NASHVILLE (Daily Caller)–Hundreds of protesters swarmed the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday demanding gun control in the wake of Monday’s deadly school shooting.
Protesters showed up outside the capitol Thursday morning as lawmakers began their session, according to WKRN. Protesters were calling for stronger gun control following Monday’s shooting in which 28-year-old transgender Audrey Hale killed three nine-year-olds and three adults at a Christian elementary school.
One organizer told WKRN they hope “that we can make change.”
“It’s a tough state, I get it,” organizer Maryam Abolfazli said, according to WKRN.
Protesters overwhelmed the Capitol, filling the hallways and eventually making their way to the legislative session chambers.
Video shows a massive group of protesters screaming and trying to break past a group of troopers. One male protester storms through and is immediately taken into custody by authorities before being released as the crowd chants “give him back!”
Another video shows protesters in the legislative chambers chanting “no action, no peace” and “enough is enough.”
Authorities managed to clear the Capitol and resumed their session, according to reports.
NEW YORK (The Hill) — A lawyer for former President Trump said on Monday that it will be “an all-out war” if Trump is indicted in the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into a 2016 hush-money payment.
“They can do what they want,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said of the possible indictment in an interview with former Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle on Monday. “At that point, this is an all-out war.”
“He’ll be there loud and proud, and there’s nobody that’s gonna make him cower,” Tacopina told Guilfoyle, who is also the fiancée of the former president’s oldest son Donald Trump Jr.
The Trump attorney similarly told the New York Daily News on Friday that the former president would not refuse to surrender if he is indicted, emphasizing that “there won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office.”
Tacopina has been making the rounds on TV defending the former president, as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) appears to be nearing the end of his investigation into a $130,000 payment made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
An indictment appeared increasingly close, after Trump suggested on Saturday that he could be arrested in the Manhattan probe as soon as Tuesday and called on his supporters to protest the possible indictment.
The former president said in a post on Truth Social that “illegal leaks” indicate that “the far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”
However, a Trump spokesperson said he had not been formally notified of charges.
WASHINGTON–Steve Moore, chief economist at FreedomWorks, issued a stern warning Monday that recent bank collapses may be “just the tip of the iceberg” of Biden’s failed economic policies.
In an appearance on Fox News, Moore told Harris Faulkner that the Biden administration’s spending caused the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, leading to financial problems for many major banks.
“I agree with the president that we don’t have an overall banking crisis. The system is sound, but I do think you have a lot of major banks that are in some trouble. And SVB, the Silicon Valley Bank, may just be the tip of the iceberg here,” Trump’s former White House adviser said of the current economic situation. “And I think it’s important for people to understand how this potential banking crisis happened. It’s not because there aren’t enough bank regulators, as Biden is trying to say. It’s because of the massive inflation and the trillions and trillions of dollars of borrowing that the federal government has done that has put our financial system in great jeopardy and great peril.”
“You can’t just keep doing this month after month, year after year, borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars. And so what happened, because of the Biden spending and debt policies, is that not only did inflation go up, but interest rates have gone up,” Moore added. “Harris, as you know, the Fed has had to raise interest rates eight or nine times, and they’re talking about more interest rate increases to come. And that’s caused a lot of financial problems for these big banks is the interest rates go up.”
Biden responded Monday to the economic crisis, stating that Americans can “feel confident” in their banking system after his administration’s response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank last week.
“No losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” Biden said. “Instead, the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the deposit insurance fund. Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them.”
WASHINGTON– The Department of Justice announced Wednesday they will not charge Rep. Matt Gaetz following a probe into allegations of ties to sex trafficking.
DOJ officials notified lawyers for at least one witness in the investigation Wednesday that charges will not be brought against the Florida Republican.
“We have just spoken with the DOJ and have been informed that they have concluded their investigation into Congressman Gaetz and allegations related to sex trafficking and obstruction of justice and they have determined not to bring any charges against him,” Gaetz’s lawyers Marc Mukasey and Isabelle Kirshner said in a statement to CNBC.
The announcement follows a year-long investigation of Gates over alleged connections to Seminole County, Florida, tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking a minor, identity theft and fraud in May 2021.
Greenberg had previously alleged that Gaetz paid him to arrange sexual encounters with young women though Venmo, but those allegations were found to be without merit according to DOJ sources.
In September, prosecutors at the DOJ reportedly doubted Gaetz would be convicted based on credibility issues uncovered regarding many of the witnesses who testified against him.
“Those who told lies about Congressman Matt Gaetz are going to prison, and Congressman Matt Gaetz is going back to Congress to continue fighting for America,” a spokesman for Gaetz’s office said last year.
Calls for comment to the Department of Justice were not immediately returned.
WASHINGTON– Dr. Anthony Fauci was chastised online on Sunday after critics discovered that the retired NIAID director, who was once the highest-paid federal U.S. government employee, is charging up to $100,000 for speaking engagements.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ rapid response director Christina Pushaw on Sunday tweeted a screenshot from the Leading Motivational Speaker’s Agency’s website, which lists Fauci as a “motivational” and “health care” keynote speaker with a price tag that ranges from $50,000 to $100,000.
The website describes Fauci as someone “who’s career warrants execution under immense pressure that can alter the course of human existence. His work on domestic as well as global health issues has saved millions of lives. This high level of research, discovery and execution is amazing given the grave challenges he faces on a daily basis,” the agency writes.
Outraged Fauci critics pounced on the former White House coronavirus task force member, accusing him of inflating his self-worth while emphasizing his role as one of the most controversial figures of the pandemic.
“Follow The Science Starting at 50k an hour,” Substack writer Jordan Schachtel wrote.
“Gotta replace the 400K federal salary…,” NewsBusters’ Tim Graham replied.
“The grift that keeps on gifting,” Kingsley Cortes, a conservative influencer and Trump 2020 campaign staffer, quipped.
Bitcoin and finance expert Saifedean Ammous tweeted, “Motivational? WTF is he motivating them to do? Triple mask? Gain of function?”
Fauci is slated to give the 2023 Yale Medical School commencement speech in May. Last year alone, Fauci reportedly delivered keynote speeches at the commencement ceremonies for University of Maryland, Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and The City College of New York.
The chief Biden medical adviser was once considered the highest-paid employee of the U.S. government – surpassing even the president, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed. In 2019, Fauci pulled in $417,608.00 – his largest haul ever—and in the previous two years earned $384,625.00. Forbes reported that from 2010 to 2019, Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earned $3.6 million.
The Faucis saw their net worth expand from $7.5 million in 2019 to $12.6 million at the end of 2021, watchdog group OpenTheBooks discovered and shared with Fox News Digital. The increase came from the likes of investment gains, awards, compensation and royalties.
Fauci has been embraced by many in the media and Hollywood who portrayed him as a calming presence during a tumultuous Trump administration. But he also has his share of detractors who say he was inconsistent with his messaging at the beginning of the pandemic and see him as a career bureaucrat relishing in his newfound stardom.
WASHINGTON (The Epoch Times)– The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, may protect abortion as a federal right, a federal judge said on Feb. 6 in an ongoing prosecution of pro-life activists charged with conspiracy to block access to an abortion clinic.
The statement could open up a new line of attack that pro-choice activists could use to advance their cause after the Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old precedent Roe v. Wade, holding that the Constitution does not protect abortion as a right.
The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, handed down in June 2022, opened the door to a flurry of lawsuits and new state-level restrictions on abortion.
Roe itself held that a right to abortion was part of a right to privacy that emanates from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Its companion precedent, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which was also overturned, held that states could not impose significant restrictions on abortion before a fetus became viable for life outside the womb. Casey was based on the idea that obtaining an abortion was a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
The comment came in a ruling issued by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Lauren Handy and nine other defendants were indicted (pdf) last year for conspiring to obstruct access to an abortion clinic in October 2020, a violation of federal law. Handy moved to dismiss the indictment for lack of jurisdiction, quoting the Dobbs ruling, which states that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.”
Handy is the director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, which describes its mission as mobilizing “grassroots anti-abortion activists for direct action and [to] educate on the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex through an anti-capitalist lens.”
After being released from jail in July 2022 on a separate charge, Handy said: “As a Catholic and Progressive myself, I am compelled by my deeply held beliefs (religious and political) to put my body between the oppressed and the oppressor.”
But Handy’s “constitutional argument is predicated on the false legal premise” that the federal statute she is challenging “only regulates access to abortion,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her new order (pdf). In fact, the law “regulates a broad category of ‘reproductive health services,’ including, among other things, ‘counselling or referral services.’”
Handy is seeking to resolve the charges against her by citing a constitutional holding, so Kollar-Kotelly directed defense counsel and prosecutors to further brief the court.
Although Dobbs has been interpreted to mean that “the Supreme Court held that no provision of the Constitution extends any right to reproductive health services … the Court is uncertain that this is the case,” the judge wrote.
Both the majority and dissenting opinions in Dobbs focused only on the Fourteenth Amendment and the unratified Equal Rights Amendment, so “it is entirely possible that the Court might have held in Dobbs that some other provision of the Constitution provided a right to access reproductive services had that issue been raised. However, it was not raised.”
Scholars and one federal appeals court decision suggest the Thirteenth Amendment in particular “might contain some right to access to such services,” she wrote.
The judge ordered prosecutors to file a brief by March 3 and defense counsel to file a reply brief by March 17 on whether the Dobbs ruling is limited to Fourteenth Amendment grounds.
Kollar-Kotelly is no stranger to controversy.
In October 2017, the Clinton appointee issued a preliminary injunction blocking then-President Donald Trump’s memorandum extending a ban on transgender persons joining the military and directing the military to discharge currently serving transgender service members, according to Ballotpedia.
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Matthew Vadum of The Epoch Times contributed to the contents of this report.
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