Search This Blog

Thursday, December 11, 2025

Trump pardons Tina Peters, says she sought 'honest elections'

 United States President Donald Trump announced he is pardoning Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2024 after being convicted of tampering with voting machines following the 2020 US presidential election.

"Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest. Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the "crime" of demanding Honest Elections," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He added that he's issuing the full pardon for her attempts to "expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!"

Trump's pardon only amps up the pressure for her release, seeing as how she was found guilty of state crimes, meaning the actual authority to pardon her or commute her sentence lies with Colorado's governor.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Trump-pardons-Tina-Peters-says-she-sought-'honest-elections'/65342024

'von der Leyen: US shouldn't interfere in EU affairs'

 European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared on Thursday that "nobody" should "interfere" in the European Union's affairs.

"It is not on us, when it comes to elections, to decide who the leader of the country will be, but on the people of this country … That's the sovereignty of the voters, and this must be protected," Von der Leyen said in an interview for Politico, following United States President Donald Trump's previos comments about European leaders.

Furthermore, the commission's president shared that she has "a very good working relationship" with Trump, but noted that the EU's relations with the US "have changed." She emphasized that the bloc should be "proud" of its unity and improve its fight against foreign interference online, including in elections.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/VDL:-US-shouldn't-interfere-in-EU-affairs/65340991

The Asylum Fraud Loophole

 


The treasonous abuse of the asylum fraud loophole in immigration law and the wholesale granting of refugee status to minimally vetted migrants during the Biden years is not only a premeditated betrayal of the American people but has led to death, destruction, rampant crime, and societal chaos.

During the four years of the Biden presidency there was a de facto open invitation for third-world migrants to abuse the seeking of asylum provision in the immigration laws to freely cross the American border. Nearly six million, or half of the unvetted illegal immigrants that entered the United States during the Biden years did so by essentially claiming they were “refugees.”

They were waved into the country and given a court date, which if they bother to show up -- and nearly 90 percent do not -- can take up to 10 years to adjudicate while these supposed “refugees” remain in the country collecting welfare and displacing native American workers and becoming virtually impossible to deport.

In the aftermath of the Thanksgiving Eve shooting of two national guardsmen by an essentially unvetted Afghan refugee, President Trump announced on November 28, 2025 that he will “…permanently pause migration from Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

Further, the Trump Administration plans to review and potentially revoke the legal status of virtually all refugees admitted to the United States during the Biden years, including nearly 190,000 essentially unvetted Afghans.

But this isn’t the first time that Donald Trump has confronted the American Left on the issue of asylum seekers from countries whose cultures are antithetical to that of the United States and whose populations are essentially unassimilable. He did so via an Executive Order on January 27, 2017. It was then that the Democrat party and its allies showed their true colors on mass immigration and the abuse of the asylum fraud loophole by incompatible third-world migrants.

Seven days after his first inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order suspending indefinitely admission of refugees from Syria and halting all potential asylum seeking immigration from six other Islamic countries for a period of 90 days, after which time a significant percentage of 50,000 refugees worldwide could be admitted annually from the Middle East. During this interval, a new process was to be put in place to significantly tighten vetting of all refugees from this region while giving preference to persecuted religious minorities.

In light of the numerous terrorist attacks in Europe over the previous eight years, due almost entirely to their open border policies regarding immigrants from the Middle East, this was a common-sense and frankly moderate executive order. However, it was totally misrepresented by the legacy media and the Democrat party as anti-Muslim, racist, and inhumane.

The usual suspects on the radical Left, such as the ACLU and numerous advocacy groups were in a total meltdown. Along with filing lawsuits with like-minded federal District Court judges, many within this ideological assemblage utilized the threadbare tactic of manipulating images of hardship from this region as confirmation of the heartlessness of Donald Trump.

Others on the Left attempted to make the case for the inhumanity of these orders by comparing the Middle East refugee flow to that of post-World War II wherein Europe was awash in tens of millions of displaced survivors of the most devastating five-year period in human history.

As many readers of these pages are aware, I am a refugee as well as a WWII displaced war orphan. I daresay very few citizens of this nation are more acutely aware of the suffering and hardships endured by children enmeshed in the catastrophic aftermath of a continent-destroying unconditional war. I can no longer remain silent over the treasonous abuse of American compassion and manipulation of immigration laws as I am also aware that the first duty of this government is to protect the citizens of the United States.

I was brought to America under the terms of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which allowed just 10,000 war orphans and 400,000 others to immigrate to the United States over a four year period. In 1948 it was estimated there were still upwards of 11 million displaced persons in refugee camps in Europe. Nearly all of whom were from Eastern Europe and not only experienced first-hand the unbridled violence of the war but were now faced the dire specter of oppressive Soviet occupation of their home countries.

The Displaced Persons Act applied only to those who were displaced as of the end of the war in Europe (May 1945) and by December 1945 living in refugee in camps within the zones of U.S., French or British occupation. It should be noted that virtually all German, Austrian and Italian citizens were ineligible. Further, the law required that each applicant be sponsored and be subject to stringent vetting which included being interviewed in order to make certain they had no hidden Nazi leanings and truly wanted to become productive and loyal American citizens. This screening took place not in the United States but in Europe.

Within this universe of non-German, Austrian, and Italian refugees in postwar Europe there were no Islamic terrorists or others whose culture, or religion, or upbringing promulgated unfettered criminal activity, violent religious intolerance, anti-Western hatred, or an inbred inability or desire to assimilate.

Despite being from the same cultural background as the population of the United States, the extraordinarily limited number of European refugees from World War II that arrived in America were subject to geometrically greater vetting and document verification than the millions of so-called asylum seekers from incompatible third-world countries allowed to arbitrarily walk across the border, claim to be seeking asylum, and given welfare and free transportation to the American city of their choice by the Biden Administration.

A question from an incensed American citizen who happens to have been a refugee: why, considering the nature and background of the societies from which today’s refugees and asylum seekers emanate, are they not subject to the same stringent vetting as post-World War II refugees before, or at a minimum, upon their entrance into the United States?

The answer to that question is that the vast majority of those on the Left and the now Marxist-controlled Democrat party despises the bulk of the American citizenry, in particular those of European descent (which includes two-thirds of Hispanics).

As their Marxist-inspired political and economic tenets have been a spectacular failure wherever tried, they have determined that the only way they can only seize the reins of power in perpetuity is by fomenting chaos and demographic change by flooding the nation with migrants from third world countries whose first loyalty is not to the United States but to a religion, an ideology, or another nation.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, this treasonous cabal has no compassion for these migrants as their true intent is to exploit the anti-West mindset as well as the cultural and religious identity of the third world “asylum seekers” they wave into the country in order to advance their megalomaniacal agenda.

In order to permanently thwart the malevolent plans of the American Marxists, President Trump’s November 28, 2025 message to the American people clearly outlines the steps that must be taken in the short term but they must be augmented by eliminating the filibuster in the Senate in order to pass legislation to dramatically change the immigration laws.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/12/the_asylum_fraud_loophole.html

California: taxing people who aren't there

 


As the old aphorism goes: “Don’t tax you; don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.” Nobody likes paying taxes, but most Americans accept them as a necessary evil and are willing to pay their fair share, unless politicians waste those tax dollars in extraordinarily—well—wasteful ways, or steal them outright.

I refer, of course, to California, where, as the classic Eagle’s song Hotel California goes: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

California, it’s no secret, is in deep financial trouble. In 2022, Gavin Newsom bragged about a $97.5 billion dollar surplus. By the 2024-25 budget, that surplus turned into an estimated $73 billion deficit. By the end of 2025, it’s likely far worse and virtually no one trusts state government’s estimates.

Graphic: X Post

A substantial part of the problem has been grotesque government overspending and fraud that reportedly makes Minnesota’s fraud totals look like couch cushion change. Newsom’s high-speed-rail-to-nowhere debacle hasn’t helped. And worse, Americans get to vote with their feet and U-Hauls. California is losing a taxpayer every one minute and 44 seconds of every day. This includes billionaires, of which California used to have a reasonably large supply.

What to do; what to do? Newsom and the one-party Democrat legislature know: retroactively tax fleeing billionaires!

California Democrats are pushing the retroactive billionaire tax targeting the roughly 220 billionaires residing in California in 2025. It signals not just desperation in the face of crippling debt and overspending but a recognition that California is chasing its highest earners out of the state.

The “2026 Billionaires Tax Act” would impose a one-time 5% tax on individual wealth exceeding $1 billion. While technically using 2026 wealth figures, it would apply to billionaires who resided in California in 2025. So you cannot hope to flee… at least with your wealth intact. It is a penalty for those who stayed too long hoping that rational minds would prevail in California.

 

Democrats have long whined that the rich weren’t “paying their fair share.” Make the rich pay what they owe and our budget problems, state and federal, will disappear, they claim. It’s a topic Bill Whittle addressed in a classic video titled: “Eat the Rich!”    Whittle, step by step, explored taking all the assets of the wealthy to fund one year of the federal government, and by that mechanism barely manages to do it, but points out that money covered—barely—a single year. All the assets of the wealthy are gone, every penny. From where—who—will the money to cover next year’s bills come? A one-time billionaire tax suddenly becomes eternal.

Californians can be certain if California gets away with a retroactive tax on billionaires, they’ll surely extend it to millionaires and then everyone else, and so will other blue states. But how does that work? How can a state tax people who don’t live there any more?

George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley explains:

The constitutionality of a retroactive tax has long been controversial. In Landgraf v. USI Film Products (1994), the Supreme Court declared “the presumption against retroactive legislation is deeply rooted in our jurisprudence… [e]lementary considerations of fairness dictate that individuals should have an opportunity to know what the law is and conform their conduct accordingly; settled expectations should not be lightly disrupted.”

Turley goes on to note several other Supreme Court decisions coming down on both sides of a bright line. And at Legal Insurrection, Mary Chastain notes that presidential candidate Gavin Newsom may have had a change of heart: 

Dan Newman, a political adviser opposing the campaign to tax billionaires, said Newsom is against a plan to slap a one-time, 5% tax on roughly 200 Californians worth more than $1 billion to “replace lost federal dollars and protect essential services,” as described by the campaign’s website.

That’s a tough one for Newsom. On one hand the financial disaster he’s made of California is likely to figuratively kill him in a presidential race. On the other, if he does decide to run, and he wouldn’t lie about a thing like whether or not he’s already made that decision, he’s going to need every billionaire buck he can find. Fleecing them after they’ve fled the state isn’t going to fill his campaign coffers.

Maybe Newsom won’t get the chance to do to America what he’s done to California after all—but he just might.

Become a subscriber and get our weekly, Friday newsletter with unique content from our editors. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/california_taxing_people_who_aren_t_there.html

Trump Signs Order Seeking to Limit State-Level AI Regulation

 


President Donald Trump signed an order aimed at thwarting state-level regulation of artificial intelligence through lawsuits and funding cuts, handing a win to tech industry leaders who’ve pressed for preemption of local rules.

Trump said the measure was necessary to bolster the emerging technology and counter a patchwork of state-level rules the industry worries will hamper its growth.


FDA Proposes Allowing New Sunscreen Ingredient

 The FDA has proposed adding bemotrizinol as a new active ingredient allowed in sunscreens, in a move it says will "advance sunscreen innovation."

This move is part of a broader initiative in the Office of Nonprescription Drugs, according to the FDA news release. Bemotrizinol is an ultraviolet light filter and features in many popular Asian, European, and Australian sunscreens.

"Based on the data reviewed by the FDA, bemotrizinol provides protection against both ultraviolet A and B rays, has low levels of absorption through the skin into the body, and rarely causes skin irritation," the release stated.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, said that the FDA historically has moved too slowly in the sunscreen space, "leaving Americans with fewer options than consumers abroad."

"We're continuing to modernize the regulation of sunscreen and other over-the-counter drug products," he added.

Two main types of ultraviolet filters are used in sunscreens in the U.S.: chemical and mineral. Chemical sunscreens typically include at least one active ingredient such as oxybenzone, octinoxate, cinoxate, dioxybenzone, ensulizole, homosalate, meradimate, octisalate, or octocrylene. Mineral sunscreens typically contain zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.

Sunscreens are considered over-the-counter (OTC) monograph drugs, which can enter the market without an approved drug application if the drug meets certain requirements established in its monograph, such as for permitted active ingredients, uses, and doses. Companies kick off the process by submitting an OTC monograph "order request."

Manufacturer DSM Nutritional Products submitted a request that FDA "add bemotrizinol, at concentrations up to 6%, as a new active ingredient in the OTC monograph for sunscreens," according to the release. Though used in sunscreens abroad, the FDA has not previously approved an application for a drug product containing bemotrizinol or added the ingredient to the sunscreen monograph.

FDA is seeking public comments on its proposal via the Federal Register.

The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) in a press release applauded the FDA "for taking the first steps in more than two decades to provide more safe and effective sunscreen options to the American public," noting that AAD has been advocating for more sunscreen options for years.

"The United States lags behind many other countries that have nearly twice as many approved sunscreen ingredients," the release stated.

Korean sunscreens in particular have garnered a cult following in recent years, with people praising what they say are better formulations than most sunscreens available in the U.S. Tariffs, however, have made some foreign sunscreens more difficult to get.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/dermatology/generaldermatology/118962

Florida Sues Medical Groups Over Youth Gender-Affirming Care

 Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier targeted three major medical organizations in a lawsuit over gender-affirming care for youth.

The lawsuit alleges that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the Endocrine Society misled "public opinion on the safety" of gender-affirming care for minors, according to an announcement from the Attorney General's office.

The complaint stated that "defendants' campaign to mislead patients, parents, insurers, regulators, and courts about the reversibility and efficacy of pediatric sex interventions violates the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and constitutes a pattern of racketeering activity under the Florida Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act."

In a video posted to X, Uthmeier said "we believe these organizations failed to disclose the risks, limits, and evidence when promoting so-called gender-affirming care for children. For years, these groups insisted the recommendations were settled science, but behind closed doors, they knew the evidence was weak. They knew the outcomes uncertain and the risks very real."

"Parents were not told the full story," Uthmeier continued. "In fact, some parents were told that if they didn't put their kids through permanent, life-altering, sick procedures ... that their child would commit suicide. Not only is that unethical and dangerous medicine, but it is against the law."

The complaint points to the 2024 Cass Review, a U.K. report that concluded there is no high-quality evidence supporting puberty blockers and hormones in gender-affirming care for youth.

At the time the Cass Review was published, however, U.S. experts told MedPage Today that it should be taken in "totality" and that treatments should be available while the evidence base is enhanced.

Gender-affirming care for youth has fielded significant challenges at the state and federal level.

In May, HHS released a report urging greater reliance on behavioral therapy rather than broad gender-affirming medical care for minors with gender dysphoria; the report did not include input from WPATH, AAP, or the Endocrine Society. In response, a number of major medical organizations pushed back.

WPATHAAP, and the Endocrine Society all publish guidelines on gender-affirming care for youth, which include factors that are important to consider prior to physical interventions, and describe the reversibility or irreversibility of specific interventions, among other information and recommendations.

In response to the lawsuit, WPATH pointed to the importance of its guidelines.

"As a professional organization for clinicians and experts, WPATH is committed to advancing cautious, evidence-informed guidelines for care to help improve the lives of transgender people globally so they may live full and authentic lives," WPATH told MedPage Today in an email.

"WPATH believes strongly in the value of scientific and academic research as well as discussion among peers to help improve the standards of care and outcomes for transgender and gender-diverse people," the organization added. "Transgender people -- and all people -- deserve the freedom to make their own personal, private healthcare decisions in consultation with their families and medical providers, free from political interference and retaliation."

AAP declined to comment, and the Endocrine Society did not immediately respond to request for comment.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/transgendermedicine/118970