Earlier today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley released explosive whistleblower documents showing how former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith demanded the records of donors to President Trump from December 2019 through August 2023.  [Press Release Here] – [Donor Records Here] Records provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) via legally protected whistleblower disclosures reveal […]

The post Senator Josh Hawley Confronts former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith During Explosive Senate Committee Hearing appeared first on The Last Refuge.

State media in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirmed on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a secret trip to Abu Dhabi on Sunday afternoon and met with Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, commonly known by his initials MBZ.

The post United Arab Emirates Confirms Secret Visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared first on Breitbart.

Twenty-eight individuals in 12 different states have been charged with election interference or illegal voting in federal elections in the past two weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice says.

The effort to root out illegal, noncitizen voting has come as part of a large-scale move by the Trump administration to ensure election integrity prior to this year’s midterm elections.

This effort has extended to different states across the nation. On Monday, DOJ announced charges against 12 individuals relating to election crimes committed in seven different states. This comes after the department on Sept. 18 announced charges against 16 individuals, including three in Georgia, for illegal voting.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security commented on the partnership with the DOJ to root out election fraud across the country.

“DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens,” the DHS spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “Only Americans should elect American leaders.”

“Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: We will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences—including criminal charges and deportation.”

While investigations continue to root out election fraud, officials at the DOJ say the 28 individuals come from various countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and more.

Noncitizens across the nation have been charged with voting in elections, submitting voter registration applications, or election interference, DOJ says. Some even voted multiple times.

Three noncitizens from Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico, and Venezuela living in Georgia were charged with illegal voting in elections, the DOJ recently announced.

Pauline Lewis, 65, an alleged noncitizen from Antigua and Barbuda, was detained on grounds of voting as an illegal alien in a federal election.

Gabriel Covarrubias, a 44-year-old alleged noncitizen from Mexico, was suspected of voting in person using an incorrect name in the federal election of November 2024, while also making an untrue statement in an application for a U.S. passport.

Analiea Milliscent Eccles, a 44-year-old noncitizen from Venezuela and recipient of DACA, voted nearly 10 times from 2008 to 2024. Additionally, she made a false statement that she was a U.S. citizen to cast her ballot in an election.

The scope of this interference in Georgia cannot be ignored, as the DOJ said individuals residing in Florida, Texas, Utah, and nine other states have been charged with these crimes, including multiple guilty pleas.

While some of the individuals involved were illegal aliens and some were only suspected noncitizens, or even lawful permanent residents, these crimes have not only involved noncitizens voting but also have expanded to additional crimes—such as untrue statements on citizenship applications and the suspected removal of roughly 300 mail-in ballots by a former mail carrier.

In Georgia, this occurred following the subpoena that was issued by DHS to the secretary of state’s office this month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Mike Hassinger, public information coordinator for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, told the Daily Signal that he cannot “comment on any specific allegations made in ongoing investigations.”

However, he added, “Georgia was the first state in the nation to conduct citizenship verification of its voter rolls.”

In a statement sent to the Daily Signal, Raffensperger said, “These cases show exactly why citizenship verification matters. Georgia will continue to verify all voters, investigate potential violations, and work with law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws that keep Georgia elections secure.”

A Washington state computer science professor who won a First Amendment lawsuit against his university over its response to his mock land acknowledgement says the campus culture that fueled the controversy remains firmly entrenched.

“It’s kind of scary. They broke the law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the “9th Circuit said you broke the law, and they’re saying, ‘Well, we think we behaved appropriately,'” Stuart Reges, the professor, told the Daily Signal in an interview Monday.

Reges sued the University of Washington, claiming it discriminated against his viewpoint when he published the mock land acknowledgement in a syllabus. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in his favor, and the university agreed earlier this month to pay $600,000 to settle the case, without admitting wrongdoing.

Reges said the university’s response will only entrench a broader intellectual problem.

“I’ve been seeing this growing orthodoxy on campus that’s being imposed by progressive faculty, and particularly, staff,” he said. “I’ve been seeing this silencing of alternate viewpoints, even among liberals.”

“If a liberal faculty member says something that’s wrong, not sufficiently supportive of trans rights, for example, they’re attacked,” Reges argued. “I’ve been trying to push back against this imposed orthodoxy in whatever ways I can.”

“The settlement agreement states that there is no admission of any wrongdoing or liability,” Victor Balta, the university spokesman, told the Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “We effectively agree to disagree and determined that the most reasonable option was to settle rather than incur additional legal fees as we moved toward a damages trial on remand or leave it to the court to decide the final terms.”

The Land Acknowledgment Case

The University of Washington’s school of computer science recommended in 2019 that instructors include an “indigenous land acknowledgement” in their course syllabi, without dictating what the acknowledgment must say. The University of Washington’s official statement “acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land.”

In 2022, Reges added a statement to his syllabus: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”

Reges told the Daily Signal he sees land acknowledgements as “a kind of useless performative statement,” and attacked the academic monoculture for saying “you’re only allowed to say a land acknowledgement that implies the progressive point of view that this is stolen land.”

“I just thought it was fun to be able to challenge that concept, and they just freaked out,” he recalled.

When students complained about his note, the university publicly declared that the leadership was “horrified.”

“They removed it from my syllabus,” he recalled. “They apologized to my students. They told my students, ‘Here’s three ways to report Professor Reges if he insults you again,’ and they created an alternate section of the course, so that students who were so deeply offended that they couldn’t learn Java programming from me could take it on videotape from a different instructor.”

“Those are adverse employment actions, that’s a violation of the First Amendment,” he said, explaining the 9th Circuit’s rationale.

He noted that the university encouraged land acknowledgments, allowed statements that toed the leftist line, but censored his.

“You can either forbid them all, you can allow them all, but what you can’t do is to allow the progressive ones and then deny the conservative one—that’s viewpoint discrimination,” he explained, citing law professor Eugene Volokh.

Other Universities Weigh In

Four other Washington universities—Washington State University, Western Washington University, Central Washington University, and Eastern Washington University—filed an amicus brief in February, asking the 9th Circuit to rehear the case after it ruled in Reges’ favor.

The universities argued that the 9th Circuit’s ruling “could inhibit administrators’ ability to effectively redress student and faculty complaints,” and claimed that the University of Washington should win the case to allow schools to “ensure safe learning environments.”

Reges claimed the filing amounted to a defense of the University of Washington’s handling of the controversy.

“They said that they need these kinds of rules to be able to create a safe learning environment,” Reges noted. “You want to have a campus where ideas that are considered harmful are not expressed. Expressing an idea is harming people?”

He expressed concern about the long-term future of the university.

“The most radical, the most progressive, are the young faculty,” Reges warned. “They’re the ones who are going to be in charge in 20 years.”

New Jersey Democrat congressional candidate Rebecca Bennett repeatedly declined to disclose her net worth during a Sunday debate against incumbent Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), even as she campaigned on removing money from politics and criticized the incumbent over his financial dealings.

The post New Jersey Democrat Rebecca Bennett Dodges Net Worth Question Three Times Despite Calls for Transparency appeared first on Breitbart.

Conservative media outlets pushed back after revelations that former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators obtained communications from nearly 50 journalists at more than a dozen media outlets on both the right and left.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed the information Tuesday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee previously exposed that Smith and the Justice Department obtained the phone data of dozens of Republican lawmakers as part of the investigation into Donald Trump’s challenge to the outcome of the 2020 election.

“What I can say today is that Smith also obtained communications from members of the media, to include: 60 Minutes, Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, LA Times, Mark Levin Show, Media Research Center, NBC, NPR, NY Magazine, Reuters, The Federalist, The Washington Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said during his opening statement.

Grassley posed the question: “What will the partisan media say about this disgraceful government overreach? This wasn’t a normal prosecution by any means.”

Mark Levin, a TV and radio host and former chief of staff to Attorney General Ed Meese, raised First Amendment concerns about the probe.

“A clear and massive 1st amendment breach by a federal prosecutor, Jack Smith, in the Biden regime involving what appears to be my radio show and scores of media and groups,” Levin posted on X.

Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, said in a statement, “Corrupt cop Jack Smith spied on The Federalist and accessed our communications during his lawless anti-Trump witch hunt.”

The National Archives produced the information for Smith from 87 White House phones, so the material was swept up in a broader subpoena.

The Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, posted on X: “Sen. Grassley says Jack Smith obtained communications from 18 media outlets, the Media Research Center among them. Everyone on that list should want answers. We do.”

Grassley also revealed a whistleblower disclosure that showed Smith’s team collected 4,782 personal checks from Americans nationwide who donated to Trump and Trump-aligned entities between September 2019 and August 2023.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked about both the media records and the donor information.

“Did your subpoenas demand communications with Fox News?” Cruz asked.

“The subpoenas we issued did relate to communications regarding ad buys because it was relevant to the false statements,” Smith said.

Cruz responded, “Advertising on a news agency, you believe it criminal.” He then asked Smith if he obtained fundraising data.

Smith said, “I would have to look at the subpoenas.”

“Are you testifying right now you don’t know if you obtained donor and fundraising data?” Cruz asked.

When Smith didn’t answer, Cruz said, “You can sigh all you like—it’s a very simple question.”

Smith answered, “I do not recall because I have not seen those subpoenas for a very long time.”

Smith stood firmly by his prosecution and his team and repeatedly denied any political bias. He also noted that members of Congress were not the targets of the probe.

“I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalty,” Smith said. “I stand by my decision to bring charges against President Trump.”

Variations of this denial prompted Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., to ask during questioning, “Do you believe in the tooth fairy?”

Smith answered, “No.”

“How about the easter bunny?”

“Not any more,” Smith replied.

Kennedy wrapped up by telling Smith, “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Newly elected Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, brought up that Smith’s team obtained data from her brother.

“Do you really believe that Lindsey was going to destroy evidence that was not even in his possession?” she asked.

“No. I believe your brother was a patriotic public servant. He was not a target of our investigation,” Smith replied. “In fact, he likely would have been a witness in our case. Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making. He found them to be false.”

She followed up, “Why does the gag order say that disclosure of the subpoena would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence?”

“Because disclosure of that evidence could result in Donald Trump trying to intimidate witnesses as he had before and after,” Smith replied.

She shot back, “It makes no sense that anyone would be able to destroy the evidence that you were seeking,” since the evidence in question was in the hands of Lindsey Graham and Verizon.

She added, “You should be ashamed of yourself. It’s also a damned shamed that you weaponied our legal system to do this, to go after a political opponent, and his allies, including Lindsey.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., called Smith a “dirt bag.”

Schmitt pressed Smith on whether he visited Atlanta during his time as special counsel, when Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was prosecuting a case against Trump over the 2020 election dispute.

Schmitt said the committee had a text from Smith’s staff that said he went to an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024. Smith later said he was at a women’s college basketball game in Maryland between the University of Maryland Terrapins and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, not an Atlanta Hawks game.

Senate Democrats focused almost entirely on the Jan. 6, 2021, protest that led to a breach of the Capitol.

“What we’ve heard, and what we haven’t heard, from my colleagues across the aisle, they have attacked you repeatedly, aggressively, inapprorpiately, scandalously, but none of them have contested what happened on this day,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. “None of them have said there was no attack on Jan. 6. None of them have tried to deny the assault on police officers. None of them have even suggested the president wasn’t involved.”

When it comes to politics, Republicans are incorrigible optimists. But bright smiles and hope may not be enough to avoid a calamity in the midterm elections that are already underway.

The post Breitbart Business Digest: Bleak Economic Sentiment Haunts Republican Midterm Hopes appeared first on Breitbart.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed the "No Kings Act," which makes it easier for left-wing migrant activists and others to sue ICE agents.

The post CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs ‘No Kings Act,’ Making It Easier to Sue ICE Agents appeared first on Breitbart.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. I am going to mention Canada again. I know we’re getting tired of this subject because, after all, Canada is our closest ally, closest friend, the country that is most like the United States, or so we’ve been told. But [Prime Minister] Mark Carney is doing things that we have never seen or heard before in Canada.

His latest is he tells a reporter that, yes, he has thought of preparing the Canadian military to prepare for an invasion by the United States. That is absolutely insane when the United States has protected, since World War II, the entire North American continent.

Canada has never had missiles launched into its airspace. It has never had its claims, extravagant though they are, in the Northwest Passage and the Arctic challenged by China or Russia or any hostile power due to the U.S. military.

The idea that the protector of Canada, the protector who allowed Canada to disarm, is preparing an invasion is absurd, and it’s an insult.

And Carney is doing this, once again, to jack up opinion in Canada for a new nationalism to avoid the great dissatisfaction in Alberta and Quebec, and especially to try to influence the midterms in the United States and to otherwise mask his unpopular socialist globalist agenda.

But when he said to the world that the United States, he thought, could invade Canada militarily, and when he reached out to Communist China and is basically seeing them as one of its two new trading partners, given its record in cheating on trade, its human rights violations, and the horrendous legacy of the Communist Party since Mao Zedong in China, and he’s preferring that now over the tradition of American friendship.

And then at the same time, as he warned the world that he was preparing or he could prepare for an American invasion, at the same time he’s reached out to the EU, the European Union. Canada has 75% of all of its trade and its exports with the United States. It has 5%—5%—with the EU, and yet he’s reaching out for a new trade partner as if he thinks the EU, which is one of the most protectionist entities in the world, is going to drop its tariffs and its barriers to benefit Canada’s 5% trade with the EU.

This is insane.

More importantly, he doesn’t quite understand that of all, in this dispute, it’s over 2%. The tariffs are over 2% of the trade, which everybody agrees was almost tariff-free.

All the United States was saying is that we’re tired of 250% tariffs once we get over a certain number of exports into Canada, and we don’t like, at the 11th hour, slapping 5% on our digital media companies so that we have to subsidize your acculturation in Canada or promote the French language or Indigenous people, and these are American companies.

We don’t do that to Canada, of course. And we did resent, at the last moment, telling us that you were going to allow cheap Chinese metals to come into your economy so that they can be reassembled and sent as finished vehicles into the United States and therefore allow China to avoid tariffs. We resented that, but it still only represented 2%, and yet that sent Carney wild.

He doesn’t realize, though, what he’s getting into, as I said. Not only do his children live there in the United States, not only did he go to school, as they did, in the United States, not only did his 91% investment portfolio reside in the United States, but Canada is the most favored nation of all the nations in the world as far as tariffs go with the United States.

Canada is the only country, as I’ve said before, where you can come into the United States without a visa and work immediately for six months, as 1 million Canadians do as I speak.

Canada doesn’t have to deal with 10,000 illegal immigrants coming from Latin America on their way into North America. It doesn’t have to deal with the dangerous cartels that kill 100,000 Americans in some years. It doesn’t have to deal with Chinese fentanyl going into Mexico to be repackaged as designer drugs to kill Americans.

It doesn’t have to deal with that because the United States is a barrier to Canada. It has the longest unenforced border with the United States. We don’t treat Canada the way Mexico treats us, or rather, we ensure that Mexico doesn’t treat Canada the way it treats us.

People in Canada are not sending back $65 billion out of their economy. All we’re saying is that year after year after year, Canada should try to reduce a $50 billion surplus.

It should try to at least match or exceed the NATO promise that it made to spend 2% of [gross domestic product] on defense, and it needs to discuss any other issues in a sober and judicious manner rather than walk out at the 11th hour and tell nobody.

And so, what’s gonna happen is we’re watching—when he said the latest, Carney said the latest about a veritable war, the American people’s ears perked up.

And you can talk all you want in Canada about elbows out and how chauvinistic you are and how you’re gonna cut off the tar sands oil to the United States and all the terrible things you’re gonna do, and you’re going to get China on your side and the EU.

They’re not going to do it.

The United States has a $30 trillion economy. It’s $10 trillion larger than the EU. It’s $10 trillion larger than China. There are no transportation costs for Canada just to walk across the border with 75% of its trade.

What Carney is basically saying is: I’m not gonna tell you what I said in these negotiations and why I walked out. I am going to misrepresent it. I won’t give you a transcript. I got my ministers to back me up. No discussion.

He’s saying this because he had ulterior political motives. But he sacrificed the viability, not just the economic viability, the viability of Canada, which was heavily reliant on the U.S. military, the goodwill of the American people, and the U.S. economy.

I’d just like to finish why he’s doing this and why the Canadians are reacting in such a Pavlovian manner to follow his prompt.

This is not the Canada that we used to know that was proud, confident, had a glorious record in World War II, a strong military, a strong economy, developed in a very sober and judicious manner its rich treasure house of natural—sir, not after Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney.

We in the United States did not cause this problem. We did not say to Canada, “You better let in 45% of your current population from foreign countries who were not born in Canada or their parents weren’t born, and they’re not gonna be assimilated and integrated in melting-pot fashion.”

We did not say, “Forego all of the rich fossil fuels in your country. Stop pipelines to other provinces from Alberta and stress green energy, solar power in frigid Canada, so to speak.”

We did not say to you, “Craft your economy so of all the 30-something industrial Western nations, you will have the least amount of per annum GDP growth.”

We did not do it, much less [President] Donald Trump. He did not say to Canada, “You can’t have the same familial GDP as we are. You have to be $30,000 to $40,000 poorer per person and per family than we are.”

We didn’t say to the Canadians, who are a strongly moral and ethical people, “You shall lead the world in assisted suicides, 5.1% of all your deaths, 19,000 people a year, ostensibly to save overwhelming health care costs for people who may be terminal because the economy doesn’t support that. The economy doesn’t support open borders and the amount of immigrants who are coming in. The economy doesn’t support fulfilling your defense needs. The economy doesn’t support fair trade with the United States that’s symmetric.” But we didn’t do that. Your leaders did.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.