As the media and pundits attempt to uncover the political leanings of David DePape, the man arrested in Friday’s attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, many observers have noted one clear aspect of the disturbing situation:
DePape likely suffers from untreated, severe mental illness.
It’ll take some time to learn DePape’s motives behind the brutal attack against 82-year-old Paul Pelosi in the middle of the night. Still, the New York Post rounded up described interviews with several of DePape’s former neighbors, who told similar stories about the man.
Neighbors described DePape as “homeless,” with the Post adding that he lived in a “dilapidated” school bus parked outside of the home of “notorious Bay Area nudist and left-wing activist Gypsy Taub.”
Ryan La Coste, one of DePape’s neighbors, told the Post that DePape “he usually kept to himself.” He added, “He would just give us a blank stare when we would walk by. We tried to stay clear of him.”
“Another crazy story coming from someone in that house,” La Coste said. “They are always on the news and trying to be ‘activists.’ They always want to be in the spotlight.”
The Post interviewed another of DePape’s neighbors, Margarita Gonzalez, who told the outlet that she had never witnessed DePape commit violence, but suggested he could be mentally ill.
“He never had work,” Gonzalez said. “Maybe there’s a mental problem with him.”
Journalist and author Michael Shellenberger, writing in a separate article in the Post, described interviews with others who know the man.
The media are portraying the suspect in the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband as a man fundamentally driven by right-wing ideology. But it’s obvious to anyone who looks that what drove David DePape to violence was drug-induced paranoid psychosis.https://t.co/qfs5zHokni
Shellenberger described the disturbing environment at the residence where DePape’s bus is parked, which is littered with various left-wing slogans and signs.
“In the driveway, there is a broken-down camper van. On the street is a yellow school bus, which neighbors said DePape occasionally stayed in. Both are filled with garbage typical of such structures in homeless encampments,” he wrote. “People come and go from the house and the vehicles, neighbors say, in part to partake in the use of a potent psychedelic drug, ibogaine.”
“What I know about the family is that they’re very radical activists,” a neighbor, identified only as “Trish,” told Shellenberger.
“They seem very left. They are all about the Black Lives Matter movement. Gay pride. But they’re very detached from reality. They have called the cops on several of the neighbors, including us, claiming that we are plotting against them. It’s really weird to see that they are willing to be so aggressive toward somebody else who is also a lefty.”
An acquaintance, identified as Linda Schneider, told San Francisco’s KRON-TV and CNN that she met DePape in 2014, and at the time, he was a homeless, drug addict.
“He [was] likely a mindless follower of something he saw on social media because I don’t think he had the courage to be part of any political or terrorist group,” Schneider said, according to KRON. “His drug use began again and he went off his rocker.”
The information the Post and Shellenberger collected from those close to DePape points to the likelihood that severe and untreated mental illness, combined with years of hard drug abuse, could have been behind the attack on Pelosi.
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Shellenberger continued with the kind of observations that have made him unpopular with the leftist set.
“In truth, DePape is much more like one of the hundreds of psychotic homeless people I’ve interviewed in recent years than the fanatical climate ideologues who I’ve been writing about in recent weeks,” Shellenberger tweeted in a series of updates regarding DePape’s disturbing background.
Wrapped up in their obsession with MAGA Republicans, journalists have missed the real story. David DePape is not a microcosm of the political psychosis gripping America in general. Rather, he’s a microcosm of the drug-induced psychosis gripping the West Coast in particular.
“David DePape is not a microcosm of the political psychosis gripping America in general. Rather, he’s a microcosm of the drug-induced psychosis gripping the West Coast in particular,” Shellenberger tweeted.
Well, well, well… not so fun when the attack dogs are turned on you, is it?
Conservatives have been saying for years to keep politics out of sports. It’s just not what sports fans want to see or think about when watching their favorite teams play, and ratings have reflected that in the past.
After those cries have largely fallen on deaf ears, conservatives are taking a different approach: fighting fire with fire.
Citizens for Sanity, a conservative nonprofit looking to defeat “wokeism,” decided that if politics are here to stay in sports, it’s time to go all the way with it. Look no further than the blistering pair of ads the group ran during Game 1 of the World Series on Friday.
The first ad tears into President Joe Biden’s general lawlessness, focusing on hot-button issues like crime and illegal immigration. The ad also brings up the possibility of World War III before ending with the tagline “No Mas!”
BASEBALL FANS: Did you see our ad “NO MAS!” that just ran during Game 1 of the World Series? WATCH 👇 pic.twitter.com/wdLH79rdNw
The Philadelphia Inquirer published an entire article about the “vile” ads that had been airing throughout the baseball playoffs. The Los Angeles Times went so far as to outright call these ads “racist.”
The left’s panicky finger-pointing is understandable given that there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that the person viewing the ad already views Biden unfavorably.
And these ads aren’t airing during some late-night rerun programming. This is the World Series. According to Deadline, a whopping 9.7 million viewers tuned into Game 1 between the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies.
Given that the midterms are less than two weeks away, it makes sense that political ads are ramping up. But that hasn’t stopped some baseball fans from complaining to MLB about the anti-Biden ads:
saw an unhinged political ad during the baseball last night. Does that always happen? I don’t think of MLB as more racist than NFL but I don’t know if NFL would let ads like that run
🤮 Well, it’s the top of the sixth inning with #WorldSeries Game 1 tied 5-5 between the @Phillies & @Astros, & what’s that?!
Another political ad from “Citizens for Sanity” calling for Biden to end military aid to Ukraine: Music to Putin’s ears.@MLB care to share any thoughts? pic.twitter.com/wTDunbG6v7
As to how MLB is “feelin about this,” the league provided a statement to The Athletic that will likely not quiet those complaints.
“Networks make the decision on what political ads to run,” an MLB representative said. “MLB does not believe it should be in the role of censoring political advertising.”
Given MLB’s statement, it’s safe to assume that there will be more political ads airing during the rest of the World Series.
Is the left ready to admit that they too want politics out of sports?
Silver-tongued former President Barack Obama, speaking in Detroit on behalf of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was thrown off his rhetorical game by a persistent heckler on Saturday.
Ironically, Obama was lamenting the rise in heated and sometimes violent political rhetoric while referencing the recent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when an unidentified man in the crowd yelled, “Mr. President!”
What the heckler was saying after that was not clear from initial video from the event, but Obama’s response was.
“Sir, this is what I’m saying,” a frustrated Obama retorted, according to Fox News. “We’ve got a process that we set up in our democracy.”
Obama went on to say, “Right now, I’m talking. You’ll have a chance to talk sometime later. You wouldn’t do that in a workplace.”
The crowd seemed as exasperated as the former president by the man’s outburst and the back-and-forth exchange between the two that followed.
The crowd booed the heckler and then began repeatedly chanting “Obama!”
From the video, it appeared the heckler was led away and removed from the venue.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson likened the fallout from the dust-up to an interaction between a novice instructor and unruly pupils.
“Obama trying to get the crowd to pay attention to him after getting heckled reminds me of a student teacher trying to control a classroom,” he tweeted.
Obama trying to get the crowd to pay attention to him after getting heckled reminds me of a student teacher trying to control a classroom 😂 pic.twitter.com/4lu3eB4IzJ
The former president attempted to use the incident as a teachable moment as he struggled to get the crowd to settle down.
“Not only is this an example of what I’m talking about,” Obama told the audience, “but it’s also an example of how we get distracted.”
To make his point, Obama referenced Dug the “talking” dog in the Pixar move “Up,” who is easily distracted by a squirrel.
“That’s us with politics,” he quipped.
Obama was interrupted twice by hecklers during the event, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The former president is on the campaign trail for the upcoming midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats can hold on to their razor-thin majority in the House and power in the evenly divided Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris provides the tie-breaking vote.
Disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has been having a rough couple of years.
Cuomo’s flagrant disregard for journalistic integrity led to his removal from CNN. He was busted running cover for his older brother, the equally disgraced former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.
But it’s tough to keep an overinflated ego down, so it wasn’t long before the younger Cuomo returned to a familiar, albeit less prestigious, arena in the form of NewsNation.
Despite all of the pomp and circumstance, Cuomo’s new show debuted to abysmal ratings, drawing a meager 147,000 people — for his debut. For comparison, Sean Hannity, the fiery Fox News host, routinely draws 2+ million viewers for his show.
According to the New York Post, things have only gotten worse for the embattled Cuomo. In fact, by all indications, it appears the former CNN talking head is in a position to take down everyone around him as well.
First, to address the root issue: Cuomo’s ratings have not gotten any better. The Post reported that after the 147,000 viewers who tuned in for his debut, that number has fallen to an average nightly viewership of 119,000.
Even when Cuomo landed an interview with the artist formerly known as Kanye West, he was only able to draw a paltry 129,000 viewers.
“Cuomo is getting nasty about the ratings and he’s starting to blame everyone but himself,” a source told the Post. “He’s blaming the network, staff that he personally hired, his lead-in, the promo department and even the press department!”
Cuomo’s tantrums are allegedly having a tangible impact on morale. Multiple sources confirmed to the Post that employees are bracing for layoffs.
“Chris has zero patience,” another source said. “This isn’t going to end well.”
For its part, NewsNation has denied this damning report from the Post.
“Your information is completely, totally, 100% inaccurate. But we are glad that The Post [has] taken such an interest in NewsNation’s success,” a NewsNation representative told the Post. “We have talked to numerous people in our newsroom and on Chris’ staff and they are all very happy with the growth we’re seeing.”
It’s understandable and almost expected for the network to cover for its star. But if it really cares about that, it needs to do a better job of stopping this deluge of leaks and quotes.
“He’s a Cuomo. He doesn’t blame himself. His entire life he’s been told he’s special,” a source said. “No one is talking about his show.”
To be fair to Cuomo, that last sentiment isn’t completely true.
An anonymous TV exec talked to the Post about Cuomo’s post-Pennsylvania Senate debate episode, which drew 214,000 viewers, a best for the show.
It should go without saying that some things are bigger than politics.
For instance: Americans should all be able to agree that Hurricane Ian was a devastating tragedy and whatever aid can be provided to the victims should be administered.
Alas, turns out leftists would rather those victims suffer further if aid is in any way tied to Florida’s firebrand governor, Ron DeSantis.
Just look at the way they reacted when DeSantis thanked country star Luke Bryan for inviting him onstage during his concert in Jacksonville on Friday:
Hey Luke Bryan – if you don’t want to be seen as political, don’t bring a psychotically deranged human trafficking child torturing right wing extremist like Ron DeSantis on stage during your concert.
Luke Bryan, so disappointed you brought Ron Desantis on stage at your concert. So many LGBTQ+ kids audition/ look to you as a model on AI. He is exactly NOT that.
It’s “disgusting” and disappointing of Bryan to bring DeSantis onstage to raise awareness for victims of Hurricane Ian? What?
Bryan, clearly fed up with the nonsensical criticisms being hurled in his direction, issued a statement on Twitter.
“I typically don’t respond to stuff when I’m getting run down on a social platform but here’s the deal,” Bryan wrote. “I understand Governor Desantis is a very polarizing figure.”
That’s fair, insofar as virtually any politician could be considered “polarizing” in 2022.
“But I grew up in a country where if a governor [asks] you if they can come and raise awareness to help victims of a natural disaster you help,” Bryan continued. “I’ve generally stayed out of politics throughout my career.”
“I knew people would chatter about this but for me the important piece was If I am going to come back there a few weeks after a large portion of people have been affected by a natural disaster in a state where people have been good to me this felt right.”
Bryan ended his statement by essentially telling his critics to go outside and touch grass, which is sound advice if you have enough time to complain about raising awareness for hurricane victims.
“This is all I am saying about this. I’ll be outdoors with my boys. Enjoy your Sunday,” Bryan wrote. “Text: disaster to 20222 to support.”
Bryan’s response probably wasn’t necessary. While there will always be a very vocal portion on social media who will complain about anything under the sun, the reaction of the crowd in attendance spoke literal and figurative volumes:
A judge in Arizona gave the go-ahead for an election integrity group to keep an eye on ballot drop-off boxes, a major blow to Democrats who claim that such activity is somehow “suppressing” or “intimidating” voters.
On Friday, District Judge Michael Liburdi ruled that claims from a left-wing group called the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans could not prevent Clean Elections USA from setting up monitors at ballot drop-off boxes in the state, The Associated Press reported.
The judge noted that the case “certainly presents serious questions,” but he insisted that he could not rule in favor of the left-wing group without violating the First Amendment rights of the group monitoring the drop-off boxes.
“An individual’s right to vote is fundamental. But so too is an individual’s right to engage in political speech, assemble peacefully, and associate with others,” Liburdi wrote, according to ABC News.
For their part, the liberals in Arizona claimed that Clean Elections USA — which sometimes sent armed citizens to stand near the drop-off boxes — was scaring voters away from putting their ballots in the boxes.
“Plaintiffs have not provided the Court with any evidence that Defendants’ conduct constitutes a true threat,” Liburdi wrote in his decision. “Defendants have not made any statements threatening to commit acts of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
Clean Elections USA and others are motivated by claims that “mules” subverted the 2020 election by stuffing thousands of illegal votes in drop-off boxes.
Indeed, in April, election integrity group True the Vote calculated that approximately 4.8 million votes were cast as part of an alleged illegal ballot harvesting scheme in key swing states in the 2020 general election.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department has posted officers around the county’s two ballot boxes for security. State Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also called on citizens to report any cases of voter intimidation at drop-off boxes.
So far, only 10 cases have been reported to the federal Justice Department by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is also the Democratic candidate for governor, according to ABC News.
Liburdi is a Trump appointee, and the case shows how important it was that Donald Trump was in a position — even for just those four short years — to appoint judges who would actually rule on the law and not on ideological grounds.
Liburdi is 100 percent right. The freedom to vote should be sacrosanct in the U.S., and the freedom to make sure elections are not jerry-rigged or otherwise mired in fraud is just as important to ensure trust in the electoral process.
An investigation conducted by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has found that sanctuary states in the United States are dishing out millions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer money to illegal immigrants.
Illegal aliens are ineligible for federal unemployment benefits, with the Federal Unemployment Tax Act requiring states to take precautions to prohibit such people from filing for these claims. However, the three sanctuary jurisdictions of the District of Columbia, Colorado, and New York have handed out a combined $2.715 billion in unemployment benefits to illegal aliens, the Oct. 25 investigation report reveals (pdf). The annual cost to taxpayers will be “much higher” if anti-border activists have their way, the report warns.
“If, for example, New York revamped their program and made it permanent; the D.C. City Council enlarged its fund; and California successfully implemented its own proposal, American taxpayers would be faced with an utterly staggering price tag of roughly $4,350,000,000 every year—to reward illegal aliens for violating our immigration laws and winding up unemployed on American soil,” the report says.
New York launched the Excluded Workers Fund in 2021, providing $2.1 billion to over 128,000 illegal aliens.
In December 2020, legislation passed in Colorado granted $5 million for the Left Behind Workers Fund intended for illegal immigrants.
Last year, the District of Columbia disbursed $15 million to “excluded workers,” which mostly consisted of the illegal alien population.
In California, lawmakers introduced the Excluded Workers Pilot Program, which if signed into law will disburse $300 per week to illegal aliens in the state for 20 weeks.
According to an estimate by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a sister organization of IRLI, illegal aliens cost America more than $116 billion annually. Providing unemployment benefits to illegal immigrants will just “incentivize further immigration violations,” the report states.
Sanctuary Community Crimes, Inflation Worries
A report published by the IRLI in August deemed New York City to be “America’s most dangerous sanctuary community.” Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco made up the remaining top five.
“These communities have earned their places on this list because of incredibly poor leadership at the city, county, and state levels,” Dale L. Wilcox, IRLI’s executive director and general counsel, said in a statement.
“Data overwhelmingly shows that sanctuary policies lead to more crime, fear, and death. The leaders of these communities should not escape accountability for the damage they have caused. Their residents deserve much more.”
Funds are being distributed to illegal aliens at a time when American citizens are struggling with high inflation. The annual inflation rate has remained above 7.5 percent for every month this year, with elevated prices forcing American households to make tough budgetary decisions.
A recent survey by the Nationwide Retirement Institute found that 18 percent of Americans have avoided buying groceries or chosen to skip meals in the past 12 months due to high inflation.
Another survey by LendingClub found that 63 percent of American citizens were living paycheck to paycheck as of September. Of these people, 66 percent have reduced spending and 49 percent have changed their shopping preferences.
In Pennsylvania, the Department of State has allowed at least 249,000 unverified voters to receive mail-in ballots for the 2022 general election, owing to an odd process for verifying the identity of those requesting mail-in ballots, where people vote first and verify their identification later.
The Department of State also recently changed directives for county election boards, creating procedural confusion and drawing fire from 15 Pennsylvania House members in the form of a letter (pdf) demanding that the department immediately correct its guidance and tell counties they may not count the ballots of unverified voters until proof of ID is received.
There are two things to know about voter registration. First, the state must follow the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), a law that requires anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide identification in the form of a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. And second, HAVA requires that states verify the accuracy of the information provided by the applicant by matching their ID information to the state motor vehicle database or the federal Social Security number verification system.
But in Pennsylvania, the state has passed the work of ID verification on to the counties. Here’s the order of the ID verification process in Pennsylvania for mail-in ballots:
A registered voter requests a mail-in ballot. The application requires a driver’s license number or the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.
The voter’s identification is verified by comparing numbers on the ballot application to records at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation or the Social Security Administration.
If the ID numbers don’t match, a ballot is mailed to the voter anyway, but it comes with a “non-verified” (NV) designation.
Unverified voter casts ballot.
While processing ballots, the county sets aside NV ballots until they can reach out to each unverified voter and get proof of ID.
So, instead of the state verifying voter ID before sending a ballot, counties must separate NV ballots and verify identification before counting the votes on that ballot.
“The Directive to register voters without verification of identity, combined with the delivery of mail ballots without verification, creates conditions that shift the burden of verification from the [Department of State’s] automated matching system, to county election offices where resources are already scarce,” a recently released Verity Vote report stated.
Verity Vote is a group of citizen volunteers with data research and investigation backgrounds who have been reviewing elections throughout the country.
The certified 2020 election results in Pennsylvania showed Joe Biden winning, with 80,555 more votes than Donald Trump. That means that the 249,000 ballots already sent to unverified voters this year could be enough to sway the results of an election.
But it’s important to understand that “unverified voter” doesn’t mean the ballots are fraudulent. Some unverified voters had ballot requests containing simple typos—perhaps a driver’s license number was written with transposed numbers, or a name was misspelled. When this happens, the voter must send a copy of their driver’s license to the county board of elections or go in person to show their property identity information.
That verification is supposed to happen before their vote is counted.
Changing Guidance
“A non-verified voter is a concern. The individual has submitted an incomplete voter registration application or an application with information that can’t be verified,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Frank Ryan told The Epoch Times.
“The Department of State testified at our September House State Government Committee hearing that the department enters incomplete voter registration applications into the state SURE [Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors] system and tags them as ‘non-verified—NV’ and then forwards those entries in batches to the appropriate county to verify legal eligibility.
“The poorly written Act 77 allows counties to send and receive mail-in and absentee ballots to and from non-verified voter applicants, and also allows five days post-election to verify the legal eligibility of those applicants.”
The Department of State has overwhelmed counties with non-verified voter applicants, Ryan said.
“Some county election offices have explained that they unlawfully ‘fix’ the applications without contacting the applicant, override the system, and verify applicants without securing the legally required verification information, or simply ignore the non-verified record designation.”
That’s why Ryan and other lawmakers sent the Oct. 25 letter to the Department of State, noting that its Deputy Secretary Jonathan Marks contradicted himself when testifying before the committee.
“Marks testified that ballots are mailed to unverified applicants. But less than two weeks later, the Department of State sent out guidance informing the counties that the verification is done prior to the mailing of ballots,” the letter reads.
“Either the ballots are mailed to unverified applicants, or ballots are not mailed to unverified applicants. But both statements cannot be true. Due to this conflicting information, conscientious election workers could unknowingly accept and count ballots for which no verification has ever occurred.”
In the letter, the lawmakers ask the Department of State to inform counties of the requirement to set the NV ballots aside and not to pre-canvass, canvass, or count any of them until the applicant provides a valid form of identification, as well as to direct counties not to “fix” non-matching identification.
The Department of State has yet to respond to the letter.
The Department of State didn’t reply to a request for comment on whether it intends to respond to the letter or issue new guidance.
The Verity Vote report noted that first-time voters who appear at the polls in person on Election Day must provide proper identification before being handed a ballot. Those who vote by mail can get the ballot first. Pennsylvania only requires voter ID when registering to vote for the first time and when requesting a mail-in ballot.
REVIEW: ‘Newsroom Confidential’ by Margaret Sullivan
We’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but come on. There is surely an exception for Newsroom Confidential by Margaret Sullivan, the cover of which features a blurb from Katie Couric about “how journalism really works.” Dan Rather must have been too busy looking for work. It sounds like a joke, but until recently the disgraced news anchor had a steady gig discussing media ethics on a show called Reliable Sources.
Having seen this, and noting the author’s work history at the New York Times and Washington Post, I judged Sullivan’s book to be an unserious work of #Resistance fan fiction. I read it to make sure, but I needn’t have bothered. For example, there is an entire chapter—”But Her Emails…”—about how the media’s “endless emphasis on [Hillary] Clinton’s email practices doomed her campaign perhaps more than any other factor,” in which the author approvingly cites noxious partisans such as David Brock, Charles Pierce, and Ian Millhiser.
Like a white nationalist aghast at the country’s demographic transformation, Sullivan is “sickened” at the mainstream media’s loss of cultural supremacy. The author and her industry peers aren’t as influential as they used to be, which is bad because their opinions are the right opinions. They “base their views and actions on science and reason.” Alas, the American people don’t trust them anymore, but that’s mainly because of the Iraq war and Fox News, the author insists. Nothing less than the future of democracy is at stake.
To paraphrase our country’s preeminent communicator: You go to these big newsrooms in New York and Washington, D.C., and, like a lot of media outlets, the ratings and traffic are way down and nothing’s replaced them. Everyone keeps saying their audiences are going to regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to “democracy” or the war in Ukraine or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them as a way to explain their frustrations.
Newsroom Confidential is half memoir, half lament for the media’s fading relevance. Sullivan recounts the “lessons” and “worries” she accumulated over the course of her 42-year career in journalism, which more or less traced the industry’s rise and fall in the post-Watergate era. A wide-eyed intern who worked her way up to editor of the BuffaloNews, she abandoned the Rust Belt for the Upper West Side and the “singular … cachet” of the Times, where she served as public editor from 2012 to 2016 and occasionally complained that local newspapers were on the decline.
After using her platform at the Times to denounce colleagues for giving “equal weight” to Republican positions and respond to “intense criticism … on Twitter,” Sullivan jumped to the Washington Post. There she joined a stable of mediocre pundits who chased clicks and assuaged traumatized liberals who required multiple columns a week about why hating Donald Trump and Fox News made you a good person. “I knew that if I wrote a column about Trump, it would find a passionate audience: thousands of comments, thousands of retweets, hundreds of emails, requests to talk on TV and on the radio,” she recalls.
Sullivan’s gift for mediocre punditry is on full display as she channels the boutique anxieties of an élite professional class who pines for the days of Woodward, Bernstein, and Cronkite while openly despising their “non-college” compatriots who pine for manufacturing jobs and don’t necessarily think what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was “one of the most appalling moments in all of American history.”
Nevertheless, it is hard to take the author seriously when key aspects of the book’s thesis—that the mainstream media’s output since 2016 has been insufficiently antagonistic toward Trump; that journalists these days are insufficiently obsessed with themselves and reluctant to embrace their role as pro-democracy activists—suggest a worldview at odds with reality.
Sullivan argues, for example, that the media can restore public trust by denouncing the bad things “more forcefully,” and declaring “war” on Donald Trump to save democracy. Journalists should “start being patriotic.” Not by “wearing American-flag label pins,” obviously, but by “giving proper attention to the role of the press in a democracy, and letting that coverage reflect that.” By finally reckoning with the “dire consequences” of their failure to prevent voters from letting them down in 2016. By acknowledging their inability t0 “communicate … effectively or even grasp the problem” with Trump’s “deeply abnormal” candidacy.
By now you might be wondering, as I was: What on earth is she talking about? Has she watched even five minutes of cable in the past six years? How many times are journalists and other Democrats going to blame ineffective communication when voters fail to validate their preferences? Sullivan should know better. While touring the country in an effort to engage with normal Americans and understand what happened in 2016, she observed that voters aren’t getting the media’s message because they’ve stopped listening. “Most people I talked to just didn’t care about the news, shrugged off the implications of a Trump presidency, and seemed uninterested in following the news closely or critically,” she writes. (Psst… maybe that’s what makes them normal. Maybe journalists are the weirdos.)
That brings us back to Katie Couric. If this book was an earnest attempt to explain the public’s apathy toward the media, she wouldn’t have lent her name. That book would probably include a whole chapter on the former Today show cohost about the time the Washington Free Beaconexposed her for deceptively editing a conversation with gun-rights activists in her 2016 documentary Under the Gun. Couric refused to apologize or fix the misleading segment, which made it appear as though she had stumped the activists with her unassailable logic. (She had not.)
Couric hung out with Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein for decades. She attended a dinner party at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in 2010—after the jet-setting pedophile became a registered sex offender. The same year Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was a guest at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. Like so many other exalted members of the cultural élite, Couric was shocked to learn these guys were total creeps. Who could’ve known?
Answer: Many people, including journalist Ronan Farrow, whose in-depth reporting on Weinstein’s sex crimes was spiked by Couric’s old network, NBC. Amy Robach, an ABC News anchor, filmed an interview with one of Epstein’s accusers that network executives refused to air. Donald Trump described Epstein as someone who liked girls “on the younger side” back in 2002. Journalists cite this as a knock on Trump, but it’s actually an indictment of the media’s tendency to look the other way when powerful Democrats commit violent crimes.
Last year, Couric revealed she omitted portions of her 2016 interview with Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The self-described “big RBG fan” said she did it to “protect” her hero from criticism. Couric’s boss urged her not to cut Ginsburg’s problematic remarks about how black athletes who kneeled during the national anthem were showing “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life, which they probably could not have lived in the places they came from.” Couric thought the comments were “unworthy of a crusader for equality,” so she left them out.
Couric currently sits on the board of the Aspen Institute’s commission on media disinformation, whose work Sullivan touts as a framework for how the press can “rededicate itself to being pro-democracy.” Maybe, just maybe, there’s a good reason why most Americans no longer feel compelled to take these people seriously. For all her sermonizing “the truth,” Sullivan doesn’t seem all that concerned with it. Advancing the correct agenda is paramount. For example, she praises Nikole Hannah-Jones and the controversial 1619 Project, which “accomplished its goals” despite the “objections by a few historians to some of the project’s assertions.”
Days before her book came out, Sullivan’s media colleagues teamed up to bully NBC News reporter Dasha Burns for daring to speak honestly about a Democrat after interviewing John Fetterman, the stroke victim and candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. Fetterman’s disastrousperformance at Tuesday night’s debate vindicated Burns’s account of his mental fitness. Her fellow journalists, who are hysterically concerned about attacks on the press, bullied her for telling the truth. These people have lost their minds. Tune them out. Shrug them off. Lose interest. Don’t read their books if you can help it.
FACT CHECK: Speaking of truth, Sullivan writes that Fred Ryan, publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, was a cofounder of “Politico, the D.C.-based news organization.” That’s false. Politico is headquartered in Arlington, Va., many floors below the Washington Free Beacon.
In 1990, the Boy Scouts of America fired James Dale, a gay rights activist and assistant scoutmaster, after he came out out of the closet, citing the group’s longstanding opposition to homosexuality. Dale sued the Scouts under New Jersey’s civil rights law, which banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. But when the Supreme Court heard the case, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, in 2000, it ruled that the Scouts had a First Amendment right to discriminate.
In a 5-4 opinion that has never been overturned, Chief Justice William Rehnquist drew a link between exclusion and free expression. The Scouts had a viewpoint—homosexual conduct is wrong—that they were trying to impart to their members, he said; an openly gay scoutmaster would send the opposite message, which meant forcing the group to rehire Dale would violate its freedom of speech.
The verdict infuriated liberals, who blasted Rehnquist’s opinion as a set back for civil rights and an affront to fundamental fairness. “The Court has essentially said that freedom of speech gives an organization the right to discriminate on the basis of an individual’s identity,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a press release. “James Dale’s case is a clear example of why New Jersey passed a non-discrimination law in the first place—so qualified people don’t suffer discrimination because of who they are.”
Now, however, the tables have turned, and a progressive health care journal is citing Dale to justify its own discriminatory practices: In response to a civil rights lawsuit, Health Affairs says it has a First Amendment right to exclude white applicants to the journal’s “health equity” fellowship—because doing so is the only way to convey its stance that “diverse” scholarship is “vital to health equity.”
The fellowship’s eligibility requirements, which explicitly bar whites from applying, “cannot be separated from the overall expressive goals” of the program, the journal argued in a September court filing. “As such, the criteria are a form of expression protected by the First Amendment.”
The lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, hints at a major shift in free association’s political undertones. Over the past half century’s civil rights battles, whether it was women seeking to join all-male clubs or blacks seeking to join all-white private schools, conservatives often emphasized the right to free association and argued that it trumped the demand for inclusion.
It was liberals who resisted First Amendment exceptions to anti-discrimination law—in part out of a concern that the exceptions would become the rule. If the Boy Scouts can exclude gays on free speech grounds, the ACLU queried in an amicus brief in Dale, couldn’t they also exclude Jews? Would a business run by segregationists be allowed to exclude blacks?
But with private institutions increasingly in thrall to a race-conscious progressivism, the left may be developing a new respect for free association—and the right for restrictions on it. For example, said David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason University Law School, if the Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action, some colleges may challenge the ruling by arguing that racial preferences are a form of protected speech. The logic would be that a non-diverse class makes it harder to promote a pro-diversity message and thus infringes on academic freedom.
“The left has always been fighting to make free association rights more limited,” Bernstein said. “Now it has a use for them.”
The Health Affairs lawsuit offers a preview of how these arguments could play out in court. In September, the conservative advocacy group Do No Harm—whose chairman, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, is an avid Washington Free Beacon reader and the father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb—filed a discrimination complaint against the journal, alleging that its “Health Equity Fellowship for Trainees” violated multiple civil rights laws. The fellowship, which provides publishing and mentorship opportunities, accepts only “American Indian/Alaskan Native, African American/Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and Hispanic/Latino” applicants, per the program’s eligibility criteria.
But just as the Boy Scouts argued that they could not convey their message about homosexuality without excluding gays, Health Affairs is arguing that it cannot convey its message about health equity without excluding whites. The filing quotes a line from Rehnquist’s Dale opinion—anti-discrimination law “cannot ‘justify … a severe intrusion on [an organization’s] right[] to freedom of expressive association'”—to suggest that the First Amendment licenses the fellowship criteria, which it calls an “integral part” of Health Affairs‘s equity initiative.
Do No Harm, on the other hand, is echoing the slippery slope argument the ACLU made in Dale, warning that Health Affairs‘s defense will invite a radical retrenchment of civil rights.
“Under Defendants’ theory of freedom of association, the First Amendment would also permit all-white fellowships,” Do No Harm said in an October filing. “This flies in the face of a mountain of precedent that accumulated for decades.”
Though the Supreme Court accepted the free association argument in Dale, it has rejected it in numerous other cases involving race discrimination—mostly against African Americans—and courts typically treat racism as a uniquely invidious prejudice. In Runyon v. McCary, for example, an all-white private school claimed it had a First Amendment right to exclude black children because of its sincere belief in segregation. The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning 7-2, holding that the belief in segregation was different from the practice of it.
“If you allow the free speech argument to prevail in the Health Affairs case, you’d also have to let it prevail in the private school case,” Bernstein said. “That would undermine the enforcement of all anti-discrimination laws, so no court is going to buy it.”
Health Affairs declined to comment on the implications of its argument, saying only that it was “confident” of the fellowship’s legality.
Beyond the radical precedent it would set, Health Affairs‘sdefense ignores a number of other differences between the Dale case and this one. For example, Bernstein noted, Dale wasn’t just a member of the Scouts, but a leader and role model charged with inculcating moral values, which meant his open embrace of homosexuality was likely to impact the group’s message. It is less clear how accepting white fellows would prevent Health Affairs from conveying that diverse scholars are “vital to health equity.”
Another difference, Bernstein said, is that the Scouts were arguably excluding Dale over his support for homosexual conduct—he was the leader of a local gay rights group—not his homosexual identity as such. While Rehnquist’s opinion is a bit hazy on that distinction, there is no corresponding ambiguity about the Health Affairs fellowship: It excludes all white applicants regardless of their views or conduct.
The Boy Scouts also did not take federal funds, which means they were not bound by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the law that bans race discrimination in goverment-funded entities. Health Affairs, however, is part of a nonprofit organization, Project HOPE, that receives millions in government grants.
“Substantively, Defendants would have this Court declare a federally subsidized First Amendment right to racially discriminate,” Do No Harm said in its October filing. “That declaration would significantly upend the anti-discrimination efforts made since the Reconstruction era.”
Democrats have their own craven political response to the attack on Paul Pelosi
Three days out from an attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home, we still know precious little about the attacker’s motivations—or, for that matter, about what precipitated the attack itself.
That hasn’t stopped Democratic politicians and their allies in the mainstream media from fingering the culprits—their Republican adversaries—and concluding that, eight days out from an election in which they are bracing for a shellacking, the GOP should spend the final week of the campaign sitting on the bench, reflecting, atoning. How convenient. How cravenly and transparently political.
Pelosi herself, meanwhile, is fundraising on the back of the attack. This is the message tacked to the bottom of an email blast from her office that landed in inboxes on Saturday evening:
To hear the media tell it, Republicans are responsible for the attack and, while Pelosi raises money in this final week, they must cry uncle. Chuck Todd noted with surprise on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that ads against Pelosi “are still on the air.”
Punchbowl News on Friday suggested there was something untoward about Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance urging voters to “fire Pelosi”—or, as they put it, employing “the ‘fire Pelosi’ rhetoric.”
The media hive mind is real, and—lo and behold—the geniuses at the Washington Post also traced the attacks to “a ‘Fire Pelosi’ project—complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames—devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.” The audacity!
Enter former president Barack Obama with a warning that “demonizing” people and stirring up division is dangerous. When he came to this realization isn’t entirely clear—certainly many years after sitting in the pews listening to his friend Jeremiah Wright and cavorting with Louis Farrakhan, but not before arguing that Republicans are warmongers who have a lot in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
We know Obama’s exhortation only swings one way. Democrats are of course still out there trying to discern the motive for the attacks on the novelist Salman Rushdie, New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin (R.), and Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.).
It’s been just a few months since the New York Times got clear of defamation charges over the outrageous attempt to pin the shooting of Gabby Giffords on Sarah Palin. How about the Atlanta spa shooting that was pinned on the anti-Asian rhetoric of the Republican Party? Again, total nonsense. But the Democrats who write the news are in lockstep with the Democrats who make the news—and, of course, the Democrats who stand to benefit from Republicans sitting out the last week of the campaign.
Enough already. We await the conclusions of investigators in the Paul Pelosi case with an open mind and the knowledge that these things are often not what they first appear. In the meantime, Republicans should campaign hard until the polls close. Nancy Pelosi sure will be.
Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) are leading a GOP call for investigations into “politically motivated” decisions made by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a letter exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, Roy and Biggs, joined by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) called on Republican leaders to add the issue to a growing list of potential investigations if Republicans take the House.
The letter is addressed to Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.).
All members of the ACIP voted to add the Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax vaccines to the 2023 schedules, asserting that the vaccines, despite waning effectiveness, can still prevent severe disease. While technically the vote was only a recommendation, that recommendation is highly likely to be approved by the CDC.
This vote came after a Pfizer executive admitted that their COVID-19 vaccines were not tested for preventing transmission.
“We view this as COVID is here to stay,” said Dr. Matthew Daley, one of the advisers on the ACIP. “When I think about the routine immunization schedule as a pediatrician, I think of it as an opportunity to prevent serious disease and death. And if something is added to the schedule, it’s because I feel like the benefits continue to strongly outweigh the risks.”
This decision, Biggs and Roy warned, will continue to undermine Americans’ freedom and protect vaccine manufacturers from legal liability.
“This decision is concerning for multiple reasons and will only put the well-being of American families with school-aged children at further risk of their healthcare freedom while protecting pharmaceutical companies from any liability related to vaccine injuries,” the lawmakers wrote.
In response to the decision, Roy and Biggs called for the CDC to be added to a growing list of federal agencies to be investigated for misconduct by Republicans.
“If Republicans are once again entrusted with the majority of the House of Representatives, congressional committees with oversight of the CDC should immediately begin investigations, host hearings, and hold accountable those involved in politically motivated decisions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” the duo wrote. “This latest decision is but just one example.”
‘Unwarranted’
Citing several statistics showing that children are at minimal risk from the disease, and in some cases are more at risk from the vaccine, Roy and Biggs called the recommendation by the ACIP “unwarranted.”
“The decision to include such a revision in the childhood immunization schedule is unwarranted,” the lawmakers wrote.
For instance, the lawmakers noted CDC statistics showing that those aged 0–17 years old infected with COVID are at minimal risk for hospitalizations, with rates of hospitalization never exceeding 4.8 percent throughout the pandemic. During several months, hospitalization rates for 0–17-year-olds were as low as 0.3 percent according to the same data.
Further, the lawmakers cited evidence from medical studies showing that children aged 0–19 years had a 0.0003 percent mortality rate from COVID-19, or three deaths per million infections. Other research showed that in 100 percent of cases, children who died from COVID-19 had co-morbidities.
Additionally, the lawmakers warned, “studies show that children have an increased risk to COVID-19 vaccine side effects.”
After a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, one study found, boys aged 12–17 years were more likely to have an adverse cardiac event than to be hospitalized.
In men under the age of 40, another study showed, incidents of myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—were more likely after a second dose of the vaccine than after getting COVID-19 itself.
Further adding to the dubitability of claims about vaccine safety, Biggs and Roy noted, is information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS data shows that as of Oct. 14, 2022, there have been 57,166 reports of adverse events in children after they were given the vaccine. Of those, there are 161 reported deaths, 528 reported permanent disabilities, and 1,962 cases of myocarditis.
Despite research showing that natural immunity is more effective for preventing transmission of COVID-19 among children than vaccines, Biggs and Roy noted, “the CDC does not have guidance including natural immunity for this age.”
‘CDC Guidance Has Been Wrong Before’
Biggs and Roy also warned against too readily accepting CDC guidance, noting that past CDC recommendations have had devastating consequences on children’s mental health.
“CDC guidance has been wrong before—leading to terrible outcomes for children,” the duo wrote.
The Manhattan Institute estimates that guidance from the CDC calling for school closures led to around 100,000 public schools shuttering in-person classes for at least eight weeks.
Because of the consequences these decisions had on children’s development, Biggs and Roy said, “We now face a devastating mental health and substance abuse crisis among America’s youth.”
In 2020, CDC data shows, 1,006 teenagers died from drug- or alcohol-related causes—nearly twice as many as died in 2019. By contrast, 199 people under the age of 17 died from COVID-19 that year.
CDC data shows that 1,006 teenagers died from a substance abuse event in 2020.
‘Actively Misled the American People’
Further, Biggs and Roy accused the CDC of misleading the American people.
“The CDC has also actively misled the American people throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote.
The lawmakers cited the CDC’s controversial decision to change the definition of “vaccine” from “producing immunity” to “producing protection.”
In March 2022, the agency also chose to withhold hospitalization data by vaccine status, saying that the data might be misinterpreted. In June, the CDC reportedly decided to withhold information about the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals out of “fears of embarrassing the hospitals.”
In view of these factors, Biggs and Roy called for CDC leaders to be “questioned and fully scrutinized by Congress.”
“This recent decision by the CDC to include COVID-19 vaccines in the childhood vaccine schedule—and thereby pressuring states to implement this recommendation—should be questioned and fully scrutinized by Congress,” they wrote.
“No child should ever be faced with losing his or her education over a clearly and undeniably politicized vaccine,” they continued. “Every parent should have the full freedom to choose whether it makes sense for his or her child to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Decisions such as these are personal and do not require the ‘recommendation’ of the federal government.”
In closing, the lawmakers wrote: “As you consider the numerous failures of the public health apparatus, we strongly urge you to immediately investigate and hold to account the people responsible for brazen political decisions with the potential to impact our children with irreversible harm.
“The U.S. government should respect the decisions of American families, and not pressure States to issue an ultimatum that jeopardizes children’s access to primary and secondary education. Congress should ensure this is the case.”
The proposal by Roy and Biggs is the most recent in a line of potential investigations that Republicans could pursue if they retake the House.
Other proposed investigations could look into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) role in leaving the Capitol unprepared on Jan. 6, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s handling of southern border security, and Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Thousands of volunteers in midterm battleground states have been trained on local election procedures and to become poll watchers, a conservative group has confirmed.
Volunteers have been trained to clean voter rolls, understand changes to election procedures, and become poll watchers or even election judges, Jenny Beth Martin, the chair of Tea Party Patriots Action (TPPA), told The Washington Times.
“The first part is about personal relationships, and the second is about procedures and policies,” Martin told the paper. “Do they use temporary staffing companies [to manage elections]? What computer systems are they using? What contracts do they have in place for that?”
Martin and another trainer, Toni Shuppe, the head of Audit the Vote PA, said that about 6,000 people are in training to become poll watchers in Pennsylvania alone ahead of the midterms, a massive increase from the 500 in 2020, Shuppe said.
Shuppe also recently confirmed to Reuters that her group is “focused on encouraging people to become poll watchers in the upcoming November midterm elections.” The Republican National Committee (RNC) told The Washington Post last week that it and its allies have staged thousands of training sessions on how to become a poll watcher and how to lodge election-related complaints.
Andrea Raffle, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) director for election integrity in Pennsylvania, told participants on the call that they had already filled 6,000 poll watcher positions in the state this year, compared with 1,000 in 2020. Raffle referred a request for comment to the RNC’s national office.
The RNC has been pouring resources into recruiting observers and workers since being freed from the restrictions of a court-ordered consent decree in 2018, according to Reuters. It expects to have trained over 52,000 poll watchers and workers between November last year and the coming election; it said comparative numbers for past elections were unavailable.
“The more eyes that we have on this election, the more comfortable people will be that the outcome was fair and transparent,” Shuppe said, adding to the outlet that such efforts are necessary to ensure transparency so as to not repeat problems that unfolded in 2020.
Some Republican observers said they were unlawfully kicked out of polling places in Detroit, Philadelphia, and other Democrat-majority areas during the 2020 election amid allegations of voter fraud.
“The endgame is to have Democrats and Republicans alike have as many eyes on [the election] as possible so that both parties are comfortable in the outcome at the end of the day,” said Shuppe, who endorsed GOP Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. “We just don’t want a repeat of 2020, where people are running around screaming ‘fraud.’ That, to me, would be the worst possible outcome.”
A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee told Reuters that the group doesn’t have a national number because state party offices manage their poll watcher recruitment.
RNC and Democratic National Committee officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
A major fuel supply company has issued an alert about diesel fuel shortages in several Southeastern U.S. states.
States that are expected to experience shortages include Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina, Mansfield Energy said in an alert last week. The company also noted “extremely high prices in the Northeast.”
“Poor pipeline shipping economics and historically low diesel inventories are combining to cause shortages in various markets throughout the Southeast,” the company said. “These have been occurring sporadically, with areas like Tennessee seeing particularly acute challenges.”
It noted that fuel prices are 30 to 80 cents higher than the posted market average due to “tight” supply, while saying that “fuel suppliers have to pull from higher cost options, at a time when low-high spreads are much wider than normal.”
Fuel carriers are now having to go to “multiple terminals to find supply, which delays deliveries and strains local trucking capacity,” it said.
Due to “rapidly devolving” conditions, the firm issued its “Alert Level 4” to address the volatility, according to the statement. For the southeastern United States, Mansfield said it is issuing a “Code Red” alert and is “requesting 72-hour notice for deliveries when possible to ensure fuel and freight can be secured at economical levels.”
Diesel enables most of the shipping across the United States and is used by long-haul trucks and freight trains. While gasoline prices have dropped since they posted record highs in June, diesel hasn’t decreased nearly as much and currently stands at $5.31 per gallon, according to AAA.
Bottlenecks in supply chains caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and soaring energy prices have added to rising price levels. Data released earlier this month show the Consumer Price Index, a key inflation metric, has risen 8.2 percent year-over-year in September.
Republicans, meanwhile, have targeted the Biden administration for its policies around oil drilling, pipeline construction, and unremitting focus on promoting electric vehicles. In response to the energy crunch, the White House has released tens of millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, bringing it down to about 400 million barrels, or the lowest levels in decades.
Democrats and Joe Biden, meanwhile, have blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for the spike in prices and low supply.
There have also been concerns that the United States is running out of diesel. Oct. 21 data from the Energy Information show that the country had 25.9 days of diesel left.
“Russia produces a lot of heavy products, a lot of heavy oil that produce and yield more diesel,” GasBuddy’s Patrick de Haan told KGVO. “The other problem is simply demand post-COVID that has certainly recovered significantly with many trucks and many goods. We can all remember how ports have been stuffed full with goods that Americans have been buying and those all need to move out of port via trucks.”
David DePape, the man accused of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer last week in the couple’s California home, has been “mentally ill for a long time,” according to a woman who identified herself as DePape’s former life partner.
Oxane Taub, a nudist activist who’s currently incarcerated in the California Institution for Women after being convicted on abduction charges last year, told ABC7 that DePape, 42, suffered from mental health issues.
“Hello, this is Gypsy Taub. I am the ex-life partner of David DePape and the mother of his children,” Oxane “Gypsy” Taub told the local media outlet over the weekend. “He is mentally ill. He has been mentally ill for a long time.”
Taub, who noted that the pair had two sons before they split seven years ago, said that DePape at one point disappeared for about a year. When he resurfaced, Taub said, he believed he was Jesus Christ.
“He came back in very bad shape. He thought he was Jesus. He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him. And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal,” Taub told ABC7.
Taub said DePape had never been particularly involved in politics, but she described herself as a progressive. However, she said DePape appeared to share her left-wing views when they were involved.
“When I met him, he was only 20 years old, and he didn’t have any experience in politics, and he was very much in alignment with my views, and I’ve always been very progressive. I absolutely admire [Democrat House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi,” she said, noting that she sends her “deepest apology” to the Pelosi family.
‘Very Radical’ Activists
Meanwhile, journalist Michael Shellenberger wrote that he went to the alleged home of DePape in Berkeley, a city located near San Francisco that has long been a hotbed of progressive activism.
“And, as I discovered yesterday, DePape lived with a notorious local nudist in a Berkeley home, complete with a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree. A closer look reveals the characteristics of a homeless encampment,” he wrote for Substack.
Neighbors told him that “people come and go from the house and the vehicles, neighbors say, in part to partake in the use of a potent psychedelic drug, ibogaine,” Shellenberger wrote.
President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) depart following a meeting with the Democratic caucus at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 28, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
A woman named Trish told him that people who live at the home are very left-wing—”very radical” even.
“What I know about the family is that they’re very radical activists,” she told him. “They seem very left. They are all about the Black Lives Matter movement. Gay pride. But they’re very detached from reality. They have called the cops on several of the neighbors, including us, claiming that we are plotting against them. It’s really weird to see that they are willing to be so aggressive toward somebody else who is also a lefty.”
However, mainstream media outlets stated that DePape allegedly wrote a blog that attacked Jews, black people, Democrats, COVID-19 vaccines, and media outlets.
Democrats, including President Joe Biden, were quick to link the alleged assault to Republicans, former President Donald Trump, and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Biden said at a fundraising event in Pennsylvania on Oct. 28 that the attacker allegedly used the “same chant” as individuals who breached the Capitol.
“You know, it’s reported that the same chant was used by this guy they have in custody that was used on Jan. 6 in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol,” he said. “The chant was ‘Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?’ This is despicable,” he said.
It isn’t clear if the alleged Pelosi attacker uttered those words. Media reports, citing anonymous sources, claimed that the suspect made that statement during the incident.
DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early on Oct. 28, officials said. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters that she expects to file several felony charges, such as attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, and elder abuse.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said the attack was intentional and not random. Authorities said officers responded to a well-being check at the Pelosi home at 2:27 a.m. on Oct. 28.
Arizona Republican governor frontrunner Kari Lake lashed out at the legacy media for spreading “fake news” about her alleged involvement in a burglary of Democratic rival Katie Hobbs’ campaign headquarters on Oct. 25, without providing evidence.
In a 30-minute press conference the day after the break-in, Lake claimed that the only reason Hobbs accused her was that she was losing in the polls.
“Guys, we’re going to do a tutorial on how fake bogus, defamatory news is made,” Lake told a gauntlet of legacy media outlets in Phoenix.
“We know the world is watching us.”
Lake said while meeting with police officers and firefighters, “my desperate opponent, who is sinking like a lead weight in water, pulled a stunt, and you guys fell for it. She put out a defamatory statement, and you all ran with it.”
“You didn’t do your journalistic duty. It was malpractice in journalism like I’ve never seen before. And it was an effort, I believe, to influence this election.”
Burglary Claims
On Oct. 26, the Arizona Democratic Party, without any supporting evidence, said the burglary was a “direct result” of Lake and “Republicans spreading lies and hate.”
“Make no mistake—this is a direct result of Kari Lake, and fringe Republicans spreading lies and hate and inciting violence—and it is despicable,” the Democratic Party affiliate said in a statement on Twitter.
In a statement, Hobbs’ campaign manager, Nicole DeMont, echoed those remarks without evidence of Lake’s alleged involvement in the burglary.
“Let’s be clear: for nearly two decades, Kari Lake and her allies have been spreading dangerous misinformation and inciting threats against anyone they see fit,” DeMont said.
“The threats against Arizonans attempting to exercise their constitutional rights and their attacks on elected officials are the direct result of a concerted campaign of lies and intimidation.”
Arizona Secretary of State and candidate for governor Katie Hobbs speaks to reporters in Tolleson, Ariz., on Aug. 2, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Arrest Made
Police have arrested a man in connection with the break-in but would not release his identity. Nor would they say whether the crime was politically motivated.
Lake, who leads Hobbs in a Fox10 news poll 54-43 percent, accused many in the legacy media of being “an arm of the Democrat Party.”
“Many of you are propagandists. And you all should be ashamed.”
“She [Hobbs] knew darned well I had nothing to do with it. So she puts out a statement, and right away, your gatekeepers here at the Democrat Party jump on it. And they put out a statement, which was the cue to you to start running with it.”
Lake said the media did not exercise due diligence in trying to corroborate Hobbs’ statement using credible sources before publishing the story.
“You gotta do better, guys. We’re 13 days out from this election, and you’re trying to influence the election.”
Lake said the same media outlets refused to cover Hunter Biden’s “criminal laptop” before the 2020 presidential election, and “this time, it’s the other way around.”
“You don’t care about the facts. You know the facts will come out later, and you’ll cover those once or twice—no big deal. But you’ll spread the lie around the globe—over and over—and that is how fake news spreads,” Lake said.
“You’re in a frenzied panic because your chosen candidate is not winning. Shame on every one of you.”
Lake said her campaign is considering possible legal action.
In the meantime, Arizona state Rep. Jake Hoffman (R) announced he would introduce a bill to hold news outlets accountable for disseminating information to interfere with an election.
During the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th national congress, China’s ruling regime claimed that they have been more effective in managing the environment over the past decade, citing official data. However, a Chinese investigative journalist revealed that the deterioration of the environment in mainland China is shocking and may not recover for decades.
Zhai Qing, vice minister for the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said at a press conference during the party congress that in the past ten years, under the guidance of “Xi Jinping and the thought of ecological civilization,” the party has made overall advances in China’s ecological and environmental protection. He claimed numerous achievements, including China becoming the country with the fastest improvement in air quality in the world, the country’s improved safety rating for the drinking water of 770 million people, and the restoration and increase in population of more than 300 kinds of rare and endangered wild animals and plants.
Regarding the official claims, mainland Chinese investigative reporter Zhao Lanjian told The Epoch Times on Oct. 23 that China’s air pollution, groundwater pollution, soil pollution, and so on are all still at shocking levels. People’s anti-pollution protests have been suppressed, investigative reporters have been silenced, and only CCP officials from the Ministry of Environment would brag about the state of China’s environment.
“The standards for environmental protection evaluation should first come from the establishment of the evaluation system of non-governmental organizations (NGO), so that it is possible to objectively evaluate the environmental protection results that are related to people’s lives,” Zhao said. “He [Zhai] is bragging about how well the CCP manages the environment. All the questions at the press conference are prepared in advance, and its data cannot be trusted.”
Predatory Development Destroys Natural Reserves
Zhao pointed out that the CCP’s environmental protection policies and its economic development model are contradictory.
“Some protected natural resource landscapes have been developed for quick commercial success in a predatory model, such as Zhangjiajie or Changbai Mountain.”
Tourists are seen on sightseeing cruises at the Baofeng Lake on Sept. 1, 2013 in Zhangjiajie, China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
“I have visited Changbai Mountain four times; the earliest visit was in 1994 and again in 2015, and I found out that the natural reserve has been plundered and artificially developed, and all the scenic spots in China are facing the same problem,” Zhao said.
He compared the situation with other countries. “I have visited ecological parks in many countries, such as the United States and Chile, where people are not allowed to build roads nor to develop commercial tourism. However, China puts the tourist economic model in first place; puts tourism revenue from selling tickets in first place.”
Zhao said that he has spent 10 years investigating the ecological status of places along China’s Yangtze River, Yellow River, in Qinghai, as well as Tibet and Inner Mongolia, and has witnessed the devastation of the same predatory development model on the natural environment.
Desertification Affecting Water Supply, Fisheries
In 2018, Zhao went to various areas of Sanjiangyuan, on the Tibetan plateau in the south of Qinghai province, to do field studies, and saw the extent of many new deserts. Compared with the maps in the past, “I found out that this desert was formed in the last 30 years. Thirty years ago, it was graveyards and swamps,” he said.
“The existence of this desert proves that at least the ecological environment of the Sanjiangyuan area has undergone shocking changes compared with 30 years ago. I interviewed some experts, and they also believed that the desertification of the upper reaches of the Sanjiangyuan has actually caused the water shortage in Shanghai and the entire Yangtze River system,” Zhao said.
Sanjiangyuan, which literally means “The Source of the Three Rivers,” is the birthplace of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and the Lancang River. It is known as the “Chinese Water Tower” and plays an important role in China’s ecological status and national economic development.
An aerial view shows the Yangtze river that is approaching record-low water levels during a regional drought in Chongqing, China, on Aug. 20, 2022. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
“Everyone can see the deterioration of China’s ecological environment now, such as the cut-off of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers and many water systems,” Zhao said. “The cutoff of such water systems will also affect the development of agriculture, animal husbandry, and fisheries along the rivers. Therefore, no matter how good the government’s slogan is about these environmental issues, the reality is visible to everyone.”
CCP leader Xi Jinping emphasized two points about the environment in his speech at the party’s 20th National Congress: that the party will be “deeply promoting the prevention and control of environmental pollution, and further promoting the ecological protection and management of important rivers, lakes, and reservoirs.”
In response, Zhao said of Xi’s comments, “The issues of environmental protection and ecology are imminent and he had to mention it. When we noticed that the environment has changed, the environment has actually already been deteriorating to a certain extent. The development model of the entire society is on the verge of crisis.”
Pollution in a river in the Tengger Desert in northwest China’s Zhongwei, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, after releases of chemical wastewater by a paper company. After the wastewater dried up, a large number of chemical crystals appeared on the shore. (Provided by Zhao Lanjian)
Zhao Lanjian’s 2014 report revealed shocking pollution in the Tengger Desert. Local herdsmen pointed out that sewage ponds had appeared in the desert hinterland, with local enterprises discharging untreated wastewater into the sewage ponds. His articles and photos have since been deleted from the internet by the regime.
Censoring Journalists, Protests
Zhao said, “China has tightened control of the media since 2014, and investigative reporters have been severely suppressed. At the same time, large-scale anti-pollution demonstrations by tens of thousands of people have emerged one after another across China, all of which have been brutally suppressed by the CCP’s military and police.
The groundwater in 90 percent of China’s cities is polluted due to the deep underground discharge of sewage by enterprises. A public welfare activist has made a “Map of Cancer Villages in China.” Due to pollution, there are thousands of cancer villages across the country, Zhao said.
An expanse of about 4-square-miles of radioactive waste outside Baotou City in northern China on April 21, 2011. Strong winds whip up the cancer-causing materials dumped by producers of rare-earth minerals, iron ore, and steel, poisoning surrounding villages and farms. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection admitted that there are at least 450 pollution-related “cancer villages” in the country. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
“How is China’s current environment?” Zhao asked. “The final evaluation system is in the hands of the government.”
He pointed out: “After Xi Jinping advocated green mountains and rivers, the local governments have not been able to restore green mountains. As a result, plastic green plants were spread from the top of the mountain layer by layer, and the bare mountain became an artificial green mountain, and there were many places where ‘green’ mountains were sprayed with green ink and paint.”
He said, “The destruction of the entire natural environment in China, the destruction of tourism resources, and the destruction of ecological resources may not be recovered in the next few decades or even hundreds of years.”
Republican-leaning states have been shortchanged at least three congressional seats and electoral college votes because their population was undercounted in the 2020 census. Democrat-leaning states received at least one extra seat and vote due to census overcounts and kept at least two they should have lost, according to an analysis of Census Bureau’s post-census survey.
The bureau acknowledged the errors but said there’s no way to correct them until the next census in 2030.
Several experts and at least one lawmaker have expressed concern over the errors.
“It’s consistently undercounting red states and consistently overcounting blue states,” commented Hans von Spakovsky, head of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
He called it “a very odd coincidence,” noting that “so far, the Census Bureau hasn’t really explained how and why they made these mistakes.”
It appears the first to sound the alarm over the issue back in June was Fair Lines America (FLA), a conservative-leaning nonprofit focused on redistricting issues.
“It’s obviously concerning that there’s a pattern in the error of the census,” said Adam Kincaid, executive director of FLA and the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
The Census Bureau identified 14 states with statistically significant errors in the census count. Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas—all GOP-dominated, save for Illinois—were undercounted. Meanwhile, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Utah—all Democrat-dominated save for Ohio and Utah—were overcounted.
For comparison, no state saw a significant error in the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
The 2020 error pattern still holds when including states where the miscount didn’t reach statistical significance. Among all the 50 states and the District of Columbia, only two Democrat-leaning states registered an undercount: Illinois and Maryland. On the other hand, 12 Democrat-leaning states saw overcounts of at least 1 percent, compared to five Republican-leaning states: Alaska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia. States with no clear-cut leaning, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, tended to have relatively accurate counts.
Unanswered Questions
The 2020 Census was unprecedented in several ways. Due to COVID-19 policies, census workers were initially blocked from knocking on the doors of people who didn’t respond to the census online or by mail. Furthermore, a large number of people temporarily moved during the lockdowns. Access was limited at facilities where the virus was spreading particularly fast, such as nursing homes as well as prisons to some extent. College students were largely sent home. The Census Bureau tried to fill gaps in coverage by guessing how many people lived where using administrative records, such as driver’s license data. All these factors presented additional challenges that could explain why this census was particularly inaccurate.
Such factors, however, don’t answer why the errors benefited Democrats so consistently, Kincaid and von Spakovsky said.
Some of the states with the most protracted lockdowns, such as Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Connecticut, where census workers would have been expected to have the greatest troubles overcoming COVID-related restrictions, had some of the most accurate counts.
Furthermore, the bureau has yet to fully explain what methods it used to navigate the challenges. How did it ensure, for example, that the administrative records it used in fact reflected reality?
“We don’t have good answers for those things,” Kincaid said.
His group tried to obtain further data and answers from the bureau through Freedom of Information Act requests, but most of the information was denied on confidentiality grounds, he said.
“What the pattern suggests is that there is some sort of issue with the methodology that seems to favor blue states over red states, and I continue to believe that it’s important for the Census Bureau to open up its books and be more transparent,” he said.
The lack of transparency is particularly pernicious when combined with the lockdown challenges that seem to have made the process more opaque.
“It opened the door for more bias whether intentional or unintentional,” Kincaid said.
Von Spakovsky urged Congress to launch investigations into the matter and get answers from the bureau “so we can decide whether this was intentional bias or whether it just was bad procedures and bad practices. It’s got to be one or the other.”
“You certainly can’t have this happen again and Congress needs to figure out whether there’s any way they can fix this,” he said.
He called the issue “deeply concerning for the legitimacy of our Democracy,” in an Oct. 24 letter to the Census Bureau Director Robert Santos.
“This wasn’t a coincidence because things like this don’t just happen. The swamp in Washington has an agenda. They want Democrats in power and won’t let anything get in their way,” he said in a press release that day.
“We must get to the bottom of what happened. When Republicans take back the House majority, we will use our oversight authority to investigate the Census Bureau and determine how and why these significant errors happened to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
The Census Bureau didn’t respond to emailed questions.
Attempts to reach National Democratic Redistricting Committee for comment were unsuccessful.
Expanding security to additional members of Congress and relatives could be a good idea after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked inside their home in California on Oct. 28, according to some lawmakers.
“I understand that the speaker has a detail but we really need, at least for the leadership, to have Capitol Police at the residences like we do for Supreme Court justices,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on CNN.
Khanna said he was surprised to learn that no U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officers were at the Pelosi residence when a male suspect entered early Friday.
The USCP said that Nancy Pelosi was in Washington with her protective detail at the time of the attack.
Providing security can’t happen for every member of Congress, Khanna said.
“But certainly for the leadership—who are high-profile—you can do that,” he said. “And if there are some members of Congress who have threats, and unfortunately some of my colleagues do, they need better protection.”
Some congressional leaders receive security but their families and residences aren’t covered at present.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said that “it cannot be solely the members’ and elected officials’ responsibility to provide for their families security.”
“We need more ways to protect members and their families,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) told Axios.
The House’s sergeant-at-arms reportedly said over the summer it would pay for security system equipment at the homes of members, but capped the scheme at $10,000 per member. The sergeant-at-arms also offered to provide up to $150 a month for ongoing costs.
The announcement came after a man was arrested with a gun outside the home of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and another man attacked Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) during a campaign event.
Some members pay for private security—including multiple lawmakers who have supported cutting funding to police agencies.
The shooting of Republican members at a baseball field in Virginia in 2017, which was determined to be politically motivated, “marked an accelerated rate of both threats and acts of violence directed toward the Congress,” USCP Police Chief Thomas Manger told a congressional committee this year.
Nearly 9,700 threats were recorded in 2021, more than double the number in 2017.
“The biggest challenge I think we have is keeping up with the number of threats. We’ve doubled the number of officers that investigate these threats, agents that investigate these threats, and if they continue to go up the way they have clearly we are going to need additional officers to assign to this responsibility,” Manger said.
The USCP received increased funding for fiscal year 2023 in part to provide additional “threat based” protective details for members. Manger also said that USCP works with local officers when members return to their home districts to try to ensure the safety and security of lawmakers.
Paul Pelosi called 911 after the man who attacked him entered Pelosi’s San Francisco home, according to dispatch audio and a top police official.
Paul Pelosi, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was attacked with a hammer in the early morning hours of Oct. 28. Authorities have identified the suspect as David DePape, 42.
According to dispatchers, Paul Pelosi called 911 and “stated that there’s a male in the home and that he’s going to wait for his wife.”
Paul Pelosi “stated that he doesn’t know who the male is but he advised that his name is David and that he is a friend,” a dispatcher said. Paul Pelosi “sounded somewhat confused.”
Paul Pelosi, 82, was able to call 911, according to San Francisco Police Chief William Scott.
The dispatcher who fielded the call was named as Heather Grives. Scott said Grives “had to interpret what she was being told,” and based on “her experience and her intuition, she basically figured out that there was something more to this incident than what she was being told.”
That led to officers rushing to the home to perform what authorities described as a well-being check. They arrived at approximately 2:27 a.m.
Officers knocked on the front door of the Pelosi home and the door was opened “by someone inside,” Scott said. The officers then stood and watched as Paul Pelosi and the suspect grappled with a hammer. The officers commanded both men to drop the hammer. The suspect gained control of the hammer and “violently attacked” Paul Pelosi with it.
The officers then entered the home and tackled the suspect, disarming him.
Paul Pelosi was struck at least one time, police said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (L) and her husband Paul Pelosi, outside of 10 Downing Street in central London, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)
Broke In
DePape broke into the home through a rear door, according to Scott. Aerial footage after the attack showed broken glass at a door at the rear of the home.
Paul Pelosi and DePape were both transported to a nearby hospital. Both were still in the hospital as of Friday evening. Paul Pelosi underwent surgeries “to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands” and is expected to fully recover, Nancy Pelosi’s office said.
Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time of the attack with her protective detail, according to the U.S. Capitol Police.
Based on the investigation so far, authorities believe the attack was not random.
“We do know that this was intentional,” Scott said.
The motive for the attack has not been pinpointed.
Reports suggest the suspect was looking for Nancy Pelosi, but authorities have not confirmed that report.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott speaks to reporters about the attack on Paul Pelosi, in San Francisco, Calif., on Oct. 28, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Daughter Speaks Out
A website that Inti Gonzalez, DePape’s daughter, said that DePape was responsible for included posts describing colleges as cults, criticizing the government and the war in Ukraine, and citing Bible verses.
Gonzalez wrote on Facebook that the attack on Paul Pelosi “came as a shock to me, though not much considering the kind of extreme abuse [DePape] had inflicted on me and my brothers.”
DePape could not be reached and it’s not clear whether he has retained a lawyer. Gypsy Taub, Gonzalez’s mother, did not respond to a request for comment.
FBI agents visited a home linked to DePape that is known as a “hippie collective” by neighbors. Signs on the home indicate support for Black Lives Matter and a local group, Berkeley Stands United Against Hate.
Authorities have drawn up multiple warrants and will seek more warrants as the investigation advances, Scott said.
Interim San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said her office is working with federal and local law enforcement and will charge DePape with multiple felony charges on Monday, with an arraignment slated for the following day. Authorities have said attempted homicide will be one of the charges.
President Joe Biden told a Democrat party reception in Pennsylvania Friday that Nancy Pelosi told him that her husband “seems to be coming along well” and was “in good spirits.”
Biden and a slew of officials, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), condemned the attack and said they hope Paul Pelosi recovers quickly.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials were alerted that they spread misinformation about child COVID-19 deaths but still did not issue corrections, according to emails obtained by The Epoch Times.
Drs. Katherine Fleming-Dutra and Sara Oliver were told within days of presenting to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, in June that statistics from a preprint study they shared were wrong, the emails show. But after internal discussion about how to respond, neither the CDC nor the officials corrected the false information.
Fleming-Dutra and Oliver both referenced the study, which has not been peer reviewed, while the CDC’s advisers weighed whether to recommend the agency grant emergency authorization for COVID-19 vaccines for babies and toddlers.
The committee ultimately recommended the CDC authorize Pfizer and Moderna shots for children as young as 6 months of age and the CDC quickly accepted the recommendation.
A week later, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky appeared to cite the false statistics while urging parents to get their children vaccinated, despite no evidence the vaccines protect against severe illness and despite the clinical trials returning substandard or unreliable results for shielding against infection.
Kelley Krohnert, a citizen researcher and mother who flagged the preprint, triggered the internal discussions among CDC officials, according to the emails. When Krohnert pointed Fleming-Dutra to a blog post that detailed the issues with the study, Fleming-Dutra sent the email to others, including Oliver.
“I am not sure who this should go through. Let me know what I need to do,” Fleming-Dutra said.
Megan Freedman, a CDC health communications specialist, looped in a CDC spokeswoman, and they informed Fleming-Dutra that she and other subject matter experts “would need to determine if there’s any validity to the complaint.” If the complaint was deemed valid, possible next steps might include pulling the slide or adding a footnote, Freedman said.
Oliver jumped in, saying that Krohnert “appears [redacted], but there are my thoughts.” Her thoughts were redacted.
“I’m sure you guys can make it sound prettier, but something like this would be how I would respond,” Oliver said. “And the general sentiment that ‘even 1 death from COVID that’s preventable is too many, regardless of how you count them.’”
There’s no evidence any of the COVID-19 vaccines prevent death for small children.
“Love it – thank you for sending!!!” Freedman said.
Separate Exchanges
A separate thread started after the Washington Post forwarded Krohnert’s email over a Post article that said COVID-19 is “a leading cause of death” among children. The article still links to Fleming-Dutra’s slide, which in turn referenced the preprint.
Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokesperson, sent the email to Fleming-Dutra, who forwarded it to Oliver.
“Kristen: [redacted]. Hope that helps?” Oliver replied.
“Thanks Sara! [redacted]. And really, I think the bottom line (which lots of ACIP members said today) is any death in a child (regardless of where it ranks on a list) is one too many,” Nordlund replied.
Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer in Washington state’s Seattle and King counties, sent a link to Krohnert’s blog post to Oliver, Fleming-Dutra, and two CDC advisers, Drs. Matthew Daley—who also shared the misinformation—and Grace Lee.
“Great work today, as always. No doubt you’ve seen this and similar critiques of the mortality data presented. Will there be a response from CDC?” Duchin asked.
Correction
Seth Flaxman, a professor in Oxford University’s Department of Computer Science, and other researchers corrected the preprint after Krohnert flagged the issues to them. Their paper relied on death certificate statistics from the CDC. They initially said at least 1,433 deaths among people 19 and younger in the United States were attributed to COVID-19, but acknowledged in the updated version that the number was just 1,088.
The initial version “incorrectly used” the death certificate data, the authors said.
That sent the rank of COVID-19 among causes of death for children down. For infants under 1, for instance, it went from fifth to eighth.
Months later, Fleming-Dutra’s slide remains uncorrected, and nobody at the CDC has ever publicly acknowledged sharing the misinformation.
Fleming-Dutra, Oliver, Freedman, Nordlund, Daley, and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Duchin’s agency told The Epoch Times via email that the CDC replied to him in June.
The CDC “noted that the ACIP considers a multitude of data points in making their recommendations, so even if this specific pre-print paper was removed from consideration, the data overwhelmingly support COVID-19 as a cause of serious disease and death in young children, and COVID vaccines as an important way to prevent this,” the spokesperson said. “These ACIP decisions are made after reviewing the totality of the data and it is never one singular data point or analysis used.”
A spokesperson for the Stanford University School of Medicine, which employs Lee, declined to comment.
Lee promoted the false statistics during a meeting in September, and the official webpage for the committee she heads still lists the uncorrected figures. A spokesperson for the panel did not return an inquiry.
The Epoch Times obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request.
‘Very Strange’
The confirmation that the CDC officials were made aware of spreading misinformation but did nothing is “super frustrating,” Krohnert said.
“They had all this internal discussion about the criticism and still the CDC director gets on TV and spouts the same criticized data,” she told The Epoch Times. “And at that point, Flaxman even said he was going to be updating their report.”
None of the CDC officials have ever replied to Krohnert.
The analysis from the British researchers utilized CDC data. It took Krohnert under an hour to run the same numbers. The Epoch Times also examined the data on the CDC’s site, corroborating Krohnert’s analysis. It’s unclear why the CDC scientists didn’t do the same.
“I don’t understand why they don’t seem to know how to use their own resources,” Krohnert said. “It’s very strange.”
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping said during the recently-concluded 20th Party Congress that China would open up economically to the world. But experts warned that this would mean obliterating international rules in the regime’s favor at the expense of the free world.
“We’ll be steadfast in deepening reform and opening up across the board,” said Xi during his meeting with the press at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Oct. 23, according to Xinhua, the regime’s official news agency. The day, Xi secured an unprecedented third term as leader of the CCP.
But Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, warned that such remarks are a smokescreen.
“I don’t think it means what Westerners think it means,” Newsham told The Epoch Times in an email.
“There was nothing compromising in the speeches,” said Newsham, adding that he has been following the Chinese regime for almost 40 years and economic “opening up” has been a consistent CCP talking point the entire time.
The CCP regime wants to welcome Western businesses and financial companies to China so that they can provide funding, investment, and technology to strengthen the country’s economy and its military, the People’s Liberation Army, according to him.
“When that objective is achieved to the CCP’s satisfaction, the foreigners will be ordered to leave China,” said Newsham.
Disastrous Economic Policies
Frank Lehberger, a Europe-based sinologist and an expert on CCP policies, drew attention to Xi’s emphasis on promoting “institutional opening up.”
“We will steadily expand institutional opening up with regard to rules, regulations, management, and standards,” Xi said during the opening of the Party Congress on Oct. 16.
Yet such language again is code for the Chinese regime wanting to reshape the global economic landscape in its image.
“China wants to subvert accepted international trade and commerce rules, and replace them with new arbitrary and dictatorial socialist one that ALWAYS favor China and no other trading partner,” Lehberger told The Epoch Times in an email.
He cited the regime’s trillion-dollar global infrastructure investment project, the Belt and Road Initiative, as an example. The initiative has drawn mounting criticism from Western officials who describe it as a form of “debt-trap diplomacy” that opens the door to Beijing getting its hands on critical infrastructure in developing countries.
Lehberger described the Chinese regime’s trade practices as “predatory” that violate World Trade Organization rules, and noted that Xi’s handling of the pandemic through the draconian “zero-COVID” has crippled the country’s economy.
Meanwhile, the regime has also faced considerable international backlash over a range of issues from human rights abuses to technology theft, and have countered Beijing’s aggressions with biting sanctions and trade embargoes.
As a result, China is also losing its status as the “workshop of the world,” he said, and this year the Chinese economy has declined further with dismal gross domestic product figures.
Despite such woes, Xi will not put an end to his “destructive” policies, according to Lehberger.
As the communist regime’s supreme leader, Xi “can never be wrong, whatever he says or does, so his policies—however erroneous—must be kept in place forever no matter the economic cost,” said Lehberger.
“He even a few years ago doubled down and started his own decoupling from the West,” he added, referring to Xi’s promotion of “internal circulation,” a self-reliance program that seeks to shift the country away from its export-driven economy towards internal demand and consumption.
Foreign Reliance
The West, however, remains the vital provider for China’s economy despite the regime’s attempts to subvert the international rules-based order. This means that Beijing will continue to lean on other nations for financial support.
Attorney Jonathan Bench, a regular contributor to China Law Blog and the chair of Harris Bricken’s corporate practice group, told the Epoch Times that by talking about China opening wider to the world, Xi is signaling that PRC can’t exist without engaging with the rest of the world despite it trying to boost it’s domestic consumption.
“Looking at the U.S. and its allies, that means dealing with head-to-head competition and making limited concessions, as China did in finally acquiescing to the PCAOB (the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) inspectors auditing the books of public Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges,” said Bench, referring to the United States’ insistence on getting U.S.-listed Chinese companies to comply with American auditing requirements, which the firms were previously excused from.
The Chinese regime will continue to “negotiate and intimidate” while it deals with its allied countries or those saddled between the United States and China—doing this will ensure its domestic security, which largely means energy security at this point in time, according to Bench.
Lehberger said Xi needs the West for more foreign capital that can ensure support for the country’s faltering economy.
However Xi’s socialist planned economy model is a “huge step backwards,” he said, and therefore will be a failure because it will not be accepted or recognized by the international community, especially developed nations. “Except maybe autocracies such as Putin’s Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, or quasi-failed Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and some countries in Africa,” he said.
Lehberger also doubted Xi’s economic expertise, adding that his choice for the next premier next is equally clueless.
Chinese leaders, like outgoing Premier Li Keqiang and outgoing Vice Premier Liu He, who had expertise in the economy and in international trade are now all retired and removed from power, according to him.
“So economic catastrophe in China replete with all social ills is practically preprogrammed for the immediate future,” Lehberger said.
The United States and South Korea will hold a large-scale joint air exercise involving 240 military aircraft next week to bolster their combat readiness amid North Korea’s ongoing missile provocations.
The drill, known as the Vigilant Storm, will run from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 and involve major air missions such as close air support, defensive counter air, and emergency air operations, the U.S. Air Force said in a statement.
“Support forces on the ground will also train their base defense procedures and survivability in case of attack,” it added.
The drill will involve 240 aircraft, 140 of which will be from South Korea, including its F-35A stealth jets and F-15K and KF-16 fighters. The U.S. will deploy its F-35B jets, EA-18 electronic warfare aircraft, and KC-135 tankers.
The Australian Air Force will also deploy a KC-30A air refueling tanker during the joint drill, according to the U.S. Air Force.
“This year’s event will strengthen the operational and tactical capabilities of combined air operations and enhance our strong combined defense posture,” it stated.
The drill was first conducted in 2015 under the name “Vigilant Ace,” but it was later suspended in 2018 as the former Moon Jae-in administration sought to restart denuclearization talks with North Korea.
President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May, sought a tougher stance on North Korea and a stronger U.S. security commitment to the country’s defense as North Korea escalated its missile launches this year.
North Korea denounced the U.S.-South Korea joint drills as an “invasion rehearsal” and fired hundreds of shells in inter-Korean maritime buffer zones that had been established by the two sides in 2018 to reduce military tensions.
South Korea Plans to ‘Change Strategy’
Speaking at a committee meeting on Wednesday, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup said that South Korea’s approach to the North Korean nuclear threat should shift from prevention to deterrence.
“We have put our focus on trying to prevent North Korea from conducting additional nuclear tests and advancing its nuclear capabilities, but it’s time to change our strategy,” Lee was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.
“The priority should be on deterring the use of nuclear weapons by giving them a clear sense that if North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will bring about an end to the North Korean regime, and it will disappear completely,” he added.
Lee said that South Korea has been in talks with Washington to expand the scope of their intelligence sharing, exercises, and South Korea’s use of U.S. military assets under the extended deterrence strategy.
“We should have capabilities to watch all of [North Korean military’s] moves starting from pre-launch stages so as to neutralize them in advance physically or non-physically,” he added.
The two rivals exchanged warning shots along a disputed western maritime boundary on Oct. 24 as a North Korean vessel reportedly crossed a sea border with the South. The North Korean regime has said it stands ready to use nuclear weapons against “hostile forces” amid its renewed flurry of missile tests.
As every aspect of modern life becomes digitized, not just the economies of nations but their sovereign influence will increasingly rely on the command of technology, with supercomputers being a centerpiece of the competition.
On Oct. 7, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced sweeping new export controls that will cut China off from cutting-edge chipmaking equipment and certain advanced semiconductor chips made with U.S. technologies, regardless of whether the chips were manufactured in the United States or not.
The move is Washington’s latest effort to hamstring China’s military modernization and the development of its supercomputers.
Under the new rules, leading U.S. chipmakers such as Nvidia and AMD will be banned from selling their high-end artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing chips to Chinese companies.
Supercomputers, with high-performance computing and data processing capabilities, are often regarded as a symbol of a country’s scientific and technological strength.
The latest U.S. sanctions are aimed at restricting China’s ability to obtain supercomputing chips, according to an Oct. 11 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank.
“High-end AI chips can no longer be sold to any entity operating in China, whether that is the Chinese military, a Chinese tech company, or even a U.S. company operating a data center in China,” Gregory C. Allen, director of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance Project and a senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at CSIS, said in the report.
In the report, Allen said that Nvidia and AMD are among a few chip designers in the world capable of making chips for AI or supercomputing—with very powerful parallel processors and very fast interconnect speeds. And that Nividia, in particular, provides a robust software ecosystem called CUDA, which is widely used by programmers “to write massively parallelized software, [basically all modern AI software].”
Nvidia Drive Pegasus, the world’s first AI supercomputer for level 5 robotaxis, is on display during the CES consumer technology trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 9, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“Any customer who seeks to stop using Nvidia chips has to leave the CUDA ecosystem … [Thus], the combined offering of CUDA software and Nvidia hardware [explained] why Nvidia accounts for 95 percent of AI chip sales in China,” Allen said.
Meanwhile, the recent U.S. sanctions have also learned lessons from the past when attempting to completely block the Chinese military from obtaining advanced chips.
In the past, despite measures to limit U.S. technology exports to the Chinese military, chips designed by U.S. companies still ended up in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
CCP Military–Civil Fusion Strategy
The CCP’s military-civil fusion strategy makes it almost impossible for U.S. regulators to distinguish between military and nonmilitary end users in China, which is the basis of most U.S. export controls.
The fusion model allows the Chinese military to bypass U.S. export controls and have covert access to U.S. technology and equipment through its civil counterparts—a loophole the CCP has exploited.
Allen’s report said the Obama administration in 2015 blocked U.S. chipmaker Intel from selling its high-end Xeon chips to Chinese military supercomputer research centers, such as, the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). While the policy ended direct sales from U.S. companies to the Chinese military, it was completely ineffective at stopping indirect sales to the shell companies that helped the Chinese military evade export controls.
“China’s NUDT has not only built new globally leading supercomputers after the restrictions went into effect, but those new supercomputers still use the latest and greatest (and banned) Intel Xeon chips. More broadly, examinations of Chinese military equipment of all types have found them to be extremely reliant on U.S. chips,” the report said.
However, the latest export restrictions implemented by the Biden administration essentially intend to “end all sales [of high-end AI chips] to China,” regardless of their military or civil applications.
Chip Ban Extended to ‘Talents’
In addition, the new “foreign-direct product rule” applies not only to Nvidia or AMD. It will cut China off from certain chipmaking equipment and chips made with U.S. technologies, whether or not the chips were manufactured in the United States.
The sweeping ban also extends to “talents,” effectively prohibiting U.S. persons from supporting the development or production of chips covered by the restrictions.
Under the new rule, U.S. nationals in Chinese chip-related companies will face a choice between losing U.S. citizenship or quitting their jobs in China.
For years, U.S. export controls to China have only been on technologies, products, companies, or organizations. The new ban however, extends export controls to individual U.S. citizens and green card holders for the first time. It is considered to be the most restrictive ban on China’s semiconductor industry to date.
The report also mentioned that American companies have an absolute advantage in chip design software called electronic design automation (EDA). The software enables designers to create “the astonishingly complicated [chip] blueprints.”
And the three leading companies in the EDA market are Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design Systems, and Synopsys, all of which are headquartered and have the bulk of their staff in the United States.
According to a joint report (pdf) released in April 2021 by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), U.S.-headquartered firms collectively account for more than a 90 percent share in advanced logic products such as CPUs, GPUs, or FPGAs that power PCs, data center servers, AI analytics, and automotive ADAS systems.
The report said that U.S. companies collectively held more than a 40 percent global share in semiconductor manufacturing equipment in 2019, while China held less than 5 percent.
Chinese chipmakers are currently unable to produce some of the most advanced chips. Under the new sanctions from Washington, Chinese companies will likely struggle to obtain cutting-edge chips from non-domestic chip manufacturers.
Massive Gap in Supercomputer Technology
Studies have shown that China’s supercomputer industry relies heavily on foreign products, especially for the chips used in its core components and application software.
The 2021 first issue of the Chinese journal Science and Culture Review published a paper titled “Introspection on the Development of Supercomputers in China” (pdf) by Si Hongwei, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of the History of Science at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
In the paper Si said, that in November 2010, Tianhe-1, a supercomputer put together by China’s National University of Defense Technology, was the fastest supercomputer in the world at the time. However, more than 90 percent of its core components were from U.S. companies Intel and AMD, such as, its CPU and GPU.
Likewise, the following iteration, Tianhe-2, ranked the fastest supercomputer from June 2013 to November 2015, was found to be using almost entirely U.S.-made components, including commercial microprocessors and arrays of main components, in its hardware system.
More recently, the Chinese-assembled supercomputer named Sunway TaihuLight, first unveiled in June 2016, was said to be using the Chinese-designed SW26010 processors, which according to the paper, are far behind the international supercomputing standard.
In 2019, the paper’s author Si Hongwei interviewed Zhou Xingming, a Chinese supercomputer expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhou said that Chinese-made CPUs have low overall performance and high power consumption, and are more than one generation behind in design than foreign products and more than two generations behind leading competitors.
In addition, Si said that Chinese supercomputers are also far behind in their software systems, such that, for example, the Chinese-made Kylin operating system installed on the Tianhe-1 and Tianhe-2 supercomputers “has yet to establish large-scale software development and user eco-chain.”
He described China’s independent research and development capabilities for application software as “extremely limited” in the field of computing that mainly relied on foreign off-the-shelf products.
According to Chinese media reports, since the Tianhe-2 supercomputer was unveiled in 2014 at the Guangzhou data center, it has been used for very few major scientific research projects from the CCP. In 2015, the utilization rate of the data center was only 60 percent, while 83 percent of its clients were government agencies, universities, and research institutes, and only 17 percent were enterprise users.
Si said that the current development model of supercomputers in China could only imitate and rely on the technologies of others, and once the external supply is cut off, difficulties will ensue.
The 80-year-old billionaire CEO of the retail franchise Hobby Lobby, David Green, has made headlines for his decision to give away ownership of the company. Rather than continue as a business owner, Green wishes to be a “steward for God.”
In an Oct. 21 op-ed for Fox News, Green explained his decision, writing: “I chose God.”
(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
As Green discussed his piece on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” he said: “There’s a huge paradigm change between owning a company and stewarding it, and we want to be stewards of what God has given us.”
Since its inception in Oklahoma in 1970 on a $600 loan, according to David and his wife Barbara Green’s origin story, Hobby Lobby has grown to have over 900 stores across the country with over 43,000 employees in 47 states.
“As an owner, there are certain rights and responsibilities, including the right to sell the company and keep the profits for yourself and your family. As our company grew, that idea began to bother me more and more,” Green said. “I was responsible for the mission and purpose of what I’d been given. When I realized that I was just a steward, it was easy to give away my ownership.
“God was the true owner of my business.”
Regarding his decision to give away the ownership of the company, Green cited Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard, and Alan Barnhart of Barnhart Crane, who have made similar decisions to place faith before fortune and give away ownership of their companies.
He has transferred 100 percent of Hobby Lobby’s voting stock into a trust where it will be stewarded by a succession of trustees, so that Green and his wife no longer think of themselves as “owners.”
David Green, founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Throughout his 52-year journey with the Hobby Lobby franchise, Green has kept his dedication to the Bible at the forefront and the Christian message at the core of the company’s ethos. It has long been Green’s policy to close all stores on Sunday to allow associates time for family and church and to pay employees well above the national minimum wage.
Feeling blessed by God for the success of his chain of art and craft stores, Green has also given back to society by using Hobby Lobby as a channel through which to support ministries and plant churches all over the world. He encourages other leaders to consider if they are owners or stewards and to reflect on where their success comes from.
“I’ve seen many a business with the greatest of ideas not make it, and yet others with the simplest of ideas thrive,” he said. “I believe that God is the one who grants success, and with it the responsibility to be a good manager.”
Hobby Lobby co-founders David Green (L) and Barbara Green (R). (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Arizona Republican governor frontrunner Kari Lake responded on Friday to Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) “anti-endorsement” efforts, saying a television ad she sponsored and recently broadcasted caused a surge in campaign donations.
“Thank you for your generous in-kind contribution to my campaign,” Lake wrote mockingly in a letter to Cheney that was shared on Twitter.
“Your recent television ad urging Arizonans not to vote for me is doing just the opposite,” she continued. “Our campaign donations are skyrocketing and our website nearly crashed from traffic as people rushed to learn more about my plan to put Arizona First and join our historic political movement.”
Lake, who is actively campaigning against Democrat Katie Hobbs in the race for Arizona governor, said Cheney’s effort to derail her campaign resulted in the “biggest fundraiser yet,” claiming she raised $300,000 in a single day.
We JUST hit $300K raised in a SINGLE DAY! Shoutout to Liz Cheney, my biggest fundraiser yet ♥️
With less than two weeks to go before the November elections, Lake leads Hobbs in a FOX 10 InsiderAdvantage news poll 54–43 percent.
“In fact, my team tells me your commercial should add another 10 points to our lead!” Lake said in the letter. “I guess that’s why they call the Cheney anti-endorsement the gift that keeps on giving.”
Matt Towery, who was among those conducting the InsiderAdvantage poll, believes Hobbs’ reluctance to participate in a debate against Lake may be contributing to the gap between the two widening in recent weeks.
‘The Great Task’
Cheney’s television ad is part of “The Great Task,” a multi-candidate political action committee (PAC) sponsored by the outgoing GOP congresswoman.
In a statement, the PAC announced that it’s making “a significant media buy” in Arizona to air a 30-second ad urging voters to reject Lake and Rep. Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for Arizona’s secretary of state.
Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives Mark Finchem speaks at the “Let the Church ROAR” National Prayer Rally on the National Mall in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
The ad, dubbed “Honor,” is part of an over $500,000 media buy and will air on broadcast, online, and streaming platforms across Arizona.
“You have a candidate for governor, Kari Lake, you have a candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, both of whom have said that they will only honor the results of an election if they agree with it,” Cheney said in the clip.
Cheney, who has been called a “Republican in name only” by others in her party and lost the GOP primary to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in August, vowed last month that she’s “going to do everything” in her power to make sure Lake is not elected.
On Thursday, Cheney announced her endorsement of Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Wyoming Republican’s first-ever endorsement of a Democrat.
Cheney, who has become one of the most vocal voices in the Republican Party against former President Donald Trump, was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. She is also one of two Republican members sitting on the Democrat-led House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
Republican Mehmet Oz has pulled ahead of John Fetterman in the first Pennsylvania Senate poll released after this week’s highly anticipated debate.
According to a survey of 1,000 likely voters from Wick Insights, 47.6 percent of respondents said they would vote for Oz if the election were held today, versus 45.9 percent who said they would choose Fetterman. A small sample of voters who said they were undecided broke heavily for Oz over Fetterman—64.4 percent to 35.6 percent—when pressed to choose either the Democrat or Republican.
The poll, conducted by text message and landline, is the first indicator that Fetterman’s shaky debate performance on Tuesday hurt his chances in November. Fetterman narrowly led most polls conducted before the debate, though his lead has closed dramatically since the summer amid a flurry of Republican attacks on his record on criminal justice reform.
Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May, fumbled repeatedly during Tuesday’s debate, the only one held in the Senate contest. He gave incoherent answers on the wealth tax and his position on fracking. He also repeatedly declined to release his medical records, saying he was being transparent by “showing up” for the debate.
Some Democrats expressed alarm over Fetterman’s performance. Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said Fetterman’s performance was “hard to watch,” though he expressed confidence the Democrat will pull out a victory next month. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) was caught on a hot mic on Thursday telling President Joe Biden that Fetterman’s debate “didn’t hurt us too much.”
Slightly more Biden voters than Trump voters took part in the Wick Insights survey, in line with the results from 2020. According to the poll, 42 percent of voters said that economic issues—the cost of living and jobs—were the most important factor in their vote. Roughly 32 percent listed “threats to democracy” as the issue motivating their decision. Just 10.2 percent said abortion was the most important issue, while 6.7 percent said the same of immigration.
A Virginia public library forked over $40,000 to the creator of the New York Times‘s 1619 Project to speak as part of its “banned books week,” the Daily Wirereported on Thursday.
The Arlington Public Library paid Nikole Hannah-Jones the princely sum to deliver a speech titled “1619 and the Fight for Democracy.” The talk focused almost entirely on backlash to her project, which claims that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. Historians havecriticized Hannah-Jones and the Times for the 1619 Project’s inaccuracies, although the project has not actually been banned.
Hannah-Jones is one of several American writers who rake in money from lucrative speaking engagements while accusing America of systemic racism. Universities and public school districts have paid Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi tens of thousands of dollars to give talks on concepts like “white fragility” and “antiracism.”
The library’s contract with Hannah-Jones prevented recording of the event and pledged to pay her $100,000 if the contract were breached. The talk was live-streamed on YouTube but has since gone private. It is still available on an internet archive.
The Daily Wire obtained internal correspondence from library officials that shows Hannah-Jones’s visit pushed the library “$7,500 over and above the ‘approved’ budget.” One official noted in the lead-up to the event that it was “getting a lot of very ignorant and negative comments” from community members.
The Pulitzer Center awarded Hannah-Jones a prize for the project and pushed for it to be part of school curricula nationwide. Hannah-Jones has walked back the project’s scope at times, saying it is “not a history” but “a work of journalism.”
The Washington Free Beacon was in attendance at the event, but the questioning period ended as its reporters approached the microphone.
Nevada Dem campaigns with drummer of band described as ‘far beyond terrible’
For Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, unpopular president Joe Biden is a bit too radioactive to bring to the state for a campaign rally. So with Election Day less than two weeks away, the embattled senator is turning to another high-profile surrogate: the drummer from pop rock band Imagine Dragons.
The profitable percussionist, Daniel Platzman, joined Cortez Masto at a Thursday night event at downtown Las Vegas’s ReBar. Platzman told the city’s NBC affiliate it was “very exciting” to appear alongside the senator, who is embroiled in a high-profile reelection bid against Republican Adam Laxalt. Cortez Masto herself did not appear in the local outlet’s coverage of the event.
Cortez Masto’s decision to campaign with Platzman comes just days after the incumbent refused to say whether she would do the same with Biden. Asked by ABC’s Rachel Scott if she would “campaign with President Biden” during a Monday Good Morning America segment, Cortez Masto gave a non-answer, saying that while Biden is “welcome” in her state, her “focus is on getting out and talking to Nevadans.” Biden visited a trio of western states roughly two weeks ago but did not stop in Nevada, a state he won by roughly 2 points in 2020.
Two years after that narrow win, Biden’s political standing in the Silver State is considerably diminished. Just 39 percent of Nevadans approve of Biden’s job as president, compared with 53 percent who disapprove, according to Civiqs. It’s unclear, however, if Platzman and his fellow Imagine Dragon bandmates enjoy more support than the historically unpopular president.
After the band’s award-winning 2012 debut studio album, Night Visions, Imagine Dragons has faced intense criticism for its turn to repetitive, pop-oriented, platitude-filled tracks. In 2019, for example, music publication Spin published an Imagine Dragons takedown under the headline, “Is Imagine Dragons The Worst Band Ever?”
“Imagine Dragons’ music is aggressively unpleasant, and it’s only natural to grasp for something even louder to distract oneself,” the piece says. “Imagine Dragons are somewhere far beyond terrible. … The lyrics, a composite of motivational platitudes and pseudo-dramatic yelps, barely merit repeating.”
Cortez Masto, who did not return a request for comment, will nevertheless hope that the event with Platzman reverses a string of bad polls and carries her over the line in her race against Laxalt. According to an October Trafalgar Group survey, Laxalt leads Cortez Masto by 4 points.
Cortez Masto is not the only beleaguered politician to embrace Imagine Dragons while facing a difficult reelection campaign. Former Kentucky Republican governor Matt Bevin in January 2019 praised the band’s halftime performance at the College Football Playoff national championship game, which he called “entertaining.” Months later, Bevin narrowly lost reelection to Democrat Andy Beshear.
DUBAI (Reuters)—Iranians kept up protests calling for the toppling of the Islamic Republic on Friday, as activists posted videos of crowds demanding the death of the supreme leader and the widely feared Basij militia he unleashed against them.
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody last month.
They have turned into a popular revolt by furious Iranians from all layers of society, posing one of the boldest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution.
Video footage on social media showed protesters calling for the death of “dictator” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Basij, which has played a major role in the crackdown on demonstrators.
Commentary on the video said it was recorded on Friday in the city of Zahedan, close to Iran‘s southeastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The activist 1500tasvir Twitter account posted the video showing demonstrators chanting “Death to Khamenei”. Another video purported to show a 12-year-old protester who was shot in the head.
Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of social media videos.
On Thursday, a provincial security council dismissed Zahedan’s police chief and the head of a police station near where dozens of protesters were killed four weeks ago in the deadliest crackdown since the start of nationwide protests.
The council said the families of the victims would be compensated and a legal investigation had been opened that may lead to further measures against those who provoked the violence, “rioters” and any officials suspected of wrongdoing.
CALL FOR JUSTICE
Zahedan’s top Sunni cleric in predominantly Shi’ite Iran welcomed the move but called for an independent investigation of the killings and said any senior officials behind the crackdown should be brought to justice.
“We demand from the security council and the government that, regardless of how high in the ranks this error and crime reaches, the (guilty) official should be dismissed and brought to trial,” Molavi Abdolhamid said in a Friday prayers sermon, according to his website.
Amnesty International has said security forces killed at least 66 people in the violent crackdown on Sept. 30.
Fars news agency, seen as close to the Revolutionary Guards, blamed the violence in Zahedan on protesters.
“A number of rioters were shooting at people and security forces from rooftops during today’s disturbances… Unfortunately, a 12-year-old child was shot in the face and killed,” Fars reported.
The provincial security council has said armed dissidents had provoked the clashes, leading to innocent people’s deaths, but admitted “shortcomings” by police.
One person was shot dead, by “unidentified individuals” and 14 people, including security forces, were injured in Zahedan, the council said, according to state media.
Videos posted by 1500tasvir showed what it said were protests in the northwestern city of Mahabad with demonstrators running away from what appeared to be tear gas fumes, while another video showed protesters making petrol bombs.
‘ILL TREATMENT’
Iran has blamed its foreign enemies and their agents for the unrest. The Intelligence Ministry and the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards on Friday accused spy agencies from the United States, Britain, Israel, and Saudi Arabia of having orchestrated the unrest to destabilize the Islamic Republic.
“Precise monitoring over more than a year … and documents obtained during the recent disturbances provide much evidence of a wide role played by the American terrorist regime in designing, implementing, and maintaining the unrest,” the two security bodies said in a joint statement.
Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said its intelligence unit had foiled a bomb attack in the southern city of Shiraz, two days after a deadly shooting at a shrine there, the guards’ news agency Sepah News said.
Wednesday’s shooting, which was claimed by Islamic State, killed 15 worshippers at the Shah Cheragh shrine.
Government-organized demonstrations across the country against the Shiraz attack were broadcast live on state TV. Demonstrators waving the Iranian flag, carrying Khamenei’s photos, shouted “death to America,” “death to Israel.”
The U.N. human rights office on Friday voiced concern at Iran‘s treatment of detained protesters and said authorities refused to release some of the bodies of those killed.
Rights groups have said at least 250 protesters have been killed and thousands arrested across Iran.
“We’ve seen a lot of ill-treatment … but also harassment of the families of protesters,” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a Geneva press briefing, citing multiple sources.
“Of particular concern is information that authorities have been moving injured protesters from hospitals to detention facilities and refusing to release the bodies of those killed to their families,” she said.
Shamdasani added that in some cases, authorities were placing conditions on the release of bodies, asking families not to hold a funeral or speak to the media. Protesters in detention were also sometimes being denied medical treatment, she said.
Iran has denied allegations by human rights groups that it abuses prisoners.
(Additional reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva; Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by William Maclean, Andrew Heavens, and Grant McCool)
Legal group wants internal documents about U.S. funding for Palestinians
A legal advocacy group says the Biden administration is violating U.S. law by funneling more than half-a-billion dollars to the Palestinian government and is demanding the administration release a slew of internal documents that the group believes will reveal an illegal effort “to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem,” according to a copy of the Freedom of Information Act request provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
America First Legal, a group of conservative lawyers and activists, hit the State Department this week with a FOIA request that instructs it to furnish a slew of internal documents about U.S. funding for the Palestinian Authority, which was frozen under former president Donald Trump but resumed when Joe Biden took office.
The legal group suspects that a portion of this taxpayer aid is being used to support Palestinian-led projects in Jerusalem that could undermine Israel’s control of its capital city. The Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, but the Biden administration, while formally upholding the policy, has moved to open a Palestinian Affairs unit in the city, fueling concerns that the consulate is working with the Palestinian government to erode Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.
The Biden administration’s funding may also violate a bipartisan U.S. law that prevents taxpayer funds from reaching the Palestinian government until it ends a terrorist payment program known as “pay-to-slay,” in which imprisoned militants and their families receive stipends. The Free Beaconreported earlier this month on a non-public State Department report to Congress that determined the Palestinian government is still paying terrorists, even as U.S. aid dollars flow.
“Make no mistake—the purpose here, contrary to U.S. law, is creating facts on the ground to undermine Israel’s borders and sovereignty and to reverse the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city,” Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior counselor and director of oversight, said in a statement. “The Biden administration is pumping hundreds of millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars into ‘projects’ that directly benefit both the corrupt Palestinian Authority and the terrorist Hamas dictatorship.”
The organization’s FOIA centers on a State Department fact sheet from March that outlined projects run by the United States’ Palestinian Affairs Unit, which was opened to increase diplomacy with the Palestinian government. The State Department says this office is responsible for partnering “with Palestinian and American organizations to support projects in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza [Strip] that increase exchange between our two peoples and advance shared goals on topics such as education, entrepreneurship, environmental protection, English language learning, science and technology, art and culture, gender equality, human rights, and democracy, among others.”
These programs also include “university linkage projects connecting American and Palestinian universities directly for exchange and collaboration for students and faculty,” according to the State Department.
America First Legal wants to know the nature of these programs and whether they are benefiting groups that do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. The FOIA request instructs the State Department to turn over “all records” identifying these “Palestinian and American organizations,” as well as the specific projects they are working on.
The State Department fact sheet also references “American spaces in Jerusalem Ramallah and Hebron” that serve as “venues and hubs for many of these” unnamed programs. America First Legal is asking for “all records identifying, about, regarding, or referencing each such ‘American Space,’ including the street address and budget of each.”
Wild sought federal funds for children’s psych hospital she defended in a sodomy case
Rep. Susan Wild (D., Pa.) lashed out Friday over a campaign ad that seized on a Washington Free Beaconreport about her work for a children’s psychiatric hospital embroiled in a molestation scandal.
“Oh shut up,” Wild tweeted in response to the Congressional Leadership Fund’s ad slamming Wild for defending KidsPeace in a 2005 lawsuit involving a patient who sued the organization after he was sodomized by a counselor. Wild argued that the rape was a “medical incident” and that the KidsPeace’s insurance company should have to pay the settlement to the boy.
Wild, best known for Zooming into a campaign event while driving, did not respond to the Free Beacon’s request for comment on the story cited in the ad. But she defended her legal work for KidsPeace in her Friday outburst, saying she “had nothing to do with” the underlying molestation claim and dismissing the Congressional Leadership Fund as “liars.” Wild did not dispute that she referred to the molestation as a “medical incident” in court filings.
Wild’s meltdown comes as she is locked in a close race with Republican challenger Lisa Scheller, whom Wild beat in 2020 by just 14,000 votes. Republicans believe they can flip the seat as voters have soured on Democrats over the economy and crime.
Dozens of KidsPeace patients and their families have sued the organization over the years for negligence. Wild represented KidsPeace in two cases in the early 2000s. She represented the organization as part of a lawsuit involving a former patient, Matthew Craft, who sued KidsPeace for negligence for failing to prevent his rape in 1998 at the hands of KidsPeace counselor Dean Sine. Craft said Sine anally raped him and then threatened him from speaking out. He said that KidsPeace staff treated him for constipation after the brutal assault.
Craft said KidsPeace was negligent in employing Sine, who was indicted in 1992 for manslaughter in the suffocation death of another KidsPeace patient. Sine was acquitted, but he was later convicted of molesting another minor in an incident unrelated to KidsPeace.
Though Wild and KidsPeace did not deny the assault took place, Wild argued in court filings that KidsPeace did not have a “crystal ball” to predict Sine’s actions and was thus not negligent for preventing the rape, which she referred to as a “medical incident.”
Wild represented KidsPeace in another insurance dispute in 2007, after a youth care worker at a facility in Minnesota said she was raped by a patient. Wild argued that KidsPeace’s insurance company should have to pay the $2 million settlement to the former employee.
Wild earlier this year asked the House Appropriations Committee for $1 million in federal funding for KidsPeace to upgrade one of its Pennsylvania facilities. The Democrat has not addressed why she selected KidsPeace for potential federal funding through the Community Funding Program. In a letter to constituents last year, she said she would select roughly 10 organizations for a congressional funding program out of hundreds of expected applicants. The organizations would need to “fill a clear and present need in the community” and have “proven, widespread, and robust support from the community,” she said.
Wild has maintained other ties to KidsPeace since joining Congress. She toured a hospital in her district with KidsPeace lobbyist Caren Chaffee. She also visited a KidsPeace facility that has a federal contract to house unaccompanied minors brought to the United States illegally by their parents. Wild said she “was relieved to see that the children at KidsPeace appear to be housed in a safe, clean, and comfortable setting” and that the organization was “experienced in caring for children and adolescents with behavioral and mental health challenges.”
‘I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people’
What happened? Journalists and other Democrats have already started blaming voters for the party’s (likely) defeat in the midterm elections.
Seriously? Yes. As the Washington Free Beaconreported earlier this month, Democrats and their allies have a history of lashing out when American voters decline to validate their preferences at the ballot box. The election is in 12 days, but things aren’t looking great for Democrats. Polls suggest they are going to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate as well. That’s why the voter-blaming is already underway.
What are they saying? What they always say in these situations. That the 2022 election is the most important election of our lifetimes and anyone who doesn’t vote for Democrats is ignorant at best and evil at worst.
See for yourself:
“I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people.”
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.)
“A vote for Republicans might just be the last one you ever cast.”
— Ryan Cooper, MSNBC opinion columnist
“The United States is facing the greatest danger to its constitutional system since at least the 1950s, if not the *18*50s, and millions of people are like: Yeah, but gas, man.”
— Tom Nichols, Lincoln Project alum and “defender of experts”
“It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse, and the reversal of everything from Social Security & Medicare to student loan relief [because] they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices.”
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid, MSNBC host
“I’m not going to say that the GOP are Nazis at this point or whatever, but it certainly sounds very familiar to what happened in Germany, which is a bunch of citizens, Adolf Hitler gets a third of the vote. Nobody thought it could happen there. They kind of went along because they said he would solve the economy and fix inflation.”
— Matthew Dowd, MSNBC contributor and self-described “renowned thought leader”
“Voters who follow the news closely will likely find it hard to believe that so many fellow Americans would even consider casting ballots for election deniers and Republicans who betrayed democracy. But ‘low information’ Americans are the ones who will decide the midterm elections.”
— Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist
“Aggravated by declining economic prospects, overwhelmed by the opioid epidemic, and utterly divorced from mainstream news sources, [Republican voters] unsurprisingly glob onto conspiracies, hold up former president Donald Trump as their champion, and refuse to process any information that conflicts with the victimhood they embrace.”
— Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist
“At some point, you have to accept that we get the government we deserve. If voters want ignorant, unhinged, and unserious leaders, they’ll vote for many of these Republicans.”
— Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist
“Polls suggest that the economy and crime are among the most important issues for voters in the midterms—and that, as a result, Republicans are surging in the home stretch. I think a lot of voters are missing the point. These elections are actually a referendum on whether you favor the continuation of democracy in America—and Ukraine.”
— Max Boot, Washington Post columnist
“In four short weeks, the nation faces the most important midterm elections of my lifetime. This year, the choice is between our democracy as we know it—messy, incremental, often frustrating—and a hard-edged performative populism fueled by resentment, misogyny, and racism.”
— Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist
“The midterms are giving me agita. Aside from the MAGA cult members (for whom no crime Trump pulls is disqualifying), and the GOP (who would support a potato for Senate if they thought it could win), I am increasingly despairing of people who seem to enjoy being willfully uninformed about everything—facts, history, consequences, Biden’s accomplishments, etc. Maybe the Founding Fathers had it right about the Electoral College system because I honestly find it hard to trust ordinary Americans to vote intelligently and non-tribal-ly than ever before.”
‘Joe Biden’s hybrid hawk-dove-ostrich foreign policy is doomed to failure in a harsh world that demands constancy and strength.’
You’ve probably heard politicians with muscular and aggressive foreign-policy views called “hawks” and those with timid or hesitant views called “doves.” As a third avian category, I would add the “ostriches,” who stick their heads in the sand to ignore gathering threats. Most politicians belong to one of these flocks. But not Joe Biden.
Even by the low standards of a politician, Joe Biden has changed positions dramatically and frequently. Elected to the Senate in 1972, in his own words, “as a 29-year-old kid against the war in Vietnam,” he expressed dovish views for the last two decades of the Cold War. But after the Persian Gulf War and well into the Iraq War, he was reborn as an avenging Wilsonian hawk. After setbacks in Iraq, however, he reverted to his dovish past. Along the way, he has also exhibited ostrich-like tendencies, simply sticking his head in the sand about threats, especially those coming from Russia and China. Biden’s erratic, inconsistent views seem hard to square with a coherent, integrated worldview. “I wish I could say Biden was a student of history,” said one senior Obama administration official during the debates about the Afghanistan surge, but “that’s not Biden. He has gut instincts.” Unfortunately, these instincts tend to line up with Democratic political trends, not America’s national interest.
Having campaigned against the Vietnam War, a young Biden reflected his party’s Blame America First mindset. As North Vietnamese forces advanced on Saigon in April 1975, Biden voted against a bill to give last-minute aid to South Vietnam and to authorize the use of American troops to evacuate our citizens. In an eerie preview of his misjudgments about Afghanistan 46 years later, Biden concluded that “the time has come—perhaps it is past—for a swift, uneventful evacuation of all Americans from South Vietnam before the situation develops wherein it would take large numbers of American troops to bring out our citizens.” Biden understood that an evacuation was necessary, but he opposed the military measures necessary to conduct a safe evacuation. The Senate passed the bill but it failed in the House, and Saigon fell a few days later. American helicopters scrambled to evacuate our embassy. The desperate scenes on a rooftop in Saigon would only be surpassed by those at an airport in Kabul.
That same month, Biden also foreshadowed his lifelong hostility to defense spending. He proposed to slash more than 10 percent from the Ford administration’s defense budget, dangerous under any circumstances but especially during a foreign-policy crisis. The amendment was defeated easily, with even liberal stalwarts like Walter Mondale opposing it. “The Congress decided against the war in Vietnam,” Mondale explained. “We did not vote to become an isolationist country.” But Biden did, complaining that defense spending took priority over social spending and that we shouldn’t base the defense budget on “everything our adversary can do”—which is of course exactly how we should craft the defense budget.
For the rest of the Cold War, Biden took conventional dovish positions. He opposed higher defense spending, new missiles, and advanced weapons, fretting that we would gain the upper hand against Soviet Russia. By the same flawed logic, he opposed missile-defense systems. Biden also championed deeply flawed arms-control agreements such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of 1979, which died politically with Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan that year, but which Biden tried to resuscitate for years. Biden opposed the deployment of medium-range missiles to Europe in the 1980s and called for a nuclear freeze, which would’ve only frozen Russia’s advantage in place. He detested the Somoza government in Nicaragua and opposed Reagan’s funding of the Contra rebels in the 1980s, just as he opposed Reagan’s backing of the pro-American government of El Salvador against a Marxist insurgency. At every turn, Biden hewed to the Democratic mainstream of Blame America First policies.
Biden’s vote against the Persian Gulf War concluded his first flight as a dove. Though it’s largely forgotten now, the vote to authorize military force to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was very close, 52–47, with a few Democrats joining nearly all Republicans. Biden asked, “What vital interests of the United States of America justifies sending young Americans to their death in the sands of the Arabian Peninsula?” The way Biden phrased the question is telling. Kuwait isn’t really on the Arabian Peninsula, so Biden apparently presupposed Saddam might not stop there but rather invade more neighboring countries. That threat was a centerpiece of the case for war, as was the threat to the region’s oil supply, on which our prosperity depended more in those days. Yet Biden seemed indifferent, condemning “a precipitous war that will divide and weaken our nation.” Biden was wrong as usual: after a punishing six-week air campaign, our troops destroyed what was then the fourth-largest army in the world in four days.
After the war, Biden shed the soft white down of a dove for the razor talons of a hawk. Perhaps he had recognized the error of his ways. More likely, he recognized that Bill Clinton had at least claimed to support the war and had chosen Al Gore as his running mate, one of the few Democratic senators to vote for the war. In any event, Biden espoused bellicose interventionist views for the next decade.
Biden began his transformation by overcompensating for his misjudgment on Iraq. He acknowledged his error, but that wasn’t enough. He criticized President George H. W. Bush for not removing Saddam from power altogether, which he called a “fundamental mistake.” Biden also affirmed that Iraq had a program for weapons of mass destruction, stating in one Senate hearing that inspections and sanctions couldn’t stop the program—only “taking Saddam down” could. These words later came back to haunt him in the 2008 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
Next, Biden was particularly belligerent about the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. He bragged that he was “the first guy to call for air strikes in Bosnia,” without articulating a vital American interest to get involved in that country’s civil war. He boasted that he “was suggesting we bomb Belgrade,” the Serbian capital, and also “blow up all the bridges” between Serbia and Bosnia. Biden condemned “the bankrupt policy in the former Yugoslavia, begun by the Bush administration and continued with minor adjustments by the Clinton administration.” He added that Clinton had a “policy of despair and cowardice.” Even worse in his eyes were our European allies, whom he accused of “moral rape.”
Finally and most notoriously, Biden supported the Iraq War in 2003—until it became politically inconvenient. Again, it’s largely forgotten now, but this vote wasn’t close, 77–23. Besides Biden, among the Democratic senators who voted for the war were Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Four months after the war started, Biden stood by his vote. “I would vote that way again today,” he declared, while adding “the cost of not acting against Saddam I think would have been much greater.” A year later, he maintained that his “vote was just” even if the war itself was “unwise.” But by late 2005, as he prepared again to run for president, Biden finally recanted and admitted his vote was a “mistake.” And he’s spent the rest of his career falsely denying his early support for the war.
Biden has followed the Democratic Party back to its dovish, Blame America First roots. He opposed the Iraq surge, which he called a “tragic mistake,” even when it turned out to be a smashing success. As vice president, he stridently opposed a similar surge in Afghanistan as well, subjecting Obama to what Secretary of Defense Bob Gates characterized as constant “Chinese water torture.” He opposed the operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, alone among Obama’s senior team. Biden also didn’t join other senior members of Obama’s war cabinet in advocating the Petraeus plan to arm Syrian opposition fighters in 2012. To be fair, Biden did counsel against the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the military intervention in Libya; even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Whether dove or hawk, over the years Biden also has behaved like an ostrich, sticking his head in the sand about threats, especially those from Russia and China. Biden is particularly allergic to acknowledging geopolitical competition and rivalry, and heaven forbid a “cold war”—even during the actual Cold War. In 1983, Biden asserted that “we’re not in a cold war,” but as a result of Reagan’s policies, “we’re a whole heck of a lot closer than we were two years ago.” When Mitt Romney cited Russia as a chief “geopolitical foe” in 2012, Biden mocked his “Cold War mindset.”
The same goes for China. In 2019, Biden defended the Chinese Communists as “not bad folks.” Even after decades of Chinese crimes and aggression, Biden incredibly declared that “they’re not competition for us.” Biden’s ostrich routine continued as president. At his first speech to the United Nations, Biden insisted that “we are not seeking a new Cold War.” Of course we’re not and we never did, with Russia or China. Yet China has waged a cold war against us for decades, so our choice isn’t whether to seek one, but whether to win. Biden was so timid, however, that he couldn’t even bring himself to mention China’s name in the speech. Biden has always struggled to see China as a competitor or a threat. He summed up his own long-standing views in 2011 when he recalled a trip to China in 1979 as a junior senator: “I believed then what I believe now: that a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America.”
Talk about sticking your head in the sand.
The president’s flip flopping between hawk, dove, and ostrich was on full display this year. In March, he showed reckless aggression when speaking about Russia, bellowing, “for God’s sake this man [Putin] cannot remain in power.” Then, in August, he showed his dovish side continuing nuclear negotiations with Iran, while Iranian leaders gloated about the attempted assassination of author Salman Rushdie on American soil and began sending suicide drones to Russia, for use in Ukraine. And last month, Biden burrowed his head further in the sand on the China threat, once again declaring “we do not seek conflict. We do not seek a Cold War.”
Joe Biden’s hybrid hawk-dove-ostrich foreign policy is doomed to failure in a harsh world that demands constancy and strength. A man with such an inconsistent philosophy is unreliable, unstable, and unsuited for the most important foreign policy job in the world.
Tom Cotton, a Republican, is a United States senator from Arkansas. This excerpt is from his new book, Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power, which will be published by Twelve on November 1.
Amid a continuing rise in inflation, excessive federal spending, and growing public alarm about the state of the economy, the Nov. 8 midterm elections may represent one of the last opportunities to attain a legislative majority willing and able to reverse catastrophic fiscal policies pushing the country toward an implosion similar to the debt crisis that befell Greece in 2009, according to one economic expert.
Inflation continues to play a destabilizing role and exert worsening strains on voters. The latest figures indicate that in September, the core personal consumption index, excluding food and energy, rose 0.5 percent compared to August, marking a 5.1 percent increase over the course of 2022. During the same month, Americans’ income had risen 0.4 percent, unadjusted for inflation, while their overall spending went up 0.6 percent.
In June 2022, inflation hit 9.1 percent, its highest peak since November 1981. The annual rate, for the year leading up to September, stands at 8.2 percent, with the next reading scheduled for Nov. 10.
These figures are largely the result of an expansionist monetary policy on the part of the Biden administration that has resulted in too much money chasing too few goods, some economists say. The federal government’s aggressive buying of Treasury bonds has provided banks with a surfeit of liquid cash to loan out to borrowers.
But in the view of one expert, the most troubling figure of all, and the harbinger of even more severe economic woes to come, absent a sharp reversal in fiscal policy, is the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which currently stands at 125 percent, meaning that the government’s debts vastly exceed the entire value of goods and services produced by the country in a year.
Ivan Pongracic, a professor in the economics department at Hillsdale College in Michigan, finds the figure especially concerning when compared to the figure of 56 percent in 2000.
“We’ve seen the ratio more than double in the last 20 years, which is astonishing. The federal government is spending a quarter of all income generated in this country. The federal budget is about $6 trillion at this point, and GDP is about $22 trillion,” Pongracic told The Epoch Times.
Legislative Priorities
If the Republican Party does well in the midterms and retakes the House and Senate, one of its urgent tasks will be to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio, Pongracic said. This should be at the top of any fiscal agenda if lawmakers wish to avert a full-blown debt crisis, but a plan of action will require reversing the current state of apathy about the rise in debt to such hitherto unimaginable proportions, Pongracic believes.
“Now it’s at 125 percent, so it’s just grown completely out of control, and I think everybody’s gotten quite blasé about it. People just think the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, and we can just keep borrowing without limit,” he said.
Part of the issue is that Americans have not experienced a Greece-style default in the past and some may have been lulled into a sense that debt can continue to grow without serious consequences.
“How much further we can go with this level of debt, nobody knows, but at some point, if we continue down this road, some confidence will be lost in the U.S. government’s ability to service the debt, meaning pay off the debt as it comes due and continue to pay off the interest. If we get to that point, it would lead to an economic crisis, as we saw with Greece, which had about a 150 percent debt-to-GDP ratio before they had a massive sovereign debt crisis,” Pongracic stated.
Some people may simply not be informed enough about the economy to see such parallels, or they imagine that the United States enjoys a firewall thanks to the sheer size of its economy, but such assumptions are naïve at best and dangerous at worst, in Pongracic’s view.
“People say, the United States is not Greece, Greece is a tiny country, and the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, so you can’t compare the two. But it’s a matter of perceptions on the part of the lenders to the government, the bondholders. If the bondholders sense that the government will not repay its debt on schedule, we end up with a sovereign debt crisis,” he said.
“If the government can’t continue to borrow, it will, in a very short time, have to restrict its spending to [what it receives in] tax revenue, and that would mean sudden dramatic cuts in the budget. This would be a harsh time to have to deal with, it would lead to an economic crisis,” he added.
The problem with such a skewed debt-to-GDP ratio, he elaborated, is not simply that the government owes a lot of money. The costs of servicing the debt are increasingly difficult for the federal bureaucracy to manage, and it must continually dip ever deeper into its operating budget to pay the interest on the debt, Pongracic said. In the 2008 crisis, and over the period from 2001 through 2022 more generally, this was not so hard to do because interest rates were at record low levels, and the same applied to the interest on government-issued Treasury bonds, he explained.
The picture today is entirely different, with the interest rate on benchmark Treasury bonds having doubled from two percent to four percent.
“Not only is the debt increasing, meaning larger interest payments, but the interest rate on that debt is rising also. So the government will have to start spending a larger and larger part of its budget on just servicing the debt, and it will have to make difficult choices on where to cut its budget,” said Pongracic.
State of Denial
With few exceptions, the administration and lawmakers are in a state of “complete denial” about the worsening economic picture and are acting as if spending on any number of programs and continue without limit indefinitely, Pongracic said.
While President Joe Biden on Oct. 21 made public comments about having gotten the federal deficit down from $2.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021 to $1.4 trillion in the current fiscal year, it is important to keep this change in perspective. A deficit of $1.4 trillion is still quite high and much of the decline, Pongracic pointed out, has to do with the phasing out of some programs and policies that the government put to use to combat COVID-19. The decline does not indicate higher levels of parsimony and cautiousness on the administration’s part.
“President Biden is bragging about the largest deficit reduction in history, which is true, but that’s only because it started at such an incredibly high level,” he added.
Besides the example of Greece in 2009, Pongracic said that current trends, and possible outcomes, prompt him to recall what happened to the nation of Yugoslavia following the death of the nation’s leader, Marshal Josip Broz Tito on May 4, 1980.
Tito had used his considerable charisma to woo lenders and borrow huge amounts of money, but following his death, the International Monetary Fund and other creditors demanded repayment of the nation’s debts, Pongracic reflected. This prompted the government to print huge amounts of money with which to pay the lenders, which in the late 1980s led to one of the severest cases of hyperinflation in all the last century, economic collapse, and a civil war in which a quarter of a million people died, said Pongracic.
Can We Reverse Course?
Other economists are largely in agreement with Pongracic about the steps that a hypothetical GOP majority could follow from January onward to lift the nation out of its economic rut, but diverge on the question of how likely such an opportunity is to present itself.
“I think that fiscal, and regulatory, policy can play the primary role in stopping inflation. I believe that President Ronald Reagan’s fiscal efforts in the early 1980s were more important than Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker’s,” Brian Domitrovic, a professor of history at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, told The Epoch Times, referring to when the Fed brought interest rates up to nearly 20 percent to bring down soaring inflation.
“Fiscal reforms such as marginal tax cuts—and they must be of the marginal variety—and deregulation have large implications in terms of increased production, which leaders to lower prices,” he added.
Gary Wolfram, a colleague of Pongracic’s at Hillsdale College, concurred that a sharp reduction in the federal deficit may be the only way to curb inflation.
“The long-term solution is to reduce the debt by reducing deficit spending,” he said.
The current situation is largely the responsibility of the Biden administration and its profligate habits, as well as its opposition to the pipelines on which the energy sector has long depended, agreed Jeffrey Haymond, a professor of economics at Cedarville University in Ohio. Haymond sees the heavy-handed tendencies carrying over into the financial regulatory space, where guidance from the SEC has a notably harsher tone than under previous presidents.
“The problem is not just Biden, it’s the Biden administration, which is committed to this agenda which is anti-business and anti-production, and the issue is bigger than just the oil and gas industry, it’s exemplified by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s assault on private equity. They’re trying to change the rules on that right now,” Haymond said, alluding to efforts underway on the part of the agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to tighten the reporting requirements for investment advisers and give regulators radically expanded powers over the private funds space.
Manufacturing Crisis
The administration has also assured itself continued oversight over large sectors of the economy and citizens’ lives through Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra’s announcement on Oct. 13 that COVID-19 still constitutes a public health emergency, Haymond noted.
“The continuation of the COVID-19 emergency allows them to dole out more benefits to people on Medicaid, leading to more people not being able to go back into the workforce, because they’re making more money, effectively, by being on the dole. Stopping the emergency would force them to get a job and actually be producers and not just consumers. Biden says he wants to lower the unemployment rate, but the reality is that labor force participation is abysmal,” he added.
In aggregate, these policies contribute to an overregulated and hyper-profligate nation sliding rapidly deeper into debt, with economic collapse a real possibility, unless opposition lawmakers can curb the worst tendencies and rein in deficit spending. But even in the best-case scenario, this is an uncertain prospect, Haymond believes.
“Nobody thinks that the Republicans are going to get 60 votes in the Senate. They might get 52 or 53. But they really need 67 because Biden will veto any change to spending plans,” he said.
But Republicans should be in a position to block new legislation that would make matters even worse. With 53 votes, they ought to be able to stop nominees put forward by the Biden administration and curtail some of the worst excesses, Haymond said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Democratic National Committee for comment.
As the midterms draw near, the Democratic House campaigns chief finds himself at risk of losing the race for New York’s 17th District, an area that President Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020.
As chairman of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) has been busy trying to help vulnerable Democrats across the country defend their seats in tough races.
That Maloney, 56, himself has become one of those Democrats represents a political embarrassment to the party, experts say, adding that this could be a harbinger for liberal defeats in many supposed Democrat strongholds.
The recent designation of the 17th Congressional District race to toss-up status by an independent pollster has created a pall amongst Democrats both in New York and nationally, said the experts.
Maloney is being challenged by Republican New York Assemblyman Mike Lawler.
The Lawler campaign has released internal polls by McLaughlin & Associates since the summer that show the state legislator with a lead over Maloney, but the latest polling is the first indication by independent pollsters that Maloney could lose.
Maloney having to fight for his seat will also cost resources for a party that is contending with competitive races all over the country, experts noted.
Democrats are now fending off challenges in 60 Congressional districts that were supposed to favor liberals, versus the GOP defending 23 Districts that were supposed to favor conservatives, according to data compiled by election handicapper Cook Political Report.
Cook is also the independent firm that just changed New York’s 17th District to a toss-up race.
New York Warnings in 2021 Not Heeded
“Long Island last year was the canary in the coal mine and the Democrats did not heed that warning,” Rob Astorino, a former County Executive of Westchester County, who ran as the Republican nominee for governor in New York in 2014 and lost to Andrew Cuomo, told the Epoch Times.
“Maloney and company completely ignored the issue of crime last year and let it get worse. And now they’re going to suffer the wrath of the voters for not paying attention to them and making their lives worse,” Astorino added.
Long Island will stick with the GOP again this year, he predicted.
The area will be joined by Nassau and Suffolk counties going “red”, which could portend conservative victories in statewide races, including the governor’s race, according to Astorino.
“That redness is going to seep throughout the Hudson Valley which is critical for [Republican gubernatorial candidate] Lee Zeldin to win, and it is what’s going to help Mike Lawler win and pull off the upset” against Maloney, he said.
New York Congressional District 17 Republican primary candidate state Assemblyman Mike Lawler (R-Pearl River), with bullhorn speaking at a July Westchester County rally for GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, is the projected favorite in a five-candidate Aug. 23 primary field to November’s general election. (Courtesy Like Lawler for Congress)
Abortion: Democrats ‘One Trick Pony’ Failed
Astorino accused New York Democrats of being a “one-trick pony,” and betting everything on the mobilizing effect of Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade on abortion, which remanded the issue back to the states.
Democrats thought the abortion decision would bail them out after liberals ignored the “economic issues and rampant crime” facing the state, he said.
“When they found out that that wasn’t true, and abortion wouldn’t save them, they just had no backup plan at all,” Astorino added.
Pollster Dick Morris credited New York’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin with deflating the issue in the state.
In a surprising ad, Zeldin told voters: “Let me be clear. As governor, I will not change and could not change New York’s abortion law.”
“In one sentence, there went the entire Democratic campaign,” Morris told The Epoch Times.
“They were crazy to put themselves in that vulnerable of a position where a single sentence could end their campaign. But they did and the Republicans took advantage of that,” he added.
Morris said he felt that the Republicans were gaining a lot of momentum overall, but especially in New York because the “Democrats have no stoppers.”
“They have no issue to distract and bring votes.”
Insincerity and Incompetence Top Issues
One political consultant said that it’s a bad time to be DCCC chairman, especially if you appear insincere or incompetent.
Tony Marsh, a media consultant with Savanna Communications, said that there are two underlying themes of this election for both Democrats and Republicans. The first is integrity; the second is political incompetence.
“Maloney has a little bit of each problem,” Tony Marsh, a media consultant with Savanna Communications, told the Epoch Times.
“He’s so busy campaigning everywhere else in America and overseas that he’s not paying attention to his own backyard,” said Marsh, who noted that Maloney’s overseas fundraising trips make him appear hypocritical.
Part of the criticism leveled at him is that Maloney has been outspoken in his stated belief that Democrats appear out of touch with the problems of average Americans, but the DCCC chair’s own behavior indicates that such comments are just a political talking point, said Marsh.
In an interview with the New York Times editorial board in August, Maloney criticized Democrats for not appreciating average Americans.
“We could be more comfortable on the factory floor—or at least as comfortable on the factory floor as we are in the faculty lounge,” said Maloney of Democrat politicians.
“I think that most of the voters that we ask about this think that we’re out of touch, they think we’re elitist, we think we are better than they are. And they don’t like it,” the DCCC chair added.
Yet this week, the Cook Political Report cited lavish fundraising trips that Maloney took to Paris and Geneva and the criticism it generated as one reason for opponent Lawler’s recent surge against the congressman.
In October, Lawler shared photos on Twitter of Maloney drinking wine and eating hors d’œuvres on a “help stop MAGA Republicans” tour to London, Paris, and Geneva that the Lawler campaign said was charged to the DCCC.
A recent report by Washington Free Beacon noted Maloney’s trip in February to an exclusive private club in Hollywood paid for by the DCCC.
Amid scrutiny of these trips, Maloney faced criticism from the head of the Texas Democrat over the DCCC’s decision to cut advertising buys in vulnerable south Texas Congressional districts because the DCCC didn’t have enough money.
“I’m really, deeply disappointed in the DCCC,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said earlier in October. “I hope they change their mind, and if we lose this election, it’s completely on them.”
For its part, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has also called out roasted Maloney for putting “his husband’s personal trainer on the government payroll.” An Oct. 3 New York Post report said that the congressman’s office and campaign paid more than $7,000 to the personal trainer of Maloney’s husband.
Marsh said that this type of behavior, whether from Democrats or Republicans, is what really boils voters, especially when things are so tough for many families.
“People are frustrated by what they see as corruption and incompetence in Congress and in the White House. They’re rejecting it, particularly when they’re experiencing such difficulty and uncertainty about the future,” he said.
Marsh said that this year people aren’t distinguishing between hard corruption that personally enriches somebody and the soft corruption that he’s referring to—where politicians ignore what’s in the best interest of their voters to pursue ideological goals.
“Even if you assumed they were paying attention to things like inflation, crime, education and the border, would anyone in the White House or Congress be smart enough to do anything to fix them,” he said.
“I think the decision by most people is ‘no, they’re not that smart or good,’” said Marsh, who cited a series of missteps under the Biden administration that really became apparent with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
New York Turning Purple?
Astorino projected that the GOP could flip as many as five seats in New York’s Congressional Districts this year.
A five-seat switch would make the Democrat to Republican split in the House 14 to 12 respectively in the 2022 Congress for the Empire State.
The current composition of New York’s House delegation is 19 Democrats to 8 Republicans.
“And that’s the problem for Maloney,” Morris said, noting Maloney has so many places he has to defend at once all across the country—including his own district.
This week the DCCC announced another $867,000 ad buy in the fight for Maloney’s seat.
That brings the total spent by Democrats to defend Maloney’s seat to $1.8 million by the DCCC, even as Maloney’s campaign has spent another $4,620,358, as of Oct. 1.
Lawler’s campaign, meanwhile, has spent $641,648 for the midterm tilt, with outside groups kicking in another $3,627,165 to support the Assemblyman, as of Oct. 1.
GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has rubbed salt in Maloney’s wounds because he’s promised $4 million more for the race from his own super PAC, although it’s unclear how much of that has been spent so far.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the DCCC and Maloney’s campaign for comment.
Italian health care workers who have been suspended for rejecting COVID-19 vaccines will soon be able to return to work, the European country’s top health official said Friday.
Orazio Schillaci, who was appointed last week by Italy’s newly formed ruling coalition to lead the Ministry of Health, said his administration is working on a measure that would reinstate unvaccinated doctors and nurses before the end of the year.
“Six months after the suspension of the state of emergency and in consideration of the level of COVID-19 contagion, Health Minister Orazio Schillaci considers it necessary to initiate a progressive return to normality in activity and behavior, based on criteria of responsibility and respect for the laws in force,” a statement on the ministry’s website read.
Schillaci also announced that the ministry will no longer provide a daily bulletin with numbers of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. Instead, that information will be updated on a weekly basis.
Friday’s announcement, at least in part, is tied to the “worrying shortage of medical personnel,” according to the ministry.
The changes mark a departure from the policies of Schillaci’s predecessor, Roberto Speranza, who allowed hospital employers to suspend without pay any employee who refused to get vaccinated.
Under Speranza and previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, whose government imploded in the midst of an energy crisis and a worsening economic outlook, all public and private sector workers must get a COVID “green pass” before they go to work. Italians who ignore the order and go to work without proof of vaccination or a negative test or recovery from the virus are suspended on no pay and fined up to 1,500 euros (about $1,500).
The “green pass” policy was considered to be among the most restrictive in Europe. While some European countries have made COVID vaccines mandatory for their health workers, none have implemented a vaccine passport system for all employees.
“We are making these choices in order to restrict the unvaccinated as much as possible, as this is what is causing the burden on our hospital system,” Speranza told media outlets earlier this year.
The new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has vowed to not inherit the Draghi administration’s pandemic response, saying that despite the harsh restrictions placed on millions of citizens, the country nevertheless suffered the highest COVID death and infection rates in Europe.
“Something clearly didn’t work there,” Meloni said Tuesday in her very first speech to parliament as prime minister. “That’s why I want to say that in no way will we imitate this model.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has faulted President Joe Biden for not including undocumented immigrants in his blanket pardon he announced in early October for people convicted of possessing marijuana on a federal level.
The New York lawmaker made the comments during an episode of “Pod Save America” that came out on Oct. 25. Her comments were part of a discussion on how the Democrat Party has not done enough to win over Latino voters.
“I can at least say with Latino voters, we’ve never tried as a party. The Democratic Party has not tried in terms of Latino electorates,” she said.
She added,” We really need to step up both in our efforts on campaign, but also in our efforts in governance.”
As an example, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out how the Dream Act has not been passed into law.
The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, is legislation that would allow illegal immigrants, who came to the United States as minors, a chance to earn lawful permanent residence and eventually naturalized citizenship.
She went on to criticize Biden’s pardon, which has since drawn mixed responses from Congress.
“And even recently with President Biden’s marijuana executive order, I very much applaud that he went there, but he exempted people who were convicted if they were convicted while they were undocumented,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Pardon
Biden announced the pardon on Oct. 6 and his proclamation states that the pardon “does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense.”
“I’m pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession,” Biden wrote on Twitter after announcing the pardon. “There are thousands of people who were previously convicted of simple possession who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My pardon will remove this burden.”
“[N]o one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden wrote.
Many Democrats applauded the president for his decision, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
“By pardoning those arrested for simple marijuana possession, and encouraging governors to follow suit, President Biden is advancing racial and economic justice: empowering more Americans to return to their loved ones, find a good-paying job and contribute to our communities,” said Pelosi according to a statement released on Oct. 6.
Also on Oct. 6, some Republicans took to Twitter to criticize the president over his decision.
“In the midst of a crime wave and on the brink of a recession, Joe Biden is giving blanket pardons to drug offenders—many of whom pled down from more serious charges,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who serves on both the Senate Judiciary and Armed Services Committees.
“This is a desperate attempt to distract from failed leadership,” Cotton added.
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who serves on the House Oversight and Reform, Education and Labor, and Budget Committees, said Biden “is not only out-of-touch with the American people, he is making our communities less safe.”
“In the midst of a historic crime crisis sweeping our nation, the Biden Administration’s priority is to pardon thousands of criminals, releasing many of them back onto our streets,” Grothman added.
For the November midterm elections, about 34.5 million Latinos are eligible voters, making up 14.3 percent of all eligible voters, according to Pew Research Center.
A recent poll (pdf) by Axios/Ipsos found that 23 percent of Latino voters said they didn’t know whom they would vote for in November, compared to 33 percent who said a Democrat candidate and 18 percent who said a GOP candidate.
Thirty-seven percent of those polled cited inflation as their most worrying issue, followed by 36 percent who cited crime and 26 percent who cited immigration. Abortion or access to abortion was cited by just 12 percent of respondents.
Several news outlets falsely reported that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had lunch with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis one day before he helped strike down Roe v. Wade.
Raw Story and the Independent published the reports, citing emails obtained by the American Oversight group.
The outlets said the emails showed Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, and DeSantis, a Republican, dined on June 23, one day before Thomas and other justices struck down Roe v. Wade in their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
But the emails actually showed Thomas and DeSantis met for lunch in 2021.
Raw Story corrected its story.
“A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Clarence Thomas had lunch with Ron DeSantis one day before the controversial Dobbs decision. The lunch was scheduled for June 23, 2021, not June 23, 2022,” Raw Story says in its correction.
The headline was changed from “Clarence Thomas had lunch with Ron DeSantis one day before abortion rights struck down: emails” to “Emails reveal communications between Clarence Thomas and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
The Independent retracted its story.
“I am legitimately so sorry. I was not trying to mislead. I am legitimately embarrassed and humiliated. I never wanted to do anything malicious. I am so apologetic. I should have double-checked the dates,” Eric Michael Garcia, the author, wrote on Twitter.
Raw Story and the Independent did not respond to requests for comment.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks during an event in Washington on Oct. 21, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A reprint of one of the articles on Yahoo was also taken down.
“I’d suggest checking dates on emails before chasing a narrative so hard you forget what year it is,” Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for DeSantis, said.
The emails included messages from an assistant for Thomas making plans for him to dine with DeSantis, a possible 2024 contender, in Washington in June 2021.
Other emails obtained by American Oversight indicate that DeSantis and Thomas have been in regular contact.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas, said in one of the messages that her husband “has been in contact” with DeSantis” on various things of late.”
The pair spoke together at a Florida Federalist Society
DeSantis has spoken out in support of some Supreme Court decisions, including the majority opinion penned by Thomas that struck down a New York gun law.
“From what I have seen, I think it was a great decision by Justice Thomas,” DeSantis told reporters during a press conference. “Very rarely does he do anything that is not correct. I think he’s been a fantastic justice.”
The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer.
If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information.
Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer when he was killed on a street in Washington in mid-2016. No person has ever been arrested in connection to the murder.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, ruled in September that the bureau must hand over information from the computer to Brian Huddleston, a Texas man who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the info.
The FBI’s assertion that the privacy interest Rich’s family members hold outweighed the public interest was rejected by Mazzant, who noted the bureau cited no relevant case law supporting the argument.
But the ruling was erroneous, U.S. lawyers said in a new filing.
The bureau shouldn’t have to produce the information because of FOIA exemptions for information that are compiled for law enforcement purposes and “could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source,” the lawyers said in a motion for reconsideration. Another exemption, which enables agencies to withhold information that would disclose law enforcement techniques also applies, they said.
“Given the Court’s findings that except for the information related to Seth Rich’s laptop withheld pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C) based on privacy interests, the FBI properly withheld or redacted all other information responsive to Huddleston’s requests, the production order seems inconsistent with the rest of the order,” the motion stated.
The FBI, after claiming it never possessed Rich’s laptop or any information from it, acknowledged in 2020 that it had thousands of files from the computer.
The bureau “is currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed,” the government said at the time.
Seth Rich, the voter expansion data director for the Democratic National Committee, in a file photograph. (LinkedIn)
Information and material extracted from the computer were provided by a source to an FBI agent during a meeting on March 15, 2018, FBI records officer Michael Seidel said in a declaration. He said the files included photographs and documents, among other material.
In the new filing, government lawyers said the FBI never extracted the data, which it revealed as originating with a law enforcement agency. They said the information is on a compact disc containing images of the laptop.
“The FBI did not open an investigation into the murder of Seth Rich, nor did it provide investigative or technical assistance to any investigation into the murder of Seth Rich. As a result, the FBI has never extracted the data from the compact disc and never processed the information contained on the disc,” they said.
To produce the information, the FBI would have to convert information on the disc into pages and then review the pages to redact information per FOIA, according to the government.
If Mazzant upholds his order, the FBI wants a lengthy period of time to perform the work—66 years, or 500 pages a month.
“If the court overrules the FBI’s motion, the FBI wants to produce records at a rate of 500 pages per month. At that rate, it will take almost 67 years just to produce the documents, never mind the images and other files,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“After dealing with the FBI for five years, I now assume that the FBI is lying to me unless and until it proves otherwise. The FBI is desperately trying to hide records about Seth Rich, and that begs the question of why.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested Rich leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) files to WikiLeaks, but special counsel Robert Mueller said the real source was Russian hackers. Still, Mueller’s finding conflicts with statements from CrowdStrike, the firm hired to investigate how the DNC files were released.
The magazine of the globalist left – owned by Steve Jobs’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs – published an article in its November 1950 edition entitled, simply, “Sterilization.”
The piece weighed and measured the benefits of the mass sterilization of those suffering manic depression, epilepsy, the feeble-minded, and “certain chronic criminals,” based on the idea that these were hereditary traits that should be forcibly bred out of the human population.
“There are, in America alone, millions of individuals markedly unfit 1o live in society. Many of them cannot care for themselves or their children and are a burden to their families or communities. Because of the possibility that their defects are hereditary, and that allowing these people to have children will result in spreading their disabilities more widely through future generations, we must consider the question of eugenical sterilization.”
The piece, still available on The Atlantic’s archive, goes on:
Sterilization is a very simple operation. But it is much simpler to perform the operation of sterilization than it is to decide on whom the operation shall be done. There are those who advocate sterilizing all individuals who are “socially inadequate by reason of heredity,” and here they include all the insane, the feeble-minded, the epileptic, and certain chronic criminals.
The arguments were originally expressed by Dr. Abraham Myerson, a Lithuanian eugenicist who worked at Tufts Medical School. His posthumous book, Speaking of Man, was published by Knopf (now part of Penguin Random House) and extracted for The Atlantic in late 1950.
Myerson, listed as Meyerson by the Atlantic, perhaps presciently notes in his piece:
As for meddling with the sexual organs, there is a deepseated repugnance which is socially instinctive and could be overcome only by great force or very intensive social education.
The current widespread meddling with sexual organs by the political left can be justified using Myerson’s eugenics-based arguments, a subject almost echoed by another Atlantic author, Harriet Pilpel, in 1969.
Writing on the merits of abortion, “women’s rights” activist Pilpel asserts:
For several years, we have heard warnings about the population crisis. Indeed, so concerned are we that there now are voices in the land calling for “compulsory sterilization” and “compulsory birth control,” for the withholding of public support for illegitimate children in excess of a certain number, for conditioning welfare monies or parole or whatever on coerced sterilization, and so on. Yet little is done to make sterilization easily available on a voluntary basis, particularly to the poor and underprivileged.
Myerson’s piece discusses “Mongolian idiocy,” as well as “feeble-mindedness” and epilepsy as rationales by which to enforce sterilization amongst the wider public. He noted on these points:
We recommended sterilization in the case of feeble-mindedness. Though we hesitated to stress any purely social necessity for sterilization, it is obvious that in the case of the feeble-minded there may be a social as well as a biological situation of importance. Since most of the feeble-minded can hardly care for themselves, a family of children may prove an overwhelming burden.
We believed that schizophrenia would need relatively little attention from the surgeon because most cases that are recognized in time to prevent procreation spend their days in hospitals anyway. Moreover, the sexual urge and the marriage and birth rate are low. Sterilization might well be recommended, however, for those patients living in the community, since desirable qualities of other kinds are only incidental to schizophrenia and not part of its make-up.
As for the manic-depressive psychoses, there are problems that would tax the judgment of the wisest board and that must be met with conservatism and caution. The manic-depressive temperament is frequently associated with the highest achievement and ability of which mankind can boast. In this disease particularly, the decision would have to take into account the total assets of the individual character as well as the liabilities incident to the psychosis.
As for epilepsy, we believed that if the individual’s epileptic attacks were infrequent and if the qualities of the personality were intact, there was no reason for recommending sterilization.
In a stunning conclusion, the Atlantic concluded that “a limited eugenic program is warranted,” via Myerson’s article:
It is a cardinal article of faith with me that it would be good eugenics, as well as good euthenics, to wipe out every slum, to secure for everyone access to sunshine and good food, cultural opportunities, and those things which stimulate the growth of intelligence; to eliminate the infectious diseases and especially those diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis which may injure more than one generation. A large part of our population, even in the best of our commonwealths, live in circumstances in which we would expect deterioration in plants and animals. At any rate, we can say that while a limited eugenic program is warranted at this time, even more important would be a radical improvement in the environment of civilized man and an organized research into the nature of those mental conditions from which he suffers, so that we can work with understanding and intelligence.
The man who broke into the home of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to kill her husband, authorities said Oct. 28.
The suspect, David DePape, is being booked into jail on charges including attempted homicide, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told a press conference.
DePape will also face assault with deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary, and several other additional felonies, Scott said.
It wasn’t clear whether DePape has retained a lawyer.
Interim San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she’s working with police and is prepared to file appropriate charges.
DePape broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco early Friday, authorities said. Officers responded at approximately 2:27 a.m. and, upon arrival, observed Paul Pelosi, 82, and a man grappling over a hammer.
The suspect pulled the hammer away and “violently assaulted” Paul Pelosi. Officers tackled the suspect and took him into custody. They also rendered aid to Paul Pelosi.
Both DePape and Paul Pelosi were transported to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Paul Pelosi is expected to make a full recovery, the office of Nancy Pelosi, also 82, said.
“The Speaker and her family are grateful to the first responders and medical professionals involved, and request privacy at this time,” her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement.
The motive for the attack is still being determined, according to Scott.
Authorities declined to answer any questions.
Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time of the break-in, according to her office and the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP).
The FBI and the USCP are assisting local police with the probe.
Members of Congress React
A number of Nancy Pelosi’s colleagues said they were hoping Paul Pelosi recovers quickly.
“All of us are deeply disturbed to hear about the home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, and we pray for his speedy recovery. Violent attacks are abhorrent and every criminal who commits such acts should be prosecuted to full extent of the law,” said Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), vice chairman of the House Republicans.
“My thoughts are with Speaker Pelosi and her family as her husband, Paul, recovers from the vicious, unconscionable attack in their home last night. This violence is unacceptable, and it should shock all decent Americans. Please join me in praying for Paul’s speedy recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
Others said they were upset and wanted the perpetrator convicted.
“I am angered by the attack on Paul Pelosi in his home, and am grateful to the law enforcement officers who responded. Political violence is unacceptable, and the perpetrator will be held accountable,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said in a statement.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is considering investigating an alleged long-running and widespread ballot harvesting operation among black communities in the central part of state.
Law enforcement officials are considering probing the matter on the recommendation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit, the Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS), officials confirmed.
DeSantis’ new election crimes body was established this year in an effort to hold individuals in the state accountable for voter fraud.
Law enforcement officials confirmed they are looking into the matter in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.
“The Florida Department of State has received a complaint regarding alleged ballot harvesting in Orange County, which is currently under review to determine if an investigation is warranted,” the statement read.
In a separate statement to Just the News on Wednesday, the department stated that it was made aware of the issue around Sept. 1, 2022.
“After further inquiry, OECS received additional information related to the allegation on October 17, 2022, and performed a preliminary investigation,” the statement read. “Since OECS is an investigative entity and does not [have] authority to make arrests, the office forwarded the complaint to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for possible violation of section 104.0616, Florida Statutes,” it added.
Since the 2020 presidential election, Republican lawmakers and experts have repeatedly raised concerns over alleged voter fraud that may have swung votes in favor of President Joe Biden.
The conservative election integrity group True the Vote in late 2020 said it had found “overwhelming evidence of ballot trafficking” across key states in the United States, including Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
GOP lawmakers have accused Democrats of ignoring the issue, which they say presents an obvious threat to elections across the country.
Democrat Blows the Whistle
In late August, former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris, a Democrat, filed a sworn affidavit with the office of Florida’s secretary of state alleging the ballot harvesting operation, according to a Just the News report.
In the affidavit, Harris reportedly said voting activists in Orlando were being paid $10 for each third-party ballot they collected.
Harris told Just the News she was concerned about the broken chain of custody with ballots collected by third parties.
“You know, it’s just utterly ridiculous that people don’t understand that once that ballot leaves your hand and it’s not placed in the mailbox, or it’s not directly given to the supervisor of elections, you don’t know where it goes,” she said.
The probe into the alleged ballot harvesting comes shortly after an Arizona Democrat and school board member was sentenced to 30 days in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to one count of ballot abuse.
Guillermina Fuentes, a 66-year-old former mayor of the town of San Luis, was accused of being involved in a ballot harvesting scheme during an August 2020 municipal election in which she allegedly illegally collected early ballots from four individuals that were not family members.
Under Arizona’s anti-ballot harvesting law, it is a felony to hand in early ballots for individuals who are neither family nor household members unless the person handing in the ballot is the voter’s caregiver.
Joe Biden incorrectly claimed on Thursday that the price of gasoline was over $5 a gallon when he entered the White House, while the then-average price of regular gasoline was just $2.39.
“Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39—down from over $5 when I took office,” Biden said during a Thursday speech on the CHIPS and Science Act in Syracuse, New York, claiming declining gas prices are adding up to real savings for families. “We need to keep making that progress by getting energy companies to bring down the price of a gallon of gas to reflect the cost of paying for a barrel of oil,” the president added.
According to historical data from the Energy Information Administration, the weekly regular gasoline price in the United States was $2.39 per gallon in late January 2021 and remained under $3 a gallon until May last year. The average national retail price topped $5 for the first time ever this June, about a year and a half after Biden took office.
By Oct. 28, a gallon of regular gas cost $3.76, more than 30 cents above what Biden claimed a day earlier, the latest AAA data show. However, AAA said fluctuating oil prices and low demand are driving the national average downward.
Biden’s latest remark follows a pattern of comments that have caused far-reaching diplomatic and domestic impacts, from saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” to declaring the COVID-19 pandemic “over.” Biden’s verbal miscues and other gaffes commonly go viral before White House staff scurry to walk back his statements, leading some Republicans to call on the president to take a cognitive test.
Fox News reported that the president made at least 17 gaffes over the past four weeks, including mispronunciations and confusing or inaccurate statements.
A White House spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden, the oldest president in history, said on Sunday that queries toward his age are “totally legitimate.” If Biden, who will turn 80 years old in November, wins reelection in 2024, he would be 86 at the end of his second term.
During his Thursday speech, the president also addressed domestic inflation, as a third-quarter gross domestic product report released the same day estimates the U.S. economy increased at a 2.6 percent annualized rate last quarter, after contracting at a 0.6 percent pace in the second quarter.
“Economic growth is up; the price of inflation is down; real incomes are up; and the price of gas is down. Folks continue to spend, but now at a more stable pace than during our rapid recovery last year,” Biden said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was overheard on a hot mic on Thursday telling President Joe Biden that Georgia’s Senate race was “going downhill” for Democrats.
“The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker,” Schumer can be heard telling Biden at the airport in Syracuse, New York.
Walker, a former NFL and college football star running back, is campaigning against Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-S.C.) in a heated race for Georgia’s Senate seat.
With fewer than two weeks until the midterm elections, a recent Monmouth University poll released on Oct. 26 found the race remains close, showing 48 percent of voters definitely, or probably, voting for Warnock, while 45 percent said the same thing about Walker.
“The poll does not attempt to predict turnout, but past voter history metrics and self-reported enthusiasm give a picture of a range of possible outcomes,” Monmouth University noted.
(Left) Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in Columbus, Ga., on Oct. 8, 2022. (Megan Varner/Getty Images); (Right) Georgia Republican Senatorial candidate Herschel Walker in Carrollton, Ga., on Oct. 11, 2022. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Schumer also mentioned the state’s high number of early voters for the 2022 midterm elections, describing it as “huge.”
In a statement on Twitter, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed that more than a million votes had already been cast in the state as of Oct. 25.
Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer of the Georgia secretary of state’s office, also said Georgians are continuing to cast their votes in record numbers. The deputy secretary of state noted that on Oct. 25 alone, 100,000 absentee ballots were received, while 124,000 Georgians voted in person.
The outcome of Georgia’s high-profile and expensive Senate contest is among a handful of races nationwide that could tip the upper chamber in favor of either party.
‘We’re in Danger’
Additionally, Schumer was overheard in another exchange at the airport in Syracuse on Thursday telling Biden that Democrats are “in danger” of losing Pennsylvania, though the leader of the Senate Democrats noted that the rocky debate performance of Lt. Gov. John Fetterman “didn’t hurt” them too much.
“That seat. We’re in danger of that seat,” said Schumer, adding in relief that Fetterman’s debate “didn’t hurt us too much in Pennsylvania.”
Fetterman, who experienced a stroke five months ago, appeared onstage earlier this week to debate rival Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz as the two vie for a key Senate seat.
(Left) Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate John Fetterman addresses supporters during a rally at Norris Park in Philadelphia on Oct. 15, 2022. (Right) Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz hosts a safer streets community discussion in Philadelphia on Oct. 13, 2022. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
The impact of the stroke was apparent during the debate as Fetterman used closed-captioning posted above the moderator to help him process the words he heard, which led to occasional awkward pauses.
Fetterman’s shaky performance fueled concern among some Democrat leaders that his appearance may have been a mistake, especially during the crucial closing days of the contest.
Reports and public records, meanwhile, indicate that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will head to Pennsylvania on Oct. 28 and make a rare joint appearance to campaign on behalf of Senate hopeful Fetterman.
The joint appearance by Biden and Harris shows how much is at stake in the race as Democrats and Republicans vie for control of the 50–50 split upper chamber.
According to a compilation of polls put together by FiveThirtyEight, Fetterman currently has a 1.9-point lead over Oz.
Police in China’s Fuzhou City recently bragged about solving a break-in by conducting a DNA test of a blood smear from a mosquito that allegedly stung the burglar. However, the incident, which made global headlines, brings to the fore the threats associated with the exploitation of DNA databases.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambitious efforts to collect genomic data—from inside and outside of China—to solve crimes and maintain social control have already been raising concerns for years.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned that the CCP, for years, has been collecting American healthcare and DNA data, through both legal and illegal means. U.S. officials recently said that such sensitive data might be potentially exploited by American enemies to create targeted biological weapons.
23andMe saliva collection kit for personal genetic, DNA ancestry, and health test. (Lets Design Studio/Shutterstock)
“There are now weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) reportedly said at the Aspen Security Forum in July this year.
“That’s what this is, where you can actually take someone’s DNA … their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable.”
Crow also talked about how people, especially young people, are not as concerned about privacy as the older generation, and would not hesitate to share their DNA with companies just out of the curiosity to learn more about their ancestry. “People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” he said.
However, Crow cautioned that such DNA, which is “now owned by a private company,” could be sold off to another party “with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection.” “[W]e don’t have legal and regulatory regimes to deal with that,” he added.
Human rights groups and scientists are worried about the CCP’s large-scale collection of DNA databases, and how the information could be used to persecute critics of the Chinese regime, and members of ethnic and religious minorities.
Even more worrisome is that for years China’s Ministry of Public Security has been building a DNA database from millions of Chinese men and boys, specifically targeting the Y chromosome found in males, with the aim to help “comprehensively improve” the ability to solve cases and “manage and control society,” according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Maya Wang, a researcher at the non-profit group Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, told Nature: “This collection has nothing to do with crime—it has to do with oppression.”
Mechthild Prinz, a forensic geneticist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York shared a similar concern. “This is really unique,” Prinz said. “No other country is doing it. They just go and get people that are regular citizens. It is very heavy-handed.”
Forced Collection of Samples
The Chinese regime has also been collecting blood samples from minorities and religious believers such as Christians, Falun Gong adherents, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. Human rights experts are concerned that the data could be used by the CCP for forced organ harvesting.
Minghui.org—a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that provides firsthand information on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong in China—has been reporting for the past several years that blood and DNA samples are being forcibly collected from countless incarcerated Falun Gong adherents who refused to renounce their spiritual faith.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a mind-body self-improvement discipline based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. The practice has been persecuted by the Chinese regime since July 1999.
Li Erying, a Falun Gong practitioner who fled China in 2019, recounted how police took her blood samples and linked the sample ID with her record. She also noticed that the police had detailed records of every Falun Gong adherent, including their distant relatives.
Sayragul Sauytbay, a Kazakh who was teaching Chinese in the Xinjiang detention camps, told Ethan Gutmann—an award-winning China analyst, a human-rights investigator, and a 2017 Nobel Peace Prize nominee—that a health check is done every few months and certain people who have their names marked would disappear in the middle of the night.
So, the Democrats say election interference never happens, eh? Even today, liberals accuse Republicans of being “threats” to our country by just asking about the 2020 Election. Anyone who worries that “irregularities” or other problems affected that election is accused of spreading the “big lie.”
But time and again, we find out that attempts to hijack our elections are very real. And guess what? They almost always benefit one party. Most of these discoveries come out of Republican-controlled states, which are actually enforcing election laws. And now, a Democrat scheme to illegally harvest ballots is being blown wide open…
By a Democrat!
From Just the News:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit has recommended state police open a full criminal investigation into a Democrat whistleblower’s detailed complaint of a long-running, widespread ballot harvesting operation in the African-American communities in politically important central Florida.
This is pretty huge. Former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris filed a signed and sworn affidavit attesting to a scheme to illegally harvest ballets in black neighbors in central Florida. According to Harris, voting activists pressure voters to turn over their ballots in the Orlando area and beyond.
This system is funded by liberal organizations and workers are rewarded with $10 per ballot they collect. While some states allow ballot harvest, it is against the law in Florida. Ballots can only be handed over by a voter to an official election office (or sent in by mail, which is verified by the state).
Ballot harvesting has long been used by Democrats to coerce people into voting for their party. They either pressure voters to fill out a ballot, while a worker looks over their shoulder. Or, they are able to collect blank ballots and fill them out themselves. The big danger of ballot harvesting is that it makes it very easy for workers to forge ballots.
What’s startling about this development is that a Democrat blew the whistle. And this isn’t some anonymous “source” who cannot be verified. This woman worked in that part of Florida and has signed an affidavit–which can be submitted in a court of law.
Gov. DeSantis has a new department to investigate election crimes. If the Office of Election Crimes and Security finds evidence of this scheme, it could mean jail time for some. And it means this scheme has been thwarted, just days before the election.
Key Takeaways:
A Democrat whistleblower exposed a ballot harvesting ring in central Florida.
Workers are paid $10 for every ballot they coerce from voters.
Ballot harvesting is illegal in the state of Florida; DeSantis has launched an investigation.
An author whose social media posts about COVID-19 were censored is revealing new evidence that his accounts were deplatformed on orders from the Biden White House, which he and his lawyers allege is unconstitutional and illegal.
Hart alleges the deplatforming was unconstitutional because it was done at the direction of the Biden administration.
In 172 pages of new exhibits, consisting of emails, briefings and materials from the White House and tech companies, Hart alleges the Biden administration routinely met with social media companies, giving them orders on what kind of social media posts and accounts to deplatform and censor for differing with the government’s position.
“New evidence confirms what we have long known: our federal government is working directly with Big Tech to silence Americans,” said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, who is representing Hart.
“The government is directing private companies to violate Americans’ free speech rights. Censorship may have started with what they call ‘COVID misinformation,’ but it opens the door for any administration to define any message they don’t like as ‘misinformation.’ This is unconscionable and illegal,” said Suhr.
“The depth of the collusion between Big Government and Big Tech is alarming and reveals a sinister plot to undermine the rights of Americans by fully removing certain ideas and people from public discourse,” said Hart.
“The government does not have a monopoly on truth. By directing and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, our government is silencing critical discussions and, most importantly, violating our most sacred rights,” said Hart.
According to the LJC:
> Facebook offered the federal government, and it accepted, $15 million in free COVID-19 public health advertising to promote its public health message on the Internet.
> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Biden administration officials coordinated its COVID “misinformation” response with Facebook and Twitter by holding regular “be-on-the-lookout” meetings and by providing examples of the types of messages that contradicted the government’s message and it wanted censored.
> Facebook used proprietary tools to monitor social media posts that contradicted the federal government’s COVID-19 narrative and reported such posts to the federal government.
> Facebook adjusted its policies and algorithms to align with misinformation policies set by the federal government.
The lawsuit, Hart v. Facebook, was filed on Aug. 31, 2021. It is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
A self-professed Democrat has been arrested after an alleged break-in of the Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s campaign headquarters.
Katie Hobbs previously cast blame on her Republican opponent when announcing the crime. Hobbs took aim at Kari Lake for “inciting threats” and “spreading dangerous disinformation” in a Thursday statement regarding the campaign office crime. The break-in allegedly took place earlier this week.
However, an arrest in the case appears to debunk any notion of a Republican operative targeting Hobbs. Police have apprehended 36-year-old Daniel Mota Dos Reis in the case, a man who identifies as a “Democrat” on his Facebook page.
UPDATE: The suspect describes himself as a “Democrat.” Hobbs described the crime as a political hit and blamed @KariLake in an announcement pic.twitter.com/cqUXcsDcXQ
An associate of Reis identifies him as residing in the United States on a student visa in a 2018 GoFundMe.
Reis is facing an assault charge in addition to multiple criminal trespass charges. Reis also identifies himself as an immigrant from Angola on his personal Facebook page.
Arrestee in break-in of Katie Hobbs campaign office has been identified. Charged with assault, pro-mask, immigrant from Angola. pic.twitter.com/WcksbxuW7N
Phoenix locals described Reis as an area resident with mental health problems, according to one journalist who published surveillance camera footage of the break-in suspect. There’s no reason to believe he has direct ties to political campaigns or candidates.
You phx locals are amazing! A few of you who slid into my dms knew him from the streets. As far as I can tell, he’s a local with some mental health issues and no ties to any campaigns. https://t.co/2dxoiKGlNX
Former President Barack Obama found himself in some hot water when a viral video surfaced that showed him mentioning his “husband, Michael.”
Of note, prior to this video surfacing, Obama has been well-chronicled to have been in a heterosexual marriage with his wife, Michelle.
The video from 2015 involves comments he made at the Catholic Health Association Conference.
In a moment that some might expect from the current gaffe-prone Democrat president, many flocked to the video as some sort of proof that Barack Obama was gay, or that his wife Michelle was secretly a man.
The video, which has already been slapped with a “False information” label by Facebook, quickly garnered attention.
One common line of attack against Michelle Obama has typically involved her appearance and physique. Michelle, who by all accounts appears to be a fit, healthy woman, has been maligned for having “manly” features, based on things such as certain facial features or her back.
Those who enjoy perpetuating those unfair attacks obviously had a field day with this viral video. While the actual content of the remarks is largely unedited, the video is missing some wildly crucial pieces of context.
The Western Journal Fact Check: Missing Context
First, and most importantly, Obama’s remarks were quoting something a woman had written to him in thanks for his health care policies.
“Debra couldn’t be here today, but she recently wrote to me and she said: ‘I walk with my husband Michael and hold hands. It’s like a whole new world for me,’” Obama said, according to the White House transcripts. “Just walking and holding hands — something that one of our fellow Americans for years could not do.”
There is also a full video available of the speech Obama gave, again including crucial pieces of context.
So, while Obama did speak the words being attributed to him verbatim, it’s still wildly inaccurate to attribute that as an actual quote by him. Thus, The Western Journal has determined that the viral video is “Missing Context.”
Obama will have enough on his plate without concerning himself over a secret husband named Michael.
The former president has already been putting in work to pave the road forward for Democrats leading into and beyond the November midterms.
Whether he’s funneling “Monday Night Football” viewers to vote Democrat or being requested by swing-state Democrats, Obama will have his work cut out for him if Democrats are going to try and minimize the pending “Red Wave” that many are predicting come November.
The 2022 midterms are less than two weeks away, and high-profile Republicans are out in force stumping for GOP candidates who could benefit from a last-minute boost across the finish line.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz ventured out a bit westwardly and hit the campaign trail for New Mexico GOP congresswoman Yvette Herrell on Monday night, according to Las Cruces Sun News. He fired up what was clearly an energized, excited audience during his stop at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum.
The Texas senator used a bit of wicked humor to torch Hunter Biden, California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and the thugs who make up the ranks of the unofficial domestic terrorist group known as Antifa in a beautiful zinger that emphasized just how bad inflation is under Joe Biden.
“[Inflation] is so bad that ANTIFA can’t afford BRICKS, Eric Swalwell can’t afford Chinese dinners, and HUNTER BIDEN can’t afford CRACK,” Cruz said while on stage, eliciting wild applause and cheers from the audience.
Ted Cruz ENDS Biden Regime in 60 Seconds:
“Inflation is so bad ANTIFA can’t afford BRICKS, Eric Swalwell can’t afford Chinese dinners, and HUNTER BIDEN can’t afford CRACK”
Cruz spent considerable time hammering away at the Biden administration and Democratic leaders, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for allowing inflation to rise to its current record-setting level, triggering a new level of struggle for everyday, hard-working Americans. Inflation is one of the top issues for American voters as they prepare to cast their votes Nov. 7.
“We’re going to fire Nancy Pelosi,” Cruz said.
Given New Mexico’s proximity to Biden’s immigration crisis at the southern U.S. border, both Cruz and Herrell hit on the white-hot issue. Cruz detailed the horrors taking place at and near the border, and he highlighted the importance of strong leaders like Herrell winning the election to help begin to regain control of the out-of-control immigration situation.
“We’re dealing with millions of women and children being assaulted, being brutalized, being left for dead because of political decisions by the Democrats,” Cruz said, the Sun-News reported.
In a post-rally interview with Cruz and Herrell standing side by side, the two touched on the border subject once more as they spoke with KTSM-TV.
“You know, we’re the funnel right here between Arizona and Texas, and when the chief of the El Paso Sector calls my office two weeks ago and says ‘we have to talk,’ because now we’re seeing about 1,200 to 1,500 Venezuelans coming across the border in New Mexico in that El Paso Sector illegally, we don’t have the bandwidth to hold these people, “Herrell said.
Cruz added that he believes Herrell has been “targeted” by Democrats “because they don’t like that she’s fighting to secure the border.”
Herrell, first elected to represent New Mexico in 2020, left reporters with a departing message that should resonate across the land on Election Day.
“For far too long, it’s been politics over people. It needs to be people over politics because the people are the ones who send us there to do the work for them,” she said.
Herrell’s Democratic opponent, former Las Cruces city council member Gabe Vasquez, trailed the Republican by roughly three points on Thursday, according to FiveThirtyEight. The pollster has Herrell winning on Election Day, giving her a “slightly favored” chance to win New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional district.
A recent Politico/Morning Consult poll revealed that 90 percent of voters have inflation and the economy at top of mind. In the same poll, over 80 percent of voters indicated that the state of the economy will play a major role in how they choose to vote on Nov. 8.
In the weeks before Election Day, Tiffany Smiley takes her campaign against Sen. Patty Murray on the road
COVINGTON, Wash.—When Republican Tiffany Smiley saw two young girls alone outside the Safeway, she knew something was wrong.
The girls told the Senate hopeful they were homeless and living out of a car with their mother, who was inside trying to buy them something to eat. To Smiley, the family was a perfect example of how Democrats have failed the people of Washington.
“That woman doesn’t need Patty Murray’s electric vehicle voucher,” Smiley told voters in Covington on Wednesday. “That woman needs gas prices to be lower. She needs the cost of living to be lower. She needs her groceries to be affordable. … That’s who I’m fighting for.”
Smiley’s remarks came at the kickoff event for her statewide bus tour, the last leg of her campaign to unseat Sen. Patty Murray (D.), whose 30-year career in the upper chamber, Smiley says, has been long on promises but short on results. Smiley reminds voters that on Murray’s watch, crime has spiked in Washington State, and the economy has tanked.
It’s a message that resonates with Debbie Bussell, a retiree who lives in Covington. Bussell says inflation is “killing” her family and that she has to “put things back on the grocery shelves.” Her husband, Kirk, said Christmas for their grandchildren was “going to be a little skinny this year.”
Born and raised in rural Washington, Smiley was working as a nurse in 2005 when her husband, Major Scotty Smiley, was severely injured and blinded by a suicide bomb in Iraq. Smiley quit her job to care for Scotty and became a full-time advocate for veterans and their caregivers. When she speaks to voters, Smiley says she wants to fight for Washington families as aggressively as she fought for Scotty after he returned from Iraq.
As far as she sees it, Washington needs a fighter. After leaving for another stop in Issaquah, Smiley told the Washington Free Beacon that a woman had approached her to say she doesn’t even feel safe pumping gas by herself and asks her husband to go instead.
Smiley blamed President Joe Biden, his “border czar” Vice President Kamala Harris, and Murray for allowing fentanyl to flow freely into the Pacific Northwest. “Every room I go into in Washington State, someone is affected by it,” she said. Harris on Wednesday visited a Murray fundraiser in Seattle and announced a $1 billion grant from the infrastructure bill to put toward electric school buses in the state.
“This administration doesn’t acknowledge there’s a problem,” said Tony Pinto, a businessman who attended the event with his wife. “So it’s pretty hard to solve anything.”
As a featured guest, Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) told the crowd that Murray’s legislative record has been particularly marked by inaction.
“In eight years, I have had 43 bills—that I have authored and sponsored—signed into law by the three different presidential administrations,” Ernst told a packed house at the Red Dog Saloon in Maple Valley. “Patty Murray’s been there how long? Thirty years. How many bills has she had signed into law? Nine.”
Smiley outraised Murray in the last quarter by more than $3 million and in October has closed the polling gap to within 8 points. Some polls show a statistical tie. With Murray’s support dipping below 50 percent, the race is raising concerns among Democrats and their allies that Smiley could pull out a sleeper victory in the liberal stronghold.
Smiley’s tough-on-crime messaging and readiness to confront political gridlock is making inroads with voters outside the GOP. An October SurveyUSA poll found the Republican outperforming Murray by 16 points with independents and 15 points with Hispanics. In a recent campaign ad, even Democrats and former Murray voters say they’ve had enough of the incumbent.
Camron Barth, a 36-year-old independent from Renton, told the Free Beacon his top concerns are lack of support for police and inflation.
“As a 911 dispatcher, I can attest to the fact that crime is not just in the urban areas. It’s also in the suburbs,” Barth said. “Inflation is up. It’s crushing middle-class families and working-class families.”
“Patty Murray and her ilk have run this country very poorly in the last two years,” said Matthew Lifshaz, a 23-year-old independent.
Murray’s campaign has spent millions of dollars attacking Smiley as a candidate who poses a threat to democracy, painting her as an ally of former president Donald Trump. That hasn’t stopped Murray from also comparing Smiley to Trump’s enemies, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.). During Sunday’s debate, Murray scoffed when Smiley said she would support a federal law codifying same-sex marriage.
“I feel like I’m listening to Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor,” Murray quipped, drawing scattered laughs from the crowd at Gonzaga University.
The tactic might not be as effective as she hopes. Barth said he’s drawn to Smiley because he believes she does back protections for same-sex marriage.
“I’m openly gay,” he said, “and I appreciate that Tiffany Smiley is what I call a 21st century Republican.”
Joe Biden has ‘essentially outsourced his policymaking to the progressive left,’ says Continetti
Washington Free Beacon founding editor Matthew Continetti appeared on Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s (R., Tenn.) podcast to discuss the Biden administration’s energy policy, saying the president has “essentially outsourced his policymaking to the progressive left.”
Democrats’ “obsession with climate is driving them to embrace either the Green New Deal or Green New Deal lite, which basically means shutting down America’s oil and gas industry,” said Continetti. “I think it’s this climate obsession that’s driving them to make policies that are going to make America more dependent on outside actors such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.”
As the Federal Reserve struggles to tamp down record-high inflation, mortgage rates this week rose above 7 percent for the first time since April 2002.
Rates have more than doubled compared with a year ago, the Wall Street Journalreported:
The rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 7.08% this week, according to a survey of lenders by mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Just seven weeks ago, the rate was below 6%. A year ago it was just over 3%.
The last time mortgage rates were this high, the dot-com bubble had recently burst. Rates were on the way down. They were in the middle of a four-decade stretch in which they mostly fell, underpinning the growth of the modern mortgage market and boosting the rate of homeownership.
Interest rates reversed sharply this year, pushed up by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate increases meant to curb inflation. The monthly cost of borrowing to buy a home has surged because of the additional interest buyers must pay at higher rates. That is on top of a pandemic housing boom that pushed prices up sharply.
The news comes as voters list the economy and inflation as their top issues heading into elections. Twenty-nine percent of Americans say inflation is the “most important problem” facing the nation, according to the latest polling from Reuters, while 15 percent listed jobs and the economy. The third-highest issue was gun violence, with just 8 percent of respondents selecting it.
This week, consumer confidence fell for the first time in two months but more consumers planned to buy homes despite rising rates.
A Justice Department official who pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax will hold a forum next month on how to identify hate crimes.
Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, will kick off a Fordham University symposium on Nov. 9 called “United Against Hate: Identifying, Reporting and Preventing Hate Crimes.” She will speak alongside two United States attorneys on “how to identify, report, and prevent crimes/incidents and discrimination,” according to a Justice Department announcement of the event.
But Clarke may not be the best choice for the forum. In 2019, she touted Smollett’s false claim that two white Trump supporters attacked him in Chicago while shouting homophobic and racist slurs at him. The actor, who is black and gay, claimed the men shouted “this is MAGA country” as they wrapped a noose around his neck and doused him in bleach. Smollett was later convicted for fabricating the incident. Two of Smollett’s friends, both black, said the actor paid them $3,500 to stage the attack.
Clarke defended Smollett on social media after he reported the incident to police on Jan. 28, 2019.
She asserted on Jan. 29, 2019, that Smollett was “subjected to a racist and homophobic attack.” She wrote that “2 white men wearing ski masks attacked [Smollett], put a rope around his neck, and poured bleach on him and as they yelled slurs.”
Days later, she accused the Chicago police department of “demonizing survivors” by seeking Smollett’s cell phone as part of its investigation.
“This is NOT how you treat survivors of a hate crime. Stop demonizing survivors and casting doubt on their claims if you want communities to trust that you will take #HateCrime seriously,” she tweeted on Feb. 1, 2019.
Clarke suggested that race played a role in an Illinois state judge’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Chicago district attorney Kim Foxx’s decision to drop charges against Smollett. Foxx, who is black, dropped the charges after private conversations with a representative for Smollett’s family.
“Prosecutors use their discretion every day. But when a duly elected Black prosecutor, Kim Foxx, uses her discretion to move on from the Jussie Smollett matter, it’s a different story,” Clarke said on Feb. 23, 2020. “A special prosecutor is brought in to undermine her power.”
Clarke has made inflammatory comments before.
In April 2020, she said protesters who wanted to fire coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci “should be publicly identified and named, barred from treatment at any public hospital.” She said they should be “denied coverage under their insurance” if they became sick from coronavirus.
Clarke said during her Senate confirmation hearing last year she regretted her statements about the Smollett hoax. Republicans grilled Clarke about her criticism of Chicago police and her role in the Smollett hoax during her confirmation hearing, noting that Clarke oversees investigations into hate crimes and police misconduct as head of the civil rights division.
“Like many others, I fell for Mr. Smollett’s hoax and in retrospect I regret having made that statement,” she said in a questionnaire for her confirmation. “Hoaxes distract attention away from the real incidents of hate crimes which are a growing threat in our country.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The DNC treats users of Chinese spyware app to all-expenses-paid DC trip, reports Washington Post TikTok correspondent
Joe Biden met with eight users of the social media app TikTok as part of an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., arranged by the Democratic National Committee, according toWashington Post TikTok correspondent Taylor Lorenz.
Biden on Tuesday had “an hour-long private meeting” with the TikTokers, whom the DNC brought to the nation’s capital “in hopes that their posts will turn out votes for Democrats in the Nov. 8 midterms,” which are widely expected to be a Republican wave. The TikTokers also met with former president Barack Obama and toured the Supreme Court and the Capitol.
The DNC’s trip for TikTokers comes as inflation reaches unprecedented levels and crime rates rise across the country, surging 15.2 percent in New York City.
It also comes as Democrats reorient their party to prioritize the wants of wealthy, elite young people. The Biden administration in August went through with a potentially trillion-dollar scheme to cancel college debt, which has already hiked the federal deficit. The Democratic Party also disproportionately prefers hiring white, elite college graduates even as it hemorrhages minority voters, the Washington Free Beaconreported.
All the TikTokers Lorenz mentions by name are white, and all but one are under 30.
While many of the TikTok users “had previously been largely apolitical, encouraging their fans to vote but not explicitly backing parties or candidates,” the DNC did not sugarcoat its objective.
The committee hosted a kickoff dinner where conversation “focused on issues like reproductive rights and strategizing how to best leverage [the TikTokers’] audiences for the midterms.” At the TikTokers’ meeting with Obama, the former president was even blunter, “calling a Democratic victory in November crucial.”
Mattie Westbrouck, 22, even implied that the DNC had identified specific congressional districts for the TikTokers to target in their videos. “The Michigan third district was really important,” Westbrouck said. “I’m going to try to promote content to reach those voters best.”
She neglected to mention, however, the mounting evidence that the app’s Chinese parent company spies on American citizens. The Biden administration allows the company to skirt foreign lobbying disclosures, the Free Beacon has reported.
Dem governor’s campaign resorts to shameless stunt as polls tighten in deep-blue New York
Last October, Democratic campaign staffers in Virginia shamelessly promoted an obvious hoax in an attempt to save their faltering boss, gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, from an upset loss. Almost a year to the day later, history is repeating itself in New York.
On Thursday morning, a rogue New York Post employee used the outlet’s publishing system to share fake and crude stories, including one that said New York Republican gubernatorial hopeful Lee Zeldin planned to sexually assault his Democratic opponent, incumbent Kathy Hochul. The Post quickly declared it had “been hacked” and removed the fake content. For Hochul’s campaign, however, the case was not closed. Roughly an hour after the Post‘s explanation, Hochul spokeswoman Jen Goodman released a bizarre response that appeared to present the hacked posts as legitimate, accused the outlet of using “violent, sexist rhetoric,” and issued a “demand” for “answers.”
By taking the Post‘s hacked content at face value in an apparent attempt to prompt outrage, the Hochul campaign took a page out of McAuliffe’s playbook. In October 2021, McAuliffe’s campaign promoted a fake white supremacist demonstration at a Glenn Youngkin event as if it were real, using the bogus incident to call the Republican’s supporters racist. If Hochul and McAuliffe’s attempts to weaponize political stunts in their favor seem similar, that could be because Goodman was behind both of them. One year before she issued Hochul’s Post statement, the liberal operative—who served as a McAuliffe communications aide at the time—called the sham neo-Nazi demonstration “disgusting” and “disqualifying” for Youngkin.
But Goodman’s role in both ordeals is not the only similarity between Hochul and McAuliffe. In his 2021 race, McAuliffe entered October as the clear favorite to become Virginia’s next governor, holding a clear polling lead in a state President Joe Biden won by double digits in 2020. But those polls went on to tighten, prompting Democratic concern two weeks from Election Day that McAuliffe could lose a race he was expected to win easily. As a result, when McAuliffe’s staffers saw photos of the tiki torch-wielding attendees at Youngkin’s rally, they likely felt too desperate for a boost to ignore them.
Almost exactly a year later, Hochul finds herself in an eerily similar situation. The Democrat consistently led Zeldin by double digits in the race’s early months, but that lead has since slipped—just days before the Posthack, for example, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Hochul with a mere 4-point advantage over her Republican counterpart. Even the New York Times has taken notice: The Empire State’s largest media outlet called the gubernatorial race a “rapidly tightening contest” in a Tuesday piece headlined, “New York’s Governor’s Race is Suddenly Too Close for Democrats’ Comfort.”
In McAuliffe’s case, the decision to pounce on the fake white supremacist stunt backfired significantly. Democratic super PAC the Lincoln Project eventually admitted it staged the ordeal, prompting a wave of negative news coverage for the McAuliffe campaign just two weeks before Election Day. The Democrat went on to lose to Youngkin by 2 points.
Hochul may very well avoid McAuliffe’s fate, particularly given that Biden won New York by 23 points, 13 points higher than his Virginia margin. Still, even as Hochul’s campaign publicly dismisses the “notion that Dems are lagging in enthusiasm in NY,” its eagerness to spin the Post hack in Hochul’s favor suggests the Democrat is feeling the heat in deep-blue New York.
Hochul’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
Caught on a hot mic Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told President Joe Biden that Democratic candidate John Fetterman’s performance in the Pennsylvania Senate debate “didn’t hurt us too much.”
The comment comes as Fetterman’s performance Tuesday night, which included frequent bumbled statements, left Democrats struggling to cast it in a positive light. A post-debate poll conducted by local Pennsylvania channel WPXI shows that 82 percent of respondents thought Republican candidate Mehmet Oz won.
Oz on Thursday offered a rematch debate to Fetterman, whose campaign complained about the venue’s closed captioning system.
Schumer also said that “we are picking up steam in Nevada,” where Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto is up just half a percentage point, according to recent polling.
The majority leader also said that Democrats are “in danger” in an unspecified congressional race. Schumer could have been referring to the Arizona Senate race, where Republican Blake Masters is now tied with incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly.
Faisal Gill has worked for a host of anti-Israel groups
Pro-Israel community leaders in Los Angeles are sounding the alarm over a Democratic candidate for the city’s top legal post who has spent several decades working alongside groups accused of supporting terrorism against Israel—and whose far-left views on community policing and crime are so extreme that Democratic representative Karen Bass, who is running to be the city’s mayor, withdrew her endorsement.
Faisal Gill, a libertarian Republican-turned-progressive Democrat, is running to become L.A.’s city attorney, a powerful post that will give him the ability to decide what types of minor crimes are prosecuted. “The city attorney is not elected to defend the police,” Gill states on his campaign website. He also says he wants to end cash bail, support safe injection sites, and reduce criminal prosecutions. His views have become a liability for Bass, who pulled her endorsement of Gill as she attempts to distance herself from radical elements in her own party.
Bass withdrew her endorsement after Gill pledged to stop prosecuting certain misdemeanors after 100 days, even as L.A. has experienced a rise in crime and violence in the past couple years. Gill’s campaign advocates the sort of progressive law enforcement policies that have made the upcoming race such a slog for Democrats. Voters have turned on progressive San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled, and Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, who faces impeachment.
Additionally, pro-Israel community leaders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon said that at a time of rising anti-Semitic violence Gill’s past work with a cadre of Islamist groups tied to terrorism financing is fueling fears.
Gill served as the spokesman for the American Muslim Council, an advocacy group formed with backing from the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-Israel Islamist organization that promotes Jew hatred. The council’s founder, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, was sentenced to 23 years in jail in 2004 as part of a terrorism financing case. Gill’s campaign also is receiving financial support from leading members of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an anti-Israel group known for peddling falsehoods about Israel and Jews.
“At a time of rising anti-Semitism in L.A., the thought of Faisal Gill taking charge of enforcing our laws is terrifying for the Jewish community,” Adeena Bleich, a community activist and nonprofit leader, told the Free Beacon. “My in-laws fled the horrors of anti-Semitism in Syria in the dark of night; Faisal Gill has decades-long track record of cozying up to people who hold that same ideology. I’m the mother of their descendants. I want my children to be safe, respected, and publicly Jewish.”
Howard Welinsky, the former chair and president of Democrats For Israel’s L.A. branch, said these fears are shared by many. “There is a great deal of concern about Mr. Gill’s positions within the pro-Israel community in Los Angeles,” Welinsky told the Free Beacon.
Gill has also aligned himself with the Black Lives Matter movement, which is known to be infected by anti-Israel bias and accuses it of being an “apartheid” state. The candidate has attended multiple BLM rallies and is endorsed by the BLM L.A. branch co-founder Melina Abdullah, who has faced accusations of promotinganti-Semitism. Gill has also touted endorsements from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who claimed that support for Israel is bought and paid for by a pro-Israel lobbying group, as well as Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who once claimed that U.S. foreign policy is “governed by Israel.”
Gill’s campaign is bankrolled by several members of CAIR’s national board of directors. This includes CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad, who has praised anti-Israel terror groups like Hamas and once distributed a pamphlet called, “America’s Greatest Enemy: the Jew and an Unholy Alliance.” Several other individuals affiliated with CAIR and other Arab American groups also are listed as donors to Gill.
In 2004, Gill was policy director for the Department on Homeland Security’s intelligence division. During that time, the FBI investigated him for allegedly lying on his national security questionnaire by omitting his work for the American Muslim Council. Gill was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing but left that job a year later.
Federal authorities renewed their interest in Gill between April 2006 and February 2008, when he was investigated by the FBI on suspicions he was possibly aiding and abetting foreign terrorist organizations. Two of Gill’s email addresses were monitored by the law enforcement agency, according to classified information that ultimately leaked into public view.
Gill was never charged with any crime and it remains unclear exactly what the FBI was investigating or how Gill was potentially connected.
In 2001, Gill served as the American Muslim Council’s spokesman, whose founder, Alamoudi, expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah, the top terror organizations attacking the Jewish state.
“Gill has tried to separate himself from the Islamist affiliations he held during his years working for extremist groups like AMC. Yet, if you take a look at his campaign finance records, you will find that little has changed since his days of working with suspected Al Qaeda financiers and Israel haters,” Benjamin Baird, a researcher with the Middle East Forum think-tank who focuses on Islamism and politics, told the Free Beacon. “The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a so-called Muslim civil rights group that federal prosecutors have accused of being a front for Hamas, has also backed Gill in a major way. Nearly every national board member has donated to his campaign, including CAIR Director Nihad Awad, who was secretly monitored along with Gill in a years-long FBI probe.”
“Clearly,” Baird said, “anti-Semites belonging to the anti-Israel lobby are bankrolling Gill’s bid for L.A. city attorney.”
Dillon Hosier, an L.A.-based activist who serves as CEO of the Israeli-American Civic Action Network, said he has heard “a lot of concern expressed about Faisal Gill’s campaign amongst many in the pro-Israel and Jewish communities across Los Angeles.”
“Many feel that he hasn’t been clear about his past connections with terrorism, not to mention he hasn’t really explained his party changing and flip-flopping on several issues,” Hosier told the Free Beacon. “We’re not sure who Faisal Gill really is.”
Congressional hopeful Matt Castelli (D., N.Y) says he’s a moderate who’s serious about crime, illegal immigration, and inflation. One of his biggest backers is a progressive group that says concerns about those issues are “actually kinda funny.”
Rensselaer County Women for Change mocked Republicans for caring about those issues in an Oct. 21 email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s actually kinda funny, like checking our 2022 bingo cards. Google your local Republican candidate and yup! There it is! Inflation, crime, and border security.” Castelli prominently displays the group’s endorsement on his campaign website and relies heavily on their efforts to rally voters.
The group’s endorsement could cause trouble for Castelli, who is seeking to unseat Rep. Elise Stefanik. (R., N.Y.) in New York’s rural 21st Congressional District. Castelli, a former CIA officer who moved to the district from Washington, D.C., just one month prior to launching his campaign, has often been accused of hypocrisy. Castelli claims he supports the Second Amendment and will protect the rights of gun owners, but earlier in October, a Castelli campaign staffer told volunteers in a Zoom call that he is “for gun control” and bans on so-called assault rifles, the Free Beaconreported.
A spokesman for the Stefanik campaign said Castelli’s acceptance of the group’s endorsement is disqualifying.
“Our Far Left Downstate Democrat opponent is endorsed by a radical Far Left group that has advocated for gun bans, a disqualifying position in Upstate New York,” Alex deGrasse, a senior adviser to Stefanik’s campaign, told the Free Beacon. “Now this same Far Left group is downplaying the inflation crisis, which is crushing Upstate New York families.”
Rensselaer County Women for Change said the “actual issues” on the ballot in November are abortion, democracy, and protections for LGBTQ people. In the Oct. 21 email, the group mocks Republican policy priorities in explicit detail.
On crime, an issue that more than three-quarters of American voters say is a major problem, the group said: “Crime—oh ffs [for fuck’s sake] stop it. The very minute Republicans suggest a plan to get guns, especially assault weapons, off the streets, I will be very interested in hearing their take on how to reduce crime.”
The group also claims that the only people who care about illegal immigration are “border hysteria peeps” that don’t like black and brown people. But recent polls show that more than half of all Americans, including 40 percent of Democrats, believe the United States is facing an invasion at the southern border.
Inflation, the email said, is a temporary phenomenon caused by a “mismanaged pandemic,” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and “corporate greed.” Some 82 percent of Americans view inflation as an extremely or very important issue, an October poll found, compared to 56 percent who viewed abortion as a top issue. Concerns over the cost of living took center stage over threats to democracy among a majority of Americans, the poll also found.
Rensselaer County Women for Change and its two co-chairs, Sally Lauletta and Ginny O’Brien, did not return requests for comment.
A Republican strategist told the Free Beacon that Castelli is “dependent on very liberal groups” like Rensselaer County Women for Change because he “carpetbagged into the district” and “is not well-known or from here.”
DeGrasse called on Castelli to address Rensselaer County Women for Change’s statement.
“Voters deserve to know if our Downstate Democrat opponent will denounce support from this group or if he will shamefully continue to accept the endorsement from this radical group,” deGrasse said.
Castelli and his campaign did not return requests for comment.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are seeking answers from Boston University over its “potentially risky gain-of-function research with coronaviruses.”
Researchers with the university said in a preprint paper first released on Oct. 14 that they had created a new strain of COVID-19 by combining the Omicron variant’s spike protein and the original Wuhan strain of COVID-19 variant. Dubbed Omicron-S, the lab-made hybrid killed 80 percent of mice infected with it.
The research has ignited intense debate, with concerns expressed about the nature of the work and the potential harm that such an experiment could have on humans.
The university has since issued a lengthy statement defending the research after public backlash, saying critics have misrepresented the goals of the study. It also denied that the research constituted gain of function—experiments that make pathogens more deadly or infectious.
But the university’s response hasn’t quelled the concerns.
“Americans deserve the peace of mind that proper oversight is conducted to ensure the safety & accountability of any risky scientific research,” committee Republicans wrote on Twitter on Oct. 26.
The Twitter post also contained a link to a letter some House Republicans sent to Boston University President Robert Brown regarding the situation.
The letter’s signers include Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the committee’s ranking Republican member; Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations; and Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) of the Subcommittee on Health.
An employee of the vaccine company, Bavarian Nordic, works in a laboratory of the company in Martinsried near Munich, Germany, on May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Lukas Barth
While the researchers acknowledged four grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its sub-agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the project appeared to surprise officials at the agencies. NIH is now examining whether the scientists violated the terms of the grant policy or if the grant required review under the Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (P3CO) framework, which is meant to guide funding decisions on risky research.
“I think we’re going to have conversations over upcoming days,” Emily Erbelding, director of the NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, told STAT News on Oct. 17.
She said that the researchers’ original grant application didn’t indicate that they would perform this exact work, nor did the team inform the NIAID of the experiment’s potential to enhance the pathogenicity of the virus.
“We wish that they would have, yes,” Erbelding said when asked whether the researchers should have reported their intentions.
Boston University, in an updated statement on Oct. 18, said that it “fulfilled all required regulatory obligations and protocols” from NIAID.
NIAID funding was acknowledged in the paper because “it was used to help develop the tools and platforms that were used in this research; they did not fund this research directly,” the university stated, noting that it credited an NIH award that funded a “shared instrumentation grant that helped support the pathology studies.”
“If at any point there was evidence that the research was gaining function, under both NIAID and our own protocols we would immediately stop and report,” the university stated.
In the letter, the Republican lawmakers asked the university for background materials related to the study, including all proposals and progress reports cited, funding streams to Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories related to the study, the university’s safety protocols relating to risky biological research, and correspondence over whether the study should be subject to a P3CO review.
They also requested a staff briefing from the university with appropriate subject matter experts.
Boston University officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
More than 10 million people have cast mail-in ballots ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections, according to an election monitoring project.
Another 5 million or so have voted early and in person, research from the U.S. Elections Project shows as of Oct. 27. This week, a number of states opened early in-person voting, including Texas.
The project, which is managed by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, tracks early voting activity among states that have reported data. Texas, California, Florida, and Georgia have reported more than 1.5 million in-person and mail-in votes as of Oct. 27, the project numbers show.
“It does seem very robust, early voting … I think we’re looking at more like a 2018 election, definitely,” McDonald told ABC News on Oct. 24, referring to the high turnout.
More than three dozen states have already opened early voting. For the 2022 midterms, early voting phases range from 46 days to three days before Election Day, the National Conference of State Legislatures says.
“Congratulations, Georgia voters! We’ve reached 1 MILLION cast votes. Election officials deserve our thanks for rising to the challenge & working hard to serve our communities,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, wrote on Twitter on Oct. 25.
Georgia has two key races, including for the U.S. Senate and governor’s office. Incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is facing Republican Herschel Walker, a former NFL and college football star, while Gov. Brian Kemp is facing a rematch with Democrat activist Stacey Abrams.
Early polling places across Maryland were slated to open on Oct. 27, according to its governor.
Republicans are favored by analysts and betting oddsmakers to win the House in the Nov. 8 elections, buoyed by frustration over the lackadaisical economy and decades-high inflation. Democrats are attempting to hold their ground and are relying heavily on campaign messaging around abortion.
If Republicans take just five seats, they can win back a majority in the House. In recent decades, the party that has held the White House has lost congressional seats during midterm elections.
Should the GOP prevail in the lower chamber, members of the Republican caucus would elect a new House speaker. They will also run each House committee and decide what bills will make it to the House floor. It’s also likely that the Democrat-dominated House Jan. 6 select committee, which has two Republicans who won’t be reelected during the midterms, will come to an end.
Republicans also only need a net gain of one seat to take control of the Senate, which currently stands at 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker. If the GOP takes control of that chamber, Republicans could easily stymie Joe Biden’s agenda and could block or delay the passage of bills as well as Biden’s executive branch and judicial nominees.
There are 435 U.S. House and 34 U.S. Senate seats on midterm referendums nationwide, with voters also set to elect 36 governors. But these contests will only be seen by people in most states when they go to the polls on Nov. 8.
Amid the sustained shrinkage of local and state media outlets and mushrooming growth of 24/7 cable news networks and digital news sites that nearly exclusively focus on national issues and midterm races, state legislatures garner increasingly less coverage beyond undermanned capitol news bureaus that are often mere shells of their former staffing.
But make no mistake: State lawmakers adopt policies, impose regulations, and issue decisions that have more relevancy and impact in voters’ day-to-day lives than those that come from Congress.
Police officers on horseback patrol in front of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg, Pa., on Jan. 17, 2021. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
Impact on Daily Life
Outside of national defense, foreign policy, immigration, and interstate commerce, state legislatures are responsible for nearly everything else that the government deals with.
State lawmakers are the primary decision-makers across an array of concerns, including education, health care, infrastructure, elections, land use, sales taxes, firearms, and utilities, while controlling more than $2 trillion in yearly balanced-budget spending. After June’s U.S. Supreme Court repeal of Roe vs. Wade, that realm of responsibilities now includes regulating abortion access.
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in 1932, state legislatures are the “laboratories of democracy.” On legislatures’ dockets in 2023 will be the annual top three issues—state budgets, education, and health care—as well as legislation related to marijuana, autonomous vehicles, energy, prescription drugs, data privacy, policing, sports gaming, liquor laws, tax policies, family paid leave, technology, and school choice.
State legislatures can greatly vary in size and scope—unicameral Nebraska only has a 49-member nonpartisan Senate, while New Hampshire has 400 representatives in its House alone.
Lawmakers in four states—Texas, Montana, North Dakota, and Nevada—don’t convene in even-numbered years, while those in eight states—California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio—meet year-round with recesses. Most state legislatures are in session for 30-to-90 days per year.
Yet state lawmakers are far more prolific than their congressional counterparts during their breakneck annual legislative sessions. An analysis by Quorum States, a Washington legislation-tracking service, has documented that state legislatures introduce 23 times more pieces of legislation than Congress does annually. The average state lawmaker either sponsors or signs onto 33 measures, with about four being adopted each session.
According to Virginia-based MultiState, a state and local government relations and analytics firm, state lawmakers, on average, collectively introduce nearly 250,000 pieces of legislation per year, adopting about 30,000 annually.
The Arizona State Capitol building in Phoenix, Ariz., on Jan. 17, 2021. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)
Republicans Dominate
Going into the Nov. 8 elections, of 98 state legislature chambers—Nebraska being the 99th unicameral, nonpartisan body, but certainly Republican in all but name—61 have Republican majorities and 37 are controlled by Democrats.
Collectively, there are 3,978 Republican state lawmakers constituting 52 percent of the state legislature seats nationwide. Democrats control 47 percent percent of the seats.
Republicans control both chambers in 30 states, and Democrats own both senate and house majorities in 17 states. There are 23 states with Republican trifectas, meaning that the governor is also from the same party. Democrats have 15 trifectas.
Only three state legislatures are split, with different parties controlling either of the two chambers, and only 12 states don’t have unified party control of the senate, house, and governor’s mansion, the second-lowest ratio in 70 years, “a sign that ticket-splitting may be waning nationwide” among voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
The senates in Alaska and Minnesota are held by the Republican Party, while the states’ lower chambers are controlled by Democrats. It’s just the opposite in Virginia, which along with Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey, won’t have state legislature elections on their Nov. 8 ballots.
Republicans have been ascending in state legislatures for the past 20 years. Democrats haven’t held a majority of seats nationwide since 2010, when the Republican Party captured majorities in 24 chambers. Democrats have rebounded slightly since 2016, when Republicans won majorities in a peak 66 chambers.
The Nov. 8 general election will be the first round of state legislative races in the wake of post-2020 Census redistricting.
“Watch for more races between incumbents and contested races where the political geography has changed significantly—particularly in suburban areas,” the NCSL stated in its 2022 election preview. “More turnover is a possibility.”
Also, while there are “several hundred new freshman legislators” elected nationwide in every election, these numbers tend to be higher in the first election after decennial redistricting, the NCSL noted.
“This year, we expect the number to be closer to 1,000, or just under 15 percent of the nationwide total,” the organization stated.
The NCSL rates state legislature races in 21 states to be competitive enough that control of chambers could change hands. Over the past century, an average of 12 chambers change party control in each general election cycle, but the organization noted that “that number has declined in recent years.”
That stay-put trend will likely unfold in the midterms. “While individual races may yield some upsets, chamber control is unlikely to change” in many—if any—chambers, according to the NCSL.
“Chambers held by Democrats appear to be more competitive than those held by Republicans,” the organization stated. “That means Republicans have more opportunities to make gains.”
People attend a Rally The Vote event at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing on July 30, 2022. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Most Competitive Statehouse Elections
According to NCSL, partisan control of 12 state senate chambers, including five now held by Republicans, and nine state houses, including five held by Democrats, are up for grabs on Nov. 8.
Ballotpedia has identified 28 battleground chambers in 19 states, including 16 senates and 12 houses.
A projection by CNalysis, a state legislature analytic site, forecasts that the Republicans will gain up to 147 state legislative seats nationwide, including 41 to 42 in senates and 102 to 103 in the houses. Here are outlines of projections in key state legislature elections:
ALASKA—All but one state Legislature seats are on the ballot. The NCSL rates the Alaska House, which Democrats now control under a power-sharing agreement, as a possible flip. CNalysis projects that Republicans could gain up to three House seats, which would give them a majority.
ARIZONA—All state Legislature seats are on the ballot. The Republican Party has a 16–14 Senate majority and a 31–29 House advantage.
Ballotpedia has identified seven battleground Arizona Senate races, including three in Democratic-held districts and four in Republican-held districts, and seven battleground House races, including three in Republican-held districts, two in Democratic-held districts, and two in split districts.
CNalysis offers no projection for Arizona Senate races and forecasts that Republicans could gain a House seat.
MICHIGAN—All state Legislature seats are on the ballot. The Republican Party has a 22–16 majority in the Senate and a 56–53 advantage in the House.
Ballotpedia has tabbed 10 Senate contests as battleground races, including four in Democratic-held districts and six in Republican-held districts. It rates 28 House elections as battleground races with 16 in Democratic-held districts and 12 in districts occupied by Republican incumbents.
CNalysis projects that Democrats will pick up two to three Senate seats and up to two House seats, narrowly missing flipping both chambers.
MINNESOTA—All state Legislature seats are on the ballot. Republicans have a 34–31 majority in the Senate. Democrats control the House, 69–64.
Ballotpedia rates 27 Senate elections as battleground races, including 13 in Democratic-held districts, 13 in Republican-held districts, and one in an independent-held district. There are 42 Ballotpedia battleground House races, including 21 Democratic-held and 21 Republican-held districts.
CNalysis forecasts no change in the Senate but projects that Republicans could gain four to five House seats, potentially flipping the chamber.
PENNSYLVANIA—Half of the four-year Senate seats and all 203 two-year House seats are on the November ballot. The Republican Party has a 28–21 Senate majority and a 113–89 House advantage.
Ballotpedia has identified nine Senate battleground races, including four in Democratic-held districts, four in Republican-held districts, and one held by an independent. In the House, there are 34 Ballotpedia battleground races, including 11 held by Democrats and 23 by Republicans.
CNalysis projects Republicans could gain a Senate seat, while Democrats could chip into the Republicans’ House majority by adding up to five seats.
NEW HAMPSHIRE—All state Legislature seats are on the ballot. Republicans have 13–10 Senate and 206–182 House majorities.
The NCSL and Ballotpedia identify the Senate as a potential flip with eight Senate seats defined as battleground races, including five held by Democrats and three held by Republicans.
CNalysis projects no significant changes, with Republicans potentially gaining a Senate seat.
WASHINGTON—There are 25 of 49 four-year Senate and all 98 two-year House seats on the Nov. 8 ballot. Democrats hold a 57–41 majority in the House and a 28–21 advantage in the Senate.
The NCSL and Ballotpedia have identified the Senate as competitive with five battleground races in three Democratic-held districts and two Republican-held districts.
CNalysis projects that Republicans could gain up to two Senate seats.
OREGON—There are 16 of 30 four-year Senate seats and all 60 two-year House seats on the ballot. Democrats have an 18–11 Senate advantage and the House is split, 30–30.
CNalysis projects that Republicans could gain up to two Senate seats and up to four House seats, potentially gaining control of the chamber.
NEVADA—There are 11 of 21 four-year Senate and all 42 two-year House seats on the ballot. Democrats control the Senate, 11–9, and the House, 26–16.
The NCSL and Ballotpedia rate both chamber elections as competitive. Ballotpedia classifies four Senate elections as battleground races, including two each in Democratic-held and Republican-held districts. There are 16 Ballotpedia battleground House races, including 10 in Democratic-held districts and six in Republican-held districts.
CNalysis projects that Republicans could gain a Senate seat and up to three House seats, with the Senate potentially flipping.
MAINE—All 35 two-year Senate and 151 two-year House seats are on the ballot. Democrats hold 22–13 Senate and 76–63 House (three independents, nine vacancies) advantages.
The NCSL and Ballotpedia have identified both chambers as competitive. Ballotpedia rates 20 Senate elections as battleground races, including 14 in Democratic-held districts, and 53 House elections as battleground races, including 32 in Democratic-held districts.
CNalysis projects that Republicans could gain up to four Senate seats, coming close to flipping the chamber, and up to four House seats.
Facebook parent Meta saw its stock price plunge more than 20 percent intraday on Oct. 27, amid broader carnage in U.S. tech stocks as investors pulled back amid the impact of soaring inflation on ad spending.
Shares of Meta were down as much as 24 percent on Thursday, trading at around $100, a low not seen since 2016. At its peak, the stock was trading at $382 per share.
The stock plunge sent Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth down by more than $10 billion, according to a Bloomberg estimate.
Driving Meta’s slump was the company’s third-quarter earnings report, which showed a miss on earnings per share ($1.64 versus $1.89 expected), met expectations on revenue ($27.7 billion versus $27.4 billion expected), and showed weaker than expected guidance for the fourth quarter.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which lost more than $9 billion in the first three quarters, showed bigger than expected losses in the third quarter, $3.67 billion versus $3.09 billion expected.
Zuckerberg told investors during an earnings call that Meta is facing a number of headwinds, including a “volatile macroeconomy, increasing competition, ads signal loss, and growing costs from our long-term investments.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at an event in New York City, on Oct. 25, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A slowdown in digital advertising is hitting social media companies like Meta hard, with its shares down as much as 60 percent year to date as businesses reduce ad spending amid soaring inflation and recession fears as the Federal Reserve cranks up interest rates.
Zuckerberg, whose personal fortune plunged by around $11 billion in the company’s stock slump, said Meta is behind on where it hoped to be on revenue, but he struck a hopeful note on a fix for the future.
“I believe the tougher prioritization, discipline, and efficiency that we’re driving across the organization will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company,” he said.
Over the past 13 months, the total dent to Zuckerberg’s total wealth amounts to more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At a September 2021 peak, Zuckerberg was worth around $142 billion, now drastically reduced to $38.1 billion.
If Meta’s intraday losses hold at the closing bell, the company will have lost around $78 billion in market value.
A car passes Facebook’s new Meta logo on a sign at the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Oct. 28, 2021. (Tony Avelar/AP Photo)
The company’s results come a day after Google and Microsoft posted disappointing numbers, sparking a widespread sell-off in tech stocks.
Analysts said investors are concerned because Meta is spending on capital-intensive projects at a time when the ad market, a major source of revenue for the company, is drying up as businesses pull back on spending amid growing signs the economy is faltering.
Meta has projected that Reality Labs’ losses would grow further in 2023 and promised to “pace” investments beyond that.
Mark Shmulik, an analyst from Bernstein, told MarketWatch that his team was “incredibly frustrated to see expenses balloon with an almost total disregard for investor expectations.”
“Our old swim coach once crudely said, ‘The bad news is you suck, [and] the good news is you can only get better.’ There was some truth to those words, and perhaps the same holds true here,” he told the outlet.
Bernstein cut its Meta price target to $135 from $195. At least 13 brokerages also have cut their price target on Meta stock, with JPMorgan slashing it to a Wall Street low of $115.
A judge in Wisconsin on Wednesday rejected a request to allow election officials to count mail-in ballots with incomplete addresses on them.
Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell refused a request from the League of Women Voters, a group that sought a temporary injunction and argued it “would upend the status quo and not preserve it,” “frustrate the electoral process by causing confusion,” and said her court doesn’t want to “add to the confusion” by issuing a temporary injunction with just two weeks to go before the 2022 midterms, reported The Associated Press.
“I believe that voters catching snippets of the court’s decision from local media or by word of mouth could reasonably conclude that markings made by their witnesses on the witness certification portion of the absentee ballot would suffice in any shape or form,” Trammell said, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. “A higher court could potentially disagree, and if that is the case, then there is a risk that such voters’ absentee ballots would not be counted in the upcoming election.”
The ruling was a win for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature, which intervened in the lawsuit. The case focused on how much of the address of a witness needs to be included on an absentee ballot certificate in order for the ballot to be counted.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission previously said that an address must include three elements: a street number, street name, and municipality.
In a lawsuit filed in October, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin asked the court to declare that a missing address on a mail-in ballot means only that the address field is left entirely blank.
But “no court has ever issued an order defining ‘missing’ as it is used in that provision of the law,” Trammell said Wednesday in blocking the group’s request.
If she agreed with the league, the ruling would be quickly appealed and possibly overturned, which would result in ballots being tossed that were submitted by voters who thought their witness signatures were sufficient, Trammell said.
Election Numbers
Since the 2020 election, the Wisconsin legislature has passed a number of election integrity bills that make it harder to vote via mail-in ballots. They’ve all been vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who is up for reelection next month and is facing off in a tightly contested race against Republican Tim Michels.
Ahead of the November General Election, more than 510,000 mail-in ballots have been requested by the state of Wisconsin, of which about 305,000 have been returned, according to data provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. During early voting on Tuesday, some 33,000 people voted in person, the data shows.
This election cycle, meanwhile, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has filed 73 election-related lawsuits, announced RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.
Last week, a court in Michigan also found that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson updated an election manual to impose new restrictions on poll observers and challengers without using the right rulemaking process. And earlier this month, Republicans filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania officials who said they will accept mail-in ballots without dates.
The future of racial quotas in university admissions will depend largely on the outcome of one of the most hotly disputed and closely watched cases of the Supreme Court’s new term.
On Oct. 31, the court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the long-running case of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which will address the use of race-based admissions policies not only at Harvard but at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill.
The lawsuit, which seeks to overturn the 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger permitting universities to consider race in admissions decisions with the aim of augmenting diversity, began as two separate legal actions against the two institutions. Their contention was that such discriminatory policies unfairly disadvantage Asian American applicants (and, in the case of UNC, white applicants), violating Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In January, the court consolidated the two actions into a single lawsuit, only to split them up again in order to allow new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has served on Harvard’s board of overseers, to participate in the UNC case while recusing herself from the one involving Harvard.
During her confirmation hearings, Jackson gave assurances to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that she would stay out of the Harvard case to avoid a conflict of interest.
Harvard’s Woes
The case has drawn national attention and, in the case of Harvard, proved to be a major headache when it emerged that the university missed the deadline for filing a claim with its excess insurance provider, Zurich American Insurance, for coverage of legal costs. As a consequence of its sloppiness, the university risks being unable to recoup an additional $15 million in legal fees, after the school exhausted its $25 million claim limit with its primary insurer.
Edward Blum, founder of SFFA, described the universities’ stances as “adversarial.”
Such a stance is played out not only in the courtroom, but also by university leadership who “play an adversarial role in defending what they do and arguing for racial classifications and preferences in admissions,” Blum told The Epoch Times.
Harvard has responded publicly to his lawsuit with lengthy postings on its website setting forth its stance regarding the case and why it believes race-based admissions policies are justified.
The university also went so far as to label Blum an “anti-race conscious admissions activist,” and stated that “the allegations from Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a private organization working to end the consideration of race in admissions, are dangerously misleading, distorting data to reach preconceived and wrong conclusions.”
The school’s singling out of Blum by name may have overstepped certain bounds, he acknowledged.
“One could say it wasn’t necessary for Harvard to identify me by name on their website. I’m the president of the organization that is the named plaintiff. But every lawsuit needs a villain, and every lawsuit needs a hero,” he said.
Contrary to Harvard’s assertion that the lawsuit grew out of “preconceived conclusions,” Blum described a long and meticulous process of meeting with officials and gathering and analyzing data to reach a basis on which to assess the fairness and legality of the university’s policies.
“We presented our evidence after years and years of discovery, where we interviewed officials at Harvard and UNC and were given documents showing that Harvard and UNC basically had a quota system that will limit the number of Asians at Harvard and the number of Asians and whites at UNC,” Blum said.
“Quotas, like the ones we believe are in force, have been struck down in court as outside the boundaries of the role that race is allowed to play in college admissions. We believe that classifying students by race and ethnicity, and treating them differently, violates our civil rights laws and our constitution.”
Strong Data
The lawsuit targeting Harvard relies heavily on econometric data compiled by Duke University economics professor Peter Arcidiacono, who argued in a 168-page report (pdf) that Harvard’s policies were most favorable to African American applicants, followed by Hispanics, and then by whites, and that Asian applicants were the worst off.
Arcidiacono described the case of a hypothetical Asian male applicant whose scholastic achievements and qualifications afforded him a 25 percent chance of admission. That same applicant would have a 36 percent chance of admission if he were white, a 77 percent chance if Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance if black, the professor determined.
“Race plays a significant role in admissions decisions,” Arcidiacono wrote.
Blum’s methodology also rests on evidence and figures uncovered in the course of his lengthy discovery indicating that, in 1993, approximately 19 percent of incoming freshmen at Harvard were Asian, and in 2014, the year he initiated his legal action against the school, the percentage was the same. This seemed off given that the number of people of Asian descent applying to Harvard has grown markedly during and since the period in question.
“This is only one small element of the data that we presented to the courts to prove that Harvard is trying to racially ‘balance’ every ethnic group within its freshman class,” Blum said.
He clarified that while Harvard is a privately-owned institution, it does accept federal funds, and therefore has an obligation to comply with statutes involving race and ethnicity, namely Title 6, which explicitly bars racial discrimination “under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Harvard could go the route of some schools, like Hillsdale College in Michigan, which have opted not to receive federal funds and thereby exempt themselves from such requirements and devise whatever admissions policies they please, Blum acknowledged. But as long as the university receives federal funds, it must comply.
Outcome Not Certain
In Blum’s view, the evidence may be clear, but the Supreme Court could still go either way in its decision.
“There are a number of possible outcomes,” he said. “One would be that the court rejects our arguments and says Harvard and the University of North Carolina aren’t violating the current legal boundaries, and [racial quotas are] permitted, and we lose. The next possibility would be that the schools are found to be in violation of these boundaries, and they’re told, ‘Shame on you. Now go back and fix what you’re doing.’”
If the lawsuit has its intended result, it will not only strike down racial quotas at Harvard and UNC, but set a precedent that will ultimately spell the end of race-based admissions policies at colleges and universities throughout the country, Blum added.
But he acknowledged that, in the event of an unfavorable ruling for the universities, either school may pursue appeals or look for ways to cheat.
“This may be the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end,” Blum said.
Harvard and UNC didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
The United States will stop developing nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles, according to new documents released by the Department of Defense.
The documents (pdf), released on Oct. 27, stated that the United States will “retire the B83-1 gravity bomb,” and will “cancel the nuclear-armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) program.”
During a news conference, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced questions about retiring the two programs, arguing that “our inventory of nuclear weapons is significant.”
“I do not believe this sends a message to Putin,” Austin told a reporter. “He understands what our capability is.”
The Biden administration released three documents on Oct. 27: the National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review, and Missile Defense Review. Together, they lay out the military’s priorities for the coming years and underscore that Washington plans to maintain “a very high bar for nuclear employment.”
During the Trump administration, the Pentagon made a decision in 2018 to develop a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, with a focus on the threat from Russia.
But the Biden administration said in its review that the sea-launched cruise missile program was unnecessary and would be canceled because the United States already had the “means to deter limited nuclear use.”
One program from the Trump era that Biden is keeping is the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile, which the Pentagon fielded in 2020 to address Russia’s potential employment of similar-scale tactical nuclear weapons, the kind that Moscow has threatened to use in Ukraine to salvage its war there.
‘Very High Bar’
The document also said that U.S. nuclear policy will maintain “a very high bar for nuclear employment,” but it would “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners.”
Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched by the Vladimir Monomakh nuclear submarine of the Russian navy from the Sea of Okhotsk, Russia, on Dec. 12, 2020. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
“By the 2030s, the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries. This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction,” the document says.
In addressing the U.S. military’s strategy, Austin told reporters that Russia, unlike China, “cannot systemically challenge the United States in the long term,” but he said that Russian aggression currently poses “an immediate and sharp threat to our interests and values.”
Meanwhile, the Chinese regime wants to employ 1,000 deliverable warheads by the end of the 2020s, according to the Pentagon document. The Chinese Communist Party, it added, could use those weapons for military provocations against U.S. allies in the region.
Despite Russian officials’ recent comments about using nuclear weapons to defend Russia, U.S. officials say they haven’t seen indications that Moscow is preparing to use them. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 26 observed exercises by Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, the Kremlin said.
In the United States, colleges and universities have traditionally been bastions of free speech. People with diverse religious, political, and philosophical beliefs have been able to come together for a free and robust debate in the marketplace of ideas in university classrooms, lecture halls, quads, and dorms.
But universities such as Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) have grown more hostile toward religious, political, and philosophical beliefs that university officials or students disfavor.
Such is the case with Maggie DeJong.
Maggie DeJong was targeted for her beliefs by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Who is Maggie DeJong?
Maggie DeJong graduated from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s art therapy counseling program in May 2022.
While at the university, Maggie would post on her social media accounts, send messages to her fellow students, and engage in class discussions on an array of topics, including religion, politics, critical race theory, the criminal justice system, COVID-19 regulations, Marxism, and censorship.
But she quickly found out that her views, informed by her Christian faith and conservative political beliefs, were often not in line with those held by other students in the art therapy program. Some students said Maggie’s speech was “harmful” and constituted “harassment” and “microaggressions.” They reported her to the university, leading the school to issue no-contact orders against Maggie and investigate her.
In February 2022, SIUE officials—bowing to the cries of graduate school students claiming they were harmed and offended by Maggie’s speech—issued three no-contact orders against Maggie prohibiting her from having “any contact” or even “indirect communication” with her fellow art therapy graduate students.
Maggie wasn’t given a chance to defend herself. When they issued the orders, university officials didn’t even tell her what the allegations against her were, and they did not identify a single law, policy, or rule that she had violated.
That’s because she hadn’t violated any.
Despite all this, university officials threatened “disciplinary consequences” if Maggie violated the no-contact orders and copied the school’s police lieutenant on each order.
Later that month, on Feb. 23, Alliance Defending Freedom sent the university a demand letter asking that it rescind these no-contact orders that were “infringing upon Ms. DeJong’s ability to fully participate in her educational experience and exercise her First Amendment rights.” The university rescinded the orders on Feb. 28.
It wasn’t until March 10, however, that university officials finally disclosed to Maggie the materials underlying the no-contact orders and related investigation. That same day, they closed the investigation and advised her that “no further inquiry or action is anticipated.”
But not before they dragged Maggie’s reputation through the mud and violated her First Amendment rights.
In response, on May 31, ADF filed a lawsuit against Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for violating Maggie’s civil and constitutional rights.
What’s at stake?
The First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause prohibits public universities and their officials from retaliating against or disciplining a student for their constitutionally protected speech. It also prohibits discrimination against speech based on its content and viewpoint.
“Rather than accept and embrace diverse ideological perspectives, SIUE officials are determined to force their graduate students to think and speak exactly the same—or stay silent—and they will punish anyone who steps out of line,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gregg Walters. “Maggie has always respectfully shared her religious or political views, which every student is entitled to do under the First Amendment. It is a sad day for civil dialogue and freedom of speech when universities can issue gag orders like those issued against Maggie for nothing more than expressing her beliefs—beliefs held by millions of Americans.”
Case timeline
February 2022: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville issued three no-contact orders against Maggie DeJong. In response, ADF attorneys representing Maggie sent a demand letter to the university asking that it rescind the orders. The university did so by the end of the month.
March 2022: SIUE dropped its baseless investigation into Maggie and disclosed the materials and information that led to it in the first place.
May 2022: ADF filed a federal lawsuit against SIUE for violating Maggie’s civil and constitutional rights.
The bottom line
Public colleges and universities should be places where multiple viewpoints and opinions can be heard and discussed. Students should not have their free speech rights violated or face retaliation because their views are disliked by other students or university officials.
Pennsylvania’s top election official warned that there will be delays in counting midterm votes next month, declaring that results won’t be delivered on Election Night.
Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman, a Democrat, this week told a local NPR station that “it’s really important for us to get accurate information about the election process in Pennsylvania.” That delay, she alleged, will be because election workers cannot pre-canvas or count mail-in ballots before Nov. 8, the date of the midterm elections.
“So voters and the public know that when there are delays in counting,” she added, “it doesn’t mean that there’s anything nefarious happening. It’s just what the law is in Pennsylvania.”
Chapman, a Democrat, is likely referring to the numerous delays that occurred following the 2020 General Election, which sparked allegations of voter fraud.
She also responded to questions about whether voters should hold onto their absentee ballots or turn them into their local election board on Election Day. The official said that voters shouldn’t delay sending them in.
“We have heard that there’s messaging out there in Pennsylvania, as far as instructing voters to hold onto their mail-in ballots,” Chapman said. “As part of our voter education campaign, we encourage voters to request that mail-in ballot now and return it as soon as possible. We don’t want voters to delay.”
Court Cases
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated an appeals court decision that required Pennsylvania to count mail-in ballots that don’t have dates on the envelope. Pennsylvania law stipulates that voters have to write the date on the outer envelope in order for their mail-in ballot to be counted.
“The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot,” wrote Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson as they sided with David Ritter, a Republican candidate for a judgeship in the commonwealth who lost by only a handful of votes.
About a week later, Republicans in Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against Chapman and asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare illegal guidance regarding ballots that lack dates.
“Petitioners ask the Court to issue a declaration that the date requirement is valid and mandatory, and that the Acting Secretary’s contrary guidance is invalid. Moreover, to preserve the rights of all voters and candidates, the Court should immediately issue an order directing county boards of elections to segregate any undated or incorrectly dated ballots received for the 2022 general election,” the legal challenge reads.
Pennsylvania’s midterm election includes the hotly contested race between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, who are both vying for the commonwealth’s Senate seat.
Frustrated with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s halfhearted attempt to get serious on crime, a decades-long Democrat state lawmaker says he will vote for her Republican challenger in the upcoming election.
“The No.1, No.2 and No.3 issues for New Yorkers are crime, crime, crime,” Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat who had served as an assemblyman in the New York State Legislature for 35 years until 2018, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD News after the last and only debate before the Nov. 8 gubernatorial race.
During the hour-long debate on Tuesday night, Hochul faced off with Rep Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) and took on topics including the economy, abortion, and COVID vaccine mandates. But the most heated exchange took place when Zeldin charged Hochul with failing to address rampant subway crimes and hate crimes targeting Jewish and Asian communities.
Hochul, who ascended to the governorship after former Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal, fired back by accusing the Long Island Republican of trying to “keep people scared” about crimes more than they should, while insisting that her criminal justice policies are “making a difference.”
“Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change they made to bail, has consequences. I don’t know why that’s so important to you,” the Democrat incumbent said at one point.
Hochul’s response, Hikind said, shows that she “has no clue” whatsoever as to what concerns New Yorkers the most.
“There’s a 40 percent decrease in the number of people using the New York City subway system. That’s crazy,” he told NTD News. “I don’t blame people. They’re afraid. They’re concerned. They see the things that are happening on the subway system and in the streets of New York.”
“Hochul has no clue, and I think it was very clear last night,” Hikind continued, adding that he was “dumbfounded” about whether Hochul has a plan for the future at all. He also pointed to the fact that the governor didn’t start campaigning on the issue of crime until very recently when polls showed Zeldin steadily narrowing her lead.
In a campaign ad launched last week, Hochul highlighted her opponent’s ties to President Donald Trump. The ad features footage of Trump at an April 2022 event at his Mar-a-Lago home saying, “Lee fought for me very, very hard.” It also shows Trump giving Zeldin a supportive tap on the shoulder.
“Zeldin voted with Trump, too—nearly 90 percent of the time, against tougher gun laws, for extreme anti-abortion laws,” the narrator says in an ominous voice. “Zeldin even voted to overturn the 2020 election to keep Trump in power.”
The more ads like this Hochul runs, the better Zeldin will be performing in the election, Hikind said.
“Lee Zeldin was going up in the polls because the people of the State of New York understand that if there is no freedom to live, to breathe, to walk the streets, the rest is really just not important.”
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has temporarily blocked the Jan. 6 Committee’s subpoena seeking phone records belonging to Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward, while the high court considers her emergency appeal.
The Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena had asked Ward’s phone carrier, T-Mobile, to produce call and text message records from November 2020 to January 2021.
Kagan’s decision on Wednesday is granting an emergency application that Ward and her husband filed earlier in the day seeking to prevent their phone records from being turned over to the Jan. 6 committee, after a lower appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, voted 2-1 to deny her request.
Kagan gave the Jan. 6 committee until Friday evening to respond to Ward’s Supreme Court filing.
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan stands during a group photograph of thejJustices at the Supreme Court in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Ward had argued that her First Amendment rights would be challenged if the committee found out whom she spoke with following the November 2020 presidential election.
She and her husband were among 11 Republican Arizona residents on an alternate slate of electors for former President Donald Trump. The group cast alternative Electoral College votes showing that Trump had won Arizona, after the state had certified the election in favor of President Joe Biden. At the time, Ward said the electors believe they “represent the legally cast votes” in Arizona.
Another six states had also cast dueling votes for Trump following the November 2020 election—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico.
The Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena is seeking the phone records as part of its probe into Ward’s role as an alternate elector.
The Wards in court papers on Wednesday characterized the Jan. 6 probe as a politically motivated one that carried “profound precedential implications” for a person’s constitutional right to free political association.
A Bryan County substitute teacher says she was terminated from her job at McAllister Elementary School after she reported a children’s book containing illustrations that go against her religious values.
Part of the school’s new library read-aloud program, children’s book “All Are Welcome” contains illustrations of nontraditional forms of marriage, including depictions of a same-sex male couple.
Since being fired, teacher Lindsey Barr lawyered up and began a lawsuit against Bryan County Schools and McAllister Elementary in Georgia for violating her constitutional rights—and her rights as a parent.
Also a mom of three sons, all currently attending Bryan County Schools, Barr said she learned about the book on Aug. 15 through the school librarian, who made it public on Facebook ahead of the read-aloud program, adding that she was already on “high alert” after previous interactions.
“I believe in traditional marriage, as outlined by the Bible, that marriage is held between a man and a woman—deeply held religious beliefs,” she told The Epoch Times. “This book depicted images that were contrary to that.”
Elementary school teacher Lindsey Barr is suing Bryan County Schools and Macalester Elementary for violating her Constitutional rights—and her rights as a parent. (Courtesy of Lindsey Barr)
Barr reported her findings to a fellow teacher forthwith, and shortly thereafter emailed McAllister Elementary’s Principal, Heather Tucker, voicing her concerns, and requesting that her own children be excused from the reading.
“[Principle Tucker] ended up calling me the next day, and I was not at school,” Barr said. “She said that my kids would be excused from that reading program.”
But the debacle didn’t end there.
Barr asked for an opportunity to meet the principal in private to discuss the matter, but with that came consequences. “I basically told her … we have deeply held religious values that we’re teaching our children about marriage, and that I felt like the book is outside of that,” Barr said.
As a substitute teacher, Barr uses a platform to pick up classroom work. She can choose her own schedule and it’s fairly flexible, she said. Usually, she’s awash with jobs. Then something changed.
“When you log into the platform, you can go in and say, I want to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,” she said. “When I logged into that platform, I had no offers to work. The day before I had logged in, I had 57 job offers. And then that day that I logged in—the next day, after making the complaint—I had zero.”
Prior to becoming a substitute teacher, Barr had taught fulltime in Bryan County for ten years, until taking a break in 2018. When her youngest son entered kindergarten this year, she returned to work as a substitute at McAllister Elementary—before stumbling on said children’s book.
A few days after her termination, Barr contacted Alliance Defending Freedom legal and began building a case, accusing the school of violating her constitutional rights, which guarantee religious freedom and free speech.
McAllister Elementary School, located in Bryan County, Richmond Hill, Georgia. (Screenshot/Google Maps)
“Parents have the right to express their opinion on matters of public concern, and even teachers are entitled to express concern about what’s being taught to their own children,” Barr’s attorney, Phil Sechler, told The Epoch Times. “A school, a government cannot punish somebody for speaking out on a matter of public concern, as Lindsey did. And that’s essentially what happened and she was punished for stating her views.”
The alleged punitive firing might also contravene Georgia’s new Parents’ Bill of Rights, which protects the “fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their minor children” and affords them the “right to review all instructional material intended for use in the classroom of his or her minor child.”
“[The Parent’s Bill of Rights] basically has, first, the right of parents to understand what is being used with their children in schools, their minor children,” said Sechler. “And, second, [the right] to object to things that they don’t want used with their children.”
The Epoch Times reached out to McAllister Elementary School Principal Tucker for comment.
Barr said the book “All Are Welcome” is already being read to students at the elementary school, which instructs children from grades K through 5.
In a similar lawsuit severed in July, in Loudoun County, Virginia, 11 parents, in conjunction with America First Legal, took action against Loudoun County Public Schools for exposing students to inappropriate, sexualized material in the classroom, and implementing policies that would keep parents from knowing if their kids are expressing different genders at school.
What happens when the federal government sends tens of billions of dollars of (borrowed) money to states that really don’t need it to fight an economic downturn that was already over?
Rather than, say, use that money to shore up their balance sheets, cover pension obligations or simply send the money back…they indulge in the mother of all bipartisan corporate welfare frenzies. In this case, for electric vehicle manufacturing sites. According to Bloomberg:
Michigan’s largesse — and Tennessee’s and Kentucky’s — was made possible in part by hundreds of billions in federal aid pumped into US states as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The money was meant to soften the blow of a pandemic-induced fiscal apocalypse that never happened. Instead, it’s left states flush with cash, supercharging competition to win the automotive jobs of the future and cushioning the bottom lines of companies like Ford, GM, and Panasonic Holdings Corp., a battery supplier to Tesla Inc.
There’s a risk that all the money sloshing around amid the EV development frenzy will fund boondoggles, like Foxconn Technology Group’s heavily subsidized television factory in Wisconsin that never materialized.
To counter that risk, state and local officials helping to fund this EV boom say they built in protections to keep taxpayers from getting fleeced. But the stakes are getting bigger: The cost per permanent job for some projects is now eight times the average seen less than a decade ago.
What that means is states are paying companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for each job those companies promise to create:
Ford’s Tennessee hub will cost about $414,000 for each direct job, Michigan is contributing $450,000 per GM job, while Georgia committed to forgo revenue that amounts to $212,000 per job to win megaprojects from Rivian Automotive Inc. and Hyundai Motor Co. in the past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The average per-job cost of economic incentives in the US was about $52,000 in 2015, measured in today’s dollars…
Call it corporate welfare, or industrial policy or crony capitalism…whatever the label, the outcome is the same: government picks a winner and pays said winner handsomely out of government funds (or tax incentives…which means the losers subsidize the winner for years or decades to come).
Rinse, repeat. It doesn’t matter which state, political party or ideological bent is in play. Once the political class smells an opportunity to look like it’s bringing jobs and wealth to the area, they fall all over themselves to make it happen. Those self-congratulatory press releases aren’t going to write themselves, after all.
And who gets the bill for all those incentives? Taxpayers like you.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
In a desperate stab at stemming losses in the midterms, President Joe Biden is going full monarch.
Biden took to Twitter on Tuesday to lash out at Republicans who have opposed his flatly unconstitutional plan to bail out student loan recipients by saddling taxpayers with debts they never asked for.
And he sounded more like the heir to an empire than the leader of a country born by defeating the British crown.
Biden was issuing a belated response to a September letter signed by 23 Republican governors who pointed out the inherent injustice of Biden’s plan to “forgive” student loans by $10,000 or $20,000 per recipient by simply making everyone else repay them. (Originally, it was signed by 22 governors, but Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin was a late arrival.)
It was also a jab at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who blasted the idea in an August podcast as the blatant vote-buying scheme it is, aimed at the kind of overeducated, underachieving wastrels courted by the Democratic Party.
“Who the hell do they think they are?” the president of the United States asked about the elected executives of 23 states of the union.
Republican governors wrote me a letter saying student debt relief only helps the “elite few.”
Ted Cruz, the great senator from Texas, said it’s for slackers who don’t deserve relief.
That’s Biden putting on a tough guy act when what he’s actually doing is pandering shamelessly for votes as the midterms approach — midterms that look worse and worse for the Democrats currently in control of the House and Senate. (John Fetterman’s dismal debate performance on Tuesday night only made the Democratic outlook worse.)
It’s also Biden acting as the benevolent monarch, a man who thinks the power of the purse that the Constitution specifically gives to Congress does not apply in the 21st century when the president is a Democrat and his motives are virgin-pure.
But here’s the problem for Biden: It’s not a question of who they think they are. It’s who they actually are.
And that’s 23 men and women representing states with a collective population of about 143 million — over 40 percent of a country of 330 million — as well as a man who was duly elected to the U.S. Senate by voters in the largest of those states.
That means they have not just the right but an obligation to stand up for the citizens who elected them by asking a president deep into his dotage to pull back from a decision that’s not only morally wrong but likely on a collision course with the country’s courts.
“Only 16-17 percent of Americans have federal student loan debt, and yet, your plan will require their debts be redistributed and paid by the vast majority of taxpayers,” the governors wrote, with Iowa’s Kim Reynolds heading the signatures.
“Shifting the burden of debt from the wealthy to working Americans has a regressive impact that harms lower income families. Borrowers with the most debt, such as $50,000 or more, almost exclusively have graduate degrees, meaning hourly workers will pay off the master’s and doctorate degrees of high salaried lawyers, doctors, and professors.
“What’s more, the top 20 percent of earning households hold $3 in student debt for every $1 held by the bottom quintile, generating a lopsided reality where the wealthy benefit at the expense of the working. Simply put, your plan rewards the rich and punishes the poor.”
Now, Biden might well scoff at that particular piece of analysis; anything that comes from the likes of Reynolds, Youngkin and Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kristi Noem of South Dakota has to be suspect down in the depths of whatever remains of Biden’s mind.
But in December 2020, The New York Times — the Democratic Party newsletter that masquerades as a newspaper — reached a similar conclusion.
The Times reported that “debt relief overall would disproportionately benefit middle- to upper-class college graduates of all colors and ethnicities, especially those who attended elite and expensive institutions, and people with lucrative professional credentials like law and medical degrees.”
At a glance, “those who attended elite and expensive institutions,” as the Times put it, looks an awful lot like the “elite few” the Republican governors cited as the beneficiaries of Biden’s raid on the Treasury.
None of this is likely to penetrate the Biden brain, of course. A man who has spent his lifetime ensconced in the power and wealth of the federal government — while his own family’s wealth increased — has little need to think about financial realities.
Had Biden spent some time as a governor, forced to deal with the limitations of actual budgets, balancing needs versus desires versus affordability, he might not take such a “l’etat c’est moi” approach to throwing around the taxpaying peasants’ money.
But Biden spent his career as a senator, then vice president, a near-literal leach on the body politic who has never met a problem that couldn‘t be solved by spending someone else’s money.
It’s almost inevitable that would foster the mindset of a monarch, a man who, when called to account by the elected representatives of the American people, erupts with imperial gall to demand, “Who the hell do they think they are?’
Early voting is already in progress. In two weeks more the ballots are going to be counted. And it’s a good bet that when all is said and done, Biden and his party are going to know damn well who the American people think they are.
Crime in New York City is up 15.2 percent in the last year
When pressed by her Republican challenger, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D.) in Tuesday’s New York gubernatorial debate dismissed concerns about her state’s crime surge.
“I don’t know why that’s so important to you,” Hochul said when Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) pushed her to speak on crime and cashless bail. “Anyone who commits a crime under our laws … has consequences.”
Kathy Hochul’s response to me tonight when I spoke about how we need to lock up criminals:
“I don’t know why that’s so important to you”?
NYers are getting beaten, slashed, stabbed, and pushed in front of subway cars every day, yet @KathyHochul still can’t address crime in NY. pic.twitter.com/rXvGH6XuKd
Crime ranks as the top issue among likely voters in the gubernatorial election, according to recent polling from Quinnipiac University. Twenty-eight percent of respondents listed it as the most urgent issue, followed by inflation at 20 percent.
The news comes after Hochul on Monday downplayed the crime wave in her state, calling it a few “high-profile instances” that caused a “sense of fear.” Yet crime in New York City is up 15.2 percent in the last year, according to recent NYPD data.
During the debate, Hochul responded to the crime concern by saying there is a need for gun reform.
“There is no crime-fighting plan if it doesn’t include guns,” she said.
Ironically, it serves Chinese, Iranian, and Russian interests by weakening America [US Patriot]
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Pfizer Inc said its fellowship program for minorities serves the public interest, as the drugmaker defends against a lawsuit by a group of medical professionals that claims the program illegally excludes whites and Asian Americans.
In a Tuesday night filing, Pfizer urged a Manhattan federal judge to reject Do No Harm’s request for an injunction against filling the 2023 class for its Breakthrough Fellowship Program, which enrolls Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans.
Pfizer said the two-year-old program helps address historical discrimination in the workplace, and difficulties in recruiting, retaining and promoting minorities.
It aims to enroll 100 fellows by 2025, as part of a nine-year commitment to boost minority representation.
“There exists a strong public policy in favor of voluntary affirmative action plans,” Pfizer said. “At a minimum, the public interest favors preserving the status quo.”
Lawyers for Do No Harm did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In its Sept. 15 complaint, Do No Harm said Pfizer’s program was “discriminatory on its face,” running afoul of several civil rights laws and violating a federal ban on racial discrimination by companies that accept government healthcare reimbursements.
Fellows receive two years of full-time jobs, fully-funded master’s degrees, and employment at New York-based Pfizer after completing the program.
Pfizer said Do No Harm lacked standing to sue and could not show irreparable harm, and that its claims would likely fail.
The fellowship program “does what Congress has encouraged and controlling law allows,” Pfizer said.
On Oct. 31, the Supreme Court will consider the future of affirmative action in higher education, as it hears arguments on race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
Among the precedents at risk is a 2003 Supreme Court decision where Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said race could be used as one factor among many to achieve diversity.
Pfizer quoted approvingly from O’Connor, who said “major American businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.”
The case is Do No Harm v. Pfizer Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-07908.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Alison Frankel; Editing by Diane Craft)
(Reuters)—The Biden administration on Wednesday unveiled nearly $1 billion in awards to U.S. school districts to replace aging, gas-fueled school buses with cleaner, mainly electric models.
The funding is the first tranche of $5 billion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hand out over five years through a clean school bus program created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021.
The awards will support the purchase of 2,463 buses, 95% of which will be electric, the White House said. The nearly 400 rebates will go to school districts in all 50 states.
The EPA’s clean school bus program is part of a broader push by the administration to upgrade public school infrastructure and reduce pollution from old buses. It also helps deliver on U.S. President Joe Biden’s pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and funnel federal investments to underserved communities.
Transitioning to an electric school bus fleet nationwide would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.3 million tons per year, according to a study by the non-profit Public Interest Research Group. That’s about the same as taking one and a half coal plants offline for a year, according to an EPA calculator.
Last month, EPA said it would nearly double its planned $500 million in clean bus awards for this year due to overwhelming demand from school districts. It plans to disburse another $1 billion under the program next year.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
In some cases, students struggled with remote learning for more than a year
Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer claimed Tuesday that Michigan students were only kept out of classrooms “for three months.” But many students struggled with remote learning for more than a year, and Whitmer encouraged school closures even after her shutdown orders expired.
During a debate against Republican challenger Tudor Dixon, Whitmer minimized the prevalence of remote learning in Michigan schools during the coronavirus pandemic. “Kids were out for three months,” the Democrat claimed, seemingly referring to her initialorders that shuttered schools in 2020 from mid-March to early June. Months later, however, Whitmer’s health department again suspended in-person high school classes for a three-week period starting November 15, 2020. And in April 2021, Whitmer urged schools to shut down for another two weeks, citing “alarming” virus numbers.
Beyond the Democrat’s shutdown orders and recommendations, many Michigan students were forced to learn remotely for a considerably longer timetable than the one Whitmer cited Tuesday. Schools in Detroit and Grand Rapids, for example, remained closed for most of the 2020-21 school year, while students in Ann Arbor and Flint entered 2022 with remote instruction. That’s in part because Whitmer rebuffed calls from state Republicans to require Michigan school districts to offer an in-person learning option for K-5 students. Instead, Whitmer’s plan allowed districts to return to the classroom—or not—on their own accord, a decision the Democrat defended in early 2021 after some districts failed to develop an in-person option. “You know what, I’m not going to second-guess individual districts,” Whitmer said at the time.
Dixon has spent much of her campaign attacking Whitmer’s response to COVID-19, and Tuesday night was no different. After Whitmer’s “three month” school closure remark, Dixon accused the Democrat of not “paying attention to what was actually happening.” Dixon continued to highlight the exchange in post-debate media appearances, suggesting she hopes the issue will propel her to victory in a race that’s tightened in recent weeks.
“We even had schools that were closed this year. This is shocking to me that [Whitmer] thinks schools were only closed for three months—or maybe she thinks she can convince you that schools were only closed for three months,” Dixon said during the debate. “But you know better, because your students are the ones that are desperately behind.”
More than two years after Whitmer’s first school shutdown, remote learning’s startling impact on Michigan students is now clear. According to the latest “Nation’s Report Card,” which the Department of Education released Monday, Michigan’s fourth- and eighth-graders rank in the bottom half of the country in both reading and math. Fourth-grade reading scores were especially poor—they marked the lowest levels seen in Michigan in three decades. Only seven states fared worse than Michigan in fourth-grade reading, the report shows.
Whitmer, whose campaign did not return a request for comment, rose to national prominence during the pandemic’s onset after her stringent lockdown orders earned her praise among prominent Democrats and liberal media outlets—attention that even landed Whitmer an August 2020 meeting with then-candidate Joe Biden to discuss becoming his running mate. As the pandemic went on, however, many Michiganders soured on Whitmer’s COVID response, citing the Democrat’s decisions to arbitrarily close local businesses and require nursing homes to accept positive coronavirus patients who were discharged from hospitals.
Whitmer’s pandemic woes followed her into 2021, when the Democrat broke her own COVID rules by holding a large, maskless dinner party at a Michigan State University bar. Whitmer’s table included 13 diners despite a statewide rule that forbade dining indoors with more than 6 people. Whitmer also pledged to give back a portion of her salary for the duration of the pandemic, though she stopped the donations after a mere five months—even as her gathering and mask restrictions dragged on for more than a year.
Whitmer has long held a polling lead over Dixon, but that lead has shrunk with Election Day fast approaching. An October Trafalgar Group poll, for example, shows Whitmer and Dixon in a virtual tie, with both candidates receiving 48 percent of the vote after rounding. The pair will face off at the polls on Nov. 8.
Host Joe Scarborough sponsored congressional resolution condemning Al Sharpton’s ‘racist and anti-Semitic views’
What happened? MSNBC’s Morning Joe invited Al Sharpton to discuss his thoughts on Adidas cutting ties with Kanye West in response to the rapper’s blatantly anti-Semitic comments. “‘Do you have a moral compass?’ every company ought to ask,” Sharpton said after slamming Kanye’s “intentional” anti-Semitism.
Al Sharpton? The prominent anti-Semite? Yes. That’s the one. The racist provocateur and tracksuit icon who inflamed the Crown Heights riots of August 1991, one of the worst outbursts of anti-Semitic violence in modern American history.
Sharpton delivered a eulogy for Gavin Cato, the seven-year-old whose accidental death intimated the violence that followed, during which he ranted against Jews. “Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid,” he said. One funeral attendee held a sign that read, “Hitler didn’t finish the job.”
Weeks earlier, Sharpton had publicly defended Leonard Jeffries Jr., a professor of black studies at City College of New York who accused Jews of financing the slave trade and creating “a system of destruction for black people.” Sharpton held a rally and blasted the professor’s critics. “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” he fumed.
What the hell? Indeed. Speaking of which, that’s how Sharpton described the Jewish state of Israel during a brief visit while attempting to make a citizen’s arrest. Like being “in hell.”
Sounds like Al Sharpton’s anti-Semitism was “intentional,” right? It definitely was. During his interview on Morning Joe to discuss the Kanye West situation, however, Sharpton alluded to his past anti-Semitism by suggesting he had accidentally said some “things that are harmful and could be interpreted wrong.” He didn’t really “mean it,” unlike Kanye.
And the people at MSNBC really buy that? They don’t care. It’s been more than four years since MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed a hacker planted homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic comments on her old blog. She hired a cybersecurity expert and notified the FBI, but we’re still awaiting the results of that so-called investigation. Reid was promoted in 2020.
Has Sharpton ever apologized? Not really. In a 2020 article commemorating the Crown Heights riots, Tablet magazine editor at large Liel Leibovitz wrote: “As the years went by, Sharpton was given ample opportunity to apologize for his prominent role in this modern day anti-Semitic bloodletting. He never did.”
When MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was a congressman, did he ever sponsor a resolution condemning Sharpton for his “racist and anti-Semitic views”? He did! In March 2000, then-Rep. Scarborough (R., Fla.) introduced a concurrent resolution blasting Sharpton’s “vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith,” as well as his “fierce demagoguery [that] incited violence, riots, and murder in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York.”
Pennsylvania state House Republicans are moving to impeach Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner for his soft-on-crime policies, which they say have fueled the city’s record levels of violent crime.
Republican representatives, led by Rep. Martina White, filed articles of impeachment against the progressive prosecutor Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. A bipartisan majority of the state House tasked the House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order to investigate the causes of and solutions to Philadelphia’s historic crime surge. State representative Torren Ecker (R.), a member of the committee, argued impeaching Krasner was a necessary step.
“From the beginning of this process, we have heard devastating stories from victims of crime, businesses who are closing because they do not feel safe, and victims who have been revictimized by a district attorney’s office unwilling to help them when they would rather help criminals,” Ecker said. “That is misbehavior in office, for which [Krasner] should be impeached.”
Philadelphia saw a record 562 homicides last year, and police have reported 438 in 2022 so far, causing many to criticize Krasner’s handling of criminals. Just last week, a murderer whom Krasner freed from a life sentence last year returned to custody for his connection with a second murder, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In April 2021, Krasner downplayed the city’s historic crime surge at a swanky fundraiser just hours after eight people were shot outside a Philadelphia train station.
“The city of Philadelphia cannot afford to wait any longer for us to take action on what we already know to be true: that Krasner is responsible for the rise in crime across our city due to his dereliction of duty to prosecute the guilty and to protect the innocent,” White, whose district includes part of Philadelphia, said in a news conference Wednesday morning.
The GOP-controlled House will need a simple majority to impeach Krasner. The bill would move to the state Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans, for a possible trial. It would need a two-thirds vote to remove Krasner from office.
Krasner called the investigation a “political stunt.” On Twitter, he decried the move as “devastating to democracy” and said “it shows how far toward fascism the Republican party is creeping.”
“We must do something to free the people of Philadelphia from the crime and violence crisis that has destroyed lives and property and made Philadelphians prisoners of fear,” said Pennsylvania House majority leader Kerry Benninghoff (R.).
White House chief of staff and serial Twitter user Ron Klain violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that forbids government employees from engaging in campaign-related activity, according to an Office of Special Counsel letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The violation occurred earlier this year when Klain retweeted the left-wing political action committee Strike PAC on May 22, the Office of Special Counsel said in its letter to the America First Legal. The tweet thanked President Joe Biden for delivering infant formula to the United States amid a national shortage, and linked to the commitee’s online store.
Such conduct is illegal. The Hatch Act forbids federal “employees from, among other things, using their official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election and knowingly soliciting, accepting, or receiving political contributions from any person.”
The Hatch Act violation is one in a series of White House controversies that stem from Klain’s habitual use of Twitter. As the Free Beacon previously reported, Klain’s Twitter feed often provides a window into the inner workings of the White House.
Klain’s Twitter feed has revealed, among many other things, his preference for a $23 minimum wage and how the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin holds tremendous influence over the Biden administration’s policy decisions. In the midst of the United States’ disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Klain was on Twitter liking tweets by a left-wing pundit who said “we know war is messy.”
Despite the violation of federal law, the chief of the office’s Hatch Act Unit concluded it would not charge Klain with a crime. Instead, the agency’s vice president and general counsel sent Klain a warning letter.
“Although OSC has concluded that Mr. Klain violated the Hatch Act, we understand that he promptly removed the retweet upon being notified of this complaint,” the letter states. “Accordingly, we have decided not to pursue disciplinary action and will close this matter.”
SAGINAW, Mich.—A spike in home heating costs means the upcoming winter is shaping up to be a tough one for Michigan families struggling to make ends meet in a weak economy, a grim reality that could exacerbate Democratic losses in the House.
Heating oil and natural gas across the state is projected to cost roughly 30 percent more than last year, one of the largest one-year spikes ever recorded in state history. The average Michigan family, according to the Department of Energy, can expect to pay nearly $2,500 to heat and electrify their homes this winter.
“We anticipate a really heavy utility assistance season because of inflation. It’s made it really hard for low-income families and seniors on a limited income to make their ends meet,” Stephanie Kasprzak, executive director of the Monroe County Opportunity Program, told the Washington Free Beacon. “We’re seeing a new population of people seeking assistance now, people who are employed, people who may have young children.”
Democrats in competitive districts throughout Michigan have struggled to respond to voter frustrations with energy prices, instead focusing on abortion rights or former president Donald Trump’s conduct during the Jan. 6 riots. Rising energy prices uniquely impact Michigan, which is the top residential consumer of petroleum in the entire United States. Electricity prices in the state are already nearly 17 percent higher than the nation’s average. As a result, Republicans see Michigan as a huge opportunity in their hunt for a congressional majority as statewide polling shows inflation and cost of living as the top issue on the minds of voters there.
“We’re all struggling. My mom is disabled and my dad is a truck driver, there’s just not that much income left,” said Vinnie Chesla, who was recently laid off as a roofer in Michigan’s seventh district and plans to vote Republican for the first time in November. “We’re already paying over $200 a month on gas alone.”
Republican candidates in the state say they have a solution. Republican John James, running in Michigan 10, says the White House should be doing everything in its power to “drill here.”
Other Republicans, such as John Gibbs, running in Michigan 3, and Tom Barrett, running in Michigan 7, say the United States could once again be energy independent if federal regulators got out of the way and let energy companies produce. Such policy solutions appear sensible to swing voters, such as Miles Bloom.
With a mother on disability and a father who makes a middle-class income as a welder, energy costs are making Bloom’s home life tumultuous. But President Joe Biden and the Democrats who control Congress aren’t helping things, according to Bloom.
“One of the first things he did was shut down the pipeline,” Bloom said, referencing Biden’s decision to cancel the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association wrote in a recent report that 2022 will “be the second year in a row of major [home heating] price increases. Since 2020, the cost of home energy has skyrocketed by 36 percent—the highest prices in more than 10 years.
Those conditions, according to the group’s executive director, “will put millions of lower income families … [with] no choice but to make difficult decisions between paying for food, medicine, and rent.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D.), who is running to represent Michigan’s seventh district, makes no reference to energy costs on her campaign website’s list of “priorities.” Instead, Slotkin says she’s running in part to help “fight for the Roe standard to preserve women’s personal freedom.”
Those priorities are likely a reflection of who Slotkin sees as her top constituency: college students at Michigan State rather than families in suburban Lansing who are more likely to be personally responsible for their home heating costs. Fox News recently reported on a Democratic consulting firm offering $500 to Tik Tok influencers if they endorse Slotkin.
National groups have poured tens of millions of dollars into the Michigan 7 race, making it the most expensive in the entire country. Slotkin has raised nearly $9 million, compared to Barrett’s $2 million.
In Michigan’s eighth district, incumbent Rep. Dan Kildee (D.) is facing his toughest reelection race in a decade. His opponent, former prosecutor and news anchor Paul Junge, has been singularly focused on bringing energy costs down.
Junge’s effective messaging on energy prices is making national Democrats nervous. Axios reported on Tuesday that a Democratic dark money group, the Voter Participation Project, is spending thousands of dollars on mailers to boost a libertarian spoiler candidate running in the district.
“You watch and see how everything has taken a decline. I’m not saying Trump was the best, but we were in a better situation then,” said Larry Martinez, a contractor in the Livingston area who intends to vote for Junge. “I see heating prices and I just feel for the ones who are less fortunate, I’m lucky.”
John Fetterman, the stroke victim and Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, bumbled his way through Tuesday night’s debate against his Republican opponent, Muslim entrepreneur Mehmet Oz. According to a Washington Free Beaconfact check, the candidate’s so-called doctor was blatantly lying earlier this month when he described Fetterman’s speech as “normal” and commended him for speaking “intelligently without cognitive deficits.”
The Democrat’s debate performance reminded us of another historically awkward public-speaking disaster from 2007. That’s when Lauren Caitlin Upton, best known as Miss South Carolina Teen USA, attempted to answer a question about why so many Americans can’t even locate the United States on a map:
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so that we will be able to build up our future for our children.
Fetterman did his best to channel the beauty contestant’s unique diction and halting cadence. Who do you think said it best?
Update: This is what the infamous Miss South Carolina Teen USA looks like today. She’s doing just fine.
Wisconsin Dem praised Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad
Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes said people who support “God, country, and guns” are espousing the same “dangerous” rhetoric as members of the terrorist group ISIS.
Barnes made the comments in a Twitter post in November 2015, two days after terrorists carried out a string of coordinated attacks in France that killed 130 people. ISIS—which claimed at the time that it had established a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria—took credit for the attacks.
“There are people in the legislature who feel a caliphate threat is real in America,” said Barnes in a Nov. 16, 2015, post. “I try to remind them of their theocratic votes.”
“God, country, and guns is as dangerous of a rhetoric here as it is over there,” added Barnes.
The comments could fuel concerns over Barnes’s fiery and often controversial social media posts. His opponent, Republican senator Ron Johnson, has slammed Barnes over posts praising Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and defending Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, which were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Barnes did not respond to a request for comment.
In other posts publicized by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Barnes said he “really could not care less about a Second Amendment ‘right'” to bear arms and mocked House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R., La.) for supporting gun rights after the Republican got shot by a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter in 2017.
He also slammed George Washington as a slave owner after another Twitter user called Washington “one of the top presidents.”
“Yeah. I mean, if slave owning is your thing, have at it!” wrote Barnes.
Barnes has tried to distance himself from last year’s “defund the police” and “Abolish ICE” movements despite taking funding from those groups and making social media posts that indicate he supported those campaigns. The Johnson campaign has highlighted the Democrat’s long history of far-left positions, including his support for ending cash bail, his argument that the United States must “stymie capitalism” to address climate change, and his opposition to pipeline construction and domestic energy production.
Johnson holds a 3.3-point lead over Barnes, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. The competitive race could determine party control of the Senate next year.
A Pew Research Center poll revealed that nearly all Americans are concerned about the rise in the cost of food and consumer goods due to inflation in a worrying sign for Democrats ahead of the midterm election.
Conducted last week, the poll showed that 73 percent are “very” concerned and 22 percent are “somewhat” concerned about the rise in prices, while a combined 93 percent are “very” or “somewhat” concerned by the rise in gasoline. Another 87 percent were similarly concerned about the rise in housing costs, and 70 percent were concerned about “how the stock market is doing,” the Pew poll shows.
“The survey finds that inflation remains the dominant economic concern for Americans,” Pew pollsters wrote. “In fact, the three top concerns, among seven items included, relate to prices—for food and consumer goods (73 percent are very concerned about this), gasoline and energy (69 percent), and the cost of housing (60 percent).”
Since President Joe Biden took office, inflation has been steadily rising, with the consumer price index hitting 8.2 percent year-over-year in September. While Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have often predicted inflation would level out and decrease, it hasn’t.
Gas prices, meanwhile, have dropped more than $1 on average since reaching all-time highs in June, according to AAA data, but the drop has coincided with Biden’s release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Reserve. The oil-producing nations of OPEC+ several weeks ago announced they would slash oil production in what many saw as a blow to Biden’s prospects and would create more pain at the pump in the long term.
The poll was conducted fewer than three weeks to go before the November 2022 midterms, where Republicans are predicted to at least retake the House.
Some Democratic strategists and pollsters say that the party’s lack of focus on dealing with inflation will likely harm candidates’ prospects in November’s General Election.
“A month ago, it looked like not only were the Democrats poised to hold the Senate, the question was: were they going to be able to get, you know, two extra seats?” Fernand Amandi, a Democrat pollster who worked on Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, told The Hill this week. “Now, I think the hope is just to hang on.”
“Inflation never should have been downplayed,” Mike Lux, a Democrat strategist, told the outlet, adding that lower-income Americans are getting hammered by high prices.
“Working-class folks are getting hit hard by inflation,” he said, “and we need to make clear that we understand what is going on, we know that people are having a tough time and we are with them in this fight.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pressured U.S. regulators to clear COVID-19 boosters without clinical trial data, according to newly released emails.
CDC officials relayed to counterparts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early August 2021 that they wanted authorization for Moderna and Pfizer boosters as data began showing that the vaccines weren’t working as well as initially promoted.
The conversation took place on a call that was described by Dr. Phil Krause, a top FDA official, to several other FDA workers.
“Take a deep breath before reading this next paragraph. On that call, the CDC evidently stated that they will assemble all the data they are aware of on third dosing in this setting and send it to us in the hope that we will (very soon) authorize the third dose for immunocompromised as part of the EUA,” Krause wrote in the Aug. 5, 2021, email (pdf).
EUA stands for emergency use authorization.
All of the COVID-19 vaccines were authorized under emergency conditions at that time.
No boosters had been authorized and no clinical data were available for the boosters.
The emails show that “the CDC wanted the booster approved without a trial,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, wrote on Twitter.
The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Krause was responding to Doran Fink, who also works for the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, charged with evaluating vaccines.
Fink sent along a post that had been made to an infectious diseases forum regarding whether doctors should be giving additional vaccine doses to patients with compromised immune systems despite the lack of authorization.
Dr. Richard Nathan of Idaho had written that other countries, including Israel, had cleared boosters.
“Pfizer recommends it and I trust their guidance over the turmoil at our federal agencies. With millions of doses of vaccine set to expire, you should do what you think is best for your patients. I can’t believe you would get pushback from anyone. Keep in mind, nearly everyone in this group is six to seven months out from the second dose of the vaccine and many have significant daily exposure to the virus,” Nathan wrote.
Fink said the post “accurately reflects more widespread thinking that I am hearing in other forums as well,” including among doctors who advise the CDC on vaccines.
“Providers are losing confidence in FDA/CDC to do the right thing for their patients,” Fink said.
Less than two weeks later, the FDA authorized boosters for certain people, including immunocompromised persons.
The agency said that “a thorough review of the available data” concluded the group “may benefit” from a third dose.
“As we’ve previously stated, other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s top official said.
But just weeks later, Woodcock and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s top official, signed onto a joint statement saying that vaccine protection was waning and that boosters “will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”
In September 2021, the FDA and CDC authorized Pfizer boosters for many other Americans. The authorization was expanded to Moderna and Johnson & Johnson shots, and virtually all other Americans, later in the year.
Judicial Watch obtained the newly published emails as part of ongoing litigation against the Biden administration for not properly responding to a Freedom of Information Act request.
An earlier tranche of emails showed that Gruber was “very concerned” in late August 2021 about pressure from companies such as Pfizer over vaccine authorization.
“We need to be given time to consider their data and cannot be pushed by these companies and, for that matter the Administration, who try to impose timeless [sic] that make no sense,” Gruber wrote to Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA official.
“These FDA records further document top officials’ concerns about the controversial COVID-19 booster shots,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “That it has taken months and a federal lawsuit to uncover this critical material is a scandal.”
Aurobindo Pharma USA is voluntarily recalling two lots of blood pressure medication because of high levels of nitrosamine, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said.
The New Jersey-based company initiated the recall of quinapril and hydrochlorothiazide in 20 milligram and 12.5 milligram tablets due to the presence of the chemical, which is associated with a higher risk of cancer. The tablets are used to treat high blood pressure.
“Nitrosamines are common in water and foods, including cured and grilled meats, dairy products, and vegetables. Everyone is exposed to some level of nitrosamines,” according to the FDA. “These impurities may increase the risk of cancer if people are exposed to them above acceptable levels over long periods of time.”
But the FDA alert doesn’t say to stop taking the medication.
“Patients should contact their doctor or health care provider about whether to continue taking their medication, or whether to consider an alternative treatment prior to returning their medication,” it said, adding, “To date, Aurobindo Pharma USA Inc. has not received any reports of adverse events related to this recall.”
Meanwhile, the FDA said earlier this month on its website that bottles of drugs designed to reduce blood pressure contained medication meant for blood clots and strokes, causing a recall of each.
Other Recent Recalls
Clorox is recalling its popular Pine-Sol cleaning product in connection to a bacteria exposure risk, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
The agency said that consumers should “immediately stop” using some Pine-Sol products due to them having the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and other types of bacteria.
“The recalled products may contain bacteria, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an environmental organism found widely in soil and water,” the agency says. “People with weakened immune systems or external medical devices who are exposed to Pseudomonas aeruginosa face a risk of serious infection that may require medical treatment.”
“The bacteria can enter the body if inhaled, through the eyes, or through a break in the skin. People with healthy immune systems are usually not affected by the bacteria,” it said.
Unilever United States this week a voluntary recall of several brands of dry shampoo aerosol products because of “potentially elevated levels” of benzene, a carcinogen.
According to a company announcement that was issued via the FDA’s website, brands that are subject to the recall include Dove, Nexxus, Suave, TIGI (Rockaholic and Bed Head), and TRESemmé. They were made before October 2021 and have been distributed across the United States, the alert said.
Despite Christians instructing the magistrate on how they must govern to honor God being the historic protestant position of political theory, many have attempted to malign Christians with the label of “Christian Nationalist” in an attempt to disarm them from public discourse on politics. This term has scared many Christians and caused them to reject Christian Nationalism. This article will respond to some of the major concerns many Christians have with what they perceive Christian Nationalism to be.
Christian nationalism can be summarized by this: God instituted governments to promote good and punish evil and it is a duty of the Christian to inform the magistrate of what God calls good and evil. This is because Romans 13 details that the government is established by God and is His minister. Uncoincidentally, the word “minister” used here is the same word used for both deacon and servant— “diakonos”; the Christian then must inform the rulers on how they are to honor God with laws that promote good and punish evil.
Many have claimed that Christian Nationalism is about instituting a theocracy when nothing could be farther from the truth. God created three institutions, the Family, Church, and Government as distinct institutions with unique roles. The role of the government is detailed in Romans 13:3-4 as “Rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior but for evil… for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.” Governments have been ordained by God to promote good and punish evil and they do this by instituting just laws. Since good and evil are defined by God, it is the Christian’s duty to inform rulers on how laws are to honor Christ.
The distinction between Christian Nationalism and Theocracy can be made because Christian Nationalism is about enforcing the second table of the Law and not the first. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) the laws were divided into two tables. The first table, commandments one through three, dealt with God’s relationship with mankind and proper worship. This is administered through the body of Christ with the Church. The second table of the law, commandments four through ten, deals with man’s relation to his fellow man. This is basic civil law which is the duty of the government to enact. Since Christian Nationalism is about proper enforcement of the second table of the law Christians from varying traditions can unite around it as it does not involve the institution of laws regarding proper worship.
While it has been made clear that Christian Nationalism is about instituting just civil laws, some have thrown out the accusation that Christian Nationalists want to force conversions. Only the Holy Spirit has the power to draw sinners to Himself. However, when a government’s laws are based on God’s word those who transgress them will know they have broken God’s law. The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 3:24 that “the law is our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we may be justified by faith.” The Law does not save us but it teaches us we need to be saved. This is the first step in telling people they need the Gospel as they cannot know the good news without first understanding their depravity and need for a savior. Having civil laws based on God’s word will in turn teach people they need a savior.
Christian Nationalism is not uniquely American, nor is it about spreading Americanism. God calls all the nations to honor Him. However, different nations are made up of unique people with a specific culture so it may look slightly different in the cultural context but all nations must have laws that honor God by promoting good and punishing evil. For example, Poland declared Jesus Christ as “King of Poland” on December 20th, 2016. Some nations like the United Kingdom are still monarchies which would make the process for how governments promote good and punish evil look different. This has led some to think Christian Nationalism is a threat to democracy; thankfully, in the United States, we have a Republic. Nonetheless, if by “democracy” they mean killing unborn babies, “gay marriage”, trans’ing the kids, and normalizing pedophilia then, they would be correct in their assertion that it is indeed a threat to their so-called “democracy.” This is because these heavily promoted narratives go directly against God’s law. Their highly coveted “democracy” is typically just a sleight of hand to implement the progressive agenda.
Some have claimed that being a Christian Nationalist means only caring for your own country. This has been a result of the post-war liberal consensus that the only way to properly love other nations is to first hate your own. Scripture does not tell us to love our neighbor by hating our own family, but tells us the exact opposite when the Apostle Paul states in 1 Timothy 5:8, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Paul is saying that even the pagans take care of their own so how much worse is it that Christians don’t take care of their own? This principle can be applied at the national level as well because the nation is a large group of people with common descent and shared culture. If even non-Christian nations take care of their own, how much worse would it be for a Christian nation to not take care of its own?
Over time Christian Nationalism will result in a people and nation that develop laws that explicitly protect Christians and Christian worship. This has caused some to assert that “the Church flourished under persecution.” Christ will build His Church in any political environment because His Gospel conquers human hearts regardless of their kings. Just because the early Church suffered under persecution it is not prescribing persecuting governments to spread the Gospel. Christ said in Matthew 5:10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” This means it’s a blessing to be persecuted because it means the world identifies us with Christ. It’s a blessing to be in Christ and persecution is evidence of that blessing but Christ is not prescribing Christians to make governments that persecute them.
While it is true that the Global Church has survived and continues to survive under persecution, some environments are more hostile to the Gospel than others. This is what David Innes stated in ‘Christ and the Kingdoms of Men’ when he said:
“While civil governments can neither generate love nor coerce it, it can do what is within its sphere of competence: to protect the spiritual environment, conditions favorable to cultivating that love for God. In doing this, it is not doing the work of the Church but only removing impediments to an accommodating environment for the work.”
Since we live in a Republic it would be quite foolish to vote for our persecution; however, it is also about creating an environment favorable to the Gospel. However, we should make the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive passages in scripture about government persecution.
Conflating Christ’s heavenly Kingdom with an earthly kingdom has caused many to point out that Christ said, “my kingdom is not of this world.” This is true; however, “The statement, “My kingdom is not of this world,” relates to the origin of Christ’s kingdom, not the location. The authority and power of Christ’s kingdom are drawn from a source outside of this world– from God our heavenly Father. Christ’s headship is not of human origin but divine. Christ has authority not because the people of a nation elect Him as King but because God has given Him this authority as we see in Matthew 28:18 where Christ says, “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Christ then issues the Great Commission to disciple the nations. As Pastor Andrew Isker has pointed out “the verb is “mateteusate” (disciple) and the direct object is “ethne” (nations).” This means that Christians are to teach the nations which involves teaching the magistrate. However, even those who claim this is only a call to “make disciples of individuals” the result is the same as the nations will be filled with Christians. As Christians make disciples in these nations and of these nations the natural conclusion is for Christians to end up in political seats of power, just as with Constantine. However, many Christians think Christians should not seek political power. This is quite foolish as it’s saying that it would be better for pagans to run the country. If the saints will judge angels they certainly should be able to handle affairs in this realm.
Recent events have caused some to equate the blasphemous book “President Donald J. Trump, The Son of Man – The Christ”, with Christian Nationalism. Nothing could be further from the truth and no serious Christian Nationalist is advocating this. As in Psalm 2, Christian Nationalism is the call for all rulers to kiss the Son and honor Him with how they rule. Governments and their rulers are ministers of God and subjected to Him. Statism elevates the State to God as they become the final authority.
Based on all of this, many have claimed this is no different than basic Christianity and historic protestant political theory, and in this assertion, they would be correct. However, if you believe abortion must be banned and mutilation of children with “gender transition surgeries” must be ended then you’re going to be called a Christian Nationalist. Embrace the term. We’re all Christian Nationalists now.
One of the Democratic Party’s leading figures, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who is head of the United States Senate intelligence committee, has said former President Donald Trump was right when it came to the security risks around the Chinese-owned TikTok.
“This is not something you would normally hear me say, but Donald Trump was right on TikTok years ago,” said Warner during a visit to Australia, reported The Sydney Moring Herald on Oct. 25.
“If your country uses Huawei, if your kids are on TikTok, if your population uses WeChat as a social media platform, the ability for China to have undue influence is, I think, a much greater challenge and a much more immediate threat than any kind of actual, armed conflict.”
Warner, who is currently in Australia to engage with local intelligence chiefs, politicians, and business people, also warned about the technological domination that the Chinese regime is exerting over other countries, calling it scary.
“China having this kind of technology domination in a number of countries ought to scare the heck out of us because we’ve seen the kind of Orwellian surveillance state they’ve already created within China,” he said.
Australia is Concerned About Tiktok
The U.S. is not the only country concerned about Tiktok.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has ordered cybersecurity authorities to investigate social media giant’s data collection security.
O’Neil, who is also the cybersecurity minister, has called on Australians who use TikTok to be cautious of the app’s data collection.
“I’d say to Australians: if you’re using TikTok, think about what data of yours might be being collected, and know that we’re not always 100 percent confident of how that data’s being used,” O’Neil said on an Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) TV program on Sept. 5.
“We do need to take precautions in this digital age.”
According to Digital 2022, a report released by internet data research company WE ARE SOCIAL, the international version of TikTok has 7.38 million adult users in Australia, second only to Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram.
“Our security teams minimize the number of people who have access to data and limit it only to people who need that access in order to do their jobs,” Brent Thomas, TikTok’s Australian director of public policy, wrote in reply to the shadow minister for cybersecurity and countering foreign interference, James Paterson.
“We have policies and procedures that limit internal access to Australian user data by our employees, wherever they’re based, based on need.”
Trump Administration Wanted to Shut Down Tiktok
Former President Donald Trump attempted to shut down social media apps TikTok and WeChat in 2020, citing security risks because of their connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Trump’s executive actions centred on ByteDance, a Beijing-based firm that owns TikTok, and WeChat, which is owned by the Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings. However, they were blocked by federal court orders.
Currently, the Biden administration is conducting its own review into the Chinese-owned apps, with President Joe Biden signing his own executive order to direct the U.S. Department of Commerce to “evaluate these threats through rigorous, evidence-based analysis.”
The president advises they “should address any unacceptable or undue risks consistent with overall national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives, including the preservation and demonstration of America’s core values and fundamental freedoms.”
The Commerce Department, according to the White House, will be required to review TikTok, WeChat, and other apps that are developed, designed, controlled, or manufactured by entities linked to the CCP. The order notes that such apps “may present an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and the American people.”
Pennsylvania voters shut down MSNBC interviewer Elise Jordan, who prodded them about the U.S. Capitol riot, which reporters in newsrooms in New York and Los Angeles still think is more important than kitchen-table issues like inflation and crime.
The voters expressed their opinions in a cogent and respectful manner, further showcasing that the Jan. 6 hearings haven’t moved the political needle. Notably, the panel seemed more informed, at least on certain aspects of the riot, than the interviewer. At one point, multiple interviewees quickly corrected Jordan when she erroneously claimed Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died at the hands of rioters that day.
For the record, Officer Brian Sicknick was not beaten to death as had been originally and widely reported and repeatedly regurgitated by Democrats. Through the D.C. medical examiner, we learned in April 2021 that Sicknick died on January 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol riot, due to natural causes brought on by two strokes.
Also, four other officers, sadly, took their own lives in the weeks and months after the riot.
Four Trump supporters died the day of the riot, two from natural causes and one from a reported amphetamine drug overdose. Killed was 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashley Babbitt, who was shot dead by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd as she tried to climb through a glass-paneled door after parts of it had been shattered by rioter Zachary Jordan Alam.
As per the norm, the media are going all out in the final weeks before the election in a clear effort to rescue Joe and his fellow Democrats, even if they have to continue smearing Trump supporters in the process. Sadly for the MSM, all signs are not just pointing to a red wave of significant proportions, but trust in the media as an institution has crumbled, so their machinations – while predictable – are likely to have little to no impact, as the above MSNBC reporter found out the hard way.
Of course, last night’s focus group brouhaha was far from the only instance of MSNBC crying wolf from their isolated and insular liberal bubble.
That same day, MSNBC host Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush White House alum, suggested to Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., that foreign countries should oversee the results of our midterm elections.
Nicolle Wallace: “Do you think it’s time to ask for friends and allies to come over and help us monitor our elections?” pic.twitter.com/Qc22lcsTt7— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 24, 2022
Meanwhile, on Joy Reid’s program — mere hours later — former GOP strategist Matthew Dowd compared midterm voters concerned about the cost of basic necessities to Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932.
MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd compares Republicans to Nazis because they are focusing on economic issues & inflation: “I’m not going to say that the GOP are Nazis … but it certainly sounds very familiar to what happened in Germany…”
The Federalist’s co-founder, Ben Domenech, took note of the increasingly hysterical coverage and suggested a possible remedy.
Between Joe Scarborough’s boomer insanity, Nicolle’s traitorous suggestions, Tiffany Cross being dumber than a box of hair, and Chris Hayes claiming Republicans taking Congress is itself enabling chaos, I think MSNBC needs to check with their therapist about upping their meds.— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) October 25, 2022
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Hillary Clinton has been attacking “election deniers” who have questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, calling them threats to democracy. Now she is preemptively saying that the 2024 election is already on the path to illegitimacy before the first vote is even cast.
But, where is the media to call Hillary Clinton, who is already a rumored candidate for 2024, a “danger” to our democracy? Nowhere to be seen, naturally.
On Monday, Clinton warned on Twitter of Republican “election deniers” running for office, saying, “For every election denier running for federal or statewide office, there are a dozen more running for seats in our state legislatures.”
She also decried the “threat to our elections” posed by Republicans.
There was also a video posted to Twitter by left-wing activist group Indivisible Guide, in which the former secretary of state and multiple-time failed Democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton claimed that “right-wing extremists” are “already” planning to “literally steal the next presidential election.”
“I know we’re all focused on the 2022 midterm elections, and they are incredibly important, but we also have to look ahead, because, you know what, our opponents certainly are,” Clinton said in the video. “Right-wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election, and they are not making a secret of it.”
“The right-wing controlled Supreme Court may be poised to rule on giving state legislatures,” she continued, “the power to overturn presidential elections. Just think, if that happens the 2024 presidential election could be decided not by the popular vote, or even by the anachronistic electoral college, but by state legislatures — many of them Republican-controlled.”
*taps microphone* And now an important message from Secretary @HillaryClinton!
We’re all focused on winning the midterms and defending our congressional majorities. That’s critical. But we also must take the fight to MAGA Republicans at the state level: https://t.co/3JDygMc5T2pic.twitter.com/HPNSvnqZsK
Clinton also pushed the activist group’s latest initiative to “stop MAGA” and encourage Democratic gains in the coming elections.
When she said that “our opponents” are “looking ahead,” Hillary was talking about the upcoming Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, which will review how state courts interpret state election laws, specifically whether state legislatures can overrule state courts on election issues.
This is hardly the first time Hillary Clinton has been an election results denier. She has questioned the results of the 2016 election over and over again.
In 2019, for instance, she claimed Donald Trump was an “illegitimate president,” the Washington Post reported.
Clinton is not above outright lies. Just last month she made provably false claims that her private email servers had “zero” classified emails on it.
Hillary’s latest comments brought ridicule over her hypocrisy on social media.
So, is Twitter going to ban Hilary Clinton for denying election results and questioning the integrity of the process with no evidence? https://t.co/WMuqoozp11
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: “Accuse your opponent of what you are doing, to create confusion and to inculcate voters against evidence of your own guilt”…”Right wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election.” -Hilary Clinton pic.twitter.com/CUF3bre7FL
Apparently, there has been a shift in the impressions of what is a danger to this country.
If it is POST election denialism, that is a severe threat to our democracy. If it is a PREEMPTIVE election denial that is just sound wisdom and we all need to applaud. https://t.co/KxZMXF1qPJ
— Brad Slager: Polling For Soup (@MartiniShark) October 25, 2022
Even as Clinton claims that Republicans are “election deniers,” she, herself, has repeatedly disavowed the results of duly certified elections. Yet the media does not highlight her hypocrisy on the issue. And now she is making a preemptive attack on an election cycle that hasn’t even started, much less one in which a single vote has even been cast.
It seems clear she is setting herself up to face the GOP nominee in 2024 — which she probably hopes will be Donald Trump — and is cajoling her supporters to see an election that hasn’t happened as illegitimate. And the media seems content to let her do it.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper freaked out on an interviewer in the lobby of the network’s New York City building in a new video.
The cable news personality angrily cursed out a man who sought to question him on his coverage of VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) transportation companies.
The footage was published Tuesday on the YouTube channel News and Java.
The interviewer asked Cooper about any potential investments he has in VTOL companies he profiled in an April “60 Minutes” segment.
In the segment, Cooper depicted the luxury travel industry favorably. The extent to which battery-powered aircraft are viable as taxi-style transportation is yet to be demonstrated.
“EVTOLS promise a faster, safer and greener mode of transportation, potentially changing the way we work and live,” Cooper said of the concept on “60 Minutes.”
His interviewer wasn’t buying it, calling the segment a de facto ad for eVTOL companies.
“Why didn’t you tell the viewers they were infomercials for Joby, Lift and Wisk?”
Cooper angrily cursed out his impromptu interviewer after an awkward interaction with a sliding door.
“[What] the f*** are you saying? Get the f*** away from me!” the CNN journalist exploded on the man, following him in what appeared to be a public area of his network’s building.
“Did you have investments in those eVTOLs?” The man asked as Cooper disappeared behind a secured door in the building.
The interviewer’s line of questioning was insistent, but it’s far from unprecedented. CNN media personalities regularly pursue public figures with even more confrontational questioning.
Network performer Jim Acosta has badgered conservatives outside Congress on numerous occasions, often repeating questions endlessly when his targets decline to answer to his satisfaction.
Now-disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo exploded on a man in public in 2019, threatening to throw one of his critics down a set of stairs after he was referred to as “Fredo.”
CNN has experienced challenges to its business model in the post-President Donald Trump news era, with the network’s new corporate parent seeking to shed its reputation for liberal partisanship.
Some of the most partisan personalities of the network — such as Brian Stelter and John Harwood — have been laid off from CNN this year.
As evidence mounts that TikTok’s Chinese parent company spies on American citizens, the Biden administration has let the social media giant avoid disclosing its extensive lobbying and public relations activities to the American public.
According to a report released last week, executives at ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department developed a plan to track the location data for at least two American citizens. The report adds to longstanding concerns that the Chinese government could use TikTok to scoop up data on Americans.
But ByteDance has so far dodged extensive federal regulations and is in talks with the Biden administration on how to continue operating TikTok in the United States. In addition to a cavalry of in-house lobbyists, ByteDance has three Washington firms on retainer to lobby Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. ByteDance has spent more than $4,360,000 so far this year on lobbying.
Details of that lobbying campaign are largely kept under wraps because the U.S. government does not require ByteDance to disclose its lobbying activities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires lobbyists for foreign governments or political parties to disclose their lobbying contracts and outreach to American policymakers and media organizations. The disclosures can provide a roadmap of how foreign organizations try to influence policy in Washington.
Instead, ByteDance’s lobbyists disclose their influence activities under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, a far less transparent regulation that only requires lobbyists to disclose their revenues and issues on which they lobby. Lobbyists for foreign companies often exploit the loophole by registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act instead of the Foreign Agents Registration Act by claiming they are not working for foreign governments.
Watchdog groups and policymakers have expressed concern with the loophole.
“It’s time TikTok lobbyists register as foreign agents,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) said after a report earlier this year that ByteDance executives in Beijing have accessed the data of TikTok users in the United States.
“We’ve been quite concerned about the loophole for a long time,” Mandy Smithberger, a director at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Free Beacon last year. “FARA certainly has a very Western interpretation of the lines between corporations and governments. It doesn’t reflect how in some countries, those two are pretty synonymous.”
Like most Chinese companies, ByteDance’s corporate structure is intertwined with the Chinese government. It is also required by law to share data with the Chinese government. Last year, a Chinese state-owned organization, WangTouZhongWen (Beijing) Technology, bought a small stake in ByteDance’s subsidiary Beijing Bytedance Technology and took a seat on the entity’s board.
The Justice Department has forced lobbyists for other Chinese companies to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Lobbyists for Hikvision, a Chinese surveillance company, registered as foreign agents last week following months of pressure from the Department of Justice. Both ByteDance and Hikvision have helped the Chinese government’s human rights abuses against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province. Hikvision’s surveillance hardware has been used to track Uyghurs. Chinese authorities have forced ByteDance to censor pro-Uyghur content on its platform.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is shutting her eyes and ears to any news that “Democrats are in increasing trouble” in November’s midterm elections, the New York Timesreported Monday.
Pelosi, who is doing a frantic campaign blitz across the Midwest as polls and election analysts predict a Republican wave, said she is incredulous that Republicans could actually win.
“I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people,” Pelosi said.
The speaker’s incredulity comes as Democratic president Joe Biden oversees unprecedented levels of inflation and an economy that teeters on the brink of recession. Economists widely believe that Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and $738 billion Inflation Reduction Act, both of which Pelosi steered through the House, have exacerbated inflation.
Under Democrats’ watch, crime has also spiked throughout the country. In New York City, for example, crime rose 15.2 percent in the last year.
Pelosi, whom the Times depicted as “abrupt and impatient,” snapped at reporters for doing their jobs. She “lamented the opportunity cost of talking to a reporter when she could be working on her cellphone instead,” saying, “My time is money.”
The speaker also turned a “steely stare” on journalists who asked if she would honor her 2018 promise to retire as the House’s Democratic leader, asking, “Do you think I would respond to that question?”
While the Times in this report wondered if the campaign blitz is Pelosi’s “last hurrah,” the liberal paper noted earlier this year that she is running for reelection in her deep-blue district.
Pelosi may well “break her 2018 pledge,” the Timesnoted in August, because she views “a demotion to the backbench” as “inconceivable.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. consumer confidence ebbed in October after two straight monthly increases amid rising concerns about inflation and a possible recession next year, but households remained keen to purchase big-ticket items like motor vehicles and appliances.
The Conference Board survey on Tuesday also showed more consumers planned to buy a home over the next six months, despite soaring borrowing costs. The steady rise in consumers’ buying intentions could provide some stability for the economy in the near-term.
But there are signs that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes are starting to cool the labor market, with a decline in the share of consumers viewing jobs as “plentiful” and a rise in those saying employment was “hard to get.”
“The biggest risk is the unknown lagged effects from the Fed’s cumulative tightening and the economy may not feel the full effects until next year when recession risks are high,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 102.5 this month from 107.8 in September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at 106.5. The decline in confidence was across all age groups, but more pronounced in the 35-54 and well as the 55 and over cohorts.
Regionally, there were marked decreases in Florida, probably because of Hurricane Ian, and Ohio. Consumers’ 12-month inflation expectations rose to 7.0%, likely reflecting a recent reversal in gasoline prices after falling over the summer, from 6.8% last month. Food also remains very expensive.
Stubbornly high inflation and fading confidence are a blow to President Joe Biden and Democrats’ hopes of retaining control of Congress in Nov. 8 mid-term elections.
The Fed, fighting the fastest-rising inflation in 40 years, has raised its benchmark overnight interest rate from near zero in March to the current range of 3.00% to 3.25%, the swiftest pace of policy tightening in a generation or more. That rate is likely to end the year in the mid-4% range, based on the U.S. central bank officials’ own projections and recent comments.
The survey’s present situation index, based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions, tumbled to 138.9, the lowest level since April 2021, from 150.2 in September.
Its expectations index, based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions, fell to 78.1 from 79.5 last month. The expectations index remains below a reading of 80, a level associated with a recession and suggests that the risks of a downturn could be rising.
The survey’s so-called labor market differential, derived from data on respondents’ views on whether jobs are plentiful or hard to get, dropped to 32.5, the lowest reading since April 2021, from 38.1 in September.
This measure correlates to the unemployment rate from the Labor Department and is still high by historical standards. Unemployment benefits data show the labor market remains tight.
Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar fell against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices rose.
SPENDING PLANS RISE
Even as consumers worried about the economy’s outlook, they remained interested in buying big-ticket items over the next six months, though they pulled back on travel plans, suggesting many Americans intended to stay home over the holiday season.
The share of consumers planning to buy motor vehicles increased to the highest level since July 2020. More consumers planned to buy appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, and vacuum cleaners.
“Consumers have abundant excess saving and they are willing to dig into this pile of cash to keep their real spending at least stable, even as inflation eats into their real incomes,” said Scott Hoyt, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Consumers were also more inclined to buy a house, probably encouraged by a sharp slowdown in house price inflation.
But surging mortgage rates remain an obstacle. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.94% last week, the highest in 20 years, up from 6.92% in the prior week, according to data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac.
A separate report on Tuesday showed the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index increased 13.0% year-on-year in August after advancing 15.6% in July. On a monthly basis, prices fell 0.9% in August, the second straight monthly drop.
A third report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices increased 11.9% in the 12 months through August after rising 13.9% in July. Prices fell 0.7% on a monthly basis after decreasing 0.6% in July. It was the first time since March 2011 that monthly prices posted back-to-back declines.
“We expect home price inflation to slow in the remainder of 2022, falling to single digits by year-end and to zero by the second quarter of 2023,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics in New York. “With home sales falling as deteriorating affordability sidelines many buyers, prices will have to adjust. However, inventory remains low, and we think that will keep a floor under home prices.”
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)
Afghan allies’ pleas for help amid Joe Biden’s bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country have gone unread by the Biden administration, a new report from the State Department’s inspector general found.
The State Department established the National Visa Center’s Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program to help get stranded Afghan allies out of the country once the U.S. military pulled out . The inspector general’s report found that in May 2022, almost nine months after the withdrawal, the SIV program’s main email inbox had 325,000 unread messages, the Washington Times reported.
“In [the National Visa Center], the application backlog is related to opening emails sent to NVC’s Afghan SIV email account,” the inspector general told the Times. “As of May 2022, the email account had over 325,000 unread messages, and OIG observed that NVC staff were still opening unread emails dated from August 2021.”
About 300,000 potential immigrants are waiting on the State Department to solve its backlog of applications for the Special Immigrant Visa. The department’s backlog is the latest blunder by the Biden administration in handling the Afghan withdrawal, Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
“This report outlines exactly what I have seen with my own eyes in my office’s efforts to help our Afghan partners who are still trapped in the country,” McCaul told the Times. “Some of our cases involve people who submitted their SIV application over a year ago who still haven’t received even an application number.”
In August, former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called Biden’s pullout a “slap in the face” to every combat veteran that has “left the world less safe.”
The State Department, in a September filing, said it would clear the backlog by the end of October. Its inbox had 140,175 unread messages from “potential applicants” at the end of August. An official for the department did not answer when the Times asked if it was still on track, but it defended the program’s efforts.
“The department will continue to ensure Afghan SIV applications are processed as quickly as possible in accordance with statutory requirements, while continuing to safeguard U.S. national security,” the official said.
“These delays and dysfunctions, over several administrations, are the reasons so many vulnerable Afghan allies languished in Afghanistan in the first place,” said Mario Marquez, director of national security for the American Legion. “Corrective actions that would significantly reduce the email backlog must be put to action immediately, as every day that an Afghan and their family receive no action literally increases the risk to their lives.”
Robert Malley’s credibility shot, State Dept won’t say what massive protests are about
Biden administration Iran envoy Robert Malley is under increasing pressure to resign his post, as members of Congress and Iranian-American advocacy groups lose faith in his ability to support a growing protest movement in the Islamic Republic that threatens to topple the hardline regime.
The protests, which first erupted after the regime’s morality police murdered a young woman who didn’t properly wear her head covering, have quickly evolved into a referendum on the Iranian regime itself. But Malley, who has been the administration’s public face of diplomacy with Tehran, claimed the protesters are merely demonstrating “for their government to respect their dignity and human rights”—even in the face of mounting evidence they are protesting to end the oppressive regime.
The Biden administration is still waiving economic sanctions on the Iranian regime as it seeks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, though the prospects of reaching an agreement grow increasingly slender. These efforts have also forced the administration to walk a diplomatic tightrope as it offers tepid support to protesters to avoid isolating the hardline government from negotiations. Following Malley’s online gaffe, the State Department declined to answer Washington Free Beacon questions about whether it assesses that Iranian protesters are seeking regime change, even as those protesters chant “Death to the Dictator” and make clear they want the theocratic government dismantled.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a leading congressional critic of a new Iran deal, told the Free Beacon that the “Biden administration is literally invested in the survival of the Iranian regime because the administration wants Iranian oil to make up for the catastrophe they’ve created by attacking American energy producers. That’s why they can’t bring themselves to support the calls by the people of Iran for regime change.”
“Robert Malley will go down in the history books as the most ineffective and feckless State Department official of the last 50 years. It’s time for him to go,” Bryan Leib, executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, a grassroots group that supports democracy, told the Free Beacon. “His most recent gaffe on Twitter is just another example of how he has aligned the United States government with the Islamic Republic and not with liberty-seeking Iranian people. His fake apology is not accepted and he should be terminated immediately.”
Leib’s comments were echoed by many on Twitter, who accused Malley of obfuscating the issue.
“It’s a revolution,” Alireza Nader, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, replied to Malley’s tweet.
“Respect?” asked popular Iran commentator Saman Arabi. “Iranian [people] are literally asking for regime change!”
Though Malley later apologized for his tweet, saying it was “poorly worded,” congressional sources and other foreign policy insiders say that the damage has been done and that Malley’s credibility with Iranian reformers is shattered.
“So long as Malley is special envoy, you know the administration’s policy remains offering sanctions relief to the regime in Tehran,” said Richard Goldberg, a former White House National Security Council official who worked on Iran issues and now serves as a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “If he leaves, it’ll be the first signal of a policy shift away from accommodating the regime and toward helping the Iranian people.”
The State Department’s formal position on the protest movement is also muddled. Spokesman Ned Price would not say during the department’s daily briefing on Monday if the administration assesses that the protesters want regime change, even though he was presented with clear evidence that this is the case.
“It’s not for us to interpret what the people of Iran are asking for,” Price said. “We would never intend to characterize what it is that they seek.”
Several reporters were left confused by this response, with one saying, “Ned, I think the point is, though, that you don’t have to interpret what they’re saying. What is it that you see that they’re calling for? Do you think that they’re calling for something that’s less than regime change?”
“I am not going to speak on behalf of the Iranian people,” Price replied.
The reporter, Matthew Lee from the Associated Press, continued his line of questioning: “Well, let’s say that if I walk down the street carrying a sign saying oranges are bad, okay—orange, the fruit, oranges are bad; they should be banned—what would you say that my message is?”
“I’m the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State. I am not the spokesperson for oranges,” Price responded.
A State Department spokesman declined a Free Beacon request for comment on the administration’s assessment of what the Iranian protesters are demanding.
Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Attorney General Josh Shapiro fought to keep schools closed during pandemic
Pennsylvania had one of the steepest declines in student test scores during the coronavirus pandemic, and residents may have two Democratic candidates for statewide office to thank for it.
As lieutenant governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania, respectively, John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro pushed school closures that experts say helped cause the historic slide in test scores across the country. Fetterman, who is running for Senate, said it was an “absolute necessity” early in the pandemic to shut down schools to slow the virus. Shapiro, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, in July 2020 threatened to sue the Trump administration if the state was forced to reopen schools.
The effect of these lockdowns was laid bare Monday, when the the Department of Education released the “Nation’s Report Card.” The report found that eighth-graders in the Keystone State scored 11 points lower on a math assessment compared to 2019, the seventh-biggest decline of any state and the equivalent of nearly a year’s worth of classroom learning. Fourth-graders scored six points lower on the test, the 13th-largest decrease. Reading scores also declined more than the national average but were not as steep as the losses for math, according to the report card.
The Democrats’ support for school closures could hurt them at the polls next month, as Republicans are likely to link them to Pennsylvania’s dismal test scores. Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz tied Fetterman to the test scores on Monday, saying Fetterman “oversaw devastating school closures in Pennsylvania that set our kids’ education back years.” GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano frequently blames Shapiro for students’ learning loss in his campaign speeches.
While Fetterman and Shapiro were not in charge of school policy, they both used their offices as bully pulpits to call for school closures and mask mandates. Fetterman said it was an “absolute necessity” early in the pandemic to shut down schools to slow the virus. He said in July 2020 that the only way to “safely reopen” schools for the fall semester was for parents to push “masking, masking, masking” in classrooms.
Shapiro in July 2020 threatened legal action against the Trump administration and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after she threatened to pull federal funding if states did not reimpose in-school learning for Fall 2020. DeVos said the preferred policy was for kids to be “in school, in person, in the classroom.”
Shapiro said that “while we have learned much about COVID-19, there is still much we do not know about how physical reopening will affect students and their families along with faculty and staff—despite Secretary DeVos’ statements to the contrary.” Fetterman touted the statement on Twitter, saying, “Maybe we should keep politics out of going back to school, altogether.”
Fetterman has not discussed his position on school lockdowns during his brutal Senate campaign. Shapiro disavowed some of the policies he once enforced as Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement official, telling the Associated Press in August that school and business lockdowns were “an area where I think folks got it wrong.”
Fetterman’s support for lockdowns has opened him up to allegations of hypocrisy before. The Washington Free Beaconreported that he went on a family vacation to the Jersey Shore in June 2020 while supporting school and business closures.
Researchers, educators, and parents have increasingly acknowledged that school closures drastically hindered students’ education, delayed their socialization, and caused behavioral problems. Mask requirements have also been blamed for learning loss and other setbacks. According to a Politico-Harvard poll earlier this year, 40 percent of parents said masks hindered their kids’ school experience, with one-third saying their education was harmed.
Ohio Dem also undecided on stricter oversight for judges who release suspected violent criminals
Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) says he’s still undecided on two major Ohio ballot initiatives, including one on whether illegal immigrants should vote in Ohio elections.
Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Ryan says he doesn’t know where he stands on Ohio’s two ballot initiatives. The first initiative asks whether judges should be required to consider public safety risks when setting bail for suspected criminals. The second would amend the Ohio state constitution to bar illegal immigrants from voting in state and local elections. Ryan said on Tuesday that he hasn’t “read them” and intends to “dig into them before I make a decision.”
His failure to take a side sets him apart from every major political candidate in the state. His Republican opponent JD Vance said he’ll vote “yes” on both ballot initiatives, calling them “common sense.” The initiatives have also been endorsed by Republican governor Mike DeWine and his Democratic challenger Nan Whaley. Every state Democratic senator voted in favor of placing the two issues on the ballot.
Ryan is attempting to paint himself as a moderate in a state that overwhelmingly voted for former president Donald Trump twice. But Ryan’s shifting policy positions and left-wing voting record is a major source of attacks by Vance, who is endorsed by virtually every Republican in the state including the retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R.).
Conservative activists in the state say the ballot initiatives are an attempt to protect Ohio from the problems facing dark-blue cities such as New York and San Francisco. Local governments in the liberal cities voted to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, although a New York state judge blocked the city’s law from taking effect in June. Both those cities are also facing a spike in crime. Critics allege left-wing judges releasing suspected criminals without bail is a contributing factor.
Dem governor lauds ‘historic’ investment after similar funding went to failed companies
Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer is making a $236 million taxpayer-funded bet on an electric battery executive whose last company lost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
Whitmer on October 5 announced a $236 million incentive package for Our Next Energy, an electric vehicle battery startup that plans to build a factory in the Great Lakes State. Weeks later, the Democrat said she was “proud” to join the company’s founder and CEO, Mujeeb Ijaz, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, which saw Whitmer laud Our Next Energy as “innovative,” “historic,” and “cutting-edge.” But Ijaz has a troubled history with public funding.
Before he launched Our Next Energy, Ijaz served as a top executive at fellow electric battery maker A123 Systems after founding its automotive division in 2008. One year later, A123 secured a $249 million grant from the Obama administration, with then-president Barack Obama predicting the company would “help power the American economy for years to come.” Instead, the opposite occurred. A123 lost $269 million during an eight-month period in 2012 alone, losses that were driven in part by the company’s production of defective battery cells for Fisker Automotive—on his LinkedIn, Ijaz specifically states he led A123’s production of “battery systems” for Fisker. In October 2012, A123 declared bankruptcy and was quickly sold to Chinese automotive conglomerate Wanxiang.
Whitmer’s decision to award Ijaz after A123’s high-profile collapse comes as the Democrat faces a difficult reelection bid against Republican challenger Tudor Dixon. That race has seen Whitmer repeatedlyclaim she’s added 25,000 “good-paying auto jobs” during her tenure, but as of May, Michigan had actually lost thousands of auto jobs on her watch. Whitmer likely hopes her green energy investments will help voters forget those losses—the Democrat used the announcement of her Our Next Energy incentive package, for example, to tout the creation of “2,000 new jobs.” But the investments could also provide political fodder for Dixon, who has already criticized Whitmer for another grant recipient: Gotion, a Chinese battery manufacturer whose leader is a Chinese Communist Party member.
“This is something we have to hold Gretchen Whitmer accountable for,” Dixon said in a September 27 video. “Your taxpayer dollars should be used to make sure your kids are getting a world-class education, you have reliable infrastructure, that you have safe cities. But now we’re seeing taxpayer dollars go into an adversary, a Chinese corporation.”
Whitmer’s office did not return a request for comment.
At the time of its bankruptcy, A123 had already accepted $129 million in federal grant money. The company even received a $947,000 grant payment on the same day it filed for bankruptcy. In addition to the Obama administration grant, Michigan also gave A123 tens of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks under former Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s energy secretary. Granholm in 2010 said A123 would help “create 63,000 jobs in Michigan over the next decade.”
A123’s bankruptcy hardly hurt Ijaz. Following the company’s sale to Wanxiang, Ijaz in February 2013 became A123’s chief technology officer, his LinkedIn states. The role reportedly saw Ijaz earn $294,000 per month.
Our Next Energy did not return a request for comment.
A123 was not the only taxpayer-funded green energy company to fail under Obama. The Democrat’s administration in 2009 awarded solar panel company Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee; the company declared bankruptcy and shut down all operations just months later. Obama in 2009 also approved a similar $529 million loan to Fisker, a move that then-vice president Biden said would lead to an “American manufacturing” resurgence. Instead, the company produced its vehicles in Finland and declared bankruptcy within years of receiving the loan.
Whitmer for months held a sizable polling lead over Dixon, but the race has tightened in recent weeks. An October Trafalgar Group poll showed the pair in a virtual tie, with Whitmer receiving 48.4 percent of the vote to Dixon’s 47.9 percent.
