Government & Politics

• The Leftmedia Machine lynches Mark Robinson: Remember back years ago, when a 49-year-old Democrat president was preying on a 21-year-old White House intern, and Bill Clinton’s defenders accused Republicans of being obsessed with sex? Those were the days. These days, though, it’s the Democrats and their Leftmedia lickspittles who are obsessed with the lurid. CNN has the scoop: “Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and expressed support for reinstating slavery.” Robinson has a big target on his back. He’s vying to become North Carolina’s first black governor, and leftists don’t like it. So, they sat on a salacious story until the very last day that Robinson could exit the race, after ballots had already been printed. What did CNN reporters know, and when did they know it? And where are Facebook’s censors, and why aren’t they protecting this black conservative like they protected white-privileged Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election? It’s hard to know what the up- and down-ballot implications will be here, but North Carolina is a crucial swing state, especially for Republicans. In defending himself yesterday, Robinson said, “Clarence Thomas once famously said, he was the victim of a high-tech lynching.” True enough. But in this case, Robinson may have supplied his political enemies with the rope.

• Pelosi claims Harris won “open primary”: During an interview earlier this week, Nancy Pelosi was asked about a statement she made prior to Joe Biden bowing out of the presidential race. The event host, Kadia Goba, asked, “You had reportedly said that you wanted sort of an open primary if Joe Biden stepped down. Did you change your mind because you saw all the excitement around Kamala Harris?” Pelosi answered, “No, I didn’t change my mind. We had an open primary, and she won it. Nobody else got in the race because she was politically astute.” Really? When did this open primary happen? And how many votes did Harris garner? Before Goba could challenge Pelosi’s blatant falsehood, the former House speaker pushed on to cheers from the audience, stating, “Let’s show our talent. We have a great bench, all these great people in the country, and the president endorsed her, and that’s a big deal because Joe Biden is the most consequential president of modern times.” Later, Pelosi clarified her claim, saying, “It wasn’t that we didn’t have an open process. It’s just that nobody got in because she had a running start.” Talk about gaslighting.

• Census Bureau overcounts blue states: We give these people one job. One job. And yet, the U.S. Census Bureau can’t even count straight. We know this to be true because House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer is now investigating reports of the bureau overcounting and undercounting state populations in a way that benefits the Biden/Harris administration and its fellow Democrats. “Significantly,” wrote Comer in a letter Wednesday to Census Bureau Director Robert Santos, “these errors likely led to an erroneous apportionment of representatives among the states. Even relatively small differences in population count can affect congressional representation, as a single congressional seat cannot be divided among multiple states.” We’re shocked — SHOCKED — to report that the Census Bureau hasn’t responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. And we hate to say it, but these are your tax dollars at work.

• Supreme Court faces second major leak of internal documents (More)

Security

• Alaska man indicted for threatening to assassinate Supreme Court justices and their family members (More)

• Digging into the Hezbollah Candygram: It’s hard to know what’s worse: the mass castration of hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists or the mass destruction of the Hezbollah brand via Israel’s ingenuity and the Islamist organization’s idiocy. The more we learn about Israel’s military masterstroke, the more impressive it becomes. The Israelis didn’t intercept Hezbollah’s pagers; they actually manufactured them as part of a years-long operation. As The Daily Wire reports, there were two waves of simultaneous explosions. The first wave, which took place on Tuesday afternoon, involved pagers, and the second wave, a day later, involved exploding walkie-talkies. The Wire continues: “The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan. There was initial confusion … that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode.” Nope. The Israelis left nothing to chance.

• Texas oil thefts linked to illegal immigration: Texas Republican Representative Tony Gonzales will soon introduce a bill aimed at combatting a serious problem connected to illegal immigration: oil theft. In western Texas, across a region known as the Permian Basin, there has been an increasingly sophisticated operation of gasoline and oil theft orchestrated by malefactors with ties to criminal organizations across the border. These criminal groups primarily recruit illegal immigrants to steal the oil. And the problem is only growing as hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. The thefts include hijacked trucks hauling oil and gasoline as well as stealing expensive drilling rig equipment. Gonzales argues, “The locals know about this, but they just don’t have the resources to combat against it because it’s very sophisticated.” Matt Coday, president and founder of the Oil & Gas Workers Association, explained, “It’s not just people being attacked. It’s not just a threat to our economy. It’s an absolute threat to national security.”

• Former Border Patrol official says Biden-Harris admin muzzled him over suspected terrorist arrests (More)

• DeSantis says feds are stonewalling: “The answer is ‘no,’ they’re not being cooperative,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in response to a question regarding federal agencies sharing information with the state as it conducts an investigation into the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump. “I am concerned,” DeSantis explained. “Our investigators were rebuffed just going to the fence line outside of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.” He then observed that the Biden/Harris administration simply didn’t want Florida to conduct its own investigation. However, the governor noted, “This guy … committed potential violations of Florida law. So we have a duty to investigate this. We have a duty to bring the appropriate charges and we also have a duty to inform the public about how this happened.” DeSantis also pointed out that the country has yet to get any answers from the feds’ investigation of the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “So,” he said, “part of the investigation that our folks are doing is they are going to provide evidence they find of motive, evidence of his associations, and evidence of his beliefs. I think it is very important that the public get the real story on that.”

Leftmedia

• MSM gives Trump 95% negative coverage after second attempted hit: Welp, the assassination honeymoon didn’t last long. Whatever sympathy the mainstream media might’ve had for Donald Trump after he came within an inch of being assassinated is clearly over, as evidenced by its reaction to this latest attempt on Trump’s life. As NewsBusters reports: “Not even Sunday’s close call … could interrupt the liberal TV networks’ barrage of bad press against … Trump. A look at the first 72 hours of coverage on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts [showed] 95% negative, vs. just five percent positive.” Just to make matters clear, NewsBusters also noted the networks’ unwillingness to affix any blame to the Democrats for their rhetoric: “These networks gave relatively little time to the accusation that these attempted shootings might have been influenced by Democratic rhetoric painting Trump as an existential threat. Out of 48 minutes of coverage of the attempted shooting, the three networks spent less than two minutes … on the possibility that Democrats could share the blame. All of the networks treated the charge as a cynical deflection.”

Culture

• Tony Dungy takes Harris to task on abortion: Kamala Harris has been clear: She’s an abortion absolutist, even going so far as to invoke her “faith.” Harris posted the following message on X: “One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree: The government, and certainly Donald Trump, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” Well, that was a bridge too far for Tony Dungy, the first black NFL head coach to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Dungy, an outspoken Christian, responded: “Dear VP Harris: I hear you make this statement all the time… Exactly what ‘faith’ are you talking about when you say you don’t have to abandon it to support abortion? Are you talking about the Christian faith that says all babies are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26), that God places them in the womb (Jer 1:5) and that we should not take any life unjustly (Luke 18:20)?” He then added, “Are you talking about that faith or some nebulous, general ‘faith’ that says we’re good enough, and smart enough to make our own decisions? What ‘faith’ are you talking about?” Great questions.

Misc.

• Chicago teachers say they were told to give illegal migrants passing grades (More)

• Cuomo personally altered COVID nursing-home death report that lowballed fatalities, damning emails show (More)

• Venezuela says it will seek arrest warrant for “neo-Nazi” Javier Milei (More)

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