Federal Judge Strikes Down Gavin Newsom’s ‘Cynical’ Gun Control Scheme

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A federal judge has blocked the state of California from enforcing a gun control scheme that was modeled after a controversial Texas abortion law, delivering Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom the exact outcome he wanted.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California issued a permanent injunction on Monday against the “fee-shifting” provisions of the state’s gun law – which empowers private citizens to bring lawsuits against gun manufacturers – declaring it unconstitutional.

“‘It is cynical. ‘It is an abomination.’ ‘It is outrageous and objectionable.’ ‘There is no dispute that it raises serious constitutional questions.’ ‘It is an unprecedented attempt to thwart judicial review,’” Benitez wrote in his opinion, quoting directly from Newsom’s criticisms of the Texas abortion law.

The Texas measure makes abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat can be detected and permits private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone else who assists in a woman’s procurement of abortion for $10,000. This fee-shifting mechanism was designed to protect the 2021 law from judicial review to circumvent the Supreme Court’s old abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade. The high court has since overturned that precedent, permitting states to restrict, or liberalize, abortion. (Read more from “Federal Judge Strikes Down Gavin Newsom’s ‘Cynical’ Gun Control Scheme” HERE)

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Republicans Score Big Win in Biden’s $1.7 Trillion Budget Package

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Congressional Republicans succeeded in slashing funding for the Internal Revenue Service in the negotiations over President Biden’s $1.7 trillion omnibus budget.

Senate Republicans forced Democrats and the White House to cut more than $275 million from the IRS over the next year. GOP lawmakers demanded the cut, arguing that the IRS is already slated to receive additional money over the next decade thanks to Biden’s recently passed $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

“This process was far from perfect, but ultimately it allowed Republican redlines to be adhered to and because of that I will urge my colleagues to support this package,” said Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Overall, the budget allocates $12.3 billion for the IRS — 2.2% less than the nearly $12.6 billion the agency received in the last fiscal year. The Biden administration initially sought a $1.3 billion increase for the IRS this year. (Read more from “Republicans Score Big Win in Biden’s $1.7 Trillion Budget Package” HERE)

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US Olympic Committee Pushes ‘Open Categories’ for Transgender Athletes

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The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is encouraging individual sports to consider “category qualifiers” — classified in some sports as “open” categories — to ensure transgender athletes will have events to participate in once they reach puberty.

The USOPC finalized its so-called position paper at its board meeting earlier this month and released it Monday, addressing a proposed path forward for transgender participation in sports.

The committee’s recommendations were based, it said, on the principle that science and “fairness” should guide all major decisions. As part of that, the two-page paper said the emphasis in youth sports (before children reach puberty) should be to push for as much participation as possible.

“Here, we believe the science is clearer that there is much less physical safety or competitive risk, or sporting advantage based on physiological sex characteristics,” the paper said.

The federation said it wanted to follow the science in determining the conditions under which transgender athletes can compete once they reach puberty, which triggers significant differences in testosterone production between biologically born males and females. It acknowledged that the “sport landscape may leave currently competing athletes feeling uncertain regarding potential shifts in their eligibility status.” (Read more from “US Olympic Committee Pushes ‘Open Categories’ for Transgender Athletes” HERE)

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Ordinary Americans Are Going To Have To Save the Country Themselves, One Town at a Time

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One of the things I get asked from time to time by readers is, what can ordinary people on the right, Christians and conservatives, do to help save the country — besides voting on Election Day?

It’s a good question, and it comes from the very understandable feeling of helplessness many people feel about the direction of the country and, let’s be honest, the collapse of Western civilization that’s now well underway. It’s especially easy to get frustrated after an election cycle like the one we just had, in which Republican leaders thoroughly botched it and left things more or less where they were before the voting.

Put another way, if voting doesn’t really change anything in our so-called democracy, what will?

There’s an answer to this question, but you’re not going to like it. The plain truth is this: You’re going to have to save the country yourselves. Donald Trump isn’t going to save it. Ron DeSantis isn’t going to save it. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that a GOP majority in Congress is going to save it.

By all means, keep voting in national elections. Keep making your voices heard at the ballot box. But salvation won’t come from Washington, D.C. If America is going to be saved, or even just parts of it are to be saved, then ordinary men and women, God-fearing patriots all across the country, are going to have to do it themselves, one town at a time. And they will have to do it the old-fashioned and unglamorous way, by taking over the local institutions of civic life, organizing and winning elections for city council and school board, finding reliable and competent people willing to be candidates and staff and volunteers. (Read more from “Ordinary Americans Are Going To Have To Save the Country Themselves, One Town at a Time” HERE)

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Kim Jong-un Sister Threatens to Launch ICBM Towards USA

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Kim Yo-Jong, a top North Korean communist official and sister of dictator Kim Jong-un, published a barely coherent string of insults and threats on Tuesday suggesting that international experts doubting the quality of North Korean weapons may soon prompt an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch across the Pacific Ocean.

Kim, officially a vice department director at the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party (the ruling communist party), published her statement through the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), one of the few legal media outlets in the country and a government-run propaganda platform.

Kim appeared to be responding to the free world’s tepid response to North Korean media announcing that it had developed a military espionage satellite and publishing low-resolution, black-and-white images as proof.

“I am getting bored and tired of hearing the bark of the south Korean puppets who have the bad habit of finding fault with others,” Kim Yo-jong proclaimed. “Even in the end of the year, they continue to pull us up, not content with finding fault with us from the beginning of the year.” (Read more from “Kim Jong-un Sister Threatens to Launch ICBM Towards USA” HERE)

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Massive Snowstorm Expected to Impact Christmas Travel Nationwide

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Holiday travel and gift delivery could be severely disrupted by a winter storm expected to hit the center of the country from Wednesday to Sunday.

Residents of the Midwest and the Great Lakes region will contend with an incoming Arctic front causing heavy snowfall, according to a forecast from the National Weather Service. Blizzard conditions are expected to last from Thursday to Saturday, which marks Christmas Eve.

Snow is predicted to fall at a rate of one to two inches per hour at certain times, while winds could surpass 50 miles per hour, producing dangerous wind chills and low visibility. “The combination of heavy snow and strong wind gusts could lead to significant infrastructure impacts as well, including scattered tree damage and power outages,” the agency said.

The weather conditions could impact families’ holiday travel plans. Nearly 102 million Americans plan to drive to their holiday destinations, marking an increase of 2 million drivers since last year despite volatile gas prices, according to data from AAA. Meanwhile, as many as 54 million passengers will depart from airports between December 18 and January 3, constituting a 20% increase from last year, according to data from Hopper. (Read more from “Massive Snowstorm Expected to Impact Christmas Travel Nationwide” HERE)

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Congress’ Massive Spending Bill Sets Aside Another $45 Billion for Ukraine

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Congress appropriated an additional $45 billion in emergency assistance to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion in its yearly spending bill released early Tuesday.

The bill is Congress’ largest assistance package for Ukraine to date, following a $40 billion package signed into law in May, a $12 billion supplement in September and $800 million authorized in Congress’ defense spending budget, bringing the total anticipated support for Ukraine in 2022 to nearly $100 billion. It exceeds President Joe Biden’s $37 billion request for military, economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine despite some Republican opposition to offering a “blank check” to Ukraine.

“Finalizing the omnibus is critical, absolutely critical for supporting our friends in Ukraine,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, according to The Associated Press.

Congress appropriated $858 billion in defense funding, in line with the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act that passed the Senate last week.

It includes $9 billion in direct military assistance under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $11.9 billion to finance future drawdowns of U.S. weapons stocks and replacements with new equipment through September 2024, the bill shows. Other funds go toward upgrading U.S. troop presence in Europe, expanding research and development programs and increasing procurement thresholds. (Read more from “Congress’ Massive Spending Bill Sets Aside Another $45 Billion for Ukraine” HERE)

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US Tax Dollars Used to Wargame Media Suppression of Hunter Biden Crimes Months Before 2020 Election

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A US government-funded nonprofit known as “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite” sponsored a “tabletop exercise” intended to influence coverage of a leak of documents related to Hunter Biden, the latest installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” reveals.

In a series of tweets Monday, independent journalist Michael Shellenberger posted confidential documents from the Aspen Institute’s September 2020 event, which he said was attended by Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety, Facebook’s head of security policy and top national security reporters from The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The exercise by the “Aspen Digital Hack-and-Dump Working Group” involved an 11-day scenario in October 2020 that began with the imaginary release of falsified records related to Hunter Biden’s controversial employment by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid him as much as $1 million a year to serve on its board when his father was vice president.

“The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it,” Shellenberger wrote.

But the drill was put into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — which was either ignored or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by both Twitter and Facebook. (Read more from “US Tax Dollars Used to Wargame Media Suppression of Hunter Biden Crimes Months Before 2020 Election” HERE)

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White House Claimed 1 Million New Jobs in Second Quarter. Feds Say That Number’s off by 1 Million.

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The Biden administration vastly overstated its estimate that employers created more than 1 million jobs in the second quarter of this year, claiming historic job growth when in fact hiring had stalled, according to a new estimate.

Job growth was “essentially flat” in the second quarter with only 10,500 new jobs added, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.

Republicans are accusing the administration of lying about the employment data in an election year and are demanding answers.

The Philadelphia Fed’s new assessment shows that employment numbers in 29 states and the District of Columbia were significantly lower than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the March-through-June period.

The BLS, a division of the Department of Labor, estimated net job growth of 1,047,000 jobs in the second quarter. The Philadelphia Fed now says its data shows that 10,500 net jobs were created in that period. (Read more from “White House Claimed 1 Million New Jobs in Second Quarter. Feds Say That Number’s off by 1 Million.” HERE)

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New York Times Slammed Over ‘Swastika’ Crossword Puzzle

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Several people are calling out the New York Times after the shape of its Sunday crossword puzzle resembled a swastika.

Twitter users slammed the American newspaper on Dec. 18, with many people calling the Sunday edition of its puzzle “disgusting” and “shocking,” with some noting that it was published before the first evening of Hanukkah.

The puzzle, titled “Some Theme’s Missing,” was created by Ryan McCarty, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting manager who has previously created 22 other puzzles for the paper.

“He started this grid in the middle and worked his way out, stirring in a heap of fresh, lively vocabulary, including 20 debut entries,” a New York Times article said.

(Read more from “New York Times Slammed Over ‘Swastika’ Crossword Puzzle” HERE)

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