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Conservatives Grill Sean Hannity Over Continued McCarthy Support, Hostile Boebert Interview Sean Hannity has been skewered by large swaths of the conservative base after a hostile interview with U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) in which the Fox News host yelled and talked over her while urging support for McCarthy. At one point, Hannity even compared Boebert and her fellow McCarthy detractors to the radical left. As a result, conservatives have flooded social media to voice their displeasure with Hannity and support for the anti-McCarthy movement. Earlier in the day, Boebert nominated U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and called on former President Trump to ditch McCarthy in favor of him. “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.’” She later went on Sean Hannity’s program in order to defend her position, but was unable to do so as Hannity did not allow her to talk without yelling and interrupting. “Isn’t it time for you and your side to pack it in considering he [McCarthy] has over 200 [votes] and you have 20?” Hannity asked the Colorado congresswoman. “I understand the frustration. I promise you,” she replied. “I’m not frustrated,” Hannity interrupted. “You didn’t answer my question.” “There are more for us than against us,” Boebert stated. “I asked you a simple question congresswoman; ya know I feel like I’m getting an answer from a liberal,” the Fox News host said at one point. At that point, Boebert replied by saying that she will not be supporting McCarthy and called for the GOP conference to agree on a consensus candidate. “You will not abide by what you told President Trump you’d abide by?” Hannity asked. “I love President Trump. You’re not turn me on him. You’re not going to pit him against me. I love you. I love President Trump,” Boebert replied. The interview did not go over well with the conservative base, only adding to prior frustration stemming from Hannity’s relentless promotion of Dr. Mehmet Oz over Kathy Barnette in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary. Hannity repeated numerous leftist talking points in his attacks on Barnette and even went so far as to attack her for attending Trump’s peaceful rally on January 6, 2021. “Sean Hannity is insufferable,” said popular influencer ALX in reference to the Boebert interview. “Sean Hannity is Kevin McCarthy’s strongest soldier, which explains why he’s lost six Speaker ballots in a row,” wrote the Free Columbia Bugle. War Room host Steve Bannon demolished Hannity and heaped praise upon Boebert following the disastrous interview, stating that Boebert “bench-pressed” Hannity. “Hannity has gotta understand something, if you’re gonna bring it, you gotta bring it. She bench-pressed you brother. It’s kind of embarrassing, right?” Bannon said. “She benched-pressed Hannity, it’s embarrassing. He’s had one too many softball things with his buddy Lindsey [Graham].”

House Adjourning Until Thursday After McCarthy Lost 6th Round of Voting for House Speaker The House of Representatives has adjourned without a new speaker after two days of voting. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy lost in the 6th round of voting for House speaker on Wednesday. The House reconvened at 8pm and passed a motion to adjourn until Thursday at noon. A group of 20 conservative House Freedom Caucus members consistently opposed McCarthy’s bid for speaker on the House floor since Tuesday afternoon. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and McCarthy had been meeting with members of theHouse Freedom Caucusto reach an agreement throughout the evening on Wednesday. A concrete deal has not yet been reached.

Biden Admin to Hike Fees on Legal Immigrants to Fund Processing of Illegal Migrants Who Claim Asylum The Biden administration will increase the costs for legal immigrants to apply for permits, visas and green cards to help mitigate the backlog of asylum cases due to record surges of illegal immigration at the southern border, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Tuesday. The recent surge in illegal immigration has contributed to the years-long asylum backlogs, where applicants wait an average of 4.3 years nationwide to appear in court,accordingto Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Under the proposed new rules, H-1B application fees for skilled workers will jump from $60 to $780, fees for non-agricultural workers will jump from $460 to $1080 and fees for green card applicants will jump from $1,140 $1,540, USCISsaid. USCIS predicts the rule changes will bring in an average range of $5.2 billion and $6.4 billion each year in revenue, allowing for an additional $1.9 billion per year on average to support efforts to eliminate future backlogs,accordingto the agency. “In addition to improving customer service operations and managing the incoming workload, USCIS must continue to fulfill our growing humanitarian mission, upholding fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve,” USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou said in a statement Tuesday. “This proposed rule allows USCIS to more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years and will support the Administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system.” In fiscal year 2022 alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)encounteredmore than 2.3 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. With that, there are roughly 1.6 million asylum cases pending in immigration courts, according to TRAC. “Asylum backlogs are not new (as TRAC has shown many times), since the number of people requesting the type of protection that asylum provides has typically exceeded the capacity of government agencies to process applications quickly and fairly. Yet in recent years, with political, economic, and environmental instability in places like Mexico, Venezuela, Haiti, Central America, Ukraine, and elsewhere, the United States has seen a growth in migrants’ needs that outpace even the growing number of Immigration Judges and asylum officers added by both Democratic and Republican administrations,” TRAC noted.

Commentary: The Truth Behind George Santos’ Lies The uproar over George Santos and his crude fabrications has given official Washington an opportunity to do what it does best: moralize and deflect. It is all a little amusing to watch. Who are these scoundrels to hold forth on truth and transparency? Are we meant to be astonished that a politician lied to secure public office? The freshman congressman from New York is distinguished only by the chutzpah of his act. His dishonesty, in an ironic way, is more truthful than the posturing of the preening hypocrites denouncing him. When Santos called himself the “embodiment of the American dream,” he was only half-lying. Santos very much represents the American dream to the charlatans and ravenous social climbers who lord it over us. No rational person believes that Karine Jean-Pierre has any kind of merit. Her talent consists in being a black lesbian who is willing to trumpet invidious falsehoods with smug contempt. This is also the secret of Joe Biden’s surprising longevity: he is a man utterly lacking in shame, an empty vessel for his patrons. Is George Santos really more egregious than a prolific liar like Biden? Or the thoroughly artificial Pete Buttigieg, whose fame rests on being a homosexual and speaking in cerebral platitudes? What about the vacuous, rambling, racially ambiguous Kamala Harris, whoplagiarized Martin Luther King(imitationbeing the sincerest form of flattery), or Elizabeth Warren, a rich liberal white lady who has spent her entire lifepretending to be a Cherokee? Are Santos’ lies more consequential than the absurd “public health” dogmas that grandiose, self-appointed tyrants like Anthony Fauci used to divide and rule in the name of “science”? Have his lies caused more harm than the racialist poison being peddled by poseur court intellectuals who crowd the halls of power? Consider some of the brazen, enormously consequential lies that the ears of the public have been battered with in just the past two years: ivermectin is “horse paste.” The COVID vaccine is “safe and effective,” and those whodo nottake it are dangerous. The 2020 election was “free and fair.” The Hunter Biden laptop is “Russian disinformation.” ’The southern border is “secure.” The COVID lab leak theory is a “conspiracy theory.” The January 6 “insurrection” was an attack on “our democracy” as grave as September 11 and Pearl Harbor. The George Floyd riots were “mostly peaceful.” America is not in a recession. The pious frauds who peddled these massive lies have allfound their reward in the Americaliberal progressives have built. Why should George Santos be singled out for censure? His only sin is playing the game with more, although not much more, audacity than others who have succeeded in it. He is a mirror, reflecting the grotesque corruption of an oligarchy that calls itself Our Democracy™, in which a clever few clamber to the top by demonstrating “diversity” and obsequious loyalty to the ruling party rather than competence and character. The articles of faith of the new order are almost designed to empty one of anything resembling integrity and self-respect: men can become women, and vice versa; sterilizing children is “health care”; all socioeconomic disparities are because of evil, racist whites, who are secretly conspiring to kill young black men and beat up Asian grandmas in New York City; and on and on. Contemporary America is decadent and built on toxic orthodoxies and misdirections that cannot sustain a moment’s reflection, but few dare contradict the charade lest they lose respectability and become targets of the system. In this blizzard of demoralizing nonsense, the lies of a George Santos are but a snowflake.

Judge Completely Blocks Oregon’s Restrictive Gun Law A judge on Tuesday placed a hold on a portion of Oregon’s recently passed gun law that enhances background check requirements for firearm purchases, leaving the legislation completely blocked. The ruling is another setback for the law,Ballot Measure 114, which is now entirely paused as legal challenges to various portions of the law make their way through Oregon’s court system. The judge determined that the law’s heightened background check requirement could not be implemented while the court continues to debate the other portions of the law,accordingto Oregon Public Broadcasting, as plaintiffs argue the law violates the state’s constitution. Oregon had hoped to implement the background check requirement based on language in the measure that says if any “articles, sections, subsections, sentences or clauses” are blocked or found to be unconstitutional, the remaining portions could still be implemented. Harney County Circuit Judge Robert Raschio ruled that the background check could not be implemented because the language in the measure ties background checks to the “permit-to-purchase” requirement, according to OPB. “The court declines to remove the background check provisions from the [temporary restraining order] as the provisions are intertwined with the permit-to-purchase program and the court has made no final determination on constitutionality of the program,” Raschio wrote in his order. Following the law’s passing, gun restrictions led to amassiveuptick in attempted firearms purchases in Oregon. Background checksskyrocketedfrom 850 per day, prior to the midterms, to 4,000 per day after the law’s passing, and the Oregon state police reported more than 18,000 transactions during election week. In December, 36,000 Oregon residents werewaitlistedin the background check process, Karl Durkheimer, owner of Oregon’s Northwest Armory gun store,saidon Fox News. “Two things are happening. There’s fear they won’t be able to get a gun, but there’s the actual logistics that they won’t be able to do the background check. It’s going to take a year before an Oregonian has a permit,” Durkheimer said.

Regulator Fines Tech Giant Millions for Showing Targeted Ads Based on User Activity An Irish data privacy regulator has issued fines totaling €390 million — roughly $410 million — against Facebook and Instagram parent Meta over practices related to its monitoring of users’ behavior on its services in order to create targeted ads, according to a Wednesday press release by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). Meta had previously argued to the commission that it had the right to tailor ads to users based on their online activity because the Terms of Service that users agreed to to use the service amounted to a contract, and that gathering this personalized data was a core part of that contract,accordingto the DPC. Although the DPC originally agreed with this argument, it reversed its position after other European regulators challenged this view during a standard peer review process, finding that Meta was “not entitled” to consider the Terms of Service agreement as sufficient legal basis for its actions. The fine was issued in two parts, a €210 million fine for alleged wrongdoing at Facebook and a €180 million fine for alleged wrongdoing at Instagram, according to the DPC. Meta intends to appeal the ruling and challenge the fines,accordingto a press release Wednesday. “Given that regulators themselves disagreed with each other on this issue up until the final stage of these processes in December, it is hard to understand how we can be criticised for the approach we have taken to date, and therefore we also plan to challenge the size of the fines imposed,” the company said. Meta criticized “a lack of regulatory certainty” surrounding theGeneral Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — the E.U.’s strict data privacy law which first took effect in 2018 — and noted that the decisions did not prevent it from offering other forms of personalized ads. While Meta allows users to shield their activity on third-party apps and websites for use in personalized ads, the company relies on monitoring users’ activity on its own platforms in order to optimize its targeted advertisements,accordingto The Wall Street Journal. “We strongly believe our approach respects GDPR, and we’re therefore disappointed by these decisions,” said Meta. The DPC found that both Meta’s use of contracts and its lack of transparency regarding how it uses users’ data was in violation of the GDPR, and initially filed its complaint on May 25, 2018, the day that the regulations took effect. The agency gave Meta three months to bring itself into compliance. In the past 18 months, the Irish regulator has fined Meta nearly $1.4 billion across five decisions, according to the WSJ. In September 2022, Meta was fined more than$400 millionfor policies that the DPC alleged violated privacy rights for underage users, although Meta stressed to the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time that the ruling was based on policies that had been updated over a year prior. The DPC did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment. Meta directed the DCNF to its press release.

Commentary: With Schools Ditching Merit for Diversity, Families of High Achievers Head for the Door Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2. It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in mostNew York City middle schools. These merit-based schools, which screened for students who met their high standards, will permanently switch to a lottery for admissions that will almost certainly enroll more blacks and Latinos in the pursuit of racial integration. Shilkrut is one of many parents who are dismayed by the city’s dismantling of competitive education. He says he values diversity but is concerned that the expectation that academic rigor will be scaled back to accommodate a broad range of students in a lottery is what’s driving him and other parents to seek alternatives. Although it’s too early to know how many students might leave the school system due to the enrollment changes,some parents say they may opt for private education at $50,000 a year and others plan to uproot their lives for the suburbs despite the burdens of such moves. “We will very likely leave the public schools,” says Shilkrut, adding that he knows 10 Manhattan families who also plan to depart. “And if these policies continue, there won’t be many middle- and upper middle-class families left in the public schools.” A National Battle Over Merit The battle in New York City is an example writ large of a high-stakes gamble playing out in cities across the country – essentially a large experiment in urban education aiming to improve the decades-old lag in performance of mostly black and Latino students. By ending screened admissions that segregate poorer performers and instead placing them in lottery schools with higher achievers, the theory goes, all students benefit. But the research cuts both ways on the academic impact of mixed-ability classrooms, and many New York City parents say they don’t want to roll the dice on their kids’ education. If a large number of families do exit the city’s public schools in 2023, it would mean another financial blow to a system that has already lost more than 100,000 students since the beginning of the pandemic. Yet some of these parents may decide to remain in the public system and augment their kids’ education with advanced after-school classes, a common practice. “When desegregation policies have been adopted in other cities, some parents who object stick it out and adapt,” says David Armor, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who has extensively researched integration policies. “But I would expect some degree of middle-class flight in New York City given how the lottery is going to change the academic composition of the middle schools.” Diversity advocates – school educators, local politicians, and progressive nonprofits and parents – dismiss the threat of an exodus as scaremongering while they score wins. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, an affluent, progressive NYC neighborhood, it was parents who led the charge to end selective middle schools several years ago in a prelude to the citywide policy shift this fall. But Park Slope isn’t representative of the more moderate politics of much of the city like Manhattan’s District 2, where most parents at a recent series of community meetings strongly backed selective education. Nationwide, about 185 school districts and charters in 39 states have adopted integration policies, ranging from redrawing school boundaries to preferential admissions for low-income and black and Latino students, according to the Century Foundation, an advocacy group. A quarter of them have been implemented since 2017. “Students benefit educationally and socially from racially and economically integrated schools,” says a report from New York Appleseed, an advocacy group that lobbied for the removal of admission screens. “Society and our political systems benefit from the reduction in racial prejudice.” But advocates don’t win them all, suffering a remarkable setback in progressive San Francisco in 2022. After the Board of Education angered some parents, particularly Asian Americans, by shifting Lowell, the city’s premier selective high school, to a lottery system during the pandemic, a grassroots campaign formed and successfully recalled three members in a landslide vote. The new board voted to keep screened enrollment at Lowell. NYC Rolls Back Selective Ed The retreat from selective middle schools in New York City gained momentum during the pandemic. Prior to COVID, almost 200 of the city’s middle schools, or nearly half the total, used enrollment screens, typically grades and test scores, to select high achievers. Whites and Asians won a disproportionate number of seats in these competitive schools, creating a form of segregation based on academic performance. For instance, at Salk School of Science, a junior high in District 2, these groups accounted for three-fourths of the enrollment, with blacks and Latinos taking less than a quarter of the seats even though they make up two-thirds of all students in NYC’s system. During the pandemic, middle schools suspended screened admissions because standardized testing had been temporarily paused – and that gave diversity advocates an opening to lobby for a permanent end of selective middle schools. NYC Department of Education Chancellor David Banks, a black man who rose up the ranks from school security officer, recently got a taste of bitter politics of integration after making a politically incorrect comment in favor of merit-based education. The blunt-spoken chancellor was pilloried as “evil” on Twitter for saying that students who work harder deserve to go to a top school compared to those who need water thrown on their face to get them to class. As a former principal, Banks was speaking from experience. But perhaps due to the political pressure, rather than ordering the restoration of screening, Banks punted. He told his superintendents who run more than 30 districts to solicit feedback from parents and then decide whether to bring them back. In October, the superintendents mostly sided with progressives, dropping screened admissions permanently in more than 130 middle schools and restoring the practice in almost 60 of them for enrollment in fall 2023.Some parents cheered the sea change, arguing it’s wrong to pressure young children in 4thgrade to compete for selective middle schools. “Screens end up excluding black students and English language learners and those from low-income families,” says Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed. “It’s fundamentally unsound to judge the worthiness of a student who is nine years old to attend a middle school based on their test scores and grades.” But many other parents, particularly in District 2, are appalled by the rollback of meritocracy. The district covers a large swath of Manhattan, from the affluent Upper East Side and Midtown to Greenwich Village and the financial district. It is also home to a disproportionate share of high performing students. One District 2 mom, who taught in city public schools for six years, says she and her husband have already bought a house in Riverside, Conn., where schools provide accelerated education. They plan to move there if they can’t afford a private school in the city. “It’s 100% certain that our children won’t go to an unscreened school,” says the mother, who asked not to be named because she has two kids in public elementary school. “It’s heartbreaking because I grew up in the city and went to public schools. But the standards are falling now.” The major problem with mixed-ability classrooms, particularly in an unscreened urban school, is the remarkably large difference in skill levels that teachers will likely encounter, says Jonathan Plucker, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University who researches student achievement gaps. Some middle school students may be at least three years behind their grade level and others three years ahead, making it next to impossible for a teacher to give struggling students the attention they need while challenging advanced students with specialized curriculums. “The idea that everyone benefits in a mixed-ability classroom is an ideological statement that flies in the face of all the evidence we have, which is very mixed,” Plucker says. “And not just for advanced students. It’s not clear that struggling students benefit either.” The Exodus The New York City school system, the nation’s largest, has been losing students for years. With about 1.1 million students at its peak, the system began shedding students in about 2016, which some experts attributed to a decline in the birth rate. The drop-off accelerated in this and other cities nationwide during the pandemic. Many parents left after seeing the harm done to their children by remote learning when teachers, backed by their union, refused to return to the classroom. Families of all races, particularly blacks, and all income levels exited public schools for charters, homeschools, and mostly for an education outside New York City in New Jersey and in southern states like Florida. By 2022, the city’s schools were down to about 900,000 students, a remarkable 10% drop from two years earlier. Nothing is more dangerous to the city’s schools than the loss of students. State funding is based on head count, and the decline already forced Mayor Eric Adams to cut more than $200 million from the education budget this summer. Future cutbacks may jeopardize a major reform approved in September that requires the city to reduce the size of its large classes – high school classes now capped at 34 students will go down to 25. The goal is to lift the abysmally low English and math test scores of city public school students, with more than half of them failing to achieve proficiency in these key areas in 2022. “I have no doubt that some parents in areas like the Upper East Side will leave the city because of the elimination of screens,” says Ray Domanico, a longtime researcher of the city’s school enrollment both within the system and now at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “With significantly fewer kids enrolled today, the city shouldn’t be pushing policies that could drive more families away.” When the City Lured Families Back Selective middle schools were created decades ago to keep middle-class families in the city as crime was pushing them to the suburbs in large numbers. By the 1990s, as the soaring murder rate began to recede and more people moved into less inhabited areas of District 2, parents began to demand better schools, Domanico says. “The school system chose to respond to those families by setting up screened schools,” he says. “The city wanted to appeal to better-educated parents of all racial groups who had good jobs.” In District 2, officials rolled out screened middle and high schools that quickly gained a reputation for excellence, including the Salk School of Science on East 20thStreet in 1995. The schools helped lure white and Asian families to the district. In the following two decades, the number of white students in the district rose to 26% in 2020,up from 19% in 2003, according to state enrollment data. More Asian students enrolled in the district too, bringing their total to 22%, while the number of black students fell to 14% from 22%. Latinos, the largest group, declined as well. Chien Kwok, a Chinese-American, was part of that transformation of District 2. He was working in China when his child was accepted into a gifted and talented elementary program in the district, prompting his family to move back to Manhattan. “District 2 had a real draw for parents,” says Kwok, the treasurer of the district’s Community Education Council, which gives parents a voice in school policy. “You could work in the city, send your kids to a great gifted and talented elementary program, then to an awesome screened middle school, and high schools are the best. It was a meritocratic feeder system that is now destroyed.” Parents Back Selective Admissions The battle over District 2 middle schools came to a head this fall. At four community meetings attended by the district’s superintendent, Kelly McGuire, a large majority of parents and advocates spoke in favor of restoring screened admissions. The meetings added weight to resolutions already passed by the district’s CEC supporting competitive admissions. So in late October, when McGuire announced he was imposing a permanent lottery for admission at all of the about 17 middle schools that had used screens, parents were flabbergasted. It didn’t help his cause that the day before his announcement, McGuire’s wife, Judith Kafka, a professor of educational policy at City University of New York, co-wrotean opinion pieceagainst screened admissions. She said that competition for admission hurts all students, and quoted a parent in Park Slope who prefers a lottery because it ends the stress that comes with striving for high marks and a seat in a good school. Parents in District 2 were offended by the article. To them, it suggested that McGuire always intended to ignore their views and instead wanted to persuade them using his wife as a surrogate. At a community meeting in November following McGuire’s decision, parents directed their fury directly at the superintendent. “I am now looking for private schools for my son,” said CEC member Danyela Souza Egorov. “But so many families in our district have reached out to me that they cannot afford it. It’s deeply unfair that your plan does not meet the needs of these families.” McGuire responded that he did hear the community’s call for accelerated learning. But rather than restoring competitive schools that stress out families, the superintendent said he’s creating a new honors math course in four middle schools for those who qualify, and all schools will offer eligible 8thgraders an advanced biology course and algebra, which is sometimes taught in 9thgrade. For reading and writing, McGuire said, middle schools will continue to differentiate instruction, in which students pick books and essay topics to match their own proficiency levels. The changes, he told parents, “dramatically increase the number of accelerated learning options for students in our district.” CEC member Kaushik Das didn’t agree, calling McGuire’s honors offerings “meager scraps.” When Mixed-Ability Schools Fail Parents see a big difference between the defunct selective schools, once full of strivers and bright minds, and the new mixed-ability schools that will try to tailor instruction to learners of widely differing skills and motivation. Hunter Dare’s daughter learned this lesson at Simon Baruch, which became a District 2 lottery school during the pandemic. The sixth grader was three years ahead of her peers in math in a classroom with some students working at the second-grade level. The teacher’s response was to give the girl an algebra textbook for self-study and promised to work with her when time permitted. But that never happened. She was bored in her other classes as well, and was handed only 15 minutes of homework a day. “It was bad because she wasn’t challenged and she just lost interest in school and started slipping backwards, not doing things she was supposed to do,” says her father. Dare was considering leaving the city for a better school for his daughter. But she got lucky in the 2022 lottery and was placed in the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, which Dare calls one of the few remaining highly rigorous middle school programs in the city. His daughter’s motivation is back as she tackles at least two hours of homework a night. Another mother in District 2 calls her son’s experience during the pandemic at the unscreened Robert Wagner middle school “a disaster.” In English class on most days, she said, 25 students spent much of the period reading a variety of unchallenging fantasy and sports books. So there was little opportunity for a dynamic class discussion around a compelling literary topic. Instead, the teacher walked around the classroom and briefly talked individually to students. They avoided tackling difficult authors from Toni Morrison to William Shakespeare whose works require more elucidation and class discussion. “Advocates say students learn best in mixed-ability classrooms, but in fact nobody really learned much from their reading in my son’s class, and that’s terrible,” says the mother, who asked not to be named because her children are still in public schools. She says she won’t put her younger child in an unscreened District 2 middle school after seeing one up close. Instead, the family will likely decamp to Connecticut, where they recently bought a home.

Another Record: Nearly 314,000 Apprehensions, Gotaways at Southern Border in December December was another record month for Border Patrol agents tasked with apprehending foreign nationals illegally entering the U.S. through the southwest border. Agents apprehended at least 226,050 people and reported at least 87,631 who evaded capture by law enforcement last month. Combined, they total at least 313,681 – an increase from November’s record breakingnumberof 306,069. This is after a record number of apprehensions and gotawayswere recordedin fiscal 2022 of over 3.3 million. The preliminary U.S. Customs and Border Protection data was obtained by The Center Square from a Border Patrol agent and only includes Border Patrol data, not Office of Field Operations data. The official numbers, which include OFO data, once they’re released will be higher, although CBP doesn’t release the gotaway data publicly. “Gotaways” is the official term used by CBP to describe foreign nationals who enter the U.S. illegally and don’t surrender at ports of entry but intentionally seek to evade capture from law enforcement. Unlawful border crossers directly observed making an unlawful entry, who aren’t apprehended and don’t turn back to Mexico, are defined as gotaways, according to 6 USC 223 code, which agents use to categorize unlawful entrants. In most months, the Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley sectors in Texas experience the most traffic along the southern border. However, over the last several months, anticipating the end of Title 42, larger groups began entering through the El Paso Sector. This includes the entire state of New Mexico and two counties in far west Texas covering 264 miles of international boundary. December was another record month for this sector. Title 42 is a Trump-era health enforcement policy that allowed border agents to more quickly expel illegal crossers for fear of spreading COVID-19. The biden administration planned to end Title 42 enforcement in December but was blocked by the courts. The December numbers are broken down by BP sector and categories. They include apprehensions, turn backs, non-violations, outstanding, and deceased. The gotaways category refers to those who were detected close to the border and further into the interior of the U.S. The distinction is notable because it shows how many are reported evading capture as they make their way north despite the best efforts of BP agents and local law enforcement attempting to apprehend them. For example, in the Del Rio Sector of Texas, the 3,130 recorded in the gotaway interior zone would have been identified farther out by law enforcement in the rural counties of Kinney, Edwards, Real and othersreportingincreased break-ins, shootouts and other crimes committed by gotaways, many miles north of the border. As of Jan. 3, the preliminary data for December by sector includes: Big Bend Sector Apprehensions – 1,352 Turn backs – 79 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 890 Unclassifiable Detection – 0 Gotaways Interior Zone – 159 No Violations – 2 Deceased – 0 Outstanding – 10 Del Rio Sector Apps – 51,497 TBs – 170 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 15,509 Unclassifiable Detection – 36 Gotaways Interior Zone – 3,130 No Violations – 305 Deceased – 1 Outstanding – 152 El Centro Sector Apps – 10,863 TBs – 447 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 382 Unclassifiable Detection – 7 Gotaways Interior Zone – 9 No Violations – 3 Deceased – 0 Outstanding – 8 El Paso Sector Apps – 55,766 TBs – 3,854 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 32,302 Unclassifiable Detection – 1 Gotaways Interior Zone – 330 No Violations – 24 Deceased – 0 Outstanding – 25 Laredo Sector Apps – 3,525 TBs – 1,721 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 1,360 Unclassifiable Detection – 18 Gotaways Interior Zone – 744 No Violations – 72 Deceased – 3 Outstanding – 0 RGV Sector Apps – 29,471 TBs – 2,193 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 1,696 Unclassifiable Detection – 95 Gotaways Interior Zone – 1,278 No Violations – 189 Deceased – 9 Outstanding – 0 San Diego Sector Apps – 19,525 TBs – 465 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 6,522 Unclassifiable Detection – 12 Gotaways Interior Zone – 4,245 No Violations – 10 Deceased – 0 Outstanding – 54 Tucson Sector Apps – 22,889 TBs – 660 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 13,619 Unclassifiable Detection – 63 Gotaways Interior Zone – 4,262 No Violations – 148 Deceased – 1 Outstanding – 183 Yuma Sector Apps – 31,162 TBs – 132 Gotaways Border Zone (known/recorded) – 1,117 Unclassifiable Detection – 7 Gotaways Interior Zone – 77 No Violations – 26 Deceased – 4 Outstanding – 16 Apprehensions include those in the U.S. illegally who surrender or are caught by BP officers. Turn backs include those who entered illegally but returned to Mexico. The previous category of “unresolved detection,” now “unclassified detection,” isn’t part of 6 U.S. Code, which classifies how encounters are to be reported. This and the now deleted category of “no arrests” were used as a way to lower the number of gotaways being reported, a BP officer, who talked with The Center Square on the condition of anonymity out of fear for the agent’s job, explained. The previously deleted category of “no arrests” meant someone “was detected in a non-border zone and their presence didn’t affect Got-Away statistics,” according to the official internal tracking system definition used by agents to record data. “Unclassifiable detection” means the same thing, but the officers, for a range of reasons, couldn’t determine citizenship. Non-violations are “deemed to have committed no infraction and don’t affect Got-Away statistics,” according to the tracking system definition. The categories of non-violations, no arrests and unclassifiable detection should actually be categorized as got-aways, the BP officer said, assuming all non-arrests were of non-citizens. However, each sector also uses unclassified detection differently, the officer added, so how the numbers are categorized isn’t actually uniform. If the categories of unclassified detection and non-violations were included with the gotaway numbers, the total number of gotaways for December would be closer to 88,649. However, these numbers still don’t represent the real picture, those in law enforcement have explained to The Center Square, because they don’t include those who are unknown and unrecorded. Not all gotaways are recorded because the agents and law enforcement officers on the ground don’t spot them all, meaning the number of those entering the U.S. illegally is expected to be much greater than is reported.

Grassroots Parents Organization Files Complaints Claiming Discrimination in Schools Separating Students Based on Race Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots parental rights organization, filed three complaints Tuesday with the Biden Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) that allege discrimination in schools that formed “racial affinity” groups or “community circles” to separate students based on their race. The complaints allege that discrimination occurred in schools in Oregon,Maine, andVermont where students were organized according to their race, which, the complaints argue, is in violation of the 14th Amendment. “These groups encourage students to go into an identity group and exclude students who do not fit that,” said PDE President and Founder Nicki Neily in a statement. “We believe that this is not only immoral, but this is also unconstitutional because what these school districts are doing with federal funding is they are treating students differently on the basis on race, which is prohibited both by Title VI, as well as by the 14th amendment.” To the complaint filed against Ashland School District in Oregon, PDE attached “evidence in the form of lists of affinity groups at Ashland High School (Exhibit A), Ashland Middle School (Exhibit B), and a job posting for an “Elementary Student Affinity Group Advisor” (Exhibit C), which is posted online at ZipRecruiter and denotes a placement at Bellview Elementary School (Exhibit D).” PDE notes the document reveals Ashland School District engages in “affinity group programming at all three levels – elementary school, middle school, and high school,” whereby some programs “are only open to students of specific ethnicities, and the program descriptions do not make participation in these affinity groups open to all.” In Portland Public Schools in Maine, PDE found “evidence in the form of the district’s Human Resources page on Affinity Groups (Exhibit A), which promotes the district’s “BIPOC Community Circle,” which originally was found online here, but has apparently now been scrubbed from the Portland Public Schools website. According to PDE: This exhibit reveals that Portland Public Schools’ “BIPOC Community Circle” is only open to staff of specific ethnicities (“The BIPOC Community Circle welcomes all Black, Indigenous, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Latinx, and mixed race staff members,” Ex. A at 2). The program description does not make participation in this affinity group open to all. “Indeed, the site’s link to the article ‘Why People of Color Need Spaces without White People’ serves to further underscore that not all staff members would be welcome – and that this exclusion would be based solely on an individual’s race. (Ex. A at 2),” PDE continues. According to the document, the district’s website noted staff who participate in the “BIPOC” program may also qualify for other “social gatherings,” as well as “career pathways support and emotional support and advocacy” – all of which “do not appear to be offered to all staff members,” states PDE. The complaint against Shelburne Community School in Vermont states the school created a “BIPOC Affinity Group.” The exhibit attached to the complaint “reveals that Shelburne Community School is developing an ‘opt-in racial affinity group for students in grades 3-8 identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color.’” “The program description does not make participation in these affinity groups open to all,” PDE notes.

Latest Twitter Files Reveal Adam Schiff’s Collusion with Platform to Censor Opponents On Tuesday, the eleventh and twelfth installments of the Twitter Files highlighted the role that Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) played in censoring conservative accounts on the platform. As reported byFox News, the two back-to-back threads posted by journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter “received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.” One example was in November of 2020, when Schiff’s office emailed Twitter demanding the banning of several “QAnon conspiracists” on Twitter, which they claimed were responsible for “harassment” against Schiff aide Sean Misko. “Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service- to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content,” said the email from Schiff’s office. “Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies.” They further demanded that Twitter “stop the spread of future misinformation on Twitter” concerning committee staffers, and “label and reduce the visibility of any content.” But, as Taibbi noted, “even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time,” with the response from Twitter employees being “we don’t do this.” Paul Sperry, an investigative journalist with RealClearInvestigations, was eventually suspended for different reasons. While the eleventh thread focused on Schiff, the twelfth thread shifted the focus to the State Department’s “Global Engagement Center” (GEC), described by Taibbi as the department’s “fledgling analytic/intelligence” branch. The GEC would often cite reports by the mainstream media in its private appeals to Twitter to ban certain accounts, starting with those allegedly spreading “misinformation” about COVID-19 immediately after the pandemic began. “The GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,’” said Taibbi. “State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.’ ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.” Eventually, Taibbi said, Twitter began “taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction.” “Execs rushed to tell “Team SSCI” they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip,” Taibbi continued, posting screenshots of the emails in question as proof. “Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more.” The Twitter Files, which have been ongoing since December of last year, are Elon Musk’s flagship initiatives in his efforts to make Twitter more transparent and friendlier to free speech, following his acquisition of the company for $44 billion in October. Since taking over, he has gathered internal data revealing the full extent of Twitter’s censorship efforts over the last several years, and has released the evidence through Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and other independent journalists.

Left-Wing Tech Group Doles Out $500K in Grants to Jurisdictions for Future Elections Although about half the states ban private dollars from funding local governing of elections as a response to Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial grants in 2020, a tech-aligned group will dole out individual $500,000 grants to jurisdictions for future elections. TheU.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, established in April, will award individual grants of $500,000 to at least two local jurisdictions out of10that the organization accepted into the program. Greenwich, Connecticut, and Macoupin County, Illinois, each will get $500,000 under the alliance’s membership agreement, according to documents obtained by The Daily Signal through public records requests. The Alliance for Election Excellence primarily is a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, which distributed $350 million in grants from a foundation run by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerber and his wife to local election offices. Critics say that money primarily benefited Democrat turnout in the 2020 election. The Center for Tech and Civic Life teamed with several other technology and election organizations for the alliance. It includes the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, a project of the liberal New Venture Fund, a nonprofit funded by the “dark money” group Arabella Advisors. Arabella is known for bankrolling various groups on the Left. “They are just bulking up in the states where this funding is still legal, which thankfully is a dwindling number,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election watchdog group, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. A letter from the Alliance for Election Excellence to election officials in each of the 10 jurisdictions, dated Dec. 1, says: “I am pleased to inform you that based on and in reliance upon the information and materials provided [that] the Center for Tech and Civic Life (‘CTCL’), a nonprofit organization tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code (‘IRC’) section 501(c)(3), has decided to award a grant to support the work of Town of Greenwich (‘Grantee’).” The letter says the amount of the alliance’s grant is $500,000, with the first $150,000 to be paid in December 2022 and another $350,000 to be paid in December 2023. That would place the bulk of the funding just ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “CTCL’s new effort, camouflaged as the ‘Alliance for Election Excellence,’ still tries to manipulate elections by giving money to government offices. But money always comes with strings, even if CTCL calls them ‘training’ and ‘mentorship,’” Scott Walter, president of the Washington-based Capital Research Center, an investigative think tank, told The Daily Signal in an email. Walter noted that the Center for Tech and Civic Life is run byTiana Epps Johnson, who previously helped run theNew Organizing Institute, which The Washington Postcalled“the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.” “The more the Alliance [for Election Excellence] is investigated, the more strings to its money will be found. If Republican operatives tried this scam, the media would rightly blast off their camouflage and expose the partisanship,” Walter told The Daily Signal. Further evidence that the alliance is both left wing and partisan: Itspartnersinclude theCenter for Secure and Modern Elections, a pop-up group in the funding empire run byArabella Advisors, which The Atlantic magazinecalleda “massive progressive dark-money group,” Walter added. Although Connecticut and Illinois rarely are competitive in presidential elections, other jurisdictions in the program are in the battleground states of Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan. Two jurisdictions are in solidly Democrat California. The Daily Signal’s records requests with the eight other jurisdictions are pending. Greenwich, among the most affluent cities in the United States, long has been a Republican stronghold in a blue state. However,Democrats have been victoriousthere in recent election cycles. For most of the past two decades, Illinois’Macoupin Countyhas been a mostly Republican-leaning county in a blue state for presidential elections. But the county previously leaned heavily Democrat in presidential races. “In terms of favoring one party over another in a future election, I’d refer to item 8 of the grant agreement which specifies, among other things, that the money will not be used to attempt to influence the outcome of an election, in support or opposition of a public question, or in support or opposition of a candidate,” Macoupin County Clerk Pete Duncan told The Daily Signal in an email. The membership agreement that local government officials sign with the Alliance for Election Excellence requires what it calls a “commitment to nonpartisanship.” It reads: We are dedicated to supporting election officials and local governments of all size, partisanship, and geography by providing tools and resources that allow officials to conduct safe, secure, trustworthy, and inclusive elections. Our commitment to nonpartisanship is total. We will never attempt to influence the outcome of any election. Period. The Center for Tech and Civic Life previously has asserted that its grants for operating elections in 2020 went to jurisdictions that were both heavily Democratic and heavily Republican. A lesson learned from the Zuckerberg grants in 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s Adams said, is that officials in Republican-leaning counties used the funds for activities such as buying printers, while officials in Democrat-leaning counties used the money for activities such as collecting ballots. “They [the CTCL] are very, very good at having an extremely factual case that their funding doesn’t help either side and is a neutral flood of money,” Adams told The Daily Signal. The alliance directs press inquiries to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which has not responded to inquiries from The Daily Signal for this report. Election officials in Greenwich didn’t immediately respond to inquiries Tuesday from The Daily Signal. After the controversy in 2020 followingdistributionof $350 million in grants by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to the liberal Center for Tech and Civic Life topromotemail-in voting, drop boxes, and other election-related projects, the billionaires announced that they no longer would finance future such projects. Also,24 statesenacted bans on private dollars being used to fund election administration for government. These were mostly red states, but some voted Democrat in the last presidential election: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In April 2022, the Center for Tech and Civic Life announced it was establishing the Alliance for Election Excellence. Asreportedby The Daily Signal in July, the largest funder of the alliance’s five-year, $80 million initiative isThe Audacious Project, which is financed largely by those connected with the Big Tech sector, including Microsoft and Amazon.

John Fredericks: ‘Hey MTG, Embrace The Suck…McCarthy Is Not Going To Be Speaker’ Fredericks commented on the statement made on Wednesday by former President, Donald Trump, on TruthSocial, and called the pushback against the McCarthy regime a "grassroots fight." John Fredericks, radio talk show broadcaster and host of Outside The Beltway, called the stonewalling of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA-23)’s first round U.S. House Speaker victory a moment which is “going to go down in the annals of history” during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room on Wednesday. “[People say] ‘What’s the endgame John? There’s got to be an endgame.’ You know what the endgame is? The fight is the endgame. There is no exit strategy. Winning is the exit strategy and winning means Kevin McCarthy is not going to be the Speaker. One of the greatest things yesterday was these collective meltdowns on your show. By the way, you did a phenomenal job. MTG melted down for thirty minutes, right why? Because she sold her soul to SWAP Inc. for a piece of paper, for committee assignments. She melts down, hey MTG, I’ve got a newsflash, embrace the suck, because your guy’s going down and you’re going to get nothing,” Fredericks said.” “Well, listen. I thought yesterday was the third greatest day in our America First populist movement since we started it, since Trump came down that escalator. The first day was when he got the nomination in Cleveland. The second greatest day was that night you were there, that he got elected President.The third greatest day was yesterday in this movement’s history… It’s going to go down in the annals of history as the first day that we actually got new leaders to fight for something for the working people of this country; the people with dirt under their fingernails and calluses on their hands that nobody pays attention to,” Fredericks said on Wednesday. “Finally, we’ve got our movement play, that’s why it’s a great day. You know with all this talk about, ‘oh it’s chaos,'” Fredericks continued. “Let’s embrace the chaos. You know what chaos is? $33 trillion in debt. $10 trillion in debt on our balance to the Federal Reserve. Open borders. Grooming your kids in school. That’s what chaos is. $1.7 trillion Omnibus to strip the Republicans of any power financially until September. You want to know what chao is? That’s chaos.” “What we’re doing is taking back control of this movement. I say the other great thing about yesterday is we exposed conservative people for the frauds they are. From FOX News all the way down; Trey Gowdy, Jason Chaffetz. Newt Gingrich. I love Newt Gingrich. He’s a relic. Coming on TV talking about Democrats are going to run the house. You know what? Go away. Go back to the Vatican with your wife,” Fredericks said. Fredericks commented on the epithets that principled conservatives have received from other members of the Republican party for refusal to back McCarthy as U.S. House Speaker. “Now they want to call us rebels, radicals, hey I love that. I want to be a rebel. I want to be a radical not to spend $33 trillion of money we don’t have, not to spend the country into oblivion, not to have open borders,” Fredericks said, “John Fredericks, who is the creator of chaos, us or them?” Bannon asked Fredericks. “Them, and I tell you the other thing Steve. This is what winning feels like. You want to know what winning is? It was not winning eight seats when we should have won 50. This is what winning feels like. This is the smell of napalm in the morning, baby. It’s victory. There’s no exit strategy. I’ve got to tell you, yesterday has energized and mobilized the working class base of our populist movement that has been completely disenfranchised from it. That’s why only what, 55 percent of Republicans turned out on gameday in these midterms. They’re done with it. They’re seeing nothing. It’s the Uni-Party and It’s the swamp.” Fredericks commented on the statement made on Wednesday by former President, Donald Trump, on TruthSocial, and called the pushback against the McCarthy regime a “grassroots fight.” ‘I’ll tell you what, President Trump, he put his comments out today. I get it, right. I get where he stands,” Fredericks said. “Mr. President, this is not your fight. This is our fight. This is the grassroots’ fight. Go play golf with Baron. He’s off this week. Spend some time with your son. I’m all for that. I like spending time with Joe and my kids. This is our fight. It’s not Trump’s fight. It’s not the swamp’s fight, the lobby’s fight. This is our fight in the grassroots.” “Yesterday, the movement transcended its current leadership. We’ve got 20 new leaders now Steve. 20 of them. Courageous people. And there’s going to be more,” Fredericks added.

Texas State Rep. Slaton Calls on Federal Delegation to Withdraw McCarthy Support Texas State Rep. Bryan Slaton has called on the Lonestar State’s federal delegation to withdraw its support for U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in the ongoing U.S. House Speaker battle. Most of the Texas delegation has stuck by McCarthy with notable defections from U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Keith Self. U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) has gone so far as to label McCarthy’s Republican detractors as “terrorists.” “The battle in DC continues… @GOPLeader has not agreed to the requests of the 20. In fact he still has Pelosi’s rules in place,” Slaton wrote in a tweet Thursday. “No one should vote for him while he still supports and plans to operate under Pelosi’s rules.” The fight over Nancy Pelosi’s House rules has been at the center of the ongoing battle for House Speaker. McCarthy detractors have called for a change to the “status quo” and a number of additional concessions, including a ban on the practice of earmarking. Detractors have also called for the reinstatement of a motion to vacate the chair, which allows a vote on a new House Speaker if one member objects. Proponents of the motion have argued that it allows debate over the Speaker position as opposed to a de facto, rubber stamp decision made by party leaders. “It doesn’t matter which legislative body you’re talking about: Republicans who enable Dems to impose the leftist-radical agenda should never be in leadership,” Slaton wrote in another tweet earlier this week. “Join me in urging members of the Texas delegation As of Thursday afternoon, Kevin McCarthy has now fallen short in seven votes in his quest to become Speaker. Calls have grown for him to step aside and work out a deal with his critics on a consensus replacement, both at the federal level and among a growing number of state representatives from across the nation.

McCarthy Threatens ‘Endless War’ Against Conservatives Over Speakership Failure The GOP establishment leader is negotiating with Democrats in a desperate effort to become Speaker of the House after multiple failed votes... GOP establishment leader Kevin McCarthy is threatening an “endless war” with conservatives over his failure to be elected Speaker of the House, as he begins negotiations with Democrats in a desperate effort to win the gavel while keeping Nancy Pelosi’s left-wing House Rules intact. Freedom Caucus Rep. Matt Gaetz, a staunch opponent of McCarthy who’s among those legislators leading the charge against his speakership campaign, revealed the establishment leaders’ threat in a tweet he posted just before the fourth speakership vote, in which McCarthy failed once more to reach the 218 votes he needs. “McCarthy is losing it,” Gaetz wrote in the tweet. “He texted one of my colleagues who didn’t vote for him: ‘I am ready to fund an endless war.'” “I’m assuming this is in *addition* to Ukraine,” Gaetz added.During the fourth speakership vote, Rep. Chip Roy nominated Florida Rep. Byron Donalds for Speaker of the House. Donalds, a more recent defection from the McCarthy voting bloc, joined his Freedom Caucus colleagues in voting for Rep. Jim Jordan during Tuesday’s third and final vote of the day, before appearing on Fox News and blowing the whistle on McCarthy’s refusal to get rid of Nancy Pelosi’s left-wing House Rules as he explained his dissent from the GOP establishment leader. On Wednesday, another Rep, Victoria Spartz, became the latest defection from Team McCarthy, voting “present” and taking the total number of representatives opposed to McCarthy’s speakership campaign to 21. Spartz was seen chatting with Freedom Caucus members on a C-SPAN video feed. Reportedly, and according to rumors swirling around Capitol Hill, McCarthy and the GOP establishment are preparing to negotiate a deal with Democrats to make McCarthy or a “consensus candidate” the next Speaker of the House. One way to reach his goal would be by manipulating the voting process. Under this plan, Democrat members of Congress would refuse to vote, to lower the threshold McCarthy must reach in order to be named speaker.

Conservatives Call on Marjorie Taylor Greene to Abandon McCarthy and Vote for Jordan After Kevin McCarthy again failed to secure enough votes to become House Speaker on a third ballot, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) continues to stand by the longtime GOP House leader. In response, conservative voters have flooded the Georgia congresswoman’s Twitter replies urging her to abandon McCarthy and support Jordan. “Jim Jordan does NOT want to be Speaker and nominated Kevin McCarthy on the House floor for Speaker and is voting for him every round,” MTG wrote in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon. “Jim Jordan wants to be Chairman of Judiciary, but he can’t because 19 Republicans are not supporting Jim Jordan by voting for McCarthy.” MTG has repeatedly claimed that failure to support McCarthy will result in a Democrat Speaker, even though Democrats have thus far held firm on U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as their nominee. “If the base only understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard earned Republican majority right now,” Taylor Greene wrote. “This is the worst thing that could possibly happen.” MTG’s tweets have not gone over well with the conservative base that has generally viewed her very positively. “Not a chance are we falling for this McCarthy or nothing thing,” reads one of the top replies. “MCCARTHY is not the ONLY person!!” replied another Twitter user. “Chip Roy would be great. STOP NOMINATING RINOS!!” Despite MTG’s continued support, McCarthy’s chances of becoming Speaker continue to evaporate. After all 19 “no” voters coalesced around Jim Jordan in the second round of voting, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) became the first Republican to vote for Jordan after casting his vote for McCarthy in the first two rounds. After a fourth ballot that will result in another McCarthy defeat concludes, a motion to adjourn will be proposed for the day, sources have reported. Stay plugged in with National File for updates on this developing story.

Top McCarthy Henchman Threatening to Vote for Jeffries Advises Epstein-Tied CCP Influence Operation Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, the Kevin McCarthy henchman who’s threatening to back a Democrat for Speaker if McCarthy can’t secure the votes, advises an Epstein-tied, Communist Chinese influence operation that’s been extensively investigated and reported on by National File. National File can report that Don Bacon, the GOP Rep. threatening to back Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House should conservatives not fall in line behind McCarthy, is advising the Humpty Dumpty Institute (HDI), an Epstein-led, CCP-tied influence operation that’s already ensnared Republicans and Democrats alike, including Richard Grenell and Adam Schiff. Rep. Bacon actively appears on the Humpty Dumpty Institute’s website and is listed as a member of the CCP-tied influence group’s “Congressional Advisory Board,” along with other McCarthy Republicans, like Reps. Buddy Carter and Barry Moore. As National File reported recently, despite tough talk on combating the Chinese Communist Party and their global subversion operations, the congressional GOP is neck-deep in HDI-CCP-PLA connections and leading voices within the conference are refusing to do anything about it. Read More: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Office Covers for CCP, Epstein-Tied Influence Operation Considering HDI’s left-wing slant and ties to international communism, it should come as no surprise that the advisory board Bacon sits on is also full of radical Democrats, like Reps. Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Bennie Thompson, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Led for years by Mark Epstein, the brother of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the Humpty Dumpty Insitute has not only been linked to the Chinese Communist Party but also its People’s Liberation Army and Taihe Institutes. It’s also affiliated with numerous communists around the globe, like Maria Bokova, a KGB-trained operative who’s held high positions at the United Nations and is herself closely tied to Lula de Silva, Brazil’s far-left President who was recently elected by way of an electronic vote marred by fraud and irregularities.

Speaker Race: Rep. Spartz Votes Present on Ballots Four, Five After Voting for McCarthy on First Three Ballots U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) again came up short in his quest to regain his position as House Speaker after a fifth ballot on Wednesday afternoon. Like the fourth ballot, the following ballot contained another defector from team McCarthy after U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) again voted present. Though Spartz has stated that she still supports McCarthy for Speaker, she believes that it is clear that the GOP caucus cannot come to a consensus candidate at present and should recess until that changes. Spartz became the second McCarthy voter to break ranks on the fourth ballot after U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds(R-FL) changed course and voted for Jim Jordan (R-OH) on ballot three. The Indiana congresswoman told reporters that while she still supports McCarthy, she opted to vote present rather than cast a “no” vote. “I didn’t want to vote against Kevin, so I told him that I’ll vote present so we can have a deliberation,” she said. On ballot four, Mr. Donalds himself was nominated for the Speaker position by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who previously cast a lone vote for him on the first ballot. Bailout four differed from the preceding vote only in that Spartz opted to vote “present” rather than back McCarthy. She again voted “present” on ballot five, albeit late after not being present in the chamber when her name was called. After five failed Speaker votes — the first since 1923 — McCarthy’s chances of becoming Speaker have all but evaporated. Now, California congressman is reportedly considering a deal with the Democrats on a “consensus” candidate, per The Hill.

Republican Establishment Panics With No Apparent Strategy To Get McCarthy Elected Speaker The Republican establishment appears to be in full-fledged panic mode with no apparent strategy to get Kevin McCarthy over the goal line in the House Speakership race. A strong coalition of conservatives have banded together to vote against McCarthy, currently supporting Byron Donalds of Florida against McCarthy. RNC chairwoman and Mitt Romney niece Ronna McDaniel drew criticism for her Fox News appearance with Stuart Varney in which she prattled on mindlessly while acknowledging that she has no strategy for getting McCarthy elected besides the closed-door meetings that have been taking place that have failed to cement support for McCarthy. Varney pressed Ronna on strategy and Ronna had nothing substantial. RINO Dan Crenshaw and other Republican establishment figures have been attacking the anti-McCarthy voting bloc as desperation grows. Conservatives including Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy, and Lauren Boebert have been fighting hard against McCarthy and it is becoming evident after numerous ballots that McCarthy simply does not have enough support currently to break through and win. Even Whoopi Goldberg called for McCarthy to step aside in favor of someone who can actually win the position. In a press conference Tuesday with Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, it was revealed that the GOP leadership has threatened to remove the anti-McCarthyites from committees, a common scumbag tactic used by GOP brass. Now that Byron Donalds has voted for himself, the opposition to McCarthy has an actual candidate who is running for the speaker job. Conservatives are emboldened, and with Tucker Carlson complimenting the happy renegades it looks like the insurgency is amping up.

El Salvador President Rips Fbi Trump Raid, Questions What Us Gov’t Would Say If His Police Targeted Candidates The president of the central American country of El Salvador criticized the FBI following the raid at former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, noting apparent hypocrisy. “What would the US Government say, if OUR police raided the house of one of the main possible contenders of OUR 2024 presidential election?” Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador since 2019, tweeted on Wednesday, sharing a TMZ article about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. In a July report, the U. S. Department of State released a list of some 60 “corrupt and undemocratic actors” – many of whom are current or former officials or corporate leaders – in El Salvador, as well as in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, naming individuals who are allegedly responsible for embezzling millions of dollars in public funds and undermining democratic processes. Bukele was not on the list, but the State Department did name his current Salvadoran presidential press secretary, Jose Ernesto Sanabria, claiming that Sanabria allegedly “undermined democratic processes or institutions by using his position and wielding the presidency’s influence to inappropriately pressure officials in opposition political parties to resign on threat of being charged with criminal offenses

Eric Trump: Trump Is ‘Shattering All Fundraising Records’ Following FBI Raid Former President Donald Trump is “shattering” fundraising records following the FBI’s raid of his Mar-a-Lago home, his son Eric Trump announced on Tuesday evening. “Breaking: DonaldJTrump.com is shattering all fundraising records and I’m told has raised more money in the past 24 hours than ever before in recent history!” Eric Trump revealed on TruthSocial and Twitter, suggesting that the raid has riled up the conservative base. The report of massive fundraising numbers follows the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago, which Trump described as “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024”: 45: The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level! pic.twitter.com/03Mbm1ay6V Conservatives have not reacted kindly to Biden’s FBI taking the action, demanding a prompt investigation

Trump SPY Chief Drops Bad News To DOJ On Classified Documents Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe argued that it is “virtually impossible” to prosecute his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, for alleged mishandling of classified material. While chiding the FBI for “acting as the muscle” of the Democrats, the Trump-era spy chief hearkened back to Hillary Clinton’s email situation and surmised that Trump possessed “I thought, surely this is not about classified documents and the president being in possession of those. It has to be more than that because the Department of Justice and the FBI have already set a standard that makes it virtually impossible to prosecute a case like that,” Ratcliffe told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow, who is another former Trump administration official. Although no president has ever been prosecuted for mishandling classified material, some experts dispute the notion that one could suddenly deem something declassified and argue that the president must instead follow a formal process. “I’ve seen thousands of declassified documents. They’re all marked ‘declassified’ with the date they were declassified,” Richard Immerman, assistant deputy director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, told NBC News. During a Monday raid, FBI agents carried out a search warrant of Trump’s lavish Mar-a-Lago resort and reportedly retrieved some 20 boxes of material while seeking documents with details about nuclear weapons. A warrant released to the public Friday revealed that authorities were looking for material retained in violation of three federal laws, including the Espionage Act

Marjorie Taylor Greene Files Articles Of Impeachment Against Garland Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans. Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.” The search warrant was approved by a federal judge and was unsealed on Friday after the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys agreed. The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act

Arizona Starts Filling Border Wall Gaps With Shipping Containers.State No Longer Waiting On The Federal Gov’t Arizona officials have decided that they are done waiting on the federal government to fill the gaps left in the unfinished border wall. On Friday, Arizona started placing shipping containers to block off the three remaining gaps along the border in Yuma. “The federal government has committed to doing this, but we cannot wait for their action,” said Katie Ratlief, Governor Doug Ducey’s deputy chief of staff. To block off the remaining border sections, Arizona is using shipping containers stacked on top of one another. The containers are 60 feet wide and 9 feet high. At the top of the containers, officials plan to place razor wire, Ratlief reported. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security declared that former President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy would be coming to an end. The policy required illegal immigrants to remain in Mexico while waiting for their hearing dates in the United States. In 2018, when the policy was announced, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen said the program would help regain control of the illegal immigration crisis. “Aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates. Instead, they will wait for an immigration court decision while they are in Mexico. ‘Catch and release’ will be replaced with ‘catch and return.’” The Biden administration’s DHS stated that the policy would be terminated this week because it “has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border

Pelosi Calls On Republicans To Tone Down Attacks On FBI Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday urged Republicans to cease their attacks on the FBI and other law enforcement, suggesting the rhetoric has heightened the threat of violence against public officials. A number of GOP lawmakers have gone after the FBI in the wake of Monday’s search by the agency into classified documents allegedly held by former President Trump at his South Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. During a press briefing in the Capitol, Pelosi denounced Trump’s history of bashing the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, saying the threat to public officials, including members of Congress, has been “exacerbated by the statements of the [former] president.” Pelosi then called on other Republican leaders to condemn GOP attacks of the same ilk, particularly before the details surrounding the FBI search become known. “You would think there would be an adult in the Republican room that would say, ‘Just calm down. See what the facts are, and let’s go for that,’” she said, “instead of … instigating assaults on law enforcement.” Following Monday’s FBI search, a number of GOP lawmakershave attacked the agency, accusing the Justice Department of abusing its powers for the sole purpose of doing political harm to Trump, who is speculated to be eying another run for the White House in 2024. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)quickly tweetedthe need to “destroy the FBI” in order to “save America.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) compared the U. S. under President Biden to a banana republic. And Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)are callingon Congress to defund the FBI. The fiery GOP response prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday to rush to the agency’s defense, condemning the “unfounded attacks” on “patriotic public servants.

Donald Trump: All Documents Seized By FBI Were ‘Declassified’ And ‘All They Had To Do Was Ask’ President Donald Trump on Friday claimed that all the documents seized by FBI agents during the raid on his house Monday were declassified. “Number one, it was all declassified,” Trump wrote in a statement released to reporters. “Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything.” The former president said the documents were secure and the FBI could have asked for any documents that they wanted but accused them of choosing a more political route. “They could have had it anytime they wanted and that includes LONG ago,” he wrote. “ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.” As Breitbart News reported, the FBI list of seized documents provided to the Trump team included “Various Classified/TS/SCI documents,” and “Info re: President of France, and an “Executive Grant of Clemency re: Roger Jason Stone