Politics

Do you have to be a predator to catch a predator? Two lawsuits filed this week make claim to that, accusing Tim Ballard, the self-proclaimed savior of hundreds of trafficked children who inspired the movie Sound of Freedom, of sexual assault. On Wednesday, the attorney representing five women who filed a lawsuit against Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad earlier this week confirmed that a second lawsuit has been filed. The latest suit, brought against Ballard by a couple, accuses him of sexual assault, financial damages and ruining the couple’s marriage.  “Tim has taken everything from me. He has purposefully destroyed my marriage, manipulated my wife, ruined the relationship with my kids and with my wife's family,” the plaintiff and husband, known as FT, said.

There’s an easy way out of the chaos in the House, led by a Florida man who’s leaning on lessons learned in his decades as a firefighter and basketball player: Representative Carlos Giménez, the general leading the Only Kevin charge. For some in Congress, the literal Only Kevin pins they wore back in January were as ephemeral as a Nancy Mace promise. But for Giménez, it’s about refusing to reward bad behavior and about loyalty to the man who recruited him to run for his current job. “There was an injustice done” in Giménez’s eyes, he tells me in his Capitol Hill office. “I think that the 96 percent [of House Republicans who voted to keep McCarthy last week] bent to rule of the 4 [percent]. Everybody talks about the majority here.

The likelihood of Steve Scalise's ascent to the speakership is high at this hour, with his 113-99 victory over Jim Jordan in the House Republican Conference meeting. But there are a few challenges ahead that could prove difficult in an upcoming afternoon of voting on the floor. Jordan's total was disappointing for his supporters, who had hoped the vote would effectively be flipped, leading Scalise to bow out and wait for another day, content with his continued role as majority leader. But Jordan's team is not exactly expert at whipping votes, and the abstention of eight members didn't help him any.  What Scalise brings, effectively, is a normal continuity of leadership.

There’s something about mirrors and cameras that the Biden men just can’t seem to resist — they are compelled to photograph their appendages. First it was Hunter’s heroin selfies. Now thirst traps from the president’s brother have been uncovered. If the trend continues, a leaked pic of Joe should be coming soon, but Cockburn prays we never see that dark day.   A nude selfie of Frank Biden, the president’s youngest brother, was discovered on a gay porn site, GuysWithiPhones.com, over the weekend. The picture, originally posted in 2018 when Frank was sixty-four, shows the tan, buff Biden posing in nothing but his glasses and a hat. Frank has some serious explaining to do to his partner of more than a decade, Mindy Ward.

Representative Nancy Mace, newfound foe of ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy, has been using a software for official work that is expressly not permitted by House rules. The South Carolinian chairs a subcommittee on CyberSecurity on the Oversight Committee, and recently passed the MACE Act, which unusually she named after herself — yet uses the work management site Monday.com to handle a number of tasks in her office. “We used it for everything and Nancy ran it,” a former Mace staffer tells The Spectator. All legislative and media planning work went through this platform, sources say; we’re also told by former Mace staff that her office has used it to conduct constituent services that could leave personal information of her constituents potentially vulnerable.

California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent appointment of Laphonza Butler, a black lesbian, to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat generated headlines but it wasn’t a surprise. Newsom pledged to appoint a black woman if Senator Feinstein resigned more than two years ago. And so, he was all but required to eliminate roughly 97 percent of California’s population, which is just 6.5 percent black, from consideration straight off the bat. The appointment represents mainstream orthodoxy on the left here and in Europe, where diversity has replaced quality as a primary consideration not just in politics but also in the culture.

At 1:30 a.m. on Monday, Philadelphia freelance journalist Josh Kruger was shot seven times at the base of his stairs by an intruder. He stumbled, bleeding, into the street and collapsed on the sidewalk before being transported to the hospital, where he soon died. Come 10:00 a.m., news of his death was reported by local outlets, and Philadelphia’s media ecosystem was in a full-fledged state of lamentation. Friends, professional acquaintances and public leaders poured their hearts out for Kruger. But the moving display of mourning didn’t last long.  Before Kruger’s body went cold, prominent figures on the dissident right caught wind of the murder and discovered to their delight that he was a vocal defender of Philly’s progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Another day, another Biden family member making an embarrassing faux pas. This time, it's Commander Biden, the less-than-faithful German Shepherd that roams the White House halls looking for flesh. Recent reports tell of the hound attacking multiple people indiscriminately, making no distinction between Secret Service and civilian White House staff. The MailOnline even snapped the feral beast as he nipped White House gardener Dale Haney. Some might look to lay blame on Commander, but Cockburn wants to you stop and take stock of the situation. As many of Cockburn's colleagues have reminded, there are no bad dogs. There are only bad dog owners. And Commander follows in the footsteps of the previous Biden Alsatian, Major, who was also rehomed after biting staff.

In Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a posse of violent ne’er-do-wells forced by circumstance into a house together descend, through duplicity, avarice and lies, into bloody chaos which leaves everyone dead. The title is a fitting one for the eight Republicans who crossed party lines to vote with House Democrats, unanimous in their belief that they are better off without Kevin McCarthy as speaker. In doing so, they ensured the House is controlled by Democrats in all but name. As the speaker race begins, the odds favor Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan — both more satisfying to the right wing than McCarthy, but far less capable of fundraising as he did to protect the tenuous hold of moderates in blue states.

What’s worse than chaos? How about a power vacuum? All the beautiful people are bewailing the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House yesterday because it is supposedly “thrusting the House into chaos.”  Right on cue we have the New York Times skirling that “Far-Right GOP Faction Throws House Into Chaos.” Cant watchers: notice the deployment of the term “far-right” as an intensifier. Not only chaos but chaos from a source the Times can get away with castigating as far right. (Extra credit: would the Times describe a dramatic action by the Squad as “far left”? If not, why not?) On November 2, 1963, a CIA-instigated coup sparked the assassination of Vietnam president Ngô Đình Diệm. The trouble was, they had no one with whom to replace Diem.