647withchuckfrank

On Election Day, ballot scanners in 44 of Westchester County's 45 municipalities refused to take voters' ballots, according to NBC News. The New York State Board of Elections blames a programming change made after the machines were tested. The county executive first blamed a printer and says up to 250,000 ballots were affected. The ballots went into orange emergency bags. Rep. Mike Lawler conceded...

Seventeen of the people arrested in a seven-day Polk County sting worked at the theme parks: 13 at Disney and four at Universal, per Sheriff Grady Judd as reported by CBS News. The operation ended with 281 arrests, including 31 people who traveled to meet what they believed was a child. Judd says Disney has fired all 13. Parents, the costume is not the character. Do you know who is standing next t...

Two days before the election, a sitting Democrat stood beside a Republican and backed him for the Senate. Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Mike Rogers over her party's nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, in Detroit on Sunday, per NBC News. By nightfall, Michigan's Democratic chair said she "is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future." Sen. Schumer called it a "despicab...

Charged with unlawful voting, and not one ballot cast. Hennepin County prosecutors have filed felony unlawful voting and identity theft charges against James O'Keefe and Cam Higby over hidden-camera videos shot at Minneapolis polling places in the August primary, per MPR News and CBS Minnesota. O'Keefe's group says neither man voted. They found a hole in the law and filmed it. Chuck asks who Minne...

Ted Bundy did it. On Tuesday, 52 years to the day after a hunter found 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith near Summit Park, Utah, Summit County named her killer. The state crime lab matched DNA from her case to a sample from another Bundy victim, and the county attorney said the evidence establishes Bundy was responsible, per KPCW and the Salt Lake Tribune. Bundy died in the electric chair in 1989. Her...

The paper straw was worse. A study commissioned by South Korea's own environment ministry compared four kinds of straws across 16 environmental measures, from the factory to the trash can. Ordinary plastic straws had the smallest impact in 10 of the 16. Paper straws scored about 6.3 times plastic on the study's carcinogenic-impact measure and about twice on acidification, per the Korea Herald and...

A crime to buy a vest. Since 2022, it has been a crime in New York for most ordinary citizens to buy or sell body armor. Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John Sinatra Jr. in Buffalo struck the ban down in a 47-page ruling, holding that body armor is an "arm" under the Second Amendment and that New York could not show a historical tradition to justify banning it, per the Buffalo News and Spectru...

A sledgehammer at the Iwo Jima statue. Last Wednesday night, police near Marine Corps Base Quantico found a man hammering the limestone flag-raising memorial; one Marine's head had been knocked off, and police put the damage in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, per Military Times and NBC Washington. A 27-year-old Stafford man is charged with three felonies and held without bond; no motive has...

The most powerful member of the Virginia Senate surrendered to federal agents Thursday. Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas was indicted with six others, two of her daughters and her grandson among them, in what prosecutors call the Lucas Enterprise: more than 100 kilograms of marijuana and about $4.5 million over five years, per the Justice Department and CNBC. The indictment says she us...

$42 million in food stamp fraud, more than 40 people charged across 13 federal districts. On Wednesday at the FBI office in Cincinnati, Vice President Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the first nationwide crackdown on SNAP fraud, uncovered in a seven-week surge that began September 1, per the Justice Department and Local 12. One case: an Atlanta rapper charged with a $4.4 million...

Up to $30,000 for a fraud tip. On Tuesday in the Oval Office, President Trump and Vice President Vance launched the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program: $25 million, run by the Justice Department, paying up to $30,000 when a tip to fraud.gov leads to a conviction or a major enforcement action, per the White House as reported by AP and NBC. Trump says he will settle disputes himself: "It'll be a...

On Monday, all four U.S. Attorney's offices in California announced Operation Protect the Vote: 28 foreign nationals charged and 11 arrested in a single day, per the Justice Department's own release and the Associated Press. All 28 are green-card holders, not citizens. Most are charged with lying on naturalization paperwork, some with fraudulently registering to vote, felonies carrying up to five...

France is burning. A nationwide cost-of-living march on Saturday turned into the worst unrest the country has seen in decades: looting and arson in city after city, 2,397 arrests in a single day and 997 police and gendarmes injured, per the Interior Ministry as reported by France 24 and ABC. In Limoges, the 1883 town hall was set on fire and is "largely lost," the prefect said. Macron on national...

When Homeland Security Investigations agents searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington home on Monday, they walked out with her cellphone, Fox News Digital reports, along with her passport, notebooks and computers, per the Wall Street Journal. The Associated Press reports more than a dozen grand jury subpoenas, some to her relatives. The Justice Department calls the warrant "judicially author...

On Monday, Homeland Security Investigations searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington home in a probe tied to her immigration paperwork. On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro went on Fox News and opened a second front, per Fox News and the Daily Caller: her office is investigating Omar's financial disclosures. Those filings showed her husband's businesses, a California winery and a venture...

On Monday the United Nations General Assembly adopted a political declaration on pandemics, 153 votes to 3, per UN News and Health Policy Watch. The three no votes: the United States, Israel and Argentina. New Zealand and Paraguay abstained. It was supposed to pass quietly by consensus in September; America objected, so it went to a recorded vote. The declaration is non-binding. It welcomes the WH...

Early Monday morning, federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations searched Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's Washington-area home, per Fox News, NBC News and CNN. Fox cameras caught agents carrying boxes out and loading them into a van. Border czar Tom Homan: "I can confirm that a search warrant was executed this morning signed by a judge." The Justice Department called it part of "an ongoing fe...

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on Face the Nation Sunday, and Margaret Brennan went after the ICE officers, not the man they shot. In the Bronx last week, officers say a 28-year-old with prior arrests for robbery and assault hit the gas toward them with his five-year-old in the back seat, and an agent fired. Brennan asked why they did not notice the child. Mullin: "We had our ba...

The Fort Hood killer's firing squad will be public. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Real America's Voice that when Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood in 2009, faces an Army firing squad on December 3, "we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things," p...

Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood in 2009, will be executed by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3, per CBS News Texas, NBC News and the acting Army secretary's own announcement. President Trump approved the death sentence on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's recommendation, and the Army set the date and the place: the post where he did...

Hispanic voters now favor Republicans for Congress 50% to 42%, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,794 likely voters taken September 24 and 27 to 30, per Rasmussen and Breitbart News. In mid-September the same pollster had Democrats ahead with Hispanic voters 44 to 42; now it is an eight-point Republican edge. Nationally, Democrats still lead the generic ballot 47 to 44, but that lead...

More than 3.1 million visa-overstay leads. 104,049 of them flagged as possible national security or public safety threats. Fewer than 500 investigations. Eight arrests. Those are the Homeland Security inspector general's own numbers for how ICE handled people who came on a visa and never left from late 2020 through 2024, per the report, Newsweek and DHS's own release. Of the highest-priority group...

Steal from Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security and you go to prison, no probation. That is what President Trump asked Congress for in a video posted Saturday, per Newsmax and RSBN: mandatory minimum sentences for benefit fraud, longer the more you steal, doubled for a second conviction. And one more piece: state and local politicians who know about fraud, have the power to stop it and do nothing...

Right here in Florida, Attorney General James Uthmeier has sued Pfizer and its CEO, Albert Bourla, personally, under Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, per Bloomberg Law and the Florida Phoenix. The complaint alleges Pfizer told people its COVID vaccine was safe while failing to disclose risks including heart inflammation, and urged people to get the shot to protect others when th...

Flydubai Flight 1073, Dubai to Tel Aviv, 174 people on board. Israeli officials say the Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane, and it lost thousands of feet in seconds, per the Times of Israel, CNBC and Newsweek. The wounded captain, Smit Machchhar, unlocked the cockpit door before he collapsed. An Israeli passenger with an aviation background, Yaniv Hayun, ran in. His wo...