PrairiePundit

 Red State: All My (CA) Exes Live in TX: Businesses Still Fleeing Newsom a Reminder Americans Vote With Their Feet Taxes and excess regulation give many an incentive to move to states where government greed is in check and people can be more productive and keep more of their income.  Texas fits that bill.  As a Texas resident, we still welcome California expats as long as they don't bring with them votes for Democrats who would do the same thing here. 

Town Hall: In a move signaling the start of his new administration, President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue sweeping pardons to those convicted in connection with the January 6 Capitol Hill protests after outgoing President Joe Biden pardoned his corrupt son, Hunter Biden, despite vowing not to. Trump’s move would fulfill a campaign promise that free those who were politically persecuted by the left. During an interview on “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked if he had plans to pardon the individuals who entered the Capitol building on January 6, including the more than 900 people who pleaded guilty to a crime. “I’m going to look at everything. We’ll look at individual cases,” Trump said. “But I’m going to be acting very quickly” within his first 100 days of office. On the other hand, Trump said he would not pardon himself. "I didn't do anything wrong," he said. However, in a surprising twist, the incoming president said he would not pursue legal action a...

 I&I: Wow. A government commission/initiative will cut waste. Reduce headcount. Chop a quarter of federal spending, including entire agencies. Eliminate counterproductive regulations. And increase efficiency to boot. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Hmm. Would that be President Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency? Most recommendations were ignored, except the 1921 introduction of the federal budget process putting the executive in charge of driving budgets. That worked great a decade or so later when FDR generated a more-than-doubling of federal spending by 1940. Oh, wait. You mean the (Herbert) Hoover Commission? Two of them, really, reporting in 1949 and 1955, respectively. They were so effective that outlays jumped 152% between the first report and 1961. Richard Nixon’s proposal to squish all of government outside State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice into four “super departments”? That reorg effort ended by creating four additional entities, including – horr...

 NBC: Lead in gasoline tied to over 150 million excess cases of mental health disorders, study suggests Exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas, which was phased out in 1996, resulted in anxiety, depression and ADHD symptoms in generations of people, researchers found. Somehow I survived using leaded gas for decades.  I am married to a PhD psychologist who would know if I had a mental health disorder.  I don't have a problem with the current fuels other than they cost too much which I blame on Democrats who keep attacking fossil fuel energy producers.

 Front Page: In Trump’s first term, Jews were declared to be a minority group protected by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. And now, just weeks away from beginning his second term, Trump has laid down the law, in a speech he just gave at a rally against antisemitism in Washington. American universities that fail to combat antisemitism on their campuses should expect severe repercussions, including the loss of accreditation and of federal research contracts. More on Trump’s determination to stamp out campus antisemitism can be found here: “Trump to universities: Stamp out antisemitism or lose accreditation,” by Mathilda Heller,  Jerusalem Post , November 14, 2024: All American universities must end campus antisemitism or they will lose accreditation, President-elect Donald Trump promised during a rally against antisemitism in Washington. To “defeat antisemitism and defend Jewish citizens in America,” Trump said he would inform every college president that if they do not “end a...

 Daily Caller: Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on Daniel Penny to go after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg following Penny’s Monday acquittal by a New York City jury in his subway chokehold case. Bragg failed to convict the 26-year-old Penny for criminally negligent homicide in relation to an incident in which Penny confronted and subdued Jordan Neely, a homeless man who was high on drugs and threatening passengers in a New York subway car in May 2023 before Penny subdued him. Following Penny’s acquittal, Cruz urged the former U.S. Marine to sue Bragg for malicious prosecution in a statement obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Alvin Bragg is an absolute catastrophe. First, he indicted Donald Trump in a partisan case, and then he indicted Daniel Penny for saving the lives of other subway passengers from a deranged lunatic threatening to kill everyone,” Cruz said in the statement. “Penny should sue Bragg for malicious prosecution and hold thi...

 Red State: Liz Cheney Threatens Donald Trump's DOJ With 'Sanctions' If They Investigate Her   Liz Cheney threatened Donald Trump's incoming Department of Justice on Monday, claiming that any move to investigate the now-defunct January 6th committee would be "sanctionable conduct." The statement, put out in response to Trump's recent "Meet the Press" interview, also denied allegations that she and her colleagues destroyed evidence. While speaking to NBC News' Kristen Welker, the president-elect  said  the following.  “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” the President-elect said, referring to Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (the committee’s chairman). “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.” That triggered Cheney, who lashed out, stating that Trump committed the "worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our natio...

 David Strom: ... Having worked in government and around politicians, I can assure you that from the perspective of the bureaucratically minded, the dissociation between spending in one area and that of another is indeed totally disconnected.  People in government think in terms of bureaucratic fiefdoms, and the budget of one fiefdom is in a different universe than that of any othe r.  Right-leaning accounts and some Republican members of Congress expressed outrage that Biden was giving money to Africans while many in the southeastern U.S. are still struggling to recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. "What about the Americans affected by recent Hurricanes?" conservative commentator Benny Johnson asked on Instagram. "North Carolina would like a word," U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., wrote on X. Former U.N. Ambassador and Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wrote on X: "This is infuriating. After pardoning his son and fleeing to Africa, Biden gives...

 Miranda Devine: The reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris also marked the de facto coming out of Donald Trump as leader of the free world. His overbearing handshake with French President Emmanuel Macron sent a powerful message to the rest of the world. America is back, whether they like it or not. As Trump is feted by world leaders and royalty in Paris, holds preliminary peace talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and sends his envoy to the Middle East, the inauguration next month seems like a mere formality. Joe Biden is a pitiful afterthought in history. The ostentatiously Catholic president was somehow too busy to fit Notre-Dame into his sluggish schedule and sent his wife instead, who made googly eyes at Trump. Joe is PINO — President in Name Only — short for Pinocchio, appropriately enough, given his penchant for lying. Trump, on the other hand, is at peak triumph before he even officially takes back the presidency. Mar-a-Lago — his private club in Palm Beach that wa...

 The Federalist Wire: Democratic Party Tensions Boil Over Biden’s Controversial Decisions As resentment toward President Biden grows within the Democratic Party, top donors are reportedly threatening to withhold funding for his future presidential library. The backlash stems from two contentious decisions: his pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, and his prolonged stay in the 2024 presidential race, which some have criticized as a “selfish” miscalculation. Following President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory on Election Day, frustration within Democratic ranks is mounting. Critics argue that Biden’s unpopularity played a role in the party’s defeat, and concerns about his legacy now cloud discussions of his presidential library, which is expected to be built in Delaware. “If they had their s–t together, they would have been doing the work on this over the summer — right after he announced he was stepping aside,” a “well-wired Democrat” said to Axios. “Now, it’s just too late. Hopef...

 The Federalist: Venezuelan Busted For Extorting Illegals In PA Exposes Evil Side Effect Of Biden’s Open Borders When a party of four Venezuelans and one Colombian crawled through a hole in a fence at the United States-Mexico border, they knew they were entering the U.S. illegally. But they didn’t know they would become witnesses for the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a human trafficking case against Venezuelan national Cesar David Martinez-Gonzalez of Chester, Pennsylvania. Gonzalez pled guilty this month to conspiring to illegally bring aliens to the United States and to encourage and induce aliens to enter the United States for private financial gain. According to the DOJ, Gonzalez helped smuggle “dozens of migrants” from South America to the United States illegally so he could profit from their labor. He faces a maximum of 120 years in prison and will be sentenced March 18. The five witnesses in the case, whose names and occupations have been sealed by the court at the request ...

 The Federalist Wire: President-elect Donald Trump suggested he may issue sweeping pardons for individuals linked to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. His remarks came just over an hour after President Joe Biden granted a broad pardon to his son Hunter Biden on Sunday night. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. The statement signaled a continuation of Trump’s campaign pledge to address what he claims is a politically motivated justice system. During his campaign, Trump floated the possibility of pardons for over 1,500 defendants still facing trials or already convicted for their roles in the Capitol breach as lawmakers were certifying Biden’s 2020 victory. In a separate announcement, Trump’s transition team released a statement sharply criticizing the Department of Justice. “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have pr...

 Intercept: The leak of classified documents about preparations for an attack on Iran forced Israel to delay military action at a time of sky-high tensions in the Middle East, a federal prosecutor said as he sought to convince a judge to jail a CIA employee accused of violating the Espionage Act. Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis placed Asif William Rahman on home detention and GPS monitoring at his father’s house before trial, in a case that grew even more mysterious after a Friday hearing. Rahman, 34, is accused of the October leak of secret analyses of Israel’s preparations for a strike on Iran. Those analyses, which were based on satellite photos, included details of the missiles and planes that could be used in an attack. The disclosures embarrassed U.S. officials who were caught spying on a purported ally and launched a leak hunt that ultimately landed on Rahman, who was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia on November 12. He had been posted to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Pe...

 Newsmax: Change is coming to the Federal Communications Commission under President-elect Donald Trump and with it should be accountability for liberal outlets like CBS forcing left-wing bias and political activism on its viewers. In fact, according to journalist Charles Gasparino , CBS News might be forced to come clean on how it cleaned up Vice President Kamala Harris' interview in what Trump has called an unjust election influencing campaign as the leverage of its broadcast license will hold it accountable to remaining "neutral." "According to people close to Trump's transition team, CBS could, among other things, be forced to turn over a full transcript of the controversial '60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris, which those in the Trump orbit believe shows the network played dirty during the 2024 election," Gasparino reported. "But people close to the situation tell me the stakes could be far broader than that. In short, Skydance — a Hol...

 Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: Nothing is remotely improper or inappropriate about wanting a reformer at the Federal Bureau of Investigation right now. Three days before Donald Trump named Kash Patel, I explained why Democrats themselves should be no less unanimous than Republicans in wanting an overhaul. Mr. Patel is a plausible if not particularly decorous nominee. A former public defender and former national-security specialist in the Obama Justice Department, he later did important work as a House Intelligence Committee staffer exposing the Steele dossier fraud. A few others come to mind (apologies to them if they are horrified by the prospect): Andrew McCarthy, a former prosecutor who handled terrorism and mob cases for the Justice Department; Michael Horowitz, the Obama-appointed inspector general who exposed FBI wrongdoing in the Trump and Hillary Clinton investigations; John Durham, a U.S. attorney who investigated possible Central Intelligence Agency abuses for the Obama admin...

 Newsmax: The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote next week on an annual defense bill that includes just over $3 billion for U.S. telecom companies to remove equipment made by Chinese telecoms firms Huawei and ZTE from American wireless networks to address security risks. The 1,800-page text was released late Saturday and includes other provisions aimed at China, including requiring a report on Chinese efforts to evade U.S. national security regulations and an intelligence assessment of the current status of China's biotechnology capabilities. The Federal Communications Commission has said removing the insecure equipment is estimated to cost $4.98 billion but Congress previously only approved $1.9 billion for the "rip and replace" program. Washington has aggressively urged U.S. allies to purge Huawei and other Chinese gear from their wireless networks. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel last week again called on the U.S. Congress to provide urgent additional funding, ...

 Fox News: Trump sends message to Kamala Harris supporters during 'Meet the Press' interview Trump also said he'd treat people who didn't vote for him 'every bit as well' as MAGA supporters All Presidents should be this way.  See also: Trump Promises to Launch Mass Deportations, Pardon January 6 Prisoners in Wide-Ranging NBC Interview And:   Trump’s powerful America will produce a safer world And:   Trump’s new coalition puts female nominees at forefront

 The Blaze: ... To take on this gargantuan task, Trump has appointed Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as the next border czar. Homan seems prepared and eager to carry out the mission. But of course, leftists are screaming racism and xenophobia. They’re already throwing accusations that frail grandmothers will be deported, among other innocents. ... “You are carrying out a targeted enforcement operation. Grandma’s in the house. She’s undocumented. She get arrested too?” Homan was asked in a “60 Minutes” interview back in October. Mark Levin has a better question for this “reprobate” reporter. “How did Grandma get in the country?” he asks. “Here's the deal — everybody who's here illegally wasn't dragged out of their country and brought to the United States. They came voluntarily,” he says. That’s why “there's deportation processes in place under our immigration laws.” “Is there a grandma exception in our immigration laws if you co...

 Breitbart: During Friday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Hannity,” Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz predicted the New York City jury hearing the Daniel Penny case would remain deadlocked, possibly resulting in a loss for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Dershowitz said such a loss, coupled with a loss in his prosecution against President-elect Donald Trump, would likely result in a lost reelection bid. According to Dershowitz, Bragg was the “worst district attorney” in modern New York history. “Professor  Dershowitz , in this kind of a dynamic, when you’ve got even at one point, he told the jury that it would have to be another jury, if they couldn’t come to a decision there would be another trial and you know another jury would do their job,” fill-in host Tammy Bruce said. “But there’s no guarantee that there would be another trial, the DA could decide not to try it again. It seems again like there’s a kind of coercion that’s aimed at the jury at this point....

 Daily Caller: It Only Took 12 Months For Roughly 1,000,000 Native-Born Jobs To Vanish Under Biden-Harris More than 1,000,000 fewer native-born Americans are employed than last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The number of foreign-born workers employed increased by roughly 400,000 year-over-year in November, while 1,094,000 fewer native workers were employed, BLS data shows . The large disparity is partly driven by a decrease in the number of native-born Americans employed of 215,000 from October to November. “Biden’s economic legacy, besides 40-year-high inflation and record debt, could perhaps best be described as transforming the American labor market into a temp agency for foreign workers and government bureaucrats,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the Daily Caller News Foundation regarding the increasing disparity between foreign and native-born employment. “He ...

  The Federalist Wire: ... The communist government in Cuba, labeled a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism, reportedly duped the administration of President Joe Biden into financing its repressive military apparatus through non-government company handling remittances, according to an investigation by El Nuevo Herald published Tuesday. The scheme, orchestrated by the Castro regime, funneled money to its military and circumvented sanctions imposed by President-elect Donald Trump in 2020. These sanctions targeted military-run businesses controlling remittances to ensure that money sent by Cubans abroad would not bolster the regime’s authoritarian grip. However, the Cuban government evaded these restrictions by establishing a new company in 2022 that presented itself as independent but, in reality, was under military control, El Nuevo Herald revealed. According to leaked Cuban government documents reviewed by the outlet, this state-controlled entity, named Orbit S.A., was set up...

 Dawn Buckingham : The border crisis reached unprecedented levels under the Biden-Harris administration. Still, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel: President-elect Donald Trump will soon begin his second term as president of the United States, and he has made it clear that on day one he will secure our southern border. Well, I’m here to help. You may have read earlier last week that I sent a letter to Trump in my capacity as the Texas Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO), offering over 1,400 acres of state-owned land to construct deportation staging areas and facilities for criminal illegal immigrants. We are not stopping there. I am now extending my initial offer to include state-owned land we have identified in El Paso and elsewhere in the state for these critical purposes as well. The federal government under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris has not only allowed but facilitated an invasion of violent illegal immigrants into my state...

 Fox News: Biden administration announces $988M in aid to Ukraine on same day Trump meets with Zelenskyy in Paris The Biden administration has committed to giving Ukraine as much aid as possible before Trump takes office in January ... During the campaign, Trump and running mate JD Vance heavily criticized the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, and Trump said he would end the war before even entering office without offering further details. Vance also suggested earlier this year that the best way to end the war was for Ukraine to cede the land Russia has seized and for a demilitarized zone to be established, a proposal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flatly rejected. ... Russia's war with Ukraine has weakened both countries and exposed Russia's military as weak and inept.  While Ukraine is also weak militarily The US and its allies have attempted to prop it up.  If Russia has struggled to control Uraine it shows that Russia ...

  Jonathan Spyer: The astonishing and abrupt fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus is a moment of historic importance for the Middle East, in which the shifting of tectonic plates can be plainly felt. But which plates in particular? And what are the immediate implications? Firstly, it is important just to contemplate the dimensions of what has just taken place. The Assad regime’s beginning is usually dated to 1970. In that year Hafez Assad, father of the now deposed Bashar, launched a coup to topple his former ally, Salah Jadid, and proclaimed himself president. His family then ruled Syria, uninterruptedly, until this week. But it’s worth remembering that the Ba’ath party, through which both Assad and his predecessor emerged, had ruled Syria since 1963. So the fall of Bashar represents the end of 61 years of uninterrupted rule in Syria of this party. The Assads of course long since emptied the structures and institutions of this party of any real role or content. Theirs wa...

 Bob Hoge: According to a report, President-elect Donald Trump is considering a plan to handle countries that won’t take their illegal immigrants back: he’ll ship them somewhere else. Some countries may be in for an  unpleasant surprise : The incoming Trump administration is preparing a list of countries to which it may deport migrants when their home countries refuse to accept them, according to three sources familiar with the plans.  The countries on the list have included but may not be limited to Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama and Grenada, the sources said.  Since the report comes from NBC News, they go out of their way to imply that the tactic would be unusually cruel: The plans could mean that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of migrants would be permanently displaced in countries where they do not know any of the people or the language and have no connection to the culture.  Of course, many of these folks already went to a place where they ...