Jen Rubin, I wish I knew how to quit you. I thought you'd worked it out for us, really: You'd quit your old job at The Washington Post, where you held the "token RINO so appalled by Donald Trump you declared yourself an independent while spewing Democrat talking points" chair...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries probably can't stop the government from reopening at the expense of the Democrats' precious Obamacare subsidies, but darned if the guy ain't trying. In what may be a foreboding sign regarding negotiations over a longer-term solution to the health care issue, Rep. Jeffries and a...

Recently I was asked by Bandit to write an article about how the GOP lacks confidence. I have been thinkin’ on this task for a few days. Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, you have to admit one thing about him… he never lacks self assurance. You could park a Mack truck in the shadow of his ego. While many naysayers feel like this is a character flaw, the truth is, it’s actually one ore thing he has in common with the legends who built and shaped America. Most of them believed in, believing in yourself. Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there” and Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” It would behoove the members of the Republican party to emulate Trump’s self-reliance, and wear it proudly the same way they do the red hats and blue suits with red ties. This week’s elections ushered in a socialist Muslim as the mayor of New York City, showed us very plainly what happens when the GOP cowers in the corner like an abused wife in a Lifetime movie. For far too long the GOP has allowed the liberal media to metaphorically beat them down…. And that lack of conviction, and the cowering in the face of the brutal, battering confidence of the Democrats, has lead to a repetitive scenario where the GOP can’t seem to hold their own on ballots that aren’t offering the name Trump as a selection. We BELIEVE in him… so now its time to believe in ourselves the same way. As Henry Ford said… If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. We know in our hearts that the Right is right. We know there are only two genders. We know the laws regarding the border. We know it’s wrong to sexually groom or mutilate children. We know it’s wrong to ridicule God and murder unborn babies and to vote in Socialists as Mayor of the very heart of American capitalism. We just lack the confidence to stand up and shout it from the rooftops. We fear reprisal. We fear being called racists or bigots or Nazis. Well, sticks and stones, guys. Rise above the chatter with your belief in your own convictions. Stop hiding under your desks. Stop being the ‘silent majority’….. Be like Trump. America was FOUNDED on unbridled confidence accomplishing things that no one thought possible. Paul Revere screaming through the streets on thundering hooves… minute men hiding in the bushes till they saw the whites of their eyes… Confederates taking on a whole damned government.. slaves crawling through the mud with bloodhounds on their heels…Suffragists starving themselves till they earned the right to vote… wagon trains of settlers struggling and dying across the West.. sometimes we won.. sometimes we lost… but always, ALWAYS, we believed in our causes and were willing to fight to the death for them. Life is tough, my darlings, but so are y’all. – Amy The post Confidence by Amy Irene White appeared first on Bikernet.com - Online Biker Magazine.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani confirmed Tuesday that he will reach out to President Trump before taking office New Year’s Day, telling NBC New York in an interview that the relationship between City Hall and the White House “will be critical to the success of the city.” Mamdani had already complained that Trump didn’t congratulate him on […] The post Zohran to Reach Out to the President: It’s Critical to Success appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

What makes a crowd at a Scott Wiener event “boo” in disgust? A woman saying that a man who identifies as a woman is not, in fact, a woman. “They are men,” Tish Hyman, the woman at the center of a viral video calling for men to stay out of women’s locker rooms, told the crowd Monday night. Hyman flew across the state for Wiener’s first appearance as a congressional candidate. He was doing an interview with Mission Local, a news outlet in San Francisco, in front of a sold-out crowd. Had a chance to have a conversation with Senator Weiner. It was an honest one. I am hopeful that this is the first of many conversations we will have regarding women’s safety . Senator Weiner said he likes working with fresh young people and that he is open to ideas. And… pic.twitter.com/qEWcuh6DXJ — Tish Hyman (@listen2tish) November 11, 2025 “As a lesbian woman who was attacked in a woman’s locker room at Gold’s Gym this week by a self-identifying trans woman with a documented history of domestic violence, I’m deeply concerned about women’s safety,” Hyman told Wiener as he opened the floor up for questions. “What would you say to women who are seeking assurance that their safety will be protected from men who by California law can self-identify as women in women-only spaces?” Hyman asked. The state senator, who has taken no action to protect women from men in any space, replied in part: “Trans women are women.” Hyman vehemently disagreed, and the crowd erupted in boos. “Trans women are women,” someone yelled at Hyman from across the room. Wiener attempted to answer Hyman’s question on how he would protect women. “I mean, I want everyone to be safe and we have trans people — both men and women who are men and women…” Wiener said. It’s not the answer Hyman wanted to hear. The leftist crowd turned on Hyman, who still made her points clear to Wiener. She said it’s the first of many conversations she hopes to have with him to make California safer. “I see a lot of these bills that are dangerous for women and young children. I am telling you as a woman first and foremost, this is dangerous. We need your help because you’re in the office,” Hyman said. Wiener claimed he appreciates Hyman’s point of view, but “trans women are also brutalized in this country.” Hyman boldly told the state senator in response to his statement that trans women aren’t women. She said it as clearly as she has in every video she’s made since being catapulted into the fight for women’s rights. One of the trans-identifying men Hyman exposed in her videos for allegedly harassing her in the women’s locker room had a lengthy rap sheet of charges, including domestic violence. The Daily Wire obtained arrest records for Grant Freeman, which said he slammed his ex-wife into a toilet seat. She told that to the crowd, too. Crickets. Before she left the venue, she let Wiener know she thought he was doing nothing to protect women. Hyman said after her exchange with Wiener that she wants women to know she will not stop fighting. “Collectively we have the strength to win this together,” she said.

The House races to vote on a resolution that could end the government shutdown, the FDA removes black box warnings for hormone replacement therapy drugs, and we look at the role media bias played in shaping Americans’ views on the shutdown. It’s Wednesday, November 12, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire: House Shutdown Vote? Topline: The government shutdown appears to be on the verge of finally ending, as both parties debate the future of healthcare, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fends off calls for his resignation. The federal government may finally reopen on Wednesday. The bill broke through the Senate with the help of eight Democrats. That bill will now go to the House, and it is expected to begin voting today at around 4:00 p.m. ET. This is a major development following the longest government shutdown in American history, and it comes at a time when D.C. is deeply politically divided. There has been a lot of pushback, not only against the Democrats who voted to reopen the government, but also against Minority Leader Schumer, who is now facing calls to step down or even be primaried in 2028. What does D.C. do next? Once the government is back in operation, the focus will shift back to healthcare, but the debate will look different. During the shutdown, Democrats said they wanted the continuing resolution to be contingent upon continuing subsidies for Obamacare. Now, as part of the Senate deal, Democrats want to bring that discussion back next month, since the government will only be funded through the end of January if the bill passes. The shutdown debate could flare up again if lawmakers don’t figure this out before funding runs out. If the subsidies don’t continue, opponents have said that a coming premium spike is proof that the Affordable Care Act was not sustainable in the first place. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said that this deal was the Senate’s, and that the House didn’t make any promises on its end, so there hasn’t been a commitment yet to finding a solution to Obamacare subsidies. Trumpcare: There has been discussion on tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts. President Donald Trump has also floated giving some of the subsidy money back to the American people. Trump has argued that many of these subsidies only benefited large insurance companies. “Instead of going to the insurance companies, I want the money to go into an account for people where the people buy their own health insurance. If we did that, that would be so exciting. Call it Trumpcare,” the president said. HRT Black Box Warning Axed Topline: The FDA is removing “black box” warnings from hormone replacement therapy for menopause symptoms. The reversal is earning high praise from both the medical establishment and medical outsiders.  The warnings were slapped on HRT for menopausal and perimenopausal women more than two decades ago by the FDA. But FDA Commissioner Marty Makary says those warnings were unnecessary, harmful, and based on a significantly flawed 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study that connected this treatment to an increase in breast cancer risk. Why it matters: While currently fewer than 5% of menopausal women take HRT, Dr. Makary says between 50 and 70 million women have been denied or discouraged from taking the treatment since that study was mainstreamed. Makary also says the vast majority of those women were denied life-changing or even life-saving treatment.  “Women who go through menopause and start hormone replacement therapy have profound short-term and long-term health benefits, including reducing the risk of bone fractures by 50-60% later in life, reducing the risk of fatal heart attacks by 30-50%,” Makary told Morning Wire. “That’s the number one cause of death in women – and reducing cognitive decline. There may be no medication in the modern era, aside from perhaps antibiotics or vaccines, that can improve the health outcomes of women on a population level more than hormone replacement therapy started within 10 years of the onset of menopause.” Makary noted that this treatment is for the vast majority of women in this phase of life, though he said there are rare exceptions to that, for example, if a woman currently has breast cancer. Women should talk to their doctors before receiving treatment. View from the experts: Major medical groups are supporting this. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which represents more than 60,000 physicians and medical professionals, praised the FDA for empowering women. The Menopause Society, the American Association of Clinical Urologists, and the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy organization, also applauded this change from the FDA. Also of note, Harvard Medicine Magazine last year acknowledged that this Women’s Health Initiative study “has widely been considered flawed.” Democrat-Media Complex Topline: With the government shutdown poised to end on a sour note for most Democrats, it has become painfully obvious just how eager some in the media were to put their thumbs on the scales.  The legacy media coverage was biased against Republicans over the shutdown, and the numbers prove it. The Media Research Center conducted a study of the first full month of the shutdown, from October 1 to October 31. It looked at the evening news broadcasts on the three major networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – and discovered that 87% of the network news coverage during that time had been skewed in favor of the Democrats. The center evaluates only the statements made by anchors and experts who are supposed to be nonpartisan, which would exclude comments from elected Democrats or Republicans, or from pundits who are decidedly partisan. Using that framework, it found 83 statements about the shutdown that were critical of Republicans and only 12 that were critical of Democrats. Those same people, despite discussing the shutdown on multiple broadcasts, showed very little interest in discussing why the government was shut down or who repeatedly voted against the clean continuing resolution that would have reopened the government. According to the center, “On both ABC and CBS, only 12.5 percent of reports on either network mentioned this basic detail. On NBC, that fact was included in just 31 percent of newscasts.” View from the media: On CNN, the network is laying it on thick against Schumer and highlighting the blowback against him within his own party. CNN pollster Harry Enten sounded off: “ What about Democrats nationwide feeling about Chuck Schumer? I think the word of the day is terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.” The hosts of ABC’s “The View” have been gunning for Schumer since March because, as they said, he “caved” to avoid a shutdown early in Trump’s term. They re-upped calls for him to step aside on Monday, and on Tuesday, they spent some time yelling at Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman for voting in favor of his constituents not starving. There’s a bit of a pile-on effect happening right now. The argument appears to be that the compromise has given President Trump yet another win, which is something Democrats and many in the legacy media hate to do.

Venezuela has announced a “massive mobilization” of its military in response to the increased U.S. military presence in the Caribbean Sea. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said Tuesday that Venezuelan military and reserve forces would carry out training exercises through Wednesday in response to the “imperialist threat” from the United States, according to CNN. Padrino López said that the order to put Venezuela on a war footing came from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The military buildup in Venezuela comes as the United States’ largest warship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and the rest of its carrier group entered the US Southern Command region. War Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the aircraft carrier to the Caribbean Sea last month to join U.S. forces policing international waters off Venezuela’s shores. “The enhanced U.S. force presence in the SOUTHCOM AOR will bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, according to the Miami Herald. “These forces will enhance and augment existing capabilities to disrupt narcotics trafficking and degrade and dismantle TCOs.” Last week, Russian-made anti-aircraft systems were seen inside the La Carlota military airport in Caracas. The Buk-M2E missile systems were tagged after Maduro sent out requests to Russia and China for aid against a possible attack from the United States. In addition to the systems seen at La Carlota, a slew of anti-air missile defense systems have been spotted being placed across Venezuela. Tensions between Caracas and Washington have soared since President Donald Trump took office over Venezuela’s ties to the international drug trade and the trafficking of drugs into the United States. In response, Trump has moved warships into the southern Caribbean Sea to target suspected drug boats and subs. The White House has also targeted Maduro personally. Trump said last month that he has approved CIA operations against Maduro in Venezuela, suggesting that the White House wants regime change in Caracas. Trump has also weighed whether to expand U.S. strikes against the drug trade to Venezuelan soil.

'Just the tip of the iceberg'