Report: FBI chief Kash Patel not resigning over Epstein

FBI Director Kash Patel

FBI Director Kash Patel
FBI Director Kash Patel

Kash Patel is NOT resigning from his post at the FBI — unless the President himself removes him, according to new reports.

Earlier Friday, rumors exploded across social media, suggesting that FBI Director Kash Patel might join FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino in stepping down after growing friction with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Dan Bongino reportedly took a day off following a heated confrontation with Bondi over her suppression of critical evidence tied to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

According to CNN and The Daily Wire, Bongino has told confidants he is strongly considering resigning if Bondi remains at the DOJ.

Later Friday, The Daily Wire reported that Patel himself was “frustrated” with Bondi’s DOJ stonewalling and might follow Bongino out the door if the stalemate continued.

However, investigative journalist John Solomon of Just the News set the record straight with an update on Friday night.

According to Solomon, Patel is overseeing one of the largest criminal conspiracy investigations in FBI history—a decade-long look into the coordinated effort to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency, re-election, and comeback bid.

Solomon teased that within the next 10 days, bombshell revelations would be made public — possibly exposing how weaponized federal agencies colluded to rig the political landscape against Trump and deceive the American people.

John Solomon: There are reports out there tonight that Kash Patel is considering resigning alongside Dan Bongino. It is not true. My reporting makes very clear: Kash Patel is going nowhere unless the President tries to move him. He’s there for the long haul.

Why is that? Because the FBI has a major investigation that looks at the last 10 years of what happened to Donald Trump as one large conspiracy case. No one’s going to give that opportunity up.

Now, it is true — Dan Bongino is taking a few days to reconsider whether he wants to stay in the job. That’s his decision. He’s gone through these things before. There have been times when he’s been on radio, he got mad, took a couple of days off. I bet you he’ll come back when it’s all done.

But Kash Patel is going nowhere.

And I think next week — over the next 10 days — the base who’s been wondering, “Where’s all that accountability?” is going to get some big surprises. Over the next week, we’ll learn where the conspiracy began — a few weeks before Crossfire Hurricane was opened — and when it ended, all the way in 2024, when they were still trying to pursue Donald Trump to keep him from winning the presidency.

There’s a big case that’s been built by the Justice Department and the FBI.

It’s been masked by a lot of this infighting and drama and soap opera. The matter is — MAGA-base Americans are going to be happy when they see where this is all heading in the next few weeks.

Kash Patel is going nowhere. I hope Dan Bongino isn’t going anywhere either — but I do think he’s going to take some time over the weekend to think that through.

WATCH:

The Gateway Pundit reported earlier that sources told Fox News that both FBI Director Kash Patel and the Attorney General are fully committed to staying and continuing their service.

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com ]

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There are more important things in life than the Epstein files

U.S. Attorney General Pan Bondi listens as President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a roundtable discussion with the Fraternal Order of Police Executive Board, Thursday, June 5, 2025, in the State Dining Room. (Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s two-fold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating ‘client list’” among its Epstein files.

The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.

It is not merely that the underlying subject matter here – the feds reviewed “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” per the Justice Department – is inherently sordid. It’s also that this week’s uproar is a political distraction from substantive issues far worthier of our collective time and energy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don’t want public scrutiny.

The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts’ question about whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” that the list was “sitting on (her) desk right now to review.” It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.

With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world – and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.

The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence – or absence – of a “client list” for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been “compromised.” (They haven’t.) Instead, the election – and our politics – will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be.

More to the point: There are simply better uses of your time than fuming over the government’s avowed nonexistence of the much-ballyhooed Epstein client list.

You might, for instance, consider spending more time, during these midsummer weeks, with your family. Maybe you can take the kids camping or fishing. Maybe you can take them to an amusement park or to one of America’s many national park treasures. You can spend less time scrolling Instagram and TikTok and more time reading a good old-fashioned book; you will learn more, you will be happier, and you will be considerably less likely to traffic in fringe issues and off-putting rhetoric that alienates far more than it unifies.

Instead of finding meaning in the confirmation biases and groupthink validations of social media algorithms, perhaps you can locate meaning where countless human beings have found it since time immemorial: religion. Spend more time praying, reading Scripture and attending services at your preferred house of worship. All of these uses of your time will fill you with a sense of stability, meaning and purpose that you will never find deep in the bowels of an X thread on the Epstein files.

Too many people today who are deeply engaged in America’s combustible political process have forgotten that there are more important things in life than politics. And even within the specific realm of politics, there are plenty of things that are more deserving of attention and emotional investment than others. Above all, it is conservatives – those oriented toward sobriety and humility, not utopianism and decadence – who ought to be able to properly contextualize America’s political tug-of-war within our broader lives and who ought to then be able to focus on the meaningful political issues to the exclusion of tawdry soap opera drama.

Like many others, I expect that the Justice Department’s recent – and seemingly definitive – waving away of the Epstein files saga will not actually prove to be the final word on the matter. To the extent that I think about this sideshow, I certainly hope that the administration squarely addresses the many legitimate and unanswered questions now being asked by a frustrated citizenry that has seemingly been misled. But I also hope that the extent of this past week’s rage might serve as an edifying moment. Let’s return to the real things in life and focus on what matters most.

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Trump vows ‘historic action’ to prevent catastrophe like that of Texas flash flood

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Thursday, July 3, 2025, en route Des Moines International Airport in Des Moines, Iowa. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Thursday, July 3, 2025, en route Des Moines International Airport in Des Moines, Iowa. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Thursday, July 3, 2025, en route Des Moines International Airport in Des Moines, Iowa. (Official White House photo by Daniel Torok)

President Donald Trump said his administration will take “historic action” to prevent another devastation like the Texas flash flooding, which has claimed more than 120 lives, including dozens of children.

Scores of other victims remain missing and unaccounted for, local officials say.

“We’re going to look and see how something can happen like this,” Trump said at roundtable Friday. “They could say it’s 100-year; somebody said it’s a 500-year event. We’re not going to let a thing like this happen again where it can wreak this kind of devastation.”

Trump traveled to Kerr County, Texas, to survey the damage, meet with first responders and local officials, and visit with families who lost children.

Trump honored the young girls who lost their lives at Camp Mystic, a Christian girls’ camp on the Guadeloupe River.

“As we grieve this unthinkable tragedy, we take comfort, and God has welcomed those little, beautiful girls into his comforting arms in heaven,” the president said. “We believe that. Have to believe that, and we do. And we lost some wonderful people beyond the little girls, who lost some very brave men and women that tried to save the girls as our nation, we mourn for every single life that was swept away in the flood, and we pray for the families that are left behind.”

Trump praised a Coast Guard rescue crew that saved 169 children at Camp Mystic.

“The camp staff was also incredibly courageous,” he said.

First lady Melania Trump also extended her condolences to the families who lost children.

“We just met with the wonderful families. We pray with them. We hug, we hold hands,” she said. “They share the stories. And I met beautiful young ladies. They gave me this special bracelet from the camp in honor of all of the little girls that they lost their lives.”

“So, we are here to honor them and also to give the support help, and I will be back,” she promised. “I promise to them, and I just pray for them and giving them my strength and love.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal .]

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Evangelicals for Harris posts apology for misusing Billy Graham’s image for their politics

Billy Graham
Billy Graham

A political organization called Evangelicals for Harris, now renamed Evangelicals for America following Kamala Harris’ catastrophic presidential election loss in 2024, has posted online a multipage apology for improperly using Billy Graham’s image for their politics.

The organization had used images of the late Christian leader who was in the confidence of presidents for the last 50 years in promoting Harris, who advocated deliberately for the transgender and LGBT ideologies that many Christians find unbiblical and objectionable.

The Billy Graham Evangelical Associated pointed out the misuse, and abuse of copyright law, and a year later the Harris organization has apologized.

Among the ads released:

Now the backtracking:

The BGEA response when the images were illegally used:

Now the development this week:

The online apology admits that the organization used clips of Rev. Graham without permission and claimed they weren’t trying to “give the impression that Rev. Graham would have taken a side in publicly supporting one political candidate over another.”

The group concedes that Graham “never politicized the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the works he created through BGEA.”

“We appreciate the spirit in which BGEA has approached this matter … and we affirm its intellectual property rights including copyright in these videos, and its missional interest in protecting Rev. Graham’s legacy.”

It continued, “We have taken down and will not repost our ads that incorporated video clips of Rev. Billy Graham…”

Not the Bee explained, “The long and short of it is that they used these clips of Billy Graham, but didn’t get permission from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) to use them in their political attack ads. To avoid being sued into oblivion for lifting these clips and using them for partisan purposes to support an abortion-loving Democratic candidate, they’ve apologized.”

When the dispute arose, WND had reported on Billy Graham’s lifelong interactions with presidents, of both political parties:

He was offered government posts by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and politely said no.

Harry S. Truman not only met with Graham, he received him as his Independence, Missouri, home. Dwight Eisenhower asked him about sending troops into Little Rock during a time of civil unrest. John F. Kennedy met with Graham before he was inaugurated.

Graham was invited to the Johnson family ranch multiple times, and spent more than 20 nights in the White House during his presidency. Graham had known Nixon for years, and the president often asked Graham to pray with him. Gerald Ford explained, “I’ve heard the comments from some sources that Billy mixes politics with religion. I never felt that and I don’t think that thousands and thousands of people who listen to him felt that.”

Jimmy Carter was an honorary chair of an Atlanta Crusade by Billy Graham back in his day, Ronald Reagan once said, “It was through Billy Graham that I found myself praying even more than on a daily basis … and that in the position I held, that my prayers more and more were to give me the wisdom to make decisions that would serve God and be pleasing to Him.” George H. W. Bush called Graham “an inspiration in my life.”

Bill Clinton credited Billy Graham with refusing to racially segregate a crusade audience. George W. Bush said a turning point in his faith came during a private talk with Billy Graham in 1985. Graham said he was pleased to have had Barack Obama visit in his home.

At the time, Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and now chief of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said, “The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father Billy Graham’s image to help promote her—or rather to try to make Donald J. Trump look bad.

“They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father was a firm supporter of President Trump in 2016. He appreciated the conservative values and policies of President Trump, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.

“President Trump isn’t perfect—none of us are—but I believe he has changed over the years. This recent assassination attempt has had a huge impact on him—and I thank God that his life was spared.”

 

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Blue state’s program to radicalize kids continues in defiance of Trump’s executive order

(Photo by Max Fischer on Pexels)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at the White House, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (Official White House photo by Joyce Boghosian)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at the White House, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (Official White House photo by Joyce Boghosian)

Washington State appears to be continuing to infect the minds of young students with radical transgender school programming, in defiance of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the use of federal funds to promote gender ideology.

The Washington Personal Responsibility Education Program (WA PREP ) is a federally funded program run by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) that provides educators with recommended curriculum materials about gender ideology, sex-change medical interventions and pornography . The Democrat-run state appears to be flouting President Trump’s clear orders that federal dollars cannot be used to promote gender ideology by maintaining a public website with materials that encourage teachers to use “gender inclusive” language and indoctrinate children that biology doesn’t determine a person’s sex.

American Parents Coalition Executive Director, Alleigh Marré, told the DCNF using federal funds to teach students about gender ideology was “wildly inappropriate.”

“Using federal funding to teach activist curriculum that includes gender ideology for children as young as 5-years-old — especially without parental consent or notification — is wildly inappropriate and an overreach by educators that must be immediately rectified,” Marré told the DCNF.

“We applaud the Trump Administration for investigating this abuse of taxpayer funds to push a blatant political agenda in an effort to indoctrinate kids and hope that further investigations will ensure that any organization receiving taxpayer dollars not only follows the law, but also respects the rights of parents,” stated Marré.

The Washington Department of Health did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

In a video recommended for elementary school students under an umbrella subject “Gender, LGBTQ+” on the WA PREP website, sex educators ask a classroom of young students if “everyone born with a vulva is a girl.” When students are unsure of the correct answer, a sex educator tells them “genitals don’t actually determine our gender, so some people with vulva’s can be boys.”

Later in the video a woman, who calls herself a transgender man, visits the children’s classroom and describes how she was born female but is now male after taking testosterone and having a double mastectomy. When a student asks “Do you have male or female parts?” the gender-confused person responds by telling the child “I really only talk about […] what’s in my pants, if people are getting in there.”

Erika Sanzi, Director of Outreach for Defending Education, told the DCNF gender ideology content has “no place” in education.

“This organization’s content is cult-like and has no place in any school. Teaching elementary children that boys have vulvas is malpractice and not a single penny of public money should be anywhere near this organization,” Sanzi told the DCNF.

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has received more than 10 million dollars in PREP program payments from the Administration of Child and Families, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), since 2013, according to a government spending website.

An HHS representative told the DCNF Secretary Kennedy and President Trump are committed to removing gender ideology from the PREP program.

“In April, HHS directed all PREP states and grantees, including the state of Washington, to submit their sex education curricula and materials for review. HHS is actively reviewing submissions to ensure they are free from ideological agendas and aligned with the law,” said HHS Press Secretary, Vianca N. Rodriguez Feliciano.

“As Secretary Kennedy has made clear, federal funds may not be used to promote radical gender ideology, sexually explicit materials, or content that undermines biological reality or parental rights. Secretary Kennedy and President Trump remain committed to keeping PREP focused on its original intent– not gender ideology,” Rodriguez Feliciano told the DCNF.

The PREP program is a federal program funded through the Affordable Care Act which provides grants to states nationwide for the provision of evidence-based STD and pregnancy prevention education for youth. A recent investigation of the California PREP program by the Trump administration found program materials included sexual education lessons which promoted gender ideology. On June 20, Health and Human Services (HHS) gave California 60 days to remove the “egregious” gender ideology content or risk the loss of funding.

HHS took similar action on July 2 when it issued a statement clarifying that the mission of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPPP) is to provide “medically accurate and age-appropriate programming” aimed at reducing teen pregnancy and program funds “may not be used to indoctrinate America’s children with radical ideologies or other inappropriate material.”

Educational resources on the WA PREP website instruct educators to use “gender inclusive ” language avoid and binary terms such as “male” and “female” when teaching sexual education. One WA PREP toolkit explains teachers should use the phrase “pregnant person” rather than “pregnant women” because “not all pregnant people are women.” The toolkit acknowledges it’s unnatural to use these terms and recommends teachers practice using “gender inclusive” language in the mirror, telling educators “the more you practice the less awkward it feels.”

Another resource provides scripts that guide educators on how to use “gender inclusive” language to help students challenge the assumption that there are only two sexes.

“When I talk about bodies I’ll talk about bodies with a penis and testicles or bodies with a vulva and ovaries. You might wonder why I’m doing this instead of just saying male bodies or female bodies,” states a WA PREP toolkit script.

“As we’ve discussed, there aren’t just two kinds of bodies. I also want everyone to get used to using accurate language for body parts and functions without assuming that there are only two sexes and that everyone within a particular sex is the same.”

In 2020, the Washington State legislature passed a bill requiring public schools to teach “inclusiveComprehensive Sexaul Education (CHSE) curriculum to students in grades K-12. CHSE is a type of sexual education that normalizes transgenderism and gender ideology to students as young as five.

An October 2024 contract shows the Washington DOH website paid Cardea Services , a nonprofit organization that provides CSHE education nationwide, over $816,000 to implement the WA PREP Program for one year. Cardea Services is responsible for maintaining and updating the WA PREP website as well as recruiting and providing CSHE trainings to school districts and community partners , which included Planned Parenthood, the YMCA and 35 Washington State school districts, according to the contract. Washington state agencies have paid Cardea Services more than $2 million dollars since August 2023, according to a Washington state financial transparency website.

Cardea Services did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Why Iran’s leaders are cracking down hard on their own population

Ayatollah Khamenei (Video screenshot)

Ayatollah Khamenei (Video screenshot)
Ayatollah Khamenei

In his first public appearance at a religious event after a 23-day absence – likely due to fear of airstrikes – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made a calculated effort to present himself as a patriotic leader. Meanwhile, just one day after the ceasefire was declared, Iran’s security and law enforcement forces launched a new campaign – this time, against their own people. They set up checkpoints across the country and began widespread arrests, particularly targeting youth, often simply for having anti-regime content on their mobile phones.

Enforced disappearances of prisoners and ordinary citizens have continued, as have the arrests of foreign and dual nationals – especially Europeans and French citizens. These acts appear aimed at preventing the reactivation of the U.N. “snapback” sanctions. Simultaneously, the regime has escalated executions to an unprecedented level, aiming to stifle any and all domestic dissent.

The targeted elimination of several senior intelligence and IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) commanders has shattered the regime’s image of control, which heavily depended on its intelligence apparatus. A growing atmosphere of distrust and insecurity has spread within the regime, prompting significant defections. In response, the Supreme Leader has turned to hollow displays of strength in an effort to suppress a potential uprising.

The purpose behind the crackdowns

In the early 1980s, a similarly vulnerable regime sought to suppress opposition – particularly members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) – through widespread checkpoints and mass arrests. Today, the same strategy is being used to identify and detain members of the MEK-affiliated Resistance Units, which are now active throughout the country.

These units have become a nightmare for the regime. While state media entities avoid mentioning them, the regime knows its most serious threat comes not from foreign powers, but from within – namely, these Resistance Units. They have the potential to mobilize a powerful street force capable of confronting the Revolutionary Guards and security forces.

Escalating internal power struggles

As the regime’s fall becomes more conceivable, internal fractures are widening. Recently, 180 economists, university professors and former officials called for a “paradigm shift” in the Islamic Republic’s governance model, referencing the 12-day conflict with Israel. In stark contrast, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency praised the 1988 massacre of political prisoners – mostly MEK members – as a “successful precedent,” advocating for its repetition to suppress today’s dissent. Simultaneously, calls for the impeachment of newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian are gaining momentum within parts of the regime.

The third option

The regime understands that war alone will not bring about its collapse. Its only real concern is the potential targeting of Supreme Leader Khamenei’s hideouts in such a conflict. This explains its behind-the-scenes efforts to initiate talks with the United States – possibly via back channels in Norway – to defuse that threat. But retreating from its core policies – from repression to executions or nuclear ambitions – is not an option. Such concessions would signal the start of reform, inevitably triggering demands for basic freedoms and accelerating the regime’s downfall.

The only realistic path to democracy in Iran lies with the organized resistance movement, which has fought the regime for over four decades, weathered two mass slaughter campaigns, and continued its struggle outside the clerical system. Despite relentless repression, the resistance has built a vast network of Resistance Units inside Iran – tasked with exposing regime crimes, mobilizing citizens, directing protests and hitting the regime’s centers of oppression.

Alongside these units, a broad social support base – including families of political victims, former prisoners and various civic actors – actively participates in protest efforts. This network has succeeded in obtaining highly classified intelligence from within the regime. Much of what the world knows today about Iran’s nuclear and terror programs comes from this very source.

Conclusion

Iran’s crisis cannot be solved by foreign military intervention or appeasement. The only sustainable solution is to support the Iranian people and their organized resistance – a path that could actually lead to democracy, equality and enduring peace.

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FTC to investigate trans industry’s threats of child suicide

The federal government’s foremost consumer protection agency has an “unequivocal basis” to start investigating the transgender medicine industry after a workshop highlighting stakeholders’ horror stories, Mark Meador of the Federal Trade Commission told The Daily Signal.

The FTC hosted a daylong workshop on Wednesday called “The Dangers of Gender-Affirming Care for Minors”  to hear from parents and patients and determine whether the transgender industry has deceived families.

“I think they gave a lot of extremely alarming and concerning information that absolutely gives us the basis to investigate, to fill out the entire legal framework that we would need to pursue a case,” Meador said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal after the workshop.

“There’s a lot of things that need to be verified—dot the I’s, cross the T’s, that sort of thing,” he explained. “But I think what we saw today gave us an unequivocal basis to start investigating and determining how and where there have been violations.”

The statute that created the Federal Trade Commission authorizes it to investigate and prevent “unfair or deceptive” practices affecting consumers.

To conduct the investigation, the FTC can use compulsory process, which entails sending subpoenas or something akin to subpoenas requiring individuals, companies, and medical practices to provide documents, testimony, and written answers to questions. The FTC also uses documents and testimony from third parties to determine whether the law has been violated.

Informed by the findings of the workshop, the FTC will issue a public request for information on transgender medical interventions next week, Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced Wednesday.

That will allow the FTC to “figure out who are the people we should be talking to, what are the questions we should be asking, and what kind of harm should we be on the lookout for,” Meador said.

A key part of the context of the possible deception and fraud is that doctors told parents of children experiencing gender dysphoria that they can choose between having “a dead son or a living daughter,” or vice versa. The commissioner referred to rhetoric implying a child would commit suicide if not allowed to medically transition as “emotional blackmail.”

“That’s going to certainly factor into whether something was deceptive,” Meador said. “But we also need to look at whether that statement itself is true and deceptive. That’s absolutely going to be part of the investigation.”

When the FTC thinks that a party has violated the law, it can present evidence to a court and seek an injunction to prohibit an entity from continuing to violate the law.

“That would be one of the remnants we would have at our disposal if we are able to go to court and prove our case,” Meador said. “At the end of that, we could hopefully get a judge to say this conduct violates Section 5 of the FTC act or some other statute, and then have the judge enter an order to companies or persons continuing to engage in that conduct.”

The FTC is putting “anyone that’s been involved in any sort of deception” on notice, according to Meador.

“You don’t want to cut off one head of the Hydra and leave the other still chomping at their victims,” he said. “So, it’s important that if there is an entity as a whole that’s been engaged in deception, you obtain a remedy that covers all of them, not just one individual.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal .]

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Senator who crashed news conference without ID now demands ICE agents wear theirs

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif.

A Democrat senator whose stunt, crashing a news conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem without ID, leaving security fearful it was an attack on a federal official, now is demanding that federal agents wear their IDs on their uniforms.

It is Alex Padilla, of California, who has proposed legislation to require Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to wear identification badges.

His stunt at the news conference created quite a stir as he was forcibly removed by security because he charged the stage where Noem was, and had not identified himself.

 

The video showed multiple security officers restraining Padilla, then removing him from the room.

He shouts, “Hands off!” after being moved through double doors that partition off an entry area from the news conference room. Earlier, he is heard saying, “I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”

Increasingly strident encounters have been developing across the country as ICE officers have been carrying out President Donald Trump’s campaign to secure the nation’s border and remove mostly to their home countries illegal aliens, including criminals, allowed into the country under Joe Biden’s tenure.

Further, Padilla was criticized for his stunt.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith criticized him.

WATCH:

“Can Kristi Noem speak? Could you have waited till she finished to ask your questions — to shout your questions?” Smith asked. “You are a senator, right? You couldn’t wait? So that was just you out of control because you were just losing it, huh?”

“You — a United States senator — couldn’t compose yourself and let the head of Homeland Security finish her thoughts before you asked a question?” he continued. “Couldn’t do that, huh? Couldn’t do it, huh?”

Noem was speaking about the riots taking place in Los Angeles before Padilla began shouting a question at her. Security quickly rushed to Padilla, telling him to put his hands up.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin also criticized Padilla for his behavior in an X post following the incident.

“Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” McLaughlin wrote.

“Mr. Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” she continued. “@SecretService thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately.”

Beyond Padilla’s own hypocrisy, a report at Townhall noted the hypocrisy of Democrats across the country, who mandated masks during COVID, but now want them banned.

“The whiplash is on maximum here. Not so long ago, if you weren’t wearing a mask, you were selfish, reckless, and not part of the ‘team’ trying to curb the spread of COVID. Quietly, liberals cheered that leftist rioters were protected by masking up during the riots of 2020. Now, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents masking up to protect themselves from being doxed by left-wing domestic terrorists, the Democratic Party has suddenly become the most virulent anti-maskers in the country. It’s truly amazing (and hilarious) stuff,” the report said.

The report cited Padilla’s plan.

 

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