Quick Hits

The DOD has yanked the nomination, for head of the 7th fleet, of an admiral who held a drag show on his aircraft carrier.

The Defense Department is withdrawing the nomination of Rear Adm. Michael "Buzz" Donnelly, The Daily Wire can first report, under whose command drag performances took place on board the USS Ronald Reagan.

Donnelly served as commanding officer of the aircraft carrier from April 2016 to September 2018, during which time Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley performed as a drag queen under the name "Harpy Daniels" at a department-sanctioned "Morale, Welfare, and Recreation" event on the aircraft carrier.

The Defense Department announced on June 18 that President Donald Trump had nominated Donnelly for promotion to vice admiral and an appointment as commander of the 7th Fleet, the largest overseas force that the Navy has.

Following inquiries from The Daily Wire about Donnelly and the drag queen shows he permitted on board the USS Ronald Reagan, a source at the Defense Department said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is withdrawing Donnelly's nomination to lead the 7th Fleet.

John Kerry realizes, years too late, that the President's "Job One" is to defend the border.

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted that President Donald J. Trump was correct on border and immigration issues, stating, "Trump was right," during an interview. He criticized Democrats for failing to address border security adequately, admitting the U.S.-Mexico border was "under siege" during Joe Biden's presidency.

Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, remarked, "The first thing any President should say--or anybody in public life--is without a border protected, you don't have a nation." He added, "I wish President Biden had been heard more often saying, I'm going to enforce the law."

The NYT is sad that Democrats can't get straight on immigration.

The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch.

Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party's candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still.

Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction.

Last year, 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that they supported a decrease in immigration, nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so. The embrace of a more punitive approach to illegal immigration includes not only white voters but also working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats had long courted with liberal border policies.

"When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party," said Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico. "This is a Democratic district that's been blue for over a century."

How the Democrats reached this point, and their continued struggles on immigration, is a decades-long story of political failures, missteps, misreadings and misplaced bets -- and some shrewd Republican moves.

"We got led astray by the 2016 and the 2020 elections, and we just never moved back," said Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who introduced an immigration and border security plan in May. "We looked feckless, we weren't decisive, we weren't listening to voters, and the voters decided that we weren't in the right when it comes to what was happening with the border."

What the party does to change its approach -- and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration -- may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power.

But while there is party-wide agreement that Democrats have a problem on immigration and border security, there is no consensus on how to fix it.

Some are pushing for a course correction they see as overdue. A new proposal from the Center for American Progress, the party's leading policy shop, calls for expanding legal immigration while embracing ideas long championed by conservatives, including making it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum.

Neera Tanden, the center's chief executive, said the plan acknowledged a reality that Democrats had long resisted: They must embrace new immigration restrictions in order to have the credibility with voters to fight the far more expansive plans of the Trump administration.

"I'm happy to argue with Stephen Miller or anyone else about why they are wrong," she said. "But the way we're going to be able to do that is to also honestly assess that the border has been too insecure, that it allowed too many people to come through and that we need to fix that."

Many on the left vehemently disagree, insisting that more conservative policies will only aid what they see as an insidious and ambitious effort by the Trump administration to demonize and deport Black and brown immigrants who have been in the country for years, remaking the fabric of a nation that once took pride in its diversity.

"Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame," said Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. "This has nothing to do with law and order. This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia. Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some."
Complicating Democrats' efforts to chart a new path is the fact that the party's debate is unfolding in the midst of what it sees as a national crisis. The Trump administration is pursuing the harshest crackdown on immigrants since World War II.

Raids and patrols by masked officers, detentions at courthouses and workplaces, the promises to arrest and deport millions, and the deployment of National Guard troops against protesters all have undocumented immigrants and even some naturalized citizens running scared and lying low.

"We, and I include myself in this, created a vacuum on this issue that we allowed the current president to fill," said Cecilia Muñoz, who led the Obama administration's domestic policy council. "And the country is now living with the results. And the results are appalling."

The Washington Post sends out an email to workers -- or, let's say, Those Drawing a Paycheck -- telling them that if they feel their politics "do not align" with the current (less leftwing, allegedly) direction of the paper, they should take the voluntary buyout package. Unstated threat: If you do not align with Bezos's determination to make the paper less insane than MSNBC: The Print Edition as it is now, you will be fired and get nothing.

But the paper seems to still be MSNBC: The Print Edition. They just ran an article objecting to calling Trump a clown, by a literal clown, who says that Trump fails to live up to the Clown Code of Conduct.

I am a clown and board president of the nonprofit, Clowns Without Borders. I'm here to set the record straight.

I have performed as a professional clown for 24 years. Clown, capital C, is a valuable and varied art form; pantomimes, acrobats, magicians, dancers, stand-up comedians, vaudeville artists and jugglers are all examples of artists who incorporate Clown into their work. Whether you know it as Clown or not, you've likely seen it. From stage clowns such as Bill Irwin to the characters of Cirque du Soleil, created by masters such as Michelle Matlock and Mooky Cornish; from pedagogical ensembles, such as Pig Iron or Spymonkey to health care clown organizations such as the Laughter League and Healthy Humor. Clown is huge.

As they often ask on Always Sunny: "What is happening right now?"

Zohran Mamdani's communist supporters say they're going to primary leftwing racist Hakeem Jeffries next.

Democratic socialists in New York City emboldened by Zohran Mamdani's mayoral primary win are warning that they may go after five House incumbents next -- and Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader at the top of their list, is daring them to try.

Jeffries' political operation even has a nickname for those talking up threats to the House minority leader back home: "Team Gentrification."

That phrase reflects that Mamdani turned out young progressives who, according to unofficial election data, were largely Whiter and wealthier as a whole than the longtime residents of the districts represented by Jeffries and others being targeted. But it also speaks to the resentment many Democratic politicians in the nation's largest city -- and in places around the country that aren't as deep-blue as New York -- have at being told by Mamdani supporters there's a new reality that they now need to adapt to, and quickly.

Mamdani's allies, notably key leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America, are talking about running primary challengers against Jeffries and several other incumbents, including Reps. Ritchie Torres, Jerry Nadler, Dan Goldman and Yvette Clarke.

Jeffries' team fired back with their new, dumb insult.

"Leader Hakeem Jeffries is focused on taking back the House from the MAGA extremists who just ripped health care away from millions of Americans," Jeffries senior adviser André Richardson told CNN.

"However, if Team Gentrification wants a primary fight, our response will be forceful and unrelenting. We will teach them and all of their incumbents a painful lesson on June 23, 2026," he warned.

Must-watch compilation of the physical attacks and ambushes of ICE agents that the Democrat-Media Party continues to cover-up for, while also inciting new attacks:

posted by Ace at 03:15 PM

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