Epstein fever appears to have mercifully broken at Politico. Yes, although as recently as this past summer when Politico went full frenzy by publishing SIX Jeffrey Epstein stories in a 24 hour period in the apparent belief  that the  Epstein files would provide salvation from the Trumpocalypse, brutal reality appears to have set in. It isn't that they are any less hostile to Trump but even Trump-hating analyst Ankush Khardori recently admitted the sad truth that the release of those files is unlikely to unlikely  to harm Trump. As a result, Politico has been forced to do something very unusual when it comes to covering Epstein. They actually  wrote a story about the Epstein files and documents that pretty much stuck to the facts and avoided such absurdities as happened a couple of weeks ago when Politico Framed Possible Ukraine War Peace Deal as Distraction from Epstein Files. The person tasked with the strange assignment of writing a Trump-free straight story about the Epstein case was the Politico Congressional reporter, Hailey Fuchs. The refreshing change of pace appeared on Wednesday in "Epstein island photos, videos released by House Oversight Committee." It was unusual but pleasing to see Politico cover the topic of Epstein without a single mention of You-Know-Who. But this was still a story about what Democrats wanted to put out there.  The House Oversight Committee has received new materials from major financial institutions as part of its investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as photos and videos of Epstein’s private compound from authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The files from JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank have not yet been publicly released, though Democrats on the panel say they expect to release them in the coming days after a review.... Democrats publicly posted videos and photos Wednesday that were provided by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned his infamous private retreat.... Meanwhile, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers asked Wednesday for a meeting with Justice Department personnel to ascertain what information is in its possession and is subject to release. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told Attorney General Pam Bondi in a letter that that they are “particularly focused on understanding the contents of any new evidence, information or procedural hurdles that could interfere with the Department’s ability meet this statutory deadline.” See, once you drop a certain worn agenda it really isn't hard to simply stick to the facts. And hopefully there will be no (or at least few) relapses on the part of Politico.

We are shocked! The normally august Audie Cornish didn't go full Scarborough—someone known to drop f-bombs. Still, it was surprising to hear Cornish, the mannerly host of CNN This Morning, utter something out of character today. Mike Dubke, who served as White House Communications Director for three months during the first Trump term, suggested that one thing protecting Pete Hegseth from being fired is the difficulty that would be involved in the confirmation process for a replacement.  Responded Cornish:  "So, this is not a military term, but you're saying they're SOL. Basically, there's no other options out there." Dubke responded that Hegseth's "death by 1,000 cuts" could eventually lead to his firing, but that "right now they're not there." Cornish didn't seem to ponder that no one in Biden's Department of Defense resigned over their disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and their subsequent drone attack on innocent civilians. Cornish's "SOL" wasn't her only unusual utterance today. My working assumption has been that the liberal media considers Laura Loomer persona non grata--unfit for mention on its air. Yet Cornish took the initiative to raise her in the same segment today: "I think it's interesting. You have people like Laura Loomer who are online saying like, hey, this Venezuela, like, what's going on here? And it has put the administration at odds with that faction of MAGA, which is always changing a little bit of people who are like, are we going to war? Because we said we're not doing foreign conflicts." Perhaps Audie's fellow members of the liberal media will excuse her mention of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, since Cornish did so for purposes of stirring the pot in MAGA/Trump land.  Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 112/4/25 6:44 am ET AUDIE CORNISH: I think it's interesting, also you have people like Laura Loomer who are online saying like, hey, this Venezuela, like, what's going on here?  And it has put the administration at odds with that faction of MAGA, which is always changing a little bit, of people who are like, are we going to war? Because we said we're not doing foreign conflicts.  MIKE DUBKE: Well, we're not nation-building is what was really -- CORNISH: You think that's the distinction? I thought it was just even doing stuff about it.  DUBKE: I actually think, well, maybe for Laura Loomer. But I think for MAGA et al., and for the Trump administration, it's nation-building. They see themselves as a differentiator from the neo-cons in that sense.  But going back to what Betsy was saying about being bombastic, I do think that that is part of the reason that Hegseth has the support of the administration right now.  I also think it's the dirty little secret of Senate confirmations. If you want to push through X, Y, and Z through the Senate, you do not have time for another round of Senate confirmation hearings for the Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of War, or whatever we're calling Hegseth at the moment.  That is a real distraction. And so this is what the administration's balance is.  CORNISH: I see. So this is not a military term, but you're saying they're SOL. Like, basically, there's no other options out there.  DUBKE: There are no better options at the moment. And depending on how all of these death by 1,000 cuts of Secretary Hegseth are going to mount up, at some point they may make that decision. Right now they're not there. 

“A bombshell report from the Government Accountability Office confirms what Republicans have been saying all along” about Obamacare, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) reported Thursday. “Unaffordable Care Act subsidies are riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. They benefit insurance companies and cost the American taxpayers BILLIONS,” Scalise wrote in a social media post, highlighting results of the newly-released GAO report: The investigation found: ▪️ 100% of fake applicants were approved by Obamacare’s marketplace as recently as late 2024, and 90% continue receiving coverage in 2025. ▪️ Marketplaces approved coverage with no documents or fake documents. ▪️ 58,000 Social Security numbers belonging to dead people received subsidies. ▪️ $94 million in subsidies were sent to insurers for deceased individuals. The report discusses the preliminary results of GAO’s work on fraud risk management in the advance premium tax credit (APTC), a subsidy that the government pays to insurance companies to make premiums more affordable for eligible Americans under the Affordable Care Act. The covert testing by the GAO found that the overwhelming majority of fake applications it submitted were approved: “Preliminary results from GAO's ongoing covert testing suggest fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit (APTC) persist. The federal Marketplace approved coverage for nearly all of GAO's fictitious applicants in plan years 2024 and 2025, generally consistent with similar GAO testing in plan years 2014 through 2016.  “Plan year 2025. Of 20 fictitious applicants, 18 remain actively covered as of September 2025. APTC for these 18 enrollees totals over $10,000 per month. GAO continues to monitor the enrollments as part of its ongoing work.” The GAO investigation was requested by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).  “Rather than simply rubber stamp more bad spending and failed policies, we must take action to prevent further harm,” Chairman Smith said, commenting on the report’s findings.

New Orleans City Council’s Thursday meeting was brought to a standstill by spitting-mad activists protesting the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown in the city.'We’ll be back.'The Department of Homeland Security confirmed this week the launch of Operation Catahoula Crunch in the Louisiana city, targeting criminal illegal aliens. The immigration enforcement efforts sparked backlash from some in the local community.During a Thursday New Orleans City Council meeting, residents lined up to demand that council members designate all city-owned properties as “ICE-free zones” and pass an ordinance that prevents cooperation with immigration officials.Several demonstrators held signs that read, “No collaboration with ICE/DHS.”The council repeatedly muted the microphone after informing the protesters that their remarks were “not germane” to the agenda items. Despite this, the activists continued to approach the microphone during public comments to repeat their demands. A couple of protesters refused to sit down and continued to shout and disrupt the meeting.RELATED: This Southern sanctuary city is next on the list for federal immigration law enforcement Photo by Adam GRAY / AFP via Getty ImagesCouncil members responded by suspending public comment on the agenda item and calling a recess.The crowd of protesters then erupted, shouting and screaming at both the council members and the police officers present in the chamber.Videos captured by FreedomNews.tv showed police officers slowly escorting the protesting crowd out of the building, with many individuals refusing to leave. Several officers were forced to carry out one unruly activist.After several minutes of scuffling, shouting, cursing, and some protesters defiantly raising middle fingers at officers, the crowd was finally locked out of the premises. “We’ll be back,” they shouted at the police from the other side of the fence. RELATED: Man flings Molotov cocktails at federal building while yelling 'anti-ICE' comments, feds say Photo by Adam GRAY / AFP via Getty ImagesAccording to NOLA.com, 30 protesters were ejected from the council’s chambers.Toni Jones, an organizer for the event and a member of the New Orleans Alliance against Racial and Political Repression, told Verite News, “We haven’t seen City Council take a stand, and we demand that they declare they will not cooperate with [ICE] in any way.”On Thursday, DHS highlighted the arrest of a kidnapper and sex offender as a result of Operation Catahoula Crunch. According to the department, he was previously sentenced to 40 years in prison and later released on parole.“These are SICK people who have lived among us for far too long. THEY WILL GO BACK,” DHS stated. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

German climate alarmists claimed in a study published last year in the journal Nature that even if carbon dioxide emissions were radically cut down, so-called climate change would still drive the world economy toward a global GDP reduction of 19%. The alarmists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggested further that not only would global annual climate-change damages hit $38 trillion by 2049, but that under a high-emissions scenario, global GDP would be lowered around 60% relative to the baseline in 75 years — an impact reportedly three times larger than previous estimates.'Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number. So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart.'According to the U.K.-based Carbon Brief, this was one of the most-cited climate papers by the media, including the Associated Press, CNN, Deutsche Welle, and Reuters.Just the News highlighted that numerous activists and institutions also cited it, including Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and the World Bank.The problem for the climate alarmists and those who believed them was that the study's conclusions were bogus.A team of American economists pointed out in a commentary published by Nature in August that "data anomalies arising from one country in [the German researchers'] underlying GDP dataset, Uzbekistan, substantially bias their predicted impacts of climate change." The economists revealed that if the questionable data pertaining to Uzbekistan were excluded, projected global losses in 2100 would be 23% as opposed to 60%, which is more in line with previous estimates.RELATED: Al Gore wrong again: Study delivers good news for Arctic ice trends, bad news for climate hucksters Photo by ALEX KENT/AFP via Getty ImagesThe economists noted further that the Germans underestimated "statistical uncertainty in their future projections of climate impacts.""Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number," Solomon Hsiang, a Stanford University professor who co-authored the August commentary, told the New York Times. "So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart."'We have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger.'The paper, which was originally published on April 17, 2024, was retracted on Wednesday. The retraction notice indicates that "the results were found to be sensitive to the removal of one country, Uzbekistan, where inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995-1999."While the German alarmists attempted to correct the data for Uzbekistan and make other adjustments, they found that "these changes led to discrepancies in the estimates for climate damages by mid-century, with an increased uncertainty range (from 11-29% to 6-31%) and a lower probability of damages diverging across emission scenarios by 2050 (from 99% to 90%)."In other words, the original conclusions hyped by the liberal media were worthless.When the now-retracted paper was first published in April 2024, the German researchers made no secret of the point of the exercise: justifying societal and industrial upheaval coded as "adaptation.""Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly developed ones such as Germany, France, and the United States," Leonie Wenz, lead scientist on the study, said in a release. "These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them," Wenz continued. "And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100."Wenz and her team are hardly the first climate alarmists to have their conclusions proven to be as incorrect as they are outlandish.Failed presidential candidate Al Gore, for instance, concern-mongered in 2009 that in addition to the significant rise in the global sea level that was supposed to happen "in the near future" but never did, the entire polar ice cap was likely going to be seasonally ice-free, perhaps by as early as 2014.Gore told the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that then-new research indicated there was "a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."In September, a paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that Gore was dead wrong — that over the past 20 years, "Arctic sea ice loss has slowed considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005."Rather than wait to be proven horribly wrong, Bill Gates — who has spent years fear-mongering about the calamities that would supposedly visit humanity unless governments neutralized certain industries and regulated into extinction certain behaviors — admitted in October that climate change "will not lead to humanity's demise."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The American consumer did not fall for accusations of "fascism" and "racism" against a controversial jeans ad featuring Sydney Sweeney, according to the company's profit margins. The American Eagle company raised its annual sales forecast after seeing higher holiday sales, and that resulted in its stock price surging by nearly 15% in early trading Thursday. American Eagle said it expected holiday sales to increase between 8% and 9%. That adds up to over a 139% increase in the stock price of the retailer since July when the jeans ad dropped. Leftist commentators on TikTok and other platforms lambasted the video ad for including provocative scenes with the blonde, blue-eyed actress while she praised the quality of her jeans. "Should we be surprised that a company whose name is literally American Eagle is making fascist propaganda like this? Probably not. But it's still really shocking. Like, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman is talking about her good genes. Like, that is Nazi propaganda!" one user said. "If you haven't fully comprehended how bad it is, I need you to open your f**king eyeballs and listen. This is Nazi s**t, pure Nazi s**t! Saying that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl has good genes is Nazi s**t! Saying anybody has good genes is eugenics. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed? Nazi s**t!" another user said. Many on the right mocked and ridiculed the overreaction, and it appears that the consumer was not repelled by the controversy. American Eagle said it expected holiday sales to increase between 8% and 9%. RELATED: American Eagle responds defiantly to woke scolds claiming Sweeney ad is Nazi propaganda Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Even President Donald Trump jumped into the debate and praised the ad after being told that she's a registered Republican. "She's a registered Republican? Oh, now I love her ad. Is that right?" the president said to reporters at the White House in August. "You'd be surprised at how many people are Republicans," Trump added. "That's one I wouldn't have known, but I'm glad you told me that. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Gavin Newsom Says 'Judgmental' Democrats Need to Be ‘Culturally Normal’ to Appeal to Voters

President Donald Trump's effort to install political loyalists as top federal prosecutors has run into a legal buzz saw lately, with judges ruling that his handpicked U.S. attorneys for New Jersey, eastern Virginia, Nevada, and Los Angeles were all serving unlawfully.

The Department of Justice has quietly directed federal prison auditors to halt the use of Obama-era standards that were crafted to provide special protections for transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming inmates, according to an internal memo reviewed by NPR.

President Donald Trump wants Texas' 22nd Congressional District to remain all in the Nehls family. Trump endorsed Rep. Troy Nehls' identical twin brother, Trever, to fill his seat in a Truth Social post Thursday. Troy is retiring after serving three terms.