Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), who was the White House physician under former Presidents Obama and Trump, called on President Biden to resign during a Fox News interview amid the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that Biden is “not cognitively prepared to be our president.”

“We’re looking horrible right now on the world stage, this is an absolute national embarrassment,” Jackson, who now represents Texas’s 13th Congressional District, said. “And instead of being out in front of this and talking about what’s going on, and what went wrong, and what the plan was, and what we’re gonna do next, Biden’s just been in hiding again, as he always has.

“Biden, once again, has failed us. He’s embarrassed as internationally,” Jackson continued. “And you know, honestly, it is time for him to leave. I’ve been saying this for a long time. I’ve been saying that he’s not, he’s not cognitively prepared to be our president. And this is just another example of his failure. And I think a lot of this is relevant to his cognitive ability. But he’s, he’s created a national security disaster for this country right now. And it’s time for him to move on and somebody else needs to do this job. He is not fit to be our commander in chief. It’s time for him to resign.”

During an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in July, Jackson warned that Biden’s mental health was “only going to get worse.”

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), who was the White House physician under former Presidents Obama and Trump, called on President Biden to resign during a Fox News interview amid the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that Biden is “not cognitively prepared to be our president.”

“We’re looking horrible right now on the world stage, this is an absolute national embarrassment,” Jackson, who now represents Texas’s 13th Congressional District, said. “And instead of being out in front of this and talking about what’s going on, and what went wrong, and what the plan was, and what we’re gonna do next, Biden’s just been in hiding again, as he always has.

“Biden, once again, has failed us. He’s embarrassed as internationally,” Jackson continued. “And you know, honestly, it is time for him to leave. I’ve been saying this for a long time. I’ve been saying that he’s not, he’s not cognitively prepared to be our president. And this is just another example of his failure. And I think a lot of this is relevant to his cognitive ability. But he’s, he’s created a national security disaster for this country right now. And it’s time for him to move on and somebody else needs to do this job. He is not fit to be our commander in chief. It’s time for him to resign.”

During an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in July, Jackson warned that Biden’s mental health was “only going to get worse.”

“And I’ve been saying that it’s only going to get worse, and guess what? We’re watching that happen right before our eyes right now,” Jackson said. “And I’m at the point right now where, you know, I went from, you know, telling people, we should be concerned about what might potentially be going on, to now saying, hey, what is happening right now?”

“Where are the people in our academic medicine that were out there calling for President Trump to have a cognitive test? Where are these people?” Jackson added. “There’s something seriously going on with this man right now. And you know, I think that he’s either gonna, he’s either gonna resign, they’re going to convince him to resign from office at some point in the near future for medical issues, or they’re going to have to use the 25th Amendment to get rid of this man right now. There’s some serious stuff going on right now.”

Former Obama WH Doctor: Biden Is Not ‘Cognitively Prepared’ To Be President | Leo Terrell (theleoterrell.com)

The Wall Street Journal reports “An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document.”

The memo was dated July 13th, a mere month after Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a Trump-era program designed at providing swift and safe evacuations for Americans out of crisis zones, such as the upcoming Afghanistan troop withdrawal.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

The cable, sent via the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces, and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation, the two people said.

The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban, one of the people said.

As of last weekend, some 18,000 Afghans who have applied for the U.S.’s Special Immigrant Visa program, as well as their families, remained on the ground in Afghanistan, with about half of them outside Kabul in areas already under Taliban control, and efforts to get them to the Kabul airport have grown more difficult by the day.

Internal Memo Shows State Department Was Warned ‘Collapse of Kabul’ by Taliban was Imminent | Gregg Jarrett (thegreggjarrett.com)

The National Police Association lobbying group has said that the House hearing into the Jan. 6 Capitol incident is politically motivated, urging Congress to instead investigate left-wing riots that left numerous officers injured last year.

Association spokeswoman Betsy Brantner Smith said in an interview that Congress should hear testimonials from thousands of officers who were injured during demonstrations, riots, arson, and other violence last year following the death of George Floyd.

During the first hearing for the House select committee on the Jan. 6 breach, four police officers offered testimony saying that individuals who entered the Capitol made specific threats against them.

“People need to see that police officers go through horrible things, and Jan. 6 was a horrible thing for some of those officers,” Smith told Fox News. “But, quite frankly, I find this whole Jan. 6 Commission, frankly, a dog and pony show. It doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Later, Smith questioned why the federal government hasn’t provided more information about the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt, one of several Trump supporters who died during the incident, or raised questions about video footage of Capitol Police officers’ interactions with demonstrators on Jan. 6.

“Myself, like millions of Americans, sat there watching the testimony thinking, ‘Wait, where are the police officers who appeared—appeared—to let some of the protesters in?” she asked. “Where is the police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt? In fact, why aren’t we talking about Ashli Babbitt? I mean there’s so much more here.”

On July 27, one of the testifying officers, Daniel Hodges, who works for the Metropolitan Police Department, recounted being allegedly told, “You will die on your knees.”

Hodges said he was kicked in the chest and struck with something heavy in the head as other officers and he clashed with a crowd near the Capitol.

But Smith suggested that the injuries those officers suffered likely paled in comparison to the numerous officers who were injured during riots last year.

“We have a Las Vegas police officer who is still paralyzed from the Black Lives Matter riots,” she told Fox. “We have thousands of police officers around the country who are retiring because of post-traumatic stress because of the riots.

“The 2020 riots, we can’t just say the whole George Floyd thing was bad and that’s what cops have to deal with, and then watch these four weeping men talk about their experiences, ignoring thousands and thousands of police officers, ignoring their feelings and their experiences and their injuries.”

A recent analysis from The Epoch Times in late June showed that major metropolitan police departments are struggling with hiring new recruits and dealing with an increase in retirements or officers quitting amid anti-police rhetoric and activism. Violent crime such as murders, rapes, and robberies has also spiked in most major cities.

Last month, the Portland Police Bureau’s riot squad quit en masse after one of its officers was indicted on an assault charge. The arrest stemmed from violent demonstrations that roiled the Oregon city last year.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Smith said. “I have some cops who would rather go back to Iraq than continue to work on the street, just because of the massive amounts of blood and bodies and everything they deal with that people don’t see.”

The office of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), head of the select committee, didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

National Police Association: Congress Should Investigate 2020 Riots, Not Jan. 6 Capitol Breach (theepochtimes.com)

Vera Institute of Justice has received $89 million in contracts and grants this year

The federal government provides tens of millions of dollars each year to a nonprofit group that supports the movement to defund police departments and dismantle the criminal justice system.

Officials with the Brooklyn-based Vera Institute of Justice have urged the government to “radically dismantle” police departments in order to fix a system they say dehumanizes people of color. The institute is heavily funded by the federal government. So far this fiscal year, the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies have awarded the Vera Institute more than $89 million in contracts and grants. The organization has received $811 million in federal funding since 2008, according to USA Spending, a federal budget database.

Vera’s support for the “defund the police” movement comes amid a contentious political debate over policing in America. Democrats see the issue as a political third rail and have tried to distance the party from anti-police rhetoric popular on the left. While members of the Democratic Party have embraced the defund movement, President Joe Biden claimed this month that Republicans are “lying” when they say Democrats support the concept.

The Vera Institute, which calls itself a “justice reform change agent,” also received stipends from traditional progressive donors, such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. The billionaire’s philanthropy gave more than $10 million to Vera from 2016 to 2019.

Two top executives at Vera rallied to the defund cause following the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.

“Vera is committed to dismantling the current culture of policing and working toward solutions that defund police and shift power to communities,” Vera president Nicholas Turner wrote on June 8, 2020.

Turner, who received $420,000 in salary and benefits at Vera in 2019, urged support for “the outrage we’re seeing—in the streets, in our communities, and in the media.”

“Now is the time to stop tinkering with police reform and to enact wholesale change,” Turner said. “We’re building on this unique moment of public awareness, outrage, and calls to defund the police.”

Another Vera officer, Jamila Hodge, said it was “time for us to radically dismantle” the criminal justice system. Writing in June 2020, she said the criminal justice system “dehumanizes and devalues Black people” and is rooted in “our nation’s legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”

Vera, which took in $174 million in revenue for the year ended June 30, 2020, receives the bulk of its federal funding to represent illegal aliens and refugees seeking entry to the United States. The Justice Department has awarded Vera grants and contracts through various subagencies, including the Office for Victims of Crime and the Office for Violence Against Women, which provide assistance to crime victims. Other grants have been for research, including $750,000 to conduct a randomized trial on the effect of “innovative” youth housing on crime.

In addition to harboring radical views on policing, Vera has thrown its weight behind a pack of left-wing prosecutors, many of them backed by Soros, that swept into office across the United States on the promise to reform the criminal justice system. Their policies have come under intense scrutiny as crime rates surge across the country.

One such prosecutor is Kimberly Foxx, the district attorney in Chicago. The Vera Institute is hosting an event this week with Foxx and Angela Davis, the Communist Party USA member who supports the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Foxx was reprimanded last year over her handling of the investigation into actor Jussie Smollett’s false claim that he was the victim of a hate crime. An independent prosecutor said Foxx displayed “substantial abuses of discretion” during the investigation, in which she dropped charges against Smollett for filing a false police report.

Vera has also partnered with two other left-wing prosecutors, Boston district attorney Rachael Rollins and St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Rollins, who Biden nominated for U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, helped form a commission last year with the Grassroots Law Project, a group that supports the defund cause.

Gardner has come under fire in St. Louis after judges tossed out three murder cases in one week earlier this month after Gardner’s team of prosecutors failed to show up for trial. In another case, the mother of a murder victim blasted Gardner for striking a plea deal that involved no jail time for her son’s killer.

The Vera Institute has also prematurely entered the fray in hot-button cases, including the April shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old black girl in Columbus, Ohio.

“When Ma’Khia Bryant dialed 9-1-1, she needed help,” Vera said in a statement after the shooting. “Instead of assistance, she was shot and killed by Columbus police. Her death underscores that our emergency system does not keep Black and brown children and communities safe.”

Video released soon after the shooting showed a Columbus police officer shooting Bryant as she was attempting to stab another girl with a knife.

The Vera Institute did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal Government Gives Millions to Group That Supports Defunding the Police (freebeacon.com)

A Sartell-St. Stephen School District student is speaking out after the school required grade-school children to take an equity survey.

Some students didn’t understand some of the surveys questions, but were told by a teacher they couldn’t repeat the survey questions to their parents, according to a video uploaded by Alphanews.

The survey asked questions that some students didn’t understand. Even after hearing an explanation from their teacher, some still couldn’t comprehend the survey questions.

But a teacher told the students they couldn’t ask their parents for help, according to student Haylee Yasgar.

“My teacher said that I could not skip any questions even when I didn’t understand them. One question asked us what gender we identify with. I was very confused along with a lot of other classmates,” Yasgar said during Monday night’s meeting.

She said students were told they could not “repeat any of the questions to our parents.”

The school district hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment. It’s unclear what value a survey holds if respondents don’t understand the questions.

“Being asked to hide this from my mom made me very uncomfortable, like I was doing something wrong,” she told the school board.

The equity survey is part of a reckoning of how school systems nationwide should teach issues related not only to sexuality but as well as race in a state where George Floyd died in police custody last year.

Now that the city settled a lawsuit for $27 million and former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for third-degree murder and manslaughter, the question now remains how school systems should explain similar events to children.

Some parents call the curriculum divisive while supporters say it’s teaching history and showing how racist attitudes and activities such as redlining are embedded into daily life.

Despite being more than 40 years old, Critical Race Theory (CRT) has evolved to a flashpoint between political parties over the past year.

CRT holds that “the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans,” according to Britannica.

CRT scholars allege many societal problems are rooted in the country’s white majority using laws and other power to suppress the non-white population, whether consciously or subconsciously.

CRT opponents claim its conclusions rely on anecdotes and storytelling, rather than a comprehensive examination of evidence. They say its supporters focus on disproportionate outcomes from those individual stories, incorrectly drawing conclusions about institutional racism and white privilege and failing to take into account strides that the nation has made toward racial equality.

Critics say CRT employs heavy use of the Marxist “struggle” ideology and tactic that advocates for the destruction of history, traditions, and culture of a society.

Around the United States, there has been a growing movement of parents who have become increasingly dissatisfied with the CRT-derived curriculum being taught in their children’s classrooms.

Minnesota Student Says Teacher Told Her to Hide ‘Equity Survey’ Questions From Parents (theepochtimes.com)

Patrick Moore talks about why he left Greenpeace and why the the push for net-zero emissions is an unattainable goal

Patrick Moore was only 24 when he co-founded Greenpeace in the early 1970s. He soon became the driving force behind the environmental activist group’s many influential campaigns, such as to stop nuclear testing, protect endangered whales, and prevent toxic dumping.

“It began in 1971 with the first voyage to stop U.S. hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska, which we did,” Moore told The Epoch Times. “And then we went after France’s atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific.”

Greenpeace would go on to launch its “Save the Whales” campaign in 1975, followed in 1976 by a campaign to end the killing of baby seals for their fur, and later that decade a campaign to end toxic dumping in rivers by factories in Europe.

But as Greenpeace gained influence, Moore says he started to see it getting hijacked by what he characterizes as people with political ideology from the left.

“None of us in the original group was there to make money. We were all volunteers,” he said.  “But the ultra-leftists took over my organization when they realized there was a lot of money and power to be had there.”

He said it was during the “Save The Whales” campaign that people started donating money to Greenpeace in larger numbers, and that was when the group started getting a bank account and renting an office.

“So as time went on into the late 1970s, Greenpeace turned into a kind of business,” he said. “Pretty soon it actually became a business where fundraising started to become more and more important.”

By the time Moore left in 1986 after being with the organization for 15 years, “fundraising had now become the most important priority, and they would go ahead with a campaign for which there was no scientific basis,” he said.

He left Greenpeace due to “philosophical and political” reasons, he said, after having served as director, president, and international director.

“Greenpeace had started out with a strong humanitarian orientation, as well as a belief in saving the environment,” he said. “‘Green’ is for the environment, ‘peace’ is for the people not to be killed by nuclear war, among other things, or pollution.”

Over time, “peace” was gradually dropped, and Greenpeace, along with the rest of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that sees the “human species as the enemy of nature, the enemy of the Earth,” Moore said.

The Epoch Times asked Greenpeace for an interview but didn’t hear back.

Emphasis on Fundraising Over Science

In the mid 1980s, Moore, who has a PhD in ecology, says he found himself the only director with a formal science education on Greenpeace’s international board, and the only director disagreeing with what the rest would propose next.

“They all agreed that the next campaign for Greenpeace should be to ‘ban chlorine worldwide.’ … They named chlorine ‘the devil’s element,’” he said.

Moore says he pointed out to the board that chlorine is one of the building blocks of the Earth, and of utmost importance for public health, as chlorine added to “drinking water, swimming pools, and spas has ended waterborne communicable diseases like cholera.” 

He also said chlorine is critical for medicine because 25 percent of medicines contain chlorine, and chlorine chemistry is essential in the making of some 85 percent of medicines.

Greenpeace International proceeded to launch the campaign nonetheless, the reason being “largely based on fundraising,” according to Moore, and so he decided it was time to go. 

Moore believes this is where scare stories of impending catastrophes and doom started. “It begins with the politicians and their bureaucrats funding the scientists who can be trusted to give them a good scare story.”

The Importance of Carbon Dioxide

When it comes to climate change, the continued narrative of carbon dioxide being a “bad thing” and “destroying the world” is contrary to what the scientific community has found, Moore says. 

Moore currently serves as a director of the CO2 Coalition, established in 2015 to create educational material on the importance of carbon dioxide. The organization has published papers presenting scientific data to dispute that CO2 emissions are causing global warming. 

Contrary to what climate alarmists claim, Moore says, “carbon dioxide is the basis of all life on Earth.”

“It makes the oceans less alkaline, thus making it suitable for life,” and “on land, CO2 makes the greening of the Earth plus it makes plants more efficient with water.” 

In April 2016, an article published in Nature funded in part by NASA found that CO2 fertilization has had significant impact on the greening of the planet.

“From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” reads a post on NASA’s site on the study.

“Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth,” the article added.

Net-Zero a ‘Political Goal’

Moore said the push for net-zero carbon emissions by governments around the world is “purely a political slogan.”

“I’m not sure how they could reduce CO2 emissions if they didn’t stop using fossil fuels virtually altogether,” he said, questioning how the transportation, agriculture, mining, and forestry sectors could function without them. 

“I believe this is an unattainable political goal for society. And I also believe it is a goal that will bring greater hardship than people have endured since the great wars, since the great disease epidemics of the past.”

Moore said there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites in Western society pushing environmental scare stories.

“It puts [politicians] in the media, and the media makes much money from the sensationalism, and the activists then raise money,” he said. 

Hollywood plays a big part as celebrities join to endorse the climate change narrative, he added, as well as many scientists.  

“Nearly all the money going to the scientists who are writing these things is public money, so it all has to be approved by politicians, and bureaucrats working for the politicians,” he said, adding that scientists who utter anything to the contrary get cancelled.

In his latest book, “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” Moore talks about how the hyped up environmental catastrophes and threats create fear.

“There’s so much propaganda and so many lies, but the unified theory of scare stories is what I call these, because they have something in common—they are all based on things that are invisible or so remote that the average citizen cannot observe what these people are seeing, and cannot verify what these people are saying.”

Climate ‘Scare Story’ Began With Far-Left Ideology: Greenpeace Co-Founder (theepochtimes.com)

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol’s apprehension numbers of illegal migrants broke records in July for the sixth consecutive month following Joe Biden’s taking office as president, with the numbers reaching an “historic crisis level.”

While the “sweltering” heat of June and July usually slows down illegal immigration at the southern US border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), in June and July of 2021 border traffic actually increased. Bensman said:

“For the sixth consecutive month since President Joe Biden took office and followed through on campaign promises to dismantle his predecessor’s deterrence-based policies, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection broke records, reaching 210,000 in July, the Associated Press reported Monday. The outlet cited a court filing by David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Based on past trends, the vast majority of those encountered were likely illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol.”

Authorities encountered on average 6,770 individuals every single day of July, and many of these people were families and “unaccompanied alien minors.” Single adult “runners” were also driving the wave of immigration. Border Patrol is struggling to push these people back into Mexico over and over again, its resources “strained.” The CBP encountered 210,000 illegal aliens in July, and it is estimated that 37,000 migrants evaded Border Patrol altogether, a number which Bensman calls a “likely… significant undercount.”

While June’s apprehension number of 188,829 illegal migrants was the largest for one month in 21 years, July’s number of 210,000 exceeded that record. Overall, in this fiscal year, which ends September 30, CBP encounters reached the staggering number of 1.3 million. The last time border apprehension numbers hit the mark of a million was back in 2006.

In the border crisis “epicenter” of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, the numbers of illegal migrants stopped by Border Patrol were 51,149 in May, 59,380 in June, and 78,000 in July.

“The July numbers, once finalized and released in the next couple of weeks, will show that the border crisis is going from record high to record high in an upward climb into a red-zone crisis that will defy any control, short of a radical about-face by the Biden administration. Few signs point to any such policy reversal, although the White House has tentatively begun long-haul deportations to Central America aboard ICE jets.

Border Patrol and CBP facilities, meanwhile, are overrun in the crisis’s Texas epicenter, as are hundreds of border communities that have rarely experienced anything like the steadily worsening chaos of wandering immigrants; high-speed car chases; crime; fear of Covid; and widespread insecurity.”

Bensman explained that promises by Democrat candidates for president in 2019 and 2020 to welcome illegal immigrants and institute policies highly favorable to those migrants caused migrants to begin massing in southern Mexico and even increase CBP apprehension numbers, despite then-President Trump’s “tough turn-back policies.” Individuals who had previously been “unable to advance through Trump’s border restrictions” saw a chance to be successful migrants. As polls pointed to a Biden win, migrants continued to cross in increasing numbers. Some of the migrants in Mexico told Bensman they were planning to “wait out” what they expected to be the last few months of Trump’s presidency.

Bensman calls this steadily growing surge of illegal immigration the “Biden effect,” and said that the border crisis was predicted by an October 2020 national threat assessment from the Department of Homeland Security. Biden’s exemption of “unaccompanied alien minors from pandemic-related ‘Title 42’ instant expulsions to Mexico” and effective ending of interior removals for all those migrants who had successfully evaded Border Patrol as soon as he took office made the crisis rapidly worse.

“The exempted family groups and unaccompanied alien minors have driven the crisis, because they have forced Border Patrol agents ‘off the line’ to deal with their care and processing. Agents processed a whopping 80,000 illegal family unit immigrants in July, Shahoulian said, a leap from June’s 55,805. Reports coming from the border in recent days indicate they have been showing up in individual groups of 500, and even 1,000.

U.S. officials probably picked up more than 19,000 unaccompanied children in July, exceeding the previous record of 18,877 in March.”

If the Biden administration continues its failed border policies, apprehension numbers are likely to continue in an upward trend.

Border Patrol Apprehension Numbers Point To Historic, Crisis Levels At American Border. – The National Pulse

Human Rights Watch Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir spoke directly to board

A former longtime Ben & Jerry’s employee said the company’s decision to boycott Israel was based on advice from a BDS activist who was expelled from Israel for spearheading economic pressure campaigns against the Jewish state.

Susannah Levin, who spent 21 years as a freelance graphic designer for Ben & Jerry’s before resigning last month over the company’s decision to halt its sales in the West Bank, said the company’s board consulted with Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir, an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement who accused the Jewish state of “crimes against humanity.”

“Omar Shakir spoke directly to the board,” said Levin in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 radio on Tuesday. “He wrote the Human Rights Watch report, [which] is what they were basing their information on. It’s a report that accuses Israel of apartheid.”

“They believed him to be a valid source of information about Israel,” she added.

Ben & Jerry’s has come under scrutiny for its involvement with anti-Israel activists. The company recently hosted a conference call with anti-Zionist writer Peter Beinart, who has said he supports the destruction of the Jewish state, to address concerns about the boycott from its franchise owners, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Ben & Jerry’s declined to comment on Shakir’s alleged involvement with its board. Human Rights Watch did not respond to a request for comment.

Shakir was deported from Israel in 2019 due to his attempts to pressure various companies and international organizations, including FIFA, to join boycotts against homes and businesses in contested parts of Israel. He took credit for Airbnb’s decision to bar Israelis in the West Bank from renting their homes on the site in 2018. The rental service later backtracked in the face of legal challenges.

In April, Shakir authored a report for Human Rights Watch that accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The report’s conclusion was rejected by the Biden administration, which said it was “not the view of this administration that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid.” Israeli ambassador to the United States Gilad Erdan denounced the report as “lies and fabrications, bordering on anti-Semitic.”

Levin said she believed she had no choice but to resign after Ben & Jerry’s announced its boycott.

“I knew that my job was over. I knew I wasn’t going to work there if they were going to [boycott Israel],” said Levin. “I worked for this company for so long, and they were like family to me. To think they would really join up with people who hate Israel so much, it’s a terrible feeling.”

Former Ben and Jerry’s Employee Says Anti-Israel Activist Spoke to Board Ahead of Boycott Decision (freebeacon.com)

Minneapolis party chairman says ‘decorum’ is ‘hallmark of white supremacy’

The head of the Minneapolis Democratic Party defended his claim that the burning of a police building during the George Floyd riots last summer was an “act of pure righteousness.”

Devin Hogan, chair of the Minneapolis Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, argued in an August column for Southside Pride that the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis during the riots last year was justified as a “genuine revolutionary moment.” Police fled the building in May 2020 as rioters broke in and set the building on fire.

In a statement issued on Monday, Hogan defended his comments as accurate and truthful.

“Fetishizing decorum over substance is a hallmark of white supremacy,” Hogan said. “If antiracism offends your sensibilities then please use this moment to examine the role you play in maintaining and upholding these systems. Which side are you on?”

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the state affiliate of the national Democratic Party, did not respond to a request for comment.

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey (D.) ordered police to flee the Third Precinct as an estimated 2,000 protesters gathered outside, some of whom turned violent and looted nearby buildings.

“Death to one of our officers or the general public, that was not a consequence I could have on my watch,” Frey told FOX 9.

Hogan, in his column, insisted that the riots were justified because the “cops started it.”

“They killed George Floyd and took every opportunity to escalate, agitate, and make things worse. The cops are rioting and the people are responding,” he wrote. “The people declared themselves ungovernable and unilaterally took their power back.”

Dem Official Says Burning Police Station Was ‘Act of Pure Righteousness’ (freebeacon.com)

Border officers are releasing illegal immigrants who test positive for COVID-19 to a nonprofit organization, Texas authorities said this week.

The immigrants were handed over to the Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley, which arranged for their stay in a La Joya, Texas, hotel that it had rented out entirely, La Joya police officials said.

“We did not know this. No one told the city of La Joya. No one told the police department that these people were here. And no one told us that these people were possibly ill,” La Joya Sgt. Manuel Casas told reporters at a July 27 press conference.

The situation came to light on July 26, after a concerned citizen reported to a police officer that she saw members of a family who were coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths at a Whataburger location, and they weren’t wearing masks. Management at the restaurant where the incident was reported said they wanted the family to leave because they were disregarding other people’s health.

The officer went to the family, who told the officer they had been apprehended by Border Patrol agents just days before, but were released because they had COVID-19. The family was being housed at the Texas Inn Hotel, which authorities later learned had been completely booked to house such immigrants.

“The information we have is that everybody that is staying in that hotel is COVID-19 positive,” Casas said.

Officers later witnessed a group of 20 to 30 people staying at the hotel outside. Most of them weren’t wearing masks.

Officers also later learned that the illegal immigrants being detained by Border Patrol were given over to the nonprofit to be placed in hotels in the La Joya and McAllen, Texas, areas.

“We have been doing well as a community in slowing the spread of this deadly virus. But ill-conceived policies by both the federal and state governments are beginning to have serious consequences on Hildago County. I call on federal immigration officials to stop releasing infected migrants into our community,” Richard Cortez, the county judge, said in a statement.

A Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley representative didn’t return a request for comment by press time.

The charity’s executive director, Sister Norma Pimentel, told Border Report that the group has been helping house COVID-positive immigrants in hotels. Pimentel said that a security guard is now at the La Joya hotel to keep the immigrants inside.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told The Epoch Times via email that the agency in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector “continues to encounter significant numbers of undocumented migrants crossing the border.”

Undocumented migrants is a term for illegal aliens.

“RGV continues to expel individuals under Title 42 authorities as part of COVID mitigation efforts and utilizes pathways under Title 8 proceedings to remove those amenable to their home countries,” the spokesperson wrote. “During these challenging times, our federal, state, and local partnerships are indispensable as we work to secure our borders and to quickly move individuals out of USBP custody and through the appropriate immigration pathway.”

Border agents in the Rio Grande Valley apprehended more than 20,000 illegal immigrants in a single week this month, part of a dramatic rise in apprehensions seen during President Joe Biden’s first term.

Texas authorities have begun taking matters into their own hands, arresting immigrants on trespassing charges. The city of Laredo, Texas, sued the Biden administration last week in a bid to stop the transfer of thousands of illegal immigrants from among those apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio to the city.

US Releasing Illegal Immigrants Who Test Positive for COVID-19: Texas Police (theepochtimes.com)

Data from Public Health England (PHE) shows that, while the overall chances of getting reinfected are very low, the Delta variant, first identified in India and which accounts for around 99% of cases in the UK, poses a higher risk.
It came as new figures showed the breakdown of how many people in hospital with the Delta variant have had one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

While it is “possible” to identify that someone may have the DELTA variant, THERE IS NO DIRECT TEST.
So, I repeat my question–how the hell do we know that most of the new cases are “DELTA” when there is no DIRECT test?

How is the Delta Variant Spreading If There is No Direct Delta Variant Test? | Dude Pac | dudepac.com

• Ella French, 29, was fatally shot during a traffic stop Saturday 
• Her male colleague is ‘fighting for his very life,’ a police spokesman said
• The pair were fired upon after a vehicle carrying two men and a woman had been pulled over in the South Side of Chicago
• Two suspects have been arrested and a weapon seized; a third is on the run 
• The officer is the first to be shot and killed in the city since December 2018 
• All three suspects in the shooting have been taken into custody by CPD
• Ten people killed and 64 were wounded in Chicago gun violence this weekend
• Incidents included two mass shootings at two separate nightclubs 

Chicago police have arrested all three suspects in the fatal shooting of a female police officer during a traffic stop on the South Side as the nation’s third largest city grapples with yet another weekend of deadly gun violence.

Ella French, 29, was killed and her partner – who welcomed a daughter two months ago – was seriously wounded during the armed confrontation with three suspects.

French was one of 10 people killed and 64 wounded by gun violence throughout Chicagoland over the weekend. 

French’s death was the first fatal shooting of a Chicago officer in the line of duty since 2018 and the first female officer fatally shot on the job in 33 years. 

The two officers were fired upon after a vehicle carrying two men and a woman had been pulled over at 9pm, said Eric Carter, Chicago police first deputy superintendent, at a news conference early Sunday.

The officers returned fire, and one of the people in the vehicle was also wounded.

The wounded suspect was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, and their condition was unknown. 

All three suspects have been taken into custody, according to police.  Their names have not been released as of late Sunday.

Andrew French, Ella’s older brother, told the Chicago Tribune: ‘My sister’s always been a person of integrity. She’s always done the right thing even when nobody’s looking. 

‘She’s always believed in people and believed in doing the right thing. … She’s always believed in taking care of people that can’t take care of themselves.’ he said. 

‘We will never forget the true bravery she exemplified as she laid her life down to protect others,’ the department said of French on Facebook, adding that fellow officers will ‘grieve the loss of this hero.’

The department also requested support for French’s ‘wounded partner, who is in the hospital fighting for his life.’

At a Sunday news conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged Chicagoans to end the acrimony between ardent police proponents who say officers are hampered by overly burdensome rules and staunch critics who say officers act with impunity.

‘Stop. Just stop,’ she said. ‘This constant strife is not what we need in this moment.’ 

‘The police are not our enemies,’ Lightfoot added at the news conference. 

‘We must come together… We have a common enemy: It’s the guns and the gangs.’ 

The shooting of the officers occurred on another violent summer weekend in the nation’s third largest city, with at least 64 people shot, 10 fatally, by afternoon Sunday, ABC7 in Chicago reported. According to the Chicago Tribune, 47 of those shootings took place in the 24 hours between Saturday night.

The bloody incidents included two mass shootings at two separate nightclubs, as well as a murder-suicide.  

One of the nightclub shootings saw seven struck by bullets – one man fatally – after an argument at a lounge in the city’s Gresham neighborhood.

That saw the 24 year-old gunman allegedly shoot a 37 year-old he’d been arguing with twice in the neck and three times in the back.

The 37 year-old was rushed to hospital and later pronounced dead. Meanwhile, the gunman was himself shot eight times, and remains critically-ill in hospital. 

Five others injured in that shooting, aged between 23 and 56, were taken to hospital and are expected to survive their wounds. 

The other nightclub shooting saw two bouncers aged 42 and 40 shot multiple times after denying someone entry to another Gresham nightclub. Three other men standing near the club door were also shot.  

Dozens of officers arrived outside the University of Chicago Medical Center to pay their respects to French and her injured colleague amid the ongoing explosion of gun violence in the city.

She had joined the force in 2018 and was a member of the community safety team, a citywide unit formed last summer under police Superintendent David Brown to respond to crime hotspots. 

The other officer was ‘fighting for his very life,’ Carter said.

He asked Chicagoans to pray for officers as they risk their lives daily.

‘They go out here and do their jobs thanklessly,’ he said. 

‘They do it without asking for anything. They do it because it’s something that’s a higher calling for them. And they do it because it’s the right thing to do.’  

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, speaking outside the hospital, said: ‘The officer who succumbed to her injuries was very young on the job, but incredibly enthusiastic to do the work.’  

Lightfoot encouraged people to never forget the sacrifices officers make.

‘This is a very tragic and sad day for our city, and pray for officers the men and women of this department,’ the mayor said. 

‘They deserve our prayers every single day that they can return home safely to their families, unfortunately that didn’t happen tonight.’ 

French was the first member of Chicago police department to be shot and killed in the line of duty since Lightfoot became mayor in 2019. 

Last year, the deaths of four other Chicago officers who succumbed to COVID-19 were also considered by the police department to be in the line of duty. 

The last line-of-duty deaths of Chicago officers who were killed while pursuing a suspect were in December 2018, when Officers Eduardo Marmolejo and Conrad Gary were fatally struck by a train as they looked for a suspect wanted for illegally possessing a gun. 

That suspect, Edward Brown, was sentenced this past April to a year in prison for a felony weapon violation in the case. 

November 2018 saw the last fatal shooting of a Chicago officer, Samuel Jimenez, 28.

In February 2018 Commander Paul Bauer, 53, was shot and killed, while arresting a suspect.

He had served with the Chicago Police Department for 32 years and served as commander of the 018th District. 

The last female officer shot to death in the line of duty was Irma Ruiz, who was shot inside an elementary school in 1988. 

Data from July showed murders in the city were nearly the same as the number reported last year, but shootings increased by 15 per cent and the number of people shot in the city rose by nearly 10 per cent year-over-year.

Those statistics, released by the Chicago Police Department, show that there were 105 homicides recorded in the month of July. 

That is down slightly from last summer, when 107 people were killed in July, but up significantly over 2019, when 44 murders were recorded – representing a 139 per cent increase in monthly homicides within the last two years.

Police say that 445 homicides have been recorded so far in 2021, compared to 446 during the first seven months of 2020. 

Once again, both numbers are significantly higher than those recorded in 2019, when 290 people were killed in the first seven months of the year, representing a 53.4 per cent increase. 

Nationwide, between January and July 24 2021, there has been 25,216 gun-related deaths including homicides, murders, suicides, unintentional shootings, and defensive gun use incidents. 

On average, this means 123 people have died across the country every single day in 2021. 

If the trend continues, almost 45,000 people will lose their lives to gun violence by the end of the year.

This figure dwarfs the 43,563 shooting deaths recorded in 2020 – which had been the deadliest year for shooting incidents in at least two decades.

Female Chicago police officer, 29, becomes the first cop shot and killed in the city since 2018 | Daily Mail Online

A fourth police officer who was present at the grounds of the Capitol building when it was breached on Jan. 6 has died by suicide, according to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD).

Metropolitan Police Officer Kyle DeFreytag, 26, was found dead on July 10 from suicide, an MPD spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email.

DeFreytag was assigned to the Fifth District and had been with the police department since November 2016.

MPD Chief Robert J. Contee III had sent a message to the police force last month to notify them of DeFreytag’s death.

“I am writing to share tragic news that Officer Kyle DeFreytag of the 5th District was found deceased last evening,” Contee told the department in July, according to WUSA. “This is incredibly hard news for us all, and for those that knew him best.”

DeFreytag lived in Alexandria, Virginia, and was originally from Pennsylvania, according to an obituary posted by the Bensing-Thomas Funeral Home. A memorial service was held in his memory on July 31.

“He liked hiking, camping, riding his motorcycle, he liked traveling and playing the drums, he enjoyed trying different ethnic foods and always knew the best places to eat. Kyle was kind, he had a quick wit and a great sense of humor and kept us laughing for 26 years,” according to the obituary.

DeFreytag is survived by his parents, his brother, and his sister.

The confirmation from the MPD of DeFreytag’s suicide came just hours after 43-year-old Gunther Hashida was confirmed to have died by suicide.

According to a GoFundMe fundraising page, Hashida is survived by his wife and three children. The page didn’t specify the cause of his death or what may have driven him to end his life.

DeFreytag’s death brings the number of police officers who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 who reportedly died by suicide to four.

The other two cases said to be due to suicide are that of MPD Officer Jeffrey Smith and Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood.

Read MoreTimeline of Events in DC on Jan. 6

Lawmakers gathered at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 for a joint session of Congress to count and certify electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election. Proceedings in the chambers were temporarily interrupted when a sizable group of protesters entered the Capitol building. Thousands of protesters, mostly peaceful, remained outside.

It remains unclear who or what groups may have instigated the breach of the Capitol building.

A total of five deaths were recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 incident.

Of the deaths, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt was determined to have died from homicide on Jan. 6, having been shot and killed by an unnamed officer.

Another three people died on Jan. 6 outside the Capitol building but on Capitol grounds. Two of the deaths were found to be from natural causes—both were men in their 50s who died of hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The remaining death, involving a woman in her 30s, was ruled as an accident from a drug overdose.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was determined to have died of natural causes on Jan. 7.

More than 100 police officers were reportedly injured in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 incident.

The events of the day culminated in a second impeachment trial for then-President Donald Trump, who was ultimately acquitted of an insurrection incitement charge in February.

More than 500 people have been arrested and charged in cases related to the events on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. Among them, more than 50 are being held pretrial in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, in conditions that are “unconstitutional” and violate “every single basic human right,” lawyers representing several of the defendants told EpochTV last month.

Four police officers on July 27 recounted to a House of Representatives special committee that they were beaten and threatened amid clashes with the protesters on Jan. 6.

4th Police Officer Who Was at Jan. 6 Capitol Breach Dies by Suicide (theepochtimes.com)

She unveiled the black ops military force on the Capitol steps today as she gave an impassioned speech about defunding the police.

“If you don’t want to defund the police, my private army has been ordered to take care of you,” she said, standing in front of dozens of hardened, trained private special forces. “Butch, Spike, Zero, Aces, Skull—go get ’em!” 

The private military she’d hired with her healthy congressional salary then went out to find anyone who didn’t like Bush’s idea of defunding the police to apprehend them. Many tried to call the police to protect themselves, but their cities had already defunded the police, and nobody responded, or else a social worker showed up to ask about their feelings.

Bush has arrested thousands of Americans so far. Prisons are filling up quickly, but no worries: Bush says she is holding a protest to make sure violent criminals are released as soon as possible to make room for pro-police Americans.

Cori Bush Hires Mercenary Army To Arrest Anyone Who Doesn’t Want To Defund The Police | The Babylon Bee

Americans have been beaten in Afghanistan, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

A day after he said the military was aware of reports that Americans were beaten by Taliban terrorists, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that “we know of a small number of cases where some Americans … have been harassed, and in some cases, beaten.”

“We don’t believe it’s a very large number, and most Americans who have their credentials with them are being allowed through the Taliban checkpoints,” he added.

The stunning admission came as the U.S. Embassy warned Americans against traveling to the U.S.-held airport in Kabul, where thousands of people are trying to enter to escape the country before American troops leave.

The United States is openly working with the Taliban to facilitate the evacuation, and Taliban militants control all of the ground around the exterior of the airport.

President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States was in “constant communication” with the Taliban, which is designated as a terrorist group by a number of countries.

The U.S. military has largely chosen not to conduct operations outside the airport, leaving Americans and Afghans to fend for themselves until they reach the facility.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told members of Congress in a call Friday that violence against Americans “is unacceptable,” Kirby said Saturday.

And U.S. commanders have conveyed the same message to Taliban commanders, he said.

“We’ve been in touch with the Taliban for quite some time, I think, over the course of the last week. And we’ve certainly made our concerns known,” Kirby said.

According to the military spokesman, word had not filtered down from Taliban leadership to every individual militant.

“What appears to be happening is that not every Taliban fighter either got the word or decided to obey the word,” he said.

The revelation came as a growing number of Republicans called for more decisive action from the Biden administration, which both parties have said has botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Instead of going out there and making the Taliban our hostages, right now America is on day seven, day eight of the Afghanistan hostage crisis for us,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a military veteran, said on Fox News on Friday. “And until we flip that scenario back to where it was prior to this, we can’t safely get our people out.”

“Biden’s failed Afghanistan withdrawal has put thousands of American lives in danger behind enemy lines,” added Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is trying to impeach Biden, on Twitter on Saturday. “The Taliban is beating Americans but Biden is still relying on & trusting them. He is incompetent, unhinged, incoherent & unfit.”

Military officials said the focus remains on keeping the airport secure and evacuating people who can make it there.

“The military mission that we are executing now is a noncombatant evacuation operation,” Kirby said. “We’re fighting against both time and space. That’s the race that we’re in right now,” he added later.

Pentagon Confirms Americans Have Been Beaten in Afghanistan (theepochtimes.com)

Almost two years ago I published an article on the Gab News blog about Silicon Valley building a social credit system for the West. Exactly one year later I experienced this social credit system personally when my business and family were blacklisted by Visa after also being banned by Paypal, Stripe, Coinbase, and many other payment processors.

Around this time I wrote a warning letter to Christians about what was happening to me and what would soon be happening, and is now happening, to many more people like me. Earlier this year I wrote about the Silent Christian Secession and the need to build our own economy to escape the pending tyranny of the global elite.

In April I wrote that the vaccine was becoming a religious ceremony–cultish even– and that Christians had an absolute right to reject it. That same month I defended the right of everyone to speak freely on Gab and openly discuss, question, and criticize the vaccines in the face of a censorship crackdown on dissent from Big Tech.

God has blessed me with tremendous foresight and discernment about the Enemy’s next move. It’s why I started Gab in 2016 long before censorship became the center of cultural and political debate that it is today. It’s why I wrote these many warnings to Christians and freedom lovers everywhere about what was happening to me because I knew that it would soon be happening to all of you too.

I don’t take this blessing lightly. These things weigh on my heart heavily as a husband and father of two young children. Everyday I hear stories from Gabbers about how they are being forced and coerced into taking the vaccine when they do not want to.

I am praying that God gives them the peace and discernment they need right now. It sickens me that the Enemy is making my brothers and sisters in Christ choose between feeding their families and retaining their bodily autonomy and being true to their deeply held religious beliefs.

This week we published several religious exemption document templates for people who need them and the response was unbelievable. Many people sent emails, Gab comments, and direct messages thanking us for publishing these and I pray to God that they helped even one person facing an impossible decision to make the right one.

The people in power don’t care about Covid. They don’t care about the vaccines. They care about control. This entire situation is one giant demoralization campaign designed to grind us all down spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. If they can get us all to submit once, they can get us all to submit fully and forever.

We can’t let that happen. Do not let them get in your head with the fear mongering, the lies, and the shapeshifting narratives. They are exposing themselves like never before in human history and we are living through a period of immense spiritual warfare.

We must remember that we are human beings, made in the image of God. We always have choices. We always have hope. Darkness cannot and never will consume the light of Christ.

Do not look to political leaders for help. There is no political solution to a spiritual problem. Look to Jesus Christ. Open your Bible. Pray. Put on the full armor of God and get to work building something new. They have left us no choice. We can and must rebuild from scratch and it starts in your own heart and in your own local community.

God bless you all,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

I Tried My Best To Warn You This Was Going To Happen – Gab News

When Gab was banned from several banks earlier this year it inspired us to get right to work building our own free speech-friendly financial infrastructure. The age of financial censorship has long been coming and Gab was the canary in the coal mine on this issue over three years ago. When the financial censors came for us, few stood up to defend us. We were told to “go build our own” if we didn’t like it, so that’s exactly what we have been doing.

Facing financial censorship is nothing new for Gab.

Gab has been banned from Paypal since 2018 along with many other payment processors including Stripe, Square, Coinbase, and more.

We are even banned from accepting Visa and Mastercard despite operating a fully legal American business that sells software services and merchandise like hats, mugs, and shirts as our business model.

Gab literally cannot accept credit or debit card transactions to sell you a hat on the internet. Thankfully we had options: checks and bitcoin. New and old technology coming together to defeat financial censorship. It’s not perfect, but it works and we are about to take it to the next level.

If you’re reading this it’s inevitable that one day all of these things can and will happen to you too, which is why we have been working so hard to build a solution for everyone.

As I’ve been writing about for a while now: we need to build an alternative economy. In wake of this vaccine mandate madness that fact has never been more clear. Our human rights are being ripped from us and I’m not going to stand by and watch it happen.

Businesses, venues, sports teams, employers, and even our own federal government are all moving towards forcing people to choose between living and working in the existing economic system or being cast out for refusing to inject an experimental substance into their bodies.

Choosing between feeding your family and retaining your bodily autonomy while remaining true to your religious convictions shouldn’t be a choice any human being has to make. It’s evil, it’s wrong, and you should be speaking boldly against it.

If they want us out of their system, then so be it: we will build our own. Now is the time to stand up tall and walk away from this chaos. With our dignity and self-respect in hand we will work together to forge a new path forward that secures a future of freedom for our children.

At Gab we are making great progress on GabPay, our Paypal alternative, as one of our many initiatives in the fight against the tyranny of the global elites.

At the moment we are jumping through a lot of legal and regulatory hoops, but things are moving quickly. Building your own Paypal is not as simple as “build the software and ship it.” The software side for GabPay is actually done already and works great. It’s the red tape that takes time.

An alternative to Paypal has never been more important now that the ADL will be combing through your financial transactions and ruining people’s lives for financially supporting people and organizations they don’t like.

I’m actually really glad that Gab has been banned from Paypal for years, because it protects all of our customers from the prying eyes of the demons at the ADL. As always, God had a plan and getting banned only led us to build GabPay.

We are waiting on the lawyers to do their thing and aiming for a launch by end of the year, but I just want you all to know that something is actually being done about this madness.

Everyone loves to whine and complain about Big Tech censorship, and politicians–including President Trump— love to raise money on the issue, yet no political or legal “solutions” ever result in any concrete change or substantive action.

At Gab we are builders. We don’t sit around and whine about problems, we actively build solutions to those problems. Gab is the only community with a proven track record of not bending the knee to groups like the ADL and we’ve paid the price dearly for it by getting banned from every app store, payment processor, and even banks because of it. Despite it all we continue to survive and thrive by the grace of God and thanks to the support of people like you.

If you want to help fund our efforts in building GabPay you can upgrade to GabPRO for 15 bucks a month or make a purchase/donation on the Gab Shop. We have been testing out an early version of GabPay on our PRO upgrade system and Shop, so you can take an early look at it there if you decide to make a purchase. 

Thank you for your continued support and prayers! Keep the faith. I know many of you are scared, tired, anxious, stressed, and uncertain about our future. I believe that God is using this time to draw us closer to Him and to reveal the wicked underbelly of the global elite for all of us to see. Ultimately He is in control and that brings me tremendous peace. I pray it does for you as well.

God bless,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

An Alternative To Paypal Is Coming – Gab News

This evening I received an email (shared below) from Davey Alba at the New York Times. Davey explained that “researchers” from two organizations with direct connections to and funding from Facebook were defaming both myself personally and Gab as a whole for spreading “misinformation.”

I’ll get into the baseless and defamatory claims, but first I’d like you to tell you a little more about these two organizations.

Stanford Internet Observatory is led by Alex Stamos who is the former Chief Security Officer for Facebook. The CTO of Stanford Internet Observatory, David Thiel, also worked at Facebook before starting at SIO. Stanford itself is of course widely known as the Ivy League snob school that the “best and brightest” in Silicon Valley all attended and have deep connections to.

The second organization is Graphika. Graphika is a Facebook-funded “research” group whose executive leadership team includes Camille Francois, a woman worked at Google’s infamous censorship technology incubator “Jigsaw,” and Lauren Pencek who previously worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) among others.

The New York Times own reporting confirms that Graphika receives its funding from Facebook and Facebook is also listed as one of Graphika’s top clients right on the front page of their website. Aside from Facebook, Graphika also partners with DARPA, a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, along with Google, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Gab will never work with organizations like these and will never subject our community members to the slimy eyeballs of people who wish to “research” them. In fact we have spent years and a considerable amount of our engineering resources to stop these type of “reeeesearchers” from treating our community like lab rats.

Perhaps that’s another reason why Graphika has spent almost an entire year attacking Gab, but I suspect it has more to do with their deep connections to our competitors.

Let’s dive into the email from the New York Times, shall we?

Hi Andrew,
I’m a reporter from The New York Times, where we are writing about some viral posts about the coronavirus that have gained traction online in the past few weeks. I wanted to get your comment on a post by you that the Virality Project — a consortium of research groups focused on misinformation, including the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, among others — identified as misinformation.
You can find their assertions here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60025974f9f7920e6b40885b/t/61097813bdc29713648c24bf/1628010515835/Virality+Project+-+0803+Weekly+Briefing+.pdf

I’ve also screenshotted the relevant portion in the document:

Would you have a response to this being labeled as misinformation by this group of researchers?
Hope to hear from you as soon as possible — my deadline is on Monday, Aug. 9, at 12nn ET.
Feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXX if you have any questions about our story.
Best,Davey

My response to Davey is as follows:

The news that Lloyd Austin intends to make vaccinations mandatory in the military is two days old: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sec-of-defense-austin-to-announce-mandatory-vaccine-policy-for-all-active-duty-military

Furthermore, Pfizer and Moderna tested their vaccines on fetal cell lines and J&J used fetal cell lines in vaccination development. https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-do-the-covid-19-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-cells

I’m telling the truth. Your Facebook-funded “fact checkers” like Graphika are wrong and are the people peddling disinformation here. My response to them is that they can get bent. I’m reminding tens of millions of people that they have religious liberty and God-given human rights in this country. Deal with it. Jesus is King. 

Andrew Torba

I spent all week posting the many dozens of direct messages that I have been receiving on Gab from Military service members and their families who shared their personal stories and experiences with me. I also posted similar stories from those working in healthcare and other various industries.

People are scared, but not of Covid. They are scared of being forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs and giving up control of their own bodily autonomy or losing their livelihood. It’s a position that no human being, let alone a citizen of the United States of America, should have to be in. I choose to share their stories because no one else is.

I then drafted a blog post about my experience reading and sharing these heartbreaking stories and reminded millions of people that in the United States of America we have God-given human rights, including religious liberty. I did this by providing a set of religious exemption templates for Christians to use in the Military and in their workplace.

The post went wildly viral on Gab, Facebook, and Twitter. I also emailed it to millions of people, because people deserve to know that they always have options and the dignity of bodily autonomy and religious liberty.

For doing this both Gab and myself are being defamed for spreading “misinformation,” a totally subjective and ambiguous term that can mean anything the tyrants in power want it to mean.

Ultimately what we are seeing here is an anti-Christian, anti-competitive attack on Gab by organizations who partner with, are funded by, and are staffed by people who worked for our direct competitors.

I am sharing this all with you now to let you know how these wicked people operate and to shine a light on their lies, deception, and anti-Christian attacks. They aren’t just attacking me, they are attacking any and all dissent and opposition to their libido dominandi (lust for power.)

I’m also beating the New York Times to print by emailing this information to millions of people over the weekend. This is how you beat these people at their own game. The time to stand up and speak the truth boldly is now.

God bless you and thank you for reading.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
August 6th, 2021

Facebook-Funded “Researchers” and the New York Times Team Up to Attack Gab – Gab News

As the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th was still unfolding a despicable gremlin of a woman at The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel, was already crafting a totally baseless lie along with her demonic friends at the ADL and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg about the event being “planned” on both Gab and Parler.

“We need to ascertain right here, right now, whether this specific platform was knowingly facilitating an attack on our nation’s capital, literally a terror act against the seat of our government,” said the ADL’s Greenblatt, who noted that other platforms should also be investigated over the insurrection attempt but he says special attention needs to be trained on Gab.

Source

The ADL also went as far as demanding the DOJ investigate both myself individually and Gab as a whole for “intentionally aided or abetted individuals who carried out the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol.”

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of the largest social network on the internet that happens to have a specific feature for organizing and planning events, also deflected the blame on Gab and Parler. “Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has sought to deflect blame, noting the role of smaller, right-leaning services such as Parler and Gab.”

It has been widely reported, even by mainstream media outlets, that if the event was planned and organized anywhere it was most certainly done on her platform, Facebook.

Today the FBI is exposing the mountain of lies built up by Frenkel, Greenblatt, and Sandberg (I can’t help noticing a trend here!)

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

Source

The defamatory lies of the New York Times, the ADL, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had dire consequences for Parler, which was immediately removed from App Stores and hosting providers and has never fully recovered despite caving to Apple’s demands for censorship.

These defamatory lies also impacted Gab’s public image. The lie is still featured prominently on Gab’s Wikipedia page and is falsely cited by other reporters in stories about Gab to this day.

We demand a full and immediate retraction of this story by the New York Times and thank God for shining the light of truth on this fake news story.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

NYT Editorial Team,

Gab AI Inc. hereby demands retraction of the false and defamatory reporting published by the New York Times’ Sheera Frenkel on January 6th, 2021 claiming without providing any evidence whatsoever that the storming of the Capitol was organized on our platform.

Today it has been reported that the FBI found scant evidence that the event was organized at all, let alone on Gab.

Gab is not a lawless platform and proactively cultivates good working relationships with U.S. and international law enforcement. If we were made aware of an illegal plot taking place on our hardware, we would have removed it. This stands in sharp contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which for years have harbored international terrorist organizations like the Taliban – something your paper has never reported on or taken to task to the extent you took us to task for content which appeared on our platform in the aftermath of Jan. 6th and other offensive but legal content that has appeared on our platform from time to time.

We quote from Reuters: “The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.”

In light of this reporting vindicating Gab’s innocence in this matter, we are demanding a full retraction of the defamatory reporting published by The New York Times. Ms. Frenkel’s piece, which alleged that “[t]he storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media” and made extensive reference to posts on Gab that discussed the event (as indeed most of the Internet did on that day) without providing any evidence that the event was in fact organized by those same commenters, was presented as fact, not opinion.

This statement of fact was not only false, it was recklessly and maliciously false. FBI officials’ own statements on the matter, reported today, prove it was false.

Our rights in this matter are fully and expressly reserved. Please be guided accordingly.

Gab Legal

The New York Times and ADL Lies Exposed By The FBI – Gab News

In February, California resident Sherry Zhang received a call from her parents back in China, who told her a group of officers from the Ministry of State Security, the regime’s top intelligence agency, had shown up at their workplace.

The couple, in their late 70s, runs a factory in southern China’s Guangdong province.

“Are you the principal of this school?” Zhang’s parents asked her on the phone. “Is this true?”

They messaged Zhang a copy of a webpage, which included her photo and a short bio, Zhang told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. She immediately recognized the page—it’s from the official site of the San Francisco High School of the Arts, where she has been principal since 2015.

“I know my parents never go online; they’re old-fashioned,” Zhang said. She believes the officers gave her parents the copy.

According to Zhang, the officers told the elderly couple that Zhang is the head of a school that is “against China.” They then accused the parents of funneling money from their factory to the school, she said.

The officers then issued a veiled threat: if they uncover any proof of this, the factory would be shut down and Zhang’s parents would be jailed, Zhang said.

For the elderly couple, all of this came as a rude shock because Zhang had never told them anything about her profession or where she worked.

This is because Zhang is a practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual meditative practice persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999. Millions of practitioners who refuse to give up their faith have been arrested, detained, or tortured in China. For practitioners based overseas but who have family inside China, the regime has threatened their relatives in a bid to pressure the relatives living outside of China into staying silent about Beijing’s human rights abuses.

Since the start of the persecution, Zhang, a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country for almost two decades, has joined protests in the United States calling for an end to the atrocities in China. She has friends whose relatives from her hometown in China were persecuted to death. “I know it’s real,” she said. “I think we should speak out.”

“Falun Gong is my personal belief,” Zhang said, adding that San Francisco High School of the Arts is a non-religious private school with faculty staff from diverse religious backgrounds.

The school focuses on teaching tradition, universal values, and a sense of civic duty, according to its website. Its arts curriculum includes ballet, Chinese dance, classical instruments and vocal music, visual arts, and musical theatre.

Zhang had not revealed details of her activities to her parents these past years. “I never wanted them to worry,” she said.

The Epoch Times is withholding details relating to Zhang’s parents and their business for safety reasons.

‘They Target Almost Anyone’

For the months following the call in February, officials would show up to “inspect” her parents’ factory every other day, according to Zhang.

“It’s never been seen that so many departments all come at once, and every time they come they have like 7 or 8 people,” Zhang said, adding that officials from tax, labor, customs, and health agencies were all involved. “The employees feel pressured. They cannot operate normally.”

One employee got ahold of Zhang’s number and called her several times. They asked her to back out from her position at the school so the factory can be “free of trouble.”

“I think [the Ministry of State Security] was trying to get their words to me,” Zhang said. “They just want to make things happen, so that I could do things according to their wish.”

Experiencing regular harassment from officials, Zhang’s parents now believe they have only two options left: get Zhang to resign from the school, or cut off all ties with their own daughter, the principal said.

“If you guys feel too much pressure, you can say we are not connected anymore,” Zhang told her parents in a phone conversation. “I don’t want to be your burden.”

This is not the first time Zhang’s parents have been pressured by local authorities.

Chinese police have harassed her parents since as early as 2001, according to Zhang. In one case, the police called her mother to meet at a restaurant. When she got there, the police told her to get Zhang to stop practicing Falun Gong. “My mom felt very disturbed,” she said.

Zhang’s parents were never against her practicing Falun Gong, but they were afraid of the officials, she said. “They don’t feel like they can do a whole lot.”

Recently, communications from Zhang’s parents have dried up. The last time they called was more than two weeks ago. They mentioned the police “keep saying they found more evidence.”

Zhang is unsure what is actually going on back home right now. “My parents try to not tell me much anymore,” she said.

Having not heard from her parents, Zhang doesn’t know what will happen next.

“[The Chinese regime] don’t just target Falun Gong practitioners. I think they’re trying to control overseas Chinese because they have their roots in China: their parents, relatives, friends,” Zhang said. “They target almost anyone they view as not in line with their [communist] doctrine.”

Speaking Out

Zhang has lived in the United States since 1992. She completed a doctorate in chemistry before doing post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley researching lithium-ion batteries. After a few years of industry work, she got together with a group of like-minded parents who were dissatisfied with the U.S. public school system, and in 2010 co-founded San Francisco High School of the Arts.

“We think that a school teaching traditional arts and universal values is very important,” Zhang said. “Respect, empathy, honesty, kindness, tolerance, and responsibility.”

“When you go into a lot of schools, especially high schools, you can see the children are not necessarily motivated,” Zhang said. “I was told by many parents there’s not a single high school in San Francisco that doesn’t have drug issues.”

Many parents who come to her are concerned their children lack traditional values and work ethics, she said. “They want their children to be positive contributing members of society.”

Zhang described a typical day of work as “busy but enjoyable.” She holds weekly assemblies with students on topics like the dangers of drug addiction. Zhang’s students are like her own children, she said.

Students would tell Zhang stories of their previous schools. “They [felt] like they cannot speak what’s on their mind, otherwise they cannot fit in,” she said. “Only the loud people got their voices heard.”

Exposing the Chinese regime’s egregious abuses of power is her way of practicing what she teaches to her students, Zhang said.

“Every note [the students] play, every dance movement they make; we keep on encouraging them to work hard, and they will persevere; we teach them that goodness will prevail,” she said. “I would have to stick to the same thing.”

Zhang cautioned that the Chinese regime is infiltrating every corner of the international community. “They try to control everything, control a lot of media, a lot of schools,” she said.

“We’re teaching the traditional values here … that’s not what they [the Chinese regime] want to see.”

Zhang said that the Chinese regime tries to influence Americans through the Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, Beijing-funded language centers found in colleges and K-12 institutions that have been criticized for promoting Chinese Communist Party propaganda and suppressing academic discussion and freedom on topics the regime doesn’t want to be discussed.

“They want the next generation to be an easier target and to really infiltrate what’s easy to infiltrate—the children.”

Chinese Authorities Harass Parents of California School Principal in Intimidation Attempt (theepochtimes.com)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is partnered with a self-described “socialist” internet foundation run by the branch of the Chinese Communist Party spearheading its digital campaign to censor factual narratives and push fraudulent information about COVID-19.

The two foundations inked a memorandum of understanding in 2015, pledging cooperation in areas including “public health”:

According to the cooperation memorandum of understanding, the two parties will rely on new technologies such as the Internet to promote pragmatic cooperation in the fields of charity, public health, and international development, and work together to improve the quality of life of the poor and promote poverty reduction in developing countries.The China Internet Development Foundation (CIDF) operates under the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and is managed by the Cyberspace Administration of China.Given its close relationship to the Chinese Communist Party, CIDF’s charter pledges to “adhere to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

“Consciously maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core in ideological and political actions, and earnestly fulfill the historical mission of building a network power to promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” are among the foundation’s other objectives.

“The Foundation adheres to the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China and, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, establishes an organization of the Communist Party of China, carries out party activities, and provides necessary conditions for the activities of the party organization,” the group’s charter adds.

The CIDF also openly admits to “practicing the core values of socialism.”

CIDF’s oversight body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, also played a critical role in deploying Chinese bot armies on social media platforms to spread propaganda about the origins and severity of COVID-19.

In addition to controlling thousand-person legions online, the body was also responsible for dictating pro-government editorial lines of Chinese state-run media outlets regarding COVID-19 stories.

“All Cyberspace Administration bureaus must pay heightened attention to online opinion, and resolutely control anything that seriously damages party and government credibility and attacks the political system,” reveals a government memo obtained by ProPublica.

Gates Foundation Partnered With ‘Socialist’ Internet Group Running China’s COVID-19 Propaganda Operation. – The National Pulse

State health departments are using the Chinese Communist Party-linked social media platform TikTok to encourage children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

In West Michigan, Kalamazoo County’s Health and Community Services Department is specifically using the app to “better reach people ages 12 to 29 years old.”

Lyndi Warner, public information officer for the department, reveals the platform is being used to target the young demographic: “When we look at who’s being vaccinated and where are we wanting to make those strides… the 12- to 29-year-old age group is where we really wanted to try and focus in on.”

“We are seeing these videos do really well so far. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well that they’re doing,” she added.

The Alabama Department of Health (ADH) also sponsored a contest on TikTok for individuals aged 13 to 29 to “encourage vaccination against COVID-19 before the beginning of the school year.”

“To participate, contestants are to submit a TikTok video showing themselves getting vaccinated or include a creative message explaining, “This is why I got vaccinated.” All videos must tag @alcovidvaccine, #getvaccinatedAL and #ADPH. […] A panel of judges composed of advertising professionals and ADPH personnel will select four winners who will each be awarded a $250 Visa gift card,” a contest summary continues.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes. Its founder has also pledged to use ByteDance to “promote socialist core values” and devotion to the Chinese.

The app’s threat to national security and data privacy prompted the Trump administration to attempt to ban the platform from operating in the U.S. – an effort recently quashed by the Biden White House.

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – who played a critical role in shaping the Vatican’s controversial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party – has repeatedly headlined events sponsored by CEFC China Energy, a Chinese government-led influence group that has counted Hunter Biden as its Managing Director, The National Pulse can reveal.

The former Cardinal, who was defrocked due to sexual abuse, spoke at several events hosted by the group, with excerpts of his remarks earning publication in CEFC China Energy’s journal, “China Eye.” McCarrick has asserted commonalities exist between Communist and Catholic doctrine along with drawing positive parallels between Xi Jinping and the Pope.

McCarrick also served as an envoy for negotiations between the Chinese Communist Party and the Vatican over establishing formal ties, with many criticizing the final deal as a “slap in the face” to China’s Catholics. The establishment of formal relations between the two entities follow McCarrick’s robust involvement with CEFC China Energy.

CEFC’s Deputy Chairman and Secretary-General is Dr. Patrick Ho, dubbed “the f**king spy chief of China” in exclusive audio released by The National Pulse from Hunter Biden’s “Hard Drive from Hell.”

Ho appears multiple times in the e-mails as the pair inked million-dollar contracts, earning Hunter Biden the position of “Managing Director” at CEFC by 2018. The Chinese Communist Party operative was later indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for “schemes to bribe top officials for business advantages,” and used the committee “to conceal his criminal schemes, according to the Department of Justice.

McCarrick spoke at several CEFC events including the New York Forum on World Civilizations in 2012 and Sino-US Colloquium on Core Values and World Order in 2013.

A 2014 edition of CEFC’s “China Eye” Journal contains an excerpt from McCarrick’s speech from 2013. “It is a special pleasure to be back with the China Energy Fund,” he began his speech before praising the “brilliant” Patrick Ho. “I do not have the brilliance or the learning to match Patrick, but I’m just going to take out a couple of things that I think would be important and perhaps stimulating as we begin our discussion today,” he added.

EXC: Ex-Cardinal Negotiating Vatican-China Deals Attended Hunter Biden-Led Communist Party Influence Events, Deleted Webpages Reveal. (thenationalpulse.com)

Americans in Afghanistan were told Saturday not to go to the airport in Kabul to evacuate unless they receive a specific message to do so.

“Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so,” the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan said in an alert.

The Pentagon declined to comment, referring The Epoch Times to the State Department. That agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Video footage from the exterior of the airport on Saturday showed crowds remaining outside the concrete, razor wire-topped walls being guarded by U.S. troops.

President Joe Biden told Americans in Washington on Friday that his administration had “no indication” that Americans weren’t able to get to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

“We’ve made an agreement with the Taliban. Thus far, they’ve allowed them to go through,” he said.

He later said he misunderstood the question and that Americans may be getting into trouble after being let through Taliban checkpoints.

But the Department of Defense, about an hour later, acknowledged being aware of reports that Taliban terrorists had been beating Americans in Afghanistan.

Thousands of Americans are estimated to remain in the country after the United States withdrew most troops and the Taliban pummeled Afghan forces.

The Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.

Members of Congress from both parties have been critical of how the United States conducted the withdrawal, with many wondering why civilians weren’t evacuated before the military largely pulled out.

Now, Americans, Afghans, and others seeking to flee the country must brave the Taliban-held streets to reach the airport, with little to no help from troops from the United States or other nations, though some special forces have reportedly conducted targeted rescue missions by helicopter and U.S. troops went outside the airport to rescue 169 people.

Americans were encouraged to leave Afghanistan earlier this year and urged to do so as the Taliban rapidly gained ground this month.

Those who chose to stay have been receiving changing advice from U.S. officials regarding travel to the airport.

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan told Americans on Aug. 15 to shelter in place because of the unstable security situation there.

That directive remained active until Aug. 18, when Americans were told that U.S. government flights were departing from the airport but also informed that the government could not “ensure safe passage” to the facility.

A similar message was promoted on Thursday, with another warning.

“We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open,” U.S. citizens were told.

US Tells Americans to Avoid Traveling to Kabul Airport Because of ‘Potential Security Threats’ (theepochtimes.com)

Illegal immigrants are crossing into the United States from Mexico in record-shattering numbers, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ignoring a congressional request for information regarding where the government is relocating them, lawmakers say.

“On April 15, 2021, 34 Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter requesting important information regarding the destinations within the interior of our nation of the heavy illegal migration over our nation’s border,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an Aug. 5 letter.

The letter was also addressed to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. The two departments are responsible for implementing President Joe Biden’s open border policies on immigration.

“As of the date of this letter, the response from [HHS] deferred to [DHS], and regrettably, DHS has not responded to the Congress’ letter,” Braun and Gohmert told Mayorkas and Becerra.

The lawmakers said the repeated requests for relocation information were made because “border crossings remain unsustainably high. In July, it was reported that attempted crossings at the U.S.–Mexico border remain at a historically high level not experienced in at least 21 years.

“In June, more than 188,829 individuals were taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), including 15,018 unaccompanied children. This former figure represents an alarming 141 percent increase from January 2021. Like so many in our nation, we remain deeply concerned about this unlawful, manmade humanitarian and national crisis that is being facilitated on our southern border.”

In addition to Braun and Gohmert, the April and August letters were signed by Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

Members of the House of Representatives who signed the letters include Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), Matthew Rosendale (R-Mont.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Greg Steube (R-Fla.), Randy Weber (R-Texas), Ben Cline (R-Va.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo.), and Pete Sessions (R-Texas).

Representatives from DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

The information sought by the lawmakers includes the following:

“The locations where illegal immigrants have been sent, transported, or provided ability or funding to travel to, or allowed to travel to by other funding including their own or private funding for all individuals who entered the U.S. without visas.

“For each named location, the total number of immigrants who have been sent, transported, or provided ability or funding to travel to, or allowed to travel to by other funding, including their own or private funding to such city.

“The number of immigrants tested for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the number of immigrants that tested positive for COVID-19, and [DHS’s] course of action to respond to immigrants that test positive for COVID-19.”

The signers noted that “this requested information is critical to understanding how the unabetted flow of illegal aliens over the Southern border affects all Americans in each of the 50 states.”

“It must be reiterated that members of the executive branch have a duty, and many have sworn an oath that would include the requirement to carry out the lawfully enacted legislation under the Constitution,” the letter reads.

“With an open border facilitating illegal entry into our nation and the manifold resulting criminalities, the executive branch is failing miserably in its duty.

“Your failure to provide this requested information over the past three months, an eminently reasonable amount of time, raises further concerns about the lack of transparency and your unwillingness to provide this important information to elected representatives of the people of this nation.”

Homeland Security Ignoring Congressional Requests for Info on Where Illegal Immigrants Are Being Sent (theepochtimes.com)

‘Highly unlikely’ Taliban will overrun Afghanistan, Biden said in July

When President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by a September 11 deadline, the president told reporters in July that it remained “highly unlikely” the Taliban would take control of the country. 

“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said. “The Afghan government and leadership has to come together. They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place … there’s not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban.”

Biden’s forecast for the future of Afghanistan, however, has proven completely false. The Taliban has captured several of Afghanistan’s largest cities, and experts now believe the terrorist group will target the Afghan capital of Kabul in the coming weeks. The Biden administration scrambled to call in another 8,000 troops to the region in an effort to rescue both U.S. troops and civilians remaining in the country.

Biden’s Afghanistan Predictions Were All Wrong (freebeacon.com)

Fellow American:

Did you see the news? 

Joe Biden released 50,000 illegal immigrants into the United States without even giving them a court date. 

We don’t know how many are violent criminals, how many work for the drug cartels, or how many are infected with Covid-19. All we know is that the Left’s plan is working.

They don’t see the lawless humanitarian crisis on the border as the problem. To Democrats, the crisis is the solution. 

ONLY A CONSERVATIVE HOUSE CAN SEAL THE BORDER. CLICK HERE TO GIVE TO HOUSE FREEDOM FUND TODAY!

Democrats want chaos at the border so that they can sneak in as many illegals as possible, right under your nose. So far, more than 1 MILLION illegals have crossed the border since Joe Biden took office! 

Biden isn’t turning them back to Mexico. He’s letting them into our towns, without Covid tests or court dates, while telling American citizens we have to start wearing masks again!

What happened to our country? America belongs to the people who love her, and it’s time to take her back.

Support the House Freedom Fund today, and join the fight to win America back.

HFF is the only organization in the country exclusively committed to electing TRUE CONSERVATIVES to the U.S. House.
      
HFF only supports fighters – men and women like Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Lauren Boebert. These are leaders ready to take on the socialist Left, the establishment GOP, the Big Tech billionaires, and the mainstream media.

I know because HFF supports me, and that’s no small thing. I’ve learned that when conservatives truly fight the liberals, even many of the leaders in our own party will abandon them.

Electing more Republicans won’t change anything. Only electing conservatives can make the House great again. HFF is the Right’s secret weapon against the woke socialist Left.

As you know, under our Constitution, the House holds the power of the purse over the federal budget. If we nominate and elect enough conservatives next year, we can cut off Biden’s allowance:

❌ No more money to relocate illegal immigrants into our hometowns;
❌ No more money to poison our children with Critical Race Theory;
❌ No more money to get Big Tech to spy on American citizens;
❌ No more money for new mask mandates or school closures; and
❌ No more money to finance coronavirus experiments by Communist scientists in Chinese labs.

If Democrats won’t turn away illegal immigrants, then the American people have to turn away the Democrats.

Please join me in supporting HFF today!

Thank you for considering this urgent request and doing so much to help fight for America’s future.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Taylor Greene
U.S. Congresswoman (R-GA)

‘It was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen’ if Biden bucked military advice, Senate minority leader says

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said President Biden directly ignored the advice of military leaders during briefings on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

“I was in a number of these briefings over the last couple months, it was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen,” McConnell said Monday. “I know for a fact that the president’s military leaders argued against this decision. I think the president himself felt strongly about this and overruled his own military leaders to do it, and he owns it.”

McConnell slammed the Biden administration for its incompetent withdrawal of thousands of Americans and Afghans. Footage emerged Monday of havoc at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, that caused civilian casualties.

“Honestly, this administration looks to me like it couldn’t organize a two-car funeral,” McConnell said. “It is a sad day for the United States of America.”

President Biden responded Monday to critics of his withdrawal, saying he stands by his decision.

“We will continue to support the Afghan people,” Biden said. “The way to do it is not through endless military deployments, but diplomacy.”

McConnell: Biden Ignored Military’s Advice on Afghanistan (freebeacon.com)

The restraint crowd delivers America’s humiliation in Afghanistan

When the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was founded in 2019, the mainstream media celebrated its emergence as a beacon of hope for a more restrained American foreign policy. Two years later, the humiliating failure wrought by the toxic mix of isolationism and anti-Americanism at the heart of the Quincy Institute is on full display.

Charles Koch, once pilloried for his conservative politics, was celebrated for a collaboration with George Soros that aimed to “bring an end to America’s age of endless wars and to reduce the nation’s military footprint around the world.”

While the left and right alike remain allergic to bipartisanship, the so-called transpartisanship of the Quincy Institute’s retrenchment remains very much in fashion in Washington. It can now claim full credit for the foreign policy debacle in Afghanistan.

The institution itself—and the White House—agrees. The Quincy Institute trumpeted its “success” in a Monday night email. “We knew that if we could bring the forces against endless war on the Left and the Right together, we could achieve the impossible,” the Quincy Institute wrote to supporters. White House chief of staff Ron Klain, for his part, retweeted the top Koch aide William Ruger’s wet kiss to Biden: In Ruger’s view, the president is “showing the requisite realist spine America needs at the moment.” Congratulations!

Quincy cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement in April that the United States would leave Afghanistan, sneering that that “the military high command’s never-ending urge to stick with a failed war was complemented by the inside-the-Beltway Blob’s doomsday scenarios and tired nostrums.”

The Soros network may have been pushing on an open door with Democrats, but Charles Koch gets the credit for doing the heavy lifting to provide intellectual cover for isolationists on the right.

That’s in part why President Donald Trump nominated Ruger, to serve as ambassador to Afghanistan in the last days of that administration. We opposed that nomination, but we now regret he wasn’t there this week to see the fruits of his labor.

This precipitous and calamitous withdrawal had “transpartisan” advocates. But the slogans, the white papers, the research and reports, and the veneer of professionalism and academic rigor used to justify the reckless policy came largely from Koch, Soros, and their army of “restrainers.”

A recent article from the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft blog posed a question that gets to the core of its naïve worldview:

What would our world actually be like if you simply declared peace and came home?

Now they know the answer. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has brought us the single most irresponsible bit of American statecraft in 50 years. This travesty—and all the death and destruction that will flow from it—is their first great achievement. Let’s hope it is also their last.

Responsible Statecraft Gets Its Moment (freebeacon.com)

The Forrest Gump of American decline?

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is at the center of yet another U.S. foreign policy disaster. During the Obama administration, in his role as a top aide to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and then-vice president Joe Biden, the highly credentialed wunderkind presided over some of the most humiliating failures in the history of American foreign policy.

Sullivan’s extensive experience as an architect of American failure in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iran, and Myanmar, plus the fact that White House press secretary Jen Psaki is mysteriously out of the office, made him a natural choice to defend the Biden administration’s handling of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

“It is certainly the case [that] the speed with which cities fell was much greater than anyone anticipated,” Sullivan said Monday during an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, who also asked about President Joe Biden’s assessment that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “highly unlikely” and “there’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States,” as there was in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War.

Fact check: False. Kimberley Motley, an international human-rights attorney who has worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade, described the situation in the country as a “nightmare” that was “like Saigon on steroids.”

Sullivan was unable to muster a compelling response. “To be fair, the helicopter has been the mode of transport from our embassy to the airport for the last 20 years,” he said as the network rolled footage of Taliban militants streaming into Kabul.

Perhaps the 44-year-old Sullivan has grown weary of presiding over epic failures. Despite being considered one of the most brilliant foreign policy experts of his generation, Sullivan’s résumé is littered with embarrassing debacles, including both of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaigns. Afghanistan is merely the most recent example.

In 2011, as a top adviser to then-secretary Clinton, Sullivan helped orchestrate the “kinetic military action” in Libya. Even though the intervention resulted in the death of dictator Muammar Qaddafi, it is widely viewed as a failure. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was assassinated during the Benghazi terrorist attacks in 2012, and the country would eventually become a haven for Islamic State militants.

Less than a month before Stevens was killed, Sullivan was among the team of experts advising then-president Barack Obama on the escalating civil war in Syria. Obama warned Bashar al-Assad, the Russian-backed dictator, that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that would “change my calculus” regarding U.S. military action against the regime.

Assad crossed the red line on multiple occasions, and the United States responded by taking negligible action to deter the slaughter of civilians. Assad remained in power, Russia flexed its military muscle, and the Islamic State established a caliphate in northeast Syria, wreaking havoc in Iraq as well.

During an interview with the New Yorker in 2019, Sullivan said he considered it “a great regret of mine” that “we were not able to more effectively play a role in stopping hundreds of thousands of people from dying in Syria and millions and millions more losing their homes.”

By 2014, Obama’s failure to enforce his “red line” on chemical weapons in Syria had changed Vladimir Putin’s calculus regarding Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Once again, the United States took no significant action to deter Russian forces from destabilizing the country and annexing Crimea. The conflict would claim thousands of lives, including the 298 people aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine.

Less than a month after Biden was sworn in as president, the government of Myanmar was ousted in a military coup conducted by individuals responsible for the genocidal atrocities perpetrated against the country’s Rohingya population. Foreign Policy magazine called it “a failure of U.S. diplomacy orchestrated by some of [the Biden administration’s] own players nearly a decade ago.”

In other words, people like Jake Sullivan. In 2011, he was advising Clinton when she described meeting Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as an “inspiration” and touted the Obama administration’s efforts in the country as a diplomatic victory. The celebration was short-lived. Aung San Suu Kyi would go on to assume a senior role in the country’s government but would be widely condemned for her refusal to denounce the military’s campaign of violence against the Rohingya.

Sullivan, who played a key role in negotiating the failed Iran nuclear deal in 2015, is currently leading the Biden administration’s efforts to revive the controversial agreement. He will almost certainly have a major role in crafting the pathetic U.S. response to China’s inevitable invasion of Taiwan. He is the Forrest Gump of American decline, and one of the best rebuttals to the American system of meritocracy.

None of these policy failures will hurt Sullivan’s glowing reputation among members of the Liberal Élite. After all, his credentials are impeccable: Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa), Rhodes scholar, Yale Law School, Brookings Institution. He was a debate team champion and president of the student council in high school, where he was voted “most likely to succeed.” He clerked for Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer and worked as chief counsel for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), where he was presumably traumatized by the abuse he suffered.

In any event, these colossal blunders will likely pale in comparison to what he will be able to accomplish as U.S. secretary of state in the Kamala Harris administration.

Jake Sullivan Presides Over Yet Another Foreign Policy Disaster (freebeacon.com)

Another widely peddled media hoax has been shot to pieces as Reuters reveals that the FBI has “scant evidence” of any plot or forward planning to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6th.

The news confirms The National Pulse’s reporting from January 11th, and raises questions about the government’s power grab and abuse of authority using January 6th as pretext.

Reuters reported Friday morning:

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

The report also vindicates President Trump and his team, and clarifies that there is “no evidence that the groups had serious plans,” to overthrow the U.S. government or commit anything like an actual “insurrection.”

The news blows apart the media’s narrative over the past eight months, and should refocus attention on the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused support in advance of the peaceful Trump rally at the White House earlier that day.

President Trump is known to have cleared the way for 10,000 National Guard troops, in advance of the event, in order to keep the peace.

The FBI, meanwhile, has been targeting peaceful U.S. protesters who did not breach the Capitol on January 6th, including Alaska spa owners Paul and Marilyn Hueper. Many of those arrested in the wake of the riot are being held in D.C. prison without access to edible food, and sometime in solitary confinement.

The National Pulse declared the January 6th hoax dead in March of this year, after exhaustive investigations.

FBI “Finds Scant Evidence” of Jan 6 Insurrection Plot, Killing Off Another Anti-Trump Media Hoax. – The National Pulse

Obama’s super-spreader birthday bash may have ruined the fall party scene in our nation’s capital

Regular Americans love to complain about how the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected their lives. The plebs throw temper tantrums when members of the political élite flaunt their privilege by throwing massive parties and ignoring the rules they put in place for everyone else.

Regular Americans, who as we all know are to blame for ruining democracy and botching the Afghanistan withdrawal, should try to take a deep breath and put their so-called suffering in perspective. They shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the political élite are also suffering, and élite suffering is, for obvious reasons, even more tragic than regular suffering.

Politico reports that members of the Washington, D.C., élite are the victims of a grave injustice perpetrated by one of their own. Former president Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party in Martha’s Vineyard earlier this month was a confirmed super-spreader event. The “Obama variant” has wreaked havoc on the island’s only hospital system.

Thanks, Obama. His insatiable narcissism may have ruined the fall party scene in our nation’s capital. Democratic power players, shocked at the (relatively) critical tone of the media coverage surrounding the Martha’s Vineyard affair, are worried they might have to wait a few months before it’s socially acceptable to hang out with celebrities again:

The bashing of the bash is having a chilling effect on the D.C. party scene as (especially Democratic) pols and their staffers scramble to figure out when and where — or even if — they can party again.

“Who wants to throw a party right now when Obama hired a doctor to make sure everyone’s vaccinated and passes a Covid test and he still gets shamed for it?” said JOHN ARUNDEL, former associate publisher of Washington Life magazine and managing director of Perdicus Communications.

“I just think there’s a stigma to throwing any kind of event,” he added. “The optics of throwing the party or being at the party, it can be chilling.”

The results have been almost as tragic as the chaos unfolding at the Kabul airport. Democratic lobbyist Heather Podesta, for example, was planning to host a lavish gala in September at the French ambassador’s residence. She was forced to reschedule the event for November.

“What we could do six weeks ago, we can’t do now,” lamented Adrienne Elrod, a former Hillary Clinton adviser. “We have to be so cognizant because Republicans are looking for any reason to call us hypocrites or to call us liars.”

All is not lost, however, as a number of swanky gatherings are still on track. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) will be honored at the March on Washington Film Festival on Sept. 30; hundreds are expected to attend. The Halycon Awards, a fundraising gala for a prominent liberal nonprofit organization, is scheduled for the following day.

A number of Democrats are refusing to let Obama’s bad vibes prevent them from raising money from left-wing billionaires. Kathy Hochul, who is (at least in theory) set to replace disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.), attended a series of high-dollar fundraisers in the Hamptons this weekend.

Journalists and lobbyists, meanwhile, are suffering an almost unfathomable hardship:

Some lobbyists are panicked about shrinking guest lists at fundraisers, especially with the infrastructure and reconciliation bills on the table. Fundraisers are prime opportunities to corner a member and press their interests.

Journalists might suffer too, with the Washington book party circuit in limbo. Lobbyist and D.C. hostess JULEANNA GLOVER was slated to have a book party at her Kalorama home in September for GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON’s new tome, but she’s going to make the call the week before on whether to have the party based on the CDC’s guidance.

Perspective: Stop Whining, Plebs, the DC Élite Are Also Suffering (freebeacon.com)

Gov exploits loophole to raise millions from outside Michigan for non-existent recall election

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.) condemned “out-of-state interests” for “pouring millions of dollars” into her state. That apparently doesn’t apply to her own campaign coffers, which prominent national Democrats have flooded with cash thanks to a campaign finance loophole.

Whitmer raised a staggering $8.6 million from Jan. 1 to July 20, a state record for a candidate in a non-election year. Nearly 44 percent of the money came from donors who gave more than Michigan’s $7,150 contribution limit, which Whitmer’s campaign says is allowed due to the multitude of recall petitions filed against the Democrat. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.), oil executive Stacy Schusterman, and heiress and Colorado Democracy Alliance Cofounder Patricia Stryker, for example, combined to give Whitmer $750,000. None of the three billionaires live in Michigan.

Whitmer’s fundraising strategy did not stop the governor from railing against “out-of-state interests” for “pouring millions of dollars into Michigan to try and flip the governorship” in a Sunday campaign email. Whitmer—who has attacked Republicans for increasing campaign contribution limits and “infusing even more money into state politics”—also touted her campaign’s “grassroots” status. Michigan Freedom Fund executive director Tori Sachs said Whitmer “lied to the working class” through the fundraising plea.

“Whitmer’s ‘rules for thee, not for me’ playbook is so well known that Michiganders won’t be surprised by the governor’s dishonesty and hypocrisy,” Sachs said.

Whitmer did not return a request for comment.

Whitmer’s campaign has defended its decision to solicit unlimited contributions, pointing to a 1983 ruling from former Michigan secretary of state Richard Austin (D.), which established that a Michigan official can accept donations beyond the legal limit if a recall against the official is “actively being sought.” But the scheme has still attracted pushback from conservative groups. 

A July complaint from the Michigan Freedom Fund argues Whitmer is not facing an “active” recall, as the most recent petition drive to oust the Democrat approved by the Board of State Canvassers expired in late April. Whitmer received three contributions of $250,000 or more in the ensuing weeks. In addition, three former Michigan governors who faced recall efforts—Republicans Rick Snyder and John Engler and Democrat Jennifer Granholm—did not exploit the situation to accept excess campaign cash.

In addition to Pritzker, Schusterman, and Stryker, Whitmer received a combined $260,000 from Wrigley chewing gum heir Jim Offield, Democratic megadonor Karla Jurvetson, and the governor’s father, Richard Whitmer. Had Whitmer refused to accept contributions over $7,150, she would have raised just $5.9 million instead of $8.6 million, according to Michigan Campaign Finance Network executive director Simon Schuster. 

Whitmer has faced dozens of recall campaigns, most of which came in response to the Democrat’s far-reaching coronavirus restrictions. None of the efforts, however, have advanced past the petition signature collection phase. Whitmer may need to return the excess contributions “if there’s ultimately no recall election,” former Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer told Bridge Michigan. 

“This is not money that she’s going to be able to use next year in the general election,” Brewer added.

Whitmer took office in January 2019 after she defeated her GOP opponent, former state attorney general Bill Schuette, by 10 points. She is set to run for reelection in 2022.

Gretchen Whitmer Hates ‘Out-of-State Interest’ Money, Unless It’s Spent To Help Her (freebeacon.com)

“But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.”

As refugees from Afghanistan pour into the Fort Lee U.S. military base in Virginia, an imam named Ammar Amonette is leading the fundraising drive for the Afghan refugees. Ammar Amonette, Imam of the Islamic Center of Virginia, is a left-wing activist who has spoken alongside Democrat then-Governor Terry McAuliffe, worked with the state’s Democrat attorney general to push hate crime legislation, held a press conference with Democrat Senator Mark Warner, and protested President Donald Trump’s travel ban on terrorism-rich countries.

In a 2004 interview unearthed by NATIONAL FILE, Amonette discussed the 9/11 attackers, saying, “Terrorism is about symbolic targets. It’s sending a political message. The World Trade Center sounds in Arabic like ‘center for globalization.’ I think they took it literally, and globalism may be a threat. But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.” Amonette previously served as imam of the Colorado Muslim Society which, during his tenure, hosted an event with then-Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Ekrima Sabry, who has said that it is a “fairytale” that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Ammar Amonette’s Islamic Center of Virginia is raising money and supplies for the Afghan refugees at Fort Lee. DiscoveringIslam.org describes Michigan-born Amonette as “an American Islamic scholar who is a convert to Islam. He spent 12 years studying in Saudi Arabia. He initially studied at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He later earned a Masters at the Graduate Institute for Preparation of Imams in Mecca.” Amonette’s efforts to help the migrants was profiled this week by CBS 6 Richmond in which he stated that “It’s going to be a long process and it’s only beginning” and said “a new plane is arriving every day” to take refugees to Fort Lee.

In June 2020, Ammar Amonette was the first speaker at a Clergy Action RVA press conference to protest the police beside the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia. On its Facebook page, Clergy Action RVA posts support for Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, supported giving felons the right to vote in Virginia, stated that “As last week’s insurrection at the Capitol demonstrated, the voices of white supremacy are violent and loud,” and held “Election Organizing” and “Election Brainstorming & Organizing” Zoom meetings prior to the 2020 election.

In January 2021, Amonette was quoted as saying that Muslims are not allowed to be vaccine refusers, regardless of whether or not a vaccine contains pork ingredients. He stated: “In case of an epidemic, you’re not allowed to refuse vaccination even if there’s a slight danger to you of a reaction. Although you may be able to refuse treatment when you’re ill, you can’t endanger others in the community. We have a religious duty and obligation to be vaccinated as long as competent science and medical authorities approve the vaccine…Anything that saves lives takes precedence over food prohibitions. Protecting the health of the community takes precedence over some other details of the law.”

Amonette cited the rules of Muslim law when discussing the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an October 17, 2004 interview with Denver Post reporter Eric Gorski headlined “U.S.-born imam turns heads, minds, hearts.” At the time, Amonette worked as an imam for the Colorado Muslim Society. Text of that article is preserved at the World-Wide Religious News website.

Here is a passage from the article (emphasis added): “Given his background, Amonette is in demand as a spokesman for his faith on terrorism. His answer usually goes something like this: The Islamic concept of jihad is similar to Christianity’s just- war theory, which allows war if conditions are met. In Islam it is allowable to defend yourself against armed aggressors. But Islamic law strictly forbids killing innocent civilians.

“Terrorism is about symbolic targets,” he said. “It’s sending a political message. The World Trade Center sounds in Arabic like ‘center for globalization.’ I think they took it literally, and globalism may be a threat. But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.’”

In 2017, Ammar Amonette spoke at an interfaith Ramadan potluck at Bon Air United Methodist Church with then-Virginia governor and current gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe and then-lieutenant governor Ralph Northam. Amonette said at the event: “This is the real America, there’s nothing more American than an interfaith breaking of the fast where we’re not threatened by each other.”

Governor McAuliffe said at the event: “We want to be part of this very special occasion, and when you think about the holy month of Ramadan and how important that is, and the message it conveys, I want everybody to understand that from day one, our administration has fought to make sure Virginia is open and welcome to everyone. And to every member of the Muslim faith, let me be very clear on behalf of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we love you, we respect you and we thank you for your contribution to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States of America.”

In 2004, while working as an imam of the Colorado Muslim Society, Amonette reportedly discussed how Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin’s assassination affected the Muslim community in Colorado. In March 2006, the Colorado Muslim Society (where Amonette served as imam) hosted “An Afternoon With Shaikh Ekrima Sabry,” who was then the Yasser Arafat-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine. Years earlier in 2000, Sabry said, with regard to the Holocaust: “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity. It is not my fault if Hitler hated Jews, indeed they were hated a little everywhere.” Records confirm Amonette working as an imam for the Colorado Muslim Society both before and after the event.

Amonette expounded on his views in a lecture called “The Need To Rule By ALLAH’s Law.” In his political activism from recent years, Amonette has opposed President Donald Trump. “At US Court of Appeals today protesting Trump’s Muslim Ban,” he wrote on Facebook on May 8, 2017.

In 2015, Amonette joined Democrat Senator Mark Warner for a press conference about alleged anti-Muslim hatred. In July 2018, the Islamic Center of Virginia teamed up with the ACLU of Virginia for the event #NoMuslimBanEver to fight President Donald Trump’s homeland security policy. Amonette spoke at the event. In October 2018, Amonette spoke at a vigil at the Weinstein JCC that attorney general Mark Herring and governor Ralph Northam’s wife Pamela attended. In April 2021, Amonette spoke at a Sikh event that was attended by Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger and governor Ralph Northam’s deputy chief diversity officer and senior policy adviser for immigrant and refugee affairs.

Amonette has appeared at events for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, which advocates for progressive policies and which gave the Islamic Center of Virginia a “Beacon of Light” award. In one entry on its website, the Virginia Interfaith Center announced that “Representatives from the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy lent support today during Attorney General Mark Herring’s announcement of a new legislative push to protect racial, ethnic and religious minorities in Virginia from hate crimes, and to establish a more inclusive definition of “hate crime.”

Several faith leaders joined Herring for his announcement and added their words of support to a new effort to help protect citizens of the Commonwealth from acts of violence, harassment, discrimination or intimidation…Iman Ammar Amonette of the Islamic Center of Virginia in Bon Air, said that “we support everyone’s First Amendment rights, but hate speech emboldens some people to take matters into their own hands and to attack and assault and harass people. Most Muslims have probably been targeted by hateful speech and these incidents are underreported. We appreciate the Attorney General’s strong words and actions to protect us here in Virginia to make people feel safe and welcome and equal citizens under the law.’” (Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy passage ends)

The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy’s “Foundational Partners” include the Center for American Progress, a George Soros-funded leftist group.

Activist Imam Fundraising For Afghan Refugees Discussed ‘Good Purpose’ Of 9/11 Spoke With McAuliffe, Hosted Holocaust Denier – National File

Jihadists disseminate messages to Afghan residents on social media platforms

Taliban leaders used Twitter and WhatsApp to spread propaganda and establish control over Kabul as they stormed the Afghan capital over the weekend. 

On Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that residents welcomed the Taliban and that “the situation in Kabul is under control.” The jihadist group used WhatsApp to disseminate a similar message to Kabul residents as it entered the city. In recent days, Taliban leaders have circulated WhatsApp numbers that Afghan regime officials or soldiers could call to negotiate their surrender.

The Taliban has swept across Afghanistan in the weeks following Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops, capturing major cities with little resistance. The Pentagon on Sunday deployed an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan to aid evacuation efforts as Afghans and Americans swarmed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Administration officials said in July that they expected a Taliban takeover to take months. 

The Taliban has used WhatsApp and Twitter for years to share official statements, but in the past week it has escalated its use of the platforms, using WhatsApp to announce new rules for Kabul residents.

On Monday, Mujahid tweeted a warning against looting and unauthorized intimidation of Afghan officials. The Taliban’s “complaint commission” posted WhatsApp numbers for city residents to call “if they face threats from anyone” and set up an emergency broadcast system via the app as well.

Twitter and Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, regularly banned ISIS members from their platforms. But the sites appear to let the Taliban broadcast its messages without incident. 

A Twitter spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that it was “proactively removing content that violates our policies.” The spokeswoman linked to a policy banning “hateful conduct” and another that bans “threatening or promoting terrorism.” The spokeswoman did not comment on whether Twitter considers the Taliban a terrorist organization. A Facebook spokesman told the Free Beacon it would take action against accounts maintained by sanctioned groups in Afghanistan, but would not comment on specific cases.

Several Taliban spokesmen have maintained Twitter accounts for years, regularly tweeting updates on negotiations and regional battles. The accounts often post photos and videos from frontlines, which are then copied and shared by pro-Taliban accounts. Only 15 percent of the Afghan population has access to the internet.

Both Twitter and Facebook removed former president Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots and have not restored his account, citing “incitement to violence.” 

Taliban Leaders Used Twitter and WhatsApp to Help Capture Kabul (freebeacon.com)

Fellow Conservative:

We were right all along. It is becoming more and more apparent that Communist China directly caused COVID and that liberals – from the World Health Organization to the United Nations, to Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer – aren’t going to do anything about it.

Joe Biden is terrified of angering Communist China.

Millions are dead, the American economy in shambles and all of it can be tied back to Communist China. Joe Biden’s only response is capitulation and shaming anyone who dares to tell the truth.

Remember all the times Republicans – President Trump especially – were mocked for saying that China caused COVID-19? Remember all the times last year when we fought to close our borders to Chinese travelers, but Joe Biden and his friends on the left mocked us and called this common-sense move racist?

If they won’t do anything, then it is up to us. I am working overtime to expose the truth, save lives, do my part to take back the U.S. Senate for the Republican Party, and I need you to help me in this fight.

The outcome could decide the direction of our nation for generations and our ability to hold China accountable for harming the world.

I have been saying this for months, here is a clip of me on Fox News– if you aren’t angry after watching this, then you aren’t paying attention.

Multiple issues are being covered up:
• The “gain of function” research being conducted on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
• Big Tech’s censoring of the evidence for the lab-leak theory during last year’s election campaign;
• The three Wuhan scientists who got seriously ill in late 2019;
• The APPALING conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• China no longer holding its Military Games in Wuhan.
• The bid for new repairs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that are going unquestioned…until now.

It is disgusting to see such weakness in the Oval Office. But, if we don’t take back the Senate to add some balance and strength to our government, I don’t know what will happen.

Please, your donation of $1,000, $500, $250, $100, even just $50 to do your part to take back the Senate could make a HUGE difference.

Republicans are fighting to hold China accountable for the lives it has destroyed. Every day, every hour, we cannot stop working to protect our families and the nation I love and served in the U.S. Navy to protect.

China must be held accountable. With your help, I will continue the fight to protect our great country. Please stand with me today.

For our children,

Rick Scott
U.S. Senator, Florida

Attendees paid thousands to enjoy cocktails while local hospitals complained of ‘bursting at the seams’

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe held a swanky fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard as the liberal vacation hotspot struggled to battle a spike in coronavirus cases that follows former president Barack Obama’s birthday party.

McAuliffe charged attendees thousands of dollars to attend the Wednesday event, which he held at Sen. Mark Warner’s (D., Va.) $7 million island mansion, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by New York Times reporter Ken Vogel. While donors enjoyed “cocktails and conversation in support of” McAuliffe, however, local medical professionals rushed to deal with a spike in COVID-19 cases nearly two weeks after Obama held his celebrity-filled soirée on the island. After the former president pledged to “scale back” the party over coronavirus concerns, hundreds of guests, including celebrities John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, and Don Cheadle, flocked to the island to attend.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” Martha’s Vineyard Hospital president and CEO Denise Schepici told reporters Wednesday. “We are pretty jam-packed. … We’re hoping there will be a reprieve in September. But that’s a prayer right now.”

Cases in the island’s surrounding county have increased 179 percent since Obama’s “sophisticated” guests began to arrive for the birthday bash.

The fundraiser marks McAuliffe’s latest attempt to nationalize his fundraising efforts as he works to defeat GOP opponent Glenn Youngkin. Last week, the Democratic candidate attended a Las Vegas fundraiser with Nevada governor Steve Sisolak (D.). McAuliffe ditched a candidate forum hosted by a disabilities advocacy group to fly to the event, a decision that drew a swift rebuke from Virginia’s disabled community.

Warner purchased his Martha’s Vineyard mansion from the late 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace in 2011. The waterfront estate consists of “two dwellings connected by a covered brick veranda and two car garage” and boasts six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a private dock, and private beach, as well as a screen porch that provides “unsurpassed water views to the shores of Cape Cod.” Warner’s residence is just miles away from Obama’s $11.75 million, 29-acre estate.

At the fundraiser, Warner announced his intention to investigate President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, according to Vogel. Event “hosts” paid $10,000 to attend, while “co-hosts” and “sponsors” paid $5,000 and $2,500, respectively, the invitation shows.

McAuliffe Holds Martha’s Vineyard Fundraiser as COVID Hits Island Hard (freebeacon.com)

Dem candidate’s lobbying shop collected $1.3 million from Turkish government

A consulting firm cofounded by Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe lobbied on behalf of the Turkish government to prevent the United States from official recognition of the Armenian genocide.

Turkey paid McAuliffe’s firm, McAuliffe, Kelly, & Raffaelli, nearly $1.3 million from 1990 to 1994 for a variety of lobbying and public relations services, according to disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. At the time, the Turkish government faced scrutiny from the State Department and human rights groups over the alleged use of torture against members of Kurdish opposition groups.

McAuliffe’s tenure at his consulting firm is a largely forgotten entry on his political résumé, which includes a stint as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime friendship with the Clintons. McAuliffe has said he did not engage in the day-to-day lobbying activities at McAuliffe, Kelly, & Raffaelli, but his former partners have credited him as the glue that held the firm together. The firm at one point sported a roster of 60 clients, several of them controversial, Politico reported in 2013. In addition to Turkey, McAuliffe’s firm represented the Lead Industry Association and cigarette maker Philip Morris.

McAuliffe, who is running for a nonconsecutive second term as Virginia governor, is narrowly leading Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin in polls.

According to its foreign agent disclosures, McAuliffe’s firm received $1,287,500 from the Turkish government to arrange meetings with American policymakers for Turkey’s ambassador and diplomats. Turkey’s contract called on the firm to lobby Congress on bilateral trade and to “counter any efforts detrimental to the Turkish-U.S. relationship.” One issue that has long strained U.S.-Turkey relations is the Ottoman Empire’s murder of more than one million Armenians from 1915 to 1917.

McAuliffe’s campaign said during a failed 2009 gubernatorial bid that McAuliffe, Kelly, & Raffaelli worked for Turkey on the genocide issue, the Washington Post reported at the time.

The Turkish government has doled out tens of millions of dollars to lobbying firms to prevent the U.S. government from labeling the mass murder a genocide. The pressure campaign succeeded until 2019, when the Senate passed a resolution that recognizes the genocide. The Biden administration in April recognized the atrocities as genocide.

McAuliffe, Kelly, & Rafaelli’s work for Turkey was detailed in “The Torturers’ Lobby,” a 1992 report by the Center for Public Integrity. A 1991 State Department report said the Turkish government was at the time routinely torturing Kurds, often through the use of electric shocks, “beating of the genitalia,” and rape.

McAuliffe’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his firm’s contract with Turkey or his position on the 2019 recognition of the Armenian genocide.

McAuliffe was implicated in the 1996 Democratic National Committee campaign finance scandal, in which he arranged overnight stays at the White House for Democratic party donors. Before his first stint as governor of Virginia, McAuliffe directly lobbied the Obama administration to help his electric car company, GreenTech Automotive, gain access to a federal visa program for potential Chinese investors. The Justice Department also investigated whether McAuliffe took illegal donations from a Chinese billionaire during his 2013 gubernatorial campaign.

Turkey Paid McAuliffe’s Firm To Lobby US Against Recognition of Armenian Genocide (freebeacon.com)

The Space Force officer who was removed from his command post for condemning Marxism and critical race theory is leaving the military.

Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier told The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” that his last day in the service will be Sept. 1.

“I wrote a letter to then-Acting Secretary of the Air Force explaining certain circumstances, which I don’t plan to make public, but also requesting an early retirement, and a separation honorably from the service,” he said. “And they’ve denied me an early retirement, but agreed that they would separate me. And so my family and I have decided that that’s the best course of action for us right now, given the circumstances.”

“I believe I’m able to continue serving my country outside of the service and out of uniform, perhaps in a better way than I was able to, given the circumstances, in uniform at the moment.”

Lohmeier plans to accept public speaking engagements and offer consulting services.

He’s received a slew of invitations to various events and conferences in recent months.

Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, Space Operations Command commander, relieved Lohmeier of his command of a squadron in May “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead,” the Space Force said at the time.

Whiting made the move because of remarks Lohmeier made on a podcast. He also ordered an investigation into whether the comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.

Lohmeier published a book warning about the spread of Marxism and critical race theory in the military and was on the podcast promoting the book.

During the appearance, Lohmeier claimed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was promoting “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” which he and others have said are “rooted in critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism.”

The Air Force Inspector General’s Office later took over the investigation.

Multiple members of Congress spoke out against what happened, including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Based on the information the committee has received so far and what’s been reported in the press, I am concerned,” Inhofe said at the time. “Members of our military should not only be able to speak out against Marxism, but they should be encouraged to do so—as long as they follow the rules and laws already in place. Marxism is an ideology that goes against everything this country stands for, and it belongs, as Ronald Reagan said famously, ‘on the ash-heap of history.’”

Lohmeier told The Epoch Times that neither his book nor the remarks were politically partisan.

“It’s not politically partisan to expose Marxist ideology where it exists and to talk about critical race theory; that should be something we’re unitedly standing against,” he said.

He also said he attempted before writing the book to utilize internal mechanisms that let service members lodge complaints, but to no avail.

The Space Force and the Air Force didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Exclusive: Space Force Officer, Punished After Denouncing Marxism, to Leave Military (theepochtimes.com)

A Spanish-language flyer by the Red Cross provides detailed routes to the US southern border, shelter locations, and instructions on how to jump off a moving train safely

UVALDE, Texas—Rancher John Sewell recently picked up a pamphlet that had fallen from the backpack of an illegal immigrant who was trespassing on his property near Uvalde, Texas—about 50 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border.

On one side is a map that details transport routes from Panama to the United States. It pinpoints in great detail where migrants can find shelter or get medical help along the way. The other side is full of useful information, in Spanish, including how to more safely travel through forests and jungles, find shelter, get medical help, and deal with immigration authorities.

It was published by the Red Cross and is titled “Messages of Self-Help for Migrants.”

The pamphlet crosses a line beyond providing life-saving information to facilitating illegal immigration, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

“It’s practically a road map or a TripTech for an illegal migrant,” she told The Epoch Times. “It’s one thing to give out water to migrants. It’s quite another thing to help them migrate illegally—and breach the sovereignty of a border.”

The pamphlet includes advice such as that “it’s always safer to travel in a group, especially for women,” and to stay in contact with relatives and friends, “especially before crossing the border.”

It warns against getting on or off a train when it’s moving or wet, but then advises: “If you do get off a train when it’s moving, keep running so that others don’t fall on top of you,” and “Try not to get on a train if you haven’t eaten or rested. You may fall off if you are sleepy.”

It goes on to say: “Don’t hide in vehicles or in small places where you might suffocate, drown, or get sick. Be sure you have enough space to breathe.”

In Uvalde, where Sewell obtained the pamphlet, Border Patrol has seen a 911 percent increase this year in stowaway illegal aliens on freight trains traveling from the border to San Antonio.

On Aug. 13, on one train inspected by Border Patrol, agents found 20 illegal aliens hiding in the beds of new pickup trucks being hauled in two different train cars. Several of the aliens had been apprehended the previous day by the same agent at the same location. All were single males from Mexico and Honduras.

The map also highlights Red Cross shelters in Mexico and other places that are run by religious organizations, such as the Good Samaritan House in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Catholic Charities in Tucson, Arizona.

Vaughan said that, rather than being a “benign underground railroad-type of exercise,” the pamphlet is “enticing criminal behavior that is also very, very dangerous and illegal.”

She said the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations should be telling migrants not to come. She said most illegal immigrants entering the United States don’t meet the criteria for asylum and won’t be granted asylum status by an immigration judge. Many Central Americans, the largest population of illegal immigrants, don’t end up claiming asylum once they’re in the United States, and of those who do, less than 15 percent are granted relief.

A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the organization doesn’t prevent or encourage migration.

“As an impartial, neutral and independent organization, our actions are focused on addressing the humanitarian needs of migrants to ensure they are treated with dignity, both in their countries of origin, transit and destination, and regardless of their immigration status,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

The ICRC didn’t respond to a question asking where it makes the pamphlets available, but the Red Cross logos from seven countries are printed on the flyer, including the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama.

The spokesperson said the organization provides humanitarian assistance at key points along the route.

“We also inform them of risks they’re undertaking while using the migration route,” the spokesperson said.

“It is essential to prevent the loss of lives and to promote a humanitarian approach. Addressing the needs of this vulnerable population is a shared responsibility, of the authorities in the countries of origin, transit and destination, and of the international community.”

The Geneva-based ICRC operated in 100 countries in 2019 and spent more than $2 billion, according to its latest annual report. It is funded mainly by voluntary donations from governments, and national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, according to its website.

Vaughan said the United States should investigate how the flyer came to be published and with whose funding.

“They should be helping people in the countries where the migrants live, not aid and abet this illegal migration that is so dangerous and has created so many problems for all of the countries where it occurs,” she said.

Red Cross Pamphlet Facilitates Illegal Immigration, Says Expert (theepochtimes.com)

‘Squad’ member collected rent as she vilified landlords

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) collected up to $50,000 in rent payments last year, even as she publicly criticized landlords and supported an eviction moratorium that has hurt other small landlords.

Tlaib—who in December stressed the need to protect Americans from “landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic”—disclosed in an annual financial statement this month that she took in between $15,000 and $50,000 in rent on a Detroit property.

Tlaib is not the only “Squad” member who has raked in thousands of dollars as a landlord. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) collected up to $15,000 in rental income in both 2019 and 2020 through a Boston property she owns, her financial disclosures show. Like Tlaib, Pressley slammed landlords for collecting rent during the pandemic, calling the issue “literally a matter of life and death.”

While Tlaib collected rent from her tenants, other small landlords in the United States have not been so lucky. Numerous reports have detailed small landlords’ struggles to make ends meet amid the eviction moratorium, which Tlaib has supported since early last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented a ban on evictions last September. The Biden administration extended the eviction freeze through October of this year.

Tlaib, Pressley, and other “Squad” members introduced legislation to cancel rent and mortgage payments. The bill would require the federal government to reimburse landlords for lost rent during the pandemic, allowing Tlaib and Pressley to recoup any potential losses.

“Cancelling rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the COVID-19 virus pandemic would relieve financial pressure, allow residents to stay home from work without the added concern of losing their housing and limit the spread of the virus,” Tlaib said in March 2020.

Tlaib has at times portrayed landlords as preying on their renters.

“Always tons of agreement for tools of war and destroying families abroad, but never this much enthusiasm for protecting American families at home from landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic,” she tweeted in December.

Tlaib did not disclose the address for the rental property on her financial statement, though details from her filings and local real estate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon suggest she purchased the property using a $118,600 loan in 2016. Two years later, Tlaib listed the property for $2,000 a month rent before lowering the asking price to $1,800. Assuming Tlaib has not changed the monthly price, she collected rent for at least eight months in 2020, meaning she received payments throughout the pandemic.

According to local real estate records, Tlaib refinanced the three-bedroom home as a multifamily investment property in April 2019. The designation requires the Democrat to maintain rent loss insurance.

Neither Tlaib nor Pressley returned requests for comment.

Rent Cancellation Advocate Rashida Tlaib Cleaned Up as Landlord During Pandemic (freebeacon.com)

My sources along with media reports have made it clear: Big Tech is offering their multi-billion-dollar platforms to terrorists.

Up until yesterday, the Taliban had been using Facebook’s WhatsApp to coordinate their terrorist activities in Afghanistan.

The rapid takeover of Afghanistan was made possible with the messaging tool WhatsApp, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

For years, I have been screaming about the presence of Islamic terrorists on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

If you recall, CAIR, an Islamic terrorist organization even lobbied Twitter to remove my account.

As for Twitter, they’re allowing the Taliban to operate freely on their platform despite the group being sanctioned as a terrorist organization under U.S. Law.

Twitter acknowledged that they will continue to allow Taliban communication and coordination to take place on Twitter despite the fact that the Taliban is carrying out a murderous rampage in Afghanistan as I write this email to you.

As President Trump remains permanently banned over fears of “inciting violence”, an actual Islamic terrorist group is allowed to operate on Twitter!

This has to end!

Help fund my new lawsuit against Big Tech. Help me stop them.

The Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, is on Twitter with 321k followers and growing.

And thanks to Jack Dorsey and Twitter, the Taliban is quickly gaining support around the world.

A Twitter user named Mohammad Abbas from Pakistan tweeted:
 

Congratulations to the Taliban on their victory over Americans and against NATO. May Allah help the Taliban to run an ideal Islamic government in Afghanistan.

And as American troops are arriving to retake Kabul airport to safely evacuate people, Twitter is allowing coordination like this with Taliban leaders:
 

The tower of Kabul Airfield should not be taken over by the Americans. They should destroy “this system” after it arrives. – Taliban supporter to Zabihullah Mujahid
Facebook and Twitter are aiding and abetting terrorists!

Yet, here in the United States, we can’t even discuss COVID without censorship! We can’t share our conservative views without being banned! A sitting United States President was banned from Twitter, but Islamic terrorists are free to tweet.

This should be eye-opening to you – it was to me. And it has been for years.

This is no longer just about censorship.
 

Twitter is a national security threat, an argument I’ve been making for years.

Twitter is allowing terrorists to organize and coordinate the killing of American soldiers and innocent Afghans who are fleeing for their lives.

It’s happening as you read this email!

An administration that took national security seriously would have Twitter shut down by the morning – but we know that won’t happen under the Biden Regime.

So we’ll have to stop them ourselves, and the best immediate shot we have is forcing them to change through the courts . . . and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

The cost has been great to me. Every spare dime I have is going to fund my legal work and I need your help more than ever.

Chip in as much as you can if you can help.

Thanks so much for your support and please, help me keep fighting.

Respectfully,


Laura Loomer

P.S. Tomorrow I have a call with my attorneys to go over the final draft of my initial court filing. During that call, I expect to hear that my retainer has been depleted because this case is MASSIVE. Please give me a hand to keep going.

My Fellow American:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been wrong time and time again during this COVID-19 Pandemic, and we need to stop allowing him to set public policy.

He was wrong about closing the schools.

He was wrong about mask mandates.

He was wrong about the origin of this disease.

He is wrong to support eviction moratoriums.

I am working to ensure our rights are never taken away like this again, and I need your help.

In the coming months, you will hear politicians explain away their unconstitutional lockdowns and mandates as “following the science.” Don’t let them get away with it.

They are scaredy-cats who abdicated their responsibility to lead our nation because they were afraid of being made fun of on Saturday Night Live or at the DC Cocktail parties.

I am sick of these cowards taking away our liberties and then throwing their hands up when we prove them wrong AGAIN.

I won’t forget, and we need to make sure that the rest of the nation doesn’t either. I am working with the Republican Liberty Caucus – and that’s why I am asking you to stand with me in support of their organization.

Put simply, the RLC is the conscience of the Republican Party – something we need now, more than ever. A group of freedom-loving individuals focused on ensuring no elected or appointed member of our government can trample on our Constitutional Rights.

Just as we need to rebuild our nation’s economy, we need to rebuild the Republican Party and those who represent us in government. That hard work begins right now, and with your support, it will be led by the Republican Liberty Caucus.

We seem to have forgotten the principles that make us great during the Pandemic. You, me, and the Republican Liberty Caucus are going to remind them.

Please, your donation of $45 or more could make all the difference as we seek to Take Back America.

If you believe in America, if you believe in the Republican Party, and if you believe in finding out the truth about COVID-19 and putting our economy back on track, then please donate today.

Thank you for your time. God Bless America.

Rand Paul
U.S. Senator, Kentucky

Rudy Giuliani was still the mayor the last time New York City saw so many people shot. By mid-August, 1,163 were shot in the Big Apple. That’s the most recorded by this time of the year since 2000, according to NYPD data.

The wave of violence started in May last year coinciding with the mass protests and rioting initiated after the killing of George Floyd, a black man, during an arrest in Minneapolis. High incidence of shootings has been plaguing the city ever since.

Last weekend alone, 35 people were shot, all non-fatally, The New York Post reported.

While the total number of more serious crimes has slightly declined compared to last year, shooting incidents are up nearly 11 percent. The data indicates more people are surviving the shootings as murder is up only 0.7 percent.

In 2020, more than 1,850 were shot, fatally and non-fatally. That’s more than double the year before.

Meanwhile, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) is down about 1,500 officers since 2019 due to a wave of retirements and resignations. Some officers and experts previously told The Epoch Times that people are leaving the department because of anti-police sentiments in the city as well as obstacles to the profession created by the city and state governments.

Last year, the state outlawed officers from using a knee on a suspect’s back or chest as a restraint technique during an arrest. Police officers and experts have criticized the law for criminalizing martial arts techniques used by police to safely subdue resisting subjects.

The city implemented new laws regarding bail that banned judges from requiring cash bail for most nonviolent and some lower-level violent crimes, resulting in criminals returning to the street after an arrest. Some officers called the policy demoralizing.

Less than two weeks ago, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared “a disaster emergency on gun violence,” calling for the targeting of crime hotspots, curbing the sale of illegal firearms, rebuilding trust between communities and local law enforcement, and other initiatives. Cuomo has since resigned.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, the frontrunner in the November mayoral election, is a former NYPD officer running partly on public safety platform.

New York City used to be notorious for high levels of violence and street crime, particularly during the crack epidemic in the 1980s. Shooting numbers dropped precipitously during the 1990s and continued a gradual decline, reaching historic lows of less than 1,000 people shot a year in 2017-2019.

NYC: 1,163 Shot so Far This Year, Two-Decade Record (theepochtimes.com)

The pending report from special counsel John Durham, who was tasked with investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, should be released to the public, Senate Republicans argued in a letter this week.

More than 40 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking that Durham, a former U.S. attorney, be allowed to continue his investigation and that his report is released to the public.

There have been questions about whether Durham’s investigation will lack funding past the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30. He was tapped by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate the FBI’s operations when it surveilled former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Barr elevated Durham to become special counsel in October 2020.

“The Special Counsel’s ongoing work is important to many Americans who were disturbed that government agents subverted lawful process to conduct inappropriate surveillance for political purposes,” the Republican senators’ letter reads. “The truth pursued by this investigation is necessary to ensure transparency in our intelligence agencies and restore faith in our civil liberties. Thus, it is essential that the Special Counsel’s ongoing review should be allowed to continue unimpeded and without undue limitations.”

The Republicans called on Garland to make a pledge to release the full report and allow Durham to investigate past September.

“We are over two years into the investigation of how the Obama–Biden FBI spied on an incoming president, and we still do not have answers. America’s national security apparatus was weaponized to take down President Trump, and the American people deserve to know how this occurred,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is leading the effort, said in a statement.

In recent months, however, there have been scant reports about the progress of Durham’s investigation. According to an Aug. 13 report from The Wall Street Journal, Durham’s investigation is still active and is presenting evidence to a grand jury. The WSJ report cited anonymous sources.

If Durham presents evidence before a grand jury, it suggests that he’s considering more criminal charges beyond the case against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to altering an email about former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. During the 2016 campaign, Page was placed under FBI surveillance in an operation that was later flagged in a December 2019 report (pdf) conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, who found errors and omissions in how the agency operated.

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

44 Senate Republicans Demand John Durham Report Be Made Public (theepochtimes.com)

Officials at the U.S. State Department declined on Aug. 19 to say why Secretary of State Antony Blinken “paused” a special evacuation unit formed by his predecessor, even as the firestorm of reaction to the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal intensified.

In June, Blinken signed off on the department’s fiscal year 2022 budget justification request submitted to Congress that included a notation that, while $50.8 million was sought for the Crisis and Contingency Response (CCR) program, “the department has paused implementation pending a policy review.”

When asked by The Epoch Times “Why was [CCR] paused, is that still State’s intent, and is [CCR] being utilized now in the Kabul evacs,” the department spokesman declined to respond.

Instead, the spokesman repeated a statement previously provided to media inquiries, saying:

“It is important to note that not only would the proposed [CCR] not have introduced any new capabilities to the department, it was never formally established. Some administrative steps were taken before its establishment was paused, but the day-to-day operations of the team have not changed.

“Every requirement the department delivered on last year, and, since the proposed establishment of the bureau, can be delivered on today in the same manner if appropriate to do so.”

But interviews on Aug. 19 with former senior State Department officials indicate the CCR program had been up and functioning effectively for months when Blinken and his team took over operations following his Jan. 26 Senate confirmation.

A former official pointed to the State Department’s evacuation of U.S. citizens from Wuhan, China, at the outset of the pandemic caused by the CCP virus, which is also known as the novel coronavirus.

“This was the group of brave Americans that rescued more than 800 people from Wuhan in February 2020, when we knew little about the virulence of the virus and danger of that mission,” the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times.

“These committed civil servants are heroes, and the American citizens and Afghans who helped in the anti-terrorism fight could use their expertise right now.”

Then-State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus described the Wuhan evacuation as “a joint effort by the Department of State, the CDC, HHS, the Department of Defense, and state and local authorities to bring home Americans in need. In total, we evacuated over 800 passengers from Wuhan.”

Throughout the pandemic, the State Department evacuated an estimated 100,000 U.S. citizens from locations around the world, the official said.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley described the present evacuation effort from Kabul as “likely the second-largest” such operation by the United States since more than 20,000 Americans were rescued during a destructive volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991.

The CCR was specifically authorized by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Sept. 21, 2020, to be developed from the department’s existing OpMed program.

Congress was notified Oct. 13, 2020, about the new organization, and the official reorganization plan was approved Nov. 16, 2020. The official “standup” of CCR was ordered on Dec. 23, 2020.

Pompeo viewed the CCR as needed to upgrade the department’s ability to prevent a repeat of the Benghazi tragedy in Libya in 2012, when Islamic terrorists stormed a U.S. facility there, killing three security personnel and Ambassador Christopher Stevens before U.S. forces arrived on the scene.

As was often the case with new initiatives during President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, the creation of CCR prompted opposition from among the department’s career ranks.

Diplopundit reported in October 2020 that many career employees “are said to be up in arms about the rapid formation of this new bureau—which happened in a span of just four months—with apparently no input from the field.”

Regarding the present confused situation in Afghanistan, another former senior official told The Epoch Times that “the French are doing armed runs into Kabul to get their people,” and that “they and the Brits will do that until they get everyone they want out and then they will pack up and go without telling us.”

As The Epoch Times has reported, Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that U.S. officials estimate there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan, and the “estimate we’re giving” is 50,000 to 65,000 Afghan allies, including family members.

“Americans should understand that we’re going to try to get it done before Aug. 31,” Biden said in the interview, his first one since the Taliban took over the country. The president said the U.S. military will attempt to evacuate all Americans out of the South Asian country by that date.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for the Taliban warned in a Sky News interview that U.S. forces need to withdraw from the country by Sept. 11, which is the date of the terrorist attacks that toppled the Twin Towers in New York 20 years ago.

State Department Mum on Why It Killed Pompeo’s Crisis Evacuation Unit (theepochtimes.com)

The thousands of prisoners freed by the Taliban in Afghanistan after the terrorist group took over the country pose a “serious concern to the security of the United States,” top Republicans in the House of Representatives warned national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Wednesday.

Prisoners freed from Pul-e-Charkhi prison and Bagram Air Base, among other lockups, are reported to include Taliban terrorists, senior Al-Qaeda operatives, and former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

“This development is found to be more troubling considering recent reports of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General [Mark] Milley’s observation that terror groups like Al-Qaeda could build up in Afghanistan much sooner than earlier intelligence estimates suggested. With the very real prospect that seasoned terrorist operatives now roam freely in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we write to urgently request information on how the U.S. Government plans to mitigate threats to U.S. interests and the homeland,” the Republicans wrote to Sullivan.

They’re asking for detailed information on the prisoners, including whether the U.S. government is aware of any who were previously involved in plotting terror attacks against the United States.

“As the American people prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we are soberly reminded of the dangers posed to the homeland by threats borne out of terror safe havens, like Afghanistan,” Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) and two other top Republicans said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan was presenting broad challenges.

“We will remain persistently vigilant against the terrorism threat in Afghanistan,” Sullivan said, asserting that the United States “has proven in other places that we can suppress terrorism without a permanent military presence on the ground.”

“We are going to have to deal with the potential threat of terrorism from Afghanistan going forward, just as we have to deal with potential threat of terrorism in dozens of countries, in multiple continents around the world,” he added.

Katko, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) also linked the threat to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are crossing illegally every day.

Border agents have encountered known or suspected terrorists from far-flung countries. The outgoing Border Patrol Chief said recently that “Unprecedented numbers of known or suspected terrorists have crossed the southern border in recent months.”

As part of their inquiry, the lawmakers want to know whether the intelligence community and U.S. immigration enforcement officials are sharing information related to known or suspected terrorists “seeking to exploit vulnerabilities along the southwest border.”

Katko is the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. McCaul is the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rogers is the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

Prisoners Released by Taliban in Afghanistan Pose ‘Serious Concern’ to US Security, Republicans Warn (theepochtimes.com)

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Oregon, reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so.

To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, but to do so quickly. Within days of the June heat wave, the researchers released an analysis, declaring that the torrid spell “was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

World Weather Attribution and its alarming report were trumpeted by Time magazine, touted by the NOAA website Climate.gov, and featured by CBS News, CNBC, Scientific American, CNN, The Washington Post, USAToday, and The New York Times, among others.

The group’s claim that global warming was to blame was perhaps less significant than the speed with which that conclusion was provided to the media. Previous efforts to tie extreme weather events to climate change hadn’t had the impact scientists had hoped for, according to Time, because it “wasn’t producing results fast enough to get attention from people outside the climate science world.”

“Being able to confidently say that a given weather disaster was caused by climate change while said event still has the world’s attention,” Time explained, approvingly, “can be an enormously useful tool to convince leaders, lawmakers and others that climate change is a threat that must be addressed.” In other words, the value of rapid attribution is primarily political, not scientific.

Inconveniently for World Weather Attribution, an atmospheric scientist with extensive knowledge of the Pacific Northwest climate was actively running weather models that accurately predicted the heatwave. Cliff Mass rejected the notion that global warming was to blame for the scorching temperatures. He calculated that global warming might have been responsible for two degrees of the near 40-degree anomaly. With or without climate change, Mass wrote, the region “still would have experienced the most severe heat wave of the past century.”

Mass has no shortage of credentials relevant to the issue: A professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, he is author of the book “The Weather of the Pacific Northwest.”

Mass took on the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group directly: “Unfortunately, there are serious flaws in their approach.” According to Mass, the heatwave was the result of “natural variability.” The models being used by the international group lacked the “resolution to correctly simulate critical intense, local precipitation features,” and “they generally use unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions.”

WWA issued a “rebuttal” calling Mass’ criticisms “misleading and incorrect.” But the gauntlet thrown down by Mass did seem to affect WWA’s confidence in its claims. The group, which had originally declared the heatwave would have been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change,” altered its tone. In subsequent public statements, it emphasized that it had merely been making “best estimates” and had presented them “with the appropriate caveats and uncertainties.” Scientists with the attribution group did not respond to questions about Mass’s criticisms posed by RealClearInvestigations.

But what of the group’s basic mission, the attribution of individual weather events to climate change? Hasn’t it been a fundamental rule of discussing extreme temperatures in a given place not to conflate weather with climate? Weather, it is regularly pointed out, refers to conditions during a short time in a limited area; climate is said to describe longer-term atmospheric patterns over large areas.

When Donald Trump joked, on a cold day, that he could go for some global warming, he was chastised for confusing weather with climate. The director of Yale University’s project on climate change communication, Anthony Leiserowitz, denounced Trump’s comment as “scientifically ridiculous and demonstrably false.”

“There is a fundamental difference in scale between what weather is and what climate is,” Leiserowitz added. “What’s going on in one small corner of the world at a given moment does not reflect what’s going on with the planet.”

Until recently, at least, climate scientists long warned against using individual weather events to ponder the existence or otherwise of global warming. Typically, that argument is used to respond to those who might argue a spate of extreme cold is reason to doubt the planet is warming. Using individual weather events to say anything about the climate is “dangerous nonsense,” the New Scientist warned a decade ago.

Perhaps, but it happens all the time now that climate advocates have found it to be an effective tool. In 2019, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that three-fourths of those polled said their views about climate change had been shaped by extreme weather events. Leah Sprain, in the book “Ethics and Practice in Science Communication,” says that even though it may be legitimate to make the broad claim that climate change “may result in future extreme weather,” when one tries “arguing weather patterns were caused by climate change, things get dicey.” Which creates a tension: “For some communicators, the ultimate goal – mobilizing political action – warrants rhetorical use of extreme weather events.” But that makes scientists nervous, Sprain writes, because “misrepresenting science will undermine the credibility of arguments for climate change.”

Which is exactly what happened with the World Weather Attribution group, according to Mass: “Many of the climate attribution studies are resulting in headlines that are deceptive and result in people coming to incorrect conclusions about the relative roles of global warming and natural variability in current extreme weather,” he wrote at his blog. “Scary headlines and apocalyptic attribution studies needlessly provoke fear.”

Covering the back-and-forth between the World Weather Attribution and Mass, the Seattle Times labeled the local atmosphere academic “a controversial figure.” The newspaper noted that “Mass has sometimes gotten into very public disputes with other scientists.” He has also been critical of the news media—“including the Seattle Times,” wrote the Seattle Times—for what he says is alarmist coverage of the climate. The Seattle Times did not respond to questions from RCI.

The newspaper was not wrong that Mass has disagreed with his fellow climate scientists. He didn’t hesitate to take on any and all comers at the Real Climate blog. But he doesn’t think that should make him controversial. “Science is all about conflict,” Mass has said. “Somebody has an idea; and then someone else criticizes it.”

Mass also counts as “controversial” because he spoke out last summer against the rioting and looting taking place nightly in Seattle. A recurring segment he had on Tacoma public radio was canceled after Mass—on his own blog, not on the radio—likened the shattering of glass in Seattle to the shattered glass of Kristallnacht, the Nazi anti-Semitic pogrom.

The blogging professor laments that atmospheric sciences have been “poisoned” by politics. “It’s damaged climate science,” he told RCI.

And not just politics—Mass also says that the accepted tenets of global warming have become a sort of religion. Consider the language used, he says, such as the question of whether one “believes” in anthropogenic climate change. “You don’t believe in gravity,” he says. The religious metaphor also explains why colleagues get so bent out of shape with him, Mass says: “There’s nothing worse than an apostate priest.”

That goes even for those who are merely mild apostates. Mass doesn’t dispute warming, he merely questions how big a problem it is. “We need to worry about climate change,” he has said. “But hype and exaggeration of its impacts only undermine the potential for effective action.”

Does Climate Change Cause Extreme Weather Now? Here’s a Scorcher of a Reality Check (theepochtimes.com)