The Black Lives Matter organization has come under heavy financial scrutiny recently, as tax records and other evidence show alleged misuse of funds.
These documents indicate that potentially millions of donations have made high-ranking members of the group rich, and critics claim the entire organization is a scam that preys on “social justice.”
Unsurprisingly, many Democrat leaders support the group — but one former BLM-backed politician is now headed to jail.
Karen Carter Peterson was a Democratic Party chair and state senator in Louisiana, but she resigned last April citing mental health issues and an ongoing gambling addiction.
Then a month later, she was charged with committing $140,000 worth of wire fraud: she was accused of funneling campaign and party funds to other individuals and outside companies, and using the money herself.
Peterson is the only federal candidate Black Lives Matter has officially supported since 2021.
From Fox News:
A former Black Lives Matter-backed Democratic candidate has been sentenced to 22 months in prison.
Karen Carter Peterson, a former Louisiana Democratic Party chair and state senator, received the sentence on Wednesday after pleading guilty to a wire fraud charge that included routing more than $140,000 in campaign and party funds to outside individuals and companies and using the money on personal expenses, including gambling.
Peterson ran the scam for a whopping 7 years, during which time she quietly diverted campaign cash. She ran them through third parties and then wound up with “most or all of the funds.”
Later, she filed “false and misleading” campaign finance reports where she tried to hide her personal expenses while holding office.
Peterson continued to cite her gambling problem and apologized for her “compulsive behavior” that was driven by this addiction. But as of March 6, she’ll be in federal prison for nearly 2 years.
She failed in that attempt to nab the seat in Louisiana’s 2nd district and since then, her life appears to have spiraled downward. And BLM’s support of her likely doesn’t reflect well on the group.
This certainly isn’t the first time a politician has been caught stealing campaign funds and using them for personal expenses.
However, Peterson’s connection to BLM is making headlines in this case — when money illegally disappears, critics point out that BLM often appears to be involved in some capacity.
Key Takeaways:
A BLM-backed former Democrat is going to federal prison.
Karen Carter Peterson was sentenced to 22 months for a wire fraud scheme that stretched for 7 years.
Peterson reportedly stole over $140K in campaign funds for personal expenses, and to support her gambling addiction.
Feeling in control and being in control are two different things. Does Joe Biden know that? Does he know the security system at his private home was shut down by the Secret Service because it didn’t work? What does Joe Biden know?
On Wednesday it was announced that yet another batch of classified documents had been found, located at Biden’s Delaware residence. Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked about documents found in Biden’s garage at a Thursday press conference: “Classified material next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?”
Biden’s response? “My Corvette is in a locked garage, okay? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”
Peter Doocy on new batch of classified documents found in Biden’s garage: “Classified material next to your Corvette! What were you thinking?”
Biden responds: “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street” pic.twitter.com/8c8bgAEzip
For a second there I thought classified documents of the United States of America were either being casually tossed aside like an old high school yearbook or maybe stowed away as in a clandestine spy operation.
My paranoid imagination went so far as to designate the batches of misplaced documents as evidence that Ol’ Joe really is the Manchurian Candidate.
In all likelihood, it’s not anything so nefarious, but that remains to be seen. In one sense, though, it’s not the point.
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The fact is that the Biden home — if the past is any indicator — is not secure.
The security system at the house has a long track record of problems and false alarms, according to The Washington Post.
In 2014, the security system at then Vice President Biden’s Delaware private residence malfunctioned to the point that the Secret Service opted to turn it off for several months. Agents were warned that the system would be shut down “indefinitely.”
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In 2015, surveillance cameras at Biden’s private Delaware residence failed to capture images of a gunman who fired shots near the house in January. This left authorities without any leads or suspects, government officials with knowledge of the home’s security told The Post at the time.
The cameras weren’t even aimed at the main road, where agents and neighbors had heard a car speed away after between four and six shots were fired.
Did Biden forget about the faulty security system at his house when telling Doocy that the classified documents were at least not out on the street? Or was it just another of Biden’s infamous gaffes? Maybe it was a form of gallows humor?
It’s hard to tell with Biden anymore. And that doesn’t bode well. Biden likes to “feel” like he’s in control. When it comes to classified documents, he’s obviously not.
What else is Biden feeling that doesn’t square with reality?
That question should make everybody — politics aside — at the very least, wary.
Former Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts was appointed to the office on Thursday.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced Ricketts’ appointment at a Thursday event in the governor’s office.
Pillen succeeded Ricketts as the state’s governor.
“Gov. Ricketts assured me that no matter who calls for a different job, he is committed to the United States Senate,” Pillen said of the appointment, according to WOWT-TV.
Pillen indicated that Ricketts intends to serve as a senator for a minimum of 10 years.
“No matter who calls him to be a vice president of the United States, who calls him to be … Secretary of State or any other thing, he’s committed to this seat; and he and [his wife Susanne Shore] have committed to winning elections at a minimum of 10 years, and I’m praying it’s gonna be longer than that, and you’re gonna love it there, Susanne.”
As expected, @jim_pillen today is naming Pete Ricketts the next U.S. senator from #Nebraska. Here they are walking into the press conference from the Governor’s Office now occupied by Pillen. Ricketts was one of Pillen’s top supporters in a tough GOP primary race. pic.twitter.com/cSbdBnLRsP
“There’s a fallacy in Washington, D.C., that government can’t work and we have to expect failure, but that’s not true.
“We proved that’s not true here in Nebraska,” Ricketts said at the same event, The Hill reported.
“We need to hold Washington, D.C., accountable for making sure they’re providing the same level of high service that we do in state government.”
Ricketts replaces GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, who resigned this week to become the president of the University of Florida.
Ricketts is replacing a Republican who established himself as a frequent critic of former President Donald Trump, although he maintained his conservative bona fides on policy.
Nebraska voters will have the opportunity to vote on Pillen’s selection in the next election cycle.
Nebraska’s new Republican senator is expected to stand in a 2024 special election to complete Sasse’s six-year term, which ends in 2026, according to the Daily Caller.
Pillen: Appointments are temporary, and then the people speak as quickly as possible. There will be a statewide race in 2024. This seat runs again in 2026. “There’s never been a Nebraskan who’s had to run for statewide election in two consecutive terms.”
Pillen rejected arguments that Ricketts’ appointment amounted to a pay-to-play scheme, with critics of the move pointing out that Ricketts had donated to the new governor’s campaign and a political action committee supporting him.
“Integrity of the process and commitment to the process was highest priority,” Pillen said of his appointment process, WOWT reported.
Lara Sheehi smeared students who challenged her anti-Israel statements, watchdog says
On the first day of classes last fall, a psychology professor asked students in one of George Washington University’s required diversity courses to share their names and identities. The professor went around the room “affirming” each student’s introduction, until one student said she was born in Israel.
“It’s not your fault you were born in Israel,” the professor, Lara Sheehi, told the student in the postgraduate Professional Psychology Program, according to a classmate in attendance who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon.
The remark set the tone for a contentious semester with Sheehi, who consistently harassed her Jewish students and then retaliated against them when they raised concerns with the administration, according to a Title VI discrimination complaint filed Thursday with the Department of Education.
“She began to retaliate against us,” one of those students told the Free Beacon. “She began to spread lies about us to the faculty—smearing our reputations to the people who are going to be our clinical supervisors for years to come.”
Compiled from student testimonies provided to the anti-Semitism watchdog Stand With Us, the complaint says Sheehi accused the students of racism, encouraged classmates to demean and exclude them for their Jewish identity, and took disciplinary measures against them after they confronted her. The group says the university condoned the professor’s actions.
After publication, a George Washington University spokeswoman told the Free Beacon the institution “strongly condemns anti-Semitism and hatred” but “also recognizes and supports academic freedom.” She said the university is aware of the “allegations” and will respond if the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights launches an investigation.
A Department of Education spokesman said the Office of Civil Rights “does not confirm specific complaints” and directed the Free Beacon to an open list of its investigations. The complaint will be listed there if the office decides to formally launch one.
Sheehi, who did not respond to a request for comment, teaches “decolonial, liberatory, and anti-oppressive theories and approaches to clinical treatment,” according to her faculty biography. An advocate of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, she coauthored a book titled Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Her social media is littered with anti-Semitic statements, where she slams all Israelis as “fucking racist” and declares that it is “so fucking ridiculous how Zionism works.”
“Destroy Zionism and commit to land back, then we’ll take you seriously you fucking genocidal fucks. Fuck you,” she said in a tweet directed at the Israel Defense Forces.
During the one-semester course, Sheehi subjected Jewish students to anti-Semitic coursework and lectures, at times suggesting their failure to acquiesce would threaten their future as clinical psychologists. In September, she invited a radical speaker to campus who has falsely claimed that Israel tests its missile systems on Palestinian children.
The event occurred between the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The speaker, Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, used the occasion to denounce “white Israeli racism,” accuse Israel of using global relief work “to camouflage” its “oppressive power,” and call for violence against Jewish people. The visiting professor went on to praise a Palestinian teenager who attempted to stab two Israelis to death in 2015.
The Jewish students told Sheehi they felt targeted by the talk, questioning why they had been subjected to “a two-hour diatribe against one group—namely, Jews,” the complaint says. They noted other regimes known for human rights abuses like China, Russia, and Iran would likely not have received similar treatment. One of those students posted in a group chat for the class that the speaker’s talk also had “little to do with being a stronger clinician.” Another pointed out that there were no course readings on anti-Semitism for a class on “diversity awareness.”
But Sheehi denied the students had experienced anti-Semitism and told them the speaker’s remarks were “in keeping with the class approach of ‘disrupting,’” according to the complaint. She then went further and condemned the student for having made “damaging Islamophobic anti-Palestinian” comments about the guest speaker. In another heated class debate that term, she tacitly approved of fellow students calling out what they termed their Jewish classmates’ “white fragility.”
Behind closed doors, Sheehi slandered the students to other faculty members, claiming they were racists who called the speaker a “terrorist” and used assignments as an excuse to get “combative” with her, the complaint states.
The Jewish students spoke with their department’s chair and an unnamed dean about Sheehi’s conduct. But neither took action against the professor. The dean informed the students their only recourse would be to withdraw from the course and take it again the following year. He also denied Sheehi had engaged in anti-Semitism.
Another George Washington faculty member was tasked with overseeing a “restorative circle” to address concerns from one of the Jewish students. That professor doubled down on the use of anti-Semitic tropes when engaging with the student, suggesting that a Jewish student in Washington, D.C., necessarily had more “power and privilege” than a Palestinian student.
In November, the Jewish students were told faculty had voted to discipline them but were not made aware of their specific offenses. Instead, they were asked to describe what they believed they had done wrong, or else receive a “permanent negative mark” on their academic records. The students will be similarly penalized if they repeat their unnamed offense.
Stand With Us is asking the Education Department to compel George Washington to reverse all punitive actions against the students and investigate their complaints against Sheehi. It is also asking the department to review the university diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum for any anti-Semitic content and adopt the working definition of anti-Semitism approved by the Education and State Departments.
In the meantime, Sheehi is still teaching and promoting her brand of “liberation psychoanalysis” far and wide, including during a December appearance on the podcast “Voices From Room.” Her topic: “Making the Political Personal.”
Update 1/16 at 1:38 p.m.: This piece has been updated with comments from George Washington University and the Department of Education.
WATCH: Journos Speculated Trump Could ‘Go Down Like Al Capone.’ Now, Biden’s Classified Docs No Big Deal.
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence for classified documents, political commentators celebrated the raid. CNN anchors quoted then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) who reminded viewers, “No one is above the law, even an ex-president.” In one headline the Intercept asked: “Could Trump Go Down Like Al Capone?”
But now that reports have emerged that President Joe Biden’s attorneys discovered classified documents at Biden’s office at a Washington, D.C., think tank, the media have changed their tune, defending the president against accusations of misconduct.
“The mishandling of classified information does happen quite a bit, every day within the federal government,” former CIA attorney Brian Greer told CNN. “The situations were different between what happened with Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” CNN correspondent Manu Raju reported from the Capitol.
Joe Biden stored classified documents alongside his Corvette Stingray in the garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The White House said aides discovered the documents during a recent search following the discovery of a batch of other classified records at Biden’s personal office in Washington, D.C. The latest tranche was found in Biden’s locked garage and in a room adjacent to it, according to the White House.
The discovery of classified records at Biden’s home is certain to fuel calls to appoint a special counsel to oversee an investigation into how the materials ended up at Biden’s properties. Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly appointed the U.S. attorney for Chicago to conduct a preliminary investigation into the documents found at Biden’s office, and may also appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter, Bloombergreported.
Biden appeared to confirm on Thursday that the documents were found in his garage, and next to his Corvette.
“Classified materials, next to your Corvette? What were you thinking?” Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Biden at a press conference.
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, okay? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street.”
Biden, a self-described “car guy,” owns a classic 1967 Corvette Stingray. While the classic American muscle car may often sit in a locked garage, the president appears to drive it regularly. He showed it off during an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” last year, topping 100 miles-per-hour in the green convertible.
The White House has sought to downplay the story since reports Monday that Biden attorneys discovered classified records on Nov. 2 at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s think tank in Washington, D.C. According to reports, the documents contained Top Secret information about Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom. The White House has faced questions about why the administration waited two months—and until after the midterm election—to announce the discovery.
Vote comes after Free Beacon report showed Biden sold one million reserve barrels to Chinese oil giant
The House on Thursday passed a bill that bars the United States from selling its oil reserves to China, a move that comes after the Washington Free Beacon exposed the Biden administration’s decision to sell nearly one million reserve barrels to a Chinese oil giant.
The bill received wide bipartisan backing, with a majority of House Democrats—113 of the 210 who voted—joining their Republican counterparts to support it.
The vote’s bipartisan nature comes as a blow to President Joe Biden. After a July Free Beaconreport showed that Biden sold 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation, the Democrat’s administration defended the move. White House spokesman Ian Sams, for example, accused Republicans who criticized the sale of “lying” and “pushing false conspiracy theories about the president.” Many House Democrats, however, disagreed, and the bill will head to the Senate with wide support from both parties.
Should the bill pass the upper chamber, it’s unclear if Biden would sign it given his administration’s aggressive defense of foreign oil sales. The White House did not return a request for comment.
While many House Democrats rallied around the bill, some of their colleagues vocally opposed it. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), for example, said that the bill would inhibit the president’s ability to respond to domestic energy crises like the one seen in Texas last year. “This legislation literally says, if the president has the need and necessity to protect the American people, it will not be allowed.” Lee’s characterization of the bill, which ensures that “petroleum products will not be exported to the People’s Republic of China,” is false.
Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R., Texas) applauded the bill’s passing in a Thursday statement:
“The Biden administration’s anti-American energy agenda stamped out our energy independence and boosted our reliance on foreign oil, sending prices through the roof. We should not be selling emergency oil reserves to a geopolitical adversary, especially at a time when our country is facing an unprecedented energy crisis.”
Claim: “Senior reporter for CNN. Fact-checking the president, 2024 candidates, others.”
Who said it:
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, describing himself on his Twitter profile.
Why it matters:
Who will professionally fact-check the professional fact-checkers, if not us?
Context:
Where is Daniel Dale? Does he still work at CNN? He hasn’t written a fact check since Dec. 15, when he investigated a Republican congressman’s tweet about pedophilia. It wouldn’t be the first time Dale went missing during the Biden administration. He might be “on vacation,” or he might have been fired by new CNN boss Chris Licht, whose ruthless determiniation to rid the network of liberal hacks made him a WashingtonFree Beacon Man of the Year in 2022.
Dale and other professional fact-checkers exist for two reasons: 1) so that Democratic politicians can cite their “work” in attack ads against their Republican opponents and 2) because liberal psychopaths need something to print out and bring to the table at Thanksgiving.
Analysis:
A more accurate description of Dale’s duties would read something like “Fact-checking Republicans, Donald Trump, others.” It’s possible Dale is making a political point by implying Trump is still the duly elected president, but we don’t think that’s very likely because Dale is a liberal hack who works for CNN.
It’s true that President Joe Biden is occasionally among the “others” Dale decides to fact-check—about as often as he investigates “conservative tweeters” or “right-wing circles” or Justin Y. O’Donnell, the “anarcho-nihilist” bodybuilder. Dale’s most recent articles for CNN suggest “fact-checking the president” is not a top priority. Here’s a rundown of the people and events Dale has fact-checked since October 2022:
• Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas)
• House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.)
• Donald Trump
• Trump, Republicans
• Joe Biden
• White House tweet
• Biden
• Sen. John Fetterman (D., Penn.) debate vs. Mehmet Oz
• Republican candidates
• Biden
• Republican candidates
• Republican candidates
• Herschel Walker
• Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah)
• Democratic candidates
• Trump
• Walker
• Trump
Bottom line:
Joe Biden is a prolific liar, and the professional fact-checkers just shrug it off because his 80-year-old brain is melting like a bowl of chocolate-chip ice cream in mid-July.
We wish mainstream media outlets were as dedicated as we are to holding Sleepy Joe accountable for his lies. Alas, that is not the case.
Claim: “Pete Buttigieg is a Michael Jordan-level cable TV guest. I have never seen anyone who is even close to this good.”
Who said it:
Matt Bennett, the former Michael Dukakis campaign staffer responsible for the infamous tank photo that ended the candidate’s career in politics. He also cofounded Third Way, a center-left think tank for people who enjoy homework.
Report: House Dems Bail on Congressional Visit to Southern Border
Bennett and other professional pundits gushed over Buttigieg’s recent appearance on Fox News’s Special Report, where the secretary of transportation denounced his (many) critics as homophobes in a well-rehearsed diatribe.
“How long are we going to have to wait for this brilliant person to become president?” wrote Steven Beschloss, the brother of hack historian Michael Beschloss. Both men are perfect examples of the expensively educated elite liberals who comprise Buttigieg’s political base.
Why it matters:
Professional pundits love Buttigieg—a boring nerd who enjoys homework—because he reminds them of themselves, and they believe the world would be a better place if people like them were in charge of everything. They don’t seem to care that he isn’t very good at his current job.
When Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) announced her retirement last week, pundits instantly touted Buttigieg as a possible successor. (He has been a Michigan resident for all of six months.)
The Washington Post, among others, continues to insist (without evidence) that Buttigieg’s “national stature” and “studied talent for messaging” will make him a strong contender for president in 2024 and beyond.
Additional context:
Professional pundits maintain that Buttigieg’s failed presidential campaign in 2020 was “impressive.” It was not.
It’s true that Buttigieg performed well in Iowa and New Hampshire, irrelevant states that are 90 percent white. In states that actually matter—Nevada and South Carolina—he finished a distant third and fourth, respectively.
Buttigieg received a grand total of just 177,498 votes before ending his campaign on March 1, 2020. He barely registered a statistically significant level of support among black voters.
Analysis:
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. He was a ruthless killer on the court. Above all, he was a winner. Unless Bennett was referring to Jordan’s record as an NBA team owner, the comparison is absurd. The fact that so many members of our professional pundit class seem to actually believe this is a damning indictment of their ability to relate to normal Americans.
In the meaningless realm of cable TV punditry, Buttigieg is at best a slightly better than replacement-level guest. He’s not even in the same league as All-Star performers such as Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) and American icon Kate Upton.
As a politician, Buttigieg is one of the most overhyped and overrated figures in recent memory. Before running for president in 2020, his political experience consisted of two terms as mayor of the fifth-largest city in Indiana, the 17th-largest state, and a failed bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
It is therefore difficult to compare Buttigieg to any professional athlete in any sport. Unlike in politics, success in sports is typically determined by one’s skill and a demonstrated ability to win games. Being declared a “brilliant” athlete by a small cadre of professional sports pundits does not make it so.
Chinese batteries are crucial to Biden’s long-promised ‘clean energy economy’
The Biden administration is set to exclude electric batteries from its impending executive order meant to limit U.S. investment in Chinese technology, a move that comes as it plans a “clean energy economy” that relies heavily on Chinese batteries.
The executive order, which is expected to be unveiled in the coming months, imposes new controls on the types of Chinese technology U.S. corporations and investment firms can support. While those controls were expected to extend to electric batteries, the Biden administration is now moving to exclude Chinese battery technology from the new limits, Axios reported Thursday morning.
That’s likely because the administration needs Chinese batteries to usher in its green energy revolution. China dominates the electric battery supply chain, and President Joe Biden has thus far delayed and outright killed U.S. mining projects that could yield the materials required to ease China’s grip on the industry. Still, Biden in 2021 released a plan to make half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric, a move the Democrat’s administration said would “support good-paying, union jobs across American supply chains.”
Biden is no stranger to the electric car industry’s reliance on China. The Democrat last year showcased Ford’s electric truck and Mustang—the U.S. automaker in July announced it would import lithium batteries for the vehicles from China.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
DelBene owns a stake in low-income apartment that has raised rents 55 percent since she invested
Democratic congresswoman Suzan DelBene (Wash.) has bemoaned rising rents and built a reputation as an advocate of federal housing subsidies. But the newly minted chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has also turned a tidy profit on a low-income apartment building subsidized by the same policies she supports in Washington.
DelBene, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, holds a stake in a Seattle apartment building that receives an annual $1,065,246 Low Income Housing Tax Credit, part of a federal program she has championed in Congress. The building has upped its rents by at least 55 percent since DelBene invested in the property in 2014, and the value of her investment in the property has since risen in-kind by a factor of at least two, according to her financial disclosure statements.
The Washington State lawmaker isn’t the first progressive in Congress to reap profits from a low-income apartment building. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) was hammered during his reelection bid in 2022 following a Washington Free Beaconreport that revealed his church owns an apartment complex in Atlanta that moved to evict residents during the pandemic for as little as $28.55 in unpaid rent.
DelBene holds her stake in the Balfour Place Apartments through Balfour Place Investors, an LLC she has disclosed in each of her financial disclosures filed since 2014 as a “co-investment in multi-family housing building located in Seattle, Washington.” An attorney representing Balfour Place Investors and two other business entities identified DelBene’s LLC as one of the owners of the apartment building in a June 2016 letter to a Seattle city planner. Seattle real estate records also identify the LLC as an owner of the building.
DelBene’s investment in the property has become substantially more valuable since 2014, when she valued her stake in Balfour Place Investors between $250,001 and $500,000. In 2021, her latest available financial disclosure, the value of her investment ballooned to between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000. She has also received between $80,000 and $265,000 in interest payments from the LLC since 2014, her financial disclosures show.
Seattle’s appraised value of the property has more than doubled in recent years, going from $22.7 million in 2014 to $54.2 million in 2022. The price to rent a room at Balfour Place has also risen substantially. Income-restricted studio apartments at the building started at $892 a month in 2014. That same room now runs for at least $1,379 a month.
All the while, DelBene has bemoaned rising rents across the country and has established herself as an outspoken champion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. In November, DelBene led a group of 54 members of Congress urging House leadership to enact changes to the program to finance the construction and repair of 1.5 million affordable homes. She praised President Joe Biden in October for paying lip service to her proposal, but the measure was ultimately left out of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed in December.
Unlike some of her far-left colleagues in the House, DelBene has not accused landlords of playing a role in hiking up rent prices. In fact, she called for diverting federal funds to support landlords during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
“With 1 in 5 renters struggling to keep up with their rent payments, we must do more to support renters & landlords,” she tweeted in March 2021.
A spokesperson for DelBene defended the congresswoman’s support of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, saying the initiative is designed to “incentivize private investment in affordable housing developments, which otherwise would not be financially viable.”
‘Congresswoman DelBene is a strong proponent of affordable housing and is the lead sponsor of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act that would create an estimated 66,000 additional affordable homes in Washington state (1.9 million nationally),” the spokesperson said. “There is strong bipartisan support for more affordable housing in Congress. In the most recent Congress, the legislation had 207 cosponsors.”
DelBene’s office did not answer specific questions about her investment in Balfour Place.
‘This metadata error is a regrettable and entirely avoidable cockup on the part of the New York Times’
The New York Times accidentally published identifying information about Russian soldiers who spoke out against President Vladimir Putin, putting the soldiers at risk of reprisal by the Kremlin.
Phone numbers of soldiers and their relatives appeared in the metadata of a September article in which Russian troops criticized Putin and the Ukraine war, Vice News‘s tech site, Motherboard, reported. The information remained in the article until January, when the newspaper scrubbed the data.
One soldier said, “Putin is a fool,” while another called the Russian president “gravely mistaken.” Several voiced concerns about killing civilians.
The Times‘s oversight could cause the soldiers to face government retaliation, Motherboard reported:
“This metadata error is a regrettable and entirely avoidable cockup on the part of the New York Times,” Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS, told Motherboard in an online chat. “The Times says it spent almost two months on translating the recordings—well, it should have spent another 20 minutes on scrubbing the metadata.”
Motherboard found the Times website included not only the numbers of apparent soldiers on these calls, but also the alleged family members back home. That included the number that placed the call, the number that received it, and apparent notes from Times‘s fact checkers on the caller’s identities.
“Exposing the phone number of the families of Russian troops is exposing those family members to risks,” Rid added.
The Times said that it has “worked to remove identifying information from the story.”
“We later learned that some buried metadata was live on the site and took prompt steps to remove it,” Charlie Stadtlander, the Times‘s director of external communications, said.
U.S. and Mexican officials at a Monday meeting “ran out of time” before discussing the unprecedented border crisis, Bloombergreported Wednesday.
While “uncontrolled migration across the U.S. southern border” was “on the agenda” for an official meeting between American president Joe Biden and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a private talk between the leaders ran so long that the two administrations left the subject of immigration “largely unaddressed.”
Instead, the Biden-López Obrador meeting focused on “supply chains and drug smuggling,” officials told Bloomberg.
This is far from the first time the Biden administration has given short shrift to the border crisis. Even as illegal immigration last year soared to record levels, Biden never visited the border, saying in December that there were “more important things going on.” He only visited the border before the trip to Mexico this week. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden has tasked with overseeing the crisis, has been to the border once.
A Biden measure intended to deter migrants, meanwhile, will do little to alleviate the crisis, experts told the Washington Free Beacon.
While officials said that Biden and López Obrador “discussed migration and the border in their private session,” Bloomberg noted that “it isn’t clear how much time they spent on the subject or in what detail they spoke.” López Obrador said that he and Biden only spoke about immigration “in a very broad manner.”
Hunter Biden email shows Chinese businessmen had access to Biden Foundation office in 2017
The discovery of two batches of classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president could bring renewed attention to an office the president shared with his scandal-plagued son Hunter and a Chinese energy conglomerate linked to Chinese military intelligence.
Joe and Hunter Biden were “office mates” with executives from CEFC China Energy in 2017, according to emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop. In an email to the general manager for the K Street office building, Hunter Biden said the office would be shared by his consulting firm Hudson West, CEFC China Energy, and the Biden Foundation, his family charity.
“[P]lease have keys made available for new office mates,” Hunter Biden wrote in a Sept. 21, 2017 email, listing Joe Biden, his stepmother Jill Biden, his uncle Jim Biden, and Gongwen Dong, whom he identified as the “emissary” for the chairman of the now-bankrupt Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.
While the Bidens left the office in 2018, their cohabitation with CEFC executives could raise national security concerns in light of the revelation that Joe Biden kept classified documents related to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom in another Washington, D.C., office. Biden aides have also discovered classified records in Biden’s garage at his home in Wilmington, Del. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed a special counsel to investigate how the documents, some of which are marked “top secret,” ended up at the Biden properties.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the discoveries should prompt the Justice Department to conduct an exhaustive search of all of Joe and Hunter Biden’s current and former properties.
“If the DOJ and specifically the FBI haven’t conducted the widest possible search of every known location where Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and their associates may have kept classified documents—this is in no way a complete or legitimate investigation,” Issa told the Washington Free Beacon.
It is unclear whether any classified materials were stored at the Bidens’ K Street office. But CEFC employees’ access to the office could be of particular concern given the energy conglomerate’s ties to Chinese military intelligence. Hunter Biden worked closely with the firm’s former chairman, Ye Jianming. According to a Senate Republican report, Ye served from 2003 to 2005 as deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts, a front group for the People’s Liberation Army that “performs dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting propaganda and perception management campaigns.”
Hunter Biden also forged close ties to CEFC employee JiaQi Bao, whom House Republicans suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. House Oversight Committee Republicans last year provided FBI director Christopher Wray with “evidence of Bao’s close relationship to Hunter Biden and her attempts to ingratiate herself with his father.” Republicans said Bao received a degree from Tsinghua University, a recruiting hub for China’s intelligence services. Before joining CEFC, she worked for China’s National Development and Reform Commission.
Bao appears to have worked in the Bidens’ K Street office, located in the heart of Washington’s lobbying district.
In a March 25, 2018, email, Bao asked Hunter if there was “anything in the office that you would like me to pick up/organize for you.” Bao also urged Hunter to take as much money as he could from his partnership with CEFC. “Figure out a way to have the money transferred to the right U.S. account before any restriction levied by Chinese regulators,” she wrote.
“After infiltrating the Biden family, Bao urged Hunter to encourage Joe Biden to run for president months before he announced and then supplied the Biden family campaign advice related to China,” said Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight panel.
In 2017 and 2018, CEFC paid Hunter Biden $5 million to scout out energy deals in the United States and Europe. CEFC paid Biden another $1 million to serve as a legal adviser for Patrick Ho, a CEFC executive who was indicted for trying to bribe two African officials for oil rights. Biden referred to Ho as “the fucking spy chief of China,” in a May 2018 voice mail, according to Senate Republicans.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The city council of Hamtramck, Mich., a city outside Detroit, voted Tuesday to legalize animal sacrifices for the purpose of religious rituals following pressure from Muslim residents.
“If somebody wants to do it, they have a right to do their practice,” Councilman Mohammed Hassan (D.) said at the council meeting, the Detroit Free Pressreported. Hamtramck’s all-Muslim city council voted 3-2 in favor of the amendment, which will allow residents to slaughter animals on residential property for religious purposes.
At the meeting, some residents of Hamtramck, whose population is majority Muslim, applauded the council’s decision. Some Muslims perform ritual sacrifices of animals including goats, sheep, and cows.
While animal rights advocates opposed the legalization of animal sacrifice, proponents of the move downplayed concerns about the negative effects of animal slaughters in Hamtramck and insisted it was necessary to protect the city from lawsuits alleging religious discrimination.
“Do we want to risk the city getting sued?” Councilwoman Amanda Jaczkowski (D.) said at the meeting.
Residents at the Tuesday meeting also objected to the flying of an LGBTQ pride flag on city property, calling it offensive to their religion.
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (D.) is encouraging public school teachers to offer credit to students who volunteer for her reelection campaign.
In an email sent to Chicago public school teachers, Lightfoot deputy campaign manager Megan Crane asked teachers to encourage students to volunteer “to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring,” offering “class credit” for those who participate, WTTW News reports.
“We’re simply looking for enthusiastic, curious, and hard-working young people eager to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring,” Crane wrote in the email sent to teachers’ official work accounts.
The program sparked immediate backlash and could spell trouble for Lightfoot, who in her 2019 bid for mayor promised to fight the “Chicago machine,” a patronage system that has dominated city politics for years, with tougher ethics regulations.
“This is unethical and wrong on so many levels,” the Chicago Teachers Union said in a statement. The union tweeted that the scheme “feels strangely like it’s straight out of the machine politics the current incumbent ran against—yet continues to use herself.”
Attorneys for the union believe the email “not only violates the city’s government ethics ordinance but also the ethics policy imposed by Lightfoot when she took office in 2019,” according to WTTW News.
Political campaigns cannot use the Chicago Public Schools email system to “solicit volunteers and donations,” the district’s ethics guidelines state.
“As a rule, the district does not coordinate with any political candidates or campaigns. It has not done so to date and will not be doing so,” a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson told WTTW News.
In an initial statement to WTTW News, a campaign spokesperson defended the email, saying the program was designed “to provide young people with the opportunity to engage with our campaign, learn more about the importance of civic engagement, and participate in the most American of processes” and was “done using publicly available contact information.” But after a wave of criticism, Lightfoot’s office backtracked with a second statement:
All [Lightfoot for Chicago] campaign staff have been reminded about the solid wall that must exist between campaign and official activities and that contacts with any city of Chicago, or other sister agency, employees, including [Chicago Public Schools] employees, even through publicly available sources, is off limits. Period.
Lightfoot is one of nine candidates on the Feb. 28 ballot.
“She’s exploiting young people for political gain,” Brandon Johnson, who is running against Lightfoot, said Wednesday of the mayor’s actions.
Scandal-plagued presidential scion’s apparent access to top secret materials raises national security concerns
The home where Joe Biden improperly stored a number of classified documents was also Hunter Biden’s residency for a number of years, a Washington Free Beacon review of the younger Biden’s laptop concluded.
According to government documents stored on his personal computer, Hunter Biden lived in 2018 and 2019 at the Wilmington, Del., home where his father had classified materials stored in the garage. It is unclear precisely when the documents were put in the garage or when Hunter Biden began living at the residence, but in May 2018 the president’s scandal-plagued son was issued a Delaware driver’s license listing his father’s home as his primary residence.
The living arrangement raises serious questions following Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hunter Biden, who suffered from a crack cocaine addiction for years and had extensive ties to foreign business contacts, is facing a federal criminal investigation of his own for tax fraud and lying on a firearm application.
Neither the White House nor the Department of Justice responded to a request for comment.
In December 2018, Hunter Biden directed his Wells Fargo financial adviser to change his banking address to the Wilmington address. He also added the address to his PayPal account in January 2019. And a month later, Hunter Biden ordered a number of products from the auction site Tophatter to be shipped to the home, including a night vision monocular telescope, an anti-police GPS radar detector, a 5mW laser pointer, a 360-degree USB webcam, and a $51 smartphone, according to shipping receipts found on his laptop.
Hunter Biden also used the home as his billing address for his Apple account, according to over a dozen receipts on the hard drive dated between January 2019 and March 2019. Digital items Hunter Biden purchased in that timeframe include subscriptions for various dating services, an app that makes calls and texts from a second phone number, and an audiobook of his father’s memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.
A notarized Quitclaim Deed located on the hard drive dated Feb. 20, 2019, identifies Hunter Biden as a “divorced man, residing” at his father’s Wilmington property.
Hunter Biden appears to also have had access to the property’s garage where the misplaced classified records from the Obama-Biden administration were stored, according to a report from RealClearPolitics. Then-Vice President Joe Biden said on CNBC’s Jay Leno’s Garage in 2016 that Hunter had rebuilt the engine on his 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray along with the president’s deceased son, Beau.
Joe Biden cited his beloved Corvette in a press conference Thursday as he assured the public the classified documents he kept in the garage were secure.
“My Corvette’s in a locked garage so it’s not like it’s sitting on the street,” Joe Biden said when asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy why he kept classified materials next to the vehicle.
Joe Biden’s best two months since becoming president ended on the evening of January 9, when White House lawyers revealed that classified materials from Biden’s years as vice president had been stored in his Washington, D.C., office between 2017 and 2019. A few days later, the White House confirmed that additional secret papers had been found inside Biden’s garage in Wilmington, Delaware. On January 12, attorney general Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate whether Biden broke the law and revealed that another document had been recovered. And the scandal grew.
Biden lapsed into legalese. The West Wing built a stonewall in the press room. Democrats and their media allies pointed out differences between the Biden case and that of former president Trump, who is also under special counsel investigation for inappropriate handling of classified documents and for his actions after the 2020 election. The liberal spin failed to impress House Republicans, who quickly added the controversy to their list of investigations. They want to know why the news was kept secret for so long, and whether the documents are connected in any way to Hunter and James Biden’s influence peddling. Fair questions.
The news couldn’t have come at a worse time for the president. Biden has been on a winning streak since last November when Democrats avoided a midterm meltdown and the Republican Party lapsed into divisive recriminations. In December, Biden pocketed legislative victories on same-sex marriage and government funding and hosted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. He began the new year with a bipartisan event in Kentucky alongside Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
The McConnell event previewed Biden’s strategy for the coming year. Josh Kraushaar of Axios was the first to point out that the president is “quietly pivoting to the middle” as he lays the foundation for a reelection campaign. Highlighting infrastructure projects authorized by his spending bills, as Biden did in Kentucky, is part of the plan. And there appears to be more. A day after his trip to the Bluegrass State, Biden delivered remarks on immigration and proposed measures to relieve the crisis on the southern border. On January 8, he visited El Paso, where he walked along a portion of border wall.
On January 9, a member of the Consumer Products Safety Commission raised the possibility that the federal government might ban gas stoves. The comments ignited public outrage that spooked both the commission and the White House into reversing course. Then, on January 12, Biden had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal outlining ways he and Republicans could work together to reduce the malign influence of Big Tech. “There will be many policy issues we disagree on in the new Congress,” Biden wrote, “but bipartisan proposals to protect our privacy and our children; to prevent discrimination, sexual exploitation, and cyberstalking; and to tackle anticompetitive conduct shouldn’t separate us.”
The outreach to Republicans is not the same as then-president Clinton announcing in 1996 that “the era of big government is over.” The Democratic Party has moved too far left for Biden even to contemplate such a rhetorical concession. But he is making a noticeable shift in tone from—and indulging in a clever obfuscation of—the partisan hardball and undiluted progressivism of the past two years.
The logic behind what Mark Halperin calls “Triangulation Lite” runs like this: By addressing the concerns that conservatives and Republicans share with moderates and independents, from crime to illegal immigration to social media contagion, Biden and the Democrats will be in a better position to cast themselves as sober-minded stewards of the economy and entitlements in this year’s fight over the debt ceiling. They will be better able to portray former president Trump and the MAGA movement as extremist threats to democracy in 2024. Triangulation Lite draws lessons from Democratic success in last year’s Senate and governor’s races by targeting suburbanites worried about the direction of the GOP.
The success of Triangulation Lite is not guaranteed. It requires economic recovery, continued success in Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s place at the center of the Republican Party. It also depends on Biden’s physical and mental condition as well as his competence on the job. That’s asking a lot. Since launching his third bid for the presidency in 2019, Biden has benefited more from his opponents’ weaknesses than from his own strengths.
Nor have supply shortages, inflation, the border, and the retreat from Afghanistan inspired confidence in Biden’s leadership among Republicans, independents, or for that matter Democrats. The red wave may not have materialized nationwide in 2022, but it’s not as if the president rallied his party to an incredible victory. Republicans won the House with a majority of votes. And statewide races in Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and Florida showed how a GOP that has its act together can compete effectively in 2024.
The document drama exposes Biden as a hypocrite. It brings him down to earth just as he was beginning to take off. It lends a helping hand to Republicans while they shake off the dust from the speaker’s fight and staff their investigative committees. It’s another headache for a president who has never been forthright about his relationship to his family’s lobbying and consulting business.
Biden finished 2022 and spent the first week of 2023 on offense. Now he’s on defense once more. He doesn’t like the feeling. But he better get used to it.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) reintroduced on Jan. 10 his Federal Reserve Transparency Act in the House of Representatives, an annual tradition for the congressman. Dubbed the “Audit the Fed” bill, the legislation is an evolved iteration of a bill put forth by former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) back in 1983.
“It’s official!” Massi wrote in a tweet on Tuesday afternoon. “I just reintroduced my bipartisan bill to audit the Federal Reserve, HR 24.”
Massie’s bill would “require a full audit of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve system and the Federal Reserve banks.”
Paul’s original bill, despite being introduced in the early 1980s, did not receive a vote in the House until 2012, where it passed 337–98 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) refused to hold a senatorial vote on the legislation despite having advocating for a Federal Reserve audit earlier in his career.
The rationale behind the initiative, espoused by free market conservatives like Paul and Massie—who blame the U.S. central bank for its role in the country’s economic instability—is that transparency would better allow the public to prepare for and avoid financial crises.
“I’ve been talking about it for decades and arguing that we had a financial system that was very friable, very vulnerable, and it was the Fed that was creating the bubbles,” said Paul during a speech at the CATO Institute in 2009. “Therefore, we should be looking into it and preventing these problems rather than waiting for a cataclysmic financial crisis to hit.”
Rep. Massie has echoed similar sentiments in the recent past and offered criticisms of his own as to why the public deserves more insight in the central bank.
“The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many privileges of government agencies while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being largely insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests,” Massie said during a speech on the House floor in 2014. “The Federal Reserve can enter into agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments, and the GAO [Government Accountability Office] is prohibited from auditing these agreements.”
The GAO periodically conducts reviews of the Federal Reserve, but these are not full-scale audits and do not include arrangements made with foreign counterparts. Massie’s bill would require the comptroller general, the head of the GAO, to conduct a full audit of the Fed.
Acting Fed Chair Jerome Powell also stressed the importance of transparency at a symposium in Stockholm, Sweden, on Tuesday.
“With independence comes the responsibility to provide the transparency that enables effective oversight by Congress, which, in turn, supports the Fed’s democratic legitimacy,” said the central banker, adding that the Federal Reserve has made substantial progress on that front. “Over the past several decades, we have steadily broadened our efforts to provide meaningful transparency.”
Powell has cautioned against the “audit the Fed” movement in years past, however, saying it could impose undue political pressure on monetary policy.
Critics of the proposal say that U.S. central bankers are already sufficiently audited. Though not conducted by the comptroller general, the Fed is audited annually by an independent public accounting firm retained by the office of the inspector general.
According to a former trader on the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Trading Desk, Joseph Wang, nearly all of the central bank’s financial activities are disclosed to the public, though often with a lag. That said, Wang acknowledged there are certain obfuscated areas.
“One thing that might be of interest to the public is the Fed’s new FIMA [Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration] repo facility, where it lends money to foreign central banks and governments against Treasury collateral,” he told The Epoch Times. “The borrowers of that facility are not disclosed, but even governments not necessarily friendly to the United States could borrow through it.”
Massie is not the only member of Congress carrying the Ron Paul torch. Paul’s son, Rand, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, continues to advocate for more central bank transparency, introducing bills similar to Massie’s in the Senate in recent years.
In a 2017 interview with Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, Rand Paul was asked why Americans should want to audit the central bank, to which he replied, “I think an easier question is why wouldn’t we want to audit the Fed? It’s about transparency. It’s about knowing what your government does.”
The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed to expedite consideration of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit alleging that the 2022 election was flawed.
In a brief order, issued on Jan. 9 and made public the next day, the court ordered a reset of “the matter for conference on February 1, 2023,” and agreed with Lake’s arguments that her challenge should be handled as a “special action petition.” The court date was reportedly scheduled for March.
Lawyers for Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, the state’s former secretary of state, has until Jan. 17 to respond and argue why Lake’s challenge should be rejected, according to the order. Lake had petitioned both the state’s Appeals Court and Supreme Court after a Maricopa County judge rejected her case after a two-day trial in December.
But earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court denied Lake’s petition to transfer her election lawsuit to the high court and said it will be heard before the Appeals Court first.
In December, Lake filed a lawsuit against Hobbs in her capacity as secretary of state, Maricopa County supervisors, Maricopa Recorder Stephen Richer, and other officials, asserting that the county’s handling of the election was seriously flawed and disenfranchised Election Day voters. Lake, a former broadcast journalist, argued that such disenfranchisement and election voting issues were enough to swing the election in her favor. She lost by 17,000 votes.
A Maricopa County judge, Peter Thompson, threw out Lake’s lawsuit on Dec. 24 and said she did not produce enough evidence, but he ruled that Lake should not be sanctioned and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. Days before that, Thompson tossed out 8 of Lake’s 10 election claims.
A portion of Lake’s lawsuit included claims that she would have won or had a better chance of winning if dozens of Maricopa County ballot printers worked properly on Election Day. A number of those printers created ballots that couldn’t be read by tabulators, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates and Richer confirmed during a Nov. 8 news conference, telling voters to place those ballots in drop-boxes or find another location to vote.
Supervisors in Maricopa recently sought to produce a report to determine why those ballot printers didn’t work in November. They hired former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor to carry out an investigation, the county confirmed last week.
Lake’s lawyers previously argued that those Maricopa officials allegedly “admitted, after first denying, that illegally misconfigured ballots were injected into the election” and triggered the “tabulators to reject tens of thousands of ballots.” Lawyers stated Republican voters on Election Day were disproportionally impacted.”
During the two-day trial, Lake called on independent pollster Richard Baris, who testified that he believes the Election Day technical problems disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race. Maricopa Election Day voters, he asserted, mostly trended Republican and that between 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted actually didn’t cast ballots as a result of the tabulator and printer errors.
Baris told the court that his estimate was primarily influenced by the number of people who began answering his exit polls but didn’t finish the process during the midterm contest.
Hobbs First Address
In a ceremony earlier this month, Hobbs was sworn in as Arizona governor, and on Monday, delivered her first speech to the state Legislature. In the address, she took a veiled shot at Lake and other state Republicans.
The new Arizona Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs takes the oath of office in a ceremony at the state Capitol in Phoenix, on Jan. 2, 2023. (Ross D. Franklin, Pool/AP Photo)
“Chasing conspiracy theories, pushing agendas for special interests, attacking the rights of your fellow Arizonans or seeking to further undermine our democracy will lead nowhere,” Hobbs said.
Other officials who formally took office earlier this month were Adrian Fontes as secretary of state and Kris Mayes, who won by only about 280 votes, as attorney general. Both Democrats defeated Republicans who subsequently challenged their losses in court.
Mayes’ opponent, GOP candidate Abe Hamadeh, filed a motion in Mohave County on Jan. 6 to again challenge the Nov. 8 election results in the attorney general race and argued there is new evidence of voter disenfranchisements. It came, according to his suit, after hundreds of ballots were located in Pinal County.
“We simply ask that we be given the opportunity to apply the Pinal County process across the board to conduct a physical inspection and hand count of ballots that if the Pinal County issue repeats itself anywhere else in the state could be outcome determinative in this election,” Hamadeh wrote on Twitter.
The House of Representatives has approved a measure that would block exports from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China.
The legislation passed 331–97, with 113 Democrats siding with Republicans on Jan. 12 in backing the “Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act,” or H.R. 22.
The proposal would prohibit “the Department of Energy (DOE) from selling petroleum products (e.g., crude oil) from the SPR to any entity that is under the ownership, control, or influence of the Chinese Communist Party,” according to a summary from the Congressional Research Service. “Further, DOE must require as a condition of any sale of crude oil from the SPR that the oil not be exported to China.”
Last year, President Joe Biden announced the release of 180 million barrels from the reserve in an effort to bring down energy prices and stabilize the global market. The release drew down the emergency stockpile to its lowest level since the 1980s.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who introduced the measure, said the Biden administration has been “actively bolstering the oil reserves of our most dangerous geopolitical adversary, the Chinese Communist Party.”
“The federal government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers, especially when it makes us more dangerously dependent upon China for critical minerals, solar panels, and batteries to produce our own energy,” she said.
Last year, the Biden administration sold substantial quantities of oil to Unipec, a firm with close ties to the Chinese government.
Democrat and Republican Responses
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the ranking Democrat on the energy committee and former chair, objected to the bill. He traced the export of oil to China to congressional Republicans, who in 2015 led the successful effort to lift a 40-year ban on crude oil exports.
He questioned why Republicans didn’t back bipartisan legislation from the previous Congress from Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) that would have outlawed SPR sales or exports to China, North Korea, Iran, and other countries sanctioned by the United States.
“Are my Republican colleagues OK with exporting oil to Putin’s Russia in the midst of a war on Ukraine?” he asked.
“They’re just recycling an old one-page bill that takes a minor step in undoing the damage that they themselves created.”
Pallone later asserted that the Biden administration was largely responsible for recent domestic gas price declines through its SPR releases.
Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) also defended the Bacon–Houlahan bill, saying the Republicans’ bill is “way too narrowly tailored.”
She asserted that it would “completely ban all crude oil exports to China.”
“I might just note that President Biden has actually wanted to import from Russia and Iran,” Rodgers said after Castor spoke.
Rep. Robert Latta (R-Ohio) voiced his support of H.R. 22.
“The [Biden] administration has made every effort to undermine, avoid, and restrict oil and gas production in North America while at the same time moving to drain our strategic reserves in an attempt to offset the price increases caused by the president’s own policies,” he said.
“What political nonsense this bill is! It allows an American oil company to buy oil from the SPR on Monday and sell it to China on Tuesday,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.).
He later suggested that the United States should ban oil and natural gas exports when prices are high.
“Just to correct the record, the language is very clear, if you look at subsection two: ‘Such petroleum products will not be exported to the People’s Republic of China,’” Rodgers said after Sherman spoke.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said U.S. oil exports to China under Biden have greatly strengthened the communist country, now widely recognized as the chief geopolitical and economic rival of the United States.
“In part because of the Biden administration, China, not the U.S., has the largest government-controlled stockpile of oil in the world,” she said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) pointed out that the United States is the only free-market country in the world capable of producing large amounts of oil.
“The rest of the countries that have an abundant supply are cartels—OPEC, Russia, Iran, Venezuela. They want a high price. The only check and balance to high prices of oil is a free market producing America,” he said, later arguing that the rapid drawdown of the SPR under Biden threatens national security,” Scalise said.
“We don’t just produce enough for ourselves–because, by the way, if we weren’t allowed to export energy, then you would see a decrease in production, you would see a decrease in exploration. It’s like a farmer. If a farmer can only produce and sell in America, they’re going to plant a lot less, because they can’t have access to world markets.
“You want to have access to world markets, but you want to also have a reserve in case.”
He also noted that natural disasters and national security emergencies are legitimate reasons to tap the stockpile, rather than what he characterized as “failed policy” under Biden.
“History is not on [Scalise’s] side,” Pallone shot back. “The fact of the matter is that the Republicans created this problem by lifting the ban on the export of crude oil to China and the rest of the world when they were in the majority—and this bill does nothing to solve the problem!”
He said just a negligible proportion of U.S. oil exports to China came from the SPR.
Rep. Mónica De La Cruz (R-Texas) said H.R. 22 would be “a crucial step to holding China accountable and repositioning the United States as a global energy leader.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said, “The bottom line is America needs to be energy independent.”
A vaccine adviser to the Food and Drug Administration is questioning whether young, healthy people should get new COVID-19 boosters, arguing those shots should be used for older individuals.
“I believe we should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later,” wrote Dr. Paul A. Offit, an FDA vaccine panel adviser and professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 11.
In his article, Offit cited two studies suggesting that bivalent boosters, which target the original COVID-19 strain and two Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA. 5, do not “elicit superior immune responses.”
“Why did the strategy for significantly increasing BA.4 and BA.5 neutralizing antibodies using a bivalent vaccine fail?” he asked. “The most likely explanation is imprinting. The immune systems of people immunized with the bivalent vaccine, all of whom had previously been vaccinated, were primed to respond to the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2. They therefore probably responded to epitopes shared by BA.4 and BA.5 and the ancestral strain, rather than to new epitopes on BA.4 and BA.5.”
Offit noted that based on those studies, “boosting with a bivalent vaccine is likely to have a similar effect as boosting with a monovalent vaccine” but stressed that “booster dosing is probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease.”
Another doctor appeared to agree with Offit’s conclusions regarding “imprinting.” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told U.S. News that “it may be that people’s immune systems are so primed to respond to the ancestral strain spike protein that a reformulated booster is unable to fully stimulate the immune system because it has been ‘imprinted’ by the original version of the virus.”
More Details
Data and studies have shown that older adults and people who have compromised immune systems are most at risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms, hospitalization, and death. Children, meanwhile, have long been shown to have the lowest chance of death, hospitalization, or developing severe symptoms since the pandemic started.
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and FDA said that everyone over the age of 6 months get updated boosters at least two months after their last doses of the vaccine. The bivalent boosters were authorized under emergency use for children aged 6 months to 4 years on Dec. 9.
This photo shows a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, Bivalent, at AltaMed Medical clinic in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 6, 2022. (Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, a small number of Americans have received the updated boosters, according to the CDC. As of Jan. 4, some 15 percent of individuals aged 5 and older received the bivalent shots, while about 38 percent of adults aged 65 and older have gotten them.
That same CDC data also shows that about 80.9 percent of all Americans received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine since they were rolled out two years ago, while 69 percent have completed their initial, “primary series.”
An FDA spokesperson Abigail Capobianco responded to Offit’s article this week, telling NBC News that Offit allegedly used “selective” data to reach his conclusions and that “we strongly believe that the totality of the available evidence continues to support the use of these vaccines in all age groups.”
“Dr. Offit is entitled to his opinion about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 bivalent vaccines used as boosters,” Capobianco also said.
Earlier this week, Offit told CNN that the CDC and FDA said they were not provided with real-world data on how well the bivalent booster performs at blocking transmission of the virus before those boosters were approved by the federal agencies. Data showed that about 1.9 percent of people who got the first booster were infected, compared with 3.2 percent who got the bivalent shot, CNN reported.
“I was angry to find out that there was data that was relevant to our decision that we didn’t get to see,” Offit told CNN. “Decisions that are made for the public have to be made based on all available information—not just some information, but all information.”
The FDA’s vaccine panel is scheduled to meet on Jan. 26 to determine future vaccination regimens to address COVID-19.
The Epoch Times has contacted Moderna and Pfizer for comment.
A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.
The lawsuit (pdf), filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Texas, targets The Washington Post, the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC), The Associated Press (AP), and Reuters—all of which are members of the “Trusted News Initiative (TNI),” a self-described “industry partnership” formed in 2020 among legacy media giants and big tech companies.
“By their own admission, members of the TNI have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics,” the complaint reads.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination policies, led the lawsuit. He is joined by Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Truth About Vaccines founders Ty and Charlene Bollinger, independent journalist Ben Swann, Health Nut News publisher Erin Elizabeth Finn, Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft, Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.
The plaintiffs, the lawsuit alleges, are among the many victims of the TNI’s “group boycott” tactic, defined as a coordinated effort to facilitate monopoly by cutting off the competitors’ access to supplies and necessities.
In this case, the TNI members are accused of engaging in group boycott—in concert with their big tech partners—against small, independent news publishers by denying them access to internet platforms they need to compete and even survive in the online news market.
“As a result of the TNI’s group boycott, [the plaintiffs] have been censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In,” the lawsuit states.
For example, the lawsuit claims, TNI members have been working with Big Tech to censor what they condemned as “misinformation,” such as reports that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection, and that vaccinated people may still transmit COVID to others.
This alleged effort to establish a dominant media narrative by shutting off nonestablishment outlets, according to the lawsuit, has violated both federal antitrust and freedom of speech laws.
“Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership,’” the lawsuit states. “It’s called a group boycott and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”
Tuesday’s lawsuit isn’t the first time Kennedy fought a legal battle with media groups over censorship on social media platforms. In August 2020, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a watchdog group he chairs, sued Facebook and its “fact-checkers” after Facebook censored CHD pages for promoting health concerns related to vaccines and 5G telecom technology. The lawsuit was dismissed in June 2021.
In August 2022, CHD’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram were shut down for supposedly violating policies regarding “misinformation that could lead to real-world harm.”
Following news that documents with classified markings were found in an office space President Joe Biden used between 2017 and 2019, Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho) said the Biden administration has enjoyed friendly relations with the media, government bureaucracies, and the U.S. intelligence community, and that instances of potential wrongdoing by Biden and his administration have been “swept under the rug.”
On Monday evening, special counsel to the president Richard Sauber revealed that documents with classified markings were discovered on Nov. 2, just days before the 2022 midterm election. Sauber said White House lawyers alerted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) immediately after their discovery, and NARA took possession of those documents the following morning. Sauber first publicly revealed the discovery of these classified documents at the Penn Biden Center on Jan. 9, more than two months after they were turned over to NARA.
“Enter Jim Jordan, enter James Comer, my colleagues who are going to be very involved with looking into things like that through the judiciary committee and through the Oversight Committee,” Fulcher said in a Tuesday interview with NTD News.
“These are things that have been, let’s face it, swept under the rug, okay?” Fulcher added. “There’s been a very friendly media, very friendly bureaucracies, the intelligence community has been very friendly to the existing administration. And so we don’t know what the details of these things are.”
Fulcher put questions about the documents found in Biden’s old office space alongside questions about the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and plans Republicans have previously announced to investigate Biden and his family members.
Fulcher said the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol breach was “very one-sided” but “now, for the first time, we will get another look at these situations.”
“What are in these documents? Was it appropriate? Was it not?” Fulcher asked. “Was there personal gain that came out of some of these things—Hunter Biden, the laptop, all of that? It’s been pushed aside.”
‘The Double Standard Is No Secret’
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and newly appointed House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) raised allegations of a political double standard in how Biden and former President Donald Trump were treated when documents with classified markings were found in either of their office spaces.
According to Sauber, White House attorneys who found the documents in the Penn Biden Center handed over those documents to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) immediately after their discovery. In August, amid disputes about what records Trump was allowed to retain from his presidency, FBI agents carried out a search on his Mar-a-Lago property and recovered documents with classified markings.
On Monday, McCarthy said “Dems overplayed their hand” in their response to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago and said the Biden administration was “trying to be political to President Trump.”
Comer said the classified documents cases involving Trump and Biden bring about “further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans vs. Democrats.”
As Fulcher discussed the issue of a potential political double standard, he said, “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”
“Once again, go back to the January 6 Commission,” Fulcher added. “It was very one-sided, they started with a verdict, said, ‘Okay, now we’re going to go substantiate our verdict.’”
“We know for a fact now, FBI knew about it before the election and constrained information about that,” Fulcher said of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Of course, there’s a double standard. We’ve felt that here on the Republican side media-wise, access to information-wise, restrictions on how we communicate, and censorship with some of our communications versus some of our colleagues on the Democrat side,” Fulcher continued. “The double standard is no secret, at least to me and to our colleagues on the Republican side.”
While Republicans have raised concerns about a double standard on Biden and Trump’s classified documents, Democrats have noted that Biden’s White House lawyers took “immediate” action to hand over the documents they found in Biden’s old office space.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that attorneys for Biden “appear to have taken immediate and proper action to notify the National Archives about their discovery of a small handful of classified documents so they could be returned to federal government custody. ”
“I have confidence that the Attorney General took the appropriate steps to ensure the careful review of the circumstances surrounding the possession and discovery of these documents and [will] make an impartial decision about any further action that may be needed,” Raskin added.
Classified documents from the Obama-Biden administration were found in a second location linked to President Joe Biden, a lawyer for the president said on Jan. 12.
After the discovery of materials with classified markings at the Penn Biden Center in Washington—Biden worked out of the center from 2017 to 2019—lawyers for the president searched Biden’s residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Richard Sauber, one of the lawyers, said in a statement released by the White House.
Those two homes in Delaware are “the other locations where files from his Vice Presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition,” or the transition of Biden from vice president to a private citizen, according to Sauber.
During the search, the lawyers discovered documents with classified markings in a storage space inside the garage at the Wilmington residence. Additionally, a document marked classified was found in an adjacent room.
No classified materials were found at the Rehoboth Beach home, according to Sauber.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was immediately notified and the lawyers arranged for the department to take possession of the documents, Sauber said.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The White House said it is cooperating with a “review” by the Department of Justice and that it was “coordinating closely” with DOJ officials when it searched Biden’s residences.
Biden, reading from a piece of paper in Washington, told reporters that the materials were found in a “locked garage” that also contains a Corvette. “People know I take classified documents and classified material seriously,” Biden said.
Reporters play frisbee outside Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., in 2008. (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)
Previous Discovery
The Biden administration had revealed on Jan. 9 that materials with classified markings were found at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, 2022. Sauber claimed that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was alerted that day and took possession of the documents the following morning and that Biden’s attorneys have since been working with the DOJ to make sure any records from the Obama-Biden administration “are appropriately in possession of the Archives.”
Biden administration officials have not explained why they waited months to disclose the finding to the public.
Biden said he was “surprised to learn” about the discovery.
“I don’t know what’s in the documents,” he added while in Mexico City this week.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that she was not going to “go beyond” what Biden and Sauber had shared on the matter. At one point, after being repeatedly pressed on the subject, she told a reporter that “we work very well together but we do not have to have this kind of confrontation.”
Former President Donald Trump is under investigation for possessing materials with classified markings at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after leaving office in 2021.
Documents from Trump’s time in office were transferred to NARA in 2022 but Trump still held others. FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and seized thousands of documents, including roughly 100 marked classified.
DOJ lawyers allege Trump may have violated multiple statutes, including the Espionage Act, by holding the documents.
Neither Trump nor Biden have been charged with a crime.
Trump has said he declassified the documents before leaving office. Presidents have declassification authority; vice presidents do not.
Biden had criticized Trump as “totally irresponsible” for the handling of the materials last year.
The FBI declined to comment on the discovery of classified materials from the Obama-Biden administration.
Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers remarks at the U.S. Justice Department Building in Washington, on Nov. 18, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Public Interest
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into Trump after the former president announced his 2024 presidential bid.
“I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said.
Republicans have urged Garland to appoint a special counsel to probe Biden.
“A special counsel is necessary to assure the public about the handling of classified documents by Donald Trump, you should apply a special counsel to the mishandling of classified documents by President Biden when he was vice president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Fox News.
Some called for raids on Biden-linked properties.
“How many more batches of classified documents need to be found before Biden gets raided by the FBI?” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) wondered after news of the discovery of the second batch of documents was reported.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters in Washington that Congress “has to investigate this.”
“I do not think any American believes that justice should not be equal to all,” he said. “And we found for this administration … whatever comes out, that they utilize, they try to falsify it, try to have different standards for their own beliefs—that doesn’t work in America.”
Democrats have generally downplayed the discovery of the documents.
“I have full faith and credit in President Biden,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader. “I believe that he’s doing everything to take the appropriate steps to determine what happened and how to move forward in a responsible fashion.”
A group of 43 national security experts published an open letter on Jan. 11 criticizing news organizations and scientific publications that dismissed the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic might have been the result of a lab leak.
The letter is addressed “To the editors, authors, and contributors to major scientific, medical, and journalistic publications worldwide.” The addressees include The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The New York Times, and TIME magazine.
The letter was coordinated by the Vandenberg Coalition, and included signatures from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, and analysts from the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and other security and foreign policy analysts.
“Leading scientific journals censored dissenting voices; many science writers at major news outlets promoted narratives or asserted conclusions unsubstantiated by evidence; reporters failed to make even cursory attempts at surfacing potential conflicts of interest of their sources,” the letter states.
“This served to hamper national and international policy discussions about how to mitigate against future pandemics of any origin—natural, accidental, or deliberate.”
The letter faults editors and reporters at news organizations and scientific publications for stifling debate on the origins of the virus.
The letter references a Fox News article about a May 2021 tweet by a New York Times reporter who said, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
The New York Times reporter deleted the tweet the same day she wrote it.
“Our security and prosperity depend on rigorous scientific debate, research, and scholarship, as well as an intrepid and independent news media,” the letter continues.
“The responsibility of scientists and journalists alike is to ask hard questions and seek truth. By prematurely dismissing or stigmatizing certain questions—from the very outset of the pandemic—many prominent scientists and journalists failed in their duty.”
The letter went on to list “notable failures” by the various news and scientific publications. A February 2020 statement by The Lancet “asserted without evidence that questioning the supposed natural origin of COVID-19 constituted ‘misinformation’ and a ‘conspiracy theory,” the letter states.
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, was listed as a co-author the February 2020 statement by The Lancet. EcoHealth Alliance worked directly with China’s Wuhan laboratories to research coronaviruses. The Lancet subsequently acknowledged questions if Daszak had a “competing interest” when he co-authored the 2020 statement.
The letter authors also noted that a report by Nature Medicine, which “became one of the most-cited academic journal articles in history” had “effectively stigmatized anyone who questioned whether the outbreak may have originated in a laboratory.”
The letter also said the New York Times provided “biased-coverage” of a pre-print publication “asserting ‘dispositive’ proof that the pandemic originated in a Wuhan wet market, without a careful follow-on story after that specific assertion failed to survive a peer-review process at Science magazine, and when other data called into question the premise of the research.”
The Lancet, Nature Medicine, the New York Times, and TIME magazine did not respond to requests for comment.
A report (pdf) released in October last year by the minority oversight staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions in October concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic “was most likely the result of a research-related incident” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is considering a move to ban Chinese entities from purchasing property in the state because of the economic and security risks posed by China’s communist regime.
“If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Jan. 10.
“And, you know, when they have interests that are opposed to ours, and you’ve seen how they’ve wielded their authority … it is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.”
The remarks follow warnings from security experts and lawmakers that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, is seeking to purchase strategic parcels of land throughout the United States from which it can conduct espionage or otherwise sabotage U.S. national security interests.
In recent years, Chinese land purchases in Texas and North Dakota, which both were situated near U.S. military bases, raised alarm among locals and policymakers in state and federal governments.
DeSantis said the CCP has “taken a much more Marxist–Leninist turn” under current Party leader Xi Jinping and suggested that communist China is now a “hostile nation.”
“We do not need to have CCP influence in Florida’s economy,” he said.
A sign opposing a corn mill in Grand Forks, N.D., stands near 370 acres recently annexed by the city for the project. Many residents don’t want the project in the city because the owner, Fufeng Group, has reputed ties to the Chinese Communist Party through its company chairman. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
China Spending Billions on US Land Every Year
Chinese investors purchased more than $6 billion in U.S. real estate between March 2021 and March 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors, making it the largest foreign buyer in terms of dollars spent.
Florida has been at the center of that purchasing binge, with 24 percent of all foreign property purchases in the nation occurring there. The state with the next highest amount of foreign purchases was California, which accounted for 11 percent.
DeSantis described the CCP’s influence in U.S. society as “very insidious” and, to that end, said that he’s not only concerned with the CCP seeking out farmland but that he also wanted to terminate its access to residential properties.
“Why would you want them buying residential developments and things like that?” he said. “I don’t want them owning subdivisions and things like that.”
While outrage over the issue has been widespread in recent months, there have been relatively few concrete actions taken to curb the buying of U.S. land by CCP-aligned organizations.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced legislation in November 2022 that would “prohibit the purchase of public or private agricultural land in the United States by foreign nationals associated with the Government of the People’s Republic of China.”
Likewise, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) introduced legislation to improve national security by “preventing foreign adversaries from taking any ownership or control of the United States agriculture industry.”
There may be some movement on the issue. The House voted this week to establish a select committee to investigate issues related to the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. That effort could also help to shed light on the risk posed by CCP front companies that seek to scoop up U.S. land.
Still, there’s the problem of identifying which companies are acting on behalf of the CCP, an issue that DeSantis said would need to be addressed to make any ban effective and fair.
“The issue is going to be, obviously, if someone comes in and buys, it’s not the CCP that’s signing that,” DeSantis said. “These are holding companies. … So you have to structure that in a way that will effectively police it.”
As more has been divulged about Joe Biden’s possession of classified information while he was vice president, other members of his current administration have been linked to the scandal.
The classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank that the president started in 2018.
As reported by Fox News, 10 members of Biden’s administration were formally employed at the think tank, including current Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The list also includes Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl and White House Counselor Steven Richetti.
Blinken and Richetti were managing directors at the think tank while Kahl was a consultant.
The organization had recently been accused of accepting large amounts of donor money from China, a revelation discovered by the National Legal and Policy Center, which filed a complaint with the Justice Department in October 2020.
The NLPC found that $22 million had been given to Penn Biden Center by anonymous donors with the money coming from China.
“The University of Pennsylvania has stonewalled all inquiries into the identities of the Chinese donors who made $22 million anonymous donations to the university,” NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty said in 2021.
All 10 of the linked administration figures reside in the State and Defense Departments and hold high-ranking positions.
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Spencer Boyer, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for NATO and Europe policy was a senior fellow at Penn Biden.
Deputy to the U.N. Ambassador Jeffrey Prescott was also a consultant and Ariana Berengaut, a national security advisor, served as a center director.
To round out the list: U.S. representative to the Organization of Security and Cooperation Europe Michael Carpenter, special assistant Juan Gonzalez, speechwriter Carlyn Reichel, and former deputy secretary of state Brian McKeon.
According to the New York Post, longtime University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann and the former head of the school’s Board of Trustees, David Cohen, were also connected to the think tank, both attending Penn Biden’s opening ceremony.
Gutmann has since become U.S. Ambassador to Germany while Cohen was tapped for the Canada ambassadorship.
The documents found at the Penn Biden Center were dated between 2013 and 2016, with some labeled as top secret.
The contents of these docs cover many important events during the President Barack Obama years, including the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, and the Russian annexation of Crimea, as reported by the Post.
The perhaps most interesting thing the documents cover is the early involvement of Hunter Biden with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was appointed to the board in 2014 despite having no energy background.
Biden’s lawyers have since cooperated with the National Archives to hand over the documents for safekeeping.
“The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives,” White House counsel Richard Sauber said, according to Fox News.
“Since that discovery, the president’s attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”
When asked about the secret documents in his possession, Biden said, ”I don’t know what’s in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. I’ve turned over the boxes, they’ve turned over the boxes to the Archives, and we’re cooperating fully, cooperating fully with the review, which I hope will be finished soon and there’ll be more detail at that time.”
CORRECTION, Jan. 12, 2023:Amy Gutmann is a former president of the University of Pennsylvania. An earlier version of this article named a different university.
As Fox News commentator Greg Gutfeld continues to cement his place as the king of late-night TV, it appears that NBC executives are having a bit of buyer’s remorse after handing Jimmy Fallon an $80 million contract extension.
According to RadarOnline, NBC is getting just a little heartburn as Fallon’s ratings are eclipsed by a mere cable TV host’s ratings after they handed Fallon a fat contract.
NBC generously bestowed a contract extension on Fallon about 19 months ago. Unfortunately for the legacy TV network, Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” is only pulling in about 1.3 million viewers, about half of what Gutfeld is earning on Fox News Network.
Meanwhile, Fox’s “Gutfeld!” had an average total audience of 2.355 million viewers in August 2022, according to Forbes. Granted, Fox itself is still a ratings king. But Gutfeld is one of the network’s stars.
For his part, Fallon has been earning fewer and fewer viewers as the years roll on. RadarOnline noted that Fallon debuted with 11 million viewers when he first took over the show back in 2014. But this year he isn’t even finding as many viewers as CBS’ Stephen Colbert.
One insider even said that network executives are eyeing a way to shed Fallon.
“There have already been shake-ups in the production staff, and even with Jimmy’s contract, he isn’t immune. NBC would buy him out if they believe they can find another host who can deliver more viewers,” the source told RadarOnline.
Indeed, in August 2022, Gutfeld made history as the very first cable network star to win the late-night ratings war for an entire month running as he bested every rival.
Along with rival Colbert, Fallon is also looking to a new challenge with Comedy Central’s announcement that it intends to try fill-ins for its “The Daily Show” in the wake of the signing off by previous host Trevor Noah.
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Comedy Central has announced that Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Jones, Wanda Sykes, and D.L. Hughley will each get a chance to host the late-night show to see if any of them can earn some eyeballs.
Still, many have noticed that, Gutfeld aside, all the late-night shows are hemorrhaging viewers.
It may not be too surprising that Fallon is losing the ratings game. Especially when looking at some of the “comedy” he has been doling out to viewers of late.
Even Elon Musk took a shot at Fallon after a false rumor that “The Tonight Show” host had died hit Twitter. When Fallon asked Musk to “fix” the rumors of his death, Musk joked, “Fix what?”
Then there are the important demos. Gutfeld’s show is also leading in adults 25-54, one of the most important demographic groups for advertisers.
One reason for his success is that he is not following the pack down well-trod paths. Gutfeld said his show is different by design.
“People have had it with being told that every institution in your life is somehow oppressor vs. oppressed. The thing we did was we said we’re no different than you are. We’re looking at this stuff with a jaundiced eye. We get it. We’re on your side. So, I think it’s a combination of we’re entertainment, and we’re not homework,” he told Forbes.
Gutfeld said his show crosses boundaries because he has little regard for the old ideas.
The Fox comedian is so right, too. People really are sick and tired of the biased, left-wing hacks pretending to be late-night comedians. Their shows are not funny or inventive. And Gutfeld’s audience is soaring as a result.
In addition to leading a federal tax probe into Hunter Biden, Maryland-based U.S. Attorney David Weiss has been asked by a watchdog group to look into several eyebrow-raising anonymous China-originated donations to the University of Pennsylvania.
According to the New York Post, the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a government watchdog outfit, wants to know about several donations made in 2018, which is when the prestigious university opened a Biden-centric think tank called the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, or Penn Biden Center for short.
The watchdog group filed a 12-page complaint in October 2020, in which it asked Weiss to “investigate the Truman National Security Project, the University of Pennsylvania and its Penn Biden Center to determine whether they violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act for engaging in political activities on behalf of Burisma and Chinese interests.”
“We’ve asked … Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine,” NLPC Tom Anderson said, according to the Post.
The NLPC believes the donations to UPenn “may have been earmarked to promote Chinese interests and thus trigger registration as foreign agent,” according to its news release.
News of the watchdog’s request has become highly relevant once again as President Joe Biden faces increasing scrutiny over a batch of classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center.
The sheer volume of communist Chinese cash donated to the home of the Penn Biden Center is astronomical.
From 2014 through the summer of 2019, the Ivy League school collected a whopping $54.6 million in donations from China. Some $23.1 million of that total came from anonymous donations, which poured in beginning in 2016.
Notably, a sizeable chunk of the anonymous Chinese donations came after the university announced the formation of the Penn Biden Center in 2017. Biden, who had just finished his White House term with former President Barack Obama, was named the leader of the UPenn-based think tank.
Perhaps the most fascinating tidbit from the report is that the anonymous Chinese donors seemed especially interested in transferring large donations in 2018, which happened to be the same time the Penn Biden Center officially opened its doors. That year, a $14.5 million anonymous donation was received, with a total of $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese donations received.
While it can’t be confirmed that the Penn Biden Center was the direct recipient of any of the funds, anonymous or identified, the timing has many interested parties extremely curious.
It should be noted that many of the Chinese donations were received during a time when Hunter Biden was wheeling and dealing across the globe, with what seemed to be a particular interest in making deals with communist China, likely using his powerful, politically-connected father to seal those shady transactions.
“U.S. Attorney Weiss should pursue the larger Biden family influence-selling operation without any political pressure from the Merrick Garland Justice Department,” said NLPC’s counsel Paul Kamenar, who drafted the original complaint.
Stephen MacCarthy, a University of Pennsylvania spokesman, denied that the Penn Biden Center ever received donated funds, the Post reported.
“The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center,” McCarthy said.
While he remained firm in his denials, the Post noted that McCarthy wouldn’t detail how the Chinese donations were used at the university.
Some on social media have raised questions regarding the recent discovery of classified documents in a closet at the Penn Biden Center, wondering if those classified documents might have been placed there for more ominous reasons.
“Were the Biden classified docs found at Penn U guarded 24/7, who had access? Why did Penn receive 54 million from Chinese donors and did they have access to the docs? Biden was VP and had NO declassification authority, TRUMP DID. Who’s the criminal? #BidenClassifiedDocuments,” one Twitter user wrote.
Were the Biden classified docs found at Penn U guarded 24/7, who had access? Why did Penn receive 54 million from Chinese donors and did they have access to the docs? Biden was VP and had NO declassification authority, TRUMP DID.
While it’s probably a little too early to travel too far down that road, there are clearly a growing number of questions that need answers. The American public has a right to know.
Crypto exchange FTX has more than $5 billion in cash and liquid cryptocurrencies and securities, an attorney for the beleaguered company confirmed on Wednesday.
The Sam Bankman-Fried-founded company filed for bankruptcy in November and U.S. prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of orchestrating fraudulent activity that may have cost investors, customers, and lenders billions of dollars. Attorneys and advisers overseeing the bankrupt company are now trying to recover funds to repay creditors.
“We have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency, and liquid investment securities measured at petition date value. Our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token,” Andy Dietderich, an attorney for FTX, told a Delaware judge.
Dietderich also said that the company plans to sell non-strategic investments that had a book value of $4.6 billion, although the company’s books have been described as unreliable.
The $5 billion recovery is in connection to “any value to holdings of dozens of illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, where our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token,” FTX attorney Adam Landis told the court Wednesday, reported CNBC.
The total that FTX owes to its creditors following its collapse and subsequent bankruptcy is not clear. In bankruptcy filings two months ago, the company’s management said that between $1 billion and $10 billion could be owed.
Weeks after the firm declared bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried was charged by U.S. prosecutors with allegedly masterminding a scheme to defraud customers and for allegedly making illegal political contributions. Reports say that the company overwhelmingly favored Democrat candidates and causes over Republican ones amid calls for some candidates to return those donations.
This month, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty on all criminal charges related to the fallout of the exchange. Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York previously formed an FTX taskforce to “trace and recover” missing customer funds and handle investigations in connection to the collapse.
Barbara Fried, the mother of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrives for his arraignment and bail hearings at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City, on Dec. 22, 2022. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
Bankman-Fried, a crypto mogul also known as SBF, is accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to support his Alameda Research hedge fund, buy real estate, and issue millions of dollars in aforementioned political donations. He could face as long as 115 years in prison if convicted on all the charges, prosecutors have said.
In December, he was extradited from the Bahamas, where his company was based, after reportedly spending several days in a notorious Bahamian jail. During a later hearing, he was released to his parent’s home in Palo Alto, California, on a $250 million bond.
Lawyers for Bankman-Fried have said his parents, who co-signed the bond, have been receiving physical threats since FTX’s collapse, and that other co-signers might face similar harassment unless their names were kept secret. On Tuesday, the judge also imposed a new bail condition, saying Bankman-Fried cannot access FTX or Alameda assets.
The prosecution’s case against Bankman-Fried was strengthened weeks ago after two of his former associates, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to cooperate. Ellison had served as the head of Alameda while Wang was FTX’s chief technology officer before the two companies collapsed.
Just days before he was charged, the FTX founder struck an apparently somber tone during a Wall Street Journal interview, saying that he could not account for billions in lost funds. He also wasn’t sure whether he violated FTX’s terms.
“I don’t know of a violation of the terms of use,” Bankman-Fried conceded in December’s interview. “I don’t know every line of the terms of use. I can’t confidently say there wasn’t, but I don’t know of one.”
“I ask myself a lot how I made a series of mistakes that seem—they don’t just seem dumb,” said Bankman-Fried, who gave an interview to the paper from his former home in the Bahamas. “They seem like the type of mistakes I could see myself having ridiculed someone else for having made.”
Environmental, social, and governance goals on energy, race, and more reinforce Biden admin priorities–but movement may be losing ground
Charlie Masters, a farmer in Kentucky, has watched the prices rise.
Diesel fuel and nitrogen fertilizer, two of the most critical ingredients for running his Fleming County beef and produce operation, are still costlier than just two years ago. That’s partly due to recent fluctuations in the prices of oil and natural gas.
What’s behind those trends?
“I’m sure there are other market forces at work—we can all blame Putin or somebody—but I put a lot of the blame on ESG,” Masters told The Epoch Times in a Dec. 8, 2022, interview.
Kentucky farmer Charlie Masters with his cows. (Courtesy of Charlie Masters.)
ESG stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance, an investing approach that has picked up steam in the past few years.
Its defenders argue that ESG criteria help investors respond to risks and opportunities that traditional financial metrics ignore—for example, long-term challenges with drought, fire, and flooding that many scientists link to greenhouse gas emissions.
Top asset managers such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street have taken the lead on ESG, alongside many of the country’s biggest banks.
Yet critics worry ESG distorts the market by politicizing financial decisions. The problem, they say, was most acute over the past two years, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress as well as the presidency.
“It was particularly egregious in the first few months of the Biden administration, when there was a clear market signal, and a message sent by the administration, that they were doing everything they could to discourage any long-term investment in oil and gas,” Tim Stewart, president of the fossil fuel industry group U.S. Oil and Gas Association, said in a Jan. 5 interview with The Epoch Times.
ESG skeptics argue that the paradigm has made it significantly harder for coal, oil, and natural gas companies to finance new mining and drilling.
The sun sets behind a crude oil pump jack on a drill pad in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, on Nov. 24, 2019. (Angus Mordant/Reuters)
Jackie Haney, CEO and managing partner of the energy-focused private equity firm UnionRock, is one of many in her industry who have had to adjust to shifting views from big investors.
She had to deliver many more presentations to finance UnionRock’s second private equity fund than she did while raising capital for its inaugural fund.
In a Jan. 5 interview with The Epoch Times, she said she thinks multiple factors made investors more wary during her second effort at fundraising, including relatively poor results from similar upstream and midstream investments in the past.
The only divestment she could directly trace to ESG came from university endowments, many of whose boards have recently voted to stop funding fossil fuel companies.
Yet, in recent months, prospects have brightened.
Haney predicts that her next fundraising round won’t require nearly as many presentations as her second effort did–and even as energy prices slide, she doesn’t think production will come to a screeching halt.
“Even though there is some sentiment that commodity prices may soften this year, the general consensus is that producers will still be able to operate out of free cash flow and [that] returns in public and private equities will still be robust and ripe for investment within the sector,” she said.
Beyond the ‘E’ in ESG
Following the ascent of ESG in the private sector and ESG-like policies from the federal government, Republican officials from states across the country have struck back. They’ve worked together to defend an industry long aligned with their party.
Yet, according to those politicians, ESG threatens much more than the prosperity of fossil fuel-producing states.
To some, ESG makes visible a larger effort to yoke together the public and private sectors. On that view, the movement serves radical goals–ones it can’t achieve through the democratic process alone.
“This isn’t your typical revolutionary activity,” West Virginia state Treasurer Riley Moore said in a Dec. 2, 2022, interview with The Epoch Times.
“This is taking place in boardrooms and drab government office buildings, and behind closed doors with some of the most influential people on the face of the planet,” he said.
“This is very, very top down, rather than some type of grassroots movement.”
“The ‘S’ is sort of the Brave New World next step in ESG,” Kentucky state Treasurer Allison Ball said in a Nov. 29, 2022, interview with The Epoch Times.
“It’s taking investment and making it ideological.”
In line with that phenomenon, ESG’s “social” side has encompassed the push for “racial equity audits” of large companies, often from ESG-oriented asset management firms that use shareholder proposals to advance political aims.
That enthusiasm can be traced back to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, when a socially acceptable, borderline socially compulsory form of racial advocacy quickly gained momentum. As protests, riots, and violent crime rocked the country, American corporations pledged billions of dollars to causes they expected would burnish their image.
Demonstrators walk in front of a police car that has been set on fire in Boston on May 31, 2020, during a protest in response to the death of George Floyd. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
Many influential companies, including McDonald’s and Microsoft, have already carried out racial equity audits, often administered by third-party companies.
In 2022, an ESG fund launched by the firm Trillium Asset Management proposed a third-party racial equity audit of the insurance company Travelers–one of many U.S. companies that donated to race-based organizations after Floyd’s death.
“To combat systemic racism, corporations should recognize and remedy industry–and company-specific barriers to everyone’s full inclusion in societal and economic participation,” the shareholder proposal read. It argued that Travelers’ non-white policyholders could be treated differently than its white customers.
In their recommendation against the proposal, Travelers’ Board of Directors claimed Trillium’s plan would “[conflict] with the Company’s longstanding practice not to take race into account in its underwriting and pricing decisions.”
The proposal narrowly failed, winning 47 percent of shareholders’ votes.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, one of many state-level Republicans fighting ESG, told The Epoch Times he thinks the failed shareholder resolution violated the laws of numerous states.
“As a person of color, I know that there’s discrimination out there. I’ve experienced it–in some cases, significantly. Is there inequality in different sectors? I do believe that’s true. But there are other ways to address that than to force an insurance company to start breaking the law,” he said in a Dec. 21, 2022, interview.
Trillium, for its part, has pointed out that the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) couldn’t conclude that Trillium’s racial equity audit proposal to Travelers would violate state law.
That same agency delivered a significant victory for the “governance” side of ESG in August 2021 when it approved NASDAQ’s board diversity and disclosure rules.
A flag flies in front of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission building in Washington, in this file photo. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Because of the decision, NASDAQ is poised to require most companies it lists to “have or explain why they do not have a minimum of two diverse board members.” At least one of those “diverse” members must self-identify as female. In addition, at least one must self-identify as either LGBT or an underrepresented minority.
“‘Diverse’ means an individual who self-identifies in one or more of the following categories: Female, Underrepresented Minority, or LGBTQ+. ‘Female’ means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth,” NASDAQ’s rules state.
By NASDAQ’s definition, then, heterosexual white men who don’t see themselves as transgender cannot be “diverse.”
That SEC decision has been challenged in court by Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment. Reuters expects the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to deliver an important ruling on the case this year.
Fiduciary Duty in Coal Country
In Kentucky, the state treasurer has lent her voice to the chorus of state-level officials speaking out against ESG.
During her interview with The Epoch Times, Ball reflected on her deep roots in her state’s rugged eastern half.
“I’m ninth generation from the mountains, the Hatfield-McCoy area. I’ve got generations of relatives who’ve been coal miners,” she said.
“So my radar really shows up when those industries–the coal, oil, and gas industries–are being harmed or targeted.”
Kentucky state Treasurer Allison Ball in front of the Kentucky state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., on Dec. 14, 2022. (Joy Spencer for The Epoch Times)
Like other state-level Republicans from across the country, she has sought to use her control over public pension money as leverage against ESG activism.
On Jan. 3, Ball released a list of financial institutions accused of boycotting energy firms. That’s in line with the requirements of a new state law, similar to statutes passed elsewhere in the United States.
If the companies don’t change their policies within three months of the list’s publication, state governmental entities will, in most cases, have to divest from them. Some carve-outs remain, including for governmental entities that have “suffered or will suffer a material financial loss” by dint of divestment.
State treasurers typically have a straightforward fiduciary duty concerning the funds they oversee: They must serve the interests of those funds’ beneficiaries.
Utah state Treasurer Marlo Oaks told The Epoch Times on Nov. 14, 2022, that ESG may undercut that legally binding obligation.
“To the extent that investment managers have adopted a political agenda—or an agenda that is elevated to the same level as the fiduciary obligation that we have—we then have a dual mandate at play and we cannot entertain that dual mandate legally,” he said.
Reyes likened asset managers’ fiduciary responsibilities to the prime directive from Star Trek.
“That is kind of sacrosanct, right? It’s almost this sacred duty,” he said.
Reyes fears the spread of ESG and similar activist philosophies “deconstructs the whole idea of a fiduciary.”
“How can an average American feel comfortable and good?” he asked.
There’s an additional wrinkle to fiduciary duty in the Bluegrass State.
“In Kentucky, we have another obligation, and that’s to promote the industry and economy of Kentucky,” Ball said.
Indeed, KRS 61.650 directs the board for the Kentucky Employees Retirement System or its State Police Retirement System to “give priority to the investment of funds in obligation calculated to improve the industrial development and enhance the economic welfare of the Commonwealth [of Kentucky].”
“That definitely means an eye toward signature industries like coal and oil and gas,” Ball said.
In a 2022 opinion requested by Ball, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron found that ESG practices among investment managers conflict with those firms’ fiduciary duties when handling the state’s public pension money.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron speaks to reporters in Washington on Oct. 12, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“It brought some clarity hearing that from the attorney general,” Ball said.
Obama-Era Memories Fuel ESG Skepticism
Opponents of coal, oil, and natural gas, who often count themselves among the champions of ESG, have a different narrative regarding the futures of Kentucky and similar states.
Those energy sources, they contend, are so environmentally damaging that they must be rapidly replaced as part of an energy transition to solar, wind, and other alternatives.
On that interpretation, the economic role of fossil fuel production in Kentucky and its neighbors could be supplanted by something like hydrogen.
Indeed, both of West Virginia’s senators supported a proposed “Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub” in a September 2022 statement from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)
An initial 2021 report from the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization recommended heavy federal spending in Appalachia and other regions traditionally reliant on coal mining, “given the expected near-term declines in coal production and generation from coal power plants.”
Ball doesn’t believe that a turn away from coal and other fossil fuels would serve the interests of her state.
“Right now, there really isn’t an alternative,” she said, noting recent increases in food and energy costs.
West Virginia’s Moore has a similar point of view about the coal industry in his state.
In his Dec. 2, 2022, interview, Moore said his state had suffered through a “War on Coal” during the Obama administration, because of actions by administrative agencies under the executive branch.
Thousands of West Virginians lost high-paying coal mining jobs during those years.
“Total coal production in West Virginia peaked in 2008 at nearly 158 million short tons then declined to around 80 million short tons in 2016, a nearly 50 percent decline,” West Virginia University researchers wrote in 2018.
Steam rises from a pile of coal at a mine in Bishop, W. Va., on May 19, 2018. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“We took a major, major hit there,” Moore said.
He argued that the promise of abundant new green energy jobs in West Virginia during that period ultimately went unfulfilled.
Moore, like Ball, has taken a leading role in Republican state officials’ response to ESG.
In 2022, he issued his own list of financial institutions allegedly boycotting energy companies.
Both West Virginia’s Moore and Utah’s Oaks drew attention to what they see as a particularly insidious dimension of ESG–namely, its potential future impact on a state’s ability to secure credit.
In April 2022, Oaks and other Utah officials wrote a letter to S&P Global Ratings, objecting to its inclusion of “ESG credit factors” alongside conventional credit ratings for states and other political entities. Utah scored relatively poorly on ESG, notwithstanding its AAA credit rating.
The letter voiced concern that adding ESG factors could “unfairly and adversely affect Utah’s credit rating and the market for Utah’s bonds, especially where the alleged indicators are not indicative of Utah’s ability to repay debt.”
“Utah has a pristine credit rating,” AG Reyes told The Epoch Times in his Dec. 21, 2022, interview.
“All of a sudden, if you throw in ESG standards, which don’t affect the traditional metrics, it could drastically alter the state’s ability to bond–to be able to work on projects and issues critical to the citizens of the state.”
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes speaks at a news conference in Salt Lake City, on Oct. 9, 2019. (Jeremy Harmon/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)
In response to that letter, S&P Global Ratings’ Eden Perry wrote that the firm’s ESG factors “simply provide additional transparency on those ESG credit factors that are already incorporated into our credit rating analysis.”
“We’re likely going to face a downgrade in our bond rating, because of an ESG score that has nothing to do with the finances in the State of West Virginia whatsoever,” Moore said.
“And so, now it’s going to cost us more money to build roads, hospitals, schools, all of these public projects that are so important to our people, because of a ridiculous score that’s made up.”
Moore, who recently announced his 2024 run for Congress, is the grandson of the late West Virginia Gov. Arch Moore, and the nephew of Sen. Moore Capito.
Those in the oil and gas industry are among Moore Capito’s top donors according to Open Secrets. However, people in that sector donated less than people working in securities and investment, leadership political action committees, and retired individuals.
Farmer Masters, for his part, doesn’t have any family connection to the coal industry. Like Ball and Moore, though, he does have a multigenerational link to the place he calls home.
His parents acquired the land he currently works during the 1950s–”when I was just a tyke,” he said.
Ball and Masters sounded similar when describing the threat to agriculture posed by ESG. The cost of food has a lot to do with the cost of fertilizer. That, in turn, has a lot to do with the natural gas market.
(Courtesy of Polyface Farm)
“The big story that I hear, that I hear repeatedly, is the cost of fertilizers, and the way that’s impacting corn, wheat, and even the cost of eggs. A lot of things are produced by farms,” Ball said.
“Nitrogen fertilizer is essential,” Masters said.
ESG Enthusiasm Now Cooling
Some financial giants have backpedaled from ESG and similar policies in recent months.
In early December 2022, for example, Vanguard left the United Nations-affiliated Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) Initiative.
“This HUGE WIN demonstrates that we are turning the tide against the woke radicals who are trying to impose their social & environmental agenda on our economy through coercive means!” Moore wrote on Twitter in response to the move.
Stewart, of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, thinks conditions in the global economy have forced Wall Street to reckon with the downside of aggressive ESG commitments.
“There’s nothing quite like a 30 percent drop in a NASDAQ investment portfolio, and having energy, particularly fossil fuel, being the only bright star in your entire investment portfolio for ’22 to make people go, ‘You know what, maybe this is not such a good idea. Maybe we ought to have a little more exposure to oil and gas because apparently, they’re doing something right,’” he said.
Ball put it succinctly: “I think the market works. I think there’s a demand for energy, and that’s one reason why energy is doing well.”
“We’re seeing more and more investors coming to the realization that there shouldn’t be a binary approach to energy transition and that investment in hydrocarbons will continue to be viable for their portfolios,” said UnionRock’s Haney.
The tanker Maria Energy, right, loaded with liquefied natural gas, lies at the floating terminal, along with the special ship Hoegh Esperanza, in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on Jan. 3, 2023. (Sina Schuldt/dpa via AP)
From his Fleming County farm, Masters was heartened to learn of Vanguard’s departure from the U.N. alliance.
“Maybe people are becoming more aware [of ESG] and the folks like Vanguard are having to react to pressure.”
‘The Biden family peddled influence and access around the world for profit, often at the expense of our nation’s interests,’ said Rep. James Comer
House Republicans are pressing the Biden administration to hand over bank records related to the Biden family and their business cronies.
Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, in a letter Tuesday asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to provide Suspicious Activity Reports related to Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden, his aunt Sara Biden, and several of their former business partners. The Bidens’ banks have submitted more than 150 Suspicious Activity Reports, which flag bank transactions that might signal criminal activity such as tax evasion or money laundering, related to the family’s business activity over the years.
The documents are likely to shed light on Biden’s business in China, Ukraine, Russia, and other foreign nations. Republicans have questioned to what extent President Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business arrangements. While the White House has denied Biden was involved, a former Hunter Biden business partner has said that he met with the Biden family in 2017 to discuss a multimillion-dollar business deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop also discuss an investment stake for “the Big Guy.” Hunter Biden’s business partners have said the email is a reference to Joe Biden.
“For years, the Biden family peddled influence and access around the world for profit, often at the expense of our nation’s interests,” Comer said. “The American people must know the extent of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s shady business deals and if these deals threaten national security and his decision-making as president.”
The Republican onslaught comes as the Justice Department is investigating Hunter Biden over his taxes and foreign business dealings.
Oversight Committee Republicans in November said the president’s links to his son’s businesses left him “open to influence, blackmail, or extortion by malign or foreign entities such as the CCP.” The House investigation is likely to focus on Hunter Biden’s work with CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate with ties to Chinese intelligence. The company paid Hunter Biden at least $6 million in 2017 to procure energy investment deals in the United States.
The Biden administration has so far refused congressional requests for nearly all of the Suspicious Activity Reports filed against Hunter, according to Comer. The congressman detailed two of the reports at a press conference last year. One related to Hunter Biden’s payments to an escort service. The other flagged nearly 100 wire transfers between February 2014 and August 2019 totaling $2,461,962 involving Biden’s activities in China.
Comer sent a flurry of other inquiries related to the Bidens this week. On Monday, he asked the National Archives and White House attorneys for details about a batch of classified documents found at Joe Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank the president launched in 2017. The documents contain classified information related to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom, according to CNN.
Comer is also seeking testimony from three former Twitter executives involved in the company’s decision to censor a news article before the 2020 presidential election about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Comer is asking the former executives, Yoel Roth, James Baker, and Vijaya Gadde, to testify on Feb. 16.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Cobwebs’ accumulated in apartment Democrat lied about living in, police say
A Democratic state lawmaker in Colorado resigned Sunday, weeks after facing felony charges alleging she falsified her residency to run in her district again following last year’s redistricting.
Prosecutors say Tracey Bernett, who represented part of Boulder County in the Colorado House of Representatives, lied in sworn documents when she said she lived in an apartment within the new boundaries of her district. The apartment allegedly went unused, accumulating “cobwebs,” according to police, while Bernett continued living in her old home outside the new district boundaries, CPR News reported.
Bernett faces three felony charges and two misdemeanors in the alleged scheme, counts that could land her years in prison if convicted. Those charges were levied days before the election in November, when many early votes had already been cast, and Bernett cruised to victory against her Republican opponent.
The Democrat did not admit guilt in announcing her resignation, with her lawyers saying she is giving up her seat “while addressing these charges rather than compromising the policy initiatives she deems important to those living in House District 12 and the citizens of Colorado.”
Colorado Republicans slammed Bernett for “undermin[ing] democracy” when she was confronted with the charges in November.
“Bernett disenfranchised Colorado voters by lying about where she voted and where she lives and, in effect, undermined our democracy,” Kristi Burton Brown, state chairwoman of the Republican Party, said.
Energy Department said funding would ‘ensure our clean energy future is American-made’
The Biden Energy Department announced in October that a $50 million grant to a lithium battery company would “ensure our clean energy future is American-made.” But the company sources its battery materials in China, highlighting the difficulty the administration faces in ushering in any sort of green energy transition without boosting America’s top geopolitical foe.
The Energy Department’s lucrative award went to Amprius Technologies, a California-based company that has leaned on Chinese manufacturing. The company built a battery factory in the Chinese city of Wuxi in 2014 after striking a $40 million joint venture with the city’s public investment arm, a move that Amprius CEO Kang Sun said at the time would help the company cut costs. Amprius also uses a spin-off company in Nanjing to produce its battery materials, while acknowledging in corporate filings that U.S. sanctions could one day threaten its ability to import those materials.
Amprius’s dependence on China reflects the broader challenges facing the Biden administration as it attempts to spur growth in the Chinese-dominated green energy industry. President Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, for example, offers tax credits to electric vehicles made in North America. But starting next year, vehicles that are made with Chinese battery materials won’t qualify for the credits, and American car manufacturers say they can’t meet the deadline. Ford, for example, plans to use Chinese batteries for its electric Mustang and F-150—models Biden himself has showcased—and the company and others are fighting the rule change.
If the Biden administration applied such a rule to Amprius, the company would also struggle to comply with it. That’s because Amprius, according to a December SEC filing, has purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in “raw materials and development materials” from its two Chinese spin-off companies, Amprius Wuxi and Amprius Nanjing, purchases the company acknowledges “may continue” going forward. Removing China from that supply chain won’t be easy: In its December filing, Amprius says such an effort “may not yield immediate results or may be ineffective” and could force the company to increase prices.
An Energy Department spokeswoman said the Amprius grant will help “build a clean energy supply chain here at home” and “increase our national and energy security.” Amprius did not return answers to detailed questions on its foreign business dealings and instead pointed the Washington Free Beacon to its corporate announcements webpage.
Biden has long pledged to usher in a “clean energy revolution,” a priority he is now putting hundreds of billions of dollars behind through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. That money, Biden says, is supposed to create a “clean energy economy” full of “good-paying, union jobs” that help the United States ease China’s iron grip on the green energy supply chain. Instead, in many cases, the Biden administration has used the money to reward companies with deep ties to Beijing.
Three months ago, for example, Biden’s Energy Department awarded $200 million to another lithium battery company, Microvast Holdings, which the department called a “majority U.S.-owned company … headquartered in Stafford, Texas.” But Microvast, the Free Beaconreported in December, operates primarily from China, and in April, SEC regulators added the company to a list of foreign entities that fail to comply with U.S. auditing requirements.
Such grants have infuriated Republican lawmakers. Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) has argued that Biden has misused federal funds, telling Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a December letter that “the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was ostensibly intended to develop robust domestic manufacturing bases and supply chains free from the predations of the [People’s Republic of China]” and that “DOE’s actions directly undermine the United States’ position in its race against China for technological supremacy.”
House Republicans have shared Barrasso’s concerns and are expected to use their newly obtained subpoena power to probe Biden’s green energy grants, investigations that could provide a window into the administration’s assessment of foreign investment risks—or lack thereof—when determining recipients.
Beyond its spin-off companies in Wuxi and Nanjing, Amprius’s website lists Beijing-based investment firm IPV Capital as an investor. The firm’s managing partner, Tingru Liu, previously served as director of the Economic Policy Department within China’s Ministry of Information Industry, a government regulatory agency. Following that role, Liu served as a department head at China’s largest sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, which manages some of the communist nation’s foreign exchange reserves.
Amprius’s CEO, Sun, is also no stranger to China’s green energy industry. Sun serves on the boards of both Amprius Wuxi and Amprius Nanjing, and prior to joining Amprius, he led Shanghai-based solar company JA Solar. Researchers at Britain’s Sheffield Hallam University later accused the company of using forced labor through China’s concentration camps in Xinjiang.
Amprius also received millions of dollars in grants under the Obama administration, which like the Biden administration invested billions of dollars in the green energy industry in an attempt to accelerate the industry’s viability. Some of the Obama administration’s top loan and grant recipients, including electric car manufacturer Fisker Automotive and lithium battery startup A123 Systems, went bankrupt and sold to China, a fate Biden will now hope to avoid.
Iran’s navy is set to station warships for the first time in the Panama Canal, a critical trade route in America’s backyard that has never before seen an Iranian military presence.
Rear Admiral Shahram Irani, the commander of Iran’s navy, said on Wednesday that his forces will establish a presence in the Panama Canal later this year, marking the first time Iran’s military has entered the Pacific Ocean.
Iran in recent years has placed a greater focus on moving its military into Latin American territories as it strengthens relations with anti-American dictators in the region, most notably in Venezuela. Iranian vessels have docked more frequently in Venezuela as Tehran’s hardline regime seeks to prop up dictator Nicolás Maduro. These moves are meant to provoke the United States and signal that Tehran has the ability to station its military apparatus a stone’s throw from U.S. territory.
Joseph Humire, a national security analyst who focuses on Latin American issues as executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society think tank, said Iran has been laying the groundwork for this type of voyage by holding joint exercises with allies such as Russia and China, two nations that have also been strengthening their ties with Latin American countries.
“This is what Iran has been building in Latin America for the past 30 or 40 years” by establishing embassies and bilateral agreements with a host of nations, Humire said.
Iran’s goal “has always been to have a military presence in Latin America, so it’s not surprising at all for its navy to announce it’s going to make moves on the Panama Canal,” Humire said, noting that in addition to Venezuela and Nicaragua, Iran has opened relations with Colombia.
“This is a tremendous escalation if it is to happen,” Humire said. “Many people may discount Iran in terms of its capabilities … but I would not discount it because they have been building to this for a very long time.”
Iranian rear admiral Irani said the navy presence in the Panama Canal is meant to “strengthen our maritime presence in international waters,” according to comments published by Iran’s state-controlled media.
“Today we can say that there is no scientific barrier to grow in that field,” Irani said, adding that the Iranian naval forces are sailing in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
It is likely Iran sees its presence in Latin America as a means to bolster and protect its interests in countries like Venezuela, where Iran has been helping Maduro repair his country’s dilapidated oil refineries. The two rogue regimes signed a 20-year cooperation plan in June 2022, when hardline Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi was in the country for meetings with Maduro.
Latin American dictatorships have also served as a hub for Iran to evade U.S. sanctions and make arms deals.
Hezbollah, the Iranian-controlled terror group, also has a presence in Latin America that has been gaining ground for years. Hezbollah militants are known to travel freely in Venezuela and across the relatively lawless Tri-Border Area that includes Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina.
Keeping planes in the air has taken a back seat at the Federal Aviation Administration as the agency pivots its focus to diversity, equity, and inclusion under the leadership of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The FAA’s mission-critical pilot safety alerting system crashed overnight, causing the agency to temporarily ground all outgoing air traffic across the country Wednesday morning and delay more than 6,500 flights. The FAA has had much to say about the system under Buttigieg’s watch, but not for matters relating to its functionality or upkeep. Rather, the agency announced in December 2021 that it had changed the system’s name from “Notice to Airmen” to “Notice to Air Mission,” a “more applicable term” that the agency said is “inclusive of all aviators and missions.”
“The language we use in aerospace matters,” the FAA tweeted from its official account. “We’ve begun to adopt gender-neutral and inclusive aviation terminology as part of our agency-wide initiative.”
It’s not clear why the system failed overnight, but the White House said there was no evidence of a cyberattack. Buttigieg said Wednesday he didn’t know how the system crashed and ordered a root cause analysis to determine the cause of the failure. “Glitches or complications happen all the time,” Buttigieg said on MSNBC.
The air safety system’s name change came months after an FAA advisory committee issued a report in June 2021 recommending the agency replace a wide swath of words and phrases with gender-neutral terms. The updated language, the advisory committee said, would help combat unintentional bias and reflect a “more modern recognition that gender can be binary.”
Recommendations included replacing “airman” with “aircrew,” “manned aviation” with “traditional aviation,” and “cockpit” with “flight deck.”
The FAA took the recommendations to heart. The agency hosted a two-and-a-half-hour virtual inclusive language summit in November 2021 to discuss its initiative to adopt “gender-neutral and inclusive language” nationwide.
Aerospace is for everyone, and the language we use matters. We launched an agency-wide initiative to adopt gender-neutral and inclusive aviation terminology. Watch the Inclusive Language Summit at https://t.co/6YNdyJYE4b. #BestOf2021pic.twitter.com/oHbad8rbOd
The Transportation Department’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion is also reflected in its $26.8 billion budget request for the 2023 fiscal year.
The department said it would allocate funds to tackle climate change, address inequities, and advance “environmental justice.” The department requested $15.2 billion for the FAA to improve aviation safety and infrastructure, but said it would enact those improvements by promoting environmental justice, climate change mitigation, and “enhancing equity through more inclusive contracting and workforce development.”
Buttigieg has come under fire for his absentee leadership of the Transportation Department. The ambitious politician was on paid child leave and was “mostly offline” in late 2021 amid one of the worst supply chain crises in modern American history.
In August 2022, Buttigieg quietly jetted off to Portugal for a “long-planned personal trip” just days before rail contract negotiations entered a critical period, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
House Democrats have questioned why Buttigieg isn’t doing more to penalize Southwest Airlines for canceling more than 15,000 flights over the holidays. “We believe much more needs to be done,” more than two dozen lawmakers wrote in a letter to the secretary.
Left-wing prosecutors at the forefront of a radical criminal justice movement often catch flak for refusing to enforce cash bail laws and sentencing enhancements for violent felons. Now, elected officials are slamming them for subverting another legal standard: providing evidence.
A judge scolded Dallas district attorney John Creuzot (D.) last week for his “widespread” failure to share evidence with defense lawyers. In Virginia, left-wing prosecutors have been kicked off cases and sued for concealing or withholding evidence in order to “sell” plea deals. And Pennsylvania lawmakers impeached radical Philadelphia prosecutor Larry Krasner (D.) for routinely withholding evidence from court proceedings.
These blunders often have deadly consequences, as prosecutors may be forced to downgrade charges or enter into lesser plea deals when evidentiary standards aren’t met. In Fairfax County, Va., prosecutor Steve Descano (D.) has set loose dangerous offenders after not being forthcoming with evidence—one of whom went on a shooting spree after his release.
Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Free Beacon that the pattern of disregarding evidence requests is more a feature than a bug of the progressive prosecutor movement. Typically these attorneys—many of whom received sizable donations from the liberal billionaire George Soros—lack prosecutorial experience and have fired dozens of career prosecutors after taking office, often replacing them with a staff of ill-trained public defenders.
“They’re incompetent at being prosecutors because most of them have never been a prosecutor,” Stimson said. “They’re hiring defense-oriented public defenders who aren’t used to turning over any evidence to the other side … They see the cops as the bad guys, the victims as invisible, and the defendants as the victims.”
That notion is buttressed by statements and actions from prosecutors like Krasner, who has referred to himself as “a public defender with power.” After taking office in 2017, he dismissed 31 of his prosecutors, including a number of veteran attorneys tasked with handling homicide cases. Krasner subsequently staffed his office with scores of attorneys lacking trial experience.
Murders in Philadelphia over the past two years hit an all-time high under Krasner’s leadership.
Albany district attorney David Soares (D.) told the Free Beacon he has advised fellow prosecutors to “steer clear of making those wholesale changes in the office” and laying off career staff.
“That institutional knowledge about those cases is so important,” Soares said. “To clear house because of your political ideology … is to deprive the people of that community … but it is also depriving that individual who’s been victimized by a defendant that opportunity of receiving justice.”
But faced with the incompetence of Soros-backed prosecutors, many veteran attorneys have sought greener pastures. Attorneys fled the offices of Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby (D.) and Chicago’s top prosecutor Kim Foxx (D.) after their elections. Former staffers ripped Foxx in particular for contributing to the Windy City’s recent crime spike and dropping charges against hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett.
Soros contributed more than $40 million through his network of public safety PACs to help elect prosecutors like Creuzot, Krasner, and Loudoun County, Va., commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj (D.). Creuzot and Krasner won reelection in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Biberaj was elected in 2019.
When confronted about their failure to hand over evidence, prosecutors like Creuzot have passed blame to police departments, the Dallas Morning Newsreported. Creuzot said officers have not complied with the 2021 law that requires them to immediately disclose evidence to prosecutors at any point during a case. Dallas district judge Amber Givens (D.) said she and other judges have observed instances where evidence wasn’t turned over because prosecutors hadn’t “fully inquired” about case facts.
Soares said he’s observed instances of “abuse in discovery” that can occur when offices are “wanting to hide the ball from a judge who has to approve of that disposition.”
The move hints at an ideological shift, as progressive lawyers have long sought to “reverse engineer and dismantle” the justice system, leaning on prosecutors to redefine broad swathes of the law through policy. Soros prosecutors in Northern Virginia including Descano and Biberaj have changed discovery policies based on a sense of their own political role, according to one former Fairfax County prosecutor.
“Their primary mission is to send a political signal as opposed to doing their job prosecuting cases, and part of that is providing discovery in a timely and complete fashion,” Andrew Kersey told the Free Beacon, adding that these prosecutors shift the blame when cases don’t go their way. “The response from their public affairs officer is, you blame the judge, you blame the police, you blame the prior administrations, and finally, they’ll start blaming defense attorneys.”
Biberaj and Descano are both seeking reelection this year amid growing dissatisfaction with their leadership from their party. Pennsylvania Senate lawmakers will weigh a vote to convict Krasner this month.
A man wearing women’s underwear appeared in an Arizona Democrat’s video call into a county board meeting, the Daily Callerreported Tuesday.
Matt Heinz was the only member of Pima County’s Board of Supervisors not to show up in person at a Tuesday meeting, instead appearing via Zoom call. Heinz wasn’t the only person in his video, though: A man dressed in panties showed up in the background, causing Heinz to rush to shut off his feed.
Heinz in 2008 became one of the first openly gay members of Arizona’s House of Representatives. He went on to serve in the Obama administration before he became a Pima County supervisor in 2021. Heinz received media attention for supporting a mask mandate as late as Dec. 2021, the Daily Caller noted.
While Heinz’s fellow board members did not appear to comment on the unknown man’s unexpected appearance, Twitter users offered theories for why the supervisor wasn’t physically at the meeting.
“Too busy to show up at work because he was busy boinking?” wondered one commenter.
Heinz is not the only Democrat to show something unexpected in a Zoom call. Disgraced former CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin infamously masturbated in front of colleagues during a Zoom video.
Joe Biden is pledging to get tough on the border, but the measures he proposed won’t alleviate the crisis unless he starts enforcing the laws on the books, immigration experts say.
At the center of Biden’s plan to deter migrants from flooding to the border is a mobile phone application that allows migrants in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba to apply for asylum from their home country. But critics say that until the Biden administration enforces federal law that mandates the detention of all migrants, even those with credible asylum claims, until they come before an immigration judge, migrants will continue to flood to the border.
Without enforcing that law, those who cross the southern border and claim a credible fear of returning home will simply be released into the United States. Biden’s proposal, which makes it easier for migrants to get into the country, sidesteps that central problem, experts say.
“This program started with Ukraine, expanded to Venezuela, and now includes three other countries. It will be expanded further and further because the Biden administration looks for any way to staunch the flow at the border that doesn’t include enforcing the laws,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Free Beacon. “They have learned nothing in two years and figure packing airports with immigrants will relieve the pressure amassing at the border. Something for Americans to think about as they experience long lines at customs.”
Given court backlogs, asylum seekers may not see an immigration judge for years. In the meantime, they can live in the United States, get work permits, and apply for social services in some cities and states. Even if their asylum claims are ultimately denied, the Biden administration has ground deportations to a halt, with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement removing the smallest number of illegal aliens since 2015.
Although Biden pointed to studies showing that pilot versions of the program led to a lower number of Venezuelans applying for asylum, the total number that aimed to apply is unknown due to migrants who were never detained by law enforcement. In 2022, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than half a million “known gotaways,” a jump from 2021 when there were fewer than 400,000 such cases.
When announcing the plan earlier this month, Biden said migrants who cross into the United States without using this new framework will be subjected to “new consequences,” including expedited removal. But Biden has thus far been apprehensive about using expedited removal, a power his administration has had since entering office. Law enforcement in November, for example, used expedited removal on less than 5 percent of the over 140,000 migrants apprehended on the southern border. That rate is far below years past, which averaged in the low 20s from 2012 to 2020.
Critics of the Biden administration’s plan also say allowing 30,000 migrants a month from those select countries, which comes out to hundreds of thousands annually, will overwhelm public services. Democratic mayors have bristled at Republican governors sending migrants to their cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., and have claimed they cannot support such a rapid influx of outsiders.
“This is mass immigration by another means. These foreigners need to go somewhere, but this administration has no plan,” said Center for Immigration Studies director of investigations and former ICE chief of staff Jon Feere. “From public education to housing to welfare, this administration doesn’t care about the strain this will inflict on social services.”
Biden this week met with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss issues related to border security, including illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The White House gave few details on what the meeting accomplished, and a White House summary of Biden’s meeting said the two presidents “reaffirmed their commitment to implement innovative approaches to address irregular migration.”
THE MORE DETAILS THAT COME OUT, THE LESS THE ESTABLISHMENT NARRATIVE LOOKS RELIABLE.
peaking to conservative commentator Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed Republicans will release the thus-far-unseen 14,000 hours of footage from January 6th, following years of subterfuge over the matter by both Congressional Democrats and U.S. law enforcement.
Until now, only a small percentage of what happened in D.C. on Jan 6 2021 has been released for the American public to scrutinize. Gaetz’s pledged will change all of that.
Watch:
Gaetz: Republicans will release “14,000 hours of [J6] tapes that have been hidden”
“Kevin McCarthy told us he’s going to get the evidence out in front of the American people, and that means releasing the 14,000 hours of tapes that have been hidden,” Gaetz said, adding that such a move “would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments the January 6th committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.”
More strange information about January 6th came to light recently, upon the release of the Ray Epps interview. Epps, 62, was caught multiple times over January 5th and 6th urging rally attendees and protesters to enter the Capitol. He was also filmed on the front lines of the first breaches of police lines. Despite this, he was never a focus of the Jan 6th committee, nor law enforcement, in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
For example, Epps told the committee he traveled to Washington, D.C. for a “great family vacation” but at the same time appeared to solicit gauze, tourniquets, and breathing tubes to take with him.
Otherwise, Pfizer, Moderna, etc. could be held liable for the damage from their vaccines [US Patriot]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed on Jan. 11 that it has extended the federal COVID-19 state of emergency.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra issued a declaration, saying that “after consultation with public health officials as necessary,” the administration decided to renew the emergency declaration that was first issued in early 2020 during the Trump administration. Including the latest declaration, the federal emergency has been renewed about a dozen times since then.
“The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency remains in effect, and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration,” a spokesperson for HHS told media outlets on Jan. 11.
The emergency declaration has had a significant impact on the U.S. health care system since it was enacted, providing health insurance coverage protection for millions along with giving hospitals more resources and more telehealth services. However, top officials—including President Joe Biden himself—have signaled that they believe the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
But on Jan. 11, the Biden administration didn’t give an indication as to when the emergency might end.
The White House will likely face pressure from House Republicans to end the emergency as GOP lawmakers have signaled they want to investigate the Biden administration over its COVID-19 response. The origins of the virus, which emerged in China in late 2019, also will be probed, Republican lawmakers have signaled.
Pressure to End Emergency
About two dozen Republican governors in December 2022 called (pdf) on Biden to end the COVID-19 emergency, saying that it was inflating the population covered under Medicaid and costing states hundreds of millions of dollars.
The health emergency is “negatively affecting states, primarily by artificially growing our population covered under Medicaid … regardless of whether individuals continue to be eligible under the program,” they wrote. “States are required to increase our non-federal match to adequately cover all enrollees and cannot disenroll members from the program unless they do so voluntarily.
Joe Biden signs an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure access to abortions while Vice President Kamala Harris, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco look on at the White House on July 8, 2022. (Samuel Corum, AFP/Getty Images)
“Making the situation worse, we know that a considerable number of individuals have returned to employer-sponsored coverage or are receiving coverage through the individual market, and yet states still must still account [sic] and pay for their Medicaid enrollment in our non-federal share. This is costing states hundreds of millions of dollars.”
In November, Republican and Democrat senators joined to approve a measure to end the federal emergency, although Biden said he would veto it if it reached his desk.
“It has now been more than 2 1/2 years since this first-issued proclamation declaring the national emergency concerning declaration and been extended twice by President Biden since the initial declaration, most recently February [2022],” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who sponsored the Senate resolution, said during a floor speech in mid-November 2022.
COVID-19, according to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in October 2022, is “no longer an emergency thanks to vaccinations, medical treatments, and the innumerable efforts of countless Washingtonians since the state had the nation’s first documented case in January 2020.” Washington was the first state to report a confirmed COVID-19 case in the United States, doing so on Jan. 20, 2020.
“We’ve come a long way the past two years in developing the tools that allow us to adapt and live with COVID-19,” Inslee said at the time. “Ending this order does not mean we take it less seriously or will lose focus on how this virus has changed the way we live. We will continue our commitments to the public’s well-being, but simply through different tools that are now more appropriate for the era we’ve entered.”
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, said the state’s emergency will be ending on Feb. 28.
Biden says he was ‘surprised to learn’ about the documents
Classified Ukraine documents and son receiving money from Ukraine. Hmmm… [US Patriot]
Former President Donald Trump is questioning the timeline of the November discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, a revelation made by Joe Biden’s attorneys earlier this week.
“I think they knew long before Nov. 2,” Trump told John Solomon, the founder of Just the News, on his podcast published on Jan. 11.
Referring to Biden, Trump added, “I think he knew probably right from the beginning and I think a lot of it had to do with Ukraine, because that was the papers he kept. And no, I think they knew about this for a long time and they didn’t do anything about it.”
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said on Jan. 9 that documents with classified markings were founded in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington on Nov. 2. On the same day, White House lawyers notified the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the agency took possession of the materials the next day, Sauber added.
Biden’s term as vice president ended in January 2017. A month later, he became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and was given the role of leading the school’s Penn Biden Center, which officially opened in February 2018. According to the university’s website, Biden also had an office on the school’s campus in Philadelphia.
Biden was placed on unpaid leave in April 2019, when he announced he was running for president.
On Jan. 10, Biden said he was “surprised to learn” to learn that classified documents were found in his former private office.
“I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office,” Biden said. “But I don’t know what’s in the documents.”
“I’ve turned over the boxes—they’ve turned over the boxes to the Archives,” Biden added. “And we’re cooperating fully—cooperating fully with the review.”
President Joe Biden speaks in Washington on Dec. 22, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Double Standards
When asked how documents from Biden’s vice presidency might “change the equation” with regard to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into government documents found at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Well, I think it totally changes that.”
“I was perfect under the Presidential Records Act,” Trump added. “I did absolutely nothing wrong.”
FBI agents seized over 11,000 documents and photographs without classified markings from Trump’s resort, including around 100 documents marked classified or top secret. However, Trump has said he declassified the materials when he left office.
Trump suggested that the FBI should search Biden’s properties, as well as those belonging to his son Hunter Biden.
“What about all of these places that he’s got?” Trump asked. “What about his house? What about Hunter’s house? You know, who’s going to go in there like they did with me? Who’s gonna do that?”
Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Kevin Mccarthy (R-Calif.) and House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.)—have criticized the Biden administration for double standards over the handling of classified documents.
“President Biden kept CLASSIFIED documents from when he was Vice President at his think tank, yet he sent his Department of Justice after former President Trump. Only presidents, not vice presidents, have the authority to declassify materials,” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter on Jan. 10.
She added, “The DOJ’s double standard and two-tiered system of justice is on full display.”
However, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), during a press conference on Tuesday, called GOP criticism of Biden “Republican hypocrisy in its finest.”
China
Also speaking on the podcast, Trump suggested that Beijing could have likely seen the classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center, noting that Chinese sources have paid millions in donations to the University of Pennsylvania.
In April, the New York Post reported that the University of Pennsylvania had received a total of $54.6 million in donations from China between 2014 and 2019, citing public records.
“The fact is that China was paying, through Penn—which, you know, I went to school at Penn, I went to the Wharton School of Finance, I love Penn—but they were paying all of this money to Joe Biden,” Trump said. “And they have the Biden Center there. And I would imagine—they’re paying all this money—I would imagine they had absolute entree into those documents. And they saw those documents.”
Trump made similar allegations on Monday, when he wrote on his Truth Social account that the Penn Biden Center “is funded by China” and “54 Million Dollars” from Beijing had gone to the Center.
University of Pennsylvania spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy, in a statement to Newsweek about Trump’s Truth Social posts, denied the allegations.
“The assertion that the Penn Biden Center received $54 million from China is total nonsense,” MacCarthy said. “The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity.”
“In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center,” MacCarthy added. “Since its inception in 2017 there have been three unsolicited gifts (from two donors) which combined total $1,100. Both donors are Americans. One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.
House Republicans and Democrats united in a rare display of bipartisanship on Jan. 10 to create a select committee that will examine and seek to counteract the multiple threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The vote on final passage of the authorizing resolution was 365 to 65, with 146 Democrats joining all 222 Republicans in voting for the proposal. The 65 “nay” votes were all cast by Democrats.
A succession of speakers from both parties extolled the creation of the new panel, with Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) telling colleagues that “this select committee will examine the threats from the Chinese Communist Party with a fine-tooth comb and expose them for the American people and for the whole world to fully understand.”
Barr said the panel is needed to “develop concrete solutions for how we can better position the United States to prevail in this competition and ensure that the 21st century is led by the United States and defined by a rules-based international order.”
Former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who now represents Montana in the House, described what he saw while leading a U.S. delegation in China.
“I can tell you their intentions are clear—control and dominance of the South China Sea and the entire hemisphere. It should be noted that China has the largest standing navy, greater than the United States’. It has stolen U.S. technology and increased its capacity for nuclear weapons,” Zinke said.
“On the environmental front, the People’s Republic of China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the largest source of Marine debris, the worst perpetrators of illegal, unreported fishing, [and] the world’s largest consumer of trafficked wildlife and timber products.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) recalled the period in the early 1990s when the United States invited China to join the international economic community by becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and U.S. businesses began investing heavily in the cheap labor provided by the Asian nation.
“I was one of those people 25 years ago who was part of the consensus that we could engage communist China into the world economy,” Blumenauer said, noting that he was able to travel extensively in China and met many of China’s leaders at the time.
“They were saying the right things; I think some of them were sincere. It was an encouraging opportunity. But over the course of the last 20 years, it’s taken a wrong turn. We have watched the Chinese play a cynical game. They have not lived up to their obligations under the WTO.”
Other Democrats qualified their support for the new committee by warning that it shouldn’t be used to encourage xenophobia against Americans of Chinese descent.
“This committee should not be used as an open invitation to traffic in blatant xenophobic, anti-China rhetoric that we know results in physical violence against Asian Americans,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said. “We certainly saw this with [former President Donald] Trump’s labeling of COVID as the ‘China Virus.’”
Chu, who’s chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, encouraged the committee to “directly focus specific concerns related to the government of the People’s Republic of China.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) doubts that xenophobia would be part of the new congressional panel’s work.
“As an Asian American who represents the only Asian-majority district in the U.S., I would never support a committee that I thought would engage in xenophobia or attacks on the Chinese people,” he said.
Khanna said he was reassured because “this committee is not directed against China, but it is directed against the Chinese Communist Party.”
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) will serve as chairman of the new select panel. He’s also a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and the chamber’s Armed Services Committee. The panel will include seven Republicans and five Democrats, with the latter group to be selected by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
During the debate on the resolution establishing the new House panel, Gallagher described the threat posed by the CCP as the most serious facing the United States anywhere in the world.
“The CCP’s aggression is not limited to Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong. … We see this aggression here at home, where the Party has stolen American intellectual property, technology, and industrial capacity, undermining our economy and good-paying American jobs.
“It is here at home where the Party’s extra-territorial totalitarianism terrorized Chinese students studying at our universities and targets Americans of Chinese dissent. And it’s here at home where thousands of Americans are poisoned each year with Fentanyl pre-cursored in China and a Chinese money laundering network. It’s time to understand the urgency of the threat.”
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) selected Gallagher to chair the panel.
“The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest geopolitical threat of our lifetime. We need a whole-of-government approach that will build on the efforts of the Republican-led China Task Force and ensure America is prepared to tackle the economic and security challenges posed by the CCP,” McCarthy said.
He said he chose Gallagher because the Wisconsin Republican “served in uniform as a Marine counterintelligence officer and has dedicated his time in Congress to understanding, educating, and defending America from the threat the CCP poses.”
“Mike Gallagher is exceptionally qualified and is the right person to lead and advance this important agenda at this vital moment,” McCarthy said.
The House Oversight Committee is opening an investigation into Joe Biden’s handling of classified records from his time as vice president, following the discovery of sensitive materials in an insecure closet at a think tank.
Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a Jan. 10 statement on social media that he’s launching the probe; he has demanded that the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provide documents and information related to their handling of the Biden records—including the classified documents themselves.
“The Committee is concerned that President Biden has compromised sources and methods with his own mishandling of classified documents,” Comer wrote in a letter to White House counsel Stuart Delery (pdf), while pointing out that Biden has previously called the mishandling of presidential records “totally irresponsible.”
A “small number” of classified documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington as Biden’s lawyers were clearing out the offices, according to a statement on Jan. 9 by Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president.
Sauber said the documents were in a “locked closet” at the think tank Biden used after he served as vice president and that the records were turned over to NARA a day after they were found.
For purposes of the committee probe, Comer requested that the White House provide a raft of information relating to the handling of the retrieved documents. He requested all the documents retrieved from Biden’s personal office at the Penn Biden Center, as well as all internal documents and communications regarding the recovered materials.
He’s also demanding a list of all the people who had access to Biden’s personal office at the think tank and all documents and communications between the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ) or NARA regarding the classified document find.
Comer separately wrote to NARA’s Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall (pdf) to raise the question of “political bias” at the agency over what he described as “inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records” held by Biden and former President Donald Trump.
“NARA learned about these documents days before the 2022 midterm elections and did not alert the public that President Biden was potentially violating the law,” he wrote.
“Meanwhile, NARA instigated a public and unprecedented FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago—former President Trump’s home—to retrieve presidential records.”
Comer also said this disparate treatment “raises questions about political bias at the agency.”
Officials at NARA and the White House didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
President Joe Biden speaks during a Cabinet meeting in the White House on Jan. 5, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
‘2-Tiered Justice System’?
News of the document discovery has led to comparisons to Trump, who kept some allegedly classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida that were seized in an FBI raid.
Trump, who’s being investigated by the Justice Department in connection with the incident but hasn’t been charged, said he declassified the materials before he left office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who assigned a special counsel to probe Trump over his document stash, has assigned a U.S. attorney in Chicago to review Biden’s materials and how they ended up at Biden’s office at the think tank.
Republicans have argued that Trump has been treated more harshly over his document stash and that the DOJ and the mainstream media are handling Biden with kid gloves.
“Is the White House going to be raided tonight?” Comer said in a Fox News interview. “Are they going to raid the Biden Center? I don’t know.
“This is further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans versus Democrats … certainly how they treat the former president versus the current president.”
The Republican lawmaker noted that in his research after the FBI’s search of Trump’s home in August, he found that “every president had accidentally packed documents that may or may not be considered classified,” saying, “but they weren’t raided.”
‘Immediate and Proper Action’
Democrats have defended Biden amid the fallout from the document find, pointing to the small number of documents found at the Biden-linked think tank compared to a larger volume held by Trump. They’ve also highlighted the Biden lawyers’ cooperation with NARA and quick submission of the classified materials after their discovery, compared to a drawn-out fight to get Trump’s documents, including by subpoena.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that attorneys for Biden “appear to have taken immediate and proper action to notify the National Archives about their discovery of a small handful of classified documents so they could be returned to federal government custody.”
“I have confidence that the Attorney General took the appropriate steps to ensure the careful review of the circumstances surrounding the possession and discovery of these documents and [will] make an impartial decision about any further action that may be needed,” Raskin said.
Trump, who previously said the FBI’s seizure of documents from his home was an act of retribution by his political foes, commented on the Biden document find.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?” he asked on social media. “These documents were definitely not declassified.”
A law enforcement officer stands outside Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)
Biden ‘Surprised’
Biden, who in September 2022 called Trump’s handling of classified documents “totally irresponsible,” said on Jan. 10 that he was “surprised” that any sensitive government records had been taken to his former personal office.
“People know I take classified information seriously,” Biden said at a North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico on Jan. 10.
He defended how the discovery of the documents was handled, insisting that his lawyers “immediately” called NARA and turned over the materials to the agency.
It’s unclear when Biden became aware of the discovery of the documents.
Legal experts who spoke to The Epoch Times gave contrasting views on the document find, with some insisting there’s no legal difference between Trump and Biden in terms of possible violations of laws that require classified documents to be turned over to NARA to be stored securely.
Some said a key difference is the status of the documents, with Trump insisting that he declassified the documents, although that remains unclear pending investigation. By contrast, the vice president—as Biden was at about the time the documents were placed at the think tank—doesn’t have that power.
‘No Legal Difference’
Derek Jacques, an attorney at The Mitten Law Firm, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that any removal of classified documents poses a problem for any elected official, be it Trump or Biden or anyone else.
“It doesn’t truly differ from Trump’s document stash at Mar-A-Lago,” Jacques said. “While there is the implication that storing them in your private residence might seem less secure than an office in a think tank, there is no legal difference between the two.”
From a legal standpoint, there will need to be an investigation into the documents found at Biden’s office, he said, noting that such a probe would also include a determination as to the potential damage to national security interests.
Aron Solomon, chief legal analyst at Esquire Digital, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that in Trump’s case, there was an intent to “take and hide” documents that had classified markings—including ones marked “top secret”—and that the former president refused to return the materials, even under the power of subpoena.
Another difference, according to Solomon, is in the sheer volume of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago compared to the ones at Biden’s former office.
“Under the Biden fact set, as we know it today, there was a comparatively very small amount of classified information in documents President Biden had after serving as vice president,” he said.
FBI agents seized 103 documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago, including some marked top secret.
However, Jacques insisted that the difference in the volume of documents is mostly optics.
“From a legal standpoint, it may not make much of a difference on the volume of documents; however, the ‘top secret’ classification does matter,” he said.
“The issue, again, reverts back to whether or not Trump declassified any of the materials seized at his home.”
While Trump has insisted that he did declassify the documents, details around the declassification process and status of the documents remain unclear.
Biden, by contrast, didn’t have the authority to declassify documents. This fact is “material,” Jacques insisted.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on Jan. 10 that he sees a double standard in how Biden and Trump are being treated by the media, in the context of classified documents.
“If then-Vice President Biden took classified documents with him and held them for years and criticized former President Trump during that same time that he had those classified documents, and only after it was uncovered did he turn them back, I wonder why the press isn’t asking the same questions of him,” Scalise said.
Operations in the United States are starting to resume after all flights across the country were grounded, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Jan. 11.
“Normal air traffic operations are resuming gradually across the U.S. following an overnight outage to the Notice to Air Missions system that provides safety info to flight crews,” the FAA said in a statement at 8:50 a.m. ET.
The failure of a key pilot notification system operated by the agency late Tuesday prompted the agency to order all airlines to ground planes in the United States.
The agency’s Notice To Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which is critical for relaying essential information to flights, failed for the first time in history.
FAA officials said early Wednesday they were making progress in restoring the system.
“FAA has determined that the safety system affected by the overnight outage is fully restored,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg added later, in a statement at 8:54 a.m. ET.
That ground stop has been lifted, according to the FAA.
The agency had said the pause in domestic departures was to let the agency “validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
While the grounding excluded military aircraft and medical evacuation flights, it impacted hundreds of commercial planes.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced in a statement on Twitter that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the outage and that there’s no indication it was caused by hackers.
“There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point,” she said, adding that Biden directed the Department of Transportation “to conduct a full investigation into the causes,” she wrote.
Buttigieg said he directed “an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.”
Biden told reporters that he had spoken with Buttigieg and that he asked the Transportation Secretary to “report directly to me when they find out” what caused the outage.
“We don’t know what the cause of it is,” Biden said, adding that it could be “a couple of hours” until the cause is known.
United Airlines said in a statement that it has begun resuming flight operations and the company would be issuing travel waivers to people impacted by the ground stop.
American Airlines said in a statement it was working to minimize customer disruptions, while Southwest Airlines urged travelers to check for any changes to flight status.
Michael Boyd, President and CEO of aviation consultancy The Boyd Group International, told CNBC in an interview that the outage shows a “very systemic problem” with the FAA and that the agency has fallen behind in keeping up its systems.
“There’s no excuse for this,” Boyd said, adding that “it’s going to get worse” unless the agency takes steps to improve its operations.
“We’ve got to find qualified aviation-related people” to be in charge of the FAA, “not people who know people in Washington,” he added.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the FAA for comment on the reasons for the outage and on criticism, including that it has fallen behind in keeping up with its systems.
The FAA responded by saying that it “continues to look into the cause of the initial problem” and that normal air traffic operations are “resuming gradually across the United States.”
The NOTAM system is meant to alert pilots to various hazards like snow, volcanic ash, or birds near airports.
Aviation expert Kyle Bailey told Fox News that the NOTAM system is “not up to speed” and that “the longer this goes on, there’s going to be a ripple effect throughout the entire system,” leading to more flight delays and cancelations, “possibly for days.”
The problem, according to Bailey, is that the system is “layered and antiquated” and urgently needs an overhaul.
FAA officials have been involved in efforts to modernize the NOTAM system in recent years.
So that means we should get rid of automobiles, right? After all, they’re hazardous.
Wait, there is a movement called Vision Zero that, indeed, wants to eliminate all traffic deaths and injuries. But discussing that fantasy is for another day.
Let’s deal with one unreality at a time, as in we’re faced with the CPSC mulling over getting rid of gas stoves.
To which Jill Notini, vice president of the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, has a common sense reply: “Ventilation is really where this discussion should be, rather than banning one particular type of technology.”
Thanks, Jill. good answer.
And speaking of Jill, there’s been a lot of response on Twitter to the CPSC-proposed gas stove ban in tweets showing none other than Jill Biden hard at work on her toxic asthma-and-cancer-producing gas stove.
The ‘Biden Administration’ is going to outlaw Gas Stoves…because of Climate Change. Here’s Jill and her Gas Stove. Lol. pic.twitter.com/xH4bjzN7Wl
And there is a question about why the CPSC wants to junk gas stove technology. It’s about the science, of course.
To be fair, a peer-reviewed study claiming 12.7 percent asthma rates in homes with gas stoves does say a solution could be better ventilation, if it’s done right.
But the kicker is the study claims the real answer is — you guessed it — electric.
And since Those Who Know Best are trying to eliminate natural gas for power generation and want all those electric cars hooked up to our shaky power grids, who knows how many windmills and solar panels will be needed to heat up millions of new electric stoves?
Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Virginia) said in a letter to the CPSC that gas stoves present a specific threat to minorities. And they noted that methane leaks from gas stoves equal the pollution of a half million gasoline cars.
To their credit, Booker and Beyer did not call for a ban on gas stoves, but improved regulation of gas lines and ventilation systems.
Which is in line with Jill Notini of the appliance trade group: “We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.”
But the CPSC put it out there — the real solution may be to ban gas stoves.
And without adequate electricity, I guess when we obey and convert to eating bugs like we’re being told, we’ll have to enjoy having our insects cold.
House Republicans have fired their first shot at the Biden administration, filing impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas had promised last week to file articles of impeachment and did so on Monday, according to Fox News.
The impeachment process has two steps. First, the House must decide whether an official should be charged. Then, a trial is conducted in the Senate on those charges. Given that the House has a GOP majority and the Senate has a Democratic majority, conviction on the charges would require Senate Democrats to join forces with House Republicans.
Fallon said the step needed to be taken.
“Since day one, Secretary Mayorkas’ policies have undermined law enforcement activities at our southern border. From perjuring himself before Congress about maintaining operational control of the border to the infamous ‘whip-gate’ slander against our border patrol agents, Secretary Mayorkas has proven time and time again that he is unfit to lead the Department of Homeland Security,” Fallon said in a statement.
“His willful actions have eroded our immigration system, undermined border patrol morale, and jeopardized American national security. He has violated the law, and it is time for him to go,” Fallon said.
Although the text of the articles was not available Tuesday, Fox News last week shared a draft of what had been prepared.
Article I charges Mayorkas with violating his constitutional oath by violating the Secure the Fence Act of 2006 that calls on the secretary of Homeland Security to “maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States.”
As evidence against Mayorkas, the first article said that “over 5,500,000 illegal aliens have crossed our southern border under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas.”
The first article noted that “Under Secretary Mayorkas, more fentanyl has crossed the border in the last 2 months than in all of fiscal year 2019 under President Trump’s leadership. In fiscal year 2022, over 14,000 pounds of poisonous fentanyl was seized at the southern border. Fentanyl overdoses are the number one cause of death for individuals ages 18 to 45 nationwide.”
Article II claims Mayorkas gave “perjurious, false, and misleading testimony to Congress,” citing instances when Mayorkas told Congress the border was secure.
“The record-breaking number of illegal alien encounters, including over 1,000,000 known ‘gotaways,’ as well as the record seizures of deadly fentanyl and other contraband, prove that Secretary Mayorkas has not ensured operational control of the southern border. Secretary Mayorkas clearly committed perjury on multiple occasions before Congress.”
Article III says Mayorkas “knowingly slandered his own hardworking Border Patrol agents and mislead the general public” through comments pertaining to a discredited allegation that Border Patrol agents were accused of whipping Haitian immigrants.
Mayorkas called images taken from an angle that appeared to show agents striking illegal immigrants “horrifying” and an example of “systemic racism,” the article said.
The charge against Mayorkas noted that a “511-page report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Personal Responsibility found ‘no evidence that [Border Patrol agents] involved in this incident struck, intentionally or otherwise, any migrant with their reins.’ Secretary Mayorkas slandered his own Border Patrol agents and TXDPS Troopers involved in this incident, contributing to a further decrease in already-low morale among agents.”
Last fall, prior to his election last week as House speaker, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California said Mayorkas would face scrutiny when the new Congress convened.
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure and will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said then.
Mayorkas on Sunday said he does not intend to focus on calls for him to be impeached.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do … and I’m going to continue to do my work,” Mayorkas said on the ABC show “This Week,” according to Axios.
It’s not hard to make Joe Biden look bad — when Joe Biden is around to do it himself.
Amid Tuesday’s furor over news that classified documents had been found in a suite of Washington, D.C., offices Biden used in his post-vice presidency period, damaging video from a 2018 interview resurfaced that shows Biden declaring he had no access to “classified information.”
As it turns out, classified information wasn’t all that far away.
Check out this snippet of Biden’s conversation with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. (And as an aside, note the evident difference between today’s doddering Biden and the man in 2018. He was almost stentorian by comparison.)
In 2018, Joe Biden — while in his private office where classified documents were just found — said “I don’t have access to classified information anymore” pic.twitter.com/NoC9OihcKk
According to a New York Times report published Monday, the documents were found in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University of Pennsylvania think tank established in Washington and named for Biden that opened in February 2018.
Lo and behold, it was in that selfsame month and year, and in the selfsame suite of offices, that Biden was interviewed by Mitchell and stated in no uncertain terms that “I don’t have access to classified materials anymore.”
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How the world might have been different if an aide nearby had said something along the lines of, “Sure you do, Mr. Vice President. Right over there.”
Naturally, the Biden-backing Times, along with the rest of the establishment media, are taking pains to point out that there’s a huuuge difference between the appearance of classified documents Biden himself admitted he had no business having and the classified documents at the home of former President Donald Trump.
Remember, that was the home that was raided by Biden’s FBI on Aug. 8, because a former president in possession of classified documents is such a clear and present danger to the republic that it requires a squad of armed men to take over his home while he is away and cart away possessions (after pawing through his wife’s underwear).
Biden had only a “small number” of documents, according to reports. He “had neither been notified that he had official records nor been asked to return them, the White House said,” according to the Times. And Biden is “unaware of their contents,” according to CBS News, which first reported the story.
But one big difference the establishment media won’t point out is that, as president, Trump had the power to declassify any material he wanted. Biden had only limited power to do so (see the clarification note at the bottom of this page) until he was inaugurated in January 2021 — three years after the interview with Mitchell. Trump has said he declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago but has produced no documentation to back that up.
Another point that the establishment media likely won’t stress is that the Biden White House was — allegedly — first informed of the documents’ presence in the president’s old offices on Nov. 2.
That’s an important date because it was less than a week before the Nov. 8 midterms. If the American people had known that Biden was guilty — to one degree or another — of precisely the kind of offense that supposedly justified sending a troop of FBI agents into a political rival’s home, they might have decided that Democrats really are as totalitarian as they look.
It was also two weeks before Attorney General Merrick Garland — who had approved the Mar-a-Lago raid — appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into the Trump documents.
“Today, I signed an order appointing Jack Smith to serve as special counsel. The order authorizes him to continue the ongoing investigation … and to prosecute any federal crimes that may arise from those investigations,” Garland said then.
It’s an interesting question whether Garland was aware at the time of the documents that had been found in Biden’s old office. If he wasn’t, surely Biden and his team were, which might have given some of them pause when Garland used the words “prosecute any federal crimes that may arise.”
For her part, Mitchell chimed in Tuesday with a Twitter post that would have done any Soviet apparatchik proud for its party-line loyalty.
I interviewed Joe Biden in his office at the Penn Biden Center where his lawyers say they found a small number of classified documents. As far as we know very different from Trump hiding and withholding 100’s of documents despite requests and subpoenas but GOP is pouncing pic.twitter.com/PIYRpCBUwO
See, she confirmed that the Biden documents had been found in the same spot where the president had told her to her face that he had no access to classified documents. Yet she insisted that it was all “as far as we know very different” from what Trump did.
But, naturally, “GOP is pouncing” — a phrase so hackneyed in American political reporting that it’s almost a deliberate insult to readers’ intelligence to use it.
Well, one key difference “as far as we know” is that Trump had the authority as president to declassify any documents he saw fit. Whether that exonerates him from any wrongdoing in the Mar-a-Lago affair remains to be seen.
What doesn’t remain to be seen is that Biden, in the Year of Our Lord 2018, didn’t have that broad authority as vice president.
Beyond that certain knowledge, the questions of why classified documents traveled from Biden’s vice presidential offices to offices a mile away, when that happened, and why they were never returned remain unanswered.
Sure, it could be sloppiness and ineptitude on the part of Biden and his staff; heaven knows the country has seen enough over the past two years to believe that. (Just look at his disaster of a transportation secretary in a country plagued by supply chain problems.)
But it could be something else entirely. Without knowing what the documents contain, it’s tough to say, but it’s not at all hard to imagine something damning — say, intelligence information on Chinese espionage networks in the United States. (That’s the kind of thing Chinese business partners of Hunter Biden and “the big guy” would eat up, after all.)
Regardless, Americans can count on their legacy media outlets to do their best to obfuscate reality if it appears to be causing too much damage to the leftist cause.
They’re only interested in fighting the “Republican pounce.”
CLARIFICATION, Jan. 24, 2023:The original version of this story stated that during his time as vice president, President Joe Biden lacked the authority to declassify documents. In fact, an executive order issued in December 2009 by then-President Barack Obama extended the authority to classify documents to the vice president. The same order gave the vice president the authority to declassify documents if they were classified by the vice president in the first place.
Because the documents involved in the Biden case have not been publicly described, it’s not known whether Biden’s power to declassify their contents would apply.
A truck-mounted billboard has appeared in Washington, D.C., carrying a three-word message directed at one man — the president of the United States:
“Don’t Run Joe.”
Actually, the full text of the message is six words, if you count the three smaller words in blue type (“MOST DEMOCRATS SAY”), which lead into the main message in large, red letters: “DON’T RUN JOE. “
SPOTTED IN DC TODAY:
A large billboard urging President Biden not to run for re-election has begun appearing in front of the White House and the Capitol this week, as the Don’t Run Joe campaign boosts its presence in the nation’s capital. #DontRunJoepic.twitter.com/DQJnWhZMMF
The billboard is the work of RootsAction, a progressive organization, according to Fox News.
The same organization launched a TV ad campaign with the same “Don’t Run, Joe” message in December in New Hampshire, a key primary state. It has since been seen in other states, according to a group that calls itself The Institute for Public Accuracy.
“Don’t run, Joe.”
Don’t Run Joe television ads have appeared in recent weeks on the statewide ABC affiliate in New Hampshire, and on MSNBC and CNN in Georgia, Michigan and South Carolina.https://t.co/PBE2GlOqFX
“The stepped-up advertising comes in the wake of recent polls by CNBC and CNN showing that nearly 60 percent of Democrats nationwide do not want Biden to be the party nominee in 2024,” the organization reported.
In the TV ad, a series of people who appear to represent a range of ethnic and economic backgrounds each take turns staring urgently at the camera and giving the same message:
“Don’t run, Joe.”
But just to make sure their message reaches its target, RootsAction added the mobile billboard this week.
It has been spotted all around the president’s neighborhood in Washington, D.C., including the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
The group’s “Don’t Run Joe” website has a grim warning about the threat of “a neofascist GOP” in general and “a Republican takeover of the White House” in particular.
The site proclaims, “Bold and inspiring leadership from the Oval Office will be essential” in 2024.
“Unfortunately, President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring,” it continued. “And his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak. With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake.”
RootsAction credited itself and other progressive organizations as having provided the “extraordinary grassroots efforts” that put Biden in the White House.
Their statement complained that Biden’s “moderate” policies “have failed to truly address such pressing concerns as the climate emergency, voting rights, student debt, health care, corporate price-gouging, and bloated military spending in tandem with anemic diplomacy.
“We’re calling on Joe Biden to announce that he’s not running for re-election.”
Their website even has an area for viewers to sign a petition to send their own “Don’t run, Joe” message to Biden.
“A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination,” the group’s statement concluded. “Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”
The House of Representatives is passing a resolution that will allow for the creation of a new congressional committee to investigate the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to undermine the United States and advise on methods of countering it.
House Resolution 11, “Establishing the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,” will create a 16-member, bipartisan committee chaired by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).
The move comes amid increasing reports, including from the Pentagon, that the CCP, which rules China as a single-party state, seeks to undermine and displace the United States as the world’s greatest superpower.
“The threat posed by the CCP is not abstract,” Gallagher said on the House floor before the vote to create the committee. “The CCP’s aggression is not limited to Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, or even Xinjiang, where two successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, have determined that the CCP is engaging in genocide.”
“The Select Committee will expose the CCP’s coordinated, whole-of-society strategy to undermine American leadership and American sovereignty while working a bipartisan basis and with committee’s jurisdiction to identify long overdue common sense approached to counter CCP aggression.”
The move to establish the committee received widespread bipartisan support, and will be staffed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers dedicated to uncovering and countering the malign influence of the CCP.
“One of the greatest worries about the future is that we fall behind communist China,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “The fact of the matter is the danger posed by our dependence on China is dire.”
“Here’s the good news: There is bipartisan consensus that the era of trusting communist China is over.”
“The threat is too great for us to bicker amongst ourselves. The future should be determined by us,” McCarthy said.
The Select Committee was announced on Dec. 8 and, though the committee will not have legislative jurisdiction, will seek to investigate the CCP’s strategy and malign influence and inform Congress of methods to counter such.
The committee garnered additional support from Democrats for its focus on clarifying that malign influence was emanating from the CCP, and not from the Chinese people themselves, who are most frequently those worst victimized by the CCP.
“As an Asian American who represents the only Asian majority district in the continental United States, I would never support a committee that I thought would engage in xenophobia or attacks on the Chinese people,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
“I am pleased that this committee is not directed against China but is directed against the Chinese Communist Party.”
Gallagher previously vowed that the effort would build out a bipartisan front to combat Chinese communist aggression, and dedication to that mission was on display on the House floor ahead of the vote to create the committee, with representatives of both parties acknowledging the threat posed by the CCP.
“The bottom line is communist China is a serious generational threat that we must address before it’s too late,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-La.) on the House floor.
“That’s why the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party is critical.”
“This Select Committee has the ability to do some substantive work,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). “There is a bipartisan group here in this house that for years has been focused on holding China accountable.”
“In theory this is a committee that we should all get behind and I hope that it is successful… I am going to vote for this because I think that it is the right thing to do.”
Officials in Washington state discussed in mid-2021 that there were recorded jumps in post-vaccination infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, according to newly disclosed internal emails.
Fifteen percent of COVID-19 cases and 25 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations from July 1 to July 20, 2021, were of people who had been vaccinated—up from 2 percent between February and June that year, Chris Spitters, the health officer for the Snohomish County Health District, wrote in one of the messages. A fifth of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were of vaccinated individuals.
Spitters also detailed a COVID-19 outbreak in a long-term care facility with more than a dozen so-called breakthrough, or post-vaccination, cases.
Dr. Yuan-Po Tu of The Everett Clinic responded by saying that about 20 percent of people testing positive in the clinic were fully vaccinated.
“ALL 3 vaccines are breaking through,” Tu wrote.
Dr. James Cook, chief medical officer at the Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, told Spitters and Tu that some hospitalized patients were vaccinated and that the majority of workers who were testing positive were fully vaccinated.
“I don’t think any have been hospitalized but I’m not 100% sure,” Cook wrote.
The emails, all sent on July 30, 2021, were obtained and published recently by Ari Hoffman, a radio host on 570 KVI in Seattle and an editor for The Post Millennial. The Epoch Times has reviewed the emails and confirmed their authenticity.
The emails were sent after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing that 74 percent of COVID-19 cases from an outbreak in Massachusetts occurred among fully vaccinated people, undercutting claims from top health officials that the vaccinated wouldn’t get infected. The outbreak investigation prompted the agency to recommend that vaccinated people wear masks indoors, a reversal from about two months prior.
Spitters said in his missive that the outbreak study provided “sobering news” and predicted a “rocky road ahead.”
“We really need to reframe our public education approach to emphasizing vaccination along with the other prevention measures rather than the faded illusion of vaccination instead of other prevention measures. The stellar individual protection afforded by vaccination is no longer, nor is the dream of getting out from under COVID on July 1,” he said, referring to President Joe Biden’s statement that COVID-19 “no longer controls our lives” and that the country had achieved “independence from COVID-19” because of vaccination.
“Effectiveness is still good compared to many other vaccines and higher coverage would still do us a lot of good, but the vaccine effectiveness is clearly no longer what it was just a couple of months ago and folks should manage themselves accordingly.”
Snohomish County officials had said in June 2021 that the county’s COVID-19 metrics were dropping “thanks in large part to the growing number of people getting vaccinated.” Spitters had said that “relief is on the horizon.”
Just weeks later, with metrics rising, the county’s health agency acknowledged that people who were vaccinated could still become infected, but described breakthrough infections as “occasional” and the vaccinated as better off when it came to illness, hospitalization, and death.
“Local public health officials were publicly discussing breakthrough infections in summer 2021, as were many health care professionals, researchers, and scientists. Throughout the COVID-19 response, local public health has consistently been in communication about the best disease prevention measures to keep our communities healthy,” Dr. Dennis Worsham and Dr. James Lewis, now the top two health officials in Snohomish County, told The Epoch Times via email in response to a query about the internal messages.
“It’s not a surprise to have breakthrough infections. Even vaccines that work very well are not a 100 percent guarantee against infection, and we don’t expect them to be. What we continue to see, though, is that fully vaccinated (and now boosted, particularly with the new bivalent booster) individuals are much less likely to require hospitalization or die of COVID-19-related complications.”
In August 2021, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, imposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates for public workers, health care workers, and teachers, claiming that the mandates would be crucial in “defeating this deadly disease.” When the vaccines were first rolled out, experts hoped that they would work well enough to drastically diminish or even eliminate the virus, or to reach herd immunity. But by the end of 2021, with the vaccines performing worse than expected, they were acknowledging that that may not be possible.
Other Emails
In another jurisdiction in Washington state in July 2021, Lewis flagged the rising number of breakthrough infections in a separate email chain.
As an epidemiologist with Seattle and King County’s health department at the time, he told colleagues he’d been speaking with contact tracers who were “hearing stories all day from people who are vaccinated and getting COVID.”
One example, he said, was a party to celebrate vaccination that forced attendees to provide proof of vaccination to enter.
Tracers identified at least nine people who attended the party who had tested positive, Lewis said in an email.
The Facebook listing for the event called it “Operation Inoculation: A Critical Community Vaccination Celebration” and said 258 people registered to go.
“You did it! You’ve survived one of the worst pandemics and presidencies in U.S. History,” the listing stated. “There’s no question we’ve only yet begun to deal with the fallout, but thanks to all of you who have fulfilled your Civic Responsibility to get vaccinated, we’re on the road to recovery, and we think that’s something to celebrate. If you’ve had your shots, join us for a good old-fashioned, party-like-it’s-2016 Burner Party.”
“Sorry for the bad news,” Lewis wrote, adding that the tracers wanted to know what guidance on masking and quarantining they should give to vaccinated people.
Another set of messages released by Hoffman showed Worsham, who was at the time the interim director of the Seattle and King County Public Health departments, reporting a spike in metrics to then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who asked for more information on how many breakthrough cases were happening and what the severity of the disease was like in the vaccinated. Worsham asked health workers for information.
“We do have information and are working on talking points for Jeff—should be ready tomorrow,” Sargis Pogosjans, one of the workers, wrote. “I think the context is extremely important—an increased proportion of fully vaccinated cases should be expected since the vaccine is not 100% effective against infection and now, the population of fully vaccinated residents outnumber unvaccinated residents.”
Worsham replied: “I agree with you Sargis—we are being clear in our conversations that we do expect people who are vaccinated to become infected with COVID. As our population becomes more vaccinated—we do anticipate we will see more given that more people are vaccinated AND that vaccines are not 100% effective in protecting you from the virus.”
The talking points weren’t included in the emails.
Dr. Jeff Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, told The Epoch Times via email that breakthrough infections were discussed nationally in the summer of 2021 and that the county communicated publicly about the trend.
“The fact that breakthrough infections occur does not mean vaccines do not work or provide important protection against serious COVID-19 infections,” he said. “Vaccines provide substantial protection against serious COVID-19 even though protection against transmission is lower, and vaccination plus other layered protections are most effective at preventing transmission.”
Clinical trials haven’t shown that vaccines reduce transmission, and a Pfizer executive recently acknowledged that the prevention of transmission wasn’t studied.
The papers from the CDC and other researchers have also shown that the vaccines provide little protection—the effectiveness even turns negative after time—against infection, and worse shielding against severe illness, since the Omicron variant emerged in late 2021. Observational data indicate that the latest boosters, authorized and recommended in late 2022, protect poorly against infection and solidly against hospitalization.
DUBAI (Reuters)—Iran has sentenced a Belgian national to 40 years in jail and 74 lashes for charges including spying, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, a significant increase on the 28-year sentence Belgium had reported in December.
Aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele was sentenced on four charges, including spying on Iran, cooperating with the United States against Iran, currency smuggling, and money laundering, Tasnim reported, adding that he could appeal the verdict.
Vandecasteele has denied all the charges.
Belgium’s Justice Minister in December said Vandecasteele was in prison “for a fabricated series of crimes” and had been sentenced as retribution for a 20-year jail sentence Belgian courts imposed on an Iranian diplomat in 2021.
Assadolah Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism after a foiled plot to bomb a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), opposed to the Islamic Republic, near Paris in June 2018.
(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Conor Humphries)
Penn Biden Center held classified intelligence memos on Ukraine and Iran
And one of the Hunter Biden scandals was a bribe from which country again? [US Patriot]
The Justice Department is investigating classified documents discovered at Joe Biden’s office at the University of Pennsylvania.
Biden’s attorneys found “a small number” of classified documents at the university in early November, the White House said Monday. According to CNN, the documents include intelligence memos related to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom. The White House said the records, which date from Biden’s stint as vice president, were discovered in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which Biden formed in 2017.
While the White House tried to downplay the discovery, Republicans are asking the Justice Department to shed more light on the probe, especially in light of the special counsel investigation into former president Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents at his residence in Florida.
“President Biden has stated that taking classified documents from the White House is ‘irresponsible,'” said Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. “Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority.”
“We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years,” added Comer.
Republicans are likely to question why the White House waited two months—until after the midterm election—to announce discovery of the documents. Comer and other House Republicans in 2021 asked the University of Pennsylvania for any documents related to foreign funding for the Penn Biden Center, the Washington Free Beaconreported. The Republicans noted a surge in Chinese donations to the University of Pennsylvania in recent years and questioned whether any of the money went to Biden’s think tank.
The Justice Department has also investigated Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China. Biden served as a consultant for a Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma Holdings, while his father was vice president. Joe and Hunter Biden in 2017 shared a Washington, D.C., office with executives from CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.
Republicans have said that the younger Biden’s business dealings posed a national security threat. It is unclear whether Hunter Biden had any involvement in the Penn Biden Center’s operations. But according to emails from his laptop, he attended a meeting in 2016 with his father, his White House aides, and Amy Gutmann, the University of Pennsylvania president who oversaw the launch of the Penn Biden Center.
“The Guttman [sic] mtg is a must attend for me per Dad,” Hunter Biden wrote to his business partner on April 13, 2016.
Biden tapped Gutmann to serve as ambassador to Germany. Several longtime Biden allies worked at the Penn Biden Center. Steve Ricchetti, who serves as Biden’s White House counselor, was managing director of the Penn Biden Center in 2019. Michael Carpenter, who succeeded Ricchetti as managing director, is Biden’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
According to CBS News, Attorney General Merrick Garland assigned John Lausch, the U.S. attorney for Chicago, to determine how the records wound up at the Penn Biden Center. Lausch, a Trump appointee, is in the preliminary stages of the inquiry and could potentially recommend the appointment of a special counsel.
White House attorney Richard Sauber said the documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the archives.”
“Since that discovery, the president’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden administration documents are appropriately in the possession of the archives,” Sauber said.
The White House declined a request for additional information about the documents.
When federal authorities last August discovered classified documents at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, President Joe Biden said he couldn’t understand “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”
“I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods,” the president said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. “Totally irresponsible.”
It turns out Biden was also describing himself: The White House on Monday announced that Biden’s attorneys in November discovered classified documents at the president’s office at the University of Pennsylvania.
It is unclear what information is contained in the records, which date to Biden’s vice presidency, but they include “top-secret files with the ‘sensitive compartmented information’ designation, also known as SCI, which is used for highly sensitive information obtained from intelligence sources,” according to CNN.
In light of the revelations, Republicans are demanding that Biden receive the same legal scrutiny as Trump.
“Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority,” said Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. “We expect the same treatment for President Biden, who has apparently inappropriately maintained classified documents in an insecure setting for several years.”
Resolution commends ‘bravery, courage, and resolve of Iranians risking their safety to speak out against the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses’
The Republican-controlled House is rallying around a resolution that expresses solidarity and support for Iranian protesters who are risking their lives to demonstrate against the hardline regime.
As one of its first legislative efforts on Tuesday, the House is poised to pass the resolution, which commends the “bravery, courage, and resolve of the women and men of Iran demonstrating in more than 133 cities and risking their safety to speak out against the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses,” according to a copy of the measure obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Led by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), the resolution has the initial backing of 34 members, including 22 Democrats. Congressional sources who spoke to the Free Beacon said the resolution was formally introduced on Tuesday and is expected to pass in the coming weeks with broad bipartisan support. The widespread support for the efforts sends a message that Congress is closely watching the protests in Iran and stands with the anti-regime dissidents as they try to topple the hardline government.
“While the Iranian regime continues to violently crack down on peaceful protests and slaughter its own people, Congress must take a clear and unequivocal stance against this brutality,” Tenney told the Free Beacon in a statement. “The United States must support and stand alongside the brave Iranians calling for basic human rights and demanding justice for the murder of Mahsa Amini and countless other innocent Iranians.” Amini is the 22-year-old woman who sparked the protest movement last year after she was murdered by Iran’s morality policy for improperly wearing her head covering.
The measure is a signal the new Congress wants to track and identify human rights abuses carried out by the Iranian regime so it can pursue further sanctions and other measures in response to the Iranian government’s violent crackdown. In addition to codifying public information on the number of Iranians imprisoned and killed as a result of the protests, the measure urges the Biden administration and international allies “to impose human rights sanctions on officials and entities that are responsible for the repression of current protests and involved in violating the human rights of the Iranian people.” It also calls for “transparent accountability for all killings of protesters by Iranian security forces.”
It also includes provisions that could help lay the groundwork for the United States to increase efforts aimed at bolstering internet access for Iranians. As the protests continue, Iranian leaders have attempted to shut down the internet and block messaging apps that are helping protesters coordinate. Congress, along with the U.S. State Department, can help “provide support for VPNs and other alternatives that can be used to bypass attempts by authoritarian governments to censor internet access during times of protest,” according to the measure.
The resolution calls on the Biden administration to “immediately impose, under existing authorities, additional human rights sanctions on officials and entities responsible for the repression of the current protests.”
As the protests stretch into their fourth month, the Iranian government has responded by kidnapping and murdering scores of demonstrators. In the face of this crackdown, protests in more than 133 cities and 130 universities across Iran have included unprecedented public demonstrations, such as “burning hijabs, cutting their hair, and dancing in front of Iranian security forces,” according to the congressional resolution.
Iranian security forces have arrested more than 18,000 protesters and killed more than 450, including 58 children, according to the resolution. “The number of injuries and deaths is likely higher but unobtainable due to internet blackouts,” it notes.
“We must do all we can to support the Iranian people’s right to self-determination, including by holding accountable those responsible for the violent suppression of peaceful protesters,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “The Iranian people must be able to exercise their basic human rights, and we absolutely cannot cut any deals that take pressure off this murderous regime.”
House Republicans, in the first act of their tenure in the majority, voted on Monday to rescind nearly $71 billion of the $80 billion that the previously Democratic-controlled Congress allocated to the IRS through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.
The House passed the bill 221-210 along party lines, though the cancellation of funds will likely not make it past the Democratic majority in the Senate. The bill is part of House Republicans’ campaign promise to “hold the administration accountable.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August, allocated $80 billion to more than double the IRS workforce, which would make the agency larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined. Proponents of the bill argued that better IRS audits and scrutiny would target wealthy corporations that hide their income. According to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, the majority of the new revenue gained from IRS audits will actually come from those making less than $200,000 a year.
President Joe Biden in a statement Monday dismissed the Republicans’ act, calling it “a reckless bill.” Democrats argue that vetoing the funds only aids large corporations and puts more of the burden on middle-class Americans.
“With their first economic legislation of the new Congress, House Republicans are making clear that their top economic priority is to allow the rich and multibillion-dollar corporations to skip out on their taxes, while making life harder for ordinary, middle-class families that pay the taxes they owe,” the White House said.
A Syracuse University study found, however, that in 2022 those who made below $25,000 were at least 550 percent more likely to be audited by the IRS than the average taxpayer.
“The IRS does not need a raise—it needs a reckoning,” Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.), the recently elected chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, said about the bill.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.) said the money Democrats provided to the IRS had one purpose: “to go after small businesses [and] hard-working Americans to try to raise money for … reckless spending that has caused $31 trillion in debt in this nation.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) confirmed on Monday that he had stripped three high-profile Democrats of their committee assignments.
California congressmen Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell will lose their places on the House Intelligence Committee, while anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) will be off the House Foreign Affairs Committee, according to Associated Press reporter Farnoush Amiri.
With the demotions, McCarthy is honoring a promise he made in November.
“Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the public sector,” McCarthy told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo at the time. “Why would we ever give him a security clearance and the secrets to America? So, I will not allow him to be on Intel.”
Schiff, meanwhile, “lied to the American public time and again,” McCarthy said, while Omar has made “anti-Semitic comments.”
Swalwell, known for farting on live television, had a long relationship with a Chinese spy named “Fang Fang,” whom he allowed to place “at least one intern” in his congressional office. Schiff repeatedly lied about having proof of the debunked conspiracy theory that Russia aided Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Omar has repeatedly embraced anti-Semitism, comparing Israel to terrorists and saying that American support for the Jewish state is “all about the Benjamins.”
Omar on Sunday blasted McCarthy’s plan to demote her as an attack on “the first African” on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Africa subcommittee. She has long attempted to deflect any criticism of her as Islamophobic and racist.
‘While the widespread use of this term is not intended to be harmful, we cannot ignore the impact its use has on our employees’
Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services says it will no longer use the words “field worker” in agency communications, citing the term’s “implication for descendants of enslaved Black and Brown individuals.”
The department said “staff and stakeholders have raised concerns” about the term’s allegedly racist connotations, according to a January 4 memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“While the widespread use of this term is not intended to be harmful, we cannot ignore the impact its use has on our employees,” the memo reads. “Establishing shared language is essential to our collective progress.”
The memo came from Demetrius Starling, the director of the department’s Children’s Services Agency, and Dwayne Haywood, the director of the department’s Economic Stability Administration, neither of whom responded to requests for comment. Its letterhead includes Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.), who in 2021 mandated “implicit bias training” for all health professionals in the state.
The government of Michigan is not the only progressive body to put “field” out to pasture. On Monday, the University of Southern California’s school of social work announced that it had removed the term from its curriculum, citing the need to “reject white supremacy.”
“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant,” an email from the university’s education department said. “Phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”
Formerly known as the “field education department,” the school’s education program will now be called the “practicum education department.”
The changes reflect the linguistic churn of “woke” progressivism, in which words deemed insensitive or harmful are purged from bureaucratic vocabularies. That churn has been especially turbulent on college campuses: In 2016, Yale University stopped referring to the heads of its residential colleges as “masters,” claiming the term was “associated with the ownership of slaves.” And in December, Stanford University compiled a list of “harmful phrases”, including “brown bag” and “blackballed,” that should be removed from university websites.
“Blackballed,” the guide said, “assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.” Other proscribed terms included “white paper,” “blind study,” “cakewalk,” “grandfather,” and “American.”
Stanford issued a mea culpa for the guide 48 hours after the Free Beacon and Wall Street Journal reported on it, saying the use of “American” is “absolutely welcomed” at the university.
The revision of language extends to the Biden administration. The White House’s 2022 budget proposal used the term “birthing people” instead of mothers, and diversity trainings for the U.S. Army now reference a soldier who wants to discuss “his newly confirmed pregnancy.”
In 2021, Joe Biden made headlines when he discussed vaccine hesitancy amongst “Latinx,” a gender-neutral term that has also been used by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Climate change and mental health funding on chopping block in 2023
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) revealed Tuesday that the state faces a $22.5 billion deficit in the coming fiscal year, a far cry from last year’s $98 billion surplus.
Newsom announced the deficit in a speech unveiling his proposed 2023-24 budget, which includes $297 billion in spending proposals, an $11 billion decrease from last year. The Democrat acknowledged that the state is “in a very volatile moment … of uncertainty,” which he noted could worsen over the coming months.
The governor dismissed the “old narratives” that Democrats are “profligate” and incapable of “managing budgets,” instead laying the blame on California’s dwindling tax base, which is now roughly half of what it was last year.
It was an atypical speech for Newson, who has a history of dispensing politically advantageous cash. Newsom sent $600 stimulus checks to each Californian, which landed in mailboxes shortly before a 2021 vote to recall him from office. Last year, the governor spent the $100 billion surplus on temporary spending for homelessness, climate, mental health, and other programs.
Now, just five days into his second term, Newsom is singing a different tune. The governor announced a strategy of spending “delays,” including on mental health, preschool “inclusion” grants, climate programs, and University of California capital investment. His budget also proposes using federal dollars to make up for reductions to the state’s much-touted climate initiatives.
California public schools, where students have performed poorly since the pandemic closures, will see a funding boost. Newsom is also maintaining billions in homelessness spending and won’t delay plans to roll out health coverage for illegal immigrants.
“People are dying on the streets all across the state,” he said. “The encampments, we’ve got to clean them up, we’ve got to take responsibility, more accountability, and more transparency. There’s never been more resources, ever, period, full stop, including with this budget.” The governor pledged not to raise taxes to pay for these programs or cover the deficit.
Newsom will revise his proposed budget in May, before sending it to the state legislature for approval. Speaking Tuesday, he pledged not to pull from the state’s rainy day fund in the interim, noting that the economic forecast could worsen in the meantime. California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has projected a major economic hit if a recession sets in this year.
Newsom, who is considered to be weighing a 2024 presidential run, managed to work some political attacks into the otherwise somber speech, slamming Republican leaders’ “obsessiveness” with California and boasting that the state has the “moral authority” to push back on such criticisms.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Stacey Abrams’s Fair Fight Action to pay over $200,000 to reimburse the state of Georgia for legal fees related to a spurious lawsuit that claimed Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) stole the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Abrams founded the group after losing to then-secretary of state Kemp, who she claimed used his position to disenfranchise minority voters in the lead-up to the election. A federal judge in late September ruled against Fair Fight Action on all counts following a four-year legal battle, saying the group provided no direct evidence that Georgia voters struggled to vote in the election.
Fair Fight Action must repay $192,628.85 in transcription fees and $38,674.86 in copying costs that Georgia incurred in defending itself against the group’s lawsuit, according to a bill of costs submitted Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger (R.) hailed the order as a win for the state’s taxpayers and voters.
“Stacey Abrams’s voter suppression claims were false. It has never been easier to vote and harder to cheat in the state of Georgia,” Raffensberger said in a statement. “This is a start, but I think Stacey Abrams should pay back the millions of taxpayer dollars the state was forced to spend to disprove her false claims.”
Fair Fight Action’s finances came under scrutiny in October after Politicorevealed the group doled out $9.4 million in legal fees to a law firm run by Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a close friend of Abrams and the chairwoman of her failed 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial bids. The group spent more than $25 million on legal fees in 2019 and 2020, the bulk of which went toward its failed Georgia lawsuit.
Ethics watchdogs said that Fair Fight Action spent a “shocking” amount on the case and that the close relationship between Abrams and Lawrence-Hardy raises conflict-of-interest concerns.
“Fair Fight Action ought to explain why this lawsuit cost so much,” said Washington University in St. Louis legal ethics professor Kathleen Clark. “I think there are significant questions about this choice of firm and just why this lawsuit was so much more expensive.”
Fair Fight Action isn’t the only Abrams-linked group accused of financial impropriety.
The New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded in 2013, dismissed half its leadership team in late October because of a lack of funds after raising nearly $25 million in 2020. A former senior executive at the New Georgia Project told the Washington Free Beacon that the group’s chief financial officer was fired in June 2022 after saying he couldn’t do his job without violating the law.
The New Georgia Project is nearly two months late in filing its IRS Form 990 financial disclosure, which would shed light on its financial activities in 2021. The group’s charitable solicitation license has expired in at least 17 states due to its lack of required financial transparency, and the liberal states of Washington and Colorado have ordered the charity to cease all in-state fundraising activities.
Abrams’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign also squandered its $113 million fundraising haul. Her campaign and leadership committee can’t afford to pay its employees, has less than $100,000 cash on hand, and owes a combined $1.42 million in debt, campaign finance reports released Monday show. The Abrams campaign exhausted its funds on frivolities such as rent for a TikTok “hype house” in Atlanta and a “swag truck” to distribute Abrams gear to young voters.
Abrams on Monday teased a third run for public office, telling talk show host Drew Barrymore, “I will likely run again.”
Fair Fight Action did not return a request for comment.
As the university defends its affirmative action program before the Supreme Court, it is not shying away from discriminatory programs
Ever since it was dragged before the Supreme Court over its affirmative action policies, Harvard University has insisted that it does not discriminate based on race. But the school appears to be running an internship that prohibits whites from applying.
McLean Hospital, which describes itself as the “largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School,” has since 2021 hosted a paid research program for “Black, Indigenous, and underrepresented people of color,” according to the hospital’s website. The 10-week internship offers participants a $7,000 stipend and places them in prestigious labs.
The internship may ramp up legal scrutiny on America’s oldest Ivy, which, alongside the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, is battling a high-profile lawsuit from Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit opposed to affirmative action.
That scrutiny hasn’t stopped either school from promoting discriminatory programs: UNC Chapel Hill has at least five scholarships, fellowships, and other initiatives that are available only to minorities; a sixth initiative, exclusively for “BIPOC” students, was made available to all races following a discrimination complaint.
Lawyers say that these programs violate civil rights law and demonstrate just how committed universities are to racial preferences.
“UNC and Harvard have been doubling down on Ibram Kendi-style ‘you have to be racist to be anti-racist’ programming,” said Ilya Shapiro, the director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. “Not only are these clear-cut legal violations, but it’s not a good look as the Supreme Court scrutinizes the use of racial preferences in admissions.”
The McLean internship likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866—now codified as section 1981 in the United States legal code—which bans race discrimination in contracting, according to Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, and Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project. It may also violate Title VI, which bans race discrimination by federally funded entities, Morenoff said.
Though Harvard states on its website that it “does not own or operate” its teaching hospitals, it does appear to be operating this program. The internship’s director, Oluwarotimi Folorunso, and its principal investigator, Elena Chartoff, both hold posts at Harvard Medical School, and McLean’s website directs questions about the program to a Harvard.edu email address.
“At a minimum, it looks like Harvard is facilitating McLean’s race-based system,” Berry said. The fact that Harvard employees run the program, he added, “increases the likelihood Harvard would be liable alongside McLean” in the event of a lawsuit.
Harvard and McLean did not respond to requests for comment.
Though universities are currently allowed to use race as a “plus factor” in admissions, that could soon change. Students for Fair Admissions is asking the Supreme Court to outlaw affirmative action entirely, arguing that it violates Title VI and—when done by public universities—the 14th Amendment as well.
The Court’s conservative justices have repeatedly expressed sympathy for that argument. A ruling in the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, is expected later this year.
Classified docs revive concerns of national security risks at UPenn Biden Center
After classified documents were found stored in a closet at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center, a watchdog group is calling for the university to disclose whether any of the foreign donations it was given were channeled into the think tank.
The calls from the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) come amid reports that the Department of Justice is investigating how Biden’s classified documents ended up at the institute and could revive congressional probes into national security risks posed by the Penn Biden Center, the policy institute launched by Biden and the University of Pennsylvania in 2017.
Foreign donations to the University of Pennsylvania more than tripled in the two years after the think tank opened, with most of the $61 million coming from China, the Washington Free Beaconreported in 2021. Republican lawmakers and foreign policy officials have warned about the Chinese government’s influence-buying operations on college campuses, while the Department of Justice has been cracking down on Chinese espionage at American universities.
Tom Anderson, director of the Public Integrity Project at the NLPC, said UPenn has shown an “unwillingness to disclose what appears to be millions of dollars of foreign donations” raised following the creation of the Penn Biden Center, which may have been channeled into Biden’s think tank.
The funding “has potentially opened the door to national security issues related to the University providing undocumented access to what was then future high-level officials within the Biden administration and State Department,” Anderson told the Free Beacon.
Stephen MacCarthy, a spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania, dismissed the notion of any link between the Penn Biden Center and the foreign donations to UPenn, which surged after the think tank launched. “One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds,” he told the Free Beacon on Tuesday.
The Penn Biden Center “has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center.” MacCarthy said the think tank has only unsolicited earmarked gifts from two donors, “which combined total $1,100.”
The NLPC says foreign donations to UPenn raise national security concerns, noting that the Penn Biden Center served as a national-security-council-in-waiting for the Biden administration and employed numerous Biden aides who now hold top foreign policy and defense positions under his presidency.
One of these officials is Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who served as the Penn Biden Center’s director from 2017 to 2019 and received more than $79,000 in salary, according to his financial-disclosure records. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Michael Carpenter, and U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations Jeffrey Prescott also worked at the Penn Biden Center. Biden appointed UPenn’s longtime former president, Amy Gutmann, as ambassador to Germany last year.
News of the Department of Justice’s probe into Biden’s classified records could reignite scrutiny of UPenn on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have promised to investigate foreign influence in the Biden administration. The classified material from Biden’s vice presidency was reportedly found in a closet and includes records related to Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom, according to CNN.
House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer previously raised questions about UPenn’s foreign funding, sending letters to the university requesting records and information about the donations in 2020 and 2021. On Tuesday, Comer criticized Biden for “inappropriately maintain[ing] classified documents in an insecure setting for several years.”
The death of a former Chinese deputy cultural minister amid the country’s COVID explosion would have attracted little public attention if not for a short-lived obituary.
With his “sharp mind and a booming voice,” the “spry” Gao Zhanxiang didn’t “at all resemble a patient” before the COVID surge, wrote Zhu Yongxin, deputy secretary general of the 12th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Party’s top political advisory body. “I never imagined that he would leave us so soon.”
But in his condolences, Zhu might have revealed a little more than he desired. The 87-year-old, as he noted, had “replaced many organs in his body” as he “tenaciously fought with illness,” to the point that the former official once joked that “many components are not his own anymore.”
The article caused a stir on Chinese social media Weibo despite its swift deletion. Keen-eyed observers produced copies before censors got to work, circulating them in disbelief over Gao’s alleged extensive organ transplant history and the casual way in which Zhu had mentioned it.
It’s widely known that senior Chinese Communist Party officials enjoy a raft of privileges from top-tier medical treatment to special schools for their children. But the apparent ease with which Gao was able to access multiple matching organs, each of which could cost a lifetime’s earnings for a regular Chinese citizen, raises troubling questions in a country already scrutinized for the regime’s organ transplant abuses.
“Minister Gao, when living, you changed so many organs, where did they all come from? And how many more high officials are there who can effortlessly change their failed organs?” one person commented online.
“Those ‘parts’ that he got so easily, who would have lost them and how?” asked another.
Falun Dafa parade in Manhattan, New York City, on May 16, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
State-Led Abuse
A latecomer to the field, China has seen a boom in the organ transplant industry over the past two decades despite a low number of voluntary donors. The regime has claimed that since 2015, it has relied exclusively on a voluntary organ donation system after it said that it stopped using organs from death-row prisoners.
But the numbers don’t add up.
A 2019 study published in the scientific journal BMC Medical Ethics concluded that the figures from official Chinese donation datasets conform “almost precisely to a mathematical formula,” a pattern not observed in any of the 50 other countries analyzed—suggesting that the figures are fake.
An investigation by the London-based tribunal that year also found the regime culpable of killing prisoners of conscience—primarily adherents of the persecuted faith Falun Gong—and selling their organs for prodigious profits on an industrial scale, with no evidence showing that the practice has stopped.
The former deputy cultural minister wasn’t the only official who’d had organs replaced. Jin Renqing, China’s finance minister from 2003 to 2007, underwent a heart transplant surgery due to heart disease at the age of 68. The heart came from a 28-year-old patient, a friend revealed in a 2021 obituary after Jin’s death at 77 due to an apartment fire. Jin, he said, had continued to receive ministerial benefits after leaving the ministry in 2007, including a complimentary car and driver.
“Given that China’s transplant system is based on state-organized forced organ harvesting, it is not surprising if party officials have access to transplants on-demand or multiple transplants on-demand,” Dr. Torsten Trey, founder and executive director of medical ethics group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Trey said that he’s equally unsurprised to hear that Party officials “receive multiple transplants of essential, solid organs like heart, liver, kidneys, or under COVID even lungs.”
Amid mounting international concerns about the abuse, a growing number of nations, including Canada, the UK, Belgium, Israel, Italy, and Spain, have passed measures curbing organ transplant tourism.
Falun Gong practitioners holding banners march to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa to celebrate the victory of the passing of Bill S-223 to combat forced organ harvesting, on Dec. 14, 2022. (Jian Ren/The Epoch Times)
China’s organ transplant industry has continued to grow even amid the pandemic. In 2021, the country performed 50 percent more lung transplant surgeries than the previous year, even when the world at large was seeing at least a 10 percent drop, Chen Jingyu, who oversees quality control on China’s lung transplantations, told state media in December 2022.
During the pandemic, Chinese hospitals were able to maintain the extremely short waiting times for organ transplants, which the tribunal and investigators note is indicative of a vast organ supply made up of unconsenting prisoners of conscience.
“In the faster scenario, there’ll be a suitable one in a week or 10 days; if slower, he might have to wait for one or two months,” a nurse from a hospital in China’s Hangzhou city told undercover investigators from in April 2020, when asked how soon they could find an organ match. The phone call was reported by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, a New York-based group that has been tracking China’s forced organ harvesting practices.
‘150-Year Lifespan’
The longevity of senior Party members has long been a subject of curiosity in China. The topic has made media headlines in the past, although the articles tended to place an emphasis on their lifestyle habits.
However, a one-minute ad dating back to 2019 that went viral on Chinese social media WeChat suggests a more sinister story.
Reportedly released by China’s largest comprehensive military hospital, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, the clip boasted a first-rate health system to dramatically extend the lifespans of top Chinese leaders.
“A 150-year lifespan project to combat death,” declared the ad, which was taken down within a day by censors who claimed the video was fake.
The project, the ad asserted, combines Chinese wellness concepts and Western medical technologies. Citing 2008 data, the ad said that the project has seen “significant results”—Chinese leaders on average lived to the age of 88, “far surpassing” their Western counterparts from the same period. The average Chinese life expectancy in 2009 was 72; by 2022, it had reached 78.2, according to official statistics.
“Restoring organ functions” is one of the six key focuses of the program.
The Epoch Times couldn’t independently verify the ad’s authenticity, but the program has been repeatedly cited in Chinese state media reports. The hospital, known as the go-to medical facility for Party leaders, is home to a major liver transplant center and takes care of liver transplant surgeries of high-level officials.
But greater longevity has its limits—even with multiple transplants, according to Trey. As the virus rages in China, “it is probably fair to say that it does not give better protection against the pandemic,” he said.
“What is ethically most concerning is that the one Party rule creates its own rule of exploitation (forced organ harvesting) and then tries to benefit from it. It is a barbaric practice to kill living prisoners of conscience to get their organs so as to increase one’s own longevity,” the advocate added.
“It renders medicine absurd and is a brazen contempt of God’s creation.”
This article has been updated with additional details about Chinese officials receiving transplant surgeries.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has demanded that state educational authorities report how much they spend on critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the state’s higher education system.
In a Dec. 28 memo, the governor’s office gave state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz and Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the state university system, until Jan. 13 to produce the information.
The requested documents should “provide a comprehensive list of all staff, programs, and campus activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory,” Chris Spencer, the governor’s director of policy and budget, wrote in the directive.
Officials need to describe each program, list all the full- and part-time positions associated with them, and report each program’s total funding and the amount provided by the state.
Spencer referenced the upcoming legislative session in Florida and DeSantis’ priority to provide “a cost-effective higher education system that delivers high-quality service to Floridians to best prepare them for employment.”
The iconic Century Tower on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Fla. on July 30, 2022. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)
“I can’t offer more on this topic at the moment,” Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’s press secretary, wrote in an email, responding to a query whether the move was prompted by an Epoch Times story published Dec. 24, 2022.
In it, Florida students claimed conservative viewpoints, and those expressing them, were often targeted in the state’s public university classrooms.
“All I can say for now is that we are currently fact-finding; stay tuned,” Griffin wrote.
‘Where Woke Goes to Die’
In April 2022, DeSantis signed the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees” Act, also known as the Stop WOKE Act. The law prohibits discriminatory classroom instruction, such as CRT. And it prohibits employers from forcing workers to attend antiracism and CRT training.
The law bans instruction that implies someone is responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin. The measure also allows Floridians to sue if they believe their school or workplace has violated the law.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, issued a preliminary injunction against the law in November after several Florida students and professors sued. The DeSantis administration is appealing the decision.
Students at Florida State University protest an appearance on campus of the communist political activist and academic Angela Davis, in Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 16, 2018. (Courtesy of FSU College Republicans)
In November 2022, the governor’s office said that Florida was first for best value in tuition and fees, and first overall for higher education, citing U.S. Department of Education Statistics for the 2018-2019 school year. The state budgeted about $4 billion last year for higher education.
But DeSantis, who often says Florida is “where woke goes to die,” signaled in his inaugural address on Jan. 3 that he is not done reforming higher education in Florida.
“We must ensure schools systems are responsive to parents and to students, not partisan interest groups, and we must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology,” he said, after being sworn in to a second four-year term as Florida’s governor.
In another move showing he’s serious on the subject, DeSantis named CRT-proponent Chris Rufo to the board of trustees of the state’s New College on Jan. 6. Rufo, a documentary filmmaker and Manhattan Institute fellow, spoke at the Florida press conference where DeSantis signed the Stop WOKE Act into law.
Florida’s Stop WOKE Act originated as a response to the spread of CRT and other social justice concepts widely promoted by works such as The New York Times 1619 Project, which paints America as a country founded on slavery and characterizes the nation’s Founding Fathers as racists.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs the Stop WOKE Act in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., on April 22, 2022. (The Florida Channel/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
While the 1619 Project has been rejected by many academics, historians, and politicians, its teachings have been embraced just as vigorously by many liberals and progressives. Many have held it up as a model of how history should be taught to children and college students.
Florida universities actively promote CRT, according to the Critical Race Training in Education database maintained by the Legal Insurrection Foundation. The database lists CRT programs at universities and schools nationwide.
‘A Positive Development’
In its Dec 24, 2022, report, The Epoch Times documented experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university. In the article “Students Speak Out on Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Anti-American Culture at Florida University,” the young people, who spoke anonymously, described their frustration with a hostile environment for conservatives on campus. They described feeling uncomfortable, at best, and threatened, at worst.
Their accounts describe a campus culture focused on race and social justice, and hostile to conservative or Christian views. They asked to use pseudonyms to protect their identity, fearing retaliation for speaking publicly.
One of those students, identified as Robert, was encouraged to learn that DeSantis was taking action by requesting information about the funding of university programs steeped in racial bias.
In the Dec. 24 article, Robert, a Christian law student, told The Epoch Times he’d been reported to the FBI as “an extremist” for expressing conservative views. FBI agents visited his home and questioned him for more than an hour about the claims. He never learned the name of his accuser.
“I was excited by that,” Robert said, referring to the Dec. 28 demand from DeSantis for information about programs involving DEI and CRT at Florida universities. “It’s definitely a positive development, and I think The Epoch Times brought it to light.”
A journalism student, who asked to be identified only as Mia, said she was happy to see DeSantis take CRT seriously.
A Florida university student, who asked to be identified only as Mia, sits with her study Bible at home on Christmas break on Dec. 22, 2022. Expressing Christian views on campus draws scorn from professors, who openly talk about their “hate for Christians,” she told The Epoch Times. (Courtesy of Mia)
“I’m glad to see they are looking into it,” she said, wondering aloud if it was in response to the news coverage.
The Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits discrimination based on “antiracism” in the classroom and at the workplace, is a start, she said. But she doesn’t think it’s being enforced.
“I think somebody described it as toothless, which I would agree with,” Mia said.
The culture on campus remains hostile to conservative students. And if anything, CRT has only worsened during her time in school, she said.
“You see it every day on campus. That kind of thing is alive and well.”
Rodrigues, the state university system chancellor, was contacted in December by The Epoch Times and asked to comment on the students’ concerns. Through a representative, he declined comment, citing the litigation, while noting that the university system has regulations ready for implementing the legislation.
Sunshine Needed
William Jacobson, a conservative Cornell law professor and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, said the Florida universities shouldn’t have a problem providing the financial information the governor’s office wants.
William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor, started a database of universities engaged in Critical Race Theory. (Photo courtesy of Jacobson)
“I would simply say it’s the Sunshine State, and there should be sunshine on what these expenses are,” he told The Epoch Times.
It’s essential to understand and quantify the administrative costs of various DEI programming, he said.
“Only once you understand the scope of the issue can you start to understand whether anything needs to be done.”
University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett laughed on Jan. 5 as he told The Epoch Times he’d coincidentally just been working on his department’s required report on the matter. He’s the assistant director of the UCF School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs. With the department head on leave, the reporting job fell to him.
He said he had not found much CRT or DEI spending in the school. But he acknowledged that more spending might be found at the university’s administrative level, where employees work full-time or part-time on CRT or DEI.
“They have certainly pushed being more inclusive and diverse because American society has become more diverse over the last 30 years. We want to make sure all students feel welcome at UCF,” Jewett said.
DeSantis, widely seen as a presidential aspirant in 2024, is showing national leadership on the issue, Jewett said.
“My take is that frequently Gov. DeSantis has been a leader in this area. What he does finds itself repeated in other states. He’s not always the first to do something. But he’s gotten a national reputation. And even if he’s not the first, he gets a lot of attention. He has a knack for getting that media attention, and he’s sometimes clever framing an issue.”
On how it might affect a presidential race if DeSantis runs, Jewett said, “He’s reinforcing his image as a conservative fighter. He’s somebody who’s not just talking about things they don’t like, but actually trying to do something about them. That has endeared him to many conservatives; not only in Florida, but across the country.”
DeSantis raised over $200 million in the last election cycle.
Whether DeSantis will seek the Republican nomination is one of the biggest political questions of the next presidential election cycle. Former President Donald Trump has already declared his candidacy. But polls show DeSantis to be a clear favorite after Trump, Jewett said, and in some polls even leading Trump.
University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett. (Courtesy of Aubrey Jewett.)
Addressing the issue of CRT and DEI in the budget can be effective, Jewett said.
One of his academic mentors used to say that “the budget of any organization is the most important public policy document you can have,” Jewett recalled. “It’s where you put dollar amounts to your goals and your values.”
Financial reports may not uncover all CRT and DEI efforts on Florida campuses, such as how much time professors devote to promoting those viewpoints in the classroom, how aggressively they do it, or how much they grade students on it, Jewett said.
But the budgetary inquiry surely will have an impact, he said. Universities know they’re being examined and that their funding might be impacted.
“If University X is spending $10 million on this kind of initiative, [the state can decide] they need $10 million less. The underlying potential for pushback is there.”
Jewett observed that DeSantis is opening another front, a financial one, in a battle already being waged in court, with an injunction in effect. DeSantis may not win the latter battle, Jewett said.
Some may have called the Stop WOKE Act toothless, but that’s only because the injunction has stopped it from being applied, Jewett said.
The law might face an uphill court battle on the point of impinging on professors’ free speech, he said. The DeSantis Administration has argued that professors don’t necessarily have “free speech,” because while teaching, the Florida government “owns” their speech. That’s because the government is paying for that speech.
“Anything that provides governmental oversight of university spending on DEI and CRT programs and personnel is a welcome change from the status quo,” retired Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain, now a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
Carol Swain, conservative author and commentator. (Photo courtesy of Carol Swain)
“Greater scrutiny of the programs could result in some curtailment of the most egregious ones. It is unlikely, however, to prevent individual faculty members from pursuing ideological agendas that work to the disadvantage of conservative students and faculty.
“Filing civil rights complaints might be the best avenue for students to pursue when they find their rights infringed by DEI advocates who engage in racial or gender discrimination. Enforcement of state and federal anti-discrimination and non-bias laws should protect conservative students who are victimized because of their race, religion, or gender.”
Not a New Problem for Conservatives
“Conservative students have long complained about ideological bias against conservative viewpoints in the classroom,” said political scientist Susan MacManus, professor emerita at the University of South Florida. “It’s a continuation of the CRT debate in [grades] K through 12, now extended to higher education. They will show how they’re spending the money.”
It’s worse in some disciplines—such as the humanities and liberal arts—than in is in others, such as the hard sciences, she said.
“One thing that is likely to be targeted [in this year’s budget cycle in Florida] is the ideological diversity of speakers brought to college campuses [with tax dollars]. It’s hard for conservative students to get speakers without a lot of trouble.”
One thing that did apparently get done before the injunction went into effect was a survey of students on whether they perceived bias in the classrooms, MacManus said. She has yet to see formal results but heard that, at the outset, the response rate to the survey was low, and the researchers hadn’t found much, she said.
Author and political scientist Susan A. MacManus is professor emerita at the University of South Florida’s Department of Government and International Affairs and the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies. (Courtesy of USF)
While defunding CRT is a positive step, Robert, the law student, said the governor needs to go further. He should start by replacing professors who follow Marxist-based doctrine with those who don’t, he said.
To truly make the college culture less hostile to Christian students or to those who speak in favor of preserving gun rights under the Second Amendment, he thinks universities need to hire conservative professors—if they can find them.
“From what I can tell in the culture is that the conservatives just accept that academics [and] colleges are owned by the leftists,” he said. “So they don’t really try to change that.”
Because of that belief, a lot of conservatives who might want to become professors don’t even try, he said.
“But then, another part is, it’s very obvious that whether it be through student admissions, or hirings, or grades, even, that the leftists in the schools prefer their fellow leftists and that they definitely have favoritism towards the people who share their political beliefs,” he said.
The hiring process for professors needs to become a level playing field, he said.
Right now, if a conservative professor interviewing for a teaching position discloses he was against wearing masks or doesn’t believe the Constitution is a living document, he wouldn’t be hired, Robert said.
Mia, the journalism student, questioned if restructuring money for DEI programs or anything labeled CRT would get to the root of the problem.
She pointed to a required journalism class in which her professor lauded the teachings of Karl Marx and emphatically spoke about “white privilege” and “systemic racism” as fact. She said students’ grades suffered if they wrote about views contrary to the professor’s anti-white, anti-establishment positions.
“I’m not sure she ever said the words Critical Race Theory, but she was teaching the ideas of Critical Race Theory,” Mia said. “So that won’t be uncovered by this” inquiry by DeSantis.
But she hopes the inquiry might cut back on programs and events that teach CRT and gender theory on Florida campuses.
Florida Democratic Party (FDP) Chairperson Manny Diaz on Jan. 9 resigned from office, calling the defeats in the 2022 election cycle “the final nail in the coffin.”
“After much reflection, I regret to inform you that I have chosen to retire as FDP Chair, effective immediately,” Diaz wrote in a letter to fellow Democrats. “It has been a pleasure and honor to work with you, and, rest assured, I will continue to fight with you to get Democrats elected.”
Diaz, who was mayor of Miami from 2001 to 2009, was elected as the chair of the Florida Democratic Party in January 2021, following disappointing results in the 2020 general elections. His departure comes after Republicans swept every statewide race on the 2022 ballot.
In the race for governor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-election by a margin of 19 percentage points over Democratic challenger Charlie Christ, even winning historically Democrat strongholds such as Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County.
Republicans also secured a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature following the November elections, with 85 seats in the 120-member House and 28 seats in the 40-member Senate.
Florida is also sending more Republicans in its congressional delegation to Congress after the midterms, after sweeping all five competitive House races. The makeup of the delegation is now a 20-8 Republican majority, up from a 16-11 Republican lead after the 2020 elections.
Under Diaz, Florida Republicans have surpassed Democrats in voter registration.
Letter
In his letter, Diaz said that Florida Democratic Party “has been rendered practically irrelevant to the election of Democrats,” adding that he had trouble securing funding, finding volunteers, and delivering effective messaging.
“We cannot win elections if we continue to rely on voter registration to drive turnout, build field operations only around elections, and expect to get our vote out without engaging voters where they live,” he wrote.
“During my tenure, I hoped to address these issues, and build a united party without silos, focused exclusively on our purpose—to elect Democrats,” he added. “Instead, I found obstacles to securing the resources and a longstanding, systemic and deeply entrenched culture resistant to change; one where individual agendas are more important than team; where self-interest dominates and bureaucracies focus on self-preservation.”
He also blamed Washington for the recent election losses.
“Washington continues to believe they are better equipped to determine our campaign strategy, target universe, messaging, staff hiring and firing decisions,” Diaz wrote.
He added, “My ‘choice’ to hire coordinated staff was no choice; my decision to replace underperforming staff midway through the campaign was rejected. Coordinated staff made it clear; they worked for Washington, not the FDP.”
Eventually, he said, “a broken, unsustainable system was exposed.”
“Maybe it is not always about trying to fix something that is broken. Maybe it is about starting over and creating something better,” he added. “I wish my successor Godspeed.”
Resignation Calls
After the Nov. 8 elections, there were multiple calls for Diaz to resign.
The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida issued a statement on Nov. 9 calling for Diaz’s immediate resignation.
“Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz, who two years ago promised everything, delivered on none of it. The results of this election are direct evidence of a vacuum in leadership that can not be allowed to continue,” the group wrote.
It added, “Chair Diaz never understood the electorate, the timely need for outreach, registration, and community participation. There was no outreach plan for FDP’s most reliable voters, including minorities, youth, and progressives.”
“If Chair Diaz has any decency, he will step down and let us build a state party that works for all Floridians,” the group concluded.
Days later, Diaz took to Facebook to say he intended to stay on in the position.
“I joined you in this mission to reverse the trends of the past 10-20 years. I am still committed to that end and refuse to give up when the going gets tough. That is not in my nature,” Diaz wrote. “I will continue to fight alongside you for the next two years and beyond.”
Thomas Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee member from Florida who has been calling for Diaz to resign, welcomed Diaz’s decision to step down.
“FL Dems can turn things around but it will take a long term plan, cohesive economic messaging that appeals to working people, year round voter registration, permanent offices offering tangible services to community members and electing down-ballot candidates to build a bench,” Kennedy wrote on Twitter on Jan. 9.
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, who represents District 42 in the Florida House, responded to Diaz’s resignation with some words of encouragement for her Twitter followers.
“I just want to remind everyone that we are each other’s keeper, & need to rebuild what it means to be a Democrat in Florida from the ground up,” she wrote.
Documents with classified markings were found inside an institution at which President Joe Biden worked before he took office, according to a lawyer for the president.
The classified documents were discovered in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center, Richard Sauber, the lawyer, said in a statement released by the White House.
The documents were discovered on Nov. 2, 2022, according to Sauber, days before the midterm election. Sauber did not disclose the finding until Jan. 9, 2023.
White House lawyers alerted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on the day of the discovery and NARA took possession of the materials the following morning, Sauber said.
The Penn Biden Center is a set of offices in Washington. It is part of the University of Pennsylvania. Biden worked at the center after the Trump administration took office until Biden started campaigning for the 2020 election.
The FBI and NARA declined to comment. The Penn Biden Center and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. An automated message from the number the Department of Justice lists for media queries directed reporters to submit emails, and an email was not returned.
Biden ignored a reporter who asked about the documents while in Mexico City on Monday.
Sauber said the classified documents were discovered by attorneys for Biden and were not subject to a request or inquiry by NARA.
“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” he said.
Materials with classified markings were found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, leading to FBI agents executing a search warrant at the rest in the fall of 2022.
U.S. lawyers have said they believe Trump violated multiple laws, including one governing the handling of defense materials.
Trump has said he declassified the materials before he left office.
Trump has not been charged as of yet.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to take over the investigation. Smith is also overseeing the probe into unlawful interference with the transfer of power following the 2020 election or the certification of the Electoral College vote, which took place after it was interrupted when rioters breached the U.S. Capitol.
Biden has criticized Trump for holding records with classified markings.
“How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible … totally irresponsible,” Biden said in a “60 Minutes” interview shortly after the FBI raid.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence in Washington on June 8, 2022. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)
‘Expect the Same Treatment’
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, pointed to the remarks.
“Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Justice and National Archives have made compliance with the Presidential Records Act a top priority,” Comer said in a statement. “We expect the same treatment for President Biden.”
“Biden stole classified documents and stored them at his think tank while he was VP. The VP does not have any authority to declassify classified documents,” added Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).
Republicans hold a majority in the House after a successful midterm election. That means the party has the ability to issue subpoenas and other powers only the majority enjoys.
Comers and other top Republicans have already vowed to investigate Biden and his family members, including his son Hunter Biden, over issues such as business deals conducted when Biden was vice president.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that attorneys for Biden “appear to have taken immediate and proper action to notify the National Archives about their discovery of a small handful of classified documents so they could be returned to federal government custody. ”
“I have confidence that the Attorney General took the appropriate steps to ensure the careful review of the circumstances surrounding the possession and discovery of these documents and make an impartial decision about any further action that may be needed,” he added.
Trump shared a news story on the discovery of the documents on his Truth Social platform.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump wrote.
Biden became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017 and “led” the Penn Biden Center, according to a university webpage. Biden also had an office on the university’s campus in Philadelphia.
Biden was paid more than $900,000 by the university from 2017 to 2019, including $405,368 in 2018, according to financial disclosures the president released. Biden is currently on unpaid leave, which he started when he announced he was running for president in April 2019.
Biden previously received an honorary degree from the school, and three family members, including his daughter Ashley Biden, graduated from the university. Biden has a home in Delaware and regularly visits the school.
Biden told reporters in August 2022 that he keeps classified documents secure.
“I have, in my home, a cabined-off space that is completely secure. I’m taking home with me today today’s [presidential briefing]. It’s locked. I have a person with me—military with me. I read it, I lock it back up, and give it to the military,” he said.
When asked if a president should take classified documents home, Biden said, “It depends on the document, and it depends on how secure the room is.”
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.
Sauber said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, who notified the National Archives and Records Administration — which took custody of the documents the next day.
“Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” Sauber said.
A person who is familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly said Attorney General Merrick Garland asked U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois John Lausch to review the matter after the Archives referred the issue to the department. Lausch is one of the few U.S. attorneys to be held over from former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Irrespective of the Justice Department review, the revelation that Biden potentially mishandled classified or presidential records could prove to be a political headache for the president, who called Trump’s decision to keep hundreds of such records at his private club in Florida “irresponsible.”
Trump weighed in Monday on his social media site Truth, asking, “When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House?”
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
Jan 9
When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified. cbsnews.com/news/biden-center-…
His attorneys identified the material when cleaning out office space at the center and immediately notified the White House counsel.
The revelation comes as Republicans have taken control of the House of Representatives and are promising to launch widespread investigations of Biden’s administration.
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It also may complicate the Justice Department’s consideration on whether to bring charges against Trump, who has launched a repeat bid for the White House in 2024 and has repeatedly claimed that the department’s inquiry of his own conduct amounted to “corruption.”
Rep. James Comer, the new GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Monday that the revelation raised questions about the Justice Department’s handling of the Trump probe.
“Is the White House going to be raided tonight? Are they going to raid the Bidens?” he asked reporters. “This is further concern that there’s a two-tier justice system within the DOJ with how they treat Republicans versus Democrats, certainly how they treat the former president versus the current president.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that the American public deserved to know earlier about the revelation of classified documents.
“They knew about this a week before the election, maybe the American people should have known that,” Jordan told reporters. “They certainly knew about the the raid on Mar-a-Lago 91 days before this election, but nice if on November 2, the country would have known that there were classified documents at the Biden Center.”
Jordan is among House Republicans pushing for the creation of a “select subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal government” within the Judiciary Committee.
Votes on creating that committee are expected as soon as this week, setting up a showdown between Republicans and the prosecutors leading various federal investigations, including the ones into Trump.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. A message seeking comment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago wasn’t immediately returned Monday.
CBS was first to report on the discovery of the potentially classified documents.
The Justice Department for months has been investigating the retention of roughly 300 documents that were marked as classified and were recovered from the Trump’s Florida estate.
FBI agents in August served a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago property, removing 15 boxes of records.
That investigation is being led by special counsel Jack Smith. Prosecutors have interviewed an array of Trump associates and have been using a grand jury to hear evidence.
It is not clear when a decision when will be made on whether Trump, or anyone else, should be charged.
The think tank, formally known as the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and continues to operate independently of the Biden administration.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
With the long list of deals that Kevin McCarthy made so he could advance to become Speaker of the House, a number of House committee chairmanships are going to conservative members, and one important one saw Rep. Dan Crenshaw lose his Homeland Security Committee Chairman bid to conservative Mark Green.
Crenshaw, who made a splash as a conservative when he first got elected to Congress from the 2nd District in Texas in 2018, has since made some turns toward the establishment that have annoyed many conservatives.
In fact, during the four-day Speaker vote fight, Crenshaw actually said the conservative holdouts who were seeking concessions from McCarthy were “traitors.”
He later tried to walk that back by calling it just a “turn of phrase” and insisted in hindsight that he didn’t really mean traitors, exactly.
With his blatant support for McCarthy, Crenshaw, who was a United States Navy SEAL officer, was looking for the plum job of chair of the Homeland Security Committee. The Homeland Security Committee oversees border security and cybersecurity. It is also the main oversight committee for the Department of Homeland Security.
Despite his loyalty to Speaker McCarthy during the four days of voting, on Monday House members elected Tennessee’s Mark Green to the position, the Washington Examiner reported.
Green, who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus which held up the Speaker vote, is also a combat veteran who served as a special operations flight surgeon through several tours during hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. He was first elected to Congress in 2018.
The gentleman from Tennessee now serves on seven other committees and subcommittees.
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On Monday, Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas — also a member of the Freedom Caucus — celebrated his fellow caucus member taking the important Homeland chairmanship.
“Congratulations to fellow Freedom Caucus member @RepMarkGreen on becoming the new Homeland Security Committee Chairman,” Nehls tweeted. “He’s planning to have staff stay at the border and work with CBP. BIG WIN!”
Congratulations to fellow Freedom Caucus member @RepMarkGreen on becoming the new Homeland Security Committee Chairman.
He’s planning to have staff stay at the border and work with CBP.
Politico reporter Olivia Beavers noted that Green has said he intends to have staff stationed down near the border to be able to work in real time with the problems and issues there, as Joe Biden’s disastrous open border policies continue to endanger the country.
“Mark Green tells reporters he plans to have a permanent staff member staying at the border to work with CBP and other entities,” Beavers tweeted on Monday.
Mark Green tells reporters he plans to have a permanent staff member staying at the border to work with CBP and other entities
“For the sake of our national security and homeland security, we must secure our border,” Green told Fox News Digital. “We have no choice. We will empower our brave CBP agents to do their jobs and hold President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas accountable for the crisis that they created.”
Along with the long list McCarthy gave conservatives, Green’s plan to have someone reliable on the border that can tell him exactly what is going on at any given time is going to be a nightmare for the Biden administration and the fumbling Deptartment of Homeland Security that has utterly failed to keep our border secure.
If Green plans it right, Congress will finally have actual facts about the border and not just Biden’s propaganda.
A Pfizer board member who used to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lobbied Twitter to take action against a post accurately pointing out that natural immunity is superior to COVID-19 vaccination, according to an email released on Jan. 9.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb wrote on Aug. 27, 2021, to Twitter executive Todd O’Boyle to request Twitter take action against a post from Dr. Brett Giroir, another former FDA commissioner.
“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive. Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage,” Gottlieb wrote.
Giroir had written that it was clear natural immunity, or post-infection immunity, “is superior to vaccine immunity, by ALOT.” He said there was no scientific justification to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination if a person had natural immunity. “If no previous infection? Get vaccinated!” he also wrote.
Giroir pointed to what was at the time a preprint study from Israeli researchers that found, after analyzing health records, that natural immunity provided better protection than vaccination. The study was later published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases following peer review.
Researchers said the data “demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.” BNT162b2 is the trade name for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, which is the main shot used in Israel.
Gottlieb’s email triggered messages on Jira, Twitter’s internal messaging system, according to journalist Alex Berenson, who was granted access to Twitter’s internal files by CEO Elon Musk.
“Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner,” O’Boyle wrote.
A Twitter analyst who reviewed the post determined it did not violate any misinformation rules but Twitter still put a tag on it, claiming to all users who viewed it that it was “misleading” and directing them to a link that would show “why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.” The tag prevented people from replying to, sharing, or liking Giroir’s post.
Gottlieb later defended his actions, saying he targeted posts that he thought included “false and inflammatory” information. Giroir said “my tweet was accurate then, and it remains so now” and that Twitter never responded to him.
Another Message
Gottlieb later messaged O’Boyle again, flagging a post from Justin Hart, a critic of lockdowns and a skeptic of COVID-19 vaccines, Berenson reported.
Gottlieb took issue with Hart writing that “sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of <>0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”
COVID-19 poses little mortality risk to young, healthy people, studies and data show.
Gottlieb did not detail why he wanted to censor Hart, but the objection came shortly before the U.S. government authorized and recommended Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 5 to 11.
O’Boyle sent the request to Twitter analysts, failing for a second time to disclose Gottlieb’s ties to Pfizer. The complaint did not trigger any action.
“Our team of ragtag analysts, activists, moms and dads have been going after Scott since April 2020 when he repeatedly advocated for school closures and lockdowns. He doesn’t like people pushing back on the narrative,” Hart told The Epoch Times in a Twitter message.
Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
Tried to Get Journalist Banned
Gottlieb also tried to get Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who now authors a Substack, banned from Twitter, a message released in 2022 showed.
The message showed that Gottlieb forwarded a blog post from Berenson to a Twitter worker, writing that Berenson calling Dr. Anthony Fauci arrogant was an example of why Fauci, at the time the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, needed a security detail.
Four days later, and a day after Gottlieb met with Twitter workers, Twitter banned Berenson for allegedly violating its rules on COVID-19 misinformation.
Gottlieb defended his actions.
“I’ve raised concerns around social media broadly,” Gottlieb said during an appearance on CNBC. “And I’ve done it around the threats that are being made on these platforms, and the inability of these platforms to police direct threats, physical threats about people, that’s my concerns around social media, and what’s going on in that ecosystem.”
“I am very concerned with physical threats being made against people’s safety and the people who gin up those threats against individuals,” he also said.
Berenson responded that he’d never threatened Fauci or Gottlieb and referred to Gottlieb’s comments.
In the post that triggered Gottlieb’s email, Berenson criticized Fauci for saying that “attacks on me are attacks on science” and how he handled the U.S. pandemic response.
Berenson was reinstated to Twitter in 2022 as part of a settlement of a lawsuit he brought against the company. Berenson obtained Gottlieb’s email about Fauci’s post during discovery. Before the settlement agreement, a judge had concluded that Berenson plausibly alleged Twitter failed to abide by a policy of five strikes before banning the journalist.
(Reuters)—Goldman Sachs Group will start cutting thousands of jobs across the firm from Wednesday, two sources familiar with the move said, as it prepares for a tough economic environment.
Just over 3,000 employees will be let go, one of the sources said, but the final number is yet to be determined. That scale of layoffs would be the largest since the 2008 financial crisis, one of the sources said.
The sources could not be named as the information was not yet disclosed publicly. Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Bloomberg News reported on Sunday that Goldman would eliminate about 3,200 positions.
Goldman had 49,100 employees at the end of the third quarter, after adding significant numbers of staff during the coronavirus pandemic.
The layoffs are likely to affect most of the bank’s major divisions, but should centre on Goldman Sachs’ investment banking arm, one of the sources said. Wall Street banks have suffered a major slowdown in corporate dealmaking activity as a result of volatile global financial markets.
Hundreds of jobs are also likely to be reduced from Goldman Sachs’ consumer business, Marcus, after it scaled back plans for the loss-making unit, the sources said.
The bank’s chief executive David Solomon sent a year-end voice memo to staff warning of a headcount reduction in the first half of January, two separate sources said. Goldman Sachs declined comment on the memo.
The job cuts come ahead of the bank’s annual bonus payments which are usually delivered later in January and are expected to fall about 40%.
The bank restarted its annual performance review process and staff cuts in September after pausing for two years during the pandemic.
The Wall Street giant typically trims about 1% to 5% of employees each year. These new cuts will come on top of the earlier layoffs.
Global banks, including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc, have reduced their workforces in recent months as a dealmaking boom on Wall Street fizzled out due to high interest rates, tensions between the United States and China, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and soaring inflation.
Global investment banking fees nearly halved in 2022, with $77 billion earned by the banks, down from $132.3 billion one year earlier, Dealogic data showed.
The total value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) globally had slumped 37% to $3.66 trillion by Dec. 20, according to Dealogic data, after hitting an all-time high of $5.9 trillion last year.
Banks had executed $517 billion worth of equity capital markets (ECM) transactions by late December 2022, the lowest level since the early 2000s and a 66% drop from 2021’s bonanza, according to Dealogic data.
Despite the slowdown, Goldman’s top dealmakers told Reuters in recent interviews that they are bullish on an M&A recovery in the second half of 2023.
(Reporting by Saeed Azhar in New York and Scott Murdoch in Sydney; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell, Christopher Cushing, and Nick Zieminski)
Joe Biden has said the economy is ‘strong as hell’
A Morgan Stanley strategist expects stocks to take their largest annual nosedive since the Great Recession, Bloombergreported Monday.
Strategist Michael Wilson said in a research note that “corporate profit estimates are still too high,” while “the equity risk premium is at its lowest since the run-up to 2008.” The S&P 500, Wilson said, could plummet 22 percent—much lower than “the market is currently estimating in the event of a mild recession.”
The Bloomberg report came on the same day that news broke of Goldman Sachs cutting over 3,000 jobs—the largest number of layoffs “since the 2008 financial crisis,” Reuters reported. Economists widely predict a recession this year, the Washington Free Beaconreported, with Bloomberg‘s financial experts saying in October that the odds of a downturn are 100 percent. A majority of voters, meanwhile, say the economy will get even worse in 2023, a poll found last month.
President Joe Biden, however, has pooh-poohed recession concerns, saying before last November’s midterm elections that “our economy is strong as hell.” The economy last year already had two consecutive quarters of GDP drops, the traditional definition of a recession.
Inflation under Biden is “driving Wilson’s bearish view,” Bloomberg found. Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act will have little to no effect on inflation, the Free Beacon has reported, while his possibly unconstitutional student debt cancellation will almost certainly increase deficit spending.
German police on Sunday arrested two Iranian brothers after receiving a tip from U.S. intelligence that the men could be plotting a chemical attack.
In an overnight raid northwest of Dortmund, police arrested the brothers, aged 32 and 25. The older brother was the primary suspect in the investigation, according to the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office, and allegedly was preparing an attack using the deadly substances cyanide and ricin.
The alleged motive for the attack was Islamic extremism, though it is unclear what the target would have been, and prosecutors did not find the toxic substances during their initial search of the apartment.
While the German prosecutor said there was no indication that the Iranian government was involved in the alleged plot, the news of the brothers’ arrest comes as the regime has been implicated in several international plots, including the attempted kidnapping of journalists in the United States.
The primary suspect was living in Germany as a refugee, according to the prosecutor. His brother “was convicted previously of attempted murder,” CBS News reported.
Police foiled the brothers’ alleged plot five years after arresting a Tunisian man and his wife who also planned a chemical attack. The couple was found guilty of planning a ricin attack on behalf of the Islamic State.
Three years after his death, anti-regime protesters tear pictures of notorious terrorist
Three years after the elimination of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists, President Joe Biden’s State Department is tongue-tied when it comes to articulating its support for President Donald Trump’s decision to take out Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Amid protests across Iran that have seen anti-regime demonstrators tear apart pictures of Soleimani, the State Department declined to comment on those acts of rebellion or say whether it stands by the U.S. military operation that killed Soleimani.
“We’re not going to rehash history,” a State Department spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon in response to questions about whether it believes the January 2020 drone strike on Soleimani made America safer. When asked if it has comment on videos showing Iranian protesters burning pictures of Soleimani, the spokesman said, “We cannot comment on every act of protest taking place inside Iran.”
The State Department’s unwillingness to comment on the Soleimani operation drew criticism from Iranian-American activist groups and congressional foreign policy leaders who have worked to isolate the hardline regime. As the protests stretch into their fourth month, the Biden administration has negotiations over a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord on life support. U.S. Iran envoy Robert Malley—who is under pressure to resign his post—said late last year that he is “keeping the door open for a return to diplomacy,” even as the Iranian regime murders and imprisons protesters.
Bryan Leib, executive director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, an advocacy group working to support democracy in Iran, said the Biden administration should embrace the Soleimani assassination—just as Iranian dissidents are risking their lives to do so across the Islamic Republic.
“The Biden State Department continues to project weaknesses on the world stage regarding the Islamic Republic while the entire department echoes the same talking points from the feckless Robert Malley,” Leib told the Free Beacon. “When asked a simple question about Soleimani, they can’t muster up the courage to applaud the former administration for their actions to eliminate Soleimani and to weaken Tehran through their maximum pressure [and] maximum sanctions campaign.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and author of a 2020 resolution honoring the American service members who orchestrated the Soleimani killing, told the Free Beacon he is troubled by the Biden administration’s hesitance to embrace the operation.
“It should not be controversial for an American administration to acknowledge that eliminating Qassem Soleimani, an arch-terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hands, made America and the world safer,” Cruz said. “Right now, the people of Iran are tearing up and burning the regime’s propaganda about him. The Biden administration, however, is still committed to pursuing a catastrophic nuclear deal with the regime and so remains hell-bent on appeasing the Ayatollah.”
While the State Department would not address the Soleimani operation or specific acts of protests occurring in Iran, the Biden administration maintains it is working closely with international partners to hold Iran accountable for its crackdown on demonstrators.
“We continue to vocally support the Iranian people’s right to free expression and peaceful assembly in the face of a violent crackdown against them,” the State Department spokesman said. “Together with allies and partners, we have been and continue to move urgently through unilateral actions, multilateral measures, and [United Nations] mechanisms to hold Iranian authorities accountable for that violent crackdown and the human rights abuses they are inflicting on their population since the peaceful protests began in September.”
The spokesman also described Soleimani as a “key architect of much of Iran’s destabilizing behavior” and said the deceased terrorist “had blood on his hands, including American blood.” The administration is currently working to galvanize its “partners and allies to find effective ways to confront and counter Iran’s destabilizing behavior.” This includes holding Tehran accountable for its supply of lethal drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, according to the State Department spokesman.
The State Department dismissed reports in Iranian state-controlled media indicating the regime is pressing the U.N. Security Council to punish the United States for its killing of Soleimani. Iran U.N. envoy Saeed Iravani delivered a letter last week to the council calling “for the punishment of the perpetrators of the cowardly assassination.” The letter called for punitive action against the United States and Israel, which Iran says also played a role in Soleimani’s assassination.
The State Department spokesman said the administration has reviewed these reports and is standing firm in the face of Iranian threats, including those to assassinate current and former U.S. officials as recompense.
“Iran continues to threaten U.S. citizens and interests as so-called revenge for the death of Qassem Soleimani, including threats against current and former U.S. officials, so let us be clear: The United States will protect and defend its citizens,” the spokesman said.
More than 7,000 nurses are striking in New York City after Democratic governor Kathy Hochul failed to facilitate a deal between the nursing union and city hospitals.
After negotiations stalled over pay and understaffing concerns, nurses at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan began to strike Monday morning. Hochul, whose office has worked to broker a deal, on Sunday night called for “binding arbitration” to avert the walk-off—an effort that ultimately failed.
“We have been working tirelessly with our partners in New York City to broker negotiations between the nurses and affected hospitals,” Hochul said.
To handle the staff shortages, the two facilities have been forced to transfer patients, reschedule operations, and divert ambulances to other hospitals. Montefiore Medical Center said that the strikes mark “a sad day for New York City.”
“We remain committed to seamless and compassionate care, recognizing that the union leadership’s decision will spark fear and uncertainty across our community,” the hospital said in a statement.
New York State Nurses Association, which is organizing the strike, said Hochul “should listen to frontline COVID nurse heroes.”
“Bosses have pushed us to strike by refusing to seriously consider our proposals to address the desperate crisis of unsafe staffing that harms our patients,” the union said in a statement.
‘Promising’ treatment could ‘modestly slow the pace of cognitive decline’
In a critical boost to Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a new Alzheimer’s drug that “may modestly slow the pace of cognitive decline,” according to the New York Times.
Biden, the first octogenarian president in American history, is expected to formally announce his plans to seek a second term sometime next month, thus setting the stage for a potential rematch against Donald Trump.
The president is going to need all the help he can get to mitigate the rapid deterioration of his brain before Election Day in 2024, which is probably why his administration fast-tracked the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqembi, using its “accelerated approval” designation. The new drug also carries some risk, as a significant percentage of patients in clinical trials experienced swelling and bleeding in the brain after taking Leqembi.
Whereas Trump has no discernible flaws, Biden has been widely criticized as “too old to be president.” He would be 86 by the time he left office after two terms and has already exceeded the average life expectancy for American males by several years. His cognitive decline is glaringly obvious to anyone who has watched him attempt to speak in public. A recent CNBC poll found that 70 percent of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t want Biden to run for reelection.
Biden has repeatedly refused to subject himself to independent testing that could shed light on his cognitive health, or lack thereof. When CBS reporter Errol Barnett asked Biden in 2020 if he would take a cognitive test to allay voter concerns about his health, the then-candidate responded by accusing the black journalist of being a “cocaine” “junkie.”
Trump, by contrast, is renowned for his superhuman stamina and has aced every cognitive test he’s ever taken. An esteemed doctor famously described him as “the healthiest individual ever elected president.”
Emergency reserves have plunged to four-decade low, gone to China under Biden
Joe Biden promised to refill America’s emergency oil reserves at a low enough price to “actually make money for the taxpayers.” Now, his Energy Department says prices are too high to do so, ensuring that the country’s emergency reserves will remain low.
The Biden administration last week rejected all offers it received to purchase oil for the country’s dwindling reserves because those offers “were either too expensive or didn’t meet the required specifications,” Bloomberg reported Friday. The move comes just weeks after the White House said it would “turn a profit for the taxpayers” by buying up to three million reserve barrels at a reduced cost, which Biden’s Energy Department pledged to obtain by February.
Biden’s failure to follow through on the purchase means that America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve will remain at its lowest level since 1983, at least in the short term. When Biden took office, the reserve contained more than 600 million barrels—that number is now less than 400 million. The Energy Department said in a statement that it still plans to replenish the reserves but will only do so “at a price that is a good deal for taxpayers,” making the timing and quantity of any future reserve oil purchase unclear. “We expect to share next steps in our 2023 repurchase plan soon,” a department spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon.
The blunder is also likely to prompt fresh criticism from congressional Republicans, who have long accused the president of mismanaging the country’s oil reserves.
Last year, amid record-high gas prices, Biden opted to release roughly 200 million reserve barrels, a decision his administration said would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump.” Instead, Biden sold many of those barrels to the Chinese government and other foreign entities—sales that inhibited his ability to “lower record pump prices” in the United States, according to Reuters.
House Republicans responded in July by launching a formal investigation into the Biden administration, with Rep. Ronny Jackson (R., Texas) admonishing Biden for “wasting our money and resources by sending oil that’s intended for emergencies to the Chinese Communist Party.” Roughly six months later, the GOP’s newfound House majority means Republicans have the subpoena power and committee control to advance that investigation and other energy-related oversight efforts, which House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) teased in a December op-ed.
“The president’s war on U.S.-made fossil fuels has killed well-paying jobs in energy and driven up gas and energy prices,” Comer wrote. “House Republicans will continue our investigation … into Mr. Biden’s efforts to diminish domestic energy production as part of his administration’s radical climate agenda and how he has jeopardized American energy independence.”
Beyond their impending oversight efforts, House Republicans are also targeting oil reserve reforms through new legislation. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.) on December 30 released a bill that would bar the Energy Department from selling oil reserves “to any entity that is under the ownership, control, or influence of the Chinese Communist Party.” The bill would also prohibit Biden from releasing reserve oil without a plan to increase oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
“We wanted to start with some things on [the Strategic Petroleum Oil Reserve], which we’ve seen President Biden raid to cover for his failed policies,” Scalise said of the bill.
The White House, which did not return a request for comment, has used its oil reserve releases to take credit for falling gas prices in recent months. Energy experts, however, have linked those price reductions to fears of a looming recession.
Police in Brazil surrounded and began clearing a camp of protesters who back former President Jair Bolsonaro in the capital on Jan. 9. More than a thousand arrests were reported by local media outlets as the country’s Supreme Court ordered the immediate dismantling of the pro-Bolsonaro camps after protesters stormed government buildings over the weekend.
At least 1,200 people have been arrested at a makeshift camp outside the army headquarters in Brasília, and authorities are using dozens of buses to transport the detainees to police headquarters, according to The Brazilian Report.
Members of the Brazilian military were seen dismantling tents set up by pro-Bolsonaro supporters—as well as the demonstrators themselves—at the encampment ahead of a noon local time deadline set by authorities for the protesters to leave.
A demonstrator reacts next to members of security forces as supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro leave a camp outside the army headquarters, in Brasília, Brazil, on Jan. 9, 2023. (Amanda Perobelli/Reuters)
Thousands of people believed to be Bolsonaro supporters breached Brazil’s National Congress building, Supreme Court, and presidential palace on Jan. 8, prompting a massive police response.
The governor of Brasília told Reuters that all security forces had been activated to confront the protesters.
Ibaneis Rocha, governor of the Federal District, wrote on Twitter that he had fired the district security chief and “put all the security forces on the streets, with the determination to arrest and punish those responsible.”
Police retook the public buildings after roughly three hours and dispersed the crowd with tear gas.
Security forces detain a supporter of Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, during a demonstration against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, outside Brazil’s National Congress building in Brasília, Brazil, on Dec. 8, 2023. (Adriano Machado/Reuters)
In the wake of the incident, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the immediate dismantling of pro-Bolsonaro encampments that sprang up since the Oct. 30, 2022, runoff election in which Bolsonaro narrowly lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a socialist.
Lula was sworn in as the country’s president on Jan. 1 and held a cabinet meeting on Jan. 9 inside the presidential palace that a day earlier was overrun with protesters.
Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered the “total eviction and dissolution” of pro-Bolsonaro camps set up in front of the Brazilian army headquarters in the capital and in front of army garrisons in major cities across the country.
The high court also ordered that protesters be arrested.
Demonstrators invade the National Congress building in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. (Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Indignation And a Sense of Injustice’
While Bolsonaro hasn’t conceded defeat to Lula, the former president in November authorized his chief of staff to begin a transition and has said he would abide by Brazil’s constitution.
Mass protests have gripped Brazil since the runoff, with Bolsonaro’s supporters casting doubt on the authenticity of the election results and demanding that the military intervene.
While Bolsonaro hasn’t directly claimed fraud in the election, he said in November that the protests were the fruit of “indignation and a sense of injustice.”
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro makes a statement at Alvorada Palace in Brasília, Brazil, on Nov. 1, 2022. (Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images)
Bolsonaro condemned the Jan. 8 breaches of government buildings, saying in a series of posts on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations that take place within the bounds of the law “are part of democracy” but that “invasions of public buildings” are a step too far.
Lula, who was on a trip to Brazil’s most populous state, São Paulo, when the government buildings were breached, declared a “federal security intervention” until the end of January.
“All these people who did this will be found, and they will be punished,” he said at a press conference.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaks during his government’s first cabinet meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasília on Jan. 6, 2023. (Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images)
Lula blamed Bolsonaro for the incident, saying in a series of posts on Twitter that Bolsonaro gave several speeches “encouraging this” and that the breaches are “also his responsibility and the parties that supported him.”
Bolsonaro pushed back on Lula’s claim.
“I repudiate the accusations, without evidence, attributed to me by the current head of the executive of Brazil,” Bolsonaro said on Twitter.
“Throughout my mandate, I have always been within the four lines of the Constitution, respecting and defending the laws, democracy, transparency, and our sacred freedom.”
Another part of the order issued by Brazil’s Supreme Court was to hand a 90-day suspension to Rocha on Jan. 8, based on claims that local law enforcement under his command failed to respond to threats from the pro-Bolsonaro protesters.
Officials Seek to Punish Pro-Bolsonaro Protesters
In a press conference late on Jan. 8, Brazil’s minister of institutional relations said the buildings that were breached would be inspected for evidence, including fingerprints and images, to hold people to account.
Justice Minister Flávio Dino said the acts amounted to terrorism and coup-mongering and that authorities have begun tracking those who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital.
“They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy. We need to say that fully, with all firmness and conviction,” Dino said. “We will not accept the path of criminality to carry out political fights in Brazil. A criminal is treated like a criminal.”
In a press conference from São Paulo state, Lula read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to assume control of security in the federal district. He said the protesters, who he labeled as “fascist fanatics,” as well as those who financed their activities, must be punished.
Lula also said at the press conference that there was “incompetence or bad faith” on the part of the police, and he promised that some of them would also face punishment.
A federal agency may implement a nationwide ban on natural gas stoves over concerns that they cause health and respiratory problems.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will have public comment about gas stoves in the winter of 2023 and could set standards on emissions—even possibly banning them, CPSC head Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News. Natural gas stoves are estimated to be used in roughly 40 percent of all U.S. homes.
“This is a hidden hazard,” Trumka told the news service in an interview published on Jan. 9. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
The CPSC already issued a request for information seeking data on the alleged hazards associated with gas stoves and input for solutions, but the CPSC hasn’t proposed any regulatory actions yet, a spokesperson told media outlets on Jan. 9. Representatives for the agency didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Such a request for data and input, Trumka told reporters last month, “is the first step in what could be a long journey toward regulating gas stoves.” Trumka, a Biden appointee, is a former congressional Democratic staffer and the son of Richard Trumka, the late former chief of one of the most powerful unions in the United States, the AFL-CIO.
A ban on the manufacture and import of new gas stoves is a “real possibility,” he noted at the time. If there’s enough public pressure, the CPSC “could get a regulation on the books before this time next year,” he said.
The Biden administration later signaled President Joe Biden doesn’t favor a ban on gas stoves, while Trumka wrote on Twitter Monday saying that the “CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves” and that “regulations apply to new products.” Another CPSC official released a statement that walked back Trumka’s comment in a statement.
It came after bipartisan criticism from lawmakers. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) wrote Thursday that he doesn’t favor such a regulation and that the “federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner.”
Industry groups say that natural gas stoves don’t necessarily emit more harmful emissions than other types of stoves. the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers and the American Gas Association both argued against a possible ban.
“Ventilation is really where this discussion should be, rather than banning one particular type of technology,” Jill Notini, a vice president at the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, told Bloomberg. “Banning one type of a cooking appliance is not going to address the concerns about overall indoor air quality. We may need some behavior change, we may need [people] to turn on their hoods when cooking.”
While Karen Harbert, head of the American Gas Association, argued that neither the CPSC nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “present gas ranges as a significant contributor to adverse air quality or health hazard in their technical or public information literature, guidance, or requirements.”
“The most practical, realistic way to achieve a sustainable future where energy is clean, as well as safe, reliable and affordable, is to ensure it includes natural gas and the infrastructure that transports it,” Harbert said.
Possible Reasons
However, the EPA and World Health Organization have said that natural gas stoves emit unsafe levels of air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other particles. Some studies show that natural gas appliances leak methane even when turned off, critics of the stoves have claimed.
A natural gas flare on an oil well pad burns as the sun sets outside Watford City, N.D., on Jan. 21, 2016. (Andrew Cullen/Reuters)
A study published in December 2022, found that gas stove pollution is linked to 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases. The study was led by an environmental group, Rocky Mountain Institute, not a health or safety organization.
Meanwhile, some doctors and researchers were skeptical of the study’s conclusions. A British Columbia, Canada, doctor told local media he has questions about how it linked stoves and childhood asthma.
“This is not a true representation of what is happening and there is a huge uncertainty around how many children with asthma are truly because of those emissions. Asthma is a multifactorial disease. It’s a disease we’re still studying because it’s so complex,” Dr. Ran Goldman, a pediatrics professor at the University of British Columbia, said after the ban on gas stoves was floated.
A ban on such stoves, meanwhile, wouldn’t be unprecedented. Several months ago, the California Air Resources Board unanimously voted to ban the sale of natural gas-fired furnaces and water heaters by 2030.
A handful of California cities, including Los Angeles, have similarly moved to ban new natural gas stoves in new buildings.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 9 rejected a Texas-led challenge to reinstate a Trump-era policy that blocked certain immigrants from gaining permanent residency status if they’re deemed likely to qualify for government benefits.
The high court didn’t say why it rejected the challenge, listing the case under its list of “certiorari denied” cases (pdf).
An appeal from 14 Republican-led state attorneys general, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, sought to rescind a lower court ruling against their request to mount a legal defense of Trump’s “public charge” rule after President Joe Biden stopped defending the measure and later rescinded it. The policy was put into effect by the Trump administration in February 2020 and was ended by the Biden administration in March 2021.
Other than Texas, the attorneys general are from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
Last year, a federal judge in Illinois vacated the rule nationwide. The judge later rejected the Republican bid to intervene, saying the request by the state officials came too late, and the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2022 agreed with the lower court’s ruling.
The case didn’t focus on whether the rule was constitutional but on whether the Biden administration followed the proper rule-making procedures when it revoked it. The policy had made it difficult for immigrants to obtain permanent residency, or a “green card,” if they used public benefits such as Medicaid, housing vouchers, or food stamps.
The Department of Homeland Security rescinded the rule in March 2021, two months after Biden took office. Republicans argued that the administration abandoned the usual public comment period that often precedes the rescinding of major regulations.
The White House, meanwhile, abandoned the Department of Justice’s legal defense of the Trump-era program after it was challenged in court.
Another Case Dismissed
Last year, the Supreme Court dismissed another attempt to revive the Trump-era “public charge” rule. Several Republican states had appealed to intervene in a case that had challenged the rule before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case before ultimately dismissing it.
In June 2022, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a concurrence joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch to dismiss that challenge.
“It has become clear that this mare’s nest could stand in the way of our reaching the question presented on which we granted certiorari, or at the very least, complicate our resolution of that question,” Roberts wrote at the time.
“When this and other suits challenging the Rule were first brought in 2019, the Government defended it. And when multiple lower courts, including the District Court here, found the Rule unlawful, the Government appealed those decisions. After a change in administrations, though, the Government reversed course and opted to voluntarily dismiss those appeals, leaving in place the relief already entered.”
President Joe Biden speaks with a member of the Border Patrol as they walk along the U.S.–Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
But Roberts said last year’s decision “should not be taken as reflective of a view on any of the foregoing issues, or on the appropriate resolution of other litigation, pending or future” in connection to the immigration rule.
The White House in September 2022 adopted a narrower rule under which immigrants would be deemed public charges only when they’re likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, mirroring a 1999 regulation that had been in place for two decades. Texas filed a separate federal lawsuit on Jan. 5 challenging Biden’s rule.
“I’ve sued [President Joe] Biden over a dozen times to secure our southern border,” Paxton wrote on Twitter in reference to his latest lawsuit against the administration. “Now, just as 2023 is starting, I’m bringing another lawsuit—the first of its kind in the nation on Biden’s disastrous new public-charge rule. I’ll keep suing [and] winning until he [and] his lawless Dems follow the law.”
The Republican attorney general alleged Biden is promoting an open borders agenda after enacting the new rule. Biden has received constant criticism from Republicans about his immigration policies and security along the U.S.–Mexico border.
On Jan. 8, Biden visited El Paso, Texas, and met with law enforcement officials and watched demonstrations. The president also visited the El Paso Migrant Services Center, which houses and supports people who recently crossed into the United States illegally.
After arriving in Texas, the president met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who handed a paper that Abbott later said was a proposal with several solutions to immigration problems.
A Republican lawmaker targeted by the now-defunct Jan. 6 Committee said on Jan. 8 that he was interested in joining a proposed probe of those same investigators.
The Jan. 6 panel, formed in 2021 under the guiding hand of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was almost entirely constituted of Democrats. Only two Republicans, Ranking Member Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)—both vocal critics of President Donald Trump and the populist movement he brought into being—sat on the panel.
Over the course of nearly a dozen hearings, the panel attempted to prove its case that the breakdown of order at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally was the culmination of a months-long plot by Trump and his allies to overthrow the U.S. government.
Now, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) has said that he’s interested in being a part of these investigations even though he’s under investigation for related events, the Pennsylvania Republican told ABC’s “This Week.”
In 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) seized Perry’s cellphone as part of their probe into the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Perry’s lawyers sued the DOJ and FBI for a return of the seized data but later withdrew the suit. The charges against Perry continue even as the DOJ and FBI face charges of “weaponization” from the new House majority.
In his appearance on ABC, Perry said that he doesn’t consider there to be any conflict of interest in his participating in Republicans’ Jan. 6, 2021, investigations.
“Why should I be limited just because someone has made an accusation? Everybody in America is innocent until proven guilty,” Perry said.
Pushed further by anchor George Stephanopoulos on whether this would entail a conflict of interest, Perry retorted: “So, should everybody in Congress that disagrees with somebody be barred from doing the oversight and investigative powers that Congress has? That’s our charge.
“And again, that’s appropriate for every single member regardless of what accusations that are being made.
“I get accused of all kinds of things every single day, as does every member that serves in the public eye. But that doesn’t stop you from doing your job. It is our duty and it is my duty.”
Republicans have several potential lines of inquiry to explore now that they’ve taken the gavel.
For instance, newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other House Republican leaders have promised an investigation into the role played by Pelosi and her appointees in leaving the Capitol unprepared ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, rally. Evidence shows that on several occasions in the lead-up to the rally, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asked for National Guard assistance; on each occasion, the House Sergeant-at-Arms—a Pelosi appointee—demurred or refused the requests.
During the first round of Jan. 6 hearings, panel Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) made clear that Pelosi was off-limits for the investigation—Republicans, however, have made clear that they have no such compunctions against probing Pelosi’s role.
Another potential probe could be made into the FBI and DOJ’s handling of the investigation of the unknown assailant who placed pipe bombs in front of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021.
At one point, then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was even in the DNC building, placing her meters from the undetonated explosives.
Republicans could also investigate what role, if any, the FBI played in the events of that day.
Suspicion of the FBI ramped up among Republicans after Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director for the national security branch of the FBI, refused to disavow agency involvement at the rally.
During a Jan. 11, 2022, Senate hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned Sanborn about potential FBI involvement. These questions were met with deflection by Sanborn, who avoided giving a definitive answer to the yes-or-no questions posed by Cruz.
In December 2021, Perry became one of a handful of GOP lawmakers to receive a request for documents and testimony from the panel, which had almost no Republican voices. Others called by the panel included Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and then-House Minority Leader McCarthy.
“I stand with immense respect for our Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the Americans I represent who know that this entity is illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the US House of Representatives,” Perry said in a Twitter thread at the time.
Later, the DOJ also opened a probe into Perry.
The investigation of Perry centers around whether Perry committed criminal acts in assisting Trump’s efforts to throw out certain electoral slates amid allegations of voter fraud.
Ultimately, Perry’s committee assignments will be up to McCarthy, the new speaker of the House. It remains to be seen whether McCarthy will approve Perry’s aspiration to join the upcoming GOP Jan. 6, 2021, investigations.
Brunson originally filed his case in state court. He argued that federal officials, including all members of Congress, failed to meet their oath of office because they “intentionally refused” to investigate evidence that the 2020 election was fraudulent. The case was later moved to federal court.
Brunson didn’t pick up the phone or return a voicemail seeking comment on the Supreme Court’s rejection. He said in a brief statement on social media that “we will now make our next move,” or a petition for reconsideration.
The U.S. government didn’t respond to a request for comment. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had opted to file no response to Brunson’s petition with the nation’s top court.
Brunson’s Case
Brunson noted that President Joe Biden’s campaign rallies drew fewer people than former President Donald Trump’s, and said that was “circumstantial evidence” that warranted an investigation into election fraud, but that defendants refused to investigate. He also pointed to how election laws in multiple states were changed before the election, including some changes that were later found to be unconstitutional, and affidavits from poll workers and others attesting to fraud.
The intentional act not to investigate fraud was an act of war and an attack against Brunson’s right to participate “in a honest and fair election,” according to the complaint. It also violated the U.S. Constitution, Brunson said.
He asked the court to remove the defendants from office and to order Trump to be inaugurated as president.
Government lawyers urged the court to dismiss the case, saying the claims were barred by legislative immunity.
1st Judgment
The court that received the case, the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, said Brunson failed to establish standing.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jared Bennett, appointed by other judges, said in a recommendation that Brunson didn’t prove he has a “personal stake” in the outcome of the action, or that he suffered an injury caused by the defendants.
“Mr. Brunson has failed to establish standing under Article III of the United States Constitution because all of his causes of action plead generalized claims of legislative nonfeasance arising out of the counting of electors’ votes,” Bennett said. “Mr. Brunson’s purported injury is precisely the type of undifferentiated and generalized grievance about the conduct of government that courts have declined to consider based on standing.”
Brunson objected to the recommendation and asked to file an amended complaint but District Judge Jill Parrish, an Obama appointee, rejected the request and adopted the recommendation, dismissing the case.
“Brunson does not argue that the changes to his complaint would affect his lack of standing to bring his claims. And the court is unable to discern any way in which the proposed changes would affect his standing to sue members of Congress,” Parrish said.
2nd Decision
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit later upheld the decision.
Brunson didn’t provide evidence he has standing, U.S. District Judge Bobby Baldock, a Reagan appointee, wrote in the ruling.
“Essentially, he contends that because he alleged the defendants acted fraudulently, and because ‘fraud vitiates whatever it touches,’ he has an ‘unfettered right to sue the Defendants,’ and any federal law or case law is inapplicable if it ‘support[s] treason, acts of war or the violation of Brunson’s inherent unalienable (God-given) rights,’” Baldock said. “But none of his supporting authorities suggests that allegations of fraud, acts of war, or the violation of allegedly ‘inherent unalienable (God-given) rights,’ relieve a plaintiff from demonstrating Article III standing.”
The U.S. Constitution’s Article III sets requirements for standing, restricting courts to deciding certain cases.
Brunson also offered an insufficient argument against the lower court’s order finding that the government is protected by sovereign immunity, the appeals court ruled.
Brunson told the Supreme Court that he has standing and that his arguments weren’t properly addressed in the lower court rulings.
“Brunson has an unfettered right to sue the Respondents under the serious nature of his claim,” the petition states, adding that “Brunson’s allegations against Respondents’ adhering to a domestic enemy, and committing acts of fraud are not protected by any kind of legislation of jurisdictional immunity.”
“Essentially, acts of Congress cannot protect fraud, nor protect the violation of the Oath or that give aid and comfort to enemies of the United States Constitution or America as alleged in Brunson’s complaint against the Respondents. These are facts that cannot be overcome,” the document states.
An Arkansas man has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state because state law prevents him from serving on a state board because of the color of his skin.
The legal complaint (pdf) in the case, Haile v. Hutchinson, which was filed on Jan. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, claims that a state law establishing race-based quotas on the Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who leaves office on Jan. 10, is being sued in his official capacity as governor. He’s being succeeded by Gov.-elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also a Republican.
The plaintiff, Stephen Haile, along with his wife, have fostered more than 300 children in Conway, Arkansas. In the process, he says he has gained insights into the importance of transparency between social workers and foster parents in providing the best possible environment for the children in their care.
Haile’s experiences made him interested in being appointed to the Arkansas Social Work Licensing Board, which regulates the practice of social work in the state. The nine-member board is appointed by the governor with the consent of the state Senate.
State law requires the board to be comprised of three licensed certified social workers, two licensed master social workers, one licensed social worker, one psychiatrist, one member of the public at large, and one “representative of the elderly.”
The representative of the elderly must be at least 60 years old and can’t be engaged in or retired from professional social work. Haile meets those criteria and previously served on a foster parent board.
In June 2022, that board seat became available and Haile applied for it. But because 17-103-201(c) of the Arkansas Code mandates that there be “no fewer than two African-American members” on the board and, at present, there aren’t two black members, Haile, who’s white, was excluded from consideration for the appointment, the legal complaint states.
This racial quota “perpetuates patronizing stereotypes, establishes a permanent government mandate for the Governor and state senate to engage in outright racial discrimination, and limits opportunities for many Arkansas citizens to get involved in the important work of protecting children and other vulnerable populations,” the document states.
Haile’s “ability to serve on the Board should be based on his qualifications, not his race.”
“Basically, the governor hasn’t to our knowledge appointed anyone yet to fill the open position, but he is expected to reappoint the African-American members of the board,” Laura D’Agostino, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm that’s representing Haile, told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“We believe that the governor’s decision is motivated in part to comply with the race quota. And it seems that if you look at his appointments since he took office in 2015, he has consistently enforced the race quota that’s required by the law.
“We’re bringing an equal-protection challenge [because] we believe that this is wrong [and] that anyone should be able to represent their community.
“And the interesting thing about Arkansas is that they also have other laws that require the governor to take diversity into account and to consult with different minority groups in the state and to garner feedback from them on which appointees they would recommend.”
The state law in this case is “unnecessary and unconstitutional,” the lawyer noted.
Hutchinson didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has just begun her second term, says she and her immediate family are at a “very high risk” of identity theft after the House’s Jan. 6 committee made the family’s Social Security numbers public.
In what Noem’s attorney described as a “critical breach of confidential data,” the Social Security numbers belonging to Noem, her husband, her three children, and her son-in-law were published without redaction as part of the White House’s visitor logs that became exhibits during hearings by the panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
The logs contained “nearly 2,000 Social Security numbers associated with visitors to the White House in December 2020,” according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the leak. The numbers, as required by law, should have been redacted prior to the document’s publication.
“This information was publicly available for days before being removed from the website,” the attorney wrote in a letter to the White House, the Government Publishing Office, the National Archives, and Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who chaired the now-disbanded committee. “Perhaps most troubling and outrageous is the fact that each of you had an opportunity and obligation to prevent the wrongful disclosure.
“Governor Noem and her family are now at a very high risk of identity theft and being personally compromised.”
The letter also notes that failure to protect this information is a violation of federal privacy law.
The attorney further demanded more information about how the breach occurred, who should be held responsible, and what actions are to be taken to remedy the breach.
Also among those whose information was exposed are three members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, as well as prominent Republicans such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
“Whether it was a careless and sloppy handling of records or a deliberate disregard of decorum, either scenario is a perfunctory and callous display of government and a frightening reminder of the current state in Washington,” Carson told the Post. “President [Ronald] Reagan was a savant indeed—the nine most frightening words to hear are, ‘I am from the government and here to help.’”
The exhibits that contained White House visitors’ Social Security numbers were originally published by the Government Publishing Office, according to the Post. They were taken down on Jan. 4, the day after the committee’s scheduled dissolution.
It appeared that those affected weren’t notified about the incident.
“To my knowledge, we were not notified. The governor was not notified,” Noem spokesman Ian Fury told the newspaper.
In February 2022, President Joe Biden ordered the National Archives to release the White House visitor logs to the Jan. 6 panel, denying Trump’s effort to use executive privilege to keep the information private.
“The records in question are entries in visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on January 6, 2021,” then-White House counsel Dana Remus wrote in the letter to the National Archives at that time. “As a matter of policy, and subject to limited exceptions, the Biden Administration voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis.
“The President has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records.”
Overflowing crowds enthusiastically welcomed actor and author Kirk Cameron to story hour at public libraries in New York and Indiana last week to hear him read his Christian-themed kids’ book “As You Grow.”
The Brave Books storybook espouses a message of “biblical truths of the fruits of the spirit”—those are “love, joy, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control,” Cameron told Fox News’s Julie Banderas.
Scarsdale Public Library in Westchester County, New York, was brimming past capacity on Friday, Dec. 30 forcing Cameron to give two readings in the allotted hour for the program.Play Video
Families lined up at Scarsdale Public Library in Westchester County, New York, to hear Kirk Cameron read his book “As You Grow.” (Courtesy of Zach Bell)
“We’re here because we love God, we love our families, our children, we love our country, and we love Scarsdale Public Library,” Cameron told the audience.
“We’re so grateful that we get to be here and read this story.”
The book tells the tale of an acorn that grows into a mighty oak tree and then dispenses wisdom to the animals that live within the shelter of its branches.
One passage of the book reads, “As you grow strong, grow in gentleness.”
Afterward, they sang a rendition of “God Bless America” at the suggestion of a grandfather in attendance.
They then went to the library to request more time to read to the families who missed out. “They told us no,” Brave Books spokesman Zac Bell said.
Cameron aims to battle woke ideologies in public libraries like Scarsdale’s that promote drag queen story hours for toddlers as young as 18-months.
“God gave your children to you and not to the government,” Cameron told the audience, generating applause.
Cameron was received by an even larger crowd on Thursday, Dec. 29, in Indianapolis, Indiana, where an estimated 2,500 people attended—the largest gathering in the library’s 137-year history.
(L) Families attend Indy Public Library story hour; (R) Actor and author Kirk Cameron holds up his book “As You Grow.” (Courtesy of Zach Bell and Brave Books)
There were about “1,000 moms, dads, and kids INSIDE the library” and another “1,000 waiting OUTSIDE” to show their support, Cameron wrote on a message on Facebook. The library reading room holds only 170 people.
“We were blown away by Indianapolis and the room was absolutely filled here,” Cameron told Fox News. “We could not be happier with the reception.”
Not all libraries allowed the book to be heard, however.
Over 50 of the libraries Brave Books contacted either rejected or did not respond to the request.
“It seems sort of silly, right?” Cameron said. “There are no skeletons in the closet here.
“This is about helping kids grow in wisdom through the seasons of their life and learn how to be kind and loving and strong and gentle and compassionate toward others.
“I don’t know why anybody would push back on a message like that.”
Families attend Indy Public Library story hour; (R) Christian-themed children’s book “As You Grow” by Kirk Cameron. (Courtesy of Zach Bell and Brave Books)
After Cameron wrote an open letter to the libraries and cited the First Amendment right to free speech, two libraries, in Scarsdale and Indianapolis, acquiesced.
“I came here because of [Cameron’s] values,” Marie Wayne, of Hawthorne, New York, said at the Scarsdale event. “We thought we were going to get in and out like that. We were very surprised to see this many people.”
The two readings are just the beginning, Cameron said. He’s taking suggestions for what library they should visit next.
“A ‘brushfire’ of faith, family, and freedom was ignited,” he told Banderas of their momentum. “And it’s moving across the country uncontained.”
Understanding determinants of COVID-19 vaccinated induced myocarditis
One of the toughest questions I had on my interview with Joe Rogan in 2021 was “Dr. McCullough, if the COVID-19 vaccines are so bad, how come everybody doesn’t die after taking them?” While as naïve and ridiculous as it sounds, its a good question and brings up the goal of epidemiology: to study of the distribution and determinants of disease. Roughly 15% of vaccine recipients develop a health problem after taking a COVID-19 vaccine (Zogby, 2022) based on the lot number (proxy for mRNA quantity or contaminants), susceptibility, and pre-existing disease (e.g. inherited blood clotting disorder). No young person should be hospitalized after taking a COVID-19 vaccine since that outcome far outweighs any theoretical benefit of the injections.
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard School of Medicine, had 13 young boys and 3 girls hospitalized with myocarditis and available for study. Yonker et al found all the subjects had large quantities of free circulating Spike protein generated from the vaccines while control subjects without myocarditis did not.
The Spike protein they had evaded the apparently sufficient library of antibodies that were supposed to neutralize it. Thus, it is possible that some persons do not make specific neutralizing antibodies after injection, and thus, the Spike protein is able to circulate and damage the body, specifically the heart muscle. The race is on to develop commercialized Spike protein tests and possibly monoclonal antibodies against the vaccine-induced Spike that could neutralize it and prevent more heart damage. It is ironic that our government quickly pulled monoclonal antibodies off the market for anticipated lack of efficacy with new strains and now these products could be useful against the legacy Spike protein produced by the ill-conceived COVID-19 vaccines. Clearly more research is needed. This “positive” paper on the pathophysiology of COVID-19 vaccine induced myocarditis should spur more research on thousands of young persons now suffering with heart damage from the vaccine debacle.
Joe Biden’s scheduled trip to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday, to finally get a first-hand look at the illegal immigration crisis plaguing America’s border towns might be more of a rose-colored glasses situation than it should be.
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, witnesses on the ground in El Paso claim that local officials have made considerable efforts to clean up some of the migrant camps that had been set up in late December as waves of illegals anticipated the end of Title 42.
“It’s a dog and pony show,” one Sacred Heart Church volunteer told the outlet. “They’ve cleaned it all up for him.”
Officials reportedly said the clean-up efforts are coincidental.
Though it can’t be confirmed that officials were given the order to spruce up the town ahead of the president’s visit, it sure feels like an incredibly sneaky trick to make the situation look much more positive than what’s been reported in right-leaning media circles.
The New York Post reported Saturday that the migrant camps that littered the streets of El Paso were sanitized “under cover of darkness,” making the convenient “it’s just a coincidence” report seem far less likely.
The National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) tweeted its frustrations with the president’s upcoming visit, pointing out that officials seem bent on painting a vastly different picture of the crisis situation.
“El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there. Just in time for Biden’s ‘visit to the border’. We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it’s El Paso. He’ll never know the difference,” the NBPC wrote.
El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there. Just in time for Biden’s “visit to the border”.
We suggest just landing in Des Moines, Iowa and telling him it’s El Paso. He’ll never know the difference.
Adding increased speculation that Biden’s handlers knew exactly what they were doing before the television cameras roll on Sunday is the curious timing of the president’s first southern border visit.
NBPC president Brandon Judd pointed out that a January visit by the president is no coincidence, as it’s historically the month with the least number of encounters between federal law enforcement and illegal immigrants. For instance, the U.K. Daily Mail noted that daily encounters have nearly halved compared to a few weeks ago when the streets were overflowing with illegals, dropping from 7500 to 3500 currently.
“Biden has all those figures. He knows all the trends. He knows when the best time to come to the border. And he knows that the beginning of January is absolutely the best time,” Judd said.
The NBPC on Sunday took another sharp jab at Biden and his administration, saying the president wouldn’t know the difference between El Paso and any other American city.
“If AF1 lands for a ‘border visit’ and there is 2 feet of snow on the ground, it probably ain’t El Paso. Biden would have no idea and the MSM would cover for him,” the NBPC tweeted.
If AF1 lands for a “border visit” and there is 2 feet of snow on the ground, it probably ain’t El Paso.
Biden would have no idea and the MSM would cover for him.
Many of the Border Patrol agents on the ground who work in and around the sector are far from impressed with Biden’s visit.
According to Fox News, Rodney Scott, a Border Patrol chief under Biden and former President Donald Trump, chalked up the president’s scheduled visit as “better late than never” but admitted that most of his Border Patrol colleagues are far from impressed.
“Based on the rest of the press conference, everybody that I’ve talked to thinks it’s just going to be for show, that nothing is going to change,” Scott told Fox News Digital.
It’ll be fascinating, and probably nauseating, to watch the legacy media cover Biden’s trip as if the border “crisis” isn’t all that bad.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded to an American effort to support anti-war protests in Russia with a call to put a Russian warship off of the American coast.
Last week, the U.S. embassy in Russia released a video it called “an appeal to the people of Russia.”
“Throughout history, our countries have been united by a common culture and our achievements. We believe that what is happening is not worthy of you, and we stand in solidarity with each of you who strive to create a more peaceful future,” the video said, according to a translation available on Twitter.
На протяжении всей истории наши страны роднила общность культур и наших достижений. Мы считаем, что происходящее вас не достойно, и солидарны с каждым из вас, кто стремится создать более мирное будущее. pic.twitter.com/PcEC8YF6FK
— Посольство США в РФ/ U.S. Embassy Russia (@USEmbRu) January 4, 2023
The video emphasized scientific and cultural partnerships between the U.S. and Russia and included former Soviet Union leaders, such as Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin shaking hands with Americans.
In a fiery response, Russia announced that the Admiral Gorshkov warship will conduct a voyage through the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, according to CNN. Russia has said the ship is armed with Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, one of Russia’s most advanced weapons systems.
According to a Google Translate version of the post, which was reproduced on Euronews, Medvedev wrote, “The State Department published an unctuous appeal to the people of Russia, like we love you all. It ends in their typical nasty Jesuit style: ‘in solidarity with each of you who strive to create a more peaceful future.’ And the war in Ukraine, they say, is unworthy of everyone like that.”
“Even for these top-notch freaks, this is the height of cynicism and the limit of moral degradation. The United States is spending tens of billions on the war in Ukraine, supplying its weapons on a gigantic scale, exterminating thousands of people by proxy,” he wrote.
Medvedev then sought to support Russia’s contention that its invasion of Ukraine was aimed at attacking Nazi-like elements in Ukraine.
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“This is extreme cynicism in the best traditions of the Nazis. Yes, in fact, sons of b******, carrying such nonsense, are the real heirs of the Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels,” he wrote.
Then came the threatening language.
“The main gift for the New Year with the ammunition load of the Zircon missiles went yesterday to the shores of the NATO countries. 1000 km range of their use with hypersonic Mach 9 and the ability to use any charge with a guarantee overcome any missile defense. Let it stand somewhere 100 miles from the coast, closer to the Potomac River. So rejoice!” he wrote.
“You and your henchmen who kill our people will never be forgiven. We will speak to you in the language of power, if you don’t understand it any other way. And produce even more modern weapons. To thresh with them the Nazi carrion that you gave birth to in the 21st century. Revenge every criminal for every murdered citizen of our country,” he wrote.
Analyst Carl Schuster said the warship deployment was a piece of political theater, according to CNN.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is “trying to show Russia remains a global player despite the costs and international condemnation of his assault on Ukraine,” Schuster said.
“He can show his domestic audiences that the international reaction is not as effective as stated in the Western media and that Russia still has friends in key areas. Internationally, he is signaling that sanctions have not affected the Russian navy’s ability to operate and that it remains a global maritime power,” he said.
The Biden administration on Sunday condemned Brazilian protesters who broke through security blockades and breached the country’s national Congress, presidential palace, and Supreme Court.
“Using violence to attack democratic institutions is always unacceptable. We join [President Luiz Inacio Lula Silva] in urging an immediate end to these actions,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote Sunday on Twitter.
White House adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden, who visited the U.S.–Mexico border on Sunday, “is following the situation closely and our support for Brazil’s democratic institutions is unwavering … Brazil’s democracy will not be shaken by violence.”
Videos and photos from the scene in Brasilia, the country’s capital city, showed protesters inside the presidential palace and destroying furniture in Congress and the Supreme Court. Some footage showed protesters on top of the national Congress. Reports indicated that Lula, who was inaugurated on Jan. 1, was not there, while it was likely few officials were working in the Brazilian Congress and Supreme Court on a Sunday.
At about 5:30 p.m. local time, less than three hours after the storming, security forces seemed to be regaining control of the presidential palace and Supreme Court’s surroundings, while thousands of protesters remained around Congress and on its roof.
Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to the United States ahead of Lula’s inauguration, has not commented on Sunday’s events. The social media channels of his three lawmaker sons also were silent.
Supporters of Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro hold a demonstration at the Esplanada dos Ministerios in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. (Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images)
Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha confirmed on Twitter that he had fired the capital city’s head of public security, Anderson Torres.
Bolsonaro supporters have been protesting Lula’s electoral win since Oct. 30, blocking roads and gathering outside military buildings, seeking the armed forces to intervene. Many of them alleged that election results were fraudulent or unreliable.
Videos on social media showed a limited presence of the capital’s military police; one showed officers standing by as people flooded into Congress, with one using his phone to record images. The capital’s security secretariat didn’t immediately issue a public comment about the relative absence of the police.
Other than the White House, other world leaders similarly condemned the protests and breach of the three government buildings.
Military Police forces fire tear gas at supporters of Brazilian former President Jair Bolsonaro as they storm the Planalto Presidential Palace in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023. (Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)Supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro demonstrate against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, outside Brazil’s National Congress in Brasilia, Brazil, on Jan. 8, 2023. (Adriano Machado/Reuters)
“The coup attempt by the Brazilian conservatives urged on by the leadership of oligarchic power, their spokespersons and fanatics, is reprehensible and undemocratic. Lula is not alone, he has the support of the progressive forces of his country, Mexico, the American continent and the world,” said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“The government of Peru energetically condemns the assault on the headquarters of congress, the presidency and the supreme court of Brazil and any attempt to disregard the legitimacy of the October 2022 elections. Our solidarity with President Lula and Brazilian democracy,” said the Peruvian Foreign Ministry on Sunday.
“We reject the violent actions in recent hours against the democratic institutions of the Federal Republic of Brazil and reiterate our support to our brothers in Brazil and their President Lula da Silva, democratically elected at the polls,” Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry said.
The New York City Office of Emergency Management is preparing in case thousands of New York hospital nurses go on strike on Jan. 9, officials said.
A situation room will bring together officials with the New York Police Department, New York Fire Department, New York City Health Department, health care facilities, and other groups to keep “eyes and ears” on the health care system amid the strike, a spokesperson for the Greater New York Hospital Association told Politico. A spokesperson for New York Mayor Eric Adams’s administration said the fire department has plans to reroute ambulances, while NYC Health + Hospitals will implement an emergency plan to deal with patients amid the staffing shortfall.
“We recognize the effect that a nurse strike would have on health care in our city and we are actively planning for different scenarios to minimize any impact to New Yorkers and ensure that the people of our city continue to receive care,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement. “We encourage all of the parties to remain at the bargaining table for however long it takes and work toward reaching a voluntary agreement. Our system will be prepared, in the event of a strike, to meet the challenges.”
As of the morning of Jan. 8, the New York State Nurses Association, a union representing 42,000 members across the state, said no new agreement was reached with area hospitals. It said about 8,700 union nurses at three hospitals—Montefiore Bronx, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West—will go on strike if the union’s demands aren’t met.
Stretchers outside the Montefiore Medical Center Moses Campus in the Bronx borough of New York City on April 7, 2020. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“After a day of bargaining at Montefiore and Mount Sinai Morningside and West yesterday, no new tentative agreements were reached,” it said. “Mount Sinai Hospital management walked out on the last bargaining session and avoided the table and their responsibility to bargain in good faith on Friday and Saturday.”
Union officials say the nurses are demanding higher wages, better health care benefits, and a smaller patient-to-nurse ratio.
Response
Mount Sinai disputed the union’s claims and demands, claiming it is “jeopardizing patients’ care, and it’s forcing valued Mount Sinai nurses to sacrifice their dedication to patient care and their own livelihoods,” according to a statement released to local media outlets.
“We have offered a 19.1 percent compounded pay raise over three years, which is the same offer other hospital systems in the city have made,” the hospital system said. “Still, [the New York State Nurses Association] refuses to back off its plan to strike on Monday, even though it has called off planned strikes at other New York City hospitals. It’s not reasonable for NYSNA to ask for a significant wage increase above and beyond these other sites. It’s time for NYSNA to meet us back at the bargaining table and continue negotiating in good faith, so that Mount Sinai nurses can continue providing the exceptional patient care for which they’re known and respected.”
According to an internal memo, Mount Sinai is planning to cut services amid the strike, including transferring newborn babies “outside the Mount Sinai Health System to ensure they get the care they so desperately need,” ABC7 reported. Two of three Mount Sinai hospitals will only perform emergency surgeries, the memo stated, and those facilities will start to transfer and discharge “as many patients as appropriate.”
Matt Allen, the union’s regional director, responded to the reports that neonatal babies are being transferred.
“As a labor and delivery nurse who helps mothers to bring babies into this world, I find it outrageous that Mount Sinai would compromise care for our NICU babies in any way. We already have NICU nurses caring for twice as many sick babies as they should be,” he said. “We’ve been sounding the alarm about how that’s not safe for our NICU patients, but Mount Sinai has failed to address this crisis. It’s unconscionable that Mount Sinai refuses to address unsafe staffing in our NICU and other units of the hospital but is now stirring fears about our NICU babies in contract negotiations.
Last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stated that she believes the impasse will be resolved soon.
“My full expectation is that this will be resolved because there is no alternative,” she told reporters. “We need to make sure that people in New York are taken care of.”
The Epoch Times has contacted New York City mayor’s office for comment.
Republican Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) on Saturday won the House speakership following a historic five-day battle for the gavel.
While McCarthy negotiated with Republican holdouts to shore up his support, CNN commentators spent the week scoffing at—and even ruling out—the prospect of a McCarthy victory.
“At this point, Kevin McCarthy has lost the speaker’s race,” former Democratic congressman Mondaire Jones said Wednesday. “This is embarrassment after embarrassment.”
New Georgia Project is illegally fundraising in 14 states as questions linger about its $18.5M bankroll
Washington State is threatening to refer Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project for prosecution unless it clarifies what became of its $18.5 million bankroll in 2021. But even that isn’t motivating the embattled charity to open its books.
On Tuesday, Washington’s secretary of state ordered the New Georgia Project to “immediately cease” all fundraising activities until it renews its charitable solicitation license in the state. To do so, New Georgia Project would have to disclose top-line financial information from its 2021 Form 990, which was due to the IRS in November. New Georgia Project strategic communications manager Simran Jadavji brushed off the delay, telling the Washington Free Beacon that the charity’s staff, “including our accountant, are just now returning to work after a much-deserved break for the holidays.”
That excuse likely won’t fly with the secretary, who closed out the charity’s registration in the state and threatened to report it to the state’s attorney general and impose fines of up to $2,000 per violation if it continues to solicit funds in Washington. As of this writing, the New Georgia Project is raising funds nationwide through the online fundraising platform ActBlue.
New Georgia Project’s missing IRS financial disclosure would help clarify how the charity went from controlling $18.5 million in assets at the end of 2020 to having to dismiss half its leadership team in October 2022 because of a lack of funds. The voter registration group, which was founded by Abrams in 2013 and once helmed by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), fired its top financial officer in June after the official said he couldn’t do his job without violating the law, a former executive of the charity told the Free Beacon.
Washington isn’t the only state threatening legal action against the New Georgia Project. The group’s charitable solicitation license is expired, closed, delinquent, or noncompliant in at least 16 states as of Thursday. New Georgia Project’s ongoing solicitation of charitable funds in those states could open the charity up to fines and criminal inquiries, the Free Beaconreported.
Paul Kamenar, an attorney with the National Legal and Policy Center, said an independent audit of New Georgia Project’s books is warranted to determine if the charity engaged in any financial impropriety.
“It’s astounding that despite failing to be currently registered as a charity in numerous states, and specifically barred by some from soliciting funds from the public, the New Georgia Project appears to continue to flout the law, subjecting the group to civil fines and penalties,” Kamenar said.
The New Georgia Project was once touted as the “poster child” of Abrams’s efforts to boost Democrats in the state by expanding its non-white electorate. But the group failed to fulfill its mandate. Democrats, including Abrams, suffered blistering losses in statewide contests across Georgia in the November midterm elections.
Abrams has a record of squandering massive fundraising hauls. The Democrat raised $100 million for her 2022 gubernatorial campaign but now can’t afford to pay employees and owes over $1 million to vendors. Abrams’s campaign exhausted its war chest on frivolities such as rent for a $12,500-per-month “hype house” in Atlanta to film TikTok videos, and a “swag truck” to distribute Abrams paraphernalia to young voters.
With disturbing news of child sex predators—groomers and Balenciaga—being exposed lately, parents are hugging their children a little tighter before tucking them in each night.
Few know better what dangers are lurking out there than child crimes investigator Terra Avilla, 36, of the District Attorney’s Office in Susanville, California.
The investigator and mom of three is also a TikTok influencer, going by the handle @thegirlcop, who shares her advice to parents on social media.
In her videos which went viral, Avilla shares three tips for parents to help keep their kids safe from sex predators, which she elaborated on for The Epoch Times.
But what makes this lady cop an expert in her field, one worthy of giving advice?
Officer Terra Avilla takes a selfie in her cruiser. (Courtesy of Terra Avilla)
Being the only female officer when she joined the Susanville Police Department in 2010, Avilla was often underestimated by her peers, yet her coworkers soon realized her forte.
Victims were often more comfortable speaking to a female officer so she soon was assigned to working child sex cases.
“After a while, because I was handling so many of them, I grew to be an expert very quickly,” she told the Epoch Times.
“I became an expert in speaking with children,” she said. “I learned how to develop a rapport with them and also discovered how important it is to have their trust.”
With this experience investigating crimes against children under her belt, she felt compelled to inform parents how to keep their kids safe.
She shared three important tips, which she follows raising her own children, which are as follows:
Number One–No Sleepovers
“I would not let them attend sleepovers,” she said. “This always draws a huge backlash, but after 11 p.m., there is nothing productive and good happening there.
“While I may trust the parents of my children’s friends, I have no control over who else may ‘pop’ in while my kid is there. The friends’ of their siblings, friends’ of the parents, neighbors, etc.”
Number Two–No Snapchat
“Nothing good comes from this app,” she shared in a video.
“Put all of their social medias on private and … refrain from talking to strangers on any social media platforms,” she told the newspaper. “Predators utilize fake accounts, pictures, even fake videos, phone numbers etc., to persuade young minds into thinking that they are their peers.
“Once they feel like this ‘person’—predator—is their friend, they have groomed them into sending photos and other personal information.
Terra Avilla with her husband and children, before the recent arrival of their youngest. (Courtesy of Terra Avilla)
“Children are very trusting and with less exposure to the evil of the world, it is hard for them to believe that this ‘peer’ they have been communicating with for the past couple months is not really who they say they are.”
Number Three–No Keeping Secrets with Outside Adults
“Children need to know that an adult should never tell them to keep a secret,” she said. “Also, children should be told that they can tell you anything, and that no matter what anyone else says, you will love them no matter what.
“I have taken many heartbreaking cases where the perpetrator threatened to harm the victim’s family, pet sibling, etc.
“The victims are often told that the suspect’s behavior is their fault, that they will go to jail if they tell, etc.”
In a video, she also shared, “There’s a big difference between having a secret and keeping a surprise.”
Besides these, Avilla supplied two “bonus” tips on TikTok:
Number Four–Don’t Force Your Kids to Hug or Kiss People They Don’t Want To, Not Even Family Members
“I know that that sounds really mean, but it’s their body and if they don’t want to give their nanny a hug goodbye, then they have the right to do that and set boundaries,” she said.
Number Five–Kids Shouldn’t Use ‘Silly Names for Their Private Parts’
“Teach your kids the correct names for their private parts,” she said in a video, because if something were to happen, investigators would have an easier time uncovering the truth if they knew the proper terms.
Besides taking TikTok by storm, garnering over 600,000 followers and 21 million likes, Avilla has earned the respect of her coworkers.
She has received special training to conduct forensic interviews with young victims and is often called to use the unique skillset she brings to the table.
But her being a trailblazer in her field has presented challenges, she admits.
“Being a female, everything I did was scrutinized by my male partners,” she said. “I felt like I had to be smarter, tougher, and work harder than them just to be accepted.
“Luckily, I had a great chief who saw my worth and supported me.”
After a while, her work spoke for itself.
Officer Terra Avilla poses beside two of her coworkers. (Courtesy of Terra Avilla)
She knows she may never be the one they call to kick in the door in a SWAT raid. “But I know for sure, no one will ever outwork me,” she said. “And my colleagues respect my opinion.”
Although 99 percent of her teammates are supportive, she admits some create challenges for her.
“I did have one partner who was awful to me, refused to back me up on calls, dumped ice water on my patrol seat, and made up rumors about me,” she said. “However, like any bully, I stood up to him and he ultimately quit.”
She learned to turn people’s underestimating her into an advantage. As Sun Tzu said in “The Art of War,” “Appear weak when you are strong.”
“Suspects often view me as not a threat or as intimidation,” she said. “Sometimes, by playing up a ditzy persona, I am able to get so much more information from them.
“I became incredibly proficient at ‘talking people into handcuffs.’”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on Jan. 8 that he believes Republicans can pass a House rules package that was subject to negotiations with holdouts during the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker last week.
“I think we’ll get the 218 votes we need to pass the rules package,” Jordan told “Fox News Sunday.” “What this rules package is designed to do is to stop what we saw happen literally 15 days ago, when the Democrats passed a $1.7 trillion monstrosity of a bill.”
During his bid for speaker, McCarthy had to make concessions to a group of about 20 Republicans until he was elected during the early hours of Jan. 7—after 15 rounds of voting. Some of the rule changes include lowering the threshold for a lawmaker to issue a motion to vacate, allowing members to oust the House speaker, as well as allowing a vote to allow term limits on members of the chamber.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did away with the “vacate the chair” rule when Democrats regained the majority in 2019.
“If a CEO is not doing the job, you can fire him—the same thing in politics,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of the holdouts who was won over by McCarthy by the rules changes.
McCarthy also committed to spending cuts, including slashing spending on defense. Congress faces an agenda of must-pass bills to fund the government, restock a military that has seen its supplies depleted by military aid to Ukraine and decades of war, authorize farming programs, and raise the nation’s borrowing limit to avert a federal default.
“We got a $32 trillion debt, everything has to be on the table,” Jordan said during the Jan. 8 interview. “When you’ve got numbers like that … frankly, we better look at the money we send to Ukraine as well.”
McCarthy won 216-212 in the 15th round of voting, with all Democrats voting for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and six GOP holdouts to McCarthy voting “present.”
“Let’s remember that a little temporary conflict is necessary in this town in order to stop this town from rolling over the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who was one of the holdouts, told CNN on Jan. 8.
Roy dismissed tensions that erupted during the 15 rounds of voting, which culminated in Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) being restrained after he appeared to lunge at Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the holdouts.
“I don’t think anybody on either side of the aisle could say with a straight face that they think that Washington is doing good work for the American people on a regular basis and isn’t broken. We have to work to fix this place,” Roy said.
During the voting, he ultimately backed McCarthy after earlier nominating Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).
“Some of the tensions you saw on display … we need a little of that,” Roy said. “We need a little of this sort of breaking the glass in order to get us to the table, in order to get us to fight for the American people and to change the way this place is dysfunctional.”
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (R) talks to Rep.-elect Chip Roy (R-Texas) (C) and Rep.-elect Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) during the second day of elections for speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 4, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“This isn’t just a shirts-and-skins, red-and-blue, you know, two-team thing. This is history … two-party entrenchment has made it so we don’t have a good back-and-forth to sit at the table and try to accomplish things.”
What McCarthy Said
As McCarthy took the gavel on Jan. 7, he promised to carry out a conservative agenda and tackle the crisis along the U.S.–Mexico border, cut funding for the IRS, and fix left-wing indoctrination in schools. Long-term challenges such as U.S. debt and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) must also be addressed, he said.
“No more ignoring this crisis of safety and sovereignty,” he said. “We must secure our border.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement congratulating McCarthy on his election as speaker at roughly 1 a.m. local time on Jan. 7.
“Jill and I congratulate Kevin McCarthy on his election as Speaker of the House,” Biden said. “I am prepared to work with Republicans when I can and voters made clear that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well.”
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) thanked former President Donald Trump for helping him secure the speakership.
“I do want to especially thank President [Donald] Trump. I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning,” McCarthy told reporters early morning on Jan. 7, after winning the 15th vote to become the new speaker of the House.
“He was all in. He would call me and he would call others. And he really was—I was just talking to him tonight—helping get those final votes,” McCarthy added. “What he’s really saying—really for the party and the country—that we have to come together.
“We have to focus on the economy. We’ve got to focus, make our border secure. We got to do so much work to do, and he was a great influence to make that all happen. So thank you, President Trump.”
McCarthy was finally elected speaker after 15 votes beginning on Jan. 3, after the California lawmaker had made several concessions to win over a group of populist conservatives in order to secure the votes. One of the key concessions was allowing just one House member to call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair—giving McCarthy a fragile grip on power.
In the final vote, six remaining Republican holdouts all voted “present,” paving the way for McCarthy’s victory with 216 votes, while Democrat leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York received 212 votes.
The six House Republicans were Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Bob Good (R-Va.), and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.).
Former President Donald Trump announces he is running for president in the 2024 U.S. presidential election during an announcement at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Alon Skuy/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump threw his support behind McCarthy just before the fourth vote on Wednesday, telling House Republicans at the time that the California lawmaker “will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB” as speaker.
The former president took to his Truth Social platform to congratulate McCarthy after his victory.
“The Republican Party really came together last night. It was, in so many ways, a beautiful thing to see. HISTORIC!” Trump added in a separate post.
In response to McCarthy’s comments, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Thank you Kevin. It was my great honor!”
Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) also thanked the former president for helping McCarthy secure the gavel.
“Thanks @realDonaldTrump for your leadership and influence to get us over the hump. Now it’s time for us to get to work!!!” Alford wrote on Truth Social, before adding “Take Back America” and “MAGA” hashtags.
MAGA stands for “Make America Great Again,” the slogan of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign.
Democrats
However, some Democrats have taken to Twitter to criticize “MAGA Republicans” following McCarthy’s win.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said House Republicans “caved” again to Trump and “MAGA extremists,” claiming that their decision will be “bad” for Congress and the United States.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans just held the House hostage for more than 4 days and prevented the 118th Congress from beginning its work,” wrote Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.). “This is just the beginning of the dysfunction when the Republican majority is being controlled by a small group of radical, power-hungry members.”
“I’ll be back in Washington next week to fight for a House that truly works for the people and not just a radical few,” Quigley added.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) said the delay in choosing a new speaker has “undermined” the United States.
“House Democrats are ready to work for everyday Americans—But this week’s chaos led by extreme MAGA Republicans has undermined our nation’s values and makes it much harder for Congress to work for the people,” Espaillat wrote.
Espaillat added, “We will NOT let House Republicans take us backwards.”
President Joe Biden released a statement saying he is ready to work with Republicans.
“As I said after the midterms, I am prepared to work with Republicans when I can and voters made clear that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well,” Biden said. “Now that the leadership of the House of Representatives has been decided it is time for that process to begin.”
Republicans
In his first speech to Congress after being elected, McCarthy promised to hold the Biden administration accountable, make the economy strong, and win the U.S.-China economic competition.
“As for the Chinese Communist Party, we will create a bipartisan select committee on China to investigate how to bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went to China, and then we will win this economic competition,” McCarthy said.
Some Republicans concurred with McCarthy over the importance of tackling the challenges posed by the Chinese regime.
“Speaker McCarthy has made it clear that our majority will be the first to address China as one of America’s greatest threats,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) wrote on Twitter. “I look forward to working with him to provide the needed leadership to do that. Let’s get to work!”
Rep. Mike Gallagher (2nd L) of Wisconsin nominates Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California to be Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 4, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), whom McCarthy named in December to be the chairman of the select committee on China, said in a statement after being sworn in that “hard work begins.”
“The American people elected a House Republican majority to combat the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party, restore fiscal sanity, and inject common sense into the legislative process,” Gallagher wrote. “Now that Kevin McCarthy has officially become Speaker McCarthy, we can finally get to work and implement these commitments to the country.”
Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) has also added China to what he believes should be House Republicans’ top to-do list.
“Now it is the time for House Republicans to begin the work we were elected to do: pass legislation out of the House to address forty-year high inflation, secure our southern border, reduce rising crime, and confront threats from adversaries abroad like China,” Barr wrote on Twitter.
In March last year, McCarthy said he aimed to “expose the truth behind China’s COVID Coverup,” when Republicans had the majority in the House.
Apple stabs Taiwan in the back with iPhone shift to China
Apple is doing the splits. The maker of iPhones, MacBooks, and AirPods is moving much of its production outside of China to the United States, India, and Vietnam.
Simultaneously, the company is shifting production to Chinese companies from Taiwanese firms.
Moves to the West and friendly countries will please Western consumers and governments.
Within China, whose consumers spend a whopping 17 percent of Apple’s total revenues, the company is moving production to Chinese companies such as Luxshare Precision, Goertech, and Wingtech from Taiwan’s Foxconn.
That makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) happy, or at least, less unhappy.
The production split is driven by politics. Apple wants to maintain production in China and the West during an incipient global decoupling between Washington- and Beijing-led trading blocs.
Chinese production will continue to supply China, Russia, and Iran, while non-Chinese production can reliably supply the rest of the world.
Taiwan is a definite loser in the split, as its Foxconn company specializes in Chinese production for Western markets. That specialty is no longer in demand. Vietnam and India are the biggest winners.
Apple’s first major order for premium iPhones from Luxshare was reported on Jan. 4 by the Financial Times. It comes shortly after worker riots at Foxconn, allegedly over pay and COVID-19 lockdowns at the plant. The protests hurt the Apple brand, production, and revenues.
They also pressured Apple and served as a convenient excuse for it to move Foxconn production to Luxshare, despite the Foxconn plant having regained speed.
Luxshare previously assembled only non-premium iPhones. With the new contract, the company broke Foxconn’s monopoly on premium phones.
The day the news broke, Luxshare shares rose more than 3 percent. Apple’s valuation, conversely, fell over the past year to less than $2 trillion from $3 trillion.
Cutthroat business practices are a strong possibility. Luxshare was founded by Grace Wang, a former Foxconn worker.
The latest Taiwanese-to-Chinese production shift follows the same course as many in the past, where a Chinese company cannibalizes a competitor and then develops similar products to outcompete its rival.
The regime in Beijing assists the replacement of its competitors by subsidizing Chinese companies and providing them with lax regulations while increasing regulations, taxes, and propaganda against non-Chinese competitors or fomenting labor strife in their workplaces. If competitors complain, the CCP’s only-somewhat-passive aggression increases.
“Apple struggled with iPhone 14 Pro shipments during the holiday season because of Covid restrictions on its primary [Foxconn] factory in China,” according to CNBC. Those restrictions increased labor strife and the debilitating drop in production.
Unrest erupted at Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou, China, on Nov. 23, 2022. (Screenshot of Stephen McDonell’s Twitter account via The Epoch Times)
The production shifts have occurred for years and through Apple’s enabling hand. Luxshare’s annual revenues increased to $24 billion from $2 billion between 2016 and 2021.
In the latest shift, Luxshare could only bring its technical standards up to the required level for premium iPhone production with a “significant investment from Apple,” according to sources cited by the Financial Times.
In November 2022, Luxshare was reportedly producing some iPhone 14 Pro Max units in its plant northwest of Shanghai.
“The transferred order represents a coup for Luxshare, which has been winning an increasing share of Apple’s business,” according to the Financial Times. “Apple’s ties to China have become closer in recent years as Chinese contract manufacturers have won orders at the expense of Taiwanese partners.”
But placating the CCP with production and technology transfers only buys Apple time.
Chinese state media criticized the American company. The Global Times claimed that “weakening demand for Apple products … has dragged down the performance of Chinese suppliers.”
The Global Times claimed that Apple’s problems stem partly from a “competitive market in China as domestic smartphone brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo have gained increasing popularity.”
The CCP clearly aims for the replacement of not only Foxconn by Luxshare but of Apple by China’s tech champions.
Moving premium iPhone production to a Chinese manufacturer improved Apple’s short-term chances of avoiding worker riots and arbitrary rules imposed by the regime. But in the long run, Apple’s days in authoritarian China are numbered.
Apple and other international corporations, along with shareholders who have different incentive structures than their CEOs, should watch their backs.
CEOs who pursue the Chinese market with production and technology transfers are investing in their companies’ long-term demise.
The White House pressured Facebook to take action against Fox News host Tucker Carlson for supposedly saying COVID-19 vaccines “don’t work,” according to a document released by Louisiana’s Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who characterized the move as a request to censor the journalist.
Landry shared the document—an email exchange between White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty and an unidentified Facebook employee—in a Jan. 7 post on Twitter, with the comment: “Rob Flaherty tells facebook to censor” Tucker Carlson.
“Since we’ve been on the phone—the top post about vaccines today is [T]ucker Carlson saying they don’t work. Yesterday it was Tomi Lehren [sic] saying she won’t take one,” Flaherty reportedly said in the message to the Facebook staffer, whose name and email address have been redacted.
“This is exactly why I want to know what ‘Reduction’ actually looks like—if ‘reduction’ means ‘pumping our most vaccine hesitant audience with [T]ucker Carlson saying it doesn’t work’ then … I’m not sure it’s reduction!” Flaherty continued, per the document shared by Landry.
Signaling action regarding the request, the unidentified Facebook employee then reportedly wrote: “Running this down now.”
The Epoch Times has reached out with a request for comment to Facebook parent Meta, Fox News Channel, and the White House, but no reply was received by publication.
‘Hard Evidence’ of Government Collusion With Big Tech
Landry, together with Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, sued the Biden administration in May 2022 for allegedly pressuring and colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech.
Schmitt on Jan. 5 was sworn in as a U.S. senator and has been replaced in his role as Missouri attorney general by Andrew Bailey.
Bailey took to Twitter on Jan. 7 to say that when he took the oath of office, he swore he would protect the Constitution and explained “why.”
“We now have hard evidence that President Biden’s Administration colluded with social media companies to censor differing viewpoints and silence ‘misinformation’ that was later deemed true,” Bailey wrote in a series of posts.
Bailey shared a screenshot of an email from White House COVID-19 Digital Director Clarke E. Humphrey to an unidentified Twitter employee with the subject line “Flagging Hank Aaron misinfo” and requesting the Twitter staff to “get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.”
In her request, Humphrey provided a link to a Twitter post by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known critic of the Biden administration’s narrative on COVID-19 vaccines.
The offending tweet links to an article on the website of the Children’s Health Defense, an activist group chaired by Kennedy Jr. that left-leaning Wikipedia labels as “one of the main sources of misinformation on vaccines.”
The article, from Jan. 22, 2021, says Aaron died 18 days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine of an “undisclosed cause” and cites Kennedy Jr. as saying that his “tragic death is part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of COVID vaccines.”
About a week later, the Fulton County Medical Examiner released Aaron’s cause of death as “natural causes” and that he didn’t have any COVID-19 symptoms, with his medical history listing prostate issues and hypertension.
Besides requesting action on Kennedy Jr.’s tweet, Humphrey also added a request to “keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre,” per the screenshot shared by Bailey.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Twitter with a request for comment.
‘The Truth No Longer Matters to the White House’
Bailey also shared screenshots of several other messages that he said show collusion between Big Tech and the government to suppress free speech, including another message from Flaherty to an unidentified Facebook employee in which the White House official demands “assurances” that the social media company is taking actions “to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse.”
“The truth no longer matters to the White House,” Bailey captioned the post.
“These emails confirm what we’ve known all along,” Bailey wrote. “The Biden Admin. has been colluding with social media companies to stifle opposing voices.”
“I will continue to push back against this blatant attack on the 1st Amendment with every tool at my disposal,” he added.
With Schmitt gone as attorney general, Bailey has taken his place as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against President Joe Biden, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other administration officials.
The lawsuit claims that Biden and other government officials worked with Big Tech companies like Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor conversation around matters relating to everything from COVID-19 and election integrity to the Hunter Biden laptop story, doing so under the guise of battling “misinformation.”
The two Republican-led states accuse Biden and other officials named in the lawsuit of “falsely” attacking the Hunter Biden laptop story as “disinformation.”
The story, which was first published by the New York Post in October 2020, detailed the contents of a laptop linked to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. The laptop was abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop and included compromising pictures and emails regarding allegedly corrupt foreign business deals.
Twitter labeled the story as “potentially harmful” and locked the New York Post’s main Twitter account while also blocking Twitter users from publishing the link to the story.
GOP to Investigate ‘Weaponization of the Federal Government’
It comes as House Republicans have pledged to investigate allegations of collusion between federal agencies and private companies, and to do so, they’re looking to establish a subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the federal government.
Republicans have put forward a House rules package, which includes a proposal to create a House Judiciary select subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
The proposal for the subcommittee comes after Republicans recently signaled that they want a top-to-bottom investigation of the FBI after the “Twitter Files” disclosed that the agency pressured Twitter to censor Americans’ free speech.
Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has suggested that the FBI needs to be investigated in the same way it was in the 1970s, when the Church Committee investigated abuses by the CIA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service, and the National Security Agency.
The committee, led by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), revealed the now-infamous CIA MKULTRA program, which involved the drugging and torture of American citizens in experimentation on mind control.
“We’ve been looking at a Church-style committee to look at this,” Jordan told Just the News last week.
Arizona’s largest county is launching an investigation into the issues that caused chaos on Election Day 2022.
The probe will be “an important step in our efforts to get to the bottom of the printer issues that affected some Vote Centers on Election Day last November,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Vice Chairman Clint Hickman said in a joint statement on Jan. 6.
Voters across the county found their ballots couldn’t be processed by machines in the 2022 midterm elections, a problem that led to long lines at voting centers and workers having to tabulate the votes at a later date. At least 70 of the county’s polling sites were affected, representing some 17,000 ballots. Maricopa County was one of the last counties to produce results in the midterms.
During a trial held for a lawsuit brought by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a cyber expert who examined ballots said he found 19-inch images printed on 20-inch paper. Clay Parikh, an information security officer with Northrup Grumman, said that the printers wouldn’t process the 19-inch images.
Parikh said there were only two ways the situation could’ve happened.
“One way is by changing the printer adjustments that would make the printer adjustments and settings override the image file that was sent, the other is from the application side, the operating system side,” Parikh said.
County officials said they weren’t aware of the county using 19-inch images and said that the printers were programmed to print 20-inch ballots. They’ve denied accusations that the problems stemmed from intentional actions.
Richard Baris, a pollster, testified that the problems disenfranchised enough voters to swing the election. Republicans vote at much higher numbers on Election Day, while Democrats favor early and mail voting. Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Lake by 17,117 votes, according to official election results.
Arizona Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, who oversaw the trial, ultimately rejected the case, saying he hadn’t been presented with convincing evidence of misconduct. The Arizona Supreme Court later turned down a request to transfer the lawsuit, meaning an appeal will be heard before the state court of appeals.
The new investigation will be headed by Ruth McGregor, a former chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. McGregor has led probes in the past, including an investigation into problems with locks on cell doors in state prisons.
McGregor will hire a team of independent experts “to find out why the printers that read ballots well in the August Primary had trouble reading some ballots while using the same settings in the November General,” Gates and Hickman said. “Our voters deserve nothing less.”
The officials said previously that the printer settings were the same for the August 2022 primary and the November 2022 general election, and that the paper was the same thickness.
An election worker sorts ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 9, 2022. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Election Task Force
Hobbs, meanwhile, announced an elections task force on Jan. 5 that she said would advise officials on improving elections.
The task force will “study and make recommendations to strengthen election laws, policies, and procedures in the State of Arizona,” an executive order from Hobbs stated.
The entity will be chaired by the governor or a designee and include Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, or his designee; a county recorder nominated by the Arizona Senate president; a county recorder nominated by the Arizona House of Representatives president; and two election directors picked by the Election Officials of Arizona Association.
The task force was directed to submit a report to Hobbs by Nov. 1, 2023, that identifies specific recommendations for legislators to improve the state’s election laws, including recommendations to ensure “consistent, secure, and accessible election administration and voter registration practices across the State.”
Hobbs said that Arizona’s elections “are fair, secure, and free” but that “more can be done to strengthen and clarify the laws around Arizona’s democratic process.”
Lake said that the task force would be a “cover-up” unless it probed the problems in Maricopa County, including the 19-inch images printed on 20-inch paper.
Fontes said that he looked forward to working with Hobbs to make sure the task force “is set up for success” and suggested it would help improve voter confidence.
A veteran U.S. political analyst said on Jan. 6 that the emerging consensus coming out of the fight that started as a disorganized rebellion over the speakership of the United States House of Representatives will be a win for the American people in reforming the way Congress does business.
But another expert cautioned that while some of the rebels opposing Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House Speaker are motivated by reform, others are motivated by self-interest.
As of press time, the House has adjourned until 10 p.m. ET as McCarthy continues negotiations with the remaining GOP holdouts. Earlier in session on Friday, McCarthy managed to flip 14 votes and says he’s confident he’ll soon have enough votes for the speaker’s gavel.
“At first I thought it was ‘Rebels Without a Cause’ … but the deal is a good one,” political analyst and pollster Dick Morris told The Epoch Times about the GOP negotiations to select a leader in the House, referring to the iconic 1955 film starring James Dean about disaffected American youth.
As an example of reform, Morris said that the dissident faction asked for and has apparently received concessions from McCarthy that would divide the budget into 12 different components for separate votes.
There would also be separate bills for earmarks, a typical repository for wasteful pork barrel spending.
Morris said that this would prevent the unseemly passage of 4,000-page budget legislation that is voted on by legislators who don’t get a chance to read it before a yes or no vote.
He pointed to the recent passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill by the lame-duck Congress, an eventuality that Morris warned about before the November election, as an example of how the speaker fight might change Congress for the better.
Under a McCarthy speakership, voting on bills such as the recently-passed $1.7 trillion bill before knowing what’s in them would not be allowed.
U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) (L) embraces Rep.-elect Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2023 in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Ga.), a McCarthy supporter, confirmed that the 12 appropriation bills would be moved separately, a change she described as “fantastic.”
“These are all big wins for conservatives and great news” for America, Greene told The Epoch Times in an interview after the House adjourned on Friday.
“These are things that Kevin McCarthy was very interested in doing in the beginning, which is why I supported him,” she added. The congresswoman said it was untrue that McCarthy had told members to stop talking to the press about details of negotiations, as had been reported elsewhere.
While McCarthy and his supporters believe the Californian will secure the speakership on Friday night, Morris himself was less certain.
“I’m not sure how this will all end,” he said.
“But what’s clear is that McCarthy has the negotiating skills to be Speaker” and to put his ego aside to get what he needs for the country, Morris added.
Morris said that he thinks the continuing holdouts refusing to vote for McCarthy are either representatives that McCarthy opposed in primary races or those who have “personal issues” with the California Republican.
Rebels With a Cause for Concern?
The label “rebels without a cause” used to describe the holdouts against a McCarthy speakership is partially fair and partially unfair, said a conservative advocate who is especially interested in congressional reform.
“Some of the dissidents are opportunists and/or grudge-holders who are clearly acting selfishly and not in the interests of the party,” Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative watchdog, told The Epoch Times in an email analyzing the speaker fight.
“But others have principled opposition to the way the House has been run for many years, where Republicans always seem to lose, even when they are in the majority. And it is sometimes hard to figure out who is in what camp,” said Flaherty.
Added to that is a mix of grudges and personal issues that are always under the surface in politics.
For example, a prominent target of the rebels is the Congressional Ethics Office (CEO), which might have one or two of the people opposing a McCarthy speakership in their sights for investigation, said the NLPC chief.
“I think in that room of 20 [rebels], there’s a couple of ethics problems that don’t want the CEO looking into them,” said Flaherty, adding that ultimately it would be a hard sell to Americans to label getting rid of the CEO as congressional reform.
Greene emphasized that the plan under McCarthy from “day one” was to reform the way Congress does business, even before the so-called rebellion.
“So [this is] what we’ve been working on for months and months and months, which is exactly why I’m supporting Kevin McCarthy and the fact that he’s going to let us do all the investigations that we can do,” she said.
U.S. Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) delivers remarks in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
‘Democracy Messy’
However, in the final analysis, over-the-top rhetoric will not serve the party well, Flaherty believes, regardless of who wins the speakership.
Democracy is necessarily messy, and internal party politics can be even messier—with internal conflicts like those seen in the Speaker race always the most brutal, he said.
“If the Republicans wish to be an effective majority, they will have to get past all the hard feelings being created now,” Flaherty cautioned.
Yet, despite the representation by the establishment media of a GOP in chaos over the internal bickering, Flaherty said that the only thing different today is that the bickering is public and not done in some backroom.
“As riveting as present events are, House GOP leadership elections have a history of intrigue and drama,” he said.
In 1997, Republican congressman John Boehner, who would later become speaker himself, famously plotted a coup to depose then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, with Bill Paxton as their replacement, said Flaherty.
Then-Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) balked at the plan and tipped off Gingrich, who was able to quash it, according to Flaherty.
So the intrigue today is not without precedent.
Greene laid out a laundry list of items for a McCarthy speakership to take action on, which she said would already be occurring, but for the rebellion.
That list includes: repealing the 87,000-agent IRS army that President Joe Biden and the Democrats recently okayed under the stimulus plan last year; closing the U.S. border to illegal immigration; clamping down on China; and auditing funds that went to Ukraine, amongst others, said Greene.
“These are all things that conservatives all over America are going to love. This is why Jim Jordan is supporting [McCarthy]. This is why I’ve been supporting him and I’m so excited that my friends and colleagues in the Freedom Caucus are coming around and I think you’re going to see it happen hopefully tonight,” the congresswoman added.
The U.S. government was wrong when it said a ban on machine guns applied to bump stocks, a federal court ruled on Jan. 6.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in 2018 claimed that two laws banning machine guns meant bump stocks were illegal, reversing its earlier position. The move, backed by then-President Donald Trump, came after a man carried out a mass shooting in Las Vegas, using bump stocks to fire more rapidly.
Michael Cargill, a Texas resident who had to surrender bump stocks due to the reversal, sued in 2019, arguing that the ATF and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, violated the Constitution by usurping the role of Congress in defining the machine gun ban as extending to bump stocks.
“Cargill is correct. A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machine gun’ set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in its new ruling.
Machine guns are defined as a weapon that shoots, or is designed to shoot, or “can be readily restored to shoot,” more than one shot automatically without manual reloading by “a single function of the trigger.” The term includes “the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person,” according to the Gun Control Act of 1968, one of the laws cited by the ATF.
The ruling noted that semi-automatic weapons do not fall under the definition because one pull of the trigger corresponds to the firing of a single bullet.
Bump stocks are accessories that, when attached to a weapon, let a shooter speed up the firing mechanism of a semi-automatic weapon, enabling a quicker discharge of bullets. But it does not change the mechanics of a semi-automatic weapon, or the crucial aspect of needing to re-engage the trigger to fire an additional bullet, U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee writing for the majority, wrote.
“Without a bump stock or the use of an alternative bump technique, the user must provide manual input by pulling the trigger with the muscles of his trigger finger. With a bump stock, the shooter need not pull and release his trigger finger. But the shooter must still apply forward pressure to the weapon’s forebody in order to maintain the shooting mechanism,” Eldrod said. “Again, the manual input remains, even though its form changes.”
Weighing against the government was how the ATF for years after bump stocks were invented in the early 2000s decided they did not fall under the machine gun ban. That changed under public pressure following the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, which left 60 dead and hundreds wounded. The ATF’s final rule stated that the term machine gun “includes a bump-stock-type device, i.e., a device that allows a semi-automatic firearm to shoot more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger by harnessing the recoil energy of the semi-automatic firearm to which it is affixed so that the trigger resets and continues firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.”
Not Unambiguous
Cargill argued in his suit that the government’s interpretation of machine gun was wrong. Even if it may have been right, Cargill offered, the text of the statute was not unambiguous, which means the rule was not allowed under court precedent.
Courts have been split on whether the ATF’s actions were legal. Several appeals courts had sided with the government against the rule, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, while several other courts, including a different appeals court, had said the agency overstepped its authority because the law was ambiguous.
In the new ruling, the majority said that the rulings for the government—including one that reasoned “single function of the trigger” could mean “a single pull of the trigger from the perspective of the shooter”—were based “on words that do not exist” in the law, and that a plain reading means bump stocks do not certainly fall under the definition.
“The first thing to note is that the ultimate subject is machine gun, and the subject complement is weapon. In other words, a machinegun is defined by reference to what kind of weapon it is. But identifying the subject of the sentence is only our first step. We next look, second, to the fact that the term weapon is defined by how it shoots. So, again, the definition refers to the device being made to shoot, not the person or thing doing the shooting. Third, the manner of shooting must be automatic. Fourth—and critically—the prepositional phrases define the firing process’s requirements from a mechanical perspective. The process must occur by a single function, and the single act must be by the trigger. In short, there is no mention of a shooter,” the majority said.
“The grammatical structure continuously points the reader back to the mechanics of the firearm. The statute does not care what human input is required to activate the trigger—it cares only whether more than one shot is fired each time the trigger acts.”
Because of the mixed rulings from circuit courts, Cargill’s lawyers expect the government to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously refused to take up cases against the rule.
“We are pleased that a circuit court has finally—and decisively—recognized that Congress must be the one to pass any bump stock ban,” Mark Chenoweth, president and general counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which has been representing Cargill, said in a statement. “The resulting circuit split should bring this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court’s attention promptly and supply a suitable vehicle for deciding this issue once and for all.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
The ruling does not have an immediate effect because the court remanded the case to a district court, which had ruled against Cargill, with orders to enter a judgement for Cargill.
Elrod was joined by Chief Judge Priscilla Richman, a George W. Bush appointee, and Circuit Judges Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee; Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee; Carl Stewart, a Clinton appointee; Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee; Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee; Don Willett, a Trump appointee; James Ho, a Trump appointee; Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee; Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee; Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee; and Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee.
Other Opinions
In a one-sentence concurring opinion, Haynes, joined by Richman, said, “I concur in the judgment only because I reluctantly conclude that the relevant statute is ambiguous such that the rule of lenity favors the citizen in this case.”
In a separate concurring opinion, Ho, joined by Richman and Southwick, said that due to the ambiguity, “Congress must take action if it wishes to criminalize bump stocks.”
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, an Obama appointee, joined by Circuit Judges James Dennis, a Clinton appointee, and James Earl Graves Jr., an Obama appointee, said that statutory language can be ambiguous enough to bear multiple interpretations but that shouldn’t lead to a ruling that one is incorrect.
“Today, our court extends lenity, once a rule of last resort, to rewrite a vital public safety statute banning machineguns since 1934. In conflict with three other courts of appeals, our court employs its new lenity regime to carve out from federal firearms regulation the bump stock—a device that helped the Las Vegas shooter fire over a thousand rounds during an eleven-minute long attack,” Higginson said.
“Therefore, our court uses lenity to legalize an instrument of mass murder. This is evident from our court’s attempt to confine its new lenity regime only to this statute, giving machinegun owners immunity from prosecution that is not shared by other offenders under the federal code.”
