Random News and Notes 18 July

Voice of America is a federally funded broadcaster that provides programming outside of the US. Seth Jason used to be an employee of VOA. Now he has been indicted for making eight calls over the last 15 months threatening GA Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, her staff, and their families. These calls were allegedly made from inside the VOA offices.

. . . families. The calls were made from INSIDE the offices and studios of VOA. It’s starting to make a lot of sense why Kari Lake decided VOA had become so corrupt and radical that it needed to be completely dismantled.

As of this writing, the motive for the threats is unclear.

I must have missed the beginning of this next piece because I just don’t recall anything about it. A couple of weeks ago, in the beginning of July, a woman in California claimed to have been abducted by ‘bounty hunters’ working for ICE. Juliana Calderon is a Mexican national in the US illegally. She claimed she was taken to a warehouse near the Mexican border and pressured to sign self-deportation papers. The problem? The whole thing was a hoax.

ICE and DHS do not use bounty hunters and neither agency had any record of Calderon being in their custody. That said, she is now in custody and US attorney Bill Essayli says she’s facing charges and likely deportation over the hoax and that the DOJ and FBI are looking to charge anyone who aided her in the scheme.

The $9 billon rescission bill I’ve been talking about passed the House last night and now heads to President Trump’s desk. The vote was 216-213, with two Republicans voting against it.

The passage of the bill marks the first time since 1999 that rescission has been used to trim spending. Hopefully it is the first of many.

CBS has cancelled the Late Show with Steven Colbert. There will n it be a replacement. The host announced the news during last night’s broadcast. Cue the weeping, gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts. The left is up in arms about the move. CBS says it is a financial decision.

Colbert was drawing less than 200k viewers on average. So the financial aspect is surely believable. Then there is the changing media landscape. A lower-mid tier YouTuber draws more eyes than Colbert.

Anyway, good riddance.

This just broke as I was going to publish this piece, and any info is fragmentary and incredibly incomplete. There has been an explosion at the LAPD training facility in East LA.

If and when more info becomes available, we will update or publish a new piece about it.