Letitia James Praised Jay Clayton for his “Leadership” in Personal Letter, as MAGA Revolt Against DNI Nominee Intensifies
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Last week, I reported in The Gateway Pundit on the surprising public endorsement New York Attorney General Letitia James gave to President Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton.
The post Letitia James Praised Jay Clayton for his “Leadership” in Personal Letter, as MAGA Revolt Against DNI Nominee Intensifies appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
One of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominees voted against a big case that would restrict when mail-in ballots could be accepted — and MAGA is not happy. The decision, which saw Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts side with all of the Democratic-appointed justices, ruled that ballots filed with Election Day postmarks can be accepted even if they arrive after Election Day. Justice Samuel Alito complained: "Today’s decision leaves open opportunities for voter fraud that may further undermine Americans’ faith in the integrity of this country’s elections." Zachary Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub, explained that only about 4 percent of ballots arrive after Election Day. Republicans lashed out at both Barrett and the ruling in general, with a slew of complaints. Sen. Eric Schmidt (R-Mo.) blasted it as "A shockingly wrong opinion."He was quick to jump on the anti-Barrett bandwagon, saying, "Justice Barrett joins with the liberal justices to hold that federal election law does not preempt states that allow late mail-in ballots to be counted. This is terrible for election integrity. Another reason we must pass the full SAVE American Act.""Amy Coney Barrett continues to disappoint in far too many high-profile cases," complained Article III lawyer Josh Hammer. "BEYOND insane," conservative Nick Sortor complained. He added that because of this ruling California "can CONTINUE taking WEEKS to count ballots after Election Day." In fact, California is generally slowed not by late-arriving ballots but by signature matches for mail-in ballots, as Donnini wrote. "Justice Barrett just sided with the Democrat justices to allow states to count absentee ballots received DAYS after Election Day. She is the biggest disgrace to the Supreme Court," bashed conservative Andrew Pollack."Barrett. AGAIN. WTF," asked Megyn Kelly. "You would think with a 6-3 Conservative Court we would get the easy wins. But with Roberts and Barrett on the court nothing is a given," wrote Bill Mitchell.Truth Social advisor Katie Zacharia wrote, "Barrett has been a disappointment."
Republican leaders are facing an uncertain path forward for their legislative plans, according to The Hill, after a contingent of "conservative hard-liners" mounted a "rebellion" to try and push for President Donald Trump's doomed voting bill."Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has an ambitious legislative agenda this week, but it’s unclear whether he can move those priorities forward as a group of conservative hard-liners demand action on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act," the outlet reported on Monday morning."Trump has been pushing hard for the passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would implement sweeping voting law reforms if passed, notably requiring individuals to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote. His obsession with the bill stems from his long-debunked claims that widespread voter fraud is being committed by non-citizens in the U.S., with critics warning that the bill would potentially disenfranchise millions of lawful citizens who lack easy access to things like their passports or birth certificates.Despite GOP leaders in Congress stressing to Trump that the bill lacks the votes to overcome the filibuster in the Senate, he has remained adamant that it must be passed, recently refusing to sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill until it was done. As The Hill noted in its report, he has been joined in this crusade by some of his more hard-line GOP supporters."President Trump urged House Republicans last week to fall in line after conservative rebels brought most House floor activity to a standstill by threatening to oppose procedural rules unless the Senate passed the SAVE America Act," the report continued. "Because the House must adopt a rule before debating and voting on final passage of most legislation, the tactic effectively ground the chamber to a halt."The outlet added: "Whether Trump’s appeal will be enough to sway the holdouts remains an open question. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna(R-Fla.) wrote on social media last week that she had submitted an amendment to the House Rules Committee to attach the SAVE America Act to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signaling she is unwilling to back down.""This amendment to attach the SAVE America Act to the NDAA was filed last week and is now sitting in the Rules Committee," Luna wrote. "This is how to get my vote on a rule. But I am one of MANY."GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was also adamant about the bill, urging his colleagues to "immediately pass HR2 (promised) to codify border security, a congressional stock trading ban, get SAVE passed, & fully fund defense with real pay-fors."Given the razor-thin GOP majority in the House, Johnson cannot afford more than a few holdouts at any given time, putting the chances of his other priorities moving forward in jeopardy.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will be forced, again, to navigate a “legislative minefield” this week due to President Donald Trump’s controversial agenda, a challenge that risks leaving the entire chamber “paralyzed for a second week in a row” and sparking a GOP "disaster,” Punchbowl News reported Monday.At the heart of the difficulties facing House Republicans is Trump’s controversial voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act, which has passed in the House multiple times but continues to stall in the Senate. House lawmakers are hoping to advance the annual defense spending bill this week before a July 4 recess, but one MAGA lawmaker is threatening to block all floor proceedings unless the SAVE Act is attached to the defense spending bill, an amendment that’s considered a non-starter for Democrats and would almost surely tank the bill.That lawmaker is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who’s already submitted an amendment to the defense spending bill to attach the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, something experts have described as a form of voter suppression.“If Luna’s amendment is ruled out of order, the Florida Republican told us she’ll vote against the rule and continue her blockade on floor action, likely rendering the House paralyzed for a second week in a row,” Punchbowl News’ report reads.“Johnson and top House Republicans are hopeful that Luna will drop her insistence on the language after Trump posted on Truth Social last week that the GOP members should stop messing around with rules votes. It’s true that Luna has close ties to the Florida crew in the White House. But Trump has less sway than ever. And his advice on legislating is oftentimes ignored.”
So Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi of Long Island has come out swinging against the socialists. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” reads a letter that The New York Times reports he and 14 other legislators signed and began circulating last week. This went out Thursday, two days after three self-described democratic socialists backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won Democratic congressional primaries in the city.The letter, which is on the short and vague side, states two broad principles to which the signatories adhere. The first is “growth, competition, and broad prosperity.” “Growth” and “prosperity” are time-honored centrist buzzwords, as they’re hoisted into use to send the message that these Democrats value economic dynamism more than “fairness,” which is a word that moderates fear signals endorsement of excessive statism, although interestingly, the concept is tucked into the first sentence (“We believe in a growing, fair, and competitive economy…”). The second is “safety, security, and human dignity,” under which the letter lists four components: fiscal discipline, a government that works, free speech, and patriotism.There’s nothing wrong with these things as far as they go. But these platitudes don’t go far enough. In particular, there’s one big missing word. I’ll circle back to that, but first, let’s talk about why these democratic socialists are winning in some places. The first reason is that people are really pissed off at a system they see as totally rigged. Suozzi is roughly my age. He and I grew up in a United States in the 1960s and ’70s that Lord knows had many problems, but that was at least trying to build a robust middle class and was taxing excessive wealth appropriately.The Gini coefficient is a number that measures economic inequality. Like golf, lower scores are better, and the lowest Gini scores, invariably logged by the Scandinavian countries, are in the mid-20s. The highest is always South Africa, in the low-60s.When Suozzi and I were toddlers, the U.S. number was fairly high—around 37. Then came the Great Society—the civil rights, fair housing, and other anti-discrimination laws that first brought large numbers of Black families into the middle class, and other anti-poverty programs. The right has sold middle America on the idea that the Great Society—which I’d hope most Democrats today are proud of, but much of which was, as the word is used today, “socialism”—was a failure. But by the 1980s, right before Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. Gini number reached its lowest point in modern history, 34.7.Then came Reagan and supply-side economics and the war on the War on Poverty. By the time Bill Clinton took office, the number was north of 40. Today it’s 42 and climbing. We’re worse than Russia and Iraq and about on par with Argentina and Mexico.People aren’t stupid. They may not know what the Gini coefficient is or who Gini was (an Italian economist), but they know what’s been happening to the country and their money in their bones. And they know how they’re being ripped off by corporate actors, as these hidden junk fees become more and more just a fact of life, especially for working-class people paying rent to private-equity landlords or trying to take their kids to a ball game. So, it’s small wonder that more people are voting for the candidates who are saying most emphatically that they’re going to try to do something about all that—specifically, fighting back against the people who’ve been cheating the middle- and lower-classes for years. The second reason socialists are winning elections is that the Democratic base has moved well to the left of where it was even just 10 years ago. Early this year, The New Republic commissioned a poll of 2,400 rank-and-file Democrats. We asked respondents to identify themselves ideologically, giving them five choices: conservative, moderate, moderate-to-liberal, liberal, and progressive. There were little descriptions of each, so it should have been clear to all that “progressive” was the left-most choice.I thought “progressive” was going to finish third. It finished first (within the margin of error): Progressive got 32 percent, liberal 31, and moderate-to-liberal 21. Moderate was way back at 12 percent. Back in the Obama days, moderates were around 35 percent of the party. Indeed, liberal overtook moderate as the top Democratic category only around 2012, according to Pew. So that’s a huge change. Now it’s true that other polls, which unlike TNR’s didn’t offer five categories, show a higher moderate share, but the overall move leftward by Democratic base voters is undeniable. They haven’t done so because they want the government to take over the means of production.
Texas Democrats rallied around their nominee for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. John Cornyn during their convention on Friday. Democratic Texas state […]
There’s a lot of interesting mask-dropping in this interview. Jake Tapper outlines his view on illegal alien migrants from Haiti by admitting he put his Mom in a nursing home and pays Haitian migrants to care for her. On a 1998 trip to Cite Soleil, a slum of Port-au-Prince, Mike and Fran DeWine met Tom Hagan, […]
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Iranian state media has reportedly declared that the country now has "no choice but to obtain the atomic bomb," according to a post circulating online — a statement that, if accurate, would mark a dramatic escalation amid the ongoing exchange of strikes between the U.S. and Iran.The claim was relayed by the account The Hormuz Letter, which posted what it described as a breaking statement from Iranian state media. According to that post, Iranian state media argued the country must "absolutely reach nuclear deterrence" before current negotiations can be conducted, framing the pursuit of a weapon as necessary to remove what it called "the military option for the occupation and partitioning of Iran" from the table.The reported statement seized the attention of David Pyne, an America First conservative who posts under @AmericaFirstCon and who has been sharply critical of the administration's handling of Iran. Pyne argued the development vindicated his earlier warnings about the consequences of President Donald Trump's approach."Iran is responding to Trump's continued nuclear threats against it by building more nuclear missiles just as I predicted they would do," Pyne wrote. He contended that "Trump's war on Iran hasn't reduced Iran's nuclear threat in any way" but had instead "served to greatly magnify and expand Iran's nuclear threat against the US and Israel."Pyne went further, delivering a stinging assessment of the president's broader record."Trump's disastrous foreign policy and endless unwinnable wars make Jimmy Carter look like a veritable foreign policy genius by comparison," he wrote.The reported statement also caught the attention of Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who reacted with unease. "Ugh. Hope it's just bluster; fear it is not," McFaul wrote, sharing the same post.The reported declaration comes against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating ceasefire, with the U.S. carrying out repeated strikes on Iranian targets in recent days and Trump himself warning that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist" if forced to "militarily complete the job." Trump has also continued to insist that "Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon."The Iranian framing — that only a nuclear deterrent can forestall foreign intervention — runs directly counter to the administration's stated goal of ending Tehran's weapons ambitions, and underscores the risk that the military campaign could harden rather than halt Iran's nuclear drive.
