Village People singer and co-writer Victor Willis, who dressed as the group's "policeman" in relation to the band's memorable costumes throughout the years, recently defended President-elect Donald Trump's usage of the song "Y.M.C.A."

Illegal immigration has cost American taxpayers a blistering 2.6% of the entire U.S. government’s $6.1 trillion in federal spending for the entire 2023 fiscal year. 

Outgoing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) insisted on Monday that President Joe Biden’s oft-repeated promise not to pardon his embattled son Hunter Biden was not “a lie” — despite the fact that on Sunday, Biden issued just such a pardon. Bowman, who aligns with the far-left “Squad” members like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), was defeated in his 2024 Democratic primary and is best known for pulling a fire alarm — to stall a vote — and then lying about it. He joined a CNN panel discussion on Monday evening to talk about Biden’s sweeping pardon — which covered any and all federal crimes, charged or not, that Hunter may have committed over an 11-year period. Despite an NBC report suggesting that the pardon had always been part of the plan — as had Biden’s outward dishonesty — Bowman’s assessment of the situation was that the pardon had only come about because of a change in “context”: President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. WATCH: Rep. Jamaal Bowman repeats over and over that Biden didn't lie about pardoning Hunter because "the context has changed" since Trump won the election. pic.twitter.com/1kw9fRkEta — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) December 3, 2024 “Why are we saying he’s lying when the context has changed?” Bowman asked, referring to the 2024 election results, and others on the panel began talking at once. “This is — this is a new context.” “President Trump — what do you mean, ‘so what?'” Bowman continued, throwing out Democrat buzzwords as others on the panel argued that Trump had nothing to do with whether or not Biden had lied. “Multiple times indicted, convicted, insurrectionist, wants to destroy the FBI, President Trump — that’s the new context.” CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Former Rep. Scott Taylor (R-VA) noted that even the prosecutor in Hunter Biden’s case — which was brought by Joe Biden’s own Justice Department — said it was not a political prosecution as Biden had claimed. According to NBC News’ initial report on the pardon, however, if there was a change in “context” that impacted the president’s decision, it was not Trump’s re-election, but Hunter’s conviction. That, as NBC reported, was also when the administration sanctioned a conscious effort on the parts of Biden and his media surrogates to lie to the people about it. The president has discussed pardoning his son with some of his closest aides at least since Hunter Biden’s conviction in June, said two people with direct knowledge of the discussions about the matter. They said it was decided at the time that he would publicly say he would not pardon his son even though doing so remained on the table.

Joe Biden made the Democrats’ real agenda clear. They are furious. On Sunday evening, President Joe Biden decided to give a blanket pardon to his son Hunter for any and all activities since 2014. In a scene in “The Three Musketeers,” Cardinal Richelieu decides to give one of his henchmen a prospective pardon for anything they are going to do at any point. The note starts by stating, “By my order and for the good of the state,” then finishes, “the bearer has done what has been done.” That’s essentially what Joe Biden did with his son, Hunter, by writing him a pardon that allowed him any crime for about a decade, which is an amazingly broad pardon. It’s almost unprecedented in American history. The only similar instance that has been this broad was the Gerald Ford pardon of Richard Nixon, which was basically designed to quiet any and all problems surrounding Watergate and any sort of ancillary legal issues that would have arisen therefrom with regard to Richard Nixon. The goal was to get that off the American people’s table and let them move on to the next thing. That is not true with regard to Hunter Biden. This is the president of the United States pardoning his son for any and all crimes, including those that were never charged. Why is he doing that? He believes the incoming Trump DOJ is going to look into Hunter Biden’s financial improprieties and the Biden family corruption — so it’s not just about Hunter. It is really about Joe. In fact, it’s possible to conclude the Richard Nixon precedent might be the best precedent — because really, what is Joe Biden doing here? He’s attempting to pardon himself. He can’t overtly pardon himself because he has not been charged with any crimes. And he wants to pretend he is not guilty of any crimes. What he’s really doing is getting Hunter off the table to get himself off the table. That is the goal. There’s really no other way to explain this. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show Margaret Love, who was the United States pardon attorney from 1900 to 1997, stated, “It’s very broad. It does not pardon specific offenses, but rather takes a rather broad time span and pardons anything, any crime that may have been committed during that time span.” Mark Osler, a pardon expert from the University of Saint Thomas, said, “This is very unusual. It’s unusual enough to grant clemency in a case where there hasn’t yet been a conviction. It’s rarer still to have the breadth of this one.” This is correct. This is an insanely broad pardon, and it’s meant to cover everything from violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act to further tax crimes to the possibility of bribery. Joe Biden is not answering questions pertaining to any of this. He issued the pardon, and then he immediately went to Angola. I do wonder at this point whether, as a transitional move, he resigns from the presidency because he clearly no longer cares about being president of the United States. He has not been invested in being president of the United States since he was ousted from the nomination for reelection. This pardon is the kind of move you make when you’re saying “f*** you” to your own party and the American people. And the Democrats are upset. But they are not upset for the reasons you would think. Let me explain. Democrats have preemptively decided they’re going to use every option on the table rather than stick with any set of rules — which is one of the reasons that norms have actually declined in politics. Democrats continue saying that Donald Trump has broken the norms. After all, Joe Biden essentially said the reason he pardoned Hunter was that Trump is going to come in and prosecute Hunter. However, we know Trump is actually not that kind of guy. Recall 2015 and 2016: When Trump was running for president of the United States, crowds chanted, “Lock her up!” — referring to Hillary Clinton. Then, during a debate, Trump openly said that if he were president, Hillary Clinton would probably be in jail. But he didn’t do any of that.  Trump’s DOJ was not activated in order to get his political opponent. But who did do that? Joe Biden. After the 2020 election, it was Joe Biden’s DOJ that decided to drill down on Donald Trump. And that was after four long years of career appointees inside the FBI and the DOJ drilling down on Trump. So Democrats initiated this conflict, and now they are afraid of the blowback. They’re afraid Trump will do the same to them. Thus, Joe Biden is now preemptively using the pardon power in a unique and unprecedented way in order to avoid this. We have entered an era where that norm has been broken too. Now, you can imagine a situation in which every president, on his last day in office, has to pardon himself and all of his family members just to avoid a future in which the opposite party comes in and prosecutes everyone. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE You can easily see that happening. Is the next Democratic president going to prosecute Trump for something? I’d be shocked if they didn’t try. Is the next Democratic president going to pledge to prosecute members of Donald Trump’s family? Hell, they basically did.  That is the world in which we now live. Democrats have been breaking precedents and norms for the last 15 years in American politics. In anticipation of Republicans doing the same, they break the next norm. They break the norm about not prosecuting their political opponents. Then, in order to prevent Republicans from prosecuting them in return, they’re issuing blanket pardons to people like Hunter Biden. This is how norms get destroyed. The true norm destroyers in the country are the Democrats. The real reason some Democrats today are upset with Joe Biden is not because he pardoned Hunter. The real reason they’re upset about what Biden did is because, once again, a new rule has been set, and they know that rule is going to come back around. It’s going to swing back around and hammer them directly in the head. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) ripped into Joe Biden yesterday, saying, “President Biden’s decision put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.” Claire McCaskill, former Missouri Democrat senator, made clear the reason she is upset is because the pardon would give ammunition to Trump. She’s not upset on principle at what Joe Biden did. If he could get away with it, she’d be fine with it. What she’s afraid of is that since the pardon power has been used this way, Trump will use the pardon power in the same manner. This is the story of the Democratic Party over the course of my lifetime. They are not in favor of norms. They hate norms. They’re willing to destroy every norm from social institutions like churches to governmental institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court. That’s what’s happening here. The Democrats are furious because Joe Biden made it obvious. He was too stupid to do it subtly the way Democrats would prefer. The real reason Democrats are furious is because Joe Biden exposed the fact they are willing to use power in pursuit of their own agenda at the cost of any and all norms.

Jack Johnson, the Republican Tennessee state Senate majority leader, told the New York Post that Matt Walsh’s investigation into Vanderbilt University Medical Center giving puberty blockers and hormones to children was the reason the state legislature passed a bill banning the life-altering procedures on minors. The Tennessee law protecting children from puberty blockers and hormones is now before the Supreme Court with oral arguments beginning on Wednesday in the case United States v. Jonathan Skrmetti. Tennessee passed its ban on gender procedures on minors after Walsh revealed in 2022 that the pediatric transgender clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) performed double mastectomies and chemical castrations on gender-confused children. Johnson said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the Supreme Court will rule in the state’s favor after the Sixth Circuit of Appeals upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender procedures on minors. “Tennessee’s law that I sponsored will effectively be the test case for the nation. So we’re very excited, humbled, and cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will see it as the Sixth Circuit did,” Johnson told the Post. “By no means would I be so presumptuous as to predict what the Supreme Court will do. I have tremendous respect for the court,” he added. “What’s at stake is effectively the rights of states to regulate these types of medical procedures.” Just before Tennessee’s law went into effect in July of 2023, the Biden administration secured a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, which blocked the law. “The science is unproven, it’s unsettled. The long-term ramifications of these types of procedures on kids is very unsettled, and in many cases, leads to very bad outcomes and potentially a lifetime of medical complications,” Johnson said. CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Walsh will speak outside of the Supreme Court at a rally put on by Do No Harm on Wednesday as justices hear arguments on the monumental case. The Daily Wire host, who has led a nationwide movement to protect children from gender procedures, said that a win at the Supreme Court would be another step toward a bigger goal. “What gender ideology lacks in logic, science and morality, it makes up for in left wing money, violent activism, educational indoctrination, and legacy media support,” Walsh said Monday. “But we won’t stop working to protect children from this barbaric ideology. Once the Biden administration and trans activists are exposed at the Supreme Court, the next step is a nationwide ban on child sex-changes.”

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South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol abruptly declared martial law on Tuesday, blaming “anti-state forces” planning to overthrow the government. Yoon had previously complained of media and opposition groups pushing false information to subvert society, but gave no indication he would take such drastic measures. Yoon’s action reversed decades of South Korean democratization from its authoritarian past and undermined his legitimacy. North Korea was unlikely to take military advantage of the turmoil in South Korea, but will glean propaganda victories.  Though Yoon quickly rescinded his declaration, his action could lead to his impeachment. At a time when the United States is calling on regional partners to push back harder against the China threat, South Korea will be now be a less reliable partner. Yoon claimed he imposed martial law to “protect liberal democracy and ensure the safety of the people” against unidentified forces operating covertly within South Korea to overthrow the government. He provided no evidence or indications of any groups plotting a coup. In a televised speech, Yoon accused the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) of “attempting to overthrow the free democratic system through legislative dictatorship.” He cited the DPK’s repeated impeachment motions, railroading a recent budget bill, and engaging in “anti-state activities plotting rebellion.” He also vowed to eradicate pro-North Korea forces in South Korea. Yoon declared that all political activities, dissemination of false news, and gatherings such as strikes and demonstrations were prohibited. He directed that all media and publications would be under government control and armored vehicles were deployed on the streets of Seoul. Yoon invoked Article 77 of the South Korean Constitution, which allows for proclaiming martial law, but martial law is reserved for “time of war, armed conflict or similar national emergency.” None of that appeared evident. The provision specifies that the president shall comply when a majority of the members of the National Assembly requests the lifting of martial law. People gather in front of the South Korean National Assembly on Wednesday in Seoul. South Korean lawmakers voted to lift the declaration of emergency martial law announced earlier by President Yoon Suk Yeol in a televised speech. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) During the short six-hour time frame of martial law, military troops initially occupied the National Assembly, since activities of the legislature had been prohibited. However, the National Assembly subsequently met and voted to overrule Yoon’s martial law declaration, leading him to rescind it. Yoon’s action was harshly criticized by leaders of both the opposition and ruling parties. Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung declared Yoon’s proclamation was “illegal and unconstitutional,” while Han Dong-hoon, the leader of Yoon’s Ruling People Power Party, called the decision “wrong” and vowed to “stop it with the people.” While tensions with North Korea have been high this year, there was no indication that Yoon’s action was in response to any imminent military action by Pyongyang. The regime is unlikely to conduct tactical or strategic military action as a result of the crisis, but there is always the danger of inadvertent escalation if either or both Koreas misinterpret military posturing of the other. Yoon’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, and the opposition party scored a decisive victory in April’s National Assembly elections, routing Yoon’s ruling conservative party. Some legislators have advocated legal action against the first lady for alleged corruption and the impeachment of Yoon. During his Aug. 15 Independence Day speech, which often is used by South Korean presidents to extol anti-Japanese nationalist themes, Yoon instead pushed for unification with North Korea while criticizing domestic “anti-freedom forces.” Yoon decried that unidentified groups were using false propaganda to undermine the nation by destroying the values and order of a free society. But Yoon indicated that he would counter the propaganda by providing true information to the populace, rather than suggesting dire actions such as suspending constitutional rights. The president also vowed to uphold the principles of freedom and democracy in South Korea. Yoon’s action was a damning reversal to decades of South Korean efforts to put its authoritarian past behind it. After gaining liberation from Japanese rule in 1945, the country endured military coups and repressive presidents who undermined the rule of law and human rights in South Korea. After the achievement of democratization in the 1980s, South Korea became a beacon of freedom. The last time martial law was declared in South Korea was 1980. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, could not be seen as condoning Yoon’s extraconstitutional actions since Washington has been falsely blamed in the past for approving South Korean authoritarian actions against its citizens. However, the U.S. couldn’t criticize Yoon’s actions too strongly, since South Korea remains a critical ally in addressing regional security challenges, including the growing North Korean and Chinese military threats. Though Yoon’s martial law was short-lived, the ramifications will be significant and long-lasting. His political days are likely numbered, since the populace will be united in its criticism and the majority opposition party will seek his impeachment. If Yoon is removed from office, the opposition party would likely win the special election. Its policies are not in alignment with U.S. strategic objectives. The DPK favors conciliatory policies toward North Korea and China, while distancing South Korea from its alliance with the United States. The post A Dark Day in South Korea’s History appeared first on The Daily Signal.