THE CENTER SQUARE—The Biden administration spent more than $10 million over three years on a security detail and related expenses for former First Son Hunter Biden after denying similar protections to other high-profile political figures, documents obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America and shared exclusively with The Center Square show. The security detail for former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, cost nearly $11 million, including on travel, real estate, and expensive hotels, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request CASA filed. The documents from Jan. 1, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2024, indicate that the Biden administration spent nearly $9.3 million on hotels, $1.1 million on air and rail travel, and nearly $600,000 on car transportation and rentals for Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail. “Due to reports that Hunter Biden was playing a senior role in advising his father within the White House in 2024, CASA filed a FOIA request for information related to the taxpayer resources being spent to protect him,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. “What we found is that while the Secret Service denied protection to [then presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], and failed to properly protect President [Donald] Trump resulting in two assassination attempts, Hunter Biden was enjoying a robust detail wherever he traveled, including trips to Nantucket, South Africa, and the Virgin Islands.” Nearly all costs—95%—were incurred in California, where Hunter Biden often resided, but also were incurred on expensive trips to the Virgin Islands, Nantucket, and Santa Ynez, California. “If the Biden Secret Service was truly low on funding and staffing as they claimed in July 2024, the American people deserve answers as to why their priorities were so grossly misaligned,” Fitzpatrick said. According to the documents, taxpayer-funded Secret Service expenses for Hunter Biden included multiple trips to Nantucket, an exclusive island off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This included several hundred thousand dollars spent for a 2022 Thanksgiving trip to Nantucket, including $10,000 on golf cart rentals, $120,000 on lodging with $740 nightly hotel rates; $120,000 on travel cards, among other expenses. A 2023 Thanksgiving trip to Nantucket cost more than half a million dollars, including $26,000 on ferries, $10,000 on golf cart rentals, $36,000 on Salt House Nantucket lodging, $133,500 on White Elephant Hotel lodging, $198,000 on Faraway Nantucket lodging, $161k on The Beachside Hotel lodging, $60,000 on Nantucket Inn lodging, among others. Hunter Biden reportedly stayed at the estate of Democrat Party donor Joe Kiani when visiting Nantucket. “Biden and his family have made a habit of vacationing at the homes of donors to the Democratic Party. The president and his family spent Thanksgiving together three years in a row at the Nantucket compound of private equity billionaire David Rubenstein, and rang in the New Year in 2023 at the U.S. Virgin Islands home of Democratic donors Bill and Connie Neville,” The Los Angeles Times reported. Other trips carried hefty price tags: a New Year’s trip to St. Croix cost $372,000 for real estate property and $372,000 for travel cards, according to the documents. Multiple trip costs were for Hunter Biden and Melissa Cohen, Hunter’s wife. They include: $18,000 for a two-day trip to Santa Barbara; $10,000 for one night in Arlington, Virginia; more than $170,000 for a two-day trip to Wilmington, Delaware; more than $250,000 on 13 hotels for a Biden family and Cohen day trip to New York City; nearly $650,000 for a trip to Santa Ynex, Calif, for six hotels. During the Biden administration, CASA recognized “a significant departure from the typical norms surrounding Secret Service protection coverage,” Fitzpatrick told The Center Square, which prompted his FOIA request. CASA, a nonpartisan organization, is dedicated to improving the safety and security of Americans. Many also raised concerns about Biden administration policies. During the 2024 election season, the Biden administration denied former Democrat presidential candidate Kennedy Secret Service protection when he was running for president even though both his father and uncle were assassinated. Since then, extensive failures have been uncovered by congressional investigations regarding Secret Service protections, or lack thereof, for Trump, including during two assassination attempts made on his life. A recent inspector general report highlights even more extensive failures. These include chronic understaffing of Secret Service counter snipers; agents working the equivalent of an additional 24 full-time employees’ workload each year in overtime; and agents missing mandatory weapons requalification testing. CASA filed the FOIA request in June under the Trump administration and requested records within specific time frames for resources, expenditures, and other information related to travel and security detail for Hunter Biden. Originally published on The Center Square The post Secret Service Spent $11 Million on Hunter Biden Travel Detail appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., has written to President Donald Trump expressing support for awarding Pat Buchanan the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Schmitt joins other conservative movement leaders asking Trump to honor Buchanan with the nation’s highest civilian honor awarded by the president. Public advocates for Buchanan have included Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va. Notable recent recipients of the medal include Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, anthropologist Jane Goodall, and Pope Francis.  In his letter, Schmitt describes Buchanan as “a courageous intellectual and political trailblazer.” The Missouri senator praised the adviser to three Republican presidents, three-time presidential candidate, and founder of The American Conservative magazine for “challenging the elite consensus on behalf of the Americans he famously described as the ‘conservatives of the heart’—the working men and women who shared our beliefs and convictions, but had been abandoned by both parties in Washington.” Buchanan, now 86, was an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and served as White House communications director from 1985 to 1987 under President Ronald Reagan. He is also known for his three presidential bids in 1992, 1996, and 2000. After losing the Republican presidential nomination in 1992, Buchanan delivered a speech at that year’s Republican National Convention about America’s culture war that arguably proved prescient about American society for decades to come. “There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as the Cold War itself. For this war is for the soul of America,” Buchanan declared in his 1992 address.  Schmitt’s letter states that Buchanan’s commentary was a precursor to the MAGA movement that would propel Trump to the White House. “His prolific columns, books, speeches, and television appearances reminded countless ordinary Americans that they were not alone in their beliefs—and provided the intellectual scaffolding for the America First movement that would go on to reshape the Republican Party under your [Trump’s] leadership,” the Missouri senator wrote.  Buchanan made another unsuccessful presidential bid in 1996, failing to beat Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., who went on to lose the general election to Democrat Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. In 2000, Buchanan made his final presidential run as a member of the Reform Party, a political group founded by American businessman Ross Perot and which briefly also included Trump among its ranks. Buchanan co-founded the influential noninterventionist magazine The American Conservative in 2002. Its contributors have included conservative leaders like now-Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “In awarding him with our nation’s highest civilian honor, you [Trump] would not only be recognizing the service of one man, but vindicating the cause he fought for—a cause which finally found its champion in your person. Such an honor would formally affirm that Mr. Buchanan is one of the great patriots of our time—a man who championed the forgotten Americans and laid the intellectual groundwork for the political realignment you led,” Schmitt explained.  In a time of arguably ascendent Catholic influence on American political life, Buchanan was also a prominent member of the faith for decades in the public square. “I think the Catholic faith is consistent with the kind of conservatism I believe in. You know, I’m a traditionalist, I’m a Latin Mass Catholic, and I hold to traditional views of responsibility,” Buchanan told the Jesuits’ America magazine in 2014. The post Missouri Senator Urges Trump to Award Medal of Freedom to Conservative Stalwart Buchanan appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A career bureaucrat who celebrated how the State Department would “empower” “LGBTI activists” in other countries remains in a senior leadership role at State under President Donald Trump. At a 2016 Atlantic Council event, State bureaucrat Kerri Hannan celebrated “all of the people-to-people engagement that the State Department has taken on in order to reach out to civil society and LGBTI activists on the front lines.” “LGBTI” refers to people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex. Hannan, now deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy, policy, planning, and foreign assistance at State, then added, “I have seen such an enormous amount of work done to find those activists and to empower them through alumni, through networking, to find ways so that they can be stronger and give them the tools and the connections that they need.” According to the Washington Blade, she served as president of the group Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies in 2016. At the time, she pledged to work with Trump’s team in his first term. “We do not yet know to what degree LGBT rights abroad will be a priority under President-elect Trump’s administration but are ready to work with his transition team and the new administration to address important issues that impact LGBT employees of foreign affairs agencies,” she said at the time. A person with knowledge of the situation confirmed to The Daily Signal Friday that Hannan is currently at State. Trump has taken steps to prioritize merit over the culture of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and to reframe U.S. foreign policy to stop advocating gender ideology (the idea that a man can become a woman, or vice versa, just by saying so). The Daily Signal does not have any evidence that Hannan has acted to oppose Trump’s policies from within, but her past support for “LGBTI activists” may raise red flags. “The State Department leadership is following [President Trump’s] order and expects every employee to do the same – they are public servants implementing the president’s agenda, not their own,” a State Department spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “We will continue to hold every employee to that standard.” Under the leadership of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department has embarked on significant reforms to root out leftist ideology and prevent foreign aid funding from propping up transgender causes. Rubio famously merged the functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development into the main State Department. While State has engaged in reductions in force to encourage potential deep state actors to resign, civil service protections can frustrate these efforts. An April poll found that 75% of Washington, D.C.-based federal employees making $75,000 or more per year who voted for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris in November said they would not follow a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy. Furthermore, a February Foundation for Government Accountability study found that Democrat employees outnumber Republican employees by a 2-to-1 margin across federal agencies and that 84% of federal employees’ political contributions went to Harris in the 2024 election. The Daily Signal reached out to Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies, and to Hannan’s verified LinkedIn account for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time. The post Bureaucrat Who Touted Efforts to ‘Empower’ ‘LGBTI Activists’ Still Has Policymaking Role at State Department Under Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Who knew that removing ridiculous eco-extremist regulations could help auto manufacturers save money? Even the green freaks at Bloomberg News had to concede that point to President Donald Trump. Bloomberg News reporters David Welch, Keith Naughton, and Keith Laing admitted in an eye-popping September 7 story that Trump’s “push to cut federal sales incentives and roll back emissions standards is shaping up to be a multibillion-dollar gift to Detroit’s automakers as they shift investments into gasoline-fueled cars.” Specifically, according to the report, the deregulatory push “is clearing the way for Detroit’s legacy automakers and their traditional rivals to reallocate billions of dollars earmarked for EVs and other costs linked to pollution rules.”  Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley reportedly told Bloomberg News that the Trump deregulation agenda had “the potential to unlock a multibillion-dollar opportunity over the next two years.” Contrast this with the media's support for the Green New Dealers of Team Biden over the past four years. Almost two years ago, Reuters reported that automakers were facing $14 billion in fines as a result of then-President Biden’s proposal to hike fuel-economy standards. Now, automakers have the ability to allocate much-needed resources towards production as opposed to government mandate compliance. For example, Welch, Naughton and Laing estimated that Ford was reallocating a whopping $1.5 billion it was spending this year alone on regulatory credit-purchase commitments to produce “gas-powered models and hybrids.”  But of course, the Bloomberg News reporters couldn’t resist trying to get in a jab at Trump for dismantling the climate change activists’ woke pipe dream to nix gas cars from the American economy: Critics have assailed Trump for attacking policies to curb pollution from automobiles, one of the largest contributors of planet-warming emissions. Under President Joe Biden, the EPA said the rules would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 7 billion metric tons over the life of the program — more than the US emits in a year — and save drivers about $6,000 in fuel and maintenance costs. Drivers would "save" fuel costs if they were pushed to purchase more expensive EVs? It’s worth pointing out that pushing EVs, which Biden had made a hallmark of his climate boondoggle, was always a worthless, “ineffective” eco scheme to begin with, as Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg noted in an April 2025 column. Effectively, swapping gas cars for EVs simply just changes the source of where carbon is emitted without doing much to lower that carbon footprint: The main environmental selling point of electric cars is that they don’t pollute. But although it’s true their engines don’t produce CO₂ while driving, they do emit carbon in other ways. Manufacturing them generates emissions — especially producing the batteries, which requires lots of energy, mostly achieved with coal in China. As a result, even an electric car recharged with clean power in B.C. will, over its life, emit about one-third what an equivalent gasoline car does. When recharged in Alberta, it will emit almost three-quarters.

Over the weekend, Indiana’s lieutenant governor decided to show his cards. On social media, he boasted of supporting the importation of 40,000 Haitians into his state. Then, in a tacit admission that he knew how wrong this was, he shut off the comments, then deleted the post.If he’s so proud of turning his state into a third-world dumping ground, why silence the people who elected him? Because he knows his constituents — Trump voters in a state the president won by 20 points in 2024 — vehemently reject it. He tried backtracking with another post, but that was too little, too late.America’s culture comes from Americans. Indiana deserves leaders who understand that. Iowa will have one.When a Republican openly advocates something his base opposes, he’s telling you whom he serves. Not the people of Indiana. Not the voters of the GOP. He serves the corporatist and globalist interests that see middle America as expendable.The real divideThis fight is no longer Republican versus Democrat. It isn’t conservative versus liberal. The real question is simple: Do you believe America is for Americans or not?Do landowners in Iowa actually own their land, or are they just maintaining it and paying taxes on it until some globalist interest comes along and decides to take it? Do the people of Indiana get to pass on their heritage, or must they watch it be erased by forced demographic change?Democrats like Tim Walz in Minnesota and Rob Sand in my home state of Iowa are eager to impose that future. But too many Republicans are playing along, including Indiana’s lieutenant governor.What’s at stakeI’m running for governor because part of a governor’s job is to protect and preserve the culture of his state. And culture begins with people — families and communities who built the heartland on hard work, dedication, grit, integrity, and a belief that a holy and righteous God still rewards such things with peace and prosperity.That means ending the punishment of Americans who play by the rules, only to be undercut for cheap labor and political power. Donald Trump understood this, which is why he became the most successful Republican leader of the modern era. Yet too many in the party haven’t learned the lesson — or refuse to.RELATED: A storm is brewing in Iowa — and Republicans should take note: ‘There are danger signs’ Photo by Dee Liu via Getty ImagesIowa’s fightHere is what must be done to preserve our way of life.We need an economy that works for families — not for Wall Street. As governor, I will launch the largest skilled-trade expansion in Iowa’s history. These are good jobs AI won’t erase, jobs that don’t require sending our kids off to universities that saddle them with six figures in student loan debt and leftist indoctrination.Our communities must shape government, not the other way around. They are not cogs in the globalist-corporatist machine. They are the bedrock of America’s culture, traditions, and faith. They built the greatest nation in history, and they deserve protection.America’s culture comes from Americans. Indiana deserves leaders who understand that. Iowa will have one. If elected governor, I will use every power vested in me to protect and preserve Iowa’s culture — a culture rooted in Iowans themselves.

President Donald Trump announced the latest steps his administration is taking to protect the right to pray in schools across the nation.Trump pointed out the tremendous, and often underreported, anti-Christian bias that has become commonplace in American schools during a speech Monday at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. In order to protect millions of Christians across the country, Trump announced that his Department of Education will soon issue a new guidance to protect prayer in public schools. 'I know what you went through.'"For most of our country's history, the Bible was found in every classroom in the nation," Trump said. "Yet in many schools today, students are instead indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda, and some are even punished for their religious beliefs.""It's ridiculous," Trump added. RELATED: Trump defends religious faith, says Tim Kaine 'should be ashamed' for equating the Declaration of Independence to IranPresident Trump: "I'm pleased to announce this morning that the Department of Education will soon issue new guidance protecting the Right to prayer in our Public Schools. TOTAL protection." pic.twitter.com/dkyGeZHXqL— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 8, 2025 Trump went on to tell the story of Hannah Allen, a student at Honey Grove Middle School in Texas who tried to gather a group of friends to pray for an injured classmate in 2018. The school's principal reportedly told Allen not pray publicly but to instead pray behind a curtain, in an empty gym, or outside where she is out of view. Due to pressure from religious liberty groups, the Honey Grove Texas Independent School District eventually reversed its decision and allowed students like Allen to pray in public. "I know what you went through," Trump said. "I know what you went through."RELATED: Mainstream media turns a blind eye to vicious stabbing of young Ukrainian woman Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images"To support students like Hannah, I'm pleased to announce this morning that the Department of Education will soon issue new guidance protecting the right to prayer in our public schools," Trump added. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

In a recent interview, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) urged Americans to tone down violent and divisive rhetoric — emphasizing unity and civil debate as core to the nation’s strength.“The president has done this, knowingly divided. He uses words like, ‘the enemy,’ ‘the enemy within,’ and we’ve never used that language,” Walz said in the interview.However, Walz has contributed to much of the inflammatory rhetoric himself, and BlazeTV host Pat Gray has the receipts.“Think about how easy it would be to be a damn Republican,” Walz shouted on stage at a DNC summer meeting. “Oh, what should I wear today? This stupid, freaking, red hat. What should I say today? I don’t know, just make sure it’s cruel. Who do we listen to? That guy, oh, the felon in the White House.”“That’s not divisive at all,” Gray says sarcastically on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”“And neither is this,” he adds, before playing another damning clip of Walz.“My record is so pro-choice, Nancy Pelosi asked me if I should tone it down. I stand with Planned Parenthood, and we won!” he yelled.In yet another clip, Walz is confronted in a congressional hearing about calling ICE agents under the orders of Trump “a modern-day Gestapo.”“Do you realize how disgusting that is considering the history of Nazi Germany? Would you like to recant that statement?” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) asked Walz.“What I said congressman, and I have a long history of supporting law enforcement, I said President Trump was using them as his modern-day Gestapo,” Walz answered.“Right,” Gray says in disbelief. “That’s the problem.”Want more from Pat Gray?To enjoy more of Pat's biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

President Trump drew heavy criticism for calling up the California National Guard to confront anti-ICE rioting in Los Angeles in July. On Sept. 3, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer blocked the move, claiming it violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. He delayed his order until Sept. 12, but the administration immediately appealed, and the Ninth Circuit has already granted a partial stay while the case moves forward.Critics insist Trump is misusing the military as some kind of “secret police.” They invoke the Posse Comitatus Act as if it were an absolute ban on military involvement in domestic affairs. That is flatly wrong. The Act does not prohibit the president from using the Army, Marines, or National Guard to enforce federal law. It simply requires that such forces be deployed under the president’s authority, not at the whim of a sheriff or local marshal.The real danger comes not from Trump’s use of the National Guard, but from a judiciary willing to invent limits the Constitution never imposed.The Constitution itself grants the president this power. Article IV, Section 4 reads:The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.Congress reinforced that authority in the Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorized the president to use the Army when it became “impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” In short: When mobs threaten federal law, the president has the duty — and the power — to act.What Posse Comitatus really meantBefore 1878, federal marshals could deputize Army units as a local posse. That pulled soldiers out of their chain of command and placed them under partisan officials. Officers objected, rightly fearing the practice would corrupt the Army. They welcomed congressional intervention.The Posse Comitatus Act corrected that flaw. It barred the military from being drafted by civil authorities except when the Constitution or Congress explicitly authorized it. The Act did not strip the president of power. It reaffirmed that only the president, acting under constitutional authority, could commit troops to restore order.History bears this out. The U.S. military has intervened in domestic affairs 167 times since America’s founding. Soldiers put down the Whiskey Rebellion in the 1790s, enforced fugitive slave laws in the 1850s, and captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1859. After the Civil War, troops secured polling places so freedmen could vote. The Act was not written to stop such uses, but to prevent local abuse.As scholar John Brinkerhoff explained in 2002, “All that [the Posse Comitatus Act] really did was to repeal a doctrine whose only substantial foundation was an opinion by an attorney general. ... The president’s power to use both regulars and militia remained undisturbed.”Why Breyer is wrongJudge Breyer’s ruling misreads both history and law. By treating Posse Comitatus as a blanket prohibition, he ignores the Constitution and the Insurrection Act. His injunction assumes any federal troop support is unlawful. But the law says otherwise: Troops cannot be used under lesser authority than the president’s. Trump acted as president. That is the highest authority the law contemplates.The Ninth Circuit has already acknowledged the seriousness of the case by issuing a partial stay. That matters. Pulling remaining troops before the courts finish their review risks chaos. Keeping them in place while the appeal proceeds protects public order.RELATED: A president’s job is to stop the burning if governors won’t Photo by SAHAB ZARIBAF/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesPrudence, not prohibitionThe Posse Comitatus Act never emasculated the presidency. It preserved the president’s authority while removing soldiers from the clutches of local sheriffs. The only real limitation is prudence. Presidents must decide when the threat justifies force and when restraint serves the nation better.I have opposed proposals to use the military in the so-called war on drugs and other ill-considered campaigns. Prudence matters. But the Constitution is clear: When federal law is under assault, the president can act.The real danger comes not from Trump’s use of the National Guard, but from a judiciary willing to invent limits the Constitution never imposed. Los Angeles cannot be allowed to burn while mobs terrorize federal officers. The president has the duty to restore order.That is why the administration is right to appeal. The courts should correct this error and reaffirm what the Constitution already guarantees: the president’s authority to protect the republic against domestic violence.

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