Special counsel Jack Smith has had a busy week. He filed his brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit asking that court to overturn Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of his indictment in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump. Cannon dismissed that indictment because she found that Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed to his position and, as a result, did not have the power to bring the indictment at all. Legal luminaries like former Attorney General Ed Meese and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as well as several legal scholars, filed an amicus brief supporting Trump’s argument that Smith was not properly appointed, and she ultimately agreed. In his Washington, D.C., case against Trump, which was related to Trump’s conduct in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Smith on Tuesday sought and received a superseding (amended) indictment. Ordinarily, that’s bad news for a defendant. It typically means additional charges have been brought against the defendant—but not so in Trump’s case. There is an old Herman’s Hermits song that contains the line “Second verse, same as the first.” This phrase is an accurate description of the superseding indictment. The new indictment contains exactly the same charges that the original indictment contained. The only difference is that a 45-page indictment has now been reduced to a 36-page indictment and several of the factual allegations in the original indictment have now been removed to try to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Trump v. U.S. There the Supreme Court limited the kinds of evidence that can be introduced in any criminal case against a former president for acts he committed while in office. It said that a president was absolutely immune from prosecution for certain official acts he undertook that fell within his core constitutional authority and that a president was presumptively immune from all other official acts. Moreover, the court held that no evidence stemming from those official acts could be used against him either.  In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Trump enjoyed absolute immunity from any prosecution stemming from his consultation with Justice Department officials after the 2020 election. And the court also said that Trump enjoyed presumptive immunity from any prosecution related to his conversations with Vice President Mike Pence about whether Pence should certify the results of the election. But because of the “difficult questions” presented by this scenario, the court left the immunity analysis “to the lower courts to perform in the first instance.” As a result, Smith removed from the indictment factual allegations related to the former, but left intact factual allegations related to the latter and took pains to emphasize that, in his view, Trump acted in his political and personal, rather than official, capacity. Smith’s amended indictment is simply an attempt to get in front of likely legal arguments by Trump’s legal team asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss all, or certain, of the Washington charges against him on this basis. Additionally, in an effort to avoid the allegation that this indictment is somehow tainted by the original indictment, Smith informed Chutkan that the evidence supporting this indictment was presented to an entirely new grand jury. Chutkan has a status conference currently set for Sept. 5 to discuss issues related to the case, but it’s unclear how this new indictment will impact what’s discussed at that conference. There’s also the fact that the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment has not been argued or briefed before Chutkan—it has only been ruled on in the Florida classified documents case. If it is briefed, the precedent in the D.C. Circuit is more favorable to Smith, which—depending on what the 11th Circuit decides—could tee up the issue for Supreme Court review. What is clear, though, is that none of these issues will be finally resolved before the election in November, which makes Smith’s full-speed-ahead approach all the more troubling. The post Why Special Counsel Jack Smith Filed a New Trump Indictment appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team said Tuesday it’s a “lie” that she supports electric vehicle mandates, but her record on the issue suggests the opposite. The Harris campaign blasted out an email ahead of Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s Tuesday visit to Michigan, with campaign communications official Ammar Moussa writing that Vance would “undoubtedly lie” about things like the notion that “Harris wants to force every American to own an electric vehicle.” However, Harris backed EV mandates while serving in the U.S. Senate, and presided over the Biden administration’s massive spending and regulatory push to effectively force more EVs on the roads. “Vice President Harris does not support an electric vehicle mandate,” Moussa wrote in the email. “Donald Trump railed against the Inflation Reduction Act while the Biden-Harris administration oversaw the creation of tens of thousands of new, clean energy jobs in Michigan and provided ground-breaking subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles.” Then-Sen. Harris was a co-sponsor of the Zero Emissions Vehicles Act in 2019, a bill that initially proposed to require 100% of new car sales to be EVs or otherwise be emissions-free by 2040. Harris later campaigned, during her failed 2020 presidential bid, on having all new car sales be zero-emissions models by 2035. Harris was also the second-highest ranking member of the Biden administration while it pursued the biggest EV agenda in American history. The Biden administration has a goal of having EVs or other zero-emissions models make up 50% of new auto sales by 2030. Regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration promulgated stringent regulations that will effectively force auto manufacturers to significantly increase the share of EVs and zero-emissions cars in their new fleets by 2032. Moreover, the administration is spending billions of dollars to boost EV production, adoption, and charging infrastructure. However, the administration’s EV agenda has not been especially successful to date, with consumers still hesitating to make the leap as manufacturers lose considerable sums of money on their EV lines and executives back away from some near-term production targets. Charging infrastructure remains concentrated primarily in more densely populated coastal regions of the U.S., and a $7.5 billion program to build out charging infrastructure in parts of the country that need it most has so far resulted in only a handful of stations being built. The Harris campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Harris Campaign Says It’s a ‘Lie’ That Kamala Backs EV Mandates, but Her Record Tells a Different Story appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Spreading Scurrilous Aspersions: Vance 'Trying' to 'Tether Harris to Biden'

Cornel West to Remain on Ballot in Wisconsin

This web connects us all!

We’ve all had bad days at work, but have you ever made a lake disappear?

  Elitists have been crapping on the good ole’ USA for so long that, through TV and social media they can almost make us forget our pioneers came to this great nation to start a new country, a new culture and to get the hell away from the self important tyrants of Europe. That’s right. If you think America is too woke, just see what our friends across the pond are up to!  On this episode of “Woke of the Weak,” join me on a DEI flight back to the old country and take a gander at “Woke around the world!”   Follow MRCTV on X!  Not making the leftist news, on the last night of the DNC, a Chicago Catholic pregnancy center was attacked by vandals.https://t.co/eT01GF4bME — MRCTV (@mrctv) August 28, 2024

Following his emotional endorsement Friday of President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with Tucker Carlson to discuss his reasons for doing so and the political "realignment" under way that apparently made the decision all but inevitable. Carlson told Kennedy at the outset that he found the decision unsurprising because "for all the areas where you disagree on specific issues, there's a consistent theme that I have noticed in both your lives, which is you both spent the majority of your life — in your case, your whole life — in the American ruling class and both of you decided that it was corrupt and that you were going to say so out loud, at great risk." Kennedy acknowledged that many people, including some of his supporters, may have been shocked to learn last week that he was pausing his campaign and throwing his weight behind the Republican candidate. However, he noted that such surprise would likely have been the result of a misapprehension about the true nature of the current political landscape and the Democratic Party's place in it. "I think there's been a bunch of realignments, of political realignments — about four or five throughout American history," Kennedy told Carlson. "I think we're going through one right now." Kennedy emphasized that the Democratic Party of yesteryear is gone and that what remains, with the Harris "apparatus" at the helm, is an anti-democratic force synonymous with corporatism, military adventurism, and censorship, which would be unrecognizable both to his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and to his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. 'There's been these big, profound realignments.' According to Kennedy, the Democratic Party he parted ways with in October 2023 has been badly transmogrified, in part, by the "corrupt merger of state and corporate power that's happening in Washington, D.C., now, where our democracy has really been subverted by the industries that have taken over the regulatory agencies." This has impacted, for instance, the party's approach to the environment. Kennedy indicated that Democrats have de-prioritized habitat protection, wildlife conservation, and getting "toxins out of our kids" and are instead focused on "one environmental issue, which is this carbon orthodoxy." Kennedy, who worked for decades as an environmental lawyer, has long argued there are far better ways to help the environment than geoengineering and carbon sequestration. He has also been highly critical in recent years of the Biden-Harris administration's massive subsidies for so-called green energy. The Democratic obsession with emissions "ends up benefiting the oil companies and BlackRock and Goldman Sachs with offshore wind and carbon capture and $100 billion carbon capture projects, which is just the strip-mining of the middle class," Kennedy told Carlson. "There's been these big, profound realignments, and it's not only on that issue," continued Kennedy. 'They're the party now of censorship.' Kennedy suggested further that Democrats have "clung to this illusion" that various governmental institutions are still democratic despite their co-option and transformation into "sock puppets for corporate profit-taking"; that they are "white hats" fending off barbarians. Even the institution of the presidency has been compromised, suggested Kennedy — that as was the case with Joe Biden, Democrats voting for Harris this time around will not be supporting an individual but rather the "apparatus" around the candidate. "When you talk to Democrats about, you know, 'Do you really think it's a good idea to be electing somebody who cannot give an interview?' they say, 'Well ... you're electing the people around her, you're electing the apparatus,'" said Kennedy. "The apparatus, I don't have any faith in it. It's an apparatus that are neocons like Antony Blinken who are running us right up into World War III, and they are people who masterminded the censorship from inside the White House." U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana gave Kennedy the green light last week to sue the Biden-Harris administration for coercing social media companies to engage in suppression and outright censorship of content containing free speech. Kennedy cited the censorship detailed in Doughty's ruling as well as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's assertion in 2022 that "there's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy" as evidence of contemporary Democrats' censorial reflex and the party's distrust for the American people. "They're the party now of censorship," said Kennedy, stressing that democracy and censorship are "absolutely incompatible." "The first step to totalitarianism always begins with censorship," he told Carlson. "There's no time that we look back in history and say the people who were censoring speech were the good guys. They're always the bad guys. ... We know they're the guys who are going to end up cracking a whip on us all and being our overlords." Kennedy noted that Trump, unlike Harris, is "deeply interested and well informed ... about what's happening to our kids, about chronic disease" and is "absolutely adamant about stopping the censorship and, you know, and making sure that we had free speech." Concerning war and interventionism, Kennedy revealed that Trump has again distinguished himself from his Democratic rivals. While he previously conceived of Trump as the guy who "brought John Bolton and Mike Pompeo into office," Kennedy told Carlson that upon meeting Trump, he realized the former president was "really disillusioned with them to say the least." Moving forward, Kennedy indicated he will be working to "get Trump elected" and will help "pick the people who will be running the government" should the American people re-elect the Republican. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Members of a community in Oklahoma rallied behind a local teen whose high school has forbidden him from flying an American flag on the back of his pickup truck.Caleb Horst just began his senior year at Edmond North High School in Edmond, Oklahoma, a city of nearly 100,000 residents about 15 miles north of Oklahoma City. Last Wednesday, he drove to school with a giant American flag attached to his truck, just as he has done "for quite a while," he said.'It is the practice of Edmond Public Schools to not permit students to fly or bring flags of any kind on our school campuses.'However, school administrators informed him that he could not continue to fly the flag on his truck and warned him not to show up with the flag on Monday.Rather than heed the warning, Horst and dozens of his fellow American patriots, both students and members of the community, drove to the school's campus Monday morning and peacefully protested the ban on American flags affixed to vehicles.According to the New York Post, more than 50 cars arrived at 7 a.m. that morning — some adorned in the red, white, and blue — to show their support for Horst and for public displays of patriotism more generally. They even recited the Pledge of Allegiance together."It’s our First Amendment, so it’s kind of hard for them to infringe upon our rights," Horst said."In the end, we’re all American, all united under that flag, and there’s not anything anyone can do to separate us."Vance Miller, another senior at the high school, claimed the issue "hit home" for him because he has a brother in the service."He’s fighting for that flag; we should be allow[ed] to fly it," he said, according to KOCO. "It’d be different if we were trying to make a political statement, but there’s nothing political about it."On Thursday, four days before the protest at the school, Edmond Public Schools issued a statement, insisting that "this is not about the American flag or patriotism" but about safety and "disruptions and distractions during the school day.""It is the practice of Edmond Public Schools to not permit students to fly or bring flags of any kind on our school campuses. This practice has been in place for several years and is explained to our students at the start of the school year along with various other policies and procedures," the statement read in part.The district also noted that it "proudly displays the American flag prominently" in classrooms and outside its buildings, that students recite the Pledge of Allegiance every school day, and that the national anthem is played before most sporting events.But Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters and some state lawmakers indicated that the district's self-described "practice" of banning American flags on vehicles is unacceptable."We have seen parents across the state who are so tired of people, young people, being told to hate their country or not be proud of their country," Walters told 9 News.Walters also stated in an X video that he is "working on guidelines" for school districts in his state to "ensure no student is ever targeted for having an American flag.""We want our young people to be proud of our country. Sounds like a lot of patriotic students at the school, and we want to encourage them to show love for the country."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

WATCH: Harris Campaign Staffer Confirms to CNN Kamala HAS NOT Changed Her Mind on Banning Fracking