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Hakeem Jeffries digs in on SNAP blame-game with 42 million Americans’ food benefits at risk
Government shutdown threatens food stamps for 42 million Americans as House Democrats reject the GOP’s funding bill over a healthcare cuts dispute.
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Cuomo says Trump will deploy National Guard, slash NYC funds if Mamdani wins mayor’s race
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‘Congress needs to address these serious shortfalls in our laws to protect American interests and keep foreign influence out of our politics.’
Democrat-induced shutdown poised to break record as key programs lapse
The Democrat-induced government shutdown is set to break the record for the longest shutdown in history.
Senate Democrats blocked the GOP’s clean funding resolution on September 30, initiating the government shutdown on October 1. Over a month has passed since then, with the shutdown inching toward the 35-day record after over a dozen failed Senate votes.
‘REPUBLICANS, BE TOUGH AND SMART!’
If this streak of failed votes continues through midnight Wednesday as expected, the government shutdown will have surpassed the previous record-holding 35-day shutdown from President Donald Trump’s first term.
Although neither party has indicated that a deal is on the horizon, Trump has urged Republicans to deploy the nuclear option to bring the shutdown to a close.
RELATED: Trump urges Senate to deploy the ‘Nuclear Option’ on filibuster
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, NOT JUST FOR THE SHUTDOWN, BUT FOR EVERYTHING ELSE,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “WE WILL GET ALL OF OUR COMMON SENSE POLICIES APPROVED (VOTER ID, ANYONE?) AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! REMEMBER, THE DEMOCRATS WILL DO IT IMMEDIATELY, AS SOON AS THEY GET THE CHANCE. OUR DOING IT WILL NOT GIVE THEM THE CHANCE.”
“REPUBLICANS, BE TOUGH AND SMART! THE DEMS ARE CRAZED LUNATICS, THEY WILL NOT OPEN UP OUR COUNTRY NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE IRREPARABLY HARMED!”
Trump’s calls to eliminate the filibuster would allow Republicans to pass their funding bill with a simple majority as opposed to the 60-vote threshold currently in place. Only three Democrats have consistently crossed the aisle and voted with Republicans to reopen the government, falling short of the 60 votes needed.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, an institutionalist, has always been against eliminating the filibuster. Despite pressure from the president, Thune maintains that his “position on the importance of the legislative filibuster is unchanged.”
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
While Congress shows no signs of progress, millions of Americans lost key government benefits like food assistance programs that lapsed over the weekend. Programs like SNAP affect citizens across the country, but Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is taking the opportunity to clean house, ensuring illegal aliens are not taking advantage of the program.
“I’m glad to see the Trump administration is working to get to the bottom of why 41 million people are on SNAP and why this program exploded on Joe Biden’s watch,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has repeatedly voted with Democrats against the funding bill, in a post on X. “It’s time to root out the waste, fraud, and abuse.”
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Vibe shift: No rap in the Top 40 for the first time since 1989
Kendrick Lamar’s song “Luther” has just dropped out of the Billboard Top 40, making it the first time in 35 years hip-hop is not represented on the coveted list of music.
And BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock could not be happier.
“I just want to praise Jesus for that miracle, I just want to thank God for making this happen, and I hope that hip-hop music, the current form of it, never reappears in the top 40. I think it’s an indication once again that there is a cultural shift, a vibe shift, going on in America,” Whitlock explains.
“Are we reading too much into it, or this an indication that the world is healing and people are coming out of the demonic cult of hip-hop music?” Whitlock asks his panel.
“It’s an excellent sign,” BlazeTV contributor Chad O. Jackson says.
“And I think it’s high time that something like this occurs,” he adds.
However, BlazeTV contributors Shemeka Michelle and Virgil Walker are admittedly “cynical” when it comes to it being a good sign.
“I’m happy to see that, you know, hip-hop is taking a nose dive, especially in its current iteration. You know, we grew up, Jason, in the ’80s and understood kind of the old school hip-hop, kind of the golden era of hip-hop. Then soon after that, the ‘90s came along, and we got gangster rap, and that became the new cool,” Walker says.
“If you didn’t have enough profane words in your content, if you didn’t have enough sexualizing of women in your content, you weren’t going to be a hit. And that’s only amplified over the course of the last 20 years since 2000,” he continues.
“I think it’s wonderful that for at least a moment, at least a minute, at least a point in time, we’re not going to be bombarded with that kind of crash chaos … but my thought process, kind of like Shemeka said, is that, you know, we’re gonna have to give this a few weeks or so to see if it doesn’t show up again,” he says.
“So I anticipate it’ll make a rise again,” he adds.
Want more from Jason Whitlock?
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Rapper thanks Trump for defending Nigerian Christians; president threatens to ‘completely wipe out’ their jihadi attackers
Nigeria is a fast-growing country with an estimated population of over 239 million. According to the CIA Worldbook’s 2018 estimate, roughly 53.5% of the Nigerian population is Muslim and roughly 45.9% of the population is Christian.
Despite being over 100 million strong, Nigeria’s Christian population faces brutal persecution at the hands of radical Muslim groups.
President Donald Trump, who vowed ahead of the 2024 election to “protect persecuted Christians,” made abundantly clear over the weekend that those now savaging the followers of Christ in Nigeria may soon reap the whirlwind, courtesy of the U.S. military.
While the Nigerian regime has decried Trump’s efforts to prevent further bloodshed, others have celebrated the American president’s interest in resolving yet another conflict — including Trinidadian rapper Nicki Minaj, who thanked Trump and his team on Saturday.
Background
The Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors now ranks Nigeria as the seventh-worst place for Christians in the world, noting that “Christians are particularly at risk from targeted attacks by Islamist militants, including Fulani fighters, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province).”
According to the watchdog, over 4,100 Christians were killed for their faith between October 2022 and September 2023 alone — an average of 11 Christians slaughtered every day. During that same period studied by Open Doors, over 3,300 Nigerian Christians were abducted. The situation appears to have grown more dire in the years since.
RELATED: Nigerian Christians are being murdered by Islamic radicals. This congressman has had enough.
Photo by OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT/AFP via Getty Images
A report issued in August by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law indicated that Fulani fighters and other jihadists massacred over 7,000 Christians in the first seven months of this year.
While some academics have warned against grouping the mass-killing Fulani herder-militant groups with other Islamist outfits targeting Christians — claiming their attacks are instead driven by economics or climate — the Fulani attacks appear to have a religious motive as well.
Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern and a leading expert on religious persecution, told Blaze News earlier this year that like Boko Haram, the Fulani militants, a group of traditionally nomadic cattle herders seeking greater grazing lands for their livestock, “are also driven by Islam’s practice of using violence to subjugate territories to Islam. In fact, the Fulanis are the driving force behind radical Islam’s massive land-grab of a huge swath of Africa known as the Sahel. They are motivated by a desire to rebuild a caliphate they had built in the 1700s and 1800s.”
The persecution of Christians by the Fulani militants and other radical Muslim groups has reportedly worsened since Bola Ahmed Tinubu became Nigeria’s president in 2023.
Taking action
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) and other lawmakers, confronted with indications that the situation is worsening for Nigeria’s Christians, have called on the Trump administration to take action.
“Since Boko Haram’s insurgency in 2009, more than 50,000 Christians have been murdered and more than 5 million have been displaced. Just this year, a priest was kidnapped and murdered on Ash Wednesday. 54 Christians were martyred on Palm Sunday,” Moore noted early last month. “At least 250 priests have been attacked or killed in the last decade. More than 19,000 churches have been attacked or destroyed since 2009 — averaging three per day.”
Moore, who indicated that elements of the Nigerian regime have reportedly been involved in recent anti-Christian attacks, asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. Evidently the administration similarly feels strongly about the matter.
‘If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.’
President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was applying the designation and asked Reps. Moore and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) along with the House Appropriations Committee to immediately look into the matter.
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” wrote Trump. “I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN’ — But that is the least of it. When Christians, or any such group, is slaughtered like is happening in Nigeria (3,100 versus 4,476 Worldwide), something must be done!”
The CPC designation is applied under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to nations engaged in severe violations of religious freedom. The designation can carry with it significant economic and diplomatic consequences.
Nigeria was previously slapped with the designation by the first Trump administration in 2020, but this was subsequently lifted by the Biden administration.
RELATED: Bill Maher’s shocking defense of Christians — and what it reveals
Aftermath of a terrorist attack on a Catholic Church in southwest Nigeria. AFP/Getty Images
Nicki Minaj was among those who celebrated Trump’s decision, stating, “Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God.”
“No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion,” said the rapper.
“Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice. Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.”
Republican Reps. Moore, Cole, and Mario Díaz-Balart (Fla.) noted in a joint statement, “With President Trump announcing he will be redesignating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, the United States is making clear in one resolute voice: religious persecution will not be tolerated. The scourge of anti-Christian violence and oppression of other religious minorities by radical Islamic terrorists is an affront to religious freedom. This is a critical step in mobilizing leadership and attention to confront evil extremism.”
Just in case the designation wasn’t enough, Trump threatened a military intervention in the event that the Nigerian regime fails to protect Christians.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday evening.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!” added the president.
Fresh off blowing an apparent narco-trafficking vessel to smithereens, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed the Department of War was “preparing for action.”
The promise of a reckoning clearly made officials over in the Nigerian capital of Abuja nervous.
President Tinubu rushed out a statement on Saturday claiming that his nation “stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty.
“The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians,” wrote Tinubu. “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
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