Everything You Need To Know About Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s Pick To Replace Kristi Noem At DHS

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he was replacing Kristi Noem as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with Republican Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. The personnel change will occur March 31. . .

Mullin also told reporters that he and Trump are “great friends,” adding that they “get along great,” according to NBC News.

Mullin, 48, is an Oklahoma native and the youngest of seven children. He enrolled in Missouri Valley College on a wrestling scholarship in 1996, but dropped out the following year to rescue the family plumbing business after his father fell ill. Mullin later received an associate’s degree in applied science from the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in 2010.

“A MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter, Markwayne truly gets along well with people, and knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social announcement, made Thursday.

Mullin enjoyed a stint as a mixed martial arts fighter between 2006 and 2007, retiring undefeated. He was honored by the Oklahoma Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2016. (Read more from “Everything You Need To Know About Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s Pick To Replace Kristi Noem At DHS” HERE)

‘Make The Right Choices’: Fallen Soldier’s Advice Should Guide Trump’s War In Iran

/7 Comments/in , , /by

. . .[M]essaging on the war has been disjointed, conflicting, and confusing, with administration officials citing different priorities and objectives. Is the endgame regime change? Is it knocking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the threat that we “totally obliterated” last summer?

Are we doing this to sate the unquenchable blood lust of the neocon warmongers? To further fatten the wallets of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about so long ago?


Whatever the plan is, it must keep in mind the service members in and moving toward harm’s way. As of late Wednesday, there are six flag-draped caskets heading back from a war with many aims.

How many more families will have to hear the death knell of the doorbell like the Coadys? At the very least, they and their fellow Americans should know what it is we’re fighting for.

Sgt. Declan Coady, the Eagle Scout and cybersecurity major at Des Moines’ Drake University, the young man his mom described as “so kind and so amazing,” has given the last full measure of devotion and his future to the exigencies of war.

As a pre-teen in 2017, Coady offered some advice on his Facebook page that all of us, particularly the war planners, should take to heart: “The world is always changing my friends be prepared for your future and make the right choices.” (Read more from “‘Make The Right Choices’: Fallen Soldier’s Advice Should Guide Trump’s War In Iran” HERE)

Mike Lee Unveils National Constitutional Carry Bill to Override ‘Hostile’ State Gun Laws

/0 Comments/in , /by

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is pushing nationwide constitutional carry for firearms, a move that would eliminate concealed carry permits, fees and criminal penalties for people who want to carry a firearm in public.

Lee’s National Constitutional Carry Act, first obtained by Fox News Digital, would eliminate several hurdles Americans face with concealed carry across the country.

“The Founders established a national right to keep and bear arms, not to ask for permission from hostile local officials or risk imprisonment for crossing the wrong state line,” Lee said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“Many states already protect the right to carry without a permit, and it’s time to reaffirm this right for all law-abiding Americans,” he continued. “The National Constitutional Carry Act will establish nationwide permitless carry to keep America safe and her people free.”

Currently, 29 states allow some form of constitutional carry, meaning residents can carry a concealed firearm without a permit. (Read more from “Mike Lee Unveils National Constitutional Carry Bill to Override ‘Hostile’ State Gun Laws” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

The Two Moments at Kristi Noem’s Congressional Hearings That Got Her Fired as Secretary of Homeland Security

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Fired Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem sealed her fate with two answers at a pair of disastrous congressional hearings

Noem, who is the first cabinet secretary ousted during the second Trump administration, faced pointed questions from committee members on a range of thorny matters, from a recent DHS ad campaign with a Hollywood blockbuster budget to whether she’s sleeping with top aide Corey Lewandowski.

After answering the questions in a way that reportedly left President Trump “mad as a murder hornet,” she was out of a job less than 24 hours later

On Tuesday, GOP Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy grilled Noem over a massive taxpayer-funded ad campaign where she heavily featured herself during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“How do you square that with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently?” the senator asked.

Noem replied, “Sir, the president tasked me with getting the message out to the country and to other countries with putting commercials out that if they were in the country illegally, that they needed to leave.” (Read more from “The Two Moments at Kristi Noem’s Congressional Hearings That Got Her Fired as Secretary of Homeland Security” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Trump Despises RINOs. So Why Is He Reportedly About To Endorse One Of The Swamp’s Biggest?

/0 Comments/in , /by

If President Donald Trump is looking for a senator who embodies the spirit and action of “Republican in Name Only,” he couldn’t find no better man than milquetoast Texas Sen. John Cornyn.

The four-term RINO locked in a contentious GOP primary run-off battle against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton boasts a storied Senate career of genuflecting at the altar of the Swamp. Cornyn has been begging for Trump’s platinum endorsement more shamelessly than he’s prostituted himself for establishment cash.

And it’s looking like he might get the president’s seal of approval, if you can believe the Trump-hating Atlantic and other Pravda Press publications.

“President Trump’s political advisers expect him to endorse Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s May 26 Republican-primary runoff election following the incumbent’s better-than-expected finish against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the first round of voting [Tuesday] three people briefed on the deliberations told us,” The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker write. . .

But here’s the thing: Trump hates RINOs — and rightfully so. He’s said so many, many times. Just ask Indiana’s “pathetic” state Senate RINO’s who got a collective tummy ache over a midterm redistricting bill pushed by Trump that would have boosted GOP membership in a wafer-thin Republican majority House. Meanwhile, Democrats are redrawing blue state maps left and left to get a leg up in the midterms. (Read more from “Trump Despises RINOs. So Why Is He Reportedly About To Endorse One Of The Swamp’s Biggest?” HERE)

Republican Shames Every Colleague who Rejected her Sex Misconduct Resolution

/2 Comments/in , , /by

An enraged Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) took to X on Wednesday to name and shame the vast majority of members of Congress.

Her post was an alphabetical list of all 357 members who voted to reject her resolution to require public disclosure of every complaint that a member engaged in sexual harassment or an illicit affair with a staffer.

Mace, herself a survivor of sexual assault, had greater luck with her other motion this week, to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over the failure to fully release the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files as required by law. (Read more from “Republican Shames Every Colleague who Rejected her Sex Misconduct Resolution” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Iran Warns U.S. Will ‘Bitterly Regret’ Sinking Warship, Calls for Trump’s Blood

/0 Comments/in , , /by

You’ll be sorry. That was the warning from Iran to the U.S. on Thursday as it responded to the torpedoing of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, with a Muslim leader adding a call for “Trump’s blood.”

As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. Navy sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena Tuesday night in the Indian Ocean which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has since decried as “an atrocity at sea.”

A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine delivered the fatal blow in international waters off Sri Lanka as part of Operation Epic Fury.

“Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media.

“Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set.”

(Read more from “Iran Warns U.S. Will ‘Bitterly Regret’ Sinking Warship, Calls for Trump’s Blood” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

SCOTUS Backs Trump: Votes 9:0 to Curb Migrants’ Asylum Claims

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Supreme Court has unanimously decided to handcuff liberal judges who want to help the growing number of migrants who lose their asylum pleas at the Justice Department.

“The unanimous decision in Urias–Orellana v. Bondi is a win for the Trump Administration in maintaining a high burden to overturn [the Justice Department’s] immigration courts in asylum cases,” said lawyer Jonathan Turley.

The decision means that millions of migrants will face even tougher pressure to leave the United States, especially after they are arrested by ICE.

The win is one of many gains by President Donald Trump’s deputies as they try to accelerate the number of self-deportations and ICE deportations. For example, in December, 38 percent of the migrants detained by ICE chose to go home rather than file lawsuits to stay in the United States.

The court decision in Urias-Orellana v. Bondi was written by the court’s most left-wing judge, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Read more from “SCOTUS Backs Trump: Votes 9:0 to Curb Migrants’ Asylum Claims” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Senate Debate On Iran War Turns Into Senile Men Shouting At Sky

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The Senate sort of debated a war powers resolution on Wednesday that might have eventually stopped the war in Iran, although the resulting vote was only on a motion to bring the resolution to the floor. That vote failed, leaving the Trump administration with what amounts to implied congressional permission to continue. As Rand Paul noted, speaking as the only Republican who supported the measure, “This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not.”

But the Senate wasn’t debating the war, or debating Trump: It was debating against its own history, poorly and without noticing, in a mostly incoherent series of self-negating rhetorical maneuvers. Taken as a whole, the Senate doesn’t seem to have known what it was debating at all.

You can watch the debate-shaped thing here, in an eight-hour video that doesn’t contain eight hours of war powers discussion. During speeches about the war, senators shouted and spoke of the need for urgency, invoking all of the usual language about the judgment of history. Between speeches, they took long pauses, and senators popped in with speeches on hockey, Netflix, healthcare, tax cuts, and housing shortages in Pennsylvania.

Somewhere around the middle, Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper got in a campaign speech that mentioned the war while hitting all the major talking points of the day: job growth, rent, child care. Here’s a senator’s urgent contribution to a debate about a war powers resolution, with bombs currently falling: “According to Moody’s, the top 10% of U.S. households now account for nearly half of all spending. That means on paper the economy may look relatively good, but only for half of Americans. Half of Americans at the top. And while working families struggle to get by, the president has given an extra boost to the powerful and well-connected.” Hickenlooper’s office proudly posted a transcript, if you want to see it for yourself. You can feel how deeply he cares about stopping the war.

If you don’t have a habit of torturing yourself by watching legislative debate, you might have found yourself surprised by the coupling of a frequent recourse to rhetoric about urgency with an unmistakable lack of actual urgency. This is normal. It would take the United States Senate nine hours to evacuate a burning tour bus. They give viewers the sense of being the audience for bingo night at a convalescent home. (Read more from “Senate Debate On Iran War Turns Into Senile Men Shouting At Sky” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Russia blames Ukrainian naval drones as tanker sinks in Mediterranean

/0 Comments/in , /by

A Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker has sunk in the Mediterranean between Libya and Malta after it was hit by explosions and a fire, Libyan port officials have said.

Russia accused Ukraine of targeting the Arctic Metagaz with “uncrewed sea drones” launched from the Libyan coast.

Ukraine’s SBU state security service has not commented on the allegation and the Libyan port authority said the cause of the fire was unclear.

The Libyans said the tanker was carrying about 62,000 tonnes of LNG before the blasts and that it sank about 130 nautical miles (240km) north of the Libyan port of Sirte.

Russia’s transport ministry said 30 Russians were aboard the Arctic Metagaz. Maltese Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said they were all found “safe and sound in a lifeboat” during a rescue operation by Malta’s armed forces. (Read more from “Russia blames Ukrainian naval drones as tanker sinks in Mediterranean” HERE)