What’s been happening at America’s southern border is so crazy and so out of control that it’s almost hard to comprehend. As with all national issues, the power of the corporate media to set the narrative for the massive (but shrinking) number of Americans who still rely on them exclusively to stay informed has also played a role. The media is not interested in the border story. Sure, they cover it when they absolutely must, but they have been downplaying the catastrophe from the start. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are changing all that. They are creating a story that even the corporate media can’t ignore. In the process, Americans are being forced, for the first time, to confront the reality of the tragedy on America’ southern border.
You don’t have to be anti-immigration to believe in national borders. Countries need borders. It’s a fundamental aspect of national sovereignty. It’s crazy to have to write down something so obvious. Every normal person knows this. But our border policies are not being run by normal people. They are being run by left-wing ideologues with views completely outside mainstream political thought. The result has been catastrophic for America. It’s also been a tragedy for many migrants, but no one has paid a larger price for the complete breakdown on the border than America’s border towns.
Many of these small communities have been crying out for help. They are overrun. They don’t have the resources to cope. There are many completely innocent migrants crossing the border. They are risking everything to get their families to a better place. They have energy and guts. They are just the sort of people our country should want; we just can’t take them all in without some orderly system. To the extent that they cover the border crisis at all, the corporate media is fixated on telling their story.
There is another side of the border crisis. The part that the corporate media loves to downplay is not all the migrants crossing are innocent and noble. When you, in effect, open the border completely, it’s an invitation to the non-innocent. Gang members, criminals, drug dealers and even terrorists can cross with the rest. These people are all landing in America’s border communities. Many of these small towns have been completely transformed in the process. Jails are overflowing. Hospitals can’t keep up. Crime is booming. Drugs are everywhere. People don’t feel safe. Trash is piled up. And the strain on local budgets is astounding. It’s a true crisis.
The biggest problem with the growing border crisis is nobody seems to care. The towns hit hardest are predominantly small and isolated to a few states. The people who write for America’s top newspapers and the talking heads on American television are in the big cities. Conservative media is all over the story. My news company, The Daily Caller, has had reporters all over these border communities. The corporate media? Not so much.
As with the opioid crisis that predated it, crises more isolated to smaller communities can take a long time to seep into the national consciousness. Opioid overdoses and deaths were skyrocketing to record levels for many years before anyone in America’s media centers seemed to notice. As huge swaths of America were in full crisis, elite America was still celebrating the Sackler pharmaceutical family who was at the center of the problem. As overdose deaths and crime were booming to record levels in places like Appalachia, the Sackler name was going up on museums, universities and libraries in New York City and other high-wealth locations. There are literally two Americas.
The transport of migrants to elite northern towns has broken the bubble. Suddenly, Washington, D.C., New York and even Martha’s Vineyard have a problem. Now, not surprisingly, everyone’s interested.
The main controversy is whether the internal movement of migrants is a human rights violation. Once someone enters a country illegally, the most appropriate legal course is to deport them altogether. By that standard, it is not necessarily unreasonable for the country to move them to the most appropriate location. Nonetheless, there is certainly something that seems un-American about moving people, even those entering the country illegally, against their will.
In this case, however, it doesn’t seem to have happened that way. When migrants were bussed from Arizona to Washington, D.C., the D.C. mayor alleged that they were tricked and taken against their will. Our reporter interviewed migrants just as they were getting off the bus in D.C. The people she spoke with indicated it was totally voluntary. In fact, they were grateful for the opportunity to be transported to these so-called sanctuaries. DeSantis told us the same is true of the migrants he sent.
None of this solves the border crisis. The border has been a huge issue for years, but it’s important to remember that the current acute crisis is voluntary. Biden scrapped the policies put in during the Trump administration, even though he had no replacements in place. They literally opened the border. America cannot let in millions of people per year with no meaningful screening or limits.
This week, as flight radar indicated one of his planes was headed for Joe Biden’s vacation town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, rumors flew that Ron DeSantis must be sending migrants there. We sent a reporter to check it out. Turns out the whole thing was a hoax. Our reporter didn’t find any migrants, but she found a lot of other reporters. That’s something that never happens on her trips to the Rio Grande Valley. As she said, “I’ve never seen this much media at the border, just here in Delaware.”
Now at least people are talking about the issue. By America 2022 standards, that’s progress.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) urged on Sept. 22 for the repeal of the years-long national emergency declaration following President Joe Biden’s recent remarks that the COVID-19 pandemic “is over.”
The Republican lawmaker of Kansas introduced on Thursday a privileged resolution that calls for a vote to end the undergoing emergency declaration over the global pandemic, which has been in place since being firstly announced by then-President Donald Trump in March 2020.
GOP lawmakers in the House previously attempted in March to end the state of emergency yet failed to scrap the declaration.
The latest move came after Biden made the comments during CBS’s “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over,” the president said.
“Since President Biden used his appearance on 60 Minutes to declare COVID is over, he must immediately terminate the COVID-19 national emergency declaration and wind down other emergency authorities that his Administration continues to force us to live under,” Marshall said in a Sept. 22 statement.
“The American people are fatigued and yearning to operate outside of the confines of supersized government. They long for their God-given freedoms, and for leaders to take their side,” said Marshall. “It’s high time for Joe Biden and his Administration to stop using COVID to implement their partisan political agenda and focus on the surge in crime and the fentanyl epidemic.”
The ongoing use of the emergency declaration has allowed the administration to leverage Congress into steer additional funds to address the pandemic, provides a legal basis for suspending payment interest and deadlines for student loans, and shut down ports of entry.
Hot Water
Biden’s off-the-cuff comment has surprised his health officials and other Democrat colleagues, with White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci attempting to reshape the president’s narrative, warning that “people should not be cavalier that we’re out of the woods.”
Earlier this month, the Biden administration asked Congress for more than $22 billion in additional COVID-19 funding to support research on vaccines, testing, preparations, and treatment. Republicans argued that the additional relief funding isn’t necessary given Biden’s comment. Previously, GOP lawmakers signaled they aren’t willing to back the White House’s latest request.
Moreover, the president announced in August he would wipe out the federal student loan balances of millions of people with up to $20,000 in debt per recipient, using authority under the 2003 HEROES Act that allows the government to waive or modify student loans during national emergencies such as a war.
The executive action means that one-time forgiveness of $10,000 per borrower will cost about $300 billion for taxpayers, or $330 billion if the program continues over the next decade, according to a budget estimate from economists at Penn Wharton. In addition, eliminating the income limit threshold would lead to a 10-year cost of $344 billion.
On Monday, demonstrators suffering from long-term COVID-19 symptoms, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome, protested outside the White House, calling on Biden to not end the pandemic, The Hill reported.
Officials from the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans on Sept. 22 urged the heads of the nation’s largest banks to avoid inappropriately taking liberal stances on social and cultural issues such as firearms and abortion.
JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Wells Fargo’s Charles Scharf, and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and other chief executives testified Thursday before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
They were joined by the CEOs of the country’s largest regional lenders, US Bancorp, PNC Financial, and Truist.
During his opening statement at the hearing, Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee highlighted concerns about what he said was the growing number of banks who are “inserting themselves into highly charged social and political issues unrelated to their business.”
Toomey warned that banks who continue to do so risk being treated as “public utilities” by both Democrats and Republicans in the future.
“At the outset, let me acknowledge what should be obvious: banks are essential for supporting the economy and advancing American competitiveness,” Toomey said.
“But where I see a system at the heart of free enterprise, I worry other policymakers see opportunity for social engineering. Activist regulators and some of my colleagues see banks as a tool by which they can advance their social policy,” the lawmaker continued.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon speaks during the Business Roundtable CEO Innovation Summit in Washington on Dec. 6, 2018. (Jim Waton/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Highly Charged Social, Political Issues’
“Unfortunately, there’s a growing trend of banks—several of them are represented here today—inserting themselves into highly charged social and political issues unrelated to their businesses. Banks’ willingness to help liberal policymakers achieve their liberal goals makes it very difficult to mount a principled defense against such politicization.”
Toomey added that some of his colleagues are putting pressure on banks to “use both their balance sheets and their influence to address issues wholly unrelated to banking, such as global warming, gun control, voter rights, and abortion” and that “several large banks have been far too willing to acquiesce to these demands by embracing a liberal [environmental, social, and governance] agenda that harms America.”
Additionally, Republican lawmakers noted that banks have weighed in on contentious social issues, with Toomey stating that in some cases, banks had even “made business decisions based on these factors.”
Toomey cited banks caving in to pressure from Democrats by pledging to pay for the costs of their employees to travel to have abortions following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Toomey said banks are “currently at a critical crossroads: Accept the role that some liberals prefer which is to have your institutions implement social policy on behalf of the State, or embrace your history as drivers and promoters of free enterprise and stay out of highly charged social and political issues.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 1, 2020. (Erin Scott/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
‘We Respect The Second Amendment’
In response, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon appeared to agree with one of Toomey’s assertions that federal regulators, as well as asset managers, had the power to influence banks when it comes to social issues, including those related to climate change or lending to oil and gas companies.
“Speaking for myself, (the regulators) are my judge, my jury, and my hangman,” Dimon said. “They can do whatever they want unless constrained by you,” referring to Congress.
Elsewhere, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) urged CEOs gathered at the hearing to ensure that recently approved merchant category codes (MCC) to record gun store transactions would not be used to limit the purchase of firearms.
“We do not intend to use the code to limit or restrict the purchase of firearms,” said Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, who added, “We respect the second amendment.”
More than a dozen Republican lawmakers have called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to answer questions following the circulation earlier this month of a leaked memo by the Pentagon’s watchdog that found “potential noncompliance” with the law in the review and denial process of religious accommodation requests to the vaccine mandate.
The June 2 memo by Acting Inspector General (IG) Sean W. O’Donnell states that after reviewing dozens of denials of religious accommodation requests, the IG’s office “found a trend of generalized assessments rather than the individualized assessment that is required by Federal law and DoD and Military Service policies.”
In a Sept. 19 letter to Austin, 15 lawmakers pointed to the extremely low approval rates of religious exemption requests to the Department of Defence’s (DoD) vaccine mandate.
According to the most recent publicly-available data, only 196 religious accommodation requests have been approved out of more than 26,000 requests across the armed services.
Lawmakers wrote that it was “especially concerning” that most of the approved religious accommodation requests were granted to service members slated for retirement, and that “all branches have approved non-religious vaccine exemption requests at a far higher rate than religious exemptions.”
“This suggests the DoD is applying different policies towards servicemembers’ applications based on their religious beliefs and expected employment status,” the letter stated.
Referring to the memo, the lawmakers wrote that the “blanket denial” of religious accommodation requests violates DoD Instruction 1300.17 (pdf), which requires each religious accommodation request to be reviewed individually.
“In summary, according to the DoD IG’s memo, the Department has engaged in unlawful religious discrimination,” the lawmakers wrote.
The findings of the IG memo did not astonish Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who signed the letter.
“The fact that the Department of Defense didn’t seriously consider religious exemptions is no surprise,” Higgins told The Epoch Times.
“We expected that the Biden administration had passed down some guidance to force compliance with the vaccine mandate, and that was reflected by the almost universal rate of denial.”
Another signatory Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Co.) described the findings as “extremely concerning.”
“The fact that religious exemption cases were not reviewed individually and were only assessed for a maximum of 12 minutes on average is a clear violation of our service members’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) rights,” Lamborn told The Epoch Times in an email.
The Colorado congressman said that he will “continue to work tirelessly with my colleagues in Congress to ensure DoD upholds the First Amendment rights of our men and women in the military above an unlawful vaccine mandate.”
The Congress members, in the letter, requested various records to be provided no later than Sept. 30. These include a complete copy of the IG’s memo dated June 2, all records associated with Navy, Air Force, and Army religious accommodation requests for COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as any of the DoD internal policy directives associated with the review of religious accommodation requests for the vaccines.
“The COVID vaccine mandate has been detrimental to recruitment efforts and military readiness. It has also been proven completely unnecessary,” Higgins said. “All federal COVID mandates should be terminated, especially the absurd vaccine mandate on our Armed Forces,” he added.
Army Chief Warrant Officer Danny Erickson (a pseudonym), who initially published parts of the leaked memo on his website, said that the document proves the Pentagon’s leadership is aware of the issue.
“It can no longer be said that the [secretary of defense] didn’t know, [because] he’s been aware since at least June 2,” Erickson told The Epoch Times.
For Erickson, “the most concerning thing about the IG letter to … Austin, and the subsequent silence from the DOD in response to it going public, is the blatant disregard for law.”
“Congress has confronted [Austin], and now we’ll wait to see if he’ll respond or if he’ll ignore the letter as he’s done with so many others sent in the past from members of Congress,” he added.
Erikson emphasized that his views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Army. The DoD did not respond to requests for comment.
Robert Destro, former assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, has called for sanctions on Americans who are involved with China’s slave labor.
Destro pointed to anti-human trafficking and forced labor laws such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which President Joe Biden signed into law in December of 2021 and which went into effect in June. The law bans imports from China’s Xinjiang region unless the importer can prove that the products were not produced using forced labor.
Destro spoke with “Capitol Report” on NTD News, The Epoch Times’ sister media. With midterms looming, he talked about holding China accountable.
“What it looks like is putting teeth in and getting some enforcement of” laws like the UFLPA, Destro said.
“We also have to start meaningfully doing the same thing with respect to sanctions. But now the teeth of the sanctions have to be on Americans who do business with these regimes,” Destro added.
Consistency Needed in Dealing With Abuses
The former official took note of the sanctions that the West has slapped on Russian president Vladimir Putin and his allies, due to atrocities attributed to the Russian president during the Russia–Ukraine war.
“What about the atrocities that are being attributed to President Xi and his unified state-private partnership?” he asked during the interview on Sept. 16.
“We need to be consistent in the way we apply economic pressure,” Destro stressed.
Destro said that when serving his term under the Trump administration, dealing with slave labor was one of the big issues he encountered.
“When you say to somebody, why don’t we just throttle back a little bit and not buy goods that are created by slave labor … People look at you like you’re crazy,” he recalled.
“’Well, what do you mean, we can’t stop doing that? We want to turn our country great.’ To which my response is: ‘No. What you’re doing is, you’re turning the country red with the blood of the people who are being victimized by what’s going on in China.’”
BRICS Alliance Could Mean ‘A World of Hurt’
Destro also sounded the alarm about the threat that the forthcoming BRICS alliance—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—poses to the United States.
“That’s a bloc that is formidable in its nature. It will change the power equation across the world in ways that don’t help us,” he said.
Destro believes “President Putin and President Xi are interested in replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.”
At a summit on June 23, BRICS members reportedly called for cross-border payment in BRICS currencies, a move to challenge the U.S. dollar.
Regarding the move, Destro said, “I don’t think our politicians or the country as a whole [have] any idea of what a world of hurt that will cause here in the United States.”
A top U.S. immigration enforcement official has acknowledged that Joe Biden’s administration is detaining and removing fewer illegal immigrants than earlier administrations.
“Since Biden became president on January 20, 2021, ERO is removing less aliens, correct?” Florida Chief Deputy Attorney General John Guard asked Corey Price, executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“That’s correct,” Price responded.
“Director, ICE currently is removing less aliens from the United States than it has in the last decade, right?” Guard asked.
“I do not have the last 10 years’ data available. But it is less than at least the last four years that I have here,” Price said.
ICE only detained 45,680 illegal immigrants in 2021, about half as many as it did in 2020. And in 2022, the agency has only detained about 48,200 illegal immigrants.
Price was later shown an email sent soon after Biden took office to top immigration officials, including acting ICE Director Tae Johnson, by Henry Lucero, the executive associate director of ERO.
Lucero informed the officials that the Biden administration’s change in immigration enforcement policies would likely reduce detention numbers by half.
“And given the data that we just looked at … Lucero [and other officials] were almost right on the money on their predictions, correct?” Guard asked.
“That appears correct,” Price said.
ICE, its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
“Our deposition provides even more proof that the Biden administration is intentionally underenforcing federal immigration law in a way that has never been seen. At every phase of the process, Biden is purposely failing to enforce the law and detain and remove inadmissible immigrants,” Moody, a Republican, said in a statement.
“Career ICE officials warned the administration that their reckless policies would drastically cut enforcement and still Biden continued to implement them—proving yet again, we only have Biden to blame for the border crisis and the surge in American deaths from Mexican fentanyl,” she added.
Numbers
Under Biden, illegal immigration has skyrocketed while enforcement, such as deportations, has plummeted.
For instance, in fiscal year 2021, during which Biden took office, just 59,011 deportations were executed. That was down from 185,884 illegal aliens removed in fiscal year 2020—former President Donald Trump’s last full fiscal year in office—and 267,258 in fiscal year 2019, the last full fiscal year that did not include the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arrests were also down, dropping from 143,099 in fiscal year 2019 to just 74,082 in fiscal year 2021, according to end-of-year reports that were previously made public by ICE.
The numbers for fiscal year 2022 are not yet available. There is one month remaining in the fiscal year. ICE typically releases the figures about six months after a fiscal year ends.
ICE is in charge of enforcing immigration law in the U.S. interior, and ERO is an arm of the agency.
Raul Ortiz, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, tasked with manning the U.S. borders, said in a deposition obtained as part of the same suit that the spike in illegal immigration was due to a lack of consequences for many illegal aliens.
The case, which argues that the Biden administration is violating federal law by not detaining illegal aliens until a final decision is made regarding their presence in the United States, is set to go on trial in January 2023.
An administrator at a private $60,000-a-year New York City school located in the city’s Upper West Side is “no longer employed” just under a month after Project Veritas published a video of her admitting to “promoting an agenda” in the classroom.
In a letter to parents on Sept. 21, Trinity School announced that Jennifer “Ginn” Norris is “no longer employed” there.
It is unclear whether her departure was voluntary or if she was fired.
Undercover news organization Project Veritas had on Sept. 1 published footage of Norris talking about how she and other teachers were working together to promote political agendas and left-wing ideology in the classroom.
At the time, Norris was Trinity School’s director of student activities.
“There’s always groups of teachers who want to do these [activist] things but the administration just wouldn’t let us,” Norris is seen in a video dated June 12, 2022 telling an undercover journalist. “So, we’ve been just sneaking things in [through] the cracks.”
She was also captured on video complaining about “white boys” who don’t align with her worldview.
“Unfortunately, it’s the white boys who feel very entitled to express their opposite opinions and just push back. There’s a huge contingent of them that are just horrible,” she told the undercover journalist.
“We need to find some, like, Dexter, sort of like a vigilante, taking people out. You know the show ‘Dexter?’ … We just need some vigilante Dexters. Like, ‘Here’s your community of targets,’” she also said.
Norris had been placed on paid leave on Sept. 2 following publication of the Project Veritas video.
John Allman, the head of Trinity School, and David Perez, the president of the Board of Trustees, told parents in the Sept. 21 letter that the school has “retained independent counsel to investigate the matter” and that the probe into comments made by Norris is underway.
“Our principles are clear: bias of any kind or the threat of violence toward any person or group has no place at Trinity School,” Allman and Perez said in their letter to parents.
“Our role as educators and as a school is to nurture children as they become responsible citizens. We abhor discrimination of any kind and believe strongly that a diverse, inclusive community is vital to providing the kind of education to which we aspire.”
A conservative activist group has filed a complaint with the IRS asking the agency to deny personal tax exemptions for Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan arising from the couple’s funding of grant programs to help municipalities pay for the 2020 general election.
In a second complaint, the Center for Renewing America (CRA) requested the removal of tax exemptions for three Zuckerberg-supported non-profits: the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), and the National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI).
The complaints allege that the Zuckerbergs and the three organizations pumped almost $500 million into the 2020 election process in an effort to influence the outcome in favor of candidate Joe Biden and other Democrats.
CTCL alone distributed nearly $350 million in grants to local election departments with a stated mission of helping them conduct safe elections during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A woman holding her ballot walks past a Vote by Mail Drop Box for the 2020 U.S. Elections in Monterey Park, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2020. (Frederic Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
“Mark Zuckerberg, through various non-profit organizations, contributed hundreds of millions of dollars towards efforts to rig the 2020 election,” states a Sept. 22 tweet from the CRA. “Today, we filed TWO formal IRS complaints against Zuckerberg to call him on this ILLEGAL activity.”
CTCL brushed off similar allegations from conservative groups in December 2021 as “disinformation,” asserting in its final report on the 2020 COVID-19 response grant program that “partisan considerations played no role in the availability or awarding of funding.”
The report states that nearly 2,500 election departments spread over 49 states received grants ranging from $5,000 to $19 million.
For years, conservatives have accused the Zuckerbergs and the three organizations of directing millions of dollars in grant funding to Democrat-leaning localities.
They allege that most of the money was spent on voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts in the large cities of several swing states, instead of on public health.
Statistics published by CTCL show that the city of Detroit, a Democrat stronghold, received more than $3.5 million in grant money in the runup to the 2020 presidential election, while most Republican-dominated jurisdictions received $5,000 grants or nothing at all.
Data from CTCL’s report demonstrates that in Michigan the top nine Democrat strongholds of Detroit, Flint, Pontiac, Lansing, Saginaw, Ann Arbor, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, and Benton Harbor received a combined $6.4 million in CTCL grant funding, representing 86 percent of the $7.4 million in grants distributed in Michigan.
The CTCL report explained this and similar situations in other states saying, “As their program needs changed during the pandemic, many larger urban areas, for example, required capital-intense investments to count a large volume of absentee and mail ballots in a short period of time.”
Mark Zuckerberg could not be reached for comment.
CTCL, CEIR, and NVAHI did not immediately respond to a request from The Epoch Times.
Venezuela is deliberately releasing prisoners, among them violent criminals, and has them travel to the U.S. southern border, a development that prompted 14 House Republicans to write to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who is leading the Republican effort to have Mayorkas answer questions, said in the Sept. 22 letter that the decision by the Nicolas Maduro regime has put the United States “in grave danger.”
“We write you with serious concern about a recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence report received by Border Patrol that instructs agents to look for violent criminals from Venezuela among the migrant caravans heading towards the U.S.-Mexico border,” the letter says, citing a recent report from Breitbart.
The outlet reported on Sept. 18 that it had reviewed the DHS intelligence report from an unnamed source within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The report warned that released prisoners—including those convicted of murder, rape, and extortion—had been seen within migrant caravans traveling from Tapachula, Mexico, to the southern border, as recently as July.
The report also said the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, Venezuela’s intelligence agency, may have played a role in deliberately releasing prisoners.
Hours after Breitbart published the report, Nehls took to Twitter to announce that he had obtained confirmation from the DHS.
“DHS confirms that Venezuela empties prisons and sends violent criminals to our southern border,” Nehls wrote. “President Trump warned us about this years ago.”
Former President Donald Trumpissued such a warning several times in 2021. He did it again last week while speaking to radio show host Hugh Hewitt, when he said America had become a “dumping ground” as other nations were “emptying their prisons into the United States.”
Illegal immigrants from Venezuela, who boarded a bus in Texas, wait to be transported to a local church by volunteers after being dropped off outside the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Nehls later commented on the Breitbart report during an interview with Fox News contributor Sara Carter on Sunday.
“This bombshell report confirms what we’ve known for years,” Nehls said. “Our adversaries despise what America stands for and take pride in emptying their prisons filled with the most violent and sick individuals to walk the earth and send them to our southern border, where they know they’ll have no trouble getting in.”
Nehls added, “Our overworked border patrol agents can only do so much when President [Joe] Biden gives everyone a no-strings-attached invitation into this country.”
Migrants
The letter comes as the United States is seeing an influx of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. According to CBP data, the number of migrants arriving at the southern border in fiscal year 2022 surpassed 2 million in August, with unprecedented numbers coming from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The letter points out that there have been more than 130,000 encounters with Venezuelan nationals between October 2021 and July 2022.
“As a result of the Biden Administration’s disastrous border policies, it is unknown how many of the violent Venezuelan prisoners have been released into the interior of the U.S., as identifying Venezuelans with criminal records is nearly impossible unless the individual admits their records to U.S. authorities,” the letter says. “This will undoubtedly put our country in grave danger.”
The 14 Republicans want Mayorkas to answer more than 10 questions, including the precautions DHS is taking to prevent these Venezuelan criminals from entering the United States.
“Have any of the Venezuelan nationals encountered at the southern border this year been suspected to be released prisoners?” says one of the questions. “Does DHS have a projected headcount of how many released Venezuelan prisoners are expected to enter the U.S.?”
Another question asks, “Do you have reason to believe that the release of the convicts could be a purposeful geopolitical move specifically intended to impact U.S. national security?”
“We need transparency and accountability from this administration,” Nehls wrote on Twitter.
An Iranian pro-democracy activist slammed the Biden administration Thursday for giving Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi a visa to travel to the U.S. following the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
During an appearance on Fox News, journalist Masih Alinejad blasted the Biden administration for allowing Raisi to come to the United Nations to address the United Nations General Assembly.
Amini died in custody after being detained by the country’s morality police, who claimed she was not following rules set by the country’s theocratic government.
Protests over the death have expanded to 13 cities, prompting the Iranian government to begin cracking down on the demonstrations.
“Mahsa [Amini] was an innocent person,” Alinejad said. “She was not even participating in any protest. She was not uncovered. She was wearing [an] ‘inappropriate’ hijab. That’s why the police brutally killed her.
“The mother and father and family members of Mahsa have been saying that their daughter was beaten up by police,” she told Fox News host Martha MacCallum while discussing the controversial visa grant to Raisi.
“History will judge Biden who gave a visa to our killer, our murderer. This is the time that [the] U.S. administration must see and meet the opposition leaders, they have to meet the people of Iran. They have to recognize the people of Iran,” Alinejad continued.
“They should not give [a] visa and legitimize this regime. Right now as I am talking to you, the Revolutionary Guard is in the sanction list, is in the terrorist list. But the U.S. government gave a visa to a member of the Revolutionary Guard. Can you believe that?”
The FBI foiled an alleged Iranian plot to kidnap Alinejad in 2021. The Justice Department also thwarted an alleged plot by Iran to assassinate former National Security Advisor John Bolton earlier this year.
“I cannot believe that the U.S. Government welcomed a terrorist to educate them about human rights. He had a picture of Qassem Soleimani, a man killed by the U.S. government,” Alinejad said, referencing the Iranian general killed in a January 2020 drone strike.
“I don’t care about my life. Yes, I was the target of an assassination plot. I would rather die, but not see that the western countries legitimizing our murderer right now,” Alinejad concluded.
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Joe Biden has repeatedly dodged difficult questions from the media — and now he may have encouraged another world leader to do the same.
Biden sat down Thursday for the first time with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to restore relations after the U.S. experienced “rocky times” with the Southeast Asian nation, the Washington Post reported.
“We’ve had some rocky times, but the fact is it’s a critical, critical relationship, from our perspective,” Biden began the meeting.
“I hope you feel the same way,” he added.
Overall, it was a garden-variety diplomatic meeting between the president and his Philippine counterpart.
Marcos took over in June from former Phillippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who had an especially contentious relationship with the U.S. over human rights abuses, opening the door to a warmer relationship.
However, it wasn’t so much what the men discussed during the meeting, but rather an utterance Biden made under his breath as reporters peppered them with questions afterward that carried great significance.
As reporters were shouting their queries while being ushered out of the room — per the usual custom — Biden first sat still looking on.
WATCH: Reporters try to ask Joe Biden a few questions.
Then, one reporter, in particular, asked, “Do you have confidence in David Malpass of the World Bank?” This elicited a response from Biden that is inaudible, but the White House transcript released after the meeting precisely captured the off-the-cuff comment.
“I wouldn’t bother answering,” Biden said.
That question was likely directed at Biden in light of the controversy surrounding World Bank President David Malpass, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, and his recent reluctance to toe the line on manmade climate change, Reuters reported.
Or, perhaps Biden was giving himself a general reminder by repeating a stage direction he was previously fed by one of his handlers.
Alternatively, as suggested by the way he subtly tossed his head toward Marcos as he was making the statement, maybe Biden was advising the world leader to treat the press just as he does where no question is too important to ignore.
It would make sense that Biden’s addled mind was stuck in the middle of the last century when the World Bank has been roundly criticized for the way it funded the dictatorial regime of Marcos’s father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Regardless of whether he was talking to himself in his creepy whisper again, or trying to counsel a world leader in the art of obfuscation, it was yet another instance of Biden’s royalty complex.
Biden is the king and doesn’t have to answer to anyone about anything — unless his wife or one of his handlers tells him to, that is.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol inadvertently expressed his real feelings about President Joe Biden’s United Nations speech Wednesday when he spoke into a hot mic.
Suk-yeol warned that Biden jumped the gun when pledging to provide the United Nations’ Global Fund with $6 billion in American funding.
“We’re going to work with our partners in Congress to contribute another $6 billion to the Global Fund,” Biden announced in the U.N. General Assembly speech.
It didn’t escape Suk-yeol that Congress would have to approve the funds, and he referred to the U.S legislature with profanity.
However, Suk-yeol was seemingly unaware that he was being recorded on a hot mic when he expressed skepticism to his aides.
WARNING: The following quote contains language that some may find offensive.
“How could Biden not lose damn face if these f****** do not pass it in Congress?”
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol in New York: “How could Biden not lose damn face if these f***ers do not pass it in Congress?” 🍉 pic.twitter.com/veVXYVSWvi
The profane remark was widely circulated in South Korea.
Has America lost the respect of other national leaders?Yes No
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Suk-yeol’s critics pointed to his mic mishap as a diplomatic embarrassment for the country, according to CBS.
The leader of the nation’s opposition Democratic Party accused the nation’s conservative-leaning president of slighting a crucial Pacific ally.
Park Hong-keun said that Suk-yeol’s mic mistake was a “major diplomatic mishap,” according to CBS.
A South Korean government official downplayed remarks that Suk-yeol didn’t intend to express publicly, speaking to the nation’s Yonhap News Agency.
Back in the late 70s, the original Battlestar Galactica TV series had a similar situation wherein, after being “holocausted” by the Cylons (enemy force), one of the surviving “members of the council” (i.e. ruling political body) suggested surrendering their arms to the purveyors of said holocaust. The difference is that- in the TV series- the council was unable to surrender before the Cylons attacked again. Now, in the US, the democrat politicians are doing it, and are destroying the military, our country, our freedom, and our future [US Patriot].
The United States Air Force Academy is training its cadets to “use inclusive language” that bars them from calling people “terrorists” or using male and female identifiers, according to an official presentation being used by the elite military school and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The presentation, titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What It Is, Why We Care, & What We Can Do,” takes cadets through a series of exercises meant to eradicate their use of gender pronouns and reinforce the need for inclusive language that avoids “stereotypes, bias, and microaggressions.” One portion of the presentation tells cadets to avoid language such as “you guys,” “terrorists,” and “colorblind.”
The seminar is part of a larger push by the U.S. military and its supporting institutions to foster what it describes as a more culturally inclusive environment, an effort that critics say is part of a woke cultural agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank. The U.S. Pacific Air Forces, the branch tasked with confronting China, recently ordered its senior leaders and commanders to stop using gender pronouns in written formats. The U.S. Navy recently published a video instructing its sailors on proper gender pronouns. The Army also mandates gender identity training and trains officers on when to offer subordinates gender-transition surgery.
The Air Force Academy’s seminar mirrors many of the efforts taking place in the military and also at U.S. college campuses across the country. One portion of the course instructs cadets on the proper way to use “inclusive language” in everyday scenarios. The presentation materials say that “diversity and inclusion” are “critical to developing warfighters prepared to lead the” U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force (USSF) “with character.”
An Academy spokesman told the Free Beacon this “conversation” with cadets was developed as part of its “Diversity & Inclusion Cadet Leadership Program.”
“As part of the Diversity & Inclusion Cadet Leadership Program, this conversation was developed by cadet leaders and USAFA staff to introduce all cadets to Department of the Air Force definitions of diversity and inclusion, as well as how these concepts enhance our warfighting effectiveness,” the spokesman said. “USAFA develops leaders of character that can lead diverse teams of Airmen and Guardians inclusively, to enhance innovation and win future conflict.”
“It is the diversity of Airmen and Guardians coming from all corners of our nation who perform the Department of the Air Force’s hundreds of critical mission sets that make us the best, most innovative Air and Space Forces the world has ever known,” the spokesman said.
The presentation materials echo this sentiment.
“A diverse and inclusive force is a warfighting imperative!” according to the presentation. “Our USAF/USSF faces a complex environment and tackles ‘wicked,’ complex problems.”
“What do people call themselves?” the instruction asks. “When in doubt, ask.”
It also guides cadets to “include all genders” in their interactions: “’Y’all/Team/Squaddies/Everyone/Folks’ vs. ‘you guys.’”
Certain words should be avoided at all costs, according to the presentation. “Not The ‘N’, ‘R’, or ‘F’ words, nor ‘Terrorist’ (for nationality; it happened),” one slide states.
Other words and phrases to avoid using include, “‘colorblind’ or ‘I don’t see color’ or ‘we’re all just people.’” Also verboten are “jokes at subordinate’s expense (nicknames).”
Cadets should only use “‘person-centered’ language,’” such as “people with disabilities,” and not “the disabled.”
The presentation continues with several other examples, such as using, “‘Transgender people/service members’ vs. ‘Transgenders.’”
It also is important to “recognize diverse family formation,” such as, “‘Parents/Caregivers/Guardians’ instead of ‘Mom and Dad.’”
“Most importantly,” the course says, “model humility when you get it wrong.”
Several exercises also are included in the presentation because “conversations are often not easy; we will navigate the discomfort together.”
Cadets are instructed to compile a list of animals that start with the letter “G.” After the exercise, they are asked: “How many G-Animals did you generate as an individual? How many G-Animals did your class/squadron generate? What does this activity show us about the power of combining our diverse perspectives?”
“If this were an operational USAF/USSF challenge,” it continues, “what risks might be present if we did not fully leverage the diversity of our group?”
Former secretary of education Betsy DeVos on Wednesday said blowback against COVID-era school closures and “woke” teachers has given Republicans a “window of opportunity” to help parents seize control of their children’s education.
Speaking on Capitol Hill, DeVos urged Republicans to pass school choice legislation now that parents are “mad as hell” at public schools and searching for alternatives. The former secretary said students are being held “hostage” by powerful teachers’ unions that pushed for school closures and oversaw the “rise of critical race theory” and “radical gender theory” in curricula.
DeVos told the Washington Free Beacon that school choice is the only solution to the left’s grip on education, providing “relief” to parents who don’t want their children indoctrinated with woke concepts.
“Families in many cases are being subjected to a religion they don’t subscribe to,” DeVos said. “The schools they are fleeing will need to either pay attention and make changes or serve families that decide they want to have that experience.”
Teachers’ unions and their Democratic allies are in the hot seat after news broke in September about the negative effects of school closures on students’ academic performance. The Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed students’ average math and reading scores plummeted by several points.
DeVos delivered her remarks at a School Choice Caucus event alongside caucus co-chairs Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.). She called on members of Congress to pass Scott’s Educational Choice for Children Act, which provides billions of dollars in tax credits for millions of students to attend the school of their choice. DeVos also prodded state leaders to follow Republican governor Doug Ducey’s lead in Arizona by passing universal school choice into law.
“Now is the time to strike,” DeVos told the Free Beacon. “I suspect it won’t be too long before we see a universal provision advanced in Florida.”
The Educational Choice for Children Act would provide $10 billion in annual tax credits, allowing around two million students access to the school of their choice. Scott has also introduced bills to pull federal funding from public schools that conceal students’ gender identity from parents and to stop the Biden administration from cutting off funding to some charter schools.
Scott told the Free Beacon the “silver lining” of the COVID-19 pandemic has been parents’ increased appetite for educational reform. More than two-thirds, he says, now back school choice. Scott also noted the issue is becoming more bipartisan. Pennsylvania’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro tepidly endorsed school choice this month, changes to his campaign website show. But that’s not the case in the nation’s capital, Scott quickly added.
“For more than a decade, I’ve worked to advance school choice because I know that if a student’s education is not limited by their zip code, they can achieve anything in our great land of opportunity,” Scott told the Free Beacon. “Unfortunately, this is a bipartisan issue everywhere except Washington, D.C.”
Seventy-five percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats support school choice, a Real Clear Opinion Research poll found in June. A majority of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian voters surveyed also backed school choice. Only 36 percent of voters said they backed teachers’ unions.
Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be car thieves [US Patriot]
A Florida Chick-fil-A employee came to the rescue when a woman with a baby had her car keys stolen in the restaurant parking lot. He took down the thief, helping foil the attempted carjacking, and has since been recognized for his bravery with a community service citizens’ award.
On Sept. 14, Mykel Gordon was working a shift in the afternoon at a Chick-fil-A restaurant on Beal Parkway in Fort Walton Beach when he heard screaming in the parking lot. Running to investigate, he found a woman with a baby in her arms.
(Courtesy of Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office)
The woman was lifting her baby out of her car when she was approached by a man holding a stick, who demanded her keys, according to an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office news release. The man, who’s since been identified as 43-year-old William Branch of DeFuniak Springs, snatched the keys from the woman’s waistband and got inside the vehicle.
When Gordon arrived at the scene, he pulled Branch from the vehicle and wrestled him to the ground, sustaining a punch to the face. Yet he was able to keep Branch subdued until police arrived on the scene.
The suspect, 43-year-old William Branch. (Courtesy of Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office)
Bystander Molly Kelner filmed the incident and later shared the footage with the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, who posted it on Twitter with praise for Gordon: “A major shout-out to this young man for his courage!”
Chick-fil-A also praised their worker on Facebook, amassing thousands of comments from grateful members of the community. “This is the hero!” they posted. “At Chick-fil-A our mission is to ‘Serve’ and today Mykel took it further … to ‘Save.’”
A Florida Chick-fil-A employee, Mykel Gordan, is presented with an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office Community Service Award. (Courtesy of Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office)
On Sept. 15, Gordon was presented with an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office community service award, a special coin, and a personal thanks for his quick thinking. Sheriff Eric Aden told Gordon, “What we say a lot of times is, ‘Service is in our DNA.’ That’s our mantra. You clearly have service in your DNA.”
Branch was allegedly involved in another similar incident in the parking lot shortly before the carjacking attempt. According to an investigation by the deputies, Gordan had intervened during the first encounter and had chased the suspect away from the first victim’s vehicle. It is also known that an unidentified male also assisted in pursuing the suspect.
The investigation also revealed that Branch had broken into a local home and tried to steal a purse earlier that same day.
(Courtesy of Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office)
Branch was charged with carjacking with a weapon, and battery.
Due to Gordan’s heroic action, no innocent patron was injured during this incident.
Sheriff Aden offered to sponsor Gordon as a cadet, should he ever wish to leave his day job and pursue a career in law enforcement.
Latest instance where Steve Descano’s bail policies freed a would-be murderer
All members of any and every Soros organization and elected officials aided by same are guilty of treason and should be punished accordingly. Most (if not all) are also guilty of being an accessory to murder [US Patriot]
In May, Kevin Alexander Lemus was released from jail for the second time in a month, thanks to one of Virginia’s top progressive prosecutors. Four months later, he killed a man.
Lemus confessed to second-degree murder for the shooting of Darlin Ariel Diaz Flores, Fairfax County police announced on Wednesday. Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) released Lemus without bail in April on gun and drug charges. In May, Descano released Lemus again after he was charged for drug possession and having violated his pretrial release. Lemus killed Flores four months later.
The case is the latest instance in which progressive bail reform has allowed repeat offenders to commit murder. Descano’s office has released or dropped charges on four offenders this year who have gone on to kill. In June, Descano released a violent repeat offender on probation who later beat an elderly homeless woman to death.
The left-wing billionaire George Soros donated over half-a-million dollars to Descano’s campaign as part of a nationwide push to elect progressive prosecutors. Many Soros-backed prosecutors have since eliminated bail and released offenders before trial in an effort to reduce incarceration.
Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares (R.) told the Washington Free Beacon that “the Fairfax commonwealth’s attorney must do his job and fight for justice for victims, not criminals.”
“Routinely giving repeat offenders light sentences and allowing them to quickly return to Virginia’s streets is not only disrespectful to the victims of violent crime, but encourages more crime and creates more victims,” Miyares said.
Maj. Ed O’Carroll said Lemus was “no stranger” to police in Fairfax County, having more than 80 interactions with officers in the past.
“We are all safer with Lemus behind bars,” O’Carroll said. “He chose to have a gun—not his first time. He chose to shoot a man and ultimately take a life Saturday night in Fairfax County. Now he will face his consequences for his actions.”
Homicides in Fairfax County rose 40 percent after Descano’s first year in office. They are set to outpace their 2021 levels, with at least 12 recorded so far this year.
But Descano shows no signs of changing course. In September, the prosecutor’s office dropped the majority of charges against a repeat offender who in February threatened officers with a loaded rifle. Given his record, the man could have been sent to prison for over a decade. Thanks to Descano’s intervention, the offender will serve just six months in prison.
After publication, a spokesman for Descano’s office told the Free Beacon that it was “inaccurate to state our office decided to release this individual,” because a judge made a decision to release Lemus. But a Virginia law passed in 2021 instructs judges to grant bail in most cases, leaving it to prosecutors to decide which offenders should be kept in jail. Descano’s bail policy instructs prosecutors to release all nonviolent offenders before their trial.
Lemus committed nonviolent offenses in April and May this year. He is now being held at Fairfax County’s Adult Detention Center. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 25.
Update 9:58 a.m.: This piece has been updated with comment from Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares.
Update 11:26 a.m.: This piece has been updated with comment from Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano.
Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers said he considers illegal immigrants to be “Wisconsinites” just as much as lawful residents, according to newly unearthed video from 2019.
During a speech to the Voces de la Frontera’s Migration is Beautiful Masquerade Gala in 2019, Evers said he does not differentiate between illegal immigrants and lawful residents of Wisconsin.
“No matter your immigration status, if you call Wisconsin home, you’re a Wisconsinite,” Evers told the group.
Evers’s previously unreported comments give broader insight into his positions on immigration and are likely to draw scrutiny as a national debate heats up over border security issues. Evers, who is facing a tight reelection race against Republican challenger Tim Michels, led an effort to provide drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants three years ago. He also in 2017 supported sanctuary cities in Wisconsin.
The governor said this was the primary reason he supported drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants, in addition to keeping “roads safer” and creating “opportunities for families.”
“We need to make sure that everybody has the opportunity, in this state, to get a drivers’ license to go from Point A to Point B,” he said at the 2019 gala.
Evers did not respond to a request for comment.
Evers’s drivers’ license proposal was blocked by the state’s Republican-run legislature in 2019. But it wasn’t the first left-leaning immigration policy he proposed. In an interview with CBS 58 News Milwaukee in 2017, Evers said he “absolutely” supports the creation of sanctuary cities in Wisconsin.
“Are you then open to standing with a mayor or a group of county supervisors who want to establish sanctuary status?” asked a CBS 58 reporter.
“Absolutely,” responded Evers. “Because those illegal workers, I see the children of those illegal workers when I come to the Milwaukee area, and the fear in their hearts and their eyes. It’s just extraordinary. Why should we use a political platform from Washington, D.C., that Donald Trump wants to instigate for no apparent reason?”
The governor’s race is ranked as a toss-up by election analysts, with Evers holding a small lead within the margin of error, according to the latest poll released by Emerson College this week.
A spokesman for Michels criticized Evers’s immigration policies for contributing to rising crime in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon.
“Tony Evers pulled Wisconsin’s National Guard troops away from the border, so it’s no surprise that he wants Wisconsin to be a safe haven for illegal immigrants. Illicit fentanyl is destroying families, crime is on the rise, and Evers and Joe Biden are making it even worse,” said Chris Walker, an adviser to the Michels campaign.
Immigration is turning into a major election issue ahead of the midterms, as overwhelmed border states—flooded with tens of thousands of migrants each week—have started transporting some asylum seekers to Democratic-run sanctuary cities. Evers’s opponent, Michels, held a joint rally on Sunday with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has been dominating headlines after sending a plane of 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
“This border is now an issue in these elections,” DeSantis said at the rally. “Because all these Democrats support everything Biden’s done. They support sanctuary jurisdictions, sanctuary states, benefits, they support the whole nine yards.”
A North Dakota man who allegedly struck a Republican teenager with his car because the two had a “political argument” was released on Tuesday, Fox News reported.
Shannon Brandt, 41, last week told police that he hit 18-year-old Cayler Ellingson, who he thought was “part of a Republican extremist group,” according to an affidavit obtained by Fox. “Brandt admitted to striking the pedestrian with his car because he had a political argument with the pedestrian,” the affidavit continues.
Ellingson died of his injuries. A breath test found Brandt’s blood alcohol level above the legal limit.
The case comes as fears of political violence rise across the United States. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say political divisions will increasingly spill over into violence, according to a CBS poll this month. President Joe Biden on Sept. 1 used a national speech on unity to say that “MAGA Republicans” spread “fear and lies” and are committed to “destroying American democracy.”
Brandt told the judge in his case that he doesn’t understand the charges against him and objected to the bail amount. He was ultimately released on $50,000 bail.
Congressional hopeful Val Hoyle took thousands from Eli Lilly, then worked to protect their insulin patent
As a state lawmaker, Oregon Democrat Val Hoyle received plenty of donations from pharmaceutical companies over her eight years in office. But the money she got from Eli Lilly between 2011 and 2014, totaling $17,500, was three times more than any other donation she received from a pharmaceutical company.
It stands out because, in 2014, as those donations were pouring in, Hoyle added a provision, dubbed the “Eli Lilly Amendment,” to an unrelated health care bill, aimed at protecting the pharmaceutical giant’s insulin patent against generic competitors. It became so controversial—both Democrats and Republicans said the “poisonous” amendment could “kill” the bill—that it was ultimately removed.
Now, as a candidate for Oregon’s fourth House district, Hoyle says she’s running for Congress to fix “out of control prescription costs,” and her opponent, Republican Alek Skarlatos, intends to make an issue of Hoyle’s intervention on behalf of the drugmaker.
“Big pharma and these health insurance companies know Val Hoyle is in their corner,” Skarlatos campaign manager Ross Purgason told the Washington Free Beacon. “Alek will work on solutions to lower the cost of health care.”
Hoyle served in the Oregon House from 2009 to 2017 and went on to serve as Oregon’s labor commissioner. Skarlatos is a former Army National Guard soldier who rose to fame in 2015 after he helped stop a gunman who opened fire on a train from Amsterdam to Paris. The gunman later confessed he wanted to “kill Americans,” and Skarlatos received the U.S. Army Soldier’s Medal from former president Barack Obama.
They are facing off in a bid to replace 36-year incumbent Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) who announced his impending retirement in December 2021. DeFazio narrowly defeated Skarlatos in 2020, receiving 51 percent of the vote to Skarlatos’s 46 percent. The Republican has raised $2.6 million to Hoyle’s $1.2 million.
Hoyle’s 2014 amendment limited a pharmacist’s ability to dispense generic insulin and would have “end[ed] up costing our customers more,” the Oregon State Pharmacy Association said in 2014.
Then the majority leader of the Oregon House of Representatives, Hoyle introduced the amendment after accepting $12,500 in campaign cash from Eli Lilly, campaign finance records show. The company pushed explicitly for the provision and went on to give Hoyle an additional $7,500 over the next three years, even though the Democrat’s amendment was quietly stripped from the bill following critical press coverage.
Now, Hoyle is singing a different tune. Her campaign site laments “sky-high deductibles and out of control prescription costs” and says she will “ensure that every American has access to affordable, quality care when they need it.” And in 2018, Hoyle said she is “not afraid to take on powerful special interests in order to protect hard-working Oregon families.”
The Hoyle campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
WASHINGTON/HONG KONG (Reuters)—Top U.S. bankers came under pressure from lawmakers on Wednesday to take a tougher stance on doing business with China amid growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan’s sovereignty and China’s human rights record.
During a hearing before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee, Republican congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer pressed bank chief executives on how they would respond in the hypothetical event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Lawmakers also asked the CEOs to condemn China’s “human rights abuses,” in a departure from previous hearings that tended to focus on domestic issues like housing and consumer protection.
“We will follow the government’s guidance, which has been for decades to work with China,” said Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan. “If they change that position, we will immediately change it, as we did in Russia.”
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser both concurred, saying their banks would follow government guidance if China were to invade Taiwan.
The increased scrutiny underscores the challenges the country’s largest lenders increasingly face as they try to balance commercial interests with pressure from policymakers, activists, and investors to take stances on environmental, social, and governance issues.
Wall Street giants including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley have sought in recent years to expand their businesses in China, the world’s second-largest economy.
Authorities there have granted U.S. banks more ownership of their securities businesses despite rising geopolitical tension. Despite a bigger footprint, China is not yet a big profit center for those banks.
“There would be few significant gains to the U.S. or losses to China if banks pared back operations there,” said Hong Kong-based Global Source Partners analyst Andrew Collier.
“The symbolism, however, is more important, because China is very concerned about decoupling in trade and imports of key products like semiconductors, so any pressure on the financial sector would send worrisome signals to Beijing.”
Responding to a question about the remarks by U.S. bank CEOs and lawmakers, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday that “the Taiwan question has always been the most important and sensitive issue” for U.S.-China relations.
“The U.S. side should strictly adhere to the One-China principle and the provisions in the three U.S.-China joint communiqués, earnestly and effectively implement the U.S. leaders’ stance of not supporting Taiwan independence, stop manipulating issues pertaining to Taiwan.”
‘HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION’
JPMorgan, which has been in China since 1921, serves Chinese and international corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies. Last year it became the first foreign firm to fully own a securities venture in China.
Citigroup, which was the first U.S. bank to set up shop in China in 1902, last year applied for a mainland Chinese securities license as part of its push to ramp up business in the market.
China has been carrying out military drills near Taiwan in recent weeks. After U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, China fired missiles into waters near the island, though its activities have since scaled back.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory. Taiwan’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claims.
Congressman Luetkemeyer asked Fraser what Citigroup would do if a war over Taiwan broke out.
“It’s a hypothetical question,” Fraser said. “It’s highly likely that we will have a reduced presence.” Citigroup has a global reach that spans more than 160 countries.
When asked later by Republican Lance Gooden if she would condemn “ongoing human rights abuses in China,” Fraser hesitated. “Condemn is a strong word,” she said. “We certainly are very distressed to see it.”
JPMorgan’s Dimon also warned the U.S. had to compete with Chinese banks, which have grown in size over the last few years to become the biggest in the world.
“I am going to do everything in my power to make sure we compete with the best Chinese banks in the world. It is very important for the future of America that America maintains its financial supremacy just like anything else.”
(Reporting by Lananh Nguyen and Pete Schroeder; additional reporting by Saeed Azhar, Scott Murdoch in Hong Kong and Eduardo Baptista in Beijing; Editing by Richard Pullin and Toby Chopra)
DUBAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Israel has agreed to sell an advanced air defence system to the United Arab Emirates, two sources familiar with the matter said, in the first such known deal between them since they forged ties in 2020.
The deal reinforces how, for some Arab states, resolving the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict has now been overshadowed by national priorities, such as security and the economy.
Israel and the U.S.-allied UAE share an ultimate fear, that Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, an ambition Tehran denies.
Israel approved a UAE request in the middle of the summer and would supply the Gulf state with Rafael-made SPYDER mobile interceptors, two sources said, declining to provide further details due to the sensitive nature of the deal.
A third source said the UAE had acquired Israeli technology capable of combating drone attacks like those that struck Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
Israel’s defence ministry and SPYDER manufacturer Rafael declined to comment. The UAE’s foreign ministry did not comment.
It was not immediately clear how many interceptors, which are fitted to vehicles and can defend against short to long-range threats, would be supplied, or if any had so far been shipped.
Asked if Israel was providing the UAE with air defence systems, parliament Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee Chairman Ram Ben-Barak told Israeli radio on Sept. 20 there was broad cooperation with the UAE, but declined further comment.
ATTACKS
The need to bolster the UAE’s air defence capabilities increased after a series of missile and drone strikes on the Gulf state in January and February. Most of the attacks were intercepted, but a strike killed three civilians in Abu Dhabi.
That strike rattled the leaders of the UAE, which has long boasted of its security and stability in a tumultuous region, foreign diplomats said. An under-construction terminal at Abu Dhabi airport was also hit, injuring civilian workers, sources briefed on the attacks said.
At least some missiles and drones flew at low-altitude to escape detection by the UAE’s U.S.-built Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot interceptors, the sources said.
Rafael says SPYDER can defend large areas from threats such as drones, cruise missiles, attack aircraft, helicopters, and bombers, including from low altitude.
President Isaac Herzog, visiting the UAE in January when an intercepted strike took place, said Israel supported the UAE’s security needs. And last week Prime Minister Yair Lapid said he was horrified by the attacks and Israel stood by and with the UAE.
Most of the strikes were claimed by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, who the UAE has been fighting in the war in Yemen as part of the Saudi Arabian-led military coalition seeking to restore the ousted government.
The sources said the interceptors deal was reached in mid-summer, which was around when the United States and Israel were pushing Arab states to link their air defence systems to better defend against Iranian drone and missile attacks.
That proposal was met by resistance from some Arab states that Israel does not have ties with, Reuters reported in July, although an Israeli official said partner countries were synchronising systems through remote electronic communication.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, told reporters in July that the UAE would consider anything that protects the country from drones and missiles as long as it was defensive and not targeting a third country.
Gulf state Bahrain also established ties with Israel in 2020 and later the two signed a security agreement. Israel and the UAE this year signed a free trade deal; Israel’s first with an Arab state. Negotiations with Bahrain started this week.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell and John Irish; Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Editing by Alexander Smith)
DUBAI (Reuters) – A new mobile internet disruption has been registered in Iran, internet monitoring group Netblocks wrote on Twitter on Thursday, as unrest spread over the death of a woman after she was arrested by Iran’s morality police.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is now funding studies on how to best manipulate people to receive “future” COVID-19 vaccines – including “targeted” messaging and financial compensation – despite studies continuing to show links between the vaccine and myocarditis.
Researchers supported by the Gates Foundation published a study aimed at curbing vaccine hesitancy titled “Overcoming Vaccine Hesitancy for Future COVID-19 and HIV Vaccines: Lessons from Measles and HPV Vaccines.”
Released on August 11th, researchers carried out a “narrative review of studies on interventions to address measles and human papillomavirus vaccine hesitancy” to cross-apply the lessons learned towards future vaccines.
Researchers explicitly reference making people more likely to receive “future” COVID-19 vaccines as their primary goal, concluding that “the most successful interventions directly targeted the population for vaccination.”
GATES-BACKED STUDY.
“Use of financial incentives could be a potential tool to improve vaccine uptake,” continues the paper, which drew its analysis from a review of over 150 scientific articles.
“Message framing is a powerful tool for vaccine promotion; however, messages should be carefully framed and should be targeted to the population of interest. Financial incentives, free-of-charge vaccines, and use of vaccine champions should be considered in future vaccine promotions as they were successful in increasing both measles and HPV vaccine coverage rates,” concludes the study, which also advocates implementing vaccine programs in “schools, universities, or healthcare settings to target adolescents and/or adults.”
The study comes amidst a roll-out of advertisements focusing on myocarditis in children, which studies have repeatedly demonstrated to be a side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The New York Presbyterian Hospital, for example, uploaded a video advertisement to its Youtube channel titled “Pediatric Patient Story – Suri (30s version)” on September 6th.
”Suri had a bad stomach ache that turned out to be myocarditis, a serious inflammation of the heart. Our multidisciplinary pediatric critical care team worked to regulate her heartbeat – and got her back to feeling like herself,” explains the video’s caption.
The advertisement follows an American Heart Association report acknowledging that the “risks in younger people and after sequential vaccine doses are less certain” concerning myocarditis.
The link is especially pronounced in young men, as the study found:
“In men younger than 40 years old, the number of excess myocarditis events per million people was higher after a second dose of mRNA-1273 than after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test (97 [95% CI, 91–99] versus 16 [95% CI, 12–18]).”
“In women younger than 40 years, the number of excess events per million was similar after a second dose of mRNA-1273 and a positive test (7 [95% CI, 1–9] versus 8 [95% CI, 6–8],” added the paper.
In addition to the potential drawbacks of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, other studies have demonstrated that the product doesn’t confer immunity as well natural antibodies or as promised by the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the vaccines.
The House of Representatives on Sept. 21 passed an election law bill designed to address President Donald Trump’s legal efforts to decertify some electoral slates in 2021.
The bill, dubbed the Presidential Election Reform Act, passed in a mostly-party line vote with a handful of GOP defections. The final vote, coming in at 229–203, included the support of 221 Democrats and nine Republicans.
During the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump was trying to determine how to move forward on his claims of widespread election fraud, lawyer John Eastman was among the attorneys in Trump’s inner circle who supported an effort to refuse to certify electoral slates from states where concerns of election fraud were most prevalent.
The 12th Amendment
Eastman’s position—that Vice President Mike Pence had the power under the 12th Amendment to reject some electoral slates—was heavily taken to by Trump, who tried to convince Pence to refuse to certify some electoral slates.
Specifically, the effort centered on an ambiguous line in the 12th Amendment, passed after the near-crisis of the election of 1800 which saw Congress go through dozens of ballots before finally declaring Thomas Jefferson the winner.
That line reads “the President of the Senate [i.e., the vice president] shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”
Eastman proposed that Pence could legally refuse to count the ballots of states deemed most at risk of election fraud.
Opponents of Trump’s 2021 effort have said that the Constitution only intends for the vice president’s role in the Jan. 6 certification of electoral slates to be a “ceremonial” one, while proponents of the effort have pointed to similar events in the past, particularly in regards to the presidential elections of 1800, 1876, and 1960. However, there is no hard-set legal consensus on the issue either way.
Ultimately, the effort was unsuccessful, as Pence refused to use his role to deny certification of contested electoral slates.
‘Opening the Door to Mass Litigation’
Though there is no consensus among legal experts as to the lawfulness or validity of the effort, altering the electoral certification process has been a key focus for many of Trump’s adversaries during the 117th Congress. The focus on the issue has intensified since the beginning of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, which presented Trump’s efforts as criminal and undemocratic.
The bill passed by the House on Wednesday was sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and co-sponsored by outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Both members serve on the House Jan. 6 panel.
In addition to naming the vice president’s role in electoral certification a ceremonial one, the bill would up the number of lawmakers needed to sustain an objection to a state’s reported electoral slate.
Currently, a vote on the validity of electoral slates can be forced by a single member of the House and a single member of the Senate, causing the House and Senate to have to vote to sustain or strike down the objection. Under the new bill, that figure would be upped to one-third of the House and one-third of the Senate before a vote on an objection could move forward.
Cheney fell into the camp of those who claim the role is purely ceremonial, saying on the House floor in Washington that the bill would guarantee that Jan. 6 is “as the constitution envisioned, a ministerial day.”
Further, Cheney said that it will “ensure that in the future our election process reflects the will of the people.”
“The American people are supposed to decide an election, not Congress,” Lofgren said, echoing Cheney.
Jan. 6 panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) portrayed the bill as a necessary one to update the rules of the Electoral College, which has long been targeted by Democrats, who often portray the system as undemocratic. The party has long hosted calls for the total abolition of the college and movement to a popular vote basis for electing the president.
However, most House Republicans are critical of the bill.
House Administration Committee Ranking Member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) said that the bill is “opening the door to mass litigation.” In addition, Davis argued that the legislation tramples state sovereignty over election law.
Davis added that Democrats are “desperately trying to talk about their favorite topic, and that is former President Donald Trump.”
In his opening speech on the bill delivered on the House floor, Davis argued that, despite efforts to present the contrary perspective, the 12th Amendment has long been used by members of both parties to ensure the legitimacy of an election’s results.
Davis describes the mechanism as one that preserves the checks and balances of the three federal branches on each other.
Contrary to the position espoused by Democrats, Davis said, lawmakers challenging election results when they see something suspicious “is not an affront to democracy—it’s democracy in action.”
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who has faced accusations from the Jan. 6 Committee of leading reconnoitering missions into the Capitol in the days before Jan. 6, also blasted the bill, saying that Congress’s focus should be on pressing contemporary issues like inflation and energy costs rather than on Jan. 6.
Democrats, by contrast, spent much of their time speaking on the floor by relating the bill to the events of Jan. 6 and the future of American democracy.
In a statement indicative of this approach, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) insisted that the bill was not a partisan issue, but “a democracy issue.”
“There are ambiguities in our electoral system and they can jeopardize our democracy—that’s what this bill is about,” Hoyer added later.
The party also spent a great deal of time applauding Cheney for her role in pushing for the bill.
“President Abraham Lincoln would be standing with Liz Cheney if he were on this floor,” said Hoyer, who called Cheney “as Republican as anyone” in the House.
12th Amendment Issue Remains Contested
John Eastman, the Trump attorney who was most supportive of the 12th Amendment scheme, disagreed about the legality of the effort.
Eastman told The Epoch Times before the vote that discussing the role of the 12th Amendment out of the context of the situation on the ground at the time is mistaken.
He noted that the Constitution gives states the power to make their own election laws and determine the manner in which states will choose their electoral slates. In every U.S. state at this point, the popular vote is the method for choosing this slate.
But Eastman also pointed to several last-minute changes by secretaries of state, executive orders from governors, and county clerks that changed or overshot the statutorily-required, legislature-approved legal regulations like deadlines and signature verification.
“Those election codes were violated, there’s no dispute about that,” Eastman contended. “That means the election was not constitutionally conducted. How big the impact was is hard to say.”
He added, “It was rather extraordinary, the illegality of it.”
The use of the 12th Amendment and the vice president’s role, Eastman argued, was a last resort—albeit a legal one—stemming from the unwillingness of courts to consider the legal issues involved and the unwillingness of governors to call legislatures into special sessions to address the concerns.
Finally, Eastman turned to the issue of the 12th Amendment.
“It seems a little odd that [the Founders] would waste a whole amendment on just a ceremonial thing,” Eastman argued, shunting the claim that the vice president’s role is merely ceremonial. “That’s not the way the Founders typically operate.”
Eastman further argued that the electoral process was designed in large part to ensure that Congress does not have the final say in choosing the president, as such a system would “destroy the separation of powers.”
The Current Constitutional System
Under the current constitutional system, Congress can only choose the president in the event of a three-way or more tie with no single candidate winning the majority of the votes. Even in this case, voting is taken up by the House of Representatives by state rather than by simple majority, limiting the ability of larger states or factions in Congress to determine the president by numbers alone.
This role has only fallen to Congress on a handful of occasions, all taking place in the 19th century. Since the rise of the two-party system, such pluralities are astronomically unlikely for a third candidate in the modern world.
In view of this fact, Eastman argued, the framers of the 12th Amendment intentionally wrote it to ensure that the states, the courts, and the vice president, not Congress, had the final say in determining what to do about a contested election.
“If there’s a dispute, somebody’s gotta resolve the dispute,” Eastman said, citing the work of other legal scholars who have said that the arbiter in such an event was intended to be the vice president. This ensures that “a member of the executive branch [chooses] the president” rather than making the executive “subservient to Congress.”
The core issue, the scope of the vice president’s reach under the 12th Amendment, would be resolved by the House bill by declaring the role a ceremonial one. However, under the current form of the law, it remains disputed how far the role extends.
On Track for Passage
With its passage through the House, the bill will now go to the Senate for consideration.
Though it will likely see some reworking in the upper chamber, enough Republicans have signed onto similar legislation to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold, making it possible that the bill will pass.
Joe Biden has also expressed support for election law reforms in the past.
In August, California announced the end of fossil fuel-powered car sales by 2035, prompting green energy advocates to celebrate.
However, flex alerts followed the announcement just days later, asking Golden State residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles during peak hours. Lack of compliance with the measure meant widespread blackouts due to the additional strain on the electrical grid.
The ironic turn of events underscores a massive problem facing renewable energy as demands for green technologies continue taxing the antiquated U.S. power grid.
Even using nuclear energy as a crutch, the cost of upgrades needed amounts to $4 trillion, according to a WoodMac estimate. Without nuclear power, that price tag bumps up another half a trillion dollars.
Another tally suggests the cost of electrical grid upgrades could be as high as $7 trillion.
In May, the administration of Joe Biden announced a $2.5 billion investment to modernize and upgrade the nation’s electrical system as part of the Building a Better Grid Initiative.
The spending package totals $20 billion but represents just a fraction of what’s needed to achieve Biden’s green energy goals.
Solar panels on the rooftop in the Bronx, with a view of Manhattan in the distance, on Jan. 17, 2014, in New York. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)
“The electric grid is not currently designed to accommodate large amounts of renewable energy,” Alan Duncan told The Epoch Times.
Duncan is the founder of Solar Panels Network USA, and is well acquainted with power grid challenges. He explained that more than one variable contributes to the need for an upgraded grid, making renewable energies genuinely sustainable.
One factor is the way the grid is structured and dispatches energy.
Another is that renewable sources aren’t currently considered reliable.
Intermittent Supply Spells Trouble
“This is because it’s intermittent, and it can be impacted by several factors, including weather conditions,” Duncan said.
Illustrating this, millions of Texans suffered power outages during a brutal winter storm in February 2021. Subsequently, the subzero tempest triggered a heated debate within the energy community about how fragile renewables are within the context of severe weather incidents.
This is despite the Lone Star state government spending more than $80 billion of federal subsidies over the course of a decade. Moreover, roughly $1.5 billion per year is also spent on state subsidies for renewable energy.
Regardless of how much money is being thrown at it, insiders maintain renewables haven’t caught up to the reality of powering a country like the United States.
Much of this has to do with the narrative surrounding green energy. For many, the concept of totally renewable power means going fully electric. However, this is an ill-fated approach, according to some.
John Murphy is a member of the Clean Energy Jobs Coalition in New York (CEJC) and the international representative of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry.
He told The Epoch Times changing the goal to decarbonization—not electrification—can take pressure off the beleaguered power grid.
Murphy explained the government of New York mandates that 70 percent of the state’s power must come from green energy sources by 2030. By 2040, the state’s goal is zero carbon emissions.
Water from the Niagara River passes through a hydroelectric dam the Robert Moses Generating Facility on June 4, 2013 at Lewiston, New York. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“We’re looking at seven-and-a-half years out, and we’re not even close,” he said.
At present, less than 19 percent of New York’s energy comes from renewables.
Like others at the CEJC, Murphy says there needs to be a plan, not a ban, on supplemental energies until it’s possible to phase them out.
“There’s a place for renewables, but we need every resource available to us for the transition.”
Yet there’s opposition to using supplemental energies like natural gas and nuclear power amid the conversion phase.
Paradoxically, much of this comes from environmentalists, who cling to an “all or nothing” vision for green energy.
Much of the government legislation has also been built around this narrative, which Murphy says stacks the deck against true and lasting decarbonization.
And to decarbonize, he says more power plants are needed.
“We don’t have enough generating capacity as they’re trying to shut power plants down. Those plants are 50 years old,” Murphy said.
There’s also the peak hour demand issue, which has been a major stumbling block for renewables up to this point.
Supply Versus Demand
Demand wildly exceeds the supply capacity on the renewables front. Globally speaking, available green energy sources was estimated to grow by 35 gigawatts between 2021 and 2022. Though at the same time, power demands were forecasted to hit 100 gigawatts.
That means more flex alerts and blackouts aren’t just possible, but likely.
“For example, extreme cold can cause problems because people use more energy to heat their homes. This puts a strain on power plants and can lead to blackouts.
“Other weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, and severe storms can also damage power lines and disrupt service,” Duncan explained.
He also believes these problems won’t be limited to certain seasons. Extreme weather phenomenon year round is putting considerable strain on America’s creaking power grid as the demand continues to skyrocket.
Just before the summer heatwaves hit this year, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation released an assessment that said multiple regions of the United States, including the upper Midwest, Texas, and California, were inching closer toward energy emergencies.
The announcement became a harbinger, as summer blackouts affected multiple cities and states.
And it all circles back to sky high demand, especially at certain hours of the day.
Wind turbines, of the Block Island Wind Farm, tower over the water off the shores of Block Island, R.I., on Oct. 14, 2016. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)
“Peak demand hours for electric utilities are like rush hours. The peak demands occur at predictable times, usually during very hot or very cold temperatures when air conditioners and heating systems are working at their maximum,” author and energy expert, Jill Tietjen, told The Epoch Times.
Tietjen began a career in energy back in 1976 and currently sits on the board of directors of Georgia Transmission Corporation.
She elaborated that during peak energy consumption hours, people shouldn’t plug-in electric vehicles literally anywhere. Tietjen also noted that at one point, talk of smart chargers for electric cars was on the table, but it hasn’t come to fruition.
On the flip side of the power demand challenge is the lack of storage capacity.
“Energy storage is absolutely necessary to help the electric grid make the transition to more renewable energy,” Tietjen said.
Murphy concurred a lack of energy storage is a “huge problem.”
There’s also the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production, which is known within the industry as the “duck curve.”
Tietjen illustrated that you get solar energy when the sun is shining and wind power when it’s blowing. However, renewable sources don’t necessarily generate enough power during peak usage times.
She says that the duck curve puts strain on the electric grid because solar and wind energy are intermittent.
Both Murphy and Duncan acknowledge that power transmission is a significant piece of the energy puzzle in making renewables more reliable.
Pointing out that even green energy leaders like Denmark won’t completely phase out fossil fuels for nearly 30 years, Murphy said we need to “work with what we got” and set realistic transition goals.
In the meantime, that means using non-renewable sources as a crutch to avoid further power grid issues.
“This will continue to be a problem for decades in many months of the year,” Tietjen said.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is being investigated by the Justice Department (DOJ) over alleged identity theft and damage to a protected computer relating to an alleged breach of voting machines in Colorado, court documents show.
Lindell filed a lawsuit earlier this week against the DOJ and the FBI after agents seized his mobile phone while he was at a Hardee’s drive-through in Mankato, Minnesota, earlier this month.
His lawyers have argued that the phone seizure violated his First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights.
According to the lawsuit, the search and seizure warrant was issued by Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung on Sept. 7, 2022.
The warrant states that Lindell is being probed by the DOJ over alleged identity theft, intentional damage to a protected computer, and conspiracy to commit identity theft or intentionally damage a protected computer.
It states that all records and information on Lindell’s phone that “constitute fruits, evidence, or instrumentalities of violations” of the alleged acts should be searched.
Mesa County, Colo., clerk Tina Peters, talks at a rally in Denver, Colo., on April 5, 2022. (David Zalubowski/AP Photo)
‘Erode Political Support’
It further states that Lindell is among several other individuals, including Mesa County, Colorado, election clerk Tina Peters, who are part of an investigation into the alleged security breach of voting equipment in Mesa County.
Peters was indicted by a grand jury in March, accused of being part of a “deceptive scheme” to breach voting system technology that is used across the country.
Specifically, they accused her of aiding an outsider to copy sensitive data from the county’s elections systems in May 2021.
Peters has maintained her innocence and that the charges against her were “designed to erode political support from her” as she was running for secretary of state.
“Progressives in Colorado, in both political parties, continued tactics of personal destruction against Peters, in an attempt to get her to suspend her campaign and let moderate Republican candidate, Pam Anderson, win the primary,” a statement issued through her campaign read.
“All the while, the public evidence proves Tina Peters was correct to follow Colorado’s election code and preserve access logs and other vital records required to conduct a valid election audit for the Mesa County election,” the statement added.
Leung’s warrant does not provide specific details as to whether or not the FBI believes Lindell himself violated federal law or if he is a direct target in the probe and no charges have so far been levied against him.
“We can’t have the FBI weaponized against our people in the United States,” Lindell told The Epoch Times on Monday, adding that he will continue advocating for replacing voting machines with paper ballots. “This has to happen. I’m not going to ever let up.”
A voting sign sits outside the Union Station polling center in Denver, Colo., on June 30, 2020. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
Targeted by FBI
Meanwhile, Lindell has said that FBI agents targeted him because he has been vocal about allegations of election fraud and voting irregularities during the November 2020 general election.
His lawsuit against the DOJ and FBI claims that agents questioned him about a number of subjects relating to “Dominion Voting Systems, Tina Peters, Colorado incidents, Doug Frank, information posted on Plaintiff’s media platform, FrankSpeech.com, Dominion’s Trusted Build software update that destroyed election records, his travel on his airplane throughout the Country and to Colorado, and other matters.”
His lawyers also allege that FBI agents initially refused his request for an attorney.
“At no point did they read Mr. Lindell his Miranda rights or advise him that he had a right to have a lawyer present while being questioned,” the lawsuit states.
Furthermore, Lindell claims that he was not allowed to back up the contents of his phone, which is connected to his hearing aids, on a cloud service before FBI agents seized it from him.
“Mr. Lindell has no ready access without his cell phone to passwords that are necessary for his access to essential computer programs, and financial transactions through the company banks,” the lawsuit states. “The cell phone is also programmed to operate Mr. Lindell’s hearing aids.”
As David stood up to Goliath in the Biblical story, a young Virginia nurse practitioner is facing her own modern-day giant: a massive, billion-dollar corporation hostile to her faith.
For over three-and-a-half years, Paige Casey proved an exceptional nurse practitioner for a CVS MinuteClinic in Virginia. She’s a devoted Christian who loves her work.
As a Catholic, one thing Paige can never do is prescribe life-ending drugs. She’ll do anything in her power to heal her patients, but she refuses to hurt them. That’s why she cannot prescribe abortion-inducing drugs.
CVS accommodated Paige’s beliefs up until January 2022 when they told her she’d have to begin prescribing drugs that can end the life of the baby in the womb. Because she refused to act against her beliefs about good medical care and the right to life that every person has, Paige was fired a few months later. Adding salt to the wound, Paige had just two days prior received a merit-based raise, so her firing seemed especially unjust.
Paige’s firing was illegal, and Alliance Defending Freedom is representing her against religious discrimination by CVS.
Major corporations cannot fire employees who want to live consistently with their faith. Additionally, Virginia law protects professionals like Paige who cannot in good conscience participate in abortion-including abortifacients.
Forcing nurse practitioners, doctors, and other health care professionals out of their profession because of their religious convictions means fewer health care options. It means fewer skilled health care professionals to care for us and our loved ones.
Medical professionals shouldn’t be fired because they decline to violate their faith. Show Paige she’s not alone in facing her giant.
Faithfully,
Alliance Defending Freedom
P.S. Paige won’t back down from CVS. She knows that if major corporations can punish her religious views, they can punish you, too. Will you help defend Paige against this giant? Thanks to a limited-time matching grant, your gift will be doubled!
There is a war on women taking place in this country right at this moment.
For decades, women have fought for their right to equal opportunities in academics and athletics. But in its push to radically redefine the previously undisputed definitions of “man” and “woman,” the Left is depriving women of some of their hard-won civil rights gains.
Thanks to the current anti-scientific gender identity movement that the far Left is forcing onto our society, biological male athletes who self-identify as women are being allowed to compete in women’s athletic competitions.
In one prominent example, the NCAA has allowed a biological male swimmer-now going by the name Lia Thomas-to compete in women’s competitions, outracing all the biological female competitors at the NCAA women’s 500-yard freestyle national championship meet. Far from being the only case of females being bumped off victor podiums by biological males, the Lia Thomas story shines a light on a disturbing cultural trend increasingly permeating women’s sports.
You and I both know that sex is an immutable biological reality.
By allowing biological males to dominate women’s athletic competitions, the NCAA has perpetrated an attack on women’s and girls’ athletic opportunities.
This grave injustice is wildly unpopular amongst rational members of society… yet most people are too afraid to speak out against it out of fear of extreme social criticism or political backlash.
One collegiate female athlete said that Thomas’ participation in women‘s swimming has completely ruined the integrity of the sport, and she finds it disappointing to know that the NCAA lacks the courage to do the right thing.
Title IX prohibits any school that receives federal funding from discriminating on the basis of sex. But instead of ensuring equal treatment of the sexes in all areas-including athletics-some schools are allowing athletes to compete based on what gender they self-identify with.
It’s unlikely that the NCAA has enough sense or courage to admit the harm they have created given that our universities have been overrun by “woke” administrators. So we must make our voices heard.
By signing this petition right away, you will be doing your part as an American citizen to encourage policymakers to take action and protect women‘s rights.
We must fight this radical ideological attack against God and human nature. We must work to protect women’s rights in sports and society and fight to preserve the scientific and biblical definitions of the sexes.
Executive Vice President Family Research Council Action
P.S. President Biden recently spoke in favor of the transgender movement and publicly encouraged more young people to permanently alter their bodies with puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgeries.
PayPal’s decision this week to cancel the account of the United Kingdom’s Free Speech Union, effectively demonetizing an organization which fights for freedom of speech in the UK, shows how dire the state of free expression is today.
The organization, founded by Toby Young (@toadmeister), was told that they had violated PayPal’s “acceptable use policy,” however in a statement to The Telegraph, a PayPal spokesperson said that the company was walking a line between “protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue.”
These capricious decisions from Big Tech should be seen for what they are: a tool to censor and punish anyone whose political views run counter to the ruling liberal orthodoxy. This should not be accepted in a healthy democracy, or anywhere in the world, for that matter.
GETTR Chief Executive Officer Jason Miller released this statement on the PayPal decision:
“Those who decry cancel culture as a myth are clearly not paying attention. This is just the latest example of Big Tech’s political overreach and shows why truly tolerant, free speech platforms like GETTR are so vital in defending free expression. We support the Free Speech Union in their new campaign lobbying for regulationsto prevent companies like PayPal demonetising organizations and individuals.”
GETTR, the world’s fastest growing free speech social media platform, will soon announce features which will allow users and organizations like The Free Speech Union to be able to monetize without the threat of political censorship or unfair bans. Today GETTR hosts over 6 million users in 192 different countries worldwide.
Earlier this month, the platform unveiled an edit button for all users, in addition to a massive upgrade for its in-app “Vision” short-video feature, which has already hit 39 million views. The platform recently reached 200 million livestream views following the launch of that feature just 11 months ago. GETTR will soon announce plans to allow users to monetize on the platform, without the threat of censorship.
Some of the most notable GETTR user accounts include Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, comedian and podcaster Russell Brand, conservative news commentators Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, British broadcaster and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, British professional football legend Matt Le Tissier, former White House chief strategist and “War Room” host Steve Bannon, radio great and author Mark Levin, investigative journalist Andy Ngo, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and podcasting great Joe Rogan.
Forty-seven Republican lawmakers recently expressed “grave concerns” about military readiness as a result of the Pentagon’s mandate in a letter (pdf) dated Sept. 15. The Epoch Times spoke to four of the lawmakers who signed the letter, which called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the Department of Defense to withdraw its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members.
“As a result of [the vaccine] mandate, eight percent of the Army’s approximately 1 million soldiers face expulsion” the letter stated.
The Army has only met 52 percent of its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goal, the letter added.
“While we are primarily addressing the Army’s recruitment problem,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said, “this issue is a problem across the board for all our uniformed services.” With no lack of respect for the other branches of service, he said, “the Army is the cornerstone of our military presence in the world.”
Higgins and other GOP lawmakers agreed that the Army’s failure to reach its recruiting goal is directly related to the military’s vaccine mandate that was put into effect by Austin in August 2021.
“This is clearly the case because 40 percent of men aged 18 to 24 have not taken the vaccine,” Higgins explained.
Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) emphasized that “the mandate clearly disincentivizes 40 percent of recruits.”
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) noted that “In the southeast, which is the area which has the most enlisted persons, that number is over 50 percent.”
“What that means is that the Department of Defense has disqualified nearly half of their recruitment pool right off the top,” he added.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
In the history of the Army, Higgins said, “the country has never fallen so short on its recruiting goals.”
With growing threats from countries like China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, Johnson said, “we are in a very dangerous time in terms of our national defense, and we can’t afford to have shortfalls like this.”
And according to Higgins, “the readiness and deployability of our Army is the most significant factor in the discussion about the effectiveness of our Army around the world.”
Stauber agreed with the others, saying that the Pentagon’s mandate is “tyrannical” and “absolutely harms” military readiness and national security. “With the violent, uncertain, and complex world that we live in, we as a nation have to be in a position to project military strength around the world—and losing thousands of soldiers isn’t going to help that,” he said.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 14, 2022. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Necessity Questioned
“For the Department of Defense to continue the vaccine mandate is very suspect,” Johnson said. “We have a responsibility in Congress to provide oversight and to ask important questions and that’s what we did with this letter—and we’re going to get answers one way or the other.”
Johnson recognizes that “there’s a tendency with any federal agency or department to drag their feet” on responding to a Congressional inquiry, but he said he is anticipating that Republicans will be the new majority in the House after the midterms in November.
“Come January, I can’t think of a matter of oversight that is more important than our nation’s defense,” Johnson said. “We will be pressing, and we will be very aggressive.”
Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) in an interview on NTD’s Capitol Report on April 28, 2022. (NTD/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Stauber said that constituents have been pressing his office to help fight the military’s vaccine mandate.
“The facts about the unlawfulness and ineffectiveness of the vaccine are indisputable, and informed service members and their families are calling my office, asking that Congress do something to stop [Austin’s] tyrannical mandate,” he said.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said, “these families are crying out for the people who have devoted their lives to the military and defending the country.” And as a result, she said, “I had to be part of letting Lloyd Austin know this is unacceptable.”
Johnson and others called into question the necessity of the mandate given questions surrounding the vaccine’s effectiveness.
“As mentioned in the letter, the efficacy of the vaccine is in real question now,” Johnson said.
“Service members under the age of 40 have almost no risk and there’s nearly zero chance of death from the virus,” Johnson said, adding that “it’s irrefutable that natural immunity is better protection against virus when data is showing that COVID vaccinations aren’t effective against the most recent strain anyway.”
Higgins said, “the Department of Defense refuses to recognize natural immunity, but instead, they keep pushing a vaccine that’s incredibly dangers with virtually no benefit.”
Rep. Diana Harshbarger. (Official photo)
According to Harshbarger, “when Biden said the pandemic was over [in a “60 Minutes” interview on Sept. 18], it demands the immediate reversal and withdrawal of the mandate.”
But instead of ending the mandate, she said, “they’re willing to lower recruiting standards, which is only going to make things worse and create a bigger problem in the end.”
To that end, Higgins said, “even if you had a one million strong standing army, it does you no good if you can’t deploy them to fight or they are not capable of fighting.”
“It’s also incumbent upon our Army and our military leaders to protect our soldiers so they can maintain and grow their health in a fashion that keeps them deployable,” Higgins said.
Harshbarger said, “the bottom line is this: our service members didn’t volunteer to fight for our freedom just to have their own freedoms taken away,” adding that “they must be kept strong so they can be strong for all of us.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
The suicide on Sept. 18 of an unidentified woman who had sought asylum at a shelter in New York, one of 180 cities and counties with so-called sanctuary policies that have received an influx of illegal aliens from border states in recent weeks, highlights the unpreparedness of municipal officials for the consequences of their stated positions on immigration, experts say.
In the scramble to avoid blame, some officials have pointed their finger at the governors of Florida, Texas, and other states who are simply acting in accordance with the policy of offering sanctuary to those who cross borders into the United States, regardless of the legality of their entry, according to the experts.
The woman who committed suicide at the shelter was one of a reported 11,000 illegal aliens who have strained the resources and capabilities of New York’s homeless and social services in recent months, as revealed in a leaked internal email in which officials of the city’s Human Resources Administration urged employees to make themselves available for overtime duties.
In a statement the day following the suicide, New York Mayor Eric Adams alluded to the massive influx of illegal immigrants that has caught his administration, like those of other cities and communities in the United States, off guard, while not explicitly acknowledging responsibility for the death.
“The thousands of asylum seekers we have seen arrive in our city came to this country seeking a better life. Sadly though, yesterday, an asylum seeker in one of our facilities took her own life. Our hearts break for this young woman and any loved ones she may have, and we, as a city, mourn her,” Adams said.
Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, speaks on stage during The 2022 Concordia Annual Summit – Day 1 at Sheraton New York in New York City on Sept. 19, 2022. (Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
Recriminations Fly
But other city officials quickly faulted the mayor for downplaying the role of his administration’s unpreparedness for the influx and for its lack of adherence to its own stated priorities as part of a sanctuary community.
“It is an indictment of the highest order that this woman, seeking refuge, arrived in New York City and was so overcome with hopelessness that she decided to end her life,” Democratic state Sen. Jessica Ramos of Queens said in a statement. “Her act was a direct response to the lack of care provided by the City.
“There is no excuse for a failure of this magnitude.”
In the same statement, Ramos criticized Adams for suggesting (without offering specific policy prescriptions) that it’s time for New York to reassess its “right to shelter” laws.
Ramos and others are critical of the mayor for having allowed an environment in which the city is ill-equipped for the arrival of thousands of illegal immigrants to develop on his watch, particularly when the new arrivals are simply acting in accordance with codified policies and protocols.
‘Right to Shelter’ Under Pressure
The $101 billion budget approved for New York City in June allocated $2.4 billion to homelessness services for the fiscal year to follow, while setting aside roughly $5 billion for affordable housing over the next decade.
The sheer size of the investment in homelessness and social services presents a huge incentive for illegal immigrants who know that under the “right to shelter” law, their desire to be housed can’t be legally denied, experts say. The law itself has its roots in a lawsuit filed in 1979 on behalf of Robert Callahan, a homeless man living in the city, and others who were without a fixed place of residence.
Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank who has studied migration and the homelessness issue, believes that while New York’s Special One-Time Assistance Program may have operated relatively free from misuse, there can be no question that illegal immigrants are freely availing themselves of certain other perquisites.
“I am not aware of any migrants taking advantage of the One-Time Assistance Program. But they are certainly availing themselves of the basic shelter benefit, which everyone qualifies for regardless of immigration status, as well as an array of basic services including education, health, and public safety,” Eide told The Epoch Times.
Given the realities of a network overwhelmed by the thousands of arrivals, even some progressive cities and communities have begun to rethink the wisdom of right to shelter legislation, Eide noted.
“Other jurisdictions, such as California, have contemplated establishing a New York-style right to shelter. They are probably giving the idea second thoughts now. Responding to a migrant crisis is more difficult for cities with a right to shelter than cities without one,” Eide said.
As it stands, there are few places in the country where the enticement to those who might seek to take advantage of free refuge and services is as pronounced.
“I don’t believe any community in America has a right to shelter as expansive as New York City’s. Many migrants want to come to New York anyway because it’s famous. The right to shelter just makes it appeal even more,” Eide continued.
Illegal immigrants from Venezuela stand outside St. Andrew’s Church in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Sept. 14, 2022. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette/Handout via Reuters)
Blaming the Messenger
The resettlement of men, women, and children in Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, as well as the moving of refugees to New York, has been fraught with controversy and has led to potential legal complications for the officials involved. Reports emerged this week that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chartering of flights to bring several dozen illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard is now the subject of a criminal investigation on the part of the sheriff’s office in Bexar County, Texas, looking into the alleged luring of the migrants with promises of work.
But DeSantis, like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, is simply acting in accordance with the self-imposed priorities of sanctuary communities and those who advocate welcoming illegal immigrants with a panoply of services and opportunities, some observers argue.
“Governors DeSantis and Abbott are simply helping illegal immigrants get to sanctuary cities and towns. It’s amusing because the politicians who declared these locales sanctuaries are now horrified that immigrants are actually being sent,” Charles Steele, chair of the Department of Economics, Business, and Accounting at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told The Epoch Times. “Sanctuary status—an avowal to violate American immigration law—turns out to be little more than sanctimonious posturing.”
The fiasco could have significant political consequences, even if it doesn’t sway voters in the midterm elections who are concerned with inflation and crime.
“I doubt this will have much effect on the midterm election, because I don’t think it will change people’s opinions on the immigration issue,” Steele said. “But if DeSantis and Abbott continue to move immigrants, it might lead to increasing pressure for the Biden administration to reduce the record flows across the border.”
Distributing the Burden
Richard Conley, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, argued that the policy of placing illegal immigrants on charter flights to sanctuary destinations doesn’t violate their rights and isn’t cruel, though its consequences for the communities where they arrive are another matter.
Conley sees the policy largely as a response on the part of state officials to illegal immigration that has overwhelmed small towns on the southern border of the United States and made them desperate for a way to distribute the burden of accommodating illegal immigrants in a way that’s more socially and economically feasible.
“I’ve spent a lot of time out there in Texas, where you’ve got towns like Eagle Pass, with about 29,000 people. They are getting a thousand, two thousand, and sometimes more, crossing into their communities, and the Biden administration seems to think that’s OK,” Conley told The Epoch Times.
“Governor Abbott is trying to deal with this crisis, where these small border communities don’t have the resources to deal with the influx, and so they are electing to send these folks, with their consent.”
The governors of the border states aren’t acting in an illegal or coercive manner, he argued, because the illegal immigrants are giving their consent and, in many cases, explicitly requesting relocation to a sanctuary community.
“They sign a waiver saying, I want to go to New York, D.C., or Chicago. And, in the case of DeSantis, who wouldn’t want to fly on an air-conditioned jet up to Martha’s Vineyard? It’s a playground of the rich,” Conley said.
“Instead, the island, which claims to be a sanctuary, has a complete conniption fit and within two days has them transported somewhere else,” he added, alluding to the decision to move the 50 illegal immigrants from Martha’s Vineyard to a military base on nearby Cape Cod shortly after their arrival.
Though he doesn’t view the border state governors’ relocation policy as coercive or illegal, Conley said he does detect a political element to the policy, as the governors seek to make officials outside the border state region more aware of and responsive to the consequences of the policies they champion.
“It’s a symbolic shot across the bow to the federal government, which is not enforcing the immigration laws that are on the books,” he said.
The ongoing fiasco may, at last, bring increased attention to the broader debacle of U.S. immigration policy and its human costs, Conley suggested.
“The bigger issue here that gets lost is the tragedy of all this. The horrors that migrants face, the sexual assaults. We’ve got people being found who have suffocated in trucks and died of dehydration, and migrants who had to survive on bananas and iguanas after the cartels and gangs robbed them of all their money. And their daughters are assaulted and some of them are kidnapped. The goal of the governors is to point out the really vacuous arguments and the lack of signaling from the White House that we plan on closing this off and actually doing something,”
Adams’s office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
A top Democrat in Palm Beach County, Florida, endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis for governor by saying there is “too much on the line” during the 2022 midterms.
“Endorsing Gov. @RonDeSantisFL was the obvious choice this election cycle. Gov. DeSantis’ Dem opponent has called for reallocation of resources away from law enforcement. FL cannot afford people like Charlie Crist who wants to defund the police & make our communities less safe,” Dave Kerner, the commissioner of Palm Beach County as well as its former mayor, wrote on Twitter this week.
DeSantis is running against Democrat Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida, in the state’s gubernatorial race.
Kerner further stated that his endorsement was, in part, driven by Crist’s comments that he plans to reallocate funds to instead deploy mental health professionals to assist police on domestic violence calls. Republicans say that such a move would be akin to defunding the police—a common refrain that was used during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots.
He included a video of a press conference in which he spoke alongside DeSantis, giving the Republican governor his endorsement.
“Every day until Nov. 8th, I will campaign for Gov. DeSantis, and on Nov. 8th, I will vote for Gov. DeSantis,” Kerner said at the Police Benevolent Association in West Palm Beach. “I will not remain silent. There is too much on the line in this election,” he added.
DeSantis also spoke at the event and targeted the Democrats’ “anti-police movement.”
“We are focused on protecting victims and not coddling criminals, and no one knows that better than Dave, who served Florida’s communities. Commissioner Kerner knows first-hand the threat of the ‘defund the police’ movement and understands the important role that our local law enforcement officers play in keeping Florida safe,” he said.
Palm Beach County is the third-most-populous county in Florida. In 2020, President Joe Biden won about 56 percent of the votes in the county, according to election data.
Crist, who was the governor of Florida between 2007 and 2011, was a member of the Republican Party before he became an independent in 2010. He later switched to the Democratic Party in 2012 before he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2016.
In late August, Crist resigned from his House seat to focus on his 2022 gubernatorial campaign. Florida’s now-vacant 13th District will remain without a representative until the November election. Former President Donald Trump-backed Republican candidate Anna Paulina Luna and former Obama administration official Eric Lynn, a Democrat, are vying for the seat.
In his much-anticipated remarks on the economy following the Fed’s policy meeting that saw another jumbo interest rate hike to tame soaring prices, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said inflation was “running too high,” contradicting President Joe Biden’s recent assertion that prices had risen “just an inch, hardly at all.”
Powell’s press conference on Sept. 21 followed a decision by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to hike rates by another 75 basis points, bringing the benchmark lending rate to a range between 300 and 325 basis points, or 3.00–3.25 percent.
“The Committee is highly attentive to inflation risks,” the FOMC statement said, with Fed Funds futures contracts expecting the central bank to deliver another 75 basis point hike in November to further ease price pressures.
Following the rate announcement, Powell spoke to reporters, delivering a sobering message on soaring prices and that cooling red-hot inflation would not be “painless.”
Inflation must be brought down, Powell said, and that could require more than just a “relatively modest increase in unemployment.”
“I wish there was a painless way to do that. There isn’t,” he said at the press conference.
“What we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation and if we want to set ourselves up—really, really light the way to another period of very strong labor market—we have got to get inflation behind us,” Powell said.
Stark Contrast
The central bank chief also said that various measures of price pressures show that “inflation is running too high.”
“We have seen some supply-side healing, but inflation has not really come down. If you look at core PCE inflation, which is … a good measure of where inflation is running now, if you look at it on a three, six, and 12-month trailing annualized basis you’ll see that inflation is at 4.8 percent, 4.5 percent, and 4.8 percent,” he added.
Powell’s remarks stand in stark contrast to Biden’s recent messaging on inflation. In an eyebrow-raising interview that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program on Sept. 18, Biden downplayed the inflationary pressures facing American families.
The president said in the interview that inflation over the past few months “hasn’t spiked” and that the monthly rate of inflation was negligible.
“The inflation rate month to month was just … an inch, hardly at all,” Biden said in response to a question by CBS’ Scott Pelley, who noted that the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in at an annual 8.3 percent—which is close to a multi-decade high—and that Americans were “shocked by their grocery bills.”
Grocery store inflation—based on the “food away from home” category in the CPI data—shot up by an annual 13.5 percent in August, the fastest pace in 43 years.
The president replied to Pelley’s question by calling for “perspective” and focusing on the month-over-month rate of inflation in August—which was 0.1 percent—rather than the year-over-year pace of 8.3 percent.
Biden’s remarks on inflation sparked a flurry of critical takes from Republicans and others.
A church in Texas has quietly removed a self-described “Goth” drag performer with a criminal conviction from what has been advertised as a family drag bingo event.
The First Christian Church, part of the Disciples of Christ denomination, openly supports LGBT people. In a flier, the church had advertised drag queen Tisha Flowers would be one of two performers at the sold-out event.
Flowers is a stage name for Jaysen Kettl, who portrays himself as a Goth drag queen, whose social media accounts include macabre content.
Area parents discovered that Kettl was convicted of being involved in a school shooting plot in 2004, after the news appeared in a Current Revolt article on Substack.
Images of Kettl that can be found online include one of him dressed in drag holding a red skull with pentagram earrings and another on Tik Tok where he is wearing a T-shirt with a Baphomet image surrounded by a pentagram.
An Instagram post depicts a skull and devil image announcing a Happy Death Day show.
The info spread quickly among parent groups.
Tisha Flowers was removed from the current drag bingo lineup. Parents plan to protest in Katy, Texas. (Courtesy of Rebecca Clark)
In 2004, Kettl, who was 17 at the time, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder for his role in plotting a school shooting at Vidor High School, according to a Houston Chronicle story.
The plot was foiled before anything occurred.
Kettl and at least one other student described how they wanted to torture some people by “nailing their hands to the table, chaining them to trees—before they killed certain people,” according to a prosecutor quoted in the report.
Word of the plot leaked to school administrators and was never carried out. Police found a backpack containing knives, chains, nails, and hammers in Kettl’s bedroom.
The Epoch Times attempted to reach Kettl and First Christian Church for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The church’s flier now lists drag queen “Kiki” and disc jockey “Jamie” as part of the Sept. 24 event lineup.
The 5 p.m. event is open to all ages, according to the church website. The adults-only portion of the drag show begins at 8:30 p.m.
Grassroots parent groups have vowed to protest against the event, which they believe is harmful to children.
Rebecca Clark, executive director of the Fort Bend County County Citizens Defending Freedom, said parents are outraged the church had planned to feature a “satanist” that had plotted against a school.
“We are done tolerating the exploitation and sexualization of our children in this country,” Clark told The Epoch Times via text.
Sarah Feigleson, a Katy resident and CCDF’s Fort Bend County education leader, wrote in a text that parents need to wake up.
“Drag queens and children don’t mix,” she wrote. “These events are happening in your backyard. Stand up and raise a respectful ruckus.”
The church’s drag bingo event will benefit its “Transparent Closet.”
The clothing boutique is for “trans and exploring teens, youth and young adults,” according to the church website.
A Colorado sheriff’s deputy is dead after a fatal hit-and-run collision involving an illegal alien who allegedly fled the scene of the accident.
Weld County Sheriff’s Deputy Alexis Hein-Nutz was only 24 years old. Hein-Nutz, a Bismarck, North Dakota, resident, was driving to work on Sunday when a van struck her motorcycle, according to The Denver Post.
Authorities arrested Norberto Garcia-Gonzales on Monday night after the fatal Sunday collision.
He tentatively faces charges of leaving the scene of an accident involving death and careless driving resulting in death, according to CBS Colorado.
Investigators say they recovered a false green card and a fake social security card from the car Gonzalez-Garcia was driving, according to KFYR-TV. The suspect was initially misidentified as Octavio Gonzalez-Garcia, according to The Denver Gazette.
A Weld County law enforcement official indicated investigators believe Garcia-Gonzales is an illegal immigrant on Wednesday, according to Fox News.
It is with a heavy heart we announce the passing of Weld County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Alexis Hein-Nutz. Alexis was killed yesterday in a hit and run crash north of Greeley on her way to work.
Capt. Matt Turner of the Weld County North Jail Complex is accusing Garcia-Gonzales of trying to escape justice after the crash.
“All of this together made it nearly impossible initially for our people to investigate the crime. They had no clue who was behind the wheel of this car because he fled into a cornfield and disappeared,” Turner told Fox & Friends’ Todd Piro.
Garcia-Gonzales already had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court and has been arrested for DUI before, according to Fox News.
President Joe Biden argued against the deportation of illegal aliens with drunk driving convictions as a candidate in 2020, according to National Review.
Deportations themselves have been gutted under Biden’s administration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 55,590 illegals from the country in fiscal year 2021 — less than a third of the 185,884 they removed in 2020 when Donald Trump was president.
Turner is frustrated that the suspect was free from custody to further offend in the community, according to Fox News.
“From a law enforcement perspective, it’s frustrating, but I actually wonder how the community feels about that. How frustrated are they?”
Illegal aliens made up 13 percent of the total federal prison population as recently as 2018, according to the Washington Times.
Turner told Piro that cops arrested Garcia-Gonzales with Hein-Nutz’s handcuffs.
“I’m holding her handcuffs right now, and I think what that speaks to is that she was a member of a team,” said the jail official, according to Fox News.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida kicked his rhetoric up a notch Wednesday as he insisted it is time for the United States to take dramatic action to stop the flow of fentanyl across the southern border.
Gaetz’ YouTube page included an extended video of his comments during a House Judiciary Committee hearing about sending an air strike on the Mexican drug cartels. He compared his proposal to the U.S. military response after the 9/11 attacks.
“I know all of us [recently] thought back to Sept. 11, 2001 … and you think about thousands of Americans needlessly dying, and then us going off into, like, 20 years of war in every Central Asian cave … and I think today about the tens of thousands of [American] lives that we are losing over and over again in every community in our country, and we seemingly clutch our pearls at the suggestion that we might think about dropping off a few Tomahawk missiles in the Sinaloa Mountains, where we know that that fentanyl is being manufactured,” Gaetz said in the video, which appeared under a headline reading, “Should America Drop Tomahawk Missiles on Cartel Mountains?”
Along with his terse comment, Gaetz posted a video clip of related comments he made in the House on Wednesday.
“There has been discussion today of fentanyl. And it irks me every time I hear someone talk about fentanyl overdoses, because no one overdoses on fentanyl, because I don’t think anybody really sets out to, like, score some fentanyl for a good time,” Gaetz said on Twitter.
Gaetz noted that demand from Americans ensures other parts of the drug war will never succeed.
“I get why it’s hard to keep cocaine from coming into the country. People in the United States like using cocaine, they seek it out, they pay high dollar amounts for it. And so that would be something hard to stop. But since people don’t set out to use fentanyl, since it’s something we don’t want in our country, we should be totally capable of stopping it.”
Gaetz said the border is a sagging ruin because political leaders want it that way.
“[T]he only reason we aren’t is [that] we purposely allow our border to degrade, not by accident, not because of some lack of capability or some unsolvable problem set, but because there are some groups on the Right and Left who think that they will do better economically if we just let millions of people into the country and depress the wages of Americans,” he said.
“And the cost they’re willing to pay for that are the funerals and the deaths and the broken lives as a result of fentanyl poisoning. Because it is not an overdose. It is a poisoning that happens,” he said.
The concept of bombing Mexico to eliminate drug labs hit the news in May after former Defense Secretary Mark Esper wrote his tell-all book about his time in the Trump administration.
A report in The New York Times, citing the book, said that Esper claimed that more than once, Trump asked him during the summer of 2020 if the military could “shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs.”
Esper quoted Trump as saying, “They don’t have control of their own country.”
Trump said that “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” adding that “no one would know it was us,” according to the Times’ excerpt.
The comments provoked the usual dust-up, leading Donald Trump Jr. to respond on Twitter.
I’m still trying to figure out the recent media outrage about my father possibly wanting to target Mexican drug cartel manufacturing facilities in Mexico… Is that supposed to be a bad thing???
“I’m still trying to figure out the recent media outrage about my father possibly wanting to target Mexican drug cartel manufacturing facilities in Mexico… Is that supposed to be a bad thing???” Donald Trump Jr. posted.
FDA warns ‘sleepy chicken’ challenge is very unsafe
(Reuters)—Cooking chicken in cough medicine NyQuil is not only silly and unappetizing but can also be very unsafe, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said, following the “sleepy chicken” TikTok challenge.
A number of videos challenged people to cook chicken in NyQuil, which contains acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, and doxylamine, or another similar over-the-counter cough and cold medication, according to the FDA.
Boiling medicine can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways, the FDA said in a notice dated Sept. 15.
“Even if you don’t eat the chicken, inhaling the medication’s vapors while cooking could cause high levels of the drugs to enter your body. It could also hurt your lungs.”
This is not the first time the FDA has warned against social media challenges that use non-prescription medicine.
In September 2020, a similar warning was issued by the FDA after reports of teenagers getting admitted to emergency rooms or dying after participating in the “Benadryl Challenge” on the short-video app.
(Reporting by Khushi Mandowara in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Chase, Bank of America could face questions over decision to rebuff Black Rifle Coffee Co.
Two of America’s biggest banks are facing allegations that they discriminate against conservative companies—allegations they may be forced to address during a Thursday Senate hearing that features their top executives.
Both Chase and Bank of America’s CEOs are set to testify in front of Congress Thursday as part of the Senate Banking Committee’s “Annual Oversight of the Nation’s Largest Banks.” The hearing comes just days after those banks faced allegations that they refused to work with a conservative-aligned coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee Co., because they felt the company posed a “reputational risk.”
Emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon corroborate those allegations. In one 2018 exchange with Black Rifle, Chase executive Mark Outlaw said the bank would “love to do business with a veteran-affiliated company” like Black Rifle but cited “issues” related to the company’s name and mission. Black Rifle, for example, features coffee blends such as AK-47 and Silencer Smooth, and its CEO Evan Hafer told the New York Times he voted for former president Donald Trump.
Now, Chase and Bank of America may have to answer for their treatment of the coffee company and other non-woke entities, a development that could provide insight into just how hostile America’s top financial institutions act toward “politically incorrect” companies. In addition to Black Rifle, Chase has “limited” its relationships with gunmakers, a policy that has left the bank scrambling after Texas passed a law barring the state from working with firms that “discriminate” against the gun industry.
Neither Chase nor Bank of America returned requests for comment. In the case of Black Rifle, Chase’s hostility toward the company appears to fly in the face of the bank’s financial and social missions—the company’s revenue exceeded $233 million last year, and more than half of its employees are veterans or family members of veterans. Chase’s website touts its role in “providing transformative opportunities for veterans and their families” and says its “goal is to position military members, veterans, and their families to thrive in their post-service lives.” Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, meanwhile, has assured critics that he’s “not woke.”
Despite its hesitancy to associate with conservative-aligned companies, citing “risk management practices,” Chase has leaned heavily into liberal social issues. In June, the company said it was “celebrating pride” by interviewing employees to “hear more about their personal experiences, journeys, and advice and how to best support members of the LGBTQ+ community.” The bank’s subsequent blog post, which included each employee’s “preferred pronouns,” touted Chase’s “culture of diversity and equality.” In 2018, meanwhile, a Chase press release boasted the company “earn[ed] a perfect score for LGBT equality, 16 years in a row.”
Thursday’s hearing will begin at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. It can be streamed live here.
BRUSSELS (Reuters)—Governments in Europe have earmarked nearly 500 billion euros in the last year to cushion citizens and companies from soaring gas and power prices, according to research published by think-tank Bruegel on Wednesday.
Months of surging prices have seen governments roll out measures to curb retail power prices, slash energy taxes and give subsidies to bill-payers.
European gas and power prices have rocketed as Russia has cut fuel exports to retaliate for Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
The EU’s 27 countries have collectively allocated 314 billion euros for measures to ease the pain, while Britain has set aside 178 billion euros, according to Brussels-based Bruegel.
If the cash governments have earmarked to nationalise, bail out or provide loans to ailing energy utilities was included, then EU governments have spent closer to 450 billion euros, the think-tank said.
Germany nationalised gas importer Uniper on Wednesday and Britain capped the wholesale cost of electricity and gas for businesses.
Many of the measures were designed to be temporary – but Bruegel said the state intervention has ballooned to become “structural”.
“This is clearly not sustainable from a public finance perspective,” said Bruegel senior fellow Simone Tagliapietra.
“Governments with more fiscal space will inevitably better manage the energy crisis by outcompeting their neighbours for limited energy resources over winter months.”
Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, is by far the biggest spender in the bloc – setting aside 100 billion euros, versus 59 billion euros in Italy, or 200 million euros in Estonia, for example.
Croatia, Greece, Italy and Latvia have all earmarked more than 3% of their GDP to tackle the energy crunch.
The EU last week proposed bloc-wide measures to respond to sky-high energy prices, in a bid to overlay the patchwork of national responses with a coordinated reaction.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Alex Richardson)
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. existing home sales dropped for the seventh straight month in August as affordability deteriorated further amid surging mortgage rates and stubbornly high house prices, though the pace of decline moderated from prior months.
The Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary policy tightening, marked by oversized interest rate increases, has significantly weakened the housing market. In contrast, other sectors of the economy, like the labor market, have shown incredible resilience despite the Fed’s attempts to cool demand.
“High prices and Fed rate hikes will likely remain constraints for sales going forward,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in White Plains, New York.
Existing home sales slipped 0.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.80 million units last month, the National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday. Discounting the plunge during the spring of 2020 when the economy was reeling from the first wave of COVID-19, this was the lowest sales level since November 2015.
Sales rose in the Northeast and West, but were unchanged in the densely populated South. They fell in the Midwest, which is generally considered a more affordable housing region.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast sales decreasing to a rate of 4.70 million units. The smaller-than-expected decline was likely the result of contracts signed in July, when mortgage rates retreated after sharp increases. While the NAR hoped that sales would stabilize around current levels, that is unlikely as mortgage rates are likely to push higher.
The Fed is expected to raise its policy rate by 75 basis points later on Wednesday for the third time in as many policy meetings. Since March, the U.S. central bank has lifted that rate from near zero to its current range of 2.25% to 2.50%.
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.02% last week, from 5.89% in the prior week, breaking above 6% for the first time since November 2008, according to data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac.
Though house price growth has slowed as demand weakened, tight supply is keeping prices elevated. The median existing house price increased 7.7% from a year earlier to $389,500 in August. House prices typically slow in July and August. They surged to a record high of $413,800 in June.
There were 1.28 million previously owned homes on the market, unchanged from a year ago.
At August’s sales pace, it would take 3.2 months to exhaust the current inventory of existing homes, up from 2.6 months a year ago. A five-to-seven-month supply is viewed as a healthy balance between supply and demand. The improvement is mostly because sales are weakening.
Properties typically remained on the market for 16 days, up from 14 days in July, but down from 17 days last August. Before the pandemic 30 days on the market was the norm. Eighty-one percent of homes sold were on the market for less than a month.
First-time buyers accounted for 29% of purchases, unchanged from July and a year ago. All-cash sales made up 24% of transactions, up from 22% from a year ago. Prior to 2020, cash sales accounted for only 20% of transactions.
The NAR attributed the higher cash sales share to people needing loans to buy a home dropping out of the market.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Donald Trump and his adult children were sued for fraud on Wednesday by New York state’s attorney general, who for more than three years has conducted a civil investigation into the former U.S. president’s business practices, court records showed.
The lawsuit, filed in a New York state court in Manhattan, accused the Trump Organization of engaging in “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” in preparing Trump‘s annual statements of financial condition from 2011 to 2021. It also named the Trump Organization, the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his daughter Ivanka Trump as defendants.
The investigation by Attorney General Letitia James has focused on whether the Trump Organization misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits.
James was expected to make an announcement at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT). She has said that the investigation uncovered “significant evidence” that Trump and the company fraudulently valued many of its assets.
The Republican former president has denied any wrongdoing and described James’ probe as a politically motivated witch hunt. James is a Democrat. The Trump Organization has called James’ allegations “baseless.”
Wednesday’s lawsuit followed a contentious investigation in which James accused Trump, his company and some family members of using delay tactics to ignore subpoenas and avoid testifying.
Trump on Aug. 10 declined to answer questions in a lengthy, closed-door deposition at the office of the attorney general, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 400 times.
Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump agreed to sit for depositions only after court decisions required it.
Another of Trump‘s children, Eric Trump, invoked the right against self-incrimination more than 500 times in a 2020 deposition.
The lawsuit marks one of the biggest legal blows for Trump since he left office in January 2021. Trump is considering running again for president in 2024.
The FBI conducted a court-approved search of Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Aug. 8 as part of a criminal investigation into his handling of presidential records including classified material.
Trump also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
He has denied wrongdoing in the various probes.
James’ civil probe is separate from a criminal tax fraud probe against the Trump Organization by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg.
The company is scheduled to stand trial in October, accused of paying off-the-books benefits to employees. Its former longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty and will testify against the company.
James is assisting Bragg in his criminal probe.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel, Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
The White House is irritated at a Fox News reporter’s persistent coverage of the immigration crisis at the southern border, according to a Politicoreport.
Several current and former White House officials told Politico they’re frustrated with Fox News reporter Bill Melugin’s coverage of the record-breaking numbers of migrants crossing the border. Melugin has been a constant presence on Fox News this year, pairing on-the-ground coverage with aerial drone footage to demonstrate the scale of migrant crossings.
White House officials’ irritation at Melugin’s coverage, which they say is alarmist and lacking nuance, comes as immigration is one of President Joe Biden’s weakest issues going into the 2024 midterm elections. More than half of Americans believe the United States is seeing an “invasion” at the southern border, according to an NPR poll last month.
Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre vented that Fox News got the scoop—via Melugin’s reporting—that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R.) planned to bus migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s house in Washington, D.C.
“The fact that Fox News—and not the Department of Homeland Security, the city, or local NGOs—were alerted about a plan to leave migrants, including children, on the side of a busy D.C. street makes clear that this is just a cruel, premeditated political stunt,” Jean-Pierre said.
Fox News has clashed with the Biden administration before for its border coverage. Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned the network from flying drones over migrants being processed into the country.
Brand New Congress was formed by Bernie Sanders staffers to elect progressives
Senate hopeful John Fetterman says he opposes efforts to defund police departments. That could put him at odds with his latest campaign partner, a left-wing political action committee that has called critics of the radical cause “squeamish centrists” and “appeasers.”
Brand New Congress, founded by organizers for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, on Tuesday endorsed Fetterman as a “bold, progressive voice” who if elected will bring “transformational change” to the Senate. The organization also announced a joint fundraising initiative with Fetterman that will split contributions between the PAC and Fetterman’s campaign.
Brand New Congress has repeatedly called to defund law enforcement and said it supports progressives who are “unapologetic” in supporting that and other “revolutionary change.” The group has urged lawmakers to sign Rep. Cori Bush’s (D., Mo.) pledge to defund police and has accused former president Barack Obama of “appeasement” for criticizing the movement’s slogan.
Fetterman’s support for Brand New Congress could undermine his bid to flip a Republican seat in a purple state. Americans have soured on the defund movement in recent years, with 75 percent of voters in a recent poll saying the movement is responsible for a spike in violent crime. Republicans have attacked Fetterman over his support for progressive criminal justice reform measures. Republican candidate Mehmet Oz has run ads highlighting Fetterman’s votes as head of Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons to release convicted murderers from prison. A group of Pennsylvania sheriffs criticized Fetterman’s calls to release one-third of all state prisoners and his support for left-wing Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner.
Fetterman defended his record in a series of television ads, including one in which he claimed he “did whatever it took to fund police” as mayor of Braddock, Pa. Fetterman’s campaign spokesman recently said the candidate will “never support defunding the police” if elected.
But Fetterman’s collaboration with Brand New Congress is part of a pattern of working closely with proponents of the defund movement. He held a pro-abortion rally on the anniversary of 9/11 with Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood and a supporter of the defund movement. Fetterman campaigned last week with three Philadelphia City Council members who have endorsed measures to defund police departments. Fetterman’s appointee for secretary of Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons has said she wants to “disarm the police.” The official, Celeste Trusty, has also called herself a “friend” and “buddy” of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Washington Free Beaconreported.
Brand New Congress, cofounded by Saikat Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D., N.Y.), has had limited success since it formed in 2016 to elect candidates in the mold of Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. The PAC’s biggest wins to date have been in helping elect Bush, Ocasio-Cortez, and fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). The PAC has never backed a successful Senate candidate. Besides Fetterman, this year it has endorsed only former Kentucky state representative Charles Booker in his campaign against Sen. Rand Paul. Booker during his failed 2020 Senate campaign called for defunding police.
Chakrabarti has come under fire for comparing moderate Democrats to pro-segregation Democrats of the 1940s and for wearing a t-shirt supporting Nazi collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose.
Fetterman’s campaign and Brand New Congress did not respond to requests for comment.
New nuclear deal will strengthen Iran’s terror network in Middle East, Africa, exclusive testimony says
Iran will use cash assets provided by the Biden administration as part of a new nuclear accord to fund regional terror groups and enhance the capabilities of a militant network committed to assassinating U.S. officials, according to written testimony to Congress from a top U.S. military commander exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Gen. Stephen Townsend, who led U.S. Africa Command until August of this year, in March warned Congress that Iran is certain to use “at least some of the resources gained from sanctions relief to” increase its illicit shipment of advanced weapons to terror groups operating in Africa and the Near East region, according to written information he provided to Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) after a public hearing before Congress.
In addition to boosting Iran’s terror allies like the Houthi rebels in Yemen, sanctions relief will enable Tehran to expand its Iranian Threat Network, a group of terror cells run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’s Quds Force that is focused on assassinating American officials, according to Townsend.
With a new Iran nuclear deal expected to provide Iran with up to a trillion dollars over the lifetime of the deal, a coalition of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced new legislation that would bar the Biden administration from implementing the accord until it can certify to Congress that Iran has not engaged in assassination plots on Americans in five years. The bill, which is sponsored by Ernst and Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), was sparked by Iran’s ongoing efforts to assassinate former U.S. officials like former national security adviser John Bolton and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
The disclosures made by Townsend in his communications to Congress are likely to generate further support for the legislation even among Democrats, some of whom recently wrote to President Joe Biden expressing concern about the impending deal.
“It’s hard to fathom that, after countless attacks on Americans, and multiple confirmed plots against U.S. officials, the Biden administration continues to cozy up to Iran in hopes of a mythical, so-called nuclear deal,” Ernst said in a statement. “President Biden should not provide a dime of sanctions relief to the largest state sponsor of terrorism, which is actively trying to kill U.S. officials and citizens, at home and abroad.”
Townsend, who testified before Congress in mid-March, confirmed that sanctions relief provided under a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal will directly fund Iranian-backed terrorist organizations. His analysis was provided in a written form to Ernst after she posed a series of additional questions following that briefing.
“If the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is renewed, Iran will likely use at least some of the resources gained from sanctions relief to intensify the pursuit of its interests in Africa,” Townsend said. “Tehran likely will allocate additional revenue to boost lethal aid facilitation to the [Houthis] in Yemen through smuggling routes and East Africa, and could further develop Iranian Threat Network (ITN) capabilities on the continent.”
Once Iran’s regime has access to hard currency freed up under the deal, it “will likely seek opportunities to exploit regional conflicts and the counterterrorism needs of African governments to increase arms sales, enhance defense cooperation, and to undermine Western and Israeli partnerships and ambitions on the continent,” Townsend said. “Though these efforts are nascent, a growing Iranian presence also would provide increased cover for the ITN facilitation network and operational expansion.”
Since late 2020, at least 10 Iranian assassination plots orchestrated in the region by the ITN have been disrupted, according to Townsend, including two against U.S. officials in Africa. Other plots targeted Israeli interests.
“Iran almost certainly continues to seek retaliation for the death of former IRGC-QF commander Qassem Soleimani, and it could leverage the ITN to attack high-level U.S. government or military officials visiting or staying in Africa, especially if Iran suspects them of complicity in Soleimani’s death,” Townsend said.
The Iranian Threat Network, he added, “has increased its activity and remained intent on expanding its capabilities in Africa, most likely through proxies and recruited agents,” according to Townsend. The IRGC’s Quds Force “also leverages East African smuggling networks to resupply the [Houthis] in Yemen with lethal aid.”
The Houthis are now armed with several weapons systems, including ballistic and cruise missiles, that can reach a U.S. military base in Djibouti, according to Townsend. While the Houthis have not fired on the base due to fears about a U.S. response, this situation could change in the future.
“If the [Houthis’] calculus were to change, such as during a potential future conflict between the U.S. and Iran, U.S. forces in East Africa would be under threat from an Iranian ally who could attack with little to no warning,” Townsend said.
Ernst’s bill seeks to prevent Iran from using cash it gets from the nuclear deal to fund these assassination plots. The legislation would effectively stop the administration from waiving sanctions until the State Department “can certify no assassination attempts or bounties are placed on current or former senior government officials for five years,” according to the bill.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Federal Reserve raised its target interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to a range of 3.00%-3.25% on Wednesday and signaled more large increases to come in new projections showing its policy rate rising to 4.40% by the end of this year before topping out at 4.60% in 2023 to battle continued strong inflation.
The U.S. central bank’s quarterly economic projections, meanwhile, showed the economy slowing to a crawl in 2022, with year-end growth at 0.2%, rising to 1.2% in 2023, well below the economy’s potential. The unemployment rate, currently at 3.7%, is projected to rise to 3.8% this year and to 4.4% in 2023. Inflation is seen slowly returning to the Fed’s 2% target in 2025.
Rate cuts are not foreseen until 2024.
U.S. stocks pared gains following the release of the policy statement while the dollar hit a fresh two-decade against a basket of currencies. In the U.S. Treasury market, which plays a key role in the transmission of Fed policy decisions into the real economy, yields on the 2-year note reached their highest levels since 2007. The yield on the 10-year note also rose to a level not seen since 2011.
The federal funds rate projected for the end of this year signals another 1.25 percentage points in rate hikes to come in the Fed’s two remaining policy meetings in 2022, a level that implies another 75-basis-point increase in the offing.
“The committee is strongly committed to returning inflation to its 2% objective,” the Fed said in a statement announcing its third consecutive 75-basis-point hike, which is considerably higher than the quarter-percentage-point increases typical of the U.S. central bank.
The Fed “anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate,” the statement from its policymaking Federal Open Market Committee said, repeating language from its previous statement in July.
The updated projections point to an extended Fed battle to quell the highest bout of inflation since the 1980s, and one that potentially pushes the economy at least to the borderline of a recession.
The Fed said that “recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production,” but the economy is still seen slowing to a near crawl this year, with year-end growth of just 0.2%.
“The Fed was late to recognize inflation, late to start raising interest rates, and late to start unwinding bond purchases. They’ve been playing catch-up ever since. And they’re not done yet,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.
The rise in the unemployment rate from 3.8% at the end of 2022 to 4.4% at the end of 2023, meanwhile, is above the half-percentage-point rise in unemployment that has been associated with past recessions.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT) to elaborate on the latest two-day policy meeting.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider. Additional reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir. Editing by Paul Simao)
State Police Benevolent Association says ‘a vote for Ted Budd is a vote for the men and women of law enforcement’
A top North Carolina law enforcement group that has thrice endorsed Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley is instead backing her Republican opponent, citing Beasley’s decision to campaign with “defund the police activists.”
The North Carolina Police Benevolent Association on Wednesday announced its endorsement of Republican Senate nominee Ted Budd. The decision comes as a rebuff of Beasley, who the association endorsed for statewide judicial runs in 2008, 2014, and 2020. When it comes to the Democrat’s Senate bid, however, association president David Rose took issue with Beasley’s decision to associate with “defund the police activists”—last year, Beasley authorized a joint fundraising committee with Missouri Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush, a self-described democratic socialist who says “defunding the police has to happen.”
“With violent crime on the rise in North Carolina, more than ever before, we need a senator who has our backs and not someone who is supported by Defund the Police activists,” Rose said in a Wednesday statement. “We endorse Ted Budd for U.S. Senate because he’s the best choice for NC.”
Beasley, whose campaign did not return a request for comment, has faced criticism on her public safety record as a judge. As a state Supreme Court justice, for example, the Democrat voted to vacate a career criminal’s habitual felon status after the man was caught with a “weapon of mass death,” a decision that would have given the felon a lighter sentence. Beasley has worked to sidestep that criticism by pledging to fund police and work with Republicans on crime, a pledge the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association does not appear to have bought.
Budd is also backed by the National Border Patrol Council and the North Carolina Troopers Association, which also endorsed Beasley in the past. The Republican touted the Police Benevolent Association’s endorsement Wednesday, saying he is “proud to stand with the NCPBA and law enforcement officers across North Carolina who protect and serve our communities.”
“North Carolina law enforcement officers are on the front lines of keeping our communities safe every day, and I am honored the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association has endorsed me,” Budd said in a statement. “If our citizens don’t feel safe, our communities suffer across the board.”
Meanwhile, DHS reports a record 2.5 million immigrant encounters in 2022
The unanticipated arrival of 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the elite liberal vacation hotspot and site of former president Barack Obama’s $12 million mansion, forced the mainstream media to talk about the humanitarian crisis on the U.S. southern border. While most professional pundits were outraged that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) would dare to defile their favorite island getaway—which apparently lacks the infrastructure to support an extra 50 people—the Department of Homeland Security reported a record 2.5 million immigration encounters on the southern border for fiscal year 2022.
The immigration crisis persists despite the Biden administration’s repeated efforts to ensure the American people that our southern border is secure. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has on several occasions burst out laughing when asked about the border situation, keeps insisting that everything is under control. “We have a secure border,” she told NBC’s Chuck Todd last week. “The border is secure.” President Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has repeatedly claimed the administration is doing everything in its power to stop the influx of illegal immigration. These dubious statements have been dutifully echoed by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Alas, Democratic administrations have a history of repeating falsehoods for political gain. Just ask anyone who was duped into believing former president Barack Obama’s promise that everyone would be able to keep their doctors under the Obamacare regime.
The Biden family was selling U.S natural gas to China long before Joe Biden became president, who was aware of how his son Hunter Biden was making the sale possible, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, citing documents and information provided by a whistleblower.
Hunter Biden had a Chinese Communist Party member as his assistant while dealing with the Chinese side for the shipping of American natural gas to China in 2017, and the Biden family was promising business associates that they would reap rewards once Biden became president, said Comer in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dated Sept. 20.
“The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President,” Comer wrote.
Joe Biden, Comer said, was a business partner in the arrangement and had office space to work on the deal, and a firm he managed received millions from his Chinese partners ahead of the anticipated venture.
While part of what Comer stated had previously been reported in the news, the letter, citing whistleblower testimonies, as well as emails, a corporate PowerPoint presentation, screenshot of encrypted messages, and bank documents that committee Republicans obtained, provides a more complete picture suggesting Biden’s knowledge and involvement in the plan from at least 2017.
From 2017 to 2021, the Bidens promised business associates that Joe Biden would run for president in 2020 and those who worked with them from 2017 onward would “reap the rewards in a future Biden administration,” according to Comer’s recount of a whistleblower testimony to Oversight Committee Republicans.
“As America now struggles in an energy crisis, it is critical to understand why the Biden family was selling American energy reserves to the Chinese, if that is affecting President Biden’s decision making today, and why President Biden has never disclosed his relationship with the Chinese to the American public,” Comer wrote to Yellen.
“If President Biden has worked to enrich not only himself but his family by promising, in exchange for millions of dollars, access or policy influence in a future Biden Administration, Congress and the American people are entitled to that information.”
‘Good for Both the United States and China’
Emails attached in the letter show that Hunter Biden was actively facilitating the natural gas deal with top executives from the now-defunct CEFC China Energy, at the time one of the largest energy firms in China.
In a November 2017 email to CEFC executive Dong Gongwen, Hunter told his partner he had sent information regarding liquified natural gas opportunities in Louisiana.
“We began to investigate the opportunities in United States well before the public announcement by the Chinese government of its interest in Natural Gas imports from around the world,” Hunter wrote. He offered the prospect of contracts for large quantities of liquified natural gas “at very competitive rates” in the short term, as well as the possibility of acquisition or partnership in a promising natural gas project in Louisiana that would advance CEFC’s long term goals.
Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, attends an event at the White House in Washington on April 18, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“The proposal I have shared with you has the added benefit of being good for both the United States and China simultaneously,” he added.
According to the letter, Hunter’s Chinese assistant, Bao Jiaqi, who previously worked as the research assistant at China’s macroeconomic management agency National Development and Reform Commission, sent him a detailed presentation containing political and topography maps, along with Chinese annotations, carving up America based on natural gas reserves. The 30-page presentation made particular emphasis on Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
The emails that accompanied the slides revealed a plan to advance a natural gas sale to China through Hudson West III LLC, a company set up by Hunter and CEFC officials, according to the letter.
Joe Biden’s Alleged Role
By one whistleblower’s account, Joe Biden was an “obfuscated partner” in the transactions with the Chinese, and his son would hold 10 percent of the joint venture to hide his involvement, according to Comer’s letter. The same information was previously confirmed by former business associate Tony Bobulinski to The Epoch Times.
“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when [you] are face to face, I know [you] know that but they are paranoid,” an associate for Hunter told another partner on May 20, 2017, in a WhatsApp conversation, a screenshot of which was attached in the letter.
“Ok they should be paranoid about things,” the other replied.
In what Comer speculated to be a “mistake” on Hunter’s part, Hunter wrote in a September 2017 email requesting to “have keys made available for new office mates,” who he identified to be the senior Biden, Jill Biden, and the President’s brother, Jim. Hunter gave his father and uncle’s personal cell phone number in case the recipient needed to call for confirmation.
Joe Biden (L) waves alongside his son Hunter Biden after attending mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Cecilia Browning, the general manager of the office building, responded the same day to Hunter’s request. “We are very excited and honored to welcome your new colleagues!” she wrote, according to a copy of the email from Hunter’s alleged laptop.
The White House has maintained that Hunter and the president “were not office mates.” The senior Biden has said that he’s never discussed Hunter’s business with his son. The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Hunter’s lawyer for additional comment regarding Comer’s letter.
During a recent interview on “60 Minutes,” the president was asked if Hunter’s dealings have caused conflicts for him or the United States. The senior Biden answered in the negative.
“There’s not a single thing that I’ve observed at all that would affect me or the United States relative to my son Hunter,” he said.
Democrats, on the same day Comer sent out the letter, voted down a resolution the Republican lawmaker proposed to have the president hand over documents relating to the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbottrevealed that more than 11,000 illegal immigrants have been bused to the cities of New York, Chicago, and Washington this year.
Abbott, a Republican, wrote on Twitter that his busing strategy provides “much-needed relief to overwhelmed border communities” and has transported 8,100 illegal aliens to Washington, 2,600 to New York, and 675 to Chicago.
Chicago received another busload filled with illegal immigrants on Sept. 20, officials confirmed to local media outlets. A total of 74 new arrivals were transported to Chicago from Texas in the latest round.
And last week, Abbott sent buses of illegal aliens to the Washington home of Vice President Kamala Harris. The vice president has yet to issue a public response to the drop-off.
The announcement comes as New York Mayor Eric Adams told CNN that about a half-dozen buses filled with illegal aliens arrived in the city on Sept. 17 and 18. Noting that those individuals were transported from Texas, Adams again criticized Abbott’s program and threatened unspecified legal action.
On Sept. 18, Adams told the network that his “legal team is looking at what legal challenges we could do with Texas.”
“We believe there’s some options we have because when you involuntarily place someone on a bus, we believe that actually skates the law,” he said.
DeSantis Office Responds to Suit
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office responded to a lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants who were transported to Martha’s Vineyard, saying that they voluntarily went on the flight and signed a consent form.
The lawsuit (pdf) was filed by a pro-migration organization on behalf of three individuals and alleged that DeSantis engaged in a “fraudulent” and “illegal” scheme to coerce the illegal immigrants to board the flight.
“The transportation of the immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard was done on a voluntary basis. The immigrants were homeless, hungry, and abandoned … and these activists didn’t care about them then,” DeSantis’s office said in a statement to media outlets this week.
Activists are using these illegal immigrants for “political theatre,” and if they “spent even a fraction of this time and effort at the border, perhaps some accountability would be brought to the Biden administration’s reckless border policies,” according to the statement.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also criticized the suit and noted that those individuals “came into this country illegally” and are now using U.S. laws “to sue an elected governor, to sue a state.”
“Just think about that. They just got here. They’re not even here legally,” Rubio told Fox News on Sept. 20. “They didn’t enter the country the proper way. And they’re immediately in court demanding rights and claims under our laws. This is outrageous.”
According to the suit, the illegal migrants were allegedly coerced to board the planes relocating them from Texas with allegedly false promises of housing, work, schooling, and other aid.
Last week, about 50 illegal aliens who reportedly originated from Venezuela were sent to Martha’s Vineyard, a Massachusetts island that’s popular with wealthy Democrat elites. Hours later, the governor of the state activated the National Guard and transported them to a military base on Cape Cod.
DeSantis, a Republican, said the move was designed to highlight what he says is an ongoing and escalating crisis along the U.S.–Mexico border and to say that Florida isn’t a sanctuary state.
A group of healthcare professionals have sued Pfizer Inc for running a discriminatory fellowship program that excludes white and Asian applicants.
The group, Do No Harm, filed a complaint on September 12th in Manhattan federal court targeting the pharmaceutical giant’s Breakthrough Fellowship Program. The COVID-19 vaccine maker’s program was labeled “discriminatory on its face” by the group because only Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans can apply.
Run out of New York, the fellowship program is part of the company’s broader, nine-year commitment to boost minority representation, aiming to enroll 100 fellows in the program by 2025. Participants receive a guaranteed two-year full-time job after graduating from college, fully-subsidized master’s degrees, and employment at Pfizer after completing the program.
In contrast, Do No Harm describes itself as a group seeking to advocate against “radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology” in healthcare. “Racial discrimination demeans us,” and Pfizer’s “open exclusion of white and Asian-American applicants is illegal,” the complaint said, citing the opinions of two conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.
The lawsuit seeks injunctions barring the pharmaceutical giant from making race a relevant factor in obtaining fellowships and preventing it from filling the 2023 class under current eligibility rules. Do No Harm also seeks $1 in nominal damages.
As explained in the lawsuit, the group believes Pfizer’s program violates federal, New York state, and New York City civil rights law in addition to the federal ban on racial discrimination that applies to companies accepting reimbursements from government healthcare programs.
In a statement, Pfizer admitted it had not reviewed the lawsuit, but had “every confidence” that the fellowship program complied with all U.S. employment laws.
“We will continue to strive to create more opportunity, including through specific programs designed to cast a wide net for talent,” it added.
The lawsuit follows intense scrutiny over Pfizer’s role in COVID-19 vaccine mandates across the U.S. in addition to controversy over the efficacy of its vaccines.
A grand jury subpoena, one of dozens served in recent weeks, indicates that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is conducting a criminal investigation into activities questioning the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, including the appointments of alternate slates of electors and disputing the veracity of election results.
The subpoena dated Sept. 6, which was first obtained by Red State, orders recipients to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington. They also must submit all communications related to post-election challenges, including theories of election fraud, whether then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to change the election outcome, and “any strategies or options for ensuring the certification of Donald J. Trump as the victor of the 2020 Presidential Election.”
The widespread issuing of subpoenas suggests the DOJ is ramping up investigations focused on the former president and his allies just two months ahead of the midterm elections.
The DOJ, according to the subpoena, is interested in documents and communications with a range from Trump’s top advisers to state electors, local officials, and dozens more individuals in seven contested states where Trump and supporters have cast doubt on the election outcome. One line of inquiry relates to the Save America PAC, the main political fundraising channel used by Trump and created shortly after the election, which didn’t return a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
Another focus of the DOJ appears to be the question of so-called alternate electors. In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican electors in the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico cast dueling votes for Trump, while the certified electors in the same states voted for Joe Biden. Those involved in the efforts have publicly stated that they did so because of the disputes surrounding the election.
Chilling Effect
Along with the ongoing probe into the alleged mishandling of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and a House committee’s inquiry over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, the DOJ investigation into efforts to dispute the 2020 election results appears to be having a chilling effect on Trump allies and supporters.
Few people who were named as part of the subpoena’s request for documents were willing to comment about the issue when contacted by The Epoch Times. The ones who did comment mostly hadn’t received a subpoena themselves, although some indicated they had caught wind of it.
“I have no comments, and no opinion,” Ash Khare, a member of the Warren County Republican Committee in Pennsylvania, who signed a form certifying the state’s 2020 results for Trump, told The Epoch Times when asked about the inclusion of his name in the subpoena.
One of the most prominent attorneys named is Sidney Powell, who briefly served as counsel to Trump after the 2020 election and later filed lawsuits independently alleging election fraud.
Powell told The Epoch Times that she wasn’t previously aware of a subpoena naming her and noted that a Georgia subpoena to her was recently withdrawn. Alongside the federal probe, a grand jury in Georgia also is investigating alleged efforts by Trump and his allies to dispute that state’s election results.
Conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who aided Trump’s post-election challenge efforts, also is listed in the subpoena’s records request. The attorney said she hasn’t received a subpoena.
“I noticed that I am a ‘search term.’ But that’s all I know,” Mitchell, chair of the Indiana-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times. She added that she has provided the Jan. 6 Committee with “all responsive, non-privileged documents,” and “if the DOJ serves my attorney a document subpoena, we would respond to it in the same manner as with the J6 Committee: We will provide all responsive, non-privileged documents.”
A sign for the Department of Justice hangs in the press briefing room at the Justice Department in Washington, on April 18, 2019. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)
‘Fishing Expedition’
Attorney Timothy Parlatore, whose client, former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, was named in the subpoena, said that he isn’t worried about the DOJ.
“It very much struck me as a complete fishing expedition,” Parlatore told The Epoch Times. “Usually, the DOJ is a lot more targeted with their subpoenas.”
“It’s definitely looking much more like a spray and pray,” he said. “Ask for everything under the sun, and maybe you get lucky that you might actually have something with one or two of these points.”
Given the timing, he said, the subpoenas are likely an effort to influence the midterm elections in which Republicans are seeking a reset in power dynamics.
Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik enters the courthouse for a pre-trial hearing in White Plains, N.Y. on Oct. 20, 2009. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Lauren Bowman Bis, a spokeswoman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, noted that the subpoena “includes documents constituting any evidence that there was fraud of any kind in the 2020 election.”
“This is a blatant overreach and will have the chilling effect to stop people from reporting election crimes,” she told The Epoch Times. “This subpoena is proof of what we already knew, the DOJ is full of partisan bureaucrats.”
‘Entire Trump Campaign’ Targeted
Bruce Marks, a former Republican Pennsylvania state senator and lawyer who represented the Trump campaign in 2016, described the subpoena as “outrageous.”
“It looks like they’re investigating the entire Trump campaign,” Marks, also named in the subpoena, told The Epoch Times.
“It’s a retaliatory, politically motivated attack,” he said. “What they’re doing is subpoenaing people who don’t have the resources to fight these subpoenas, and they’re using that as a backhanded way of getting the communications of the campaign, and it’s wrong.”
Marks asserted that the Trump campaign was following the playbook that took place in the 1960 presidential election, when the governor of Hawaii certified electors for Republican Richard Nixon while Democratic electors cast votes for Democrat John F. Kennedy, the ultimate winner following a subsequent recount that determined Kennedy had secured more votes in the state.
“Nothing was hidden. It was sent to the National Archives. It was sent to Congress. It was all done above board,” he said.
Marks, who led the election integrity challenge in 2020 in his home state, insisted that “there’s no basis whatsoever to think that I was involved in anything that was that was wrong.”
“I’m one of the few people who’s actually proven election fraud in the United States, let alone in my own case,” he said.
In 1993, the then-36-year-old Marks initially appeared to have lost a Pennsylvania Senate race, but emerged as the winner after a federal judge found his opponent, William G. Stinson, had engaged in election fraud through “numerous illegally obtained absentee ballots.”
He believes the subpoenas are a violation of attorney-client privilege and First Amendment rights, which protect the freedom to associate for political purposes. The disclosure of such communications will also make Republicans’ campaign strategies public, in turn, helping the Democrats in elections, he alleged.
A string of phone seizures from Trump lawyers and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) by the FBI have also been unsettling, Marks said.
Having lived in Moscow during the Soviet Union and later founded a law firm there in 1998, he said he had seen “the impact of not having a fair and free political system.”
“And it scares me that this is now happening in the United States.”
Officials at the Justice Department didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed on the federal Head Start program was struck down on Sept. 21 by a U.S. judge who said the mandate is clearly outside the power of the agency that promulgated and enforced it.
“The Court finds the Agency Defendants have exceeded their authority by implementing the Head Start Mandate because Congress only gave Agency Defendants the power to ‘modify’ Head Start performance standards. The Head Start Mandate is not a modification,” U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said in a 27-page ruling.
Federal law says the government can impose standards on Head Start, a program for young children in low-income families who aren’t yet attending school, related to administrative and financial management standards, standards relating to the condition and location of facilities, and other standards the secretary of health finds appropriate.
Defendants, including Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, had claimed that the law enabled the imposition of the dual mask–vaccine mandate, but Doughty said they were wrong.
“There is nothing in 42 U.S.C. [Section] 9836a which would allow Agency Defendants to make medical decisions for employees and volunteers, and/or to require two (2), three (3), and four (4), year-old students to wear masks the majority of the day,” he said. “There is a disconnect between the Agency’s challenged actions and its assigned mission and expertise. Agency Defendants’ expertise is not making medical decisions for its students, volunteers, or employees.”
Doughty took the unusual step of permanently striking down the mandate. That means it is no longer in place unless an appeals court or the Supreme Court steps in.
The permanent injunction is in place for 24 states, all of which sued the Biden administration over the mandate in December 2021.
The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law and for health care freedom,” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, said in a statement. “We stood up and fought the Biden administration’s illegal mandates on behalf of Kansas kids, teachers, and parents, and today, we all won.”
“Louisiana teacher Sandy Brick has been serving her students through adversity and uncertainty the last two years. Today, this decision vindicates her right to teach without sacrificing her freedom,” added Sarah Harbison, general counsel at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy.
Brick is a Head Start employee in Louisiana who filed a suit that was merged with the suit filed by the attorneys general of the 24 states.
The Department of Health and the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees Head Start, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Biden administration announced this week that it would soon rescind the Head Start mask mandate, which is in place for all workers and children aged 2 and older, but would keep the vaccine mandate, which applies to all workers and many contractors and volunteers, in place.
Even residents of Martha’s Vineyard are admitting that President Joe Biden is to blame for the influx of asylum seekers, not Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Two residents of the resort community backed the message behind DeSantis’ move to fly migrants to their community, speaking with Fox News’ Sara Carter this week.
The views of the Vineyard residents were broadcast on Monday’s “Hannity.”
Area resident Jim Joyce compared the community’s experience with fifty migrants to that of Texas — where hundreds or even thousands of migrants infiltrate the international border with Mexico every day.
“How do you think the people in Texas feel, that are getting thousands of them coming in a day, and we had a little taste of it with 50?”
“[I] think what he [DeSantis] did was a… great statement for the country, to get the conversation out there.”
Another Vineyard local named Elizabeth Bostrom praised DeSantis and sharply criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ performance as federal “border czar.“
“It’s really a joke, and everyone knows it,” Bostrom said of Harris’ job performance.
Is it too late for Biden to remedy the border situation?Yes No
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It’s not exactly easy to find conservatives or Republicans on Martha’s Vineyard.
Every town on the island voted decisively for Biden in the 2020 election, according to The Vineyard Gazette.
However, at least a few residents seem to realize that Biden’s refusal to enforce federal immigration law and deport illegal immigrants is the issue at hand — not DeSantis‘ bid to subject limousine liberals to a taste of their own medicine.
After Vineyard residents arranged a few photo ops with the asylum seekers, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker arranged for the state’s National Guard to move the migrants away from the island to a military base in Cape Cod.
This is AMAZING!
“Te amo!” They yelled while shipping the illegal immigrants off Martha’s Vineyard within 44 hours. pic.twitter.com/AtiHGfw2ts
Law enforcement has processed more migrants at the southern border than any other year in American history, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
Total migrant encounters for fiscal year 2022 surpassed two million in August, with the month of September yet to be counted.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said Tuesday that Americans are wise to the deception practiced by President Joe Biden on the subject of illegal immigration at the southern border.
“Biden talks a lot about democracy, as he should,” Kennedy said during an appearance on “The Faulkner Focus,” according to Fox News.
“Democracy depends on the mutual acceptance of the rules, norms and institutions. Biden’s southern border policy has undermined that principle. He has completely opened the southern border, and he has looked the American people in the eye, and he has lied and said the border’s closed,” Kennedy said.
Democracy depends on everyone accepting rules and norms.
Customs and Border Protection has said that through August, there were 2,150,639 encounters along the southern border. With one month to go in the federal fiscal year, the number of encounters had already far surpassed the 1,734,686 recorded in the 2021 federal fiscal year.
When CBS dug into those numbers, it found that there are changes taking place in the nationalities of the illegal immigrants streaming across the border.
More than 25,000 Venezuelans were taken into custody in August, which was a record for illegal immigrants from the South American nation. The high tide also made Venezuela the second-ranking nation behind Mexico in terms of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S.
CBS noted that when taken together, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua made up over one-third of those arrested.
Kennedy said Americans do not “have a low tolerance for morons.”
Should Biden be impeached for choosing not to secure the border?Yes No
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“They don’t like being treated like a moron. They don’t like the president lying to them, and when they call the president out, they don’t like the president calling them Nazis and racists,” he said
Kennedy said Americans should not be slammed as anti-immigrant.
“Most Americans support legal immigration,” he said, noting that “the whole world wants to come here.”
“When is the last time you saw somebody trying to sneak into China? They want to come to America, and Americans support that,” he said, noting that more than 1 million people become citizens every year.
Kennedy said Americans know the difference between right and wrong.
“The American people feel that illegal immigration is illegal. I mean, ‘Duh,’” he said.
He said fearing for the nation’s safety is not evidence of bias.
“The American people look at the southern border like they look at their home,” he said.
“Most Americans lock their front door at night,” Kennedy said. “They don’t lock their front door at night because they hate everybody on the outside. They lock their front door at night because they love people on the inside, and they want to know who’s coming in and out of their house, and that’s the way most Americans look at the southern border.”
For the first time ever, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border reached two million in one fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported Monday.
Undocumented immigrants are flooding the country at a historic pace this fiscal year, which ends on September 30. Border Patrol recorded 2,005,026 arrests since last October. Of those arrests, 78 were of individuals on the FBI’s terror watchlist, triple the number detained in the previous five years combined, Fox News reported. With a record 8,000 migrants encountered at the border every day, the White House faces growing criticism for its handling of the border crisis.
“We take what’s happening at the southern border very seriously, unlike some,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) said in a speech last Thursday, “and unlike the president of the United States, who has refused to lift a finger to secure that border.”
In recent months, DeSantis as well as the governors of Texas and Arizona have transported migrants to liberal cities whose leaders endorse lax immigration policies, bringing more attention to the crisis facing border cities.
Despite the record migrants at the border, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has defended the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis. She claims they have taken “unprecedented action” at the southern border, including new border technology and anti-smuggling task forces. Biden administration officials emphasized on Monday that more immigrants have been removed or expelled this year than any previous year. Just last year, however, the Biden administration’s policies led to the lowest deportation rate in decades, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Migrants are not just coming from Mexico and Central America, CBP reported.
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” said CBP commissioner Chris Magnus in a press release Monday.
A sheriff’s captain on Monday denied that he endorsed Democratic Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes and asked the campaign to remove his name from the sparse list of law enforcement endorsements that Barnes released last week.
Barnes’s campaign took responsibility for the mistake, telling the Washington Free Beacon that La Crosse County sheriff’s captain John Siegel’s name was included on the list due to a “clerical error from our staff.”
The endorsement blunder comes as Barnes has been fighting perceptions that he is anti-police, and as his opponent, Republican senator Ron Johnson, has been drawing support from law enforcement groups like the National Border Patrol Council. The lack of endorsements indicates that the law enforcement community has concerns about Barnes’s far-left positions on crime and his work with “defund the police” activist groups.
Barnes released a list of nine current or retired law enforcement officers who publicly support him last week, which included just two who are actively serving.
But Siegel, one of those two active officers, claims he never endorsed Barnes and has reportedly been scrambling to get his name removed from the list.
“I have not endorsed anybody. I spent most of my day Friday trying to get a hold of people asking how did this happen,” Siegel toldWisconsin Right Now.
A spokeswoman for Barnes confirmed the error in a statement.
“As Captain Siegel said, due to a clerical error from our staff, there was a mistake in our initial list,” the Barnes campaign told the Free Beacon. “The error has been corrected on our website. The Lt. Governor is proud to be endorsed by a coalition of over a dozen members of law enforcement across the state including the Sheriffs of Rock County and Green County.”
Racine County deputy sheriff Malik Frazier, the only other active-duty law enforcement officer included in Barnes’s endorsement announcement on Friday, was also removed from an updated list without explanation. The Racine sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Free Beacon.
Knudson’s secretary said the sheriff is out of the office today and unable to confirm or comment on the endorsement.
Barnes’s campaign announced additional endorsements on Monday, bringing his list of active-duty law enforcement supporters back up to two. One is the outgoing Rock County sheriff Troy Knudson, who is retiring this year, and the other is Green County sheriff Jeff Skatrud. Skatrud did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reuters)—Federal prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled criminal charges against 47 people they accuse of stealing about $250 million from a federal aid program meant to help feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that the scheme, which centered on the Minnesota non-profit organization Feeding Our Future, is the largest fraud linked to pandemic relief programs yet uncovered. Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock, 41, is among those charged.
“This was a brazen scheme of staggering proportions,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger for the District of Minnesota said in a statement. “These defendants exploited a program designed to provide nutritious food to needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Feeding Our Future could not immediately be reached for comment. Kenneth Udoibok, a lawyer for Bock, said his client “did nothing worthy of indictment.”
The alleged scheme was tied to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Child Nutrition Program aimed at feeding needy children. The program, which was expanded during the pandemic, allows private restaurants to run federally funded food distribution sites, as long as they are sponsored by a non-profit organization.
Prosecutors said restaurant owners and others paid bribes to Feeding Our Future employees to get the organization to sponsor sham distribution sites. The participants then spent federal funds intended for the sites on personal purchases, including luxury cars, real estate and jewelry, according to prosecutors.
Defendants created dozens of shell companies to run the fake distribution sites and to launder the proceeds of the scheme, prosecutors said. They face charges, including wire fraud, money laundering and bribery.
The Justice Department has been pursuing fraud related to pandemic relief programs aggressively. In March, the agency said it had brought over 1,000 criminal cases involving losses of $1.1 billion, and charged more than 1,800 individuals and businesses in civil litigation alleging fraud in more than $6 billion worth of loans.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Alexia Garamfalvi)
On the congressional campaign trail, Max Rose (D., N.Y.) says he’ll be a champion for tough-on-crime policies as his district suffers from a spike in homicides and assaults. That’s a stark contrast from when he was in office just two years ago, when he promised left-wing advocacy groups he would push for criminal justice reform measures.
Rose’s latest ad, in which he says he’ll “fix the things we worry about every single day,” such as New York’s lenient bail laws, was met with mockery from a range of police union representatives.
“It’s election time and Max Rose took his fingers out of his ears to check which way the wind is blowing,” the Detectives’ Endowment Association tweeted.
The latest ad highlights difficulties Democratic candidates face amid a national crime wave after trying to appease the most radical members of their party. Many Democrats, such as Rose, embraced left-wing criminal justice reforms following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, despite riots breaking out across the country.
Rose previously supported measures including the elimination of bail for a number of offenses, including violent felonies, as well as the decriminalization of minor offenses. Various law enforcement organizations in his district, which is situated in Staten Island, aren’t buying Rose’s new position.
The Rose campaign says the former congressman has “been consistent on this issue from day 1.”
“Max knows there needs to be a dangerousness standard to keep New Yorkers safe and that’s why he opposed the law that was enacted,” his campaign told the Free Beacon.
Even before Floyd’s death, however, New York Democrats targeted cash bail. In 2018, Rose went on the record in a candidate questionnaire for the left-wing Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn and stated that he supports “efforts to enact criminal justice reform and end mass incarceration, including … bail reform.”
The New York City Police Benevolent Association hasn’t forgotten about that. Its president, Pat Lynch, blasted Rose for supporting criminal justice reforms and asked where he was “in 2018 and 2019,” when law enforcement expressed concerns.
Rose lost his reelection race to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020. Following his defeat, Rose acknowledged that his support for Black Lives Matter was likely the culprit.
“‘Max Rose marched with the defund crowd. Max Rose marched with them. You marched with those looters,'” he said at the time. “‘You marched with BLM,’ to which end, there’s actually video of this to which I respond, yeah you caught me. What are you going to do? I thought it my responsibility—in fact, my obligation—as their congressperson. I don’t regret it for a second. I would do it again.”
But cops in his district haven’t forgotten. Earlier this month, the Sergeants Benevolent Association released a letter slamming Rose’s new positions on crime.
“The entire time Rose was in office, as well as the last two years when he was on the outside looking in, he NEVER ONCE reached out to men and women of law enforcement,” the group wrote.
Rose will face Malliotakis again in November, although he is considered a longshot. A poll released in July found Malliotakis leading by 15 points.
‘”Biological boy” is a term anti-trans activists often use to disregard and discredit transgender girls,’ says Seattle-area Lynnwood High School
A public high school in Washington State is instructing teachers to avoid the terms “biologically male” and “biologically female” in the classroom, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Ari Dodge Sheehan, the counseling secretary for the Seattle-area Lynnwood High School, in March sent an employee-wide email to promote “Transgender Visibility Day” and provide guidelines on how to work with transgender students. The message included a section on “terms to avoid” that listed “born a man,” “born a woman,” “biologically male,” “biologically female,” “biological boy,” “biological girl,” “genetically male,” and “genetically female.”
“Phrases like those above oversimplify a complex subject and are often used by anti-transgender activists to inaccurately imply that a trans person is not who they say they are,” Sheehan wrote in the email, which was obtained through a public information request. “‘Biological boy’ is a term anti-trans activists often use to disregard and discredit transgender girls and deny them access to society as their authentic gender identity. … A person’s biology does not determine a person’s gender identity.”
Facing parental backlash, public school districts around the country have privately pushed radical gender curricula and policies on students, according to a series of internal documents obtained by the Free Beacon. A Texas school district, for example, directed its teachers to take paid time off to take a course on “how to create supportive learning environments for LGBTQIA+” students as young as five years old. Nebraska secretlytapped a Planned Parenthood activist to help draft its sex education standards, which included lesson plans on transgender hormone therapy for children as young as 10 years old. The Maine Department of Education, meanwhile, cited George Floyd’s death in internal communications to justify its Biden-funded sex education lesson that taught transgenderism to kindergartners.
Sheehan sent the email the same month the Biden administration declared that transgender hormone treatments are “lifesaving health care” for children and threatened to take legal action against states that ban access to these drugs for minors. A White House and Department of Health and Human Services statement in honor of “Transgender Day of Visibility” this year cited a study from the Trevor Project, which is funded by a hormone-drug manufacturer, the Free Beaconreported.
Harmony Weinberg, the communications manager for Lynnwood High School’s Edmonds School District, said the school “prioritizes students by creating a sense of belonging.”
“We want to stress that our students are the reason behind everything we do,” Weinberg told the Free Beacon. She did not respond to a request for comment on whether the phrase ban is official district policy.
Sheehan’s email also encouraged teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns and names. To do otherwise, Sheehan claimed, would be a harmful tactic called “deadnaming.” She claimed transgender students often feel safer in school than at home.
“Here in the Edmonds School District we support the students and allow them to change their name and pronouns to match their gender identity,” Sheehan wrote. “Oftentimes school is the only place that trans students feel safe enough to be their authentic selves.”
In other emails, the school district cited research from the Trevor Project, an organization that advocates for transgender hormone therapy for children.
This is not Edmonds School District’s first controversy involving gender identity. First-graders in the district in March were allegedly given a worksheet that outlined how gender can be “girl,” “boy,” or “neither or both.” The worksheet also included an activity for students to “create a snowperson that is an example of how you identify yourself.”
Some Republican governors have pushed back against the White House’s promotion of transgender identity among children. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R., Va.) in September directed his state’s schools to recognize transgender students only if their parents approve. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R., Fla.) health department dismissed the White House’s endorsement of hormone treatment for minors as “injecting political ideology into the health of our children.” DeSantis also successfully pushed to ban lessons on gender identity in his state’s public schools between kindergarten and third grade.
Blue state turns on progressive AG as crime spikes
Minnesota voters want to oust Democratic attorney general Keith Ellison, according to a new poll, a sign that the blue state is souring on the “defund the police” movement.
Voters favor Ellison’s Republican challenger Jim Schultz by more than 3 points, a Trafalgar Group poll released last week found. Ellison, a former deputy Democratic National Committee chairman, has stoked anti-cop sentiment since taking office in 2019. If elected, Schultz would be Minnesota’s first Republican attorney general since 1967.
Schultz’s lead could signal voters’ frustration with Ellison’s soft-on-crime policies. Murders reached an all-time high in Minnesota last year, and violent crime is up more than 20 percent. Ellison has backed a plan to abolish Minneapolis’s police department and blamed cops for damage rioters caused after the killing of George Floyd.
The Minneapolis City Council voted to defund its police department by $8 million in December 2020.
When asked whether the poll’s results were a referendum on Ellison’s approach, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office told the Washington Free Beacon the question was “inappropriate” and should be directed to Ellison’s campaign. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trafalgar Group poll also found around 54 percent of likely voters in Minnesota disapprove of how Joe Biden is “handling his job as president.”
The leader of the nonpartisan Ohio Debate Commission tasked with scheduling the debates between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates over the years, including at least one donation to Ryan himself.
The commission’s executive director Jill Miller Zimon gave over $13,000 to Democrats between 2006 and 2018, including a $250 check to Ryan in 2014, according to the Federal Election Commission database. Other recipients include Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the Ohio Democratic Party.
The debate commission was established in 2018 to ensure “fair and substantive debates,” but Zimon’s partisan background is causing problems, as there are no debates on the schedule and the Vance campaign says it can’t trust the commission to provide a fair debate. Zimon has also run for office as a Democrat and was on the board for a local branch of Planned Parenthood.
“This so-called nonpartisan organization is led by someone who is a financial backer of our opponent and even gave money to Ohio Democrats the year she was hired to run the commission,” a spokesman for Vance told the Washington Free Beacon. “Mrs. Zimon’s one-sided donor history makes clear that this entire ‘debate commission’ is a sham, as if her seat on the board of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio and her multiple failed campaigns as a Democrat weren’t enough.”
The donations are part of a broader trend by self-described nonpartisan debate commissions being staffed by partisan Democrats. A Georgia Senate debate, for example, was organized by a donor to President Joe Biden and Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.). The disclosure of those donations prompted Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R., Ga.) to pull out of that scheduled debate. Similar conflicts of interest led the Republican National Committee to withdraw earlier this year from participating in all future debates held by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The Ohio Debate Commission did not respond to a request for comment.
Zimon’s largest donations went to Brown, totaling $5,760. Zimon also donated $3,000 to a Democratic Party-connected political action committee, the Ohio Grassroots Victory Fund, from 2017 to 2018. The Ohio Grassroots Victory Fund states it is working to “win up and down the ballot in … 2022, and 2024.”
Among her most recent donations is $600 to the Ohio Democratic Party in March 2018.
Zimon’s financial support extends to Democratic presidential candidates as well. From 2015 to 2016, Zimon gave $1,700 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and associated PACs. In 2012, Zimon gave $260 to then-president Barack Obama’s reelection campaign.
Fox News reported on Tuesday that Zimon twice ran unsuccessfully for the Ohio State House on the Democratic ballot in 2014 and 2016. During her campaigns, Zimon was endorsed by several left-wing activist groups, including Progressive Majority, Planned Parenthood, and EMILY’s List.
Zimon works on the board of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, according to Fox News. For years, Zimon has been a vocal critic about the Republican Party’s position on abortion.
In 2011, Zimon tweeted that Republican opposition to abortion amounts to holding “uteruses hostage.” Two years later, she called a pro-life bill in Ohio “awful” and “unhealthy.”
A spokeswoman for Ryan did not respond to a request for comment.
Nation’s top early childhood development organization tells educators to ‘use tenets of Critical Race Theory’ when working with babies
The nation’s top early childhood development organization, which has received more than $230 million in federal funds since 2008, claims that children as young as two years old can show signs of “transgender identity” and encourages educators to “use tenets of Critical Race Theory” when they work with newborns.
The group, Zero to Three, promoted these controversial views during its virtual conference this month, which included educational sessions titled “What Does It Mean to Be Transgender and How Can You Support Kids Who Might Be?” and “Elevating Racial Equity in the First 1,000 Days: Protecting, Promoting, and Preserving the Health, Wealth, and Learning of Our Families and Babies.”
“This [presentation] addresses the development of gender identity, including how early the process begins (ages 2–3), and how parents and professionals can distinguish gender exploration with the emergence of a transgender identity,” reads one session description.
Zero to Three, which has 3,653 members who work in the field of early childhood development, has received $234.68 million in funds from the Department of Health and Human Services since 2008 and is slated to receive an additional $52 million by 2027, including a $4.2 million grant from the Biden administration set to begin this month. The group trained 89,222 professionals last year, according to its 2021 impact report.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Public and private schools have adopted controversial left-wing curriculums on gender and race in recent years, but Zero to Three’s advocacy on these issues represents one of the most high-profile attempts to promote these radical views in early childhood development. Parents often hire educators to assist in their child’s development as they prepare for grade school—a process that requires child specialists to “consider the role of race and identity” and view gender as a “social construct” from the “prenatal period onwards,” according to Zero to Three’s training sessions.
While Zero to Three says it is nonpartisan, it boasts heavy ties to the Democratic Party. The nonprofit, which has spent $1.92 million on lobbying since 2018, exclusively supported Democratic-backed legislation last year, including President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. The group is also backed by Democratic governor J. B. Pritzker’s (Ill.) foundation, the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, according to the group’s financial disclosures.
John King, the former secretary of education for the Obama administration, delivered the keynote address for the September conference, in which he commented on the “critical need to address equity issues” in early childhood education.
“Because when you think about it, educational equity is educational justice for our babies who are the most underserved,” King said.
Before King’s speech, the conference hosted a “Virtual Drag Bingo” for its “happy hour entertainment.”
Inspired by Monday’s sessions, here’s what’s top-of-mind for Conference attendees! A focus on authentic relationships, continually learning and practicing with an anti-racist lens. #LEARNwithZTTpic.twitter.com/I3Ud9TWChk
Zero to Three did not respond to a request for comment.
Zero to Three relies largely on government grants. The group’s latest tax form shows it raised $38 million in 2019—$21 million of which came from the government. The Washington Free Beaconreported last year that liberal advocacy groups that fund radical sex education curriculums for grades as early as kindergarten, including the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States and Advocates for Youth, are also bankrolled by HHS.
Aside from HHS, Zero to Three received $1.95 million from the Department of Justice during the Obama administration. The Department of Defense, through the Army, had two contracts with the group for nearly $10,000. The CDC and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meanwhile, sponsored the group’s conference in 2021.
The Department of Justice, Department of the Army, and CDC did not respond to requests for comment.
Zero to Three will host another conference in December that is in person.
“Join us to discover strategies for connecting with families through brave conversations—from developmentally typical issues like challenging behaviors to more sensitive topics like racism, family violence, gender identity, or issues related to immigration,” the conference description reads.
Chinese lithium giant Ganfeng’s role in Nevada mining project prompts concern that Dems’ green energy push benefits communist nation
Democratic governor Steve Sisolak is backing a foreign company’s plan to deliver America’s green energy future through a massive Nevada lithium mine. That company’s largest shareholder is a Chinese enterprise led by known Chinese Communist Party members, prompting concern that the project could ultimately benefit America’s top adversary.
Sisolak in September 2020 approved $8.5 million in tax abatements for Lithium Americas, a Canadian company that intends to mine tens of thousands of tons of lithium—the key component in electric vehicle batteries—from a site in northern Nevada. Another top Nevada Democrat, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, in 2019 met with the company’s executives and two years later persuaded her colleagues on the Hill to scrap legislation that would have imposed costly royalties on Lithium Americas and other hardrock miners.
Both Sisolak and Cortez Masto have argued that lithium mining in Nevada will accelerate America’s clean energy economy by securing a domestic supply chain for crucial minerals, a sector that China dominates. But those arguments ignore Lithium Americas’s largest shareholder—Chinese mineral giant Ganfeng, which holds a seat on Lithium Americas’s board and “may … be in a position to affect the company’s operations and direction,” according to Lithium Americas’s most recent annual report.
Ganfeng’s influence over Lithium Americas is prompting concern that Sisolak and Cortez Masto’s green energy push will prop up the Chinese Communist Party, particularly given Ganfeng’s extensive ties to Beijing. Ganfeng president Li Liangbin, for example, holds positions on an array of committees and advisory boards that feed into the Chinese Communist Party, and the company’s 2021 annual report describes board member Yu Jianguo as “a member of the Communist Party of China.” In addition, Ganfeng executive vice president Wang Xiaoshen—who serves on Lithium Americas’s board—”established himself in the lithium sector with China State-Owned Enterprises,” according to a 2011 press release.
China already controls roughly 60 percent of the world’s lithium resources thanks in part to Ganfeng. With the support of China’s state-owned banks, the company has acquired sizable stakes in lithium mining projects in Chile, Argentina, and Australia. Now, Ganfeng could extend its footprint into the United States for the first time, causing former secretary of state Mike Pompeo to express extreme alarm over the Chinese company’s significant stake in Lithium Americas and ties to China’s government. Should the project move forward, Pompeo argued, China would “get a foothold in America on lithium mining.”
“The United States government has a responsibility to look through this façade, this corporate entity that is fronting the Chinese Communist Party, and prevent them from moving forward,” Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon. “This is clearly an intention by the Chinese Communist Party to control the entire supply chain for green energy. They want a monopoly on lithium, and allowing them to do this by presenting themselves through a Canadian entity is dangerous. The United States Department of Treasury has the capacity to stop this from happening, and they should.”
Lithium Americas minimized its connection to China, telling the Free Beacon that while Ganfeng has direct ownership in a different Lithium Americas mine in Argentina, the company “owns 100 percent” of its Nevada project and remains “focused on selling to U.S.-focused customers to strengthen the domestic battery supply chain.” Still, Lithium Americas confirmed both Ganfeng’s 11.1 percent stake in the company and Wang’s role on the company’s board. Lithium Americas’s management and directors, by contrast, hold a 5.6 percent stake in the company, according to its September corporate presentation. No company or individual other than Ganfeng owns more than 10 percent of Lithium Americas’s shares, the company’s 2022 shareholders report states.
Neither Sisolak nor Cortez Masto returned requests for comment. Sisolak in September 2020 said he was “grateful” for Lithium Americas’s “major” investment in Nevada. Roughly two years later, in July, the Democrat said Nevada “is leading the way in clean energy” thanks to Lithium Americas’s work with the University of Nevada-Reno to “help identify and advance new processes for the electrification and battery industry.” Cortez Masto, meanwhile, is known as a “fierce critic of policy proposals that would create new rules around mining” and argued that President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which allocated $17 billion in loans to “support the domestic battery supply chain,” would “benefit national security by leveling the playing field with China.”
Now, China-tied companies such as Lithium Americas could tap into the loans. In April, the company announced its “submission of a formal loan application to the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Technologies Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program,” a funding source that Lithium Americas expects will cover “the majority” of “capital costs” stemming from its Nevada mine, which sits on the largest known reserve of lithium in the United States.
It’s unclear if the company’s connections to Beijing will deter its loan application. Ganfeng invested $174 million in Lithium Americas in 2017, and Li has acquired considerable political clout in China since the deal. A 2019 Foreign Policy report, for example, says Li in 2018 joined the Standing Committee of the 12th Political Consultative Conference of Jiangxi province. And in June, Li became an elected leader of the China Democratic Construction Association, a Chinese Communist Party front group that last week published a report pledging to adhere to Communist leadership and “unswervingly follow the party.”
Beyond Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill, Lithium Americas—and, by proxy, Ganfeng—has benefited from Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $370 billion in green energy. Lithium Americas CEO Jonathan Evans went in “full celebration mode” after Biden signed the law, which was “chock-full of mining industry benefits,” according to E&E News. “It’s a big deal. We’re delighted with it,” Evans said of the law in August. Just weeks later, Biden tapped John Podesta, who has encouraged Chinese investment in American infrastructure, to oversee the law’s hundreds of billions in climate spending.
Lithium Americas plans to yield a quarter of the world’s lithium demand from its Nevada mine, according to Real Clear Investigations. The company expects “early-works construction” at the mine to commence “later this year.”
When professor Jeffrey Lax reported pervasive discrimination against Jews, including harassment of Jewish faculty members like himself, the City University of New York placed the investigation in the lap of Saly Abd Alla, an official in the school’s discrimination office but hardly an ally of the Jewish people.
Abd Alla came to CUNY from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, where she worked as a civil rights director alongside officials who have promoted anti-Israel agitprop and defended Jew-hating terror groups including Hamas.
CUNY’s decision to appoint Abd Alla to the case has sparked fierce backlash in the pro-Israel community, with critics saying it is not possible for a former CAIR official to fairly adjudicate claims of anti-Semitism. The selection comes amid a rising tide of anti-Semitic incidents on America’s college campus, some of which has sparked unprecedented investigations by the Department of Education. This includes Jewish students allegedly being booted from a group for sexual assault survivors at the University of Vermont and similar incidents at the University of Southern California in which students were cyber bullied for publicly expressing their Jewish and pro-Israel identities.
Lax, a professor at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College, says in his complaint that CUNY’s leadership, including Kingsborough president Claudia Schrader, failed to act on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s recent confirmation of pervasive discrimination against Jews on CUNY’s campus. Pro-Israel faculty members and those who identify as Zionist have repeatedly reported being targeted for their beliefs.
“Can you imagine if a college had assigned David Duke to investigate discrimination against black people? That is the equivalent of what this is,” Lax told Newsmax on Monday. “This has been a cancer at CUNY for a long time, the anti-Semitism.”
The Anti-Defamation League reports that CAIR’s leadership uses “inflammatory anti-Zionist rhetoric that on a number of occasions has veered into antisemitic tropes related to Jewish influence over the media or political affairs, or has descended into the vilification of Zionists, which includes the majority of American Jews.”
“Antipathy towards Israel,” the ADL says, “has been a CAIR staple since the group was founded in 1994.” This includes “CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad’s repeated statements in support of Hamas.”
Lax, in information provided to the Free Beacon, said he was first contacted by Abd Alla earlier this month and informed she would be handling his discrimination case.
Lax responded to Abd Alla in an email outlining his concerns about her relationship with CAIR and its support for anti-Semitic causes like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which wages economic warfare on Israel.
“Central to my claim is that I am being discriminated against and retaliated against because I am a Zionist Jew,” Lax wrote. “I want to be very open, and transparent from the very beginning about a concern that I have: I notice that you are the former Civil Rights Director of CAIR MN. As you know, CAIR is an aggressive anti-Zionist movement and a vocal supporter of BDS. CAIR has also lobbied against the existence of the 100-year-old Jewish Civil Rights organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and has supported and defended comments from Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour that most Jews believe to be deeply antisemitic.”
Lax questioned whether Abd Alla “could investigate such claims without bias.”
Lax says that Abd Alla has yet to respond to this Sept. 12 email. He also wrote to Abd Alla’s supervisor, vice chancellor Doriane Gloria, asking for a response. Gloria told him last week that she had received his message and would respond this week, though that has yet to come, according to Lax.
A CUNY spokesman told the Free Beacon that Abd Alla will have no problem fairly investigating Lax’s claims of anti-Semitism.
“CUNY is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive community, free from antisemitism and all forms of hate, and safe for all individuals,” the spokesman said. “All CUNY chief diversity officers are professionals and trained to ensure the university and its campuses comply with workplace rules and carry out when needed fair and impartial investigations of workplace discrimination.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a group that combats anti-Semitism, lashed out at CUNY on Twitter, accusing the school of losing its moral compass.
“CUNY hire[d] someone from CAIR to investigate anti-Semitism [and] anti-Zionist?” the center tweeted. “CAIR officials have mainstreamed Jew-hatred. CUNY has lost its moral compass.”
CAIR was listed by the Wiesenthal Center as one of its top 10 promoters of anti-Semitism as recently as 2021.
Inna Vernikov, Republican minority whip on the New York City Council, also criticized CUNY’s decision. “CUNY assigning a former CAIRNational rep to investigate allegations of Antisemitism, is like asking a sexual abuser to investigate the sexual harassment/rape allegations of a victim of such abuse,” she tweeted.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) said in a statement Tuesday that CUNY is guilty of displaying “disgusting antipathy for the students, faculty, and staff who have been the victims of antisemitism on campus.”
“This is just the latest example,” Zeldin said. “If you are appointing someone who held a leadership role in a known antisemitic organization to lead an investigation into antisemitism, there may as well not be an investigation at all. Through its words and actions, the school’s leadership has allowed and encouraged an environment where Jewish students, faculty, and staff do not feel valued and often feel outright attacked.”
The first hospital in the United States to mandate all its health care workers get the COVID-19 vaccine has quietly decided not to require the updated booster shot after facing staffing shortages, according to an internal email obtained by The Epoch Times.
Houston Methodist Hospital in April 2021 announced it was mandating the vaccine. The hospital fired hundreds of employees who refused to get the original vaccines, and later mandated booster shots.
But in the new email, the hospital’s chief physician informed employees that they will not be made to get the newest boosters, which are produced by Pfizer and Moderna and aimed at the Omicron subvariant strains BA.4 and BA.5.
“At this time, Houston Methodist will not mandate the new booster,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive at Houston Methodist wrote in the Sept. 12 email, which was reviewed by The Epoch Times. “We will continue to follow the scientific data, the level of infections in the community and the availability of vaccines and may mandate the new booster in the future if necessary.”
Houston Methodist promoted itself as the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccines for all employees. The mandate went into effect in June 2021 and 153 health care workers were terminated for not getting the shots. In 2022, the hospital mandated all its employees get a vaccine booster shot by March 1.
Spokeswoman Stefanie Asin said the hospital hadn’t ended its vaccine mandate.
“We just aren’t mandating the new booster just yet. Waiting to see if we surge again and what the scientific data will show,” Asin told the Epoch Times.
Asked what “scientific data” was being used, Asin did not respond.
The updated boosters were given emergency authorization in August by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration based on pre-clinical, or non-human, data. Human data for the shots are not expected to be available for months.
Pressure to Boost
While Houston Methodist is not mandating the boosters, Phillips pressed the 29,000 employees to have one.
The “bivalent (or hybrid) COVID-19 vaccines have arrived at Houston Methodist and will be available soon,” Phillips wrote. He said that the shots are “expected to rebuild immunity to the original coronavirus strain and defend against omicron variants.” No citations were included in the email.
In the same email, Phillips conceded that the “original coronavirus strain” was not in circulation, with 99 percent of sequenced tests at Houston Methodist showing infections from BA.4 and BA.5. The latter is the dominant strain in the United States.
The vaccines perform poorly against infection, and some studies have shown negative effectiveness over time. Phillips, though, said that the vaccines “were very successful in preventing infection and keeping you from a severe case of COVID-19.” The doctor also said those vaccines “have had very few documented side effects.”
“We strongly recommend you get the booster to keep our patients, you and your family even safer from COVID-19,” he wrote. “The fall shot will be one of the most important COVID-19 vaccines offered to Americans since the initial doses.”
The hospital, which has been facing staffing shortages, will continue to require all new hires get the original COVID-19 vaccines and the new booster, according to its spokeswoman. The updated shots are only available as boosters.
Houston Methodist gives bonuses ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 to new hires, depending on the job and shift. The hospital also gives the same amount as a referral bonus to employees.
Jennifer Bridges poses in Houston, Texas on June 22, 2021. (Francois Picard/AFP via Getty Images)
Doctor Questions the Science
Houston Methodist was also the first hospital system in the United States to mandate its private health care workers who are credentialed medical staff to have the shot. Dr. Mary Talley Bowden treats COVID-19 patients in her private practice, BreatheMD, and had privileges with Methodist. However, the hospital temporarily revoked her privileges and suspended her after she announced she was only treating unvaccinated patients in late 2021. She resigned and is suing the hospital for defamation.
After being shown the email from Phillips about the change in the mandate, Bowden pointed out the notice did not provide any scientific data for the booster.
“While quietly retreating from forcing its employees to get the next booster, Methodist assures everyone the previous shots were ‘very successful’ at preventing infection and the new shots are ‘expected to rebuild immunity.’ The hospital is privy to an enormous amount of clinical data, why aren’t they sharing it?” Bowden told the Epoch Times. “Houston Methodist touts itself as leading medicine yet seems to have no data to back up its claims.”
Mandate Consequences
Jennifer Bridges was a nurse at Methodist for eight years. She worked in the hospital’s COVID-19 unit during the height of the pandemic. She was fired on June 22, 2021, for refusing to get the vaccine. She and other former Methodist employees sued the hospital in federal court, but the case was dismissed. They are still pursuing their case through Texas state court. Bridges now works as an emergency room supervisor.
Bridges says she is angry that she worked on the front lines in the hospital at the beginning of the pandemic to treat COVID-19 patients and then lost her job over a vaccine mandate that is now being loosened.
“They targeted nurses—first responders—who put our lives out there to treat COVID patients and threw us to the curb. People have lost everything, gone bankrupt, and one was homeless because they were fired for refusing to take an experimental shot against their will,” Bridges told The Epoch Times.
“Methodist has no clear criteria for anything they’re doing. It’s so back-and-forth with just whatever fits their needs at the moment,” she said. “Now they are claiming there is science behind it. Well the first two shots didn’t work. All their nurses still got COVID. All the shots did was injure a lot of people.”
Bridges said current employees are unhappy. “They call me ‘Mother Methodist,’” said the nurse. “People are still contacting me all the time about getting bullied about the mandates or jumping on my lawsuit. People are quitting or getting fired left and right.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of the Houston Methodist spokeswoman. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
“WITH NO MANDATORY USE, THE YOUNGEST CHILDREN HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER TRANSMISSION INDICATORS WHEN COMPARED WITH ANY OTHER GROUP,” THE STUDY NOTES.
he use of face masks in classrooms made “no significant difference” in COVID-19 infection rates, according to a new study.
A cohort of researchers from several universities and hospitals in Spain came to the conclusion by analyzing COVID-19 transmission rates, age, and the mandated use of face masks in classrooms across the region of Catalonia.
The study – “Unravelling the Role of the Mandatory use of Face Covering Masks for the Control of SARS-CoV-2 in Schools: a Quasi-Experimental Study Nested in a Population-Based Cohort in Catalonia (Spain)” – compiled data from 1,907 schools with a total of 599,314 pupils during the first term of the 2021 academic year. It was included in August’s edition of the peer-reviewed journalArchives of Disease in Childhood, which is a part of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Group.
Though COVID-19 variants such as Omicron occurred outside of the timeframe of the study, researchers maintain it is “unlikely that the effectiveness of the mask mandate measure will increase with a more transmissible variant.”
“We analysed routinely collected health data to compare the incidence of SARS-CoV-2, secondary attack rates and the effective reproductive number among school children, comparing those without mandatory face covering masks (FCM) and those with FCM during the first term of the school year 2021–2022, to assess the effect of FCM mandates on SARS-CoV-2 transmission within schools,” explains a summary of the work.
STUDY, PRÉCIS – CLICK TO EMBIGGEN.
Researchers focused on comparing children in the last year of preschool (P5) and the first year of primary education, as the younger group had no face mask mandate, whereas the older group did.
“The aim of our study was not to measure the individual effectiveness of FCM, but to evaluate the effectiveness of mask mandates in the real-world context of schools,” prefaced researchers.
“The main findings of the study show no significant differences for children in the last grade of preschool (P5) and the first year of primary education in COVID-19 transmission indicators during the study period, despite their difference in FCM mandate and the strong age dependency of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in schools,” explained researchers.
“The age trend observed for P5 and older children follows a different pattern when P3 and P4 are included in the analysis,” the study continued.
“With no mandatory use of FCM, the youngest children have significantly lower transmission indicators when compared with any other group.”
“In conclusion, FCM mandates in schools showed no significant differences in terms of transmission. Conversely, we found that age is a key component explaining transmission in children,” summarized researchers.
The Spanish case study follows additional studies demonstrating the failed efficacy of face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, even exacerbating the spread of the virus in certain demographics.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office on Monday rebuked Mayor Eric Adams for “selectively” attacking his relocation program while taking sides with Democrat allies that failed to secure the U.S. border.
It came a day after Adams said the city would launch legal action against the Lone Star State over the busloads of migrants sent to the Big Apple on an almost daily basis for over a month, during his appearance on CBS 2.
“Our legal team is looking at legal challenges we could do with Texas,” the Democrat mayor told the news outlet after another six buses filled with illegal immigrants arrived in New York on Sunday morning. “We believe there are some options we have, because when you involuntarily place someone on a bus, we believe that actually skates the law,” Adam said.
An Abbott spokesperson defended the legality in a statement provided to Fox News, as migrants “willingly chose to go to New York” by signing a voluntary consent waiver upon boarding.
Press secretary Renae Eze accused Adams of “flat-out lying and selectively attacking Texas’ busing operation, while conveniently ignoring migrants bused into New York City by Democrat-led El Paso and flown by President Biden.”
The Mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, has sent at least 1,135 illegal aliens on 28 buses to New York since Aug. 23, as the city was overwhelmed by around thousands of new arrivals per day; The White House confirmed in October 2021 that the Biden administration has been flying unaccompanied children from the southern border to New York in the middle of the night.
“Instead of complaining about a couple thousand migrants being bused into his self-declared sanctuary city and using these migrants for political attacks,” Eze said, “Mayor Adams should call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border—something the President continues failing to do.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Adams’ office for comment.
Record Apprehensions
Official data published on Monday show Border Patrol apprehensions along the U.S.–Mexico border topped a record high of 2 million so far this fiscal year.
Texas has bused over 2,500 migrants to New York since Aug. 5, in addition to over 8,000 migrants to Washington since April and more than 600 to Chicago since late August. Abbott’s office said the busing mission is providing much-needed relief to its overwhelmed border communities, while protesting President Joe Biden’s open-border policies.
The drop-off policy stemmed from the Biden administration’s move to lift a Trump-era emergency public health order, known as Title 42, which had allowed for the quick expulsion of asylum-seekers entering the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The governor also announced on Sept. 15 the arrival of two buses of migrants from Texas outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington. The vice president had claimed the southern border was secure and denied the existence of a border crisis during her recent trip to Houston.
Buried beneath the earth in the vast deserts of western China there are hundreds of new missile silos slated to hold deadly payloads. Some of them will house conventional weapons, others nuclear, and Western leaders don’t know which is which.
That is because China’s reigning communist regime co-locates its nuclear and conventional missiles, mixing them together and placing them under the same command centers.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rush to build these new missile silos, and to construct nuclear weapons to occupy them, corresponds to the regime’s efforts to cement its leadership over a burgeoning bloc of anti-Western states that seek an end to U.S. hegemony in world affairs.
Or, in their terms, “multipolarity.”
According to several experts, China’s nuclear expansion combined with its de facto alliance with Russia will have far-reaching consequences for U.S. nuclear strategy, and the United States is not prepared for the change.
That is because the U.S. nuclear arsenal and strategy have only ever been designed to contend with one adversary: Russia. The extension of the nuclear threat to several unique actors is therefore one of the great strategic challenges of the 21st century, and one the United States will only get one chance to respond to.
“The United States certainly faces a significant challenge ahead as nuclear threats from not just one, but several actors, advance,” said Patty-Jane Geller, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in an email.
“It will need to ensure it has tailored deterrence strategies against each adversary, and find the most efficient way to develop a nuclear posture that can address multiple threats at once.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) gestures while speaking to Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sept. 16, 2022. (Sergei Bobylev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Axis and Allies
China’s communist leadership is increasing its ties with nuclear Russia and working closely with nuclear aspirants like Iran and North Korea. More and more, those relationships are tinted with an explicitly anti-American ideological backing.
When CCP leader Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Uzbekistan for a security summit in September, their respective nations issued a joint statement, titled the “Samarkand Declaration,” vowing to pursue a “multipolar world order.”
The language of that effort is important insofar as it builds directly on vocabulary that Putin has spent using to explicitly call for the ending of the United States’ position as world leader.
“A multipolar system of international relations is now being formed,” Putin said in June.
“This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world.”
Despite the rhetoric, many experts have been reticent to take the growing alliance between China and Russia seriously. The two nations have a fraught history, after all, and their steadfast insistence on absolute sovereignty over internal matters means that neither side is eager to enter the sort of formal treaty that the U.S. and its allies might recognizes as an alliance.
That is changing, however, and now U.S. military leadership fears that the alliance might not only be real, but extend even to nuclear strategic cooperation.
Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, the nominee to head U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier in September that the United States would have to develop a strategy to contend with a unified nuclear threat from China and Russia.
“In a world where we now face two, near-peer competitors, we must deter the pacing challenge of China and address the acute threats presented by Russia,” Cotton said.
As it turns out, when nuclear weapons are on the line and hostile regimes are champing at the bit to undermine U.S. interests globally, the fragility of the China-Russia alliance is a secondary issue to the damage it could cause.
Speaking on the issue at a webinar in March, Atlantic Council senior fellow Sarah Kirchberger compared the Sino-Russian alliance to that of Hitler and Stalin in World War II.
“The question is: How much harm can [Xi and Putin] do together, even if it’s just a very short term and very opportunistic type of cooperation,” Kirchberger said.
“Because, if you look historically [at] how authoritarian countries have acted in unison, sometimes these alliances were very short term and ended abruptly, but they often caused great havoc.”
It is perhaps with that in mind that more hawkish lawmakers such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have taken to describing China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as a “new axis of evil,” resurrecting the vocabulary of America’s World War II adversaries.
While the rhetoric may come across as overwrought, it does make clear that there are now, once again, two international blocs vying for drastically different world futures.
For Geller, the most pressing issue of this new multipolarity is the fact that U.S. nuclear arsenal and posture is only designed to contend with Russia, not China, much less both simultaneously.
“U.S. nuclear posture is currently sized to face only one peer nuclear threat (Russia), as it was designed about a decade ago based on assumptions of a more benign threat environment than we are facing today,” Geller said.
“With the emergence of China as a second nuclear peer, the United States needs a new strategy that can deter both countries at once, which it will not be able to do sufficiently in the future with the current strategy and force posture.”
That prognosis is in line with the consensus of numerous experts who have said that U.S. nuclear strategy is a bad place for securing deterrence due to the asymmetry that Sino-Russian strategic cooperation has wrought.
Indeed, U.S. military leadership has not shied away from the fact that it is not prepared to simultaneously face down both China and Russia as nuclear powers, as it has never faced such a situation in history.
Back in February, Maj. Gen. Ferdinand Stoss, director of plans and policy at U.S. Strategic Command, said that “This is the first time ever that we have a three-party nuclear peer dynamic.”
“We have no history of this,” Stoss added. “This is epic.”
Lieutenant General John E. Hyten, Air Force Space Command vice commander, speaks about how cyber operations are a clear catalyst for change in the art and science of modern warfare during the Space Foundation’s Cyber 1.3 luncheon at The Broadmoor hotel, Colorado Springs, Colo., on April 8, 2013. (U.S. Air Force photo/Duncan Wood)
Likewise, then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. John Hyten said in November 2021 that China’s newly tested hypersonic weapon was likely intended for nuclear first use, meaning that it would be used in a surprise attack to initiate nuclear war.
As to the question of whether the CCP and Kremlin would commit to real, joint nuclear planning, CCP officials said in September that Sino-Russian “high-level strategic cooperation” was on the table.
However fraught, tenuous, and opportunistic the relationship may be, Moscow and Beijing have joined forces against the United States, up to and including nuclear strategic cooperation.
Multipolarity by the Numbers
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, with around 1,500 deployed nuclear weapons and more than 6,000 warheads in total. The United States, meanwhile, has about 1,400 deployed systems and 5,550 warheads. Between 1,500-2,000 warheads in both nations’ arsenals are retired and awaiting disarmament.
China is reported to have around 350 nuclear weapons, though a 2021 Pentagon report warned that the CCP was drastically increasing production and modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and that it would have at least 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030.
The estimated number of nuclear weapons does not capture the true extent of China’s warhead stockpile, however. Some experts have questioned the numbers available, and researchers have suggested that the true number of Chinese warheads could be as high as 3,000 already.
Military vehicles carrying DF-31AG intercontinental ballistic missiles participate in a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 2019, (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
There are several reasons for this disparity. One is the extent of the thousands of miles of underground tunnels the CCP is constructing to tend to its silos, which appears to suggest a far greater operation than previously expected.
Another is the regime’s focus on nuclear missiles that use multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs).
MIRVs are missile payloads that feature several warheads, each of which can be launched independently at separate targets, increasing the lethality of an individual missile many times over.
China’s DF-41 missiles, which the regime’s new silos appear constructed to house, feature a MIRV that can hold up to 10 nuclear warheads.
Add to this the fact that the DF-41 has a range of 7,500 miles, and the discovery of hundreds of new missile silos in China takes on more serious implications for U.S. nuclear strategy.
If the planned 350-400 new missile silos that China is constructing each house one DF-41 missile, it could signal an increase of 4,000 warheads to China’s arsenal, each of which would be capable of hitting its own unique target virtually anywhere in the world.
China’s ‘Nuclear Breakout’ Will Spill Over
Admiral Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, described this turn of events as China’s “nuclear breakout,” an unprecedented expansion of nuclear forces that should be of significant concern to the United States.
China’s growing power not only applies a new pressure point on U.S. strategic thinking, however. It also threatens to give rise to a host of potential conflicts throughout Asia.
Geller is one of a growing number of experts who believe that China will use its nuclear arsenal to threaten, coerce, and cajole the United States away from interfering in regional conflicts.
“China’s growing nuclear arsenal will enable it to backstop its conventional aggression in the Indo-Pacific region,” Geller said. “With the backing of a stronger nuclear force, China can calculate that more aggressive actions or escalating in conventional conflicts will be less risky.”
“China’s nuclear expansion will also hinder U.S. extended deterrence efforts as allies in the region become more threatened.”
Thus, governments like those in Taiwan or Japan, or even India, will fall more prone to being targeted by CCP aggression, as the regime will consider the United States less likely to be willing to risk conflict with a strong nuclear power.
This problem is commonly referred to in international relations theory as the “stability-instability paradox.”
In essence, the paradox maintains that two nations with similar nuclear capabilities will deter one another from engaging in nuclear war for fear of mutually assured destruction, which creates stability.
The knowledge that neither side will use its nuclear weapons, however, increases the likelihood that the nations will pursue conventional warfare and indirect conflict, thus creating instability.
As such, Geller believes that a vital component of U.S. nuclear strategy ought to be avoiding a situation in which China’s nuclear power becomes so great that the regime believes it can prevent America from interfering in any conflict it may start.
“The most serious concern I believe is less so that we are at risk of China or Russia using nuclear weapons against the U.S.,” Geller said, “but that the U.S. will ultimately back down in a conflict if it does not have a credible nuclear posture and strategy.”
“To prevent this from occurring, the U.S. needs to get serious about reorienting its nuclear posture to deter two nuclear peers, and realize that business as usual will not suffice.”
The Rocket Force under the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), fires live missiles into the waters near Taiwan, from an undisclosed location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. (Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via Reuters)
China Could Coerce the United States
To some extent, some argue that China’s nuclear coercion of the United States has already begun.
Following the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August, the CCP launched unprecedented military exercises. The drills encircled Taiwan, blocked international shipping lanes, and saw the launch of nuclear-capable missiles over Taiwan and into the exclusive economic zone of Japan.
Rather than meet the aggression, or work to actively curb it, the Biden administration quietly postponed its own much-needed test of a nuclear-capable missile.
“We do not believe it is in our interest, Taiwan’s interest, the region’s interests, to allow tensions to escalate further, which is why a long-planned Minuteman III ICBM test scheduled for this week has been rescheduled for the near future,” said national security spokesperson John Kirby at a press conference.
James Fanell, the former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said that the episode was only the beginning of the CCP’s efforts to direct U.S. behavior.
“[China’s] new nuclear arsenal provides the CCP with the same ability to blackmail the United States from taking more forceful measures to defend our allies as we have seen Vladimir Putin do to the Biden administration in the Ukraine,” Fanell said in an email.
“Even in lesser cases, [China] could further use their nuclear weapons to force America and its allies to alter their behavior.”
Moreover, Fanell said, with each successful attempt to browbeat the United States into demurring, the likelihood that the CCP will turn to intimidation as a preferred diplomatic tactic will increase.
“These nuclear weapons will be used to threaten any nation, like the United States, from coming to Taiwan’s defense in the increasingly likely event Beijing decides to conduct a conventional invasion of Taiwan,” Fanell said.
Fanell added that the CCP would likely use its arsenal to command the ongoings of the Indo-Pacific region.
By threatening the United States with nuclear fire, the CCP could coerce it away from placing new weapons systems in Korea or Japan, or even from entering the Taiwan Strait or the first island chain, which is the first ring of archipelagos east of the Asian coastline. Such an effort could effectively halt the United States’ 187-year history of conducting freedom of navigation operations in the Indo-Pacific.
“It is not hard to imagine this kind of blackmail being used by the CCP to stop diplomatic efforts such as the AUKUS or the Quad agreements,” Fanell said, referring to two partnerships involving the United States and allies in the Indo-Pacific region.
To that end, he described China’s nuclear breakout as “the single biggest factor for destabilizing the international order since the Soviet Union began building its own nuclear arsenal in the 1950s.” And added that the regime was posturing in a similar manner to the Soviet union, seeking to leverage its nuclear weapons to “blackmail the world to bend to its demands.”
Speaking on the same issue, Geller said that the United States’ would need to expand its nuclear capabilities to prevent China’s regional nuclear advantage from growing any further.
“The goal of the U.S. should be to show China that attempts to coerce the U.S. using nuclear threats will fail because the U.S. has the capability and will to respond to any first use of nuclear weapons,” Geller said.
“To accomplish this, the U.S. will need to fill the perceived deterrence gap that now exists in regional nuclear capabilities.”
Tactical Nuclear Weapons Needed
In contemplating what was necessary to restore a credible U.S. nuclear deterrent in a multipolar world, both Fanell and Geller came to the same conclusion: adapt or die.
“Given the dramatic change in the status quo … in the Pacific, the United States’ number one priority must be in the rapid fielding of a credible and robust nuclear arsenal,” Fanell said.
“In response to this new reality, the United States must dust off its previously learned policies and postures from the Cold War with the Soviet Union,” Fanell said.
Fanell added that the United States needed to expand its arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons across the triad of land, sea, and, air capabilities, and also to invest large sums into the fielding of tactical nuclear weapons to be positioned in Japan, Korea, and even Taiwan.
Perhaps no capability was more vital to this effort, he said, than the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N).
The SLCM-N, a submarine-based tactical nuclear weapon, has been recommended by military leaders since the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, but was nevertheless scrapped by the Biden administration that feared escalating tensions with China.
“One of these areas [of needed capabilities] regards the fielding of afloat nuclear naval weapons, like the SLCM-N, which the U.S. Navy has unwisely cut research and development funding and for which the Biden Administration remains positioned to eliminate,” Fanell said.
“Instead of killing this program, the current administration should be seeking to enhance the speed with which the SLCM-N is fielded, but should also be looking for other ways to modernize and increase America’s nuclear arsenal.”
Geller agreed, adding that the United States would need to demonstrate both the capability and the will to field nuclear weapons in order to deter China—something that the administration appeared hesitant to do.
“Fielding weapons like the SLCM-N can help show China that the U.S. has a proportional, credible option at this lower level of the escalation ladder,” Geller said.
“The U.S. also needs to demonstrate the will to show strength when needed. Postponing a routine missile test in the face of Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, as one example, only hindered this effort.”
With the international order itself hanging in the balance, Fanell said that the United States’ national security efforts had already been hampered by the burgeoning multipolar order led by China and Russia.
Now, he said, that security needed to be restored—A feat only possible through the forward deployment of new, tactical nuclear weapons.
“These may seem like provocative measures,” Fanell said, “but when measured against the backdrop of [China’s] nuclear breakout this past 20 months, and Vladimir Putin’s nuclear blackmail over Ukraine, the U.S. does not have a moment to lose in restoring national security.”
The Epoch Times has requested comment from the White House and Pentagon.
Many leftist progressive groups are pushing forward environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards on companies and investments, claiming that such standards will benefit society. Andy Puzder, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and author of “The Capitalist Comeback,” warns that ESG is simply socialist ideologies being falsely presented as the free market.
In an interview with The Epoch Times’ Crossroads program, Puzder pointed out that while capitalism is a form of “economic democracy,” with customers in charge of the economy, socialism involves the elites controlling the economy. In capitalism, people vote with their dollars while companies become profitable by meeting the needs of the people.
ESG is a form of investing whereby the focus is on “accomplishing leftist political agenda” as opposed to enhancing investor returns.
A group of “corporate elites” at financial firms like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard—which together control more than $20 trillion worth of investments—are “imposing their will” on the managers of companies that they are invested in.
Corporate elites pushing ESG investments are not, as such, part of the government. But now under the Biden administration, “the government elites are working with them,” said Puzder. As radical leftist ideologies are not overtly popular, such ideas are being pushed onto companies via ESG investing, he stated.
The three financial firms combined are the biggest investors in 80 percent of the firms listed in the S&P 500 Index, with BlackRock alone being the second- or the third-largest shareholder in 80 percent of the S&P 500, Puzder said.
“It’s a threat to our economic freedom because they use this tremendous voting power to compel the management of these companies not only to pursue these leftist goals but also to put those leftist goals above their obligation, their traditional obligation to generate returns for shareholders,” he warned.
“And it’s a threat to our individual liberty because they figured out how to use our money to do it.” These investment companies use money that the public has invested in 401(k)s and pension funds to push forward their agenda.
Radical leftist ideas, such as critical race theory, are being indoctrinated into employees, teaching them that they are either oppressors or oppressed based on skin color.
This is basically training workers to “hate each other.” ESG also prioritizes hiring people based on their sex or race rather than individual qualifications, Puzder stated.
Environmentalism, Legality, Pushback From Florida
When a small hedge fund wanted to put environmentalists on the board of directors of oil-giant Exxon-Mobil, Vanguard and BlackRock voted along with the hedge fund. The founder of the fund was from BlackRock, Puzder said. As a result of the vote, there are now environmentalists sitting on the board of Exxon-Mobil, having a say in the future of the oil firm.
“Nobody can rationally think that that’s going to improve the profitability of an oil company, the time when oil [prices are] shooting through the roof. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. So that’s not marketing. That’s oppression, that’s socialist, that’s elites deciding what we should and shouldn’t do,” he said.
Big financial firms are legally obliged to fulfill their fiduciary duty, which is that these companies must invest people’s money in the best interests of their investors. State attorneys general from 19 states recently issued a letter which stated that BlackRock’s ESG agenda violates the fiduciary rules of their respective states.
But BlackRock has “more money than God,” Puzder said. This allows the company to hire the best lawyers in the world. In response to the attorneys’ letter, BlackRock justified how it complies with fiduciary rules thanks to its cohort of such lawyers, he said.
He also praised Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, for taking a “really strong position” on the ESG issue.
Last month, for example, DeSantis and the trustees of the State Board of Administration passed a resolution which instructed the state’s fund managers to desist from making investments based on ESG ideologies.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Mortgage rates topped 6 percent last week for the first time since 2008
For the first time since the housing crash more than a decade ago, mortgage rates have exceeded 6 percent, rising alongside the Federal Reserve’s inflation-busting tightening efforts.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.02 percent for the week ending on Sept. 15, according to the new Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS). That’s up from 5.89 percent the previous week and 2.86 percent the same week in 2021, and represents the highest mortgage rate since the housing crash of 2008.
And, while there are signs that property prices are falling, home price levels remain significantly high compared to a year ago. Consequently, the monthly mortgage payment has increased considerably over the past year.
With these interest rates, the average monthly payment for a 30-year mortgage (principal, interest, and private mortgage insurance) is nearly $2,430, according to Redfin’s mortgage calculator. This estimate is based on a median house price of $406,890 and a 10 percent down payment.
About a year ago, the same buyer would have been paying only $1,610 per month, based on a 2.86 percent mortgage rate and a median house price of about $375,410.
Consequently, new homebuyers are paying $820 more each month on their mortgages compared to the same time a year ago.
A home is offered for sale in Rutledge, Ga., on Dec. 12, 2019. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)
Higher interest rates will trigger weakening real estate demand and accelerate downward pressure on home prices, Freddie Mac noted. Moreover, housing inventory levels have been climbing steadily. At the present rate of sales activity, it would take 10.9 months to exhaust the current supply of homes for sale in the market, according to data from the Census Bureau and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The last time the metric was this high was in March 2009.
However, the current rising-rate environment will also “no doubt” affect housing affordability, Nadia Evangelou, a senior economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), recently wrote. The last time the NAR’s Housing Affordability Index was updated in July, when the 30-year rate averaged 5.48 percent, mortgage payments as a percentage of income were nearly 25 percent.
For the first time since January, single-family home prices tumbled more than 3 percent to $403,000 in August, NAR data confirmed. Prices are trending downward, but higher mortgage rates can still make owning a home more expensive or harder to be approved for a mortgage.
Still, many Americans are waiting for a sharp downturn to achieve the dream of homeownership. In August, a Consumer Affairs survey found that 78 percent think a housing crash is on the horizon. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) want it to occur, and 84 percent of respondents from Generation Z (those born roughly between 1997 and 2012) desire a significant downturn so they can afford a home.
Demand Is Declining
The Federal Reserve rate increases and the rising cost of living are weighing on the U.S. real estate market, which has slipped into a recession, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) says.
“Tighter monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and persistently elevated construction costs have brought on a housing recession,” NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said in a statement.
The NAHB Housing Market Index, a measure of homebuilder sentiment, further weakened to 46 in September for the ninth straight month, down from 49 in August. This was also below the market consensus of 47. In July, pending home sales plummeted 19.9 percent year-over-year and dropped 1 percent month-over-month. New home sales also declined 12.6 percent to 511,000 units in July. Mortgage applications slipped 1.2 percent for the week ending Sept. 9, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which was the fifth straight weekly decline.
“Higher mortgage rates have pushed refinance activity down more than 80 percent from last year and have contributed to more homebuyers staying on the sidelines,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting.
This could be the beginning of a much larger slowdown, and conditions could worsen in 2023, Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a recent memo to clients, adding that home price growth could stall completely and average at zero percent in 2023.
“We expect home price growth to stall completely, averaging [zero percent] in 2023,” Jan Hatzius, a Goldman strategist and economist, wrote in a memo. “While outright declines in national home prices are possible and appear quite likely for some regions, large declines seem unlikely.”
For the rest of 2022, the investment bank projects a 22 percent drop in new home sales, a 17 percent decline in existing home sales, and an 8.9 percent slide in the overall housing GDP.
Sam Hall, a property economist at Capital Economics, sees more pain ahead for the housing industry.
“Stretched affordability continued to weigh on housing market activity in July and August, leaving mortgage applications for home purchase down by 40 [percent] from their high in January,” he wrote in a note. “A renewed rise in mortgage rates to above their previous peak of 6 [percent] in the first week of September will cause more pain for the housing market.”
Could Mortgage Rates Rise Further?
The Fed is widely anticipated to raise the benchmark federal funds rate by 75 basis points during this week’s two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meeting.
With inflation running hotter-than-expected in August and multiple central bank officials warning of higher-for-longer interest rates, the 30-year mortgage rate could keep climbing throughout the rest of the year, according to industry experts.
The recent Bankrate Mortgage Rate Trend poll for Sept. 15–21 found that 78 percent say rates will go up. Eleven percent think mortgage rates will stay the same, while another 11 percent believe they will go down.
“Up, up and away,” Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate, said in the survey. “Inflation remains broad-based and problematic, the Fed will continue to be aggressive in raising rates and there is more supply of mortgage-backed bonds that need to be absorbed as the Fed retreats.”
A new whistleblower has alleged the FBI is “manipulating” case files to make it seem like America has a bigger “domestic violent extremism” (DVE) problem than it does, while redirecting resources away from child sexual abuse investigations to prioritize Jan. 6 cases, according to Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
The new whistleblower’s disclosures, Jordan said, indicate that the way the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C. handles DVE cases related to Jan. 6 “diverge[s]” from established practice in such a way that it “overstates the national DVE threat.”
Instead of records reflecting a number of DVE cases “stemming from a single, black swan incident” in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, it appears on paper as if there has been a rise in DVE threats all around the country.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a hearing before Senate Judiciary Committee at Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Aug. 4, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Jordan raised the allegations with FBI Director Christopher Wray in a letter on Monday, saying whistleblowers have contacted elected officials about “disturbing conduct” at the FBI, including “politicization within the Washington Field Office (WFO).”
This is not the first time Jordan has raised whistleblower allegations with Wray along these lines. In July, the Ohio congressman wrote to Wray about allegations supervisors were pressuring agents to “reclassify cases” as DVE even if they didn’t meet the criteria.
“Since then, new whistleblowers have come forward with concerning information about how the FBI is deliberately manipulating the way case files related to January 6 investigations are maintained in order to create a false and misleading narrative that domestic violent extremism is increasing around the country,” Jordan wrote.
‘Manipulative Casefile Practice’ Creates ‘Illusion’ of Extremism
According to Jordan, the whistleblower alleged “the FBI has not followed regular procedure” with Jan. 6 cases, which should all be officially led by the WFO.
Ordinarily, cases are characterized and labeled by the field office where they originate, with leads “cut,” or sent, to other field offices for specific assistance in that location.
But the whistleblower alleged the WFO has used a “manipulative casefile practice” to create the appearance of a larger number of purported DVE cases by farming out Jan. 6 DVE cases to FBI field offices in other geographic locations.
“The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics,” the whistleblower alleged, according to Jordan.
“Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from a single, black swan incident at the Capitol, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.”
Police attack two protesters on the west side of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in this scene from the EpochTV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6.” (Steve Baker/EpochTV)
The way this is achieved, the whistleblower told Jordan, is that a task force in D.C. identifies “potential subjects” and possible locations where they reside, then sends “information packets” with instructions to open full investigations at local field offices around the country.
But in fact the local field offices are only running the cases on paper at the direction of the WFO, according to Jordan’s letter.
“In other words, the FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,” Jordan said.
“[T]here are active criminal investigations of January 6th subjects in which I am listed as the ‘Case Agent,’ but have not done any investigative work,” the whistleblower alleged, according to Jordan’s letter.
“Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide,” Jordan wrote.
“These allegations are consistent with disclosures we have received from other whistleblowers that high-ranking FBI officials—including a senior WFO official—are pressing front-line agents to categorize cases as DVE matters to fit a political narrative.”
Child Sexual Abuse No Longer FBI Priority: Whistleblower
Jordan also put to Wray the whistleblower’s allegations that the FBI is pulling agents off the bureau’s Violent Crimes Against Children program to prioritize Jan. 6 targets.
“In addition, the whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law-enforcement duties to pursue January 6 investigations,” Jordan wrote.
“The whistleblower recalled, for example, being ‘told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.’
“Such a posture is not only a dereliction of the FBI’s mission to investigate violations of federal laws, but it is a grave disservice to the victims of child sexual abuse and other crimes that do not advance the FBI leadership’s political agenda,” he said.
Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)
Congress first empowered the FBI in 1932 to immediately investigate disappearances or kidnappings involving a child of “tender age,” which is usually 12 or younger, according to the bureau.
The FBI’s investigative priorities in regards to crimes against children have traditionally been child abductions, contact offenses against children, such as abuse material, sextortion, and child sexual abuse tourism, the sexual exploitation of children, trafficking of children for sexual abuse material, and international parental kidnapping.
Jordan expressed his outrage at this part of the whistleblower’s allegations on Monday night during an interview on Fox News.
“They’re juicing the numbers and they’re cooking the books,” Jordan said. “And they’re so focused on this they’re willing to pull agents from child trafficking cases to foster this narrative … about half the country being extremists.”
“Remember, we’ve had previous whistleblowers who came to us and said that they were being pressured to label cases as ‘domestic violent extremism,’” he continued. “This whistleblower came forward and talked to us about how they’re cooking the books, making it seem like there’s cases all over the country when in fact they’re all related to Jan. 6.”
Whistleblower Suspended: Jordan
Jordan also revealed during the interview that the whistleblower, who he described as “honest” and “brave,” has now been suspended by the FBI.
“Today we learned that this newest whistleblower has been suspended from his job. So there’s retaliation going against this guy for coming forward and telling us what’s going on,” Jordan said.
The Ohio Republican noted that the FBI’s action toward the whistleblower is an indication of what could be in store if the Democrats win both the House and Senate at the November midterms.
“That’s why this election in 50 days is so darn important. The way you send a message is put Republicans in charge and then what we have to do is get tough,” he said.
A member of the Secret Service in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Jordan pointed to the actions of the Department of Justice in “the last six weeks” as evidence of overreach by the Biden administration.
“[President] Joe Biden raided the home of a former president, took the phone of a sitting member of Congress, the inspector general of the Justice Department assisted imaging the phone—he’s supposed to be the independent oversight of the Justice Department,” Jordan said.
“And, oh by the way, he also signed legislation which is going to unleash 87,000 IRS agents to come harass we the taxpayer,” he added, referring to Biden.
“That happened in six weeks for goodness sake. So yeah, this election is critical when it comes to America’s freedoms, liberties, and the Bill of Rights.”
It’s no secret that some electric cars have been susceptible to their lithium batteries catching fire.
What’s increasingly becoming known to fire departments is how difficult those blazes are to put out. A Stamford, Connecticut, fire involving a Tesla took three times the normal effort to extinguish, according to the Stamford Fire Department.
And this fire was perhaps an easy one — the car’s batteries fell out of the vehicle onto the ground where firefighters had better access.
The fire occurred Thursday morning behind a Main Street restaurant, according to the fire department’s website.
A responding fire department normally uses a single hose line, according to the department commander on the scene, Deputy Chief Eric Lorenz.
But firefighters knew electric car fires require more effort, so two more hoses were aimed at the car. “We know from other fire departments’ experiences that large amounts of water are the only solution when compared to a traditional vehicle fire,” Lorenz said.
Large amounts of water, indeed — 600 gallons per minute — and the fire took 42 minutes to put out, WTIC-TV reported.
Other vehicles in the area were far enough away from the burning Tesla to avoid damage, fire officials said.
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More than five hours after the initial report of the fire, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Stamford Fire Hazmat Team and a company specializing in hazardous waste were on the scene, readying the Tesla for removal, according to the fire department.
“This is no routine car fire,” Lorenz said. “It requires special handling.”
Similar risks exist in electric vehicles as outlined in a 2016 Tesla Model S guide to first responders.
The guide also said 3,000 to 8,000 gallons of water would be required to extinguish a car fire, but Captain Parker Wilbourn of the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District told The Washington Post the required water usage could reach 30,000 gallons.
In the Connecticut fire, if the fire department pumped 600 gallons a minute for the entire 42 minutes, it would total more than 25,000 gallons.
A lithium battery fire continues until all energy is spent. “We’re basically fighting energy release,” Wilbourn said.
Wilbourn’s fire department faced a unique situation when a Tesla caught fire in a scrapyard near Sacramento.
The car had been placed in the wrecking yard three weeks earlier after a crash, and a spontaneous battery fire required thousands of gallons of water to be pumped into a tractor-excavated pit that firefighters dug for placement of the vehicle.
Each time firefighters got the fire out, it reignited, despite having the car on its side for easy access to the batteries.
It took an hour and 4,500 gallons of water to extinguish the fire; that amount of water is typically used in a building fire, the Post reported.
Wilbourn said the Sacramento fire department anticipates more fires as increased numbers of EV chargers are placed in garages.
In the mad rush to electrify road vehicles to offset perceived risks of carbon emissions, the greenies refuse to face the realities of balancing costs and benefits.
Environmental and social costs of securing electric car components are becoming more widely known along with limitations of EV range and problems with charging.
Now come the challenges of extinguishing EV fires along with hazardous materials in cleanups.
Worse, states like California are outlawing new internal combustion vehicle sales within a relatively short amount of time. Are we ready to abandon an established manufacturing, fuel, parts and maintenance system for what might be an unworkable green folly?
Whatever benefits there might be for use of electric vehicles in, perhaps, some circumstances, all efforts to move in this direction must be balanced with the realities of unintended consequences of an ideologically-driven, poorly thought out effort.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine after 11,000 men abandoned George Washington’s army following a series of humiliating defeats to the British in the fall of 1776.
Paine understood that words could inspire or destroy. Knowing what was at risk when Washington’s volunteers’ service contracts expired on Dec. 31, Paine used his rhetorical skills to help salvage the American Revolution.
Like the patriots fighting two centuries before us, the success of American conservatism has ebbed and flowed. The battle is never-ending. Like the great Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” That reality and commitment to service, inspired Mark Robinson to get into politics.
It’s now inspired him to write a book to show his fellow conservatives how they can effect positive change in their communities.
Robinson, North Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, ascended to elected office later in life. His decision to run for lieutenant governor only came after an impromptu speech before the Greensboro City Council where he passionately defended the right to bear arms.
After defeating well-oiled Republican campaigns in a crowded primary, Robinson prevailed convincingly against North Carolina Democrats who attacked him relentlessly.
Robinson’s book “We Are the Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot” is now available to select audiences before its release to the general public on Sept. 27. In it, Robinson describes his harrowing upbringing as “a poor black kid from the wrong side of the tracks” to becoming the first black lieutenant governor of North Carolina.
Robinson’s views congealed after reconciling with his mother, who instilled in him the values of faith and morality after she became a born-again Christian.
Those lessons left a lasting impression on Robinson and gave him the strength to refuse to apologize for being an “unfiltered conservative culture warrior” when Democrats threw everything but the kitchen sink at his campaign.
As Robinson likes to say, “I don’t care what these communists say, I don’t care what these socialists say, I don’t care what these blue-haired, ‘woke’ freaks say … America is the greatest nation on Earth, and it’s all because of God.”
Robinson’s ability to speak with voters, not down to them and insight into the pulse of North Carolinians shows how he connected with ordinary people despite not being a seasoned political veteran.
Instead of his past and unorthodox background being a liability, those experiences made him sympathetic, relatable and inspiring to a broad coalition of voters.
When asked why he wanted to tell his story, Robinson explained “I’d like to tell you my story, because I want you to know what I’m doing for North Carolina and will do for it in the future with God’s help, that you can do for your hometown and state.”
Like Thomas Paine, Mark Robinson understands it’s not too late for America. But he can’t spark change on his own. Words can inspire, yes. However, only action can ensure future generations of Americans will be left better off than those that came before them.
You can order Mark’s book early by clicking the links above or below.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
On Friday, a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law that prohibits media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users from censoring users based on viewpoint expression. The ruling was a big win for Governor Greg Abbott and free speech advocates who have accused media giants like Meta, Twitter and Google of intentionally censoring users.
In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Oldham continued.
The Texas legislature passed HB 20 last fall out of concern companies were deliberately censoring conservative users but tech companies quickly filed lawsuits alleging the law is unconstitutional.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised the win on Twitter.
BREAKING: I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan! The 5th Circuit “reject[s] the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. pic.twitter.com/UijlzYcv7r— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 16, 2022
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the technology trade groups that had sued to block the law, said it strongly disagreed with the court’s decision, according to CNN.
“Forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints on their platforms places foreign propaganda and extremism on equal footing with decent Internet users, and places Americans at risk,” said Matt Schruers, CCIA’s president. “‘God Bless America’ and ‘Death to America’ are both viewpoints, and it is unwise and unconstitutional for the State of Texas to compel a private business to treat those the same.”
The ruling was a major step in a legal battle that has the potential to end up at the Supreme Court. Now that the Fifth Circuit has reached a different conclusion from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on similar questions, the stage is set for the issue to be decided at the Supreme Court.
In May, the Supreme Court issued an emergency decision, temporarily blocking HB 20 from taking effect as the litigation continued. The 5-4 vote sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit, resulting in Friday’s outcome.
A New York District Attorney has opened a criminal probe into Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) regarding allegations of election fraud.
The same week absentee ballots begin going out to voters, the Albany County District Attorney’s Office and the New York State Board of Elections opened a criminal investigation into thousands of duplicated signatures submitted during the nomination process as part of an effort to secure Zeldin another spot on the general election ballot as the Independence Party’s choice while continuing to run as the Republican nominee.
According to Fox News, rumors of potential voter fraud began swirling earlier this summer but Zeldin’s campaign quickly refuted the claims and said the congressman was in no way involved in the process of submitting the signatures. Instead, Zeldin’s spokeswoman Katie Vincentz pointed to Governor Kathy Hochul‘s campaign’s desperation to distract New Yorkers from her failures, calling her the “undisputed queen of scandal, abuse, and pay to play corruption.”
“After months of non-answers and finger-pointing, New Yorkers deserve to know who exactly was involved in Xerox Zeldin’s election fraud scandal. The facts here are clear: Zeldin’s campaign manager knowingly signed off on 47 volumes of petitions containing more than 11,000 photocopied signatures,” Hochul’s campaign manager, Brian Lenzmeier, said in a statement on Sunday.
“As a congressman, Lee Zeldin supported legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election and pushed baseless conspiracy theories under the banner of ‘election integrity,’ but apparently that doesn’t apply to his own campaign,” Lenzmeier alleged. “His campaign is now implicated in a criminal investigation for attempting to defraud voters and Zeldin needs to be held accountable.”
In August, a spokeswoman for the New York Board of Elections confirmed to Fox News Digital that of the signatures submitted for Zeldin to run on the Independence Party line — in addition to the GOP ticket — just 39,228 were validated, falling short of the 45,000 required. Nearly 13,000 others were deemed invalid for a swath of reasons, including duplicate signatures, voters not properly registered, or incorrect addresses, she said. She did not comment on whether any photocopied signatures were found.
The probe into Zeldin comes on the heels of another scandal involving Gov. Hochul. Last week, reports revealed the Democrat governor agreed to pay “twice as much for COVID tests from a company tied to nearly $300,000 in donations to her campaign compared to other state vendors.” (RELATED: NY Gov. Hochul Hit With Another Scandal as Race Tightens)
According to the report, Hochul’s campaign received $300,000 from a donor whose company, Digital Gadgets, later secured a $600+ million contract to supply rapid COVID tests for New York state. New York could have saved $286 million if it paid the same price as other states.
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. President Joe Biden said U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, his most explicit statement on the issue, drawing an angry response from China that said it sent the wrong signal to those seeking an independent Taiwan.
Asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday whether U.S. forces would defend the democratically governed island claimed by China, he replied: “Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.”
Asked to clarify if he meant that unlike in Ukraine, U.S. forces—American men and women—would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Biden replied: “Yes.”
The CBS interview was just the latest time that Biden has appeared to go beyond long-standing stated U.S. policy on Taiwan, but his statement was clearer than previous ones about committing U.S. troops to the defend the island.
The United States has long stuck to a policy of “strategic ambiguity” and not making clear whether it would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan.
Asked to comment, a White House spokesperson said U.S. policy towards Taiwan had not changed.
“The president has said this before, including in Tokyo earlier this year. He also made clear then that our Taiwan policy hasn’t changed. That remains true,” the spokesperson said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular briefing in Beijing that Biden’s comments sent a “seriously wrong signal” to separatists forces for Taiwan independence.
China was “strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed” to Biden’s comments and had lodged a formal complaint over it, she said, warning that China reserves the right to take all necessary measures to counter separatism.
Taiwan‘s foreign ministry expressed its thanks to Biden for his reaffirming of the “U.S. government’s rock-solid security commitment to Taiwan”.
Taiwan will continue to strengthen its self-defense capabilities and deepen the close security partnership between Taiwan and the United States, the Taiwan ministry said in a statement.
The CBS interview with Biden was conducted last week. The president is in Britain for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday.
In May, Biden was asked if he was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan and replied: “Yes … That’s the commitment we made.”
In the 60 Minutes interview, Biden reiterated the United States remained committed to a “one-China” policy in which Washington officially recognizes Beijing not Taipei, and said the United States was not encouraging Taiwanese independence.
“We are not moving, we are not encouraging their being independent … that’s their decision,” he said.
China was angered by a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi in August and it conducted its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan in response.
China has protested against moves by U.S. lawmakers to advance legislation that would enhance U.S. military support for Taiwan.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control and has not ruled out the use of force. Taiwan strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims.
In a phone call with Biden in July, Xi warned about Taiwan, saying “those who play with fire will perish by it.”
Asked last October if the United States would come to the defense of Taiwan, which the United States is required by law to provide with the means to defend itself, Biden said: “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”
At that time, a White House spokesperson also said Biden was not announcing any change in U.S. policy.
Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said if Biden made such pledges he needed to ensure he could back them up.
“If President Biden plans to defend Taiwan, then he should make sure the U.S. military has the capability to do so,” she said. “Rhetorical support that isn’t backed up by real capabilities is unlikely to strengthen deterrence.”
Biden’s Asia policy czar, Kurt Campbell, has in the past rejected any move to “strategic clarity” over Taiwan, saying there were “significant downsides” to such an approach.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Costas Pitas, Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Lincoln Feast)
The widow of a Philadelphia police officer killed by ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal says it is “infuriating” that Senate hopeful John Fetterman picked a self-described “buddy” of the cop killer to serve on Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons.
Maureen Faulkner blasted Fetterman in an interview over his selection of Celeste Trusty to serve as secretary of the Board of Pardons, which Fetterman chairs as lieutenant governor. Trusty, a former political director on Fetterman’s campaign, is a self-described “friend” of Abu-Jamal, the Washington Free Beaconreported. “I love Mumia,” she wrote in 2018 of Abu-Jamal, who was convicted in the 1981 slaying of Daniel Faulkner during a traffic stop in Philadelphia.
“I don’t know what John Fetterman’s doing, but I think the Philadelphia people, the Pennsylvania people better really take a look at what they are going to do if they put John Fetterman in,” said Faulkner. “The city is already destroyed. It’s going to be in shambles by the time Fetterman’s done with it.”
Faulkner’s remarks come amid a wave of criticism for Fetterman on crime-related issues. A group of sheriffs came out against Fetterman over his calls to release up to one-third of Pennsylvania’s inmates from jail and his support for ending mandatory life sentences for some murderers. Fetterman has also come under fire for his work on the Board of Pardons, which he has pledged to “transform” in order to advance progressive criminal justice reform policies. Republicans aired ads this month highlighting Fetterman’s vote to free a prisoner, Wayne Covington, convicted of first-degree murder for killing a teenager for money to buy heroin. Fetterman cast the lone vote on the five-member board to free Covington, ignoring pleas from the family of Covington’s victim that he remain in jail.
Fetterman’s alliance with Trusty could prove divisive in Pennsylvania, where Abu-Jamal serves as a litmus test of sorts in state politics.
In 2014, Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) led efforts to block President Obama’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice civil rights division over his legal work for Abu-Jamal. The nominee, Debo Adegbile, claimed in a 2009 appeals court filing that Abu-Jamal’s conviction should be overturned because of racial discrimination in his jury. Celebrities and left-wing activists have for years rallied to Abu-Jamal’s cause, claiming he was wrongfully convicted. But Faulkner, who has attended all of Abu-Jamal’s court hearings over the past four decades, says she is convinced that Abu-Jamal “executed” her husband.
Fetterman’s campaign says the candidate “totally disavows” Trusty’s remarks about Abu-Jamal.
“John strongly disagrees with Secretary Trusty on this issue and a host of other issues, in no way does she speak for John in any way, shape or form,” said Fetterman communications director Joe Calvello. “He totally disavows this [sic] vile remarks.”
Calvello said Fetterman “does not believe that Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves a second chance nor should any cop killer get a second chance.”
“He will never stand up for a cop killer in any way, shape, or form. John worked hand in hand with the police as mayor of Braddock, and he knows how hard and dangerous their job is.”
While Fetterman portrays himself as a supporter of police, he has campaigned with anti-police activists. On the anniversary of 9/11, he held a pro-abortion rally with an activist who supports the movement to defund police departments.
It is unclear whether Fetterman will leave Trusty on the Board of Pardons. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has repeatedly denounced Israel as a “terrorist state,” met an unlikely admirer during his stroll through Manhattan over the weekend. Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg of Queens, N.Y., a prominent supporter of the liberal advocacy group J Street, had a “fangirl moment” upon encountering the notorious anti-Semitic dictator in Central Park.
“Oh my gosh,” the starstruck rabbi said in a video recorded by Turkish propaganda operatives. “Really? Can I shake your hand?” Goldenberg’s reaction was rather unusual, given that Erdogan has been widely condemned for his anti-Semitic rants. In 2021, for example, he denounced Jews as “murderers” who “kill children” and “only are satisfied by sucking their blood.”
The House Anti-Semitism Task Force issued a statement blasting Erdogan’s anti-Semitic remarks as “tantamount to blood libel against the Jewish people.” The U.S. State Department called the comments “reprehensible.” Several months after the Turkish leader’s anti-Jewish tirade, a Turkish man who called Erdogan a “Jew” was sentenced to 10 months in prison for insulting the dictator’s “honor, dignity, and reputation.”
Erdogan was “warmly welcomed” during his stroll through Central Park, according to the Turkish propaganda outletDaily Sabah. Alas, the fawning encounter with Goldenberg was not mentioned by the pro-government media apparatus, presumably for anti-Semitic reasons.
J Street, which claims to be a “pro-Israel” organization, has been criticized for attacking Israel and defending anti-Semites. The advocacy group has repeatedly lobbied to roll back sanctions on Iran and defended Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) in 2019 after the Squad member made a series of anti-Semitic statements. J Street communications director Logan Bayroff said Omar’s critics, which included Democrats as well as Republicans, were “reckless” and “politically motivated.”
This year the group lent financial support to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), a Squad acolyte who abruptly withdrew his support for bipartisan legislation to strengthen the Abraham Accords, a Trump-era initiative to normalize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Bowman has close ties to the Turkish American National Steering Committee, a pro-Erdogan advocacy group whose members were involved in the beating of peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
Victim says Mike Franken had ‘1950s interactions’ with ‘several other women’
An Iowa Democratic Senate candidate’s former campaign manager accused her boss of sexual assault, according to police files recently obtained by the Iowa Field Report.
Mike Franken in March apparently grabbed and forcibly kissed Kim Strope-Boggus without her consent, a police incident report in April shows. The assailant’s name is blacked out in the report, but the name of another Franken campaign manager and the candidate’s past electoral history are mentioned. Strope-Boggus said the candidate has had “1950s interactions” with “several other women.”
The allegations could imperil Franken as the former Navy admiral has made “civility” a cornerstone of his campaign. His platform also pledges to “end sexual discrimination, as well as workplace sexual harassment.” Franken is also married with two children. The assault apparently occurred during a night of drinking in Des Moines.
A spokesman for Franken’s campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Strope-Boggus was fired in February by Franken campaign manager Maddy Leahy. In since-deleted tweets, Strope-Boggus’s wife Becky corroborated her termination from the campaign. The police report reveals Franken’s legal team also pressured Strope-Boggus to remove her own tweets about the firing, saying it violated a “nondisclosure that she signed.”
Police closed the case after coordinating with the county attorney, who determined no criminal action had occurred. Another campaign manager, Julie Stauch, resigned in July but resumed her role a week later.
Democratic congressional candidates Christina Bohannan and Liz Mathis were absent from a scheduled town hall with Franken on Monday. Franken’s campaign denied the assault allegations to reporters there and said his fellow Democrats had scheduling conflicts.
Franken received $1.7 million during his last fundraising period and is featured on the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, which has removed candidates in the past for credible accusations of sexual harassment. In 2021, ActBlue booted disgraced New York governor Andrew Cuomo from its site after 11 women accused him of sexual misconduct.
ActBlue did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Franken will face incumbent Republican senator Chuck Grassley in November. A July Des Moines Registerpoll had Grassley up 8 points.
The New York City Department of Education has axed another 850 teachers and aides for not complying with its vaccine mandate, bringing the total to nearly 2,000, the New York Postreported Saturday.
The Education Department ordered around 1,300 workers to show proof of vaccination by Sept. 5 or be “deemed to have voluntarily resigned.” When 850 didn’t comply, the department fired them.
This latest round of firings brings the total to 1,950 teachers or aides axed since then-mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) instituted the vaccine mandate last year, the Post found. While Mayor Eric Adams (D.) has rolled back some of de Blasio’s COVID restrictions, he has kept the school employee vaccine mandate.
The firings come as New York City’s COVID cases and hospitalizations are down and as courts strike down similar city mandates for police officers.
Rachelle Garcia, an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, received a pink slip after the Department of Education denied her religious exemption.
“I couldn’t give a proper goodbye to my students,” Garcia told the Post. “Other teachers told me they kept asking, ‘When is Ms. Garcia coming back?’ That made me cry so much.”
New York City has fired more than 2,600 municipal workers in total for not getting the COVID shot.
Democrat Tina Kotek is locked in tight race with Republican, independent challengers
The Democratic Governors Association poured over a million dollars into the Oregon governor’s race last week, its largest contribution yet in the state.
The Association on Thursday contributed $1.25 million to Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, the Willamette Weekreported, bringing the group’s total contributions to more than $3 million for Kotek this year. The news comes as the Cook Political Report on Friday shifted its Oregon gubernatorial race prediction from “Leans Democrat” to “Toss-Up.”
Kotek faces an uphill battle as the left-wing candidate in Oregon, where voters are concerned about rising violent crime. Last year, Portland had the most homicides in its history. When she served as state House speaker, Kotek sided with rioters who damaged local businesses and flung rocks, bottles, and fireworks at police during Portland’s summer 2020 protests.
Kotek’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Kotek is seeking to distance herself from her opponents, independent candidate Betsy Johnson and Republican Christine Drazan, as they are locked in a three-way race. The Democratic Governors Association has drawn attention to both Johnson’s and Drazan’s “A” rating from the NRA, as well as Johnson’s courting of GOP megadonors.
Johnson campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Sitton told the Washington Free Beacon that the association’s donations to Kotek show “Democrats are going to back up the Brinks trucks to Oregon—a state they can’t afford to lose but can’t figure out how to win.”
A spokesman for Drazan’s campaign echoed those remarks.
“National Democrats are hitting the panic button because they have a weak candidate and failed leader as their nominee,” John Burke told the Free Beacon. “Tina Kotek was [Governor] Kate Brown’s top enabler and Oregonians know she’s responsible for massive homelessness, rising violent crime, and a continuing affordability crisis.”
A 2021 Morning Consult poll found Oregon’s Kate Brown had the lowest approval rating of any governor. Brown has endorsed Kotek’s campaign.
Johnson is pitching herself as a moderate, but served as a Democrat alongside Kotek in the Oregon legislature since the mid-2000s. She voted with Kotek on progressive bills to decriminalize drugs and reduce incarceration, the Free Beaconreported.
The Democratic Governors Association has come under fire this year for helping Trump-favored candidates win GOP primaries. In June, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D.) and the group spent $32 million to help Illinois state senator Darren Bailey beat a moderate black Republican for the gubernatorial nomination.
New measures would compel release of nuclear deal negotiations, including possible side deal
Congressional Republicans are moving to compel the Biden administration to release details of its nuclear deal negotiations with Iran, including any side deals that could provide the hardline regime with access to billions of dollars in cash.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) and 20 Republican colleagues are spearheading a legislative measure that would force the Biden administration to submit to Congress all documents “relating to any initiative or negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program,” according to a copy of the legislation.
In addition to forcing the release of the deal itself, the measure would expose any side deals that are being negotiated as part of the accord, according to sources familiar with the bill. This requirement was included as a result of the Obama administration’s decision to airlift Iran $400 million in cash in 2015 as part of a secret side agreement with Tehran that only became public knowledge after a Wall Street Journal exposé.
Foxx’s measure is likely to garner widespread Republican support and attract some Democrats who have become frustrated with the ongoing negotiations. If passed, Congress would be permitted to access “copies of any document, memorandum, or other communication in [the president’s] possession, or any portion thereof, that refers or relates to any initiative or negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program,” according to the measure. The measure comes amid a push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who wrote to the White House this month demanding it “not to return to any deal with Iran prior to releasing the full text of the agreement and any side agreements to Congress.”
While the Biden administration is required by law to submit any new deal to Congress for review, there are concerns the White House will find ways to circumvent this law, known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (INARA). That law was overwhelmingly passed by Congress after the Obama administration bypassed the legislative body to unilaterally approve the deal, which provided Iran with billions in cash windfalls.
Already, the Biden administration is expected to immediately provide Iran with up to $7 billion in cash the day the deal is signed, the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month. That money could be unfrozen by the administration before Congress has a chance to review the agreement.
Foxx told the Free Beacon that Congress must exercise its oversight authority and needs to be fully briefed on all aspects of the deal, including any secret arrangements negotiated on the sidelines of formal talks.
“Pursuant to INARA, the administration is required to keep Congress ‘fully and currently informed’ of any new or amended agreement with Iran—it’s already settled law signed by former President Obama and supported by Democrats,” Foxx said. “Congress has a mandate to exercise its explicit oversight authorities to hold the Biden administration accountable. We cannot let accountability and transparency become relics of a bygone era.”
While the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees legislation of this sort, did not fast track the legislation for a full vote in the House, the committee’s Democrat chairman, Gregory Meeks, confirmed during debate on the measure that the Biden administration has committed to upholding INARA and giving Congress a vote. Congressional sources familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon that Foxx’s resolution is just one part of the Republican push to ensure that Biden consults with Congress on any final agreement.
Democratic and Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress have been pressuring the Biden administration to provide assurances that any new deal is presented to the legislative branch.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) and seven other Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee recently penned a letter to President Joe Biden asking that he “provide Congress with the full text of any proposal to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement.”
“We are deeply concerned about multiple provisions that reportedly may be contained in the final language of any agreement with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” states Gottheimer’s letter, which was signed by 49 other lawmakers.
Rumored provisions currently included in the draft proposal have fueled concerns that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a sanctioned terror group responsible for killing Americans, would be awarded a pathway to skirt U.S. sanctions.
Gottheimer and his colleagues remain concerned the new deal “could significantly dilute the effectiveness of terrorism-related sanctions on the IRGC, Iran’s paramilitary terror arm, and provides the organization with a pathway for sanctions evasion.” The lawmakers also urged the Biden administration to remove provisions of the deal that would allow Russia to cash in on some $10 billion in nuclear contracts with Iran.
“We urge you not to return to any deal with Iran prior to releasing the full text of the agreement and any side agreements to Congress, to provide us with an in-depth briefing on the matter, and to consult with all key stakeholders,” the Gottheimer letter states.
Senate hopeful John Fetterman has cast himself as a champion of Pennsylvania’s public schools, telling voters he will “make sure our public schools have the funding they need.” But his tax records tell a different story. In fact, as mayor of Braddock, Pa., Fetterman failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes on time to his local school district, one of the poorest in the state.
Woodland Hills School District, which serves Braddock, placed nearly three-dozen tax liens against Fetterman totaling $18,692 for unpaid property taxes from 2006 to 2019, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The district sued Fetterman twice over the unpaid bills, resulting in default judgments against Fetterman totaling $3,769. Fetterman has since paid off the liens, but in some cases it took him more than six years to satisfy the debt.
The delinquent tax payments undercut Fetterman’s claim to be a champion for public schools. In 2018, he said he opposed school vouchers, claiming they would divert funds from public schools to charter and private schools. Fetterman says on his campaign website that he will fight for public school funding if he’s sent to Washington so that “teachers aren’t shouldering so much of a burden.” He recently called on state lawmakers to “invest more” in Pennsylvania’s public schools.
In failing to pay taxes to Woodland Hills, Fetterman deprived funding for one of the poorest and academically challenged districts in the Keystone State. The district’s three elementary schools are in the bottom 15 percent of academic achievement tests. Seventy-one percent of Woodland Hills students in the 2021-2022 school year were low-income, one of the highest rates in Pennsylvania, according to state education department data. The state legislature this year gave Woodland Hills $1.4 million in “level up” funding, which goes to school districts with a “higher at-risk student population.”
In all, agencies in Fetterman’s Allegheny County placed 65 liens totaling $30,463 against Fetterman and Braddock Redux, the community nonprofit he founded with funding from his wealthy father. Woodland Hills placed $6,422.11 in tax liens against Fetterman and another $12,250.38 against Braddock Redux, court filings show. In Pennsylvania, taxing authorities like school districts, counties, and waste management providers send out separate tax bills to property owners.
Woodland Hills filed multiple lawsuits against Fetterman after months of failed attempts to collect the delinquent tax debts. One lawsuit filed in September 2008 shows the lengths to which the school district went to collect the money before suing Fetterman.
Woodland Hills sued Fetterman on Sept. 9, 2008, for $1,278.38 he owed in taxes for the 2006 tax year. The district mailed Fetterman notices on May 9, 2008, and July 30, 2008, regarding the unpaid debt, and the sheriff’s office served him a lawsuit at his residence on Sept. 25, 2008, records show. The court issued a default judgment against Fetterman on Aug. 11, 2009, in the amount of $2,442.67. The debt was “satisfied” on Oct. 18, 2012, according to records.
Fetterman has given several explanations for not paying his taxes on time. He said in 2016, when the issue surfaced in his first Senate campaign, that the liens “were never substantial” and were for properties he “saved for the community.” He said some of the taxes “shouldn’t have been paid” due to clerical errors, while others “just fell through the cracks.” He has said that some of the properties were vacant houses he refurbished and gave to residents of Braddock.
Fetterman’s delinquency didn’t sit well with some Allegheny County residents.
“It’s not very responsible, especially for somebody in a political position like that,” Lisa Musta told a news station in 2016. “It’s not a good example for other people, and it doesn’t sit well with me.”
Fetterman has been accused of hypocrisy before on the public school issue. The progressive darling supported school closures and other lockdowns during the pandemic in 2020, but took a family vacation to the Jersey Shore with a taxpayer-funded security detail in tow.
Fetterman since 2015 has sent at least one of his children to Winchester Thurston, a private school in Pennsylvania where tuition is as high as $34,250, the Free Beaconreported. David P. Hardy, the founder of a charter school in Pennsylvania, accused Fetterman of hypocrisy for opposing school vouchers in poor districts, telling the Free Beacon that “the poor people there are stuck going to those schools, and [Fetterman] doesn’t give them any way out.”
A Fetterman spokesman confirmed that the liens were placed against properties Fetterman bought through the nonprofit he started with his father’s money, which the spokesman said was “helping to revive Braddock.”
The National Center for Public Policy Research is taking Starbucks to court, arguing its discriminatory policies put shareholders at risk
A Starbucks shareholder is suing the company’s top executives over a host of race-conscious policies that the lawsuit says violate civil rights law and, by exposing the company to costly litigation, threaten the value of its shares.
The policies—all of which are advertised on the coffee giant’s website—include $1.5 billion set aside for “diverse suppliers” and a compensation scheme that ties executive pay to “BIPOC representation” at the company, for which Starbucks has set numerical targets. The corporation also runs a “Leadership Accelerator Program” that is available only to minority employees, as well as a program that reserves 15 percent of Starbucks’s advertising budget for minority-owned media companies.
The lawsuit, filed on August 30 by the public interest law firm the American Civil Rights Project, will showcase a novel legal approach to challenging the race-conscious policies of publicly owned corporations. Typically, the plaintiffs in such cases are employees or job applicants who say the policies violated their civil rights. Here, however, the plaintiff is a conservative nonprofit, the National Center for Public Policy Research, that owns shares in Starbucks.
The group is arguing that the coffee giant’s programs endanger “Starbucks and the interests of all its shareholders”—which the company’s officers have a legal duty to protect—by inviting “nearly endless” civil rights litigation that could force Starbucks to pay out damages.
The lawsuit is part of a broader effort by shareholders to rein in corporate executives, who investors say are wantonly violating the law as they work to burnish their woke credentials. The National Center for Public Policy Research holds stock not just in Starbucks, but in JP Morgan and McDonald’s. Over the past year, it has threatened to sue executives at each company who’ve implemented race-conscious policies; the suit against Starbucks’s top brass marks the first time the nonprofit has made good on its threats.
Because the center is suing Starbucks’s executives in their personal capacity, any damages awarded will come out of the pockets of individual officers, not the company’s corporate coffers, a gambit designed to make other C-suites sweat.
The National Center for Public Policy Research is quite candid about its goals. “We want to scare people away from discriminating on the basis of race,” said Scott Shepard, an attorney with the group.
Starbucks declined to comment.
The lawsuit asks a Washington State court to declare Starbucks’s policies a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracting, and of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination in employment. It does not cite the violations themselves as grounds for damages, however; the claim is that the violations represent a breach of fiduciary duty, which in turn entitles the shareholders to compensation.
The litigation comes as companies across the country are reserving jobs, fellowships, and bonuses for members of certain minority groups. Pfizer excludes whites and Asians from a lucrative nine-year fellowship program. Amazon gives “Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs” an extra $10,000 to launch delivery startups. At Google, Microsoft, and IBM, prestigious research fellowships have capped the number of non-minority students that universities can nominate.
While some of these companies have been hit with traditional civil rights lawsuits—Amazon and Pfizer, for example—many have not. Such lawsuits would likely succeed on the merits, attorneys told the Washington Free Beacon, but plaintiffs can be hard to find given that suing one’s employer is often a professional death sentence—particularly when the lawsuit alleges anti-white discrimination.
“Finding the legal violation is easy,” said Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the chair of the American Civil Rights Project. “What’s hard is finding people to stick their neck out to say ‘I’m harmed.’”
Heriot’s firm believes that shareholder lawsuits—and the highly publicized threat of them—can sidestep that problem. Groups of stockholders like the National Center for Public Policy Research are “not susceptible to the kind of pressure campaign that any individual is,” said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, making them good candidates for plaintiffs in reverse discrimination cases.
If shareholder lawfare becomes more common, the thinking goes, then all publicly traded companies will face a credible threat of legal action should they adopt racial quotas. “What this does is change the incentive structure of every C-suite in America,” Morenoff said.
Working with the American Civil Rights Project, other investors are now issuing their own threats—some of which have been successful. Last year, the firm sent open letters to Lowe’s and Coca-Cola on behalf of shareholders, threatening to sue the companies’ executives if they didn’t retract their race-conscious policies. Both eventually backtracked: In February, Coca-Cola told shareholders that it had dropped racial staffing requirements for law firms doing work with the company, and in August, Lowe’s quietly dropped a promotional program that was only open to minority-owned businesses.
The lawsuit against Starbucks came after the company’s directors shrugged off a similar threat, telling the National Center for Public Policy Research that it was “not in the best interest of Starbucks” to retract their race-conscious policies. Courts are generally unwilling to second-guess business decisions made by corporate officers, Morenoff said, a potential drawback to his group’s shareholder-led approach.
But even if discrimination did maximize the value of Starbucks’s shares, Washington State law still requires corporations to engage in “lawful business.” Starbucks’s race-conscious policies thus constitute a breach of fiduciary duty whether or not they serve the company’s bottom line, the lawsuit argues.
Other state codes include almost identical language. In Delaware, where most companies are incorporated, corporate officers can be held liable for “a knowing violation of law.” Once they receive notice that their policies are illegal—the purpose of the demand letters—executives are theoretically on the hook.
Shareholder suits have another advantage over conventional civil rights litigation: An employee or outside contractor can only challenge policies that directly discriminate against them, a legal concept known as standing. “It’s hard to find one person who has standing to challenge all of a company’s racist policies at once,” Morenoff said, much less multiple people who are willing to challenge each anti-white policy individually. By contrast, a stockholder can challenge every discriminatory program in one fell swoop, on the grounds that each one represents an independent violation of fiduciary duty.
That makes shareholders an especially useful weapon against a company like JP Morgan, which has nearly a dozen race-conscious policies. The bank offers two different fellowships that exclude whites and Asians, one for black students and another for Hispanic students, as well as three different supplier diversity initiatives that discriminate based on race, according to an open letter from the American Civil Rights Project. It also has three race-conscious lending programs—one of which provides “$2 billion in small business lending to Black, Hispanic[,] and Latino communities”—that the letter says violate the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act.
“Civil rights lawsuits are the retail approach” to race discrimination, Morenoff said. “Shareholders’ lawsuits are the wholesale approach.”
Implicit in this approach is a political argument: Old-school American liberalism, with its emphasis on free enterprise and colorblind civil rights, has the resources to resist the progressive insurgency that was born within it.
That faith is almost anachronistic on today’s right, where a growing number of commentators see “wokeness” as an unholy alliance between capitalism and civil rights law. Heriot herself has argued that corporations set up diversity bureaucracies in order to shield themselves from discrimination complaints, which can cost businesses millions in damages and legal fees. The bet her group is making is that civil rights law can be harnessed against its own excesses—provided shareholders step up to the plate.
To that end, the American Civil Rights Project has sought to reframe race discrimination as a kind of corruption. In its open letters and now its lawsuit, the group argues that corporate officers are effectively stealing their principals’ money, using it to purchase progressive cachet at the expense of the company.
“It benefits [the officers] personally to pose as virtuous advocates of ‘Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity,’” the lawsuit against Starbucks reads, “even when it harms the company and its owners—a classic example of (admittedly non-pecuniary) self-dealing.”
LEADING ANTI-AMERICA THEMES ARE BEING SPONSORED BY MAJOR CORPORATES AND CHINESE COMMUNIST-LINKED ENTITIES.
Anthony Fauci is set to headline a major far-left conference whose lead sponsors include COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer, The National Pulse can reveal. Fauci will appear alongside race-baiter Ibram X. Kendi, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and more.
The September 21st to 23rd Atlantic magazine festival will take place at the Wharf in Washington, D.C., with tickets going for a cool $400.00 per person. Topics are set to include critical race theory, diversity, Ukraine, censorship, climate change, and centralizing healthcare and pandemic response control.
Fauci – who has overseen most of America’s COVID-19 response in his role as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – has long been the subject of “fact checks” by corporate media sources such as Reuters, which deny his links with Big Pharma group Pfizer. The chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Thomson Reuters Foundation– James C. Smith – is a top investor and board member for Pfizer, as The National Pulse revealed in December 2021.
Pfizer vaccine studies have also shown adverse effects on the health of its recipients, including altered menstrual cycles in women, lowered sperm count in men, and cardiovascular problems in children and young adults. Despite the flaws – or perhaps because of them – the company hired a record-breaking number of politically connected lobbyists to help advance vaccine mandates.
Anti-America Line Up.
Other participants in the event include White House Chief of Staff Ronald A. Klain, “anti-racist” activist Ibram X. Kendi, top “Critical Race Theory” scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, as well as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The first day of the conference includes “underwritten” panels by Pfizer, Genentech, the Walton Family Foundation, and Edward Jones. The website explains that “underwritten” sessions are “not produced by the Atlantic’s Editorial Team”. In other words, they are long, paid “advertorial” by major corporate interests. Underwritten sessions account for half of the first day’s events; 62.5 percent of the second day’s events; and none of the last day’s events.
The second day’s programming includes a panel on “misinformation”, underwritten by the Boston Consulting Group, and starring TikTok’s “Misinformation Researcher” Abbie Richards, as well as Louis Jacobson from the partisan “fact checker” Politifact. Richards is unlikely to be quizzed on recent revelations that dark money Democrat groups are paying for misinformation to be spread on her Chinese Communist-owned platform by leading Obama acolytes.
Southern Company is then underwriting a panel on George Floyd, followed by the MacArthur Foundation hyping ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ and Penguin Books promoting critical race theory.
China Links.
Happy Hours each day are taking place at District Pier in Washington, D.C., with representatives from the hard-left Omidyar network also due in attendance. Omidyar network founder Pierre Omidyar was connected in 2021 to the Chinese Communist-linked Berggruen Institute, whose staff helped run the now-infamous anti-Trump political war game which saw recently appointed Biden advisor John Podesta refuse to concede the election despite losing on election night, in-game.
The Transition Integrity Project’s predictions came to pass, as the political establishment refused Trump poll watchers access and claimed victory in the days after the 2020 vote.
The conference will also host the premiere of a new Peacock documentary entitled Shadowland, wherein political elites are interviewed in an attempt to debunk the idea of a ruling political class in the United States. They will claim that the idea of a political elite or oligarchy is anti-Semitic. Read more about the conference here.
A Texasteacher in El Paso was fired after telling high school students not to judge pedophiles for wanting to have sex with kindergarten-age children.
In a special meeting Sept. 6, the El Paso ISD school board voted unanimously to terminate the teacher who taught English at Franklin High School.
She was terminated after a video of her defending pedophiles went viral.
“Stop calling them that. You’re not allowed to label people like that. Stop it, Diego,” the teacher can be heard saying on the video, while students are protesting with “What?” and “No.”
“We’re going to call them MAPs: Minor Attracted Persons. So don’t judge people just because they want to have sex with a 5-year-old.”
The video on the school’s Facebook page drew scores of comments from outraged and disgusted parents.
“This is pure evil. In the past, teachers would never dream of saying this,” Andrew Ethan Pilat wrote.
“Fire that insane liberal teacher literally defending pedos. School boards have been the enemy for decades and are indoctrinating our children,” wrote Gojo Satoru.
One woman commented she was glad she had pulled her children out of public schools, while another called for parents to stage a walkout until the teacher was removed.
However, one student in the English class told a local news outlet she believed the teacher’s words were taken out of context.
“She was expressing how it was ridiculous how we [society] might not be able to call people pedophiles. That we will probably have to start calling them MAPs because it can be offensive to them. The class agreed,” Ryann Ruvalcaba, a junior at Franklin High School, told KFOXTV.
Last year, Allyn Walker, a transgender assistant professor at Old Dominion University, resigned in May after using the term “minor-attracted person” instead of the word pedophile in research, which led to an outcry on campus and social media.
“My scholarship aims to prevent child sexual abuse,” Walker said in a news release. “That research was mischaracterized by some in the media and online, partly on the basis of my trans identity.”
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore recently hired Walker to work as a postdoctoral fellow at a center to prevent child sexual abuse.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report Thursday about how companies deploy “dark patterns” in advertising for enticing potential customers, manipulating them into making purchases and giving up their privacy in the process.
“Our report shows how more and more companies are using digital dark patterns to trick people into buying products and giving away their personal information,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “This report—and our cases—send a clear message that these traps will not be tolerated.”
Dark patterns include many oft-used marketing techniques such as ads posing as independent content, burying key terms in corporate jargon, tricking customers or website visitors into giving up personal data, making use of deceptive colors, pre-checked consent boxes, language and emotion to coerce customers into making purchases, deceptively signing up for content, tricking customers into recurring charges, and making it extremely difficult to unsubscribe.
The greater use of e-commerce in recent years has made it easier for companies to target consumers with a variety of tactics.
The FTC report, titled “Bringing Dark Patterns to Light” (pdf), examined how these tactics can obscure, subvert, or impair consumer choice, and may be violating consumer protection laws. According to the report, the FTC has sued companies making use of such tactics to deceive customers.
FTC Versus LendingClub
The FTC sued online lender LendingClub Corp. in 2018 after the company falsely marketed “no hidden fees,” when in reality, the company deducted hundreds or even thousands of dollars in hidden up-front fees from the loans.
The other allegations against LendingClub were that consumers were misinformed about being eligible for loans when they were not, and taking money from consumers’ bank accounts without authorization.
After judgment was passed, LendingClub agreed to pay out more than $9.7 million to 61,990 consumers who were charged hidden fees.
The FTC has outlined three main principles for businesses when advertising:
Disclose clearly and accurately the material terms of the sale contract such as costs, deadlines to cancel, frequency of charges, and disclosure of essential information.
Obtain the customer’s informed consent before the payment is made.
Provide an easy and simple cancellation process.
Failure to comply with the requirements may result in the FTC taking action.
Refunding ABCmouse Subscriptions
In 2021, the FTC sent refund payments totaling more than $9.7 million to nearly 207,000 consumers of ABCmouse who were automatically billed for renewals, as well as those who were prevented from canceling memberships.
ABCmouse advertised “Special Offer” 6- or 12-month memberships, but failed to inform customers that their subscriptions would be automatically renewed. The marketing practice ran from 2015 to at least 2018 and led to thousands of customers having their subscriptions renewed and charged for memberships without proper consent.
Based on the settlement (pdf), ABCmouse—run by online education company Age of Learning Inc.—was required to change its negative option marketing and billing practices to settle the FTC charges, including misrepresentations about cancellations and failure to disclose important information to consumers.
A key source for the anti-Donald Trump dossier paid for by Democrats has confirmed that he was on the FBI’s payroll for years.
Igor Danchenko, who provided information to the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, “was a vital source of information to the U.S. government during the course of his cooperation and was relied upon to build other cases and open other investigations,” lawyers for Danchenko said in a filing lodged in federal court in Virginia.
Special counsel John Durham recently disclosed that Danchenko was a confidential human informant for the FBI from March 2017 to October 2020.
Danchenko was later charged with five counts of lying to the government in interviews about his role as a collector of information that was put forth in the dossier, which was funded by the campaign of Hillary Clinton—Trump and Clinton faced off in the 2016 presidential election—and the Democratic National Committee.
Danchenko allegedly lied about not sourcing information from Charles Dolan, a longtime Clinton associate, and sourcing information from Sergei Millian, a businessman and supporter of Trump.
Some have alleged that the FBI paid Danchenko in an effort to conceal the fabrications. The FBI has declined comment on the allegation, referring The Epoch Times to the Department of Justice, which didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
Prior Investigation
Danchenko was investigated by the FBI from 2009 to 2011. While working for the Brookings Institution in 2008, he approached two colleagues and discussed whether they wanted to provide classified information in exchange for money, according to Durham’s team.
Danchenko said he thought one of the employees might be able to join the Obama administration, which came into power in early 2009, and gain access to classified information. Danchenko said he knew people who would pay money for the information. The employee conveyed the offer to a contact in the government, who relayed it to the FBI.
The FBI started a preliminary investigation and upgraded the probe to a full investigation after learning that Danchenko was an associate of two people who were known by bureau counterintelligence experts and that he had previous contact with known Russian intelligence officers and the Russian Embassy.
“The defendant had also informed one Russian intelligence officer that he had interest in entering the Russian diplomatic service. The investigation into the defendant was closed in 2010 after the FBI incorrectly believed that the defendant had left the country,” Durham’s team stated.
When speaking to the FBI in January 2017, Danchenko denied being in contact with Russian intelligence. But he later said he had been in contact with two people who he thought were connected to the Russian intelligence community.
‘Direct Evidence’
Prosecutors should be able to bring up the prior investigation at Danchenko’s upcoming trial because it’s “direct evidence of the materiality of the defendant’s false statements,” according to Durham’s team.
“The Government anticipates that a potential defense strategy at trial will be to argue that the defendant’s alleged lies about the sourcing of the Steele Reports were not material because they had no effect on, and could not have affected, the course of the FBI’s investigations concerning potential coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian Government. Thus, the Government should be able to introduce evidence of this prior counterintelligence investigation (and the facts underlying that investigation) as direct evidence of the materiality of the defendant’s false statements,” it said in a recent court filing.
“Such evidence is admissible because in any investigation of potential collusion between the Russian Government and a political campaign, it is appropriate and necessary for the FBI to consider whether information it receives via foreign nationals may be a product of Russian intelligence efforts or disinformation. Had the FBI known at the time of his 2017 interviews that the defendant was providing them with false information about the sourcing of his claims, this naturally would have (or should have) caused investigators to revisit the prior counterintelligence investigation and raise the prospect that the defendant might have in fact been under the control or guidance of the Russian intelligence services.”
Danchenko’s lawyers said the agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane, the operation against Trump and his campaign, “were well aware of the prior counterintelligence investigation.”
They also said that agents involved in the prior probe were consulted about using Danchenko as a paid source and raised no objections, that agents factored the prior probe into their evaluation of Danchenko’s credibility, and that an independent source review committee recommended using Danchenko as a source through December 2020, even after taking into account Danchenko’s links to Russia.
“As an initial matter, those facts obliterate the government’s argument that any alleged false statements were material to the government’s ability to evaluate whether Mr. Danchenko could have been working for the Russians all along,” Danchenko’s lawyers said.
“It would be one thing to argue that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators were not aware of the prior investigation and Mr. Danchenko failed to inform them of it when asked. But, as one might expect, Mr. Danchenko was not aware of the investigation.”
They also noted that Danchenko only learned of the probe when then-Attorney General William Barr disclosed it to the public in September 2020.
“Moreover, it stretches credibility to suggest that anything else would have caused the FBI to be more suspicious of Mr. Danchenko’s statements and his potential role in spreading disinformation than the very fact that he was previously investigated for possibly engaging in espionage on behalf of Russia. Armed with that knowledge, however, and based on the substantial and ‘critical’ information Mr. Danchenko provided to the FBI throughout his time as a source, the FBI nevertheless persisted,” Danchenko’s team stated. “The Special Counsel perhaps disagrees with that decision, but Mr. Danchenko’s trial [is] on five specific statements and this is not the place to air out the Special Counsel’s dissatisfaction.”
Feng Zhenguo, former owner of a profitable wood furniture factory in China’s central Hebei province, experienced extortion from the environmental authorities and police, and was forced to sell his factory to Chinese police at a very low price.
“The communist regime’s so-called reform and opening up is just to loosen the shackles around Chinese people’s necks when both its rule and economy are on the verge of collapse,” Feng said.
“It allows you experience a little bit of freedom and lets you work hard until you make some money. Then, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) comes for your money.”
Feng’s solid wood furniture factory is in Qinhuangdao, a port city 190 miles east of Beijing. He invested over 3 million yuan (over $430,000) and had about 40 employees in his factory, customizing high-end solid wood furniture. But he was forced to sell his factory to the police for only 400,000 yuan ($57,000).
“I thought that I could do something well if I was really fond of it and did it with all my heart,” Feng said. He decided to set up the business, as he had always loved carpentry and good craftsmanships.
Customized solid wood furniture made in Feng Zhenguo’s factory. (Courtesy of Feng Zhenguo)
However, the communist regime turned his life’s dream into a nightmare, asking for money from him time and again citing various excuses and guises, Feng told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Sept. 14.
“I suddenly came to understand that, under the rule of the CCP, we ordinary Chinese people are just like ants, insignificant and easily crushed, no matter how hard we work,” Feng said.
Environment Protection in China an ‘Extortion Campaign’
Feng went on to tell The Epoch Times how the communist party’s environmental authorities and police have been extorting money from him.
In 2016, Feng went about the various procedures listed for establishing a factory, including filing an application for an environmental impact assessment (EIA), which was the most troublesome of all the procedures, according to Feng.
The communist party’s rubberstamp legislature claims on its official website, the EIA is “a mandatory legal system that determines whether a construction project can proceed.” The local ecology and environment bureau carry out their assessment of a construction project, after which a report will be submitted for approval regarding the site selection of the project, the impact on the surrounding environment, and preventive measures to be taken. A business cannot operate without the approval of the ecology and environment bureau.
But in reality, the EIA actually facilitates constant extortion by the environment bureau that oversees the assessment process, according to Feng.
“For example, the ecology and environmental bureau would designate a certain supplier of environmental protection products. You have to purchase from this supplier. For a piece of environmental protection equipment that is worth a bit more than 100,000 yuan ($21,000), this supplier might sell it for 400,000 yuan ($57,000) to 500,000 yuan ($71,000),” Feng said.
This is only one of the ways that the bureau makes money from businesses that apply for EIAs, he noted.
“They also designate a contractor for construction and an acceptance company for review at completion,” Feng said.
In his city, the boss of the acceptance company was formerly the deputy director of the ecology and environment bureau, Feng said.
“The deputy director claims that he’s taken leave without pay, which is a red herring,” Feng said.
The bureau and the acceptance company colluded with each other to force business owners to pay more for the equipment and extra money is expected to guarantee the pass of assessment.
Feng said that he was lucky, after having spent several hundred thousand yuan, that he passed the assessment and was able to begin production.
“Many people were forced to demolish their factories as they could not pass the assessment, and they went bankrupt. Some committed suicide because of this,” Feng said.
After he passed the assessment, staffers from the ecology and environment bureau came to his factory regularly—mostly several times a month. “They sent different people with different allegations. We were never able to meet their requirements because their purpose was to ask for money,” he said.
Once the deputy director, also the boss of the acceptance company, told him: “Our quota of fines for this year is 3 million yuan ($429,559), which we must fulfill.”
In addition to the regular payments, Feng needed to prepare for unexpected expenses.
For instance, only months after he started production, he had to install a new set of environmental protection equipment, as the ecology and environment bureau had a new director, who said that his equipment was unqualified and needed renewal.
He had no other choice but to obey, as he had to carry on with his business, in which he had already invested millions by that time.
Undated photo of Feng Zhenguo’s furniture factory in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province, China. (Courtesy of Feng Zhenguo)
“The CCP’s environmental protection is a campaign to get money. It is not for the long-term protection of the enterprises or the environment,” Feng lamented.
Persecuted for Belief
Feng and his wife, Han Yanjing, accompanied their daughter to Vancouver to study in 2019. There, a friend from their hometown brought Han to church.
Han then went back to China in early 2020, just before the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan, to take care of the daily operation of the factory, while Feng stayed in Canada with their daughter.
Undated photo of Feng’s family. From left to right: Feng Zhenguo, the daughter, and Feng’s wife Han Yanjing (Courtesy of Feng Zhenguo)
Han went to a family church in Qinhuangdao city several times with an employee, after which she has since been targeted by the local police.
Zheng Shiyong, a police officer from Haiyang Police Station in Qinhuangdao, started visiting Feng’s home. He came to meet Han, telling her that someone had reported her for participating in an “illegal rally.” He said that the police chief wouldn’t report her to higher authorities as long as she was willing to pay.
Han gave him 5,000 yuan ($715).
Several days later, Zheng came with the police chief to Han’s home again. This time, a hand-made wood gazebo in her courtyard caught the fancy of the police chief. He asked Han to make one for him at the cost price.
Han knew what he meant, so she said, “If you like it, just take it.” The police chief had the gazebo taken away a few days later.
Profitable Business
Feng had rented a piece of land of 1.58 acres on which he built a workshop with a floor area of 0.74 acres.
“I regarded the factory as my baby,” Feng said, “I had an ardent yearning for a bright future.”
He attended to the operation, manufacturing, and planning with great care. Every year, he made a new plan for sales targets, the number of employees, and the scale of production.
He positioned his products to be unique, high-end pure solid wood designed and made to customers’ requirements.
“In fact, my factory was very profitable. We customized high-grade solid wood furniture for those who planned to upgrade home decoration. In Qinhuangdao city, my brand ‘Mu Jia’ was in a position to set prices for high-end furniture. I didn’t want to compete with low-end products,” Feng said proudly.
His products were well received in the market. Once at a home decoration and construction materials exhibition, his products were so popular that his sales staffers were all occupied answering calls from customers and placing orders. His customers came from as far as Xinjiang in the west of China.
His face beamed with happiness as he recalled that period of time. “I felt very proud because I was able to offer job opportunities for about 40 people who were working with me,” Feng said.
Business a Steal at $57,274
But following the police visits, Feng felt it was no longer safe to run the business. So he told his wife to sell it.
A potential buyer quoted them 2.8 million yuan ($400,000) for the plant, but Feng was reluctant to sell it at that price, as his total investment had exceeded 3 million yuan and the plant was making a good profit.
But after that offer, no one contacted them with another offer.
They decided to contact that person who made the offer but the man said, “we can’t buy your factory, because someone from the police station wants it.”
After some time, a man named Zhang Jian offered them 400,000 yuan ($57,274) for the plant. Zhang threatened them that they would get an even lower price if they didn’t take the offer.
Feng and his wife decided to sell the plant to Zhang even though the $57,274 wasn’t even close to covering their investment.
The couple later learned that Zhang represented Han Jiajun, a police officer from Haiyang Police Station.
Police Continue to Ask for Money
After selling the factory, Han found a job working for a friend. The couple didn’t expect that the police would call them again, asking for money.
Zheng Shiyong, the policeman who accompanied his boss to get the gazebo in Han’s yard, called Han before the Chinese New Year in 2021 and said, “We can no longer cover up your issue last time [Han’s going to the family church]. We have to report to our superiors.”
This time, Han didn’t have anything to pay them. She fled to Canada and joined her husband and daughter when China lifted its travel restrictions.
The Epoch Times called Haiyang Police Station for comment on Sept. 15, but the police declined to comment.
End the CCP
Feng is now enjoying life as a carpenter in Canada, where he feels very happy.
“I feel much more comfortable working as an ordinary carpenter in Canada than being a boss in China,” he said.
“The iron fist of the CCP kept hitting me almost every day, and I wasn’t able to have a good sleep during those years when I had my own factory in China,” he said.
He has now come to see that private enterprises in China are just like “chives,” a term used by Chinese citizens to describe things that are easy to grow but subject “to cuts or harvests.”
“After we get rich with our hard work, the CCP is there to harvest,” Feng said.
He said that the CCP has long been treating the Chinese people this way. In the early years when the CCP first came into existence, it robbed wealthy farmers of their wealth and then killed them. And then, when it came into power, the CCP continued killing the Chinese people throughout its reign.
Freedom of Belief
After making their decision to leave China, Feng says his family now enjoys freedom of belief in Canada. He said he hopes that Chinese people in China will one day enjoy freedom as well.
“My grandpa told me when I was young that the CCP is very, very bad, and an organized gang of bandits,” Feng said.
On Aug. 20, at a rally in Vancouver calling for an end to the CCP, Feng attended the rally, wearing a T-shirt on which was printed the following sentence in both Chinese and English: “Destroy the CCP, build a new democratic country.”
Lin Cenxin and Chang Chun contributed to the article.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York believes the rich should pay their fair share — except for when it comes to taking care of illegal immigrants. In that case, she seems to believe that average-everyday Americans living in small border towns should be the ones picking up the check.
This was made clear on Wednesday when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planeloads of illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard, an island in Massachusetts that describes itself as a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants, according to the Associated Press.
Martha’s Vineyard is home to Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and many other prominent celebrities and Democrats, according to Business Insider.
In response to DeSantis’s clever move to make Democrats face the consequences of their policy positions, AOC condemned the act as “crimes against humanity” via Twitter on Friday.
It’s appalling that far-right politicians seem to have decided that fall before an election is their regularly scheduled time to commit crimes against humanity on refugees.
Don’t normalize this. Lying to & trafficking people for TV and clicks isn’t politics as usual. It’s abuse.
“It’s appalling that far-right politicians seem to have decided that fall before an election is their regularly scheduled time to commit crimes against humanity on refugees,” she tweeted.
“Don’t normalize this. Lying to & trafficking people for TV and clicks isn’t politics as usual. It’s abuse.”
Apparently, transporting needy, poor illegal immigrants to wealthy communities with the resources to take care of them is a crime against humanity. Who would’ve thought?
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It’s too bad the Obamas don’t have enough money to take care of illegal migrants themselves.
Oh wait, they do. It’s just that Democrats like AOC are fine with helping those in need, as long as someone else is footing the bill.
In response to AOC’s tweet, several Twitter users pointed out this hypocrisy.
AOC’s party has been flying illegals by the millions around the country for 18 months – now that 50 were sent to a rich, elitist, Democrat snob town – AOC suddenly cares. 😂😂😂
We saw just how quick the racist, rich Democrats bused them the hell out of their snob community.
DeSantis’s plan to send planeloads of illegals straight to Democrats’ doorsteps was absolutely brilliant. It forces Democrats to finally face the consequences of their own decisions.
If these tweets are any indication, people are waking up. Biden, Harris, AOC and the whole leftist open-borders coalition won’t be able to hide behind their lies any longer.
REVIEW: ‘Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis’
It must be nice to be Beth Macy. The bestselling author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America and now Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, sees the world in black and white. For Macy, whose cliché-ridden prose borders on painful, the fact that there were 100,000 overdose deaths between May 2020 and April 2021 can be blamed almost entirely on corporate greed. The people who are using drugs are victims of an economic and political system that is stacked against them, created almost entirely by an army of evil Republicans. And the only way to help ordinary Americans is to take profits from drug companies, dismantle the criminal justice system, and institute socialized medicine. Macy is almost always wrong, but never in doubt.
It is easy to see why Macy got an audience when Dopesick was published. She actually spent time in the parts of the country—particularly Appalachia—that were being overrun by opioids. (She had previously published a book called Factory Man about manufacturing jobs leaving America.) She interviewed users and dealers and chronicled the desperate lives that were destroyed by drugs. She wasn’t the first, but at a time when many readers were still trying to figure out what was behind Trump’s victory, Macy offered them a story. She grew up in this world and her own family and friends have been touched by the devastation.
She prides herself on her gritty reporting but unfortunately it’s full of banalities like, “I spoke with Bisch multiple times most weeks. … I know how he takes his coffee, that he calls sub sandwiches hoagies, that he pronounces the word huge ‘yu-u-ge.’” Talk about seeing into someone’s soul.
Or this: “Mathis vowed to meet drug users where they are—physically, spiritually, and emotionally. But working in the heart of the Bible Belt, she also knew she would have to build bridges before anyone could roll stones across them.” Surely there is an easier way?
Macy tells us that in her “fourth decade as a journalist, I have always done my best storytelling when I follow what moves me, warts and all, relying on the long game to illuminate what the great Robert Caro means when he says, ‘Time equals truth.’” Robert Caro should sue to get his name out of this sentence.
Raising Lazarus is focused on finding the people who will solve the problem. And Macy interviews plenty of real-life saints, people who go into drug dens, persuade addicts to go to counseling, bring them food, get them to go to the hospital to be treated for HIV or hepatitis. They will call people every day for two straight months to get them to try some kind of rehab. It is hard work, not just because, as Macy suggests, there is not always enough funding or support from local authorities. But also because the lives of drug addicts are difficult and messy, and it’s hard not to get emotionally involved with them.
Macy is most interested in medically assisted treatment, helping substance users switch from opioids or heroin to Buprenorphine. And while there are plenty of folks in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and the medical community who are worried about people trading one addiction for another, there is a lot of evidence in favor of using such treatments to help people combat the serious withdrawal effects of going off drugs. Time and again, “dopesickness” makes it all but impossible for some addicts to get clean.
The fact that there are physical symptoms associated with drug addiction and drug withdrawal means for Macy that addiction is just like any other physical ailment. She quotes one Mississippi lawyer who explains that “you ought to be able to go to the ER, just like if I broke my leg and they fix it up. Well, this is the same thing. It’s a disease and people ought to be able to go somewhere and be treated for it.” A few pages later, she complains that drug addicts are treated differently from cancer patients. “Lisa had not been told to let her daughter ‘hit rock bottom’ before taking her to an oncologist. … No one suggested to Lisa that she simply lock up Amelia as treatment for her disease.”
It does not take anything away from the fact that addiction is a physical problem to suggest that it is not the same as cancer or breaking a leg. But Macy has no room for such subtleties. She argues that there should be almost no requirements for addicts to get “bupe,” as it’s commonly called, or even just clean needles to continue using. For Macy, meeting addicts where they are means a policy of all carrots and no sticks. They should get housing and food and not even be required to attend counseling. “Pizza parties and old-fashioned house calls were the carrots. Continued medicine was the carrot. So were clean needles for the 40 percent of people who use drugs and weren’t yet ready to stop using. The sticks were—as long as you didn’t turn the local Walgreens into a trap house—well, there shouldn’t be any sticks.”
Macy has no sense that even addicts respond to incentives, and making addiction as comfortable as possible for them might have poor effects. Particularly since she believes that the solution to the opioid epidemic lies in greater government funding of health care. “Federal leaders should adopt Medicare for All so that basic health care, SUD [Substance Use Disorder] treatment, and mental health treatment with an emphasis on childhood trauma—arguably the biggest driver of SUD—can’t be so easily politicized.” And, by the way, she concludes that the United States “will not reverse its declining life expectancy until we replace our current system of corporate socialism with one that puts the health and happiness of regular people ahead of billionaires.”
If you want to know how she knows all these things, don’t look for any footnotes to studies or research, there aren’t any. Instead, she relies on a few academics and politicians, and, of course, “lived experience.” She writes, “It took me more than a decade to fully grasp this, but people who use drugs are the real experts.” What could go wrong with this strategy?
The other thread in Raising Lazarus is the problem with our billionaires, particularly the Sackler family who owns Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Macy clearly believes the Sacklers were out to get as many people addicted to their drug as possible from the beginning, and its members are rubbing their hands together at the prospect of so many people suffering.
Macy practically drools every time she sees a protest outside the courtroom where the Sackler bankruptcy is being discharged. She thrills to the sound of congressional hearings over their misdeeds, convinced that each clever jab by a lawyer or legislator is going to be the end of the company. She breathlessly recounts the story of activists who release thousands of fake prescriptions inside the Guggenheim to protest the use of the Sackler name in the museum. She calls it “mesmerizing theater, a camera-ready call out,” and then recounts how two of the activists turned it into a first date, with sushi afterward. Heartwarming stuff.
Perhaps the saddest part of Raising Lazarus is how many of the family members of overdose victims are also hanging on the every turn of the Sacklers’ fortune. They have been persuaded that bringing these billionaires down will somehow change things for their families or even for others going forward. The truth of the matter is that the opioid crisis is nowhere near as simple as Macy makes it out to be. Sure manufacturing jobs were lost, sure there are problems with using the criminal justice system to deal with addiction. But the problems in these communities are complex.
They involve economic changes, educational failures, family breakdown, loss of religious institutions, and a failure of human connection. Macy is right that just trying to replicate the work of the saints she meets is not going to fix the system or the fundamental problems at the root of the crisis. Nor is ending the use of the word addict, by the way, another suggestion she offers.
In a book that purports to describe the “hope” from the personal connections people can make to those suffering from substance abuse, it is finally surprising how little Macy has to say about the lockdowns during COVID. While she does note that this seemed to interfere with people getting to rehab or counseling, and that many of the people she profiled were hampered in their work, and that the substance abuse and overdoses seemed to increase during the past couple of years, she cannot come up with anything to say about the legislators who set these policies in place. Faced with the idea that a progressive Democrat could come up with a bad plan, Macy is practically speechless. It’s a miracle perhaps only surpassed by the raising of Lazarus.
Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis by Beth Macy Little, Brown, and Company, 400 pp., $30
Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum, is the author of No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives.
In latest ad, Michigan House candidate Hillary Scholten says her family is forgoing air conditioning, new shoes
Michigan Democrat Hillary Scholten, who is running in one of the country’s most competitive congressional races, wants voters to believe she’s “making do with less and making things last longer” just like them.
In her latest campaign ad, Scholten claims her family has dramatically cut back on spending because of inflation. Higher energy prices, for example, mean no more air conditioning for the Scholten family, the ad shows.
Nor can Scholten even afford shoes for her children. “Things [are] so expensive,” she says after the ad shows her son wearing duct-taped sandals.
But those images may be a tough sell for Michigan voters, considering Scholten netted more than $200,000 last year working as an immigration attorney for a Grand Rapids-area law firm, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of her financial disclosure forms. Her family’s total income was likely far higher given her husband scored consulting fees from two nonprofits, on top of his salary as a professor at a local university.
Scholten’s latest ad push is part of a broader trend of Democrats struggling to relate to average voters during a period of immense economic uncertainty. For candidates such as Scholten, who makes roughly six to seven times Michigan’s median individual income, that means making questionable statements about their own financial security.
Scholten did not respond to a request for comment.
In the same ad, Scholten demands Democrats “stop the spending” and promises to “focus on the issues that matter most to Michigan families because they matter to mine too.”
Scholten, however, has backed seemingly every Democratic spending proposal since President Joe Biden entered office. In March, she celebrated the one-year anniversary of the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan.
“Every single Republican voted against it,” Scholten tweeted. “#Democrats deliver.”
Economists from across the political spectrum blame the American Rescue Plan for partially causing the historically high inflation seen in the United States. Consumer prices continued rising in August despite lower gas prices.
Scholten also applauded the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and claimed it would “lower costs for working families across the country & improve the lives of all [West] Michiganders.” Contrary to the bill’s name, there is no evidence that the bill will materially lower inflation.
The Free Beacon in April reported that Scholten failed to provide health coverage for her campaign staff. Scholten has called health care a “human right.”
Scholten will face Republican John Gibbs in November for the state’s Third Congressional District, which is currently held by Republican Peter Meijer. Scholten ran against Meijer in 2020 and lost by 5 points.
Senate hopeful was ‘happy’ to release murderer who, while out on bond, ordered hit on top witness
Charles “Zeke” Goldblum was sentenced to life in prison for killing a man with garden shears in a parking garage in downtown Pittsburgh and later trying to hire a hitman to kill his accomplice in the brutal murder. As lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Senate hopeful John Fetterman voted to set Goldblum free in 2019 and said he was “happy” when the killer was released from prison last year.
Goldblum was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1976 killing of George Wilhelm as part of an insurance fraud cover-up. According to prosecutors, Goldblum and an accomplice, Clarence Miller, lured Wilhelm to a parking garage in Pittsburgh, where Goldblum stabbed the man 26 times. While out on bail, Goldblum tried to hire an undercover police officer to murder Miller, who had fingered Goldblum for the crime.
Goldblum, who has maintained his innocence, was poised to die in prison, having unsuccessfully appealed for clemency seven times. But in 2019, Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, which Fetterman chairs, voted unanimously to release Goldblum from jail, overriding the wishes of Wilhelm’s family. To justify its decision, the board points to the judge and prosecutor on Wilhelm’s case, who have since concluded he was the accomplice rather than the principal assailant.
But in 2007, a federal appeals court rejected Goldblum’s request for an evidentiary hearing, writing, “there is just too much evidence here establishing Goldblum’s guilt.” Both judge and prosecutor have been vague about what information motivated their reversal, and no one has claimed Goldblum is innocent of the hitman charge.
Still, Fetterman cheered when Goldblum was released from jail last year, saying he was “happy that he’s going to be going home to his family” and that Goldblum was “not a threat to public safety.” The commutation was part of Fetterman’s pledge to “transform” Pennsylvania’s pardon process and free more prisoners, a record the Democrat has touted on the campaign trail. Fetterman specifically points to his efforts to end life sentences for those who are involved in murders but did not directly “pull the trigger.”
Beyond Goldblum, however, Fetterman has voted to free “triggermen” convicted of first-degree murder. Last year, he was the only member of the board to vote to release Wayne Covington, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing a man for money to buy heroin. That ordeal has already made its way into GOP ads that argue Fetterman is “too far left” and “dangerously liberal on crime,” suggesting Fetterman’s record as chair of the board may not be the winning issue he thinks it is.
Following his release from prison in 2021, Goldblum admitted he hired Miller to burn down a restaurant he owned in order to collect the insurance money. The pair went on to arrange a meeting with Wilhelm, who “knew of Goldblum’s involvement in the land fraud scheme and the arson” and wanted a payment, according to federal court documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Wilhelm did not leave the meeting alive—he was stabbed 26 times while in a car with Goldblum and Miller, who “agreed to lie to the police in order to provide each with an alibi” and “left the scene together,” court documents show.
While out on bond and awaiting trial, Goldblum concocted a “slay-for-pay plot” to kill Miller, who was expected to testify against Goldblum, the Pittsburgh Press reported in 1976. Goldblum, according to the Press, offered an undercover detective $2,000 to whack his co-conspirator but balked at the would-be assassin’s request for payment in advance, stating, “I was burned on this before. I’m not fronting anyone.” Goldblum has since acknowledged he “put a hit out on Miller,” who court documents describe as “the Commonwealth’s chief witness.”
Goldblum has claimed he was merely a witness to Miller stabbing Wilhelm, who shortly before his death told a police officer “Clarence Miller did this to me.” But prosecutors have argued that Goldblum’s attempt to hire a hitman to kill Miller indicated he was guilty of killing Wilhelm, and Wilhelm’s family members strongly opposed his release, insisting he is guilty of their relative’s murder.
“His claims of innocence have no merit,” Wilhelm’s niece, Sandra Horton, told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star of Goldblum in 2019. “We thought [his life sentence] would be just that—a life sentence without the possibility of parole, and that he would be made to accept his role in George’s brutal death.” Horton blamed Fetterman and Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf (D.) for freeing the killer after his pardon application was denied seven times previously. “It’s Wolf and Fetterman,” she said. “That’s how we got here. … The eighth time’s the charm.”
Fetterman campaign spokesman Joe Calvello defended the Democrat’s vote to free Goldblum, saying “John is proud of his work on the Board of Pardons giving second chances to non-violent offenders and the wrongfully convicted.”
“Goldblum was wrongfully convicted and that is why John, along with every other member of the Board of Pardons, voted to recommend clemency,” Calvello told the Free Beacon. “The judge and prosecutor that presided over his trial also came to this conclusion and advocated for his release.”
Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons is no stranger to controversy. In 1992, board members voted to commute the sentence of serial killer Reginald McFadden. Within months of his release, McFadden killed two people and kidnapped and raped a third woman. The scandal prompted Pennsylvania voters to raise the board’s approval standard from a majority vote to a unanimous one, a move that caused life-sentence commutations to plummet.
Fetterman has pushed to lower the board’s vote threshold to 4-1. In January, he appointed his campaign political director, Celeste Trusty, as secretary of the Board of Pardons. Trusty supports many of the same criminal justice reform policies as Fetterman and has called to “disarm the police.” She is a supporter and self-avowed “friend” of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther who murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, the Free Beacon reported.
Bestselling author and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy made the case in an interview with EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders program that at the heart of true American identity is the dogged pursuit of excellence and simultaneous rejection of the perilous-yet-alluring siren song of victim culture.
There’s a tug of war taking place in the American soul between the archetype of the underdog, who seeks to prevail against the odds, and that of the victim, who’s defeated by hardship and sees life’s obstacles as too difficult to overcome, he said.
America’s national psyche has been battered by messages that encourage the adoption of victimhood narratives, said Ramaswamy, whose newest book is called “Nation of Victims.”
Corporate America is partly to blame, he said, as it exploits various narratives of victimhood and postmodern ideology to push more products to consumers. But it takes two to tango, he points out.
“What is it about our national psyche, the general population, that causes us to gobble up these victimhood narratives, to eat it up? And that’s a deeper question. It goes to the heart of the national identity crisis that we’re in, where today where everyone in America—black, white, left, center, right, doesn’t matter—views themselves as a victim,” he said.
In trying to answer that question, Ramaswamy said he discovered that an incentive structure had been created in America—one that rewards victimhood over victory.
.@VivekGRamaswamy: “What is it about our national psyche, the general population that causes up to gobble up these victimhood narratives?…It goes to the heart of a national identity crisis.
…Everyone in America, black, white, left, center, right…views themselves as a victim.” pic.twitter.com/S9Ori51ckm
“Victimhood is a new currency that is trading at an all-time high, it’s in a bubble,” he said. “And that’s what everyone’s trying to do, is to cash in the chips of victimhood before the victimhood bubble bursts.”
The pin that pricks that bubble could come in the form of a period of economic hardship, he argued, describing it as a catalyst that would force Americans into self-reflection, help them dispense with the culture of entitlement, and become more productive.
“Part of increasing real productivity is letting go of this culture of laziness, where people assume that they’re going to have a job and that they’re entitled to have a job even if they’re actually ‘quiet quitting,’ as the new expression goes,” he said.
The economic shock that he believes is coming could be the dose of bitter medicine that helps dispel the disease of victimhood afflicting the American spirit and fortifies our national identity, he argued.
Once people set aside the grievances they hold dear and abandon the “victimhood wars,” the way back to a common national identity will come by way of an “unapologetic pursuit of excellence,” he said.
“Let’s just put our grievance weapons down, ask ourselves what actually binds us together as one people. And I think that our shared pursuit of excellence ranks pretty high on the list,” he said.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has referred to Ronald C. McAbee as a ‘terrorist’ who committed ‘insurrection’
Despite audio and video evidence showing former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy Ronald Colton McAbee did not assault a police officer on the Capitol steps on Jan. 6 as alleged by prosecutors, a federal judge again refused the defendant’s motion to be released from the District of Columbia jail pending trial.
The issue took on added urgency on Sept. 5 when McAbee, 28, was twice assaulted with chemical spray by a guard in the District of Columbia jail for not wearing a COVID mask, his wife Sarah told The Epoch Times
“This is just inhumane,” Sarah McAbee said. “It doesn’t even matter what your political beliefs are. You should never treat somebody that way.
“Are we living in the same universe?” she asked. “This is not the America I once knew.”
McAbee is charged by federal prosecutors with seven Jan. 6-related crimes: assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer; two counts of civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon, and committing an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or buildings.
McAbee was outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel during some of the worst violence on Jan. 6, 2021. Several times, he tried to render lifesaving aid to a dying Rosanne Boyland, 34, of Kennesaw, Georgia. His interactions with Metropolitan Police Department officers resulted in most of the charges. They also served as justification for a U.S. District Court judge to reverse a Tennessee judge’s order and keep McAbee in jail for 397 days—and counting.
Pepper Spray for Not Masking
Ronald McAbee walked out of his cell at the D.C. Central Treatment Facility about 11:30 a.m. EDT on Sept. 5 to retrieve his medication from a cart in the hallway, his wife said.
Lieutenant Crystal Lancaster shouted at him to put on a COVID mask, Sarah McAbee said. When he continued to walk toward the cart without a mask, the guard sprayed him point-blank in the face with oleoresin capsicum (OC), a harsh chemical irritant that burns the eyes, skin, and mucous membranes.
“She sprayed him and he was like, ‘Did you really just spray me?’ ” Sarah McAbee said. “[The Lieutenant] told another corporal in there to handcuff him. And as they were handcuffing him, she sprayed him again in the face. I mean inches away from his face. And they threw him on the ground.”
Three other Jan. 6 detainees—Ron Sandlin, Bart Shively, and Ryan Nichols— began shouting at Lancaster to stop the attack on McAbee, his wife said. Those men were also sprayed and handcuffed. All four were threatened with prosecution. McAbee was threatened with charges of assault and causing a riot, his wife said.
January 6 detainee Ronald McAbee with his wife Sarah. McAbee was denied release from jail for a second time since October 2021. (Sarah McAbee/Special to The Epoch Times)
But Sarah McAbee said she is considering legal action against the jail, Lt. Lancaster, and the U.S. Marshals Service.
“One, there was no riot in the pod that day,” Sarah McAbee said. “And two, he was the one being assaulted. How can you charge him with assault?”
McAbee said the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for all federal prisoners and pretrial detainees, told her an investigation of the attack is ongoing. It is being handled by an independent third-party investigator, she’s been told.
After being discharged from medical and thrown in the shower, McAbee later begged to rinse off the remaining oily OC residue when it reactivated. Guards told him to “suck it up” and made him wait 12 hours to shower again, Sarah McAbee said.
Oleoresin capsicum can cause skin blisters, inflamed airways, hypoxia, eyelid spasms, cornea burns, elevated heart rate, and severe nausea, according to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). It is banned for use in warfare but legal for law-enforcement purposes. It can be fatal if not used properly.
Chemical irritants attack temperature and pain receptors, causing a sensation that McAbee described as like jumping into a hot tub with severe sunburn.
Irritant sprays allow a stream of “potentially higher doses of the chemical agent to directly strike targeted people or groups,” PHR said in a report (pdf) on the use of tear gas and pepper spray by law enforcement.
The U.S. Marshals also did not realize for about a week that McAbee had been moved across the street from the Central Treatment Facility to the Central Detention Facility after the attack, his wife said.
The Marshals Service moved some 400 inmates and detainees out of the Central Detention Facility in November 2021 after a surprise inspection (pdf) found inhumane living conditions. The Central Treatment Facility was found adequate, although there have been persistent complaints about abuse of Jan. 6 defendants by staff since then. Both facilities are run by the D.C. Department of Corrections.
Judge Again Denies Bail
McAbee said she was disappointed but not surprised that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected her husband’s latest motion to be released to home detention until trial. Her attorneys will petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for a review of the ruling, she said.
“You know, this sat in front of him for 117 days before he ruled on it,” she said. “And I think he only ruled on it because the appellate court came down and said, you either rule on it or you have a hearing.”
Ronald McAbee renders aid to a pulseless Rosanne Boyland outside the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Graphic by The Epoch Times)
Sullivan took 69 days to issue his written opinion denying McAbee bail in December 2021.
In a 31-page ruling (pdf) dated Sept. 3, Sullivan dismissed McAbee’s new video and audio evidence, calling them “ambiguities” that the court “could not resolve.”
McAbee’s filing for reconsideration of bail cited audio evidence from Metropolitan Police Department officer Andrew Wyatt’s bodycam, which showed that McAbee didn’t assault Wyatt while he lay on the concrete steps, but assured him he would help him up.
“There is no evidence—it did not happen as admitted by the government—that Mr. McAbee assaulted Officer AW while Officer AW was in that vulnerable position,” attorney William Shipley wrote in the motion filed May 9.
Does Not Pose a Danger
Jeffery Frensley, a U.S. magistrate judge in the Middle District of Tennessee, ordered McAbee released (pdf) to home detention pending trial after hearings in August and early September 2021.
“I do not believe that Mr. McAbee poses a future danger to the community if he were to be released between now and the time that he resolves this case,” Frensley said. “And the government, despite my request that they provide me any evidence that he’s presented any sort of a danger to the community, have been able to point to absolutely nothing beyond the events around and during January the 6th.”
Prosecutors immediately appealed and Judge Sullivan stayed Frensley’s order until Oct. 13, 2021, when he made an oral ruling that McAbee would remain jailed. Sullivan’s memorandum opinion on Dec. 21, 2021, said it would be impossible to guarantee the public’s safety without keeping McAbee behind bars.
Judge Sullivan disputed McAbee’s contention that the court “made its determination by pronouncing his factual guilt” and that the judge sidestepped “certain uncontroverted video evidence.”
“The court rejects both arguments,” Sullivan wrote.
Sarah McAbee said watching the video without the associated audio track could lead anyone to draw the wrong conclusion.
“The way the videos are portrayed, it looks very damning,” she said. “Until you get the audio and you look at the video for what it’s worth, you realize his feet never move from the position that he’s in when he’s protecting Wyatt. While you listen to him say, ‘Hey, I’m helping you.’ Then they get up together.”
Ronald McAbee (wearing “sheriff” patch) stands at the police line on the Lower West Terrace as a Metropolitan Police Department officer (right) attacks protester Rosanne Boyland with a walking stick. (Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Judge Sullivan said he made no conclusions about McAbee’s guilt or innocence in the case. However, during a hearing on Sept. 22, 2021, Sullivan suggested that McAbee is a terrorist.
“It appears clearly to this court that the defendant is pulling the officer back into the crowd of other terrorists,” Sullivan said, according to the official court transcript (pdf).
“You can’t call someone a terrorist on record and then say you aren’t biased,” Sarah McAbee said.
In his Sept. 3, ruling, Sullivan said there is “indisputable evidence” that McAbee committed “insurrection,” a crime neither he nor any other Jan. 6 defendant is charged with.
“Mr. McAbee’s text messages corroborate that he planned to and actually participated in the insurrection,” Sullivan wrote. In another section of the decision, Sullivan concluded that McAbee engaged in “physical and violent” behavior.
“As a law enforcement officer, he should understand the gravity and egregiousness of such conduct—but nevertheless, he chose to act in this manner,” the judge wrote. “It is no ‘Catch-22’ that the court takes seriously charges that someone tasked with enforcing the law has shirked that responsibility.”
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Virginia took a sharp turn on transgender student policies with new guidelines released on Sept. 16.
According to the new guidelines, public schools cannot affirm a student’s gender without parents’ written requests. In addition, bathroom and locker room use is to be based on students’ sex, defined as the biological sex at birth. Student sports participation should be sex-based as well unless federal laws require otherwise.
The new policies are is a complete reversal of the previous guidelines, which define transgender as a student’s “self-identifying term.” Those rules, which took effect in March 2021 under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, ask schools to consider not disclosing a student’s gender identity to the parents “if a student is not ready or able to safely share” it with their family.
The new policies have common ground with the previous rules with regard to ensuring a safe learning environment without bullying, discrimination, or harassment for students. It lists the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution as primary evidence.
The new guidelines will enter a 30-day public comment period around Sept. 26 and take effect after the state superintendent approves the final version.
“The 2022 model policy posted delivers on the governor’s commitment to preserving parental rights and upholding the dignity and respect of all public school students,” Macaulay Porter, spokesperson for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.
“It is not under a school’s or the government’s purview to impose a set of particular ideological beliefs on all students. Key decisions rest, first and foremost, with the parents.
“The previous policies implemented under the Northam Administration did not uphold constitutional principles and parental rights, and will be replaced.”
Virginia Del. Marcus Simon (D-Fairfax), who introduced the state House bill that became a 2020 law and the basis of the 2021 rules, said in a tweet on Sept. 16: “These new policies are cruel and not at all evidence-based. … If enacted, these policies will harm Virginia children. Stop bullying kids to score political points.”
Loudoun County Parents Applaud New Policies
Loudoun County father Clint Thomas at a rally outside the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Sept. 13, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
Loudoun County-based parental rights group Fight for Schools applauded the new policy. “Governor Youngkin promised to put parents back in charge of the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Today, he delivered—big time,” said Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.
He also had something to say to the school boards, especially his own in Loudoun County: “To the school boards in Virginia, such as the one in Loudoun County, you spent last year telling parents that they had to pass radical anti-parent, transgender policies to match the VDOE’s [Virginia Department of Education] model policy—now you will have to revise those policies based on the law and your own words. So get to work.”
Clint Thomas, a father to Loudoun County schoolchildren, echoed Fight for Schools’ sentiment. He has two daughters, both studying in Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). Caroline, the elder daughter, is a high school senior and was on the school’s soccer team.
He’s also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against LCPS administrators and school board members, filed by America First Legal (AFL), a nonprofit conservative legal group, on his and 10 other parents’ behalf. At the end of June, the defendants were sued for “promoting secret gender transitions” and “forcing children to change in locker rooms with members of the opposite sex,” according to AFL.
“Virginia is returning to a focus on parents’ rights in education with its 2022 revision to model policies,” Thomas told The Epoch Times. “It feels so good as a father of children in LCPS to know our state Department of Education is returning to sanity when it comes to the basic rights of girls and women in our schools and athletic competitions.”
It’s unclear whether school districts will face budgetary consequences if they don’t follow the requirements. Porter didn’t respond to a question by The Epoch Times about the potential ramifications of noncompliance.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misidentified the former governor of Virginia. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
USING A CHINESE COMMUNIST-OWNED COMPANY TO SPREAD FALSE ELECTION INFORMATION TO AMERICAN VOTERS AHEAD OF THE MIDTERMS.
The “Good Information Foundation” – a project led by a top Obama aide – appears to have been caught offering social media influencers money to post false claims about President Donald Trump and January 6th on the Chinese Communist-owned platform TikTok. The attempted election disinformation campaign including outright falsehoods about the Trump campaign “paying millions” for the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A video posted to the CCP-linked TikTok by legal influencer Preston Moore reveals the foundation’s efforts to spread disinformation about the events that transpired on January 6th, in addition to the planning and aftermath.
The group behind the nefarious, CCP-linked effort is run by former Time magazine editor, Obama White House staffer, and current MSNBC contributor Rick Stengel, who is on the record praising U.S. propaganda efforts.
#Breaking “Good Info Foundation” appears to be offering money to Viral Tiktok Lawyer to spread anti-Trump propaganda. @stengel FMR Obama SOS for Public Affairs 13-16 appears to be involved with the “Good Info Foundation” unclear if either are involved in the propaganda campaign pic.twitter.com/beeqiB0RuZ
A representative from the Good Information Foundation reached out to Moore, who has over 80,000 followers, seeking a paid collaboration on a TikTok video about January 6th. In exchange for $400, Moore would provide a 15 to 60 second video, where he’d be required to use certain terminology when referring to Trump and the events of January 6th.
Correspondence between Moore and the foundation, as shared by Moore, shows that he would have been obligated to use phrases such as “criminal conspiracy,” “Trump Republicans,” and “MAGA Republicans.”
Avoiding words such as “attempted coup,” Moore was also urged to “make clear that this is ongoing and unresolved” as part of a broader effort to “show voter agency” and “turn the anger into defiance.”
The foundation also provided Moore, and likely other users, with talking points such as “the Trump campaign paid literally millions of dollars to make January 6th happen.”
Moore, who prefaces his video with the fact that he is not a supporter of Trump, inquired via email with the Good Information Foundation about the evidence for the aforementioned claim, which was dismissed by the group.
“Let me know if you are interested and if the rate works for you, thanks so much,” replied the foundation representative, entirely ignoring Moore’s question about the source of the claim.
It remains unclear how many users the Good Information Foundation has solicited content from, as they instructed Moore to “not use paid disclosures” on the video, attempting to make it appear more organic.
Rick Stengel.
The Good Information Foundation is a project led by Rick Stengel, the chief executive of the National Constitution Center from 2004 to 2006 and President Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2014 to 2016.
“Stengel is an on-air analyst at MSNBC, a strategic advisor at Snap Inc., and a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. His 2019 book, Information Wars: How we Lost the Battle Against Disinformation and What to Do About It, recounts his time in the State Department countering Russian disinformation and ISIS propaganda,” explains his bio on the foundation’s website.
In the past, Stengel – also a former editor of Time magazine – has openly admitted “I’m not against propaganda,” and appears to be using similar tactics to curate negative content surrounding Trump and January 6th.
The Good Information Foundation is the non-profit arm of Good Information Inc., whose board is comprised of similarly partisan actors, including several former staffers from the Obama White House such as Senior Advisor for strategy and communications Dan Pfeiffer, Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman, and Principal Deputy Director of Public Engagement Stephanie Valencia.
Founded by Democratic strategist Tara McGowan, who played key roles in the election of Obama and failed campaign of Hillary Clinton, the $65 million effort seeks to “restore social trust” in media. McGowan has also been at the helm of several left-wing advocacy groups, including those funded by George Soros.
Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Sleeping Giants, an organization which seeks to bankrupt conservative news sites through advertiser boycotts, is also on the board of the organization.
The foundation’s efforts to spread curated narratives – often lacking evidence – but disguise themselves as the source follows several social media fact-checking operations engaging in similar tactics to silence stories critical of Joe Biden and the Chinese Communist Party.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urged Republican governors to send illegal immigrants to three other Democrat-run areas after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s well-publicized move to send them to Martha’s Vineyard last week.
OnTwitter, the Republican senator urged DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbot to send illegal aliens to Nantucket, Massachusetts; Palo Alto, California; and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Like Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket is often used as a vacation spot for the wealthy and powerful. Rehoboth Beach is where President Joe Biden has a vacation house, and Palo Alto, a city located in Silicon Valley, is home to several large tech companies.
For months now, Abbott has been sending illegal immigrants from the U.S.–Mexico border to Democrat-run areas, including New York, Chicago, and Washington—all of which are “sanctuary” cities. The leaders in those areas have sounded the alarm and said their municipalities can’t handle the influx of illegal immigrants, prompting cries of hypocrisy.
On Sept. 15, Abbott sent several buses filled with illegal migrants to Washington before they were dropped off outside the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris. At about the same time, DeSantis sent 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama has a sprawling estate. Within a day, the governor of Massachusetts activated the National Guard and transported the people to a military base on Cape Cod.
Top Democrats, including officials in the White House, have condemned the move, alleging that DeSantis and Abbott are engaging in human trafficking. But the two governors have said that their states can’t handle the massive surge in illegal immigration, that the federal government has the sole authority to carry out deportations, and that the Biden administration’s lax immigration rules are what caused the influx.
Illegal immigrants from Venezuela stand outside St. Andrew’s Church in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Sept. 14, 2022. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette/Handout via Reuters)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, accused DeSantis of “kidnapping” the illegal immigrants, writing on Twitter, “Clearly, transporting families, including children, across state lines under false pretenses is morally reprehensible, but it may also be illegal.”
The governor also sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and alleged that some “individuals who were transported to Martha’s Vineyard have alleged that a recruiter induced them to accept the offer of travel based on false representations,” although that assertion was disputed by DeSantis in a press conference on Sept. 16.
Cruz suggested to Fox News last week that top Democrats don’t have their priorities in order. He made note of an incident that unfolded earlier this year during which more than 50 illegal aliens were found dead inside a truck near San Antonio.
“You know, the Democrats did not think it was a humanitarian crisis when we pulled over 50 bodies in body bags out of a truck in Texas of illegal immigrants who died because the smugglers let them die of heat exposure,” Cruz said. “And yet, suddenly 50 illegal immigrants show up in lily-white Martha’s Vineyard, where rich liberals and billionaires sip Chardonnay, and it is, it is World War II.”
At the beginning of September, approximately 70,000 people took to the streets of the Czech Republic’s capital city of Prague calling for the government to do more about spiraling energy prices.
During that same time in Germany, the far-left and the far-right put aside their differences to threaten weekly protests against the rising cost of food, gas, and energy.
In Naples, Italy, citizens set fire to the expensive energy bills in the streets. And in Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom, unrest reached a fever pitch.
The citizens of these countries were far from alone in their discontent.
Protesters attend a rally triggered by energy price hikes in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 4, 2022. (Abduaziz Madyarov/AFP via Getty Images)
On Sep. 1, risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft released a report that found over the past quarter, civil unrest rose in 101 out of 198 countries.
“The data, covering seven years, shows that the last quarter saw more countries witness an increase in risks from civil unrest than at any time since the index was released.”
It added, “the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” as more than 80 percent of countries around the world experience inflation above six percent.
On Sep. 13, despite the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States government admitted that inflation increased from July to August and was up 8.3 percent from a year ago.
Verisk Maplecroft’s report distills the above into one poignant sentence, “Over the coming months, governments across the world are about to get an answer to a burning question: will protests sparked by socioeconomic pressure transform into broader and more disruptive anti-government action?”
Energy Crisis in the Making
The last time the world experienced an energy crisis was in the 1970s, when OPEC first imposed an oil embargo over the United States’ decision to resupply the Israeli military.
OPEC then extended the ban to other countries that supported Israel.
The embargo strained the U.S. economy and prompted then-President Richard Nixon to announce Project Independence, promoting domestic energy independence.
It also led to the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, fuel economy standards, and the creation of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The IEA consists of 31 member countries and eight association countries.
Upon creation, the IEA’s mission was to help coordinate a “collective response to major disruptions in the supply of oil.” But since its inception, the IEA has evolved, and now its mission includes tracking the clean energy transition “on the pathway to net-zero emissions.”
In March 2021, IEA and the European Commission joined together to advance “net-zero by 2050,” with executive vice president Frans Timmermans stating, “The European Union is determined to reach net zero by 2050 and we urge others to join us in this effort.
“Europe is anchoring its course with the EU Climate Law and the upcoming package of measures to deliver our -55 percent reduction target for 2030.”
In May 2021, IEA released the “world’s first comprehensive energy roadmap” that stated the road to “net-zero emissions in 2050” was “narrow and requires an unprecedented transformation of how energy is produced, transported, and used globally.”
Qatar’s energy minister Bin Saleh Al-Sada gestures during a closing press conference at the meeting of oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting countries, OPEC, on Sept. 28, 2016. (Sidali Djarboub/AP Photo)
As part of the roadmap, the IEA specified 400 specific milestones, including “from today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, and no further final investment decisions for new unabated coal plants.
“By 2035, there are no sales of new internal combustion engine passenger cars, and by 2040, the global electricity sector has already reached net-zero emissions.”
Of note, the IEA admitted that the pathway to net-zero involves technologies that aren’t readily available, “in 2050, almost half the reductions come from technologies that are currently only at the demonstration or prototype phase.”
As such, IEA encouraged governments to reprioritize their spending on research and development and adopt policies that put “clean energy technologies” at the core of “energy and climate policy.”
The IEA concludes, “By 2050, the energy world looks completely different.
“Almost 90 percent of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar together accounting for almost 70 percent.”
If the above policy sounds familiar, it’s because President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order a week after assuming office, which, among other things, banned new oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands and waters.
It also ordered the federal government to only use “clean and zero-emission vehicles” for its fleet by 2035, and eliminated fossil fuel subsidies.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, addresses a session at the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, on Nov. 4, 2021. (Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images)
Additionally, it put the “climate crisis” at the center of the United States’ foreign policy and national security and committed to making a “positive contribution” to the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).
According to the IEA, its net-zero transition report was “designed to inform the high-level negotiations that will take place at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention in Glasgow in November.”
And inform it, it did. At COP26, 153 countries committed to new 2030 net zero commitments, “The Glasgow Climate Pact accelerates the drumbeat and puts in place the underpinning rules and systems.”
Further, “developed countries” committed to delivering a $100 billion climate finance goal by 2035, and “five public finance institutions will stop international support for the unabated fossil fuel energy sector next year. Private financial institutions and central banks are moving to realign trillions towards global net zero.”
According to the Glasgow Climate Pact, 90 percent of the world’s collective money and 90 percent of global emissions now fall under net zero commitments.
Changing Energy Winds
For some countries, the above commitments reaffirmed policies they’d already implemented.
In 2000, Germany enacted the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), which required six percent of energy to come from “renewable resources.”
In 2017, the legislation was revised, requiring 40 to 45 percent of energy to come from “renewables” in 2025, and up to 65 percent in 2030, according to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
In 2018, the Czech Republic committed to at least 13 percent consumed energy from “renewable sources” by 2020.
It also committed itself to 18 to 25 percent of its electricity production from “renewables” by 2040 and said it “generally supported” the EU targets for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
Solar panels and wind turbines. (Mike Mareen/Adobe Stock)
Just before the Glasgow Climate Pact, Prague adopted a policy to “transform the city of Prague into a climate responsible and environmentally friendly metropolis, attractive for living,” which included reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 45 percent.
In 2013, Italy developed the National Energy Strategy to help it exceed the EU’s GHG emission reduction goals, which included reducing emissions by 21 percent by 2020 compared to 2005.
As a result of the above policies, countries have phased out things like domestically produced coal and nuclear energy and moved toward increasing their reliance on wind and solar.
But, according to Sarah Lohmann, a non-resident fellow with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University, there’s a gap between ambition and reality.
“Unfortunately, in its passion to lead the pack, Germany didn’t quite do its math. It has not created nearly enough renewable energy to replace the nuclear and coal that it is determined to phase out.
“When the last of the nuclear reactors is turned off next year, there will likely be a shortage of 4.5 gigawatts, or the equivalent of what 10 large coal-fired power plants would provide.”
The Grafenrheinfeld plant, which is owned by German utilitiy E.ON and has been in operation since 1981, is scheduled to cease operations. Germany is withdrawing itself from nuclear energy reliance and has established ambitious goals for increasing its capacity of renewable energy sources. Photo taken in 2015. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Thus, countries like Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, the EU, and others, turned to Russia for help. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russian gas imports account for 15 to 40 percent of annual energy consumption in countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
As countries phased out domestic investments in oil and natural gas, and increased their reliance on renewable energy—generally understood as energy derived from sources like the sun or wind that replenish faster than they’re used—and the EU flexed its muscles by increasing carbon prices (a tax the government imposes on countries based on gas emissions), energy prices increased.
“Electricity produced from renewable sources grew by 6 percent in 2021, but it was not enough to keep up with galloping demand,” the IEA states.
Then, in early 2022, the reliance on Russia to bridge the gap between energy needs and production came to a head when Russia invaded Ukraine.
History Repeats With Russian Oil and Gas
Much like the 1970s when the United States supported Israel over the 15 Arab countries that make up OPEC, the United States and Europe’s support for Ukraine over Russia has spiraled into an energy crisis by exacerbating already increasing energy prices.
On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, intensifying a conflict that’s been ongoing since 2014.
In response, and in an attempt to rein in Russia’s aggression, the United States, in coordination with the G-7 nations, and the European Union, instituted a series of escalating sanctions.
Initially, the sanctions were financial, but they didn’t deter Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, and on March 8, Biden signed an executive order banning Russian oil imports. Before the ban, the United States imported about 700,000 barrels daily.
Germany and Poland joined the United States and pledged to ban Russian oil by winding down pipeline imports by the end of the year.
Then, the European Union joined the sanctions and imposed a partial embargo on Russian oil—starting with seaborne imports of crude in December and petroleum product imports in February 2023, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Joe Biden signs into law the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on May 9, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
At the start of the energy sanctions, Biden admitted it would cause energy prices to increase.
“This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin. But there will be costs as well here in the United States.
“Defending freedom is going to cost—it’s going to cost us as well in the United States.”
In his remarks, Biden celebrated that the United States produced “far more oil domestically than all of the European countries combined,” acknowledging that Europe was in a far more precarious position because of energy imports.
Russia, the largest natural gas supplier to the 27-nation bloc and the second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, retaliated by cutting natural gas imports.
Then, at the beginning of September, Russia’s energy giant, Gazprom, indefinitely shut down Nord Stream 1 pipeline deliveries.
Speaking at an economic forum in Russia on Sep. 7, President Putin stated, “We will not supply gas, oil, coal, heating oil—we will not supply anything,” when asked about the West’s continued attempts to rein-in Russia.
The sanctions and Russia’s response have resulted in sky-high energy prices in Europe, escalating inflation, and building socioeconomic pressure.
Escalating Unrest
According to the IMF, food, and energy prices are the most significant contributors to inflation.
And USA Facts reports that since March 2021, gasoline “has been the largest single-category driver of inflation” in the United States, accounting for nearly 25 percent of inflation.
Considering gas only makes up 4.8 percent of Consumer Price Index spending, gas’s impact on inflation is particularly notable and regarded as “outsized.”
The IMF reports that major social unrest events—defined as protests, riots, and other forms of civil disorder and conflict—are rare and, unlike some claims, are not caused by inequality.
“Although inequality has crept up slowly in recent decades, it has not significantly worsened over the past decade in a way that would explain the recent surge of discontent.”
Instead, socioeconomic factors like the price of food and fuel “seem to be particularly important” along with access to social media—suggesting coordination and communication plays a role.
Demonstrators block a street in Canary Wharf during a protest outside the Ofgem headquarters in London, following the energy price cap announcement on Aug. 26, 2022. (Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters)
In its September report, Verisk Maplecroft states, “The world is facing an unprecedented rise in civil unrest as governments of all stripes grapple with the impacts of inflation on the price of staple foods and energy, according to the latest edition of our Civil Unrest Index (CUI).”
In Europe, the unrest comes from the fallout of Russia invading Ukraine, the report states. But, unrest isn’t limited to Europe, as energy prices worldwide are increasing due to countries’ policies.
“The impact is evident across the globe, with popular discontent over rising living costs emerging on the streets of developed and emerging markets alike, stretching from the EU, Sri Lanka and Peru to Kenya, Ecuador and Iran.”
The report predicts unrest will worsen over the next six months and into 2023.
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) stands by a sign during a press conference on the Inflation Reduction Act at Glynwood Boat House in Cold Spring, New York, on Aug. 17, 2022. (Michael Santiago/Getty Images)
“Only a significant reduction in global food and energy prices can arrest the negative global trend in civil unrest risk. Recession fears are mounting and inflation is expected to be worse in 2023 than in 2022.
“Weather will be another crucial factor. A cold autumn and winter in Europe would worsen an already serious energy and cost of living crisis. Although socioeconomic pressure has already given rise to protests across the world, the next six months are likely to be even more disruptive.”
On Aug. 16, Biden signed the partisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, which “modernized” the Clean Air Act and established the EPA’s authority “to protect American families from climate and air pollution.”
Additionally, via the IRA, Congress reaffirmed that greenhouse gasses are “air pollutants” and further specified that the term “greenhouse gas” includes the pollutants “carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.”
“These new Clean Air Act sections and the new provisions that rely on the Clean Air Act reinvigorate EPA’s responsibilities under the law addressing the climate crisis and long-standing inequities with new tools, new solutions, unprecedented investments, additional policies, and with great urgency,” the Environmental Defense Fund states.
In other words, thanks to the passage of the IRA, the United States now has a law requiring it to transition away from fossil fuels and to renewable energy—much like Europe.
Romanian gulag survivor Dan Novacovici has some invaluable insight regarding the current state of the world; he recognizes all the glaring signs of a communist agenda and began to realize several years ago that “communism was being implanted openly in the United States.”
The 85-year-old Washington, D.C., resident was a political prisoner in Romania during its communist era, post-World War II; being the son of a general in the king’s army didn’t help matters. In fact, Dan’s father was special forces commander and right-hand man for the last king of Romania, Michael I, who was forced to abdicate the throne in 1947 after being unsuccessful in pushing back against Soviet invasion.
Aside from this family connection to someone the communists deemed an “enemy of the people,” Dan was found out to be a member of an anti-communist poetry group.
He was sent to two gulags and reached the point of near death under extreme torture and starvation. Fortuitously, he survived and eventually escaped to France, later immigrating to the United States with his wife, Emilia, and daughter, Anca, thinking that “the United States would be the last country in which communism would come.”
Dan Novacovici with his wife, Emilia, in 2022. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)Dan Novacovici’s father, Ticu, who served as a colonel in the Romanian military. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
“I never thought it would come here in my generation,” Dan told The Epoch Times. “It started, I believe, in 1948—every university has a communism club.”
Dan pointed to “the way things are repeated in the same messaging across multiple media outlets,” and “the fear that is created with this pandemic,” as all-too-familiar, telltale signs of a communist-infiltrated media and government. “The sentence structure and the way things are presented right now in the media is the same as in communism,” he said.
“I can’t point to a specific document that lists the phrases, but I recognize them from communism. … Phrases about how they care about people, about the future, but specifically the way it is phrased—that they do it for the good of the people. So—sanctions are for your health, ‘we are thinking about you and your loved ones.’”
He added that encouraging separation between family members and friends “is also a classic communist approach,” highlighting its occurrence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
All in all, despite the overthrow of communism throughout the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the gulag survivor holds that the threat of world communism prevails. “I see it approaching in the West,” he said, “and slowly gaining ground worldwide.”
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Dan details his extraordinary journey, from witnessing the beginnings of communism in his home country, opposing it, and surviving under tyranny; to escaping and becoming an advocate for safeguards against the spread of communism in the United States.
‘When the Communists Came’
Dan Novacovici, now a husband, father, and grandfather, was 8 years old when the Russian communists took over Romania in 1944.
“When the communists came, my father took us to a place near Pitesti, about 100 kilometers outside of Bucharest, to keep us safe,” he said, referring to a 100-hectare farm estate owned by his great-aunt.
“I remember the Russians came in on horseback and, discovering one of my great-aunt’s horses, Dolina, which was a racehorse, they took [it] for themselves. They killed the dogs; went into the house, looked for alcohol, found 10 to 15 bottles … they drank them all. They found my dad’s uniform and decorations and said, ‘this man killed a lot of Russians.’”
The Russian officers took two horses, but killed one when she wouldn’t let them ride her.
Dan Novacovici (L) and his mother, Lucia (riding racehorse Dolina), on his great-aunt’s 100-hectare farm estate outside of Bucharest in 1944. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)Dan Novacovici (R) with his parents and siblings on his great-aunt’s estate in Beneasa, outside of Bucharest, circa 1945. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
By 1948, the communists had taken his great-aunt’s estate and placed her under house arrest in a little house in Pitesti, where “she had to sign a sheet every day that that is where she was,” Dan said.
Meanwhile, Dan returned to Bucharest with his sister, Doina, and brother, Doru. His mother, Lucia, a high school teacher of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, died when Dan was only 13 years old.
“At the high school, they changed the principal to the cleaning lady,” Dan said. “The first thing, the cleaning lady met with all the teachers and told them to sweep all the classrooms and that she will be checking on them. My mother was so upset, she got breast cancer and she died at 39 years old.”
Life Under Communism
When Dan’s father, Ticu, left the army at the end of the war in 1945, he started a construction company with work in Bucharest rebuilding the National Assembly—the equivalent of the Senate. Working under supervision of traditionalist figure Mihail Sadoveanu, who was then president of the National Assembly, Ticu was given only two months to remodel the building’s great hall, which Sadoveanu feared was too short a time.
“Sadoveanu showed him a gun and said, ‘If it’s not done in two months and the Russians walk through here, you can kill me first, then kill yourself, because they will kill us if it’s not done,’” Dan said.
In school, everyone had to take classes about Marxism and Leninism. “The teachers weren’t allowed to say anything except what was written on their script—adapted locally,” Dan said. The script, he added, explained “how society worked” and that the bourgeoisie was the “the class that exploited others … the enemy of the people.”
Ticu and Lucia Novacovici, Dan’s parents. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)Dan Novacovici (R) as a child, with his mother and siblings. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
“Colleagues in high school were kicked out because their parents were ‘exploiters’ … one of my professors knew Russian and helped a lot of kids to not get kicked out; he taught students to say that their parents weren’t in the exploiter class,” he said. Still, one of Dan’s classmates got expelled for having a parent who worked in management at an American company.
Students were forced to sing communist songs, and there were also gangs who beat up on kids who were deemed as belonging to the wrong class. “I had a teacher who taught us to sing a Marxist song. It was about hatred for the ‘ruling’ class—to beat up and kill the ruling class,” he said. “There was a guy in my class whose nickname was Tarzan—he was a bully and bullied anyone in the ‘exploiting class.’”
To get into construction college in Bucharest, Dan had to compete against 20 or so others by completing a written and oral exam who’s results were separated between the working class and the bourgeoisie—the middle class—and assessed differently. About 8 to 10 percent of those 20 students were considered bourgeoisie, while the other 90 percent were in the working class. “In that 10 percent, you had to get a 9.5 to 10 grade; the others were admitted when they had a grade 4 or higher,” he said.
Sometimes, even if a student did well in an exam, grades were given based on orders, such as in the case of Dan’s sister. “Doina took a written math exam, she got a 9; at the oral exam, they kicked her out because she was the daughter of a former colonel; ‘bandit’—she’s not allowed to go to college,” he said.
Dan Novacovici (R) with his brother, Doru, and sister, Doina. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
Family members turning on each other was not uncommon. Dan’s adoptive brother, Gigi, whom Ticu adopted toward the end of the war, eventually became a socialist and turned against his adoptive father, despite everything he’d done for him. “He was about 12 years older than me, around 21 years old in 1944,” Dan said of Gigi. “He accused my father of being an exploiting capitalist.”
In recalling how Ticu had come to initially adopt the boy, Dan said his father was on his way home one day when he came upon a homeless kid on a wooden box; he had no parents. Ticu provided him with a home, food, and lodging. He later made him the boss of his construction company and he also sent him to school. “He even went to college, since he was considered a peasant worker,” Dan said.
The Fight for Freedom
Near the end of high school, around 1952, Dan and Doru, along with a group of friends, started an anti-communist poetry group. They would meet every week at his place, turn off the lights, have someone guard the door, and go into one of the rooms to discuss poems and novellas.
Dan Novacovici at age 16, in 1952. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
During this time, his father was working on the border—in charge of protecting Bucharest, since he’d been reactivated in the military and reappointed as colonel—and was gone for 2 to 3 years. He returned in 1956 when the Hungarian revolution came and echoed in Romania. He said to his sons: “Make sure you don’t do anything and don’t speak with anyone, because there are a lot of people who are trying to get you because you’re my kids.”
However, Dan, his brother, and the others began putting notes in people’s mailboxes to encourage unity against the communists and to help keep up the morale. “I assured them that the Americans will come and free us,” Dan said. “I didn’t use the typewriter, because [the communists] followed exactly the model of the typewriters.” They couldn’t write by hand either, lest they be tracked by their handwriting, so they used rubber stamps from kids’ games.
“There was a 14-year-old kid who was sent to jail by his father, who came to be the one to sentence his child,” he said, indicating how imperative it was to not be found out, even by potentially disloyal family members. “The Russians left, but everyone was still in charge.”
An anti-communist resistance movement had formed in Romania in the late 1940s and held out for the most part until the mid 1950s; armed men took to the mountains, taking refuge in caves, to fight against the communist regime. Dan and his friends would go hiking to drop supplies and guns off to them. But “the mountain men were killed,” Dan said, when a Romanian prisoner of the Russian communists became part of the Securitate—the secret police—and was tasked with hunting the men down.
Dan Novacovici and his friends take a trip to the Fagaras Mountains to bring supplies to men of the anti-communist resistance movement who were hiding in caves in the mountainous region, circa 1948–1950. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
“He dressed as a priest and he went to the villages saying he wanted to help the mountain folks,” Dan said. “Those people trusted him and would tell him where people were hiding. He would send groups to kill them directly. He was counter information, so he was also spying on the spies. In Romania, he could arrest anyone and get him killed—up to the level of ministers.”
Dan’s small poetry society was similarly tricked when a communist informant nuzzled his way into the group after they’d put feelers out for more members in hopes of extending their group.
“One of the ones in the group, who was a great writer, Paul, was a former legionary,” Dan said. “In principle, legionaries were nationalists and loved their country, so we assumed that he would be on our side. He was the traitor.”
Members of the group had recruited Paul believing that as an ultra nationalist and religious man who’d been jailed for standing up to the communists, he’d be the last person to “rat people out.” He had all the names of the group’s members and their planned actions, which he gave to the Securitate. In 1959, Dan and the others were arrested.
“[We] found out after that, Paul, when he originally went to jail, was freed on the condition that he would give away 8 to 10 people by the end of the year—or else he would be sent back to jail,” Dan said.
Dan Novacovici and his friends during a trip to the Fagaras Mountains, circa 1948–1950. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)Dan Novacovici and his friends during a trip to the Fagaras Mountains, circa 1948–1950. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
The Gulags
Dan was 23 when he was arrested in October 1959, and in February 1960, he was sentenced to 5 years of forced labor followed by 5 more years of no civil rights. “I was condemned for planned crimes against the ‘social order,’” he said. But before his sentencing, the torture had already begun.
“I was put in a room and sat in a corner … in the other corner was an interrogator. Then they start with the interrogation—‘Bandit, did you do this?’—if you said no, he would beat you up, then he would ring the bell and two others would come and take you to the next room and beat you up. If when that was done, you could walk, they would put you back in the cell; if not, they would throw you on a blanket and drag you back to the cell.”
That first day after his arrest, the interrogator beat him so much that he lost most of his top and bottom teeth, with only two or three still left and the rest dangling from their nerves. “The pain was so much that I didn’t feel the rest of the beatings that day,” Dan said.
Periodically, they were taken out of their cells to be interrogated and beaten, and they weren’t allowed to speak to each other. When his sentencing was finalized, he was to be sent to Jilava prison to be processed.
“Before leaving, they called me in and they asked me to share if I heard anyone speaking negatively about them in jail, and if I agreed, I would be back in college in two to three weeks,” he said. “I said, ‘I wouldn’t remember if I heard anything,’ and the guy said, ‘no problem, you can just tell [on] your colleague.’ I said I couldn’t do that.”
Following four months at Jilava—a fort established by King Carol I of Romania to protect Bucharest that had now been transformed into a prison by the Russian communists—Dan was sent to Luciu Giurgeni on the Danube river, and put on a boat called Girond, a floating gulag.
Dan Novacovici (L) at age 27, with his father and sister, a few months after being freed from the gulags in 1963. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
“We would have forced labor, in the rice fields from morning until night, with leaches that clung on to us while we worked,” he said.
One time, Dan made a mistake when a guard asked him to lift a hatch in the barracks; he was supposed to slide it across, not lift it. “The guard took me and beat me up, then put me in isolation—a metal box with no window,” he said. “I couldn’t eat or drink. I stayed [there] three days.”
After about two to three months, everyone on the boat was sent to Gradina, in Balta Brailei. It was another gulag. Each person had to dig out 10 cubic meters of dirt each day and, with a wheelbarrow, transport it all up to the pier. “By the end of the day, everyone was so tired that we linked arms to be able to walk back,” Dan said.
The guards monitored each prisoner to make sure they achieved the quota of dirt each day. “The persons who didn’t [achieve the quota] would stay at the door when they came back at the end of the day; they would take off their clothes, sit down, and get beaten with braided wire,” he said.
Eventually, Dan dropped to a weight of 64 pounds (29 kilograms) and was transferred to a working group of older people and people who were expected to die soon. A fellow in the group, Titu, once attempted to bring food to Dan, but Titu was caught and got beaten up by the guards.
Freedom in America
Dan was freed from the gulag after an international convention held in the spring of 1963 obliged Romania to send political prisoners home. “They said, ‘you’re free, you can’t talk about anything you did, you’re free to do whatever you want.’” Dan recalled the gulag’s guards saying. “‘No obligation, you just can’t talk about what happened,’” At the time he was released, he had a shaved head and a mustache so long that it wrapped around his ears.
Ten years later, in 1973, Dan married Emilia, and their daughter was born soon after.
Dan Novacovici and his wife, Emilia, on their wedding day in 1973. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
In 1980, determined to expose communism’s true face to the world but unable to do so from within Romania, which was still under Soviet rule, he decided to leave the country. The family immigrated to France as political refugees. There, Dan joined a prisoners-of-war organization in Paris and successfully lobbied the European Union (EU) to prevent a deal that would allow Romania to export it’s food.
“There were stocks of meat, pork, and cheese from Romania that was getting ready for massive export,” he said. “A country who has cartels for food—meaning that the food was rationed—should not be able to sell to the EU when they are not giving that food to their own people.” As a result of Dan’s efforts, the food stocks were placed in the Romanian markets.
Dan Novacovici on his terrace in Bucharest, Romania, not long before leaving for France, in 1980. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)Dan Novacovici with his wife, Emilia, and daughter, Anca, in France, circa 1982. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
In 1983, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where Dan started a residential construction and inspection business. He immediately began working on helping to free Romanians from communism, and since then has done everything in his power to expose the evils of communist ideology.
From 1984 to about 1995, he wrote almost daily for various Romanian newspapers. “I had my own column in a Romanian New York newspaper in which I provided information about people who were in prison so that people could find their families,” he said. “Communism took everyone at night and they disappeared and no one knew where they were after.”
Dan helped create and was the U.S. representative for the Worldwide Union of Free Romanians. He was also instrumental in getting Romania into NATO, and has been a huge support to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), helping the organization educate the world about what communism really is and telling his story in a moving video.
Dan Novacovici (R) with his wife at the fourth congress of the Worldwide Union of Free Romanians, held in Romania for the first time, in 1994. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
Today, Dan calls on all Americans and the world’s people to “wake up” and see the evidence all around that communism is right here in the West. “There are too many people who are financially involved and don’t think far ahead to the repercussions of following the party line,” he said.
“The creation of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ and a disinformation section of Homeland Security is also clearly suppressing freedom of speech. In social media, [people are] being de-platformed for saying things that don’t agree with the main narrative. The declaration that Republicans are terrorists by the Democrats makes you scared to speak out or say that you’re Republican. … Attorneys change the laws in various states to fit the narrative … the definitions of basic words are being changed to fit the narrative.”
Whenever some truth is stated, Dan said, an opposing piece of media shows up providing a bit of truth, then falsifying the rest; and then there’s technology to follow you and track your information and data. “It is much easier than under the old-school communism, where they sent people to your house to bug the phone,” he said. “Now, large companies do it and share it with the government.”
Dan Novacovici. (Courtesy of Dan Novacovici)
What advice does the gulag survivor have for his fellow Americans and the rest of the world? “Don’t listen to mainstream media,” he says, “most of it across the West says the same thing using the same words; that is not coincidence, it is brainwashing. … Ask questions and do your own research—check multiple sources. This closed mindset has been introduced and is working very well—there is no room for discussion or disagreement; everything is politicized.
“Communism is a cancer on humanity. It’s a cancer that is moving quickly. You can only stop it by thinking logically what is good for people—not what someone tells you is good, but what you think is good for you.”
