Live Above The Madness
Jan. 29, 2025: 1:40 p.m.:
Sen. Roger Marshall gets applause for saying, “RFK you’ll make America healthy again.”
SEN ROGER MARSHALL TO RFK JR: YOU’LL MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN
“I think that you are the person to lead HHS to make America healthy again, that God has a divine purpose for you, and I look forward to your confirmation and working with you to make America healthy again.”… https://t.co/pEjpAgREet pic.twitter.com/iFz16dcx6h
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 29, 2025
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared in Washington for a Senate hearing on his confirmation to be President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary and came face-to-face with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who went bonkers over onesies being sold to parents for their infants.
It’s because the clothing items, sold by an organization that Kennedy no longer has an affiliation with, express vaccine-skeptical messages.
One message stated, “Unvaxxed. Unafraid,” while the other indicated: “No Vax, No Problem.”
Sanders was described as going “unhinged” and demanding whether Kennedy was going to do something about the sales of the clothing by the outside organization.
WATCH: “ARE YOU SUPPORTIVE OF THESE ONSIES?”
Bernie Sanders goes totally unhinged on RFK Jr. over anti-vax baby clothes. pic.twitter.com/Gp4o9V1KvF
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 29, 2025
“Are you supportive of these onesies?” Sanders demanded, over and over.
Kennedy, long known as a vaccine skeptic, has confirmed multiple times that there are good results from some vaccines, but that all vaccines carry with them the possibility of affecting different people in different ways.
Also in the hearing:
Kennedy dismantled claims from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who brought up excerpted comments from Kennedy about his opinion on vaccines.
Kennedy schooled and scolded Wyden:
BOOM
RFK Jr. just completely dismantled Senator Ron Wyden’s DISHONEST opening line of questioning:
“I‘ve corrected it MANY TIMES, including on national TV. You know about this, Senator Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.” pic.twitter.com/L3MAxp3MTb
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 29, 2025
“Senator, as you know, because it’s been repeatedly debunked that statement I made on the Lex Fridman Podcast was a fragment of the statement,” Kennedy charged. “He asked me and anyone who goes back and looks at this podcast will see this. He asked me whether there were vaccines that were safe and effective and I said to him some of the live virus vaccines are. And I said there were no vaccines that were safe and effective for every person. Every medicine has people that are sensitive to them, including vaccines. He interrupted me at that point. I’ve corrected it MANY TIMES, including on national TV. You know about this, Senator Wyden, so bringing this up right now is dishonest.”
The Gateway Pundit commented, “The early award for most unhinged lunatic questioner goes to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) who set out from the beginning to conduct a massive character assassination on RFK Jr.. But the man at the forefront of Making America Healthy Again (along with President Trump) was more than ready and blew up his lies.”
Also, Kennedy called out Democrats and ripped them for burning money.
“I would ask any of the Democrats who were chuckling just now, do you think all that money, the $900 billion that we’re sending to Medicaid every year, has made Americans healthy? Do we think it’s working for anybody?”
JUST IN: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls out Democrats to their faces who were laughing at him, rips them for burning money just to make Americans less healthy.
“I would ask any of the Democrats who were chuckling just now, do you think all that money, the $900 billion that… pic.twitter.com/EvY4Hlil2G
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 29, 2025
Kennedy also pointed out the failings of the Obamacare plan, the Affordable Care Act, with concerns about its inefficacy and fiscal wastefulness.
“Americans, by and large, do not like the Affordable Care Act. People are on it, they don’t like Medicaid, they like Medicare, and they like private insurance,” suggesting a huge overhaul is in order.
He explained the president has asked him to work on the chronic disease epidemic in America, and that’s his goal.
RFK JR: President Trump has asked me to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.
SENATOR: Is that the only reason you’re at the HHS?
RFK JR: If we don’t solve that problem, all of the other disputes we have … are just moving deck chairs around on the… pic.twitter.com/y4Idvnnw0A
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 29, 2025
He also pointed out, to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t want to “give me money.”
RFK Jr’s reaction to Elizabeth Warren asking if he would take money from Big Pharma is HILARIOUS :
“WHO? ME? I don’t think any of them WANT to give me money.”
pic.twitter.com/nHnqFpkOke— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 29, 2025
Further, Kennedy’s running mate for his brief candidacy for the White House, Nicole Shanahan, worth over a billion dollars, promised senators primary opponents if they vote against Kennedy.
BREAKING: Nicole Shanahan – worth over $1B – vows to fund challenges to *any* senator who votes against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS Secretary.
“Please know – I will be watching your votes VERY closely. I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate… pic.twitter.com/E9Syw8RwX1
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2025
She said, “Please know – I will be watching your votes VERY closely. I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate if you vote against the future health of America’s children.
“I will personally fund challengers to primary YOU in YOUR next election.”
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The National Education Association held a webinar on Jan. 17 instructing teachers on how to protect “undocumented” students from immigration authorities.
The presentation for members of America’s largest teachers union was part of a webinar series titled, “Preparing for a Second Trump Administration,” reviewed by Parents Defending Education and shared with The Daily Signal.
President Donald Trump promised to carry out mass deportations of illegal immigrants, starting with criminal aliens. So far, he is keeping that promise—there have been over 3,500 arrests of illegal aliens.
NEA President Becky Pringle said it is teachers’ “professional” and “moral obligation” to keep “our students safe” when “ICE comes into our schools or into our communities” by “making sure that you know your rights, you know how to protect your students, and that you know that this is that time.”
Lubna Alam from the NEA Office of General Counsel told teachers how they can prepare for potential deportations of students by pushing school districts to adopt “safe zones resolutions that NEA has drafted” and engage in “education of immigrant communities in your area.”
Hundreds of school districts have designated themselves as “Safe Zones,” meaning they don’t collect data on students’ place of birth and staff commit “to keep our students safe, especially if, and when, Trump sends ICE into our communities.”
The NEA lawyer informed teachers on the call how to hide children of illegal immigrants from immigration authorities.
“ICE cannot just come to school and look through student records, because, you know, they would need a subpoena to do so unless it’s directory information,” she said.
She said if families don’t want information about their child’s place of birth listed, it may be because that is information the school could give to the authorities.
“When it comes to the directory information and this information that schools are collecting,” Alam said, “it’s important that the school district is not including place of birth information in their directory information and that they are informing families that they have the ability to opt out of directory information disclosure.”
Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, the group that uncovered the presentation, said NEA staff promote “falsehoods and hyper-partisan content” in the presentation on preparing for Trump’s second term.
“It’s understandable that school staff is concerned for their students and their families but the NEA —including their General Counsel staff—is promoting falsehoods and hyper-partisan content,” Sanzi told The Daily Signal. “Hyperbole and lies do not help anyone, regardless of immigration status or political party.”
The webinar also focused on the union’s education ideals.
To open the webinar, Pringle said the NEA will “continue its critical work of not just building a movement with our members, but with the entire nation to reclaim public education as a common good, as a foundation of this or any democracy.”
She continued: “You understand that we cannot stop there, that we actually have to transform it into something it was not designed to be, a racially and socially just and equitable system that prepares every student, native and newcomer.”
The webinar included a “land acknowledgement” with the statement that “through hundreds of years of displacement, erasure, and colonization, the resilience of our nation’s first peoples persists, and their cultural and historical presence today is invaluable and irreplaceable in the fabric of our society.”
Guest speakers for the webinar included the NEA’s senior director for the Center of Racial and Social Justice, Rocio Inclan.
Trump won the 2024 election “by villainizing and othering our populations, our migrant populations, our populations of color,” according to Inclan.
She said her “head is spinning” because of the “number of attacks that we see currently and that we see coming on our black, brown, LGBTQ students, ourselves, our communities, and our immigrant communities.”
These so-called attacks “are existential threats to our fundamental freedoms and to our liberty, attacks on our liberty to pursue our dreams,” Inclan said.
The attacks are coordinated, she said, adding that the bad actors behind them share a “common motivation to erode trust, to reduce funding, reduce participation, consolidate power, and sow division.”
“The extremists use immigration as the way to separate us,” Inclan said. They “energize their base, they keep them enraged and engaged so that they are able to hold on to whatever it is that they want to do.”
She said the bad actors “start provoking fear, they’re eroding trust in our system and our immigration system” and they “start reducing the funding appropriated for having a solid and stable, in this case, immigration system.”
Inclan said that the “side that is pro-immigrant, pro-democracy hasn’t been as consistent about beating the drum with a counter narrative.”
She showed a slide titled “Race Class Gender Narrative Key Elements,” and said that “whenever we talk about our issues, we lead with our values.”
The National Education Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education announced the opening of an investigation into a Colorado high school Tuesday for reportedly turning a women’s bathroom into an “all-gender” facility.
East High School in the Denver Public Schools District now has a men’s restroom and an all-gender restroom but no female-only space on the second-level of the building, the education department said in its announcement of the investigation, alleging that the school may have violated students’ constitutional rights. The department cited the Title IX rule, which mandates that institutions receiving federal funds provide similar facilities to both sexes.
“The alarming report that the Denver Public Schools District denied female students a restroom comparable with their male counterparts appears to directly violate the civil rights of the District’s female students,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights, said in a statement. “Let me be clear: it is a new day in America, and under President Trump, OCR will not tolerate discrimination of any kind. I have directed OCR’s Denver regional office to investigate this matter fully.”
Other schools in the district have also reportedly instituted multi-stall “all gender” restrooms, according to a letter the education department sent to the district notifying it of the investigation.
“[The] Administration has sacrificed the comfort of these young females for this dubious change by now limiting their options,” one parent of an East High School student told the district’s school board, which the Education Department cites in its letter to the district. “We, as adults, should be protecting students at all costs. Not using minors for this social experiment. This in my opinion is unlawful, immoral and is, in fact, a form of abuse.”
A day-one executive order signed by President Donald Trump declared the federal government will not only recognize two sexes. The order has since been challenged by a male prison inmate who is no longer allowed to be held in a women’s facility.
Denver Public Schools did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in her failed 2024 Democrat presidential campaign, says Democrats knew what President Donald Trump would do if elected.
But they’re still off-balance simply because he is doing what they expected, he confirmed.
Trump has, in fact, delivered a multitude of executive orders that take aim directly at Joe Biden’s progressive and social agenda points, including an order halting transgender body mutilations for children, many orders launching a roundup of illegal alien criminals, pardons for J6 trespassers and much more.
Further, Trump has delivered new terrorism designations, banned DEI from government, declassified multitudes of files, appointed officials at breakneck speed, rescinded dozens of Biden’s actions, halted new regulations, frozen federal hiring, ordered federal workers back to the office, and offered them severance to leave, ordered agencies to address the cost of living, pulled America out of the Paris Agreement, pulled out of the World Health Organization, ordered an end to the weaponization of government, announced the name “Gulf of America,” created an agency to eliminate unnecessary government spending and lifted the security clearances for dozens of officials who falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop scandals were Russian disinformation.
“To the voters, I’m with this too. Everybody’s fatigued. Trust me, I get it,” Walz said in an interview on MSNBC. “It was pure hell, and the disappointment and the frustration, and I’m, you know, soul-searching – what could we have done to make the case? Because we knew this was coming. We knew the implication. And they’re throwing so much at us that we’re fatigued.”
It is Fox News that reported on Walz interview:
Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
Walz was asked for advice for “average people” who oppose Trump’s agenda, including those who fall into the group of people with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“You know that overused term, ‘The frog in the boiling water?’ We’ve been in the damn pot way too long,” Walz claimed. “I think it is speaking up. It’s thinking about your neighbors. It’s writing and putting those members of Congress – look, there is no spine among those folks – but this is real.”
He complained about his own party’s obsession with things Trump, including Trump allies like tech billionaire Elon Musk.
He said it was a waste of time to debate whether Musk gave a “Nazi salute” at a recent rally, a claim that has been debunked over and over.
“Of course he did, but that is a distraction from what, I think you said it, this is ‘game on’ stuff right here. And I am worried with these federal employees because look, they’re in a tough spot, that some of these folks, especially those that are doing good work around environmental concerns, around justice for people, around, you know, criminal justice reform, all of the things that make our society better,” he said.
Trump, in fact, has targeted spending federal money and federal workers’ time on “environmental concerns, around justice for people” and more, charging that those social ideology campaigns are not something for the government to promote with taxpayer money.
Walz, whose scandals during the campaign included documentation that he once was arrested for drunken driving, said people should “stay focused.”
“Don’t take the bait on the distractions. Surround yourself with people who understand this, and recognize the things they went after today are basically a big chunk of what society does, and people like to have clean water, and hospitals, and safety, and roads, and airports, all the things that they are going after… We have to find that voice. We have to push back. We have to be organized.”
A recent Napolitan Institute poll found that 64% of Washington, D.C.-based federal bureaucrats who voted for Kamala Harris for president said they would not follow a lawful order from President Donald Trump if they considered it bad policy.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., won’t stand for it.
“The American people spoke when they voted President Trump into office,” Paul told The Daily Signal in a statement on the poll. “Any bureaucrat who does not follow the law because they consider it bad policy should be fired for cause—immediately.”
The poll, which RMG Research conducted on behalf of the Napolitan Institute and released earlier this month, revealed that 42% of what the survey characterizes as “federal government managers”—federal employees who live in the National Capital Region around Washington and earn at least $75,000 annually—plan to politically oppose the new administration.
Nearly two-thirds of those federal government managers who voted for Harris said they would ignore a lawful order from Trump if they regarded it to be bad policy. Only 17% of the Harris voters in the federal bureaucracy surveyed said they would follow Trump’s order.
Paul joined other Republican senators in condemning this deep state effort against Trump.
“Bureaucracy is the real threat to democracy,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, previously told The Daily Signal. Ernst leads the Senate DOGE Caucus, an effort to help the Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal waste and abuse. While the original DOGE was a nongovernmental panel led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump recently announced he would be giving it a role inside the government, replacing the U.S. Digital Service.
Conservatives often warn that insulating federal bureaucrats from Congress and the president weakens the voters’ ability to have a say in their government.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted other efforts bureaucrats are taking to tie the new president’s hands.
“Entrenched bureaucrats are already subverting President Trump’s agenda and working to box in the incoming administration and Republican Congress, including and especially on foreign policy,” Cruz previously told The Daily Signal. “President Trump and administration officials are going to have to focus immediately on ensuring such bureaucrats are fired.”
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., condemned the deep state effort as “shameful” and endorsed some policies to combat it.
“This polling data is shameful—civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party,” she told The Daily Signal. “The administrative state is a huge problem that demands serious reforms.”
The poll also found that Republicans who work in Washington federal offices are more likely to support Trump. Republican federal government managers proved more likely (74%) to say a bureaucrat should be fired for refusing a presidential order, while only 23% of Democratic managers agreed.
RMG Research surveyed 500 federal government managers between Dec. 9 and Dec. 23. The margin of error for this poll is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee convened Tuesday to discuss the American-Chinese rivalry at the Panama Canal, one of President Donald Trump’s major talking points since his reelection in November.
Trump has repeatedly called for the United States to take back control of the canal—while not ruling out using military force to do so—and has warned of heavy Chinese activity in the region.
Sen. Ted Cruz opened the hearing by warning of increasing Chinese control of the canal—in his view, a violation of the United States’ 1977 agreement with Panama that returned control of the canal to the Central American nation at the end of 1999, as well as an economic and national security risk.
“Chinese companies are building a bridge across the canal—at a slow pace so as to take nearly a decade—and control container ports at either end. The partially completed bridge gives China the ability to block the canal without warning, and the ports give China ready observation posts to time that action. This situation poses acute risks to U.S. national security,” said Cruz.
“We cannot afford to let American shippers be extorted,” Cruz said. “We cannot turn a blind eye if Panama exploits an asset of vital commercial and military importance. And we cannot stay idle while China is on the march in our hemisphere.”
The committee invited four experts to speak, all of whom have expertise on the Panama Canal and the international economy.
Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University, told senators that Chinese companies’ activities in Panama—although presented as mere business dealings—are likely also strategic military maneuvers.
“Modern warfare has seen belligerent powers seek to evade international legal limitations by disguising their actions in civilian garb,” said Kontorovich. “Bad actors seek to exploit the fact that international treaties focus on sovereign actors. Many of China’s manmade islands in the South China Sea began as ostensibly civilian projects before being militarized.”
Kontorovich also contended that the treaty between then-President Jimmy Carter and Panama provided both sides the ability to use military force to defend their interests in the canal.
“It was clear that the treaty was understood as giving both sides separately the right to resort to use armed force to enforce the provisions of the treaty … Panama agreed that the United States could enforce this regime of neutrality by force,” he said.
Daniel Maffei, the chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, also told the committee that foreign actors shutting off American access to the Panama Canal is possible, although he suggested he had no reason to believe Chinese spies were working to do so.
“It’s not hard to close off a waterway,” said Maffei. “The Panama Canal is actually quite vulnerable in terms of infrastructure. This is not a fort or a military enforced location.”
Although they did not condemn the Chinese activities as harshly as their Republican counterparts, Democratic senators seemed amenable to the idea of securing American interests in Panama.
“I am concerned about Chinese-owned ports in Panama and their proximity to the canal. I’m also deeply concerned about the installation of Chinese equipment from Huawei and Chinese companies near the canal,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
After leaving the hearing, Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., told The Daily Signal that securing international waterways was essential to protecting the American economy.
“Whether it’s Gibraltar, whether it’s the straits of Malacca, or the Panama Canal, the entire world economy runs on the freedom of navigation of those oceans,” Sheehy said.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also told The Daily Signal in a written statement that she considers protecting waterways from Chinese interference a top national security priority.
“Chinese Communist Party’s influence on the operations of Chinese companies at the Panama Canal is a huge national security concern,” she said. “The United States should consider conditioning the billions of dollars we invest in Panama on keeping Communist China out of essential canal operations.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
Some 75,000 people have died over the past few years because they were on waitlists for surgeries or diagnoses, according to a new report.
75,000+ CANADIANS DIED WAITING FOR HEALTH CARE
New data reveals over 15,000 Canadians died in 2023-24 while stuck on waitlists for surgeries or diagnostic scans.
Since 2018, that number has surpassed 75,000.
Some patients waited years for treatment they never received,… pic.twitter.com/H54Y1wG2xY
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 28, 2025
The report at ZeroHedge said the death count for just 2023-24 was 15,000 Canadians, as patients there “waited years for treatment they never received” or those who “turned to euthanasia due to lack of timely care.”
“For a country that pays high taxes for ‘free’ health care, many are left asking – at what cost?” the report said.
Canada is one of the nations with a socialized medical program, where treatment is supposed to be free, but in reality it’s turned out the treatment often is rare, or even unobtainable, as the record shows physicians have offered their patients euthanasia instead of treatment.
The report cited data from SecondStreet.org, which said the death doll for 2023-24 was 15,474 Canadians who died “before receiving various surgeries or diagnostic scans.”
However, the reported some local governments in Canada don’t report numbers, so the total isn’t accurate.
“SecondStreet.org collected the data by filing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests across Canada. When the data collected is extrapolated across jurisdictions which did not provide data, the number actually nearly doubles, to around 28,077. These figures cover everything from cancer treatment and heart operations to cataract surgery and MRI scans,” the report explained.
Harrison Fleming, an official with SecondStreet, said, “Canadians pay really high taxes and yet our health care system is failing when compared to better-performing universal systems in Europe. Thousands of Canadians across the country find themselves on waitlists — in some cases for several years -— with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated, or even diagnosed.”
The known total of 15,474 does not include those cases from Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland, Labrador and most of Manitoba. Two other provinces, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, release information on deaths among those awaiting surgeries only not those awaiting diagnostic scans.
Wait times were found to be up to 14 years.
And the report said since April 2018, the organization identified a staggering 74,677 cases where Canadians died while awaiting care.
Further, the reported noted about 15,000 people were euthanized in Canada in 2023, including an unknown number because they were unable to obtain care.
JERUSALEM – In an effort to get some kind of grip on the anti-Semitism, which has swept the U.S., especially since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught on Israel, President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order Wednesday which will instruct all federal agencies to take decisive action, including identifying legal avenues to punish and deport individuals engaging in anti-Jewish activities – in particular, foreign students on visas.
BREAKING: President Trump to sign an executive order to deport pro-Hamas students on visas that break the law. pic.twitter.com/UvPwj4jALN
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 29, 2025
A document describing the order requires agency and department leaders to provide the White House with recommendations within 60 days and outlines plans for the Justice Department to investigate pro-Hamas graffiti and intimidation, including on college campuses, according to a New York Post exclusive.
Among those to be targeted in the executive order are resident aliens – including those on student visas – who broke laws as part of the anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7, terrorist attack, which sparked Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Some of the protests began before the IDF’s entry into the Strip had begun. The Department of Justice will also intensify its investigations into pro-Hamas graffiti, harassment, and intimidation.
Last month, six House Republicans called on the government to more to address the rising tide of anti-Semitism, including the conditioning of federal aid to colleges – such as Columbia, which has become a hotbed of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist agitation – to enforce stricter policies to counter it. The college reportedly took in more than $2 billion in federal funds in the 2023 fiscal year.
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department allegedly stonewalled on releasing key records on the matter, reinforcing Republican claims the Biden administration had been slow – at best – to address anti-Semitic threats.
For his part, Trump is keeping yet another campaign promise, following up on remarks he made calling for the expulsion of foreign students openly supporting Hamas. Last week, he signed another executive order hinting at broader measures to prevent non-citizens from supporting designated terrorist organizations within U.S. borders.
While so-called “hate speech” is protected under the First Amendment, the same House GOP report released last month argues federal law bars recipients of taxpayer funds from tolerating discrimination, under the rubric of which preventing Jewish students – and only Jewish students – from certain areas would presumably fall.
