The men allegedly asked them if they were paid for their coverage

House Republicans pressed Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about bias at FEMA after a supervisor directed staff to avoid helping Florida residents with signs supporting Donald Trump. A FEMA supervisor, Marn’i Washington, told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida, to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid after Hurricane Milton, The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported. The directive reportedly prevented FEMA from offering post-hurricane aid to at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags in late October and November. Criswell announced that FEMA had fired Washington and claimed Washington acted on her own initiative in giving these orders. Yet Washington claimed that her directions were not an isolated incident. Sources inside FEMA have spoken to The Daily Signal and other outlets, also saying that the direction for FEMA staff to avoid Trump supporters was not an isolated incident. “Why should we believe this is an isolated incident?” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked the FEMA administrator during a committee hearing. “We are conducting an investigation and we have asked the IG [inspector general] to look into this further, to ensure that this is not beyond the one employee who sent this message,” Criswell said. “It is not indicative of the rest of our workforce and it is completely unacceptable.” ?WEAPONIZED"Why should we believe this is an isolated incident?" Chairman @JamesComer asks."We are conducting an investigation and we have asked the IG to look into this further, to ensure that this is not beyond the one employee who sent this message," Criswell says. "It is… pic.twitter.com/YY5DB03Trv— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 Comer noted the way Democrats have repeatedly demonized Trump supporters. ?DEMONIZATION"For nearly a decade, Democrats… have demonized the millions of Americans who support President Trump," @RepJamesComer said. Trump supporters "are tired of being called trash, cult followers, fascists, Nazis, and many other horrific names for simply loving their… pic.twitter.com/Zt4Gzz2cKG— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The Democratic Line House Democrats thanked Criswell for firing Washington and defended her claims that Washington did not represent a broader trend at the agency. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., insisted that Washington’s actions represented a “quite isolated situation.” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., accused Trump of having “deliberately directed disaster aid based on the party politics of local leadership and past electoral performance, not the needs of the community and disaster survivors.” “In 2018, after California suffered the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in its history, President Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid because of the state’s liberal democratic leanings,” Raskin said. “He reportedly later changed his mind after his staff provided him data showing that there were more Trump voters in Orange County, California, than there were in the entire state of Iowa.” These claims trace back to a Politico story citing Mark Harvey, who served as Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff. Common Practice? Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., noted Washington’s statements that “avoiding politically hostile homes is common throughout FEMA.” “Is this a practice at FEMA?” he asked. “Congressman, there is nothing in any of our policies, our training, or our information sent out to our field workers, to avoid any home for whatever reason, especially not because of a political affiliation,” she replied. “The actions of this one individual are not representative of the work we do at FEMA.” Donalds cited a New York Post article quoting an anonymous FEMA employee calling the avoidance of Trump-supporting houses an “open secret at FEMA.” ?WATCH: @ByronDonalds presses Deanne Criswell on whether Marn'I Washington's direction for FEMA staff to avoid houses with Trump signs was an isolated incident.Criswell insists that it was an isolated incident, despite Washington's statements that it wasn't, and despite FEMA… pic.twitter.com/aqbCo6svJG— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 Citing The Daily Signal Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., cited FEMA whistleblowers who spoke to The Daily Signal and The Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity. “An anonymous FEMA employee, we’ve been told, I guess it would be from The Daily Signal, that employees were also advised to avoid certain homes and specifically used the terms, ‘Hick,’ ‘cowboy,’ redneck,’ ‘Trump supporters,’ and ‘MAGA,’ to describe them,” he said. “Have you come across any of these terms in your investigation so far?” “This is the first I’m hearing any of those terms,” Criswell replied. ?'HICK, COWBOY, REDNECK':@RepGosar cites my reporting in @DailySignal, where I quote a former FEMA employee who said she heard those words when she was told, "Don't go into any house that looks suspicious." Here's the quote:“We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that… pic.twitter.com/TE61h7SaYn— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The former employee did not say FEMA supervisors told her to avoid “Trump supporters” or “MAGA,” but she did mention that it would not be a stretch for FEMA supervisors to use those terms, given guidance she had been given. “We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that looks suspicious,’” the former employee recalled. “They would use words like, ‘hick,’ ‘cowboys,’ ‘rednecks.’ You can change that over to ‘Trump supporters,’ ‘MAGA.’” Referring to Washington, the fired supervisor, the former employee said: “She’s saying, ‘I didn’t make this up on my own.’ I believe her because I’ve totally seen it.” A Matter of Culture Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, noted the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan, which prioritizes “equity” and “climate resilience.” He said a culture focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion may lead FEMA to discriminate against Trump supporters and others, regardless of whether the agency has a specific policy to that effect. “From our standpoint, it’s not the policy that we’re concerned with,” Cloud said. He mentioned many scandals in which the federal government has targeted conservatives for adverse treatment or ended up otherwise harming Americans in recent years. “It’s not in the policy for the IRS to target conservatives, it’s not in the policy for [the National Institutes of Health] to fund gain-of-function research, it’s not in [the Department of Homeland Security] policy for them to release foreign terrorists into our land, but they are,” he said. “It’s not policy in the FBI to target school teachers or people of faith, but all this is happening.” (The FBI targeted parents who expressed concern about COVID-19 and woke policies, and it targeted conservative Catholics, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. It seems Cloud meant to say “concerned parents,” not “school teachers.”) “The common response is, ‘It’s not in the policy manual.’ Well, we’re concerned about the culture,” Cloud explained. He said he did not believe that there is a stated policy or a deliberately-cultivated culture to “skip over Trump signs,” but he said FEMA needs a “proactive response” to prevent such things. “We know that these DEI initiatives have had a discriminatory aspect in them,” Cloud added, turning to the strategic plan, which encourages a focus on racial and religious minorities. ?CULTURE, NOT POLICY@RepCloudTX explains why FEMA's Strategic Plan and the DEI culture it instills helps explain why a FEMA supervisor directed employees to avoid homes with Trump signs.FEMA veterans also emphasized this issue when speaking to me about bias at the agency.… pic.twitter.com/cdSfPj8caP— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 19, 2024 The post 4 Key Takeaways From FEMA Head’s Testimony After Supervisor Told Staff to Avoid Houses With Trump Signs appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Republicans weighing their options to protect female-only spaces on Capitol Hill amid the election of the first transgender member of Congress are receiving support from a key conservative organization. A memo from the American Principles Project circulated on Capitol Hill and first obtained by The Daily Signal encourages Republicans in Congress to root transgenderism out of the Capitol.  “The American people voted for a return to normalcy — and they voted against the Democrats’ transgender extremism,” APP President Terry Schilling writes in the memo. “But it’s not even December yet, and Democrats are leaning in on defending the ‘right’ of a male member of Congress to hang out in the women’s restroom.” The new member of Congress in question is Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., a biological man who identifies as a woman. McBride’s use of women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill as a member of Congress became a live issue on Monday when Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a resolution that would prohibit lawmakers and House employees from using single-sex bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex. Mace confirmed that the resolution came in response to McBride’s election and told members of the press she was “absolutely 100% going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms.” Schilling’s memo stood in support of Mace’s resolution. “McBride would prefer to use female private spaces on Capitol grounds,” the memo reads. “This presents a serious privacy issue for female members of Congress and female Hill staffers, which led to Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s recent announcement of a resolution to explicitly protect women’s private spaces on Capitol grounds.” “There should be no ambiguity on this, especially when Republicans control Congress: men should use male facilities, and women should use female facilities,” Schilling writes. In interviews and on the campaign trail, McBride has attempted to de-emphasize transgender rights as a campaign issue. “When I was campaigning in Delaware, I was not hearing about these attacks on trans people. I was hearing about the cost of living,” McBride told PBS News after the election. “I was hearing about the need for affordable childcare, housing and health care.” But McBride has a long history of radical transgender activism, the APP memo submits.  “McBride only saw a political career boost after identifying as a transgender female in 2012,” Schilling argues. “Since then, McBride has worked for the Obama White House, Equality Delaware, the Center for American Progress, and the Human Rights Campaign. The Delaware representative’s area of policy expertise has always been ‘transgender rights.’ McBride is widely credited on the Left with shaping Joe Biden’s personal views and political evolution on transgender issues. This is important context as McBride often pretends not to be motivated in politics by so-called ‘transgender identity’ — an obvious lie.” After Mace filed the resolution, McBride said it represented a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”  “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” McBride said. When House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was asked whether McBride was a man or woman at a press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson replied, “Look, I’m not going to get into this. We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people.” “There’s a concern about uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that. This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before,” Johnson added. “And we’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion, with member consensus on it. And we will accommodate the needs of every single person.” Johnson faced swift criticism from conservatives on social media for not answering the question directly. He clarified his comments later Tuesday afternoon. Johnson said he “rejected the premise of the question because the answer is so obvious.” “Let me be unequivocally clear,” Johnson said. “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman.” The APP memo cites polling showing that the American people agree with Mace’s resolution. A Nov. 13 poll from Napolitan News Service/RMG Research found that 75% of respondents said biological men should not be allowed to use women’s restrooms. “The American people sent Republicans to Washington with a mandate to protect women and children from transgender ideology. There’s no question about that,” Schilling claims. “Republicans in the House and Senate should feel comfortable defending their positions not only because they are right and just, but because they are politically popular.” But a House vote on Mace’s resolution would only mark the start of rooting out transgenderism for APP. “We encourage both chambers of next year’s Congress to call an up or down vote on Rep. Mace’s resolution, along with bills to protect women’s sports, ban sex changes for kids, and prohibit taxpayer funding from going toward the transgender industry,” the memo concluded. The post Conservative Group Encourages GOP House to Ban Trans Rep-Elect From Using Women’s Facilities appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sitting before members of Congress on Capitol Hill Tuesday, retired Border Patrol agent J.J. Carrell told the lawmakers that the “United States federal government is the world’s largest child sex trafficking organization in modern history.”  WATCH: Retired Border Patrol agent J.J. Carrell tells members of Congress that the "United States federal government is the world's largest child sex trafficking organization in modern history." pic.twitter.com/0gVOAqpSDV— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) November 19, 2024 Carrell served in the Border Patrol for 24 years, retiring as a deputy patrol agent in charge of the San Diego Sector before going on to author a book on the border crisis and film two documentaries on the topic.  “I state with complete certainty that [President Joe] Biden, [Vice President Kamala] Harris, and [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas intentionally, strategically and purposely weaponized illegal immigration and use it as a tool to fundamentally transform America,” Carrell said during the joint hearing by the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability, both subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee. “Inside this invasion, the unspoken evil of child trafficking and more specifically, child sex trafficking has flourished,” he said.   Where Are the Missing Migrant Children? In August, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that it does not know the location or status of more than 300,000 migrant children. Between fiscal year 2019 and 2023, 32,000 illegal alien minors did not appear for their immigration court hearing, and an additional 291,000 were never given an immigration court date.  According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 81% of unaccompanied alien children are between the ages of 13 and 18. The average age of a trafficking victim in the U.S. is between 12 and 15, according to Anti-Trafficking International.    Under current U.S. law, after being apprehended by Border Patrol or Customs and Border Protection, unaccompanied migrant children are released into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which in turn releases the child to a sponsor in the U.S.  For a decade, HHS has demonstrated a “record of losing children to sponsors who abuse, exploit, traffic, and harm children in unthinkable ways,” Tara Rodas told members of Congress during her testimony at Tuesday’s hearing, which was titled “Trafficked, Exploited, and Missing: Migrant Children Victims of the Biden-Harris Administration.”  As a government employee, Rodas was recruited in 2021 to help HHS with the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the southern border. She soon discovered that the department’s unaccompanied migrant child program was allowing for the exploitation of children.   The names of the sponsors who take the children from the Office of Refugee Resettlement are run through the National Crime Information Center before a child is released. A sponsor can be a distant relative or have no blood relation to the child at all, opening the door for human traffickers to prey on minors, which, according to Rodas, has and continues to happen regularly.   “Migrant children are working overnight shifts in slaughterhouses and factories, and some may die today because they don’t have the knowledge or skills to do the job that their supposed to be doing, but their doing it because they need to repay debts to their smugglers and traffickers,” she said.  ?Tara Rodas, former deputy to the director of the Federal Case Management Team at HHS: "Children, boys and girls, are being sold for sex. Just last month I spoke to a care provider in Florida who told me about cases of migrant children as young as 8 with sexually transmitted… pic.twitter.com/H9BbF3W6AT— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) November 19, 2024 Rodas accused the U.S. of operating a “white glove delivery system” that is responsible for handing migrant children over to “MS-13, 18th Street Gang, Russian Balkans crime syndicates, and other unsavory characters.”   WATCH: Tara Rodas, former deputy to the director of the Federal Case Management Team at HHS:"I'm very unclear as to why we're luring children to the United States to be the white glove delivery system of these children to known MS-13, 18th Street Gang, Russian Balkans crime… pic.twitter.com/FTQ5NQoyx2— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) November 19, 2024 In defense of HHS, Rodas pointed out that the department is “not an investigative or law enforcement agency. HHS simply does not have the knowledge, skills, ability, or the tradecraft to protect children from traffickers.”   Furthermore, child trafficking has become a highly sophisticated operation, according to Rodas, mirroring the “tactics and operations of terrorist organization.”   HHS Whistleblower Tara Rodas: “HHS has a 10-year demonstrated record of losing children to sponsors who abuse, exploit, traffic, and harm children in unthinkable ways.” pic.twitter.com/GNn4C4q5N2— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) November 19, 2024 Solutions Solutions to end the exploitation of migrant children, according to Rodas, include DNA testing for sponsors who claim to be a relative of the child, and prison time for sponsors who cannot produce the child that was given into their care.   “Let’s mobilize the full power of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to dismantle these criminal networks,” Rodas said, recommending that child trafficking activity should be elevated on the National Intelligence Priorities Framework and be designated a terrorist activity.   “We cannot be a nation that looks the other way,” Rodas said. “We have a moral imperative to care for children that the government takes into custody, and the time to act is now.”  The post US Government Is ‘World’s Largest Child Sex Trafficking Organization,’ Former Border Patrol Agent Claims appeared first on The Daily Signal.

THE CENTER SQUARE—Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Tuesday that his office will oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss his felony conviction in New York. Bragg said that despite plans to oppose Trump’s motion, his office would agree to hit pause on the proceedings pending the judge’s decision on Trump’s motion to dismiss. Bragg also suggested the case could wait until Trump finishes his term in the White House.  “No current law establishes that a president’s temporary immunity from prosecution requires dismissal of a post-trial criminal proceeding that was initiated at a time when the defendant was not immune from criminal prosecution and that is based on unofficial conduct for which the defendant is also not immune,” Bragg wrote in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan. “Rather, existing law suggests that the court must balance competing constitutional interests and proceed ‘in a manner that preserves both the independence of the executive and the integrity of the criminal justice system.'” In late May, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all counts in his ‘hush money’ case. Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records for disguising hush money payments to an adult film actress as legal costs ahead of the 2016 election. Under New York state law, falsifying business records in the first degree is a Class E felony with a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Trump and his attorneys want the judge to dismiss the case based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s immunity decision. In July, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presidents and former presidents have absolute immunity for actions related to core constitutional powers and presumptive immunity for official actions. The ruling said the president has no immunity for unofficial conduct. Bragg said Tuesday that the case could remain on pause through the end of Trump’s second term. Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the two-way race for the White House. He will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025. “Given the need to balance competing constitutional interests, consideration must be given to various non-dismissal options that may address any concerns raised by the pendency of a post-trial criminal proceeding during the presidency, such as deferral of all remaining criminal proceedings until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term,” Bragg wrote. New York District Attorney letterDownload Originally published by The Center Square. The post Bragg Won’t Drop Trump’s ‘Hush Money’ Sentencing, But May Suspend It for 4 Years appeared first on The Daily Signal.

RFK in the Crosshairs of Democrats, Big Pharma, and Big Food

For years, New York Times reporters used their “reporting” to encourage social media companies to drive conservatives off of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook through blacklisting, censorship, hysterical fearmongering over what liberals consider “misinformation,” even attempts to eavesdrop on suspected gatherings of wrong-think. “Journalist” Taylor Lorenz in particular longed to play social media hall monitor, lamenting in February 2021 that one couldn’t listen in on private conversations taking place within online apps like Clubhouse [remember Clubhouse?]. Now, with Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) and Trump’s Truth Social, one of those would be monitors, San Francisco-based reporter Sheera Frenkel, whined that the left has no safe sandbox left to play in. Check out this headline deck: “Liberals Are Left Out in the Cold as Social Media Veers Right -- If the election underscored anything about the internet, it was the ascendancy of social platforms for the right. That puts Democrats at a disadvantage.” Do violins come that small? After Donald J. Trump won the election this month, his supporters gravitated to a panoply of online destinations to celebrate. Hundreds of thousands of posts lauding Mr. Trump’s victory filled Truth Social, the social platform that the president-elect owns. Speculation about what the new administration would accomplish ran rampant on X, which is owned by Elon Musk. Gab, Parler and other right-wing social media sites were flooded with thousands of memes glorifying Mr. Trump. No similar spaces existed for the left. Meta’s Instagram, Threads and Facebook had publicly de-emphasized politics leading up to the election. Mr. Musk had transformed Twitter into X and shifted it to the right. And no other tech platform had gained momentum as a public square for liberals. But not for lack of trying: Economist turned Democratic hack Paul Krugman has devoted a couple of Times columns to trying to escape Elon Musk. If the election underscored anything about the internet, it was how far social media platforms had moved to the right. While Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other sites continue to be popular gathering places for entertainment and meme-making, political discourse online has increasingly shifted to an array of mostly right-wing sites that have built up their audiences and stoked largely partisan conversations. The change was an unintended consequence of a series of decisions made by some of the biggest social platforms nearly four years ago. (Decisions strongly supported by the censor supporters at the Times, including Frenkel.) After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Facebook and Twitter booted Mr. Trump and his far-right supporters from their platforms. In response, Mr. Trump and his allies, who accused the tech companies of censorship, flocked to or started their own social media sites that promoted conservative causes. By the time the mainstream platforms allowed Mr. Trump and other right-wing figures to return, they had increased their online followings and influence. Frenkel noted that Facebook and Twitter “removed the accounts of militia groups that had participated in the riot and other far-right supporters of the 'Stop the Steal; movement,” and also froze Trump’s personal accounts, causing conservatives to migrate to Gab and Parler. It seems that once the political censorship slowed, social media becomes a more hospitable place for conservatives. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, became less political. In January 2020, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, told investors that he was “considering steps” to reduce political content on Facebook. Over the next four years, he disbanded the company’s election integrity team, which focused on securing information around elections, and removed tools that allowed researchers and reporters to track misinformation. Frenkel pushed the left’s latest idea of a social media safe space: the X-like platform Bluesky. On Monday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, lauded Bluesky as a welcoming place. “A thing I like here is it’s okay to have moments of happiness in public without being broadly scolded, and I believe that sustaining this kind of humanity will be very important as we resist fascism,” she wrote. Actually, it sounds like a censorious leftist hellhole. After the post-election influx, the “Bluesky Safety” team reported: “In the past 24 hours, we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports/hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360k reports.” Sounds like lefty-on-lefty infighting already. Here's Jordan Schachtel of The Dossier, commenting on Bluesky under the email subject line: “I got banned from BlueSky for committing wrongthink,” wrote: “Far from its corporate media-advertised depiction as a place for joy and friendly conversation. BlueSky is a safe space for seething left-wingers to engage exclusively with their political allies and to rage at their perceived enemies.”

Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York blamed a Jewish lobbying group for the Democratic Party's woes in the election and got nailed with online backlash. Ocasio-Cortez posted the missive on social media in an attempt to steer the liberal in-fighting against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. 'Scapegoating the Jews for one’s failure is unreflective and a truly pathetic and ugly tactic.' "If people want to talk about members of Congress being overly influenced by a special interest group pushing a wildly unpopular agenda that pushes voters away from Democrats then they should be discussing AIPAC," said Ocasio-Cortez in response to a senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The congresswoman was immediately assailed by those who perceived the criticism as motivated by anti-Semitism. "Unsurprising, but still deeply concerning to see AOC react to the election by blaming @AIPAC for 'overly influencing' Congress and falsely claiming that supporting Israel is 'wildly unpopular.' Scapegoating the Jews for one’s failure is unreflective and a truly pathetic and ugly tactic," responded Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. "Many lessons should be learned from the results of the 2024 election. If the only lesson learned by @AOC is to blame the Jews and Israel, then she deserves to be called out for trafficking in Antisemitism," replied Newsweek contributor Joel Petlin. "There is a critical conversation to be had about AIPAC. But so singularly focusing on them here - when there are a number of special interest groups that operate the same way - plays into dangerous tropes," said Amy Spitalnick of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Ocasio-Cortez has been accused of anti-Semitism before, but she has also been excoriated by the far left for not being sufficiently anti-Israel. In October, the Democratic Socialists of America, the congresswoman's party, said it was going to take a vote to censure her for daring to approve of bills in Congress affirming Israel's right to exist. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

No Farmers, No FOOD: UK Farmers Descend on London to Protest Labour's Insane Farm Inheritance Tax

You've Been Trump'd! Newsweek Becomes Punchline By Fact Checking Future-Predicting Prank Painting