Category: News

Trump’s Former DOJ Official Jeffrey Clark Has Oral Argument Appealing Recommendation to Suspend His Law License

Rachel Alexander
Jeffery Clark

Oral arguments took place last month in the appeal by Donald Trump’s former Department of Justice Jeffrey Clark over a recommendation suspending his law license for two years due to his efforts advising Trump on 2020 election irregularities. A three-member committee of the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility (BPR) found him culpable on August 1 of violating attorney ethics rules due to drafting a letter that was never sent to Georgia officials advising them of their options in dealing with the irregularities. 

The Washington D.C. Bar’s counsel, Hamilton Fox, who is pressing to disbar Clark as a “threat to democracy,” gave the argument for the bar to eight members of the BPR. Fox referred to the letter Clark drafted as a “false letter,” since the officials above him decided not to send it. One of the attorney members on the BPR responded that attorney ethics rules don’t prohibit attorneys from disagreeing with their superiors.

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Homelessness Spiked 18 Percent in 2024; Migrants Caused Record Rise

The Center Square
Homeless

The number of homeless people in the U.S. reached the highest level recorded in 2024, as more than 770,000 people lived without housing on a single night in January, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual report.

The number is an 18% increase from 2023, fueled in part by the surge of migrants illegally entering the U.S. and residing without housing in sanctuary cities, the report noted.

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Violent Venezuelan Gang Reportedly Attacked Border Crossings as Concerns Mount About More Possible Violence

Daily Caller News Foundation

Tren de Aragua gang members armed with weapons attacked crossings along the Texas-Mexico border, according to an internal memo obtained by the New York Post.

Earlier in December, 20 members of the notorious Venezuelan prison gang attempted to force their way into the country at a border checkpoint near El Paso, Texas, while armed with blades, broken liquor bottles and tire irons, according to a leaked Texas Department of Public Safety memo obtained by the Post. Another attempt to bust into the U.S. is expected on New Year’s Day.

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Commentary: Betting on Homeschooling and Microschooling

Admin
Mother with kids

I have spent the past thirty-five years creating small, highly-personalized schools where students flourish. I have, if you will, bet my life on the value of these schools—microschools before they became a thing. Over the course of that time, I’ve seen hundreds of children who were anxious, depressed—sometimes even suicidal—become happy and well within weeks or months of switching from a large, impersonal public school to a small learning environment which offered a closely-connected community.

Based on that experience, for the past decade I’ve been looking at research showing the various ways in which small, high-touch learning environments may be more beneficial for student mental health than are large, impersonal public schools.

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Tech Giants Secure Work Visas for Tens of Thousands of Foreigners While Kicking Existing Employees to the Curb

Daily Caller News Foundation
Worker at Desk

U.S. tech giants have been sacking employees in droves while simultaneously importing tens of thousands of foreign workers.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have laid off at least 27,000, 12,000 and 16,000 employees, respectively, since 2022. However, in that same roughly three-year period, the companies have secured at least 61,000 H-1B visas combined for foreign workers, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

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New Orleans Police Chief Teaches FBI Course on ‘Bias and Diversity,’ Helped DOJ Gain Oversight of Chicago P.D.

Tom Pappert
New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick

Anne Kirkpatrick, the chief of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), instructs executive members of law enforcement agencies on “bias and diversity” as a National Instructor for the Leadership Training Program at the FBI’s Law Enforcement Executive Association.

Kirkpatrick, who leads the NOPD as it responds to the early in the morning terrorist attack allegedly committed by Shamsud Din Jabbar on January 1, was described as an instructor for the FBI program by the National Press Foundation (NFP) in 2024. She was a panelist for the foundation in January 2024, when the group said Kirkpatrick recommended police increase their engagement with journalists.

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New Orleans Bought Retractable Bollards to Prevent Terrorist Attacks in 2017, but Announced Four-Month Replacement in November

Tom Pappert
Moments after New Orleans New Year's Eve truck attack

The City of New Orleans spent $40 million on a public safety plan in 2017, including retractable bollards placed on Bourbon Street that were designed specifically to prevent terrorists from using their vehicles to strike pedestrians.

Seven years later, the New Orleans Department of Public Works announced in November that the bollards would be removed and replaced over a four-month project that was originally estimated to conclude in February 2025.

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Gun-Toting Driver Plows into New Orleans Crowd, Killing at Least 10

Just the News
New Orleans residents post images from the NOLA New Year's Eve truck attack

A gun-toting driver plowed his pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans’ famed French Quarter and opened fire on officers, killing 10 and injuring at least 35.

Authorities said they also found explosive devices on the truck in what they called an “intentional act.” But the city’s mayor and the FBI differed on whether the event was a terrorist attack.

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Virginia U.S. Rep. Spanberger Says Tulsi Gabbard ‘Dangerous’ as Trump’s Pick for Director of National Intelligence

Tom Pappert
Spanberger and Gabbard

Outgoing U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07), who is leaving Congress to pursue the Democratic Party’s nomination for Governor of Virginia, said it was “dangerous” for President-elect Donald Trump to nominate Tulsi Gabbard to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in an interview with ABC 7 News published Tuesday.

Spanberger, who formerly worked as a federal agent for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and a case officer for the CIA, made the remarks about Gabbard when asked about those nominated by Trump to serve in key intelligence positions during his second term in the White House.

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Commentary: A MAGA Wishlist

American Greatness
Donald Trump

We did it.

The greatest comeback in political history, President Donald Trump taking back the office he held four years ago, is historic and nothing short of remarkable. The message it sends is that “Make America Great Again,” the MAGA movement, is here to stay. Long gone are the days of the old GOP establishment, the controlled opposition that had no problem managing the decline of the nation along with the Democrats. Now, Americans are no longer the forgotten men and women. We are ascendant, and we must make sure that our party will continue this path for the foreseeable future.

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Commentary: Trump Driving Foreign Policy Blob Crazy by Daring to Put America First

Daily Caller News Foundation
Trump Saluting

For the past 40 years, American politicians have argued how wars in far-flung third-world countries are in the United States’ vital strategic interests. From Iraq to Kosovo, American leaders of both parties squandered trillions of dollars and thousands of lives chasing phantom threats around the world.

The rationale behind these interventions has often been based on outright fabrications cloaked by high-falutin’ language to the American public. Take President Bill Clinton’s 78-day bombing of a European capital — the first since World War II. Clinton sold the intervention as a way to prevent World War III: “We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe, that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results.”

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Voters Balked on Natural Gas Bans, but Climate Advocates Are Hoping to Withstand Court Challenges

Just the News
Natural Gas Plant

When a Consumer Project Safety commissioner suggested in 2023 that the federal government would consider banning gas stoves over safety concerns, it set off fierce nationwide backlash. While the Energy Department finalized stove efficiency standards, they were watered down from the original proposal and no outright ban ever materialized. 

No federal ban on gas stoves materialized, but climate advocates seeking to stop consumers from accessing natural gas have tried a number of state and local efforts to achieve their goals – all with similar results as that on the federal level. Despite more recent losses, they’re looking at trying some other strategies. 

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

Rachel Alexander
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

Just the News
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

Tom Pappert
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

American Greatness
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

American Greatness
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

Tom Pappert
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

Kaitlin Housler
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

Just the News
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

Daily Caller News Foundation
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

The Center Square
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

Tom Pappert
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

Tom Pappert
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

The Daily Signal
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

The College Fix
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

The Daily Signal
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

Daily Caller News Foundation
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’

Kaitlin Housler
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

Rachel Alexander
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

Tom Pappert
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

Just the News
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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Beacon Center of Tennessee Sues Nashville over Stormwater Ordinance

Kaitlin Housler
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

Tom Pappert
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

Tom Pappert
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

Tom Pappert
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

Rachel Alexander
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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