Mexico Abruptly Freezes Relations With US, Canada

That’s quite the growth spurt.

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In a solemn segment full of faux-intellectualism, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell trashed the Supreme Court as a “stain on America’s claim to the world that it is a democracy” and claimed that slavery is the only reason why a majority of the justices have been appointed by Republicans. O’Donnell began by hyping Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s interview with another O’Donnell, “The Supreme Court ruled that any crime that Donald Trump conspires to commit in the oval office with appointed members of the executive branch, any of those crimes, are crimes that the Supreme Court leaves the founders wanted the presidents to get away with. The Republican Supreme Court is, of course, insanely wrong about that. Here's what Ketanji Brown Jackson said to Norah O'Donnell about that tonight.”     The clip showed Jackson criticizing the immunity ruling, including “I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had, ordinarily, treated everyone the same.” For Lawrence O’Donnell, the fact that every justice who was in the majority proves, “That decision was not a product of legal scholarship, that decision was a product of Republican convenience.” That every justice who dissented was appointed by a Democrat and maybe their opinion was pseudo-scholarship based on Democratic convenience was not something O’Donnell was even willing to consider. O’Donnell then recalled, “Every justice who voted in support of that opinion is Republican. Only one of those Republican justices was appointed by a president who entered the presidency by winning the most votes. George H.W. Bush is the last Republican president who entered the presidency by winning the most votes. That was 1988 and he gave us Clarence Thomas.” Still, O'Donnell claimed that: If you lived in a democracy, where the candidate with the most votes wins, there would be no other Republican justice currently serving. Clarence Thomas would be the only one. The current composition of the Supreme Court stands, in my view, and in my view alone, as a stain on America's claim to the world that it is a democracy. In no other democracy in the 21st century with seven out of 50 states decide presidential elections through an electoral contrivance created in a slave-holding country 235 years ago, a contrivance they tried to make sound serious by calling it a college, the Electoral College. O’Donnell is assuming his viewers aren’t very smart because he is simply wrong about that. If voters found the Electoral College as offensive as O'Donnell does, they could've sent George W. Bush home in 2004, but instead, Bush won the popular vote and then appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Different democracies have different ways of selecting members of their supreme courts, and those courts have varying amounts of power. Different democracies also have different ways of selecting their leader, but swing states are not unique to America. For example, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has lost the popular vote to the Conservative Party in the last two Canadian general elections, but Trudeau is still the prime minister because the party won enough of their version of swing states. O'Donnell is trying to delegitimize the Court, but he can't even get his basic political science facts correct. Here is a transcript for the August 27 show: MSNBC The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell 8/27/2024 10:04 PM ET LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The Supreme Court ruled that any crime that Donald Trump conspires to commit in the oval office with appointed members of the executive branch, any of those crimes, are crimes that the Supreme Court leaves the founders wanted the presidents to get away with. The Republican Supreme Court is, of course, insanely wrong about that. Here's what Ketanji Brown Jackson said to Norah O'Donnell about that tonight. NORAH O’DONNELL: In your dissent, you wrote that the Court “declared for the first time in history, that the most powerful official in the United States can, under circumstances, yet to be determined, become a law unto himself.” It sounds like a warning. KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: Well, I mean, that was my view of what the Court determined. NORAH O’DONNELL: You’re concerned about broad immunity? JACKSON: I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had, ordinarily, treated everyone the same. LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: That decision was not a product of legal scholarship, that decision was a product of Republican convenience. Every justice who voted in support of that opinion is Republican. Only one of those Republican justices was appointed by a president who entered the presidency by winning the most votes. George H.W. Bush is the last Republican president who entered the presidency by winning the most votes. That was 1988 and he gave us Clarence Thomas.  If you lived in a democracy, where the candidate with the most votes wins, there would be no other Republican justice currently serving. Clarence Thomas would be the only one. The current composition of the Supreme Court stands, in my view, and in my view alone, as a stain on America's claim to the world that it is a democracy. In no other democracy in the 21st century with seven out of 50 states decide presidential elections through an electoral contrivance created in a slave-holding country 235 years ago, a contrivance they tried to make sound serious by calling it a college, the Electoral College.

The panelists on the post-Democratic convention edition of PBS’s Washington Week with The Atlantic’s Friday night political roundtable offered an assortment of bias, lauding the Harris campaign the night after her acceptance speech, while also praising Michelle Obama as “the most admired woman on Earth” and maybe the whole solar system and spouting about the Democratic embrace of “freedom.” USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page hailed Harris’s fledgling campaign. Page: The most surefooted 33 days in modern American political history that we've seen….In 33 days she went from being No. 2 on a ticket that was trailing and now she has made virtually not a single mistake and has claimed the nomination and momentum, and got us -- the Democrats back to an even-up race. Oops! Yes, Page apparently said “us” before correcting herself to “the Democrats.” Is there a difference? The show host hailed another prominent convention speaker, former first lady Michelle Obama. Jeffrey Goldberg: By the way, just noting for the record that the gap between her, Michelle Obama's political talent and her lack of desire to be in politics, is the greatest gap in American life. I mean, that is a talented, in American life-- Page: And that was the greatest speech of the convention [indecipherable]-- Politico’s Eugene Daniels also showered blessings on the former first lady and her angry speech. Daniels: Michelle Obama continues to be the most admired woman on Earth, right. There's no one better to have? Goldberg: On Earth? Daniels: On Earth, on the planet, and maybe other planets too. I don't know. I haven't talked to Mars. To bring this down to Earth, when pollsters like Gallup ask for the "most admired woman," Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton have won, but with 10 or 15 percent of the volunteered responses. Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic admired the supposed normalcy of the DNC and actually said “there is actually quite a bit of sort of centrist Republican energy or potential growth there.” “Centrist Republican energy”? None of the in-the-tank panelists paused to correct this clip aired from Harris’s speech. Harris: In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine, Donald Trump with no guardrails. No guardrails, and no fact-checking either for that false claim. Even CNN objected, albeit with the weaselly “this needs context.” Leibovich loved it when Harris belittled Trump as “unserious” while also casting him as a threat to democracy. Leibovich: ….And as I was sitting in the hall, I mean, it was deathly quiet in that moment….I actually thought that was her best moment. And in the hall, I mean, everyone was like, that's a home run. I thought in the hall it felt more like a double, maybe. But when I saw it digested on video and in clips and so forth, it certainly seemed elevated and that seemed to be what people clung to, which I thought was very effective. Page: And so effective in getting under Trump’s skin. Ali Vitali of NBC News chipped in with another definition of Democratic “freedom”: Lots of abortion. Vitali: Can I also just add that word, freedom, you know where it started being successful? In the early referendums on abortion and reproductive access. Democrats found success in red states because they were able to reclaim that word for people party aside who say I just wanna do what I wanna do, people who just want to do what they don't want the governor -- government involved. That transcends partisanship. Millions of people turned out for a race that was about abortion. And to me, that spoke volumes. Page: Mind your own damn business. [Vitali points an approving finger] That is the essence of [indecipherable]… Since when did the Democratic Party become the party of less government interference in people’s lives? Gov. Walz’s draconian COVID policies alone should scrap any portrait of Walz as some kind of freedom fighter. National Review’s Rich Lowry has more on the Democrat’s new band of fake libertarians. This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.

The student organization Young Americans for Freedom is taking the Biden-Harris administration to court over a scholarship and career advancement program it claims discriminates against Americans on the basis of race. According to the federal lawsuit filed this week by the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of two students and YAF's University of North Dakota chapter, the $60 million Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, which supports around 6,000 students annually, gives preferential treatment to a "list of favored racial groups." Noticeably missing from that list are Caucasians, Asians, Jews, Arabs, and other students who fail, through no fault of their own, to "fit into a narrow exception for first-generation low-income students," said the lawsuit, which names both the DOE and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona as defendants. According to the Biden-Harris Department of Education: Students who qualify for McNair must be enrolled in a degree-granting program at an eligible institution. In all projects, at least two-thirds of the participants must be low-income, potential first-generation college students. The remaining participants may be from groups that are underrepresented in graduate education. Races listed as "underrepresented" are black, Hispanic, Alaskan Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander. 'Why are we continuing to separate and divide students?' Those McNair scholars whose dermal pigmentation and ethnicity are to the satisfaction of the Democratic administration can apparently receive an internship stipend worth thousands of dollars along with mentorship and other academic opportunities. "The McNair Program's racial eligibility requirements are unconstitutional," said the lawsuit. "By using 'race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens,' the McNair Program violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection." The two individual plaintiffs named in the suit are Avery Durfee, a white female student at the University of North Dakota, and Benjamin Rothhove, a white male student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both of whom allegedly discovered they were ineligible for the program on the basis of their race. Durfee said in a statement, "I've worked unbelievably hard throughout my undergraduate career and have wanted to go to graduate school my entire life. Being told that I didn't qualify for the McNair program because I'm white seemed completely wrong. This sends the wrong message to young Americans everywhere." Rothove noted that he was devastated to learn he was ineligible for the program because of his race. "This is the 21st century," said Rothhove. "Why are we continuing to separate and divide students?" This suit, like other recent legal actions targeting similar racist, federally linked initiatives, cites the U.S. Supreme Court's June 29, 2023, ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC banning race-based college admissions. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted, "The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race." "Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin," continued Roberts. "Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." WILL's lawsuit specifically accuses the Biden-Harris DOE of violating the equal protection guarantee under the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. "Denying a student the chance to compete for a scholarship based on their skin color is not only discriminatory but also demeaning and unconstitutional," YAF president Scott Walker said in a statement. "At YAF, we proudly defend our students' right to be judged on their merit and abilities, not on race." Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at WILL — a conservative law firm that has been taking the Biden-Harris administration to task for years over its discriminatory programming — said, "WILL continues its march through Biden-Harris radical DEI programs." "We have already heard that the administration knows they can't win in court, and so, one by one, we will terminate these discriminatory, taxpayer-funded efforts," added Lennington. This is not the first time that the McNair program has been dragged over its race-based criteria. Last year, the Legal Insurrection Foundation's Equal Protection Project filed a civil rights complaint with the DOE's Office of Civil Rights over the McNair program's implementation at the University of Colorado. "We bring this civil rights complaint … for supporting and promoting a scholarship program that engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin," said the complaint. According to the the Equal Protection Project, the McNair program is funded by federal dollars and is therefore subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. As a result, it is prohibited from intentionally discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. WILL's lawsuit also comes amidst a broader societal campaign to kneecap discriminatory corporate policies, particularly those executed in the name of DEI. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Most Americans had no idea who Tim Walz was until Kamala Harris announced him as her running mate. Many were shocked by this decision, as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro seemed the logical choice, given that he would increase her chances of winning a major swing state and perhaps appeal to the moderate Democrat voter. But Mark Levin knows the truth: Tim Walz was the only choice for the Harris campaign because he’s the only candidate who matches her radicalism. - YouTube www.youtube.com “When you think of the sickest parts of our culture, this guy is a leader,” he says, citing “abortion on demand without limits,” “tampons in the boys' room,” and “Islamicism” as some of Walz’s most alarming red flags. According to Levin, Walz’s embrace of Islamicism was a key factor in why Harris chose him over Shapiro, who’s Jewish and doesn’t appeal to the “pro-Hamas wing of the party.” “[Walz] embraced [Ilhan] Omar” – one of the most outspoken Hamas sympathizers in the government. He also gave “$100,000 of taxpayer money” to imam Asad Zaman, the executive director of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and called Zaman a “master teacher” despite the fact that he praised Hamas’ October 7 attacks and shared a documentary glorifying Adolf Hitler on Facebook. Walz is the perfect example of “the enemy within,” says Levin. To hear more of his commentary on Walz, watch the clip above. Want more from Mark Levin?To enjoy more of "the Great One" — Mark Levin as you've never seen him before — subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Wednesday Morning Minute

New Trump 'Scandal' Drops, Press Freak Out Over Arlington National Cemetery Visit