During a press conference in Denver on Friday, Van Hollen said he will nuke the filibuster if he is elected as Senate Majority Leader.
President Trump was right. The Democrats will nuke the filibuster and slam through their Marxist agenda without any Republican votes.
“My personal opinion is that we need democracy in the United States Senate, and that means allowing, ultimately, a majority of senators to answer the call of the American people,” Van Hollen said during Friday’s press conference.
“So, that means 51 votes. So, my personal view has been all along that the filibuster is an anti-democratic … provision. It’s not in our Constitution,” Van Hollen added.
“It was put in there by senators to enhance their power over the power of the people,” The Maryland Democrat said.
Van Hollen recently floated a 2028 White House run, but he told reporters at the press conference on Friday that he is giving that up to run for Senate Majority Leader
“Yes, I’m no longer pursuing that [White House bid]. I believe that the size and scale of these majorities provides an opportunity for the Senate to answer the call of the American people,” Van Hollen said.
(VIDEO) Rep. Tim Burchett Speaks to TGP About Potential Blackburn Senate Appointment
November 13, 2026
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) speaks to The Gateway Pundit
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) spoke to The Gateway Pundit this week about Senator and Governor-elect Marsha Blackburn’s upcoming Tennessee Senate appointment, as he has emerged as one of the top contenders for her seat.
Blackburn, the current Senator, won her race to become Tennessee’s next governor last week, and Burchett won reelection to the House. But he’s recently expressed interest in becoming the next Senator when Blackburn appoints a replacement.
Burchett told The Gateway Pundit on Wednesday he had not spoken to Blackburn about appointing him as Senator, but that he’d “like to get that opportunity.”
“I have no earthly idea,” he said when asked if he has confidence she will choose him to fill her role.
“Right now, she’s just focused, which she should be as the governor-elect. Tennessee’s a huge, huge government, but it’s not— smaller government, but it’s a lot of work, and she’ll have to— She’s laser focused right now, from what I understand, on the transition,” he said.
Asked about what he’s most excited to see from Blackburn as governor, he said, “fiscal responsibility.”
“We’re tightly– we’re a balanced budget state. I’m anxious to see her DOGE every department. It always seems we find stuff that are in there,” he said. “We’ve gotten millions of dollars, actually, when I was county mayor, so I can’t imagine what she finds in the state.”
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Previously, Burchett told The Gateway Pundit that he’s “working on” becoming the next Senator from Tennessee.
Burchett also responded to rumors that RINO Senate Leader John Thune is actively working behind the scenes to prevent Blackburn from appointing him to the seat, dismissing those reports. “I don’t think he knows who I am,” he said.
Previously, Burchett responded, telling radio host Todd Starnes that Thune’s leadership is not “what we need right now in the United States Senate.” He further said, “I love the fact that he’s not for me,” in response to the reported opposition.
“Governor-elect Blackburn’s team has announced that it’s gonna be decided in Tennessee, not in Washington, so that makes me very happy,” Burchett told The Gateway Pundit.
Deadly Brooklyn Collapse: Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Will Lead to More Maintenance Failures as Operating Costs Rise
November 13, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference after a building collapse in Brooklyn killed eight people. Screenshot from a New York City Fire Department video.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered inspections at about 100 sites across the city after a three-story apartment building at 1321 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn collapsed on Nov. 11, killing eight people, including a 9-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. The cause remains under investigation. Whatever caused this collapse, it shows what is at stake when buildings fail. Mamdani’s rent freeze makes future maintenance failures and collapses more likely by holding rents flat while the cost of maintaining buildings rises.
At about 4 p.m., the building fell into an excavation pit at 2625 Bedford Avenue, where crews were digging the foundation for a new apartment building. Two of the people killed were construction workers.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, the city Department of Investigation and the Department of Buildings have opened a criminal inquiry into the collapse. At a Nov. 12 briefing, Mamdani said that “a tragedy of this magnitude demands a comprehensive and thorough investigation that includes both the construction site and the building which collapsed.” He said the city had identified five entities involved at the construction site that were also linked to the roughly 100 other sites slated for inspection.
In March, the Department of Buildings ordered a contractor to stop demolition work on the neighboring lot. The developer continued work after receiving the order. Mamdani said he was “incredibly troubled” by a Department of Buildings report filed earlier this year that documented cracks in the Flatbush Avenue building during the permitting process for the excavation.
Crain’s New York Business reviewed a Department of Buildings document that attributed the collapse to unsafe construction work next door. The department subsequently retracted that finding and said the cause remained under investigation.
City housing records list 98 open violations at the collapsed building, ranging from bedbugs to leaks. The owner is Isolag Realty Corp. Its registered agent, Olufemi Falade, spent 12 days in jail in 2006 after a judge found him in civil contempt for refusing to fix problems at his Brooklyn buildings. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development lists the four-unit building as outside rent regulation.
Less than five months before the collapse, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted 7–1 to freeze rents on about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The June 25 vote set increases at 0% for one- and two-year leases beginning from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027. It was the first freeze on two-year leases since the board began setting rent guidelines in 1969.
The board’s own 2026 Price Index of Operating Costs, released April 9, showed that operating costs for buildings with rent-stabilized apartments rose 5.3%. Insurance costs rose 10.5%, fuel costs rose 11% and maintenance costs rose 6%.
“The Rent Guidelines Board ignored its own data and made a terrible decision tonight. Older rent-stabilized buildings are already struggling under rising operating costs, yet the Board chose to disregard those realities,” said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the city’s main landlord and developer trade group.
Mamdani campaigned on a promise to freeze rents and appointed six of the board’s nine members in February. Landlord representative Christina Smyth resigned hours before the vote. “This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater,” she wrote in her resignation letter. Arpit Gupta, an appointee of former Mayor Eric Adams, cast the lone vote against the freeze.
Austrian economists described the effects of rent restrictions nearly a century ago. Friedrich Hayek, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics, examined Vienna’s experience after World War I in his 1930 paper “The Repercussions of Rent Restrictions.” The London-based Institute of Economic Affairs later republished it in its collection Verdict on Rent Control.
Rental income pays for repairs and upkeep. When the city freezes rents while taxes, insurance, fuel, labor and materials get more expensive, owners have less money for repairs and major work after paying their other bills. They may put off work or leave units vacant when the rent would fail to cover the cost of making them habitable. Older buildings are especially vulnerable, and New York’s rent-stabilized housing is concentrated in buildings with six or more units built before 1974.
Vacancies in rent-stabilized apartments were already rising before the freeze. Gupta said more than 57,000 stabilized units sat vacant in 2025, up from about 49,000 in 2024. Some landlords say they keep units empty because the rent would fail to cover the cost of repairs. The state’s 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act originally capped the renovation costs owners could recover through rent increases at $15,000. ·
If the city continues freezing rents while operating costs rise, more owners will defer repairs and postpone major work. In older buildings already in need of repairs, that raises the risk of serious maintenance failures and future collapses.
DHS Chief Mullin Provides Updates to FAA’s Nationwide Ground Stop (VIDEO)
November 13, 2026
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon due to Air Traffic Control communication issues.
The FAA ordered all US airports to ground stop. No flights may depart, and flights already in the air will be allowed to land.
The @FAAnews issued a nationwide ground stop for all U.S. airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers. FAA technicians are investigating the issue. We will provide immediate updates as we have them.
DHS Chief Markwayne Mullin held a gaggle and told reporters that there was a ‘telecommunications outage throughout the FAA.’
Mullin also assured the public that all midair flights are safe.
“There is no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack,” Mullin said as he assured that every flight has been accounted for.
“There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure everybody is at ease about that,” Mullin said.
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“There is no reason to be concerned about your loved ones if they’re flying or anything like that, I just wanted to make sure everybody is at ease about that.” @SecMullinDHS https://t.co/Wz3iXNhwZw
A reporter asked Mullin if the ground stop is related to the rollout of a new AI traffic control system.
“There are reports that the FAA was rolling out a new A.I. traffic control system today. Has there been any link between that?” a reporter asked Mullin.
Secretary Mullin responded: “We’re looking at that. That’s part of something that obviously, through CISA at DHS, we are we’re taking a look.”
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REPORTER: “There are reports that the FAA was rolling out a new A.I. traffic control system today. Has there been any link between that?”
SEC. MULLIN: “We’re looking at that. That’s part of something that obviously, through CISA at DHS, we are we’re taking a look.” https://t.co/E5Cp5FrUZa
Later Friday, the developer of the FAA’s Smart AI rollout system said the ground stop is not based on its SMART system.
“The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC,” Air Space Intelligence said in a statement posted to X.
The current ground stop is not based on or a result of the SMART system, any product of ASI or our integration with FAA and ATC.
Leftist Groups Are Trying to Stop Workers From Owning a Piece of Anthropic
November 13, 2026
Protesters hold a “Block the IPO” banner in New York City as they call on Anthropic to cancel its initial public offering. Photo via Instagram, as published by Trending Topics.
A leftist campaign that says billionaires capture the gains from companies like Anthropic is trying to block the initial public offering (IPO) that would let ordinary Americans buy shares in the company.
Five activists were arrested on Monday, Nov. 9, after blocking an employee security entrance at Anthropic’s Manhattan offices. The protesters demanded that the maker of the Claude chatbot cancel its IPO. The next day, Anthropic launched its roadshow for an offering of 825 million shares at an expected price of $70 to $78 each. The company has applied to list on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.”
The protesters came from Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change and Planet Over Profit. Climate Defenders is a sponsor of Stop Funding Billionaires, a coalition of labor, student and community organizations that held #BlockTheIPO rallies outside Anthropic’s New York and San Francisco offices on Oct. 14.
In a press release, the coalition called on pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors to stay out of billionaire-owned corporations. Its petition sponsors include the Action Center on Race and the Economy, Americans for Financial Reform, the American Association of University Professors and #TeslaTakedown.
The petition calls on banks, pension funds and asset managers to “boycott the Anthropic IPO,” pause all investment in AI and data centers, and pledge never to use taxpayer or retirement money to bail out AI companies. It names JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick, Goldman Sachs CEO David M. Solomon, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji.
It also names New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and California State Treasurer Fiona Ma. Elizabeth Parisian of the American Association of University Professors said pension managers have a duty to shield the public from the “disastrous and fiscally irresponsible risks that Anthropic’s IPO threatens,” according to The Armchair Trader.
As a private company, Anthropic has been owned by a limited group that includes its founders and employees, venture capital funds, and corporate investors such as Google and Amazon. Once its shares begin trading on Nasdaq, individual investors can buy them through brokerage accounts, and retirement savers can gain exposure through funds that hold the stock.
The campaign’s petition claims that IPOs let “pre-IPO investors and insiders” cash out and get rich. About 801 million of the 825 million shares in Anthropic’s offering are new shares that the company is selling to raise money for itself, according to its roadshow announcement. Existing stockholders are selling the remaining 24 million shares and will keep the proceeds from those sales. Anthropic plans to use its proceeds to fund continued growth, including computing capacity, infrastructure and hiring, according to coverage of its S-1 filing.
In Gallup’s April survey, 58 percent of U.S. adults said they owned stock, either directly or through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Families can also invest in stock funds through college savings plans. The Trump Accounts program, which launched July 4, provides a $1,000 federal contribution for eligible children born from 2025 through 2028, with the money invested in stock index funds.
The campaign also complains that changes to index rules could put Anthropic shares into retirement portfolios within weeks of the listing. Under rules Nasdaq adopted in May, a newly listed company large enough to rank among the 40 biggest in the Nasdaq-100 can join that index after 15 trading days. The index tracked by Vanguard’s Total Stock Market fund can add a qualifying IPO after five trading days. If Anthropic is added to either index, workers whose retirement accounts hold funds that track it could gain an indirect stake in the company within weeks.
A public listing would also give public pension funds the opportunity to buy Anthropic shares. Protecting workers’ retirement is one of the left’s stated priorities, and allowing the IPO would give pension managers the chance to decide whether Anthropic belongs in their portfolios. Public pension plans rely on investment returns to pay benefits promised to teachers, firefighters and other public employees.
U.S. state and local pension plans are 85 percent funded and remain $1.13 trillion short. Employer contributions, which taxpayers fund, have reached 31.83 percent of payroll. The campaign is asking managers of these underfunded plans to pass up one of the largest stock offerings in history.
Several public pension plans already have indirect stakes in Anthropic. Plans in Los Angeles, Orange County, Massachusetts and South Carolina invest in funds managed by Spark Capital, Anthropic’s first venture capital backer. Spark invested about $777 million in the company, and The Information estimated, based on an analysis of filings, that the stake could be worth $9 billion or more at the IPO price. A public listing would give Spark Capital a way to sell shares and realize gains for the pension plans and other investors in its funds.
New York City’s pension funds have about $7 million invested in Anthropic through private equity, according to the comptroller’s office. Levine, a Democrat who oversees the city’s pension funds with more than $325 billion in assets, urged Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to pause the IPO over safety and governance concerns in an Oct. 14 letter. “Instead of proceeding headlong with its IPO, the company should focus its energies on addressing these unprecedented risks,” the letter states. Anthropic opened talks with Levine after receiving the letter.
Anthropic’s expansion has also increased its headcount and spending. The company had about 5,300 employees as of Sept. 30, 2026, up from about 940 at the end of 2024, according to reporting on its SEC filing. Anthropic reported more than $1.7 billion in third-quarter personnel expenses, including salaries, bonuses, benefits and employer payroll taxes.
Its amended filing showed a $417 million provision for income taxes for the first nine months of 2026. The company spent $9.86 billion on computing and infrastructure in the third quarter and reported about $895.4 billion in future purchase and lease commitments.
Blocking the IPO would keep Anthropic shares off the public market. Its existing private investors, including public pension funds with indirect stakes, would retain their holdings. Individual investors would lose the opportunity to buy shares on Nasdaq.
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