Morning Brief: Biden’s ‘Politburo’ & Homan’s Sanctuary City Plan

Explosive new allegations about who really ran the country during Joe Biden’s presidency are shaking up Washington. Border czar Tom Homan gives us a sneak peek into his deportation plans and how ICE will handle hostile sanctuary cities. And, the Supreme Court hands a big win to an elected official in Maine who was speaking out about the state’s transgender policies.

It’s Thursday, May 22, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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Biden’s Inner Circle & Cognitive Decline Cover-Up

Topline: As new details continue to emerge regarding the White House cover-up of former President Biden’s decline while in office, the legacy media is facing new pressure for its role in the scandal.

The slow drip of stories on Biden’s decline has turned into a waterfall. On Tuesday, the authors of the new bombshell book “Original Sin” – CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson – revealed the existence of what they called a “politburo” of longtime advisors who were, if not making the decisions for President Biden, heavily influencing his decisions: Mike Donilon, Steve Burschetti, Ron Klain and Bruce Reed.

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We’ve also learned that during the 2024 campaign, Biden’s team spent millions of dollars organizing a staged town hall event, with hand-picked attendees asking friendly, pre-written questions. The plan was for clips of that orchestrated event to be used in TV ads. But according to reporting in the new book, the 90-minute event was a disaster, with Biden unable to string together coherent answers. As one staffer put it, “the man could not speak.” It was so bad that the campaign never aired any footage, blaming poor lighting instead of the president’s mental capabilities. That story and countless others have drawn outrage from folks asking just how many people were involved in concealing Biden’s cognitive decline.

Much of that outrage has been directed at the former president’s inner circle, but people are also asking questions about the media’s role. For years, many of the country’s most prominent outlets and news anchors parroted White House talking points that President Biden was totally fit for office and locked in behind closed doors. For example, just to pick a name out of the hat, in a 2020 interview with Lara Trump, Tapper himself was so incensed by claims that then-candidate Biden was showing signs of cognitive decline that he ended the interview early. Tapper has since admitted that conservatives were right all along for questioning Biden’s mental fitness.

But plenty of people don’t buy the excuse that the legacy media were totally in the dark about Biden’s mental and physical decline and believe journalists are only changing their tune now because they’re trying to save their credibility.

“Now that Joe Biden has no power anymore and can’t hurt them, now that he is a cancer-ridden old senile man, they are lining up to kick him,” author and journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon told The Daily Wire. “Acting like somehow they deserve credit for speaking truth to power now that he no longer has any more power.”

Tom Homan Tells Morning Wire His Plan To Ramp Up Deportations

Topline: Border czar Tom Homan called for the passage of the Trump budget bill that the House passed on Thursday morning, which he says is crucial to carrying out the president’s immigration agenda.

Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan spoke with Homan on Wednesday.  He made a case for why ICE needs more money to continue to secure the border, increase deportations, and clean up sanctuary cities.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on the border, but we want to keep it permanent,” Homan told The Daily Wire. “We need the money, not just for the border, but interior enforcement operations… ICE is in the hole right now. They got about 50,000 people in beds. We’re funded for 34,000. Ice is already in the hole, so if we want to continue this massive deportation operation, we need more money.”

Homan said that if Congress authorizes the spending, ICE will prioritize getting more teams on the streets and more bed space for detainees, as well as more frequent flights to remove illegal aliens from the United States more quickly.

“There’s no downside on a secure border and there’s no downside in less trafficking of women and children. There’s no downside in less fentanyl, there’s no downside in less people on terrorist watch list coming across, there’s no downside in taking billions of dollars away from the cartels. There’s no downside in removing public safety threats and national security threats from this country. We should all be on the same page. So step up, get this done. Give us the money we need so we can keep President Trump’s promise to American people alive.” 

Supreme Court Sides With Maine Republican, Restores Voting Rights

Topline:  The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with a Maine Republican after Democrats punished her for drawing attention to controversial transgender policies in the state.

Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby was censured by Democrats back in February in a party-line vote over a post she published on Facebook that highlighted a male athlete winning a state championship in the girls’ high school pole vault competition. In Maine, males who identify as transgender are allowed to participate in female sports – which, according to all polling, is not a policy supported by the American people, even in a liberal state like Maine.

“The Democrat majority in the Maine House voted to censure me and at the same time to strip my constituents of their voice and their vote,” Libby told The Daily Wire. “Following that, the censure vote is when Speaker Ryan Fecto declared that until I apologize, I would not be allowed to speak or vote on the floor.”

Libby refused to take down her Facebook post and would not apologize. For that, she’s been stripped of her right to vote and speak on the House floor for months. Libby told The Daily Wire she knew “immediately” that she had to take legal action to challenge her punishment. She lost at the district and appeals court levels, before she appealed to the Supreme Court in April. The court sided with Libby and ruled 7-2 that she can vote while her legal battle is playing out. There were only two dissents, from liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. 

The Trump administration is still fighting the state’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills over her decision to defy President Donald Trump’s executive order barring males from girls’ spaces and sports. The feds have frozen federal funding for the state, and last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a civil lawsuit against Maine’s Department of Education. 

There have also been questions raised about the network of transgender groups surrounding Mills and her family. The governor’s sister, Dora Anne Mills, is the chief health improvement officer at MaineHealth. That health system was a top donor to Mills’ 2022 gubernatorial run and offers irreversible “procedures” for gender-confused minors, such as puberty blockers, and what they call “gender affirming hormone therapy,” and “menstrual suppression.”