News
Compiled by Michael Hernandez, 1-19-25
There are so many stories making up the mosaic of national/international news that we can’t cover them all every week. The biggest stories now seem to be: the Trump transition, immigration (migrants and illegals), wars, weaponization of government (the deep state) against Trump and conservatives, our nation going bankrupt, massive inflation, climate change controversy and related expenses of government, industry attempting to address these issues, the Chinese threat, drones, national security, abortion, anti-Christian hate, terrorist attacks and Los Angeles fires. Here are just a few:
Jan. 13: Gateway Pundit By Cristina Laila
Joe Biden Forgives Student Loans for 150,000 Borrowers Just Days Before Trump Inauguration
Joe Biden canceled student loans for 150,000 borrowers on Monday one week before Trump’s inauguration. Joe Biden boasted about passing down the ‘canceled’ student loan costs to the working class and middle-class families that never sent their kids to college. Biden also punished the responsible people who paid back their student loans in full because they don’t get refunds.
Jan. 13: Breitbart By Kristina Wong
FBI’s Chris Wray Reveals Right Before Resigning That China Has Penetrated U.S.’s Critical Infrastructure
Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during an interview on Sunday, a week before he steps down, that China has penetrated America’s water treatment plants, electric grid, and other critical civilian infrastructure, and is lying “in wait” for an opportunity to cyberattack at a time and place of its choosing.
Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure, Wray said China’s cyber program is the largest in the world and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined.
Jan. 14: Breitbart By Hannah Knudsen
Trump Hypes Incoming ‘Make America Wealthy Again’ Era
America is entering the “Make America Wealthy Again” era, Team Trump hypes in a video first obtained by Breitbart News, one week out from Inauguration Day.
“We’ll make America wealthy again, and we’ll make America affordable again,” Trump says in the montage, which features quick clips of him speaking to massive crowds and meeting with workers across the country.
The video highlights a number of Trump’s “MAWA” promises — from lowering energy costs to making groceries affordable again. “Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, low inflation, so that everyone can afford groceries, a car and a home,” Trump says in the video.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/14/exclusive-team-trump-hypes-make-america-wealthy-again-era/
Jan. 14: Gateway Pundit By Jordan Conradson
O’Keefe Media Group Exposes Former FBI Special Agent Giving Tell-All On Defense Department’s Plan To Sabotage Incoming Trump Administration
O’Keefe Media Group has released footage from their investigation into Department of Defense advisor Jamie Mannina, revealing that he’s working behind the scenes with third-party groups and retired generals to undermine Trump’s incoming administration.
O’Keefe was in Washington, DC, this past weekend exposing Deep State employees who gave up information on plans to sabotage President Trump’s incoming administration. The Gateway Pundit spoke to O’Keefe Sunday, and he shared that more tapes are coming this week, which expose various Deep State agencies, including the DOD and Executive Office of the White House’s plans to sabotage the incoming Trump Administration.
January 15: Fox News By Joshua Comins
IDF General Credits Trump Threat As ‘Big Change’ In Securing Cease-Fire After Hamas Rejected Same Deal In May
IDF Reserve Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi says “two things” changed regarding the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement after fifteen months of conflict in the Middle East. “This deal has been on the table since May last year and Hamas opposed it completely. Why? There was no real pressure on Hamas. Israel wanted to stop some of the humanitarian aid, especially some of the gasoline, but the administration wouldn’t let us do that. So Israel has no major leverage on them. What’s changed is two things,” Avivi told Fox News. “One, Israel defeated Hezbollah and Hezbollah cannot support Hamas anymore. Also, Syria fell. Iran is weaker. But the big change is President Trump’s threat.
Once President Trump threatened them, that if they don’t release hostages, there will be hell… I think they understand that if they don’t get a deal now, the chances of getting a good deal for them will be very, very low, if at all. And therefore, they made their own assessment, and they are inclined to do the deal, thinking that they’ll maximize what they can get now and not wait to see what ‘hell’ means,” Avivi stated.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/idf-general-credits-trump-threat-big-change-securing-cease-fire-after-hamas-rejected-same-deal-may
Jan. 16: Breitbart By Nick Gilbertson
20 Attorneys General Call For Swift Senate Confirmations of Noem, Bondi, Patel
Attorneys general from 20 states are urging the U.S. Senate to quickly confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for Attorney General, secretary of Homeland Security, and FBI director.
Attorney General Liz Murrill (R-LA) led 19 peers from around the country in a letter, obtained by Breitbart News, supporting Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), the DHS secretary nominee; Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general; and Kash Patel, who Trump tapped to lead the FBI.
The letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), adds that the Biden administration has endangered Americans. The attorneys general then turned their attention to issues within the Department of Justice and the FBI in advocation for Bondi and Patel.
Jan. 17: Breitbart By Simon Kent
Evacuations, Road Closures Begin As Fire Engulfs World’s Largest Battery Plant in California
A massive fire broke out at a Californian power plant early Friday morning, threatening one of the largest battery energy storage facilities in the world. The blaze began in a building containing lithium-ion batteries hours earlier, an official at the Monterey County Sheriff’s office told the BBC. The Moss Landing power plant, run by Vistra Corp, was evacuated, as were people in the surrounding area. No injuries were reported.
Officials are not actively fighting the fire, the Monterey Sheriff spokesperson said, and are instead leaving the building and the batteries to burn on the advice of fire experts. Hundreds of people have been ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in Northern California has been closed.
Jan. 17: Breitbart By Elizabeth Weibel
Sen. Tim Sheehy: ‘This Country Was Not Founded By 65-Year-Old Bureaucrats’
The United States “was not founded by 65-year-old bureaucrats” but by patriotic young risk takers, Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) explained in a Friday interview on The Alex Marlow Show with Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow.
Sen. Sheehy said that the U.S. is dealing with multiple disasters–such as rising inflation and a “wide open border”–because the country is being led by bureaucrats who have “really never done anything else in their” lives outside of politics.
“Leadership matters and decisiveness matters, and this country was not founded by 65-year-old bureaucrats,” Sheehy said. “The signers of the Declaration of Independence, I think the average age of the signers was like 24 years old. I mean, you look at — some of them were 18, 19, 21 years old. Thomas Jefferson was 33… These were young people who had a vision for the greatest experiment in the history of mankind, which is this country.”
“It wasn’t 80-year-old, career government bureaucrats who took the risk to craft a new concept of human governance,” he continued. “It was young people who were creative, who had a decisive vision and were willing to take the risk to act on it.”
Sheehy added that “in the last 50 years,” the U.S. “drifted away” from having younger political leaders and shifted instead towards having “highly educated, highly qualified, very experienced, bureaucrats to run the government.”
Sheehy continued. “This whole technocrat outlook–where we need these people who’ve really never done anything else in their life other than be involved in government policy–and the downfall of that is exactly what we’re seeing. The results are laid bare: Afghanistan disaster; $36 trillion in debt and growing rapidly disaster; wide open border; 20 million illegal immigrants; we have foreign policy crises around the world; rapid inflation; record interest rates.”
Jan. 17: Breitbart By Elizabeth Weibel
‘No Excuse’: Former Aerial Firefighter Sen. Tim Sheehy Details What CA Got Wrong Ahead Of Wildfire Disaster
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who founded the aerial fire fighting company Bridger Aerospace, explained that “the entire wildland fire community” has been sounding the alarm for years that “we are entering an era of complete unpreparedness” in fighting wildfires. Sheehy noted that over the past 18 months there have been increasingly destructive wildfires in states as far-flung as Hawaii, New Jersey, and Texas; and, thus, he argued that there was “no excuse” for California to have been unprepared for a similar situation.
“It’s not just me saying it,” he said. “The entire wildland fire community has really been screaming from the rooftops for years that we are entering an era of complete unpreparedness for these types of disasters. Just look at the last 18 months. Lahaina, Maui — remember that was wiped off the map? One hundred people [were] killed. In December and November, we had fires burning in New Jersey. Last year in February, March, we had the Smokehouse Creek fire in Texas, [the] largest fire in Texas history, second largest fire in American history. And then, of course, now we’re seeing literally… L.A. burning to the ground in front of us.” Sheehy added that wildfires were “threats we can prepare for and can fight.”
Jan. 18: Fox News By Chris Pandolfo
Appeals Court Deals Blow To Obama-Era Amnesty For Dreamers
A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against an Obama-era policy that provides amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as children. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled unanimously that a new version of the policy issued by President Biden in 2022 overstepped the executive branch’s authority. The decision by two Republican-appointed judges and one Democratic-appointed judge is the latest blow to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in a string of legal challenges that has kept 500,000 so-called Dreamers waiting for a resolution for more than a decade.
The decision Friday does not immediately change the status quo. Program beneficiaries can still renew temporary permits to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation. But the federal government remains prohibited from issuing new applications. However, Friday’s decision does create an opportunity for DACA to be appealed to the Supreme Court for a third time. And it comes just three days before President-elect Trump assumes office with his promise to begin mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/appeals-court-deals-blow-obama-era-amnesty-dreamers
Jan. 19: Breitbart By Joel Pollak
First Images Of Israeli Hostages Reuniting With Families
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released the first photos of the three female hostages who were released Sunday as part of a hostage deal with Hamas — Romi Gonen, 24; Emily Damari, 38; and Doron Steinbrecher, 31 — and returned to Israel. They were finally free, after 471 days in captivity. All were abducted in the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023.
The three are the first of 33 hostages to be released over the course of six weeks, most of whom are presumed to be living, with priority given to female and civilian hostages. In return, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian terrorists and withdraw from some positions in the Gaza Strip while surging humanitarian aid into the territory. The deal almost collapsed when Hamas failed to provide the names of the hostages to be released, as it had agreed. It did so, belatedly.
Michael Hernandez, from California is co-founder of the Citizens Journal—Ventura County’s online news service. He is a former Southern California daily newspaper journalist and religion and news editor. Mr. Hernandez can be contacted at [email protected] and is editor of the weekly “Stories Speak Volumes.”