VP’s first trip to Arizona highlights what critics see as admin’s misplaced priorities

Border czar Kamala Harris is heading to a southern border state Thursday, but don’t expect her to discuss the nation’s migrant crisis.

That’s because Harris’s first official vice-presidential visit to Arizona is to talk green energy, not the record number of migrants flooding the southern border under Harris and President Joe Biden. Harris is set to arrive Thursday afternoon in Tonopah, Ariz., which is roughly 100 miles northeast of Yuma, a busy border town that in December 2021 issued an emergency proclamation over the “unprecedented number of migrants entering the area.” But Harris—whom Biden tapped in 2021 to lead the White House’s migration efforts—won’t be addressing the issue. Instead, she’s in the Grand Canyon State to tout a wind and solar energy project.

This is not the first time the Biden administration has missed an opportunity to confront the ongoing chaos at the southern border during a trip down south. Biden on Jan. 9 met with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which came as escalating cartel violence swept the Latin American nation. Biden went on to release a list of commitments he secured through the Mexico City meeting, though the list did not include the word “cartel.” It did, however, include pledges to advance “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “promote racial justice,” “tackle the climate crisis,” and “integrate a gender perspective” into natural disaster response efforts.

Republican National Committee spokesman Nainoa Johsens said Harris’s decision to prioritize green energy over the border shows that the Biden administration “doesn’t care” about the migrant crisis.

“Failed border czar Kamala Harris is looking at power lines and solar panels while the southern border remains wide open and drugs and violent crime are pouring into Arizona,” Johsens told the Washington Free Beacon. “The Biden administration has completely abandoned our border communities.”

The White House did not return a request for comment.

While Harris in 2022 oversaw a fiscal-year record high of 2.4 million border encounters, she has refused to take responsibility for the crisis. Instead, she’s blamed Republicans for the administration’s migrant woes, saying in December that congressional Republicans have shown “an unwillingness to engage in any meaningful reform that could actually fix a lot of what we are witnessing.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Alec Baldwin was charged Thursday with involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 shooting of a crew member on the set of a film he produced.

The charges come more than a year after Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while preparing for a scene on the New Mexico set of the Western film Rust. The actor said after the shooting that he did not know live rounds were loaded in the revolver he was handling and claimed he did not pull the trigger. The armorer on the Rust set, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, will also face involuntary manslaughter charges. An assistant director pleaded guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon.

“I have determined that there is sufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Alec Baldwin and other members of the Rust film crew,” New Mexico prosecutor Mary Carmack-Altwies said. “On my watch, no one is above the law, and everyone deserves justice.”

Baldwin, a prolific fundraiser for the Democratic Party, has been dogged by scandal for much of his career. The actor has faced charges for punching a paparazzi photographer, was removed from an American Airlines flight for not cooperating with crew members’ instructions, and was arrested after riding his bicycle the wrong way and being belligerent with officers.

In the 2021 incident, Baldwin shot and killed Hutchins while explaining to the film crew how he planned to draw his revolver. The bullet also struck director Joel Souza in the shoulder; Souza was released from hospital the following morning.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A majority of Americans support Republicans’ efforts to block the Biden administration from hiring 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service employees, according to a new poll.

Sixty percent of voters want Congress to reverse the hiring, which Democrats funded last year with $80 billion in spending through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, polling conducted by the Convention of States/Trafalgar Group found. In their first act in the majority, House Republicans last week voted to rescind nearly $71 billion in funding for the IRS expansion, which would more than double the size of the agency and make it larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.

While 84 percent of Republicans oppose the expansion, according to the poll, more than a quarter of Democratic voters also oppose the hiring spree.

While the White House defended the IRS overhaul, saying the agency would target the ultra-wealthy, the Biden administration is expected to target small businesses and freelancers in an effort to bring in more than $200 billion in revenue. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that 78 to 90 percent of new revenue from the hirings would come from families making less than $200,000 per year.

Poor Americans faced a far greater chance of being audited by the IRS in 2022 than other income groups, the Washington Free Beacon reported:

In fact, no group faced as much scrutiny from the IRS as those who made below $25,000, the university’s data-gathering center found. Among families that benefited from the earned income tax credit, a rebate on income and payroll taxes made available to the nation’s poorest families, 1.27 percent were audited. The IRS in 2022 audited just 0.19 percent of the vast majority of taxpayers, meaning the poorest families were at least 550 percent more likely to have the IRS knock on their door than the average filer.

The Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to kill the House Republicans’ bill to defund the IRS.

Update Jan. 20 1:05 p.m.: This article was updated to include the fact that the poll was conducted by the Convention of States/Trafalgar Group.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Howard Slingerland raised nearly $750,000 for Obama from 2007 to 2012

A top fundraiser for former president Barack Obama confessed to misusing more than $600,000 in federal grant money and embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from a nonprofit dedicated to helping impoverished youth, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Howard Dixon Slingerland, who raised nearly $750,000 for both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, illegally took federal grant money to pay off more than $600,000 of his organization’s payroll and credit card debts, which included personal expenses. The $1.5 million grant was meant to provide career advancement for young adults who had been through the criminal justice system, court filings show.

Slingerland also admitted to underreporting around $450,000 in income and owing nearly $150,000 in back taxes. He also admitted to embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from his nonprofit to pay his property taxes and fund personal tutors for his children and an expensive dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

Slingerland pleaded guilty to one count of misapplication of funds and one count of lying on his tax returns. He faces a maximum sentence of 13 years in federal prison.

The disgraced nonprofit leader is no stranger to abuse of funds charges. In 2014, Slingerland’s nonprofit, the Youth Policy Institute, failed to disclose $140,000 it spent lobbying Obama’s White House and federal agencies for grant funding—potentially violating federal lobbying laws.

An attorney for Slingerland said he “takes responsibility for the mistakes he made,” citing his misapplication of funds and failures to report personal income.

From 2015 to 2019, Slingerland used more than $14,000 from his nonprofit to pay down property taxes, more than $10,000 on tutoring his children, more than $6,000 for an upscale family dinner at Momofuku Ko in New York City, and nearly $2,000 on a new personal computer.

In addition to raiding his nonprofit to fund personal expenses, including his wife’s pension and lavish home decor, Slingerland helped line the pockets of Democratic candidates like former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti (D.). He hosted multiple fundraisers for Garcetti’s 2013 campaign and contributed $5,000 to Democrats in the 2018 midterms, Fox News reported.

Slingerland ran his Los Angeles-based nonprofit from 1996 until 2019, when he was accused of misusing funds and fired. A bankruptcy filing alleged the former CEO had misspent $1.7 million in company money. Slingerland called the filing “extremely misleading” and said only “a handful of expenditures were mistakenly made,” the Associated Press reported.

The Youth Policy Institute was founded to fight poverty and empower poor youth through education and job training initiatives, according to court filings. Slingerland pocketed as much as $400,000 annually during his final years at the nonprofit.

Before his sentencing hearing, Slingerland must complete a financial disclosure form and pay back at least $821,958.56 in restitution to the federal government.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Now you see why d!ckhead investment firms like Black Rock are investing and buying up utilities. Dems are trying to force a utility monopoly, from which only the rich will benefit. [US Patriot]

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may soon have to give up your natural gas heaters.

On March 15, regulators will decide if they will ban new propane water heaters and furnaces, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Residents would have to replace their broken gas units with electric appliances, starting in 2027 for most water heaters and in 2029 for furnaces.

The sweeping proposal from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board is similar to a recent move by the Biden administration to crack down on gas stoves because of their alleged link to childhood asthma. The news drew immediate public outrage, which the media described as the latest twist in the “culture wars.”

The proposed Bay Area ban would apply to a vast swath of homeowners in the populous counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara, as well as parts of Solano and Sonoma.

Businesses and apartment buildings would have until 2031 to comply. Supporters of the proposal are calling it a matter of public health, the Chronicle reported, insisting that home appliances can pollute as much as vehicles, when “multiplied over millions of households,” and cause asthma and other health issues. Environmentalists have long eyed prohibitions on everyday gas appliances as part of their climate change agenda.

The proposal is limited to the Bay Area for now, but it reflects the climate ambitions of state legislators. California Democrats, who frequently boast that their policies lead the way for the rest of the nation, have been aggressively pushing laws against gas-fueled appliances, vehicles, and tools. Most recently, state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) administration banned future gas car sales and gas leaf blowers—prohibitions that hurt middle-class and poor Californians the most.

Officials want households to rely completely on electricity, even as the electric grid is seeing unprecedented strain. Last summer brought the first controlled blackouts in 20 years as leaders urged Californians to conserve energy and limit their use of air conditioning amid a heat wave. Democrats are pushing massive solar and offshore wind developments to try to reach their zero-emission goals, even though these power sources can be famously unreliable.

Amid the push to “go green,” Californians have seen a severe energy crunch and skyrocketing electricity prices—which forced Newsom to delay Democrats’ planned closure of the state’s only nuclear power plant. Nuclear energy supplies nearly 10 percent of the state’s total electricity and 17 percent of its zero-carbon electricity.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The billionaire has long denied editorial involvement

Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who has long denied editorial involvement, sat in on newsroom meetings on Thursday as employees discussed articles about the Amazon founder and his business interests.

During the meetings, editors discussed stories on the discontinuation of AmazonSmile and the impending sale of the Washington Commanders, which Bezos has shown interest in purchasing, the New York Times reported.

Post editors have long insisted that Bezos, who purchased the newspaper in 2013, does not interfere in coverage. Former editor Marty Baron said in 2019 that “he hasn’t interfered with a single story” and “hasn’t criticized a story.”

Bezos’s attendance in the morning news meetings comes as the paper has become unprofitable for the first time in years. The Post lost half a million subscribers since Joe Biden took office, and publisher Fred Ryan announced last month that the paper will begin laying off staff.

A Post employee confronted Bezos about the layoffs, the Times reported:

During the meeting on Thursday, Mr. Bezos’ retinue stood outside the room, earpieces clearly visible. As he left, a Post employee wearing a red shirt emblazoned with the insignia of The Post’s guild stopped him and asked why the company was laying people off without offering buyouts first, according to the three people with knowledge of the meeting. Mr. Bezos responded that he was at The Post to listen, not answer questions, and underscored his commitment to The Post’s journalism.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Slow response comes as Iranian government continues violent crackdown on anti-regime protests

he Biden administration is lagging behind its international partners in imposing sanctions on the Iranian regime, stoking concern among advocacy groups that are pushing for a tough response to the clerical government’s violent crackdown on protesters.

The European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada sanctioned 46 Iranian individuals or entities in December 2022 for their role in the violent crackdown on anti-regime protesters, 29 of which have not been hit with similar measures by the Biden administration, according to figures collected by a watchdog group and shared with the Washington Free Beacon.

Since protests erupted in September of last year, the European Union has added 66 individuals or entities to their sanctions list. Just 26 of those are sanctioned by the United States. The United Kingdom has taken action against 41 individuals or entities, just 20 of which are sanctioned by the United States. And Canada added 84 individuals or entities to their sanctions list, only 42 of which are also sanctioned by the United States. The Biden administration has not issued any new sanctions since Dec. 21, as opposed to both the United Kingdom and Canada. There are only 16 individuals or entities that have been designated by the United States since September that are not also designed by the European Union, United Kingdom, or Canada.

The figures, compiled by United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) as part of the watchdog group’s Iran Human Rights Sanctions Tracker, show a gap between the pace of designations by the Biden administration and its international allies. The Biden administration has walked a diplomatic tightrope in hopes the hardline government will resume diplomacy over a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord. But with the protests showing no sign of slowing down—and the Iranian regime becoming increasingly violent—experts say it is past time for the Biden administration to drop its diplomatic talks and get serious about isolating the leadership in Tehran.

“The White House was perhaps fearful of appearing to torpedo the Vienna talks to restore the JCPOA by designating regime leaders. But it’s time to face reality. The JCPOA is dead,” UANI executive director David Ibsen told the Washington Free Beacon, referring to the nuclear deal by its official acronym. “These designations would also be fundamentally non-nuclear in nature. This raises the question—what else must [Iranian Ayatollah] Khamenei and his hand-picked leadership do to earn human rights and terrorism designations?”

Watchdog groups like UANI are concerned by the Biden administration’s decision to refrain from sanctioning Iran’s top leaders, including Khamenei, his family, and closest associates. Canada and European nations also have stopped short of targeting Iran’s top officials, though they have designated mid-level targets still untouched by the United States, according to Ibsen.

“The Biden administration has stopped short of designating the highest ranking officials in the Islamic Republic and is not yet matching the designations of mid-level targets that have been announced by the UK, Canada, and EU,” Ibsen explained. “There is no reason why Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, and President Ebrahim Raisi should remain beyond the reach of U.S. human rights and terrorism sanctions, or why Washington is hesitating to match the designations coming from abroad.”

The figures provided by UANI show that nearly 61 percent of the human rights sanctions enacted by the European Union are not similarly designated by the United States. The figure rises to 62 percent when compared with the United Kingdom, and stands at 49 percent when compared with Canada.

On Wednesday in a major decision, the European Union Parliament called for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to be designated as a terrorist group. Europe has long refrained from taking action against the IRGC and the latest decision signals a wholesale reevaluation of the continent’s position on the matter. The United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist group under former president Donald Trump. President Joe Biden considered for a short period of time removing that designation as part of a concessions package to cajole Iran into negotiating over its nuclear program.

The State Department’s response to the Iranian regime’s violent crackdown on protesters took center stage last week, when Iran executed a dual Iranian-British citizen. The Biden administration condemned the matter but offered little else when pressed by reporters, who questioned whether the administration’s current approach has had any tangible effect on the Iranian regime.

Without greater coordination between the Biden administration and its international partners, sanctions on the Iranian regime will continue to lack bite, according to UANI’s Ibsen. The figures compiled by the group show that in some cases the United States has sanctioned individuals not covered by Canada and European allies, and vice versa.

“Washington should work with its allies in the G7 to sanction all these men and harmonize human rights sanctions as it would send a powerful message that the world stands with the Iranian people and not their oppressors,” he said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Task Force was a ‘cynical attempt to signal engagement’ while ‘doing little or nothing,’ watchdog says

Joe Biden tapped Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to co-chair a team tasked with fixing a supply chain crisis that left grocery shelves empty. The secretary never even showed up to a meeting, records show.

In June 2021, as supply chains were being crippled by the effects of pandemic-era restrictions and Biden’s rampant spending, Vilsack pledged to participate in meetings with the newly formed Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, an initiative Biden said would solve the budding crisis with a whole-of-government approach.

But those promised meetings never occurred. There are no records showing that Vilsack or his designees participated in any meetings with the task force after its launch, according to the Department of Agriculture’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Functional Government Institute.

Instead, Vilsack focused his efforts on accusing the meat industry of using the pandemic as an excuse to reap unfair profits. And he wasn’t the only absentee member of the supply chain initiative. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, another task force co-chair, quietly went on paternity leave in August 2021. Two months passed before anybody noticed Buttigieg’s absence.

The Department of Agriculture produced just 19 pages of records responsive to the Functional Government Initiative’s request, which asked for all of Vilsack’s memos, meeting minutes, calendar entries, and calendar invitations for task force meetings from the date of its creation through July 28, 2022. The records contained 14 pages of public statements from the department and the White House. The remaining five pages were briefing materials for the task force’s launch event where Vilsack pledged to participate in the initiative.

According to Functional Government Initiative spokesman Peter McGinnis, Vilsack’s task force “might be more aptly called a ‘hole in government’ approach.”

“Secretary Vilsack’s failure to convene a single meeting with his fellow leaders, while dedicating federal resources to investigate and blame the private sector, shows that the Task Force was little more than a cynical attempt to signal engagement on supply chain disruptions while, in fact, doing little or nothing,” McGinnis said.

The United States is still reeling from supply chain issues in the food industry, the lingering effects of which have caused egg prices to spike by 60 percent since the end of 2021.

Vilsack was present at a publicly televised, virtual task force meeting with Biden and a group of private sector CEOs on Dec. 22, 2021. The secretary didn’t say a word during the event. In February 2022, the Department of Agriculture claimed in a press release that Vilsack was intimately involved with the task force.

The Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force’s only apparent accomplishment was its creation, according to a May 2022 report from the Congressional Research Service. The report said Biden tasked the initiative with alleviating bottlenecks and supply constraints in a wide array of industries, and that it was directed to increase data sharing among agencies. But the report did not identify what, if anything, the task force did to fulfill its mandate.

The Department of Agriculture did not return a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon