Opinion

Home Opinion Page 39

War on ‘Misinformation’ is a Democrat Dark Money Campaign to Squash Conservatives

0
CNN Headquarters via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – In case there was any doubt that the entire, fabricated ‘misinformation’ threat was a Democrat-fueled campaign to squelch conservatives, new information connects the dots. 

Researchers at the Capital Research Center (CRC), a conservative watchdog group, have found the Democrat dark money links funding these dangerous efforts targeting conservatives online.

According to the CRC, Arabella Advisors, a notorious political consulting firm founded by a Clinton advisor and closely tied to the Democratic Party, is quietly bankrolling the academic research into online ‘misinformation.’

Researchers funded by the Arabella network then recommended ‘strategies’ such as censorship as ways to mitigate the spread of what they call ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation.’

This misinformation is usually any opinion or news that could harm democrats or challenge their chosen narratives.

Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigative researcher at CRC told the Daily Caller News Foundation that: “Groups like the Arabella network weaponize charitable laws and tax exemption to aid Democratic electoral victories, bypassing the IRS prohibition on electioneering.”

The Daily Caller reports:

Arabella Advisors, run by former Bill Clinton official Eric Kessler, manages certain administrative, legal and philanthropic functions of several non-profits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, North Fund and New Venture Fund, which donate to a variety of left-leaning groups, causes and Democratic candidates, according to tax filings and statements on the funds’ and Arabella’s websites. Several funds within the network are also sponsoring research into the effects of, and how best to mitigate, misinformation and disinformation, according to a DCNF review of public grants.

Many of the Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives predominantly as purveyors of misinformation, with several projects recommending solutions to mitigate the spread of misinformation, including censorship.

One of these Arabella Advisors financed groups, The New Venture Fund recently sponsored a project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy called “The True Costs of Misinformation.”

The Daily Caller continues by describing one egregious panel at that Harvard event:

A presentation titled “What Is Driving Conservativism’s Post-Democratic Turn in America?” by Steven Feldstein at the Carnegie Council ostensibly examined the impact of misinformation on the perceived “anti-democratic” attitudes espoused by conservatives in the U.S., according to the workshop agenda.

“How did American conservatives reach a point where their main political messages are either blatantly anti-democratic or outright falsehoods?” the presentation’s description read, alleging that “political partisanship” in the U.S. was “largely stoked by conservative propaganda and disinformation.”

According to the Daily Caller: “One panel entirely focused on strategies for “misinformation mitigation,” with presentations from researchers at the University of Washington and Google…”

And their remedies included legislative action to change election laws to curb election misinformation, as well as “psychological inoculation” against dis- and misinformation.

This Democrat bankrolled, anti-‘misinformation’ campaign is the real threat to American democracy and just the latest war on conservatives that must be fought against and won. 

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

Is One of America’s Most Powerful Liberal Groups Illicitly Lobbying for this Foreign Billionaire?

2
Image via Pixabay free images

Members of Congress want to know if one of America’s most powerful liberal political groups is evading federal laws requiring them to report lobbying on behalf of foreign billionaires.

U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) want League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski to answer questions about LCV’s fundraising, lobbying, and political activities, and whether it is complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The League of Conservation Voters, a radical environmentalist group, is one of the nation’s most powerful political organizations.

OpenSecrets reports the LCV donated $15,129,989 to federal political candidates in 2020.  They also spent $42,272,125 on ads supporting or opposing federal candidates in 2020, making them the nation’s 15th-biggest political spending.

But members of Congress want to know if the LCV is lobbying lawmakers at the behest of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a radical leftist who opposes American energy independence.

The members write:

“Following ‘intense lobbying’ from LCV and related groups that led to passage of the [Inflation Reduction Act,] you met then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who told you Democrats ‘passed what you wanted’ and asked whether LCV would ‘have our backs’ in the 2022 election. Following the election, in an end-of-year memo on December 19, 2022, LCV detailed how the ‘LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities invested more than $100 million’ to elect Democrat candidates that align with LCV’s eco-agenda agenda in the 2022 elections. Previously, in the 2018 cycle, LCV spent $80 million on candidates that support its eco-agenda.  

“LCV has registered to lobby on several activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee, including issues like opposing offshore drilling plans, supporting a ‘pause and review of the federal oil and gas program,’ and supporting the restoration and expansion of a number of national monuments. The Committee is concerned that LCV’s relationship with foreign donors, such as Swiss national Mr. Wyss, who are prohibited from contributing, either directly or indirectly, to domestic political campaigns may impact LCV’s political and lobbying activities relating to America’s ability to achieve energy independence. As you are aware, such political and lobbying activities may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.   

“The central purpose of FARA is to ‘promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the United States by ensuring that the United States government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy, and laws.’ Hence, FARA requires any person or entity, including non-profits, to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they act as an agent or at the request ‘of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.’ Registration under FARA is also required for any entity that attempts, on behalf of a foreign principal, to influence any section of the U.S. public or a U.S. government official in ‘formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States.'”

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

The Legal Hit Squad Targeting Trump Lawyers

1
Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image
Screenshot via X [Credit: @amuse]

Without a whisper, David Brock once again took his seat in that deep club chair, the one upholstered in battered oxblood leather and steeped in quiet menace. He reached for his tailor-crafted inner pocket, drawing from it a fresh Davidoff 702 Double R. The oily Ecuadorian leaf caught flame with practiced ease, releasing those same familiar notes of dark chocolate and café crema. Nearby, a Baccarat tumbler appeared in a silent ritual of service, filled just so with Pappy Van Winkle, as though it had always been there. This wasn’t just habit. It was stagecraft, and the man in the chair was directing a performance with constitutional consequences.

There was no need for preamble. Those in the room knew why they were there. Brock was about to reintroduce the legal profession to its own velvet-clad nightmare. His audience, a quiet circle of left-wing patrons and media barons, leaned in as he explained the next phase of his campaign, not against Donald Trump per se, but against anyone daring to offer him or his allies a legal defense. This wasn’t about winning court cases. This was about ensuring those cases were never filed at all.

The 65 Project, Brock explained, was not an electoral effort. It was not a messaging campaign. It was war. A war against the 6th Amendment, that slender but essential clause guaranteeing every American the right to legal counsel. Its aim? To deprive Republicans, particularly those challenging elections or government orthodoxy, of any capable legal defense.

Screenshot via X [Credit: @amuse]

Run through Brock’s network of nonprofits and housed under Law Works, the 65 Project deployed seasoned political operatives to file bar complaints, ethics charges, and sanctions motions against Trump-affiliated attorneys. The power of the model lay in its asymmetry. A single complaint, even meritless, could cost an attorney tens of thousands of dollars and a year or more in disciplinary review. And even if dismissed, the stain was permanent.

In 2025, this campaign has not slowed. In February, the 65 Project filed a high-profile complaint against Edward Martin, then the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia. His offense? Alleged conflicts of interest tied to representing January 6 defendants before his federal appointment. The complaint cited violations of Rule 4-1.7 of professional conduct, a detail blasted across the headlines of friendly media outlets. As of June, there is no word on whether the complaint succeeded, but that isn’t the point. The accusation is the punishment.

Incredibly, the 65 Project also targeted the sitting Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi. On June 5, 2025, a coalition including the 65 Project, Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Lawyers for the Rule of Law filed a 23-page ethics complaint with the Florida Bar, accusing Bondi of “serious professional misconduct.” The complaint alleged that Bondi threatened DOJ lawyers with discipline or termination for failing to pursue President Trump’s political objectives, particularly via a February 5 “zealous advocacy” memo. It claimed her actions led to resignations and firings in violation of DOJ norms and Florida Bar rules. Yet, on June 6, the Florida Bar summarily rejected the complaint, citing a policy against investigating sitting officers appointed under the US Constitution. It was the third such complaint against Bondi, and the third rejection. Critics like DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle called the filings “vexatious” and politically motivated. That the 65 Project would go after a sitting Attorney General at all illustrates the sheer audacity, and absurdity, of their campaign. They have announced they will be filing more complaints against Bondi.

Even more outrageous, the same coalition named two additional Trump administration officials in their June 5 complaint: Emil Bove, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General and Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General. The complaint accused them contributing to a culture of unethical conduct within the Justice Department by pressuring career lawyers to ignore professional responsibilities and instead pursue political objectives at the behest of President Trump. The goal was clear: not just to intimidate one leader, but to undermine the credibility of an entire legal team working within the bounds of the law.

This complaint, like so many others, underscores the project’s enduring mission: to ensure lawyers think twice before defending Trump or any of his associates. Public defenders and private litigators alike have been swept into the net. Whether you were in court for Giuliani, or simply filed an amicus brief on election integrity, the 65 Project likely has your name on a list.

This strategy, weaponizing legal ethics as a partisan bludgeon, would have made Boss Tweed grin from ear to ear. Backroom operators like Col. George Brinton McClellan Harvey would recognize it instantly. Harvey, managing editor of the Democratic Party’s press empire at the turn of the 20th century, orchestrated conventions from smoke-filled rooms in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel, where policies were written not in law books, but on cocktail napkins between puffs of Havana cigars. Brock, in many ways, is his spiritual heir, using legal bureaucracy the way Harvey used ink and influence.

The Biden-appointed judiciary has not resisted. In Michigan, Democratic activists succeeded in convincing a federal judge to sanction every lawyer who filed election-related litigation for Trump in 2020. Among them: Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Stefanie Junttila. Each was ordered to pay legal fees to Democratic Party groups and attend re-education courses, under the euphemism of continuing legal education. The court referred them for possible disbarment, fulfilling Brock’s vision.

Michael Teter, managing director of the 65 Project, has filed complaints against more than 100 attorneys across 26 states. The targets include high-profile figures like Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Cleta Mitchell. And while many of these complaints were dismissed by mid-2023, the damage to reputations and client relationships lingers.

The project’s tactics have drawn sharp rebuke. Congressman Lance Gooden, in April 2025, called the 65 Project a “political hit squad” and demanded a Justice Department investigation. Others on social media have accused the group of colluding with establishment Republicans to kneecap Trump’s legal allies. Yet Brock’s defenders frame the group as guardians of democracy, protecting the legal profession from ethical collapse.

Such framing is dishonest. When Alan Dershowitz defended Al Gore in 2000, no one suggested he should be disbarred for challenging election results. But now, lawyers challenging questionable election conduct on behalf of Republicans face professional ruin. This is not accountability. It is ideological warfare.

Critics may point out that the 65 Project has not secured many disbarments. That may be true, but they have achieved some high-profile penalties. Jenna Ellis was publicly censured by a Colorado judge in March 2023. Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York and is facing permanent disbarment proceedings in Washington, DC. John Eastman was disbarred in California following a March 27, 2024, decision by State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland, who found him culpable of 10 out of 11 disciplinary charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. His license was placed on involuntary inactive status days later, rendering him ineligible to practice law in California. Eastman has appealed, but as of June 15, 2025, no reversal has been reported. He was also suspended from practicing law in Washington, DC, on May 3, 2024, pending resolution of the California case. Lin Wood surrendered his law license in Georgia under pressure from multiple complaints. These results are rare but not insignificant. Still, the goal was never just disbarment. It was deterrence. It was a public display of consequence, a digital scarlet letter. No need to win in court when you can win in LinkedIn’s HR department.

The project has inspired imitators including the Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Lawyers for the Rule of Law. The Lincoln Project also targets law firms, encouraging junior associates to pressure partners against accepting GOP clients. Shutdown DC and the Un-American Bar maintain lists of “insurrectionist” lawyers. Others push the American Bar Association to adopt rules banning election challenges altogether, cloaking censorship in the rhetoric of professionalism.

Marc Elias, the left’s court general, has taken the mission even further, seeking to disqualify GOP candidates under the 14th Amendment, resurrecting post-Civil War measures to bar Trump allies from holding office. Lawsuits against Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and others reflect this broader ecosystem of lawfare. It is a constellation of coordinated attacks designed to render conservative legal advocacy untenable.

And what of the Constitution? The Sixth Amendment was never meant to be partisan. It exists not to protect the powerful, but the accused. In America, even pariahs have lawyers. Even the guilty deserve defense. The 65 Project’s perverse genius is to flip that premise, treating legal representation as complicity, and enforcing political loyalty through professional terror.

David Brock did not build this machinery alone. Melissa Moss, a Clinton veteran, helped architect the effort. She recruited Democratic grandees, Tom Daschle, ABA presidents, former state judges, to lend legitimacy. Their goal? To make conservative legal advocacy professionally radioactive.

And it may be working. Some lawyers are declining GOP clients outright. Others fear disciplinary complaints, X mobs, or worse. The chilling effect is real, and precisely what the architects intended. The War on the Sixth is a war on courage, a war on professional independence, a war on the idea that justice should be blind.

In the end, Brock’s smoke-filled rooms are not about cigars or cocktails. They are about control. They are about ensuring that when Republicans step into a courtroom, they do so alone.

If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing: https://x.com/amuse.

Feds Gave $400 BILLION in ‘COVID Relief’ to Criminals and Scammers

4
Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine answering questions from the press. As states across the country begin to reopen and nearly half are seeing COVID-19 cases rise, Governor Tom Wolf announced Friday that Pennsylvania is not one of them. ...Today at a daily COVID briefing with Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine, he noted another milestone: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proprietary data for states indicates that we are one of just three states that has had a downward trajectory of COVID- 19 cases for more than 42 days. The other two states are Montana and Hawaii. JUNE 17, 2020 - HARRISBURG, PA.

ANALYSIS– This should be one of the biggest stories in America. The bloated, overreaching, over-powerful, over-taxing federal government gave nearly half a TRILLION of our tax dollars for so-called ‘COVID-19 relief’ to grifters, scammers and fraudsters. 

If that doesn’t cause national outrage, nothing will.

They used to say sarcastically, ‘a billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.’

Well, this is $400 billion worth of real money, and the monstrosity we call the federal government literally gave it away to criminals.

Often the fraud involved identity theft and crooks overseas. Sadly, some of those criminals might also be your next-door neighbors, family, or friends. 

Everyone, it seems, ‘wanted in’ on an easy payday.

And the government gave it all to them in about three years. Fortune reported:

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents a jarring 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID-relief aid.

That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

There are myriad reasons for the staggering loss. Investigators and outside experts say the government, in seeking to quickly spend trillions in relief aid, conducted too little oversight during the pandemic’s early stages and instituted too few restrictions on applicants. In short, they say, the grift was just way too easy.

“Here was this sort of endless pot of money that anyone could access,” said Dan Fruchter, chief of the fraud and white-collar crime unit at the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Washington. “Folks kind of fooled themselves into thinking that it was a socially acceptable thing to do, even though it wasn’t legal.”

It was theft. Some big; some small. But together it equaled a mass of scams so large it is unprecedented in U.S. history.

And it all occurred when America was being devastated with overrun hospitals, school closures, closed businesses, and many others who really needed help.

This is what happens when a giant faceless government bureaucracy is enabled by politicians from both parties (but generally more so from the Democrats) and detached from reality, taken from the people, and then decide who to give it to afterward.

As Fortune notes: “Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste, and inflation.” And it does.

But it also shows the state of American society where almost everyone wants something for nothing and is willing to scam and steal to get it.

And in this case, both sides are to blame for the massive spending and waste.

At the height of the pandemic, President Donald Trump approved emergency aid measures totaling $3.2 trillion, according to figures from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, and reported by Fortune.

And then came Joe Biden with his 2021 ‘American Rescue Plan’ spending another $1.9 trillion. 

The committee’s most recent accounting shows that about a fifth of the $5.2 trillion (over $1 TRILLION) has yet to be fully paid out. 

Perhaps they should put that on hold until they can figure out what fraudsters they will be giving it out to, and also recover the $400 billion already wasted.

At least Republicans and Democrats have agreed on one way to fix it. 

They are giving the government more time to catch fraudsters with legislation passed in August To increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the Small Business Administration.

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

China’s Spy Balloon Was a Big Deal, Likely Gained Valuable SIGINT for Beijing

11
Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Joe Biden’s Chinese spy balloon fiasco keeps getting worse. As I noted earlier, almost all of the Biden spin about the Chinese balloon that spent eight long days surveilling military and strategic sites across the United States, was misleading or outright false. 

Contrary to the furious pro-Biden spin, the 200ft tall balloon with a jetliner-sized surveillance package strapped to it, did pose an intelligence and military threat.

It could also have been shot down much earlier without undue risk to those on the ground – especially since it first cruised over the Aleutian Islands and parts of Alaska.

And no, President Trump did not know or ignore prior Chinese balloon incursions when he was in office. 

Reports of brief crossings of Chinese balloons over peripheral parts of the U.S., like Florida, or U.S. territories far from the continental U.S. like Guam, did not surface until well after Trump left office.

Apparently, the Pentagon didn’t detect those extremely brief forays at the time, displaying a major gap in our surveillance capabilities.

But this incursion was of a whole different scope and scale.

I earlier argued that the primary goal of this latest extended cross-country balloon incursion for China was political.

It was a clear test. What would Biden and the U.S. military do? And their answer was, basically nothing until after the airship completed its 8-day surveillance mission.

However, an added, and more dangerous goal was potentially to test how to use a stratospheric balloon to employ a small nuclear device at an extremely high altitude to produce a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would fry communications, power networks and almost all electronics across much of the United States.   

For more on that see my previous piece.

But let’s return to the more mundane intelligence-gathering functions of this airship. 

While the Biden spinners rushed to say that the balloon could not gather intel not already gained by Chinese satellites in low earth orbit, this simply ignorant, and untrue.

One left-leaning intelligence news site, SpyTalk, edited by the elderly Jeff Stein, wrote in an almost knee-jerk fashion without waiting for more facts: “Pssst: Chinese Satellite Not a Threat. Experts say news media hysteria over the floating orb not at all warranted.”

Stein then brought in his usual suspects to buttress his pro-Biden spin.

The liberal Stein quoted one of his regular minions, Paul Cobaugh, a left-leaning retired Army information operations specialist with no intelligence or technology background, as saying we have a “variety of capabilities to render it unusable or mitigate the threat.” 

This is partly true. We do have means to mitigate the threat. 

A senior U.S. defense official said on Feb. 2 that when the Chinese balloon was detected near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, home of the 341st strategic intercontinental ballistic missile wing, the Pentagon “acted immediately to protect against the collection of secretive information.” 

That likely meant shutting off signals-emitting systems and moving secretive aircraft and sensitive equipment under cover or into a hangar.

The Pentagon can take similar steps to stop satellites from gathering intelligence, but it is far more disruptive to have a giant airship looming overhead for long periods of time, as it was in this case.

But SpyTalk’s Cobaugh takes his uninformed argument about the balloon to an extreme, adding with no nuance or uncertainty:

“It’s not a threat.”

SpyTalk didn’t stop there though and added the always predictable, hyper-partisan, Trump-hating former Air Force general and CIA director Michael Hayden to the mix, who totally dismissed the Chinese balloon, and Biden’s inaction, by saying:

“Really, it’s not a big deal.” 

Well, this is all just nonsense. It was a very big deal.

Beyond the various risks noted above and in my earlier piece, the ability to vacuum up valuable Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) unavailable to satellites, makes the balloon threat unique. 

As Defense News reports:

Experts say balloons loitering at high altitudes can offer some advantages over satellites and drones — or could at least augment their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said one benefit of these balloons is their ability to hover closer to the ground than satellites, and they may be able to intercept communication or electronic signals that orbiting systems can’t.

“It could be thermal infrared, it could be signals intelligence. One of the reasons there are advantages to the suborbital position is you might not be able to do all of that from space,” he told C4ISRNET in a Feb. 3 interview. “There’s a whole lot of value to something other than space.”

Bryan Clark, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, said balloons also offer more persistent, less predictable coverage over an area of interest. While satellites follow a known orbit, airships use wind currents and automated controls to maneuver in different directions. They can also hover in one place for a long period of time.

Clark told C4ISRNET: “With a satellite, you know when they’re going to go overhead, so you stop doing whatever you’re doing for the time it’s overhead. If you have a balloon, it could be out there for days or months, and you’re sort of left either having to stop whatever you’re doing that’s generating intel — or you live with it.”

And there is much more our intelligence experts and agencies can’t yet divulge about this balloon.

Hopefully, once it is fully recovered we can expect a full damage assessment.

So, yes, the high-tech, high-altitude, Chinese surveillance airship that spent 8 days traversing the U.S. was a threat, and the leftist partisan spin machine continues to churn out uninformed nonsense.

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?

1
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.

Amanda Head: Waking Up Early Is Racist

1

A recent article claims that the notion of waking up early with the rising sun is rooted in white supremacy…It doesn’t get more unbelievable than this.

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

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

Tucker Carlson Jan 6 Exposé – Partly True and Also Kinda Dumb

20
Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSISTucker Carlson’s misguided attempt to use cherry-picked moments of the newly released video of Jan. 6 to argue that nothing bad happened at the Capitol that day, is horribly timed and very dumb. 

As I wrote the day after I personally observed events at the Capitol that day, January 6 was neither a deadly coup, insurrection nor peaceful guided tours of the Capitol. 

It was a mixture of some of those things, none of those things, and everything in between.

And Tucker would have been far more effective, and credible had he used the video to show that the Left’s Jan. 6 narrative was incomplete, distorted, and totally one-sided, rather than trying to say it was totally false.

Because the truth is that Jan 6 was like the story of the blind men and the elephant, each one grasping one part of the animal, like the leg, tail, or trunk, and describing the giant beast as something totally different.

On Jan. 6 what began as a massive peaceful rally of tens of thousands of pro-Trump protesters, soon degraded when smaller elements (a few hundred) of the much larger peaceful crowd broke off and did conduct a violent attack on parts of the Capitol.

Hundreds more just stupidly followed the initial ‘attack mob’ inside.

In the first group, some had military training, used stack formations, and were very organized and intent on forcefully breaching the building. 

While none were found with, or used firearms, during the riot, there was violence with sticks, flagpoles, and pepper spray.

I called these violent rioters, thugs, and criminals.

They were similar to the violent BLM rioters who had violently attacked police at the White House in the summer of 2020 or besieged the Portland Federal Courthouse for months.

On Jan. 6 police officers were similarly attacked and beaten, and the Capitol was ultimately breached unlawfully.

Inside, one non-violent protester, Ashley Babbitt, an Air Force security forces veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police Officer. Likely, unjustly. 

She was the only person killed during the riot.

All this occurred in the span of just a few hours.

But the Capitol complex is massive, and what was happening violently on one end was not being replicated at other parts of the Capitol. 

As much of the Tucker video showed truthfully, in many places and entrances, Capitol Police had allowed protesters inside, in some cases escorted them around. 

In other cases, the police simply stood by as the ‘tourist’ protesters milled around and took selfies or acted stupidly.

Still, ever since then, there has been a profound narrative battle pitting those fanatics on the right who said nothing at all happened and the fanatics on the left who claim Jan. 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and an insurrection that risked the essence of American democracy. 

Sadly, neither side is correct, but only the most extreme one-sided ‘insurrection’ narrative was put forward by the left and last Congress’ Democratic-run Jan. 6 committee, and repeated daily by the partisan, anti-Trump media.

The insurrection narrative was pushed by cherry-picked videos and photos of the same short-lived Capitol violence from different views and angles, repeated in a nearly constant loop for the most distorted and dramatic effect possible.

But now Tucker has done the same.

As Politico reported:

Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger wrote in an internal message to officers that Carlson’s Monday night primetime program “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” to incorrectly portray the violent assault as more akin to a peaceful protest. He added that Carlson’s “commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

And many Republican leaders agreed.

The timing is also horrible.

As Politico reported:

It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show “anything we don’t already know.”

“I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”

So how should we view the events of the January 6 riot accurately and fairly?

Probably the best description was provided by Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) when he said he has “a hard time with all of it.”

He added that Jan. 6 “was not a peaceful protest. It was not an insurrection. It was a riot that should have never happened. And a lot of people share the blame for that. The truth is always messier than any narrative.”

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

On Twitter Show, Tucker Carlson Blames Ukraine for Attack on Dam

1
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,

ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.

And he may be right.

Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.

As Newsweek reported, that is part of Tucker’s claim, too.

And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.

Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.

This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.

While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.

On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”

And that has always been a stretch. Instead, The Post reporting today reinforces my earlier conclusion that it is “likely, the U.S. was aware but turned a blind eye.”

Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:

The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.

Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.

Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”

Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.

So, what are the facts?

The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.

Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.

The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.

Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.

In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”

In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack. 

But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:

So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.

Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.

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

Time Magazine Denies Nazi-Era Echo In Trump Cover Image

4
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Photographer’s nod to controversial 1963 portrait fuels speculation.

WASHINGTON — Time magazine is facing backlash over its latest cover photo of President Donald Trump, after online critics and media outlets pointed out a visual similarity to a portrait the magazine used 60 years ago featuring convicted Nazi industrialist Alfried Krupp.

The image, shot by photographer Stephen Voss, shows Trump looming over the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, dramatically lit from below. According to a report by The Daily Beast, the composition bears a striking resemblance to a 1963 photo of Krupp taken by the Jewish photographer Arnold Newman — a photograph widely studied for its chilling and deliberate framing of a man convicted of facilitating some of history’s most heinous crimes.

The Historical Background

Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach inherited control of the Krupp industrial empire from his father, Gustav Krupp, who had supported Adolf Hitler and helped finance the Nazis’ rise to power. Under Alfried’s leadership during World War II, Krupp factories supplied the Third Reich with armaments and heavy machinery vital to its war efforts, including tanks, submarines, and artillery.

National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After Germany’s defeat, Krupp was tried by the U.S. Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg Krupp Trial (officially The United States of America vs. Alfried Krupp, et al.), which took place from 1947 to 1948.

He was convicted primarily for:

  • Exploitation of Forced Labor: Krupp industries used 100,000 slave laborers and prisoners of war under brutal conditions. Many of these laborers were taken from occupied countries and concentration camps, forced to work long hours in unsafe factories.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-138-1083-20 / Kessler, Rudolf / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons
  • Plundering Occupied Territories: Krupp was found guilty of seizing industrial plants and raw materials from conquered nations to boost Nazi Germany’s armament production.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2005-1017-521 / Gehrmann, Friedrich / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons
  • Participation in Crimes Against Humanity: The tribunal held that Krupp’s active role in maintaining and expanding his war production empire made him complicit in Nazi crimes.
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1985-100-33 / Unknown authorUnknown author / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE , via Wikimedia Commons

He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and had his property confiscated.

Newman’s portrait of Krupp is iconic in photographic circles. In the image, Krupp is seated at a desk under harsh lighting, his posture and setting portraying him as both powerful and ominous, reminiscent of a devil or a fiendish creature. Critics argue that Time’s Trump cover bears such a resemblance to Newman’s portrait that it cannot be a coincidence.

Photographer Reacts on Social Media

Voss, the photographer behind the Trump image, has not publicly commented on the comparison. However, he reportedly “liked” social media posts highlighting the resemblance — a move many interpret as a subtle acknowledgment of influence.

A spokesperson for Time magazine rejected the claims outright, telling The Daily Beast that “any suggestion of an intentional reference is completely untrue.”

Why This Matters

The controversy cuts across political and cultural lines:

  • Visual symbolism: Referencing imagery linked to Nazi figures — even inadvertently — risks crossing ethical and historical boundaries.
  • Editorial credibility: Time, known for its iconic covers, faces questions about whether such visual choices are neutral, intentional, or ideologically driven.
  • Trump’s image control: As a media-savvy political figure, Trump is acutely aware of how visuals shape perception. Whether intentional or not, the cover’s tone could affect public interpretation.

What’s Still Unknown

  • Was the similarity intentional? No direct evidence confirms that Voss or Time deliberately modeled the image after Newman’s Krupp portrait.
  • Does intent matter? Critics argue that even unintentional parallels can carry meaning, especially given the historical weight of the reference.
  • Will this have a lasting impact? It’s unclear, though likely, that the controversy will become another political flashpoint in media criticism.

A Larger Media Question

This episode adds fuel to a long-running debate over how the media portrays political leaders — especially those it opposes editorially. It also highlights the power images have in shaping public perception.

In an era when symbolism is parsed as carefully as language, even a magazine cover can carry profound consequences.