inflation!” wrote Arizona Rep. Leo Biasiucci. “But he won’t…” U.S. Reps. Schweikert, Ciscomani, and Lesko have thus far indicated that they will continue to support McCarthy, though the pressure on them from their own State House and voters continues to mount. As of ballot #9, Kevin McCarthy still has not made any progress in his bid to become Speaker.A tenth ballot is possible on Thursday, or a possible adjournment.

Trump Spokeswoman Retweets Video Of Gaetz Nominating Trump For Speaker Liz Harrington envigorated Trump supporters after she retweeted a clip of Matt Gaetz calling for a Trump speakership A Donald Trump spokeswoman excited Trump supporters after she retweeted a video of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) throwing the former president’s name in the ongoing House Speaker election. Liz Harrington, a longtime Trump spokeswoman, retweeted the clip of Gaetz just an hour after the Florida congressman made his comments in the House chamber. While a non-legislator has never been elected to serve as the House Speaker, the Constitution does allow ordinary citizens to be nominated and elected. Rep. Gaetz proudly nominated and voted for Trump on the eighth ballot and ninth, before voting for Rep. Bob Hern (R-OK) on the tenth. Video of Gaetz nominating Trump can be watched below: Rep. Gaetz recently called Trump’s support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) speakership bid “sad.” “Supporting McCarthy is the worst Human Resources decision President Trump has ever made. Sad!,” Gaetz posted on Twitter. “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote [for Speaker],” Gaetz added in a Wednesday statement. The Florid rep. has led a group of growing McCarthy defectors, as they continue to stifle McCarthy’s chances at wielding the Speaker’s gavel. The House Speaker race has not lasted past one ballot, let alone ten, since 1923. Following Gaetz’s Trump support, high-profile right-wingers Steve Bannon and General Michael Flynn echoed a call for a Trump speakership. National File previously reported: The proposal, while seen by many as a long shot, has indeed received support from a number of key conservative figures, including former Trump White House strategist andWar Roomhost Steve Bannon. “It’s all about money and power. That’s why right now we have to stand up and say ‘no, it can’t be McCarthy. If it can’t be McCarthy, then who’s it gonna be?’” Bannon said Thursday. “My vote, is Trump. Bring him in for 100 days, let’s start the negotiations, let’s do the debt ceiling, spend less. Get it up front, do it now. Let’s lance the boil, let’s get down to what’s really important and stop playing games.”

Video: Byron Donalds Challenges Cori Bush To Debate Him On Policy Cori Bush called Byron Donalds a 'prop' who is 'intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.' Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) challenged Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) to a debate over policies after Bush called Donalds a “prop” of the GOP. Byron Donalds and Cori Bush, both black politicians serving in the House of Representatives, got into a spat after Bush made disparaging comments about Donalds on Twitter. “FWIW, @ByronDonalds is not a historic candidate for Speaker. He is a prop. Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress—it’s pathetic,” Rep. Bush tweeted after Donalds was nominated as a House Speaker candidate. Donalds called her tweet “blatantly outrageous” and called on Bush to debate him on policies. “@CoriBush, if you see a Black man rise, let the man rise even if you disagree with them. I’d be happy to sit down and debate our policies one on one whenever you’d like. As a Black man to a Black woman, I’d never do that to you. It’s a shame you did it to me,” Rep. Donalds posted to Twitter. Rep. Donalds, a House rep. from Florida, voted in support of Kevin McCarthy on the first two House Speaker ballots before shifting his support towards Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). After the third ballot, Donalds was nominated as a House Speaker candidate to face off against McCarthy. Rep. Kevin McCarthy has lost all nine rounds of voting this week and there is no sign he will end his losing streak anytime soon. Stay tuned to National File for any updates.

Speaker Trump: President Trump Floats Speakership in Truth Social Post Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has officially nominated President Trump for Speaker of the House President Trump posted a photo to Truth Social depicting himself as Speaker of the House after Freedom Caucus Rep. Matt Gaetz voted for him to command the gavel and prominent conservatives voiced their support for a Trump speakership. Since voting kicked off on Tuesday, establishment leader Kevin McCarthy has failed time and time again to secure the 218 votes he needs to become Speaker of the House, leaving Congress in limbo as he refuses to step aside for the speaker that the American people and their representatives are demanding. Trump can be seen in the doctored photo he posted to Truth Social sitting behind Joe Biden and to the flank of Kamala Harris, in the Speaker’s chair. After Kevin McCarthy has failed over and over again, even with President Trump’s endorsement, to be elected Speaker of the House, momentum is growing to nominate and elect President Trump for the position, and a growing number of conservatives are publicly saying that he’s the only man for the job. Watch Rep. Gaetz nominate President Trump for Speaker of the House below: Following Gaetz’s earlier vote for the 45th President as a speaker, before he made the official nomination, Steve Bannon backed Trump for the gavel. “It’s all about money and power. That’s why right now we have to stand up and say ‘no, it can’t be McCarthy. If it can’t be McCarthy, then who’s it gonna be?’” Bannon said Thursday. “My vote, is Trump. Bring him in for 100 days, let’s start the negotiations, let’s do the debt ceiling, spend less. Get it up front, do it now. Let’s lance the boil, let’s get down to what’s really important and stop playing games.” This story is developing. Stick with National File for updates.

John Fredericks: ‘FOX News Is ’24/7 Shill for Kevin McCarthy’ The veteran radio talk show host praisedthe courage of the 20 holdouts who continue to stonewall the election of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) as the possible next U.S. Speaker of the House. In a broadcast of Steve Bannon’s War Room on Thursday, radio talk show host and long-time journalist, John Fredericks, called out the “Conservative Inc.” establishment and “FOX News as a “24/7 shill for Kevin McCarthy,” in light of a group of 20 Republicans who stonewalled the vote for Kevin McCarthy as U.S. House Speaker on Wednesday. The veteran radio talk show host lauded the courage of the 20 holdouts who continue to stonewall the election of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23) as the possible next U.S. Speaker of the House. “Number one Steve, this has been probably the greatest 48 hours in our movement. It’s energized our base like nothing I’ve ever seen. Our populace movement is now gaining steam with these 20 people who are actually standing up for us and standing for working people,” Fredericks said. “The beauty of this Steve, in 48 hours: look what we’ve exposed. And the Club for Growth got exposed today. Let’s start with who we exposed in 24 hours. We exposed [the] entire Conservative Inc. The money making machine off our backs. FOX News, all of them. FOX News has turned into a 24/7 shill for Kevin McCarthy. That’s all they are,” Fredericks said. “They’re not even reporting the news right? and you go right down the line the whole bunch of them: Newt Gingrich, Trey Gowdy, Jason Gavvits. Sean Hannity last night absolutely being so rude to Lauren Boebert. The woman actually stands for something. Couldn’t get a word in, kept cutting her off. I mean, Brett Baier. The whole bunch of them got exposed. It’s like you went in the kitchen, you turned on the lights and there arecockroaches. It’s like that bathroom in your basement that you haven’t cleaned in 20 years,” Fredericks continued. “Finally you go down there you rip off the mat and see all that scum and you’re like, ‘Oh my god get out the ammonia, I’ve got to scrub this thing clean.’ They’re all getting exposed, Steve. This is the beauty.” Fredericks brought up the political action committee (PAC) called Club for Growth, which has a history of going against former U.S. president, Donald Trump. “Now you’ve got Club for Growth and David McKintosh. This is a Never-Trumper Swamp Organization tied to the Chamber of Commerce. They’ve never stood for anyone of our America First populist views. Now you’ve got David Mckintosh: cuts the deal. At first he was opposed to McCarthy because he didn’t get anything.” “Can people trust Kevin McCarthy, John Fredericks?” Bannon asked the radio talk show host. “No, and they’re exposing it all. Club for Growth [is] another slime-ball PAC organization. David Mckintosh; nobody gives a rats ass what David Mckintosh says. This guy gets on, he’s like ‘oh I cut a deal with McCarthy, he’s not going to use the Super PAC money against my candidates. Therefore, I’m now for McCarthy. I’ve got 10 votes.’ They don’t have any idea what this is about,” Fredericks stated. “This isn’t about hey you’ve got your bag of gold, you’ve got your piece of pie at the table and now you’re back with Kevin McCarthy because you got something from him. Nobody cares what David McKintosh or slime-ball Club for Growth thinks, that by the way, spent $1 million in 2015 and 2016 to defeat President Trump,” Fredericks said.“These are the slime-balls that these 20 are exposing by the hour,” he added. “I’ll tell you the other thing. We’re done collaborating with the Quislings and the Communists. Now they’re out threatening us. ‘Oh, we’re going to cut a deal with the Democrats,” he said. “What deal are they going to cut? Oh they’re going to what, get another $20 trillion Omnibus bill? Oh, they’re going to get 20 Republicans to vote for that in the Senate? Oh, we already did that. Oh they’re going to get $2 trillion in spending for bike paths to nowhere with money we don’t have. Oh they already cut that deal. What exactly deal are they going to help? [sic.]” Fredericks stated. “So, let me get this straight, Gang of 200. You’re willing to cut a deal with the Democrats to weaken the country, weaken Republican’s hand, weaken the majority, put more Democrats on committees, weaken the investigations. You’re willing to do that for what? To shill for McCarthy? What are you getting in return? This has nothing to do but shilling for McCarthy. It’s the Gang of 200.” “Do you think Nancy Pelosi was ever going to compromise with Republicans and give them committee chairs in coalition government for bipartisanship? Was that ever a possibility with the way Nancy Pelosi and that gang over there rolls?” Bannon asked Fredericks. “No, of course not. What we’re seeing is this gang of 200, putting their personal bag of gold, they got their hands out, they got their tin cups out. ‘If McCarthy doesn’t get in there, if my shill doesn’t get in there…Hey, what about the three-corner office you promised me with the four windows on the fourth floor, do I lose that?” This is what this whole thing is about. This has nothing to do with us, working people, spending money we don’t have, policy. It’s all about them,” he replied. The Gang of 200 is willing to sell out working people in this country to protect their shill, Kevin McCarthy. That’s why we need to turn this around. It’s the Gang of 200. What is it they stand for? What is it they plan to do? What’s their plan? They don’t have a plan,” Fredericks said. “I’ll tell you what. We have a plan. That plan is ‘No.’ We’re finally standing up. We’ve got 20 people.” “‘Oh it’s only 20. It only represents 10 or 15 percent,'” Fredericks said. “Guess what? It represents 80 percent of our base because we’re all cheering these people on. One person with courage makes a majority. 20 people? We have a frickin’ army.” he added

Record High Employee Turnover Since Pandemic Has Hurt Business Productivity Employee turnover has surged since the pandemic, and the need to replace and train new employees at high volume has hampered productivity for businesses, according to The New York Times. More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily left their jobs in November 2021, the highest since the government began tracking this data 20 years earlier, and the turnover rate remains significantly higher than it was before the pandemic,accordingto the NYT. Businesses are struggling with the costs of high turnover; new employees take time to become productive, and existing employees lose productivity because of the time they spend training others. The leisure and hospitality industries have seen especially high employee turnover due to a highly competitivelabor market, according to the NYT. The negative impact that turnover has had on businesses across the board may be harming theeconomyoverall by contributing to weak productivity growth in the last few years. “All that turnover, all that hiring, all that training you have to do — that takes away from your day job,” Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo, told the NYT. “So it’s essentially less output at the end of the day.” The manufacturing company W.H. Bagshaw has seen a slowdown in production due to high employee turnover and the constant need to train new employees; 22 employees exited the company over the last two years, while only one or two left in 2019, according to the NYT. “Anytime we bring in a new hire, they’re not productive on Day 1 — usually they’re shadowing someone for a few weeks or months,” Adria Bagshaw, the company’s vice president, told the NYT. “You’re investing in someone for the future. Whoever is doing the training, they’re slowed down from their normal productivity.”

U.S. Manufacturing Declined in December at Fastest Rate Since Pandemic Began The S&P Global U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell at the fastest rate since May 2020 in December, a continuing sign that the manufacturing sector is on the decline, S&P Global reported Tuesday. The U.S. Manufacturing PMI posted a 46.2 in December, down from 47.7 in November and solidly below 50, which signals that the sector is contracting,accordingto S&P Global. Production levels contracted in back-to-back months, with new sales plummeting at the end of December at the fastest pace since 2007, as companies cited weakening demand amid “economic uncertainty” and inflation weighing on customers. “New orders are collapsing and cannot sustain current output levels,” Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Instead, manufacturers have been expanding employment to work through their backlog of unfilled orders. They were running on fumes and with that gone, the layoffs are around the corner. That means unemployment and recession.” Although input prices declined, and cost savings were generally passed onto consumers in the form of price cuts, inflation remained well above historic trends and cut into demand and economic activity, S&P reported. As demand fell, manufacturers worked through their backlogs at an accelerated pace, causing demand for new employees to decline to the second-lowest level of the past 29 months, although “fractional” levels of hiring were reported due to companies filling extended vacancies at skilled positions. “The manufacturing sector posted a weak performance as 2022 was brought to a close, as output and new orders contracted at sharper rates,” Siân Jones, senior economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in the company’s press release. “Concerns regarding the outlook for demand weighed on hiring decisions. Job creation was only slight, and largely linked to skilled hires, as firms displayed caution.” The broader labor market remains incredibly tight, with hiring far surpassing investor expectations in November,accordingto the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). However, even as the market remained tight, the BLS estimated that manufacturers added just 14,000 jobs in November, while private payroll firm ADPestimatedthat manufacturers actually lost 100,000 employees in November. “While unemployment is a lagging indicator, manufacturing often lags less than the labor market as a whole,” said Antoni. “For manufacturing to bounce back, we need to see DC scale back the taxing, spending, and—perhaps most importantly—the regulating.”

Poll: Americans Pessimistic About the Economy in 2023 Americans are not optimistic about the economy this year. A new poll from Gallup found that about 80% of those surveyed expect higher taxes, a higher deficit, and a worse economy in 2023. “More than six in 10 think prices will rise at a high rate and the stock market will fall in the year ahead, both of which happened in 2022,” Gallupreports. “In addition, just over half of Americans predict that unemployment will increase in 2023, an economic problem the U.S. was spared in 2022.” Americans have good reason for their economic pessimism. Inflation has soared in the past two years, and wages have failed to keep up with the higher prices. Grocery priceshave risen even higher than the overall inflation rate, and they show little sign of returning to their previous levels this year. As The Center Square previouslyreported, an analysis from GasBuddy predicts that gas prices will rise again this year, peaking at over $4 per gallon nationally this summer. “The government, the economy and inflation dominated as the most important problems facing the U.S. in 2022, and confidence in the economy remains among the worst readings measured since the Great Recession,” Gallup reports. “This decreased confidence is largely due to the highest inflation in the U.S. in more than 40 years, which a majority of Americans say is causing financial hardship in their household.” Setting aside economic concerns, Americans expect more partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., and continued conflict internationally. When asked if they expected if there would be “apeaceful year, more or less free of international disputes,” the vast majority answered in the negative. This pessimism could weaken President Joe Biden’s legislative efforts over the next two years. With a divided Congress, a prolonged conflict in Ukraine, and ongoing economic struggles, he may have little political clout to bring about any significant legislative wins before 2024, when all attention will turn to the presidential race. “Americans are greeting 2023 with great skepticism and little expectation that the economic struggles that closed out 2022 will abate,” Gallup reports. “Few U.S. adults also predict the partisan politics that plague the nation will improve, not an unreasonable expectation given that there will be divided government in 2023 after Republicans won control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The public’s predictions for international affairs are similarly pessimistic. However, with their party controlling the White House, Democrats are more hopeful about the year ahead.”

Commentary: New Year’s Resolutions for a Better America Entering the new year, it is traditional to set goals and pronounce resolutions to improve ourselves and our lot in life during the coming 12 months. Although these resolutions are more often honored in their breach than their fulfillment, they are nonetheless a useful tool to focus our attention on our weak points, whether we have the fortitude to correct them or not. Unfortunately, the people who could use the most improvement are the least likely to take the time to do a moral (or any other) inventory. That goes for the worst among us (the sexual predators, drug dealers, gang members, thugs, and looters) as well as the most elevated – our elite politicians, Wall Street wizards, talking heads and corporate raiders. The former have no capacity for self-reflection; the latter have, in their estimation, no need for it. And so, as a nation, we plod forward with little hope for improvement, and no expectation that the coming year will be any better than the dismal one we just escaped. No wonder thatcurrent pollingshows as much as 70% of Americans think we are headed in the wrong direction. But what if our politicians actually did their jobs and resolved to solve problems instead of pushing them into the future – or ignoring them altogether? What if we faced the truth instead of telling ourselves happy stories? Might we be able to save our country instead of just saving our incumbents’ political futures? An impossible dream, yes, but it makes for a useful exercise in putting down a list of our obvious failings, our self-deceptions, and our weaknesses, and then imagining how we might correct them. Here is a brief roadmap for how things could get better if we just faced the truth about ourselves. Call it a list of New Year’s resolutions, or call it the last chance for an American future. You can make your own list. This one isn’t comprehensive, but it’s a starting point – seven resolutions that aim to restore safety and sanity to a country on the brink. 1) We resolve to secure our border.Just as we protect our families by locking our doors at night and taking arms against anyone who comes into our house to harm our children, so too must we stand ready to repel those who would destroy our culture, drug our children, and steal our treasure. Protecting our citizens and legal residents from invasion is an obvious starting point. 2) We resolve to restore law and order.You can either start at the top or the bottom. First, let’s recognize that our cities are not safe, that our laws favor criminals over victims, and that the justice system has been perverted by outside money. Don’t let looters loot. Don’t let killers kill. Don’t let prosecutors ignore laws they don’t like. And as for corruption at the top, let’s clean out the Department of Justice – starting with aChurch-style commissionto document the politicization of the FBI. 3) We resolve to stop spending money we don’t have.Easier said than done in a country addicted to easy solutions, but essential to the continued existence of our country. Our annual federal deficits are running in the $300-$400 billion range. Our federal debt is $31 trillion. Unfunded government pensions in cities, counties, and states are crippling localities from hiring police officers, maintaining parks, and providing other basic civic services. Unless you want your grandchildren cursing you with every breath, now is the time to stop the madness. 4) We resolve to restore bodily autonomy.When you allow the government to control your medical decisions by mandating largely untested experimental vaccines, then you have surrendered the power of life and death to an agency that has no particular interest in your well-being. 5) We resolve to respect the nuclear family.How is it even possible that we have to make a special effort to restore the family to the center of American life? What nation, what society, what tribe has ever persisted while teaching children to dishonor their parents? 6) We resolve to follow the Constitution.If Congress only passed laws that were authorized by the Constitution, and lived up to the expectations of our founders, then virtually every problem we face in this list would disappear. If the president stopped acting like a dictator, that would help too. 7) Finally, we resolve to honor and follow our national motto: “In God We Trust.”Lord knows, trusting in politicians who think they are gods has led us to the edge of perdition. If we hope to remain a great nation, we had better remember where our greatness comes from. If we don’t know the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, or don’t have the wisdom to side with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” as Thomas Jefferson put it, then our failure should come as no surprise to anyone.

Commentary: The Origins and Destiny of Critical Theory Karl Marx once famously commented that Hegel wrote that history repeats itself. Marx then supplemented this by noting that this happens the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. And it is perhaps ironic that this is nowhere more true than among some of Marx’s own progeny, the critical theorists. Critical theory’s first coming was as a sophisticated reappropriation of Hegel for Marxist thought in response to the tragedies of the early 20th century — the Russian Revolution, the failure of the German Spartacist uprising, and the rise of Nazism and Stalinism. Its founding fathers were deeply immersed in the Western philosophical tradition and men of substantial intellect. Its second coming — that of our own day — is as the theoretical part of the farce that is postmodern identity politics, often in a form that feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock has declared to be “adolescently, simplistically monotonic.” From tragedy to farce, as Marx would say. The problem that gave birth to critical theory was the obvious failure of the narrowly economic Marxism of the Second International, which was the focal point for international socialist thinking and action from 1889 to 1916. For Second International Marxists, the development of capitalism was meant to lead inevitably to revolution and a communist society as the capitalist system collapsed under its own contradictions. The problem was the success of a Marxist revolution in Russia (which was not an advanced industrial capitalist society and therefore lacked a significant industrial working class) and the failure of the same in Germany (which was the most advanced industrial nation in the world, had a well-developed proletariat, and had just lost a war — ideal conditions in theory for a workers’ revolution). The fate of these two nations cast significant doubt on the ability of economic development alone to deliver the revolution. In this context, a number of thinkers, most notably the German Karl Korsch and the Hungarian György Lukács, turned their thoughts to issues of consciousness. To do so, they revisited the roots of Marx’s own thinking in the thought of Hegel. Marx famously declared that he had turned Hegel upside down (and therefore the right way up) by moving from Hegel’s focus on ideas to focusing on material conditions. Put simply, where Hegel had seen thought as foundational to the material conditions and relations of society, Marx saw material/economic conditions as foundational to the way people think. This materialist revolt against idealism was an article of faith for Marxists in the early 20th century. Of the two men, Lukács was the most influential. Key to his thinking was his rehabilitation of Hegel in the service of a new, more philosophical approach to Marxism. Hegel’s concept of alienation led Lukács to reflect upon how individuals thought about and experienced themselves in relation to society. And the problem that history revealed was that the economic engine of capitalism was not enough to make this consciousness a revolutionary one. Workers needed, for example, to identify themselves first and foremost with other workers and not by nationality or region. And they needed to come to understand their historic destiny as the instrument of revolution. That could only be achieved by developing a critique of the social and cultural conditions of the capitalistic status quo. Indeed, it was no coincidence that Lukács began his career as a literary critic who drew eclectically upon other thinkers, such as the sociologists Georg Simmel and Max Weber. In his important work,History and Class Consciousness, Lukács made a number of claims that were to be developed in later critical theory. First, he identified “ideology” as the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie projected onto the proletariat. In layman’s terms, this meant that the values, practices, and claims about reality that the middle class needed to maintain its status were effectively made normative for all and not simply by imposition. The working class internalized these values and thus were willing, if unwitting, instruments of their own oppression. Marx had made a similar point about religion in hisCritique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Rightand had thus demanded that critique of religion be the foundation of revolutionary politics: stripping away false hope being a necessary prerequisite to workers understanding and embracing true hope. Lukács’ second point referred toreification, a term he used to refer to the way in which social and economic relations took on lives of their own in the consciousness of the people and thus came to drive how such relations were understood. Again, building on Marx — this time the latter’s notion of the commodity fetish, the attribution of power to something that had no intrinsic power — he pointed to the way in which socially constructed conventions and arrangements took on a life and power of their own and to which the individual was then subordinated in status and importance. We see this today in how we speak of “the economy,” as if there was some entity that existed independently of the individuals involved in economic production. The kind of Marxism that Lukács represented might be termed “critical Marxism.” Its task was the unmasking of the socially constructed ideas and institutions that presented themselves as real, solid, natural, and thus irresistible facts of life but were really keeping the corrupt system in place. It was this mantle that a group of thinkers at the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt assumed. Founded in 1929, the Institute became home to what is known as the Frankfurt School. As with Lukács and Korsch, its leading lights sought to reconstruct Marxism by drawing upon the earlier Hegelian tradition out of which the later Marx emerged. In so doing, they developed a rich and variegated tradition of a revolutionary criticism of modern Western society that ranged from discussion of aesthetics to sexual morality and psychology to photography. While the range of critical theory produced by the Frankfurt School is vast, a number of influential themes can be easily identified. First, and most basically, they saw critical theory as revolutionary. The early Frankfurt School took very seriously the spirit of the 11th of Marx’sTheses on Feuerbach. This declared that “the philosophers have onlyinterpretedthe world in various way; the point is tochangeit.” Philosophy was thus not to be a merely descriptive discipline, but a transformative one. As Max Horkheimer declared in an early programmatic essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” its goal was the achievement of social justice. The connection between theory and practice in Marx had always been vexed, struggling with the obvious logical problem inherent in a theory that itself claimed to prioritize practice over theory. But for the Frankfurt School, theory was practice. It was not just theory butcriticaltheory. And this theoretical critique of society was a key element in the revolutionary transformation of society. Second, there was the notion of false consciousness. The early members of the Frankfurt School were all Jews living in a Germany where the anti-Semitic far right, specifically National Socialism, was ascendant. That Nazism drew much of its support from the working class was an obvious problem: why did large numbers of the proletariat throw their weight behind a party that, from a Marxist perspective, clearly served the interests of the bourgeoisie? To solve this, proponents of critical theory developed the notion of false consciousness. This was the idea that members of a class could fail to understand their true interests, internalize the values that served the capitalists, and therefore willingly act to maintain a system that ensured their continued subordination and exploitation. This is closely connected to one of the ways in which the term “ideology” is understood, as a distorted way of viewing the world that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. False consciousness is the internalization of ideology. The Frankfurt School saw exposing false consciousness as one of its central tasks. In perhaps the most important book ever to emerge from its faculty,Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno offered a critique of the modern society to which the philosophical Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, and the rise of industrialization had given birth. They argued, for example, that the language of liberty had been used to dethrone the old religious and feudal hierarchies but had also been a manipulative means of keeping the new, bourgeois order in place by couching its class domination in the rhetoric of universal liberation. Reason too was much the same: it provided an apparently objective (and thus irrefutable) basis for the rise of technocracy. Third, and one of the principal means of cultivating false consciousness, was the School’s concept of the culture industry. This is the term Horkheimer and Adorno used for the way in which entertainment was used to colonize time and also to project an image of reality that shaped the consciousness of the masses. Workers worked five days a week, but they did have leisure time. What the culture industry did was fill that leisure time with mass-produced entertainment. In consuming entertainment, the masses made themselves dependent upon the capitalist system that produced it. But it was not simply this dependence that was the problem. The primary media of the culture industry — radio and movies in Adorno’s day — cultivated passivity in the audience. They also distorted reality by leading the consumer to think that they reflected real life and, for example, there is always a happy ending or where social injustice is always rectified. For the Frankfurt School, the culture industry fulfilled an analogous function to that of religion for Marx: it dulled the pain of existence and prevented the development of a revolutionary consciousness. Herbert Marcuse, another member of the School, saw consumerism as fulfilling a similar role by offering a surfeit of goods and choices that tricked people into thinking that they were really free while leaving the basic unjust structure of society in place. The culture industry also disempowered people in more subtle ways. For example, a movie that told the story of a humble secretary who, thanks to a random encounter, became a movie star sent out a twofold signal. It encouraged the audience to think that they too might become stars. But it also sent the signal that blind fate — or the System — decides who is successful and who isn’t, who wins, and who loses. Thus, it combines its message of specious hope — anyone can make it — with that of abject despair — nothing you as an individual either are or can do will make any difference. Fourth, the Frankfurt School critiqued traditional sexual codes as means by which bourgeois oppression was normalized. To do this, they drew on Freudian psychology, but with a Marxist twist. If the working class was happy to give its support and its loyalty to Hitler, the Frankfurt School saw this as the result of the way in which families trained children to be obedient to the dominant father figure. When the children became adults, they thus found obedience to the authoritarian leader to be natural. The principal means by which this was done was via the sexual codes that defined family relations. Now Freud clearly saw that sexual codes were necessary to preserve civilization. Marcuse and his contemporary, Wilhelm Reich, appropriated this insight for a Marxist cause: yes, they agreed thatthesesexual codes — those that emphasized monogamy and fidelity, for example — were important for maintainingthiskind of society. But if this society is unjust, then the path to revolution lies in shattering the sexual codes that give it a stable foundation. Fascism, Nazism, and indeed totalitarianism in general could only be resisted if the sexual codes and practices of the bourgeoise were dismantled. Of course, Reich could call for this sexual revolution in the 1930s and Marcuse could do so in the 1950s, but it was not until the 1960s, with easily available contraception and abortion, that the revolution could be practically realized. There is much more to the Frankfurt School and early critical theory than this survey presents. And even on these points, there was a variety of opinions. For example, Adorno’s friend, the critic, Marxist, and Jewish mystic Walter Benjamin, was far more sanguine about the possibilities that the new cultural media of radio, photography, and movies offered for the cause of social revolution. Indeed, he even made a considerable number of radio broadcasts himself. But the basic elements — theory as revolutionary criticism, ideology, false consciousness, the culture industry, and the expose of sexual codes as politically oppressive — capture the heart of the movement. The great generation of Frankfurt School thinkers is long dead. Adorno died in 1969, Horkheimer and Marcuse in 1973 and 1979 respectively. Yet the last few years have witnessed the public prominence of new branches of critical theory — of race, of gender, of queerness, of postcolonialism. While the relationships of these branches of critical theory to the Frankfurt School are not uniform, and the issues with which they wrestle go far beyond the basic economic class struggle that marked traditional Marxism, including that of Adorno and company, the basic tendencies of these later forms of critical theory are all present in Frankfurt and are worth highlighting. First, there is the preoccupation with power as the key to understanding society. This takes two basic forms in critical theory. There is a tradition that, like the Frankfurt School, draws upon Hegel and sees history as a dialectical power struggle. The lectures on Hegel that Alexander Kojève gave in France to an audience that included such figures as Georges Bataille and Maurice Merleau-Ponty were later edited and published by Raymond Aron. These were hugely influential, as was the Hegelian-inflected thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre taught Franz Fanon, a key figure in the development of postcolonial theory and an influence on perhaps the most important theorist in this area, Edward Said. Said’sOrientalismeffectively created the discipline of postcolonial studies, and his own eclectic use of Lukács, Fanon, and the post-structuralism of Michel Foucault was a singularly influential achievement. In addition, Slavoj Žižek, arguably the most influential Marxist intellectual — indeed, a true celebrity intellectual — has done much to recapture this Hegelian element through his appropriation of the tradition of French thought exemplified by Jacques Lacan. Judith Butler, the great gender theorist, is also explicit about her debt to Hegel through the appropriation of his notion of recognition with its desire to dominate. Gender is thus not a natural, given thing but rather a performance demanded by the powerful in society who desire to dominate, and it is arbitrarily mapped onto biological differences. The other stream of critical theory’s critique of power draws its strength not from Hegel, whom its advocates would reject as offering a totalizing system, but from Nietzsche via Michele Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Here the concern is that stable categories of discourse are really discourses of power. In other words, a claim to truth is really a bid for power. Categories and definitions involve hierarchies and manipulation. The question in, say, matters of morality is not, therefore, “Is this action right or wrong?” but rather “Why is this action considered right or wrong?” Such a question demands a genealogical approach that sets aside questions of truth in the traditional sense in favor of asking what moral claims do, who benefits, who is marginalized, etc. Such an approach has its antecedents in Frankfurt, where Hegelian Marxism tilted its founders toward studying the function (and genealogy) of morals. This points to a second area of broad continuity, that of false consciousness. Now, “false consciousness” as a term is not favored by many modern critical theorists, being replaced by the language of “hegemony” and “discourses of power.” The terminological change, however, is not of major significance. “Hegemony” and “discourses of power” both refer to the larger ideological structures that dominate the way individuals think and internalize the values of the status quo. It refers to how we are unconsciously taught to see as real and solid those things that are really constructed and manipulative. Modern cultural Marxists and post-structural cultural theorists may differ in how they would argue their case, but the result is the same: the individual self-consciousness is not autonomous but really a product of invisible cultural forces. Third, Frankfurt and modern critical theorists see liberal democracy as offering only an illusory freedom. Thus, Marcuse’s notion that freedom of speech is really a harmless sop whereby bourgeois society effectively disempowers criticism by accommodating it within the bourgeois system is akin to that of a critical race theorist who sees civil rights legislation as changing the language of law while really doing nothing to dismantle systemic oppression. It gives the appearance of justice by reforming a system that in reality cannot be reformed and needs to be demolished and replaced. Fourth, and really underlying the whole tradition of critical theories, from Marxism to race theory to queer theory, is a fundamental anti-essentialism. This is the denial that there is such a thing as a human nature that binds us all together. It ultimately requires the relativizing of all other differences. For critical theory, all is socially constructed and the notion of human nature is just a concept developed by those in power — whether by the bourgeoisie, white males, heterosexuals, etc. — to marginalize other groups who do not fit and, indeed, to cultivate a feeling of natural inferiority and impotence in those groups. This is where intersectionality comes in, with its complication of the nature of power relations through the acknowledgment that every individual belongs to more than one category (race, gender, class, sexuality, etc). At this point, of course, everything is reduced to power relations from which there is apparently no escape, and ultimately a creeping sense of impotence will start to emerge. What began as an attempt in Frankfurt to generate self-conscious resistance to Nazism ended up disempowering everyone. And that is the really critical problem in critical theory. If there is no human nature, then everything is truly destabilized, from the individual self to any other categories one might care to invent. All categories are simply part of the hegemonic discourse of power or the regime of truth, to use the jargon. And thus the tools by which one might resist power are themselves reduced to mere bids for power. Like the Roman emperors of old, one regime replaces another only to be assassinated by the next. It also explains why critical theory is now increasingly preoccupied with what we might describe as bizarre trivia. The movement that started with an attempt to explain the very serious problem of why Nazism was proving so attractive is now used to justify drag queen story hour. But if there is no such thing as human nature, if there is no given common end or goal to being a human, then there can really be no hierarchy of goods and no way to distinguish the ephemeral from the important. The tilt to trivialization is irresistible. Twenty years ago, Marxist Terry Eagleton lamented how a preoccupation with theory had trivialized the horizon of his own discipline, English literature. We might today say that it has trivialized everything, with the plight of the affluent middle-class drag queen being as important, or perhaps more important, than that of the unemployed miner in West Virginia. Marx was right: history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce. There was surely nothing more tragic last century than the rise of totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism. And there is nothing more farcical today than grown men dressing up as women to read to children in public libraries. That critical theory was born as a result of the former and now flourishes in a world that valorizes the latter merely proves Marx’s point.

Famous College Ranker Overhauls System After Law Schools Pull Out Due to Equity Concerns U.S. News & World Report is modifyingits law school ranking system after several top schools pulled out of the rankings altogether, according to The Wall Street Journal. The ranker will give dean, faculty, lawyer and judge “reputational surveys” less weight and will no longer consider per-student expenditures which critics have said favor the wealthiest schools during the ranking process, according to theWSJ. The announcement comes after top law schools Yale,Harvard,Georgetown,Columbia, the University of California,BerkeleyandStanfordpulled out of the rankings,sayingthe report hurts schools that admit students with lower test scores because they could not afford tutoring and academic services. A ranking team for U.S. News met with more than 100 deans and law-school administrators after the prestigiouslawschools announced they would no longer be participating in the rankings, the WSJ reported. “Based on those discussions, our own research and our iterative rankings review process, we are making a series of modifications in this year’s rankings that reflect those inputs and allow us to publish the best available data,” Robert Morse, U.S. News’ chief data strategist, and Stephanie Salmon, senior vice president for data and information strategy, told the WSJ. Yale Law School, U.S. News & World Report’s top law school, was thefirstschool to pull out of the national ranking system, calling the program “flawed.” “While academic scores are an important tool, they don’t always capture the full measure of an applicant,” Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerkensaidin a press release. “This heavily weighted metric imposes tremendous pressure on schools to overlook promising students, especially those who cannot afford expensive test preparation courses. It also pushes schools to use financial aid to recruit high-scoring students. As a result, millions of dollars of scholarship money now go to students with the highest scores, not the greatest need.” U.S. News said law school administratorshave concerns on how the ranking system weighs diversity and loan forgiveness which “potentially encourages awarding scholarships based on LSAT scores rather than on financial need,” the WSJ reported. For those concerns “additional time and collaboration” will be needed, the U.S. News & World Report told the law schools. The company also will offer “more detailed profiles” to law schools who choose to stay in the rankings and give the report information, the WSJ reported. The U.S. News & World Report did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

After FBI Warning, Michigan Gov. Whitmer Still Posting on TikTok After the FBI declared the popular Chinese video app TikTok a national security threat, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer continues to post on the platform. Whitmer posted three videos in three days to her 186,000 followers. The most recent post is video of her second inauguration on Jan. 1. Another video shows Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Attorney General Dana Nessel walking through a door and into their second term. TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. About 14 states have taken action to rid TikTok from state devices after FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the app “allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.” AxiosreportedWray telling an audience at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy: “All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States,” Wray said. “That should concern us.” Whitmer’s office hasn’t responded to multiple requests from The Center Square for comment. Whitmer praised the FBI for its reaction to the 2020 plot to kidnap her, but it appears she’s not heeding the agency’s TikTok security concerns. Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming have banned the app on state devices. Wisconsin political leaders are also considering banning the app on state devices. Also, the Pennsylvania Treasury banned the app on government-owned devices. West Virginia officials have said they plan to pursue a ban on the app for state employee devices. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte banned the app, saying its used to harvest data from user devices for the Chinese Communist Party. “Government’s chief responsibility is keeping its citizens safe and secure,” Gianforte wrote in a memo. “Use of TikTok on state devices poses a significant risk to the security of our state and Montanans’ sensitive data.” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt warned of possible national and cybersecurity threats from the Chinese-owned social media app. “Maintaining the cybersecurity of state government is necessary to continue to serve and protect Oklahoma citizens and we will not participate in helping the Chinese Communist Party gain access to government information,” Stitt said in a news release. A ban on TikTok on electronic devices managed by the U.S. House of Representatives is also included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill.

Key GOP Congressman Confirms That Party Blocs Are Negotiating Speaker Deal Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube confirmed on Wednesday that the party’s competing wings have entered negotiations to reach a compromise on choosing the next Speaker of the House. California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the party’s lead contender for the post, has failed six times thus far to secure the support of a majority of lawmakers. The House voted three times on Wednesday and no candidate received the necessary 218 votes. A stalwart group of 20 House Republicans remain directly opposed to McCarthy’s leadership and are backing Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who twice voted for McCarthy before defecting on the third vote. The House has adjourned until 8 p.m. at which time it will hold yet another vote for speaker. Speaking on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show, Steube confirmed that the adjournment was to buy time for the opposing groups to negotiate. “Yeah, so we broke on the floor so that some individuals on team McCarthy and some individuals with the 20 individuals that aren’t voting for him can have some negotiations behind closed doors,” he said. “There’s been a number of concessions on the rules that have been made up to this point. So the real issue that has been amongst members is what is it exactly that you want?” “Is it just you’re not going to vote for Kevin no matter what or is it really the rules?” he continued. “And if it’s the rules, what are we going to negotiate on? Try to get there… that meeting is happening today, as we speak, and at eight o’clock, we come back on? So we’ll just have to see if there’s any logjam that comes out of that. And we’re able to break free from some of this.” Steube remained adamant that McCarthy represented the majority of the caucus and that his detractors were undermining Democratic principles by hog-tying the party with their opposition. “So you you have 9%, like 10% of the entire conference that is dictating the will of the entire conference. We live in a democratic republic where the majority rules, certainly in conferences and caucuses, and for the American people, and the majority should hold sway and everybody else support the candidate, whether it’s the person you want there or not, and work together for the best of the American people,” he said. “[E]very hour in every day that we sit up here, negotiating this and these 20 members holding out on who the mass majority of the conference voted to be speaker is the day we’re not working for the American people and fighting against the Biden agenda,” he concluded. McCarthy is the first speaker candidate to fail on the first vote in more than 100 years.

FDA Approves Chemical Abortion Pills to Be Sold at Retail Pharmacies The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a regulatory change that allows independent and chain drugstores, as well as mail-order companies, to offer a drug that induces abortion, making it easier for women and girls to conduct their own abortions at home or in college dorms. The New York Times reported Tuesday evening the FDA’s regulatory change, which apparently came without an official announcement to the public, officially removes the requirement for the patient to have an in-person doctor’s visit for the prescription of mifepristone, the first drug used to induce an abortion. According to the report: Until now, mifepristone — the first pill used in the two-drug medication abortion regimen — could be dispensed only by a few mail-order pharmacies or by specially certified doctors or clinics. Under the new F.D.A. rules, patients will still need a prescription from a certified health care provider, but any pharmacy that agrees to accept those prescriptions and abide by certain other criteria can dispense the pills in its stores and by mail order. Misoprostol, the second drug taken to induce an abortion, has historically been easily obtained at pharmacies through the normal prescription process. With the requirement for an in-person doctor visit prior to a prescription for mifepristone now officially eliminated, two criteria remain to allow women and girls to simply have their prescription for the pills filled at chains such as CVS and Walgreens: healthcare providers must show they have the expertise and ability to treat abortion patients, and the patients must fill out a consent form. Drug companies Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro – both of which manufacture the pill – released press statements noting the FDA had informed them of the regulatory change. Danco Laboratories, which sells the abortion drug under the brand name Mifeprex, said in a statement about the FDA’s move: At a time when people across the country are struggling to obtain abortion care services this modification is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers with an additional method for providing their patients with a safe and effective option for ending early pregnancy. Danco is proud and honored to continue the work with Mifeprex ® providers and the reproductive rights community that has spanned more than two decades. Abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood celebrated the federal agency’s rule change. Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps abortion workers leave the industry, explained in comments to The Star News Network the abortion industry “loves anything that gives women more access to abortion because it means more money for them and that’s always been their bottom line.” Johnson commented on the fact that the FDA’s elimination of restrictions on mifepristone means more at-home abortions, an outcome the abortion industry once assailed: Women deserve so much better than abortion, than being told that at-home abortions are somehow safe and easy and just like a “heavy period.” That’s a complete lie – I had a medication abortion and no one told me how I thought I would be dying because of the pain and amount of blood I lost. The old coat hanger that used to represent back-alley abortions that Planned Parenthood loved to use should be brought back to remind women that they are going to be just as alone, and quite possibly in more pain and agony, as when they take the abortion pill. Johnson said she had two abortions before her conversion to the pro-life movement, one of which was drug-induced. “It was horrific,” she noted. “I was alone, in immense pain, and bleeding profusely.” She elaborated on the dangers associated with drug-induced abortion: It wasthis scenein the movieUnplanned that garnered it an R rating, and that scene was less bloody and painful than in real life. The thing is, it almost doesn’t even matter that the FDA is allowing the abortion pill to be more widely available because the women aren’t seeing a doctor either way. They aren’t having ultrasounds and some aren’t even verifying they are pregnant. The people dispensing the drugs have no idea how old these women are or their medical history. “While the abortion lobby will say this move is a huge step forward for women, it’s only a step forward for them and for those who manufacture the abortion pills because it means more money for them while throwing women under the bus,” Johnson said. “They don’t care about the women who are ordering the pills or what will happen to them when they lie on their bathroom floors and think they are dying. That’s exactly what happened to me and it still haunts me to this day. No woman should have to go through that.” In May, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America,revealed increased health risks for women urged by abortion activists and providers to keep secret their drug-induced abortions if they require hospital admissions or surgeries for complications. According to the CLI study, if a woman’s complications resulting from a drug-induced abortion are miscoded as a miscarriage in the ER, as advised by the abortion industry, she is more than twice as likely to need surgical admission and at significantly greater risk of multiple hospital admissions. CLI reports the drug mifepristone works to “starv[e] the unborn baby of hormonal support.” “When used as part of the abortion drug regimen, misoprostol induces contractions to expel the baby and placental tissue from the uterus,” the institute notes. CLI alsorevealedin 2021 the dramatic spike in abortion pill-related emergency room visits. James Studnicki, Sc.D., CLI’s vice president of data analytics and lead author of the abortion pill studies, asserted the abortion industry’s claims of the safety of chemical abortion is “greatly exaggerated”: In fact,the increasing dominance of chemical abortion and its disproportionate contribution to emergency room morbidity is a serious public health threat, and the real-world data suggests that threat is growing. “Our peer-reviewed research should alarm anyone who claims to be pro-woman, yet the current trend among pro-abortion politicians, bureaucrats, and their allies in the media is to turn a blind eye,” Studnicki said. Texas-based Ingrid Skop, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., CLI’s director of medical affairs, also emphasized the dangers associated with drug-induced abortions. “I’ve performed at least adozen surgerieson women who experienced complications when the abortion pills failed,” Skop said. “I’ve cared for several women who took mifepristone and misoprostol and requiredblood transfusions or treatment for severe infections, and I’ve counseled women who experiencedsignificant emotional distressafter viewing the body of their easily identifiable child in the toilet.” Skop noted as well in her area OB/GYNs “are regularly called upon to address serious abortion pill complications that Planned Parenthood fails to treat and which the FDA doesn’t even bother to track.” “Right now, the abortion pill is promoted as safe under a ‘see no evil, hear no evil, report no data on evil’ regime that puts the life and health of women and girls at risk,” she asserted. Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins explained drug-induced abortion is already ranking as the primary method of abortion. She added that cutting the requirement for an in-person doctor’s visit and allowing pharmacies to easily sell these drugs is a “win for the abortion lobby who profits off the death of the preborn and a loss for women who will suffer physically, mentally, and emotionally.” Hawkins said the FDA’s move amounts to the Biden administration “makingdangerous chemical abortion pills attainable at every corner as it lowers the medical standards for protecting women.” “The objective of this administration has always been increased access to dangerous drugs which is why Students for Life has launched a multi-layered campaign to demand transparency and real tests into the impact of these pills on women and the environment,” she said.

Rep. Boebert Calls on Trump to Withdraw McCarthy Endorsement U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has called on former President Donald Trump to withdraw his endorsement of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) after the longtime House leader again came up short on multiple ballots on Wednesday. Trump has held firm in his support of McCarthy despite the fact that the California congressman has blamed him for January 6 and once stated that he should resign in a leaked audio recording. Trump has reportedly reached out to McCarthy dissenters — including Boebert and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — and urged them to abandon their quest to oust McCarthy. “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL,” and “TAKE THE VICTORY,” the former president wrote in a Truth Social post on Wednesday. “REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT. IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE, YOU DESERVE IT. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB – JUST WATCH!” Boebert pushed back on Trump’s demands, however, instead urging the president to acknowledge that McCarthy does not have the votes and support somebody else. “Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us, even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off,” Boebert said on the House floor Wednesday. “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, ‘Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.'” As of ballot six, Kevin McCarthy has failed to secure enough votes to become Speaker and has seen his margin thin over time. After U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds defected from McCarthy on ballot three, he was joined on Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, who changed her vote from McCarthy to “present.” U.S. Rep. Ken Buck has also hinted at withdrawing his support for McCarthy, stating that he clearly does not have the necessary votes. Buck did vote for McCarthy on ballot six, but he has also reportedly urged the longtime GOP House leader to cut a deal. The House is set to reconvene at 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday.