Judicial Watch Alleges Collusion Between Fulton County DA Fani Willis and the January 6 Committee to Prosecute Trump, Republicans

Fani Willis and Nathan Wade

The legal integrity organization Judicial Watch (JW) announced on December 10 that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was prosecuting Donald Trump and several prominent Republicans over their concerns about election fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election until she was removed earlier this month for “impropriety,” colluded with the Biden administration to conduct the prosecutions. The group has been repeatedly stonewalled in its attempts, including litigation, to obtain public records from Willis’ office revealing any coordination.

“Judicial Watch and a state court forced Fani Willis to confirm additional documents exist about her collusion with the partisan Pelosi January 6 Committee to ‘get Trump,’” JW President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “But Willis, citing legal exemptions for a prosecution that’s essentially dead in the water, now wants to hide these records from the American public. Judicial Watch plans to push back in court against this disingenuous secrecy.”

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Jack Smith Drops Appeal of Classified Docs Case Against Trump’s Co-Defendants

Jack Smith

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday withdrew his appeals request for his Florida classified documents case against President-elect Donald Trump’s co-defendants.

The attorney dropped his appeal against Trump last month after Trump won reelection to the White House, citing a Justice Department policy not to prosecute sitting presidents. Trump will be sworn in next month. 

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Tennessee Law Allowing Blended Sentences for Minor Criminal Offenders Becomes Active in 2025

ICE Arrest

Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) on Tuesday described 2024 as “an amazing year” marked, in part, by the passing of “tough-on-crime legislation” that became active earlier this year.

Taylor wrote in a post to the social media platform X, “2024 was an amazing year as you and I worked to #MakeMemphisMatter by restoring law and order to our community through holding our local elected officials accountable and passing tough-on-crime legislation,” referring to his public safety bills aimed at lowering crime in Memphis.

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Commentary: H1B Blues

Workers

Just in time for Christmas, some infighting has broken out among Trump supporters. Muckraking online personality Laura Loomer began the fracas with criticism of Sriram Krishnan, who Trump has chosen to be an AI policy advisor. Loomer pointed out that Krishnan has said previously that he wants the quota of green cards available to his Indian coethnics to be expanded.

Elon Musk entered the fray and argued that in order for the country to remain competitive, it must import talent from overseas.

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Report: 118th Congress Passed Fewest Laws in 36 Years

Congress

When measured by the number of bills passed and signed into law, the current 118th session of Congress was the least productive in modern history, passing fewer laws than any other session since the 1980s.

As Axios reports, the data on the number of bills passed was compiled by the public affairs firm Quorum, which determined that less than 150 bills were passed in the two years spanning from 2023 to 2025. By comparison, the previous Congress – the 117th Congress, from 2021 to 2023 – passed 350 bills. Every Congress since 1989 has passed an average of 380 bills into law.

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Metro Nashville Police Department Seemingly Ignores Law Demanding Agency Notify ICE When Arresting Illegal Immigrants

Metro Nashville Police Department

A frequently asked questions web page for the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) indicates the police force does not report immigration status of criminal offenders to federal police in apparent defiance of a law passed earlier this year.

Governor Bill Lee signed legislation in April that made a one-word change in Tennessee law in order to mandate every law enforcement agency in Tennessee must, “communicate with the appropriate official regarding the immigration status of any individual, including reporting knowledge that a particular alien is not lawfully present in the United States or otherwise cooperate with the appropriate federal official in the identification, apprehension, detention, or removal of aliens not lawfully present in the United States.”

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Reporter Tom Pappert: Legal Challenge to Corporate Transparency Act Will Be ‘Early Test’ for Trump AG Nominee Pam Bondi

Tom Pappert

Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the way President-elect Doanld Trump’s Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, if she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, handles the Department of Justice’s legal fight to keep the Corporate Transparency Act in place will be one of the first “early tests” for Bondi in the role.

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COVID Catechists Come for Incoming NIH Chief Bhattacharya as SCOTUS Reconsiders Doctor Censorship

Jay Bhattacharya, M.D.

Proponents of once-dominant COVID-19 views and policy, from the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 to mandatory lockdowns, remote learning, masking and vaccines, often chose between two strategies to marginalize dissenters.

They flooded medical licensing boards with complaints against doctors such as Minnesota’s Scott Jensen, who faced new investigations from Democratic Gov. Tim Walz’s administration after announcing his candidacy for governor, or sought to destroy their reputations in general, scientific and social media, calling them racist, cold-hearted and “fringe.”

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Biden Greenlights Billions More for Ukraine in Waning Days of Presidency

Biden and Ukraine

President Joe Biden announced Monday that the federal government is sending $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine in the final days of his presidency.

The funding will help the Ukrainians secure equipment for artillery and air defense systems, among other things, according to the White House. In his official statement, Biden said that he is “surging as much assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible” in the final weeks of his presidency, even as President-elect Donald Trump has clearly stated he wants to end the bloody Russia-Ukraine war after years of fighting.

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Trump Faces Federal Employee Unions in Government Efficiency Battle

AFGE members

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to drastically cut government and clean out inefficiencies, but he faces an entrenched power in Washington, D.C. that may throw a wrench in his plans: federal government public employee unions.

“For president-elect Trump to succeed at making the federal bureaucracy more efficient and accountable to the American people, he’ll have to once again do battle with federal unions,” Max Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation, told The Center Square.

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Georgia AG Chris Carr Urges State Supreme Court Not to Accept Appeal from Fani Willis in Trump Case

Chris Carr

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr urged the Georgia Supreme Court not to accept the appeal launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she was disqualified from prosecuting the state’s 2020 election case against President-elect Donald Trump.

The attorney general, who recently became the first Republican to launch a 2026 gubernatorial campaign, posted a statement to the social media platform X that accused Willis of creating “her own conflict” in the Trump case, alluding to the district attorney’s romantic relationship with her former special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.

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Virginia AG Jason Miyares Asks Supreme Court to Uphold TikTok Ban as January Deadline Looms

Jason Miyares

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to maintain the law requiring for ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the social media platform TikTok, to sell its American operations or face a ban in the country.

After Congress raised concerns about TikTok’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Joe Biden signed legislation in April that gave ByteDance until January 19, 2025 to sell its American operations. ByteDance sued to block the legislation, but the federal government obtained rulings allowing the law in place from lower courts, leading to the Supreme Court deciding to take the case on January 10, 2025.

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Commentary: 2024’s Winners and Losers

Donald Trump

For those of us in the news business, 2024 provided a steady stream of stories to cover—and rarely a dull moment. From the Republican primaries early in the year to the assassination attempts and political conventions this summer, our Daily Signal team stayed busy through Election Day and in the days that followed.

During his first term as president, Donald Trump provided a plethora of political and policy news for us to report. We expect the same will be true in 2025. But before we turn the page on this year, our team reflected on the winners and losers—compiling the following list (listed alphabetically).

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Erasing History: American Leaders, Artifacts Removed from Campuses in 2024

Woodrow Wilson

What do Woodrow Wilson, Myles Standish, and Christopher Columbus all have in common?

All three were the targets of campus cancel culture this year. They represent a trend over the past decade in higher education of removing or slapping “trigger warnings” on historical figures and items, supposedly because young adults cannot handle the complex, controversial, and sometimes ugly parts of humanity’s past.

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Commentary: PBS Hosts Far-Left Smear Factory to Demonize Trump—Using Your Tax Dollars

Donald Trump point

PBS, backed by your tax dollars, hosted the leader of a group that compares conservatives to the KKK, and she used the opportunity to demonize President-elect Donald Trump. Then PBS hosted one of her close allies who suggested that America failing to elect Vice President Kamala Harris emboldens misogyny.

The two segments make a rather eloquent case against continued public funding for PBS.

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Commentary: America Gaining Control of Greenland and Panama Canal Will Deter China’s Influence in Western Hemisphere

Donald Trump

President-elect Donald J. Trump promised that if elected he would govern in bold colors, not pale pastels. Our next president believes deeply in American Exceptionalism and is making it perfectly clear that the days of America taking a back seat to anyone are over.

Trump’s optimistic vision is for our great nation to lead once again as a beacon of freedom for centuries to come, and that we must be victorious in the great battle of ideals that is currently underway. There is simply no escaping it; the United States will continue to lead the world for good or Communist China will gladly take up the mantle and lead it for evil.

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Tennessee U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett Expects House Speaker Mike Johnson to Be Reelected and Work to Fulfill the Trump Agenda ‘As Best He Can’

Donald Trump

Tennessee U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) said he expects that U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) will be reelected in his role as Speaker next month and work to fulfill President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda “as best he can” given Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House.

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Kari Lake Posts on X That She Will Not be Running for Office Again, Will Work for Trump in Media Position Leading Voice of America

Kari Lake

Less than a month after being offered a job by incoming President Donald Trump heading up the Voice of America (VOA), Kari Lake announced on X that she will not be running for office again. Instead, she accepted the job heading up the journalism position with the Trump administration. Many believe that progressive activists conducted illegal election activity to defeat her in both the 2022 election race for governor and the 2024 race for U.S. Senate.

“We know the movement that we have in Arizona, and I will never take that for granted,” she posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform on Saturday. “But there is a corrupt machine here that is hellbent on making sure I never hold office. So, I won’t put my family (and myself) through the torture of running again. I will go to Washington, D.C., return @VOANews to its glory days, and help President Trump Make America Great Again.”

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Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell Touts ‘Years’ of ‘Collaboration’ with Group Biden-Harris Admin Asked to Help Release Illegal Immigrants

Freddie O'Connell

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell on Sunday touted his “years” of “successful collaboration” with the Tennessee Immigrant Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), a nonprofit that was asked by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to help facilitate the release of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from a Louisiana detention facility into Tennessee.

After The Tennessean asked O’Connell about his disappointment following the decision by the Metro Nashville Council not to approve a contract for a private company to install license plate readers in the city’s streets in its Sunday interview, the mayor pivoted to public safety concerns raised by a “segment” of Nashville’s immigrant community, before referencing another “segment” that is concerned about President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

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Key Senator Says U.S. Vaccine Safety System Failing, Urges Reforms to Testing and Liability

Sen. Ron Johnson

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who next month will begin overseeing the Senate’s most powerful investigative body, says the government’s vaccine safety system is no longer protecting Americans adequately because of conflicts of interest and lack of transparency, and he is vowing to work with the incoming Trump administration to press for sweeping reforms.

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Mexico Launching App for Migrants to Alert Relatives If Detained in U.S.

NBC Montana   Mexico is developing a cell phone app that will allow its citizens in the U.S. to alert family members if they are at risk of being detained, a senior official announced Friday. The app, which will be officially launched in January, will allow migrants to notify both relatives and the Mexican consulate nearest to their location. Applicable family members must have been selected ahead of time, according to a press release. Juan Ramón de la Fuente, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, likened the app to a panic button during a press conference. READ THE FULL STORY 

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Trump Loses Latest Bid to Toss $5 Million E. Jean Carroll Defamation Verdict

Axios   A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the verdict against President-elect Trump in the civil suit for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.  The ruling means Trump must pay Carroll $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages for his alleged defamatory statements after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. “We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. READ THE FULL STORY                 

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Beacon Center of Tennessee Sues Nashville over Stormwater Ordinance

Wen Fa

The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed over a city ordinance that created a stormwater capacity fee to fund improvements to the city’s stormwater system.

The stormwater fee, passed by the Metro Nashville Council in 2023 and implemented at the beginning of 2024, charges individuals seeking a development permit a fee to fund capital improvements to the city’s stormwater system.

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Tennessee Bill Would Encourage Schools to Display Ten Commandments, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution in Classrooms

Classroom with US Flag

Legislation submitted to the Tennessee State House of Representatives on December 19 would allow Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) and public school charters to adopt policies allowing the display of the Ten Commandments, the U.S. Constitution, and Declaration of Independence in classrooms.

According to its summary, House Bill 47 by State Representative Michael Hale would give entities governing Tennessee’s schools the opportunity to publicly display, “the Ten Commandments, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of Tennessee, the Bill of Rights,” and other historical documents at a “prominent location in each school building.”

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Top 2024 Covenant School Shooting Revelations Include Killer’s Therapy, Use of Pell Grants to Buy Guns, and Release of 2023 Manifesto

Audrey Elizabeth Hale

In 2024, The Tennessee Star reported multiple revelations about Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the biological woman who identified as a transgender man when she killed six at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023, after obtaining the killer’s journal and a selection of documents related to the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) case from a source familiar with the investigation in June 2024.

The Star first shared on June 4 that a retired MNPD lieutenant said police knew Hale was a patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center immediately after searching her family’s home in March 2023, and on June 19, confirmed it obtained an internal police document labeled “Vandy Psych” that appeared to include investigative notes about the killer’s time as a mental health patient.

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Tennessee Resumes Executions with New Lethal Injection Protocol After Gov. Bill Lee Announced Pause in 2022

Inmate

The Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) announced on Friday that the Volunteer State will resume executions by lethal injection more than two years after Governor Bill Lee announced a pause and reevaluation on the state’s method of lethal injection.

A press release by TDOC announced the state government will resume executions using the drug pentobarbital under a revised lethal injection protocol, with Commissioner Frank Strata stating, “I am confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws.”

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Article III Project’s Mike Davis Suggests Attorney General Kris Mayes Could Go to Prison

Mike Davis, AG Kris Mayes

Attorney General Kris Mayes, who is prosecuting the alternate electors for Donald Trump from 2020 as well as Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby for delaying the canvassing of that election due to election irregularities, may find herself on the other side of prosecution. Founder Mike Davis of the Article III Project, which defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law, posted on X that Mayes could go to prison due to obstructing the incoming president.

He said, “Dear @AZAGMayes: You disenfranchised AZ voters and stole your election from @AbrahamHamadeh. Now you’re plotting to overturn the will of American voters and illegally obstruct President Trump’s immigration mandate? Want to go to prison? 8 U.S.C. § 132.” 

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Appeals Court Reinstates Doctor’s First Amendment Retaliation Suit for Challenging Critical Race Theory, BLM

Tara Gustilo, M.D.

“Can a workplace demand ideological conformity from employees, especially when those employees are expected to represent certain racialized or gendered perspectives?”

That’s the core issue in a reinstated lawsuit by a Filipina-American doctor with black children who alleges a witch hunt by her former Minneapolis public hospital for criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and critical race theory, calling COVID-19 the “China virus” and categorizing protests against George Floyd’s death as “riots,” according to her lawyer.

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Taiwan Chip Giant Given Billions by Biden Used H-1B Visas to Hire over 60 Foreign Workers in Arizona, Including Accountants

TSCM Workers

Data publicly tracked online reveals the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) hired more than 60 foreign nationals for its Arizona factories using the H-1B visa program. The company was given billions under President Joe Biden through the CHIPS Act, including $6.6 billion in November.

According to the h1bdata.info website, data released by the U.S. Department of Labor reveals TSMC’s Arizona corporation hired at least 58 foreign employees through the H-1B visa program implemented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

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Virginia Democrat Claims Trump’s Plan to Relocate 100,000 Federal Jobs from D.C. Will Boost Democratic Turnout in Special Elections

Don Scott

Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) said on Thursday that the “Agenda 47” plan by President-elect Donald Trump to relocate up to 100,000 federal employees from Washington, D.C. to other parts of the country will help unite Democrats ahead of the January 7 special elections.

Scott made the remarks during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show,” telling the eponymous host he is optimistic his party will fare well in the upcoming special elections sparked by the electoral victories of U.S. Representatives-elect Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10) and John McGuire (R-VA-05).

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Median U.S. Home Price Expected to Hit $410,700 in 2025

Home Sale

Home prices could climb 2% in 2025 and an additional 2% in 2026, according to the latest forecast from the National Association of Realtors.

The group’s economist, Lawrence Yun, projected the median U.S. home price would continue to increase in 2025, but at a slower pace compared to previous years, reaching a $410,700 median existing-home price. The median home price in November stood at $406,100.

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Violent Venezuelan Prison Gang Members Expand Operations in Western States

Arrest

Members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA), continue to expand criminal operations in western states, including in Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

As the border crisis escalated, a record number of illegal border crossers from Venezuela were released into the country by the Biden administration and TdA violence expanded nationwide.

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Trump Asks Supreme Court to Halt January 19 TikTok Ban Until He Takes Office

Tiktok

President-elect Donald Trump on Friday filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting the justices halt the January 19 ban of the short-form video application TikTok until after he takes office.

The push by Trump to delay the TikTok ban comes as a result of President Joe Biden signing legislation in April 2024 that required TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S.-based TikTok operations by January 19, 2025, over concerns of the Chinese Communist Party influencing or monitoring Americans through the app.

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Tennessee High School Band Selected to Perform at Presidential Inaugural Parade in D.C.

High School Band

The Stewarts Creek High School band is set to perform at next month’s inauguration of 47th U.S. President Donald Trump and the 50th U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Washington, D.C.

The high school band was selected by the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee to perform at the 60th Presidential Inaugural Parade on January 20, 2025 shortly after Trump and Vance are officially sworn into office.

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CDC: First Severe Bird Flu Case in America Shows Mutation

Chickens

The CDC conducted a genetic analysis of an H5N1 bird flu sample from a person in Louisiana that shows the disease could be more transmittable to humans.

The person became infected with the “D1.1 genotype virus,” which closely resembles the virus “detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State,” according to the CDC.

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U.S. Navy Sailor from Nashville Recognized as Sailor of the Year

John Thompson

Petty Officer 1st Class John Thompson was named Sailor of the Year for fiscal year 2024, the Navy Office of Community Outreach (NAVCO) announced.

Thompson, a Nashville native who graduated from Whites Creek High School in 2002, was awarded for his “sustained superior performance, leadership and professionalism” while serving at Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Beaufort.

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