News Quicksilver Netflix to Adapt Callie Hart’s Quicksilver Into a Movie The TikTok sensation has been snapped up in a bidding war By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 3, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share In a bidding war almost as heated as the sexual tension between Kingfisher and Saeris, Netflix won the rights to adapt Callie Hart’s romantasy novel, Quicksilver. According to Deadline, the deal was in the seven-figures, reflecting the novel’s popularity within a popular subgenre, in no small part because of its following on TikTok. Here’s the official blurb of the story: Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember. When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares… but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed herself right in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed. The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist’s magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him… or her. Kingfisher’s past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he’s the only way Saeris is going to make it home. Spoiler: Saeris and Kingfisher have the hots for each other and conjoin in various ways, magical and otherwise, throughout the book’s 624 pages. Quicksilver is the first in the planned Fae & Alchemy trilogy. It was Hart’s first foray into fantasy, though she is a prodigious romance author with several series published, including the Crooked Sinners, Blood & Roses, and Dirty Nasty Freaks books. No news yet on when the adaptation will go into production. Let the dream-casting of Kingfisher and Saeris, however, begin![end-mark] The post Netflix to Adapt Callie Hart’s <i>Quicksilver</i> Into a Movie appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Julia Armfield Read an Excerpt From Julia Armfield’s Private Rites A speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world… By Julia Armfield | Published on December 3, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Private Rites by Julia Armfield, a speculative reimagining of King Lear available now from Flatiron Books. It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and old rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. His death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.The sisters are more estranged than ever, and their lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams, Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling, and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world. ISLA On the afternoon of her father’s death, Isla takes a session with a man who was exorcised of evil spirits at the age of seventeen. He is a new patient, referred from the counseling program at the hospital—white teeth and a voice whittled down from a scream. When he clasps his hands around one knee, the veins bunch up between his knuckles, pale blue against the jut of the bone. Isla tries not to notice this, inspects her own hands instead and the bitten-off edge of a cuticle. Bad habits; both the tendency to chew the skin around her nails and to notice a tic or a physical trait of a patient and allow it to grow, blowing up until it becomes their entirety, the characteristic against which all else seems to pale. She lives in horror of slip-ups, practices saying their names aloud to counter her mental Rolodex: patients listed in order as Bug Eyes, as Taps His Foot When He’s Horny, as Big Hands, as Talks Like a Robot, as Tits. She’s good at her job, but the impulse to open her mouth and say something dreadful recurs and recurs. Not unlike the irrational desire to dash a contemplative silence to pieces or to climb to some high place and jump, so it seems a compulsion born less of intent than of the simple fact of its own possibility. The fact that she could do it is more than enough. She reels it in, always. Reels herself in tight. Any minute now, she thinks, any second, I could crash this whole day into the wall. He tells her his parents were the ones who pushed for the ritual—the patient, hands unclasped, now sipping water. Isla pauses, looking up from her notepad, asks him to say that again. She’s heard of this once or twice before, archaic practices resurfacing the way trends will, exorcisms like bootcut jeans, like mixing pattern with print. Two years ago: not her patient but a woman on television, face pixelated, discussing her experiences as a child of the Cult of Our Lady. And before that: a patient recalling how her parents would often wake her at odd hours and lead her out to their Japanese garden, let the blood from her arm, and pray for deliverance. Not a rampant fad, but certainly a recurring one, things being as they are these days. A memory, briefly summoned and then swiftly, professionally set aside: Isla’s own mother, white to the lips and muttering. Isla’s own mother, her face very close: This will only hurt for a second. Her sister Irene once said that, at pinch points, people always turn to the divine, or if not to the divine, then at least to the well-trodden. It’s a backup, she said, like a tested recipe. People love a ritual when things get hairy, to feel they’re doing something that thousands of people have done before them. And so, the patient, telling a story that Isla suspects he has told before: the blood on the bed linen, his mother inviting the priest, the sensation of something first beckoned, then wrenched from his guts. He believes both that the ritual worked and that it didn’t, expresses appropriate levels of skepticism toward the concept of exorcism yet can’t seem to set aside the idea that his parents did what they did for the best. “I think they wanted to feel better,” he says. “I think they got it into their heads that something was wrong that could only be solved this way. They wanted to feel like they were taking action, given how little they could do anywhere else. It’s weird, because I don’t remember them being that religious, at first.” Toward the end of the session, Isla asks if he believes in the devil. “I don’t,” he replies—clasps his hands so the knuckles pulse as if filling and retracting—“I don’t, but I feel him anyway.” “Thank you, Ted,” she says, thinks Ugly Knuckles, reels it in again, thinks that she ought to get someone in to look at the dark spot on the wall. The air conditioner purrs. Someone in a consulting room across the hall appears to be weeping. D’you ever have the thought, says a voice along the corridor, that it might be getting worse every day but you’re just so used to it that you aren’t noticing? Like maybe it’s really terrible and I’m just so cut off from it that I’ve lost all sense of size? Half the time I can’t get back to mine because the train’s fucked or flooded or whatever. Last night I got home at ten to midnight and I’m just like… “Well, that’s not bad.” Fucking council. Isla operates from a suite of offices shared with two other therapists, and the noises around her are never quite muffled enough. The building is crisp, masculine, yet somehow fleshly—its walls vibrating the way a creature might breathe in its sleep. On occasion, she will sit across from a patient and listen to the noise of other patients and other therapists in adjoining rooms, imagining them all held safe within the mouth of something vast and slumbering, unlikely to turn to one side, unlikely to swallow. Buy the Book Private Rites Julia Armfield Buy Book Private Rites Julia Armfield Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget She sees the patient out, asks him to remember that their meeting will be half an hour later next week. Did you know, she hears a voice saying in reception, that magnolias evolved before bees? They’re one of the earliest flowering plants—as a species they’re something like ninety-five million years old. She heads back to her desk and removes her phone from the drawer, notes an unfamiliar number has called and left a message. She considers this for a moment, makes a mental list of probabilities: Morven might have a new number (but I don’t want to talk to Morven), Irene might have a new number (but why would Irene call), it might be the insurance company, it might be the bank. She presses a button on her phone and waits, grinding one heel into the carpet. From her vantage point near the window, she can see down into the plaza below. The water is high today, lapping up against the edges of the elevated walkways, the sunken string of high-rise buildings sharp in unaccustomed light. It is midafternoon, threatening rain, agapanthus dying in a pot beneath the heating vent, and Isla hasn’t eaten lunch. When the call connects, the voice on the line is kindly, professional. They would like to know her surname, her date of birth; they would like to tell her that her father is dead. IRENE On the train, a girl at the other end of the carriage vomits into her handbag and passes it to her boyfriend. The boyfriend holds the bag away from himself, makes long and meaningful eye contact with the floor. It’s too early for this, Irene thinks, then messages Jude about it. Either it’s too early or I’m getting old. Jude responds that two things can be true and asks what Irene wants for dinner. Three seats down across the aisle, a man is talking loudly into his phone while the woman beside him makes periodic tutting noises. Irene tips her head, tries to avoid the gaze of the woman sitting directly opposite. She hates making eye contact in public places, the idea of an inadvertent brush with someone best kept in peripheral blur. Some time ago, she accidentally winked at a woman while messing around with her contact lenses and the horror of that moment stayed with her well into the end of the day. Embarrassment, the potential for it, like something caught on the sole of the foot and hard to slough off again, a physical object she carries around at all times. The light in the uppermost edges of the train windows is starting to turn, evening bleeding as if from a leak-sprung ceiling: incremental, then thickening, swelling as it falls. The afternoon is wide, peach-ripe—rain incoming as always and the windows greased with mist, the city grown porous and slack around itself. The gaps between rain are so few and far between that they barely count as gaps so much as temporary glitches. It will start again, she knows, before her journey is over, before she has the chance to disembark and enjoy the respite. The irritation of that, of having missed it, will simply be something to shoulder, like everything else. Irene often feels she can detect a certain amphibious quality in the people with whom she shares transportation, shares offices, shares the ingrown cramp of city space. Some days, she will squint her eyes and imagine a waterlogged sheen to the skin of the woman who hands over change at the newspaper kiosk, the man who touches her knee on the tram. People at work complain of bloated joints, persistent headaches, though only as one complains about anything that has always been the case. I don’t know, Jude will say in the sanguine tone they tend to apply to things unrelated to the Now, that I’d even know how to go back to things being drier. I don’t know if it would suit me at all. But the whole point is that you were suited to it once, Irene replies on the days when she’s feeling disagreeable. When we were kids, when we were teenagers, even. The whole point is you were different once, too. I know that, Jude says, but what’s the point in dwelling. Once you start, you’ll never get to the end of it. Jude tends to operate like this, focusing solely on what’s going on right in front of them, as if everything else is irrelevant and incapable of causing them harm. That was Then, this is Now, like a screen set up to block peripheral vision. Irene has tried it, has sat and reflected that the house was Then but this is Now. That her PhD and all she planned to do with it was Then but Jude is Now, that work is Now, that the sofa and carpet and special soft furnishings she’s bought for the flat are all Now. The train is Now, she supposes, and the moment the girl at the end of the carriage recommences throwing up is Now, although then it is Now again and Now again and again until the girl is white and dry-heaving and the boyfriend sets down the still-reeking handbag, gets up, and moves toward the door. They are two stops away from the end of the line. This train route used to be longer, but old ends to old lines have long since been abandoned, stations drowned and duly cut off, trains diverted, raised above the water where possible or else supplanted by boats and water taxis, journeys thrown off course. Irene thinks about calling her sister and then dismisses it, thinks less seriously about calling her other sister but then leans her head back against the window and sighs. She was trying to get to the end of a thought about souls, about the strange internal silence of something one might assume to be essential and yet which serves no tangible purpose. This happens fairly often. Thoughts crop up, unwanted, despite the fact that her PhD is a relic, discarded long ago in a panic that feels foreign to her now. She works, these days, for an office that administrates payroll for remote staff and agile workspaces, and the memory of her studies operates rather like an atrophying muscle, unconditioned but still prone to spasm when pressed a certain way. She’ll think that if one assumes that the soul is distinct from the physical form, then the soul cannot communicate, for it has no recourse to speech or any other form of expression with which to sign out its meaning. She will think that if this is the case, then one might extrapolate that the soul has no need of language, which poses questions about how it enacts control or influence over the human body and what the divide between silence and language means in terms of spirituality. She will think, I should write this down, but then find that the notion recedes the more closely she looks at it, until it reveals itself as little more than a muddy act of pointillism. It’s depressing, all this thought that has nowhere to put itself, all this context and research with no place left to go. Give it a rest, she will think to herself. You have a job and it isn’t actually this. The train rattles over a series of point blades. The sky is closing in. Later on, the summer constellations will sharpen into being, though too far back behind cloud to be seen. Her phone vibrates in her pocket. She slides it out and checks the number, feels surprise quickly curdling into annoyance as she realizes her older sister Isla is calling. What, she thinks irritably, do you want. Whatever it is, can’t it wait. Excerpted from Private Rites by Julia Armfield. Copyright © 2024 by Julia Armfield. Reprinted with permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. The post Read an Excerpt From Julia Armfield’s <i>Private Rites</i> appeared first on Reactor.

In the 1960s, film audiences became particularly interested in the weird and unknown, resulting in a spike in science-fiction films. Noticing the public's interest, filmmakers began to make science-fiction films with the hope of creating the next big one. During this time, some of the most classic and iconic science-fiction films were introduced to the world, which set the bar for what a film of... Source

THE CENTER SQUARE—Federal agents are arresting a record number of individuals on the terrorist watchlist at the northern U.S. border, including a Jordanian national with ties to terrorism who recently was removed from the country after illegally entering from Canada. Border Patrol agents in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Blaine Sector apprehended Jordanian national Mohammad Hasan Abdellatif Albana, 41, near Lynden, Washington, a few miles from the Canadian border. Lynden is roughly 22 miles to Aldergrove in British Columbia. There are 13 land ports of entry at the U.S.-Canada border in Washington, including the Lynden-Aldergrove Port of Entry. The port of entry is famous for the 1979 murder of U.S. Customs inspector Kenneth Ward, who was shot while performing a vehicle inspection by members of far-left domestic terrorist group the Symbionese Liberation Army. Albana illegally “entered the U.S. without being admitted, inspected, or paroled by a U.S. immigration official,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. He would have been considered a “gotaway” if he hadn’t been caught. Gotaways is the official CBP term for foreign nationals who illegally enter between ports of entry to intentionally evade capture and aren’t caught. Once apprehended, he was identified as a match on the terrorist watchlist, processed for removal, and removed to Jordan on Nov. 15 because he posed “a risk to the national security of the U.S.,” ICE said. Albana was among 44 individuals who’ve been arrested and identified as a known or suspected terrorist this fiscal year, according to CBP data last updated Nov. 20. By comparison, 8 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at the southwest border over the same time-period. As The Center Square first reported, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists are being apprehended at the U.S.-Canada border. Overall, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists have been apprehend under the Biden administration in U.S. history: 1,903. The majority, 64%, totaling 1,216, were apprehended at the northern border coming from Canada between fiscal years 2021-2024, according to CBP data. A record 687 known or suspected terrorists were reported at the southwest border over the same time period. CBP publicly reports four known-or-suspected-terrorist data sets: apprehensions at land ports of entry and between ports of entry at the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. Data is reported by fiscal year, from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30. Those identified as known or suspected terrorists are matched to the Terrorist Screening Dataset, the federal government’s database that contains sensitive information on terrorist identities. The Terrorist Screening Dataset originated as a consolidated terrorist watchlist to hold information on known or suspected terrorists. Over the past decade, it evolved “to include additional individuals who represent a potential threat to the United States, including known affiliates of watchlisted individuals,” CBP says. Over the last four years, most congressional reports and news reports have solely focused on known or suspected terrorists apprehended between ports of entry at the southwest border, ignoring the greater number apprehended, and unknown number illegally entering, at the northern border. Since 2017, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended every year at the northern border, except in 2019, The Center Square first reported. The greatest number apprehended in U.S. history at the northern border was 487 in fiscal 2023. Under the Biden administration, 1,209 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at U.S.-Canada ports of entry and seven between ports of entry. By contrast, 989 known or suspected terrorists were apprehended at the southwest border; 604 at ports of entry and 385 between ports of entry. “The record number of people on the terrorist watchlist coming across the northern border” disproves the “most secure border in the world” claim made by Canadian officials, President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told The Center Square. “It’s really simple math,” he said, pointing to CBP data. “What they won’t tell you are the unknown gotaways coming through the northern border.” Unlike the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border, there are no border walls and significantly less technological equipment and agents to patrol the U.S.-Canada border, the longest international border in the world totaling 5,525 miles, The Center Square reported. Because there are far fewer Border Patrol agents in the field, less technological surveillance and a lack of operational control, combined with national security threats posed by Canadian policies, among other factors, the number of known or suspected terrorists who’ve illegally entered from Canada between ports of entry is unknown, border officials tell The Center Square. Unlike the southwest border, where agents in the field can track illegal entry and report gotaways, no comparable capability exists at the northern border, where one agent may be responsible for 500 miles. “There’s always been a national security vulnerability there; it remains a national security vulnerability,” Homan told The Center Square. “There are hundreds of miles of open border that is not being patrolled and that’s just a stone-cold fact.” Homan told The Center Square the Trump administration will secure the northern and southwest borders. Originally published by The Center Square The post Northern Border Terrorist-Related Arrests Soar appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Department of Justice filed a reply on Tuesday supporting its motion for a gag order against Dr. Ethan Haim, a surgeon indicted by the Biden administration after he blew the whistles on sex change procedures for minors. “The prosecutors in @eithanhaim’s case are doubling down on their shameless effort to ask the court to censor us and our client on @X,” the Burke Law Group, which is representing Haim, said on X. “We will continue to zealously represent @EithanHaim’s liberty, and now his (and our) First Amendment right to Free Speech.” The prosecutors in @eithanhaim’s case are doubling down on their shameless effort to ask the court to censor us and our client on @X. We will continue to zealously represent @EithanHaim's liberty, and now his (and our) First Amendment right to Free Speech.— BLG Tweets (@BurkeLawTweets) December 3, 2024 Haim initially came forward as an anonymous whistleblower to expose gender treatments being performed on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. He is facing four felony counts of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, according to journalist Chris Rufo, who first reported on Haim’s story. The reply in support of its motion for a gag order said the order would “prevent the defendant and his attorney from making inflammatory and and unfairly prejudiced statements.” The DOJ did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment about example of what types of speech would and would not be permitted. “Given the number of such statements readily available online, the defendant’s national platform and increasing prominence, and his avowed intention to continue to make such statements,” the order said, “there is a substantial likelihood of prejudicing the court’s ability to conduct a fair trial.” The prosecution argues Haim is advancing a “false narrative of government corruption,” which “ignores the facts and evidence.” Yet in the next paragraph, the prosecutors say most of “the defendant’s ire” is focused on the case’s former lead prosecutor, leaving the prosecutors unsure of Haim’s claims are true. Tina Ansari, the former lead prosecutor against Haim, withdrew from the case on Nov. 21 after conflict of interest concerns. Ansari’s family runs coffee and tea company FreshBrew Group, whose customers include multiple hospitals in the Texas Medical Center which house Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine are located. Ansari’s “close family members have substantial financial and political ties” to Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM),” Haim’s lawyers wrote in a Nov. 13 letter. Haim was a resident at the Baylor College of Medicine from June 2018 to June 2023. He worked at Texas Children’s Hospital during part of his residency. The gag order would “completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism,” according to Burke Law Group. “The prosecution tries to make its case by painting Dr. Haim’s and the defense’s critical tweets as inaccurate,” the X post said. “But as the defense already explained in its own filing, all of the public criticism has been richly deserved. Indeed, many of the tweets included pictures from the court’s transcript showing where it was the court, not the defense, that took issue with the government’s shoddy work.” It is suspicious that the DOJ filed a motion for a gag order on the same day, Nov. 20, that Ansari withdrew herself from the case, Haim said on X. “So, my question is this – what do the remaining DOJ prosecutors know about these conflicts and when did they know it?” he asked. “Because if the case against me was brought under conflicted pretenses, the remaining prosecutors cannot cleanse themselves of the odor of corruption by simply kicking Ansari to the curb and continuing on like everything is kosher.” The DOJ particularly wants to prevent Haim from retweeting allies who have defended him on X like Ethics and Public Policy Center legal expert Ed Whelan; Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; journalist Chris Rufo; and psychologist Jordan Peterson, according to Burke Law Group. DOJ is seeking a gag order on Dr. Eithan Haim, the courageous whistleblower its transgender ideologues are targeting with an outrageous prosecution. Any gag order will backfire, as those of us not subject to it will intensify our efforts to expose DOJ’s abuses.— Ed Whelan (@EdWhelanEPPC) December 3, 2024 Texas Children’s Hospital had 30 child gender transition patients before Texas passed a law prohibiting doctors from providing transgender medical interventions to minors, according to medical watchdog Do No Harm’s database. The hospital “took away all the public-facing indications that the program was still active,” “but within the hospital, they’re prioritizing it to the highest level,” Haim said. Haim said in Rufo’s City Journal article that a surgeon implanted a hormone device in an 11-year-old girl who said she identified as a boy three days after the announcement that transgender medical procedures had stopped at the hospital. Multiple colleagues told Haim over the next year they were implanting puberty-blocking devices in minors.  After revealing this information, two federal agents with the Department of Health and Human Services showed up on Haim’s door, saying the documents he sent to Rufo were published with children’s names, violating HIPAA. But Haim’s lawyers say all patient information was redacted and that HIPAA regulations allow protected information to be disclosed to “prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to a person or the public.” Virginia Allen contributed to this article. The post DOJ Revisits Effort to Censor Trans Children’s Hospital Whistleblower Eithan Haim appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Fox Business host Charles Payne called out the alleged “huge double standard” of President Joe Biden’s family Tuesday by revealing that his brother, who struggles with a crack addiction, is currently serving a jail sentence. Payne said his brother, who is getting out of jail on Friday, is likely one of the first Americans to struggle with an addiction to crack cocaine and may likely start using the substance again once he is free. He accused Biden of participating in elitism in order to save his son from jail time while everyday Americans struggling with addiction have had to face the consequences for their crimes. “Hearing Democrats try to justify what Biden is doing with his son because his son has a drug habit is just heartbreaking,” Payne said on “America’s Newsroom.” “I’m gonna tell you something right now, and I probably shouldn’t say this. My brother’s getting out of jail on Friday. My brother was among the first 100 crack addicts in America. At least the first 1 out of 200. In the hood, when he came upstairs and told us about crack and how great it was, I had never heard of it before. I kind of don’t want him to come out of jail because before he went in, he stopped by my aunt’s house and he didn’t have shoes on in the middle of winter.” WATCH: Payne accused black Democrats of remaining silent on the pardoning of Hunter despite the crack issue being a detriment to their community. “What’s happening with the Biden’s, and this is the ultimate sign of elitism, and just of entitlement gone amok … Where are black Democrats saying this is such a huge double standard? That if this was Donald Trump and anyone in his family, there would be people in the streets screaming. Now if you want to use this as a way of saying ‘hey, we need to find more ways of reforming and helping everyone out and not just Hunter Biden,’ but this has hurt our community so badly and no one’s immune from it,” Payne continued. “And listen, I wish I could be there waiting for [his brother] when he gets out on Friday, but I can’t,” he added. “I wish I could be there to hold his hand and everything, I can’t. We talked about this. He’s probably going to go back to smoking crack even though he hasn’t had it for a year. He was the smartest one in my family growing up, he’s a great person in his heart, and he could’ve been a great American. It’s a slap in the face to everyone that Joe Biden gets to do this. It really is, it’s a slap in the face for anyone whose family members had gone to jail for doing stupid stuff.” Biden issued a “full and unconditional” pardon for his son on Sunday regarding any crime he is charged with or may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024. The president alleged that his political opponents “singled out” Hunter by charging him for crimes that almost no American allegedly gets prosecuted for having committed, including writing false information on a gun purchase form and paying back their taxes past the deadline. A Delaware jury convicted Hunter in June on three felony charges related to his purchase of a gun in 2018 while knowingly being addicted to drugs and for writing false information on a gun purchase form. He faced up to 17 years in prison over nine charges relating to his alleged failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019 in California. The pardon further protects Hunter from facing any potential charges regarding an alleged influence peddling scheme in his overseas business dealings in Ukraine, China, and Romania. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘Where Are Black Democrats?’: Charles Payne Tells Personal Story to Call Out ‘Huge Double Standard’ of Biden Family appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Former Obama deputy-turned-acting attorney general during the first days of the first Trump Administration, Sally Yates is the poster child of Justice Department politicization. She famously made herself a martyr by forcing Trump to fire her after she ordered the department not to enforce his travel ban order. Still, when Yates traveled over to Comedy Central on Monday, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart asked her if the Bush-era DOJ was the one to blame for politicization. Yates insisted that the department is full of high-minded individuals who simply care about justice, leading Stewart to ask: Did you see in your time when you were there? Did you see the mission begin to change? Did you see it become politicized? While we were there? When you first started, was it much more nuts and bolts? Because I guess that is not the part of the Justice Department, Department of Justice, that I also think about. I also think about after 9/11, you know, John Yoo getting the Department of Justice to justify torture or, you know, is there another hallway, where, like, there’s another Department of Justice, where, like, you guys are working on human trafficking, but they’re there trying to justify other maybe less, what you would say, high-minded things?     On one hand, the Bush Administration wanted to get information out of terrorist detainees, on the other Yates thought the Constitution revolved around her unelected self. For Stewart, the former is somehow worse. As for Yates, she gave a non-answer and instead tried to wax poetic about the department, “Yeah. Look, the vast majority of folks of the Department of Justice are what they call career employees. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily—” After some quips from Stewart about the “deep state” being “a state that is very deep,” Yates continued, “There literally are maybe 100, well, if you count U.S. attorneys, there are a few hundred political appointees out of 113,000 employees at the Department of Justice.” Still trying to convince everyone she’s not a partisan figure, she added, “So, yeah, the hallways there are filled with people who don't even know—I mean, I worked for over 20 years in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's office, I had no idea whether the folks next to me were Democrats or Republicans.” Later in their discussion, Stewart tried to summarize, “I think what you were getting to is it's a system that has flaws but that every day, we have worked towards, boy, you hate to say a more perfect union, but that you've worked towards making it more just.” After Yates affirmed that, Stewart wondered, “So, why is this a threat, when you just said, like, the threat now?”     Yates replied that “The threat now, and this is not because he's a Republican, Donald Trump poses a unique threat to our criminal justice system, and to that concept of equal justice. He’s made really clear, over and over again, that he views the Department of Justice as his own personal goon squad… he wants to use the power of the state to literally criminally investigate them and try to send them to prison and he’s been really clear about that.” Stewart tried to play devil’s advocate, “Wouldn't he say that is what was done to him? That, because he was a candidate for president, that, in his mind, and I am not suggesting I’m in his mind, but that's what he believes the Russia investigation, that is what he believes all of these cases, whether we believe them to be meritorious or not, what he would suggest is, an unprecedented use of the Department of Justice is how they have been operating against him, and so that firewall is already been breached.” Yates was unsympathetic, “Well, first of all, if he thinks that, and I'm not 100 percent convinced he genuinely thinks that, but even if he does, that doesn't make it true. Are you telling me that when someone fomented in insurrection as he did, that DOJ should just look away from that and not investigate it?” Of course, history did not begin on January 6, and if the left wants to make the case that Trump is a threat to the rule of the law, the woman who tried to use the DOJ to obstruct Trump and make herself famous because she didn’t like his immigration plans is the worst possible person to make that case. Here is a transcript for the December 2 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 12/2/2024 11:25 PM ET JON STEWART: Did you see in your time when you were there? Did you see the mission begin to change? Did you see it become politicized? While we were there? When you first started, was it much more nuts and bolts? Because I guess that is not the part of the Justice Department, Department of Justice, that I also think about. I also think about after 9/11, you know, John Yoo getting the Department of Justice to justify torture or, you know, is there another hallway, where, like, there’s another Department of Justice, where, like, you guys are working on human trafficking, but they’re there trying to justify other maybe less, what you would say, high-minded things? YATES: Yeah. Look, the vast majority of folks of the Department of Justice are what they call career employees. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily – STEWART: I’ve heard of the deep state. Deep State. I know what this is. YATES: I'm not even entirely sure what the deep state is, but— STEWART: It is a state that is very deep! Don't play dumb with us! YATES: But that is — there literally are maybe 100, well, if you count U.S. attorneys, there are a few hundred political appointees out of 113,000 employees at the Department of Justice. STEWART: There's 113— YATES: Thousand. Because understand, this includes not just the folks who are prosecutors and lawyers there. It includes investigative agencies like the FBI and the ATF and the DEA and the Marshall service. It includes all of the Bureau of Prisons. It's a lot of people. So it's a very, very small number of people who change with administrations and change depending on who the party is. So, yeah, the hallways there are filled with people who don't even know — I mean, I worked for over 20 years in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's office, I had no idea whether the folks next to me were Democrats or Republicans. … STEWART: I think what you were getting to is it's a system that has flaws but that every day, we have worked towards, boy, you hate to say a more perfect union, but that you've worked towards making it more just. YATES: Absolutely. And that has been the goal. And so,— STEWART: So, why is this a threat, when you just said, like, the threat now? YATES: Yeah. The threat now, and this is not because he's a Republican, Donald Trump poses a unique threat to our criminal justice system, and to that concept of equal justice. He’s made really clear, over and over again, that he views the Department of Justice as his own personal goon squad, for lack of a better term here, to go after the people that he wants to retaliate against, whether those are folks who have crossed him politically, whether it is people who just disagreed with him, whether it is people who wouldn't carry his water. That he wants to use the power of the state to literally criminally investigate them and try to send them to prison and he’s been really clear about that. He— STEWART: As devil's advocate — YATES: I figured this was coming. STEWART: Alright. Wouldn't he say that is what was done to him? That, because he was a candidate for president, that, in his mind, and I am not suggesting I’m in his mind, but that's what he believes the Russia investigation, that is what he believes all of these cases, whether we believe them to be meritorious or not, what he would suggest is, an unprecedented use of the Department of Justice is how they have been operating against him, and so that firewall is already been breached. In his mind. YATES: Well, first of all, if he thinks that, and I'm not 100 percent convinced he genuinely thinks that, but even if he does, that doesn't make it true.  STEWART: Right. YATES: Are you telling me that when someone fomented in insurrection as he did, that DOJ should just look away from that and not investigate it? STEWART: No.

MRC founder and president Brent Bozell appeared Tuesday morning on the D.C. talk radio show "O'Connor & Company" to discuss media coverage of President Biden pardoning his son Hunter on gun and tax charges. Larry O'Connor said he had "nothing but contempt for the propagandists who call themselves 'mainstream media,' Brent. but I have to say it's been so amusing watching then deal with this....trying to continue to perpetuate this myth that Joe Biden is a man with such great integrity and honesty." Bozell agreed: "He's making them look like fools and they know it! They've spent years denying that there was a Hunter Biden problem," suppressing the Hunter laptop in the 2020 campaign. He underlined Hunter had about 20 LLCs or shell companies to obscure all his ill-gotten gains from foreign business partners. He said when Joe pardons Hunter, he's also pardoning himself. "If the media had a lick -- a lick! -- of decency, they would have said this [pardon] was outrageous, would have said this guy had escaped justice, and the entire family has escaped justice, but instead they call it a part of his legacy!" That this is a "great family thing to do." When asked about all the controversy over Kash Patel's nomination to run the FBI, Bozell said Trump means business when he wants to rein in the deep state, and the media are going to resist it.  O'Connor humorously wrapped up by protesting that Bozell was forcing our Nick Fondacaro to watch every minute of The View on a daily basis. "This is cruel! This is inhumane! Then he has to put out the videos so the rest of us can hate-watch it as well!" He asked Brent to thank Nick for "taking one for the team."  

With Matt Gaetz having stepped down from attorney general consideration almost two weeks ago, the liberal media have turned their ire toward decorated Army veteran, best-selling military author, and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth. On Tuesday, they giddily passed along the “troubling” “new allegations” against him, including those peddled by far-left smear merchant Jane Mayer of The New Yorker (which they trumpeted as gospel) ludicrously painting Hegseth as a danger to women and our tax dollars. CBS Mornings hailed from the get-go. In the Eye Opener, featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers peddled the “[n]ew allegations of drinking and sexual misconduct against Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.” Co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King had the “troubling” line and shared the CBS at least “confirmed Pete Hegseth was forced to step down from a veterans’ nonprofit after being accused of alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct and mismanaging the group’s money.” Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes had quite the approach to Hegseth, taking a condescending tone: Gross. CBS’s Nancy Cordes all but mocks @PeteHegseth facing allegations of drinking and financial mismanagment... “Hegseth has been tapped by the President-Elect to run one of the largest bureaucracies in the world, the U.S. military, and yet, CBS News has confirmed now that he… pic.twitter.com/zSt7UCwcKl — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 3, 2024 After airing a clip of congressional correspondent Nikole Killion chasing down Hegseth and asking him about being “drunk...on the job” and Hegseth scoffing he wouldn’t “dignify that with a response,” Cordes seemed to play up comments from Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) as a way to mock the GOP and play up the allegations. ABC’s Good Morning America found time for this as part of their Trump-hating agenda, but not a second for the continued blowback over President Biden lying to the American people by deciding to pardon son Hunter. Trump-hating correspondent Rachel Scott boasted “these new allegations” — which took over a minute to disclose — “could set the stage for a bruising confirmation battle.” After summarizing attorney general pick Pat Bondi’s trip to the Capitol, she turned to Hegseth, touting Mayer’s piece despite the admission ABC hasn’t confirmed its validity or a separate-but-also-gross New York Times piece: ABC’s Trump-hating correspondent @RachelVScott on ‘Good Morning America’ smearing @PeteHegseth: “But Pete Hegseth is fending off allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual misconduct which he denies. According to The New Yorker, Hegseth was forced to step down from… pic.twitter.com/YRqKidaVr9 — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 3, 2024 NBC’s Today spent only 63 seconds on the confirmation hubbub, and even less on Hegseth. Capital Hill correspondent Garrett Haake boasted Hegseth won’t face “a fairly easy path to confirmation” like Bondi, who “lack[s]...any serious scandal[.]” Haake touted “the steady drip of reports about personal issues around him related to alleged drinking or mismanagement of funds at previous jobs, alleged mistreatment of women” as a millstone as if they just organically came out of the woodwork instead of a coordinated smear campaign. After admitting he’s “denied” “some of” the claims, Haake said he will have “a lot of tough questions answer to lock down support from Republicans that he’ll need.” To see the relevant transcripts from December 3, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

President-elect Donald Trump's sweeping deportation plan could "quickly" eradicate Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua from the United States, according to former Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Ronald Vitiello.Department of Homeland Security data revealed that TDA has a confirmed presence in at least 16 states and is rapidly expanding its territory. The agency has warned that its gang members have "violent tendencies."'Even if 1% of them were here to do harm to the United States, they have a real advantage in this scenario.'The transnational group has been tied to a multitude of crimes across the country, including apartment takeovers, retail theft, assaults, and sex trafficking.Vitiello, who previously served as a former acting deputy commissioner for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told Newsweek that TDA's presence in the country could be wiped out before it is able to secure a strong foothold."In the case of Tren de Aragua, they can be dismantled quickly and definitively because their presence in the United States, although dangerous, has just begun," he explained. "They are particularly vulnerable to removal and deportation, and so the United States could end their lawlessness as quickly as it began."Vitiello continued, "We've seen deadly examples where illegals who have committed crimes and then went on to do terrible things, as in the case of Laken Reilly near Atlanta, who was killed by an individual from Venezuela who was here illegally and was arrested."During a separate interview with Fox Business on Monday, Vitiello stated that the current administration's open border policies require Trump's incoming office to make drastic corrections.Vitiello explained, "Under the Biden-Harris administration, we went through the worst border surge probably in the history of the world, certainly in the history of the United States. So a correction needs to be made.""What are they [migrants] all doing here? Even if 1% of them were here to do harm to the United States, they have a real advantage in this scenario. That's why the deportation efforts are important," he added.When asked whether he thinks Trump's administration will be successful in deporting millions of illegal aliens, he replied, "We must do it.""We have almost 20 million people that have gotten here in the last four years," Vitiello said.He noted that Trump and his incoming border czar, Tom Homan, have stated they plan to deport "the worst first," including criminals and gang members."Let's start with all those criminally involved people; let's get all those convicts out of here and then work our way down the list and protect America," Vitiello remarked.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!