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Cruz blocks Biden’s State Department nominees ahead of Senate break

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blocked the quick confirmation of dozens of State Department nominees on Wednesday morning, guaranteeing that they will stay in limbo until next month when the Senate returns from its summer break.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tried to get the nominations confirmed at the end of an all-night session before the Senate left Washington until mid-September.

In a floor back-and-forth that lasted roughly 50 minutes, and wrapped just before 6 a.m., Menendez and then Murphy went one by one through the list of State Department nominees trying to get consent to confirm them.

Each time they were blocked by Cruz, though Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also got in on the action and blocked one of the nearly 30 nominees: Brian Nichols’s nomination to be an assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs.

“I know the hour is late, but we have nearly 30 highly qualified foreign affairs and development nominees who are languishing on the Senate floor. We have to confirm these nominees to fully equip the United States to pursue our foreign policy objectives,” Menendez said as he kicked off the floor slog.

Cruz has been slow-walking the nominations until the Biden administration imposes congressionally mandated sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will allow Russia to deliver natural gas to Germany.

The Biden administration in May issued a sanctions waiver on one entity and three individuals related to the pipeline’s construction, which is more than 90 percent complete.

“All of the senators in this chamber know precisely why these nominees have not moved forward, and the reason is because the Biden administration is currently engaged in open defiance of the United States Congress,” Cruz said on Wednesday morning.

“Vladimir Putin desperately wants the pipeline completed. If the pipeline is completed it will give billions of dollars to Putin to use for malign efforts in Europe and throughout the world,” Cruz said, referring to Russia’s president.

Cruz’s actions don’t prevent the Senate from eventually confirming the nominees, but Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will be required to eat up limited floor time in order to do so.

Cruz said on Wednesday morning that he would lift his block, and let the nominees be confirmed, if the Senate passed legislation imposing sanctions over the pipeline. But Menendez objected to Cruz’s bill, noting it hadn’t gone through the Foreign Relations Committee, and Cruz, in turn, kept blocking Menendez and Murphy from being able to confirm the nominees.

The State Department and Senate Democrats have called out Cruz for holding up the confirmation votes on key members of Biden’s national security team.

Murphy, on Wednesday, warned that Cruz’s tactics could be replicated by Democrats under a GOP administration.

“This place just becomes unworkable if every single senator holds up this many nominees over one particular policy disagreement. And this tactic will be utilized by Democrats when there is a Republican in the White House,” Murphy said.

In addition to the Nichols’s nomination being blocked by Lee, Cruz blocked quick confirmation of nearly 30 nominees including six nominees to be assistant secretaries of State and several ambassador nominations.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd suggests Andrew Cuomo can make political comeback after resignation

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd weighed in on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation Tuesday, saying the disgraced governor could make a political comeback after the dust settles on his alleged sexual misconduct. 

Speculating the Democrat’s resignation was a defensive move against his critics and an attempt to stay in good graces with his party, the Meet the Press host said stepping down could open the door to future political opportunities. 

“He eventually did something that, maybe over time, will at least give him an opening to maybe not be a full pariah, say in three years, four years, five years,” Todd said on MSNBC.

Cuomo, whose resignation is effective in two weeks, faces credible accusations of sexual misconduct from 11 different women, according to an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James. 

The 63-year-old governor repeatedly denied accusations of harassment, saying, “The most serious allegations made against me had no credible factual basis in the report.” 

“This is a sad day for New York because independent investigators have concluded that Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and, in doing so, broke the law,” James said. “I am grateful to all the women who came forward to tell their stories in painstaking detail, enabling investigators to get to the truth. No man, no matter how powerful, can be allowed to harass women or violate our human rights laws, period.” 

Todd noted Cuomo is a “career politician,” working on his father’s campaign when he was younger and eventually succeeding to the governorship himself. 

“This is all he’s known,” he said. “What would he do without the ability to run for office?” 

Todd concluded by saying Cuomo’s resignation was a tactical decision, and he fully expects the governor to run again in another capacity. 

“I expect, in my lifetime, Andrew Cuomo to run for office again. What that office is? I don’t know, but that’s what this resignation tells me today,” Todd said at the end of the segment. “He wants to live to fight another day.”

President Joe Biden, who called for Cuomo to resign and speculated he would be prosecuted, said the governor had done “a hell of a job” in office. However, the president was quick to clarify he was commenting on Cuomo’s performance as governor and not as a person. 

“Should he remain as governor is one question. And women should be believed when they make accusations that are able to, on the face of them, make sense, and they are investigated. And the judgment was made what they said was correct,” Biden said. “That’s one thing.” 

Cuomo will be replaced by Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who will become New York’s first female governor.

T Is for Tyranny: How Freedom Dies from A to Z

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a convenient, traumatic, devastating distraction.

The American people, the permanent underclass in America, have allowed themselves to be so distracted and divided that they have failed to notice the building blocks of tyranny being laid down right under their noses by the architects of the Deep State.

Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton: they have all been complicit in carrying out the Deep State’s agenda.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day, part of a calculated siege intended to ensure our defeat at the hands of a totalitarian regime.

It’s time to get educated on what’s really going on.

Thus, in the interest of liberty and truth, here’s an A-to-Z primer that spells out the grim realities of life in the American Police State.

A is for the AMERICAN POLICE STATE. A police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

B is for our battered BILL OF RIGHTS. In the militarized police culture that is America today, you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is rarely held accountable for violating your rights.

C is for CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE, a governmental scheme to deprive Americans of their liberties, namely, the right to property.

D is for DRONES.

E is for EMERGENCY STATE. From 9/11 to COVID-19, we have been the subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.

F is for FASCISM, a form of government where private corporate interests rule, and money calls the shots.

G is for GRENADE LAUNCHERS. The federal government has distributed more than $18 billion worth of battlefield-appropriate military weapons, vehicles and equipment such as drones, tanks, and grenade launchers to domestic police departments across the country.

H is for HOLLOW-POINT BULLETS. The government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions.

I is for the INTERNET OF THINGS, in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits, driverless cars populate the highways, and a person’s biometrics are constantly scanned and used to track their movements, target them for advertising, and keep them under perpetual surveillance.

J is for JAILING FOR PROFIT. This profit-driven form of mass punishment has given rise to a $70 billion private prison industry that relies on the complicity of state governments to keep their privately run prisons full by jailing large numbers of Americans for petty crimes.

K is for KENTUCKY V. KING. In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that police officers can break into homes, without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home as long as they think they may have a reason to do so.

L is for LICENSE PLATE READERS, which enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.

M is for MAIN CORE. Since the 1980s, the US government has acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of at least 8 million names of Americans considered to be threats to the nation.

N is for NO-KNOCK RAIDS. Owing to the militarization of the nation’s police forces, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for routine police matters. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year.

O is for OVERCRIMINALIZATION and OVERREGULATION. Thanks to an overabundance of 4500-plus federal crimes and 400,000 plus rules and regulations, it’s estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it.

P is for PATHOCRACY. What we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

Q is for QUALIFIED IMMUNITY. Qualified immunity allows police officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.

R is for ROADSIDE STRIP SEARCHES. The courts have increasingly erred on the side of giving government officials—especially the police—vast discretion in carrying out strip searches, blood draws and even anal and vaginal probes for a broad range of violations, no matter how minor the offense.

S is for the SURVEILLANCE STATE. A byproduct of the electronic concentration camp in which we live, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

T is for TASERS. Nonlethal weapons have been increasingly used by police as weapons of compliance, enabling police to aggress with the push of a button.

U is for UNARMED CITIZENS SHOT BY POLICE. No longer is it unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later.

V is for VIRUSES and VACCINE PASSPORTS. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including the US) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

W is for WHOLE-BODY SCANNERS. Using either x-ray radiation or radio waves, scanning devices and government mobile units are being used not only to “see” through your clothes but to spy on you within the privacy of your home.

X is for X-KEYSCORE, one of the many spying programs carried out by the National Security Agency that targets every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone.

Y is for YOU-NESS. Using your face, mannerisms, social media and “you-ness” against you, facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business.

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE. We have moved into a new paradigm in which young people are treated as criminals, often for engaging in little more than childish behavior or for saying the “wrong” word.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the reality we must come to terms with is that in the post-9/11 America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age.

You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state.

Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.

Senate passes framework of $3.5T budget reconciliation package in party-line vote

The vote was the initial step in the budget reconciliation process.

The Senate voted early Wednesday to pass the framework of the hotly contested, $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package after a nearly 15-hour-long vote-a-rama in Washington, D.C., and if there was any camaraderie on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, it seemed to have taken a holiday after this vote.

The vote was procedural and the initial step in the budget reconciliation process that could eventually allow Democrats to pass the package without a single Republican vote. The vote on Wednesday was 50-49, and straight down party lines.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said the resolution paves the way “for legislation that would redefine the very role of the federal government in the lives of average Americans, all under a 50-50 Senate, a razor-thin majority in the House, and a President who was elected on moderation.”

“After Democrats shamelessly used COVID as an excuse to pass a partisan $2 trillion liberal wish-list in March, Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders has brought the rest of his party along for another $3.5 trillion that seeks to increase dependency of the middle class on the federal government, re-engineer the economy to benefit liberal interest groups, and provide tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy in Democrat-run states,” Toomey said in a statement. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised the vote and said the budget will “bring a generational transformation on how our economy works for average Americans.”

“It’ll cut taxes for American families, it’ll lower costs for everyone,” the Senate majority leader said. “It’ll create good paying jobs while tackling climate change. And it will be paid for by making our tax code more progressive and more fair, asking corporations in the wealthy to pay their fair share.”

The framework is 92 pages and opens the door to climate and social initiatives and expanded Medicare. Politico reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was sidelined by COVID-19 and recovered, returned to the floor to say the package is “a dream for those who want to socialize” the U.S. and that “America as we know it is at risk in this budget resolution.”

Dr. Fauci’s Federal Agency Spent $424K Cruelly Experimenting on and Euthanizing Beagles, Exposé Reveals

The federal government is using your money on some shockingly cruel animal experiments.

Every day as I write from my home office, my sweet, elderly beagle Reggie sits next to me and keeps me company. I adopted him from a rescue shelter almost a year ago—his “birthday” is coming up on August 12—and he has brightened my life in too many ways to count. So, you can imagine the revulsion and disgust that overcame me when I recently discovered that the federal government spent nearly half a million dollars of our taxpayer money on futile experiments to hurt and ultimately kill beagles just like my Reggie.

That’s right: According to a new exposé from the anti-animal-experimentation advocacy group the White Coat Waste Project, the National Institutes of Health spent $424,000 on a study involving the abuse of dogs. The NIH department that is specifically under the leadership of Dr. Anthony Fauci funded this experiment, and it “commission[ed] a study in which healthy beagles are given an experimental drug and then intentionally infested with flies that carry a disease-causing parasite that affects humans.”

The White Coat Waste Project discovered this through a Freedom of Information Act request that forced the government to turn over information and images from this cruel experiment. Many of the dogs involved “vocalized in pain” during the experimentation, and images (included below) show their injuries.

And, according to the exposé, all the beagles will be euthanized at the end of this ongoing experiment.  

Morality aside, the White Coat Waste project also argues that this experiment wasn’t even scientifically necessary.

 “What’s worse is that this is all completely unnecessary,” the group reports. “Experimenters admit this investigational drug, ‘has been extensively tested and confirmed…in different animal models such as mice…Mongolian gerbils…and rhesus macaques….’” 

Moreover, this isn’t even the NIH’s first cruel experiment on beagles. In 2016, the White Coat Waste Project reported that Dr. Fauci’s division was “using tax dollars to buy beagle puppies and strapping capsules full of infected flies to their bare skin.”

“More than 1,100 beagles, hounds, and mixed-breed dogs—even puppies—were subjected to experiments in government laboratories operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Defense (DOD), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” their 2016 report reads. “Hundreds of the dogs were subjected to experiments involving significant pain and distress. NIH… [has] spent $5.95 million since 2011 to give dogs heart attacks. Other recent experiments include exposing dogs to anthrax, repeatedly forcing dogs to vomit, and drilling into dogs’ skulls and damaging their brains.” 

This is nothing short of mortifying. While the debate over animal experimentation is complex, particularly in cases where it can advance human health, we should all agree that objecting taxpayers should not be forced to fund the government’s animal abuse.

Mike Lindell Presents ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence Of Voter Fraud, Says He’ll Give $5M To Person Who Proves Him Wrong

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is presenting “irrefutable” evidence in a two-day event showing voter fraud occurred during the 2020 elections. He is also promising to give a $5 million reward to anyone who will prove him wrong.

WND reported that Lindell‘s “cyber symposium” in his website, FrankSpeech, is presenting “irrefutable” evidence that China-sponsored hackers switched the results of the 2020 elections for President Joe Biden. Lindell is said to have spent $15 million to investigate on the election fraud and to host the symposium.

As of now, 48 states have registered for the symposium that is not open to the public and registration-basis only. Politicians are in attendance during the event.

Lindell said in an interview with the Washington Times that his evidence will unite the country since it is about “free and fair elections.” He also believes that it will overturn the election results.

“Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, this will be the greatest uniting of our country ever. Because this isn’t about politics. This is about free and fair elections and about the 2020 (election). And you’ve got to get that righted,” Lindell announced.

Lindell was on the receiving end of attacks against former President Donald Trump and experienced boycotts on his company’s products in the beginning of this year. Lindell was later sued by Dominion Voting System for his “false accusations” that allegedly defamed them for involvement in the 2020 elections fraud.

But the CEO fought back in June with a lawsuit against Dominion Voting Systems, as well as Smartmatic, over violations on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act. The lawsuit pointed out that the two companies were “weaponizing the judicial system and the litigation process to silence dissent, unpopular beliefs, or facts inconveniently out-of-line with mainstream groupthink.”

Now, Lindell is back with evidence that shows China meddling with the 2020 November Presidential Elections. Lindell, who positions his website as “the voice of free speech” having been deplatformed by BigTech for his statements on the election, promotes the two-day symposium as a way to “help save our country.”

The website provides visitors the opportunity to download flyers for printing “to share with” their “friends, family, church, state, and local government” besides having a section on election fraud. The businessman has also partnered with FedEx stores where people can get already-printed “yard signs, posters, flyers” for free through a special code.

The Cyber Symposium, as per the website, is Lindell’s “showdown” against Dominion and other “big name companies pulling his pillows” because he contended the results of the elections. The symposium is said to be part of his “expose” and a precursor to his “release of hot-button documentaries” on the election fraud.

“For our attendees, they have one goal. Find proof that this cyber data is not valid data from the November Election. For the people who are able to find the evidence, 5 million is their reward. Seems insane, right? But this is real!” The symposium’s introduction read.

“Despite the mockery, it doesn’t hide this simple truth. Regardless of political affiliation, a corrupt election system is disastrous for all of us. That is why everyone should be fighting to find out the truth. And this 72-hour event has been put together by Mike Lindell to do just that. Our voting system should not be second-guessed, and when it is, Americans need to stand up,” it ended.

Pro-Life Billboard Removed After Just One Day Due to Death Threats

A group of pro-life Christians commissioned a billboard in rural Texas calling on locals to “ignore” the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling on Roe v. Wade, which gave legal cover to abortion. After just one day, though, the banner was removed because the landowner received death threats.

The group, Abolish Abortion Texas (AATX), designed the billboard, which promoted the website, “IgnoreRoe.com,” under the phrase, “62 million dead and counting.” The link directs visitors to the AATX website, which states, “We should abolish abortion in Texas, regardless of what the Supreme Court says we can do.” 

The billboard, located outside Boyd, Texas, contained no graphic imagery.

In a press release about the sign’s removal, the pro-life organization said the billboard was taken down after the landowner received “complaints” and “death threats,” which “forced the advertising company to remove” it.

The fund coordinator for the campaign, Jon Speed, who serves as pastor of missions and evangelism for First Baptist Church of Briar, said the ordeal is evidence of “how intolerant Texas has become.”

“There are no graphic images on the billboard, not even a strong statement,” he said in a press release shared with Faithwire. “It’s just a website that seeks to abolish abortion in Texas. The fact that this happened in rural Texas is not only surprising in a self-professed pro-life state, it indicates how weak that commitment is.”

Speed, who earned national attention in 2019, when he decided to shutter his New York bookstore and move to Texas as a result of the “tyranny” he experienced in the Empire State, cast doubt on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s commitment to the pro-life cause.

Last month, Abbott signed a so-called “trigger bill” that would allow Texas strongly limit or entirely outlaw abortion, should the Supreme Court overturn its ruling on Roe v. Wade.

The rural Texas preacher, however, isn’t convinced Abbott — or other conservative lawmakers — will stand by his pro-life bonafides.

“The conservative nature of Texas is really an illusion when you can have people that call in and make those kinds of complaints and have a billboard taken down,” he said in a YouTube video. “Don’t be deceived by big splashes in the media about what Texas is going to say they’re going to do, because if you can’t even get this to stand in Texas, I don’t believe it.”

It’s not clear how many threats and complaints the landowner received.

Senate Democrats Admit Defunding the Police Is a Bad Idea

Senate Democrats overnight appeared to have realized defunding police departments in the aftermath of last year’s riots and amid this year’s crime wave is not a good thing after voting in favor of amendments for the fiscal year 2022 budget resolution.

In a vote of 99-0, the Senate voted in favor of Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) amendment “that would reduce or eliminate federal funding to local governments that defund law enforcement departments.”

“If local leaders in Minneapolis or Portland are so beholden to the radical Left that they cut financial support for their law enforcement, there is no reason federal taxpayers in Alabama or any other state should have to pick up the tab,” Tuberville said in a statement. “My amendment is simple: if a city council believes the ‘woke’ thing to do is to cancel the police department, then they shouldn’t expect the federal government to bail them out.”

It was not the only pro-police amendment the Senate passed last night. Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) amendment that would seek to hire 100,000 more police officers across the country to deal with the rise in violent crime passed with only one Democrat voting against it.

While the votes are non-binding it is telling so many Democrats in the Senate would put their names behind such measures, given the fact many high-profile and outspoken Democrats, like Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), have called for the defunding of police departments.

Biden’s Mental Decline on Full Display In Latest Gaffe

William Lane Craig debates Ben Shapiro about Jesus…

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