Beijing Biden is letting China back into U.S. federal infrastructure after Trump banned their drones.

Despite the Trump administration blacklisting DJI – a controversial Chinese technology company – several branches of the federal government under have purchased drones from the firm under President Joe Biden.

DJI Innovations – formerly Da Jiang Innovations Science – currently leads the world’s market drone market, first catching the attention of U.S. intelligence officials in 2015. The organization has admitted complying with Beijing’s data requests, leading the U.S. Army to ban their use in 2017, citing cyber vulnerabilities. 

The office of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles sent a memo stating officials have “moderate confidence” DJI’s commercial drones and software are “providing US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

Now, America is buying these drones again, giving the Chinese Communist Party yet another entry into U.S. federal infrastructure.

The purchases follow the appointment of two high-profile Biden campaign officials who previously worked for a consulting firm lobbying for DJI: Senior Spokesman for Biden Inaugural Committee Matt Hill, and Director of State Communication Meira Bernstein.

Following stints at the Global Strategy Group, Hill began serving as the Senior Associate Communications Director, and Bernstein is now Deputy Assistant Secretary for Media Operations at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Deleted client lists from the Global Strategy Group’s website reveal the firm working on behalf of DJI.

As Axios notes, the Secret Service bought eight DJI drones on July 26th, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) purchased 19 drones a few days earlier.

In contrast, under the Trump administration, the DHS – the Secret Service’s parent agency – asserted that DJI was “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

The New York Times reported on a 2016 DJI press briefing in China where company spokesman Zhang Fanxi described how DJI “is complying with requests from the Chinese government to hand over data”:

Biden Govt, Secret Service, FBI Purchase Drones From Firm Complying With Chinese Government Data Requests. (thenationalpulse.com)

Despite claims made by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the majority of those entering the U.S. illegally are not being deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the head of the Border Patrol union, Brandon Judd, told The Center Square.

Mayorkas, who traveled to Del Rio, Texas, where nearly 15,000 Haitian migrants gathered this past week, warned illegal immigrants at a news conference, “If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life.”

Likewise, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that DHS, Border Patrol, ICE, and the U.S. Coast Guard were moving individuals from Del Rio to other processing locations in order to take individuals into custody, process them and remove them from the country.

It added that DHS was securing additional transportation to accelerate the pace and increase the capacity of removal flights to Haiti and other destinations in the hemisphere within the next 72 hours. But the agency hasn’t confirmed how many flights, and how many Haitians have been deported.

A few days later, at another news conference in Del Rio on Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, when asked about the Biden administration’s deportation flight plans, said, “They have shown no capability of being able to process these migrants by the end of this week. The only thing they’ve shown is an incapability of dealing with this crisis, candidly, in a way they pretend it doesn’t even exist. And we’re here to tell you it exists.”

The Associated Press reported that Haitians have been released on a “very, very large scale” in recent days, with one official estimating the number of those releases is in the thousands.

“The first three [deportation] flights that went to Haiti included family units” who were deported, Judd said. But deportations are on a case-by-case basis, he added, and inconsistent.

For example, “if the flights focus on deporting people to Haiti, the flights to Guatemala stop and those people are released,” he said. “So, all you’re doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul. You’re shifting resources to handle one segment and you’re releasing the other segment. Not all the people from Haiti are being flown back; not all the people are being expelled from under Title 42. A good number of them are in fact being released with an NTA (Notice to Appear) or NTR (Notice to Return),” notices related to the immigration court process.

Border Patrol agents make official arrests and transfer individuals to ICE facilities. ICE then determines whether they are released with an order to reappear for court hearings to go through the process to remain in the U.S. or be deported.

Haitians already processed and released into the community were observed boarding buses at the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition in Del Rio. Roughly 50-60 Haitians at a time boarded a large commercial charter bus, and smaller groups were shuttled in a grey rundown minivan to the local bus station. With brown envelopes in hand, a mix of families and individuals also carried with them food, cash and papers to help them reach their next destination.

When asked where the bus was going, the first stop was San Antonio, with a final destination of Houston, The Center Square was told. Officials wouldn’t confirm if the Haitians were boarding planes to another destination or if San Antonio or Houston were their final destinations. This group of Haitians had already been processed by Border Patrol and released into the general population.

Meanwhile, a steady flow of people continued to cross the Rio Grand River farther upstream from the bridge, crossing onto private property on a heavily trafficked area on Vega Verde, where Texas Department of Public Safety officers were waiting to detain them and call Border Patrol for pickup.

DHS has also been busing Haitians to El Paso, Laredo, and cities in the Rio Grande Valley for processing, also adding them to flights to Tucson, Arizona, the Associated Press reported.

Judd said of the roughly 200,000 apprehensions that Border Patrol makes, “they are probably dealing with 120,000 people because sometimes the same person or people are apprehended more than once. Of those, it’s right about 60-68 percent are being released [into the community] with NTAs. The vast majority are not being expelled or deported. The majority are being released into the United States.”

When asked if this ratio applied to Haitians under the Del Rio Bridge, he said, “If we go off, historically speaking, the majority of the ones under the bridge will be released.”

But this number can shift depending on which segment of the population ICE chooses to deport, he added. ICE “can say we’re going to send all the Haitians back but then we’re going to release all the other people from another country. Or we can release the Haitians.”

In response to being asked if there’s consistency in this process, he replied, “Zero consistency.”

By Bethany Blankley

Border Patrol: Despite Mayorkas’ Claims, 60 Percent of Migrants Being Released Into U.S. Communities (theepochtimes.com)

Fox News on Wednesday ran a scroll listing the many controversies plaguing the Biden administration during its eighth month, and the moment really put things into context.

We’re n deep trouble.

Not that we didn’t already know our country has descended into complete chaos. That much has been obvious for some time. It’s everywhere you go, actually.

Grocery stores, gas stations, airports and the passable portions of the country’s southern border are all reminders of how terrible President Joe Biden has been for America.

Walk by a TV, though, and the larger picture comes into focus.

That was especially true on Fox News when “America Reports” anchors Shannon Bream and John Roberts rolled out a list of the ongoing crises, tragedies and other disasters plaguing the country and its inept leadership.

“It’s been eight whole months, but it looks like the honeymoon is over,” Bream said while Fox viewers were reminded of the many failings of the Biden administration.

A graphic displaying “current controversies” scrolled upward as the pair commented on the 18 different issues the network had keyed in on. Bream declared that not even the “mainstream media can ignore” all the trouble.

Those troubles include reports that thousands of Haitian migrants who have been camped out along the border in Texas are being released into the country. That occurred after the White House assured that no such thing would happen.

Roberts then noted that Biden was “getting called out for not calling out China by name at the United Nations” when he addressed the global body this past week and managed to make no mention of the world’s largest human rights abuser.

Fox’s scrolling Biden crisis graphic reminded viewers that while they face being treated as second-class citizens if they’re not vaccinated against the coronavirus, no such mandates exist for people who are literally breaking the law by being in the country.

It also pointed out Biden’s mixed messaging about COVID-19 booster shots, which are now not being recommended for the general population by the Food and Drug Administration. Biden sure stopped talking about that subject quickly.

The adults are back in charge, right?

The current administration has managed to anger France, the country’s oldest ally, while also moving to leave the Israeli people vulnerable to attacks from Hamas terrorists.

Landowners Fight Back Against Biden Plan to Control Americans’ Property

In case anyone had forgotten that the U.S. military surrendered full control of Afghanistan to the Taliban last month, Fox’s crisis meter reminded them.

That’s all going on, and we can expect, any day now, a capitulation to Iran over nuclear weapons. It feels like a matter of time before pallets of cash start landing in Tehran.

There was also present on Fox’s list the fact that not one single person in the White House or the president’s Cabinet has claimed responsibility for a drone strike in Kabul that killed seven children. There has also been no accountability over the fact that the Pentagon left American citizens behind in Afghanistan as troops were ordered out.

Labor shortages, rising prices on basic commodities and high gas prices are all still with us as domestic issues to remind everyone just how bad the Democratic Party’s ideas are.

The opening segment from Bream and Roberts on Wednesday served as a sobering reminder of just how much trouble this country is in. Simultaneously, it somehow also failed to capture the magnitude of the situation.

The good news: There are just under three and a half years left of this madness — if we’re lucky.

Fox News Runs Devastating List of Every Single Current Biden Controversy, It’s Worse Than You Think (westernjournal.com)

The Biden administration is forging ahead with a cryptic federal program to expand government control of property under the guise of combating “climate change.”

Skeptics say the program is a sinister land grab targeting 680 million acres nationwide disguised as environmental conservation, Breitbart reported Wednesday.

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska has been leading the charge to oppose President Joe Biden’s so-called 30 x 30 executive order, which calls for the government to conserve at least 30 percent of all the land and water in the United States by 2030.

Ricketts said several counties in Nebraska — where 97 percent of the land is privately owned — have passed resolutions to block the initiative.

“More and more Nebraska counties are speaking out against President Joe Biden’s 30 x 30 land grab,” he tweeted.

Boone County has unanimously passed a #Stop30x30 resolution!

More and more Nebraska counties are speaking out against President Joe Biden’s 30 x 30 land grab.

Contact your county commissioners today and urge them to step up and make their voices heard. pic.twitter.com/Jv0QQneOtZ

— Gov. Pete Ricketts (@GovRicketts) August 30, 2021

Washington County just unanimously passed a #Stop30x30 resolution!

More and more Nebraska counties are speaking out against President @JoeBiden‘s 30 x 30 land grab.

Contact your county commissioners today and urge them to step up and make their voices heard. pic.twitter.com/QCWdqgELJF

— Gov. Pete Ricketts (@GovRicketts) May 26, 2021

The president announced his 30 x 30 program a week after being installed in the White House.

In his Jan. 27 executive order, Biden openly declared that he’ll use the full power of the government to advance his radical climate agenda, which is to “deliver an equitable, clean energy future, and put the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions” by 2050.

To achieve this goal, Biden vowed to take aggressive action “that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.”

A keystone of the 30 x 30 plan is federal control of large amounts of land across the country. It sets a goal of “conserving at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030.”

Not surprisingly, private landowners such as farmers and ranchers are disturbed by this move.

Gay Couple Unleashes Fury on Christian Who Politely Declined Their Business (westernjournal.com)

“While private owners have successfully stewarded our land and water here in Nebraska, new leadership in the White House wants more federal control,” Ricketts said in a June 8 news release.

“On January 27th, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14008, which set a goal of conserving 30% of the nation’s land and waters by 2030,” the governor said. “This requires restricting a land area the size of the State of Nebraska every year, each year, for the next nine years, or in other words a landmass twice the size of Texas by 2030.”

Ricketts slammed the executive order as “radical,” saying the president has no constitutional authority to execute his plan.

He said landowners are especially concerned because Biden has shared few details about what exactly his program entails.

“So far, he has not defined what he even means by ‘conservation.’ Aside from vague platitudes, he has not revealed how he intends to implement his plan,” Ricketts wrote.

The governor also warned that the program will result in higher taxes.

“Unlike states in the western part of the country where there are already significant amounts of federally owned lands, 97% of land in Nebraska is privately owned,” he explained in the news release.

“Federally owned land is not taxed, and restrictions will reduce our ability to develop it for agriculture, infrastructure, or businesses. If 30% of land in Nebraska is set aside for conservation, it will shift the property tax burden onto fewer farmers, ranchers, homeowners, and business owners.”

Fourteen other Republican governors, including Greg Abbott of Texas, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Greg Gianforte of Montana and Brad Little of Idaho have slammed what they call potential federal overreach.

I joined Governors around the U.S. in standing against Biden’s radical 30×30 plan.

The President has no authority to dictate to states or citizens what to do with their private property.

Read the full letter. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/iz9HIx8Vta

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 22, 2021

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack denied that the government is attempting to seize private property.

“There’s no intention to have a land grab,” Vilsack said in April, according to Agri Pulse. “There’s no intention to take something away from folks.”

However, the Biden administration has not provided details about how it plans to implement the program, and this lack of transparency is alarming.

Even some liberals are skeptical. Tom Goldtooth, an activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network, is worried that Biden’s initiative will be another Big Government scam.

“We have so many concerns that this is just another scam,” he told NPR on Tuesday. “It’s another scam to give the impression that these lands are going to be protected, set aside, restoring nature.”

Judge Slaps Down Government’s Attempt to Control Public Image of Jan. 6 ‘Insurrection,’ Orders Release of Narrative-Busting Video (westernjournal.com)

The public school system isn’t just failing — it has become near irredeemably corrupt.

This is especially the case at Minnesota’s Richfield Public Schools district, where one program being used by the school district reportedly directs school children to role-play as gay and transgender children. During the curriculum’s role-play, the students are then asked to decide whether or not to have sex with one another.

According to Alpha News, the program is called “3Rs,” which stands for “rights, respect, responsibility,” and was developed by Advocates for Youth, an organization that partners with Planned Parenthood. The program has curricula available for a variety of ages, but this particularly outrageous exercise was intended for 9th-grade students, according to one parent in the school district.

In one of the 3Rs scenarios, a student is asked to role-play as Morgan, a young student who “identifies as queer.” Another student is asked to role-play as Terence, who “isn’t sure whether he’s straight or bisexual.”

The student playing Morgan is told “Terence has dated girls and seems straight, but he also seems attracted to you. Last week, you bumped into him in the laundry room in your building and after a lot of ‘accidental touches’ you ended up kissing.”

The scenario gets even more explicit for the student playing Terence, who is told, “You date girls you like, but haven’t done much sexually with them; you’ve kissed a couple of them, but didn’t find it very exciting. Now you feel very attracted to Morgan.”

“When you kissed him last week, it felt wonderful, but also confusing. You just can’t stop thinking about Morgan and imagining his touch. You think you want to have sex with him, but you don’t want your family or friends to find out, because they would disapprove.”

After receiving these prompts, the students are told by the curriculum to — as their characters — talk to each other “about what’s going on” and then “make a decision about whether to have sex.”

The curriculum choice was heavily criticized by parents of the children who had to review these overtly sexual exercises in the school district’s recent board meeting.

While this all may sound very shocking, those of us well-versed in left-wing indoctrination saw this sort of child-sexualization coming from a mile away.

After all, the foundation for many modern-day sexual dedication courses is gender theory — the academic philosophy responsible for the left’s obsession with transgender issues — which, from its inception, has promoted the sexualization of children.

John Money, the psychologist whose work serves as the bedrock of gender theory, was known to have made two young brothers role-play as a couple as they pretended to perform sex acts on one another.

School Workbook Encourages Writing ‘Sex Scenes’: Mayor Calls for Resignations, Charges

In other words, the left’s sex and gender craze has always been intrinsically tied to the sexual abuse and exploitation of young children. The news coming out of Richfield Public Schools is only the latest in a long line of examples.

Despite this, it wasn’t too long ago when if one was to say that the left’s goal is to sexualize children, that person would be ridiculed.

Well, no one’s laughing anymore.

Today, the left isn’t planning on sexualizing children — they are actively doing so.

Public School Curriculum Asks Kids to Pretend They Are Gay, Role-Play Plan to Have Sex: Graphic Content Warning (westernjournal.com)

The woke corporate mob has struck again. In First Liberty’s most recent case, we witnessed Alaska Airlines bowing a knee to woke ideology when they decided to fire Lacey Smith and another client who wishes to remain anonymous for questioning the “Equality” Act based on their religious beliefs. Here’s a quick recap of what happened.

On its employees’ message board, Alaska Airlines announced its support for the “Equality” Act. The company encouraged employees to comment and ask questions about the company’s policy.

As a Christian, Lacey has concerns about the ramifications the “Equality” Act would have for people of faith in the workplace—as do millions of Americans. Lacey, in keeping with her religious beliefs, posted a simple question: “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” In the same forum, First Liberty’s second client asked, “Does Alaska support: endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom, obliterating women rights and parental rights?…”

But for Alaska Airlines, so-called “diversity” doesn’t factor in religious views. The company’s leadership swiftly took action to terminate both flight attendants, claiming that “defining gender identity or sexual orientation as a moral issue…is…a discriminatory statement” and the questions they asked were “hateful” and “offensive.”

By firing Lacey and our other client, Alaska Airlines sent a chilling message: If you’re not woke, you’re not welcome. But although today the airline punishes and targets those with a religious point of view, this wasn’t always the case. Even a brief glimpse into Alaska’s history shows it was a company that once embraced people of faith.

Woke Ideologues Cancel Alaska Airlines’ History of Religious Inclusion

Alaska Airlines surely isn’t the only company that’s caved to woke ideology. A quick scan of headlines today reveals countless American companies going “woke” and allegedly promoting values of diversity and accommodation, yet they almost always exclude religious people. But the woke transformation of Alaska Airlines is unique, considering its rich history of religious inclusion.

At one point, Alaska Airlines promoted a culture that affirmed religious liberty. With each meal it handed out to passengers, the airline included a card with a Psalm as a gesture of thanksgiving. This was an exceptional practice by the airline that lasted thirty years and differentiated them from the rest of the industry. However, it discontinued this tradition in 2012.

What’s more, at the end of World War II, Alaska Airlines considered it a humanitarian obligation to help relocate persecuted religious minorities. In 1949, the airline launched operation “On Eagles Wings,” which helped transport 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel.

But that was then, and this is now. The same airline that once helped Yemenite Jews escape from persecution is now firing people of faith who express their beliefs.

For the woke ideologues who’ve infiltrated the leadership of Alaska Airlines and other American companies, even a rich heritage of religious inclusion apparently doesn’t matter all that much. Because in their quest to impose a radical agenda, there’s simply no room for dissent or tolerance for anyone expressing a religious perspective.

No One Is Safe from “Wokeism”

The case of our two Alaska Airlines flight attendants shows the threat woke corporations pose to the freedom and the rights of religious Americans. And if you think what happened to Lacey won’t happen to you, think again.

Corporate “wokeism” will continue to spread unless we step up now and make it clear that it is illegal to discriminate against Americans because of their religious beliefs. At First Liberty, we will not stand for brazen attacks on our First Freedom. Defending these flight attendants is about much more than changing the “cancel culture” of Alaska Airlines. We’re taking a stand against injustice to hold corporate America to our country’s historic commitment to religious freedom.

Would you consider supporting First Liberty’s ongoing defense of Lacey and all religious employees to stop this growing trend? Americans should NOT fear being fired from their jobs because of their faith. Stand up for your constitutional rights and tell the woke corporate mob enough is enough.

How Alaska Airlines Embraced Woke Ideology and Turned Its Back on Religious Inclusion – News – First Liberty

Hunter Biden requested a $2 million annual retainer and “success fees” to help unfreeze Libyan assets when his father, Joe Biden, was vice president, according to emails reviewed by Business Insider.

Through an intermediary, the younger Biden offered to help recover $15 billion in Libyan assets that the Obama administration froze during the reign of Muammar Qaddafi. The intermediary, a Democratic donor, in a Jan. 28, 2015, email asked for a “close circle of people” to be involved in the offer “for confidentiality,” adding that Joe Biden was considering running for president. Another email on Feb. 26, 2016, stressed the importance of only a small, close-knit group’s being involved “due to the sensitivities surrounding their involvement.”

The emails further reveal a well-established pattern of nepotism in the Biden family, in which Hunter Biden has made frequent and lucrative use of his father’s political connections. The New York Post in Oct. 2020 released a smoking-gun report that detailed meetings in 2015 between Joe Biden and the head of a Ukrainian gas company—less than a year before the then-vice president pressured government officials to fire a prosecutor investigating the company. At the time, Hunter Biden was being paid $50,000 to sit on on the board of the company.

The Democratic donor involved with Hunter Biden’s Libya deal, Sam Jauhari, advertised Biden’s access to high-ranking members of the State Department, the Treasury Department, then-secretary of state John Kerry, and his father, who Jauhari said had the “Libya file” in the Obama administration.

“Since he travels with dad, he is connected everywhere in Europe and Asia,” Jauhari wrote of Hunter Biden, adding that he even “has access to highest level in [China].”

Jauhari warned his correspondent, Sheikh Mohammed al-Rahbani, an Obama donor, that Hunter Biden’s substance abuse may prove an issue.

“His negatives are that he is alcoholic, drug addict – kicked [out] of U.S. Army for cocaine, chasing low class hookers, constantly needs money-liquidity problems and many more headaches,” Jauhari wrote. Biden was discharged from the Navy Reserve, not the Army, after he tested positive for cocaine in 2014.

Business Insider said it found the emails while “reporting on an unrelated matter,” not among files on Hunter Biden’s now-infamous laptop, which contains emails and documents of Biden that peddle his political connections and images and videos of him abusing drugs and engaging in sex acts with what appear to be prostitutes.

An attorney for al-Rahbani told Business Insider that his client “knows to a certainty that he never spoke to and has no recollection of talking about Hunter Biden.”

Hunter Biden Requested More Than $2 Million To Unfreeze Libyan Assets When Dad Was VP (freebeacon.com)

Jared Huffman, Rashida Tlaib aim to ‘abolish’ military branch

House Democrats on Wednesday introduced a measure in the 2022 defense budget to eliminate the Space Force.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D., Calif.) led a resolution, cosigned by fellow Democratic representatives Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), and Jésus García (Calif.), to “abolish” America’s newest military branch. The measure received support from the Koch-funded National Taxpayers Union and radical anti-war groups such as Peace Action and Demand Progress.

“Since its creation under the former Trump administration, the Space Force has threatened longstanding peace and flagrantly wasted billions of taxpayer dollars,” said Huffman. “It’s time we turn our attention back to where it belongs: addressing urgent domestic and international priorities like battling COVID-19, climate change, and growing economic inequality. Our mission must be to support the American people, not spend billions on the militarization of space.”

Huffman and his allies are far-left on the vital issue of defense spending. Pocan in March proposed a major cut to the defense budget, but fellow Democratic caucus members shot it down. National security officials and experts have called President Biden’s proposed defense budget insufficient to meet the challenges posed by Russia and China.

The House Armed Services Committee this month approved Republicans and some moderate Democrats’ plan to increase the Biden defense budget by $24 billion.

The push to defund the Space Force comes as China increasingly threatens the United States. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said Monday that China is developing means to bombard American targets from space.

China has launched satellites and a space station, threatening American dominance in space. Simulated war drills show that Beijing would likely exploit American vulnerabilities in space as a first move in a takeover of Taiwan.

Dems Plan To Scuttle Space Force (freebeacon.com)

Dilawar Syed sits on board of group that calls Israel an ‘apartheid state’

Senate Republicans are blocking Joe Biden’s nominee for deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, Dilawar Syed, over his affiliation with a group that advocates for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Republicans and conservative groups are raising concerns about Syed’s board position with Emgage Action, a Muslim-American advocacy group that has described Israel as an “apartheid” state and lobbied against legislation that would penalize U.S. companies for boycotting Israel.

“As a board member of Emgage Action, Dilawar Syed has embraced the hateful [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movement and anti-Semitic rhetoric calling Israel an ‘apartheid’ state,” said Tom Jones, the founder of the American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit group that conducts oversight on the federal government.

Republicans on the Senate Small Business Committee were no-shows at a Thursday hearing for the nominee, preventing the committee from reaching a quorum necessary to move forward with a vote. GOP senators said that they will stall Syed’s confirmation not only because of his anti-Israel activism but also because he has not committed to recovering around $100 million in taxpayer-funded loans they say were illegally issued to Planned Parenthood. The Biden administration is under fire for awarding Planned Parenthood this cash via the COVID relief program, even though the organization was ineligible to receive these funds.

Syed’s connection to Emgage, “paired with his lack of a commitment to recover PPP funds illegally allocated to Planned Parenthood, should immediately disqualify him as deputy administrator of the small business administration,” said Jones.

Emgage Action has described the BDS movement as a “constitutionally protected nonviolent response that seeks to end the occupation” and says it “support[s] the right to boycott, divest, and sanction, as well as the Right of Return of Palestinians.” The organization describes Israel as an “apartheid” state, saying on its website that Palestinians “continue to suffer under racist, undemocratic Israeli apartheid rule that steals their land and destroys their homes to make way for illegal Jewish settlements.”

While Syed has said during his confirmation process that he does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement, critics say that Emgage Action has issued inflammatory statements about Israel since Syed’s confirmation hearing in April, even though Syed still sits on the board. Eight Republican senators in June wrote to Democratic committee chairman Ben Cardin (Md.) to request a follow-up hearing to address their concerns about Emgage Action’s comments.

Emgage Action “has since made alarming statements that have members of your committee and the small business community that we represent seriously concerned,” wrote the senators.

The letter cited the group’s defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) after she in June compared Israel and the United States to the Taliban. Emgage Action in a Twitter post described Omar’s comments as “standing up for human rights” and “calling out state violence.”

Emgage Action and a coalition of progressive activist groups released a statement Thursday that slams Republicans for blocking Syed’s confirmation, calling him “a historic nomination for the Muslim and Asian American Pacific Islander communities.”

For four long years, leftist Democrats whined about former President Donald Trump’s repeated refusal to release his tax returns, claiming that he must be hiding something.

Well, if a new report is to be believed, President Joe Biden was the candidate with something worth hiding.

The president “improperly avoided paying Medicare taxes before he took office” and could owe the IRS up to $500,000 in back taxes, according to the New York Post.

The president’s alleged avoidance of paying his taxes was revealed in a report drafted by the Congressional Research Service at the request of Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks.

Following the document’s release, Banks excoriated the president for his reported hypocrisy, saying “Joe Biden wants to raise taxes by $2.1 trillion while claiming the rich need to pay their ‘fair share.’ But in 2017, multi-millionaire Joe Biden skirted his payroll taxes — the very taxes that fund Medicare and Obamacare.”

“According to the criteria CRS provided to my office, he owes the IRS and the American people hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes,” Banks said, according to the New York Post.

“Every American should know about Joe Biden’s tax hypocrisy.”

According to Banks, in 2017 and 2018, Biden avoided paying Medicare taxes on various fees related to both book sales and speaking fees by using “S corporations” improperly.

While the report from CRS never names Biden specifically, it does analyze cases where the IRS held various taxpaying individuals accountable who had been paying themselves relatively low salaries through S corporations, counting most of the revenue as “distributions” which then exempted them from Medicare tax.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the president and first lady Jill Biden have reported over $13 million through S corporations.

Less than $800,000 of that was counted as salary eligible for the Medicare tax, meaning the Bidens could very well have avoided paying the tax on the remaining millions.

This news, highlighting possible tax irregularities on the part of Biden, is especially revealing given what the media was talking about nearly a year ago to the day.

On Sept. 27, 2020, The New York Times released a report supposedly exposing that Trump had only “paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency” and only $750 in 2017 as well.

Then, following its publication, that very same article came with its own fact check hidden 77 paragraphs after the above quote, admitting that Trump had actually paid $1 million in taxes in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017.

Suffice it to say, the establishment media went out of its way to excoriate Trump for possible improprieties when it came to his own taxes.

Sadly, it’s unlikely those outlets will hold Biden’s feet to the fire in any sort of similar fashion — especially after they all spent an entire election cycle working to ensure he won the presidency.

Thought Trump’s Taxes Were Bad? Joe Biden Reportedly Owes $500K (westernjournal.com)

Despite trying to distance themselves from one another, Fauci and Daszak have been colluding for years.

espite Anthony Fauci’s attempts to distance his agency from EcoHealth Alliance, the Peter Daszak-led group collaborating on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, The National Pulse can reveal that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director has been published in the controversial organization’s scientific journal.

Fauci authored an article for Volume 10 the EcoHealth Journal, whose Editor-in-Chief is Daszak, in March 2013. Of the 18 stories included in the issue, Fauci’s article was selected as the “cover story,” as the piece’s accompanying artwork was featured on the front page of the magazine.

The article – “Dengue: The Continual Re-Emergence of a Centuries-Old Disease” – counts two additional National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) officials as authors: Senior Scientific Advisor David Morens and Chief of Staff Greg Folkers.

The article was published roughly one year before Fauci’s NIAID inaugurated the controversial “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” grant, which ultimately led to U.S. taxpayer dollars funding collaborative research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“The two-century-old American emergence of dengue is an interesting starting point for considering determinants of emerging infectious diseases that occur today,” the article begins its overview of the viral disease.

The article stresses that the virus entered and spread throughout America via travelers from the Caribbean islands: “As early as the eighteenth century, dengue was being spread by human travel and was being introduced into new locales such as Philadelphia by the importation of both mosquitoes and infected crews and passengers arriving from Caribbean islands.”

EXC: Fauci-Funded Wuhan Research Relied On Human Blood Samples Provided by China’s Military.

The piece reiterates that American epidemics can often trace their roots to other countries:

“Dengue and yellow fever usually began in residential areas close to the docks, only occurred in the summer months, were repeatedly associated with concomitant Caribbean island epidemics, and such epidemics seem to have been most pronounced in places, like Philadelphia, where fresh water was scarce and expensive, leading to on premise storage of potable water, an ideal environment for Aedes oviposition (egg-depositing).”

Fauci’s featured publication in the EcoHealth journal undercuts his repeated claims that the NIAID didn’t support the group’s research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In addition to top Wuhan lab personnel describing Daszak as a “longtime collaborator,”  The National Pulse has also uncovered Fauci’s repeated attendance at events hosted by EcoHealth such as “Zika virus: A Pandemic in Progress.”

Fauci and Daszak were also co-panelists at a 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference where Daszak admitted that NIAID funded his “work on coronaviruses in China.”

EXC: Fauci Authored Article For Wuhan Lab Collaborator Peter Daszak. (thenationalpulse.com)

The United States has been subverted by people who believe in the failed ideologies of communism, socialism, and Marxism. America’s experiment in self-governance—with State power constrained by well-crafted limits of our constitution—is under direct threat from people who want to “deconstruct” our nation and replace it with a collectivist system of governance.

Many of the 1960s-era adherents to collectivist ideas have infiltrated our government, churches, and a multitude of other institutions, meaning these destructive philosophies have penetrated deep within our country and will be difficult to root out. Many of these radicals are also embedded within the education system, indoctrinating American children.

These people are America’s enemies. But, trying to counter subversive efforts without a full understanding of your enemy is a fool’s errand. I recently interviewed The Epoch Times’ Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative journalist and an expert on communism, socialism, and Marxism, to determine how America might reorient itself toward mounting an effective defense against the proliferation of these destructive ideas.

One of the least effective ways to discuss communism, socialism, and Marxism is arguing against the economic outcomes and human suffering that inevitably follows adoption of these systems.

“Your average socialist doesn’t care that it doesn’t work economically. Your average socialist doesn’t care that it’s going to uproot the family system and destroy family order,” Philipp said. “They believe that their end goals are so righteous, that killing a few people along the way is worth it for the sake of accomplishing what they hope to create.”

Frequently cited in arguments against collectivist systems are the hundreds of millions of people killed by leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Kim Il Sung, and Mao Zedong. But, “real socialists and communists don’t even bat an eye to it,” Philipp said.

While he believes the numbers of people murdered by communists should be part of this conversation, he also thinks that in order to persuade people against these philosophies, opponents of collectivism must address the roots of these ideas.

Religion and Natural Order

Karl Marx stood in strong opposition to religion. Though he had been a Christian in his youth, the timeless question that turned him away (and that he used to recruit people into a socialist mindset and the communal communist order) was essentially: If God is righteous, and if everything is created by God, then why does evil exist?

“If God created all things, and evil exists, then he must have created evil. That was the theory,” Philipp said. “And then they believe, well, if he created evil, then he must not be totally good. And therefore, he must not be the true, perfect image.”

For millennia, this has been a part of theological and philosophical debates, with religious scholars arguing that evil is not God’s creation, but the absence of God. Evil exists because man has free will, so people can choose to do good or evil. But, according to Philipp, what communists and utopians have sought to do is essentially try to eliminate evil from the world, as they see it.

Certain questions naturally follow: How do you prevent people from doing bad things? How do you prevent greed? How do you prevent people from doing things you don’t want them to do?

“You have to destroy the natural order. And, so they looked to create systems that could dictate to a very specific degree all elements of free will, that was one side of it,” he said. “That was always the downfall of utopians.”

Communists believe in the destruction of all previous institutions, including religious institutions. They believe in rebelling against God, whom they see as imperfect. Therefore, communism cannot coexist with the church. Communist ideology suggests that in order to perfect society, “you need to remove God from human morality, you need to remove God from human art, you need to remove God from architecture, and from our family structures, and from the way we shape our lives,” Philipp mentioned.

Dialectical Materialism

One of the pre-existing ideas that was brought into Marxism was that of the “negation of the negation,” which basically means that through the destruction of an existing institution, a more highly evolved system will emerge. For example, the chicken is born through the negation of the egg, the plant is born through the negation of the seed, a higher institution can be born through the negation of an existing institution. This would mean that by destroying institutions, a higher state of human evolution can be induced.

So, they must challenge the church, challenge tradition, challenge belief, create antithesis—the opposite of what is. “Marxism did the same thing under what they call ‘dialectical materialism,’” Philipp said, which is where you intentionally create inversion. You identify important cultural systems of that society and create the antithesis of that.

“So, you promote divorce, you promote feminism, you need to find ways to break up the family,” he said. “You need to look at the ways of doing it, and then develop social movements to argue against whatever the existing institution is.”

“If you want to destroy religion, you need to promote atheism,” he said. “Want to destroy the family, you need to promote feminism, promote divorce, promote the taking away of children by the government.”

The Way Forward

We don’t need to look too closely to see the ways in which communists, socialists, and Marxists have infiltrated the United States and other countries. Communists infiltrated American churches in the early 20th century. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has penetrated American schools. They have seized influence in U.S. companies and within our government.

Notably, their presence is visible in the authoritarian policies born from the pandemic response: the capricious, autocratic mandates; the brutal repression of people marching in the streets demanding the government’s boot off of their necks and a return to normalcy; actions by members of groups such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum who decry a return to normalcy, while pushing a global centralization of power.

For freedom-loving individuals, once you understand the goals of communists, socialists, and Marxists, you cannot cede any ground to them. There’s absolutely no capitulating, no negotiating, no meeting halfway.

“Every time they make a moral argument, and you say, ‘Okay, I want to be reasonable here, I’ll concede half the ground to you,’ society loses half its morals, society loses half its beliefs,” Philipp said. “Every time they do this, and they continue doing it, they force people to acknowledge it. And every time they do this, every time people give ground, they give up half their values.”

All supporters of individual liberty, freedom, and human rights must unite to confront the destructive forces attempting to take over. Americans must use all non-violent means available to deliver an immense repudiation of authoritarian systems of governance.

The battle isn’t unwinnable. There are only a few thousand politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate executives. There are more than 333 million American citizens. Who really holds the power in this country?

If government schools enforce Draconian mandates or teach lessons that indoctrinate your kids with communism, socialism, or Marxism, send your kids to private school or homeschool. If businesses enforce unconstitutional mandates, you stop spending your money there—put them out of business. If airlines enforce authoritarian policies or mandates, then stop flying with them. If your place of employment is caving to authoritarianism, you team up with like-minded employees and say no.

“You do not give an inch, you don’t sacrifice even a single morsel of your system of values, you don’t give in even a drop, you don’t play their games, you don’t talk within the boundaries of their arguments,” Philipp said. “You don’t even engage with them, in terms of giving any ground on anything. If they want to call you names for it, so be it. If they want to attack you, so be it. You do not sacrifice an inch.”

Uprooting Communism, Socialism, and Marxism in America (theepochtimes.com)

FBI director Christopher Wray says that he would like to do away with encrypted messenger services like Signal that I and many of my friends and colleagues use to communicate with each other.

Wray claims that would make it easier to counter so-called “domestic extremism” that he and secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas, not to mention most of the staff of MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times, are insisting (forget al Qaeda, et. Al.) is the greatest threat to our nation today.

You know, folks like that hapless fellow in horns that’s been in solitary confinement since Jan.  6 as if he were a serial killer, he and those thousands of other “terrorists” and “insurrectionists,” only one of whom, it turns out, had a gun, who stormed (or were they waved in) to the Capitol that day.

But truth to tell, the very reason I—and I assume others— am on Signal and Telegraph is to stay as far as possible from prying prevaricators like Wray and Mayorkas and, most of all, from the organizations they lead.

I recommend others do the same.

One doesn’t have to go much further than last week’s revelation the FBI looked the other way for years on multiple cases of sexual abuse of our very young female Olympic gymnasts to know the organization is not only corrupt, it’s morally repellent.

As Jon Gabriel notes in “Larry Nassar got his due punishment. When will his FBI enablers get theirs?” “the FBI was busy chasing imaginary crimes instead of ending the serial abuse these national heroes suffered.”

Of course, this mostly took place when James Comey was director.

Wray is merely covering up, just as he has been for that great, even more monstrous, if that’s possible, other national malfeasance (i.e. imaginary crime) that has affected all of us—the little matter of supposed Trump-Russia collusion.

That “collusion” was concocted—as has been demonstrated by John Durham’s latest indictment, if we didn’t know in the first place—by Hillary Clinton and her ever-complaisant legal representatives (a “privacy & data security attorney” no less) and mainlined to the public by an FBI who took Hillary and the attorney’s lies at face value and ran with them.

Oh, how they ran with them, running roughshod over the rights of Americans, destroying the careers of the most patriotic citizens, like Gen. Michael Flynn, all in the attempt to upend the democratic election of a president or destroy his reputation once he had won.

This was attempted or accomplished by what has been revealed as a highly-politicized and secretive national police force.

Then there was this putative kidnapping of Michigan governor Whitmer in which more FBI agents were involved than kidnappers.  And the recent paltry Jan. 6 demonstration in which FBI attendance was only exceeded by the press (or maybe it was the other way around).

There has been little or no accountability, thus far, for any of this, with two minor exceptions due to Durham’s work.  Many of us are hoping for more.  Maybe we will have it.

Christopher Wray is clearly hoping for the opposite, practicing the old Nixonian technique of the “limited hangout” while doing his best to obfuscate the demonstrated evil that occurred in any way possible.

Meanwhile, he points the finger at the rest of us as “extremists” with no evidence of anything other than Constitutionally-protected political opposition.

If Mr. Wray is really concerned about “domestic terrorists,” he should look in the mirror.

Nevertheless, since I’m a good guy and like to think of myself as a patriot, I will save his techno-goons some time and effort, forego Signal and say right here in public what I well might say in encrypted form. It’s not all that hard, since it’s so obvious.

Like Carthage, the FBI delenda est. The FBI must be destroyed.

(Holman Jenkins has written similarly in “Abolish the FBI” in the Sept. 22 Wall Street Journal.)

In The American Mind the estimable  Angelo Codevilla advocates reforming it, but it is too late, not just because of its recent activities, but because of its history that has consistently, since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, devoted far too much attention to domestic spying on so-called “enemies within” (actually political enemies for one reason or another) and far too little to serious crimes like the Olympic gymnast scandal.

The identity of those “enemies” varied with the political winds or with the out-of-control power ambitions of people like Hoover.

When I say the FBI delenda est, I mean not just the Seventh Floor leadership that some, like Sean Hannity, blame for the entire problem, but the whole organization and everyone in it.

The fish may rot from the top but the rot seeps down, fatally if left alone long enough.  And in this case the rank-and-file agents below apparently went along with a lot of malevolent activities.  Is it possible they were all blind to them? Where were the whistleblowers?

No, everyone must go and the organization too.  After the FBI is gone, we can think about how to build a replacement. With 16 other intelligence agencies, there’d probably be plenty of backup, although a number of them should probably go too.

Nevertheless, as they say in that horrible cliché “at the end of the day,” what a relief it would be that when the “Feds” come calling, the first thing you think about would not be where you put your lawyer’s phone number. It might even be how can I help.

The FBI, Like Carthage, Must Be Destroyed (theepochtimes.com)

Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris are working desperately to impose on the whole country the kind of Big Government Socialist bills that have given their states massive homelessness, huge unemployment, and frightening levels of violence and crime.

Big Government Socialism has been tried at the state level and it has failed spectacularly.

Stephen Moore, an economist working with the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, offered conclusive proof that Big Government Socialism is a disaster with real consequences for people and the economy in his remarkably useful newsletter “the Unleash Prosperity Hotline” (issue 374).

Moore compared states run by Republicans with states run by Democrats. The above chart from Moore’s newsletter proves the gap between Republican policies of jobs and economic growth and Democratic policies of big government, union domination, corruption, regulation, and an anti-business, anti-jobs attitude.

Note that the only non-red state in the top job creating list is Vermont — which has a Republican governor.

Callista and I recently had lunch with Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts. His state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Ricketts’ concern was that businesses in Nebraska were doing so well and growing so rapidly that they had a tremendous number of jobs they could not fill. Remarkably, he thought the real unemployment rate in Nebraska was actually below 2.2 percent.

The red states consistently have lower taxes, less government spending, less bureaucracy, and fewer regulations. Republican-run states also have a pattern of honoring businessmen and women, valuing entrepreneurship and hard work, and expecting people to do their share to create better lives and a better state.

In Omaha, they also have a deep tradition of enforcing the law. When the Black Lives Matter riots broke out, Omaha had an immediate and aggressive response to the violence and looting. By contrast, nearby Lincoln, Nebraska – which has a Big Government Socialist Democratic mayor – failed to enforce the law. While Lincoln is one-fourth the size of Omaha, it had 10 times as much damage from looting. In fact, the difference in law enforcement (and radical woke-think) led the long-time Democratic Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine to switch parties and become a Republican. As he said to me, “there are no moderate Democrats left.”

By contrast many of the highest unemployment blue states also have some of the highest murder rates. Crime, taxes, red tape, overbearing bureaucracy, and corruption all drive jobs out of a state. Those states are almost always run by Big Government Socialist Democrats.

The power of big government ideology, government employee unions (including the teachers), and the corruption and incompetence which metastasizes when governments outgrow the control of their citizens all lead to higher unemployment and slower job growth.

The amazing thing is that Moore’s chart, as definitive as it is, has almost no impact on Big Government Socialist mayors, city councils, state legislators, and governors.

And this kind of evidence seems to have no impact on the reporters and editorial boards in the states and cities which are being cheated by their politicians and bureaucracies.

When you realize that the Nevada, California, and New York unemployment rates are 3.4 times higher than Nebraska’s you would think that delegations would come from those states to try to understand the miracle happening in Missouri. Instead, what we get is scorn for “flyover country” from the supposedly sophisticated elites in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco who are certain they know much more than non-coastal people.

Sadly for Americans, the Speaker of the House and the Vice President come from the state with the second highest unemployment while the Senate Majority Leader comes from the state with the third highest unemployment. They are working desperately to impose on the whole country the kind of Big Government Socialist bills that have given their states massive homelessness, huge unemployment, and frightening levels of violence and crime.

There is an old saying that misery loves company, but this is ridiculous.

Call your representative and senators and urge them to vote “no” on the Bernie Sanders Big Government Socialist bills which would cripple America economically and spiritually.

And then go to the Unleash Prosperity Hotline and sign up.

Newt Gingrich | Big Government Socialist States Kill Jobs (gingrich360.com)

You have probably heard about Critical Race Theory. It’s not just Political Correctness on steroids. It is the hateful, elitist scam that fuels the woke Left’s anti-American cancel culture. You’ve seen the stories:

❌ CRT says white children start becoming racists at three months old!

❌ Coca-Cola employees were forced to take a class telling them to “try to be less white”!

❌ At one federal agency, all white, male employees were forced to write letters apologizing to women and people of color.

❌ In San Diego, the school board declared that it was racist to expect minority students to hand in homework on time. When these stories pop up, the first thought is, “That’s insane.” But Critical Race Theory is not crazy – it’s just racism.
 
It’s bigotry. Prejudice. Hate. And it’s on the march.

CRT racism has taken over American college campuses, elite corporations, and the mainstream media. But it won’t stop there. It’s coming for our local schools, our small businesses, our rights, our jobs, and our speech.

The good news is, deep down, Critical Race Theorists, like all bullies, are cowards. If Americans stand up to CRT racism, the New Racists will back down.
 
But we know Establishment Republicans won’t take up this fight. They are too afraid of the media and too beholden to corporate donors.
    
That’s why Senate Conservatives Fund only supports principled conservatives who fight. 

Just talking about Critical Race Theory was not enough for Donald Trump – who banned CRT from federal training programs and launched the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education in American schools. And talk is not good enough for us.
 
As you know, SCF is the only organization in American politics exclusively committed to recruiting, vetting, and electing principled, conservative fighters to the U.S. Senate. We don’t care about a candidate’s Party – we care about their guts.
 
Today I want to tell you about three conservative Senate candidates we have endorsed to replace finger-to-the-wind RINOs.

✅ In Alabama, Congressman Mo Brooks has our support and the support of conservatives around the country – from grassroots activists all the way to Donald Trump. Brooks is leading the fight against the New Racism in the House Representatives, with legislation to bar CRT from federally funded programs and schools.

✅ In North Carolina, we have endorsed Congressman Ted Budd, a member of the House Freedom Caucus committed to the color-blind, equal opportunity America we all know and love. Budd has not only been working in the House to strip CRT from the federal budget. He’s been helping North Carolina legislators to do the same in his home state.

✅ In Ohio, former Secretary of State and combat veteran Josh Mandel is the strongest, toughest conservative in a crowded Republican primary to replace moderate Republican Senator Rob Portman. Mandel is a rock-solid social, economic, MAGA conservative who has made Critical Race Theory – which he calls “a cancer” – a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s not backing down from the outrage mobs or the Big Tech censorship machine.

By contributing today, you will push these three candidates one step closer to winning those races and winning back our country from the woke mob.

Brooks, Budd, and Mandel are exactly the kind of leaders we need to stand up to the racist bullies of CRT. They won’t shy from the truth, or the bigoted beltway insiders who try to hide it.

SCF supports them because they, like us and like you, stand against the racism, hatred, and lies of the Woke Left. We have their back because they have ours.

Now we need your help. I’m asking you to contribute $25 or more today. Will you please help us fight against the New Racists?

The Left is all in, and the established elites won’t give up their power willingly. To win in 2022, conservative Senate candidates have to fight both of them – but with SCF and your help, they will succeed.

Thank you for being part of our team and for doing so much to help fight for America’s future.

Sincerely,

Mary Vought

Executive Director

An audit of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, America’s largest public pension fund, found regular payments to pensioners well after they died, so much so it’s challenging to get the money back.

Around 1,800 CalPERS pensioners die every month, according to a June memorandum from the fund’s Office of Audit Services that recently become public. CalPERS had more than $41 million in wrongful pension payments outstanding as of July 31, 2020, the audit said. It estimated CalPERS made those payments to about 22,000 dead pensioners.

The CalPERS Death and Survivor Benefits Division (DSBD) is responsible for verifying a pensioner has passed away and stopping payment. The audit found this process is done by a part-time employee that’s not given regular supervisory oversight.

“DSBD did not consistently identify deaths timely to minimize the issuance of benefit payments after death and related receivables,” the report said.

The pension relies equally on family members reporting deaths and weekly audits of death reports from a third party, the audit said.

Of the sample of 30 cases audited, the report found DSBD learned pensioners had died an average of 47 months after the date of their deaths, resulting in $2.34 million in wrongful payments that had yet to be recovered.

In one situation, the pension paid out a lump sum to survivors before it realized original payments had been wrongly paid.

CalPERS agreed with the findings of the report but “not the severity of the finding,” adding it would work to record the deaths in a more timely manner.

The wrongful payments are minuscule compared with the fund’s overall operation. CalPERS paid more than $25 billion over the time the audit was conducted.

The audit classified the finding as “high,” meaning the issue is considered an immediate concern and “could cause significant risks if not addressed as soon as possible.”

Responsible for most of California’s public employees, CalPERS is monetarily the largest pension fund in the country. Its most recent valuation was $472 billion. It’ is funded partially by pensioner contributions and taxpayer dollars in the form of government contributions.

By Cole Lauterbach

Audit Finds California Regularly Sends Pension Checks to Dead People (theepochtimes.com)

Senate Republicans will not vote to raise the debt limit at this time because of Democrat plans to spend trillions of dollars, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republican leaders said Wednesday.

The House of Representatives voted this week along party lines to pass a bill that includes suspending the debt limit until after the 2022 midterm elections. The Senate plans on voting on the measure next week.

“We all agree, America must never default. The debt ceiling will need to be raised,” McConnell told reporters in Washington.

But “reckless” Democrat spending plans, including one measure that’s been pegged at $3.5 trillion, and the way Democrats have been operating “on a partisan basis,” means the party will have to figure out how to raise the debt ceiling without GOP votes, the senator from Kentucky said.

“The democrats can deal with us all by themselves, because they have the House, the White House, and the Senate. So this is their responsibility,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, added.

Democrats have a 220–212 majority in the House and a one-vote majority in the 50–50 Senate thanks to their control of the White House.

Democrats have struggled, though, to pass legislation since President Joe Biden took office. Republicans have criticized many of their plans, and several moderate Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), have refused to vote for some of the more radical proposals.

The White House last week warned the looming federal debt crisis could lead to a recession as it pushes for raising or suspending the debt ceiling.

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, tried blaming McConnell on Sunday for the failure to get a bill passed that would do one or the other.

“The position that Republicans, primarily Sen. Mitch McConnell, have taken is totally irresponsible,” Yarmuth said. “Mitch just said that every Republican in the United States Senate was prepared to vote to have the federal government default. That’s what he said. I think that’s a violation of the constitutional oath. It would be financial havoc if we actually defaulted,” he added later.

Yarmuth on Monday, though, noted that Democrats can raise the debt limit without any Republican votes. But he said they don’t want to do that.

“They don’t want people to know how much money they want to spend and borrow. They don’t want the American public to know they don’t want to put a dollar figure on their irresponsible reckless spending,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the Senate Republican Conference chairman, told reporters on Wednesday.

“The American people can see through this, they know that they’re going to be taxed, everyone’s going to ultimately pay one way or another through inflation through higher taxes on their income on their retirement savings, even on death. If the Democrats want to go it alone on spending, they’re going to have to go it alone on raising the debt ceiling,” he added.

Democrats and Republicans worked out a suspension of the debt ceiling in 2019, and then-President Donald Trump signed the bill. The ceiling was suspended for two years, but came back into effect on July 31. The ceiling is the highest amount of debt that the Department of Treasury can issue to the public or other federal agencies, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It was reset this year to $22 trillion plus the borrowing that took place during the suspension.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/republicans-wont-vote-to-raise-debt-limit-given-democrats-partisan-budget-plans-mcconnell_4012527.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-09-23-1&mktids=8d40352257396a05b47af47d49a62ca3&est=UnSh7eB%2F8ZKzMhudetuKwRzTltLq2rjhurjbmg7prRp7IYHo6NhxH9gDmQT4GUsx5w%3D%3D

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib opposed support of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system Thursday with a Twitter post, claiming Israel has used U.S. aid to “commit war crimes.”

“I will not support a standalone supplemental bill of $1 billion to replenish the bombs Israel used to commit war crimes in Gaza,” Tlaib wrote.

The tweet included a link that highlighted the bill’s support for Operation Guardian of the Walls, the defensive effort of the Israeli Defense Forces used to protect the country’s civilians against bombing from Hamas in May.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a supplemental appropriations bill on Wednesday to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

According to Fox News, DeLauro introduced the standalone bill because Democrats had stripped the Iron Dome funding from a larger spending bill last week.

“The United States’ commitment to the security of our friend and ally Israel is ironclad. Replenishing interceptors used to protect Israel from attacks is our legal and moral responsibility,” DeLauro said in a statement.

“While this funding would ordinarily be included in a year-end spending package, we are advancing this legislation now to demonstrate Congress’ bipartisan commitment to Israel’s security as part of a Middle East with lasting peace.”

According to DeLauro’s statement, the funding is part of an agreement reached in the Obama administration.

“The funding is consistent with the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Israel, which commits the United States to providing additional assistance to replenish the Iron Dome after periods of fighting to allow Israel to continue to defend itself from attack,” the statement said.

In May, Israel mobilized 5,000 reserve troops to augment its security and defense after Hamas launched hundreds of missiles at Israeli cities.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attacks and said Israel would pursue aggressive action to defend itself from violence.

“The terrorist groups in Gaza crossed a red line on the eve of Jerusalem Day, a red line, and attacked us with rockets on the outskirts of Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Democrats Remove Provision Funding Israel’s Defense System After Progressives Complained

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Israel “has no other choice but to defend its citizens from these indiscriminate attacks, and we demand the international community hold the Palestinians accountable and forcibly condemn their actions,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

Hamas had attacked Israel with more than 500 rockets up to that point, including a barrage of 137 rockets launched in under five minutes, according to The Wall Street Journal.

According to that report, Israel said it struck back at targets including Hamas leadership, weapons manufacturing sites and tunnels used by Hamas forces to stage attacks on Israel.

“At the conclusion of a situational assessment, it was decided that both the strength of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” Netanyahu said, according to Reuters.

The executive branch is going back on its word about releasing Haitian migrants into the United States, according to an Associated Press report.

Two officials told the AP there have been roughly thousands of migrants who have been sent on a “very, very large scale” from Del Rio, Texas, to cities such as Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas.

The report explained that the migrants are being given immigration hearing dates instead of being expelled from the U.S. and sent back to Haiti, as they entered the country illegally.

Furthermore, the federal government has been using Coast Guard planes and transportation contractors in order to transport people away from the large encampment to other cities with more resources.

This directly contradicts comments made by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a Monday news conference, where he ensured that those coming across the border will not be allowed to remain in the U.S.

“If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life,” Mayorkas said.

Obviously, that has been determined to be a lie, which should be no surprise to those who have been watching the border crisis from the start.

DHS published a statement Saturday that also went against the current actions of the government in its desperate attempt to solve the humanitarian disaster within a crisis.

“The Biden Administration has reiterated that our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey,” the department said.

“Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion. Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”

Haiti is currently recovering from a major earthquake and political instability, which was highlighted by the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse in July.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, along with several other Republican governors, has criticized Biden’s mishandling of the border as epitomized by the Haitian migrant situation.

“When you have an administration that is not enforcing the law in this country, you see the onrush of people like what we saw walking across this dam that is right behind me, because the Biden administration has been promoting and allowing open-border policies,” Abbott said at a Tuesday news conference.

“It has been the state of Texas that had to step up,” he added.

Biden Admin Assigns Border Agents Who Were Doing Their Job to Desk Duty

As Biden continues to create chaos, Texas has taken the lead on securing the border, not just for border communities, but for communities across Texas & the U.S.

We will continue surging state resources to save lives & keep Texans safe.

Time for Biden to up his game.

Originally tweeted by Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) on September 21, 2021.

Regardless of what the administration says, the decision to send massive numbers of migrants into the U.S. puts a significant strain on both local governments and the public.

The choice should be clear: Prioritize the safety and stability of America’s border and its nearby communities.

Biden’s team lied, and now Americans will have to face the consequences.

The following is an installment in a weekly series of commentary articles by Cameron Arcand, founder of the conservative commentary website Young Not Stupid and a contributor to The Western Journal.

Are you shocked by the flood of Haitian refugees at the border? You might not be.

In fact, 14,000 illegal migrants camped out underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, hardly even feels newsworthy anymore.

These people made the perilous journey through Mexico to escape the poverty and political instability in their own country, and the Biden administration was not up to the challenge.

Local law enforcement described the conditions at the encampment as “third world-like,” according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin.

Trump’s Surgeon General Says He Tried to Refinance His Mortgage, But Biden Admin Pulled a Dirty Move to Stop It from Happening

“Really hard to believe this is the United States of America,” Melugin added.

Fox News’s @BillFOXLA: “Local law enforcement out here are on-the-record describing this [migrant] camp as ‘third-world-like conditions'” and “really hard to believe this is the United States of America.”

Originally tweeted by RNC Research (@RNCResearch) on September 21, 2021.

That’s a major problem, yet President Joe Biden’s handling of the border has numbed the public to chaos and tragedy.

There is a humanitarian crisis happening on American soil, and it’s nothing more than we’ve come to expect.

Illegal migrant encounters are at a 21-year high, with nearly 200,000 in July alone, according to Pew Research Center.

That is unacceptable. The Biden administration has clearly lost control of the border despite having had several months to get this “seasonal uptick” under control.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is saying there will be “dramatic results” in Del Rio in the coming days, Politico reported; but don’t hold your breath.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=cameron_arcand&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-

The President just addressed the UN— not one mention of the crisis at the border where roughly 15,000 people surged into the US (mostly Haitians) from Mexico.

More than 9,000 remain here in Del Rio waiting to be processed by @CBP

Originally tweeted by Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) on September 21, 2021.

Biden Admin Assigns Border Agents Who Were Doing Their Job to Desk Duty

He and other officials have known for months that the Rio Grande Valley is extremely vulnerable, and have done little to mitigate the problem.

The Biden administration has been playing the “at least we aren’t Trump” card from the beginning while ushering in a crisis at the southern border.

Our leaders have not acted with true humanity and conviction.

Instead, they are wearing the old, false guise of compassion. It is a disgrace to this country and those who seek a better life here.

Haitian immigrants being deported back to the Caribbean nation bit Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on a flight bound for Port-au-Prince from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, according to the Washington Examiner.

The Monday incident saw two Haitian immigrants leave their seats as the aircraft taxied to the runway and attack ICE agents by biting them, forcing takeoff to be delayed, the report said.

Federal assault charges will be brought against the two Haitian attackers, the Examiner reported.

“[The Haitians] all realized they were going back to Haiti and lost it,” a senior federal law enforcement officer told the newspaper.

Last month, Haiti was hit by a powerful earthquake resulting in thousands of deaths.

Trump’s Surgeon General Says He Tried to Refinance His Mortgage, But Biden Admin Pulled a Dirty Move to Stop It from Happening

The devastating temblor came just weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

A second deportation flight was reported canceled by the U.S. government because Haitian migrants on board were “being disruptive and not complying” while the plane was on the tarmac, the Examiner reported.

Meanwhile, in another incident, three ICE officers were injured during a Tuesday assault at the Port-au-Prince airport when a group from a plane carrying single adult men stormed another recently arriving flight carrying deported families, according to NBC News.

The three ICE agents suffered non-life-threatening injuries, the report said.

CNBC video from the scene showed the chaotic incident at Haiti’s main airport, with returnees reacting angrily to spending large sums of money on arduous journeys attempting to reach the United States after learning the Biden administration had stopped deporting Haitians.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/cgmu0ZGbjSc?feature=oembed

“On Tuesday, Sept. 21, some adult migrants caused two separate disruptions on the tarmac after deplaning in Port-au-Prince, Haiti,” a Department of Homeland Security representative said in a statement, according to NBC News.

“Haitian crowd control officers responded to both incidents and resolved the situations. ICE fully respects the rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions, while continuing to perform its immigration enforcement mission consistent with our priorities, federal law and agency policy.”

President Joe Biden, already facing criticism for his overall handling of the immigration situation at the southern U.S. border, has seen things become even more complicated recently.

Horseback Border Patrol Agents Accused of Whipping Migrants with Reins Reassigned to Desk Duties

Some 10,000 migrants, mainly Haitians, have set up an impromptu camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, after wading across the Rio Grande separating Mexico and the United States.

NEW: This is what it looks like under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning. Latest numbers as of 6 AM.

6,722 migrants
4,742 family units
1,489 single adult men
418 single adult females
73 family “groups”

300+ pregnant women here as of yesterday.
@FoxNews

Originally tweeted by Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) on September 22, 2021.

Border agents have begun expelling planeloads of mostly Haitian migrants from the sprawling makeshift camp.

Optics for the Biden administration worsened on Monday after viral footage from the U.S.-Mexico border showed officers on horseback trying to push Haitians back across the border.

Despite the backlash over the incident, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a Senate panel on Tuesday there are no plans to cease flights.

“We are increasing the frequency and number of the repatriation flights each day,” he said. “And we’re hoping that what we are doing now serves as a deterrent because it backs up the words that we have spoken since the very outset: that irregular migration is not the way to enter the United States. It will not work.”

Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends, or your interests—without a major war.

Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed.

It’s an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence still remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited.

The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitler’s serial aggressions.

Hitler’s Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscow’s lost deterrence after its lackluster performances in Poland and Finland, its pact with the Nazis, and its recent purges of its own officer corps.

Deterrence is omnipresent and also applies well beyond matters of war and peace. The current crime wave of murder and violent assault in our major cities is the wage of loud efforts to defund the police and contextualize crimes as somehow society’s rather than the criminal’s fault.

As a result, lawbreakers now believe there is a good chance that robbing people or hurting or killing them might result in monetary gain or at least bloody satisfaction. They no longer fear a likely sentence of 30 years in prison. So, they see little risk in hurting people. And innocents suffer.

With a border wall, an end to catch and release, and tough jawboning of the Mexican and Central American governments, a new American deterrent stance in 2019–20 discouraged once unstoppable waves of migrants.

Northern bound migrants knew that even if they reached and crossed the border, there was a good chance all such effort would be for naught, given quick apprehension and deportation.

So, in their rational calculations, migrants waited at home for less deterrent times. And they found them when Joe Biden stopped construction on the wall, renewed catch and release, and eased pressures on Mexico to interrupt caravans headed northward.

Abroad, Donald Trump restored the strategic deterrence lost by his predecessor.

Barack Obama had dismissed the murderous ISIS as “JVs”—and they thrived. He shrugged when China stole territory in the South China Sea to build military bases. He dismantled missile defense in Europe to coax Vladimir Putin to behave during his own 2012 reelection campaign.

Obama loudly announced redlines in Syria while never intending to enforce them. He gave the Taliban back their incarcerated terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of the American deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And he sent the Iranians nocturnal cash to coax them to conclude an appeasing Iran deal. Aggression followed as U.S. deterrence eroded.

As an antidote to all that, Trump destroyed the ISIS “caliphate.” He obliterated an attack of Russian mercenaries in Syria. He took out terrorist masterminds like Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and the ISIS cutthroat Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

To dangerous actors, an unpredictable Trump appeared likely to strike back if provoked. As a result, America’s enemies become fearful of challenging the United States. And its friends and neutrals were more ready to join a power again deemed not just reliable, but willing to take reasonable risks to assist in their safety.

Key to deterrence is for all parties to know beforehand the relative power of each and the likelihood that it may be used. When strong powers unfortunately transmit signals of weakness, whether deliberately or inadvertently, then weak powers are confused and come to believe their rivals may not be so strong as their armed forces appear. Often, unnecessary wars are the unfortunate result.

These are quite dangerous times because Joe Biden has cut the defense budget. He withdrew recklessly from Afghanistan, leaving behind American citizens, our Afghan allies and friends, and tens of billions of dollars worth of modern weaponry and equipment.

He angered our NATO partners who were abandoned with some 8,000 troops, in a country that the United States had once implored them to enter. He has politicized the military into a caricature of an elite woke top brass at odds with traditionalist enlisted soldiers.

The result is that our enemies—Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Chinese Communist apparat, the Iranian theocrats, the lunatic North Koreans—are now pondering whether Biden’s reckless laxity is an aberration. Or is it now characteristic of his administration? Or does it even signal a new weaker and confused America that offers enemies strategic openings?

Like the would-be felon, or the potential border crosser, our enemies know the United States has the power to deter unwanted behavior, given its vast military, huge economy, and global culture.

But they may have contempt that with such strength comes such perceived confusion. And thus, in the manner of an emboldened criminal, or migrant, they try something that they would otherwise not.

In sum, deterrence at home and abroad is now dangerously lost. And it will be even scarier trying to recover what was so rashly and foolishly thrown away.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/civilization-requires-deterrence_4012816.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A barbeque food truck operator in North Carolina is suing a local government after it enacted protectionist regulations that increased food truck permitting fees by close to 8,000 percent.

The lawsuit, Shirley v. Town of Farmville, was filed Sept. 21, in state court in Pitt County, North Carolina, on behalf of plaintiff Mark Shirley by Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm based in Sacramento, California. Shirley resides in Walstonburg, just west of Farmville.

“Many restaurants faced difficulties throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” Jessica Thompson, a PLF attorney representing Shirley, told The Epoch Times.

“And when so many small businesses are fighting to survive, the government shouldn’t be erecting new barriers for entrepreneurs. The Town of Farmville cannot pick economic winners and losers.

“And we’re suing under the North Carolina constitution to protect Mark’s economic liberty as well as the economic liberty of future generations of entrepreneurs in North Carolina. That’s because economic liberty protects an individual’s right to improve their own lives and it also provides customers with more choices.”

In September 2019, Shirley quit his sales job and started his own food truck business. He obtained the needed permits, paid Farmville’s then-required $100 annual fee, rented a private parking space in town, and opened up for business serving lunch in Farmville on Wednesdays and Fridays. Despite the usual challenges a new restaurant faces, including the ongoing pandemic, his food truck business, called Ole Time Smokehouse, developed a loyal customer base, according to the legal complaint.

But in April, Farmville amended the food truck ordinance to require Shirley to fork over a $75 permit fee daily—which works out to an annual fee of $7,800 for a truck serving lunch twice per week—representing an increase of more than 7,700 percent. The amended food truck ordinance also forbids food trucks from operating within 100 feet of the property boundary of brick-and-mortar restaurants, unless the food truck receives written permission from its competitor to operate in closer proximity.

The permit fee “operates as an illegal tax to raise general funds for the Town’s expenses unrelated to food truck regulation,” the legal complaint states.

The amended ordinance “is intended to protect existing brick-and-mortar restaurants from competition from food trucks by erecting expensive, arbitrary regulatory barriers.”

“Because economic protectionism is not a constitutionally legitimate purpose for an ordinance, the restrictions on Mark’s business violate the North Carolina Constitution, Article I, Sections 1 and 19. Moreover, because the Amended Ordinance singles out food truck lunch providers for regulatory burdens while exempting brick-and-mortar lunch providers, the ordinance also violates the North Carolina Constitution’s equal protection clause, Article I, Section 19.”

Thompson said the problem is that “the General Assembly has not authorized Farmville to levy such an outrageous permit fee,” which is functioning as a tax.

Under North Carolina law, towns are allowed to assess regulatory fees only to cover the cost of the regulation, she said. “There’s just no way that it costs them $75 a day to regulate food trucks.”

The town doesn’t conduct health inspections of the food truck, or provide water or waste removal or any other services, she said.

“It’s an arbitrary regulation intended to make it difficult for him to operate his business and interfere with his right to earn a living,” Thompson said.

The requirement to seek permission to operate the food truck within 100 feet of the property line of an established restaurant gives that restaurant a veto on the food truck setting up in a private lot near it, she said.

According to the legal complaint, for Shirley, Ole Time Smokehouse is more than a food truck.

“It represents century-old southern cooking traditions, service to others, and his professional calling. Rare is the debate between North Carolinians livelier than about which style of barbeque represents true Carolina Barbeque: Eastern-style or Lexington-style barbeque. Some barbeque historians argue that the difference is one of degrees since both styles are vinegar-based—the two styles are more alike than different, especially when compared to other regional barbeque styles. Mark’s Ole Time Smokehouse food truck blends these Carolina barbeque traditions.”

Farmville officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-food-truck-operator-fights-protectionism_4011803.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

In American higher education today, the equivalent of the holy trinity consists of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The impact of this pseudo-religion is difficult to overstate. For example, new faculty are often required to sign a loyalty oath pledging their fealty to “diversity,” while administrative positions with “equity” and “diversity” in their titles proliferate. In practice, this results in an unnatural obsession with race and gender, which affects admissions decisions and, to some measure, every degree program. As with any religion, indoctrination is a crucial part of the process. So-called general education requirements are one vehicle for such indoctrination. This issue of indoctrination is particularly perverse, as indoctrination is, in some sense, the polar opposite of education.

Can anything be done to rectify the situation? Being a natural-born optimist, I believe there are a couple of relatively simple, common-sense changes that would have a profoundly positive impact on American higher education. Quoting Hoyt Axton, “If I were the king of the world, tell you what I’d do.”

First, I would require that universities be held financially responsible when their former students default on education-related debt. I believe that such a requirement would, overnight, transform higher education in multiple positive ways. For example, grievance-studies majors would likely vanish from the curriculum, and easy majors in the soft and pseudo sciences would be disfavored. The humanities would not disappear, but they would serve even more of a supporting role than at present. Universities would have a vested interest in promoting fields that are in demand, which include most of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Of course, a student could still major in any subject, but if their preferred major is unlikely to provide a positive return on investment, loans would be hard to come by, and as a result, the student would have to foot a significantly higher percentage of the cost.

I believe that this change would benefit students who today are too often lured into easy, worthless majors. And, does anyone doubt that society as a whole would benefit from a renewed and sustained emphasis on STEM subjects?

As a second step towards saving academia from itself, I would require that universities set clear, objective, education-based admission requirements. For example, a highly selective university might empirically determine that an applicant who is in, say, the top five percent of his or her graduating class, or has a composite SAT at the 95th percentile (or higher) almost certainly has the necessary academic foundation to succeed. On the other hand, a less selective university might have analogous, but lower, thresholds. Regardless of how such objective criteria are set, there are sure to be far more applicants who meet any rational baseline requirements than spaces available. I would allow universities to admit any students under full scholarships based on any criteria. But for everyone else, a lottery system would be used to randomly select students from the pool of well-qualified applicants. This would ensure that all applicants who meet a well-defined academic standard for success would have an equal chance of admission. Issues such as the choice of major could be determined after admission.

Such an approach to admissions would ensure true equity among qualified applicants. It would also serve to provide equal opportunity to the children of the taxpayers who fund higher education, instead of artificially favoring one group over another, as is the case today. And, by putting the focus squarely on academic preparedness, the message to high school students would be unambiguous—if you want to succeed academically, prepare yourself academically. Furthermore, it would be well-nigh impossible for universities to game the system, as they would surely be wont to do.

Under such an admissions scheme, to make changes to the racial or gender makeup of the university, the diversicrats would be forced to focus on the lower rungs of the educational ladder, which is precisely where such efforts properly belong. In the process of doing so, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the gross failings of the U.S. public education system, especially as it pertains to disadvantaged students. Perhaps we would then see diversity advocates begin to advocate for proven reforms, such as charter schools (I warned you, I’m an optimist). Most important of all, this admissions scheme would get universities out of the corrosive business of racial and gender gerrymandering that corrupt the admissions process today.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-to-save-american-higher-education-from-itself_4012261.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

House Rules Committee Democrats quietly extended a rule earlier this week in the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that effectively bars Republicans from obtaining information on President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, say GOP representatives.

The provision was adopted during the Rules panel’s Sept. 20 hearing on the defense bill, and it includes a continuing resolution on spending and a measure designed to nullify state laws limiting abortion access at any time during a pregnancy.

The provision, which has been extended by Democrats multiple times since the original adoption, reads as follows:

“24. Provides that House Resolution 188, agreed to March 8, 2021 (as most recently amended by H. Res. 555, agreed to July 27, 2021), is amended by striking ‘September 22, 2021’ each place it appears and inserting (in each instance) ‘October 27, 2021.’”

The provision continues one of the chief tools House Democrats have used in the rules adopted in January for the 117th Congress to frustrate the ability of Republicans to demand and receive information from the Biden White House and the executive branch using the resolution of inquiry (ROI).

The wording of ROIs “will vary depending on the person to whom the resolution is directed. The House traditionally ‘requests’ the President and ‘directs’ the heads of executive departments to furnish information,” according to the House parliamentary procedures manual.

The Rules panel’s action comes as Republicans on the House Foreign Relations Committee seek an investigation of the administration’s actions in the Afghanistan withdrawal.

The ROI is an effective investigative tool because it puts the authority of a congressional committee behind a legislative request rather than causing representatives of the minority party to rely on letters and telephone calls seeking needed information and data.

It’s much more difficult for executive branch officials to ignore a request backed by an ROI, while telephone calls aren’t returned and letters from lawmakers are easily and often ignored.

The ROI is also more difficult for the majority to defeat because House rules require such a measure to be marked up within two weeks of its introduction or it becomes a privileged motion for the whole House. If the resolution is approved, the ROI then becomes a request of the House, not just a committee.

Rules committee member Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) offered a motion on Sept. 21 to end the ROI ban, saying that “in light of President Biden’s failed Afghanistan withdrawal and evacuation, it is absolutely imperative that we restore this tool to get to the bottom of this administration’s avoidable debacle.”

Reschenthaler said he was “concerned that the majority maintains this provision simply to shield the administration from addressing the very real concerns that members on both sides of the aisle have” on the Afghanistan situation.

Rules member Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), spoke in favor of Reschenthaler’s motion, telling the panel the ROI ban should be terminated because “we can’t get phone calls answered from the administrative state. This is not right and it needs to change. … I urge the majority to restore minority rights” under the ROI process.

Burgess also seeks the passage of an ROI concerning the Biden administration’s treatment of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children coming across the U.S. border from Mexico.

Reschenthaler’s motion was defeated 9–4, marking the fifth time Democrats, led by Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), have rejected efforts to restore ROIs. ROIs were first adopted in 1879.

A spokesman for the Rules panel majority didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

During debate on a previous attempt, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the panel’s ranking Republican, said: “The speaker and the Democratic majority have ruled with an iron fist, beginning in earnest at the start of the 117th Congress. In one fell swoop, they eliminated two critical minority tools, motions to recommit and the use of resolutions of inquiry.”

Besides the ROI, Cole was referring to limits during the 117th Congress on the minority’s ability on the House floor to offer motions to recommit bills to committees with instructions to change them rather than having votes on final passage.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told The Epoch Times the ROI ban has prevented effective legislative oversight on multiple issues.

“Democratic Leadership has suspended a centuries-old House rule that allows for more congressional oversight—all to protect President Biden from scrutiny for the multiple disasters his failed leadership has caused,” McCaul said.

“Whether it’s the deadly catastrophe in Afghanistan or the crisis at our southern border, the American people expect Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable for their mistakes. The majority needs to lift this indefinite ban on resolutions of inquiry and allow for vigorous oversight.”

Republicans on the foreign relations panel have been frustrated by having to depend on letters to gain needed oversight information on the Biden administration’s lax administration of congressionally mandated sanctions against, for example, Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Europe.

The Biden administration didn’t answer questions posed by House Republicans in a March 5 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Questions also went unanswered from an April 22 letter from McCaul to Blinken concerning Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

In the April letter, McCaul predicted the withdrawal would “hand the Taliban an undeserved victory, damage U.S. credibility as a counterterrorism partner, and gravely endanger the lives of Americans and Afghans alike.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/house-democrats-use-obscure-rule-to-stifle-gops-kabul-probe_4010514.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Security at the United States’ southern border has fallen sharply since President Joe Biden took office, the former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol says.

Rodney Scott was part of the border enforcement agency for nearly 30 years before being ousted in June. In a new letter penned to top senators, Scott said he witnessed an “unprecedent[ed] seismic shift in border security and immigration policy” after Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20.

“I believe this policy shift and the associated public statements created the current border crisis. Of greater concern, I also witnessed a lack of any meaningful effort to secure our borders,” he added.

The United States made advances in border security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks after finding out that some of the attackers illegally entered the country from Mexico. But Scott said this year, under Biden, that security has rapidly disintegrated.

Biden administration officials are ignoring common-sense recommendations and seem “laser-focused on expediting the flow of migrants into the U.S.” while downplaying “the significant vulnerability this creates for terrorists, narcotics, smugglers, human traffickers, and even hostile nations to gain access to our homeland,” Scott wrote.

He accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of providing factually incorrect information to Congress and letting illegal immigrants who, by law, should be expelled from the country remain here. He urged top senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), to request detailed information on the situation from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of their oversight responsibility.

Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, declined to comment. DHS, which includes both, did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter was written in mid-September and released this week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

“It’s a devastating letter. It should be a bombshell,” Johnson told The Epoch Times.

Johnson quoted from the letter in a congressional hearing on Tuesday that featured, among others, Mayorkas.

Of the over 1.3 million apprehensions at the southern border this year, Johnson asked, “how many immigrants have been released into the United States?”

Mayorkas said he did not have those numbers but promised to provide them later to the senator.

Biden and his administration have radically altered immigration enforcement from the previous administration, which had cut down on illegal immigration through tools like the Migrant Policy Protocols, a program that forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their claims were heard. Mayorkas ended that program.

Mayorkas claimed that the administration’s strategy is working, pointing to a slight drop in apprehensions in August from July. He and other officials have said it will take time for the overhaul to show results.

Johnson, though, alleged that what’s currently happening is what Democrats want to happen.

“They’ve got a plan. It’s called completely open borders, and they’re executing that plan, and from their standpoint, he was working swimmingly well,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’m hoping the rest of America realizes what an unmitigated disaster and the serious consequences [and] the homeland and national security impact of this.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-border-patrol-chief-says-border-security-rapidly-disintegrated-under-biden_4010590.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

If the current administration represents the will of the people, why would they need to grant $77 million to defend themselves? Why are we searching for criminals when we are importing them en mass? [US Patriot]

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is touting a raft of new programs aimed to combat domestic extremism—many of which are raising red flags among interest groups across the political spectrum.

The new DHS plans follow a March intelligence community report that deems white supremacy and violent domestic extremism as the most dangerous terror threat to the homeland. Mayorkas made similar statements at a Sept. 21 Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on counterterrorism.

“Today, U.S.-based lone actors and small groups, including homegrown violent extremists and domestic violent extremists—who are inspired by a broad range of ideological motivations—pose the most significant and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country,” he said.

These “broad range of ideological motivations” include “racial bias, perceived government overreach, conspiracy theories promoting violence, and false narratives about unsubstantiated fraud in the 2020 presidential election,”

He didn’t elaborate on what he meant by “perceived government overreach” or “conspiracy theories promoting violence.” He did, however, assure lawmakers that his department is working hard to combat these perceived threats.

One of the major programs touted by Mayorkas is the newly branded DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), formerly known as the Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention. In conjunction with that, the DHS is in the midst of a $77 million grant program aimed to provide state and local institutions with tools to counter extremism.

The DHS first announced CP3 in May along with a new dedicated domestic terrorism branch within the Department’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A). Mayorkas told the Homeland Security panel that CP3 is helping expand the department’s ability to prevent terrorism and targeted violence “through the development of local prevention frameworks.”

“Through CP3, we are leveraging community-based partnerships and evidence-based tools to address early-risk factors and ensure individuals receive help before they radicalize to violence,” he said.

However, Mayorkas didn’t offer details about other elements of CP3—elements that various interest groups say pose a threat to liberty.

Among the details that weren’t discussed are what CP3 says on its own site—that it “leverages behavioral threat assessment and management tools, and addresses early-risk factors that can lead to radicalization to violence.”

According to human rights activist Ed Hasbrouck, consultant to the nonprofit Identity Project, this mission amounts to a pre-crime program.

“CP3’s attempts to predict future crimes are to be based on behavioral patterns— i.e., profiling—and on encouraging members of the public to inform on their families, friends, and classmates,” Hasbrouck wrote when CP3 was first announced.

“The problem, of course, is that the law does not permit prosecution based solely on patterns of lawful behavior,” he wrote. “With good reason: ‘precrime’ prediction is a figment of the imagination of the creators of a dystopian fantasy movie, ‘Minority Report.’”

The Brennan Center for Justice has expressed similar concerns. Far from a conservative group, the Brennan Center agrees with the DHS and FBI that domestic extremism is a rising threat.

“Over the past five years, from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to El Paso, attacks by people who reject our multiracial democracy have shaken our country to its core and sparked conversation about how best to address far-right violence,” the group stated in a June report.

“The Trump administration, which stoked the flames of white supremacy, ended with the ransacking of the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.”

But the Brennan Center said CP3 and the Biden administration’s overall approach to countering domestic extremism—enhanced surveillance, profiling, and the like—are the same draconian tactics government used against Muslims post-9/11.

“At a time when jurisdictions around the country are considering how to reduce law enforcement involvement in mental health and social issues, CP3 prevention activities take the opposite approach. They create structures to bring a broad range of concerns about mental health and socioeconomic conditions to the attention of law enforcement as indicators of criminality without normal safeguards,” the Brennan Center stated in its June 69-page report on the issue.

Not only are the DHS-Biden plans a threat to civil liberties; they’re also proven to be ineffective, the Brennan Center said.

The Brennan Center report paid particular focus to DHS “fusion centers”—law enforcement compounds scattered throughout the United States that seek to integrate federal, state, and local intelligence. The goal of fusion centers is to create partnerships between varying agencies and the private sector to share intelligence on threats to public safety so law enforcement has the whole picture and can “connect the dots.”

Citing congressional reports from 2012, the Brennan Center stated that these fusion centers have proven to be ineffective. Those reports found that the DHS spent $289 million to $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003, with little results to show.

“Instead of looking for terrorist threats, fusion centers were monitoring lawful political and religious activity. That year, the Virginia Fusion Center described a Muslim get-out-the-vote campaign as ‘subversive,’” the Brennan Center stated in its June report. “In 2009, the North Central Texas Fusion Center identified lobbying by Muslim groups as a possible threat.”

Seemingly little has improved since then.

Earlier in September, NBC News revealed an investigation into fusion centers. The report starts with an anecdote of Mike Sena, the president of the National Fusion Center Association, bragging that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) helped stop a mall shooting attack in Santa Clara.

NBC News found that Sena was apparently stretching the extent to which his fusion center helped.

“We don’t have any information showing that NCRIC was involved,” said Steven Aponte, a San Jose Police Department spokesperson.

The Brennan Center stated in its June report that the Biden administration is inappropriately involving law enforcement in social problems and should focus on “community investment, not criminalization.”

“Communities around the United States should not need to sign up for a counterterrorism program to get resources for their schools, universities, places of worship, or social institutions,” the Brennan Center stated.

“Government commitments should directly address these as social problems rather than treat those experiencing them as potential violent criminals, and should wall off programs addressing social ills from law enforcement across levels of government.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dhs-touts-counter-domestic-extremism-plan-but-rights-groups-fear-threats-to-civil-liberties_4008214.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Based on the allegation that a “woke mob” within his faculty discriminated against him, a North Carolina State University (NCSU) professor filed a civil suit (pdf) on Sept. 14 in federal court against the college’s board of trustees.

Stephen Porter, the plaintiff, is a professor at NCSU in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he has alleged that the college’s 13-member board of trustees infringed upon Porter’s freedom of expression, violating both his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by retaliating against his free speech.

Porter was hired as a tenured professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development (ELPHD) in 2011.

The defendants are listed individually in the lawsuit as Dean Mary Ann Danowitz, Chancellor Randolph Woodson, and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs John K. Lee.

Joy Gaston Gayles, the senior advisor for Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; and Penny Pasque, a professor in the Department of Educational Studies, are also named as defendants.

In response to Porter’s questioning of social issues, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants “have intentionally and systematically excluded him from departmental programs and activities that are necessary for him to fulfill his job requirements, effectively hollowing his job out from the inside.”

According to the lawsuit, the defendants deliberately have intended “to set the stage for his eventual termination.”

“While the structures of the plaintiff’s academic department—and thus, the details of the adverse employment actions taken against him—is complex, what is happening is quite simple: Defendants are gradually forcing plaintiff into what is effectively a ‘rubber room’ in retaliation for his criticisms of the so-called ‘social-justice’ ideology that now prevails both in his department and in academia more broadly,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit states that Porter had been outspoken in questioning what he called harmful agendas that Porter said further “a highly dogmatic view of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion.’”

Porter began to be known as a “bully,” according to the lawsuit, in 2017.

An Account of Exclusions

Porter alleged that Danowitz “was instrumental” in removing him from his “departmental program area in retaliation for his protected speech” before assigning him a fifth course to teach as a punishment.

Gayles excluded him from doctoral events and activities “critical to the fulfillment of his job duties” before developing the Higher Education Opportunity, Equity, and Justice program, from which Porter said he was not included, a move that was intended to later edge him out of the ELPHD program altogether.

Lee “systematically excluded” Porter from meetings and activates related to higher education programs and the advising of students, Porter said, which prevented him from getting new advisees.

Pasque removed Porter from his “departmental program area” and assigned the previously mentioned punitive fifth course.

The ‘Woke Joke’ Blog

 Much of the contention between Porter and his co-workers centered around opinions expressed in Porter’s blog, Porter said.

“I’m a political conservative who has no problem taking a stand and expressing my opinion, which is why I have, for years now, been targeted by the woke mob at NC State,” Porter wrote in his blog on why he filed the lawsuit, adding that he will begin blogging about the details leading up to the lawsuit, which go back several years.

The Epoch Times reached out to NC State University for a response to Porter’s lawsuit, but it did not immediately respond.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-state-professor-alleges-woke-mob-at-university-discriminated-against-him-files-lawsuit_4008200.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Despite the passage of laws in some states banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) from being taught in schools, some educators are teaching other educators how to “back-door it” into the classrooms.

A teacher in Iowa posted a video teaching other educators how to circumvent the ban on teaching Critical Race Theory in her state.

In Florida, a Duval County teacher was removed from her position because she refused to remove a banner in support of Black Lives Matter from outside the door to her classroom.

The Zinn Education Project has collected the names of nearly 7,500 educators who vow to keep pushing CRT into classrooms despite the passage of laws banning CRT in a growing number of states.

While the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten, denied that critical race theory was even taught in elementary schools or high schools, she vowed to fight back against “culture warriors” who are “bullying teachers.”

Not only did the National Education Association adopt a resolution to prioritize their effort to implement CRT in “K-12 and higher education,” it vowed to use all resources at their disposal—including friendly media—to go after those who are “attacking educators doing anti-racist work.”

In June 2020, the Florida Board of Education unanimously passed a rule banning CRT from being taught in the schools.

But on Sept. 20, Florida Atlantic University sponsored a webinar where Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad—an associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University—taught educators in Miami Dade, Broward, Martin, and Palm Beach County how to creatively slip the divisive subject matter through the back door of any classroom, regardless of subject matter.

This was not the first time Muhammad made a conscious effort to promote CRT in the classroom. During a 2020 interview, Muhammad discussed her plans for revising the entire education system in five steps.

First, Muhammad believes educators “need to get a team together to write new learning standards that are embedded in identity, skill development, intellectualism, joy, and criticality.”

Second, Muhammad said they need “new standards for folks who are writing curriculum,” suggesting  they “will no longer write a curriculum that’s absent of identity and cultural-responsiveness.”

Third, “we need to change the way we think about standardized testing,” she added. “Skills-only does not measure success for a child’s life.”

Fourth, Muhammad wants schools to “stop hiring folks who don’t have a justice-centered mindset.”

“If they don’t have this justice-centered mindset, stop hiring them as Secretary of Education, stop hiring them as school board members, as superintendents, as principals, as teachers, as staff. Period,” Muhammad said.

“The fifth part of the plan is teacher education,” Muhammad concluded, suggesting “diversity” cannot be “learned in one class” but rather it needs to be “threaded throughout the entire program.”

“This calls for hiring conscious professors who know how to research and teach within the realms of critical race theory and other theories like it,” she said.

The Epoch Times reached out to Muhammad for comment.

Difficulties in Defining CRT

“This is very similar to what has happened here in Loudoun,” Patti Hidalgo Menders—president of Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club in Virginia—told The Epoch Times. “They’re implementing CRT under the guise of equity and diversity.”

Menders explained how the new principal at Parkview High School—Dr. Jason Jefferson—immediately removed the heads of all departments and “fired the bookkeeper because she wouldn’t take the equity training.”

“Then he gave a speech about how he wanted to ‘dismantle and disrupt the American public education system,’” Menders said. “So they’re making it very clear what their progressive ideas are.”

“Dr. Jefferson asked Park View’s department chairs to re-apply for their positions,” Wayde B. Byard, public information officer for Loudoun County Public Schools told The Epoch Times. “This is a common practice used when administrations change so that the principal can interview the department chairs and get to know them. At Park View, all the department chairs reapplied and all were reappointed.”

Byard also said “there was no bookkeeper at Park View when Dr. Jefferson assumed his position on May 25. Thus, he fired no one.”

“Dr. Jefferson related to me that he did not make the following statement: ‘dismantle and disrupt the American public education system,’” Byard stated further. “I would hope that anyone who would make such an accusation would be willing to stand behind it. Attributing such a quote anonymously would be cowardly.”

Menders also shared how the Loudoun County school board “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring equity consultants.”

“One group is called The Equity Collaborative,” Menders explained, “and while the superintendent of Loudoun Public Schools claims they are not teaching CRT in schools, it talks about CRT training right on their website.”

“The LCPS Ad Hoc Committee on Equity created an Equity Resolution that was adopted by the Loudoun County School Board on September 24, 2019,” the website explains.

“As a part of the on-going equity work in the school division, on June 8, 2021, the newly appointed superintendent, Dr. Scott Ziegler, recommended that the Equity Resolution be reaffirmed by the current School Board. By consensus, the board recommended that this resolution [pdf] should be publicly available.

“In recent days, media reports and social media posts have sought to distort the equity work by Loudoun County Public Schools,” LCPS Superintendent Dr. Scott Ziegler states on the LCPS website. “Misconceptions and misinformation persist. I want to take a moment to clarify LCPS’ efforts to ensure every student, employee and member of the community is treated in an equitable, respectful manner.”

“In explaining LCPS’ equity priorities, it might be helpful to state what they are not,” Ziegler explains. “They are not an effort to indoctrinate students and staff into a particular philosophy or theory. What they are is an effort to provide a welcoming, inclusive, affirming environment for all students.”

However, the Equity Collaborative website clearly states that their “goal is to help organizations develop their own capacity to create educational equity and social justice by addressing bias and oppression.”

“That means creating an environment that is capable of holding staff members in a place where they are uncomfortable enough to change, but not so uncomfortable as to disengage or revolt,” the Equity Collaborative explains.

The Epoch Times reached out to LCPS for clarification regarding what some, like Menders, see as a contradiction in claims.

“Loudoun County Public Schools has said—repeatedly—and I will repeat now,” Byard told The Epoch Times regarding this separate matter. “Critical Race Theory is not part of our curriculum.”

“They’re very good wordsmiths,” Menders said. “They’re re-branding CRT and calling it ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion.’”

Autry Pruitt, CEO of New Journey PAC, agrees.

CRT By Any Other Name

“All they do is take the various aspects of CRT propaganda and change the language, change the name,” Pruitt told The Epoch Times, explaining how textbooks used to mention “Critical Race Theory, or Race Theory” by name.

“Now when you open those same textbooks, you’ll read things such as ‘diversity and inclusion or equity theory,’ which is the same baseline as CRT,” he explained. “That’s one way they back-door it.”

Asked how people can oppose “critical race theory and other theories like it” being taught in schools, Pruitt said parents can provide the first line of defense themselves.

School Boards

“The best avenue is to take over the school boards to monitor and fire teachers who are determined to push CRT,” he said bluntly. “They also have to be represented in the education department at the state level. It’s not enough to take over the school board and have a blue governor. Even if you have a red governor, like in Florida. You’ll still get resistance in the education department.”

“What needs to happen is almost like the spoil system,” Pruitt went further, “where parents take over school boards and conservative governors are elected, and then the governor basically wipes out the entire state-level education bureaucracy and puts in new people. That’s the only real way to solve it.”

Publishers

While Pruitt anticipates the pushback from parents at school board meetings will continue to increase, as will the number of parents who send their kids to different schools or resort to a home school program, pro-CRT publishers are going to keep “pushing the agenda they want” through the textbooks they provide to their supporters throughout the school system.

“Under a different name with new adjectives and nouns, CRT is concealed, shrouded, veiled, or disguised in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) ELA curriculum,” Pruitt noted. “With the use of subliminal messages, teachers are guided to teach Social Emotional Learning (SEL), equity, diversity, inclusion, etc. Feelings are more important than facts.”

As The Epoch Times reported on June 8, HMH declared on its own website a “commitment” to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and “social justice.”

“We believe the education system needs to change,” the website states, “and we will continue to use our platform to make that change.”

Members of the Collier County School Board (CCSB) were made aware of this during a June 7 meeting by CCSB Vice-Chair Jen Mitchell, who said she learned of the “commitment” through an email she received from a concerned citizen. Mitchell further revealed that one of BLM’s greatest advocates in the education field—Dr. Tyrone Howard—had been given a platform to promote the principles of CRT and BLM through the HMH blog site.

“It will be a wait-out, like everything else with the left,” Pruitt explained. “In other words, they don’t have to win. The left has a hold of the publishing world, and they are teaching it in higher education. So it doesn’t matter what the textbooks say in K-12.”

Textbooks

Pruitt strongly suggests parents “actually open and read the textbooks and highlight passages and send it out to people to show other parents what their children are being taught.” According to Pruitt, “most parents don’t understand the language of diversity and inclusion.” He posited that, when people were first waking up to CRT, it was because it was easy to find if one only bothered to look. They used words like “white people” and “oppression,” which most people found to be “troublesome and problematic.”

“But when you use language like diversity and inclusion,” Pruitt suggested, “it doesn’t come off as rough.”

“The people haven’t changed. The committees haven’t changed. The publishers haven’t changed,” Pruitt said. “It’s the language they’re changing.”

“By the time these children graduate, they will not be able to read but they will be great activists who hate their families, God, and America,” Pruitt predicted. “What a horrible thing to do to a child.”

Pruitt said “we all breathed a sigh of relief” when the Florida Board of Education banned the teaching of CRT in Florida, “embracing a traditional American education.”

“Wonderful we thought, Florida students will be getting a great education. The entire nation said we must use Florida as an example,” he recalled. “How wrong we were. We must remember that Communists NEVER stop.”

It is the opinion of Pruitt that the curriculum department of the Florida Department of Education is either “incompetent and never reviewed the texts and curricula that they approved” or they’re “undermining Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Corcoran.”

“In either case,” he admonished. “they should be fired.”

Despite Bans on CRT, Educators Are Teaching Other Educators How to ‘Back-Door It’ Into the Classroom (theepochtimes.com)

Two Afghan refugees who were brought into the United States following Democrat President Joe Biden’s disastrous pullout from the country are facing federal charges related to allegedly trying to rape a minor and suffocate a woman.

“Bahrullah Noori, 20, is charged with attempting to engage in a sexual act with a minor using force against that person, and with three counts of engaging in a sexual act with a minor, with one count alleging the use of force,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. “The indictment alleges that that the victims had not attained the age of 16 years and were at least four years younger than the defendant.”

“Mohammad Haroon Imaad, 32, is charged with assaulting his spouse by strangling and suffocating her,” the statement continued. “The indictment alleges that the assault occurred on September 7, 2021.”

The statement said that the cases were not related to each other.

The DOJ added:

Noori and Imaad were charged previously in complaints filed in U.S. District Court. They made initial appearances in Madison on September 16 and are being detained at the Dane County Jail. Noori and Imaad are scheduled for arraignment tomorrow, September 23, at 9:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m., respectively, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker.

If convicted, Noori faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 30 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charges alleging use of force, and a maximum penalty of 15 years on the other two charges. Imaad faces a maximum penalty of 10 years. The charges against them are the result of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Fort McCoy Police Department.

The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it is vetting the Afghan refugees that it is bringing into the country, even after the administration left behind thousands of SIV applicants and possibly more than 100 Americans.

The New York Times reported on the struggles the administration has had with vetting people:

Refugees pushed their way onto airplanes. Hundreds of children were separated from their parents. Rogue flights landed without manifests. Security vetting of refugees was done in hours or days, rather than months or years. …

American officials have said the refugees are being thoroughly vetted, with the authorities feeding fingerprints, portraits and biographical information into federal databases to weed out potential risks. Mr. Mayorkas said the Defense Department had sent hundreds of biometric screening machines to 30 countries. …

But unclassified briefing documents titled “2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission” reveal that in some cases, spotty information is being collected: Flight manifests have been at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status is unknown, and there is a lack of basic demographic data.

This article has been expanded after publication to include additional information.

Related:

• Biden Administration Says It Is Thoroughly Vetting Afghans Brought To U.S. Reports Indicate Otherwise.
• Dozens Of Afghan Evacuees Flagged For Potential Terror Ties; Two Shipped Out Of U.S.

MSNBC host Joy Reid said Monday that people care about the murder of 22-year-old Gabby Petito because they’re afflicted with so-called “missing white woman syndrome.”

Daily Wire host Candace Owens shot back Tuesday via Twitter, questioning why there’s a media spectacle around the fatal police killings of black males while white people killed by the police get nearly no airtime in the media.

“Yesterday I learned about missing white person syndrome,” Owens tweeted, referring to Reid’s comment. “Can someone let me know what syndrome it is that causes us to ignore every white person that is killed by a police officer, but demands that we burn cities across the world to the ground for thugs like George Floyd?”

Yesterday I learned about missing white person syndrome.
Can someone let me know what syndrome it is that causes us to ignore every white person that is killed by a police officer, but demands that we burn cities across the world to the ground for thugs like George Floyd?

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 22, 2021

Owens was swiftly called a “Race Traitor.”

“When will you learn about the Race Traitor syndrome you suffer from where you go out of your way to get attention by being overly critical about your own race because nobody would care about you otherwise?” posted Andreas Hale.

When will you learn about the Race Traitor syndrome you suffer from where you go out of your way to get attention by being overly critical about your own race because nobody would care about you otherwise? https://t.co/LJlGEIdVw6

— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) September 22, 2021

“White people discussing white people who have committed crimes against other white people is ‘missing white person syndrome,’” Owens replied to Hale. “But black people discussing black people who have committed many crimes against other black people (see: George Floyd) are race traitors.”

“So basically, it’s very important that black people shut up and say nothing when crimes are committed against black victims, but also very important that we get angry and ask why white victims get so much attention when crimes are committed against them,” the “Candace” host added.

So basically, it’s very important that black people shut up and say nothing when crimes are committed against black victims, but also very important that we get angry and ask why white victims get so much attention when crimes are committed against them.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 22, 2021

As highlighted by The Daily Wire, Reid made her jarring comments about “missing white woman syndrome” on Monday:

“If you’ve been watching the news for the past few days or on Twitter or Tik Tok, you’re probably familiar with the name Gabby Petito,” she began. “The 22-year-old aspiring social media influencer who was reported missing after her fiancé returned from their van life excursion without her.”

“Now, it goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain, and the Petito family certainly deserve answers and justice. But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?” Reid asked. “Well, the answer actually has a name, ‘missing white woman syndrome,’ the term coined by the late and great Gwen Ifill, to describe the media and public fascination with missing white women like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color.”

The FBI Denver, the National Park Service, and law enforcement announced Sunday during a news conference in Grand Teton National Park that remains found in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park were believed to be consistent with Petito, ABC7 reported.

The body was confirmed to be Petito’s on Tuesday, and the cause of death was determined to be homicide, pending final autopsy results.

Joy Reid On Why People Care About Gabby Petito: They’re Suffering From ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

Joy Reid Goes Off On ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome.’ Candace Owens Has A Question. | The Daily Wire

Rep. Maxine Waters was a national disgrace when Donald Trump was in the White House.

Nine months into President Joe Biden’s administration, the spite-spewing Democrat from Southern California is showing she hasn’t lost a step.

A Waters Twitter post on Tuesday – about the widespread lie that Border Patrol agents were using whips on illegal immigrants — proved that.

“Haitians fleeing violence & the lack of a credible government in Haiti are being treated like animals,” Waters wrote. “U.S. government cowboys on horses used whips on Haitians as they sought refuge.”

Naturally, she found a way to blame Biden’s predecessor – without a shred of evidence, or even a conjured rationale: “Why are we following the Trump policies? This horrendous treatment of Haitians must STOP NOW.”

Teen Says She Went Into Walgreens for a Flu Shot, She Walked Out with a Sick Surprise

Haitians fleeing violence & the lack of a credible government in Haiti are being treated like animals. U.S. government cowboys on horses used whips on Haitians as they sought refuge. Why are we following the Trump policies? This horrendous treatment of Haitians must STOP NOW.

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) September 21, 2021

The problem for Waters is that the post is dead wrong — and anyone who follows the news would know it.

“Why are we following Trump’s policies?” she asked. The fact is, the country is not following the policies Trump put in place during his presidency. Those policies — a “remain in Mexico” rule that made border crashing less attractive for would-be immigrants, plus construction of a much-needed border wall — actually restored a semblance of order to the U.S.-Mexico border.

And as to the latest bogus “horrendous treatment” tale, by the time that Waters was published, the truth about the alleged whips had been widely circulated.

The story that started Sunday with a mistaken description of Border Patrol agents on horseback using whips against illegal immigrants near Del Rio, Texas, had already been debunked.

Anyone who cared to know the truth of the matter could have with just a few minutes of Google searching. The “whips” the agents were wielding were long reins used to control horses.

Even the video posted by one of the main promulgators of the “whip” hoax — Democratic operative Sawyer Hackett, who runs a political action committee founded by Obama-era House and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro — never really backed up the main accusation.

Here’s the video pic.twitter.com/itFwZfYN45

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) September 20, 2021

Chauvin May Still Walk – Judge Said Verdict Could Be Overturned

As National Review’s Brittany Bernstein and Isaac Schorr noted on Monday, the videos show the agents “wielding their reins — not whips — as they try to contain the flow of migrants across the river. And, while the agents can be seen swinging their reins menacingly, none of the available video evidence shows border patrol agents striking migrants with their reins.”

Twitter being what it is, of course, Waters had plenty of supporters who evidently don’t care to learn the facts or don’t care what they are. But there was some pushback.

You do know how horses work, right? They use the whips to get them to move. They’re not whipping the people!

Do better.

— Irene Armendariz-Jackson For Congress (@ArmendarizDis16) September 21, 2021

They are not using whips. Get the facts. Follow the law!!!

— J Barrett🇺🇸 (@sunshines48) September 21, 2021

The whips thing has been debunks. You should correct your statement.

— Outside Roob (@OutsideRoob) September 21, 2021

They seem to be Bidens policies, considering he’s been in office for 8 months on the promise to change how immigration is done in the U.S. The only thing I see is the level of brutality has been increased along with the number of deportation UNDER BIDENS POLICIES…

— J. F. (@TurdFergusonjr8) September 21, 2021

Waters isn’t alone, of course.

Administration officials such as Vice President Kamala Harris also took the lie and ran with it. (Harris demanded a “thorough investigation” of a simple fact.) White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the footage “horrific.”

With the Biden administration being buffeted by continuous crises largely of its own making — the border disaster, the continuing fallout from the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan, disarray in its latest plan to fight COVID-19 — administration officials and top Democrats are desperate for anything that can make them look like the good guys again.

And the Democratic Party has proved over and over again that it’s perfectly willing to betray law enforcement — whether its local police departments or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers or Border Patrol agents — to build its own political power.

To name just a few examples: Democrats (with the help of the mainstream media, of course) peddled lies about a police officer in the 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, that helped make Black Lives Matter a national movement. The George Floyd case in Minneapolis gave them license to peddle more lies about American police officers’ allegedly homicidal hatred of blacks.

For years, they’ve been attacking ICE and the Border Patrol for trying to protect American sovereignty – remember New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bogus story about illegal immigrants being forced to drink from toilets?

Now, with a demonstrably incompetent Biden in the White House and disastrous Democratic control over both houses of Congress, the party needs to do something — anything — to distract American voters from the chaos they’ve caused. Midterm elections might be a year away now, but they’re getting closer all the time.

For lunatic lefties like Waters (the chairwoman of the House Finance Committee, God help us), that distraction is Donald Trump — and blaming him for the crises Joe Biden has caused must be an easy lie compared with the countless others Democrats have told.

The presidency changed in 2021, but Maxine Waters hasn’t. She’s still a disgrace.

The fact that she’s a powerful member of what is now the party in power in the United States is even worse.

Maxine Waters Called Out for Pushing Debunked Lie About Border Patrol, Then Having the Nerve to Blame Trump (westernjournal.com)

More than 6,7000 mostly Haitian migrants remain under the Del Rio International Bridge along the Texas border, including more than 300 pregnant women, according to a new report.

Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin tweeted the new information Wednesday morning from Del Rio.

“NEW: This is what it looks like under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning. Latest numbers as of 6 AM.

“6,722 migrants
4,742 family units
1,489 single adult men
418 single adult females
73 family ‘groups’

“300+ pregnant women here as of yesterday,” Melugin tweeted.

Border Agents Furious After What Kamala Harris Said About Them

NEW: This is what it looks like under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning. Latest numbers as of 6 AM.

6,722 migrants
4,742 family units
1,489 single adult men
418 single adult females
73 family “groups”

300+ pregnant women here as of yesterday.@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/xbR2tNj9XT

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 22, 2021

The Biden administration has said it plans to send many of the migrants back to Haiti. However, “family units” will be excluded. This will include thousands of the up to 15,000 migrants who have crossed the Mexican border across the Rio Grande into Del Rio.

“We are releasing family groups (couples who claim female is pregnant). Family units (Families w/ children). All a woman has to do is claim she is pregnant and she will be released. They’re asked to please report to immigration within 60 days,” Melugin reported from a Border Patrol source.

From BP source in Del Rio: “We are releasing family groups (couples who claim female is pregnant). Family units (Families w/ children). All a woman has to do is claim she is pregnant and she will be released. They’re asked to please report to immigration within 60 days.”@FoxNews

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 22, 2021

Independent journalist Ali Bradley reported that at least one of the Haitian women from Del Rio has already given birth.

“While I was boarding my flight out of Texas, I talked with migrants, all from Haiti getting ready to head to: Florida (Orlando), New York, and Maryland,” Bradley tweeted on Wednesday.

“Baby Mateo was born 5 days ago in Del Rio,” he added.

Congressman Officially Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against Biden: ‘He’s Done So Much Damage’

While I was boarding my flight out of Texas, I talked with migrants, all from Haiti getting ready to head to: Florida (Orlando), New York, and Maryland.

Baby Mateo was born 5 days ago in Del Rio.

I asked permission to take these photos 👍🏼 pic.twitter.com/GvGe1nbAR9

— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) September 21, 2021

KTRK-TV in Houston reported on Wednesday that Haitian migrants from Del Rio have been bused to the area. The report noted thjat “volunteers from a coalition of churches are preparing them for the next part of their journey in America.”

In addition, “The migrants staying there are reportedly families who came to escape violence or persecution. They’ll eventually be taken to Bush Intercontinental Airport or the bus station to meet up with their sponsors in other states.”

https://abc13.com/video/embed/?pid=11036612

The migrant gathering of nearly 15,000 people has now dropped to less than half of its size.

However, many of the migrants appear to be moving to other parts of the U.S. rather than being deported to Haiti.

Hundreds of Pregnant Women Are Among the Massive Gathering of Migrants Under Texas Bridge (westernjournal.com)

Beltway raconteur Bob Woodward has a track record for sensationalizing gossip in order to create buzz and sell books.

In American high schools and the Washington Beltway—is there a difference?—“buzz” is a term for manipulating emotional and social responses to achieve a goal. Woodward? He wants to sell books and demonstrate he matters, years after Watergate made him a Washington Post legend.

In the case of high school, the buzz creators are usually Mean Girls decapitating Nice Girl rivals or punishing boys and girls who ignore or abhor Mean Girl deceits, scams, and deceptions.

Washington? Hey, in the Beltway, Mean Girl is an asexual term for a power-mad, self-serving politician practicing perception warfare, no matter the on-the-ground reality (Afghanistan; Haitians under a Del Rio bridge), no matter the cost to American taxpayers, no matter the damage to American national security.

Woodward and co-author Robert Costa have a new book out named “Peril.” According to their buzz, the authors claim that shortly after the Jan. 6 Washington semi-riot, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was so deeply concerned by President Donald Trump’s behavior he decided he simply had to—absolutely had to—take personal action outside the chain of command in order to prevent an out-of-control Trump from starting a nuclear war or whatever against Communist China.

Since Woodward and Costa’s publicists started buzzing, Milley has acknowledged something happened.

The something: One of Milley’s public affairs officers, Col. David Butler, said that Milley’s “calls with the Chinese and others in October and January were in keeping with (his) duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability.”

Col. Butler’s something sounds like a concession, though note he employs bureaucratic rhetorical camouflage—a classic perception warfare technique. Still, Butler admits Milley spoke with senior Chinese military officers. Missing in action: the subject Milley addressed was potential U.S. military action against the nation that is America’s most potent adversary. More missing facts: Milley spoke to the Chinese officers without approval from Trump. Reflect for a moment and it sounds like Milley acted on his own self-serving Hollywood script, not on evidence Trump was preparing to start a war.

The Beltway is a vicious high school of a sort, but unfortunately its viciousness isn’t Mean Girls wrestling with fantasy crises. In Milley’s case, we’re confronting the abrogation of the constitutional order of the military under civilian control and ultimately the U.S. military’s duty to defend America regardless of the party or personality of the president.

Fact for Milley: Senior Chinese military officers are members of the Chinese Communist Party. Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong absorption. Uyghur genocide. The Chinese military is a Party tool, Mark, a violent tool.

Milley’s short-sighted and, I argue, savvily self-serving action weakened U.S. national security and put the U.S. constitutional system at risk.

Milley’s actions are another example of the destructive perception warfare waged against the American people by powerful Beltway elites—and the worst examples of this war are perpetrated by power elites in the Democratic Party, to include President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

It’s a benevolent coincidence that last week Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Hillary Clinton campaign paid lawyer Michael Sussman. The Clinton campaign’s Russia collusion lie compromised and ultimately sacrificed the FBI’s counterintelligence security function and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court’s credibility to Hillary’s personal political goals. Her goals superseded American security. Hillary’s collusion crock was hatched to distract from her criminal abuse of classified information. The payoff for some of the actors? According to Durham’s indictment, positions in her administration. For the New York Times and Washington Post? Media Pulitzers for pushing a total lie.

Mark Milley violated constitutional order and subverted the chain of command. Why? His goal doesn’t matter, but here’s my guess: to secure the largesse of Biden and the Beltway media.

Try Milley by court martial, convict and sentence him to Fort Leavenworth’s Long Course. At Leavenworth, he can discuss perception warfare with his sledge while he whacks a rock.

Mark Milley’s Perception Warfare Deserves a Leavenworth Long Course (theepochtimes.com)

White House reporters are protesting after President Joe Biden’s handlers did their best imitation of screaming banshees as they blocked reporters from asking him questions during British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to the White House on Tuesday.

Johnson and Biden held a brief photo op in the Oval Office during which Johnson answered questions from the British media.

As he finished his answers, the race was on between White House staff yelling at reporters that it was time to leave and reporters trying to get in a question as Biden impassively observed the screeching scrum.

MOMENTS AGO: Staff orders news media to leave The White House as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks mid-sentence pic.twitter.com/MXg2m0o1hq

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 21, 2021

Biden’s Border Crisis Explodes as Haitian Migrants Take Control of ICE Transport Bus

Ed O’Keefe of CBS News said he was able to ask Biden for his reaction to events at the nation’s southern border, where waves of illegal Haitian immigrants have swamped the region around Del Rio, Texas.

O’Keefe tweeted that he heard Biden say “violence is not justified.”

UPDATE: We have played back the tape and part of the president’s answer is decipherable. I asked for his response to the situation on the southern border and he says in part, “Violence is not justified.”

He is wearing a mask and there is shouting so nothing else is decipherable

— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) September 21, 2021

The comment appeared linked to media claims that Border Patrol agents on horseback were using whips in their efforts to control the mass of migrants. In fact, they were holding the horses’ reins.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Steve Portnoy said editorial members of the media pool confronted White House press secretary Jen Psaki to make a formal complaint about the incident.

“The entire editorial component of the US pool went immediately into Jen Psaki’s office to register a formal complaint that no American reporters were recognized for questions in the president’s Oval Office, and that wranglers loudly shouted over the president as he seemed to give an answer to Ed O’Keefe’s question about the situation at the Southern Border,” he said in a statement, according to Fox News. “Biden’s answer could not be heard over the shouting.

“Psaki was unaware that the incident had occurred, and suggested that she was not in position to offer an immediate solution. Your pooler requested a press conference. Psaki suggested the president takes questions several times a week.”

Portnoy also addressed the incident on Twitter, writing Tuesday, “IN THE PRESIDENT’S OVAL OFFICE: Boris Johnson recognized two British reporters for questions. Joe Biden then signaled it was time for the press to leave, without taking any questions from his own press corps.”

‘Embarrassing:’ Biden Slammed for ‘Alternate Reality’ UN Speech That Centered on ‘A Monumental Lie’

IN THE PRESIDENT’S OVAL OFFICE:

Boris Johnson recognized two British reporters for questions.

Joe Biden then signaled it was time for the press to leave, without taking any questions from his own press corps.

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) September 21, 2021

The White House received a sound scolding from others for its tactics in protecting the president from the press.

NO ANSWER QUESTIONS BIDEN: How can the American people tolerate the president NOT taking nor answering questions from the press? A flagrant plan to keep him silenced to hide his severely weak cognitive state. The leader of the free world is faking it. https://t.co/lxI5Vpmmrk

— Fernando Amandi Sr. 🇺🇸 (@FernandoAmandi) September 22, 2021

He may not scream “fake news” but his aides have no problem screaming “let’s go, thank you!” That’s Biden White House code for “get the heck out of the Oval” https://t.co/Bgat0pkzt7

— Joe St. George (@JoeStGeorge) September 21, 2021

Prior to the shrieking denouement of the photo op, Johnson had asked Biden about allowing a question or two, according to the New York Post.

“Good luck,” Biden said.

The questions came from British reporters, one of whom asked about Northern Ireland and the other an American government employee who killed a British teenager in a car crash.

Johnson then interjected a comment, but before he finished speaking, reporters were given the bum’s rush.

Reporters Furious After Screaming White House Staffers Block Them from Asking Biden a Single Question (westernjournal.com)

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is rapidly pursuing nuclear armament across the board and seems reluctant to enter into any sort of arms control agreement such as the one the United States previously maintained with the Soviet Union, according to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine).

“Right now, China seems totally uninterested in that proposition,” King said.

The comments came as part of a keynote address on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation at a virtual conference held by Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies on Sep. 21, during which he expressed concern for the current state of nonproliferation efforts and voiced concern about China’s refusal to slow or halt its own process of nuclear armament.

King further stated that the CCP was likely attempting to reach full parity with the United States in terms of its number of nuclear weapons and their capabilities.

“That makes this a dangerous situation,” he said.

King said that the United States still relies on a broad strategy of deterrence, whereby the threat of force is intended to prevent the use of force by an adversary.

“Deterrence is still our basic strategy,” King said.

“The whole idea of deterrence is to have the capability to respond to any kind of attack or aggression against this country in order to deter that attack from ever happening.”

Despite the previous success of this strategy, however, King suggested that not enough had been done to adequately distinguish the many differences between Russia and China, and to account for the fact that the CCP is a fundamentally different kind of threat than what the USSR was during the Cold War.

“We’re at a fundamentally different place than we were 40 to 50 years ago,” King said.

“The rules of the game that were played with the Soviet Union and then Russia, don’t really apply to China,” he added.

King, who wrote his senior college thesis on the strategy of deterrence in 1966, articulated that a key difference in the strategic landscape between the Cold War and the present was that the fact that the world is no longer a bipolar political landscape, locked in a struggle between two great powers. Rather, he said, the world is entering a multipolar world that presents more complexity and novel scenarios in terms of international strategy.

“Now, China is very much in the mix,” King said. “It’s now a tri-polar world, and China is deeply engaged in a nuclear buildup.”

To this end, King said that the most immediate external threat to the United States’ ability to meaningfully pursue deterrence was the possibility of a cyberattack intended to interfere with U.S. command and control, those capabilities concerned with overseeing and facilitating military operations.

To that end, King argued that the United States needs to develop better redundancies, that is, systems and processes that guarantee a military technology can effectively operate even if another, similar technology fails.

“It’s so critical to have redundancy on top of redundancy, because if the enemy believes they can compromise our command and control capabilities, the deterrence evaporates,” King said.

“Any conflict that is coming our way will start with a cyberattack, the purpose of which will be to blind our communications and compromise our command and control,” King added.

King further mused that a foreign government could likely hire some 8,000 hackers for the cost of a single fighter jet, and that the low barrier to entry for cyberwarfare essentially guarantees that the next war will begin in cyberspace.

As such, he said that any effort at nuclear deterrence would be predicated on the United States’ ability to seriously invest in the cybersecurity necessary to protect the nation’s nuclear arsenal and its ability to use it. He drove the point home by asking those in attendance to consider the worst-case scenario at the onset of a potential armed conflict.

“What if the whole grid goes down?” King said. “What if there’s no power to the White House?”

“If they can disable our entire carrier fleet in the Western Pacific, that changes the strategic calculus dramatically,” King added.

China ‘Uninterested’ in Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Sen. King (theepochtimes.com)

https://www.khou.com/embeds/video/285-8ce2656c-cf58-4532-84fe-dcf0e8ced130/iframe

HOUSTON—A Houston police officer was killed and another was wounded Monday morning during a shooting that also killed a 31-year-old man whom the officers were attempting to arrest on drug charges, authorities said.

The veteran officers were each shot multiple times while attempting to serve an arrest warrant at an apartment complex on the city’s northeast side, Mayor Sylvester Turner said during a news conference.

“This has been a tragic day today,” Turner said. “It is another reminder that police work is inherently dangerous.”

Senior Officer William Jeffrey, who joined the Houston Police Department in 1990, was pronounced dead at a hospital following the shooting, authorities said. He was 54. Sgt. Charles Vance, who joined the department in 1998, was in stable condition, according to police Chief Troy Finner. Vance is 49.

The officers arrived at the apartment around 7:30 a.m., knocked on the door and spoke with a woman who answered it, Finner said. He said the man then came out and began shooting at the officers.

“You’ve got a suspect with a female girlfriend with small kids in that apartment complex and he still fired upon our officers,” Finner said. He said police returned fire and that the man died on the scene.

Authorities didn’t identify the man the officers were attempting to arrest. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shooting.

Houston Officer Killed, Another Wounded While Serving Warrant (theepochtimes.com)

Health agency mandates measles vaccines and quarantines for refugees

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Afghans being brought into the United States are carrying viruses including malaria, measles, and tuberculosis, as well as COVID-19.

The health agency said that the Afghans will have to receive vaccines for measles and undergo quarantining. Since last month, the Biden administration has brought in thousands of Afghan nationals after their government collapsed amid a Taliban takeover.

As of Monday, the agency “has been notified by public health departments of 16 measles cases among the evacuees. All patients confirmed to have measles have been isolated and provided care,” said the CDC, “and their contacts have been quarantined. Contacts who were not immune were given the MMR vaccine or, if not vaccine-eligible, immunoglobulin.” MMR refers to the measles, mumps, and rubella shot.

“Evacuees who are in the United States are required to be vaccinated with MMR and complete a 21-day quarantine from the time of vaccination at U.S. ‘Safe Haven’ designated locations, such as military bases,” the CDC wrote.

Other than measles, tuberculosis, and malaria, the CDC said that there are concerns about evacuees having an increased likelihood of “shigellosis, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and viral diarrheal diseases.”

The CDC, according to the release, is “also aware of some cases of varicella, mumps, tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, hepatitis A, and COVID-19 among evacuees. Although COVID incidence in this population has been notably low, COVID immunization and testing is being provided for all evacuees.”

The military bases where the Afghans are being housed include Fort Pickett in Virginia, Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Fort Lee in Virginia, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Dix in New Jersey, and Camp Atterbury in Indiana.

Starting last month, the U.S. military led a chaotic and rushed evacuation as the Taliban took over the country following the U.S. forces’ pullout. While a few thousand Americans are believed to have been evacuated, far more Afghans were flown out of the country on military flights.

On Tuesday, the Taliban started naming more officials to the country’s interim government.

Main Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir will be deputy defense minister, while Sadr Ibrahim was named deputy minister for the interior. Both men had been expected to take major positions in the new government but neither was named in the main list of ministers announced this month.

Reuters contributed to this report.

CDC: Afghans Arriving in US Infected With Measles, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (theepochtimes.com)

The wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent told Fox News on Monday that the border crisis is so severe in her community, Del Rio, Texas, that she’s been finding footprints underneath her daughters’ bedroom windows.

Alison Anderson appeared on the network to share a story of just how close to home the Biden administration’s border dysfunction is hitting. The area she lives in is currently the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis and an embarrassing display of government ineptitude.

Stunning images shared online over the past several days showed thousands of migrants, most reportedly from Haiti, had ignored the federal government’s weak language advising them not to travel to the United States.

NEW: We’ve learned that the FAA just implemented a two week TFR (Temporary Flight Restrictions) over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, meaning we can no longer fly our FOX drone over it to show images of the thousands of migrants. FAA says “special security reason”. pic.twitter.com/aJrjAPO2Pz

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 17, 2021

NEW: From our @FoxNews drone, a look at the migrant camp under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning, where thousands migrants remain after they crossed into the US illegally. pic.twitter.com/06sUY2XCi5

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 19, 2021

In fact, so many people had amassed under an international bridge in southern Texas that action is finally being taken to fly many of those people back to Haiti.

But according to an account Anderson shared, people crossing the border aren’t just staying put on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Illegal immigrants are crossing through her property just feet from where her three daughters sleep, she said.

NEW: From our @FoxNews drone, a look at the migrant camp under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning, where thousands migrants remain after they crossed into the US illegally. pic.twitter.com/06sUY2XCi5

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 19, 2021

In fact, so many people had amassed under an international bridge in southern Texas that action is finally being taken to fly many of those people back to Haiti.

But according to an account Anderson shared, people crossing the border aren’t just staying put on the banks of the Rio Grande River. Illegal immigrants are crossing through her property just feet from where her three daughters sleep, she said.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6273382485001

“We had illegals running through the back end of our property towards our house. … We’ve had footprints from illegals, because there is nobody else on our property walking around in the middle of night, underneath our daughters’ bedroom windows,” Anderson said.

She also went after President Joe Biden and those around him for refusing to acknowledge the terrible situation on the border, which she said is “out of control.”

“We would like to hear this actually get called what it is, which is a crisis,” Anderson said. “It is a border crisis. It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s a health crisis. And, I mean, it’s a security crisis right now.”

She also rightly accused the federal government of abandoning American citizens who are left to deal with the aftermath of its disastrous immigration policies in Texas. Anderson said property owners are on their own, as are the Border Patrol agents, like her husband, who are dealing with a morale crisis as they’ve been forced to sit and watch their country suffer through an invasion.Related:Host of ‘Meet the Press’ Finally Hits His Breaking Point on Biden’s Disastrous Presidency

“It would be great to have some support and, unfortunately, our town, our community, our citizens and our agents, our DPS [Texas Department of Public Safety], our troops, nobody is getting that support,” Anderson told Fox News.

The Biden administration doesn’t care about securing the border, even as its officials ramble on elsewhere about the coronavirus pandemic. Nor does it care about stopping criminals or preventing people from becoming crime victims.

Anderson has lived near the border amid Biden’s historic surge in illegal migration. She would like, at the very least, for the president and his advisers to call the entire mess what it is: a crisis. That is something they still refuse to do.

I asked Sec. Mayorkas if he will publicly admit the situation at the border is a crisis since he was recorded last month privately admitting there is a crisis and it’s unsustainable.

He did not, instead saying DHS is focused on “meeting the challenge.” pic.twitter.com/TmYoxUaqsM

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 20, 2021

Sadly for people who live in areas dealing with waves of illegal immigration, the federal government apparently is more concerned with hiding what is happening than anything else. The Federal Aviation Administration last week instituted a temporary ban on drones over the border in Del Rio.

The FAA’s conveniently placed a ban on drones flying over the international bridge where 10K+ illegal aliens are waiting to be processed – preventing media from covering the scene.

Biden doesn’t want you to see what a disaster he’s created.

Read more: https://t.co/7BAyzSaW8H pic.twitter.com/JVA2g1ZKBM

— Brian Babin (@RepBrianBabin) September 17, 2021

Nobody in the White House or the Department of Homeland Security will have to answer for a crisis if people outside of the affected area don’t know what is going on.

Woman Living on Border Finds a Mom’s Worst Nightmare Beneath Daughters’ Bedroom Window (westernjournal.com)

Non-public report to Congress shows sanctions drained nearly $18 billion from Iran’s coffers

Trump administration sanctions on Iran decimated the hardline regime’s trade with the world’s largest economies, knocking it from $46 billion in 2019 to $28 billion in 2020, according to a non-public report sent by the Biden administration to Congress earlier this month.

The roughly $18 billion decrease in trade was a significant blow to Iran’s attempts to gain access to hard currency amid an ongoing cash crunch that has ruined the country’s economy and sparked nationwide protests. All told, the reimposition of sanctions, which began in 2018, decreased Iran’s trade by more than $70 billion.

The extent of damage caused by the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran was disclosed this month to Congress in an unclassified but non-public mandatory report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. It demonstrates that sanctions on Iran leveled by the former administration prevented the Iranian regime from making profits, even as critics of the GOP-led sanctions claimed such measures were ineffective.

The disclosure comes as the Biden administration pursues negotiations with Iran and aims to ink a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord, which provided Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Iran is pushing U.S. officials to dismantle the former administration’s bevy of sanctions, which would provide the hardline regime with a cash lifeline. The Biden administration has signaled that it is willing to waive the most crushing economic sanctions on Tehran, drawing criticism from GOP hawks in Congress and others who say the United States is giving up its leverage on the regime.

The latest report was submitted to Congress under the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, which requires the president to inform lawmakers about the dollar value of Iran’s trade with leading global countries known as the Group of 20. The significant decrease in trade occurred after the Trump administration invoked in August 2020 a mechanism known as “snapback,” in which all international sanctions that were lifted on Iran as part of the nuclear deal were reapplied.

The report also outlines U.S. trade with Iran, which dropped from $34.5 million in 2019 to $26.5 million in 2020. The majority of America’s exports to Iran are permitted by humanitarian waivers on sanctions and include agricultural goods, medicine, and medical devices. This trade continued with Iran as the coronavirus pandemic stormed the globe and ravaged Iran’s population.

Iran’s top trading partner is China, which in 2019 conducted more than $19 billion in trade with Iran. That number dropped to $12 billion in 2020. China has skirted American sanction measures to do business with Iran. This includes Iran’s lucrative and heavily sanctioned oil trade, which takes place under the radar.

The European Union in 2019 conducted $4.7 billion in trade with Iran, according to the report. That number dropped to $4.3 billion in 2020. Europe remains committed to trade with Iran, even in the face of U.S. sanctions, and has worked to facilitate America’s return to the nuclear accord, which it views as advantageous to this business relationship.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the figures “put more meat on the bone of the macroeconomic markers of success of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy against Iran.”

“Put simply,” he said, “maximum pressure was working, and reversing course will only have the opposite effect. These figures also serve as one footnote to support the larger claim that if economic pressure was enforced and compounded, the question of negotiating from a position of strength with the Islamic Republic of Iran would be a matter of when, not if.”

Morgan Ortagus, the former State Department spokeswoman under Trump, told the Free Beacon that the report shows the Trump administration sanctions against Iran worked.

“Our campaign of maximum pressure against Iran was succeeding—their economy was crumbling, their military was shattered by the death of Qassem Soleimani, and their people were revolting against the daily oppression of the clerics,” she said. “Instead of taking advantage of the leverage we handed the Biden administration to get a better deal, his team relaxed the economic and diplomatic pressure, and the Iranians have predictably given them nothing in return. This regime only understands the language of pressure.”

Trump Admin Sanctions on Iran Decimated Regime’s Global Trade, Report Says (freebeacon.com)

Surgeon Joseph Sakran said Trump could use politics to compromise vaccine’s approval process

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe employed a left-wing doctor who questioned the efficacy of the vaccine during the Trump presidency to portray his GOP opponent as anti-science.

In an ad released Friday, McAuliffe trotted out trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran to argue Youngkin “won’t listen to doctors and scientists.” While the ad presents Sakran as an unbiased expert who merely cites “the science,” Sakran himself sowed doubt about the vaccine during its development and has a long history as a liberal activist and donor.

Sakran in May 2020 questioned a Moderna announcement that touted “promising vaccine results,” suggesting that the company only did so to manipulate its stock price.

“Moderna announced promising vaccine results…..and the executives then sell 30 million in stocks,” Sakran wrote. “Something smells funny!” Months later, he contended that the Trump administration could use “political pressure” to “circumvent” health experts and create “an expedited vaccine making healthy people sick.”

Prominent liberals echoed Sakran’s rhetoric at the time. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for example, asked in September if “anyone at all” will “ever fully trust the CDC again” as “Trumpist nonsense has infected everything.”

“And who on God’s earth would trust a vaccine approved by the FDA?” Reid added. She has since claimed “anybody rational was hesitant” to take the vaccine because “Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods.” Reid now regularly criticizes those who express vaccine hesitancy.

Sakran, meanwhile, called the vaccine “promising” just weeks after he warned that Trump could use politics to compromise its approval process—and just days after Biden won the November election. In December, he praised the Food and Drug Administration for recommending authorization of the Pfizer vaccine and declared himself “ready to get vaccinated.”

Sakran told the Washington Free Beacon he has “always been clear that vaccines work and ha[s] always encouraged their use” but declined to answer questions about his vaccine rhetoric during the Trump presidency. McAuliffe did not return a request for comment.

In his McAuliffe campaign ad, Sakran also made questionable claims to criticize Youngkin’s positions on coronavirus-related measures. Sakran, for example, said Youngkin “is against requiring masks in schools, even though the science has made clear that’s how we prevent outbreaks in schools.”

That science, however, is far from clear. Many American allies in Europe have exempted children from wearing masks in schools, and the World Health Organization advises against requiring masks for children ages 5 and under.

“Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty,” hematologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in September. “And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”

McAuliffe’s embrace of Sakran could also undermine the Democrat’s position as a supporter of Israel. Sakran, a self-identified “Palestinian American,” has referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state and condemned former president Donald Trump’s “reckless” decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As governor, McAuliffe notably denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but has since welcomed an endorsement from an activist group that staunchly defends the anti-Israel campaign. Sakran did not respond to a request for comment about his past Israel rhetoric.

Sakran has long supported liberal causes and politicians. He created “Doctors for Hillary” in 2016 and gave nearly $7,000 to support failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He went on to launch gun control advocacy groups that caught the attention of Democratic officials—Sakran attended the 2019 State of the Union address with Rep. Mike Thompson (D., Calif.). In addition to his Clinton contributions, Sakran has donated nearly $9,000 to Democrats since 2016, including a $2,800 offering to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

With Election Day quickly approaching, McAuliffe leads Youngkin by just 3 points, according to a September Washington Post poll. The pair will square off at the polls on Nov. 2.

McAuliffe Taps Onetime Vaccine Skeptic To Slam Youngkin on COVID (freebeacon.com)

The Biden administration said on Monday it will double the refugee admissions cap to 125,000 in fiscal year 2022 from the current cap of 62,500.

Fiscal Year 2022 begins on Oct. 1. The State Department announced that it has sent a report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that recommends the refugee cap increase “to address needs generated by humanitarian crises around the globe.”

The report is produced by the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. It said the Biden administration seeks to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) through “strengthening its global infrastructure to welcome significantly greater numbers of refugees” as well as making the program responsive to future changes.

In particular, the new admissions target plans to focus on certain populations and programs, including: “expanded resettlement of Central Americans; enhanced access to the USRAP for Afghans at risk due to their affiliation with the United States; increased resettlement of LGBTQI+ refugees; priority access for at-risk Uyghurs, Hong Kong refugees, and Burmese dissidents; and resettlement of Burmese Rohingya.”

The report lays out the new refugee caps by region: 40,000 refugees from Africa; 15,000 from East Asia; 10,000 from Europe and Central Asia; 15,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean; 35,000 from the Near East and South Asia; and 10,000 in “unallocated reserve to be used if needed in any region.”

Former President Donald Trump had set a refugee cap of 15,000 before the Biden administration more than quadrupled that figure in May. Biden said at the time that Trump’s cap “did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees.”

The Biden administration said in its report that it expects arrivals in the current fiscal year to “fall far short” of the 62,500 target. In FY 2021, 7,637 asylum seekers were found to meet the criteria for being admitted as a refugee into the country as of the end of August. The administration said it “will redouble efforts in FY 2022 … to meet the longer-term global objectives.”

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement that the latest move “is reaffirming our commitment to refugee resettlement in line with our long tradition of providing a safe haven and opportunity to individuals fleeing persecution.”

“With the world facing unprecedented global displacement and humanitarian needs, the United States is committed to leading efforts to provide protection and promote durable solutions to humanitarian crises, to include providing resettlement for the most vulnerable,” the statement reads.

“A robust refugee admissions program is critical to U.S. foreign policy interests and national security objectives, and is a reflection of core American values,” Price said in the statement. “The United States has long been a global leader in refugee resettlement.”

Some members of Congress have voiced their support for the administration over the measure.

“We are greatly encouraged by President Biden’s announcement today affirming his commitment to admit up to 125,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year and to rebuild the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said in a statement. “As multiple humanitarian crises continue to unfold around the world, the President’s action could not come at a more important time.”

They added, “We look forward to working with the Biden Administration to restore this life saving program and our reputation as a leader in providing refuge to those fleeing persecution around the globe.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also praised the Biden administration, saying he had been advocating for the high refugee cap since April.

“Facing the greatest refugee crisis in our time, I know the Biden Administration is working to restore the United States’ longstanding bipartisan tradition of providing safety to the world’s most vulnerable refugees—including Afghan refugees,” Durbin said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, communities facing the border crisis at the south are grappling with the worst border numbers in history, driven by Biden’s policies that have, so far, allowed a large portion of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States.

However, the “rather sudden” surge of immigrants has prompted a large-scale response from the federal government, including moving some 6,500 immigrants from Del Rio to other parts of the border to ease the burden on the overtaxed agents.

In recent weeks, thousands of illegal immigrants have amassed near the Texas border but are now leaving the United States, returning to Mexico to pick up supplies or to avoid being deported back to their home countries.

Haitians and others were witnessed on Sept. 20 crossing the Rio Grande to enter Acuña, Mexico, preempting a U.S. crackdown on an illegal immigrant camp under the International Bridge at Del Rio.

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.

Biden Admin to Double Annual Refugee Cap to 125,000 (theepochtimes.com)

Undermining civilian rule of the military and promising the military commander of our chief geopolitical adversary that we would notify him in advance of an attack is not “abnormal at all,” according to one general — one of several who came out to voice their support for Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley over the past few days.

Amid allegations in Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s upcoming book “Peril,” set to be released Tuesday, that Milley told his Chinese counterpart that he’d give him warning of any impending American military action and that he told his officers that they weren’t to launch a nuke on then-President Donald Trump’s orders until getting an OK from Milley, there were plenty of retired top brass closing ranks around him.

The conversations were first reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday. In the first call with Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army on Oct. 30, Milley sought to ratchet down tensions with Beijing by giving Li an absurd pledge.

The book quotes Milley as saying, “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” according to the Post.

This came dangerously close to the textbook definition of treason. If the United States was in a position to attack China, that would, by the very nature of the action, make them our enemy. By committing to alerting them, Milley was, in effect, promising a potential foe that he would telegraph our moves.

After the second conversation with Li, which came following the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion, Milley “summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved,” the Post reported.

“Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an ‘oath.’”

Civilian control of the military is a key tenet of any free society, particularly ours. By acting to remove it, even though his authority to do so was in question and the use of nuclear weapons wasn’t even on the table, Milley had undermined democracy.

And yet, the key takeaway from former top military brass contacted by the media was that this wasn’t any big thing.

Take retired Adm. Michael Mullen, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 2007 to the end of September 2011 — from the final year of the George W. Bush presidency through most of the first three years of Barack Obama’s first term.

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, he shrugged the allegations in “Peril” off as basically business as usual.

“Having communications with counterparts around the world is routine, and even having them now with China,” Mullen told host Martha Raddatz.

“There was a time when we had no communications with China, or we’d have a problem with China, they’d cut off all [military-to-military] connections. And so, actually, I’m encouraged at the fact that the line of communication is there.

“And this was routine. I think it was also overseen, certainly listened to by many others in the interagency process. So, Milley wasn’t out there by himself.”

Raddatz then paraphrased the line about Milley calling China to warn of a U.S. attack — which Mullen found slightly problematic, but still not a huge deal.

“Yes, well, I’m hopeful that actually, that part of it isn’t true, per se,” Mullen said. “But, at the same time, having the conversation is really critical. What’s a little bit alarming to me, though, is that the Chinese would read the situation, as they did, as really chaotic and as if we were going to possibly strike.”

As for Milley’s action that undermined civilian control of the military, again, nothing major, according to Mullen.

“It’s fairly routine that you would look everybody in the eye and say, ‘Do you get that?’ particularly for something this serious,” Mullen said. “I didn’t consider that abnormal at all.”

In a piece for CNN published Friday, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling — a vehemently anti-Trump contributor to the network who served 37 years in the military and was, at one point, the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe — wrote the “cries of outrage have been hyperbolic, vitriolic.”

“But Milley is emphatically not a traitor. His actions also don’t rise to the level of heroics, as some on the left are proclaiming,” he wrote. “Rather, I’d say the Chairman was acting rightly on intelligence that America’s adversaries and friends were extremely concerned about the violent turmoil surrounding the presidential transition — and the uncertainty about what Trump might do before leaving office.

“Given that the former president had already made worrisome comments about summarily pulling US forces out of various areas around the world, and given media reports of Trump’s earlier threats to attack other nations, Milley found it necessary to communicate directly with his counterparts overseas, with whom he had a professional relationship.”

Hertling added that Milley “was reacting to the realities on the ground. Straight talk with our allies and partners, lowering the temperature when tensions are rising, is critical to avoiding misunderstandings and perhaps deadly unintentional consequences.”

Except China is decidedly not an “ally,” and, in this situation, could hardly be considered a “partner.” If the situation rose to the point of shooting, it would be neither.

And while Hertling may have been under the impression that undermining civilian control of the military and assuring China they’d be the first to know about a military attack upon them lowered the temperature geopolitically, it hasn’t done so at home, rightly concerning Americans about what they can expect from their generals.

And, indeed, perhaps that’s the catch: The military supports its own under the (usually correct) assumption they act according to America’s best interests. That’s likely a big part of the reason three retired generals living near Fort Hood, Texas, contacted by the hometown Killeen Daily Herald either supported Milley outright or were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I think we should give him his due and get all the facts first,” retired Lt. Gen. Paul Funk told the newspaper. “I’m not inclined to believe Mr. Woodward, because I don’t think he’s given us any reason to trust him. I’m not going to prejudge [Milley], but pretty sure it’s not how it’s been portrayed in the media.”

Time will tell on that. But the fact that Milley hasn’t outright denied the reporting in Woodward and Costa’s book is a fairly solid indication that it’s substantively accurate.

And if that’s truly the case, there’s a serious argument to be made that Milley did not act in the best interests of the country — even if we’re to accept that his motivations were as pure as the driven snow.

Unfortunately, Milley has given at least half of the country reason to suspect his motivations. It’s been apparent for some time that the Joint Chiefs chair has now gone woke, from his dubious repudiation of his own appearance with Trump outside a church in Washington in June 2020 to more recently throwing his support behind critical race theory training and infamously telling Congress that part of his reasoning was that he wanted to understand “white rage.”

Whatever his military qualifications — and no one gets to be Joint Chiefs chairman without having a lot on the ball — Milley has proven himself to be a political creature. The actions reported in “Peril,” and the fact that they have not been denied, indicate politics is operating in the United States military in a manner that should be repugnant to every American — even retired military brass.

The chances Milley ever sees a court-martial for this may indeed be slim, but he must resign or be fired. It’s that simple. The military may want to close ranks around him, but if the book’s allegations are true, this remains a disgraceful act by a man who can no longer remain in his current position.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Tells ABC: ‘Milley Wasn’t Out There by Himself’ (westernjournal.com)

Hypocrisy! The radicals in Congress, from Maxine Waters to the Squad, are calling to ‘Defund the Police,’ but they spend large sums of campaign cash on private security and Capitol Hill police protection wherever they go in America.

They rely on all of this security while pushing legislation in Congress that would take cops off the streets in our communities, and they still want to increase their own Capitol Hill police force with YOUR taxpayer dollars.

You may recognize them as “the Squad,” but Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC sees them for what they truly are: two-faced charlatans who publicly attack law enforcement and beg private firms to keep them safe. Many employees at private security firms are former and retired law enforcement and military, so the irony is not lost on us…

Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC is fighting back against the Squad’s hypocrisy and history of hatred for police by supporting principled candidates who will Back the Blue in Congress and oppose drastic measures to strip law enforcement of critical resources.

Roll up your sleeves with us as we prepare to make critical endorsements ahead of the 2022 Midterm Elections. Chip in $25, $50, $100, or more toward our effort to send our team to Congress to combat the Squad.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush have spent more than $100,000 on private security this year alone. They believe they should have police protection while you and your neighbors fend for yourselves.

That’s why they’re ramping up their attacks on law enforcement officers:
Ocasio-Cortez backed a rowdy anti-police protest in New York City, where activists shouted “punch a cop!” as they held signs reading “hit ‘em!” and “don’t let these pigs touch us!”
AOC even endorsed the most radical ‘Defund’ candidate for NYC Mayor.
Ilhan Omar took “Defund the Police” to the extreme, backing a ballot initiative to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department in its entirety and replace it with social workers with clipboards. She called Minneapolis police “incompetent” and “brutal” after months of rioting and protests.
Cori Bush is a professional BLM activist who told America to “suck it up” when she was first criticized over her private security expenses, and
Ayanna Pressley is using a D.C.-based political action committee to endorse anti-police candidates all the way down the ballot in states across the country…

They won’t stop until they’ve unleashed their activist mob on your community and left you defenseless and at their mercy. Defunding the police is only the beginning.

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Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC

STAND WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT – DONATE TODAY

Victor Gao, a former Morgan Stanley Vice President, made the bold claim on a UK radio show.

top advisor to several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated think tanks as well as the New York-based Asia Society gave a “stern warning” to those opposing a Chinese Communist Party takeover of Taiwan. He suggested the regime will pursue the policy by “whatever means possible.”

Speaking with LBC presenter Matt Frei, Victor Gao declared: “nothing in the world can stand in the way of the unification of China,” adding the goal would be accomplished through “preferably peaceful means, but if not, peaceful means whatever means possible.”

“Unification of China is a must,” he adds.

‘This is a stern warning to whoever in Taiwan who will oppose the reunification,” insists Gao, who is the Vice President of the Chinese Communist Party-linked Center for China and Globalization and an advisor to several other Beijing-linked influence groups such as the Beijing Energy Club and the China Energy Security Institute.

Gao also has a presence in the U.S., serving as a member of the Asia Society’s Global Counsel and a former Vice President at Morgan Stanley Asia.

The National Pulse has previously exposed the Asia Society for influencing curricula and personnel in American schools to align with “social justice”  and “globalism,” reaching up to 4,000,000 students and 100,000 educators.

When asked about America’s response to the Chinese Communist Party attempting to overtake Taiwan, Gao cautioned “Wake up, no American leaders who will want to shed blood of American soldiers for the unification of China.”

‘By Whatever Means Possible’: Chinese Communist Takeover of Taiwan Imminent, Asserts Regime Flack. (thenationalpulse.com)

The chief executive of a leading investment firm said that inflation is hitting every portion of the company’s portfolio.

Marc Rowan — the CEO of Apollo Global Management, which controls $472 billion in assets — said in an interview with CNBC that rising price levels are affecting every portion of his business.

“There’s not a place [where we are not seeing inflation]. Everything that we once did now costs more,” Rowan explained to CNBC’s Leslie Picker. “Lead times, pressure on inventory, pressure on supplies, pressure on employment. Our experience in our portfolio is really no different than the broader economy.”

CNBC reports:

Rowan said it remains to be seen if inflation proves to be transitory — that is, temporary — as Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly said. Still, Rowan believes the price increases will ease as the recent spending boom decreases and U.S. natural low-inflation pressures, such as slow population growth, reassert themselves…

Rowan said he wasn’t sure if Apollo could find a way to control inflation in its portfolio but that it [sic] his company’s job to thrive in any environment. He also said that markets appeared to be “priced for perfection” and at risk of a pullback but that there are still places for investors to find value.

Indeed, Rowan is not the only leading businessman to witness the pervasive effects of inflation on the American economy.

John Catsimatidis — the owner and CEO of Manhattan-based grocery chain Gristedes Foods — told Fox Business in July that Americans should anticipate higher prices for basic expenses over the coming months.

“We’re both in the food business, and we’re in the oil business. Food prices are getting higher, and we expect even more increases by October,” he projected. “We’re seeing anywhere from 10% to 14% by October 1. It’s a real number.”

“And oil prices — I know they’re a little bit off today, but I expect even higher numbers,” he continued. “It’s a sine wave — everything just goes up and down. I expect by October you’re gonna have over a 6% annualized rate of inflation.”

The most recent data from the Department of Labor shows that inflation is presently at a year-over-year rate of 5.3%. Nevertheless, the Federal Reserve has not yet tightened its aggressive quantitative easing, and Democrats in Washington continue to advance a $3.5 social welfare spending program.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

CEO Of Top Investment Firm Says Inflation Is Hitting Entire Portfolio | The Daily Wire

The humongous bill that Democrats in Washington, D.C. are assembling this week is a slap in the face to Americans who work, pay taxes and support their families.

The bill demeans work ethic and glorifies government handouts. It sends a message that work and self-sufficiency are for suckers. Better to climb on Uncle Sam’s gravy train that will now provide cradle-to-grave benefits.

The social spending bill will give monthly payments to almost all parents based on how many children they have, regardless if anyone in the family works. Democrats are also promising virtually free child care until kids reach age 5, free community college and, near the end of life, new Medicare and elder care benefits. The bill also includes 12 weeks paid leave each year for anyone who claims a family member needs care.

These freebies are rolled into one massive bill that is allegedly expected to run about 10,000 pages and, of course, will likely go unread by anyone, including your state’s representative.

Why are Democrats rushing? Under the U.S. Senate rules, they have only one shot to pass a bill before the end of the year with their slim majority. Democrats don’t have a mandate to transform America into a European-style welfare state, but they’re determined to ram the bill through anyway.

Democrats are also eyeing the 2022 midterm elections, which is when they could lose power. “Many of us feel that this is the biggest opportunity we will have,” explained Rep. Don Beyer, D-V.A. It’s vote buying on a grand scale.

This bill pours money down a rathole. It allocates a whopping $45 billion to make community college free. Students won’t have to spend even $1 on tuition or fees, or pursue a course of study that prepares them for work.

Most students don’t finish community college within two years. Currently, 42% of community college students graduate within four years. A big reason is a lack of academic skills when they enter. Nothing in this program will change that.

One of the bill’s costliest items is paid family leave, with an estimated price tag of $225 billion over 10 years. It’s the mother of all family leave plans. Benefits are paid by the federal government based entirely on an employee’s word that a family member needs care. No doctor’s note or medical records required. Even the self-employed are eligible. It’s an invitation to big-time fraud, and a nightmare for small businesses that would have to hire a replacement on short notice and yet still keep the job open for the employee on leave.

The overall bill is being touted as a way to reduce poverty. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brags that extending the monthly payments to parents will “cut child poverty in half.” Nonsense. Government entitlements don’t cut poverty or improve mobility for poor children — a working parent does.

This bill lacks incentives to work. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., is urging a work requirement for parents to receive their monthly payments. His party should listen.

House and Senate committees are racing to finish drafting this gigantic bill, but what’s needed is public input. Most Americans don’t want to swap the American ideal of success through hard work for government paternalism, but that’s what the bill does.

The U.S. already has a generous social safety net, including federal programs to subsidize housing, food, child care, college, medical care and even cellphones for the poor. Democrats are also trying to get green cards for 8 million illegal immigrants and make them eligible for the benefits of the bill.

Europe demonstrates the dismal results of a declining work ethic and ever-expanding government entitlements. Europeans have a lower gross domestic product per capita because they work fewer hours. They have to settle for smaller homes, fewer household appliances and conveniences, and a lower material standard of living.

Everything Europeans manage to buy is laden with hidden taxes to support their “caring” governments. Working-class Europeans are heavily burdened by these taxes.

That is the choice Americans face: Adopt European-style entitlements and the suffocating taxes to pay for them, as socialist Bernie Sanders wants to do, or work hard and have more spending money to buy what you and your family want.

Democrats Are Trashing the American Work Ethic With Their Spending Bill :: Right & Free (rightandfree.com)

With advisers like Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley, former President Donald Trump hardly needed enemies — at least, if Bob Woodward and Robert Costa are to be believed.

Woodward and Costa’s new book “Peril,” about the events surrounding the 2020 election and unprecedented instability encompassing it, isn’t even out yet and the allegations contained therein have led to calls for Milley’s resignation.

In one excerpt from the book, Milley is alleged to have talked to the Chinese twice to assure them the United States wouldn’t launch an attack — and if they did, he would give Beijing a heads-up. Milley also reportedly told senior officers that if there was any move toward a nuclear launch, while a president could give the order, he needed to be consulted.

That whole series of episodes, if true, skirts with treason when you consider he would be warning an enemy of an attack. Perhaps more crucially, it undermined the bedrock principle of civilian leadership of the military, one of the principles that separates us from an authoritarian state.

When it came to domestic threats, however, Woodward and Costa say Milley was considerably less concerned — so much less that he called the George Floyd riots “penny packet protests.”

According to an excerpt from the book obtained by Fox News, Milley pooh-poohed White House fears that the riots were insurrectionary and “burning America down” during the summer months last year.

“Mr. President, they are not burning it down,” Milley reportedly said. “They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection.”

According to the book, the conversation took place near the end of May. The date isn’t given, but the protests had spread well beyond Minneapolis by May 27, according to a timeline of events from The New York Times. That’s just two days after Floyd’s death.

A May 30 timeline from Fox News mentions protests or riots in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix and St. Louis, among many others.

“More than a dozen cities instituted curfews and thousands were arrested, while thousands of National Guard members were deployed in at least 15 states,” Fox News noted.

“When Milley spoke to Trump, however, he reportedly cited data at that time that said there had only been two cities with major protests, while elsewhere it was 20-300 protesters.”

According to Woodward and Costa, Milley then pointed to a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln and said the protests and riots couldn’t be compared to the attack on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War in 1861.

“We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests,” Milley said, adding that it couldn’t be compared to the riots which engulfed the country in 1968, according to the book.

Milley also reportedly blamed systematic racism for the protests and said anger had “pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality.”

Milley was, if nothing else, a bad prognosticator.

The George Floyd riots would go on to cost America up to $2 billion in insurance claims, according to estimates obtained by Axios in September of last year. That would likely make them the most costly riots of all time, surpassing the Los Angeles riot of 1992; that cost $775 million in insurance claims at the time, which would be $1.42 billion in 2020 dollars.

The three most costly riots of 1968, meanwhile, barely topped $300 million in damage when adjusted for 2020 dollars.

More importantly, the George Floyd riots would rend our national fabric more than any domestic event in recent memory. It would enable the worst elements in the Black Lives Matter and antifa movements.

The protests — and the so-called anti-racist movement they supercharged — also became an avenue for expressing explicitly anti-American sentiments. How many times, for example, did we witness scenes like this?

Protesters cheer as they burn American flags at the guillotine outside the police bureau #PortlandProtest #Portland pic.twitter.com/R9I6dobNiv

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) August 23, 2020

Those weren’t the riots that Milley was worried about, though. According to the book, he was more concerned with the Capitol incursion, which the book alleges he perceived as being “indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason.’”

The book goes on to say Milley was afraid Trump wanted a “Reichstag moment” — referring to the Reichstag fire, a relatively minor incident in 1933 which Adolf Hitler used as an excuse to consolidate power in Nazi Germany — and that the attack was “so unimagined and savage, could be a dress rehearsal for something larger” for Trump supporters.

It’s not that Milley was the only man expressing these overheated sentiments about the Capitol incursion — but if these reports are true, at some point during the past year, Milley became one of America’s wokest generals, if not the wokest. There’s a clear throughline from his remarks about the George Floyd riots to his testimony before Congress defending his inclusion of critical race theory in military education, and it’s one that doesn’t bode well for the future.

Everything in the report comes with a huge asterisk, of course, given Bob Woodward’s history of problematic investigative journalism. If true, however, it’s more evidence Milley needs to resign posthaste.

Calling the George Floyd riots nothing more than graffiti artists and “penny packet protests” doesn’t rise to the level of treason, but it’s more evidence that this isn’t the man who should be one of the president’s top military advisers.

What Gen. Milley Secretly Revealed to Trump About George Floyd Riots: Report (westernjournal.com)

The White House and federal health officials are standing by the decision to announce the plans for COVID-19 booster shots for many Americans back in August ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) approval for the extra doses.

The announcement issued by eight top government doctors on Aug. 18 notes clear evidence the COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness decreases over time and reveals a plan to roll out booster shots in response. The Biden administration then laid out plans to begin giving booster shots to more Americans starting Sept. 20.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met Friday morning to discuss whether booster doses will be recommended. It voted 16–3 against providing the booster for most people, but recommended it for those over 65 years old and those at high risk. The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will hold a two-day meeting next week to make its recommendation.

The decision to make the announcement in August has raised questions of whether the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) put undue pressure on the regulatory agencies to approve boosters by making the potential need for a third dose public.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Friday the announcement was made for two reasons: transparency and planning.

“If we saw a signal that indicated to us that protection was starting to wane and that additional shots might be required, that we would be transparent and open to the public about that,” said Vivek, adding, “You want to roll out booster shots to the population. You can’t flip a switch and make that happen overnight. There’s important planning that needs to take place.”

The White House also backed the August announcement this week when press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters: “Our objective is to be prepared should all of this process move forward. It’s always been pending the approval of the ACIP and the FDA.”

The recent resignation of top vaccine officials within the FDA seems to suggest stark disagreement within the regulatory agency on the plan to roll out booster shots. Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, announced late last month their plans to leave the FDA in October and November.

The two were co-authors on a paper released this week in the scientific journal The Lancet saying that booster shots may only be appropriate for certain at-risk populations.

The article reads, “although the benefits of primary COVID-19 vaccination clearly outweigh the risks, there could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects … If unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions, there could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, widespread boosting should be undertaken only if there is clear evidence that it is appropriate.”

Officials say there is plenty of supply of boosters should they be approved.

White House, HHS Defend Announcing Booster Shot Plan Ahead of Approval (theepochtimes.com)

Apple and Google removed a tactical voting app from its online store on Friday that was linked to Kremlin critic and jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny as polls opened across Russia for three days of voting in a parliamentary election.

The move was prompted after Russian authorities put pressure on the U.S. tech giants to remove the app from their stores, saying a refusal to do so would be treated as meddling in its parliamentary election while also threatening the companies with fines.

The app is part of the “Smart Voting” project, which was created by a team of Navalny supporters. It was designed to organize a tactical voting campaign to channel opposition votes to United Russia—President Vladimir Putin’s ruling political party.

Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of Navalny, said on social media that the move by Apple and Google to remove the app is “shameful” and amounts to “political censorship.”

“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” Zhdanov wrote on Twitter. “Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.”

Both companies have not immediately responded to a request for comment, although Zhdanov linked a statement on Friday that appears to be from Apple, saying the app was removed from its store because it is illegal in Russia.

Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship.
Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.@google @Apple

— Ivan Zhdanov (@ioannZH) September 17, 2021

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the presidential administration “definitely, of course” welcomes the companies’ decision to remove the app, as it comes in compliance with Russian laws. Peskov said that the app was “outside the law” in Russia.

The parliamentary election this weekend is widely seen as an important part of Putin’s efforts to cement his grip on power ahead of the 2024 presidential election, for which control of the parliament is key.

Earlier this month, Russian authorities also blocked access to the Smart Voting website, which aims to identify candidates who are in the strongest position in the Sept. 19 election in order to channel opposition votes, although some internet users can still access it.

In an Instagram post earlier this month, Navalny’s team said that the move to block the Smart Voting website shows that Russian authorities are “panicking” and “afraid.”

Navalny, meanwhile, published a step-by-step guide on his Instagram Stories, detailing how supporters could attempt to bypass the block.

In June, the Moscow City Court outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of his regional offices as extremist organizations. The ruling barred people associated with the groups from seeking public office and exposed them to lengthy prison terms.

Navalny, Putin’s most determined political challenger, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin—accusations that Russian officials reject. He was handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence in February for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he denounced as politically driven.

Putin, 68, has been in power—either as president or prime minister—for more than two decades. He pushed through constitutional changes last year that enable him to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term ends. The changes would allow him to potentially hold onto power until 2036.

Putin earlier this year signed legislation barring members of groups deemed extremist, including allies of Navalny, from running for office. The move, critics say, was designed to stamp out opposition to United Russia. The Kremlin denies the crackdown is political.

Isabel van Brugen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Google, Apple Accused of ‘Political Censorship’ After Removing Voting App as Russian Polls Open (theepochtimes.com)

General Milley is captured on camera lauding the brutal, oppressive, genocidal regime.

General Mark Milley – who participated in secret phone calls with Chinese military leaders while pledging to not carry out then-President Donald Trump’s orders – revealed he “hesitates” to call China an enemy, insisting he trusts the Chinese Communist Party to be forthright with its military ambitions in remarks unearthed by The National Pulse.

Milley – who used a treasonous backchannel to inform Chinese Communist Party officials that he would alert them ahead of U.S. military actions – divulged his view of the regime while speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference in 2017.

“I would hesitate to call China an enemy. Some would say adversary. Others would say enemy. Some would say hostile. I think they are what the slide implies.”

– General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017

The slide referenced by Milley reads: “The Modernisation of Land Forces to Deliver Land Power Decisively in an Era of Constant Competition.”

“They’re a competitor and the competition between the United States and China has a military dimension to it, but that is a far cry and that’s a long leap between that and enemy,” he added, before concluding, “there is a lot of time between now and any time the United States and China would become quote-on-quote an enemy where armed conflict were to be pursued.”

RUSI, an establishment British think-tank, summarized Milley’s speech by noting “China and the United States are competitors, not enemies” in a tweet from the event.

Gen Milley at #RUSILWC; China and the United States are competitors, not enemies. But, that competition does have a military aspect.

— RUSI (@RUSI_org) June 27, 2017

Speaking about his worldview regarding China, Milley admitted “that is a construct, though, that we use, that I use within the United States Army” at the event which he noted had Chinese Communist Party military officers in attendance.

“There’s a lot of commonality, areas of common interest.”

In addition to his rejection of the belief that the Chinese Communist Party is not an enemy of the United States, Milley also reveals he takes the regime “at their word” concerning their military ambitions:

The Chinese military is clearly and unambiguously developing a very modern, capable military. Why are they doing that? The Chinese have their own reasons, but they have clearly published it in unclassified documents. I believe them. I take them at their word. I believe the declaratory policy, that they want to assert themselves and be a co-equal partner with the United States on the global scene and they want to dominate the region in general and assert their historical rights.

The Chinese Communist Party has run influence operations across the United States and Europe for decades, culminating in the bribery of public officials, as well as outright propaganda successes.

WATCH: Gen. Milley’s Shocking Admission About ‘Commonalities’ With the Chinese Communist Party. (thenationalpulse.com)

The Democratic mayor of a Texas border town is pleading with the Biden administration to do more to stop the flood of migrants at the southern border at the same time the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that the federal government’s failure to test migrants for COVID-19 puts the health of Americans at great risk.

Bruno Lozano, who serves as mayor of Del Rio, Texas, put out a video on Twitter Friday morning warning about the “real time threats” of COVID-19 and “other communicable diseases.”

“This is something that really needs to be brought to light,” the mayor said. “We need quick action from the administration. We need quick attention to this. We need a response in real-time.”

Those health threats were underscored in a government watchdog report on the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis. The IG report called out Customs and Border Protection’s failure to “conduct COVID-19 testing for migrants who enter…custody” and noted that the White House has not required it to do so. That policy, the IG wrote, puts federal employers’ “support staff, communities, and migrants at greater risk of contracting the virus.”

Lozano says nearly 11,000 migrants currently sit under the Del Rio International Bridge, with thousands more crossing in every few hours. At the current rate, the number of migrants waiting for processing at the Del Rio International Bridge could soon surpass the entire population of the city, which sits at just under 36,000.

Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) attacked the federal government’s response to the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Del Rio, noting the lack of proper shelter, health care, and safety precautions for the thousands of migrants in the city.

“The Biden administration is in complete disarray and is handling the border crisis as badly as the evacuation from Afghanistan,” Abbott said.

A COVID-19 outbreak among the migrants could prove disastrous for the town of Del Rio. The regional hospital in the area, Val Verde, only hosts seven ICU beds.

According to the IG, the Biden administration never “documented” a “formal policy” for COVID-19 testing of migrants. The sheer volume of migrants crossing the border makes “proper physical distancing in holding facilities” impossible. The crisis grew so dire in the Del Rio sector that the Department of Homeland Security deployed agents from its Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office from March until May.

Despite Lozano’s appeals to the White House, DHS leadership told watchdogs the agency’s chief medical officer will not finish its “active monitoring and impact analysis of mitigation efforts” against the spread of COVID-19 until Sept. 30, 2022.

“The Department will prioritize efforts related to the DHS Chief Medical Officer to enhance the level of coordinated oversight and resource support for the DHS public health and medical enterprise,” the agency wrote in the report. “The estimated completion date is September 30, 2022.”

More than 1.5 million migrants have crossed the southern border in 2021. The month of July saw the most migrants encounters at the southern border in 21 years. The 212,000 apprehensions eclipsed the previous record high set in June. August saw 208,887 encounters—a 317 percent increase from August 2020.

Local Democratic officials are beginning to push back against the White House. The city of Laredo, Texas, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on July 16, alleging that DHS’s practice of releasing migrants into the town spread COVID-19 and contributed to overcrowding in hospitals.

“Unfortunately, the federal government has left this public health concern to be tackled by our local government with no consideration of the city’s little to no resources nor regard for the deadly ramifications it could have on the country,” the lawsuit says.

The IG report placed the spread of COVID-19 among migrants in part on the Biden administration’s “erosion of Title 42 authority,” a federal law that empowers the federal government to turn away migrants at the border out of concern they may spread disease. On Jan. 30, President Joe Biden fulfilled a campaign promise of exempting children from Title 42. He has since broadened that exemption to many migrant families and others facing purported humanitarian concerns in their home countries.

IG Blasts Biden’s Handling of Border Crisis as Surge Overwhelms Del Rio (freebeacon.com)

My career has taken me around the world, including the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. These travels have helped me appreciate how fortunate I am to have been born in America—home of the free because of the brave.

On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people across our nation gathered in remembrance of the lives lost and the heroes who selflessly gave their lives to save others. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., and saw the hole in the Pentagon. Later, I traveled to New York City and saw the massive hole where the Twin Towers once stood. Those are images I will never forget.

In 2002, I was recruited into government service to lead necessary change and transformation in the intelligence community (IC), including better integrating our imagery and signals intelligence enterprises—America’s eyes and ears. I was sworn in as a senior executive in defense intelligence and was a civilian peer to general and flag officers. After the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established, I was sworn in as the first IC deputy chief information officer at ODNI. In that role, I worked across the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. IC and regularly met with the leadership of both the IC and the Department of Defense.

Through my 25 years of service in the national security community and study of history, I have become aware of the techniques, tactics, and procedures that our enemies use. Though the Cold War ended 30 years ago, our nation is still in a war that has been brewing for decades—a war for America’s soul.

Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, openly predicted the destruction of the United States and said that it would happen in the way that every society eventually collapses. He said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” Khrushchev was talking about an entire system of Marxist indoctrination and takeover that they had refined and executed in country after country during the 20th century.

Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, and high-level Russian propagandist, escaped to the West in 1970. He warned America about the KGB tactics used to subvert a nation that he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union. This is a planned process of altering the way people think for a particular purpose, which is to affect a regime change. It’s effectively the brainwashing of society—a slow, methodical transformation. Those who conduct this ideological subversion are very patient to employ the tactics over decades.

Ideological subversion has four stages and follows the Hegelian dialectic, a tactic long exploited by Marxists and Fascists to control people.

• Stage 1: Demoralization. This is the destruction of faith in the government and society. Believing that society is broken, systems are failing, and patriotism is evil are three key beliefs that are promoted to create guilt. This leads to the acceptance of radical new ideas because the current structure is believed to be harmful. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality, classical education, and American patriotism are discarded.
• Stage 2: Destabilization. With the decision-making ability of Americans negatively affected through demoralization, the next step takes a foothold—destabilization of the nation’s foundations. Destabilization causes citizens to believe the worst of what they hear about their nation and form of government. Supporters of traditional values and foundational structures in the nation are ostracized and even demonized.
• Stage 3: Crisis. The altered values of Americans cut to the root of the current systems. Upheaval presents opportunities for change. Once a society is destabilized, it begins to collapse into chaos. At this point, citizens want the government to provide stability. We saw this recently as a demoralized and destabilized society responded with fear and panic when a “pandemic” faced our nation. Americans are willingly trading civil rights and freedoms for authoritarianism and overreach that they believe will keep them safe. Messaging in all of this is key. The mainstream media and their tell-a-vision programming play a key role in framing the prescribed narrative as truth.
• Stage 4: Normalization. The “new normal” is a term we have heard constantly lately, and it’s an accurate description of what the normalization stage is all about. When the government and societal structures have changed to restrict liberty, citizens are told the radical transformation is “the way it has to be.” Ironically, it’s described as normal when it’s not normal at all. Normalization creates a new baseline for what a nation will accept, value, and promote. The cycle is complete.

These steps are repeated over and over, bringing a greater result with each cycle until there’s a controlled collapse. America could be on the verge of collapse right now unless we collectively wake up to reality and take a stand to stop tyranny.

The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding people’s thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead them to a predetermined solution. The enemies of America are using this tactic to create fear, turn citizen against citizen, and divide our nation. A house divided cannot stand. If people do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes their perceptions of the world, then they do not know how they are helping to implement the agenda, which ultimately is to advance humanity into a dictatorship—whether by the fascists, the communists, or the globalists and their New World Order. We must step outside the dialectic so that we can be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

The most important thing about America is liberty. America is what has stood between power-hungry people and their goals of world domination. The true enemies of America are trying to convince us that we are each other’s enemies and that big government and control of the lives of the many by a few is the solution to cure what ails us. We must all recognize that they are weaponizing the crisis and this narrative is a lie. Government bureaucrats are now labeling anyone who thinks they have overstepped their constitutional bounds as enemies of the state—“patriot terrorists.” What liberty-loving people are now combating is pure evil.

All it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. As we reflect back on Sept. 11, 2001, one thing that stands out about that time following the terrorist attacks is that we forgot the things that divide us. We united as Americans. There’s no better example than what we saw in New York City. We were united together in support of one another fighting a common enemy.

So many have sacrificed so much to secure our liberty and preserve it for future generations. Many of us have lost a loved one on a foreign battlefield or from a service-connected illness after they returned, or in the line of duty here at home. How do we honor their sacrifice and that of so many others in our nation’s 245-year history? We stand and fight to uphold liberty and our unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents. If liberty is to be lost, it won’t be on our watch.

We Are in a War for America’s Soul (theepochtimes.com)

In order to pass their massive $3.5 trillion spending bill, Democratic leaders may need help from Republicans. But Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told his conservative colleagues not to fall for the Democrats’ tricks.

According to CNN, the Senate will likely have to pass an increase to the national debt ceiling. Such a move would require at least some Republican support to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the filibuster.

Democrats are already attempting to set up an ultimatum for Republicans. CNN reported a government shutdown could happen on Oct. 1 if a budget is not passed, which some Democrats want to pin on their political opponents.

“The choice for Republicans, Democrats say, would amount to this: If they block an increase in the national debt limit, they would also risk shutting down the government on October 1 as well as the billions for disaster aid for communities hit hard by recent natural disasters and cash for the Afghanistan evacuation effort,” the outlet noted.

You see, if Republicans don’t back a completely irresponsible spending bill that will plunge the country deeper into debt, they must want to hold back money for natural disaster relief or the Afghanistan evacuation effort, according to leftist logic.

This, of course, is nonsense. There is a perfectly reasonable alternative, which is for the Democrats to negotiate a smaller and more reasonable spending bill.

But as their actions are once again showing, they have no interest in compromise. Cornyn knows this full well, which is why he urged Republicans not to go along with the Democrats.

“Even though this is a partisan spending spree, our friends across the aisle expect Republicans to join them in raising the debt ceiling, claiming that this should be a bipartisan effort,” he said from the Senate floor this week.

Cornyn added that there could be an alternative for Democrats, which would be to add the debt increase to their spending bill. This would allow them to pass it through reconciliation, which is not subject to a filibuster.

However, Cornyn feels congressional Democrats have a vested interest in attempting to gain Republican support.

“They want political cover,” he said. “They want us to help them pull the pin out of the economic grenade that they’re about to toss into the laps of the American people.”

Cornyn pointed out that some Democrats in the House have reservations of their own about the spending bill, which is hardly an encouraging sign.

“The fractures in the reckless taxes spending spree aren’t just deepening in the Senate,” he said. “House Democrats are beginning to wring their hands, trying to figure out if they can justify such extreme spending and taxing. And I must say, it certainly will require some creative thinking.”

According to Fox News, Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida is one Democrat who has said she is not sure how the bill will be funded, which is causing her to hesitate.

“I don’t think we can afford everything,” she said. “Unless something changes, I have no choice but to vote no on every subtitle (in the bill) and on final passage … I don’t know how we’re paying for them.”

A Democratic plan summary said that one of the ways they plan to pay for their massive spending spree is by raising taxes on nicotine and tobacco.

According to a 2018 study by Truth Initiative, 72 percent of smokers are from lower-income communities. This suggests they would be disproportionately affected by these tax increases despite President Joe Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on low and middle-class families.

The reckless spending from congressional Democrats is already causing destruction, and Biden wants to continue down the same path. Republicans should avoid attaching themselves to such policies at all costs.

Cornyn: Dems $3.5 Trillion Bill Is an ‘Economic Grenade’ About to Be ‘Tossed Into the Laps of the American People’ (westernjournal.com)

TheNebulator, [14.09.21 21:17] on Telegram

Not only is General Mark Milley “woke,” he also apparently (https://on.rt.com/bgoh) conspired with the CIA, NSA, Nancy Pelosi and even China (!) to undermine President Donald Trump. This is according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa – who, it needs to be noted, are sworn members of the anti-Trump #resistance – excerpts of which were leaked to the Media-Democrat Complex today.

Milley denies having done anything improper, mind you. But his actions, as detailed by Woodward and Costa, are pretty damning. While most Republicans are following the white rabbit of Milley calling his counterpart in China to say he’s give them advance warning of any US attack (not that any was in the cards, but consider the implications), far worse to my mind is the whole thing about telling the NSA and CIA to spy on Trump for signs of anything “crazy or illegal” (as defined by Pelosi, apparently). If this isn’t treason, then what is?

Ah, but Orange Man is Bad, which means anything goes. Milley is the Who, Trump is the Whom, and thus the “logic” of moral relativism is satisfied. The aforementioned MDC was marching in lockstep defending his reported actions all day.

Mind you, I think the Woodward/Costa book is spin – they’re reporting what happened, but imputing evil motivations to anything Trump did or may have thought of doing, while ascribing the purest noble motives to anyone working against him. Think of it as a sequel to that Time article about the “fortifiers” of 2020: they want to tell everyone what they did, because in their Narrative, they’re heroes, not villains.

Milley’s actions appear to corroborate my analysis from June 2020, when I found it odd that Biden was so confident the military would be on his side, right after Milley uncharacteristically offered a groveling apology to the woke scolds for doing his job. Today’s revelations also reinforced what I wrote back in January, when I argued that the Resistance and the MDC, in their obsession with ousting Trump, had thoroughly discredited what Darren Beattie would later label the Globalist American Empire (both links are in the piece linked above, don’t want to clutter this post).

You’d think I would be happy about that, but… that might also mean I was right about other things, other patterns I’ve observed and extrapolated from. About things that I think might be coming. Trouble is, they’re not pretty.

TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:35]
[In reply to TheNebulator]
Update on Milley: it’s worse than I thought. I had somehow missed that he made two phone calls to China, one on January 8 (amid conspiring with Pelosi) but the other four days prior to the election, suggesting even more strongly that he was part of the “fortification” already. Moreover, he apparently “suggested” PACOM cancel some exercises to reassure China, and they did so. This is according to the Washington Post, mind you.

The Pentagon’s response today was to double down and say Milley did nothing wrong, while the White House praised his commitment to Our Democracy. As I said, it doesn’t matter what is done, only Who is doing it to Whom. I actually went on News Views Hughes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoXB_dsN0-w&list=PLagVUKF7CUTTtjJqFw6JvO14pG6Z1RBmv&index=1&t=94s) today to discuss the whole situation. But it’s bad, folks, really bad.

TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:43]
You get two posts tonight, though, because I simply have to comment on the sheer irony of Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, far better known as Nicki Minaj, becoming the unlikely hero in the fight for common sense against the Branch Covidian cult (as Eric D. July so memorably calls it).

Everything about that story is just perfect: from the original tall tale of “her cousin’s friend in Trinidad” getting his wedding called off because his testicles swelled up ( the symptom is more commonly associated with some STDs, but that was obvious from the get-go) — to her point that people should make the decision for themselves instead of getting bullied into it, to the shrieking response of everyone from her fandom to pundits to Big Tech and the government of Trinidad…

Is there a better way to expose the sheer absurdity of the System, than a rapper with millions of social media followers not giving a damn? When facts and arguments don’t help, because people offering them get censored or smeared, it’s down to the jesters — and entertainers are the biggest jesters of all, aren’t they?

Years from now, when the Davos set has failed in their attempt at a neo-feudal Great Reset, we’ll look back and try to figure out the exact moment the tide turned. It’s entirely possible this will be it.

TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:07]
So, special counsel John Durham finally indicts someone in his probe of the Trump-Russia probe… and it’s not a nobody, but a partner in the DNC law firm that was behind the Steele Dossier. Michael Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI, by telling them he wasn’t representing anyone — while in fact representing a tech executive coordinating with the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to spread the lie about Alfa Bank being a “secret conduit” for candidate Trump to Russia.

Normally this would be a very big deal, except the DOJ already leaked it to the New York Times earlier today, which pre-shaped the narrative to minimize Sussmann’s culpability… (to be continued)

TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:26]
(continued) What’s the big deal, you might say. Only in that for five years the weaponized FBI, DOJ and the intelligence community went after Trump for alleged “Russian collusion,” bankrupted his aides and allies with legal fees, jailed some for unrelated charges in hopes they’d agree to implicate him, and deterred decent people from taking jobs in his administration while letting neocons and various double agents infiltrate instead. Yet despite the proven, documented wrongdoing of the highest echelons of the FBI and DOJ, CIA and NSA, only one person involved was ever charged — and given a slap on the wrist.

Kevin Clinesmith, who literally falsified evidence to enable the FBI to spy on Trump via Carter Page (by altering a document that said Page was a CIA source to say he wasn’t) got… 12 months’ probation, some community service, and just got his DC bar license back. The regime protects its own, you see.

Earlier this week, we found out that JCS chairman General Mark Milley was back-channeling with China and conspiring with Democrats , CIA and NSA against Trump. But the entire media-political complex came to his defense, calling him a hero. Meanwhile, retired General Michael Flynn was illegally unmasked, charged with lying to the FBI on absolutely zero basis, and dragged through the courts for something like three years — even had his family threatened — before he was eventually pardoned, because the activist federal judge in DC refused to accept the DOJ dropping the case.

That judge, Emmett Sullivan, just ruled this evening that illegal immigrants can’t be sent back to Mexico under a rule intended to protect public health. Get that? Vaccine and muzzle mandates for you, but not for people just walking across. A Fox News crew in Del Rio, Texas has used a drone to film thousands of people (mainly from Haiti) crossing over from Mexico. The regime’s response? Judge Sullivan’s ruling — and a FAA ban on all drone activity. On grounds of “security,” you see.

Even so, some intelligent but apparently still clueless people are harping on the hypocrisy of the What, not realizing that the republic in which it mattered no longer exists. It has been replaced by Our Democracy, in which the only thing that matters is Who/Whom. Do you understand yet?

TheNebulator – Telegram

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should open an official investigation into reports that Gen. Mark Milley held secret calls with a Chinese general, a group of House Republicans said on Sept. 16.

In a letter to Austin, the group asked Austin to open an Army Regulation 15–6 investigation into the calls, which Milley’s spokesman appears to have confirmed took place.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and 26 other Republicans said they’re “gravely concerned” with “Milley’s ability to exercise his duties and responsibilities as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“In this recent case, our specific concerns involve reports from 14 September 2021, which indicate that Gen. Milley blatantly disregarded the concept of civilian control of the military, and gave aid and comfort to America’s principal adversary, the Chinese Communist Party,” they wrote.

John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told The Epoch Times in an email that the Department of Defense is aware of the letter and will respond to the members directly.

“General Milley retains the trust and confidence of Secretary Austin,” he added.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t return a query.

According to anonymously sourced reports, Milley told Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng across conversations in October 2020 and January that the United States wasn’t going to attack China and suggested that he would tip off China if an attack were about to occur.

Republicans say those remarks, if accurately reported, amount to treason, and have called on President Joe Biden to fire Milley, or for Milley to resign.

Biden offered his support for Milley on Sept. 15, without commenting on the veracity of the reporting. Austin is an appointee of Biden, while Milley was appointed by President Donald Trump.

An Army Regulation 15–6 investigation can be formal or informal. The members of Congress are asking for a formal probe.

While Milley hasn’t personally commented, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sept. 15 that Milley “regularly communicates with Chiefs of Defense across the world, including with China and Russia” and confirmed that Milley spoke with the Chinese in October 2020 and January.

The calls “were in keeping with these duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability,” the spokesman said.

But the calls were unauthorized, Christopher Miller, who headed the Pentagon when the second one took place, said on Sept. 15.

“If the reporting … is accurate, it represents a disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination by the Nation’s top military officer,” Miller said.

House Republicans Ask Defense Secretary for Probe Into Gen. Milley’s Calls With China (theepochtimes.com)

Heritage Foundation scholar is latest conservative censored by Amazon

Amazon blocked an ad for a book critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, the latest example of the retail giant censoring conservative voices.

The online retailer prevented the Heritage Foundation from purchasing ads to promote Mike Gonzalez’s BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution. Amazon told Heritage that the ad “contains book/s or content that is not allowed,” specifically “content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted.” Amazon later reversed its decision and posted the ad, telling the Washington Free Beacon that its “policies were not enforced correctly in this case” and that the employees responsible would receive “additional training.”

Amazon refused to explain the nature of the error. But in recent months, the company has used its policies to suppress conservative books. A book on the transgender movement was pulled from the platform in February without explanation. After senators pushed Amazon to explain its decision, the retailer announced it was changing its policies to ban any books that treat gender dysphoria as a mental illness. Amazon funded an effort to place hundreds of copies of critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You in Virginia public schools.

BLM criticizes the titular movement for its Marxist roots. One of the three Black Lives Matter founders said in 2015 that she and another cofounder “are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists.” Gonzalez, a former journalist and Heritage senior fellow, said his book addresses important questions “after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead.”

Gonzalez said Amazon is “trying to limit how many Americans read this book” and asked whether books by left-leaning authors on Black Lives Matter and race faced the same restrictions. Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James released a statement calling examples of “big tech censorship … inescapable and irrefutable.” “Conservative voices are deemed ‘unacceptable’ and are silenced,” she said.

Advertising makes up a substantial portion of Amazon’s revenue. Amazon, Google, and Facebook together took up almost two thirds of the digital advertising market in 2020. A growing contingent of lawmakers worry that advertising consolidation on a few online platforms could harm market competition.

Amazon has faced pressure from liberal politicians to exercise more control over which speech is allowed on the platform. Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) called on Amazon to ban books containing “misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.”

Amazon Blocks Ad for Book Critical of Black Lives Matter (freebeacon.com)

Republicans concerned aid money was ‘ransom payment’ to get stranded Americans home safe

A coalition of Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress is demanding that the Biden administration turn over all internal documents and communications related to plans to provide the Taliban with cash assets, a move the coalition says would incentivize the terror group’s taking of American hostages.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest GOP caucus in Congress, is spearheading a probe that requires the Biden administration to disclose if the Taliban has insisted on U.S. financial aid in exchange for allowing Americans stranded in the country to return home. The State Department announced last week that it is sending $64 million in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, generating concerns that the Biden administration has agreed to a quid pro quo in which the terrorist group gets aid dollars in exchange for providing safe passage to those still stranded in the country.

“We have serious concerns about negotiations with the Taliban leading to the payment of ransom—whether marketed as humanitarian assistance or sanctions relief—which will give the Taliban resources that could be used to attack the United States or our allies,” a group of 21 RSC lawmakers wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and sent Tuesday to the State Department. “The payment of ransom to terrorists, likely including the September 13 announcement of $64 million dollars in humanitarian aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provided without guardrails, will only further place Americans in harm’s way by incentivizing the Taliban, and other terrorist groups, to kidnap more Americans.”

The latest investigation is one of several helmed by Republicans in Congress who want to know why the Biden administration pulled U.S. forces from Afghanistan without a plan to stop the Taliban from regaining control of the country. The Biden administration is under intense criticism for leaving Americans and vulnerable Afghans behind in the country as the Taliban angles to use them as leverage in negotiations with U.S. diplomats. The State Department still “has not presented a plan before Congress illustrating how it will ensure that Americans will not be left behind through diplomatic negotiations,” the RSC wrote in its letter.

The State Department has 10 days to provide Congress with detailed internal information about negotiations with Afghanistan’s recently formed Taliban government that could see economic sanctions on the group lifted, according to a copy of the investigation documents obtained by the Free Beacon. The investigation is backed by 21 GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Tracey Mann (Kan.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Banks, the chairman of the RSC, told the Free Beacon that any deal that gives the Taliban access to hard currency will send the message that “holding Americans hostage is an effective way to make money.”

The lawmakers say they want detailed information about any plans the Biden administration has to unfreeze billions of dollars in assets held in U.S. accounts on behalf of the former U.S.-aligned Afghan government. This includes “any sanctions relief, or financial assistance to the Taliban in exchange for providing them safe passage of American citizens or lawful permanent residents out of Afghanistan,” according to the document request letter.

They also want the State Department to provide copies “of all documents and communications” related to the administration’s ongoing dialogue with Taliban leaders regarding frozen funds.

Mann told the Free Beacon that “the American people deserve to know whether the United States has provided any financial assistance to the Taliban in exchange for the release of American citizens, or whether the Taliban has requested such assistance, which amounts to ransom.”

The State Department’s failure to inform Congress about its ongoing discussions with the Taliban has fueled GOP concerns that money will be exchanged for concessions from the Taliban, including the release of Americans and vulnerable Afghans still inside the country.

“The Biden administration’s lack of planning and execution created the conditions for the Taliban to hold Americans and our Afghan allies hostage and allows the Taliban to use them as bargaining chips to unfreeze assets, withdrawing sanctions, or gain international recognition,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas), who signed the letter, told the Free Beacon. “We cannot negotiate with terrorists and we certainly cannot acquiesce to their demands.”

GOP Lawmakers Probe Biden Admin Humanitarian Aid to Taliban (freebeacon.com)

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe told voters Thursday night that he would not repeal qualified immunity. In April, McAuliffe pledged to “end” the policy.

During a Thursday night debate against his Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin, McAuliffe said that he “would not end” qualified immunity, a legal shield that protects police from most lawsuits while they’re on the job. The statement is a reversal from McAuliffe’s position during the Democratic primary, when his campaign said he would end qualified immunity as part of his plan to “increase police accountability.”

“Terry believes Virginia must increase police accountability and transparency in incidents of misconduct, improve training, expand body-worn camera programs, and end policies like qualified immunity that can prevent accountability when heinous acts are committed against Virginians,” McAuliffe spokesman Jake Rubenstein told the Virginia Mercury on April 13. One month later at a May 6 Democratic debate, McAuliffe again said he supported ending the policy.

McAuliffe’s flip-flop came just hours after he lashed out at a local sheriff who questioned his record on police funding. When Montgomery County sheriff Hank Partin noted that McAuliffe accepted an endorsement from a group that supports defunding police, the gubernatorial hopeful asked Parin if he was “out of his mind.” Partin responded by calling the answer “unbelievable,” to which McAuliffe said, “I don’t care what you believe!”

Youngkin said McAuliffe “completely recanted” his position on qualified immunity during Thursday’s debate.

“This is why the law enforcement community doesn’t trust him,” Youngkin said. “Standing up for Virginians is more than just rhetoric and political statements—it’s about actions.”

McAuliffe is not the only statewide Democratic candidate to spar with police in recent months. Virginia attorney general Mark Herring (D.) wrongly touted the endorsement of two local sheriffs who actually backed his Republican opponent due to the Democratic Party’s push to defund police.

Terry McAuliffe Flip-Flops on Qualified Immunity (freebeacon.com)

Students get paid to go to class under Democratic reconciliation bill

The Democratic plan for free community college also throws in up to nearly $7,000 in cash for students who qualify for a Pell grant.

A portion of Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan would create a federal program that eliminates the cost of tuition at public community colleges in participating states. The federal government would pay for 100 percent of the program in the first year, although its contribution would drop 5 percent each year going forward. The elimination of tuition, however, does not disqualify students from cashing in on tuition assistance benefits. Education economist Preston Cooper said the proposed structure of the program essentially works as a cash giveaway that privileges community college students over those who decide to pursue different careers or opportunities after high school.

“I’m worried about perverse incentives of these two policies together: free community college and Pell expansion,” Cooper told the Washington Free Beacon. “Right now, this is less of a problem because most of your Pell money will go to tuition, so the rebate students get is smaller. But if community college becomes free, that changes.”

The budget reconciliation bill also increases by $500 the maximum Pell grant award, which is $6,495 for students planning on attending a college for a full year. The Democratic bill would not preclude students from collecting Pell grants, which were designed to provide funding for students “who display exceptional financial need,” meaning they would be essentially paid to go to school. Roughly one-third of all college students—6.8 million of 19.7 million—pay for their education at least in part by using taxpayer-funded Pell grants. The average award in 2020 was $3,900 and is based on a formula from the Department of Education that considers family income and the number of dependents an individual or family claims. About 69 percent of all high school graduates attend college in the fall after they graduate, although a smaller percentage end up graduating.

Congressional Democrats are proposing to spend $33 billion on Pell grants next year, a 10 percent increase from 2020. The average cost for a year of community college during the 2018-2019 school year was $3,660, significantly less than the average cost for both public and private four-year universities and colleges. Defenders of Pell grants for community college students argue that money not used for tuition can help cover expenses such as gas, child care, or room and board.

Carlo Salerno, an education economist who works for a financial aid software company, questioned that rationale. The federal government already has a number of other welfare programs to address poverty. Moreover, the reconciliation bill includes a number of new spending initiatives on things such as universal pre-school and expanding the child tax credit.

“The big issue is that Pell was designed to pay for education, not living expenses,” Salerno told the Free Beacon. “Why are we turning an education grant into a living grant? Why are community college students specially chosen for increased aid?”

Congressional Republicans, who are unified in their opposition to the budget reconciliation bill, attacked the provision as another example of reckless Democratic spending.

“Democrats won’t admit that community college is already free for those who need it. The maximum Pell Grant already exceeds average tuition and fees for public, two-year institutions,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), ranking member on the House Education and Labor Committee. “Pelosi wants to slap a clearance sign on college degrees and then design federal program after federal program to keep those students entangled in a web of government subsidies. … This is nothing more than a federal takeover of our postsecondary degree system in order to give a handout to millionaires and illegal immigrants at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.”

Research regarding the impact of Pell grants on the rising cost of tuition remains inconclusive, although experts such as Cooper worry that community colleges will be incentivized to raise prices once the cost burden of tuition shifts to states and taxpayers. The reconciliation bill, as it stands, also mandates that states not impose eligibility requirements—such as full-time status, or GPA requirements—on students enrolled at community college.

That provision marks a departure from previous Democratic proposals, including from President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget request to Congress. Under Obama’s plan, free community college would only be available “for responsible students” who meet basic academic and attendance requirements.

Dem Budget Would Hand Out Cash to Students at Tuition-Free Colleges (freebeacon.com)

General Milley is captured on camera lauding the brutal, oppressive, genocidal regime.

General Mark Milley – who participated in secret phone calls with Chinese military leaders while pledging to not carry out then-President Donald Trump’s orders – revealed he “hesitates” to call China an enemy, insisting he trusts the Chinese Communist Party to be forthright with its military ambitions in remarks unearthed by The National Pulse.

Milley – who used a treasonous backchannel to inform Chinese Communist Party officials that he would alert them ahead of U.S. military actions – divulged his view of the regime while speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Land Warfare Conference in 2017.

“I would hesitate to call China an enemy. Some would say adversary. Others would say enemy. Some would say hostile. I think they are what the slide implies.”

– General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017

The slide referenced by Milley reads: “The Modernisation of Land Forces to Deliver Land Power Decisively in an Era of Constant Competition.”

“They’re a competitor and the competition between the United States and China has a military dimension to it, but that is a far cry and that’s a long leap between that and enemy,” he added, before concluding, “there is a lot of time between now and any time the United States and China would become quote-on-quote an enemy where armed conflict were to be pursued.”

RUSI, an establishment British think-tank, summarized Milley’s speech by noting “China and the United States are competitors, not enemies” in a tweet from the event.

Gen Milley at #RUSILWC; China and the United States are competitors, not enemies. But, that competition does have a military aspect.

— RUSI (@RUSI_org) June 27, 2017

Speaking about his worldview regarding China, Milley admitted “that is a construct, though, that we use, that I use within the United States Army” at the event which he noted had Chinese Communist Party military officers in attendance.

MUST READ:  EXC: Biden’s National Security Council China Director Is Former Fellow At Chinese State-Funded Group Advising Communist Officials Sanctioned For Human Rights Abuses.

“There’s a lot of commonality, areas of common interest.”

In addition to his rejection of the belief that the Chinese Communist Party is not an enemy of the United States, Milley also reveals he takes the regime “at their word” concerning their military ambitions:

The Chinese military is clearly and unambiguously developing a very modern, capable military. Why are they doing that? The Chinese have their own reasons, but they have clearly published it in unclassified documents. I believe them. I take them at their word. I believe the declaratory policy, that they want to assert themselves and be a co-equal partner with the United States on the global scene and they want to dominate the region in general and assert their historical rights.

The Chinese Communist Party has run influence operations across the United States and Europe for decades, culminating in the bribery of public officials, as well as outright propaganda successes.

WATCH: Gen. Milley’s Shocking Admission About ‘Commonalities’ With the Chinese Communist Party. (thenationalpulse.com)

Demand has increased 20-fold in recent weeks, expert says

Some states are set to receive fewer doses of monoclonal antibody treatments after the Biden administration switched the distribution system this week.

Demand for monoclonal antibodies, used to treat non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, has shot up in recent weeks, leading to what some officials have described as a shortage.

The Biden administration tipped off states in early September that it was limiting distribution of the treatment before abruptly switching on Sept. 13 from letting sites directly order the doses to putting the federal government in charge of allocation to states, which can then choose where to send them.

Some state officials say they weren’t notified of the change until late Sept. 13, and that pending orders with AmerisourceBergen, the primary distributor in the old model, were being closed out.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) alerted Texas health officials “that the national supply has considerably decreased and states should expect lower amounts of therapeutics available for shipment in the coming weeks,” Douglas Loveday, press officer for the Texas Department of State Health Services, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“The amount available to distribute is expected to be disproportionately small compared to the amounts needed.”

Other states have also been told they won’t get as many doses as they were getting before. Among them are southern states grappling with the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the nation.

COVID-19 Cases Coming in Through Southern Border: Stephen Miller

Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s top medical officer, said HHS recently called to “let us know that Alabama and some other states are going to be on an allocation.”

“We don’t think providers are going to be able to order as much as they would like,” he said during a briefing late last week. Up until the change, “there was really sort of no limit to what could be ordered.”

HHS and the federal COVID-19 response team didn’t respond to requests for comment.

HHS said in an update on Sept. 13 that the higher number of COVID-19 cases in the United States in recent weeks has “caused a substantial surge in the utilization of monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs,” especially in parts of the country with low vaccination rates.

Federal officials informed state health officials that there’s been a 20-fold increase in demand for monoclonal antibodies in just the past few weeks, James Blumenstock, chief of health security at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told The Epoch Times.

“Clearly that’s outstripping the current supply even with the supply increase this month; that increase is not sufficient to meet the current demand,” he said.

The timeline for when supplies will increase enough to meet the jump in demand isn’t clear. The new process will help ensure consistent availability for the drugs in all parts of the nation, according to HHS, which is basing its weekly shipments on reports of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations and inventory data.

Monoclonal antibody treatments from two companies, Regeneron and Eli Lilly, are purchased by the federal government and distributed across the nation. Patients get them for free. The treatment received emergency use authorization from drug regulators earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical trials show that they reduced hospitalization or death by as much as 70 percent.

It takes several weeks or months to produce a batch of Regeneron’s drug, REGEN-COV, a spokesman for the New York-based company told The Epoch Times in an email. Regeneron says demand has grown since earlier this year but that it’s ready to deliver new doses quickly because it “remained proactive” and has the drug in various stages of the manufacturing process.

An Eli Lilly spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the Indiana-based company “continues to work with governments globally to help address the therapeutic needs of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Another monoclonal antibody treatment, from GlaxoSmithKline, isn’t being distributed through the federal government. A spokesperson for the company, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom, told The Epoch Times in an email that there are no supply or access issues for its medicine.

The United States has purchased or committed to purchasing nearly 3 million doses of REGEN-COV, including 1.4 million doses on Sept. 14. Most of the doses cost taxpayers $2,100 each, according to the Regeneron spokesman. Eli Lilly’s treatment requires two drugs, etesevimab and bamlanivimab. The company just reached an agreement to provide 388,000 additional doses of etesevimab to the U.S. government for nearly $1,000 each, building on earlier contracts to supply nearly 1 million vials of one drug or the other.

More than 2.1 million monoclonal antibody doses were shipped to more than 8,000 sites across the nation as of early September, John Redd, chief medical officer for HHS emergency preparedness and response office, told state officials in a recent call.

Redd said that HHS hadn’t returned to the allocation model that was used between November 2020 and February. A few days later, the model was switched.

Biden’s administration said last week in a fresh COVID-19 response plan that it would increase shipments of monoclonal antibodies to states by 50 percent in September—something critics are pointing to in questioning the change.

“It is regrettable that the Biden administration would play politics with people’s lives during a pandemic, by withholding a life-saving treatment and providing mixed messages to Americans,” Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told The Epoch Times via email.

“Today, I pressed President Biden’s team to explain the sudden rationing of these life-saving treatments—without any warning—after the administration urged us to promote them. It is yet another example of confusing and conflicting guidance coming from the federal government,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wrote on social media.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) office told The Epoch Times in an email that it’s looking into the matter to see how it can be of assistance.

Florida hasn’t yet seen its supply drop, and some other states said they don’t expect the distribution model change to affect them.

“We do not have any concerns about monoclonal supply at this point of time in Arkansas based on current usage patterns,” Danyelle McNeill, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Health, told The Epoch Times in an email.

Some governors, including DeSantis, have heavily promoted monoclonal antibodies, which have a high efficacy rate against cases of COVID-19 that don’t require hospital care and are sometimes used following exposure to a COVID-19 patient.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

For now, officials are encouraging people to continue seeking out the antibody treatments. Some experts say the drop in supply should prompt people who haven’t received a COVID-19 vaccine to get one.

“The public health message is, while everyone is doing their absolute best to treat and care for individuals who get sick from COVID, the best effort is to avoid that scenario in the first place, and therefore get vaccinated,” Blumenstock said.

States See Looming Monoclonal Antibody Crunch as Biden Administration Rations Doses (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) wants the U.S. military to be more focused on “readiness, not wokeness” and hopes to put an end to “dangerous and divisive” critical race theory being taught to service men and women.

Earlier this week, Buck submitted an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which specifies the annual budget and expenditures of the Department of Defense, regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion practices being mandated at the DOD, when it comes to employment training.

Buck is just one of many GOP lawmakers who oppose critical race theory (CRT) over fears that peddling the Marxist theory to service members will only serve to reduce both their cohesion and combat effectiveness when it comes to fighting real threats facing America, such as those posed by terrorist groups. 

Critical race theory redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors”—typically white people—and the “oppressed”—other identity groups—similar to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.”

CRT adherents generally believe that America is systemically racist and that racial oppression exists and that institutions that emerged in majority-white societies are racist and “white supremacist.” The theory has slowly expanded in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, congressman Buck said he believes CRT—which has become more of a central focus following the death of George Floyd while in police custody on May 25, 2020— has “no place” within the U.S. military, calling it “dangerous and divisive”.

“I think that there are political theories that are being espoused in this country, such as critical race theory, that are dangerous, and divisive and have no place in the military,” he said.

“If we want to have those discussions in the private sphere, in the marketplace of ideas, we can certainly have those discussions, but to require members of the military to be trained in critical race theory and to have inclusion and diversity officers in the Department of Defense, I think undermines the necessary discipline that we need in our military to conduct business.”

Advocates of CRT, such as Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have defended its teachings among the U.S. military, saying that he wants to “understand white rage” and that it’s important for military members to be “open-minded and be widely read”.

But Buck disagrees with this sentiment, and says the military should instead be focusing their attention on “winning wars” and not spending hours and hours being trained on “social issues”.

“Any time we require hours and hours of training on diversity, inclusion, and other areas, we take away from the time that our troops are actually engaged in the activities that that will save their lives, the training is so important to them,” the congressman said.

“I can remember talking to a general several years ago, and the Obama administration required more hours of training in a particular month than the service members worked in that month,” Buck said.

“In other words, more than 40 hours a week they were expected to be in this type of diversity training, and not in the field practicing and training for why they joined the military.”

Buck noted that placing too much of a burden on teaching social issues to military members can also actually widen the divide between Americans based on their race, among other things, which in turn “takes away from the cohesion that is necessary to create a unified fighting force.”

“It reduces our ability for military preparedness for all threats out there — China, which is the greatest threat to this country’s security,” he said while adding Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups that present a threat to the United States.

Cathy He contributed to this report. 

President Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to restore U.S. leadership in the global fight against climate change and followed up with a dizzying number of executive orders and lofty targets to slash emissions.

But nine months into his presidency, political, legal, and economic obstacles have forced his administration to make several moves in support of fossil fuels development at home and abroad, and raised questions about whether the Democrat will be able to meet his commitments to clean energy.

Setbacks include a judge overturning the administration’s effort to block new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, forcing it to offer millions of new acres for drilling, and rising retail gas prices that have led the White House to publicly ask the global oil cartel, OPEC, to boost production.

Most importantly, heavy political opposition has forced the administration to put its centerpiece climate proposals that would help deliver an April pledge to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 into a budget reconciliation bill that has an uncertain future in the closely-divided U.S. Congress.

Democrats, who hope to pass the bill by the end of September, are already talking about paring back investments and targets.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. If Washington fails to deliver ahead of a climate summit in November in Glasgow, Scotland, other global powers, including the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, China, will be reluctant to commit to slashing their own emissions.

“If that (climate-related legislation) went down before Glasgow, it would be a big mess for Biden and his administration,” said Bill Hare, chief executive of non-profit Climate Analytics.

A Biden administration official said legal and economic realities have compelled certain administration moves and touted Biden’s progress so far.

“We can do two things at once: Achieve our climate goals while ensuring the energy transition is one that takes into account the interests of the middle class, who experience changes in energy prices very directly, and meet global energy needs as the economy recovers from the pandemic,” the official said, asking not to be named in order to be able to speak freely.

Biden’s mission is uniquely challenging in the United States, where some voters and even some senior leaders in the opposition Republican party are skeptical that climate change is caused by human activity.

Congress “is where the main theater of activity is taking place. And that is where I would pin the fate of the Biden administration’s climate legacy,” said Sam Ricketts, a co-founder of Evergreen Action, a group aiming to advance climate policy at the federal level.

Hard to Quit

Biden has reengaged the United States in the Paris international agreement to fight climate change, canceled the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline project from Canada, paused new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, and suspended drilling rights in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

His administration also aimed to decarbonize the power sector by 2035—a key marker on the U.S. path to its Paris agreement goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

In addition, the United States and Europe have agreed to big voluntary cuts to methane emissions this decade, Reuters reported earlier this week.

At the same time, however, the administration has backed lesser-known oil and gas infrastructure projects like Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline from Canada and sped up processing of oil and gas drilling permits. Government data show the administration has approved more than 2,600 drilling permits on onshore leases, a faster pace than during the Trump administration.

In August, the White House also urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to lift production to help the global economy recover from the impacts of the coronavirus crisis and keep retail pump prices in check for U.S. motorists.

After a federal judge in Louisiana in June blocked Biden’s signature attempt to pause new leasing, the Interior Department plans to open millions of acres for oil and gas exploration, including some 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to be auctioned later this year.

“What started as a set of ambitious campaign promises is quickly devolving into a disappointing milieu of fossil fuel development,” said Taylor McKinnon, a senior campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group opposed to oil and gas development.

All Eyes on Congress

Climate Analytics’ Hare said much now depends on the legislation making its way through Congress, which includes provisions to reduce carbon emissions from the power and transport sectors, tax credits for clean energy technologies, fees on methane releases from oil and gas, more investments in electric vehicle deployment, and a fund to funnel climate investments to low-income communities.

Many of the proposals were initially in a smaller infrastructure package but have since been either weakened or wedged into the $3.5 trillion budget bill that only requires a simple majority in the 100-member Senate rather than 60 votes as usual under the chamber’s rules.

Even that will require the backing of every single Democratic senator, a big ask given that both Joe Manchin, a moderate from coal-producing West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have said they will not vote for a bill of that size.

Neither Manchin nor Sinema’s offices responded to requests for comment.

Ahead of the Glasgow summit, international observers are not optimistic about the prospects.

“It is not too hard for China to be cynical about U.S. climate action,” said Li Shuo, a senior climate policy officer at environmental group Greenpeace East Asia, who is in regular contact with officials in China.

Even America’s partners are worried, according to Pete Betts, a former lead European Union and United Kingdom climate negotiator who now works at think tank Chatham House.

“The international climate community has had to become expert over the years on U.S. domestic politics and legislative processes, and the challenges of delivering are well understood by allies and competitors of the U.S. alike,” he said.

By Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom

Analysis: Biden’s Lofty Climate Goals Collide With Political, Economic Reality (theepochtimes.com)

DEL RIO, Texas—Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly from Haiti, are congregating under a bridge in Texas while they wait to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Immigrants were spread out over a span of dirt, many sitting or lying on blankets. Others stood, chatting with companions.

Some 8,000 illegal immigrants, including Haitian, Cuban, and Venezuelan nationals, are in the area, a Border Patrol source told The Epoch Times.

The number increased by about 2,000 overnight, sources said.

Other immigrants are making their way towards Del Rio through Mexico.

It’s not clear why they’ve chosen Del Rio, though migration patterns show that people from certain countries have favored routes into the United States. Haitians, especially, often choose to cross the Rio Grande River to enter the Texas border town.

The illegal immigrants are waiting in the area to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents, who will transport them to Border Patrol facilities for intake and processing, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email this week.

Because of the massive influx of aliens, U.S. officials have set up drinking water, towels, and portable toilets under the bridge, leading many to congregate there.

BORDER NOW: Heard from sources last night that there’s 6,000 illegal immigrants under this international bridge in Del Rio now.

Chatter about another 20k on the way, unconfirmed. Mostly Haitians, some Cubans, Venezuelans.

Most transported to BP station, processed, released. pic.twitter.com/mK3e1d07Ov

— Charlotte Cuthbertson (@charlottecuthbo) September 16, 2021

The spokesman did not pick up the phone or return voicemails or an email on Thursday as the number of illegal immigrants continued to swell.

“It’s completely predictable because Biden is basically inviting in illegal immigrants,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates for a pro-immigrant, low-immigration system, told The Epoch Times.

“This just seems to be an extreme example of what we’ve been seeing since Jan., 20, which is illegal immigrants, taking Biden up on his offer that if they manage to get into the United States, they’ll be let go,” he added.

President Joe Biden upon entering office quickly overhauled the U.S. immigration system, ending construction on the border wall and a program that forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.

Biden administration officials also stopped using the federal government’s Title 42 authority, which was established during the COVID-19 pandemic, to expel unaccompanied minors, or illegal immigrant children.

The use of Title 42 has dropped in recent months as Democrats pressure Biden to end the authority. Officials applied it to just 44 percent of the illegal immigrant encounters in August.

The decline in federal immigration enforcement has prompted Texas authorities to fill the void. Both state and local law enforcement have ramped up enforcement of illegal immigrants, including in Del Rio, where the mayor has pleaded with Biden to stop releasing illegal immigrants as local conditions deteriorate.

“This is beyond crisis. This is urgent. This is dire,” Bruno Lozano, the Democrat mayor of the city, told KSAT-TV on Wednesday.

The mayor noted he asked the Biden administration in February to take action to staunch the surge in illegal immigration. “I’m still waiting for the plan of action,” he said.

Crossing the border into the United States without proper papers is illegal, but after entering an immigrant can claim asylum, or fear of persecution if they are returned to their home country. If they do, they are often released into the United States. If they don’t, they are processed under Title 8, or federal law, typically getting a court date or told to appear at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office on a certain day. Most don’t end up appearing.

The CBP spokesperson told The Epoch Times that “the vast majority of single adults and many families will continue to be expelled under the CDC’s Title 42 authority, and those who cannot be expelled under Title 42 and do not have a legal basis to remain will be processed under Title 8 authorities.”

There are indications that a number of single adults are being allowed to remain in the country, particularly foreign nationals whose nations have been granted a special type of protection called Temporary Protected Status by U.S. authorities.

One Haitian man, a single male who crossed with some 350 other illegal immigrants from Mexico into Del Rio in July, spoke to The Epoch Times after entering the United States. About a month later, he texted to say he’d made it to Boston and was fine.

A Cuban man in his late 20s, Eduardo, told The Epoch Times this week at a gas station in Del Rio that he was waiting to be picked up by his parents, who live in Houston. He said he traveled from Panama through Central America before making it through Mexico to reach Del Rio, walking most of the time.

“There’s no freedom in Cuba,” said Eduardo, who was also not expelled.

The United States recorded over 200,000 illegal immigrant arrests at the border in August, one of the highest months on record. Under the Biden administration, the country is slated to set new records for the highest fiscal year encounters and the highest calendar year encounters.

The administration would have known about the large groups of immigrants that are now in Del Rio, Jaeson Jones, CEO of Omni Intelligence, told The Epoch Times.

U.S. intelligence programs monitor Central America to detect large groups forming, according to Jones, a former Texas Department of Public Safety intelligence and counterterrorism captain, who worked closely with Border Patrol.

“No one in the federal government has acknowledged what was coming, stated that this was happening, nor did they do anything to mitigate it, because this should have been stopped. This is a large caravan of people that wasn’t stopped,” he said.

“To me, this just is more validation of the level of failure of leadership within the current administration.”

Thousands of Illegal Immigrants Amass Under Bridge in Texas (theepochtimes.com)

President Joe Biden earlier this month quietly fired two presidential appointees from the waning days of the Trump administration who sued the Department of Education for refusing to deliver their signed presidential commissions.

The two men, economics professor Steve Hanke and law professor John Yoo, were appointed by then-President Donald Trump to the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) when he signed their respective commissions in December 2020. Hanke is at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Yoo is at the University of California, Berkeley.

The appointees stayed in touch with the department about the paperwork when the Trump administration was in power and after the Biden administration took office, but when they began to press for their commissions to be delivered, the Biden-controlled agency stopped communicating with them, according to their lawyers at Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento, California-based national public interest law firm.

The appointees argued that the department failed to acknowledge the validity of the appointments and made it impossible for them to fulfill their responsibilities as members of NBES, an independent board that advises officials within the Education Department on research and funding priorities. The board also performs an oversight function, advising the director of the Institute for Education Sciences. The institute is an independent, nonpartisan arm of the department that evaluates and provides funding for education research.

The Education Sciences Reform Act requires that the board meet at least three times a year and produce an oversight report to both Congress and the secretary of education. The report is due annually on July 1—yet the department had refused to call a meeting.

The Biden administration’s failure to call a meeting, as well as its continuing refusal to deliver the commissions, prompted Hanke and Yoo to sue Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on July 15 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as The Epoch Times reported at the time. The lawsuit is ongoing. Cardona is required to file a response with the court by Sept. 24.

The appointees argue that even though the commissions were not delivered to them they still possess what lawyers call a vested legal right to the delivery of their commissions even after the election of a new president. This principle was included in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the principle of judicial review, which is the power of federal courts to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional.

PLF attorney Jessica Thompson told The Epoch Times that even though no president had ever before fired NBES members appointed by a previous administration, the Biden White House delivered an ultimatum in the form of letters to both men on Sept. 2.

The letters, from Catherine M. Russell, the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, asked the men to quit NBES voluntarily by close of business that day.

“Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight,” Russell wrote.

The ultimatum letters constitute a legal admission that Hanke and Yoo were appointed by President Trump, Thompson said.

The fact that the Trump appointees were fired on Sept. 2 “means that they were legally appointed and that they should have been able to serve in those positions for the past nine months.”

“If they weren’t legally appointed there would be no need to ask them to resign or to fire them,” the attorney told The Epoch Times. “He could just go ahead and appoint the new people that he would like to serve on the board.”

Biden could also have sent out a letter saying his administration refused to recognize the appointments by Trump, but he did not do that, she said.

“It’s a bit petty that the Department of Education has continued to refuse to send over the commissions,” Thompson said.

“I believe that we’ve already established and proved the key point that we were trying to advance through this lawsuit, which is that appointment by the president, even if it’s from the prior administration, is valid once the president signs that commission.”

She said she accepts that Biden enjoys the legal prerogative to remove her clients from the NBES but those clients still want to take physical possession of the paper commissions signed by Trump.

“It’s an honor to be appointed by the president and to receive such a commission and our clients and other members [of the board] were excited to serve the country in this way. And so these commissions mean something to them, and they’re hopeful that they can still obtain them.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Education for comments but had not received a reply as of press time.

Biden Admin Quietly Fires Trump Education Appointees Who Filed Lawsuit (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is facing an ethics complaint after allegedly accepting a ticket reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars to attend the Met Gala this week in New York City.

Thomas Jones, founder of the conservative-leaning American Accountability Foundation wrote (pdf) in an ethics complaint that he believes Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described socialist who represents areas of Queens and the Bronx, broke House rules by accepting the gift.

“While the individual’s invitations may bear the name of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum has ceded control over the invitations to a for-profit company, specifically Condé Nast, and to its Chief Content Officer, Anna Wintour,” Jones wrote.

“These rules exist for a reason. Without strict adherence, we run the risk of corruption in the halls of Congress and public officials serving others over their constituents. Government has a responsibility to its citizens, and integrity and accountability should be our foremost concern,” the complaint added.

During the event on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez wore a gown worth thousands of dollars that featured the words, “Tax the Rich,” in red, which drew significant criticism and attention on Twitter that a self-described socialist would attend an exclusive event that reportedly costs $35,000 per ticket. New York designer Aurora Jones created the dress.

Ocasio-Cortez’s office said that she didn’t violate House ethics rules.

“We are confident we complied with all ethics rules,” her office said in a statement to media outlets on Wednesday. The Epoch Times has contacted her office for comment.

Amid the critical feedback online, Ocasio-Cortez posted a video online defending her attendance at the Met Gala, which is generally frequented by celebrities, singers, actresses, and fashion luminaries. The congresswoman, who is in her second term, attempted to characterize her attendance as something that would send a message to wealthier Americans.

She also wrote on Instagram that she is “proud to work with [James,] a sustainably focused, Black woman immigrant designer who went from starting her dream [company] at a flea market in Brooklyn to winning [a Council of Fashion Designers of America award] against all odds—and then work together to kick open the doors at the Met.”

Ocasio-Cortez then pivoted, saying that the “time is now for childcare, healthcare, and climate action for all. Tax the Rich. … NYC elected officials are regularly invited to and attend the Met due to our responsibilities in overseeing our city’s cultural institutions that serve the public. I was one of several in attendance. Dress is borrowed.”

However, her comment did not assuage her critics, among them longtime journalist Glenn Greenwald, who publicly supported her during her 2018 campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez’s attendance and the Met Gala in general, he argued, is representative of the “convoluted” COVID-19 rules and decried photos that showed the congresswoman and other luminaries without masks while the Met Gala employees and others were forced to wear them.

“Even with all of this deceit and manipulation, there is something uniquely disturbing—creepy even—about becoming accustomed to seeing political and cultural elites wallowing in luxury without masks, while those paid small wages to serve them in various ways are forced to keep cloth over their faces,” Greenwald wrote for Substack. “It is a powerful symbol of the growing rot at the core of America’s cultural and social balkanization: a maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class.”

Ocasio-Cortez Faces Ethics Complaint for Accepting Ticket to Met Gala (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) is hoping to dismantle the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence on American academic institutions through Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes.

The congressman earlier this week submitted an amendment (pdf) to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a massive defense bill that authorizes spending levels for defense, seeking to bar the use of funds from the legislation to provide grants to “any academic institution that receives funding from the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Government or its affiliates, or hosts a Confucius Institute.”

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Buck described Confucius Institutes as “an avenue for the Chinese government to spread propaganda on U.S. campuses.”

“The propaganda is misleading and untruthful,” he added. “We as a government should not be funding institutions of higher education that are using and allowing Chinese propaganda to be spread.”

Billed as Chinese language and culture programs, Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes have drawn heightened criticism in the United States over their role in promoting CCP propaganda and stifling academic freedoms on American college campuses. The State Department during the Trump administration designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission in recognition of its role as a propaganda agent of the Chinese regime.

Trump administration officials and lawmakers have also piled pressure on universities to disassociate from the institutes, resulting in dozens of closures across the country. There are currently 36 Confucius Institutes in the United States, down from more than 100 in 2017, according to the National Association of Scholars.

“My hope is that the universities will shut down the propaganda machines of one of our adversaries,” Buck said.

The measure was one of four NDAA amendments submitted by Buck to the House Rules Committee due for consideration on Sept. 20, before the bill moves to the House floor.

The congressman, in another proposed amendment, is pushing for a ban on Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from being downloaded onto U.S. government devices.

“The threat is that the Chinese Communist Party … can use TikTok to gather sensitive information about Americans,” Buck said.

The Trump administration had attempted to ban TikTok last August, saying that the app could be used by the CCP to spy on Americans, but the order was never enforced due to several court orders. President Joe Biden revoked the ban in June, instead directing the Commerce Department to a review of apps with ties to the Chinese regime for national security risks. TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has denied allegations that the app poses an espionage risk.

Buck also wants Congress to take a stronger stance against the CCP’s sweeping human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, where more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are detained in a network of internment camps.

The current version of the House’s NDAA condemns the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang, but does not label it a genocide. Buck is hoping to change this.

“The term genocide is used in a particular way in international law and is condemned in a particular way in international law,” he said.

“It’s important that the United Nations and our allies of the world understand that the United States Congress believes that the Chinese government is committing genocide.”

The U.S. government and several other Western legislatures have recognized the CCP’s campaign in Xinjiang as genocide.

The congressman called on the House to adopt these amendments, saying that Congress should send a “very strong message to China.”

“We will not tolerate their military activities around the world. We are aware of their activities, we’re concerned about those activities, and we are not going to turn a blind eye,” he added.

“It’s very important in this NDAA that we send a message that Congress is absolutely resolute in recognizing the threat from China,” he said.

Rep. Buck Calls on US Universities to Shut Down CCP ‘Propaganda Machines’ (theepochtimes.com)

Recently released drone footage is revealing the “out of control” situation taking place at the US-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas; showing thousands of Central American migrants waiting to be processed by Federal Agents before entering the United States.

“Our drone is back over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX. Per source, the number of migrants waiting to be processed has now swelled to approx 8,200. It was 4,000 yesterday AM. Doubled in one day. BP overwhelmed, & I’m told situation is ‘out of control,’” posted Fox News’ Bill Melugin.

BREAKING: Our drone is back over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX. Per source, the number of migrants waiting to be processed has now swelled to approx 8,200. It was 4,000 yesterday AM. Doubled in one day. BP overwhelmed, & I’m told situation is “out of control” @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/ThJJJ0JWCT

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 16, 2021

The number of migrants crossing the United States border from Mexico continued to surge this summer, with new data from the Department of Homeland Security showing more than 200,000 encounters between immigrants and Federal Agents.

That’s up 317% compared to August 2020.

“The source told Fox that there were 208,887 encounters in August. While it marks the first decrease in migrant encounters seen under the Biden administration, where migrant encounters have been sharply rising for months, it is only a 2% drop over the more than 212,000 encounters in July,” reports Fox News.

“Additionally, the 208,887 number for August represents a 317% increase over last August 2020 which saw 50,014 apprehensions — and a 233% increase over August 2019, where there were 62,707 apprehensions during that year’s border crisis,” adds Fox.

“We have a plan, we are executing our plan and that takes time,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month.

“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Mayorkas said. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue and our system isn’t built for it.”

Read the full report at Fox News.

IMAGES SURFACE: New Drone Footage Shows ‘Out of Control’ Situation at US-Mexico Border | Sean Hannity

In a special briefing Tuesday, the Biden administration detailed its plan and efforts to relocate and settle Afghan refugees across the country in the near future.

The teleconference was held by the spokesperson office of the Department of State.

“The Department of State works with nine resettlement agencies and their networks of more than 200 local affiliates across the country to resettle Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) recipients through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and Reception and Placement Services,” one senior official said during the briefing.

Non-SIV holders, such as SIV applicants and other vulnerable Afghans who have entered as parolees, are transferred to one of eight domestic military installations for additional immigration processing and medical screenings before they’re resettled, the official continued.

“Afghans granted parole will receive State Department-funded assistance through these resettlement agencies via the Afghan Placement and Assistance Program, the APA. Through the APA Program, individuals will be placed in communities across the country to begin to rebuild their lives,” the official added.

The Department of State reported that more than 124,000 individuals had been evacuated from Afghanistan, including 6,000 American citizens.

On Sept. 3, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said nearly 40,000 people had arrived in the United States, about 20 percent of them are American citizens or permanent residents.

Tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are still being processed in overseas bases such as in the Gulf area and Europe. It’s unclear how many more will come to the United States in the coming months.

During Tuesday’s teleconference, a senior official said that “a core tenet” of the settlement program is family unification.

“As with traditional refugee and SIV resettlement, placement of individuals will prioritize reunification with U.S.-based family and friends and will consider the needs and characteristics of each case,” the official said.

Other factors in determining where Afghans will be relocated include reasonable housing, job opportunities, and community capacity, the official added.

Between October 2001 and August 2021, over 97,000 Afghan refugees and SIV recipients have settled in the United States, U.S. News reported, citing data from the State Department.

According to the data, over 80 percent of Afghan refugee and SIV recipients were resettled in 10 states since 2001. The 10 states are California, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, and Missouri. California alone admitted 31,695 Afghan refugees, almost one-third of the total.

During the teleconference, officials said HHS would provide vaccines, “short-term emergency health insurance,” and “time-limited cash and medical assistance” to refugees and all other eligible populations, among other services.

HHS has requested additional funding to support these new arrivals from Afghanistan, the official added.

In August, President Joe Biden authorized an extra $500 million for relocating Afghan refugees, including applicants for SIVs.

Last week, the Biden administration requested Congress to provide $6.4 billion in the fiscal year 2022 to support processing Afghan refugees, provide resources for new and future Afghan arrivals, and for other humanitarian needs.

Biden Administration Details Plan to Relocate Afghan Refugees Across the Country (theepochtimes.com)

Senate Democrats are trying to convince the Senate parliamentarian—a nonpartisan figure who arbitrates disagreements over Senate rules—to allow them to include about eight million green cards into the $3.5 trillion budget resolution.

The blessing of the current parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, will be necessary because of the peculiar track Democrats are using to pass the budget.

Specifically, they are using the reconciliation process, a parliamentary procedure added to the Senate’s rule in the early 1970s. The process allows some types of budget bills to pass through the deliberative upper chamber with only a simple majority, bypassing filibuster by opponents altogether. Ultimately, what is allowed under this process is up to MacDonough, whose job it is to protect the rights of both parties.

At a press conference Wednesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) explained that the Senate Judiciary Committee “believe[s] immigration is a critical element in reconciliation.”

“How many years have we all complained that the immigration system in America is broken and needs to be fixed?” he asked, adding that the last comprehensive immigration reform to come from Congress was passed 35 years ago and signed by President Ronald Reagan.

Durbin then presaged the challenge that Democrats will have in convincing the parliamentarian. He said, “this immigration package does have a cost associated with it.”

Under the standing rules of the reconciliation process, provisions in reconciliation bills must have an impact on the federal government’s spending and revenues that is more than “merely incidental.” Durbin also notes that staffers from relevant committees have already met with the parliamentarian, hoping to convince MacDonough that the immigration provision is legally allowed under the reconciliation process’s rules.

“If more and more people become legal permanent residents, they qualify for some government programs,” Durbin conceded. “But,” he contended, “economists agree that for every dollar paid out through a government program to a legal permanent resident, ten dollars is returned to the economy.”

As to whether MacDonough will be likely to support the measure, Durbin admitted that he was uncertain, noting that the decision is “entirely within her hands at this point.”

Democrats must have the full support of the parliamentarian, who can unilaterally shoot down the measure on her own authority.

Parliamentarian Has Strict Track Record on Budget Reconciliation

In that capacity, MacDonough has not been shy to kill priorities by both parties that she considered to be outside the scope of reconciliation.

For example, in 2017 Republicans tried to add a provision to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—passed through the reconciliation process—that would have repealed restrictions on churches, charitable foundations, and universities that forbade such nonprofits from becoming politically involved or endorsing candidates.

After Democrats took back the majority, MacDonough also put restrictions on what they were permitted to do as well. In February, the parliamentarian ruled against including a $15 minimum wage in a CCP virus (Chinese Communist Party virus) relief package proposed by President Joe Biden.

In both cases, the majority party tried to convince MacDonough that the provisions were budget-related to little avail. Now, Democrats are trying to get the parliamentarian’s blessing for a similarly expansive provision: one that would allow up to eight million illegal aliens to receive green cards, putting them on a path to citizenship.

Included under this provision would be so-called Dreamers—a group of people who entered the United States illegally as children and were granted amnesty under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) a controversial executive order signed by President Barack Obama—agricultural laborers, and other essential workers, among others.

This target of a path to citizenship for eight million illegal aliens falls short of the president’s more ambitious targets on the campaign trail.

Then-candidate Biden was asked during an October presidential debate about the Obama Administration’s track record. On the 2008 and 2012 campaign trails, comprehensive immigration reform was a key Obama-Biden priority, but the administration failed to bring these promised changes about.

Biden explained that he and former President Obama “made a mistake … we took too long to get it right.”

Biden then made his ambitious promise, saying that within his first 100 days he would “send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people.” He continued “those so-called Dreamers … [are] going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship.”

While one of Biden’s main priorities on the campaign trail—a path to citizenship for and continued protection of Dreamers—would be included in the provision if accepted by the parliamentarian, it would still fall far short of this 11 million amnesty goal.

Amnesty Effort ‘Unprecedented and Dangerous’: FAIR

Preston Huennekens, the Government Relations Manager at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), criticized this most recent amnesty effort.

FAIR is a nonpartisan organization that describes its mission as “seeking out solutions that help reduce the negative impact of uncontrolled immigration on the nation’s security, economy, workforce, education, healthcare, and environment.”

Huennekens began, “The effort by House and Senate Democrats to use the budget reconciliation process to amnesty millions of illegal aliens is unprecedented and dangerous.”

He then listed concerns that he and the organizations have about the move. First, he said that “Granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens will exacerbate our raging border crisis and deeply harm our nation for decades.”

Currently, the southern border is experiencing unprecedented levels of immigration. Republicans have blamed this on Biden’s relaxed attitude towards the border. In a letter (pdf) to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused the Biden Administration of “refus[ing] to fulfill their responsibility to enforce immigration laws enacted by Congress.”

Huennekens also warned that allowing the provision in the reconciliation bill “would set a terrible precedent and an opportunity for the party in power to get around the traditional legislative process to enact unpopular special interest priorities unrelated to spending or revenue.”

“This move,” he said, “is clearly ‘merely incidental’ to the goals of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package,” thus falling outside the purview of the reconciliation process. Rather, “it is drafted with the single goal of amnestying illegal aliens.”

Huennekens concluded: “This has nothing to do with spending or the Federal budget. It is a naked attempt by Democrats to pass legislation that is politically and practically impossible outside of the budget reconciliation process.”

Democratic Amnesty for 8 Million Illegals in Budget is ‘Unprecedented and Dangerous’: FAIR (theepochtimes.com)

Pennsylvania’s Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines on Sept. 15, following a heated debate, to issue subpoenas to Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, requiring her office to provide extensive information about the 2020 general and 2021 primary elections.

Democrats hope to block the subpoenas in court.

“It has been made plain that the Department of State and acting Secretary of State Degraffenreid are not willing to participate in this investigation into the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary election, and how the election code is working after the sweeping changes of act 77 of 2020,” Committee majority Chair Cris Dush, a Republican, said in the opening comments of the meeting.

Act 77, signed by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019, created a new option to vote by mail without providing a reason, which had previously been required for voters using absentee ballots. It also allowed for a 50-day mail-in voting period, the longest vote-by-mail period in the country; extended the deadline to register to vote to 30 days from 15 days before an election; and extended mail-in and absentee submission deadlines from the Friday before an election, to 8 p.m. on Election Day.

The Sept. 15 subpoenas call for the Department of State to provide the following information to the Senate Republican Caucus by Oct. 1:

All communications between the Department of State and any county election director and other election officials; a copy of every version of directives, guidance, policies, and procedures in effect during specified dates, relating to elections, election systems, mail-in ballot applications, ballots, polling places, or poll watchers; and all training material used to train election workers.

The subpoenas also seek a list of all changes made to voter records; a copy of the certified results for every race or ballot question for both elections; a copy of all audits or reviews of the voting system; and a copy of annual reports submitted to the Department of State in 2021.

Also requested by subpoena are detailed voter lists, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number, last four digits of Social Security number, address, and, in some cases, date of last voting activity. This information was requested for lists of all registered voters, those who voted in the 2020 general election or the May 2021 primary, in-person, by mail-in, absentee, or provisional ballot.

Democratic Opposition

Democratic committee members took issue with the request for driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers.

“You’re asking for a lot of information … for nearly 7 million people,” Democratic state Sen. Steven Santarsiero said. “What do you hope to do with that information?”

Dush said the documents are part of any audit that the auditor general would conduct, or anybody who is looking to verify the identity of individuals, their place of residence, and their eligibility to vote.

“There have been questions regarding the validity of people who voted—whether or not they exist. We’re not responding to proven allegations,” Dush said. “We’re investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are factual.”

If there are problems, Dush said, the legislature has a responsibility to create legislation that will prevent problems in future elections.

Santarsiero grilled Dush on the cost and the name of the vendor that would handle the investigation.

“We are still looking at vendors who will handle the information,” Dush said. “I’m not going to be hiring political activists to do the investigation.”

Democrats protested the subpoenas so vigorously that three times, Dush stopped the meeting as it was broadcast across Pennsylvania.

“This meeting is at ease! Cut the feed,” Dush said, when Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes complained about members of the Senate who were “involved in the insurrection” having access to investigation information.

He was referring to Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who has said he attended the Jan. 6 rally and march for President Donald Trump in Washington, and that he followed the law while there.

“We have a public that is concerned about how the last election was conducted,” Republican state Sen. Jake Corman said. “Credibility is important to all of us. When we look at the results of this investigation, one of two things will happen. Either it will give us action items to better our laws, or it will dispel the concerns that people have.”

Ultimately, the committee voted 7–4 to issue the subpoenas.

“I thought it was totally inappropriate,” Minority Chair Anthony Williams, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times. “I felt frustrated by the manner in which this was done and the substance. We don’t know the cost, we don’t know who the vendors will be, we don’t know what they will do with the information.”

The Senate’s Democratic Caucus was expected to file papers in the Commonwealth Court, seeking an injunction to stop the subpoenas, Williams said.

Pennsylvania Senate Committee Spars Over Advancing Election Investigation (theepochtimes.com)

Yet another Joe Biden nominee is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party.

Reta Jo Lewis, Joe Biden’s nominee for President and Chair of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, has collaborated with various Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups flagged by the U.S. government for seeking to coerce American officials into adopting “Beijing’s preferred policies,” The National Pulse can reveal.

The National Pulse can also exclusively report that Lewis serves on the board of the Greater Washington China Investment Center (GWCIC), which describes itself as a “public-private partnership designed to help small to mid-sized Chinese companies seeking to go global with a guided entrance to the U.S. market.” GWCIC President Bill Black’s bio boasts about his advisory roles with blacklisted telecommunications firm Huawei.

The group promises to form “key connections” for its Chinese clients in order to “build relationships with key players in both countries who have influence on foreign investment.”

To do so, GWCIC promises to provide “access and introductions to city, state and federal leaders in the United States and China.” A now-deleted promise on the website is that the GWCIC would also provide “access to U.S. industry and government databases.”

GWCIC’s blog even contains a post entitled “The Consequences of Being Tough on China,” which praises a broadcast from state-run outlet China Central Television (CCTV) as “insightful,” and features an interview with Marc Ross, a “friend of the GWCIC.”

The group has hosted events alongside the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), a registered foreign agent on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

Lewis has also helped the Chinese Communist Party expand its presence in the midwest.

She serves as a Strategic Advisor to the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA), a group with deep ties to one of the Chinese Communist Party’s premier foreign influence groups, the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). The USHCA is “proudly working with” CUSEF to foster collaboration between the Chinese Communist Party and American farmers, targeting local officials with free trips to China.

CUSEF is an integral component of the Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.

Lewis has spoken at USHCA events alongside Chinese Communist Party officials as recently as July 2020, and has attended and praised the controversial China-U.S. Governors Forum, flagged by the U.S. State Department for its efforts to influence American officials to advocate for policies aligned with the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party.

The event is hosted by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), dubbed the “public face” of the Chinese government’s United Front and “avowedly an arm of the party-state.” The U.S. State Department asserts that CPAFFC is seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.

In a 2011 press briefing, while serving in the Obama administration, Lewis extended thanks to the CPAFFC for sponsoring the event. As recently as 2019, Lewis has also praised the event and its mission, as revealed in Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua:

The “most important thing” for subnational leaders is about the business of moving their state forward around jobs, moving their state forward around prosperity and making sure that each citizen has an opportunity to participate in the economy, and that’s the “motivation” for their relentless efforts in seeking cooperation with China, said Reta Jo Lewis, senior fellow and director of congressional affairs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Biden’s Export-Import Bank Nominee Advises Chinese Communists on ‘Access To US Government.’ (thenationalpulse.com)

On Sept. 12, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s database of viral sequences was taken offline. The deleted database, which has never been publicly recovered, contained more than 22,000 unpublished samples and sequences of bat and rodent viruses.

Notably, the database contains crucial data and may hold the key to determining whether the lab in Wuhan, China, had COVID-19 or a progenitor virus in its possession.

The importance of having access to virus sequence data was illustrated earlier this year, when sequences from early COVID-19 cases were recovered from another dataset that had been deleted in June 2020 from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) database at the behest of a Chinese researcher. That data confirmed that the pandemic didn’t start at the Huanan Seafood Market as Chinese authorities had claimed.

Despite the potential importance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) data, there have been no known requests from public health officials to reinstate or examine the Institute’s database and none of the major health officials and experts involved in the pandemic response, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, British pharmaceutical trust Director Jeremy Farrar or NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, have publicly acknowledged the database’s existence.

In February 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent an investigative team to Wuhan. The team’s report states that as part of their analysis they “reviewed data collected through the China National Centre for Bioinformation integrated database on all available coronaviruses sequences.”

But the team failed to request an examination of the database of viruses collected, maintained, and later deleted by the WIV.

The WHO’s failure to pursue what could have been its most promising investigative lead is notable as the Wuhan Institute of Virology is widely regarded as perhaps the most likely source of a viral lab leak.

Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group used by Fauci’s NIH to fund the Wuhan Institute lab, claimed that the WHO’s investigative team didn’t request to see the deleted Wuhan database because Daszak told them that the data didn’t contain relevant information on the pandemic’s origins.

It seems surprising that WHO officials would accept Daszak’s assertions at face value, rather than insisting upon examining the database for themselves. It’s also worth noting that Daszak was inherently conflicted as he had been enmeshed with the WIV’s activities for years.

When asked about the deleted database in January 2021, WIV Director Shi Zhengli claimed that she deleted the database because of alleged hacking attempts—despite the fact that this information was supposed to be publicly available, according to Daszak’s funding agreement with Fauci’s NIH. 

The WHO’s failure to examine the Wuhan Institute’s database also is surprising in light of a September 2019 WHO report that specifically warned of the possibility for a global pandemic.

That report, which stated that “the world is not prepared for a fast-moving, virulent respiratory pathogen pandemic,” was published six days after the Wuhan Institute deleted its entire database of dangerous pathogens. 

There’s no suggestion that the authors of the WHO report had foreknowledge of the pandemic outbreak, since it was based on a Sept. 10, 2019, John Hopkins study. But the fact that the WHO’s September report warned of the potential for a global viral outbreak at the same time that the Wuhan Institute deleted all its dangerous pathogen data should have caught  WHO’s immediate attention.

The timing of the Institute’s decision to remove the database of virus sequences is notable in light of events that followed the database’s deletion.

According to a Harvard Medical School study, an increase in traffic at hospitals throughout Wuhan took place in October of 2019.

John Brownstein, the Harvard medical professor who led the research, told ABC that “Something was happening in October. . . clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”

The Harvard study appears to have been validated through the observations of the U.S. consul general in Wuhan, Russell Westergard, who is on record as stating that by mid-October 2019, the U.S. consulate in Wuhan “knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season.”

Westergard would later note that “the disease worsened in November.”

Westergard also stated that when Wuhan city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread of the disease, his team passed the information to the U.S.Embassy in Beijing while they continued to monitor the situation.

Around the same time that Westergard was raising his warnings, likely at some point in early November, three WIV lab workers were reportedly hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms. 

Additionally, Huang Yanling, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has been rumored to be patient zero, also appears to have disappeared during this time frame. Her profile was subsequently scrubbed from the Wuhan Institute’s website.

The annex to the WHO’s 2021 investigative report—which describes Huang as a former lab worker—notes that according to the Wuhan Institute of Virology staff, Huang was an alumnus who graduated in 2015 and was working in a different province. But Huang’s profile on the Institute’s website remained active until after the pandemic outbreak. And Huang can also be seen in a 2018 Wuhan Institute group photo. 

In November 2019, warnings began to sound in Washington. According to an April 8, 2020, report by ABC News, U.S. intelligence officials were warning in late November that “a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region.”

ABC News also said that a November 2019 intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) had stated that the contagion in Wuhan “could be a cataclysmic event.”

Notably, NCMI would later be identified by French media as the agency that had concluded that the virus most likely leaked out of a Wuhan lab in the 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment on the virus’s origins.

Unsurprisingly, there has been significant debate and conflicting information as to when the COVIDoutbreak first began. One report, which cited Chinese government officials, noted that the first case could be traced back to Nov. 17, 2019.

A detailed academic report in The Lancet claimed that the first known COVID case occurred on Dec. 1, 2019, and noted that the patient had no known ties to the Huanan Seafood Market.

These earlier dates contrast with the WHO’s first officially stated date for an individual becoming ill with COVID on Dec. 8, 2019.

As the outbreak in Wuhan appeared to be reaching a critical juncture, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suddenly moved its lab’s location on Dec. 2, to a spot just a few hundred yards from the Huanan Seafood Market.

While this lab has received little, if any, media attention, the WHO’s lead investigator into the virus’s origins, Peter Ben Embarek, privately voiced his concerns about this facility to a Danish documentary crew. 

The Wuhan CDC kept the sudden move of its lab quiet and away from media attention. Embarek claims he only became aware of the move after he noticed that as he was being shown around the Wuhan CDC lab’s facilities, everything appeared to be new.

The WHO’s report, which contained only a single reference to the Wuhan CDC lab, noted that “Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory” and stated that the lab “reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.”

However, the WHO’s statement regarding the Wuhan CDC’s activities is at odds with the activities of the lab’s resident coronavirus researcher, Tian Junhua.

In 2017, Tian bragged to a Chinese newspaper that he personally captured 10,000 bats in remote caves in southern China before bringing them back to his Wuhan CDC lab. 

Tian also is well-known in academic circles for his research on bat coronaviruses and has co-published at least 14 scientific articles with Edward Holmes, a WHO-affiliated scientist and natural-origins proponent with long-standing ties to China.

The deletion of the WIV’s database along with other evidence, including the observations of the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan, would seem to suggest that the outbreak in Wuhan began earlier than has been generally reported.

This raises questions as to why the WHO failed to give this information serious consideration in the preparation of its report on the origins and timing of the virus.

The WHO should have been aware of this information—and should have been on guard for misinformation. As WHO investigator Embarek later acknowledged, the WHO was well aware of China’s reluctance to cooperate in their investigation from the start.

WHO Failed to Investigate Deleted Virology Database and Evidence Indicating Earlier Start of Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

Six confirmed, 17 suspected cases is a “major public health threat” and “has the potential to seed countless U S community outbreaks,” CDC chief warns in private letter obtained by Just the News.

The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a private warning to the chief of Afghan evacuation operations that measles is spreading among refugees and poses a “major public health threat” that includes the potential for “larger imminent outbreaks” in U.S. communities already reeling from the coronavirus.

CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky’s memo Tuesday night urged Operations Allies Welcome senior official Robert Fenton to take “urgent public health action” that includes mass vaccinations of refugees, revealing there are now six confirmed cases of measles in Afghan refugees, 17 suspected cases and hundreds of exposures in U.S. hospitals.

“The large number of unvaccinated Afghan evacuees as seen already has the potential to seed countless U.S. community outbreaks,” Walensky warned in the four-page memo obtained by Just the News.

“These outbreaks represent a major public health threat and rapid mass vaccination and expanding quarantine and isolation capacities are essential,” she stressed.

You can read the memo here: CDCMeaslesWarningFinal.pdf (Alternate Location)

She also wrote the current cases are “an indicator of potentially much larger imminent outbreaks” that could already overwhelm hospitals fighting the deadly surge of the Delta coronavirus variant.

“Immediate implementation of CDC public health standards is imperative to prevent introduction of measles into US communities and to respond to multiple concurrent measles outbreaks,” Walensky wrote.

She added, “Health care facilities are already at limited capacity as they battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which requires tremendous workforce in laboratory assets.”

Measles was declared eradicated from America decades ago after an aggressive vaccine campaign, and its reintroduction to U.S. communities could prove deadly to those it infects who aren’t vaccinated, officials warn.

Walensky’s memo used stark language to describe the consequences if the outbreaks aren’t thwarted soon through quarantine and vaccination campaigns.

“Failing to swiftly execute the measures outlined above will likely result in increased exposure to evacuees and personnel supporting OAW operations, including safe havens,” she wrote. “Further, evacuates who have not been vaccinated (41% of children under five years old are not currently protected against measles) pose a public health threat.”

The imminent fears of large outbreaks comes less than a week after the first measles case was detected in an Afghan refugee patient at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. 

EXCLUSIVE: CDC warns Afghan refugees pose threat of ‘larger imminent outbreaks’ of measles in U.S. | Just The News

President Joe Biden’s administration is accepting new applications from parents who want to bring children as old as 20 from Central America, years after former President Donald Trump ended the program.

The Central American Minors Program was launched in 2014 during the Obama administration to let certain parents legally present in the United States bring their children from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador to the United States if their request was cleared by U.S. authorities. It was first announced by Biden, then the vice president, in November 2014.

Trump terminated the program in 2017.

Now it’s being restarted as part of the Biden administration’s attempts to expand legal pathways to enter the United States. New applications were accepted for the first time in four years on Sept. 14.

The administration not only rebooted the program, but expanded it. In addition to parents, legal guardians can ask for their kids to be flown from their home country to the United States. The parents or legal guardians can even have pending asylum cases, or be in America on parole, and apply.

“We are firmly committed to welcoming people to the United States with humanity and respect, and reuniting families. We are delivering on our promise to promote safe, orderly, and humane migration from Central America through this expansion of legal pathways to seek humanitarian protection in the United States,” the Departments of State and Homeland Security said in a statement.

Marta Youth, a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. State Department, told reporters in a remote news conference that some 1,400 cases would be reopened as part of the program’s resumption, Reuters reported.

America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant group that wants to make it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens, was among those praising the resumption of the program.

“CAM offers a safe, expeditious and orderly way for young people to seek safety and apply for reunification with loved ones from the region. After vetting and approval, these young people will board airplanes and join family in America. This provides an alternative route to protection,” Frank Sharry, executive director of the group, said in a statement.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, though, argued that the program elevates illegal aliens above U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

“Virtually all Central American minors who were left behind by parents who entered the U.S. illegally will be able to be admitted or paroled to the country and the American taxpayers will bear the costs of administering the program, while lawful immigration programs continue to experience historic delays and backlogs,” Matthew Tragesser, spokesperson for the group, which seeks to reduce immigration levels, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“The reimplementation of this program reveals where the Biden administration’s immigration focus stands right now. It does not want to secure our southern border or limit incentives for illegal aliens, despite illegal immigration increasing every month under the administration and apprehension totals reaching figures not seen in two decades,” he added.

Illegal border apprehensions have shot up since Biden took office in January, hitting a 21-year-high in July. One expert projected arrests at the border setting a new record this year. The jump has included an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors, or illegal immigrant children who arrive without a responsible adult. Over 13,000 unaccompanied minors were in U.S. government custody as of Sept. 13.

Biden administration officials have asserted that the chaos seen at the border is a result of changing what was a “cruel” immigration system under Trump. They’ve said it takes time to alter the system and that some areas have seen improvement.

Changes so far include stopping construction of the border wall, halting the “Remain in Mexico” program, and proposing to let immigration officers take over hearing some asylum cases from judges.

The dramatic alterations have hit some roadblocks, with judges ruling against the administration in a series of key cases, including ordering officials to resume Remain in Mexico.

A Department of Homeland Security official told The Epoch Times in a recent email this week that the department has not yet started to return illegal immigrants to Mexico, the core part of the program.

The agency was scheduled to deliver a report on the resumption on Sept. 14.

Biden Restarts Program That Lets Parents Bring Central American Children to US (theepochtimes.com)

There are many ways in which to divide humanity—the decent and the indecent, the happy and the unhappy, the cowardly and the courageous, those who lead and those who follow, etc.

Two major divisions that are less often noted but highly consequential are between those who want to control others and those who have little interest in controlling others, and between the related categories of those who are comfortable with being controlled by others and those who detest being controlled by others.

Those who seek to control others and those who seek to be controlled by others would seem to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they are not. Both groups are overwhelmingly populated by individuals on the Left.

They currently dominate four of the five English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom may be the one exception). The ease with which Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders have accepted the loss of liberty in their respective countries has been the saddest and most frightening development since the rise of totalitarianism in the early 20th century.

Even sadder and more frightening has been the acceptance of authoritarianism by half of the American people. America has been the beacon of liberty in the world. America was the country to which France gave the Statue of Liberty. America has been, as President Abraham Lincoln characterized it, “the last best hope of Earth.” America’s self-image has been that of a “sweet land of liberty” and of “the land of the free and home of the brave.”

Then came a new virus (one with a survival rate in the 99 percent range for nearly all age groups except older adults who are also very sick), and suddenly, in the name of “public health,” no amount of suppression of liberty, no matter how irrational, has been resisted by the majority of Americans or almost any citizens of the other English-speaking countries.

The citizens of Australia’s biggest states are not allowed to leave their homes for more than a few hours a day, not allowed to congregate with other citizens even outdoors, not allowed even to speak with one another outdoors. For more than a year and a half, Australians have not been allowed to leave their country without the express permission of their government, which will decide whether they have a good enough reason. And, of course, church services are forbidden. Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders, most of whom are thoroughly secular, have only contempt for their compatriots who wish to attend religious services.

In many arenas of life, most Australians have fewer rights than most Soviet citizens did. Like Australians, Soviet citizens could not leave their country without permission, but they were allowed to leave their homes, to speak with people in the street, and to visit dying relatives in hospitals.

Meanwhile, a large percentage of Americans support a president of the United States who offers government and an enormous number of private-entity workers a choice between getting vaccinated—no matter how young they are, and whether they already had COVID-19—or losing their job. In other words, many Americans support firing any unvaccinated fellow citizens who work for the government, the medical professions, or privately owned companies with 100 or more employees.

Half of America supports a president who portrays the other half of America as an enemy, their fellow Americans as people for whom they should have hatred. No American president has ever given as divisive a speech as the one in which President Joe Biden announced his vaccine mandates (something he denied wanting to impose only nine months ago, in December of 2020). Lincoln, despite the Civil War, a war in which more Americans were killed than in all other American wars combined, called on Americans to have “malice toward none.” Biden, as mean-spirited a president as this country has ever had, has called for malice toward 100 million Americans, declaring, “our patience is wearing thin.”

There is a three-pronged left-wing assault on liberty: in the name of public health (COVID-19); in the name of “anti-racism”; and in the name of saving the planet (climate change). By ratcheting up fear and hysteria, the Left is using each to end individual liberty, including freedom of speech, for the first time in American history.

Will the Left succeed?

Unless Americans fight the Left as hard as the Union fought the slave states, the answer is yes.

Why Freedom Is in Serious Jeopardy (theepochtimes.com)

Dems hope reconciliation end-around can achieve amnesty through party-line vote

Democrats are trying to grant mass amnesty to illegal immigrants by arguing that amnesty’s $140 billion price tag qualifies as a budget issue—a legislative maneuver that will allow millions of people to achieve legal status through a party-line majority vote.

According to Politico, Democratic congressional staffers argued on Sept. 10 that because mass legalization will add to the deficit, the provision should be included in a reconciliation bill nominally meant to fund the federal government for the next year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Democratic plan to legalize eight million immigrants will add $139.6 billion to the budget deficit by 2032, almost entirely due to increased use of entitlement programs and tax credits.

“Democrats’ central argument to the parliamentarian is that offering green cards to certain undocumented immigrants would unlock federal benefits for them, causing effects on the budget that they say are a substantial, direct and intended result,” Politico reported.

The Democrats’ argument contradicts the rhetoric of amnesty supporters, who often point to the cost-saving measures of a mass amnesty program. During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden attacked then-president Donald Trump for “costing taxpayers billions of dollars” on border security measures, said Trump’s hardline stance against immigration was “bad for our economy,” and cited the “$23.6 billion from 4.4 million workers without Social Security numbers” who “contribute in countless ways to our communities, workforce, and economy.”

To include a provision into the massive reconciliation plan, Democrats need to prove that it would have a significant impact on the federal government’s debt, spending, or revenues. Democrats are opting to pass Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget through the parliamentary trick to avoid a GOP filibuster, a move Republicans call an abuse of the process.

Senior GOP aides who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon balked at the argument, with one calling it “obvious desperation.” Another called it “pathetic” and added that the Senate parliamentarian might have felt “insulted” by the proposal.

Many illegal immigrants who work in the United States already pay into Medicare and Social Security through payroll taxes. With permanent residency, they would now be able to fully partake in those programs. The immigrants covered by the Democratic proposal would include Temporary Protected Status holders, farmworkers, “essential workers,” and those enrolled in the Dreamer program.

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough rejected a Democratic scheme to include a $15 minimum wage into the pandemic relief bill. MacDonough called the wage’s potential impact on the budget “merely incidental.”

Democrats were careful to say that the proposed bill would not grant citizenship to millions of illegal aliens. Federal immigration law, however, states that anyone with a green card can apply for citizenship after five years. And left-wing activist groups such as the National Immigration Law Center have called the proposal a “pathway to citizenship.”

“Immigrants are an essential part of our communities, not only as our family members and neighbors but also as people who have continued to show up day after day during this pandemic to keep our country going,” National Immigration Law Center executive director Marielena Hincapié said in a statement. “As we enter our recovery phase, we must also recognize that there is no recovery without immigrants—and passing a pathway to citizenship through reconciliation would provide urgently needed relief and stability for millions of DACA recipients, [Temporary Protected Status] holders, farm workers, essential workers, and their loved ones.”

Democrats Justify Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants by Arguing It Will Increase Deficit (freebeacon.com)

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill on Friday that would have increased penalties for those who engage in riots that result in damage or injury.

“People who commit crimes during riots and at other times should be prosecuted and our laws provide for that, but this legislation is unnecessary and is intended to intimidate and deter people from exercising their constitutional rights to peacefully protest,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in a press release.

A person would have faced felony charges and jail time if he or she caused damage to property, or assaulted a citizen or emergency personnel, during a protest or state of emergency.

Republican House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, called it a “common-sense bill” written to protect “small businesses and individuals in the event that a protest became violent and focused solely on the perpetrators of violence rather than peaceful protesters.”

“Every suggested change to improve the bill from the other side of the aisle was incorporated,” Moore said. “Unfortunately for this governor, pandering to the far left is more important than rule of law.”

In a statement released after the bill passed in the Senate in August, Moore said he had witnessed “the violence and destruction caused by rioters right here in downtown Raleigh” in 2020.

“What this bill does is enforce harsher penalties for the perpetrators of violence and looting, while preserving every North Carolinian’s right to protest peacefully,” Moore said. “Our rights to free speech and assembly are precious and must be preserved, but never at the expense of harm to others. House Bill 805 simply ensures the safety of our citizens while upholding their rights to free speech and assembly.”

Felony charges would have been handed down if damages exceeding $1,500, serious bodily harm, or death, had resulted from the actions of the rioter.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the bill “harmful,” adding that it “would dissuade many people from engaging in peaceful and constitutionally protected acts of protests.”

The bill was retaliation, the ACLU alleged, against the “uprising for racial justice” that happened in 2020 when an outbreak of violence started in May at the time of the killing of George Floyd, a black man who had been arrested.

The May 25 arrest was filmed, and in the video, Floyd, 46, said he couldn’t breathe as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was witnessed kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he pleaded for air.

Floyd was pronounced dead an hour after the incident.

According to a September 2020 report (pdf) from the Raleigh Police Department, May 30 through June 7 became a week of peaceful protest that devolved into acts of violence and destroyed property.

In July 2020, the Triangle Business Journal reported that statewide insurance claims were over $10 million.

Anti-Riot Bill Vetoed in North Carolina (theepochtimes.com)

A Missouri college is denouncing the removal of flags commemorating victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, but it’s not clear if the student identified as removing the flags will be disciplined.

The Young America’s Foundation placed nearly 3,000 flags in the ground at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri to commemorate the victims of the terror attacks. But video footage from Sept. 11 showed a man carrying trash bags filled with the flags, after removing them from where they’d been placed.

Fadel Alkilani was later identified as the man. He’s the student union vice president of finance, the school’s paper reported.

Alkilani admitted to removing the flags in social media posts he later deleted. In one, he wrote that he intended to “protest against American imperialism and the 900,000 lives lost as a result of post 9/11 war.”

Alkilani later took to Instagram to pen a lengthy statement, writing that he “had no intention of removing the flags from the Mudd Field area, and my full protest did not have the chance to be actualized.”

“My planned protest was to place the bags of flags on Mudd field, along with various statistics explaining the human cost of 9/11 in the past 20 years,” he added.

Alkilani indicated that he is under investigation for possibly violating the university’s code of conduct, though he maintains he did not.

The university in an initial statement on Sept. 11 said it was “disappointed to learn about the disruption to the 9/11 display on Mudd Field,” adding, “we condemn the interference.”

“I want to make it very clear that, as an institution, we find the actions of this student to be reprehensible,” Chancellor Andrew Martin wrote on Sunday to students and teachers.

“The removal of the flags impeded the ability of individuals to commemorate the lives lost on 9/11 and to process the trauma of that day. This act was seen as a personal affront by many, at WashU and beyond, and as an affront to the ideals of our institution,” he said.

Martin confirmed that what happened is being investigated.

The school did not respond to an early morning request for comment.

College Republicans President Nick Rodriguez told the student paper that Alkilani’s actions “made a mockery of one of the most somber days in American history” and called for his removal from the student union.

“What does it say to be a top American institution, and have yourself represented by a student leader who has no respect for property, campus traditions, or the remembrance of thousands of lost lives?” he said.

Reagan Steirn, another student, described herself as “livid” about Alkilani removing the flags.

“With a leadership role, someone doing those actions and showing his disrespect will just allow other students on campus to do the same thing, when in this situation it’s just not OK to do that,” she said.

Missouri University Condemns Removal of 9/11 Commemoration Flags by Student (theepochtimes.com)

As President Joe Biden launches via executive order a sweeping vaccine mandate for all federal government workers, and now a brand-new initiative for private sector mandates, the issue has once again risen to the forefront of the national dialogue. United Airlines, for example, recently became the first U.S. airline to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for all its employees. United Airlines’ mandate takes effect on Sept. 27, and it might augur a broader trend: A poll conducted last month by insurance and advisory firm Willis Towers Watson, for example, suggests that 52 percent of private sector employers surveyed expect to have a workplace vaccine mandate by the end of 2021. As Biden’s brand-new announcement of a Department of Labor rule for private sector vaccination requirement now makes clear, that poll was prescient.

Against this backdrop, several Republican-leaning states have advanced laws or executive orders that prohibit private sector vaccine mandates for employees, customers, or in some other respect. That tally is now at least eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Texas, South Carolina, and South Dakota. The legal mechanics and specifics differ from state to state. But the highest-profile and most mechanically straightforward Republican-led assault on vaccine mandates is the one in my new home state, Florida.

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has emerged as a talismanic figure of sorts for those standing athwart COVID-induced hysteria, signed into law SB 2006. The legislation bans private businesses, local governments, and schools from issuing vaccine mandates for customers or members of the public. On Aug. 27, Florida’s Department of Health announced that it will enforce SB 2006 via $5,000 fines “per individual and separate violation.” That rule will go into effect on Sept. 16, though DeSantis had previously already taken aim at mandatory private sector vaccinations via executive order even prior to the passage of SB 2006.

Amid the pending Biden Department of Labor vaccination rule for all employers with 100 or more employees, there will now inevitably be mass litigation between the states and the federal government. But while that litigation begins to percolate, the battle lines were already clarified.

Progressives, whose various echo chambers have led them to believe COVID is a modern-day apocalypse despite a 98 to 99 percent (at least) survival rate, predictably march in lockstep against bans on vaccine mandates. It is perhaps the only time progressives defend private enterprise against public regulation, broadly speaking. But those on the right have divided over the question of what role, if any, the state should play in regulating private sector vaccine mandate promulgation and enforcement.

The private sector vaccine mandate, much like the roiling debates over Big Tech regulation, is a proxy for a broader intellectual fault line on the right. That divide is between the more adamantly classical liberal, libertarian-inspired pundits and politicians who believe the quintessence of sound governance is simply permitting individuals and private entities to do what they wish, and the more common-good-inspired figures who believe the breadth and depth of the threat from our wokeist ruling class is such that we must be less skittish about the prudential use of state power to secure the deplorables’ basic way of life.

On this matter, as in many other matters, the DeSantis-style common-good conservatives have the better of the doctrinaire “let businesses do whatever they want” libertarian absolutists. It is important to understand why.

President Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” That was probably true when the Gipper said it, but times have changed. The new, 21st century threat comes in the form of a sprawling, paninstitutional ruling class whose public and private sector branches alike worship at the secular altar of wokeism. That ruling class has no interest in abiding by any sort of neutral “live and let live” niceties; its interest is in banning conservative speech from social media, soft-banning conservative ideas from the academy by means of “microaggressions” and “safe spaces,” and so on. As I have argued, we should think of the new “most terrifying words” as, “I’m from the ruling class, and I’m here to subjugate you.”

Vaccine mandates will be a convenient fig leaf for a ruling class already gung-ho at the possibility of precluding conservatives from the full panoply of in-person public life: air travel, concerts, or even private banking services. Accordingly, the governing imperative is to use state power to protect those who may harbor not-unreasonable reservations about the COVID vaccines against woke capital and woke businesses champing at the bit to forsake those who have made a different decision about what to do with their bodies than what our elites may wish. Dispensations will always be made, but the default legal rule should be a general ban on private sector vaccine mandates. Those still very concerned about COVID, after all, can always vaccinate themselves: The vaccines presumably work well, as we are constantly told.

It is the obligation of patriots in 2021, to quote Claremont Institute senior fellow David Reaboi, to “know what time it is.” On vaccine mandates, that means following the DeSantis lead, and, as now appears to be necessary, launching strategic state-led lawsuits against an overzealous Biden administration dead-set on making COVID hysteria the law of the land.

The Vaccine Mandate Assault on the Common Good (theepochtimes.com)

Paul Shinkman of U.S. News wrote the other day:

“China is considering deploying military personnel and economic development officials to Bagram airfield, perhaps the single-most prominent symbol of the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

“The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram, according to a source briefed on the study by Chinese military officials, who spoke to U.S. News on the condition of anonymity.”

As Moon Unit Zappa used to say, “Gag me with a spoon!”

Feasibility study? You don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out how that’s going to turn out, assuming it hasn’t been done already and this is just a masquerade.

Why wouldn’t the Chinese take over Bagram? It’s sitting there.

And no real estate could be more apt for their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road), essentially a large-scale bait-and-switch operation. The Chinese—in reality the Chinese Communist Party—lends the poor country—in this case the impoverished Taliban—money to modernize their infrastructure with the caveat that, if they don’t pay off the loan in a certain amount of time, guess who owns said infrastructure?

Well, we know the answer to that. The Chinese are in essence buying the world with the help, note well, of some of the most prominent American firms (pdf) busy enriching themselves with more money than most of us can compute.

(If you’re interested in how successful the BRI has been, here’s a helpful map from the Council of Foreign Relations.)

What has occurred in recent days is that China has achieved something absolutely free for which the Soviets and the United States wasted decades of personnel (tragically dead or wounded), matériel and trillions of dollars, not to mention ended up by disgracing themselves in the eyes of the world.

Effectively, the Chinese own Afghanistan, the important parts of it anyway—airbases, ports, mineral rights, and so forth—or will shortly.

As for internal Taliban affairs, the Chinese communists aren’t about to lift a finger about the horrifying level of women’s rights or the extensive drug growing and dealing the terror group engages in, especially if they send as much of it as possible to America.

As long as the various Islamic terror organizations leave the Chinese alone, the Chinese will let them do as they wish. Yes, some—al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, one we haven’t heard of yet—may make a fuss about the treatment of the Uyghurs and make their violent presence known, but I would imagine they ultimately see the Chinese forces as much more ruthless than the Americans (now especially) and this will be at best a temporary sideshow of little global importance. Realpolitik will be at play on both Chinese and Taliban (Islamic) sides as they benefit each other, at least for now.

So how did we get here? If this is all so obvious—and it is—wasn’t our State Department and our military aware of how this would, or certainly could, turn out? (Wouldn’t they at least leave a small NATO force guarding Bagram and destroy our weaponry?)

I imagine many of our officials were—how could they not be—aware of this eventuality. And that’s highly disturbing.

Why then did the USA cede Afghanistan—a territory bounded by Iran and Pakistan, among other states, not to mention control of much of the world’s rare earths and other key resources—to the increasingly totalitarian China of Xi Jinping?

For an answer, it’s hard not to think back to those days when, shortly before declaring for the presidency and reversing himself on the topic, our current president told us “The Chinese aren’t our enemies, folks.”

Was he covering up for his own activities and connections that could have been recorded on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop, much of which is as yet unseen? Do the Chinese, in the crudest sense, have something on him? Unfortunately, considering the operations and governance of our FBI and Department of Justice, we may never know.

We can, however, make our own surmises. But whatever they may be, they’re only a part of a more depressing overall zeitgeist.

I have believed for some time—and our extraordinarily rapid and ill-conceived evacuation of Afghanistan, leaving behind not only Bagram but enough U.S. weaponry to make the Taliban’s army nearly equivalent to the Italian’s, not to mention putting our advanced military technology in the hands of the Chinese and the Russians, only underscores this—that a large percentage of our Democratic Party leadership as well as a tragically significant percentage of the Republican have long believed the Chinese regime are winning the battle between China and America for global hegemony. They are therefore, overtly or covertly, consciously or subconsciously, throwing in with the Chinese side for their own economic—and to a lesser extent survival, though the two interact—advantage.

Our globalist-leaning corporations, like the giant law firm linked above, that deal extensively with China are similar. They’re going with what they think is the winning side.

And globalism is not democracy. For the globalist, people voting has been irrelevant, even retrograde, for decades. It’s the one-party state gone world-wide.

So, to be overly colloquial, “bugging out” on Afghanistan to them is no big deal. And China taking over, well, to them it’s just part of the game.

Why Did the USA Hand Afghanistan to China? (theepochtimes.com)

The son of leftist billionaire George Soros tweeted an image of himself and his father meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, saying, “In Pelosi we trust!”

“In Pelosi we trust! Was good seeing [Pelosi] this weekend,” Alexander Soros tweeted on Thursday.

In Pelosi we trust! Was good seeing @SpeakerPelosi this weekend. pic.twitter.com/dguGCxDm37

— Alexander Soros, PhD (@AlexanderSoros) September 9, 2021

According to his Twitter profile, Alexander Soros serves as deputy chair of the Open Society.

According to its website, the organization is “the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights.”

George Soros is the founder and chair of Open Society Foundations. The elder Soros also leads a variety of other business and non-profit endeavors.

In July, Federal Election Commission records revealed that Soros is a major financial backer of the “defund the police” movement, pouring $1 million into an organization associated with the cause.

Campaign finance data publicly available on the FEC’s website shows that Soros contributed to the Color of Change Political Action Committee on May 14.

Color of Change describes itself as “the nation’s largest online racial justice organization” on its website.

“We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by 7 million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.”

Color of Change has an online petition bearing the title: “TAKE ACTION: Defund the police, and invest in communities now!”

The “defund the police” campaign calls for lawmakers to slash the budgets of traditional police departments and instead invest in social programs and alternative means of law enforcement.

Though the movement enjoyed some success in the months after George Floyd’s death, people gradually began to become disillusioned with it as crime rates rose across the country.

Soros is also known for financially backing Democratic candidates. He reportedly donated $1 million to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall campaign.

According to records from the California Secretary of State’s office, the left-wing financier’s first donation was on June 22, with $250,000 given to a committee called “Stop the Republican Recall.”

Then, on Aug. 3, he dropped another $250,000.

Finally, on Aug. 30, Soros doubled down, putting in a $500,000 donation.

Photo Emerges of Nancy Pelosi Meeting with George Soros and His Son (westernjournal.com)

A new report claims Google is engaged in an “anti-racism” campaign to paint America as a white supremacist nation.

According to internal documents shared with writer Christopher Rufo, Google is teaching employees that the U.S. has a “system of white supremacy” and that Americans are “raised to be racist.”

The City Journal reported on Wednesday that the Big Tech giant is presenting to employees materials that promote “the core tenets of critical race theory.”

Included in the program is a graphic entitled “The White Supremacy Pyramid,” which features conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. The graphic further suggests that former President Donald Trump is bringing “mass murder” and “genocide” into the mainstream of society.

Shapiro trashed his trashing.

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“All it would take is one Google search to learn just how much white supremacists hate my work, or how often I’ve spoken out against their benighted philosophy,” Shapiro said.

“The attempt to link everyone to the right of Hillary Clinton to white supremacism is disgusting, untrue, and malicious.”

Another graphic said that Columbus Day and phrases such as “Make America Great Again” are examples of “covert white supremacy.”

Google’s program also included video discussions with Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi and “1619 Project” author Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Rufo tweeted screenshots of documents he said were used by Google.

Another graphic, titled “The White Supremacy Pyramid,” advances the idea that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is a foundation of “white supremacy” and that Donald Trump is moving society on a path toward “mass murder” and “genocide.” pic.twitter.com/9s81yC1Cxd

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 8, 2021

In a module called “Allyship in Action,” Google trained employees to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, and then rank themselves on a hierarchy of “power [and] privilege,” then “manage [their] reactions” through “cry[ing]” and “accessing [their] ‘happy place.’” pic.twitter.com/LUtzbzenr2

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 8, 2021

Rufo told Fox News that this indoctrination is dangerous.

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“For years now, companies in Silicon Valley, including Google, are ideological echo chambers,” he said.

“I have documents now from about a third of the Fortune 100 companies that are promoting similarly themed anti-racism programs. And this, in the confines of Silicon Valley, is considered not only not unusual, it’s considered virtuous.”

“The reality is that the culture inside companies like Google matters, and when it’s hijacked by racial ideologues, it can do tremendous damage, not only to Google’s users and consumers but actually to American society,” he said.

“What we see inside these companies is that increasingly, the ideology of Google employees is actively hostile to the United States.”

Leaked Docs at Google Expose ‘Anti-Racism’ Initiative: Ben Shapiro Listed in ‘White Supremacy Pyramid’ (westernjournal.com)

Kellyanne Conway, a former senior Trump counselor, posted a fiery message to  President Joe Biden Wednesday, after receiving an email from the administration telling her to resign from the U.S. Air Force Academy board or be fired.

“President, Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should,” Conway posted to Twitter, captioning a letter she wrote to POTUS.

President Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should. pic.twitter.com/HuRYM4bLYP

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

“Your decision is disappointing,” Conway wrote in the letter, “but understandable given the need to distract from a news cycle that has you mired in multiple self-inflicted crises and plummeting poll numbers, including a rise in new COVID cases, a dismal jobs report, inflation, record amount of drugs coming across the southern border, and, of course, the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan that left hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies stranded under Taliban rule.”

In a follow-up post reacting to criticism on left-wing social media site Twitter, Conway suggested her foes “get some fresh air” and “make a friend” offline.

“Since I’m not the Conway on Twitter regularly,” she wrote, referencing her husband George Conway, “I’d forgotten how left-wing it is and how nutty some people are. LOLOL. I’m WORRIED for you. Get some fresh air, folks. Wear pants that button and zipper again. Get a hobby that doesn’t involve a keyboard. Make a friend.”

Since I’m not the Conway on Twitter regularly, I’d forgotten how left-wing it is and how nutty some people are. LOLOL. I’m WORRIED for you. Get some fresh air, folks. Wear pants that button and zipper again. Get a hobby that doesn’t involve a keyboard. Make a friend. https://t.co/k1mR2JVLON

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 8, 2021

Conway was not alone in her defiant message. Trump-era White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer announced Wednesday that he will not be resigning from the Naval Academy Board and will instead join a lawsuit against the Biden administration.

“All Trump appointees, including myself, have been kicked off the boards of the United States Naval Academy Air Force Academy in West Point in an unprecedented move by the Biden administration,” Spicer announced his Newsmax show, “Spicer & Company.”

“I’m announcing tonight for the first time that I will not be submitting my resignation and I will be joining a lawsuit to fight this,” he told viewers.

Earlier in the day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested Conway, Spicer, and others from the past administration are not “qualified” to be on the board and do not “align” with Biden administration “values.”

“The President’s objective is what any president’s objective is — to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with your values,” Psaki said at the presser. “And so yes, that was an ask that was made.”

“I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the President’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration,” she added.

The Daily Wire on Wednesday reported on the unprecedented move by the administration to remove Trump era officials:

The Joe Biden administration is purging the federal government’s constellation of advisory boards and commissions of Donald Trump appointees, even though such people are typically appointed to fixed terms and are not removed by new presidents.

Officials received a curt letter, one dated today, saying “Please submit your resignation to me by the close of business today. Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight. Thank you.”

The removals range from highly credentialed experts at obscure entities where politics are unlikely to be an issue, such as the Arctic Research Commission, to military service academies.

In some cases, the Biden administration initially opted to refused to convene the commissions, including the National Board for Education Sciences — meaning the Biden administration chose to suspend a board dedicated to science in education during a year defined by schools’ attempt to grapple with how they should respond to the coronavirus, seemingly to ensure that no one tied to Trump would have a voice.

Related: Sean Spicer: ‘I Will Not Resign’ From Naval Academy; Suing Biden Admin For Kicking Him Off Board

‘I’m Not Resigning, But You Should’: Kellyanne Conway Fires At Biden Over Military Academy Board Removal | The Daily Wire

Karl Eikenberry – a former Ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden – now collaborates with several Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups seeking to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” to the regime and works for a state-run university in China, The National Pulse can reveal.

The sole political appointee to fill the role in the Obama-Biden years, Eikenberry served as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. His appointment followed his service as a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army focusing on Afghanistan, overseeing the training of the now-defunct government’s army and police forces.

Since his departure from the role, Eikenberry has affiliated with several Chinese Communist Party-run institutes and initiatives.

In addition to serving as a senior advisor to the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense, he doubles as a Visiting Professor at Schwartzman College housed at Tsinghua University. The alma mater of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, Tsinghua University has a history of launching cyberattacks against the U.S. government.

Tsinghua also has a “clear connection between them and the state administration for technology and industry in discussions on what [they] can do to help the national security,” according to former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department Official Nicholas Eftimiades.

Similarly, Eikenberry is an International Security fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). The National Pulse has previously highlighted the center’s deep collaboration with several Chinese military and government-linked entities, including those flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for espionage and blacklisted by the U.S. government.

Eikenberry is also part of a working group based at the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) 21st Century China Center, which is predominantly funded by the co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. The China-based firm has close financial and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its military. It has been flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond academia, Eikenberry has also participated in dialogues at the East-West Institute sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). The organization was founded by the Vice-Chairman Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”

Another event sponsor – the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) – has been flagged by the U.S. government as a United Front group operating under the auspices of China’s military.

“CAIFC has additional ties to the Ministries of State Security, Civil Affairs, and Foreign Affairs, and it is a platform for deploying undercover intelligence gatherers,” the federal commission’s report adds.

Despite these ties, Eikenberry participated in a 2018 military-to-military dialogue – the Sanya Initiative – alongside Chinese Communist Party counterparts sponsored by CUSEF and CAIFC.

“Retired American and Chinese senior flag officers and executives of the hosting organizations met in Beijing to discuss critical issues of mutual concern and interest impacting the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship, including North Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea, emerging technologies, as well as other regional security challenges,” an event summary notes.

Foreign Policy magazine noted how the Chinese regime effort aims to subvert former American military leaders into advocating on behalf of Beijing and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA):

• One of those PLA projects is the Sanya Initiative, an exchange program that brings together U.S. and Chinese former high-ranking military leaders. On the Chinese side, the Sanya Initiative is led by a bureau of the PLA that engages in political warfare and influence operations, according to Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute.

• Sometimes the results of such high-level exchanges aren’t subtle. In February 2008, PLA participants in the Sanya Initiative asked their U.S. counterparts to persuade the Pentagon to delay publishing a forthcoming report about China’s military buildup, according to a segment excised from the 2011 annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

• The U.S. members complied, though their request was not successful.

Obama-Biden Afghan Ambassador Is Now A China-Funded Academic Tied To Influence Groups ‘Neutralizing’ Beijing’s Enemies. (thenationalpulse.com)

The Biden administration has forced out nearly a dozen Trump administration appointees from their positions on the advisory boards of U.S. military service academies, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a press briefing that the administration was seeking to ensure that the advisory board members were “qualified to serve” and “aligned” with President Joe Biden’s values.

Shortly afterwards, White House spokesman Chris Meagher said that all of the Trump appointees “either resigned” or have been “terminated from their position.” Eighteen members of military service advisory boards, including 11 officials appointed by former President Donald Trump, were asked to resign or be fired.

These included former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway; the former president’s first White House press secretary Sean Spicer; Trump’s second national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster; and Russell T. Vought, a former White House Office of Management and Budget director under Trump.

“The president’s objective … was to ensure you have nominees and people serving on these boards who are qualified to serve on them and who are aligned with our core values,” Psaki said on Wednesday. “I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified or not political to serve on these boards.”

The duties of the boards are “to inquire into the state of morale and discipline, the curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods, and other matters relating to the academy which the Board decides to consider.”

Members typically serve the entirety of their three-year terms.

Several of the officials posted screenshots on social media of the letters they said the White House sent them on Wednesday, asking that they either resign by 6 p.m. that day or be fired.

“On behalf of President Biden, I am writing to request your resignation,” White House Personnel Director Cathy Russell wrote to the appointees. “Please submit your resignation to me by the close of business today. Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight. Thank you.”

Conway shared a letter addressed to Biden, saying that she wouldn’t resign from her advisory position at the Air Force Academy.

“President Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should,” she wrote on Twitter.

“Three former directors of presidential personnel inform me that this request is a break from presidential norms,” Conway wrote in her letter to the president. “It certainly seems petty and political, if not personal.”

Vought posted on Twitter a copy of the letter from Russell, saying he wouldn’t resign as a member of the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy.

“No. It’s a three year term,” Vought wrote on Twitter.

“Instead of focusing on the stranded Americans left in #Afghanistan, President Biden is trying to terminate the Trump appointees to the Naval Academy, West Point and Air Force Academy,” Spicer said on Twitter.

Spicer said on his show on Newsmax that he and other appointees intend to file a lawsuit challenging the decision.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for additional comment.

Biden Forces Out Trump Appointees From Military Academy Advisory Boards (theepochtimes.com)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned the United States could hit its debt limit by next month, warning Congress that she will run out of maneuvering room.

In a letter to leaders of Congress, Yellen said she can’t provide a specific date for when she’ll be not able to keep the federal government funded unless the chamber raises the debt limit. Should that happen, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, funding for Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicare will likely be halted.

“Given this uncertainty, the Treasury Department is not able to provide a specific estimate of how long the extraordinary measures will last,” the secretary wrote in the letter (pdf). “However, based on our best and most recent information, the most likely outcome is that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted during the month of October. We will continue to update Congress as more information becomes available.”

And Yellen warned that once cash on hand and other available measures are exhausted, the United States “would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history.”

The U.S. debt ceiling, which reached $22 trillion in August 2019, is the legal limit on the amount of debt the federal government can borrow, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Lawmakers missed a July deadline to extend former President Donald Trump’s two-year suspension on the borrowing limit, which was reinstated in August 2021.

For months, Yellen has warned lawmakers to raise the U.S. debt limit before the end of July and warned that a delay could cause “irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets.”

“Waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen also wrote in her letter. “At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.”

Her letter was dated Wednesday and was sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

In response to the warning, Pelosi told reporters this week that Congress has several means to raise or suspend the debt ceiling before funds run out.

“We’d like to do it in a bipartisan way,” Pelosi said. “We don’t ever want to put the full faith and credit [of the U.S.] in doubt.

Biden Administration Warns US May Hit Debt Limit in a Few Weeks (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats in the House Education and Labor Committee revealed how their committee would use the $761 billion from the $3.5 trillion budget resolution package, saying that among other things, the money will be used to lower the cost of childcare and provide free preschool and community college.

“The Education and Labor Committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act makes historic investments that will lower costs for nearly every family, create good-paying jobs for American workers, and provide our nation’s children the strong foundation they deserve,” said Chairman Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) in a press statement Wednesday.

The committee will begin marking up the legislation on Thursday with members offering amendments in an attempt to change how the $761 billion is spent.

The legislation would subsidize childcare programs, making it so most families would not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income for each child’s daycare. The funding would also subsidize a pay increase for childcare workers, so facilities could hire more workers.

The funding would also subsidize universal pre-K, so all 3- and 4-year-olds could go to school.

The funding allots $111 billion to provide two years of free community colleges, invest in the Pell Grant program, and fund educational institutions that cater to blacks, Hispanics, and minorities to make quality degrees more affordable for those groups.

The committee’s bill provides $82 billion to public schools for repairs and upgrades. It will invest close to $80 billion in workforce development programs including training people for climate change energy-related jobs.

The funding will also include about $35 billion for school food programs during the school year and the summer months, as well as provide money to upgrade school kitchens.

Ranking Member of the committee Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-S.C.) slammed the committee’s bill, calling it a part of Biden’s “reckless,” “partisan” spending.

“Congressional Democrats could empower individuals and entrepreneurs to make the financial, professional, educational, and parental decisions that work best for them. Instead, Democrats are pushing an irresponsible spending scheme that will double down on the inflation crisis and allow the federal government to infringe on Americans’ liberties,” Foxx said in a press statement Wednesday.

Democrats are pressing forward with their $3.5 trillion budget resolution even though there is opposition within their own party, with some moderates saying this level of spending will increase inflation and saddle future generations with federal debt.

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has repeatedly said he does not think that this level of spending is wise and his party should put a pause on the legislation until after the pandemic and after assessing the recent inflation.

Republicans have all said they will oppose the budget resolution, but Democrats do not need the GOP to vote in favor of the bill if they get all 50 Democrat senators to vote in favor of the package.

Top Democrat leaders have shared confidence that their party will rally together to pass the massive funding bill.

Schumer was asked by a local ABC news reporter on Sunday if he can convince all members of his party, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has also said she will not support the resolution, to vote in favor of the massive spending bill.

“I’m going to do my best and you know so far, after some discussion, and some compromise they have gone along with previous bills. Let’s hope it happens again,” said Schumer. “I have a caucus that runs from Bernie Sanders on the left to Joe Manchin, on the right. How do I bring them all together when you only have 50 votes and every one of them counts?”

Meanwhile, Sanders said he speaks directly to caucus members, in an effort to further negotiations on the budget bill.

“After a lot of negotiations and pain—and I’m going to be on the phone all week—what we are going to do is pass the most comprehensive bill for working families that this country has seen,” Sanders told The New York Time

House Education and Labor Committee Reveals How They Would Spend Their Portion of the $3.5 Trillion (theepochtimes.com)