Sean Casten holds up to $500,000 in company that is expected to benefit from Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten is very happy with his party’s “historic” green energy spending. His latest financial disclosure may show why: The congressman holds up to $500,000 in a green energy company that will likely benefit from the spending.

Casten has spent much of the last week touting Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is not expected to have “any measurable impact on inflation” but does funnel nearly $400 billion toward green energy initiatives. Casten in a statement last week called that spending “a historic win for American families and for the future of our planet.” It could also be a historic win for Casten’s investment portfolio.

That’s because Casten, according to a financial disclosure he filed last week, holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in Greenleaf Power, a Sacramento-based green energy company that sells “carbon-neutral electricity” to utility companies. The Casten-backed green energy bill contains specific provisions that are likely to benefit Greenleaf. The legislation, for example, allocates roughly $30 billion toward “grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities” that obtain “clean electricity” like that offered by Greenleaf. The bill also provides generous tax credits to property owners who install equipment to harness alternative energy sources such as biomass, in which Greenleaf specializes.

Still, none of Casten’s many statements touting the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy spending disclose the Democrat’s six-figure stake in Greenleaf, which brought Casten up to $50,000 in “partnership income” in 2021 alone. Casten’s decision to fixate on Democrats’ work to “fight climate change,” meanwhile, may prove to be shortsighted as the congressman faces a competitive reelection campaign against Republican Keith Pekau. Only 35 percent of U.S. adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change, down from 44 percent just three years ago, according to an Associated Press poll.

Power the Future founder and executive director Daniel Turner called it a “shame that the American people are going to be on the hook” for “provisions that enrich this member of Congress.” He also argued that the “green energy” Greenleaf produces from biomass is not truly “green”—the company generates electricity by burning wood, a far cry from the wind and solar energy Casten has touted in the past.

“It just shows you the political motives behind this piece of legislation,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “The fact that we consider biomass clean is really laughable, because biomass is really just burning trees. So why are we proud of that?”

Casten did not return a request for comment. The Democrat’s latest financial disclosure provides some clarity on his Greenleaf holding, as the congressman’s prior disclosure listed Greenleaf but claimed the asset had no value. Casten filed that 2020 disclosure as he urged Congress to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on “tax credits for clean energy.” In one case, Casten went as far as to attack fellow congressional Democrat Joe Manchin after the West Virginia senator expressed opposition toward the spending.

“We’re trying to drive a car into the future,” Casten said during an September 2021 MSNBC interview. “With all due respect to Mr. Manchin, until we’re lining up to take off the emergency brake this car ain’t driving very fast. It’s certainly not driving as fast as it needs to, and that’s the pressure we as Democrats have to keep focused on.” Casten’s past clean energy spending advocacy also excluded any mention of his Greenleaf investment.

Beyond the American public’s waning concern about climate change, it’s unclear if the Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will have a sizable impact on climate change. A climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package told the Associated Press the legislation will reduce global warming “not a lot.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Data suggests ‘economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly’

America’s recessionary drumbeat just got louder as a key economic gauge from the Conference Board dropped for the fifth month in a row, weighed down by a slowing job market, weak manufacturing new orders, and deep consumer pessimism.

The Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States, which is a forward-looking gauge designed to predict business cycle shifts including recessions, fell by 0.4 percent in July, following a 0.7 percent drop in June, the Conference Board said on Aug. 18.

“The U.S. LEI declined for the fifth consecutive month in July, suggesting recession risks are rising in the near term,” Ataman Ozyildirim, senior director for economics at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

While the U.S. economy met the common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession when gross domestic product (GDP) printed negative for two quarters in a row earlier this year, recessions are formally called by a panel of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). They use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule, relying on a wide range of indicators, including the labor market, which has remained on a relatively solid footing.

The Biden administration has seized on the NBER’s criteria for declaring a downturn, insisting that the economy isn’t in a recession, with White House officials often citing labor market strength—though there are signs that it’s cooling.

Even though unemployment is at 3.5 percent and the latest non-farm payrolls report showed U.S. employers adding a forecast-beating 528,000 in July, a growing number of U.S. corporations have announced hiring freezes or layoffs, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance has been slowly trending up.

Mild or Severe Recession?

The slowing labor market was one of the factors singled out by Ozyildirim in his comments on the LEI’s fifth consecutive monthly slump.

“Consumer pessimism and equity market volatility as well as slowing labor markets, housing construction, and manufacturing new orders suggest that economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly throughout the US economy,” he said, adding that the Conference Board projects that the U.S. economy won’t grow in the third quarter and “could tip into a short but mild recession by the end of the year or early 2023.”

While the view that America’s recession will be short and mild has its advocates, economist Nouriel Roubini, who got the nickname “Dr. Doom” after correctly predicting the 2007–08 financial crisis, calls that view “delusional.”

Roubini said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV that he believes persistently high inflation will force the Fed to keep monetary settings tight, which will tip the U.S. economy into a “severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis” that will be long-lasting.

Similarly, former President Donald Trump recently warned that, unless the country changes course in key areas—including energy policy—he believes something worse than a recession is on the horizon.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona at the end of July. “We’ll have a depression.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Joe Biden is set to cancel $3.9 billion in student loans, announcing that the federal government will discharge all remaining federal student loans for students who attended the ITT Technical Institute.

The student loan borrowers who attended the now-defunct institute will receive a discharge through “borrower defense to repayment” according to Forbes and do not need to apply to have their loans canceled.

“It is time for student borrowers to stop shouldering the burden from ITT’s years of lies and false promises. The evidence shows that for years, ITT’s leaders intentionally misled students about the quality of their programs in order to profit off federal student loan programs, with no regard for the hardship this would cause,” Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona said.

“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to stand up for borrowers who’ve been cheated by their colleges while working to strengthen oversight and enforcement to protect today’s students from similar deception and abuse.”

The ITT Technical Institute was a well-known private technical institute based in Indiana with approximately 140 satellite campuses all over the United States. The institute operated until announcing on Sept. 6, 2016, that it would “discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently”.

Since taking the White House in 2021 Biden has canceled almost $32 billion in student loans, essentially subsidizing the educational expenses of a combined 1.8 million borrowers spread across “borrower defense to student loan repayment and school closures,” “public service loan forgiveness” and “total or permanent disability”.

Democrats continue to call for Biden to “#CancelStudentDebt“, a move that conservatives believe would obfuscate the transfer of debt from the individual borrowers to the American taxpayer.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jaypal of Washington urged Biden to cancel all student debt.

Student loan payments are set to resume in 16 days. With the stroke of a pen, @POTUS can bring relief to millions of people across the country. Let’s get it done.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) August 15, 2022

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri also joined the refrain.

Right now, millions of people are living in limbo, unsure if student loan payments will resume in 16 days. Canceling student debt would provide immense relief to numerous borrowers.@POTUS, now is the time. #CancelStudentDebt

— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) August 15, 2022

Conversely, Republicans have heavily criticized student loan forgiveness.

“Expansive student loan forgiveness does nothing to solve the problems in higher education and exacerbates the economic disaster fueled by the President’s lack of fiscal responsibility,” Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina said according to Forbes.

Revolving Door: Biden Adviser Forced to Divest Stock Portfolio, Recuse Herself from Decisions Involving Corporate Clients

“Time and again, Biden operates as if he can issue any decree he wants on student loan forgiveness, even if it means exercising authority that he does not have.”

In an Op-Ed for Fox News, Foxx and Sen. Richard Burr, also of North Carolina, wrote, “By caving to progressives, Biden is breaking his promise to over 100 million taxpayers without student debt who are subsidizing this boondoggle.”

They pointed the finger squarely at their Democrat colleagues in Congress, “Yet, when in the position to actually legislate, House and Senate Democrats are (un)surprisingly quiet on student loan debt. Rather than do their jobs, top Democrats are asking the president to do their dirty work for them, calling for an additional extension through the end of the year and debt forgiveness by executive fiat.”

The GOP legislators also voiced concerns that the proposed student loan cancelation would “easily push inflation above 9 percent” back in April when the piece was written.

Inflation hit 9.1 percent in June before pulling back slightly to 8.5 percent in July, according to Trading Economics.

central pillar of the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act is $80 billion going to the IRS to hire some 87,000 new agents, doubling the current force, to chase down U.S. taxpayers who allegedly are not meeting their tax obligations.

The rationale is we have a large national budget deficit — that is, government is bringing in less money than it spends — so a larger army of IRS agents chasing down tax deadbeats will help solve our nation’s fiscal problems.

But part of this same new law in which U.S. taxpayers are asked to spend $80 billion to hire more IRS agents to shake down their neighbors who are supposedly not paying their fair share, there is $430 billion in new government spending, a large portion of which is earmarked for green energy projects of various shapes and forms.

At the same time that we’re expanding our army of tax collectors, we continue to expand government and spending at an even faster pace.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook, and here we get a broader picture of the problem.

According to the report, “From 1972 to 2021, total federal outlays averaged 21% of GDP; over 2022-2052 period, such outlays are projected to average 26% of GDP.”

The Congressional Budget Office projects that government will take on average 5% more from our national economy in the next 30 years than it did on average over the last 50 years.

Looking at our GDP in 2022, roughly $25 trillion, at 26% of GDP, government spending will be over a trillion dollars more than it would have been at 21%.

A trillion dollars more in spending on average per year, with another 87,000 IRS agents running after taxpayers to make sure they pay up.

So, the bigger army of tax collectors is about helping raise money to finance ongoing expansion of government and increasing control of government over the lives of private Americans.

Why, as someone whose business is trying to improve the lives of low-income Americans, do I care about this?

Turning pages forward in the CBO report, we get to the really shocking information.

From 1992 to 2021, per CBO, the average growth of the U.S. economy was 2.4% per year. CBO projects that from 2022 to 2052 the average growth of the U.S. economy will be 1.7% per year.

This should shock every American, and it’s getting hardly any attention.

The more our national economy is controlled by government and politicians, the more sluggish will be growth of our economy.

It stands to reason. Growth comes from entrepreneurs, work, creativity. More government means less of all these things and slower growth.

Slower growth means lower income and less opportunity.

Anyone who cares about helping those who want to get ahead in America should be cheering for faster growth and less government rather than more government and slower growth.

Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has pointed out that from 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at 3.5% per year. Real income per person went from $16,000 in 1950 to $50,000 in 2000. If the economy grew from 1950 to 2000 at 2% instead of 3.5%, notes Cochrane, income in 2000 would have risen to just $23,000 rather than $50,000.

It’s why, as someone who cares about helping low-income Americans get ahead and improve their lot, I care about a growing dynamic economy, not a bloated, sclerotic economy controlled by politicians and Washington special interests.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act takes matters in the exact opposite direction in which we should be going. Pretending to care about the nation’s fiscal imbalances while adding $430 billion in new spending, all of it driven and defined by Washington special interests, is the problem, not the solution.

SOURCE: Right and Free

A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower has said that the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will see the government target middle-income Americans with increased scrutiny and audits.

William Henck previously worked as a lawyer for the IRS for 20 years until 2017, when he was terminated for allegedly revealing sensitive information to the media about how the IRS had reportedly failed to identify a multi-billion-dollar corporate tax credit scheme involving a source of energy known as burning pulp byproducts, or black liquor.

Speaking to Fox Business, Henck disputed claims by the IRS and other officials who have said that increased funding for the agency under the IRA, which is set to be signed into law by Joe Biden this week, would only lead to more audits for wealthy millionaires and billionaires and large corporations.

“The idea that they’re going to open things up and go after these big billionaires and large corporations is quite frankly [expletive],” Henck said in the interview on Aug. 15. “It’s not going to happen. They’re going to give themselves bonuses and promotions and really nice conferences.”

“The big corporations and the billionaires are probably sitting back laughing right now,” he said, adding that it was “insane” to double the IRS budget.

Henck also said he believes that the agency will go after businesses that don’t have enough money to hire Washington lobbyists.

‘Absolutely Not’ Being Used to Target Middle-Income Americans

The Democrat-controlled House passed the IRA in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12. It includes nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, including $45.6 billion for “enforcement.”

A Treasury Department report from May 2021 (pdf) estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031.

Amid mounting fears, the IRS has said it will “absolutely not” be using the extra money to increase audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig stated in a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 that the extra resources will instead serve to help the agency in “challenging” areas such as audits of large corporate and global high-net-worth taxpayers.

“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Rettig wrote in the letter. “As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre have also doubled down on their rhetoric regarding reports about the extra funding being utilized to target middle-income Americans, stating that there would be no new audits for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year.

Henck disagrees.

‘Unlimited Resources And No Accountability’

“There will be considerable incentive to basically to shake down taxpayers, and the advantage the IRS has is they have basically unlimited resources and no accountability, whereas a taxpayer has to weigh the cost of accountants, tax lawyers—fighting something in tax court,” he told Fox Business.

“If you own a roofing company, you better count on getting audited because that’s what they’re going to be doing,” he continued. “They’re going to be going after your car dealerships, roofing companies.”

Henck’s comments come after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that working-class Americans will end up paying billions of dollars in new taxes thanks to the IRA.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said on Aug. 12 that they had received the information from the CBO confirming that under the new legislation, lower- and middle-income Americans will pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade.

This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels,” GOP lawmakers said in a statement.

The Epoch Times has not received a response for comment from the CBO.

Source: The Epoch Times

Elite Afghan forces bring U.S. training to Tehran, according to whistleblower interviews

Elite Afghan soldiers trained by the United States fled to Iran with weapons and specialized combat training following the Biden administration’s bungled withdrawal from the country that let the Taliban regain power, according to a report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee based on interviews with whistleblowers and internal State Department documents.

“A ‘significant’ number of Afghan special forces and about 3,000 Afghan security forces, including high ranking officers, crossed the border into Iran,” according to the report, which was released on Monday to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Some brought military equipment and vehicles with them. We believe this happened because they were not evacuated by the U.S. or our allies, and therefore had no other option.”

These forces were trained in combat by U.S. special operators, in some cases within the United States, and “could be a serious national security threat to the United States if they are captured or turn,” according to the report. They “know not only our tactics but who these elite [U.S.] military officials are.”

The findings detail months of chaos following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and indicate that the tumult in the country has provided an opportunity for regional enemies like Iran to regain a foothold in the war-torn country. Details of Iran’s ties to these U.S. trained fighters comes as new threats from Iran are making headlines across America, with the arrest of an Iranian national who’d put a bounty on former White House national security adviser John Bolton’s head, as well as the attempted murder last week of the novelist Salman Rushdie, who has long faced threats from Iran’s clerical regime.

“The recruitment of former Afghan military and intelligence personnel poses a major national security risk due to the fact these Afghan personnel know the U.S. military and intelligence community’s tactics, techniques, and procedures,” the report concludes.

In addition to the weapons and military equipment these special forces brought with them to Iran, they have an intimate knowledge of the U.S. military and its tactics in the region, know-how that is highly sought after by Iran’s terrorist proxy groups and other jihadi militants.

“These commandos are trained, highly trained, on how we do signals intelligence, how we do human intelligence, how we operate,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran, said in the report. “We know that the Taliban are hunting them down. They are seeking to force them through coercion to hand over that information so that they can use it and they can understand how we operate.”

Beyond Iran, Russia and China are also looking to recruit these forces for their inside knowledge about American military tactics.

“It is possible these former Afghan military and other intelligence personnel could be recruited or coerced into working for one of America’s adversaries that maintains a presence in Afghanistan, including Russia, [and] China,” in addition to Iran, according to the report.

The State Department said in October 2021 that it is aware of the threat posed by Afghan soldiers trained by the United States, though it has done little since then to find them and get them to safety.

“Afghans who possess the knowledge specific to security operations, intelligence collection, other aspects of security and defense forces that if it were to fall into terrorists’ hands would pose a national security risk to the United States, those people will have a special category, I think there is just no way around it,” a senior State Department official quoted in the report told Congress.

The Pentagon was to create a list detailing “critical Afghan personnel that would warrant prioritization in being evacuated.” But, as of February 2022, “the Pentagon list had still not been shared with the State Department Task Force, meaning several months of inactivity with regards to evacuation,” the report disclosed.

Afghan military personnel also do not qualify for the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program that has brought in scores of vulnerable Afghans, the report says. The administration is still only evacuating remaining Americans, green card holders, and pre-approved SIV applicants.

It also has not been made clear if Afghan military members would qualify for refugee status, and, if they did, they would be responsible for getting themselves out of the country without American assistance, according to the report.

The number of Americans stranded in Afghanistan after the evacuation also is far higher than the Biden administration admits. While U.S. officials repeatedly said “about 100” Americans were left in the country after the military left, the State Department is known to have evacuated more than 800 American citizens since Aug. 31, 2021—a number that does not include the scores of Americans evacuated by outside groups.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

As Democrats take a victory lap after passing a bill that spends nearly $400 billion on green energy initiatives, Americans say they are less concerned about climate change than they were three years ago.

Only 35 percent of adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change on them personally, according to a poll from the Associated Press. In 2019, 44 percent of respondents said the same.

Fewer than half of respondents, 45 percent, said individual people have a large responsibility to fight climate change. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they were not concerned about the impact of climate change, and 33 percent said they were only “moderately concerned.”

The results come as Democrats celebrate Joe Biden’s upcoming signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. Although several studies show the bill will do nothing to lower inflation, which is at a 40-year high, the bill does provide the largest ever single investment in green energy and climate change mitigation. Because reports show the bill will do little to curb inflation, media outlets have begun referring to the Inflation Reduction Act as a climate and health bill. Yet that framing may not help Democrats sell its provisions to voters. Fewer Americans believe they have a direct impact on climate change than three years ago, the AP poll found. Roughly half said their actions have an effect on climate change, compared with the two-thirds who said the same in 2019.

The Inflation Reduction Act earlier this month passed both chambers of Congress, with every Democrat voting in favor. Biden is expected to sign the bill on Tuesday.

Many Democrats running in competitive races this November touted the bill’s provisions as evidence that the party is addressing voters’ concerns. But the AP poll found that Americans are far more concerned about rising consumer costs and economic issues than the environment. Fewer Americans cite the environment as a pressing issue than they did three years ago, the AP found.

In total, the Inflation Reduction Act earmarks $386 billion for green energy and climate change-related initiatives. One-hundred-sixty-one billion dollars of that money goes to clean electricity tax credits, while $36 billion goes to tax credits for electric cars.

Just 10 percent of respondents said they live in a household with solar panels or drive an electric car. Although nearly 75 percent of respondents said they are using energy-efficient appliances or reducing driving and air-conditioning use, the main reason was saving money rather than stopping climate change.

“I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does—period,” Biden said this month.

Other than climate-change-related spending, the Inflation Reduction Act allocates $80 billion to double the size of the IRS’s workforce. Should the IRS find enough staffers to join the agency, it will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee say they have received information from the non-partisan scorekeeper at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) challenging the Biden administration’s narrative that Americans making less than $400,000 a year won’t see higher IRS audit rates.

The remarks came in an Aug. 12 statement that was published as the Democrat-controlled House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $46 billion in additional funding for IRS enforcement of the $80 billion or so total funding boost to the tax agency.

Committee Republicans said that the CBO statement they were provided with confirms that, under the new legislation, lower and middle-income Americans will be squeezed harder by the tax man to the tune of at least $20 billion.

‘Supercharged IRS’ Coming For Middle-Income Americans

This figure was arrived at by calculating how much less tax revenue would flow into government coffers if legislators had accepted amendment 5404 (pdf) proposed by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that explicitly called for none of the funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act to be used to audit taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year.

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that had this amendment passed and lower- and middle-income taxpayers been protected, revenue in Democrats’ bill would have been reduced by at least $20 billion,” Committee Republicans said.

This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the CBO with a request for confirmation of the scorekeeper’s assessment and comment, with no response received by publication.

‘Absolutely Not’ Increasing Audit Scrutiny?

Republicans said the CBO statement proves that members of the Biden administration are misleading the public by claiming that lower and middle-income Americans won’t face additional tax audits.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted Republican claims that tax auditors will target lower and middle-income Americans at higher rates are false and politically motivated.

“I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Yellen said in an Aug. 10 letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.

“This means that, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” she added.

The IRS chief, too, has insisted that the tax agency would “absolutely not” be increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans relative to “recent years,” according to a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 (pdf).

More Audits ‘Almost Certain’

A previous CBO analysis indicated that, under basically the same funding plan as is featured in the Inflation Reduction Act, audit rates would be restored to levels around 10 years ago and that audit rates would rise “for all taxpayers,” though ones with higher incomes would face the biggest increase.

IRS audit rates have fallen sharply over the past decade, with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying in a report that rates in 2019 were about one third of those in 2010 for all income groups, dropping from 0.9 percent down to 0.25 percent.

A CBO estimate (pdf) shows that that the additional $80 billion in funding will bring in around $204 billion in new revenues, including from enforcement.

Despite Yellen’s and Rettig’s insistence that audit rates wouldn’t jump for those making under $400,000, Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at the Grover M. Hermann Center, wrote in an op-ed for the Heritage Foundation that this is likely not the case.

“Despite the Biden administration’s claims, it’s almost certain that households making less than $400,000 a year would face increased audits under Democrats’ bill,” Greszler wrote.

“And despite estimates from official congressional scorekeepers that the Schumer-Manchin-Biden tax increase indeed would raise taxes on those Americans, the administration has doubled down on the claim,” she added.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on the House floor that the way Democrats can manage to raise $200 billion in new tax revenues is “with thousands of new agents targeting what I would call Walmart shoppers.”

“They’re real hard working American families. They are my constituents, they are my neighbors in my district. They’re living paycheck to paycheck, struggling with inflation and high gas prices,” Brady said.

“They will be hit with over 700,000 new audits thanks to a skyrocketing surge in IRS agents,” he added.

“Higher taxes, harassing IRS audits on our Walmart shoppers, no relief from inflation—all as America battles a recession,” Brady said.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12, with the bill next heading to Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal court has reimposed an Obama-era freeze on coal leasing from federal lands that former President Donald Trump axed in a bid to unlock domestic energy production, though the judge left the door open to resuming the coal leases if a more extensive environmental review is done.

In a ruling on Aug. 12 (pdf), U.S. District Judge Brian Morris faulted the Trump-era review of the coal leasing program for limiting the environmental impact review to “just” three issues: greenhouse gas emissions, socioeconomic impacts, and water quality.

“The Court determines that such a limited analysis fails to consider ‘all direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts’ of re-starting the federal coal-leasing program,” Morris wrote in the ruling.

The judge said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) tried to curtail the potential environmental impacts of coal leases in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, calling the bureau’s decision “arbitrary and capricious.”

Morris also objected to BLM evaluating only four approved leases under the program, calling it “insufficient.”

In the ruling, the judge said that the coal leasing program would be put on hold “until the completion of sufficient NEPA review analyzing revocation of the moratorium.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to BLM for comment, with no response received by publication.

Interior Department spokesperson Melissa Schwartz told The Associated Press that officials are reviewing the ruling.

‘End to the War on Coal’

In January 2016, in a decision known as the Jewell Order, the Department of the Interior put a temporary freeze on leasing federal land for the purpose of mining coal, in part over concerns about climate change.

“Given serious concerns raised about the federal coal program, we’re taking the prudent step to hit pause on approving significant new leases so that decisions about those leases can benefit from the recommendations that come out of the review,” said then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

Trump, who championed domestic fossil fuel production as a bulwark against energy dependency on foreign countries, reversed the freeze in a sweeping executive order in March 2017 that also undid other Obama-era climate policies.

Announcing that “my administration is putting an end to the war on coal,” Trump said at the time that, “with today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations.”

Under Joe Biden, a review of coal leasing impacts on climate change and taxpayers was launched in April 2021, but the Trump-era decision to pull the plug on the Jewell Order was not reversed—until now.

‘Significant Victory’ Versus ‘Deeply Troubling’

National Mining Association President Rich Nolan said in a statement that the industry group would appeal the ruling, citing the imperative of energy supplies that are cheap and secure.

“This is a deeply disappointing decision with energy-driven inflation, energy affordability, and energy security top concerns for Americans,” Nolan said.

“Denying access to affordable, secure energy during an energy affordability crisis is deeply troubling,” he continued, adding that “Americans need the energy affordability and energy security buttressed by coal production on federal lands.”

In 2017 and 2018, the most recent years of available data, the U.S. government sold leases for 134 million tons of coal on public land in six states, according to Interior Department figures.

Environmental groups hailed the court’s decision and called on the Biden administration to go further and terminate existing coal leases.

“This is a significant victory for our climate and the communities across the country who are impacted by our continued reliance on this dirty and dangerous fuel, but we cannot stop here,” Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office, said in a statement.

“While this ruling reinstates the moratorium on new coal leasing on public lands, the Biden administration must go further by urgently phasing out the existing coal leases that are destroying our planet,” she added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Congressional Budget Office report found that the Internal Revenue Service will collect billions of dollars from auditing low- and middle-income Americans under the White House-backed “Inflation Reduction Act,” contradicting Biden administration claims, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Fox News confirmed the report, finding the CBO informed congressional Republicans that, under the act, audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will account for about $20 billion in additional revenue.

The news comes after high-ranking Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, assured Americans that the IRS would not increase audits of people earning under $400,000. The Inflation Reduction Act, which on Sunday passed the Senate, allows the IRS to hire up to 87,000 new agents, making it larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Control combined. Democrats shut down an amendment that would have prevented agents from increasing audits on middle- and low-income Americans.

The bill is expected to pass the House on Friday.

News of the CBO report also comes as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business found the bill will have an “impact on inflation [that] is statistically indistinguishable from zero” even as it raises taxes on Americans and decreases GDP for the next decade.

Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the bill, with Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) saying that “only the Democrats would call a bill that doubles the size of the IRS, raises taxes, and spends billions on a green energy slush fund the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.'”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.

One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)

In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

Banks, federal agencies, and ESG investors handicap the expansion of America’s energy supply

The oil and gas industry is looking to the future with caution, and plans for expanding production of fossil fuels appear to be limited. 

At the Enercom Energy Investment conference in Denver this week, the oft-repeated mantra among CEOs was that they will use the bulk of their profits to pay down debt and return money to investors through stock buybacks and dividend payments, with significantly less emphasis on major new capital investments. In addition, executives highlighted their commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for producing cleaner energy and addressing social justice issues. 

As Democrats in Congress prepare to allocate $369 billion via the Inflation Reduction Act to subsidize electric cars and wind and solar energy, America’s oil and gas producers face an uphill battle. A shrinking supply of capital, a hostile regulatory environment, and shortages of materials and labor are creating significant hurdles against new drilling. 

“I don’t want subsidies for our industry; we don’t need subsidies in our industry,” Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, told The Epoch Times. “We just don’t want barriers standing in the way of us providing the energy that people in the world want and need.”

Wall Street Steps Back from Fossil Fuel Financing

Among those barriers are banks and investors cutting back financing for new fossil fuel projects, due to both economic and political factors. In line with the ESG movement, 114 banks, collectively representing 38 percent of global banking assets, signed the Commitment Statement of the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, in which they pledged to “transition” their lending portfolios to reduce greenhouse-gas (GNG) emissions and reach net-zero GNG emissions by 2050 or sooner. American banks that signed this pledge include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

Another global money club, Climate Action 100+, is “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.” It has 700 investment companies as members, representing $68 trillion in assets, and includes asset managers such as BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, Invesco, Fisher, and PIMCO; insurers such as Aegon, Allianz, and AXA; state pension funds like CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York State Common Retirement Fund, New York City Pension Funds, and Maryland State Retirement and Pension System; and university endowment funds from Harvard, MIT, and University of Rochester, among others.

In response, West Virginia and Texas recently barred banks that discriminate against fossil fuel companies from getting municipal banking contracts in their respective states. On July 28, for example, West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore announced that JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo would be placed on a Restricted Financial Institution List because they “are engaged in boycotts of fossil fuel companies, according to new state law, and are no longer eligible to enter into state banking contracts.”

“Each financial institution placed on the Restricted Financial Institution List today has published written environmental or social policies categorically limiting commercial relations with energy companies engaged in certain coal mining, extraction or utilization activities, rather than considering the financial or risk profile for each company,” Moore said in an official statement. “While the ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ or ‘ESG’ movement might be politically popular in California or New York, financial institutions need to understand their practices are hurting people across West Virginia.”

Last week, 19 state attorneys general sent letters to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declaring that his efforts to impose the ESG agenda on companies whose shares it owns run counter to its fiduciary obligations to pensioners, intentionally harm America’s energy companies, and, to the extent that financial companies collude in this effort, raise anti-trust concerns. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with approximately $10 trillion in assets under management. 

In a letter to Fink, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote, “BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote. BlackRock’s past public commitments indicate that it has used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States.”

Global ESG Clubs Leave Oil and Gas Industry ‘Starved for Capital’

Oil and gas executives say the push to divest from fossil fuels by global organizations like Climate Action 100+, the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is having its intended effect.  

“Our industry is being starved for capital,” Anthony Gallegos, CEO of Independence Contract Drilling, told The Epoch Times, noting that banks are increasingly unwilling to provide revolving lines of credit or asset-based lending facilities [ABLFs] to the oil and gas industry. “There’s probably a third as many banks today that are willing to provide revolvers and ABLFs to [oil and gas] service companies compared to what there would have been six years ago,” he said. “There are investors, there are endowments, there are limited partnerships, some of which have historically invested in energy, that today have a mandate that they cannot make investments in fossil fuel industries.”

“The concern that the State of West Virginia, the State of Texas, and other states have had about financial institutions trying to dissuade investment I think is very real,” Wright said. “What that impacts most is the smaller or rising players that count on bank debt financing and reserve-based lending [RBL]. There is massively less RBL capital today than a few years ago; there’s a number of big European banks that were players in this space that have pulled out; there are American banks that want to show a decline in the percent of their portfolio that’s in oil and gas; there is less private equity capital because university endowments and CalPERS, CalSTRS, and other state pension funds, are divesting from oil and gas.”

Curtailing credit to smaller, private oil and gas companies is particularly harmful, Wright said, because they are currently the most active in developing new production. By contrast to the larger, public oil and gas companies, which are cautiously investing in new growth, “The private companies are investing relatively aggressively. Sixty percent of the drilling and fracking activity right now in the United States is private oil and gas companies,” Wright said. 

In response to state actions, several U.S. banks recently denied they are doing anything to reduce financing for fossil fuels. Goldman Sachs stated in a July letter to West Virginia’s treasurer that it provided more than $118 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies. JPMorgan wrote that it had more than $42 billion in credit exposure to oil and gas companies. 

In an apparent reversal of BlackRock’s position in 2020 that “we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” BlackRock announced in May that it will likely support fewer climate-related corporate votes in 2022 than it did in 2021.

Investors Are Risk-Averse After Oil Price Volatility, Bankruptcies

In addition to the ESG movement, the oil and gas industry is also emerging from a period of over-investment in new fracking projects a decade ago, which together with increased output in the Middle East caused oil and gas prices to fall sharply in 2016 and then collapse in 2020 during pandemic lockdowns, forcing many oil and gas companies into bankruptcy. This has caused many investors to take a more cautious approach, particularly now that the economy is slowing and oil and gas prices have fallen from their peaks in the spring. 

“I don’t think you’re ever going to see capital flow into this industry the way it did in 2012 through 2014,” Gallegos said. “Investors have made it clear: ‘We’re not here to fund your growth just for growth’s sake; if we’re going to give you money, you’re going to have to demonstrate a pathway toward generating returns where we’re seeing something back as investors.’”

Accordingly, CEOs are now more focused on returning cash to their equity and debt investors. 

Fitch Ratings Director Neil Stirrat said that oil and gas companies were “exercising capital discipline” and using profits to repay debt and repurchase equity, with only a “marginal” increase in capital expenditures. This increase, about 15 percent on average across the industry, was approximately equal to the increase in companies’ costs due to inflation. 

Fitch noted that industry credit ratings were generally going in a positive direction, as oil and gas companies reduced leverage, extended loan maturities, and improved their financial health. Whereas in 2020, Fitch downgraded the debt of 20 oil and gas companies, while upgrading four; in 2021, 13 companies were upgraded and only two downgraded. Year to date in 2022, Fitch upgraded the debt ratings of 10 oil and gas companies, with no downgrades. The average debt ratio for North American oil and gas companies, calculated as debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), came down from 4-to-1 in 2016 to 1-to-1 today.

A Hostile Regulatory Environment for Fossil Fuels

In addition to less generous investors, America’s fossil fuel companies faced a hostile regulatory environment. A June 28 report from the Heritage Foundation, for example, noted a rush by oil and gas companies in the final months of 2020 to secure drilling permits before the Biden administration took control. 

“To date, Biden is the only president in modern history not to have held a single oil and gas lease sale on federal lands despite clear direction from Congress to do so quarterly,” the report stated. “While the Department of Interior is being forced by court order to hold a lease sale this quarter, it increased fees by 50 percent and decreased the amount of available acreage for drilling by 80 percent—even as it cut fees and red tape for renewable ‘green’ energy production.”

In addition, Biden has not completed any offshore lease sales. By contrast, the Trump administration sold eight offshore leases, and the Obama administration sold 29. However, in 2021, the Biden administration issued more permits to drill on federal lands than the Trump administration did in its first year in office, though issuance of drilling permits has declined sharply in 2022.

Biden has also used other agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to discourage investment in new oil and gas projects. The SEC issued a mandate in March that all listed companies must produce audited reports detailing their fossil fuel emissions, as well as those of suppliers and customers, together with their plans to reduce them. The SEC claimed that it was compelled to issue this mandate because “investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures.”

Government Spends Hundreds of Billions to Support Wind and Solar

Besides government policies and global money-club boycotts, the hundreds of billions in subsidies for renewable energy further undermine oil, gas, and coal companies’ ability to compete. This includes the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the invocation by Biden of the Defense Production Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, currently being debated in the House of Representatives after being passed by the Senate.

In return for voting for green subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) reportedly negotiated a “side deal” that Congress would later approve a lessening of the regulatory burden for fossil fuels, including more congressional action to attempt to force the Biden administration to sell more oil and gas leases and issue new drilling permits. However, many doubt that Manchin will ever receive his part of the bargain, given that Democrats were virtually unanimous in rejecting a GOP-backed bill to streamline permit approvals last week.  

The version of the Inflation Reduction Act that Manchin approved even granted the EPA the right to regulate carbon emissions. This was a critical issue because the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in West Virginia v. EPA stated that the EPA’s decree that electric utilities must transition to renewable energy and away from coal and other fossil fuels was not legal because Congress never gave the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act would have given the EPA this authority, invalidating the Supreme Court’s decision, which had ruled in favor of Manchin’s home state. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) offered an amendment, which all Democrats, including Manchin, voted against, to remove from the bill the provision that granted sweeping new powers to the EPA. When that effort failed, Capito then challenged the provision’s compliance with budget reconciliation rules, which allow the Senate to bypass the filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with Capito, and the language granting the EPA new authority was removed from the bill. 

“You could make the argument, and I’m sure Manchin would make it, that we’re getting some of those barriers out of the way for hydrocarbon development, and that would on the margin be positive,” Wright said. “But I balance that with the certainty that we’re going to spend $300 billion subsidizing unreliable, more expensive, grid-destabilizing energy, and if you subsidize it heavily enough, you’re going to get it no matter how destructive it is to our grid. No matter how negative it is, the subsidies are big enough that it is in the economic interests of those parties to build it, and we’re going to pay the price.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and remains in office under Joe Biden.

In a recently published excerpt from her forthcoming book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” New Yorker writer Susan Glasser recounts Milley’s service during the Trump administration.

Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.

There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.

The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.

The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”

In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”

Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.

During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”

“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.

It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”

Woke Gen. Milley Quietly Revises Wildly Incorrect Prediction He Gave Congress in February

“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”

Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.

“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”

“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.

“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.

“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.

“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”

Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.

Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.

Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”

Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.

“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”

Sen. @RandPaul tells me why he believes Milley’s alleged actions could have “caused an accidental war.” pic.twitter.com/81YadLJbbv

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 15, 2021

I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.

Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.

Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.

A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink prioritizes left-wing political initiatives over shareholder returns and is jeopardizing the retirement of middle class workers with pensions.

Fink’s embrace of environmental, social, and governance investment policies, known as ESG, potentially runs afoul of several laws, the AGs charge in a letter sent to Fink. Instead of managing state pension funds and finding the best returns on investment, the AGs write, BlackRock uses “citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements” such as various climate initiatives.

Republicans are increasingly targeting asset managers such as BlackRock over their pro-ESG policies. They allege that these asset managers are transforming into backdoor channels for liberals to implement policies outside of the legislative process and leaving aside their principle, legal duty: maximizing returns for shareholders.

Critics of ESG say the policies are often arbitrary and can hurt a company’s bottom line. Moreover, ESG metrics can be gamed. Many companies, such as Tesla, receive a high ESG score under one metric while they rank poorly on another.

“Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field,” the AGs write. “As a firm, Blackrock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management.”

BlackRock manages an estimated $10 trillion in assets, a number larger than many first-world economies. Billions of those dollars come from U.S. pension funds. That extraordinary amount of money also gives billionaire Fink, a large donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes, tremendous influence over companies BlackRock invests in. Should Blackrock pull investments from a company over its climate or racial policies, two categories often included in ESG metrics, the company’s stock price would plummet.

The AGs assert that when BlackRock engages with companies over climate practices, it violates the states’ law about maximizing financial returns. For example, if BlackRock representatives pressure a company CEO to adopt a more expensive way to source energy in order to meet climate goals, that company may post lower profits. That drop in profits may translate to a lower stock price and harm pension funds invested in that company.

BlackRock has emerged as an explicit leader in the push “to retire fossil fuels,” the AGs allege. Part of that may be purely ideological or because of a desire to “attract investment from European or left-wing pension funds,” the AGs add. Regardless of motivation, BlackRock is obligated per law to only seek the best financial return on their investments.

Pressure from asset managers such as BlackRock appears effective. Sixty percent of respondents to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey last year said “investor pressure” was the number one reason that oil companies such as Exxon are not expanding operations.

The Biden administration recently picked BlackRock Investment Institute chairman Thomas Donilon to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. During his time at the BlackRock Investment Institute, Donilon called on Americans to triple their investments in China, the world’s largest polluter.

West Virginia announced last month that it would no longer do business with Wall Street firms that boycott the fossil fuel industry. One of those firms included BlackRock. The ban will cost the firms $18 billion a year, according to the state’s treasury office.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Matt Cartwright, who has a history of tax delinquency, endorses bill that more than doubles agency’s size

Congressman Matt Cartwright has a history of tax delinquency. That isn’t stopping the Pennsylvania Democrat from backing a plan that would sic an army of nearly 90,000 new IRS agents on the American people.

Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest that stemmed from late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week. The incident was not his first tax-related mishap—from 2013 to 2018, the Democrat racked up thousands of dollars in penalties and interest related to his tax delinquencies. Still, Cartwright on Monday announced his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ $430 billion spending bill that does little to fight inflation and gives the IRS $80 billion to hire up to 87,000 additional employees.

Cartwright’s history of tax delinquency and subsequent support for the bill could haunt the congressman as he faces a difficult reelection bid against GOP challenger Jim Bognet. Cartwright trails the Republican by 1 point with 9 percent of voters undecided, internal polling obtained by the Free Beacon shows. 

Cartwright will also have to overcome Joe Biden’s historic unpopularity, which has even extended to the president’s hometown of Scranton. In Cartwright’s eighth district, which includes Scranton, just 38 percent of voters approve of Biden, compared with 60 percent who disapprove, the Free Beacon revealed Wednesday. Despite Biden’s hometown woes, Cartwright is standing by the president—unlike some of his House Democratic colleagues, the congressman has publicly backed Biden to run for reelection in 2024. Cartwright was also a staunch Biden supporter during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, having said in 2019 that he was “honored” to endorse his “friend, northeastern PA hometown boy, Joe Biden for president.”

Cartwright did not return a request for comment. His Monday statement voicing support for Democrats’ latest spending bill did not include a comment on its IRS-related provisions. Should that bill pass the House, the IRS will receive $80 billion to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The hiring spree would more than double the size of the agency’s workforce, making the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined, the Free Beacon reported. Bognet has railed against the proposal, arguing that the Inflation Reduction Act should instead be called the “Audit America Act.”

“With that many new IRS agents, every small business can expect to be audited,” Bognet said Monday. “We must stop this spending spree, and we must stop this auditing spree.”

Beyond the Cartwright-backed bill’s proposed IRS expansion, even liberal economists don’t believe the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, whom Biden himself routinely cites, said in a new report that the legislation will cause no change in inflation until the third quarter of 2023, when Americans can expect to enjoy a .01 percent decrease.

Cartwright is nevertheless touting the bill as a win for Democrats. In his Monday statement, he called the bill “landmark legislation” that “the American people have been waiting for.”

Cartwright’s race against Bognet is not his first. The Democrat narrowly defeated Bognet by roughly 3 points in 2020, a result that marked the tightest reelection bid of his career. Bognet has thus far raised $1.2 million to Cartwright’s $3.5 million.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

China and Russia are the clear winners of the the carbon-reducing provisions in the Democrats’ latest spending bill that aim to cut fossil fuel emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to former President Donald Trump’s erstwhile economic adviser.

Stephen Moore, a Trump-era adviser and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD in a recent interview that the climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—now en route to final House approval—would hamstring American energy production and benefit adversaries.

“The two big winners from this bill clearly are Russia and China,” Moore said, adding that he thinks the bill is not just bad for the U.S. economy but it’s “really bad for national security to give up our energy dominance.”

Moore pointed out that China—which is responsible for around five times more carbon emissions than the United States—is now building dozens of massive coal plants and “obviously, they don’t care about climate change.”

As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Russia also stands to gain from efforts to accelerate curbs on U.S. carbon emissions as that would keep crude prices elevated and bolster Russia’s revenue stream, Moore said.

The economist argued that the Biden administration has “basically declared a war on our fossil fuels,” while pointing to Germany’s “experiment” of going all-in on clean energy a decade or so ago that he said “basically led to a complete economic collapse.”

“Let’s not follow in their footsteps,” he said.

Markets or Government Subsidies?

The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate and energy provisions, with measures like tax credits for buying electric vehicles, making homes more energy efficient, and installing residential solar panels and battery systems.

The measure also reinstates the superfund tax on crude and imported oil, which could lead to higher energy bills for households, and it includes a fee of up to $1,500 per ton for methane emissions.

Overall, the bill is set to more than triple power production from wind, solar, and energy storage capacity installations, according to an analysis from the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

“More simply, it means that roughly 40 percent of the country’s electricity will come from wind, solar, and energy storage by 2030,” ACP said in the analysis, which projects that the Inflation Reduction Act will, overall, deliver an estimated 525 to 550 gigawatts of new non-fossil fuel power by the end of the decade, up from the current 211 gigawatts.

The bill is also expected to generate over $900 billion in economic activity via the construction of clean energy projects between now and 2030, according to the association.

Moore said that he doesn’t object to renewable sources of energy but argued that market forces rather than government subsidies should be their key driver.

“We didn’t have the government subsidize Henry Ford when he invented cars,” Moore said. “We didn’t have the the federal government subsidize Standard Oil when it started making … gas plentiful and cheap for everyone. So why do we need to have the government throw hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in this industry?”

Moore also argued that, contrary to what its name implies, the bill won’t reduce inflation.

Inflation Reduction?

The Inflation Reduction Act “will increase inflation,” Moore said, adding that, “the reason we have 9 percent inflation today is because of the massive Biden spending spree.”

“There’s two things you don’t want to do when you have massive inflation. You don’t want to spend more government money. And when you’re in a recession, you don’t want to raise taxes. This bill makes both those mistakes,” he said.

Some disagree with Moore about the bill’s impact on inflation.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in an Aug. 9 interview in The Harvard Gazette that “the tendency of this bill will be to reduce inflation because over time it reduces demand by bringing down budget deficits.”

Summers also argued that it would bolster the supply of key commodities in the energy sector, helping push down prices.

Other backers of the bill, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), say the government subsidies for clean energy will have a knock-on effect and boost private investment in the sector and so accelerate cutting carbon emissions.

“This is going to be more massive than people realize,” Khanna told Politico in a recent interview.

“If the government invests $300 billion in solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps, that has the potential to unlock trillions of dollars in private sector investment in climate,” he added.

Moore argued that the bill is less about the environment and more about money.

“This is a massive, now trillion-dollar, industry. This is about money, folks, this doesn’t have anything to do about cleaning up the environment or keeping our environment safe,” he said.

“This is massive numbers of huge companies and huge investors. They’re going to get very, very rich off of these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies,” Moore added.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a fossil fuels industry group, identified six problematic provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that it argued would undermine the industry’s ability to promote energy security for American consumers.

Besides the superfund tax and methane emission fees, the API also noted additional costs imposed on energy companies with the bill’s minimum book tax provisions and increased rental fees on onshore leases.

The group also panned the bill’s omitting of comprehensive permitting reform, which API believes is key for bolstering domestic energy production, lowering costs for consumers, and helping the country meet its emission objectives.

“Glaringly absent in the bill is permitting reform, which is required for America’s infrastructure needs and to bolster critical oil, natural gas, and renewable supplies to meet our current and future energy demand,” said Mike Sommers, API president and CEO, in a statement.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”

“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”

Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.

In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.

“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”

Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”

‘Weaponization of the Justice System’

“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.

Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”

The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.

“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”

America ‘No Longer Respected’

In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”

Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”

“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.

“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.

“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.

“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”

‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’

Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”

“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.

“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.

“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.

“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.

The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.

Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.

“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.

Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”

Soaring Inflation, Recession

During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.

“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.

A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.

Worse Than Recession

In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.

“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.

“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”

During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.

“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.

Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.

During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.

Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.

Tax Hikes

According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.

This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.

In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.

Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.

“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.

“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.

‘We Have to Win’

During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.

“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.

“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.

“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.

The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Supply chain woes have more companies eyeing manufacturing here at home

It wasn’t long ago that Sherman, Texas, might have been best known as the birthplace of Buck Owens, the late country-and-western star, or as the home of Austin College, one of the state’s oldest colleges. More recently, however, the city of nearly 44,000 people located about 65 miles north of Dallas has had something else to brag about: a growing reputation as a center of high-tech manufacturing.

In June, Taiwan-based semiconductor manufacturer GlobalWafers announced plans to build a state-of-the-art, $5 billion silicon wafer factory in Sherman, which beat competing sites in South Korea and Ohio for the facility. The plant will produce advanced, 300-millimeter wafers—which are currently manufactured in Asia—and could support as many as 1,500 jobs over time.

The GlobalWafers announcement came on the heels of Dallas-based Texas Instruments saying that it would put up as many as four new semiconductor (or chip) manufacturing plants in Sherman, potentially investing $30 billion and employing up to 3,000 people. Before selecting the North Texas city, the company had considered Singapore for the facilities, which also will produce 300-millimeter wafers.

The latest developments are a far cry from previous decades in Sherman, when factories there making surgical dressings and automotive glass products were shuttered, with some of the jobs going to other countries.

“We’ve suffered our ups and down,” Sherman Mayor David Plyler said. “But as the economy changed and we started telling our story, things turned. Now folks want to be here.”

Sherman’s success at luring new factories underscores how some cities and towns across the country are enjoying a manufacturing renaissance. That renaissance comes after the United States spent decades shipping manufacturing jobs overseas—mainly to lower-cost suppliers in East Asia, especially China. In 1990, the United States made 37 percent of the world’s computer chips, a figure that since has fallen to about 12 percent. Now, however, some of the manufacturing is coming back, promising communities new jobs and new life.

The return of manufacturing to the United States, known as “reshoring,” got a kick-start in about 2010. But it took on new urgency after COVID-19 lockdowns revealed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Shipping costs soared and ports were logjammed, resulting in shortages of products ranging from masks and toilet paper to computer chips, which are critical components in everything from smartphones and computers to appliances and automobiles.

“You’ve got by far the most momentum we’ve had at any time in the 12 years we’ve been tracking it,” said Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes the “return-manufacturing-home” message. “Where I’ve had to go to companies in the past and sort of hustle them, now I get more calls from companies saying, ‘I’ve been told we have to get our work out of China and find a source in the U.S. Can you help me find a source?’”

While other kinds of manufacturing are experiencing a U.S. revival as well—there are plans for more than a dozen new electric vehicle battery factories in the South and Midwest, for example—semiconductor plants have taken center stage lately, in part because of the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act.

The bipartisan measure, which passed the House and Senate last week and was headed to Joe Biden’s desk, provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for domestic chipmaking. Both GlobalWafers and California-based Intel, which plans to build two big semiconductor plants in Licking County, Ohio, had stated that the projects in Sherman and Ohio might not have proceeded as planned unless the legislation was successful. The Biden administration pushed the measure partly on national security grounds, citing U.S. reliance on China for “mature” chips, as well as China’s threats against the island of Taiwan, which the United States has depended on for the most advanced chips.

Offshoring Declines

As recently as the 1970s, the United States had a robust manufacturing sector and balanced trade. The country ran a trade surplus of $8.9 billion in 1975, and manufacturing employment in June 1979 climbed to a record 19.5 million. After that, however, both figures went south. Manufacturing employment plunged to 11.5 million in 2010 before recovering some to 12.5 million in 2021. And the export-import trade balance has been underwater for more than 45 years, with a record deficit of about $860 billion in 2021.

It’s also been about four decades since U.S. companies started “offshoring” jobs overseas. Attracted by the lower cost of labor in Latin America and Asian countries such as China, manufacturers in industries including textiles, steel, and electronics decided to relocate some of their operations there, ostensibly to stay competitive by paring production costs. By 2011, however, an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group was questioning this strategy. The influential consulting firm stated that China’s labor-cost advantage was quickly eroding and predicted that, by 2015, “manufacturing in some parts of the U.S. will be just as economical as manufacturing in China.”

Companies such as Caterpillar and General Electric got the message. Over the past 12 years, the rate of offshoring has declined, while the rate of “reshoring plus foreign direct investment (FDI)” in the United States has been accelerating, Moser said. Combined, the latter two categories were responsible for a record 261,000 manufacturing job announcements last year, up from 6,000 in 2010, he said. That brought the total number of jobs announced because of reshoring and FDI since 2010 to more than 1.3 million.

Most of the jobs came back from Asia. Eliminating the trade deficit by making in the United States what’s currently being imported would result over time in a 40 percent increase in domestic manufacturing, generating 5 million more manufacturing jobs, he said.

The best candidates for reshoring include companies in those manufacturing sectors with high freight costs, volatile demand, frequent design changes, and processes that can be automated, Moser said. Among them are machinery, transportation equipment, appliances, electric batteries, semiconductors, personal protection equipment, pharmaceuticals, and rare earth materials. To help companies better understand the benefits of reshoring, his nonprofit has developed something called a “Total Cost of Ownership Estimator” (TCO). The TCO is a free online tool that calculates the “true” total cost of outsourced products, including such factors as overhead, balance sheets, corporate strategy—and risk.

Risks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine pale in comparison to the risk of China “decoupling,” which these days hangs over companies like the sword of Damocles, according to Moser.

“I tell companies, ‘Figure out what you can bring back now, and get it back here now—or if you have to, get it to Mexico,” he said. “Because if the [expletive] hits the fan and nothing is coming from China to anyone, you’re going to be one of 30,000 companies trying to find a foundry or a machine shop, and you’re not going to get it.”

Hitendra Chaturvedi, a professor of supply chain management at Arizona State University, agrees that Mexico is a good alternative location for U.S. companies exiting China. “Nearshoring” from China to Mexico—as well as to Latin America and Canada—would make supply more accessible, he said. And manufacturing in Mexico is about 20 percent cheaper than in China.

Besides considering the advantages of nearshoring, Chaturvedi suggested a more targeted approach to reshoring itself.

“We should not take a shotgun approach to this,” he said. “You don’t want low-paying sewing jobs coming back to the U.S. You want high-paying jobs. I want us to focus strategically on sectors that we want to onshore.”

‘Just Getting Started’

For its part, Sherman attracted the two new chip facilities with incentives such as tax abatements, in Texas Instruments’ case, and a package of cash, cheap land, and other breaks for GlobalWafers. The Taiwan-based company also received a $15 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, the state’s “deal-closing” fund, and is eligible for more incentives under the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS subsidies should also benefit Texas Instruments’s Sherman projects (as well as South Korea-based Samsung’s plans to build multiple semiconductor plants in the Austin area).

Plyler said his city also touted its ample workforce, abundant water supply, “business-friendly” approach, and diversified economy. Among the city’s top employers are Tyson Foods, beverage company Sunny Delight, and II-VI, a high-tech optical firm and Apple supplier.

“We’ve taken a lot of hassles out of City Hall for developers and people who want to come in and start a business,” he said. “We walk them through the process of getting permitted, sometimes in a fast-track manner. Making that process easy goes a long way in getting some of these projects off the ground.”

As a result of Sherman’s success, smaller towns around the city are preparing to accommodate the Texas Instruments and GlobalWafers workers with new housing, and industrial facilities for high-tech suppliers and vendors “are really hopping” in the region, the Dallas Business Journal reported.

“We’re expecting a lot of businesses to fill in,” Plyler said. “We’re expecting a lot of new restaurants, a lot of quality-of-life improvements. I think we’re just getting started.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Revisionist powers, nations whose leaders seek to undermine American leadership in the world, seem to be on the march.

Russia persists with its heavy bombardments in Ukraine. Its army holds on, at least for now, not only in eastern Ukraine but also on the Black Sea coast, shutting off Ukraine from supplies and trade with the rest of the world.

China is threatening retaliation for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. The regime of President Xi Jinping may be mollified for the moment by the Biden White House’s hints that it wasn’t their idea, or deterred by the staging of U.S. naval forces nearby. But there’s no doubt that China has much more military capacity to attack Taiwan and inflict damage on U.S. forces than when Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan in 1997.

Iran, meanwhile, is showing little interest in Biden administration efforts to reinstate the JCPOA, the nuclear pact signed by the Obama administration in 2015 and from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018. The mullah regime seems unblushingly intent on achieving nuclear weapons capability.

In reflecting on these threats, I am struck by how much longer the leaders of each of these revisionist polities have been in power, how secure their hold on it has been, how short the tenure has been and how weak the hold of elected leaders here in the United States and among our allies.

Consider Vladimir Putin. When he took power in the last hours of 1999, he was unknown beyond Moscow and not expected to be around a generation later. Yet he’s still there 22 years and eight months later, longer than the reign of Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) and not that many years less than the 29 years of Joseph Stalin (1924-1953). There’s speculation that the 69-year-old Putin’s hold on power has been endangered by the failure of his apparent plan to absorb Ukraine, but last year, he signed a law that would allow him to serve until 2036.

Speaking of changing term limits, China abolished its limit of two five-year terms in 2018. Xi is expected to be granted another 10 years in power this fall. Those term limits were established by Deng Xiaoping, a close observer and sometime victim of the violent lurches in the nearly 27-year rule of Mao Zedong (1949-1976).

Now Xi, at age 69, is positioned to challenge that record, though not that of the 18th-century Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796). But Xi may want to stick around for the 100th anniversary of the Communist takeover in 2049, at which point the regime hopes to become the world’s dominant power, according to Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon.”

The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, is already a record-setter. He has held that position since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989, 33 years ago. That’s nearly as long as the 37-year reign of the Shah Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979).

There’s an obvious contrast here with Western leaders. The two most recent American presidents won a majority of electoral votes by margins of 77,000 and 42,000 popular votes in three states. Though there’s some continuity in their administrations’ policies, they’re not on speaking terms. Oh, and they’re also currently 76 and 79 years old.

Other Western countries are in similar flux. Britain awaits a vote of some 160,000 Conservative Party members that will determine who becomes prime minister next month. France’s Emmanuel Macron lost his parliamentary majority last month. Germany’s Olaf Scholz, in office since December, leads an unwieldy coalition. Japan’s prime minister lacks the counsel of his long-lasting predecessor Shinzo Abe, assassinated July 8.

Successive Western leaders have supposed that they can change the behavior of revisionist leaders. American China policy since Henry Kissinger assumed that China could be prodded to be more open, more democratic, less aggressive. It didn’t work much before Xi, and under Xi, China has been moving in the opposite direction.

The first three presidents this century sought some kind of reset with Russia, and Donald Trump had some positive words for Putin (but the charge he colluded with Russia was always a hoax). But these approaches never worked out better than Hillary Clinton’s mislabeled reset button. As for Iran, presidents including Reagan, Obama and now Biden have reached out for better relations — and have gotten nothing for their concessions.

Putin and Xi are both 69, and Khamenei, the only one older than Biden and Trump, is 83. None will last forever. But deaths are hard to forecast and regime change even harder. There are underlying geopolitical forces behind Russia’s and China’s challenge to American leadership, and a religious motivation behind Iran’s.

The downside risk is that revisionist leaders, or Western mistakes, may plunge much of the world into destructive war. That has happened in Ukraine, although the violence is minuscule next to the carnage of the 20th century’s two world wars. The negative potential in Taiwan could be worse, and the reverberations of communist conquest more profound, as defense analyst Elbridge Colby argues. But those are subjects for another column.

In the meantime, let’s hope recent events have made the West’s wobbly buttressed leaders skeptical of the possibilities of enticing the revisionist leaders to see things our way. They’ve played this game before.

SOURCE: Right and Free

Small businesses seeking to grow their overseas sales are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of loan guarantees by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EX-IM), but a new analysis by a nonprofit government watchdog finds most of the funds go to corporate giants and corrupt regimes overseas.

“Small businesses, supposedly the intended beneficiary of the Export-Import Bank, received only $54.8 billion of the over $234 billion in total assistance since 2007, or about 23 percent” of the bank’s total funding, according to the report by Open The Books (OTB), a Chicago-based nonprofit that monitors government spending.

By filing more than 40,000 federal Freedom of Information Act requests and posting the checkbooks of 49 state governments, OTB has posted to the internet more than $6 trillion in public spending. The non-profit’s goal is to “post every dime in real-time.”

By far the biggest beneficiary of EX-IM lending is the Boeing Corporation, the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer and one of the world’s most successful designers and builders of commercial airliners.

Boeing’s headquarters is currently in Chicago, but the company is planning a move to Arlington, Virginia, in the near future.

“The Export-Import Bank has been nicknamed ‘Boeing’s Bank’ by critics, and it is easy to see why. From 2007-2021, the aircraft giant received 33 percent of all of the Export-Import Bank’s assistance, totaling over $66.4 billion, while the second largest vendor received just over $5 billion. That’s more than all small businesses received combined,” the OTB report said.

“Boeing subsidiary Boeing Satellite Systems International reaped another $1.4 billion in assistance. Major international airline companies like Ryanair, Emirates Airlines, and Air Canada have all received assistance for Boeing purchases. Boeing employs a small army of 18 lobbyists to advocate for the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

The second largest beneficiary of EX-IM funding is the Reston, Virginia-based Bechtel Corporation, which ranked only behind Boeing despite getting assistance for only seven contracts since 2007.

“The engineering and construction company received just over $5 billion from the bank for petroleum engineering in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and India, as well as with governments like Serbia and Kenya,” according to the OTB report.

General Electric Corporation and its subsidiaries whose exports of industrial engines and machinery in over 265 transactions earned them third place on the list of top vendors. The report said GEC got $4.7 billion in assistance between General Electric International Operations Company and General Electric Energy Parts alone.

About EX-IM’s overseas funding activities the report said, “the mandate of EX-IM is ‘filling the gaps’ to provide liquidity—facilitating the wheels of commerce. [A total of] 147 countries have received some amount of aid since 2007.

“While the United States sent billions of aid to some of the most corrupt countries and repressive regimes in the world, equally disturbing is the amount that went to wealthy countries that don’t need our aid.”

Ranked by countries, the largest beneficiary of U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed EX-IM loans is Nigeria, ruled by a regime that is ranked among the world’s most corrupt. “Ranked 149th in the world on a scale from least to most corrupt by Transparency International in 2020, importers in Nigeria received over $570 million from the Export-Import Bank.

“It would be a miracle if any of those dollars actually reached their intended recipient,” the OTB report said.

China, with the world’s second-largest economy, was also a large beneficiary of EX-IM resources.

“Second to only the United States in [Gross Domestic Product] GDP, businesses in China nonetheless received more than $6.4 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank assistance. Even amidst Donald Trump’s trade war with China, $128,062,638.20 flowed to China from 2017 to 2020,” the report observed.

Russia and Turkey are also big beneficiaries of EX-IM funding.

“At least part of the over $1.9 billion that went to Russia likely went to line the pockets of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s oligarchs, who control most of the commerce in the country.

“Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, was recently sanctioned by the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though they were approved for $29,103,807 of assistance from the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

“Human Rights Watch warned in 2021 that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been ‘dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms in Turkey on a scale unprecedented in the 18 years he has been in office.’ Still, the Export-Import Bank has sent over $6.2 billion to Turkey since 2007,” OTB reported.

The EX-IM bank currently has 396 employees, with 321 of them, or 81 percent, being made more than $100,000 annually. The highest paid employee made $199,300.

The bank has been the source of controversy for nearly a decade, with conservative Republicans demanding it is abolished as a corrupt example of crony capitalism, and Democrats defending it as an essential tool of U.S. foreign policy.

The then-Republican-led Congress allowed EX-IM to expire in 2015 but reversed itself five months later.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Democrats and Republicans need to rein in spending: Heritage Foundation’s Joel Griffith

With raging inflation and the Democrat-led Congress gathering enough Senate support to pass billions more in spending, Joel Griffith, a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD TV that if the United States does not rein in its irresponsible fiscal actions, the nation is headed for a worse economic crisis.

Griffith said that raising taxes on the wealthy will not get the federal government out of the financial hole it’s dug for itself over the past few decades, particularly the spending that’s occurred in the last two years.

“The only way to pay for all this would be to print the money, to borrow the money, or to raise taxes on the middle class. There’s no easy way out of this,” Griffith said during the interview. “And politicians don’t have an appetite to correct the problem. So, there’s going to be a crisis if we do not correct our ways. It’s just a matter of time.”

By technical definition, the United States already has entered a recession, but the Biden administration continues to deny the facts.

“Everybody loves the goodies, and now we’re suffering the consequences. And it’s so important for people to realize that the economic misery that we’re feeling right now is directly related to the mistakes that were made in the past two years, with shutdowns, with spending, and with printing,” said Griffith.

The U.S. government’s debt now amounts to more than $30 trillion, which calculates to $100,000 per person, and with current interest rates, it’s an additional $1,000 in debt, per person, being added each year, said Griffith.

Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction’ Bill

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on July 27 that they had enough votes to pass a measure called the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” (pdf), which seeks to spend some $433 billion—about $369 billion toward energy and climate programs over the next 10 years, and $64 billion toward extending federal subsidies for three more years for some people buying private health insurance.

Meanwhile, many from both sides of the aisle viewed Manchin as a fiscal moderate who would not opt for further government spending, especially during a recession.

Griffith, however, said that he is not surprised by Manchin supporting liberal legislation that will expand the federal government, and hurt his own state of West Virginia, because he has observed that the senator supports liberal policies.

“We know what [Manchin has] supported in the past. And he has been for expanding the size and the scope of government. So I’m disappointed that he has agreed to a package that is going to dramatically increase taxes on businesses, [that] it’s going to actually include more taxes on fossil fuels. And it’s going to even further socialize our health care sector,” said Griffith.

The U.S. consumer is already paying, via taxes and inflation, the trillions of dollars the government spent and printed in the name of pandemic relief, said Griffith. This new package will only make the economy worse off.

“We are suffering through the consequences of too much spending … and to see the Senate now moving forward on a package that’s going to increase taxes and increase [the] costs on fuel production,  it’s unfortunate,” said Griffith.

Not Putin’s Fault

Griffith said for a family with a middle-class income, “We’ve seen your real take-home pay decline by more than $6,000 annually because of all this inflation.”

And even if inflation were to revert to normal tomorrow, about 2 percent annually, it will not negate the economic damage, only lessen it for the future, he said.

“Putting the blame on [Putin] and his actions in the war in Ukraine for rising prices—that’s simply, largely untrue,” said Griffith.

Gas prices were already on the rise long before Russian President Putin invaded Ukraine, said Griffith, adding, “Same thing goes with our food costs, commodity costs, fertilizer costs—all of those were rapidly increasing long before Putin decided to invade Ukraine.”

“Let’s remember, it was our own politicians who shut down our economy. It was our own Congress in the United States that voted to spend $6 trillion that we don’t have. And it was our central bank, our Federal Reserve, that printed $6 trillion out of thin air. That is what is largely responsible for this inflation, not Vladimir Putin,” said Griffith.

Another contributing factor to the poor economy is an aspect of the employment rate called the participation rate (i.e., the percentage of people who are working age and are either working or looking for work), which more accurately describes who is working, said Griffith.

“The [participation rate] is near generational lows. In fact, if we were to have a participation rate that would have remained steady over the past three years … it shows that more than a million people have actually dropped out of our workforce entirely.”

“That’s part of the reason why if you go to a restaurant, a bar, a retail store, you notice the service isn’t so good right now,” added Griffith. “And that’s because relative to our overall population, we have fewer people working today than there were just two and a half years ago.”

There has been some increase in the participation rate in the United States, said Griffith, because “as people draw down on those savings [accumulated during the time when the government was doling out pandemic relief funds], they’re finding it necessary to return to the workforce.”

Middle-Class Most Impacted

Griffith said the money the government is spending is coming from the taxpayer and that this will affect the middle-class the most because they won’t be able to save and “build wealth” because of the current and rampant inflation.

“And that’s what I’m very fearful of—that as we continue to spend far beyond our means, that it’s not just going to have an impact this year, and next year, [but] 10 years and 15 years from now, [and] we’re going to see even fewer opportunities [like the creation of new jobs] for typical American families,” said Griffith.

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

My blood is boiling.

The Deep State Cabal inside the DOJ and FBI went out of their way to hinder the investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 Presidential election. By blocking the disastrous news, it kept America in the dark and aided Biden’s so-called victory.

When America was being distracted with COVID, mandates, lockdowns, and BLM riots, our freedom was being taken away without most people noticing because our government was conspiring against us.

How can we trust our so-called “top law-enforcement” agency to do their job when they actively hid Hunter’s investigation in a RESTRICTED SUBFOLDER on their network?

Now Biden’s handpicked Attorney General has no problem turning a blind eye to the actions of the Biden family. This isn’t just refusing to investigate Hunter’s laptop, this is ACTIVELY HIDING EVIDENCE so no one else would investigate.

That’s why you and I must continue to stand up to them.

If you want to see Hunter investigated and the Big Guy impeached, then I need your URGENT Contribution of $25, $50, or $100 today!

We need to let these Deep State hooligans know that we’re going to do the job they were supposed to do. I’m opening up a congressional investigation into the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and exposing the criminality of Hunter and the Big Guy. I told you my blood is boiling, right?

If the DOJ didn’t cover up Hunter’s crimes and the intelligence officials didn’t peddle the lie that Hunter’s Laptop was “Russian Disinformation,” Donald Trump might still be President.

The 18-month-long nightmare we all have been living under Biden’s illegitimate reign would not have happened.

No hyper-inflation. No borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for Marxist social programs. No baby formula shortages or selling of oil reserves to Hunter’s friends in China.

That’s what the DOJ took away from us when they covered for the Biden family’s criminal enterprise.

If you’re as upset as I am, then chip in $50, $100, or $250 today to help me investigate and expose the truth behind Hunter’s and the Big Guy’s criminal enterprise… and those who helped cover it up!

Here’s the problem. The Swamp knows I’m a woman of my word. They know that I will not rest until Congress finally investigates Hunter and impeaches Joe Biden.

That’s why they have been working overtime to make sure I’m not in Congress after November. From filing lawsuits to kick me off the ballot to donating millions to my Democrat opponent, I’m having everything AND the kitchen sink thrown at me.

Do you really think Nancy Pelosi has ignored the behavior from AOC and the Jihad Squad by mistake?

Do you think the Democrats accidentally forgot to sanction their own member who gave the middle finger on National TV to GOP Members of Congress at the Congressional Baseball game the other day?

Somehow no one is being held accountable for their actions… except me. Because in Washington, some people do as they’re told while I’m fighting to do what Americans expect from their duly elected Representatives—SERVE THE PEOPLE!

That’s why I URGENTLY need your help to fight back and win this November with your $100, $500, or $1,000 donation today. Otherwise, Hunter and Brandon are going to keep enriching themselves off the backs of the U.S. government and no one will stop them.

But if I win in November, all bets are off.

That’s why we can’t let Hunter and Brandon get away with it simply because I wasn’t there to lead the charge in Congress. Help me win so I can investigate Hunter and impeach Joe Biden! Please donate today.

Thank you. God Bless America.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Congresswoman (R-GA)

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of military intelligence and national security adviser, will file a motion against a penalty imposed on him by the Pentagon for allegedly violating the Emolument Clause by giving a paid speech in Russia in 2015.

“I’m fighting back against that,” Flynn told EpochTV’s “Facts Matter” host Roman Balmakov during a recent interview.

The Department of Defense decided to charge Flynn’s retirement account for nearly $40,000 he was paid in cash and in-kind services for attending and giving an on-stage interview at a 2015 anniversary event of the Russian state-sponsored RT television.

Flynn previously said his attendance was arranged by his speakers bureau. The Pentagon acknowledged that Flynn informed the department of his attendance, was briefed before, and debriefed after.

“I went and did a classified briefing prior. I did a classified briefing after, which means, you go get a counterintelligence assessment,” he told Balmakov, explaining that people from the relevant government agencies would convey what kind of information they’re looking for from the people he might talk to during the trip.

“Then you try to get the answers for those people. And you come back and you give those answers back,” he said. “That’s normal, you know. Diplomats, retired government officials, like me, would do stuff like that routinely.”

Now, the Pentagon says Flynn violated the Constitution’s Emolument Clause, which prohibits military members from receiving anything of value from foreign governments without authorization.

Flynn said he’s planning to file a motion against the penalty.

“We’ve got to do things by letter, right? And it comes at a legal cost. I mean, this is what they do. They tried to wear us out—all of us. They’re going to try to wear the American people out,” he said.

The RT event was visited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who briefly sat next to Flynn at a table before giving his speech and leaving, several other attendees previously told The Epoch Times.

Flynn’s attendance was later used by the FBI to open a counterintelligence case against him as part of the Crossfire Hurricane probe of alleged collusion between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The probe failed to establish any such collusion. The FBI used false information paid for by the campaign of Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to get spying warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. At least two of the warrants were invalid and resulted in illegal surveillance, the bureau acknowledged.

The Flynn case was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act by discussing with foreign diplomats the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized diplomacy, has never been successfully prosecuted. The government had only used it twice, more than a century ago.

Flynn was charged in 2017 with lying to the FBI during a January 2017 interview. He pleaded guilty later that year, but then withdrew his plea. The DOJ dropped the charge in 2020, after Attorney General William Barr ordered an outside prosecutor to review the case. Then-head of the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office, Timothy Shea, concluded that it seemed the FBI’s purpose for interviewing Flynn was to “elicit … false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn,” which isn’t a legitimate investigative purpose.

Then, in an unusual move, the judge trying the case refused to grant the dismissal, only dropping the case after Trump pardoned Flynn.

Flynn is now suing the FBI and the Department of Justice for their alleged efforts to oust him as Trump’s national security adviser.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the prosecutor who made the conclusion regarding the dismissal of Michael Flynn’s case. The prosecutor was Timothy Shea. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

As an independent news organization dedicated to reporting the truth, The Epoch Times has been subjected to excessive censorship by Big Tech. 

In the latest such incident, Twitter on July 28 censored all of our content by putting up a blockade to our website, describing it as “unsafe,” and encouraging users not to proceed. 

Twitter’s actions—just like those by other tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube—specifically targeted the reach of our independent news and video content.

Twitter hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment and appeal, nor has the company explained what led it to censor our content or what caused it to lift its blockage two days later following a public outcry.

The move by the social media giant came less than a week after we published our new documentary “The Real Story of January 6” and on the same day posted an interview with sex trafficking survivor Eliza Bleu, on our program “American Thought Leaders.”

While it remains unclear why Twitter targeted us, what is clear is that The Epoch Times is different from most other major news organizations, in that we dare to follow the stories where the facts lead.

In our Jan. 6 documentary, our reporters take an unvarnished look at the events of that day and present new witnesses and evidence that challenge the prevailing narratives. It provides extensive evidence of excessive use of force by police that broke protocol and policy, and raises questions on the lack of security that day. So far, the documentary has received more than half a million views on our EpochTV platform.

In recent years, there have been other major stories on which The Epoch Times, because of our independence and adherence to traditional journalism, has differed from other major news organizations, only to be proven right.

For example, The Epoch Times reported accurately on events surrounding allegations that then-candidate and later President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. From day one, The Epoch Times reported on the facts and through our reporting uncovered significant problems with the FBI’s probe of Trump’s campaign, which included problematic conduct involving surveillance. 

While other news organizations won Pulitzers for their articles suggesting collusion between the president and Russia, The Epoch Times was, in fact, correct in reporting that the allegations had no support—as confirmed through investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice inspector general, as well as the ongoing probe of the origins of the FBI’s investigation by special counsel John Durham.

The Epoch Times was also among the first to report on the possibility that the novel coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Our April 2020 documentary on the subject was censored by Facebook. Today, a lab leak is now held as the most likely explanation for the spread of the virus, by both media organizations and many government officials. 

The dangers of allowing platforms such as Twitter to take on the role of arbiter of the truth is that they, in many cases, are plainly wrong. The most prominent example was Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post over its reporting on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

This censorship behavior, which is antithetical to the protections Big Tech receives under Section 230, has also raised concerns about social media platforms censoring content on behalf of the government. Most recently, a federal judge ordered the government to cooperate in a lawsuit that alleges behind-the-scenes efforts to target the dissemination of information of stories related to COVID-19—including its possible origins and alternative treatments—that didn’t fit the government’s narrative.

“Government can’t outsource its censorship to Big Tech,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said.

Public Outcry

The public outcry against Twitter’s censorship of The Epoch Times was swift, with three U.S. senators publicly questioning the platform—which in recent years has repeatedly found itself in hot water for acts of censorship—over its targeting of the news organization. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demanded that Twitter “explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked, “Where’s the respect for free speech and freedom of press, Twitter?”

“We all remember your biased censorship of [the New York Post] and how that ended for you,” Scott said.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) described the action by Twitter as “alarming.”

“Twitter is censoring [The Epoch Times] under the guise of ‘unsafe’ speech. Remember what happened the last time corporate media and big tech tried to censor my investigation on Hunter Biden corruption?” he wrote. “The truth always prevails.”

Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, described Twitter’s action as “an outrageous act of censorship.”

Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya called out Twitter’s suppression, writing: “It is perfectly safe to click through to the [Epoch Times] site in the quote tweet. For some reason, Twitter decided that today was a good day to suppress access to Epoch Times.”

Sex trafficking survivor Bleu, who was among the first to notice the censorship by Twitter due to its blockage of her interview with EpochTV’s program “American Thought Leaders,” posted a video condemning the platform’s actions that went viral. 

It also created a stir among Twitter users, with many condemning the platform’s actions. 

The Epoch Times wants to thank everyone who spoke out against this latest instance of censorship.

We will keep reporting the only way we know how, rooted in our tagline Truth & Tradition, without favor or fear. The fight for truth is one that has no shore and that is as old as the ages. We believe that only with brave individuals going the distance and striving to record the truth of what happens, can the world have an accurate picture of events and history.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

TURNS OUT IT HAS BEEN THE RADICAL LEFT TAKING INSTRUCTION FROM THE KREMLIN.

The only demonstrable evidence of Russian interference in U.S. politics came quietly out of the U.S. Department of Justice today, with the unsealing of an indictment charging a Russian national with “orchestrating a years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.”

The New York Times report on the subject buries the names of the groups allegedly utilized by the Russian government in the scheme, namely the “Uhuru Movement” of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is part of a wider entity known as the African People’s Socialist Party.

Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that from “at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. Ionov utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s influence campaign.”

“Ionov allegedly orchestrated a brazen influence campaign, turning U.S. political groups and U.S. citizens into instruments of the Russian government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Department of Justice will not allow Russia to unlawfully sow division and spread misinformation inside the United States.”

Ionov is alleged to have used his control over a handful of groups such as the Uhuru movement, in order “to spread pro-Russian propaganda under the guise of a domestic political organization, and to interfere in local elections,” the DOJ says.

One example cited stems from January 2016, when Ionov apparently guaranteed “financing for — and ultimately funded — a four-city protest tour undertaken by U.S. Political Group 1 in support of a ‘Petition on Crime of Genocide against African People in the United States’.”

In 2017 and 2019, Ionov is alleged to have supported two St. Petersburg, Florida, political campaigns, as well as further instructing Russian handlers of his campaigns. He is charged with conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government – a crime with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Meanwhile, on a Facebook live post, Uhuru movement chairman Omali Yeshitela divulged that police had “handcuffed me and my wife,” before going on to discuss potential funding from “anyone else who wants to support the struggles for Black people.”

Ionov has previously been accused of raising funds for convicted Russian spy Maria Butina, who is now a Member of the State Duma in Russia. Butina targeted conservative groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) having been given a student visa by the Obama administration.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on July 31 that he expects there to be an agreement to conceal an indictment of Hunter Biden.

Johnson predicted in a Fox News interview that law enforcement “may indict Hunter Biden, but they’ll probably seal—they’ll do a deal—they’ll seal all the information.”

“The American public will never get the full truth,” he said.

Both Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have been involved in a yearslong investigation into the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in places such as China, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The pair released a report in September 2020 that detailed extensive financial connections between Chinese Communist Party-linked entities and individuals and Hunter Biden.

“We’ve known that the Bidens are a corrupt family for years,” Johnson told Fox News’ Dan Bongino, noting that the “corrupt mainstream media has been covering it all up” and “even the FBI.”

Johnson also predicted that legacy news media outlets will now turn on Biden amid increasingly low poll numbers.

In March, both Republican senators presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct firm, made payments to Hunter Biden. That included a $100,000 wire payment to one of the younger Biden’s companies, Owasco, from CEFC.

Other payments include a wire transfer of $5 million to Hudson West, a company Hunter Biden invested in and managed, from Northern International Capital, a business that partnered with CEFC. A contract also made public by the senators shows that $500,000 went to Hunter Biden as a “one-time retainer fee.”

Two others show a $1 million payment made to Hudson West by CEFC and a transfer of $1 million from Hudson West to Owasco, with the money appearing to go to Hunter Biden for the purposes of representing Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman who has helped CEFC gain advantages through bribery.

FBI Interference

In a recent letter, Johnson further claimed that the FBI attempted to undermine their congressional investigation in mid-2020.

Amid recent “whistleblower revelations,” they “would strongly suggest that the FBI’s August 6, 2020 briefing was indeed a targeted effort to intentionally undermine a Congressional investigation,” he wrote in a letter (pdf) to top Department of Justice officials and members of other intelligence agencies.

“If these whistleblower allegations are accurate, how can your agency, Director Wray, be capable of investigating the president’s son?” Johnson wrote in his letter. “Unfortunately, the FBI can no longer be trusted to investigate Hunter Biden with integrity and the equal application of law.”

He was referring to whistleblower complaints issued by unnamed FBI officials, as detailed by Grassley in a July 25 letter (pdf).

“The allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” wrote Grassley, who has long been involved in crafting legislation to support federal government whistleblowers.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law.”

Department of Justice officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession.

“Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week. “We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.”

The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said.

Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter.

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Vance Ginn, Chief Economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD in an interview that, while officially it’s NBER that calls recessions, the two-quarter rule is “usually how it’s done by a rule of thumb.”

“I think this is definitely recession that we’re in now from these bad policies,” Ginn added, blaming a series of “progressive policies” coming out of the White House and the Democrat-controlled House.

Stagflationary Winds Blowing

In his remarks, Trump also took aim at resident Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation.

“Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said.

While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high.

Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.

Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.”

In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

‘War on American Energy’

Soaring energy prices have been one of the key contributing factors to inflation, accounting for around half of the headline inflation figure, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In his criticism of Biden’s policies, Trump singled out what he called “Biden’s war on American energy” and blamed it for pushing up gasoline prices.

Since taking office, Biden has taken a number of executive actions targeting the oil industry, including rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit, halting new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and waters, and ending fossil fuel subsidies by some agencies.

The price of gasoline is around double what it was when Biden took office, with the president blaming various factors, including a lack of refining capacity, the war in Ukraine, and corporate greed.

In a bid to lower prices at the pump, Biden ordered the release of oil reserves from the national strategic reserve, called on U.S. refineries to boost output, and pushed OPEC to pump more crude.

In his speech, Trump said this amounted to “begging” other countries to pump more oil instead of trying to ramp up domestic production.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world. We are a nation that is consumed by the radical left’s Green New Deal, yet everyone knows that the Green New Deal will lead to our destruction.”

“Just two years ago, we were energy-independent. We were even energy-dominant. The United States is now a beggar for energy

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.

Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.

On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.

Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.

Oversight Committee

Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.

The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.

“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”

Hunter Biden

Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.

Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”

Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.

The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.

Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.

“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.

“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.

COVID-19 Origins

The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.

An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.

The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.

Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.

Other Key Priorities

The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.

“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.

With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.

“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Criminal exchange [US Patriot]

CORRECTION, July 28, 2022: The Western Journal has changed the headline of this article to include the fact that Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine held by Russia since 2018 on espionage charges, is also part of the proposed trade and not only Brittney Griner. We also removed the reference to Viktor Bout as a “known Russian terrorist,” an error for which we apologize; Bout was convicted on four terror-related conspiracy charges, but has not been found guilty of any actual acts of terror. We have also added a link to the original DOJ statement regarding Bout’s conviction in 2011, which we originally omitted, as well as including the full text of that statement at the bottom of the article for context, and included some additional information about Whelan’s history for context.

Resident Joe Biden is offering to exchange a Russian known as the “Merchant of Death” for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.

In February, Griner was detained by Russian authorities in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters containing cannabis oil were found in her belongings.

Months later on July 7, Griner pleaded guilty to drug possession and smuggling in a Russian court. In Russia, the penalty for such a crime is up to 10 years in prison.

Whelan was arrested in 2018 on espionage charges and has been in Russian custody since. He has consistently denied the charges, but was convicted in 2020 and received a 16-year sentence.

According to an exclusive report from CNN, the Biden administration has been debating how to handle the situation for “months” and has finally come to a solution.

Three anonymous sources claim that the Biden administration is offering to exchange Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout for the two-time Olympic gold medalist and Phoenix Mercury star.

The Department of Justice is reportedly opposed to Biden’s decision to release Bout but the president’s authority overrules any opposition from the department.

In 2011, Bout was convicted on charges of “conspiring to kill U.S. nationals; conspiring to kill U.S. officers and employees; conspiring to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles; and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to a statement from the DOJ at the time.

“Today, one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers is being held accountable for his sordid past,” then-Attorney General Eric Holder said at the time. “Viktor Bout’s arms trafficking activity and support of armed conflicts have been a source of concern around the globe for decades. Today, he faces the prospect of life in prison for his efforts to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to terrorists for use in killing Americans.”

“As the evidence at trial showed, Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries,” Preet Bharara, the then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said after Bout’s conviction. “He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans. With today’s swift verdict, justice has been done and a very dangerous man will be behind bars.”

Despite Bout’s many crimes, one senior administration official told CNN that negotiations for the exchange were ongoing. The official said a “substantial offer” was first communicated in June.

It remained unclear whether the deal would go through, the official then noted.

“It takes two to tango. We start all negotiations to bring home Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained with a bad actor on the other side. We start all of these with somebody who has taken a human being American and treated them as a bargaining chip,” the official said.

“So in some ways, it’s not surprising, even if it’s disheartening, when those same actors don’t necessarily respond directly to our offers, don’t engage constructively in negotiations.”

Experts: Hunter Biden Could Be Thrown in Jail After Failing to Register as Foreign Agent

The entire text of the DOJ’s 2011 news release regarding Bout’s conviction follows:

International arms dealer Viktor Bout was found guilty today of conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) – a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Colombia – to be used to kill Americans in Colombia, announced the Department of Justice.

“Today, one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers is being held accountable for his sordid past,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Viktor Bout’s arms trafficking activity and support of armed conflicts have been a source of concern around the globe for decades. Today, he faces the prospect of life in prison for his efforts to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to terrorists for use in killing Americans.”

“ As the evidence at trial showed, Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. “He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans. With today’s swift verdict, justice has been done and a very dangerous man will be behind bars. I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who investigated this case on three different continents and helped to bring Viktor Bout to justice.”

Bout was arrested in Thailand in March 2008 based on a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. He was subsequently charged in a four-count indictment in May 2008 and extradited to the Southern District of New York in November 2010. Bout was convicted today of conspiring to kill U.S. nationals; conspiring to kill U.S. officers and employees; conspiring to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles; and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The three-week jury trial was presided over by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin.

According to the indictment and evidence presented at the trial:

Since the 1990s, Bout has been an international weapons trafficker. As a result of his weapons trafficking activities in Liberia, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control within the Department of Treasury placed him on the Specially Designated nationals list in 2004. The designation prohibits any transactions between Bout and U.S. nationals, and freezes any of his assets that are within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Between November 2007 and March 2008, Bout agreed to sell to the FARC millions of dollars’ worth of weapons – including 800 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), 30,000 AK-47 firearms, 10 million rounds of ammunition, five tons of C-4 plastic explosives, “ultralight” airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and unmanned aerial vehicles. Bout agreed to sell the weapons to two confidential sources working with the DEA (the “CSs”), who represented that they were acquiring them for the FARC, with the specific understanding that the weapons were to be used to attack U.S. helicopters in Colombia.

During a covertly recorded meeting in Thailand on March 6, 2008, Bout stated to the CSs that he could arrange to airdrop the arms to the FARC in Colombia, and offered to sell two cargo planes to the FARC that could be used for arms deliveries. He also provided a map of South America and asked the CSs to show him American radar locations in Colombia. Bout said that he understood that the CSs wanted the arms to use against American personnel in Colombia, and advised that, “we have the same enemy,” referring to the United States. He also stated that the FARC’s fight against the United States was also his fight and that he had been “fighting the United States…for 10 to 15 years.” During the meeting, he also offered to provide people to train the FARC in the use of the arms.

The evidence presented at trial included a recording of the March 6, 2008 meeting between Bout, the CSs, his former associate Andrew Smulian, and others. Smulian was charged along with Bout in the government’s March 2008 complaint and pleaded guilty in May 2008 to the four conspiracy counts of which Bout was just convicted. Smulian cooperated with the government and, along with the two CSs, provided testimony at the trial.

Bout faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on counts one through three, including a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison for count three. He faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison on count four.

Bout is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Scheindlin on Feb. 8, 2012.

The case was investigated by the DEA, with assistance from the Royal Thai Police; the Romanian National Police; the Romanian Prosecutor’s Office Attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice; the Korps Politie Curacao of the Netherlands Antilles; and the Danish National Police Security Services.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anjan Sahni and Brendan R. Mcguire from the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided assistance.

The Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an entity tied to the Chinese Communist Party, records show.

From September 2021 to July, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three crude oil contracts with a combined value of roughly $464 million to Unipec America, the U.S. trading arm of Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, according to a review by The Epoch Times of the DOE documents. A Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden had invested in the national oil giant.

The sale would tap 5.9 million barrels in total from the strategic reserve (SPR) to export to the Chinese firm. The latest contract, revealed on July 10, was for 950,000 barrels sold for around $113.5 million.

The two most recent sales to Unipec came out of an emergency drawdown of the U.S. oil stockpile, initiated under resident Joe Biden on March 31 in what he said would offset the loss of Russian oil in global markets and tame rising fuel costs at home.

The Unipec contracts have been subject to heavy criticism in recent weeks, especially because of the firm’s connections to the president’s son. With Americans nationwide still reeling from elevated gas prices, the selling of oil reserves to foreign adversaries such as China is at odds with U.S. energy and security needs, Republican lawmakers and analysts have said.

“Biden is draining our strategic reserves at an unprecedented rate. This is an abuse of the SPR, far beyond its intended purpose. Sending U.S. petroleum reserves to foreign adversaries is wrong, and it undermines our national security,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told The Epoch Times.

What the United States should do, he says, is to “unleash American energy production and ensure that our strategic reserves are stocked and able to meet the demands of a national emergency.”

Unipec’s Bids

The oil auction is price-competitive, meaning contracts are awarded to the highest bidder. Unipec, a consistent participant in previous U.S. crude oil sales, secured 1.9 million barrels over the past three months through two contracts it won on April 21 and July 10.

The DOE also sold 4 million barrels to Unipec last fall during a congressionally mandated sale.

Sales to Unipec appear to fall in the lower price range among the successful buyers, a review of DOE contracts by The Epoch Times shows. For the 2021 contract, Unipec paid about $63 for each barrel, about $7 lower than the trading price at the time, and more than $2 short of the highest price from other buyers in the sale.

The April and July purchases cost Unipec $103.30 and $119.50 per barrel, respectively. The highest prices offered, by comparison, were $111.25 and $125.10.

Unprecedented Drawdown

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, with four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana designed to alleviate significant oil supply shortages in times of major geopolitical events or natural disasters.

The amount of oil in the SPR has seen a steep decline over the past year, more notably since Biden, blaming Russia’s Ukraine war for the “price hike at the pump,” in March ordered a withdrawal at a rate of 1 million barrels per day for six months to curb gas prices. The planned sale of about 180 million barrels marked the biggest drawdown in the reserve’s more-than-four-decade history and is set to cut the U.S. backup oil supply by about a third.

The inventory stood at 474.5 million barrels as of July 22, marking a 34 percent drop from its peak of 726.6 million, and some 90 million lower than the level in late March.

The DOE on May 5 announced a “long-term buyback plan” to repurchase 60 million barrels in fall through “a competitive, fixed-price bid process.” The delivery date, the DOE said, will take place “in future years when prices are anticipated to be significantly lower,” likely after fiscal year 2023. More buybacks would follow after this first tranche of purchases, it added.

But releasing oil reserves at this magnitude carries risks, according to Abhi Rajendran and Robert Johnston, two research scholars on global energy policy at Columbia University. For one, there’s no guarantee that oil prices will fall when the government moves to refill the stock. Further, the diminution of oil supply may cause the market to price in a greater premium for wars and other supply shocks, resulting in higher prices for longer, they said in a Q&A on April 1.

Scrutiny

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have been watching the oil sales with growing alarm. A total of 206 House Republicans voted on July 20 in support of a legislative amendment aimed at preventing the Biden administration from exporting petroleum to entities with Chinese Communist Party ties.

“It does not make sense that we are using our already depleted energy supplies to help China build up their own strategic reserves,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said in a speech rallying support for the proposal.

China is the world’s largest importer of oil. As the West turns away from Russian oil due to the Ukraine war, China has been quietly snapping up Russian resources at steep discounts. From March through June, it spent more than $25 billion on Russian oil, gas, and coal, nearly doubling the amount from the year-earlier period, the latest customs data show. The sales volume propelled Russia to become China’s top oil supplier for two straight months from May, displacing Saudi Arabia.

The GOP-led measure was overruled after 219 Democrats in the House unanimously voted against it.

The same day, 20 Republican members on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote (pdf) to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm requesting an immediate briefing and all documents related to the administration’s decision to sell U.S. oil reserves. They noted that Sinopec, the parent organization of Unipec, has been linked to the president’s son Hunter Biden, through the state-backed Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, which became a stakeholder of Sinopec in 2014.

Hunter served as a founding board member of BHR from 2013 through April 2020. His firm Skaneateles also held a 10 percent stake in BHR, which his lawyer said has been divested as of November 2021. On BHR’s 2021 annual report released in June, however, Skaneateles was still listed as a shareholder.

Hunter’s lawyer hasn’t responded to The Epoch Times’ questions regarding Skaneateles.

“As if Biden couldn’t have bundled this energy crisis anymore, this latest development of sending our strategic petroleum reserves to a Chinese oil firm connected to Hunter Biden reaches a new low,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who signed on the letter, told The Epoch Times.

“For one, this administration should have never tapped into these reserves. Second, these reserves should have never left U.S. shores, and third, the U.S. shouldn’t be doing deals with firms connected to the president’s son,” he said, adding that the Biden family’s “continued compromising actions require strict oversight from Congress.”

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee who spearheaded the letter, noted that previous inquiries by Republicans to the DOE about the oil sale had gone unanswered.

“Under no circumstances should the Department of Energy be making decisions which financially benefit Hunter Biden or any of the Biden family’s business partners,” he told The Epoch Times.

“If Administration officials continue to ignore meaningful oversight,” Republicans will “use the gavel to get answers in January,” Comer said, in reference to the expected swing to a Republican majority in the House in the November midterm elections, which would hand GOP lawmakers subpoena power as chairpersons of the chamber’s various committees.

“The American people need answers to determine if this is another attempt by the Biden family to peddle access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who also backed the Oversight Committee request, said the sale demonstrates the current administration’s “rank incompetence.”

“The Biden White House obviously didn’t see a problem with loading millions of barrels from our strategic reserves onto tankers bound for foreign countries, which likely explains why they don’t see a problem selling our emergency crude oil to a Chinese gas company with ties to Hunter Biden’s investment firm,” he told The Epoch Times.

White House Pushes Back

Ian Sams, a special assistant to Biden and spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, responded to the Republican claims on July 22, calling them “ridiculous and false.”

The DOE is “required by law to sell it ‘in a competitive auction to the highest bidder,’ regardless of whether that bidder is a foreign company,” he told Fox News, noting that the Trump administration, in 2017, also sold a half-million barrels of crude oil from the reserve to China’s state-run PetroChina International through the same “competitive bidding process.”

Sams also stressed that Biden “had no personal involvement in this process whatsoever.”

But Sams’s statement may not have presented the full picture, according to Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future, a nonprofit group advocating for energy workers.

“The White House has pushed back as saying we have sold in the past to the communist Chinese. And that is true. We sold when our SPR was nearly full and oil was not at record highest and the world was at relative peace,” he told The Epoch Times. “Times change, and thanks to this president, they have not just changed but become worse, and our policies must change with them.”

DOE officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times about its buyback plan and Republican lawmakers’ concerns.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) alleged on July 25 that there were “systemic and existential problems” within the Justice Department and the FBI, after “highly credible” whistleblowers informed his office that officials from the bureau labeled evidence against Hunter Biden as disinformation.

“The allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” Grassley wrote in a letter (pdf) to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the “volume and consistency” of the whistleblowers’ allegations “substantiate their credibility.”

The latest revelation is part of Grassley’s ongoing effort to probe into Hunter Biden’s business activities. In September 2020, he and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released a report, discovering that there was “potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals,” while Joe Biden was vice president during the Obama administration.

In March, the two senators presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct company, made payments to Hunter Biden. Currently, the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is investigating Biden for possible tax violations.

Whistleblowers

According to whistleblowers, the FBI came into possession of information about Hunter Biden’s “criminal financial and related activity” in 2020, which prompted FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten to open an assessment in August 2020, according to the letter. An FBI headquarters team subsequently used the assessment to “improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation” and caused the bureau’s investigation on Hunter Biden “to cease.”

A month later, the FBI team placed findings by FBI agents involved in Auten’s assessment in “a restricted access sub-file.” Grassley said the decision was “problematic.”

“[I]t does not allow for proper oversight and opens the door to improper influence,” Grassley explained.

Auten was previously known for being under investigation for failing to properly vet the now-discredited Steele dossier, which contained false and fabricated claims accusing former President Donald Trump of colluding with Russia.

In October 2020, “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” surfaced, and the reporting was “verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants,” whistleblowers told Grassley. However, the FBI did not pursue the reporting after Timothy Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, shut it down.

“Thibault allegedly ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required by FBI,” the letter said. FBI officials, including Thibault, then tried to “improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”

In May, Grassley requested an Inspector General investigation into Thibault, expressing concerns about how the agent had demonstrated “a pattern of active public partisanship,” in violation of his “ethical obligation as an FBI employee.” In his letter (pdf) to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz at that time, Grassley documented Thibault’s left-wing social media posts, including retweeting a post from the anti-Trump political-action committee the Lincoln Project.

In response to Grassley’s letter, Horowitz wrote back (pdf) saying that Thibault may have violated the Hatch Act, and asked the Office of Special Counsel to review the case. The Act, passed in 1939, bans federal government officials from taking in certain political activities.

Request

Grassley said Garland and Wray must take the whistleblower allegations seriously.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Grassley wrote in his letter.

Grassley ended his letter by asking Garland and Wray to turn over records and information relating to the Biden family, Austen, and Thibault before Aug. 8.

The senator requested “all leads” that were either “ordered closed” or denied further review by Thibault.

“All records related to derogatory information on Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their foreign business relationships,” Grassley wrote as one of his requests.

The FBI said it has received the letter but declined to comment further.

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Republican lawmaker is warning that the National Guard’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will possibly cripple the military reserve component weeks after Army officials announced that some 60,000 troops won’t be allowed to participate in their duties if they aren’t vaccinated.

“June 30 marked Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s arbitrary deadline for members of the National Guard and Reserves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine despite Congress’ mandate that the Department of Defense establish uniform procedures under which service members can be exempted,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a retired Army Green Beret, wrote for Fox News on July 25, saying that if the mandate is ultimately enforced, the guard “will be crippled” due to a lack of staffing.

“To date, approximately 60,000 National Guard and Reserves remain unvaccinated and the pending decision from the Biden administration could punish the very service members who have been on the front lines of fighting this pandemic.”

Combined with poor recruitment efforts, “woke indoctrination,” and mandates, Waltz said that the U.S. military is “being depleted” in the midst of the Chinese regime’s military buildup and the Russia–Ukraine conflict. At the same time, the United States is soon to enter both its hurricane season, which generally starts in August, and its wildfire season, the congressman said.

“Two things have changed since the mandate was implemented. First, the vaccine has shown to not stop the spread but rather reduce symptoms,” Waltz wrote. “Second, tens of thousands of National Guard and reservists have expressed serious reservations about the emergency development of the vaccine.”

He added that “many of these service members have already been exposed to COVID-19 and last year’s defense bill specifically asks the department to consider whether previous exposures induce sustained antibody protection, which may produce similar levels of immunity as the vaccine.”

Earlier this month, the Army confirmed that 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers who didn’t get the vaccine will be blocked from their duties.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.

A study published in JAMA found that at least 22 service members have suffered from serious vaccine-related side effects, including heart inflammation. Few service members, meanwhile, have been given religious exemptions, with only 20 being approved in the Army and six National Guard soldiers having their religious exemptions approved.

Several Republican governors have vowed not to remove Guard members who remain unvaccinated. Last year, the governors of Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, and Nebraska wrote in a letter to the Pentagon that the troops don’t need to follow federal military policy.

Pentagon officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Deputy National Cyber Director Camille Stewart has called for a race-focused defense agenda

Solving “perceived” systematic racism by implementing systematic racism. Sounds like a democrat. Stop looking for hand-outs and start lending a hand. [US Patriot]

Resident Joe Biden’s incoming cyber defense deputy has claimed that “systemic racism” is one of the greatest threats to U.S. cybersecurity.

Camille Stewart, a former Google strategist whom Biden reportedly tapped for White House deputy national cyber director, has argued that “our #NatSec apparatus must be a part of dismantling systemic racism,” and “pursuing anti-racist and anti-hate policy outcomes” should be a chief national security focus for the administration.

Biden’s new hire is likely to stoke concerns from Republican legislators that his administration has been more focused on pushing a race-focused ideological agenda than on traditional national defense issues—such as the increasing risk of cyberattacks from Russia, Iran, and China. The Department of Justice said in June it is bracing for more cyberwarfare from adversarial countries. Last month, the FBI revealed it intercepted an Iranian-backed cyberattack against Boston Children’s Hospital, and Russian hackers targeted an American satellite company in Ukraine earlier this year.

Stewart, who served as policy adviser for the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security, has criticized the United States as an intrinsically racist society in her writing and on social media.

She claimed that the U.S. economy “lost $16 trillion b/c of Racism against Black Americans,” and warned in 2020 that “SYSTEMIC RACISM WILL RUIN THIS DEMOCRACY,” arguing that systemic racism was a part of “every institution not just the criminal justice system.”

“[Solutions] to cybersecurity challenges will never reach their full potential until systemic racism is addressed and diverse voices are reflected among our ranks at all levels,” Stewart wrote in a 2020 column for the Council on Foreign Relations titled “Systemic Racism Is a National Security Threat.”

She added that “communities of color are disproportionately affected by cyberattacks that target critical infrastructure.”

In a 2020 column for the Hill, Stewart said the Biden administration’s efforts to combat systemic racism “must be woven into leadership priorities, processes, structures, and domestic and international strategy.”

Stewart proposed that U.S. foreign policy leaders be encouraged to “talk about systemic racism in the U.S on a global stage” and acknowledge the “detrimental effects of racism at home and in U.S. foreign policy towards regions of the world.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A White House press release on Monday said Stewart was “regarded as not only an expert but also as an inspiration, especially to women and underrepresented minorities.”

Republican lawmakers have objected to other recent hires by the Biden administration, including U.S. special representative for racial equity and justice appointee Desirée Cormier Smith, who claimed white diplomats lack empathy and humility.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Wheat prices rose on July 25, days after Russian forces struck the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa.

Chicago wheat futures surged by as much as 4.6 percent before paring the gain to trade 3.1 percent higher at $7.82 1/4 per bushel by 3:21 p.m. in Singapore.

Corn futures rose by as much as 2.8 percent on July 25 before the gain eased to 1.4 percent, while soybeans were up by just 0.3 percent.

Wheat prices dropped by almost 6 percent on July 22 after Russia and Ukraine, both of whom are major exporters of grains, reached a deal to allow crucial grain shipments to safely leave three Ukrainian Black Sea ports: Odesa, Pivdennyi, and Chornomorsk.

That level of prices haven’t been seen since before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in neighboring Ukraine in February.

The agreement was brokered by Turkey and hailed as a vital step toward helping to avert a global food crisis.

Representatives of Turkey, as well as Ukraine and Russia, met in Istanbul on July 22 to sign the deal, along with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said of the deal on July 22: “We are proud of being instrumental in an initiative that will play a major role in the solution of the global food crisis that has occupied the whole world for a long time.”

The president also said the deal would “contribute to preventing the danger of hunger that awaits billions of people in the world.”

Missile Strike

However, Russia said on July 25 that its cruise missiles had struck military infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port over the weekend, shortly after the agreement was signed.

The strike used “Kalibr missiles” and destroyed Ukrainian military infrastructure, “sending a Ukrainian military boat to the Kiev regime’s favorite address in a precision strike,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram on July 24.

The “favorite address” was a reference to Ukrainian forces on Snake Island in the Black Sea who reportedly told a Russian ship to “go [explicit]” itself before a Russian strike in February.

Serhii Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, said on Telegram that Kalibr-type cruise missiles hit the infrastructure of the port and that two were shot down by Ukraine’s air defense forces.

“Two hit the port’s infrastructure facilities,” he wrote.

Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said on TV that the missiles didn’t hit grain storage at Odesa’s port.

An estimated 20 million metric tons of grain have been held up in the port of Odesa in southwestern Ukraine, according to the BBC.

Wheat futures rose by 70 percent to a record high of $12.94 per bushel in the two weeks after the invasion began, prompting concerns that the conflict could impact global supplies, worsen food insecurity, and drive prices up further.

Wheat prices have gradually declined by roughly 42 percent since reaching those initial highs, but U.S. wheat features are still 15 percent higher than where they were last year, while the Benchmark French milling wheat futures are 65 percent higher than they were at this time last year, according to Business Insider. 

The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, said on July 23 that the bloc “strongly condemns” the attack.

He wrote on Twitter, “Striking a target crucial for grain export a day after the signature of Istanbul agreements is particularly reprehensible & again demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law & commitments.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration—including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents.

Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents show. Other evidence shows that two other Biden officials—senior State Department official Dafna Rand and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler—also are entangled in the so-called Russiagate scandal.

It’s not known whether these Biden appointees have been interviewed by Durham’s investigators. But as the probe widens, some government ethics watchdogs anticipate that Biden’s presidency could be pulled into the scandal, which saw the FBI abuse its surveillance powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser based on Clinton opposition research.

Just as the Democrats have used their control of Congress to cast President Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as threats to American democracy, Republicans are vowing if they regain power after November’s congressional elections to investigate the years-long effort to question Trump’s 2016 victory and undermine his presidency.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, recently pledged to hold hearings and issue subpoenas “to get to the bottom of [Russiagate] so this never happens again, so we never have Americans having to distrust their own government because of the politicization of the FBI [and] of our intelligence community.”

RealClearInvestigations has learned that Congress has referred to the Special Counsel’s Office at least a dozen cases of potential perjury involving former Clinton campaign officials and Obama administration officials who have testified behind closed doors about their involvement in Russiagate. Hill lawyers and investigators have met with Durham’s staff about the criminal referrals stemming from the sworn depositions.

Republican sources say that the roles played in Russiagate by Krass, Sullivan, Rand, and Gensler may be among the first to draw attention in hearings. Although the full range of their efforts has not been made public, here’s what is known so far.

Caroline Krass: Clinton Donor and Top CIA Lawyer

Krass, 54—whom Biden appointed as general counsel of the Defense Department early last year—is the former top CIA lawyer cited by Durham as “General Counsel of Agency-2” in his indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Durham alleged Sussmann first tried to plant a fabricated report with the FBI’s general counsel about a secret cyber-link between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank in order to set in motion an investigation of Trump before the 2016 election. Then, after the election, Sussmann filed a similar report with Krass’ legal shop at the CIA, the prosecutor said.

Although a Washington, D.C. jury in May acquitted Sussmann of lying about who was paying him to approach the FBI, the trial revealed that FBI field agents specializing in cyber crimes debunked his report within days of receiving it, and even suspected some of the evidence was cooked up. “We think it’s a set-up,” one agent warned in an internal FBI email. FBI brass working under then-Director James Comey, however, prolonged the investigation for several months.

Nevertheless, after Trump won the election, Sussmann brought the same Trump-Alfa Bank ruse to Krass—a Clinton donor and Obama appointee, then working under CIA Director John Brennan. Durham has found evidence that Krass welcomed the tip.

“We’re interested,” he said Krass told him in their December 2016 phone call. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here, and someone will get back to you to arrange a meeting.”

Krass allegedly told Sussmann she would consider the information for inclusion in the intelligence review of alleged Russian interference in the election that Obama had ordered at the time. A declassified version of the review, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), was released to the public the next month and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win. A classified version included an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign as part of the so-called Steele dossier. It’s not known if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard, since several sections remained blacked out when it was made public in 2020.

The ICA became a foundational document for subsequent Trump-Russia probes and has been used by Democrats and the media to suggest the 2016 election was stolen from Clinton.

“The greatest concern with the role of Krass is her ‘interest’ [in Sussmann’s tip] despite the lack of foundational support [for it],” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RCI. “As with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager [Obama] officials to move on any such allegation [against Trump].”

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussmann secured a sit-down meeting at CIA headquarters with “a representative from the Office of General Counsel,” according to documents reviewed by RCI, where he turned over more dubious material allegedly linking Trump to Russia. The CIA lawyer he met with worked under Krass, who did not leave the agency until several months later, despite the change in administrations.

The attorney, identified at trial only as “Steve M.,” said he would pass the tips on to CIA technical experts, as well as an FBI liaison officer, but they too dismissed the data as “self-generated,” meaning they appeared to be designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion of a nefarious cyber-link. Complete datasets were withheld from the CIA.

Apparently, the CIA did not even ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got the data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann reported the false Trump-Alfa Bank connection.

However, like FBI brass, Krass and her boss at the time, CIA chief Brennan, were aware of Clinton campaign efforts to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent, and it was no secret that Sussmann’s Perkins Coie law firm represented her campaign.

“As Brennan’s top lawyer, she would know everything about that,” said Kash Patel, the former House Intelligence Committee investigator who interviewed Sussmann in a closed-door deposition in December 2017, and was the first to discover the Alfa Bank smear operation he ran at the FBI and CIA on behalf of Clinton campaign operatives.

Evidence shows that Krass had other reasons to be skeptical of Sussmann’s claims. As legal adviser to Brennan, she was involved in the referral her boss made to the FBI in 2016 to open a counterespionage case to find out how Russian intelligence intercepted information about Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie up Trump in a Kremlin scandal. The intercept revealed the Russians were on to a plot by Clinton and her then-foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan to “stir up” a scandal on Trump about Russia during the Democratic convention in late July 2016.

Brennan appears to have been less concerned about the Clinton campaign’s disinformation campaign than the fact Moscow knew about it. This so alarmed Brennan that he briefed Obama about it, according to a summary of his handwritten notes, declassified in 2020.

The referral, known as a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL), was sent to Comey, who in turn forwarded it to then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to investigate.

Strzok—who was fired by the FBI after his anti-Trump views became public—opened an investigation, not of Clinton but the Trump campaign. Krass’ chief of staff at the time, Brian Greer, confirmed that the purpose of the CIOL was not to investigate the Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks, but to run a counter-spying probe to see if the Russians had penetrated the Clinton camp. The concern, he said, was that Clinton “may have been spied on by a hostile intelligence service.”

Seemingly reflecting the attitude of his former boss at the spy agency, Greer opined that “there’s nothing illegal about” what Clinton did to Trump. “Even if it’s unsavory,” he shrugged, “that’s just politics.”

Federal campaign records reveal that Krass donated at least $3,575 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 and 2008 campaigns for president. Before Obama appointed her to the CIA in 2014, she served as his special counsel for national security affairs in the White House.

Brennan’s handwritten notes were turned up by Durham and opened a new track in his investigation, which early on had appeared to clear the CIA of wrongdoing. But now Durham is actively investigating this CIA front, according to one of his pre-trial filings. His grand jury has interviewed at least eight current and former CIA employees, and he is seeking out other agency employees who may have attended the meeting with Sussmann.

“The government has been undertaking additional steps to determine if additional personnel were, in fact, present at this [Feb. 9] meeting with [CIA] employees,” Durham noted. “In addition, the Special Counsel’s Office maintains an active, ongoing criminal investigation of these and other matters that is not limited to the offense charged in the [Sussmann] indictment.”

It could not be determined if Krass is among former CIA employees interviewed by Durham’s team. Durham’s office remains tight-lipped, and neither the CIA nor Pentagon responded to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Krass were also unsuccessful.

During his 2017 House Intelligence Committee interview, Sussmann and his lawyer promised to provide the committee copies of all the documents he gave to the CIA, but Patel said they failed to turn them over. The former staff counsel said he is confident Durham has obtained them.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is suing the CIA for all its records of contacts with Sussmann under the Freedom of Information Act. The Washington-based watchdog group recently filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed last year to reply to a request for the records, including notes, related to agency phone conversations and meetings with the Clinton campaign attorney.

“The CIA is in cover-up mode about its communications with the [Clinton] lawyer implicated in a shady spy operation against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “What is the CIA hiding about its role in this plot against Trump?”

Fitton maintains that what happened at the CIA could be an even bigger scandal than what happened at the FBI.

As one of the Intelligence Community’s top attorneys, Krass also was involved in Obama’s sudden decision after Trump won to make it easier for the CIA and FBI to root through raw personal communications intercepted globally by the National Security Agency, according to sources familiar with high-level legal consultations regarding the revision to spying rules at the time.

The departing president’s executive order relaxing rules for mining the NSA’s highly classified databases went into effect less than three weeks before Trump took office. At the same time, the White House rushed to preserve all intelligence related to Trump and Russia and disseminate it across U.S. agencies.

The order, known as “12 Triple 3,” allowed the FBI for the first time to sift through large troves of incidental communications—including phone calls and emails—involving U.S. citizens, without NSA filtering or even wiretap warrants. In effect, agents could put advisers and appointees of Trump, along with their family members and friends, under warrantless surveillance.

The easing of longstanding restrictions on intelligence-sharing set off a massive fishing expedition.

The FBI didn’t have much time to exploit the raw intercepts before Trump put his own people in place. So in a last-minute scramble, it asked both the CIA and NSA to search their holdings and collect as much information as possible on Russian oligarchs and other figures for any links to Trump and his advisers—namely, Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page.

The information was hastily processed and compiled into analytical reports and shared with other agencies, as well as Congress, putting Trump and his presidency under suspicion before he could even take the oath of office. Some of the material also was leaked to the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and other major media—even though it was largely unsubstantiated.

In short, the new rules that Krass, along with other intelligence agency lawyers, helped draft making it easier to share raw streams of communications also made it easier to frame Trump as a Russian stooge before Obama left office.

Although Brennan’s appointment ended the day Trump was inaugurated, Krass stayed behind in her CIA job through the end of April 2017. When she finally resigned, she left behind a team of around 150 attorneys in her legal shop at Langley. They all remained in their positions in spite of the change in administrations.

Krass is not the only Russiagate-tied official who has resurfaced in the Biden administration.

Jake Sullivan: Potentially False Testimony

Sullivan, 45, played a pivotal role in the baseless Alfa Bank story as the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser.

He is the “foreign policy adviser” referenced in the Sussmann indictment as one of the campaign officials who was briefed on the scheme to cook up the debunked rumor that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were secretly communicating through Alfa Bank’s computer servers. Sullivan promoted the “secret hotline” hoax in a campaign statement via Twitter just days before the November 2016 election, claiming, “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” He even called on “federal authorities” to investigate.

Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified at Sussmann’s trial that he discussed the Alfa Bank project with Sullivan before going to Clinton herself for approval to publicize it.

Sullivan is also the “foreign policy adviser” cited in U.S. and Russian intelligence as the mastermind behind the Clinton campaign plot to “stir up” a Trump-Russia scandal ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. During the party’s gathering in Philadelphia, Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers and anchors the fable that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.

Now operating out of the West Wing as Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan is under scrutiny for potentially false testimony he gave to Congress regarding his knowledge of, and role in, the campaign’s opposition research efforts against Trump. Lying to Congress is a felony, although it’s rarely prosecuted.

“He has the gall to come into Congress—I took so many of those depositions—and say he had no idea how the [Clinton-funded Steele] dossier was created, or who the $10 million [that] Jake Sullivan and the DNC were paying was being utilized [by] to collect fraudulent information [on Trump and his advisers],” said Patel, a former federal prosecutor, who had worked for GOP intelligence chair Devin Nunes when he took the depositions. ”So, I think John Durham’s on his case.”

An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment.

Prosecutors say the Clinton campaign operation to tar Trump continued even after the election, with Sullivan again taking a prominent role.

In February 2017, Sullivan met with another central figure in the plot to plant the Trump-Alfa smear with investigators—Daniel Jones, a former FBI analyst and Democratic staffer on the Hill, whose goal was to reignite the investigation and put Trump’s fledgling presidency under a cloud of suspicion.

On Feb. 10, 2017—one day after Sussmann met with a member of Krass’ staff at the CIA—Sullivan secretly huddled with Jones and his partners at FusionGPS, an opposition research firm that worked for the Clinton campaign, to hatch the post-election plan to resurrect rumors Trump was a tool of the Kremlin. As RCI first reported, the meeting—which lasted about an hour and took place in a Washington office building—also included former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group discussed raising money to finance a multimillion-dollar opposition research project headed by Jones to target the new president. They ended up raising several million dollars for the effort, organized under a nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project. In effect, Jones’ operation would replace the Clinton campaign’s operation, continuing the effort to undermine Trump.

It’s not known whether Sussmann also attended the Feb. 10 meeting, but he had paid a visit to CIA headquarters that same week to peddle new disinformation about the supposed secret server.

At the time, the FBI closed its Alfa Bank probe, finding nothing sinister. ”The FBI’s investigation revealed that the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administrated by a mass-marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients,” Durham wrote in his indictment.

Nonetheless, Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true. Jones reached out to old bureau colleagues to pass on supposedly fresh leads, and the FBI looked into the new leads, while Sullivan went on national media to give the impression there was still something to the rumors.

In a March 2017 interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, for example, Sullivan discussed a story leaked to CNN by unnamed sources that the FBI was continuing to investigate the rumors of “a secret hotline between Trump and Russia.”

“How surprised were you to hear last week that this investigation is still ongoing?” Blitzer asked.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Sullivan said, “because what we learned during the campaign was that very serious computer science experts—people who work closely with the United States government—had uncovered this secret hotline between the Alfa Bank, the Russian bank, and the Trump organization.”

Sullivan insisted that the computer scientists “weren’t just making up crackpot theories.”

In fact, Durham is actively investigating their leader for potential fraud and conspiracy: computer contractor Rodney Joffe, who was offered a top post in a future Clinton administration, according to recent court filings. Joffe, who recently was terminated for cause as a longtime FBI informant, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to cooperate with grand jury subpoenas. His lawyer did not respond to phone calls and email messages.

Dafna Rand: An Anti-Trump Outfit Called TDIP

A longtime Clinton aide currently serving in the Biden administration as the director of the Office of Foreign Assistance, Rand also played a key role in spreading the Alfa Bank hoax.

In early 2017, Jones recruited Rand, a former Senate Intelligence Committee colleague, to sit on the board of The Democracy Integrity Project to help dig up new dirt on Trump, according to incorporation papers, while continuing to push the debunked Trump-Alfa Bank allegations.

In October 2018, TDIP blasted out an email to top Washington journalists with the subject line, “TDIP News Brief,” which attempted to keep the Alfa Bank hoax alive. The three-page bulletin, a copy of which was obtained by RCI, rehashed the alleged “connections between a computer server associated with the Trump Organization and servers associated with Russia’s Alfa Bank.” It speculated Democrats would subpoena information from “the server in question” if they regained control of Congress in the midterm elections the following month.

Rand’s resume on LinkedIn omits her role at TDIP (pronounced T-DIP), which is revealed only in the nonprofit’s IRS tax filings. A Democratic Party donor, Rand previously worked as a top aide to Clinton at the State Department. Before that, she served in the White House as a national security adviser to Obama.

Responding to grand jury subpoenas, her old colleague Jones reportedly has cooperated with Durham’s investigation.

Rand did not return requests for comment.

Gary Gensler: At SEC, Still After Trump

Biden nominated the longtime Clinton operative to head the Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2021, and Gensler was confirmed by the Senate and then sworn in as chairman of the Wall Street regulatory agency two months later.

Notably, the SEC press release announcing his appointment and detailing his personal biography omitted his prior role as chief financial officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election team, where he managed the campaign budget, including expenditures that weren’t properly reported.

In March of this year, the Federal Election Commission fined both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee for violating campaign finance laws by falsely claiming that more than $1 million used for the Steele dossier and other opposition research against candidate Trump was for “legal advice and services.”

Durham has sought these and other financial records as part of his investigation and has interviewed several former Clinton campaign officials including Mook, who handled opposition-researching spending and other budget matters and consulted with Gensler’s office during the campaign.

Patel said investigators would be wise to continue following the money trail. He maintained that he and other lawyers on the House Intelligence Committee found that the Clinton campaign failed to report the proper purpose of millions of dollars in additional funding.

“They need to keep digging, because there’s at least $10 million and maybe $20 million more that went directly into opposition research,” Patel said, adding that the Clinton effort to frame Trump as a Russian agent was ”massive.”

Last year, Gensler named Melissa Hodgman his associate director of enforcement. She happens to be married to disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok, who’s also implicated in Durham’s probe. Strzok led the investigation of Trump and his campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane,” before he was fired in 2018 over anti-Trump texts he exchanged with his mistress, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

As adviser to the head of the SEC’s enforcement division, Hodgman currently is helping oversee an investigation into Trump’s social media start-up, Truth Social. According to regulatory filings, the SEC last month served Trump Media & Technology Group with a federal subpoena for records. The company owns Truth Social, Trump’s answer to left-leaning Twitter, which kicked him off its platform last year over remarks he made concerning the Jan. 6 riot.

The SEC reportedly wants to know more about merger talks between Trump’s parent company and Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded company regulated by the SEC. RCI contacted the SEC about the investigation and Gensler’s previous work for the Clinton campaign, but did not hear back.

Patel warned that too many of the people who “abused their power” in the Russiagate conspiracy to frame Trump have returned to power.

“A lot of these Russiagate conspirators are back recycled in the Biden administration,” said Patel, who recently published a book related to the Russiagate scandal, “The Plot Against the King.” “They must be held accountable or they’ll only abuse their power again.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China’s military has become more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years, the top U.S. general asserted on July 24.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a trip to Indonesia that the United States and its allies have conducted more and more intercepts of Chinese aircraft and ships in the Pacific. The number of unsafe encounters has also increased significantly, he said.

“The message is the Chinese military, in the air and at sea, have become significantly more and noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” said Milley, who recently asked his staff to compile details about interactions between China and the United States and others in the region.

The Chinese military has become “noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” he also told the Financial Times. Milley spoke with The Associated Press and the Financial Times aboard his aircraft as he was flying to visit the Indo–Pacific over the weekend.

Milley, who has faced congressional blowback for holding two phone calls with a top Chinese general during the waning months of the Trump administration, didn’t provide specific figures about incidents involving Chinese jets or ships.

But, in one example, a Chinese J-6 fighter jet in May flew close to an Australian P-8 Poseidon spy plane and released chaff—pieces of metal debris to confuse enemy radar—that was sucked into the Australian plane’s engines, Australian officials said.

“The intercept resulted in a dangerous maneuver which posed a safety threat to the P-8 aircraft and its crew,” Australia’s military said last month about the encounter.

Threats to the Region

U.S. military officials have recently raised alarms about the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could invade Taiwan amid speculation the CCP could take inspiration from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The CCP has stepped up its military provocations against Taiwan in 2022 as it looks to intimidate it into assimilating with the communist mainland.

Milley also made note of an agreement between the CCP and the Solomon Islands that will allow Beijing to potentially construct a naval base in the South Pacific region.

“This is an area in which China is trying to do outreach for their own purposes. And again, this is concerning because China is not doing it just for benign reasons,” Milley told reporters. “They’re trying to expand their influence throughout the region. And that has potential consequences that are not necessarily favorable to our allies and partners in the region.”

He said that the “vast majority” of countries in the Pacific want the U.S. military to be more involved amid the CCP threat.

“We want to work with them to develop interoperability and modernize our militaries collectively, in order to make sure that, geostrategically, we’re able to meet whatever challenge that China poses,” he said, according to the FT.

Earlier this month, two Republican congressmen again asked Milley’s office to provide more details about two phone calls he had with a top Chinese general, including one on Jan. 8, 2021. They said that the general may have usurped civilian control of the military and said that he “has yet to respond” to their questions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Free Beacon report sparks probe

Congressional Republicans launched a formal investigation into the Biden administration on Friday following its decision to sell a Chinese state-controlled company nearly one million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to a copy of the probe obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The probe comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report detailing how the Biden administration sold China oil from the U.S. reserves amid a crippling energy crisis that has sent consumer prices skyrocketing. Rep. Pat Fallon (R., Texas), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is spearheading the investigation along with six of his GOP colleagues, including Reps. Ronny Jackson (Texas) and Ralph Norman (S.C.).

Fallon and his colleagues are demanding the White House turn over a trove of documents detailing the behind-the-scenes decision-making about these sales, as well as others potentially made to “foreign adversaries.”

The Biden administration came under intense criticism earlier this month after it was disclosed that it sold Chinese state-controlled energy firm Unipec 950,000 oil barrels from the U.S. reserves, which historically are tapped in response to emergencies. The White House claimed the sale would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump” and “help lower energy costs.” But critics say the administration is exploiting the reserves to appease foreign countries while it cuts production domestically to appease the Democratic Party’s far left flank.

“Your policies are harming American energy independence and benefiting our adversaries,” the lawmakers write. “Draining the [U.S. reserves] to historic lows for the sake of political expediency … threatens the national security of our nation, and contemplates no long-term strategy to ensure the energy independence of the United States.”

Information included in the Republican probe shows that the White House sold China 2.5 million barrels in October and another 1.5 million in November. Millions more were sold to other foreign countries during this time period. Amid these sales, the U.S. reserves dipped below 500 million barrels—the lowest level since 1986. China, on the other hand, has around 926 million barrels stored as it continues to import illicit Russian and Iranian oil to offset the rising price of crude. Current projections show the U.S. reserves “will be drained to approximately 130 million barrels by 2031,” according to figures included in the probe.

“The American people can’t afford to put gas in their tanks and our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in decades, yet Joe Biden is wasting our money and resources by sending oil that’s intended for emergencies to the Chinese Communist Party,” Jackson told the Free Beacon. “Helping our adversaries and setting America up for failure in the event of a major disaster or national security threat is no way for an American president to govern. Taxpayers deserve better.”

The lawmakers say the “depletion of emergency supplies is troubling to the American public and puts the United States at a disadvantage should there be a real disaster or a national security threat.”

As China drains the American reserves, it also is “benefitting from loopholes in current sanctions against Russia and from your lack of sanctions enforcement,” the lawmakers write. “It is troubling that the United States is exporting [reserved] crude to China as China continues to align itself with our adversaries.”

While China has said that it would stop importing Russian oil amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, it has not made good on these promises. It also is importing illegal Iranian crude oil at record amounts, behavior that has been enabled by the Biden administration’s decision to loosen sanctions on Tehran as part of an effort to cajole it into signing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord.

“Biden has taken these inappropriate steps as China continues to build their own reserve capabilities with cheap Russian and Iranian oil,” Fallon told the Free Beacon. “Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created to address national or weather emergencies, not for political expediency and personal profit.”

The Republican lawmakers instructed the White House to provide them with internal documents related to the sell-off of America’s strategic oil reserves. This includes “all documents and communications, from January 20, 2021, to present” that relates to U.S. crude “being shipped to foreign adversaries—specifically, the People’s Republic of China.” The White House must also furnish in-depth information about China’s own oil reserves, as well as any draft plans to potentially replenish America’s stockpile.

“Our strategic reserves are for national security, not to satisfy global oil markets, and certainly not to cover for resident Biden’s failed energy policies,” Norman told the Free Beacon. “This administration owes our nation immediate answers to these questions.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to militarize outer space are threatening the United States’ ability to defend itself and project power, according to the U.S. Space Force’s chief of space operations.

“China has gone from zero to 60 very quickly,” said Gen. John Raymond. “They are clearly our pacing challenge.”

“Today, more so than in the past, we have to worry about protecting and defending [our] satellites.”

Raymond delivered the remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20, where he said that the United States would need to lead the world in developing international norms of behavior for space.

A Cluttered Space

Raymond said that developing more codified rules for space and further developing U.S. space systems are important given the essential role of space-based technologies in deterring conventional conflicts and preventing the escalation of hostilities.

“Space provides a great opportunity to have one more … means to change the deterrence calculus … and to deter conflict from beginning or extending into space, which we feel would deter a conflict from spilling over onto land,” Raymond said.

He noted that virtually all of the world’s most vital systems—from GPS to missile defense to international banking verification—are space-based. And space, Raymond said, is becoming more congested, more competitive, and more contested.

Indeed, the number of tracked objects in orbit has increased from 22,000 to 50,000 in just the last two years, he said.

China on the Horizon

Beyond mere space debris, however, Raymond said that China’s communist regime poses a serious threat to the United States’ interests in space, and that the regime is building out a suite of different weapons to attack U.S. space infrastructure.

“There’s a full spectrum of threats that we’re worried about,” Raymond said.

“Everything from reversible jamming of communication satellites and GPS satellites … to kinetic destruction.”

Raymond added that the CCP is reaching “near parity” with the United States regarding its space capabilities and is working to develop technologies that could seize the military, civil, or commercial advantage in space.

“That provides them [an] advantage, and that provides risk to our forces,” Raymond said.

“They have seen the advantages that space has provided us as we’ve integrated space and cyber and multi-domain operations, and, to be honest, they don’t like what they see.”

Raymond’s comments to that end were reminiscent of those made by Space Force Gen. David Thompson back in November, who said that China and Russia are conducting reversible attacks on U.S. satellites “every single day.”

2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fchina-threatens-every-instrument-of-national-power-space-force-

To that end, Raymond said that establishing “rules of the road” for the international community is vital to securing space, even if it was a foregone conclusion that the CCP wouldn’t obey those rules. By at least having a solidified framework, Raymond said, China’s hostile actions in space could be measured and recorded.

“I firmly believe that we need to develop norms of behavior, rules of the road. The U.S. and its partners are working on that.”

“And today, one of the challenges is there are no rules or very few rules. It’s the wild, wild west.”

Raymond added that China threatens “every instrument of national power.” Still, he assured the audience that the Space Force would do everything in its power to prevent the CCP from escalating its aggression in space into a bona fide war.

“We come to work every day wanting to deter great power war,” Raymond said. “That’s what we do.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

ANALYSIS: Does wearing a fancy top hat indoors to conceal your unsightly bald dome make you dumber?

Washington Post columnist Max Boot wears a fancy top hat—indoors and outdoors—to conceal his freakish bald head. It may or may not be making him dumber, given the profoundly stupid tweet he posted while attempting to insult a group of veterans who actually did serve their country in uniform.

“Just imagine how all these right-wingers would have reacted with horror if they had been around when Harry Truman desegregated the military,” Boot wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform. “Now that was woke!”

Boot’s ridiculous and racially charged comment came in response to a New York Post op-ed written by Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army captain. Church argued that our military should focus more on preparing for armed conflict with bad actors around the world and less on embracing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ethos of government bureaucrats.

“The Navy is producing instructional videos on gender pronouns while its poorly maintained ships crash at sea,” wrote Church, citing a Washington Free Beacon report. He also suggested—quite reasonably—that lowering the military’s physical fitness standards in the name of “inclusivity” was not a good thing. Other changes designed to make the military more “woke,” Church argued, have “weakened training, lowered morale,” and “diminish[ed] the fighting spirit, cohesiveness, and reputation of America’s Armed Forces.”

Boot, who never served in the military but has written several books about war, had responded with the cerebral heft of a Salon commenter, and Church let him know it. “With respect to @MaxBoot, this is beneath you and the Post,” he wrote. “We are right to be worried about politicizing the military and @VeteransOnDuty will voice these concerns. Smugly dismissing this as bigotry is cheap and wrong.”

Church, who joined the Army in 2011 and received a Purple Heart in Afghanistan, is the chairman of Veterans on Duty, a national membership organization dedicated to “exposing how the woke revolution in the services works” and compelling the military to “get back to basics” by electing like-minded policymakers.

Jeremy C. Hunt, a black Army veteran and member of the Veterans on Duty board, also blasted Boot’s smug commentary. “We care about a military that wins,” he wrote in response to Boot’s tweet. “If you want an example of modern segregation in the military, look no further than the Biden administration’s racist [diversity, equity, and inclusion] protocols that you defend.”

Boot attempted to defend himself, once again channeling the intellectual rigor of the Salon comments section. “Diversity makes the military stronger,” he wrote. “Will you criticize Trump as well as Biden?”

Church, Hunt, and their fellow Veterans on Duty members fought for democracy by defending their country against foreign enemies. Boot “fights for democracy” by writing boring columns in the Post.

On Sunday, for example, Boot defended Biden’s meeting with bone-saw dictator Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, whom the president once pledged to make a “pariah” until flip-flopping as soon as rising gas prices threatened Democratic prospects in the midterm elections.

READ MORE: I Forced a Bot to Read 1,000 Max Boot Columns and Write a Max Boot Column of Its Own

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.

The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.

“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.

Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.

Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.

“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away

For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.

As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.

The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.

Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.

That deepened the discontent among moderates.

A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.

The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.

Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price

Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.

According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.

The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.

However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.

A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.

How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms

Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.

“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.

She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.

Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.

“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.

“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”

“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.

The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.

Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that after about five decades in the federal government, he’s planning on leaving his position by the end of resident Joe Biden’s current term.

“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci, 81, told Politico in an interview published on July 18 that he plans to retire by the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.

Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a household name as the face of the federal government’s response, often generating criticism from Republicans and conservatives about his generally dire predictions about the pandemic.

Of his relationship with former President Donald Trump, Fauci said that “we developed an interesting relationship … two guys from New York, different in their opinions and their ideology, but still, two guys who grew up in the same environments of this city. I think that we are related to each other in that regard.”

And if Republicans win back either the House or Senate in 2022, Fauci noted that he will likely be investigated by GOP lawmakers. But he claimed that regarding those investigations, “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”

In the Politico interview, Fauci continued to defend his public recommendations, including school closures, mask-wearing, vaccination regimes, and lockdowns.

“My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices … what are you going to investigate about that?” he asked.

Possible Investigations

However, Fauci has faced public questions from Republicans in Congress about his agency having given funding to third-party groups to carry out research in China. COVID-19, caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, emerged in Wuhan, China, and a significant number of U.S. intelligence officials last year released a report suggesting the virus may be linked to the top-level Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Last month, amid questions from Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Fauci conceded that he isn’t able to halt federal funding from being doled out to researchers in China.

“The NIH [National Institutes of Health] is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020,” Marshall said. “In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars.”

Later, he asked Fauci, “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”

Federal health agencies, Fauci said in response, “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”

“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he said.

NIAID officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Biden administration is poised to give Iran “more than a hundred billion dollars” in cash windfalls if it signs a new nuclear deal, according to former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who also hinted to a group of pro-Israel activists on Monday that she will run for president in 2024.

With negotiations over a revamped nuclear deal ongoing, Haley warned an audience of pro-Israel activists that the Biden administration is preparing to unload billions of dollars to Tehran—money that “will fund terrorist attacks on Israel and America.”

Biden has “made clear that he’ll do almost anything to get the ayatollahs to sign on the dotted line,” Haley said in a speech before the Christians United for Israel organization during its annual gathering in Washington, D.C. “And do you know who Biden allowed our lead negotiator on the Iran deal to be? Russia.” An advanced transcript of her remarks was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Haley said that with Moscow’s help, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork for Iran to obtain “missiles and nukes to destroy both Israel and America.”

Haley’s speech, which focused heavily on Israel and the threats posed by both Iran and Russia, comes amid speculation that she will throw her hat into the ring for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination—rumors that she appeared to confirm in her speech. It also laid the groundwork for a foreign policy approach that would refocus America on countering Iran and its growing alliance with Russia.

“Anything Joe Biden signs [with Iran] will all but guarantee that Iran gets the bomb. No deal is better than a bad deal,” she said. “And if this president signs any sort of deal, I’ll make you a promise. … The next president will shred it—on her first day in office.”

In addition to advocating for increased U.S. military aid to Israel to help it confront Iran, Haley discussed the war in Ukraine and blamed the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan for fueling Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“If America hadn’t failed so miserably in Afghanistan, there never would have been a war in Ukraine,” she said. “Putin saw the strongest country in history leave Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night—without even telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades.”

The bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is why “Putin made his move. It’s the price we pay for American weakness. And now countless Ukrainians are paying for our mistake with their lives,” Haley said.

Other world dictators learned a similar lesson when the United States ran out of Afghanistan, according to Haley.

“Putin wasn’t the only one who saw a green light in Afghanistan. So did Kim Jong Un in North Korea. So did Xi Jinping in Communist China,”
she said. “And last but not least, our surrender in Afghanistan was the gift that keeps on giving for Iran. When Kabul fell, the ayatollahs celebrated.”

Haley also criticized Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East, including Israel, where he announced a $300 million cash infusion to the Palestinian government. The Free Beacon exclusively reported last week that a large portion of this cash is funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has a history of inciting violence against Jews.

“The money has no conditions, no strings, nothing. The Palestinians can keep stoking hatred of Israel,” Haley said of the renewed funding. “They can keep paying the families of terrorists, which encourages more suicide bombings. Basically, the Palestinians can use America’s money to attack America’s ally. It’s a disgrace.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Hunter Biden held dozens of talks with his father from 2008 to 2016, often shortly after returning home from trips abroad on business, according to data from the younger Biden’s abandoned laptop.

At least 30 such talks took place, The New York Post reported on July 16, based on a personal calendar on the laptop. The meetings took place at either the White House or the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

The latest revelation comes amid President Joe Biden’s continued claim that the two have never spoken about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which included transactions with entities and individuals in countries such as Russia and China.

One of the talks occurred in February 2012, when the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory. The meeting came four days after Hunter Biden was wined and dined by billionaire oligarchs in Moscow.

In November 2015, Hunter Biden met with his father again at the Naval Observatory, two days after returning home from a trip to Romania.

On April 15, 2016, Hunter Biden met with Daniel Kablan Duncan, who was at the time the prime minister of Côte d’Ivoire. Less than an hour after the meeting, the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory.

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) told the NY Post that the latest discovery is more evidence of corruption.

“Hardly a day goes by without another revelation about how intimately involved Joe Biden was with his son Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings,” Stefanik said. “The fact that Joe was in meetings with senior foreign leaders on behalf of Hunter and his business associates while vice president further proves that Joe has been lying to the American people.”

Cory Mills, who’s seeking the Republican nomination to represent Florida’s 7th Congressional District in the midterm elections, said the Post’s findings warrant legal action against the Bidens.

“Hunter Biden should be arrested and Joe Biden impeached,” Mills wrote on Twitter.

The laptop’s calendar also showed that Eric Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, was an invite recipient on 21 of the 30 meetings between Hunter Biden and his father.

In April, The Epoch Times reported that Schwerin visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, after reviewing White House visitor log records. One of the meetings took place in the West Wing on Nov. 17, 2010.

Read More

White House Doesn’t Dispute Joe Biden Left Voicemail About China Story for Hunter Biden

Biden Spoke to Hunter About China Business Deals, Voicemail Reveals

The Post also revealed that Hunter Biden had set up a meeting between his father and Andrés Pastrana Arango, the former president of Colombia, on March 2, 2012.

Before the March 2012 meeting, Hunter Biden and his partners at Rosemont Seneca Partners were allegedly seeking business with Brazilian construction company OAS, according to emails from the laptop, the Post reported. The Brazilian firm was interested in several projects in Columbia at the time, including a hydroelectric power plant worth $1.8 billion and a renovation project to a subway system in Bogota worth $3 billion.

“If it works, we’ll all be rich,” Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden in an email in August 2011, according to the Post. Emails showed Hunter Biden traveling to Bogota in November 2011.

It’s unclear if OAS won any of the projects the company was interested in.

Eventually, OAS was involved in a Brazilian government corruption scandal and agreed to pay a total of 1.92 billion Brazilian reais ($461 million) by 2047 as part of a leniency deal the company signed with Brazil’s federal government in 2019, according to Reuters.

White House officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Recently, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed published by the Post declaring that they aim to investigate the Bidens’ business dealings if Republicans take back the House after the 2022 midterm elections.

“Contrary to Joe Biden’s statement that he never spoke to Hunter about his foreign business dealings, associates state that he was fully aware of his family’s business dealings and influence peddling,” the three lawmakers wrote. “There is evidence of a direct sum of money set aside for ‘the Big Guy’—who witnesses have identified as Joe Biden—from foreign nationals.

“A Republican majority will be committed to uncovering the facts the Democrats, Big Tech, and the legacy media have suppressed.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine finally, though perhaps not permanently, awakened Western Europe to the dangers of relying on a thug for its energy supply.

Help Governor DeSantis Keep Florida Safe From Radical Leftists!

The EU nations have scrambled to replace Russian natural gas, which they have feasted on for years even as they bullied emerging nations (some of whom have abundant oil and gas reserves) never to use the stuff.

The hypocrisy has gotten to be too much – and some emerging nations are calling out the Euros for putting their own comfort ahead of local needs:

While African leaders are eager for the millions in revenue that the gas deals are likely to bring in, they’re also calling out the sudden interest in their resources as a double standard that perpetuates the West’s exploitation of the region. They question why Africa must move away from dirty fuels — thereby delaying access for hundreds of millions of people to electricity — even as its gas is used to keep the lights on in Europe. Rich countries have been reluctant to fund pipelines and power plants that would facilitate the use of gas in Africa because of its emissions, yet haven’t delivered on promises to help finance green projects that could be an alternative source of energy.

Europe’s awkward position was on display at the Group of Seven leaders summit last month. The world’s most advanced economies walked back a climate commitment to halt financing for overseas fossil fuel projects, but indicated that exceptions would likely apply to projects that would allow for more shipments of LNG to their countries. In another climbdown, European Union lawmakers recently voted to classify gas and nuclear energy projects within the bloc as “green investments”, potentially opening up billions of euros in fresh funding.

That approach has irked African leaders who need fuel, any fuel, to lift millions out of poverty. “We need long-term partnership, not inconsistency and contradiction on green energy policy from the UK and European Union,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said in written comments. “It does not help their energy security, it does not help Nigeria’s economy, and it does not help the environment. It is a hypocrisy that must end.”

And that’s just the beginning:

The turn to Africa for a short-term gas fix is “patronizing” and “hypocritical,” said Carlos Lopes, former head of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. It is “absolutely outrageous to say to the Africans that they should basically not look into the options that they have in front of them, and at the same time accelerate the request for gas for Europe because of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank, was more blunt. It’s “green colonialism,” she said, as rich countries exploit poorer nations’ resources while essentially denying them similar access in the name of climate action.

“Green colonialism.” That ought to leave a mark on the conscience of even the most obtuse EU bureaucrat.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.

Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.

In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.

Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.

On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.

He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.

Straightforward from here:

1. Biden announces not running again.

2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.

3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.

4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.

Pourquoi pas?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.

Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.

“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.

“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”

BIDEN: “Read the polls! Read the polls, Jack! You guys are all the same.” pic.twitter.com/e0G3Sfufwm

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 12, 2022

Related:

Conservative Anti-Trump Magazine The Weekly Standard Announces Closure

If Biden were to run for re-election in 2024, he’d start his second term at the age of 82, smashing presidential age records.

Democrats have quietly circulated concerns about his age and unpopularity.

Kristol repeated his desire for Biden to eschew a 2024 re-election campaign in a subsequent tweet.

A lively (I thought!) podcast with @SykesCharlie.

We discuss just how (predictably) dangerous Trump proved to be, and the failure of Republicans and conservatives to come to grips with this.

Bonus: I make the case for Biden announcing he’s one and done.https://t.co/Ux5LubuqpN

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.

Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.

TikTok is no longer advertising for employees in Moscow, following a Washington Free Beacon report that the company was seeking hires in Russia a few months after announcing it had suspended operations in the country.

TikTok’s corporate website listed over a dozen job listings for staffers in Moscow—noting a preference for candidates who spoke Mandarin Chinese—but the posts disappeared shortly after the Free Beacon’s report in late June. The postings appeared to conflict with TikTok’s announcement last March that it would scale back its operations in Russia after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The removal of the job postings comes as the social media company has faced criticism for promoting pro-Putin propaganda and reportedly allowing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to access private U.S. consumer data.

The company had advertised for numerous openings in Russia, including revenue planning managers, industry analysts, and monetization strategists. While TikTok often stresses its independence from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, several of the Russian job ads request Mandarin Chinese speakers, with one stating that “fluency in Mandarin would be [a] distinct advantage” for candidates.

It’s unclear if the posts were removed because the positions were filled. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.

Many news outlets depicted Twitter’s suspension of business in Russia as part of a global corporate boycott campaign. But the company’s actions ended up aiding the Putin regime’s efforts to control information on the platform, according to a Washington Post report in June, by allowing state-run outlets to post propaganda while censoring outside information.

Last week, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate concerns that TikTok “may be collecting biometric data such as faceprints and voiceprints” from its U.S. user base, and that this information could be accessed by the Chinese government.

In a letter to the FTC, the senators cited leaked audio recordings from TikTok meetings that revealed engineers at ByteDance were able to obtain U.S. user data, despite assurances from the social media company that these private records were inaccessible to China. The recordings were first reported by BuzzFeed last month.

“In light of this new report, we ask that your agency immediately initiate … [an] investigation on the basis of apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counter-intelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice,” wrote Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) and vice chairman Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in the letter last week.

“TikTok’s Trust and Safety department was aware of these improper access practices and governance irregularities, which—according to internal recordings of TikTok deliberations—offered PRC-based employees unfettered access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers, and device identification information.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Surging costs of fuel, housing, and food were major contributors to high inflation last month

The U.S. annual inflation rate climbed to 9.1 percent in June, reaching its highest level since November 1981 and topping the market estimate of 8.8 percent and May’s annual rate of 8.6 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose by 1.3 percent month-over-month. The monthly inflation also was higher than economists’ expectations of 1.1 percent.

While the core inflation rate, which removes the volatile food and energy sectors, eased to 5.9 percent, that was higher than the forecast of 5.7 percent. On a monthly basis, core inflation rose at a higher-than-expected pace of 0.7 percent.

Food prices soared by 10.4 percent, while the energy index advanced by 41.6 percent.

Nearly every food item, except uncooked beef steak, was more expensive last month. Pork surged by 9 percent, chicken soared by 18.6 percent, and ham increased by 9.6 percent. Eggs spiked by 33.1 percent, milk rose by 16.4 percent, fruits and vegetables jumped by 8.1 percent, and coffee swelled by 15.8 percent.

On the energy front, fuel oil increased by 98.5 percent. Gasoline surged by 59.9 percent, electricity costs picked up by 13.7 percent, and propane and kerosene jumped by 26.1 percent.

New vehicles surged by 11.4 percent, used cars and trucks jumped by 7.1 percent, apparel increased by 5.2 percent, and shelter climbed by 5.6 percent.

Shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the CPI, increased by 0.6 percent in June from May. This was mainly driven by a 0.8 percent rise in rent of primary residence, the greatest rent increase since 1986.

“Today’s shockingly high consumer price inflation number does not bode well for our country’s economic outlook,” Desmond Lachman, economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email.

It makes it likely that the Fed will keep raising interest rates and decreasing its “bloated balance sheet” aggressively, he said.

“The Fed will likely do so despite the growing signs of economic and financial market weakness both at home and abroad,” Lachman said. “That has to raise the risk of a hard economic landing before yearend and further turmoil in the equity and bond markets.”

The S&P 500 ended 0.4 percent lower, its fourth consecutive drop, after tumbling as much as 1.6 percent earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite ended down 0.2 percent, erasing nearly all of an early 2.1 percent loss.

The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, spiked with the news before ending the day lower by 0.13 percent to 108.02. The index has been on a tear in 2022, rallying about 13 percent year-to-date.

A fake CPI report circulated online on July 12 and attempted to emulate the formatting of the May inflation data, using different dates and figures. It claimed that the annual inflation rate was 10.2 percent in June. Despite being a forgery, it caught the attention of investors, sending stocks slightly lower in the afternoon session on Wall Street.

The White House braced the American people on July 12 for an elevated headline reading, noting in a memo that the June CPI report was out of date since it didn’t contain the dramatic decline in food and energy prices. U.S. officials are ostensibly looking ahead to the July inflation numbers to show that their efforts are succeeding.

Peak Inflation?

Over the past month, crude oil and gasoline prices have fallen by notable levels amid growing recession fears and weaker demand outlooks.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude has slumped by about 17 percent to below $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange since the middle of July. The national average for a gallon of gasoline has tumbled by roughly 7 percent to about $4.65, according to AAA.

Agricultural commodities have also plummeted, with corn, wheat, and soybeans down by approximately 20 percent in the past month.

“The softening food, energy, and commodity prices, the improved supply chains, the easing shipping costs, and lower purchasing manager indices hint that U.S. inflation may have hit a peak last month, or will hit one soon,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, wrote in a research note.

Even if inflation has peaked, market experts believe prices for many goods and services in the marketplace will remain elevated, such as rent and airline fares. Core CPI could moderate, too, because of weaker used car prices.

The headline inflation reading prompted the interest-rate futures market to revise its expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise rates by 100 basis points at this month’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meeting. Most of the market had anticipated a three-quarter-point increase at the upcoming rate-setting committee meeting, with small odds of a full point hike, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

Price stability has become the central bank’s primary objective, even if it triggers a recession and extends the selloff in the financial markets. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stated that it’s possible to navigate a soft landing, but noted that it isn’t a guarantee.

Bryce Doty, senior vice president and senior portfolio manager at Sit Investment Associates, says the Fed’s actions will exacerbate problems in the economy.

“The Fed’s clear mistake of destroying demand by aggressively raising rates instead of supporting businesses desperately in need of workers will further extend shortages,” he wrote in a July 12 research note. “Just think of the incredible growth we would have if another 2 to 4 million workers re-entered the workforce. Supply shortages would dry up and inflation pressures would dissipate. Instead, the Fed’s actions will slow growth and inflation will persist longer than it should.”

However, Deutsche Bank analysts believe that the U.S. central bank needs to maintain its hawkish attitude as inflation continues to show that it’s “a demand-driven phenomenon.” In the past couple of months, consumer demand has eased. Personal spending rose by just 0.2 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Retail sales unexpectedly fell by 0.3 percent in May, the Census Bureau reported.

At the same time, with near-term recession fears growing, the financial institution expects the peak fed funds rate will be 4.1 percent, but economic downturn concerns “could well short-circuit the Fed’s hiking cycle before it reaches our current terminal rate expectations.”

Following the June FOMC meeting, the Fed updated its dot-plot from March, projecting that the benchmark rate would hit 3.4 percent this year, 3.8 percent in 2023, and drop back to 3.4 percent in 2024 (pdf).

“My expectation is that inflation will soon peak,” Lachman said. “It will do so as a result of the U.S. and world economy moving into a recession, as well as a result of the slump presently underway in international commodity prices in general and oil prices in particular.”

Next on the inflation front, the BLS will release the June producer price index on July 14. Economists forecast that it will come in at 10.7 percent year-over-year, down from 10.8 percent in May.

Emel Akan contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

WNBA star Brittney Griner remains imprisoned in Russia, and many people have argued resident Joe Biden and his administration are not doing enough to bring her home. NBA star LeBron James said she should be questioning her desire to return at all.

In a trailer for a new episode of his talk show “The Shop,” James suggested Griner may feel like she has been abandoned by the United States.

“Over 110 days,” James said. “Now, how can she feel like America has her back? I would be feeling like, ‘Do I even want to go back to America?’”

According to NPR, Griner was initially arrested on Feb. 17, at an airport near Moscow after staff allegedly found vape cartridges containing marijuana in her luggage.

On Thursday, Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a Moscow-area court, CNN reported. The charges could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

“She decided to take full responsibility for her actions as she knows that she is a role model for many people,” Griner’s legal team said in a statement.

“Considering the nature of her case, the insignificant amount of the substance and BG’s personality and history of positive contributions to global and Russian sport, the defense hopes that the plea will be considered by the court as a mitigating factor and there will be no severe sentence.”

While James was not the first to suggest the U.S. government should do more to help Griner avoid having to stay in a Russian prison, he took his comments further than most by saying he would question a return to the country if he were Griner.

Multiple conservative commentators torched James on Twitter following his comments.

“LeBron James thinks America is so bad Brittney Griner might prefer to just stay in a Russian prison for a decade,” The Daily Caller editor David Hookstead wrote on Twitter. “People on ESPN act like this clown is a genius. In reality, LeBron is incredibly stupid.”

LeBron James thinks America is so bad Brittney Griner might prefer to just stay in a Russian prison for a decade.

People on ESPN act like this clown is a genius. In reality, LeBron is incredibly stupid. https://t.co/ShPS4Pym86

— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) July 12, 2022

Outkick founder Clay Travis referred to James as a “professional idiot.”

Related:

LeBron James Issues Follow-Up Statement After His Comment on Brittney Griner and America Sparked Backlash

LeBron James, professional idiot, says he would question ever returning to the United States if he’d been arrested in Russia like Brittany Griner. https://t.co/L2CAJivkpj

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 12, 2022

USA Today interviewed David Whelan, whose brother is being held in a Russian prison for a spying charge he denies. Whelan said the condition of Russian prisons is abysmal.

“When they talk about buildings being Stalin-era, they’re not kidding,” Whelan said. “Prisoners have to maintain the cleanliness of their cell, and so it was at first quite filthy, since the previous occupant had not seemed concerned about cleanliness. You are allowed a weekly shower and a daily walk.”

He said guards show “no interest in nutrition” for prisoners, and friends or family members often have to bring in food for many of them.

Meanwhile, James is enjoying the NBA off-season in America. According to contract information from Sportrac, he is set to be paid a base salary of more than $44 million dollars for the season starting later this year.

Aspen Times publisher decries brazen use of power and influence to ‘control a community newspaper’

Pot and kettle? [US Patriot]

Eighteen Colorado politicians are threatening to use their power and influence to compel a small local newspaper to hire their preferred editor, to republish a column the paper pulled from its website, and to disclose the terms of a settlement the paper reached in a defamation lawsuit in June.

Failure to acquiesce to their demands, the politicians are warning, will cause them to use power to “pull advertisements and notices from the paper,” to encourage local businesses to divest from the paper, and to refuse the paper access to local officials. The publisher of the paper, the Aspen Times, is pushing back, arguing that it is “shocking to see elected officials so brazenly threaten to use their positions of power to control a community newspaper.”

The fracas comes in the wake of legal settlement between the paper and Russian-born billionaire Vladislav Doronin. Doronin sued the Times over its coverage of his purchase of a prime piece of land at the base of Aspen Mountain, which referred to him as an “oligarch” and suggested he is an ally of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The Times settled the dispute with Doronin out of court, agreeing to issue a correction to its coverage of the billionaire. Many defamation cases are settled out of court, and it’s not uncommon for settlements to be kept private.

The lawmakers, however, say the newspaper’s actions cast doubt over its “ability to freely achieve the high journalistic standards which you purportedly profess and which our community has come to expect of this local institution.”

“We would like to see clear action,” the lawmakers wrote in a June letter, including the “reinstatement of Andrew Travers as the editor in chief; republication of [Roger] Marolt’s June 10 column … and public clarity about the settlement that was reached in Doronin’s lawsuit.” The signatories also accused the paper of censoring stories about Doronin’s real estate acquisitions, which have been covered by other papers, including the Aspen Daily News.

The situation in Aspen is rare in the United States, where politicians generally avoid making explicit demands about the staffing and editorial decisions of media organizations. Polling has shown that Americans overwhelmingly support press freedom, despite their distrust of the media.

Of the people who signed the letter, at least 12 are Democrats, 3 are Republicans, and 3 appear to be unaffiliated.

Allison Pattillo, the publisher of the Times, rebuked attempts from government officials to control the press in the name of preserving freedom. “This chilling precedent is certainly not representative of our democracy nor the Aspen Idea our community touts,” she wrote.

The letter’s signatories include some ambitious Colorado politicians. Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, secured the Democratic nomination to run against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) in the 2022 midterm elections. “Protecting our Democracy” is one of the top priorities listed on Frisch’s campaign website.

Democrats in recent years have condemned Republicans for allegedly eroding freedom of the press. The American Civil Liberties Union painted former president Donald Trump as the enemy of the free press. Several left-leaning publications said Trump was engaging in a prolonged assault on press freedom.

The letter’s signatories did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Senate candidate Alex Lasry spent weeks blasting Sen. Ron Johnson for participating in a congressional delegation to Russia

Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Alex Lasry—who has spent the past few weeks slamming Sen. Ron Johnson (R.) for traveling four years ago on a congressional delegation to Moscow—visited Russia himself shortly after President Vladimir Putin’s controversial election in 2012, according to a now-deleted post on Lasry’s Facebook page.

Lasry, the son of a hedge fund billionaire, posted a photo of himself posing on a gold-carved, red velvet throne while dining at a luxury tourist restaurant inside an imperial palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, according to a copy of the June 17, 2012, post obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“Oh I just can’t wait to be king,” wrote Lasry in the caption for the photo, in which he is holding a red crystal goblet.

The picture could complicate Lasry’s attempts to contrast himself with Johnson, whom Lasry has blasted as a “Putin apologist” who “would rather spend the Fourth of July in Moscow than Wisconsin.” It could also play into criticism from Lasry’s Democratic primary opponents, who argue that his massive family wealth has left him out of touch with voters.

The restaurant, Russian Ampir, is a popular site with tourists, according to TripAdvisor, which says the hotspot gives diners an “acquaintance with the cuisine of Russian aristocracy in the days of the imperial St. Petersburg.”

“Even the most exacting audience will be fascinated by the view of tables served with 24-karat gold flatware, exclusive porcelain of 18th century, crystal wares encrusted with gold,” said the travel guide.

Lasry, who is polling in a dead heat against fellow Democrat and Wisconsin lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes in the party’s Senate primary, has been running ads criticizing Johnson over the Russia trip, saying Wisconsinites can’t count on the senator to “represent our values of freedom and democracy.” Johnson in July 2018 traveled to Moscow on an eight-member Republican congressional delegation led by then-Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Richard Shelby (R., Ala.). The Kremlin later barred Johnson and several other senators from visiting on a bipartisan delegation trip in 2019, reportedly in retaliation for their support of U.S. sanctions against Russia.

“I’ll always represent you, as a Wisconsinite and as an American,” said Lasry in the ad.

Lasry’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the nature of the trip. At the time, Lasry had just finished a three-year stint as an aide in the Obama administration. He went on to attend graduate school at the New York University Stern School of Business.

Lasry’s trip took place amid global outcry and massive protests against Putin’s 2012 election, which many pro-democracy activists said was fraudulent, and as U.S.-Russian relations were growing increasingly rocky.

One year after Lasry’s Russia trip, Lasry’s father, hedge fund billionaire and Democratic donor Marc Lasry, was dropped from consideration as the Obama administration’s ambassador to France due to alleged involvement with an illegal high-stakes poker ring and reported ties to a Russian mobster. The poker game later became the focus of the film Molly’s Game.

The younger Lasry went on to work as an executive for the Milwaukee Bucks, which is co-owned by his father.

One of Lasry’s far-left Democratic primary opponents, Tom Nelson, during a party forum last week slammed him as an “out-of-state billionaire,” citing the candidate’s wealth and East Coast upbringing. The Democratic primary is scheduled for Aug. 9.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Army suspended a decorated general for criticizing a tweet by first lady Jill Biden, USA Today reported.

The branch released retired three-star lieutenant general Gary Volesky, a veteran of the wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from advising senior officers because of his June 25 response to a Jill Biden tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade.

“For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies,” the first lady tweeted. “Today, that right was stolen from us.”

“Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” Volesky replied.

Volesky’s tweet has since been taken down.

Volesky was likely talking about Biden’s support for transgender rights, a cause the military has also embraced. As Russia this year began its bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army was training officers on “gender pronouns” and “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Top-ranking General Mark Milley, who secretly promised to warn the Chinese People’s Liberation Army about U.S. military actions, has in recent years embraced left-wing causes, saying he wants to “understand white rage” and apologizing for appearing with former president Donald Trump.

This is the second time this month that the Army has punished service members for disagreeing with someone in the Biden White House. The Army announced July 1 that it will deprive soldiers of pay and benefits if they do not comply with the administration’s vaccine mandate.

Volesky, who retired in 2020, received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest decoration for valor, the New York Post reported. He served as the Army’s chief of public affairs from 2012 to 2014 and commanded the 101st Airborne Division.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft cut bait

A few years ago, the Koch brothers and George Soros had a dream. What if the anti-war left joined forces with the isolationist right and worked together to bring U.S. foreign policy back to the 1930s? 

From this unholy alliance sprung the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The mission: make America neutral again. Finally appeasers in Washington had a safe space to apologize for Russian oligarchs, Iranian terrorists, and Chinese communists. 

Well, all good things must come to an end.

An all-star in the Koch-Soros foreign policy alliance, Joseph Cirincione, announced on Thursday his resignation from the Quincy Institute: “They excuse Russia’s military threats and actions because they believe that they have been provoked by U.S. policies,” he told Politico.

Cirincione is not just some disgruntled scholar. He is the former president of Ploughshares, a grant-making organization that was not just a recipient of the Soros organization’s politicized philanthropy, but a gatekeeper and driver of it—deciding which pinkos would prosper and which would starve. Mother Jones reports that Cirincione helped connect Quincy to major donors in its early days.

His change of heart on Quincy is surely a weathervane for other elements of the Soros network. Indeed, Soros himself has been signaling in the last year that he favors a much tougher policy on China than the one offered up by the Quincy crowd, which released a major study in June that found the Chinese military build up was nothing to worry about and has warned of the perils of “threat inflation” when it comes to China’s military expansion. 

Soros, by contrast, came very close to endorsing regime change. “It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad,” he told an audience at the Hoover Institution in January, calling Xi “the greatest threat that open societies face today.” 

Trita Parsi, a co-founder and executive vice president of Quincy, as well as somebody who could be confused for an Iranian agent—at least according to a federal judge—told Mother Jones he’s bewildered that Cirincione would suggest the think tank was avoiding criticism of Russia. But he acknowledges that Quincy is “not going along with the idea that it’s a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.”

As the Quincy Institute demonstrated so spectacularly in Afghanistan, one sure fire way to end endless war is to lose the war quickly and all at once. 

As for the interpersonal drama that we assume is engulfing the Quincy Institute, and the enmity growing between teams Koch and Soros—may that war truly be endless.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WNBA star Brittney Griner is still imprisoned in Russia, and political leaders in America have begun speaking out about efforts to bring her back.

At the same time, Hollywood star Nick Searcy said there are more important priorities.

“Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit,” Searcy wrote on Twitter.

Tell you what: when the @joebiden Occupation releases the Jan. 6th political prisoners who have been held in a DC gulag for 18 months without bail, maybe then I’ll give a damn about some basketball player who hates America who is in jail in Russia because of her drug habit.

— Nick Searcy, INSURRECTIONAL FILM & TELEVISION STAR (@yesnicksearcy) July 10, 2022

Harsh as his statement was, Searcy was correct that Americans should not have their constitutional rights stripped in this country.

Last year, Searcy teamed up with filmmaker Chris Burgard for a documentary called “Capitol Punishment.”

In the documentary, Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin detailed the treatment he received following the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021.

“They put me in a cell by myself, total solitary confinement, in a cell not much bigger than a walk-in closet,” Griffin said in the film. He remembered being called an “effing white cracker” on multiple occasions.

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In December, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar further detailed the alleged rights violations the prisoners had to endure.

“They have been beaten by the guards. They are called white supremacist,” Greene said, according to the Post Millennial. “They are denied religious services, haircuts, shaving, the ability to trim their fingernails.

“There’s more outrageous things happening there. They’re denied time with their attorneys. They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there. They are denied bail and being held there without bail.”

While Biden has yet to address these allegations, he said on Friday that he replied to a letter from Griner, The Guardian reported. Griner wrote to Biden about her fear of being stuck in Russia long term, but he reportedly assured her of his efforts to bring her home.

“I was able to read [Biden’s] letter, and it brought [me] so much joy, as well as BG,” said Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner.

Related:

Top Dem Admits Brutal Truth Behind AOC’s Effort to Impeach Clarence Thomas

“I believe every word that she said to [Biden] he understood, and he sees her as a person, and he has not forgotten her, which was her biggest cry in her letter.”

She said Biden promised he is “exhausting all efforts” to get Griner home.

While there is nothing wrong with Biden trying to get Griner home, he should be making the same or more effort to ensure prisoners in the United States are not being mistreated.

By focusing efforts on Griner instead of major issues occurring in America, Biden is showing just how powerful his political bias truly is.

The Biden administration on July 8 announced it is sending another $400 million in aid to Ukraine to “meet critical needs for Ukraine’s fight” in the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war.

The money comes from a Presidential Drawdown (PDA) of equipment from the Pentagon’s inventories—the 15th such authorization for Ukraine since August 2021 under the Biden administration.

The latest security aid will be “especially important and effective in assisting Ukraine and coping with the Russian artillery battle” in Ukraine’s Donbas region, a senior defense official told reporters on July 8.

The security assistance package includes four additional High Mobility Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and additional ammunition for the systems. The systems have a range of about 40 miles and allow Ukraine forces the power to strike faraway targets with more accuracy.

The senior defense official told reporters the additional HIMARS would bring the total number of these systems to 12.

“As the United States surged HIMARS systems and the missiles for those systems, that Ukraine has now been successfully striking Russian locations in Ukraine, deeper behind the front lines, and disrupting Russia’s ability to conduct that artillery operation,” he added.

‘Further Evolution’

The aid package would also include three tactical vehicles to recover equipment and 1,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition.

“This is a new type of 155-millimeter artillery ammunition,” the senior defense official told reporters. “It has greater precision. It offers Ukraine precise capability for specific targets. It will save ammunition. It will be more effective due to the precision, so it’s a further evolution in our support for Ukraine in this battle in the Donbas.”

The package furthermore includes demolition munitions, counter-battery systems, as well as other equipment and spare parts.

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Todd Breasseale said on July 8 that since the start of the Biden administration, the Pentagon has committed about $8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, of which $2.2 billion were committed in the past three weeks.

Just last week, the Biden administration announced a security assistance package worth $820 million that included two surface-to-air missile systems.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States had committed some $1.8 billion in weapons and military training to Ukraine, $700 million of which came from the Biden administration.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Trade between Russia and Iran has topped $4.5 billion as the two regimes integrate their economies to create a network capable of evading U.S. and international sanctions.

Russia is making major investments in Iran’s ports, nuclear infrastructure, energy sector, and military machine. Iran’s deputy roads and urban development minister, Shahriar Afandizadeh, this week valued this trade at $4.5 billion.

Tehran and Moscow also recently inked an economic deal to carry some 10 million tons of goods from Russia into Iran through a land corridor. This deal “puts emphasis on transit in addition to imports and exports,” according to a summary of Afandizadeh’s comments published Wednesday in the country’s state-controlled press. This relationship helps to keep Moscow afloat as international sanctions cripple Russia’s economy as a result of its war in Ukraine.

Members of Congress and regional experts have warned for some time that Iran and Russia are ratcheting up relations to combat Western sanctions and boost each other’s militaries. With the Biden administration’s diplomacy aimed at securing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord, warnings have swirled on Capitol Hill that a new deal will create a “sanctions evasion hub for Vladimir Putin based in Iran,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. Iran, Russia, and China also are slated to hold a series of major war drills in Latin America next month, highlighting the emphasis these countries place on combatting the United States in its own backyard.

Iran also recently announced that it will boost exports to Russia, including “construction materials,” with an estimated worth of $3 billion.

The total amount of trade between Iran and Russia last year totaled around $2.5 billion, signaling that in the year since, trade between the countries has increased significantly.

Russian companies also stand to cash in on a new nuclear deal with Iran. Several of Russia’s top state-controlled nuclear companies would receive billions of dollars in revenue once sanctions are waived as part of a new agreement.

Iran has reportedly already paid Russia more than $500 million for its work building out Iran’s nuclear plants. If a nuclear deal is inked, Iran and Russia will be free to continue building nuclear sites.

Sanctioned Russia ships also have been caught in recent months ferrying illicit Iranian oil, providing both regimes with financial lifelines. At least two Russian tankers sanctioned as part of U.S. efforts to isolate Russian businesses were seen carrying illicit Iranian oil from various ports. This type of sanctions-busting scheme is also employed between Iran and China.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said that Russia is learning sanctions evasion techniques from its ally Iran.

“Russia, which is now under increasing sanctions due to its invasion of Ukraine, stands to learn a lot from the Islamic Republic in the sanctions busting space,” he said. “Therefore, the value of Russo-Iranian collaboration will not just be quantitative as represented by the volume or value of trade, but qualitative, namely the industries as well as what contacts are made and experiences gained.”

“The longer Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine continues, the deeper its embrace of actors like the Islamic Republic, who are used to operating outside or abusing formal financial networks, will be,” Ben Taleblu said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WNBA player Brittney Griner on Thursday pleaded guilty in a Russian courtroom to possessing less than a gram of cannabis oil in her luggage when she landed at a Moscow airport in February.

It’s a sad story, but Griner is hardly the political prisoner that resident Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have made her out to be. And under no circumstances should the Democratic Party’s identity politics allow a black lesbian millionaire athlete who broke the law in a foreign country to receive preferential treatment—as she already is receiving—over genuinely innocent hostages long left to rot in foreign prisons. Even if one were to leave aside the fact, which we simply cannot, that Griner clamored for the removal of the national anthem from WNBA games.

So far, the administration is sending all the wrong signals, elevating Griner’s case above that of actual political prisoners like Paul Whelan: A senior U.S. diplomat on Thursday hand-delivered a personal note from Biden to Griner, a move that followed a phone call from Biden and Harris to Griner’s partner, Cherelle, in which Biden assured her that he is “working to secure Brittney’s release as soon as possible, as well as the release of Paul Whelan and other U.S. nationals who are wrongfully detained or held hostage in Russia and around the world.”

That may sound like inoffensive boilerplate, but equating Griner and Whelan is indecent. Whelan has been locked up since 2019 on trumped-up espionage charges. He insists he’s innocent, and he was almost certainly framed by Russia’s spy service.

Whatever one thinks of Russia’s draconian drug laws, Griner has quite plausibly admitted her guilt, so it’s unclear why Biden and Harris have made Griner’s ordeal a higher priority than Whelan’s. Now, his family wants to know why. His sister, Elizabeth Whelan, said this week she was “crushed” and that if the president wants to talk about securing Whelan’s release, “he needs to be talking to the Whelans!”

Beyond that, Griner is not exactly an American patriot. She launched a campaign in the summer of 2020—in the wake of George Floyd’s murder—to press the WNBA to stop playing the national anthem before games. “Yeah, we’re here to play basketball. But basketball doesn’t mean anything in a world where we can’t just live,” she told the Washington Post at the time. “We can’t wake up and do whatever we want to do. Go for a run, go to the store to buy some candy, drive your car without the fear of being wrongfully pulled over.” Maybe after her brush with Russian law enforcement, she’ll realize conditions back stateside aren’t as oppressive as she made them out to be.

In the meantime, Griner should not jump the line in any prisoner swap negotiated by the Biden administration. Russian media have reported that Moscow wants the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout cut loose in exchange for Griner. His arms trafficking fueled some of the worst wars of the 21st century, from Africa to South America to southwest Asia. He was finally convicted in 2011, after federal agents posing as Colombian Marxist guerrillas caught him in a sting. Should Bout go free because a WNBA star wanted to get high when she was playing basketball in an authoritarian police state? Clearly not.

Biden should reject that rotten deal, but if he’s tempted to make a trade, he should demand the Russians first release Paul Whelan.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

CROSSROADS

JOSHUA PHILIPP

Protests have broken out in the Netherlands, where the government has begun restricting agriculture in a push to reduce nitrogen use. This follows a broader global trend, where governments are placing restrictions on farmers and fertilizers under claims of fighting global warming. And meanwhile, Sri Lanka serves as an example of where these policies could lead, where restrictions on fertilizers caused food shortages that are now sparking riots.

We will also have war correspondent Michael Yon joining us live from the Netherlands to talk about the current farmers’ protests and what’s happening on the ground there.

In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we’ll discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience.

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SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Iran, Russia, and China are gearing up to run a series of major war drills in Latin America in a show of force meant to signal how these militaries can reach the United States.

The war games, known as the Sniper Frontier competition, show that these malign regime from across the globe are uniting and “getting ready to make a loud statement that the region is ready to embrace the multipolar force,” according to the think-tank report, which focuses on Latin America’s embrace of authoritarian regimes. A key portion of Russia’s “military is prepping to bring, for the first time, some of these military games to the Western Hemisphere”—even as Moscow is bogged down with war in Ukraine.

The war drills are one of the starkest signs to date that Latin America’s coalition of anti-U.S. regimes is working to boost relations with Russia, China, and Iran. Maduro recently wrapped up a diplomatic tour of the Middle East in which he inked a 20-year strategic deal with Iran that laid the groundwork for an Iranian oil tanker to dock in Venezuela and offload Tehran’s illicit crude. “The strategic deal between Iran and Venezuela is meant to mirror similar strategic agreements that the Islamic Republic signed with China and Russia in recent years,” according to the think-tank report. Latin American regimes also are inking military pacts with Russia.

“Russia and its allies Iran and China are about to make a major show of force with the army games competition in August in Venezuela. But it’s important to understand that this force is molded by cyber-enabled, digital disinformation that is at the heart of how this kind of joint military exercise is used to legitimize authoritarian states and delegitimize democracies in the Western Hemisphere,” Joseph Humire, a national security analyst and executive director of the think tank, told the Washington Free Beacon. “By normalizing military movements of U.S. adversaries in the Caribbean, we run the risk of weakening the moral legitimacy of democracies in Latin America.”

There are also signs that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s paramilitary fighting force, is boosting its presence in Latin America.

In early June, a Venezuela cargo plane flying in the region “was discovered to have members of the Qods Force, the elite unit of Iran’s revolutionary guards, on board,” according to the think-tank report. “Gholamreza Ghasemi, a known weapons trafficker for the IRGC and manager of Qeshm Fars Air, was piloting the Boeing 747-300M that returned to Buenos Aires along with 4 other Iranian nationals and 14 Venezuelans.”

After the plane was grounded, “documents, personnel effects, and electronics were seized by Argentine authorities who discovered images of tanks, missiles, and other pro-IRGC paraphernalia on one of the mobile devices,” hinting at a larger Iranian-backed plot unfolding in the region.

Ghasemi reportedly made at least 13 trips from Iran to Venezuela in the past year and a half, raising red flags with the FBI and the Israeli government.

As Iran and Venezuela increase their military and economic ties, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega—an ally of Venezuela’s Maduro—renewed a military pact with Russia “authorizing Russian troops, planes, and ships to patrol the Central American country’s borders and conduct joint military training exercises,” according to the report. The military agreement was signed amid Russia’s war with Ukraine, indicating that a presence in Latin America remains a priority for Moscow even as it faces pressure on its own borders.

Russia has been waging covert espionage operations in Latin America. An accused Russian GRU military intelligence agent was recently caught trying to obtain an internship at the International Criminal Court. The spy “had been cultivating his cover as a Brazilian national for years and may not have been working alone,” according to the think-tank report.

China also has been active in the region, though these efforts have received little media attention.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi last month inked several economic deals in Latin America, making calls to Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program to increase the Chinese Communist Party’s global footprint, has made its way into Argentina, where it is working to build infrastructure projects.

“As Russia attempts to delegitimize the international financial system,” the think tank noted, “China has signed an agreement with a Switzerland-based bank to establish a reserve of yuan currency together with Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile to counter the U.S. dollar.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Analysts with JP Morgan Chase said the price for a barrel of oil could more than triple if Russia decides to cut its output amid record-high gas prices.

The current price for a barrel of oil stands at around $110, but that could increase to a “stratospheric” $380 per barrel if Russia acts to cut output, JP Morgan’s analysis wrote in a note, according to Bloomberg News.

“It is likely that the government could retaliate by cutting output as a way to inflict pain on the West,” the analysts wrote in what they described as a worst-case scenario. “The tightness of the global oil market is on Russia’s side.”

JP Morgan analyst Natasha Kaneva said that Russia cutting production by 3 million barrels a day would push global prices to $190 per barrel. And the worst-case scenario, she added, would be if Moscow cut 5 million barrels per day, which could send the price to $380.

Since the start of the Ukraine conflict on Feb. 24, Western nations have hit Russia with punishing sanctions. However, Russia supplies much of Europe with oil and natural gas. The United States, meanwhile, has blocked all Russian oil exports since March.

JP Morgan’s analysts added that if the West continues to target Russia’s oil industry, the Kremlin may not play along.

“The most obvious and likely risk with a price cap is that Russia might choose not to participate and instead retaliate by reducing exports,” the note said, according to Bloomberg.

Data from AAA shows that the nationwide average for a gallon of regular gas currently is hovering around $4.81 as of Sunday, a slight decline of about 10 cents from the previous week.

US Response

Last week, when asked about how long Americans should expect to pay high gas prices, President Joe Biden claimed that they will continue to be elevated as long as the conflict takes to resolve.

“As long as it takes so Russia cannot in fact defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine,” Biden told reporters on June 30. “This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are. Why do we have NATO? I told Putin that in fact, if he were to move, we would move to strengthen NATO. We would move to strengthen NATO across the board.”

White House economic adviser Brian Deese said that Americans should pay high prices because it “is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm.”

Biden also attempted to shift the blame to gas stations for the higher prices, writing on Twitter: “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

He did not provide any examples of how gas stations could “bring down the price.” It’s also not clear if he was writing to individual gas station owners, companies, or individuals who own many franchises.

A day later, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby defended the Twitter post in a Sunday morning interview with Fox News.

“If everybody cooperates on this, we can bring the price down at least by about a dollar a gallon,” Kirby remarked, “so he’s working very, very hard to do this because he knows the impact that high gas prices have on the American household.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Amazon founder and multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos criticized the Biden administration’s messaging around gas prices and rising inflation.

On Saturday, resident Joe Biden suggested on Twitter that gas stations across the United States charge customers less for gasoline to offset historically high gas prices.

“Ouch,” Bezos wrote in response. “Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”

Earlier, Biden’s Twitter account wrote that he has a “message” to gas stations: “This is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

From the Twitter post, it’s not clear how gas stations might accomplish Biden’s Twitter demand, which was praised by a Chinese Communist Party media account. Others, however, criticized the president’s post.

“You know as well as everyone that the Federal Reserve actually sets the prices—through rampant inflation,” wrote the Libertarian Party’s account. “When 40 percent of the dollars in the world was printed in one year, inflation sets in and prices skyrocket. Just yesterday you were blaming [Russia]. We see through your scam.”

Added California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger, “At a time of war, Biden could have leveled with the American people and united the country through an ‘all-of-the-above’ clean energy strategy that included oil & gas. Instead, he has repeatedly lied about the causes of the energy crisis and divided the country.”

Data released by auto club AAA on Sunday shows that the national average price for a gallon of regular gas currently stands at $4.81, down about 10 cents from a week ago. In mid-June, the average price hit $5 per gallon for the first time.

Biden and fellow Democrats have shifted from blaming Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, for the spike in gas prices to blaming oil companies and gas stations in recent days. The president sent a letter to the top oil companies in the United States, demanding that they bring down prices while accusing them of price-gouging.

ExxonMobil, one of the firms, fired back by suggesting that federal policies have contributed to rising prices.

“In the short term, the U.S. government could enact measures often used in emergencies following hurricanes or other supply disruptions—such as waivers of Jones Act provisions and some fuel specifications to increase supplies,” the oil giant wrote in a news release.

The federal government, it added, “can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.”

Republicans and some analysts have said the higher prices are caused by Biden having issued a series of executive orders last year suspending new drilling leases on federal lands, fossil fuel subsidies, and killing off the Keystone pipeline.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A recovered voicemail reveals resident Joe Biden called his son, Hunter Biden, in late 2018 to discuss a New York Times report on the latter’s dealings with a Chinese oil tycoon who had been charged with financial crimes.

The leaked voicemail contradicts Biden’s claims that he never spoke with Hunter about his overseas business transactions.

“I think you’re clear,” Biden said to Hunter in the audio, first released by Daily Mail on June 27. “And anyway if you get a chance, give me a call, I love you.”

The voicemail, dating back to Dec. 12, 2018, came from Hunter’s old iPhone backup on his abandoned laptop. It came after the NY Times published an article detailing Hunter’s ties with Chinese oil giant CEFC’s former chairman, Ye Jianming, who was arrested in China on bribery charges in 2018.

“Hey pal, it’s Dad,” Biden began with his message. “It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance, just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good,” he said.

NEW: In 2018, Joe Biden left a voicemail for Hunter saying he wanted to talk to him about a New York Times report on Hunter’s business deals in China.

Biden repeatedly said he “never discussed” business with Hunter. pic.twitter.com/7r9VatHUoH

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 27, 2022

Hunter Biden’s Chinese Business Dealings

The NY Times reported on a private meeting between Ye and Hunter in Miami in May 2017.

Moreover, when a top aide of Ye, Patrick Ho, was arrested by the FBI for corruption and bribery in 2017, Ho reportedly called Biden’s brother, James Biden. The latter later told the NY Times that he believed the call was intended for his nephew Hunter.

According to a disclosed letter, CEFC China Energy also paid Hunter $1 million to find a U.S.-based attorney for Ho, whom Hunter once called “the spy chief of China.”

Throughout his presidential campaign, Biden repeatedly denied any knowledge of his son’s overseas business dealings.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said at a Democrat fundraiser in Iowa in 2019, accusing then-President Donald Trump of trying “to smear” him.

During the second presidential debate in 2020, Biden went further, claiming that stories about his son’s laptop were “a Russian plant.”

Since taking office, Biden has denied such allegations on several occasions, both in person or via his press spokespersons.

The White House didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

“SMOKING GUN!” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) wrote on Twitter upon the release of the voicemail message. “Even Big Tech can’t ignore [resident Biden’s] Hunter problem anymore,” he said in another post.

“It’s time for a hearing,” the GOP lawmaker concluded.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-spoke-to-hunter-about-china-business-deals-voicemail-reveals_4565987.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-30&utm_medium=email&est=qRQ5%2B7UaFS1SJjHNRYCj1PSv8I2DL2V%2Bcjanp64Y%2BjMc50JVlkpdhy6fln8FQxsBsg%3D%3D

TikTok is advertising job openings in Moscow, just months after the Chinese-owned social media platform said it suspended its Russia operations amid a mass corporate exodus from the country.

TikTok’s corporate website lists more than a dozen job postings in Moscow, including revenue planning managers, industry analysts, and monetization strategists. While TikTok often stresses its independence from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, several of the Russian job ads request Mandarin Chinese speakers, with one stating that “fluency in Mandarin would be [a] distinct advantage” for candidates.

The TikTok job listings suggest the company has no plans to exit Moscow, even as hundreds of companies, including McDonalds, Starbucks, and Ikea, have pulled out of the Russian market since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The hiring activity comes amid growing concerns from U.S. lawmakers about TikTok’s relationships with adversarial countries, and more than a year after the Biden administration promised to conduct a national security review of the platform. ByteDance has accessed private U.S. consumer data collected by the social media site, BuzzFeed reported in June. U.S. senators are also investigating the flood of Russian state-sponsored propaganda on the platform.

In March, TikTok banned Russian users from live-streaming and posting new content in response to the Kremlin’s “fake news” law, which prohibited people from spreading anti-government information. The platform also blocked Russians from viewing content from outside the country.

Some news outlets depicted TikTok’s announcement as part of the worldwide corporate withdrawal from Russia, with CNN reporting that it joined a “long list of companies boycotting the country over its war in Ukraine.”

But the company’s decision was actually a benefit to the Russian government, according to the Washington Post, which reported in June that TikTok selectively enforced its policies and allowed Russian state-run outlets to continue to post propaganda while censoring outside information.

Republican senators slammed the policy in a letter to TikTok’s CEO last week.

“We are deeply concerned that … TikTok is enabling the spread of pro-war propaganda to the Russian public, which risks adding to an already devastating human toll for both Ukrainians and Russians,” said the letter, which was led by Sens. James Lankford (R., Okla.) and Steve Daines (R., Mont.).

Another group of Senate Republicans on Friday pressed the Biden administration for an update on its promised national security review of TikTok, after reports of a Chinese data breach at the company. While TikTok says it stores private American user data in the United States for security, engineers at ByteDance have routinely accessed this data, according to company audio recordings published earlier this month by BuzzFeed.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/as-companies-flee-russia-china-owned-tiktok-takes-different-course/

THE LATEST GRIFT FROM THE ECOHEALTH CHIEF INVOLVES A NUMBER OF KREMLIN-LINKED RESEARCHERS.

Peter Daszak – a controversial U.S-based researcher whose collaborations on coronavirus research with a Chinese laboratory were funded by Anthony Fauci – isolated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus strains in Russia using funds from the Russian government in a recently published research paper, The National Pulse can reveal.

Daszak, 49, appeared to play a critical role in the origins of COVID-19, as his organization, the ‘EcoHealth Alliance’, facilitated a “longtime” joint research effort with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is believed to be the source of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, Daszak also featured prominently in promoting the “natural origins” theory while simultaneously discrediting supporters of the “lab leak” theory, most notably in the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 investigator.

His latest study appears to be yet another controversy. Daszak, who is originally British, is listed as the sole U.S. researcher on the paper: “Identification and Genetic Characterization of MERS-Related Coronavirus Isolated from Nathusius’ Pipistrelle  Near Zvenigorod (Moscow Region, Russia).”

The paper was published on June 10th 2022 and counted an additional 11 Russian researchers from Kremlin-run facilities including the Federal Service on Consumers’ Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Surveillance and Moscow State University.

The study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the national science funding body of the Russian government, and the state-run Russian Science Foundation.

Researchers conducted “analyses of bat viromes,” which “have been used to identify novel viruses with potential to cause human infection.”

“We characterized the fecal virome of 26 samples collected from six bat species captured during 2015 in Moscow Region. Of these 13/26 (50%) samples were found to be coronavirus positive,” continued researchers.

MUST READ: HOT MIC: Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Admits YOUR Tax Dollars Are Paying for the Upkeep of Seized Russian Yachts.

“We sequenced and assembled the complete genome of a novel MERS-related Betacoronavirus from Pipistrellus nathusii, named MOW-BatCoV strain 15-22.”

The capture and sampling of bats were carried out by Moscow State University researchers in the summer of 2015.

Appearing to use similar tactics as researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Russian scientists and Daszak focused on the spike protein. The spike protein allows viruses to penetrate host cells and cause infection and is believed to have been manipulated by researchers in Wuhan to become more lethal to humans.

“To predict and analyze the interaction of MOW-BatCoV Spike glycoprotein with DPP4 receptors of the different mammalian species, the three-dimensional structures of these proteins were obtained by homologous modeling. The DPP4 proteins of two bats (Myotis brandtii and Pipistrellus kuhlii), the hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus), domestic cat (Felix catus) and mouse (Mus musculus) were used for analysis,” explains the paper.

Analysis of the complete genomes the novel coronavirus discovered in the paper shows that it “falls into clade of human/camel’s MERS viruses together with a few bat viruses.”

Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur distances herself from D.C. after serving for nearly four decades

Ohio Democratic congresswoman Marcy Kaptur says she’s fed up with “people in Washington” who “care only about the coasts.” She’s been in Congress since 1983 and votes in lockstep with her party’s coastal leaders.

In her first ad of the general election cycle, titled “Feeling Squeezed,” Kaptur claims “too many of us” are hurting economically because “the people in Washington only care about the coasts.” The Democrat should know—she’s served in Congress for nearly four decades and votes with resident Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) 100 percent and 99 percent of the time, respectively. Kaptur also routinely touts her vote in favor of the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus package. Prominent liberal economists say that bill drove the nation’s inflation surge.

This is hardly the first time Kaptur has attempted to distance herself from her record as a career politician as she navigates a competitive reelection campaign for the first time in decades. With record-high gas prices seen under Biden driving voters away from Democrats, Kaptur is blaming BP and other “big oil” companies for “gouging consumers.” But Kaptur has taken thousands of dollars in campaign cash from major oil and gas companies since 2013, including $12,000 from BP. And when Biden similarly blamed oil and gas companies for “pad[ding] their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans,” energy experts debunked the claim.

Bernie Moreno, Ohio chair of the nonpartisan group U.S. Term Limits, said Kaptur’s ad proves the Democrat is “desperate” with the midterm elections looming.

“Democrats are desperate for shifting narratives, so they pretend they’re something they’re not. Because the polling and the public sentiment is crystal clear—people don’t want career politicians, so the only way they think they can win is by pretending none of that exists,” Moreno told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s unbelievable to see them try to morph into something they’re not. For example, Marcy Kaptur, she’s been there for 40 years. All the problems she’s talking about, well, why didn’t you solve those while you were there for four decades?”

Kaptur’s campaign did not return a request for comment. Her attempt to distance herself from Washington, D.C., Democrats is particularly bizarre given her unwavering support for Biden. When Biden visited Kaptur’s district in February, Kaptur called him the best president she’s “walked alongside as a member of Congress.” “resident Biden, your report card is outstanding for your first year as president,” Kaptur added. Just 27 percent of Ohioans approve of Biden, while 62 percent disapprove, according to Civiqs.

Kaptur’s February speech explicitly touted Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which the Ohio Democrat said would lead to “the modernization of our nation.” Instead, former Obama administration economic adviser Larry Summers says the legislation led to inflation. Buckeye Institute research fellow Greg Lawson agrees—he told the Free Beacon Kaptur was “sticking her head in the sand” if she believed Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus package wouldn’t be inflationary.

“It’s a massive amount of money that really wasn’t essential and has now created all kinds of reverberation effects,” Lawson said. “So at the end of the day, it was a bad deal. And now we’re paying for it quite a bit.”

Over her nearly 40-year career, Kaptur has won all but three of her reelection bids by at least 20 points. That will almost certainly change in November—Ohio’s redistricting process made her district considerably more red, meaning Kaptur will likely face the toughest reelection bid of her career in November. The Democrat is set to face Air Force veteran J.R. Majewski, who won his primary contest by 5 points in May. Roughly two months earlier, Majewski signed a U.S. Term Limits pledge to limit terms for elected officials. Kaptur, meanwhile, said in 1995 that term limits would cause “upheaval” and lead to a “bunch of juvenile congressmen.”

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/tone-deaf-democrat-whos-been-in-congress-since-1983-goes-after-people-in-washington/

New York billionaire and refiner John Catsimatidis, who owns hundreds of gas stations, blasted resident Joe Biden’s pinning the blame on high prices at the pump on gas station owners, arguing there’s only one solution for inflation—boosting production of crude.

Catsimatidis made the remarks in an interview on Fox News on June 24, after being asked to comment on Biden’s call to gas station owners to “bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you are paying for the product.”

“Do it now. Do it today. Your customers, the American people, they need relief now,” Biden said at a White House press conference on June 23, in which the president called for a federal gas tax holiday, urged oil companies to use their profits to boost refining capacity, and leaned on gas station owners to pass along lower crude oil prices by lowering prices at the pump.

‘Ridiculous to Put It on Us’

Catsimatidis reacted to Biden’s remarks by defending gas station owners, arguing that they’ve been “making the same margin that we’ve been making forever” as they have to cover payroll and pay rent, electricity bills, and other operating expenses.

While the margin gas station owners make fluctuates several cents one way or the other, Catsimatidis said it’s “ridiculous to put it on us. We’re not the ones that created the problem.”

The price of gasoline has nearly doubled since Biden took office, with the president variously blaming oil industry greed, a lack of refining capacity, global supply shortfalls set against a sharp post-pandemic rebound in demand, and the war in Ukraine.

Some experts and industry insiders have argued that the Biden administration’s anti-fossil fuel policies have discouraged companies from investing in refining capacity.

“It’s not the war in Ukraine. It’s really domestically caused constraint on the supply side,” said Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario and expert on energy and environmental policy, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.

“Nobody’s willing to invest in expanding refinery capacity because the outlook from everything that the government has said is you won’t get the approvals,” he added.

McKitrick’s view was echoed by Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, who said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, arguing that government policies are the key factor.

“We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce,” Wirth said.

Still, American drivers facing pain at the pump could see some relief from economic headwinds and reduced demand, if not from gas station owners squeezing their margins or refiners finding ways to process more crude.

‘No Denying Biden Has Some Blame’

Oil prices have retreated over the past two weeks amid broad market concern over an economic slowdown as soaring inflation has pushed central banks to tighten financial conditions by hiking rates.

The drop in crude prices has led gas stations to reduce prices at the pump, with the national average for a gallon of gas landing at $4.897 on June 27, according to AAA.

Several weeks ago, that figure stood at over $5 a gallon, while a year ago, the national average for a gallon of gas was $3.095.

Some gasoline market experts, like GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan, predict further drops.

“We’re down to $4.88/gal with #gasprices down for the second straight week. A third is possible, with prices by July 4 falling to $4.75-$4.80/gal,” De Haan wrote in a recent tweet.

What’s De Haan’s take on Biden’s role in high prices at the pump?

“There’s no denying Biden has some blame for rising #gasprices, but it is far far from 100%,” he said in a tweet, while agreeing “100 percent” with a comment that pinned the blame on a massive demand disruption related to COVID-19 combined with a sluggish domestic production response driven by the desire to use profits to repair damaged balance sheets when oil prices crashed at the beginning of the pandemic.

‘Open Up the Spigots’

For his part, Catsimatidis said in the interview on Fox that there’s only one fix for the current inflationary spike—a big part of which is due to soaring energy costs.

“We have 100 years’ worth of oil,” he said. “Open up the spigots.”

“If we open up the spigots and flooded the market with oil, with crude oil, American crude oil, we bring the price of oil back” and “inflation goes away,” Catsimatidis said.

Petr Svab contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/oil-billionaire-blasts-bidens-gas-price-blame-game-says-only-one-thing-will-fix-inflation_4560993.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-28&utm_medium=email&est=3%2FzcSKWPOY4rRNOP8hGJKXoA3vkP8asu0EcKoYlTK3zv%2BlyK%2BXvRXLgydkJeJZDyfw%3D%3D

The lessons for America from Germany’s ‘Energiewende’

American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said that “experience is an expensive school but fools will learn in no other.” Germany’s green energy policy, launched in the year 2000, could have been a cheap lesson for America today.

The Biden administration has chosen to follow Germany, providing heavy subsidies for wind and solar, while suppressing industries that could reliably meet America’s energy needs and even reduce its carbon footprint. In January, the administration announced that it had “pulled every lever to position America to scale up clean energy … the Biden-Harris Administration has readied offshore areas to harness power from wind, approved new solar projects on public lands, and passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build thousands of miles of transmission lines that deliver clean energy.”

On June 6, the Biden Administration invoked the Defense Production Act to increase the production of green energy and to replace the use of fossil fuels. While the legality of this move is questionable, it established the U.S. government as a major controlling party in America’s heretofore private energy industry. But like most grand government adventures into industrial policy, the push for renewables is already revealing itself to be enormously wasteful and counterproductive.

Twenty-two years ago, Germany stepped into the forefront of the green energy movement, implementing its “Energiewende,” an ambitious program of subsidies for solar panels and wind turbines, coupled with a reduction in coal, oil, and natural gas. After the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, Germany decided to also close its nuclear plants.

In 2000, less than 7 percent of Germany’s electricity came from so-called renewables. By 2021, that share exceeded 40 percent of the country’s electricity generation and about 20 percent of its total energy consumption, including electric vehicles (EVs).

By the end of 2021, before the Ukraine war drove prices even higher, German households paid 32 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The rate in France, which kept its nuclear industry intact, was 23 cents. Americans paid an average price of 11 cents for electricity at that time—about a third of what Germans paid. Twenty percent of Germans’ electric bills went to a “renewables surcharge” to subsidize wind and solar.

Germany had spent heavily to increase its renewable energy capacity, but in the case of wind and solar, capacity never delivered the promised output. According to a 2020 report from the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Germany’s electricity output in 2000 was 54 percent of its total capacity, also known as the “capacity factor.” Unused capacity is the norm for power grids because the demand for electricity varies significantly depending on the time of day, the season, and the weather. By 2019, however, while Germany’s total electricity capacity had risen dramatically thanks to a sharp increase in renewables, its capacity factor had fallen to just 20 percent, largely because wind and solar generators were less productive than fossil fuels or nuclear.

The capacity factor for solar energy was just 10 percent because much of the country is often overcast. Wind energy was also producing well below capacity because wind turbines produced no energy on calm days and had to shut down on particularly gusty days to prevent turbine blades from being damaged. Even within those limits, the amount of energy produced by wind turbines was hugely variable depending on how hard the wind was blowing.

“It costs Germany a great deal to maintain such an excess of installed power,” the IEEE report stated. “The average cost of electricity for German households has doubled since 2000.”

A major problem with wind and solar is not only that they are unreliable, but also that they tend to generate the most power when people need it least. The peak seasons for wind generation tend to be fall and spring, but the peak demand for energy occurs in summer and winter when people need to heat or cool homes and offices.

An electricity grid must manage huge variability in demand. It must have enough capacity to cover peak demand, for example during the hottest hours of summer, but also have the flexibility to reduce power during early morning hours or springtime days when demand falls considerably. Because renewables are unpredictable in terms of how much energy they will produce, and when, they add substantial variability to the supply side of the equation as well.

“The whole idea that you would take something as complicated as an electric system, one of the most complicated things people have invented to date, and choose what to put on that system and how to run it by a popularity contest, to me that’s nuts and it’s going to end in tears,” Peter Hartley, Professor of Energy Economics at Rice University, told The Epoch Times. “Trying to run that system with politics is not a very smart thing to do.”

Germany’s energy sector had a difficult year in 2021 because the winds were calm. Even as demand surged, wind output fell by a quarter in 2021. The capacity factor for solar also fell because it was not a particularly sunny year.

After a sharp drop in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany’s CO2 emissions increased by 31 million tons in 2021. A significant portion of this increase was due to the failure of renewables to produce, which forced Germany to lean more heavily on fossil fuels, including coal, to keep its electric grid going. And while shutting down its own nuclear plants, Germany also bought nuclear-generated electricity from France.

The surplus periods for wind and solar brought problems as well. When the weather cooperates and wind and solar produce at peak capacity, they often generate more power than consumers want. This leaves power companies with the choice of either trying to store excess energy, which is technologically problematic, or trying to offload it at deep discounts. This left Germany in a position of importing energy when prices were high and attempting to dump excess energy on a saturated market when prices were low.

The same thing happens in the United States. In Texas, for example, wind farms have been known to even pay grid operators to take their excess output. America’s wind farms receive government subsidies based on the amount of power they sell to utilities. This means that they can pay grid operators to take their excess energy and still make a profit as long as the amount they pay is less than what the government pays them in subsidies.

This market distortion from government intervention comes at a price, however. In America, traditional energy producers that don’t get subsidies, such as natural gas, struggle to make a profit when prices are artificially depressed, and this means that more reliable energy producers are crowded out of the market and, in many cases, are shut down. Nuclear energy, a reliable, relatively inexpensive, carbon-free producer, suffers the most because of how costly it is to cycle nuclear plants up and down.

“By having governments force intermittent renewables into the system through industrial policy,” Hartley said, “You’re actually penalizing nuclear, which might be the best long-run solution.”

There is an ongoing debate about how much and how fast CO2 emissions are changing the earth’s climate. However, if reducing carbon emissions is the ultimate goal, nuclear is probably the best means of achieving it. It emits far less CO2 than renewable energies, when mining and construction are taken into account; it is scalable; it is steady, reliable, and not subject to wild variations due to the weather; and it builds energy independence.

“Two of the most successful mass displacement of fossil fuels in the world are the nuclear programs in France and Sweden,” Hartley said. Nuclear is by far the most energy-dense technology, producing 10,000 times the amount of energy per kilogram that diesel fuel produces. It also takes up less space than solar panels and requires far less mining, with all the collateral damage that comes with that.

The downsides of nuclear are well known: nuclear waste and the possibility of catastrophic accidents such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. However, new innovations in nuclear energy have made the technology safer, cleaner, more flexible, and more scalable. Downsized nuclear plants called Small Modular Reactors can be built closer to industrial users, reducing the cost of building lengthy transmission networks.

While Germany appears to have closed the door on nuclear energy, the European Union is reportedly drawing up plans to reclassify natural gas and nuclear energy as “green.”

According to Jessica Johnson, communications director for Nucleareurope, “We’re starting to see member states recognize that in order to have a stable supply of low carbon electricity, nuclear needs to be part of the mix.”

Europe has set ambitious targets to “decarbonize our economy completely by 2050,” Johnson said. If nuclear energy is excluded, “we can forget those targets.”

Currently, about 25 percent of Europe’s electricity is generated by nuclear power, as well as half of Europe’s “low-carbon” electricity. Belgium is rethinking its program to phase out its nuclear plants, Johnson said. France has proposed ambitious plans for building up to six new nuclear plants, and “a couple of weeks ago, in a manifesto, the Finnish Green Party made a clear statement in support of nuclear.”

‘Carbon Debt’

Germany’s Energiewende has succeeded in reducing its national carbon footprint substantially, but it only measures emissions within its own borders. Had it measured its actual global footprint, it would have discovered that the batteries, solar panels, and EVs that it was importing were increasing CO2 emissions substantially.

EVs come with a “carbon debt.” This refers to the fact that manufacturing electric batteries, an industry projected to grow to $100 billion by 2025, is highly pollutive. A 2018 report by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a green energy advocate, noted that the production of EV batteries in China, where more than half of the world’s lithium-ion batteries are made, generated 60 percent more CO2 than building traditional gasoline-powered engines.

A report by the World Economic Forum, another renewables advocate, stated that the amount of fossil fuel required to build EVs exceeds that for gas-fired cars to such an extent that “in Germany, a mid-sized electric car must be driven for 125,000 km, on average, to break even with a diesel car [in terms of CO2 emissions], and 60,000 km compared to a petrol car. It takes nine years for an electric car to be greener than a diesel car.” EV batteries last between 10 and 20 years.

Rare earth minerals essential to the production of solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries include lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, among others. Copper is also essential for building extended power lines to connect grids to distant renewable sources, such as offshore wind farms and remote solar fields.

According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in order to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, the production of these minerals would have to increase by six times over what it is today, by 2040. Furthermore, “The production of many energy transition materials is more concentrated than that of oil or natural gas … the world’s top three producing nations control over three-quarters of global output.”

The dominant players in this market are the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and China, which together control a majority of the production of many essential renewable-energy minerals. “China’s share of refining is around 35% for nickel, 50-70% for lithium and cobalt, and nearly 90% for rare earth elements,” the report states.

The mining of these materials is energy-intensive and can be devastating to local environments. Lithium, for example, comprises only about one percent of the rock from which it is mined, causing the destruction of large swathes of land in the mining process in order to extract it. Lithium and copper mining also require huge amounts of water, straining natural resources. Cobalt is often mined by child slave labor in Africa. And the refining process releases toxic heavy metals and other pollutants into the soil and water.

The installation of solar panels requires taking large plots of land and displacing wildlife. Wind turbines kill birds and bats. And the disposal of these often toxic minerals, once batteries, turbines, and solar panels reach the end of their productive use, has yet to be resolved.

‘Conditions of Genocide’

Germany struggled with the moral consequences of its Energiewende. The German parliament determined that the solar panels it was buying from China were being manufactured under “conditions of genocide” and slave labor.

“People think they’re very virtuous with these wind, solar, electric vehicles and so forth,” Hartley said. “But when you look into the background of these things, it’s pretty dicey stuff from a human rights point of view, let alone the strategic issues.”

In February, these strategic issues came to the fore when Russia invaded Ukraine, and Germany discovered how dependent it had become on unfriendly foreign suppliers. Wind and solar, upon which it had bet so heavily, proved incapable of filling the gaps its energy policies had created, and the embargo of Russian exports, together with counter-threats from Russia to cut off vital energy supplies to the West, hit Germany hard.

In May, Germany’s producer prices jumped 33.6 percent in annualized terms, the largest increase since data collection began in 1949, largely due to escalating energy costs. Energy prices shot up 87.3 percent from a year earlier; natural gas prices were up 154.8 percent.

A German federal audit in March warned of energy shortages and blackouts across Germany and power rationing between consumers and industry. With the sharp increase in the cost of inputs, the report said “there is a risk of losing Germany’s competitiveness and acceptance of the energy transition.” Last week, Germany raised its gas risk level to “alarm,” the second-highest level before “emergency.”

The German government could soon be in a position of choosing which companies are more essential than others when allocating scarce energy supplies. As is often the case with government industrial policies, the Energiewende could end up harming the industry to such an extent that the only solution would be more government intervention to save it.

Throughout Europe, some companies began shutting down in June, unable to compete with foreign firms whose energy costs were much lower. One country that is not transitioning to renewables is China.

A June Foreign Policy report stated that, while China is rapidly building out its battery manufacturing industry for export, “the country continues doubling down on coal” for its domestic energy. China expanded its coal mining operations by 300 million metric tons in 2022, “almost the annual production of the entire European Union.” The report notes that China is prioritizing energy stability and cost competitiveness, while “China’s main competitor, the United States, now experiences increasingly frequent supply disruptions as it works to transition its electric system, the world’s second largest, toward renewable energy.”

The strategic risks of Biden’s green gamble go beyond consumers and industry to include our military. Access to energy often proves to be decisive in military conflicts. One of the reasons that Germany and Japan were defeated in the Second World War was their inability to acquire fuel for their ships, planes, and tanks. Today, while America’s submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear powered, most of our military still runs on oil derivatives; diesel for tanks and ships and jet fuel for aircraft.

China is not a significant producer of oil, which has been its strategic Achilles heel. Transitioning from fossil fuels to wind and solar, however, reverses this equation, making American industry dependent on China for the raw materials of renewable energy, when we have fossil fuels in abundance.

The lesson that the Biden administration could have learned from Germany is that wind and solar are inferior technologies that are inefficient, unreliable, polluting, and create a dangerous dependence on foreign countries that are not always your friends. Apparently, they weren’t paying attention.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-bidens-green-energy-policy-will-end-in-tears_4559434.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-27-1&utm_medium=email&est=PoMonR6CL3Il%2F8BHtmHUw1bHhvGxCZlVVo1calkHWiHrucg8%2FrfFztYS4Cuh49%2BtDA%3D%3D

With an open border, there’s no telling who is responsible for all of the sabotage.

Russia had the motive, the means, and perhaps the opportunity to sabotage an American liquified natural gas plant — but did it?

Tom Rogan, national security writer at the Washington Examiner, made a compelling case that it just might have.

In his report Tuesday, Rogan suggested Russian hackers may have had something to do with an explosion at the Freeport LNG plant on Quintana Island in Texas on June 8.

Amid a burgeoning energy crisis across the globe spurred on by the war between Russia and Ukraine, the disaster has taken the facility offline at least until the end of the year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long seen the facility, which is located in the Gulf of Mexico and just 70 miles south of Houston, as a threat to his nation’s energy industry because it gives the U.S. the ability to sell gas to European nations.

Moreover, Putin has been friendly to hackers and would certainly welcome an attack that cut America’s supply, which would, in turn, force the European Union to think twice about sanctioning Russia.

These possible motives are bolstered by evidence that there was already a plan in the works shortly after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began.

“According to two sources, around the time of Russia’s late February invasion of Ukraine, a cyber unit of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service again conducted targeting-reconnaissance operations against a major U.S. liquefied natural gas exporter, Freeport LNG,” Rogan wrote.

One of the sources also told Rogan that the FBI’s Cyber Division was investigating the incident, though the agency told him it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation into this matter.”

Preliminary data in the days following the explosion revealed that high pressure caused a section of a transfer line to burst and allow the highly flammable vapor cloud of natural gas to escape and ignite.

“However, what was not explained is how a critical overpressure event could have occurred without safety systems kicking into action,” Rogan pointed out.

While Rogan’s unnamed LNG pipeline experts said there were issues such as corrosion that could have naturally led to the explosion, the author contended that “the FBI’s investigative involvement, the specific nature of this explosion, and the scale of damage incurred do raise major questions.”

Notably, one expert said that these pipelines that flow from the storage tank into the terminal are “undertaken from a networked control facility.”

This means Russian hackers that breached the network would have had the means and opportunity to eliminate or circumvent these safeguards through a cyberattack to initiate the disaster — and it wouldn’t be the first time.

Related:

After What Russia Just Announced About American POWs, Anything Less Than Immediate Action from Biden Is Unthinkable

It’s a well-established fact that Russian cyberattacks have created mayhem for American businesses and that the government has had difficulty doing anything to effectively stop them.

Moreover, the energy infrastructure was proven vulnerable just last year after a ransomware attack against the Colonial pipeline ended only after a $4.4 million payout was made to hackers to resume flow through America’s largest refined-oil pipeline.

And this is exactly the kind of action the Russian cyber attack unit dubbed XENOTIME would undertake.

Rogan claims the unit was likely behind the reconnaissance mission in February and previously “has utilized boutique TRITON/TRISIS malware developed by the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics,” according to Rogan.

“That malware is designed for the seizure of industrial control systems and the defeat of associated safety systems,” he continued. “In 2017, GCHQ (Britain’s NSA-equivalent signals intelligence service) outlined the need for network compartmentalization to protect safety systems against this malware better. In March 2022, the FBI warned that TRISIS malware remained a threat.”

An attack against the Freeport LNG plant falls in line with XENOTIME’s “modus operandi” that takes aim at these “industrial control systems and supervisory control systems in order to effect unilateral control of a network.”

It even specifically targets “safety systems,” which precisely fits the bill for a system that regulates pressure for flammable substances.

Rogan conceded that it will be difficult “attributing Russian culpability” if Freeport LNG didn’t detect the attack. “Deficient cyber forensics is an issue that afflicts many private sector organizations,” Rogan concluded.

Though not directly related, this theory about the Freeport LNG explosion plays into growing suspicions about the possibility of intentional attacks on the necessities of life.

Several food-processing plants have caught fire this year and 10,000 cattle dropped dead earlier this month in Kansas, leaving many to question whether the nation’s food supply is under attack.

Over 10,000 cattle “spontaneously” dropped dead between Kansas and Nebraska over the last 48 hours. This is not normal, folks.

— George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) June 17, 2022

What the hell is going on? 25 food processing plants “caught on fire”, a liquified gas facility, “caught on fire”…Dead cattle on ranches throughout the Midwest. One ranch in Kansas has 10,000 plus dead cattle. The government’s reason is “seveer heat”,the ranchers say, “Bullshit” https://t.co/umxtFAWVOZ

— Janie Johnson – America is Exceptional (@jjauthor) June 17, 2022

Is Joe Biden also behind the 10,000 cattle dying in Kansas and the random fires at food processing plants or is he just sticking to destroying the energy sector and leaving food destruction to a friend?

— Blair Brandt (@BlairBrandt) June 15, 2022

Why are so many food processing plants randomly catching fire?

Is this going to become the new “conspiracy theory” that’ll turn out true a few months down the line?

— Lewis Brackpool (@Lewis_Brackpool) June 15, 2022

It’s undeniable that several circumstances have pushed the U.S. toward serious shortages, and it’s not unreasonable to connect the dots where they exist.

Whether these incidents are intentional or just a series of unfortunate coincidences, it’s clear that America is on the brink of disaster on many fronts.

The only question now is what, if anything, can be done to stop it.

Closing the border would be a start, though any imported terrorists/activists have already had plenty of time to arrive here, and Biden is flying them all over the country on taxpayer airfare. [US Patriot 6-24-2022]

For months, resident Joe Biden has blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the United States’ record-high inflation, calling it “Putin’s Price Hike.” Unfortunately for the White House, however, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell just shot down this theory.

“Inflation was high before—certainly before the war in Ukraine broke out,” Powell said Wednesday during a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

By the time Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, inflation had already skyrocketed from 1.4 percent at the start of Biden’s presidency to 7.9 percent—a 40-year high. Many economists blame the president’s $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which Congress passed in March 2021, for driving up consumer prices.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/watch-fed-chairman-throws-cold-water-on-bidens-favorite-inflation-excuse/

Retired U.S. Army Major General Paul Vallely is vigorously sounding the alarm against a potential communist takeover of the country and is also very concerned about the mandatory COVID vaccination of all members of the military.

Vallely asserts that there have been many adverse reactions within the force since the rollout of the vaccines, singling out the risk of blood clots and heart problems with the jabs.

“The mandatory vaccines and boosters … under Department of Defense guidance and directives to the commands throughout the Armed Forces have caused a great deal of controversy. Number one: those that declined mandatory vaccination under the First Amendment religious rights,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.

He believes that there is no need to force COVID vaccines on them, as “these are the healthiest men and women we have in the country.”

“They can take [the vaccines] as an option, but we’ve got to stop this mandatory vaccination. It’s hurting the armed forces. And of course, our enemies see that—the Russians, the Chinese, the cartels. And then [there’s] the wokeism, the teaching of critical race theory. So there are a lot of things going on that are affecting the status and the readiness of our forces right now. I’m very worried about that.”

According to U.S. Army Public Affairs, 97 percent of the active army and 88 percent of the army reserve is completely vaccinated. It also states that 2,846 exemption requests have been refused and there have been 3,330 official reprimands, as of April 13. However, an anonymous whistleblower told The Defender that the actual vaccination rates may be significantly lower.

The Army had separated 669 soldiers “for refusing the lawful order to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” as of May 19.

Vallely served for 31 years in the U.S. Army and retired in 1992 as the deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has over 15 years of experience in special operations, psychological operations, and civil-military operations.

He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and earned his commission in the Army in 1961, at the height of the Vietnam war.

After serving two combat tours in Vietnam, Vallely also served in several other overseas theaters in Europe and Pacific Rim countries. Vallely also served on U.S. security assistance missions and civilian–military relations tours all over the world.

Time Spent on CRT and Communist Ideology Could Be Used for Gun Training

“I think the Russians and the cartels and the Chinese, they’re letting us destroy ourselves from within. They don’t have to even do anything. It’s self-destruction within our own government. They see that, and of course, that makes us very, very vulnerable when we have critical race theory and ideology and what we call indoctrination, rather than putting forth the training and education that has to go on within our military,” Vallely said.

He believes that there “absolutely” is an agenda to transform the republic, that the country is being dismantled from within, and that a socialist takeover has already made substantial progress.

“When you take away to teach a critical race theory and communist ideology, you’re taking away from the time that could be used for learning how to shoot better, how to operate airplanes better, take care of airplanes through maintenance; and even within the medical corps of the armed forces, it has affected many the doctors and nurses. So it’s a terrible thing. They need to stop it right now. They need to stop enforcing the mandates,” he stated.

“This is terrible tyranny that’s going on.”

How to Stop a Communist Takeover

Despite the gloomy prospects, Vallely keeps a positive spirit and thinks that if the country is to be preserved, Americans need to awaken and act, starting at the local level—and quickly turn the tides before it’s too late.

“We have to have the sheriffs and the governors enforcing the 10th Amendment. We need to have that happen. I’m not sure that the elections are going to be fair in November.

“People have to stand up before we are led into a really bloody civil war. And that’s what it’s looking like.”

Vallely further asserted that there are “high-tech oligarchs” that, behind the scenes, want to “change the direction of this country, and they’re doing it. They’re dismantling this country. They don’t believe in our Constitution, for example they don’t care about the First Amendment or Second Amendment. They want to completely dominate the society culturally.”

Vallely is now the chairman of Stand Up America US Foundation and the Legacy National Security Advisory Group. He is a founding member of the Citizens Committee on National Security and is the founder of Nemo Arms incorporated in Boise, Idaho.

“2022 is the awakening of America. We need to wake up to see what’s happening to our country and to our government—the demolishing of our Constitution, increased burglaries, crime, and deaths within our cities. We got to enforce the law. These are all things that are on the table that must be done to turn the country around. If not, we’ll be destroyed,” Vallely concluded.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/people-have-to-stand-up-before-we-are-led-into-a-really-bloody-civil-war-former-us-major-general-paul-vallely_4546269.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-23-1&utm_medium=email&est=bDM0I89cUm%2F30nojeh7gA17jQ%2BQPboEzYmIZ8N2oHM11rO9s1uDnXZFAHOk1%2BKIttw%3D%3D

‘The West’s foolishness was boundless’

The Western world’s “total failure of deterrence” is largely to blame for Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a foreign policy speech Wednesday in London.

The West’s decades-long failure to confront Putin and other malign regimes like China and Iran should serve as a warning that prompts a “fundamental shift in how the West approaches our enemies,” Haley said, according to an early transcript of her remarks obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. She said it is time for the Western world to cut economic ties with Russia and China to send a message to these regimes that their subversion of the international order will no longer be tolerated.

Haley, who is positioning herself as a Republican prospect for the 2024 presidential election, previewed how a future Republican administration would handle the globe’s most pressing foreign policy matters. She harshly criticized the Biden administration’s appeasement of countries like Iran but also said Europe shares blame for the world’s instability—criticism that is usually expressed behind closed doors when a foreign leader travels abroad.

“It was Western weakness that convinced Putin he could get away with attempting to swallow Ukraine,” Haley said. “He saw America as too internally divided and distracted, and Europe as too bureaucratic and soft to stop him. And sadly, I have to say he wasn’t wrong.”

Decades of appeasement—and fears about directly confronting the Russia-China-Iran axis—led to the worst European war in nearly 80 years.

“We should have made crystal clear to Putin the full implications of his actions ahead of time. We didn’t,” Haley said. “And now we have the worst war in Europe since the Second World War. This dereliction of duty was years in the making. For too long, the West wrongly feared provoking Putin, instead of taking the steps needed to prevent him from starting a war in the first place.”

The Biden administration’s recent foreign policy blunders, primarily the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, provided the fuel that sparked Putin’s war machine, Haley said.

“It pains me to say it, but if there had been no Afghanistan disaster, there would likely have been no Ukraine invasion,” she said. “Putin saw our lack of resolve in Kabul and assumed nothing meaningful would happen once his tanks rolled into Kyiv.”

But the conditions that led to Putin’s war weren’t created overnight. The United States and Europe spent decades trying to integrate Russia and China into the global economy while ignoring their totalitarian tendencies and mass military buildup.

“The West’s foolishness was boundless,” Haley said. “Whenever Russia tested us, the West shrugged off the necessary strong response, fearing it would do more harm than good.”

“It is critical that we all understand this central point: Appeasement never satisfies the appetites of tyrants. It only makes them want more,” Haley said. “Trying to be ‘inoffensive’ only emboldens our enemies. It leads to wars—like the one we are now witnessing right now in Ukraine.”

Russia is not the world’s most present threat, however, according to Haley. That distinction goes to China.

There can be “no doubt that China is the biggest national security threat the world faces,” she said.

There is only one solution to reassert Western dominance, Haley said. “We must economically detach from our enemies and rely more heavily on ourselves and our friends.”

“That means breaking the Western addiction to Russian energy,” Haley said. “It means securing strategic supply chains completely free of Chinese control or leverage. It means expecting our businesses to do their part to uphold our interests rather than those of our enemies.”

The belief that “economic interdependence with hostile regimes” would dampen their worst tendencies has been “painfully disproven,” according to Haley. If the West does not abandon these foolish ambitions, “our pain and vulnerability will only increase.”

The Western world stands at an “inflection point,” facing a “set of powerful and fanatical dictators with dreams of conquest. Imperial Russia, Communist China, and Jihadist Iran pose existential threats to us and to free peoples all over the world,” Haley said. “The Western way of life depends on deterring these threats.”

A stalemate, she said, “is not good enough. Victory is required.”

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/nikki-haley-wests-total-failure-of-deterrence-drives-putins-war-machine/

In a stirring and spot-on campaign email, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis declares war on the Far Left calling it a “Radical Vigilante Woke Mob.”

While I’ve seen my share of them over the years and sent out a few myself, campaign fundraising emails are notorious for appealing to the hard-core base of both parties.  

So, most of them are taken with a grain of salt by political observers.

However, the email I just received from the DeSantis re-election campaign really hit home. It accurately defined and summarized the aggressive domestic threat posed by the extreme Left to our nation’s very core:

Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.

This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.

A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.

Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.

We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”

DeSantis omitted the LGBTQ brainwashing of our young children and the collusion of major woke companies like Disney in doing so, but he has been at the forefront of battling both these evils in Florida.

The DeSantis campaign continues, noting something that impacted me directly on the huge social media platform LinkedIn: “We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.”

And of course, the last piece of the massive leftist effort: “We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.”

Referring to himself as the “Governor of the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis then goes on to make his pitch for how he will fight this grave threat to America, at least in Florida, with “faith, with reason, and with freedom.”

And of course, he asks for our financial support.

In my view, this email accurately and effectively summarizes the threat we face from the extreme Left in America today. DeSantis is on the front lines of this battle in Florida, but he also seems to be preparing to take the fight nationally as well.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

https://www.americanliberty.news/politics/florida-governor-goes-to-war-against-radical-vigilante-woke-mob/pcrespo/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=7766

During the State of the Union address to Congress this year, resident Joe Biden delivered an astoundingly Orwellian endorsement of socialism, clothed as its anti-matter counterpart.

“I’m a capitalist, but capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” the president declared. “It’s exploitation, and it drives up prices. When corporations don’t have to compete, their profits go up, your prices go up, and small businesses and family farmers and ranchers go under.”

Besides dubiously blaming today’s 40-year-high inflation on corporate greed (greed that, presumably, was inexplicably dormant during decades of inflation that was a fraction of today’s), Biden’s remarks shamelessly suggest that his administration’s heavy imposition of new and revived regulations fosters competition when the real mission is to level unprecedented burdens and governmental control upon businesses of all sizes.

“I’m a capitalist” belongs alongside “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Promising to reduce average global temperatures by a degree or two is the most fashionable excuse in America today for the state battering companies, even though Russia and China have no intention of joining in the climate crusade at the expense of their expansionist objectives, and India and other developing nations aren’t going to abandon the ongoing industrialization their people yearn for in exchange for being congratulated by international bodies for going green.

Socialists who aren’t hiding their true identity propose basically a quick and merciful death for the private sector, like now-ousted British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arguing that wasteful “fragmentation” warrants re-nationalizing privatized railroads. Or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders proposing a 95 percent tax on companies that are more successful than he likes. But while Biden suggests he’s enabling enhanced competition, his Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, Gary Gensler, finds new forms of slow torture for this country’s employers. Gensler was heavily involved in writing one of the most onerous pieces of regulatory legislation ever—2002’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which costs Fortune 500 firms millions of dollars each annually on average, and has been a powerful disincentive to firms setting themselves up as publicly traded or retaining that status.

The SEC’s most prominent policy under Gensler is requiring issuers of stocks and bonds to assess and report the risks climate change poses to their investors. As Heritage Foundation senior fellow David Burton pointed out in a letter to Gensler, “Requiring all public companies to develop climate modeling expertise, the ability to make macroeconomic projections based on these models and then make firm-specific economic assessments based on these climate and economic models will be expensive, imposing costs that will amount to billions of dollars on issuers. These expenses would harm investors by reducing shareholder returns.”

Burton also points to the irony that discouraging companies from being or going public gives fat cats more wealth and the average Joe less because it “would deny to ordinary (unaccredited) investors the opportunity to invest in dynamic, high-growth, profitable companies until most of the money has already been made by affluent accredited investors” and “would further impede entrepreneurial access to public capital markets.”

According to former SEC chief economist James Overdahl, the “massive scope and prescriptive particularity” of the regulations, “centering around the inherent complexity in collecting required data and completing the calculations and analysis necessary to make the proposed disclosures” make it “difficult to recall any other instance in which the SEC has mandated disclosures where there are so many significant uncertainties, data limitations and practical difficulties in developing the required information.”

Obviously, lawsuits would become legion, as publicly traded firms are endlessly accused of failing to report climate impact to the full satisfaction of environmentalists. But companies not to be found on the stock exchange, who think themselves safe in their private status, will actually also be subject to heavy new costs, because public companies’ private partners and contractors will be required by the SEC to report their emissions, outside firms having to be turned to for certification.

In a media conference call on Thursday, U.S. Chamber Executive VP Tom Quaadman pointed out that according to the SEC itself, the climate disclosure rule in its current form “would be at least three times the implementation costs of Sarbanes-Oxley, which was the most expensive disclosure regime that we’ve gone through over the last generation,” requiring “almost 16 to 18 years to finalize all of the different Sarbanes-Oxley rules.”

Quaadman added that after “many, many meetings” with companies that are U.S. Chamber members, they told the Chamber of “implementation costs in the millions or tens of millions of dollars” for each firm—many times the SEC’s estimates.

Testifying to the Senate Banking Committee in September, Gensler claimed of climate risk information that “investors are really demanding it.” More accurately, trendy asset managers, most prominently BlackRock, the largest such firm in the world with $10 trillion under its control, demand it, the better to inflict its wishes on companies in which it invests. Blackrock boasts that it “voted against 55 directors/director-related items on climate-related issues. This is a tool available to us in virtually every market we invest in on behalf of our clients … 83% of the time our votes against directors in the FTSE [Financial Times] 350 over remuneration concerns resulted in revisions to pay policies within 12 months.”

Pointless or politicized regulations both devastate private sector productivity and kill jobs. A Conference Board survey just found that “more than 60 percent of CEOs globally say they expect a recession in their primary region of operations before the end of 2023 or earlier … Fifteen percent of CEOs say their region is already in recession.”

With a looming economic downturn—on the heels of the devastation of COVID—is this a time to be helping multi-trillion-dollar money managers bully the nation’s providers of private-sector jobs, one objective being to charm the left so they might forget about things like BlackRock’s massive military investments?

And all in the guise of a “capitalist” eager to boost competition—like a call girl attending a masquerade party costumed as a mother superior.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/killing-jobs-in-the-name-of-saving-the-planet_4543237.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-21-2&utm_medium=email&est=1FPUnM%2BaA9c7t8LBAA3fh%2FJRWso4o%2FXt%2BNLbcBOaZJJ%2Fq2aboQbufkieAEzCL2mk1A%3D%3D

Whether or not Marie Antoinette said rioting French peasants upset about the shortage of bread to feed their families should “eat cake” instead is not important. The idea that she did has been passed down, generation to generation, as the perfect illustration of how the isolated elites in a society can become hopelessly out of touch.

This is not just a problem for the rich but also for the powerful, who use their positions to grant themselves perks that alleviate the need for them to worry about the kinds of things that keep the rest of us at night.

Like whether we’re going to have enough gas in the car to get to work in the morning.

Since coming into office, the Biden Administration has been at war with the American energy sector. Following the President’s lead, they believe climate change is an existential threat to the continued well-being of mankind that can only be thwarted if Americans are forced to go green.

That’s what’s really behind the sudden, continuing rise in the price of gasoline. It’s not, as resident Joe Biden continues to assert, a transitory thing caused by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It is the result of calculated policy decisions intended to roll back the energy independence that became a reality by the end of the Trump Administration.

There’s nothing wrong with green energy per se. Indeed, the United States would realize considerable benefit from the ability to rely on fuel coming from renewable sources like wind and solar and to be more efficient in the generation and use of power from fossil fuels so that less of it is wasted.

All that can be achieved by market forces a lot faster and cheaper than by government mandates. The Biden Administration has chosen – regardless of the consequences – to force this upon us all, meaning that some people are now, in a period of inflation unseen for at least 40 years, to face the very real choice between putting gas in the car and food on the table.

Too many Democrats regard that as a good thing. They don’t blame the government for the problem. They blame the energy sector, which it criticizes for earning record profits because the price at the pump is up thanks to the shrinkage Biden and his cohorts have forced on the industry. The cancelation of new pipelines and oil and gas leases on federal lands are two among a handful of reasons domestic energy producers cannot respond to the increase in demand by increasing the supply to keep prices stable.

The energy markets are behaving as the President wants, given his belief, he can prioritize his strategy to increase the use of energy made from renewables and the need to bring down the price of gasoline.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre seemed badly ignorant of economic reality when she insisted during a recent press briefing that there was nothing inherently problematic with pursuing both objectives at the same time.

“What we’re trying to deal with right now is how do we lower costs for American families,” she said. “One of the things that we are seeing currently right now with oil refiners is they are using this moment,” she continued, “to actually make a profit.”

She can get away with shifting blame for a while but what does she suggest as an alternative? Does she think the energy sector should sell gasoline and other fuels at a loss? That’s a recipe for economic catastrophe, as would be the kind of nationalization of the sector that exists in so many other countries.

The problem is that Biden and Jean-Pierre and so many others are out of touch with what’s going on. The people aren’t rioting for gas yet, but it may just be a matter of time.

Consider the comments of Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who recently described a drive she made from her home state to Washington in an electric vehicle.

“After waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country to finally get my electric vehicle,” the state’s senior elected Democrat said during a June 7 meeting of the Senate Finance Committee. “I got it and drove it from Michigan to here last weekend and went by every gas station and it didn’t matter how high it was.”

Stabenow doesn’t have to choose between putting food on her table and putting gas in her car. Rather than being grateful and understanding she’s insulated from reality because she enjoys elected privilege, she claims she’s mystified by the expressions of concern coming from the American people because they are routinely paying more than $100 for a full tank of gas. Wonderful.

An elected official, whose annual salary is just shy of $200,000, is driving a car that cost more than most Americans make in a year that the taxpayers probably pay for her to use, thinks high gas prices aren’t a problem because she doesn’t have to pay them anymore. That’s the kind of leadership that causes politicians to lose their heads.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

Peter Roff can be reached at RoffColumns@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.

https://www.americanliberty.news/capitol-hill/the-view-through-debbie-stabenows-windshield/proff/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=7573

Columnist Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” asserts that after two years of pandemic policies, people in free societies are behaving more like those in authoritarian societies.

Wolf maintains that America is now less free, and becoming almost unrecognizable.

“A handful of bad actors” including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) used the pandemic to “exploit the crisis in such a way as to reengineer our free democratic open societies, especially in the West, especially in the United States, into a post-free society, a post-humane society,” said Wolf during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

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‘We Don’t Have America Anymore’—Dr. Naomi Wolf on CCP-Style Technocratic Authoritarianism in the US

The Biden administration in April extended the 2-year-old coronavirus public health emergency for another 90 days.

Wolf said, based on history, the ongoing lockdowns and extension of the public health emergency indicate society is in the last phase of a tyrannical takeover, because with emergency powers, laws protecting liberty can be suspended.

According to Wolf, there are 10 steps every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10, said Wolf. Some of the other steps include demonizing whistleblowers and critics, calling dissent “treason,” “espionage,” or “subversion,” and controlling the media narrative.

During the last two years of lockdowns and mandates, Big Tech and the elites have profited while the average Americans have seen the American Dream slowly “closing” on them, she said.

“And so often, when a democracy is dying, or a regime is turning the screws on freedoms to create an established new form of tyranny, it happens intentionally in a very incremental way,” said Wolf. “And you really see this from 1930 to 1933 in Germany.”

She said humanity is witnessing the formation of a two-tier society of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, in which people who would never discriminate against others based on categories of race and sex are now discriminating against the unvaccinated.

“Suddenly, they’re happily embracing a discrimination society in which some people are cast as clean and valuable members of society and other people are ostracized and marginalized and ‘othered’ and described as sort of dirty and causing infection to others,” said Wolf.

She argues that big tech companies had an active role in creating these perceptions and in “shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us, and then the vaccine rollout, in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society,” said Wolf.

Wolf cited the emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s role in getting the right public health “messages out” during the lockdowns.

People had no choice but to rely on tech platforms while they were locked down, and Big Tech used that to manipulate the public, said Wolf.

“What I do trace in the book is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person,” she said. “And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly.”

Wolf thinks big tech companies will not stop at just harvesting data on the computer, but that they want to dominate peoples’ bodily autonomy with vaccine passports.

“What these companies want more than anything is to leave the parameters of your computer and to colonize other currently non-colonized spaces, notably the human body,” said Wolf.

This would give these companies and governments the ability to switch off peoples’ access to commerce, travel, and other goods and services if they did not comply with a particular mandate, Wolf added.

Some forms of digital tracking and surveilling are already here in the United States, she said.

“You’re now expected to swipe these QR codes just to see the menu, or just to get in. And the QR code uploads your data to a central database,” she said, adding that she’s seen the software “that maps the relationships of everyone sitting at that table, and then builds databases and networks of relationships.”

Wolf said that on a scale of one to 10 on the Chinese social credit system, the United States is currently at a three.

“There’s a change that’s happened in American cities in the last two years,” she said.

Because most people around the world, particularly in U.S. cities, use digital apps to travel, do banking, and shop, a digital social credit system similar to China’s is imminent, she said.

Our data is being harvested and used by the “global technocratic elite” to control human behavior, said Wolf.

“We’ve assumed that the worst it can be is data are harvested from us with everything that we choose to do using our free will as human beings,” said Wolf.

“But what I’ve seen is that digital technology has its own logic, and it isn’t restricted by what human beings want to do. So once digital platforms and their oligarchical masters can figure out how to change people’s behavior to suit technology, there’s nothing, moral or ethical, that will keep them from changing people’s behavior to suit their technology, and to suit their business plans,” she added.

The pandemic has revealed how this type of digital control is playing out, because humans, before the prevalence of digital technology, did not choose to “socially distance” to fight pandemics, said Wolf.

“The dream of our digital overlords is for technology to tell humans what to do, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” said Wolf.

While some people might label her a conspiracy theorist, her opinions are based on a long career as a journalist, political consultant, and now tech CEO, Wolf said. Furthermore, she has witnessed firsthand the powerful elites making historical decisions under the radar, she said.

Wolf was well acquainted with this group of powerful people until recently when she was ejected from their circles for writing oppositional pieces on lockdowns.

“But it’s really true that the global technocratic elite have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow Germans or Americans or Russians or Chinese, and they now are able to align above the level of nation-states,” she said.

For example, one of the WEF’s goals is to make nation-level decision-making less and less important, and the World Health Organization’s goal is to make public health decisions on a global scale, bypassing countries’ own authorities via the pandemic treaty, said Wolf.

“These technocratic elites really do believe that they can order the world better than you and I and that they have the right to,” she said. “That’s really scary.”

Little by little, humanity’s tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism has grown.

“The war wasn’t just on us as a political entity, the war was on American culture, and is on American culture,” she said. “And they’ve succeeded largely, unless we wake up, because we were a kind, decent, inclusive culture that respected other people’s boundaries and freedoms. … And now a CCP-style cruelty is something that we tolerate.”

What people believe is largely determined by the news they consume, said Wolf, and many people only watch news outlets that give a skewed picture of pandemic treatments and policies, largely funded by wealthy people like Bill Gates.

“I do trace in ‘The Bodies of Others’ how millions of dollars flowed and are flowing from entities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the BBC and the Guardian and NPR and other formerly very credible, objective news outlets.”

Because most people get slanted news coverage, the country is more divided and many people on the left refuse to consider any other narrative or look at primary source documents, because they believe only government sources are giving them “scientific” information, said Wolf.

This skewed messaging has been able to convince people that the mandates and lockdowns are more American and important than liberty or critical thinking.

Wolf said the most brilliant aspect of the pandemic messaging was that it was framed altruistically.

“You know, ‘You’ve got to exclude those people for the good of the community,’ or ‘You’ve got to mask yourself and your child to save your child,’” said Wolf. “This really brilliantly upended American culture because it cast freedom as selfish.”

Now that those in power have effectively conditioned people to be fearful and submissive, they can keep reinstituting emergency powers, she argued.

“That’s what emergency law means,” she said. “They can do whatever they want, basically. It’s a weaponization of boards of health, it’s a weaponization of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [Department of Health and Human Services].”

Wolf said although the situation is dire, people can do something to push back against this tyranny by being informed about what is really going on in the country, assembling in groups, and getting involved politically on the local level.

As it stands now, “I will say that each side is being fed narratives and stereotypes about the other that would persuade each side that the other is absolutely insane and dangerous, dangerously insane,” said Wolf.

“I get that conservatives think, ‘liberals don’t know what a woman is.’ That is not actually literally true, and liberals think ‘conservatives all want to torch our democratic processes, storm the Capitol, and are misogynist, racist thugs who are trigger happy,” said Wolf.

The last two years have conditioned people to fear each other and so the conversations that would have normally occurred when people gathered are not happening and keeping the country divided, said Wolf. She said she will gladly talk to people on the right.

“People I love think I’m doing something wrong in even talking to conservatives and libertarians. That’s very dangerous. The left, especially, has decided that you’re morally complicit if you have a conversation across the aisle,” Wolf said. “That is censorship, that is cancel culture, that’s un-American, that is an importation from Communism.”

She urges people to remember what makes America unique and a beacon to other nations: to remember we are the great experiment where neighbors talked to each other, listened, and didn’t “rat” each other out if they did not agree with each other, Wolf said.

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ANOTHER FOOLS ERRAND BROUGHT TO YOU BY BIDEN’S CURIOUS OBSESSION WITH UKRAINE.

Resident Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan revealed that the U.S. federal government is using taxpayer cash to maintain seized Russian yachts, according to a report from Insider. The accidental admission – caught on a “hot mic” – came during an event at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) on June 16th.

Sullivan – who many suspect is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party – was speaking with Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the CNAS, about the White House’s effort to seize Russian assets including yachts amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine when he made the remarks.

In a livestream video of the event uploaded to YouTube, which has since been deleted, the pair’s personal conversation before the publicized discussion portion of the CNAS was included.

I previously wrote how the popular seizure of yachts was ignoring legal and practical problems, including the cost of maintenance. Those costs are now mounting. https://t.co/PDuuE9QIaK Some of these yachts may have to be returned with tax-funded repairs. https://t.co/GgNipe6aKs

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 18, 2022

Speaking moments before the beginning of an event at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Sullivan mentioned the ongoing Operation KleptoCapture, a Justice Department-led effort targeting Russian “elites, proxies, and oligarchs” with sanctions and civil and criminal asset seizures.

Sullivan appeared to reference the recent seizure of the Amadea, a 348-foot yacht owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. The U.S. government moved to seize the yacht in early May and it sailed for the U.S. in early June, after Fiji’s supreme court authorized its seizure.

MUST READ: Biden’s White House Radicalized the Would-Be Kavanaugh Killer as Pelosi Held Up Supreme Court Security Funds.

“I just wasn’t aware how many super yachts there were in the world,” Fontaine tells Sullivan on the recording. “I mean the size of these things, the value of these things is unbelievable.”

Sullivan responds, noting that “we have to pay for upkeep” in reference to the U.S. federal government:

“I know. It’s so ridiculous, but you know what the craziest thing is? When we seize one, we have to pay for upkeep.”

“The federal government pays for upkeep because under the kind of forfeiture rubric, so like some people are basically being paid to maintain Russian superyachts on behalf of the United States government,” he continues.

A spokesperson for the think tank called the takedown an “honest mistake” and it was later reposted without Sullivan’s private comments.

It is believed that the U.S. Marshals Service, which takes control of seized property, is running the maintenance operations with a network of private contractors.

Sullivan – now at the very heart of Joe Biden’s national security apparatus – has previously served at a number of Chinese Communist-linked entities including Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center and Harvard’s Belfer Center. Sullivan infamously once said he wanted to “encourage China’s rise,” and asserted that Al-Qaeda was “on our side.”

In the United States, the right to worship freely is often called America’s first freedom. It is a necessary component of U.S. foreign policy and our commitment to creating a more peaceful world.

History has shown that governments and societies that champion religious freedom are safer, more prosperous, and secure. Our commitment to protect this fundamental human right is both a moral necessity and a national security imperative.

On June 2, the U.S. Department of State released the 2021 International Religious Freedom Report. The more than 2,000-page report is a comprehensive, fact-based account of nearly 200 countries and territories around the world that is made publicly available for use by all guardians of religious freedom, including governments, religious communities, and activists.

For more than two decades, the International Religious Freedom Report has been an essential tool for the United States to advance and defend the universal right to worship freely.

Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the State Department is required to submit an annual report to Congress detailing the status of religious freedom in countries, government policies violating religious beliefs and practices, and U.S. policies that promote religious freedom.

As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo previously said of the report, “Its very existence is evidence of our strong resolve to defend human dignity.”

Three central themes emerged from the 2021 Report.

First, discriminatory laws and policies are used by foreign governments to abuse their own people. For example, excessive prison sentences and home raids target people of faith in Russia, the Taliban and ISIS-K threaten and attack religious minorities in Afghanistan, and the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minorities.

Second, the report found that the rise of intolerance and hatred in societies fuels violence and conflict. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, record-high levels of antisemitic incidents took place in Germany and the United Kingdom in 2020. In a separate report, the Commission stated that 82 percent of Jews in Sweden, 85 percent in Poland, 86 percent in Belgium, and 95 percent in France said that antisemitism is a “very big” problem.

Lastly, the partnership and collaboration among members of civil society, governments, and multilateral partners have been important to making progress in advancing and defending religious freedom.

Using the findings of the report, the president is also required to designate any nation that has “engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom,” as a “Country of Particular Concern.” Nations that are severe violators of religious freedom but don’t meet all of the CPC criteria are designated as “Special Watch List Countries.”

On Nov. 15, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken designated Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as Countries of Particular Concern.

The Special Watch List designations included Algeria, Comoros, Cuba, and Nicaragua. As I previously wrote, the administration removed Nigeria, but in the wake of the ongoing violence, it should be redesignated as one of the world’s most serious violators of religious freedom.

The Biden administration’s updates to these designations, which have yet to be released, will be watched closely by religious liberty advocates and perpetrators of persecution alike.

Tragically, as evidenced by the latest International Religious Freedom Report, religious oppression is a daily reality for millions of people of faith around the world.

The United States plays a consequential role in exposing these atrocities so that violators of religious freedom can be held accountable. America will not sit back as people are targeted, punished, and persecuted for their faith.

A U.S. senator Friday spoke out against the “woke” policies implemented by the military, which has become especially apparent during LGBT Pride Month of June.

“The United States military should be focused on one objective – creating the most lethal fighting force on planet Earth,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The Tennessee Star. “Instead, Joe Biden’s military leaders are secretly attempting to turn our brave warfighters into social justice warriors. Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not care how woke our military is or what our soldiers’ pronouns are.“

She echoed a similar sentiment on Twitter.

“The Biden Defense Department should focus energy on combatting our adversaries — not wokeism,” she said.

Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not care what our soldiers’ pronouns are.

The Biden Defense Department should focus energy on combatting our adversaries — not wokeism. https://t.co/HDWskD7F0tJune 17, 2022

The U.S. Air Force celebrated Pride Month with a message of its own on Twitter.

“Pride in all who serve,” the military branch said, attaching a photo of its members running alongside a pride flag.

The @DoD_IG recognizes June 2022 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month. During Pride Month, we commemorate the achievements and contributions of the LGBTQ+ community, to include service in defense of our Nation. pic.twitter.com/K69xtRi6EM— DoD Inspector General (@DoD_IG) June 17, 2022

The Department of Defense (DOD) itself, the parent organization of America’s military branches, sent out a June 7 press release officially recognizing Pride Month.

“DOD is committed to ensuring and promoting an atmosphere of dignity and respect for all civilian and military personnel,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said. “We strive to make the Department of Defense a workplace of choice for all Americans willing and qualified to serve. In doing so, we set a bedrock foundation where all personnel are valued and given an equal opportunity to succeed.”

https://www.americanliberty.news/politics/marsha-blackburn-says-u-s-military-is-too-focused-on-being-woke/pdabrosca/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=7381

‘China is the drug he just can’t quit’: GOP Senator slams NIAD head’s remarks

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was unable to commit to stop federal funding from going to Chinese scientific research, despite the U.S. intelligence community assessing the regime as America’s top adversary.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), made the remarks while appearing virtually at the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on June 16, during an exchange with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas).

“The NIH is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020. In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars,” said the senator during the hearing. “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”

Since 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a total of $8.3 million in grants to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its division National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, along with five top public universities in mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the NIH website.

Although this amount doesn’t capture dollars later funneled to a Chinese institution through a U.S.-based organization, such as New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which had partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to perform coronavirus-related experiments that some experts said fit the definition of gain-of-function research, that is, experiments that increase the pathogenicity or transmissibility of a virus.

Fauci, in response to Marshall’s question, said that the U.S. federal agencies “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”

“So I don’t think I’d be able to tell you that we are going to stop funding Chinese,” Fauci said.

“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he continued, adding that “grants that go to foreign countries, including China, have State Department clearance.”

“Dr. Fauci’s remarks prove that China is the drug he just can’t quit,” Marshall later told The Epoch Times about the NIAID head’s response.

“Dr. Fauci told the truth for once after years of repeated dishonesty that has eroded Americans’ trust in our public health institutions. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, our government should know it’s dangerous and wrong to continue funding research projects supported by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The senator, at the hearing, followed up by asking Fauci if he agrees that the American public lacks records and studies from EcoHealth Alliance’s research.

Fauci’s answer was evasive.

“We have access to an extraordinary amount of information that has gone there,” he said, arguing that the publicly available information in the scientific journals is sufficient.

“Obviously none of us know everything that’s going on in China but if the question at hand is the rather small … peer-reviewed high-priority grant that was given from Eco[Health] to China in a sub-award we have a lot of good information that’s in the publishing.”

The NIH gave a total of $3.1 million grant to EcoHealth over the five years from 2014 to 2019. A fifth of that, $599,000, went to the Wuhan lab, in part for identifying and altering bat coronaviruses deemed likely to infect humans, documents obtained by The Intercept show.

Fauci earlier this week tested positive for COVID-19 and joined the Thursday Senate hearing remotely. His response to Marshall omitted reference EcoHealth’s lack of disclosure over some of its research activities, which would have prompted an NIH review over biosafety measures.

In one experiment at the Wuhan facility, funded by NIH via EcoHealth, mice infected with a modified version of the original bat coronavirus “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, an “unexpected result” that was not “something that the researchers set out to do,” Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the NIH, told lawmakers last October.

He said EcoHealth had violated grant terms by failing to promptly notify the NIH about the finding.

Fauci, at the Thursday hearing, also told Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) that he believes the outbreak of the virus “is very, very likely a jump in species from an animal host,” and less likely to be the result of a lab leak.

“I believe it’s essential to have cooperation and collaboration with the Chinese,” he said when Braun asked him whether he thinks Beijing will cooperate with him to “get to the thorough bottom of” COVID-19 origins.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-refuses-to-stop-funding-chinese-research-with-us-tax-dollars_4541209.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-18&utm_medium=email&est=TeiJMXVcP10NZweU8mCwu8Sz0Y1B%2FospyPfhUIWJdUOmQEwt1uTNLUEWv%2FJeKS%2FgZw%3D%3D

Chevron this week released a statement addressing resident Joe Biden’s letter to oil companies that suggested he may take executive action amid record-high gas prices.

“We understand the significant concerns around higher fuel prices currently faced by consumers around the country, and the world. We share these concerns, and expect the Administration’s approach to energy policy will start to better reflect the importance of addressing them,” Chevron said in a statement to Biden.

The president sent letters Wednesday to Marathon Petroleum Corp., Valero Energy Corp., ExxonMobil, Phillips 66, Chevron, BP, and Shell to demand action on lowering gas prices. He asked why oil companies are not refining more and claimed they are reaping windfall profits.

“At a time of war, refinery profit margins well above normal being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable,” Biden wrote, according to the letter. This weak, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that oil producers have a “patriotic duty” to increase refining capacity, although she told a reporter Thursday that the United States doesn’t need to be drilling more to deal with the record prices at the pump.

Chevron further said that since Biden took office in January 2021, his administration has signaled that it will “impose obstacles to our industry delivering energy resources the world needs.”

While the firm did not elaborate, it may have been referring to a flurry of executive orders targeting the oil industry such as killing the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new oil drilling leases on federal lands, and ending fossil fuel subsidies used by certain agencies, among other measures.

Chevron also stated it will increase its Permian Basin production by 15 percent in 2022, while other oil firms have said they’ve already increased capacity in light of the gas prices.

“Our refineries are running full out,” Bruce Niemeyer, corporate vice president of strategy and sustainability at Chevron, told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Shell told the news outlet that it is “producing at capacity” and looking at options to increase oil production.

ExxonMobil also issued a response to Biden’s letter and provided what it described as short-term and long-term solutions.

“In the short term, the U.S. government could enact measures often used in emergencies following hurricanes or other supply disruptions—such as waivers of Jones Act provisions and some fuel specifications to increase supplies,” the energy company said in a news release Wednesday.

In the longer term, the federal government “can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines,” according to ExxonMobil.

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JOHANNESBURG—South Africans are clamouring for guns in the midst of soaring violent crime, while their government tries to pass legislation to outlaw ownership of firearms for self-defense.

“A government is supposed to protect its people. A government is supposed to care about the welfare of citizens,” said Dave Alfonso, outside a firearms dealership in Johannesburg, minutes after his purchase of a 9mm pistol.

“Here we have a government which has established one of the most useless police forces in the world, and under whose watch we are now one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. A government that says South Africa will be safer when private citizens are not allowed to own guns!”

There are no official statistics indicating the recent rise in gun demand, but the police confirm burgeoning demand for firearm licenses.

Weapons dealerships across South Africa report rising trade since the events of last July, when mobs rampaged across several cities, destroying property, looting stores and private homes and attacking people.

Hundreds lost their lives. Law enforcement agencies faced extreme public backlash for their initial slow reaction to the violence, with citizens forced to form vigilante militias to defend their families and property.

“I think that opened a lot of eyes as to what this country could look like in the not-too-distant future, and people have been rushing to arm themselves,” said Nick Yale, who’s been selling firearms in Johannesburg for almost 40 years.

“The last time I saw demand like this was between 1990 and 1994.”

Thousands were killed in the period that Yale mentions, as a South Africa transitioning from apartheid to democracy teetered on the brink of civil war, with assassinations, security force massacres of protesters and bombings by far-Right groups.

South Africa remains one of the most dangerous places on earth, constantly rated as such by global violence and crime watchdog groups.

The World Atlas, for example, collates crime data from around the world, and places South Africa 9th on its list of countries with the most murders, with 36 per 100,000 people. But that ranking springs from data before 2020.

Given that murders have increased exponentially since then, say crime analysts, South Africa’s murders per 100,000 people are now closer to 40, enough to put it on par with Lesotho, the tiny kingdom surrounded by South Africa, and ranked 5th on the World Atlas list.

Several violence monitoring organizations rank South African cities among the most dangerous, with Cape Town’s homicide rate—currently measured at 62.22 people murdered per 100,000 based on 2021 police statistics—being the highest in the world.

The country’s main firearms rights group, Gun Owners of South Africa (GOSA), says weapons sales and license applications spiked again after police released crime statistics in January, numbers that showed increases in all violent crimes, including murder, armed robbery, and rape.

The data showed almost 7,000 murders in the last three months of 2021, an increase of almost 9 percent compared to a year earlier.

Fresh police information indicates almost 6,100 people murdered between January and March 2022, an increase of 22 percent compared to the same period last year.

Almost 11,000 rapes were reported during this period, and almost 14,000 attempted murders.

“We don’t need [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to invade us and bomb us; South Africa is at war with itself. I’m struggling to decide which place is safer at the moment, South Africa or Ukraine,” said member of parliament for the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), Ockert Terblanche.

As flippant as his comment appears to be, a comparison of the numbers of murder victims in South Africa with official civilian deaths in Ukraine gives insight into the scale of horror Africa’s most industrialized economy is enduring.

In early May, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said 3,381 civilians had been killed in the first 70 days of the Russian invasion.

So, said Terblanche, the civilian death toll in a “full-scale war isn’t too different from the death toll of South Africans murdered over a similar period of time, in a so-called peaceful country.”

GOSA chairman Paul Oxley told The Epoch Times: “In this context, it’s understandable and fair that sensible people want to arm themselves. What’s not understandable is that the government wants to remove citizens’ rights to defend themselves from criminals.”

In May last year, the African National Congress (ANC) government moved to amend the Firearms Control Act. The change, if approved in parliament, would prohibit the issuing of licenses for firearms bought for self-defense.

Following a public outcry and court action, the proposed bill is on hold, but police minister Bheki Cele told The Epoch Times the ANC “remains resolute” in making the amendment, “because it will make South Africa a safer place.”

He explained further: “Our data shows that the majority of gun crimes are committed by criminals in possession of weapons stolen from private citizens.”

The country’s biggest anti-firearms lobby group, Gun-Free South Africa (GFSA), says reducing the numbers of firearms will mean less violent crime.

“We need non-proliferation, in line with international norms and standards. There are too many guns in the country,” said GFSA director Adele Kirsten.

According to international weapons monitoring group, the Small Arms Survey, there are 5.4 million privately held firearms in the country with a population of roughly 60 million.

That’s enough to place South Africa 20th on its list of nations with the most private guns in circulation, but very far away from the 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents in the United States.

Oxley points out that the 5.4 million private guns in South Africa are “legal, and registered by responsible people who have to undergo strict competency training and background checks before they’re permitted to take possession of firearms.”

He said the government should not be trying to limit ownership of legal guns, but should focus instead on seizing the many thousands of illicit weapons left over from the apartheid era.

During apartheid, black people were prohibited from owning firearms. In contrast, the Nationalist government made it relatively easy for whites to get guns, arguing they needed to protect themselves from “communist liberation movements” like the ANC.

But the Soviet Union provided thousands of AK47 assault rifles and Makarov pistols to the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or “Spear of the Nation.” These were smuggled into South Africa through neighbouring countries, especially Mozambique.

Kirsten said she’d provided the government with “tons” of research showing that limiting legal gun ownership “will lower levels of gun violence and can only do good.”

Rubbish, is Oxley’s response.

“None of what GFSA presents as credible research is applicable to South Africa. It applies to countries in Europe, which don’t have the levels of violent crime that we have here. Europeans don’t have to defend themselves against the kind and scale of threats that are normal in a traumatized, violent nation such as South Africa.

“Our constitution guarantees us the right to life, and if we have that right, then we surely also have the right to protect our lives and to defend the lives of our loved ones.

“Until someone, somewhere, comes up with a better way then the best way to do that is by using firearms, responsibly and safely, but using them when necessary and without hesitation when life is threatened.”

That’s exactly what Ronald Naidoo said he did when he and colleagues from a neighbourhood watch group fought off a crowd of people trying to enter the suburb of Phoenix in the city of Durban last July.

He told The Epoch Times: “If we didn’t have our firearms, I don’t think I’d be standing here right now. The only reason these guys did not invade our area was because we stood guard at all entrances with firearms. When they approached, we shot over their heads and they turned back.”

GOSA says if weapons for personal protection are banned, it’s going to make South Africa even more dangerous than it already is.

“Go into any suburb now and you’ll see that it’s protected by private security officers, not the police, because our police service is broken by corruption, mismanagement, lack of training, and lack of funding,” said Oxley.

“Likewise poor townships, that are often protected by private self-defence units. The new bill, if it becomes law, will mean it’s illegal for private security officers and these units to own firearms.

“It’ll be party-time for the criminals.”

But Cele maintains the self-defence clause must be removed from the Firearms Control Act as soon as possible.

“It’s too easy to abuse. Almost everyone registering a gun says they want it for self-defence. We only want police in this country to have guns.”

GOSA says if parliament passes the law, it’ll challenge it in South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the highest in the land.

“It can’t be that only police have the right to self-defence using firearms,” said Oxley. “What must citizens use to defend themselves against rampant criminality? Knives? Karate?”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/south-africans-fight-their-government-to-keep-guns-as-violence-continues-to-soar_4535315.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-17-2&utm_medium=email&est=A5Sk5%2BLTQLxAInMKKB7G9RK5MBl2%2FzBqc5lz18uvloTvVv91i6clEuoicwV0wkuGpg%3D%3D

CCP boosts ties with Russia amid Taiwan invasion fears

Congressional Republicans are spearheading an effort to fast-track U.S. weapons shipments to Taiwan amid growing concerns Communist China is planning to start “a war of aggression,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told the Washington Free Beacon.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has emboldened the CCP, which took steps earlier this week to strengthen bilateral ties with Moscow to help it combat Western economic sanctions. With the two malign regimes displaying a united front, Republican lawmakers want to send a clear message that America will come to Taiwan’s aid if Beijing launches an invasion.

The Biden administration also is closely monitoring the situation, with a State Department official telling the Free Beacon on Thursday that U.S. officials remain “concerned about China’s alignment with Russia.”

Banks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Biden administration was caught off guard by Russia’s incursion, proving that “you can’t deter an invasion after it happens.” China is learning lessons from its Russian ally, fueling concerns that Beijing will make good on its threats to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the prospect of a Chinese attack on Taiwan during a speech over the weekend, saying, “We will defend our interests without flinching.”

“China breached Taiwan’s airspace a record number of times in 2021,” Banks told the Free Beacon. “House Republicans can’t let Joe Biden repeat the same mistakes he made in Ukraine. You can’t deter an invasion after it happens and Congress and the Biden administration should be entirely unified around the need to send Taiwan defensive weaponry to dissuade Xi from starting a war of aggression.”

Banks, who has repeatedly pressed the Biden administration in multiple forums to “unequivocally and publicly” commit to defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion, said the Taiwan Weapons Exports Act would serve as a central legislative vehicle to deter Beijing.

It would boost Taiwan’s trade standing to make it a central U.S. ally in the same way that NATO members like Japan and South Korea are, according to a full copy of the bill provided to the Free Beacon. It also would expedite licensing approval for weapons shipments to Taiwan and remove other administrative barriers that could slow the process. The measure also cuts in half the amount of time these types of weapons deals are reviewed by Congress, making it easier for military equipment to actually arrive in Taiwan.

A Senate companion version of the bill is being spearheaded by Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

The Republican Study Committee, which is helmed by Banks, also is using its 2023 budget proposal to increase U.S. commitments to Taiwan. Under the RSC’s proposal, the U.S. would accelerate lethal aid to Taiwan, including stinger missiles, naval strike missiles, and quick strike air-dropped sea mine—all of which could be used if China launches an attack.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke by phone on Wednesday to reaffirm relations in the face of Western sanctions. Xi reportedly “noted the legitimacy” of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, claiming that Moscow is protecting its “fundamental national interests in the face of challenges to its security created by external forces.”

Russia and China inked a cooperation agreement in February and both countries have said the deal contains “no limits” on their partnership.

The State Department says it sees through China’s claims of neutrality on the Russian war.

The U.S. and European partners have already “warned China against providing Russia military assistance” and continue to closely monitor Beijing’s actions, according to the State Department.

“More than three months into Russia’s brutal invasion, China is still standing by Russia,” the official said. “It is still echoing Russian propaganda around the world. It is still shielding Russia in international organizations, shirking its responsibilities as a P5 member. And it is still denying Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine by suggesting instead that they were staged.”

Both countries are believed to be boosting their economic infrastructure to “bypass SWIFT,” the international banking system, as well as “U.S. and European sanctions,” according to the official. These efforts have been accompanied by military drills, most recently a joint bomber patrol in East Asia.

“Nations that side with Vladimir Putin will inevitably find themselves on the wrong side of history,” the State Department official said. “This is not a moment for equivocation or hiding or waiting to see what happens next. It is already clear what is happening.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-plotting-war-of-aggression-in-taiwan-gop-lawmaker-warns/

by Pastor Andrew Isker

We are now back to a national average gas price of $5.00/gallon. This is a subject of serious concern for almost everyone. Conservatives will (rightly) point to the Biden Administration’s hostility toward domestic oil production and distribution as the primary cause of the growing crisis, yet struggle to frame the problem in terms other than “the naïveté of environmentalist policy.” While the American ruling class is indeed dominated by extremely stupid people, its environmentalism is not “oh whoops we accidentally made gas cost way too much, who could have predicted that!”

           Allowing it to be framed that way while giving conservative satirists plenty of low-hanging fruit to work with, is a massive mistake. It is easy to poke fun at the stupidity of people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and AOC. And that’s entirely the problem. These people are not sincerely-yet-naively attempting a solution to what they see as a truly apocalyptic disaster. It is a major mistake to assume they are ever operating in good faith. None of these people actually believe this stuff. They all have massive multimillion-dollar homes on coastlines they say will not exist by the end of the decade. It has been demonstrated ad nauseum that these people fly around in private jets, expending more fossil fuels in a single vacation than the average person will in their entire lives. You have to understand these are deeply cynical people. They do not care about the stuff they say they do. But what do they care about?

           The most important filter to understand politics, especially politics in the Current Year, is Friend/Enemy distinction. Do not look at what these people say, look at what they do. And, look at who benefits from what they do or who is harmed by what they do. Who are the enemies of the occupational regime? Obviously, they will never explicitly state who it is they seek to destroy. Unless the pharmaceutical cocktail that allows the current president brief moments of lucidity is badly messed up, you are never going to hear him say “we want to totally impoverish and destroy the American middle and working class.” But every single day the actions of the regime speak as clearly as possible.

           You need to stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt. They are not stupid, at least not the ones that truly matter. They are not misguided. They are not simply mistaken. They are intentionally malicious. It is not the naïveté of bleeding-heart liberals who get teary-eyed at the thought of punishing violent criminals that have caused the ruling regime to empty prisons and violent crime to exponentially increase. Yes, the naive liberal useful idiots who give them power are easily deluded by propaganda, but those who wield power know exactly what they are doing. They want the people they hate to be punished. They want white women and their babies to be run over by violent criminals who never should have been let out of prison. They want violent criminals to be released back into the wild, they want police to be terrified to fight them, and they want you to go to prison if you ever have to defend yourself against them. These are not accidents caused by well-meaning-but-naive libs—this stuff is by design.

           “Climate change” is no different. For his entire presidential campaign, Joe Biden read carefully crafted scripts about reducing the use of fossil fuels, cutting oil production, increasing “clean energy,” etc. That the cost of gasoline is nearly triple what it was when he took office is not some accident of the inscrutable forces of the free market. The people who rule the American people want gasoline and diesel to be unaffordable for most of the country. Regular people—with jobs and families and mortgages—those people are the enemies of the regime. They want things to be more expensive for you. They want you to suffer.

           They not only don’t care if you are impoverished, but it also brings them sick pleasure. You are their enemy. They want to destroy you. This should have been evident during the Wuhan Flu, the Mostly Peaceful Summer of George, and the Most Secure Election in History. What were those events, in truth? Whether you believe those events were 100% organic or they were operations of alphabet agencies and aligned NGOs or (most likely) some mixture of both, it doesn’t matter. What matters is both who benefited from these events and who was harmed. Who benefited from the lockdowns? Megacorporations, especially trillion-dollar hedge funds like Blackrock, which got the overwhelming majority of newly printed trillions (while you got a couple of tiny checks). In short, the greatest constituency of the regime benefitted from everything that happened in 2020. Every industry got hundreds of billions for almost nothing, Big Pharma got a huge boon, and the military-industrial complex now likewise gets to cash in on an absurdly expensive (even by War on Terror standards) proxy war with Russia. Everyone who was already filthy rich got even richer, all at your expense. Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and especially billionaire retailers like the Waltons and Bezos raked in the dough while their competitors were shut down.

           And who was harmed by the events of 2020 (and beyond)? The greatest enemy of the regime, that’s who: the middle class, the people who have spent their entire lives toiling away to build businesses that provide services and goods and jobs for their neighbors, who donate to the things that make their communities worth living in, churches, local sports teams, youth activities, and service organizations. The regular people who have a stake in the places they live, who love their country and their neighborhoods, who want to live in peace and quiet, who simply want good order. That is who the regime hates the most. The few Norman Rockwell Americans who have the audacity to still exist. The regime was happy to allow your businesses to be locked down, while their billionaire friends could stay open. The regime was happy to allow organized violent revolutionaries to burn down your neighborhoods with almost no arrests and no investigation into the machinations behind the scenes. All of this while spending years holding men without trial in solitary confinement for walking through wide-open doors to the U.S. Capitol and spending years investigating an understandably overly exuberant protest of a fraudulent election. You need to filter everything that happens today through the friend/enemy distinction and politics becomes absolutely crystal clear.

           This is why it cost so much to fill up your car and your grocery cart. The people in power hate you and your family. They are stupid and incompetent, but even worse, they are malicious. If you are a normal person, who just wants to have a job and home and family, who loves his country and loves his God, the people in power do not want you to exist. They want to make life as hard as possible for you. They do not want you to have children. And if you somehow can even have children, they want the children you do have to be groomed into disgusting freaks. You have an enemy that hates you. Do not ever forget it.

           But you also have friends. The good news is that more and more people are starting to see they no longer live in the America they grew up in. More people are beginning to see that the America of “at the end of the day everyone is an American on the same team and we just disagree about some things” is dead. And while this is a great tragedy it is a necessity. We have to realize the thing we love is gone before we can begin to bring it back. And many people are now beginning to have that realization.

           This is the very first step in things being made right again. Now you can organize around this principle, knowing who your friends are and who is on your side. From there you can build churches, build neighborhoods and towns, build communities dedicated to rebuilding Christian civilization, communities that will have the strength to weather together the difficult years to come. One in which you can recognize who your friends are and who your enemies are, only then will you have the ability to fight and build.

Andrew Isker is the pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, MN. He is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Greyfriar’s Hall Ministerial Training School, and he has served churches in Missouri, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Boniface Option. Andrew, his wife Kara, and their five children reside in his hometown of Waseca, MN. He can be found on Gab @BonifaceOption.

Published in Bold Christian Writing

The only thing that could curb the current record-high gasoline prices would be a major drop in demand, i.e. a recession, according to several experts. Theoretically, a major shift in U.S. foreign and energy policy could make a difference too, but nobody seems to realistically expect that to happen.

Gas prices have particularly pained Americans, climbing in recent months to more than $5 a gallon. Some experts even consider it the driver of price inflation, which hit a four-decade high of 8.6 percent in May. The price hike has been caused by several factors piling up, including currency inflation, anti-carbon policy moves, misjudging the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’ve made a lot of policy errors in this country and overseas to put us in this situation and it’s not going to be easily fixed,” commented Phil Flynn, senior analyst with The Price Futures Group.

“If we start to reverse some of those policies, the market can start pricing in a better future.”

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, on June 14 released a list of 10 steps the U.S. government should take to boost domestic oil production, which still lags behind pre-pandemic levels and barely budged for half a year now. Top of the list is restarting drilling leases on federal land and speeding up project approvals.

But since the Biden administration has centered its agenda around “decarbonizing” the economy, chances of any pro-oil policy moves are expected to be nil.

Tight Supply

The administration has been begging foreign producers, from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela, to pump out more, but with little success.

“People are estimating that global spare production capacity can be as low as 2 million barrels a day,” Flynn said, noting that “we’ve already stretched the system to the limit.”

Refineries have emerged as another bottleneck with no apparent fix in sight. Refining capacity in the United States and Europe has been declining for years under the mantra of moving away from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and governments locked down large swaths of the economy and population, oil prices collapsed and the industry was stuck with massive excess capacity. The prospects at the time were deary. Not only was there no end of the pandemic in sight, but financial elites openly discussed using the crisis as an opportunity to move away from oil. Especially in the financial sector, the “environment, social, governance” (ESG) initiatives went into overdrive, promising to starve the oil industry of capital. Investment prospects in the industry took a severe hit.

“We had people predicting that oil demand would never get to pre-pandemic levels,” Flynn told The Epoch Times.

As it turned out, the pandemic didn’t cripple the economy quite as severely as expected. Many U.S. states quickly started lifting the lockdowns and by the end of the year just about returned to normal. The vaccine was delivered before the end of the year, allowing reopening even in most areas that were previously reluctant to do so. Demand quickly bounced back and so did the oil market.

U.S. oil product demand reached roughly the pre-pandemic level in June last year, even as domestic oil production still lagged about 2 million barrels per day (bpd) behind the pre-pandemic maximum of over 13 million bpd.

With the inauguration of President Joe Biden came a new era of “whole of government” anti-fossil fuel policy. The administration stopped leasing federal land for drilling and nixed the Keystone XL pipeline, further squashing long-term industry prospects.

To attract investors, oil companies adopted a strategy of “efficiency”—cut costs, cut development, and instead send their profits to stockholders. The strategy has somewhat worked, but only at the expense of future production and processing capacity.

The Biden administration has recently blamed refineries and oil companies for profiting from the high oil prices, which have been hovering around $120 a barrel for the past few days—more than double from a year ago.

But some experts have argued that it’s been the excessive government spending and the subsequent money printing by the Federal Reserve that has allowed the oil industry to raise prices so much without, so far, significantly affecting demand.

“The government never makes any mistakes. Have you ever noticed that,” Flynn quipped.

Excise tax on oil recently floated by the administration would be “disastrous for the economy,” he said.

“If you kill the refining margins, you’re going to kill the incentive to work and you’re going to have less supply,” he explained.

Ukraine Invasion

The Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year was timed to take advantage of the tight oil supply, according to Art Berman, geologist and energy expert.

“Putin knew what he was doing,” he told Wealthion’s Adam Taggart in a recent interview, noting the Russian President has a Ph.D. in energy economics.

Oil prices rallied on concerns that Western sanctions on Russia will prevent it from selling its oil.

Such expectations haven’t materialized. European countries still buy the majority of Russian oil and China and India continue to buy too, albeit at a discount.

E.U. leaders have been promising to ban oil imports from Russia, but Berman doesn’t believe that’s realistic.

“They’re absolutely incapable of doing that,” he said.

The U.S. and the E.U. could also put pressure on India to stop buying.

“But they haven’t done that yet because they know, at the end of the day, if they do that, oil prices will go to $300,” Flynn said.

Russia is the world’s second-largest oil producer and it appears there’s just not enough spare capacity available to exclude it completely.

There are already examples of clever schemes to dodge the sanctions. Russia-made diesel is mixed with diesel of other origins, resulting in a product that can be shipped to Europe without restrictions, Berman said.

Price Drop

Berman predicted oil prices will come down significantly, but only through “demand destruction.” He argued that, historically, inflation and high gas prices in particular have caused consumers to cut back. He expects that U.S. gas and diesel consumption could drop about 10 percent in the next 12–18 months. That could lead to an oil glut and price collapse, but it could very well also mean a recession.

From an investment perspective, Lance Roberts, chief investment strategist at RIA Advisors, warned that oil rallies tend to unwind just as suddenly as they build up.

“Oil prices are all driven by commodity traders. So oil prices are somewhat supply-demand driven, but a lot of it is these non-commercial speculators in the options markets that are driving oil prices through options contracts. Right now, everybody is ramping up their oil contracts,” he said during a recent Wealthion interview.

“Well at some point, somebody says, ‘I’m out.’ … He’s like the popular guy that brings all the people to a party. Whoever that guy is, when he says, ‘I’m out,’ the rest of the herd follows him.”

Flynn doesn’t see that happening—at least not in the short term.

“Technically, most people think we’re in a recession right now, but assuming that we are, it might be a mild recession,” he said.

He expects “real demand destruction” would only come if oil climbs even further, perhaps to $150 a barrel.

Both Flynn and Berman agreed that in the longer term, oil prices will remain high.

“We can see a big correction of $30 … I think it will recover … I think it would only be a pause in the bull market,” Flynn said.

The Fed’s flurry of interest rate hikes may be the wild card that could pull the rug from under the economy more broadly.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/major-recession-only-realistic-way-for-gasoline-price-to-drop-experts_4535959.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-16-1&utm_medium=email&est=ZYjHEB7ybGnPP%2Fgdk8YHmlQVlmLptWjj1iyKzXylQ64OSzwG8E48jarEMQRDSMkD0Q%3D%3D

Either 0.50 or 0.75 percentage point hike ‘seems most likely’ at the July meeting, according to Powell

The Federal Reserve raised the benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points on June 15, the largest rate hike since November 1994, as part of its effort to tame soaring inflation.

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) officials agreed to increase the Fed funds target range to between 1.5 percent and 1.75 percent. This is the rate that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing, affecting consumer borrowing, such as credit cards and home equity loans.

Before the latest headline inflation reading, the Fed forward guidance had penciled in a 50-basis-point rate hike in June. Investors had been pricing in this level, but a red-hot consumer price index (CPI) prompted the market to alter its expectation and forecast a more hawkish central bank.

During his post-FOMC meeting press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that “either a 50 basis point or a 75 basis point increase seems most likely” at the July meeting.

The Fed raised interest rates by 25 basis points in March, marking the first increase since 2018. Rates were increased by a half percentage point last month.

Looking ahead to the FOMC’s interest rate projections, the Fed is forecasting 3.4 percent at the end of 2022, up from 1.9 percent in the March projection. It’s also expecting 3.8 percent next year. The Fed’s policymakers anticipate that they’ll start trimming interest rates in 2024.

The Fed increased its inflation forecast for this year from 4.3 percent in March projections to 5.2 percent. The central bank sees inflation slowing to 2.6 percent next year.

On the gross domestic product (GDP) front, the Fed projects that growth will slow to 1.7 percent this year from the previous forecast of 2.8 percent.

“Overall economic activity appears to have picked up after edging down in the first quarter,” the revised FOMC statement reads. “Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher energy prices, and broader price pressures.

“The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is causing tremendous human and economic hardship. The invasion and related events are creating additional upward pressure on inflation and are weighing on global economic activity. In addition, COVID-related lockdowns in China are likely to exacerbate supply chain disruptions. The Committee is highly attentive to inflation risks.”

Kansas City Fed Bank President Esther George was the lone dissent vote, preferring a 0.5 percentage point increase.

Financial markets turned positive during Powell’s press conference after he signaled that the Fed would remain tough on inflation. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 300 points. The S&P 500 increased by 1.5 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite Index was up by 2.5 percent.

The U.S. Treasury market was mostly in the red, with the benchmark 10-year yield down 14 basis points to 3.34 percent.

U.S. rate futures have priced in a 93.4 percent probability of a 75-basis-point hike in July and a 55 percent chance of a half-point increase in September.

Fed’s Balancing Act

The central bank has been coming under pressure to rein in four-decade high inflation by being more aggressive in tightening monetary policy and employing enormous rate hikes. At the same time, the Fed needs to avert a hard crash, ensuring that the United States doesn’t slip into a recession.

Powell and the FOMC are entrenched in a juggling act to balance economic growth and curb inflation. A chorus of economic commentators is doubtful that the Fed can fight inflation and sustain the post-pandemic economic expansion.

When asked if the economy will still experience a soft landing, Powell indicated that recent events, such as commodity price volatility, have increased the degree of difficulty and provided significant challenges to the central bank.

“Panicked by sky-high inflation, now the Fed is stepping hard on the monetary policy brakes too hard in much the same way as last year it kept its foot on the accelerator too long,” Desmond Lachman, economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email. “It is doing so now by rising interest rates in 75 basis point steps rather than the more normal 25 basis point steps.”

Lachman noted that the Fed’s shift to a more hawkish policy stance might trigger a recession because “it has already caused the asset and credit market bubbles it created last year to burst.”

“Since the start of the year, equity prices have fallen by around 25 percent, bond prices have declined by more than 20 percent, and the cryptocurrency market has lost more than half of its value,” he said. “That has involved the evaporation of around $15 trillion or 70 percent of GDP in household wealth that could cause consumers to cut back heavily on spending.”

The situation comes down to the Fed being unable to admit the problem in the first place, according to Nancy Tengler, CEO and chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments.

Since last year, the policymakers “shared a stubborn refusal to admit the problem,” she wrote in a research note. “The chaos resulting from their actions—and make no mistake, those poor policies straddle both parties—goes unrecognized, un-examined, unresolved, doomed to be repeated.”

Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist of Yardeni Research, essentially echoed this sentiment in a June 15 note, writing that the Fed has been behind the curve, turning “woke” in the process.

“Perhaps the most important similarity between the 1970s and recent events is the lame response of the Fed to the wage-price-rent spiral. The Fed was well behind the inflation curve during most of the 1970s and is now once again,” Yardeni wrote.

Today, the U.S. economy is dealing with a trade-off: beat inflation with a recession or deal with soaring prices and maintain stagnant growth.

“[A] more accelerated Fed hiking cycle ultimately should help tame inflation pressures but will make it more difficult to thread the needle between lower inflation and a recession,” Deutsche Bank said in a June 14 note. “We continue to anticipate that bringing inflation back down to target will require a meaningful hit to demand and rise in the unemployment rate, the latter of which historically does.”

There’s a growing expectation that substantial rate hikes would halt business activity and spending, while also leading to greater job losses.

But everything the Fed will do moving forward will be based on data, which has been the modus operandi from before the start of the tightening cycle, according to Robert R. Johnson, CEO of Economic Index Associates and professor at Heider College of Business, Creighton University.

“Let the Federal Reserve raise rates in a very measured manner and there is a possibility that we could achieve a soft landing for the economy,” he told The Epoch Times. “Reckless moves like some are calling for would preclude any possibility of a soft landing.”

Johnson does anticipate that the year-end interest rate would be closer to 3.75 percent to 4 percent.

About That Recession

Wall Street appears to be split on the odds of a recession. Many financial institutions and analysts have placed the bets at 50 percent, while others think there’s a decent chance that the U.S. economy could experience a soft landing.

The Atlanta Fed Bank’s GDPNow model projects zero percent growth in the April-to-June period.

But could a recession already be here? It wouldn’t be surprising, said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it started in the third quarter of this year,” he told CNBC on June 10. “You can say that we’re in the midst of it right now, in the beginning phase. Only in retrospect will we know for sure, but it should not surprise us at this point.”

In the first quarter, the U.S. economy contracted at a 1.5 percent rate.

The next two-day FOMC policy meeting will take place on July 26 and 27.

According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the market is penciling in a three-quarter point rate hike next month.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fed-raises-interest-rates-by-three-quarters-the-largest-increase-in-28-years_4534321.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-16&utm_medium=email&est=GRTBLJh72iPWT0ishq3VoXCkzrzLbYcdIYyUoqGUAgMenXQsjOmrjzVXdqdW7hxkwQ%3D%3D

The Biden administration’s climate czar, John Kerry, proclaimed that despite record-high gas prices, the United States doesn’t need to drill for more oil or natural gas.

Speaking during a forum, Kerry said that Republicans and some analysts have suggested that “we need more drilling” and “we need to go back to coal.” He then argued: “No, we don’t. We absolutely don’t.”

The former secretary of state also suggested that he will push back on alleged false narratives that the United States needs to drill more and use more traditional energy sources. Kerry delivered his remarks at the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy on June 10.

“We have to prevent a false narrative from entering into this,” he said.

Kerry’s comments come as data from auto club AAA shows that the average price for a gallon of gasoline remained steady at $5.01 nationwide. California is still leading the way with an average price of $6.43 per gallon. No other state has reached $6 gas so far.

Because of the elevated prices, Republicans and oil industry executives have suggested that the Biden administration’s policies are at least partially to blame. President Joe Biden issued a series of executive orders last year, including suspending the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new drilling on federal land, and ending federal subsidies for fossil fuels, among other orders.

Democrats and Biden, meanwhile, have said the high gas prices are caused by the war in Ukraine, often blaming the spike on Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, gas prices and year-over-year inflation had been rising long before the invasion in February.

Some analysts, including GasBuddy, have said that a surge in the demand for oil and other petroleum products as countries emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns is also contributing to the high prices. A report in June of last year found that U.S. refining capability shrunk about 4.5 percent in 2020 as COVID-19 caused oil and gas facilities to shut down.

Although Kerry said the United States and other Western countries shouldn’t opt for more coal-based energy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been heavily promoting relying more on coal-fired plants in recent months. CCP officials in April said China, which has a significant amount of coal reserves, plans on boosting coal production by 300 million tons in 2022, according to reports. That’s equal to 7 percent of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, or a 5.7 percent increase over 2020’s figures, according to The Associated Press.

And late last month, India’s government said that it would reopen old coal mines to increase output by 100 million tons as cities have suffered frequent rolling blackouts amid a heat wave. In a memo released on May 7, the Indian environmental ministry gave coal mines permission to boost production by as much as 50 percent without permits.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/john-kerry-we-absolutely-dont-need-to-drill-for-oil-as-gas-prices-soar_4535220.html?utm_source=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-06-15&utm_medium=email&est=t2kmr%2BCN4FU1WTZweFQ067FnnYcw6Tk5fBZiiZbaZpdt9YSH7PkDRC6i0fQi6HjVLg%3D%3D

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager that oversees $10 trillion in client funds, has positioned itself as a socially conscious firm. However, the company is choosing China over the United States as it advances its environmental and social priorities, according to Will Hild, executive director of Washginton-based nonprofit Consumers’ Research.

Hild said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is “selling out the interests of American consumers and American companies in the United States, in return for personal favors for BlackRock in mainland China,” during a recent interview with EpochTV’s “China Insider” program.

Related Coverage

BlackRock andESG Controlling America but Benefiting China—With Will Hild

Fink has been one of the most prominent advocates for ESG investment, which is investing in companies that agree to uphold certain environmental, social, and governance standards.

However, according to Fink, ESG “is an excuse for Wall Street to push politics into corporate America.” In other words, Wall Street is pushing ESG policies that “could never be achieved at the ballot box,” he added.

Additionally, BlackRock has also taken up the position of supporting a net-zero emission future. The company’s website tells its clients that “climate transition creates a historic investment opportunity.” In a 2020 letter to CEOs, Fink wrote that “climate risk is investment risk.”

While BlackRock has pushed U.S. companies such as ExxonMobil to embrace green energy, it has not taken the same approach with Chinese firms, according to Hild.

“Ironically, Blackrock controls about the same amount of shares, about seven-and-a-half percent, of PetroChina as they do Exxon, but they don’t engage in any of the same behavior when it comes to that company,” he said, such as pushing Chinese companies to adopt net-zero policies.

PetroChina is the listed arm of China’s state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). In February, Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom inked a 30-year deal with CNPC, paving the way for Russia-to-China natural gas via a new pipeline linking the Russian Far East with northeastern China.

”I think if they did, Larry Fink would find himself not welcomed in mainland China very quickly because we know how that government acts,” Hild continued.

Hild said BlackRock’s excuse for not pushing Chinese firms is “so absurd.”

“The excuse that they use is that China is still a developing economy, and so we cannot force the same rules on them,” Hild explained.

In 2021, BlackRock sided with hedge fund firm Engine No.1, which replaced new directors on ExxonMobil’s board, believing that the oil giant had responded too weakly to the climate crisis. Citing a Wall Street Journal report, Hild said the board subsequently considered divesting itself from two gas and oil projects in Mozambique and Vietnam.

Hild argued that the projects would have “served American consumers at the pump so that prices could have been brought down.” 

“Effectively BlackRock and Larry Fink are using America as China’s carbon offset. They are not putting pressure on China to decarbonize,” he said.

“And so they are putting up corporate America on an unlevel playing field here in the United States, against their rivals in China,” he continued. “And they’re using American investment dollars to do that.”

One favor BlackRock has had from the Chinese regime was being granted the right to start the first wholly foreign-owned mutual fund business in China, according to Hild.

In August 2011, BlackRock Fund Management Co. Ltd, BlackRock’s business in China, launched a mutual fund product in China, making it the first mutual fund offering by a wholly foreign-owned company, according to China’s state-run media.

Read More

Consumers’ Research Warns US Governors About BlackRock’s Retirement Fund Investments in China

State Farm Remains a ‘Creepy Neighbor’ After Transgender Book Backlash, Consumer Group Head Says

Many state governments in the United States have invested their pension funds with BlackRock. According to a 2021 report (pdf) from Consumers’ Research, Washington, Florida, and New York were the top three investors, investing $13.8 billion, $10.7 billion, and $9.8 billion, respectively,

The report also warned about BlackRock putting investors’ money in Chinese companies with ties to the Chinese military, such as China’s biggest chipmaker SMIC.

“BlackRock’s investment choices are not only risking the security of U.S. pensions, but the security of our nation as a whole,” according to the report.

With the United States facing record-high inflation, Hild believes that BlackRock’s investment decisions, which help industrialize China while deindustrializing the United States, are not benefiting pensioners.

“It’s going to hurt their returns as pensioners. And it’s going to hurt them at the gas pump and the grocery store and all the other places they spend money,” he said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to BlackRock for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/blackrock-sells-us-interests-for-personal-favors-in-china-consumer-group-director-says_4534418.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-15-1&utm_medium=email&est=QWzrtdjao0D%2FIYi6fBA7JRzJTVuhDwT4OUkwwYZeXUlxgvq3eANn28x2SAbl2zCU%2FQ%3D%3D

God…please bring back our true president, and evict the current resident. [US Patriot]

The White House and its allies are circulating a misleading talking point that the Biden administration is overseeing the most oil production in U.S. history.

Both White House chief of staff Ron Klain and resident Joe Biden have used the talking point as a response to Republican criticism that Democrats are discouraging domestic energy production through regulation and not issuing new drilling permits. Earlier this month, Klain shared a chart on Twitter showing oil production under Biden—at an annual average of 11.18 million barrels a day—was higher than any of his five predecessors. In March, Biden said the United States was “approaching record levels of oil and natural gas production.”

The claim from Democrats that domestic production is higher now than during the Trump administration is based on a comparison of four-year averages that includes the tremendous drop in economic activity at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Domestic oil production under Biden has yet to come close to the pre-pandemic levels reached under the prior administration, a more detailed Free Beacon analysis found.

The Free Beacon analysis of domestic crude oil production data shows that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States produced just under 13 million barrels of oil per day at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020. For comparison, that figure is more than 20 percent higher than the amount of oil the United States produced per day in September 2021. Energy industry expert James Wilson, who runs an oil and gas economics consulting firm, says the White House is abusing statistics to fit a narrative.

“You can claim anything with statistics,” Wilson told the Washington Free Beacon. “When COVID hit, the price of oil dropped and then production dropped. Surprise, surprise.”

The White House’s insistence on repeating the oil production claim bolsters the impression increasingly held by the public and some Democrats that the Biden administration is out of ideas to tackle rising prices. Even as the cost of gas skyrockets, the White House is sharing a months-old graph from liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias, a symptom of an office “defined by insularity,” as Politico has described it.

Lots of assertions on this website about why gasoline production is not keeping up with demand, but here’s a fact about US oil output: pic.twitter.com/VP0Rf95eP8

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) June 12, 2022

Domestic oil production trends prior to the pandemic show how misleading these sorts of claims are. For example, the United States produced an average of a million barrels more per day between the start of 2019 to April 2020 than the 11.185 million barrels a day averaged under Biden.

Biden told a group of labor union leaders on Tuesday that “I’m doing everything in my power to blunt Putin’s gas price hike” and blamed rising prices on “nothing else but that.” Despite that claim, federal data show that average daily domestic oil production in March, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was lower than in November of last year.

Unlike during Trump’s final year in office, consumer demand for energy is elevated today. Total U.S. petroleum consumption is estimated to rise 730,000 barrels per day this year over last, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Some industry analysts point to macroeconomic trends out of the Biden administration’s control, such as oil companies’ reluctance to invest in new drilling sites because of shareholder pressure, as reasons for lower domestic production. That explanation, Wilson says, does not tell the full story.

“Another thing that’s inhibiting these guys from drilling is uncertainty about what this administration was and is going to do,” Wilson said, referring to new and potential future regulations against the oil and gas industry. “The bottom line is that when Trump was president, these companies started producing and oil was cheaper.”

Earlier this month gas prices hit an average of $5 a gallon nationwide. Industry analysts expect that price to only increase throughout the summer when more Americans travel for vacation.

The rising price of gas and household goods is the driving force behind Biden’s plummeting approval rating. A majority of voters say the economy is their top concern in multiple surveys, and a RealClearPolitics aggregate of recent polls shows Americans’ approval of Biden’s job performance is lower than at any time since he entered office.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/is-america-really-producing-more-oil-under-biden-than-trump-no-obviously-not/

The FBI’s top national security official had dozens of improper meetings with journalists and accepted tickets from one journalist to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, interactions that FBI officials said were a “no-no” and “dangerous.”

Michael Steinbach, who served as an FBI executive assistant director, failed to report the gifts on his federal financial disclosures, according to an inspector general report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. He met regularly from 2014 until his abrupt retirement in February 2017 with 7 reporters and had contact with 21 others. His interactions with journalists overlapped with his work on major counterterrorism cases and Crossfire Hurricane, the ill-fated investigation into collusion between the 2016 Donald Trump campaign and Russia.

The report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, is the latest example of a top FBI official accepting gifts from journalists. The former head of FBI public affairs, Michael Kortan, received baseball game tickets and other gifts from CNN and New York Times reporters. Journalists also plied Steinbach’s former deputy, Bryan Paarmann, with a variety of gifts.

The FBI prohibits employees from accepting gifts from a “prohibited source”—a category that includes journalists—without prior authorization. FBI officials told the inspector general that off-the-books meetings like Steinbach’s could “lead to a lot of problems” within the bureau.

“You never know what can be said. You don’t know under what conditions it can be said. So it can lead to a lot of problems,” an FBI official told the inspector general’s office.

Steinbach is not accused of leaking classified or sensitive information, but the inspector general’s report details numerous conversations he had with journalists about breaking news stories. The watchdog also determined that reporters gave gifts to Steinbach “because of his official positions with the FBI.”

Steinbach eagerly sought invitations to swanky media industry parties, such as the Radio-Television Correspondents’ Dinner and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual gala. According to text messages and emails in the watchdog report, Steinbach on March 25, 2015, began soliciting an unnamed reporter for tickets to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Steinbach attended the next year’s event and an afterparty, according to the report. Steinbach did not disclose the gift, which was valued at $300.

Steinbach’s host is not identified, but text messages show him joking with a journalist from a different outlet about attending the gala.

“I put you on the map and now you’re cheating on me with [reporter’s first and last name]?” a CNN reporter wrote Steinbach in April 2016.

“I kept waiting for my invite from you,” Steinbach replied.

The CNN reporter is not identified, but Steinbach in February 2015 conducted one of his only television interviews, with CNN’s Pamela Brown.

Steinbach in an email after the dinner thanked his host. “Thanks for hanging out with us last night,” Steinbach wrote in an email titled “Great Night.” He told the reporter he “would love to grab … drinks” at some point in the future.

It is unclear where the reporter worked, but some news organizations have policies against reporters giving gifts to sources. The Los Angeles Times, for example, prohibits staff members “from accepting gifts from or giving gifts to news sources, potential news sources, or those who seek to influence coverage.”

Steinbach is one of several officials who worked under ex-FBI director James Comey to run afoul of FBI guidelines. Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was fired in 2018 after the inspector general found he lied in October 2016 to internal investigators about authorizing leaks to the media regarding an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Peter Strzok, who oversaw the Crossfire Hurricane probe, was fired after the discovery of anti-Trump text messages on his FBI cell phones.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. Steinbach, who is now head of fraud prevention at Citi, did not respond to a request for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/dangerous-top-fbi-official-had-close-relationship-with-dozens-of-journos-accepted-tickets-to-white-house-correspondents-dinner/

FBI agents, just weeks before the 2016 election, opened an investigation into allegations of a secret communication channel between Donald Trump and Russia. The bureau closed the probe after several months but did not make public that it had dismissed the claims, which came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a group of researchers.

Details of the FBI’s analyses, and CIA treatment of the claims, emerged during the trial of ex-Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann.

‘Jumped to Conclusions’

The white paper and data handed over to the FBI by Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, asserted there was a “secret email server” used by the Trump Organization that was communicating with Alfa Bank in Moscow through “another unusually-configured server” at Spectrum Health in Michigan.

“These servers are configured for direct communications between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank to the exclusion of all other systems,” researchers wrote. “The only plausible reason,” they claimed, “is to hide the considerably recent email traffic occurring between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank.”

Scott Hellman, an agent who specializes in investigating cyber crimes, took the first crack at the allegations with Nathan Batty, a colleague. The pair spent inside of a day examining the data, and quickly concluded that whoever penned the white paper “had jumped to some conclusions that were not supported by the technical data,” Hellman testified.

The allegations were based on purported “look-ups,” or Domain Name System requests, between mail1.trump-email.com, the server allegedly controlled by Trump’s business, and servers belonging to the Russian bank. DNS lookups are a way for a computer to find another computer’s Internet Protocol address (IP address), a unique number needed for communication between computers.

The researchers said they tried to connect with the Trump server and that the server would not accept mail from their IP address, or returned what was essentially an error message, Hellman said. The researchers used that, among other data, to suggest the Trump server would only communicate with certain devices, such as those linked to Alfa Bank.

“That didn’t make sense to me. It was sort of like if I knocked on your door, and you told me to go away—I don’t want to talk to you—I’m then going to assume that you’re only willing to talk to other people. I can’t make that assumption. I don’t know if you’re willing to talk to anybody. But that’s what they had done,” he said. “When they received an error message, they assumed that that computer wasn’t willing to talk to them, but it was willing to talk to others, and there was no evidence to suggest that. So assumptions like that is what I was referring to.”

Hellman and Batty wrote in their assessment that they found it suspicious that the activity the researchers highlighted began just three weeks before the researchers began their investigation. They called it “abnormal” that Trump would name the supposed secret server a name that included his name, use a domain registered to his own business, and communicate directly to Alfa Bank’s IP address as opposed to masking the communications.

They also said that Russia’s state-sponsored technical abilities “exceed the [operations] of that suggested in the report.”

Hellman, who is still with the FBI, said in a chat message at the time that the paper “feels a little 5150ish.” He said he meant that “perhaps the person who had drafted this document was suffering from some mental disability.”

Batty wrote that the data was “intended to overwhelm and confuse the reader.” “We think it’s a setup,” he later told Dan Wierzbicki, an FBI supervisor.

‘No Evidence’

Under pressure from then-FBI Director James Comey and other senior officials, a hybrid cyber-counterintelligence team based in Chicago took control of the data and opened a full investigation, the most serious step the FBI could have taken.

Thumb drives containing the white paper and the underlying data outlined the conclusions reached by the researchers and some of the data they used, but that was just a “snapshot,” forcing FBI investigators to “create the whole picture from scratch,” Allison Sands, the agent who led the investigation, said on the stand.

Sands, now with Roku, compared it to trying to assemble a puzzle without the benefit of having a box at which to look.

The Trump domain was on a server in Pennsylvania owned by a company named Listrak, an internet server provider. The domain was registered to a company named Central Dynamics, which is based in Florida. The domain was being leased from GoDaddy.

Agents reached out to the companies for data and answers. Listrak confirmed that the server was only configured to send emails, not receive any. It also provided some 135,000 records. Central Dynamics provided closer to 500,000 records and GoDaddy handed over a similar amount.

The Chicago team determined that the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank servers “almost certainly did not communicate intentionally or covertly,” according to a heavily redacted assessment dated Oct. 3, 2016.

The determination was based on an examination of the allegations conducted on behalf of Alfa Bank. The examination concluded the Alfa Bank servers may have conducted the DNS lookups in response to spam emails sent by Listrak or Central Dynamics.

“Alfa Bank’s conclusions corroborate current FBI investigative activity, which has not identified any evidence to support the whitepaper’s hypothesis that Alfa-Bank and Trump Organization servers intentionally, covertly communicated via DNS channels,” the document stated.

It was learned that Central Dynamics established the domain in partnership with the Trump Organization in 2009 but the company never used the domain, which had only received about 14 emails, all of which were blocked as spam or malware.

“It was largely dormant for the lifespan of its life, was currently inactive, and that it was entirely a ‘from’ email address, so it only sent outbound messages,” Sands explained.

Additionally, the FBI saw that in logs from Listrak, the server had sent emails to over 30,000 domains in 107 countries, none of which were affiliated with Alfa Bank, according to the document on the closing of the investigation.

“From all of the U.S. companies we had spoken to, of the logs that we had looked at, as well as the Mandiant report from the Alfa Bank servers, there was no evidence that this covert communication channel existed,” Sands said.

“Our investigation was unable to substantiate any of the allegations in the white paper,” said Curtis Heide, another FBI agent involved in the probe.

Listrak and Central Dynamics did not respond to requests for comment. Rodney Joffe, another client of Sussmann; his business associate April Lorenzen; and Georgia Institute of Technology professors David Dagon and Manos Antonakikis, who created the white paper and compiled the data, did not respond to inquiries. Several of the researchers were poised to testify, but were not called after they said they would plead the Fifth Amendment.

‘Did Not Pass Analytical Muster’

The other piece of the allegations involved Spectrum. Researchers said the nonprofit healthcare company was essentially being utilized as an intermediary between Trump’s business and Alfa Bank, through a The Onion Router (TOR) node, a technology designed by the U.S. government that enables anonymity.

FBI investigators went to a website, TORproject.org, to see if any of Spectrum’s servers were or had ever been used as a TOR node, and found that they had not.

The agents also received logs and records from Spectrum, and “did not see any unusual activity,” Sands said.

That part of the allegations “did not pass analytical muster,” Ryan Gaynor, an agent monitoring the investigation for senior leaders from the Washington area, testified. “It didn’t have merit.”

“In 2016, media coverage alleged internet traffic between a computer server affiliated with the Trump organization and the computer servers of Alfa Bank (a Russian bank) and Spectrum Health. Spectrum Health does not and never has had any relationship with Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations,” a Spectrum spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

“As we have previously stated, we concluded a rigorous review with both our internal IT security specialists and expert cyber security firms. That review’s detailed analysis of the alleged internet traffic did not find any evidence of any actual communications (no emails, chat, text, etc.) between Spectrum Health and Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. While we did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails, they originated from a third party,” the spokesperson added.

CIA Conclusions

According to special counsel John Durham’s team, which prosecuted Sussmann—the lawyer who was acquitted—the CIA also analyzed the allegations, and concluded they were not only not true, but were not plausible.

Sussmann went to the CIA in early 2017, apparently frustrated by the FBI’s investigation. He met with a retired agent first, then with two agents on Feb. 9, 2017.

Sussmann handed over white papers and underlying data purportedly supporting documents, which included allegations involving Trump’s business and Alfa Bank and allegations concerning Russian-made phones, according to a memorandum of the meeting and testimony by one of the agents.

In court papers, prosecutors referred to the CIA as “Agency-2.” They said that CIA analysts believed the data from the researchers was fabricated.

“While the FBI did not reach an ultimate conclusion regarding the data’s accuracy or whether it might have been in whole or in part genuine, spoofed, altered, or fabricated, Agency-2 concluded in early 2017 that the Russian Bank-1 data and Russian Phone Provider-1 data was not ‘technically plausible,’ did not ‘withstand technical scrutiny,’ ‘contained gaps,’ ‘conflicted with [itself],’ and was ‘user created and not machine/tool generated.’” prosecutors said in a filing before the trial.

Little was said on the subject during the trial because U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, ruled that prosecutors could not broach the possibility of the data being spoofed unless the defense did. Defense lawyers did not bring it up.

There were several moments, however, when statements slipped through.

When presented with an email Joffe sent to his group just five days before Sussmann gave the data to the FBI, Heide said that “it appears, from this email, that this report may have been fabricated.”

The statement was later struck from the record, as was the email.

Cooper also ordered redacted a portion of the report authored by Hellman and Batty that said the data “might have been intentionally generated and might have been fabricated,” according to Andrew DeFilippis, one of the prosecutors.

“I will not allow [Hellman] to talk about whether it’s fabricated or spoofed,” Cooper said, adding that doing so would encroach on his order.

Ankura, a Washington-based consultancy hired by Alfa Bank, said in a previous report (pdf) obtained by Just the News that its analysis of records and the timing of the allegations suggested that somebody mimicked the Central Dynamic servers to send fabricated emails, or “inauthentic DNS queries, ” to Alfa Bank “to create a connection between Alfa-Bank and the Trump Organization.”

The CIA didn’t respond to an inquiry. The Epoch Times has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the CIA documents.

Years of Speculation

Speculation about the nefarious activity alleged in the white paper continued for years as the FBI and CIA remained silent about their findings.

The first stories about a possible secret link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank ran in Slate and the New York Times on Oct. 31, 2016—just one week before the presidential election.

The logs the researchers studied “suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence,” Slate reporter Franklin Foer wrote in his article. “We don’t yet know what this server was for, but it deserves further explanation,” he added later.

Foer was one of multiple reporters in communication with Fusion GPS, the firm hired by the Clinton campaign that conducted opposition research on Trump, before his article was published.

The New York Times said the FBI was investigating the purported link but “ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.”

In March 2017, CNN reported, citing anonymous sources, that the FBI investigation into the matter was still ongoing. That was false, according to the trial documents and testimony.

The New Yorker, in late 2018, published a lengthy article suggesting there was a secret channel between Trump’s business and the Russian bank.

Only Slate’s article has been corrected, and not since a day after publication. Some of the stories still contain false information; all have outdated details. Spokespersons for the publications did not respond to requests for comment.

The allegations divided technology experts when first promoted, but reporters found a number willing to make comments supporting the researchers’ theories.

“The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project,” Paul Vixie, the CEO of Farsight Security, told Slate. Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge, told the New Yorker he believed the server connections signaled times when Trump Organization and Alfa Bank officials wanted to talk.

Of the eight researchers mentioned or quoted in the pieces as suggesting the allegations made sense, none were willing to talk on the record about what they think now based on the newly emerged information.

“Thanks for reaching out, but I’m not interested,” Vixie, now with Amazon Web Services, told The Epoch Times in a LinkedIn message. “I know nothing of how they came to their conclusions,” Clayton added via email, referring to the FBI and the CIA. Of the Sussmann trial, he said, “I haven’t been following that.”

Steven Bellovin, a professor at Columbia University, referred a request for comment to his lawyer. “We are not going to comment on the matter,” the lawyer said.

Some outlets did publish articles portraying the allegations as unreliable, including The Intercept and the Washington Post. And some experts cast doubt on the claims, including Robert Graham, a cybersecurity specialist, who wrote that the allegations were “nonsense.”

“While I of course think the DNS logs were nonsense, I’m still not sure how [t]he FBI came to that conclusion,” Graham told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message. “I think the basic issue is that it looks like an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, and that this is why they didn’t do more.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-the-fbi-dismissed-claims-of-secret-trump-russia-link_4524152.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-12&utm_medium=email&est=pAxBEt9Aj0BKpPQBYlDcVPPMRDrGQ%2FbpCkGOU6MP6X9I%2FRmGR9zHxycrK4fFUXEYEw%3D%3D

‘I never thought I’d see $7.50 a gallon for gas’

As the Biden administration oversees record-high gas prices, drivers across the country are struggling to pay at the pump.

“I never thought I’d see $7.50 a gallon for gas,” San Jose resident Joshua Howard told NBC News. “I remember when I bought my first car, it was $1.85. And I was afraid, how am I going to afford $1.85? Now it’s $7.50.”

Since resident Joe Biden’s inauguration, the average price of gas has more than doubled—from $2.38 per gallon to $4.98, according to AAA. Inflation, meanwhile, has reached a 40-year high, with consumer prices skyrocketing 8.6 percent over the last year, the Labor Department reported Friday. The price of energy commodities has climbed more than 50 percent, according to the report.

“Gas prices are ridiculous,” one Pennsylvania man told a local Fox affiliate.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/watch-drivers-fed-up-with-bidens-record-high-gas-prices/

They have 30 days to respond to letters before being placed on a financial blacklist

Six banks have been warned by the West Virginia State Treasury that they may be in violation of a new law preventing the state from doing business with financial institutions boycotting energy companies.

The office told The Epoch Times it had sent out letters on June 10, but didn’t share the banks’ names on the record.

Enacted in March, S. 262 directs the state to notify financial institutions that they’re slated for placement on the restricted financial institution list 45 days before the document is published.

Those institutions must respond within 30 days of receiving those notification letters to avoid winding up on the list.

In June 2021, Texas passed a similar law barring state agencies from investing in funds boycotting energy companies.

“We felt like we had a clear conflict of interest,” West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore said at a June 8 press conference.

He cited firms that he said want to benefit from the state’s finances while simultaneously “trying to diminish our dollars and destroy our industries.”

The letters come after months of escalating conflict between many energy-producing states and much of the financial sector.

In May 2021, Moore and treasurers from 14 other states sent a letter to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to express their concerns about private comments that he made to banks in March of that year. He reportedly asked major financial institutions to step up their climate commitments.

“We intend to put banks and financial institutions on notice of our position, as we urge them not to give in to pressure from the Biden administration to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil, and natural gas companies,” Moore and his colleagues wrote at the time.

Environmental nonprofits mounted their own pressure campaign encouraging Kerry to further Wall Street’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

A March 2021 letter from 145 environmental organizations demanded that Kerry “[end] the flow of private finance” to the fossil fuel industry, specifically requesting that he push asset managers “to divest from pure-play coal, oil, and gas.”

In January of this year, West Virginia divested from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

“BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been outspoken in pressuring corporate leaders to commit to investment goals that will undermine reliable energy sources like coal, natural gas and oil under the guise of helping the planet, but at the same time he’s pouring billions in new capital into China, turning a blind eye to abhorrent human rights violations, genocide and that country’s role in creating the COVID-19 global pandemic,” Moore said in a Jan. 17 statement explaining the decision.

Moore told The Epoch Times he hasn’t yet heard from BlackRock.

In his view, the war in Ukraine underscores the vital importance of maintaining domestic energy resources.

“There is power in this type of energy, and I just don’t mean electrification. I mean, power for the countries. And that’s why energy independence is so important,” he told The Epoch Times in a June 8 interview.

Moore said it would be “very easy” to get West Virginia to change its increasingly aggressive stance toward financial institutions that have turned against fossil fuels or embraced extreme environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment practices.

“All you all need to do is have banks act like banks, asset managers act like asset managers, and maximize returns for your shareholders and your company. It’s pretty simple. I mean, that’s kind of how capitalism works,” he said.

The Epoch Times has requested additional information on the six banks from the West Virginia Treasury.

The Epoch Times has also reached out to BlackRock.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-virginia-notifies-six-banks-they-may-be-breaking-states-fossil-fuel-anti-boycott-law_4525672.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-10-4&utm_medium=email&est=VYcTwCN53hwC%2FjELeRqaN3fSqUKsQCPgwnn4Zx5OfOv6Yn2fQZgHgILNHlJ4rObhnQ%3D%3D

The Department of Homeland Security worked with Twitter on its ill–fated Disinformation Governance Board, according to whistleblower documents, which show the agency arranged a meeting with the Twitter executive who blocked news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Department officials set up an April 28 meeting to ask Twitter to “become involved” in the disinformation project, according to a DHS itinerary. The meeting was planned with Yoel Roth, the Twitter executive behind the controversial decision to block New York Post stories about Biden’s laptop from being shared on the platform in October 2020. 

The whistleblower documents, released by Republican senators on Wednesday, show Homeland Security’s plans for the disinformation board were more extensive than previously acknowledged. The department publicly announced the board on April 27, but did not disclose plans to work with social media companies. Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas said the board would function as a “working group” to track disinformation regarding human smuggling operations and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He insisted the board would have no “operational authority or capability,” though the itinerary for the Twitter meeting shows DHS saw it as “an opportunity to discuss operationalizing public-private partnerships between DHS and Twitter.”

The board came under intense scrutiny not only for its Orwellian-sounding name, but also the past comments of Nina Jankowicz, the board’s executive director. Jankowicz pushed the unfounded claim that Biden’s laptop emails were hacked or part of a Russian disinformation campaign. She also called on social media platforms, law enforcement officials, and lawmakers to crack down on content she deems “awful but lawful.” 

According to the documents, Homeland Security officials planned to offer government data to Twitter to help the disinformation board’s work. The DHS itinerary for the meeting urged Rob Silvers, the undersecretary for strategy, policy, and plans, to ask what data “would be useful for Twitter to receive” to help the company counter disinformation. 

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said the documents “raise concerns” that DHS is enlisting the help of “social media companies and big tech” to censor viewpoints deemed to be disinformation. 

“DHS should not in any way seek to enlist the private sector to curb or silence opposing viewpoints,” the senators wrote Mayorkas. 

The Republicans noted it is unclear whether DHS held the April 28 meeting with Twitter. Neither DHS nor Twitter responded to Free Beacon requests for comment. 

Grassley and Hawley suggested in their letter to Mayorkas that Jankowicz was selected to lead the disinformation board because she had worked with Twitter’s Roth. The DHS itinerary for the April 28 meeting notes that Jankowicz and Roth knew each other. 

Roth, who recently unveiled Twitter’s “crisis management policy,” came under fire for blocking access to the Post stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Roth said he made the decision after American intelligence officials told him in meetings before the 2020 election that foreign actors might release materials hacked from Hunter Biden. 

To date, there is no evidence that Biden’s emails were hacked or that his laptop was mishandled. A computer shop owner said Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs in April 2019 but never came back to retrieve it. Federal prosecutors are investigating Biden’s business dealings, many of which are discussed on the laptop. 

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/dhs-solicited-twitter-to-become-involved-in-disinfo-board/

New York billionaire and refiner John Catsimatidis warned that rising interest rates could produce ill effects on the U.S. economy.

The White House’s “obsession” against “turning on North American oil spigots” has triggered a significant hike in energy costs and inflation, Catsimatidis told Fox Business on Tuesday. He noted that the Biden administration asked Saudi Arabia and other nations for more crude oil production rather than boosting domestic output.

“We have 100 years’ worth of oil [in the U.S.]. Let [the government] open up the spigots and the price of crude oil will come back down to $55, $60, maybe $65—half,’” said Catsimatidis, the head of the United Refining Company and also the Gristedes Supermarkets retailer.

He added that the Federal Reserve’s choice to hike interest rates amid high inflation and soaring energy costs could trigger a recession. Other high-profile business leaders have issued similar warnings in recent weeks. Federal data for April indicated the inflation rate has risen 8.3 percent, while AAA data suggests the average price for a gallon of regular gas is nearing $5.

“Somebody’s on the path to destruct America, and somebody’s got to say ‘guys, enough is enough,’” he told Fox. “You know what the cost has been to the American people because of the rising gas prices—the cost of the rising food prices—it’s going to go even higher with $120 oil,” Catsimatidis said.

White House officials this week suggested that there is little the administration can do to alleviate high costs at the pump. They’ve primarily cast the blame on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, along with oil companies.

“You know, this is, in large part, caused by [Russian aggression],” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo alleged in a recent interview with CNN. “Gas prices have gone up over $1.40 a gallon” since Russian troops moved closer to Ukraine’s border earlier this year, “and the president is asking for Congress and others for potential ideas,” she said.

Republicans have said Biden’s executive orders—including a flurry of rules that were authorized after President Biden took office in January 2021—have driven up the public and private costs of oil drilling in the United States by halting drilling on public lands and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to the interior U.S.

But Raimondo told CNN that the prices will not go down until the conflict ends, again pinning the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“But again, especially what we need to do is get [Moscow] to end this war. And that is also something that we are working as hard as we can to do. … The President is thinking about this every day and pushing his team and Congress to come up with any idea possible because we’re deeply aware of how this is hurting American families,” Raimondo said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/oil-billionaire-warns-somebodys-on-path-to-destruct-america_4520514.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-08-3&utm_medium=email&est=faE8f%2F6UWVY%2F589MESms5PpBx7xDaxpVfVfVqu2dMoLVqDyaRLo3ycb%2FwnjhcDstMQ%3D%3D

Over the last month, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices have surged nearly 20 percent to around $120 per barrel. Despite soaring energy prices, U.S. output is still below pre-pandemic levels, with analysts pointing to Washington and cash discipline as the causes.

WTI and Brent, the international benchmark for oil prices, have rallied in recent sessions on China’s economic reopening and Saudi state-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco having raised the price of Arabia light crude for Asian customers by $2.10 per barrel. The European Union’s plan to reduce its imports of Russian energy by 90 percent at the end of 2022 has also contributed to the latest gains.

But the U.S. oil and gas industry’s lack of significant activity continues to play a major role in the commodity’s gains.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), domestic production totaled 11.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in the week ending May 27. This is unchanged from the same time in the previous month, and it remains under the peak of 13.1 million bpd in February 2020.

Industry activity has quieted down in recent weeks. The Baker Hughes oil rig count stood at 574 for the second consecutive week.

This could exacerbate the sector’s fragile situation, particularly after the United States has seen three straight weeks of notable supply drawdowns, totaling nearly 10 million barrels. Moreover, inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma storage facility recently recorded a small build of 256,000 barrels following three consecutive weeks of withdrawals totaling close to 4 million barrels.

A first-quarter Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Quarterly Energy Survey revealed that public firms have been “practicing capital discipline in 2021” to satisfy investors’ requirements. Globally, collective exploration and development (E&D) expenditures rose by a tepid 1 percent last year, the EIA noted in a recent report.

This cash discipline has been the new normal for domestic onshore shale firms, says Campbell Faulkner, the senior vice president and chief data analyst at OTC Global Holdings, the world’s largest independent institutional broker of commodities.

“Additionally, there has not been a flood of cash via private equity into new entities to begin drilling across the U.S.,” Faulkner told The Epoch Times. “Inflation and labor shortages have also greatly crimped the ability for shale firms to even modestly expand their capital expenditures (CapEx) while experiencing robust cash flows.”

Moreover, with the financial sector focusing on ESG, it has become challenging for the fossil fuel industry to attract new investment. Some of the world’s largest banks have been divesting from or applying restrictions on the fossil fuel industry and certain projects, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The report noted that banks like Citigroup would not invest in Arctic drilling, while MetLife is restricting investment in the oil sands.

But U.S. production could enjoy revived growth over the next couple of years, says Rystad Energy.

Permian crude production growth is forecast to outpace Iraq this year. The Permian Basin, which is a vast shale basin situated in west Texas, is projected to expand by approximately 1 million bpd to 5.6 million bpd this year and then climb to as much as 6.5 million bpd in 2023.

The Middle Eastern nation produces roughly 4.4 million bpd.

“The Permian has become the hot spot for U.S. oil production thanks to significant resources, low breakeven costs, and high oil content. This trend is only likely to continue as global oil markets struggle with supply constraints and the demand for oil shows little sign of easing,” wrote Espen Erlingsen, head of upstream research at Rystad Energy, in a research note.

Quinn Kiley, Managing Director and Energy Portfolio Manager at Tortoise, also reported in a recent QuickTake Podcast that Kinder Morgan increased its 2022 capital budget guidance by $300 million.

“The market had been punishing companies for increased spending, but Kinder traded well last week,” Kiley said. “The shift may be an acknowledgment by the market that new infrastructure is needed to reduce long-term inflation due to higher commodity prices. Or it may be a signal that spending on natural gas infrastructure and CO2 sequestration is what the market wants as it looks to a realistic energy transition strategy.”

Still, Faulkner contends that greater activity can only become ubiquitous throughout the industry if the “Biden administration ceases its predatory stance against domestic oil and gas production.”

Bob Bilbruck, the CEO at Captjur, a technology and strategic services firm, echoed this sentiment, telling The Epoch Times that the White House has made “it very hard to drill for oil.”

“It’s a cute little political game they are playing with the oil industry to make it appear that they are pro-drilling but when the rubber hits the road they are making it very hard on these companies to get new drilling leases and operations under way,” Bilbruck stated.

Last month, the Biden administration pulled three offshore oil lease sales in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Critics warn that replacements for these leases will not happen overnight since it is a rigorous regulatory process that consists of environmental analysis, public consultation, and government reviews.

President Joe Biden suspended new oil and gas leasing on federal land and waters last year, but the directive was halted by a Louisiana judge, forcing the administration to continue leasing.

Despite the rhetoric emanating from Washington, ESG and climate-related risks will start taking a backseat in the short-term due to the plethora of challenges the global economy is facing, according to Jarand Rystad, the CEO of Rystad Energy.

“As companies continue to consider how they can ease the supply crisis in the face of the new geopolitical situation, while investors review their portfolios in a new light as supply chain issues persist, we are likely to see new commercial models emerge as energy security, inflation, and interest risk in the short-term trump ESG and climate related risks,” he stated in a note. “In the longer term, however, the Russian invasion has triggered an acceleration of renewable energy initiatives, especially in Europe.”

Will Prices Come Down Soon?

For the global energy market to rebalance, crude prices need to average $135 a barrel in the 12 months beginning in July, Goldman Sachs analysts predicted in a new note. Prices are expected to surge to $140 this summer amid a drop in Russian output, recovering Chinese demand, and the busy U.S. driving season.

“The negative global growth impulse remains insufficient to rebalance inventories at current prices,” analysts Damien Courvalin and Jeffrey Currie wrote. “Oil prices need to rally further to normalize the unsustainably low levels of global oil inventories, as well as OPEC and refining spare capacities.

Motorists will feel like crude oil is closer to $160 a barrel because of the refining shortage, the investment bank warned. Over the last year, there have been intense bottlenecks at refineries, resulting in soaring gasoline prices. Gasoline stocks have also fallen 11 of the last 12 weeks.

According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), the national average price for a gallon of gasoline is $4.92, up more than 61 percent year-over-year.

The price hikes will not end anytime soon, writes Phil Flynn, a market analyst and author of The Energy Report, citing the futures market. This, he says, will harm economic growth, consumers, and businesses.

July RBOB gasoline futures have risen more than 17 percent over the last month on the New York Mercantile Exchange, adding to their year-to-date gain of 86 percent.

But should inflation continue to be stubbornly high and the economy slips into a recession, oil prices could fall back to around $100, purports Faulkner.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-crude-output-still-below-pre-crisis-levels-slowing-production-could-weigh-on-growth_4517660.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-08-1&utm_medium=email&est=X2t82JxhBvQBkTv6SJS7sjMjDDDsxyWGgvLlU4yiNu15%2B%2F5yfX9U6tS6FyA%2FGWVO1A%3D%3D

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While former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted of lying to the FBI, a number of new details came to light during his trial. Some haven’t been made known or been widely reported.

1. FBI Lawyer Sussmann Met With Sought Perkins Coie Job

Sussmann passed along claims about Clinton presidential rival Donald Trump to FBI lawyer James Baker on Sept. 19, 2016, as well as data that supposedly supported the claims.

Baker gave the information to others in the bureau, triggering an investigation. The FBI and CIA both determined the claims were unsupported.

Baker, while testifying during the trial, described Sussmann as a friend whom he met when both worked for the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI’s parent agency. Baker, who left the bureau in May 2018, revealed that he was seeking to work for Perkins Coie, the firm that employed Sussmann, soon after.

“To the best of my recollection, I think it was Michael’s idea,” Baker said. “I mean, Michael knew that I had left the bureau, and I was looking around for a job—I had a job at the time, so I was working—I was working at the time, but I was looking around at other jobs, including [at] law firms. And so somehow he became aware of that and inquired about whether I would be interested in working at Perkins Coie.”

In one of many text messages the men exchanged before and after the meeting, Sussmann told Baker on Sept. 29, 2018, that it was “great seeing you this week.” That was a reference to a meeting that involved discussing a job at Perkins Coie, according to Baker.

While Sussmann arranged interviews for Baker, Perkins Coie never made a job offer.

Baker described “a miscommunication” in which a headhunter he was working with told him that the firm had essentially rejected him. But when Baker conveyed the message to Sussmann, Sussmann “went and got it sorted out,” Baker said, adding that the firm was actually considering offering him a job. Baker, however, ended up taking jobs at the think tank R Street Institute and CNN. He left those positions to work at Twitter, where he’s currently employed.

2. Joffe Was an FBI Source, and Was Fired

The information that Sussmann took to the FBI was obtained by Rodney Joffe, among others. Joffe was a technology executive at Neustar who was one of Sussmann’s clients.

Joffe was a confidential human source (CHS) for the bureau for years, it was revealed during the trial. He had regularly helped the bureau on cybersecurity matters and was even recommended for an FBI award in 2013.

But Joffe was terminated, apparently because of his actions in 2016. He was “closed for cause as a source,” prosecutor Deborah Brittain Shaw said.

“Our understanding is that Mr. Joffe was terminated as a source for cause in 2021 as an outgrowth of this investigation,” Michael Bosworth, a defense lawyer, added later.

The defense successfully got U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, to order prosecutors not to reference Joffe’s status again, after they claimed it was “prejudicial to explore or elicit further testimony about his termination, given that it happened so late and was connected to this case.”

Bosworth called Joffe “one of the world’s leading cyber experts” during opening arguments.

Joffe “exploited his access” to non-public data from Trump Tower, Trump’s apartment in New York, and the White House to compile the data Sussmann eventually took to the FBI, according to prosecutors. Joffe could still be charged with crimes, prosecutors have indicated. He wasn’t called as a witness because he was going to refuse to answer questions, since he’s still under investigation.

3. ‘Tea Leaves’ Was April Lorenzen

The group that gathered the data that Sussmann presented to the FBI also included April Lorenzen, a data analyst at a firm called ZETAlytics.

It was known that a person in the group went online and posted some of the information under the moniker “Tea Leaves.” The posts were made in October 2016, shortly after Sussmann met with Baker.

But the identity of the person wasn’t confirmed until the trial, during which Bosworth said it was Lorenzen.

Bosworth was questioning FBI agent Ryan Gaynor, who monitored the investigation into the Trump–Russia claims from Washington on behalf of FBI leadership.

Gaynor acknowledged that, as far as he knew, nobody had tried to contact the person who posted the information online pseudonymously.

“And are you aware that, if they had done so, they would have discovered that the person posting was another cyber expert named April Lorenzen?” Bosworth asked.

“I am not,” Gaynor said.

Slate magazine, which was one of the first outlets to publish an article about the Trump–Alfa Bank claims, described “Tea Leaves” as a male, as did The Intercept.

“Tea Leaves” was mentioned in Sussmann’s indictment, which also described the person “Originator-1.” According to the indictment, “Tea Leaves” was a business associate of “Tech Executive-1,” who has long been known as Joffe.

Jared Novick, who conducted research for Joffe on Trump associates such as Carter Page, said on the stand that Joffe “had involvement in” a number of companies, including ZETAlytics. Joffe previously refused to answer questions about the businesses he owned or was otherwise affiliated with during a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Alfa Bank.

4. Multi-Pronged Effort to Seed Allegations

Lorenzen posted the data on a WordPress blog. One or more members of the group also reportedly took to Reddit to share the data, and Joffe directed Sussmann to go to the FBI with the claims, Sussmann indicated in previous testimony before Congress.

Separately, Joffe approached an FBI agent named Tom Grasso with several IP addresses that were purportedly linked to Alfa Bank, the Russian bank that Joffe’s group claimed had a secret backchannel with Trump’s business.

Grasso said on the stand that he’d been working with Joffe for years, even though he wasn’t Joffe’s handler. He also said the situation was “unusual” because “it concerned a matter that I normally did not work on with Mr. Joffe.”

“Most of the stuff I worked on Mr. Joffe with was cyber crime matters, and this was in the area of Russia and foreign influence and counterintelligence and things like that, which is why I quickly passed it off to who I thought were the people working that matter,” Grasso testified.

Grasso didn’t reveal Joffe was a CHS in passing along the information to others in the bureau. Instead, he described Joffe as an “anonymous reporter.”

During closing arguments, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis said: “This is Mr. Joffe trying to put these politically charged allegations into another part of the FBI in order to create the appearance of two different streams of information. And that makes sense with the broader plan that was at work here. They were trying to hide origins, hide the involvement of clients in order to get the FBI to investigate.”

Another aspect of the effort involved promoting the allegations to the media. Sussmann, operatives with Fusion GPS, and at least one Clinton campaign staffer shared the data with reporters to try to get stories written. That plan was approved by Clinton herself, campaign manager Robby Mook said on the stand. Among the reporters was Mark Hosenball of Reuters, who emails show was in contact with Fusion operatives. Hosenball went to the FBI to ask about the “Tea Leaves” post.

5. Clinton Lawyers Met Regularly With Fusion

Marc Elias, another lawyer with Perkins Coie, served as the Clinton campaign’s counsel after Clinton won the Democratic primary. He hired Fusion to perform opposition research and to help him with legal services. Fusion is the firm that compiled the infamous anti-Trump dossier with the help of former British spy Christopher Steele.

Elias was known to have met multiple times with Fusion co-founders Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson ahead of the election. But during the trial, documents entered by the prosecution show the trio convened regularly, and that Debbie Fine, a top lawyer with the campaign, was part of the meetings.

One document, titled “Daily Check in,” shows that meetings were scheduled every weekday for 30 minutes from June 6 until Oct. 31, 2016. Another shows a meeting of the quartet on Aug. 12 for its daily check-in. A third shows a meeting on Aug. 17.

Fine said on the stand that she communicated with Fusion operatives on average several times a week.

Fine didn’t recall daily check-ins. She said that as far as she knew, only she and Elias were aware of Fusion doing research, but she didn’t know why others weren’t aware.

“I operated on the assumption that, like most of the work that I did for clients, it’s on a need-to-know basis, so I just—I didn’t share it, and I wasn’t told not to share it. And I don’t know whether or not Marc Elias shared it with anyone,” she said.

Fine also said she didn’t recall discussions about Alfa Bank. Presented with an email she asked Elias to print in October 2016, she said the email was about the Trump–Alfa Bank allegations, as laid out in the Slate article.

Elias previously told a congressional panel that Fusion was “acting as my agents” and that he met with the operatives on a weekly basis.

Other documents entered during the trial showed that Elias met with Joffe in his office and spoke with him by phone, and that Elias sent an article related to Alfa Bank to top campaign officials, including campaign chair John Podesta, four days before Sussmann went to the FBI.

6. FBI Leaders Were Excited About Probe

Then-FBI Director James Comey was “fired up” about the Trump–Alfa Bank allegations, according to internal messages entered into evidence.

Comey was interested in the case, another agent wrote.

The decision to open an investigation was made by senior officials.

Joseph Pientka, an FBI official, wrote in a message that the Chicago team “must” open a case because Bill Priestap, another official, “says its [sic] not an option—we must do it.”

The case was opened later that day.

FBI leadership kept tabs on the probe, mainly through Gaynor, who volunteered to monitor it from Washington.

Senior FBI leaders imposed a “close hold” on the material, “which meant that the specific information about who had provided the allegation could not be provided to the field,” Gaynor testified during the trial. Leaders were also said to be behind efforts to stonewall agents who asked to interview the source.

“When we said that we were interested in interviewing the—when I say ‘the source,’ I mean the author of the white paper or the source of the data—I don’t know if that’s different people or not—but wherever it came from,” said Allison Sands, the FBI agent who was in charge of investigating the claims.

But leadership communicated that “we should, at the division level, focus on the technical analysis,” she added.

Headquarters “was not giving us the ability to go interview these people,” Curtis Heide, another agent working the case, recounted. He said he was frustrated.

Agents said that it’s important to know about sources’ political biases, such as Sussmann representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

Gaynor acknowledged he had been under investigation for violating the hold during an interview with employees of the DOJ inspector general’s office during a 2020 meeting. He said he was “woefully ill prepared” for the meeting. He believes he’s no longer under investigation.

7. Multiple Offices Worked on Investigation

Baker was based in Washington at the FBI’s headquarters. Gaynor monitored the investigation into the claims from Washington. Cyber experts in Chantilly, Virginia, initially analyzed the data, then passed the probe to a hybrid cyber-counterintelligence team in Chicago.

At least one agent based in Miami worked on the case, interviewing Central Dynamics, the company to which the Trump email domain was registered, while another agent or agents in Philadelphia handled interviews at Listrak, another company.

Grasso was based in Pittsburgh.

“It looks like the clearing house in London” received the same white paper as the one given to Baker, or a similar one, Sands wrote in a message on Oct. 4, 2016.

8. FBI Took Months to Close Investigation

A full investigation into the Trump–Russia claims was opened on Sept. 23, 2016. The probe wasn’t officially closed until Jan. 18, 2017.

FBI experts deemed the allegations likely false within a day. The team that did additional work in looking into the claims, which included contacting entities like Central Dynamics had come to a similar conclusion by Oct. 5, 2016.

The delay in closing the probe stemmed from not being able to figure out who handed over the thumb drives that contained the data, according to Sands.

The drives were serialized as 1b, which is digital evidence. When the bureau closes cases, it has to return items taken in the course of an investigation to their rightful owner.

“Well, in this case, we didn’t know who the owner of the thumb drives was, because James Baker wasn’t the owner,” Sands said. “He was like a middleman or something. He had given them to us, but we didn’t know who the thumb drives belonged to.”

The team moved to initiate an “abandonment hearing,” which would enable them to destroy the drives. However, because that involved layers of bureaucracy, Sands’s supervisor recommended reserializing the drives as 1a, which refers to anything an agent wants to have in a case file but isn’t necessarily evidence. She cited notes taken in an interview as an example.

The reclassification allowed the FBI to close the investigation. That means it was closed when CNN reported, citing anonymous sources, in March 2017 that it was still being investigated.

9. Paperwork Had ‘Mistakes’

The document memorializing the opening of the investigation said the DOJ referred the allegations to the FBI. So did the closing document.

Heide referred to both as “mistakes,” or “typos.” He said the team had apparently conflated the FBI’s office of general counsel with the DOJ.

That wasn’t the only problem with files related to the probe.

The closing document said that the was a “preliminary” inquiry as opposed to a “full” investigation.

“That’s a typo as well,” Heide said.

Heide said he was alerted to the issues for the first time in 2018 by the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General.

“I believe they brought it to my attention and asked me if it was accurate, and my response was the same, that I don’t believe it was accurate,” he said.

10. Investigation Into Crossfire Hurricane Continues

Special counsel John Durham’s team, which prosecuted Sussmann, is investigating the origins of the government’s counterintelligence probes into alleged Trump and Russia links. Many of the probes utilized information paid for by the Clinton campaign.

The FBI is also conducting its own inquiry into the probes, collectively known as Crossfire Hurricane, Heide said on the stand.

“And are you being investigated individually as part of that investigation?” a prosecutor asked.

“Yes. Myself and, I believe, others as well,” Heide said.

Heide is being investigated for “not identifying exculpatory information as it pertained to one of the Crossfire Hurricane investigations,” he added later. “There were various consensual recordings that were obtained from one of the subjects, and there were statements, I believe, used in a FISA application that were—the exculpatory information was not divulged to the FISA court”—the secretive court authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

A previous watchdog probe found the FBI committed “significant” errors and omissions in all four of the applications made to the court to spy on Page. The most significant may have been how an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, doctored an email to state that Page wasn’t a CIA asset when, in fact, he was. Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a charge stemming from Durham’s probe and received probation.

Heide, during testimony, denied that he withheld exculpatory information from the court.

Heide, who is still with the FBI operating out of Des Moines, Iowa, worked on both Crossfire Hurricane and the Mid-Year Exam, or the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use while secretary of state of a private email server to send classified emails.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/10-underreported-revelations-from-trial-of-former-clinton-lawyer_4514516.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-07-2&utm_medium=email&est=7zuFZTiCJEU2Zpd4I%2FAyXDvS611%2B0uT159OLpb20zaiB0M0pxGaRDhmS3XauiNQFpw%3D%3D

President Barack Obama approved a statement by the U.S. intelligence community in October 2016 accusing Russia of stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), despite the U.S. government not having obtained the DNC server images crucial to ascertaining whether Moscow was involved in the theft.

FBI emails recently made public during the trial against now-acquitted DNC attorney Michael Sussmann show the bureau was still in the process of requesting images of the DNC servers on Oct. 13, 2016. The server images, which are equivalent to a virtual copy of the alleged crime scene, were taken by private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

On Oct. 7, six days before CrowdStrike agreed to mail the server images to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement accusing Russia of hacking U.S. political organizations and disseminating emails allegedly stolen through the hack. The statement was approved and encouraged by Obama, according to then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

“The president approved the statement. I know he wanted us to make the statement. So that was very definitely a statement by the United States government, not just Jim Clapper and me,” Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee in June 2017, referring to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The DHS, ODNI, and the office of Barack Obama didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Oct. 7, 2016, statement said that the U.S. intelligence community, which is composed of more than a dozen agencies including the FBI, was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

“The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the statement said.

The lack of server images at the time the statement was released highlights the question of what the intelligence community used to establish Russia’s involvement.

On Aug. 31, 2016, CrowdStrike provided a report on the DNC hack to the FBI. The FBI special agent who reviewed the report called it “heavily redacted,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Russia investigation. FBI Assistant Director James Trainor was so frustrated with the redactions that “he doubted its completeness because he knew that outside counsel had reviewed it.”

The “outside counsel” the report referred to was all but certainly Sussmann, who served as the DNC’s point of contact for all intrusion-related matters. He was acquitted last month of one charge of lying to the FBI about whether he was representing the DNC when he took a white paper to the FBI that alleged a connection between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia. The FBI agents who reviewed the paper found the claims in it unfounded within 24 hours.

On Sept. 30, 2016, one week before the release of the statement accusing Russia of the hack, the FBI was still seeking copies of the CrowdStrike reports without the redactions. That day, FBI agent Adrian Hawkins listed copies of the unredacted CrowdStrike reports as the No. 1 priority request to the DNC, according to another email made public as a trial exhibit in the Sussman case.

The FBI never received the unredacted reports, according to a government court filing in the case against Roger Stone. According to the filing, lawyers for the DNC told prosecutors that “no redacted information” in the CrowdStrike reports “concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller alleged that the hack of the DNC during which emails were stolen took place on or around May 25 to June 1, 2016. That time frame is significant because CrowdStrike has since told The Epoch Times that the DNC systems were not hacked during that time frame. Crowdstrike had deployed 200 sensors and other counter-intrusion technologies on the committee’s network within the first week of its engagement, which began on May 1, 2016.

“There is no indication of any subsequent breaches taking place on the DNC’s corporate network or any machines protected by CrowdStrike Falcon,” the company told The Epoch Times in August 2020.

CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry, who was in charge of the firm’s work on the DNC intrusion, has told congressional investigators that his company didn’t have concrete evidence that emails had been stolen from the DNC.

“We have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated,” Henry told lawmakers on Dec. 5, 2017.

The alleged hacking of the DNC along with the subsequent release of the committee’s emails was the nexus of allegations of collusion with Russia that plagued the administration of President Donald Trump.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/obama-approved-accusing-russia-of-dnc-hack-before-fbi-received-dnc-server-images_4514033.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-07-1&utm_medium=email&est=9uk9hx3CsXkb1WDuum7fD2tOgZuRkLCnL0Ntm4k1InsMks36hdGGKbPNHeLox6pnYA%3D%3D

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – American Liberty News (ALN) – in collaboration with the Center for American Defense Studies (CADS) – provides our readers the PDB:

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

Get Your Best Daily Defense and Foreign Affairs Intelligence Here in One Brief.

Read the summaries or dive deeper via the linked articles.

Today’s PDB includes a variety of critical, global national security issues.

** For additional intel on the Russia–Ukraine war and other hot topics we can’t fit here, please also subscribe to ‘Paul’s Defense Brief’ at paulcrespo.substack.com.

READ TODAY’S PDB BELOW:

HOMELAND SECURITY

GOOD OR BAD IDEA? Senator wants to ‘mobilize’ military veterans to guard schools. In the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is calling to “mobilize” military veterans to serve as security officers at schools around the country.

CHINA THREAT

INDEED! – With US distracted, Tehran and Beijing tighten embrace in the Middle East. The US pivot to the Pacific may be all about China, but it misses Beijing’s moves to fill a US void elsewhere.

Beyond weapons: Time for a new US strategy on Taiwan. Enlarging Taipei’s military cooperation throughout the Indo-Pacific is today potentially the most effective way to break Beijing’s heavy-handed efforts to quarantine Taiwan politically. Deciding what military assets America should provide Taiwan is crucial, but the bigger picture is to interweave Taiwan into the emerging alliances and coalitions forming to deal with the Chinese threat.

RUSSIA THREAT

Russia hits Kyiv with missiles; Putin warns West on supplies. Russian forces pounded railway facilities and other infrastructure early Sunday in Kyiv, which had previously seen weeks of eerie calm.

ESCALATION OR MORE OF THE SAME? – Putin threatens new targets if Ukraine gets longer-range rockets; missiles hit Kyiv. In a television interview with state media that was recorded Friday and aired Sunday, Putin said he considered the medium-range missiles Biden promised last month to be replacements for similar artillery that Ukraine has lost in the fighting. But should longer-range systems arrive, Putin said, his military would begin hitting targets it has so far avoided. He offered no specifics.

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 103. A Russian state media journalist reported Moscow’s Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed in eastern Ukraine, adding to the string of high-ranking military casualties sustained by Moscow. Ukraine has reversed a Russian advance in Severodonetsk and recaptured about 20 percent of the strategic eastern city, meaning Ukraine now controls half, the governor of Luhansk said.

LET THE NORDIC GAMES BEGIN – Major Baltic Sea exercise kicks off as Swedish, Finnish NATO bids wait on Turkey. The NATO exercise BALTOPS – to be held on the Baltic Sea next week – is the latest showing of unity and military strength as Sweden and Finland trade neutrality for NATO’s embrace in the wake of Russia’s three-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

NORTH KOREA THREAT

OVERDUE – US, S Korean navies end key exercise amid N Korea tension. The three-day exercise that began Thursday in international waters off Okinawa was apparently the allies’ first joint drill involving a U.S. aircraft carrier since November 2017.

YES, NORTH KOREA – WE HAVE MISSILES TOO – US and South Korea respond to North Korean launch with 8 missiles of their own. U.S. Forces Korea and the South Korean military fired one U.S. missile and seven South Korean missiles eastward into the sea to demonstrate the countries’ ability to “respond quickly to crisis events,” the U.S. military said Monday.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

‘Evil and wicked’: At least 50 killed in Nigeria church attack. Gunmen opened fire and detonated explosives killing dozens of people in an attack on a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria.

PUTIN’S ‘AFRIKA CORPS’ – In Africa, a Putin-backed group that’s far more than a war machine. Backed by the Kremlin, a shadowy network known as the Wagner Group is getting rich in Sudan while helping the military crush a democracy movement.

US excludes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua from Americas summit. The decision, which followed weeks of intense deliberations, risks an embarrassing boycott of the U.S.-hosted gathering this week in Los Angeles if Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and some other leaders choose not to show up.

US MILITARY AND SPACE

INTERESTING – Marine Corps Reserve gets new missions, new roles and a whole new design. For decades the Marine Reserve was a near-carbon copy of the active side. Not anymore.

GUARDIANS ALERT – How the US Space Force plans to police outer space. Outer space is getting crowded, with both commercial endeavors and secretive military projects. And it’s going to be up to the newest United States military branch, the Space Force, to protect American interests there.

REAL ISSUE – OR EASY FIX? Military families not having enough food is a national security issue, report says. The key factors that make up military life were found to be significant contributors to food insecurity for military families and could hinder the ability of the armed forces to recruit and retain troops if it isn’t addressed, according to two reports released this week.

END of PDB

paulcrespo.com

https://www.americanliberty.news/defense-news/report-china-gaining-ground-in-middle-east/pcrespo/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=5285

It’s time for a comprehensive fact-check on the origins and purposes of the Ukrainian war.

The underlying issue is the ultimate disposition of the 14 republics apart from Russia that seceded from and produced the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991. Russia has never acknowledged the legitimacy of those secessions, and they were accomplished abruptly by the governments and legislatures of the jurisdictions involved, without the formality and legitimacy the break-up of countries requires.

As the Soviet Union fell like a soufflé without a shot being fired (after a Cold War in which there were routine reciprocal threats of nuclear annihilation), many promises were made by the major powers, including Russia and the United States, and none of them was kept. When the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, acceded to the reunification of Germany, then-Secretary of State James Baker assured him that NATO would not advance “one inch” to the east of Germany. The president whom he served, George H. W. Bush, famously gave what Nixon speechwriter William Safire called the “Chicken Kiev speech” to the Ukrainian parliament recommending that it remain in union with Russia, in 1991. All of the major powers, including Russia and the United States, promised Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, that their borders would be respected, in exchange for the renunciation in 1994 of the nuclear weapons that they had inherited from the Soviet Union.

Needless to say, all of these solemn promises were forgotten almost as soon as they were made. In the next several years, NATO accepted as members Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria; and Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which had been constituent republics of the Soviet Union and had been fully integrated into Russia for more than 200 years prior to the end of World War I in 1918. President George W. Bush advocated the eventual admission to NATO of Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, but this was deferred as Russia invaded two largely Russian-speaking provinces of Georgia and intervened heavy-handedly in Ukrainian affairs. Russian meddling enabled the election of an outright puppet of the Kremlin in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2010, and Western counter-meddling achieved his ouster and replacement by Petro Poroshenko in 2014.

It must be admitted that Ukraine has never shown the slightest aptitude for successful self-government until its inspiring performance following the Russian invasion of Ukraine three months ago. It’s an ethnic hodgepodge of Russians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Tatars, and approximately one-sixth of its population of over 40 million is Russian-speaking.

The likeliest explanation for what brought on the present war is that the on-again, off-again Western enticement of NATO membership for Ukraine collided with the ambition of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s most purposeful leader since Leonid Brezhnev, to assert Russia’s partial authority over its former fellow republics of the USSR.

It isn’t surprising that Putin thought that this was the time to act: The unimaginable shambles of the American flight from Afghanistan and the complete failure of the United States to enunciate any consistent policy about the former Soviet Union could well have convinced him that this was his chance to begin reassembling the involuntary Confederation of ethnicities put together over more than 250 years by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, some lesser Czars, and Joseph Stalin.

Many readers will remember the inanity of President George W. Bush’s assertions that he looked Putin in the eye, and the reassuring importance that Putin attaches to his cross. President Barack Obama appeased Putin by withholding the promised anti-missile defenses for Poland and the Czech Republic, as if such defensive weapons could remotely be considered a provocation to Russia. The Pentagon has contributed to the present confusion by taking the immense budget granted it by President Donald Trump and failing to keep pace with Russia and China in hypersonic weapons, in providing adequate antimissile defenses for America’s Nimitz class aircraft carriers, and possibly in some areas of artillery as well. This may explain why the United States and NATO generally have been clearly intimidated by Putin’s nonsensical threats to resort to nuclear weapons.

Because of this saber-rattling, which is much less believable and nerve-racking than the antics of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, President Joe Biden allowed the Pentagon to repudiate Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s public pledge to facilitate the transfer of Polish warplanes to Ukraine as “escalatory” (what was the Russian invasion?), and has declined to provide high-altitude anti-aircraft missiles and any Ukrainian capability to reply with offensive weapons that would reach inside Russia as a response to the relentless Russian aerial assault on Ukraine’s civil population.

Apart from the Ukrainian government, which has played its hand, militarily and in public relations terms, brilliantly, almost every conceivable blunder has been made by both sides in the present conflict. It’s inconceivable how Putin and his advisers imagined that they could, with only 150,000 trigger-pullers, overrun a country of over 40 million people defended by a trained army and reserve of half a million well-armed men. Ukraine possesses the possibility of a high manpower advantage unless Russia conducts a general mobilization, which would be extremely unpopular, and hideously expensive for a country with a smaller GDP than Canada. Ukraine has the advantage of having most of its war effort paid for by rich NATO countries; in that sense only is there any truth in the Russian government’s claim, echoed by a number of conservative isolationist American commentators, that Russia is at war with all NATO.

But there’s no truth to the claim of those American commentators that Ukraine is of no strategic value to the West. It’s making a bona fide effort to make democracy work and it’s the subject of a brutal and completely illegal and unprovoked attack. The consequence of permitting Russia to succeed in this criminal enterprise would be to provide convincing evidence that the United States is in inexorable decline and that it’s open season on the crumbling Western alliance as the Kremlin took a giant leap toward undoing the West’s epochal strategic victory in the Cold War.

Readers will painfully recall the total defeatism of Biden and the joint chiefs at the outset of the Ukrainian war, when Kyiv was expected to be occupied within a few days and Biden offered to evacuate president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his family, and made sophomoric comments about the Russian ruble becoming “rubble” and the strength of sanctions, which since they’re being ignored by 155 countries in the world are a gigantic Swiss cheese. When the strength of Ukrainian resistance became clear, Biden spoke of Putin being mad and sick and a “war criminal” and that regime change was necessary, even as he backed down before Putin’s juvenile nuclear threats. There has been no clarification of Western war aims and a large quantum of aid is to some extent a substitute for giving Ukraine the weapons they need to provide the Russians an incentive to end the war.

As I have written since before the start of this war, we have the ability in the West to ensure that Ukraine is recognized as a sovereign state as long as we provide the Russians with some recognition of their traditional status in that country—assumedly the autonomy under Russian suzerainty of the Russian-speaking sections of the country but with an iron-clad Russia-NATO guarantee of the security of Ukraine’s modified borders. Zelenskyy cannot expect more; the geopolitical reality is that Putin doesn’t have to settle for less; American isolationists should be given a brief tutorial in geopolitical realities; the entire senior level of the Pentagon should be sacked; and NATO-U.S. will have to provide the weapons necessary to bring the war to a negotiated end. As long as the Russians can kill and terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population from the air with impunity, the war will go on and the tragedy will become greater.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-origins-and-purposes-of-the-ukrainian-war_4513275.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-07&utm_medium=email&est=iI9rZk9cOaqw7aYT8NgcGKWK61%2Fcnb%2BEWj7cHBO9Ijd7E20fezd%2B%2BWHPnmURev%2FK3w%3D%3D