Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

An advert created by Pakistan International Airlines has received fierce backlash for depicting one of the company’s planes flying directly toward the Eiffel tower in an image evoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The caption alongside the image reads “Paris, We’re Coming Today,” prompting some to ask if it is a threat.

Is this a threat???

— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA) January 10, 2025

To make things worse for the airline, an ad made by PIA in the 1970s that depicted a plane’s shadow on the twin towers of the World Trade Center is again going viral.

This was PIA’s ad in 70s… they haven’t learnt anything yet… in which world they live????? pic.twitter.com/AdkaBBK5as

— Yasir PTI (@Yasir_PTI_UK) January 10, 2025

You can’t be serious this time! This was back in 70s. Fire your designer! pic.twitter.com/ar2XkIDuHR

— Muhammad Uzair Balagamwala (@muzairb) January 10, 2025

The purpose of the new ad is to announce that PIA flights to Europe are resuming following a five year ban imposed by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) after a PIA Airbus A-320 jet crashed into a street in Karachi, killing a hundred people.

In addition to a poor safety and financial records, investigations into the incident led to accusations that many PIA pilots were flying with falsified licenses. The airline is still banned from operating in the United Kingdom and the United States.

prolly should have put the tower on the left of the shot

— tossit (r/acc/n) (@TossitRambles) January 11, 2025

Uhh, I don’t think Parisians want you to come like that.

— Manuel, mocha enjoyer (@ManuelSConde) January 10, 2025

Worse still there is kinda a twin tower theme happening with the French flag pic.twitter.com/H0XJAAWLgz

— GrokCheck ☼ (@GrokFact) January 10, 2025

Please don’t fly into the Eiffel Tower. 🙏

— KU (@KU20241201) January 10, 2025

Even people in Pakistan were shocked at the imagery, with columnist and former political media adviser Omar Quraishi pondering “Did the idiot who designed this graphic not see a PIA plane heading for the Eiffel Tower? One of Europe’s iconic landmarks?”

Do they not know about the 9/11 tragedy – which used planes to attack buildings? Did they not think that this would be perceived in similar fashion? Do they not know that PIA is an airline owned by a country often accused of supporting terrorism?” Quraishi added.

I mean who is PIA’s creative agency

Who designed this?

Who or which agency manages its social media accounts?

Did the airline management not vet this?

Did the idiot who designed this graphic not see a PIA plane heading for the Eiffel Tower? One of Europe’s iconic landmarks… pic.twitter.com/Z0Vm7LQR51

— omar r quraishi (@omar_quraishi) January 10, 2025

Pakistani Finance Minister Isaq Dar also labeled the ad “stupid,” and announced that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation. 

Some believe PIA used the provocative image on purpose to drive social media engagement.

This is low key marketing genius. If there’s one thing that sells besides sex, it’s terroristic threats of flying planes into national monuments.

— Darth Crypto null af (@DefNotDarth) January 10, 2025

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Instead of focusing on third-world migrants causing havoc in the UK,  the police have shifted their focus to confiscating at least one Tesla Cybertruck, which the government has deemed illegal for street use. 

According to a post on the Bury Police of Greater Manchester’s Facebook page…

Officers from GMPTransportUnit stopped this Tesla Cybertruck in Whitefield last night. The driver was a permanent UK resident but the vehicle was registered and insured abroad which is prohibited in the UK. The Tesla Cybertruck is not road legal in the UK and does not hold a certificate of conformity. Whilst this may seem trivial to some, legitimate concerns exist around the safety of other road users or pedestrians if they were involved in a collision with a Cybertruck. The vehicle was subsequently seized under S165 of the Road Traffic Act and the driver reported.

Here’s the post:

Autoblog Road & Track noted:

It’s extremely difficult (in fact, nearly impossible) to register a Cybertruck anywhere in Europe. Some intrepid folks have gone through the painstaking task of modifying lights, compensating for its sharp edges and inspection processes to get a small number in and legal. However, this truck in the UK was not one of those modified vehicles.

A Facebook user commented on Bury Police of Greater Manchester’s post, telling the police:

Well done guys. You made our country much safer now. Can’t stand anymore to see how those Cybertruck owners are driving around stealing tools from vans, stealing catalytic converters, cars, burgling, drug dealing etc…

Another user said:

Got nothing better to do god forbid there’s actually a serious crime going on…

Will the Cybertruck ever be road-legal in the UK, given Elon Musk’s barrage of attacks on the Labour government over the grooming gangs scandal?

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Germany is importing huge volumes of nuclear-generated electricity due to recent unfavorable weather for renewable energy production — placing the left-wing government’s decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear power plants firmly under the spotlight in the lead-up to next month’s federal elections.

Rather than producing its own clean nuclear energy, Berlin is importing electricity from France at a far higher cost this week as winter grips the nation with colder temperatures, overcast skies, and weak winds drastically reducing solar and wind power generation.

“Friday is a very weak day. There will also be little wind on Saturday. Monday will be almost a total loss for wind energy. Tuesday will also be difficult. The high-pressure system is extremely stable,” warned weather expert Karsen Brandt from Donnerwetter.de, as cited by Bild.

With high energy demand but insufficient green electricity, Germany’s grid operators have had to resort to importing energy at a premium — primarily from France, where nuclear power plants are running at full capacity.

Germany still had its own nuclear production facilities until April 2023, but the left-wing federal government under Social Democrat (SPD) Chancellor Olaf Scholz, supported by the Greens, shut them all down. The move was highly controversial, at a time when energy prices were sky-high due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and European nations were attempting to wean themselves off Russian gas.

Just five weeks before the federal election, the SPD-Green government’s energy policy is under intense scrutiny, with supply risks and skyrocketing prices fueling growing criticism.

Energy expert Prof. Manuel Frondel of the RWI Institute described the situation bluntly.

“By phasing out nuclear power and coal, we have become heavily dependent on foreign countries and accepted higher supply risks.”

This strategic miscalculation is not new. Similar shortages in December saw Germany’s electricity prices surge to record highs, with some businesses forced to halt production due to unaffordable costs. This led to electricity prices on the exchange soaring more than tenfold, reaching as high as €1,156 per megawatt-hour.

Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Diba, warned that prices could continue to rise, despite nuclear imports from France.

“I assume that prices will keep increasing. This does not immediately impact all consumers, as many have fixed-price contracts. However, those on dynamic pricing models will feel the effects.”

Although Brzeski does not expect prices to exceed €1,000 per megawatt-hour, the ongoing volatility remains a serious concern.

With just five weeks until the federal election, the SPD-Green government’s energy policy is facing growing backlash. The decision to shut down nuclear power while depending on expensive imports from France is increasingly viewed as a policy failure, especially as electricity shortages become more frequent.

Opposition leaders have long criticized the decision, including Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel who has pledged to reverse the policy and revitalize Germany’s nuclear energy sector.

Branding wind turbines “windmills of shame” during a recent X Spaces conversation with U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, Weidel vowed to return to nuclear energy and build more coal power stations.

“They switched off the last nuclear power plant to even more create a shortage of energy, so either you must be very stupid or you just hate your own country,” Weidel said of the current administration.

Musk expressed alignment with the AfD’s positions, particularly on energy policy. “Germany should really keep its nuclear power plants running. I think that’s extremely important,” he said.

Read more here…

Austria is set to eliminate roughly 20% of all subsidies related to climate change initiatives, as negotiators trying to form a nationalist-conservative government seek to avoid a budget reprimand from the European Union, Bloomberg reports.

The EU’s so-called ‘excessive-deficit’ procedure would limit Austria’s budget independence, according to a Thursday statement from Freedom Party representative Hubert Fuchs.

As part of a €6.4 billion ($6.58 billion) budget saving program for 2025, the government would cut €1.6 billion of payouts compensating households for a carbon tax, and slash about €500 million in subsidies introduced to help the economy adopt emissions-free technologies.

The government would also eliminate tax incentives to buy electric vehicles and install solar panels, as coalition negotiators seek €435 million in additional dividends from state holdings that include a minority stake in energy company OMV AG.

Most of the measures on the chopping block were introduced by the previous conservative-green government, however with Austria’s economy in its longest recession since World War II – and may contract again in 2025 if budget steps hurt growth, according to the Wifo research institute.

Meanwhile, Austria’s Fiscal Advisory Council anticipates needing to slash costs by more than €12 billion by 2028, which comes as Fitch lowered Austria’s AA+ rating to “negative” on Jan. 10, pointing to political instability and persistent deficits which exceed the EU’s 3%-of-output limit.

Authored by Wolfgang Münchau via UnHerd.com,

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”.

The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.

If anything, things have got worse.

Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when Călin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EU’s mindset during a damning recent TV interview. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,” he said.

In other words, if you can’t beat the far-Right, ban them.

I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels “very large online platforms”, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news.

But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europe’s ultimate aim isn’t to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isn’t even the last word in the EU’s anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyen’s big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called “democracy shield” — effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs. This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects it’s not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy.

Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms — effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Musk’s X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of America’s social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europe’s essential weakness before America.

This isn’t just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farage’s brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliament’s benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU.

The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Musk’s intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media.

But while marginalised by traditional media, the AfD thrives on TikTok, where it has large following. So what irks the German media, and politicians from other parties, is that the censorship cartel is no longer functioning as well as it once did. In the US and in the UK, the once mighty legacy media have already lost their power. Hillary Clinton expressed the frustration perhaps most clearly when she said that social media companies must fact check, or else “we lose total control”. But Europe still lives in a twilight zone where the traditional media still basks in the dwindling sunset of power, trying to ignore social media rising on the other horizon. Like all the modern political battles in Europe, this is about protecting vested interests.

The Romanian case demonstrates how these restrictions on freedom of speech are the first salvos in a greater war of repression. The presidential elections there were cancelled on the grounds that a Russian-infested TikTok had misinformed voters. I am sure that the Russians were active. But it is shocking to think that an election was cancelled because someone lied on TikTok.

Let’s be clear, there was no suggestion of any vote rigging. Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square. But as with the laughable misperception in Brussels after the Brexit vote, the presumption behind the EU’s support for the nullification of the result, was that voters were too stupid to make up their own mind. The rerun is to take place on 4 May, followed by a run-off between the most successful candidate two weeks later. Georgescu is still the most likely candidate to win according to opinion polls, but the Romanian political establishment is still determined to find ways to disbar him, the most promising of which is the hope that he may have received undeclared funds.

There are similar patterns elsewhere.

Marine Le Pen faces potential disqualification from the 2027 presidential elections following accusations of irregularities regarding her assistants in the European Parliament. More recently, Brussels was spooked by the victory in Austria of the Freedom Party, which managed to obtain 28.8% of the vote in the September general election. It surpassed a threshold at which point it became politically impossible for the other parties to form coalitions. Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s leader, is now likely to become Austria’s next chancellor. Meanwhile, in Germany, a group of 113 MPs has ganged up to ban the AfD. Their story is that the far-Right wants to destroy democracy. While the party is not yet polling high enough to frustrate yet another centrist coalition in Berlin after next month’s elections, Germany may only be a few percentage points away from an Austrian-style impasse.

Surely, though, the sensible approach to the rise of the AfD, the FPÖ and other parties of the Right is not to censor them, but to address the underlying problem that has made them so strong: persistent economic uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and dysfunctional policies on migration. Failing that, why not co-opt parties of the far-Right as junior coalition partners as they did in Sweden and Finland? If Weidel were suddenly thrust into the job of economics minister, we would see whether she could defend her record in government. But the centrist parties in Germany and France do neither. They have erected political firewalls against the far-Right. And they are doubling down with the same old policies.

It’s an approach that will inevitably backfire. A banned Le Pen would be far more dangerous for the centrist establishment, and possibly even more extreme when she eventually gets to power. Likewise the AfD would surely be radicalised after a ban.

Until then, the EU’s blunt weapons of choice — the legal bans, political firewalls, and censorship — will inflict more self-harm than good. In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe. Like the creatures in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.

Authored by Ron Faucheux via RealClearPolitics,

The U.S. Constitution gives presidents the power to grant pardons and commutations for federal crimes. This unique, unchecked power was meant to be used sparingly, as a last resort to correct injustices in the system. Pardons shouldn’t be gifts for friends, donors, and relatives who happen to be lawbreakers. It’s intended to right wrongs, not cause new ones.

Not all presidents have misused the pardon power, but some have. How you see it often depends upon your politics. To paraphrase an old saw: One man’s shady pardon is another man’s pursuit of justice.

President Gerald Ford’s pardon of predecessor Richard Nixon was roundly criticized at the time, and may have cost Ford the 1976 election. Nixon had picked Ford to be vice president, which led to Ford’s accession to the presidency when Nixon resigned.

President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to Vietnam War draft evaders – keeping a promise he made during his campaign. He wanted to move the nation beyond a grim moment in history, similar to what Ford did with Nixon’s pardon.

Shortly before he left office, President George H.W. Bush pardoned Reagan administration officials who had been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, including former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Bush’s connection to these officials, as vice president in the same administration, raised eyebrows. Was he just trying to protect colleagues, or worse, himself? But because the pardons came after the 1992 election, which Bush lost, it never became a campaign issue.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton commuted sentences for 16 members of FALN, a Puerto Rican paramilitary group that set off 120 bombing attacks in the United States. Clinton’s action was supported by archbishops in New York and Puerto Rico – but condemned by the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney’s office and a big majority of Congress. Some critics saw it as a political gambit to boost Hillary Clinton’s Senate candidacy in New York, a state with a large Puerto Rican population. 

On his last day as president, Clinton pardoned dozens of federal offenders, including billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, whose wife contributed big money to the Clinton Library and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and Susan McDougal, who refused to testify about the president’s role in the Whitewater scandal. He also pardoned two convicted felons who paid $400,000 to Hillary Clinton’s brother, attorney Hugh Rodman, to represent them. His half-brother, Roger Clinton, and two former Democratic congressmen were also on the clemency list.

President Donald Trump’s use of the pardon power to keep allies out of prison has been unusually barefaced. His first pardon went to a prominent supporter, former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Later, he pardoned his former national security advisor, retired General Michael Flynn, and his own daughter’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner.

Trump additionally granted clemency to a slew of former political advisers and supporters, including Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, and longtime counselor Roger Stone. Democrats in Congress questioned whether Stone’s pardon was a reward for protecting Trump; Sen. Mitt Romney called it an act of “unprecedented, historic corruption.”

In the 2024 campaign, Trump said that during a second term he’d likely pardon some of those involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. 

The most recent clemency controversy was President Joe Biden’s “full and unconditional pardon” of his son Hunter Biden, which covered a 10-year period of possible federal offenses. He had previously said he wouldn’t do it. Biden also commuted sentences for 37 of 40 convicts on death row in federal prisons, which was largely a policy statement against capital punishment.

There isn’t much that can be done about dubious pardons – it’s a constitutional grant of power. But two things may help clean up the process. 

First, make pardons a bigger campaign issue. The news media should start asking presidential candidates about their clemency policies – and get them on record. Will they pardon friends and relatives? Political supporters? Witnesses in legal matters? It’s amazing how rarely these questions are asked.

Second, change the Constitution to prevent pardons and commutations during the last 100 days of each four-year presidential term. This means no clemency after mid-October of election years.

During Thanksgiving, presidents usually grant pardons to turkeys – for laughs, of course. But when the turkeys are well-connected criminals, it’s not so funny.

Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst and pollster. He’s the author of “Running for Office” and publishes a national newsletter on public opinion, LunchtimePolitics.com.

Back in the last week of December, when the stock market was desperately trying to reverse the slump of the Santa rally which prevented stocks from closing 2024 at an all time high, we warned that a bigger threat than a modest 1% market drawdown was looming: the countdown to the next debt ceiling crisis. We quoted Democratic operative – and the only US government official who has personally overseen total debt increase by a staggering $15 trillion under her watch at both the Fed and Treasury – Janet Yellen…

… the said the United States would hit its statutory debt ceiling around the middle of January, at which point the Treasury would resort to “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its obligations.

While it may not feel like it, we are now in mid-January, and late on Friday, Janet Yellen, in what is almost certainly the last ever official announcement of her long and undistinguished political career, said that the US would hit its debt ceiling the day after President Trump is inaugurated, and that the Treasury will launch “extraordinary measures” to stave off the threat of a national default.

After a previous 20-month suspension of the debt limit expired earlier this month, Yellen wrote in a letter to bipartisan congressional leaders Friday she was advising them “of the extraordinary measures that Treasury will begin using on January 21.” That will be a day after the Biden administration leaves office. “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The letter marked the second notification in the latest tussle over the debt limit, which kicked back in as of Jan. 2, and the last ever for Yellen before the Trump administration takes office Jan. 20. Congress had suspended the ceiling in 2023 after a close-fought battle by lawmakers to avert a default on federal obligations. The limit is currently set at about $36 trillion.

While some strategists anticipate an easier path to an agreement to suspend or lift the cap given Republicans’ unified control of Congress and the White House once Trump takes office again on Jan. 20, until that action is taken the Treasury will need to deploy measures used repeatedly over the decades to avoid breaching the limit.

As Bloomberg reminds us, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Trump’s nominee to succeed Yellen as Treasury chief, Scott Bessent, vowed that there’d be no default on his watch… which is glaringly obvious. Which nominee for Treasury secretary would ever say out loud: “Yes, I fully intend on watching the US default under my watch.”

While nothing new to those familiar with the periodic song and dance when the US enters its debt ceiling crunch, Yellen advised that the Treasury’s extraordinary measures would begin by redeeming a portion of, and suspending full investments in, the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. It will also suspend additional investments of amounts credited to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. Those funds will be made whole after Congress acts on the debt ceiling, Yellen said. She gave no indication how long the accounting measures and Treasury’s cash balance would last.

“The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the US government months into the future,” she wrote.

One thing we do know, is that the Treasury currently has $680 billion in cash in the Treasury General Account which will now be drained at an accelerated pace, and potentially hit $0 by the summer, until a new debt ceiling deal is reached (it will be, it’s just a matter of when). What is just as notable is that as we first described it at the start of 2021, this rapid drain of Treasury cash serves to goose risk assets aggressively, and according to some strategists, has an even greater impact on prices than the Fed’s QE, since there is no new net debt issuance for the duration of the debt ceiling suspension.

And speaking of debt issuance suspension, total US debt will now remain frozen at around $36.2 trillion for the next ~6 months, until the next debt deal is reached, at which point the debt issuance will “catch up” to where it was supposed to be, and surge by almost $2 trillion overnight.

The above assumes of course that after the requisite fire and brimstone, a new debt deal will be reached. Naturally, should the Treasury become unable to issue fresh debt and then run out of cash, the US government would be in danger of defaulting on some financial obligations. Wall Street is already trying to handicap how long the US government has before it’s unable to pay its bills because of the newly re-imposed debt ceiling. That so-called X-date has been estimated by some strategists as looming around July or August.

In the event of congressional standoffs, investors tend to dump the Treasury bills most vulnerable to a potential default in favor of securities maturing before or after the X-date, creating a kink in the curve. Right now, though, the bill market is showing no signs of angst, given the uncertainties about the outlook.

South Korea is looking at a plan to purchase more US oil and gas to diversify its energy sources, and also ‘potentially head off the threat of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs,’ Bloomberg reports.

The possible move would be aimed at reducing the trade surplus with America, as well as improving the country’s energy security, according to Thursday comments in Seoul from Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy, Ahn Duk-geun. The country is also considering additional government support for companies so they can import more oil and gas from countries outside the Middle East.

“Other countries are all talking about how they need to ease the growing trade deficit under the Trump administration,” said Ahn. “We are pretty much in the same situation so we are thinking about increasing energy imports, and there’s also a need to diversify supplies to improve energy security.”

South Korea is heavily dependent on exports to drive its economic growth – with the US being one of its top trading partners.

The move comes after Trump promised an array of protectionist policies – including universal tariffs – to try and reduce an out-of-control US trade deficit with other nations.

South Korea, the world’s third-largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, follows several other nations who are looking at boosting their purchases of US fossil fuels, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the EU.

Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 16 announced that Ashley Moody, Florida’s attorney general, will replace Sen. Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate, praising her as someone who will deliver results in step with the incoming administration’s America-first agenda.

“Florida deserves a senator who stands unapologetically for conservative principles, supports law enforcement, has a strong record of combatting illegal immigration, and is ready to deliver on President Trump’s agenda. Attorney General Ashley Moody’s exemplary track record shows her commitment to these principles,” DeSantis said.

Rubio is expected to resign from his seat upon receiving Senate approval to become the next U.S. Secretary of State, and DeSantis said Moody will quickly fill the vacant seat.

Joining DeSantis for the announcement, Moody accepted the appointment and promised to bring “the same persistence and passion and tenacity” to her role as a senator that she brought to her role as attorney general.

“You better believe, as a United States Senator, I will work for you, those that stand on that thin line between chaos and order, between safety and crime,” Moody said. “I have got your back … and we will all work to protect the American people and make all of our cities and states stronger and safer together.

“And so I have one message right now to President Trump and to my new colleagues on the United States Senate: America first, let’s get it done.”

DeSantis praised Moody for the work she’s done in the past six years as Florida’s attorney general, stating, “I’m happy to say we’ve had an attorney general who has been somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share.”

He summarized her track record, touting her tough-on-crime stance and her work fighting against issues such as illegal immigration, the opioid and fentanyl crisis, anti-Semitism, influence and land ownership by communist China, and federal government overreach by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

He praised Moody for taking legal action against the Federal Emergency Management Agency for alleged discrimination, urging the Supreme Court to remove illegal immigrants from voter rolls before the last election, speaking out against the now-failed state Amendments 3 and 4, and fighting to ban transgender surgeries for minors.

Moody said that what angered her most as a state attorney general was the past four years of having to fight against federal government overreach.

She promised to work to give power back to the American people.

“The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she said.

She pointed out that she has already served in the judiciary and executive branches of government, and joked that she might be the only senator to serve in a third branch.

She also stressed that she is a trained accountant and could “shrink the bloat of the federal government.”

DeSantis said he won’t appoint Moody’s replacement as Florida’s attorney general before the position is available, but he expects to appoint his Chief of Staff James Uthmeier.

“James Uthmeier is kind of like Ashley,” he said. “He’s proven himself in these fights.”

DeSantis added that he thinks Moody is leaving “big shoes to fill,” but that Uthmeier would do a good job.

Rubio has not yet submitted his resignation, although DeSantis anticipates that Moody will likely take office on Jan. 20.

“I want to thank Senator Rubio for his service in the United States Senate,” DeSantis said. “I think he will serve the country ably as Secretary of State, and we need it, because the last four years has been a total disaster.”

Florida’s other senator, Rick Scott, celebrated Moody’s appointment on social media platform X, welcoming her to the Senate.

“Ashley has done an incredible job fighting for Floridians and keeping our communities safe as Attorney General,” he wrote. “I have no doubt she will do an incredible job as senator.”

DeSantis said that he notified Moody the night before the announcement. He praised the array of choices he had to choose from at both state and federal levels.

He specifically called out Florida Representatives Cory Mills and Kat Cammack, as well as Florida’s Secretary of State Cord Byrd, and State Senator Jay Collins.

Byrd and Collins both congratulated Moody on X shortly after the announcement, and expressed their gratitude to the governor for considering them.

DeSantis also said he “got a kick out of” speculation that he would appoint himself, but said that it was better to “hold the fort down” in Florida, saying that his team can be very helpful to President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.

“I think we can play a good supporting role when senators like Ashley Moody are fighting for us, and we can be there in support for some of those policies to bring power back to the states,” he said.

The unfortunate saga of Pakistani state persecution against former Prime Minister Imran Khan continues, as a Pakistani court on Friday sentenced Khan and this wife to 14 and seven years in prison after finding them guilty of corruption.

He had already been held in jail for a couple years, despite many months of huge protests in various places by supporters demanding his release, after he and his wife were accused of accepting a gift of land from a real estate tycoon in exchange for laundered money, amid many additional pending graft investigations.

Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party reject the allegations, and the former prime minister had pled non-guilty in the case.

“Whilst we wait for a detailed decision, it’s important to note that the Al Qadir Trust case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi lacks any solid foundation and is bound to collapse,” PTI’s foreign media wing asserted in a statement.

PTI plans to challenge the verdict in higher courts, with Khan pledging after this conviction: “I will neither make any deal nor seek any relief.”

Khan has meanwhile insisted that his arrest in 2023 was simply politically motivated, designed by his rivals and enemies to keep the popular politician from power. According to a review of the last couple years of turmoil which has gripped Pakistan over Khan’s fate:

While imprisoned, Khan has been facing dozens of cases ranging from charges of graft and misuse of power to inciting violence against the state after being removed from office in a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022.

He has either been acquitted or his sentences suspended in most cases, except for this one and another on charges of inciting supporters to rampage through military facilities to protest against his arrest on May 9, 2023.

His supporters have led several violent protest rallies since the May 9 incidents.

He’s gotten some international support and backing amid the saga, with a United Nations panel of exports having announced last year that his detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office“.

Importantly, Khan’s supporters are expressing hope that Trump will use his influence to free him. According to the NY Times on Friday:

Supporters of Imran Khan, the imprisoned former prime minister, are now pinning their hopes on getting him freed — however fanciful — on the wild card among the three: the incoming administration of Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Trump has said nothing publicly to indicate that he plans to intervene in Mr. Khan’s case. Once he is sworn in as president on Monday, Pakistan is unlikely to rank high among Mr. Trump’s foreign policy priorities.

But a series of posts on social media by one of Mr. Trump’s close allies has inspired almost messianic certainty among Mr. Khan’s followers that the once and future American president will help secure his freedom.

I’ll say it again, @geonews_urdu:

Free Imran Khan. pic.twitter.com/z4Uxdejc2O

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) December 16, 2024

PTI had made a better than expected showing in February 2024 parliamentary elections and had decried that this was all a conspiracy to prevent his return to office by the military-run deep state. There are ultimately a whopping 170 legal cases against Khan.

Current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who emerged victorious in the last elections while Khan had languished in jail, was seen more as the “military’s man” in Islamabad, while Khan’s legacy has sought to be erased by those same elite powers.