Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during an interview this week that the U.S. military can increase its capacity to hold illegal aliens at Guantanamo Bay well beyond the 30,000 beds they currently have ready for the job.
Hegseth made the remarks during a Fox News interview after Trump announced on Wednesday afternoon that the U.S. would be sending up to 30,000 illegal aliens to the base on Cuba.
“We absolutely can and can increase it rapidly,” Hegseth said. “I served there, I know the places where this would happen. Guantanamo has long been a place for migrants. In fact, in the 90s, tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants staged their as part of a crisis.”
“We have an even bigger crisis on our hands right now,” he continued. “It was mentioned, 7,500 violent illegals have been captured by ICE in the last nine days. God bless them, where you move them? I tell you what, know one is going to be waiting on the Defense Department.”
He said that the U.S. military would continue to “lean forward and make sure we stay on the border to protect it and that we have great tales which are known as military aircraft to help mass deportations to Guantanamo Bay.”
“We don’t want illegal criminals in the United States, not a minute longer than they have to be,” he added. “Move them off to Guantanamo Bay where they can be safely maintained until they are deported to their final location, their country of origin where they are headed. So we feel great about this plan, we know we can execute it. And the Defense Department is prepared to do everything we can. We applaud DHS and ICE what they’ve done, and we’re going to protect the American people.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) erupted during a heated exchange with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the U.S. Senate on Thursday after RFK accused him of being corrupt.
The exchange happened during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s hearing to consider the nomination of Kennedy to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“If we want to make America healthy, will you assure the American people that you will fight to do what every other major country on earth does—guarantee healthcare to every single American?” Sanders asked.
“I’m going to make America healthier than any other country in the world right now,” Kennedy responded.
“Will you guarantee to do what every other major country is?” Sanders interrupted him. “It’s a simple question, Bobby.”
Kennedy fired back: “The problem of corruption is not just in the federal agencies, it’s in Congress, too. Almost all the members of this panel are accepting, including yourself, millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry to protect their interests.”
“Oh no, no, no! No, no, no,” Sanders responded. “I ran for president like you. I got millions and millions of contributions. They did not come from the executives. Not one nickel of PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry. They came from workers.”
“In 2020, you were the single largest recipient of pharmaceutical dollars,” Kennedy responded.
The U.S. military announced on Thursday that it killed a top Islamic terrorist leader in Syria earlier in the day.
U.S. Central Command said that it “conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria targeting and killing Muhammad Salah al-Za’bir, a senior operative in the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din (HaD), an Al-Qaeda affiliate.”
“The airstrike is part of CENTCOM’s ongoing commitment, along with partners in the region, to disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against civilians and military personnel from the U.S., our allies, and our partners throughout the region and beyond,” the statement said.
Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, commander, U.S. Central Command, said that CENTCOM under the Trump administration would be focused on continuing its mission “to hunt and kill or capture terrorists, and defend our homeland, against groups that plot to attack US and allied personnel.”
CENTCOM Forces Kill Senior Operative of Terror Group Hurras al-Din, an Al-Qaeda Affiliate
On Jan. 30, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Forces conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria targeting and killing Muhammad Salah al-Za’bir, a senior operative in the terrorist… pic.twitter.com/7waflpa0Y6
The Tennessee legislature approved a school choice bill on Thursday, sending the long-sought legislation to Governor Bill Lee’s desk to be signed into law.
The bill, the Education Freedom Act, is a key victory for the governor after efforts to pass the legislation last year fell short. The state General Assembly passed the bill in a 54 to 44 vote on Thursday, a day after the Senate approved it 20 to 13, according to The Tennessean.
“I’ve long believed we can have the best public schools & give parents a choice in their child’s education, regardless of income or zip code. Today is a milestone in advancing education in TN,” Lee said in a statement.
TN just passed the Education Freedom Act to deliver Universal School Choice!
I've long believed we can have the best public schools & give parents a choice in their child's education, regardless of income or zip code.
The bill will have limited impact at first and ramp up in later years. For the 2025-2026 school year under the bill, the state will offer 20,000 scholarships of about $7,300 each. Parents can apply for the scholarship and use the funds toward tuition, books, and other education-related expenses. Half of the scholarships will have an income requirement to be eligible.
The program will grow by 5,000 additional scholarships offered in the 2026-2027 school year. Both public and private school attendees are eligible to apply.
“It is estimated that 7,000 … scholarships will be awarded to public school students and 13,000 will be awarded to private school students in FY25-26. It is assumed that scholarships will continue to be awarded on a 65/35 basis in FY26-27 and subsequent years,” the legislature projected in an analysis of the bill.
The bill also promises that school districts will not see a drop in state funding even if they see a drop in students next year. The legislation also approves a one-time bonus to teachers of $2,000.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump publicly backed the push for school choice in Tennessee.
“We will very soon be sending Education BACK TO THE STATES, where it belongs. It is our goal to bring Education in the United States to the highest level, one that it has never attained before. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president posted on Truth Social.
The bill received some bipartisan pushback, but the GOP supermajority in the Tennessee legislature overcame the criticism. The final vote on the legislation in the General Assembly came after over four hours of debate.
Meryl Streep’s nephew Abe Streep shared the Hollywood star’s harrowing escape from her home, which was in the line of fire following multiple wildfires in the Los Angeles area earlier this month.
In a New York Magazine article about the devastating fires, Abe wrote that the evacuations came so fast that his 75-year-old aunt almost ended up being trapped inside her home due to a fallen tree.
“Evacuation mandates were sent across the city,” Streep wrote. “My aunt Meryl Streep received an order to evacuate on January 8, but when she tried to leave, she discovered that a large tree had fallen over in her driveway, blocking her only exit.”
“Determined to make it out, she borrowed wire cutters from a neighbor, cut a car-size hole in the fence she shared with the neighbors on the other side, and drove through their yard to escape,” he added.
Streep’s nephew also spoke with pals Martin Short and actor Haley Joel Osment for the piece, whom he said were forced to evacuate due to the raging fires. The two actors were part of the massive evacuations in the area, unsure of whether their homes would be there when they returned.
Short moved to the southern California area in 1984 and bought a house three years later in the Palisades, the article noted.
“Right away I knew this is where I wanted to live,” the actor told Abe. “You’re five minutes from the ocean or five minutes from the greatest hiking in the mountains imaginable.”
“Beyond that, he said, the Palisades offered a sense of safety: ‘There was only one way in and one way out.'”
Five years ago, Osment moved to an area near Eaton Canyon. The 36-year-old actor said he had just returned home from shooting a film when he spotted the rising black smoke coming from the canyon, the piece noted.
“He went for a walk in his yard and looked back at his house, a 1951 post-and-beam structure with large glass windows and skylights,” Streep’s nephew wrote. “Bears sometimes rambled through the yard, and he often heard owls at night; it felt like he lived in the forest.”
“After he let his dogs out into the yard, he saw a large plume of black smoke and a glow coming from the canyon,” he added.” So he loaded up his dogs, passport, and family photos and went to his parents’ house, which was nearby.”
Short’s home miraculously managed to survive the blaze. However, Osment wasn’t so lucky and he lost his home, as did his parents, and so many others in southern California, the outlet noted.
On Thursday, the GOP-led Senate confirmed former North Dakota Governor and businessman Doug Burgum to become Interior secretary, a big step forward for President Donald Trump‘s “energy dominance” agenda.
The final vote was 79-18, with many Democrat members joining with their Republican colleagues in supporting Burgum’s nomination to the Cabinet role in Trump’s second term. Another three senators did not vote.
On X, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he looked forward to working with Burgum to “protect our public lands and leverage some of America’s greatest assets for a safer, more prosperous future.”
Governor Burgum knows that America’s natural resources are our greatest national asset.
I look forward to working with him to protect our public lands and leverage some of America’s greatest assets for a safer, more prosperous future. pic.twitter.com/wdQWN13hqi
Burgum ran for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2024 race, but dropped out and endorsed Trump. He was reportedly a finalist to become Trump’s running mate before now-Vice President JD Vance got the nod.
In November, Trump announced that he picked Burgum to lead the Department of Interior, which manages public lands and deals with Native American relations, as well as a new National Energy Council.
“Doug Burgum will protect our Nation’s Natural Resources, restore our fabulous Oil and Gas advantage, and Make America, and its Energy, Dominant and Great Again!” Trump said in a statement.
In his confirmation hearing for Interior, Burgum testified about Trump’s “energy dominance” vision. He argued that shutting down U.S. energy production to help the global environment was a “false tradeoff.”
Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum on how he would help to make President-elect Trump's vision of American energy dominance come to fruition. pic.twitter.com/FtDPITYafu
Burgum advanced out of committee by an 18-2 vote. His final confirmation vote was very bipartisan, but it fell short of the unanimous show of support that Secretary of State Marco Rubio received.
Other nominees are still working their way through the Senate. Democrats have sought to impede the confirmation process, such as forcing procedural votes, an effort that has earned stern rebukes from the GOP.
By Jan. 30th, Obama had 22 members of his admin confirmed, 19 of which were expedited votes.
As of this morning, Trump has 7 confirmed, & today, Democrats are delaying yet another confirmation vote.
I’ve got news for Dems: late nights and long hours won’t stop us. We WILL…
Among the next Cabinet picks poised to get a confirmation vote is Christopher Wright, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy. Wright was also chosen to serve as a member of the National Energy Council.
“This team will drive U.S. Energy Dominance, which will drive down Inflation, win the A.I. arms race with China (and others), and expand American Diplomatic Power to end Wars all across the World,” Trump said.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday in the wake of a tragic plane and helicopter collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
His action comes after an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 collided Wednesday night before crashing into the Potomac River. Authorities worked throughout the night to recover the bodies of the deceased, and said Thursday that there were no survivors out of the 67 people on both aircrafts.
Trump’s first executive order appoints Chris Rochelau as deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration. Rochelau will serve as the acting administrator since the administrator seat is currently vacant, the president’s staff secretary, Will Scharf, said at the signing.
The president’s second executive action is titled: “Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety.” It orders the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA administrator to “review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior 4 years, and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety, including the replacement of any individuals who do not meet qualification standards.”
“This review shall include a systematic assessment of any deterioration in hiring standards and aviation safety standards and protocols during the Biden Administration,” the order notes.
(Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
Trump laid out in the executive action, as he did during Thursday’s press briefing, how former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden took steps to minimize merit and competence by prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in the FAA.
“The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude,” his executive action says. “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence. But the Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous ‘diversity equity and inclusion’ tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA.”
“On my second day in office, I ordered an immediate return to merit-based recruitment, hiring, and promotion, elevating safety and ability as the paramount standard,” the order reads. “Yesterday’s devastating accident tragically underscores the need to elevate safety and competence as the priority of the FAA.”
Trump stressed to reporters on Thursday that though it is unclear what role DEI measures played in the tragic plane crash, it is extremely important to his administration that employees be chosen on merit and competency.
“We want the most competent people,” he said. “We don’t care what race they are. We want the most competent people, especially in those positions. You’re talking about extremely complex things, and if they don’t have a great brain, a great power of the brain, they’re not going to be very good at what they do and bad things will happen.”
“All I’m talking about is competence,” he continued. “And we want, in that particular position, we have to have the most competent people in our country, because we’re talking about lives. Now, it may or may not have to do, but I don’t like that the helicopter was at the exact same level as the airplane. The helicopter should’ve been 1,000 feet or 500 feet above it, or something below it. The plane was at 300-400 feet.”
Trump described the fatal crash as “tragic” but preventable, asking: “Do you blame it on the air traffic controller too in addition to the pilots? They should’ve seen it. I would’ve thought they should’ve seen it.”
He also shared that he will be meeting with some of the families of the deceased.
There’s a civil trial going on right now in the state of California that hasn’t gotten much attention at all. For the most part, the corporate press doesn’t want to talk about it, probably because it would upset some of their biggest advertisers. But if you have any interest in learning more about how the alleged “science” concerning vaccines actually works in this country, it’s one of the most important cases that’s ever been tried.
I’m talking about a product liability lawsuit that’s underway against the pharmaceutical giant Merck. The litigation relates to allegations that Merck concealed serious side effects of its “Gardasil” vaccine, which promised to protect people from getting HPV — a virus that can lead to cervical cancer in women. Merck of course denies the allegations, and the jury hasn’t returned a verdict yet.
But even without a verdict, the fact that this case has made it to trial, in and of itself, is worth talking about. Concerns about the Gardasil vaccine have been widespread for nearly two decades, since it was first introduced to the market. Here for example are two news clips from 2008 and 2009, related to the first version of the vaccine. Watch:
Put aside for a second whether Gardasil was indeed dangerous, or whether Merck lied in its advertising. Those are questions that I don’t pretend to be an authority on. That’s for a jury to decide. The really interesting question is why it took until 2025 for anyone to resolve, definitively, the question of whether this vaccine is actually as safe as advertised. The fact that the judge has allowed this case to go to trial means the allegations, at a minimum, probably aren’t frivolous. So how was this vaccine — which has been taken by countless people — allowed to escape this kind of serious scrutiny for so long?
That fact alone — the existence of an information blackout on such an important vaccine — is of course just one of many harrowing, unexplained failures of the public health establishment in this country. If you pull up one of the complaints against Merck, which was filed by the law firm Wisner Baum, you’ll find a lot of other very disturbing allegations too. One woman, the main plaintiff in the case, alleges she’s been confined to a wheelchair since the age of 16 because of the vaccine.
There are also allegations that Merck paid doctors and nonprofits thousands of dollars to promote the vaccine, as well as claims that Merck lied about the vaccine’s contents. Normally, allegations like this never see the inside of a courthouse, because the pharmaceutical industry enjoys a broad liability shield. This case is a rare exception.
I mention the lawsuit over the Gardasil vaccine because it came up yesterday during the confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. That’s because RFK Jr. worked with the law firm that brought the case against Merck, and he stands to benefit financially from the outcome. In other words, RFK Jr. played a role in finding the plaintiffs for this very rare, and very important lawsuit that’s currently in progress against Big Pharma. Here’s how Elizabeth Warren questioned Kennedy about it. Watch:
What’s extraordinary about this moment is that Warren has built her entire career around the lie that she’s a populist — or at least, someone who’s extremely skeptical of entrenched corporate power, particularly when it’s held by banks. But in this case, Warren is pretty much indistinguishable from a lawyer for Big Pharma. She’s berating RFK Jr. because he took Big Pharma to court over the HPV vaccine. And even though he’s stated that he won’t pursue any lawsuits while he’s in government, it’s not enough for her. She wants him to commit to renouncing lawsuits that he’s already participated in, or that he might pursue after leaving office. And he wouldn’t agree to that.
I’m not going to speculate on Warren’s motivations. You can point to various campaign contributions she’s received from the pharmaceutical industry, as many people already have. Actually, on second thought, I am speculating that Elizabeth Warren is a bought and paid for shill for Big Pharma. Not speculating but outright accusing her of it. Still the truth is, this is a much larger problem than Elizabeth Warren. Throughout the hearing, RFK Jr. was repeatedly attacked by Democrats simply for questioning the safety and efficacy of various drugs that are widely prescribed. These are drugs we’re assured are effective, even though there are very real reasons to doubt that. And in particular, Kennedy was hit over his skepticism of SSRIs, in the most unfair and disingenuous way imaginable. Here’s Tina Smith of Minnesota, in one of the most egregious moments from this hearing:
RFK’s response at the end of that clip is obviously the right one. Remember the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine? The shooter killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar. We still don’t know what, if any, drugs he was taking at the time of the incident.
The same is true of the trans-identifying mass shooter here in Tennessee. The Tennessee Star has reported, citing a search warrant, that Vanderbilt had prescribed SSRIs to the shooter. But we don’t know if the shooter was actively taking those medications, because neither the police nor Vanderbilt will tell us. And therefore, it wouldn’t show up in any “studies” that purport to show how many mass shooters were on SSRIs.
This is the norm, when it comes to these academic papers on SSRIs. And as I’ve previously discussed, there’s another way that these “studies” hide the number of mass shooters who are on SSRIs. Basically, they include inner city violence in their tally of mass shootings. So if a bunch of gang members in the South Side of Chicago shoot up a birthday party or something, that gets added to the tally of mass shootings. And because those kinds of shootings happen every day in places like Chicago — for reasons that have nothing to do with SSRIs, like turf disputes and so on — the authors of these studies can make it seem like SSRIs don’t cause mass shootings. But they’re really just obfuscating the central question by flooding the data set with unrelated shootings. The core question — which is whether SSRIs cause otherwise law-abiding young students to shoot their classmates — remains unresolved in medical literature.
It’s not surprise and no secret that young angry males who grow up in the hood with no father figures and get involved in gangs and drug dealing by the age of 12 would turn to violence. There’s no mystery there. But there is a mystery as to why a child who has never been violent, who was not raised by a street gang, who is financially stable, would one day casually execute a dozen classmates for no reason that he can even articulate. Why is that happening? And why is it that so often these kids are on psychiatric medication?
There are definitely reasons to think SSRIs could play a role in this kind of violence. For one thing, you can look at the warning label on SSRIs, which states that the drugs can actually increase the risk of suicide and violent behavior in some cases. The drugmakers are telling us outright that these drugs can put violent thoughts into your head. They can make you want to lash out violently against yourself or other people. The pharmaceutical companies are telling us that directly. And yet when that thing happens, they will insist that the drug they said can cause it to happen, must not have caused it to happen.
Or you can look at the studies that show that SSRIs can increase the risk of violence in people who aren’t depressed at all. A few years ago, for example, researchers in Denmark reviewed experiments going back to the 1960s. And they found that, when healthy volunteers — meaning, people with no mental health issues — were given antidepressants, the drugs doubled their risk of “suicidality and violence.”
So why did that happen? Why might SSRIs make healthy people more violent?
The honest answer is that we have no idea. Just a few years ago, we learned that there’s actually no clear link between low serotonin levels and depression. This was the central claim that supposedly justified the mass-adoption of SSRIs in this country, and it’s completely false. We have no idea what these drugs are actually doing. So maybe we should pump the brakes a bit. That’s what RFK tried to say yesterday. Here’s the response he got:
Usually, you expect that in a confirmation hearing, the worst thing that can happen is that the nominee says something disqualifying. But in this case, the senator said something disqualifying. Let me be extremely clear about this: If you need psychiatric drugs in order to function, then you are not fit to serve at the highest levels of government. You’re not qualified to teach elementary school students or operate heavy machinery, for that matter. You simply cannot claim that you’re competent to govern if you need to regularly take psychoactive substances. Am I saying that every lawmaker on anti-depressants should be removed from office? Yes, I am absolutely saying that. That should be common sense.
More importantly, RFK is obviously right about SSRIs. When the peer-reviewed journal “Molecular Psychiatry” — one of the most prominent journals in the field — admits that depression isn’t actually caused by a serotonin imbalance, which is what happened in 2022, then it’s obviously worth taking a close look at a class of antidepressants that’s entitled, “Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.” If a comprehensive review finds that we were wrong about these drugs for decades, then maybe we need some more information and studies before we prescribe them to millions of people — including children.
But of course, this is a pattern in the healthcare industry. Drugs are approved all the time when they don’t actually work — at least not in any way that we understand. As RFK Jr. said yesterday, it was a similar story for Alzheimer’s drugs. Some of these drugs received a lot of funding and fast-track approvals, only to turn out to be completely useless. In one case, the data supporting these drugs was actually faked. Watch:
By this point you can probably tell that this hearing didn’t go very well for Democrats. Later on, they tried to attack him for pointing out that Lyme Disease has some very conspicuous origins. Apparently we’re supposed to think — post-COVID — that it’s an outlandish conspiracy theory to believe that Lyme Disease could possibly have anything to do with government labs injecting ticks with various exotic diseases.
Then there was this moment, where one Democrat tried to make the point that RFK Jr. doesn’t believe that germs can cause disease. Then he refuted what she was saying, so she just “read it into the record” anyway. Watch:
These hearings are all like this. They’re not actually about getting any kind of thoughtful answer from the nominee. It’s all drive-by soundbites. It doesn’t even matter what he says.
But even by this low standard, there was one moment in yesterday’s hearing that managed to stand out. This moment comes to us from Bernie Sanders. Sanders began by asking RFK Jr. whether healthcare is a human right, and he said no, because no one — especially gluttons or habitual smokers — is entitled to anyone else’s labor. And then Sanders resorted to berating RFK Jr. for his support of anti-vaccine apparel — specifically, anti-vaccine onesies. Behold one of the greatest moments in modern congressional history:
This is the level of seriousness that Democrats are applying to these confirmation hearings. They barely even mentioned gender ideology, or how RFK Jr. plans to end the castration of children in this country. They weren’t remotely interested in his call for more transparent and accurate data in modern medicine. Instead, one by one, Democrats ran interference for Big Pharma. They talked about anti-vax “onesies” and demanded that RFK stop bullying Merck.
Democrats like to pretend that they stand against “corporate greed” and so on. But you simply cannot pretend to be an avenger for the working class standing against corrupt billionaires if you will also defend the pharmaceutical industry to your dying breath. There is no greater example of corporate greed than what we have seen from Big Pharma.
This is an industry that we know for an absolute fact has pushed literal poison on people, by the millions, and done it all for no reason other than pure profit. This is the industry that supplies actual castration drugs to 13-year-olds. An industry that got millions of Americans hooked on anti-depressants on false pretenses, based on a belief in a chemical imbalance that doesn’t exist. There are dozens of other examples just like this. And they are all things that Democrats don’t want us to talk about — and have in fact attempted to forcibly prevent us from talking about.
So whatever reservations conservatives have about RFK Jr., it’s very clear that he needs to be confirmed. We have a real opportunity to install someone who is skeptical of the junk science we’ve been relentlessly fed for decades, on everything from SSRIs to Alzheimer’s to gender ideology. And after yesterday’s debacle of a confirmation hearing, it’s clear we need to take this opportunity now, while we still have it.
President Donald Trump on Thursday correctly noted that Democrats have long sought to lower standards for aviation professionals out of concern that the field is overwhelmingly white and male.
In 2023, President Joe Biden nominated a black man, Phil Washington, to oversee the Federal Aviation Administration despite Washington having little experience in the field. Washington had run Denver’s airport for two years in a job that largely revolved around managing the airport’s commercial space. He withdrew his nomination after he could not answer basic questions about flying in a Senate hearing, leading to bipartisan condemnation.
Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), a pilot, said “He should have never been appointed for the job. I put this on Joe Biden who was going more for diversity rather than the public safety when it comes to air traffic.”
In 2016, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that a group advocating for black air traffic controllers, the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), gave black applicants the answers to a test, according to Fox News.
The inspector general declined to pursue criminal charges against the cheaters, even though one was caught in a lie by investigators, according to Michael Pearson, an attorney who uncovered the secret report. Pearson added that those implicated remained employed by the FAA.
In 2013, President Barack Obama’s FAA Administrator, Michael Herta, “made an historic commitment to transform the Federal Aviation Administration into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers we serve,” after commissioning a paper that said relying on qualifications and test scores created “barriers…for racial/ethnic minorities.”
Seventy-three percent of white applicants passed the qualifications stage, compared to 47% of black applicants and 60% of Hispanic applicants. If the cutoff score for the test was 85, 78% of Asian applicants and 77% of white applicants passed, while only 38% of black applicants and 41% of Hispanic applicants did. But if the cutoff was lowered to 70, racial equity was in sight, with all Asian applicants passing, 99% of white applicants passing, and 90% of black applicants passing, the Obama consultant said.
In the end, the Obama administration opted to add a “Biographical Questionnaire” (BQ) to the application, which was used to give minorities extra points by asking questions about how many sports they played, or asking them to explain the cause of their failures, seemingly “to elicit stories of personal disadvantage.”
Pearson said the questionnaire actually punished people for being competent. It gave them 10 points for saying they’d been unemployed for the last three years, but just two points for saying they were trained pilots. Applicants were also rewarded if they said science was their worst subject in high school.
Historically, air traffic controllers were recruited from the military or elite schools, in a rigorous process reflective of the fact that lives were on the line. But the new process, in a bid to diversify, opened hires to what the FAA called “off-the-street.”
In 2024, House Republicans introduced a provision removing the biographical questionnaire into the FAA’s funding bill. Biden signed the funding package into law in May 2024.
On Wednesday during the hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Democrats made fools of themselves, with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) taking the lead.
What helped RFK Jr. in this hearing was that whatever mistakes he made were quickly covered up by Democrats who were out of their freaking minds. They are out of their minds. They’re crazy.
It’s not our fault, on the Right, that leftists decided to tout Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as your champions of diversity, inclusion, and economic issues.
That’s your fault. You decided to make these people your leading lights. We didn’t. You “chose the form of your destructor” — and it turns out it was a bunch of geriatric socialists with no relationship with the real world.
The funniest moment, by far, came when Bernie Sanders started questioning RFK Jr. about a onesie for a baby that read “Unvaxxed. Unafraid.”
Sanders foamed, “They are selling what’s called onesies. These are little things, clothing for babies.” His eyes became like saucers as he yelled, “Are you supportive of this?”
RFK Jr. replied, “I’ve had nothing to do with leadership —”
“Are you supportive of these onesies?” Sanders yelled again.
“I’m supportive of vaccines,” RFK Jr. said simply.
“Are you supportive of these, this clothing which is militantly anti-vaccine?” Sanders screamed.
Kennedy, trying to suppress a laugh, said, “I am supportive of vaccines. I want good science; I want to protect —”
“But you will not tell the organization you founded not to continue selling that product. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Sanders concluded.
Bernie’s new 2028 slogan: “Will you denounce the onesies?”
Do you think you’re going to get RFK Jr. on, “Will you denounce the onesies?”
That was not the end of Bernie’s insanity. He then asked RFK Jr. if healthcare is a right and RFK Jr. gave the correct answer, which was “not the way you mean it.”
“Is health care a human right?” Sanders asked.
RFK Jr. asked if Sanders meant a right in the way that free speech is a human right. Sanders said, “Yes,” whereupon RFK Jr. said, “I would say it’s different. … Free speech doesn’t cost anything. But in health care, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the pool. So are you guaranteed the same right?”
That is the correct answer. When someone asks, “Is X a right,” you have to ask, “What do you mean by that?”
There are many different types of “rights.” What Bernie means is, “Do you think it’s a good thing that everybody should have?” And the answer to that is, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s a right.”
If you’re demanding a service from somebody, it’s no longer a right. I don’t have a right to food. I have a right to have the capacity to obtain food in a free system. I don’t have a right to food because that means that somebody else would have to provide me with that food.
I do have a right to free speech because I do have the capacity to demand from you that you don’t impede my ability to speak freely.
It wasn’t just Bernie. Elizabeth Warren — who is a sort of a knockoff Temu Bernie — was yelling at RFK Jr. and basically mimicking the “lady screaming at cat” meme.
If this is who Democrats want to be, please, more of this.
Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan broke down in tears over the tragic plane crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport involving an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 on Wednesday night.
Speaking to reporters outside the Skating Club of Boston, as an alumna member of the club, Kerrigan joined with fellow members and opened up about trying to process the loss following news that six of the victims — two teenage figure skaters, two coaches, and their mothers — who were killed in the plane crash, were from the Boston club, WCVB reported.
“Not sure how to process it,” Kerrigan said through the tears. “Which is why I’m here. I just wanted to be here and be part of our community.”
“And then when you find out you know some of the people on the plane, it’s an even bigger blow,” she added. “We just wish them well, the families, the courage and the strength to make the next steps.”
“I just feel for the athletes, the skaters and their families … anyone that was on that plane, not just the skaters, because it’s just such a tragic event and we’ve been through tragedies before as Americans, as people, and we are strong,” Kerrigan continued. “Even when it’s hard, you get back up. Even when you’re crying, hurt, pain, you get back up and move forward. It’s not easy. But that’s what we all have to do now together.”
U.S. Figure Skating announced that there were “several” athletes and coaches aboard the passenger flight when it crashed into the Potomac River after colliding with the helicopter on Wednesday night, as previously reported. The organization provided a statement to news outlet WUSA9 on Thursday morning.
“U.S. Figure Skating can confirm that several members of our skating community were sadly aboard American Airlines Flight 5342, which collided with a helicopter yesterday evening in Washington, D.C.,” the statement read. “These athletes, coaches and family members were returning home from National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas.”
On Thursday morning, D.C. Fire Chief John Donnelly said that rescue efforts were now switching to recovery efforts with no survivors expected in Wednesday night’s crash, as previously reported. He said first responders had already recovered the bodies of 27 of the 64 people onboard the passenger plane and one body from the Black Hawk helicopter.
“We wish we were gathering for different purposes today,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference. “We will not rest until we have answers for the families and for the flying public. You should be assured that when you fly you are safe.”
New details indicate the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport in the Washington, D.C., area was understaffed when a nearby helicopter collided with a passenger jet on Wednesday night.
An internal preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that staffing at the tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to The New York Times.
“The tower was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of Sept. ***2023***… The shortage — caused by ***years*** of employee turnover and tight budgets, among other factors — has forced many controllers to work up to six days a week…” https://t.co/f78yCtL21j
The newspaper said the controller who was dealing with helicopters around the airport was also instructing planes that were landing and departing, tasks which are typically assigned to multiple people.
Also mentioned by The New York Times was how the Reagan airport tower had been understaffed for years, part of a nationwide shortage that has led to many controllers working long hours, up to six days a week.
The newspaper further explained that the Reagan airport tower was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023 reported to Congress in an FAA workforce plan.
Search efforts in the Potomac River began immediately after the mid-air crash between an American Airlines jet with 60 passengers and four crew on board and an Army Black Hawk Helicopter carrying three soldiers.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday afternoon, “Sadly, there are no survivors. This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital and in our nation’s history and a tragedy of terrible proportions.”
President Trump on DCA helicopter-plane crash: "Sadly, there are no survivors. This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation's capitol and in our nation's history and a tragedy of terrible proportions." pic.twitter.com/ZzeXygwpAr
National Transportation Safety Board officials said their agency plans to release a preliminary report on the D.C. crash “within 30 days” followed by a final report when an investigation has been completed.
The mid-air collision follows the Senate confirmations in the past week of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, both of whom have responded to the tragedy.
“What happened today should never have happened. I want the families of the victims to know that they have my word: I will not rest until you have the truth,” Duffy said in a series of posts to X.
“I will find answers to how this happened. I have directed every relevant agency to immediately investigate what went wrong, and I will not tolerate delays or bureaucratic excuses,” the secretary added.
He concluded by saying: “If there was negligence, incompetence, or failure anywhere in the system, we will find it — and I will fix it. I will provide further updates as we uncover the facts.”
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) took a brief moment during Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to throw a little shade at his colleague, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), over the latter’s claims that Kash Patel was a “conspiracy theorist.”
Kennedy addressed the comments to Patel, who was testifying before the committee as part of the Senate’s “advise and consent” process since being named by President Donald Trump to take over leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
WATCH:
🚨KASH PATEL A CONSPIRACY THEORIST?
Here's the epic moment when @JohnKennedyLA mocked Sen. Durbin for calling @Kash_Patel a conspiracy theorist.
“My colleague and friend Senator Durbin called you a ‘conspiracy theorist,'” Kennedy said to Patel. “You remember that?”
“I do, Senator,” Patel replied.
“You were instrumental in revealing the Trump-Russia election-collusion hoax was a hoax, weren’t you?” Kennedy asked.
Patel said that he was, and confirmed that he had been the lead investigator on that particular case. For a moment, Kennedy remained silent, hands folded, and simply nodded his head.
“Sounds to me like we need to get some new conspiracy theories because all the old ones turned out to be true,” he observed.
Patel laughed, and added, “Facts matter, senator.”
“I mean, conspiracy theorists are up something like 37 to nothing,” Kennedy said, prompting more laughter, before pivoting to a more serious line of questions: “You’re not saying everybody at the FBI is bad, are you?”
“I’ve never said that,” Patel replied. “I’ve overwhelmingly said, multiple times, that 98% of the FBI is courageous, apolitical warriors for justice. They just need better leadership.”
Patel’s hearing included a series of contentious exchanges with Democrats like Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who used her allotted time to make several attempts — all of which failed — to walk Patel into a rhetorical trap.
Also on Capitol Hill for hearings on Thursday were Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was nominated to be Director of National Intelligence.
For the past decade, one issue has confronted our country like no other. And for one decade, The Daily Wire stood at the forefront of the fight, refusing to bow to cultural pressure — even when the cost was enormous.
As our society embraced the transgender delusion and pushed it onto innocent children, we did what others wouldn’t. We told the truth. We fought back. And because of you — our readers, subscribers, and supporters — we won.
This week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” banning these horrific procedures on minors.
This moment didn’t just happen — it was won through years of relentless fighting.
“You Can Have the World — If You Sell Your Soul”
In a town hall reflecting on this victory, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing told the story of how close we came to a very different future.
In 2019, as The Daily Wire was gaining major traction, a big Hollywood talent agency came knocking. They saw our success and wanted in—with one condition: “You can talk about abortion. You can talk about small government. But you have to drop the trans issue.”
We said no.
“Essentially, we were being told, ‘You can have the world, and it will only cost you your soul.’ … We chose our souls,” Boreing said.
Luke Rosiak’s investigative journalism exposing the Loudoun County, Virginia, transgender sexual assault cover-up.
Matt Walsh’s best-selling book, “Johnny the Walrus,” taking over the LGBTQ category on Amazon.
Walsh’s uncovering of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s gender procedures on minors, which led to state bans across the country, with Tennessee’s ban at the center of a Supreme Court case being decided this summer
We didn’t just expose the Left — we changed the culture.
Our fight didn’t stop at journalism. We took action.
In 2022, Harry’s Razors pulled their ads from The Daily Wire because we refused to accept their radical gender ideology. Instead of backing down, we built something better.
We launched Jeremy’s Razors— a razor brand that stands for truth, not woke nonsense. It wasn’t just a middle finger to woke corporations — it was a statement: We don’t need you. We have our audience. We have our people.
And you proved us right.
Jeremy’s Razors became a massive success, bringing in $20 million in revenue last year — all because you stood with us.
Then, in 2023, Hershey’s decided to celebrate Women’s History Month … with a man.
“Our work matters. Our dedication to our principles matters. These battles aren’t short, and victory is never guaranteed. But when we take great risks on behalf of what’s right, sometimes God allows us to participate in world-changing events.” – Jeremy Boreing
But none of this — none of it — would have been possible without you.
Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier for allegedly manipulating his performance in a 2023 NBA game as part of an illegal gambling conspiracy.
Federal investigators are focusing on a March 23, 2023, game that Rozier exited early with a reported foot injury, finishing with five points, four rebounds, two assists, and one steal after playing under 10 minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal. Rozier did not play a game for the rest of the season.
Authorities became suspicious when a known gambling ring placed massive bets on his performance that night, prompting several sports books to stop taking bets on Rozier and a review of betting records.
“In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans … and did not find a violation of NBA rules,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said.
The league is now cooperating with prosecutors as they investigate Rozier’s possible ties to a gambling scheme involving Jontay Porter, who was banned from the NBA last year after pleading guilty to criminal conspiracy similar to Rozier’s case.
According to CBS, “An investigation found that Porter relayed confidential information to bettors and agreed to feign an injury or illness to remove himself early in two games to ensure bettors would win wagers on his individual statistics. Porter pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy last year and is currently awaiting sentencing.”
Rozier, a 10-year veteran with 642 career appearances, joined the Miami Heat after stints with the Boston Celtics and Charlotte Hornets. He has averaged nearly 12 points per game this season while coming off the bench for Miami.
The same suspicious shift that led to sports books dropping wagers on Rozier also raised red flags for federal authorities, who are now examining whether Rozier’s early departure was part of a deliberate plan. Although the NBA’s own review initially concluded that Rozier had not violated league rules, officials have acknowledged that the federal probe may uncover new information tied to alleged collaborators outside the league.
While Porter’s role in an illegal betting operation led him to plead guilty to wire fraud conspiracy last July, the circumstances surrounding Rozier’s alleged involvement will be scrutinized in the context of his more established NBA career. As the inquiry progresses, league officials and federal prosecutors will continue collaborating in an effort to determine whether any further legal or disciplinary action is warranted.
Sometimes history turns on a phrase. Patrick Henry had, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Ronald Reagan gave us, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”And now Vice President JD Vance has given us “I don’t really care, Margaret.”
If you missed it, this new rallying cry emerged during an interview between CBS’s Margaret Brennan and Vance about illegal immigrants who weren’t vetted for terrorist connections.
When Brennan insisted, “Yes, they were,” Vance cited an illegal immigrant who had planned a terrorist attack in Oklahoma on Election Day last November.
Brennan, perhaps believing this was a gotcha moment, asked, “Was he radicalized here or before he came here?”
To which Vance delivered the line of the year: “I don’t really care, Margaret.”
At last, a spine. At last, an end to the abusive empathy that has held our country hostage for far too long.
The Tyranny Of The Appeal To Pity
For decades, the Left has operated on two primary emotional threats that happen to also be logical fallacies:
The appeal to pity — the idea that any demand for order, justice, or security must be discarded if someone, somewhere, might feel bad about it.
The appeal to fear, fear of being called racist — a charge wielded so indiscriminately that it has lost all meaning, save as a tool of manipulation.
Both of these threats are failing. And Vance’s blunt response encapsulates why.
Brennan’s question was an exercise in obfuscation. Well, sure, he was planning a terrorist attack, but was he radicalized before he came here, or was America to blame? The correct response to such nonsense isn’t a 15-minute forensic analysis of his ideological formation — it’s “I don’t really care, Margaret.” Because the problem isn’t when he was radicalized. The problem is that he was here in the first place, and he shouldn’t have been.
Moving to the United States is not a universal human right. Universal human rights are things that all humans always have. Most humans lived before the United States came into existence and yet they had human rights, meaning it’s not possible for them to have had that right — therefore it is not universal. Those who live today have the right to improve their own living conditions but there is no obligation on the part of the United States to move the population of the world here because they haven’t straightened out their own countries.
The usual leftist retort is, “their countries are in ruins because of us!” There comes a time to grow up and face your own problems. “Take responsibility for yourself” is a kindergarten lesson. Many of these places have been this way for centuries and some even before there was a United States. Passing the blame won’t make your life better.
The Left has long weaponized compassion against the very people tasked with upholding the rule of law. The formula is simple: Ignore or downplay the crime, then shift attention to how the criminal (and family) feels about facing consequences, and then insist that enforcing the law is cruelty.
Brennan’s entire exchange with Vance was built on this faulty foundation. In the modern leftist mind, it’s not enough to ask, Did this man illegally enter the country and plan an act of mass murder? One must also consider, How would he feel if we deported him? Or What would I feel like if I lived in that country instead of the United States?
Sorry, Margaret, we don’t really care. Write about it in your diary.
Selective Mercy
Of course, the “be merciful” crowd has its limits. Mercy, as it turns out, only flows in one direction.
Consider Bishop Budde, who recently took it upon herself to lecture President Trump on being merciful. According to the good bishop, mercy demands that we not consider how or why someone broke the law to enter this country, not consider who they harmed, but only how they might feel when they are held accountable.
Funny — where was this mercy when the unborn needed it? Bishop Buddy has encouraged the murder of untold thousands of unborn babies, their silent cries drowned out by the very same “compassion” industry that tells us terrorists deserve our understanding. The “bishop” is not alone. The “Christian” philosophy professors are coming out in droves to post on social media that one cannot be a Christian and support Trump. These same professors smile approvingly as abortions occur and God is mocked at their universities. The same voices that insist we extend boundless mercy to criminals and lawbreakers have no interest in mercy when it comes to the most vulnerable.
It’s almost as if this isn’t about mercy at all. Newsflash: it isn’t. It’s about manipulation.
The Way Forward
Thankfully, conservatives are finally refusing to play this game. The age of emotional manipulation is coming to an end. Vance’s “I don’t really care, Margaret” is more than a quip — it’s a declaration that we will no longer be ruled by guilt trips and crocodile tears.
Let’s put that together with what I consider to be the classic Trump quote about reforming higher education: Let’s get the Marxists, maniacs, and lunatics out of our universities by no longer offering free government money for God-haters. “But how will that make them feel?” Do we care? They have opposed the truth and will face worse consequences if they don’t repent than losing a federal grant.
Too much is at stake. We have a country to defend and rebuild. We have a Christian faith to proclaim and protect. We have families to raise who will love God and love the truth. And we will not be bullied into submission by those who would trade the hard work of justice for the cheap grace of emotional blackmail.
The Left wanted a national conversation. They got one. And now, every time an activist reporter or radical professor tries to steer the discussion away from reality and into an emotional cul-de-sac by using their standard appeal to fear or appeal to pity, Americans have a ready response: “I don’t really care, Margaret.”
* * *
Dr. Owen Anderson is a professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He is an internationally known scholar, theologian, and a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu instructor. With a Ph.D. in Philosophy, he has authored numerous books, including “The Twelve Arguments” and “The Declaration of Independence and God.”
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) used his time during Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to strike up a brief game of “Would You Rather?” with Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“I know Senator Willis has got the game of Bingo, I’d like to play a different game. Would you rather?” Schmitt began, prompting a laugh from Patel.
“Let’s have at it, sir,” Patel agreed.
Schmitt repurposed the game, which presents a dilemma in the form of an either-or choice to the player, to address real issues that a potential FBI director might have to assign personnel to investigate.
WATCH:
🚨 NOW: Sen. Eric Schmitt launches a game of "Would You Rather?" with Kash Patel during his confirmation hearing
These questions are gold.@Eric_Schmitt: "Would you rather investigate parents at school board meetings, or investigate the sh**tings that threaten the lives of our… pic.twitter.com/QIn7OMgpXF
“Would you rather the FBI prosecute and persecute parents who voice legitimate concerns at school board meetings, or should it investigate domestic terrorists who commit school shootings and threaten the lives of American children?” Schmitt asked.
The Missouri Senator was referencing the FBI’s investigation of parents — at the direction of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department — many of whom were attending school board meetings to protest COVID lockdown policies, as well as classroom instruction on radical gender theory and Critical Race Theory that pushed students toward the ideological Left.
“Absolutely investigate, and prioritize the safety of our children, any real domestic terrorists, as I’ve prosecuted in my past in the Obama Justice Department,” Patel replied.
“Would you rather the FBI be weaponized by investigating presidential candidates, political opponents, spying on and wire-tapping candidates’ advisors, or should the FBI get back to its core mission and get politics out of the FBI?” Schmitt asked.
“There should be no politics in the FBI,” Patel said, adding, “And having been a victim of the weaponization of law enforcement against me, I know what that feels like.”
Another of Schmitt’s questions was equally targeted toward the Biden administration’s open-border policies, as well as the DOJ’s attempt to designate traditional Catholics as right-wing religious “extremists.”
“Would you rather target traditional Catholics as extremists, or should the FBI focus on investigating actual threats posed to American people by cartels pumping fentanyl into our communities through the southern border?” Schmitt asked.
“One hundred thousand deaths due to fentanyl and drug overdoses in one year,” Patel said. “I’d rather the FBI focus on that and save our children.”
CNN analyst Bakari Sellers admitted he “f***ed up” when he blamed President Donald Trump for the plane crash outside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport involving an Army helicopter and American Airlines plane before he deleted the post on Wednesday night.
Sellers initially took to X after the crash and posted a screenshot of a partial headline from a statement from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Democrats.
His post read, “8 days ago,” and he included only part of the statement, which read, “Trump’s Dangerous Freeze of Air Traffic Control Hiring.”
The entire head read, “Ranking Members Larsen, Cohen Statements on Trump’s Dangerous Freeze of Air Traffic Control Hiring,” the Free Beacon noted.
You deleted the post because dozens of Americans are currently being fished out of the Potomac, and rather than have reverence for the victims, you chose to dishonestly (and despicably) blame @realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/djduf7OqE3
A short time later, Sellers deleted the post and explained why.
“I deleted the post because timing matters,” the CNN analyst wrote. “Politics at this point does not. I f***ed up, I own that.”
“I am very prayerful but I’m also very frustrated, upset, and disturbed with where we are as a country,” he added. “I recognize, and I will do better.”
“The only thing that matters is rescuing the survivors, and ensuring this never happens again,” Sellers continued.
The reaction was swift on social media, with one person after another blasting the CNN analyst for the “despicable” and “horrid” original post he had made.
“You deleted the post because dozens of Americans are currently being fished out of the Potomac, and rather than have reverence for the victims, you chose to dishonestly (and despicably) blame @realDonaldTrump,” one person wrote.
Another added, “Unreal. @Bakari_Sellers is a pathetic example of what happens when your religion is politics. A plane crash & your first response is to blame your political enemy. This is pagan neo-Gnosticism. A hiring freeze 8 days ago isn’t why a Black Hawk pilot failed to visually separate.”
While a third person wrote, “They are fishing corpses out of the Potomac, families are praying their loved ones miraculously survived, we haven’t the faintest clue yet what caused the crash, and Bakari is already frantically (and publicly!) looking for a way to blame it on Trump. What a broken human being.”
On Thursday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly thanked President Trump for his executive order targeting anti-Semitism.
Trump’s executive order, issued Wednesday, implemented additional measures to add to his December 2019 executive order 13899 targeting anti-Semitism.
“Executive Order 13899 provided interpretive assistance on the enforcement of the Nation’s civil rights laws to ensure that they would protect American Jews to the same extent to which all other American citizens are protected,” the new executive order stated. “The prior administration effectively nullified Executive Order 13899 by failing to give the terms of the order full force and effect throughout the Government. This order reaffirms Executive Order 13899 and directs additional measures to advance the policy thereof in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, against the people of Israel. These attacks unleashed an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence against our citizens, especially in our schools and on our campuses. Jewish students have faced an unrelenting barrage of discrimination; denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault.”
The White House noted, “Every Federal executive department and agency leader will review and report to the White House within sixty days on all criminal and civil authorities and actions available for fighting anti-Semitism. Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities. The Order demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws.”
“On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I thank President @realDonaldTrump for his executive order to fight antisemitism and support for terrorism on American campuses. Thank you, @POTUS, for standing up for truth and justice,” Netanyahu wrote on X.
On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I thank President @realDonaldTrump for his executive order to fight antisemitism and support for terrorism on American campuses.
Thank you, @POTUS, for standing up for truth and justice.
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) January 30, 2025
Regarding the huge increase in anti-Semitism across American campuses after the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, Tablet Magazine reported in February 2024, “Schools with the highest levels of antisemitic hostility include elite private universities in the Northeast, as well as large public universities in California and the Midwest. A study titled ‘In the Shadow of War: Hotspots of Antisemitism on US College Campuses,’ found the greatest anti-Semitism was displayed on the campuses of Boston University, Columbia University, George Washington University, New York University, Ohio State, University – Columbus, Queens College – CUNY, University of California – Berkeley, University of California – Los Angeles, University of California – San Diego, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin – Madison.”
“The 2023-2024 ADL annual report on anti-Israel activism on U.S. campuses tallied 2,087 anti-Israel incidents of assault, vandalism, harassment, protests/actions and divestment resolutions between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024, a staggering 477% increase in those categories compared to the same period in 2022-2023. This marks the highest number ever documented by ADL,” the Anti-Defamation League noted.
First lady Melania Trump issued a statement on Thursday following the tragic plane crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport involving an Army helicopter and American Airlines Flight 5342 on Wednesday night.
“My heart goes out to those impacted by last night’s terrible tragedy,” the post on X from the first lady’s official account read. “I pray for those who so sadly lost their lives, their families [and] loved ones, [and] the first responders who have worked tirelessly through the night.”
“May they find strength and solace in this difficult time,” she added.
My heart goes out to those impacted by last night’s terrible tragedy. I pray for those who so sadly lost their lives, their families & loved ones, & the first responders who have worked tirelessly through the night. May they find strength and solace in this difficult time.
Authorities said Thursday morning they believe there are no survivors after a military helicopter collided with the passenger plane that was about to land. Both aircraft crashed into the Potomac River.
D.C. Fire Chief John Donnelly said Thursday morning that rescue efforts were now switching to recovery efforts with no survivors expected. He said first responders had already recovered the bodies of 27 of the 64 people onboard the passenger plane and one body from the Black Hawk helicopter.
“We wish we were gathering for different purposes today,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a press conference. “We will not rest until we have answers for the families and for the flying public. You should be assured that when you fly you are safe.”
The crash, reported around 8:48 p.m., prompted a 300-person emergency response from local fire departments, police departments, the Department of Defense, the Coast Guard, and the FBI.
Duffy added that the two aircraft had been located and that the fuselages of the airplanes had been found in about three different locations. He said that the National Transportation Safety Board and the FA were conducting an investigation.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said he was “absolutely heartbroken” and that “we are all hurting incredibly.” He said the helicopter appeared to have veered into the flight path of an American Eagle regional jet that had departed from Wichita, Kansas.
President Donald Trump released a statement on Wednesday night following the crash. He wrote on social media that he had “been fully briefed on the terrible accident which just took place at Reagan National Airport. May God Bless their souls.”
“Thank you for the incredible work being done by our first responders,” he added. “I am monitoring the situation and will provide more details as they arise.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) attempted to walk FBI Director-designate Kash Patel into a rhetorical trap during Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Patel appeared to be more than ready for her line of attack.
In one instance, the Minnesota senator raised a question about a supplement — that she said Patel had promoted — that was advertised as minimizing the potential side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.
WATCH:
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: "You did promote this supplement and told people that it would reverse or mitigate the side effects from COVID vaccine?"
KASH PATEL: "Did I give people an opportunity to make an independent choice for what's best for their families? Yes." pic.twitter.com/VdkL3kXTjC
Klobuchar noted that doctors had said the supplement in question did not reverse or mitigate the effects of the COVID vaccines — and then she asked whether Patel himself had run any “clinical trials” before promoting it.
Patel’s response was simple: “I am not a doctor, so no.”
“You did promote this supplement and told people that it would reverse or mitigate the side effects from COVID vaccine?” Klobuchar asked.
“Did I give people an opportunity to make an independent choice for what’s best for their families? Yes,” Patel replied.
Klobuchar tried again with a different topic, asking Patel about exiting FBI Director Chris Wray. She pointed out the fact that Wray had taken the job under difficult conditions, and that the Bureau is still seeing large numbers of applicants — and then argued that if the people did not trust the FBI, it was unlikely that so many would be signing up to work there.
WATCH:
HERE THEY GO AGAIN: Unhinged Sen Amy Klobuchar starts hyperventilating and goes over her time, has to be reigned in by Patel and Grassley.
KASH: "If the best attacks on me are going to be false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations, the only thing this body is doing is… pic.twitter.com/DRLDsdevaS
“Applications to the FBI has in fact tripled,” she said. “Do you think people would be applying to that agency like — in those numbers — if they thought it was so corrupt?”
“American public’s trust in it is at 40%, that’s an all-time low,” Patel replied.
Klobuchar then asked whether Patel had suggested shutting down FBI headquarters and turning it into “a museum of the deep state.”
Patel asked Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for extra time, after which Klobuchar interrupted and repeatedly demanded that Patel answer her question.
Instead, Patel was given a moment to speak his mind — and he did: “If the best attacks on me are going to be false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations, the only thing this body is doing is defeating the credibility of the men and women at the FBI. I stood with them here in this country, in every theater of war we have. I was on the ground in service of this nation, and any accusations leveled against me that I would somehow put political bias before the Constitution are grotesquely unfair.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump emphasized the need for “fast confirmations” in the wake of the tragic plane and helicopter crash in Washington, D.C.
The president took questions from the press at the White House on Thursday, where he shared that no passengers or crew had survived the Wednesday evening crash. Trump stressed the importance of eradicating measures that prioritize DEI over merit, stressing the need for stronger Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards.
Asked by The Daily Wire whether it is helpful to have his Secretary of Transportation confirmed only a day before this tragedy, and whether this incident intensified his interest in getting his other nominees confirmed quickly as well, Trump responded: “We want fast confirmations and the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them. They’ve taken too long.”
.@MaryMargOlohan: "Is it helpful to have your Secretary of Transportation confirmed, and does this intensify your interest in getting other nominees confirmed quickly as well?"@POTUS: "We want fast confirmations. And the Democrats are doing everything they can to delay them." pic.twitter.com/EOCBzqawxP
“Very good people, everybody knows, are going to be confirmed, but we’re struggling to get them out faster,” he continued. “We want them out faster. It’s a good question, actually we — we’ve been pushing Sean [Duffy], everyone knows Sean, for a long time. We got many, many Democrat votes, but they want to take as long as they can.”
Trump nominees Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard sat before their respective Senate committees in their nomination hearings as Trump spoke.
The president took a jab at NBC News White House Correspondent Peter Alexander, who had loudly berated Trump while asking a question moments before.
Photo by OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images)
“They ask questions like some of the questions that Peter would ask that were totally irrelevant and not good questions, but they want to just keep it going,” Trump said. “They want to keep it going as long as possible. I was very honored, actually, that you got so many Democrat votes. That was really good. That was really good.”
Trump began the briefing by calling for a moment of silence for the deceased victims and their loved ones. There are no survivors of the U.S. military helicopter’s collision with the passenger plane, which carried 64 people, authorities said.
“I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for our nation,” the president said. “This was a dark and excruciating night in our capital and a tragedy of terrible proportions. We grieve for every precious soul that has been taken from us so sadly.”
And the president argued: “We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. Only the highest aptitude – you have to be the highest intellect — and psychologically superior people, were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.”
“We have to have our smartest people,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. What matters is intellect, talent. The word talent. They have to be talented geniuses,” he continued. “We can’t have regular people doing that job. They won’t be able to do it.”
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles talked about the “out of touch” comments made by Democratic Senators at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary under President Donald Trump.
Speaking to “The Megyn Kelly Show” podcast on Wednesday, Knowles and Kelly discussed questions by Democratic Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Knowles said they appeared to be “shilling for the big pharmaceutical companies” that didn’t want Kennedy selected.
“The Democrats and the squish Republicans have not caught up with the tectonic shift that has happened in politics,” Knowles said. “They’re still considering politics from 10 or 15 years ago, but after this election, issues like mass deportations, that is now the mainstream position of most Americans, issues like questioning the over-prescription of vaccines, the regulatory capture by big pharmaceutical companies, that is now the mainstream position for most Americans.”
“I think that these senators who haven’t gotten the message, they’re just so profoundly out of touch, and if they continue to remain out of touch, it will be at their own electoral peril,” he added.
Knowles said that what he witnessed at the hearing wasn’t a case of “Democrats versus Republicans or leftists versus conservatives.”
“It’s not over some ideological issue,” the DW host said. “The sole pushback that Kennedy is getting … is from the pharmaceutical companies operating through the politicians they have bought off and control.”
“That’s it,” Knowles added. “So, the question that remains to be seen is can Bobby Kennedy, with the backing of Donald Trump who just won a landslide election with the popular vote for the first time for a Republican in 20 years, can he overcome one single lobby in the country, and that is the pharmaceutical lobby. We are about to get a measure of their relative power in the U.S. Senate.”
“All these Democrats are opposed to me for partisan issues, they used to be my friends,” Kennedy said at one point in the hearing. “They agreed with all the issues I’ve been working on my whole career. Now, they’re against me because anything President Trump does has to be discredited, derided, and vilified.”
Jennifer Love Hewitt discussed being sexualized when she was a teenage actress working in Hollywood, saying she didn’t fully understand what it meant to be a sex symbol at the time.
The 45-year-old actress made the remarks during a recent episode of Mayim Bialik’s “Breakdown” podcast.
“In my 30s, I sort of went back and looked at that time again and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Hewitt said during the episode. “There were grown men talking to me at 16 about my breasts just openly on a talk show, and people were laughing about it.”
Hewitt’s career took off when she was cast as Sarah Reeves Merrin on the Fox teen drama Party of Five (1995–1999). She was 18 when the massively popular teen horror movie “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was released in 1997.
“In hindsight, it was really strange, I think, to become a sex symbol sort of like before I even knew what that was,” she continued. “I didn’t know what being sexy meant.”
The actress continued, “I was on the cover of Maxim magazines, and people would openly walk up and be like, ‘I took your magazine with me on a trip last week.’ I didn’t know what that meant, you know what I mean? It’s kind of gross. I think later it sort of hit me more… but at the time, it felt very innocent and exciting and fun.”
Later in the conversation, Hewitt recalled some of the jokes made after “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was released.
“After the movie came out, everybody said, ‘Oh, I know what your breasts did last summer’ and that was the joke,” she told Bialik, per Page Six. “Everybody would laugh, and so I would laugh, ’cause it was supposed to be funny, I guess. It didn’t register with me that this was a grown man, talking about my breasts on national television.”
The actress said she doesn’t blame the people making jokes, explaining that it was standard procedure then.
“It was a culture that was fully accepted. They were allowed to believe that that was appropriate, and I answered the questions, laughed right along with them,” she said.
Hewitt said she was embarrassed by her figure and wore baggy clothing to hide it. “I had bigger boobs for a smaller person, and so it was embarrassing. I didn’t want to be looked at by a 40-year-old in Pizza Hut,” she said. Hewitt also recalled being “so mad” that she was only noticed for her looks in the film.
“I had worked so hard trying to be good in a horror movie, and I really wanted people to walk away from the movie going, ‘That’s a really good actress,’” Hewitt said. “And instead, every headline — and I’m not even joking — for 10 or 12 years after that … it was always about my breasts, always first. …That was heartbreaking for me.”
Director of National Intelligence designate Tulsi Gabbard torched her detractors during her opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, addressing their likely attacks before they even had a chance to deliver them.
Gabbard wrapped up her statement by predicting that Democrats on the committee — with whom she had previously shared party affiliation — would challenge her loyalty to the United States and question whether she was a “puppet” beholden to President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, or a host of others.
WATCH:
DNI Director-designate @TulsiGabbard: Democrats have accused me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet — but what truly unsettles them is I refuse to be THEIR puppet. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/nphSJ26r1M
“Before I close, I want to warn the American people who are watching at home: you may hear lies and smears in this hearing that will challenge my loyalty to and my love for our country,” she said.
“Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience, and the Constitution of the United States, accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet — not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet-masters,” Gabbard continued.
“The same tactic was used against President Trump and failed,” Gabbard said, referencing the efforts made by the Left and legacy media to falsely tie Trump to Russia.
“The American people elected Trump with a decisive victory and mandate for change,” she added. “The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is that I refuse to be THEIR puppet.”
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) also predicted that opponents would question Gabbard’s loyalty and dedication to the United States, saying that such criticisms were ridiculous and unfounded.
“Hillary Clinton has basically called her a traitor in the past. This is a woman who served more than 20 years in our nation’s army. She’s passed five different background checks. I reviewed the latest one. It’s clean as a whistle. It’s fine for people to have policy differences and ask questions about those differences. I hope no one would impugn Mrs. Gabbard’s patriotism or her integrity,” Cotton said.
Login
