by Gary Spina Penny Chenery Editor’s Note: Miss Penny is now gone, and we would like to remember this very special lady and the most wonderful racehorse that ever lived. This is a great interview and one of her last. She died in 201,7 but was a very private person. Her horse, Secretariat or Big […] The post There Will Never Be Another Secretariat: Thank You Miss Penny [Reprint] appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

There are many ways in which the House of Representatives is feeling the effects of the absence of former Congresswoman Cori Bush. You might remember that Cori Bush was the only member of Congress in the history of this country who claimed to have performed a bona fide miracle while in office. Specifically, in a televised interview, Bush said that she once cured a woman’s cancer simply by placing her hands on the woman’s body. As she put it: “This [homeless] lady came to us, and she had these tumors, and she wanted us to like, feel them. … I laid hands on her and prayed, and then I felt that my hand was no longer touching a tumor. It shrank along with the others on her body. … And the lumps that were there were no longer there. She was so happy, and she went on about her day.” It’s too bad that this homeless woman disappeared, because this kind of interaction seems like the thing that cancer researchers might have been interested in following up on. But in any event, Bush didn’t stop there, because as we all know, you need *two* miracles in order to qualify for sainthood. Normally, these miraculous events occur after the saint has died. But Bush doesn’t have time for that. Therefore, she claimed that she also once helped a toddler take her first steps in St. Louis, even though the child was gravely ill. “I carried the child from the prayer room in the back of the church out into the sanctuary . . . ‘Walk,’ I said gently to the three-year-old girl, ‘You will walk.’ And this girl took her first step,” Bush wrote. Because Bush was voted out of office in the last election, unfortunately, we don’t hear stories like this anymore. Therefore, until Jesus himself returns, we can assume that countless hobos in St. Louis will continue to suffer needlessly from cancer and all kinds of other horrible afflictions. But despite that sad reality, it’s not all bad news. Consider the fact that, without Cori Bush’s voice to amplify them, a lot of fraudulent BLM narratives will die before they get started. We also won’t have to listen to her tributes to Michael Brown and George Floyd every year. So that’s something, at least. Yes, we’ve lost a miracle worker. But we’ve gained some peace and quiet. Or at least, we thought we gained some peace and quiet. At the moment, there is a concerted effort underway among House Democrats to revive the “legacy” of Cori Bush, such as it is. But they’re not revising the whole “bid for sainthood” routine. Instead, they’re doubling down on Cori Bush’s true passion in life, which is whipping up a race war. And to that end, Democrats are revitalizing one of Bush’s dumbest ideas, which is her plan to enact trillions of dollars in reparations. Quoting from The Hill: “A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and advocates on Thursday reintroduced a resolution to offer reparations to descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent. Representative Summer Lee led the reintroduction of the Reparations Now resolution, which was first introduced in 2023 by former Representative Cori Bush. The resolution calls for the federal government to allocate trillions of dollars in reparations to Black Americans.” WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show Keep in mind, the entire federal budget for the last fiscal year was around $7 trillion. So we’re talking about spending a very significant chunk of the federal budget on handouts to black people, essentially. And on top of these trillions of dollars in reparations, Cory Booker and Jasmine Crockett are planning to introduce the “Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Commission Act,” which would supposedly “acknowledge and memorialize the arrival of the first slave ship in the United States and the injustices suffered by people of color throughout history.” Here are Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee to explain. And I promise these clips aren’t sped up in any way, at least as far as I know. They’re simply talking really, really fast for some reason. Watch: Now, before we go any further with the specifics of this legislation, I have to provide something of a disclosure at this point. We’ve talked about the issue of reparations many times on this show, to be sure. But now I have a very personal stake in the issue. And that’s because recently, and somewhat unexpectedly — and I say this with nothing but modesty in my heart — I have become something of a pioneer when it comes to the issue of reparations in the United States. In fact, according to all available information, I am the only person in America who has actually paid reparations, along with the famed author Robin DiAngelo. Now, you might point out that I was undercover doing a movie when I paid my reparations. And you might point out that I took my reparations back immediately after the cameras were off. And you might point out that my reparations were like $20. And all of that’s true. But it’s not the important thing to keep in mind here. The important thing is that I’m an expert in this issue, and therefore, I have no choice but to chime in and provide my analysis. And with that in mind, the first thing that needs to be said is that, if we really want “reparations” for the descendants of slaves, then we’re going to spend a lot more than a few trillion dollars. That’s because every single person who’s alive right now on the planet, if you go back far enough, has ancestors who were slaves. Period, no exceptions. The Romans alone enslaved millions of people from all over the world. So did Egypt, Greece, China, the Persians, the Russians, the Mayans, the Aztecs, and Ottomans, and so on. And that’s not even getting into indentured servitude. Take a look at what happened to Irish Catholics in the 17th century in places like Barbados, for example. Technically, many of these Irishmen became “indentured servants,” not slaves. But in many cases, that meant that they were treated even worse than slaves, since they weren’t expected to work for their entire lives. Roughly half of them died within four years, by some estimates. As the researcher Michael Mahoney pointed out: “John Scott, an English adventurer who travelled in the West Indies during the Commonwealth, saw Irish servants working in field gangs with slaves, ‘without stockings under the scorching sun’. The Irish, he wrote, were ‘derided by the negroes, and branded with the Epithet of ‘white slaves.” … Once in the Caribbean, many plantation owners considered servants and freemen from Ireland as a potentially subversive lot who had to be controlled and kept in a labouring status. Punishments for attempted escapes included branding the letters ‘FT’ (Fugitive Traitor) on the servant’s forehead. One assembly member in Barbados is quoted in 1667 as stating, ‘We have more than a good many Irish amongst us, therefore I am for the downright Scott, who I am certain will fight without a crucifix about his neck.'” In other words, there’s obvious anti-Catholic bigotry at work here, and in many cases, these Irish servants were treated far worse than slaves as they worked alongside them. And this is just one of dozens more examples. Here’s another. Did you know that, in 1797, 20% of the U.S. federal budget — a total of one million dollars at the time — went to paying tribute to Muslim nations in North Africa, so that they’d stop enslaving white people? This was a big business for them; in total, they enslaved more than a million whites from both Europe and the United States. This was during the Barbary Wars. For context, today, we don’t spend anywhere near 20% of the U.S. budget on defense spending. But in 1797, we spent 20% of the budget on ransom payments to Algiers. And as we did so, the Africans made sure to mock Americans at every opportunity. The tribute was ultimately ferried to Constantinople by the frigate USS George Washington, and along the way, the Africans forced the American warship to fly an Ottoman flag. This was sadistic brutality at every level. They only stopped enslaving white people when they were forced to do so. These are chapters from American history that you don’t hear much about. Certainly, smooth-brained race hustlers like Ayanna Pressley won’t mention any of this. That’s because, as always, their goal isn’t actually to have a serious discussion about reparations — to the extent it’s even possible to do so. They know that this resolution has no chance of passing in either chamber of Congress, much less being signed into law. They know that this is a purely performative piece of legislation that’s intended to stoke racial conflict, and enrage as many people as possible so that they’ll feel entitled and envious. And then they might finally start rioting, as Democrats desperately want them to do. Of course, indirect, inexplicit reparations have already been paid — in the form of DEI policies, affirmative action, the welfare state, and every other policy put in place in the name of white guilt. Most of the federal government is a kind of make-work program for certain demographics, to funnel them taxpayer money without any accountability. And we see what good all of that has done for the black community. But explicit reparations — the kind where black Americans get money simply for being black Americans — will almost certainly never happen. From a political perspective, it’s not feasible. This is yet another failed idea from the Cori Bush playbook, one among many. At the same time, it’s interesting to note that this legislation comes at the very moment that white South Africans are fleeing their homeland, seeking refuge in the United States. They’re being forcibly evicted from their own homes solely because of their skin color, as we’ve discussed several times this week. And you know what that means: There’s about to be a lot more room in Africa for any supposedly oppressed group in the United States, including congresswomen like Ayanna Pressley. So maybe there’s an opportunity here for a kind of “reparation through repatriation.” Maybe we can offer some of these Democrats a taxpayer-funded, all-expenses-paid trip to whatever lands their ancestors came from. Since we’re judging everyone by their ancestors, it seems more than appropriate. Plus, they’ll gain access to plenty of fertile farmland in South Africa, as Don Lemon often reminds us. The opportunity for untold riches, in a land totally devoid of white people, is right there for the taking. Will Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee and all of these other Democrats seize that opportunity? Of course not. That’s because they know that, when given the opportunity, they can’t govern. They can’t improve anyone’s lives. They certainly can’t manage a farm. All they’re capable of doing is demonizing white people and looting the treasury. And without white people to demonize, there won’t be any money to loot. That’s why “reparations” is a losing issue for Democrats. It’s also why South Africa is about to collapse entirely. And it’s why, as more Americans wake up to the reality of what’s happening, politicians like Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee and Ilhan Omar will go the way of Cori Bush. They’ll be removed from Congress by the voters. That is the outcome these anti-white politicians are apparently clamoring for. And now that they’ve introduced this reparations bill once again, and made it clear they have no interest in representing all Americans regardless of race, we should give it to them.

Ten prison inmates, at least four of them charged with murder or attempted murder, have escaped from prison in New Orleans, Louisiana. On Friday morning at roughly 9:30 a.m., it was discovered that the men were missing from Orleans Parish Justice Center. “Photos released by the sheriff’s office show the inside of a cell where the escape is believed to have happened. A large hole was cut behind a toilet with phrases such as ‘We Innocent’ and ‘Too Easy LOL’ written above it,” NBC News reported. Sheriff Susan Hutson revealed the inmates had the help of people “inside of our department.” “Someone clearly dropped the ball and there’s no excuse for this,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill wrote. “I’m in communication with Troop NOLA and @LAStatePolice Superintendent Colonel Hodges. It’s all hands on deck. The first priority in any escape must be the immediate capture of the inmates and coordination with state and local law enforcement — but that effort cannot come at the expense of timely notification to the public, which is also critical to keeping communities safe. My office will do whatever it takes to determine how this happened and make sure that it won’t happen again. I am calling for a full investigation – This is beyond unacceptable, and once these offenders are back in custody, there must be real accountability.” Someone clearly dropped the ball and there’s no excuse for this. I’m in communication with Troop NOLA and @LAStatePolice Superintendent Colonel Hodges. It’s all hands on deck. The first priority in any escape must be the immediate capture of the inmates and coordination with… pic.twitter.com/APXD9Gj7UE — Attorney General Liz Murrill (@AGLizMurrill) May 16, 2025 According to Deputy Chief of Field Operations Bureau Christopher Goodly, the men should be considered armed and dangerous. Not only have four of the escapees been charged with murder or attempted murder, others have been charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, armed robbery with a firearm, armed false imprisonment, or battery and drug offenses. One man has been caught. Kendall Myles was discovered hiding under a car in the Hotel Monteleone parking garage in the French Quarter. Troop NOLA Troopers located escapee Kendall Myles in the French Quarter this morning. After a brief foot pursuit, he was apprehended on Royal Street. Troopers continue working with partners to locate the remaining escapees and ensure public safety. #troopnola pic.twitter.com/ef5FM55YRS — LA State Police (@LAStatePolice) May 16, 2025 “Thank you to Troop NOLA for their diligence and speed in apprehending the first escapee,” Gov. Jeff Landry posted on X. “To the other 10: YOU ARE NEXT! @OrleansParishSO and @SheriffHutson must be working in total conjunction with Troop NOLA. There is no time to waste!” Thank you to Troop NOLA for their diligence and speed in apprehending the first escapee. To the other 10: YOU ARE NEXT! @OrleansParishSO and @SheriffHutson must be working in total conjunction with Troop NOLA. There is no time to waste! https://t.co/4YZzcSlWDa — Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) May 16, 2025  

A former police officer was charged last week with leaking the writings of the transgender-identifying woman who murdered three children and three adults at the Covenant School in March 2023. But retired Lt. Garet Davidson — who was arrested and jailed on May 6 — says that he’s innocent. Davidson claims he’s being retaliated against for a complaint he filed against the department criticizing its Covenant investigation in May 2024, four months after he retired. Davidson’s May 2024 complaint against the police department alleges numerous instances of misconduct by top police officials, including mismanagement of the Covenant investigation, a pattern of bias in disciplinary investigations, altering performance results for low-achieving recruits, avoiding accountability, and failure to follow sexual harassment policies. Davidson’s legal team believes that the charges were brought in retaliation for his efforts to expose problems at the police department. “The charges against retired MNPD Lieutenant Garet Davidson represent a transparent attempt to discredit and silence a whistleblower who exposed serious misconduct within the Metro Nashville Police Department,” Davidson’s legal team said. “We look forward to vigorously defending Mr. Davidson against these retaliatory charges.” Davidson has been outspoken about the investigation into the Covenant shooting, telling conservative radio host Michael Patrick Leahy in June 2024 that the FBI sent a memo to police instructing them not to release any details of the attacker’s writings. At the time, Davidson said that he had some concerns that there would be action taken against him based on the information he had shared about the FBI memo. “I don’t put it beyond anybody,” he said. “Part of the reason why I left law enforcement was to avoid some aspects of retaliation, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.” In the charges unveiled last week, Davidson is accused of being involved in the leak of the writings of the woman who entered the Covenant School, a Christian school in an affluent Nashville neighborhood, on March 27, 2023, and murdered six people before she was killed by police. Following the attack, the police announced that the shooter had a “manifesto,” but refused to release it to the public. Despite that refusal, media outlets, including The Daily Wire, obtained portions and uncovered that the shooter wrote frequently of her desire to be a man and anger at her parents for resisting her so-called transition. Prior to his arrest last week, Davidson had been linked to the police department’s investigation into the leak. His home was raided by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in November 2024 in relation to the investigation into the leak. He faces two indictments: one charges him with theft, two counts of burglary, and 30 counts of official misconduct; the other charges him with six counts of official misconduct related to the Covenant School shooting. The raid came after he was named in a June 2024 court filing on the leak, though he was not directly named as a leaker. That came just weeks after he filed a misconduct complaint against the police department, which included criticism of the Covenant investigation. A GoFundMe Davidson set up to help with his legal expenses has been shut down. A spokesman for the platform told The Daily Wire that the fundraiser was removed because of its policies not to raise money for “the legal defense of financial and violent crimes, including those related to money laundering, murder, robbery, assault, battery, sex crimes or crimes against minors.” The spokesman did not further elaborate on why the fundraiser had been shut down. Last month, the Nashville police department released its final investigative report into the shooting. The report, released over two years after the attack, downplayed the attacker’s hatred of Christianity and fixation on gender ideology and “white privilege.”

Self-described “working class” Democrat congressional hopeful Hanna Trudo was exposed after conservative podcast hosts discovered her Ferrari ownership and membership on a millionaire dating site. Trudo, a former journalist for The Daily Beast, Politico, and The Hill, announced her potential congressional run for New Hampshire’s first district in early May, claiming that she grew up in a “working-class” family that received heating assistance. “Like many families, we received heating assistance at times to get through our freezing winters. While my mom was not able to go to college or buy a home due to the high cost of living, she worked tirelessly as a public school Title 1 reading aide,” Trudo wrote in her campaign announcement, according to the Daily Mail. The hosts of the conservative “Ruthless” podcast began investigating Trudo’s background after she initially offered to appear on their show, but then reportedly ghosted producers for several weeks. Their investigation uncovered a profile on Luxy, an exclusive dating website that requires users to have a “verified annual income” exceeding $200,000 and describes itself as a platform where “only sophisticated, successful and people of quality join.” According to Luxy’s website, “60% of our members have a verified annual income of more than €200,000,” or $223,000, and “41% verified income greater than €1 million,” or $1.1 million. On the dating profile featuring her name and photo, Trudo described herself as a “senior political correspondent, splitting my time between DC (weekdays), NYC, & Miami (for fun).” The podcast team also discovered that Trudo had posted an image of a Ferrari on social media, offering it for sale. Trudo responded to the Daily Mail article on X, writing: “Sorry gentlemen, I like fashion AND Medicare for All! $15 minimum wage.” “You can try and shame me into not running for NH1 because you hate progressives, but not for being a fabulous woman.” Sorry gentlemen, I like fashion AND Medicare for All! $15 minimum wage. You can try and shame me into not running for #NH1 because you hate progressives, but not for being a fabulous woman Live Free or Die #nhpolitics https://t.co/7NxPKLSEAB — Hanna Trudo (@HCTrudo) May 16, 2025 Trudo initially announced her interest in running for Congress with messaging focused heavily on working-class advocacy. “I’m simply writing with the same fire I’ve spit for the past decade: Democrats must be better,” she wrote in her campaign memo, per NBC News. “Under Donald Trump’s off-brand of authoritarian politics, we are no longer free. Our First Amendment freedoms are being cruelly ripped away by Trump, Elon Musk and other obscenely rich, unelected tech lackeys who have contempt for us.” She specifically cited Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) failed presidential campaign as her inspiration to explore a run for office, emphasizing that “new blood matters alongside a working class agenda.” Her announcement was met with amusement from conservative media outlets, who pointed to her candidacy as more evidence that many Washington, D.C., journalists harbor partisan Democratic leanings while claiming journalistic objectivity. The Washington Free Beacon combed through Trudo’s tweets, revealing a “left-wing activist feed” convinced that America was “no longer free” under President Donald, in addition to less-than-objective headlines like “Sanders steps back into role as anti-oligarch crusader.” NEW: Hanna Trudo, a journalist who covered the Democratic Party for The Hill, is “exploring” a run for Congress in New Hampshire. It seems redundant to mention that Trudo would be running as a Democrat, but there you have it.@AndrewStilesUSA has reviewed Trudo’s social media… pic.twitter.com/FPemlT9kKa — Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) May 6, 2025 New Hampshire’s first congressional district is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Chris Pappas, who announced that he is running for Senate in 2026.

WASHINGTON—About 1.4 million illegal immigrants are enrolled in Medicaid, something House Republicans hope to change. To the White House, this is a clear instance of lawmakers eliminating fraud and saving taxpayers’ money. But to Democrats, it’s the worst of all possible things: Republican attempts to cut Medicaid. A provision in the budget reconciliation currently being debated on Capitol Hill would block anyone from receiving Medicaid if they cannot verify immigration status, nationality, or citizenship. “We’re making sure no illegals are going to be in the program,” Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter told The Daily Signal. “We are making sure people aren’t registered in more than one state. We’re making sure there are going to be work requirements…to fear-monger that we’re trying to kick people off is simply untrue.” Every Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee opposed the bill, Breitbart reports, and vociferously condemned it for blocking illegals from receiving Medicaid. And the Democrat lawmakers argue that the bill is purposefully snatching healthcare from Americans in order to fund the wealthy. Just like we’ve said all along, @HouseCommerce‘s reconciliation bill addresses illegal immigrants, ineligible recipients, and able bodied adults choosing not to work. pic.twitter.com/luCeVKNvTv — Energy and Commerce Committee (@HouseCommerce) May 13, 2025 In a statement, Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D, NJ) argued that “this is not a moderate bill, and it is not focused on cutting ‘waste, fraud, and abuse.’” (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images) “Instead,” Pallone argued, “Republicans are intentionally taking health care away from millions of Americans so they can give giant tax breaks to the ultra-rich who don’t need them.” The White House has a different take. “President Trump and Republicans are protecting Medicaid,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told The Daily Wire, “and that starts with kicking 1.4 million illegal immigrants off the program to prioritize the Americans who need it.” Conservative healthcare experts agree. They say the bill is not full of Medicaid cuts, but changes to ensure the program is being received fairly. “The proposals are not benefit or service cuts, but commonsense administrative changes aimed at weeding out fraud, waste and abuse and bringing about much-needed transparency, accountability, and fairness to the program,” Nina Schaefer, the director of the Center for Health and Welfare Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire. Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, argued that “Republicans have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to restore fiscal sanity to Medicaid.” Pipes, who praised the package for incentivizing states not to grant Medicaid to illegal immigrants, actually believes the package doesn’t go far enough, calling for Republicans to “reduce the federal match for Medicaid’s expansion population to the level for the legacy population.” “States currently receive seven times more federal funding for covering the able-bodied under Obamacare’s expansion of the program than for covering Medicaid’s legacy population of pregnant women, the disabled, and children,” she added. “That discrepancy makes no sense.” The White House is aggressively defending the reconciliation bill, dubbed “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump, as a “generational opportunity to deliver the long-term changes Americans voted for.” They argue that it is the largest tax cut in American history, including no tax on tips or tax on overtime, secures the border permanently by funding the border wall and boosting law enforcement on the front lines, modernizes air traffic control, and blocks tax-payer funded gender procedures for minors. And the Trump administration clearly considers its efforts to boot illegals off Medicaid as a winning message, while Democrats continue to hype their concerns despite polling showing that 71% of Americans strongly favor removing illegals from the program and requiring all who want Medicaid to work if they are able.

Billy Joel turned 76 on May 9, and friends and family spent the day sharing well wishes with The Piano Man. He’s spent decades entertaining millions, including a record-breaking residency at Madison Square Garden that lasted more than 10 years and 150 shows. Billy Joel is the consummate entertainer, but recently, he’s had to put his health first. In March, the singer announced on his website that he was postponing shows due to a “medical condition.” He planned to hit the stage again on July 5 at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh. “While I regret postponing any shows, my health must come first. I look forward to getting back on stage and sharing the joy of live music with our amazing fans. Thank you for your understanding,” Billy Joel shared. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Billy Joel (@billyjoel) Billy Joel’s Wife Gave An Update On His Health Alexis Roderick Joel spoke about Billy Joel’s health during a recent interview with Fox News Digital. “He’s doing well. It’s funny, I was just having this conversation the other day. He’s going to be 76. And I don’t think of him that way. People don’t think of him in that way, but he is. And he’s been doing this job nonstop for 15 years — just this recent run,” Alexis said. She added that show business requires a lot of scheduling, and sometimes things get in the way. “With the exception of COVID, he’s been working every two weeks for 15-plus years—and it’s a lot. At 75, 76, there comes a time where you can’t always plan out everything you need to do a year and a half in advance, you know? And that’s how long these schedules are. That’s when you’re booking things. You’re booking it that long prior, Alexis dais.” Alexis said Billy Joel cares for his health, and a little setback won’t discourage him. “In the grand scheme of things, he’s a healthy person, and he’s well and working on himself, trying to get better and do what he has to do medically. So it’s important, you know, we need him around so he has to do what he has to do,” Alexis said. This story’s featured image is by Ethan Miller/Getty Images. The post Billy Joel’s Wife Gives Update On Husband’s Health appeared first on InspireMore.