Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

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Title 42 Set to Expire as Thousands of Migrants Approach Southern Border

Title 42, a Trump-era public health order that gives the government power to automatically expel illegal immigrants, is set to expire on May 11, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

With the expiration of Title 42, all illegal immigrants will be processed under the Title 8 immigration law that is more involved and a longer process.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), a Democrat, told The Epoch Times that Title 42 has been ineffective in keeping illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States.

“Title 42, you just expel people and there are no repercussions; they can come right back,” Cuellar said. “Under Title 8, there are some teeth, which means if someone is deported, there will be a five-year, 10-year, 15-year, 20-year ban or more, which means they cannot come back into the country.”

President Joe Biden said in January that his administration will return to the Title 8 order once Title 42 is rolled back: “It’s—my prediction is—it’s not—there’s nothing particularly insightful about this: Title 42 is going to go away before the end of the year, in terms of the Supreme Court, in my prediction. And then we’re going to have to use Title 9—Title 8.”

The Biden administration was quick to roll back many of his predecessor’s border security measures. The rules were introduced as an emergency health measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The Caravan

The removal of Title 42 comes as thousands of illegal immigrants have been moving in a caravan throughout Mexico to reach the U.S. border and 1,500 hundred troops have been sent to the border by the Biden administration.

“These characters will likely try to enter the United States by force, so the protocol of the border, which is to safeguard and protect the passage, will be put to the test,” Juan Rojas, a member of the Mexican National Guard, told The Epoch Times.

An estimated over 3,000 migrants from at least 50 countries, including China, will be marching to the U.S. border after Title 42 is rolled back, but the actual figure could be larger than that.

Mexico has recently granted the migrants free passage through the country by giving them visas to expedite their way to the U.S–Mexico border.

“The institute entered into dialogue with the members of the caravan who are in Villa Comaltitlán, Chiapas, with whom it was agreed to set up a processing table to grant them, if they so request, the Multiple Migration Form (FMM) for humanitarian reasons,” the Instituto Nacional de Migración of Mexico stated.

This provides the migrants with the same protections that a U.S. citizen would have while traveling through Mexico.

Sources told The Epoch Times that they’ll most likely be controlled or directed by criminal cartels in Mexico and possibly ushered to Juárez, Mexico, which is directly across from El Paso, Texas. That’s the area where a detention facility caught fire in March, killing at least 40 illegal immigrants this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

During Fiery Hearing, GOP Senators Blast Democrats’ ‘Unseemly Efforts’ to Delegitimize Supreme Court

During a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Republicans shot down their Democrat colleagues’ efforts to intimidate and delegitimize the Supreme Court.

The Democrat-led “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” hearing was held amid a partisan media campaign accusing conservative justices of ethics violations and conflicts of interest.

Corporate media hit pieces in recent weeks have focused on Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, accusing them ethics violations, while ignoring the allegedly larger ethics violations of liberal justices, the Wall Street Journal editorial Board argued on Monday.

WSJ writers have “examined and debunked” multiple MSM reports accusing Thomas and Gorsuch of various ethics violations in recent weeks, and have concluded that the attacks have been part of a larger effort to subject the Court to more political control.

The first sign that this is all politics is the context for the hearing. Note that it’s been triggered by easily debunked reports about the conservative Justices, especially claims that Justice Thomas didn’t properly disclose certain financial transactions.

But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t get the same attention when she revised her financial disclosures in 2022. Her oversights were far more extensive than Justice Thomas’s. There was also no outcry in 2020 when Justice Sonia Sotomayor amended her financial disclosures after the group Fix the Court found that she hadn’t disclosed reimbursement for trips to universities.

Nor was there an uproar when the OpenSecrets website reported in 2019 that former Justice Stephen Breyer was reimbursed for trips some 219 times from 2004-2018. Some of those trips were supported by the wealthy Pritzker family. There are other examples involving liberal Justices.

To be clear, we believe none of these Justices did anything wrong. But neither did Justice Thomas in having a rich friend in Harlan Crow or a minor oversight on one of his disclosure forms.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demolished the Democrats’ hyped accusations against the conservative justices by detailing the hundreds of trips Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor have taken over the years. “None of my Democrat colleagues care because this is a political attack directed at a Justice they hate,” he argued.

WATCH: Sen. Ted Cruz debunks the left wing hypocritical smear of Justice Clarence Thomas.

RBG, appointed in ’93, 157 trips, 28 international trips.Stephen Breyer, appointed in ’94, 233 trips, 63 int trips.Justice Thomas, appointed in ’91, just 109 reported trips, 5 int trips. pic.twitter.com/nnCcvZmDc5

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 2, 2023

“This assault on Justice Thomas is well beyond ethics,” said Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “It’s about trying to delegitimize a conservative court that was appointed through the traditional process.”

As part of their partisan efforts to politicize the court, according to the WSJ, Democrats “have been floating proposals to impose a new ethical code on the Justices” with an outside monitor answerable to Congress to enforce it. Use of such a monitor would be “unconstitutional” the Journal argued, and would “inevitably become a political weapon to attack unpopular Justices and intimidate the Court.”

“Not only is this Democratic proposal unconstitutional, it’s unnecessary,” said Senator John Kennedy during the hearing Tuesday. “The attacks on conservative justices are targeted, they are exaggerated, their alarmism is affected,” he added. The danger isn’t that rogue Justices are operating without ethics. It’s that Democrats aren’t winning every fight and they find that reality intolerable,” Kennedy said.

.@SenJohnKennedy: “The danger isn’t that rogue Justices are operating without ethics. It’s that Democrats aren’t winning every fight and they find that reality intolerable.” pic.twitter.com/MsjbRgneIy

— Senate Republican Communications Center (@SRCC) May 2, 2023

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) detailed the left’s “thuggish” intimidation campaign to influence the Court.

“The truth is, the Left simply disagrees with the decisions issued by our current Supreme Court—and they obviously can’t persuade the American people to adopt their radical policies through legislation—so they are attempting to destroy the Court’s credibility and intimidate the Republican-appointed justices and their families,” Lee argued. “They’re making clear that justices who disagree with them will pay a price—one that the Left will ensure is very high. This is all just a thuggish shake-down. ‘Nice Supreme Court, ya got there, America—it sure would be a shame if something happened to it.’”

Lee cited Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who in 2020, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and bellowed: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released he whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Flashback to Chuck Schumer in 2020:

“I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh — you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you.”pic.twitter.com/35rcQVp3sY

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 2, 2023

In another attempt to intimidate the court in August 2019, according to Lee, five Democrat Senators, including four members of the Judiciary Committee, submitted the following threat in an amicus brief: “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.”

Since the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion one year ago today, the justices and their families have endured constant protests at their homes, their churches and their children’s schools, and even an assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh. Of course, when I say “the justices” in this context, what I really mean is “those justices who joined the majority opinion in Dobbs,” as only the dissenters have been spared of the rage-machine’s bullying threats and intimidation tactics. As Justice Alito recently noted, the Dobbs leak made Justice Alito and those among his colleagues deemed likely to be joining the opinion he authored “targets of assassination.” As Justice Alito explained, “it was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”

Astoundingly, Democratic Senators are now threatening to defund the Supreme Court Police’s protection of the justices and their families unless they enact the specific “ethics reform” measures that those Senators demand. All of these tactics are meant to harass and intimidate the Court—specifically, the justices appointed to the Court by Republican presidents—and force them to force the Left’s radical policy agenda on the American people by judicial fiat.

The left has coordinated these attacks with the increasingly compliant, left-wing media. If you just read articles from sources like The New York Times, Politico, and outlets like the George Soros-funded ProPublica, you’d think Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican president were universally and reckless and corrupt, and that those nominated by Democrats were universally conscientious and virtuous.

Lee went on to shame Democrats for continuing their “high-tech lynching” of an “uppity black” that they started 31-years ago. “The place where a Black boy born into poverty in the segregated South could become one of the greatest, most respected jurists in our nation’s history,” he said.

We now have the Radical Left trying to jackhammer the very foundation of our judicial system—impartiality and adherence to the rule of law—because they disagree with the outcome of a few cases. This isn’t democratic or ethical. Nor is it part of a sincere effort to improve our judicial system or remedy an actual problem. No—this is a progressive temper tantrum. It’s a toxic, highly partisan solution in search of a problem.

I remain confident that Justice Thomas will not be intimidated by the latest attacks, and for that I’m grateful. As he said in 1991: “I will not be scared. I don’t like bullies. I have never run from bullies. I never cry uncle and I am not going to cry uncle today whether I want to be on the Supreme Court or not.”

Graham pointed out that in 1998, Democrats had no problem when Justice Ginsburg donated a signed decision to be auctioned off at fundraiser for the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense Fund.

2/ and here is excerpt from law review article noting that RBG personally donated this signed copy. pic.twitter.com/pO32KqKFDo

— Mark Paoletta (@MarkPaoletta) May 2, 2023

Graham asked Amanda Frost, professor of law at American University, whether “all hell would have broken loose” in this country had Justice Alito donated the signed Dobbs opinion to a pro-life group. Frost replied that such a donation “would certainly be a problem,” and added that this is why it’s so important for Congress to play an “active role” in monitoring SCOTUS.

“Why didn’t all hell break loose in 1998?” Graham demanded. “I think we all know the answer to that.”

Senator Graham pointed how Justice Ginsburg’s 1998 donation of her signed VMI decision that went on to be auctioned off at fundraiser for the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense Fund received no outage.

And he asked witnesses how a hypothetical scenario of Justice… pic.twitter.com/IO2iFDxhYP

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) May 2, 2023

Graham also argued that the Democrat response to SCOTUS’s conservative majority has been to try and pack the court. “Virtually every member of the Democratic caucus except maybe one or two are for expanding the number of judges to dilute the conservative majority that exists today,” the senator said.

“So Mr. Chairman, from our point of view, this is not going to work. You can write all the articles you want to write. You can take all the shots that the conservative justices you want to take. You can picket before their houses, and it’s not gonna stop people from doing their job,” Graham continued.

“This is an unseemly effort by the Democratic left to destroy the legitimacy of the Roberts Court, it’s put people at risk, it’s put their personal safety at risk,” he said.

“We’re going to push back as hard as we can, and tell the American people the truth about what’s going on here,” Graham said. “This is not about making the court better. This is about destroying a conservative court. It will not work.”

SOURCE: Firebrand News

What If 1 Day the Federal Workforce Just Disappeared? Turns Out, It Has

As of Wednesday, it’s been 1,143 days since workers across the country were sent home in an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. It’s been 692 days since the Biden administration issued a plan for “an effective, orderly, and safe increased return of Federal employees and contractors to the physical workplace” and 227days since President Joe Biden declared that “the pandemic is over.”

But enter any federal agency’s office building in downtown Washington, and you’re likely to find a skeleton workforce, reminiscent of the early months of the pandemic.

Remote work and flexibility can be a win-win for certain businesses and workers, but only under certain conditions.

Not all jobs can be done remotely. Some require a combination of remote and in-person work, and most remote work necessitates flexibility to respond to changing needs.

That’s why the attempts by unions for federal employees to impose one-size-fits-all remote work policies across entire agencies are so problematic.

Take the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example. While the American Federation of Government Employees is trying to finalize a permanent telework program, employees are required to come in to work only four times during each two-week pay period.

If that policy becomes permanent, will the aggrieved workers whom the EEOC serves have access to in-person representation only two days a week? The federal government can’t operate effectively if federal employees have the right to refuse to show up in person when needed.

That seems to be a problem currently, as the government’s effectiveness reached an all-time low for serving veterans, processing tax returns, approving passport applications, and other services.

The other key component of productive remote work policies is accountability. But accountability is anathema in the federal workforce.

According to a study by the Office of Personnel Management, almost 80% of all federal managers say they have managed a poorly performing employee, but fewer than 15% issued less than fully successful ratings for problematic employees and only 8%  attempted to reassign, demote, or remove problematic employees. Of the mere 8% who attempted to impose accountability, fully 78% said their efforts had no effect.

Some lawmakers who are paying attention have tried either to restrict or end this practice. In 2021, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., urged “immediate action to transition federal workers to resume in-person operations.”

The latest effort, a bill introduced in January by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has passed the House and been sent to the Senate, where it awaits a likely early death at the hands of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Comer’s “SHOW UP Act” (using an acronym for Stopping Home Office Work’s Unproductive Problems) would prevent the Biden administration from cementing outdated telework policies until Congress is supplied with a reasonable plan to avoid the negative effects of telework and require federal agencies to study those effects on each agency’s mission.

And it’s not just senators and congressmen who have flagged this need to return to normality. Even Biden has agreed that federal workers should return to the office to restore downtown traffic and commerce in the nation’s capital. The problem is that the president’s plan is just that—a plan to require agencies to produce plans, with zero consequence for not following through with those plans.  

Note that many in the private sector have moved past mass telework policies. Among those, Elon Musk has led the charge by requiring Tesla employees to spend 40 hours a week in the office or resign. Other large companies insisting on in-person office work include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Netflix.

It seems as if the COVID-19 pandemic is over for everyone but for federal workers in Washington, D.C.

Officials have wasted taxpayers’ money on paying for inefficient telework and mostly empty office buildings in the nation’s capital, about a third of which are leased by the federal government.

The most intense defense of telework comes from labor unions, which have succeeded in introducing remote work policies in federal employee union agreements, making it increasingly difficult for agencies to require employees to return to the office.

There is no denying that federal agencies are falling short of their missions. It is the duty of government employees to serve the taxpayers, not themselves.

Until federal government ends its mass telework policies, the government will continue to let the American people down.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post What If 1 Day the Federal Workforce Just Disappeared? Turns Out, It Has appeared first on The Daily Signal.

SOURCE: Firebrand News

Dem Rep Sold Stock in Collapsing Bank and Picked Up JPMorgan Shares Right Before Acquisition, Disclosures Show

Rep. Lois Frankel sold her First Republic Bank stock weeks before bank’s collapse

Florida Democratic representative Lois Frankel is capitalizing on First Republic Bank’s collapse and subsequent buyout by JP Morgan Chase & Co, according to congressional financial disclosures reported on by Newsweek.

Frankel sold her stock in the San Francisco-based bank on March 16, weeks before the value of its shares dropped 75 percent and U.S. regulators seized the failing bank’s assets, Newsweek reported. A few days later, on March 22, Frankel bought stock in JP Morgan Chase & Co, which on Monday bought most of First Republic Bank’s assets. The exact amount of stock Frankel traded is unknown, but according to the filing, the value for each trade was between $1,001 and $15,000, Newsweek reported.

Frankel’s shrewd trading fuels mounting criticism of members of Congress buying and selling stocks, which allows them to profit from industries they are supposed to regulate. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D., Ore.) and John Curtis (R., Utah) also reported trading First Republic Bank stocks before its collapse. Several members of Congress have introduced legislation to ban congressional stock trading.

“My account is managed independently by a money manager who buys and sells stocks at his discretion,” Frankel said in a statement to Newsweek.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Non-Law Enforcement Agencies Like IRS and EPA Spend Billions on Guns and Ammo, Watchdog Says

Federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency have spent nearly $4 billion in taxpayer funds on guns, ammunition, and other “military-style equipment,” a watchdog group found.

Since 2006, “76 rank-and-file agencies” outside “traditional law enforcement entities” or the Department of Defense spent $3.7 billion on “guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment,” according to watchdog group Open the Books’s summary of its report. These agencies include the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Small Business Administration, among others that historically have played little to no role in law enforcement activities.

Federal agencies have ramped up spending on weapons and ammunition under the Biden administration, according to data provided to the Washington Free Beacon. The IRS has seen its annual spending on these items nearly double since 2020, while the whole federal government has seen a 60 percent increase over the same period.

The report comes as the Biden administration works to hire 87,000 new IRS employees, raising alarms across the country that the government is stepping up its tax enforcement of rank-and-file Americans. Republicans have sounded the alarm on this policy and others like it as examples of the federal government being “weaponized” against the American people.

This weaponization is part of a longer pattern, according to Open the Books founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski.

“A culture of militarization has permeated across the federal bureaucracy,” Andrzejewski said in a statement. “In many cases, these agencies are stockpiling the very weapons some politicians seek to ban citizens from owning.”

The IRS is now known to have spent a total of $35.2 million on various weapons since 2006, including about $725,000 on ammunition in 2022 alone. The agency’s weapons purchases peaked in 2020 and 2021, when the government authorized the tax agency to purchase “$10 million in weaponry and gear.”

Around 2,100 IRS agents have “firearm authority,” and around 600 more will be given this power as the tax collection agency expands as part of the Biden administration’s budget. Prior to a COVID-era budget increase, the IRS “owned 4,500 weapons, including AR-15 rifles, submachine guns, and 5 million rounds of ammunition,” the report found. The IRS is now the general size of the 50 largest police departments in America.

“It’s not only the IRS, but dozens of other rank-and-file administrative federal agencies,” Andrzejewski said. “So, just who are they preparing to battle?”

NIH’s internal police force includes 105 officers, which is larger than 95 percent of the police departments across the United States, according to the report. “This includes sophisticated training, night vision equipment, and weaponry,” Open the Books noted.

The Office of Assistant Secretary for Health also “is involved in the purchase of $100 million in guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment,” the organization found.

The federal government now employs more than 200,000 agents with “arrest and firearm authority,” according to the report.

The IRS and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Difficult To Describe With Words’: CNN Reporter Stunned By Number of Illegal Immigrants In Texas City

A CNN reporter was left stunned by the number of illegal immigrants in El Paso, as the Texas city and dozens of others across the country struggle to address record migration.

“It’s difficult to describe, Jim, with words … the magnitude of the number of individuals,” reporter Rosa Flores said from a church in El Paso, where Democratic mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of emergency this week ahead of the May 11 end of Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that allowed agents to turn migrants away at the border. Outside the church, CNN’s camera captured dozens of migrants sitting on the sidewalk and street. The Biden administration is deploying troops to assist with administrative duties at the border when Title 42 ends.

“We are getting prepared now for what we call the unknown,” said Leeser, who anticipates thousands of migrants to flood El Paso in the coming weeks.

The increased mainstream media coverage of the border crisis comes as more Democratic politicians speak out about the struggles in their cities. 

New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) lashed out at Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) Tuesday for sending migrants to New York and other “black-run cities.”

“This weekend, we learned that Governor Abbott is once again deciding to play politics with people’s lives by resuming the busing of asylum seekers to New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, D.C.,” Adams said Monday. “It is also impossible to ignore the fact that Abbott is now targeting five cities run by Black mayors. Put plainly, Abbott is using this crisis to hurt Black-run cities.”

Lori Lightfoot (D.), the outgoing mayor of Chicago, said her city is “tapped out” of resources for migrants.  

Despite the comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre falsely said Monday that illegal immigration has decreased “by more than 90 percent.” Her comments mirror similar declarations of confidence in border security from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Illegal immigration actually hit a record high in 2022 of 2.76 million encounters. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WATCH: Karine Jean-Pierre Struggles To Explain Why Biden Is Sending Troops to the ‘Secure’ Border

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to explain why the Biden administration needs to deploy troops to the border that she has described as “secure.”

“Because we need more work. We need more—work needs to be done,” Jean-Pierre said Tuesday when asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy why, if the border is secure, the administration is sending the military. “Republicans in Congress refused to act. …We are putting … forth processes to deal with the changes that are going to be ahead of us.”

Jean-Pierre’s attempt to downplay the administration’s Tuesday decision to deploy 1,500 active-duty troops to the border ahead of an expected surge in migration this month came a day after she falsely claimed that “illegal immigration” has “come down by more than 90 percent.” Illegal immigration actually hit a record-high in 2022 of 2.76 million encounters.

Jean-Pierre has repeatedly claimed the situation at the southern border is not out of control and said she agreed with Vice President Kamala Harris’s claim that the border is “secure.”

In spite of repeated assurances by Jean-Pierre, Harris, and Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the border is secure the administration plans to send 1,500 active duty troops to the border ahead of the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that allows border agents to turn away migrants. The troops will assist agents with administrative duties, Politico reported, joining 2,500 National Guard troops already deployed at the border.

Hundreds of Department of Homeland Security staffers are also shifting focus ahead of an anticipated border surge, receiving training this week to help in catch-and-release efforts through May and June.

“Once again, the Biden administration is using the rest of the government to wave more migrants through,” a senior Homeland Security official told the Washington Free Beacon on the condition of anonymity. The administration has given $290 million to a George Soros-linked nonprofit that works to help illegal immigrants fight deportation.

Jean-Pierre on Tuesday also attempted to defend her claim that “illegal migration” has “come down by more than 90 percent.” She said that she was referring to an immigration parole program instituted by President Joe Biden, which allows non-citizens with a family member in the United States to apply to legally enter the country to join them.

“I was speaking to the parolee program. … The president put in place a parolee program to deal with certain countries on ways that we can limit illegal migration” Jean-Pierre said. “The data has shown us that it has gone down by more than 90 percent.”

It’s unclear what data Jean-Pierre was referring to, since data from Customs and Border Protection show border encounters in recent months are on track with last years record-breaking numbers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

DOE Set To Award $200M Grant to Battery Maker Run by Chinese ‘Talent Program’ Recruit

FBI warns that Chinese use talent recruitment programs for economic espionage, theft of trade secrets

The founder of a lithium battery company poised to receive a $200 million grant from the Biden administration was once brought to China through a Chinese Communist Party program that the FBI warns is used for economic espionage.

The founder and chief executive officer of Microvast, Wu Yang, in 2000 was recruited to move back to China from the United States as part of a Chinese government-sponsored “talent program.” The grant to Microvast could conflict with the stated policy of the Department of Energy, which plans to boost the company with the massive green energy grant. A DOE official said in February that the department is “prohibited” from funding people who are involved in foreign talent programs.

The Department of Energy has faced criticism from lawmakers for months over its proposed $200 million grant to Microvast to build a battery separator facility, after the Washington Free Beacon reported late last year that the company operates primarily out of China. While the administration in a pre-election press release last October portrayed the funding as a done deal, the department now says the grant is still under review.

But the Microvast CEO’s participation in a talent recruitment program could complicate the deal further. Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), who first noted Wu’s participation in the Chinese program, is urging Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to “immediately terminate [the department’s] award negotiations with Microvast, Inc.”

Barrasso says there is “clear evidence that the founder, chairman, and CEO of Microvast participated in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talent program designed to entice overseas talent to return to China for the benefit of the CCP.” These programs work to entice high-achieving individuals to move back to China—but the Chinese Communist Party often uses them to “encourage trade secret theft [and] economic espionage,” according to the FBI.

The United Front Work Department of the Huzhou municipal government—a local branch of China’s national “United Front” overseas influence operation—in a 2017 press release lauded Wu for his involvement in the talent program. According to the release, Wu was recruited by a local talent program called the “South Taihu Lake Elite Project.”

“In 2000, he responded to the ‘South Taihu Lake Elite Project’ and returned from the United States with $3 million in his pocket,” the press release said. “In 2006, he established Weihong Power System (Huzhou) Co., Ltd., specializing in the R&D.”

Should Wu’s participation be confirmed, it could tank Microvast’s grant, which was awarded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021.

Granholm deputy David Turk in February assured the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that “any persons participating … in a foreign government-sponsored talent recruitment program … [are] prohibited from participating in projects selected for federal funding.”

The Energy Department declined to comment, but it directed the Free Beacon to Granholm’s remarks during a Senate hearing last month.

“We are very vigilant about making sure that no taxpayer dollars go to any state-owned enterprise or Chinese-influenced company,” Granholm said. “That particular [Microvast] award is still under negotiation, and we’ll get back to you on the final conclusions on that.”

Barrasso said the department’s failure to identify problems with Microvast calls into question its entire grant-awarding process, and he argued that grants should be “suspended until a robust, pre-selection security review process for awardees is finalized by your department with input from other members of the intelligence community.”

“DOE’s distribution of $200 million in taxpayer funds to a company joined at the hip with China is demonstrably antithetical to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s intent,” Barrasso said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

RFK Jr. Says Climate Change Being Exploited to Push ‘Totalitarian Controls’

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that climate-related issues are being “exploited” by wealthy individuals in a bid to enact “totalitarian controls” over society.

“Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by … mega billionaires” like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Kennedy told radio host Kim Iversen over the past weekend. “The same way that COVID was exploited to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society and then to give us engineering solutions.”

“And if you look closely, as it turns out, the guys who are promoting those engineering solutions are the people who own … the patents for those solutions,” Kennedy said during Iversen’s show. “It’s a way they’ve given climate chaos a bad name because people now see that it’s just another crisis that’s being used to strip mine the wealth of the poor and to enrich billionaires.”

“I, for 40 years, have had the same policy on climate and engineering,” said Kennedy, the scion of former Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. “You can go check my speeches from the 1980s, and I’ve said the most important solution for environmental issues [is] not top-down controls, it’s free market capitalism.”

Kennedy—a longtime environmental activist and lawyer—wrote in a 2014 blog post for corporations and other groups that “sponsor climate lies” should face punishment. But he wrote that he “support[s] the First Amendment which makes room for any citizen to, even knowingly, spew far more vile lies without legal consequence” before adding at the time: “I do, however, believe that corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously, and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty,” Kennedy wrote for EcoWatch.

Kennedy’s comments about climate change years ago were highlighted by Fox News and other right-leaning publications after he declared his candidacy for president last month. Although he’s better known for his comments about childhood vaccines, Kennedy worked as an environmental lawyer for New York City and also for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Also in the Iversen interview, Kennedy suggested that other than Gates, the World Economic Forum is also exploiting climate-related policies to produce a totalitarian society. The Davos, Switzerland-based group hosts annual meetings each year that include world leaders and top business executives, while in January, speakers at the forum said that governments and businesses should pursue a “net-zero” policy around carbon emissions and that people don’t need cars.

“What we have in this country now is not free market capitalism—it’s corporate crony capitalism. It’s … a cushy kind of socialism for the rich and a brutal, barbaric, merciless capitalism for the poor,” Kennedy also stated in the interview.

Kennedy filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to launch his 2024 bid on April 5. He’s joining self-help writer Marianne Williamson as well as President Joe Biden, who announced his reelection bid last week via campaign video.

When he announced his 2024 candidacy, Kennedy said that he has a desire to work with “rural and working-class Americans, and particularly hunters and fishermen.” Those individuals, he said, have been “alienated from the mainstream environmental community.”

He’s also said that he’s running because he believes Democrats have gone astray, becoming the “party of war,” corporate interests, and “censorship.”

While Biden remains the favorite to win the Democratic nomination for president, a Fox News poll recently showed Kennedy has around 20 percent support among Democrat voters. He also recently drew headlines after being interviewed by ABC News and accused the Disney-owned broadcaster of censoring his comments about vaccines.

“We should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines,” ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis said last week after his presidential announcement. “We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including portions of that exchange in our interview.”

On social media, however, Kennedy accused the network of violating federal election laws by editing out his remarks about vaccines. “ABC showed its contempt for the law, democracy, and its audience by cutting most of the content of my interview with host Linsey Davis leaving only cherry-picked snippets and a defamatory disclaimer,” Kennedy said.

“I’m happy to supply citations to support every statement I made during that exchange. I’m certain that ABC’s decision to censor came as a shock to Linsey as well. Instead of journalism, the public saw a hatchet job,” he added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Sales Crash as Company Reports Drop in Revenue

Pfizer’s revenue dropped in the first quarter of 2023 primarily due to flagging COVID-19 vaccine sales.

The company reported $18.3 billion in revenue, down from $25.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022. Pfizer made just $7.1 billion from its COVID-19 vaccines and the COVID-19 pill after reaping more than $56 billion from the products in 2022.

The drop in COVID-19 product sales was expected, company officials said.

As Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was expected to tell investors in an earnings call: “Our financial results were as we anticipated. Our non-COVID revenues grew 5 percent operationally compared with the year-ago quarter, while overall revenues declined 26 percent operationally primarily due to a previously communicated and expected decline in Comirnaty revenues.”

Pfizer and other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have been dealing with decreased demand amid plunging effectiveness and lower levels of COVID-19 in various countries. The company said in its 2022 report that it could not “accurately predict the impact of COVID-19 on our business” and that various factors could affect sales, including an inability to report clinical trial results for its updated COVID-19 vaccine.

Pfizer expects 65 million COVID-19 doses to be administered in 2023, down from 92 million in 2022. But the company projects an increase to 67 million in 2024. And if a planned combination COVID-19/influenza shot works out, officials project the administration of 77 million doses in 2025 and 98 million doses in 2026.

“In terms of our COVID products—Comirnaty and Paxlovid—we expect sales to trend more seasonally in 2023,” Dr. Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, planned to tell investors. “Given these dynamics, we expect significantly lower sales contributions from our COVID products in the second quarter versus the first quarter.”

Pfizer officials, however, predict that sales will pick up if U.S. regulators follow through on plans to update the vaccine strains to target the variants in circulation.

Current plans involve picking the strain or strains to target in the spring or summer and rolling out updated shots each year during the fall, similar to how influenza vaccines are distributed in some countries.

The market for both the vaccines and Paxlovid, Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill, are shifting from largely government-driven to commercial this year as governments stop buying or slow down the purchasing of COVID-19 products from companies like Pfizer.

“We continue to expect 2023 to be a transition year as the virus continues to mutate and we move from advance purchases under government contracts to more traditional supply arrangements in a commercial model for both Comirnaty and Paxlovid in the U.S,” Bourla’s prepared remarks stated.

The company expects to make $67–71 billion in 2023. It made $100.3 billion in 2022.

Moderna, Pfizer’s chief rival for COVID-19 vaccines, is slated to report its first-quarter results on May 4. Moderna reported $5.1 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales in the fourth quarter of 2022, down from $7.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, and expects declining sales in 2023.

Novavax, another COVID-19 vaccine maker, is at risk of shutting down due to uncertainty around its revenue in 2023, while Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine is also authorized in the United States but has been deemphasized due to its link to a deadly blood-clotting condition.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘Godfather of AI’ Quits Google to Warn About ‘Scary’ Technology

A groundbreaking innovator in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is sounding the alarm over the dangers imposed by the technology for which his work laid the foundation.

Geoffrey Hinton, the British computer scientist who has been called the “Godfather of AI,” recently left his position as a vice president and engineering fellow at Google so he could join the dozens of other experts in the field speaking out about the threats and risks of AI.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Hinton, 75, told The New York Times in an interview.

Following the launch of OpenAI’s latest version of its GPT chatbot in March, other AI professionals signed an open letter, written by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, warning that the technology poses “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Hinton, like the letter’s signatories, said he finds the recent advancements in AI to be “scary” and worries about what they might mean for the future—particularly now that Microsoft has incorporated the technology into its Bing search engine.

With Google now rushing to do the same, Hinton noted that the race between Big Tech companies to develop more powerful AI could easily spin out of control.

One particular facet of AI technology that concerns the computer scientist is its ability to create false images, photos, and text to the point where the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

He also warned that, in the future, AI could potentially replace humans in the workplace and be used to create fully autonomous weapons.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people—a few people believed that,” Hinton said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

Hinton’s Departure

Hinton is primarily known for his role in the development of deep learning, a form of machine learning that trains computers to process data like the human brain.

That work was integral to the development of AI, but in retrospect, Hinton said he regretted his role in the process.

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” he said.

Hinton notified Google last month that he was leaving the company after more than a decade.

On May 1, he clarified that the reason for his departure was solely to isolate the company from his statements and had nothing to do with Google’s approach to AI.

“I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google,” he wrote in a tweet. “Google has acted very responsibly.”

In a statement provided to The New York Times, Jeff Dean, Google senior vice president of research and AI, said: “We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI. We’re continually learning to understand emerging risks while also innovating boldly.”

‘Digital God’

Despite Google’s assurances, others have been critical of the company’s methods.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who also co-founded OpenAI—said he felt that Larry Page, Google co-founder, was not taking the risks of AI seriously.

“He really seemed to want digital superintelligence, basically digital God, as soon as possible,” Musk said, referencing conversations he has had with Page on the matter.

“He’s made many public statements over the years that the whole goal of Google is what’s called AGI, artificial general intelligence, or artificial superintelligence,” he noted. “I agree with him that there’s great potential for good, but there’s also potential for bad.”

Musk, who signed the Future of Life Institute’s letter, has been outspoken about his concerns with AI in general, holding that it poses a serious risk to human civilization.

“AI is perhaps more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design, or production maintenance, or bad car production, in the sense that it is, it has the potential—however small one may regard that probability, but it is nontrivial—it has the potential of civilizational destruction,” he told Fox News.

Another fear Musk revealed is the worry that AI is being trained in political correctness, which he maintained is just a form of deception and “saying untruthful things.”

Despite those concerns—or perhaps because of them—the tech billionaire has also expressed interest in developing his own “truth-seeking” AI that would be trained to care about humanity.

“We want pro-human,” he said. “Make the future good for the humans. Because we’re humans.”

Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

14 Million Jobs Will Be Slashed Globally by 2027 Owing to AI and ESG Standards: WEF

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned that the employment landscape will change drastically over the next five years amid increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI), the transition to green energy, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, and slower economic growth.

According to WEF’s “The Future of Jobs Report 2023,” roughly 23 percent of jobs are expected to change by 2027, with around 69 million new jobs to be created and 83 million eliminated, resulting in a decrease of 14 million jobs, or 2 percent of current employment.

The report (pdf) surveyed 803 companies collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers in 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from across the globe, on macro and technology trends and their impact on jobs and skills, as well as the “workforce transformation strategies” that businesses plan to implement between now and 2027.

It found that clerical or secretarial roles, including bank tellers, cashiers and ticket clerks, data entry clerks, postal service clerks, and administrative and executive secretaries will likely see the fastest decline in roles over the next five years relative to their size today, with roughly 26 million fewer jobs by 2027.

Meanwhile, certain tech jobs, including those focused on AI and machine learning, sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts, information security specialists, and fintech engineers, are expected to see an increase in employment.

Overall, the biggest job growth will likely be seen across the fields of education (10 percent, leading to 3 million additional jobs), agriculture (30 percent, or 3 million additional jobs), and digital commerce and trade (4 million additional jobs), according to the report.

chatgpt
A smartphone with a displayed ChatGPT logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken on Feb. 23, 2023. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

Renewable Energy, ESG Pushing Job Changes

The WEF cites trends such as the transition to renewable energy, ESG standards—which are used by companies in the investment decision-making process to measure sustainable and ethical impacts—advancing technology adoption, and localization of supply chains as the “leading drivers of job growth,” while economic challenges such as ongoing high inflation, slower economic growth, and supply shortages pose “the greatest threat” to job creation.

“The largest job creation and destruction effects come from environmental, technology, and economic trends. Among the macro trends listed, businesses predict the strongest net job-creation effect to be driven by investments that facilitate the green transition of businesses, the broader application of ESG standards, and supply chains becoming more localized, albeit with job growth offset by partial job displacement in each case,” the report states.

U.S. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly warned that companies embracing ESG standards risk slashing investment returns and hampering economic growth, which could have ripple effects across the economy.

“Climate change adaptation and the demographic dividend in developing and emerging economies also rate high as net job creators,” the WEF report adds. “Technological advancement through increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and increased digital access are expected to drive job growth in more than half of surveyed companies, offset by expected job displacement in one-fifth of companies,” it continues.

The report also cites the increasing cost of living for consumers as another factor that will likely pose the greatest threat to the job market in the next five years and will significantly displace jobs.

Epoch Times Photo
Attendees take pictures and interact with the Engineered Arts Ameca humanoid robot with artificial intelligence as it is demonstrated during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Firms ‘Need to Be Ready for the Disruptions Ahead’

Elsewhere, the WEF found that the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased geopolitical divisions, and demographic dividends in developing and emerging economies ranked lower as drivers of business evolution by respondents.

The latest report comes shortly after Goldman Sachs economists forecast two-thirds of occupations across America could be partially automated by AI, which has exploded in use in recent years, despite concerns over its potential risks to society and humanity.

However, economists also noted that its use in both business and society could lead to an almost $7 trillion increase in global GDP owing to increased productivity and manufacturing, among other factors.

According to the WEF report, nearly 75 percent of companies surveyed plan to adopt AI, big data, and cloud computing within the next five years, which around 50 percent of firms believe will create job growth and 25 percent expect will lead to job losses.

Elsewhere, the report found that organizations estimate roughly 34 percent of all business-related tasks are currently performed by machines, with the remaining 66 percent performed by humans.

“The latest findings in the Future of Jobs Report renew calls for action from all labor market stakeholders,” said Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of the human resource consulting firm, Randstad.

“Acceleration in digitalization, AI, and automation are creating tremendous opportunities for the global workforce, but employers, governments, and other organizations need to be ready for the disruptions ahead. By collectively offering greater skilling resources, more efficiently connecting talent to jobs, and advocating for a well-regulated labor market, we can protect and prepare workers for a more specialized and equitable future of work,” he added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Mark Morgan Calls Out Hypocrisy of Corporate Media’s Silence Over New Photos of ‘Kids in Cages’

The Biden administration is holding migrant children in cages and the leftist media is silent.  

“Where Is the mainstream media? Where is their outrage right now?,” Mark Morgan, former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, asks.  

Morgan, who is also a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, confirmed Monday to The Daily Signal that Newsmax border correspondent Jaeson Jones took photos Thursday at a migrant detention center operated by the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

SHOCKING PICTURES: @SenRonJohnson laments: “.@POTUS and @SecMayorkas are putting kids in cages at the border. Thanks to Mark Morgan, @jaeson_jones and @NEWSMAX for showing the truth. Where’s the mainstream media? Where’s the outrage?” pic.twitter.com/cYsZPpqgTV

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 29, 2023

Morgan described Jones as a “good friend,” noting that the two work together at Newsmax, where Morgan is a contributor.  

One photo that Jones shared on Twitter, Morgan said, shows a group of unaccompanied migrant children from various countries.  

A second image, which includes a child sleeping on the ground, shows a group of Chinese children, Morgan said. 

Newsmax correspondent Jaeson Jones took this and other photos of “kids in cages” Thursday at a migrant detention facility in the the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas.

“Jason was physically there … he took the picture, and then through source information, people he talked to, they confirmed that they were all, in fact, minors,” Morgan said.  

Border Patrol agents are placing children in holding facilities because processing centers are overcrowded, Morgan said, noting that “segregating out the unaccompanied children is actually the right thing to do, the safe thing to do.”

“You do not want unaccompanied minors … in the general population area with single, adult men,” he said.

When the Trump administration used similar holding facilties for unaccompanied minors who crossed into the U.S., corporate media ran headlines such as “Trump migrant separation policy: Children ‘in cages’ in Texas” (BBC) or “Trump and Biden’s debate over kids in cages underscores the stark choice facing Americans” (NBC News). One image that went viral showed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., crying outside a Texas detention center for migrant children.  

I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them.

More kids died after this. To date, no one has been held accountable.

We need to save these kids. https://t.co/HhdMqc5zML

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2019

“Look, when Border Patrol facilities are overrun, they’re overcrowded because of this administration’s policies. You can’t blame Border Patrol for doing everything they can to deal with what this administration has forced them to deal with,” Morgan said.

And “the issue is the hypocrisy,” he added. “Because where is AOC and her white pants and her crocodile tears? Where’s everybody that was yelling out ‘kids in cages?’”  

Morgan pointed out that the holding facilities actually were first used before Trump, during the Obama administration.  

Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, U.S. Customs and order Protection reports that agents have encountered about 5 million illegal aliens at the southern border. Since the start of fiscal year 2023 on Oct. 1, the agency has encountered a record 1.2 million illegal migrants.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that since Biden became president, about 1.3 million illegal aliens successfully have evaded the Border Patrol and are “gotaways.”  

The surge of illegal aliens crossing the southern border into the U.S. is expected to increase when the public health measure known as Title 42 expires. Title 42, set in place by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed the Border Patrol to quickly expel some illegal aliens from the country.

When the nation’s public health emergency ends May 11 as scheduled, Title 42 also will be lifted, triggering an expected surge of migrants at the border.   

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post Mark Morgan Calls Out Hypocrisy of Corporate Media’s Silence Over New Photos of ‘Kids in Cages’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

SOURCE: Firebrand News

EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Hope to Block Biden’s Use of Government to Get Out Vote

Republicans in Congress are moving to rein in President Joe Biden’s executive order putting federal agencies in the business of getting out the vote. Their proposed legislation would defund any federally backed voter mobilization drives and prohibit the government from entering election-related agreements with private, nonprofit organizations to mobilize voters. 

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who co-chairs the House Election Integrity Caucus, plans to introduce a bill Tuesday called the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act. 

Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., intends to introduce the Senate version of Tenney’s bill. Budd, who was a House member last year, was active in its Election Integrity Caucus. 

The legislation would prohibit federal agencies from entering agreements with nongovernmental organizations to conduct voter registration or voter mobilization activities. It also would prohibit use of federal funds to carry out such activities.

These prohibitions would stop certain actions Biden envisioned in March 2021 in Executive Order 14019, titled “Promoting Access to Voting.” Biden’s order states that agencies will “promote voter registration and voter participation” and will be “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

“President Biden’s EO 14019 allows the federal government to use its power and your taxpayer dollars to influence our elections,” Tenney told The Daily Signal in a written statement, adding:

The Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act ensures that federal agencies are not engaging in partisan voter registration and mobilization efforts on the taxpayer’s dime. As the Election Integrity Caucus co-chair, it is my privilege to introduce this legislation to restore transparency and confidence in our democratic process while keeping federal bureaucrats and the swamp from deliberately tipping the balance of our elections.

Critics of Biden’s executive order previously expressed concern that it could prompt violations of the Hatch Act, which forbids political activity by federal employees on federal property or work time; violations of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal employees from obligating tax dollars not authorized by Congress as well as any agency from accepting voluntary service from individuals; and violations of the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law better known as the “motor voter” law. 

This last law authorizes federal agencies to engage in specified activities to ease voter registration, but Biden’s order goes beyond the boundaries of the law, some contend. 

The aim of the Republicans’ legislation is to stop the Biden administration from using the power of federal agencies and offices, located in states across the country, from engaging in voter registration and mobilization efforts designed to benefit Democrats.

Under Biden’s order, agencies were supposed to issue strategic plans for implementing it. However, agencies have not been transparent with Congress, the media, or government watchdogs about what nonprofit groups they’re working with, nor the contents of the strategic plans. 

If passed, the Tenney-Budd bill would stop any federal agency from implementing such a strategic plan until 180 days after submitting a copy of the plan to Congress.

It also would specifically prohibit agencies from engaging in any voter registration activities outlined in Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act until at least 180 days after providing Congress a copy of a strategic plan to do so. 

The Tenney-Budd legislation would prohibit agencies from conducting, or outsourcing to nonprofits, the distribution of voter registration application forms; providing assistance to applicants in completing an application; transmitting completed applications to state election officials; and doing voter registration and mobilization in federal work-study programs.

The legislation includes a requirement that all federal agencies submit to Congress, within 30 days of tts effective date, a report describing all activitiesthey carried out under Executive Order 14019.

The Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act also would provide Americans with transparency and reassurance that governing agencies are using taxpayer dollars lawfully and in their best interests, according to the bill’s summary. 

Although agencies aren’t releasing their specific strategic plans for getting out the vote, since Biden issued the order in March 2021, several agencies have responded by broadly outlining actions they will take. These include

The Justice Department announced guidance for states to increase awareness of voting rights for convicted criminals, in compliance with Biden’s order. States differ on restoring voting rights to convicted felons after they serve their sentences.

Based on a Freedom of Information Act request, The Daily Signal first reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is engaging in voter registration efforts that in some cases allow mass collection of registration forms by local public housing officials. 

The Department of Homeland Security said it will focus on voter registration “at the end of naturalization ceremonies for the hundreds of thousands of citizens naturalized each year.”

The Education Department said it will focus on “increasing civic engagement at the elementary school, secondary school, and higher education level, helping more than 67 million students.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Republicans Hope to Block Biden’s Use of Government to Get Out Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.

SOURCE: Firebrand News

‘We’re Not Doing That Here,’ Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Says of DEI Instruction

Oklahoma is taking a lead on school choice programs and resisting far-left ideology in classrooms across the state. 

“It is amazing how aggressive the Biden administration is with this radical agenda towards our schools,” Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, says. When he came into office, Walters says he told staffers there, “We’re not doing diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re not doing that here.”

The leftist agenda in schools has gone well beyond DEI instruction, and now the Biden administration is considering changing the definition of sex in Title IX to include gender identity and sexual orientation, opening the door wide for biological boys and men to compete in girls and women’s sports and to use their restrooms and locker rooms. 

“We’ve already submitted comment to the Biden administration and told them, ‘We’re suing you if you move down this road,’” Walters said. 

Walters joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain the ways Oklahoma is fighting against the Left’s efforts to influence the next generation in the classroom and to discuss the state’s aggressive action to implement school choice programs. 

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Virginia Allen: We are joined today by the Oklahoma state superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters. Ryan, thank you so much for being here today.

Ryan Walters: Hey, I’m very excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Allen: Well, this is a big topic, education—discussing what exactly is happening across the country with education and specifically in your state of Oklahoma.

But before we dive too far into the weeds, I want to ask you, how did you first get involved in the field of education?

Walters: So, for me, I wanted to be a teacher going all the way back to when I was in grade school. I had a history teacher that really inspired me. We were talking in sixth grade about the Civil War, and about Abraham Lincoln, and about how he had this kind of inner strength and I got obsessed with history. I wanted to learn all I could. And so, I wanted to be a teacher.

So I go back, I’m a public school teacher in a rural school in Oklahoma, down in McAlester, Oklahoma. And as time went on, I began to see [that] our education system does not work for all kids. We have a system that treats all kids as if they’re the same. It is it very mechanic in that it doesn’t allow for individuals to kind of find their own path for success. I was concerned about the low expectations that I was seeing in our schools.

And I saw a system that didn’t reward teachers. It didn’t incentivize being a great teacher. It was very socialist in so many of the concepts. And you look in every other type of industry, they’re innovating, they’re trying to put all the financial incentives for innovation, and education just wasn’t.

And so, I went on from that to nonprofit and began working to support parents and push for change in our education system. And then I was appointed to be the governor’s education adviser.

And then from that point on, I won a statewide election to be the state superintendent of Oklahoma. And we are moving absolutely as fast as we can to get an education system that’s gone so far off track in the right direction.

Allen: Well, when we talk about that education system that has gone off track, it’s really easy to talk about the problems and talk about the issues. I’ve sat in the studio many times and talked about some of those really large issues facing the education system with individuals from across the country.

And one of the themes when you start talking about solutions that always comes up is that of school choice. And I know that you are an advocate for school choice. You said earlier this year that Oklahoma must and will have the most expansive school choice program in the country.

How is that process going, of moving forward with school choice in your state?

Walters: Right. I mean, we have to have school choice. I mean, the reality is, when we talk about education, we talk about those problems. I just kind of did it at a super high level right there.

But the fact that we have an education system that doesn’t meet the needs of all learners—we can go through the woeful [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores. We can go through the lack of having folks ready when they graduate to enter college or enter any kind of industry.

But what you see here is, you see an education system that has routinely pushed against any change. And the ultimate change, the ultimate way to empower individual kids and to really get parents involved, is school choice. And the reality is, we have these new innovative options that can occur.

You have teachers that want to think more outside the box. You have systems that can come in and look completely different, if we start funding students and not systems, if we start ensuring that kids are the foundation of everything we do. That means paying for the child and allowing that child and their family to determine what their education looks like. That has to happen.

Without that, you have no incentive for excellence to occur in education, for the needs of every learner to be met.

Frankly—and I tell this to teachers all the time, being a public school teacher myself. For teachers—you want me to tell you what happens when you have universal school choice? … Guess what parents really want for their kids? I’ve got four little ones at home. So I’ve got a 7-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 1-year-old. So, I’ve got a 7- and a 5-year-old in school. You want that great teacher for your kid.

School choice, money following the kid, also incentivizes schools to keep their great teachers because they know that’s what’ll attract parents to their schools. It has to happen.

This is one of these fundamental changes that, when we get away from the teachers union mentality of just paying for buildings, “Just guarantee us we get this money every year,” and we turn it into, “Actually, this is going to be tied to whether the parents are happy with the education their kids are getting,” it is a fundamental game-changer in education.

In Oklahoma, we are pushing a universal school choice bill for every family. Everyone. I’ve made very clear, we’re not carving anybody out. I mean, just think about the absurdity of these half measures. It has to be every kid, it has to be every parent has access to all of their funds and can send them to a private school, a homeschool, whatever is best for their kids.

And frankly, that should always be our plumb line. That should always be what we come back to. “What is the best thing we can do for kids?” And there’s no doubt about it, school choice is what’s best for kids.

Allen: And what does the timeline look like as far as Oklahoma moving forward and passing legislation that will allow that universal school choice?

Walters: This session, the speaker’s passed out of his chamber a universal school choice measure. We have a more limited one that passed out the Senate.

And we’re in negotiations right now. We’ve got a great governor in the state of Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt. He is a huge champion of school choice. And so, between the Senate, the House, him, and myself, we’re going to keep pushing, “It’s got to be every kid. We’ve got to make sure that we’re not carving folks out.”

And so right now, we are in the final stages of negotiating that. I have a lot of confidence it’s going to get done. But for any of your listeners in Oklahoma, let your legislators know, “Hey, we don’t want carve-outs. We think that every kid matters. We think every parent should have universal school choice in the state. And we want to be a leader.”

I mean, I’m passionate about ensuring that, as a state, we have put our kids in the position to be the most successful state in the country.

And we’re seeing other states doing this. It’s incredible what [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has done, what [Arkansas Gov. Sarah] Huckabee Sanders is doing. We’ve seen these successes. We need, though, this as a country. And I do appreciate [that] President [Donald] Trump made this a top priority. He came in and talked about school choice, “Every state should have it.”

We’ve really come a long way, but we’ve got to get the wins.

And that’s the other thing. As conservatives, we need to talk about it. We’ve got to win people over and explain to them the cause, and then we’ve got to go get it done.

So, we are focused on getting this across the finish line in Oklahoma.

Allen: Well, one of the other issues that I know you’re very passionate about and that you want to see Oklahoma really leading on is pushing back against the Biden administration and its proposed rule change to Title IX.

So Title IX, of course, protects equal opportunities for women and girls within education, including in sports. Well, now, the Biden administration, they want to change the definition of sex within Title IX to include sexual orientation, gender identity.

You-all are pushing back in Oklahoma. Talk a little bit about what you-all are doing.

Walters: It is amazing how aggressive the Biden administration is with this radical agenda toward our schools. When I first came into office, I had my agency, I said, “Hey, we’re not doing diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re not doing that here.”

And they started flagging for me, “Well, we need to talk about these grants because the Biden administration keeps adding additional criteria to grants we’ve gotten for years that are basic math and science. Now, they’re adding in these diversity, equity, and inclusion components.”

So, we saw that initially, and then this radical overstep to say, “We are going to, unilaterally here, at a whim, change Title IX to say that states, you’re going to risk federal funding if you don’t allow boys that say they’re girls to participate in girls sports.”

So we passed a law in our state that said we weren’t going to allow that to happen. And so initially, I’ve come out, and we’ve already submitted comment to the Biden administration and told them, “We’re suing you if you move down this road. The minute that you institute this new rule change, you will be sued by myself and by all the power that I have, to say, ‘We will not do this in Oklahoma.’ You will not hold our kids hostage. You will not endanger our girls by saying we want to start not only allowing them to compete, but it brings up the entire question of separation between the two sexes in that capacity, in athletics.”

And we’re seeing this professionally. We’ve seen a UFC fighter break the skull of a female, and it’s a man that says he’s a woman. This radical ideology is dangerous. It is dangerous.

And my daughter, my oldest, already wants to be a tennis player. She takes tennis lessons. Think about, if we don’t act on this, our young girls—and we’ve seen it all over the country. That work their whole life to get to a state tournament, to have an opportunity to win.

And think about, there’s so many cool, “I’m a former coach. I’m a basketball coach and a tennis coach.” All of those cool lessons that you can learn from dedication to work ethic, that you get from sports. And for us as a country to come to a point where our president says, “Hey, forget all that. We’re more worried about the self-esteem of this boy that now says he wants to be a girl and go compete.” And boom, “Hey, go out there and win the track state tournament. Go out there and beat these girls in tennis, or basketball, or volleyball.”

It is absurd. It is insane that we have reached a point where [President] Joe Biden is threatening the states to force them to take boys in girls sports.

And hey, we’re not going to do it. We’re going to sue them. We are absolutely not going to implement it. We have been very direct. I’ve been working with some other states. We’ve got great superintendents of instruction in Florida, South Carolina, and other states. We talk and we’re banding together. We’re actually meeting later today.

We are going to fight back and we are not going to give up our kids, we’re not going to give up our schools, to this woke agenda of the Biden administration. And that’s the reality. They want to control the schools and they want to control your kids.

Allen: I want to ask you to speak for a moment from the perspective of teachers. You were a teacher, you interact with so many teachers, and teachers are often the ones who are being asked to teach this woke ideology, to embrace it. And many of them, that’s not what they signed up to do. They signed up to instruct and educate kids.

When you talk to our teachers, what do they say that they need?

Walters: That’s a great question, and that is one of the things that, it’s funny how the fake news media don’t report that part of recruiting teachers. I hear from teachers all the time.

We had mandatory sex ed classes that were to be taught in Tulsa public schools in Oklahoma, our biggest school district, that were pushed. And the teachers go, “Hold on, this is not your typical sex ed. This is graphic. This is way—I don’t want to do that. I came here to teach biology. I came here to teach physical science.” And the teachers go, “They shut down our classroom for weeks to come teach this to our kids.” And they go, “Hey, we’re leaving. As soon as I can get out, I’m getting out.”

And I hear this from teachers all over the state that say, “Listen, we came to teach our subject matter. We love kids, we want to help kids. We love math, or English.” They always tell you their stories and go, “The more that you’re going to push me to do things that, first of all, I don’t agree with, second of all, have nothing to do with what my core role is as a teacher, I’m going to get out.”

And I’m going to tell you the other thing. So, they’re pushing this woke ideology. You have administrators. And the administrators get together, and it’s almost like the “Woke Olympics.” They are almost competing with each other of, who can be the furthest left administrator? So, you’ve got that dynamic.

And the other thing is, with the woke ideology, they’ve also mixed in here—and you hear this from teachers all the time. “Hey, when a kid acts up or misbehaves, he’s a victim, so you just got to let him do it. You’ve just got to let them.”

You know, it’s the victim mentality. It’s like I said at the beginning, the lack of high expectations both on academics and on student behavior. This comes from that left-wing ideology that, “Hey, we have victim groups. There’ll always be victims. We have oppressors. There’ll always be oppressors.”

So they build that into a system and teachers go, “Well, what am I supposed to do when Johnny is throwing an eraser at my head, saying things that I would never say. And I’m told, ‘Well, you’ve got to let Johnny be Johnny. We don’t want to discipline him, it could hurt their self-esteem’?”

That is part of what the Left—and even in red states, we have allowed the Left to push into our schools.

I’m going to give you one more. I’m pushing for performance and merit-based pay in Oklahoma, and we’re going to do it. We’re launching some over the summer, some of these programs. We want it across the board where, “Hey, when you’re a great teacher and you show that and you exhibit that, boom, you should get pay raises based on that.”

Guess what? The teachers union fights it every time. Frankly, we have a lot of administrators that fight it. “Well, how do we pick who the best teachers are?” I go, “You name a teacher, teacher of the year in most of your districts. Hey, you’re fine with a performance-based pay raise.”

We have some administrators that get $60,000 performance pay increases, but yet we can’t do that for our teachers?

We’ve created a system that’s socialist in nature. “Hey, teachers, it doesn’t matter how good you do, it doesn’t matter how bad you do, it doesn’t matter how engaged you are. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing in your classroom, you’re going to make the same amount every year.”

And when you do that, it goes against basic human nature. The more we incentivize excellence, the more excellence we’re going to get. And the more that we allow a union mentality in our schools, the more you’re going to see the radical ideology push, and the more you’re going to see no incentive for excellence. And so, you’re going to get less of it.

Allen: Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters. Ryan, thank you for your time today. We truly appreciate it and truly appreciate the encouragement as well.

Walters: Absolutely. Thank you for having me and thank you so much for the work you guys are doing. You guys are doing a tremendous job. Heritage is one of the best foundations in the country.

You guys do tremendous work, so I’m very excited to be here. And thank you so much for all you’re doing.

Allen: Oh, thank you.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post ‘We’re Not Doing That Here,’ Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Says of DEI Instruction appeared first on The Daily Signal.

SOURCE: Firebrand News

Suspect on Run in Texas After Mass Murder Is Illegal Immigrant Deported 5 Times

The suspect accused of killing five people including an eight-year-old in Texas on Friday is an illegal immigrant who was deported multiple times.

The alleged murderer, Francisco Oropesa, had been deported from the United States five times, a source in Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox News. Oropesa, a Mexican national, is the target of a manhunt in Texas after he allegedly killed five of his neighbors when one of them complained about him shooting his rifle late at night. The murders occurred in Cleveland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. 

Oropesa last had a run-in with ICE in 2016. The FBI said on Sunday that it has “no leads” in the search for Oropesa, and law enforcement agencies are cumulatively offering at least $80,000 for information on his whereabouts. “We do not know where he is, that’s why we’ve come up with this reward,” FBI special agent James Smith said Sunday.

The killings come as border agents brace for a potential surge of migrants in the coming weeks following the May 11 expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era rule that granted agents power to turn away migrants for health concerns. With the lapse of the pandemic national health emergency this month, the immigration rule also expires. 

Border agents have already seen a surge. Border Patrol agents reported 162,317 migrant encounters in March, 32,000 more than the month before. 

Border agents have apprehended at least 69 people on the terror watch list this fiscal year, which is on pace to beat 2022’s total of 98. Only eight individuals on that list were caught between 2017 and 2020.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WATCH: DHS Secretary Mayorkas Gives Bizarre Definition of a ‘Secure Border’

Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave an odd definition of what he considers a “secure border” during a Sunday interview on NBC.

“It is, in the context in which we are working, it is maximizing the resources that we have available to us to deliver the most effective results,” Mayorkas said after NBC host Chuck Todd asked him to define the term. Mayorkas has consistently maintained throughout his tenure in the Biden administration that the border is secure, even as there have been record numbers of illegal border crossings and drug smuggling.

As the administration is poised to end Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that allows agents to turn migrants away at the border, Mayorkas is moving to enact new policies that would expand the number of migrants allowed into the United States. Those policies would include increasing the number of available applications for entry into the country through the CBP One App, allowing family members from four Central and South American countries to reunite with migrants in the United States, and doubling the number of refugees allowed into the country from the Western Hemisphere.

Mayorkas’s defense of the border’s security under his tenure comes as Democrats have described the situation as a crisis. The Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, on Monday ordered a state of emergency to prepare for a potential surge of migrants when Title 42 expires on May 11.

The secretary has often claimed the border is secure, even as border agents have frequently encountered migrants deemed security threats illegally crossing the border. Agents have apprehended at least 69 people on the terror watch list in this fiscal year, which is on pace to beat 2022’s total of 98.  Only eight individuals on that list were caught between 2017 and 2020.

Mayorkas during the Sunday interviewed refused to comment on the immigration status of Francisco Oropesa, who is the subject of a manhunt in Texas after he was accused of killing five neighbors, including an eight-year-old. Oropesa, a Mexican national, was in the country illegally and had been deported five times. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Unconscionable’: 27 States Challenge Biden’s Plan To Punish Home Buyers With Good Credit

More than 30 officials from 27 states are demanding the Biden administration end its mortgage redistribution program that makes borrowers with good credit scores pay more to subsidize loans for borrowers with poor credit.

“The policy will take money away from the people who played by the rules and did things right—including millions of hardworking, middle-class Americans who built a good credit score,” the state officials said in a letter to President Joe Biden. 

BREAKING: 34 state financial officers from 27 states have signed-on to a letter to the Biden Administration demanding that they end their new mortgage equity program, which forces buyers with good credit to pay higher rates to subsidize loans for riskier borrowers. pic.twitter.com/P8RHbj0zzf

— Will Hild (@WillHild) May 1, 2023

The policy goes into effect Monday and will increase monthly mortgage payments for borrowers with good credit scores. The program is run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which will use the revenue from higher fees to lower the monthly mortgage cost for borrowers with poor credit. The Washington Free Beacon described how the policy will work in a report last week:

Riskier borrowers with low credit scores or income pay more each month for their mortgage. These borrowers will still pay more after May 1 but much less than they paid before. In order to compensate for that lost revenue, borrowers with strong credit will see their monthly increase to roughly $40 a month on a $400,000 mortgage. That’s an extra $14,400 over the course of a standard 30-year mortgage.

“It is already clear that this new policy will be a disaster,” the state officials said. “It amounts to a middle-class tax hike that will unfairly cost American families millions upon millions of dollars.”

“We urge you to take immediate action to end this unconscionable policy,” the letter concluded.

Former Federal Housing Finance Agency director Mark Calabria said the new policy appears to be an attempt by the Biden administration to subsidize minorities without falling foul of federal law against racial discrimination.

“The Biden administration is definitely trying to create more of a cross subsidy between good credit and bad credit, that’s the intent,” Calabria told the Free Beacon. “They are essentially trying to discriminate by race within the legal rules they have and minorities tend to have lower credit scores.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Democrat Congresswoman Met With Alleged Chinese Spies at ‘Secret Police Station’ in NY

Rep. Grace Meng (D., N.Y.) attended several events with alleged operatives for the Chinese communist government, at least one of which took place at a New York City nonprofit’s headquarters that U.S. officials say was a front for a secret Chinese police station.

The alleged spies, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, were charged for running a “secret police station” in the Manhattan office of the America Changle Association, a nonprofit where the two men have served as chairman and commander-in-chief, respectively. Meng attended several events hosted by the organization with the alleged operatives, including the ribbon-cutting for the office in question, according to the Daily Caller.

Prosecutors said the men admitted to deleting digital correspondence with Chinese officials after learning of the federal investigation.

“While Congresswoman Meng has likely encountered him at local community events, she has no personal relationship with [Lu Jianwang], and was unaware of any allegations against him until last Monday’s news,” Meng’s press secretary told the Daily Caller. 

Meng attended several events with the arrested men, according to the Daily Caller

On September 26, 2016, Meng apparently participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the launch of America Changle’s Manhattan headquarters — the same office where Lu Jianwang allegedly operated a CCP police station — according to a report from Chinese state-run news outlet FJsen.com’s social media account.

Photos included in the news report show Meng standing right beside Lu Jianwang during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. 

More recently, Meng presided over the ceremonial transfer of power between then-outgoing America Changle chairman Zhang Zikuo and Lu Jianshun during a June 2021 event held at the Royal Queen Restaurant located in Flushing, New York, Chinese-language photos, video and reports show. The restaurant is located within Meng’s congressional district.

Following Lu Jianshun’s inauguration, Meng delivered a speech in Mandarin Chinese during which she praised America Changle for their “contribution” to Chinese people in New York, according to a DCNF translation of video from the event. The footage shows that Meng’s speech was then followed by an address given by Chen Jinping, America Changle’s “commander-in-chief,” whom the FBI also arrested on April 17.

Previously unearthed photos show Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) also rubbing shoulders with Lu. 

The report comes after a federal watchdog found U.S. officials don’t know how much taxpayer money is going toward the CCP. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said data on money to China are “incomplete and sometimes inaccurate.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘I Wish I Could Legislate What Parents Do,’ NV Dem Chairwoman Says

State lawmaker Daniele Monroe-Moreno dismisses school choice, parental rights during committee hearing

The head of the Nevada Democratic Party last week lamented parental input in public schools, saying she wishes she could “legislate what parents do” but sadly “cannot.”

Liberal state lawmaker Daniele Monroe-Moreno, who was elected Nevada Democratic Party chair in March, made the comment during a Wednesday committee hearing on a GOP-led school choice bill. Monroe-Moreno defended Las Vegas area public schools—which in 2021 ranked second-worst in the nation—by dismissing criticism of the schools as misplaced “parent input” that she wished she could stifle through legislation.

“All my kids went through the public school system in Clark County, and people can say what they want about CCSD—we have some amazing educators in CCSD, and they did a great job with my kids and others,” Monroe-Moreno said. “And a lot of it is parent input. I wish I could legislate what parents do, but I cannot. Had to say that.”

Unlike her kids, Monroe-Moreno went to private school as a child, an opportunity she said she received because her mom “worked two jobs” to afford tuition. That experience, the Democrat argued Wednesday, shows why Nevada Republican governor Joe Lombardo’s school choice bill is not necessary. For Monroe-Moreno, parents don’t need public funds to send their kids to private school because those parents already have “options” when it comes to their children’s education.

“There are options out there for parents now. I went to private school for a point myself,” the Democrat said. “My mom worked two jobs and my dad was in the military and they made that extra money to put me in private school for a short period of time.”

Lombardo’s bill would create a state Office of School Choice and increase public funding for a scholarship program that helps parents send their children to a registered private school. Monroe-Moreno on Wednesday blasted that provision, arguing that the money should go to public school teachers “so they can succeed and really work to have success.” Lombardo’s $2 billion education budget, however, would also increase per-pupil funding in public schools by more than $2,000 a year.

Better Nevada PAC, a political group associated with Lombardo, blasted Monroe-Moreno’s comments as “offensive and out of touch.”

“Nevada Democrats aren’t even trying to hide their disdain for parents across Nevada,” Better Nevada spokesman John Burke told the Washington Free Beacon. “Monroe-Moreno’s offensive and out-of-touch comments are not only an attack on Nevada parents, but they demonstrate the exact kind of backwards thinking from politicians that has put Nevada schools among the last in the nation.”

Monroe-Moreno, who did not return a request for comment, took over the Nevada Democratic Party in March following a tumultuous period for the party under former chair Judith Whitmer. An avowed democratic socialist, Whitmer was elected Nevada Democratic Party chair in 2021, prompting the party’s entire staff to quit. Establishment Democrats in Nevada went on to accuse Whitmer of working against elected officials in her own party, accusations that Whitmer said were part of a “smear campaign.” Nevada’s top Democrats endorsed Monroe-Moreno’s candidacy for chair, including Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen and Reps. Susie Lee, Dina Titus, and Steven Horsford.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

There’s Something Wrong With Young Democrats: Poll

The kids are not OK

Young Democrats are abnormally nervous, depressed, bisexual, and eager to defund the police, according to a new poll from the Harvard Kennedy School of Politics.

The poll asked respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 how often they had experienced a certain emotion or problem over the past two weeks, and the results among Democrats were rather shocking. Here’s how young Democrats reported feeling “at least several days” over that period:

• 61 percent reported feeling “nervous, anxious, or on edge”

• 57 percent said they had “trouble relaxing”

• 55 percent said they felt “unsafe”

• 52 percent reported feeling “down, depressed, or hopeless”

• 49 percent said they felt “little interest or pleasure in doing things”

• 47 percent said they experienced “loneliness”

• 46 percent reported “feeling afraid as if something awful might happen”

• 27 percent said they had entertained “thoughts that [they] would be better off dead” or “thoughts of hurting [themselves] in some way”

That doesn’t seem very healthy. And in case you were wondering: Yes, those numbers were significantly smaller among young Republicans. Despite feeling nervous and unsafe all the time, nearly 4 in 10 young Democrats said they support “defunding police departments” in their communities. Nearly one in three said police officers make them feel “less safe.”

Other noteworthy findings include the following:

• 32 percent said they regularly use TikTok for “news and current events related content,” compared with 21 percent of young Republicans

• 25 percent said they disagree with the statement “I would rather live in America than any other place,” compared with 10 percent of young Republicans; just 49 percent of Democrats agree with the statement, compared with 71 percent of GOP respondents

• 11 percent said they are neither employed nor enrolled as students, compared with 6 percent of young Republicans

• Just 72 percent of young Democrats identified as “heterosexual or straight,” compared with 89 percent of young Republicans

• 22 percent of young Democrats identified as gay (2 percent), lesbian (4 percent), bisexual (10 percent), or “other” (6 percent), compared with 7 percent of young Republicans

Bottom line: A significant chunk of the Democratic base is comprised of nervous Nellies who are (most likely) mentally ill and get most of their news from TikTok and other social media apps. Politics aside, a significant chunk of young Americans are mentally ill worrywarts who are glued to their phones. That does not seem like a recipe for success.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New York Responds to Rampant Car Theft by Handing Out Apple AirTag Trackers

New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) is handing out Apple AirTag tracking devices to 500 residents so they can track their car if it’s stolen, as car thefts skyrocket across the city. 

“The aggravated number of grand larceny autos continues to drive up crime in our city,” Adams said on Sunday. He announced that 500 AirTags donated by a local nonprofit will be distributed to New Yorkers. He also encouraged citizens to purchase tracking devices for their cars. Car thefts are up 13 percent from this point last year, with nearly 4,500 cases so far. 

Adams said the tracker is a “really amazing piece of ingenuity,”

“It’s easy to monitor,” Adams added. “You can see in real-time where the vehicle is located.”

Adams’s comments come after he urged store-owners in March to ban entry to people wearing face masks in order to crack down on robbers.

Critics of Democratic policies point to the city’s bail reform as responsible for a “revolving door of criminals” that’s led to an increase in crime. The New York Times reported last month that just 327 thieves, who have collectively been arrested more than 6,000 times, are responsible for a third of the city’s retail crime.

House Republicans held a hearing in the city last month focused on rising crime and Democratic officials’ failure to curb it. A bodega owner who was arrested after killing an attacker in self-defense called out Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for arresting “an innocent man like me” instead of “people committing crime.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Two Years After Botched Withdrawal, The Biden Administration Has Yet to Properly Vet 88,000 Afghan Refugees

The Biden administration has yet to properly vet over 88,000 Afghan refugees who were resettled in the United States after its botched military withdrawal, which lawmakers say raises “serious national security concerns for the state of U.S. homeland security.”

The Department of Homeland Security “encountered obstacles to screen, vet, and inspect all evacuees” arriving stateside after the rushed 2021 evacuation that killed 13 American servicemen, House Homeland Security Committee chair Mark Green (R., Tenn.) and subcommittee chairs August Pfluger (R., Texas), Dan Bishop (R., N.C.), and Clay Higgins (R., La.) said Monday in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The pair further notes that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection also “lacked critical data to properly vet evacuees” but nonetheless admitted thousands of Afghan refugees who landed in America without passports or basic identifying information.

“Not only did the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan threaten our allies in the region by allowing the Taliban to return the country to a terrorist breeding ground,” Green told the Free Beacon, “but the failure of DHS to properly vet or screen all Afghan nationals during the evacuation has put the U.S. homeland and our security interests at great risk.”

While many Republicans in Congress have focused on the bungled evacuation itself, the vetting deficiencies remain one of the most active and pressing national security concerns, particularly since these Afghan refugees are already situated inside the United States.

Green and Pfluger are demanding the Biden administration hand over a trove of documents, including classified information, as part of the House GOP’s larger investigation into the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan. The pair notes that lawmakers still lack a full understanding of what went wrong with the withdrawal because Homeland Security “has stonewalled requests from committee members for information” from the outset.

Homeland Security—like the State Department and other agencies—has been blocking investigations into Afghanistan since late 2021. A litany of document requests and other investigatory efforts “remain either wholly unsatisfied or insufficiently satisfied,” according to the letter. “President Biden and his administration must be held accountable, and we will ensure its compliance with the Committee’s serious requests.”

The failure to produce these documents could result in a subpoena, a primary vehicle for Congress to force the Biden administration to comply with its investigations. The House Foreign Affairs Committee hit Secretary of State Antony Blinken with a subpoena in late March for his failure to disclose classified information believed to show that American officials knew the Taliban would rise to power soon after the withdrawal.

The Homeland Security Committee wants Homeland Security to provide all internal communications about Afghanistan from January 1, 2021, to the present. This includes “all documents and communications between or among employees of DHS referring or relating to CBP’s screening, vetting, or inspection of Afghan evacuees,” according to the letter.

It became clear soon after the withdrawal that the Biden administration knew it could not handle the influx of refugees but still ordered the military to fill planes to “excess” with unvetted individuals, according to an internal August 16th, 2021, directive that leaked to Congress.

“Total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available. Err on the side of excess,” the order stated, according to Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

Lawmakers were also informed during a classified December 2021 briefing that “not all security and vetting measures have been taken to ensure the safety of our homeland,” the Free Beacon reported. “It is beyond unacceptable that several months after President Biden’s disastrous and deadly withdrawal we still do not have … a full account of the Afghans who were evacuated to the U.S.,” Hawley and other lawmakers said at the time.

The Homeland Security Committee’s investigation comes just weeks after former U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials told Congress that Afghanistan “is once again a terrorist safe haven” under Taliban rule. Officials are particularly concerned that DHS and other intelligence agencies no longer have vetting networks in place that could thwart a future terrorist attack.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Secretive Su: Biden Admin Won’t Release Records of ‘Transparent’ Labor Secretary Nominee Julie Su

The Biden administration is stonewalling public records requests regarding acting labor secretary Julie Su, whose confirmation to lead the agency on a permanent basis faces an uphill battle in the closely divided Senate.

Conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation last month petitioned the Labor Department for all official correspondence between Su and the nation’s most powerful unions, whose business dominates her public calendars. Last week, the agency blew by its deadline to provide the documents as Su moved toward a confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate.

The watchdog said the administration’s failure to provide documents from Su’s time at the Labor Department ahead of a potential vote “thickens the cloud already hanging over this confirmation process.”

“The American people and members of the Senate who are considering her confirmation right now deserve to know the full truth about Julie Su and it is disgraceful that they are being kept in the dark,” the group said in a statement. “The fact that the acting head of the Department of Labor right now is Julie Su herself only thickens the cloud already hanging over this confirmation process.”

The Labor Department’s lack of timely transparency cuts against Su’s own defense of her record. Under questioning from Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) in a confirmation hearing last month, Su described herself as “someone who is communicative, transparent, and really sees that there is tremendous areas of common ground between employers who are job creators and employees who do the work.” Her nomination made it through committee on Wednesday and set up a full Senate vote. She must win over a number of Democratic moderates who have had second thoughts after supporting her 2021 confirmation as deputy labor secretary.

The Labor Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Su’s public calendars, on which American Accountability Foundation based its information requests, suggest that she has maintained the kinds of close ties to unions that she cultivated during her rise in California’s Democratic politics, where public employee unions hold massive sway.

According to the calendars, Su has a quarterly check-in with Neal Bisno, the president of the SEIU. She also joined a May 12, 2022 SEIU “wage theft” event in support of a controversial bill then moving through the California legislature to hand power over fast food wages and benefits to a special state council. California Democrats passed the bill, AB 257, but a judge has temporarily put the measure on hold in response to a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Su notably had zero meetings with business leaders as deputy labor secretary. It was Romney noting this fact last month that prompted Su to tout her “transparency.”

Su’s calendars also showcase her commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. For example, she participated in a meeting about “equity in procurement”—to ensure that government contracts go to business owners who are not white or straight—and a panel about incorporating gender and race into workplace safety.

Su was an early supporter of critical race theory, an academic idea that Western society is inherently racist. In a recently unearthed essay, she and a co-author decried the notions of “colorblindness” and “individuality.” They called for political lawyers and race scholars to work together for progressive social justice and claimed that “Critical Race Theory and its related schools have provided a framework for diverse alliances to combat the anti-affirmative-action assault … and to stem racial and gender violence.”

Last April, per her calendars, Su met with Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, the former California lawmaker who now leads one of the state’s most powerful unions. Gonzalez Fletcher authored California’s controversial “gig worker” law, AB 5, which was meant to improve work conditions for independent contractors but led to job losses and pay cuts for many of them. Unions have pressed Democrats to federalize the law, and Biden promised to use it as a national model in an endorsement he has since scrubbed from his campaign website.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller Advised Crypto Giant With Chinese Ties Amid Federal Probe

New Biden official is worth up to $60 million, disclosures show

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller advised the American subsidiary of a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange under investigation for fraud, money laundering, and enabling Islamic terrorist groups to use its platform.

Before joining the Biden administration last month, the former MSNBC talking head and Obama administration official was a partner at the crisis communications firm Vianovo. The firm’s roster of clients includes BAM Trading Services, a subsidiary of crypto giant Binance, according to financial disclosures obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in March sued Binance and its founder, the Chinese-Canadian billionaire Changpeng Zhao, in federal court for allegedly coaching its wealthy clients on how to evade regulations that bar Americans from trading cryptocurrency derivatives. The commission alleged that Binance executives discussed turning a blind eye to transactions conducted by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group.

Miller’s work for Binance’s public relations firm could raise eyebrows as he reenters the public sector. But consulting work was highly lucrative for Miller, who was the director of the Obama Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs and communications director for embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.). Miller has between $30 million and $60 million in assets, including a $25 million to $50 million investment in a Vanguard investment fund, his disclosures show. Over the past calendar year, Miller received $85,000 in income from Vianovo and $786,435 from its affiliate, VNPG. NBCUniversal paid Miller $98,027 for his appearances on MSNBC, where Miller appeared frequently to trumpet the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Miller served a stint last year as special adviser to the National Security Council, where he led the government’s “communications and outreach as part of our support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and defense,” according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The council has long had concerns that terrorists use cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance. Last year, the agency asked Binance to block Russians from using its platform over the invasion of Ukraine. Binance resisted calls to “unilaterally” freeze all Russian accounts.

It is unclear what work Miller provided Binance, but Vianovo touts its specialty in providing crisis communications for companies facing lawsuits, investigations, or negative publicity. “Our services include risk assessment and planning, crisis communications, litigation support, ally development, congressional testimony preparation, and brand rehabilitation,” the company says. On its website, Vianovo boasts a roster of clients including IBM, Walmart, and the NBA. But financial disclosures indicate that the firm has clients it does not publicly tout, including Binance, Google, and the business empire of Democratic megadonor Pierre Omidyar.

The firm says it no longer counts Binance as a client. “Vianovo provided Binance US with communications counsel,” Vianovo managing director Rob Norcross told the Free Beacon. “That work ended earlier this year.”

Federal regulators asserted that Binance and Zhao have “common ownership and control” of BAM Trading Services, which also operates as “Binance.US.” Zhao once referred to the Chinese parent company as a “pirate ship” in the crypto industry, with Binance.US serving as a “navy boat,” according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission complaint.

Binance and Zhao have faced additional scrutiny for hiding extensive links to China. According to the Financial Times, Zhao repeatedly instructed Binance employees to lie about the company’s presence in China because of the heightened scrutiny the relationship would bring the company.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto market, has hired a stable of attorneys and lobbyists to handle the federal investigations. Zhao and the company recently hired the white-shoe law firm Latham & Watkins and lobbyists from Hogan Lovells, ICE Miller Strategies, and Fierce Government Relations to lobby Congress and federal agencies, according to disclosures. Catherine Coley, the former CEO of Binance.US, recently hired a former Commodities Future Trade Commission official to represent her in anticipation that she will be in the crosshairs of federal investigators.

Binance did not respond to requests for comment. A State Department spokesperson responded to say that “personnel across the administration follow the highest ethical standards, including recusals when appropriate.”

Update May 2, 10:50 a.m.: This piece has been updated to included comment from the State Department.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Green Energy Industry Admits It Needs Cheap Chinese Goods To Survive

Industry leaders in panic as Congress pushes to impose tariffs on Chinese solar panels

The green energy industry is scrambling as Congress pushes forward with legislation that would impose costly tariffs on Chinese solar panels, a move that industry leaders say would cripple their business given their overwhelming reliance on cheap Chinese suppliers.

The House on Friday passed a bipartisan bill to restore tariffs on Chinese solar panels sold out of Southeast Asia, tariffs that President Joe Biden suspended last year in an attempt to “satisfy the demand for reliable and clean energy.” The legislation has already garnered support among some Senate Democrats, reflecting s significant possibility that the bill will become law.

For the green energy industry, that possibility marks a full-blown disaster.

China controls more than 80 percent of the world’s solar panel production, a figure that hasn’t waned as Biden spends hundreds of billions of dollars on green energy subsidies intended to give the United States the ability to “compete with China.” Instead, U.S. solar companies have been flooded with increased demand and have turned to China to satisfy it. A reimposition of Chinese solar tariffs would cost U.S. developers at least $1 billion in retroactive fees, prompting solar executives and trade groups to publicly stress their need to maintain a free flow of cheap Chinese goods.

The Solar Energy Industries Association, for example, admitted in a Friday statement that the United States “cannot produce enough solar panels and cells to meet demand.” The American Council on Renewable Energy similarly said Chinese tariffs “would have a devastating impact on U.S. solar deployment.” Solar energy contractor George Hershman, meanwhile, said tariffs would prompt him to lay off “thousands of people,” given the hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that his company, SOLV Energy, has fulfilled using Chinese goods. “I don’t know why anyone would support this,” Hershman told the Washington Post.

But for many congressional Democrats and Republicans, the reasoning for renewed tariffs is clear. China has for years provided illegal subsidies to its solar energy companies, allowing them to undercut U.S. competitors. When the United States imposed tariffs on Chinese solar companies to combat those illegal practices, China got around the tariffs by shipping its products through a handful of nations in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Tariffs on Chinese goods sold out of those countries, then, allow U.S. solar manufacturers to compete with “cheap, unfairly subsidized imports,” an argument that both Missouri Republican congressman Jason Smith and Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown have made in recent days.

For the Biden administration, however, the desire to transition to green energy has outweighed any appetite to combat China. Last summer, as Biden’s Commerce Department investigated whether Chinese solar companies dodged U.S. tariffs by routing their operations through Southeast Asia, Biden issued an executive order delaying tariffs on Chinese solar products sold in the region for two years. Biden held firm on that delay even as his Commerce Department determined months later that China’s solar industry indeed did dodge U.S. tariffs through its work in Southeast Asia. Ensuring a steady supply of solar panels, the White House said in a June 2022 fact sheet, was simply too important to risk.

“We need to boost short-term solar panel supply to support construction projects in the United States right now,” read the fact sheet announcing the delay. “Grid operators around the country are relying on planned solar projects to come online to ensure there is sufficient power to meet demand.”

The Biden administration, which did not return a request for comment, hasn’t changed its assessment as the solar tariff bill works its way through Congress. Biden said last week he would veto the bill, which the White House said would “create deep uncertainty for jobs and investments in the solar supply chain.” Still, should the tariffs receive staunch bipartisan support, they could still become law if Congress includes them in a bill that Biden does support, a possibility about which a House Democratic aide warned in an April interview with the Post.

“I’m worried that if you give them 60 [votes] in the Senate, Republicans will keep coming back for more bites at the apple,” the aide said. “They’re going to find every possible way to make us take hard votes on that.”

This is far from the first time that influential Biden administration officials have lobbied in favor of China’s solar industry. Top Energy Department official Jigar Shah in 2011 partnered with three Chinese solar giants to form the Coalition for Affordable Energy, a nonprofit that mounted an aggressive campaign to kill U.S. tariffs on Chinese solar panels. American consumers, Shah argued, could not afford solar panels without cheap Chinese goods, stressing the need for the two nations to “work together to solve our planet’s energy and environmental crisis.” Shah also accused the tariffs’ proponents of mounting a baseless “anti-China crusade.”

A decade later, in 2021, Biden tapped Shah to run the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, which is flooding the China-dominated green energy sector with billions of taxpayer dollars. While the office was largely dormant under Trump, Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act gave it hundreds of billions of dollars, meaning Shah now has close to $400 billion at his disposal.

https://freebeacon.com/energy/green-energy-industry-admits-it-needs-cheap-chinese-goods-to-survive/

Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Attorney Now Controls His Stake in Chinese Private Equity Firm

Documents could complicate Hunter’s efforts to negotiate lower child support payments by crying poverty

Hunter Biden says he’s a struggling artist living on a budget. But business records and emails indicate his attorney controls his valuable assets as he argues in court that he can’t come up with the child support payments for his four-year-old daughter.

Business records reveal that Biden’s stake in a Chinese private equity firm called BHR is now controlled by the Hollywood super lawyer Kevin Morris, who is paying for one of Biden’s cars, according to court proceedings on Monday.

The revelation casts doubt on the first son’s claim that he divested from his foreign business interests after his father, President Joe Biden, pledged that his family members would do so. Hunter Biden’s legal team told the New York Times in November 2021 that he “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly, in either BHR” or in his own firm, Skaneateles.

Morris’s control of Skaneateles, which holds Biden’s 10 percent stake in the Chinese private equity firm, also raises the possibility that the first son handed off his piece of the firm as payment for legal representation as he engages in a bitter court battle over custody payments to the young daughter he has worked to disclaim.

Biden was in court on Monday working to reduce his child-support obligations to his onetime mistress, Lunden Alexis Roberts, after telling the Arkansas court he cannot afford the payments. Roberts’s lawyer on Thursday cast doubts on the claim, making a motion to have Biden disclose who funds his “stable of American super lawyers.”

“Mr. Biden claims to be nothing more than a Yale-educated attorney/artist who is somewhat financially destitute and needs his child support adjusted,” Roberts’s attorney, Clint Lancaster, wrote in the filing. “However, for an artist living on meager means, Mr. Biden is living lavishly.”

Biden has Morris to thank for that lavish life, at least in part. A Democratic donor and big-time Hollywood attorney whose clients include Chris Rock and Matthew McConaughey, Morris reportedly pays Biden’s rent and living expenses in Los Angeles and has loaned him over $2 million to help pay his overdue taxes, according to the Daily Mail. Known among Biden’s inner circle as his “sugar brother,” Morris has also advised Biden on how to structure his art sales, according to the New York Post.

Records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show an amended joint venture contract for BHR Partners that identifies Morris as the managing member of Biden’s LLC. It is not clear when the transfer of interest from Hunter Biden to Morris occurred. While the contract revealing the transfer is undated, BHR executive Heng-Yin Zhang on April 20 emailed longtime Biden associate James Bulger with “signing instructions” for a contract stipulating that Morris controlled Biden’s 10 percent share in BHR.

BHR Partners is co-owned by the Beijing-controlled Bank of China and manages $2.1 billion in assets. The BHR Partners amended joint venture contract was first obtained by the nonprofit investigative group Marco Polo. Morris did not return a request for comment.

Biden’s share of BHR Partners stems from a $420,000 investment made in October 2017 through his personal company, Skaneateles LLC. Less than two years later, his interest in the company had swollen to an estimated $894,000, according to a March 2019 email from his former business partner, Eric Schwerin.

Biden attorney Chris Clark did not return requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Judge Orders Hunter Biden to Provide Details on Income From Artwork, Investments, Gifts From Friends

Biden’s attorneys reveal he has paid up to $750,000 in child support since March 2020

BATESVILLE, Ark.— Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden may have paid the mother of his 4-year-old daughter up to $750,000 in child support since March 2020, said one of his attorneys at a hearing.

Hunter Biden appeared in Independence County Circuit Court in Batesville, Arkansas, on May 1 as ordered by the judge overseeing the child support dispute between the president’s 53-year-old son and Lunden Roberts. Roberts is the Arkansas woman who, according to court filings, had a relationship with Hunter and gave birth to a baby girl in August 2018. She sued for support in 2019.

At first Hunter Biden denied that the child was his, but a DNA test confirmed he is the father.

On March 12, 2020, he and Roberts agreed to an undisclosed amount in monthly child support to begin on April 1, 2020. Terms of the agreement are sealed because they contain sensitive personal information, including the amount of monthly support and each party’s source of income.

Hunter Biden asked the court to review the child support arrangement the following September because his financial status had changed.

Lawyer Reveals Monthly Payment

During a discussion of the discovery process, Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, said his client has been paying $20,000 monthly, more than $700,000 since the support order was signed.

Judge Holly Meyer clarified during the May 1 hearing that any information discussed in open court was a matter of public record.

Lowell’s remarks came after he and attorney Brent Langdon of Dallas, Texas, complained that news outlets had published information from sealed court files. He said news reports referenced tax files, information on Hunter Biden’s cars, and other things that had been redacted.

“How is it that things that are redacted in the file are released to the Daily Mail? There are matters that are being redacted that are getting out to the daily news,” Langdon said.

Meyer said that, without proof someone was illegally releasing information, there was little she could do. Journalists and the public often speculate on matters and may come close to guessing what is in a sealed file, she added.

‘Can’t Gag the World’

“If the press comes up with those things, I can’t control that. I can’t gag the world,” Meyer said.

The judge ordered Hunter Biden to provide information on his income from his artwork, investments, employment, gifts from friends, and other sources. She also ordered Roberts to provide information on the value of her property and income while working with her father’s business.

The dispute until now has been mostly a battle of lawyers, with neither of the litigants appearing in court. Hunter Biden’s lawyers have filed at least five motions to delay the process including a last-minute attempt to delay the May 1, 2023 hearing.

Meyer denied that motion.

“All parties are to physically appear for all future court hearings in this matter. The parties will no longer have their appearances excused,” Meyer wrote in her order.

Motions Must Be Filed Correctly

Roberts’ lawyers have asked the court to find Hunter Biden in contempt and jail him for refusing to comply with previous orders, and provide requested discovery information.

Meyer wrote that those matters would be dealt with once everyone was in the courtroom.

In subsequent filings, Roberts’ attorneys complained that the Biden team was dragging its feet in the discovery process. They claim Hunter Biden is living a “lavish lifestyle.”

During the May 1 hearing, Meyer said the contempt request needed to be appropriately filed. She added that she couldn’t rule on the amount of child support because neither side provided enough information in the discovery process to move ahead.

The judge went through a to-do list so each side knew what they were expected to do in order to proceed.

One issue has been the role Hunter Biden’s laptop would play in the process. Roberts’ lawyers reportedly believe the laptop contains important financial information. The Biden lawyers have refused even to acknowledge that the computer belongs to their client. Meyer said all these issues would be addressed as long as each side does what it needs to do to advance the case.

Warning the lawyers that her patience had worn thin, Meyer said she would hold them to the agreed-to schedule.

“I expect this case to move. I will ride herd on you, gentlemen.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

US Tracking Another Unidentified Balloon Spotted Off Hawaii Coast

The U.S. military is tracking another high-altitude balloon that crossed over the Hawaii coast and is now heading toward Mexico, the Department of Defense has confirmed.

Using “newly-established parameters for monitoring U.S. airspace,” the Department of Defense first detected the balloon on April 28 off the coast of Hawaii floating at approximately 36,000 feet, a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times on May 1.

The balloon is unmanned and its ownership remains unknown. But the spokesperson said there’s “no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor.”

“The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” the spokesperson said, adding that despite it flying in the range of commercial aircraft, the balloon “posed no threat to civil aviation over Hawaii.”

These observations have led Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to agree with his military commanders that “no action need be taken against the balloon,” according to the spokesperson.

The department said the balloon has now moved out of Hawaii’s airspace and that they will continue to track its path with the Federal Aviation Administration.

The revelation marks the latest balloon overture after a Chinese spy balloon traveled for more than a week across the United States, passing over a number of sensitive military sites. A U.S. Airforce fighter jet ultimately shot it down on Feb. 4.

United States, China
A high-altitude balloon floats over Billings, Montana, on Feb. 1, 2023. The United States is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over American airspace. The Pentagon would not confirm that the balloon in the photo is the surveillance balloon. (Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette via AP)

That balloon, which had also entered Canadian airspace, appeared around the same time that a Chinese balloon traversed Latin America. That was eventually taken down by Chinese authorities when it reached the Atlantic Ocean.

Both are part of the Chinese regime’s global military surveillance program that has conducted operations in more than 40 countries across five continents, U.S. officials have said.

RELATED COVERAGE

‘Silent Killer’: Inside China’s Military Balloon Program

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions to the Department of Defense during the Monday press briefing.

Last month, reports citing two unnamed senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official claimed that the Chinese balloon that traversed the mainland United States had been able to send data back to China in real time, contradicting U.S. government’s claims that it had successfully protected American interests against the balloon’s intelligence collection.

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh refused to confirm the report at the time, saying whether real-time transmission had happened was “something we’re analyzing right now.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

KISS Guitarist Paul Stanley Speaks Out on Child Sex Reassignment Surgery

Paul Stanley, the longtime guitarist for KISS, sharply criticized child sex reassignment surgery, describing it as a “sad and dangerous fad” in a lengthy social media post.

“There is a BIG difference between teaching acceptance and normalizing and even encouraging participation in a lifestyle that confuses young children into questioning their sexual identification as though some sort of game and then parents in some cases allow it,” wrote Stanley, 71, in a post on several of his social media accounts.

“There ARE individuals who as adults may decide reassignment is their needed choice but turning this into a game or parents normalizing it as some sort of natural alternative or believing that because a little boy likes to play dress up in his sister’s clothes or a girl in her brother’s, we should lead them steps further down a path that’s far from the innocence of what they are doing,” the father of four continued.

“With many children who have no real sense of sexuality or sexual experiences caught up in the ‘fun’ of using pronouns and saying what they identify as, some adults mistakenly confuse teaching acceptance with normalizing and encouraging a situation that has been a struggle for those truly affected and have turned it into a sad and dangerous fad,” he concluded.

It’s not clear what prompted Stanley—the co-founder of the popular hard rock band—to write the post on Sunday. However, sex reassignment surgery for children as well as male athletes competing in female sports has turned into a hot-button issue in recent months, as a number of GOP-led state legislatures have moved to pass bills in response to the trend amid a widespread parent-led backlash.

At least one fellow glam rocker shared Stanley’s statement. Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider responded by saying his social media post was “well said” and was thankful “my parents didn’t jump to any rash conclusions.”

pic.twitter.com/5Gvz6v5HUi

— Paul Stanley (@PaulStanleyLive) April 30, 2023

At the federal level, the House of Representatives passed a measure in April barring transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports, although President Joe Biden has signaled he would veto the measure if it ever reaches his desk. It’s not clear if the Democrat-led Senate will even take up the bill anytime soon.

The bill stated: “It shall be a violation for a recipient of federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.”  Democrats, in turn, have claimed the bill would be tantamount to bullying transgender students.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Noam Chomsky Responds to Revelations He Met With Jeffrey Epstein

Chomsky accuses Wall Street Journal of engaging in a ‘deceitful hit piece’

Former Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor Noam Chomsky came under fire over the weekend after a report disclosed that he met with disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in 2015.

The Wall Street Journal, in an exclusive news report published on Sunday, said it obtained Epstein’s private calendar, which included numerous meetings with high-profile individuals such as Chomsky and others.

“First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally,” Chomsky, who recently has been critical of NATO’s and the United States’ involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, told the WSJ in response to the calendar’s revelations.

In an email to The Epoch Times on Monday, Chomsky said that “when I wrote a personal letter to the [WSJ] reporter, in response to her inquiries, I ended by saying that from experience I assumed that this would be the kind of deceitful hit piece favored by the editors.”

“Turns out I was right. Plenty of deceit, but far more interesting is omission: e.g., omission of the demonstration of the dedication of the [J]ournal not just to donations by leading criminals, but to honoring them,” he said, describing that as “far more extreme.”

In March 2015, Epstein scheduled a meeting with several academics, including Chomsky, who said they met multiple times at Harvard University professor Martin Nowak’s institute to discuss neuroscience.

The paper reported that two months later, Epstein scheduled a flight with Chomsky and his wife for a dinner with director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, famously also the adopted daughter of Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow. The academic said that he discussed politics and academics in his meetings with Epstein, and Epstein donated some $850,000 between 2002 and 2017 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—although MIT later rejected the donations.

At another point in 2015, Chomsky was also scheduled to fly with Epstein to dine at Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan, the paper reported, citing Epstein’s calendar.

“If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Chomsky told the WSJ. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”

US-NEWS-EPSTEIN-AIRCRAFT-LAWSUIT-PM
Jeffrey Epstein (C) appears in court in West Palm Beach, Fla., on July 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post via AP)

“What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence,” Chomsky also told the outlet about his meetings. “According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

Epstein, accused of sex trafficking underage girls, was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell as he awaited trial. He had an infamous “black book” that contained flight logs of people who flew on his private jet or to his private island, including current and former politicians, billionaires, actors, academics, and other celebrities.

After Epstein’s death, there has been widespread speculation about whether he died from suicide or if he was murdered. A forensic pathologist and former New York City Medical Examiner publicly questioned the official narrative around Epstein’s death in early 2020, saying the wounds around his neck are “more indicative of a homicide” rather than suicide.

In other comments on Sunday, Chomsky told Fox News that the WSJ’s “reporting covered 2015-16, when what was known about Mr. Epstein was that he had been sentenced for a crime, served his sentence, which wiped the slate clean according to US law and norms.”

“The gossip column chose not to publish the extensive information they have about far worse criminals who not only donate to MIT and other institutions but, far more serious of course, are greatly honored by them,” Chomsky added.

CIA Director Visit

The Wall Street Journal, citing Epstein’s calendar, said CIA Director William Burns met with Epstein at least once when he was an Obama administration official. The intelligence agency later confirmed that Burns was introduced to Epstein by a mutual friend in Washington, although Burns said he didn’t know much about the disgraced financier.

“The director did not know anything about him, other than he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp said. “The director does not recall any further contact, including receiving a ride to the airport. They had no relationship.”

The calendar also included names such as Bard College President Leon Botstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky, and Kathryn Ruemmler, who was a White House lawyer during the Obama administration, according to the Wall Street Journal’s report. Those individuals mainly said they met with Epstein due to his wealth and connections, with some saying they were seeking donations.

“I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ruemmler said, reported the paper.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘Shut Down the Administrative State,’ 2024 Presidential Candidate Vows

Removing the ‘fourth branch of government’ is necessary for restoring the ‘lifeblood of our constitutional republic,’ says Vivek Ramaswamy

NEW YORK—Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy made his first major splash in 2014 after founding a company that developed a drug for treating prostate cancer.

A child of immigrants from India who arrived in America with almost no money, Ramaswamy started the biotechnology firm at the age of 29 and quickly built it into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, landing him on the cover of Forbes in the process. That was his American dream.

But he left the medical field to treat “a different kind of cancer” metastasizing in America, Ramaswamy, now a GOP 2024 presidential candidate, told a full house at a campaign event hosted by the New York Metropolitan Republican Club on April 26.

“Not a biological cancer, but a cultural cancer that threatened to kill that dream that Martin Luther King had 60 years ago, that threatened to kill the dream that allowed me to achieve everything I ever had in my life,” Ramaswamy told the crowd.

“Pick your favorite ‘-ism’: woke-ism, transgenderism, climate-ism, COVID-ism, globalism—whatever it is, you think it’s an accident that these things cropped up at the same time?” he said. “It’s not. It’s a symptom of a deeper identity crisis.”

The candidate touted the ideas that would ultimately underlie his campaign platform, from instituting radical government reform to reviving a national identity to fill “the vacuum at the heart of our national soul.”

The gist of his promise is to revive the values that made his American dream possible: faith, patriotism, hard work, and family. And a necessary step in achieving this goal, he said, is dissolving the federal agencies controlled by a corporate managerial class.

“[President] Ronald Reagan led us out of our last national identity crisis in 1980. I’m running for president to do the same thing again in 2024,” Ramaswamy said in closing his speech.

‘Gut It’

A political outsider and businessman, Ramaswamy has a campaign message that strikes a similar tone to that which propelled candidate Donald Trump to victory in 2016: overhaul the Washington establishment.

“I’m going to shut down the administrative state—the unconstitutional fourth branch of government—gut it,” he told The Epoch Times after the event while on his way to downtown Manhattan for dinner.

Doing so, he added, would restore “the lifeblood of our constitutional republic” and the “economic growth in this country.”

“Because that’s one of the great obstacles that gets in the way.”

According to Ramaswamy’s 2021 book “Woke Inc.” and subsequent online posts, these agencies include the FBI, the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Education, and others.

In “Woke Inc.,” the entrepreneur writes that these agencies have been fundamentally transformed by a scheme he calls “wokenomics”: C-suit executives of corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street deploy woke ideologies as a “smokescreen to distract from greed, fraud, and malfeasance.”

This scheme, he argues, goes beyond the “old” crony capitalism model in which corporations influence legislation via campaign contributions: corporations promulgate this woke ideology, which permeates government administrative agencies, who in turn “became the willing henchmen of the woke-industrial complex.”

As a result, a set of pseudo-moral principles has dominated American institutions, devastated American values, and spawned an administrative state—a federal bureaucracy largely controlled by a corporate managerial class.

That administrative state, he said, then comes back to force the market to adopt agendas most American people don’t agree with—an agenda that conforms to the “climate cult,” for example.

“That’s not the invisible hand of the market. That is the invisible fist of government,” he said during his speech.

So, vowing to treat what he describes as a “cultural cancer” and dissolve the administrative state, Ramaswamy, 37, in February threw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination.

But getting rid of the administrative state would not be a perpetual solution, he said.

“It’s going to come back,” Ramaswamy told The Epoch Times. “It’s going to take the next leader, then, to be vigilant in their own way. But that’s no excuse for not doing the best thing we can do right now.”

A successful 2024 bid—currently looking like a long shot with former President Donald Trump leading the pack—would make history as he would be the country’s youngest-ever commander-in-chief.

Countering Communist China

Ending the administrative state would be his top priority to address the greatest internal threat to the United States, he told The Epoch Times.

But at the same time, the candidate identified the greatest external threat: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

He proposed during his Wednesday speech that he would forbid most U.S. businesses from expanding into the Chinese market until the CCP reforms its behavior dramatically.

“No theft, no mercantilism, no intellectual property theft,” he said.

“And I’m going to be really honest with you—that will involve some short-term sacrifice,” Ramaswamy added. “Here’s the secret—and geopolitics is not that different than in business—it’s when you are most willing to make a sacrifice that you will not have to make one.”

He also said during an event earlier in April that if he becomes the president, he will put “a gun in every Taiwanese household” to deter CCP aggression towards the self-ruled democratic island the communist regime has repeatedly threatened to invade.

“If I do those two things: shut down the administrative state and declare independence from communist China … and then add to that, maybe if I secure the border, and end the Fentanyl crisis in the process … I’ve done my part,” he told The Epoch Times. He added that declaring independence from communist China will help end the fentanyl crisis, because much of the fentanyl in America has been made with precursors from China.

On Statesmanship

When asked about his plans for getting America out of the identity crisis he warns about, Ramaswamy said that a good statesman goes beyond implementing good policies.

“I think part of the job of a U.S. president is not just to lead with the policy agenda, but to lead with national character, to be somebody who you can look your kids in the eye and say: I want you to grow up to be like him,” he told The Epoch Times.

“And I think that that’s something that Reagan did really well—I don’t think we’ve had a president since him who embodied that in quite the same way. So, I think that’s part of the job—that’s more than just the policy—but the inspiration of the next generation of Americans to allow them to see the ideals that actually make us who we are.”

But what about being attacked by the establishment? Recent events, including the historic indictment of Trump, have some commentators worried that people who oppose the left might be targeted by politically motivated prosecutions.

“I’m ready,” he replied. “You don’t prepare for this. You don’t get into this without having a spine of steel. They’re going to come for us. We’ll be as ready as we can.”

“One thing I’ve learned from the Trump experience is that they’re going to come to you,” Ramaswamy said.

“But the only thing in our control is—we can’t make it easy for them.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Did This Call Lead To Tucker’s Firing?

Could a phone conversation between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch have resulted in the firing of Tucker Carlson?

Zelenskyy reportedly conveyed his displeasure with Carlson’s negative coverage of Ukraine in March. During the call, he and Murdoch also talked about the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion and the death of a Fox News employee in Ukraine.

It has been reported that Zelenskyy had another conversation with Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch a few weeks prior to the end of Carlson’s show.

Whether the Murdochs sidelined Carlson because of Zelenskyy’s complaints remains unclear. It is known that other Ukrainian officials made their dissatisfaction with the host clear to network executives.

The news website Semafor continues:

The Murdoch’s have not revealed which of Carlson’s many provocations triggered his firing, and there’s no particular suggestion that Zelenskyy — whom Carlson had called a “dictator” — delivered the final blow.

But Carlson’s firing will immediately relieve pressure on key Capitol Hill Ukraine supporters whom Carlson had criticized on air — and sometimes pressed behind the scenes to change their positions on the war.

Support for providing Ukraine with weapons and financial assistance has decreased among Republicans as the fighting drags on. Like the GOP establishment, Murdoch is more supportive of the government in Kyiv than the party base.

Some congressional Republicans, who don’t share Carlson’s views on Ukraine, have expressed relief that he’s gone.

“There have been some that have argued that he was setting foreign policy for the Republican Party, which I find to be bizarre. Certainly not for me,” Sen. Mitt Romney told the Hill. “To the primary [Republican] voter, the active participant, the grassroot voter, he’s a person they listen to and has a big influence.”

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Stock Prices Of Major Lenders Plummet After Second Largest American Bank Failure

On Monday, the stock prices of several mid-size banks experienced a significant drop following the collapse of the third major U.S. bank in two months.

On Monday morning, First Republic Bank closed after an attempt to save the regional bank failed to materialize. Federal regulators promptly seized control of the bank. Later that day, JP Morgan Chase announced its acquisition of First Republic.

After striking a deal to purchase the bank, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon declared, “this part of the crisis is over.”

“This part of the crisis is over,” says JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon during an analyst call after the firm struck a deal to purchase First Republic Bank https://t.co/BWdvKfsp7h pic.twitter.com/mstsNlNZePMay 1, 2023

CNBC has more:

JPMorgan emerged as the winner of a weekend auction for First Republic after regulators decided that time had run out on a private sector solution. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized the bank and New York-based JPMorgan announced early Monday that it was acquiring nearly all of the deposits and most of the assets of First Republic.

“There are only so many banks that were offsides this way,” Dimon told analysts in a call shortly after the deal was announced.

“There may be another smaller one, but this pretty much resolves them all,” Dimon said. “This part of the crisis is over.”

In the wake of the sudden collapse in March of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, investors have punished other lenders that had similar characteristics to SVB. Companies with the highest percentage of uninsured deposits and losses on their balance sheet were most scrutinized.

Biden promised Americans the banking system was secure after the collapse of SVB.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Leaked Top Secret Files Came From US Global Drone Network

MONDAY PDB – Airman in massive classified leaks case worked on a global network essential to drone missions. Jack Teixeira’s National Guard unit is part of a vast system that carries video and data from spy satellites and drone missions worldwide.

Called the Distributed Common Ground System, it is a vast computer network that handles the immense amounts of data generated by surveillance drones, spy satellites and other sensors — information that intelligence analysts rigorously vet and pass along to troops on the ground.

DESPITE HIS EGREGIOUS TREASON – Family of Pentagon leak suspect say they’re supporting him. The airman first class has been accused of accessing classified information and posting government information to a social media platform.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – Here’s a roundup of today’s other top defense stories.

Not the President’s Daily Brief, but almost as good – PAUL’S DAILY BRIEFING – the PDB:

POLITICS

NOW THE DEMS ARE THE WARMONGERS – These Democrats are leading the call for Biden to send jets to Ukraine. Biden is facing pressure from within his own party to send fighter jets and longer-range missiles to Ukraine, as Russia continues to inflict death and destruction by air.

NATIONAL SECURITY

007 STOPPED IN A PUB AND WENT TO THE LOO – British Royal Navy submarine files left in a pub bathroom. Do not take documents about nuclear-powered attack submarines to bars.

CHINA THREAT

US Navy P-8 flies over Taiwan Strait, causing China to scramble. China’s People’s Liberation Army scrambled fighter jets to monitor a P-8A Poseidon that flew over the Taiwan Strait Friday.

Japan ocean policy vows tougher security amid China threat. It adopted a new five-year ocean policy on Friday that calls for stronger maritime security, including bolstering its coast guard’s capability and cooperation with the military as China grows increasingly belligerent in regional seas.

RUSSIA THREAT – UKRAINE WAR

Russians seem to be baiting US jets to dogfight in Syria, says US general. Russian pilots have begun buzzing American fighter jets over Syria in apparent invitations to dogfight.

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 432. Russia’s defense ministry has said Russian forces took control of new areas of the eastern city of Bakhmut. The head of Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries has threatened to withdraw his troops from Bakhmut because of rising casualties.

Ukrainian drones strike Crimea oil depot. A massive fire erupted at an oil depot after it was hit by two of Ukraine’s drones, the latest in a series of attacks on the annexed peninsula as Russia braces for an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Ukraine says its air defenses shoot down 15 Russian missiles. They destroyed 15 of 18 missiles launched by Russian forces as Moscow has intensified its attacks.

Russian army numbers growing inside Ukraine, says top NATO commander. The Russian army operating in Ukraine today is larger than when the Kremlin launched its invasion in February 2022, but remains vulnerable to a Kyiv counteroffensive expected in the coming weeks.

EU nations quarrel over where to buy fresh ammo for Ukraine. As the European Union figures out how to spend €1 billion on bullets and shells for Ukraine, the buildup of a massive weapons cash pile it will use is sparking debate about the bloc’s new-found appetite for arms purchases.

IRAN THREAT

PR OP – Iran TV airs footage of commandos seizing US-bound tanker. Masked Iranian navy commandos conducted a helicopter-borne raid to seize a U.S.-bound oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

Washington must focus on Asia when targeting Tehran’s drone technology procurement. Asia has long served as a critical hub for military and missile technology to the Islamic Republic.

NORTH KOREA THREAT

A friendly visit to Washington is also a crucial summit on global security. South Korea’s president will discuss strengthening security cooperation with the U.S. during his state visit this week to Washington.

SPACE THREAT

SpaceX launches triple-core Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket soared into space on Sunday, kicking off a complicated mission that boosted a powerful commercial communications satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

US conducts first evacuation of its citizens from Sudan war. This is its first evacuation of American citizens and permanent residents from Sudan since war broke out in the capital two weeks ago. U.S. diplomats were evacuated earlier.

A-10s return to Middle East with a new mission, and a new weapon. Tensions with Iran, Russia have CENTCOM calling upon the venerable Warthog once again.

ISIS chief killed in Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency, Erdogan says. The suspected leader of the Islamic State group has been killed in Syria in an operation carried out by Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency.

Marcos Jr treads a fine line over military ties as he heads to US. The Philippines president has tilted towards the U.S. since taking office a year ago but is keeping Beijing close.

US MILITARY

Army grounds helicopter fleet for force-wide safety stand down. It announced that its pilots are grounded until they complete a mandatory safety training program in the wake of a series of deadly helicopter crashes.

END of PDB

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Sen. Cardin Won’t Seek Reelection

A three-term United States senator will not seek reelection.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., confirmed the news Monday morning. Pundits expect the vacancy will spark a free-for-all Democratic Party primary in the deep blue state.

The Washington Post reports:

CARDIN, 79, HAS BEEN A FIXTURE IN MARYLAND POLITICS FOR DECADES, BUILDING A REPUTATION AS A SERIOUS, RESERVED LEGISLATOR WHO GRAVITATES TOWARD COMPLEX POLICY ISSUES AND AVOIDS THE KIND OF SHOW-HORSE POLITICKING OF SOME OF HIS PEERS. HIS RETIREMENT IS LIKELY TO CREATE A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY TO REPLACE HIM.

DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO STEM RETIREMENTS OF POPULAR LONGTIME SENATORS AHEAD OF WHAT IS EXPECTED TO BE A TOUGH ELECTORAL MAP FOR SENATE DEMOCRATS IN 2024. MARYLAND REPUBLICANS HAVE NOT WON A SENATE SEAT SINCE THE 1980S. BUT DEMOCRATS AREN’T TAKING ANYTHING FOR GRANTED, WARY OF THE POTENTIAL OF A LARRY HOGAN-ESQUE MODERATE REPUBLICAN EMERGING AS A GOP NOMINEE.

CARDIN, WHO HAS SERVED IN THE SENATE SINCE 2007, HAS COMFORTABLY WON REELECTION IN EVERY RACE SINCE THEN.

HE BEGAN HIS CAREER IN THE MARYLAND GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN THE 1960S, RUNNING HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN WHILE HE WAS STILL IN LAW SCHOOL IN 1966, BEFORE CLIMBING THE RANKS TO HOUSE SPEAKER IN 1979. PUBLIC SERVICE RAN IN THE FAMILY. A THIRD-GENERATION MARYLANDER FROM BALTIMORE AND THE GRANDSON OF RUSSIAN-JEWISH IMMIGRANTS, CARDIN FILLED THE SEAT IN THE STATE HOUSE VACATED BY HIS UNCLE AND WAS THE SON OF A STATE LAWMAKER WHO BECAME A JUDGE.

This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

DeSantis-Backed Florida Tourism Board To Launch Countersuit Against Disney

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board has announced that it will counter-sue Disney after the company filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

“Disney sued us, we have no choice now but to respond,” Martin Garcia, chair of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said Monday, according to Fox News. “The district will seek justice in state court here in central Florida where both it and Disney reside and do business.” 

On Monday, the DeSantis-backed board convened and passed a motion to take legal action against Disney, which will be filed in state court.

Disney filed a lawsuit against DeSantis last week, alleging the Republican governor orchestrated a “targeted campaign of government retaliation” against the company that violates Disney’s free speech rights. (RELATED: Disney Sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis)

Disney is challenging the legality of a new board appointed by DeSantis to govern the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District – where the Walt Disney World resort is located.  

Earlier this year, Gov. DeSantis signed a new law into effect that stripped Disney World of its self-governing status. (RELATED: Florida Governor Signs Bill Revoking Disney’s Self-Governing Status)

The bill, HB9, renamed the Reedy Creek Improvement District, where Disney World is housed, to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Under the new law, the park may only have term-limited members who are not recent employees or have been contracted by Disney in the past three years.

Last week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a summons against Gov. DeSantis in relation to Disney’s lawsuit. The governor was more than 6,000 miles away from the state on a trip to Israel at the time.  

“A lawsuit has been filed against you,” it says, adding that “[w]ithin 21 days after service of this summons on you (not counting the day you received it)… you must serve on the plaintiff an answer to the attached complaint or a motion under Rule 12 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”  

DeSantis, in Jerusalem last Thursday said “I don’t think the suit has merit.”

“They’re upset because they’re having to live by the same rules as everybody else. They don’t want to pay the same taxes as everybody else, and they want to be able to control things without proper oversight,” DeSantis added. “The days of putting one company on a pedestal with no accountability are over in the state of Florida.”  

The Florida governor is widely expected to enter the 2024 Republican presidential primary in the coming weeks, teeing up an intense fight against former President Donald Trump.

This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

JPMorgan Buys First Republic, After Regulators Seize Beleaguered Bank

First Republic Bank has been seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), which announced on May 1 that the beleaguered bank is being bought by JPMorgan Chase.

California financial regulators on May 1 ordered First Republic Bank closed, with the FDIC appointed as receiver.

“To protect depositors, the FDIC is entering into a purchase and assumption agreement with JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, Columbus, Ohio, to assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank,” the FDIC stated on May 1.

The purchase and assumption agreement will see the FDIC contribute an estimated $13 billion from its deposit insurance fund to sweeten the deal, which was hammered out late April 30 and early May 1 after several banks submitted last-minute bids.

The Epoch Times hasn’t been able to confirm other participants in the bidding, but the FDIC stated that JPMorgan’s offer—which includes the assumption of all customer deposits and substantially all of its assets—fits the bill.

“The resolution of First Republic Bank involved a highly competitive bidding process and resulted in a transaction consistent with the least-cost requirements of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act,” the FDIC stated.

This refers to the legal requirement for the FDIC to pick a form of “resolution”—or orderly liquidation of a failing bank—that results in the lowest possible cost to its deposit insurance fund and, indirectly, to customers of healthy banks that will eventually be encumbered by the cost of topping up the fund via a special assessment (or insurance premium) on banks.

The FDIC is also entering into a loss-share transaction with JPMorgan Chase on real estate loans purchased from First Republic, an arrangement meant to both minimize disruptions for loan customers and maximize recoveries.

“The FDIC as receiver and JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, will share in the losses and potential recoveries on the loans covered by the loss-share agreement,” the FDIC stated.

First Republic Bank had approximately $229.1 billion in total assets and $103.9 billion in total deposits as of April 13.

Under the terms of the takeover, depositors of First Republic will automatically become depositors of JPMorgan Chase and will continue to have full access to their deposits.

On May 1, First Republic Bank’s 84 offices in eight states reopened as branches of JPMorgan Chase, which will operate normally during regular business hours.

The transaction makes JPMorgan Chase—already the nation’s biggest bank—even larger.

The announcement of the deal caps weeks of speculation about the fate of First Republic, which was tossed a lifeline recently in the form of a $30 billion injection of uninsured deposits by five of the nation’s biggest banks, including JPMorgan.

First Republic was, by July 2020, the 14th biggest bank in the United States, and at the end of last year, it employed more than 7,200 people.

The San Francisco-based lender was, like other regional lenders, squeezed by the Federal Reserve’s rapid rate hikes in a bid to quash soaring inflation. Rising rates made the bank’s portfolio of bonds drop in value, and the March collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) sparked what First Republic executives said was an “unprecedented” outflow of deposits, sparking a steep selloff of its shares.

Epoch Times Photo
People walk by the First Republic Bank headquarters in San Francisco on March 13, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

‘Unprecedented Deposit Outflows’

An earnings report (pdf) released by First Republic on April 24 revealed it had experienced an “unprecedented” run on deposits following the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.

“With the closure of several banks in March, we experienced unprecedented deposit outflows,” Neal Holland, First Republic’s chief financial officer, said in the earnings report.

On March 9, a day before SVB failed, First Republic’s deposits stood at $173.5 billion, down 1.7 percent from year-end 2022.

But on March 10, as SVB’s collapse grabbed headlines, First Republic began experiencing an unprecedented run on its deposits that saw $101 billion in savings flee the bank through April 21.

Word of the deposit exodus sent First Republic Bank’s stock to record lows.

In the run-up to the FDIC’s April 29 seizure of First Republic, there was speculation as to whether the bank would try to continue operating while taking steps to bolster its balance sheet.

That seemed to be the preferred course of action for First Republic CEO Michael Roffler, who said in the earnings report that deposits had stabilized and the bank remained “fully committed” to serving its customers.

“With the stabilization of our deposit base and the strength of our credit quality and capital position, we continue to take steps to strengthen our business,” he said.

At the same time, First Republic said in the earnings report that it was “pursuing strategic options,” which is Wall Street code for looking for a white knight to swoop in for a rescue.

Some analysts say that the failure of First Republic will put more pressure on an already battered financial sector.

Svb
SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) logo and decreasing stock graph are seen in this illustration taken on March 19, 2023. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

‘Credit Shocks’ Coming?

The banking crisis is expected to cause “credit shocks,” which would drag down economic growth, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Disruption in the financial system will leave its mark on the real economy,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote in a recent note. “Our banking analysts see permanently higher funding costs for banks going forward, and the disruption to funding markets will likely lead to a tightening in credit conditions.”

The manufacturing, commercial real estate, and technology sectors are the most vulnerable to a pullback in bank lending, according to Goldman Sachs.

A reduction in lending will result in lower business investment in these industries, Jan Hatzius, chief economist of Goldman Sachs, wrote in a recent note.

“We also expect slowing job growth in the leisure and hospitality and other services industries, as diminished loan availability dissuades restaurant operators and other smaller businesses from hiring new workers and opening new establishments,” Hatzius said.

Although deposit outflows have stabilized in recent weeks after an initial surge in the wake of the SVB collapse, the banking sector isn’t yet out of the woods, experts say.

“The U.S. banking sector continues to have fundamental weaknesses that have been contained due to liquidity injections and short term loans,” Daniel Lacalle, chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and a contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an email.

“But the core problem remains: the profitable asset base has been destroyed by years of negative real rates.”

Negative real rates occur when nominal interest rates—those usually quoted by banks on loans and other financial products—are lower than the rate of inflation. Banks have a harder time turning profits when interest rates are low.

Before soaring prices forced the Fed to start hiking interest rates in March 2022, there was a period of more than a decade during which the central bank expanded its balance sheet by buying government securities, driving interest rates to near zero, and flooding the economy with cheap money.

Analysts say many banks took added risks to increase investment returns during years of very low interest rates and some may have failed to hedge against the risk of rising interest rates.

“Deposit outflows have also forced banks to sell assets at a loss that they had intended to hold to maturity in order to generate the cash required to cover deposit withdrawals,” Ben Johnston, chief operating officer of Kapitus, a provider of financing for small and medium-sized businesses, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“These losses have reduced the equity value of the banks, weakening their ability to withstand future losses, and worrying their customer bases. While fear in the banking system has subsided, these risks have not gone away.”

Investor Warren Buffett predicted recently that “we’re not through with bank failures,” and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in a letter to shareholders that even when the current crisis is behind us, “there will be repercussions from it for years to come.”

Liam Cosgrove and Emel Akan contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Trump Moves For Mistrial Over Court’s ‘Unfair’ Rulings

Former President Donald Trump‘s attorney Joe Tacopina has requested a mistrial hours before his cross-examination of E. Jean Carroll is set to resume.

Carroll is suing Trump, accusing him of defamation after he denied sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Tacopina filed a letter early Monday, arguing the judge made “unfair and prejudicial rulings” against him. Instead of declaring a mistrial, Tacopina informed Judge Lewis Kaplan he could alternatively “correct the record for each and every instance in which the Court has mischaracterized the facts of the case to the jury” or give him more leeway when cross-examining Carroll.

NEW in CARROLL TRIAL: Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina has moved for a mistrial on multiple grounds, as summarized on the front page of this letter. pic.twitter.com/S85poutu1sMay 1, 2023

As The Hill reports:

Carroll, 79, has accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City in the 1990s. Carroll, a longtime columnist for Elle magazine, is suing for battery and defamation, claiming that Trump defamed her when he denied the allegations.

In the 18-page letter, Tacopina lays out a number of alleged reasons for a mistrial, including arguments that the court, led by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, has “mischaracterized evidence” in Carroll’s favor and sustained improper objections from the plaintiff’s team.

Trial opened with jury selection in the case last week.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll began her testimony, according to The Associated Press. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.”

Legal experts doubt that Tacopina’s request will result in a mistrial, but reports suggest that Trump’s team is preparing a counterargument in the event that the jury holds the former president responsible.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

How Surging Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Introduced Anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan to the Anti-Vaxx Movement

Farrakhan: ‘Some of us are afraid, but Mr. Kennedy found his way to our door’

Robert Kennedy Jr., who has won a substantial amount of Democratic support since announcing his run for president, is a longtime ally of the notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, who credits the candidate with turning him on to anti-vaccine theories.

The Kennedy-Farrakhan courtship began in 2015, when Kennedy visited the Nation of Islam leader at his home in Chicago to discuss the measles vaccine administered routinely to young kids. Farrakhan said in a social media post after the meeting that the vaccine was “designed” to harm black males. “Some of us are afraid, but Mr. Kennedy found his way to our door,” Farrakhan has said.

Kennedy now has vocal support from Farrakhan, who has praised Adolf Hitler, compared Jews to “termites,” and maintains a massive following through the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan has credited Kennedy with introducing him to the controversial and widely disputed theory that childhood measles vaccines are linked to autism. Kennedy has cosponsored events with the Nation of Islam and its leader, whom he has praised as a “truly great partner” in the “battle” to publicize the autism theory.

Nineteen percent of Democratic voters say they support Kennedy over President Joe Biden, according to a Fox News poll. The anti-vaccine activist’s popularity among Democrats could cut against the party’s efforts to portray the Republican base as anti-science bigots. While Biden is still the heavy favorite, Kennedy’s surprisingly strong numbers show that a sizable chunk of Democratic voters are open to supporting a candidate who has pushed anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

The Kennedy family scion’s numbers could be cause for concern for Biden, with one analyst arguing they show the commander in chief “ceding a significant and potentially embarrassing chunk of voters to an anti-vaccine activist.”

Researchers have largely disputed Kennedy’s claims about the measles vaccine, asserting it is based on a misinterpretation of data regarding autism cases for children who have been vaccinated.

That hasn’t deterred Kennedy and Farrakhan.

“I thank God for Minister Farrakhan for getting involved in this. He’s been a truly great partner in this battle,” Kennedy said at a protest with the Nation of Islam outside CDC headquarters in Atlanta in Oct. 2015.

The Nation of Islam in 2016 promoted Kennedy’s film Vaxxed, which accuses the federal government of covering up a link between vaccines and autism in black children. Kennedy, who runs the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, in 2017 hosted Nation of Islam officials at a press conference with actor Robert De Niro in which they promoted a vaccine-autism link. In 2021, Kennedy hosted Nation of Islam’s Tony Muhammad for a discussion of Kennedy’s documentary Medical Racism: The New Apartheid. Kennedy posited that health officials “are conducting an experiment on black Americans” by vaccinating black children against measles.

Kennedy debuted the documentary at a Feb. 2021 Nation of Islam conference, winning the praise of Farrakhan, who called the movie “brilliant.”

Farrakhan and Kennedy carried their unlikely alliance through the coronavirus pandemic. During a 2020 speech in which Farrakhan called a vaccine a “vial of death,” the preacher urged his supporters to “follow Robert Kennedy.” In another speech that year, Farrakhan asserted that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates had plotted to administer the vaccine across the globe to “depopulate the Earth.”

Nation of Islam minister Ava Muhammad said at the event that the goal of the vaccine was to “cull the population of our planet by 2-3 billion” because “white people see their [population] numbers going down, and the numbers of indigenous people, black, red, and brown, going up.” The Nation of Islam has cited Kennedy in its claim that the polio vaccine is linked to higher cancer rates in black people.

But Kennedy hasn’t always felt so warmly about Farrakhan. According to excerpts of Kennedy’s private diary leaked in 2013, Kennedy lamented that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had a “love affair with Louis Farrakhan and his Jewish xenophobia.”

Kennedy is hardly the only prominent liberal to find common cause with Farrakhan, and the minister is hardly a pariah in Democratic politics. Former president Barack Obama managed to suppress a picture of himself engaged in what the Philadelphia Tribune described as a “warm conversation.” The British boy band Coldplay last year dedicated a song to the anti-Semitic preacher, who once mocked Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin for having Jewish friends.

Farrakhan and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Anatomy of a Washington Post Smear Campaign

The paper claimed conservative judge Matthew Kacsmaryk violated legal ethics. Ethics experts say otherwise.

On April 15, one week after Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, the Washington Post published what it framed as a scandalous story about the Texas judge.

When he got word of his impending nomination in April 2017, the Post claimed, Kacsmaryk, then the deputy general counsel of the religious freedom group First Liberty Institute, removed his name from an article he had allegedly drafted for the Texas Review of Law and Politics, substituting the names of two of his colleagues for his own byline.

The switcheroo meant that Kacsmaryk did not have to list the article, which concerned religious conscience exemptions for abortion and transgender surgeries, on his Senate Judiciary Questionnaire. The revelations “raise questions” about whether Kacsmaryk “was seeking to duck scrutiny” of his views on hot-button issues, the story said—and prompted calls from Democratic lawmakers for an investigation.

The firestorm was fueled by prominent attorneys quoted in the Post, including Adam Charnes, a high-ranking official in George W. Bush’s administration, who said it was abnormal and unethical for nominees to publish things they’d written under other people’s names.

Almost every part of the story appears to have been misleading or false.

This report is based on dozens of interviews with experts on legal ethics from across the political spectrum, attorneys at First Liberty, and people involved in Kacsmaryk’s nomination process. It suggests that Kacsmaryk did not write the article in question but insteadsupervised the attorneys drafting it, stepping back from that project—and many others—once his nomination was imminent.

This is a common practice, ethicists and people who have worked with judicial nominees said. And it hardly constitutes a duplicitous dodge.

“I’m not aware of a canon of judicial ethics that this would violate,” said Carissa Hessick, a legal ethicist at the University of North Carolina, who has criticized restrictions on abortion and warned the right to gay marriage could be “blown up” by the Supreme Court. “It’s not unusual or strange.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee requires nominees to disclose all “published material” they have written or edited, any excerpt of which can be used against them. That is why, when someone is about to be nominated, the Justice Department tells that person to shut up.

“Our advice to nominees was to wind down their practices and not publish or give speeches while they were being considered for a federal appointment, even if they had made plans to do so up to that point,” said Bethany Pickett, who worked on hundreds of judicial nominations in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy under former president DonaldTrump. “It would be common for any nominee not to author or further engage with a publication once being considered for the federal bench.”

Though Pickett did not work directly on Kacsmaryk’s nomination, three people who did confirmed that Kacsmaryk was given the same advice. The decision to take his name off the article—in which he played only a minimal role—was in keeping with Justice Department norms throughout the years.

What emerges is a picture of a national newspaper framing a common and recommended practice as anact of deception. With Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch now facing ethics allegations of their own, the story is a cautionary tale of how overzealous reporting can insinuate scandal where none exists—especially when the target is a conservative judge.

Kacsmaryk has been under the microscope since he issued an order halting the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of mifepristone, effectively outlawing the drug. The ruling, which the Supreme Court stayed in mid-April, sparked outrage from liberals and even some conservatives, who said it was an act of judicial overreach. Adam Unikowsky, a former law clerk to Antonin Scalia, went so far as to imply that the decision threatened the rule of law itself, calling Kacsmaryk’s reasoning “egregiously wrong.”

The Post story leaned into this bipartisan backlash. It included quotes from Adam Charnes, the principal deputy in former president Bush’s Office of Legal Policy, and Alex Aronson, a former chief counsel to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), arguing it would be unethical for a hypothetical nominee to remove his name from an article.

They were the only attorneys in the story who expressed that viewwhichdoes not appear to be the consensus position among legal ethicists. Even liberals and moderates were skeptical that the byline switch raised any red flags, telling the Free Beacon it was neither unusual nor untoward.

“I know of other nominees—not for President Trump—who have taken their names off articles upon being nominated,” Hessick, the University of North Carolina professor, said. “Potential nominees are explicitly told to stop publishing.”

William Dailey, an ethics expert at the University of Notre Dame who writes occasionally for the liberal Catholic magazine America, said he didn’t “see what the ethical objection would be.” And Brian Frye, a legal ethicist at the University of Kentucky, said the name change would be problematic only if Kacsmaryk was the original author.

It “doesn’t seem duplicitous to take your name off something you didn’t actually write,” Frye said, adding that he was a registered Democrat who doesn’t agree with Kacsmaryk “about anything.”

Charnes did not respond to a request for comment.

The Post made much of the fact that Kacsmaryk submitted an early draft of the article, titled “The Jurisprudence of the Body,” in early 2017 under his own name. The byline switch came that April, when he informed the Texas Review of Law and Politics that, “for reasons I may discuss at a later date,” First Liberty attorneys Stephanie Taub and Justin Butterfield would coauthor the piece instead. Their names weren’t anywhere on the first draft, the Post stressed, and it was Kacsmaryk who’d been corresponding with the journal. He also provided some edits on later drafts, according to emails reviewed by the Post.

But Taub and Butterfield told the Washington Free Beacon that they wrote the first draft themselves. Kacsmaryk, they said, had been brainstorming ideas with Taub, who was his research assistant at the time. “When his schedule became too busy to write an article, or even to review my outline,” Taub said, “I took the initiative of drafting an article. I listed [Kacsmaryk’s] name as the author of this and subsequent drafts because I assumed I was ghostwriting it for him.”

The Post did send First Liberty an inquiry addressed to Taub and Butterfield, according to emails reviewed by the Free Beacon. First Liberty responded on their behalf, telling the paper that Taub and Butterfield wrote the article and providing documentation of their involvement, some of which the Post mentioned, albeit with skepticism. Butterfield also said that the paper never contacted him directly—even though it had been given his cell phone number, according to Butterfield and another person with knowledge of the situation.

The Post’s director of communications, Azhar AlFadl Miranda, declined to answer specific questions about the paper’s reporting, saying only that the “responses from the First Liberty Institute are captured in our story.”

Taub’s drafts of the article were mainly edited by Butterfield, he said. Kacsmaryk’s primary contribution was serving as a liaison to the Texas Review of Law and Politics, with which he had institutional ties.

“It made sense for Kacsmaryk to be the point man for the article,” the journal’s former editor in chief Aaron Reitz said, “because Kacsmaryk himself had worked on the Review while a student at [University of Texas] Law and had an established relationship with our journal.” Hiram Sasser, First Liberty’s executive general counsel, and Mike Berry, its vice president of external affairs, corroborated that account.

The article did not advance a novel legal argument, much less take positions Kacsmaryk hadn’t already taken publicly. It was largely based on research Taub had conducted for an amicus brief in Stormans, Inc. v. Wiesman, a Supreme Court case involving religious conscience rights, Butterfield said. The article cited many of the same sources as that brief—which Kacsmaryk did include on his Senate Judiciary Questionnaire—as well as an essay Kacsmaryk had published in First Things, which he also included, according to a review of the documents’ footnotes.

“All the content in that article was disclosed through some other citation,” Sasser said.

Even if it wasn’t—and even if Kacsmaryk had written the article himself—most experts agreed he wouldn’t have done anything wrong. The Senate’s rules apply only to articles that have been published or edited under a nominee’s own name, Pickett, Dailey, and Hessick said, in part because a more exacting standard would be unworkable.

Ghostwriting is par for the course in the legal profession, and the attorneys listed on a brief often had unattributed help drafting it. If nominees had to disclose ghostwritten or ghostedited material, the Senate questionnaire would be nearly impossible to fill out.

“This broad interpretation being advanced—to disclose everything a nominee has ever touched—is inconsistent with the Senate’s policies and practices,” Pickett told the Free Beacon. “If that were the rule, every nominee who has ever served on a law journal would need to list all of the articles they ever edited.”

Such a standard would pose problems for liberals and conservatives alike. After all, Fifth Circuit appellate judge James Ho noted in an April speech, “former Senate lawyer Stephen Breyer was not required to disclose everything he ghostwrote for Senator Ted Kennedy.”

The only ethics expert who said Kacsmaryk should have disclosed the article was Frye. Judges should avoid “even the appearance of impropriety,” Frye argued, and though the name change itself wasn’t objectionable, Kacsmaryk’s failure to list the article could still raise eyebrows.

But Frye also said that Kacsmaryk hadn’t violated any rules. At the end of the day, Frye wrote in an email, a nominee’s “obligation is to provide what the Senate requested. Nothing more & nothing less.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

California, New York, Illinois Biggest Losers Amid Exodus to Low-Tax States: IRS

The latest tax migration data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that the exodus of taxpayers from high-tax states continued from 2020 to 2021, with California, New York, and Illinois again suffering some of the nation’s biggest losses of people and money.

California’s tax base shrank by nearly $29.1 billion as the Golden State saw a net loss of 332,000 taxpayers and their dependents during a time of widespread lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and business closures, according to the IRS migration data released Thursday.

In second place was New York, which was hit by a net loss of $24.5 billion and 262,000 people. Illinois was third, with a net loss of $10.9 billion and 105,000 people. Other high-tax states such as Massachusetts ($2.6 billion) and New Jersey ($2.3 billion) also saw tens of thousands of people moving out during the period.

On the winning side, Florida reaped the benefits of the wealth migration more than any other state, enjoying a net gain of $39.1 billion in gross income from 256,000 new residents. Texas, which gained $10.9 billion and 175,000 people, came in second. They were followed by Nevada ($4.6 billion), North Carolina ($4.5 billion), Arizona ($4.4 billion), South Carolina ($4.2 billion), and Tennessee ($4.1 billion).

The data was compiled by comparing the mailing addresses on one year’s income tax return and that of the next. The most recent migration data reflects address changes that occurred between when taxpayers filed their tax year 2019 returns in calendar year 2020 and when they filed their tax year 2020 returns in calendar year 2021.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, California had already seen a net outflow of people and money to other states. According to previous IRS data, California lost $8 billion in income in 2018 and $8.8 billion in 2019.

California still takes in more tax revenue than any other state due to its tax structure, which places higher rates on wealthy residents. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last May that his state had a historic $97.5 billion budget surplus.

There remains a question over the stability of such a system that heavily relies on taxing the top one percent of earners. In January, just eight months after Newsom unveiled the unprecedented budget surplus, the Democrat governor asked lawmakers to cut billions of dollars of investment and put expensive programs on hold to balance a $22.5 billion budget deficit in case tax revenues don’t rebound.

In New York, the Democrat-led state Legislature has reached a deal with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who resisted a proposed plan to increase tax rates on those earning more than $5 million and $25 million a year from 10.9 percent to 11.4 percent. Like California, New York generated billions of dollars in budget surplus from previous tax hikes on rich New Yorkers.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently questioned whether his state is losing population, claiming that the state has grown in size.

“We did not lose population as you saw when the Census Bureau data came through for the 2020 census,” Pritzker said in March. “We actually gained population, especially as they looked more closely after the initial announcements at what happened state to state.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

15-Minute Cities Are ‘Complete Impoverishment and Enslavement of All the People’: EU Lawmaker

EU parliamentarian Christine Anderson on new residential model being pushed in Europe

Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament, believes that COVID passports and QR codes that became widespread during the pandemic were only test runs for implementing “15-minute cities” aimed at tightening government control over people.

A 15-minute city is a neighborhood where a resident can reach everything they need, like a grocery store, doctor, and so forth within a 15-minute walk. According to Anderson, such cities are the beginning of tighter government control of people. The administration can exert control by deciding “you are no longer allowed to leave your 15-minute immediate area. They don’t have to fence it in or anything. It will be done via digital ID,” she said in an interview with Jan Jekielek’s “American Thought Leaders” program published on April 25.

“If you now fancy another store and it does not happen to be in your neighborhood, guess what? You won’t be going to that store anymore. Like I said, total control is what we’re talking about.”

RELATED COVERAGE

Christine Anderson: From 15-Minute Cities to Climate Lockdowns, the Onslaught of Digital Tyranny

In Europe, legislation is being pushed forward to set up 15-minute cities. According to Anderson, the Digital Green Certificate, the COVID pass introduced during the pandemic, was only a test run designed to get people used to producing a QR code and related requirements.

“Now, they’re slamming us with these 15-minute cities. Make no mistake, it’s not about your convenience. It’s not that they want you to be able to have all of these places that you need to get to close by. It’s not about saving the planet either,” Anderson said.

“With the 15-minute cities, they will have to have those before they can lock you down, and that’s what we were talking about here.”

“In Great Britain, some counties have already passed legislation. They will be able to impose a climate lockdown. That’s the next step. That’s what we are talking about. In order to do that, they will have to have these 15-minute cities.”

The next step, Anderson says, will involve restricting people within their localities, only allowing them to leave the place two or three times a year. However, the rich will be able to get away with these rules as they can buy off exit passes from the poorer segments, she stated.

“The poor people will be left in these 15-minute neighborhoods while the ones that are better off get to go wherever they want to go. This is what we are talking about.”

An article featured on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) website in March last year called the concept of 15-minute cities “a lot more than a fad” and a consequence of the current times, specifically the pandemic.

“With COVID-19 and its variants keeping everyone home (or closer to home than usual), the 15-minute city went from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a rallying cry,” it claimed, adding, “As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.”

Digital Tyranny

Anderson pointed out that Chinese communist-style “social credit” systems are already being tested out in Europe. “There are pilot projects already going on in Bologna. There, it’s called the ‘Bologna Wallet.’ In Vienna, it’s called the ‘Vienna Token.’”

“It’s voluntary for now, and it’s only pretty much enticing people. If you do this, you get some tickets for a little less, to go to the theater. Voluntary. Once again, [it’s the] first step,” she said.

“But soon, there will be a time when you don’t have a choice anymore. You have to have this Digital Green Certificate with this QR code. Then, they will tell you where you can go, what you can do, and what you cannot do.”

Anderson criticized “The Line” project being constructed in Saudi Arabia. A 200-kilometer-long, 200-meter-wide, 500-meter-high structure, The Line is projected to house up to 9 million people.

“If I wanted to get total control of the people, that’s exactly where and how I would house them, and then, have them on a three-meal-a-day prescription. Guess what will happen if you do not do as you are told—they will probably cancel those meals. It’s so easy,” she said.

“That’s what we’re talking about. When you really take all of this together, there is no other way for me to actually say this—it will be a complete impoverishment and enslavement of all the people. I’m stating it so clearly because that’s what it seems like, and that’s what it looks like to me.”

The concept of 15-minute cities is drawing heated debate on social media. When documentary maker Carla Francome posted a thread in February about the benefits of such cities, it soon attracted criticism.

One person suggested that though 15-minute cities sound great in theory, it would become a problem once the government tries to enforce it.

Another pointed out that if 15-minute cities were to become a reality, Francome would have to take a special permit to visit her father if he was living 30 minutes away from her.

“One day, you’ll be trapped in your 15 minute city, waiting for a drone to deliver your sweet and sour bugs and trying to remember what it was like to be on holiday,” author Lisa Keeble said in an April 22 tweet. “You’ll ask yourself- when did it all go wrong. When you applauded lockdowns and masks.”

Government Fearmongering

Anderson also highlighted the fearmongering employed by governments to control people during the COVID-19 pandemic. “In Germany, there was a manual, an outline on how to get the people to do what the government wanted them to do to adhere to these restrictions,” she said.

“They outlined it there specifically, ‘Even though kids are at no risk of this COVID, we have to make them afraid. If they catch it and then they infect their grandparents, they’re responsible for having killed their grandparents.’ That’s the kind of thinking that went on in the governments.”

“A completely blown out of proportion kind of pandemic. For what? It was so the pharmaceutical companies could make billions and billions of dollars.”

Jekielek noted that there’s “unequivocal evidence” that the UK government was involved in sowing fear among its populace with regard to COVID-19 and had a specific strategy for doing so. Similar things were done in other countries, including the United States, he pointed out.

When asked whether this was the result of some kind of global coordination, Anderson replied, “Absolutely.”

“That is actually the scariest part of all of this. Had it only been two or three countries going rogue, we would have had the hopes another country would step in and put a stop to it,” she said.

“They were in lockstep with all of this. They literally read from the same script, repeating the same lines, ‘Build back better, safe and effective.’ Every single Western democracy was pretty much doing the same thing.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Putin’s Plans For Dominating Europe’s Baltic States Revealed

ANALYSIS – One thing that these Russia apologists, or opponents of aiding Ukraine in its fight for survival, generally ignore is Vladimir Putin‘s hostile plans for other parts of Europe. 

He is especially obsessed with reining in former Soviet colonies with large Russian-speaking populations. (RELATED: Poland On Track To Becoming Our Most Militarily Powerful NATO Ally)

And Putin doesn’t care if these countries are members of NATO or not. (RELATED: Is GOP Rep. Marjorie Greene Dangerously Uninformed On Russia – Or Just Playing Politics?)

Top on his target list are the three small Baltic states of EstoniaLatvia and Lithuania, all formerly occupied by the Soviet Union.

And, no, he isn’t planning to invade NATO members with their collective defense guarantees, including backing from the United States.

He isn’t insane.

What he does have, now substantiated by leaked documents, is a series of plans that outline how Russia can exert its influence to indirectly undermine and dominate these countries.

Or at least neutralize them and weaken the NATO presence in them.

The leaked files were obtained by the Swedish news outlet Expressen and others.

And while strategies outlined in these documents were likely drafted before Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, the plans do include the use of military pressure and intimidation.

Estonia’s foreign intelligence service recently said Russia could exert “credible military pressure” on the Baltic states. It also believes that Russia considers them to be “the most vulnerable part of NATO.”

This “would make them a focus of military pressure in the event of a NATO-Russia conflict,” the intelligence service noted.

But why are these states especially vulnerable?

For one, their size and energy dependency. (RELATED: Did Pro-Ukrainian Groups Sabotage Nord Stream Pipeline – Or Is This Misdirection?)

One strategy aims to use the dependence of the Baltic states on Russia’s electricity grid as leverage, just as it is still striving to influence Germany and others with its gas.

The Baltic states are currently part of BRELL, an electrical power grid controlled by Moscow.

But there is also the issue of their populations.

About 300,000 ethnic Russians live in Estonia, almost a quarter of the population. Likewise, 471,000 ethnic Russians reportedly live in Latvia, also 25% of its population.

140,000 Russians live in Lithuania, which is about 5% of its population.

Newsweek reports that:

The documents state that associations and organizations should be created that can covertly advance pro-Russian narratives and spread Russian culture. Propaganda should allege discrimination against Russian speakers and Russian-speaking students should be invited to Russia. Meanwhile, the demolition or relocation of Soviet-era World War II monuments should be prevented.

Newsweek adds that according to the Kremlin plans, the Russian language should be consolidated as a state language in Latvia by 2030.

The plans also mention the “containment of NATO” and the creation of a school at a Russian institute in the capital, “which will become a center for strengthening the position of the Russian language, literature and culture” by 2025. (RELATED: Putin Sending ‘Patriotic’ Teachers To Ukraine To ‘Russify’ Students In Captured Territories)

This now seems highly unlikely.

The same Russian leadership group that created these plans, the Russian Presidential Administration’s Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation, previously developed another plan to incorporate Belarus into a “Union State” with Russia by 2030.

And Belarus does seem on track to be absorbed in a few years. (RELATED: Did Putin ‘Humiliate’ China’s Leader Xi By Deploying Nukes To Belarus?)

However, the invasion of Ukraine has created strong resistance to any Russian influence efforts in Europe – especially so in the Baltics.

Both Estonia and Latvia recently adopted reforms that will gradually prohibit Russian-language teaching in grammar schools.

And as Newsweek notes, Russia’s invasion has pushed the three Baltic states to fast-track the integration of their power grids with Europe at the beginning of 2026.

Still, the Russian goal remains – to reduce the NATO military presence in the former Soviet-occupied countries while at the same time strengthening Russian influence and culture.

Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, the West should remain vigilant to this ultimate Russian objective. (RELATED: Tit-For-Tat: Putin Ups The Ante With Plans To Station Nuclear Warheads On NATO’s Doorstep)

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Epstein’s Calendar Included Meetings With CIA Chief, Other Prominent Leaders

It’s not just Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book that included a controversial list of who’s who.

The Wall Street Journal disclosed the private calendar of the deceased predator for the first time this weekend.

Correspondence details meetings with a far wider circle of the rich and powerful than initially reported. (RELATED: Report: JPMorgan Chase Can Be Sued Over Links To Jeffrey Epstein)

They include alleged meetings with current CIA Director William Burns, when he served the Obama administration as deputy secretary of state.

Other names include former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, who later joined Goldman Sachs as its chief legal officer; Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College; and Noam Chomsky, arguably the most influential intellectual and iconoclast in the past 50 years. (RELATED: Epstein Associate Fashion Agent Jean-Luc Brunel Found Dead In Jail)

All of the meetings occurred after Epstein pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution involving a minor.

According to the documents, William Burns met Epstein on two occasions. One of them at his Manhattan townhouse. Ruemmler and Epstein had dozens of meetings. He had scheduled for her to join him in Paris in 2015 and fly to his private island in 2017. The disgraced financier’s schedule listed that Chomsky was to fly with Epstein and have dinner at his glided New York City mansion in 2015. The Journal couldn’t verify if every meeting took place. However, Epstein visited Leon Botstein at Bard College along with several young women. (RELATED: Government Files Suggest Federal Attorneys Were Unwilling To Prosecute CIA Employees Who Molested Children)

None of these individual’s names appeared in Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s so-called black book or on the flight logs for his private jet.

The report adds:

Most of those people told the Journal they visited Epstein for reasons related to his wealth and connections. Several said they thought he had served his time and had rehabilitated himself. Mr. Botstein said he was trying to get Epstein to donate to his school. Mr. Chomsky said he and Epstein discussed political and academic topics.

Mr. Burns met with Epstein about a decade ago as he was preparing to leave government service, said CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp. “The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” she said. “They had no relationship.”

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the spokesman said. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Ruemmler said.

In 2006, Palm Beach police began an investigation into accusations that Epstein molested at least 40 young women and girls. In 2008, he pled guilty to two state charges, avoiding dire consequences.

A secret arrangement with the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta (R), spared Epstein from a potential life sentence. Acosta claimed he agreed to the sweetheart deal because he was told Epstein was involved in intelligence work “above his pay grade.” No further details are known.

Epstein’s case generated waves of media coverage at the time, with publications in the U.S. and abroad reporting on accusations from underage girls and young women. In 2006, several politicians returned donations from Epstein. Some associates moved to distance themselves from him. His biggest known clientretail billionaire Leslie Wexner, later said he cut ties in 2007. His bank, JPMorgan Chaseclosed his accounts in 2013, though some bankers continued to meet with him for years after.

During his 13-month jail sentence, with a six-day-a-week work release, the alleged sex trafficker met with constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz and Arnold Paul Prosperi, a friend of former President Bill Clinton.

Epstein and Maxwell, his madam and on-and-off girlfriend, are documented to have rubbed shoulders with Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine. (RELATED: Ghislaine Found Guilty – What’s Next?)

Epstein maintained a close friendship with future President Donald Trump for the better part of two decades. Their falling out occurred in the early 2000s before allegations that Epstein abused underage girls became public. (RELATED: Judge Who Signed Off On Mar-A-Lago Raid Connected To Jeffrey Epstein)

In 2018, the Miami Herald started publishing a series of exposés on Epstein’s accusers and his preferential treatment. The paper corroborated allegations of trafficking in women and girls as young as 12 from the United States, South America, Europe and former Soviet republics. Journalist Julie Brown identified 80 Epstein victims and located more than 60.

On July 6, 2019, an FBINYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested Epstein at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. A raid at his New York City townhouse found copious evidence of what’s been described as a sex trafficking empire.

At the time of his mysterious death, Epstein was held without bail at New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. Although his jailers promised the Justice Department they would have a guard check his cell every 30 minutes, those procedures weren’t followed on the night of his purported suicide. The two security cameras within view of his cell also malfunctioned.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Chinese ‘Scorpion’ Multirole Drone Circles Taiwan For First Time

ANALYSIS – As part of its continuing intimidation and harassment of the independent island nation, Communist China has just flown one of its TB-001 ‘Scorpion’ medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drones around Taiwan.

While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been increasing its military pressure and belligerent actions toward Taiwan recently, this is the first time one of these large, potentially armed drones has been reported circling the entire island.

Chinese ‘Twin-Tailed Scorpion’ drone detected off east coast of Taiwan https://t.co/m8swfJe3Cb pic.twitter.com/cs43EsOQIuJuly 26, 2022

Another drone, a single-engine BZK-005, also flew halfway around Taiwan on a similar course but turned back before reaching the median line that serves as a de facto boundary between the two countries.

Long-range Chinese drones generally conduct over-ocean intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) along the first island chain of Pacific archipelagos that extends from the East Asian mainland.

But it seems they are now being operated around Taiwan.

The Taiwanese defense ministry reported the TB-001 and BZK-005 as “recce” (reconnaissance) drones, but the Scorpion was designed to be an armed drone.

And as described later in this piece, it can be very well armed.

With its mix of surveillance and strike capabilities, the Scorpion could potentially identify targets on the eastern side of the island and launch strikes directly against them.

Still, in this case, it was likely conducting detailed surveillance for military targeting, especially on the less defended eastern side of the island, indicating China is increasing its preparations to attack or blockade the country.

The two drones were part of a group of 38 PLA aircraft that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense says it detected around Taiwan.

38 PLA aircraft and 6 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond these activities. pic.twitter.com/SiSwSWls4jApril 28, 2023

Nineteen other aircraft were reported to have crossed the median line and/or entered Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). These were five Su-30 and two J-16 Flanker fighter jets, eight J-10 fighter jets, a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft and another reconnaissance Y-8 variant.

The Scorpion drone is a twin-engine, twin turboprop (one on either side of its fuselage under its straight, high-mounted main wing) with twin tail booms to the rear.

Taiwanese defense sources did not confirm if this TB-001 was carrying weapons, but even if just used for ISR, the drone is highly capable, notes The Drive:

The TB-001’s multi-intelligence gathering capabilities include a radar in the nose, various external pods, likely including ones with electronic intelligence payloads, and various antennas scattered around the airframe. The TB-001 is also capable of full beyond-line-of-sight operations.

The Drive continues:

…the TB-001 provides China with an efficient ability to collect multiple types of intelligence over and around the highly strategic strait. Its range — around 1,860 miles — and reported 35-hour endurance also allow it to venture around Taiwan, which means it can also conduct radar mapping and classification of electronic emissions from air defense systems and other Taiwanese military assets on the east coast of the island. 

If armed, this drone can also provide quite the strike package.

The Drive explains:

Among the weapons associated with the TB-001 in the past are the FT-7 glide bomb, FT-8D guided missile, and the FT-9 and FT-10 guided bombs. At the Zhuhai Airshow in 2018, the drone was shown alongside the C-701/K anti-ship missile and the CM-502 air-to-surface missile. Chinese media reports suggest that the TB-001 can be equipped with the 40-pound AR-2 and 160-pound AR-4 air-to-surface-missile, as well as the 200-pound AR-3 cruise missile.

While the appearance of this drone around Taiwan may not seem significant at first, it could indicate that the PLA is taking its job of identifying targets on the island seriously and plans to also use these unmanned aircraft to take them out.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Is Hunter Biden Hiding In The White House To Avoid Arrest?

An explosive New York Post column alleges President Joe Biden‘s troubled adult son Hunter is hiding behind the iron gates and armed security of the White House to avoid arrest in a child custody case.

“Lawyers for former stripper Lunden Roberts asked an Arkansas court Friday to jail the first son for failing to fork over his financial records as required in her lawsuit over support payments for their 4-year-old unacknowledged daughter, Navy,” the Post’s Miranda Devine writes.

“Roberts’ legal maneuvers in Arkansas lend weight to the rumor in Washington, DC, that Hunter has been living at the White House with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, and their 3-year-old son, Beau, allegedly to avoid being served with legal papers,” Devine claims.

Hunter Biden has allegedly refused to follow any court order or hearing in Roberts’ child support case and may face prosecution over federal tax charges as well as questions over the alleged illegal disposal of a handgun in Delaware.

In both cases, federal agents and officials are accused of either obstructing investigators or otherwise impeding probes.

But now President Biden himself is accusing of shielding Hunter Biden and doing so using “the people’s house.

“Surrounded by his father’s Secret Service detail and protected by his own agents, it is difficult for a process server to get to him,” Devine writes, noting that it would be nearly impossible for Biden to be presented with a court order for payment or testimony if armed security is tasked with keeping the public away from him.

“Numerous sightings over the past six months lend credence to the idea, with Hunter and his family spotted trailing his father and the first lady onto Marine One for weekends away to Delaware or Camp David or for longer vacations at the borrowed homes of billionaires,” Devine writes.

“From early last year, an elaborate swing set suitable for a toddler was spotted on the White House grounds when the president ambled back to his office from Marine One,” Devine adds.

In addition to his four-year-old child with Roberts, Hunter Biden and his wife have a three-year-old son named after his late brother, Beau.

In addition to dodging child support payments and facing questions about his taxes and firearms, Hunter Biden is also the subject of a congressional investigation into alleged influence peddling to foreign figures, including interests in Communist China, that netted millions of dollars in payments to at least six Biden family members.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Store Manager Stops Armed Robbery At A Chicago Auto Parts Store

Some of us need supplies to fix or maintain our automobiles. All of us have been out shopping on the weekend. The customers and employees at an O’Reilly Auto Parts store never thought they would be involved in an armed robbery. The store manager at this auto parts store thought differently. He didn’t know when, but he thought his store could be robbed and his customers threatened. To be fair, the south side of Chicago is not the safest place to live. The store manager must have noticed other violent crimes happening to stores around him. Thank goodness this responsible store manager was armed on an ordinary Saturday.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when the store manager looked up to help the next customer in line at the checkout counter. The news report didn’t mention if the customer had any auto supplies in his hands, but the store manager noticed when the customer raised his shirt and flashed the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. The robber told the store manager to hand over the cash.

This store manager was also a gun owner. He had his Illinois Firearms Owners Identification card in his wallet. The store manager was also armed and carrying concealed at work that day.

This is where we wish we had a video to show us what happened next. We know the store manager presented his concealed handgun. We know he shot the armed robber several times. We know the armed robber turned and ran and drew his firearm from his pants. We don’t know if the robber fired his gun.

The robber dropped his firearm on the floor mat outside the store. He collapsed next to it. The news stories seem to indicate that the store manager stopped shooting after the robber collapsed. Our armed defender stayed inside the store and called 911 for help. He also gave a statement to the police when they arrived.

Police disarmed the armed robber. Emergency medical services took him to the University of Chicago Hospital. The attacker died of his injuries at the hospital.

We’d like to know so much more about this armed defense. Given the level of crime on the south side, it would be unusual for a retail business not to have security cameras throughout the store. Fortunately, we know that none of the customers or employees in the store were injured.

Local news reports mentioned that this was the 45th time that someone with a legally owned firearm stopped a criminal in Chicago in the last three years.

This story is one of many that go under-reported by the mainstream media because it shows a positive image of a law-abiding gun owner defending their life and their family. It is our responsibility at AmmoLand to report these stories to you. While we will continue to report these stories, groups like the Crime Prevention Research Center, led by Dr. John Lott, are fastidious in studying the use of firearms for self-defense. Stay up to date with all news on self-defense by following CPRC and Ammoland.

Rob Morse

Find the original article in its entirety at Ammoland.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Republicans Subpoena Head of CDC Over Big Tech Censorship Coordination

The U.S. House of Representatives has subpoenaed several top Biden administration officials, including the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over the administration’s coordination with Big Tech to censor users.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent the subpoenas on April 28 to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and James Rubin, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).

All three have responded inadequately to requests to provide documents, including communications between their respective entities and social media platforms, Jordan said in letters accompanying the subpoenas. CISA and GEC have not responded at all to the requests, while the CDC has not provided any of the requested documents, he said.

“Freedom of speech is one of the most important rights we have in this country,” Jordan told the Washington Examiner. “The collusion between our federal government and Big Tech undermines First Amendment principles and should be investigated.”

The CDC and GEC did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, CISA’s parent agency, said that the department “does not censor speech and does not request that content be taken down by social media companies.”

“Instead of working with the Department, as numerous committees have done this Congress, the House Judiciary Committee has unnecessarily escalated to a subpoena,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, adding that the agency “will continue cooperating appropriately with Congressional oversight requests, all while faithfully working to protect our nation from terrorism and targeted violence, secure our borders, respond to natural disasters, defend against cyberattacks, and more.”

Collusion

Jordan is working with the Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to probe issues “related to the violation of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”

Documents brought to light by reporters who were given access to Twitter’s internal files and produced in a lawsuit filed by several states against the federal government have shown officials were regularly in contact with Twitter and other Big Tech companies on alleged mis- and disinformation, including making requests to crack down on specific users.

The CDC, for example, sent specific posts to Twitter and Facebook, while also adjudicating claims about COVID-19. While doing so, the CDC offered false information about vaccine effectiveness.

CISA official Brian Scully, meanwhile, said in a deposition that officials would route concerning social media posts to Big Tech, with an understanding that the companies would apply their moderation policies and potentially take action.

And Daniel Kimmage, a GEC official, said under oath that his team would regularly meet with Big Tech companies and provide them with information. The team’s focus was foreign disinformation, Kimmage said, though he acknowledged that the GEC flagged concerns about a YouTube channel run by Americans in one instance.

‘Plausibly Alleged’

The Biden administration has maintained that its communications with the social media companies were not coercive. U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said recently he was unpersuaded by the government’s arguments as he rejected their motion to dismiss the suit.

“Plaintiffs have clearly and plausibly alleged that Defendants engaged in viewpoint discrimination and prior restraints,” the judge wrote.

The states that filed the suit are seeking a preliminary injunction that would bar government officials from “taking any steps to demand, urge, encourage, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media company or platform for online speech, or any employee, officer, or agent of any such company or platform, to censor, suppress, remove, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to content, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, content, or viewpoint expressed on social media.”

A hearing on the motion is set for May 12.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

US Taking ‘Urgent’ Action to Secure Data Amid TikTok Security Fears: Official

The United States is taking “urgent” actions to protect Americans’ data amid growing concerns over security risks posed by TikTok and other foreign companies, a U.S. official said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told Reuters that the government is hiring people to monitor and identify companies that may pose “undue security risks” to the country’s networks or data.

At the Senate hearing on Wednesday, Raimondo said they planned to form a team to do “monitoring, investigation, and enforcement” while safeguarding communications and technology networks.

“I think it is a top priority, and we need to move with urgency,” she said.

“It’s more than one company, and it is a constant, pervasive threat, and we need the permanent tools properly funded with expertise,” Raimondo added.

Raimondo said her department was actively assessing the risks posed by Chinese companies, and that additional resources may be necessary to review export control issues.

“I’ve put over 200 Chinese companies on the entity list in my tenure and we are actively, constantly investigating additional threats, and if we think companies need to go onto the list, I will not hesitate,” she said.

The White House and Raimondo support the Restrict Act. Critics say the bill is overbroad and hurts civil liberties of Americans including the more than 150 million U.S. TikTok users. The Chinese video-sharing app denies it improperly uses U.S. data.

Earlier in February, Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the risks TikTok poses to U.S. national security and consumer privacy.

They urged the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is chaired by Yellen, to impose structural restrictions on TikTok’s American operations.

This came after ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, admitted that its employees used the social media app to track journalists, including two American journalists.

“The risks associated with TikTok are not limited to sensitive account data and information collected through advertising trackers, but include the app’s access to hours of personal videos and discussions of tens of millions of Americans, and its control over the platform’s powerful algorithmic recommendation system,” they stated.

“As TikTok plays an increasingly important role in American civic and political life, we should be concerned whether Chinese entities can promote or hide particular topics,” the lawmakers said, adding particularly in the service of the Chinese regime’s political interests.

‘Brainwashing App’

TikTok has more than 100 million users in America, with many earning an income from the app. Some lawmakers and security experts have described the app as “a spy balloon into your phone.”

In line with actions taken by global leaders, the White House on Feb. 20 ordered TikTok purged from all government devices and systems to keep U.S. data safe.

The Epoch Times previously revealed that ByteDance had been employing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in its highest ranks.

The company, like many organizations in China, is bound by the regime’s National Intelligence Law, which requires all organizations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.”

TikTok has said that users’ personal data collected by the app can be remotely accessed in China but denied it had or would ever provide the data to the CCP. The promise has done little to assure security experts who warned against trusting the Chinese regime.

Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the U.S. think tank the Hudson Institute, previously told The Epoch Times that the app harvests an enormous amount of data that can be used to picture, in the case of the United States, “where American vulnerabilities lie.”

Its algorithms can also turn the app into a “brainwashing app” by filtering content disliked by the CCP, Herman said.

Caden Pearson, Lily Zhou, and Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

First State Passes Law Defining Gender as a Person’s Biological Sex at Birth

Kansas has become the first state to adopt a definition of gender with the passage of legislation that keeps men, no matter what gender they identify as, out of women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, and other intimate spaces.

It also separates inmates and restricts participation in sports by biological sex.

The move came late Thursday afternoon when the state legislature voted to override Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of S.B. 180, which became known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights.”

Under it, a female is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova.” A male is defined as “an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

It also defines gender words calling for “woman” and “girl” to be used to refer to human females and “man” and “boy” to refer to human males. It defines “mother” as a parent of the female sex and “father” as a parent of the male sex.

The override comes a little over a week after Kelly vetoed the bill on April 20. She vetoed the bill after it was passed by a two-to-one margin between Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate.

Kelly said she vetoed the legislation because she was concerned it would open the state up to costly discrimination lawsuits, cause the loss of federal funding, and hurt the Sunflower State’s economy.

The bill garnered widely diverse support with staunchly pro-choice women’s rights groups celebrating the veto.

“Victory!” tweeted the Women’s Liberation Front (WOLF), upon news of the veto override.

In rallying for support of the bill, the national women’s rights organization, which actually helped craft the legislation, wrote on its website: “This bill takes procedural steps to write into law common sense definitions that ensure the meaning of words like ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ aren’t corrupted by unelected bureaucrats intent on pushing gender ideology.”

The group said members sent more than 600 messages to Kansas lawmakers in support of the bill.

Opposition Forces

The legislation also had its lion’s share of opposition, which called it anti-trans and reminiscent of racial segregation in the 1960s.

“It’s the same sayings,” state Rep. John Alcala (D-Topeka) said at a public hearing on the bill. “I don’t want you in my bathroom, I don’t want you drinking out of my water fountain. I don’t want you over at my house. I don’t want my kid hanging out with you.”

Beth Oller, a physician who testified against the bill, said the title was inappropriate and violated women’s rights. “This is no way a women’s bill of rights. The bill does the opposite of protecting women, it causes harm.”

Oller said that medical doctors “for decades have agreed that there is no sufficient way to define what makes a woman.”

“Gender is not binary but is a spectrum of biological, mental, and emotional traits that exist along a continuum,” she said. “Intersex people exist.”

The bill does include a provision that does recognize intersexual individuals. “Individuals born with a medically verifiable diagnosis of disorder/differences in sex development are to be provided available federal and state legal protections,” the legislation states.

Opposition to SB 180 also came from the Kansas Superintendents Association, the United School Administrators of Kansas, and Kansas Legal Services.

The Kansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence also opposed the Women’s Bill of Rights, which specifically cites women’s shelters, rape crisis centers, domestic violence safe havens, and women’s prisons as protected places where biological males identifying as females should be restricted.

Female Spaces in Danger

Following public testimony against the bill by Rev. Carolene Dean, an associate pastor with the Plymouth Congregational Church, Lauren Bone, attorney for WOLF, asked if Dean, a female, “had ever been unfortunate enough to find herself in a domestic violence shelter, rape crisis counseling, or a women’s prison.”

Bone said with many states now opening such places up to men, it has put biological women at “increased risk of further violence and harassment.”

When asked by a Republican lawmaker how many genders there are, Dean replied: “There are as many genders as there are beautiful creations in the world.”

Similar gender-defining bills to the one passed in Kansas are pending in other states, including Oklahoma and Montana.

Nationwide, there have been a number of reports of assaults on women by men identifying as women.

Earlier this month, The Windsor Star reported that a man who identified as a transgender woman was arrested in Ontario on allegations he climbed into bed with a biological woman at a women’s shelter and sexually assaulted her.

There are also several pending civil rights lawsuits filed by attorneys on behalf of female inmates who have reported being raped by men they were incarcerated with because the men claimed to be females. They include one over sexual assaults at the Logan Correctional Center, Illinois’s largest women’s prison.

Last year, as part of a plea deal, transgender prisoner Ramel Blount pled guilty to raping a female prisoner while she was taking a shower. Blount, a biological male who goes by the first name “Diamond,” was housed with women at New York’s Rikers Island prison.

The then 33-year-old admitted to grabbing the female inmate by the neck and holding her down against her will while raping her, according to released statements from the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

What Happens When Millions Of Gun Owners Become Felons May 31st 2023?

U.S.A. — In a heated exchange during the House Judiciary Committee‘s Oversight hearing of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on April 26th, Chairman Jim Jordan questioned ATF Director Steven Dettelbach on the upcoming deadline for pistol brace owners.

On May 31st, 2023, millions of American gun owners could potentially become felons for possessing pistol braces, a fact that Dettelbach acknowledged.

Jordan questioned Dettelbach on the impact that this rule change would have on millions of Americans.

Jim Jordan: “..so you told them [American Gun Owners] not once but twice that it was okay, and I’m just asking does it bother you now that [what] you are doing, that you’re making the change that’s going to impact millions of Americans?”

The ATF Director replied that the rule was necessary to address inconsistencies in the definition of pistol braces. He further explained that specific products get presented for classification, and these products sometimes change. Therefore, the rule change was necessary to ensure consistency.

Jordan then accused Dettelbach of contradicting what ATF had previously told American citizens, and now millions of law-abiding citizens will be impacted by this rule change. Dettelbach denied this accusation, stating that only specific products would be impacted, and those impacted individuals would have several options, including detaching the brace from the firearm and keeping both, attaching the brace to another firearm, removing or destroying the brace, getting a longer barrel, turning in or destroying the firearm, or registering the firearm.

Jordan then asked what would happen to those who do not take any of these actions and let the deadline expire.

Dettelbach replied that it would depend on the facts and circumstances of each case, and if a person were unaware, they would not be prosecuted, even though they were now breaking newly created rules. However, if they were aware, they could potentially become a felon.

Jordan also questioned how the ATF would enforce this rule and questioned Dettelbach whether ATF would inspect people at gun ranges or go to manufacturers and look for lists of people they sold braces to. Dettelbach mumbled something about ATF would consider it as one of the charges when doing a search warrant in a drug case and discovering an unlawful item.

Finally, Jordan asked if the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act clearly and unambiguously prohibits pistol braces. Dettelbach replied that it doesn’t prohibit anything and calls for increased controls on short-barreled rifles. Jordan cited a court decision this week in the Sixth Circuit, where the court ruled that the statute does not clearly and unambiguously prohibit bump stocks. In that ruling, the court also stated that for a decade, the ATF maintained that a bump stock was not a machine gun part, and the ATF’s own flip-flop on this position is one of the reasons why the court ruled in favor of those opposing the rule.

The exchange between Jordan and Dettelbach was intense.

The ATF’s flip-flopping on rules and Dettelbach’s inability to answer questions about the impact of the rule change on millions of Americans is a serious issue for American gun owners, whose only crime was following those same rules. The lack of accountability and poor decision-making by a rogue federal agency raises concerns about the risk of law-abiding citizens being turned into felons. The exchange was intense, with Jordan accusing Dettelbach of contradicting himself. At the same time, Dettelbach defended the Biden-ATF’s decision, stating that it was necessary to ensure consistency and address inconsistencies in the definition of pistol braces.

Thomas Conroy

Find the original article in its entirety at Ammoland.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Caitlyn Jenner Snaps At ‘Rainbow Mafia,’ Calls For ‘Alpha Male’ Trump To Save America

During an interview with Sky News Australia, former Olympic champion and Fox News contributor Caitlyn Jenner wasted no time bashing President Joe Biden while praising former President Donald Trump.

Jenner told Sky’s Rita Panahi that an “alpha male” like Trump needed to save America from an otherwise inevitable decline. The gold medal-winning decathlete also expects Biden to lose the next election.

Asked by Panahi what the country would like if Biden did get reelected, Jenner said, “I don’t even want to think about Joe Biden winning again.”

Jenner argued that if Biden did manage to win the election, “It would be over for the United States. It would be the end.” She said that while it was “almost the end right now,” the country was “still at the point where if we get the right person in there,” America’s end could be averted.

The Fox News contributor said that while she was friends with Trump, and had attended an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort just a week prior, she would support whoever the Republican Party nominated.

“From my standpoint, I hope that’s Donald Trump,” Jenner said. “What we need right now in the White House is we need kind of like an alpha male that can get in there, [who] knows what he’s doing.”

Jenner was more reserved regarding Fox’s decision to cancel Tucker Carlson‘s show.

“Like anything, you know, businesses change,” she said, reluctant to go further.

Besides giving a wide berth to her employer, Jenner took to Twitter and praised Carlson after his show ended abruptly.

I did @TuckerCarlson first ever episode on Fox News! He was fearless in his pursuit of different perspectives and new stories. I know he will be missed and more importantly, will go on to do great things! pic.twitter.com/lr2iLJy29EApril 24, 2023

SOURCE: American Liberty News

North Carolina Supreme Court Reverses Previous Ruling On Gerrymandering

The North Carolina Supreme Court has overruled an earlier decision that declared partisan gerrymandering illegal.

The 5-2 ruling could eliminate as many as four Democrat-held congressional seats, thanks to North Carolina Republicans’ veto-proof majority in the General Assembly.

The court’s prior decision came down when it leaned left.

NEW: as expected, new GOP majority on NC Supreme Court reverses previous court’s ruling that partisan gerrymandering is illegal. This could wipe out four Dem seats, nearly doubling the GOP’s cushion in the House. Full backstory at @CookPoliticalhttps://t.co/HkgUv9uCuJApril 28, 2023

As CNN reports:

The ruling is a victory for the GOP state legislature, which brought the case back to the state Supreme Court after Republicans flipped seats on the court in the midterms, giving them the majority. The GOP legislature had also taken the case to the US Supreme Court – where Republicans were pushing an aggressive theory that would limit the role state courts can play in election disputes – and it is unclear whether Friday’s ruling prompts the US Supreme Court to dismiss the case that is before it.

“Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text,” the new opinion from the North Carolina court said. “Those limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering. It is not within the authority of this Court to amend the constitution to create such limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to another branch. Furthermore, were this Court to create such a limitation, there is no judicially discoverable or manageable standard for adjudicating such claims.”

The 5-2 opinion was written by Chief Judge Paul Newby, who was joined by the four other Republican members of the court. Democratic Justice Anita Earls wrote a dissent joined by Justice Michael Morgan, a fellow Democrat.

The ruling is a major loss for the voting rights groups that had challenged the congressional plan that had been drawn by the Republican legislature after the 2020 census, as the ruling will prevent them from going to state court in the future bring claims of extreme partisan gerrymandering against North Carolina maps.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

What Tennessee’s Governor Doesn’t Get About ‘Red Flag’ Laws

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has yet to announce when he’ll be calling lawmakers back to the state capitol for a special session on “gun reform and public safety”, but the Republican is already stumping for his version of a “red flag” law in the hopes of overcoming opposition from GOP legislators and many Second Amendment advocates.

On Monday Lee was asked what he hopes to see from the special session, and the governor once again floated his idea of a “temporary mental health restraining order”; i.e. a “red flag” law.

“What we plan to do is work together with the General Assembly to find a way that will in fact protect the broader public, that will protect the rights of Tennesseans,” Lee told reporters in Chattanooga, according to WKRN. “We believe we can do that.”

Speaking with media at an event to sign the “Forever Homes Act,” which aims to expedite adoptions and encourage them over abortions, Lee discussed what he expects from the special legislative session since last Friday’s announcement. “There needs to be a way to separate those that are a danger to others and to themselves from access to weapons and protect the rights — and particularly the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseans,” Lee said.

I don’t think Lee is some anti-gun commie in disguise who’s just been waiting for the opportune moment to strong-arm Republicans into adopting a gun confiscation measure. This is the same governor who signed constitutional carry into law, after all, and he’s got a good track record when it comes to supporting the right to keep and bear arms. I think Lee’s trying to respond to public pressure to “do something” in the wake of the Covenant School shootings without offending his base of supporters, but while I respect the fact that he’s called for a “red flag” law that does not allow for ex parte hearings and requires the subject of a petition to have access to an attorney, there’s still a fundamental flaw in his plan.

The governor spoke of finding a way to “separate those that are a danger to others and themselves from access to weapons,” but the truth is that if someone truly poses a threat to themselves or other people then simply blocking them from legally possessing a firearm isn’t going to achieve his goal. The subject of a “temporary mental health restraining order” could still pick up a butcher knife, gasoline or matches, car keys, or any number of items that could be used as a weapon. The issue is the supposedly dangerous person, not any guns that they might own.

To that end, Lee would be better off calling for an overhaul of the state’s criminal justice and mental health systems, though that’s a far more complicated and costly issue than passing a “red flag” law and claiming that the issue has been addressed. Still, that’s a more substantive approach to dealing with dangerous individuals, and one that would find more favor with Republicans around the state than his proposal. Already this week Knox County commissioners have rejected a resolution backing Lee’s call for a temporary mental health restraining order, and more opposition is likely to emerge as details of the legislation become available.

I respect that what Lee has outlined offers more due process protections than the vast majority of “red flag” laws that are already in place, but that doesn’t change the fact that the underlying premise is still about taking guns away instead of treating the “dangerousness” of the individual in question. Any gun-centric approach to addressing mental illness or criminal behavior should be non-starter for Tennessee lawmakers. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to sit on their hands and do nothing, but if they’re going to “do something” it should be targeted at dangerous individuals themselves and not any inanimate objects they might own.

Cam Edwards

Read the original article in its entirety at Bearing Arms.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

WATCH: No, Randi Weingarten Wasn’t Fighting To Open Schools

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten testified before Congress on Wednesday to defend her union’s role in influencing public policy on school lockdowns. Weingarten told lawmakers, “We spent every day from February on trying to get schools open. We knew that remote education was not a substitute for opening schools. “

A review of Weingarten’s comments in 2020, however, shows she was not the school reopening champion she now portrays herself as.

Weingarten called then-president Donald Trump’s push to reopen schools “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel.” She also said “there’s no way that you’re going to have full-time schools for all the kids and all the teachers the way we used to have it.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Fed Admits Fault for Silicon Valley Bank Collapse in ‘Unflinching’ Report

The Federal Reserve wants more regulatory power after string of oversight failures

(Reuters)—The Federal Reserve issued a detailed and scathing assessment on Friday of its failure to identify problems and push for fixes at Silicon Valley Bank before the U.S. lender’s collapse, and promised tougher supervision and stricter rules for banks.

In what Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr called an “unflinching” review of the U.S. central bank’s supervision of SVB, the Fed said its oversight of the Santa Clara, California-based bank proved inadequate and that regulatory standards were too low.

“SVB’s failure demonstrates that there are weaknesses in regulation and supervision that must be addressed,” Barr said in a letter accompanying a 114-page report supplemented by confidential materials that are typically not made public.

While it was the regional bank’s own mismanagement of basic risks that was at the root of SVB’s downfall, the Fed said, supervisors of SVB did not fully appreciate the problems, delaying their responses to gather more evidence even as weaknesses mounted, and failed to appropriately escalate certain deficiencies when they were identified.

At the time of its failure, SVB had 31 unaddressed citations on its safety and soundness, triple what its peers in the banking sector had, the report said.

One particularly effective change the Fed could make on supervision would be to put mitigants in place quickly in response to serious issues on capital, liquidity, or management, a senior Fed official said.

Increased capital and liquidity requirements also would have bolstered SVB’s resilience, the Fed added. Barr said as a consequence of the failure, the central bank will reexamine how it supervises and regulates liquidity risk, beginning with the risks of uninsured deposits.

Regulators shut SVB on March 10 after customers withdrew $42 billion on the previous day and queued requests for another $100 billion the following morning.

The historic run triggered massive deposit outflows at other regional banks that were seen to have similar weaknesses, including a large proportion of uninsured deposits and big holdings of long-term securities that had lost market value as the Fed raised short-term interest rates.

New York-based Signature Bank failed two days later – the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is due to release its review of that collapse later on Friday – and the Fed and other U.S. government authorities moved to head off an emerging crisis of confidence in the banking sector with an emergency funding program for otherwise healthy banks under sudden pressure, and guarantees on all deposits at the two banks.

SUPERVISION HEADCOUNT FELL

Before the twin failures in March, banking regulators had focused most of their supervisory firepower on the very biggest U.S. banks that were seen as critical to financial stability.

The realization that smaller banks are capable not only of causing ructions in the broader financial system but of doing it at such speed has forced a rethink.

“Contagion from the failure of SVB threatened the ability of a broader range of banks to provide financial services and access to credit for individuals, families, and businesses,” Barr said. “Weaknesses in supervision and regulation must be fixed.”

In its report, the Fed said that from 2018 to 2021 its supervisory practices shifted and there were increased expectations for supervisors to accumulate more evidence before considering taking action. Staff interviewed as part of the Fed’s review reported pressure during this period to reduce burdens on firms and demonstrate due process, the report said.

Between 2016 and 2022, as assets in the banking sector grew 37%, the Fed’s supervision headcount declined by 3%, according to the report.

As SVB itself grew, the Fed did not step up its supervisory game quickly enough, the report showed, allowing weaknesses to fester as executives left them unaddressed, even after staff finally did downgrade the bank’s confidential rating to “not-well-managed.”

The Fed is looking at linking executive compensation to fixing problems at banks designated as deficient on management so as to focus executives’ attention on those problems, a senior Fed official said in a briefing.

While the fallout from the failures of SVB and Signature has slowed, some firms are still feeling the effects, with San Francisco-based First Republic Bank struggling for survival after reporting earlier this week that its deposit outflows after the SVB and Signature collapses exceeded $100 billion.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir, Hannah Lang and Chris Prentice; Editing by Dan Burns and Paul Simao)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden Admin Scrambles To Respond to Collapse of Another Bank

(Reuters)—Shares of First Republic Bank plunged to a record low on Friday, losing nearly half of their value after a CNBC report said the troubled lender was most likely headed for receivership under the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The stock fell as much as 46% to $3.33, giving it a market capitalization of $620 million. Trading in the bank’s shares was halted multiple times.

A Reuters report of a government-brokered rescue deal for First Republic had pushed its shares up as much 6.6% earlier in the session.

According to the report, the FDIC, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are among government bodies that have started to orchestrate meetings with financial companies about a lifeline for the bank.

The government’s involvement was helping bring more parties, including banks and private equity firms, to the negotiating table, one of the sources for the report had told Reuters.

Still, concerns remained that deposit declines at First Republic could worsen and spark a fresh meltdown in the U.S. banking industry even as it recovers from the collapse of two regional lenders last month.

First Republic earlier this week said its deposits had slumped by more than $100 billion in the first quarter.

“The potential worst-case scenario stemming from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank appears to have been averted,” said Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, in a note.

“But the problems at First Republic are a reminder that further problems remain possible.”

The San Francisco-based lender’s stock has more than halved so far this week. Since the start of the year, it has lost nearly 97% in value, making it the worst-performing S&P 500 stock.

(Reporting by Medha Singh and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Devika Syamnath)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Soros Family Gives Early Financial Support to Montana ‘Moderate’ Jon Tester

Liberal billionaire George Soros and his son nearly max out to Tester

Montana senator Jon Tester bills himself as a moderate Democrat willing to criticize his party’s left-wing elements—like the progressive policies pushed by his latest financial backers, George and Alexander Soros.

The Soroses last month nearly maxed out campaign contributions to Tester, each giving $2,800, according to campaign finance disclosures, making the red-state Democrat the only candidate to whom both father and son have contributed this election cycle. Though the two pour millions of dollars every year into a variety of left-wing causes, their direct political support so far this cycle has been sparse. The elder Soros has given to only two candidates aside from Tester, Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), both of whom are politically safe. His son Alexander Soros has given to only Tester and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), who this cycle is targeting Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.), a former Democrat, from the left.

Tester’s support from the Soros family highlights the political tightrope he will have to walk in his bid for reelection. Tester, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the 2024 cycle, will need to raise money from major Democratic donors in what is likely to be one of the most expensive Senate races of 2024. But the senator, who recently said that he brings a “dirt-under-your-fingernails perspective to Washington,” will have to avoid embracing left-wing policies unpopular in the Big Sky Country.

The elder Soros gives tens of millions of dollars a year to groups that support the movements to defund police, expand the Supreme Court, and restrict gun ownership. He has contributed $1.45 million to Color of Change, a civil rights organization that has called to defund police. He funds a variety of gun control groups and has stated, “I’m very much against guns.”

Tester has spoken out against those policies, saying the average Montanan views the Democratic Party as “toxic” for ignoring rural voters.

“The defund the police stuff is garbage,” said Tester, who also says he is a “strong supporter of the Second Amendment.” Asked whether he supports packing the Supreme Court, Tester quipped, “Ix-nay on that bullshit-ay.”

Tester’s dilemma—balancing a centrist bent while wooing deep-pocketed Democratic donors—was on display last month following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Tester criticized a federal bailout of the bank and pledged to hold bank executives and regulators “accountable.” But the same day, Tester attended a fundraiser in Palo Alto, Calif., organized by a lawyer for the firm that represents Silicon Valley Bank.

Another fundraiser host serves on the board of the National Resources Defense Council, an environmentalist group that repeatedly sued the Trump administration to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The host, National Resources Defense Council board member Nicole Lederer, has said the pipeline “is against the best interest of our country.”

Tester publicly supported the pipeline, saying that it “would have yielded big benefits” for Montana.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Hunter Biden’s Ex-Mistress Wants to Know Who’s Paying His ‘Stable of American Super Lawyers’

President’s son says he can’t afford to pay child support, has been ordered to appear in Arkansas court on Monday

Hunter Biden’s ex-mistress Lunden Alexa Roberts is asking a court to force the president’s son to disclose who is paying for his “stable of American super lawyers,” arguing that his high-priced legal team contradicts his claim that he can’t afford to pay child support.

Biden has retained “some of the most expensive attorneys on planet Earth,” according to a motion filed by Roberts in an Arkansas court on Thursday, including former Arkansas attorney general Dustin McDaniel, prominent Washington fixer Abbe Lowell, and Hollywood celebrity lawyer Kevin Morris.

“If Mr. Biden can afford a Washington DC, Hollywood, Chicago big law, and the best domestic relations attorney on the Texas side of the Texarkana border, he surely must have income for child support purposes,” wrote Roberts’s attorney Clint Lancaster in the filing.

The motion, if approved by the court, could be another political headache for Hunter Biden, who has fought to shield his financial records during the years-long custody battle with Roberts, the mother of his four-year-old daughter. It comes days after the judge ordered both Biden and Roberts to personally attend all future hearings.

“Mr. Biden claims to be nothing more than a Yale educated attorney/artist who is somewhat financially destitute and needs his child support adjusted,” added Lancaster. “However, for an artist living on meager means, Mr. Biden is living lavishly.”

Biden reached a child support settlement with Roberts shortly after his father, President Joe Biden, launched his presidential campaign in 2020. He is now arguing for reducing those payments.

Biden initially denied the baby was his, but a court-ordered paternity test showed he was the father. The Biden family does not publicly acknowledge the child. President Biden has repeatedly claimed—including this week—that he has just six grandchildren, omitting the four-year-old girl from the list.

Roberts recently asked the court to allow her to change their daughter’s last name to “Biden,” arguing that the prestige of the name would benefit the child. Biden is fighting the motion, claiming the move would be damaging to the tot due to the “scorn in the community for the Biden name.”

In the disclosure motion on Thursday, Roberts’s attorneys argued that disclosures about Biden’s legal payments would “show that there is no difficulty that a person with the last name ‘Biden’ cannot fix with a Biden-paid or funded attorney”—bolstering support for Roberts’s name-change request.

Family law attorney Peter M. Walzer told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s objection to the name change was “very uncommon” and unlikely to succeed in court.

“I’ve never seen a litigation where a father didn’t want the [child] to take his name,” said Walzer. “This is pretty unique.”

The next hearing is scheduled for Monday. Arkansas Circuit Court judge Holly Meyer ordered Biden and Roberts to show up, saying their absences are causing delays in the case.

Meyer issued the order after Biden’s attorney was unable to answer whether Biden owned the abandoned laptop that became a subject of controversy during the 2020 election. Financial records discovered on the laptop have become an issue in the custody dispute.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Whitmer Appoints CEO Who Brought Chinese Battery Company to Michigan to Powerful State Board

Democrats in state have voiced concerns about the Chinese government’s infiltration of Michigan

Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer’s latest appointee to a powerful state economic board is a nonprofit executive who helped facilitate the deal that brought a controversial Chinese battery company to the Great Lakes State.

Whitmer on Thursday tapped Randy Thelen to serve on the Michigan Strategic Fund, a powerful state board that approves the distribution of public grants and tax breaks to private businesses. Thelen is the CEO of Grand Rapids-based nonprofit The Right Place, which works to drive economic development in western Michigan. With Thelen at the helm, the nonprofit partnered with Chinese battery maker Gotion to help the company acquire land for a western Michigan factory, a controversial project that the state is showering with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

Whitmer’s decision to appoint Thelen comes as Michigan residents and elected officials express concern over Gotion’s presence in the state. The Chinese battery giant’s leader is a known Chinese Communist Party member, and the company’s bylaws require Gotion to “carry out party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.” Gotion’s ties to the CCP prompted hundreds of Michiganders to hold a rally last week in opposition to the battery plant, and even Democratic lawmakers have questioned Gotion’s Michigan project. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Mich.), for example, acknowledged Tuesday that she’s “worried” about the project’s national security implications.

“Am I worried about national security implications? I have to tell you that I am,” Dingell said during a Fox News appearance. “Let us be clear—if you are a Chinese business, the communist government is part of your business. So it’s something that worries me every day.”

Just days before Dingell made those comments, Michigan’s legislature approved $175 million in state funds to support Gotion, $50 million of which will go to The Right Place to secure “site preparation and land acquisition” for the Chinese company’s plant. The Right Place on its website also touts Gotion’s Michigan project, with the nonprofit saying in October that it’s “honored to have played a role in bringing this transformational project” to the state. As Michiganders protested Gotion in recent weeks, meanwhile, Thelen worked to defend his Chinese partner, arguing during an April 5 meeting with local residents that Gotion would merely become one of many Chinese-owned companies in Michigan.

Thelen is related to Gotion vice president of North American affairs Chuck Thelen. The cousins told Bridge Michigan they did not know each other before they worked on the Gotion deal.

For conservative group Michigan Freedom Fund, Whitmer’s willingness to elevate Thelen to an influential state board despite the CEO’s work with Gotion “raises concerns about Gov. Whitmer’s decision-making and signals her disdain for Michigan residents.”

“Rather than making any effort to quell fears of both local and state residents, Whitmer … doubled down,” Michigan Freedom Fund spokeswoman Mary Drabik said in a statement. “Appointing Thelen is a clear signal of where the governor’s priorities lie: with China and rewarding those who stand to profit from the Gotion deal.”

Neither Whitmer nor The Right Place returned requests for comment.

Gotion is not the only Chinese company with impending plans to settle in the Great Lakes State. American auto giant Ford in February announced plans to build a Michigan electric vehicle battery factory in partnership with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), which will provide technology, equipment, and workers to help build and run the factory. Ford says the factory will nonetheless qualify for lucrative federal subsidies under President Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which the Democrat said would help the United States “compete with China for the future.”

Ford’s use of federal funds to partner with CATL has sparked intense criticism from congressional Republicans, with Florida senator Marco Rubio in March unveiling a bill that would block Ford from earning taxpayer dollars through its Chinese partnership.

“Without additional restrictions, Chinese companies will benefit from the subsidies President Joe Biden claimed would spur domestic manufacturing,” Rubio said. “Hard-working Americans should not be forced to subsidize Chinese companies that make batteries for electric vehicles that cost more than most people make in a year.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

IRS Hiring Hundreds of Armed Agents

The Internal Revenue Service posted a hiring notice for hundreds of new armed agents amid Republicans’ concerns about the tens of thousands of staffers the agency is hiring with funding from the Biden administration. 

The agency is looking for more than 350 “criminal investigation special agents” in all 50 states, with applicants asked to serve minimum 50-hour weeks, engage in “dangerous assignments,” and “carry a firearm,” according to the agency job posting, which was first published in February. The positions are in the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division, which deals with money laundering, terrorist activity, and other cases. 

The armed agents “must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations.”

The description goes further, adding the applicants “must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

The hiring is a part of the tens of thousands of agency employees expected to be hired through the $80 billion the Biden administration allocated to the IRS in the trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act. 

Democrats have advocated for the funding as a means of increasing government revenues. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the hiring would bring in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the government over the next 10 years. 

The IRS will hire as many as 87,000 additional employees, a number that sparked outrage among Republicans. Estimates show the majority of new revenue will come from audits and scrutiny of those making less than $200,000. 

Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) last year slammed the proposal to hire tens of thousands of new IRS staffers.

“When faced with the decision to spend $45 billion on America’s largest revenue collection agency, or give it back to parents to help them get their kids the help they need, the Senate needs to choose the latter option every single time,” Scott told the Washington Free Beacon.

The staffing increase would more than double the current IRS workforce, which has around 78,000 full-time staffers, according to federal data. It would make the IRS larger than the FBI, Border Patrol, State Department, and the Pentagon combined.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New York Governor Announces Progress in Push To Ban Natural Gas in New Buildings

New York governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday declared progress in her push to make her state the first in the nation to ban natural gas in new buildings, announcing a budget agreement that would mandate new buildings be “zero emissions” starting in 2025. 

The state is “going to be the first state in the nation to advance zero emissions in new homes and buildings,” Hochul said during a speech at the State Capitol in Albany. If the budget passes, natural gas appliances will be banned in new small buildings by 2025 and large buildings by 2028. 

“Our budget prioritizes nation-leading climate action that meets this moment with ambition and the commitment it demands,” Hochul said.

Hochul’s announcement comes just months after she and Democrats in the state legislature pledged support for the controversial policy. “We are taking these steps now because climate change remains the greatest threat to our planet, and to our children and grandchildren,” Hochul said in January.

It’s the latest move by Democrats to ban the use of natural gas and the appliances that rely on it. The Biden administration’s Energy Department is advancing regulations that would effectively ban roughly half of gas stoves on the market from being sold. 

The controversy surrounding gas stove bans kicked off in January, when a Biden-appointed commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., floated banning gas stoves, citing a study by an environmental group that attributed 13 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases to gas stoves. 

Scientists later criticized the study. Facing backlash, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would not support such a ban. The Washington Free Beacon reported in January that the group behind the now-infamous study worked with the Chinese government to push “an economy-wide transformation” away from gas and oil. 

Climate activists not only want gas banned, but also argue the administration must change how it refers to the substance. A climate group recently demanded the Biden administration stop using the term “natural gas” because it sounds too climate friendly. The group, Gas Leaks, suggested saying “fossil gas” or “methane gas” instead. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Harm Reduction’: California Democrats Kill Legislation to Crack Down on Fentanyl Dealers

Progressive California lawmakers bent to political pressure and revived a handful of bills this week to crack down on fentanyl dealers—only to turn around and kill or weaken most of the measures.

With overdose deaths accelerating in California, the State Assembly public safety committee on Thursday blocked two of the bills, which would have strengthened punishments for dealers who kill or seriously injure someone with fentanyl or are caught with enough of the synthetic drug to kill thousands of people. The panel also loosened a proposed ban on dealers carrying guns before punting the bill along with a measure to increase penalties for fentanyl trafficking on social media.

“Despite all the talk, the extremist legislators who opposed these bills guaranteed that innocent Californians will continue to die, victims of drug dealers profiting off poisoning our communities,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher said in a statement after the hearing. “These bills were not criminalizing addiction, returning to the ‘war on drugs,’ or any other lie told by the pro-fentanyl lobbyists. They were reasonable, bipartisan proposals to save lives.”

California Democrats, who dominate the state legislature and government, signaled once again on Thursday that they remain committed to a years-long progressive push to roll back criminal penalties for drug-related crimes. That’s despite public pressure to do something about the fentanyl epidemic, which has killed more people in California than in any other state.

The Assembly’s public safety committee only agreed to even debate the bills targeting fentanyl dealers after Republican lawmakers last week threatened to force a floor vote on the measures.

On Tuesday, the California Senate public safety committee—which like its Assembly counterpart is stacked with progressives—voted down for the second time a bipartisan bill that would have let law enforcement advise fentanyl dealers that their pills can be deadly. If those dealers sold fentanyl again and killed someone, they could have then faced second-degree murder charges. A similar law for drunk drivers has been on the books for years.

During Thursday’s hearing in the Assembly, Democrats were often on defense against allegations that they simply oppose action to address the fentanyl crisis. Several progressive lawmakers unfavorably likened the bills on offer to the war on drugs and touted “harm reduction” programs as a superior alternative to jailing fentanyl dealers.

“We are doing something,” said assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D.), the wife of California attorney general Rob Bonta, citing California’s $61 billion investment in harm reduction programs, including widespread distribution of overdose medication and test strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl in other drugs. “Not enough, but we have been doing something.”

Public safety committee chair Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D.) pointed to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new directive for California police officers to start coordinating crackdowns on fentanyl traffickers. Newsom, who has not weighed in on the fentanyl legislation, left the state just ahead of the hearings.

Assemblyman Jim Patterson, the only Republican to present a bill to the committee, criticized Democrats’ harm reduction approach as inadequate.

“The reality is that we have dealers in Fresno with 2,000 pills, that the worst you can do is a misdemeanor,” he told the panel. “They’re out in two days. If we really cared about the addicts, wouldn’t we also care that their dealers are out on the street, churning more and more?”

The committee did advance three relatively incremental measures against fentanyl dealers: one to boost their sentences to match those of cocaine and heroin sellers; another to push law enforcement cooperation against them; and a third to launch a task force to study fentanyl trafficking.

Jones-Sawyer promised a follow-up hearing in May to look at a “holistic” strategy that includes more money for treatment, education, and overdose medication.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Yale Law School Accepted a Donation for Clarence Thomas’s Portrait. Five Years Later, the Painting Is Nowhere To Be Seen.

In the spring of 2018, Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken happily acknowledged the receipt of a donation from the Texas billionaire Harlan Crow to fund the commission of a portrait of Crow’s friend, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.

In an April 2018 letter to Crow, Gerken thanked him for the gift and described Thomas, a 1974 graduate of the law school, as a “trailblazer.”

“We are so pleased to welcome the justice to our outstanding gallery of portraits,” Gerken wrote. “They will always have a place of prominence at Yale Law School.” Five years later, students and faculty members say they’ve never seen it, and certainly not displayed in a place of prominence.

The portrait exists. Yale commissioned the New York City-based artist Jacob Collins to paint it, and Collins told the Washington Free Beacon that, according to his records, the portrait was being framed in March 2019 and that he believes it was delivered to the school shortly thereafter. Yale acknowledged his gift with a letter of thanks.

Neither Gerken nor a spokesman for the law school responded to requests for comment about the portrait’s whereabouts.

“It was completely understood that the painting would join…the pantheon of paintings,” Crow told the Free Beacon.

Thomas has had a contentious relationship with his alma mater, writing in his autobiography of his feeling that a Yale Law School degree “meant one thing for white graduates and another for blacks” and of affixing a 15 cent price sticker to his diploma and tossing it in the basement. In recent years, though, he has visited the school and called his resentments “juvenile.”

Dozens of portraits adorn the walls of Yale Law School, which uses them to honor the law school’s founders as well as distinguished graduates and professors.

The portraits fall into two categories, former law school dean Guido Calabresi told the Yale Daily News in 2015: those that are automatically displayed and those that are displayed by the dean’s discretion. The former includes alumni or faculty members who have served as president of the United States, justices of the Supreme Court, or chief judge of one of the circuit courts—a category that should include Thomas.

All portraits, aside from those of former deans, must be commissioned with outside funding, and Crow in 2018 provided the $105,000 to fund Thomas’s portrait after Yale Law School professor George Priest worked to repair Thomas’s relationship with the school and helped to persuade the justice to sit for the portrait’s painting.

“We’ve had some episodes here where students protest when people come to the law school, that may have something to do with it,” Priest told the Free Beacon. He had not visited the law school since the COVID-19 pandemic and was not aware of whether the painting had gone up, he added.

“It’ll be hung, there’s no doubt about that. We have Abe Fortas’s portrait up, for crying out loud,” Priest said, referring to the Yale Law School graduate and former Supreme Court justice who resigned from his seat in 1969 after revelations that he was receiving payments of $20,000 annually from the family foundation of a Wall Street financier—for the rest of his life—in exchange for unspecific advice.

Typically, the university has marked portrait unveilings with celebratory events. The school in 2017 held such an event for the unveiling of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s portrait, which now hangs in the law school’s largest classroom.

Prior to Crow’s gift, the Yale Daily News noted the absence of Thomas’s portrait. A 2005 report reads: “The walls of the law school display portraits of past Supreme Court justices affiliated with Yale—William Howard Taft, William Douglas, Byron White, Abe Fortas, and Potter Stewart—but Thomas’s portrait is conspicuously absent.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Supreme Court Justice Says He Thinks He Knows Who Leaked Draft Abortion Opinion

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he thinks he knows who leaked a draft opinion in a major abortion case.

“I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible,” Alito told the Wall Street Journal.

The leaked opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was authored by Alito, a George W. Bush appointee. Politico obtained the draft opinion and published it on May 2, 2022. The final opinion was largely similar. Issued in June 2022, it struck down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that found access to abortion was a constitutional right.

Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley investigated the breach and concluded in a January report that there was insufficient evidence to determine the identity of the person or persons who disclosed the draft.

“Investigators have been unable to determine at this time, using a preponderance of the evidence standard, the identity of the person(s) who disclosed the draft majority opinion,” she wrote.

Curley spoke with each justice and followed up on leads, none of which implicated justices or their spouses. The marshal said that was why she didn’t require justices to sign sworn affidavits attesting they weren’t behind the leak.

The Supreme Court said the investigation would continue and has not issued any update since.

Alito said that Curley “did a good job with the resources that were available to her.”

He also said that there is not enough evidence to publicly name a suspect.

While he believes he knows the responsible party, “that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” Alito said.

He is, however, sure of what motivated the disclosure.

“It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court,” Alito said. “And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside—as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

The disclosure of the draft triggered widespread protests, including at the homes of Alito and other justices believed to be supportive of his position.

Alito said it was “rational” for people to think they might be able to alter the final outcome of the case if they killed one of the justices. Six of the justices on the nine-justice court were appointed by Republicans, with several regularly siding with the Democrat appointees in high-profile cases. The Dobbs ruling was a 6–3 decision.

The protests violate federal law, but no arrests have been made, even after a man tried to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee who ultimately sided with Alito in the Trump case.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has said that U.S. Marshals have the authority to arrest anyone in violation of federal law, including the law that forbids  “picketing” or “parading” near the residences of judges or justices in order to influence the outcome of a case. But they were told not to arrest the protesters, according to materials obtained by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and released earlier this year. Garland said he had not seen the materials.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China Flies 38 Fighter Jets, 6 Navy Vessels Near Taiwan

More than 38 fighter jets and other warplanes from China’s military flew near Taiwan in the latest chapter of military escalation from the regime since it staged war games around the island earlier in April.

The Taiwanese defense ministry announced the incident on Friday in its daily update of Chinese military activities from the previous 24 hours.

Six Chinese navy vessels were also seen around Taiwan from Thursday 6 a.m. to Friday 6.a.m., the ministry added, in what appears to be part of the Chinese regime’s effort to intimidate Taiwan.

The latest flight display comes after the Chinese regime on April 8 sent 42 warplanes and eight naval vessels toward Taiwan as part of three days of military exercises that simulated sealing off the island.

The move was an apparent response to a meeting between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The Chinese regime sees such meetings as encouraging Taiwanese voters and politicians who support formal independence for the island, a step the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) says would lead to war.

According to the Taiwanese defense ministry, on Friday, 19 of the CCP’s aircraft flew across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, and into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), an area that Taiwan monitors to provide it more time to respond to threats.

The median line serves as an unofficial barrier between Beijing and Taipei, although the Chinese regime does not recognize it. Since last year, CCP military aircraft have regularly crossed this line.

The 19 aircraft included five SU-30 and two J-16 aircraft. It also included a new type of Chinese combat drone that China’s state media says can carry a heavy weapons payload—the TB-001.

The drone flew around Taiwan, according to a map from the Taiwanese defense ministry. It first crossed the Bashi Channel, then up Taiwan’s east, and crossed back toward the coast of China.

The CCP’s state-run media claims the TB-001 is capable of high altitude, long-range missions, and can carry missiles under its wings.

There were no shots fired and while the Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s ADIZ, it did not breach Taiwan’s airspace.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 following a civil war that ended with the CCP in control of the mainland. But the CCP claims Taiwan as its territory, even though Taiwan has never been part of the CCP.

The CCP has vowed to claim sovereignty over Taiwan, even if by force. But Taiwan’s government rejects such claims.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

ANALYSIS: The Ripple Effects of Tucker Carlson’s Exit From Fox News

Where will the viewers go, will Fox re-emerge in the 8 p.m. time slot, and what is Carlson’s next move?

Two days after his ouster from Fox News, Tucker Carlson broke his silence with a video that had at least 22.1 million views, more than the number of viewers in the 8 p.m. ET hour combined that day, let alone in that time slot on the network.

Fox News’ ratings have been down since the network parted ways on April 24 with Carlson, who anchored the most-watched show not just on that channel but on cable news as well.

The future of the coveted 8 p.m. slot is uncertain, as is whether the network can replicate the millions who tuned in to Carlson.

“Tucker Carlson Tonight” averaged 3.25 million viewers in the first few months of 2023. In 2022, the show averaged 3.3 million viewers.

“Tucker Carlson had a unique appeal, due in large part to his unique perspective—or unique, at least, to mainstream/mainstream-adjacent media,” Josh Hammer, Newsweek opinion editor and podcaster, told The Epoch Times.

“How long that trend lasts is anyone’s guess, and many—perhaps most—viewers will come back to Fox. But for now, at least, it helps confirm what many already knew: Tucker’s audience is deeply loyal to him and his brand.”

The 8 p.m. slot on Fox News is now occupied by “Fox News Tonight,” where there will be a rotation of Fox News personalities until a permanent show and host are named. Brian Kilmeade has been hosting this week. Meanwhile, former Fox News host Eric Bolling, who now hosts an 8 p.m. show at Newsmax, saw his ratings nearly triple this week.

On April 24, when Fox News announced Carlson’s departure, 2.597 million viewers tuned in to “Fox News Tonight,” a 577,000 decrease from the 3.174 million viewers who tuned in to Carlson’s show the previous week. Meanwhile, rivals MSNBC’s “All in with Chris Hayes” and CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” garnered 1.387 million and 635,000 viewers, respectively, in the same 8 p.m. hour. Newsmax had an average of 531,000 total viewers, an increase of 385,000 viewers on average from April 17, for its 8 p.m. show, “Eric Bolling The Balance.” NewsNation’s “Cuomo” got just 128,000 viewers.

While Fox News’ primetime shows outperformed those of their competitors, averaging 2.351 million viewers, it was nonetheless a drastic drop with Carlson not being on air.

On April 25, 1.704 million viewers tuned in to “Fox News Tonight,” winning the 8 p.m. hour but with a decrease of 893,000 from the previous night and a decrease of 1.519 million from the 3.223 million the previous week. “Eric Bolling The Balance” got 562,000 viewers, an increase of 31,000 from the previous night and 440,000 from the previous week. “All in with Chris Hayes” got 1.449 million viewers, “Anderson Cooper 360” got 678,000, and “Cuomo” got 156,000.

“Many of Tucker’s fans are probably also big fans of Laura Ingraham,” said Hammer. “Some will go to Newsmax during the 8 p.m. hour, as Eric Bolling’s ratings bump indicates. Some others will probably go to non-cable/internet TV shows for news consumption during that time slot.”

Indeed, it “appears to be the case” that the bump in Bolling’s show can be attributed to Carlson being taken off the air, Bryan Leib, a Newsmax contributor, told The Epoch Times.

“I think Fox viewers have seen Dan Bongino [not have his contract renewed] and now Tucker Carlson be fired and it has been an eye-opener for them,” said Leib. “Fox has always been seeking to censor [Donald] Trump in many ways and a large percentage of the Fox base is very supportive of Trump. Meanwhile, Newsmax does not censor Trump and in fact, they carry all of Trump’s rallies and live events. This is the type of programming Fox News viewers seek, and that is why they are coming over in droves to Newsmax.”

Carlson’s next stop is anyone’s guess. One America News Network, which is not carried by the major cable providers (Xfinity, DirecTV, Verizon Fios), is looking to bring Carlson on board. BlazeTV has expressed a desire for him to join. Even Russian state media outlet RT appeared to offer Carlson a job.

“There’s a point of how much more can Tucker do there is a good question,” media analyst Jon Nicosia, a former editor at Mediaite, told The Epoch Times. “He gets bored pretty easily and I’m not sure this is how he thought it was going to end, but … he can start a podcast tomorrow and have Joe Rogan-level people.”

Nicosia also raised the possibility of Carlson doing a joint venture with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who was one of Carlson’s final major interviews.

“He’ll reemerge,” said Nicosia.

But will Fox News reemerge in the 8 p.m. hour?

“Fox shouldn’t be counted out quite yet because when Bill O’Reilly left for far different circumstances, at least we know as of now, under a clout of repeated [alleged] examples of sexual harassment … there were concerns, ‘What are we going to do? O’Reilly had been the most-watched person in cable news for many, many years, nearly an entire generation or at least half a generation,’” Curtis Houck, the managing editor of the conservative media watchdog Media Research Center’s blog, NewsBusters, told The Epoch Times.

“Fox News just still has just a unique standing in our body politic that to just suggest that this leaves them dead in the water, as some people have, I don’t really think you can say that,” he added.

Nicosia predicted that Jesse Watters, who helms the 7 p.m. slot at Fox News, will succeed Carlson and that viewers are “basically going to hear Jesse come up and say the same stuff that Tucker said.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Ron DeSantis Flies To Israel To Destroy Free Speech In Florida

This week Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida made a trip to Israel to sign HB 269, a bill that makes it a felony with up to five years in jail for passing out “offensive” flyers or pamphlets. This move has been widely criticized by free speech advocates and legal experts as a gross violation of the First Amendment. The bill states that anyone distributing “any material for the purpose of intimidating or threatening the owner” could be convicted of a felony “hate crime.” While we often write about the “hate speech” rules on Big Tech platforms, this is far worse. This is the state of Florida violating the First Amendment of the United States.

The legislation came about after activists from a group called the Goyim Defense League made headlines for several years for their activism efforts. The Goyim Defense League’s activism takes the form of distributing flyers that contain “uncomfortable truths” about the individuals who control the mainstream media in the United States. These flyers have been handed out across multiple states, including Florida, and have been met with mixed reactions from the public.

Despite the controversy surrounding the flyers, it is worth noting that they contain no threats of violence or threatening language. Rather, they present what the Goyim Defense League sees as a reality about the individuals who control the mainstream media, and invite readers to consider a different perspective. While some might consider this information to be “offensive,” there is nothing inherently threatening or “intimidating” about the distribution of flyers with factual information on them. The flyers even have a statement on them noting that they are “distributed randomly without malicious intent.”

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. This means that individuals have the right to express their opinions, even if those opinions are controversial or unpopular. The government cannot censor or punish individuals for their speech, unless it poses an imminent danger or threat to others.

HB 269, however, seeks to criminalize speech that is deemed “intimidating” by the state. This is an extremely vague and subjective standard, and it could be used to silence a wide range of speech that is protected by the First Amendment. It is important to note that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that speech that some may find offensive is still protected under the First Amendment.

This isn’t the first time Ron DeSantis has signed anti-First Amendment legislation while in Israel. Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 741, also known as the “Combating Public Disorder” bill, into law on May 14, 2019, in Jerusalem, Israel. The signing ceremony took place at the David Citadel Hotel, where DeSantis was joined by several prominent Jewish leaders and members of the Israeli government.

The bill aims to protect religious institutions and their members from discrimination and harassment. However, many have argued that it does much more than that, and that it represents a serious threat to free speech and civil liberties.

One of the main provisions of HB 741 is a requirement that all Florida public schools, colleges, and universities adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that includes certain forms of criticism of Israel. The definition in question is the one adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which defines anti-Semitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” and includes examples such as “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” and “applying double standards to Israel.”

Critics of HB 741 argue that this definition is overly broad and could be used to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies. They point out that the definition includes language that could be interpreted as equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, even though the two are not the same thing. They also argue that the definition is not necessary, as schools and universities already have policies in place to address discrimination and harassment.

Another provision of HB 741 requires law enforcement agencies to conduct training on identifying and responding to anti-Semitic incidents. Many have raised concerns that this provision could be used to target legitimate forms of protest and dissent. For example, if a group of pro-Palestinian activists were to stage a peaceful demonstration outside an Israeli consulate or embassy, could they be accused of engaging in an anti-Semitic incident?

Perhaps most controversially, HB 741 creates a private right of action for people who believe they have been discriminated against on the basis of their religion. This means that individuals who feel that they have been the victim of anti-Semitic discrimination can sue the alleged perpetrator for damages. This is highly likely to be used to stifle free speech and dissent. For example, a professor who expresses a controversial opinion about Israel could potentially be sued by a student who disagrees with them and feels that their religious beliefs have been discriminated against.

The fact that Governor DeSantis flew to a foreign country to sign both of these bills is absurd. Florida is a state in the United States, and its laws should be signed within the state’s borders. The reality that Gov. DeSantis chose to sign these bills in Israel, a foreign country, raises serious questions about his priorities and commitment to upholding the Constitution for the citizens of the United States and his state of Florida.

The implications of HB 269 and HB 741 are deeply troubling. They could be used to silence political dissent, punish those who criticize government officials, or suppress speech that challenges the status quo. In short, it is a direct attack on the First Amendment and the principles of free speech that are so essential to a healthy society.

We must be willing to engage in open dialogue with those who hold different views, and to stand up for our rights even when it is uncomfortable or unpopular to do so.

This means supporting organizations and individuals who are working to protect free speech, like Gab, and advocating for policies that promote openness and transparency in government. It also means being willing to speak out against efforts to silence dissent or suppress speech even when they come from our own political allies.

The defense of our fundamental rights is not a partisan issue. It is a matter of basic human dignity and freedom and it requires all of us to stand up and be counted. We must remain vigilant in the face of attempts to suppress speech and dissent, and be willing to push back against these efforts wherever they arise. Only by doing so can we ensure that America remains free for generations to come.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of kings

Published in Free Speech

Tucker Carlson’s 5 Takes on COVID

On April 24, the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host and Fox News parted ways. Fox News stocks fell by as much as 5 percent on the same day, while Tucker Carlson’s Twitter profile gained about 700,000 followers in less than a week.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlson has been routinely criticized for his COVID commentaries that opposed the mainstream narrative.

Yet many would argue that Carlson’s commentaries were a rare source of reason over the past three fear-plagued years.

Prominent cardiologist and leading COVID-19 vaccine critic Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times that Carlson was “on track” about the significant factors influencing society.

“He made great contributions over the last two years,” McCullough said.

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“People recognize that he is genuinely telling the truth, and even if they don’t agree with his interpretation, in general, his comments are factual and reasonable,” Dr. David Bell, public health physician and former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), told The Epoch Times over the phone.

Here is how Carlson weighed in on some of the critical topics throughout the pandemic.

Origins of SARS-CoV-2

Carlson, a prominent voice calling for a thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19, was among the few eminent TV hosts open to the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak origin.

“Maybe an animal transmitted it to researchers, and the Chinese government didn’t quarantine those researchers. That’s an entirely reasonable possibility, as reasonable as any other explanation,” Carlson suggested in a segment of his show in September 2020.

Hong Kong virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan appeared in the same episode. Yan researched SARS-CoV-2 in China and later fled to the United States. She told Carlson that she believed the virus was engineered and intentionally released to infect the globe.

He was critical of media and political commentary that argued against calling COVID-19 by the name “Wuhan virus” because they claimed it would be offensive and racist.

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“Now is not the time to indulge in the lowest and dumbest kind of identity politics,” Carlson said in a February 2020 segment. “In times of crisis, euphemisms kill. You need accuracy and clear language in the way you talk about the threat. It’s essential.”

On Feb. 23, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported on a classified report from the U.S. Energy Department that concluded COVID-19 likely originated from a lab leak.

“We know perfectly well COVID came from, we’ve known this for years,” Carlson said on his show in 2023, commenting on this report. “One of the very first things we knew about COVID was that it was an engineered virus that escaped somehow, intentionally or not, from a Chinese military biolab in Wuhan.”

COVID-19 Severity

Carlson’s stance on COVID-19 severity has shifted throughout the pandemic.

Early in the pandemic, mainstream health authorities argued that the risks of COVID-19 were “minuscule” and that the flu posed a more significant concern. Carlson, however, citing data from the WHO at the time, expressed concern that the COVID-19 virus could be 30 times more dangerous than the flu and that the health system might be unable to handle this virus.

A subsequent study showed that the COVID-19 case fatality rate is less than 1 percent, significantly lower than the 3.4 percent reported by the WHO early in the pandemic.

“We now know … that the virus isn’t that deadly,” Carlson said in a segment aired on May 22, 2020. “An enormous percentage of coronavirus infections produce mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. They’re asymptomatic. The death toll is a tiny fraction of what we were told it would be.”

Vaccine Adverse Events

Carlson was a leading critic of the push to vaccinate and the censorship of discussing adverse events since the initial vaccine rollouts.

He questioned the efficacy of vaccines and raised concerns about their safety but has not advocated against getting vaccinated.

With the advent of the vaccine rollout, Twitter and Facebook implemented new misinformation policies. Posts about COVID-19 vaccinations deemed to be false or misleading were removed. This also led to the closure of Facebook groups discussing vaccine reactions.

In December 2020, Carlson expressed that these actions would erode trust.

“None of this inspires confidence,” he said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “Censorship will not convince a single person to take the coronavirus vaccine. In fact, it will have the opposite effect.”

At first, Carlson favored vaccination for vulnerable people, but he has been against mandating it.

“I thought that American physicians agreed that compulsory medical care was unethical, it was immoral, and it could never be imposed on anyone,” he said on Jan. 21, 2022.

In April 2021, Carlson cast doubt on vaccine safety after adverse events of blood clotting and bleeding appeared in those who took the J&J vaccine.

On May 5, 2021, Carlson raised concern about deaths after COVID-19 vaccinations. He cited data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), saying 3,362 people died after getting the shots between late December to April 2021.

Lead cardiologist and COVID-19 vaccine critic Dr. Peter McCullough said Carlson would be the first to cite VAERS data on primetime television.

In June 2021, the WHO published its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, writing that “children should not be vaccinated for the moment.”

“There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the WHO added.

Carlson interpreted this vaccine recommendation as indicating that the vaccines were harmful to children.

“The drugs are too dangerous. There’s not nearly enough data to understand the long-term effects or to show that the benefits are worth the risk that they bring,” Carlson said.

“Judging by the VAERS reporting system, we can be certain that some will be harmed. Beyond that, we can’t be sure. We aren’t even sure what effects this vaccine will have on the elderly—the one group we were told from day one should take the vaccine as quickly as possible.”

Carlson’s most recent comments on COVID-19 vaccines came from the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show aired on April 19, 2023.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a 2024 presidential candidate and the founder of Children’s Health Defense, a not-for-profit activist group for childhood vaccine safety, joined Carlson.

Carlson introduced Kennedy as someone who knew early on that “the COVID vaccines were both ineffective and potentially dangerous.”

Masking

Carlson was initially in favor of voluntary masking.

“Of course, masks work,” he said in a segment in late March 2020, while also raising the concern that masks were becoming difficult to source.

He later changed his take on masking in July 2020, saying there was “no basis of any kind in science” on mask-wearing.

However, Carlson has always been critical of mask mandates, arguing that the mandates were implemented more for political reasons than public health.

In discussing the Virginian lawsuit that ruled to allow parents to opt their children out of wearing masks, Carlson repeated ruling judge Louise DiMatteo’s comments.

“Louise DiMatteo made a highly revealing statement: ‘I’m not going to decide who’s right and who’s wrong on masking,’ she said. ‘This is really about the hierarchy of authority.’ Well, exactly. That really is what it’s about. After more than two years of COVID restrictions, there’s not a huge amount of scientific debate over masks on children,” Carlson said.

“The only debate left, as the judge pointed out, is not to debate over science. It’s a debate about power.”

In January 2023, research gold standard Cochrane published a review concluding masking does not slow the spread of COVID-19.

Lockdowns

Carlson has been critical of lockdowns, arguing that they have been harmful to individuals and society and do not help control the spread of the virus.

Carlson said in a segment on his show in November 2020, “The evidence is in. Lockdowns don’t work. They don’t make us safe. They don’t stop the virus. They do cause enormous harm, though, especially to the poor and the middle class.”

Studies have shown conflicting benefits of lockdowns. For example, a study by the University of California found that early lockdowns prevented infections by 56 percent, but they came with a decline in GDP, employment, customer spending, and satisfaction. Contrastingly, a Johns Hopkins study showed that lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 mortalities by 0.2 percent on average (pdf).

Carlson has also criticized government officials for imposing strict lockdown measures while failing to adequately support businesses and individuals struggling due to the pandemic.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

ABC Refuses to Air RFK Jr. Comments About COVID-19 Vaccines

ABC News cut off a presidential candidate when he started talking about COVID-19 vaccines, raising concerns about censorship.

Robert Kennedy Jr., who recently announced his presidential run as a Democrat, sat down with ABC News for a lengthy interview released on April 27.

After airing clips of the interview, reporter Linsey Davis spoke to viewers.

“We should note that during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines,” she said. “We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview,” Davis said.

The claims in question were not listed, and ABC did not return a request for comment.

Davis indicated that at least one dealt with the effectiveness of the vaccines.

“Data shows that the COVID-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease,” Davis said. She did not provide any citations for the claim.

“He also made misleading claims about the relationship between vaccination and autism. Research shows that vaccines and the ingredients used in the vaccines do not cause autism, including multiple studies involving more than a million children and major medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the advocacy group Autism Speaks,” she added.

Kennedy said that what happened violated the U.S. law that bars some media outlets from censoring candidates for public office.

“ABC showed its contempt for the law, democracy, and its audience by cutting most of the content of my interview with host Linsey Davis leaving only cherry-picked snippets and a defamatory disclaimer,” Kennedy said.

“Offering no evidence, ABC justified this act of censorship by falsely asserting that I made ‘false claims.’ In truth, Davis engaged me in a lively, informative, and mutually respectful debate on the government’s Covid countermeasures. I’m happy to supply citations to support every statement I made during that exchange. I’m certain that ABC’s decision to censor came as a shock to Linsey as well. Instead of journalism, the public saw a hatchet job,” he added.

Before airing the interview, Davis described Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.” She did not mention how the vaccines are increasingly ineffective against newer COVID-19 variants and how the vaccines have been proven to cause serious problems, including heart inflammation and death.

Critics decried ABC’s cutting of Kennedy’s remarks.

“The most outrageous part of this is ABC gets to ream RFK Jr. about vaccines during the interview but then censor his ability to even respond while forcing us to blindly trust them that his claims were ‘false,’” commentator John Ziegler wrote on Twitter. “All this after they were wrong about vaccines stopping transmission.”

Producer Alex Lorusso noted that ABC never censored officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who have made false and misleading claims about vaccine effectiveness, including his claims on ABC in January 2021 that if enough people were vaccinated, herd immunity would be achieved.

“They are going to censor to interfere with the 2024 election, and they won’t even hide it,” Lorusso added on Twitter.

“At the end of this otherwise interesting interview with Robert Kennedy Jr., ABC News admits they censored ‘extended portions’ relating to discussions around the COVID ‘vaccine,’” Townhall writer Scott Morefield wrote on Twitter. “If his claims are so easily disproven, why not simply disprove them instead of resorting to censorship?”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Hip-Hop Cocktail Party: Liberal Dark Money Group Hosts Concert for Journalists (Feat. 4 Violent Criminals)

Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, French Montana, and Rick Ross have lengthy rap sheets

What’s happening: A liberal dark money group is hosting a concert Thursday evening ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, a truly sickening affair during which journalists dress up and go to fancy parties to mingle with celebs and congratulate themselves for saving democracy.

This particular event—sponsored by Power to the Patients, a health care nonprofit funded by mysterious donors—will feature hip-hop performances by four violent (alleged, at the very least) criminals: Busta Rhymes, French Montana, Rick Ross, and Fat Joe, the group’s celebrity spokesman. Mr. Joe is in Washington, D.C., this week to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and with Biden administration officials at the White House.

Rap sheets: All of the headline performers at Thursday’s WHCA kickoff event have a long history of legal challenges.

• Fat Joe—Charged with assault and robbery in 1998 for allegedly beating a man with a baseball bat and stealing his gold chain; charged with assault in 2002 after members of his entourage fractured a man’s jaw; credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman inside his Cadillac limo after a concert in 2011; named as a witness in two murder trials; sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion in 2012; bragged that he used to “stick people up” and endorsed violent theft in a 2022 interview.

• Busta Rhymes—Charged with assault in 2006 for beating a pedestrian; charged with assault in 2007 for beating up his former driver; busted for DUI and driving with a suspended license; ordered to pay $75,000 to a fan he allegedly assaulted at a concert; arrested in 2015 for assaulting a gym employee while spouting racist and homophobic slurs; refused to pay his fair share in taxes.

• French Montana—Credibly accused of sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman in 2018, resulting in an undisclosed settlement; credibly accused of sexually assaulting another woman in a Las Vegas hotel room that same year; credibly accused of raping a teenaged model in 2021; sued for negligence earlier this year after 10 people were injured in a shooting while filming a music video; refused to pay his fair share in taxes.

• Rick Ross—Sentenced to five years probation in 2017 after pleading no contest to kidnapping and assault charges; widely denounced that same year for saying he would never hire a female artist because “I would end up f—ing her and f—ing the business up;” arrested for gun possession in 2008; sued that same year for orchestrating a “brutal attack” on a rival artist; refused to pay his fair share in taxes.

Why it matters: Assaulting people is wrong.

Bottom line: A hip-hop cocktail party hosted by a left-wing dark money group, headlined by violent criminals and tax cheats, intended to kick off several days of ceremonial self-congratulation among political journalists. It is a rather fitting reflection of the Democratic Party in 2023.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘The China Way’: Biden Campaign Co-Chair Lavished Praise on China in Interview with CCP Propaganda Outlet

DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has come under fire for his close relationship with Beijing

Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chairman for Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, heaped praise on China in an interview with Chinese state television, saying “doors opened” for his movie studio in the communist regime after he learned “the China way.”

Katzenberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks, said in a 2017 interview with CGTN America, a subsidiary of the CCP’s propaganda department, that business in China had proved “extremely rewarding.” He praised China’s technological innovation as “way ahead” of other countries, and downplayed concerns about China’s reputation for censoring American movies.

Katzenberg’s friendly relationship with China could present a political liability for Biden, who has come under scrutiny for failing to stand up to Beijing and for his son Hunter’s dealings there. National security officials have warned that the Chinese government increasingly tries to influence American foreign policy through business leaders and other influencers outside government.

Biden may have had a hand in opening doors for Katzenberg in China. In 2012, the New York Times reported that then-Vice President Biden negotiated with Chinese president Xi Jinping to secure a deal that would open the Chinese market to more American films. Katzenberg, who attended a State Department event with Biden and Xi around the time the deal was sealed, called it an “honor for us and a huge opportunity” to have more access to China. One of Katzenberg’s earliest business partners was Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Communist Party leader and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Katzenberg’s status in China was on display at a 2015 White House dinner, when the Hollywood mogul was seated at the head table with Xi and a few other American executives.

Katzenberg, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, is the only Biden co-chairman from the private sector. Sens. Chris Coons (Del.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Reps. Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Veronica Escobar (Tex.), and Lisa Blunt Rochester, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (Mich.) will serve in the role.

Katzenberg has faced some scrutiny over the years for his China ties. The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated whether DreamWorks, which Katzenberg founded in 1994, paid bribes to Chinese officials to expand its business. One of Katzenberg’s first projects in China was a film called Tibet Code, which came under fire because it put forth a pro-Beijing view of the longstanding feud between Tibet and China.

Asked in his CGTN interview about China’s well-earned reputation for censoring Western films, Katzenberg said he “was never restricted” by Chinese authorities.

“I’ve never been censored on anything that I have done. Maybe that’s the choices of the kinds of things and the type of content that I make in that there wasn’t any sensitivity around it,” he said.

It’s not that China’s censors have given Katzenberg a free pass. The New York Times reported in 2013 that Chinese officials visited DreamWorks’s Los Angeles headquarters to sign off on the studio’s “Kung Fu Panda 3.”

“The story line, production art and other creative elements have met their approval,” the Times reported of China’s visit to DreamWorks.

The Biden campaign and Katzenberg did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Al Qaeda Lawyer Defends Seizure of House From Elderly Lady

Justices ridicule Neal Katyal’s defense of county that seized woman’s home over $2,300 in unpaid taxes

A left-wing lawyer who once defended al Qaeda terrorists argued before the Supreme Court Wednesday that a Minnesota county was in the right when it confiscated an elderly woman’s condo and took all the profits from its sale over a small unpaid tax. 

Supreme Court justices appeared unconvinced by lawyer Neal Katyal’s defense of Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, according to the Associated Press. The plaintiff in the case, Geraldine Tyler, now 94 years old, didn’t get any of the $40,000 the county received from the sale of her condo. The county seized the property in 2015 over $2,300 in unpaid taxes. Tyler owed $15,000 total with penalties and interest on the unpaid taxes. 

“At bottom, she’s saying the county took her property and made a profit on her surplus equity. It belongs to her,” Justice Clarence Thomas said Wednesday. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch ridiculed the county’s position that expensive properties could also be seized for minuscule missing payments. “So a $5 property tax, a million dollar property, good to go?” Gorsuch asked Katyal, who answered in the affirmative. 

Katyal’s defense referenced historical events dating back to 1272, as well as the Court’s recent striking down of Roe v. Wade, the Associated Press reported. “I just don’t understand what on earth any of that history has to do with this case,” Gorsuch said of Katyal’s historical references.

Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general under the Obama administration, is no stranger to representing controversial defendants. He is known as one of the “al Qaeda 7,” a group of lawyers who represented al Qaeda terrorists against the Bush administration. 

He also appeared before the Supreme Court in 2020 to defend Nestlé and Cargill, who faced charges of abetting child slavery at cocoa plantations in Africa.

Katyal, a frequent face on MSNBC, rose in popularity in 2017 for leading challenges against former president Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on countries including North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden Spends Taxpayer Funds To Address Burning Question: Is the Construction Industry Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive?

It isn’t, according to a survey that cost nearly $90,000

The Biden administration spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to determine whether the construction industry is sufficiently diverse, equitable, and inclusive. It isn’t, the survey found.

Joe Biden’s General Services Administration in November released the survey’s “powerful” findings, which highlighted the glaring need for construction companies “to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in their industry.” While the federal agency did not include the survey’s cost in the release, a contract obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows that the “DEI Survey and Report” cost taxpayers nearly $90,000.

Biden has issued a slew of executive orders on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which require federal agencies to implement “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Strategic Plans” in an effort to advance “equity for all.” The General Services Administration said it commissioned its construction industry survey as a result of those orders. In the subsequent report, agency administrator Robin Carnahan said the effort is part of a push to ensure federal contractors—not just the federal government—embrace Biden’s equity “vision.”

“GSA can’t do this work alone; we need partners—including architects, contractors, and others—who fully understand that DEIA advances the federal government’s mission and is good business,” Carnahan said in the report. “The data-driven report shows that there is much more work to do.”

For Carnahan, a Democrat who served as Missouri’s secretary of state from 2005 to 2013, that work includes advancement “in areas such as recruiting, empowering, and advancing a diverse workforce.” Nearly half of construction companies, the agency’s release laments, were grouped into the survey’s “low to no engagement” category when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, stressing the need to “advance equity in architecture and construction.” Still, Carnahan identified some bright spots—diversity, equity, and inclusion training, the Biden appointee’s report says, “is becoming a norm for the industry.”

The General Services Administration, which did not return a request for comment, manages transportation, office space, and other logistics for the federal agencies. Its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion could prompt accusations that it is more concerned with a federal contractor’s politics than its job performance. Prominent Republicans have long argued as much, with former Trump administration secretary of state Mike Pompeo saying last month that equity programs “erode the American commitment to the dignity of hard work.”

“The fairness of playing by the rules is abrogated when government steps in and awards bonuses to people based on something other than the fact that they worked hard and were decent and good,” Pompeo said. “And more importantly, it erodes the fundamental decency—the goodness of doing what is right every day.”

Biden’s diversity, equity, and inclusion push has extended far beyond the General Services Administration. Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, for example, launched a $3.8 billion Department of Agriculture relief program that aimed to pay up to 120 percent of loans for farmers and ranchers of color. A federal judge halted that program in June 2021, saying it “discriminate[d] against farmers because of their race or national origin.” Biden’s Treasury Department, meanwhile, created in October 2021 a “counselor for racial equity” who is meant to “advance equity and advise the Treasury Department on all racial equity policy issues and programs.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The ‘Su Tax’: California Businesses Are Still Paying for Biden Nominee Julie Su’s $31B Mistake

Julie Su is on Capitol Hill auditioning to be Joe Biden’s next labor secretary, but back in her home state of California, businesses are paying what some call the “Su Tax”—a hike in payroll taxes to make up for the massive fraud that took place on her watch during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly 60 California businesses and agriculture groups complained last month that their four million-plus members face escalating payroll taxes to bail out the state’s insolvent unemployment insurance fund. The groups warned state legislative leaders that the taxes—which could exceed $400 per worker each year—threaten employee-heavy small businesses and restaurants that were already devastated by California Democrats’ strict COVID-19 lockdowns.

The business groups did not mention Su by name, but they noted how California’s unemployment insurance fund spent up to $31 billion on payouts for fraudulent claims when she was the state labor secretary. After presiding over the fund’s fall into insolvency, Su left to become the Biden administration’s deputy labor secretary.

“California’s businesses … had no control over [the fund’s] mistaken distribution of the employer-funded UI funds–but now California employers are being taxed for these policies,” the groups, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, wrote in a March 23 letter.

Now, with Su seeking confirmation as Biden’s labor secretary, the plight of California businesses underscores swing-vote senators’ concerns about her competence. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee  voted along party lines Thursday to advance Su’s nomination to a vote by the full chamber, but her confirmation remains very much in doubt.

In California, some Republicans have taken to referring to the new costs of doing business as the “Su tax.” While Rep. Kevin Kiley (R., Calif.) was familiar with the term, he preferred a different monicker.

“It’s an incompetence tax: a price private citizens are being forced to pay for their government’s failures,” Kiley told the Washington Free Beacon. “The predicament that small businesses in California now find themselves in—facing double taxation to make up for the government’s negligence—is another example of why Julie Su’s nomination to be our nation’s next labor secretary is so ill-considered.”

Ranking committee member Bill Cassidy (R., La.) during Thursday’s hearing voiced some of the objections to Su’s confirmation that Republican lawmakers and national business groups had raised.

“Julie Su has an extensive record of partisan activism and promoting policies that undermine workers to the benefit of politically-connected labor unions,” Cassidy said. “A qualified Secretary of Labor needs to successfully handle negotiations, manage a department properly, and refrain from partisan activism. I haven’t seen evidence of Julie Su’s ability to do any of those three things.”

At a HELP committee hearing last week, Su insisted that she had moved swiftly to stop California from being defrauded during the pandemic. But her testimony was directly contradicted by federal and California state audits, which found that, under Su, California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement failed to act for months to stop the fraud despite repeated warnings.

According to the audits and to Su’s own directives, she tossed safeguards out the window to pump unemployment dollars to the millions of people who were rendered jobless during the state’s long COVID-19 lockdown. Early on, Su suspended a requirement that unemployment insurance recipients check in every two weeks to prove they still qualify for benefits—arguing the state could not otherwise keep up with the staggering number of claims. The unemployment insurance fund also paid claims to parties its own analysis flagged as suspicious—which California’s watchdog deemed a “lax approach.”

A federal audit, meanwhile, found that California transferred one fraudster $1.6 million in unemployment benefits over 164 days.

Ahead of Su’s nomination to deputy labor secretary in January 2021, she acknowledged that her agency wasted as much as $31 billion in pandemic unemployment insurance payments—more than any other state. “There is no sugar coating the reality, California did not have sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud,” she said at the time.

More than two years later, California’s unemployment insurance fund is still nearly $20 billion in the red. Since federal law decrees that the fund must be replenished, the burden falls on California businesses through a reduction of their tax credits. The businesses—already among the nation’s most heavily taxed and regulated—will pay for the state’s errors starting with a $21-per-employee increase in their payroll taxes. The tax bump will rise every year that the fund remains insolvent, maxing out at $434 per worker, with no exemption for small businesses.

As the business groups pointed out in their letter, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) latest budget does not address the fund’s insolvency, and there is no plan in place to make it whole.

“Just as COVID-19 was a statewide public emergency and went beyond individual private employers,” the groups wrote, “the cost of COVID-19 on California’s UI Fund should not fall on private employers alone.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

FACT CHECK: Joe Biden Said Republicans Are ‘Banning Books’ Like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

Verdict: 4 Clintons

Claim: Republican politicians are “banning books,” including To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Who said it: President Joe Biden in the video he released earlier this week officially launching his reelection campaign. When he says Republicans are “banning books,” we see a stack of books at the top of which sits a worn paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Context: Journalists and other Democrats frequently complain about Republicans “banning” books. They are almost always spreading misinformation. Usually the book in question has simply been removed from a school’s curriculum—sometimes in response to complaints from parents, sometimes because the school board felt like it.

Why it matters: Perhaps the only things journalists and other Democrats hate more than book “bans” is misinformation, defined (by them) as information that has not been thoroughly vetted by journalists or some unaccountable board of left-wing “experts.”

Nevertheless, they persist in spreading information about a wide range of topics and will do so even more passionately now that the 2024 election is underway.

Analysis: In August 2022, a bunch of liberals started spreading misinformation on social media. They claimed (without evidence) that To Kill a Mockingbird was on a list of books Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) had recently “banned” from Florida public schools.

The Associated Press fact-checked the ridiculous claim, writing: “False. … A school district in Florida’s Palm Beach County removed [To Kill a Mockingbird] from school libraries earlier this year as part of a review, but later returned it, according to district documents. The ‘Banned Book List’ shared across social media this week is also bogus, and includes many titles that aren’t banned in Florida, according to groups that track book bans and challenges.”

As it turns out, a number of schools have recently “banned” (removed from their required reading lists) the Harper Lee novel about a white lawyer who defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman during the Great Depression.

As you might expect, the schools are located in and around Los Angeles, Seattle, and Madison, Wisconsin. Their respective boards took action in response to deranged liberal parents who denounced the book’s “white-savior story line,” complained that it “reflects a time when racism was tolerated” and “ignores the reality of black agency in resistance,” whatever that means.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WATCH: Climate Activist Who Shut Down Highway Admits She Wants To Ruin Your Life

‘We consciously are disrupting people’s lives,’ climate alarmism group says after protest

Here’s a snapshot of the climate history over the past half million years. It’s several years old. We are at the top of the curve and heading downward as we enter a grand solar minimum. The things claimed by the alarmists are the things that will happen if we DO abandon our current energy sources overnight, not if we don’t. Catching photons and wisps of wind do not make nearly enough power. [US Patriot]

A climate activist who shut down a Washington, D.C., highway acknowledged that she’s consciously “disrupting people’s lives” and compared herself to civil rights pioneers who were “not well liked during their time.”

Declare Emergency, a climate alarmism group that conducts disruptive protests in and around D.C. in hopes of urging Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, on Wednesday blockaded a busy section of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. After the demonstration, group spokeswoman Nora Swisher dismissed criticism of the protest, admitting that the “point” of the protest is to ruin people’s days. Swisher went on to argue that those who don’t like her tactics will eventually come around, just as the general public now reveres once-unpopular civil rights pioneers.

“We consciously are disrupting people’s lives today in hopes that we can mitigate more serious destruction down the road. Because that’s the trajectory we’re on right now,” Swisher told FOX 5. When asked if she feared whether the protest would turn people against her cause, Swisher said she “expected” such a backlash and expressed confidence that history would look fondly upon the group. “This has been true of nonviolent civil disobedience movements throughout history,” Swisher said. “The suffragettes, the civil rights movement—they were not well liked during their time. Now, with hindsight, we see that their actions were moral and justified.”

Far-left environmental groups have long pressed the federal government to declare a national climate emergency, but the calls have entered the Democratic Party’s mainstream in recent years. Biden reportedly considered issuing a climate emergency declaration last summer but stopped short, prompting criticism from climate activists. Months later, in October 2022, a group of eight Democratic senators urged Biden to declare the emergency, arguing that he could not reach his emission reduction goals without the declaration.

“We will only achieve these targets if you build off the momentum of the Inflation Reduction Act with strong executive action,” wrote the group, which included Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, California’s Alex Padilla, and Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen. “We urge you to take the important next step of declaring a climate emergency and unlocking the full tools at your disposal to address this crisis.”

A climate emergency declaration would allow Biden to unlock COVID-esque emergency powers to fight climate change through executive order. Under a climate emergency, for example, Biden could use the Defense Production Act to stimulate green energy generation. He could also deploy the military to build green energy projects near military installments around the country.

Declare Emergency has long blocked highways around D.C., including last year on Independence Day. In October 2022, meanwhile, the group planned a “week of arrest,” which then-leader Donald Zepeda said was necessary to spur climate action. “What people are interested in and concerned about is the sacrifice element,” Zepeda told the Washington Free Beacon. “So I don’t think we’re going to have actions without arrests.”

Residents in D.C. and Northern Virginia can expect similar protests from the group “in the coming weeks and months,” Swisher told FOX 5. Those demonstrations are not likely to make Declare Emergency any friends. One local resident trashed the group’s Wednesday protest in an interview with FOX 5, saying the demonstration forced her to miss a medical appointment for her dog.

“It’s something that’s a very important cause, of course, but you’re now having all these people idle, and you’re also now making them angry,” the woman said. “If you want people to be attentive to your cause, making them angry is not the way to do it, especially at 9 o’clock on a Wednesday morning.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Energy Secretary Granholm Ducks Questions on Biden Admin Grants to Companies with ‘Material Operations in China’

Lithium battery company Microvast set to receive $200 million from Biden admin

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm declined to rule out giving funding to companies with “material operations in China” on Wednesday after a lawmaker pressed her on the Department of Energy’s $200 million announced grant to a lithium battery company that operates primarily out of China.

Granholm’s testimony comes a week after she told another Senate committee that her department is still reviewing the pending grant to lithium battery company Microvast, which the department announced with great fanfare a few weeks before the midterm election last fall.

Lawmakers have criticized the grant, noting Microvast’s extensive business in China. While the company’s registered headquarters is in Texas, it disclosed in its financial report last year that it operates primarily in China and that the Chinese government “exerts substantial influence over the manner in which we must conduct our business activities.”

Granholm told Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.) on Wednesday that “no state-owned enterprise” in China would receive funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“What about companies that have material operations in China?” Schmitt asked.

Granholm declined to answer directly, saying the DOE is “using this [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] vetting program to be able to identify exactly where the control is of a particular technology … and we want to make sure that we are the beneficiaries of those acts and not others.”

The exchange came after Schmitt pressed Granholm on the proposed grant to Microvast, which was intended to fund a battery separator facility in Tennessee. He told Granholm that the grant was “concerning.”

Although the DOE framed that grant and others as a done deal in an announcement last October—even releasing statements from elected officials praising the funding—Granholm said the awards are still “going through vetting process to ensure that there is no money flowing to countries of concern.”

“Those vetting processes are going on, not a dollar has gone out the door yet,” she told Schmitt.

The DOE has defended the proposed grant, saying that Microvast is an American company headquartered in Texas.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden DHS Chief Admits The End of Title 42 Will ‘Strain’ Immigration System

Alejandro Mayorkas attempted to quell staff’s concerns in an internal memo obtained by the Free Beacon

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in an internal memo that the end of a policy that enables the swift deportation of migrants “will strain our workforce, our communities, and our entire system.”

“We anticipate that we may experience increased levels of arrivals at our southern border in the coming weeks,” Mayorkas wrote in Thursday’s staff-wide memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “This will strain our workforce, our communities, and our entire system.”

Mayorkas is referring to the termination of Title 42, a pandemic-era public health order that allows for the swift deportation of migrants. The policy is set to lapse on May 11, after years of legal battles and inaction from the White House. Mayorkas circulated the memo hours before discussing changes to border policy in a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The memo shows Mayorkas’s efforts to quell his staff’s concerns ahead of a coming migration surge, which one senior Department of Homeland Security official called “an upcoming s— storm.” The southern border could see up to 15,000 crossings a day once Title 42 lapses, which amounts to 5.1 million annually. By comparison, last March saw an average of roughly 5,200 daily illegal border crossings.

Given the expected surge, Republicans have called on the president to keep Title 42 in place, while activists and far-left Democrats applaud its termination. But other Democrats are less enthusiastic, including Rep. Veronica Escobar (D., Texas) who said earlier this month that she is “very concerned for our border communities.”

Mayorkas acknowledged that he anticipates an increase in illegal border crossings in his Thursday press conference but also claimed that new remote processing centers will give asylum seekers greater ability to enter the United States from their home countries. Those new processing centers, Mayorkas said, should disincentivize individuals from attempting to sneak through the southern border.

“You almost feel bad for the secretary. After two years on the job he knows full well the chaos we’re about to face—especially the burden that will fall on frontline officers,” the senior DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Free Beacon. “But the administration pours all efforts into processing under the stated belief it will decrease strain on the border. It didn’t help under COVID rules and Mayorkas’s comments show the White House knows it won’t work when Title 42 ends.”

Mayorkas’s memo echoed much of what he said at the press conference, including an attempt to blame the record-number of border crossings that have occurred under his watch on the nation’s “broken immigration system.” Mayorkas also touted policies that would bar illegal aliens from entering the country for five years and fine them for each repeat illegal entry.

But the senior DHS official noted that both those policies have been on the books for years, and that repeat entry is already a felony.

“The challenges of migration are immense and have been so for decades. We are dealing with a broken immigration system that we need Congress to reform,” Mayorkas wrote. “Through it all, one thing is constant: the heroism, tireless dedication, and incredible talent of our personnel.”

Although morale has been low at DHS since the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term due to the border crisis, the end of Title 42 has left many, according to the senior DHS official, “feeling screwed.” The United Nations estimates that 660,000 migrants are currently in Mexico, most of whom want to eventually enter the United States.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform blasted the White House after Mayorkas’s press conference, alleging his “plan … amounts to the same failed policies that resulted in record levels of illegal immigration, only on steroids.”

“The DHS plan amounts to a massive and illegal scheme designed to accommodate unlimited numbers of migrants in defiance of the department’s statutory obligation to deter and prevent illegal immigration,” FAIR president Dan Stein said. “It is the same failed strategy that has already resulted in more than 7 million illegal entries in just the first 26 months of this administration.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Inside The House GOP Plan to Stop a Second Iran Nuclear Deal

Republican Study Committee package would block the Biden administration from lifting sanctions

Congress is readying a bevy of bills that would effectively kill any hope the Biden administration has of inking a revamped nuclear deal with Iran, according to sources briefed on the matter.

House Republicans on Friday will begin rolling out a series of six bills designed to expand sanctions on Iran and curtail the White House’s ability to waive sanctions in future deals, according to copies of the legislation exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The bills, sponsored by members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, target Iran’s military, government leaders, and financial sector.

The legislative blitz comes as the Biden administration works to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Though the Biden administration publicly claims negotiations with Iran are on standby, lawmakers close to the issue maintain that the White House is still working behind the scenes to secure a new nuclear deal. These talks may have inspired Tehran to step up its military activity and attacks on the United States, the Free Beacon reported this month.

Study Committee chairman Kevin Hern (R., Okla.) said the legislative blitz is a warning to the White House that Republicans have “not forgotten about the Biden administration’s continuing attempts to re-enter the Iran deal.”

Winning approval in the Democrat-controlled Senate could pose a challenge, given Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s hesitance to interfere in the White House’s diplomacy with Iran. But the study committee’s national security task force, led by Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), will “play an integral role” in selling the bills to Democrats and Republicans in both chambers, Hern said. The Republican lobbying campaign will include an “extremely aggressive” push to get the bills included in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the yearly spending bill that is jointly authored with the Senate, according to several Republican aides.

The study committee’s package would prevent the Biden administration from using executive authority to unilaterally lift sanctions on Tehran—just as the Obama administration did when it skirted Congress to ink the original accord. One of the primary vehicles to stop a new deal is a bill spearheaded by Rep. John James (R., Mich.) that would deem any agreement with Iran as a formal treaty that requires congressional approval. With a split Senate, the Biden administration would likely fail to attract the two-thirds necessary for a treaty to be enacted. This bill alone would neuter diplomacy, stopping the White House from making good on any promises to Tehran.

James’s bill would also expand sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s paramilitary fighting force that has killed hundreds of Americans. Though the IRGC was designated as a terror outfit in 2019, its vast network of affiliates still remains in the clear. The bill would broaden sanctions by targeting “individuals and entities that provide significant financial or material support” to the IRGC, according to a copy of the measure. Any financial institution that does business with an IRGC front company would also be subject to sanctions under the bill.

“Despite having bipartisan opposition in Congress and no support from our Israeli and Arab allies and partners, President Biden has not fully shut the door on negotiating a flawed Iran nuclear deal,” James said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “My legislation returns congressional accountability to the Iran nuclear negotiations and forces the administration to work with us to find a resolution to address Iran’s nuclear and malign activity.”

A related measure set to be introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.) would further widen IRGC sanctions to include the thousands of companies and smaller cells run by the terror organization. This IRGC’s vast network, which extends into Latin America and Europe, remains immune to most American sanctions currently on the books.

A third measure, backed by Rep. Bryan Steil (R., Wis.), would block the Biden administration from lifting terrorism sanctions unless it can prove the individual or entity has ceased engaging in these activities. Given Tehran’s vast regional terrorism enterprise, Iran would be unable to clear this threshold.

Congressional sources familiar with the bill said it is a direct response to the Obama administration’s contested decision to unilaterally skirt terrorism sanctions on Iran via a series of executive licenses.

The fourth bill, authored by Rep. Cory Mills (R., Fla.), would prohibit the Biden administration from lifting existing sanctions on Mahan Air, an Iranian fleet that ferries weapons and militant fighters across the region. Iranian officials are pushing for these sanctions to be lifted as part of any new deal with the United States.

Two other bills, from Wilson and Texas Rep. Pat Fallon (R.), would further isolate the IRGC by cutting off its access to international financial institutions.

Fallon’s bill would make it difficult for Iran’s banking sector to work with global financial institutions, while Wilson’s bill sanctions Iranian government leaders and others involved in the country’s vast security state.

“The Iranian regime continues enriching uranium, oppressing the Iranian people, and exporting missiles and terrorism,” Wilson told the Free Beacon. “Now that the Republicans are in the House majority, we will pass legislation to continue to pressure this brutal regime.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Over 10,000 FBI Agents Can Access Data From Secretive Surveillance Program: Inspectors General

More than 10,000 federal employees could have access to data revealed by a secretive government surveillance program that has come under scrutiny because of alleged abuses, lawmakers were told by U.S. inspectors general.

At an April 27 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, lawmakers heard from a panel of three witnesses associated with the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) responsible for oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The legislation gives intelligence agencies broad powers to conduct surveillance on foreigners suspected of spying for a foreign power or belonging to a terrorist group.

However, bipartisan concerns have been raised because the program also has the ability to collect information about U.S. citizens.

During the hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) queried panelists about how many FBI agents could have access to FISA-acquired data.

Epoch Times Photo
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) delivers remarks at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A court-ordered report released in May 2022 revealed that the FBI had made more than 3.3 million queries of Americans under FISA authority. This, in turn, prompted a crisis of confidence in the FBI’s respect for civil liberties among members of both parties.

In his questioning, Gaetz referenced that report.

Addressing each of the three panelists, Gaetz asked, “If I represent to you that we believe there may be north of 10,000 people in the federal government who can perform [FISA] queries, would anyone here have a basis to disagree with that?”

All three answered in the negative.

In a Twitter post featuring a clip of the exchange, House Judiciary Republicans said, “Upwards of 10,000 FBI personnel may have access to section 702-acquired FISA data.

“10,000! Why’s that number so big?”

Rep. Andy Biggs
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) speaks at a House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee hearing, “The Fentanyl Crisis in America: Inaction Is No Longer an Option,” in Washington on March 1, 2023, in a still from video footage. (House Judiciary Committee YouTube/Screenshot via NTD)

Alleged Abuses

The program in question, FISA section 702, has been scrutinized for its alleged abuses. Aside from the incidents uncovered in 2021, the intelligence community (IC) has repeatedly failed audits of its use of FISA.

In 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz investigated a random sampling of 29 FISA cases by the FBI. None of the 29 cases chosen were found to be legitimate.

The FISA is overseen by the FISA court, a secretive body that grants spying authority to U.S. intelligence agents.

To make a FISA query of U.S. citizens, the FBI and other law enforcement agents are legally required to receive the approval of the closed-door FISA court.

In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was unsupported, uncorroborated, or inconsistent information.” The FBI couldn’t even produce the relevant investigative files in the other four.

“In those 29 applications that were reviewed, the inspector general found over 400 instances of noncompliance with the Woods Procedures,” Biggs said, referencing FBI procedures requiring that FISA requests be “scrupulously accurate.”

Since 2021, the FBI has reduced illegal queries by about 90 percent, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Specifically, the authority for these searches was granted by FISA section 702, an amendment added to the bill’s original text in 2008. That section gave the U.S. intelligence community the power to gather information on foreign agents “reasonably believed to be operating outside the United States.”

But section 702 also gives the IC the ability to make “incidental queries,” queries of U.S. citizens who have communicated with a suspected foreign agent—an authority that lawmakers say is anti-Fourth Amendment.

“Unfortunately for the intelligence community, we have a Fourth Amendment,” Biggs said in his opening remarks.

The House Oversight Committee has a six-member working group trying to hammer out a reformed section 702, which will expire on Dec. 31, 2023, without congressional reauthorization. But during the hearing, Biggs indicated his belief that section 702 may “already [be] beyond repair.”

“FISA section 702 explicitly states that it may only be used to target non-U.S. persons located abroad for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information,” he said. “But it’s clear that the government has used communications acquired through this program to conduct backdoor searches of Americans’ communications.”

During the hearing, the panel heard testimony from Horowitz, who’s part of a watchdog group designed to ensure IC compliance with Americans’ civil liberty protections.

Although safeguards are in place to ensure that Americans’ civil liberties are being respected, Horowitz and other panelists made clear that the IC has repeatedly failed to comply with these safeguards.

Bipartisan Concerns

Republicans have led the charge in substantially revising or even abolishing the FISA.

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has shown to be a powerful tool for United States intelligence,” Biggs said. “[But] the United States intelligence community has shown they cannot be fully trusted to retain this power.

“In fact, I cannot think of a single example of a powerful intelligence tool that was not abused in the United States in this way.”

The issue crosses party lines, with many Democrats joining Republicans in calling for reforms. However, Democrats have been less open to full-scale abolition.

“Today, this committee finally gets back to the serious work of keeping Americans safe—safe from those who seek to do us harm and safe from those who might trample on our civil liberties in a quest to keep our country secure, no matter the cost,” ranking Democrat member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said.

Nadler, who says he has never voted to reauthorize section 702, nonetheless called it “important to national security, especially in today’s threat environment.”

In 2020, prior to revelations about the FBI’s massive illegal spying operations against U.S. citizens, Wray told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that he “wouldn’t lose any sleep” over most FISA queries and warned against “grinding FISA to a halt” with “more scrupulous review.”

The constitutionality of the FISA program has been in dispute for about a decade.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed in 2013 that the U.S. intelligence community, despite the claims of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to the contrary, was carrying out the largest intelligence-gathering operation in human history—all without the knowledge of Americans or their elected representatives.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

IN-DEPTH: US Officials Reject Compensation for People Diagnosed With COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries

U.S. authorities rejected multiple people who sought compensation for COVID-19 vaccine injuries, despite diagnoses from doctors, documents show.

Letters from U.S. officials reviewed by The Epoch Times show officials contradicting doctors who treated patients as they turned down requests for payment.

Cody Flint, an agricultural pilot, was diagnosed by four doctors with a severe adverse reaction to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Shortly after being vaccinated, Flint experienced intense head pressure, which led to problems such as perilymphatic fistula, the doctors said.

Flint sent a slew of medical files, including evidence of the diagnoses, to the U.S. Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which compensates people who prove they were injured by a COVID-19 shot.

But administrators for the program rejected Flint’s application in a denial letter, saying they “did not find the requisite evidence that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination caused” the conditions from which he suffers.

Flint, in his 30s, felt his first symptoms within an hour of vaccination. An onslaught of severe symptoms followed while he was flying two days later.

“One second I went from having burning in the back of my neck and tunnel vision to the very next second I was slumped over in my airplane. The best way I know to describe it, it was like a bomb went off inside my head,” Flint said.

CICP administrators told him that “compelling, reliable and valid medical and scientific evidence does not support a causal association between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, perilymphatic fistulas, increased intracranial pressure, Eustachian tube dysfunction, hearing loss, or loss of eyesight.”

They also tried to pin the problems on barotrauma. Colloquially known as airplane ear, barotrauma happens when air pressure suddenly changes, and is common as planes climb higher in the sky. Barotrauma causes the fistulas and symptoms of the fistulas “began while flying,” administrators wrote.

Flint and his doctors asserted in appeal letters that the barotrauma theory doesn’t hold up because Flint flies low as he dusts crops. Flint’s condition is “not from barotrauma,” Flint’s doctors told the CICP. “As an agricultural pilot, he does not fly more than a couple of hundred feet off the ground which is not of a magnitude to where he is at risk for barotrauma.”

“Elevated intracranial pressure has been recognized as a complication of COVID vaccination, and given the sequence of events, more probable than not, it is the cause of Mr. Flint’s elevated intracranial pressure, which had been documented on lumbar puncture,” they added. “The elevated intracranial pressure led to his perilymphatic fistula. Elevated intracranial pressure is a cause for perilymphatic fistula and more probable.”

The CICP determination was reviewed by a panel that sided with administrators. The panel found that the COVID-19 vaccine “did not cause Mr. Flint to develop bilateral perlympathic fistulas and related symptoms,” Suma Nair, an administrator, told Flint in a final denial letter. “There is no compelling causal connection between the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and the symptomology Mr. Flint experienced; the more likely cause of Mr. Flint’s symptoms is trauma from flying a plane, which would have developed over time.”

Administrators cited no studies or other evidence in their letters.

Flint said that the determination was wrong, pointing to a number of papers detailing post-vaccination intracranial and other neurological issues. He also noted a study that said intracranial pressure can cause perilymphatic fistulas.

Nair also said the panel concluded: “given the timeline of symptoms, it was not plausible for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to have caused the otologic and vestibular issues experienced by Mr. Flint.”

“It’s just all comical to me,” Flint told The Epoch Times. “I get the shot, I’m injured within 48 hours, and they say that that makes it implausible.”

Epoch Times Photo
Agricultural pilot Cody Flint in a file image. (Courtesy of Cody Flint)

Difficulty Getting Compensation

The case highlights how people who experienced problems after vaccination have struggled to get money from the federal government, even when doctors diagnose vaccine injuries.

Flint is one of 76 people who were rejected as of April 1 because administrators determined they did not “show that a covered serious physical injury was sustained as the direct result of the administration” of a COVID-19 vaccine.

“The CICP may only make such determinations based on compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence,” the program says.

More than 8,100 applications, as of April 1, have been submitted to the CICP for compensation for a COVID-19 vaccine-induced injury or death. Three hundred and sixty-two in total have been turned down. Just 23 have been accepted. All but two are for a type of heart inflammation called myocarditis or a related condition known as pericarditis, both of which U.S. authorities say are caused by COVID-19 vaccination.

Documents on the denials and acceptances have been largely withheld from the public. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, successful in unearthing information about COVID-19 vaccine safety, have yielded few documents. Administrators located 652 records in response to one request seeking all claims and associated documents. They only released 52 heavily redacted documents, citing exceptions to FOIA. A similar request returned a single page that wasn’t already public.

COVID-19 vaccine injuries fall under the CICP, a little-used program before the pandemic that was created by Congress in a 2005 bill, because of a Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act declaration entered during the Trump administration that has not yet been rescinded.

Most administered vaccines in the United States fall under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, enabling people with alleged or actual injuries to take their cases to federal judges in a no-fault system that paid out $4.8 billion between 1988 and 2022.

Decisions on CICP petitions, in contrast, are decided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)—the same agency that operates the program.

That “potentially creates a conflict of interest,” researchers wrote in a 2022 paper, advising Congress to initiate major reforms by either relocating the program or allowing judicial review of determinations.

Some members, including Sens. Cindy-Hyde Smith (R-Miss.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have expressed interest in reform but no bills have gained traction yet in the divided Congress.

People who apply to the CICP are only eligible for money for unreimbursed medical expenses and lost pay. Survivors of people who die can get death benefits. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program covers past and future healthcare costs, pain and suffering, lost earnings, and legal fees.

The CICP has paid just $6 million to date, including under $5,000 total to the only three people who were injured by COVID-19 vaccines and have been compensated.

HHS and HRSA did not respond to requests for comment.

Epoch Times Photo
Dr. Joel Wallskog speaks in a file image. (Courtesy of Dr. Joel Wallskog)

‘All These People Are Going to Get Denied’

Dr. Joel Wallskog was one of the first people to receive Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. He got a shot on Dec. 30, 2020. Within days, he experienced symptoms including a loss of balance, headaches, and leg weakness.

“I was completely healthy, very active,” Wallskog, 53, told The Epoch Times. “Now I take 20 medicines.”

Wallskog was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, or spinal cord inflammation. At least two doctors have concluded the injury was caused by the vaccine, records show.

Wallskog transmitted medical records and supplementary documents, such as a study from National Institutes of Health researchers that discussed reports of neuropathic symptoms following COVID-19 vaccination. The same researchers diagnosed multiple people with vaccine injuries.

CICP administrators rejected Wallskog’s petition.

“The current medical and scientific evidence does not show a causal link between the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and transverse myelitis, other neuro-inflammatory disorders, myelopathy, or thrombotic disorders, including spinal cord infarction,” Dr. George Reed Grimes, director of the HRSA’s Division of Injury Compensation Programs, wrote in the denial letter.

“Furthermore, there is no evidence that your symptoms of lower extremity numbness and tingling with neck flexion, and chronic thoracic pain with weakness and numbness in your legs, is caused by the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine,” he added.

Administrators did not note the doctors’ diagnoses or cite any studies.

One doctor had written in office notes that Wallskog suffered a “significant reaction from Moderna COVID vaccination.”

Wallskog disputed the determination, writing in an appeal that “an exhaustive work-up revealed no other cause of my symptoms besides my Moderna shot.”

An appeal, or request for reconsideration, sends the determination to “a qualified panel, independent of the program,” according to federal law. The panel reviews the determination and sends its recommendation back to the program, which makes the final determination.

Twenty-eight studies have documented transverse myelitis following COVID-19 vaccination, a systematic review published in October 2022 found. Those include case reports of transverse myelitis after a Moderna shot. Researchers said the exact mechanisms for vaccine-induced transverse myelitis remain unclear but posited genetic factors play a role.

Wallskog said that as of now, only people who suffer a narrow set of injuries can expect to be compensated by the U.S. government.

“Many people have this false sense that the CICP is going to be their answer, and it’s not,” he said. “All these people are going to get denied unless they have myocarditis, anaphylaxis, or certain blood clotting conditions.”

Epoch Times Photo
COVID-19 vaccines at George Washington University Hospital in Washington in a Dec. 14, 2020, file photograph. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Outside Compensation

Vaccine manufacturers are not liable for injuries due to laws like the PREP Act. That leaves people with few options when they’re injured.

Wallskog helped found a group called React19, which describes itself as a “science-based non-profit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for those suffering from long-term COVID-19 vaccine adverse events.”

Drawing from a pool of donated money, the group has so far paid $556,652 to the vaccine injured, with 81 people receiving compensation.

Applicants must provide a medical note or consultation documenting symptoms and signs they’re related to vaccination.

Group officials, including Wallskog, review each application and make a determination during weekly board meetings. They give out grants of up to $10,000.

The donations come from what the group describes as a care fund.

“Unfortunately, the care fund is on hold right now because we’re low on money,” Wallskog said. “I always say we wish we had more money but at the same point we’re doing with React what our healthcare organizations and our federal agencies should be doing.”

The program could help people like Angie Bluford, who did not apply to the CICP because of the one-year deadline. Bluford wasn’t diagnosed with a vaccine injury until 18 months after getting a Moderna COVID-19 vaccination.

React19 is also advocating for reform of the CICP or moving injury claims from the CICP to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, widely considered the superior option. That would require adding the COVID-19 vaccines to the routine immunization schedule, which has already been done; adding vaccines to the vaccine injury table, and congressional approval of an excise tax. Coverage under the national program should be retroactive, React19 says.

Epoch Times Photo
Steve Wenger in a file image. (Courtesy of Steve Wenger)

Still Waiting

It’s taken more than a year for some injured people to get a determination.

There were still 7,771 applications pending as of April 1.

One was sent in by Steve Wenger, a project manager whose COVID-19 vaccination caused Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder that damages the immune system.

Wenger, who got vaccinated to avoid losing his job, submitted his application in March 2022. He didn’t receive confirmation until July 2022. He’s still waiting for the outcome.

“The CICP cannot estimate when the medical review will begin or how long it may take to complete,” administrators told him in a letter.

“It’s a waiting game,” Wenger told The Epoch Times. “To be honest, I’m waiting on my rejection letter, because that’s what I’m expecting.”

Wenger’s pessimism stems from the high rejection rate and the fact no claims for Guillain-Barre syndrome have been approved despite U.S. authorities acknowledging the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine causes the disorder.

Wenger has been dealing with large medical bills, including thousands of dollars for biweekly treatments with intravenous immunoglobulin, one of the few drugs that have helped those with lingering injuries from the vaccines. Even if CICP approves Wenger’s petition, the money likely wouldn’t last long.

“I’ve read stories that medical debt has just absolutely destroyed people, financially buried them,” Wenger said. “I never envisioned myself being one of those people. But you know, here I am.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

CIA Figure Reveals Source Behind Fake Hunter Biden Narrative

A former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency reveals current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was the driving force behind a since-debunked October 2020 letter signed by 51 national security figures claiming damaging revelations about the Biden family were concocted and planted by the Russian government.

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that Blinken, then senior advisor to Democrat nominee Joe Biden‘s campaign, was behind the “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” that he and 50 other high-level national security figures signed, which falsely claimed an abandoned laptop computer belonging to Biden’s adult son Hunter, containing evidence of Hunter’s drug use, engagement with prostitutes and possible illegal foreign business deals by the Biden family, was the product of “Russian disinformation.”

The laptop and its contents revealed in a New York Post story in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, threatened to derail Biden’s bid. Media figures blasted the Post, claiming the story was planted by the Russian government. That claim has since been debunked and the contents of the laptop proven accurate.

In response, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, now demand Blinken turn over documents and communications related to the Committee’s investigation of the matter.

The Committee reports:

In his transcribed interview, Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken served as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign and reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, although your outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.

That same day, October 17, Blinken also emailed Morell an article published in USA Today alleging that the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a “disinformation campaign.”  The very bottom of the email he sent to Morell included the signature block of Andrew Bates, then-director of rapid response for the Biden campaign.

Morell testified that his communication with Blinken was one of a few communications he had with the Biden campaign, explaining that he also received a call from Steve Ricchetti, Chairman of the Biden campaign, following the October 22 debate to thank him for writing the statement. Morell also explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement. Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.

Based on Morell’s testimony, it is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election. Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association—which we do not dispute—their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Why Is A Chinese Aircraft Company Approved For Military Contracts By The Biden Administration?

Two U.S. senators are blowing the whistle and demanding answers after revealing a communist Chinese aircraft company is on the Biden administration‘s list of companies permitted to engage in sensitive military research, development and weapons production with the United States.

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent a letter to Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez, demanding to know why the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), which had been blacklisted as a national security threat by the Trump administration, is now permitted to engage in U.S. military research and production.

The senators demand COMAC be placed on the Military End Users (MEU) list of companies prohibited from receiving assistance from the United States.

“Spun out of China‘s military, COMAC was initially formed by AVIC as a separate SOE in 2008. Today, AVIC still holds a minority stake (12.35 percent) in the company. Despite this minority ownership, AVIC maintains considerable influence over COMAC, which actively employs AVIC leadership, employees, technology, and facilities,” the senators write.

“COMAC is also a subsidiary of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Multiple defense SOEs operate under SASAC, including AVIC, Aero Engine Corporation of China, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and China National Nuclear Corporation among others. COMAC also works closely with Western aerospace companies, including firms that produce jet engines and many other components used in commercial and military aircraft. Given the CCP’s commitment to acquire dual-use aerospace technologies through trade as well as forced joint venture and partnerships, these firms, and U.S. national security by extension, are at risk,” the senators add.

The senators warn that Beijing’s “military civil fusion” strategy requires all Chinese companies to use their resources to fuel the regime’s military machine, meaning COMAC’s approval poses a potential national security threat.

“Military Civil Fusion (MCF) enables the CCP to acquire industry expertise through both licit and illicit means. It enables ‘civilian’ entities to engage in sensitive military research, development and weapons production,” Rubio and Scott write.

“This means that Western companies engaging in joint research and trade may be exploited to create or support systems that benefit the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). COMAC’s status as a fully-owned state enterprise, as well as its close relationships with the CCP and other aerospace companies, create a vulnerability that undermines both the national and economic security of the United States,” they write.

It appears COMAC’s approval is a change from Trump administration policy, and the company should have raised red flags with the Biden administration.

“COMAC’s key parent entities are already included on Commerce’s MEU list, and the Trump Administration had included COMAC itself under its “Communist Chinese Military Companies” investment blacklist. Aviation experts have noted that COMAC’s ties to the military are “common knowledge,” which makes the department’s reluctance to proceed with an MEU list addition all the more perplexing,” the senators write.

“Given these realities, and the CCP’s continued application of state-owned enterprises to systematically access dual-use aerospace technologies, we ask the Bureau of Industry and Security to add COMAC to the Military End User List,” Rubio and Scott conclude.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Fox News To Hand Over Documents As Smartmatic Case Inches Forward

Fox News will share additional documents from the recent case it settled with Dominion Voting Systems to Smartmatic, a second voting systems company that is also suing the network for defamation.

“We will produce the materials as quickly as we are able to,” Winn Allen, a Fox lawyer said during a hearing in New York, CNN reported.

According to The Hill, Smartmatic is suing Fox News for over $2 billion, alleging the network intentionally defamed the company by allowing former President Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to make false claims on the network about the 2020 election.

A trial in the Smartmatic case is likely months away, if not years, however, Fox lost its first bid to toss the company’s suit allowing it to move onto discovery. 

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” a spokesperson for the network said in its most recent statement about the case.

“As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on its face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

Fox’s willingness to hand over the additional materials comes a week after the network agreed to pay nearly $800 million to Dominion Voting Systems. (RELATED: Fox News Reaches Last-Minute Settlement With Dominion Voting Systems)

The documents are reportedly related to Fox News Corp. (FNC) chairman Rupert Murdoch.

The settlement came just hours before opening arguments in the defamation trial were slated to begin in a Delaware courtroom.

In a statement, Fox News Media said the network was “pleased” to reach a settlement and that it acknowledged “the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Pro-School Choice Arguments Pop Up In Unconventional Places

Who is it that benefits most from school choice? Students in the worst school systems in the country. Who, given the horror stories we hear about some of the education systems in this country are those who suffer the worst education systems in the country? The inner-city children sentenced to mal-education in those appalling urban school systems – also obviously. And the way the demographics of the U.S. work out that means that it’s largely Black children who are given that appalling education by the worst school systems in the country.

 So the people who will benefit most from school choice are those Black, poor inner-city children who suffer the most from the worst parts of the current systems. Thomas Sowell has written entire books on how this is so.

NowThis News (running an AP report) highlights the effect of this. Black parents are among those most interested in school choice:

The situation has caused more Black families to leave public schools, opting for homeschooling or private schools that embrace their identity and culture. Public school enrollment of Black students between pre-K and 12th grade has declined each year measured in federal data since 2007.

Now, we’d not say we regard that falling enrollment, entirely on its own, as proof given that the Black child population has been falling over the same time period. But it does look as if the fall in public school enrolment is higher than the population decline.

It’s also possible to query the reason for these choices – toward private schools. AP (and NowThis) are arguing that it’s unwillingness to teach African-American history, to insist on the innate racism of the country and so on that is leading to this choice. Hey, maybe that’s even true although our other investigations find little evidence of that.

The point of school choice though is that parents get to decide upon the schooling they think is best for their children. Parents get to decide on the schooling best for their own children. Period. That’s what school choice means.

So, here we have evidence that school choice is being taken up, desired, and applied for where available, by Black parents. Good. That’s the point of it all. Parents decide. What parents decide isn’t for us to insist upon – for that again is the point of school choice – parents get to decide, not us, the school board or the teachers’ unions.

We’ve seen this before in Texas, where some of the strongest support for school choice is among Black parents. On exactly the same grounds as we opened this piece with – Black children get some of the worst education in this country, why wouldn’t black parents want choice to escape those appalling systems?

We can even be more than a little arch about this. To be progressive is, according to the usual definitions, to be concerned with those worst off in our current society. That makes school choice the progressive choice, doesn’t it? All we’ve got to do now is convince progressives of that truth.

This article originally appeared in Accuracy in Media. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

IN-DEPTH: Battle for the Heartland–How US Farmland is Quietly Falling Into Chinese Hands

Chinese ownership of US agricultural lands saw 5000% increase in one decade

The valleys give way to the prairies and the prairies give way to the badlands where fields of golden cinquefoils surrender to the might of towering plateaus of striated bedrock.

The rugged openness of South Dakota presents the quintessential image of the American countryside, a pure distillation of the natural environment that captured the pioneers’ hope for a better future all those years ago.

But how long this countryside remains American is now an open question in these parts.

That’s because Chinese-owned entities, some linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have been purchasing land here in South Dakota and elsewhere in the country at a breathtaking pace for more than a decade.

Some of the land they gobble up is for farming, other acreage is allotted for energy use, and still more parcels are forebodingly adjacent to sensitive U.S. military sites.

Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates (pdf) that Chinese holdings of U.S. agricultural lands reached more than 352,000 acres in 2020, up more than 5,300 percent from the less than 14,000 acres owned in 2010.

To stem the growing incursion, state governments from across the nation are working desperately to craft legislation that would end the trend once and for all.

Too often however, those efforts are met with stolid resistance from entrenched business interests and, as was the case in South Dakota, are ultimately abandoned to placate private interests.

Epoch Times Photo
Cattle graze near Ojai, California, on June 21, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A Permanent Spy Balloon

Adam Savit heads the China Policy division of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank tasked with the mission of advancing policies that put American citizens’ rights and well-being before other considerations.

He believes that the continued acceptance of CCP-backed acquisitions of U.S. land are an affront to American laws and norms, as well as a violation of equitable international practice.

To allow the regime to continue investing in U.S. land and resources, while U.S. companies are barred from doing the same in China, he says, runs counter to the value of “reciprocity” that so much international trust is necessarily built on.

“If we don’t have access to a resource, opportunity, or institution in the CCP, they should not have access to that in our country,” Savit tells The Epoch Times.

To that end, Savit authored the institute’s latest issue brief (pdf), which tracks state responses to the growing threat posed by CCP land grabs in the United States.

Numerous states are now seeking to bar the CCP or other, similarly aggressive entities, from purchasing U.S. land.

Much of this effort is no doubt a reaction to the alleged national security threat posed by allowing CCP-linked companies to purchase land in close proximity to U.S. military bases, as previously occurred in North Dakota, as well as efforts to buy huge swaths of land and energy infrastructure, as previously happened in Texas.

“This land [near military bases] is a permanent version of that [spy balloon],” Savit says of the CCP’s efforts. “They can station whatever they wish wherever they wish.”

To that end, Savit underscored the necessity of state legislation to help curb the increasing Chinese investments in an area otherwise devoid of meaningful legal protections.

“In most states, there’s no legal barrier to [these purchases] right now and no process to vet or evaluate the side effects of that,” Savit says.

Seeing the struggles of its neighbor to the north, for example, South Dakota sought to insulate itself against similar incursions, with lawmakers crafting a law that would have granted the governor the ability to oversee foreign investments into state land.

Despite initial support from state lawmakers, however, the bill was roundly defeated after all the state’s major agricultural associations and unions lobbied against it for fear of giving too much power to the state’s executive branch as well as concern that the effort could ignite racial animosity toward Chinese Americans and immigrants.

Epoch Times Photo
Airmen assigned to the 319th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron from Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota, perform a maintenance check on a drone on June 6, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Ashley Richards)

States Seek to Repel CCP Influence

South Dakota is not alone. The AFPI report highlights legal struggles underway in 23 states from Arizona to Virginia, totaling 53 separate bills.

In more than a dozen other states, Savit says, some laws already exist that could feasibly be used to prevent the Chinese acquisition of U.S. lands but are never enforced.

The legislation springing up across the country is as varied as the states giving rise to it, and includes efforts to ban investments from CCP-linked entities in Iowa, a law to ban land purchases from revanchist nations like North Korea and Iran in Georgia, as well as a blanket ban on all foreign land buys in Texas, which was recently diluted to apply only to state-linked entities.

Savit believes “there’s no foolproof way” to prevent the CCP regime from getting its hands on American lands but commends the varied efforts of the states to address the issue in their own ways.

“There is no perfect way because each state has its different concerns,” Savit says. “Each state has its different existing laws. Each state has different agricultural sectors. These are all experiments.”

“There is no one-size-fits-all answer. It’s a dynamic challenge.”

US Failing to Track Foreign Investments

The problem of determining who is a legitimate investor and who is a CCP proxy is a particularly daunting task for state governments, however. Particularly at a time when record numbers of Chinese are fleeing the country amid increasingly harsh repression efforts by the CCP.

For Savit and the AFPI, the issue is simple: Those with the resources to make the purchases likely have some connection to the CCP’s regime.

“An investor from China is going to have some sort of connection,” Savit says.

“Our assumption … is that anyone with that capital or able to invest in that way has some sort of direct or indirect connection to the CCP or they’re being leveraged in some way.”

There’s one critical issue with that assumption, however. Namely, that the United States has little to no understanding of who is actually buying the land.

Enter Lars Schonander, a policy technologist at the Lincoln Network think tank.

Epoch Times Photo
A sign opposing a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D., stands near 370 acres recently annexed by the city for the project. Many residents don’t want the project in the city because the owner has reputed ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its company chairman. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

Schonander has spent considerable time in recent years tracking what he calls “malign foreign investment” in the United States. That is, investments made by hostile nations in the U.S. with the ultimate goal of exploiting or otherwise undermining the nation’s interests.

The relevant data needed to track such investments, he tells The Epoch Times, is “private but not classified” and can be stunningly frustrating to get a hold of. Simply put, the federal government is not collecting in-depth data about foreign land purchases in the country.

“This plays out strangely specifically when one wants to look at detailed data [of foreign investments],” Schonander says.

“What I’ve discovered is the annual reports have high-level data on how much investors from a given country invest in a year but, you can only know what specific foreign corporations and entities are investing in by going to the private database, which makes it next to impossible if there is a specific project you’re concerned about.”

At present, the only federal law that tracks such investments is the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, which requires foreign entities to report transactions of farmland to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Schonander cautions, however, that the USDA is authorized only to acquire data on land purchases up to three orders of ownership. This means that a series of U.S. shell corporations could be ultimately owned by a foreign entity and the agency would never know.

This issue is magnified, he says, by the huge lag times between an investment being made and it being recorded.

“There’s quite a bit of a lag between people maybe knowing of a certain investment and it actually being in the database,” Schonander says.

“The data is only updated at the end of a year. So, right now, we only have as of the end of last year, the 2021 data. At the end of this year, we’ll have the 2022 data.”

Because of this, Schonander notes, even members of Congress will be working with data that is, at best, a year old.

This is not to say that the government has always been aloof to the need for more granular data on foreign investments.

Schonander notes, for example, that the U.S. Energy Information Administration used to require details each year about foreign investments into U.S. energy infrastructure, but that the single form used to collect that information had been discontinued following the federal government’s  budget sequestration in 2011.

“It was quite valuable information because in the more recent reports they had acquisitions and investor data which, nowadays, you’d probably have to either manually collect yourself or pay a data broker for,” Schonander says. “Now we have no idea publicly.”

With that in mind, Schonander says hat collecting more useful data could be as simple as restarting the program to measure such investments using the tools previously set up for the same purpose.

“They have the form and they still have the personnel to set it up,” he says. “They just haven’t sent out the forms in over 10 years.”

A spokesperson for the Energy Information Administration told The Epoch Times that the agency has no plans to reinstate the program. The Epoch Times has also reached out to the USDA for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

IMPACT: Congress TAKES ACTION as a Result of Veritas Investigations

HHS whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, who told us about government-sponsored child trafficking at the border, TESTIFIED IN CONGRESS about what she has witnessed.

You can watch what Tara Rodas said by CLICKING HERE.

But this wasn’t the only Congressional reaction to occur this week.

Senator Ted Cruz [R-Texas] and Congressman Chip Roy [R-Texas] sent a joint letter to Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas, after Project Veritas’ #TooYoung investigation showed that the medical facility performs gender transitions on minors as young as nine years old.

Both Senator Cruz and Rep. Roy DEMANDED that Dell Children’s Medical Center provide some answers as to what exactly they are doing to children.

You can read the full letter here: Cruz Roy 1.jpg Cruz Roy 2.jpg Cruz Roy 3.jpg
It’s beyond clear at this point: the Congress of these United States is paying close attention to Veritas’ journalism.

They are relying on our investigations to conduct their own inquiries into corruption – be it at the border or at children’s hospitals.

Project Veritas is nowhere near done bringing truth to light and exposing bad actors.

Stay Tuned,

Project Veritas Team

It’s Time To Burn The Ships Of Traditional Media

In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived in the New World with a mission to conquer the Aztec Empire. He arrived with a small army of 600 men, but he faced a significant challenge. His men were afraid and they were not sure that they could succeed in their mission. To inspire his men Cortés did something radical – he burned his ships. By doing so he eliminated any possibility of retreat and forced his men to fight for victory or death. This act of burning the ships became a symbol of determination and commitment.

Fast forward to today and we face a similar challenge. We are in a battle for the truth and we are facing a media landscape dominated by a small group of powerful corporations. Traditional media is owned by an oligopoly regime that runs the United States. They control what we see, what we hear, and even what we think. They have their own agenda and it is not at all in our best interest.

Today the news broke that Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent voices on Fox News, is leaving the network. Regardless of the reasons, his departure from Fox News is significant, and it could be seen as a death knell for traditional media.

Traditional media, including cable news networks like Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, has long been the dominant source of news and information for many Americans. These networks have enormous influence, and they shape the way people think about current events and politics. 

Over the past decade there has been a dramatic shift away from traditional media and toward alternative sources of information.

One of the reasons for this shift is the rise of the internet and social media. These platforms have given people access to a vast array of information and have allowed them to connect with others who share their interests and beliefs. This has created a new media landscape, one that is more decentralized and less reliant on traditional media outlets. Those in power quickly realized this after the 2016 election which is why they have invested billions of dollars and countless human resource hours into developing censorship and “fact checking” systems on these platforms. 

That’s why we created Gab.com in 2016. We saw this happening and we knew we had to protect free speech online for all people at all costs. We paid the price heavily for it precisely because Gab is the one place that the people in power do not control. 

Another reason for the shift away from traditional media is a growing sense of distrust. Many Americans feel that the mainstream media is biased and that they cannot be trusted to provide unbiased information. This distrust has only grown in recent years, as traditional media outlets have become increasingly politicized and polarized.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx#:~:text=Just%207%25%20of%20Americans%20have,in%20newspapers%2C%20TV%20and%20radio.

The departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News is significant because he was one of the network’s most popular and influential hosts. He had a large following, and his show was consistently one of the highest-rated programs on cable news. His departure is a sign that even the most established and influential media outlets are not immune to the changing media landscape.

While traditional media is not dead yet, the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News is a clear signal that it is on the decline. The rise of alternative media sources and the growing sense of distrust in traditional media outlets have created a new media landscape that is more diverse and decentralized. This new media landscape is not without its challenges, as Gab knows all too well—but it offers opportunities for new voices and perspectives to be heard.

Burning the ships of traditional media means that we must abandon the old ways of consuming news and information.We must stop watching the same news channels, reading the same newspapers, and listening to the same radio stations. We must break away from the status quo and embrace a new way of thinking.

We must also turn off traditional media for good. We must stop supporting the oligopoly regime that controls our media landscape. We must stop giving them our attention, our money, and our trust. We must turn to new media platforms like Gab and others as well as independent journalism, and we must support them with our time, our money, and our trust.

Turning off traditional media for good does not mean that we should ignore the news altogether. It means that we should seek out alternative sources of information and take an active role in seeking the truth. We should read independent blogs, watch independent news channels, use independent platforms, and listen to independent podcasts. We should engage in discussions, share our views, and challenge our own biases.

Burning the ships of traditional media and turning it off for good is not an easy task. It requires courage, determination, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. However, it is necessary if we want to create a media landscape that serves the interests of the people, not the oligopoly regime. We must embrace new media and independent journalism, and most importantly we must take an active role in seeking the truth.

By doing so, we can create a better future for ourselves and for generations to come.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of kings

Published in Bold Christian Writing

SOURCE: Gab

The CDC’s ‘Public Health’ Ruse

The Centers for Disease Control are fighting for the power to make you do almost anything under the guise of “public health.” They must not succeed.

n January 2021. the U.S. Centers for Disease Control imposed a nationwide travel mask mandate for persons using conveyances and in transportation hubs. Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF) filed a challenge to the mandate in a federal district court in Tampa, Florida. 

In April 2022, the district court struck down the mask mandate on several grounds under the Administrative Procedure Act. Among those grounds was the conclusion that the CDC lacked the statutory authority to impose the mandate. 

The CDC appealed that ruling but conspicuously declined to seek a stay of the district court’s order. Thus, the CDC tacitly conceded that the widely hated mask mandate was not, in fact, a matter of life or death. The CDC’s real aim in appealing the ruling is to secure for itself a broad authority to regulate public health under 42 U.S.C. Section 264(a) of the Public Health Service Act.

Section 264(a) authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, to make and enforce regulations to 

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prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, [CDC] may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.

Reading this together with the rest of Section 264 reveals that these measures are intended to support the CDC’s quarantine and isolation authority. In other words, the statute grants the CDC a limited power to prevent infectious disease from entering the country or from crossing state lines, and imposes strict obligations on the government to ascertain that a person subject to this authority is actually infected with disease. 

Nowhere, however, does the law authorize the CDC to intrude into the lives of tens of millions of healthy Americans in response to an endemic pathogen.

The CDC claimed that the word “sanitation” justified its federal travel mask mandate, however this was but a post hoc rationale. Nowhere in the rule did the CDC mention the word “sanitation.” It only did so after the Health Freedom Defense Fund filed its lawsuit challenging the rule.

Statutory interpretation requires that words be known by the company they keep. In the case of Section 264(a), those words are fumigation, disinfection, extermination, etc. The district court concluded that what these words share in common is that they refer to active measures to identify, isolate, and destroy the disease itself. 

By contrast, the CDC argues that “sanitation” means anything related to preventing disease. But this unprecedentedly wide claim of authority offers no limiting principle. Can the CDC dictate how much sugar we can consume, regulate how much we exercise, or add vitamin D to our drinking water systems—all of which would boost our immune systems thereby enhancing protection from illness? Can the CDC mandate the use of prophylactics and other intimate hygiene measures to prevent the spread of AIDS or monkeypox? Could the CDC mandate vaccination against any given pathogen as a condition of boarding a conveyance? 

Under a doctrine of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v.  Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc. (1984), courts are generally required to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous or unclear statute that the agency is charged with enforcing. While the CDC has not invoked Chevron in its appeal of the mask ruling, Chevron nevertheless casts a long shadow over the question of the CDC’s statutory authority.

First, there is nothing unclear or ambiguous about Section 264(a)—it plainly relates to inspecting, isolating and destroying infected or contaminated “animals and articles” in pursuit of preventing the “introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases.” While the statute authorizes other measures, those measures must align with the measures clearly delineated; otherwise, the rest of the words in the statute would be rendered meaningless, because any public health measure one can possibly imagine could be justified by the word, “sanitation.”

Second, the Chevron doctrine is rooted in a presumption that agencies (which are part of the executive branch) will interpret statutes in accordance with the president’s constitutional obligation to ensure that laws are faithfully executed. Chevron implicitly demands that an agency, and the administration overseeing its decisions, act in good faith. But recent history has shown that agencies cannot be trusted to do so. 

Unfortunately, recent administrations have taken advantage of Chevron deference by reaching into a grab bag of long-extant statutes and claiming sweeping powers that were never previously recognized. This increasing tendency to legislate by executive fiat has given rise to what is known as the “major questions” doctrine—i.e., when an agency claims a previously-unheralded power with major impacts on the economy or personal liberty, a court should closely examine the agency’s reasoning to determine whether the statute in question actually confers the new authority claimed by the agency. 

In the case of the travel mask mandate, there are ample reasons to conclude that the CDC did not interpret its authority in good faith. 

First and foremost is that federal public health officials never previously claimed authority to govern the conduct of millions of individuals, and never previously claimed any authority to directly impose regulations purporting to prevent the person-to-person transmission of an endemic pathogen. Likewise, the CDC failed to articulate what measure in Section 264(a) authorized the mask mandate. As noted above, the CDC only seized onto the word “sanitation” after HFDF challenged its claim of authority in the district court. 

Second, the CDC never cited any evidence that requiring millions of laymen to don a medical device would do anything to prevent the spread of an aerosolized virus. Indeed, the CDC’s own statistics from its COVID data tracker demonstrate that the mask mandate changed nothing about the trajectory of COVID-19 among the states.

While the CDC has conducted randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating lack of efficacy of masks in curbing the spread of influenza, the CDC chose not to conduct RCTs on masks and the spread of COVID-19. Surely, the burden of proof is on the CDC to justify its mask rule in advance of any rule making. 

The recent publication from the prestigious Cochrane organization, reviewing all available RCTs, showed, once and for all, no evidence that masks control the spread of viral respiratory illnesses. And dozens of additional studies demonstrate the failure of masks in controlling these infections. 

The CDC, when it issued the mandate, was also clearly aware of the harms of masking such as rapid increases in blood concentrations of C02 and concurrent decreases in oxygen levels. But the CDC failed to disclose those data and still refuses to adjust its stance. 

Against this backdrop, it is clear that our judiciary needs to vigorously scrutinize broad claims of power over our lives by public health officials, whether under the major questions doctrine (for federal agencies) or the 14th Amendment (for state agencies).

If the CDC is empowered to mask us, then CDC may dictate virtually anything in the name of a “public health” emergency. Surely, Congress never intended to grant such immense authority.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Masked Murder Manifesto

The FBI has ruled out a full release of Audrey Hale’s documents.

What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned.” That was Nashville City Councilmember Courtney Johnston, in reference to Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man.

On March 27, Hale walked into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, also 9 and the daughter of Chad Scruggs, senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church. Police shot Hale dead, but she left behind a “manifesto” that could explain her motive, the primary question in any murder case. From the start, it was kept under wraps and subject to speculation.

According to Johnston, “It’s really not even a manifesto, it’s diaries of a mentally ill person.” The councilwoman, a real-estate agent, did not explain how she was qualified to diagnose Hale, who carefully planned the attack for months. “Her mental illness is not something that should be used for entertainment,” Johnston added, “and I don’t understand these claims that law enforcement is hiding something.” 

A search of Hale’s residence turned up 20 journals, five laptops, two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks, seven cell phones and other materials. Johnston was on record that the FBI had ruled against releasing the manifesto in its entirety. So the FBI is indeed hiding what is most crucial to the case, evidence of motive.

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According to Johnston, “that document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.” So it was the “document” that was dangerous, and trans-friendly activists also sought to suppress its release. For example, Charles Moran, of the Log Cabin Republicans, advocates for equal rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, warned of “serious consequences” if the manifesto were to be made public. 

Johnston’s colleague, Nashville City Councilman Robert Swope, told the New York Post that the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is working “in tandem” with the Metro Nashville Police Department to complete “a very in-depth analysis of certain aspects of the shooter’s life.” 

According to the councilman, “the manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when. There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life.” 

Hale’s manifesto has yet to be revealed, but a key reality is perfectly clear. 

With all its money, resources, and those allegedly brilliant minds, the FBI did nothing to prevent domestic terrorist Audrey Hale from murdering six innocents, including three children. That failure is no surprise. 

In 2009, Major Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, was communicating with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al Awlaki about killing Americans. As the government report Lessons from Fort Hood explains, the FBI knew all about those communications, but someone in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., office judged that Hasan was not a threat and called off the surveillance. 

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Hasan murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers—14 counting the unborn child of Private Francheska Velez. In similar style, the FBI did nothing to prevent the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015 that left 14 people dead, or Orlando in 2016, with 49 dead. 

Consider also the case of Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson, who was carefully tracking Republican members of Congress. 

On June 14, 2017, as the representatives practiced baseball at a field in Virginia, Hodgkinson opened fire on them with an SKS 7.62 rifle and a 9mm pistol, wounding five and nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). The FBI, then under Andrew McCabe, passed off Hodgkinson’s attack as a mere case of “suicide by cop,” a ludicrous claim that drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike. 

Hodgkinson shot first at unarmed civilians. Audrey Hale shot first at innocent children and the teachers and staff who sought to protect them. With Hale’s manifesto in the hands of the FBI, relatives of the victims might consider the FBI’s record of concealing evidence in murder cases. 

In February 2020, DHS whistleblower Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, was found dead in Amador County, California. The local sheriff handed Haney’s computer, thumb drives and other materials to the FBI. 

By 2023, the FBI had failed to make the material public, and announced no suspects. Consider also the case of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, a possible leaker of Hillary Clinton’s emails. 

On July 17, 2016, Rich was gunned down on a Washington street. The FBI showed no interest in the basic questions of motive, means, and opportunity, but quickly grabbed Rich’s laptop computer. In 2020, the bureau admitted that it possessed the computer and with the murder still unsolved the FBI seeks to delay release of the computer’s contents until 2088, a proxy for never. 

In the run-up to the so-called Trans Day of Vengeance, Hale murdered six people, including three children. As their parents might note, open condemnations of this terrorist act are hard to find. 

Joe Biden failed to condemn the shooter, name any victims, or attend any funerals. Biden’s press secretary proclaimed “our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now.” 

The FBI failed to call the Nashville atrocity a hate crime and, at this writing, the bureau is keeping the murderer’s manifesto under wraps. If anyone called it a coverup it would be hard to blame them. 

Meanwhile, Nashville officials say autopsies should be ready in 12 weeks. Those documents will let the murder victims testify from the grave.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Tucker Carlson, Indispensable Border Champion

The former Fox News host used his platform of the most-watched program on cable news to relentlessly alert viewers of the danger from our border policies, and
he didn’t sugarcoat anything.

The news that Tucker Carlson and Fox News have “parted ways” did more than just send shockwaves through the cable news business. It removed Carlson from a number of critical roles in which he has served the nation the last six years: educator, investigator, and a check on corruption and power. Nowhere has this function been more important than in bringing attention to the causes and effects of the crisis at our borders.

Why were Carlson’s broadcasts on the immigration issue arguably more important than the many other topics he discussed? Because the issue concerns America’s past, present, and future like no other. It is an existential problem in the most literal sense. The way we address it or ignore it today will have serious ramifications for America in the years and decades to come.

Plenty of other news shows cover the border crisis. Unlike most others, Carlson didn’t just play video clips and shrug his shoulders at the problem. He asked difficult, probing, and politically incorrect questions, including “Who is responsible for this?” and “Why would we choose policies that make our country bankrupt and out of control like this?”

For the heresy of speaking the truth about what is plain for any objective person to see, Carlson was vilified by those who profit from lies and deception. In 2019, he was predictably attacked as a racist and xenophobe for saying, “We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.”

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To radical antiborders activists, there is gold in such a statement. It can be twisted and manipulated into whatever pushes their agenda forward. If Carlson’s statement is taken in context with the data, however, it is factually correct.

At the start of this year, even when factoring in tax revenue paid by illegal aliens, the gross negative economic impact on the country from illegal immigration is more than $150 billion. We are undeniably weaker financially as a nation as a result of our foolishness in not protecting our borders.  

Tucker’s critics tried to spin his “dirtier” comment by suggesting he accused immigrants of being physically unclean. This is false and disingenuous. One of the consequences of allowing rampant, unchecked illegal crossing of our border is the harmful effect it has on our environment.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

This is inconvenient for the forces that seek revolution in America, because runaway illegal immigration and climate change activism are both high priorities. Despite this, there are now muted admissions within the environmentalist movement that mass migration will inevitably increase migrants’ greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, when Arizona was experiencing over 120,000 border apprehensions, more than 65,000 pounds of border trash was being collected annually. That’s more than 32 tons of garbage—plastic water bottles, abandoned vehicles, human waste, medical products and much more—on the ground. Given the Biden Administration’s near-complete abandonment of border enforcement in the years since, the damage to our desert ecosystems is compounded.

Carlson used his platform of the most-watched program on cable news to relentlessly alert viewers of the danger from our border policies, and he didn’t sugarcoat anything.

“What’s happening at the border is not a crisis . . . this is an intentional act,” he said last year. “This is the [Biden] Administration bringing felons, violent criminals, into our country on purpose. Why would you do something like that? Only to destroy it.”

Some coverage of Tucker’s departure sounded like an obituary, as if his voice had been silenced and he would not be heard from again. That is almost certainly not the case. He will return, most likely in a bigger and better way than before.

That should be celebrated by people who seek truth and transparency, even if they disagree with his opinions. In a world run today by too many who are weak and cowardly, Tucker represents boldness and courage. His persistence on the border issue is indispensable.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Dominion vs. ‘Russian Collusion’ and ‘Disinformation’

Massaging a U.S. election by conspiring to concoct a disinformation campaign must be as actionable as Dominion’s postelection claim of $757 million in damages. That’s exactly what happened in 2016.

Fox News is reeling, both financially and with respect to its talent, after being drawn into a long lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems. 

The network just settled for an astounding $757.5 million and soon after released Tucker Carlson, the network’s highest-rated host.

The voting machine company had alleged some of Fox’s hosts had either promulgated, or allowed their guests to push, a false narrative that the corporation’s voting machines were “fixed” and misreported the vote count in some precincts of the 2020 presidential election.

In other words, Dominion walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars on the accusation that some raving guests and a few Fox journalists insinuated, falsely, that the machines had thrown the election to Joe Biden.

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Yet no one argues that such post facto accusations influenced the election. The postelection dispute instead was over whether a news organization was responsible for all that its hundreds of guests and hosts say that proved later to be not substantiated, false, or defamatory.

Fox settled with Dominion reportedly to avoid messy revelations of its internal texts and to stop the hemorrhaging of its brand.

But by doing so, the network may have inadvertently set a dubious standard that any speculative opinion, voiced in public media, however nutty and later proven to be inaccurate, will be actionable.

If that is the standard, we are going to see a lot more costly lawsuits.

Compare Dominion’s writ with the twin “Russian collusion” and “Russian disinformation” hoaxes.

Lots of journalists and guests on network news, cable, public broadcasting, and internet news sites ran daily with the utter lie that the concocted Christopher Steele dossier was accurate.

Four years later, they were still claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by enlisting the aid of the Russians—as an “asset” and puppet of Vladimir Putin.

All that was demonstrably untrue.

No one on these news shows ever produced any information validating the dossier, much less offered apologies to those whose lives they ruined, as in the case of Lt. General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

The steady two-year drumbeat of media and DNC-fabricated untruths neutered the first two years of the Trump Administration.

Robert Mueller’s $40 million, 22-month special counsel “investigation” leaked wild and lurid rumors of Trump indictments to come, and yet ultimately found no proof of collusion.

No matter. The agendas of the Democratic Party’s collaboration with the media were fulfilled. The Trump Administration was wounded, forced on defense to reply to countless new fabrications, and smeared to the point of caricature.

The incumbent president went into the 2020 election crippled by years of media-voiced lies about collusion. Given all that, did these miscreants learn anything the second time around?

No. They redoubled their efforts. This time, the new farce was “Russian disinformation,” even as the playbook of smearing remained the same.

First, once again, the Left enlisted the media. It helped to spread the lie that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop was a product of “Russian disinformation” aimed at helping Donald Trump.

Second, once more,  the FBI helped to further what the agency knew was a lie. So the agency either persuaded or paid social media companies in Silicon Valley to suppress news that pointed to an authentic Biden laptop—whose contents revealed embarrassing details about Joe Biden’s (“The Big Guy”) apparent quid pro quo profiteering with foreign nations. 

Twitter was hired as a news suppressor. The FBI paid the company $3 million to suss out “disinformation.” 

Joe Biden’s campaign operative, current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, tapped former interim CIA Director Mike Morell on the eve of the 2020 presidential debate to round up 50 former senior intelligence officials.

The “experts” publicly promulgated the lie that the laptop “bears the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.” Then, as planned, Biden in the debate used the experts’ phony consensus—dreamed up by his own campaign team—to play the victim of Trump/Russian disinformation.

He blasted Trump as a demagogue who unfairly had suggested Biden and his family were trading influence for cash.

One conservative poll suggested that the farce influenced enough voters to have changed the election. Again, no one has apologized—not the current secretary of state, not the former interim CIA Director, not the 50 experts who signed the bogus letter. 

Massaging a U.S. election by conspiring to concoct a disinformation campaign must be as actionable as Dominion’s postelection claim of $757 million in damages.

Did not Twitter, the FBI, CNN, and MSNBC knowingly try to influence an election by spreading what they must have known was an absurd lie?

Almost no one after the election swallowed the notion that Dominion had rigged its voting machines. But millions before the election may have been swayed by the Biden campaign and the media-generated lie that the authentic Biden laptop was part of a Russian intelligence operation. 

And that lie, unlike the Dominion charge of postelection defamation, might have changed history.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Senate Dems Advance Nomination of Biden Labor Secretary Nominee Who Presided Over Mass Fraud in California

Julie Su, who presided over an estimated $31 billion in fraud as California’s labor chief, heads for a full Senate vote to lead Joe Biden’s Labor Department.

The Senate workforce committee in charge of vetting her qualifications for the post narrowly cleared her nomination for Senate approval on Wednesday, voting 11-10 along party lines.

The committee’s vote tees up a contentious vote on the Senate floor that is by no means certain to go Biden’s way. A handful of Democratic moderates, including Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), have yet to commit to supporting her.

Su, who currently serves as deputy secretary of labor, has been dogged by her California record since Biden nominated her for the post in February. During her time overseeing California’s Employment Development Department during the state’s pandemic lockdowns, Su froze checks on unemployment claims and failed to stop payment to suspicious accounts, leading to an estimated $31 billion in fraudulent payouts. California’s unemployment insurance fund is now in a nearly $20 billion hole.

Su also worked to implement California’s Assembly Bill 5, known as the anti-gigworker law, which cracked down on many of the state’s independent contractors by forcing them to reclassify as employees.

Senate workforce committee chair Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) praised her record as a staunch union ally ahead of the vote, noting her support for raising the minimum wage.

“I think Julie Su currently and in her role in California and throughout her life has made it clear she’s prepared to stand up for working families,” Sanders said.

Republican ranking member Bill Cassidy (La.) questioned Su’s competence in light of the fraud that happened under her watch, noted her lack of experience with complex and high-stakes contract negotiations, and said he worried she would bring an anti-business bias to the job.

“Julie Su has an extensive record of partisan activism and promoting policies that undermine workers to the benefit of politically-connected labor unions,” Cassidy said. “A qualified Secretary of Labor needs to successfully handle negotiations, manage a department properly, and refrain from partisan activism. I haven’t seen evidence of Julie Su’s ability to do any of those three things.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Kiss My Gay Country Ass’: Kentucky’s Beshear Taps New Poet Laureate

Silas House says all Trump supporters are bigots. That’s about two-thirds of Kentucky.

Kentucky’s Democratic governor wants a left-wing writer who believes Appalachia is “homophobic” and says a majority of his state’s voters are “bigots” to be his state’s “ambassador to the rest of the world.”

Gov. Andy Beshear (D.) on Monday named author Silas House Kentucky’s poet laureate during a ceremony in which he praised the writer’s “unique gift” and said “we’re gonna be blessed to have him as our literary ambassador to the rest of the world.” House has a long history of criticizing the political and religious beliefs held by many of his fellow Kentuckians—especially former president Donald Trump’s supporters, who he once told to kiss his “gay country ass.”

House is a risky choice for Beshear, who faces a dicey reelection bid this November. Kentucky hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996 and swung for Trump by nearly 26 points in 2020. Beshear won his first term in 2019 by just over 5,000 votes. He has since kept President Joe Biden at arm’s length, saying in December that his re-election campaign “isn’t going to be about national figures.”

House often takes to Twitter to voice his left-wing views and disdain for conservatives. On May 15, 2019, House wrote, “If you support Trump you’re a bigot. Just claim it.” And on June 28, 2019, House wrote, “Unfortunately, Appalachia IS part of the reason Trump is in office. Unfortunately, the region as a majority IS homophobic. We can deny it all we want, but it’s true.”

Much of House’s writing revolves around critiques of evangelical Christianity, a faith embraced by nearly 50 percent of Kentuckians. House wrote an essay last November for Time warning that “the Christian nationalist forces that terrorized me as a child have grown only more powerful” and reflected on his youth spent “raised in a church of terrorists.” Those “Christian nationalist forces,” House alleged, now include Republican members of Congress who “terrorize LGBTQ children.”

House offered his vision for what a Republican-led future could look like in his 2022 novel Lark Ascending. The book follows the journey of a young gay man who attempts to flee to Ireland after the United States is “overrun by extremists.” Beshear praised the book at the Writers’ Day event, citing it as an example of how House “tells his Kentucky story.”

That “Kentucky story” also includes a run-in with Beshear’s father, former Gov. Steve Beshear. House crossed paths with the elder Beshear during a 2011 anti-coal mining protest at the governor’s mansion. He wrote about his experience in a New York Times op-ed entitled “My Polluted Kentucky Home,” in which he lamented how teachers told him to “change my accent if I wanted to get ahead in the world. Never mind that I had nearly perfect grammar and spelling.”

Neither House nor Beshear’s office responded to a request for comment.

Though his political commentary is largely devoted to criticizing Republicans, House has also boosted Democrats. In a 2019 essay for Salon, House wrote about how Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign was an inspiration for “gay Christians” such as himself. In the essay, House once again inveighed against evangelicals.

“The thing that none of them realize is that every time they allow their judgment to rear its head, support for Buttigieg grows even stronger among many potential voters,” House wrote.

Buttigieg would later drop out of that cycle’s Democratic presidential primary and ultimately only received 2.5 percent of the vote.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Iran Orders United States to Pay $1 Billion for Alleged Terror Strikes

Tehran falsely claims the United States is in cahoots with the Islamic State

An Iranian court on Wednesday ordered the United States government to pay more than $1 billion in fines for terror strikes that Tehran now says were American-ordered.

The court determined “the U.S. government as well as some American officials and institutions must pay $312,950,000 in damages” to the families of those killed in a 2017 terror strike on Iran’s parliament and a popular holy site. The court “also set $9,950,000 for material damages, $104 million for moral damages caused to the plaintiffs, and $199 million for punitive damages,” according to Iran’s state-controlled press.

Iran is blaming the United States for a spate of attacks that are known to have been carried out by the Islamic State, a rival terror organization that is at odds with Iran’s clerical regime. Iranian officials claim the American government is in cahoots with the Islamic State, and is chiefly responsible for the 2017 attack that killed 17 and wounded 50 others.

The judgment is likely payback for the U.S.  government’s 2021 seizure of around $7 million in Iranian assets, which were paid out to the victims of Tehran’s terrorism enterprise. The United States also successfully petitioned the International Court of Justice in March to toss a case that would have barred further payments from Iranian coffers.

Iran’s countersuit names former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, former U.S. general Tommy Franks, the CIA, U.S. Central Command, and the Treasury Department as defendants. Lockheed Martin and American Airlines also are named in the suit.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden Campaign Co-Chair Has Deep China Connections, Met With Xi Jinping

A co-chair for Joe Biden’s newly announced reelection campaign has connections to the Chinese government. 

Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairman of Disney and DreamWorks, will be one of the national co-chairs for the president’s 2024 campaign, Biden announced Tuesday. In his years as a corporate CEO, Katzenberg inked deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Chinese companies. Katzenberg visited the country every month for years while working out the deals. 

Katzenberg took several meetings with then-vice president of China Xi Jinping, Fox News reported

Perhaps most infamously, when Katzenberg was at DreamWorks in 2012, the company announced a multi-billion-dollar deal with the Chinese government to build a production studio in Shanghai.

The deal, which effectively increased the number of U.S. films that could be released in the Chinese market each year, came just days after then-Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping met with then-President Barack Obama in Washington. 

Xi, now the head of China’s ruling Communist Party, traveled after the Obama meeting to Los Angeles, where he met with Katzenberg and both men were featured at a ceremony inking the deal.

Biden also played a central role in pushing Hollywood’s entry into Chinese markets during the Obama administration, meeting with Xi multiple times during the Chinese leader’s trip to the U.S. in 2012 — with Katzenberg often showing up.

Biden’s elevation of Katzenberg to the role comes a month after the administration moved to allow schools with Chinese-funded Confucius Institute chapters to circumvent a ban on receiving federal funds.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

San Diego Moves To Purchase Hotels for Homeless at Cost of $400K Per Room

San Diego leaders are requesting state funds to buy three hotels for the city’s homeless at a cost of $383,000 per room, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The wealthy city, where homelessness has surged to record highs in recent months, will apply for the funds from California governor Gavin Newsom’s (D.) latest $736 million round of funding from his homelessness grant program. City officials were unfazed by the cost of the plan, with commissioner Ryan Clumpner calling it “a fantastic value proposition.”

Commissioner Stefanie Benvenuto called the value of the purchases “incredible when you see the cost at the door.”

San Diego is eyeing the hotel purchases despite the recent failure of a similar initiative. In 2020, city commissioners approved the purchase of two hotels to house homeless people at $278,000 to $353,000 per room. A newly opened affordable housing apartment project cost $51.1 million in total, or $583,000 per room. Still, downtown San Diego’s homeless population reached a new record high earlier this year of nearly 2,000 people.

“They’re nuts,” Bob Rauch, a San Diego businessman whose company owns and operates hotels, told the Union-Tribune of the city’s leaders. “They overpaid last time during a pandemic, and they’d be overpaying again.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s (D.) latest budget proposal includes $1.3 billion for the city’s nearly 41,000 homeless, which equates to $32,000 per person. The per capita Los Angeles income is $39,380. 

A similar trend has played out on the state level. California Democrats have spent some $20 billion over the past five years to address a growing homelessnes crisis.

Last month, Newsom proposed a ballot initiative to approve a minimum of $1 billion each year to house homeless people who are mentally ill. 

According to the federal government’slatest count, California holds nearly a third of the nation’s homeless—multitudes more than any other state.

Earlier this month, a legislative committee approved a bipartisan request for an audit of where local, state and federal funds to address homelessness are going and what the dollars are accomplishing.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden Administration Paves Way for Confucius Institute Affiliate Schools to Receive Federal Funding

Waiver program lets colleges who host Confucius Institute chapters circumvent a ban on receiving federal funds

The Biden administration is quietly helping American universities that host China’s Confucius Institute on their campuses circumvent a ban on receiving federal funds.

The Defense Department in late March announced that it would grant waivers to allow schools to host chapters of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese Communist Party-backed program that Beijing uses to peddle influence and steal intellectual property from American universities. The department’s waiver program is a response to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which barred American colleges and universities from receiving federal dollars if they maintain Confucius Institute chapters.

Lawmakers say the Defense Department is subverting federal law.

“The Chinese Communist Party is subverting U.S. institutions and Joe Biden is sabotaging legislation to stop them,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Select Committee on China, told the Washington Free Beacon. Banks added that the Biden administration has essentially “greenlit China’s espionage and malign influence operations on college campuses.”

The workaround comes amid warnings from the intelligence community that American colleges are a “soft target” for Chinese spies. China has opened at least 100 Confucius Institutes in the United States since 2008, with China pouring more than $158 million into them. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that these outposts are “ultimately beholden to the Chinese government” and pose an espionage risk.

But American schools have been hesitant to cut ties with their Confucius Institutes, lest they miss out on the $426 million China has injected into American higher education since 2011. This money funds an array of research projects, with a large portion also coming in the form of gifts to various schools.

Confucius Institutes ostensibly promote cultural exchange and offer language programs. But lawmakers maintain they actually “limit a school’s autonomy by censuring political debate and preventing discussions on certain topics, such as Taiwan and Tibet.” These CCP outposts also maintain “contracts with U.S. universities [that] forbid activities that violate Chinese law and require the contract remain confidential, limiting effective oversight.”

The NDAA’s bipartisan funding prohibition, which is set to take effect October 1, was meant to force American universities into dropping Confucius Institutes to keep lucrative Pentagon contracts. But the waiver program offers them a lifeline and comes amid parallel efforts by higher education lobbyists to pressure the Biden administration into easing reporting requirements on foreign donations, like those coming from China.

Schools seeking a waiver only need to send the Pentagon a letter affirming that their Confucius Institute supports “academic freedom” and “openness.” The schools are also given leeway to self-report to the Defense Department about any changes that may be made to the institution’s relationship with these CCP outposts.

Universities that have active partnerships with the Pentagon also must “demonstrate that it has adequate measures in place to secure information, including information generated by scientific research,” according to the guidance. This includes cybersecurity firewalls and prohibitions on Confucius Institute staff gaining access to sensitive research projects.

This could prove difficult for a number of American schools that have been infiltrated by Chinese spies.

Stanford University, for instance, took in $1.9 million from the Defense Department in 2022 to study “multiphase detonation of liquid aeropropulsion fuels,” which could apply to advanced military technologies such as hypersonic missiles. The school also employed a Chinese researcher who was acting as a spy for the CCP’s military, according to federal authorities.

The Justice Department has warned at least 60 top colleges that they are susceptible to Chinese espionage operations.

Banks says that his committee is “working overtime” to push back against the waiver program and “win a game of oversight whack-a-mole against a president who is running cover for China.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon