'Greenland looms large in its significance'

The firefighter who found the ring handed it to an astonished and grateful Yu

Bombshell allegations

With the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, the House Freedom Caucus’ conservative members could have a veto over the upcoming budget reconciliation package that aims to pass massive portions of President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. The Freedom Caucus made its budget reconciliation priorities known Thursday, releasing a proposal that seeks to make the MAGA agenda happen while fitting it within the budget. In their two-page plan, members of the Freedom Caucus propose cutting Biden administration spending and raising the debt ceiling to make room for Trump campaign promises such as the border wall. “We would quickly fund border security, modernize the U.S. military, cut spending by reversing some of the worst Biden policies, right-size federal agencies and programs, and increase the debt ceiling for two years, while legitimately bending the spending curve down for the first time in two decades,” reads a statement from the Freedom Caucus. HFC’s “218” Reconciliation Proposal pic.twitter.com/7hvlG0aTth— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) January 16, 2025 Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal that his colleagues had to be realistic in terms of how much they could balance the budget. “The budget is not going to be in balance for 10 years or so,” said Harris. “What we have to do is, we have to bend the deficit curve.” In Harris’ view, it is necessary to raise the debt ceiling to implement Trump’s agenda and to keep financial markets stable. “We need to deliver on the border quickly. We think we need to reassure the financial markets that we’re serious about cutting spending, and we think we need to reassure the financial markets that we are, in fact, going to have a debt ceiling increase,” said Harris. Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, a member of the Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal that the reconciliation proposal largely came out of a compromise at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home between Trump and Republican congressmen who had concerns about excessive spending. “I, as well as most of the other people that contributed to this proposal, met with the president last Friday at his request, and we made notes and we provided input—things that were important to us. He pointed out things that were important to him. And that was the genesis of this letter,” said Fulcher. “The president, for fiscal reasons, really wants to see a debt ceiling increase—not for the reasons, per se, of just opening up the ability to spend more, but just to provide some breathing room for Wall Street and bond markets,” he said. The reconciliation plan mentions Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, a proposed commission to advise Trump on cutting wasteful government programs. The letter says the plan will “empower DOGE” and “sets the stage for DOGE cuts in FY26 [fiscal year 2026] appropriations.” Fulcher said that Musk played a large role in the negotiation of the plan, pushing for an increased role for the Department of Government Efficiency.  “Mr. Musk was part of our meetings the entire time that we met with the president,” said Fulcher. “So, we got a little bit of a feel for his approach, and I think where the president is trying to go there is just outside interest—kind of a refreshing, nongovernment look at the overall spending paradigm.” Harris told The Daily Signal that he doesn’t know exactly how DOGE will function, but that the president-elect and Congress are taking it seriously. “Obviously, that’s for the administration to figure out exactly how it’s structured and what it does,” said Harris. “But we think that the administration and Congress should seriously look at their work and take their proposals into consideration. Some of them can be delivered by executive action, some are going to take Congress … But we think the recommendations by Elon and Vivek [Ramaswamy] have to be taken very seriously.” With Thursday’s budget proposal, the Freedom Caucus is attempting to unite a tiny Republican House majority that can afford almost no dissent against Trump’s agenda. “We’ve actually designed a plan which, combined with the debt ceiling increase, could actually be passed by Republicans alone,” Harris said. “That’s why we call it the 218 plan. There’s no need to involve Chuck Schumer, as you would involve if you do it in any other way other than reconciliation.” The big question, however, is what will House Freedom Caucus members do if Speaker Mike Johnson’s, R-La., plan is different from theirs. The post House Freedom Caucus Republicans Have a Plan to Make MAGA Affordable appeared first on The Daily Signal.

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer is set to meet Friday with President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to run the Justice Department and the FBI.   In Comer’s meetings with Pam Bondi and Kash Patel—Trump’s picks to be the next attorney general and FBI director, respectively—they will discuss topics including potential corruption by outgoing President Joe Biden’s family as well as federal bureaucrats, Comer told The Daily Signal.  The Kentucky Republican noted that the president’s pardon of his son Hunter extended back to 2014, as far back as the bank records of financial transactions that the House subpoenaed.  “We want to see the Justice Department hold these people accountable for crimes that have been committed. A lot of the crimes that Hunter committed happened prior to 2014,” Comer said in a wide-ranging interview to be aired in full on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” “The pardon Joe issued to Hunter Biden started in 2014 and went to today, I guess the rest of his life. The reason he went back to 2014 [was] that’s when we started subpoenaing bank records. That was about as far back as I could go with the banks.” Comer’s new book, “All the President’s Money,” was released this week.  Comer further noted that the president’s brother, Jim Biden, was also involved in unusual business activity.  Hunter Biden was convicted on a gun crime and pleaded guilty on tax charges last year. He was pardoned by his father last month. Jim Biden has not been charged with a crime.  The president has said the investigations in Congress and by special counsel David Weiss were politically motivated. In his final report on the investigation of Hunter Biden, which became public this week, Weiss—who initially offered what critics called a “sweetheart deal” to the president’s son—took issue with the president’s characterization. Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said the investigations were meritless and criticized the Justice Department for bringing the cases.  Comer noted that when questioning the Biden family’s financial activity, “the deep state would step in and say, ‘No, stand down.’” “That’s what I want to talk to Kash Patel about,” the Kentucky Republican said.  “Look, I’m not telling you what to do, but you need to hold these people accountable or you’re never going to reform these intelligence communities, if you don’t set some examples out of some people, some deep state, unelected bureaucrats that have abused their power,” Comer said, suggesting what he would say to Patel.  The oversight chairman said he already sees a major improvement. He suspected that outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray would leak inaccurate information about the oversight committee’s investigations to the media.  “I’ve gone for two years having to watch my back with Christopher Wray,” Comer said. “So, to go from a guy that was dishonest to me, that obstructed all my investigations …  to Kash Patel, a guy who called me wanting to meet, to talk, to get advice, and strategize about cleaning that agency up, it’s a pretty good day for me. And Pam Bondi, I will be communicating with her on holding people accountable. “Jan. 20th can’t get here fast enough for me,” Comer said. The post Oversight Panel Chief to Meet With Bondi, Patel on Bidens’ Business Dealings, Deep State Reforms appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WSJ: Harris, Biden At War Over Election Loss

Trump Is Troll in Chief, and It Is Hilarious

You can’t make this stuff up.  Residents of Worcester, Massachusetts are spending taxpayer dollars so their “non-binary” town councilor can take a month-long “mental health” leave of absence. Why? Because “they” were “misgendered,” of course! “Mr. Chairman, under your leadership, I have felt unsafe around this council body,” announced Thu Ngyuen, a Keffiyeh-wearing council member over a Zoom call on Tuesday.   “You have also misgendered me,” Ngyuen whined to his colleagues. “Therefore, I never felt there was any avenue I could turn to for safety and feel protected against the discrimination and toxicity of our council culture.”  Will the victim provide any evidence to back up...er...its claims of discrimination? Of course not. “For the record, I will not be taking on the responsibility of proving my experience of transphobia and the discrimination and toxicity of council culture,” Ngyuen told the council. Ngyuen continued that he/she is a victim of “transphobia” and has been “dehumanized to the point where I am being referred to as ‘it’ by my colleagues on this council.” (BAHAHA!) “It is unfortunate, as we transition under a Trump administration and exponential increase of fear experienced by the LGBTQ+ community that I, as a City Councilor At-Large of Worcester, had to file a complaint to our Executive Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” reiterated the councilor in an Instagram post.              View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Thu Nguyen (@votethu)   That is why IT announced a dramatic exit over the call, ensuring everybody heard the sorry sound of ITs small violin.  Related: 'Transgender' Congressman Tells Elementary School Kids It's 'Society's' Fault For Calling Him a Boy Who gives a crap about making sure the roads are paved and residents have running water! You know… things that town council members are actually responsible for. One councilmember felt unappreciated so it must be the top priority of the population of over 206,000 residents paying its salary. “As someone with many marginalized, intersectional identities,” the genderless humanoid whined that the lack of attention its colleagues paid to its struggles made it feel “unsafe.” But besides Ngyuen’s woe over receiving inadequate attention, the member complained there also wasn’t enough attention paid to a past “ceasefire” resolution, condemning Israel for defending itself against Hamas. Also on the list of Ngyuen’s grievances was the council’s alleged plans to sundown the Zoom option for meetings and make all members participate in-person.  The horror! Nguyen would actually have to…go to work, had he/she not decided to skip it for a month! But the member’s absence likely won’t make any difference for the city’s council, since according to co-workers, “they” rarely attended any meetings in the first place. Follow MRCTV on X! Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the Confirmation hearings show that Democrats have still not found a cure for TDS. https://t.co/iifx7crPXM — MRCTV (@mrctv) January 16, 2025

The Associated Press’s in-house public relations flunky for President Joe Biden, Josh Boak, is following the dragged out trend of leftist media figures treating Americans like they’re just too impatient to understand the true genius of Bidenomics. Boak’s January 15 propaganda piece disguised as news, “How Biden’s domestic policy record stacks up against public perception,” was laced with a hodgepodge of excuses and celebratory ramblings about Biden’s economic policies, which he mourned were hampered by a disgruntled voter base. “President Joe Biden ends his term with a gulf between his policy record and his public reputation,” he wrote. He implied the disconnect was that Biden was more fixated on long term priorities than on more immediate concerns like the inflation peaking to 40-year highs in 2022, which in turn drove voters up a wall. In essence, implied Boak, the tragedy of Biden is that the effects of his illusory achievements won’t be realized by the agitated voter base until long after he’s left office.  Yet this was the same Boak who tried teeing up outgoing White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last year to explain how the surge of illegal immigration across the border was contributing to a roaring American economy. No, you didn’t misread that. “Biden’s term ends just as many of his major domestic policy achievements are being implemented, meaning that the story of his presidency will continue to be written long after he turns over the White House to Republican Donald Trump,” wrote Boak. [Emphasis added.] But when recapping Biden’s unrealized record, Boak’s first go-to was a disastrous Biden policy that was already “implemented” to the economy’s inflationary detriment: “Within months of becoming president, Biden along with congressional Democrats delivered $1.9 trillion toward powering the United States out of the COVID-19 pandemic.” Yeah, it powered the U.S. alright, straight off the economic rails. That’s the same $1.9 trillion stimulus that former Obama National Economic Council Director Larry Summers warned adamantly would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” Now, consumers are trapped in a situation where prices are about 21 percent higher on average than they were when Biden took office, coupled with the fact that real wage growth hadn’t been enough to keep up with the months where prices were “disproportionately rising faster than Americans’ paychecks,” as Bankrate noted in a September 2024 study. The irony is that Boak buried this in the 13th paragraph.  But when it came to inflation, Boak gaslit readers into believing Biden really didn’t have much to do with it, and instead blamed a spider web of variables: There was never one single cause for the inflation that hounded Biden’s presidency, nor was there a satisfying solution for the public. Republicans were quick to blame the spending from the pandemic relief, relying on forecasts such as those by the economist Larry Summers to suggest that Biden had flooded America with too much money. That political argument obscured a far more complicated reality that involved multiple factors, not just pandemic aid, [emphasis added]. But the resort to fixating on supply chain disruptions to cloud Biden’s culpability is grossly misleading, as The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board noted in a November 24 editorial. Further, the MIT Sloan School of Management admitted in July that “some policymakers — up to and including President Joe Biden — blamed shortages in the supply chain. But a new study shows that federal spending was the cause — significantly so.” Senior MIT Senior Lecturer of Finance Mark Kritzman, one of the authors of the research, added: “Our research shows mathematically that the overwhelming driver of that burst of inflation in 2022 was federal spending, not the supply chain.” How about them apples, Boak? Boak wasn’t done, also highlighting Biden’s asinine infrastructure spending plans. “Infrastructure week? More like infrastructure decade,” celebrated Boak in a sub-header, who later bemoaned how delays in some of Biden’s supposedly brilliant pet projects on this matter would hurt him with voters. But here’s the problem, as Reason pointed out about Biden’s infrastructure ambitions: “The outgoing president's signature legislative achievements spent tens of billions of dollars with little to show.”  Reason even criticized previous Associated Press spin which Boak later co-opted that the Biden “record includes legislation that will rebuild the country in ways that will likely be seen over the next dozen years, even if voters did not immediately appreciate it.” When it came to the national debt, Boat actually attempted to blame Republicans for balking at Biden’s push for tax hikes and "illegal" student debt forgiveness for contributing to the debt, rather than out-of-control government spending on his watch. “With Republicans blocking tax hikes, the national debt grew,” blared his insane sub-header on the topic.

With his favorite President set to return to office on Monday (and the source of a lifetime of memories for him), serial carnival barker and real-life cartoon character Jim Acosta closed his Thursday morning hour of CNN Newsroom by declaring the media “democracy” itself in fawning over President Biden’s farewell address lamenting the lack of trust in the news media. In other words, the pompous prick who sadly thrived off of attention and faux victimhood wanted a return to that sugar-high feeling.     Acosta only briefly brought it up earlier in the show when asking moderate Republican strategist Doug Heye to weigh in on his “misinformation” lecture and didn’t tip his hand. But, with less than a mintue left and no chyron, Acosta said he “want[ed] to take a moment to talk about something President Biden said during his farewell address.” Acosta said Biden “warned the free press is crumbling in this country” and voiced his agreement by saying the “would add, that's only if we, the people, let that happen.” He then fell into an all-too-predictable level of impenetrable sanctimony about the news media: “ Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people's stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable. We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people.  Oh, journalists, not we, the peons outside the esteemed press, have the power to be “defenders” of yourselves. But, wait, there was more, including a Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith-like insistence that journalists aren’t just “important to democracy,” but rather “democracy” itself: “Walter Cronkite once said, ‘freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.’” Before signing off, Acosta — the man who posted a picture of himself staring at, yes, himself in a dressing room mirror before a Late Show appearance — shared a sign some deranged, far-left feminist protester made for him in 2021: I want to take a moment to show you something. A woman sent me this sign eight years ago. She carried it here at a march in Washington. She wrote on the back of the sign to me and the press here in DC, “you have our support.” To Nora, wherever you are, right back at you. Reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta. Unbeknowst to him, sharing the poster gave birth to a new meme template that’ll likely live on for years to come. Thanks, Jim! To see the relevant CNN transcript from January 16, click “expand.” CNN Newsroom with Jim Acosta January 16, 2025 10:59 a.m. Eastern JIM ACOSTA: I want to take a moment to talk about something President Biden said during his farewell address. He warned the free press is crumbling in this country. I would add, that's only if we, the people, let that happen. Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people's stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable. We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people. Walter Cronkite once said, “freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.” I want to take a moment to show you something. A woman sent me this sign eight years ago. She carried it here at a march in Washington. She wrote on the back of the sign to me and the press here in DC, “you have our support.” To Nora, wherever you are, right back at you. Reporting from Washington, I'm Jim Acosta.