White House Dossier's

Republican governors back Texas in border standoff with Biden . . . Republican governors in half of the US have backed Texas in an intensifying standoff with the federal government over illegal immigration. The Supreme Court ruled this week against Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has strung razor wire along miles of the frontier with Mexico. But the Republican has vowed to add more razor wire to crack down on what he calls an invasion. A record 225,000-plus illegal migrants crossed the border in December alone. BBC 

Trump calls on states to send National Guard to Texas

Texas Democrats urge Biden to seize Texas National Guard . . . Texas Democrats in Congress this week urged President Joe Biden to take control of the Texas National Guard in response to Gov. Greg Abbott's (R.) refusal to give up control of a section of the state's southern border. "Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border," Rep. Joaquin Castro said Tuesday on X. "If Abbott is defying yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, @POTUS needs to establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now." Washington Free Beacon

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Trump surrogates audition for VP . . . Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) appeared alongside Trump in New Hampshire and phone-banked with Trump campaign volunteers. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has been ubiquitous at Trump events since endorsing the former president last Friday.  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) traveled to Iowa to campaign for Trump.  Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) traveled to New Hampshire in support of Trump. Steve Bannon, a former top adviser to Trump, has said he believes Trump will have a woman as his running mate. He named Stefanik, Noem, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) among those he thought should be considered. The Hill

Trump moves to kill the Senate border deal . . . Former President Trump’s push to kill the border deal in order to deny President Biden a legislative win is upsetting members on both sides of the aisle as negotiators hope to wrap up work on an agreement within days.

Trump had been the sleeping giant in the background of talks, but his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, coupled with his recent remarks calling for Republicans to oppose any border package short of H.R. 2, have complicated the path forward for the Senate. The Hill

Scalise aide tells senators border deal is DOA in the House

RNC pulls motion to declare Trump the nominee . . . The Republican National Committee has pulled a resolution to consider declaring Donald Trump the party’s “presumptive 2024 nominee” before he formally clinches the requisite number of delegates, a person familiar with the decision said Thursday. News of the withdrawal came shortly after Trump posted on his Truth Social site that, while he “greatly” appreciated the notion, he felt, “for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan, but that I should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way, and finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX.” Associated Press

VIDEO | CNN "journalists" give aid and comfort to Democrats

Navarro sentenced to four months for defying subpoena . . . Peter Navarro, who served in the White House under former President Donald Trump, was sentenced Thursday for flouting a House Jan. 6 committee subpoena. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Navarro to four months in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of $9,500. That's two months shorter than the six prosecutors had sought, but Mehta drastically reduced the whopping $200,000 fine sought by the Justice Department. Fox News

Biden blasted for "best gibberish yet"

Texas billionaire on path to become the new George Soros . . . A Texas billionaire is on track to replace George Soros as the largest donor in the fight to remake America's criminal justice system. Former Enron executive John Arnold has poured more than $46 million into criminal justice efforts since 2019, exceeding the $40 million that Soros has spent over the past decade to elect liberal prosecutors across the country. Arnold's efforts are largely focused on his Public Safety Assessment program, a free algorithm that recommends whether judges should grant bail. Washington Free Beacon

When Hunter Biden decided to make trading on the family name his line of work . . . Hunter ultimately took the job with MBNA. In doing so, he settled into a pattern that would last the rest of his life, taking opportunities and putting himself in positions marked by good money and terrible political optics. MBNA was then the largest independent credit card issuer in the world, and perhaps the most plum professional gig available in Delaware. Over the course of Joe Biden’s congressional career, MBNA executives showered him with more than $200,000 in campaign donations, the largest amount in his war chest tied to any one company. Sen. Biden was friendly with MBNA officials and a reliable ally for their issues. Politico

Biden outsources border problem to Mexico . . . President Biden, unable or unwilling to secure the border alone, has decided to outsource the job to Mexico — and it’s working. After a horrific December, illegal activity at the southwestern border cooled in the first part of January. That coincided with increased Mexican efforts to block illegal immigrants from reaching the U.S. boundary. Mexico has pulled migrants off trains and begun flying or busing those it catches near the U.S. border farther south — some back to Venezuela. Washington Time

Please read my latest piece for Fox News . . . 

Space Warfare: US, China, Russia gear up for conflict . . . The best way to avoid space warfare is to be ready for it. On Dec. 28, Elon Musk’s Space X launched into space the Pentagon’s highly secretive X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, an unmanned reusable robotic spacecraft operated by the Air Force, in collaboration with Space Force. Former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson revealed in 2019, however, that X-37B can change its orbit "when it’s close enough to the atmosphere." During my service in the Defense Intelligence Agency, I specialized in foreign space doctrines and operations and participated in war games simulating a conflict in space. I can attest that China and Russia consider the X-37B a counter-space weapons platformand are obsessed with trying to gain insights into its capabilities. Both have space warfare programs, targeting their main perceived enemy, the United States of America. Rebekah Koffler

NSA secretly buying Americans' data . . . The National Security Agency has secretly been buying Americans’ internet records and using them for spying purposes without obtaining a warrant, a senior senator revealed Thursday. Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, said the practice had been a “legal gray area,” with data brokers quietly obtaining and reselling the internet “metadata” without the users’ consent. He said the NSA has been trying to keep the whole thing under wraps. Washington Times

FBI hiring fat, illiterate candidates . . . The FBI is reducing hiring standards to the point where it is considering overweight applicants and hiring barely literate agents, a group of current and former FBI agents and analysts allege. In a report delivered to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, the FBI officials describe how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is being prioritized in the hiring process to the point where standards are being reduced for physical fitness, drug usage, finances, mental health, experience and integrity, the report states. Daily Caller

Hopefully fat OR illiterate, not both at the same time.

International

King Charles in the hospital for prostate treatment . . . King Charles has been admitted to hospital for treatment for an enlarged prostate, says Buckingham Palace. The procedure will be carried out at the London Clinic private hospital, where Catherine, the Princess of Wales had surgery last week. It is understood the King visited his daughter-in-law in the hospital on Friday morning, ahead of his own scheduled treatment. BBC

The royal prostate gets a tune up.

Identical twins sold at birth reunited by TikTok videos . . . Amy and Ano are identical twins, but just after they were born they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families. Years later, they discovered each other by chance thanks to a TV talent show and a TikTok video. As they delved into their past, they realised they were among thousands of babies in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia stolen from hospitals and sold, some as recently as 2005. Now they want answers. BBC

Russia fires top geneticist who said humans lived to 900 before the Flood . . . Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday. Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination. Associated Press

Money

Biden makes major move to halt natural gas exports. . . The White House is halting the permitting process for several proposed liquefied natural gas export terminal projects over their potential impacts on climate change, an unprecedented move environmentalists have demanded in recent months. In a joint announcement Friday morning, the White House and Department of Energy said the pause would occur while federal officials conduct a rigorous environmental review assessing the projects' carbon emissions, which could take more than a year to complete. Fox News

Japan's stock market soars while China's plummets . . . Japan’s stock market, overlooked by investors for decades, is making a furious comeback. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index is edging closer to the record it set on Dec. 29, 1989, which effectively marked the peak of Japan’s economic ascendancy before a collapse that led to decades of low growth. China, long an impossible-to-ignore market, has been spiraling downward. Stocks in China recently touched lows not seen since a rout in 2015, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was the worst-performing major market in the world last year. New York Times

Culture

US elite trust government more, love freedom les, than average Americans . . . Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty, and a newly published survey points to why. The survey interviewed earlier this month 1,000 members of the “elite,” which the survey defined as the 1% of Americans who met three criteria — holding postgraduate degrees, having annual household incomes of more than $150,000, and living in a high-density ZIP code. When it comes to individual freedom, 57% of all U.S. adults said the nation provides “too much government control,” while 47% of elites and 55% of Ivy League grads said “too much freedom.” The elites were also more willing to accept rationing of energy and food to address climate change. Washington Times

WWE box Vince McMahon accused of sex trafficking . . . A woman who received a payout from WWE boss Vince McMahon has accused McMahon, the company and a former executive of sex trafficking in a new lawsuit. Janel Grant, a former employee at the wrestling firm’s headquarters, said in a lawsuit filed Thursday that she was abused and sexually exploited by McMahon while he was chief executive. She alleged that McMahon lured her with promises of career advancement, and then he allegedly exploited her and trafficked her to other men inside the company. WSJ

VIDEO | Grandmother dragged to her death while trying to save her dog from an 10ft alligator

Explicit images of Taylor Swift that were generated by AI swamp social media . . . Fake, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift likely generated by artificial intelligence spread rapidly across social media platforms this week, disturbing fans who saw them and reigniting calls from lawmakers to protect women and crack down on the platforms and technology that spread such images. One image shared by a user on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed 47 million times before the account was suspended on Thursday. X suspended several accounts that posted the faked images of Ms. Swift, but the images were shared on other social media platforms and continued to spread despite those companies’ efforts to remove them. New York Times

Sofia Vergara: "My giant boobs . . . opened doors for me" . . . Sofia Vergara is acutely aware that she is revered for her good looks. She will not deny it is how she garnered fame. "It would be absurd to deny it or for that to make me feel bad," she told Spanish newspaper El País of how her body has been a gateway to success. "On the contrary, I’m grateful for [my] life," she said. "My giant boobs and my body opened doors for me; they were my passport to the world when I was 20 years old, when I started as a model, but today I’m 51 years old, and I’m still here." Fox News

Just to be clear, she doesn't literally mean she uses her giant boobs to open doors.

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