Archive for the ‘Ann Coulter’ Category

Why is a Silicon Valley billionaire trying to get an immigration hawk elected to the US Senate? – The Guardian

In usually deep-red Kansas, Democrats have the luxury of a sleepy primary contest for US Senate. Republicans do not.

Thats because in the Democratic primary the Kansas state senator Barbara Bollier is the heavy favorite to win her partys nomination and then run a competitive general election campaign fueled by a large war chest of cash.

That prospect is sharpened because Republicans are having to go through a bloody primary between the Kansas congressman Roger Marshall and former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, the immigration hardliner and former Republican nominee for governor whose unpopularity should he win the nod could hand the Democrats a vital Senate seat they would never normally hope to win.

Kobachs candidacy is notable for its support from the billionaire Peter Thiel, the libertarian venture capitalist who has at times expressed the same type of hardline immigration stances as Kobach.

Thiels support for Kobach has flowed through a pro-Kobach Super Pac called the Freedom Forever Political Action Committee. That support has allowed Kobach to effectively remain competitive with the more establishment-aligned Marshall. It has also meant that Republicans have had to sort out their contentious primary right up until the election on 4 August rather than focus on their Democratic opponent.

Thiels support is not based on a longtime relationship with Kobach, despite comments by both of them that places them roughly in the same immigration hawk wing of the Republican party.

Rather, Thiels support for Kobach stems from Ann Coulter, who connected the two and helped host a 2019 fundraiser for Kobach featuring Thiel. Other high-profile Republican donors such as Rebekah Mercer and Eric Prince attended. Kobach and Thiel first interacted in 2015, according to Recode. But Thiel really decided to support Kobach in 2019 after being pitched on supporting the pro-Kobach Super Pac, according to the Recode report.

Peter and Kris dont actually know each other reasonably well, said one well-entrenched Kansas Republican operative. Ann Coulters one of Peters best friends, and he kind of does whatever she tells him to.

Thiel has poured over $850,000 into the race to support Kobach. That support has buoyed the Kansas secretary of state through a multi-candidate primary and sparked a string of stinging attacks between Kobach and Marshall.

Super Pacs have played an influential role in this Senate race. A mystery Super Pac with ties to Democrats has tried to play spoiler in the Republican primary. Marshall also has a Super Pac supporting him.

Some Republicans cant see Kobach winning the primary, even with Thiels money behind him.

Republicans in Kansas want a proven winner, not a proven loser. Kobachs toast, the edge goes to Marshall, said the Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who is helping run the pro-Marshall Super Pac.

But in the final few days before the primary internal campaign polling has found Marshall with a single-digit lead over Kobach, according to multiple Republicans with knowledge of those figures. More concerning for Republicans is that polling also shows Bollier competitive against either candidate.

If Bollier won the Senate race, it could dramatically shift control of the Senate to Democrats. It would also end the eight-decade streak of Republican control of both Kansas Senate seats. Statewide Democratic victories in Kansas arent unheard of. In 2018 the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Laura Kelly, defeated Kobach after a grueling Republican primary fight. Now Republicans worry 2020 could be deja vu.

Theres plenty Kobach and Thiel have in common.

Thiel has donated money to NumbersUSA, the anti-immigration group thats supported Kobach. Both have considered running for governorships with Thiel weighing a bid in California. Both have ties to Trump. Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican national convention for Trump, donated $1.25m to the Trump campaign, and had been in consideration to serve on the Trump administrations intelligence advisory board.

Kobach had been mentioned as a potential secretary of the Department of Homeland Security or immigration tsar but those talks fell apart after an unusually long list of Kobachs demands to serve in the Trump administration became public.

Both Thiel and Kobach have connections to extremely aggressive approaches to curb immigration. Software from Palantir, a company co-founded by Thiel, was used to target the relatives of migrant children, according to a report in the Intercept. Kobach has also laid out a blueprint for a federal registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

The Kansas Senate race has emerged as one of the more competitive races regardless of who wins. Trump does not plan to weigh in in the primary despite having endorsed Kobach when he ran for governor in 2018. Aides and advisers see Marshall as the more competitive opponent in the general election.

On Wednesday on Air Force One Trump indicated he would stay out of the primary. During a conversation on that flight the Texas senator Ted Cruz reminded Trump that Marshall supported the former Ohio governor John Kasich and not Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

Cruz has ties to Thiel as well. Thiel has been a longtime donor to Cruz campaigns going back to Cruzs initial interest in running for attorney general of Texas. So the forces pushing Kobach extend to multiple corners of the Republican party.

Other parts of the party remain unconvinced. I think if Kobach is going to be the nominee its over, fretted a longtime Republican strategist.

The rest is here:
Why is a Silicon Valley billionaire trying to get an immigration hawk elected to the US Senate? - The Guardian

r/The_Donald banned from Reddit as Trump suspended from Twitch – Brooklyn Vegan

r/The_Donald, the largest group on Reddit devoted to discussing Donald Trump, has been banned from the site for violating three of the sites' rules, namely, rules 1, 2, and 8:

Rule 1Remember the human. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.

Rule 2Abide by community rules. Post authentic content into communities where you have a personal interest, and do not cheat or engage in content manipulation (including spamming, vote manipulation, ban evasion, or subscriber fraud) or otherwise interfere with or disrupt Reddit communities.

Rule 8Dont break the site or do anything that interferes with normal use of Reddit.

"All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith," a spokesperson for Reddit said. "We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, weve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its usersthrough warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more."

The virtual "quarantine" had been in place for just over a year, and required viewers to opt-in before being able to see the site. Reddit had previously hidden popular r/The_Donald posts from the site's front page.

r/The_Donald has often become embroiled in the discussion of conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and the alleged involvement of the Clintons in the 2017 murder of Seth Rich. It was also a hotbed of racism, Islamphobia, and misogyny. While Trump wasn't officially affiliated with the subreddit, he did an AMA there in 2016. Other AMAs hosted on the subreddit included Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Roger Stone, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Tucker Carlson.

Along with r/The_Donald, around 2000 other subreddits, including one for discussing podcast Chapo Trap House, were banned.

Meanwhile, streaming site Twitch temporarily suspended Trump's own account today. A spokesperson for the site told TechCrunch, "Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trumps channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."

The comments that led to the suspension were from two of Trump's campaign rallies, the first from his 2015 campaign kickoff:

When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what were getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. Theyre sending us not the right people.

The second comment was much more recent, coming from his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally earlier this month:

Hey, its 1:00 oclock in the morning and a very tough, Ive used the word on occasion, hombre, a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, Im sorry, this numbers no longer working. By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether its a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and youre sleeping.

"Like anyone else," Twitch told TechCrunch, "politicians on Twitch must adhere to our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. We do not make exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and will take action on content reported to us that violates our rules."

See the rest here:
r/The_Donald banned from Reddit as Trump suspended from Twitch - Brooklyn Vegan

Trump moving fast to shore up immigration campaign promises – Washington Examiner

President Trump is racing to fulfill immigration-related campaign promises as he enters a tough reelection fight against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trumps most memorable promise from the 2016 race was his pledge to build a wall along the United Statess border with Mexico. The administration is touting 200 miles of recently completed border security fencing, on track to reach about 450 miles by the end of the year.

Well have 500 miles just a little bit after the end of the year, Trump said during his Fox News town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Thursday night.

Trump also extended his executive order temporarily suspending most immigration during a period of high unemployment following the coronavirus lockdowns, expanding it to include many of the guest-worker programs immigration hawks were disappointed to see exempted when the first version of the edict was handed down back in April.

It seems to me that curtailing the issuance of work visas at a time of massive unemployment is a matter of common sense, said Jerry Kammer, author of the new book Losing Control: How A Left-Right Coalition Blocked Immigration Reform and Provoked the Backlash That Elected Trump. But, of course, the immigration lobby's hunger for foreign workers is insatiable. At times like this, it's unconscionable.

President Trump has repeatedly promised that he would put American workers first, and to his credit, he did just that, said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, in a statement. Stein had been critical of the order before it covered more nonimmigrant temporary workers, but the FAIR told the Washington Examiner it was now mostly satisfied" with it.

Trump won the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and then the general election in part because he vowed to break with the last two presidents of both parties, who were in favor of offering legal status to most illegal immigrants in the U.S. and expanding immigration more generally. He was advised on the issue by restrictionists such as Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller and later endorsed legislation sponsored by Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia that would reduce legal immigration levels.

The president has been under fire from Democrats and immigrant rights activists for his record on this issue the entire time he has been in office. But the Trump White House is not uniformly populated by immigration hardliners, and he hasnt always satisfied immigration hawks either.

Syndicated conservative columnist Ann Coulter famously backed Trump over his tough immigration stance but has spent most of the last four years criticizing him for not completing the border wall or overhauling the system and for breaking with Sessions. The In Trump We Trust author has said she is undecided on whether to vote for Trump this November.

Kammer, a senior research fellow at the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, noted that Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to make E-Verify mandatory, has now backed away from that commitment. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican and Trump nemesis, this week touted the system for preventing employers from hiring illegal immigrants.

The Trump campaign is highlighting the presidents immigration record under the banner of Promises Made, Promises Kept, citing an 84% reduction in apprehensions along the southern border. Arrests tend to track the number of people trying to enter. While Joe Biden campaigns on open borders, President Trump is keeping his promise to protect the safety and health of Americans by securing our Southern Borders, said Trump campaign spokeswoman Abigail Marone in a statement.

The Biden people and he's controlled totally by the radical left, as you understand. Hes not controlling it; they're controlling him, Trump said at a border security roundtable discussion in Yuma, Arizona, on Tuesday. They want open borders. They want criminal sanctuaries. They want everything that doesn't work.

Trump has fallen behind Biden in his race for a second term. He trails the former vice president by 9.6 points in the RealClearPolitics national polling average and is also down in both the Fox News and New York Times/Siena College battleground state polls. Returning to the immigration issue is potentially one way to fire up his base and win back wavering supporters.

If my speeches ever get a little off, Trump said during his first campaign, I just go: We will build a wall! You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of maybe thinking about leaving I can sort of tell the audience I just say, We will build the wall, and they go nuts.

Trump has held steady among Hispanic voters but has lost ground with white people. While college-educated suburbanites tend to be turned off by his immigration rhetoric, showing he has kept his promises could attract more of the working class.

Visit link:
Trump moving fast to shore up immigration campaign promises - Washington Examiner

Court Says Trump Violated Constitution With Border Wall Cash Grab – The Ring of Fire Network – The Ring of Fire Network

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Trump violated the Constitution by stealing money from the Pentagon in order to fund his ridiculous border wall. This means that, pending appeal, the $2.5 billion that Trump thought he could spend is now tied up in limbo, hopefully long enough to wait out Trumps entire term in office. Ring of Fires Farron Cousins explains the legal justification for denying Trump the Pentagon money.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Uh, big news on Friday, they kind of got overshadowed by everything else happening in this country, but its still good news. Nonetheless, a, a three judge panel actually ruled in two separate cases, uh, that both directly say that Donald Trump was wrong. And in fact, lacked the constitutional authority to steal money from the Pentagon in order to pay for his border wall. Um, you know, lest we forget before the whole pandemic broke out, uh, before we had all the civil unrest as a response to the gross racial inequality here in the United States, there was the border wall and Trump was doing everything possible to go full steam ahead on the border wall because he knew if he couldnt get that done or at least enough of it done to show off before November, that that would have been the issue that could have tanked him at the polls.

Now, obviously several other things have arisen since then that, uh, any one of them would take them out. All three of them together. You know, the, the racial inequality, the pandemic and the economic collapse, uh, all three of those together have pretty much already tanked Trumps reelection chances. But before that it was hinged on whether or not he could get that border wall, because thats how you get the crazy radicals like Ann Coulter to continue to support your campaign. If you dont have that, youre losing a large chunk of the Republican base who view you as weak and ineffective and could likely stay home in November. Well, thats when Trump decided Ill just take money out of the militarys budget, right? I can totally do that. Im the president. Well, this, this panel is echoing what legal experts had said at the time, which is legally, no, you cant.

Uh, that is in fact unconstitutional because Congress has the power of the purse. They have the power to pass the budgets. They allocate where the money goes. Now you can spend it, but you have to spend it on what they tell you. You can, and you cannot deviate from the norms. So then of course, Trump declares his national emergency on the Southern border. And then he says, aha, well, now its an emergency because Ive decided to call it one. So Im gonna take two and a half billion dollars from the Pentagon, and Im gonna use that to pay for my border wall. But even then, as, as we had pointed out back in the day, thats still illegal. You still cant take that money and just do whatever the heck you want with it. Congress would still have to approve it, or you would have to prove that there was a legitimate threat to the American public that would warrant this emergency decision by the president to spend the money on a border wall.

And in two separate rulings on Friday, this a three judge panels from the ninth circuit said, yeah, you havent demonstrated at all that theres any kind of threat. In fact, heres a direct quote out of the ruling, uh, from judge Sidney Thomas, uh, the executive branch has failure to show in concrete that the public interest favors a border wall is particularly significant given that Congress determined fencing to be a lower budgetary priority. And the department of Justices own data points to a contrary conclusion. So theyre looking at Trumps own data by the way, and saying, Hey, what youre showing us here shows that we dont need this thing. And it certainly isnt an emergency. You know, there theres no caravans folks remember hearing every six months like clockwork for the first two and a half years of Trumps administration, that there was a caravan. Theres now a caravan.

Theres new Dinu caravan. Theres a bigger caravan and theyre all coming to the border. And yet none of them ever actually came to the United States border. And its not because they were afraid of the border wall. Its not because they were afraid of Trump its because in most instances they didnt actually exist in the way that he said they existed. And the judges are looking at the data, looking at immigration data, looking at the threat statistics and saying, you know what? There is nothing that you have shown us that warrants stealing money unconstitutionally from the Pentagon in order to pay for your ridiculous border wall. So in light of all of the other things that Trump has, that are threatening his reelection campaign. Now we can go ahead and add on top of that for the hardcore conservatives, thats your boy cant even get the money for his border wall. And that was the only thing yall wanted from him. And its been a spectacular failure, even when he breaks the law to get the funding for it. He still cant make it happen.

Follow this link:
Court Says Trump Violated Constitution With Border Wall Cash Grab - The Ring of Fire Network - The Ring of Fire Network

Ann Coulter: Yale University has to go! | Opinion | havasunews.com – Today’s News-Herald

The Democratic Party is being forced into taking ridiculous positions by its insane base. Defund the police! Dishonor the flag! Throw Christopher Columbus in a lake!

What a wonderful gift! All Republicans have to do is take the other side. Make themselves the alternative to madness.

Instead, Trump and the Republicans have decided theyre going to be Democrats Lite.

Ill let others berate Republicans for doing nothing about the rioting, the arsons, the beatings, the corporate and social media canceling. This column will address the GOPs moronitude in response to attacks on the destruction of Confederate monuments. Works of art are being destroyed by Maoist vandals who have no idea what theyre doing.

Literally no idea.

Quick! Who was Fort Bragg named after? What did he do? Do you even know his first name? When you have to Google the guy on a statue to figure out who he is, maybe its not really the daily humiliation you claim it is.

At this point, the military bases are famous in their own right. No one hears Fort Hood and thinks of Gen. John Bell Hood.

Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne, is many orders of magnitude more famous than Gen. Braxton Bragg. It would be like demanding President John F. Kennedy change his name because his namesake, John Fitzgerald, was a corrupt Boston mayor.

Most obviously, the Democratic Party is going to have to change its name. You want an institution that represents slavery? Confederate politicians were all Democrats, Democrats created Jim Crow, and the founder of the party was a slave holder. (The Republican Party was founded to end slavery.)

Speaking of repellant Democrats, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on the Senate floor this week that the United States didnt inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.

This is the most ignorant statement ever made on the Senate floor. (And thats saying something!)

Every society has had slavery; it existed long before America did, including by American Indians (though they preferred torturing their captives to death, inasmuch as few of the natives farmed or built things).

From 1530 to 1780, at least a million Europeans were kidnapped by African Muslims and forced into slavery. The vast majority were starved or beaten to death.

In fact, unless were counting the Democrats wearing kente cloth last week, slavery is the only African institution ever adopted by this country. Portuguese not Americans brought the first slaves to Jamestown in 1619 (The New York Times favorite episode of American history!). We, are, however, the only country that fought a war to end slavery.

Isnt slavery bad enough? No, Kaine has to make it extra bad by calling slavery an American invention. A U.S. senator committed a blood libel against his own country.

Anything to say, Republicans? Even Obama would have corrected this boob.

The BLM fanboys complain that other countries dont honor the losing side in their civil wars. Yes, exactly thats why their wars never end. Myanmar has been in a civil war since 1948. Israels been fighting Palestinians since 1948. The Kurds and Turks have been fighting for half a century. At last count, there are two civil wars going on in the Philippines, and at least three in India.

America concluded its civil war by dominating and subjugating the losers, but also honoring their bravery.

Even before the war, the South was eons behind the North in industrial development. If the entire country had been the South, America never would have become the richest, most advanced nation on Earth. (And thats how slaves built America!) After the war, it was like a third world country.

On the other hand, Southerners could take justifiable pride in what everyone agrees was a better class of general and soldier.

At Appomattox, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant allowed Gen. Robert E. Lee to keep his sword. As Lee mounted his horse to leave, Grant saluted him. After announcing the Souths surrender at the White House, President Lincoln ordered the band to play Dixie.

It was an amazing way to end a civil war.

My ancestors were abolitionists who fought for the Union, but you dont have to be a Southerner to care about Confederate monuments. I cant help but notice that the people trying to obliterate our history are not part of that history.

Not that long ago, nearly all Americans had pre-Civil War ancestors. Not anymore! Recent immigrants, by which I mean people who arrived after 1865, think the country started with them. They find it hilarious to destroy anything that happened before they got here.

Talk about cultural imperialism!

What about the black Revolutionary heroes, like Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley? Nope, you can forget about foundational black Americans, too. The first two centuries of our nations history are canceled. Why would that interest someone from Pune, India, Mogadishu, Somalia, or Bangkok, Thailand? (That would be Kshama Sawant, socialist Seattle city council member, Democrat; Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat; U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Democrat.)

Corporate plunderers, globalists, the wolf of Wall Street, 8 million diversity jobs (that go to Indians, not the descendants of American slaves, as intended) -- thats the America they revere.

The new arrivals are fine with Red Guards going into cemeteries, ripping up symbols of our heritage. Just dont dare lay a finger on their privately owned Rothkos!

What do the Republicans say? No problem! Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says hes OK with changing the names of military bases. Trump tweets narcissistic bluster.

How about a bill withholding all federal funds from Yale University until it changes its name? The schools namesake, Elihu Yale, was not only a slave owner, but a slave trader.

Quite a dilemma for the little snots who attend and teach there! It will be tremendously damaging to their brand.

After all, true sublimity for a Social Justice Warrior is virtue signaling and advertising their high SAT scores at the same time.

If you refuse to fight, Republicans, dont you at least want to have some fun?

Ann Coulter is a regular contributor to conservative news sites Human Events and Breitbart. She is a native of New Canaan, Conn.

See the original post here:
Ann Coulter: Yale University has to go! | Opinion | havasunews.com - Today's News-Herald