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Federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the second trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The congressman’s involvement underlined how far the former president was willing to go to overturn the election, and Democratic lawmakers have begun calling for investigations into those efforts.

Complaint accuses ex-mayor of having ‘manufactured and disseminated’ conspiracy theory related to voting machines....more rust-coloured sweat trickles down Giuliani's temples

When President Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden arrived at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, there was no chief usher to greet them. He had been fired at about 11:30 a.m., half an hour before Biden was sworn in as president, The New York Times reports. Former first lady Melania Trump had hired the chief usher, Timothy Harleth, from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2017, after the previous chief usher, Angella Reid, was dismissed a few months into Donald Trump's term.
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The White House chief usher is in charge of the first family's residence, overseeing everything from personnel issues to budgets. It is typically an apolitical job, and ushers typically stay through several administrations. Reid, hired in 2011, was only the ninth chief usher since 1885, though she was the first woman hired for the job. The Bidens had communicated to the White House counsel that they intended to bring in their own chief usher, a person familiar with the process told the Times. A Biden White House official told CNN that Harleth "was let go before the Bidens arrived," though CNN reports it was the Bidens who gave him the ax.

Harleth was already in hot water with Trump's team, though. He "had found himself in an untenable position" since the election, "trying to begin preparations for a new resident in the White House, even as its occupant refused to concede that he would be leaving the premises," the Times reports. And Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was "unhappy" with Harleth "for trying to send briefing books about the residence to the Biden transition team in November." Harleth "had worked with Jill Biden's staff for weeks to organize the move of household belongings," The Washington Post adds.

The absence of a chief usher was one manifestation of the chaotic transition period, but it doesn't entirely explain the curious breach in protocol where nobody opened the doors for the BIdens when they arrived at the White House, the Times notes. The doors, which awkwardly stood closed for about 10 long seconds as the Bidens watched, are typically opened by Marine guards.

When President Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden arrived at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, there was no chief usher to greet them. He had been fired at about 11:30 a.m., half an hour before Biden was sworn in as president, The New York Times reports. Former first lady Melania Trump had hired the chief usher, Timothy Harleth, from the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2017, after the previous chief usher, Angella Reid, was dismissed a few months into Donald Trump's term.

The White House chief usher is in charge of the first family's residence, overseeing everything from personnel issues to budgets. It is typically an apolitical job, and ushers typically stay through several administrations. Reid, hired in 2011, was only the ninth chief usher since 1885, though she was the first woman hired for the job. The Bidens had communicated to the White House counsel that they intended to bring in their own chief usher, a person familiar with the process told the Times. A Biden White House official told CNN that Harleth "was let go before the Bidens arrived," though CNN reports it was the Bidens who gave him the ax.

Harleth was already in hot water with Trump's team, though. He "had found himself in an untenable position" since the election, "trying to begin preparations for a new resident in the White House, even as its occupant refused to concede that he would be leaving the premises," the Times reports. And Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was "unhappy" with Harleth "for trying to send briefing books about the residence to the Biden transition team in November." Harleth "had worked with Jill Biden's staff for weeks to organize the move of household belongings," The Washington Post adds.

The absence of a chief usher was one manifestation of the chaotic transition period, but it doesn't entirely explain the curious breach in protocol where nobody opened the doors for the BIdens when they arrived at the White House, the Times notes. The doors, which awkwardly stood closed for about 10 long seconds as the Bidens watched, are typically opened by Marine guards.

Once the Bidens passed through the doors into the newly sanitized White House, things got better, the Post reports. "Awaiting Biden in a room adjacent to the Oval Office were two trays stacked with chocolate chip cookies, each one in plastic wrap with a gold presidential seal."
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The Prime Minister yesterday said he wanted 'maximum possible protection against reinfection from abroad' to prevent new coronavirus variants jeopardising the vaccination programme.

Maxine Waters (D-CA) warned on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart” that former President Donald Trump would attempt “to take over legislatures, little towns and cities.”

Therefore, she said he must be convicted in his impeachment trial to “take away his power.”

Waters said, “I do believe he sent all of these domestic terrorists to the Capitol to take over the Capitol, and that includes not only the Proud Boys but the Oath Keepers, the QAnon, and white supremacists. These people have been aligned with him. One of the things I hope that will be looked at as we take this impeachment to the Senate is the fact that in his campaign for re-election, he was paying the very organizers of the insurrection that took place. The names are right there. The amount of money that he paid to them, it is shown in the last report. More of it is going to show up in the next report that they have to do.”
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She continued, “I think it is very clear. We cannot afford to allow this president to leave here without being impeached and, you know, absolutely convicted. We cannot allow him to leave and have all of the resources of the taxpayers to have not only money to hire staff, but to hire security, and money to organize with, because he will continue. He now knows, he has a population, he’s going to expand that. He will be attempting to take over legislatures, little towns and cities and he doesn’t give a darn about the Constitution and so our democracy is at stake. We must convict him, and we must take away his power.”
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President Biden will lay out his “racial equity” plan and sign a series of executive actions to jumpstart that agenda Tuesday.

The commander-in-chief offered a preview of what he planned to outline in a tweet Tuesday, writing, “America has never lived up to its founding promise of equality for all, but we’ve never stopped trying.
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“Today, I’ll take action to advance racial equity and push us closer to that more perfect union we’ve always strived to be.”

Biden issued an executive order addressing “equity” on his first day in office, pursuing “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

In that order, Biden instructed the Domestic Policy Council to coordinate with federal agencies, specifically the Office of Management and Budget, to push forward racial equity legislation.
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President Joe Biden angered Canada with his hasty, Day-one decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline, but we can imagine a world in which annoying our neighbors to the north is not among the president’s chief concerns. On the other hand, Biden has also sent waves of outrage throughout his own supporters, many of them labor unions who saw the pipeline for the job-producing project that it was. We’re sure Biden can easily patch things up with Justin Trudeau; making nice with these unions could be a different story.
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The day after Biden canceled the pipeline, TC Energy announced that they would have no choice but to slash more than 11,000 jobs – quite the accomplishment for a president who had been in office less than a day when he signed the order. Add that together with the jobs lost due to halting the border wall, and it’s clear that Biden’s priorities do not include getting people back to work.

In his executive order, Biden explained: “The Keystone XL pipeline disserves the U.S. national interest. The United States and the world face a climate crisis. That crisis must be met with action on a scale and at a speed commensurate with the need to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate trajectory. Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my Administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”

The move drew quick reactions from labor unions that had endorsed Biden for president, including the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which wrote of the Biden/Harris ticket in September, “Joe Biden is one of us; he knows, first hand, the trials and tribulations faced by working men and women across this country.”

Last week, however, the union tweeted, “Pipeline construction has been a lifeline for many #LIUNA members across the country. The anticipated decision to cancel the #KeysonePipeline will kill thousands of good-paying #UNION jobs!”

It was the same story from the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters. They endorsed Biden last August, but last week their president, Mark McManus, wrote, “In revoking this permit, the Biden Administration has chosen to listen to the voices of fringe activists instead of union members and the American consumer on Day 1. Let me be very clear: When built with union labor by the men and women of the United Association, pipelines like Keystone XL remain the safest and most efficient modes of energy transportation in the world. Sadly, the Biden Administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”

When liberal idealism meets reality, the results are often not pretty.

Somehow, though, none of these people ever seem to learn a lesson.
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The first bill of 2021 introduced by House Democrats would codify and expand many of the measures blamed for election fraud in the 2020 election. H.R. 1, the For the People Act, among other things, would establish nationwide mail-in voting, eliminate restrictions on ballot harvesting and ban voter ID, noted the Gateway Pundit’s Joe Hoft, citing the Populist Press blog.
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Article originally published at WND.

After analyzing the proposal, the Gateway Pundit summarized the legislation in its headline “The Democrats’ First Bill of 2021 Is to Lock In Fraudulent Election Maneuvers and Steal Elections in Perpetuity.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., cited the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol as a reason to pass it.
“We have just literally seen an attack on our own democracy,” she said, the AP reported. “I cannot think of a more timely moment to start moving on democracy reform.”

The bill, first introduced two years ago, would give independent commissions the job of drawing congressional districts. And, clearly with Trump in mind, it would obligate presidents to disclose their tax returns. Republicans strongly opposed the bill during the last session. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”

McConnell said in an op-ed that Democrats were seeking to “change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”

Among its features, the bill:

Bans the requirement to provide a full Social Security number for voter registration.
Creates a nationwide “Motor Voter” registration, automatically registering people who obtain a driver’s licence, which is how thousands of illegal became registered voters in California and Nevada.
Establishes nationwide same-day registration.
Prohibits the type of work done by Judicial Watch to clean voter rolls of non-residents.
Mandates early voting.
Creates nationwide vote-by-mail and legalized ballot harvesting
Bans a personal identification requirement as a condition of obtaining a ballot
Prohibits requiring notarization or a witness signature to obtain or cast an absentee ballot.
Permits a voter to designate any person to deliver an absentee ballot and puts no limit on how many ballots a person may deliver.
Lays the groundwork for D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood.
Puts redistricting in the hands of Congress

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, noted, “I don’t see how this gets a thumbs-up from the Supreme Court, but if it does, we’re finished.”
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The Democrats appear intent on instituting one-party rule in the United States.

They’re trying to use the U.S. Capitol riots as an excuse to criminalize dissent and banish conservative voices from the public sphere, and at the same time they’re hoping to use their temporary, razor-thin majority in Congress to rewrite the rules governing our elections in a way designed to keep the Democrat Party entrenched in power for decades to come.
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In the House, Democrats have revived sweeping election reform legislation that died in the Senate during the previous session, perhaps hoping they can browbeat enough Republicans into going along with them. If that happens, the “Grand Old Party” of Abraham Lincoln might as well disband, because Republicans would never have any hope of regaining a congressional majority or controlling the White House under the rules that HR 1 would put in place.

Although the Constitution explicitly places state legislatures in charge of managing federal elections, HR 1 seeks to use the power of the purse to bludgeon the states into conforming to a centralized system pioneered in California and other deep-blue states. Congress can’t technically compel the states to change their voting laws, but seasoned politicians know that the states have become dependent on federal money to run their elections, and can’t afford to pick up the tab themselves.

To make matters worse, HR 1 declares that Congress possesses “ultimate supervisory power over Federal elections” — an extraordinary usurpation of governmental authority that the Founders specifically assigned to the states.

The 2020 election witnessed private interests dictating the manner in which the election was conducted in the nation’s urban cores. Mark Zuckerberg alone poured $419 million into this scheme.

The goal of centralizing power in the hands of the federal government has long been at the heart of liberal politics, and this legislation demonstrates why.

HR 1 would codify the very practices — many of them currently illegal in most states — that created widespread irregularities in the 2020 elections and contributed greatly to public mistrust of the electoral process. In 2020, state and local officials used the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to ignore or deliberately violate state election laws. If HR 1 is enacted, they won’t need any such excuse in 2022 because the states will have no choice but to implement policies such as legalized ballot harvesting, early voting, and universal mail-in voting, as well as repeal of voter ID laws, signature-matching laws, and other ballot security measures.
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An estimated 12,000 illegal-alien criminals will be released every month into American communities as a result of President Biden's executive actions, warns former White House adviser Stephen Miller.

Biden's orders have included a 100-day "moratorium" on deportations, which already has drawn a legal challenge from border state Texas, and the release of all detainees "immediately."
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"This is the most extreme directive, I would argue, really in the history of modern law enforcement that's ever been issued," Miller said of the moratorium in an interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Monday.
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