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Quadruple tariffs against Chinese EVs

There are several Warbonds in Helldivers 2, each offering unique toys to play with. But is the new one worthy of your hard-earned Super Credits? Let me answer the question: Is the Polar Patriots Warbond worth it in Helldivers 2? Should you buy the Polar Patriots Warbond in Helldivers 2? The Polar Patriots Warbond offers a shiny assortment of weapons, cosmetics, and boosters. If you’re into the icy theme of the new armor, then Polar Patriots may be the Warbond for you. Sadly, the Warbond may disappoint you if you’re after overpowered weapons. Let’s look at the cosmetic offering first before diving into the guns. I think we can all agree that most armor in Helldivers 2 looks pretty similar. The Polar ensemble is far more striking, and if you’re tired of the norm, there’s plenty to enjoy. While the new helmets aren’t to my taste, they are unique and you’ll stand out with them on. Screenshot: PC Invasion On that note, there ar...

Animal Well is a puzzle playground ready to be solved, filled with mysteries, secrets, and easter eggs. One easter egg allows the player to turn into the Fox from the video game “Tunic”, and this guide details how it’s done. Animal Well: How to turn into the fox from Tunic Players can turn into the fox from Tunic in Animal Well by simply pressing and holding the jump button. Once you press and hold the jump button, your character will jump into the air, land on the ground, and then turn into the fox from Tunic after holding the button for about five seconds. Remember, you must hold down the jump button or this easter egg will not work. Unfortunately, turning into the fox from Tunic doesn’t have any benefits in Animal Well. For example, you don’t gain new abilities and you can’t even move around as the fox. In other words, you will transform back to Animal Well’s main character as soon as you start movin...

In Solo Leveling Arise, you’ll need Gate Keys to enter the many dungeons that’ll be available to you at any time. It isn’t exactly obvious how to get more, however. Gates are currently the only way to farm XP outside of the story, but farming for levels is hard considering the limit on Gate Keys. Every way to get Gate Keys in Solo Leveling Arise Unfortunately, there are a few ways to get Gate Keys in Solo Leveling Arise. Every day, all of your Gate Keys will replenish. This means that you’ll only have so many gate attempts every day. So if you want to maximise XP gain without spending a penny, you’ll simply have to clear all of the gates you can with whatever Gate Keys you have. This isn’t typically a challenge for most, so this comes as a rather limiting factor. So if you’re desperate to clear more gates, you can spend Essence Stones. 150 Essence Stones will get you one Gate Key, which isn’t a bad trade, but isn’t...

Why does the Biden administration want open borders so badly? For three very big reasons. One is ideology, which I covered in last week’s BorderLine column. Another is extortion, which I will cover in next week’s column. But this week, I look at how the Left uses illegal immigration to give itself an unfair electoral advantage.   First, illegal immigration affects congressional representation because the apportionment of members of Congress by state is based on U.S. census data. As Heritage Foundation Border Security and Immigration Center Director Lora Ries writes, the census currently counts all noncitizens—from green card holders to illegal aliens—in addition to U.S. citizens for the purposes of apportioning congressional districts among the states. The more citizens in a state, the more congressional districts—i.e., seats in Congress—a state gets. In turn, the number of congressional districts in a state determines how many Electoral College votes that state receives. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) While president, Donald Trump tried to restore the U.S. citizenship question on the 2020 census and exclude all noncitizens from apportionment calculations. Yet court challenges prevented him from doing so prior to the deadline for getting a new census form printed and distributed. Joe Biden then immediately terminated the effort when he took office. That should tell you which states and party benefit most from the population overcount. The second way mass illegal immigration undermines U.S. elections is through negligence and fraud. Only American citizens can legally vote; it is a crime for a noncitizen to vote. Yet, in many states, noncitizens can easily register and vote with little chance of detection. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as “Motor Voter,” was intended to make it easier for U.S. citizens to register to vote when they applied for or renewed a driver’s license. However, Motor Voter also made it easier for noncitizens to accidentally or purposefully get on voter rolls. In December 2022, the Reno Gazette Journal reported that if applicants applying for a Nevada driver’s license check the online box saying they are eligible to vote, their information is sent to Nevada’s secretary of state for registration. The Washoe County Registrar’s Office told the Gazette Journal that it is possible for a noncitizen to register by falsely claiming citizenship (though this is a felony). Moreover, Nevada accepts alien work authorization cards as proof of identity. Millions of aliens the Biden administration has released into the country are eligible for such cards and could register to vote in Nevada and other states with similar registration processes with little risk of detection. It would seem to be common sense for all states to want to close loopholes and maintain confidence in their electoral systems. Yet, one of the biggest canards in American politics today is to equate election integrity efforts—like ensuring proper identification or limiting mail-in and early voting—with voter suppression. There was real and shameful voter suppression in our nation’s past. Efforts in the post-Civil War South to deter blacks from registering included discriminatory literacy tests and poll taxes; police intimidation at polling places; and at the extreme, cross-burnings, bombings, and even killings. But the civil rights movement, strong new laws, and voter-registration drives ended the “Jim Crow” era by the 1960s. Poll taxes and literacy tests were banned. In 2022, 98.9% of voters in Georgia “felt safe in their polling location” and “98.9% reported no issues casting a ballot,” according to a University of Georgia postelection poll. Nonetheless, legitimate efforts to ensure that voters are legally entitled to vote, that they do so in accordance with the law, and that their votes are properly counted are falsely labeled as voter suppression. “Americans need and deserve a system in which it is easy to vote and hard to cheat,” says The Heritage Foundation, which publishes a state-by-state Election Integrity Scorecard to encourage best practices from electoral officials and vigilance by voters. As Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Ensuring that only American citizens vote in American elections is a straightforward requirement for maintaining election security and public trust.” And yet, progressive groups seem intent on fighting efforts to ensure that voter rolls contain only eligible voters. The logical inference is that they believe ineligible noncitizens would be more likely to vote for their candidates. As Raffensperger writes, these activists want states “to rely on a person’s word” when registering to vote and oppose all efforts to verify citizenship. Unfortunately, in the real world, people sometimes lie—especially when there are no consequences. A Heritage database currently records 1,500 cases of proven election fraud nationwide—and that is merely a sampling. When it comes to abusing absentee ballots, most of the perpetrators in the database are Americans. But on just the first page (of five) for one state (North Carolina) are cases of noncitizens from the Congo, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nigeria convicted of falsely claiming American citizenship to register to vote. They committed a fundamental offense against our democracy, and yet most of them got a one-year pretrial “diversion program,” after completion of which, charges were dropped. Some states are better than others regarding voter integrity. Virginia cross-references Motor Voter data with the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, and “since 2014, has removed 11,000 ‘declared non-citizen[s]’” from the voter rolls, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Meanwhile, the foundation is suing Wisconsin and Minnesota for lack of transparency with their voter rolls. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, recently introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to require states to obtain proof of citizenship—in person—when registering an individual to vote. Further, the bill requires states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls.   Meanwhile, this week, the House passed the Equal Representation Act, a bill that would restore the U.S. citizenship question to the census and exclude noncitizens from congressional apportionment. The bill passed 206-202 by a completely party-line vote. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., forced a vote on a similar bill in the Senate in March, but it failed 51-45. All of the Democrats and one Republican voted against it. Election integrity shouldn’t be a liberal versus conservative issue, and maintaining accurate voter rolls is a national, not a political, goal. Impartial legislation to ensure both integrity and accuracy ahead of our next election and census should receive bipartisan support.   The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more. Read Other BorderLine Columns: The Ideological Roots of the Open Borders Push US Should Adopt UK’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ to Address Illegal Immigration Biden’s Precarious Parole Programs for Illegal Immigrants My Look Inside Biden’s Illegal Immigrant Catch-and-Release Craziness What I Saw on My Latest Visit to the Border The post The Ways the Left Exploits Illegal Immigration for Electoral Gain: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Apart from the taxpayer-funded lawfare being waged against former President Donald Trump by leftist prosecutors in New York, Atlanta, and Washington, there is no clearer proof that the Left has embraced “by any means necessary” as its credo than the politicization of Secret Service protection of President Joe Biden’s presidential rivals. Not only has Biden’s Department of Homeland Security denied five requests for Secret Service protection from independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the flimsiest of grounds, but now the Democratic congressman from Mississippi who chaired the kangaroo court Jan. 6 committee is proposing to strip Trump of his Secret Service detail if he were convicted in any of the politically motivated trials he’s facing. Never mind that this brazen legislation, championed by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has no chance of being enacted by Congress or that the courts would surely enjoin it as unconstitutional if it were. Its sheer coldbloodedness is appalling.  Thompson knows full well that if any of Trump’s trials—which the former president calls “witch hunts”—were to end in a prison sentence and he had no Secret Service protection behind bars, he would have a target on his back for attack by other inmates. (Think Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the killing of George Floyd, who barely survived a Nov. 24 stabbing in prison in Arizona.)  Such is the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has suffused the Left. What other possible reason than bloodlust would motivate Thompson to sponsor such sociopathic legislation—even though he surely knows that it reeks of being an unconstitutional bill of attainder? The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School states that courts apply a legal test to determine whether legislation violates the ban on bills of attainder under Article 1, Sections 9 and 10 of the Constitution by determining whether the law “targets specific named or identifiable individuals or groups.” Thompson’s Disgraced Former Protectees Act, introduced April 19, includes only one “identifiable individual”: Donald Trump. Thompson is the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, which brings us back to disgraced Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ repeated denial of Secret Service protection for Kennedy since he announced his candidacy just over a year ago. Given that the independent presidential hopeful’s father and uncle were both assassinated, it’s beyond appalling that Biden and Mayorkas can’t even be shamed into authorizing Secret Service protection for him. Even many of Kennedy’s own relatives who have inexplicably endorsed Biden’s reelection bid over their own kin have asked for a security detail for him—to no avail. At an April 18 event in Philadelphia at which Biden was endorsed for reelection by several members of the extended Kennedy clan (including two of RFK Jr.’s own siblings), the president obliquely alluded to the assassinations. “Your family … has endured such violence,” he said. If they expected authorization of Secret Service protection as a show of presidential gratitude for turning their backs on their own relative, they were sadly mistaken. Mayorkas asserts that Kennedy doesn’t qualify for Secret Service protection. As recently as March 28, the homeland security chief wrote to the Kennedy campaign: “Based on the facts and the recommendation of the advisory committee, I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.” That’s patently false, inasmuch as Mayorkas and the president have wide latitude in authorizing the protection. You could ask then-President Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 extended it to then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s uncle, after he launched an insurgent Democratic primary challenge to Carter. It’s as if Biden and Mayorkas actually want harm to befall the scion of the legendary political family because they fear his independent candidacy will siphon enough votes away from the incumbent to ensure Trump’s return to the Oval Office next January. What is that if not “by any means necessary”? One thing is certain: It’s not as if Biden’s spendthrift administration is trying to save federal taxpayer dollars by withholding the protection. Kennedy rightly characterizes the repeated denial of protection as the “weaponization of government” and “a political scandal.” A day after the most recent denial, his attorney, Aaron Siri, in a letter to Mayorkas, called it “capricious, an abuse of discretion, and clearly politically motivated,” adding: If any harm befalls Mr. Kennedy or any other member of the public who may be injured or killed in any incident that arises due to lack of Secret Service protection to the candidate and the deterrent it affords, we will seek to hold you accountable. Translation: The president and his lackey Mayorkas will have blood on their hands. Originally published by The Washington Times The post Biden’s and Thompson’s Disgraceful Weaponization of the Secret Service appeared first on The Daily Signal.

NEW YORK—Stormy Daniels testified Thursday that she had no direct knowledge of former President Donald Trump’s involvement in the $130,000 payment made to keep her quiet about claims of an alleged affair in 2016, which is at the center of the case against him. Daniels’ detailed testimony about her alleged affair with Trump in 2006 prompted the defense to twice motion for a mistrial, once on Tuesday and again on Thursday, though Judge Juan Merchan denied the motion both times. Still, her admission that she did not know Trump’s role in the deal highlighted that she was testifying despite being unable to speak to the core charges—that Trump falsified business records while reimbursing his former attorney Michael Cohen for the payment—suggesting she was on the witness stand for another reason. “There was zero relevance to her testimony,” defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “She had no information to share about bookkeeping at the Trump Organization. All the added was a salaciousness designed to make Trump look like a womanizer and a manipulator. In a rational legal world, she would have caused a mistrial.” Trump’s defense attorney argued Tuesday that prosecutors had only asked Daniels certain questions to “inflame the jury.” Establishing Trump’s involvement in the payment and Cohen’s reimbursement is the key to the prosecution’s case. Daniels’ admission that she never spoke directly with Trump about the $130,000 payment came toward the end of cross-examination, after a morning of defense attorney Susan Necheles seeking to draw out inconsistencies between the story of her encounter with Trump she told on the stand and how she had previously told it, including in her 2011 interview with In Touch magazine. Necheles sought to demonstrate Daniels was driven by twin motives: money and her hatred of Trump. She pointed to Daniels capitalizing on Trump’s indictment by pushing merchandise from her store on Twitter, highlighting items in her shop like a “Stormy Saint of Indictments” candle and a “Stormy Daniels Political Power” comic. When asked about the core charge in the case, Daniels said she is not an attorney and doesn’t really understand what Trump is being indicted for. “There’s a lot of indictments,” she told Necheles. Necheles tries to draw out inconsistencies between the story of her encounter with Trump she told on the stand and the one in her 2011 interview with In Touch magazine, walking back through her testimony and grilling her on the details.— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) May 9, 2024 Necheles pointed out that after the nondisclosure agreement, Daniels continued to profit from her story through a strip club tour titled “Make America Horny Again” and her documentary. “You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex appear to be real?” Necheles asked. “Wow,” Daniels said. “That’s not how I would put it.” If the story with Trump was untrue, Daniels said she “would have written it to be a lot better.” In one of the stranger moments, Necheles inquired about Daniels cashing in her purported ability to speak to ghosts and the dead—and about living in a New Orleans house that was supposedly haunted, where spirits “attacked” her boyfriend. “We brought in experts,” Daniels said of the house, explaining she brought in religious experts and people to measure the electromagnetic fields. “A lot of the activity was completely debunked as a giant possum that was under the house.” Daniels’ time on the stand drew significant attention, with the Thursday morning press and public access lines stretching far longer than usual. But it was the other witnesses who testified Thursday who had knowledge of Trump’s bookkeeping and habits. Rebecca Manochio, a junior bookkeeper at the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg’s former executive assistant, testified about how checks were sent for Trump to sign while he was in the White House in 2017. She explained they were sent first to the personal address of Trump’s former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, and later to former Trump aide Johnny McEntee. Another witness called Thursday, Trump’s former White House executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout, testified that Trump on a few occasions called Weisselberg for clarification on checks he had questions about. Westerhout also testified about his family relations and work practices, specifically noting his relationship with his wife, Melania Trump, was one of “mutual respect.” “I just found their relationship really special,” she said, noting they laughed a lot when she came to the Oval Office and he would sometimes tell her to call Melania if he was running late. “He was my boss but she was definitely the one in charge,” Westerhout said. The defense has sought to demonstrate that payments to suppress stories prior were motivated by his concern for his family over his campaign. Merchan dismissed the jury Thursday to allow the defense to argue two motions: one to modify the gag order to allow Trump to respond to Daniels and another renewed motion for a mistrial. He denied them both. For the gag order, Merchan said that his concern was for “protecting the integrity” of the proceedings as a whole, noting that other witnesses will see Trump’s comments, not just Daniels. “I continue to be concerned about witnesses using the gag order as a sword instead of a shield,” Merchan said. As to the mistrial motion, Merchan reasoned that Daniels’ testimony was relevant because the defense had denied the alleged sexual encounter in their opening statement, putting the jury in the position of having to choose who to believe. This, he said, means the prosecution needs an opportunity to “rehabilitate” Daniels’ credibility as a witness and corroborate the story. “This isn’t a case about sex,” defense attorney Todd Blanche told the judge while making his argument. He argued that many of the prosecution’s questions were not relevant, highlighting questions about their relative height differences and whether Trump used a condom. Merchan, as he did on Tuesday, again questioned why the defense did not raise more objections during Daniels’ testimony. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Stormy Daniels’ Admission on Witness Stand Sheds Light on Why Alvin Bragg Had Her Testify Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Watch: Billionaire Real Estate Investor Expects ‘One Or Two’ Bank Failures A Week, UK Economist Says “Entering A New Dark Age”

Virtual Home Invasions: We’re Not Safe from Government Peeping Toms