Tuesday's Final Word

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Cracklin' tabbies, get on board ....

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Caught on its back foot, the regime media’s reaction will be…

Ed: Exactly what we'd expect it to be, probably. In fact ...

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Ed: This is the headline on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's front page. Like almost all of their content, it's paywalled, and I stopped subscribing years ago. However, the use of the word "alleged" in the headline even after several convictions and the framing of this as just "claims of a right-wing influencer" likely tells us all we need to know about the value of their "reporting" on the fraud. The Strib got scooped, because the Strib didn't want to do reporting. It exists for narrative amplification, and that's it. 

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NY Post: State Rep. Kristin Robbins (R-Maple Grove), chairwoman of the Minnesota Fraud Committee and a GOP candidate for governor, told The Post she informed the Walz administration about her suspicions after running a hearing on day care fraud in February 2024 — but it fell on deaf ears.  

“I gave the Department of Human Services a list of day care providers getting over $1 million in the previous year from the state who had numerous violations, and this day care was one of them on the list,” Robbins said outside the “Quality Learing [sic] Center” facility. 

“They can’t say they didn’t know. We had a hearing on it. We gave them a list, and nothing has happened,” she claimed. “I find it shocking that this is still happening when we flagged something over and over again.”

Ed: Is our Democrats 'learing'? Is our Protection Racket Media 'learing'? Apparently not ...

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Ed: Gerstein is normally better than this, or at least I thought he was. His comment is a massive non-sequitur, legally and in every other way. There is nothing threatening about a door knock on a public business. There are no self-defense issues in play here, unless Gerstein is suggesting that people should treat reporters as grave threats to life or great bodily harm. And how long would it have taken for a [checks notes] legal reporter to research whether Minnesota has a Stand Your Ground statute? You'd think a legal reporter/analyst for a national platform like Politico would have at least done a basic search and discovered this news from nine months ago ...

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Minnesota House Republicans: In Minnesota, you can use force, even deadly force, to defend yourself provided you first try to get away from your attacker and your counterforce is commensurate with the danger you are facing.

And that “duty to retreat” legal standard will remain the case because the House was unable to garner enough votes Thursday to pass HF13, which would have allowed a person to use reasonable force in self-defense “regardless of whether a reasonable possibility of retreat to avoid the danger exists.” ...

Needing 68 House votes for passage, the bill could only garner party-line results with 67 affirmative votes but 65 negative votes. It was then reconsidered and tabled in a pair of procedural moves.

Ed: The issue is a little more gray when it comes to using lethal self-defense in your home in Minnesota; IIRC, you may avoid the duty to retreat during the commission of a felony. But otherwise, Minnesotans have a duty to retreat. And this status remained in effect nine months ago after the state legislature refused to adopt SYG.  

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Ed: It's not just firearms policy, clearly. This industry exists to promote radical-progressive narratives, not to report facts or give honest opinions and analyses. 

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ESPN: Nick Kyrgios won the latest version of the "Battle of the Sexes" in tennis, beating top-ranked women's player Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 6-3 in an exhibition match that represented light entertainment rather than another landmark moment for gender equality. ...

Kyrgios, the 2022 Wimbledon runner-up who has played only six tour-level matches in the past three years because of wrist and knee injuries, appeared to play within himself at times and faced the disadvantage of Sabalenka's side of the court being nearly 10% smaller in an attempt to level the playing field. The players were given only one serve per point, rather than two.

Ed: ESPN fails to mention that Kyrgios is currently ranked 671st on the men's tour. This wasn't a "landmark moment for gender equality" because the match was set up with unequal playing conditions. The need to "level the playing field" and its abject failure, along with the level mismatch, provides ample evidence that males have distinct and significant physical advantages in athletic competition. 

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Ed: It might just be ... but the day isn't over yet. 

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The Free Press: I’ve been a maternal-fetal medicine doctor for more than two decades, and, unfortunately, I’m used to working with patients who are going through these sort of unimaginable losses. That’s partly because many of my patients are women over 35, when they are technically considered to be at “advanced maternal age.”

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Despite amazing innovations in fertility medicine, women who reach a certain age are forced to face an inconvenient truth: There is a biological window of fertility, and for safely bearing healthy children. (And men have one, too.)

But saying this out loud has somehow become taboo. Instead, young women and men are being comforted by the false premise that childbearing may be delayed without consequences. The science says differently. And while developments like egg-freezing and IVF have contributed mightily to extending fertility, they are also not the guarantees the public perceives them to be.

Ed: Gee, I wonder how these false premises propagated in the first place? 

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While calling for higher taxes, FDR also decried the "tax burden caused by inefficient and extravagant local government." I have always been for accountability and taking on corruption. That is what my work with Massie on the Epstein files is all about. That is why I have opposed the bloated defense budget which has repeatedly failed an audit.

Today, I am announcing that in  2026 I will be working on a bipartisan basis on Oversight to request hearings on state governments' high risk programs, including California, that have led to illegal payments and eligibility errors. I also will work on legislation to call for a full independent audit of California's budget.

I believe we can and must ask those Americans who have done well to pay more so everyone has healthcare and education. In turn, we must provide an accountable and transparent government.

Restoring TRUST in government is the highest priority.

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Ed: Hmmm. The only result of this kind of investigation would be to kneecap Gavin Newsom in the 2028 Democrat presidential primaries sweepstakes. Khanna must be worried that Newsom will turn out to be another Tim Walz but on a larger scale. One has to wonder if Khanna is worried about what an audit of Newsom's choo-choo project will uncover. And speaking of that ...

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Reuters: California has dropped a lawsuit challenging the decision by the administration of President Donald Trump to cancel more than $4 billion in federal grants for the state's high-speed rail project, the state said late on Friday.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority, which filed the lawsuit in July, said the decision to abandon it reflected the state's "assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California." 

The agency said it plans to move forward without federal funding, adding that only 18% of program expenditures for the long-delayed project have come from federal funds. A judge this month rejected a bid to dismiss the lawsuit.

Ed: Did Newsom finally learn about the concept of the "dry hole"? Donald Trump certainly understands the sunk-cost fallacy, even if Newson refuses to recognize it. 

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Ed: Be sure to read the whole article at Barlow's Substack, Blacklisted. Journalism still exists. Just not at mainstream media outlets. 

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Power Line: Thus far, Gonen’s incendiary and heartbreaking story has not been picked up by the BBC, or Sky News, or New York Times, nor Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, the Guardian…. Nobody has shared the testimony of a then 23-year-old innocent young woman who was kidnapped from a music festival, after witnessing her friend be shot and killed in front of her, only to then spend more than one year in captivity in Gaza, during which time she experienced sexual assault by four different men. They included one “nurse” at the now infamous Al Shifa hospital, and one “journalist” (ie the Hamas militants that human rights “feminist” lawyers of the West advocate for, while turning a blind eye to Gonen, and her fellow victims). ...

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Where are all the journalists who rushed instantly to publish stories on Palestinians being abused sexually by the IDF without evidence? All the journalists who claim without proof that Israeli prisons are torturing their inmates? All the non-profits who rushed to scream that Israel was abusing Greta Thunberg’s Instagram-posing amateur fellow sailors when they were intercepted this summer – again with no basis? All the celebrities insisting that there was no rape on or after October 7 but who enthusiastically came to the defense of hate-baiting artists like Kneecap and Bob Vylan and political agitators such as Mahmoud Khalil? Where are all the voters who insisted they couldn’t in good faith hit the ballot box for alleged sex pest Andrew Cuomo in the New York Mayoral Election, so chose Jihad-loving Mamdani instead? Where are their voices now? Did their brains fall down a toilet?

Prominent Hollywood voices denied that reports of sexual abuse, such as Gonen’s, would ever exist. Rosie O’Donnell, Indya Moore, Sara Ramirez, Saul Williams and John Cusack, among many others, have spread rape denial to their millions of followers. In the name of social justice. They owe Gonen an apology. They owe women an apology. They owe everyone who has ever been sexually abused an apology. That’s how this goes, no?

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Ed: Please pray for Mr. Hanson, who is a national treasure. 

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Editor's note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments -- and support independent platforms -- why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise.  Use the promo code MERRY to get 74% off your membership!