Daily News Roundup

Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes

NOTABLE QUOTES

William Doyle contributor to The Federalist: According to its creative interpretation of the new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, elections should be classified as a “critical service” deserving of competitive FEMA grant funding. According to the email, “As a core element of government function, elections are a critical service and eligible for this government funding.” The webinar plans to cover the application process, and “will include sample content, as well as inspiration for what the grant funds can be used for.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist: Democrats want to criminalize dissent. You disagree with them, so you are a thought criminal needing punishment. This bank flagging system puts the massive weight of federal resources behind leftist cancel culture — that is to say, behind bloodthirsty mobs.

Tristin Justice correspondent for The Federalist: Migrants without proper identification may apparently opt out of being photographed by TSA upon entry at Miami International Airport. According to a sign posted on X by conservative podcaster Dave Rubin Thursday, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is allowing migrants to pass through entry points without having their picture taken.

Gov. Ron DeSantis in March 2023: “A federally controlled Central Bank Digital Currency is the most recent way the Davos elites are attempting to backdoor woke ideology like Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) into the United States financial system, threatening individual privacy and economic freedom. The Biden administration’s efforts to inject a Centralized Bank Digital Currency is about surveillance and control.”

Brodigan contributor to Louderwithcrowder.com: Carbon trackers and giving “you” the ability to track “your” carbon footprint falls under the globalist genre of digital currency, and a cashless society.

Former President Donald Trump in NH on 1/17/24: “Tonight, I’m also making another promise to protect Americans from government tyranny. As your president, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.”

Steve Karp, M.D. contributor to American Thinker: . . . to summarize, dealing with any form of government is akin to “the house always wins.” How could it not be when the meaning of words are not static, when words and concepts may be inherently vague, prosecutorial discretion can be abused and unaccountable, precedent can be ignored, new precedent formed, or on the flip-side, be adhered to when patently absurd, government can be designed to protect itself and those whom it choses to protect, and lastly, the only option “allowable” is to vote ourselves out of any and all situations we find unacceptable.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei in Davos warned: “Today, I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty. ‘

“The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause.”

Mindszenty Report (January): As Christians, whatever our partisan inclinations, we should understand that there is no moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel or between extremist Islam and Christianity. Hamas seeks more than the destruction of Israel. They foster a hate-filled culture of death, and their hatred extends to the entire West. The U.S. should give Israel space to do the hard work of cleaning up its neighborhood.

2024: ANOTHER RIGGED/STOLEN ELECTION?

Doyle: Infamous ‘Zuckbucks’ Group Tries To Election-Meddle Again — This Time With Federal Tax Dollars

n Wednesday, in an email sent to a network of election officials and nonprofit organizations, the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) announced it would begin efforts to facilitate applications to a massive federal government grant program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This program could potentially funnel more than $700 million to election offices during the 2024 election under the auspices of CTCL officials and their partners in the nonprofit world of left-wing election activism. CTCL is the organization that funneled hundreds of millions of Mark Zuckerberg’s dollars into key election offices to increase Democrat turnout in the 2020 election. CTCL announced in “ELECTricity,” its regular e-newsletter sent to thousands of election officials who are part of its network, that it will host a webinar on Jan. 25 to assist those officials in applying for FEMA’s 2024 Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program. […] Democrat election activists are nothing if not ingenious, however. By tapping into a huge reservoir of potential federal funding, CTCL and its partners could skirt the prohibitions against “private funding” of elections, while gaining de facto control over a much larger funding source than could be provided by individual billionaires such as Zuckerberg, all the while using it to mount the same sort of technical, data-driven, and activist-led manipulation of the election system in favor of Democrats that they mounted in 2020.

BIDEN’S DEMOCRAT PARTY MARXIST PLAYBOOK: PERSECUTE YOUR OPPOSITION, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP & HIS FORMER TRUMP EMPLOYEES, SUPPORTERS & WH STAFF

Whedon: Judge rejects Trump bid to hold Jack Smith in contempt, but restricts additional filings

judge on Thursday declined to hold special counsel Jack Smith but required that he seek court permission before he make additional filings in his prosecution of former President Donald Trump. “The Stay Order did not clearly and unambiguously prohibit the Government actions to which Defendant objects,” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote, according to The Hill. “On its own terms, then, the Stay Order’s key operative sentence did not clearly bar the Government from voluntary rather than obligatory compliance with the Pretrial Order’s now-stayed deadlines.” Earlier this month, Trump’s legal team asked Chutkan to hold Smith in contempt, arguing that his continued filings and pursuit of the case despite a court-ordered pause merited such action. Chutkan paused the case in December amid Trump’s appeal of her rejection of his presidential immunity claims.

GLOBALISM (GREAT RESET/NEW WORLD ORDER) & TRANS HUMANISM (AI HUMANS 2.0) ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED

War Room: “It Goes Beyond Globalism And Nationalism”: Joe Allen On The Growing Threat Of Trans-humanism

Watch the 6:15 minute interview: https://rumble.com/v47st2q-it-goes-beyond-globalism-and-nationalism-joe-allen-on-the-growing-threat-of.html

(Scorched earth) The Liberty Daily: BASED: Heritage Foundation Founder Kevin Roberts Takes a Flamethrower to WEF Talking Points in Davos

Watch the 3:32 minute video: https://rumble.com/v47xjgo-based-heritage-foundation-founder-kevin-roberts-takes-a-flamethrower-to-wef.html

(Davos 2024) World Economic Forum: What is ecocide and which countries recognize it in law?

More countries are considering making environmental damage – or “ecocide” – a crime.
The legal definition for ecocide was developed by international lawyers in 2021.
The consequences of environmental damage are highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023.

More and more countries are taking steps towards making ecocide a crime. In 2021, a panel of criminal and environmental lawyers from around the world created a legal definition for “ecocide” as the basis of a push to criminalize mass damage and destruction of ecosystems. […] The definition was made available for states to consider and is part of an ongoing effort by NGO Stop Ecocide to add environmental damage to the list of international crimes at the International Criminal Court. This would create an arrestable offence for anyone committing ecocide, and would make individuals responsible for acts or decisions that cause severe damage to the environment liable for criminal prosecution. […] The expert panel defines ecocide as: “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. The call for greater protection for the environment has been increasing in urgency and volume in recent years. But the idea of making environmental harm a crime is over 50 years old, as the US-based media organization NPR points out.

TYRANNY IN THE NAME OF CLIMATE DOOM MYTH: GLOBALIST POLITICIANS & BIG BUSINESS ACCUMULATE MORE POWER & CONTROL

TheLibertyDaily: Professor Ian Plimer Utterly Demolishes the Climate Scam

Plimer is also a fellow of the Geological Society and AusIMM. He has been awarded the Eureka Prize (twice), the Centenary Medal, the Clarke Medal, and the Leopold von Buch Plakette.

Watch the 3:29 minute speech: https://rumble.com/v47k9hr-professor-ian-plimer-utterly-demolishes-the-climate-scam.html

Hellner: So filled with fraud: The green agenda and the rich who benefit from it

The federal government essentially has ordered electric car companies to commit fraud. Here’s the headline: The Electric-Vehicle Cheating Scandal A government rule makes them look nearly seven times as efficient as they are. Here’s what’s from the article: “When carmakers test gasoline powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid). It is counted as an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP = SEC/NYSE

(UPDATE) War Room: Frank Gaffney And Marlo Oakes Explain What’s Going On With Natural Asset Companies

Government bureaucracies are stopped for now from transferring public lands (waters, air and private land) to unaccountable investment vehicles called Natural Asset Companies. NAC’s mission is to assure that there will be no productive use of these natural resources.

Watch the 8:41 minute interview: https://rumble.com/v47n27l-frank-gaffney-and-marlo-oakes-explain-whats-going-on-with-natural-asset-com.html

REPUBLICAN U.S. HOUSE MAJORITY

Ballasy: Johnson’s temporary spending bill passes with more Democrat than GOP votes, signaling future strife

The GOP-led House passed a continuing resolution (CR) on Thursday to extend current federal funding levels to avoid a government shutdown, despite House Speaker Johnson having previously vowed not to pursue any more temporary spending bills. “I’m done with short term CRs,” Johnson said in November 2023 after Congress passed a two-step CR with Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 appropriations deadlines. Johnson decided to put the Democratic Senate’s short-term continuing resolution on the House floor for a vote on Thursday, despite harsh criticism from House Republicans about his strategy, and it passed with more votes from Democrats than Republicans. […] On Thursday afternoon, there was talk of adding border security language into the CR in the House after House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., said the speaker was considering the move. The speaker’s office said he would not pursue that path. […] In the House, 207 Democrats and 107 Republicans voted in favor of temporary CR. The legislation passed 314-108. There were 18 Republicans who voted against the bill in the Senate. It ultimately passed 77-18.

Ingraham Angle: Sen JD Vance: This is not about border security

Watch the 3:52 minute interview: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6345083624112

Chaitin: House Republicans Announce New Date For Hunter Biden Deposition

Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) shared the news in a brief statement that included interview plans for other witnesses. “Hunter Biden will appear before our committees for a deposition on February 28, 2024. His deposition will come after several interviews with Biden family members and associates. We look forward to Hunter Biden’s testimony,” they said.

U.S. SUPREME COURT

Ketanji Brown Jackson Faces Ethics Probe over Hubby’s Missing Financial Disclosures

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is facing an ethics investigation from the Judicial Conference over allegations that she failed to include her husband’s income in financial disclosures. In December, the Center for Renewing America filed a complaint with the Judicial Conference, which serves as the governing body of all federal courts and their judges, alleging that Jackson “willfully failed to disclose” required information about her husband’s consulting income for more than a decade. […] “We are hopeful that the Judicial Conference takes a long, hard look at the ethics concerns surrounding Justice Jackson and ensures there is not a double standard for justices,” said Russ Vought, a former senior Trump administration official and president of CRA, in a statement. […] The report by the CRA found that Jackson “repeatedly failed” to include medical malpractice consulting fees earned by her husband.

CHINA: AMERICA’S MORTAL ENEMY

Saavedra: China Conducts Large Military Maneuvers Around Taiwan As Fears Of Invasion Loom

Communist China conducted its largest military drills around Taiwan in weeks on Wednesday, which comes just days after Taiwan once again elected a president that has vowed to confront China. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said that China’s military conducted air and naval operations near the island nation last night with 24 planes and five ships. “The security and prosperity of the Taiwan Strait region are closely related to global development and stability, and are obligations and responsibilities that all parties in the region must share,” Taiwan said in a statement. “The military will continue to strengthen its self-defence capabilities by enemy threats and self-defence needs, and respond to regional threats.”

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA’S AMERICA LAST REGIME: RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF FOREIGN POLICY

Fischberger: Violent Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Are Not a Bug

They’re a feature of a dangerous new politics. Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself. These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.” What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause? [Note: Don Surber on the pro-Palestine WH violent protests that had zero arrests wrote: When you realize who actually controlled the event, you see it not as a protest but as an announcement of a change in foreign policy. This regime supports erasing Israel from the river to the sea.]

Toldjah: See It: Ted Cruz Flattens Dick Durbin in Heated Exchange Over Biden Judicial Nominee Adeel Abdullah Mangi

It is without fail that anytime a prominent Republican politico disagrees with or otherwise opposes a prominent Democrat minority figure, the race card (and/or the sexism card) will get trotted out as a way to shut that Republican up, shut down the debate, and dishonestly frame the differences in opinion as boiling down to racism or sexism (or trans/homophobia). On Thursday, we saw it again during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Adeel Abdullah Mangi, who was nominated by Joe Biden in November to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was then renominated in early January after a contentious round of questioning in December. As the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time, Mangi has had some troubling connections to leftist hate groups that Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee raised questions about in December: […] During Thursday’s hearing, Cruz again brought up some of those issues before the committee. In response, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) proceeded to play the race card against Cruz, accusing him in so many words of “Islamophobia” and insinuating that Cruz suggested Mangi might be a terrorist because he was a Muslim American.

Greenfield: Gen Z College Dropout Congressman Introduces Bill Demonstrating His Ignorance of American History

There’s a fine art to congressional trolling. Okay maybe not that fine since AOC can do it, but there’s still an art to it. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who can’t stop talking about how he’s the first Gen Z member of Congress, is really bad at it. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) challenged his Republican colleagues to introduce a bill that removes the Statue of Liberty because of their stances on immigration at the southern border. Frost, a first-term legislator, read part of the poem “The New Colossus,” which was cast and mounted on to the lower level of the Statue of Liberty as a message to immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in the 1800s.

[…] This is sad on so many levels. Rep. Frost is a college dropout who promised to finish his college degree while in Congress which is apparently a part-time job for him. The Statue of Liberty was sent as a gift by French liberals and the move had nothing to do with encouraging immigrants.

UNEQUAL APPLICATION OF THE LAW

Fleetwood: Daniel Penny’s Fight To Be Free Illustrates Leftists’ Hierarchical, Two-Tiered Justice System

Similar to Penny, Queens resident Jordan Williams — who is black — was charged by a Brooklyn prosecutor in June for his role in the death of an ex-convict on a Brooklyn subway. Video footage of the incident reportedly showed ex-con Devictor Ouedraogo “choking Williams and slugging his girlfriend,” actions which resulted in Williams stabbing Ouedraogo and the latter’s death. This led prosecutors to charge Williams with “manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.” Unlike Penny, however, prosecutors’ request that Williams be placed on a $100,000 cash bail was denied by a local judge. Less than a month later, a grand jury dismissed Williams’ charges altogether. Neither Penny nor Williams should have been charged in the first place. Both men were clearly defending themselves and others against threatening, violent agitators. But NYC residents’ decision to indict Penny and not Williams is further emblematic of Democrats’ hierarchical worldview.

WAR IN ISRAEL

Casiano: Armed Palestinians attack Christian holy site in West Bank: report

Palestinians from the Balata refugee camp in the city of Shechem were armed with guns, firebombs and stones during the Sunday night attack on Jacob’s Well near Nablus, sources told the Tazpit Press Service, an Israeli news agency. “Nablus is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which fails to help the Christian community and stop the disturbing pattern of violence against them,” Elias Zarina told the TPS. Zarina is the co-founder and community manager of the Jerusalemite Initiative, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit, which encourages Arab Christian integration into Israeli society.

The monastery’s keeper, 80-year-old Father Ioustinos of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate was not hurt, but was traumatized by the violence, the news agency reported.

OTHER NEWS, COMMENTARY, OPINION

Land & DeGregory: Trump prosecutor Fani Willis faces hearing on misconduct claims, tries to weasel out of grilling by alleged lover’s ex-wife

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a hearing for Feb. 15 – and set a deadline for Willis to respond to allegations by Feb. 2 that she had an inappropriate relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, according to a brief order from Thursday. On the same day, her legal team also made a filing in the divorce case of the prosecutor, Nathan Wade, where she attempted to get out of sitting for a grilling by his ex-wife, who has been seeking to depose Willis.

Whedon: Family to sue Biden admin for $100 million over death of woman killed by illegal immigrant

The killer reportedly had an MS-13 tattoo and authorities later confirmed his association with the illicit group. He was 16 at the time he crossed the border and told authorities he had paid a guide to smuggle him across so as to escape gang violence in El Salvador. […] The illegal immigrant raped Hamilton and subsequently strangled her with a phone cord. Prior to the murder, he entered the U.S. unlawfully in March 2022, but secured release into the interior under the Biden administration’s directives.

Durden: Conservative Billionaire Buys Baltimore Sun Newspaper

Maryland’s largest daily newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, has been acquired by a conservative billionaire who is the biggest owner of local television stations in the US and has provided favorable coverage for former President Donald Trump. Axios reports David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair, has acquired The Sun in a private deal from Alden Global Capital. This investment firm is one of the country’s largest newspaper operators. […] He continued: “I think the paper can be hugely profitable and successful and serve a greater public interest over time.”

So what could Smith mean when he stated “greater public interest over time”? Well, firstly, the purchase of the newspaper comes as the 2024 presidential election cycle has kicked off. The paper has been analyzed by various media bias websites, such as Media Bias Fact Check, and found “slight to moderate liberal bias” in news reporting.

O’Keefe: The Establishment Is Unmasking Itself

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article laying out the political class’s struggle to preserve its legitimacy by fighting to regain control over the digital information space. The piece built on Martin Gurri’s thesis that the wide adoption of the internet has caused an information revolution that, similar to the adoption of the printing press, has allowed dissent to grow and spread beyond the control of the ruling classes. The results have been political shocks like the Arab Spring, the passage of Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump. If the twenty-first century has been a war to preserve the establishment’s legitimacy, the current battle in the United States is the 2024 presidential election. There’s truth to the familiar cliché that the next election is always the most important in history. As the federal government grows, spends more of our money, and intrudes more in our daily lives, the stakes of elections get higher and higher.

INTERNATIONAL

CBS/AFP: Meet Retro — the first rhesus monkey cloned using a new scientific method

Scientists in China on Tuesday announced that they have cloned the first healthy rhesus monkey, a two-year-old named Retro, by tweaking the process that created Dolly the sheep. Primates have proved particularly difficult to clone, and the scientists overcame years of failure by replacing the cloned cells that would become the placenta with those from a normal embryo. They hope their new technique will lead to the creation of identical rhesus monkeys that can be experimented on for medical research.

DISCOVER THE NETWORKS

Michelle Obama

* Wife of Barack Hussein Obama
* Attorney
* Views America as a racist, sexist, homophobic nation
* Declared in 2008, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country…”

Black Lives Matter (BLM)

Established in 2013, in response to the acquittal of the man who killed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin
* Seeks to stoke black rage over the “virulent anti-Black racism” that “permeates our society”
* Says America was originally “built on Indigenous genocide and chattel slavery” and “continues to thrive on the brutal exploitation of people of color”

Hamas

* Islamic terrorist group founded in 1987
* Received funding from Saddam Hussein
* Receives funding from Iran
* Responsible for many suicide bombings and terrorist acts against Israeli targets