US Chamber of Commerce intends to sue Democrat-controlled FTC for passing rule 3-2 banning noncompete agreements

Congress has not given the agency explicit authority to ban noncompetes. ... The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest pro-business lobbying group in the country, has said it will sue to block the rule. ... While the dissenting commissioners said they did not support noncompete agreements carte blanche, they did not believe the agency had the authority to issue the rule without an express directive from Congress.

More.

It's a BFD, as Joe would say.

Millions of American workers are not completely free to work where they may because of noncompete, nondisclosure, and confidentiality agreements they must sign as a condition of employment or as a condition of severance on termination of employment.

The FTC vote covers only the noncompete issue and represents an end run around Congress which has failed to pass appropriate legislation.

Biden DOJ under Garland and FBI under Wray vigorously prosecute non-violent pro-lifers under the Face Act while turning a blind eye to hundreds of violent pro-abortion attacks

 

My organization has been highlighting this dangerous double-standard, warning Americans that the Justice Department and FBI are exploiting the FACE Act to target and harass individuals like Eva who stand in the way of their extremist agendas. 

Just this month, a man named Elliot Bennet set fire to a Catholic Church in New Jersey. This was the third time Bennet had committed acts of violence or vandalism against the church since 2018, the 21st attack on a Catholic Church in 2024, the 274th attack since May 2022 and the 412th attack since May 2020. 

Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute Bennet for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations. It has also failed to federally prosecute a single one of the more than 400 egregious FACE Act violations against Catholic Churches since May 2020, or to meaningfully address the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers across the nation since May 2022. 

These attacks don’t involve prayer and hymns. They’ve involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners. They have cost at least $25 million in damages to Catholic Churches, while intimidating hundreds of peaceful Catholic and pro-life communities. 

More.

Trumps hit with big fines, but Judge Engoron backed down and didn't dissolve Trump World as promised, Trump certain to appeal

It’s a major reversal after Engoron effectively stripped Trump of his ability to continue as a real estate mogul in New York, recommending at the time that independent receivers begin managing the “dissolution of the canceled LLCs.”

Story. 

The big fines are meant to cover up this fact. The judge knows he went out on a limb on this case and is likely to be overturned.

The novelty of the judgment against Trump will be front and center on appeal to a five-judge panel because there were no victims of Trump's exaggerations:

On appeal to a five-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division - a mid-level state appeals court - Trump's lawyers are expected to reiterate arguments they made to no avail during the trial. They told the judge that lenders at Deutsche Bank were finance experts who were obligated to do their own due diligence and were savvy enough to know that Trump was probably exaggerating his property values. ...

A former Trump banker at Deutsche Bank, David Williams, testified in November that conducting due diligence on information clients provided was standard practice. In one instance, the bank adjusted Trump's net worth down to $2.6 billion from the $4.9 billion he reported, Williams said, adding that such a revision was "not unusual or atypical." ...

Severe penalties in a novel case like this one could potentially be met with skepticism on appeal, legal experts said. They could also prompt appellate judges to consider whether the attorney general overstepped her authority, according to Germain.

"I think the judges are going to have to look carefully at what the powers of the attorney general are here," Germain said. "Are they so broad that any lie can put you out of business, even if nobody believed it?"

More.

 

The former president of ABC News James Goldston was the Joseph Goebbels of January 6th The Movie

About 6% of the country at best tuned in for the Jan 6th theatrical production, compared with 71% for the Watergate hearings.

 

Paraprosdokianism in the news: Colorado and Maine move to destroy democracy in order to save it

Do we really want another pre-civil war election, where one candidate doesn't appear, for whatever reasons, on the ballots of ten Democrat states, as Lincoln did not and became president despite 60% of the country wanting anybody but Lincoln?

Radicalism is in the air.

Please wear a mask.

 

 

 

 

 

Destroying democracy to save it: Maine shows the danger of zealots in our legal system:

Maine’s Shenna Bellows issued a “decision” that declared Trump an “insurrectionist” and ineligible to be president. She joined an ignoble list of Democratic officials in states such as Colorado who claim to safeguard democracy by denying its exercise to millions of Americans. ...

One columnist wrote that “Democrats may have to act radically to deny Donald Trump the 2024 Republican nomination. We cannot rely on Republicans to do it…Trump must be defeated. No matter what it takes.”

A Democrat gleefully buries the serious version of Donald Trump who supposedly terrified the left not so long ago

 How DeSantis Became 2024's Presidential Punchline Max Burns, The Hill

Israeli babies killed and decapitated in fair hand to hand combat, Palestinian babies killed in indiscriminate aerial bombing of Gaza by evil occupiers

 

Breaking from The Hamas/BLM News division at The Hill: Israeli babies die in hand-to-hand combat

Harvard BA, JD

 Briahna Joy Gray, co-host of The Hill’s online morning show Rising, has drawn fire from staffers at the Beltway political outlet for what some describe as her “pro-Hamas” and “fringe” commentary. ...

“We also have to hold space for 140 Palestinian children who have been killed in this last weekend of conflict,” Gray said on Wednesday. “And it is awful, even if we don’t have the same images of them and even if they were killed from bombs from the sky instead of in hand-to-hand combat.”

More.

Joe Biden advisor Annie Tomasini inventoried Joe Biden's classified documents 20 months before Joe Biden said he discovered them, oops

 Jonathan Turley here.

Rep. James Comer, here, as of August 8th has a letter from a Penn Biden Center employee indicating:

• March 18, 2021 – Annie Tomasini (Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Oval Office Operations) went to Penn Biden Center to take inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials.

The Hamas Squad in Congress takes incoming for justifying atrocities against Israel, especially AOC

 . . . after mounting pressure, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) condemned the “bigotry and callousness” at a pro-Palestinian rally aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in New York City. ...

In a sign of the growing pressure on progressives, Ocasio-Cortez earlier this week criticized the DSA-aligned rally in New York City’s Times Square, a stance that came after she was chided for supporting a ceasefire.

The rally, which was held in support of Palestinians, drew swift rebukes from leaders across the political spectrum. Ocasio-Cortez, whose district is not far from where the protests were held, eventually released a statement condemning it.

Here.

LOL, in article supposedly touting the Cornel West threat, clueless former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader says he prefers Biden autocracy to Trump fascism

 “I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said, according to the outlet. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

Yeah, every censored, canceled person in America agrees with that, right?

If Ralph Nader is West's friend, who are West's enemies?

The whole farcical thing is here, pretending Biden doesn't now have a record, that he won the House in 2022, and that inflation isn't crushing the worker.

That's because the culture is lost, especially among Republicans

 Culture-war battles fail to deliver for Ron...

Today's up-is-down headlines: Variety v The Hill, Drudge v Real Clear

 Tucker Takes Man Cave Rants to Social Media -- to Smaller Results... (Drudge)

First Episode of "Tucker on Twitter" Nets More Than 70 Million Views (Real Clear Politics)

 

Debt ceiling compromise clears the US Senate 63-36, Republican Senators extract pledge from Chucky Schumer for more defense spending which amounts to a pig in a poke so 31 vote against it anyway

Hello, all spending bills must originate in the House.

Some Senate Republicans are pretending you don't know that.

What a joke.

 CNBC:

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of the day Thursday hammering out an agreement with a group of Senate Republicans who demanded that he pledge to support a supplemental defense funding bill before they would agree to fast-track the debt ceiling bill.

The current House debt ceiling bill provided $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 3% year over year. That figure rose to $895 billion in 2025, an increase of 1%.

But GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called this “woefully inadequate” Thursday, arguing that a 1% increase did not keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding. The solution came in the form of a rare joint statement from Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which was read on the floor.

“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats,” Schumer read. “Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds and respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance,” said Schumer.

The Hill:

The normally slow-moving chamber raced through a dozen votes in just over three hours. ...

A total of 31 Republicans voted against the measure ...

Just four Democrats voted against the measure: Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), along with Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). ...

The legislation would provide $886 billion for defense, which negotiators described as a 3 percent increase, and $637 billion for non-defense programs, according to a White House summary. ...

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said McCarthy didn’t sign off on the agreement between Senate leaders and defense-minded GOP senators. ...

Asked how confident he is about a defense supplemental spending bill passing later in the year, Thune said, “hard to say.” 

“It was important for some of our members have folks on the record acknowledging there clearly could be a need, will be a need for our national security interests,” he said.

The US House passed the debt ceiling compromise 314-117 this evening

 

Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against the bill in the House — mostly liberals and conservatives protesting specific provisions of the bill. Their numbers, however, were never a threat to the bill’s passage because of a hodgepodge of moderates and leadership allies who — despite some acknowledging the bill wasn’t exactly what they wanted — threw their support behind the measure. ...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Tuesday estimated that the bipartisan debt limit deal could reduce projected deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, a meager assessment compared to the roughly $4.8 trillion the nonpartisan scorekeeper said the GOP bill would save. ...

While votes on rules, which govern debate over legislation, typically break along party lines, 29 Republicans broke from the GOP and opposed the rule on Wednesday as a way to boycott the debt limit bill. Shortly before the vote closed — as the bill was poised to be blocked — 52 Democrats threw their support behind the rule, bringing the final vote to 241-187 and allowing the debt limit bill to advance to the floor for a full vote.

More.

Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted for the rule advancing the debt ceiling compromise to the House floor because the compromise contains the Penny Plan and a return to regular order

 The Penny Plan would be triggered in the event 12 appropriations bills are not passed by Jan. 1 annually, automatically reducing spending 1% across the board.

Ending the present bad habit of omnibus spending bills is essential to a return to good governance and represents a good reason to vote for this bill despite its shortcomings.

 

Massie followed through with his statement during Tuesday evening’s vote when he supported the rule. He also told reporters that he plans to vote for the bill when it comes to the floor on Wednesday after announcing it in a closed-door GOP conference meeting minutes earlier.

“It’s because it cuts spending,” Massie told The Hill Tuesday night when discussing his intent to support the bill.

“Nothing I’ve ever voted on has ever cut spending that’s passed that’s become law; this will,” he added.

During Tuesday’s Rules Committee hearing, Massie highlighted a provision in the debt limit bill that incentivizes Congress to pass 12 appropriations bills rather than relying on omnibus measures to fund the government. The provision threatens to cut government spending by one percent across the board if the measures are not approved by Jan. 1.

“There is one way in which I think this bill got better, and it is this 1 percent cut that we’re all agreeing to if we vote for this bill, Republicans and Democrat, come Jan. 1. If we haven’t done our homework, and if the Senate hasn’t done their homework, and if the president hasn’t signed those bills — so everybody is gonna be in this, responsible for the outcome,” Massie said.

More.

Fidelity Investments: Average retirement account in 2022 fell to $104,000

 

 And most retirement nest eggs are much smaller now than a year ago. By Fidelity’s estimate, the average retirement account lost one-fifth of its value in 2022, dwindling from $135,600 to $104,000.  

More.

DrudgeReport is a willing participant in the left's objective to shape opinion through lying polls, in season and out of season

 POLL: Majority oppose laws restricting drag...

But in that poll 92% were registered voters, and of those only 29% polled were Republicans when Republican votes for Congress in Election 2022 represented 50.6% of the votes cast (54.5 million) vs. 47.8% for the Democrats (51.5 million). 

That's the trick with almost all polls, minimizing the size of the Republican opposition from the get-go in order to obtain a preordained result favorable to the left's side.

Same thing happened with this one from March 27th. Just 29% were Republicans.

POLL: Americans Pull Back from Values that Once Defined USA...

These information war operations wouldn't be necessary if Americans overwhelmingly agreed with the left on the issue du jour.

400k without power in California

 

 

... hurricane-force winds ...

 

The storms won’t be enough to officially end California’s ongoing drought but they have helped.

 

Martha's Vineyard gets rid of its illegal immigrant problem just in time to save the last weekend of the summer