On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court released their ruling on the hotly contested issue of presidential immunity. The ruling was limited in that presidents had immunity for acts done in an official capacity under the office but certain acts – particularly those done outside the office of president – were not. But CNN’s Jake Tapper, who’s at the center of a $1 billion defamation suit against CNN, kept coming back to an insane, liberal conspiracy theory that the ruling opened the door to presidents assassinating their political rivals. After playing oral argument audio from April, in which liberal Justice Sotomayor floated the bonkers notion of a president ordering SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, Tapper asked a panel of CNN legal analysts: “Did the court say, ‘Yeah, you can assassinate a political rival?’” He was immediately rebuked by Elie Honig. “No, I don't think they did,” he declared, barely letting Tapper finish the question. “The basis for Donald Trump's legal argument that maybe he can order an assassination and still be okay. Is this preposterous argument that they offered below that, while a president can only be indicted if he’s first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. The Supreme Court explicitly rejected that argument; impeachment has nothing to do with this, that's not the test.” His fellow legal analysts also shot down Tapper’s suggestion (Click “expand”): ELLIOT WILLIAMS: To your question, Jake, someone's got to decide what's the official act. Right? The challenge here, and this was what Sotomayor was getting at in her point, somebody has to make the call as to whether even the SEAL – the preposterous SEAL Team 6 example falls under the ambit of official acts and that's litigation months in court? JIM SCHULTZ: No. Agreed. I think that's something that we'll have to be decided by the trial court, if we were faced with that preposterous type of scenario, no doubt about it.     But less than two minutes later, Tapper latched on Sotomayor’s dissent to insist that his interpretation of the ruling was correct: I wanna just read something from a Justice Sotomayor's dissent on some of these issues that we're talking about. “Let the president violate the law.” She writes in her dissent, “Let them exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain. Let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like them to be. That is the majority's message today. Orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival: immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power: immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon: immune. Immune, immune, immune.” He prefaced that reading with by bloviating about how “obviously there is a crisis of confidence in the U.S Supreme Court.” CNN anchor Kasie Hunt, who has made a name for herself by shouting down criticism of CNN, agreed with Tapper that Sotomayor’s opinion was a “remarkable and very stark way to think about out it.” Hunt went on to whine that she doesn’t like how the Supreme Court thinks about how their rulings affect “far into our future.” She argued that they “can't pull it apart from the immediate political contexts in which we are living” and the threat former President Trump posed. “[T]his is going to be viewed as much more of an inflammatory situation than perhaps it is when you consider that, yes, of course it's writing history books as well,” she huffed. CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel said the quiet part out loud when she asked the legal analysts about “one of the big concerns” in “getting evidence out in in front of voters before November.” “[W]ould an evidentiary hearing be a way for Jack Smith to get some of that evidence out there in the public record?” she wanted to know. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: CNN’s Trump Immunity Ruling July 1, 2024 10:46 27 a.m. Eastern (…) JAKE TAPPER: That was a stunning moment in April, did the court say, “Yeah, you can assassinate a political rival?” ELIE HONIG: No, I don't think they did. That's a ridiculous answer by Donald Trump's team, a dangerous and reckless answered. One really important thing. The basis for Donald Trump's legal argument that maybe he can order an assassination and still be okay. Is this preposterous argument that they offered below that, while a president can only be indicted if he’s first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. The Supreme Court explicitly rejected that argument; impeachment has nothing to do with this, that's not the test. ELLIOT WILLIAMS: To your question, Jake, someone's got to decide what's the official act. Right? The challenge here, and this was what Sotomayor was getting at in her point, somebody has to make the call as to whether even the SEAL – the preposterous SEAL Team 6 example falls under the ambit of official acts and that's litigation months in court? JIM SCHULTZ: No. Agreed. I think that's something that we'll have to be decided by the trial court, if we were faced with that preposterous type of scenario, no doubt about it. TAPPER: Jamie. JAMIE GANGEL: I just have a quick question for lawyers. So, one of the big concerns is getting evidence out in in front of voters before November. We now don't think a trial – TAPPER: We’re not going to get it. GANGEL:  - is possible. TAPPER: No. GANGEL: Is it possible – one lawyer just texted, would an evidentiary hearing be a way for Jack Smith to get some of that evidence out there in the public record? HONIG: So the judge, district judge now has to have an evidentiary hearing. She can absolutely do that before the election. She can hear from witnesses – We're not going to get a verdict, I guess the judge will say some things were official or unofficial, but there's not going to be a convicted felon tag hang on, Donald Trump for this case. (…) 10:48:16 a.m. Eastern TAPPER: So, listen to this because obviously there is a crisis of confidence in the U.S Supreme Court –among many other institutions in America – and I wanna just read something from a Justice Sotomayor's dissent on some of these issues that we're talking about. “Let the president violate the law.” She writes in her dissent, “Let them exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain. Let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like them to be. That is the majority's message today. Orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival: immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power: immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon: immune. Immune, immune, immune.” “That is the majority's message today,” from Sonia Sotomayor. KAIE HUNT: Yeah. I mean, it's remarkable and very stark way to think about out it and you mentioned the crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court; our varying institutions. I just – I can't help but think, while, on the one hand, yes, this is a decision that's going to affect president's far into our future, you can't pull it apart from the immediate political contexts in which we are living. TAPPER: Yep. HUNT: And note that in a 5-4 decision like this split along ideological lines, like this is going to – TAPPER: 5-4 or 6-3? HUNT: Excuse me, I may have, I may have misspoken. It may have been 6-3. My fault. But still along ideological lines, I should say. Right? Is how this broke down? TAPPER: Right. Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah. The court's shifted. HUNT: Right, you're absolutely right. But it – it just I think that in the closely divided times in which we live, this is going to be viewed as much more of an inflammatory situation than perhaps it is when you consider that, yes, of course it's writing history books as well. (…)

The cause for free speech is down but not out. In the two cases challenging Texas and Florida’s anti-censorship laws, the Supreme Court “vacated” the previous decisions and sent the case back to the lower courts. NetChoice, the anti-free speech tech trade association challenging the state laws, brought these cases arguing that there were no constitutional applications of the laws. In a 9-0 decision, the Court shut down NetChoice's claims as inaccurate.  The nine justices ruled that the laws in certain cases could be constitutional. To challenge the laws, individual platforms will now have to sue Texas and Florida for how the laws are, or will be applied.  Writing the Court’s opinion, Justice Elena Kagan implied that constitutional principles suggest the Texas law unconstitutionally regulates speech when applied to some of the worst Big Tech censors, Facebook and YouTube.  “The current record indicates that the Texas law does regulate speech when applied in the way the parties focused on below—when applied, that is, to prevent Facebook (or YouTube) from using its content-moderation standards to remove, alter, organize, prioritize, or disclaim posts in its News Feed (or homepage),” Kaegan wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas, however, noted in his concurring opinion that this is “opin[ing],” “dictum” and “unnecessary to [the decision’s] holding.” MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider explained the significance of the ruling in an X post this morning. “Today the majority has upheld the TX and FL laws, but with a series of non-binding dicta (guiding language that does not necessarily control) that suggests there is a Constitutional right to censor people's speech,” he wrote. Schneider added that the Texas and Florida Attorneys General Ken Paxton and Ashley Moody “now have a renewed opportunity to demonstrate Meta/Facebook and Google/Youtube have already disavowed that users' speech is their speech.”   The MRC vice president continued, “These Big Tech companies have repeatedly claimed in court filings that when their users post content, that content is not the platforms' speech. Going forward, any company that is claiming Section 230 immunity should not have a right to violate the TX and FL laws that SCOTUS allowed to stand” This comes after the Court refused to halt government actors from pressuring social media companies to censor specific content in the Murthy v. Missouri.  Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency and an equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

Video games trade fair Gamescom pointed out that a producer for the Sims 4 purposely pushed gender ideology on gamers and "pathed [sic] the way for queer characters," including through the use of preferred pronouns.The German trade fair posted in celebration of June 2024 Pride Month and highlighted people in the gaming industry based on their sexuality or sexual preference."Pride Month is almost over, but that doesn't mean that queer matters will stop being important," the company wrote on X. "Today we want to introduce just a few of the many talented queer people that are an integral part of the gaming industry. Cause, whether you want to believe it or not: Gaming and being queer can go hand in hand just fine." — (@) 'We started looking into the game itself to see how we could approach the addition of customizable pronouns.'The company's final post included an avatar of John Faciane, who worked on the Sims games; the company noted that he carved out a special path for gender ideology in the games he produced."And last but not least John Faciane, who has more or less on purpose, pathed [sic] the way for queer characters in video games with his work on the Sims." — (@) This celebratory confession led to online commentators and writers finding other remarks by Faciane about the game in which the developer wrote about working with activists to deliver in-game messaging."First we started looking into the game itself to see how we could approach the addition of customizable pronouns. We went through a couple of different explorations, but ultimately where we landed was to create a system that allows for pronouns to be defined by the player and have those then be used in multiple different text strings," Faciane wrote in a since-deleted blog post for Electronic Arts.Faciane spoke on working with GLAAD about how to properly insert preferred pronouns for transgender people."We reached out to our partners It Gets Better Project and GLAAD and worked with them to learn more about how pronouns are used, particularly by trans and nonbinary people. Through this research and through doing a deep dive into the game, we've learned about all of the different complex areas that binary gender was present in The Sims 4."The producer has given multiple interviews about inserting gender ideology into the games, including when he spoke to the Guardian in 2022."I'm an openly gay man working in the games industry, so for me I have a vested interest in greater inclusion not just in the games we play but in those who make games," he told the outlet."The more we include all those people, the better it is. … A big reason that I felt comfortable to come out when I did, even though I have a wonderful, supportive, loving family, was seeing representation of gay men within games," he added.That same year, Faciane said that he and Sims executive producer Phill Ring — who is also gay — had been contemplating putting such themes into the games for some time."We've been thinking about this for a very long time; it's been very near and dear to a lot of us, especially those who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community," he told Queerty. "This time around, we were seeing not only internally us advocating for this, but we also saw players saying that on Twitter and social media, and we really felt like it was time for us to be up front about it and put our best foot forward and start talking with the community about what they'd like to see."The game designer reportedly no longer works with Electronic Arts but is now employed by Netflix as a senior producer, per That Park Place.According to Levvvel, the Sims 4 has 10 million active users, with more than 36 million people having played in total. Gamerant reported in 2021 that 60% of the user base is young women ages 18-24. This was revealed by the game designer, who reportedly said in a job posting that it has a "very unique playerbase" and followed up by boasting about the audience demographic.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently issued a first-of-its-kind Surgeon General’s Advisory for “firearm violence.” “Today, for the first time in the history of our office, I am issuing a surgeon general’s advisory on firearm violence,” Murthy said in a video statement. “It outlines the urgent threat firearm violence poses to the health and well-being of our country.” “Unfortunately, the problem has continued to grow,” he continued. “The Surgeon General’s Advisory lays out the approach we can take to address firearm violence as the public health crisis that it is.” According to Murthy, that approach “includes implementing community violence prevention programs and risk reduction strategies, improving access to mental health care for those exposed to or at risk for firearm violence and expanding research funding to inform and evaluate our prevention strategies.” The Surgeon General has also claimed that racism is a public health emergency. While Glenn Beck doesn’t believe these are actual public health emergencies, he knows why they’re doing it. “When you have a public health emergency, you know, i.e. COVID, the government can claim all kinds of powers,” Glenn explains, adding, “They’re using this language very, very carefully.” Not only are they attempting to gain power, but they’re ignoring what actually is causing the rise in “community violence.” “Why has it gotten so dangerous to walk through our neighborhoods? There’s some other things that are going on that I would call a crisis, but he doesn’t want to talk about that. He wants to talk about the evil gun and those who want guns and it’s a ‘Public Health crisis,’” Glenn says. Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

The man described as "the #1 most wanted criminal illegal immigrant" in the state of Texas has been arrested, this time for allegedly sexually assaulting a child.About a month ago, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, issued a list of Texas' top 10 "Most Wanted Criminal Illegal Immigrants" as part of a statewide initiative to curb illegal immigration. Barely a week later, Abbott could already claim a major victory after the suspect ranked highest on the list, 38-year-old Victor Hugo Chox Gonzalez, was apprehended in Forth Worth."Texas captures the #1 most wanted criminal illegal immigrant. He's now behind bars in Tarrant Co. We continue our search for the other most wanted," Abbott posted to X just a few days after Gonzalez's arrest.The current accusations against Chox Gonzalez are horrific. Among other offenses, he has been charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by sexual contact after warrants were issued to that effect last year.Chox Gonzalez, a Mexican national in the U.S. illegally, remains in custody at Tarrant County Jail on a bond of nearly $150,000. Jail records list his race as "white."This recent arrest is hardly Chox Gonzalez's first. In fact, in addition to multiple illegal border crossings, he has a history of criminal activity within the United States that dates back almost a decade.In 2016, Chox Gonzalez was deported after a conviction on charges related to assault of a family member resulting in injury and driving under the influence. A child under the age of 15 was also a passenger in the vehicle at the time of the DUI, though whether the child was the injured party is unclear. He has been previously charged with child cruelty causing possible injury or deathIn 2021, he was back in Tarrant County, Texas, and charged with assault once again, as well as failing to properly identify himself. Chox Gonzalez has a string of known aliases, including Victor Coronado Gonzalez, Arturo Sanchez, and Felix Lopez.The Texas Department of Safety also provided several mug shots of Chox Gonzalez taken for different arrests: Screenshot of Texas DPS press releaseWhen Chox Gonzalez is next to appear in court and whether he has an attorney are unclear. Gov. Abbott did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The transition from gas-powered automobiles to electric vehicles has been a gong show, even though Democrat bans on new gas cars have not yet gone into effect. The trouble is not simply that EVs — which require the mining of many times more minerals than required for a conventional vehicle — are less environmentally friendly than promised or that they are both expensive and unreliable. Electric vehicles require charging stations. Unless Americans are to be confined to 15-minute cities, there needs to be a juiced network of such stations. The infrastructure is not in place, however, thanks in part to the Biden administration's bungling of its promised national rollout of EV charging stations. The Democratic administration has established fewer than a dozen of the promised 500,000 charging stations across the country. Even if there was a satisfactory number of active stations, there is no guarantee they would be useful on account of power supply issues. Last month, the California-based software company Xendee released the results of its survey of leaders "involved in the development, operation, and commercial use of EV charging infrastructure." 75% of respondents said electric grid limitations were a "significant roadblock to the rollout of EV charging infrastructure for commercial EV usage." Despite uncertainty about whether the charging stations will have the power to charge the cars, 84% of fleet owners indicated they expect to draw grid power from the utility. A new report from ISO New England Inc., the transmission organization that oversees New England's bulk electric power system and corresponding transmission lines, revealed that EV vehicle adoption over the next decade would significantly drive up electricity demand — demand satisfied mostly with natural gas, reported the VTDigger. Vermont is hardly an exception. Princeton University recently projected that the U.S. will need 3,360% more electricity on hand to satisfy the Biden administration's EV goals, reported the Daily Mail. "Right now, our infrastructure is likely 'OK' for the slow trickle of EV adoption," Robby DeGraff, the manager of product and consumer insights at AutoPacific, told the Mail. Increased demand shaped by government mandates will, however, mean that "the grid will certainly need to be revamped." Already states like Georgia, Arizona, and California are buzzing their way toward capacity, and the costly infrastructure needed is far from established. Michael Stadler, chief technology and marketing officer at Xendee, told Utility Drive that not only have numerous prospective EV charging station developers acknowledged they would be unable to acquire adequate electricity from utilities, electricity prices in some regions make it uneconomic to link up. "Time of use rates and power charges are a really big problem," said Stadler. "If you end up paying more for electricity than gas, then something is wrong." Many of Xendee's clients have apparently opted to install fossil-fuel-powered generators to power their charging stations. So in effect, there's a good chance that EVs whose drivers manage to find charging stations are powered by the same energy source EV is supposed to have made redundant — if not by a generator on-site, then by a predominantly gas-powered grid. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Even if Democrats manage to rationalize themselves into accepting Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, the incumbent has been done in by his allies’ candor.

All the OOF! Jill Biden's Vogue Cover Gets Much Deserved MEME Treatment and Here Are Some of the BEST

OUCH! People Have Questions About This Job Opening to Assist Dr. Jill Biden

She MAD! AOC Has the Meltdown-iest of ALL Meltdowns Over SCOTUS Immunity Ruling, Threatens Impeachment