DAILY SIGn HEIL 2

7 23 = TWO

JORDAN WEAPONZ CHIP ROY ~ SPLC ANTIFA BS 12 25

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rww

12/12/2025

Kyle Mantyla

Rep. Chip Roy says that Republicans in the House of Representatives will be holding hearings to expose how George Soros, NGOs, and the United Nations have been using the SPLC and antifa to promote "Marxists and Islamists who want to take this country over."

"Prophet" Mark Taylor fumes that "Susie Wiles and her people are the ones responsible for single handedly KILLING the America First Agenda!": "She is a demonic infiltrator in the highest order sent in to destroy the President and the America First Agenda."

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ref

tony perkins

Rep. Chip Roy Highlights the latest on the Defense Bill & Looks Ahead to 2025 Agenda

0:00

And here we have Texas Congressman Chip

0:02

Roy who has joined us here in the media

0:06

center at the Family Research Council.

0:09

Uh a familiar face and voice on

0:11

Washington watch. Uh Congressman, thanks

0:13

so much for running off the hill and

0:15

coming down here and joining us.

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about something. You are hosting or

4:06

actually you're chairing, I should say,

4:07

a subcommittee hearing next week. You

4:09

chaired the constitution committee in

4:12

the judiciary committee on the southern

4:14

poverty law center that has in fact when

4:18

you walk out the door of this room you

4:20

will see the bullet holes in the wall

4:21

that was inspired a gunman to come into

4:24

this building. Uh Congress is ready to

4:27

act on that. They're ready to move to

4:29

expose these this long-term relationship

4:32

that SPLC was had has had with

4:34

government agencies.

4:35

Well, I'm certainly ready to do that. I

4:37

think uh Congressman uh and chairman

4:39

Jordan uh rightly agreed that we should

4:42

have this hearing in the subcommittee on

4:43

the Constitution. And so we're going to

4:44

be doing this next week. Uh Tony will be

4:46

one of the witnesses. Uh uh Tyler Boyer

4:49

from TPUSA is going to be one of the

4:51

witnesses. Uh as well as an individual

4:54

who's pretty knowledgeable here in town,

4:55

a journalist named Tyler O'Neal about

4:57

all of the dot connecting of all the

4:59

money. Now, there's a lot to unpack

5:01

here, which we probably don't have

5:02

enough time to do in full, but the short

5:04

version is anybody who loves and is

5:06

familiar with with with F FRC knows what

5:09

Southern Poverty Law Center meant with

5:11

respect to the attack here over a decade

5:12

ago uh here in this building. Um, but

5:16

and now we've seen the connection to

5:18

what happened with Charlie and and the

5:20

extent to which your, you know,

5:21

crosshairs are put on you. Heck, my name

5:23

is now getting put in the crosshairs

5:25

because I'm daring to call out the

5:26

Islamification of America. So what we're

5:29

going to do in this hearing is expose

5:30

that, demonstrate what's actually

5:32

happening, but I want to take that a

5:34

step further so people understand the

5:35

vast array of networks that are funding

5:37

all of it. The Soros operation, uh,

5:40

Arabella, all of the groups and all of

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the operatives that are involved, the

5:43

Islamification funding, the open borders

5:45

groups, the NOS's, the United Nations,

5:48

your taxpayer dollars, all of it coming

5:50

together in this vast network to have a

5:52

red green alliance where you've got the

5:54

Marxists and the Islamists who want to

5:56

take our country over. and it's all

5:58

related and SPLC is right at the center

6:00

of it. Antifa is at the center of it.

6:02

All of these groups need to be exposed

6:04

and we're going to be doing that next

6:05

week and we're just getting started and

6:06

I've had some great conversation with

6:08

Secretary Bessant with people in the

6:09

administration. Um I think there's a

6:11

hunger to go break this network down

6:14

because it's attacking our way of life.

6:15

Well, it's it's

6:18

finninging violence and it's and it's

6:20

it's leading to death. Yep.

6:22

And it's chilling our First Amendment

6:24

freedoms. Chip Roy, always great to see

6:26

you. Thanks so much for joining us. Look

6:27

forward to seeing you next week.

6:28

Absolutely.

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RWW 10 25

Tyler O'Neil of The Daily Signal reports that he has been speaking with member of Congress about launching investigations into the Southern Poverty Law Center, which MAGA has been targeting in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

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mma 12 24

Daily Wire host **Andrew Klavan**: “If every woman in Congress went home, the world would run fine.”

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ref sig heil

Tyler O'Neil @Tyler2ONeil

Tyler O'Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center," and "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."

americans took to the streets Saturday for the latest round of protests targeting Tesla and condemning Elon Musk for his work with President Donald Trump, but these protests trace back to a larger movement with funding from the Left’s dark money network.

Some of the organizations that encouraged and helped organize the protests have raked in millions from arms of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and from other nonprofits that act as middlemen between the Left’s major donors and its operations on the ground. (Open Society claims that it does not fund or direct protests, though public records show that it has funded at least one of the groups helping to organize them.)

In the “Tesla Takedown-Day of Action” Saturday, protesters targeted more than 275 Tesla dealerships in the U.S. and over 500 worldwide, Fox News Digital reported. Protesters held up a sign reading “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy” at a protest in New York City.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Former Wall Street Journal reporter and propaganda expert Asra Nomani teamed up with the Fairfax County Times to create a chronology of the protest actions, building a public database of anti-Tesla protests published on ActionAlert.com and Mobilize.us. According to Nomani, the Seattle-based protest organization Troublemakers and the Philadelphia-based group Disruption Project have sponsored about 70%, or 220, of the protests. Local chapters of Indivisible Project, a Washington-based nonprofit, have organized about 29%, or 87, of them, according to Nomani.

Indivisible Project told The Daily Signal that it did not organize the Saturday protests, but several of its local chapters participated in them. Indivisible Project may not have directly organized the protests, but it did publish a guide for organizing protests against Musk.

“Indivisible is not focused on Tesla as a business,” Sarah Dohl, Indivisible’s chief communications officer, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “This is not about cars, dealerships, or private enterprise. What we are focused on is educating communities and drawing urgent attention to the fact that Elon Musk—an unelected billionaire—is now operating as a de facto government official, wielding power over federal agencies and public resources that families depend on without a single vote cast in his name.”

“Indivisible unequivocally condemns violence and property destruction,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has brought charges against at least four defendants for lighting Teslas, a Tesla dealership, and Tesla charging stations on fire using Molotov cocktails. The attacks took place in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and South Carolina. Last week, the FBI opened a special task force examining the rash of attacks.

“The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” Attorney General Pam Bondi declared in March. “The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences. We will continue investigations that impose severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

Musk called for arresting people for funding the attacks, though he did not establish any direct tie between the protests and the attacks.

“It is time to arrest those funding the attacks,” he posted on X Sunday. “Arresting their puppets and paid foot-soldiers won’t stop the violence.”

IFrame Content

Indivisible Weighs In

Dohl, the Indivisible spokeswoman, drew a clear distinction between the peaceful protests and the arson attacks.

“These were regular people holding posterboard signs on sidewalks, exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest,” she said. “Any attempt to conflate these community events with the ‘violent attacks’ you reference is both dishonest and reckless.”

“Tesla Town Halls are just one small tactic in a larger recess guide we distributed to our members—alongside advice for attending congressional town halls, organizing ’empty chair’ events, and pushing for accountability from elected officials,” she added. “That’s what democracy looks like.”

“We do not pay protesters,” Dohl told The Daily Signal. Her organization does reimburse Indivisible groups for “food, flyers, or a stack of poster board,” however.

“If your story is really about communities peacefully organizing to stop a billionaire from rigging our government for himself and his donors—yes, Indivisible is proud to be part of that,” she said.

“Small-dollar donors are the backbone of Indivisible’s budget, and we’re proud to be accountable to a nationwide grassroots base, not a single donor or interest,” Dohl added.

Yet she acknowledged funding from two massive left-wing foundations.

Both Indivisible Project and the Disruption Project have received funding from the Left’s dark money network—the system of foundations I expose in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.” My book reveals which far-left nonprofits infiltrated and advised the Biden administration, using the administrative state to force woke ideology on the American people.

So, who funds these groups?

Open Society Funding

Indivisible Project has received at least $8 million from organizations under the umbrella of Open Society Foundations, the funding network established by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros and now run by his son, Alex.

According to IRS records, the Open Society Policy Center gave Indivisible $875,000 in the year ending in December 2021; $1.135 million in the following year; and $3 million in the year after that. In 2023, Open Society Action Fund awarded Indivisible with a $3 million grant over a two-year period. (The years of IRS records may or may not align with calendar years.)

Open Society insisted that it does not fund protesters or direct protests.

“The Open Society Foundations do not fund protesters or direct protests,” the foundation told The Daily Signal. “We condemn all acts of violence and any unlawful behavior.”

“Our work is dedicated to promoting human rights guaranteed by the Constitution, protecting fundamental freedoms, and strengthening American democracy,” the foundation added.

The foundation also pointed to a statement from May 2024 stating that while some grant recipients “seek to articulate and amplify dissenting voices” through “petitions, meetings, and peaceful public protests,” most recipients of Open Society money “have no involvement with protests of any kind.”

Dohl, the Indivisible spokeswoman, noted that Open Society funding “does not determine or direct our work.”

She also called Open Society “a legitimate, globally respected foundation that has supported democratic movements, human rights, and civil society for decades.”

The Tides Foundation

The Tides Foundation and its sister nonprofit, Tides Advocacy, have funneled more than $3 million to Indivisible.

The Tides Foundation gave Indivisible: $1.27 million in the year ending December 2018; $50,000 the following year; $230,000 in the year after that; $147,000 in the year ending December 2022; and $100,000 in the following year. The total adds up to more than $1.8 million.

Tides Advocacy gave Indivisible $2.24 million in the year ending December 2018 and another $150,000 in the year ending December 2020.

Tides Advocacy gave $20,000 to the Disruption Project in the years ending in December of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, for a total of $80,000.

The Movement Voter Project

The Movement Voter Project, which directs leftist donors’ funds to activist groups, sent the Disruption Project $5,000 in the year ending in December 2020 and another $8,400 two years later.

The Daily Signal also reached out to the Tides Foundation, Tides Advocacy, the Movement Voter Project, Troublemakers, and the Disruption Project for comment, but did not receive a response by press time.

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morano bs

DDSB

ONLY 1 Radio station? 10 24

Climate Change Narrative Continues To Fall Apart | NewsRadio 740 KTRH

NewsRadio 740 KTRH - iHeart

"This is a campaign cause" said Marc Morano, publisher at Climate Depot, "It doesn't really matter what's true and what's not, it supposed to be ...---

NASA spending millions on DEI even as budget crisis emerges | NewsRadio 740 KTRH

fox the five

KTRH Local Houston and Texas News

The Climate Change Narrative Continues To Fall Apart

B.D. Hobbs

Oct 21, 2024

Just when the left thought it was safe to freak out about the weather, scientists are now expecting a cooler than average La Nina, and that is pouring a lot of cold water on the left's climate change narrative.

"This is a campaign cause" said Marc Morano, publisher at Climate Depot, "It doesn't really matter what's true and what's not, it supposed to be science. But this about a narrative, and it's about activists."

So, with that said, then what about the narrative the left likes to use on warming oceans?

"The claims that they're claiming for record heat in the oceans are a temperature change of 3 and half thousandths of one degree" Morano told KTRH, "They're not even measurable in real world data."

The reality is, the left's climate change narrative is melting.

NewsRadio 740 KTRH - iHeart

Marc Morano of The Climate Depot says this DEI push by NASA has caused them serious problems. "They have budget shortfalls in every main area that ...

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KTRH Local Houston and Texas News

NASA spending millions on DEI even as budget crisis emerges

Oct 24, 2024

Once upon a time, NASA was at the forefront of not just space exploration, but America in general. The space race captivated the world, and the Space Shuttle program continued carrying the imagination for years. But in the last two or three decades, NASA has fallen into oblivion, both with their budget, and in terms of relevance.

As with every federal agency in the last ten years, NASA has gone completely woke, focusing on equality hires and environmental justice. In fact, they have spent millions on DEI in the last few years, all while facing a budget shortfall everywhere else.

Marc Morano of The Climate Depot says this DEI push by NASA has caused them serious problems.

"They have budget shortfalls in every main area that is supposed to be their mission...whether that be exploration or what have you...all of them except one, and that is diversity, equity and inclusion," he says.

In total, NASA has shelled out $10 million to pay out dozens of grants and contracts aimed at DEI since 2020 alone. Meanwhile, they are multiple billions of dollars short of funding for their current missions, firing people over budgetary concerns. They are even reportedly out of money to maintain their multibillion-dollar space telescope.

One record even shows NASA approved $150,000 in funds to Columbia University to pair 'earth observations and socioeconomic data.' Seems super useful in terms of outer space.

People also just do not care about NASA anymore. Space and astronomy used to captivate Americans for years. Now, social media does. Really, you can argue NASA lost its footing during the Challenger Disaster in 1986, and never recovered. Add in the Columbia Disaster in 2003, and you have failed expectations, and imaginative minds lost.

"The space shuttles were the last thing to capture the imagination of the public...then that ended disastrously, and they are not even backing the program now," he says. "They are no longer competing in the world, they are just competing for which federal agency can 'out woke' each other."

There was also another $250,000 grant paid to Los Angeles as part of their Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program. They did that so the city would provide pollution data to its residents, in a way which 'works across communities and cultural differences pollutants.' They essentially want to prove pollutants are racist or fascist, and only smog up low-income areas.

They have their toes dipped in DEI, the green agenda, and it is hurting their bottom line now. Which normally, would make a company stop. But NASA refused. They have spent another $5 million since 2022 on environmental related grants. Money that could have been spent on retaining employees.

All of this combined just shows that NASA is a shell of what it once was, and there is no coming back, especially with SpaceX taking the reins of exploration.

"Their golden age is long past...and this DEI shows that...they are failing their mission," he says.

NASA also used over $2 million to 'engrain DEI into their culture.' So, until either SpaceX goes away, or NASA stops bending the knee to the liberal agenda, they will continue sliding further into a black hole of irrelevance.

no name but link to d sig

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/16/nasa-spent-millions-on-environmental-justice-and-equity-grants-despite-budget-woes/

Robert Schmad

Robert Schmad is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has shelled out millions in awards to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as “environmental justice,” despite recently laying off staff and shuttering space programs due to budgetary shortfalls.

NASA has allocated roughly $10 million to pay out dozens of grants and contracts aimed at advancing some element of environmental justice or DEI since 2020, federal spending records show. The agency is multiple billions of dollars short of the funding required to complete its current missions, has fired hundreds of people working on its Mars missions over budgetary concerns, and may not have enough funding to maintain a multibillion-dollar space telescope, according to multiple Washington Post reports.

“The environmental justice movement focuses on ensuring communities receive equitable protection from natural and human-induced environmental hazards,” NASA’s webpage on equity and environmental justice reads. “It embodies the principle that all communities should be heard and represented in decision making.”

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Much of NASA’s grant spending went to universities to help them study environmental justice in urban areas as well as other places with high concentrations of racial minorities. For instance, the agency approved $150,000 in funding to Columbia University so it could pair “earth observations and socioeconomic data” and enable students to do environmental justice work in New York City, records show.

Another grant, this time worth $250,000, was paid out to Los Angeles as part of NASA’s Predictive Environmental Analytics and Community Engagement for Equity and Environmental Justice (PEACE) program, per federal records. To remedy its observation that “people of color often face higher exposure to air pollutants,” NASA’s PEACE program paid the city to provide pollution data to its residents in “a way that works across communities and cultural differences and specifically analyzes, engages and responds to needs for environmental justice.”

NASA has set aside over $5 million for environmental justice grants like these since 2022, according to federal records.

As NASA paid out millions to fund environmental justice initiatives, the agency in February fired about 530 people, plus an additional 40 contractors, or 8% of its workforce, working at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Post reported. Many of the workers let go were involved in the agency’s Mars Sample Return program, which was studying possible evidence of past life on the red planet.

While short on funds for Mars research and a major space telescope, NASA shelled out millions on embedding DEI both within its own organizational structure and in the broader scientific community, records show.

In 2023, for instance, NASA approved a contract worth roughly $2.9 million to a consulting firm to “incorporate and deeply engrain” DEI in the “culture” of its Space Mission Directorate, according to spending records. NASA allocated another $900,000 in 2020 for the National Academy of Sciences to help it increase diversity among the leaders of space missions.

NASA also gave the Southeastern Universities Research Association thousands of dollars to make the agency’s heliophysics material “more relevant and open to the Latinx and Native American communities,” records show. The agency paid tens of thousands of additional dollars to The Oceanography Society to embed DEI in ocean sciences.

The language used by NASA to describe its environmental justice programs mirrors that used by the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which dictates that 40% of the beneficiaries of federal climate and environmental programs must be from “underserved communities.” The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council later defined “underserved communities” as those that are “majority minority.” NASA’s work is also covered by the Justice40 Initiative, according to government documents.

NASA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

*Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

===

an 10 24

The U.S. Naval Academy is under fire after it invited — then uninvited — a distinguished expert on authoritarianism and fascism to give a lecture.

**Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat** is a professor of history and Italian Studies at New York University, where her bio says she “writes about fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and the threats these present to democracies around the world.” She is the author of books on fascism and serves as an advisor to the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Protect Democracy. She is also an MSNBC opinion columnist, where she appears as a commentator, as she does on other news networks.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Ben-Ghiat announced that she’d be speaking at the event in an op-ed last month and further claimed that former President Donald Trump was an ‘authoritarian ‘and drew comparisons between him and world dictators,” The Daily Caller’s Jake Smith wrote in an opinion piece.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on ‘authoritarianism,'” two Heritage Foundation officials, Mathew Lee and Wilson Beaver, wrote at The Daily Signal in a piece marked commentary. They called for the Naval Academy to retract the invitation to Dr. Ben-Ghiat.

The Heritage Foundation is the headquarters of **Project 2025**. The ACLU calls Project 2025, “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, ‘Mandate For Leadership,’ is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.”

Dr. Ben-Ghiat in her Substack piece also wrote about Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where a cemetery official was “pushed,” allegedly by Trump campaign staffers, according to an Army report. A judge on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to release its records related to Trump’s visit there in August, by the end of this week.

“The conduct of Trump and his campaign on those hallowed grounds violated federal prohibitions against election-linked activities at military cemeteries,” Ben-Ghiat wrote. “The photos and videos they took there also showed graves of U.S. service members whose families had not given permission. Additionally, a Trump aide shoved an Arlington employee who was trying to enforce the rules, and Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed she initiated the aggression and was having a ‘mental health episode.'”

“It seems counter-intuitive when you are running for president and commander-in-chief to insult the U.S. military,” she added. “But that hasn’t stopped Trump: insulting and mocking the military are among his most consistent habits.”

On Tuesday, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Banner, Rick Hutzell slammed the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 for getting Dr. Ben-Ghiat’s lecture canceled. (The U.S. Naval Academy is based in Annapolis, Maryland.)

“If Trump wins, the right-wing thought police will come for the Naval Academy,” Hutzell wrote in a scorching editorial.

“You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy,” he wrote. “All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.”

“Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.”

“As controversies go, it was easy to miss this one. It all took place within the conservative media ecosystem. But it could foreshadow what might happen to the U.S. service academies if Trump is elected next month,” he added. “Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.”

Ben-Ghiat in an email told Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”

Hutzell wrote that Heritage “Foundation ‘researchers’ Matthew Lee andWilson Beaver made the connection a month after Ben-Ghiat’s announcement and simply made up the rest, assuming she planned to attack Trump.” He also pointed to another piece at The Daily Signal by “Heritage Foundation mouthpieces Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson,” and n0ted that “U.S. Rep. Keith Self — a West Point graduate who represents a district north and northeast of Dallas — wrote Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, the academy superintendent, and demanded that she cancel the lecture.”

He also reports The Daily Signal’s managing editor called for an apology from the Naval Academy, and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee “called for an explanation.”

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“The harrumph over Ben-Ghirat smacks of hamfisted stagecraft. It’s not about protecting young minds from learning what tools authoritarians use, it’s about preparing the case for an intellectual bloodletting,” Hutzell concluded.

Others lashed out at the Naval Academy.

“This is a shameful move by @NavalAcademy. If our armed services are truly training people to be loyal to the Constitution, not to an individual, this is one lecture they need to hear. Very disappointing,” declared attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, a legal and national security expert.

She also blasted the “members of Congress who do not want students at service academies to learn what happens when you turn into Hitler’s generals,” likely a response to news of Trump allegedly praising Hitler and saying he had wanted “Hitler’s generals.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, pointing to Ben-Ghiat being disinvited, warned: “This is exactly what she’s been warning about—caving in to the demands of authoritarian leaders, even before they’re in place. Dangerous & shameful.”

Historian and professor of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien, author of several books including, “How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II,” called Hutzell’s editorial a “terribly worrying story about how MAGA pressure is already leading to censorship in the US military. The US Naval Academy disinvited the distinguished historian @ruthbenghiat from delivering a major lecture because of Heritage-MAGA pressure.”

===

hacked

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Gay Furries Allegedly Hack The Heritage Foundation - Metro Weekly

,,,but SiegedSec claims that its members believe one hack in particular led to the suspension of their accounts on X.

Following several months of teasing its social media followers, the group announced that it had obtained data from the Heritage Foundation, and had promised, on its X account, to publish the data on July 10.

“they didnt want us posting the heritage hack tomorrow,” vio wrote on their account.

According to the Daily Dot, SiegedSec leaked about 200 gigabytes of data on their Telegram account, containing information from between 2007 and 2022, focusing primarily around the think tank’s news wing, The Daily Signal.

The data includes commenters’ emails and IP addresses, full names, usernames, and passwords, as well as information about those who posted articles on the site.

Cybersecurity expert Jackie Singh, who reviewed the data from the breach, commented on X that she had “identified very embarrassing data within this dataset,” adding, “Why so many Chinese IP addresses?”

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“Sample geolocations from the first 100 IPs (these are sorted ‘low to high’, and many Asia-based netblocks start with the number 1),” Singh added in a thread, following up on the earlier post.

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Singh also noted that some suspicious IP addresses of commenters on the Heritage Foundation’s website appear to have come from individuals abroad, including Kathmandu, Nepal, and Hong Kong.

“This breach can help shine light on who exactly is supporting Heritage, and also encourage people to fight against them even more than before,” vio told LGBTQ Nation.“I believe it’s also worth noting, this could help show the amount of support Heritage has that’s provided by malicious users or bots from China.”

SiegedSec claims the majority of leaked data is “mostly useless” information that it will not be releasing, although vio did tell LGBTQ Nationthat the user data “has many people of interest,” including members of the U.S. House of Representatives, federal government employees, and Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage Foundation.

The hack of Heritage was part of a campaign known as #OpTransRights, which targets groups opposed to transgender rights, including the right-wing channel “Real America’s Voice” and a Minnesota church whose pastor has made anti-transgender comments.

The Heritage Foundation was reportedly targeted for its creation of Project 2025, a plan that seeks to reshape the United States government in the mold of modern-day right-wing regimes, with a unitary executive at the top and party loyalists installed into various federal agencies in place of longtime government employees.

Project 2025’s policy reforms include erasing protections for LGBTQ individuals, banning LGBTQ-related information, especially in schools, and the full erasure of transgender identity.

SiegedSec posted a transcript of a chat, conducted on the messaging app Signal, between “vio” and Mike Howell, the executive director of the Heritage Oversight Project, the think tank’s investigative arm. In that exchange, vio revealed that the hack was done due to SiegedSec’s opposition to Project 2025.

Howell allegedly threatened to expose members of the hacktivist group, saying they had “turned against nature.”

“We are in the process of identifying and outting (sic) members of your group,” Howell wrote. “Reputations and lives will be destroyed. Closeted Furries will be presented to the world for the degenerate perverts they are. You cannot hide. Your means are miniscule (sic) compared to mine. You now can either turn yourself in or you can cooperate.”

He threatened to place members of SiegedSec in jail.

“Are you aware that you won’t be able to wear a furry tiger costume when you’re getting pounded in the ass in the federal prison I put you in next year?” he wrote.

When vio asked if it was okay to share the transcript, Howell allegedly wrote, “Please share widely. I hope the word spreads as fast as the STDs do in your degenerate furry community.”

Howell also said he was contacting the FBI issuing a “2702 order” on vio’s social media.

“You aren’t that sneaky for your line of work,” he wrote, providing a screenshot of SiegedSec’s bitcoin wallet’s transactions.

“omg you learned how to look up the public history of my bitcoin address!!! good job pal im proud of you :D” vio responded.

A Heritage Foundation spokesperson released the following statement to Metro Weeklyin an email:

“The Heritage Foundation was not hacked,” the spokesperson wrote. “An organized group stumbled upon a two-year-old archive of The Daily Signal website that was available on a public-facing website owned by a contractor. The information obtained was limited to usernames, names, email addresses, and incomplete password information of both Heritage and non-Heritage content contributors, as well as article comments and the IP address of the commenter.

“No Heritage systems were breached at any time, and all Heritage databases and websites remain secure, including Project 2025. The data at issue has been taken down, and additional security steps have since been taken as a precaution. The story of a ‘hack’ is a false narrative and exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.”

The Heritage spokesperson did not address questions sent by Metro Weeklyregarding Howell’s chat with vio or his threats to involve the FBI.

SiegedSec has since posted a message on its Telegram channels that it plans to disband, saying they were doing so “for our own mental health, the stress of mass publicity, and to avoid the eye of the FBI.”

“I’ve been considering quitting cybercrime lately, and the other members have agreed its time to let SiegedSec rest for good,” the message reads.

“In the past, I have tried quitting cybercrime a few times, and I’ve always been unable to fully quit. This time, hopefully I am able to stay away from it for my own wellbeing. We may not be a cybercriminal group anymore, but we will always [be] hackers and always fighting for the rights of others.

“Within the past week, we have posted the last of our breaches every day,” the message concludes. “We hope you enjoy all of it :3 We also have a couple more private breaches that have been sent to journalists, they’ll handle the rest from there. The channel, all leaks, and our community’s chats will remain open. Feel free to join.”

---

ANDREW KLAVAN (DAILY WIRE HOST): Now, I don't believe in making great generalities about things — what they call totalizing principles, like life is about this or society is about this. But sometimes, it's kinda like being the blind man with the elephant, you're only seeing one side of it. But sometimes that helps. Sometimes you're just taking a look at one side of things, and that's what I'm gonna do now. There is a sense in which the central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women because women are valuable. They're valuable not just for their company and for their way of looking at things and for sex, which is a lot of fun, but also because they are the only path there is to continuing your genetic inheritance. That is the way it is. When men want women on this kind of basic animalistic, just life level, to reproduce. Right? So the most obvious way to distribute women is to give all the women to the strongest man. Right? So you get — reproduce from the strongest person. That's the way gorillas — many gorillas, silverbacks live. The one guy gets all the girls. And the problem with that is it sounds like a good idea, but it's unstable because, obviously, all the other guys finally get think to themselves, oh, I know what we'll do. We'll get together and we'll kill the main guy, the alpha guy, and we'll steal the woman. And that's why those governments are unstable. That's how you get Magna Carta where the aristocrats, the most powerful people, go to the king and say, we want power too. That is, kind of, the human way of acting out that gorilla system. Ultimately, other men want women.

When you have a democracy, the best system is monogamy. Right? One per customer. Everybody gets a woman. And it sounds like that means that weak people will be allowed to breed, but it turns out it's actually a pretty good system because it favors diversity. Because a lot of times, the smartest guy in the room and the strongest guy in the room are two entirely different people. So you want the strongest guy to reproduce, but you also want the smartest guy to reproduce, and that is how humanity advances. In fact, monogamy, one per customer, is a really good basis for a society. However, it goes against the gorilla code, and the gorilla code is written into our DNA. We're somehow related. I'm not saying we evolved from gorillas, but we're related to them. We're not that far away from them. The men want lots of women, so the strongest man wants all the women, and the women want the strongest man. That is the way evolution has designed us.

So the strong have to take back the women. They want to take back the women from a system that is free. A system that is free is going to be a monogamous system. That's the way that works because it is the best system for freedom. It means everybody gets something. Right? All the women get a man. All the men get a woman — as close as we can come to that. The strong want to take women back, and they have to do it through — because it's a free system, they can't do it by force. They might want to, but they can't. They have to do it by lies. And there are two big lies they want to tell them. One is your husband is a no goodnik. He's a pain in the ass, and he's bossing you around. That's the first lie. And that lie is probably not a lie. It's probably true on some days at least. But the big lie that the government wants to tell you, that the people who want the power concentrated all in one place to get all the women, they want to tell you is that women can take care of themselves. And women hate the idea that they can't take care of themselves, but women cannot take care of themselves. They're smaller, weaker. Men are stronger. Men are mean. They're more aggressive. They will take them over. They'll do it anytime they can, anywhere they can. They will abuse them. They will hurt them. Women have to come up with different strategies for survival than men do. Right? Men buff up, they get tough, they study karate, they learn how to fight. Women can do all those things, and they still there still is going to be a man who can take them down. Women have to find different ways of being safe, and one of those ways is finding a man to protect them.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Hate-Pay-Corruption-Southern/dp/1642934399

Senior Editor of PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil is an author and conservative commentator. He has written for numerous publications, including The Christian Post, National Review, The Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Signal, AEI's Values & Capitalism, and the Colson Center's Breakpoint. He enjoys Indian food, board games, and talking ceaselessly about politics, religion, and culture. He has appeared on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight." He is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

Racial discrimination. Sexual harassment. Off-shore accounts. Inflated and biased attacks on “hate.” These are some of the many reasons Americans should mistrust the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Southern Poverty Law Center started with noble intentions and has done much good over the years, but a pernicious corruption has undermined the organization’s original mission and contributed to a climate of fear and hostility in America. Hotels, web platforms, and credit card companies haveblacklisted law-abiding Americansbecause the SPLC disagrees with their political views. The SPLC’s false accusations have done concrete harm, costing the organization millions in lawsuits. A deranged man even attempted to commit mass murder, having been inspired by the SPLC’s rhetoric.

How did a civil rights group dedicated to saving the innocent from the death penalty become a pernicious threat to America’s free speech culture? How did an organization dedicated to fighting poverty wind up with millions in the Cayman Islands? How did a civil rights stalwart find itself accused of racism and sexism?

Making Hate Pay tells the inside story of how the SPLC yielded to many forms of corruption, and what it means for free speech in America today. It also explains why Corporate America, Big Tech, government, and the media are wrong to take the SPLC’s disingenuous tactics at face value, and the serious damage they cause by trusting this corrupt organization.

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Articles by Tyler O'Neil

POLITICSCOMMENTARY President Joe Biden salutes in a blue suit

Senate Passes Defense Spending Bill Without House Amendments on Abortion, Transgender ‘Health’

Tyler O'Neil / July 28, 2023

The U.S. Senate passed its version of the House of Representatives’ military spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, on Thursday, but omitting two amendments… Read More

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Secret Service Refuses to Hand Over ‘Known Pool of Individuals’ List in White House Cocaine Incident

Tyler O'Neil / July 27, 2023

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Secret Service has refused to turn over the list of individuals who may have accessed the area of the White… Read More

LAWNEWSTed Cruz in a blue suit speaks at a podium

Bureaucrats ‘Don’t Give a Damn’: Ted Cruz EVISCERATES Chevron Deference in New Supreme Court Filing

Tyler O'Neil / July 27, 2023

Sen. Ted Cruz took aim Thursday at a Supreme Court precedent that empowers the administrative state at the expense of the people’s will and the… Read More

POLITICSNEWSProtester holds sign reading "protect black trans women."

Put You ‘IN THE GROUND’: Grad Student Threatens State Senator Over Vote to Protect Kids From Trans Drugs

Tyler O'Neil / July 26, 2023

A Louisiana state senator says he is undeterred despite receiving a death threat after he voted to override a governor’s veto on a bill protecting… Read More

LAWNEWSA bearded man holds a lobster on a fishing vessel

‘NEVER WHAT FOUNDERS INTENDED’: Supreme Court Should Strike Down Chevron Deference, Conservatives Say

Tyler O'Neil / July 24, 2023

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A conservative nonprofit launched by former Vice President Mike Pence is representing 11 conservative groups in supporting fishermen challenging the extensive… Read More

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Here’s the Real Reason Obama Went Out of His Way to Defend Librarians in a ‘Banned Books’ Letter

Tyler O'Neil / July 18, 2023

Former President Barack Obama just came out in favor of porn in schools. Sure, the former president didn’t say that outright. He released a letter… Read More

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GASLIGHTING 101: How Biden and the Left Create Their Own Villains

Tyler O'Neil / July 17, 2023

Hate is on the rise! Not only are hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in every state in America, but antigovernment groups lurk… Read More

SECURITYNEWSSecret Service stand in front of the White House

Secret Service Closes White House Cocaine Probe. Heritage Isn’t Giving Up So Easily

Tyler O'Neil / July 13, 2023

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project is demanding that the Secret Service turn over the list of individuals who may have accessed… Read More

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These 49 Senators Voted to Confirm Biden EEOC Pick Seen as Likely to Force Transgender Ideology on Employers

Tyler O'Neil / July 13, 2023

The U.S. Senate narrowly confirmed Kalpana Kotagal, President Joe Biden’s pick to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a move critics warn will… Read More

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TRANS TAKEOVER? Biden EEOC Pick Will Force Gender Ideology on Employers, Critics Warn

Tyler O'Neil / July 12, 2023

The Senate will vote Wednesday on Kalpana Kotagal, whom President Joe Biden appointed to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a move critics… Read More

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EXCLUSIVE: Pew Backs Away From Crackdown on ‘Payday Loans’ After Conservative Group’s Reports

Tyler O'Neil / July 11, 2023

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Pew Charitable Trusts appears to have backed away from touting affordable small loans and attacking “payday loans”—often the only form… Read More

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Social Media Censorship BACKFIRES: Biden Admin Flags Itself, Pro-Ukraine Accounts as Russian Disinformation, Docs Reveal

Tyler O'Neil / July 11, 2023

Using the power of the federal government to pressure Big Tech into censoring “disinformation” is a modern Pandora’s box. Sure, the Biden administration may decrease… Read More

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ORDER UPHELD: Judge Blocks Biden Admin’s ‘Orwellian’ Collusion With Big Tech to Suppress Free Speech

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UPDATE July 11, 2023: Judge Terry Doughty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on Monday rejected the Biden administration’s motion… Read More

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FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Todd McMurtry, the lawyer who secured settlements from CNN, NBC Universal, and The Washington Post on behalf of Covington Catholic High… Read More

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Images in this article contain swear words. FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Moms for Liberty has received countless death threats, but the messages spiked after the… Read More

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Last week, a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to stop strong-arming Big Tech into silencing Americans’ free speech online in a first-of-its-kind temporary injunction…. Read More

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More than 180,000 Americans sent in comments on the Biden administration’s stringent emissions rule, which threatens to remove cheaper and more reliable gas cars from… Read More

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dIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A conservative nonprofit launched by former Vice President Mike Pence is representing 11 conservative groups in supporting fishermen challenging the extensive power of the federal bureaucracy.

Advancing American Freedom, which plays no role in Pence’s 2024 presidential campaign, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the court will revisit the longstanding precedent of Chevron deference. The group exclusively gave The Daily Signal a copy of the brief.

In Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council (1984), the Supreme Court held that whenever a law is ambiguous, a federal agency has the authority to interpret the scope and content of that ambiguity to achieve its ends, so long as the interpretation is “reasonable.”

This precedent granted executive agencies tremendous power to effectively rewrite the law, critics like Advancing American Freedom claim.

“The Left has used Chevron Deference to grow the administrative state and circumvent the approval of Congress to push their own agenda,” J. Marc Wheat, Advancing American Freedom’s general counsel, told The Daily Signal. “This is never what the Founders intended; unelected bureaucrats at various agencies do not have the power to legislate and we hope that the Supreme Court checks the Chevron Deference once and for all.”

In Loper Bright, fishermen are challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service—represented by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Federal law forces fishermen to carry inspectors aboard their vessels. A new Fisheries Service rule forces the fishermen to pay the salaries of these federal inspectors. The federal law requiring the inspections does not stipulate that fishermen must pay inspectors’ salaries, but the Fisheries Service insists that it has the power to demand payment under Chevron.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the Fisheries Service in August 2022, noting that the statute leaves “room for agency discretion.” Yet Judge Justin Walker dissented.

“Did Congress authorize the National Marine Fisheries Service to make herring fishermen in the Atlantic pay the wages of federal monitors who inspect them at sea?” he asks in his dissent. “Congress unambiguously did not.”

“Fishing is a hard way to earn a living,” he notes. While “Congress can make profitable fishing even harder by forcing fishermen to spend a fifth of their revenue on the wages of federal monitors embedded by regulation onto their ships,” it has not done so. “Until Congress does that, the Fisheries Service cannot.”

Advancing American Freedom filed the amicus brief on Monday, representing itself and ten other conservative organizations. Eagle Forum, the National Center for Public Policy Research, Project 21 Black Leadership Network, Students for Life of America, and Young America’s Foundation joined the brief.

The brief begins by quoting the Declaration of Independence, noting that the Founders faulted King George III for erecting “New Offices… to harass” them “and eat out their substance.”

“Here, a New England fishing business is threatened with insolvency because a Federal agency seeks to swarm the industry with bureaucrats to consume the proceeds of some 20% of the daily catch,” the petitioners write. “Bureaucracies that have grown smug and fat through Chevron deference should reacquaint themselves with their country’s history.”

“This case presents the question of Chevron deference dead on without any need to tack, offering an excellent opportunity to abandon this sinking ship and to offer lower courts a more seaworthy vessel for judicial review,” the petitioners write.

Conservative Supreme Court justices have criticized Chevron deference in recent years. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence in Michigan v. EPA (2015) that Chevron “wrests from Courts the ultimate interpretative authority ‘to say what the law is,’ and hands it over to” the executive branch. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote last fall that the court should acknowledge “that Chevron did not undo, and could not have undone, the judicial duty to provide an independent judgment of the law’s meaning.”

Federal agencies have used Chevron deference to justify many controversial policies.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, President Joe Biden directed his administration to “protect and expand access to abortion care.” Following the prompting of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued guidance claiming to find an abortion mandate in a law that had never been interpreted as mandating abortion.

The federal agency interpreted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires health care providers to provide “stabilizing treatment” in certain circumstances, as mandating abortion. If a health care provider determines that abortion is necessary to protect the mother’s life, he or she must either perform the abortion or refer the woman to a medical facility that would perform it, regardless of the relevant state law.

Advancing American Freedom, representing 25 other conservative and pro-life groups, filed an amicus brief challenging this interpretation of the law. The brief argues that this interpretation “would expand the meaning of the 1986 statute to include abortions as a form of treatment and would illegally overwrite legitimate state laws designed to protect women and the unborn.”

As in Loper Bright, Advancing American Freedom urges the Supreme Court to overturn Chevron.

have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Portrait of Tyler O'Neil

@Tyler2ONeil

Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center."

wow looks like caricature of libtard

eXON HILL, Md.—The Heritage Foundation and a small army of conservative allies on Friday launched the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025, calling for reining in federal agencies and curbing political weaponizaiton.

“For the most powerful think tank in America, it would be very easy to go it alone,” said Ed Corrigan, president of the Conservative Partnership Institute, referring to The Heritage Foundation. “This has been really a team effort, 50 different conservative organizations contributed to this. That’s what makes this a historic product.”

Policy and personnel recommendations dot Heritage’s blueprint for the next conservative president. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

The first pillar of the plan is Heritage’s book “Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” which sets forth policy proposals touching on virtually every government agency. The second pillar is the concept that personnel is policy. The third is a call for training and the fourth recommends executive orders to advance conservative policy.

“This has never happened. We’ve never had this coming together in our movement to prepare for one thing—Day One, January 2025,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, referring to Jan. 21, 2025, when the next president will be sworn into office.

“What brings all these organizations together is our common theme to take down the administrative state, the bureaucracy,” Dans said. “The bottom line is we need to have an army of conservatives ready to march in on Day One.”

Dans stressed that the effort includes examing the 50 states for useful and practical knowledge outside Washington. The alliance of conservatives will be involved in recruiting and training officials.

Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump administration’s acting deputy secretary of homeland security, wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Homeland Security.

“We don’t agree on everything all the time—you may have noticed that in the conservative movement—but we reflect alternative options, and DHS is a good example of this,” said Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general who now is part of The Center for Renewing America. “We start out with a recommendation which may surprise some of you, to get rid of the Department of Homeland Security.”

Cuccinelli said he didn’t want to bet on that:

We don’t mean get rid of the missions. We mean [make them] better managed from the national standpoint, how American security is protected. We go through agency by agency as well, including some of the things we think we should get rid of, like the TSA [Transportation Security Administration]. There should be security, but government doesn’t need to run that.

“The peaceful transition of power is an awesome responsibility. I would have given my right arm to have the book on the tables out there,” Rick Dearborn, former deputy chief of staff for President Donald Trump and also executive director of Trump’s presidential transition team in late 2016 and early 2017.

Dearborn, who was referring to copies of “Mandate for Leadership 2025,” is now a Heritage visiting fellow on the Presidential Transition Project.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Portrait of Fred Lucas

@FredLucasWH

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. Lucas is also the author of "The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left's Assault on Clean Elections." Send an email to Fred.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/02/07/what-the-media-isnt-telling-you-about-jan-6/

27 MIN VID https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDdicrsDPZw&t=8s

LONG INTERVIEW CONSPIR J6 WACKO

bluey: Yeah, it certainly seems like they are politicizing it to the extent that they can benefit in their own elected offices and pursuing an agenda that they want to do.

Now, the interviews you have done reveal what you just remarked on. This was a rather spontaneous event. It was a protest that started at the other end of the National Mall near the White House and proceeded to the U.S. Capitol. As you did these interviews and learned more about the day, what are some of the most revealing details that you want to share with our listeners?

Kelly: So, first of all, Rob, the idea that [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [D.C. Mayor] Muriel Bowser kept the Capitol intentionally insecure that day.

I’ve spoken with a D.C. National Guardsman. They were stationed at the Armory at 6 a.m. that day. They were waiting there, about 1,200 of them, and they were not activated and deployed until 4 o’clock that day. Now, why? BC TRUMP WD NOT CALL, VP DID]

So why did they leave it intentionally unsecure? Why then, right before the session started, did you have two things happening at once? One, the alleged discovery of the pipe bombs—who, by the way, we still don’t know who the pipe bomber is. And then two, the first breach of the perimeter, the grounds, which happened when one man, after Ray Epps, famous Ray Epps, whispered in his ear, he knocked down these bike racks and ran up.

This happened about 10, 15 minutes before the joint session commenced. So you have all these interesting timelines.

Now, the people who were at Trump’s speech were still there. Trump’s speech didn’t end until 1:15. By the time they walked to the Capitol, a lot of whoever the instigators [PROUD BOYS] were, the provocateurs, the undercover agents, the informants, the rattle rousers, they had already started a lot of the chaos that we saw. So people who were coming from Trump’s speech really didn’t know what was going on.

And as I say, repeatedly, Rob, the people who wanted the proceedings that day shut down were not Republicans, they were Democrats. They did not want the airing of all of the evidence of fraud, which would be two hours per state.

You had senators working with Republican House members to contest those results, ask for the 10-day audit and have two hours of debate over it. Democrats did not want that. It was the Democrats who wanted the proceedings that day shut down, not Republicans. And of course, they got what they wanted.

Bluey: Yeah. Thank you for providing that important historical fact, and also that context. Let’s go back to that time period. So here we are, and you write about this in the book, four days after this highly contentious election, in which there were millions of mail-in ballots and absentee ballots yet to be officially counted, the news media declared Joe Biden the winner. I believe it was a Saturday—

Kelly: Right.

Bluey: … afternoon when that happened. And immediately afterward, the Trump campaign began to raise some concern about some irregularities. Well, they were doing it even before that announcement was made. But then even in the weeks leading up to that, you had a number of members of Congress, House members and senators, who, as you said, wanted to have this 10-day audit. Why were Democrats so intent about plowing through and carrying out this, as you said, on Jan. 6?

Kelly: Well, because they did not want any of the evidence of voter fraud to be exposed. And that’s why the media immediately announced Joe Biden the winner. You’re right, it was that Saturday, I think the 7th or 8th of November. Then they branded any inquiries about what happened in the election “The Big Lie,” which we still hear to this day.

But look, all you have to do is look at that Time magazine article that was written in February of 2021. They admitted, not just as you’re saying, all the malfeasants with the mail-in ballots and people who were curing ballots when they shouldn’t have been, but just this whole orchestrated effort with Big Tech, national news media, business interests, everyone collaborating to take down Trump.

Now, what’s interesting is, they war-gamed out this whole thing under something called the Transition Integrity Project. I write about it in my book. They used the word insurrection four times in that plan. So they were already planning that this was going to be their excuse for Trump. He was going to call in the military. He was going to initiate the insurrection.

So they already had so much of this pre-planned. And so, that’s how they really, effectively, shut down any congressional investigation into voter fraud. [LOST 62 CTCASES, SEVERAL STATE FRAUDITS] And then, of course, after Jan. 6, it was completely shut down.

Bluey: And of course, during this period of time, the American people, Trump supporters, or even maybe not Trump supporters, who were just upset about the way things were proceeding, decided to start gathering, as you said, at these rallies, “Stop the Steal” rallies. And one of these [JUST HAPPENED TO TAKE PLACE, NOTHING TO DO W TRUMP] took place on Jan. 6. Bring us to that day and some of the things that you heard from people who came to Washington, D.C., never expecting what transpired at the U.S. Capitol. Why were they there?

Kelly: That’s a great question. They were there, I think, most of them really thought something was going to happen in Congress that day, that they were going to pass this 10-day audit that the senators were asking for. Some of them, I think, believed [then-Vice President] Mike Pence actually would be able to do something. That, of course, he wasn’t going to do. And then said at 1 o’clock that day he was not going to do, which is fine.

But they also were there, I think, some of them sensed nothing was going to happen. This was kind of a way to see Donald Trump, listen to his speech, sort of say “thank you,” be with like-minded Americans, protest what they believed was a rigged election.

And so people say it was a great event, people who were at [it]. And there were hundreds of thousands of people there, there was great spirit, comradery. People were singing, they had flags, and then they went to the Capitol. And of course, it was all over after that.

Bluey: Let me ask you specifically about that. Many media outlets incorrectly reported many of the details that happened on Jan. 6, including the circumstances of Officer Brian Sicknick’s death, which The New York Times and others had to famously correct their errors. What stands out to you as some of the most egregious falsehoods that the media put forward in the aftermath of that day?

Kelly: So, the Officer Sicknick story has to be at the top of that list. Because what happened, Rob, is four Trump supporters died that day. Ashli Babbitt, killed by a police officer. Rosanne Boyland probably died because of what police officers were doing that day, and likely two other men.

Because what was happening is law enforcement and official officers were throwing flash bangs into the crowd, dosing people with tear gas, using rubber bullets against protesters. These are people outside. They’re not even near the building. They just started attacking these people around 1:15, 1:30. So that led to a lot of the confrontations you see on cherry-picked video.

What happened was, the night of Jan. 7, U.S. Capitol Police announced that Officer Brian Sicknick had been killed in the line of duty, that he had been killed by protesters, basically. The next day, Jan. 8, The New York Times posts a report, an account based on two anonymous law enforcement officials, saying that Brian Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by Trump supporters.

Now, this story goes viral. Every major news organization picks it up. Democrat politicians pick it up. Even some Republican conservative outlets picked it up. No questioning about whether this was true or not.

So this prompted all sorts of outrage, led to a lot of optics, like his procession through the Capitol. He was laid in state. His remains were laid in state in the Capitol Rotunda. He was eulogized by Nancy Pelosi and by [Sen.] Chuck Schumer. His remains were taken to Arlington National Cemetery. The whole idea was that Trump supporters were responsible for murdering a police officer.

Well, what happens after all that’s over? The New York Times quietly retracts their story, says, “We have no evidence that he was killed by anyone with a fire extinguisher.” But it was too late because they had gone for five weeks and had all the optics that they needed. And it even made it into the House Democrats’ impeachment memo, that New York Times citation. And it’s still in there.

So one of my big questions is, if Jan. 6 was so bad, why do they have to lie about it? That’s just one of the big lies that they told.

Well, of course, the D.C. coroner comes out in April and says Brian Sicknick died at the age of 42 of natural causes, a very untimely, unfortunate death, but had nothing to do with what happened on Jan. 6.

Bluey: Thank you for helping to clarify and expose this. As you and I both know, when something is out there for as long as that was, the impression is already made in so many people’s minds. And so they’re not going to see the retraction or the correction.

Kelly: Nope.

Bluey: Let’s talk about the other tragic death that happened that day, and that’s Ashli Babbitt. You mentioned her name. A lot of controversy surrounding that. She was unarmed at the time she was killed. What do you want our listeners to know about her death?

Kelly: That it was so unnecessary, that they covered up the name of the police officer who shot and killed her. They covered that up for months, including the news media.

Now, Rob, think about that. In any other situation, especially in a race—I mean, you had a black police officer shoot a white woman. [GEO FL BLM?] Race had nothing you with it, but that’s not how the media works. So in any other situation, his name would’ve been released, they would’ve scoured his social media, known where he worked before, talked to his relatives. None of that happened. His name was concealed for months. He was then heralded as a hero.

She, in the meantime, was completely vilified by the news media as a QAnon supporter, that she sort of deserved what happened to her. Five-foot-two, a veteran, longtime veteran, tours of duty overseas, unarmed, and was trying to climb through a window.

Now, it looks like new video that came out is that she was trying to stop the man who’s smashing the window. There’s some video that shows her punching him in the face to get him to stop. And there’s speculation that she was trying to get through that window because of the violence that was happening around her and trying to escape.

Bluey: Yeah. Watching Tucker Carlson’s special and hearing from her mother and husband is just so sad and particularly how they treated her body after she had been shot as well.

Kelly: Right. And that’s why they want to conceal a lot of this video, Rob, which is the 14,000 hours of surveillance video that they’re keeping under wraps. They don’t want the public to see how her body was handled by police officers, basically dragging her down these stairs face up, just so disrespectfully.

And so just the way she’s been treated in the media. And millions of Americans who feel the same way, that she deserved what was coming to her, and they think it’s unfortunate that more people weren’t shot that day.

And Rosanne Boyland is another woman who died that day. They mishandled her body, too. She was dragged through that tunnel after police basically contributed to her death and hidden inside the rotunda near [Rep.] Steny Hoyer’s office by two Capitol Police officers until paramedics arrived and declared her dead. So there’s a lot still to uncover. The Jan. 6 committee has no interest in this, but I do think some of the evidence will come out in these trials.

Bluey: Yes. Well, certainly. And our prayers go out to not only them, but their families who are still grieving.

You’ve talked about the police and you say, you write in the book that they were responsible for a lot of the violence that took place through some of their actions, which you have already mentioned in the interview. As you reported this, what did you discover about the police and the steps that they were taking that led some people to act the way they did?

Kelly: I was shocked. I remember the first man, he’s still in the D.C. jail, he sent me a video that he had taken that showed police throwing flash bangs into the crowd. And I was shocked. Now, this was four months after I had started reporting it. I had never seen anything like this.

So you see him saying, “Look at this, they’re throwing flash bangs into the crowd. They’re exploding in people’s faces.” And then they were throwing something called sting balls, which, when it hits the ground, deploys these rubber bullets. So you see people bleeding from these rubber bullets.

And I thought, “Well, why were they doing this?” These people were basically outside on the grounds. They had flags, they were singing. Then all of a sudden, D.C. and Capitol Police started attacking them. Again, I think that’s why there were not National Guardsmen there, because if you had had the thousand or so National Guardsmen, they would say, “Well, you can’t do this to people. Why are you provoking them?”

So that’s why you see the crowd turn. They were very supportive, Back the Blue, Trump, whatever. And then you see them start screaming at police officers, and that is why. In some instances they were tackling, they were punching protesters, spraying them directly in the face. Now, these aren’t even people trying to get into the building.

So this is why I write in my book that the law enforcement officials there, D.C. Metro and Capitol Police, were the provocateurs that day. And that is what I think their marching orders were, is to get the crowd riled up so you would see all of these brawls that we did see. And so, another reason why they want to keep the video under seal.

Bluey: Sure. And naturally, if you put yourself, you or I put ourselves in that position, and we feel that we are being attacked—I mean, I can only imagine the natural human reaction to a situation like that.

Kelly: Right.

Bluey: You also talk about the FBI having informants at the Capitol that day. This is one of the areas where I feel like we still are missing a lot of information. What can you tell us today about what we’ve learned so far?

Kelly: We’ve learned that we need to learn a lot more.

Bluey: OK.

Kelly: Right? So we already know that informants were run into two of the militia groups, because it’s been confirmed in court filings and also The New York Times.

We know that the FBI will not answer any questions about, say—[Attorney General] Merrick Garland refused to answer [Rep.] Tom Massie’s question about who Ray Epps was, said he didn’t know, which he probably does not know. Merrick Garland is like Robert Mueller, right? He’s not running that department. Lisa Monaco is running it, his deputy, a former Obama top official.

But also it was interesting, Jill Sanborn, who’s a top FBI official, when she was asked by [the] Senate Judiciary [Committee], “Were there any FBI informants or agents who either incited or engaged in violent behavior that day?”, she twice refused to answer that question.

So we need a lot more answers about how many FBI agents, not just were involved that day, but months beforehand, including the infiltration in these alleged militia groups.

Why were there so many people photographed with the Proud Boys, but only about 20 of them have been arrested? Who were the rest of those men who were with that group during the first breach? We still don’t know.

And knowing how this FBI operates, looking at the Whitmer kidnapping caper, which was concocted solely by the FBI and executed by the FBI for political purposes, the same FBI field office director who oversaw the Whitmer case was then promoted to the D.C. FBI field office right before Jan. 6. So there’s no coincidences when it comes to the FBI, and so we need to answer.

So hopefully, when Republicans get the House, they are going to confront [FBI Director] Christopher Wray with a lot of questions and demand a lot of answers, because the American people need to know. This FBI we know has been completely weaponized. It’s a law enforcement agency. It’s like Gestapo, basically, for the Democratic Party. We deserve all the answers about what they did before and during Jan. 6.

Bluey: And the American people aren’t going to get it from the Jan. 6 committee, Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked group that’s allegedly looking into to the events of that day.

Let’s fast forward. You also talk about the deplorable conditions in the jail where some, believe it or not, here a year, over a year later, some people are still being held. Who are the political prisoners who are still in jail and what are the types of charges that they’re facing? [JAN20 THREW EGGS FROM FREE SP ZONE, KETTLED?]

Kelly: That’s such a good question. So shockingly, we have a political prison in Washington, D.C. Right now, there are about three dozen men who have been detained there. This D.C. jail opened one year ago this week. But a lot of men were incarcerated in other jails before they got to D.C., so over a year they’ve been behind bars.

Most of them face some sort of attacking, assaulting, or interfering with law enforcement, but there are also nonviolent offenders, including at the D.C. jail, members of the Oath Keepers who are not accused of any violent crime, a couple of others who face no violent charges. But nonetheless, [the Justice Department] continues to ask for their continued, indefinite incarceration, because some of them don’t even have trial dates yet.

And the ones that had them, Rob, have now been pushed into the middle or end of this year, based on COVID, based on some chicanery by the DOJ, which keeps adding superseding indictments, they keep adding defendants, so this delays the cases for months.

You could have one man in particular who will be in jail for 18 months before his trial even starts at the end of May, no violent charges, he walked in peacefully, did nothing wrong. [NO NAME]He’s been dubbed a white supremacist. He’ll be in jail for 18 months. And you know what’s really upsetting about that case is the man who’s kept him behind bars is a Trump-appointed D.C. District Court judge, Trevor McFadden.

Bluey: Wow.

Kelly: Yes. So, it’s all the judges.

Bluey: Yeah, yeah. And as you said earlier, and just to repeat, no one has been charged with insurrection.

Kelly: That’s correct.

Bluey: Yeah.

Kelly: We just got charges for seditious conspiracy. I guess that’s supposed to be close enough. But out of 730 defendants, now think about this, 730 people arrested by the FBI for Jan. 6, three times as many as have been arrested by the FBI for the 2020 riots that lasted months. So yes, these men will be in jail. Their trials are being delayed and they are political prisoners. They are being kept there because of their involvement in Jan. 6, and that’s the only reason why.

Bluey: Paint a picture for our listeners of what it’s like … you use the word deplorable in the book, what are the conditions like that they’re currently facing in that jail?

Kelly: Well, in the D.C. jail for the first several months, they were under solitary confinement conditions. Again, based on COVID.

They were separated from the general population, saying it was for their own protection because most of the people in the D.C. jail are convicted criminals and they wouldn’t be fans of Trump supporters, neither are the guards. And so, there have been reports of physical assault, some very explicit strip searches that actually required one man to be transferred out of there to another jail, racial slurs.

The only newspaper that’s distributed there is the Nation of Islam newspaper. They are withholding discovery evidence that’s sent to the jail so they can’t even see their evidence against them. If they’re not vaccinated, they can’t meet in person with their defense attorney, which of course, constitutional violation.

But I think it’s really the solitary confinement conditions, they’re back to 22 hours a day in their cell. Again, the premise is COVID, but they’re really just being tortured.

And again, not convicted of any crime … most of them have no criminal records. Some of them are veterans. So there’s no reason for them to not be released back home awaiting trials that the DOJ and judges keep delaying. They pose no threat to the community. They’re not a flight risk. And so they’re just keeping them there to torture them. AGAIN NO SPECIF NAMES]

Bluey: Thank you for helping to expose and reveal to not only our listeners, but to the world about what those conditions are, because if it weren’t for you and a few others, I don’t think we would truly know.

And you’ve spent so much of the past year dedicating your life to getting the truth about Jan. 6 to a bigger audience, and making sure that where others in the media or the Democrats in Congress have failed or ignore the opportunity to do so, you’re stepping in and filling that void. So we are thankful for that.

As you sit here today, what would you say if you had to pick one or two of the biggest issues that you want to get to the bottom of? What would those be?

Kelly: The No. 1 issue would definitely be the government’s involvement. So, FBI and other agencies, what they did to provoke that day.

And also, I would want to get to the bottom of what these prosecutors are doing, what they’re showing the grand jury. We already know that they’ve misled the grand jury on two of the most prevalent misdemeanor charges. So I really want to expose everything that’s happening at DOJ with these prosecutions, their correspondence with other political actors, but most importantly, I think what happened with the FBI.

And I do, before I forget, want to give a shoutout to—there was no structure in place either, Rob, to help any of these defendants. And so a woman of one of the detainees actually started what’s called the Patriot Freedom Project, and it’s patriotfreedomproject.com. And she really single-handedly helped raise money. Dinesh D’Souza contributed $100,000 to it, which really got it started, because no lawyers would step up and help these people.

So I do think the narrative is shifting quite a bit and we are seeing some lawyers and people step up to help them, but there was a huge vacuum there.

Bluey: You’re dedicating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of your book to that. We’ll make sure to link to it in the transcript and in the show notes.

Kelly: Thanks.

Bluey: So, looking back a year later and all of the work that still needs to be done, why are you still dedicated to doing this? I mean, I imagine you’ve come under personal attack from those on the left for seeking the truth. What motivates you to keep going and why should the American people still want these answers?

Kelly: That’s such a good question. Because this is wrong, it should not be happening in America. You know, Rob, I talked to the wife of a detainee the other night and she’s like, “I never thought this would be happening in America.”

It just should not be happening. The Democrats should not be using the weapons of war against American citizens and they are. And they’re escalating it. They’re doing it with the J6 committee, but they’re certainly doing it with this DOJ and FBI. It’s just wrong. And if we are going to keep our country protected from the enemies in our own country, which is the left and the Democratic Party, then we need to expose what they’re doing.

So I think I keep doing it because it’s right for the country, but also on behalf of all of these people whose lives are seriously being destroyed and really had no one to speak up for them. So that’s why.

Bluey: Thank you, Julie. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for writing the book. Again, it’s called “January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right.” Thank you for visiting with The Daily Signal today.

Kelly: Thanks so much for having me, really appreciate it.

Julia Dandoy, a member of The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program, assisted with the questions for this interview.

DAILY SIEG HEIL

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/31/capitol-punishment-movie-tells-story-you-wont-hear-from-jan-6-committee/

rob BLUEY

NO LNX TWT? VID

During the month of June, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plan to hold six public hearings on the events that took place on Jan. 6. Two of them are even scheduled during primetime TV in an effort by Democrats to maximize their attempt to frame what happened that day at the U.S. Capitol.

But there’s another side to the story that you won’t hear from the likes of Reps. Bennie Thompson, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, or other members of the House select committee. They determined long ago who to blame and what narrative to tell.

Now, thanks to a new documentary called “Capitol Punishment,” Americans are able to hear stories from the people who were there on Jan. 6—in their own words and the ordeals they’ve faced since that day.

Joining me on “The Daily Signal Podcast” are two people who made the movie, actor Nick Searcy and director Chris Burgard. Listen to the full show or read a lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey: Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s go back to that day on Jan. 6. What was your experience in Washington, D.C., like on that day?

Nick Searcy: Part of the reason we wanted to make the movie is that Chris and I were both there and we were in different places. And our experience on that day was so different from what the media was showing us.

We saw people, hundreds of thousands of people, biggest crowd I’ve ever seen. And most of them were singing hymns and saying the Pledge of Allegiance and waving flags. And I saw people of all races, all creeds. It was a very happy, joyful time, really.

And then as the day went on and after the speech was over, I personally saw the police moving barricades and allowing people to go into the Capitol. So the things that we saw on television, that it was a few hundred crazed, right-wing, Trump-supporting white supremacists, was not anything like what I saw when I was there.

Chris Burgard: The difference in what we saw that day versus what was on the news was so dramatic that we just couldn’t just sit by and watch a day in history and the government be stolen.

I had been in Central America during attempted regime change previously, and my bells and whistles were going off, especially when Nick called me and said, “They just moved the barricades. They’re letting people in the Capitol.”

I just said to my wife, I said, “Look—”. We were still marching down to the Capitol. Nick was ahead of us. I said to my wife, I said, “Look at all these peaceful images. Look at this, over a million people here. And there’s no cameras. That leads me to believe that there’s going to be an orchestrated event at the end of this. And that’s the agendas that they want to run with.” EXCEPT EVERYONE CARRYING MOST USING ONE]

And when Nick called just at that time and said, “Look, they’re moving the bike racks. They’re letting people in,” I looked to my wife and I said, “I got bad deja vu. And I’m afraid someone’s going to die today.” And that’s exactly what it was.

It was just a day of orchestrated events that anybody that knew what they were looking for saw it. I mean, we saw people changing from Antifa black-block into MAGA clothes.

These same people were trying to get us to attack the police, the Capitol Police. We said, “No.” And when we went to the FBI that was on the ground and said, “Hey, you’ve got bad guys here trying to start violence and recruit others to violence. Do you want me to show you who they are?”, the FBI said, “No.” I’m like, “Do you want to take a report? My family can give you witness. I was there with my wife and my daughter,” and the FBI agents on the ground just said, “No, we’re OK. Thank you.” So, there was clearly a disconnect.

Bluey: One of the things that strikes me as I watch the film, and I think so many of the people who do will see this with their own eyes, are the many images and the videos that you have collected and compiled into this one powerful documentary. Share more about the types of people who you interacted with on that day.

Searcy: Like I said, most of the people there were very patriotic people, and people of all races and creeds, and they were not there to cause any violence. And they had come to make their voices heard, that they believed that there were things about the election that didn’t make sense. They wanted the certification to be paused for 10 days so that this could be investigated.

They weren’t there to disrupt any process that was going on in the Senate, which is what most of them have been charged with, is trying to disrupt an official proceeding. They wanted what was happening in the joint session of Congress to happen. [Sens.] Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and other people were making the argument that this needs to be paused for 10 days.

There’s no reason for the people that came there to make that happen, for them to disrupt the proceeding, which made us begin to put together—when we were making the film—that the fact of the matter is the people that were trying to disrupt the proceeding or the people that … instigated people to go into the Capitol Building were not people that supported Donald Trump. They were not people that wanted the proceedings to be stopped.

And what happened? As soon as the Capitol was breached and all the violence happened, they suspended the session of Congress and they went ahead and certified the election. We can’t have any more discussion. It’s too dangerous.

So the people that went inside, a majority of them, I would say, at least a significant number of them, were not Trump supporters.

Burgard: Yeah, it was pretty obvious. You saw this mass of possibly up to 2 million people headed to the Capitol. And if you could have seen—and picture a huge herd of cattle, but this cattle was mostly, there was a lot of church groups there, families, two and three generations of folks. And then there was a lot of groups from a former communist country, people that had escaped communist countries.

There were Chinese organizations on the ground. There were Americans who were—nationals who were Vietnamese heritage. All these different groups saying how great America was and warning against China and warning against this country moving to socialism because they had escaped that and come to America.

There was just so many good kids there with their parents. [RECONN TOUR DEFENSE] And like Nick said earlier, they were praying, they were singing. And the people that you saw at the Trump rally, the people that you saw around the Washington Monument, the people that you were with marching to the Capitol Building is a completely different crowd than what we’ve been seeing over and over again in the attack videos.

Just for your audience alone, anybody that looks at a video of what happened at the Capitol, if the people had a mask on or if the mask was dropped below their chins, they were probably operatives. They were in there to capture this operation.

Because we went through almost 2 million people waiting to go see Trump, seeing Trump and marching back, and I think I saw maybe seven or eight people wearing masks. I mean, the Trump supporters just weren’t wearing them.

Searcy: No, because we Trump supporters are heartless. And remember, we want grandmas to die. We won’t wear our masks.

Bluey: Nick, tell me about the various people that you feature in the movie. There are many stories that I think Americans probably have never heard of.

Searcy: Well, as the movie went on, we started talking to people who had their doors broken down by the FBI. And we interviewed a number of people, Derek Kinnison, Tony Martinez, man named Easton Cantwell, Simone Gold, the America’s Frontline Doctors. And all of these stories were pretty similar.

Six a.m., no phone call, no nothing. FBI shows up at their door. In Derek and Tony’s cases, they came with an overwhelming show of force, armored vehicles driving through their little suburban neighborhood, battering rams, flashbang grenades. They treated these people as if they were drug cartel members or leaders or serial killers, and most of these people had never been arrested for anything in their lives.

And as they tell their stories in the movie, you start to realize, you start to ask yourself the question, what is the government doing? Why is the government treating these people this way?

Simone Gold even says so in the movie, somebody like her, who’s a public figure, no history of violence, they could have just called and said, “We’d like to speak to you,” but no, they come and they treat them like criminals. And they do that to send a message. They are doing this on purpose.

This like a terror tactic. They’re trying to instill fear in the citizenry, that if you stand up to the government or if you stand up and say, “I believe that the election was stolen and shouldn’t have been certified,” then you were committing some vile act and the government is going to come down on you and treat you like this. And they’re trying to send a message to everybody: “Do not ever resist us again or this is what will happen to you.”

And this is an ongoing terror campaign against these people. There’s still people in jail that have been there for over a year, most of whom are charged with misdemeanors, and the people in our movie are still going through their trials.

And this is judicial harassment. These people don’t have much of a chance. They are facing a D.C. jury. They have to have a D.C. attorney because of the rules in the District of Columbia and a D.C. judge.

All of these are 96% Democrat, all of whom hate Trump, all of whom are biased against Trump supporters. So they go in with all these charges against them and they try to get these people to take a plea deal so that they don’t face 80 years in prison or something insane.

And most of the people in our movie never even went in the building. The only two people that went in the building are two 74-year-old twin sister grandmothers who went into the building, asked the police if they could be there, they took a couple of pictures, they walked out, and three weeks later, the FBI’s banging on their door. This is a terror campaign against American citizens who disagreed with the Democrat Party.

Bluey: Chris, let me ask a follow-up question to that. As you went through the process of identifying the people to feature in the film, what was it like talking to them, getting them to tell their stories? And some of them might be apprehensive to speak publicly about this given the circumstances that they currently face, as Nick said, awaiting their judgment.

Burgard: Never underestimate the power of fear to control people, because there were more people than we put in the movie that didn’t go in the movie because they were so afraid.

We actually had to take one person out of the film who did not go into the Capitol. And he was former law enforcement. He was a retired police chief, and we thought he was going to be the strongest guy in the whole film. And over the course of our production, what happened to him and the continuing pressure that the government put on him, he backed out of the film.

So the folks that are still in the film, the biggest thing I can say about them is what good people they are and how brave they are. …

A common thread we saw in this, like Nick was saying, Tony Martinez and Derek Kinnison never went into the building, but what did they have in common and what did some of the other people who were arrested have in common? They were leaders in putting together Trump caravans or helping their community, small business band together when [Black Lives Matter] was coming to protest in their communities or put together anti-mask rallies, but they didn’t go inside the Capitol.

So then you have to ask yourself, “Well, what’s going on here? Are they really going after people they think broke the law? Or is this a political purge?” And that’s something we saw, like with Simone Gold.

I mean, why did they arrest Simone Gold? Because she followed the crowd into the building when the police said it was OK, or did they arrest her because she had previously stood on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with a bunch of other Frontline Doctors and said, “This pandemic is a hoax. This pandemic is treatable. If we use common sense in good medicine, no one has to die”? That’s what we saw over and over.

Bluey: One of the most powerful parts of the movie, in my experience, was hearing from Aaron Babbitt, the husband of Ashli Babbitt, who tragically died on that day. Nick, [let’s] start with you, what was the experience like talking to Aaron and hearing his perspective on this?

Searcy: So, it was overwhelming. I mean, what the media has done to Ashli Babbitt after she was murdered is as much of a crime as her actual death. They have vilified her as some sort of rabid Trump-supporting zealot. And in fact, nothing can be further from the truth.

Footage that we’ve found since the movie was released of what she was doing before she was killed was, she was telling the people to stop breaking the doors, stop trying to break in. She was talking to the police, saying, “We need more reinforcement up here.” She was actually up there trying to stop the violence rather than cause it, as she’s been portrayed.

And just to hear Aaron recount what it’s like to actually see your wife, your loved one, your partner in life, see her killed on television and be powerless to do anything, to reach her, to be there—I mean, it is heart-rending.

And one of the things we wanted to do with the movie is really humanize Ashli Babbitt and just let people know what she was really like, rather than the way the media has lied about her.

Bluey: And Chris, what are some of the things that you would like our listeners to know about Ashli Babbitt that they might not hear elsewhere?

Burgard: Ashli Babbitt wasn’t only a 14-year military veteran, she was a law enforcement specialist. She had served her country on some very difficult situations in Iraq. She had been previously injured, seriously. She knew what was going on that day. She was there.

Not only, she went there as someone to support her president. She was very excited about the day. You’ll see in the film, she was streaming her thoughts as she was walking toward the Capitol.

But in that moment, the footage that we have of her that we’ve since found, you can see she’s acting as a law enforcement professional, telling these young cops that I’m sure had much less experience than she did, she’s like, “You need backup in here. There’s a force of people coming. You need to get help now.”

And there’s a guy named Zachary Alam. If you see the footage in the movie, this is the guy that’s trying to break the window. He’s leading the violence against the Capitol. He’s got a military helmet and he’s trying to crack the glass with the military helmet. He’s hitting it with everything he can.

In this other angle that we have, you see Ashli Babbitt grab him. He jerks away from her. She grabs him again, and she throws a left hook into his face and actually knocks his glasses off. This is mere seconds before she gets shot.

As a law enforcement professional, I mean, Aaron thinks, and I agree with him, that due to her claustrophobia and due to the situation getting more and more out of hand, he thinks she actually might have gone through that window trying to escape or get to a better vantage point to try to stop the violence.

In any case, as a law enforcement professional, she knows the procedure for that you follow before use of deadly force, the use of deadly force continuum. She knew as a military law enforcement personnel what the Capitol Police training was, and they did not do their job.

There was no vocal warning. There was no visible presence. There was no use of nonlethal force. So the last thing that woman thought as she was going through that window was, “I’m going to get shot for doing this.”

You look at the footage of [Lt. Michael] Byrd and how he handled his weapon, that was not a professional.

Bluey: I want to ask you both about a couple of the families who are featured in the film. Let’s start with Tony Martinez. You’ve been able to pull some of the actual footage of the FBI raiding Tony’s home. You spoke to Tony and his teenage daughter. Nick, what was that like, hearing from this 13-year-old girl about the experience of having her home raided?

Searcy: It’s heartbreaking. I mean, they basically terrorized and traumatized [this] family. And by treating them, like I said, like they were hardened criminals. These are decent, hardworking Americans, church-going people, never been arrested for anything before. A man and his wife and three children, and they threatened to break down his door and then literally break the sliding glass door in the back.

And Tony and his daughter Isabelle were frantically trying to get them to pause long enough for them to control the family dog. And because the dog was traumatized, of course, and they couldn’t control the dog, the dog ran away, was gone for a week.

And they pulled this 13-year-old girl out of the house and handcuffed her on the sidewalk, and it’s nonsensical. You can’t explain why they would do this in any other way than they are intentionally trying to traumatize people. And it’s heartbreaking to hear them tell the story.

Bluey: Nick, the other family that you interviewed was Derek Kinnison and his daughter, and you have footage from the Ring doorbell camera, essentially that you include in the film, and what’s Derek’s story?

Searcy: Derek and Tony were friends and they went there together. They felt called to go and they were there with first-aid gear. Basically, they had received some reports on the internet that there might be some Antifa presence there, and they wanted to be there to be present to help people.

There are no weapons. They weren’t carrying anything except first-aid gear. And Derek was treated much the same way as Tony. And when you see the footage of the armored vehicles, it’s surreal. It looks like something in a crazy, futuristic movie, or something that you might see in the streets of Afghanistan.

It looks like a raid. A raid on a terrorist is what it looks like. They’ve got armored vehicles, battering rams, 20 SWAT team members. Derek said, when he stepped out of his house, there were red dots all over his chest. He’s got his hands up. It’s surreal. It looks like a raid on a terrorist camp.

Bluey: Chris, let me ask you this question, because we are just about to embark on the Jan. 6 committee set up by [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, stacked with Democrats and a couple of Republicans who are Republican in name only. And they are presenting a narrative that is quite different from what we’ve just heard you and Nick talk about. As Americans see coverage of these hearings, what are some of the things you want them to remember and think about in the context of the film that you’ve made?

Burgard: I would like them to know that everything the J6 committee is pushing is a lie. Everything that they’re telling you is a lie.

If the J6 community was, congressional committee was interested in the truth, they would’ve subpoenaed somebody like Millie Weaver, who is an investigative journalist, who has a track record of infiltrating groups and providing information to the Capitol Police and to Secret Service, and the FBI that has been used in actionable law enforcement actions to protect senators like Lindsey Graham and other VIP personnel.

Before this film, she had infiltrated a call that had not only far-left groups planning an event just like this that was carried out, but on that call were actually members of our own government.

Now, that footage is in the movie. Why don’t they subpoena her and bring her in so that she can show the evidence that she brought up that was never used? Why don’t they subpoena the foreign Isabelle, the 13-year-old girl that was dragged out of her bed and handcuffed? How about her 4- and 7-year-old brothers and sisters that are still completely suffering from PTSD from being woken up with flashbangs and having their door smashed in?

These are what I’d like America to see, is the whole story, the real story. They’re not getting that. They’re getting a false narrative.

Basically, you’re seeing one of the biggest psy-ops this country’s ever gone through. And the congressional committee in tandem with the fake news media is working hand and foot to bring this fiction and push it into the minds of the American people. I’d like to see the truth.

Bluey: Will there be a point when Americans say, “Enough is enough. We’ve watched ‘Capitol Punishment.’ We’ve read other sources. We’ve read Julie Kelly’s book. We’re not standing for this anymore”? When will that moment come?

Searcy: I think that moment has to come when somebody in the Republican Party stands up for these victims. So far we haven’t had anybody, very few people. Maybe [Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, maybe a few others have really tried to call attention to the fact that these people are not only being held in jail, in D.C. jails for misdemeanor charges, for month after month after month with their trials continually pushed forward,[BY DEFENSE?] but also that the people who have been awaiting trial now for over 18 months or almost 18 months, they keep having their adjudications continued and everything because the government wants to bleed them out.

The government is trying to bleed these people of their resources and make them so desperate that they just accept a plea deal just to get it over with. And it is so criminal, so wrong what is happening to these people. We need someone, even if it’s President Trump himself, we need someone to stand up for these prisoners and these people that are being tortured. And until that happens, until the Jan. 6 committee is given all this legitimacy; treated, taken seriously—

The Jan. 6 committee is a clown show. It is a joke. It is there simply to draw this out so that they can try to use it for the narrative on the next election to say, “We’ve got to stop these evil white supremacists, these domestic terrorists,” blah, blah, blah.

There’s no truth in it whatsoever. And until our side stands up and forcefully calls it out, I don’t see it ending anytime soon. And if it actually does impact the election and it works for them, they’re never going to let it go.

Bluey: Let me ask you this as we start to wrap-up here. Chris, I’ll begin with you. This was obviously a massive undertaking on your part and Nick, and so many of the other people who were involved in making “Capitol Punishment,” what was it that motivated you to devote the time to doing this?

Burgard: My kids love for this country. Nick and I could not stand to sit and see this day in history stolen. Somebody had to tell the truth and that’s what we did. And this is now the most censored movie in America.

There’s a reason why the Silicon Valley algorithms and the mainstream media have done everything they can to cover this film up, because this film completely destroys the false Jan. 6 narrative. It completely destroys the agenda of the J6 commission. The Democrats are going to double down on J6. And it’s been working for them.

I mean, people on our side are so afraid to be branded as violent insurrectionist, they won’t look at the truth. This movie completely destroys their agenda. The Democrats are going to double down on this all the way through the 2020 elections. And with what I’ve seen, them abuse the law to average citizens, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to charge Trump with something else so that instead of running for a fair election in 2024, he’s fighting off some sort of indictments.

The abuse I’ve seen of our legal system in this film is incredible. My dad went to the 109 Session, FBI Academy. My dad was law enforcement. He must be rolling over in his grave with the abuse of power that’s been going on legally here.

The truth is the only thing that will beat this. And if there’s a tipping point of truth, of enough people see with their own eyes what happened that day, everything falls apart. Big shifts, big things happen, big doors open on very small hinges.

And the hinge that makes everything fall apart is Jan. 6, because people can see with their own eyes what really happened that day. They can see with their own eyes what our government is doing to innocent Americans and to small children. And they will stand up and they will say, “This should not be happening in the United States America. This is Third World. This is what happened in the revolutions in Venezuela, in Ukraine, in Egypt. It put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. That same thing should not be happening in America, but it just did.”

Bluey: Nick, I’ll give you the last word here. What was it about this day and your being involved there that led you to embark on a project like this, to tell the story of Jan. 6 from this perspective?

Searcy: Well, to be honest, I must say, at the beginning I was reluctant because I was scared. And so many of the people that we talk to, we interview a number of people in the movie, but there’s an equal number, if not more, that were afraid to speak to us.

Because when you see the way the government is treating these people, it makes you wonder, “Is it worth it?” But as we kind of got going, and Chris and I, “OK, we’re going to make this movie,” and we started talking to people as it went on, it became something that I knew I had to do. We had to finish this. We had to see it through. …

I was appalled at my own government and I really never wanted to think this. I never wanted to think that this is what my government is like, but it is. And we have to expose it. We have to get the truth out there and people need to confront it.

I’ve always said from the beginning, even if you disagree with us, please, would you just please watch this movie and tell me if you think this is the way Americans should be treated, no matter what side they’re on.

Even if they were there protesting a Republican president, do you think this is correct? Do you think this is the way our government should operate? And a lot of the problem that we have is a lot of people on the left, they’re afraid to look at it. They don’t want to see the movie. They call it propaganda. They’re just afraid to look at something that might disturb their worldview.

But I really believe that if more people will confront the truth of what happened about Jan. 6 and see through the government’s lies, we’re all going to be better off for it. We can still save this country, but people have to confront the truth of what is actually happening right in front of their faces.

Bluey: And what’s the best way for our listeners to watch the film?

Searcy: Right now, there’s a number of places, but the best one right now is: Go to givemelibertynow.org. … And you can also find it at capitolpunishmentthemovie.com. Both those places, the movie’s available.

Bluey: We will be sure to include links to those, both in the transcript of this interview and the notes for this podcast. As somebody who’s watched it myself, I’m certainly grateful that you’ve given us the time today to explain what motivated you to make the movie, and also why you are so passionate about telling those stories of the Americans who’ve suffered as a result.

Searcy: Thank you, Rob.

Burgard: Thanks for having us on, Rob.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/06/02/california-reparations-report-demands-tree-planting-in-black-neighborhoods-for-shade-equity/

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SOCIETY NEWS

California Reparations Report Demands Tree Planting in ‘Black Neighborhoods’ for ‘Shade Equity’

Gabe Kaminsky / June 02, 2022

"Climate change is certain to exacerbate existing, historically-codified disparities that track existing housing-related harms experienced by African Americans,” a report greenlit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom says. Pictured: Newsom speaks during a news conference with New Zealand's prime minister May 27, 2022, in San Francisco. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A report on alleged systemic racism released Wednesday and greenlit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for the planting of trees statewide “to create shade equity” and reduce “heat islands in black neighborhoods.”

The 500-page report was released after Newsom, a Democrat, signed legislation in 2020 forming a nine-member task force to “inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations.” It describes tree demolishing in black neighborhoods for highway construction and says climate change makes these areas hotter.

“Nationally, formerly redlined areas consistently show hotter temperatures than other areas,” the report states. “Therefore, climate change is certain to exacerbate existing, historically-codified disparities that track existing housing-related harms experienced by African Americans.”

The report is billed as the first of its kind by a state government to examine slavery and “the compounding harms that the United States and Californian governments have inflicted upon African Americans,” according to a press release. The California Reparations Task Force issued the document to the state Legislature, and a final report will then be issued prior to July 2023.

“In particular, so-called [TTUMPISM, SO CALLED JUDGE] ‘heat islands,’ which will worsen due to climate change, exist where built-up urban areas have few trees, vegetation or parks that serve to dissipate or reflect heat, and instead have pavement and building materials that absorb and retain it,” the report also notes.

While the report accurately notes that cities are indeed hotter due to “heat islands,” it uses this fact to claim that black people are disproportionately impacted by heat, former Republican aide Marc Morano, who runs the website Climate Depot, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Adding tree cover to cities will most likely [WEASEL?] have a negligible impact on the urban heat of the cities,” said Morano. “These solutions appear to be nothing more than just ‘virtue signally’ racial grievance claims. These types of reports are generated to justify bureaucratic jobs and massive bloated budgets for ‘equity’ programs.”

Morano also said that the climate debate has “descended into cultural absurdity” and called the idea of “shade equity” the latest in a round of “racially charged climate claims and identity politics” in the left-leaning movement.

The report further claims “modern efforts to add green space” in black neighborhoods “involve racist narratives.” It argues that the city of Los Angeles intentionally limited tree growth in areas with more black people due to police officers expressing concern that trees “could serve as places to hide drugs or weapons.”

California’s Reparations Task Force did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Gabe Kaminsky is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Daily Signal, Heritage’s news and commentary website, ended 2021 with large audience gains, registering a year-over-year increase of 66%, according to Comscore data released by TheRighting, a media tracking company.

Among the top 20 conservative websites tracked by TheRighting, The Daily Signal had the largest year-over-year increase. The Daily Signal was one of only four conservative websites that grew its audience in December 2021 compared to December 2020.

“The Daily Signal team has worked around the clock to bring our readers the most important underreported news,” said Katrina Trinko, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. “We are excited about our growth and can’t wait to see what we can do in 2022.”

Under Trinko’s leadership, The Daily Signal expanded its focus on investigative reporting in 2021. The Daily Signal’s team of reporters will build out this capability in 2022, working in conjunction with Heritage’s newly announced Conservative Oversight Project.

The Daily Signal’s work has been cited across other major media platforms, including Fox News, New York Times, Washington Examiner, and the Daily Wire.

“One reason The Daily Signal gained more audience than any other conservative website in December was due to the Dec. 13 publication of the commentary ‘What I’ve Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy.’ It was among The Daily Signal’s most popular stories of the year,” reports TheRighting.

That commentary, written under the pen name Charlie Jacobs, received over half a million views. Other articles that performed well for The Daily Signal in 2021 included, “My Woke Employees Tried to Cancel Me. Here’s How I Fought Back”, and “11 Takeaways From Fauci’s Emails About COVID-19.”

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-signal/ [lotta popup ads?]

Bias Rating: RIGHT

Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL

Country: USA (45/180 Press Freedom)

Media Type: Website

Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic

MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

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History

Founded in 2014, The Daily Signal is a conservative American political news journalism website that focuses on politics, policy, and culture. It is published by the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. The Daily Signal is based in Washington, DC. The current editor is Robert Bluey, who wrote for many other right-leaning publications such as The Daily Caller, RedState, Big Government, and the Washington Examiner.

Read our profile on the USA government’s influence on media.

Funded by / Ownership

The Heritage Foundation owns the Daily Signal. The website does not have advertising and is completely funded through The Heritage Foundation, which has drawn criticism for right-leaning bias due to all funding coming from the right-leaning think tank.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The Daily Signal reports on political news and policy with a right-leaning bias in both story selection and wording such as this: Osama Bin Laden Was Right. This article is critical of President Trump’s decision to leave Syria, arguing that pulling out will result in “at some point having to fight them again on U.S. soil.” In other words, the Daily Signal supports a more right-leaning interventionist Neoconservative military approach. In another article, the moderate use of loaded language in the headline negatively portrays the Mueller investigation: Mueller Investigation Stirring Up More Trouble Than Its Finding. This particular story is republished directly from the Tribune Content Agency. Other stories are republished from the factually Mixed Daily Caller. Original news stories such as this one are typically properly sourced through hyperlinking to credible media sources.

Editorially, The Daily Signal consistently casts doubt on the role of humans in climate change with articles such as this: Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas. Further, all opinion pieces favor the right and denigrate the left. In general, story selection and editorials almost always favor the right, though, at times, The Daily Signal is critical of former President Donald Trump’s policies and actions.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years

Overall, we rate the Daily Signal, Right Biased based on story selection and editorial positions that always favor the right. We also rate them Mostly Factual, rather than High, due to not aligning with the consensus of science regarding human-influenced climate change. (D. Van Zandt 7/19/2016) Updated (03/24/2021)

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Far-right MAGA Republicans admire Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine — and try to emulate it: report

Alex Henderson March 16, 2022

The list of far-right MAGA Republicans who have vigorously defended and even praised Russian President Vladimir Putin is a long one, ranging from former President Donald Trump to “War Room” host Steve Bannon, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and QAnon supporter Lauren Witzke (the Delaware Republican who ran against Sen. Chris Coons in 2020). Bannon has praised Putin for not being “woke,” and Witzke recently said, “I identify more with Putin's Christian values than I do with Joe Biden.”

To Kevin Baron, executive editor of Defense One, all of the Putin worship coming from MAGA Republicans speaks volumes about their view of the world. In an article published by Defense One on March 11, Baron warns that the way Putin runs Russia is the way the far right would like to run the United States — and he stresses that MAGA media functions a lot like government-operated pro-Putin media in Russia.

“It’s hard to watch Russia's version of journalism and not think of the American far-right’s version of it,” Baron argues. “Indeed, the connections are both direct and philosophical — and of import to national security leaders. But there’s a deeper connection as well. America’s right-wing partisans wish they had what Putin has: control of the information and messages that flow to the body politic. That’s not an accusation; it is their goal.”

[twt?]

According to Baron, it's no coincidence that Carlson in the U.S. and government-operated media in Russia use the same talking points when discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In the past few months,” Baron explains, “we’ve seen just how closely related the two are: Putin’s propaganda and our own. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, America’s far-right denied the looming threat as a wag-the-dog conspiracy concocted by deep-state Democrats and centrist Republicans, or tried to blame President Joe Biden. Russian propaganda outlets gleefully put those clips into heavy rotation. Two weeks into the invasion, far-right leaders continue to sow doubt on war reporting, claiming or implying there is an elite conspiracy to keep Americans uninformed, and often parroting Russian propagandists’ distortions and lies.”

Baron cites specific examples of far-right media outlets that conduct themselves like state-owned Russian media.

“While politicians come and go, the lasting damage is in the lingering popularity of Soviet-style agitprop propaganda from loyalist far-right media operations deliberately masquerading as journalism,” Baron observes. “These outlets —designed to look, sound, and feel like journalism — are de facto paid actors, directors, and scriptwriters of a carefully crafted fiction that would make the Kremlin proud. They call themselves reporters and operate in pretend newsrooms like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, Carlson’s Daily Caller, Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and upstarts like One America News Network and Newsmax. They are different from older conservative magazines like the National Review and Weekly Standard, whose writers did not try to impersonate straight newsrooms — and, indeed, intermittently opposed Trump’s 2016 election.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Signal

The Daily Signal is an American news website founded in June 2014. The publication focuses on politics, culture, and under-reported stories. It is published by The Heritage Foundation.

Overview

2 History

3 References

4 External links

Overview[

The Daily Signal is a digital-only news publication created by American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation based in Washington D.C.[1][2][3] The publication reports on American politics and public policy issues, both foreign and domestic, with a focus on unreported or under-reported news stories.[1][4][5] The site relies on original investigative reporting and aims to be an unbiased news source.[2][6] It was created as an attempt to remedy what the organization saw as a lack of original reporting on public policy issues from understaffed publications.[1]

The Daily Signal also includes an opinion section geared toward Millennial readers that features conservative commentary, but that is kept separate from the news section.[1][2] Entertainment and sports stories that relate to politics are also published by the site.[6]

The publication has a staff of 12 and uses freelance investigative reporters.[2][3][7] [1][7] The editor-in-chief is Robert Bluey, former editor at Human Events and reporter for Cybercast News Service.[2][3][6]

Other key staff include Katrina Trinko, former National Review political reporter, who is the managing editor,[1][2][8] and Sharyl Attkisson, former CBS News reporter, who is a senior independent contributor.[5]

The Daily Signal is funded entirely by The Heritage Foundation.[2][8] The publication's initial annual budget was US$1 million.[3][5]

History[

Prior to starting The Daily Signal, The Heritage Foundation ran two other digital publications: The Foundry, a blog, and Townhall.com, a news and opinion site.Townhall.com was acquired by Salem Communications in 2005, while The Foundry was phased out following the advent of The Daily Signal.[5][9]

The Daily Signal was announced by The Heritage Foundation in May 2014.[1] Atlantic Media Strategies was hired to design the site specifically for mobile phones and tablets.[1]

In its initial reception, the site's design and mission drew comparisons to Vox and FiveThirtyEight.[1] The announcement was also met with skepticism that the publication could be unbiased.[10] It was also criticized for not having advertisers.[11]

The Heritage Foundation responded to these criticisms with understanding that The Daily Signal would have to prove its ability to produce fair journalism. Kelly McBride, Poynter's media ethicist, commented that The Daily Signal could never be credible for liberal readers, but could reach an undecided audience, so long as the publication removed political agenda and published quality work from trained journalists.[8]

The site was officially launched in June 2014.[3] Debut stories included an exclusive report from Sharyl Attkisson about medical research on premature babies funded by the government,[5] an interview with Kansas Governor Sam Brownback about federal health care law's effects on his state,[3] and an account of a recent trip to the DMZfrom Jim DeMint, the president of The Heritage Foundation.[3]

In September 2014, Sharyl Attkisson's interview with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Raymond Maxwell was picked up by multiple outlets, including Fox News,[12] CBS,[13] Slate,[14] and Daily News.[15]

References[

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Joshua Green (May 8, 2014). "The Tea Party Gets Into the News Biz". Businessweek. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Rebecca Ballhaus (May 8, 2014). "Heritage Foundation Plans News Site". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Paul Farhi (June 2, 2014). "Heritage Foundation starts online site to cover news it says is unreported or under-reported". The Washington Post. Retrieved1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Catherine Thompson (May 8, 2014). "Heritage Foundation To Launch 'Straight-Down-The-Middle' News Site". Talking Points Memo. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b c d e Jessica Chasmar (June 3, 2014). "Sharyl Attkisson joins new Heritage website The Daily Signal". The Washington Times. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b c Roger Yu (May 8, 2014). "Heritage Foundation to launch online news site in June". USA Today. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b Johana Bhuiyan (May 8, 2014). "Heritage Foundation to launch ‘straight-down-the-middle’ news site". Capital New York. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

^ Jump up to:a b c Kristen Hare (May 8, 2014). "Heritage Foundation’s news site doesn’t have ad or traffic constraints". Poynter. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Dylan Byers (May 7, 2014). "Heritage Foundation to launch news service". Politico. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Tess VandenDolder (May 8, 2014). "Move Over, FOX: The Tea Party Launches Its Own News Site". InTheCapital. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Tom Scocca (May 8, 2014). "The Heritage Foundation Admits It's Afraid of Capitalism". Gawker. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Judson Berger (September 14, 2014). "Ex-official claims Clinton allies scrubbed Benghazi documents in secret session". Fox. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Stephanie Condon (September 17, 2014). "Will politics doom the Benghazi committee's investigation?". CBS. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ David Weigel (September 15, 2014). "The Benghazi Whistleblower Who Might Have Revealed a Massive Scandal on His Poetry Blog". Slate. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

Jump up^ Dan Friedman (September 16, 2014). "Staffers loyal to Hillary Clinton covered up potentially damaging Benghazi documents: former official". The New York Daily News. Retrieved 1 December 2014.

External links[

Official website

Categories: American political websitesInternet properties established in 2014American news websitesThe Heritage FoundationPolitical blogs2014 establishments in Washington, D.C.

Sharyl Attkisson (born January 26, 1961)[1] is an American author and formerly an investigative correspondent in the Washington bureau for CBS News. She had also substituted as anchor for the CBS Evening News. She resigned from CBS News on March 10, 2014 after 21 years with the network. She hosts the weekly Sunday public affairs program Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, which airs on television stations operated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.[2] Her book Stonewalled reached number 5 on New York Times best seller list in November 2014.[3]

Early life

2 Career

2.1 1990s

2.2 2000s

2.3 2010s

2.3.1 Report of Attkisson's computer being hacked

3 Personal life

4 References

5 External links

Early life[edit]

Attkisson was born in 1961 in Sarasota, Florida.[4] Her step-father is an orthopedic surgeon and her brother is an emergency room physician. Attkisson graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in broadcast journalism in 1982.[5]

Career[edit]

Attkisson began her broadcast journalism career in 1982, aged 22, as a reporter at WUFT-TV, the PBS station in Gainesville, Florida. She later worked as an anchor and reporter at WTVX-TV Fort Pierce/West Palm Beach, Florida from 1982–85, WBNS-TV, the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio from 1985–86, and WTVT Tampa, Florida (1986–90).[6]

1990s[

From 1990–93, Attkisson was an anchor for CNN, and also served as a key anchor for CBS space exploration coverage in 1993.[7] Attkisson left CNN in 1993,[8]moving to CBS, where she anchored the television news broadcast CBS News Up to the Minute and became an investigative correspondent based in Washington D.C.[6]

She served on the University of Florida's Journalism College Advisory Board (1993–97) and was its chair in 1996.[6] The university gave her an Outstanding Achievement Award in 1997. From 1997 to 2003, Attkisson simultaneously hosted CBS News Up to the Minute and the PBS Health news magazine HealthWeek.[9]

2000s[edit]

Attkisson received an Investigative Reporters and Editors (I.R.E.) Finalist award for Dangerous Drugs in 2000.[10] In 2001, Attkisson received an Investigative Emmy Award nomination for Firestone Tire Fiasco from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.[11]

In 2002, she co-authored a college textbook, Writing Right for Broadcast and Internet News; later that same year she won an Emmy Award for her Investigative Journalism about the American Red Cross.[6] The award was presented in New York City on September 10, 2002.[12] Attkisson was part of the CBS News team that received RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2005 for Overall Excellence.[10]

In 2006, Attkisson served as Capitol Hill correspondent for CBS,[13] as one of a small number of female anchors covering the 2006 midterms.[14] Attkisson was part of the CBS News team that received RTNDA-Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2008 for Overall Excellence.[10]

In 2008, Attkisson said that a claim by Hillary Clinton to have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia was unfounded: Clinton's trip to Bosnia was risky, she said, but no real bullets were dodged.[15] In 2009, she won an Investigative Emmy Award for Business and Financial Reporting for her exclusive reports on the Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) and the bank bailout.[10] The award was presented on December 7 at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus in New York City.[16]

2010s[edit]

Attkisson returned to the University of Florida as a keynote speaker at the College of Journalism and Communications in 2010.[5] That same year, she received anEmmy Award nomination for her investigations into members of Congress, and she also received a 2010 Emmy Award nomination for her investigation into waste of tax dollars.[17] In July 2011, Attkisson was nominated for an Emmy Award for her Follow the Money investigations into Congressional travel to the Copenhagen climate summit, and problems with aid to Haiti earthquake victims.[10][18]

In 2011, Paul Offit criticized Attkisson's reporting on vaccines in his book Deadly Choices as "damning by association" and lacking sufficient evidence.[19] Attkisson has been identified in the medical literature as problematically using rhetorical tactics that "imply that because there is no conclusive answer to certain problems, vaccines remain a plausible culprit."[20]

In 2012, CBS News accepted an Investigative Reporting Award given to Attkisson's reporting on ATF's Fast and Furious gunwalker controversy. The award was from Accuracy in Media, a non-profit news media watchdog group, and was presented at a Conservative Political Action Conference.[21]

In June 2012, Attkisson's investigative reporting for the Gunwalker story also won the CBS Evening News the Radio and Television News Directors Association's National Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video Investigative Reporting. The award was presented October 8, 2012 in New York City.[22] In July 2012, Attkisson's Gunwalker: Fast and Furious reporting received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.[23]

On March 10, 2014, Attkisson resigned from CBS News.[24] She stated that the parting was "amicable".[25] Politico reported that according to sources within CBS there had been tensions leading to "months of hard-fought negotiations" – that Attkisson had been frustrated over what she perceived to be the network's liberal bias and lack of dedication to investigative reporting, as well as issues she had with the network’s corporate partners, while some[who?] within the network saw her reporting as agenda-driven and doubted her impartiality.[25]

Later that year came the release of her New York Times Best Seller, Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington (Harpers),[3] in which she accused CBS of running advertorials and of protecting the Obama administration by not giving enough coverage to such stories as the 2012 Benghazi attack and slow initial enrollments under Obamacare.[26]

In February 2015, Attkisson gave a TEDx talk at the University of Nevada. In the talk, she said that astroturfing was swaying public opinion, legislation and media outlets.[27]

Report of Attkisson's computer being hacked[edit]

In May 2013, while still employed at CBS, Attkisson alleged that her personal and work computers had been "compromised" for more than two years.[28] CBS Newsstated that it had investigated her work computer and found evidence of multiple unauthorized accesses by a third party in late 2012.[29] The U.S. Department of Justicedenied any involvement.[30] In her 2014 book, she alleged that her personal computer was hacked with keystroke logging spyware, enabling an intruder to read all her e-mail messages and gain access to the passwords for her financial accounts.[31] In October 2014, just before the publication of her book, Attkisson released a video that she said corroborated her allegations of having her computer hacked.[32]

In late January 2015, Attkisson appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee[33] during a confirmation hearing for Loretta Lynch, President Obama's nominee to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. Attkisson's testimony concentrated on the Justice Department under Holder and was not related to Lynch's qualifications.[by whom?] As part of her appearance in front of that committee, a report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was released[34] stating that "their investigation was not able to substantiate... allegations that Attkisson's computers were subject to remote intrusions by the FBI, other government personnel, or otherwise" and the deletion seen in Attkinsson's video “appeared to be caused by the backspace key being stuck, rather than a remote intrusion".[35][36][37] "CBS News told the OIG that they did not conduct any analysis on her personal computer."[38]

In February 2015, The Washington Examiner clarified that the OIG did not examine Attkisson's compromised CBS News computer,[38] the OIG only inspected Attkisson's personal devices.[39]

In March 2015, Attkisson and her family filed a suit against Holder, Patrick R. Donahoe and unnamed agents of the US Department of Justice, the US Postal Serviceand the United States in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia claiming to have been subject to illegal surveillance activities.[40][41]

bad code

https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/staying-paris-agreement-would-have-cost-families-20k

...Global compliance with the Paris Agreement has been nothing short of abysmal....Those who are clamoring for action on climate change are the ones who should actually be most upset with what a sham the Paris agreement is

....https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.heritage.org%2Fenvironment%2Fcommentary%2Fstaying-paris-agreement-would-have-cost-families-20k...bad code]...

Editor’s note: The U.S. just took a new, major step to leaving the Paris Agreement, a climate change deal between several countries. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Today the United States began the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. Per the terms of the Agreement, the United States submitted formal notification of its withdrawal to the United Nations. The withdrawal will take effect one year from delivery of the notification.”... President [Donald] Trump made the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement because of the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers by U.S. pledges made under the agreement. The United States has reduced all types of emissions, even as we grow our economy and ensure our citizens’ access to affordable energy. Our results speak for themselves: U.S. emissions of criteria air pollutants that impact human health and the environment declined by 74% between 1970 and 2018. U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions dropped 13% from 2005-2017, even as our economy grew over 19 percent.

Here’s a version of a previously published article from Heritage Foundation researcher Nick Loris on why the Paris Agreement wouldn’t significantly affect the climate–but would cost America jobs and would hurt some families’ incomes.

President Donald Trump is right to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. While the climate is indeed changing and human activity is playing a role, the chances of looming climate catastrophe are simply unrealistic and not grounded in reality.

But even granting such a looming catastrophe, the Paris Agreement itself would do little to alter the climate. To have any impact whatsoever on climate, the entire world would either have to quickly change the way it consumes energy or simply remain undeveloped. Both options are devoid of reality.

While many countries are rapidly expanding their use of renewable power, forecasts indicate that coal, oil, and natural gas will continue to provide the overwhelming majority of the world’s energy needs well into the future. For developing countries, the highest priorities are to reduce energy poverty and improve living standards.

Those who are clamoring for action on climate change are the ones who should actually be most upset with what a sham the Paris agreement is. It’s been celebrated as a breakthrough achievement of the world’s developed and developing countries coming together, but it is anything but that.

>>>The Right Way to Ensure a Cleaner Environment

With no enforcement mechanisms in place and no repercussions for failing to meet emissions reduction targets, countries are essentially free to do whatever they want, meaning they will continue on their business-as-usual trajectory without making any changes. China, for instance, can peak its emissions in 2030 even though projections have their peak emissions falling before that year.

India, for its part, has pledged to reduce its emissions levels, or cuts its ratio of carbon emissions to gross domestic product. That ratio may well go down so long as carbon emissions rise at a slower rate than GDP, but carbon emissions will keep rising all the same.

Actually, India committed to emissions reductions that are less than what the country would achieve if it continues on the same track it is currently on today. In other words, it set the bar so low that it can continue along its businesses-as-usual trajectory of emissions intensity and come out looking like a climate hero.

As the Manhattan Institute’s Oren Cass wrote, “It’s easy to slim down to 180 pounds, if you weigh 175 to begin with.”

Pakistan was more honest than most about its emissions prospects, stating bluntly, “Given the future economic growth and associated growth in the energy sector, the peaking of emissions in Pakistan is expected to take place much beyond the year 2030. An exponential increase of [greenhouse gas] emissions for many decades is likely to occur before any decrease in emissions can be expected.”

Global compliance with the Paris Agreement has been nothing short of abysmal. In fact, most nations will soon fail to meet the deadlines they agreed to.

The original hope that each nation’s contribution might somehow push other countries to “do more” is not playing out. This deal was a hodgepodge of arbitrarily defined commitments with no enforcement mechanism. It was doomed from the start.

Following through with the Obama administration’s commitments would impose clear economic harm on the U.S. by driving energy prices higher—and that’s just a small part of the overall cost. Americans would pay more for food, health care, education, clothes, and every other good and service that requires energy.

These higher costs would be spread across the entire economy and would shrink overall economic growth and employment. Heritage Foundation analysts estimated that the regulations required to meet the Obama administration’s commitments would impose the following costs by 2035:

An overall loss of nearly 400,000 jobs, half of which would be in manufacturing.

A average total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four.

An aggregate GDP loss of over $2.5 trillion.

Other countries would continue getting a free pass under the agreement, but if the U.S. signed back on, one can be sure that environmental activist lawsuits would make sure the U.S. kept its obligations.

To make matters worse, the climate regulations encompassing the U.S. target may not even achieve the desired results and would require additional regulations. And that would just be the beginning. The Paris Agreement requires ever-increasing targets as time goes on, which would further increase the cost of compliance. These efforts would return us to the same costly and ineffective policies that the current administration is unwinding.

Congress should instead advance pragmatic policies that will actually drive innovation in energy and environmental protection.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

How a Former Cheney Aide Nearly Killed the Christmas Tree Industry

The National Christmas Tree Board was supposed to protect American tree growers, until one man intervened.

By Muira McCammon DECEMBER 13, 2016

RITUALS WEEK

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A Christmas tree.

A Christmas tree. JOHNNY LAI/CC BY 2.0

Back in the early 2000s, the Christmas tree industry was in distress. Artificial tree imports kept rising, threatening the livelihoods of domestic tree farms. The situation spiraled so out of control that in 2004, the National Christmas Tree Association launched a free online video game called “Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Tree.” The game invited players to throw snowballs at artificial trees, which were branded as “100% Fake” and “Made in China” and blamed for “sucking the spirit out of Christmas.”

Christmas tree growers were worried that their competitors in the artificial tree industry would quash them. Profit margins were shrinking. The soul of Saint Nick was on the line. Other agricultural producers in the United States—almonds, cotton, honey, watermelons, peanuts, raspberries, and other farm-grown products—have had similar moments, when competition, unpopularity, or lack of public understanding threatened to derail the industry.

Screenshot of the now defunct “Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Tree” via the Wayback Machine.

Screenshot of the now defunct “Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Tree” via the Wayback Machine. WAYBACK MACHINE

Leaders in these troubled industries had taken advantage of a provision in the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996 to fund research and to launch advertising campaigns to repopularize and retell the story of their products. This is how America got the “Got Milk?” campaign. It’s why there’s such a thing as the National Honey Board, the American Lamb Board, and U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council. These checkoff programs use a combination of research and ads to try to bolster and distinguish their products.

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Faced with the perception that potatoes are bad for the diet, for instance, the National Potato Board might put together a potato nutrition handbook. The Mushroom Council might stump for National Mushroom Month to burnish the reputation of the widely-derided fungus. These initiatives may seem funny, but they’re driven by people, who are trying to grapple with serious concerns in their respective industries.

The Christmas Tree Promotion Board wasn’t supposed to be much different. It was supposed to shine a light on the beauty of real Christmas trees, and bring tree growers together once and for all. It was supposed to fund focus groups to answer big questions, to figure out who wanted to buy real Christmas trees in the 21st century, to appeal to new demographics. It was supposed to let Christmas tree growers launch their own campaigns, to put up “Got Christmas?” advertisements if they wanted.

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The process seemed straightforward: for every Christmas tree sold, a small deduction of $0.15 from each grower’s proceeds would go into a fund that would support the Board’s work. But it wasn’t so simple. The Christmas Tree Promotion Board had a powerful enemy, and thanks to him, the American Christmas tree would have to wait a full four years for its heroes to convene.

Artificial trees on sale at Macy's.

Artificial trees on sale at Macy’s. RICH MITCHELL/CC BY 2.0

In photographs, rosy-cheeked, grey-bearded David Addington almost looks like Santa Claus. Don’t be fooled: from the perspective of Christmas tree growers, he’s more of an Anti-Claus. Addington will go down in U.S. history as the man who dumped some serious coal on the farm grown Christmas tree industry in America. This is the man who almost killed the Christmas Tree Promotion Board.

From 2005 to 2009, Addington had served as the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. He wielded so much power in the Bush Administration that many took to referring to him as “Cheney’s Cheney.” Richard L. Shiffrin, the Pentagon’s former deputy counsel for intelligence, called Addington “an unopposable force.”

In 2011, Christmas tree farm growers were on the verge of getting what they wanted. That’s when Addington made his move. On November 8, 2011, he published “Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax” on the Daily Signal. Addington wrote: “Nobody is saying President Obama doesn’t have authority to impose his new Christmas Tree Tax — his Administration cites the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. Just because the Obama Administration has the legal power to impose its Christmas Tree Tax doesn’t mean it should do so.”

Then, he put a star on his own proverbial tree: “And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government.”

David Addington with Dick Cheney in the White House, 2008.

David Addington with Dick Cheney in the White House, 2008. NATIONAL ARCHIVES 18542200

The blog quickly amassed over 3,000 comments—many from frustrated Christmas tree farmers, who disagreed adamantly with Addington. They wanted to set the record straight about the threats to the Christmas tree industry. One commenter wrote in to clarify that the fee was something that the growers had been wanting since 1991. He added, “The majority of tree growers are Republican. It is not a tax and has been done for other agricultural products thru the years. This is a comical spin.”

The entire purpose of the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996 was to give people like the tree growers a chance to promote the commodity they were selling and protect it against competing markets, like the artificial tree industry. As one online commenter put it to Addington, “[It’s] simple business logic, you should be able to understand that.”

Nevertheless, the White House immediately postponed appointing board members to the Christmas Tree Promotion Board. No one in the U.S. government, especially President Obama, wanted to be labeled a tree-taxing humbug. In strategic terms, the delay made sense. Few people stepped up to try to explain the nuances of how checkoff programs worked, to clarify that the Christmas Tree Promotion Board embodied the very core concept of “for the people, by the people.”

Yes, the Promotion Board was for Christmas tree growers, by the Christmas tree growers, but the technicalities didn’t matter anymore. No one wanted to get on Fox News and recite thorny, polysyllabic clauses of legislation to prove that President Obama and his administration were actually on the side of the trees. The damage was done.

A Christmas tree farm.

A Christmas tree farm. CAROL FERNANDEZ/CC BY-ND 2.0

So Christmas tree growers had to wait four more years for their gift to come. And in 2015, they got what they wanted: a group convened to try to save their industry from a slow and painful death.

Tim O’Connor, the executive director of the Christmas Tree Promotion Board, reflected on the damper Anti-Claus Addington had put on the industry: “This program should have been implemented in 2011. It didn’t happen until 2015, because of that whole fiasco of presidential politics. The growers who work so hard on this program are so frustrated by that, because they didn’t want to get involved in presidential politics. They wanted to promote Christmas trees. They lost years and years of opportunities, and still are dealing with the hangover from that.”

Robert Bates, a professor of horticulture at Penn State University, lamented: “It probably would have been approved much sooner, but for David Addington’s article. Once that piece created the (misguided) illusion that the Obama administration was ‘taxing Christmas’ the issue became a political hot potato and USDA delayed the process until later.”

Now that the Christmas Tree Promotion Board is in session, maybe Christmas tree growers in the United States can finally follow their star

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