"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabart, allegedly created multiple LLCs to funnel campaign contributions from various political action committees (PACs), a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint from the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) said.

"According to the NLPC, Chakrabarti's entity, Brand New Congress LLC, 'served as a "cutout," for at least $885,735 received from Ocasio-Cortez's campaign and two federal political action committees, Brand New Congress PAC and Justice Democrats PAC.'

"Under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, all expenditures of $200 or more are required to be reported to the FEC. It appears that this structure was established to skirt FEC requirements on PAC donations, which are limited to $5,000 per election cycle. ...

"'These are not minor or technical violations. We are talking about real money here. In all my years of studying FEC reports, I've never seen a more ambitious operation to circumvent reporting requirements. Representative Ocasio-Cortez has been quite vocal in condemning so-called dark money, but her own campaign went to great lengths to avoid the sunlight of disclosure,' Tom Anderson, director of NLPC's Government Integrity Project, said in a statement."

"Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ... is a self-proclaimed socialist who apparently is ready to move straight into the Stalinist phase of her political career, promising to organize purges against Democrats who don't do as she says. She's even calling herself a 'boss' these days. No doubt she's already looking for her Trotsky. ...

"That a liberal political culture cannot survive enforced homogeneity is obvious enough. The assault on free speech already is well under way, and the Democrats are poised to impose sweeping restrictions on political communication and organizing as soon as they have the votes.

"'The personal is the political,' they used to say. The slogan is intellectually flaccid but no less authoritarian and totalitarian for that. Progressives, once the partisans of 'diversity,' 'tolerance,' and social liberalism, have become the partisans of absolutism, conformism, and moral hysteria. Part of that is cynical politics: It was predictable that the same people who championed toleration when they were a relatively powerless minority would discover the attractions of homogeneity as soon as they got a taste of political power. But there is more to this than cheap opportunism: The emerging left-wing fanaticism gives every appearance of being mostly genuine. Genuinely asinine, genuinely dangerous, but genuine.

"Poor dopey gawping old Joe Biden apparently thinks he's going to get out in front of that parade, and that the red banners will be furled on his say-so. He is in for a shock. So are the rest of us. 'Voting in lockstep' isn't going to be enough for these new totalitarians. What they have in mind is living in lockstep."

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"The Green New Deal is not about stopping climate change. Climate always changes and always will. The United States has cut back on greenhouse gas emissions by about 13% since 2005 to virtually no effect on the Earth's climate. The net effect of reducing the United States' carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050 would be negligible.

"Even reduction by 100% would have little effect on the climate, but the policies proposed by the Green New Deal would make Karl Marx proud. But realize this; any draconian changes such as these would necessarily change our fundamental way of life. And that, not addressing the ills of climate change, is what the Green New Deal is all about."

"Lights, camera, Cohen. Democrats got the reality show they wanted out of President Trump's fixer-turned-enemy, with their star witness parroting the party's talking points. ...

"There was also a turn-back-the-clock quality to the spectacle. Sitting over Cohen's right shoulder was Lanny Davis, Hillary Clinton's longtime pal and now a Cohen lawyer.

"Don't tell Davis and Clinton that she lost the 2016 election. They think it's not over yet."

"Scientists searching for cures to cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other deadly illnesses may soon lose their funding, due to a misguided new proposal from Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar.

"The proposal would gradually reduce Medicare's reimbursement rate for advanced drugs administered in hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices by 30 percent. Mr. Azar claims these price controls 'will save $17 billion in Medicare drug spending over the next five years.'

"It's true that price controls would save the government money, at least initially. But they'd also deter investors from pouring money into risky, expensive -- but potentially game-changing -- biopharmaceutical research projects.

"The cuts to research funding would make it much harder for scientists to discover the cures of tomorrow. Those future medicines wouldn't just save lives -- they'd also save the government money by stemming the rising tide of chronic disease. Mr. Azar's price-control proposal is penny-wise and pound-foolish."

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"[H]ere's the brutal truth for Democrats: If Hispanic Americans are in fact showing surging approval of Trump, he could be on his way to matching or exceeding the 40 percent won by George W. Bush in his 2004. If Trump does 12 percentage points better than his 2016 numbers with the growing Hispanic vote, it pretty much takes Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina off the table for Democrats, who would need to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House. At the same time, that 12-point shift would give Trump a clear shot at winning Colorado and Nevada, states where Hispanic voters make up well over 10 percent of the electorate and where Clinton won by 5 percentage points or less in 2016.

"And if the Democratic path to the presidency looks hard without overwhelming Hispanic support, control of the Senate looks almost impossible. Any realistic scenario to gaining the necessary three seats -- four if Trump retains the presidency -- requires Democrats to defeat incumbents Cory Gardner in Colorado and Martha McSally in Arizona. Both states have higher than average Hispanic electorates. Gardner won his seat in 2014 by evenly splitting the Hispanic vote. McSally, who was just appointed to succeed John McCain, narrowly lost her 2018 race to Kyrsten Sinema by winning 30 percent of the Hispanic vote in her state. Any improvement among Hispanics for Republicans -- or even just a lack of enthusiasm for turning out to vote against Trump -- could easily return Gardner and McSally to the Senate and leave Democrats in the minority."

"While the unkillable ideological cockroach that is socialism seems to be enjoying a resurgence primarily among stupid and/or evil millennials, there are three key groups who will oppose any such transition here in America. There are ex-military folks like me who served in the ruins of socialist countries and saw the way they poison a culture (and literally the land too -- socialism is always an environmental atrocity). There are folks, like my wife, who escaped from murderous socialist hellholes -- wear your scummy Che t-shirt around her and she'll cut you. And then there are the rest of the Normal Americans who are both aware of socialism's 100 million corpse tally and who don't particularly want a bunch of aspiring campus Castros taking power and bossing them around for eternity.

"Here's the thing, and I've said it before, but I'm not worried about socialism because I'll never live in a socialist America. It either will not happen, or it will happen after I and millions of others are dead fighting for the Constitution. So, this is really not my problem, but a problem for the millennials who would have to live with it. Sadly, a lot of millennials are -- how do I put this delicately? -- really stupid and eager to create a system that empowers aspiring lil' kommisars to bully the Normals."

"In America, the left knows it can't just spring socialism on the land. They must accustom people to their most grandiose projects while maneuvering the politics and grinding away at public opposition.

"Miss Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades expect us to ridicule then ignore her silly Green New Deal while they work tirelessly to make it a reality. So unless we're willing to cede our most fundamental freedoms -- which often manifest in things like cars, air travel, hamburgers and private health insurance -- we must get as serious about their hostile takeover as they are."

"Bernie Sanders, the antique Brooklyn socialist who represents Vermont in the Senate, is not quite ready to retire to his lakeside dacha and so once again is running for the presidential nomination of a party to which he does not belong with an agenda about which he cannot be quite entirely honest.

"Progressivism in 2019 is a funny critter, indeed.

"Comrade Muppet puts on a good show, but if you want to know where his heart is, go to berniesanders.com, where you'll find a Bernie Sanders swag store and a donations link and precious little about what the candidate thinks and believes. Sanders has been around long enough to appreciate that Democratic presidential campaigns are made of rage and money, with ideas way back there somewhere near the caboose. Fresh ideas don't pay the mortgage on second and third homes, either, which must be of some interest to a man with Senator Sanders's real-estate portfolio, relatively modest senator's salary, and light professional resume."

"A review of existing federal laws makes clear that President Donald Trump has clear statutory authority to build a border wall pursuant to a declaration of a national emergency. Arguments to the contrary either mischaracterize or completely ignore existing federal emergency declarations and appropriations laws that delegate to the president temporary and limited authority to reprogram already appropriated funding toward the creation of a border wall between the United States and Mexico. ...

"Trump is operating within the bounds of a clearly defined and narrow delegation of authority within the realm of appropriations law. He has not conjured funding from thin air (the military construction and Army Corps funding has already been appropriated), nor is he using funds for purposes explicitly prohibited by Congress (to the contrary, Congress explicitly authorized the construction of a border wall). A president who attempted to unilaterally levy taxes or confiscate lawfully owned property pursuant to some declaration would not be operating within the law, and Trump's use of limited appropriations transfer authority will have no legal bearing on potential attempts by future presidents to exercise presidential authority outside the bounds of the law.

"With all that said, the entire legal debate is almost academic at this point, as courts have repeatedly assumed for themselves authority that they do not have to prohibit Trump from exercising authority that clearly belongs to him. Regardless of what the law actually says, and how previous presidents have previously used it, a federal district court judge in Hawaii or California is surely champing at the bit for an opportunity to issue a nationwide injunction against Trump's latest move under the legal doctrine of Orange Man Bad."

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