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Congress Should Miss Their Paychecks Too

This week marks the third week of the government shutdown – and there continues to be no end in sight. This week, millions of federal workers officially missed their first paycheck. These workers are staring down the barrel of piling bills; many are unable to put gas in the car or food on the table for their families.

The consequences of a prolonged shutdown are stacking up fast. Federal services are grinding to a halt. Veterans’ career counseling and regional offices have gone dark. Flight delays and travel disruptions are wreaking havoc across the country. And for every week this drags on, the U.S. economy takes a $15 billion hit. A month-long shutdown means 43,000 more Americans are thrown out of work.

And yet, there’s one group that hasn’t missed a single paycheck: members of Congress. While working-class families are about to miss paychecks their livelihoods depend on, fat-cat politicians in Washington continue to get paid. It’s time for Congress to feel the pain they’re inflicting on millions of Americans.

Congress should miss their paychecks.

Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego displayed the hypocrisy out loud as the shutdown began. In an interview with NBC News, he defended his refusal to forgo his salary during the shutdown, saying, “I’m not wealthy, and I have three kids. I would basically be missing, you know, mortgage payments, rent payments, child support.”

Exactly, Senator. That’s precisely what millions of everyday Americans are facing right now.

Ask yourself – would this shutdown even happen in the first place if members of Congress couldn’t make their own mortgage payments or pay their own rent? If they were scrambling to fill up their gas tanks or stay on their feet? Not a chance.

My heart breaks for the families who are beginning to feel this impact while their members of Congress treat this like a political game. I’ve lived this struggle myself. In 2005, my husband Scotty was blinded by an IED suicide bomb while serving our country in Iraq. While he lay in a coma at Walter Reed, I was forced to navigate a system that offered no real support – not for him, and certainly not for me. I had resigned from my job to be by his side, while facing student loan debt and mounting care expenses. There were no safety nets, no clear guidance – just bureaucracy and silence.

That was 20 years ago. Shamefully, not much has changed. While I’m thrilled and thankful to see President Trump ensure that members of our military get paid, law enforcement, air traffic controllers, and millions of moms and dads are still missing paychecks.

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Lindsey Halligan Brings Russiagate’s Last Case To A Close After Seven Years Of Injustice

It may surprise some people, but until this week the Russia collusion hoax was still alive. Two prosecutions from the Robert Mueller era were still ongoing. On paper, the first, against a dozen Russians no one has ever seen or heard of, who were accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) without a shred of verifiable evidence, remains open. But for all practical purposes, the hoax is now over, because the other, far more consequential case finally came to an end on Monday thanks to the courage and persistence of the new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan.

Many of us remember the abusive prosecutions Mueller’s team inflicted on figures such as Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and George Papadopoulos. Far fewer know about the collateral damage that extended beyond President Donald Trump’s circle. One of the most egregious cases targeted a Dutch-Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.

Alptekin had no connection to Trump, no connection to Russia, and no reason whatsoever to be caught in the Mueller dragnet. His only “crime” was hiring Gen. Michael Flynn’s consulting firm, the Flynn Intelligence Group, for a project unrelated to the 2016 election. The project involved raising awareness about an alleged radical Islamist cleric living in the United States, a matter of concern to Alptekin but irrelevant to anything Mueller was supposed to be investigating.

So why was Alptekin targeted? Because Mueller’s team combed through Flynn’s client list, searching for anyone they could pressure into making false claims. They zeroed in on Alptekin, attempting to coerce him into asserting that Flynn had secretly lobbied on behalf of Turkey without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), intending to use that fabricated claim as leverage against Flynn and, ultimately, Trump. When Alptekin refused to lie, Mueller’s prosecutors proceeded to file bogus FARA charges against him.

Flynn’s business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, was hit with parallel charges. Unlike Alptekin, Rafiekian lived in the U.S., so his case went to trial. Predictably, he was convicted by a heavily partisan Northern Virginia jury, only for Judge Anthony Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, to throw out the verdict almost immediately, finding that the government had failed to prove its case. This alone is remarkable and highlights how in Alexandria, right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the jury pool is deeply tainted and partisan. After a long and messy appeals process, Rafiekian’s case was dismissed entirely.

Yet the related case against Alptekin somehow stayed alive. For seven years he lived in legal purgatory, unable to see his wife and children for fear of extradition, his business destroyed, projects abandoned, accounts frozen, millions in legal fees piling up, and his professional reputation shattered.

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DUBLIN RISES: Irish Citizens Explode in Wrath After Algerian Migrant Rapes 10-Year-Old Girl – Police Attack Protesters

Irish citizens have had enough, and the police protect the illegals. 

It’s a sad, but repetitive story: in the midst of the invasion of Europe by military-aged males posing as ‘asylum seekers’, a ten-year-old girl in Dublin, Ireland, was raped by an Algerian man who is housed, fed, and clothed by the Irish taxpayer’s money.

While in many EU countries the population has been drawn to apathy, in Ireland a fury has spread like fire among the citizenry, and for two nights the protests have centered around the migrant hotel.

The Guarda (Irish police), always ready to protect the invaders, charged on the protesting citizens, and in turn, officers were attacked with bricks, glass bottles and fireworks as the protest turned violent.

The Telegraph reported:

“Thousands gathered at the Citywest Hotel in Saggart after reports that a 10-year-old girl had been sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker.

Witnesses saw a police van set on fire as protesters waved Irish flags and chanted: ‘Get them out’.

The crowd attempted to breach a police cordon outside the hotel, with some carrying garden forks and other tools.”

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The New York Times Wants An America Without Americans

n Tuesday, Leighton Woodhouse wrote for The New York Times that conservatives are “spinning” a “mythology” that is “historically delusional.”

The delusional mythology Woodhouse is referring to? The belief that Americans are a “group of people with a shared history.”

According to Woodhouse, “The founding fathers were an assortment of people from different histories and backgrounds who coexisted — often just barely.” These “different” histories, however, were all rooted in Christianity. But Woodhouse wants readers to believe that this type of variety in Christianity proves America was born out of a multicultural diversity experiment.

Of course it wasn’t. The colonists shared a common language, moral framework, and writ large, a lineage. Yet Woodhouse insists otherwise.

The United States isn’t exceptional because of our common cultural heritage; we’re exceptional because we’ve been able to cohere despite faiths, traditions and languages that set us apart, and sometimes against one another. The drafters of the Constitution tried to create that cohesion by building a government that could transcend our divisions.

In other words, Woodhouse is arguing that America is not the product of Americans at all. Rather, it’s just a cosmopolitan conglomerate held together by particular processes but not people. It’s why Woodhouse invokes “Mexican, Korean, Somalian” “anestries” as similar examples of American heritage just like English, Irish, and Scottish settlers. The implication of course is that America would be just as American even without “heritage Americans.”

But that’s not how nations work. As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson wrote in these pages, the very premise of the entire American legal and civic culture emerged from the specifically Christian claim that “All men are created equal,” and such conviction “arrived in America by way of settlers and pioneers who came here specifically to establish a nation where they could practice their Christian faith as they saw fit.”

“The only people who ever took that self-evident truth [that all men are created equal] and used it as a foundation on which to forge a new nation were the English colonists in America,” Davidson pointed out. Not Mexicans, not Koreans, not Somalians, but English colonists who created America and thus became the first Americans.

And despite Woodhouse’s best efforts, there is in fact such a thing as a heritage American. They are the descendants of those who settled this land, fought for its independence, and built our institutions. The great statesmen of our nation understood this. They spoke not of a diverse collection of foreigners as tying the nation together, but of a people bound by blood, memory, and the sacrifices of the generations that came before them.

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Leftists Downplay Dem’s Nazi Tattoo After Calling Hegseth’s Christian Ink ‘White Nationalist’

he propaganda press was sick less than a year ago over a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross on Pete Hegseth’s chest. They called his Christian markings “white supremacist and extremist,” as they tried to derail his confirmation for secretary of defense. Some mistakenly thought the cross was a Nazi swastika. It isn’t.

Now the press is making excuses for the actual Nazi symbol that was tattooed on Maine’s Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner’s chest. Platner would challenge Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, if he can make it through the primary against Maine Gov. Janet Mills.

Platner got a large skull and crossbones in the style of the Nazi’s SS Totenkopf (death head) on his chest in 2007 while he was a Marine in Croatia. It was worn by Nazi guards at concentration camps and is considered a hate symbol, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

MSNBC found Platner’s tattoo, and some heinous things he said on Reddit (like, cops are “bastards”; white rural Americans are “racist” and “stupid”; black people “don’t tip”) merely “a political stress test.” None of it disqualifies him for office in their eyes.

Platner shared a video of himself topless on Pod Save America, saying opposition research had found the video. He tried to get ahead of it on Monday by explaining the tattoo on a friendly podcast. Pod Save America Host Tommy Vietor is the former national security spokesman for President Barack Obama.

After the terrible tat was exposed this week, Platner claimed he did not know it was a Nazi symbol and rushed to have it covered up. Is it conceivable that in the 18 years he has had that tattoo, he never looked up the image? That no one ever mentioned it to him?

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Trump Suggests US Strikes on Alleged Drug Shipments on ‘Land’ Are Coming Soon

President Trump on Wednesday suggested that US strikes on alleged drug shipments “on land” could be coming soon amid the US bombing campaign targeting boats in Latin America.

Trump has made similar comments before, and according to multiple media reports, the US is preparing to bomb Venezuela with the goal of ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is using cracking down on drug trafficking as a pretext.

The president claimed to reporters at the White House that he had “legal authority” to launch the strikes, but Congress hasn’t authorized the bombing campaign, which the Constitution requires for launching a war. Trump said he may notify Congress of the plans to launch strikes on land targets, but didn’t say he would seek authorization.

“We will hit them very hard when they come in by land. And they haven’t experienced that yet, but now we’re totally prepared to do that. We’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when [they] come to the land,” the president said.

The president previously told Congress that he believes the US is now in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Trump has framed the airstrikes as self-defense, pointing to the large numbers of drug overdoses in the US, but they are primarily caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which don’t come from Venezuela, something Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been very critical of the campaign, has pointed out.

“There is no fentanyl made in Venezuela. Not just a little bit, there’s none being made. These are outboard boats that, in order for them to get to Miami, would have to stop and refuel 20 times,” Paul told British journalist Piers Morgan this week.

“It’s all likely going to Trinidad and Tobago. There are a lot of reasons to be worried about this. Number one is the broader principle of when can you kill people indiscriminately when there’s war. That’s why when we declare war is supposed to be done by Congress. It’s not supposed to be done willy nilly. When there’s war you just kill people in the war zone, there are rules of engagement,” Paul added.

Since September 2, the US has bombed at least seven boats in the Caribbean and one in the eastern Pacific near Colombia, extrajudicially executing 34 people at sea, according to numbers released by the Trump administration, without providing evidence to back up its claims about the targets. Sources told The Washington Post on Wednesday that any US airstrikes in Venezuela would likely first target alleged trafficker encampments or clandestine airstrips, but regime change remains the ultimate goal.

“There really is no turning back unless Maduro is essentially not in power,” a person familiar with the administration’s deliberations told the Post.

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City Health Officials Tied to Soros Urge Public to “Get Vaccinated”

A coalition of city public health officials with ties to pharma investor George Soros is urging the public to “get vaccinated.”

In an open letter, the Big Cities Health Coalition accused federal officials of driving down vaccination rates and fueling an increase in dangerous infectious disease outbreaks by making “repeated false claims” about vaccines.

They wrote:

“Vaccines have eradicated devastating diseases and saved millions of lives. They keep classrooms safe and schools open. They allow children to spend time with friends and enjoy their favorite activities. They help parents and caregivers work to support their families.

The letter also addresses recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule for children and adults, though it does not mention U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or President Donald Trump by name.

The coalition, which represents 35 U.S. cities and about a fifth of the U.S. population, “has been working together to exchange ideas and address public health threats for more than two decades,” according to CNN, which first reported on the letter Monday.

Participating cities include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Seattle.

The group’s financial documents reveal support from billionaire financier Soros. Soros has also invested heavily in the pharmaceutical industry, including COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and Gilead Sciences, which produces remdesivir, a controversial antiviral treatment frequently given to COVID-19 patients.

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“I’m From the Hood, OK?!” – Texas Democrat State Rep. Jolanda Jones Says She Will Slash Republicans Across the Throat if They Bully Her

A Democrat state lawmaker went on CNN on Wednesday evening and threatened to slash Republicans’ throats.

And CNN didn’t push back at all.

Jolanda Jones, a Texas State Democrat Rep. who is running for a US House seat, went on CNN and told host Erin Burnett that she’s going to get violent with Republicans because she’s from the ‘hood,’

“I’m from the hood, okay!? So when the bully comes like – if there are no rules you have to figure it out so Donald Trump has changed things,” Jones said.

She continued, “And I think that’s why Democrats are losing black people. That’s why they’re losing poor people.”

“Because with poor people, all they want is for us to fight, so if you hit me in my face, I’m not gonna punch you back in your face I’m gonna go across your neck.”

“You gotta hit hard enough where they won’t come back and so yeah, for the same way that I went to New York and spoke with governor Kathy Hochul and said that if they’re gonna try to wipe up out in Texas, we need to wipe out every Republican in New York and California, and Illinois,” she said.

Jolanda Jones didn’t take Michelle Obama’s advice. She said if they go low, I’m going to get in the gutter.

Erin Burnett sat there and did not push back on Jolanda Jones at all.

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Late-Term Abortion Clinic Expected to Open in New Jersey

An abortion clinic that kills unborn babies in the latest stages of pregnancy is expected to open in New Jersey next year. 

New Jersey is one of nine states and D.C. that have no gestational limits on abortion. Even so, there is only a handful of clinics across the United States that abort babies in the third trimester of pregnancy. Dr. Kristyn Brandi and Nurse Practitioner Catherine Obando, who said they are tired of referring women out of state for late abortions, are working together to open the state’s first all-trimester abortion clinic, NJ.com reported.

Right now, there are no abortionists in New Jersey who perform abortions past 28 weeks, according to the report. Babies can survive outside the womb at around 24 weeks of pregnancy, although there have been documented cases of babies born even earlier who have survived with medical intervention.

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US military conducts ninth lethal strike on drug smuggling vessels in Eastern Pacific

Three narcoterrorists were killed in what is believed to be the ninth deadly attack on vessels attempting to smuggle illegal drugs into the U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the strike on social media Wednesday evening.

Hegseth’s post included a video that showed a small boat moving along the water. Several seconds into the video, the boat explodes and is seen floating motionless in flames.

The latest strike took place in the Eastern Pacific, marking the second strike against a vessel in the Eastern Pacific within a day. The previous seven took place in the Caribbean.

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