Ron DeSantis took his offensive against Joe Biden on the road this past week, appearing at a fundraising event in Nebraska to give what has the makings of a 2024 stump speech, according to Politico. DeSantis may be up for reelection next year in Florida, but his focus was national as he escalated tensions with Biden over his state's COVID-19 surge. DeSantis declared:

"My message from Florida is this: When Joe Biden violates the Constitution, when Joe Biden attacks the jobs of Floridians and Americans, when Joe Biden targets the livelihood of Florida families and American families, I am fighting back against him."

The Florida governor was not the only Republican leader to show face at the event, which was held in a Nebraska town that conveniently borders Iowa--traditionally the first state that every presidential hopeful has to trudge through en route to the White House. Mike Pence and Ted Cruz, who edged out Trump in Iowa in 2016, gave anti-Biden speeches of their own at the annual steak fry hosted by Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts.

House Democrats removed funding for Israel's Iron Dome defense system from the short-term government spending bill yesterday, in what activists hailed as "an unprecedented moment for Palestinian rights." The move came in response to pressure from progressive Congress members.

An eleventh hour request was tacked onto a bill that has to be passed in order to avert yet another government shutdown. It would have given Israel $1 billion to replenish its Iron Dome system, on top of the $3.8 billion in military aid that it already gets from the United States government.

According to Politico, the aid was opposed by the same group of House Democrats that tried to block a Biden administration arms sale to Israel back in May. This would include Rep. Ocasio Cortez, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). It's currently cosponsored by Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) , Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WI), and Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN).

A member of Congress told The Times of Israel that Ocasio-Cortez and McCollum pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to remove the funding with mediation from Rep. Rosa Delauro (D-CT).

House Republicans weren't expected to back the spending bill with or without the funding, but that didn't stop many of them from denouncing the move. House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said that Democrats were capitulating "to the antisemitic influence of their radical members."

Several emails from Hunter Biden's laptop have been confirmed as legitimate, according to Politico, citing claims in a new book, along with emails released by a Swedish government agency.

Ben Schreckinger's The Bidens: Inside the First Family's Fifty-Year Rise to Power, out today, finds evidence that some of the purported HUNTER BIDEN laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October's controversy.

A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden's emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden. The same goes for a 2017 email in which a proposed equity breakdown of a venture with Chinese energy executives includes the line, "10 held by H for the big guy?" (This person recalled seeing both emails, but was not in a position to compare the leaked emails word-for-word to the originals.)

MORE: Emails released by a Swedish government agency also match emails in the leaked cache, and two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden confirmed emails from the cache were genuine. -Politico

Recall that news of Hunter Biden's laptop was broken by the New York Post shortly before the 2020 election - resulting in a multi-week Twitter ban on the outlet, and a baseless claim spread throughout the MSM and by notable Democrats including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) that it was Russian disinformation.

Libya's House of Representatives on Tuesday withdrew confidence from the unity government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh.

The parliament decided to withdraw confidence from the government by a majority of 89 out of 113 lawmakers who attended today's session, parliamentary spokesman Abdullah Belhaiq said on Facebook. He did not give further details.

The High Council of State criticized the move, with its spokesman Muhammad Abdel Nasser tweeting that it

"rejects the procedure of withdrawing confidence from the national unity government, and considers it void for violating the constitutional declaration and the political agreement, and considers everything that results from them null."

There was no comment from the unity government on the move.

Meanwhile, 38 lawmakers signed a petition in opposition to parliament withdrawing confidence from the government, local Al-Ahrar TV channel reported. Also, mayors of 65 out of 116 municipalities in Libya announced their rejection of the motion, saying it lacks constitutional or legal basis and "aims only to sow chaos."

An axis of the CIA, Big Tech and the DNC-allied wing of the corporate media spread an absolute lie in the weeks before the 2020 election. We now have definitive proof.

A severe escalation of the war on a free internet and free discourse has taken place over the last twelve months. Numerous examples of brute and dangerous censorship have emerged: the destruction by Big Tech monopolies of Parler at the behest of Democratic politicians at the time that it was the most-downloaded app in the country; the banning of the sitting president from social media; and the increasingly explicit threats from elected officials in the majority party of legal and regulatory reprisals in the event that tech platforms do not censor more in accordance with their demands.

But the most severe episode of all was the joint campaign — in the weeks before the 2020 election — by the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party to censor and suppress a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Joe Biden. On October 14 and then October 15, 2020, The New York Post, the nation's oldest newspaper, published two news reports on Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine and China that raised serious questions about his integrity and ethics: specifically whether he and his family were trading on his name and influence to generate profit for themselves. The Post said that the documents were obtained from a laptop left by Joe Biden's son Hunter at a repair shop.

On September 21st, NPR's "All Things Considered" had a segment titled "How Ivermectin Ended Up In The Middle Of A COVID-19 Controversy" and reported by Pien Huang.

She totally ignored — didn't mention at all — the actual scientific research studies that have been done comparing the disease-outcomes of covid patients who have been receiving ivermectin versus the patients who haven't. That should have been what her report was focusing on, but instead she totally ignored that question, and the interviewer (the program-host) never even raised the question with her.

Here are those data, all of which she ignored:

Pathetic scene in Oval Office as British PM takes press questions while Biden's handlers refuse to allow him to speak

CBS News reported Tuesday that the press pool of White House reporters have launched a formal objection over the fact that Joe Biden refuses to answer any questions, with reporters routinely being yelled down and physically pushed away by Biden's handlers.

The revelation came after an embarrassing scene in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson answering questions, but Biden not being allowed to by aides.

The top U.S. military officer met with his Russian counterpart Wednesday, against the backdrop of U.S. struggles to get military basing rights and other counterterrorism support in countries bordering Afghanistan — a move Moscow has flatly opposed.

The meeting in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, between Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov comes at a crucial time in the wake of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Without troops on the ground, the U.S. needs to forge more basing, intelligence sharing and other agreements to help monitor al-Qaida and Islamic State militants in Afghanistan to ensure they are not regrouping and posing a threat to America and its allies.

The Ides of March are upon us in September, and the air is heavy with palace intrigue.

When White House officials leak damaging goodies to their allies at Politico, it's a sure sign the sinking ship is barely treading water. The rats appear to be jumping; Biden's presidency will likely not survive another year.

Via Yahoo! News:

"Anxiety about what President Joe Biden might say if he takes questions from the media drives some in the White House to mute him or turn off his public appearances altogether, Politico reported Tuesday, citing White House officials...

Biden has made frequent flubs during press events and other public appearances by losing his line of thinking, stumbling, and forgetting names...

Biden occasionally shrugs off reporters' inquiries by telling the press that his staff directed him not to take questions, suggesting officials seek to minimize the number of those incidents."

This is all an outrageous, illegitimate affront to the façade of American democracy. No voter elected the anonymous staffers/bureaucrats who control when the president can speak and what he can speak about. In a functional representative democracy, shadowy figures in the background don't get to control such issues; the people, theoretically, elect their representatives to personally work on their behalf.

For the first time newly installed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addressed the UN General Assembly meeting on Tuesday afternoon, hours after Biden spoke wherein the US president said the White House still wants a full return to the JCPOA nuclear deal "if Iran does the same". Raisi addressed the UN body via remote feed, given sanctions on him could make the trip into New York difficult.

Raisi, who has long been described as more hardline than his predecessor Rouhani, wasn't so conciliatory in his tone. He took the occasion to lash at the foreign policies of both Trump and Biden, saying "The world doesn't care about 'America First' or 'America is Back."

He blasted and mocked the "US hegemonic system" as having "failed miserably" while calling continued US-led sanctions initially imposed by former President Trump "crimes against humanity during the coronavirus pandemic." He further took the opportunity to declare the failure of the US in Afghanistan.

"One clear message was sent to the world: the United States' hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country," Raisi said. He added forcefully that "not only the hegemonist and the idea of hegemony, but also the project of imposing Westernized identity, have failed miserably."