President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly planning to ramp up the U.S. pressure campaign on Iran by enacting crippling sanctions on the Islamic regime immediately after taking office. The Wall Street Journal reported that the plans include “drastically increasing sanctions” on the country and killing its oil industry as part of an “aggressive strategy to undercut Tehran’s support of violent Mideast proxies and its nuclear program.” Trump is expected to move rapidly to cut off Iran’s oil revenue, including by going after “foreign ports and traders who handle Iranian oil.” The report said that Trump’s new “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran will also factor in the fact that the regime has repeatedly tried to assassinate him and some of his top officials from his first administration. “People tend to take that stuff personally,” said Mick Mulroy, a top Pentagon official during Trump’s first term. “If he’s going to be hawkish on any particular country, designated major adversaries, it’s Iran.” Prosecutors unsealed an indictment this week against Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran, on multiple charges, including murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, money laundering conspiracy, conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ Prosecutors said that he hired two individuals to kill an Iranian dissident and two Jewish Americans. However, with the elections approaching, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) told Shakeri to pause his efforts to kill the dissident and the two Jewish Americans because they wanted him to focus on killing Trump. “SHAKERI indicated to IRGC Official-1 that this would cost a ‘huge’ amount of money,” the indictment said. “In response, IRGC Official-1 said that ‘we have already spent a lot of money [s]o the money’s not an issue,’ which SHAKERI understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination.” During a meeting just one month ago with the IRGC official, Shakeri was instructed to have a plan in place to assassinate Trump within a week and that if he could not do it, Iran would put the plan on hold because they believed Trump “would lose the election and, afterward, it would be easier to assassinate.”

The New York Times is under fire after the paper seemingly downplayed the attack on Jews in Amsterdam Thursday night, calling it “soccer violence.” Organized gangs reportedly assaulted Jews leaving a soccer game where Maccabi Tel Aviv played. Videos posted to social media show assailants hunting, beating, and injuring Israelis while shouting “Free Palestine” and curses in Arabic.  Hi @nytimes, We fixed it for you: pic.twitter.com/SjcLqHATcL — David Saranga (@DavidSaranga) November 8, 2024 The Times dismissed the attack — which Israeli officials are calling a pogrom — as “violence tied to a soccer game.” David Saranga, an Israeli diplomat, led the charge against the paper, stating that their headline should change from “Violence Tied to Soccer Game Prompts Dozens of Arrests in Amsterdam” to “Violent Antisemitic Pogrom Prompts Israeli Rescue Mission To Amsterdam.” The Times later changed its headline to “Israeli soccer fans injured in Amsterdam Attacks That Authorities Call Antisemitic.” Saranga also suggested the subhead read, “The police said 57 people were arrested after terrorists lynch Jews who were in Amsterdam to watch Israeli Team. The Attacks were driven by antisemitism.” The Times later changed their subhead to “Dutch officials said that people had attacked Israeli fans as tensions flared around a soccer match.” On X, several users attacked the Times for the headline, accusing the outlet of lying. The New York Times writes lies to cover up mass violence against Jews in Amsterdam @johnjyoon @jin_charli @clairemoses pic.twitter.com/bvWagIbPtL — Gabe Hoffman (@GabeHoff) November 8, 2024 The New York Times buried the Holocaust in the back pages. True to form, they’re now burying a pogrom in Amsterdam where organized mobs of Muslims hunted Jews to beat, stab, and even run over Jews with their moving vehicles (while recording it all and proudly posting it on their… pic.twitter.com/tGOJyEcsh0 — Marina Medvin ?? (@MarinaMedvin) November 8, 2024 King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands condemned the attack on Friday, telling Israeli president Isaac Herzog, “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.” I fixed your appalling headline @nytimes pic.twitter.com/uSFEWWX9m9 — Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) November 8, 2024 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated the “harsh pictures of the assault on our citizens in Amsterdam will not be overlooked.” “Prime Minister Netanyahu views the horrifying incident with utmost gravity and demands that the Dutch government and security forces take vigorous and swift action against the rioters, and ensure the safety of our citizens,” the statement said. Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called the attack a “pogrom.” “‘Globalize the intifada’ was not just a slogan for these terrorist supporters,” Danon told Fox News. “I urge the Dutch government to help all Israelis and Jewish people immediately. It’s time to respond with force against these barbaric rioters.” President Joe Biden condemned the attacks Friday afternoon, calling them “despicable.”  “The Antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam are despicable and echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted,” Biden wrote in a statement on X. “We’ve been in touch with Israeli and Dutch officials and appreciate Dutch authorities’ commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blamed President Joe Biden this week for Vice President Kamala Harris’ blowout loss to President-elect Donald Trump. The former Speaker of the House — who played a key role in whipping up Democrats behind the scenes over the summer to force Biden out of the race after his disastrous debate performance against Trump — made the remarks during an interview with The New York Times. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.” “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward,” she claimed. “But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.” However, Pelosi said in September that it was a fair and open primary. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ “We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it,” she said. “Nobody else got in the race.” “We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it. Nobody else got in the race,” @SpeakerPelosi tells @kadiagoba. pic.twitter.com/y2O0JhKBgc — Semafor (@semafor) September 18, 2024 In the interview with the Times, Pelosi fumed over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) saying that the Democrats lost because they focused on identity politics instead of economic issues. “Bernie Sanders has not won,” Pelosi claimed. “With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.” “Guns, God and gays — that’s the way they say it,” she continued. “Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”

There is no doubt that President-elect Donald Trump has won a sweeping victory, becoming only the second U.S. president to be elected to a second, non-consecutive term in one of the most remarkable political comeback stories in American history. But his victory in the Electoral College would’ve been even bigger if two factors hadn’t cheated him out of the additional votes he should have received.  Why do I say this? Because of the jarring errors the Census Bureau admitted it made in its population numbers for multiple states, and its unfair inclusion of aliens in the population used for congressional apportionment. That inclusion dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens, distorting representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.  Let me explain.  First, the costly errors. In 2022, the Census Bureau issued a report in which it announced that a post-census survey revealed that its count was wrong in 14 states. It undercounted the populations of Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, while overcounting the populations of Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah. The errors ranged from a low of 1.49% to a high of 6.79%.  Due to these errors, Florida did not receive two additional congressional seats it should have gotten, Texas lost out on one additional seat, and Minnesota and Rhode Island each retained a seat they should have lost. Colorado received an additional seat it didn’t deserve.  Since Trump won Florida and Texas, he should have gotten an additional three Electoral College votes from those states. Kamala Harris should have had three Electoral College votes deducted from her total with her wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Rhode Island.  Second, the inclusion of aliens, both legal and illegal, in the population used for apportionment also had a significant effect on the election since they are included in the population used to determine how many votes each state is entitled to in the Electoral College. That’s a major reason why liberals fought so hard to prevent a citizenship question being reinstated on the 2020 Census form; they don’t want the citizen population available for apportionment or redistricting.  We have had an unprecedented, intentionally engineered influx of illegal aliens in the four years of the Biden-Harris administration—at least 10 million. But even before this latest population explosion of illegal aliens that has made the problem even worse, the Congressional Research Service in 2015 issued a report on what would happen if apportionment were based solely on citizen population. According to the CRS, that would have shifted seven congressional seats.  Gaining one seat each (with the 2024 winner noted): Louisiana (Trump), Missouri (Trump), Montana (Trump), North Carolina (Trump), Ohio (Trump), Oklahoma (Trump), and Virginia (Harris). California (Harris) would lose four congressional seats and thus four Electoral College Votes.  How does all of this stack up? If you exclude the alien population from apportionment and the Electoral College as they should be, and correct the Census Bureau’s mistakes, then Donald Trump should have been awarded an additional nine Electoral College votes, while Kamala Harris should have had six votes deducted from her total.  The final result with these corrections? As this article was being written, Trump had 295 Electoral College votes to Harris’s 226, with Arizona and Nevada still outstanding. But adjusting for the errors and inclusion of aliens means that Trump actually should have won 304 votes and Harris should only have 220 (not including Arizona’s 11 votes and Nevada’s 6 votes). In a close election, even those numbers could make a difference.  This fundamental injustice ought to be fixed. There is no excuse for what happened at the Census Bureau. It needs a major review of its personnel, procedures and policies, to determine the cause of its mistakes. It did not make this large a substantive error in the 2010 Census, in which the Bureau’s post-census survey disclosed a mere 0.01 percent overcount.  Second, there should be a concerted push to add a citizenship question to the 2030 Census form and to change the apportionment formula used by the Census Bureau through legislation such as the Equal Representation Act to exclude “individuals who are not citizens of the United States.”  The mandate won by Donald Trump in both the Electoral College and in the popular vote gives the president the authority and the support of the American people to do the right thing when it comes to ensuring their franchise and protecting the voting rights of American citizens free from errors and foreign interference. * * * Hans von Spakovsky is Manager, Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He is an authority on a wide range of issues — including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, and immigration. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) on Friday blamed those who forced President Joe Biden out of the presidential race for President-elect Donald Trump’s victory this week. Fetterman made the remarks during an interview with Semafor while discussing his desire for Biden to have been the party’s nominee after he won the primary. “For those that decided and moved to break Biden, and then you got the election that you wanted, it’s appropriate to own the outcome and fallout,” he said. He acknowledged that Biden’s debate against Trump at the end of June was “undeniably rough,” so he understood people who demanded that there be an alternative candidate. “The options: Double down on the only person that’s ever beat Trump, or demand an alternative,” he said. “When the outcome didn’t support your thesis and actions, then own it.” “There’s a lot of egos, institutions and reputations that championed the alternative,” he continued. “When you take a reasonable, calculated risk to f*** around, embrace your culpability for what you found out. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+ He said that it was going to be tough to beat Trump after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania because that created an “incredibly powerful visual.” “Can you imagine if somebody had a bullet hit Obama and he had that moment: You know, fight, fight, fight?” he said. “Can you imagine how that would have resonated for Democrats? That’s never happened in American political history. There have been assassination attempts, but they never created that kind of a dynamic.” He said that his party’s attacks on X owner Elon Musk projected weakness. “And I promise you: Musk doesn’t give a s***,” Fetterman said. Fetterman’s remarks come in contrast to what Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told The New York Times on Friday where she blamed Biden for Harris’ loss. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.” Pelosi’s remarks contradicted what she said in September about the party having a fair and open primary. “We had an open primary and [Kamala Harris] won it,” she said. “Nobody else got in the race.”

We’re more than a week into November, which means that Christmas music is officially on the radio. Yes, we’re excited about Thanksgiving, too, but there’s nothing wrong with humming a jolly tune while you make your turkey. There are plenty of Christmas songs to enjoy. Some of us like the standards like Bing Crosby or Eartha Kitt. Others prefer a country Christmas and tunes from Carrie Underwood or a duet with Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. We all love Mariah and Wham, but there is more out there to enjoy. Sometimes, our favorite music comes from an unlikely place. Like, say, a recording studio with Stevie Nicks and Jason Kelce recording a Christmas song. Friends, it’s happening, and we love it. View this post on Instagram A post shared by A Philly Special Christmas (@aphillyspecialchristmas) Jason Kelce Singing Christmas Music With Steve Nicks Is Amazing The pair recorded Maybe This Christmas for A Philly Special Christmas Party and shared a video of the session on Instagram. Jason was clearly starstruck with Stevie, who handled it like a pro. She gave Jason some constructive criticism to help make their duet perfect. View this post on Instagram A post shared by A Philly Special Christmas (@aphillyspecialchristmas) A Philly Special Christmas captioned the video, “Jason’s Landslide…Singing with Stevie Nicks was an absolute dream!” So many noticed how excited Jason Kelce was to sing Christmas music with Stevie Nicks. “Jason’s face when Stevie first begins to sing is priceless,“ someone wrote. This person agreed, “His face when she starts singing is priceless!!!! Like a little boy on Christmas morning seeing his toys for the first time!!!! I’m a guy & I love this dude!!!!!” “This is so special. Love how Jason’s face lights up when Stevie Nicks starts singing. Beautiful song. Love them both,” another wrote, The song made this person emotional. “There’s not one chance in hell of me being able to hear this without sobbing. Love this duo!” Maybe this Christmas by Jason Kelce and Stevie Nicks is streaming now. This story’s featured image is by Debby Wong via Shutterstock. The post Jason Kelce & Stevie Nicks’ Christmas Duet Is Live & You Can’t Miss It! appeared first on InspireMore.

No injuries were reported but there was damage to nearby homes and cars

There were 959 carjackings in Washington, D.C., last year—up from 148 in 2018. Shoplifting is so bad that stores in some neighborhoods have closed. The CVS on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks from the White House, keeps Charmin toilet paper and trash bags in locked cabinets. Not surprisingly, though, to the dismay of progressive activists, it’s not just conservatives who want crime prevented, prosecuted, and punished. After a disastrous experiment under far-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin, even ultraliberal San Francisco had had enough of rampant lawlessness and fired him back in 2022. On Tuesday, almost-as-woke Los Angeles replaced its deliberately feckless, far-left District Attorney George Gascon with a “former federal prosecutor who ran on a platform of ‘restoring safety and justice,’” according to local station KTLA. In elections across America, the Democrats tried to reduce everything to identity politics. Anyone voting against their candidates, they claimed, did so because of racism or misogyny, not because they preferred conservative policies. But the truth is, people of all races and both sexes don’t like being victims of crime. It’s a universal value. Just as they prefer ineffective alternatives to punishing crime, the American Left does not want immigration enforcement either. If she had been elected, Kamala Harris had promised to support a Senate border bill that she claimed would have fixed the border she and Joe Biden broke. Not only would the bill have failed to do that—as I explained here in a previous column—but it would have made taxpayers foot the bill for lawyers so millions of economic migrants Biden let in could make unmerited or fraudulent asylum claims and drag them out in immigration court as long as possible. The American Civil Liberties Union, which used to defend free speech for Americans, now seems focused on promoting gender ideology and the rights of illegally present non-Americans. With the balloons barely deflated from the election night parties, they and other activists are already rolling out a legal campaign to stop President-elect Donald Trump from carrying out his duty—and his electoral mandate—to enforce our immigration laws. We’ve seen the people of Los Angeles and San Francisco belatedly reject woke ideology that gets in the way of enforcing the law. Imagine if the people of Washington, D.C., got so mad at the rampant crime and incivility in their streets and pressured the mayor to do something. Imagine the police chief then stood up a special task force that assigned more officers to high-risk areas and arrested offenders. Imagine if prosecutors did their jobs and put the guilty behind bars. The result would be that crime goes down, repeat offenders are locked up, and people feel safer. Would we call this scenario “mass law enforcement”? No, it would just be competent law enforcement. In the same way, should Trump and his future homeland security chief instruct federal officers to do their jobs, it will be nothing but restoring the status quo before Biden and his secretary of homeland [in]security, Alejandro Mayorkas, decided to ignore the law and facilitate the largest influx of illegal immigrants in the history of our country. For four years, Americans saw the results of the Biden administration refusing to enforce the law—from more preventable crimes to overtaxed schools, housing, and hospitals. They saw millions of inadmissible foreigners allowed to enter the U.S.—despite having no visa—and then stay indefinitely through quasi-legal fudges of the law. They saw inadmissible aliens being fed, housed, and paid using our tax dollars. It turns out that “Latinos want a strong economy and a border that doesn’t allow criminals from around the world to cross it and establish themselves permanently, living off taxpayer largesse while contributing nothing but menace and mayhem,” the New York Post concluded. (They also don’t like being called “Latinx,” no matter how much white progressives tell them to.) Because Biden left a four-year deficit on national immigration law enforcement—at the border and inside the country—the Trump administration will have to catch up. There are over 1.3 million illegal aliens with official removal (deportation) orders still in the U.S. They’ve had their due process, and now they should be removed. If a court’s decision to deport them isn’t carried out, there is no rule of law. Overlapping with the 1.3 million aliens with removal orders are around 435,000 aliens who have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and another 230,000 or so with pending charges. The backlog of asylum cases at the Department of Justice’s immigration courts has grown to 1.5 million. The asylum case backlogs waiting to be processed at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services before being sent to the immigration courts are nearly as big. And don’t forget, millions of the aliens paroled or released by Biden over the past four years are expected to file asylum claims to add to the pile. These massive backlogs are part of a giant mess deliberately created by those who want to thwart the intentions of Congress through executive overreach and arrogance to open our borders to virtually anyone. Someone, sometime, has to clean it up. That someone has just been elected, and that sometime is now. As our elected leaders do their jobs, and as the men and women sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution and the rule of law get back to business, expect all eyes to be on them. There will be hyperbole, spin, selective media coverage, and even outright lies in much of the national media that will make the press’ partisanship during Trump’s first term look like objectivity. Expect to see photos of government facilities—most likely built by Biden to process illegal aliens into the U.S. as part of the “Mayorkas Migration Machine”—falsely labeled Trump’s internment camps, or worse. Expect people who understand why alleged human sex trafficker Sean “Diddy” Combs is detained for public safety reasons not to understand why detention should also apply to illegal aliens caught at the border until we know their identity and their criminal records and we have full resolution of their immigration cases. Expect reporters and left-wing media pundits to wring out the thesaurus for new adjectives to make routine law enforcement sound like a dystopian novel from the 1930s. But don’t believe the hype. The rule of law is the rock on which this republic is built. A return to that now will seem odd at first, but it is proper, long overdue, and deserving of public 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 such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more. Read Other BorderLine Columns: What Would Harris and Trump Do Differently on Immigration? My Job Was Getting Countries to Take Back Their Criminal Illegal Aliens. Under Biden-Harris, I’d Be Unemployed Biden Administration Gives Panama ‘Jack’ to Help Control Border What I Saw on My Visit to Springfield, Ohio ‘The BorderLine’ Anniversary Column: Revisiting Biden’s Border by the Numbers One Year Later The post The Mass Hysteria Over Deportation: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Imagine President-elect Donald Trump carrying New York and California and sweeping New England and other blue states to rack up 520 votes in the Electoral College.  Ironically, it could have happened if a movement largely funded by left-leaning organizations got its way.  Already, 17 states and the District of Columbia have joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, agreeing to allocate their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote—regardless of which candidate wins a majority of the state’s vote.  That membership has a total of 209 electoral votes, within striking distance of the 270 needed for the compact to snap into effect. (A tally of 270 votes or more in the Electoral College is what elects a president.) The interstate compact still needs enough states to produce 61 more votes and reach 270 before states would be bound to the interstate agreement.  As of Friday morning, Trump had 312 electoral votes to 226 for Kamala Harris, according to the website 270 to Win. Harris won all 17 states, plus D.C., that already are part of the compact. Those states and the nation’s capital would have had to give their electoral votes to Trump under the agreement.  Voters in blue states that joined the compact wouldn’t likely be pleased with this scenario, said Trent England, executive director of Save Our States, which opposes the proposed popular vote compact. “What you would likely see if this happened is a Democratic voter in California would sue in state court and find a partisan judge, and one state court decision could unravel the entire compact,” England told The Daily Signal. England posted an article showing an almost entirely red map signifying Trump wins, with the headline: “Trump Wins 520 Electoral Votes?” National Popular Vote, a bipartisan national nonprofit organization, advocates that all states join the compact. The group includes some prominent Republicans, although it is mostly funded by left-leaning organizations. The largest of these donors is Democracy Fund Voice, which contributed $400,000 in 2022. Democracy Fund Voice is a left-leaning lobbying group that is part of the advocacy network of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.  Other left-leaning organizations that have funded National Popular Vote include the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation, the Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.  So, arguably, if these funders had their way, Trump would have won an Electoral College landslide in Tuesday’s election that is comparable to those of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Franklin Roosevelt.  A National Popular Vote spokesperson didn’t respond to phone and email inquiries Friday from The Daily Signal. But the organization has said it’s a myth that going to a national popular vote to elect a president would advantage Democrats over Republicans.  “The cumulative nationwide presidential vote for the two parties in the 20 presidential elections between 1932 and 2008 has been virtually tied—a grand total of 746,260,766 votes for the Democrats and 745,502,654 for the Republicans,” NPV’s website says.  It later adds: “Contrary to political mythology, the Republican Party gains no partisan advantage from the 13 smallest states (i.e., those with three or four electoral votes) under the current state-by-state, winner-take-all system. In the six presidential elections between 1992 and 2012, the 13 smallest states have divided 7-6 in favor of the Democrats four times, 8-5 in favor of the Democrats once, and 7-6 in favor of the Republicans once.” The Heritage Foundation published an ebook, “The Essential Electoral College,” which defends the traditional system for picking a president. “The Electoral College prevents presidential candidates from winning an election by focusing solely on high-population urban centers and dense media markets, forcing them to seek the support of a larger cross-section of the American electorate,” Heritage’s publication argues. “This addresses the Founders’ fears of a ‘tyranny of the majority,’ which has the potential to marginalize sizable portions of the population, particularly in rural and more remote areas of the country.” Save Our States’ England said he anticipates that many Democrats in states that belong to the agreement might question their lawmakers about remaining in it.  “The compact was started on partisan sour grapes on a belief by some Democrats that Republicans couldn’t win the popular vote,” England said. “It’s not just that Trump won the popular vote this year. But I think more people are becoming aware that battleground states have been expanding and shifting in the last 20 years.” The post Here’s What Would Have Happened Election Day If Popular Vote Compact Had Been in Effect appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Kennedy School: We Can't Remain Nonpartisan (As if They Were)