The Alley Kats vs. The Devil Dollies (QCRD)

Every kid has heard “No means no!” when they want something their parents don’t think they should have. This week that phrase got a couple high profile uses when Canada’s new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, told Donald Trump right to his face that Canada was not and never would be for sale and Montana’s Congressman Ryan Zinke forcefully said “no” to the sale of public lands in the West.

In this day and age seeing U.S. politicians keep their campaign promises — or honor their oaths of office — is becoming increasingly rare. But on “keeping public lands in public hands,” Rep. Zinke did just that.

The measure in question was part of the “big, beautiful bill” touted by Trump to give yet more tax breaks to the already wealthy. The new twist was to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of federal lands in Nevada and Utah for mining, logging, drilling and development to finance those tax breaks.

Doug Burgum, the Secretary of the Interior, has publicly declared public lands and resources as “natural assets” that can be used to pay down the national debt. Consequently, GOP Reps. Mark Amodei of Nevada and Celeste Maloy of Utah inserted the public land sale as an amendment since it was not contained in the original draft of the bill due to bipartisan opposition.

Montana’s Congressman and former Secretary of the Interior called the move to sell public lands “a red line” and was adamant: “It’s a no now. It will be a no later. It will be a no forever.’’ As Zinke explained his firm opposition: “I prefer the management scheme and I give as an example a hotel. If you don’t like the management of a hotel, don’t sell the hotel; change the management.”

At almost the same time, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney was using almost the same words in his White House meeting. After listening to Trump’s blather about how Canada should be our 51st state, how much he “loved Canada” and how erasing the “artificial” border line would make one beautiful piece of real estate, Carney used Trump’s own real estate line to fire back: “As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. We’re sitting in one right now. Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it’s not for sale, won’t be for sale,” adding: “Canada’s not for sale. It never will be for sale.”

Carney won office largely on his opposition to Trump’s intentions to take over Canada, saying during the election that: “America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

Both Zinke and Carney are dead right. Polls show 74% of Americans oppose the sale of our public lands — and Carney’s election speaks for itself. He won by fighting Trump’s nasty threat to take over our northern neighbor that 77% of Canadians oppose.

For a guy who’s always been told he can have everything he wants, the double-barrel blast should be a wake up call. The world is not one big real estate sale to be marketed solely to make greedy billionaires even more money. Kudos to Zinke and Carney — and hopefully a sign to the rest of Congress and the world that it’s time to tell our spoiled child of a president “No means no!”

The Trump administration is weighing plans to publicly release audio recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel who raised concerns about the former president’s mental acuity after an investigation into his handling of classified documents.

That’s according to Politico, which reported Wednesday that while no final decision has been made, Biden’s camp is preparing for the possible release of the audio. The recordings stem from Hur’s investigation of Biden, which triggered a political firestorm when he concluded the Democrat was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The recordings have long been sought by President Donald Trump’s MAGA allies.

“The Hur audio will confirm what is one of the biggest cover ups in American history,” Far-right legal activist Mike Davis, a staunch outside Trump ally, told Politico.

ALSO READ: ‘Pain. Grief. Anger’: Families heartbroken as Trump backlash smashes adoption dreams

Biden had made attempts to block the tapes from reaching the public, asserting executive privilege last year to prevent House committees from obtaining the recordings, the outlet added. The Biden White House had argued that making the audio public could deter future witnesses in high-profile investigations and infringe on Biden’s privacy.

According to Politico, a deadline may force the issue.

“In separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by conservative groups like Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation and various news organizations, the Justice Department has been ordered by a judge to say whether it will stand by Biden’s assertion of executive privilege to block the release of the tapes,” the publication reported.

“DOJ officials will also have to indicate whether they will continue to press other arguments for keeping the audio secret, including that disclosure would invade Biden’s privacy and that it could interfere with future investigations by making high-level officials less willing to cooperate,” according to the report.