Attorney General Merrick Garland broke precedent just weeks before the November election, delivering politically charged remarks at the U.S. Attorneys’ National Conference in Washington—pointedly speaking publicly rather than privately in a departure from his usual practice. “Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this department to be used as a political weapon,” he said before a packed house, gathered in the Great Hall of Justice Department headquarters on Sept. 12. “Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution for the purpose of affecting any election or the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.” Garland’s words came in response to former President Donald Trump’s assertion during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris that the FBI and Justice Department had been weaponized against him. But in issuing a fiery rebuttal, the attorney general put himself squarely where he said he didn’t want to be: namely, in the crossfire of a partisan political campaign.  Moreover, in the view of many, his assertions clearly belie the Justice Department’s deeds. These critics say it’s obvious that the FBI and DOJ have repeatedly put a thumb on the scale of justice to defeat Trump. In 2016, it was the Russia-gate collusion hoax. In 2020, it was the FBI’s refusal to say not only that it was in possession of Hunter Biden’s incendiary laptop, but that it had verified its contents, even as Joe Biden claimed erroneously that it was a Russian plant. Most recently, after being rebuffed by the Supreme Court, special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against Trump regarding the 2020 election, just 74 days before Election Day. DOJ guidelines advise against filing politically relevant charges 60 days before an election.  In recent weeks, the DOJ, led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, has accelerated the arrest of those who protested at and breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Several new defendants live in swing states, which reintroduces Jan. 6 in local and national headlines while bolstering key talking points of Democrat standard-bearer Harris and others in this year’s campaign. Such Trump antagonists regularly describe the former president as a “threat to democracy”—rhetoric echoed by the second and latest alleged would-be Trump assassin to emerge in the campaign, before his arrest Sunday. On the same day Garland addressed the conference, the FBI arrested Justina Guardino, a 34-year-old member of a North Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nationwide group of moms defending their children from “woke” ideology and government overreach; Trump spoke to the group in Washington last month. According to the DOJ charging documents, Guardino nonviolently entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and stayed inside for approximately 10 minutes. Despite being interviewed by law enforcement in the summer of 2022, the FBI waited more than two years to make and announce her arrest, raising questions as to whether the DOJ is delaying arrests to coincide with the election. Early voting begins in North Carolina in mid-October. Since Aug. 1, Graves’ office has announced the arrest of several more J6ers, including individuals from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Michigan, considered must-win states for Harris. Appointed by Biden in 2021, Graves appears to be fulfilling his pledge to bring the overall Jan. 6 caseload to 2,000 defendants before the statute of limitations runs out; the total number of defendants just exceeded 1,500 last week. Meanwhile, his office has brought one federal charge against a single pro-Hamas demonstrator despite hundreds being involved in unlawful activities such as attacking federal police officers, vandalizing property, and illegally occupying government buildings on numerous occasions in 2023 and 2024. Graves also handled the prosecution of Trump allies Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon on contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas issued by the Democrat-controlled House January 6 Select Committee. Although both prosecutions resulted in prison time for Navarro and Bannon, critics note that the cases were brought at the discretion of the department. Bannon is currently serving a four-month sentence in a Connecticut federal prison, successfully shutting down his popular “War Room” program during the height of the campaign season. In what might also be considered election interference by the DOJ, Graves, who rarely conducts interviews, appeared in a Jan. 6 segment on “60 Minutes” on the evening of Sept. 15—just hours after the alleged assassination attempt against Trump on his West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course. Graves defended his ongoing Jan. 6 investigation and prosecution as fair and free of White House influence. (Graves said he has never met Biden, but as RealClearInvestigations reported last year, Graves’ wife, Fatima Goss Graves, is a regular visitor at the White House.) “No one is being prosecuted for their views,” Graves told reporter Scott Pelley. “They’re being prosecuted for their acts.” The “crime was severe,” Graves continued. “It was an attack on our democracy.” But the DOJ recently hit a major roadblock in the Jan. 6 prosecution, calling into question Garland’s claims of a careful adherence to the rule of law devoid of bias. The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States reversed how the DOJ applied a statute, 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in the Capitol Breach probe. Since early 2021, at least 340 Jan. 6 protesters and Trump have been charged with the post-Enron statute, once understood to apply to document-altering. In many instances, the felony was added to otherwise misdemeanor cases to turn nonviolent protesters into felons. Prosecutors also used the threat of adding the felony enhancement to secure plea deals on lower-level charges. At least 130 individuals have been convicted at trial or accepted plea deals on the obstruction count with many sentenced to prison time. Since the Fischer decision was published, prosecutors have been dismissing the count in pending cases. Last week, the D.C. appellate court vacated 15 1512(c)(2) convictions. Dozens more will see their convictions vacated over the next several weeks. But the relief did not come soon enough for defendants who already served prison time on the charge. Further, the DOJ is asking judges to keep defendants currently in jail on the 1512(c)(2) behind bars by seeking longer prison time on their remaining charges. For example, Thomas Robertson, a former police officer from Virginia, was sentenced to 87 months following his conviction by a D.C. jury in 2022. The 1512(c)(2) conviction represented the bulk of the prison sentence since it is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. This month the DOJ dismissed the obstruction count against Robertson, but prosecutors asked Judge Christopher Cooper to keep Robertson incarcerated for the full term by applying several sentencing add-ons to his conviction. “I think what happened that day was an attack on democracy, and, as this Court found, the defendant advocated for an armed rebellion and counterinsurgency, and he came with the intent to do violence,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi told Cooper on Sept. 4. “Robertson was an avid and willing participant in an unprecedented crime. His offenses specifically targeted the peaceful transfer of power, an essential government function and one of the fundamental and foundational principles of our democracy.” Cooper, whose 1999 wedding was officiated by then-Judge Merrick Garland, consented to most of the DOJ’s sentencing enhancements. He sentenced Robertson to 72 months in federal prison. “The historical significance of the certification and the effect that your conduct had on our democratic principles and the country more generally, this is not just hyperbole,” Cooper told Robertson. “These are very real harms that not just you, but including you, caused on January 6th.” The DOJ is expected to make the same argument in several other cases. “The continued harsh treatment of Jan. 6 prisoners is a glaring example of the egregious weaponization of our justice system under the Biden-Harris administration,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., who recently was denied access to a section of the D.C. jail that houses Jan. 6 defendants, told RealClearInvestigations. “This politicized use of the Department of Justice, spearheaded by Kamala Harris and her allies, has turned the legal system into a tool for silencing dissent and punishing political opposition.” Critics say Garland’s ongoing prosecution of Trump also contradicts his insistence that the DOJ steers clear of national elections. Smith, the special counsel, appointed by Garland in November 2022, just renewed the stalled case against Trump related to the events of Jan. 6 in Washington. Smith could have waited until after the election to file his new indictment, and critics say his timing can be interpreted to bolster Jan. 6 as a campaign issue. The Justice Department continues to allocate resources to the special counsel’s office; recent financial disclosures show Smith and the DOJ spent more than $35 million in the first 14 months of the special counsel’s investigation. That figure likely could double by the time his appointment ends, which is at the discretion of the attorney general, or include the amount spent on the dual investigations before Smith was appointed. Smith’s continued pursuit of Trump has drawn renewed scrutiny and skepticism since the Supreme Court challenged his original indictment as a broad attack on presidential immunity.  On July 1, the court published its decision in Trump v. United States. Authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the 6-3 opinion for the first time in history established three categories of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution: official acts, outer perimeter acts, and private acts. Official acts, the court held, are covered by immunity while outer perimeter acts—such as Trump’s communications with Vice President Mike Pence related to the Jan. 6 indictment—are what Roberts described as “presumptively immune.” On that score, Roberts continued, “It is ultimately the Government’s burden to rebut the presumption of immunity.” The court further concluded that former presidents are not immune from prosecution for “unofficial” or private acts. In order to hew to the decision, Smith filed a superseding indictment on Aug. 28 that partially gutted his original indictment, which had been handed up a year earlier. Since the Supreme Court determined Trump’s interactions with DOJ officials fell safely within the core constitutional authority of a sitting president, Smith had to cut nine pages of evidence and drop a co-conspirator, former Assistant Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. Although the watered-down indictment contains the same four counts as the first version, the case remains on uncertain legal ground given the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and opinion in the Fischer case. But the special counsel, presumably with the consent of Garland, is reinvigorating the case to coincide with the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign. Long-standing DOJ rules preventing the department from interfering in national elections are once again being ignored as Smith reappears in the headlines as early voting begins this month in several states, including Virginia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In early October, early voting commences in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nevada. Smith found a like-minded ally in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the Obama appointee presiding over the unprecedented case. It was Chutkan’s 2023 order denying Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution that the Supreme Court overturned and sent back to her for further proceedings.  Chutkan, who has a record of making anti-Trump statements in court and who imposed a gag order on the former president last year, told Trump’s lawyers at a Sept. 5 hearing that the election is not a factor in her calculation as to the next steps. “I understand there is an election impending, and I’ve said before and I say again that the electoral process and the timing of the election and what needs to happen before or shouldn’t happen before the election is not relevant here,” Chutkan informed John Lauro, Trump’s lead attorney in the Jan. 6 case. “This court is not concerned with the electoral schedule,” she added. In a follow-up scheduling order, Chutkan issued a series of deadlines leading right up to and a few days beyond Election Day. The special counsel will file a brief later this month articulating why he believes the existing elements of the Jan. 6 indictment are not protected under the Supreme Court ruling. By permitting the filing of what even Chutkan herself described as a “procedurally irregular” document, Smith’s brief is likely to contain cherry-picked passages from grand jury testimony and other allegations to create damaging headlines that again claim Trump tried to stay in power by breaking the law. The brief is expected to be filed before Sept. 26; Trump’s attorneys will have a chance to respond, further dragging the matter into the headlines. This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire. The post To Many, the Justice Department Is Honoring Political Neutrality in the Breach Again appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Jim Banks is demanding that the individual responsible for the military training that portrayed pro-life Americans as terrorists must be held accountable. Banks, R-Ind., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Military Personnel, hosted a hearing Thursday, “Oversight of Extremism Policies in the Army.” The Indiana lawmaker, who is running for Senate, addressed training sessions given to service members on the North Carolina military base Fort Liberty from 2017 to a few months ago that characterized pro-life organizations as “terrorist groups.” “The training labeled several prominent and well-respected pro-life groups, that count millions of everyday Americans as members, as violent extremists,” Banks said disapprovingly in his opening statement. The Directorate of Emergency Services training labeled pro-life organizations, including National Right to Life and Operation Rescue, as terrorists. A slide from the PowerPoint presentation featured a common pro-life license plate and warned about common pro-life activities, such as sidewalk counseling, counseling at pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and “demonstrations and protests” opposing the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide. Some 10,000 soldiers underwent the training, Banks said. “The training accused the members of these organizations of being threats to the safety of military installations and designated symbols of pro-life groups, including state-issued pro-life license plates, as indicators of terrorism,” said the four-term Indiana congressman who serves in the Navy Reserve as a Supply Corps officer and who served in Afghanistan. Banks questioned U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock about how the training went on for so many years. “I want to emphasize again, these training materials were improperly developed and should have never been presented,” Matlock responded “The failure was in anyone providing feedback or any supervisor not observing the training and taking immediate correction. There is no excuse for how long it lasted.” After the investigation into the training, Matlock said “the commander” directed corrective actions, which have now all been completed. The individual who created the training has “received corrective training” and continues to work for the Army, Matlock said in response to Banks’ questions about accountability for the training. “The training materials were very poorly developed, and we fully acknowledged that failure,” Matlock said. The general did not answer Banks’ repeated questions about who was held accountable for the training and how they were punished. “This is embarrassing,” Banks said. “And it makes me wonder what other mistakes is the United States Army making, maybe even in a larger way. I’m even more baffled after hearing from you than I was before.” Banks raised concerns about the recent Army Directive 2024-07 on “Handling Protest, Extremist, and Criminal Gang Activities,” which broadly defines extremism, he said, to “police the speech of conservative service members, quiet dissent, and require service members who believe in conservative ideals to hide their identities for fear of retaliation from their commands.” The training is a First Amendment violation that could be used against any soldier whose views differ from the ruling authority, Banks said. “The First Amendment is broad for a reason. Once speech is limited speech, no matter how offensive or vulgar, individual freedoms are dangerously infringed upon, and that is the real threat to democracy,” he said. Banks questioned Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Agnes Schaefer about whether the National Right to Life or the environmentalist Earth Liberation Front are terrorists groups. Schaefer said neither were. But the Earth Liberation Front was responsible for more than 130 bombings and arsons between 1995 and 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security. “You admit that something went wrong, but yet today, even at this hearing, no one has ever been held accountable for it,” Banks said. The post Rep. Banks Demands Accountability for Military Training Branding Pro-Lifers as Terrorists appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This summer, the Southern Poverty Law Center laid off about a quarter of its staff, and former SPLC employees revealed more information about those layoffs this week, accusing the organization of “classic union-busting behavior.” Former employees of the SPLC’s education arm, Learning for Justice, published an open letter Tuesday outlining their experiences in the lead-up to the layoffs. They claimed the SPLC shifted the direction of their department, gave them more duties without more pay and without hiring more staff, and then abruptly fired most of them in June. “We know it is no coincidence that the layoffs, which targeted mostly union members and union leadership, follow employee surveys that show declining confidence in SPLC management over the past couple of years,” the former employees wrote. “It’s also no coincidence that these layoffs happened less than a year before our union negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement.” “From a social justice organization that refused to voluntarily recognize our union at its inception, it is classic union-busting behavior,” they added. The open letter also gave a concrete number of those SPLC laid off: 81. The SPLC Union released a statement last week calling for SPLC CEO Margaret Huang to resign. Lisa Wright, the SPLC Union chair who was laid off after more than 23 years at the organization, wrote in that statement, “We believe [SPLC Board Chairwoman Karen] Baynes-Dunning hired Huang in 2020 to bust our union. Huang has a proven track record of hostility toward unionization.” Learning for Justice Learning for Justice, which launched as “Teaching Tolerance” in 1991, focused on providing teachers with materials promoting diversity. In the past few decades, however, the education program has embraced gender ideology for children in pre-kindergarten and promoted critical race theory (the lens through which teachers tell students that American society is systemically racist). The SPLC claims it is “teaching hard history” by framing American history, emphasizing what it claims to be the continuing oppression of black people (despite the progress of civil rights laws). As the former staff recalled, the program was rebranded to “Learning for Justice” in 2021, and with that announcement came a change that shocked staff. Newly hired Director Jayala Liles Dunn noted at the time that Learning for Justice would “start working with caregivers and communities,” shifting the focus away from working with educators, the former staff noted. Former staff also lamented the SPLC’s more recent announcement that “if states won’t let us teach Black history in schools, we’ll teach it in communities, as was done during Jim Crow.” “This approach cedes ground to those seeking to erase or distort history in schools,” the ousted employees argued. “Stepping away from direct engagement with educators risks leaving students in hostile learning environments without the support they need.” Yet, besides this ideological consideration, the laid-off workers added more practical concerns. They wrote that “there was no plan” for what a shift toward engaging communities “really looked like.” “Staff members repeatedly advocated internally—even directly to SPLC President Margaret Huang—that SPLC’s commitment to working with communities should mean an investment in hiring more people who have experience and expertise working with community partners,” they wrote. “But the expansion of our work did not come with an expansion of staff. In fact, some positions that were vacated were never filled.” Instead, the SPLC restructured Learning for Justice twice in less than four years, with only one position dedicated to community partnerships. “Supporting community-facing work became ‘everyone’s job,’ rather than hiring more staff with expertise in community education, organizing and other skills,” the former staff wrote. “Additionally, we were told everyone could participate in 501(c)(4) work for SPLC Action Fund, despite the job descriptions and pay of the majority of [Learning for Justice] staff not reflecting that additional policy work.” SPLC Isn’t Hurting for Money The laid-off workers noted that the SPLC isn’t exactly hurting for funding. The organization’s endowment stood at $731.9 million as of 2022. According to the union, Huang gave conflicting reasons for the layoffs: she told some SPLC leaders that the organization had a budget shortfall and others that leadership wished to restructure the group. “SPLC has the resources for community education and advocacy and direct educator support. We don’t need to choose one or the other,” the former staff wrote. “Additionally, will community education work not require operations support or website development? The SPLC’s decision to eliminate those roles, for example, suggests a disingenuous commitment to their proposed new strategic direction.” The staff also claimed that Learning for Justice managers with years of experience “did not receive willing collaboration from new leadership, nor a seat at the table to discuss [the project’s] future.” From this report, it does seem the SPLC mismanaged that department and may even have structured things in such a way as to justify mass layoffs. The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about the former employees’ claims. The Fallout The letter begins and ends with an expression of thanks to the teachers who worked with or read materials from the SPLC. The former staff appear to be driving a wedge between the SPLC and the educators who agree with its leftist positions. The very existence of the open letter speaks volumes. Not only is the SPLC Union willing to reveal the internal dissension at the organization, but it seems these former staff are willing to burn bridges between their former employer and the teachers who support its causes. Teaching Tolerance once boasted that “more than 500,000 educators … read our magazine.” Now, the educators who are most favorably disposed to the SPLC may turn on it. What Is the SPLC? As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC routinely smears mainstream conservative and Christian organizations by placing them on a “hate map” alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC uses the “hate map” as a reputational weapon to silence those who dissent from its woke agenda. While Learning for Justice pushes critical race theory and gender ideology, the “hate map” smears parental rights groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education as “extremists.” In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder and saw its president resign amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. At that time, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Employees decided to unionize after that scandal. The SPLC currently faces a defamation lawsuit that crossed a major legal hurdle last year. The SPLC also has influence in the federal government. In the fall of 2021, Huang bragged that the then still new administration of President Joe Biden had reached out to the SPLC earlier in the year for help in fighting “domestic terrorism.” The FBI’s Richmond office notoriously cited the SPLC in a since-retracted memo calling for surveillance at Catholic churches last year. The SPLC briefed the Justice Department and a high-ranking official of the Department of Education. SPLC leaders and staff have attended White House meetings at least 18 times since January 2021, and Biden appointed an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The post ‘Classic Union-Busting Behavior’: Laid-Off SPLC Employees Reveal Internal Dissension at Far-Left Smear Factory appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Emails Suggest Andrew Cuomo Lied About Editing Nursing Home Report

Uh Oh: CNN Claims GOP Candidate in NC Posted Comments on Porn Sites

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) strongly cautioned their colleagues in the Senate and witnesses from Big Tech against continuing past censorship of Americans in the name of combatting so-called foreign mis-, dis- and mal-information.  The Senate Intelligence Committee held a Sept. 18 hearing on “Foreign Threats to Elections in 2024” featuring President of Global Affairs for Google and Alphabet Kent Walker, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. During the hearing, Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cotton both emphasized serious past abuses committed by Big Tech platforms allegedly in the name of fighting Russian disinformation. On Aug. 9, the MRC-led Free Speech Alliance put Big Tech on notice, calling on Big Tech executives to affirm their commitment to not censor Americans’ speech in the lead-up to the 2024 election “as so many of [them] did in 2020.” In a letter, the Free Speech Alliance listed examples of egregious past and present election interference and censorship by the platforms, most notably when Twitter and Facebook censored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, and when at least 10 major platforms banned then-sitting President Donald Trump from their platforms.  Sen. Cotton made the point that fears of “memes” and “YouTube videos” interfering in elections pale in comparison to “an example of election interference here in America that was so egregious, some of your companies efforts, in collusion with Joe Biden's campaign, led by the current Secretary of State to suppress the factual reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop.”  Sen. Rubio also mentioned the scandal, using it in his opening statement to illustrate the pitfalls of embracing government or so-called fact-checker disinformation claims. “[Fifty-one] former intelligence officials went out and said, ‘This has all of the attributes of a Russian disinformation campaign,’ and as a result, the New York Post, who posted the original story had their story censored and taken down, their account locked,” Rubio said. “[T]here was a concerted effort on the basis of that letter to silence a media outlet in the United States on something that actually turned out not to be Russian disinformation.”   How significant was this election interference? A survey commissioned by the Media Research Center found that 45.1% of Biden voters were unaware of The New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story and that 9.4% of Biden voters would have not voted for Biden if they had been aware of it. These desertions would have been enough to doom Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and reelect Trump.  While discussing whether companies would censor social media users for posting memes about Trump saving ducks and cats, Sen. Cotton also pointed out that social media companies often rely on biased, leftist and even Soros-funded organizations like PolitiFact for fact-checking and beyond.  “Who is gonna draw that line? Who is gonna decide what's playful, innocuous and harmless and what is misinformation and disinformation?” Cotton asked. The Arkansas Senator added, “And I gotta say some of the people you go to like PolitiFact and Southern Poverty Law Center don't strike me as quite neutral sources." Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that the State Department be held to account to adhere to the U.S. Constitution and that Big Tech mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

ABC continued to show its virulent hatred and bias toward former President Trump on Wednesday’s World News Tonight and Thursday’s Good Morning America as, along with CBS’s respective shows (CBS Evening News and CBS Mornings) and NBC’s Today, they’ve refused to tell their viewers about a poll of Teamsters rank-and-file members showing nearly 60 percent support for Donald Trump, not Vice President Harris. Instead, the networks focused their efforts on how Teamsters leadership refused to endorse either candidate and went back to peddling more hate on Trump over Springfield, Ohio, thus rescuing Harris from a negative headline.     ABC’s chief Trump-hating correspondent Rachel Scott minimized the lack of a Teamsters endorsement, instead emphasizing Springfield: Between bomb threats and evacuations, the city of Springfield has been on edge ever since Donald Trump amplified those false claims about Haitian migrants who live there and officials warned that a campaign stop will make things worse. Overnight, Donald Trump telling his supporters that he plans to visit Springfield, Ohio, after amplifying false claims that Haitian migrants in Springfield were eating neighborhood pets...Springfield’s mayor has warned against a visit from any candidate. The city has had least 33 bomb threats. After cheering Harris’s latest speech attacking Trump as anti-immigrant, Scott screeched that “Trump also [made] misleading claims that he won the endorsement of one of the most powerful unions in the country, the Teamsters” when “the reality” is they’re “not...endorsing” anyone. Scott went even hard to the mat for Harris on Wednesday’s World News Tonight (click “expand”): SCOTT: Tonight, the powerhouse Teamsters union announcing that, for the first time in nearly 30 years, it will not endorse in the presidential race. Union president Sean O’Brien declaring, “[U]nfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business.” Both campaigns went all-out for the teamsters, former president Donald Trump even inviting o'brien to address the Republican national convention. O’BRIEN [on 07/15/24]: At the end of the day, the teamsters are not interested if you have a D, R, or an I next to your name. We want to know one thing. What are you doing to help American workers? SCOTT: But Trump also sparking anger among unions when he praised billionaire Elon Musk for threatening to fire striking workers. TRUMP [on 08/12/24]: Well, you — you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in. You just say, you want to quit? They go on strike. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you say, that's okay, you're all gone. You're all gone. So, every one of you is gone. SCOTT: The Teamsters president said that amounted to “economic terrorism.” Vice president Kamala Harris, who has worked the picket line with striking autoworkers and has the backing of major unions, including the AFL-CIO, met with the teamsters board on Monday to try and win their support. Today, her campaign said she stands by her promise to “look out for the teamsters rank and file no matter what.” This evening, trump calling the Teamsters decision not to endorse a win for him. TRUMP: It was always automatic that Democrats get the teamsters, and they said, “We won't endorse the Democrats this year." So that was an honor for me. SCOTT: But Harris tonight announcing a significant endorsement of her own. 100 Republican former national security officials now backing her, calling Trump unfit to serve. In a letter, the officials, who served under Reagan, both Presidents Bush, and Trump himself, said as commander in chief, Trump “promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies, and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country's founding documents.” The Teamsters issue was a footnote on the CBS Evening News. Congressional correspondent Nikole Killion merely shared that the Teamsters wouldn’t be “backing either presidential candidate because they weren't able to make a serious commitments to the groups.” By Thursday’s CBS Mornings, Killion fretted Trump “heaped praise on the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, claiming he won their endorsement” even though “the union did not endorse a presidential candidate” Thursday on Today, NBC’s Peter Alexander framed the topic as “Trump...touting a non-endorsement” and promoted Harris’s campaign claiming local Teamsters chapters have endorsed her before pivoting to cheering Harris’s speech to the Congressional Hispanic Institute and Trump’s “baseless claims about Haitian migrants” Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News had the only mention of the poll, courtesy of correspondent Garrett Haake: Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, this story from @GarrettHaake on @NBCNightlyNews was the ONLY mention on the networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- of the @Teamsters poll showing 58% support for Trump among rank and file members pic.twitter.com/3zFEkXWqWM — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 19, 2024 To see the relevant September 19 transcripts, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

Joe and Hillary: a love story. Who knew? Hillary appeared on today's Morning Joe to promote her latest book, a fourth memoir. Scarborough began the interview by recounting how, attending his first White House picnic as a congressman, the Hillary he encountered was very different from the one he anticipated. He and other Republicans had run on the notion that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Hillary were all Marxists. After the picnic, Joe was invited on a conservative talk radio show and asked to share his impressions of the trio. Whereas he confirmed that Bill and Gore "breathed fire," he found Hillary to be not a Marxist, but a "Midwest Methodist." That made the radio hosts' heads explode, said Scarborough. Despite saying she was reticent to talk about her faith, Hillary then proceeded to describe how central it is to her being. Scarborough said that only having met her for three minutes at the picnic, "that faith came through even then." Scarborough then broke out an early Valentine, saying: "It really has always been disconcerting to my conservative friends, how much I, I, I loved you from the start." Kamala Harris has been notoriously reluctant to do national TV interviews. But could something be worked out with Morning Joe if there were an understanding that Scarborough would profess his undying affection for the Democrat candidate? Here's the transcript. MSNBC Morning Joe 9/19/24 7:41 am EDT JOE SCARBOROUGH: I read something in the book, and, you know, instead of starting on politics or foreign politics, I want to start on the book. Because it reminds me, something I read reminds me of the first time I met you and President Clinton and everybody else at the White House picnic.  And of course, we all ran against you. Hillary's a Marxist. Bill's a Marxist. Everybody's a Marxist. And after, after the picnic, I was asked by a conservative radio show to come on and talk about how horrible you all were. They said, what'd you think about the president?I was like, ah, breathes fire. What did you think about the vice president? Ah, breathes fire. And then they laugh and go, what did you think about Hillary? I go, she's a Midwest Methodist.  Their heads all exploded. I said, you want me to tell you the truth? She's a Midwest Methodist. That's what I saw in talking to her. Not a Marxist, a Midwest Methodist.  And then I saw this in your book. You're reticent in talking about your faith, but you say, "My faith has sustained me, informed me, saved me. I don't know who I would be or where I would have ended up without it." And you know, isn't it crazy? Even with all the political divide, and all the differences, that came through in you. For people who really know you, and I'd only met you for three minutes, but that faith, that came through even then. HILLARY CLINTON: Wow, Joe. That's an amazing memory. And I used to love those White House picnics and Christmas parties, because at least for a couple of hours, everybody was talking to each other and having fun together before they went back to their corners. And you know, I write about my faith, my family, my friends, obviously my politics in this new book because I do think we've got to start looking at people as the whole beings that we are.  And certainly, my faith, as I say, has been critical. It's been key to who I am, how I think about my life, the kind of service that I believe in, and I really appreciate the old memory that you just shared. SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. It really has always been disconcerting to my conservative friends, how much I, I, I loved you from the start.

There’s no doubt Donald Trump is a popular candidate among patriotic Americans — but is he popular enough to win the election? In a clip on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan asked Bret Weinstein this question, and Weinstein’s answer came in the form of a warning. “Let’s imagine it is dirty, and you really can manipulate elections,” Rogan says to Weinstein. “How much can you manipulate it by? Can you manipulate it by 30%?” “To your point about how much can they cheat? I call that factor, which none of us can put a number on,” Weinstein answers, “I call it the cheat factor.” “One of the things that I’m trying to convince people of is that it’s not hopeless because they can cheat, but it means that you have to succeed at a level that exceeds their capacity to erase it,” he continues. “Like, maybe they can cheat by 10%,” Rogan responds. “Right. And what we know, and I think actually we owe Trump a huge debt of gratitude for proving something that I couldn’t have told you if it was true because he won the presidency, which is, is there still enough democracy left in the system for something to upend the plan,” Weinstein explains. Vivek Ramaswamy agrees with Weinstein and tells Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” that “we need a landslide” in order to win the election in the face of potential cheating. “We are skating on thin ice. I think that 50.1 is not a sufficient margin, but even for the purpose of governing, I think we’re going to need to do a lot better than that in order to really have decisive change in this country,” he adds. Want more from Dave Rubin?To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

A new poll shows a surge in favor for former President Donald Trump in a pivotal battleground state. According to an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey, Trump is winning the support of 49.8% of the people in Georgia while Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is only garnering 47.2% support. 'Far more of the respondents said they disapproved [of] President Joe Biden.'The same poll found Harris was beating Trump by 1% at the end of August, meaning Trump had gained three percentage points in about three weeks. The poll found that a majority of Georgians cited the economy as the utmost of their concerns for the election. Far more of the respondents said they disapproved of the job President Joe Biden (D) was doing while far more approved of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). The debate between Trump and Harris could have been a factor in the swing as well as the second assassination attempt on Trump's life at his golf course in Florida. Elections in battleground states are likely to determine the presidential election if the vote in the Electoral College is close, which is suggested by most polls. Biden was able to win Georgia's electoral votes in 2020 by a very small margin of about 11,700 votes, which precipitated the infamous call from Trump to Georgia's secretary of state. The former president is facing election tampering charges in Georgia, though last week, some of the charges were dropped over lack of standing. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!