The Conservative Cave

BREAKING: Unanimous SCOTUS Rejects VA Dems Attempt to Reinstate Referendum

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/05/15/breaking-scotus-rejects-va-dems-attempt-to-reinstate-referendum-n3815002

A former inspector general who fast-tracked a "whistleblower" complaint that led to the first impeachment of President Trump in 2019 knew the whistleblower was a registered Democrat and Joe Biden loyalist yet still determined his complaint was "a matter of urgent concern that appeared credible," according to newly declassified documents.
The documents also reveal the anonymous whistleblower secretly met with the Democratic staff of former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff prior to submitting his complaint in August 2019.

Yet under direct questioning, the whistleblower -- later identified by RealClearInvestigations as intelligence analyst Eric Ciaramella -- failed to disclose those contacts in interviews with IG investigators or on whistleblower forms, according to more than 350 pages of intel briefings Schiff classified as secret and locked up in a Capitol vault.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford released the papers Monday morning after National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard declassified them late last week. Justice Department insiders say the documents factor into an ongoing grand jury investigation into an alleged "grand conspiracy" by former Obama and Biden officials to illegally target Trump in political espionage activities.

Nonetheless, IG Michael Atkinson, then the intelligence community's top watchdog, did not question the whistleblower's political motivations, truthfulness or credibility.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday it is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California, alleging the state has not done enough to tackle fraud.

Vice President JD Vance claimed during an event at the White House that the “simple reason” for deferring Medicaid payments to the Golden State is “because the state of California has not taken fraud very seriously.” The news comes as the administration has recently been moving to crack down on healthcare ‌fraud nationwide.

“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously, but also you have people who have been prescribed medications that they don’t even need,” Vance said. “They’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration of medications.”
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The Vice President also said the administration is informing all 50 U.S. states that it could halt funding to their Medicaid Fraud Control Units if they fail to “aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud.”

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz stated in a statement posted to X on Wednesday that “when states like California refuse to work with the federal government on saving American taxpayer dollars,” the administration “will hold those states accountable.”

The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the District of Columbia Bar’s disciplinary authorities, alleging that the attorney discipline process has been improperly used to investigate and penalize federal government lawyers for actions taken in their official capacities.

At the center of the dispute is an ongoing disciplinary case involving former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who faced scrutiny over his role in discussions surrounding the 2020 presidential election and a draft letter concerning allegations of election fraud in Georgia. According to the Justice Department, the letter was never finalized or sent, and the disciplinary proceedings improperly target internal executive branch deliberations.

The lawsuit aligns with President Donald Trump’s Executive Order titled Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government and a related presidential memorandum aimed at limiting what the administration describes as politically motivated uses of legal and regulatory processes.

“As our complaint and history make clear, the DC Bar has long acted as a blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes. No more,” said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

WASHINGTON — With small drones inflicting massive losses on both sides in Ukraine, defense electronics maker L3Harris is reprogramming its widely used Falcon IV handheld radios to generate a personal protective electronic-warfare “bubble” for the soldiers carrying them, company executives said.

Branded as Wraith Shield, the capability doesn’t require any new hardware, the company said, just a software upgrade to the existing Wraith communications waveform, which is compatible with over 100,000 Falcon IV radios in service worldwide.

“At the cost of a software upgrade … single-digit thousands of dollars … you can add this capability to a radio they’re already carrying,” Chris Aebli, the company’s president for Mission Critical Communications, told reporters this morning. “[It’s] their own protection bubble for counter-UAS.”

“It’s ready to be delivered,” he said, although international sales are still awaiting export approval from the US government. ...