Pentagon Denies Congressman’s Claim Of Iranian ‘Mothership’ Launching Drones Off US Coast
Update (1523ET): “There is not any truth to that,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Wednesday afternoon, hours after Republican Congressman Jefferson Van Drew of New Jersey claimed on Fox News that Iranian drones were flying over New Jersey skies.
Singh said: “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States … and there is no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones towards the United States.”
“They were not US military drones,” she continued, adding, “These are not drones or activities from a foreign entity or foreign adversary.”
🚨NEW🚨
Deputy DoD Press Secretary says that these are NOT Iranian drones, and there is no Iranian “mothership” off the eastern seaboard, and that these drones are not from any foreign entities.
USNorthCom, who oversees the defense of US Airspace, needs permission in order to investigate the recent drone incursions near sensitive DoD facilities in New Jersey.
Republican Congressman Jefferson Van Drew of New Jersey, a member of both the House Judiciary Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner around noon that government sources have informed him that mysterious drones in New Jersey skies at night originate from an Iranian “mothership” stationed off the US East Coast.
“Here’s the real deal Harris …. and I’ve gotten to know people. And from very high sources, very qualified sources, and very responsible sources… I’m going to tell you the real deal: Iran launched a mothership – probably about a month ago that contains these drones and is off the US East Coast,” Van Drew said.
Van Drew continued, “Know that Iran made a deal with China to purchase drones – motherships and technology to go forward. The sources I know are good.”
He emphasized, “These drones should be shot down,” adding the military “is on alert with this.”
BREAKING REPORT – DRONES OVER NEW JERSEY ARE FROM IRAN: Congressman Jeff Van Drew claims Iran has stationed a “mothership” off the U.S. East Coast, reportedly launching drones now flying over New Jersey. pic.twitter.com/ayV8tYioXA
“We saw one right up above us that was the size of our car.”
Mysterious drones have been spotted hovering over neighborhoods in New Jersey, leaving residents confused and concerned. The FBI is investigating and local police say there’s no known threat to public safety. pic.twitter.com/iVussv4Q8D
America’s government-run school system is failing…
In a memorable April 1995 video, Apple founder Steve Jobs declared, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible….”
Then in January 2006, John Stossel’s eye-opening documentary, Stupid in America, was aired.
The investigative ABC show was billed as“a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools, and it’s about time we face up to it…The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic, and South Korea…This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.”
Sadly, since Jobs’ comments and Stossel’s documentary, public school performance has not improved.
The 2023 test, the results of which were released on December 4, revealed that average U.S. math scores declined sharply between 2019 and 2023, falling 18 points for 4th graders and 27 points for 8th graders. Internationally, this puts the U.S., a purported world leader, at 22nd of 63 education systems for 4th-grade math and 20th of 45 education systems for 8th-grade math.
Additionally, average U.S. math scores for both 4th and 8th graders reverted to performance levels of 1995, the first year the TIMSS assessment was administered, meaning any progress made since Steve Jobs’ damning comments has been erased.
Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner, summed up the dreary results, asserting that the phenomenon is particularly troubling because the U.S. is an outlier compared to other countries. She added that among 29 education systems that participated in both the 2011 and 2019 iterations of TIMSS, the U.S. was the only one that saw widening score gaps between top- and bottom-scoring students in both subjects and both grade levels.
Sadly, many parents are fooled by their kids’ lack of knowledge as teachers frequently resort to grade inflation. In fact, a recent study from the Equitable Grading Project of about 33,000 middle school and high school grades found that almost 60% of students’ grades did not match their course knowledge according to standardized tests. The mismatches were highest among Black and Hispanic students and those from families who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Those with a vested interest in government-run schools invariably blame underfunding for abysmal education results.
But reality tells a different story.
According to Just Facts, which is dedicated to researching verifiable data about public policy issues, the U.S. spent $1.2 trillion on education in 2022. The bulk of the outlay, $834 billion, went to elementary and secondary education, while $226 billion was disbursed to higher education, and $121 billion went to libraries and other forms of education.
This total breaks down to $8,993 for every household in the U.S., 4.6% of the U.S. gross domestic product, and 14% of the government’s current expenditures. It’s important to note that these figures don’t include land purchases for schools and other facilities, as well as some of the costs of durable items like buildings and computers. The unfunded liabilities of post-employment non-pension benefits (like health insurance) are also not included.
Just Facts also finds that “the average inflation-adjusted cost of private K–12 schools in the 2019–20 school year was $9,709 per student. In contrast, the cost for public schools was $17,013 per student—or 75% more than private schools.”
What can we do about this deplorable state of affairs?
“Dismantling the Department of Education won’t make any measurable difference in educational outcomes,” writes Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“If you want real transformation, fight the elected school boards, defang the unions, and create alternatives to the ed schools.”
Petrill is correct, but more than anything, parents need to take charge. If your state has a private choice program, see if there is a school that is a better fit for your child. Or maybe there is a high-performing local charter school that does a better job than your zip code-mandated public school.
Another option for parents is to provide education for their kids in the same way they provide food, clothing, and shelter, and indeed, homeschooling rates continue to rise. Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, declares that there are currently about 3.2 million students educated at home in grades K-12 in the U.S. (roughly 6% of school-age children), compared to 2.5 million in spring 2019.
Too many children are educationally shortchanged these days, and to turn things around, we must stop looking to the government—especially where its employees are unionized—for solutions.
Roger Ver, widely known as “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early promotion of cryptocurrency, is contesting charges made against him by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
Ver, who renounced his US citizenship in 2014, was arrested in Spain in April. US authorities are seeking his extradition on charges including tax evasion, mail fraud and filing false tax returns.
Prosecutors claim Ver undervalued his assets and failed to report ownership of about 131,000 Bitcoin BTC$97,604. He denied the allegations in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Dec. 10.
“I wasn’t an American citizen or living in the US at the time these claims were made,” Ver said. He accused the US government of being “angry” not about taxes but about his “lack of obedience.”
Legal history
According to the DOJ, Ver failed to report significant capital gains from Bitcoin sales and underreported the value of two companies when he renounced his US citizenship in 2014. Prosecutors allege Ver concealed 131,000 BTC, worth nearly $240 million at the time of sale in 2017, leading to a $48 million tax shortfall.
Ver’s defense argues the allegations are outdated and stem from ambiguous cryptocurrency tax laws.
His legal team also contends that US prosecutors misused confidential communications and violated legal protections.
Political retaliation claims
In the interview with Carlson, Ver insisted that the charges don’t stem from tax charges but from his high-profile promotion of cryptocurrencies, which he believes threatens government control of money systems.
He also said that US intelligence agencies orchestrated a campaign to suppress BTC’s original goal of decentralization.
The Bitcoin evangelist also linked his indictment to the recent publication of his book, which he claimed exposes government interference in the cryptocurrency industry.
Tax evasion charges dismissal
On Dec. 3, Ver moved to dismiss the US tax evasion charges by claiming the case was “unconstitutional” and arguing that the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) exit tax was “inscrutably vague.”
In the filing, he said that the charges relied on “provisions of the US tax laws” that were unclear about the “application to digital assets of the kind that underlie the charges.”
The IRS exit tax requires that US citizen pay all required taxes before renouncing their citizenship and removing themselves from the country’s taxation system.
Moscow Threatens Retaliation After Ukraine Strikes Russia With 6 US-Made ATACMS Missiles
Moscow has announced a very serious escalation out of Ukraine on Wednesday, with defense ministry officials saying that six US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles were launched against a Russian airfield inside the country’s sovereign territory.
Taganrog is a Black Sea port city in southwestern Russia, and was targeted in the heavy attack. The military claimed that all six were able to be intercepted and downed before reaching their target, with two reported intercepts by a Pantsir air defense system, and the others destroyed after electronic warfare systems diverted them.
“Missile fragments caused injuries among personnel. There was no destruction, but two buildings in the airfield’s technical area and three military vehicles sustained minor shrapnel damage. Civilian vehicles in a nearby parking lot were also damaged,” the Russian Defense Ministry statement said.
Apparently this damage occurred through “falling fragments of the missiles” according to the ministry, which also vowed that retaliation is coming for the strike.
“This attack by Western long-range weapons will not go unanswered, and appropriate measures will be taken,” it added, but without specifying anything further.
It appears that at least other drones or missiles which were part of the broader assault made it through Russian aerial defenses:
In the early hours of Wednesday, Dec.11, multiple explosions shook the city of Taganrog in Russia’s Rostov region, regional governor Yuri Slyusar reported, describing the attack as a “missile strike.”
The attack, reported around 4:20 a.m., triggered air defense systems and caused at least ten explosions, local residents told the Shot Telegram channel. Eyewitnesses suggested the target might have been a military airfield, according to CHEKA-OGPU Telegram channel.
It was only in September that President Vladimir Putin declared new ‘red lines’ for the conflict, asserting that any long-range attack on Russia with West-supplied missiles would be viewed as the as the “direct participation” of NATO countries in the war in Ukraine.
“It would substantially change the very essence, the nature of the conflict,” he said at the time, shortly after Washington finally approved its change in policy to allow such attacks. “This will mean that Nato countries, the USA and European states, are fighting with Russia.”
With the ATACMS and other Western systems, NATO personnel actually have to assist directly with satellite and targeting data, which includes being able to “input flight missions into these missile systems” – as Putin described earlier.
Putin could now order a major attack on Kiev, or command and control centers of Ukraine’s armed forces. Russia has also been targeting locations where it’s believed that Western munitions are held.
All of this will no doubt make it harder for the incoming Trump administration to negotiate a potential peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, something he’s vowed to begin from the moment he enters office again.
Luigi Mangione’s Fingerprints Match Prints Found At Scene, Police Say
Update (1156ET):
Two law enforcement officials told CNN that fingerprints found at the scene of the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO outside a Midtown Manhattan Hilton hotel last week match those of 26-year-old Ivy League graduate Luigi Mangione.
“This marks the first positive forensic match tying Mangione directly to the scene where Brian Thompson was gunned down just over a week ago outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel.”
This new development comes as suspected killer Mangione fights extradition to New York City. He is currently held at the State Correctional Institution—Huntingdon, Pennsylvania—until proper paperwork by NY is filed.
Mangione’s extradition challenge has kicked off the process requiring a warrant issued by the New York governor’s office to allow him to be transported to the state, where he would then be arraigned at the criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan.
Mangione’s lawyer, Thomas Dickey, told CNN earlier: “I haven’t seen any evidence that they have the right guy.”
On Tuesday night, we published what appears to be Mangione’s manifesto…
“Parasites Simply Had It Coming”: Luigi Mangione’s Manifesto Published Online By Journalist https://t.co/fyqdQcSHa0
Ahead of the extradition proceeding at the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Mangione yelled to reporters: “It is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people.”
🚨 #BREAKING: Luigi Mangione just SCREAMED at reporters and struggled with police as he was escorted into court
Holy CRAP 😳
“It is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people!”
The attorney hired to represent the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO said that he’s seen no evidence showing his client is guilty.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that says that he’s the shooter,” Thomas Dickey told reporters in Pennsylvania on Dec. 10, after a hearing in which his client Luigi Mangione was denied bail.
Law enforcement officials say Mangione is the individual who approached UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk earlier this month and fatally shot him in the back.
Dickey said Mangione plans to plead not guilty and urged people to remember that in the American justice system, defendants are innocent until proven guilty.
“The burden is always on the government, thank God, and that’s their burden, and they’re going to have to produce some evidence, and we’re anxious to see it,” said the lawyer, who announced during the hearing that he was fighting government attempts to extradite Mangione to face charges.
The challenge prolongs what can be a relatively quick process when defendants waive their right to fight extradition. The U.S. Constitution’s Extradition Clause provides that, upon the demand of the governor of the state from which a fugitive fled, the fugitive be delivered to that state.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement that she was grateful for law enforcement arresting Mangione. She said that she would be signing a governor’s warrant “to ensure this individual is tried and held accountable.”
The judge in the hearing gave Mangione 14 days to file a petition formally challenging the extradition. The judge gave prosecutors 30 days to obtain the New York governor’s warrant.
“We’re going to do what’s necessary to get the governor’s warrant and we’re working with the New York City Police Department and the Manhattan DA’s office and we’re going to get the defendant out there so they can prosecute him on their charges,” Blair County District Attorney Pete Weeks told reporters in a briefing after the hearing.
“So, waiving accelerates that process. Contesting it just provides more hoops for law enforcement and prosecutors to jump through but we’re happy to do that.”
Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona after a customer alerted police. Officers found Mangione with multiple fake IDs, a firearm, and a silencer, according to police.
Mangione suffered a back injury, according to friends and others, and underwent back surgery. Joseph Kenney, an NYPD official, said on Fox News that some of the writings that police allegedly found on the defendant were “discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury.” Police were still looking into a possible nexus with insurance.
Dickey, Mangione’s lawyer, declined to talk about his client’s injury.
Mangione on his way into the hearing shouted, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the American people and their lived experience.”
“He seems outspoken,” Dickey said. As a defendant, it’s natural to experience a range of emotions, the lawyer said. Dickey said he wants to do all of the talking moving forward. “Hopefully there won’t be any more of that,” he said, regarding the shouting.
Dickey has met with his client. When asked by reporters about his first impressions of his client, Dickey said, “I wasn’t looking for impressions. What I was trying to do was form a bond with my client, I want him to trust me, and I want him to be confident that I’m here for him, and I feel that I’m very pleased with how that went.”
Luigi Mangione leaves the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa., on Dec. 10, 2024. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
The lawyer said he was hired. He would not say who hired him.
Mangione grew up in Maryland, and his family owns a country club there. A cousin, Nino Mangione, is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. Relatives declined requests for interviews.
“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione. We only know what we have read in the media,“ the family said in a previous statement. ”Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson, and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news.”
“Let many ideas flourish as industrial policy doesn’t work.” Those are the words of the excellent Andy Kessler in his latest Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
Policymakers should embrace Kessler’s logic, all the while applying it to their shameful attempt to force a TikTok divestiture. And yes, the demand from politicians (and upheld last week by the D.C. Circuit court) is industrial policy.
Seriously, what else could the anti-freedom and anti-freedom of speech battering of TikTok by the U.S. political class be? It couldn’t realistically be related to how TikTok “scoops up data on its 170 million monthly users in the U.S.,” and that the latter puts it in the position “to track federal employees or to conduct blackmail or corporate espionage.” If limiting information flow about Americans were the goal, politicians would be demanding the closure of all social media sites that are popular stateside, and that possess voluminous information about their users that they already sell. In short, “China” and/or the “CCP” don’t need TikTok to gather information on the American people, its corporations, federal employees, or all three.
The embarrassing treatment of TikTok similarly couldn’t be related to how “TikTok is a tool of Chinese Communist propaganda.” Sen. Tom Cotton has made the previous point, and excuses his own authoritarian actions with the communist angle. How we know this excuse is bogus can be found right inside China itself. The country is dense with American signage representing the best and brightest of U.S. corporations. Translated, the Chinese people are conducting a passionate love affair with all things American, yet we’re supposed to believe the CCP can use TikTok to convince the American people to hate America?
After that, policymakers might in a moment of introspection list even one “tool” of authoritarian governments that has proven popular in a marketplace marked by so much competition. Insert pun here: Tick tock, tick tock…
Moving on from the unrealistic to the possible, maybe the attacks on TikTok are quietly rooted in antitrust? If so, it’s easy to point out that nailbiting politicians and frightened-of-an-app pundits needn’t worry. So-called “market power” is the picture definition of ephemeral. The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins has made this point with great regularity for decades, and did so once again two weeks ago. As he put it so powerfully, “Antitrust has become perhaps government’s least useful and productive endeavor, so vastly does today’s dynamic, liquid economy differ from the economy of 1890 when the Sherman Act was passed.” Precisely.
It insults TikTok not one iota to remind readers that the present in the world of commerce is a lousy indicator of the future. Change is so quick. Kessler instructs well here. In his words, “What is astounding is the rate of acceptance” of new entrants to the internet space. In particular, Kessler notes how “OpenAI’s ChatGPT had a million users within five days of its late 2022 release. Five days!” Again, the business landscape changes quickly. Kessler adds that two years after ChatGPT’s astoundingly quick rollout, it now “has 300 million weekly users.”
What’s important is that the rate of acceptance with regard to ChatGPT hardly won’t stop with ChatGPT, or for that matter, TikTok. Precisely due to the speed with which users have adapted to the former, investment into the AI space has been soaring as the intrepid look for ways to build market share in what could be an enormous market. What’s true about ChatGPT is similarly true about TikTok and its leap from unknown to arguably the world’s most popular social media site. In other words, if politicians really are fearful of TikTok, then they should get out of the way. So long as its usage and value continue to soar, so will investment meant to compete away its enormous popularity.
What’s important is that neither government force nor government investment are the answer when it comes to generating competition for TikTok. As Kessler has written, “inventing the future is always about staring over a large precipice, with no idea how to get across.” About this, government most certainly has no ability to invent the future, but in attacking TikTok it’s picking TikTok’s competition over the corporation most capable up to now when it’s come to discovering what’s ahead.
Which means the U.S. political class isn’t just blurring the commercial future with its odious attempts to force a sale of TikTok from those who made it great, it’s once again embracing industrial policy. The problem is that per Kessler, industrial policy doesn’t work.
New PM Urges Syrians Abroad To Return Home (Amid Israeli Airstrikes & ISIS Threats)
Syria’s new transitional Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, who had headed up Hayat Tahir al-Sham’s (HTS) administration of Idlib, has urged all Syrian refugees across the globe to return and help rebuild the country.
He announced Wednesday that among his first goals is to “bring back the millions of Syrian refugees who are abroad.” At the moment Bashir and his HTS overseers are urging state employees to return to their respective government ministries in order to get basic services such as electricity fully restored.
Al-Bashir has said that Syrians need “stability and calm” – even as HTS allies, factions, as well as rivals conduct sectarian revenge and execution killings especially in countryside areas of Syria. There have been reports that HTS leaders are urging people not to upload images of such killings or violent reprisal attacks to the internet, dismissing these instances as a few bad acts in a country with millions of people.
Recent United Nations figures say that after 14 years of brutal war, and following the events of the past week, at least six million Syrians are refugees abroad – most of them in neighboring countries like Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan – but many of them in Europe as well.
European countries including Germany and Austria have halted and canceled asylum cases for Syrians, telling them to return home. But it remains that at the moment there’s not much of a home to return to. Germany has been among the first European countries to pledge large sums of humanitarian aid to Damascus.
The vast majority of Syria is without basic services including electricity, with Western studies estimating at least $1.2 trillion in damage after the war. But the most immediate threat to anyone on the ground is the state of lawlessness and likelihood for inter-factional fighting.
Israel has also continued its unprecedented bombing campaign across almost all parts of Syria, destroying and degrading the Syrian Army’s bases, missile stockpiles, and chemical weapons facilities. These airstrikes are happening with impunity, as there is no military or anti-air defense units, and they have been going for several days straight, intensifying most in the night hours.
One war monitor has cited at least 350 Israeli airstrikes on Syria in the past four days.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has described that “Israeli fighter jets continue to destroy the remaining military assets in Syria for the fourth consecutive day.”
Meanwhile, Russia is saying that the current situation is ripe for ISIS’ return. “Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has warned that there was a real risk that ISIL (ISIS) fighters could rise again in Syria,” the state RIA news agency has reported. But the reality also is that ISIS-linked factions as well as “former” ISIS members are now comfortably ensconced in Damascus.
The return of Tulsi Gabbard to Capitol Hill began with breakfast in the Senate dining room courtesy of Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, followed by back-to-back meetings with other Republicans, all of whom were happy to welcome the former Hawaii Democrat and discuss her nomination to lead the U.S. intelligence community.
But members of her old political party, including one-time House colleagues, largely ignored her. It’s still early in the process, but Gabbard has been unable to schedule a single meeting with Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, outgoing chairman of the committee, has not responded to her requests for a meeting, according to a source directly familiar with Gabbard’s efforts. Others have replied to her outreach but remain hesitant about putting anything on the books. At least one Democrat scheduled a sit-down this week only to abruptly cancel.
The cold shoulder comes nearly a month after President-elect Donald Trump picked Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence, two years after she quit a Democratic Party that she called “an elitist cabal of warmongers,” and immediately after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Gabbard met with the now-deposed dictator twice in 2017 while on a “fact-finding mission” to the war-torn country. These meetings proved to be an impediment when she ran for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
“What do you say to Democratic voters who watched you go over there, and what do you say to military members who have been deployed repeatedly in Syria, pushing back against Assad?” Kasie Hunt asked two years later during an MSNBC interview. Gabbard replied that U.S. troops deployed there “without understanding what the clear mission or objective is.”
Gabbard added that Assad was “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.” Hillary Clinton promptly accused Gabbard, then a major in the Hawaii National Guard, of being a “Russian asset.”
The Republicans who will control the Senate next year do not see the meeting with Assad eight years ago as disqualifying or insurmountable. Despite the suggestion of Democrats such as Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who recently worried that Gabbard “couldn’t pass a background check,” Republicans point out that as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, Gabbard already has a top-secret security clearance. More than 250 military veterans co-signed a letter published Monday endorsing her as “a warrior whose vote cannot be bought.”
Trump remains unbothered by the meeting with Assad. Asked by NBC News if the meeting “compromises her,” the president-elect all but rolled his eyes. “I met with Putin,” he said of the Russian president now sheltering the Syrian dictator. “I met with President Xi of China. I met with Kim Jong-un twice. Does that mean that I can’t be president?”
Nonetheless, Gabbard will be grilled about her Syria meeting. Defense hawks, Republicans and Democrats alike, are expected to press her for details in committee and challenge her foreign policy views that some have described as “isolationist.” Allies of the president-elect prefer the term “America First.” And it is increasingly the new orthodoxy among a GOP base wary and weary of overseas entanglements.
There is some evidence that skepticism of a muscular foreign policy has gained traction among younger Democrats and independents in the last four or five years. When Hillary Clinton questioned Gabbard’s logic and loyalty, Gabbard punched back. In a series of tweets, she called the former secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee “the queen of warmongers” and “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”
Upstart presidential candidate Andrew Yang took Gabbard’s side. “Tulsi Gabbard deserves much more respect and thanks than this,” Yang tweeted. “She literally just got back from serving our country abroad.”
As Gabbard made the rounds Monday, the nominee mostly ignored shouted questions from reporters. The only public statement Gabbard made was a reiteration of the Trump policy announced over the weekend that the U.S. would stay out of Syria.
“My own views and experiences have been shaped by my multiple deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of Islamist terrorism,” Gabbard said. “It’s one of the many reasons why I appreciate President Trump’s leadership and his election where he is fully committed, as he has said over and over, to bringing about an end to wars, demonstrating peace through strength and putting the national security interests and the safety, security and freedom of the American people, first and foremost.”
Gabbard would oversee a vast intelligence apparatus if confirmed, a role of tremendous influence and significant authority over presidential intel briefings and issues of declassification. Sympatico with Trump, she has already earned support from very different corners of the GOP. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a skeptic of foreign intervention, endorsed her last month as did the much more hawkish South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who previously served in the same Army reserve unit with the nominee.
She still holds out hope for Democratic support. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which prides itself on bipartisanship, unanimously advanced the nomination of Avril Haines, President Biden’s director of national intelligence, before the Senate confirmed her 84-10.
But Gabbard isn’t starting from scratch. She knows at least one member of the committee already. New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who now sits on the intel committee, once campaigned on behalf of Gabbard and called the then-little-known Hawaii politician “a rising star.”
Republicans now lay claim to the lapsed Democrat, and the president-elect sees in Gabbard an opportunity to cement the political “realignment” that he heralded after winning the election.
While Trump locked down the Republican faithful, he won the election by expanding his base to include what his longtime pollster John McLaughlin calls “disaffected Democrats.” These voters jumped ship, like Gabbard, and became MAGA converts, also like Gabbard. The question as Trump begins his second term, and as Republicans look to the next election without him atop the ticket, is whether the GOP can keep them.
“Right now, these Trump voters, the Republican Party is just renting them,” McLaughlin told RealClearPolitics. Putting an ex-Democrat like Gabbard in a Republican cabinet, he said, would go a long way toward making those voters “permanent.”
Macy’s reported its financial results for the third quarter on Wednesday and slashed its outlook after concluding an investigation into an employee who intentionally hid $151 million in delivery expenses from the fourth quarter of 2021 through the third quarter of this year.
During an earnings call on Wednesday morning, Macy’s CEO Tony Spring told investors that “integrity is paramount at Macy’s,” adding, “The responsible individual is no longer with the company, following discovery of their actions.”
Spring continued, “We’ve also identified and begun to implement additional controls to be a stronger and more disciplined organization so that an action like this could not happen again.”
In late November, Macy’s delayed its third-quarter report due to an investigation and forensic analysis that specified a “single employee with responsibility for small package delivery expense accounting intentionally made erroneous accounting accrual entries to hide approximately $132 to $154 million of cumulative delivery expenses from the fourth quarter of 2021 through fiscal quarter ended November 2, 2024.”
As a result, the department store chain lowered its full-year guidance, estimating an impact of $79 million. Adjusted earnings per share were revised downward to a range of $2.25 to $2.50, compared to a previous forecast of as high as $2.90 in August.
However, Macy’s raised its full-year sales forecast …
Here’s the revised full-year forecast (courtesy of Bloomberg):
Sees adjusted EPS $2.25 to $2.50, saw $2.55 to $2.90
Sees net sales $22.3 billion to $22.5 billion, saw $22.1 billion to $22.4 billion
Sees gross margin rate 38.2% to 38.3%, saw 39% to 39.2%
Here’s what the retailer reported for the third quarter (courtesy of Bloomberg):
Adjusted EPS 4.0c vs. 21c y/y, estimate 3.5c (Bloomberg Consensus)
EPS 10c vs. 15c y/y
Total revenue $4.90 billion, estimate $4.91 billion
Net sales $4.74 billion, -2.4% y/y, estimate $4.76 billion
Owned plus licensed comparable sales -1.3%, estimate -1.39%
Shares of Macy’s fell in premarket trading, down about 11%. On the year, shares closed down 17% on Tuesday.
Commenting on the earnings report, Goldman’s Brooke Roach and Evan Dorschner called the results “disappointing” …
M reported adj. F3Q24 EPS of $0.04, below GSe at $0.08 and in line with Factset consensus. Owned reported comps at -2.4% and retail sales of $4.742bn were in line with preliminary results announced on November 25th, 2024. However, profit was reported below expectations, with gross margins contracting to 39.6% as a % of retail sales, below GS/consensus at 40.5%/40.4%. This more than offset well-controlled SG&A, driving adj. EBIT to 0.9% vs. GS/consensus 1.2%/1.4%. Inventories were in line preliminary results.
On the forward outlook, M lowered its EPS guidance to $2.25-$2.50 (vs. $2.55-$2.90 prior), compared to GS/consensus at $2.75/$2.73. Within this, $0.21 of the reduction in guidance was driven by the adjustment to delivery expense following the company’s concluded accounting investigation. Beyond the delivery expense adjustment, Macy’s further reduced its EPS guide, now calling for lower gross margins and adj. EBITDA margins despite a stronger comp forecast. For 4Q, Macy’s guide for $7.8-8.0bn in net sales and $1.40-$1.65 of EPS compares to consensus at $7.7bn and $1.87, respectively. After adjusting for delivery expense in 4Q at $0.17, M’s 4Q guide is below consensus.
This is a disappointing result for Macy’s. While we are encouraged by the company’s stronger comp trend (especially in comparison with peers), we believe investors will focus on the company’s lower gross margin guidance and weaker EPS outlook for the year.
The analysts maintain a “Buy” rating on Macy’s with a 12-month price target of $20. This PT is based on 3.5x Q5-Q8 EV/EBITDA and includes a $1 per share contribution value from the retailer’s real estate.
Macy’s is currently undergoing a turnaround effort. The struggling retailer is a current activist target of Barington Capital and the private equity firm Thor Equities, which advocate for reducing administrative costs, trimming inventory, selling luxury brand stores, and exploring sales of its real estate portfolio.
Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias had a rough election. Several of his clients, notably Kamala Harris and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, fell to defeat.
But instead of accepting their losses, Elias disputed the presidential and senatorial results in Pennsylvania, leading to charges that Elias, a self-advertised “democracy defender,” is what he’s accused Donald Trump of being: an “election denier.”
With the races now settled – and many of his skeptical posts on X deleted – Elias is unrepentant and remains defiant. Not only is he shaking off the criticism, but he is vowing to fight Trump and Republicans even harder in court in 2026 and 2028.
“Democrats need to oppose, and not simply resist, a second Trump presidency,” the lawyer said last week.
This time, Elias promises to employ more “ruthless” tactics to stop Trump, Republicans, and their MAGA agenda.
“All legal tactics must be on the table,” he added in his recent blog post. “We must be comfortable using every legal tool available to challenge Trumpism in court.”
Elias believes he will get favorable rulings because “more than half of federal judges were appointed by Democratic presidents,” and “many state courts are controlled by liberals.”
“The judiciary is the best hope we have to stop Donald Trump from running through American democracy,” he asserted on his podcast.
Elias continues to bring legal challenges in several states. He recently noted there are still 211 voting or election cases pending in 40 states.
His anti-Trump crusade has gotten personal. In his trademark smashmouth style, Elias has called Trump both “Hitler” and a “buffoon.” Now he worries Trump has targeted him for attack.
“I fear the threat of retribution, political vengeance,” he said in a recent column. Elias notes that Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has branded him “an enemy.”
While claiming to protect voting rights, elections, and the democratic process, Elias’ partisan actions in the wake of the 2024 election stand in tension with his past statements excoriating Trump for denying the 2020 results and trying to “steal the election.”
After the Associated Press and ABC News called the 2024 Pennsylvania Senate race for GOP challenger Dave McCormick, Elias refused to accept the loss suffered by his client Casey.
“The Pennsylvania Senate race is not over,” Elias insisted on X (a post he has since deleted).
Instead of advising Casey to concede, he demanded a recount. Meanwhile, he sued state election officials over provisional ballots, which he argued should be counted even though they were ruled invalid.
When McCormick countersued to throw out such ballots, Elias complained: “Candidates who believe they have won don’t file lawsuits like this. Very strong Trump 2020 vibes.”
But the Republican National Committee said the desperate party was Elias.
“We actually have legal filings by the Bob Casey campaign filed by Marc Elias, where they have called on votes that are cast by individuals who are not registered to vote to be counted,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said. “They have taken every step that they can to try and engineer votes that would overturn this margin.”
In the end, Casey struck out on the recount, and his high-priced lawyer whiffed in court. Casey finally conceded the election to McCormick after 16 days of protesting the result on the advice of counsel.
Elias even disputed Trump’s own clear victory in Pennsylvania, where he beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 171,000 votes.
“Trump knows he is losing Pennsylvania,” the Harris campaign lawyer claimed in a post on X, also since deleted.
Asked for a response, Elias spokesman Blake McCarren did not comment.
It’s not the first time the controversial Duke-educated attorney, who keeps a “BEWARE OF ATTACK DEMOCRAT” sign behind his desk, has doubted the results of elections and used questionable tactics to try to overturn them.
In 2021, Elias pushed the House Democratic leadership to nullify the victory of GOP Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks over his Democratic client Rita Hart. Meeks’ narrow win had already been certified by Iowa when Elias asked Congress to essentially kick her out of office; she remains in Congress. In 2018, he represented Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson in his recount loss to Republican challenger Rick Scott. And in 2008, Elias was able to switch a Senate seat in Minnesota from an incumbent Republican to Democrat Al Franken by shopping for a friendly judge to count previously rejected ballots and overturn the lead of GOP Sen. Norman Coleman.
‘Extreme’ Gerrymandering
While Elias has decried what he calls “grotesque partisan gerrymandering” by Republicans in red states like North Carolina, court records show he defended Democrats doing the same thing in blue states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maryland.
In Maryland, a state court ruled in 2022 that the Democrat-drawn map pushed by Elias was so one-sided against Republicans that it “subverts the will of those governed.” The judge tossed out the map for “extreme partisan gerrymandering.” The same year, a federal judge in New York rejected Elias’ lawsuit to reshape congressional districts to favor Democrats as a “Hail Mary pass.”
Federal Election Commission records reveal Elias has earned millions of dollars from redistricting clients – such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, along with its affiliate, the National Redistricting Action Fund – to assist their efforts to redraw electoral maps to protect Democratic congressional seats in blue states.
One year after publicly mocking Trump and his campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, over their unfounded claims that Dominion voting machines switched Trump votes to Biden in 2020, Elias himself blamed the same Dominion “voting tabulation machines” for a Democratic client’s loss in New York. In 2021, Elias unsuccessfully claimed machine “irregularities” had somehow undercounted thousands of votes for Rep. Anthony Brindisi. But a judge rejected his complaint, ruling that there were “no discrepancies” with the machine counts while denying his request for a hand recount of the votes. FEC records show Brindisi paid Elias $8,230 for legal services.
Publicly, Elias has railed against the infusion of “dark money” in Republican campaigns. But behind the scenes, he’s lobbied to lift campaign finance caps and is credited with helping create the so-called “super PAC,” political committees that can accept unlimited contributions from dark money groups.
“Well before Marc was litigating major voting cases, he was a campaign-finance lawyer, fighting against regulation on the Democrat side,” said UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen. “It was Marc working to loosen campaign-finance limits on political parties, a move that has increased the role of big money in influencing candidates through the political parties.”
Shortly before the 2016 election, billionaire left-wing donor George Soros, whom Elias views as “a hero,” gave at least $5 million to Elias and his law firm to fight voter ID requirements at polling places. Dark money groups also helped fund his legal work in the 2020 election. When reporters pointed this out, he threatened to make it easier to sue journalists for defamation he threatened to make it easier to sue journalists for defamation, arguing the courts should “revisit New York Times v Sullivan,” the landmark libel case that makes it harder for public figures to sue for defamation. (He’s since deleted the tweet.)
‘Dark Money’ Double Standard
What’s more, two nonprofit groups Elias founded, Democracy Docket Legal Fund and Democracy Docket Action Fund, are “both projects of the Arabella Advisors dark money funding network,” according to the Capital Research Center. They provide him almost unlimited cash to file lawsuits across the country to block GOP measures to prevent voter fraud. Arabella manages several nonprofit “dark money” funders, who in turn channel money to Elias’ groups, according to the Capital Research Center.
Notwithstanding his rhetoric about “protecting voting rights,” critics say Elias’ primary concern is making sure Democrats have the advantage in elections. Indeed, his law firm, the Elias Law Group, acknowledges on its website that it is “committed to helping Democrats win.”
When Elias says he’s fighting against “voter suppression” by Republicans, detractors say he’s really fighting against laws to stop voter fraud, such as non-citizens illegally casting votes for Democrats. Former White House press secretary and GOP pundit Ari Fleischer warned that what Elias did in Pennsylvania is a harbinger of how Democrats plan to count votes in future close races. “They want people who aren’t registered, don’t have IDs, or live out of state to be counted,” he said on X.
After the election, Elias complained he had lost more than 50,000 followers on X. He has used the political platform to plug his digital newsletter, “Democracy Docket,” and attract paid subscribers for the for-profit website, which he started in 2020. He has done this even while defending Media Matters against a defamation lawsuit brought by Elon Musk. The liberal watchdog claimed X promotes Nazism.
While Elias claims “Donald Trump tried to subvert the election results in a lot of different ways in 2020,” he himself used a variety of dirty tricks to influence the election held four years earlier, which caught the eye of federal prosecutors who subpoenaed him to testify about his election meddling in court in 2022.
In 2016, while working as Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer, Elias hired D.C. opposition research shop Fusion GPS and former FBI informant Christopher Steele to feed the FBI false information about connections between Trump and the Kremlin to generate an investigation of the Republican opponent so, as Special Counsel John Durham suggested, he could turn around and tell his media contacts that Trump was being investigated in the hopes of swinging the election in Clinton’s favor. During the same month he commissioned Steele, Elias hired the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to write a public report blaming Russia for hacking the Clinton campaign. In his since-debunked dossier, Steele went a step further, pinning the hacking on not just Russia but also the Trump campaign.
Also in 2016, Elias collaborated with Clinton campaign official Jake Sullivan (now President Biden’s national security adviser) on the Russian Alfa Bank hoax targeting Trump, resulting in another dead-end FBI probe. After Elias’ campaign schemes fell under the scrutiny of Durham in 2020 and 2021, Elias scrubbed several years of posts from his X feed.
Critics say Elias seems to morph into those he denounces.
“Elias insisted that [Trump] was an election denier and [a] threat to democracy,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “What is hypocrisy to some is a living to others.”
Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.
