“Nobody attacked Russia, nobody threatened it. It was Putin’s regime that attacked Ukraine – solely because of the megalomania of its leaders, because of the inhuman thirst for power over everything around it.“
– Alexander Skobov, Russian historian and dissident
“This… is not a ban on TikTok. It is a pathway to a safer, better TikTok. This is the first step – now it is time to make the deal of the century.”
– Congressman John Moolenaar (R-MI)
“There are consequences when Americans break the law. Yet when illegals break the law, there are none. Thousands of rapists and murderers are free … and the Biden admin did nothing. We will be doing that immediately.”
– Governor Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary Nominee
Cabinet Confirmation Hearings: Anyone who has had a chance to observe any of the confirmation hearings can see that the President has put forth a very strong team to help implement his agenda. I had a chance to watch parts of Hegseth’s, Bondi’s, Wrights’s, Ratcliffe’s and Rubio’s hearings. If you listened to their responses, you had to come away realizing the President is putting together a very strong team.
As I’ve said before, the President deserves the right to put his team of qualified, accomplished Cabinet members together to help him implement his agenda. He received a mandate from the American people to govern, and what the Democrats are making so painfully obvious is that at best their partisan bickering and “gotcha” questions are little more than politics as usual.
Historically, every president has picked his team, and the Senate has normally acted fairly early and, in most cases, in a bipartisan manner to approve his Cabinet. President Trump deserves the same opportunity.
Congress Is Off to a Good Start: As Committee Chairs emerge on the House and Senate side, it is obvious there is a commitment to help the President implement his America First Agenda.
Having had a chance to talk to several House and Senate members this past week, the consensus is to move fast and put the policies into place that will have time to reverse the mistakes and horrible policies of the Biden Administration.
Members are VERY aware of the challenges from the bureaucrats and the deep state going forward. We have joined with other center-right groups to do all we can to help move a pro-growth, pro-senior, pro-America agenda forward.
Don’t let the mainstream media and their pundits distract you from the political realities of the challenges ahead and somehow allow them to demonize the President’s motives and allies.
There are some very serious challenges ahead, and it will take strong leadership, bold action, and a united front. For the sake of the country, we have to move fast… So let your members of Congress know you expect swift action!
Read more below and follow me on X & GETTR – @sanuzis
–Saul Anuzis
Saul’s News Weekly Rewind Video
This Week: Ted Cruz blasts Senate Democrats for behavior during Bondi hearing, Biden drops Cuba sanctions, and Gov DeSantis picks a new Florida Senator!
Tracking Trump’s Cabinet and Staff Nominations
President-elect Donald J. Trump has quickly chosen many of the figures he wants to serve in his cabinet and in other senior positions during his second term. The cabinet always comprises at least 16 positions — the vice president and the heads of the 15 executive departments — and presidents have discretion to elevate other officials, like the White House chief of staff, to the cabinet level. This page will be updated as new announcements are made.
Dems grandstand through Trump nominee hearings because cheapshot politics is all they have
The first round of confirmation hearings for Trump Cabinet appointees shows that Democrats aren’t interested in governing — only grandstanding.
Look at the circus of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s Tuesday hearing.
Hawaii’s Sen. Mazie Hirono, a lefty stalwart, debuted an utterly bizarre line about Hegseth greenlighting military invasions of Greenland or takeovers of the Panama Canal; she also asked if Hegseth would follow a hypothetical order from Trump to shoot protesters.
Virginia’s Tim Kaine sternly wagged his finger at Hegseth over allegations of bad behavior toward women — pretty rich coming from a man who went puppy-eyes gaga in public for . . . Bill Clinton.
Liz Warren, who lied about having Native American heritage to prosper in academia, went after Hegseth for his honesty.
Pathetic. Zero substance, 100% partisan theater.
And that same cheap, circus-barker mentality was on display during the Judiciary Committee’s hearing for Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi.
Despite Dem Theatrics, Expect Most of Trump’s Nominees to Sail Through
Even CNN says that most of Donald Trump’s nominees will be confirmed. It’s unprecedented for presidential cabinet picks to be rejected by the Senate. The total number of those who got rejected or withdrew their nominations throughout American history is 29. That’s it.
Elections analyst Harry Enten broke down the figures and named John Ratcliffe, Pam Bondi, and Marco Rubio, who are nominees for CIA director, attorney general, and secretary of state, respectively, to sail through confirmation despite some of the theatrics. All have around a 96 percent-plus chance of being confirmed. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he’d vote to confirm Marco Rubio to be our top diplomat.
The last time a cabinet pick was rejected was when the opposition party controlled the US Senate in 1989. When the president’s party controlled the upper chamber, you must return to 1925.
Woke Has Gone Broke at the Confirmation Hearings
I’ve been saying for a while that Pete Hegseth’s confirmation process was going to mark a major change in American politics that was facilitated and caused by the election of Donald Trump on Nov. 5.
It’s pretty clear that the Democrats in the Senate haven’t been listening. Which is fine — they and their ideological bed-buddies can stay out of touch and in the political wilderness as long as they’d like, and the rest of us won’t mind a bit.
In a previous column, I talked about what I call The Old Game, which is what you saw a great deal of at Hegseth’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. The Old Game, which could also be defined as the “politics of personal destruction” in the verbiage of one Hillary Clinton, who had a lot of nerve decrying it when it was literally her political stock in trade, is what you play when you can’t win a real, substantial political argument with somebody.
Instead, you attack them on “character” issues as a means of distracting from the substance of the argument.
They played the Old Game against Hegseth. In previous year,s it would have been a no-brainer of a way to stop his confirmation. Sex sells, of course, and Hegseth spent his younger years (and some of his middle-aged years) as a bit of a philanderer. He busted up a pair of marriages because he had trouble turning down the strange, and he has something of a reputation — whether earned or not — as a guy who likes to tie one on from time to time.
Biden booted me off a nonpartisan board — precedent for Trump to clean house now
Early in his term, President Biden made history: He fired, en masse, his predecessor’s appointees to presidential boards and commissions before their terms ended.
On Monday, when President Trump is sworn in for his second term, he should not hesitate to follow the precedent that Biden established.
Like every president before him, Trump appointed thousands of people to boards and commissions during his first term.
These generally nonpartisan groups advise the president on our military academies, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, public television and radio, national cemeteries and more.
I was fortunate to be one of those people appointed after leaving the White House as Trump’s press secretary: He named me to serve on the Commission on White House Fellows and the Board of Visitors to the US Naval Academy.
Propaganda Press Wants You To Believe Trump Is Guilty Because Jack Smith Said So
Smith gave the stenographers in the corporate media everything they needed to keep hyperventilating about Jan. 6 before Trump’s inauguration.
The propaganda press dutifully fell in line with regime messaging Tuesday, as nearly every corporate media outlet ran with headlines claiming President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted in the Jan. 6 case if he lost re-election — because lawfare specialist Jack Smith said so.
Smith, the former special counsel charged with weaponizing the justice system to go after Trump, released his report on the Jan. 6 prosecution, which was designed for a woefully uncurious media complex to regurgitate nonsense about the bogus case.
“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” he wrote. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
That’s all she wrote, as far as the gleeful stenographers in corporate media were concerned. Smith made it easy for them — they didn’t even have to read the report — all they had to do was skip to the last paragraph to find what Smith wanted them to write about. And they did, time, and time, and time again.
Republicans Need A Forceful Answer To Democrats’ Deceptive Questions On The 2020 Election
It’s past time for Republicans to provide a pithy answer to counter the Democrat’s deceptive question about the 2020 election.
Democrats continue to play games with the Senate confirmation hearings. And while the Trump nominees remain unscathed by the “gotcha” questioning, someone needs to forcefully, substantially — and in a sound-bite — answer their query about whether Donald Trump “lost” the 2020 election.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, sidled near the sweet spot when Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked her if she was “prepared to say today under oath without reservation that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020.”
“Ranking Member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” the attorney general nominee replied.
Durbin persisted, though, asking whether she had “any doubts that Joe Biden had the majority of votes, electoral votes necessary to be elected president in 2020.”
Bondi reiterated that she “accept[s], of course, that Joe Biden is president of the United States, what I can tell you is what I saw firsthand when I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the campaign. I was an advocate for the campaign, and I was on the ground in Pennsylvania and I saw many things there, but do I accept the results? Of course I do. Do I agree with what happened, and I saw so much. You know, no one from either side of the aisle should want there to be any issues with election integrity in our country. We should all want our elections to be free and fair and the rules and the laws to be followed.”
Rick Scott elected to lead bloc of Senate conservatives
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) will replace Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) as chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, a body representing the chamber’s most conservative members.
Scott was elected to the post unanimously in a Monday vote, according to a source familiar with the matter. As chairman, Scott will host weekly lunches attended by most of the Senate Republican Conference. The committee, an ideological caucus akin to the House Freedom Caucus, also helps conservatives strategize over policy and legislative floor tactics.
Lee ran the group for years but stepped down upon taking over the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The election consolidates Scott’s role leading the Senate’s right flank. He lost a run to become majority leader in November but came close to placing second with the support of Steering members.
Scott also hosts weekly meetings with Senate conservatives and members of the Freedom Caucus at his home in Washington, D.C.
Democrats’ crisis of the future: The biggest states that back them are shrinking
Texas and Florida are growing rapidly. California, Illinois and New York are shrinking.
With America’s population shifting to the South, political influence is seeping from reliably Democratic states to areas controlled by Republicans. Coming out of a presidential election where they lost all seven swing states, Democrats are facing a demographic challenge that could reduce their path to winning the U.S. House of Representatives or the White House for the long term.
If current trends hold through the 2030 census, states that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris will lose around a dozen House seats — and Electoral College votes — to states that voted for President-elect Donald Trump. The Democratic path to 270 Electoral College votes, the minimum needed to win the presidency, will get much narrower.
“At the end of the day, Democrats have to be able to win in the South or compete in the South” if they want to control the levers of government, said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Otherwise, it’s a really uphill battle every time.”
The Brennan Center, which is left-leaning, projects Democratic states in 2024 would lose 12 seats in the next census. The right-leaning American Redistricting Project forecasts a similar blue-to-red shift but pegged the loss at 11 seats, not 12.
The Left’s Ignoble Motives
Elites in the U.S. and U.K. prioritize protecting their power over public safety, hiding the truth about crimes and fearing backlash more than addressing the harm inflicted on innocent victims.
Truth,” clearly Christopher Roach did a splendid job of employing a cinematic reference to tie together the U.S. and U.K. establishments’ mutual fear of telling their public the truth about terrorism and other criminal acts when the perpetrators are from a preferred intersectional group.
Specifically, Mr. Roach deftly stated the case how the refusal by the authorities and the corporate media in the United States to call the murders in New Orleans a terrorist attack constitutes a refusal akin to that exhibited by the United Kingdom regarding the Pakistani rape gangs. Per Mr. Roach:
There has been an even more aggressive media blackout in response to the horrifying rape gangs in the United Kingdom. For years, not only the media, but police, politicians, social workers, and other authorities downplayed the reality of these attacks, blamed victims, and did little to stop the rape of young, native British females by Pakistani immigrant gangs.
Regarding such obfuscations and denials by the two nations’ leftist elites, Mr. Roach noted the role allegedly played by their fear of being accused of “racism”: “[I]n the modern West, whether in the United States or the United Kingdom, authorities are more afraid of being accused of racism than stopping terrorism and child rape.”
Joe Biden Proposes to Underfund Medicare Advantage in Twilight Hours of His Administration
President Joe Biden proposed underfunding Medicare Advantage during the last few weeks of his administration, which could have disastrous effects for American seniors.
Last Friday, Biden’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a 2.23 percent increase for the increasingly popular Medicare option.
The proposed rate increases are lower than the consumer price index’s (CPI) year-over-year trend for inflation, or 2.7 percent.
In effect, this makes for a net cut of Medicare Advantage, similar to how the administration slashed Medicare Advantage in 2024.
American seniors have experienced higher premiums and lost their health plans due to Biden’s prior cuts.
Roughly 1.3 million Americans enrolled in Medicare Advantage lost their health plan due to the Biden Medicare Advantage cuts.
Seniors with Medicare Advantage are experiencing an average premium increase of more than 10 percent across 19 states.
Median out-of-pocket spending for Advantage plans will increase $400, or to $5,400 from $5,000.
