The shutdown is the eleventh in U.S. history resulting in curtailment of government services, and the third under President Donald Trump. It is the first U.S. federal government shutdown since the 2018–2019 shutdown.
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Every single government shutdown over the past several decades has been the fault of the Republicans, which because of their bigoted Conservative ideology refuse to compromise with Democrats on anything, resulting in completely unnecessary partisan gridlock.
This matter is especially frustrating because Republicans control BOTH houses of Congress, plus Donald Trump, a Republican, is President, so passing a budget reflecting Republican priorities should be a simple matter. The problem: not all Republicans are MAGA extremists like Trump is, and so these moderates are reluctant to support a budget that cuts down the federal government. But the LEADERS of the Congressional Republicans ARE MAGA extremists and control the agenda.
A political leadership that refuses to compromise with opposing parties is authoritarian in nature and thus is unfit to rule or be representatives in a diverse Democracy. The Republican Party itself is illegitimate and must be brought down completely and replaced by another party that respects the standards and principles of the United States Constitution itself.
Ukraine’s OnlyFans content creators declare more than $7 million in income
Ukraine’s tax service is looking to collect taxes on Ukrainians’ income made on the the subscription-based site OnlyFans, widely known for being an adult content platform, despite pornography being illegal in the country.
After the country’s tax service sent out requests to Ukrainian citizens who earn money on the platform, 451 people sent in declarations totaling Hr 326.1 million ($7.76 million) for the period of 2020-2022, Ekonomichna Pravda reported on Jan. 22, citing information requested from the country’s tax service.
Ukraine’s tax authorities said it had requested data from the U.K.’s tax service on Ukrainian earnings on OnlyFans for the period from 2020-2022, Ekonomichna Pravda reported. OnlyFans is owned by the British company Fenix International Limited.
Ukraine’s tax service refused to disclose how many Ukrainian citizens were earning money on OnlyFans, but said it had sent out 4,429 requests to Ukrainians to declare their income from the site.
Only 451 people, or 10% of those contacted, filed declarations. These filings revealed a total tax liability of Hr 63.2 million ($1.5 million) in personal income and military taxes. It is unclear what type of content those who responded to the request for declaration are creating on OnlyFans.
Although OnlyFans is known for adult content, it hosts a variety of materials, including fitness tutorials, cooking lessons, and behind-the-scenes content from artists.
Ukraine’s tax service also told Ekonomichna Pravda that it had received a court order to pass along information on Ukrainians earning money on the site to a law enforcement agency, without specifying which one.
The media outlet reported a day earlier that Ukraine’s Bureau of Economic Security was provided the names of Ukrainians earning income on the platform, and had begun carrying out searches of models and bringing charges against them under Article 301 of the criminal code that deals with the production of pornography.
Kyiv has looked to increasing tax revenues as a means to bolster its wartime budget amid Russia’s ongoing war.
But as pornography and adult content, which makes up a lot of the activity on OnlyFans, remains illegal in Ukraine, its users have largely avoided declaring income from the site out of fear of legal repercussions.
Ukraine’s strict anti-pornography laws have created complications for creators. The legal framework prohibits the production and distribution of pornography, with broad interpretations leading to prosecutions even for consensual sharing of intimate images.
“OnlyFans already pays taxes in Ukraine. But for ‘Ukrainian actors,’ even if they want to pay taxes, it is impossible. It would be an admission of guilt,” Opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak said late last year.
OnlyFans as a company pays taxes in Ukraine through the country’s taxes on electronic services.
Efforts to change the laws surrounding pornography are underway. A bill to decriminalize pornography was registered in late 2024 for the second time in recent years and gained support from the Verkhovna Rada’s specialized law enforcement committee in December.
Zhelezniak, who has supported amending the laws around pornography in Ukraine, said late last year that there are more than 5,000 people in the country currently making money through OnlyFans.
One of those OnlyFans members who lives in Ukraine is:
I made contact with her about three months ago and she seemed different from most of the shallow women on the site, so we became friends. We even switched to chat on Telegram instead of OnlyFans later.
She told me repeatedly that she wanted to get out of Ukraine to escape the war and go to America to start a new life with a man she would love and have a family with. So I believed her and used Paypal to send her money, but I made it clear to her I saw these donations as LOANS she would have to pay me back later. And she promised me she would do so.
But she later BROKE that promise and when she said she was about to leave Ukraine for Poland, she suddenly demanded MORE money from me…..like the 2600 dollars I had sent her was simply not enough?! I was furious at her now obvious treachery! So I blocked her. Then she switched to another Telegram account to attack me for not sending her money, even though I was already in debt because of her! I blocked that too. Then I reported what she did to the OnlyFans admin. If she is scamming people like me via PayPal, she doesn’t need OnlyFans, right? She should be BANNED from that site!
It seems my sense of skepticism has failed to protect me again. ANOTHER painful lesson learned!
Germans mourn the 5 killed and 200 injured in the apparent attack on a Christmas market
MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy outdoor Christmas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public’s sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy.
The alleged attack Friday evening in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise.
Magdeburg marked the tragedy Saturday with the tolling church bells at 7:04 p.m., the exact time of the attack in the city of roughly 240,000 people.
The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to police at the scene. He’s being investigated for five counts of suspected murder and 205 counts of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a news conference.
Among other things, investigators are looking into whether the attack could have been motivated by the suspect’s dissatisfaction with the way Germany treats Saudi refugees, Nopens said.
“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”
Although Nopens mentioned the treatment of Saudi immigrants angle, authorities said Saturday that they still didn’t know why the suspect drove his black BMW into the crowded market.
Police haven’t publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who had left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.”
Magdeburg is shaken
The violence shocked Germany and Magdeburg, which is the capital of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring the centuries-old German tradition of Christmas markets. It led several other communities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its many markets open but increased its police presence at them.
Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.
Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg, where a memorial service took place Saturday. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.
Although many people went to the site with candles to mourn the victims, several hundred far-right protesters gathered in a central square in Magdeburg with a banner that read “remigration,” German news agency dpa reported.
A witness recounts the horrifying attack
Verified bystander footage distributed by dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs that she thought were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.
Shaking as she described what she had witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.
The number of injured people was overwhelming.
“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold,” she said.
The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red and white tape and police vans, as armed officers guarded at every entrance. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.
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So let me get this straight…..this doctor, a domestic TERRORIST, killed and injured people because of his hatred for Islam?! REALLY???!!! HOW DOES HURTING INNOCENT BYSTANDERS DISCREDIT ISLAM?!
Maybe this guy should be DEPORTED back to Saudi Arabia and then the Saudis can punish him, since I know already the Germans won’t give him the death penalty if he is kept in Germany.
All this does is make Islam and Muslims look sympathetic, the exact opposite of what that idiot intended!
President Joe Biden issues pardon for son Hunter Biden
President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal gun charges and is due for sentencing in December.
Despite the White House’s assurances last month that the president had no intentions of pardoning his son, the announcement came through on Sunday evening that he had pardoned him.
In a statement, he said, “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” for what he called a “miscarriage of justice.”
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” he wrote.
President Biden also mentioned “political opponents in Congress,” whom he credited for instigating the charges and for ensuring that a plea deal, composed in July, fell apart in August.
The statement concluded, “Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”
Over the summer, a jury found the younger Biden guilty on three felony counts related to his purchase and possession of a firearm while addicted to drugs. And in September, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to nine tax-related charges, including three felonies, on the eve of what was expected to be a lengthy and grueling trial.
For the tax charges, Hunter Biden faced up to 17 years in federal prison and $1.35 million in fines. His gun-related conviction carried a potential of up to 25 years in prison.
Hunter Biden was scheduled to face sentencing for both cases in the coming weeks – on Dec. 12 on the gun-related charges in Delaware, and Dec. 16 on the tax charges in California.
Asked about the president’s intentions to pardon Hunter Biden on Nov. 7, shortly after the election results came through in favor of Donald Trump, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”
She declined to comment on any other pardons the president may make before the end of his term, including any administration officials or people threatened by President-elect Donald Trump with legal action.
President Biden had also previously told ABC News’ David Muir that he did not intend to pardon his son, during an interview in June.
He said, at the time, that he would accept the results of the trial.
At a White House briefing in June, President Biden also stated, “I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is — he’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know.”
He added, “I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him.”
He released a statement on Sunday, saying, “I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport. Despite all of this, I have maintained my sobriety for more than five years because of my deep faith and the unwavering love and support of my family and friends. In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages. In recovery we can be given the opportunity to make amends where possible and rebuild our lives if we never take for granted the mercy that we have been afforded.”
The statement continued, “I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
Within an hour of President Biden’s pardon, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed perfunctory notices with the courts in both criminal cases. Attorneys wrote, “The President’s pardon moots Mr. Biden’s pending and yet to occur sentencing and entry of judgment in this case and requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice.”
For the record, if President Biden had issued that pardon after Kamala Harris was elected last month. I would have opposed such a move. But Donald Trump being elected means that the American people have decided once and for all that they do NOT want an ethical leadership. They WANT corruption, bigotry, cruelty and incompetence in America’s leadership, period! So President Biden has leaned his lesson and has given up; Republicans have ruthlessly treated ethical consistency as a weakness, and sought to punish Democrats like President Clinton for ethical failures, such as in his affair with Monica Lewinski, but even he had a sense of shame after owning up to that incident. Republicans like Trump have no shame whatsoever. Richard Nixon was pardoned for Watergate by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan was never punished in any way for the Iran-Contra scandal, and President Bush Jr. was actually reelected after starting a totally needless war against Iraq.
Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
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Executive Grant of Clemency Joseph R. Biden, Jr. President of the United States of America To All to Whom These Presents Shall Come, Greeting: Be It Known, That This Day, I, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, Pursuant to My Powers Under Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, of the Constitution, Have Granted Unto ROBERT HUNTER BIDEN A Full and Unconditional Pardon For those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted (including any that have resulted in convictions) by Special Counsel David C. Weiss in Docket No. 1:23-cr-00061-MN in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and Docket No. 2:23-CR-00599-MCS-1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF I have hereunto signed my name and caused the Pardon to be recorded with the Department of Justice. Done at the City of Washington this 1st day of December in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-four and of the Independence of the United States the Two Hundred and Forty-ninth.
No one who watched Trump misuse his position as President from 2017 to 2021 should object to Biden doing what Trump would have done for any of his own kids in the same situation.
When Republicans start supporting and electing ethical leaders again, I will take their whining about possible corruption in government caused or enabled by Democrats seriously.
If Republicans like Nixon did not go to prison for Watergate and Trump does not go to prison for his criminal convictions, why should a Democrat like Hunter Biden pay any legal penalty? The playing field is now leveled for both parties.
Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction with Sandy Hook families’ backing
By DAVE COLLINS
Updated 2:33 PM CST, November 14, 2024
The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.
The purchase turns over Jones’ company, which for decades has peddled in conspiracy and misinformation, to a humor website that plans to relaunch the Infowars platform in January as a parody. Within hours of the sale’s announcement Thursday, Infowars’ website was down and Jones was broadcasting from what he said was a new studio location.
“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.
The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sales price.
The satirical outlet — which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead — was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture, including making Jones a frequent target of mocking articles. Mass shootings in the U.S., such as the Sandy Hook attack, are often followed by The Onion publishing slightly updated versions of one of its most well-known recurring pieces: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
“No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds,” The Onion said in a satirical post about the sale. “And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.”
On his live broadcast, Jones was angry and defiant, vowing to challenge the sale in court and calling it “a total attack on free speech.” He later announced his show was being shut down. Jones, who had told listeners for days that he had a new studio set up nearby, then resumed his broadcast from the new location, carrying them live on his accounts on X.
He claimed the takeover by The Onion was premature because the bankruptcy judge had not yet signed off on the winning bid.
A Jones-affiliated company named by the bankruptcy trustee as the backup bid requested an immediate status conference, citing “the apparent defects in the sale process, including changing the procedures, lack of transparency, and inaccurate disclosures to interested bidders.” A hearing was scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Houston.
The Onion, based in Chicago, consulted on the bidding with some of the Sandy Hook families that sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress in lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas, lawyers for the families said.
“Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones’ ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale,” said Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families.
Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, told The Associated Press in a video interview that it will relaunch the Infowars website in January with satire aimed at conspiracy theorists and right-wing personalities, as well as educational information about gun violence prevention from the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Collins would not disclose the sale price.
“We thought it would be a very funny joke if we bought this thing, probably one of the better jokes we’ve ever told,” Collins said. “The (Sandy Hook) families decided they would effectively join our bid, back our bid, to try to get us over the finish line. Because by the end of the day, it was us or Alex Jones, who could either continue this website unabated, basically unpunished, for what he’s done to these families over the years, or we could make a dumb, stupid website, and we decided to do the second thing.”
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said the organization will be the exclusive advertiser on the new Infowars website.
“When you think about the unmitigated harm that Alex Jones and Infowars brought to Sandy Hook families, it’s just poetic justice that now Everytown and The Onion together will open a new chapter on Infowars and a chapter that is devoted to the issue of gun safety,” he told the AP.
Jones did not lose his personal X account, which has more than 3 million followers, in the auction. But the bankruptcy judge is deciding whether his personal accounts can be sold off at the trustee’s request.
Sandy Hook families sued Jones and his company for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers. Jones has since acknowledged the shooting was “100% real.”
The Onion bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers. Recent headlines have included, “Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets To Run Foreign Policy Meetings,” “Oklahoma Law Requires Ten Commandments To Be Displayed In Every Womb” and “Man Forgetting Difference Between Meteoroid, Meteorite Struggles To Describe What Just Killed His Dog.”
Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. The bankruptcy trustee named First United American Companies, which is affiliated with one of Jones’ product-selling sites, as the backup bid should the sale to The Onion fall through.
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You can oppose gun control without lying about one of the issues related to gun control. The simple fact that Alex Jones lied outright about such a sensitive issue is proof enough to me that the cause of opposing gun control is worthless.
Alex Jones really should be in prison, but the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and the press means that it is perfectly LEGAL to tell lies for the sake of political propaganda. Which is why he and others like him have to be sued instead. Slander and libel are civil rather than criminal issues.
There should be NO legal or civil penalty for telling and printing the TRUTH, but lies about anything or anyone should never be tolerated anymore. The First Amendment in its current form is worthless and it should be replaced. I would recommend it say:
“Neither the federal government nor any state in the United States shall have an established religious body of any kind, and while truthful speech and postings in the media must always be protected, slanderous and libelous statements of any kind are prohibited and will be subject to prosecution”
In 2017, the rock music community lost one of its greatest singers, Chester Bennington, to suicide. Since that time until this year, Chester’s band, Linkin Park, was said to be on hiatus, rather than just break up completely. Finally, less than a week ago, we learned that the band had finally hired a new lead singer, Emily Armstrong.
WHO???
I’d never heard of her, at all. And it seems her sudden appearance was a shock to many others too, but not for the reasons you’d think were obvious.
So she was a Scientologist. Does that mean she should be condemned for her past? I am an ex-Baha’i and I would think it unfair for me to be condemned for being a Baha’i if I joined a famous rock band. I’d want to be known for what I am NOW, a Unitarian Universalist. Likewise, Armstrong should be known for what she is NOW. I mean, has she made any statements defending the Church of Scientology lately?
As for her singing for Linkin Park:
She does well enough to satisfy me, but she may not win over hardcore fans who still miss Chester Bennington. But the band Linkin Park will live on, just as AD/DC did after losing Bon Scott and Metallica did after losing bassist Cliff Burton and both bands became even more successful later. So let’s watch and see what happens.
President Joe Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race
Biden, after a five-decade career, faced a reckoning over his age and his ability to defeat Trump. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his party faces a historic effort to replace him.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will end his presidential re-election campaign, bringing an abrupt and humbling conclusion to his half-century-long political career and scrambling the race for the White House less than four months before Election Day.
Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November. He backed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted on X. “I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision.”
Biden thanked Harris for “being an extraordinary partner” in his letter and then endorsed her in a subsequent post.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” Biden posted. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.”
Biden and Harris spoke multiple times Sunday ahead of the president’s announcement, according to a source familiar with the campaign.
In a statement, Harris thanked Biden for “his extraordinary leadership” and his “remarkable legacy of achievement.”
“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Harris said. “I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” she said.
Biden — who for weeks had insisted publicly that he planned to stay in the race — told his senior team he had changed his mind about continuing his campaign at 1:45 p.m. ET, according to a source with direct knowledge. The tweet announcing his decision was sent at 1:46 p.m.
His withdrawal caps a singular national political career, bookended by Richard Nixon’s fall and Trump’s rise. He mounted four presidential bids. He spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate representing tiny Delaware. He rose to the chairmanships of the powerful Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. And he served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president.
‘Great public servant’
Reactions from politicians quickly began pouring in.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X that Biden “has been an extraordinary, history-making president — a leader who has fought hard for working people and delivered astonishing results for all Americans.”
“He will go down in history as one of the most impactful and selfless presidents,” said Newsom, who was one of the most prominent Biden surrogates. Newsom has been floated as a possible Democratic presidential contender, but threw his support behind Harris hours after the announcement, saying in a post on X that “no one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump’s dark vision and guide our country in a healthier direction than America’s Vice President, @KamalaHarris.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another prominent Democrat talked about as a future national candidate, called Biden a “great public servant” in a post on X.
“My job in this election will remain the same: doing everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose agenda of raising families’ costs, banning abortion nationwide, and abusing the power of the White House to settle his own scores is completely wrong for Michigan,” Whitmer wrote.
First lady Jill Biden reposted her husband’s announcement with heart emojis. “Down to the last hours of the decision only he could make, she was supportive of whatever road he chose,” said her communications director, Elizabeth Alexander.
Across the aisle, Republicans slammed the move and many called on him to resign from office, days after the completion of a Republican National Convention where speaker after speaker slammed the Biden-Harris ticket.
“If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as President. He must resign the office immediately,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson.
In a brief phone interview with NBC News, Trump reacted to Biden’s decision, calling the president “the worst president in the history of the United States by far.”
When asked whether he was surprised by Biden’s decision, Trump said that Biden “should never have been there in the first place.”
“He should have stayed in his basement,” Trump said.
In a fundraising email, Trump’s campaign said that Biden “quit the race in complete disgrace.”
An unprecedented decision
Biden’s decision to exit the race less than a month before his party’s convention and a few months before voters head to the polls is unprecedented in the modern political era. The last sitting president to abandon a re-election bid was Lyndon Johnson, whose expansion of the Vietnam War in the 1960s split the Democratic Party. But Johnson’s announcement came in March 1968 — eight months before that election.
“We’re in uncharted waters,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential studies professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “No president has dropped out or died this close to the convention.”
Replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket is likely to set off internal Democratic tremors as ambitious officials maneuver to become his successor. Factions have already formed around Harris, Whitmer and Newsom.
Harris, who at 59 is 22 years younger than Biden, would seem to be the heir apparent. She broke a barrier as the first female vice president. A woman of color, she enjoys strong support among African Americans, a loyal piece of the Democratic coalition. Overall, though, Harris’ approval rating stood at only 32% in an NBC News poll released earlier this month.
“There’s no one you can name right now who is an obvious substitute,” Perry said. “That’s what makes this so uncertain and chaotic.”
Unlike Republican delegates, who are bound to their candidate, Democratic delegates aren’t, so they are free to do what they want at the convention. Biden could have some influence over the delegates, but they could vote for a different candidate than his chosen pick, pending any rule changes at the convention meant to address this unprecedented situation. The rules currently say that the delegates simply have to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
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Biden has proven, once and for all, that he is a better man than Trump. And it doesn’t surprise me that Republicans are angry over this move. Kamala Harris taking on Trump directly and tearing him apart in public will be their worst nightmare!
Building now for a conservative victory through policy, personnel, and training.
It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.
This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.
I wonder what “radical Left” they could possibly be talking about. The only radical Leftist movements in America I know about are socialist or communist in nature and those have never been popular here. The Democrats currently in power under President Biden are moderate or centrist in nature; only a minority can be called leftist and they don’t have much influence now. I do wish they did, though.
The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.
What damage are they talking about? And how will their polices benefit Americans that are not benefiting now under the present policies of government?
The project is the effort of a broad coalition of conservative organizations that have come together to ensure a successful administration begins in January 2025. With the right conservative policy recommendations and properly vetted and trained personnel to implement them, we will take back our government.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is being organized by The Heritage Foundation and builds off Heritage’s longstanding “Mandate for Leadership,” which has been highly influential for presidential administrations since the Reagan era. Most recently, the Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s “Mandate” for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.
Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) during the Trump administration, serves as the director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to the president and associate director of Presidential Personnel, serves as associate director of the project.
So what do they want to do, exactly?
Policy Agenda
This book is an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can. Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.
This book is the product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country. Contributors include former elected officials, world-renowned economists, and veterans from four presidential Administrations. This is an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next Administration to save our country. The Heritage Foundation is once again facilitating this work, but as our dozens of partners and hundreds of authors will attest, this book is the work of the entire conservative movement.
The next conservative President will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure. It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every other generation of Americans has faced and passed. The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative movement in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.
Save our country and republic from WHAT? And why should I have to buy and read a BOOK to understand what their plans are? Moving on….
On page 19 of their book, we read the following:
America’s Bicentennial, which culminated on July 4, 1976, was a spirited and unifying celebration of our country, its Founding, and its ideals. As we approach our nation’s 250th anniversary, which will take place during the next presidency, America is now divided between two opposing forces: woke revolutionaries and those who believe in the ideals of the American revolution. The former believe that America is—and always has been—“systemically racist” and that it is not worth celebrating and must be fundamentally transformed, largely through a centralized administrative state. The latter believe in America’s history and heroes, its principles and promise, and in everyday Americans and the American way of life. They believe in the Constitution and republican government. Conservatives—the Americanists in this battle—must fight for the soul of America, which is very much at stake.
More false buzzwords. At the time of the American Revolution, race based slavery was an institution in the southern states. It took a civil war and the passage of the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. Additional Constitutional Amendments (the 14th and 15th) enabled the federal government to stop states from passing laws to discriminate against newly freed slaves. You know who favored slavery and also championed the concept of “states rights” in opposition to federal authorities banning racist policies in southern states? CONSERVATIVES! And after the Reconstruction period, they won control of the southern states and were able to force racist policies and laws anyway, and it wasn’t until the mid-20th Century that the Supreme Court and the Congress began to change things in accordance to the 14th and 15th Amendments.
Many of America’s “heros” were slaveowners, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Are these promoters of Project 2025 saying we should accept slavery again because some of our Founding Fathers owned slaves? Moving on to page 283…..
When our Founders wrote in the Constitution that the federal government would “promote the general Welfare,” they could not have fathomed a massive bureaucracy that would someday spend $3 trillion in a single year—roughly the sum, combined, spent by the departments covered in this section in 2022. Approximately half of that colossal sum was spent by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) alone—the belly of the massive behemoth that is the modern administrative state. HHS is home to Medicare and Medicaid, the principal drivers of our $31 trillion national debt. When Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law these programs, they were set on autopilot with no plan for how to pay for them. The first year that Medicare spending was visible on the books was 1967. From that point on through 2020—according to the American Main Street Initiative’s analysis of o cial federal tallies—Medicare and Medicaid combined cost $17.8 trillion, while our combined federal deficits over that same span were $17.9 trillion. In essence, our deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem.
So….what was the amount of our Defense spending in 2022?
The United States’ defense budget for fiscal year (FY) 2022 was $782 billion, as agreed upon by a bipartisan group in March 2022. This was part of a $1.5 trillion budget for the year, which helped avoid a government shutdown. However, actual military spending in 2022 was closer to $1.537 trillion, which is more than double the officially acknowledged amount. This increase was largely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which the U.S. provided over 40 billion euros in military aid to the country.
So where the hell did the Project 2025 people get that 3 trillion dollar amount regarding welfare spending from? If they want to cut that, why not cut military spending as well? Oh, wait, Republicans have always favored MORE Defense spending, not less. As often do Democrats.
The real problem with our deficits is Republicans cutting taxes to the rich instead of making them pay their fair share of the responsibility for maintaining our way of life. Those that have more should naturally pay more.
Speaking of Defense issues, we read this on page 87:
“Ever since our Founding,” former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller writes in Chapter 4, “Americans have understood that the surest way to avoid war is to be prepared for it in peace.” Yet the Department of Defense “is a deeply troubled institution.” It has emphasized leftist politics over military readiness, “Recruiting was the worst in 2022 that it has been in two generations,” and “the Biden Administration’s profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll.” Additionally, Miller writes that “the atrophy of our defense industrial base, the impact of sequestration, and effective disarmament by many U.S. allies have exacted a high toll on America’s military.” Moreover, our military has adopted a risk-averse culture—think of masked soldiers, sailors, and airmen—rather than instilling and rewarding courage in thought and action.
You know this is all in code, right? The “profoundly unserious equity agenda” must refer to allowing LGBT people to join the military. “Vaccine mandates” refer to efforts to stop the spread of covid 19 and other diseases, which would naturally weaken our troops and therefore our defense abilities. What idiots!
Then on page 657 of the book:
The next Administration must prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans. For several decades, establishment “elites” have failed the citizenry by refusing to secure the border, outsourcing manufacturing to China and elsewhere, spending recklessly, regulating constantly, and generally controlling the country from the top down rather than letting it flourish from the bottom up.
Lies. Most of the outsourcing to China and elsewhere is a direct result of the globalization of capitalism, which is not the fault of governments, but of private corporations obsessed, quite naturally, with making their profit margins as large as possible. It would take government action to BAN such outsourcing. As for securing the border, I think that is code for keeping more non-English speaking people of color from coming here to seek a better life, which is racist by nature.
I have read enough of this shit. We must oppose this SCAM with all our might. We must save America from THEM!
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 