Tag: politics

South Korea Election Officials Suspected of FORGING Vote Tally Sheets and COVERING UP Discrepancies — Special Prosecutor RAIDS Election Commission Offices

What was dismissed as a simple clerical mistake in June has now escalated into a criminal investigation involving allegations of falsified election records and an attempted cover-up inside South Korea’s National Election Commission (NEC).

South Korea’s election system is facing another explosive controversy after a special prosecutor announced Tuesday, November 10, that investigators had uncovered evidence suggesting an election commission employee concealed and forged official vote tally sheets during the June 3 local elections.

The allegations involve the election for superintendent of education in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea’s most populous province.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the special counsel team led by independent prosecutor Lee Tae-han suspects an employee of the Gwangju City Election Commission in Gyeonggi Province manipulated election records, resulting in discrepancies between the reported vote totals and the actual count.

Even more troubling, investigators are examining whether officials within the local election commission attempted to conceal the suspected wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, investigators executed court-authorized search-and-seizure operations at the Gyeonggi Provincial Election Commission and the Gwangju City Election Commission.

The searches were conducted as part of an investigation into suspected violations of South Korea’s Public Official Election Act.

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In Major Win For Nuclear Energy, Nearly Half Of Senate Democrats Join GOP To Advance Permitting Overall

The Senate voted 73-25 on Monday evening to invoke cloture and open debate on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA), the sweeping permitting overhaul written by Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee with Democrats Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Supporters were hoping for 15 to 20 Democrats, good for around 70 votes, and TD Cowen had cut its odds of success to about 25% from 40%.

Instead, 51 Republicans, 21 Democrats and one independent voted yes. That’s 22 of the 47 senators who caucus with Democrats, nearly half, backing a bill Trump has endorsed.

Piper Sandler’s policy team boils the nearly 500-page bill down to four parts: permit deadlines and limits on yanking permits, a narrower NEPA, more FERC power over transmission lines and data center rules:

  • Including a limit of no more than 2 years for federal decisions on environmental approvals and restraints on agencies’ abilities to withdraw permits once granted.
  • Amending the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by reducing the scope of its applicability, i.e. who can sue and on what grounds, and shortening the litigation window.
  • Accelerating the buildout of transmission lines by enhancing FERC’s backstop authority, which gives the federal government more authority to approve major lines and helps projects move through the permitting process much faster.
  • On data centers, the bill is a step up from the Ratepayer Protection Act in that it forces more energy behind the meter and establishes rules to ensure data centers are responsible for energy costs until all incremental costs are fully recovered (even after contract terminations).

Shutting the courthouse door

One of the most important changes involves stripping environmental activist groups of their favorite weapon.

Today, most NEPA challenges have six years to be filed. BAAJA cuts that to 150 days, and only people who commented during the review and can show direct harm get standing.

Even a winning NEPA challenge gets a remand “without vacatur or issuance of an injunction,” per the Bipartisan Policy Center, so the project keeps moving while the agency fixes its paperwork.

Sue-and-delay activists don’t need to win in court, and they often know they won’t. They just need to tie a project up until financing costs pile up and investors walk away. A 150-day window with no injunctions takes that weapon away.

Data centers get the bill, again

Data centers already agreed to this in an informal way with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge pushed by Trump.

The BAAJA bill pushes for harder requirements to actually enforce it, considering some recent pushback data center operators have exhibited with actually paying for the associated grid upgrades.

The September text made data centers and crypto miners drawing 20 MW or more pay the full cost of the generation, storage, transmission and distribution built to serve them. The weekend rewrite “expands ratepayer protections to data centers of all sizes,” per BPC.

They’d also pay for the existing grid on top of new upgrades, a “double tap” that FERC’s 1994 pricing policy doesn’t allow, and stay on the hook even if they exit a contract early.

Behind the meter until the grid catches up

Piper’s read is that the bill “forces more energy behind the meter,” and states could even require data centers to bring their own generation.

Pay twice for a grid that can’t connect you for years, or build your own power plant?

Goldman already sees behind-the-meter supplying 25% of all data centers by 2030. The median power project built last year waited more than five years from interconnection request to operation, per Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

As we reported in March, PJM said the Three Mile Island restart might not get full deliverability until 2031, at a plant that fed the same grid until 2019.

Fully connecting a large data center “can take 5 to 10 years,” a16z’s Ryan McEntush wrote last month, but “every site I’m aware of intends to connect to the grid as soon as it can.”

Until grid owners and operators can bolt on new plants and big loads in under five years, behind-the-meter will be the default for anyone who can afford it.

Four House nuclear bills along for the ride

The weekend rewrite also added a nuclear title folding in four of the six bills that cleared House Energy and Commerce in September without a single “no” vote, per a summary from Heinrich’s office.

They scrap the mandatory hearing on uncontested reactor and enrichment licenses, let enrichment plants start building before getting an NRC license, raise senior NRC pay and make DOE announce nuclear facility actions.

Fuel recycling (the REFUEL Act) and an NRC advisory committee bill didn’t make it.

The House didn’t wait. On Monday night it passed the REFUEL Act 397-2 and the enrichment bill 394-3. As we wrote earlier, nuclear is the one energy source Washington still agrees on.

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Democratic Party turns a popular repudiation of Trump into a call for “moderation” and austerity

Just days after the 2026 midterm elections delivered a major popular repudiation of inequality, war and attacks on democratic rights, the Democratic Party has launched a campaign to redefine the election as a mandate for austerity, accommodation with Trump and opposition to socialism.

The New York Times, speaking for the Democratic Party, set out the program in an editorial published Monday. Under the headline “This Winning Combination Is the Future of American Politics,” the Times claims that Democratic candidates won in states Trump carried in 2024 because “they ran as economic populists and cultural moderates.” This combination, it writes, “meets the moment, after years of disappointing laissez-faire economic policies and a decade of cultural excesses by the progressive left.”

The editorial praises Democratic candidates for adopting right-wing positions on what it calls “hot-button culture issues.” On immigration, it highlights candidates who attacked the Biden administration as lax on the border, including Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who credited Trump for the fall in crossings.

But the assault on immigrants is not a “cultural” issue. It is the spearhead of the Trump administration’s war on the Constitution, including mass roundups and detention camps, deportations carried out in defiance of court orders, troops deployed in American cities and federal agents who have shot and killed citizens in Minneapolis. Its architect, Stephen Miller, took over as White House chief of staff the same morning the editorial appeared.

Nor is the epidemic of police violence a matter of “culture.” Yet the Times hails Democrats who embraced law-and-order demagogy and “well-funded police departments.” It applauds support for voter ID requirements, which disadvantage the poor and elderly and have been at the center of the administration’s efforts to delegitimize the elections.

The Times’ model candidate is Adam Hamilton, the Kansas senator-elect, whose campaign ad declared, “On one side, the far left pushes socialism and open borders.” The Times says this “captured the mood.” It praises another winner, Josh Turek in Iowa, for boasting that he voted with Republicans “more than 700 times.” The Democratic victors, it concludes, showed “an admirable pragmatism and a willingness to compromise that are central to maintaining democracy.”

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Hungary Detains Viktor Orban’s Brother On Human Trafficking Charges

Hungary has detained one of former Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s brothers during an investigation into the smuggling of illegal immigrants from Vietnam.

“Three out of the ex-ministers of Orban are already in custody,” Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said on Monday in Berlin. “Already his brother today went to custody.”

Hungary’s National Asset Protection and Recovery Office (NVVH) said in a statement that it had detained four people and searched several homes in Budapest and the nearby towns of Fot and Dunakeszi. However, it did not name any of them.

Orban responded on social media, saying it was part of a “witch hunt” against him.

“Today, the government should be held to account before the National Security Committee over its handling of the communist-era secret police archives,” Orban wrote on X on Monday.

“However, instead of facing scrutiny, it is using political persecution to divert attention.

“What is happening in Hungary is not accountability. It is a political witch hunt.

“The aim of this dirty political game is to eliminate opponents and establish a one-party state.”

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House of Representatives blocks effort to impeach Hegseth

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to block an effort to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, effectively killing the resolution by referring it to the House Judiciary Committee.

In a 211-to-204 procedural vote, House Republicans successfully rallied to table the impeachment push introduced by outgoing Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Massie was the sole member of his party to vote alongside all voting Democrats against referring the measure to the committee.

The move sidestepped what would have been a historic full House floor vote on individual articles of impeachment against a sitting Cabinet member. The impeachment resolution leveled serious allegations against Secretary Hegseth, accusing him of committing high crimes and misdemeanors while serving as the head of the Pentagon.

Among the charges were claims that Hegseth bypassed Congress by executing military operations in Iran without authorization, failed to minimize civilian casualties, ordered extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, directed operations involved in the capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and retaliated against Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

Rep. Massie claimed that Hegseth carried out unlawful orders and compromised constitutional standards, seeking a formal trial in the U.S. Senate. In response to the resolution, Hegseth and administration officials forcefully pushed back against the charges ahead of the vote.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday morning, Hegseth described the impeachment push as a partisan “farce” and “political spectacle,” asserting that policy disagreements over military campaigns should not be twisted into impeachable offenses.

President Donald Trump also rallied behind his defense chief in social media posts and public statements, defending Hegseth’s actions and urging congressional Republicans to reject the resolution. Following the vote, Pentagon officials declared total victory, stating that referring the articles to committee put an end to a political distraction.

Although the procedural maneuver halts the current effort during the outgoing Congress, the battle over Hegseth’s tenure may reemerge. House Democrat leaders, including Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), supported the impeachment push, and other Democrat lawmakers have signaled that they could revive investigations or file new impeachment articles when the new Congress convenes in January with a shifted Democrat majority.

Nonetheless, for now, the procedural vote ensures Hegseth remains in his post as the administration continues to uphold its foreign policy and military directives.

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DEMOCRAT CIVIL WAR EXPLODES! Newly Elected Ohio Democrat Says Senior Party Members Threatened to Make His Life a “LIVING HELL” If He Refuses to Back Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker

The Democrat Party’s internal power struggle is getting uglier by the day.

Fresh off their victories in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are already turning on one another as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attempts to consolidate his grip on the speakership.

Now, a newly elected Democrat from Ohio is publicly accusing senior members of his own party of threatening political retaliation if he refuses to fall in line behind Jeffries.

Don Leonard, the progressive former Ohio State University professor who just flipped Ohio’s 15th Congressional District from Republican incumbent Mike Carey, posted a video saying senior House Democrats told him in no uncertain terms what happens if he refuses to support Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker.

According to Leonard, they warned it would mean “making my life a living hell for the next two years here in Washington as well as being sure to lose my election” in 2028. They expect him to “wear the team jersey” and “be a good team player.”

Leonard, a first-time candidate who branded himself a “Do Something Democrat,” defeated Carey in a district Trump carried by roughly 10 points in 2024. Unofficial results showed Leonard winning by about 6–7 points (roughly 52% to 45%).

He has conditioned any support for Jeffries on two demands: a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and ending “U.S. support for the war in Iran and the country Israel that led us into it.”

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Bernie Sanders’ Plan Shows Democrats Have No Intention of Addressing Affordability

Spend, spend spend.

Tax, tax, tax.

That’s what the next two years are going to look like for a lot of Americans who voted for Democrats after believing their affordability argument. Sen. Bernie Sanders proves this, with his litany of agenda items that include Medicare for All, an inflationary minimum wage of $20, and more.

And 70 percent support voter ID, yet Democrats don’t want that.

All that means more taxes, more inflation. If you like paying $10 for a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs, this is your jam.

Sanders also wants to expand Social Security benefits by at least $2,400 a year by taxing the “wealthy” even more.

He also wants to expand Medicare by lowering the eligibility age and adding coverage for dental, vision, and hearing. Your taxes will cover that, of course. And imagine all the fraudsters just itching to start fake Medicare dental offices and vision clinics.

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Here’s What Democratic Socialism Would Really Cost Americans

here is a powerful appeal to the promise of government-provided health care and other social programs without premiums, deductibles, or copays. But there are questions that politicians promoting Democratic socialism rarely answer, specifically, what will it actually cost and how will we pay for it? If we want to understand what these promises mean for middle-income families, we need to look beyond the sales pitch and examine the numbers.

Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan senator-elect, recently said of universal health care: “it is guaranteed health insurance from cradle to the moment you pass away. It comes without premiums or co-pay for deductions. It guarantees you care when you need it. This is a level of security we have never known in the United States.”

Any country that has adopted some version of national health care proves it does not work as the advocates promise. In fact, it is paid for through substantial taxes, requires some fees and co-pays, and means long waits for many of the medical procedures.

What would Democratic socialists’ programs cost and how would they be paid for? Advocates will argue that taxing the rich can pay for these programs. However, studies have repeatedly shown that the additional revenue from taxing high-income earners would fall far short of covering the costs. Even substantially higher taxes on the wealthy cannot close a funding gap of this magnitude, leaving middle- and lower-income taxpayers to shoulder much of the burden.

The U.S. is not paying for the programs it already has. For fiscal year 2026, federal spending was $7.4 trillion and revenue was $5.4 trillion, leaving a deficit of $2 trillion. To pay for our current expenses solely through increased revenue would require an increase of approximately 37 percent in taxes; doing so solely through spending cuts would require roughly a 27 percent decrease in spending. Adding the Democratic socialist programs would add a minimum of $8 trillion annually to spending, according to a Cato Institute study, and require a 166 percent increase in overall taxes to pay for all of the current and new programs.

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Kraków Gunman Appears to Have Been an LGBT Leftist, According to His Social Media

Poland’s left-leaning Tusk government and international media labeled Kraków gunman Michał Oksiński far-right, but prosecutors found no evidence of a right-wing affiliation, while images circulating on X from deleted Facebook accounts attributed to him appear to show him posing with an LGBT Pride flag and mocking the pope.

On Nov. 7, Michał Oksiński, 24, drove a Subaru onto Kraków’s Main Market Square and opened fire at random, killing six people and wounding 15. Police officers Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański chased him from the square, and both were shot in the exchange of fire. Kulik, hit three times, approached the gunman, fired, and stopped him, then applied a tourniquet to his own arm. The dead included an Austrian woman and a British man. It was Poland’s deadliest shooting since the fall of communism in 1989.

Before driving to Kraków, Oksiński shot his father Janusz, 53, his mother Renata, 52, and his sister Magdalena, 21, a painting student at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, in the family flat in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, according to investigators. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said Oksiński faced a separate murder charge over those killings, bringing the total number killed to nine. Investigators found two AR-15 rifles, two pistols and several hundred rounds of ammunition in his car and on his person. In all, they seized 11 firearms. Oksiński died in hospital on Nov. 9 after three operations.

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McConnell Sparks New Health Fears After Unsettling Reaction To Midterm Blowout

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is facing renewed scrutiny over his health after appearing to freeze when a reporter asked him about Republicans’ devastating midterm election losses.

The 84-year-old Kentucky Republican was approached by Newsmax congressional correspondent Kilmeny Duchardt, who asked for his reaction to the GOP’s election setbacks and what he believed needed to change.

McConnell briefly looked toward the camera before staring straight ahead without answering. After several awkward seconds, an aide appeared to wave the reporter away.

The footage quickly went viral, reportedly attracting more than 4 million views on X and sparking fresh calls for congressional term and age limits.

The incident comes amid longstanding concerns about McConnell’s health.

In 2023, the former Senate Republican leader experienced two widely publicized freezing episodes during press appearances, including one in Kentucky when he remained silent for approximately 30 seconds.

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