States Sue Feds on Commercial Driver Licensing
Twenty-one states governed by Democrats have sued the federal government, calling its efforts to efforts to keep dangerous drivers off the nation's highway "an invasion of privacy." Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul explained "the Trump administration trying to obtain personally identifiable information of millions of commercial drivers. This database was created 40 years ago so states could share information with each other to stop unsafe drivers from operating commercial vehicles."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin observed that "these same states have neglected to stop hundreds of unsafe drivers from killing and injuring other road users. They have notoriously licensed illegal aliens who cannot read or understand critical road signage. They are failing to do their part to keep the nation's roadways as safe as they could be."
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones asserted "this is our data. We refuse to share it with a rogue Trump Administration attempt to extort it from us by threatening to withhold our federal aid. I am proud to stand with attorneys general around the nation in fighting back against the President's latest attempts to block the gainful employment of non-English-speaking immigrants and derail them from the pathway to citizenship we are trying to provide for them."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pointed out that "this isn't some 'rogue' action. Every administration since 1988 has had access to this same database. These radical state AGs want to make it harder for my department to enforce the rules of the road and easier for dangerous illegal immigrant truck drivers to operate a big rig. These states are abetting the violation of our immigration laws and eroding the safety of American families. We will fight this lawsuit tooth and nail to prevent more senseless crashes by unqualified drivers."
Secret Service Ruse Endangers Media
MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace criticized President Trump's "extraordinary deception that needlessly exposed respected members of the White House press corps to a potentially deadly Iranian missile strike as he departed Turkey. His claim is that he was 'just doing what my Secret Service bodyguards wanted me to do' when he secretly was smuggled off Air Force One and onto a nondescript military plane is okay, as far as it goes. What he didn't do was warn the folks who thought that they'd be flying with the President that they would be on the decoy plane. His willingness to risk the lives of these innocent people is another example his callousness and incompetence."
In an interview on NewsNation with Katie Pavlich, veteran newsman Bill O'Reilly called Wallace and other media figures complaining about the ruse "fools. They don't know how it works. They don't care how it works. All they wanna do is bash Trump all day, every day. The Secret Service has to protect the President. If you're covering the President you are voluntarily putting yourself in the danger zone. You can't expect to get advance notice of measures deemed necessary to protect the President."
Pavlich chimed in "that's the job they sign up for. They should stop whining about it."
"I'm not buying that excuse," Wallace said. "Every life is equally precious. Trump had a duty to clue in the members of the press so they could avoid being exposed to unnecessary risk."
Ronald Kessler, a journalist who has written extensively on the White House and Secret Service called the ruse "standard procedure. There's a long history of strategies to mislead anybody who might be trying to harm the president. Given the animosity most of the press corps has toward President Trump, I think an advance warning would immediately have been publicly reported by one or more of the forewarned reporters, undermining the effectiveness of the ruse strategy."
Judge Dismisses Antisemitism Lawsuit Against Harvard
Massachusetts District Court Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit asserting that Harvard University was not doing enough to quell antisemitism on its campus. Stearns acknowledged that "while there have been incidents of Jews being threatened, intimidated, and discriminated against, who's to say that the University must take action? It seems to me that any actions that could be taken would run afoul of the First Amendment's prohibition of interference in the 'free exercise' of Muslim religious beliefs. The Quran contains many passages explicitly calling for the persecution, subjugation, and killing of Jews. The Trump Administration's demand that University officials are obligated to intercede to prevent Muslims from obeying this religious guidance is not supported by the Constitution. In fact, nothing in the Constitution explicitly prohibits the persecution, subjugation, or killing of Jews."
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said "we disagree with the ruling. Jewish and Israeli students have been harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon. We are assessing what steps to take."
The University insisted that "Harvard cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus. However, we are equally committed to defending the First Amendment rights of those who hate them and prefer that Jews not offend them by being in their presence. It's a conundrum that we are struggling with. The added pressure from the Trump Administration's demands is not helping."
Julian Epstein, former chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee and the staff director of the House Oversight Committee for the Democrats, disagreed and called on Republicans "to take action within the university system to save the country from Democrats who are going off the deep end. I worked with Chuck Schumer when he was in the House. He was against leftist lunacy. He favored limits on immigration. He favored strict policies against crime. Now he is afraid to stand up against the economically ignorant socialists who advocate communist policies that will destroy the country."
LA Leftists Blame Each Other for City's Failures
Though they share nearly identical progressive views, the two contenders to be Los Angeles' next mayor sharply criticized each other. Challenger Nithya Raman accused incumbent Mayor Karen Bass "of conspiring to achieve my ouster as Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee" likening it to "Stalin's underhanded moves against Trotsky in the 1920s."
Mayor Bass called Raman's ouster "fully justified. She canceled committee meetings for weeks, didn't show up to votes, and failed to deliver on building more housing or getting people off the streets. Her signature program spent over $60 million to provide apartments for only three families. She's a 'do nothing' incompetent' that's unfit to be elected mayor."
Raman countered, saying "I fought to create a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight at the city to make sure that we're tracking every single dollar. Sixteen months later, Mayor Bass still hasn't hired someone to lead it. I fought for years to push back against a politically motivated system of homelessness response that incentivizes elected officials to shove encampments from one district into another instead of actually solving the problem. I faced a wall of resistance to get those three families into apartments. I admit it's a meager accomplishment, but it's more than Mayor Bass has accomplished in her four years in office."
Spencer Pratt, third-place finisher in the mayoral primary that selected Bass and Raman to faceoff in the general election, observed "neither of these left-wing nitwits will slow the city's spiral into an unlivable hellhole. Neither understand economics or budgets. Voters face a difficult decision on whether to stick with the incumbent who has more experience at wasting the taxpayers money or give an equally inept newcomer a chance to mismanage the city."
