12 ex-intel officials slam Trump for 'ill-considered and unprecedented' action against Brennan

Drain the Swamp Mr. President.

Twelve former senior intelligence officials issued a statement late Thursday criticizing President Trump’s “ill-considered and unprecedented” decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.
“The president’s action regarding John Brennan and the threats of similar action against other former officials has nothing to do with who should and should not hold security clearances — and everything to do with an attempt to stifle free speech,” the statement reads.
“As individuals who have cherished and helped preserve the right of Americans to free speech — even when that right has been used to criticize us — that signal is inappropriate and deeply regrettable.”
Among the signers are six former CIA directors -- including retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was a potential candidate for secretary of state in the early days of the Trump administration.
Also in the group: five former deputy directors of the CIA, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whose name reportedly appeared on a White House list of ex-officials who may soon join Brennan in losing their security clearances.

"As individuals who have cherished and helped preserve the right of Americans to free speech — even when that right has been used to criticize us — that signal is inappropriate and deeply regrettable."
- The joint statement from 12 former intelligence officials.

The dozen stressed that while they don’t necessarily agree with comments made by Brennan, who’s become a frequent guest on liberal news channels, they believe he has the right to voice them.
The statement came just a day after the White House revoked Brennan’s security clearance following a review of access granted to several top Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The Trump administration said Brennan “has a history that calls his credibility into question,” and accused him of “leveraging” the clearance to make “wild outbursts” and claims about the administration.
“The president has a constitutional responsibility to protect classified information and who has access to it, and that’s what he’s doing is fulfilling that responsibility in this action,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
In a series of tweets, Trump also tweeted comments critical of Brennan, including that he “has gone off the deep end”.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Cartoons

Make election ballots English-only, Arizona GOP candidate says, igniting debate

A voter casts her ballot in Wisconsin's primary election, Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018.  (Telegraph Herald via AP)

Election ballots should be printed in English only, a Republican running to be Arizona's next secretary of state said last weekend in a comment that drew pushback from both sides of the aisle.
Candidate Steve Gaynor's remarks came during a GOP candidate forum in Wickenburg last Saturday, the Arizona Republic reported.
"My printing plant in L.A. printed an information pamphlet not too long ago. It had 18 languages on it," Gaynor, the owner of a printing business in Southern California, said, according to the paper. "I would be the first to say it should be -- ballots, information pamphlets, all the material in our country -- should be in English."

"My printing plant in L.A. printed an information pamphlet not too long ago. It had 18 languages on it."
- Steve Gaynor, GOP candidate for Arizona secretary of state

Many in the crowd booed, the report said.
Incumbent Secretary of State Michele Reagan, who is among Gaynor's opponents in the state's GOP primary Aug. 28, accused Gaynor of "pandering" to far right-wing groups, the Republic reported.
Another candidate for secretary of state, state Sen. Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix, said Gaynor's remarks were worrisome, the report said.
Maggie Acosta, lead canvasser for a progressive voter advocacy group, told the Republic that Spanish-language materials were crucial in Arizona because many of the state's voters who speak and read English still prefer to cast a ballot in their first language, to make sure they cast their votes correctly.
“A lot of the people are willing to (vote), yet they are afraid that they’re going to make a mistake on something," Acosta said. "They get discouraged and they’d just rather not vote."
The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that some districts provide election materials in other languages for minority citizen groups who speak different languages, according to the report.

“A lot of the people are willing to (vote), yet they are afraid that they’re going to make a mistake on something. ... They get discouraged and they’d just rather not vote."
- Maggie Acosta, leader canvasser

Based on U.S. Census data demographics, 10 of Arizona's 15 counties must provide voting materials in languages other than English, the Republic reported. About 900,000 Arizona voters are eligible to receive translated ballots under the law, the report said, citing Census data.
Gaynor said the counties should be able to decide if they want to print materials in Spanish. 
He added that learning English would help immigrants "assimilate into American society," the Republic reported.

Trump supporter says he took beating after protesting Social Distortion singer's politics

Mike Ness, 56, is the lead singer of the punk rock band Social Distortion.  (Instagram)

A supporter of President Trump claims that Mike Ness, lead singer of the rock band Social Distortion, spat on him and repeatedly punched him in the head after he protested Ness's criticism of the president at a concert.
The confrontation allegedly took place July 17 at a show in Sacramento, Calif., when concertgoer Tim Hildebrand, 30, held up his middle finger to convey his disagreement with Ness.
The 56-year-old lead singer was “badmouthing President Trump and America,” Hildebrand told CBS 13 Sacramento.
“I pretty much said, 'I paid for your music, not your politics,'” Hildebrand told the station. “I stood pretty much with my silent protest with my middle finger up for the next two songs.”

“I pretty much said, 'I paid for your music, not your politics.' I stood pretty much with my silent protest with my middle finger up for the next two songs.”
- Tim Hildebrand, supporter of President Trump

But Ness didn’t seem to take kindly to Hildebrand’s nonverbal expression. Cellphone video appears to show the lead singer motioning toward a fan in the crowd, before removing his guitar and jumping off stage. He then repeatedly throws punches for a brief moment until the camera cuts out.
Hildebrand, a Republican, said Ness took “his guitar off, jumps off the stage and proceeds to punch me multiple times in the head.”
He told the station that the singer spat in his face and that the two argued before Ness attacked him, resulting in two black eyes, a busted lip and a concussion.
“I wasn’t able to defend myself because people in the crowd were holding me back,” he said.
Security dragged Hildebrand out of the venue, where he met with officers and filed a police report, according to the station.
Sacramento police said they were investigating the incident, the station reported.
Hildebrand told the New York Times that he wasn’t the only fan to express displeasure with Ness’ political statements during the concert, as others walked out and yelled expletives toward the stage.
“If you can speak your mind but you can’t take a response or rebuttal,” he told the paper, “it shows a lot about your character.”
Social Distortion did not immediately return Fox News’ request for comment.

Trump says Cuomo ‘having a total meltdown’ after gov's earlier remark that America ‘was never that great’

President Trump fired back at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo late Wednesday, saying the Democrat was having "a total meltdown" after he declared at an earlier bill-signing that America “was never that great.”
The Democrat made the seemingly off-hand comment as part of his rebuke of President Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan during the event in New York. But the line drew gasps from the crowd.
"We're not going to make America great again. It was never that great," Cuomo said.
In response to the remark, Trump tweeted, "Can you believe this is the Governor of the Highest Taxed State in the U.S., Andrew Cuomo, having a total meltdown!"
ANDREW CUOMO SHOCKS CROWD, SAYS AMERICA 'WAS NEVER THAT GREAT'
Cuomo fired back at the president on Twitter shortly after.
"@RealDonaldTrump: What you say would be 'great again' would not be great at all...We will not go back to discrimination, segregation, sexism, isolationism, racism or the KKK," the tweet said.
During Wednesday's event, Cuomo went on to say that the country had not yet achieved "greatness."
"We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged, we will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution," he said.

“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo told the crowd in New York.  (AP)

Following the remarks, a spokeswoman for the governor stressed that he "believes America is great," which will become more evident "when every man, woman, and child has full equality. America has not yet reached its maximum potential."
"When the President speaks about making America great again - going back in time - he ignores the pain so many endured and that we suffered from slavery, discrimination, segregation, sexism and marginalized women's contributions," Cuomo's press secretary, Dani Lever, said in the statement. "The Governor believes that when everyone is fully included and everyone is contributing to their maximum potential, that is when America will achieve maximum greatness."
The New York Democrat is currently engulfed in a gubernatorial primary race against actress and activist, Cynthia Nixon. He is also considered a potential White House contender in 2020.

Graham calls for special counsel to investigate FBI's handling of Clinton emails, FISA warrant

Claiming that FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton's emails and the Carter Page FISA warrant were "corrupt to the core," U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle both probes.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said FBI investigators were “in the tank” for Clinton and the FISA warrant process was abused -- possibly in a criminal fashion.
“What do you think Democrats would be saying if a Republican — if the RNC [Republican National Committee] -- hired a former British agent to go to Russia to get dirt on [Hillary] Clinton?” Graham asked Fox News' Laura Ingraham, host of “The Ingraham Angle.”
Graham said he's grown tired of talking about the Clinton email investigation and the 2016 FISA warrant to wiretap Page, the former Trump campaign adviser. He said an outside investigator could hopefully approach the issue with a nonpartisan perspective.
TRUMP REVOKES EX-CIA DIRECTOR'S SECURITY CLEARANCE
Democrats have said the FISA warrant application shows the Justice Department acted correctly in its probe. Democrats also point to ex-FBI Director James Comey's decision to announce the reopening of the Clnton email probe just days before the 2016 presidential election as an example of no bias.
Comey has since said that he was operating at the time in a world "where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump."
Graham's remarks came a day after former FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired over text messages that were critical of Trump.
Strzok vigorously defended himself at a combative House hearing in July, speaking publicly for the first time since the texts were revealed. He insisted that the texts — including ones in which he called Trump a “disaster” and said “We’ll stop” a Trump candidacy — did not reflect political bias and had not affected his investigations.
Strzok was also a lead investigator on the probe into Democrat Clinton’s email server in 2016.
Trump has repeatedly taken aim at Strzok on Twitter, saying his critical text messages showed that Mueller’s investigation is a hoax.

Stormy Daniels Cartoons

Desperate anti-Trump media elevate a strange trio to discredit the president

In the media’s latest tactic to take down President Trump in the court of public opinion, anti-Trump journalists are pinning their hopes on a porn star, a corrupt lawyer and a reality TV star. It almost sounds like the beginning of a bad joke – except this is unfortunately our present reality.
While legitimate questions may exist for the president, trying to legitimize this shady trio by giving them a media makeover isn’t going to give them credibility with the general public. This may be the mainstream media’s “dream team,” but Main Street USA will be a much harder sell.
President Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, secretly recorded a conversation with Trump prior to the election in 2016. They talked about paying for Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story, in which she claimed to have had an affair with Trump.
American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, had agreed to pay for McDougal’s story about the alleged affair, though the Enquirer never ended up publishing it.
The president’s legal team claimed that the recording conveniently stopped prematurely, raising questions about what was not recorded. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor emeritus, said: “There’s no indication of any crime being committed on this tape.”
So, once again, there’s no “there,” there.
Reality TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman, fired three times on “The Apprentice” by Donald Trump, was fired again last year, this time from the West Wing, allegedly over ethics violations.
Though she’s never earned the reputation of “playing well with others,” Manigault Newman left Pennsylvania Ave with the promise to tell her story. Translation: hell hath no fury like Omarosa scorned.
Manigault Newman breached national security protocols on her way out the door by recording her firing by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in the Situation Room, where recording devices are prohibited.
President Trump’s campaign filed for arbitration Tuesday against Manigault Newman, claiming she violated a 2016 nondisclosure agreement by leaking information from the Situation Room and by disparaging the president in her new gossip-filled book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” Her surreptitious recordings of Kelly may also get her a visit from the FBI, the Secret Service or both.
The mainstream media, which salivates over all things anti-Trump, rolled out the red carpet for Manigault Newman. However, over the last couple of years when she was solidly on Team Trump – either on the campaign trail or in the White House – the media considered her a joke, especially when it came to her ongoing feud with CNN’s April Ryan.
The Brad Paisley song “Celebrity” comes to mind: ‘Cause when you’re a celebrity, it’s adios reality. You can act just like a fool, people think you’re cool, just ‘cause you’re on TV.”
Nobody thinks Omarosa’s cool, except for the liberal darlings in the mainstream media. When she’s effectively discredited she will have burned that bridge as well, and they’ll no longer have a use for her either.
The media’s other fan favorite is Stormy Daniels, the porn star and walking contradiction who’s suing the president and Michael Cohen for defamation, for denying her claim that she had an affair with Trump. Cohen paid her $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
Meanwhile, Daniels signed a letter in January saying: "I am not denying this affair because I was paid 'hush money' as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
Confused? Stormy appears to be too.
Most reasonable people find it difficult to take seriously accusations made by these three media darlings who are paraded out as if they are pillars of society, when in fact they are famous for their flexible morals. None of them are likely to even be trusted enough to be chosen to serve on a jury at this point.
If the media are truly interested in answering legitimate questions related to the president, this isn’t the way to get it done.
The reality TV star with a vendetta, the porn star who claimed she never had an affair with Trump before she claimed she did, and the attorney who violates confidentiality by recording his clients are weak arguments for a case against an unfair, biased media grossly obsessed with “getting Trump.”
History teaches that if you’re going to go after the king, you better destroy him; because if you don’t you’ll only make him stronger. If the media are so desperate to sink this low, the result will likely be a long, last laugh for President Trump – as in a two-term presidency.
Lauren DeBellis Appell, a freelance writer in Fairfax, Virginia, was deputy press secretary for then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in his successful 2000 re-election campaign, as well as assistant communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee (2001-2003).

John Stossel: Social Security is going broke

Social Security is running out of money.
You may not believe that, but it’s a fact.
That FICA money taken from your paycheck was not saved for you in a “trust fund.” Politicians misled us. They spent every penny the moment it came in.
This started as soon as they created Social Security. They assumed that FICA payments from young workers would cover the cost of sending checks to older people. After all, at the time, most Americans died before they reached 65.
Now, however, people keep living longer. There just aren’t enough young people to cover my Social Security checks.
So Social Security is going broke. This year, the program went into the red for the first time.
Presidents routinely promise to fix this problem.
George W. Bush said he’d “strengthen and save” Social Security. Barack Obama said he’d “safeguard” it, and Donald Trump said that he’ll “save” it.
But none has done anything to save it.
“There is a plan out there to save it, but it requires some tough choices,” says Heritage Foundation budget analyst Romina Boccia.
Heritage proposes cutting payments to rich people and raising the retirement age to 70.
Good luck with that. Seniors vote. Most vote against politicians who suggest cutting benefits.
This summer, interviewing people for my new video about Social Security’s coming bankruptcy, was the first time I had heard the majority of such a group say they were aware there is a problem. One said, “We’re already at a trillion dollars (deficit) … (I)t’s almost like a big Ponzi scheme.”
Actually, more like a pyramid scheme. Ponzi schemes secretly take your money. But the Social Security trick is written into the law -- there for anyone who bothers to look.
Social Security isn’t the only hard choice ahead of us. Medicare will run out of money in just eight years. At that point, benefits will automatically be cut. Social Security hits its wall in 15 years.
Amazingly, as we approach this disaster, Democrats say -- spend even more.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., proudly announced, “Nearly every Democrat in the United States Senate has voted in favor of expanding Social Security.”
How would they pay for it? “Raise taxes on the wealthy!” is the usual answer.
I tried that on Boccia: “Just raise taxes on the rich!”
“There isn’t enough money, even that the rich would have,” she countered, “to pay for the $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities.”
One partial solution proposed by Heritage and others is to let younger workers put some of their Social Security money into their own personal retirement accounts.
“Imagine being able to own and control your own retirement dollars,” urged Boccia, with genuine excitement. “You could invest it in businesses, grow the economy, whatever rocks your boat.”
If history is any guide, private accounts would almost certainly pay retirees more than Social Security will ever pay.
“Even a conservative portfolio of stocks and bonds that got you about a 5 percent annual return, you would make many times more,” said Boccia.
She’s right. Money in government hands just sits there or gets spent wastefully; it’s rarely invested wisely.
Private accounts have been tried in a few countries. In Chile, the investment they created helped make Chile the richest country in Latin America. (Before, Chile was poorer than most.)
Yet even after that success, leftists in South America hold street protests against private accounts. They’re angry because capitalists get a slice of the pie.
I told Boccia that I couldn’t understand why people in Chile don’t loudly cheer private accounts because of the wealth they’d created.
“We lack gratitude,” she replied, “for what the free market provides. That is difficult to wrap your head around. It’s easy to think, ‘Here is the government. This is where I go.’”
But eventually, even governments run out of other people’s money.
Like most American politicians, Donald Trump campaigned saying, “I’m not going to cut Social Security … not going to cut Medicare.”
He and other politicians pretend they’re protecting people’s futures, but they are not. They’re ignoring the inevitable.
Better to fix old-age programs now -- rather than have them suddenly go bankrupt later.
John Stossel is the author of "No They Can't! Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed." Click here for more information on John Stossel.

Leah Vukmir projected to win Wisconsin GOP Senate primary, face Baldwin in November

Wisconsin Sen. Leah Vukmir was projected to defeat political outsider Kevin Nicholson in Tuesday's GOP Senate primary, clearing the way for a closely watched general election battle against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Though pre-primary polls showed a close race between Vukmir and Nicholson, with about a third of Republican voters undecided, Vukmir -- a 15-year veteran of Wisconsin's legislature and an ally of Gov. Scott Walker -- was leading Nicholson by 14 percentage points when The Associated Press called the race.
National Republicans have targeted Baldwin, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, and outside groups already have spent millions on television ads attacking her in a state that went for President Trump in 2016. The race is one of a handful of key contests expected to decide which party will hold the Senate after November's midterm elections.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.  (AP, File)

Both Vukmir and Nicholson, a Marine combat veteran and a former Democrat, pledged not to raise taxes, to support the repeal of ObamaCare and back the building of a border wall with Mexico.
Neither Nicholson nor Vukmir initially supported Trump in 2016, but both got behind him in the general election. Trump did not endorse either of them in the primary, but retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan backed Vukmir, as did longtime Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner.
Two weeks before the primary, video of Vukmir badmouthing Trump in 2016 re-emerged and became fodder for TV ads attacking her loyalty to the president. Vukmir, who initially supported three others for president before lining up behind Trump, has insisted she's an ardent backer now.
Vermont was one of four states holding U.S. Senate primaries Tuesday, along with Connecticut, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is heavily favored to win a third term in November.  (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

In the Green Mountain State, Sen. Bernie Sanders was projected to win the Democratic nomination for a third term Tuesday – though Sanders was expected to decline the nomination and run as an independent in November’s general election.
With 83 percent of precincts reporting, the democratic socialist Sanders had received 94 percent of the vote compared to six percent for self-described Democratic activist Folasade Adeluola. Sanders, who received 65 percent and 71 percent of the vote in his first two Senate election victories, is a heavy favorite to win re-election.
Under Vermont law, Sanders cannot appear on the November ballot as both a Democrat and an independent. In his previous U.S. Senate races, in 2012 and 2006, he declined the Democratic nomination but accepted the formal endorsement of the state's Democratic Party.
Sanders' long-time political adviser Jeff Weaver told The Associated Press that the Sanders campaign is donating $150,000 to the Vermont Democratic Party.
Adeluola moved to Vermont from Indiana in 2017 to run against Sanders, whom she blamed for dividing the Democratic Party with his insurgent run for the presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton.
"I did not like the way Sen. Sanders caused the DNC to lose the White House,” Adeluola told the Burlington Free Press. "That is why I'm angry.” The paper reported that Adeluola, like Sanders, is registered as an independent candidate and plans to carry on through the November election.
In the Republican primary, perennial candidate H. Brooke Paige held a narrow lead over real estate broker Lawrence Zupan with 83 percent of precincts reporting. In a twist, Paige was also projected to win the Republican nomination for Vermont's lone U.S. House seat, currently held by Democrat Peter Welch.
In Connecticut, Matthew Corey was projected to easily defeat Apple computer executive Dominic Rapini to win the Republican nomination to face incumbent Sen. Chris Murphy. Corey, a Navy veteran who owns a window-washing business as well as a Hartford bar, described himself in a July Connecticut Post interview as a "blue-collar fella" who supports Trump's tax cuts and regulation rollbacks.
Murphy, a prominent gun control advocate and strident Trump critic, ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and already has raised approximately $13.5 million for his re-election campaign.
Unusually, both of Minnesota's Senate seats are up for grabs this year. In the regularly scheduled race, Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar was projected to easily win the party's nomination for a third term. She will face Republican state Rep. Jim Newberger, who was projected to defeat three other candidates in the GOP primary, but faces an uphill battle against the popular Klobuchar.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., was appointed to replace Al Franken, who resigned over sexual misconduct allegations.

In Minnesota's other Senate primary, Democrat Tina Smith was projected to defeat challenger Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. Gov. Mark Dayton appointed Smith to fill Al Franken's Senate seat earlier this year after Franken resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct.
In the Republican primary, state Sen. Karin Housley -- the wife of Hockey Hall of Famer Phil Housley -- was projected to defeat opponents Bob Anderson and Nikolay Nikolayevich Bey for the right to face Smith in November.
By Minnesota law, Franken's seat will be contested in a special election later this year and the winner of that contest will complete the remaining two years of Franken's term before coming up for re-election in 2020.

Pawlenty, who called Trump 'unfit and unhinged,' derailed in comeback attempt in Minnesota; battle lines drawn in Connecticut

Tim Pawlenty, right, had sharply criticized President Trump during the 2016 campaign after the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape.  (AP)

Tim Pawlenty -- who briefly ran for president in 2012 and had derided President Trump as "unhinged" -- was denied in his effort to stage a political comeback and become Minnesota’s governor again in the race to replace Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.
County Commissioner Jeff Johnson won in Tuesday's Minnesota GOP gubernatorial primary despite Pawlenty's enormous fundraising and name recognition advantages. He also won despite his own history as the party's losing candidate for governor four years ago.
Pawlenty joins several other prominent Republicans -- including Reps. Martha Roby and Mark Sanford, as well as Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker -- who have recently suffered major political consequences, at least in part, for opposing Trump.
Johnson had positioned himself as a more conservative candidate than Pawlenty. He branded the former two-term governor as part of the "status quo" and bashed him for calling Trump "unhinged and unfit for the presidency" in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election -- rhetoric that Pawlenty softened during the campaign.
Pawlenty was hoping to resurrect his political career after flaming out as a presidential candidate in 2011. He spent the intervening years as a Washington lobbyist.
KEITH ELLISON HANGS ON IN MINNESOTA DESPITE DOMESTIC ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

Tim Pawlenty, who had called Trump 'unhinged,' was dened in his bid to retake his old governorship on Tuesday.  (AP)

Democratic Rep. Tim Walz, meanwhile, won the party's three-way primary for the governorship, and will take on Johnson in November.
In all, voters in four states headed to the polls Tuesday to select nominees for critical gubernatorial, House, and Senate races in November, and several of the day's contests were broadly seen as an early indication of voters' views on Trump and the Republican Party.
In Connecticut, Madison businessman and political newcomer Bob Stefanowski won the Republican primary for governor, defeating four fellow GOP contenders and setting the stage for a pivotal battle with businessman Ned Lamont in November.
Connecticut is ground-zero for Republican efforts to continue their gains in progressive New England. Even though Connecticut voted for Hillary Clinton by double-digits in 2016, the state's governor, Dan Malloy, is deeply unpopular, with critics citing high taxes and an ongoing budget crisis. Malloy declined to seek a third term.
And in Wisconsin, Democrats making yet another effort to unseat Republican Scott Walker have nominated state schools chief Tony Evers. Evers emerged from a field of eight candidates in Tuesday's primary. He was the only candidate to have won election statewide before and now faces his biggest challenge against Walker, who has built up a huge financial advantage.
The 66-year-old Evers has been the state's education chief since 2009 and has clashed with Walker in the past on mostly education issues.Walker's campaign and Republicans criticized Evers for not revoking the license of a teacher who was caught viewing pornographic emails on his school computer.
Meanwhile, Christine Hallquist made history in Vermont Tuesday night as the first openly transgender nominee for a governorship from a major party in the nation's history, beating back her Democratic challengers in the state's primary.

Christine Hallquist was vying to be the first transgender gubernatorial nominee in the nation's history Tuesday.  (AP)

Hallquist defeated educator Brenda Siegel, who earlier was considered a frontrunner in the race, and environmentalist James Ehlers.
Hallquist, a former CEO of the Vermont Electric Cooperative, made no bones about the fact she wanted a place in the history books during the campaign.
She's appealed to Vermonters with a progressive message including a livable wage, Medicare for all, free public college education and high-speed broadband access — even to those who live on remote back roads.
"That's how I want to be known in Vermont," Hallquist, 62, told The Associated Press in an interview at her Burlington offices. "Nationally, I want to be known as the first trans candidate."

Gov. Phil Scott, in April, signing gun control legislation that drew fierce protests.  (AP)

Hallquist also defeated another candidate who was trying to make history: a 14-year-old boy, Ethan Sonneborn, who took advantage of the state constitution's lack of an age requirement to seek the governorship.
On the Republican side, first-term Gov. Phil Scott overcame businessman Keith Stern to win the GOP gubernatorial primary, surviving the major political fallout from his decision to sign the state's first major gun control laws earlier this year.
No sitting governor has been defeated in Vermont since 1962, and Scott's victory in November would continue Republicans' surprisingly strong hold on governorships in highly progressive New England. The GOP currently holds the governorships of four out of six states in the region, including Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
However, Scott may have a unique vulnerability. In April, he was heckled by a bevy of protesters calling him a "liar" and "traitor" as he signed sweeping gun regulations into law, citing the dangers posed by mass shootings.
The package of bills raised the age to buy firearms from 18 to 21, banned high-capacity magazines, and made it easier to take guns from people considered a danger to themselves or others and from people arrested or cited for domestic assault.
Scott's approval rating in the state tanked after he signed the measure, plummeting from 65 percent early in the year to 47 percent shortly after the bill took effect. His disapproval rating nearly doubled to 42 percent in that period.

John Brennan Ex-CIA Cartoons

Trump's 'no more apologizing for America' foreign policy helps Republicans in November

One of the all-time best lines in television and politics was delivered by the late Fred Thompson on “Law and Order.” To his assistant district attorney he advised, “Jack, it’s not enough to do good. You have to be seen doing good.”
So too with presidents and national security. It’s not enough to keep America secure. Voters must feel more secure.
One of the key themes of the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland was, “Make America Safe Again.” Turns out that a huge number of voters did not feel safe under Obama policies, despite his tenure being widely celebrated around the world. Demand for change was fed by talk of open borders, unenforced red lines, flexibility with Russia, ISIS, Benghazi, plus lost opportunities in manufacturing and energy.

Not only has the president and Congress made America safer, most Americans feel safer and better off. Republicans running on this record, together with the strong economic revival at home, stand a very good chance of defying history this election cycle.

Trump famously broke all predictive models in building a new electoral college coalition in 2016. He may be defying history and the “best and brightest” predictive models for the mid-term elections in 2018, with strategic moves on trade and foreign policy playing a major role.
Trump is winning on trade and diplomacy and that will help energize his base in midterms. People are proud after a long era of Democrats apologizing for America. ISIS is gone from the headlines. Finally, we have a president who puts muscle behind rebalancing alliance and trade relationships in our favor. Most “experts” mistake his approach as a revival of nationalism or isolationism, but in reality, Trump represents a new pro-American internationalism, without apology. And mainstream Americans support it.
Turns out it also is popular to keep promises made during a campaign. The U.S. embassy is now in Israel’s capital. The U.S. exited bad deals – the Paris Climate Accord and Iran deal. No more disappearing red lines and no more nation-building. And no more multilateral trade deals that weaken American sovereignty or our economy.  Unconventional tweets and summits resonate with flyover America. Economic revival at home projects strength and opportunity abroad.
Absent a shock between now and election day, most Americans feel safer and more confident in America’s role in the world. Trump themes of sovereignty, security, fair trade, and international realism resonate strongly with mainstream America and are hard for Democrats to oppose.
Not only has the president and Congress made America safer, most Americans feel safer and better off. Republicans running on this record, together with the strong economic revival at home, stand a very good chance of defying history this election cycle. We’re not tired of winning.
Stephen Yates is CEO at DC International Advisory (dciadvisory.com), former chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, and co-chair of the 2016 RNC Platform subcommittee on national security.

Omarosa's revenge: Book trashes 'moblike' Trump, exposes family drama, bashes ex-colleagues

In a twist all-too-familiar for anyone who watched her villain persona on reality TV, Omarosa Manigault-Newman has turned – on her former mentor, her former colleagues and anyone else who crossed her during her brief time in politics.
The famously vindictive TV personality-turned-aide, in her forthcoming book due out Tuesday, aims to settle countless scores. She blasts President Trump as “moblike.” She depicts tensions inside the first family. She mocks her former campaign and White House co-workers.
And that's in addition to her accusations of racism against Trump that have featured heavily in her promotional interviews.
Fox News obtained an advance copy of the sensational tell-all, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.” In it, she details her long working relationship with the now-president, from her rise to fame on his show "The Apprentice" to her work on the campaign and later in the White House.
But, months after her firing, she has traded her praise of the administration for payback. And no blow is too low, including swipes at former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, who also served as press secretary for the Trump campaign.
In the book, Manigault-Newman accuses Hicks of lacking “the understanding of politics for the job she was given.”
“She was always Googling terms while we were in meetings, always playing catch-up, always sensitive about what she didn’t know,” Manigault-Newman writes. “She was so painfully aware of her inadequacies, she refused to speak publicly about the campaign or as a surrogate to express the candidate’s views.”
Manigault-Newman also accuses Trump, whom she calls her “mentor” throughout the book, of expecting “moblike” loyalty, likening him to a “cult leader.”
“Loyalty is a loaded topic when it comes to Donald Trump. His moblike loyalty requirements are exacting, imperishable, and sometimes unethical (as in James Comey’s case.),” she writes. “But for the people in Trumpworld, loyalty to him is an absolute and unyielding necessity, akin to followers’ devotion to a cult leader.”
She alleges: “Trumpworld is a cult of personality focused solely on Donald J. Trump.”
At one point, she deploys a Trumpian nickname for the president: "Twitter Fingers."
But Trump has deployed his own for the author, dubbing her "Wacky Omarosa" on Monday as she hits the interview circuit, as his aides come out in force to decry her conduct.
Drawing pointed condemnation from the West Wing was her decision to release tapes of secretly recorded conversations, including with Trump himself.
That recording was released Monday on NBC’s “Today,” purporting to capture a conversation between Manigault-Newman and Trump after she was fired by Chief of Staff John Kelly in December. In the tape, Trump claims he didn’t know about her firing in advance.
Over the weekend, Manigault-Newman released a different recording, of that conversation with Kelly in the Situation Room.
White House officials blasted her for making both recordings.
“The thought of doing something like that to a fellow employee, not to mention the leader of the free world, is completely disgraceful,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told "Fox & Friends."
And on Monday, Trump tweeted that, “People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart.”
Her firing is a key section of the new book. In it, she goes so far as to claim that Kelly and the White House lawyers present, upon notifying her of her termination, were holding her against her will in the Situation Room, suggesting she was at risk of an asthma attack because she initially couldn't get her inhaler.
“I am an asthma sufferer, and I began to feel a tightness in my chest. I had to calm myself down or I could have had a full-blown asthma attack,” Manigault-Newman writes in the prologue. “I asked if I could go get my purse where I had stashed my inhaler, and they wouldn’t let me leave the room. I asked why I was not allowed to leave, and they said this is how Kelly had set up the meeting.”
Manigault-Newman’s assistant was ultimately allowed to “go get [her] purse” with the inhaler.
“My asthma is triggered by stressful situations, and this was definitely one. I asked again if I was allowed to leave the room or speak to my husband, and they refused,” she wrote. “I was being held against my will in a secure room guarded by men with guns.”
Manigault-Newman also writes in the book that she believed her firing was related to her knowledge of a tape made in the early 2000s, in which Trump supposedly uses “the N-word.”
That claim has been the subject of intense dispute, as she says in the book that the tape exists but she hadn't heard it. Yet on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, she said she has since heard it
Monday evening, Trump tweeted that "The Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett had assured him that no such tape existed of him using "such a terrible and disgusting word."
"I don't have that word in my vocabulary, and never have," Trump wrote. "She made it up."
The president then claimed that "Omarosa had Zero credibility with the Media (they didn’t want interviews) when she worked in the White House. Now that she says bad about me, they will talk to her. Fake News!"
The former White House aide makes a slew of other accusations in her book, sure to be chewed over for days by the president's allies and detractors alike.
In other sections, she gets deeply personal about the first family. She says that daughter Tiffany Trump was “treated like a California castoff,” and that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, was “desperate to please his father.”
“Don Jr. has been struggling against the negative expectation of his namesake since the moment he was born,” Manigault-Newman writes, going on to state that candidate-Trump did not attend his eldest son’s convention speech, but instead watched Eric’s.
“He beamed with pride at his second son,” she writes. “When Donald sat there to watch Eric, I felt sorry for Don Jr.”
She later quotes Trump as calling Trump Jr. “a f---up” over his comment likening Syrian refugees to “a bowl of Skittles.”
Manigault-Newman lobs a slew of other shots at the first family, including claiming first lady Melania Trump wants a divorce when he's out of office.
Plus she writes that, "Our president is mentally and physically impaired."
The White House on Friday responded to early leaks of the book's contents with a blanket statement decrying it. "Instead of telling the truth about all the good President Trump and his administration are doing to make America safe and prosperous, this book is riddled with lies and false accusations," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.
Manigault-Newman also blasts former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now on trial, as a “liability,” and former Trump campaign chief strategist Steve Bannon as an “alarming” choice, slamming him as a “sexist and racist.”
And as for Russia, Manigault-Newman claims that Trump “lacked basic comprehension about the very complicated relationship” between the U.S. and Russia.
“He was fixated on Vladimir Putin as a feared, respected, and admired leader,” she writes. “I believe he was envious of the control that Putin exerts over his people.”
In another skirmish, Trump tweeted Monday that Manigault-Newman signed a non-disclosure agreement upon her exit from the White House. But the former White House aide writes in her book that she “refused” to sign an NDA.

Suspects tied to 'extremist Muslim' compound released; boy believed dead

The children discovered at an “extremist Muslim” compound in New Mexico earlier this month were both trained to use firearms and taught multiple tactical techniques in order to kill teachers, law enforcement and other institutions they found corrupt, state prosecutors revealed on Monday.
The prosecutors provided more details about the accusations during a court hearing in which they asked that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj and four other defendants be held pending trial on child abuse charges.
But the judge in the case ruled against prosecutors’ request.
Judge Sarah Backus said although she was concerned by "troubling facts," prosecutors failed to articulate any specific threats to the community.
She set a $20,000 bond for each defendant and ordered that they wear ankle monitors and have weekly contact with their attorneys.
It was also announced Monday that 3-year-old Abdul-ghani Wahhaj, who had been missing since December, allegedly died amid a ritualistic religious ceremony intended to “cast out demonic spirits,” Reuters reported.
“It was a religious ritual carried out... a ritual intended to cast out demonic spirits from Abdul-ghani Wahhaj,” Taos County Prosecutor John Lovelace said.
Public defenders argued the boy's father was trying to heal the child by reading passages from the Quran but prosecutors claimed he was denying the boy medication. One of the children taken into custody claimed that the boy had died in February.
The children said they were told the boy would be resurrected as Jesus and guide them on which "corrupt institutions" to attack, NBC reported citing investigators.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the remains of a child found on the grounds of the compound were Abdul-ghani Wahhaj.
The defendants were arrested and 11 children were taken into custody during a raid Aug. 4 on the compound near the Colorado state line.
Wahhaj and the others were seated with their public defenders in a Taos courtroom Monday as prosecutors presented books that were found at the compound, documents related to Wahhaj's trip to Saudi Arabia and a handwritten notebook that appeared to be some kind of teaching manual. They also pointed to evidence that Wahhaj had taken a series of firearms courses while in Georgia.
Defense attorneys, meantime, argued that prosecutors were trying unjustly to paint their clients as armed militants. Public defenders also argued that the rifles and handguns found on the property were common guns that could be bought at retail stores and that their clients made no aggressive efforts to defend their compound.
Wahhaj is the son of a Brooklyn imam, also named Siraj Wahhaj, who was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the New York Post reported. The elder Wahhaj, who heads Masjid At-Taqwa mosque, was a character witness in the trial for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the notorious “blind sheikh” who was convicted in 1995 of plotting terror attacks in the U.S.