Tag: politics

State criminalizes political memes, gets sued by popular satire site

The Babylon Bee, a popular satire website, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Hawaii challenging a state law that censors online content, “including political satire and parody.”

An announcement from the ADF, which is representing the publication as well as a Hawaii resident in the case, said, “The law violates fundamental free speech and due process rights by using vague and overbroad standards to punish people for posting certain political content online, including political memes and parodies of politicians.”

The ADF explained Gov. Josh Green signed S2687 into law in July 2024, and it bans the distribution of “materially deceptive media” that portrays politicians in a way that risks harming “the reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate.”

Further, the state forces satire artists to post disclaimers, destroying the purpose of satire.

“Hawaii’s war against political memes and satire is censorship, pure and simple,” said ADF lawyer Mathew Hoffmann. “Satire has served as an important vehicle to deliver truth with a smile for centuries, and this kind of speech receives the utmost protection under the Constitution. The First Amendment doesn’t allow Hawaii to choose what political speech is acceptable, and we are urging the court to cancel this unnecessary censorship.”

Seth Dillon, chief of the Bee, said, “We’re used to getting pulled over by the joke police, but comedy isn’t a crime. The First Amendment protects our right to tell jokes, whether it’s election season or not. We’ll never stop fighting to defend that freedom.”

Keep reading

Crockett: Dems ‘Actually Care and We Love,’ GOP Lacks Compassion

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) said Democrats “actually care,” while Republicans like Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) lacked compassion.

Crockett said, “So now that there’s like the family infighting, we see, you know, even Elon Musk coming, he can’t get out of the Twitter. Right? Like he is talking about the bill and trying to tank the bill and telling people call your senators and make sure you take this bill down. And listen, I never thought there would be a day that I would agree with Elon on anything, but that’s where we are. People are finally starting to say, you know what? This is actually impacting me a little too much. I’m going to have to speak up and speak out against this. But my issue is this, all of y’all voted for this so that it would hurt somebody else. The problem was you got upset when you found out that, ‘Oh, shoot, it can hurt me too?’ Honestly, it is like it’s ingrained in who Democrats are is that we actually care and we love and we want to take care of everybody and that’s why we got this big tent party and we all over the place.”

Keep reading

Who Really Are the Lawless and the Dictatorial?

The left is in its usual sanctimonious but schizophrenic mood.

The media claims daily that the Trump administration has usurped power. It is supposedly destroying democracy. It tramples on the rule of law and thus has created a virtual dictatorship.

Yet at the same time, Democrats high-five the most recent district court judge who has put a stop to the current Trump executive orders—which the Trump administration abides by as it files appeals.

There are two clear conclusions from the flurry of the lower-court liberal justices’ orders: 1) Trump has obeyed their record number of interventions as the appeals go forward; and 2) rarely in the history of the republic has a pool of some 300-400 left-wing district judges exercised such nationwide control over the executive branch and indeed the entire nation.

Yet consider the array of double standards.

Donald Trump is accused of improperly dictating to private elite universities who choose to apply for and receive federal funds. At least, lower court cherry-picked justices predictably rule so.

But please spare us the district courts’ sermons on truth, justice, and the American way, given their lodestar is often ideology, not principled adherence to the law.

After all, Trump is only following the precedents of the Obama administration. With legal impunity, it had threatened fines and worse to public and private universities that did not fully implement Title 9 to Obama’s subjective standards.

Indeed, the Obama Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, in an unconstitutional fashion, habitually threatened colleges and universities (“Dear Colleague…”) with a cutoff of federal funds if they did not comply with its weird version of addressing charges of campus sexual harassment. For the “constitutional lawyer” Obama, gone was the American creed that Americans accused on campus were innocent unless proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Keep reading

General Welfare Clause: The Truth They Never Teach

“It would be ABSURD to say … Congress may do what they please.”

That was James Madison, obliterating the modern lie that the general Welfare Clause is a blank check for almost unlimited power.

But that’s exactly how it’s treated and used today.

The general Welfare clause had a clear, limited meaning when the Constitution was ratified – and both Madison and Jefferson warned exactly what would happen if it got twisted into something more.

Spoiler alert: They weren’t just right. They were prophetic.

WHAT THE CONSTITUTION ACTUALLY SAYS

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
-Article I, Section 8, Clause 1

Legal scholar Rob Natelson has explained just how badly this clause has been twisted from its original meaning.

“The General Welfare Clause is one of the two principal constitutional pillars supporting the modern federal welfare state – the other being the Commerce Clause.”

Today, politicians and judges treat this clause as permission to spend money on virtually anything – as long as they claim it’s for the “general welfare.”

But that interpretation is flat-out wrong – and Natelson made that clear.

“The General Welfare Clause is said to include an implied spending power used to justify federal spending programs and the regulatory conditions attached to them.” 

In fact, that’s why many now refer to it as something else entirely.

“For that reason, the General Welfare Clause sometimes is called the Spending Clause.”

But the clause wasn’t written to authorize everything – it was written to limit Congress. To block favoritism. To keep spending within constitutional bounds.

“The General Welfare Clause is more than a mere ‘non-grant’ of spending power.”

Then he dropped the hammer.

“It was intended to be a sweeping denial of power – specifically, it was intended to impose on Congress a standard of impartiality borrowed from the law of trusts, thereby limiting the legislature’s capacity to ‘play favorites’ with federal tax money.”

A STRICT RESTRAINT ON POWER

In 1831, James Madison made it clear that the general Welfare clause wasn’t a blank check – it was a limit.

“With respect to the words ‘General welfare’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them.”

In other words, the clause doesn’t authorize taxing for whatever Congress wants – only for purposes tied directly to the enumerated powers.

Madison followed with a direct warning – about what would happen if “general Welfare” were twisted into a broad, open-ended power.

“To take them in a literal and unlimited sense, would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character, which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its Creators.”

Thomas Jefferson agreed. The general Welfare clause granted no independent power – it was tied to the powers delegated in the Constitution.

“our tenet ever was … that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated”

Jefferson ripped apart the claim that the clause gave Congress broad power for anything it wanted.

“As it was never meant they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers” 

That meant no power for anything outside the Constitution’s list.

“so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action: consequently that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money”

That was the bottom line: specific powers = specific limits.

Keep reading

Jasmine Crockett tries to describe Dem ‘playbook’ on the fly. It doesn’t go well

Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett rambled about “education” when a reporter asked her to describe the Democratic Party’s playbook for the 2026 midterm elections during an interview posted to YouTube Wednesday.

Crockett acknowledged in a March interview with “Lone Star Politics” that she was more focused on opposing President Donald Trump than passing legislation in Congress. In an interview with FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth, reporter Steven Dial asked Crockett what “the Democrat playbook for the midterms” was and whether the party would focus on denouncing Trump or discussing “kitchen table issues.”

“You act like I got the playbook,” Crockett quipped.

Dial then asked what she personally believes is the “playbook.”

“The winning playbook, I think overall, is just communication and education. I think that you can talk about kitchen table issues all you want to, but it comes down to actually having a rapport and making sure that people actually understand what it is that you’re talking about,” Crockett said. “I don’t think that we failed to talk about kitchen table issues, but basically, Trump was simple and lied, right? Like he said, ‘Hey, the price of eggs are high. I’ma reduce it on day one.’ It was a very simple message. It was a lie.”

Dial interrupted to note that egg prices are decreasing, which Crockett acknowledged was true.

“After they went up through the roof … let’s be clear. And honestly, they may be down for the second, but again, having people be educated about what it is that the FDA does and talking about things such as the bird flu and talking about if you have less birds because they are sick, then that’s less eggs,” she said. “But the demand is still the same, then the price goes up. Like, we have to make sure we do education. One of the other issues that I think that we had is that people didn’t understand that the global pandemic was the cause of our inflation. They were like, ‘Oh, everything’s high,’ and they just said, ‘Well, that’s the person that’s in office,’ instead of actually having this global conversation.”

The congresswoman also claimed that voters did not comprehend what the effect of Trump’s tariffs would be.

“Or one of the things that he was honest about is that he actually was going to institute tariffs,” she said. “The problem was people didn’t understand exactly what a tariff was because he was able to tell you, ‘You know what? And it’s going to be those foreign countries that pay for the tariffs.’ So everybody’s like, ‘All right, cool.’ Like — but that’s not the case. And so I think that our win is in the education.”

Keep reading

Taxpayers shell out $2 billion yearly on Congress, members rake in millions while working just 133 days

American taxpayers spend $2 billion dollars per year on Congress
‌
– Salary $174k
– $7.6 million per year for meal reimbursements
– Their MRA, the Members’ Representational Allowance is $810 million
– Majority and Minority leadership, Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson, get $37 million just for them
– MRA broken down is $1.5 million to each Congress Rep
– Actual Budget can range around $2 million per member, though some suggest it might be closer to $5 million when including all expenses
– Operational Costs: $750 million for House expenses and $250 million for Senate expenses
– – US Congress is getting 18 weeks of vacation this year
– Congress will only work 133 days in 2025
‌
Conservative estimate total cost $1.5 million to $2 billion per year

What do we get in exchange for this? They sell us out 100% of the time

Keep reading

Democrats made themselves toxic — now they’re addicted to their own poison

A few Democratic officeholders, activists and pundits are finally coming to their senses that their brand is toxic to a majority of the American people.

The Biden administration killed what was left of it in a number of ways.

First, it serially lied to Americans about the cognitive decline and cancerous condition of President Joe Biden, both while in and after office.

Only when caught did the complicit media ‘fess up that the Biden inner circle serially misled the American people about Biden’s inability to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

Second, left-wing politicos used Biden as a waxen effigy.

His job was to pose as a “moderate” cover to push through the most radical and unpopular agenda in the last half-century.

Only that way could “Old Joe Biden from Scranton” and his backroom handlers ram down the throat of the American people unpopular policies that nearly wrecked the country.

Third, without either a functional president or viable initiatives, the new hard-left Democrats sought to brand Donald Trump as “Hitler” and half the country who supported him as “fascists.”

For nearly nine years, the Democrats launched one failed hoax after another on the American people: “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” and the lying so-called “51 intelligence authorities.”

They proved quite willing to undermine the rule of law by manipulating the court system in efforts to destroy their bogeyman, Trump.

The people are finally tired of all the potty-mouthed Democrat videos, the congressional stunts and meltdowns, the pampered rich kids rioting on elite campuses, the knee-jerk obsessions with racial slurs, the firebombing of Tesla dealerships, the romanticization of left-wing political murderers — and always the adolescent tantrums over Trump.

The Democrats had mostly given up on democracy some 13 years ago. That was the last time they transparently and democratically nominated Barack Obama a second time as their presidential candidate.

Ever since, their nominations have been rigged.

Keep reading

Kiev Mayor Klitschko Hits Out At Zelensky: Ukraine “Stinks Of Authoritarianism”

The former mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko has blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and bluntly stated that the country is plagued by authoritarianism.

The former world heavyweight champion boxer told the Times of London that Kiev City Council essentially cannot operate because of “raids, interrogations and threats of fabricated criminal proceedings.”

“This is a purge of democratic principles and institutions under the guise of war,” Klitschko declared, adding “I once said that it smells of authoritarianism in our country. Now it stinks of it.”

The Times describes Zelensky and Klitschko as being in a “de facto state of war.”

The report notes that the Ukrainian government has arrested seven Kiev city officials as part of ongoing investigations targeting an alleged criminal network involved in corruption cases related to urban development.

Keep reading

Rep. Jasmine Crockett Raises Eyebrows Online After Making a Shocking Claim About What Republicans Think About Her

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) went viral again last week after making a stunning claim about Republicans she meets in person.

As TGP readers know, Crockett is regularly roasted online by the right for her numerous bizarre and racist statements, radical positions, and violent behavior. One would think that Republicans not on social media would have a similar negative view.

But during an interview last week with disgraced former CNN hack Jim Acosta, Crockett essentially said that the Internet is not real life and further raised eyebrows after making this surprising remark:

“Republicans poll all the time, and I have no idea what is happening in their polling, but I can tell you that they approach me as they see me out and say, ‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I really like you.’”

Crockett went on to say that Republicans also tell her they believe she is fighting for the people and doing “what is best for all of us.” She concluded that this is all scary for Republicans.

Upon seeing her remarks, conservatives were understandably dumbfounded and extremely skeptical.

Keep reading

U.S. Intervention Halts Germany’s Attempt to Suppress AfD Opposition.

Germany’s bid to marginalize its largest opposition party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), through intelligence agency tactics has been derailed, thanks to intense pressure from U.S. political figures.

As German establishment parties and authorities orchestrated a campaign to discredit the AfD, Republican leaders in the U.S. intervened, condemning the move as a threat to democracy.

On May 2, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) labeled the AfD a “proven right-wing extremist” group, triggering a media onslaught aimed at delegitimizing the party and potentially laying the groundwork for a ban. This aggressive move against parliamentary democracy quickly drew international backlash.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was among the first to respond, posting on X: “Germany has empowered its intelligence service to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s disguised tyranny.”

Keep reading