2024 Kicks Off With Insane Number of Bomb Threats at State Capitols

Six states received bomb threats to their state capitols on Wednesday morning, forcing them to stall their newly opened legislative sessions and evacuate their capitol complexes.

Those states included Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Connecticut, and Montana. No evidence of dangerous items were immediately found, officials said.

“There have been multiple bomb threats to state capitols around the nation. So far Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan & Montana,” said Georgia’s Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling in a statement on X. “Do not jump to conclusions as to who is responsible. There will be chaos agents sowing discord for 2024. They want to increase tensions. Don’t let them.”

While the mass threat against elected officials is certainly a shocking way to begin the year, it’s actually a part of a growing trend. Data reported by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education, or NCITE, Center indicates that violent threats against public officials have been on the rise since they began collecting data in 2013.

In the last decade, 501 threats against public officials have resulted in federal charges, with 80 percent of those ending in convictions, according to NCITE.

“We have had an astounding number of threats against public servants for the last several years,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told a Republican-controlled congressional committee in September.

“When they are singled out, this can lead to threats of violence and actual violence,” Garland said, referring to the armed attacker who attempted to breach the FBI’s Cincinnati office shortly after the federal law enforcement agency seized documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.

“We must not allow that to happen in this country,” he added.

Several of Donald Trump’s biggest fans seem increasingly frantic about a forthcoming list divulging the names of those who traveled on Epstein’s plane and visited his various international estates.

In social media posts and public appearances, several MAGA talking heads have made it clear that Trump’s highly anticipated presence on such a list, which is expected to contain nearly 200 names, is at the front of their minds.

On Tuesday, the former president’s son turned fingers toward Bill Clinton, who has also been photographed alongside the serial rapist.

“Everyone knows Bill Clinton was on Jeffrey Epstein’s [planes] and island a lot. Literally no one is at all surprised that he’s all over the release,” Don Jr. posted on X. “What we want to know is ALL THE OTHER NAMES that the government has been hiding & running cover for. That will actually be revealing!”

InfoWars host and Trump sycophant Alex Jones also made some noise on the issue, apparently having a hard time rationalizing how the known womanizer could have been associated with Epstein.

“I will say this, if it turns out Trump ever went to Epstein Island, I will remove any support from him,” Jones said. “But I know Roger Stone very well, and I know people that know Trump well, a lot of people, I’ll leave it at that. I know women that have dated Trump, prominent women.”

“He gets devoted to one woman at a time, gets totally obsessed with them, totally nice to them,” Jones continued, apparently ignoring the fact that Trump is due for a criminal trial this year on the basis of paying hush money to a porn star with whom he reportedly had an affair.

Other conservatives seemed equally flabbergasted at the anticipated unveiling, attempting to frame a new conspiracy to avoid confronting the reality of Trump’s behavior.

“High chance that the Epstein filings will include Donald Trump’s name. Out of context, the legacy media and TDS sufferers will pretend this isn’t because he gave willing testimony against Epstein when queried and will make believe that it makes him a pervert,” posted X user @Styx666Official to much conspiratorial head-nodding.

That’s compared to the dozens of instances in which Trump was captured in photos and vidos partying alongside Epstein and Maxwell. In one video from 1992, he is seen laughing with Epstein and pointing to young women dancing at a party.* Trump also once described the pedophile peddler as a “terrific guy.”

Other MAGA headliners were so upset by the list that they ceased making any sense at all, including Tomi Lahren, who insinuated that the list includes Trump only as a diversionary tactic.

“So, what do you think they’re going to go after Trump for next to bury the Epstein document dump and all the pedophiles on it?” Lahren posted on X. “Every time they want to cover their tracks, they go after Trump.”

The list of Jane and John Does, which was formed nearly nine years ago after Virginia Giuffre filed a defamation claim against Epstein’s girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, was originally set to be published on Tuesday but has since been postponed until after January 22, according to NewsNation.

Many of the names are expected to be publicly known Epstein associates, including employees of the financier. Other possible names to be unveiled could include Epstein’s victims as well as his clients and perpetrators. The latter will likely include some public figures who have already been explicitly tied to the sex trafficker, including British Prince Andrew and, of course, Donald Trump.

* This piece has been updated with a concrete example of Trump and Epstein being captured on camera together.

It seems that Israel is finally opening up to the idea of a two-state solution to its conflict with Palestine—so long as the second state is on a completely different continent.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition has been secretly speaking with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling thousands of Palestinians in the African nation, the Israeli outlet Zman Israel reported Wednesday.

“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security Cabinet, speaking anonymously, said.

Netanyahu and his allies floated the idea of sending Palestinians elsewhere last week, but the idea has been vehemently rejected by the international community. Moreover, Congo is unlikely to have the resources necessary to take care of such a massive influx of displaced people. More than half of the country’s population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Food Programme.

Israeli officials have made it increasingly clear in recent days that their plan is to completely eliminate Palestine. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that a way to solve the war was to “encourage the voluntary migration of Gaza’s residents to countries that will agree to take in the refugees.”

Separately, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir told reporters Monday that the war was an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”

The U.S. State Department slammed the officials’ comments as “inflammatory” and “irresponsible.”

“We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately,” department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

But it seems that Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s statements do reflect the policy of the Israeli government. Nearly all of the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been displaced due to Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of the region. Palestinians were forced to flee to designated “safe zones,” only for Israel to bomb those areas, as well.

South Africa asked the International Court of Justice on December 29 for an urgent order declaring that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly three-month assault on the Gaza Strip. More than 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children. Some organizations, such as the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, put the death toll at nearly 30,000.

Michigan’s state Republican Party is falling into complete disarray as the Michigan GOP state committee tries to remove its party chair, who claims that such a move is unlawful.

The committee has scheduled a special meeting for Saturday to vote on whether to remove Chair Kristina Karamo. But Karamo argued Tuesday that the meeting has not been lawfully scheduled, and threatened not to abide by the result of the vote.

Karamo has served less than one year of her two-year term. A 2020 election denier and ardent Donald Trump supporter, she ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2022. A few months later, she was elected as the Republican Party’s chairperson.

Her short tenure has been plagued with problems. Her fellow party members have accused her of a lack of transparency and organization, autocratic rule, and even interference with county party business.

In October, Karamo revealed the party was nearly $500,000 in debt. Her opponents slammed her for seemingly failing to do anything to improve the party’s finances.

In a sign of how little support she has from her own Republicans, eight of the 13 district chairs and her own party co-chair signed a letter calling for Karamo’s ousting.

“You were chosen as chairwoman because the majority of the Republican delegates strongly respected your commitment to a new era of transparency, honesty and meaningful involvement on the part of the State Committee,” the letter said. “Regrettably, these policies no longer seem to be a priority in your administration and the Party’s financial stability is quickly deteriorating.”

Karamo pushed back, claiming Tuesday that the meeting had not been called according to party rules. She told the Detroit Free Press that the people who called the meeting “have zero legal authority to conduct business regarding the Michigan Republican Party or its State Committee.”

Under party bylaws, 75 percent of the party must vote against Karamo to remove her. If Karamo refuses to recognize the meeting and its result, it could spark a legal battle over party leadership.

Fox News host Sean Hannity has moved to Florida from New York, citing a desire to be in a state with representatives that share his ideologies.

The far-right anchor announced Tuesday that he was already settled in his new home. He had previously recorded his shows out of his home in Long Island and would go to Fox News’s Manhattan headquarters for live shows.

“I’ve been threatening now to do this for quite a while, but we are now beginning our first broadcast from my new home, and that is in the free state of Florida,” Hannity said on his radio show. “I am out. I am done. I am finished.”

“Finally, for the first time that I can think of in my adult life, I actually have representatives in the state that I’m living in that share my values.”

Florida’s Republican Party controls the state legislature and the governor’s office. This overwhelming amount of power has allowed Governor Ron DeSantis to push through multiple extreme culture-war laws.

Hannity bragged that his new home has “warmer weather, law and order, better education, more freedom, [and] better quality of life.”

The state also has incredibly high insurance premiums as climate change batters the coastline. It has rules restricting everything from what people can wear in public to what books they can read and what bathroom they can use. It has an education system that tries to argue slavery was just a job training program. And DeSantis has antagonized Disney, one of the biggest job creators in the state, setting off a bizarre legal battle.

The move also puts Hannity much closer to Donald Trump. Despite purporting to be a journalist, Hannity appears to be a close adviser and ally to the former president. Hannity appeared onstage at a Trump rally in 2018. Two years later, Hannity helped write one of Trump’s 2020 campaign ads.