His official cause of death has not been reported

A standard progressive claim is that the Left truly cares about democracy but the other side, not so much.  Yet the Biden-Harris White House is now suing my home state, Virginia, and our Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, for simply following and appropriately enforcing a 2006 law meant to protect our voting rights. That measure was signed into law by Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat now seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate representing Virginia. By undermining the security of our ballot box and the rule of law, the Biden-Harris administration is the true threat to democracy. The law requires Virginia officials to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a noncitizen and then registering to vote.  It also requires Virginia to use data from the Department of Motor Vehicles to do so, a practice in place for 18 years. Democrat governors since Kaine, including Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, used this process all the way through October in election years.  For the current election cycle, the commonwealth in recent months removed more than 6,300 noncitizens from the rolls so they couldn’t vote in the Nov. 5 general election. Virginia has followed the prescribed process of notifying the elections registrar that noncitizens must be told that if they can’t affirm U.S. citizenship in 14 days, their names will be taken off the voter rolls. It’s shocking that with less than 30 days until the election, the Biden-Harris Justice Department filed this unprecedented lawsuit.  “Virginians—and Americans—will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the commonwealth, the very crucible of American democracy,” Youngkin said in a public statement in response to the Justice Department’s suit.  “With the support of our [state] attorney general, we will defend these commonsense steps, [which] we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us,” the governor said. “Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period.” Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution gives control of elections to state legislative branches, not to city workers or state or federal judges at the last minute. The 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause doesn’t allow the federal government to corrupt the integrity of elections in favor of noncitizens and in violation of the law. In a Fox News interview, Youngkin said: “To me, this is unprecedented, and I think it represents a Department of Justice that is trying to achieve something other than fair and free elections.”  He’s right.  Youngkin vowed to battle on in the courts against the Biden-Harris administration. But the governor also is resisting progressives in Virginia who want to undermine the rule of law in voting.  Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, or RITE, a nonprofit voter-integrity organization, wrote Virginia elections officials to request immediate action to halt Democrat-leaning Prince William County from ignoring a state law that safeguards elections from noncitizen voting. Under Virginia law, election officials must challenge any voter whom they suspect of not being a U.S. citizen. Challenged individuals may still vote if they sign a statement affirming, under oath, that they are U.S. citizens. Recently, however, RITE noted that Prince William County published an operations manual that ignores this requirement. The county manual directs election officials to allow those who present so-called Driver Privilege Cards—or DPCs, which are issued exclusively to noncitizens—to vote without challenge so long as they also present another form of identification. This is blatant disregard for the law. Someone with a Driver Privilege Card gives ample evidence of being a noncitizen because only noncitizens may receive a DPC.  So Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections requested that Virginia election officials correct the situation in Prince William County by notifying the county of its obligation to challenge voters who present DPCs.  “The Youngkin administration has made great progress in protecting Virginia’s elections from noncitizen voting,” said Derek Lyons, the organization’s president and CEO. “Undertaking the actions RITE has requested would further this work and give the commonwealth’s citizens even more reason to have faith and trust in this year’s elections.” As a voter, homeowner, and taxpayer who was born in Virginia, I couldn’t be more proud of my governor for standing up to the tyranny of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other progressives in defense of the U.S. Constitution, the Virginia Constitution, and the rule of law. Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Voice. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Virginia’s Governor Bucks Biden-Harris Admin Over Noncitizen Voting appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Florida pro-lifers filed a lawsuit Wednesday against a pro-abortion group found to have engaged in fraudulent practices to put on the ballot a radical amendment legalizing abortion up to birth. Alan Lawson, a lawyer who is a former Florida Supreme Court justice, filed the lawsuit against the group Floridians Protecting Freedom on behalf of four state residents to challenge the validity of Amendment 4, the Washington Examiner first reported. If the suit succeeds, the pro-abortion measure would be removed from the Nov. 5 ballot in Florida. “Irrespective of what a Floridian believes about the merits of this amendment and abortion in general, every Floridian ought to want to protect their [state] Constitution from fraud and criminal activity,” Lawson told the Examiner. According to a Friday report from the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security, more than 100 paid petition circulators associated with Floridians Protecting Freedom engaged in fraudulent practices to get the amendment on the ballot. If approved by voters, the initiative would amend the Florida Constitution to prohibit restrictions on abortion when “necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”  Because the text of the constitutional amendment contains no definition of “health” or “health care provider,” the measure likely would legalize abortion at any stage of pregnancy if anyone who claims medical expertise asserts that the mother would benefit physically, emotionally, or otherwise.  Illegal activities by Floridians Protecting Freedom include forging signatures, misrepresenting voter information, and using personal identifying information without consent, the Office of Election Crimes and Security’s 348-page interim report says. Many of the petition forms collected were erroneously validated, allowing fraudulent submissions to slip through existing checks, the office said. The allegations could affect more than 1,500 voters across 35 counties in Florida. During late 2023 and early 2024, the Office of Election Crimes and Security received a high number of complaints about Floridians Protecting Freedom. Two paid petition circulators for the organization were arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for felonies involving election fraud early this year. “In addition to the arrests, OECS has, to date, opened well more than 100 preliminary criminal investigations into individual paid petition circulators and organizations involved in the collection of petitions on behalf of [Floridians Protecting Freedom],” the report says. “Given the credibility of the allegations, OECS has referred over a hundred individual FPF cases to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is actively pursuing dozens of criminal investigations together with the [state attorney general’s] Office of Statewide Prosecution.” Floridians Protecting Freedom gathered more than 900,000 signatures to put Amendment 4 on the ballot. The OECS report concludes that 16.4% of the signatures may be invalid. “Each of these petitions could correspond to a Floridian who (unbeknownst to him or her) is a victim of felony election fraud,” Brad McVay, Florida’s deputy secretary of state for legal affairs and election integrity, said in the report’s cover letter. “This illegal scheme is likely driving the petition fraud outlined above. If a circulator is paid per signature, circulators are incentivized to forge as many signatures as possible to make a quick and easy buck.” In September, the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asked law enforcement to “prioritize” the investigation into what may be “fraudulent” signatures on petitions, according to a letter shared with The Daily Signal. The report from the Office of Election Crimes and Security asserts that Floridians Protecting Freedom submitted petition forms on behalf of more than 20 individuals who are dead. The Florida election office also found that registered circulators were hiring unregistered individuals to collect signatures, violating state laws requiring registered circulators to oversee the signing process. “Both the unregistered circulators who circulated petitions for compensation and the registered petition circulators who hired them committed crimes, and petition forms collected in this manner are invalid,” the report says. Some paid petition circulators had criminal histories and were not Florida residents, the report says. Circulators reportedly altered completed forms to fill in missing information before submitting the forms, according to the Office of Election Crimes and Security. Some misrepresented the purpose of the petition to potential signers, leading to signatures being gathered under false pretenses. Despite Florida’s attempts to combat petition fraud, the report says, Floridians Protecting Freedom’s agents compensated circulators based on the number of forms gathered—a third-degree felony in Florida. California-based PCI Consultants Inc. conducted and oversaw the petition circulation campaign; campaign finance reports show that Floridians Protecting Freedom paid PCI Consultants more than $27 million in 2023 and 2024. “Criminal intelligence generated by OECS, law enforcement, and the Office of Statewide Prosecution strongly indicates that multiple subcontractors engaged by PCI Consultants paid individual circulators per petition collected, in gross violation of Florida law,” the report says. “At least one of these subcontractors advertised the illegal payment scheme on social media websites.” Floridians Protecting Freedom recently was fined $328,000 for election law violations and already has paid $22,000 in additional civil penalties, McVay writes in the OECS report. The report from the Office of Election Crimes and Security recommends that Florida’s executive and legislative branches require paid petition circulators to be state residents and make convicted felons ineligible for these paid positions to prevent future fraud. In an emailed statement to The Daily Signal, Floridians Protecting Freedom denied allegations of fraud. “Ask yourself, why is this happening now, over half a year after over 997,000 petitions were verified by the state of Florida and now with less than a month until the election they want to revisit the petition collection process?” Hazel Smith, campaign director for Yes on 4, said. “Simply put, it’s because our campaign is winning and the government is trying to do everything it can to stop Floridians from having the rights they deserve.” Some legal scholars oppose ballot questions because of fraud such as what Floridians Protecting Freedom is accused of engaging in, said Daniel J. Schmid, associate vice president of legal affairs at Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based law firm specializing in religious freedom. “It’s rife with fraud, and it’s difficult to identify in the best of circumstances, and we’re basing significant changes in the law off of petitioners, some of whom have a financial stake in the petition itself,” Schmid told The Daily Signal. “That creates a problem, and I guarantee it’s happened in other places, on the abortion amendments and others, but particularly on the abortion amendments because they are so insistent on maintaining the right to slaughter children.” “In order to maintain the massive amounts of money that they retain because of this stuff, and to maintain the political power that they gain by it,” Schmid said, “they stop at nothing, up to and including fraud [in] the petition process.” The post Floridians Challenge Radical Abortion Amendment After Report Reveals Fraud in Petition Process appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Alleged 'Assassin' Suspect Sues Riverside Sheriff for Defamation

FBI Juked the Crime Stats, Quietly Revises

The online headline captured the tone of Monday’s PBS News Hour segment from the dueling Trump and Harris presidential campaigns: “Trump ramps up his dangerous political rhetoric in final weeks of campaign.” Taxpayer-supported PBS even let its gross partisanship show while showcasing the segment on X: "On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris is working to shore up support from Black voters while former President Donald Trump is increasing his extreme political rhetoric. @lbarronlopez reports." That would be Laura Barron-Lopez, the News Hour’s most partisan reporter. Anchor Amna Nawaz introduced Barron-Lopez’s report from the campaign trail, with Donald Trump stumping in Pennsylvania and Kamala Harris in North Carolina. Laura Barron-Lopez: This afternoon, Kamala Harris jetted off to the country's largest battleground state. The vice president is doing in Pennsylvania as she did in North Carolina over the weekend, energizing black voters. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump increased his extreme rhetoric, describing some American citizens as enemies. Donald Trump: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Barron-Lopez: In a FOX News interview yesterday, Maria Bartiromo asked Trump whether or not Election Day would be peaceful. Trump: We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the -- and it should be very easily handled by -- if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military. New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a recurring PBS favorite, did what she does best: Wax hysterical on anything a Republican says, no matter how unhinged it makes her look. (Remember her 2023 attack on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for sensibly suggesting cellphones be banned from classrooms? She tweeted, then deleted: "He is so dangerous in every way. Truly an authoritarian personality.”) Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU History Professor: This kind of terminology is the terminology of dictators. Barron-Lopez: Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an American historian and scholar. Ben-Ghiat: Initially -- and he's been doing anti-immigrant rhetoric since 2015 -- it was keeping people out so that you should militarize the border. But now it's the enemy within. And that enemy can be anywhere, even in the Heartland, such as Aurora or Springfield. And, thus, he's talking about using various types of armed forces, National Guard and, he says, even the military, to go and liberate these territories. And this is very dangerous rhetoric. It's turning armed force against a domestic population, and that's what dictators have done in the past. There was a distinct vibe shift when Barron-Lopez checked in from the Harris campaign. Laura Barron-Lopez: Across the country, at her own rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Harris, who released her own medical records on Saturday, took a swing at the former president's lack of transparency. Note that this comes after the media spent at least four years hiding Joe Biden's clear mental decline. Kamala Harris: He refuses to release his medical records. I have done it. Every other presidential -- every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a 60 Minutes interview, like every other major party candidate has done for more than half-a-century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate. There was no mention of Harris’s notorious reluctance to do interviews before her recent media blitz. This segment was brought to you in part by Raymond James financial advisers. A transcript is available, click “Expand.” PBS News Hour 10/14/24 7:13:39 p.m. (ET) Host Geoff Bennett: Turning our focus now to the 2024 presidential race, over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris made stops in North Carolina while out West, former President Donald Trump ratcheted up his political rhetoric. But, tonight, both candidates are in opposite corners of one of the most important states in this election. That's Pennsylvania. Laura Barron-Lopez has our report. Laura Barron-Lopez: This afternoon, Kamala Harris jetted off to the country's largest battleground state. The vice president is doing in Pennsylvania as she did in North Carolina over the weekend, energizing black voters. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump increased his extreme rhetoric, describing some American citizens as enemies. Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Laura Barron-Lopez: In a FOX News interview yesterday, Maria Bartiromo asked Trump whether or not Election Day would be peaceful. Donald Trump: We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, NYU History Professional: This kind of terminology is the terminology of dictators. Laura Barron-Lopez: Ruth Ben-Ghiat an American historian and scholar. Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Initially — and he's been doing anti-immigrant rhetoric since 2015 — it was keeping people out so that you should militarize the border. But now it's the enemy within. And that enemy can be anywhere, even in the heartland, such as Aurora or Springfield. And, thus, he's talking about using various types of armed forces, National Guard and, he says, even the military, to go and liberate these territories. And this is very dangerous rhetoric. It's turning armed force against a domestic population, and that's what dictators have done in the past. Laura Barron-Lopez: Trump's choice language didn't stop at FOX News. On Saturday, he described American towns as being invaded at a rally in Coachella, California. Donald Trump: We're like an occupied country. We got people taking over parts of Colorado. We have people taking over other states. November 5, 2024, will be liberation day in America, liberation day. Ruth Ben-Ghiat: This is a strategy. The ultimate goal is to convince Americans that democracy is failing and that strongman leadership to fix everything, and Donald Trump will say, I alone can fix it, is supposed to be the answer. And so as soon as he would take over and go back to the White House, all of our problems would be solved. But this is based on a fictional reality that's been created by disinformation. Laura Barron-Lopez: In Prescott Valley, Arizona, this weekend, Trump made a new immigration pledge, to add 10,000 agents to Border Patrol ranks and bump up their salaries. Donald Trump: After I win, I will be asking Congress immediately to approve a 10 percent raise, haven't had one in a long time, for all agents, at a $10,000 each retention and signing bonus. So we're going to retain them. We're going to retain them. Laura Barron-Lopez: Across the country, at her own rally in Greenville, North Carolina, Harris, who released her own medical records on Saturday, took a swing at the former president's lack of transparency. Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: He refuses to release his medical records. I have done it. Every other presidential — every other presidential candidate in the modern era has done it. He is unwilling to do a "60 Minutes" interview, like every other major party candidate has done for more than half-a-century. He is unwilling to meet for a second debate. Laura Barron-Lopez: Back in Pennsylvania where the stakes couldn't be higher, this festival in Greeley described by vendors as three days of God, guns and motorcycles, drew huge crowds of Trump voters. With November 5 just three weeks away, die-hard Trump supporters are counting down the days. Todd Herhart, Voter: We're 23 days away from the election. And the days drag. It's like a 10-year-old waiting for Santa Claus to come. The days just can't get here fast enough. Laura Barron-Lopez: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Laura Barron-Lopez.

It was a classic case of liberal-media condescension to the great unwashed Trump masses during Wednesday's CNN This Morning. And what made it all the more outrageous was the obliviousness of it all. Speaking about CNN as if it was above the commoners in the wider country, host Kasie Hunt said to her panel: I have to say, I mean, we're sitting at this table, right? I mean, Kate [Bedingfield], you've worked, you've dedicated your career to electing Democrats the White House. Matt, you've done the same for Republicans. We're able to sit here and have a conversation about what's going to happen. To try to do it in a civil way, where we're operating kind of in the same world.     Operating in the "kind of same world," indeed! The world of political and media elitism. Along with Hunt, the panel was composed of Edward-Isaac Dovere, a senior CNN reporter, formerly of The Atlantic and Politico; Kate Bedingfield, Biden's former communications director; and Matt Gorman, who served as a communications person for the presidential candidacies of Republicans Tim Scott (SC), Jeb Bush (FL), and Mitt Romney (UT). In contrast, Kasie kvetched, the American electorate was incapable of "civil" conversation - and it's all Donald Trump's fault. She gave as an example the situation in western North Carolina, where statements Trump has made have made people distrustful FEMA. Dovere did his bit: "The reason why this began, with the hurricane disinformation about FEMA and everything, is because Donald Trump is talking about it." Bedingfield's take was simultaneously the worst and the most hilarious of all: "This is why his continuing erosion of faith in the media is so dangerous . . . If there's not an independent arbiter of the facts, people cannot start from a place of -- we can't function as a society." And just who should be that "independent arbiter of facts," Kate? CNN? MSNBC? The New York Times? If elected, perhaps Kamala Harris could create a cabinet-level Department of Truth to certify approved media outlets. And who better to head the department than Kate herself! Gorman did push back. While not entirely lifting the onus from Trump, he said that the discrediting of the media has been going on for 30 years.  Thirty years. That roughly coincides with Brent Bozell's founding of the Media Research Center, NewsBusters' parent organization.  To the extent MRC/NewsBusters has contributed to the well-deserved discrediting of the liberal media's outrageous bias--something we document every day--we proudly accept responsibility! Hunt ended the segment on an ominous note: "It's just a reminder that 20 days to go, we are hurtling toward something, toward an unknown that has, you know, it's, it has the potential to be a really significant and potentially difficult chapter in our history." Translation: If Trump doesn't win, he will stir up his stormtroopers! The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN This Morning 10/16/24 6:12 am EDT KASIE HUNT: Look, I have to say I mean, we're sitting at this table, right? I mean, Kate, you've worked, you've dedicated your career to electing Democrats the White House. Matt, you've done the same for Republicans. We're able to sit here and have a conversation about what's going to happen. To try to do it in a civil way, where we're operating kind of in the same world. But increasingly, and Matt, I'm really interested in your perspective on this. Like, what happened with FEMA in the mountains of North Carolina this week really, for me, crystallized the degree to which people are living in alternate information universes. Where you have federal officials going in, trying to help, trying to give people money that they are entitled to as Americans, who are the victims of this kind of a disaster. And they can't do it because there are people out there who think that FEMA is dangerous and a threat and they're going after them. Militia types. It just really kind of underscored to me the degree to which we are not -- two separate groups of people in America are living in two different worlds. MATT GORMAN: Oh, there's no better example of this than Covid, right? I mean, imagine if you were, like, let's say, an investment banker living in Florida during Covid or a waitress in San Francisco. You live two very different existences for the better part of two years. And that would shape how you would probably view that event. I mean, it's so much, it's broader, it's broader than purely media. It's broader than where you live. It's broader than how you consume information, from whether it's media online or just the people you live around and talk to. We live in one country, but can have vastly different experiences. EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE: But there's an agency here though. Donald Trump is, he's not the only reason why this exists, that diversification of media, the people paying attention to different things, living different experiences in their lives. But the reason why this began, with the hurricane disinformation about FEMA and everything, is because Donald Trump is talking about it. And we had a congressman from North Carolina who last week, a Republican congressman, had to put out a long statement on his website that began, the first thing was, no one controls the weather. That's where we are in 2024. KATE BEDINGFIELD: Yeah, and this is why Trump's continued erosion of people's faith in institutions is so dangerous. I mean, this is why his continuing erosion of faith in the media is so dangerous. Because if there is not an independent arbiter of the facts -- before you get  about how to present them or your feelings about them or your opinion about them. If there's not an independent arbiter of the facts, people cannot start from a place of -- we can't function as a society. I mean, that sounds dramatic, but I think that that's true. And I think that the role that Trump has played in exacerbating and furthering this erosion of faith in institutions is really scary. And he wields an enormous amount of power. I mean, half the country feels incredibly, passionately about him and about his leadership. And he uses that to make it so that people in a hurricane-ravaged area don't trust that they can go get the help that they need. HUNT: Very quickly. GORMAN: Trump might have gotten the [inaudible], but this was happening for the last 30 years. BEDINGFIELD: I agree with that. GORMAN: He might have it, but [inaudible.] BEDINGFIELD: No, no question. But he accelerated it, absolutely. HUNT: Well, it's just, it's just a reminder that 20 days to go, we are hurtling toward something, toward an unknown that has, you know, it's, it has the potential to be a really significant and potentially difficult chapter in our history.

ABC’s Good Morning America has been the reliable broadcast network morning news show for the left (with MSNBC’s Morning Joe holding that claim on cable), but their toolish, real-life North Korean news lady for the Biden-Harris regime — chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce — took it to another level Wednesday by gushing Vice President Harris was not only “reach voters where they are,” but implicitly comparing her to George Washington. The shameless hack had the led-off story by gushing over Harris as “hoping to reach the small sliver of voters that can still be persuaded with just days to go” and, between “doing targeted interviews, even sitting down with Fox News,” and “holding events with Republicans,” she’s “trying to reach voters where they are.”     Try and read this and decipher if the HarrisHQ X account would have scripted up a segment masquerading as journalism any better (click “expand”): BRUCE: Hoping to solidify support from black men, the Vice President stopping by black-owned businesses in Detroit and sitting down with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God, outlining her plan to boost black homeownership, grow generational wealth, and lower prescription costs, trying to cut through misinformation about her agenda. HARRIS: They are trying to scare people away because they know they otherwise have nothing to run on. Ask Donald Trump what his plan is for black Americans. BRUCE: Speaking to voters who may be swayed by Trump, Harris urging them not to fall for his tough talk. HARRIS: It’s a sign of weakness that you want to please dictators and seek their flattery and favor. It’s a sign of weakness that you would demean America’s military and America’s service members. It’s a sign of weakness that you don’t have the courage to stand up for the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which it stands. This man is weak and he is unfit. Then came with the elongated Washington comparison, first swooning over Harris “trying to win over conservative voters not happy with the former President” with a Pennsylvania speech featuring “over 200 elected Republicans, including former members of Congress like Adam Kinzinger.” It got even dumber as Bruce hit her final notes: Harris will make a big push for bipartisan unity urging Republicans to put country ahead of party. She will make the case standing at the same site where George Washington famously crossed the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War arguing she is the candidate who will defend the principles and ideals that this country was founded on. Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos flipped the script to talk about former President Trump by screeching that he “was in Chicago yesterday at the Economic Club repeating false claims about the January 6 election, refusing to say whether he’s spoken to Vladamir Putin since he left office.” Three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl focused on Russia, January 6, and a biased view of “16 Nobel Prize-winning economists” (pulled together by Harris allies) to blast his views on tariffs (click “expand”): KARL: In that interview before the Economic Club of Chicago, Donald Trump referred to January 6, the day when his supporters attacked the Capitol and tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 as a, “day of love and peace.” Asked whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after this election, Donald Trump pointed to the last one, insisting it was peaceful and bizarrely saying January 6 was a day of love and peace and falsely saying the police invited the rioters into the Capitol building. TRUMP: It was love and peace and some people went to the Capitol and a lot of strange things happened there. A lot of strange things with people being waved into the capitol by police, with people screaming go in that never got into trouble. KARL: The reality? Nearly 500 people have been charged with assaulting police officers on January 6. Nearly half of them pleading guilty or being convicted at trial. The former President also defending his plan to impose new tariffs on products imported into the United States. [TRUMP-BLOOMBERG CLIP] KARL: In Chicago, Trump also refused to comment on Bob Woodward’s reporting that he has had multiple conversations with Russian leader Vladamir Putin since he left the White House. [TRUMP-BLOOMBERG CLIP] KARL: Just days ago, Trump had a different answer, telling me he had not spoken to Putin. [TRUMP-KARL CLIP] KARL: The Kremlin has also denied the two men have spoken but they have not denied Woodward’s reporting that Trump secretly sent the Russian leader Covid testing machines during the early days of the pandemic when most Americans could not get Covid tests. Regarding those tariffs, most Americans — most economists say that tariffs — the cost of tariffs are borne by American consumers. And, recently, George, earlier this year a group of 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warn that the Trump tariffs would, “reignite inflation.” Stephanopoulos weighed in as well with concern about Trump’s “rhetoric taking an even darker turn” and arguing it’s “absolutely unprecedented in American history.” NBC’s Today didn’t make the Harris to Washington plunge, but they still carried water for her. Co-host Savannah Guthrie fretted in a tease that Trump “double[d] down on his rhetoric against those who disagree with him” and boasted Harris was “trying to shore up the key voting block that she continues to struggle with.” Fellow co-host Hoda Kotb picked up on that first part later in setting the table for the show’s political coverage: “[F]ormer President Trump is doubling down on his controversial comments labeling Democrats, ‘the enemy from within.’ Vice President Harris continuing to condemn his rhetoric.” Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander cut straight to the Harris talking points: “Vice President Harris is trying to make sure that voters do not ignore former President Trump’s increasingly incendiary language.” He added that Trump “doubled down” in a new interview “on his inflammatory remarks, referring to Democrats as the enemy from within” and hyped his friends on the left as having “seized on that language, warning voters a second Trump term would be dangerous.” On the faux Republican event, Alexander kept it together: “Harris is going to deliver a speech outside of Philadelphia, joined by more than 100 Republicans who support her campaign, Savannah, warning that Trump poses a threat to the Constitution.” To its credit, CBS Mornings was far more muted. Correspondent Nikole Killion framed Economic Club event as a place where Trump “rebutted claims his proposal to implement tariffs on foreign goods would hike consumer prices” and “was also coy about reported conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” White House and election correspondent Ed O’Keefe covered Harris’s stops, correctly admitting trepidation from some in the black community toward her and that, in her Charlamagne tha God interview, she had “to defend herself against accusations she is doing this outreach now, just because of political timing.” To see the relevant transcripts from October 16, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).

Pro-free speech academics are calling on Congress to halt the “unethical” government-funded censorship experiments causing “harm” to Americans.  Stanford Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and liber-net CEO and former Harvard Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society fellow Andrew Lowenthal wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post reaming misinformation research and government censorship efforts. In their piece, the pair noted that government-funded censorship research often flies under the radar. “Under the guise of combating misinformation, the US government funds universities, ostensibly to analyze social-media trends — but in truth, to help censor the Internet,” they wrote. The pair also called on Congress “to penalize universities” and defund their “misinformation” studies. Bhattacharya and Lowenthal referenced the Twitter Files that detailed how universities collaborate with or receive funding from the U.S. government to target so-called “misinformation” online. The authors called this research “unethical”  and “violating the prime directive of academic research: to do no harm to its subjects.”  Bhattacharya and Lowenthal noted that there are typically high standards for research conducted using human subjects and that “[u]niversity human-subjects boards are, as a rule, sensitive to even the slightest possibility of harm to research subjects.” However, they noted that these standards are often not upheld against those studying the impacts and spread of so-called misinformation. They argued, “University researchers must prove to these human-subjects review committees that their work will not harm subjects or violate subjects’ rights. The boards have the power to prevent investigators from conducting a research project altogether.”  The authors of the op-ed went on to note how these research teams have become censorship proxies funded by the U.S. government. “Agencies like the National Science Foundation provide taxpayer dollars to universities like Stanford and the University of Washington as part of a broader government effort to pressure social-media companies into censoring speech related to elections, public health and other matters.” They later added that in some cases “research teams are embedded within social-media companies, feeding the results into databases that companies use to delete posts or label them as misinformation.”  The Stanford Internet Observatory has been identified as one such proxy with programs like the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project both of which were revealed in The Twitter Files to be working closely with Twitter and the federal government to censor Americans. Similar programs mentioned in the Twitter Files and uncovered by past MRC Free Speech America reporting include the Clemson University Media Forensics Hub and University of Dayton's PREVENTS-OH program and the University of Rhode Island Media Education Lab.  Bhattacharya and Lowenthal went so far as to argue that “misinformation” researchers are “defaming” their subjects and conducting studies on them without their consent. They continued, “For scientists and doctors, such defamation can end careers.” Hence many in the medical and scientific professions either “self-censor or find themselves in the cross-hairs of the censorship industrial complex. The op-ed authors gave the example of, when in 2021 Harvard vaccine expert Martin Kulldorff posted on Twitter (now X), “Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should.”  The Murthy v. Missouri lawsuit and The Twitter Files revealed that, at that time Kulldorff tweeted that,  the Biden administration and its academic censorship researchers were pressuring social media to censor posts critical of COVID-19 vaccines, so as Bhattacharya and Lowenthal noted, Kulldorff found himself suspended.  Bhattacharya and Lowenthal called on Congress to hold the universities acting as censorship proxies to account. “Congress should end federal funding of these unethical projects by agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation,” the authors demanded. “And universities should live up to their stated ethical principles: Stop authorizing research whose primary purpose is the wide-scale violation of Americans’ free-speech rights,” they added. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

CBS News has a serious addiction problem. They can’t stop using dishonest techniques to help out their liberal friends while harming conservatives.  Most recently, CBS got in trouble for their deceptive edits of their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. The so-called “Tiffany network” aired two different answers to the same question on Israel in its 60 Minutes, First they aired a word-salad answer on the October 6 Face the Nation. But when the interview aired on October 7, the answer was entirely different. With Harris CBS News used dishonest edits to make the Democratic presidential candidate look better. However, in the case of conservatives, CBS has a record of employing their video editors to make them look bad.  Speaker of the House Mike Johnson exposed how CBS sliced and diced up his October 13, edition of CBS’s Face the Nation interview. Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has also been the victim of CBS chopping up videos.  It’s not just selective edits. CBS will target conservatives with investigative pieces based on “fake news” sources (See Rathergate). They will also set them up with ambush interviews (See Connie Chung’s interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s mother) or even cut their mic off during a live debate, as they did with VP candidate J.D. Vance.   A look through MRC’s archives shows CBS has a long history of using dishonest techniques to interfere with the election of conservative candidates.    1. RatherGate  In 2004, Dan Rather’s most corrupt act as a journalist occurred when he and producer Mary Mapes attempted an election-year hit job on then-President George W. Bush. Just eight weeks before election day, in a September 8, 2004 report on 60 Minutes, Dan Rather claimed “new” evidence showing Bush received “preferential treatment” during his Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. “Newly discovered documents spark new questions,” Rather hyped that night on his CBS Evening News. “CBS News has exclusive information, including documents, that now sheds new light on the President’s service record.” The documents in question were supposedly from Bush’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, typed on his office typewriter decades before computers and word processors became common in the workplace. It didn’t take long before observers on the Internet highlighted how the “newly discovered documents” looked more like something whipped up in Microsoft Word using the default Times Roman font than on an early 1970s typewriter. The supposed author of the documents, Col. Killian, was no longer living, but others from the Texas Air National Guard office disputed the documents. Killian’s boss, Major General Bobby Hodges, told the Los Angeles Times that he didn’t believe the documents were real. Killian’s secretary, Marian Carr Knox, told the Dallas Morning News that “those are not real....They’re not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him.” Instead of honestly admitting error, Rather dug in but, by September 20, Rather finally acknowledged that CBS “could no longer vouch for their authenticity.” He revealed that his source had been Bill Burkett, a left-wing Texas activist who, Rather admitted, had been trying “for several years now to discredit President Bush’s military service record.” In the end, Mapes was fired and after the election, Rather announced he would step down in March 2005 after 24 years as anchor of the CBS Evening News.    2. Dan Rather’s Failed Ambush of George HW Bush     On Monday, January 25, 1988, Dan Rather, the anchor of the CBS Evening News at the time, laid a trap and attempted to ambush then-Vice President George H.W. Bush on live TV. Of course, Rather’s goal was to embarrass the leading Republican contender for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.  The segment was supposed to be a “candidate’s profile.” Instead, Rather screamed at the Vice President over the Iran-Contra scandal, making it the sole topic discussed. Visibly angry, he berated the Vice President: “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world!”  But Bush didn’t just sit back and take the bias. He zinged the journalist by mentioning a truly embarrassing moment for Rather. In 2008, Rich Noyes quoted from The Quest for the Presidency, recounting: “...a notorious incident several months earlier when Rather, on location in Miami, had got sore at having his newscast held up by a tennis match and had walked off his set to call New York to bitch about it. The tennis match had ended in his absence, and CBS, with nothing else to put on the air, had gone to black — an empty screen — for six minutes. It was the ultimate embarrassment for a network…”  So when an unhinged Rather yelled and berated Bush, the Republican retorted: “It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your whole career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?” Bush lowered the boom: “I have respect for you, but I don’t have respect for what you’re doing tonight!”  Even Rather’s colleagues in the press were appalled. According to the February 1988 issue of the Media Research Center's MediaWatch, 60 Minutes co-host Mike Wallace chided, “The style was wrong. Dan lost his cool.” ABC's Sam Donaldson derided, “Rather went too far.... I don’t think we can get to a situation where we make — on our own authority— accusations.”  The cover of the February 8, 1988 issue of Time labeled it “the ambush that failed.” Then-Time associate editor (and future Obama official) Richard Stengel criticized the CBS anchor, describing the scene as “a powerful TV journalist hectoring the Vice President, who had been lured into the interview expecting that it would focus on his presidential campaign.”    3. Speaker Mike Johnson Exposes CBS for Editing Out Arguments They Didn’t Like On October 14, 2024 House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lashed out at CBS on X.com for how they sliced and diced his interview on the October 13 edition of Face The Nation. He tweeted about how CBS edited out five “important minutes” out of a 15-minute interview — and he exposed the video edits.  Among the sentences CBS cut were Johnson’s arguments about non-citizens voting, pointing out the “Biden Harris administration sued the governor and the state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, to try to prevent them from cleaning up their voter rolls.” CBS did it again in a follow-up when Johnson said “We passed the SAVE Act. You know, in the house, the SAVE Act says you gotta have proof of citizenship before you register to vote. And Chuck Schumer and the Democrats blocked that in the Senate.”   The CBS transcript shows what they edited out [and the viewer wouldn’t notice during the broadcast because it’s edited where the shot changes to a full-screen shot of Johnson]:  MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the FEMA Director says there’s only $11 billion left from that $20 billion that was allocated. So that's a different accounting than this 2% you say was distributed. SPEAKER JOHNSON: Yeah. So they’ve obligated some funds, but they’ve only distributed 2%, [and when I was there on the ground, and you should go, I mean, bring the cameras and talk to the people there, they'll tell you, don't- don't take politicians words for this or the administration's word, talk to the people there on the ground they had not been provided the resources almost two weeks out from the storm that they desperately needed. And when I was there 13 days, post- you know, post the storm hitting that state, people are still being rescued. They're stuck in the higher elevations in the mountains because the roads are down and all the rest. So they need every- every available resource and all hands on deck.] The rescue and recovery efforts are still going on, and then we address the rest of it. But FEMA was slow to respond. They did not do the job that we all expect and hope that they will do, and there’s going to be a lot of assessment about that as well in the days ahead. That wasn’t the only edit. When Johnson said there was going to be “some cheating” in this election, Brennan pounced. CBS didn’t want to spread any notion that Republicans are the ones for election integrity. MARGARET BRENNAN: You know that it is against– SPEAKER JOHNSON: Glenn Youngkin, the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia - BRENNAN: The law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections that’s established law. JOHNSON: Of course it is, of course it is, but of course it is. But here’s the problem, there's a number of states that are not requiring proof of citizenship when illegals are noncitizens register to vote. We know that’s happening. [Look, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, I was going to say he issued an executive order to clean up their voting rules heading into the election. Less than 30 days out, a couple of days ago, the Obama, I mean, the Biden administration, Department of Justice, Biden Harris administration, sued the governor and the state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, to try to prevent them from cleaning up their voter rolls. Their voter rolls. See, that kind of thing creates a lot of doubt and concern in the minds of a lot of the American people. Why would they do that?] BRENNAN: But respectfully, Speaker – JOHNSON: Everybody should want the law to be followed. The biggest removal of Johnson’s argument came shortly after, when Brennan suggested Johnson was undermining the integrity of elections by suggesting non-citizens will vote!  CBS didn’t want any discussion of a “SAVE Act,” or how Chuck Schumer and the Democrats oppose any attempt to insure illegal immigrants don’t vote.  MARGARET BRENNAN: Respectfully, Speaker, you both, in the course of this interview, said that you do believe that states have taken measures that will help the integrity of this election SPEAKER JOHNSON: That’s true- BRENNAN: – and then you just also seem to undermine confidence in the integrity of the state elections – JOHNSON: No, no. Margaret. Hold on. Wait a minute. Wait, wait just a minute. It's not me undermining it. It’s the actions of the Biden-Harris administration and some of these states. Noncitizens are not allowed to vote under federal law. [BRENNAN: Right. JOHNSON: But the states have prohibited it. We passed the SAVE act. You know, in the house, the SAVE Act says you gotta have proof of citizenship before you register to vote. And Chuck Schumer and the Democrats blocked that in the Senate. We could have prevented this, the questions that people have about that, but the Democrats chose not to. They opened the border wide. A lot of people theorize that that was so that they could have non citizens to vote. These are realities, Margaret. I wish it weren’t true, but that's what’s, that’s the concern that people have. And Wisconsin– [CROSSTALK] BRENNAN: – But, but. People can have lots of concerns, but it is already law that noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections. JOHNSON: It is a law. That’s correct, but we have to make sure the law is followed. And that is the whole point. That has always been the whole point of the SAVE Act and all the measures that we've tried to ensure. I believe, by my count, we have about 16 million illegal aliens in the country since Mayorkas and Harris and Biden opened the border wide. And because of that, there's concern, because those people are distributed all around the country, as you know, there's concern some of those people will try to participate in the elections. Look, some of our House races. I believe the Republicans are going to win the House, grow the House majority, win the Senate and the White House. But in some of our House races, I mean, I have a colleague who was elected by six votes in 2020. Some of these are decided by hundreds or a few 1000s of votes. So if you have non citizens participating against the law, and you have no mechanism in some states to stop it. That is the root of so much of the concern. And of course, you know, in California, they have ballot harvesting right? Ballot harvesting is notorious for opening the door for fraud in Wisconsin, they're going to put — BRENNAN: — Mr. Speaker, you seem to be JOHNSON: – In some counties unmanned ballot boxes in public parks, again BRENNAN: Contradicting yourself. The states are run by the state government – JOHNSON: No. I'm stating the facts, Margaret. BRENNAN: – Not the federal government. JOHNSON: That’s right. That's correct. And that's yeah we hope and pray- ] BRENNAN: So if your issue is with certain governors, shouldn't you be talking to them?  JOHNSON: We have been- we have been and the Republican governors have done heroic work. They’ve done their own audits of the voter rolls to try to ensure and do their best duty to make sure that this is a free, fair and legal election. We're calling on all the governors to do the same thing, Democrat governors as well, and Democrat led states in the legislature, they need to do the same thing.   4. CBS Moderators Trample All Over Debate Rules to Fight with GOP VP Pick, Cut Off Vance’s Mic     Liberal moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell were so desperate to make Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) look bad, that they repeatedly broke the rules of the debate to fact-check him. And their so-called fact-checks were so wrong that Vance had to call them out for it. CBS News agreed that they would not fact-check either candidate and would leave it up to the debaters to do that. But throughout the debate, the moderators either offered up fact-checks against Vance.  Things came to a head when Brennan delivered a dubious fact-check overlooking how the asylum process was being abused by illegal immigrants. Vance spoke up to lay out the real facts of how the system was being manipulated, ultimately leading to O’Donnell to cutting off his microphone.   5. CBS’s Lesley Stahl Scolded Trump In 2020: Hunter Biden Laptop Emails “Can’t be Verified” CBS tried to suppress the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and the emails it contained when it came to light in 2020 after the New York Post broke the story in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. It was such a taboo subject for CBS that when President Donald Trump brought up the subject during an October 2020 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, it was edited out of the final broadcast.  Fortunately, the Trump campaign recorded the segment left on the 60 Minutes cutting room floor so you can see Stahl claim over and over that the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop “can’t be verified”:     PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Lesley, you’ve discredited yourself. When you say that you’re not going to cover Biden, you’re going to ask him what flavor ice cream he has, okay. LESLEY STAHL: That’s not me. TRUMP: Instead of, “Why did Hunter get three and a half million dollars from Moscow?” Instead of, “Why is an energy company paying your son $183,000 a month, or whatever they’re paying him?” And he has no experience in energy. You discredit yourself. I don’t have to discredit you. STAHL: So this story about Hunter and his laptop, some repair shop found it, the source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani. TRUMP: I don’t know anything about that. I just know it’s a laptop and they haven’t- STAHL: And you’re making this one of the hottest, most important issues... TRUMP: I don’t know about the two gentleman you mentioned. STAHL: It’s an important issue- TRUMP: It’s a very important issue to find out whether or not a man is corrupt, who’s running for president. Who’s accepted money from China, and from Ukraine, and from Russia. Yeah, I think that’s an important issue. STAHL: All these things have been investigated and discredited. TRUMP: It’s incredible the way you can try and say this and sit there and look me in the eye and say it. He accepted money, his family, from Russia, from Ukraine, from China and from other places. His brother who didn’t have experience became a big builder in Iraq, without experience. Take a look at what’s going on, Lesley. And then you say that shouldn’t be discussed? It’s the biggest scandal out there, Lesley. STAHL: And you think it’s the biggest issue to campaign on? TRUMP: I think it’s one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever seen, and you don’t cover it. You want to talk about- STAHL: Well, because it can’t be verified. TRUMP: You want to talk about insignificant things. STAHL: I’m telling you. TRUMP: Of course it can be verified. Excuse me, they found a laptop. Lesley, listen. STAHL: It can’t be verified. TRUMP: What can’t be verified? STAHL: The laptop. TRUMP: Why do you say that? Even the family hasn’t… The family on the laptop… He’s gone into hiding for five days, he’s gone into hiding. STAHL: He’s preparing for your debate. TRUMP: Oh, it’s taking him five days to prepare? I doubt it, I doubt it. Okay, go ahead.   6. Connie Chung Cons Newt’s Mom: “Whisper It to Me, Just Between You and Me” Hoping to boost the ratings for an upcoming Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, CBS News managed to mar Newt Gingrich’s first day as Speaker on January 4, 1995. The day before, CBS released the text of an exchange taped 14 days earlier between Connie Chung and Newt’s mother. Chung coaxed Kathleen Gingrich into telling what Newt thought of Hillary Clinton. Posing the now infamous “Why don’t you just whisper it to me, just between you and me,” Mrs. Gingrich whispered “She’s a bitch.” CBS was engulfed in criticism for using a statement which many thought Chung made clear was “off the record.”  CBS News President Eric Ober bizarrely complained to The Washington Post: “It’s a legitimate, very good interview that has unfortunately been reduced to one five-letter summary.” Chung introduced the actual piece on the January 5, 1995 Eye to Eye by saying, “You may have heard one small portion of this interview. Now you will see it in context.” It seems both forgot it was CBS which promoted the excerpt and showed it on CBS This Morning, CBS Evening News and Up to the Minute.   7. DeSantis Smashes CBS Reporter’s Fake Vaccine Narrative, So CBS Takes Him Out of Context     CBS ran a malicious and deceptive hit piece against the Florida governor Ron DeSantis on the April 4, 2021 edition of 60 Minutes. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s whole report proposed DeSantis led a “pay for play” rollout of the COVID vaccine in his state. She spent the majority of the time speaking to his critics, including West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James who alleged wealthy communities were “jumping the line” to procure the vaccine. “It sounds like the Hunger Games!” an alarmed Alfonsi, seriously said. She touted other critics like Democrat State Rep. Omari Hardy blasting DeSantis for not prioritizing minorities for getting the vaccine before seniors. At a press conference, the CBS correspondent confronted DeSantis, accusing him of a “pay for play” scheme with the vaccine rollout, because he gave the most popular grocery chain in the state, Publix, the rights to distribute the vaccine in certain counties, weeks after receiving donations to his campaign from the store (which also donated to Democrats.)  However, CBS completely cut out DeSantis’s thorough takedown of Alfonsi's claim. In the original press conference, he explains for nearly two minutes how wrong the media’s assessment of this has been. “You don't care about the facts,” he blasted Alfonsi. Emails from the camp of DeSantis revealed the shady way the CBS 60 Minutes team operated before their hatchet job suggesting (without actual connecting evidence) that DeSantis engaged in a “pay to play” scheme with the Publix supermarket chain on vaccine distribution.   While there is less than three weeks to go until Election Day 2024, there is still time for CBS to get in a few more cheap shots against conservative candidates. Consider this a warning to be on the lookout for more CBS shenanigans.