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Radical Army Secretary Doesn’t Want White Men from ‘Patriot’ Families

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The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – In one of my earlier PDBs I asked if the Pentagon’s ‘Wokeness’ was a deliberate effort to keep straight, white Christian males from joining the military. Of course, I knew the answer was ‘yes.’ 

I even said, “this may be the left’s goal – to deliberately alienate [straight] white Christian men from joining, so they can expand efforts to recruit non-religious, non-white, woke LGBT lefties instead.”

But now Joe Biden’s Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, a lefty civilian bureaucrat who never served a day in uniform, is saying the quiet part out loud. And she is going even farther. Much farther.

Wormuth doesn’t just want to alienate white Christian men, so they won’t join, she specifically wants to keep out recruits from what I call ‘patriot families’ – those who have a history of serving our country going back up to seven generations. 

Most of these patriot family recruits would be white Christian men. Many of them are from the South.

Since the end of the draft in 1973 at the close of the Vietnam War, notes the Wall Street Journal, the Army has relied “heavily on veterans and military families to develop the next generation of recruits, especially in the region known in the military as the ‘Southern Smile,’ a curving region from the mid-Atlantic and down across the southern U.S.”

But we now also have multi-generational Hispanic service members and a few others. The children of all these military families make up most new recruits in the U.S. military. 

The Journal added:

Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because “people who know the most about it stick around.” 

But to the far-left Democrats, including Wormuth, all these patriots are dangerous and must be purged from our fighting forces. That’s what the Pentagon’s wokeness is really about.

As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Depending too much on military families could create a “warrior caste,” Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.

What does that nonsense mean in real terms?

Well, Daniel Greenfield says it very well in Frontpage Magazine:

There is a ‘warrior caste’ insofar as you have families who have fought for this country since the War of Independence. They showed up, they bled, and now they’re to be replaced by drag queens and identity politics quotas.

And Wormuth’s radical plan to replace our ‘warrior caste’ is being finalized. 

According to the WSJ, “Wormuth said she expects within weeks to begin drafting a proposal for a recruiting overhaul so sweeping that Congress might need to pass legislation to enact all of it.”

While not going into details, Wormuth has stated that: “The Army is strategically deploying recruiters to communities across the country based on demographics, ethnicity, race, and gender.” 

How does this translate into policy? 

Greenfield writes in another Frontpage piece that: “Rather than getting the best people or even adequately qualified people, the goal is to match the force to the census data in a completely senseless exercise so that the people they do get are 20% black, 7.2% Asian, and 0.6% American Indian, or develop a plan to get those Asians.”

He adds:

That’s what deciding that the military should “look like America” really means in the ranks. You can’t have too many white men, but too many black men could also become a problem. If the goal is to match the census, then you can’t have too few minorities or too many. Come on in Jiang, we haven’t met our Chinese quota yet, sorry Jose, we have too many Hispanics already.

But as the Pentagon’s annual June ‘Pride’ festivities highlight, it’s not just about racial quotas, it’s also about sexual identity politics. Greenfield concludes:

Who needs a few good men when you can have a few good trans-men of color? And who cares if they speak English? No Habla Ingles? No problemo! Having HIV  is not a problem. Being from an enemy nation is not a problem. Being a man who believes he’s a woman is not a problem.

Being white, especially a heterosexual male, is a very big problem. We need a military that looks like America and white heterosexual men look nothing like America.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Supreme Court Discrimination Ruling Undermines Corporate Wokeness

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Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – BOOM! – The landmark Supreme Court decision against racial and sex discrimination by schools and universities (under the guise of ‘affirmative action’) will also impact corporate ‘diversity’ programs based on the same flawed, discriminatory ideas. 

In what has become a major legal development in a growing wave of anti-wokeness, corporations will soon have to reconsider all their – likely illegal – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. 

While pushed by the increasingly leftist establishment, most of these woke programs have been illegal under U.S. state and federal laws, which explicitly prohibit discrimination by race and gender. But until now the courts let them get away with it.

Now the Supreme Court has made it official. Affirmative action (aka – discriminatory ‘diversity’ efforts) are out.

The court held by that Harvard and University of North Carolina’s (UNC’s) admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, sued Harvard and UNC over their ‘race-conscious’ admissions programs, arguing they intentionally discriminated against Asian American applicants.

In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

He added:  “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”

Previously, the Supreme Court in the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, ruled that “the use of an applicant’s race as one factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if the policy is narrowly tailored to the compelling interest of promoting a diverse student body.”

This was intended to be a very narrow exception, but soon became far more. And this helped woke corporate America justify its own discriminatory DEI programs.

A 2022 Harvard Business Review 2022 survey, reported by The Epoch Times, showed that more than 60 percent of U.S. companies had a DEI program, which separates employees according to race and gender. 

After the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots, major corporations announced explicit race-based hiring and promotion policies.

But now that the 2003 decision has been superseded, they will all need to revisit the legality of their DEI programs. As Kevin Stocklin explains in The Epoch Times: 

In an amicus brief regarding the Harvard and UNC case, the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and attorney Ilya Shapiro argued that “what this Court authorized in Grutter as a temporary, grudging exception to America’s ideals and generally applicable law of Equal Protection … has metastasized into a threat blooming across the legal landscape, the economy, and society as a whole.”

The exceptions granted by the Grutter case were narrowly tailored to government-funded universities’ admissions policies, and were intended to be a temporary remedy that would include “sunset” provisions. But corporations have applied them as a precedent to race-based policies on staffing and training, and expanded them to include new racial goals.

“To the extent that corporate America has thought that Grutter provided some kind of fig leaf to the illegal discrimination they’ve been engaging in for the last two decades, this would be a really good time for them to rethink that,” Morenoff said. “It never made sense for corporate America to argue that there was a diversity rationale exception to our civil rights laws,” he said.

However, if the Supreme Court decision reverses Grutter or the Johnson executive order, even that questionable pretense would be gone. Rather than standing on thin ice, Morenoff said, “they’re standing on no ice at all.”

This is the next battleground – using this Supreme Court precedent to eliminate discrimination by sex and race from corporate America.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Teen Accused Of Using Weapon To Intimidate Voters

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Florida law enforcement officers apprehended a teenager for threatening voters with a machete.

Caleb James Williams, 18, was arrested after two women called the Neptune Beach Police Department when he allegedly brandished the weapon against them at an early voting polling station.

Authorities say he stood inside the parking lot posing in pictures with the machete with several other male juveniles who were chanting in support of former President Trump.

“The investigation revealed that the group arrived to protest and antagonize the opposing political side,” Police Chief Michael Key told reporters at a briefing, saying the incident, which comes amid rising fears of political violence surrounding the 2024 election, “escalated into a verbal disturbance.”

Williams, the only individual over 18, was also the only one arrested. He was charged with aggravated assault on a person 65 years of age or older and improper exhibition of a firearm or dangerous weapon.

Law enforcement said the other individuals’ actions did not warrant criminal charges.

“The group was there for no other reason but for ill intentions to cause a disturbance,” Key said. “This is not an incident of solely a First Amendment protected right, but rather one where they were simply there to cause a raucous. Voting in our country is one of the most sacred and protected rights we have. Ensuring everyone’s right to vote is crucial, and it will not be impeded upon in Neptune Beach or Duval County.”

Williams was given a GPS monitor and freed on $55,006.00 bail according to Mediaite.

Fears of violence or other forms of voter intimidation have been running rampant in the months leading up to Election Day. (RELATED: Woman Arrested For Alleged Terroristic Threats Against Trump Ahead Of Penn State Rally)

Pennsylvania woman was arrested earlier this week after allegedly making threats against former President Donald Trump before a planned rally at Penn State University.

Paul J. Gavenonis, 74, a registered Democrat and resident of Spring Township, reportedly made alarming comments while purchasing a parking pass at the university’s transportation office. According to witnesses, Gavenonis, who identifies as transgender, expressed hostility toward Trump, stating, “I hate Donald Trump. I’d like to shoot that guy,” while making a gesture that resembled cocking a gun.

The remarks prompted the transportation office staff to alert authorities. According to The Daily Wire, Gavenonis also allegedly referenced climbing a building in the area but expressed concern over being spotted by students if carrying a firearm.

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News

Walz Family Members Buck VP, Endorse Trump

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The family of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz aren’t fans of his politics…

An image circulating online shows family members of vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz openly supporting former President Trump.

The photo was shared online by former Nebraska Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster. It shows eight people wearing “Nebraska Walz’s (sic) for Trump” T-shirts.

“Tim Walz’s family back in Nebraska wants you to know something…” Herbster wrote on X. 

Family members told Fox News they consider themselves “distant” from Walz and have never met or spoken with him. One person in the photo who wished to remain anonymous said they are supporting Trump because “he supports our values.”  

Trump replied on Truth Social to the image, implying that he plans to “meet” with Jeff Walz, the older brother of the Minnesota governor. 

‘Barbie’ Movie Banned in Vietnam as Hollywood Again Kowtows to China

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ANALYSIS – China’s outrageous claim to almost the entire South China Sea – everything within a “nine-dash line” drawn on Chinese maps – has taken its most recent victim – the movie-viewing public in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has banned the movie due to a scene with that Chinese-made line on a map.

China takes its illegal claim very seriously and strives to impose its visual representation on maps everywhere, including those appearing in Hollywood movies.

While it’s unclear why the soon-to-be-released film ‘Barbie’ about the iconic doll and her boyfriend Ken would get embroiled in international politics, it has. 

This south China Sea has been a flashpoint between Vietnam and China for years. The artificial line is shown on Chinese maps to mark their claims over the area despite Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan claiming parts of the same vast expanse of sea.

Chinese warships and fishing vessels routinely operate in these waters to establish de-facto presence, often provoking clashes with neighboring countries.

The Daily Wire (DW) reported:

“We do not grant license for the American movie ‘Barbie’ to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,” Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government body in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films, was quoted as saying in the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.

The movie’s trailer shows Barbie leaving her perfect doll world and to explore the “real world” after becoming disillusioned with her life.

So why did a big Hollywood studio decide to include this ridiculous claim in their otherwise non-political movies?

All I can think of is – in order to please the communists in Beijing. China is obviously a far bigger market than Vietnam. And who knows if Chinese investors were involved in the movie’s production.

DW notes:

“Barbie” isn’t the first film banned for including the nine-dash line. The Vietnamese government also blocked the DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” (2019) and the action-adventure film “Unchartered” (2022) for the same reason. Netflix removed the Australian spy drama “Pine Gap” in 2021 for their inclusion of the line.

Hollywood blockbusters including the Marvel films “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” have also been in China after directors or actors involved in the films made comments critical of China.

Another big controversy exploded in 2019 over the Tom Cruise movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ Initially the movie appeared to remove the flags of Taiwan and Japan from Maverick’s flight jacket. The flags were part of historical patches representing prior U.S. naval deployments to the region.

As NBC News reported:

In 2019, the trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick” showed Cruise’s character, U.S. Navy pilot Pete Mitchell, in the same bomber jacket he wore in the original film. But two of its flag patches — representing Japan and the Republic of China, the official name for Taiwan — appeared to have been replaced by other emblems.

The move was criticized at the time as an act of self-censorship to please China’s censors. Beijing sees Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy of 24 million people, as an inalienable part of its territory and lashes out at any reference to it as a sovereign nation.  

In this case Hollywood, or Cruise, had a change of heart and reversed their apparent kowtowing to China. CHinese investors also pulled out of the movie.

NBC News continued:

On the film’s release last month after a two-year pandemic delay, both flags had been restored. At an advance screening in Taipei, the audience broke out in cheers and applause at the sight of the Taiwanese flag on the big screen, local news outlet SETN reported.

Sometimes in Hollywood the good guys do win. Sadly, not in the case of Barbie.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Biden’s ‘Puppy Sex Role Play,’ ‘Non-Binary’ Energy Official Arrested for Stealing Designer Bag

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Arrest image via Pixabay

ANALYSIS – Stranger than fiction. Can’t make this stuff up. The cross-dressing, ‘puppy sex role play,’ ‘non-binary’ Department of Energy (DOE) official appointed by Joe Biden, was placed on leave last month after he was reportedly caught on camera stealing an expensive suitcase at a midwestern airport terminal.

This is according to a report in the New York Post.

His criminal case is now in court. 

According to court filings, Sam Brinton, the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy was charged with felony theft after allegedly snatching a Vera Bradley suitcase reportedly worth $2,325 from baggage claim at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on Sept. 16.

Brinton, who has a shaved head, mustache, an affinity for wearing lipstick, women’s dresses, and high heels, and uses idiotic plural ‘they/them’ pronouns, initially denied taking the expensive designer luggage.

https://twitter.com/sbrinton/status/1542288527920185344

However, Brinton was captured on surveillance video grabbing the luggage and quickly removing the real owner’s ID tag, before scurrying away.

Investigators said Brinton was later seen using the stolen Vera Bradley suitcase at least twice while traveling to Washington, DC, within weeks of snatching it.

He is one of the U.S. government’s first ‘non-binary’ (aka – openly mentally ill) officials.

Public Health Service Admiral Richard (who now goes by Rachel) Levine identifies as a woman, so he is binary, just a different gender from what his biology dictates.

Both, of course, are Biden appointees.

Brinton is also a “queer activist” who brags about his “kink” of leading other gay men who are pretending to be dogs around on leashes before having sex with them.

As one Twitter user noted:

He doesn’t care about that. But he does care that this was the reason he was picked by Biden for this senior government post.

Brinton is charged with felony theft of movable property without consent and, if convicted, faces up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Brinton’s hearing is scheduled for December 19.

It is unknown whether he would be sent to a men’s or women’s correctional facility, or whether he would be allowed to wear dresses.

Please note – unlike too many other news writers, journalists, and outlets, I won’t confuse my readers, and enable mental illness, by also using idiotic plural pronouns to refer to a single individual.

Let’s see how this story plays out.

Hopefully, there will be no gay men ‘puppies’ involved.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Biden Stashed Highly Classified Docs at Beach Home Garage, Next to ‘Corvette TS/SCI’

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Yes, Donald Trump took scores of highly classified materials to his home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, but at least he didn’t stash them next to his old sports car in a garage.  

Mar-a-Lago is also protected by the Secret Service.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden may be the only POTUS to own a very sweet, racing green, 1967 Chevy Corvette Stingray – TS/SCI Edition.

Who knows what’s in the glove compartment?

The latest find by government investigators has shown former Vice President Biden apparently took a second batch of highly classified materials after leaving office in 2017 and stashed them in his Delaware beach home’s garage.

The first batch found in a closet of a private office in DC Biden used relating to his shady relationship with the Penn Biden Center, including Top Secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) which requires extraordinary security measures to protect.

In fact, since they include intelligence sources and methods (people and processes) they must only be viewed, used, or discussed in a highly secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).

As far as we know, Biden’s garage where he keeps his Corvette is not a SCIF.

But that didn’t keep Biden from arguing his garage was still somehow secure, because, well, it is locked.

In the White House’s South Court Auditorium, Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked the president, “Classified materials next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?”

“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So, it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden responded. 

“People know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously.”

Ummm… LOL. 

Of course, you do, Joe. And we take you seriously as well.

Continuing the patterns denial and obfuscation, on Wednesday, Doocy, along with other White House correspondents, had a tense encounter with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the classified documents. 

“On these documents, how could anyone be that irresponsible?,” Doocy asks, reiterating Biden’s question about Donald Trump after boxes of classified documents were found in former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year.

Despite the barrage of intense questions about the documents over the past two days, Jean-Pierre has frustrated reporters by repeatedly dodging the questions.

The Blaze reported:

CBS anchors Errol Barnett and Lana Zak slammed Jean-Pierre for having “not answered a single question” about the discovery of the documents.

“For a second straight day now, the White House struggling to answer any questions related to classified documents discovered at locations associated with President Biden, citing Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, simply reading a statement, where she says the president was surprised by the discovery, takes this matter very seriously, the documents were inadvertently misplaced, and he doesn’t know what’s in them,” Barnett began.

“She has not answered a single question outside of a prewritten statement by the president’s lawyers,” he said.

Thankfully, reporters are now directly questioning Team Biden’s narrative about being “transparent” and forthcoming about the classified documents.

One big question that also remains unanswered is why Biden failed until now, to disclose the finding of the first batch of his mishandled classified documents, which occurred not long after the unprecedented August FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and only days before the 2022 midterm election in November.

Hopefully, many other unanswered questions, such as did Biden use any of this classified material while writing his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” will be addressed soon.

According to an order signed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland has appointed Robert K. Hur as special counsel, a veteran prosecutor, to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” at Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington and his residence in Wilmington, Del. 

But this independent counsel should not preclude the media and the GOP-led House from continuing to push for the full truth on this issue.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Pro-Lifers Bash Trump ‘Terrible’ Abortion Comments – But Was He Wrong?

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Washington D.C., USA - January 22, 2015; A Pro-Life woman clashes with a group of Pro-Choice demonstrators at the U.S. Supreme Court.

ANALYSIS – During his recent NBC interview, former president Donald Trump called Florida’s recently passed six-week abortion ban “terrible.” The ban was signed into law by his 2024 Republican campaign rival Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Trump believes that picking six weeks as the line to draw for abortion banning is not politically viable nationally. He argued that both liberals and conservatives should agree on a compromise solution — a compromise number of weeks.

And to clarify, Trump said the six-week ban was: “terrible. A terrible mistake.”

He was saying that, politically, passing a six-week ban was a mistake, because it charges up the pro-abortion activists, and alienates moderate women needed to win nationally.

Like it or not, exit polls in 2022 showed that the rush to ban abortions outright by some states just after Roe vs Wade was reversed, scared away a lot of independents and moderate suburban women, contributing to the extremely weak results for Republicans in the last midterm elections.

Trump, the ever-ready wheeler dealer, also predicted that: “both sides are going to like me,” adding, “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months, you’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy.”

Here I think Trump made a terrible choice of words. You don’t want the left to like you, even if you are trying to disarm them. But that’s the way he thinks and speaks.

The former president also said that he would be “a mediator” between both sides to come up with a policy that is “good for everybody.”

I take that to mean a compromise timeline on the number of weeks for banning abortion nationwide, and what exceptions to make.

Some pro-lifers immediately bashed Trump for his comments. The Christian Post reported on the backlash:

Trump’s criticism of Florida’s law that bans abortion once a heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks of gestation, did not sit well with pro-life activists

Lila Rose, the founder and president of the pro-life group Live Action, took to X to describe the former president’s remarks as “pathetic and unacceptable.”

“Trump is actively attacking the very pro-life laws made possible by Roe’s overturning,” Rose wrote. “Heartbeat Laws have saved thousands of babies. But Trump wants to compromise on babies’ lives so pro-abort Dems ‘like him.'” 

And then there was conservative culture warrior Matthew Walsh, with whom I usually agree, who called Trump’s remarks as “an awful answer from a moral perspective” and “also stupid politically.” 

In his post on X (formerly Twitter) Walsh said that “there is no compromise on abortion that everyone will like.”

“It’s delusional to think otherwise. And contrary to Trump’s claims, almost all Democrats are indeed extreme on this issue,” he added. “You will be hard pressed to find more than maybe two or three on the national stage who don’t want abortion until birth or beyond. You can’t win over Democrats by going squishy on this issue. Republicans have tried that brilliant strategy for decades and accomplished exactly nothing by it.” 

But is Trump wrong? 

A six-week ban based on a fetal heartbeat sounds very reasonable to me. And is fine for Florida.

But I know that won’t wash with many other folks across the country who aren’t extreme but prefer another timeline for banning abortion. GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is staunchly pro-life, doesn’t believe a 15-week national ban is realistic either.

As governor of South Carolina, Haley signed a 20-week ban, joining 12 other states back then with bans.

Polls have shown that many, if not most, Democrats believe in some restrictions on abortion. Most, if not all Republicans will make exceptions for rape, incest, and health of the mother. Many would be happy with any reasonable ban, whether six, eight or ten weeks.

And Trump isn’t the only one who argues that taking a strident no compromise stance on abortion will hurt Republicans nationally. As the Christian Science Monitor reported:

At a closed-door conference meeting in the Capitol earlier this month, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave Senate Republicans a briefing that seemed intended to serve as a wake-up call. The Dobbs decision has “recharged the abortion debate and shifted more people (including some Republicans) into the anti-Dobbs ‘pro-choice’ camp,” the political action committee’s report stated. Some senators reportedly left the meeting brainstorming potential new labels, such as “pro-baby,” that could replace the increasingly fraught “pro-life.”

Unlike in the past, when conservative candidates could simply identify themselves as “pro-life” without having to be specific, they are now being peppered with questions about real policy choices: Should abortion be banned at the state or federal level? After how many weeks? With or without exceptions? What about abortion pill restrictions?

At one end of the 2024 spectrum are Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who have strongly leaned into an anti-abortion message. Both candidates have endorsed a national 15-week abortion ban.

By contrast, Mr. Trump, in his “Meet the Press” interview, declined to explicitly endorse a 15-week ban, drawing a rare rebuke this week from Senator Scott. Ms. Haley has outright dismissed a national 15-week ban as unrealistic – one of the “hard truths” that she has been delivering to voters across New Hampshire and Iowa. She says the Supreme Court was “right” to send abortion back to the states.

While I understand and appreciate the 100% pro-life stance, I also want to win the White House and Senate, and expand our lead in the House, so conservatives can keep pushing on this and other issues important to us.

So, Trump may not be wrong. We need to be more tactically flexible to win the bigger war.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Trump Appeals To Supreme Court Over Colorado Banning Him From Ballot

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Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – This could be huge. Donald Trump is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court – which he helped shape as president – following a ruling in Colorado to bar him from its presidential primary ballot over his engagement in an “insurrection.”

Colorado’s all Democrat appointed, left-leaning Supreme Court has ruled 4 to 3 that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in an “insurrection” over the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republicans see the Colorado court’s decision as yet another egregious example of the Democrats’ ongoing campaign of election interference against Trump.

The majority justices’ decision reversed a Denver district judge’s finding last month that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment did not apply to the presidency.

The three justices who dissented did so on procedural grounds. In three separate dissenting opinions, each based on different legal arguments, they all concluded that the Colorado Supreme Court had overstepped its authority.

Colorado’s decision will go into effect on Jan. 4, 2024 – the eve of Colorado’s March 5 Republican primary.

In the wake of the decision, Team Trump came out swinging. As The New York Times reported:

“Unsurprisingly, the all-Democrat appointed Colorado Supreme Court has ruled against President Trump, supporting a Soros-funded, left-wing group’s scheme to interfere in an election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden by removing President Trump’s name from the ballot and eliminating the rights of Colorado voters to vote for the candidate of their choice,” a campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said. “We have full confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits.”

Similar challenges in New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota have all been dismissed in court, because the idea is nonsense. The courts there also decided that the Constitution is unclear about whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies to the president.

As Trump’s lawyers have already said he will appeal the verdict. The shock ruling will put an exceptional case before the U.S. Supreme Court – possibly being forced to decide the question for all 50 U.S. states.

The U.S. Supreme Court is made up of nine justices, six of whom are conservatives, or “constitutionalists,” three of whom were appointed by President Trump.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

This article was republished with permission from American Liberty News.

False AP Report About Russian Missiles Hitting Poland Could’ve Triggered WWIII

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Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Last week the world was hit by the purported news of a Russian missile strike into NATO member country, Poland. 

And now the award-winning AP reporter who wrote it has been fired.

Based only on a single, unnamed ‘senior U.S. intelligence official,’ the initial Associated Press (AP) story by James LaPorta, a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan, was widely disseminated and quickly caused a barrage of other reporting.

Most of it was alarmist and panic-causing, with many in the news media and blogosphere quickly demanding harsh action against Russia.

As the Blaze reports:

Fox News and the Daily Mail similarly carried the AP reporter’s suggestion, the former running a piece entitled, “Russian missiles cross into NATO member Poland, kill 2: senior US intelligence official,” and the latter stating, “‘Russian bombs’ kill two in POLAND.”

CBS Evening News tweeted “RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKE: Two Russian missiles crossed over the Ukrainian border into Poland, a NATO country, killing two civilians.”

A Russian attack on Poland could have triggered articles 4 and 5 of the NATO charter, potentially putting the U.S. into direct conflict with nuclear power.

Article 4 requires full consultation at the North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s political decision-making body, while Article 5 requires joint NATO action to repel an attack.

As MSN explains: “Article 5 states that the parties to the NATO treaty ‘agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.’”

Article 5 also states that each NATO member must take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

This of course would make the U.S. a direct combatant in this war and could escalate to a nuclear exchange.

As such, I wrote about the ‘errant’ strike the same day, albeit in more careful ways.

My headline was more matter-of-fact and far less alarming, and it didn’t mention a direct Russian missile strike: “Escalation in Russia-Ukraine War Leads to Emergency Crisis Meeting.”

In the piece I did note the ramifications of any foreign missiles crashing into Poland, writing: “In what might be the greatest (albeit perhaps accidental) escalation since Russia invaded Ukraine, the war just crossed the border into a NATO country.”

And, yes, I like to say ‘albeit.’

added:

According to a senior U.S. intelligence official, as Russia pounded Ukraine’s energy facilities Tuesday with the largest barrage of missile strikes to date, some reportedly ‘stray’ Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland and struck a site in Poland about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border.

The allegedly errant strike killed two persons in the Polish village of Przewodów and provoked an emergency crisis meeting of Poland’s national security team, which will be held Tuesday evening.

While I did refer to a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman who said Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles in the latest attacks against Ukraine, and reports that expressed the belief that “one or more of these cruise missiles were the ones that struck Poland,” I was very careful in how I reported all this.

Note the extensive use of the words “accidental,” “allegedly,” “reportedly,” “errant,” and “stray” missiles in my report. I also explained that the incident had provoked an “emergency crisis meeting” in Poland.

The rest of my piece focused on the confirmed, massive Russian barrage of missile strikes against Ukrainian energy and infrastructure targets throughout the country.

In the end it appears that the missile that struck Poland was a Russian-made Ukrainian air defense missile that missed its mark and fell back to earth rather than self-destructs.

And even after its country of manufacture was known, outlets like CNN kept calling it a ‘Russian-made missile’ without adding that Ukraine uses lots of Russian-made missiles.

Of course, in my view, Russia is still to blame for this, albeit indirectly, since no one would be firing armed missiles near a NATO country if it weren’t for the unprovoked Russian invasion, and its reckless and dangerous strikes near NATO’s borders.

The Blaze added that:

After having updated the initial report several times, the AP indicated [November 16] that a new assessment from three U.S. officials “contradicts information” in the original article. Shortly thereafter, the article was reportedly taken offline.

The AP issued a retraction later that day…

On Nov. 21, LaPorta was fired.

But let’s use this incident as a teachable moment. 

Lesson one – as sophisticated news consumers, be circumspect with the news you read until it is fully verified.

Lesson two – be wary of reports using only one or two anonymous sources.

And lesson three – journalists, and social media posters, should use words like ‘reportedly’ a lot more, and make it clear that there is room for doubt or questions when the reports are still fresh and early.

The most important rule I’ve learned in journalism, and in intelligence, and also during my stint on Wall Street, is that – it’s never as good (or as bad) as first reported. 

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.