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

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

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

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

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

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

The Caravan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flashback to Chuck Schumer in 2020:

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

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Mark Paoletta (@MarkPaoletta) May 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) May 2, 2023

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: Firebrand News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: Firebrand News

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hinton’s Departure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Digital God’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renewable Energy, ESG Pushing Job Changes

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

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

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

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

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

Firms ‘Need to Be Ready for the Disruptions Ahead’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) April 29, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: Firebrand News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: Firebrand News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allen: Oh, thank you.

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

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

SOURCE: Firebrand News

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

— Will Hild (@WillHild) May 1, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The kids are not OK

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

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

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

• 57 percent said they had “trouble relaxing”

• 55 percent said they felt “unsafe”

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

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

• 47 percent said they experienced “loneliness”

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

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

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

Other noteworthy findings include the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biden attorney Chris Clark did not return requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lawyer Reveals Monthly Payment

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

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

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

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

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

‘Can’t Gag the World’

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

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

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

Meyer denied that motion.

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

Motions Must Be Filed Correctly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELATED COVERAGE

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

pic.twitter.com/5Gvz6v5HUi

— Paul Stanley (@PaulStanleyLive) April 30, 2023

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CIA Director Visit

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Gut It’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Countering Communist China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Statesmanship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

The news website Semafor continues:

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

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

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

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

CNBC has more:

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

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

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

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

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

POLITICS

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

NATIONAL SECURITY

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

CHINA THREAT

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

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

RUSSIA THREAT – UKRAINE WAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

IRAN THREAT

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

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

NORTH KOREA THREAT

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

SPACE THREAT

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

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

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

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

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

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

US MILITARY

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

END of PDB

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

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

The Washington Post reports:

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Unprecedented Deposit Outflows’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Credit Shocks’ Coming?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liam Cosgrove and Emel Akan contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

As The Hill reports:

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

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

Trial opened with jury selection in the case last week.

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

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

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That hasn’t deterred Kennedy and Farrakhan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farrakhan and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charnes did not respond to a request for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

RELATED COVERAGE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digital Tyranny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government Fearmongering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

He isn’t insane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But why are these states especially vulnerable?

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

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

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

But there is also the issue of their populations.

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

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

Newsweek reports that:

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

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

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

This now seems highly unlikely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, the West should remain vigilant to this ultimate Russian objective. (RELATED: Tit-For-Tat: Putin Ups The Ante With Plans To Station Nuclear Warheads On NATO’s Doorstep)

SOURCE: American Liberty News

It’s not just Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book that included a controversial list of who’s who.

The Wall Street Journal disclosed the private calendar of the deceased predator for the first time this weekend.

Correspondence details meetings with a far wider circle of the rich and powerful than initially reported. (RELATED: Report: JPMorgan Chase Can Be Sued Over Links To Jeffrey Epstein)

They include alleged meetings with current CIA Director William Burns, when he served the Obama administration as deputy secretary of state.

Other names include former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, who later joined Goldman Sachs as its chief legal officer; Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College; and Noam Chomsky, arguably the most influential intellectual and iconoclast in the past 50 years. (RELATED: Epstein Associate Fashion Agent Jean-Luc Brunel Found Dead In Jail)

All of the meetings occurred after Epstein pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution involving a minor.

According to the documents, William Burns met Epstein on two occasions. One of them at his Manhattan townhouse. Ruemmler and Epstein had dozens of meetings. He had scheduled for her to join him in Paris in 2015 and fly to his private island in 2017. The disgraced financier’s schedule listed that Chomsky was to fly with Epstein and have dinner at his glided New York City mansion in 2015. The Journal couldn’t verify if every meeting took place. However, Epstein visited Leon Botstein at Bard College along with several young women. (RELATED: Government Files Suggest Federal Attorneys Were Unwilling To Prosecute CIA Employees Who Molested Children)

None of these individual’s names appeared in Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s so-called black book or on the flight logs for his private jet.

The report adds:

Most of those people told the Journal they visited Epstein for reasons related to his wealth and connections. Several said they thought he had served his time and had rehabilitated himself. Mr. Botstein said he was trying to get Epstein to donate to his school. Mr. Chomsky said he and Epstein discussed political and academic topics.

Mr. Burns met with Epstein about a decade ago as he was preparing to leave government service, said CIA spokeswoman Tammy Kupperman Thorp. “The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” she said. “They had no relationship.”

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the spokesman said. “I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Ruemmler said.

In 2006, Palm Beach police began an investigation into accusations that Epstein molested at least 40 young women and girls. In 2008, he pled guilty to two state charges, avoiding dire consequences.

A secret arrangement with the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta (R), spared Epstein from a potential life sentence. Acosta claimed he agreed to the sweetheart deal because he was told Epstein was involved in intelligence work “above his pay grade.” No further details are known.

Epstein’s case generated waves of media coverage at the time, with publications in the U.S. and abroad reporting on accusations from underage girls and young women. In 2006, several politicians returned donations from Epstein. Some associates moved to distance themselves from him. His biggest known client, retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, later said he cut ties in 2007. His bank, JPMorgan Chaseclosed his accounts in 2013, though some bankers continued to meet with him for years after.

During his 13-month jail sentence, with a six-day-a-week work release, the alleged sex trafficker met with constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz and Arnold Paul Prosperi, a friend of former President Bill Clinton.

Epstein and Maxwell, his madam and on-and-off girlfriend, are documented to have rubbed shoulders with Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, Wall Street billionaire Leon Black, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine. (RELATED: Ghislaine Found Guilty – What’s Next?)

Epstein maintained a close friendship with future President Donald Trump for the better part of two decades. Their falling out occurred in the early 2000s before allegations that Epstein abused underage girls became public. (RELATED: Judge Who Signed Off On Mar-A-Lago Raid Connected To Jeffrey Epstein)

In 2018, the Miami Herald started publishing a series of exposés on Epstein’s accusers and his preferential treatment. The paper corroborated allegations of trafficking in women and girls as young as 12 from the United States, South America, Europe and former Soviet republics. Journalist Julie Brown identified 80 Epstein victims and located more than 60.

On July 6, 2019, an FBI–NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested Epstein at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. A raid at his New York City townhouse found copious evidence of what’s been described as a sex trafficking empire.

At the time of his mysterious death, Epstein was held without bail at New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. Although his jailers promised the Justice Department they would have a guard check his cell every 30 minutes, those procedures weren’t followed on the night of his purported suicide. The two security cameras within view of his cell also malfunctioned.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

ANALYSIS – As part of its continuing intimidation and harassment of the independent island nation, Communist China has just flown one of its TB-001 ‘Scorpion’ medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drones around Taiwan.

While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been increasing its military pressure and belligerent actions toward Taiwan recently, this is the first time one of these large, potentially armed drones has been reported circling the entire island.

Chinese ‘Twin-Tailed Scorpion’ drone detected off east coast of Taiwan https://t.co/m8swfJe3Cb pic.twitter.com/cs43EsOQIuJuly 26, 2022

Another drone, a single-engine BZK-005, also flew halfway around Taiwan on a similar course but turned back before reaching the median line that serves as a de facto boundary between the two countries.

Long-range Chinese drones generally conduct over-ocean intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) along the first island chain of Pacific archipelagos that extends from the East Asian mainland.

But it seems they are now being operated around Taiwan.

The Taiwanese defense ministry reported the TB-001 and BZK-005 as “recce” (reconnaissance) drones, but the Scorpion was designed to be an armed drone.

And as described later in this piece, it can be very well armed.

With its mix of surveillance and strike capabilities, the Scorpion could potentially identify targets on the eastern side of the island and launch strikes directly against them.

Still, in this case, it was likely conducting detailed surveillance for military targeting, especially on the less defended eastern side of the island, indicating China is increasing its preparations to attack or blockade the country.

The two drones were part of a group of 38 PLA aircraft that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense says it detected around Taiwan.

38 PLA aircraft and 6 PLAN vessels around Taiwan were detected by 6 a.m.(UTC+8) today. R.O.C. Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond these activities. pic.twitter.com/SiSwSWls4jApril 28, 2023

Nineteen other aircraft were reported to have crossed the median line and/or entered Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). These were five Su-30 and two J-16 Flanker fighter jets, eight J-10 fighter jets, a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft and another reconnaissance Y-8 variant.

The Scorpion drone is a twin-engine, twin turboprop (one on either side of its fuselage under its straight, high-mounted main wing) with twin tail booms to the rear.

Taiwanese defense sources did not confirm if this TB-001 was carrying weapons, but even if just used for ISR, the drone is highly capable, notes The Drive:

The TB-001’s multi-intelligence gathering capabilities include a radar in the nose, various external pods, likely including ones with electronic intelligence payloads, and various antennas scattered around the airframe. The TB-001 is also capable of full beyond-line-of-sight operations.

The Drive continues:

…the TB-001 provides China with an efficient ability to collect multiple types of intelligence over and around the highly strategic strait. Its range — around 1,860 miles — and reported 35-hour endurance also allow it to venture around Taiwan, which means it can also conduct radar mapping and classification of electronic emissions from air defense systems and other Taiwanese military assets on the east coast of the island. 

If armed, this drone can also provide quite the strike package.

The Drive explains:

Among the weapons associated with the TB-001 in the past are the FT-7 glide bomb, FT-8D guided missile, and the FT-9 and FT-10 guided bombs. At the Zhuhai Airshow in 2018, the drone was shown alongside the C-701/K anti-ship missile and the CM-502 air-to-surface missile. Chinese media reports suggest that the TB-001 can be equipped with the 40-pound AR-2 and 160-pound AR-4 air-to-surface-missile, as well as the 200-pound AR-3 cruise missile.

While the appearance of this drone around Taiwan may not seem significant at first, it could indicate that the PLA is taking its job of identifying targets on the island seriously and plans to also use these unmanned aircraft to take them out.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

An explosive New York Post column alleges President Joe Biden‘s troubled adult son Hunter is hiding behind the iron gates and armed security of the White House to avoid arrest in a child custody case.

“Lawyers for former stripper Lunden Roberts asked an Arkansas court Friday to jail the first son for failing to fork over his financial records as required in her lawsuit over support payments for their 4-year-old unacknowledged daughter, Navy,” the Post’s Miranda Devine writes.

“Roberts’ legal maneuvers in Arkansas lend weight to the rumor in Washington, DC, that Hunter has been living at the White House with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, and their 3-year-old son, Beau, allegedly to avoid being served with legal papers,” Devine claims.

Hunter Biden has allegedly refused to follow any court order or hearing in Roberts’ child support case and may face prosecution over federal tax charges as well as questions over the alleged illegal disposal of a handgun in Delaware.

In both cases, federal agents and officials are accused of either obstructing investigators or otherwise impeding probes.

But now President Biden himself is accusing of shielding Hunter Biden and doing so using “the people’s house.

“Surrounded by his father’s Secret Service detail and protected by his own agents, it is difficult for a process server to get to him,” Devine writes, noting that it would be nearly impossible for Biden to be presented with a court order for payment or testimony if armed security is tasked with keeping the public away from him.

“Numerous sightings over the past six months lend credence to the idea, with Hunter and his family spotted trailing his father and the first lady onto Marine One for weekends away to Delaware or Camp David or for longer vacations at the borrowed homes of billionaires,” Devine writes.

“From early last year, an elaborate swing set suitable for a toddler was spotted on the White House grounds when the president ambled back to his office from Marine One,” Devine adds.

In addition to his four-year-old child with Roberts, Hunter Biden and his wife have a three-year-old son named after his late brother, Beau.

In addition to dodging child support payments and facing questions about his taxes and firearms, Hunter Biden is also the subject of a congressional investigation into alleged influence peddling to foreign figures, including interests in Communist China, that netted millions of dollars in payments to at least six Biden family members.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Some of us need supplies to fix or maintain our automobiles. All of us have been out shopping on the weekend. The customers and employees at an O’Reilly Auto Parts store never thought they would be involved in an armed robbery. The store manager at this auto parts store thought differently. He didn’t know when, but he thought his store could be robbed and his customers threatened. To be fair, the south side of Chicago is not the safest place to live. The store manager must have noticed other violent crimes happening to stores around him. Thank goodness this responsible store manager was armed on an ordinary Saturday.

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon when the store manager looked up to help the next customer in line at the checkout counter. The news report didn’t mention if the customer had any auto supplies in his hands, but the store manager noticed when the customer raised his shirt and flashed the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. The robber told the store manager to hand over the cash.

This store manager was also a gun owner. He had his Illinois Firearms Owners Identification card in his wallet. The store manager was also armed and carrying concealed at work that day.

This is where we wish we had a video to show us what happened next. We know the store manager presented his concealed handgun. We know he shot the armed robber several times. We know the armed robber turned and ran and drew his firearm from his pants. We don’t know if the robber fired his gun.

The robber dropped his firearm on the floor mat outside the store. He collapsed next to it. The news stories seem to indicate that the store manager stopped shooting after the robber collapsed. Our armed defender stayed inside the store and called 911 for help. He also gave a statement to the police when they arrived.

Police disarmed the armed robber. Emergency medical services took him to the University of Chicago Hospital. The attacker died of his injuries at the hospital.

We’d like to know so much more about this armed defense. Given the level of crime on the south side, it would be unusual for a retail business not to have security cameras throughout the store. Fortunately, we know that none of the customers or employees in the store were injured.

Local news reports mentioned that this was the 45th time that someone with a legally owned firearm stopped a criminal in Chicago in the last three years.

This story is one of many that go under-reported by the mainstream media because it shows a positive image of a law-abiding gun owner defending their life and their family. It is our responsibility at AmmoLand to report these stories to you. While we will continue to report these stories, groups like the Crime Prevention Research Center, led by Dr. John Lott, are fastidious in studying the use of firearms for self-defense. Stay up to date with all news on self-defense by following CPRC and Ammoland.

Rob Morse

Find the original article in its entirety at Ammoland.

SOURCE: American Liberty News