"Misinformation" is what politicians call information they don't like. The post Gov. Newsom Complains About “Hurricane Force Winds” of “Misinformation” appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

Rudy Giuliani has been held in contempt of court for the second time in a week.The former New York mayor is accused of spreading misinformation after the 2020 election. District Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling Friday came as Giuliani allegedly continues to make allegedly false insinuations about two Georgia election workers. This is long after they […] The post Rudy Giuliani Held in Contempt for a 2nd Time by a Partisan Judge appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

We know little about the undersea cable network, and it can be a significant problem. A Chinese vessel recently cut a Taiwanese cable. People see it as part of the pressure campaign against Taiwan. The expert in the clip below explains how they can determine if the cutting of the cables is deliberate and not […] The post The Attacks on the Undersea Cable Network appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The New Orleans Police Department released bodycam footage on Friday that showed Islamic terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar firing upon responding police officers after he mowed down people with his truck on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day. Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Texas, was shot and killed when officers returned fire. The terrorist killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more when he sped down Bourbon Street in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. Footage taken from the bodycam worn by officer Luis Robles shows him and at least two other officers approaching Jabbar’s rented truck. Robles and officer Christian Beyer stood by the truck with their guns drawn after Jabbar crashed, the Associated Press reported. One officer yelled, “Put your hands up” before gunfire erupted. The bodycam footage showed a flash come from Jabbar’s gun before the officers ran for cover. Beyer, officer Jacobie Jordan, and Sgt. Nigel Daggs returned fire and killed the terrorist. New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick called the officers “national heroes” and said they responded to the threat according to procedures. “Officers are trained for shoot scenarios like that — they’re highly trained, and that’s what you saw. These are split-second decisions,” Kirkpatrick said. “All officers are faced with ‘shoot, don’t shoot.’ And this was clearly within the law and clearly, solidly within policy,” she added. Daggs is a 21-year veteran of the New Orleans Police Department while Beyer and Jordan have been with the department for nearly two years. Jordan and officer Joseph Rodrigue were wounded in the shootout and have since been released from the hospital, NBC News reported. WARNING: The following footage could be disturbing to some viewers. Breaking News: This is video from the police warn body camera of the moments leading up to the shootout between the man who attacked New Orleans on Bouborn street for New Year’s Day and @NOPDNews after he hit multiple people and crashed his car. It shows the driver of the white… pic.twitter.com/S7CCH7DKsu — Cassie Schirm (@Cassiewdsu) January 10, 2025 Authorities are still investigating the attack, and Kilpatrick said more bodycam footage will be released in the future. Officials are also looking into the security measures that were in place to protect people who were ringing in the New Year. Despite owning portable steel barriers that are often used to block off streets during large events, the city did not use any of the steel barriers to block off Bourbon Street during the New Year’s Day celebration. Jabbar accessed the bustling street by driving past a police car that was parked to block it off. JOIN THE MOVEMENT IN ’25 WITH 25% OFF DAILYWIRE+ ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS WITH CODE DW25 Kilpatrick said last week that she didn’t know about the steel barriers in the city’s possession. “I didn’t know about them, but we have them,” Kirkpatrick told reporters, according to CNN. “And so we have been able now to put them out.” Last week, the FBI revealed footage of the terrorist placing two IEDs on Bourbon Steet just over an hour before his attack. Jabbar hid the IEDs in coolers, but they weren’t detonated during the attack. Authorities found a transmitter to detonate the IEDs in the terrorist’s truck along with an ISIS flag. Jabbar recently became radicalized. In a video he recorded in the rented pickup truck on his way to carry out the attack, Jabbar said, “I wanted to record this message for my family. I wanted you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this year,” according to The New York Times. In the video, Jabbar added that he considered killing his family members so they could “witness the killing of the apostates.”

There’s now a very noticeable pattern that plays out every time we witness a colossal failure on the national stage. It happened after the Secret Service allowed Donald Trump to get shot in the head in Pennsylvania. It happened after Harvard’s president was exposed for plagiarism, and after Kamala Harris lost the presidential election. Here’s how it usually goes: Conservatives pointed out that DEI was involved in some way. And then everyone on the Left acted with shock and indignation at the mere suggestion that DEI might have backfired.  DEI, they tell us, is an essential mandate that always adds value. It’s vital to every organization. And then, in the same breath, they tell us that DEI can’t possibly be related to any failure by any organization or government agency that practices DEI. In other words, DEI is either critically important or not important at all, depending on how things are going.  As entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles are destroyed by fires, once again, we’re seeing this familiar pattern play out. As we talked about yesterday, conservatives have pointed out that DEI has infected every aspect of the government of Los Angeles, and in particular its Fire Department. And in response, as they usually do, the Left has insisted that DEI actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the fires, or the disastrous response to them. And they’re wagging their fingers at anyone who suggests otherwise. Rolling Stone, in particular, was upset with my response to the wildfires. The published an article the other day entitled, “RIGHT-WINGERS ARE BLAMING THE L.A. FIRES ON DIVERSITY.” Here’s part of it: “Climate-denying conservatives are instead blaming the devastation on California’s ‘woke’ policies. … ‘Los Angeles deliberately set out to exclude white men from becoming firefighters, and now they don’t have enough firefighters to prevent their city from burning to the ground,’ wrote right-wing commentator Matt Walsh in one post endorsed by Elon Musk. ‘DEI is a cancer that destroys everything it touches.'” Now, first of all, I had to look up who wrote this article, because it reads like something our PR department would come up with. The whole article is just a series of quotes — from myself, Alex Jones, Elon Musk, Megyn Kelly, and so on. And sure enough, the author is one Nikki McCann Ramirez, a former Media Matters staffer. She’s apparently found another organization that’s willing to pay her to write articles about my tweets, after Elon Musk sued Media Matters into the ground. The only original contribution that Nikki Ramirez made to the article is this line of commentary at the end. It reads: “There’s no evidence that the fire department’s push for diversity has any effect on its ability to fight fires.” It’s a line that made me realize we need to do another deep-dive on DEI in the Los Angeles Fire Department, because it’s completely false. But a lot of people on the Left are still repeating it. And they’re repeating this line because they think it’s safe. In their minds, it’s impossible to find a “smoking gun” that proves DEI leads directly to failure. After all, DEI is a bureaucratic system. And the whole point of bureaucracy is to make it impossible to assign blame. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show Unfortunately for Rolling Stone and the rest of these activists, the leaders of the Los Angeles Fire Department haven’t been subtle about their DEI policies, and the impact these policies have on their job performance. In fact, they’ve actually been quite direct about it. Here’s a video of Deputy Chief Kristine Larson, the head of the Fire Department’s “Equity and Human Resources Bureau.” You may have seen a shortened version of this video online, because it’s going viral. I found a longer, unedited version of it. And it’s worth watching because it implicates both the LAPD and the LAFD. And it also includes the context, to the extent you need it. Here it is:   It looks like some kind of AI-generated parody, but it’s not. So let’s review what we just saw. The first claim from the Deputy Fire Chief is that, when you have a medical emergency or when your house is on fire, all you care about is seeing first responders who “look like you.” You don’t care if they’re good at their jobs. You’re not worried about their CPR certifications, or their ability to put out fires. Instead, the most important thing is the appearance of the firefighter — meaning their skin color and gender. And the LAPD sergeant agrees with that. This isn’t a claim that needs to be broken down and dissected in a million different ways. But just for fun, let’s do that. First of all, let’s assume this is true. Let’s assume that, when white people call 911 in Los Angeles because their house is burning down, they really don’t want to see black firefighters show up. So when a team of all-white firefighters show up, in Kristine Lawson’s worldview, it would be totally normal and appropriate for the white homeowner to say, “Thank God they didn’t send any black firefighters.” After all, he wants to see people who look like him. What’s wrong with that? Of course, what Kristine Larson really means is that non-white firefighters should want to see non-white firefighters respond to their house. But there’s still a big problem here. I’d wager a lot of money that there’s not a single black person on the planet who would react with relief or joy, if they called 911 and someone like Kristine Larson waddled up to their door. That would be a moment of sheer panic for anyone, regardless of skin color. That would be the moment they knew that their life was over. But even if we assume that black people demand to be saved by overweight black lesbian firefighters like Kristine Larson, there’s still another problem with Larson’s explanation, which is this: How exactly would dispatchers know what race of firefighters to send to a particular call? Should the dispatcher demand to know the callers’ race? Should they dispatch race-matching fire crews? Is any of this happening right now in Los Angeles? By the logic of the Deputy Fire Chief, it should be happening. And then, of course, comes the second part of the video, in which Larson responds to someone who’s worried that, as an overweight black lesbian, she won’t be able to lift a man and remove him from a house fire. Larson’s response is that the man shouldn’t have put himself in that position in the first place. She couldn’t be making it any clearer that DEI hiring compromises the fire department’s ability to do its job. She thinks it’s a laugh line, apparently. This is how DEI hires at the highest levels of the Los Angeles Fire Department are talking about the impact of DEI on their jobs. But Larson has never been disqualified or punished in any way. She has a job paying well over $300,000 a year at the Los Angeles Fire Department, in which she enforces various equity mandates while she laughs at people who ask why she’s so overweight. And part of that job apparently entails weeding out alleged “bigots” in the ranks of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Watch:   This is reminiscent of Lloyd Austin’s big plan to purge the Pentagon of “extremist white supremacists,” by which he meant, white people who support Donald Trump and refuse to take the COVID shot. It’s the kind of thing that no public agency in the United States should be doing, for about a million reasons. First of all, the idea of “racism” in fire departments and police departments has been stretched beyond all recognition, to the point that it’s completely meaningless. As we discussed earlier this week, fire departments all over the country are getting sued right now for “racism” because they attempt to enforce basic standards of literacy and competence in the admissions process. Secondly, this is a department that’s now very short of manpower during a historic crisis. Barring extreme circumstances, they should not be weeding out any competent firefighters right now. The Los Angeles Fire Department should be focused on retaining as many firefighters as possible — not firing them for liking an offensive meme or something. And if you doubt that, take a look at Ferguson, Missouri, or Minneapolis, or Baltimore. Have any of these cities become safer, after the BLM revolution? Of course not. The real purpose of all of these purges is to punish anyone who thinks an unapproved thought that also happens to be true. They don’t want people to make obvious observations like this one: Women shouldn’t be firefighters at all. Any effort to include more women is by definition an effort to make the fire department less equipped and less capable. The same is true for police departments, which are being gutted all over the country in the name of equity. Just this week, the Maryland State Police agreed to a $3 million settlement with Joe Biden’s DOJ over their hiring practices. As one local news station reports: “The lawsuit claimed that the Maryland Department of State Police violated Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it used a certain physical fitness test and a certain written test to hire entry-level troopers. The lawsuit claimed the tests disqualified more women and African American applicants than others and were not job-related.” In other words, in the world of policing, physical fitness and literacy are no longer “job-related,” apparently. This is how many police and fire departments now operate. They know they have to hire and promote incompetent people. This is the kind of deliberate sabotage that has directly contributed to the disaster that’s unfolding in Los Angeles. Instead of spending every moment thinking about protecting their state, the leadership of California has been busy appointing “equity” overseers. So, when a disaster occurs, they have no idea what to do. That led to this clown-car performance from Gavin Newsom yesterday. He told a constituent he was on the phone with Joe Biden. Then, when she asked to talk to Joe Biden, he admitted he didn’t have cell service. Watch:   If thousands of people weren’t having their lives destroyed right now, the incompetence would be pretty amusing. Instead, given the staggering nature of this catastrophe, it’s infuriating. And people are very, very tired of this kind of thing. They want competence to make a comeback. That would mean the Los Angeles Fire Department would have to fire some overweight lesbians who are making $300,000 a year. But it would also mean that, the next time a massive wildfire engulfs the city, Los Angeles might actually have water in the fire hydrants. They might have a mayor who’s on the scene, coordinating a response, instead of pandering in Africa. They might have enough firefighters to put out the blaze. That’s a turn of events that outlets like “Rolling Stone magazine” desperately wants to prevent. But at this point, it’s looking more likely than ever. DEI has been tried, and it has failed in spectacular fashion. Now it’s time for competent people to take over — even if they happen to be white men. The residents of Los Angeles might not understand much, but they understand survival. And at this point, that’s exactly what survival will take.

'high levels of government spending'

'716k fewer native-born Americans working today than pre-pandemic'

'It’s appalling'

With less than 10 days until President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, Republicans worry that government bureaucracy will prevent the new president from starting his term with a fully confirmed Cabinet.Cabinet and Cabinet-level nominees traditionally face extensive paperwork obligations, including FBI background checks and financial disclosures, but Republicans are now suggesting that this bureaucratic process has the potential to obstruct Trump’s agenda in the early days of his administration. As the Washington saying goes, “Personnel is policy.” The Senate needs to act quickly if senators want the Trump agenda to become the Trump reality.  Some Senate Republicans have proposed beginning the hearings for Trump’s nominees while the rest of their required paperwork is being completed. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, for example, has scheduled a hearing next week for energy secretary nominee Doug Burgum as he continues to complete his paperwork and send it to senators.  A majority of both Trump and Joe Biden’s initial Cabinet or Cabinet-level nominees who were not withdrawn were confirmed either in February or March of the president’s first year in office.  During Trump’s first term, his secretary of defense and secretary of homeland security nominees were the only nominees confirmed the first day. Those picks, Jim Mattis and John Kelly, had a much easier time navigating the national security bureaucracy as both were retired four-star Marine Corps generals. Their stars also evoked a certain level of deference from senators considering their confirmation. By the end of January 2017, Trump had five total Cabinet-level nominees confirmed (four department heads and the ambassador to the United Nations). The last initial Trump department nominee to be confirmed was the head of the Department of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, who took office on April 25, 2017, over a year after the administration began. Alex Acosta, Trump’s second nominee to lead the Department of Labor, was confirmed by the Senate two days later.  It was not until May 2017 that the Senate had fully confirmed all of Trump’s Cabinet and Cabinet-level posts. Biden had similar results getting his nominees confirmed before the end of his first month in office. He had four Cabinet-level positions filled by the end of January 2021. Those were his nominees to lead the Defense Department, State Department, and Treasury Department, plus the director of national intelligence. Biden’s last initial Cabinet-level nominee was confirmed just four months later, in May 2021.  Recent reporting on the nominees for the second Trump Cabinet has suggested that secretary of state nominee Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; ambassador to the United Nations nominee Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.; and director of Central Intelligence Agency nominee John Ratcliffe are the most likely to be confirmed on Day One.  Rubio appeared cheerful in a post about a meeting he had last month with Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and the hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about his nomination. Today began meeting with Senators about my nomination by @realDonaldTrump to serve as the next Secretary of State @SenatorRisch @LindseyGrahamSC pic.twitter.com/bEwhsMCKlz— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 3, 2024 Both Rubio and Stefanik have experience with contentious hearings through their time in Congress, and they both still have connections on Capitol Hill. Stefanik, known for her grilling of university presidents during a hearing on campus antisemitism, has not yet resigned her seat in the House of Representatives and has served in House GOP leadership, which means she has extensive relationships with both House and Senate members. Before Ratcliffe served as the director of national intelligence from May 2020 until the end of Trump’s first term, he also was a member of Congress. The combination of legislative and national security experience will serve as a boon for the CIA-bound Ratcliffe. But Rubio has an even greater advantage because he is not only a member of the body considering his nomination but is considered a leading voice on foreign affairs. Having won both houses of Congress and the White House, Republicans are tasked now with governing. They will have a lot on their plate in the upcoming months, including passing one or more reconciliation bills to attempt to implement many of Trump’s priorities, such as deporting illegal aliens, renewing the American energy industry, and passing tax cuts. Failing to implement such “America First” priorities has the potential to imperil the Republicans during the midterm elections. The post Trump Faces Starting Term Without a Cabinet appeared first on The Daily Signal.

While California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass blame this week’s devastating wildfires on climate change or claim that they did all they could to prepare, the evidence tells a different story. Their focus on a woke, climate-driven agenda has come at the expense of practical, effective wildfire prevention measures. The result? Lives lost, homes destroyed, and a state left unprepared. Mismanagement of Forests and Water Resources Decades of forest mismanagement have created a dangerous tinderbox across California. Overgrown vegetation, deadwood, and excess fuel such as dried leaves and fallen branches have accumulated unchecked, turning forests into powder kegs. Proactive measures like thinning trees, controlled burns, and vegetation management have been deprioritized due to excessive regulations and litigation driven by environmental groups. Newsom’s administration has compounded the problem by slashing budgets for fire prevention and delaying critical water infrastructure projects. Firefighters in Los Angeles battled this year’s blazes with insufficient water resources, a failure directly tied to Newsom’s inaction. Billions of dollars allocated for new reservoirs remain unspent while the state’s aging water infrastructure struggles to meet the growing demand. Bass worsened the situation by cutting $17.5 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, all while jetting off to Ghana during peak wildfire season. These decisions reflect a troubling detachment from the practical needs of Californians. Ideological Influence The root of these failures lies in an ideological agenda that prioritizes performative politics over governance. Newsom’s Green New Deal-inspired energy policies have worsened California’s wildfire crisis by misallocating resources and overregulating essential infrastructure. Meanwhile, activists oppose vital measures like logging, controlled burns, and timber sales, labeling them as environmentally harmful. This shortsightedness ignores the essential role these practices play in preventing catastrophic fires. California’s progressive leadership has also diverted resources away from wealthier neighborhoods under the guise of “antiracism,” a move that leaves all communities at greater risk. Instead of prioritizing public safety, they’ve fixated on initiatives like increasing diversity quotas and combating climate change—efforts that create more problems than they solve and do little to address the immediate threat of wildfires. A Strained Insurance Market Losses from recent wildfires are estimated to exceed $150 billion. Alas, insurers offering policies in the future will be hard to find. In recent years, their requests to increase premiums to reflect the soaring wildfire risk were denied by state regulators. Many left the state. And as they did, the burden has fallen on the state’s Fair Plan, a last-resort insurer now overwhelmed by surging policies. The lack of investment in fire prevention only exacerbates this problem, threatening the long-term affordability and availability of coverage in high-risk areas. Federal and State Failures California’s wildfire crisis isn’t solely a state-level failure. The federal government, which oversees much of California’s forestland, has also fallen short under the Biden administration. Effective wildfire mitigation requires state and federal cooperation, yet both levels of government have neglected their responsibilities. By contrast, the previous Trump administration took decisive action with Executive Order 13855, promoting active forest management to reduce wildfire risks. This approach emphasized thinning, timber sales, and reducing regulatory barriers—practical solutions that California desperately needs to revisit. Strengthening state-federal partnerships and encouraging public-private collaborations could provide the comprehensive strategy required to protect lives and property. A Call for Responsible Leadership California’s leadership crisis is not just about incompetence—it’s about priorities. Leaders like Newsom and Bass have chosen ideological distractions over practical governance, leaving millions of Californians vulnerable to preventable disasters. Their failures on wildfire prevention, water management, and public safety underscore the need for a new approach. Californians deserve leaders who prioritize solutions over slogans. Proactive forest management, modernized water infrastructure, and adequate funding for first responders are not optional—they are essential. It’s time to reject ideology and demand practical, forward-looking leadership that protects lives and property. The post California Burning: A Failure of Leadership Fueled by Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.