Calling the proposed Democratic budget package of progressive sugar plums “fiscal insanity,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Wednesday said he has not budged in his opposition to the mammoth spending bill.
Manchin and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have long been holdouts in the Senate and have indicated opposition to a bill that totals $3.5 trillion, a sum Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders has already said is “not enough” for what should be doled out to social programs.
This week, they were courted by President Joe Biden in an effort to get them on board, as CBS News reported. The two votes matter to Democrats because without them – and with continued united Republican opposition – the spending bill cannot pass a Senate that’s divided between the parties 50-50.
That makes Manchin’s announcement a huge roadblock to progressive plans.
Manchin explained his stand in a statement on his website.
“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question – how much is enough?” he wrote.
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” he wrote.
Manchin wrote that claims that spending will not fuel increased inflation are pipe dreams.
“Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax,” he wrote.
Manchin also expressed doubts that an unprecedented deluge of taxpayer dollars will create the version of nirvana its supporters claim will take place.
“Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery,” he wrote.
Manchin noted he supports tax code changes to address fairness concerns, but that there is a limit.
“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he wrote.
Manchin did not rule out further conversations about an appropriate amount of spending, but wrote that “I cannot – and will not — support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”
Manchin also hinted that the final solution may not be a one-party bill, as the $3.5 trillion package was designed to be.
“If there is one final lesson that will continue to guide me in this difficult debate ahead it is this: America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” he wrote. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”
Sinema is doing her negotiating directly with the WH and Schumer. She’s been at the WH for meetings 10 times since the summer. Durbin, No. 2, himself acknowledged being in the dark about her and Manchin’s demands. Sanders: “I don’t want to talk about Sinema and Manchin.” https://t.co/GvnwyQ8oYs
Progressives in the House of Representatives say they want to move forward regardless of what Manchin does.
“Progressives won’t back down on delivering paid leave, education, health care, child care, and climate action because of an arbitrary deadline,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, according to Fox Business. “We’re sticking to our deal and delivering for the people.”
Radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota indicated disgust with Manchin and Sinema.
“It is saddening to see them use Republican talking points. We obviously didn’t envision having Republicans as part of our party,” she said, according to The Hill.
The number of those apprehended crossing the southern border illegally during fiscal year 2021 that ends today exceeds the population of 11 American states.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, so far there have been over 1.5 million encounters of people crossing the southwest border through August.
That number will go up by 200,000 or more when September’s encounters are included, if recent trends continue.
The current tally already exceeds the total populations of 11 states, according to 2019 figures, including Hawaii (population: about 1,416,000), New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming (population: about 579,000).
By comparison, there were just 458,000 encounters in 2020.
CBP Encounters, Southwest Land Border. (Check out those 2021 ‘single adult’ numbers.)
No need to travel to see it ‘first hand’… It’s right there on the freaking website! pic.twitter.com/7G7q1sbaOn
Last week, 26 Republican governors — including border governors Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas — sent an urgent letter to President Joe Biden seeking a meeting to discuss the border crisis within 15 days.
“As chief executives of our states, we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders,” they wrote.Do you think Biden is derelict in his duty to secure the border?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states. A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens,” the governors added.
NEW 🚨 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis
“More fentanyl has been seized this fiscal year than the last three years combined—almost 10,500 pounds of fentanyl when only 2 milligrams prove fatal. This is enough to kill seven times the U.S. population,” they further noted.
The governors argued they are doing what they can to mitigate the situation, but that in the end, it is a federal issue.
‘[O]ur Constitution requires that the President must faithfully execute the immigration laws passed by Congress,” they wrote. “Not only has the federal government created a crisis, it has left our states to deal with challenges that only the federal government has a duty to solve.”
Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psakiaccused Republicans of being more interested in making speeches than solving the border crisis.
“There are a lot of Republicans out there giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border,” she said at Friday’s news briefing, according to a White House transcript. “Not many who are putting forward solutions or steps that we could take. So we’re a little tired of the speeches,” she said.
.@PressSec Jen Psaki: “There are a lot of Republicans out there giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border. Not many who are putting forward solutions or steps that we could take. So we’re a little tired of the speeches.” pic.twitter.com/ujqfcJOrOX
On Biden’s first day in office, he suspended construction of the border wall and ended former President Donald Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy for those seeking asylum in the United States, which Republicans have argued triggered the 21-year high surge in border crossings.
In a Newsmax interview this week, James Carafano, a national security expert with the Heritage Foundation who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during a 25-year Army career, argued that what happened in Del Rio, Texas, this month with a massing of migrants on the border, has now become part of the playbook for illegal entry into the U.S.
“They’ll just throw a camp up on the border, put thousands of people there and then the Biden team will be so anxious to get it off of the news cycle, they’ll just take those people and ship them right into the interior,” Carafano said.
“Look, we’re going to wind up with not millions, but if we keep this up, ten of millions of people coming in,” he predicted.
Carafano argued that the Biden administration really wants open borders, despite anything officials might say to the contrary.
“They’d like to hide that fact as much as possible from the American people, but at the end of the day, when the open-borders people say, ‘Do this,’ they jump,” he said.
The former West Point professor contended that having an open border, in addition to the unsustainable flow of migrants into the U.S., imperils national security.
“The other key thing is, we have a wide open border. It’s more wide open than it was on 9/11,” he said near the end of the interview, pointing out that the terrorist group al Qaida is reconstituting in Afghanistan and looking to hit the U.S. again.
“So it’s all fun and games, my friends,” Carafano said. “It’s all a big laugh until more people die than died on 9/11, and that’s going to happen, if we don’t do something.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a habit of responding to difficult questions with sarcasm, condescension or downright snark. Earlier this week, she appeared to get so miffed by a press query that she forgot to mask up.
At the end of her Monday media briefing, Psaki was gathering up her notes to exit the White House briefing room when a reporter — as they are wont to do — shouted a parting question to her about President Joe Biden’s poll numbers.
“The president’s polling continues to collapse–” the reporter began, but Psaki quickly spoke over her.
“I know you like to shout at the end. Next time we’ll do it during the briefing,” she replied in a sarcastic, condescending tone.
Psaki then put on an artificial smile, walked off the stage, and in a voice still dripping with snark, repeated “thanks everyone,” and “thank you so much” before finally leaving the briefing room.
Psaki often appears to work hard to convey the kind of cool and in-control demeanor that made Trump supporters such big fans of White House press secretaries Sarah Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany, who expertly thwarted the attacks of the activist media on a routine basis without batting an eye.
Yet Psaki was clearly bothered by this comment, as she left the stage without obediently remasking as she was finished speaking, as per White House guidelines.
Lately, Psaki has typically paused when she is finished with her briefing to put her mask back on, during which time it is normal for reporters to shout out last-minute questions they’re hoping she’ll answer.Is this another case of Democrats’ double standards?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Reporters, of course, remain masked during the whole of the briefings as the White House requires. The guidelines were reimposed over the summer after a brief pause in the practice before the delta variant prompted a fresh wave of COVID scares.
At the time, as The New York Times reported, Psaki said she was prepared to wear masks again, although she does not appear to be required to do so while giving briefings.
When President Donald Trump was in office, he was roundly criticized both for his treatment of the establishment media and his own failure to wear a mask in public.
The Biden administration, for which Psaki is the chief spokeswoman, promised to be the administration that was going to play by the rules and respect our nation’s free press.
And here Psaki is, throwing shade at reporters and forsaking masks that she herself has insisted are necessary to save lives.
The Democrats seem to genuinely believe that what they expect of everyone else — particularly us plebs in the American public — doesn’t apply to them.
After all, during Monday’s briefing, Psaki had been pressed on a comment that Biden made Friday while meeting with Indian Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which he’d disparaged the American press on a hot mic and suggested the Indian media was “better behaved.”
As the New York Post reported, several reporters had taken their grievances to Psaki immediately after Biden’s Oval Office meeting with Modi, and Psaki was then grilled about the incident on Monday.
Maybe this was why she was feeling so annoyed with the press pool and distracted to the point that she forgot to dutifully swath her face before leaving the podium.
She’d already fielded a question on why Biden would suggest that the American media is worse than the Indian media when the latter nation ranks 142nd in the world for press freedoms, so perhaps a question on the president’s dropping polling numbers was just too much for her to handle.
Yes, it certainly can’t be easy being the press secretary for the disastrous Biden administration and being expected to live up to all those lofty goals it set for itself by slandering and smearing the unwashed, unmasked masses who criticize the media.
Over the weekend, House Democrats reportedly snuck a provision into the controversial $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill that could raise the fines for violating the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate from $14,000 per violation to $70,000 per violation, and “willful” and “repeat” violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations could cost some businesses a shocking $700,000 per incident.
“Buried on page 168 of the House Democrats’ 2,465-page mega bill is a tenfold increase in fines for employers that ‘willfully,’ ‘repeatedly,’ or even seriously violate a section of labor law that deals with hazards, death, or serious physical harm to their employees,” Forbes reported Tuesday.
“The increased fines on employers could run as high as $70,000 for serious infractions, and $700,000 for willful or repeated violations—almost three-quarters of a million dollars for each fine,” the outlet noted, adding that if the provision is “enacted into law, vax enforcement could bankrupt non-compliant companies even more quickly than the $14,000 OSHA fine anticipated under Biden’s announced mandate.”
The Biden administration may have begun laying the groundwork for this change over the summer when OSHA “published an emergency Covid-19 rule in the Federal Register taking jurisdiction over and providing justification for Covid-19 being a workplace hazard for healthcare employment.” That jurisdiction currently covers “encouraging” vaccines.
Early in September, Biden announced his 100-or-more employee Covid-19 vaccine mandate and tasked OSHA with drafting an enforcement rule to exert emergency vaccine compliance authority over companies with 100 or more employees.
The legislative provision that passed the Budget Committee raises the OSHA fines for non-compliance 10 times higher – and up to $700,000 for each “willful” or “repeated” violation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not announced when the House will vote on the reconciliation bill that includes the new OSHA fines.
If the legislation is enacted, OSHA could levy draconian fines to enforce Biden’s vaccine mandate, a move that could rapidly bankrupt non-compliant companies. The Biden mandate affects employers collectively employing an estimated 80 millionworkers.
The new OSHA regulations are expected to build on the existing “general duty” requirements, which currently demand health care workplaces implement an “infection-control plan developed with worker participation” and mandate “the wearing of masks and respirators,” as well as “Covid-19 screenings at entry points. The current regulation “compels paid time off for employees to get vaccinated or recover from a shot’s side effects.”
OSHA has shown a willingness, particularly in the Biden administration to pursue “willful” violations of this clause. According to Bloomberg Law, “President Joe Biden‘s OSHA, which June 10 released an emergency rule limited to health-care employers, has used the general duty clause against several types of workplaces, from a mobile phone repair shop to a medical clinic. It twice has alleged willful violations, which carry a maximum fine of $136,532.”
The prosecutable “illful” violations included a workplace that specifically did not allow employees to wear masks, and one workplace where a health care provider allegedly continued to work after becoming infected with COVID-19, “passing the virus to co-workers.”
Congress has also been tasked with increasing OSHA’s capacity for enforcing its COVID-19 regulations: the administration’s Biden fiscal 2022 budget requests that “OSHA’s enforcement staff…grow to 1,545 positions in 2022, a 15% increase.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) seemed to mock the far-left-wing of the Democrat Party, as well as a reporter’s question on Wednesday when asked about where she stood on the Democrats’ massive $3.5 trillion social spending bill.
“Sinema, a onetime school social worker and Green Party-aligned activist, vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats,” The New York Times reported. “She counts John McCain, the Republican senator who died in 2018, as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party.”
Frank Thorp, a reporter with NBC News, highlighted an exchange that happened with Sinema today when she was confronted about where she stood on the multi-trillion dollar package:
Q: What do you say to progressives who are frustrated they don’t know where you are?
SINEMA: “I’m in the Senate.”
Q: There are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated they don’t know where your are either.
SINEMA: “I’m clearly right in front of the elevator.”
Q: What do you say to progressives who are frustrated they don’t know where you are?
SINEMA: “I’m in the Senate.”
Q: There are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated they don’t know where your are either.
SINEMA: “I’m clearly right in front of the elevator.”
Sinema’s opposition to the $3.5 trillion bill, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated could actually cost over $5 trillion, comes at a time when inflation has skyrocketed under the Biden administration.
Sinema has faced intense criticism for standing her ground against her party’s attempt to ram through the multi-trillion package.
Sinema was even threatened by the Arizona Democrat Party that they would give her a vote of “NO CONFIDENCE” if she did not give into to Democrats’ demands:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: The Arizona Democratic Party will closely watch Senator Sinema’s votes in the coming weeks and if Senator Sinema does not vote in favor of Filibuster reform to change the Senate rules in order to allow the passage of The For The People Act – voting rights bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, and other urgent legislation, for example the PRO ACT, that has already passed by the House and if she votes against the Senate Reconciliation Budget Bill, also referred to as the Human Infrastructure Package and the American Families Plan supported by President Biden and the vast majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and if she continues to delay, disrupt, or votes to gut the Reconciliation Package of its necessary funding, then the Arizona Democratic Party State Committee will go officially on record and will give Senate Sinema a vote of NO CONFIDENCE.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED – that before the next State Committee Meeting (Jan. 2022) the ADP State Committee gives the ADP Chair and the Executive Board the authority and power, if the conditions of the preceding paragraph are met, to issues a formal letter of CENSURE to Senator Sinema with the clear understanding she could potentially lose the support of the ADP in 2024.
They say when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When it comes to Vice President Kamala Harris, she can count on energetic admirers in the press who take on the task of making lemonade out of her lemons.
Take Washington Post White House reporter Cleve Wootson Jr., who accentuated the positive in a Sunday story headlined “Handed a pile of no-win issues, Harris builds a network: Gains credit with liberals focused on migration, abortion and the vote.”
One would think that being handed “volatile social issues” such as illegal immigration, abortion and voting rights may be very damaging for Harris. But no! Wootson touted that, “behind the scenes, Harris has been quietly seizing the opportunity to build a liberal national network of dedicated activists that is convinced she embraces its causes.”
Wootson found delighted leftists who appreciate the allyship of Harris. “Advocates invited to the White House, or to Harris’s ceremonial office in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building, often express appreciation that their opinions and standing are being amplified by a political star.”
Is this reporting? Or merely advertising? Cuddly Cleve has a way with sweet talk.
The story began with Harris meeting with abortion advocate Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Women’s Health in Austin, Texas. Miller said she appreciated how Harris would “talk straight to the extreme politicians in this country,” and she meant Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
That’s fascinating. The House of Representatives just passed a bill called the “Women’s Health Protection Act” with 218 of 219 Democrats that is so extreme on untrammeled abortion that it would require states to allow abortions of an unborn baby viable outside the womb if one physician can proclaim that an abortion would protect the woman’s health. An army of Gov. Ralph Northams could make post-birth abortions happen across America.
But sure, tag the anti-abortion Republicans as the “extreme politicians in this country.”
Liberal extremism is no vice in the pursuit of the presidency. Wootson added, “If Harris has a path to the presidency, it is likely to run through an energized liberal base — not, as it did for Biden, through blocs of centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans.”
Political scientist Matthew Wilson argued that Harris doesn’t need to be broadly popular to win the presidency, but can triumph as the “champion of a base cause.”
The Washington Post story noted Harris was “dogged” by Republicans on the issue of “irregular migration.” She was hounded as the “border czar” who wouldn’t go to the border. But when she (sort of) went there in June, to El Paso, it was a triumph with her base.
Fernando Garcia of the left-wing Border Network for Human Rights, a group bearing hashtags such as “#HugsNotWalls,” told Wootson, “I made remarks in regard to not forgetting our history — this border, the U.S.-Mexico border, is the new Ellis Island. And then when she went over and had a press conference at the hangar, she said the same thing.”
Wootson concluded the story by telling readers that an audience with Harris gives activists the proverbial “seat at the table,” and then they will feel they are heard and this will make them more open to “bring about a Harris administration,” whenever Joe Biden isn’t going to be president anymore.
“She’s breaking ground, and Black women will keep fighting and keep supporting her,” said Melanie Campbell of the Black Women’s Roundtable, another leftist collective.
Harris is not exactly holding a pile of press conferences, so almost no one can name her press secretary. But keep an eye out for Wootson. He’s making a good case for himself.
The CEO of Pfizer (market cap: $240.5 billion) is Albert Bourla (2020 compensation package: $21 million). Bourla and his colleagues want your kids to start getting jabbed with his company’s COVID vaccine by Thanksgiving. Triumphant after the Biden administration last week approved Pfizer’s COVID booster shots (estimated global sales: $26 billion), the company is touting study results (preliminary and non-peer-reviewed), which purportedly show “robust” antibody response and “favorable” safety outcomes for children ages 5-11 who received a two-dose combo in clinical trials.
Now, here are some facts all moms and dads must know about Pfizer before they allow their young daughters and sons to be guinea pigs of a profit-maximizing multinational corporation.
Twenty five years ago, Pfizer sent a team to Kano, Nigeria during a meningococcal meningitis outbreak. They conducted an “open label” (unblinded) clinical trial involving 200 children, half of whom were given Pfizer’s new antibiotic Trovan and half of whom received the gold standard treatment, ceftriaxone. Watchdogs noted that Pfizer used substantially lower doses of ceftriaxone to rig the trials in favor of Trovan.
At the time of the Kano trial, Pfizer was pushing for FDA approval of their latest potential billion-dollar cash cow for pediatric use. Eleven Nigerian children died: five after receiving Pfizer’s product and six after receiving lower-than-normal doses of the older drug.
Pay close attention, parents. A Washington Post investigation reported that one 10-year-old girl suffering from meningitis was not taken off experimental Trovan and given standard, proven treatments by Pfizer’s clinical trial operators–when it was clear that her condition was deteriorating. One of her eyes froze. She lost strength, then died. A Nigerian doctor who supervised the studies for Pfizer admitted that his office had “backdated an approval letter” for the human trials, which “may have been written a year after the study had taken place.” Informed consent was undermined by language and education barriers.
One outraged African newspaper demanded that the government “tell us whether our children were used as guinea pigs and, if so, who committed such criminality and who is liable.” After years of protracted litigation with the pharmaceutical behemoth, Nigerian families reached a $75 million out-of-court settlement sealed with a confidentiality clause.
A separate whistleblower lawsuit filed by Pfizer’s former associate medical director for central research and Yale pediatric infectious disease specialist, Juan Walterspiel, alleged that the company fired him in retaliation for warning before and after the deadly Kano fiasco that the study methods were “improper and unsafe.” Walterspiel further claimed that Pfizer had bribed Nigerian officials to continue the study and cut safety corners because “stock options and bonuses were at stake.”
Pfizer tried to suppress Walterspiel’s allegations, but was forced into a settlement after Wikileaks published diplomatic cables showing that Pfizer had attempted to dig up dirt on a Nigerian prosecutor to bully him into dropping lawsuits by state and federal authorities in Africa.
A secret internal Nigerian government report, leaked years after it had been written, concluded that Pfizer violated international law by conducting an “illegal trial of an unregistered drug” and failing to inform children’s parents that the meningitis treatment was experimental. The government panel called the Trovan tragedy a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant.”
If you think this corruption was all an anomaly, or misunderstood altriuism, or “misinformation,” I encourage you to start doing your own homework before your child’s health and life become just another cost of doing Big Pharma Business.
Search the Internet and PubMed (while you still can) for “Pfizer,” “Celebrex,” “Bextra,” “Geodon,” “Zyvox,” “Lyrica,” and “Neurontin.”
Find out more about why Pfizer paid the largest fine for health care fraud in American history ($2.3 billion) in 2009 to resolve allegations that it illegally caused false claims to be submitted to the government and paid kickbacks to health care providers to induce them to prescribe their products.
Learn more about the nearly 3,000 people who developed suicidal thoughts and severe psychological disorders after taking Pfizer’s smoking cessation drug, Chantix. Pfizer paid out nearly $300 million to settle those cases. Or the nearly 10,000 women who won claims of nearly $1 billion after developing breast cancer linked to Pfizer’s Prempro hormone replacement therapy.
And just remember, parents, that the pandemic profiteers who stand to gain unprecedented, multi-billion-dollar windfalls from endless vaccine boosters administered cradle to grave around the world have the most terrifying man-made immunity ever created: immunity from liability for their corner-cutting, life-endangering business model.
Parents: Protect your children at all costs from Big Pharma so your children’s lives don’t become costs of Big Pharma doing business.
Isolation & Quarantine Team Consultants (PS2) – Non-Permanent – DOH5814
APPLYSalary $3,294.00 – $4,286.00 MonthlyLocation Lewis County – Centralia, WAJob TypeFull Time – Non-PermanentDepartmentDept. of HealthJob NumberDOH5814ClosingContinuous
Update 9/20/2021 – 4:45 pm: Additional information regarding the Isolation and Quarantine facility has been included.
Important Note: As stated in Governor’s Proclamation 21-14, all employees engaging in work for the Department of Health are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on or before October 18, 2021. Proof of vaccination will be verified by the Office of Human Resources after an employment offer has been extended and accepted. See vaccine requirement timeline. Please reach out to the Office of Human Resources at HR@doh.wa.gov if you need information on a medical or religious accommodation.Apply early! Application review will be ongoing. Initial review begins September 21, 2021. This recruitment is open and continuous. The hiring authority reserves the right to make a hiring decision and/or to close the recruitment at any time. The mission of the Department of Health (DOH) is to protect and improve the health of people in Washington. The division of Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) ensures the agency and its local health, tribal, and medical partners are better prepared to respond to and recover from public health emergencies, major disasters, and terrorist activities that affect the health of the people of Washington State.
The Isolation and Quarantine (I&Q) Section works to decompress hospitals by supporting local and state isolation and quarantine, Alternate Care Facility (ACF), and patient transport (EMS) by partnering with local governments (Tribes, Counties, Cities) and communities, state agencies, and other entities in the event of an emergency.
People who test positive for COVID-19 or who are exposed to someone who tests positive are asked to isolate or quarantine (I & Q) away from other people for 10 to 14 days in order to reduce risk of transmitting the virus to others. Most people are able to isolate or quarantine in their own homes. In Washington State, providing for I & Q is the responsibility of local jurisdictions.
The state Isolation and Quarantine facility was created for individuals who are not Washington residents but are traveling in our state and test positive for COVID-19 or who have been exposed to someone who tests positive and do not have a residence or other location in which to spend their 10-14 day isolation or quarantine period.
Our state facility operates from within a motel in Lewis County. Our team provide a number of different services for our guests. Team members provide transportation to and from the facility in vans that have been altered to separate air flow to protect the driver. There is a nurse on staff who checks guest vitals multiple times per day to ensure that guests whose condition worsens get timely transport to a medical facility for care. Another team member will accompany the nurse on their rounds and take notes for the nurse. Team members provide for all aspects of the guest’s stay to include providing laundry services, delivering hygiene products, delivering ready-made foods or microwaveable foods to the guests. Team members also answer phones, check inventory and keep track of supplies needed to safely operate the facility. Team members receive training in fit and use of personal protection equipment (PPE). In addition, team members may be asked to provide technical assistance to local health jurisdictions or tribal nations on facility operation and performance.
Learn more about Isolation and Quarantine for COVID-19 Under the direction of the Team Lead, these Program Specialist 2 (PS 2) positions are responsible for participating in program planning and evaluation of health service delivery products and identifying needs for personnel, supplies, and activities to support community and state response activities. These positions implement policies and procedures that guide the work of the team. This recruitment will be used to fill three (3) non-permanent full-time Program Specialist 2 positions located within the Division of Emergency Preparedness & Response. These Program Specialist 2 positions are anticipated to last twelve (12) months from date of hire. The duty station for this position is in Centralia, WA at our State Isolation and Quarantine Facility. The facility is staffed 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. Staff may work any or all of the three shifts and may work overtime as needed to ensure adequate staffing of the facility.
About the Department of Health The vision of the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is equity and optimal health for all. Our mission is to work with others to protect and improve the health of all people in Washington state.
Our Values Good organizations know what they do and how they do it. Great organizations also understand why they do it. Our values are:
Human-centered: We see others as people who matter like we do and take into account their needs, challenges, contributions, and objectives.
Equity: We are committed to fairness and justice to ensure access to services, programs, opportunities, and information for all.
Collaboration: We seek partnership and collaboration to maximize our collective impact. We cannot achieve our vision alone.
Seven Generations: Inspired by Native American culture, we seek wisdom from those who came before us to ensure our current work protects those who will come after us.
Excellence: We strive to demonstrate best practices, high performance, and compelling value in our work every day.
Benefits of Working for DOH Washington is America’s Top State, according to U.S. News (2021), and provides one of the most competitive benefits packages in the nation.
We also offer:
Ahealthy life/work balance by offering flexible schedules and telework options for many positions.
Growth and development opportunities.
A wellness program that offers education, access to healthy food, and fitness classes.
Opportunities to serve your community through meaningful work.
A commitment to diversity and inclusion fosters an inclusive environment that encourages all employees to bring their authentic selves to work.
An Infant at Work Program based on the long-term health values of breastfeeding newborns and infant-parent bonding.
A modernized workplace.
Duties Include
Maintaining the readiness of the facility and equipment which includes ensuring contractors have cleaned the facility adequately. Staff may also be responsible for making beds, doing laundry, and restocking supplies.
Providing direct services to guests of the facility to include check-in, purchasing groceries and supplies for the site and guests, distributing microwavable/readymade meals and or sandwich fix and other resources, and ensuring all guests receive excellent customer service.
Assisting with inventory of resources: tracking PPE, food, and hygiene supplies. Notifying leadership of the need to order more supplies.
Assisting nurses on performing rounds by taking notes.
Maintaining facility cleanliness and processing guest laundry.
Providing guest transport to and from the facility.
Prepping the facility to receive guests, ensuring rooms are stocked and have been properly cleaned.
Providing outreach, education, and training to internal and external stakeholders.
What we’re looking for Our ideal candidate has a driving passion for the work, brings humility to their job and interactions, and understands how their actions affect others. They see the needs and objectives of others and take them into account while achieving their objectives, and they adapt their approach and expectations accordingly. Our ideal candidate is outward even when confronted with others that are not open or collaborative. They demonstrate resilience to model outward behaviors even when stressed or tired.
Required Qualifications
Option 1: Three (3) or more years of demonstrated experience working in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or a closely related field.
OR
Option 2: An Associate’s degree or higher in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or closely related field; AND one (1) or more years of experience working in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or closely related field.
OR
Option 3: A Bachelor’s Degree or higher in public health, healthcare, hospitality, customer service, or related field.
Desired Qualifications
Demonstrated experience dealing with institutional and jurisdictional problems and making independent decisions, as needed.
Knowledge of and experience with working in Emergency Operations Centers and under an ICS structure during actual emergencies, disasters and/or functional/full-scale exercises.
Community health experience.
Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) certification.
Experience as a Home Care Aide.
Application Process Intrigued? Click “Apply” to submit your detailed application profile along with the following:
A cover letter, describing how you meet the qualifications and why you are interested in this position.
A current resume.
Three (3) or more professional references, to be included in your profile. Please include at least one supervisor, peer, and (if you have supervised staff) someone you have supervised or led.
Important Note: Do not attach documents that contain a photo or private information (social security number, year of birth, transcripts, etc.) or documents that are password protected. These documents will not be reviewed and may cause errors within your application when downloaded.
Applicants wishing to claim Veterans Preference should attach a copy of their DD-214 (Member 4 copy), NGB 22, or signed verification of service letter from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to their application. Please remove or cover any personally identifiable data such as social security numbers and year of birth.
The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) is an equal opportunity employer. DOH strives to create a working environment that is inclusive and respectful. We prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, political affiliation, genetics, or disability.
This is a position covered by a bargaining unit for which the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) is the exclusive representative.
Conditions of Employment/Working Conditions With or without an accommodation, I am willing and able to:
Under the Governor’s Proclamation (21-14), agency employees are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on or before October 18, 2021. Proof of vaccination will be verified by the Office of Human Resources after an employment offer has been extended and accepted. Please reach out to the Office of Human Resources at HR@doh.wa.gov if you need information on a medical or religious accommodation.
Legally operate a state owned vehicle in a variety of weather conditions.
Work Sunday – Saturday (days off will vary).
Work weekends and shift work to include days, evenings, and night shift.
Occasionally work more than 40 hours per week and/or to adjust normally scheduled hours, which may include evening and weekends.
Travel as needed to transport guests to and from the facility.
Drive in heavy traffic, on interstate, highways, and within major metropolitan areas anywhere in Western Washington.
Work in a climate controlled I & Q facility office setting.
Work remaining stationary for extended periods of time, with repetitive motions.
Move and/or transport objects weighing up to 40 pounds.
Participate in emergency response activities and when the Agency Activation Center is activated.
Fit tested on N95 masks and wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at all times while in the facility.
The duty station for this position is in Centralia, WA at our State Isolation and Quarantine Facility. The facility is staffed 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. Staff may work any or all of the three shifts and may work overtime as needed to ensure adequate staffing of the facility.
If you have questions, need alternative formats or other assistance please contact Recruitment@doh.wa.gov, or TDD Relay at 1-800-833-6384 or 7-1-1. Technical support is provided by NEOGOV, 855-524-5627 (can’t log in, password or email issues, error messages).
This recruitment may be used to fill other positions of the same job classification across the agency. Once all the position(s) from the recruitment are filled, the recruitment may only be used to fill additional open positions for the next sixty (60) days.
Only applicants who follow the directions and complete the Application Process in-full will have their responses reviewed for consideration.
Texas mayor Pete Saenz: ‘It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working’
The Democratic mayor of Laredo, Texas, slammed President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, alleging that his party has no plan to fix the southern border and has abandoned local communities in favor of massive spending proposals for other interest groups.
Mayor Pete Saenz says that for months many of his city’s public services have been forced to focus on providing humanitarian aid, medical services, and transportation for thousands of migrants who pass through Laredo. Those are jobs, he says, the federal government should handle—particularly as the Biden administration loosens immigration restrictions. The added threat of COVID-19 has led Saenz to admit reluctantly that former president Donald Trump’s policies benefited Laredo residents.
“We need to truly secure the border,” Saenz told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview. “It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working.”
As Democrats scramble to pass $3.5 trillion in federal spending on programs ranging from free community college to “achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector,” Saenz notes how little of that money will be used to support Customs and Border Protection. The president’s budget allocates virtually no additional funds to the agency, which since is dealing not only with inflation but also with record numbers of illegal immigrants since Biden took office.
“We’re spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn’t given priority. Border Patrol isn’t being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded,” Saenz said. “Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they’re not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement generally.”
Laredo, which has a population of 260,000, is 95-percent Hispanic, making it one of the least diverse cities in the country. The city’s concerns over Democrats’ immigration politics challenge the conventional wisdom that strong border policies serve the anxieties of a dwindling white population. Republicans in 2020 doubled their turnout in the county in which Laredo sits, a pattern that continued in districts throughout southern Texas.
Biden’s immigration policy, Saenz contends, serves neither Americans nor migrants well. He pointed to the squalid Del Rio bridge under which thousands of Haitian migrants lived and the outbreaks of COVID-19 and other diseases in Laredo as evidence that a de facto open borders policy is far from the humanitarian solution. Instead, he said, the Biden administration should work on processing overseas asylum claims—the principle that guided the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
“The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum. I believe in the asylum process. It needs to be followed or changed. If we don’t like the way people are attempting to come, we can have them apply remotely or from either the country of origin or some other place that is close to the country of origin,” Saenz said. “No person wants to spend their last penny giving it to the cartels, then risking life and limb travel to try and get all the way to the border. And then there’s still the uncertainty that they may not even be granted asylum. At some point, they’ll be fugitives.”
The border crisis has caused Saenz to reevaluate his own politics. The mayor in 2015 told then-candidate Donald Trump that a large wall across the southern border was not practical. He told NPR in 2019 that Trump’s proposal to order the Pentagon to construct fencing in Laredo would be less effective than the “virtual wall” backed by Biden. But, Saenz says, Laredo residents are growing tired of empty promises from Democrats, particularly as the city’s fire department is forced to serve as shuttle service for migrants who get dropped off by charities and federal agencies. Saenz has not heard from the Biden administration on any plans for a “virtual wall” or any other measure to stem the tide of illegal immigrants.
“If Biden doesn’t come out with implementing a virtual wall, people here will be begging for a wall, a physical structure, simply because of his lack of attention to the border and especially the size of these surges,” he said. A wall would “deter or at least buy time, so to speak, for law enforcement.”
The Biden administration did not return a request for comment.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency grant for Laredo has eased the burden of paying city employees overtime to relocate migrants. That money came only after the city filed a federal lawsuit that accused the administration of negligence. Customs and Border Protection began transferring hundreds of migrants to the city after processing stations in other parts of Texas reached capacity. The number of migrants who have tested positive for COVID-19 led to targeted shutdowns in Laredo and a lack of hospital beds for city residents—in other words, a government-caused health catastrophe.
For now, the federal government has spared Laredo from facing the ongoing brunt of the migrant crisis. The city’s policy of busing out migrants has proven a temporary salve, but no community withstand the constant influx Laredo has seen.
“The border’s not secure and hasn’t been for a while,” he said. “We can’t continue this way, and I really haven’t seen any measures yet from Washington to remedy this.”
Federal immigration authorities are trying to alleviate the pressure on Laredo by redirecting the surge of migrants to other Texas towns. Customs and Border Protection announced the opening of a temporary processing facility 15 miles south of Laredo. Twenty-four hours earlier Saenz had to dispatch local police to assist federal authorities to break up a pair of stash houses in which smugglers had crammed dozens of people. Authorities were shocked to find that one of the locations was allegedly run by a teenager.
Situations like these, Saenz said, are entirely avoidable. “It’s really an embarrassment for us as a country now. You know we can do so much better.”
Sen. Hagerty slams Biden for ignoring sanctions meant to halt pipeline
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) said that a classified briefing on Wednesday about the contested Nord Stream 2 Russian energy pipeline renewed concerns that the Biden administration is bowing to Russia, which is completing a massive energy project that Republicans worry will solidify Moscow’s grip on Europe’s energy needs.
Hagerty, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that information provided by U.S. officials in a classified setting confirmed the Biden administration will continue to ignore congressionally mandated sanctions meant to stymie the completion of Nord Stream 2. Congress, he said, will not sit by as the administration bucks the law.
“The Biden administration continues to ignore mandatory congressional sanctions that would significantly delay and even halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” Hagerty said. “If the Biden administration will not enforce the law in good faith, Congress will need to act very soon to counter Vladimir Putin’s malign influence energy project.”
The Trump administration and Congress held up completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with sanctions on the companies that were building it. The Biden administration has stopped enforcing the economic penalties, effectively allowing Russia to make the pipeline operational.
“If Putin’s pipeline ever goes online, Russia will further weaponize the flow of energy in Europe in order to coerce Ukraine and other European nations and reduce their sovereignty, and ultimately damage the security and prosperity of the United States and our partners,” Hagerty said, echoing concerns from many other Republicans in the Senate.
Reports indicate that Russia is taking advantage of a massive gas shortage in Europe to force the European Union to expedite approvals for Nord Stream 2. If the pipeline becomes fully active, Russia will essentially control a large portion of Europe’s energy, allowing it to hold supplies hostage to advance its foreign policy goals.
Hagerty also said that Wednesday’s classified briefing left him “with far more questions than answers about the Biden administration’s weak and submissive policy toward Vladimir Putin’s malign influence energy project.”
Nourhan Mesbah faces calls to resign from student Democrats across the country
A College Democrats of America leader is facing pressure to resign after her anti-Semitic tweets resurfaced.
Just one day before Nourhan Mesbah was elected vice president of the College Democrats’ executive board, the national student club’s Jewish Caucus released a screenshot of a 2016 tweet where she blamed Jews for sabotaging Hillary Clinton in a debate against Donald Trump.
“I blame this debate on the yahood,” Mesbah tweeted. “Yahood” is the Arabic word for Jews.
In her tweet, Mesbah tagged Dima Jubara, an acquaintance with a long history of anti-Semitic statements—including one 2016 tweet where she prayed that “God will kill the Jews.” The College Democrats of America Jewish Caucus called on Mesbah to drop out of the race and resign from the organization. College Democrats chapters at George Washington University and American University echoed calls for Mesbah’s resignation and threatened to withdraw from the national organization if it fails to address anti-Semitism within its ranks.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Democratic Party. Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and other left-wing members of the Democratic Party are quick to address instances of hatred toward minority groups but have largely ignored hate crimes against Jews, which far exceeded those against Asians, Muslims, and transgender people combined in 2020, according to FBI crime statistics released Sept. 27. House progressives earlier this month successfully lobbied to strip funding from Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system from a defense spending bill.
Mesbah issued an apology but denied her tweets stemmed from hatred toward Jews. She quickly turned to discussing her own experience with bigotry as a “Muslim, immigrant, woman of color.”
“While I take responsibility for my actions, I am hurt by the Islamophobia and xenophobia that continues to unfold,” Mesbah’s statement reads. “The harassment I have faced is never acceptable but unfortunately all too common for Muslim, immigrant women of color who often face bigoted targeting unique to our experience.”
Prior to her election, Mesbah served as College Democrats’ director of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and accountability. Mesbah would have been the first person alerted at the national level if anti-Semitic tweets from College Democrats leadership surfaced.
Mesbah’s predecessor, former College Democrats of America vice president Tasneem Ahmad Al-Michael, also tweeted racial slurs and anti-Semitic comments. In May, he tweeted, “I’m part of the ‘From the river to the sea’ group,” referencing an anti-Semitic phrase that calls for the elimination of the Jewish state.
Two members of College Democrats of America who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon on condition of anonymity said they believe the elected officials will pass anti-Israel resolutions and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions measures.
“If we insist on zero tolerance for bigotry we have to mean it in every instance, not just when it’s convenient for our own political sensibilities,” one of those members told the Free Beacon. “As a party, Democrats must be clear in our opposition to anti-Semitism and our commitment to the State of Israel.”
League hopes to build ‘baseball ecosystem’ in China
Major League Baseball is expanding its partnership with the Chinese Communist Party, coming at the expense of U.S. jobs and growing Chinese influence over America’s pastime.
The country’s leading propaganda outlet China Daily on Aug. 20 touted the MLB’s attempts to build a “baseball ecosystem” within the country. The league has grown its network to more than 100 Chinese baseball teams in 20 cities, with a growing fanbase of millions. The league’s operations in cahoots with Beijing are not just limited to play—quality U.S. jobs are also at stake. Miken Sports, a baseball equipment brand that provides business to the league, folded a Minnesota production plant and moved its nearly 70 jobs to China.
The league’s interest in exporting jobs and resources to China is drawing fierce rebukes from lawmakers. Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R., Minn.), whose district includes the Miken plant, introduced a resolution on Wednesday obtained by the Washington Free Beacon blasting the MLB for taking away American jobs.
”Baseball is considered to be America’s national pastime, so it is completely outrageous that the MLB has decided to shut down the Miken Sports plant in Caledonia and outsource American jobs to communist China—directly defying the MLB’s position as an American sports league,” Hagedorn said. “Miken has been one of the largest employers in Caledonia for decades, and this community will face major hardships and job losses due to this closure. We are urging the MLB to reverse this decision, purchase products that are made in America, and work to keep these jobs at home.”
The MLB has also tapped savvy business professionals with deep ties to Chinese industry to oversee production. Tony Qi, the managing director of MLB China, leads the league’s operations in China. The MLB tapped Qi to grow activities in China in 2019, citing his work with Chinese state media, tech supergiant Tencent, and other Chinese conglomerates. In an August interview, Qi praised the Chinese government for its cooperation and assistance in establishing the MLB brand in China.
“Government policy is also a huge help,” Qi said. “China is now aiming to let the next generation enjoy various sports, and has implemented a series of preferential policies. So more and more baseball clubs are growing in China. … The baseball environment has changed dramatically since MLB entered the Chinese market.”
The MLB did not return a request for comment. The MLB Players Association did not return a request for comment.
Ambitious efforts from the league come shortly after the MLB appealed to Chinese tech giant Tencent—noted for its surveillance activities, human rights abuses, and ties to the military—to grow its brand. The league signed a three-year contract with the Chinese company in 2021 to stream games across Asia. Chinese state media framed the agreement as a step forward for Sino-American relations, even as the two countries feud over issues such as the genocide of Uyghur Muslims, economic espionage, and military buildup.
The MLB’s cooperation with the Chinese regime also comes amid Beijing’s criticism of American domestic political figures for alleged civil rights abuses. The league moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of a voting law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp (R., Ga.), citing the need for the league to express its “values.”
Michael Sobolik, a fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the values expressed by the league more resemble a “cynical PR campaign” than a stand on principle.
“It’s telling that Major League Baseball pulled out of Georgia for the All-Star Game over concerns with voting legislation, but is entirely comfortable with operating in a nation with an ongoing genocide,” Sobolik said. “If your corporate values abroad don’t match your corporate values at home, you aren’t standing on principle; you’re just running a cynical PR campaign. The CCP routinely exploits this inconsistency in U.S. companies eager to access China’s market. Every time American businesses choose their own economic wealth over human rights, they write the Party’s propaganda for them.”
Rep. Drew Ferguson (R., Ga.) told the Free Beacon the MLB is another example of big business “playing politics” and caving to the “woke mob.”
“This year, the MLB along with CEOs from several Fortune 500 companies have decided to start playing politics, picking and choosing where they’ll do business according to the whims of the woke mob,” Ferguson said. “Unfortunately, when it comes to issues of real human rights and genocide, they fall silent. It’s time to hold American organizations and companies accountable for their roles in propping up communist China on the global stage. Congress must set aside partisan politics and stand united against the CCP’s malign influence and activities at home and abroad.”
Mandela Barnes hobnobs in Bay Area with liberal prosecutor Chesa Boudin, state lawmaker who wants to abolish ICE
A Wisconsin Democratic Senate frontrunner held a San Francisco fundraiser with the son of left-wing terrorists and a California state lawmaker who wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Mandela Barnes traveled to the Bay Area on Tuesday to hobnob with San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin and California state senator Scott Wiener, a photo shared by California Democratic Party vice chair David Campos shows. Boudin—the son of two Weather Underground terrorists who has ended cash bail and repeatedly declined to prosecute serial offenders—faces a recall effort sparked by a murder surge in his city. Wiener, meanwhile, has called for the abolition of ICE, because it is a “force of oppression” that makes “communities less safe.”
Barnes is running to succeed incumbent GOP senator Ron Johnson. While the San Francisco soirée may have helped his coffers, the guest list may not play well with local voters who have helped make him the frontrunner in a crowded primary. In an August Remington Research Group poll, Milwaukee County Democratic primary voters identified “lowering crime and increasing neighborhood safety” as their top issue. That same poll showed Barnes with a 24-point lead in the primary.
Republicans in the swing state have accused Barnes and the rest of the party of being soft on crime. Barnes referenced “overpoliced communities” and refused to distance himself from the “idea behind ‘defund the police'” in a TV Interview. Wisconsin Republicans have pointed to the clip to accuse Barnes of caring “more about appeasing the far left and violent criminals than standing up for public safety.”
Barnes did not return a request for comment.
In addition to Wiener’s efforts to abolish ICE, the Democrat in 2016 called for “[California] & other states to become sanctuary states.” Boudin also campaigned on his intention to hold “zero cooperation with ICE” and prosecute ICE agents. In 2019, he bragged he “helped pioneer San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy.”
Boudin, who served as a translator for the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez before taking office, has faced criticism for his failure to charge serial offenders who have gone on to commit heinous crimes.
In January, for example, police arrested 45-year-old Troy McAllister after the San Francisco resident hit and killed two women while drunkenly driving a stolen vehicle through a red light. Months before the tragedy, Boudin’s office offered McAllister a plea agreement for a robbery charge that kept him out of jail. Police went on to arrest McAllister on multiple occasions for drug and theft crimes, but prosecutors did not charge the career criminal.
After the January arrest, assistant district attorney Ryan Kao wrote in a court filing that McAllister’s “pattern of criminality has done nothing but increase over the years” and acknowledged Boudin’s office “missed defendant’s out-of-control spiral while on parole.” San Francisco police admonished Boudin over his role in the incident.
“Had the DA done their job, Mr. McAllister would’ve been in custody and you would not have grieving families,” San Francisco Police Officers Association president Tony Montoya said at the time.
Boudin in 2020 lobbied disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.) to grant clemency to his father, David Gilbert, who faced a 75-year sentence for second-degree murder over his role in a 1981 Brinks truck robbery, which left two police officers and a security guard dead. Boudin’s mother, Kathy Boudin, also participated in the deadly heist. Cuomo granted Gilbert clemency before resigning from office in August.
Barnes became lieutenant governor of Wisconsin in 2019 after serving as a state legislator for four years. While a September poll released by Barnes’s campaign shows him in a tie with Johnson, the Republican has not yet decided to run for reelection.
James O’Neill, previously tapped by Bill de Blasio for Police Commissioner of New York City and his current COVID-19 Senior Advisor, has repeatedly spoken at the America China Public Affairs Institute (ACPAI), which is closely tied to top Chinese Communist Party-linked influence groups seeking to “co-opt and neutralize opposition” to the regime.
O’Neill, who served as the 43rd Police Commissioner from 2016 to 2019, addressed the America China Public Affairs Institute (ACPAI) three times during his tenure, speaking at the “Police Commissioner Luncheon” in August 2016, September 2017, and November2018.
O’NEILL 2018 TWEET.
The ACPAI website reveals the group “strongly supports a Security Partnership between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China” on areas including “law enforcement cooperation”, “military consultation”, and “pandemic disease control.” Similarly, ACPAI “strongly supports a Mutual Visa Waiver Program between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China” along with free trade agreements between the two counties.
Fred Teng, the president of ACPAI, doubles as the senior U.S. representative of the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).
CUSEF was founded by C.H. Tung, the Vice-Chairman of the “highest-ranking entity overseeing” China’s United Front, which the U.S. government identifies as seeking to “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.”
TUNG SPEAKING AT ACPAI.
Tung himself has spoken at a 2016 ACPAI event in addition to CUSEF Governor Ronnie Chan, who has spoken for the group three times. ACPAI has also hosted events featuring several Chinese Communist Party officials including United Nations Ambassadors, Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Vice Ministers, and the Consul General along with Chinese state-run media hosts.
The group has also hosted a “private breakfast forum with Dr. Yao Yunzhu,” who is a retired Major General of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along with a “Security Partnership Symposium” hosted by the PLA Academy of Military Science.With the help of the aforementioned Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, ACPAI seeks to “gather our expertise and our network of friends to facilitate a transformational United States-China relation,” according to its mission statement.
“For the twenty-first century, a cooperative partnership with the People’s Republic of China is important and necessary for the United States of America,” it continues.
Despite O’Neill affiliating with the group, de Blasio rehired the former Police Commissioner to serve as a COVID-19 Senior Advisor in April 2020.
“In this role, O’Neill will oversee the supply and distribution of personal protective and medical equipment within New York City hospitals as demand continues to surge due to the COVID-19 crisis. O’Neill will create, operationalize and manage a supply inspection regime within the hospitals to ensure the rapid turnaround of new supplies and verify each hospital is pushing needed equipment to frontline health care workers,” explained the Mayor’s office.
There’s the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs” but the real war our leaders fight with any perspicacity is the “War on Truth,” second only to that even older, perhaps oldest and most crucial of all, wars known colloquially as CYA.
The latter is fought to the bitter end and takes precedence.
We find this on display frequently in Washington, D.C. and Sept 28 was no exception.
During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, both Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie insisted, under oath, they had advised against President Biden’s precipitous and, to be as polite as humanly possible, ill-conceived exit plan from Afghanistan.
Milley said he urged Biden to leave 2,500 troops in place. This would have left enough military to guard Bagram air base and prevent it becoming the staging area for the Chinese air force it likely will become.
They also would have been able to arrange for either the destruction or the recovering of the 80+ billion dollars of U.S. weaponry, much of it high-tech, now in Taliban (and therefore Chinese, Russian and Iranian) hands.
It goes without saying too, most importantly, an operable Bagram could have saved myriad lives, American and Afghan, and would continue to do so.
President Biden denied hearing any of this. Or, more precisely, he didn’t recall hearing this.
The real question is—was he lying? Most likely, yes. From law school onwards he has plagiarized and lied multiple times. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, as they say.
But there are other possibilities.
One is that President Biden’s cognitive issues are so severe that he couldn’t understand or actually allow himself to hear what the generals were advising. He had been so completely locked into an idée fixe of getting out of Afghanistan on whatever schedule he thought politically useful (Sept. 11?) nothing permeated.
A yet more disturbing alternative is that he was counseled against the generals’ view by some of his own advisors. Normally, that would make little sense, considering the disaster that occurred, but many actions of the Biden administration can be read as being against the long-term interests of the United States, actually weakening it deliberately, and in favor of the globalists or the Chinese communists, assuming they are not, in reality, one and the same.
The recent indictments and leaks from the Durham investigation lend credence to this possibility. Many of the officials in the Biden administration, in the State Department and elsewhere, are holdovers from the Obama administration, just in different positions as if reseated in a game of musical chairs.
How many of these people really want a strong U.S. military in a position to be guardians of the free world as it has been for decades? Wouldn’t they prefer it to fall apart? It’s worth thinking about.
But enough “paranoid” speculation. What about the head man in this CYA fiesta, General Milley?
When Sen. Tom Cotton, among others, asked Milley why he didn’t resign after the Afghanistan debacle, he replied as follows:
“Senator, as a senior military officer, resigning is a really serious thing—it’s a political act—if I’m resigning in protest. My job is to provide advice—my statutory responsibility is to provide legal advice or best military advice to the president, and that’s my legal requirement.”
Perhaps the general has short-term memory loss.
No American general in this century has been more overtly “political” than he.
Has he forgotten that for some time he has been referred to as the “woke” general?
Nothing is more political than “woke.” Indeed, that is its intention, to turn everything in our lives into politics—the food we eat, the air we breath, our educational system, our entertainment, our press, who gets a job, who gets promoted, who appears in a commercial, who goes to a restaurant, what we can say on social media, who’s skin color is best, who’s the biggest victim, what sex we declare ourselves to be, our pronouns and on and on.
Not very long ago, General Milley made a speech sympathetic to that flagship of “woke”—critical race theory. That the chairman of the joint chiefs would do that is astonishing and, in a sense, revolutionary.
He has, in effect, politicized the military that is supposed, for very good reason, including winning wars, to be neutral.
Also with good reason, we could dub him General “Woke.”
But now, of all a sudden, in Senate testimony, he self-righteously claims the military should not be politicized. He would never do such a thing.
Actually his vision of politicization is, in itself, completely politicized. He wouldn’t resign from Biden, no matter what the issue, and the current one is unbelievably extreme, but could well have resigned from Trump.
It wasn’t that long ago that he made a public apology for merely accompanying the then president to the torched St. John’s Church:
“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
Learn what exactly? That the chairman of the joint chiefs is a hypocrite? We certainly learned that.
During his questioning by Sen. Marsha Blackburn we also learned Milley is a kind of creepy gossip who likes to make sure the likes of Bob Woodward know the general’s side of the story for the journalist’s forthcoming—is it fiction or non-fiction— best seller. After all, General “Woke’s” legacy is in play.
I’m not going to go into the telephone calls to the Chinese general, interesting as that may be, because I suspect more facts will be coming out.
What I will say is that, as usual “woke”—or in this case General “Woke”—is the opposite of really woke. What business was it of his to supersede the commander-in-chief and telegraph our intentions to the enemy?
Milley seemed to think that was his job, that he was just being internationally “woke.” Many would disagree.
Yes, CYA trumped the War on Truth, as it almost always does, in Washington Tuesday.
If rich Americans and large corporations foot the bill, does a tax plan really cost “zero dollars” to the average American?
Recent comments suggest the Democratic Party believes this to be the case.
In promoting the forthcoming $3.5 trillion, 2,465-page “Build Back Better” bill, President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Washington Democrats have forwarded claims that the bill — because it is paid for by the wealthy and large corporations — comes at “zero” cost to Americans.
My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.
Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.
Implicit in this assumption is the idea that such economic disruptions are isolated, with no rippling effects on America’s free-market economy.
However, as many economists have pointed out time and time again, high tax rates on the rich often only serve as disincentives for growth. In other words, using taxes to punish the groups most responsible for economic investment and growth often leads to less of both.
Instead, high earners will choose to move their investments to other countries with lower taxes and fewer restrictions, countries that go on to receive the subsequent benefits that would have been reaped by their American counterpart.
In comments sent exclusively to The Western Journal, Walter E. Block — professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and senior fellow at the Mises Institute — explained as much through the use of two examples.
“Bjorn Borg, a Swedish tennis champion of a generation ago, was faced with a marginal tax rate of 110%. This means if he earned $1 million in a tennis tournament, he would have had to pay $1.1 million in taxes. That is, he would LOSE $100,000 on the deal,” Block wrote. “He moved to Monaco.”
“Gerard Depardieu, a French actor, also faced punitive taxes. He moved to Russia.”
“The wealthy in the US need not move to another country, although many of them will. But they will spend a lot of time and effort on tax avoidance: reducing their tax bill legally. They will hire lots of very bright tax attorneys and economists to hide their earnings. This will reduce the GDP, because, in the absence of these punitive taxes, these people would have been creating goods and services which will not come into existence.”
A cap on the creation of goods and services then leads to a cap on the number of jobs created for middle- to low-income Americans.
An additional problem caused by taxing the rich excessively is “tax shifting,” Block explained.
“Just because the tax is placed on a given firm or person, does not mean that entity pays the taxes. Rather, this depends upon the elasticity of demand for the goods and services. Biden is targeting the rich, but all sort of people will end up paying the tax, not only his targets,” he wrote.
So, the “costs” of such taxes will be felt even by Americans who are not paying them directly.
This appears to be part of an already evident pattern of behavior repeatedly exhibited by the Biden administration.
Despite often touting its refusal to raise direct taxes on the average American, experts agree — many of the administration’s policies come with trade-offs that cost Americans as much or more anyway.
For example, the administration’s high level of spending has resulted in a massive spike in inflation — a phenomenon which American economist Milton Friedman famously described as “taxation without representation.”
The effects of inflation can be seen in drastic rising prices that outpace similar spikes in wages, resulting in the average American’s savings becoming less and less valuable over time.
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana recently warned that tacking the $3.5 trillion bill on top of the already skyrocketing rate of inflation will only serve to make life worse for everyday Americans.
“President Biden’s agenda has dramatically increased inflation, and they’re trying to pour gasoline on that fire,” Scalise said, according to Fox Business.
“[Democrats are] seeing how families have tied the increase in spending in Washington to higher inflation, and if you add trillions in new spending as well as trillions in new taxes, you’re only going to make inflation worse.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says that many of the provisions in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill will reward U.S. adversaries by increasing energy dependence on countries such as China and Russia.
“So, Democrats’ plans would have American families hurting badly. But it’s not even like all the sacrifice would buy some big national advantage. It’s just the opposite. Their proposals would be a huge gift, a huge gift, to adversaries like Russia and China,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on Sept. 28.
The Democrats are in the process of passing trillions of dollars of legislation to fund their climate change and green energy mandates, which would allocate billions for electric vehicles, refitting homes and offices with solar panels, and ending the use of U.S. fossil fuels.
“To give just one example, the Democrats are drafting blunt mandates for more solar panels. Somebody should tell our colleagues that China currently supplies about three-quarters of the world’s solar panels. They’ve also largely cornered the market on some of the necessary raw materials and critical minerals. So, look, if we’re going to borrow money from China to send a windfall right back to Chinese miners and manufacturers? Is that the master plan?”
Chinese coal-fired factories supply more than three-quarters of the world’s polysilicon, which is a key component in most solar panels. The Chinese regime has thousands of coal-burning power plants to meet the demands of the clean energy industries and demands for solar panels.
Chinese workers examine solar panels at a manufacturer of photovoltaic products in Huaibei in China’s Anhui Province, on March 21, 2012. (AP Photo/File)
Supporters of clean energy sources such as solar panels argue that even though panels are produced through the use of coal, emissions are reduced over time because solar panels don’t emit carbon and last almost 30 years.
According to a memorandum (pdf) sent to Democratic senators in August, the Senate Budget Committee recommended an allocation of $67 billion to the House Environment and Public Works Committee as their portion of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package, to be used for the Clean Energy Technology Accelerator “that would fund low-income solar and other climate-friendly technologies.”
In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s portion of the budget is $198 billion and will help Democrats reach their climate goals, reaching net-zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.
The $3.5 trillion package will invest “$27.5 billion in a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to support the rapid deployment of low- and zero-emission technologies. We also invest in electric vehicles, appliances, and building efficiency rebates, electric transmission, and low-income solar,” said Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (pdf) during a markup of the bill.
“Also, on the environmental front, we provide $30 billion in funding to fulfill the President’s commitment to replace all lead service lines in drinking water systems, as well as $10 billion for Superfund cleanups, and $5 billion for environmental and climate justice block grants,” Pallone said.
“I’m thrilled by the historic investments we made to fight the climate crisis and create millions of new, good-paying clean energy and manufacturing jobs right here at home,” Pallone said in a statement after the passage of the bill in his committee.
However, Republicans don’t share the Democrats’ desire to replace fossil fuel sources, because they say it will kill U.S. energy independence and lead to higher energy costs for average Americans. They also argue that the United States has reduced its emissions significantly and continues to be a leader in producing clean energy, while countries such as China are one of the biggest carbon emitters.
Smoke billows from smokestacks and a coal-fired generator at a steel factory in China’s Hebei Province, on Nov. 19, 2015. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the ranking Republican member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee (ENRC), opposes the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget and abrupt shift away from fossil fuels.
“Democrats are trying to jam through a scheme that would impose new costs on the natural gas and electricity that nearly every American family uses to heat and power their homes. This is a tax on all Americans. The House Democrats’ bill will wreak havoc on the nation’s economy, make energy less reliable, and cost thousands of workers—especially those in energy-producing states—their jobs. Congress should reject this dangerous proposal,” Barrasso said in a statement.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), chairman of the ENRC, is one of the only Democrats to argue that ending the use of fossil fuels in the United States will not solve climate problems, as most of the carbon emissions come from countries such as China.
“My concern [about the environment] is basically being realistic and being practical about what’s going on in the world. Within the next 10 years, 90 percent of pollution is going to come from one continent, Asia. And China is going to have 3,500 coal-fired plants. In America, they make you believe we only have 504. There’s 6,600 operating and they’re building another 1,063—none in America,” Manchin said in an August interview on “Face the Nation.”
The West Virginia senator argued that research and development is a more realistic and U.S.-friendly solution to lowering emissions and saving the environment.
“We have $12 billion for carbon capture sequestration. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to save the climate.”
Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters during a Sept. 28 press briefing that there is broad public support and advocacy for the climate change provisions within the budget reconciliation package and President Joe Biden understands the urgency of the matter.
“It is clear the climate crisis is here, and it’s taking its toll. The recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] made clear we’ve faced code red for humanity because of the climate crisis. And that is why, inspired by the American people led by our climate champions and President Biden, our Democratic majorities in Congress are taking action,” said Pelosi.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) announce the Green New Deal outside the U.S. Capitol, on Feb. 7, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Pelosi said the legislation will create jobs in the green technology sector.
“The president has made this very special to his agenda. He will go to Glasgow wanting to do so with legislation that has passed, that again confirms our commitment to the Paris Accords by honoring our commitment to first emission standards, and then the president, again, has the bill—this is today we’re telling you they’ll build back better for climate.”
However, McConnell said China will be glad the United States is relying on its energy.
“They’ll go roaring by, increasing their prosperity and emissions, no matter what we do. Hurt families helps China. A war on American energy just as the rest of the world is stealing for shortages. This is just one piece of the Democrats’ reckless taxing and spending spree, along with historic tax hikes,” McConnell said.
Wikipedia has in recent years drifted away from neutrality and slid into “leftist propaganda,” according to its co-founder Larry Sanger.
Sanger, who parted ways with Wikipedia almost two decades ago over the project’s direction, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that the online encyclopedia, which turned 20 years old earlier this year, has gradually shifted to follow the narrative of “the news media.”
“Wikipedia made a real effort at neutrality for, I would say, its first five years or so,” said Sanger. “And then … it began a long, slow slide into what I would call leftist propaganda.”
Wikipedia has around 125,000 active volunteer editors who work on crowdsourced articles, and more than 1,000 “administrators” who can take actions such as blocking accounts or restricting edits on certain pages.
Sanger told EpochTV that particularly in the past five years, any individual who is “on the right,” or “even contrarian,” often finds themselves with an article on Wikipedia that “grossly misrepresents their achievements, often just leaves out important bits of their work, and misrepresents their motives.”
Wikipedia “casts them as conspiracy theorists, are far right or whatever, when they and their friends and people who know them well would never describe them in that way,” Sanger said.
Sanger criticized Wikipedia, suggesting that it has recently moved to “follow the news media.”
“More recently, they’ve gotten rid of almost all conservative news sources as sources for their articles,” he explained. “And so as the news media has shifted, and as the establishment, frankly, has shifted more to the left or to the left, the content of Wikipedia has followed suit.”
He previously noted that Wikipedia has banned Fox News’s political reporting, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail from being used as sources.
Sanger said he is now working on creating a new decentralized network, a “superset of all encyclopedias.”
“We’re going to be putting all of the encyclopedic content and the world in a single network. That’s an extremely compelling vision,” he said.
He first announced in March that he was working on developing technical standards that could strip power over social media from giant companies and give users more control over the content they produce and see.
Sanger created Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in 2001, but left the project the following year and has subsequently criticized the website.
Wikipedia officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
House Democrats blocked a measure on Wednesday by Iowa Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks that would have required a negative COVID-19 test before migrants are released from Customs and Border Protection custody.
“Today, I offered my REACT Act on the House floor, which would require DHS to give a COVID test to everyone crossing our border illegally,” Meeks tweeted.
“The majority chose to block this commonsense bill that would ensure the health and safety of border patrol and border communities,” she added.
Today, I offered my REACT Act on the House floor, which would require DHS to give a COVID test to everyone crossing our border illegally.
The majority chose to block this commonsense bill that would ensure the health and safety of border patrol and border communities. #IA02pic.twitter.com/Qwbc2ZjH04
More than 12,000 mostly Haitian migrants were released into the U.S. last week. No negative COVID-19 test was required before release.
FLOOR ALERT: @HouseDemocrats blocked @HouseGOP requests to consider @RepMMM‘s commonsense bill that simply requires illegal immigrants are tested for COVID-19 before their release into the U.S., unlike the 12,000 Haitian migrants admitted by @POTUS last week. pic.twitter.com/mj4r9LmXWH
In both July and August, more than 200,000 illegal immigrants crossed the southern border. No COVID-19 tests were required unless symptoms were shown.
Miller-Meeks first proposed the REACT Act in March (Requiring Every Alien Receive a COVID-19 Test). “This legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test all migrants illegally crossing our border for COVID-19 who DHS plans to release into our communities,” according to a news release by the congresswoman.
“This week, I traveled to El Paso, Texas, to meet with CBP agents and officers. I saw firsthand the crisis they are facing, and I believe it is our job in Congress to address it and assist them. Approximately 50% of agents have tested positive for COVID-19, and very few migrants are being tested,” Miller-Meeks said in March.
“My REACT Act would require that every migrant released from CBP or ICE custody is tested and receives a negative test. Border security and immigration is not an issue that only affects border states, it affects every community across the country. By ensuring that individuals entering the country are negative for COVID-19, we can help keep our communities safe and healthy,” she added. https://www.youtube.com/embed/gC9IQzeidDA?feature=oembed
The number of COVID-19 cases has reportedly also spiked in illegal immigrant detention centers, according to information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Should illegal immigrants be required to take a COVID-19 test?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The data, first cited by The New York Times in July, revealed more than 7,500 coronavirus cases were reported from April to July. During the same time, the number of people held reportedly rose from 14,000 to more than 26,000.
According to the data, the number of positive cases since April account “for more than 40 percent of all cases reported in ICE facilities since the pandemic began, according to a New York Times analysis of ICE data.”
Part of the new surge is related to increased testing. “Paige Hughes, an ICE spokeswoman, said that all new detainees were tested for the coronavirus and are held in quarantine for 14 days on arrival,” according to the report.
In addition, a very low percentage of illegal immigrants who enter the country are already vaccinated.
The low vaccination rate, combined with a lack of social distancing protocols and crowded locations, has provided many opportunities for the spread of the coronavirus.
Psychological warfare. Public opinion warfare. Legal warfare.
Known as the “three warfares” doctrine and relatively unknown in the West, these concepts serve as key strategies guiding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its quest to win a war against the free world without firing a single shot.
Psychological warfare seeks to demoralize the enemy; public opinion warfare seeks to shape the hearts and minds of the masses; legal warfare seeks to use systems of law to deter enemy attacks.
This explanation was set out in a recently released 650-page report that provides a comprehensive illustration of the Chinese communist regime’s global influence operations. The French-language report was published by the Institute for Strategic Studies of Military Schools (IRSEM), an independent agency affiliated with the French Ministry of Armed Forces.
Combined with another key CCP doctrine called “United Front” work, these principles have undergirded a breathtaking campaign by the Chinese regime to expand its influence and infiltration into Western democracies, the report stated.
United Front, described by the CCP’s first leader Mao Zedong as a “magic weapon,” is a policy that, according to the report, involves the regime “eliminating its internal and external enemies, controlling groups that may challenge its authority, building a coalition around the Party to serve its interests, and projecting its influence abroad.”
The report comes amid rising pushback from the West against CCP aggressions, including its severe human rights abuses, rampant theft of intellectual property, economic coercion, and military assertiveness.
Sweeping Effort
Guided by such strategies, the Chinese regime has built a sprawling infrastructure with global reach consisting of a broad network of state and non-state actors to execute its plans.
According to IRSEM, Beijing’s influence operations abroad have two main objectives: “to seduce and subjugate foreign audiences by creating a positive narrative of China,” and “above all, to infiltrate and coerce.”
“Infiltration aims to slowly penetrate opposing societies in order to hinder any inclination to act against the interests of the Party,” the report stated.
“Coercion corresponds to the gradual expansion of ‘punitive’ or ‘coercive’ diplomacy to become a policy of systematic sanction against any state, organization, enterprise or individual threatening the interests of the Party.”
Targets of the CCP’s campaigns span the whole spectrum of society. Key battleground areas include education, media, politics, culture, and social media.
United Front Work in Action
Much of Beijing’s overseas United Front efforts are carried out through a “nebulous network of intermediaries” loosely coordinated by CCP bodies, including Chinese embassies and consulates, and the Party’s United Front Work Department, the report stated.
In a 2020 speech, then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs David Stilwell said the CCP leverages thousands of overseas groups that carry out political influence operations, suppress dissident movements, gather intelligence, and facilitate the transfer of technology to China.
While some United Front organizations publicly state their affiliation with Beijing, “most try to present themselves as independent, grassroots-type NGOs, cultural-exchange forums, ‘friendship’ associations, chambers of commerce, media outlets, or academic groups,” Stilwell said at the time.
A 2020 investigation by Newsweek found about 600 such groups in the United States.
One of those groups highlighted in the report is the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).
CUSEF is a Hong Kong-based nonprofit headed by billionaire and Chinese regime official Tung Chee-hwa that bills itself as an independent group working to provide U.S.–China dialogues and exchanges. But in reality, it “functions as a de facto front organization for the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government,” the report stated, citing the findings from a 2020 study by Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. The group is also registered under the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
The group has entered into a range of partnerships with a range of prestigious American think tanks and universities, which IRSEM characterized as a bid to “launder” its influence activities. Partners include Johns Hopkins University, the East-West Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the Atlantic Council, and the Brookings Institution.
Earlier this year, CUSEF’s ties to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace came under the spotlight during the nomination hearing for CIA Director William Burns. Prior to his nomination, Burns served as president of the think tank. Facing criticism from Republican lawmakers, Burns told the Senate hearing that he had “inherited” Carnegie’s relationship with CUSEF but cut ties with the group “not long after” he began his tenure in 2015. Burns further said he was “increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations.”
The group also sponsors many high-level dialogues between CCP officials and U.S. military and political figures, the report stated.
U.S. media have also been targeted by CUSEF. It has organized trips to China for more than 120 journalists from almost 50 U.S. media outlets since 2009, The Epoch Times previously reported.
From 2009 to 2017, CUSEF also hosted a range of dinners and meetings with executives and editors from 35 outlets, including Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and Reuters. The group’s FARA filings described the dinners, hosted by CUSEF founder Tung, as “invaluable for their effectiveness in engaging support from the leaders of the news industry.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to CUSEF for comment.
Repression
Overseas ethnic Chinese populations, even those who aren’t Chinese citizens, find themselves as “priority targets” of Beijing’s influence operations, according to the report. One objective, according to IRSEM, is to control the diaspora such that “they do not represent a threat to power;” the other is to “mobilize them to serve its interests.”
Described by Freedom House as the world’s largest perpetrator of transnational repression, Beijing has targeted a range of overseas-based dissident groups, including Uyghur Muslims, rights activists, Hong Kong democracy proponents, and Falun Gong practitioners.
Victims face physical attacks, threats, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation by Chinese agents or their proxies, in person or online, the advocacy group stated in a February report.
In one extreme example, Freedom House noted the case of Sun Yi, a Falun Gong practitioner who survived imprisonment in the notorious Chinese labor camp Masanjia. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that has been brutally persecuted by the CCP for more than two decades.
While he was detained, Sun snuck an SOS letter into a Halloween decoration for export. It was later found by an American woman in 2012. He filmed a documentary with undercover footage detailing his experiences and escaped to Indonesia.
In 2017, Sun died of sudden kidney failure. His family said Sun never had kidney problems, and the hospital didn’t give concrete details of his death and rushed to have his body cremated. No autopsy was performed. These circumstances have caused Sun’s supporters to suspect foul play.
Democratic leadership in the House blocked a GOP-led measure to sanction trade between the Taliban and China, with the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee citing opposition to any move that could anger the Afghan terror group, according to congressional sources briefed on the matter.
House Republicans tried to attach an amendment to the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, the sprawling annual defense-funding bill, that would sanction any person or business that attempts to work with the Taliban to purchase rare earth minerals, a lucrative natural resource coveted by China and used to power most modern electronics. The Communist regime has used the American exit from Afghanistan to boost its presence in the war-torn country, in part to gain access to its natural resources, which are valued at anywhere from $1 to $3 trillion.
The GOP measure was rejected last week by Democrats on the House Rules Committee and by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.). According to congressional sources briefed on the matter, Meeks’s staff cited concerns about any legislation that could provoke the Taliban. Meeks’s office said it is concerned that any additional sanctions that target the Taliban could complicate ongoing efforts to rescue Americans still stranded in war-torn Afghanistan. Meeks aides also said that sanctioning the Taliban will push them to sell illegal drugs, which GOP sources say the terror group will do and is doing anyway.
Republicans will reintroduce the measure on Tuesday as a standalone bill in a bid to force Democrats into voting on a measure that will increase pressure on the Taliban, according to congressional sources familiar with the matter. GOP leaders say China’s increased focus on Afghanistan poses a national security risk, particularly as it seeks to work with Taliban leaders to export precious materials that U.S. companies will end up buying.
“House Democrats proved once again that they are unwilling to compromise with Republicans by blocking my amendments to the [National Defense Authorization Act],” Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.), who is spearheading the measure, told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s outrageous that Democrats would not even allow a vote on something so commonsense as banning the Taliban and China from profiting off of rare earth minerals. Pretty soon Americans will be carrying around products with rare earth minerals sourced from the Taliban due to the reckless policies of the left.”
The measure is part of a larger effort by the Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP caucus in Congress, to block the Taliban’s access to cash resources and stop the group from aligning itself with malign regimes, such as China, Russia, and Iran.
“The Taliban’s control of these minerals likely now makes it the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world,” the Republican Study Committee wrote Tuesday in a private memorandum sent to 154 GOP offices, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon. “Unless conservatives in Congress act quickly to limit the damage done by the Biden administration, it is likely that soon products as varied as iPhones to laptops to the electric vehicles championed in Democrats’ reconciliation package will contain raw earth minerals sourced from Taliban-run Afghanistan and developed by communist China. This would allow both the Taliban and China to profit and put American national security in jeopardy.”
Rare earth minerals have become an increasingly hot button topic. China controls around 35 percent of all rare earth minerals reserves in the world and exports a large portion to the United States for use in a range of consumer products. Around 80 percent of the United States’ rare earth mineral imports come from China.
China has prioritized an expansion in this market, injecting itself into a range of countries known for their stockpiles.
Since the United States withdrew its forces from Afghanistan, China has inked business deals with the Taliban that will expand its footprint in the country and also provide the Communist regime with billions in revenue. China inked a 30-year contract worth $3 billion dollars with Afghanistan’s former government and has expressed its willingness to follow through on the deal with the Taliban leadership.
While the Taliban is subject to many American and international sanctions, the Biden administration and Democrats have expressed a willingness to work with the terror group and recognize it as Afghanistan’s official government. Republican leaders in Congress want current sanctions enforced and additional ones implemented to prevent partnerships like the budding one between Beijing and the Taliban.
“It’s not enough that we left Afghanistan vulnerable to a Taliban takeover and let them seize $85 billion worth of our military equipment,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told the Free Beacon. “We’ve also left them access to $1 to $3 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, which they plan to develop and sell with China. Instead of working to stop them, House Democrats are enabling them. Is this part of a new strategy to reward the Taliban that they’re not telling us?”
$3.5 trillion spending bill hits American tobacco users and those trying to quit
The Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget proposal relies on a $100 billion tax hike that disproportionately targets the poor, lines the pockets of organized crime, and increases inequality.
The plan doubles the federal tax on cigarettes, which would break President Joe Biden’s promise to raise taxes only on those earning more than $400,000. Households with an income of $35,000 or less smoke at three times the rate of households with incomes of more than $100,000. Richard Marianos, a 27-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who worked on gang violence, said a tobacco tax increase will punish vulnerable communities.
“You’re punishing lower-income people, which the administration promised it wouldn’t do,” Marianos told the Washington Free Beacon. “You’re punishing the police departments that want to push towards reform. You’re punishing the states or organizations that truly have the tobacco harm reduction strategy to keep it out of the hands of kids and criminals. You cannot have a healthy community that is not safe.”
A tobacco tax hike would also put a dent in state economies that rely on tobacco production. Democratic Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, for example, told Biden last week that he opposes the proposed tax increases, which he said would cost the state $50 million in revenue.
The tax plan establishes the first-ever federal tax on vapor products, which have been consistently cited by medical experts as a safer smoking option than cigarettes. The proposal aims to raise $100 billion in government revenue by raising the tax rate on all tobacco and nicotine products to equal that of traditional cigarettes. It would increase taxes by 2,000 percent on chewing tobacco and 1,600 percent on pipe tobacco and snuff. Ulrik Boesen, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, said the Democratic proposal sacrifices low-income individuals’ and the overall public’s health for the sake of budget concerns.
“People of lower income are still consuming tobacco—it’s obviously not a financial decision—so I don’t think taxes are a good final solution to end cigarette smoking,” Boesen told the Free Beacon. “If you really want to get at the issue here, which is smoking cigarettes, you should be encouraging people to switch to less harmful products.”
A pack-a-day smoker who makes $35,000 would go from spending 4 percent to spending 5 percent of his income on cigarettes under the proposed tax plan, according to Boesen. This tax rate would be worse in the majority of states that set tobacco taxes on cumulative price of a product after federal taxes. Boesen noted that the plan may fail to reach its revenue goals in the long run as more consumers turn to the black market. More than half of cigarettes in New York City are smuggled, according to a study this year from the Tax Foundation in response to tax hikes on cigarettes.
Marianos said cigarettes have become the “new face of organized crime.” Local gangs have cigarettes imported from organized crime groups overseas then sell them on the streets. Gangs that prefer to do business on their own buy cigarettes in low tax areas then sell them in high tax areas for profit. Marianos said this could put local corner stores out of business, which rely heavily on tobacco sales—leaving no option for low-income smokers but gangs.
“When you can’t afford cigarettes, where do you go? You go to the black market. You go to the crooks,” he told the Free Beacon.
The nation’s largest tobacco companies oppose the tax plan, citing concerns with the equal tax rate on all tobacco and nicotine products. Philip Morris International, for example, has spent billions of dollars to develop iQOS, a smoking alternative that allows users to heat up, rather than burn, tobacco. The FDA in recent years approved iQOS as a reduced risk product because of its lower chemical levels, but the product could find itself facing the same tax hikes as the cigarettes it seeks to replace.
“Tax policy is a powerful tool for incentivizing consumer behavior and can help make innovations more accessible to adults who smoke across income levels,” Philip Morris spokesman Corey Henry told the Free Beacon. “We encourage governments to utilize this tool to accelerate switching to smoke-free products that are a better choice for adults who would otherwise continue smoking.”
Tobacco companies have increasingly poured money into products that are less harmful. RJ Reynolds owns Snus, a smoke-free form of dip that has been heralded for its relative safety compared with cigarettes. RJ Reynolds spokeswoman Kaelan Hollon said lawmakers could do more harm than good by making FDA-approved reduced risk products less affordable.
“Taxation should be based on the relative risk of products so that potentially less harmful products can compete more effectively with cigarettes, encouraging adult smokers uninterested in quitting to consider and choose lower-risk options,” Hollon told the Free Beacon.
Boesen and Marianos agreed that lower taxes on vapor products are in the best interest of public health. Marianos said the most effective and safe way to stop smoking is through education, which helps people make choices for themselves as opposed to financial pressure.
“Give them a choice, educate them, but don’t create a prohibition or increase taxes so they have to go to other means,” Marianos told the Free Beacon.
The COVID-19 vaccine should not be mandated for children since it does not “necessarily benefit” them like the vaccines required for school and child care, according to former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.
“Those vaccines that are mandated for children, even if you believe they should be mandated, are for diseases that are highly dangerous to children and highly communicable to other children, who therefore have a high danger from that virus,” Atlas said in an interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
“That is not the case with this disease. Children do not have a high risk from this disease. Children do not necessarily benefit themselves from the vaccination of this,” he added.
Atlas, a senior fellow for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, said that kids whose immune system is extremely compromised should consider getting vaccinated, but to require healthy children to receive the COVID-19 vaccines would violate the Declaration of Helsinki, a set of ethical principles developed by the World Medical Association to guide physicians and scientists conducting experiments involving humans.
“In fact, the forced vaccines, particularly for children, violate several of the codes outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki from 1964,” Atlas said. “And I think, when you start having a society that violates some of the most basic codes of ethics, I think we’re in trouble.”
Pfizer said that it had submitted preliminary data of its COVID-19 vaccine trial for children aged 5 to 11 to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday. This comes only two days after the vaccine manufacturer’s Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told ABC’s “This Week” that the company will soon request authorization of its vaccine.
A five-dose vial of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is held in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, said that the data on the 2,268 children aged 5 to 11, who were given a 10-microgram dose of a two-dose regime, showed that the vaccine was safe and triggered an antibody response similar to that observed in those aged 16 to 25 from a previous trial, who had received 30-microgram doses. But whether the vaccine was effective in preventing disease in kids is still unknown as the companies did not release this data in their press release last week.
Pfizer’s vaccine is the only one granted emergency use in adolescents aged 12 to 15 and approved for people 16 and older.
Although kids are at extremely low risk from COVID-19 and do not significantly spread the disease, there is still a push to get them inoculated. One of the reasons for the push is that it could help protect society, which is a big concern for Atlas.
“Are we a society, a civilization, where we are using our children, even if they did spread, as shields? We’re going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they don’t have a significant benefit from, to shield ourselves,” Atlas said.
He added: “I will never use my children as shields to somehow protect me. That’s really just a heinous violation of all moral principles in my view.”
Opponents of vaccinating children say that the vaccine uses “experimental technology” and lacks long-term safety data. Pfizer states in its press releases that the vaccine may cause adverse events including heart inflammation and other “serious and unexpected side effects” that have not been reported yet, since “the possible side effects of the vaccine are still being studied in clinical trials.”
The vaccines have shown that they do not protect fully vaccinated people from getting infected or transmitting COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, after several months.
Students line up before classes start on the first day of the school year, in Montreal on Aug. 31, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 544 children aged 0 to 18 had died from confirmed or presumed COVID-19 between Jan. 4, 2020 and Sept. 18, 2021, out of a total of 672,020 deaths from all ages.
However, comprehensive studies from the United Kingdom that are still waiting to be peer-reviewed, found that the overall risk of dying or getting severely ill from COVID-19 was extremely low in children. The studies also found that COVID-19 caused 25 deaths in kids younger than 18 between March 2020 and February 2021.
Federal health authorities are likely to authorize the vaccine for children soon. The FDA said that it was “prepared to complete its review as quickly as possible, likely in a matter of weeks rather than months” and will “carefully, thoroughly, and independently examine the data to evaluate benefits and risks.”
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the health agency will urgently review the data for children once they’ve been reviewed by the FDA.
“As soon as they get submitted to the FDA, I know the FDA is urgently planning to review these data, it will go from the FDA to the CDC, and we will review it with similar urgency,” Walensky told Good Morning America on Monday.
Pfizer said that it will submit a formal request for emergency use of its vaccine for children to the FDA “in the coming weeks,” including to other regulatory authorities around the world.
Some medical experts are also questioning the need to inoculate children without long-term safety data.
“Why would an EUA [emergency use authorization] for C19 vax for 5-11 yo be given, w/o any efficacy and long-term safety studies? Why is it OK to accept efficacy based on seroconversion, when Ab [antibody] status for naturally immune are not accepted?” Dr. Mahesh Shenai, a neurosurgeon, asked on Twitter.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine replied: “Exactly. And we have not just antibody (or even T-cell) lab data for natural immunity, but also robust clinical evidence of protection against reinfection, hospitalization, and death. Vaccines for 5-11 yo receive approval without this yet NI [natural immunity] is ignored with this data?”
Natural immunity from people who have recovered from COVID-19 continues to not be recognized by the federal government and businesses mandating vaccines and passports in the United States.
Atlas said that Americans should have the choice to decide whether they want to be vaccinated or not.
The CDC says that more than 183 million Americans are fully vaccinated as of Sept. 28.
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—To address what Governor Ron DeSantis called a “brazen disregard for federal immigration law” an executive order was signed and a new public safety czar announced on Tuesday.
DeSantis addressed what he called the “Biden border crisis” with his executive order that prohibits state agencies from providing support for the “resettlement of illegal aliens” in Florida.
The governor initiated the order because he says that illegal immigration is taking its toll on taxpayer dollars and overwhelming state agencies.
“This executive order makes it clear that Florida resources will not be used to prop up the failed open border agenda enacted by this administration,” he said.
The executive order (21-223) addresses several things including directing the Department of Children and Families to refuse to renew licenses to facilities that house unaccompanied minors. Then it asks that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conduct audits of companies in Florida to verify they do not employ illegal aliens.
The second half of the order requires the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to “lawfully gather information on the number and identities of illegal aliens being transported from the border to Florida.” It also encourages state law enforcement to “detain any vehicle transporting illegal aliens if there is reason, suspicions, it is being used for human or drug trafficking.”
The order additionally requests information from state officials “on the number of illegal aliens who are pending criminal prosecution or have been convicted of a crime.”
To ensure that the executive order is followed, DeSantis named Larry Keefe as public safety czar.
“Larry Keefe was nominated by President Trump in 2018 to serve as the United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida,” wrote DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Punshaw in a statement.
“He resigned in February 2021 after Biden took office. Mr. Keefe was a trial lawyer for more than 30 years, during which he has tried criminal and civil cases in federal and state courts.”
DeSantis told reporters during a press conference that Keefe’s appointment is part of the state’s efforts “to protect Florida taxpayers from bearing the burden of reckless immigration policies.”
“We will continue to hold the federal government accountable for refusing to enforce the immigration laws of this country,” he said.
Keefe will serve to ensure the actions directed by the executive order “are carried out.”
The former U.S. Attorney told the press conference that: “I saw illegal aliens that would get deported and come back, and then get deported and come back in an endless cycle.”
“The states, including Florida, bear the brunt of this cycle. Over the coming weeks and months, our state agencies will be addressing the impacts illegal immigration has had on our state,” he said.
Keefe said if “people are illegally in the state, and they have broken (state) laws” they will be punished.
He also made a promise to law enforcement.
“We will support them (law enforcement) when they are attacked,” Keefe said. “And they will be attacked for trying to do their jobs.”
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Mancino said that people come to Florida for the sun as well as other things.
“But they also know that this is a law-and-order state, we will deliver on our end,” he said.
This all follows a letter that DeSantis sent to the Biden administration on Aug. 26, as was reported by The Epoch Times, asking for a meeting seeking more transparency regarding illegals being resettled in Florida. That letter went unanswered, according to DeSantis, which prompted him to act.
Mary Gordon-Judge and Michelle Orfanos, registered nurses from Massachusetts, felt they were “discarded like trash” as hospitals in the state announced plans to discipline employees who would not comply with their vaccine requirements.
The nurses said their colleagues could easily get an exemption from flu shots in past years, but now only “a percentage of them” were able to be exempted from COVID-19 vaccines.
“Either you get this vaccine, or you don’t have a job, and that’s not right,” Orfanos said.
The two were among those who rallied in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. Thousands of people filled the street with signs like “my body, my choice,” “no mandates, yes to freedom” and “freedom is the only mandate,” voicing their opposition to vaccine and mask mandates issued by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.
In an executive order issued last month, Baker has required 45,000 state employees and contractors to be vaccinated by Oct. 17. Otherwise, they risk discipline and termination. The order points out that the state is the largest employer in Massachusetts, and argues that the mandate is the best way to protect the health of both workers and residents.
Last week, the Massachusetts State Police Union sued over the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. After a Superior Court judge denied their bid for an injunction on the policy, the union announced that dozens of the troopers have submitted their resignation paperwork, and some of them plan to return to other departments “offering reasonable alternatives such as mask-wearing and regular testing.”
Meanwhile, many local governments, hospitals, and other organizations also issued their own vaccine mandates, which were regarded by the protesters as “modern-day segregation.”
Jeff Kuhner, a well-known radio host, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
“How this is not a form of modern-day apartheid, except this time they are discriminating and persecuting us, not based on the color of our skin, but based on our vaccination status,” said Jeff Kuhner, a well-known radio host, and keynote speaker at the Sunday rally.
According to the Boston Broadside, organizer of the rally, the energized crowd included nurses, firefighters, police officers, first responders, workers, teachers, small business owners, veterans, and parents, who are “the backbone of America.”
The rally started with the national anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, and a prayer for the 13 U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan.
Other speakers included Jim Lyons, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, and Geoff Diehl, a Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts.
Geoff Diehl, a Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)Jim Lyons, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, spoke at the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
Citing speeches of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan, Lyons emphasized the need to protect liberty and restrict the power of the “big government.”
“Freedom matters. And what they’re doing to us is hijacking our freedom,” he said.
Donnie Palmer, a public school teacher, attended the rally in front of the Massachusetts State House on Sept. 26. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times)
Donnie Palmer, a public school teacher who presented at the rally, believed that being forced to get vaccines and wear masks infringes on his freedom.
“We want to be freed. We don’t want to be governed by a tyrannical government. We don’t want communism. We don’t want socialism. We want Americanism, freedom,” he said.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers apprehended nearly 100 illegal aliens inside two stash houses in Laredo, Texas, during a 24-hour span last week, the agency announced on Tuesday.
Officers nabbed more than 50 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras in a stash house discovered on Ligarde Street on Sept. 23. The next evening, CBP officers followed a tip about illegals being housed on Philadelphia Street to discover another stash house. Inside, the authorities found more than 40 illegal aliens from Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.
CBP noted that all of the illegals were given face masks prior to being processed.
“The substandard conditions typically encountered when stash houses are found can foster a breeding ground for illnesses or other communicable diseases,” the CBP said in a press release on Sept. 28.
Border patrol agents have discovered and dismantled 400 stash houses this fiscal year, resulting in the apprehensions of 7,400 illegal aliens in the Rio Grande Valley. The illegals tend to be from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. A stash house disrupted in August was run by two U.S. citizens with extensive criminal records, the CBP said at the time.
In late May and June, CBP dismantled six stash houses over the course of less than a week, leading to the capture of 173 illegal aliens.
U.S. authorities have apprehended more than 1.2 million illegal border crossers this year, a number unseen in years. Many more evade capture.
Border Patrol agents have arrested 8,691 criminal aliens coming across the southern border in the past 10 months. Between them, the aliens have committed 12,685 crimes.
On Aug. 14, border agents in south Texas arrested two MS-13 gang members. One, a convicted murderer from El Salvador, was apprehended after illegally crossing into the United States with a group near Mission, Texas. The 44-year-old man spent three years in prison for a murder in California in the late ’90s and was imprisoned again in 2005 for “re-entry of a deported alien,” according to CBP.
Many criminal aliens are arrested while trying to evade Border Patrol, or as they attempt to blend into large groups crossing the border. While Border Patrol agents are tied up dealing with large groups, the cartels and criminal organizations smuggle contraband and people through unpatrolled areas nearby.
Several Border Patrol agents told The Epoch Times that agents estimate they’re apprehending between 10 percent and 20 percent of all illegal border crossers, although it’s impossible to estimate how many have avoided detection and capture.
Tucked deep into the massive $3.5 trillion spending bill that progressive Democrats hope to ram through Congress is a new plan to put what one writer calls “crippling” fines on businesses that fail to enforce vaccine mandates to the extent the Biden administration wants.
The spending proposal before Congress has the support of a majority of House Democrats, but has so far not won over enough Senate Democrats to allow for passage there, even under a procedural gimmick that would allow the bill to pass with all Republicans opposed.
Although most of the bill is focused on doling out dollars to social programs, on Saturday, a provision was added in a version of the bill that cleared the Budget Committee and went to the House floor, according to Forbes.
The bill now features, on page 168 of its more than 2,400 pages, a change in the schedule of “crippling” fines for employers who are adjudged to have put employees at risk jacks up financial penalties by up to 10 times the level in current law, Forbes’ Adam Andrzejewski wrote.
Instead of fines of up to $7,000 for a serious infraction, an employer could be hit with a fine of up to $70,000.
What the Occupational Health and Safety Administration concludes is a willful or repeated violation could now cost $700,000, up from $70,000.
Over the summer, OSHA issued an “emergency temporary standard” that classified COVID-19 as a workplace hazard for the health care sector, setting the stage for a similar ruling in all workplaces.
Some, like Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, have already called for pushback against Biden’s rules.
Andrzejewski, a Forbes senior contributor, explained the bottom line.
“If the legislation is enacted, OSHA could levy draconian fines to enforce Biden’s vaccine mandate, a move that could rapidly bankrupt non-compliant companies,” he wrote.
‘The crippling change described on page 168 of the Democrats’ bill isn’t a typo or a clerical error. It was inserted by design and, likely, with the hope that no one would notice before Democrats ram the bill through Congress,” he wrote.
“If this OSHA change becomes law, the Biden administration will force American businesses to choose between vaccinating their employees, testing them weekly for Covid-19, or going bankrupt under crippling OSHA fines.”https://t.co/BFA8sf3bm5
“If enacted, it could bankrupt a whole host of companies that do not believe they should have to comply with the Biden administration’s mandate or harbor the cost of intrusive, weekly tests.”
He said if that provision becomes law, “the Biden administration may force American businesses to choose between vaccinating their employees, testing them weekly for Covid-19, or going bankrupt under crippling OSHA fines.”
President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda is supposed to tax the wealthy to help the middle class. If you don’t believe me, just ask Biden, who’s more than willing to tell you about it on his Twitter account.
To be fair, I’m assuming the messages aren’t written by Biden himself, a man who seems like his relationship with technology involves yelling at his phone, either asking Siri to find his slippers or telling Scotty to beam him up. However, whoever tweets for him stays on message when it comes to the president’s tax-and-spend plan.
“We’re going to pass a historic middle class tax cut — and we’ll do it by making those at the top pay their fair share,” one tweet from Sunday read. “I know the crowd on Park Ave might not like it, but it’s time we give people in towns like Scranton — the folks I grew up with — a break for a change.”
“From health care to child care, my Build Back Better Agenda will lower everyday costs for middle class Americans,” a tweet from this Monday read.
“I’m not looking to punish anyone, I just think it’s only fair that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share once again. Then, we’ll use that money to invest in the middle class,” a tweet from last week reads.
“For me it’s pretty simple: It’s about time working people got the tax breaks in this country,” a tweet from the day before that read. “That’s the Build Back Better Agenda.”
We’re going to pass a historic middle class tax cut — and we’ll do it by making those at the top pay their fair share.
I know the crowd on Park Ave might not like it, but it’s time we give people in towns like Scranton — the folks I grew up with — a break for a change.
I’m not looking to punish anyone, I just think it’s only fair that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share once again. Then, we’ll use that money to invest in the middle class. pic.twitter.com/xZYMMUo5yi
If someone has to repeat themselves this much, it’s usually because they’re lying — and, lo and behold, the Joint Committee on Taxation seems to have confirmed that.
According to a media release from the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Taxation — a non-partisan congressional tax scorekeeper — found that almost every income level below the threshold the Biden administration said would be immune would take a hit.
Furthermore, the committee’s analysis found the vast majority of taxpayers would see no benefit from the plan in its current form.
According to the analysis, by the calendar year 2023, nearly 5 percent of those making between $40,000 and $50,000 would see a tax increase. Nine percent of those making between $50,000 and $75,000 would see an increase, 18 percent earning between $75,000 and $100,000 would see their taxes go up and 35 percent of those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would be subject to a hike.
The media release also noted that the benefit most people see will pretty much be nil.
In 2023, two-thirds of all taxpayers won’t get see any kind of real benefit from the legislation, either seeing their tax bill changed by less than $100 or getting a tax increase.
By 2027, this number would balloon to 85.5 percent, with huge swaths of the middle class seeing a sizable tax increase; these numbers are projected to stay mostly steady until 2031.
Meanwhile, the Joint Committee on Taxation also found that hiking corporate taxes would hit middle-class Americans hard, too.
“Within 10 years of a corporate tax increase from 21 percent to 25 percent, 66.3 percent of the corporate tax burden would be borne by lower- and middle-income taxpayers with income well below $500,000,” an August media release from the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee read.
“This statistic becomes only more striking in absolute number of taxpayers. Of the more than 172 million taxpayers who would bear the burden of the increased corporate tax rate, 98.4 percent, or about 169 million, have incomes under $500,000.”
Of course, the charge from the left would be that this doesn’t take into account what the spending these tax hikes will pay for is going to buy for the middle class. Beyond the fact these “investments” never bring back the kind of returns that are promised, Biden promised a middle-class tax cut. At least in the plan’s current form, it doesn’t look like it’ll end up delivering — no matter what the president says.
Do you know who did lower taxes on the middle class? Former President Donald Trump.
Joe Biden may have spent much of the campaign whining about Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which slashed taxes across the board. Most of the outrage focused on the fact he didn’t soak the rich: “Tax experts estimate that over the long run, 83% of Trump’s tax giveaway will flow to the top 1% of earners in this country,” Biden’s campaign website read.
And yet, in March of 2020, MarketWatch reported that “Americans paid almost $64 billion less in federal income taxes during the first year under the Republican tax overhaul signed into law in late 2017 by President Donald Trump, with some of the sharpest drops clustered among taxpayers earning between $25,000 and $100,000 a year, even as the overall number of refunds dropped during a turbulent tax season” in 2019.
Biden plans on taking that away. In return, he’s offered nothing of substance — except, as promised, he’s soaking the rich. And the upper-middle class. And some people in the middle class, too. But mainly the rich. See, priorities!
Biden may not be giving people in towns like Scranton — the folks he grew up with — a break the same way Trump did. But at least they can watch as his administration takes (and then squanders) Park Avenue’s money. He’ll be squandering Scranton’s money, too, but at least they get the joy of class-based schadenfreude out of the deal.
If the Democrats in Washington, D.C., have their way, Sen. Rand Paul is going to be a busy man this holiday season.
The Kentucky Republican is famous for his “Festivus Report” every December in which the spending hawk airs his grievances regarding the most ridiculous items the federal government spent money on that year. Last year’s report included lizards on treadmills, studies on whether hot tubs lower stress and yacht subsidies.
Unfortunately, this year will find us with a Democratic president as well as Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. We’ve already burned through trillions in spending and, if moderate Democrats don’t derail it, we’re about to sign on for $3.5 trillion more via this year’s bloated budget.
And, believe you me, there are some whopping grievances in there that need to be aired, at least if the bill passes in its current form.
It’d be difficult to go through all of the waste in the budget. Paste each sheet of paper from the 2,465-page bill on a wall, throw a dart at it and you’re more likely than not to hit some item of proposed governmental profligacy.
However, if you want some of the most ridiculous provisions of the bill, there are four preposterous uses of taxpayer money hidden in the budget that need to be seen to be believed.
1. “Tree equity”: $3 billion
Equity is every liberal’s favorite word these days. It’s a way of saying “equality of outcome” without the stigma attached to the concept. Any spending item with the term attached should raise a red flag, particularly if it involves trees.
According to Fox Business, the Agriculture Committee earmarked $3 billion to plant trees — but not just anywhere. Instead, the program promises “a priority for projects that increase tree equity.”
The term “tree equity” isn’t defined in the bill, because of course it isn’t. However, Fox Business noted the definition from conservation group American Forests, which says the concept “identifies the cities that can gain the most significant health, economic and climate benefits by increasing tree canopy in places of high need.”
Spending $3B on “tree equity” is the perfect encapsulation of Democrats in 2021. https://t.co/FWPDbd6z8F
There’s plenty of other wasteful environmental spending where that came from; for instance, there’s also a “Civilian Climate Corps” ($7.5 billion) and money for “climate justice” block grants ($5 billion). However, “tree equity” is a fair representation of how much woke spending we can expect.
2. Bias training in health care: $25 million
While not necessarily up there with “tree equity” in terms of the amount of money spent, the $25 million for “anti-discrimination and bias training” in health care is another sign of how misplaced the bill’s priorities are.
According to the New York Post, the budget calls for the Treasury to give the money to nonprofits in order “to develop, disseminate, review, research, and evaluate training for health professionals and all staff who interact with patients to reduce discrimination and bias in the provision of health care, with a focus on maternal health care.”
Wait, maternal? Maternity sounds like a loaded concept when it comes to gender. After all, not all mothers are women, according to the left. Shouldn’t it have been “a focus on health care for birthing persons?” Check your privilege, Democrats. Maybe you can cut off another $25 million to spend on bias training for members of the House of Representatives, because you clearly need it.
3. “High-performance green buildings”: $1 billion
When I first read reports about the budget and the pork that was squeezed into it, I had a strange image in my head of what constituted a “high-performance green building.” I was picturing a house with a huge biodiesel-powered V-8 out back. This, unsurprisingly, turned out to be incorrect.
A so-called high-performance green building is what it sounds like — a building designed to reduce energy consumption. The General Services Administration is getting $1 billion to convert its facilities to this standard, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail. The process will reportedly take 10 years.
4. Tax enforcement: $78.94 billion
But remember, this whole thing is supposed to cost us nothing. President Joe Biden told us so, after all:
My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.
Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.
So, how’s he going to do this? Not only does it involve raising taxes, it involves giving the Internal Revenue Service $78.94 billion to shake American taxpayers down.
According to Fox Business, among the most controversial outlays would be the nearly $80 billion the IRS would receive for tax enforcement. Because what every American said was that we needed the IRS to be more aggressive when it came to taking our tax dollars.
“Tree equity” is already a cinch for Paul’s Festivus list, assuming it becomes law. Everything else deserves to be, particularly the nearly $80 billion for America’s least-loved federal agency in order to make itself even less lovable. And these are just the worst offenders we’ve found so far. Considering the size of this bill, who knows what else is lurking in there?
YouTube is removing the channels of prominent anti-vaccine activists as part of its new policies to ban videos that claim approved vaccines are “ineffective or dangerous,” according to a new report.
“As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous,” the Post reported.
“The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox,” it added.
YouTube and other social media platforms banned “misinformation” related to COVID-19 during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. The YouTube ban now extends to other vaccines, seeking to remove content that would increase vaccine hesitancy.
According to Axios, YouTube vice president of global trust and safety Matt Halprin said the video platform would allow personal testimony, such as parents describing their children’s experiences with vaccines, but there would be restrictions.
“If the speaker then goes on to generalize and make calls for all parents not to vaccinate or makes broad claims about vaccines not being safe or effective, that would be removed,” Halprin told Axios.Should Big Tech censor vaccine information?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“In the weeks and months that followed the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine misinformation policy, we observed content and realized that there appeared to be an interaction between general vaccine hesitancy that was being promoted on the platform, and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation,” Halprin said. “We felt like we need to address both.”
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter initially banned certain videos that criticized the coronavirus vaccines in 2020 and YouTube pulled more than 130,000 videos with what it considered misinformation, according to the Post.
Wednesday’s report comes as vaccine requirements are causing widespread controversies across the nation. In the National Basketball Association, for instance, a debate continues regarding whether to impose a league-wide vaccine mandate.
Although league officials reportedly hope to ensure every member of the league receives a COVID vaccine, a strong coalition of NBA players — including many high-profile stars — are opposing any such mandatory requirements.
Among the stars leading the charge are Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards, Andrew Wiggins of the Golden State Warriors, Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic and, most notably, Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets.
According to Rolling Stone, many more professional athletes voiced their opinions during a recent annual players’ union summer meeting. The meeting was held to assess the upcoming season’s agenda. High on the list of items to be discussed was a “proposed mandate from the league office that 100 percent of players get vaccinated against COVID-19.”
For numerous players, the idea prompted one simple answer: “Non-starter.”
In addition, dozens of Massachusetts state troopers submitted their resignations to protest Republican Gov. Charlie Baker’s coronavirus vaccine mandate.
Michael Cherven is the president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts, a union that represents 1,800 members of the state police.
On Friday, his union issued a news release expressing disappointment after a judge denied the union’s request to delay the vaccine mandate until it can negotiate for reasonable accommodations, such as a weekly testing option or wearing a mask on the job.
“To date, dozens of troopers have already submitted their resignation paperwork, some of whom plan to return to other departments offering reasonable alternatives such as mask wearing and regular testing,” Cherven said.
“The State Police are already critically short-staffed and acknowledged this by the unprecedented moves which took troopers from specialty units that investigate homicides, terrorism, computer crimes, arsons, gangs, narcotics, and human trafficking, and returned them to uniformed patrol,” he wrote.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki displayed a surprising level of naïveté on Monday that apparently is representative of President Joe Biden and much of the Democratic Party regarding taxing companies.
They seemingly believe that businesses do not pass their tax costs on to their customers.
What world are the Democrats living in?
Psaki was asked about the impact of the proposed tax increases on businesses and the “wealthy” contained in the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion so-called human infrastructure bill.
“Obviously, the president’s commitment remains not raising taxes for anyone making less than $400,000 a year,” Psaki responded.
“There are some — and I’m not sure if this is the case in this report — who argue that, in the past, companies have passed on these costs to consumers. I’m not sure if that’s the argument being made in this report. We feel that that’s unfair and absurd, and the American people would not stand for that.”
Jen Psaki: It’s “unfair and absurd” that companies would increase costs for consumers in response to us taxing them more. 😳 pic.twitter.com/rHilrYdj4j
“Unfair and absurd.” Wow. Does she not understand that companies are in business to make money? That’s how business owners keep the lights on and the doors open, not to mention make a living, pay their workers and pay back those who invested in the business.
A tax is a cost of production: The higher you raise the price, the more the business owner charges the consumer or chooses to relocate to where the tax burden is lower in order to remain competitive.
Then-President Ronald Reagan explained so clearly that it is the consumer who ultimately pays for taxes placed on companies.
“Some say shift the tax burden to business and industry, but business doesn’t pay taxes,” Reagan said in an Oval Office address to the nation in February 1981.
“Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. Business is being taxed, so much so that we’re being priced out of the world market. But business must pass its costs of operations — and that includes taxes — on to the customer in the price of the product. Only people pay taxes, all the taxes,” he continued.
“Government just uses business in a kind of sneaky way to help collect the taxes. They’re hidden in the price; we aren’t aware of how much tax we actually pay.”
Under the Trump tax cuts, the federal corporate rate came down from 35 percent, the highest in the industrialized world, to 21 percent, which is slightly below average among the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
When combined with state corporate taxes, however, the U.S. current rate is above average at 25.7 percent and higher than China’s 25 percent rate, according to the Tax Foundation.
Former Vice President Mike Pence noted in an opinion piece for Fox News in May that following the Trump tax cuts, factories and jobs began returning to the United States from overseas following years of the reverse happening.
“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America gained 12,000 new factories, because employers were no longer driven away by an exorbitant tax burden,” he wrote.Do you think the corporate tax rate should stay the same?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The Tax Foundation reported that under the legislation being considered by the Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee the federal corporate tax rate would increase from 21 percent to 26.5 percent.
When combined with state corporate taxes, the U.S. would have an average combined rate of 30.9 percent, the third-highest among OECD countries.
Such a move would put our nation at a significant disadvantage compared to the rest of the world.
In August 1962, then-President John F. Kennedy, recognizing the U.S. had become uncompetitive on the world stage, proposed across-the-board tax cuts on individuals and corporations.
“The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy,” he said.
“Every dollar released from taxation that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary,” Kennedy continued. “And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries and more customers and more growth for an expanding American economy.”
“Our goal must be full capacity and full employment and the budgetary surpluses that that kind of employment and capacity can produce,” he said.
Kennedy’s prediction about the efficacy of tax cuts proved true. After his plan was adopted in 1964, tax revenues to the federal treasury increased by over 60 percent by the end of the decade, unemployment fell to under 5 percent and the nation enjoyed a budget surplus by the end of the 1960s.
Similarly, after Reagan signed the first in a series of tax cuts into law in August 1981, the American economy took off.
The unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent and the economy grew a third larger, which was like adding the entire economy of West Germany at the time. Additionally, due to the incredible economic growth, revenues to the federal treasury nearly doubled during the 1980s.
Increasing taxes on corporations is a losing proposition not only for American businesses but also for consumers who ultimately pay the price. You would think the Democrats could have figured that out by now.
For those who think that election audits and integrity investigations are just for conspiracy theorists who still buy into the “big lie,” consider the situation in DeKalb County, Georgia.
DeKalb is the fourth-most populous county in the state and part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. It’s a Democratic stronghold that saw 83 percent of its voters go for Democrat Joe Biden in November. It also could have a serious chain-of-custody issue regarding mail-in ballots put in drop boxes — serious enough that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office has opened an investigation.
Journalist John Solomon, founder of the website Just the News, confirmed the probe on Tuesday, almost a month after the issue was first reported in the Georgia Star News, a local conservative publication. Earlier in September, the county’s elections director was put on an extended leave of absence from her job with no reason given, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“The Secretary of State’s office has opened an investigation into the drop box chain of custody documentation for DeKalb County,” Raffensperger’s office said in a statement, Solomon reported.
“The investigation includes not only whether DeKalb County properly complied with the documentation required by the State Election Board but also whether the actual procedures used by DeKalb adequately protected chain of custody for ballots returned to drop boxes.”
Raffensperger told the Washington Examiner last week that he had opened an investigation into DeKalb County’s election integrity practices because “some information came to us that there was a question about chain of custody,” although this wouldn’t invalidate the votes from DeKalb.
In June, a similar investigation had been launched into Fulton County, home to Atlanta and the state’s most populous county.
On Aug. 30, the Georgia Star News first reported that nearly three-quarters of the absentee ballots retrieved from drop boxes during the 2020 election — 43,907 out of 61,731 — were counted despite violations of the state’s chain of custody rules.
“That rule states absentee ballots placed in drop boxes, ‘shall be immediately transported to the county registrar’ by the two person collection team, which is required to sign a ballot transfer form indicating the number of ballots picked up, the time the ballots were picked up, and the location of the drop box, and that, ‘The county registrar or a designee thereof shall sign the ballot transfer form upon receipt of the ballots from the collection team,’” the Georgia Star’s Laura Baigert reported. [Emphasis in the original.]Do you support election audits?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
According to records obtained by the publication, 46 percent of the ballots, totaling 28,194 votes, weren’t documented as being received by the elections registrar until the day after they were collected.
Another 26 percent of ballots, totaling 15,713 votes, had no timestamp at all, the Star News reported.
Raffensperger’s office said most Georgia counties didn’t submit their chain of custody forms for ballots put into drop boxes until January or February, Solomon reported. While it’s found issues with chain of custody documents in other counties, these were mostly rural.
“As we announced earlier this year, Coffee, Grady, and Taylor counties all failed to complete any ballot transfer documents,” Raffensperger’s office said, Solomon reported.
“They were referred for investigation. In Stephens County, the elections director emptied an absentee ballot drop box on her own instead of with the two people that the State Election Board rule required. Stephens County was referred to the Attorney General’s office by the State Election Board.”
Coffee, Grady, Stephens and Taylor counties combined have a little over 100,000 residents, according to demographic data compiled by Cubit. DeKalb, meanwhile, is home to almost 765,000.
There’s also the mysterious case of DeKalb elections director Erica Hamilton’s extended leave of absence. When Atlanta’s WXIA-TV reported on it Sept. 9, it claimed that DeKalb had “mostly avoided the kinds of missteps that made Fulton [County] the epicenter of election contests last year.”
At the time, however, Raffensperger wasn’t publicly investigating the county and the Georgia Star’s report had stayed under the radar.
Furthermore, if you either haven’t been paying attention or forgot about it, Raffensperger isn’t a close ally of former President Donald Trump; the two have attacked each other since the 2020 election, Trump over Raffensperger’s decision to certify the results and Raffensperger over Trump’s stance that the results were illegitimate.
During a rally in Georgia on Saturday, Trump attacked Raffensperger as “incompetent and strange” and said “there’s something wrong with this guy,” according to WXIA. Raffensperger, for his part, told the Washington Examiner Trump had “continued to promote the big lie” and said the former president “knows in his heart that he lost the election.”
In short, this is hardly about the “big lie.” Rather, it’s the fact that, from all appearances, two of Georgia’s biggest counties — Democrat strongholds both — apparently played fast and loose with Georgia law when it came to absentee ballots during the 2020 election.
This isn’t a smoking gun that says Trump won Georgia or that the two Senate seats the Democrats picked up in the state in January runoff elections were the result of election fraud. There’s no evidence that’s the case.
Instead, it’s yet another sign Democrats treat urban boards of election like their own private fiefdoms, playing by their own rules and expecting state officials to shrug off the sloppiness.
In a swing state that could have decided the presidency and definitely decided the balance of power in the Senate, that’s utterly unacceptable — and it’s why election integrity is so crucial.
DEL RIO, Texas—The largest caravan of illegal immigrants to date was, for them, successful. At its height, around Sept. 18, nearly 15,000 mostly Haitian nationals who had primarily been living in Chile or Brazil, were camped under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, that had been closed to legitimate trade and travel.
More than 12,400 of the aliens were ultimately released into the United States as the primitive camp was cleared and dismantled, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The majority were given either a notice to appear, which is a date to appear in immigration court, or a notice to report, which is a request to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within 60 days. None were tested for COVID-19.
About 2,000 Haitians were flown back to Haiti during the week, Mayorkas said on Sept. 24. He also said that Border Patrol had apprehended almost 30,000 illegal immigrants in Del Rio during the previous two weeks.
News spread swiftly among the Haitians in Del Rio, and when the first deportation flights landed in Haiti, many of those left under the bridge fled back across the Rio Grande to Acuña, Mexico, to wait out the uncertainty.
All of the Haitians that The Epoch Times spoke to had been living in Chile or Brazil for years before deciding to come to the United States. They all said it wasn’t an option for them to return to Haiti and that they were determined to get into the United States one way or another.
Illegal immigrants take supplies back and forth between Acuna, Mexico, and the United States (far side) across the Rio Grande, the international boundary with Mexico, in Acuna, Mexico, on Sept. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The southwest Mexican city of Tapachula is the common entry point of the well-worn route for Haitians making the trek north.
After passing through the treacherous Darien jungle from Colombia to Panama, they get help from the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration. Then, they make their way through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, before entering Mexico near Tapachula.
Haitians and African nationals have been gathering in Tapachula for years to wait for transit permits or to apply for asylum in Mexico.
In 2019, The Epoch Times reported that more than 5,000 Haitians and Africans were bottlenecked in Tapachula’s immigration center. At the time, it took more than one month to get the required documents, but no one wanted to be caught without legal documents and risk deportation at that stage, so they waited.
However, in mid-September this year, thousands of Haitians left Tapachula, some without legal documentation, and started making their way to the U.S. border, mostly by bus.
“The Mexican government has been very helpful,” Phanel, a Haitian national, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 21 in Acuña, Mexico.
“Legally, they are issuing permits, but some of us didn’t wait for it [in Tapachula]. But still they provided guidance on how to get here.”
Phanel said he had been living in Chile for three years before deciding to come to the United States. He had spent five nights under the bridge in Del Rio with his wife, son, and daughter, before crossing back to Mexico to retrieve groceries.
Another Haitian man who had been living in Chile for several years was looking for a hotel to stay at in Acuña to avoid deportation from the United States.
“I thought I was going to be let in [to the United States], be handed the notice to appear, and right away, look for a job so I can send money back to my family,” he said.
Traditionally, Haitians first made it to Puerto Rico, rather than take the overland route through Latin America. The second-busiest crossing point for Haitians had been the northern U.S. border (604 arrests in 12 years) and the southern border was third, with 473 arrests in 12 years.
But, in 2019, Border Patrol agents in Del Rio started apprehending upward of 1,000 Haitians within a few weeks.
This year, the number of Haitians crossing illegally into Del Rio has been on a sharp upward trend, especially since April, when agents apprehended 514 Haitians. The number grew tenfold to 5,196 in August. September is set to break all records.
Haitians, and others, who crossed the U.S. border illegally have been processed by Border Patrol and are dropped at local NGO Border Humanitarian Coalition to catch a bus to San Antonio or Houston, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Policy Incentives
On a policy level, the Biden administration has been lenient on illegal immigrants, including through policy changes that allow most to be released into the United States.
Mayorkas announced on May 22 an extension for Haitians currently eligible under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program that was put in place after the 2010 earthquake. That allowed Haitians who were already in the United States before the earthquake to stay, as their country was deemed unsafe to return. TPS holders get work permits and are shielded from deportation.
The original 2010 designation was extended several times until the Trump administration announced in January 2018 that Haiti’s designation would end, effective July 22, 2019. Subsequent lawsuits allowed the designation to remain in effect.
On Aug. 3, Mayorkas dramatically increased the number of Haitians eligible for the program by announcing that all Haitians who had made it into the United States by July 29 this year, would now be eligible to apply for TPS.
Former President Barack Obama started the practice of redesignating TPS so people who arrived after the original designation were also covered, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a D.C.-based think tank that promotes legal immigration.
“Redesignating … does provide an incentive to get here and then take advantage. You can never be sure that that’s going to happen, but I think it was a reasonable expectation for people that if they got here, the Biden administration would eventually do it again,” Vaughan told The Epoch Times.
“I don’t think the migrants themselves always know the specific policies and what the eligibility criteria are … they just know that people are being allowed to enter and stay here for an indefinite period of time.”
Social media such as Facebook and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp contribute greatly to the rapid spread of information and organizing capacity of large groups of would-be illegal immigrants.
As many as 30,000 Haitians are currently on their way to the border, according to reports received by Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano last week.
Thousands of illegal immigrants, mostly Haitians, live in a primitive, makeshift camp under the international bridge that spans the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico while waiting to be detained and processed by Border Patrol, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
A Warning
Three months before the Haitian crisis, Jon Anfinsen, a Border Patrol agent and national union representative for Del Rio, said he warned the administration to prepare for an overwhelming influx of illegal immigrants. It was a warning cry he said was ignored.
“It was basically recommended that they should start building some kind of facility down here,” Anfinsen told The Epoch Times on Sept. 21.
Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council said, “Not only did they ignore him, they came back and said, ‘We have more efficient ways to handle it.’”
“Now we’re in this situation,” Judd said as he pointed to the squalid conditions under the bridge in Del Rio.
Judd said “there’s no way in the world” that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t know 15,000 Haitians were on their way to the U.S. border.
“We have a very robust intel department. There is no way in the world they could not have prepared. They just didn’t do it,” he said.
Speaking to the media at the White House on Sept. 24, Mayorkas said the situation in Del Rio was unprecedented.
“It is unprecedented for us to see that number of people arrive in one discrete point along the border in such a compacted period of time,” he said.
He reiterated that the criteria for asylum don’t include “economic need, flight from generalized violence” but rather “credible fear of persecution by reason of one’s membership in a particular social group.”
It’s unclear if Haitians who have safely lived in Chile or Brazil for years will be eligible for asylum.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped in March to address the border issue and has said her focus is on the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
Mayorkas’s three-part plan is to invest in the countries that people are leaving, to build “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” for migration, and rebuild the asylum system and refugee program.
Vaughan said Congress has been unable to address border security and immigration issues for years.
“Immigration law and policy has been abdicated by Congress, and is now in the hands of the courts and the executive branch,” she said.
The effects of huge numbers of illegal immigrants being released across America will put a “huge burden” on communities, she said.
“[The communities] are going to have to pick up the tab for it—to have these kids in school, for health care. They’re going to be occupying a lot of the affordable housing, they’re going to be trying to work off the books because they don’t have work permits. And they will eventually be accessing all kinds of public welfare programs.”
Haitians who crossed the U.S. border illegally have been processed by Border Patrol and are dropped at local NGO Border Humanitarian Coalition to catch a bus to San Antonio or Houston, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Off the Border
As the Haitian nationals poured across the border, Border Patrol was forced to close several highway checkpoints for more than a week in order to send agents to deal with the influx. That left Highway 90—a direct shot from Del Rio to San Antonio—open, as Texas state troopers also left the highways to guard the border.
On Sept. 24, before the checkpoint reopened, Highway 90 kept troopers and local law enforcement tied up with vehicle pursuits and smuggling arrests.
The driver of a stolen pickup truck out of Houston took state troopers and Kinney County deputies on a high-speed chase for several miles, before he careened off the road and smashed through a high game fence. Five illegal aliens were arrested near the truck and the remaining three were located and arrested with the help of the DPS helicopter. Border Patrol took all eight into custody.
The closed Border Patrol highway checkpoint on Highway 90 near Uvalde, Texas, on Sept. 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Within hours of that stop, Kinney County Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Molinar stopped a vehicle suspected of carrying illegal aliens. The driver, a 15-year-old boy, had stolen the car from his father in Cedar Creek, Texas, and was smuggling four Mexican nationals.
The boy is currently in juvenile detention facing four felony counts of human smuggling. A recent law change in Texas has made it easier to prosecute human smugglers by removing the requirement to prove pecuniary gain, or payment, to the smuggler.
“When you look at the resources that are being pulled to the bridge to deal with this, it’s completely and totally depleted the field resources of not just DPS but the Border Patrol,” Judd said.
“And Del Rio, you’ve got close to 240 miles that just is being patrolled by an absolute skeleton crew. And, of course, the cartels are going to exploit that.”
WASHINGTON–A group of Republican lawmakers threw their support behind doctors who advocate for the right to use ivermectin, an inexpensive antiparasitic drug, for treating COVID-19.
Ivermectin is the latest drug caught in controversy after demand surged dramatically in August. Physician and pharmacist groups, including the American Medical Association “strongly oppose” the prescribing of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients. Federal health agencies also issued warnings recently to prevent the use of the drug, stating that “adverse effects associated with ivermectin misuse and overdose are increasing.”
Critical care physician Pierre Kory, however, describes correctly administered ivermectin as “a gift” in the fight against COVID-19.
“I know ivermectin works. I’ve been using it to treat patients for 10 months now,” Kory told The Epoch Times.
During the pandemic, Kory led intensive care units in several hotspots, including New York City. He is one of the founding members of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which “strongly recommends” the use of ivermectin in both the prevention and treatment of the virus.
Kory briefed more than 20 members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Sept. 27 about the efficacy of the drug.
During the briefing, Kory claimed that ivermectin has helped reduce COVID-19 deaths by 88 percent with early treatment and by about 75 percent in cases of hospitalization, based on data from Mexico City and Misiones, a province in Argentina where a large number of patients were treated with ivermectin.
Kory also said COVID cases significantly dropped in Uttar Pradesh, which was the first state in India to introduce large-scale use of ivermectin during the peak of the delta surge in the country.
Dr. Pierre Kory (C) speaks to members of the House Freedom Caucus about the efficacy of ivermectin against COVID-19 at the Conservative Partnership Institute in Washington on Sept. 27, 2021. (Emel Akan/The Epoch Times)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who joined the briefing, criticized the efforts to quash access to the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. Johnson has been a vocal advocate for COVID-19 treatments beyond vaccines, including ivermectin. A possible explanation for the resistance “has to do with money,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The vaccine has been worth billions to these companies. Is that what’s driving this? I would like to think that’s not the case,” he said. “How many lives could have been saved had our federal health agencies robustly explored all these generic drugs?”
Ivermectin is an FDA-approved antiparasitic drug that has been used safely for more than three decades in the treatment of certain worm infections. The two doctors who developed ivermectin received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 “for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world.”
While ivermectin was not developed to treat viruses, an increasing number of doctors around the world believe in the efficacy of the drug against the COVID-19.
Over 88,000 ivermectin prescriptions were reported in the United States in the second week of August, which is 24 times higher than the pre-pandemic level, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published an article warning against use of the drug, stating that many have been taking the one intended for animals.
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” the agency posted on Twitter on Aug. 21.
Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a member of the Freedom Caucus and one of the supporters of allowing people the right to try ivermectin, criticized federal agencies and the media for smearing the drug as “horse treatment.”
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Gohmert called the efforts to suppress the use of ivermectin as “dishonesty,” which is preventing people from having access to an FDA-approved drug that is inexpensive and widely available. He likened these efforts to the disinformation tactics used for decades by the tobacco industry to dismiss the health risks of smoking.
“It goes beyond being wrong. It gets virtually to being criminal,” Gohmert said.
The FDA warned that it has not yet approved ivermectin “for use in preventing or treating COVID-19.” The agency said that the “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective” against the virus, adding that the clinical trials are ongoing.
According to Kory, FDA approval for ivermectin use to treat COVID-19 is not required for off-label prescriptions. Off-label use refers to using an approved drug to treat a different type of disease that the drug is not approved to treat. Nearly 20 percent of all prescriptions written in the United States are off-label.
There are now threats from medical boards to take away licenses from doctors who prescribe ivermectin, Kory said.
“I cannot describe the harm, and the tragedy, and the actual humanitarian crisis that this is causing,” he said.
With so many geriatric politicians shuffling around Washington, D.C., verbal slipups sometimes happen that reveal things they shouldn’t.
Usually, it’s something like President Joe Biden’s admission that his handlers don’t want him taking questions from the press or when the 78-year-old is spinning one of his tall tales that’s easily debunked.
But now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 81, accidentally attributed the jewel of the Biden agenda to former President Barack Obama that left us wondering whether it was a sober revelation or just another “senior moment” from an elderly politician?
“Keep government open — we intend, we have to do those imminently, more imminently even to address the full Obama agenda of building back better,” Pelosi said to reporters during a House Democratic Leaders news conference Tuesday.
To be fair, Pelosi had just been comparing the fight with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling during the Obama administration to the one about to happen now under Biden.
Moreover, Pelosi is an elderly woman who could easily find herself muddling facts as her brain just can’t keep up and orient her to the proper date.
But it’s also true that Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is a tax-and-spend bonanza like his former boss’, complete with language about “making the tax code fairer and making the wealthiest and large corporations pay their fair share.”
Then there’s the way Obama famously admitted he would increase capital gains taxes for the sake of fairness regardless of any economic benefit to doing so, and Biden’s historic tax hike on the wealthy echoes the same class warfare game.
There are the overlapping promises to reduce health care premiums and costs in Biden’s agenda that sound similar to the promises made about Obamacare, though predictably it remains a problem to be solved even after Obama “fixed” it (funny how that works).
On a broader scale, the two are twinning when it comes to their handling of race relations, though Biden has taken the mask of civility off to stoke the flames of the dumpster fire that the issue has turned into.
Like Obama, the current president never misses the chance to divide along racial lines and attribute whatever he can to racism, though it doesn’t pack the same punch coming from an old white guy.
But they even handle racially charged fake news stories the same. When the easily debunked narrative about Border Patrol agents whipping migrants made the rounds, Biden was out in front of the facts and threatened that “those people will pay.”
That self-righteous and ill-informed stance echoed the way Obama handled a situation during his presidency where police responded to a neighbor’s call of a possible burglary only to find a black professor trying to break into his own property.
Though the police were simply trying to ascertain whether the man did indeed own the home, accusations of racial profiling were flying and Obama ran with the narrative, declaring those police officers involved “acted stupidly” without regard to the facts of the case.
It seems that having Biden in office is akin to a third term for Obama, though he’s the older and clunkier model in many ways.
Pelosi probably didn’t have all of this in mind when she said they were working toward Obama’s agenda and likely used the wrong name because she’s old and has been in politics forever — but she was onto something.
It seems that stopped clocks and memory-challenged octogenarians occasionally get things right, even if it’s only by accident.
The progressive left has, for too long, dismissed conservative claims that the LGBT agenda normalizes the sexualization of children as “homophobic” or “bigoted.”
Yeah … about that.
An NBC contributor and vocal proponent of the LGBT movement has been slated as the spokesman for an organization with uncomfortably close ties to the sexualization of children.
Activist Noah Berlatsky is an ideal choice for this organization, as it happens, as he himself also has a long history of promoting the very same thing.
What’s incredibly stunning, however, is that he isn’t just some fringe liberal arts college academic no one’s ever heard of. He’s a contributor to one of the nation’s major news outlets as well as several other huge platforms, and his appointment to this position will no doubt only further legitimize the faction of LGBT Americans who vocally support the acceptance of pedophilia, child prostitution, child pornography and child sexuality.
And yes — Berlatsky and the organization, Prostasia, appear to be supportive of all of these things, however shrouded with seemingly conflicting claims to be interested in protecting children from sexual abuse.
Berlatsky is a writer and editor who, according to his LinkedIn profile, has contributed to, among other outlets, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Slate, Media Matters, and of course, NBC News.
It appears that he is now the communications director for the non-profit organization Prostasia, which as The Post Millennial recently detailed at length, gives off the very conspicuous impression of working to normalize pedophilia.
This is fitting — he seems to have worked with the organization for some time and has shared tweets from one Dr. James Cantor, also affiliated with Prostasia, who, in a now-deleted tweet captured in a screenshot by Post Millenial, argued that a “P” for pedophiles should be included under the extensive LGBT+ banner.
Prostasia has a support group for “Minor Attracted Persons” for adults and teens over the age of 13, which is described as a “peer support chat for minor attracted people who are fundamentally against child sexual abuse and committed to never harm children, and is a safe space to have peer support in times of trouble.”
“Prostasia bills itself as ‘a new kind of child protection organization’ that has a different approach to protecting children than the current methods of social work and law enforcement, saying that these approaches ‘are less effective than they should be, because they are driven by emotion rather than evidence,’” the Post Millennial explains.
One of these novel approaches is validating the desires of “minor attracted persons” who they believe can be “committed to never offending.”
Despite this apparent commitment to supporting those who are attracted to children but do not want to harm them or view child pornography, however, Anna Slatz recently wrote for the feminist website 4W that they nonetheless “have dedicated themselves to crusades against child pornography bans, letter-writing campaigns to state representatives demanding child-likeness sex dolls be kept legal, and funding research into ‘fantasy sexual outlets‘ for pedophiles.”
“In Prostasia’s blog entries, ‘child protection’ routinely ends up in the same sentences as ‘free speech,’ ‘kink,’ or ‘sex positivity.’ The topics of age play, furries, hentai [anime or manga pornography], and prostitution are spoken about no differently as, and often with no barrier between, child sexuality and child sexual abuse,” Slatz noted.
You can see for yourself by visiting the organization’s website — but you have most certainly been warned … it’s nauseating, horrifying and infuriating.
One stunning example of Prostatsia and Berlatsky’s openness to accepting and promoting child sexuality is an interview he conducted for the group with a porn star who glowingly promoted the idea of exposing children to pornography, recalling a wonderful experience she had as a child discovering nude photographs and developing an insatiable appetite for smut — at the age of 8.
“The anti-porn crusaders fear that children being exposed to sex is going to lead them to some kind of ultimate demoralization,” Mireille Miller-Young told an apparently entirely supportive Berlatsky in a July interview for Prostatsia.
“And, of course, the socialization that pornographic materials can provide at that age can be interpreted in different ways. And my experience was of it being joyful and fun. It was an image of beauty and sexiness that influenced my ideas about sexuality through life,” she declared.
Another example is an article he wrote for The New Republic in 2016 headlined, “Child Sex Workers’ Biggest Threat: The Police,” which sympathetically president a professor arguing for the decriminalization of minors engaging in sex work.
(Cops and the criminal justice system are worse for the kids than their pimps, the article essentially argues.)
So, Belatsky is full of empathy — though it might not be a surprise that there’s one group he has no empathy for: supporters of former President Donald Trump.
In a YouTube video from 2019, in fact, he spent the better part of an hour bashing any idea of trying to understand Trump’s backers. https://www.youtube.com/embed/5_sdX3uzsp8?feature=oembed
Referring to trafficked children as “young people trading in sex,” according to Twitter posts captured in screenshots by the Post Millennial, he has argued that child sex trafficking laws somehow victimize children rather than help them escape a sick and disgusting cycle of abuse and exploitation.
He’s also written that “Pedophiles are essentially a stigmatized group” and that people “love accusing people of pedophilia” as it’s apparently “an explosive accusation linked historically to queer people and Jewish people and sex workers.” (The quotes are again from Twitter posts captured in screenshots by the Post Millennial.)
Or perhaps people accuse people of pedophilia when they actively oppose laws restricting the production of child pornographic images, fight to get pedophiles recognized under the banner of LGBT, and support the idea of exposing children to pornography.
As far as such outrageous ideas go, Berlatsky is in good (well, abhorrently immoral) company in today’s “sex-positive” culture that seems to serve only as a very, very thinly veiled push to normalize child sexuality.
There was the Manhattan prep school teacher who taught kindergartners about masturbation and gave high school students a “porn literacy” seminar.
There was the blue-check writer Flora Gill, who has been published by GQ, The Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Sunday Times, among other outlets, who wrote in a since-deleted tweet earlier this year that “Someone needs to create porn for children.”
“Young teens are already watching porn but they’re finding hardcore, aggressive videos that give a terrible view of sex. They need entry level porn! A soft core site where everyone asks for consent and no one gets choked,” she argued.
Maybe Prostasia has an opening for Gill, too.
There is also the trans activist Alok Vaid-Menon, himself a blue checkmark on Twitter, who once wrote that fears that transgender bathroom laws could little girls being sexually assaulted by adult men were misplaced as there are “no innocent victims” because “little girls are also kinky.”
Vaid-Menon also appeared on self-identified non-binary pop star Demi Lovato’s YouTube channel earlier this year and was the subject of an HBO Max documentary in 2020:
Meanwhile, across the nation, schools have been using sex-ed curricula under the umbrella of so-called “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” backed by the abortion provider Planned Parenthood and entirely centered around the ideology of “sex-positive” yet is more accurately described as “Grooming 101.”
The push to normalize child sexuality has been burgeoning over the last few decades, but only in the last few years has it gotten this far into legitimacy, and suddenly we find it is at the heart of mainstream media and parts of public education.
There is no longer any basis whatsoever to dismiss the opposition to this dangerous and disgusting ideology as hysterical, homophobic, or bigoted.
It’s never been more clear that, as the San Francisco Gay Men’s Choir so gleefully celebrated earlier this year, they are, indeed, coming for our children.
Several days after the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, President Joe Biden sat for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He insisted he had not been advised by his military to leave a small number of troops in Afghanistan to keep the country from falling to the Taliban.
“Your top military advisers warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops,” Stephanopoulos said.
Biden abruptly cut him off. “No they didn’t. It was split. That wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.”
“They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“No, not in terms of whether we were going to get out — in a time frame — all troops. They didn’t argue against that,” the president said.
Stephanopoulos tried again. “Your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?”
Biden answered: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”
FLASHBACK: In August, Biden insisted that “no, no one” advised against his withdrawal timeline.
Today under oath, Generals Milley & McKenzie confirmed they recommended against Biden’s withdrawal timeline and warned him about the impending collapse of the Afghan government. pic.twitter.com/HejzUb5FIf
In addition to the fact that Biden’s remarks didn’t sound particularly convincing, two of his top military advisers contradicted him in testimony before Senate lawmakers on Tuesday morning. And a third testified he was sure the president had “received this input.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, addressed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
Both Milley and McKenzie said they had recommended leaving 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country, according to CNN.
Milley told lawmakers: “In the fall of 2020, my analysis was that an accelerated withdrawal without meeting specific and necessary conditions risks losing the substantial gains made in Afghanistan, damaging US worldwide credibility, and could precipitate a general collapse of the Afghan government, resulting in a complete Taliban takeover or general civil war.”
The Joint Chiefs Chair said his view all along was “that we should keep a steady state of 2,500 and it could bounce up to 3,500, maybe, something like that, in order to move toward a negotiated solution.”
McKenzie echoed Milley. According to Fox News, McKenzie told the committee, “I won’t share my personal recommendation to the president, but I will give you my honest opinion and my honest opinion and view shaped my recommendation. And I recommended that we maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.”
“I also have a view that the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government,” he added.
To make things worse for the president, Austin was asked if he was certain Biden “received the input” from Milley and McKenzie. Austin replied, “Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure.”
It’s abundantly clear: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ignored the advice from the military and mislead the American people.
Biden’s botched Afghan withdrawal could have been prevented and American lives could have been saved. https://t.co/wUCd3C0xt0
Milley also told the senators, “I think that our credibility with allies and partners around the world, and with adversaries, is being intensely reviewed by them to see which way this is going to go. And I think that ‘damage’ is one word that could be used.”
I think so too.
Notably, both Milley and Austin blamed the Doha agreement negotiated by the Trump administration with the Taliban in February 2020 for a precipitous drop in the morale and the performance of Afghan troops.
This issue was raised when senators questioned why the Biden administration didn’t have a better sense of the limitations of the Afghan forces, according to CNN.
“It’s my judgment that the Doha Agreement did negatively affect the performance of the Afghan forces in particular by some of the actions the government of Afghanistan was required to take as part of that agreement,” McKenzie said. “[The Doha deal] did affect the morale of the Afghan security forces.”
This is more an excuse for poor judgment than a cause of the debacle. Biden has repeatedly blamed the chaotic U.S. exit on the Trump administration’s peace deal with the Taliban.
In fact, The Associated Press explored the veracity of that claim days after the fall of Kabul and found it lacking in substance. Its fact check determined that Biden was not bound by the Doha, Qatar, agreement. The deal contained an “escape clause.”Do you believe that Biden is responsible for the disaster in Afghanistan?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed,” the AP wrote. “They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.”
Former President Donald Trump and his officials were realistic. In defense of the Trump administration’s efforts, it must be said that they were well aware of the forces they were dealing with. They were always clear that the Taliban would be monitored and “conditions on the ground” would determine the path forward.
All along, Trump warned of significant military retaliation if the Taliban reneged on its obligations.
His administration was criticized for giving legitimacy to a terrorist group, but the Taliban is such a dominant force in the country, how could it have been otherwise? The U.S. and the Afghan government could ignore the group at their peril.
Biden was so determined to get out of Afghanistan that he ignored the most important words in the Doha agreement: “conditions on the ground.”
The Doha deal had not been ratified by Congress and it could and should have been changed as conditions changed. Biden had no problem with changing any other policy and program implemented by the Trump administration.
Milley says putting a specific date on withdrawal went against his advice, says conditions-based approaches are superior.
The other excuse offered by the generals was that the collapse happened so quickly. What they believed would take months occurred over 11 days, they claimed.
The report lists the key events since U.S. Central Command began its formal military drawdown on May 1.
Here are the most relevant developments.
June 22: “Taliban seize Sher Khan border crossing to Tajikistan.”
June 23: “General Milley says 81 district centers are under Taliban control.”
Jun 25: “President Biden meets with President Ghani and High Council for National Reconciliation Chairman Abdullah in Washington, DC.”
July 8: “Taliban capture Islam Qala border crossing in Herat Province, key trade route to Iran.”
July 12: “General Austin Miller relinquishes command of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and NATO Resolute Support Mission.”
July 12 – 15: “Four media outlets publish maps indicating Taliban control majority of Afghan districts, with many taken since May 1.”
July 14: “Taliban capture border crossing at Kandahar Province’s Spin Boldak, connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
July 17: “High-level Afghan delegation meets with Taliban in Doha to expedite stalled peace talks.”
July 21: “General Milley says Taliban control more than 210 districts [out of a total of approximately 400].”
The report indicates the Taliban was executing a preplanned, systematic takeover of the country, that U.S. military leaders were well aware of it and allowed it to continue.
By June 23, 20 percent of the districts in the country were under Taliban control. Milley told Congress about it.
Exactly four weeks later, on July 21, 50 percent of the districts were held by the Taliban. They had also captured at least three border crossings.
It’s likely the Biden administration knew long before June 23 that the takeover had begun. I would be willing to bet the administration was aware of it in real-time.
But even giving them the benefit of the doubt, officials knew about it for nearly two months rather than the 11 days Milley referred to at the Senate hearing.
The bottom line is that contrary to what Biden told Stephanopoulos, his military advisers recommended that he leave 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. The Biden administration could have torn up the Doha agreement at any time. And Biden officials were aware that the Taliban was sweeping through the country, swallowing up districts for far longer than 11 days.
The Washington Post on Tuesday fact-checked U.S. President Joe Biden over his claims that he can accomplish his spending goals with a price tag of “zero” dollars.
While speaking to reporters on Friday, Biden claimed that his spending plan for the country has a “zero price tag on the debt. We’re paying — we’re going to pay for everything we spend,” according to footage and a transcript of the news conference obtained by Factbase.
The following day, the President wrote in a Twitter post: “My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.”
My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.
Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.
“Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America. And it adds zero dollars to the national debt,” Biden’s tweet further stated.
According to the Biden administration, the Build Back Better Agenda is an “ambitious plan to create jobs, cut taxes, and lower costs for working families,” which among other things seeks to lower the cost of child care, higher education, prescription drugs, health care and housing, as well as institute tax cuts for low-wage workers and families with children.
The agenda also seeks job creation through workforce training, clean-energy jobs, and investing in teachers and schools.
The Biden Administration plans to fund such lofty goals “by making the tax code fairer and making the wealthiest and large corporations pay their fair share,” which is Democrat-speak for raising corporate and other taxes that Americans have to pay to the government.
Despite Biden’s belief that the Build Back Better Agenda would cost “zero dollars” and his optimistic claims that his plan will not increase the nation’s already high deficit, the plan would require around $3.5 trillion through a reconciliation bill for it to be implemented according to the New York Post.
On Tuesday, Washington Post fact-checkers gave Biden’s comments two “Pinnochios.” By the Post’s fact-check rating scale, a Pinnochio count of two means that the statements by Biden had “[s]ignificant omissions and/or exaggerations.”
“Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily,” according to the Posts’ rating description. “A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people. (Similar to ‘half true.’)”
Regarding Biden’s zero-cost budget claim, the Post wrote that, “given our long experience in writing about the federal budget, we’re pretty certain a deficit score of zero would only be accomplished with some dubious gimmicks that help disguise the true cost of Biden’s agenda.”
“Even if the reconciliation bill lands with a calculated deficit impact of zero, the president will still be in a deficit hole because of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.”
“Originally the two bills were supposed to work in tandem, but now the White House claims only the reconciliation bill represents the president’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan. That wasn’t the story in the spring,” the Post’s fact-check report stated.
In addition to the Post — a major, left-leaning legacy news outlet — several Republicans slammed Biden for his claims that his plan will have a price tag of zero dollars.
GOP Congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois called Biden’s claims “a lie.”
“This is completely false. The largest spending spree in government history will cost ‘zero dollars’? That defies logic and basic math. Alongside massive tax increases, it will add trillions to the debt. Peddling false narratives won’t change those facts,” said Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas.
A lawsuit brought by bartender Dustin Hice alleging CNN anchor Don Lemon inappropriately touched him in a sexually charged assault more than three years ago is expected to make it to a courtroom early next year, according to a Fox News report.
It is the latest such headache for the network, as last week veteran television news producer Shelley Ross accused CNN host Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her in 2005 when both worked for ABC News. The host of “Cuomo Prime Time” apologized at the time, according to Shelley, and reiterated his apology to The New York Times last week.
The assault and battery suit against Lemon, 55, who is openly gay, hasn’t made it before a judge due to a lengthy discovery process and the coronavirus pandemic, but Hice’s legal team told Fox News Digital it expects the suit to end up in court around January 2022.
Hice, 40, claims Lemon, anchor of “CNN Tonight,” rubbed his own genitals and then put his fingers into Hice’s face at Murf’s Backstreet Tavern in Sag Harbor, New York, in July 2018.
“At such time, Mr. Lemon, who was wearing a pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt, put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into Plaintiff’s moustache under Plaintiff’s nose,” the complaint, filed in Suffolk County Court on Aug. 11, 2019, stated.
“Mr. Lemon intensely pushed his fingers against Plaintiff’s face under Plaintiff’s nose, forcing Plaintiff’s head to thrust backward as Defendant repeatedly asked Plaintiff ‘Do you like p**** or d***?’ While saying this, Mr. Lemon continued to shove his fingers into Plaintiff’s face with aggression and hostility.”
George Gounelas, Hice’s former boss, told Fox News last year he witnessed the incident, corroborating his onetime employee’s account of his encounter with Lemon.
“Dustin worked for me as a bartender [and] we went out after work one night. We were standing there and he said, ‘Hey, that’s Don Lemon,’” Gounelas said at the time.
After Lemon allegedly refused Hice’s attempt to get his attention and buy him a drink, Lemon approached Hice and Gounelas sometime later.Is CNN right to stand behind Don Lemon over this allegation?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“Don Lemon has now come around the corner and is standing face to face with us. There is a beam, a pole, in the place. Don’s standing up against the pole, face to face with Dustin, I turn around and I’m standing right there between the two of them,” Gounelas said, noting the alleged incident occurred shortly after.
The complaint went on to note Hice stepped outside the bar after being “emotionally devasted by Mr. Lemon’s demeaning unprovoked and offensive assault. Plaintiff and Mr. Gounelas remained outside for approximately 5 to 10 minutes before Plaintiff was able to collect himself and return to Murf’s,” as the incident left Hice “shocked and humiliated.”
According to Hice, a proposed six-figure payment was offered by Lemon before talks broke down, resulting in the lodging of the formal complaint, the Daily Mail reported.
For his part, Lemon has been adamant he did nothing wrong.
On June 3, 2020, Lemon’s attorney, Caroline Polisi, wrote in a court document that her client is “often subjected to racist and homophobic harassment” and “strangers” often approach him in public, at “times intrusively and repeatedly,” as reported last year by Fox News.
She called Hice’s allegations “speculative, hypothetical, unsupported by any reasonably methodology” and “not cognizable as a matter of law.”
“The plaintiff in this lawsuit has previously displayed a pattern of contempt for CNN on his social media accounts,” a CNN spokesperson told Mediaite in 2019.
“This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money from Don Lemon. Don categorically denies these claims and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time.”
An Instagram post from January 2017 allegedly posted by Hice and obtained by the news website showed him posing in front of CNN’s Atlanta headquarters with the caption, “touring the #CNN center today … or as #Trump would say ‘the home of Fake News’ lol.”
The allegations against Lemon and Cuomo follow on the heels of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin returning to the network this summer, eight months after being suspended for exposing himself during a Zoom call with colleagues at The New Yorker, where he also worked.
The Biden administration’s repeated release of illegal immigrants has drawn a legal challenge from the state of Florida.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, sued the federal government over its “catch-and-release” policy, which has led to the freeing of over 225,000 illegal immigrants this year.
The lawsuit primarily concerns the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, which is granted in cases where authorities rule they have a legitimate fear of persecution based on their race, religion, or several other reasons.
Federal law requires the government to detain the asylum seekers until authorities rule on their case. But under President Joe Biden, it has released at least 225,000 illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, so far, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
“Releasing this many arriving aliens into the interior necessarily means that the government is violating congressional commands in the immigration laws,” the 23-page suit, filed in federal court in Pensacola, states.
“We are seeing dramatic effects at our border. It is an unmitigated crisis based on this president’s refusal to follow federal law. It’s in black and white folks, and it’s not a president’s responsibility to decide whether he agrees with the law. In fact, the head of an executive branch must follow the law,” Moody told reporters during a briefing in Lee County.
Florida has been negatively affected through elevated costs to hold illegal immigrants, officials say.
Florida is asking the court to find the Biden administration’s “catch-and-release” policy unlawful and require defendants to stop enforcing the policy while coming into alignment with requirements set by federal law.
The Biden administration did not respond to a request for comment.
Officials have defended the widespread release of illegal immigrants, claiming the law is being followed because they’re being given notices to appear in court or at an immigration office.
“We remain in touch with them. We monitor them to ensure their appearance in court at the designated time of appearance,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters in Washington last week after the administration released over 12,000 illegal immigrants who were clustered in Del Rio, Texas.
But fewer than 6 in 10 illegal immigrant asylum seekers show up in court, according to Department of Justice data.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is seen in a file photograph. (Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)
Florida officials say the Biden administration’s policies are designed to boost immigration numbers and illegal immigration has skyrocketed since the Democrat took office.
Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration has been bypassing what previous administrations did, which was only releasing illegal immigrants when detention facilities were full.
One way the administration is doing that is by using its parole power, which was designed to be used for a small number of cases and only for “urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit.”
“The policy of releasing immigrants into the country on parole is vast, widespread, and historic in its scope,” Bensman told The Epoch Times.
The new suit asks the judge to stop the Biden administration from paroling immigrants without engaging in a case-by-case review.
Also on Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced an executive order that bars all Florida agencies under his purview from facilitating illegal immigration and requires state officials to collect information on the costs and scope of illegal immigration in the state.
“Since President Biden took office—which has been less than one year—the Border Patrol has released nearly a quarter-million illegal aliens into the United States,” DeSantis said in a statement. “This executive order makes it clear that Florida resources will not be used to prop up the failed open border agenda enacted by this administration.”
Career politician Joe Biden is an epic failure as U.S. president who has made the world a more dangerous place, as evidenced by the numerous domestic and international crises he has unleashed so far in his tenure.
That’s the somber assessment of Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, who enumerated eight major ways Biden has damaged the United States.
“Among America’s most important allies, there is no longer any trust that President Biden can be relied on as a serious partner,” Stewart wrote in a grim piece published Sunday by The Hill.
“Among America’s most competitive rivals, there is no longer any belief that President Biden can protect our interests. And among the American people, there is no longer any faith that President Biden can defend our most fundamental ideals.”
The 14-year Air Force veteran said Biden has emboldened America’s enemies, betrayed our allies and sold out the American people.
This multi-pronged collapse is a direct result of the 78-year-old Democrat’s toxic policies, which have done the following, according to Stewart:
Energized the Taliban and the terrorist group known ISIS-K.
Emboldened foreign adversaries to take advantage of Biden’s weakness.
Empowered communist China to begin assault drills near Taiwan.
Enabled Russia to ramp up cyberattacks against the U.S.
Obliterated American energy independence.
Ignited soaring inflation, hurting consumers and the economy.
Blamed fellow Americans for the ongoing COVID crisis.
Because of Biden’s botched troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Stewart wrote, “the Taliban and ISIS-K are unnecessarily emboldened, enriched and energized.”
He continued: “Right now, they are arresting, torturing and killing Afghans who fought alongside American troops for years. The Biden administration has responded by calling these terrorists a ‘strategic partner.’”Should Biden be impeached for failing America?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The congressman wrote that Biden’s Afghanistan debacle set in motion a dangerous cascade of other threats around the world.
“In the immediate wake of the disastrous withdrawal, China began performing assault drills near Taiwan,” Stewart noted. “Every indication is that China will only accelerate its efforts to reclaim the country.”
Stewart also pointed out that Russia increased its cyberattacks on the U.S. “the moment Biden stepped into office.”
“And how did President Biden respond? He cleared the way for a Russian pipeline that will boost our rival’s economy and enhance their ability to manipulate our partners in Western Europe,” Stewart wrote. “This is the type of decision-making that is hamstringing our own interests, both abroad and here at home.”
In contrast, Biden “began his term by going to war against American energy,” Stewart wrote. “He sabotaged the Keystone pipeline, canceled domestic oil and gas leases, rolled back restrictions on Iranian oil sales and more.
“Then, when the price of energy began to rise, as it inevitably would, he even went to our foreign competitors and asked them to increase their production to help cover his mistakes. These decisions destroyed American jobs and empowered our enemies,” Stewart added.
Biden’s reckless economic policies have also ignited “levels of inflation that we haven’t seen in decades,” Stewart wrote.
“The costs of housing, fuel, food and just about every other necessity in your life are all on the rise. This is effectively an additional tax on every American.”
As if that weren’t enough, Biden’s vaccine mandates and oppressive coronavirus restrictions have simply further divided the country.
“He inherited a ready-to-go vaccine program and an economy that was primed to take off,” Stewart wrote. “Still, he has lost the confidence of the American people with arbitrary, baseless, inconsistent guidance.”
The congressman pointed out that shortly before being installed in the White House, Biden insisted that he would not mandate vaccines.
“Now, he’s blaming his fellow Americans and political opponents for the surge of COVID-19 this summer and ordering them to be vaccinated or risk losing their jobs,” Stewart wrote. “President Biden has come a long way from his pledges to unify the country and defeat COVID-19.”
The disastrous past year confirms that Biden is simply not fit for office. He is failing America, damaging her alliances and empowering her enemies. And when the world’s most powerful country is damaged, the world becomes a more dangerous place.
Can the United States endure three more years of this chaos and devastation?
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said during an interview on Tuesday that the Democrats’ “reckless” spending bill is going to “cost all Americans,” in contrast with President Joe Biden’s promises to only tax the rich.
“This bill is going to cost all Americans,” Cotton said during a “Fox & Friends” interview regarding the Democrats’ plans to pass $5 trillion in legislation in two new bills.
“They’re going to raise taxes on all kinds of businesses, they’re going to raise taxes on savings, retirement.
“That means that people are going to have fewer jobs, they’re not going to get pay increases. They may not have enough money to put kids in college or to save for retirement,” Cotton added.
The increased costs will not only be for the wealthy but will impact many areas of American life.
“They’re even going to tax cigarettes, Dana, so if you want to pick up a pack of smokes on the way home from the job, you’re going to pay higher taxes on that as well,” Cotton said.
These increases are in addition to increased costs and inflation that have already taken place since Biden has entered office.Should Congress pass the Build Back Better spending bill?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“The American people are already paying every day when they go to the grocery store or the gas pump for the rampant inflation that the reckless Democrats’ spending plans have caused,” Cotton added.
The senator also explained these increased costs are why Democrats are struggling to get the votes needed to pass the legislation.
“So that’s one reason why they’re struggling to find the votes is that they understand just how reckless these spending bills are and how much they’re going to pay for it in the election next year if they go forward with it,” Cotton said.
During the interview, the Arkansas senator also addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that began Tuesday and will examine Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gen. Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are slated to testify.
“We also want to explore that terrible drone strike in which 10 innocent civilians were killed, because that reflects going forward in the future exactly how limited our options are for what President Biden calls a so-called over-the-horizon terrorist capability,” Cotton said.
“It should be called more along the lines of over-the-rainbow because our actions are so limited in Afghanistan to protect this country,” he added.
The hearing will address some of the controversies surrounding the departure from Afghanistan, especially regarding the 13 U.S. military personnel who died during a Kabul suicide bombing.
The panel will also more fully discuss the controversial drone strike Cotton mentioned that killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
On Jan. 24, just days after President Joe Biden took office, official CNN Democrat brown-noser Brian Stelter shared a chyron from his television show on Twitter.
“Psaki Promises to Share ‘Accurate Info’ (How Refreshing),” it read. The insinuation, of course, is that there wasn’t any accurate info from the Trump administration — but don’t worry, help was on the way!
Now, as it turns out, there’s a caveat to that refreshing promise: Psaki will be sharing “accurate info” (if often incomplete or misleading), but if President Joe Biden is going to be sharing information, your questions had better be “on point.”
If they’re on a topic he doesn’t like, he’s not going to answer. (Psaki herself will probably promise to “circle back” to whatever the question was at a later date.)
On Friday, Biden met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Before their meeting, however, the president badmouthed the U.S. media and counseled Modi not to take any questions.
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press,” Biden told Modi. “I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.”
WATCH: President Biden, during meeting with Indian PM Modi:
“The Indian press is much better behaved than the American press…I think, with your permission, you could not answer questions because they won’t ask any questions on point.” pic.twitter.com/VppL7973ma
That didn’t seem quite so refreshing, particularly after an incident with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier in the week when Biden’s staff shooed away reporters in the Oval Office.
During a meeting between Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, staff abruptly order journalists to leave. pic.twitter.com/kJ4itX2kU4
Psaki was called on the carpet by the Washington press corps on Monday, given that reporters weren’t happy at the president telling the Indian prime minister to avoid taking questions. The White House press secretary tried to recontextualize — and made the problem worse in the process.
“I think what he said is that they’re not always on point,” Psaki said.
“Now I know that isn’t something that anyone wants to hear in here, but what I think he was conveying is, today he might want to talk about COVID vaccines, some of the questions were about that,” she continued.
Psaki was just confronted by two reporters about Biden asking Indian Prime Minister Modi to not take questions from the American press.
Psaki then embarrassingly justifies the remark by saying sometimes the Press doesn’t ask about what Biden wants to talk about.
“Some of the questions are not always about the topic he’s talking about in that day. I don’t think it was meant to be a hard cut at the members of the media, people he’s taken questions from today and on Friday as well,” she added.
Another reporter — CBS News Radio’s Steven Portnoy — followed up, saying, “It happened that he was sitting next to prime minister of India, the world’s largest democracy, when he said that. It also followed the incident on Wednesday when he was sitting next to the prime minister of Great Britain. Is the president reticent to take questions when he’s sitting next to a foreign leader in the Oval Office? Can we expect him to do that in the future?”
“Steve, he took questions earlier that day on Friday. He’d already taken questions that day. I think that was the context of his comments,” Psaki said. “And he’s taken questions standing next to a foreign leader many, many times in the past, and will continue to.”
Good on @WSJ‘s @Catherine_Lucey & @CBSNewsRadio‘s @StevenPortnoy for repeatedly pressing Jen Psaki on the fact that Biden blew off the press last week with U.K. PM Boris Johnson & took a swipe at them last week behind their backs, telling Indian reporters not to ask questions. pic.twitter.com/dUS24W8X90
There was also one other problem with Biden’s remark, as Fox’s Jacqui Heinrich noted.
“The president said that the Indian press was better behaved than the U.S. press, but the Indian press is ranked 142nd in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders, for press freedoms,” she asked.
“How does he say that about the U.S. press compared to the Indian press?” she asked.
“Well, I would just say to you that, having now worked for the president, serving in this role for nine months, having seen that he’s taken questions from the press more than 140 times, including today and Friday, that he certainly respects the role of the press, the role of the freedom of free press,” Psaki said.
“We ensure that we have press with us, of course, when we travel, that we have press with us for sprays in foreign capitals, and we will continue to. I think that should speak to his commitment to freedom of press around the world.”
FTR, Fox’s @JacquiHeinrich also asked: “The President said that the Indian press was better behaved than the U.S. press, but the Indian presence ranked 142nd in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders for press freedoms. How does he say that about the U.S. press[?]” pic.twitter.com/mhNwt4OwSD
It’s worth noting that Psaki had all weekend to work on her answer to this. She knew full well this was going to be one of the things she had to answer when she walked into the Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing of the White House.
The best the press secretary and her team could come up with: You guys need to start asking the kinds of questions the president wants to hear. Talk about what he’s talking about. See, this is why he never takes questions from the press. Focus, people!
It was an embarrassment — to Psaki and the president. And even the shamelessly pro-Biden press corps had to know it.
For whatever reason, Brian Stelter hasn’t weighed in on how refreshing that answer was. Perhaps he missed it.
There are forces that wish to destroy America. Some of them are visible and some are stealth.
The visible forces include terrorists and certain nation states like Iran. Radical Islamic preachers cry “death to America” in their sermons, encouraging martyrdom through suicide bombings. Sept. 11 was their crowning achievement, so far. There will likely be other attacks. Some of our military leaders have so predicted. China might also make the list, if not as a destroyer, then as a nation that wants to supplant America as the world’s top economic and military power.
Those who would destroy by stealth include undocumented immigrants flowing across our southern border. Their intention may not be to destroy America, but that will be the effect if we don’t quickly stop the influx and discourage others from coming. It’s almost laughable to hear some in the liberal media claim we have a “moral obligation” to help immigrants when we are ignoring the plight of women in Afghanistan and so many other areas to which the word “moral” might rightly be attached.
Reaction to the open border has been as predictable as the coming of the fall season. Some Democrat progressives shout racism because the latest flood includes Haitians. Signs rapidly appear. Some say, “stop deportation now!” Where did the signs come from? Who are the people carrying them and where do they come from? Is someone paying them? The media never ask these questions.
Undocumented immigrants are not only attracted by low-paying jobs but by lots of free stuff, like access to healthcare and public schools, all paid for by American taxpayers. If a pregnant non-citizen gives birth on U.S. soil, her child instantly becomes a U.S. citizen with all the benefits of full citizenship.
One of the few political leaders responding to this crisis is Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas). Abbott has ordered state police to close off parts of the border because the migrants are violating Texas law. For this he is being pilloried and even sued by the Biden administration, though the White House announced just recently that it would swiftly begin to deport Haitian migrants flooding into Del Rio, Texas. But where’s Vice President Kamala Harris who was assigned to fix our border crisis?
In public schools and too many universities of what I would describe as “lower learning,” America’s history is being re-written to shame young people and load them aboard the progressive train wreck. There are many stories of students returning home and accusing their parents of racism, and worse. The stain of racism can never go away despite the money that has been spent and the programs enacted to help lift descendants of slaves out of poverty and into better lives.
Once more or less united, Americans are now fragmented into groups and those groups are pitted against each other as gladiators once were in the Roman Coliseum. Caesar, we who are about to die, salute you!
Seriously, can we go on like this and think we will pass down anything to succeeding generations that remotely resembles what we received from previous ones, especially those we have honored by calling them “the greatest generation”? What made them great and what makes us a small shadow standing in their historic presence?
Values, morals, and economic principles that transformed this nation from an agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse to now a leader in technology, are all threatened by those who breach our borders.
If we don’t find the national political leadership to do something about our steady decline and defend ourselves, as in warfare (because war is what it is, though it is being fought with different weapons), we are at risk of oblivion. Will we follow the path of other nations that no longer exist or have become shadows of their former selves?
The Republican National Committee is suing two cities in Vermont to stop non-citizens from voting in municipal elections.
The RNC is joined in the lawsuit by the Vermont Republican Party against the state capital of Montpelier and the city of Winooski, according to Fox News.
The two Vermont locations have amended their charters to allow non-citizens can now vote in municipal elections under a new state law passed in the spring.
The Republican National Committee news release called the action a “radical scheme passed by Vermont Democrats, to allow foreign citizens to decide American elections.”
The release also called the effort”a blatant attack on election integrity and violates the state constitution which requires Vermont voters to be U.S. citizens.”
The RNC and the VTGOP are today suing the cities of Montpelier and Winooski, Vermont over their new town charters that allow noncitizens to vote in their municipal elections.
This radical scheme passed by state Democrats is a blatant attack on election integrity. pic.twitter.com/YfU2ZLxw3D
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel provided tough words in response to the new Vermont voting changes.
“Democrats are trying to dismantle the integrity of our elections. In addition to attacking widely supported safeguards like voter ID, Democrats also want foreign citizens to vote in American elections,” Ronna McDaniel said in the news release on Tuesday.
“Democrats are trying to dismantle the integrity of our elections. In addition to attacking widely supported safeguards like voter ID, Democrats also want foreign citizens to vote in American elections. Republicans are fighting back” –@GOPChairwomanhttps://t.co/enJeLwe3x5
“Republicans are fighting back on this far-left assault against election integrity — unlike radical Democrats, we believe that our elections should be decided solely by American citizens,” she added.
McDaniel also said the RNC will remain vigilant to address any state that attempts to allow non-citizens voting rights.
“This is a matter of principle and we will fight in all 50 states to ensure this remains the case,” she said.
The bill that would allow non-citizens to vote passed in the spring but was initially vetoed by Vermont’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott, Fox News reported.
“Allowing a highly variable town-by-town approach to municipal voting creates inconsistency in election policy, as well as separate and unequal classes of residents potentially eligible to vote on local issues,” Scott wrote in a May letter to legislators.
However, the governor’s veto was overridden by the state House and Senate in June, according to Fox.
When the bill was originally passed, Republican state Sen. Sen. Brian Collamore said, “I believe if someone wishes to be able to vote they should be a citizen.”
Collamore argued that the voting change was based on a person living in the U.S. on a “permanent basis.”
“The Montpelier bill allows what is defined as a legal resident of the United States to be able to vote in city elections. … If someone is here on a permanent basis, why would he or she not want to participate in the process to become a citizen?” Collamore added.
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).
(UPH)
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.
Two people were killed in Philadelphia on Sept. 25, pushing the city’s total number of homicide victims this year past 400, a milestone that has only been surpassed once since 2007.
Two men, ages 35 and 28, were shot multiple times in South Philadelphia at about 9:30 p.m., according to CBS Philly, citing the Philadelphia Police Department. Both were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where the younger man died of his injuries and the 35-year-old is in critical condition.
Another shooting that took place about an hour later left a 39-year-old man dead and two people injured, police said.
“I am heartbroken and outraged that we’ve lost over 400 Philadelphians to preventable violence already this year,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement released to The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I want all residents to know that our administration takes this crisis very seriously and we’re acting with urgency to reduce violence and save lives.”
Neither of the two Saturday shootings has so far led to an arrest. According to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, just 29 percent of homicides and 15 percent of nonfatal shootings in the city result in arrests.
“We should all be outraged that senseless, preventable violence continues to claim and break lives here in Philadelphia and in communities across the country that are also experiencing alarming increases in gun violence,” Krasner said in a Sept. 26 statement. “We have seen cycles of increased homicides before, and we have more research and data than ever on which to formulate solutions.”
Solutions to the homicide surge start with investment in children, according to Krasner. He said that would include providing all children with “safe, structured learning environments” in buildings free of neurotoxins, regular access to nutritious meals, and reliable after-school options.
As for the criminal justice system, Krasner argued that institutions must be “restructured” to make violence prevention their “true priority.” He said that would mean using forensic technologies to solve shootings with no witnesses or not caught on camera, and “shoring up” training and staffing for homicide and nonfatal shooting investigations.
The news comes as the United States saw a nearly 30 percent increase in homicides in 2020 compared to 2019—the largest single-year increase ever recorded by the FBI.
According to the FBI’s latest Uniform Crime Report (UCR), there were 21,570 homicides in the United States in 2020. The overall violent crime rate, including murder, assault, robbery, and rape, was up by 5.6 percent from the 2019 number, while property crimes continued to decline and dropped by 8 percent from 2019.
The actual numbers are likely to be even higher, considering that just 15,897 of the 18,619 federal and local law enforcement agencies eligible to participate in the UCR program voluntarily submitted their crime data to the FBI last year.
The Democrats’ “Build Back Better” agenda is proof that names can be deceptive.
Investigating the $4.5 trillion plan, the Texas Public Policy Foundation gave crucial economic estimates that reveal the damage that could be done by President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress.
The agenda is made up of two key pieces of legislation: a $3.5 trillion spending bill and a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Over the course of ten years, the foundation estimates that 5.3 million full-time jobs would be lost, $1.2 trillion in income would be lost, and the long-run GDP would lose $3.7 trillion.
Terrifying news: A dangerous contagion is sweeping across Washington. It’s a virus that specifically targets victims’ hippocampus, particularly impacting the area of the brain responsible for … basic math. See for yourself! pic.twitter.com/wdj5lbUhvk
When broken down even further, the report explains that median family income could drop by $12,000, and there could be a marginal tax rate increase of 13 percent for some.
As the economy is still in recovery mode following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Democrats’ plan would hinder development in the private sector and end up harming average Americans.
For example, the proposed corporate tax rate increase to 26.5 percent would have a harmful trickle-down effect even if it seems harmless on the surface.
If companies are paying more in taxes, that expense falls onto the consumer, who would see prices increase, and their employees, who would risk having their jobs cut.
That corporate tax rate would make the United States less competitive with other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, because we would have the third-highest rate in the group, according to the Tax Foundation. America’s rate would even eclipse communist China’s.
Regardless, the Biden administration is touting public opinion polls that show a majority of Americans support “Build Back Better.”
I would be willing to bet that few Americans know the implications of passing the agenda because the establishment media has kept its negative effects quiet.
“Poll after poll makes it clear: The majority of Americans overwhelmingly support my Build Back Better Agenda,” the president tweeted Monday. “Let’s get it done and deliver for the American people.”
Poll after poll makes it clear: The majority of Americans overwhelmingly support my Build Back Better Agenda.
Democrats are scrambling to unite their caucus to get both bills past before the fiscal year ends on Thursday while trying to avert a looming government shutdown.
Fauci and Daszak continue their CCP collaborator road show.
nthony Fauci recently spoke to a conference sponsored by Wuhan lab collaborators, EcoHealth Alliance, The National Pulse can reveal.
Despite a preponderance of evidence of EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak’s role in the cover-up of COVID-19’s origins, Fauci addressed the event which also featured Daszak as a speaker.
The National Pulse can also reveal that the Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sponsored the September 2021 event alongside other federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
SPONSORS.
A longtime recipient of grants from Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency, Daszak controversially used the federal funds to pursue collaborative research on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak, who has hosted Fauci as a featured guest at several EcoHealth Alliance events, also spearheaded the fraudulent narrative that COVID-19 developed in a wet market in his roles on the Lancet COVID-19 committee and World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 origins investigation team.
Daszak was later recused from the Lancet task force due to his conflicts of interests exposed by The National Pulse.
Despite EcoHealth’s Chinese Communist Party collaboration and subsequent cover-up, Fauci appeared at a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) forum, “Toward a Post-Pandemic World,” alongside him. The event occurred September 21st through 24th, concluding one day before Daszak’s entire Lancet COVID task force was disbanded due to conflicts of interest.
A conference agenda seen by The National Pulse reveals that Daszak delivered the event’s welcome and closing addresses.
Similarly, on the final day of the event, Fauci delivered a pre-recorded “visionary statement” on “Pandemic Preparedness: The Biomedical Research Approach.”
AGENDA.
Despite Daszak’s repeated lies about COVID-19, the event seeks to mitigate the “impact of dis- and misinformation” in an effort to “maintain public trust and optimize adherence”;
“The impact of dis- and misinformation and how it can be managed to maintain public trust and optimize adherence to health behavioral guidance in a time of crisis.”
The September event was the complement to a forum convened in March 2021 by NASEM’S Forum on Microbial Threats, where Daszak serves as the Chair.
Brandon Schadt, Johnson & Johnson Regional Business Lead: “It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?”
Schadt: “Kids shouldn’t get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine.”
Schadt: “It’s a kid, it’s a f*cking kid, you know? They shouldn’t have to get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine, you know?”
Schadt: “J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of sh*t you could step in.”
Justin Durrant, Johnson & Johnson Scientist: “Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though.”
Durrant: “It wouldn’t make that much of a difference” if children are unvaccinated for COVID.
Durrant: “Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying?”
Durrant: “It’s almost like — you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated…you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do.”
Durrant: “If you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough…Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine]…That’s what we’re doing.”
[NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Sept. 27, 2021] Project Veritas released the third video of its COVID vaccine investigative series today exposing two Johnson & Johnson [J&J] officials, who argue children do not need to take the COVID vaccine in part because of the potential long-term side effects.
One of the exposed J&J employees, a scientist by the name of Justin Durrant, laughs about inconveniencing unvaccinated adults if they refuse to comply with mandates being imposed upon them:
Justin Durrant, Johnson & Johnson Scientist:“Inconvenience [the unvaccinated] to the point where it’s like, ‘I might as well just f*cking do it [and take the COVID vaccine],’ you know what I’m saying? Like ‘I can’t go out of state,’ I can’t – ‘my grandma’s in Canada and I can’t visit her,’ you know what I’m saying? You can’t go to France unless you’re vaccinated — you know you’ve just got to keep doing things like that where you’re almost like a second-grade citizen if you’re not vaccinated, but I know that’s awful.”
Veritas Journalist:“You’re almost what?”
Durrant:“Like a second-grade citizen, like you can’t do anything that a normal citizen can do.”
Veritas Journalist:“A second graded citizen?”
Durrant: “Yeah like top grade, like the ones that get it, and the ones that just like — then you can’t do sh*t.”
…
Veritas Journalist:“So then how do we punish [the unvaccinated]?”
Durrant:“I mean if you can’t work, I feel like that’s punishment enough.”
Veritas Journalist:“People what?”
Durrant:“Only way people really act and comply is if it affects their pockets, like if you’re working for a big company and you’re going to lose your job, best believe you’ll be the first one in line [to take the COVID vaccine].”
Veritas Journalist:“Right, so if you’re working for a big company and you’re about to lose your job, you’ll be the first one in line?”
Durrant:“Yeah.”
Veritas Journalist:“That’s so true. That’s smart, that’s what we need to do.”
Durrant:“That’s what we’re doing.”
Durrant said he does not recommend taking his own company’s vaccine. He asked the Veritas journalist to keep that information private.
“Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though,” he said.
Both Durrant and Brandon Schadt, J&J’s Regional Business Lead, said that applying the COVID vaccine on children would not move the needle in the battle against the pandemic.
“It wouldn’t make that much of a difference” if children are unvaccinated for COVID, Durrant said.
“It’s a kid, you just don’t do that, you know? Not something that’s so unknown in terms of repercussions down the road, you know?” Schadt said.
“It’s a kid, it’s a f*cking kid, you know? They shouldn’t have to get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine, you know?”
Schadt compared J&J’s COVID vaccine efficacy to the other pharmaceutical companies.
“J&J is like stepping in the best smelling pile of sh*t you could step in,” he said.
More footage exposing Big Pharma will be released by Project Veritas imminently. To receive these upcoming videos directly into your email inbox, click here.
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations. Donate now to support our mission.
According to a report from the Washington Times, a man who had been convicted of rape and deported from the U.S. was allowed to board an Afghan evacuation flight and reach the state of Idaho.
Ghader Heydari, a convicted rapist who was deported from the US in 2017, was arrested after catching an Ethiopian Airlines evacuation flight out of Kabul.
According to The Washington Times, Heydari came to the US as a refugee and was even granted a green card in 2000.
Heydari pleaded guilty to rape in Ada County, Idaho, in 2010, and he served more than five years in prison.
Roughly 400 Afghan refugees or more will resettle in Idaho in 2021 according to officials with the International Rescue Committee in Boise.
Over 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted to the United States this year under a program called “Operation Allies Welcome.”
The news comes as reports surface describing several attacks committed by the newly arrived Afghan refugees.
A female soldier was recently gang assaulted by several Afghan men brought over during the evacuation. Two other Afghan refugees have been arrested on charges of sexual assaults of minors, and the assault of another woman.
After a short stay at various processing centers, the more than 50,000 refugees will be resettled in states across the country.
According to reports, many of the refugees are being sent to Spokane, WA, Boise ID, Missoula, MT, and parts of Minnesota.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to explain why prosecutors have dropped a series of cases connected with the Justice Department’s (DOJ) clampdown on Chinese espionage.
In July, federal prosecutors filed motions to dismiss charges against six Chinese researchers who had been accused of hiding their ties to Chinese institutions or the Chinese military. The DOJ said at the time that “recent developments” in those cases had prompted the department to “re-evaluate these prosecutions,” stating that the dismissals were made “in the interest of justice.”
However, other reports have suggested that the decision to drop the charges was due to other reasons, such as the FBI’s failure to properly inform the accused of their rights against self-incrimination, Jordan wrote to Garland in a joint letter (pdf) with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) dated Sept. 27.
“It is not clear whether the Department dismissed these [charges] due to reported misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or because the Department under your leadership is more invested in pursuing the far-left political goals of the Biden-Harris Administration than in protecting American national security interests,” the letter reads.
“These actions by the Department raise serious concerns about its commitment to confronting the national security threats posed by the People’s Republic of China.”
The letter comes days after the DOJ struck a deal with Huawei Chief Financial officer Meng Wanzhou allowing her to return to China, nearly three years after the executive was arrested in Canada at the request of U.S. prosecutors who had accused Meng of lying to HSBC, causing the bank to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran. The deal, which paved the way for the release of two Canadians held in China, has similarly prompted Republican lawmakers to question the Biden administration’s approach to confronting threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In recent years, the DOJ has, under a project called the “China Initiative,” aggressively pursued cases targeting the CCP’s expansive campaign of economic espionage against the United States. Academics, in particular, for the first time found themselves in the crosshairs over allegedly hiding their funding ties to the Chinese regime.
In 2020, there were at least six prosecutions against alleged undercover Chinese military officers posing as researchers at U.S. universities. But the department moved to drop five of those cases in July.
One of the cases was against Tang Juan, a researcher at the University of California–Davis, who allegedly hid her affiliations with the Chinese military in her visa application. She was arrested in July 2020 after being harbored by the Chinese Consulate in San Franciso for one month, according to prosecutors.
In another dropped case, the researcher, according to prosecutors, admitted under questioning by federal agents that he was instructed by his supervisor, the director of an unnamed military university lab in China, to “observe the layout of the UCSF [University of California–San Franciso] lab and bring back information on how to replicate it in China.”
In the letter, Jordan and Biggs requested the attorney general to provide details by Oct. 11 on why the department decided to drop the cases. The lawmakers also asked for information on the China Initiative, including the project’s staffing and resources and whether the department has any plans to “reform, prioritize, or reinforce its duties and responsibilities.”
“Especially at a time when President Biden’s disastrous foreign policy in Afghanistan has alienated allies and alarmed Americans, our country cannot afford the threat to the United States posed by Chinese espionage,” the letter reads.
DOJ officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Monday attacking the Biden administration for releasing “17,000 illegal immigrants” from Del Rio, Texas, into America as part of a twin debacle alongside failure in Afghanistan, arguing, “Our Country is being destroyed!”
“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are,” Trump began in his statement posted to Twitter by spokeswoman Liz Harrington.
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are. pic.twitter.com/BiqEkdthNa
Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a briefing on Friday that approximately 30,000 mostly Haitian migrants had been encountered in Del Rio since Sept. 9, with only about 2,000 deported to Haiti.
Many were given a notice to appear for an asylum hearing and were released after being removed from a camp under the Del Rio International Bridge that included about 15,000 people at its height.
Trump also criticized the Biden administration for releasing the Haitian migrants without COVID-19 testing or other health checks.
“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation,” he said in the statement.
“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation.
The former president argued that the Biden administration’s open border policies have resulted in America being “humiliated like never before.”
In addition to the border crisis, he also noted President Joe Biden’s “embarrassing” withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!” Trump said.
“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing “withdrawal” from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!”
The Biden administration withdrew all U.S. military personnel on Aug. 31, leaving hundreds of Americans behind under the rule of the Taliban.
In addition, the military departure included leaving behind vast amounts of military equipment, providing tremendous resources to arm the Islamic extremist group.
Further, 13 U.S. military personnel were killed during a suicide bombing in August outside the Kabul airport.Should Trump run for president in 2024?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
In response, the Biden administration authorized a drone strike, originally reported to have taken out an Islamic State group leader.
A later report revealed the drone strike accidentally hit an innocent target, killing 10 people, including seven children.
An unknown number of Americans and allies remain in Afghanistan nearly a month after the Biden administration’s military departure.
Surviving in President Joe Biden’s America is getting harder and harder for workers who find themselves falling behind as costs gobble more and more of their paychecks.
As noted by Trading Economics, inflation was at 1.4 percent when former President Donald Trump left office, then spiked rapidly during the first months of the Biden administration.
Although the Biden administration for months rejected claims that its spending was triggering inflation and tried to spin the rise in costs as a transitory blip, even the Federal Reserve now admits the inflation picture will not improve soon, according to KATV-TV.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the causes of inflation were “greater and longer-lasting than anticipated.”
The Fed, which in June said inflation for the year might hit 3 percent, adjusted its prediction to 3.7 percent, with a possible mark of 4.2 percent for the year when including rising energy and food costs. The translation for workers is that making more might not mean making enough.
“Some of the gains we had seen for workers in certain categories, the increases looked good, but not if you have 5 percent inflation,” said Jim Butkiewicz, an economist at the University of Delaware.
Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showed that within the 5.3 percent overall increase in costs from a year ago, gasoline prices were up 42 percent, beef prices were up 14 percent, lumber prices were up 10 percent and egg prices were up 10 percent.
One of the factors driving price increases is that wages have increased as employers try to attract help, leading to a spiral in which wages and prices keep rising.
As the spiral continues, the National Association for Business Economists has reduced its forecast for Gross Domestic Product growth, according to CNN.
In May, the group’s economists projected 6.7 percent growth, but that is now down to 5.6 percent.
Growth in the third quarter of the year is now projected at an annualized pace of 4 percent, down from May’s estimate of 6.6 percent.
The group also upped its estimate of the toll inflation would take on workers, projecting consumer prices in the coming fourth quarter of the year will be 5.1 percent above last year’s levels, far above the prediction of 2.8 percent the group made in May.
In a statement, Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said it’s no secret that the White House is to blame for inflation.
“Reckless government spending causes inflation. We’ve seen the disastrous consequences of the Democrats’ radical spending plans in consistently rising inflation month after month. We know Democrats won’t stand up and fight for American families. They only care about getting their liberal wish list, no matter the cost,” he said on Friday.
“There will be a day of reckoning for this, and unfortunately, American families will pay the price if Democrats have their way. It’s time to say enough. Republicans won’t raise the debt ceiling. We won’t cut Democrats another blank check and allow them to keep hurting families with insane spending and raging inflation. We won’t let the total lack of accountability in Congress continue.”
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana said the $3.5 trillion spending bill Democrats want to pass would only make inflation worse, according to Fox Business.
“President Biden’s agenda has dramatically increased inflation, and they’re trying to pour gasoline on that fire,” Scalise said.
“[Democrats are] seeing how families have tied the increase in spending in Washington to higher inflation, and if you add trillions in new spending as well as trillions in new taxes, you’re only going to make inflation worse.”
If our federal authorities are going to construct a prison-worthy surveillance state, can they at least buy American while they do it?
According to a report from Axios, federal law enforcement agencies — including the FBI and the Secret Service — have purchased drones from a Chinese company that was flagged by the Department of Defense as a national security threat.
The drones were purchased from Da Jiang Innovations, a company based in Shenzhen, China, that’s the biggest consumer drone manufacturer in the world.
“DJI makes an array of consumer products that are tremendously popular, including the Phantom and Mavic drone series, as well as the Osmo image-stabilization handle,” Axios reported.
“While the products are used for personal and commercial purposes, they also require the user to download proprietary DJI software, and to fly using mapping databases that have the potential to be monitored remotely.”
The FBI bought 19 of the drones for nearly $60,000 on July 20 and on July 26, the Secret Service purchased eight of the drones for over $12,000, according to records included in the Axios account. And yet, on July 23, the Pentagon warned in a news release that DJI’s drones “pose potential threats to national security.”
“Existing DOD policy and practices associated with the use of these systems by U.S. government entities and forces working with U.S. military services remain unchanged contrary to any written reports not approved for release by the DOD,” a release read.
“A recent report indicated that certain models of DJI systems had been found to be approved for procurement and operations for US government departments and agencies. This report was inaccurate and uncoordinated, and its unauthorized release is currently under review by the department.”
It was unclear what specific report the release was citing.Should the federal government be using Chinese drones?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Just over four years ago, in an August 2017 report, as Axios noted, the Department of Homeland Security said it had “moderate confidence” that DJI drones were “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”
In 2019, according to a Wall Street Journal report Axios cited, the Interior Department grounded its entire drone fleet over national security concerns related to Chinese manufacturing.
However, Axios reported that efforts to rid government agencies of the drones have stalled due to red tape, partially due to what the outlet called the “cost and complexity of replacing the systems.”
The Secret Service said the drones will “supplement the agency’s existing fleet of small unmanned aircraft and improved [sic] mission support through the use of the most up-to-date equipment nd [sic] software,” according to purchasing records cited by Axios.
The FBI, in its purchasing records, said DJI’s Phantom 4 Pro was “the only commercially available consumer [drone] to combine all [its required] capabilities at an acceptable cost.”
A DJI representative told Axios there’s nothing to be concerned about and the company’s data won’t be transmitted to Chinese authorities.
“Claims that somehow DJI products are transmitting customer data back to China, or to DJI, or anywhere they’re not supposed to be … are just false,” DJI spokesman Adam Lisberg told the outlet. “No one has ever found a deliberate attempt to steal data, or any of the other fantasies promoted by some of our critics. It simply isn’t true.”
There’s also another potential explanation: That the FBI is securing the drones to study Chinese data mining and devise methods to counteract hacking attempts.
“If the federal government is purchasing DJI drones for counter-drone or other security research — fine,” American Enterprise Institute defense and cybersecurity expert Klon Kitchen told Axios via email.
“But otherwise, in a world where you have plenty of alternatives — including some U.S. alternatives that are very good — why would federal agencies assume the inherent risks of Chinese-made systems?”
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio was similarly unimpressed, according to Axios.
“DJI’s cyber security vulnerabilities are well documented,” Rubio wrote in an email to the outlet.
“Given everything we know about the Chinese Communist Party and its companies, there is absolutely no excuse for any government agency to use DJI drones, or any other drones manufactured in countries identified as national security threats.”
And that’s the critical problem here — if these agencies aren’t using these drones as vehicles to study China’s data-collection efforts and hacking, this is handing Beijing the keys to our national security apparatus.
The fact that these off-the-shelf drones are in the fleets of our federal government is worrying enough as it is.
The Interior Department has already stopped using DJI drones, after all. If the FBI and Secret Service are using these drones, it’d be impossible to ensure complete sequestration between our systems and Chinese software.
We’d also be hard-pressed to stop them from seeing and hearing exactly what our federal law enforcement sees and hears — which is, by its very nature, sensitive data. No matter what role the unmanned vehicles are playing in either agency’s mission, I’m guessing it won’t just involve a dad playing with his son in the backyard, teaching him how to use the drone.
Say what you will about the necessity of our surveillance state and how invasive (or not) it is. If it’s going to exist and it’s going to be peeking into our backyards and up our streets with panopticon-like omniprescence, it would help if China isn’t seeing what the federal government sees, too.
Former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan blasted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a “Fox & Friends First” interview on Monday, arguing that Mahorkas is misleading Americans regarding the border crisis.
On Sunday, Mayorkas faced questions from “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace about the mass of Haitian migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border at Del Rio, Texas, that have dominated the latest headlines about the Biden administration’s illegal immigration debacle.
And one particular aspect of Mayorkas’ answers stood out to him: That many of the migrants are in “immigration court proceedings.”
“When you say 12,000 are in immigration proceedings, they are not,” Homan said.
“That’s what the secretary leads you to believe, but many of them were released on notice to report. On the notice to report, it clearly says at the bottom of the form, ‘You are not in immigration proceedings. You will not be detained. ICE will not detain you for humanitarian reasons. You are released.’
So, they’re only going to be in immigration proceedings if they chose to voluntarily show up and turn themselves in, which most won’t. So the secretary is misleading on what he told Chris Wallace,” he added.
Homan also disputed claims that many Haitian migrants had returned to Mexico.
According to The Washington Times, Mayorkas’ DHS estimated on Friday that 8,000 Haitans had gone voluntarily back to Mexico.
“[Mayorkas] realizes they went one or two miles down the line and came into the United States because they surged so many resources to Del Rio that they left 224 miles of border unguarded,” Homan said.
“So those 8,000 didn’t just go to Mexico and they’re going to live there. They went down to cross illegally. Those a8,000 are now in the United States, you know, living here illegally,” he added.
The Biden administration has reported about 2,000 Haitians have been deported.
Approximately 30,000 Haitian migrants crossed at Del Rio in September, according to NPR.
Earlier in September, Sen. Ted Cruz visited Del Rio when more than 10,000 migrants were awaiting processingm and called the situation a “manmade disaster” due to President Joe Biden’s political decisions.
“Joe Biden’s policies are encouraging this staggering rush of illegal aliens,” the senator said on Twitter.
Joe Biden’s policies are encouraging this staggering rush of illegal aliens:
208,887 encountered in August including 103,129 single adults (up 134% from 2020), 18,847 unaccompanied children (up 507% from 2020), & 86,487 individuals in a family unit (up 3,086% from 2020).
“208,887 encountered in August including 103,129 single adults (up 134% from 2020), 18,847 unaccompanied children (up 507% from 2020), & 86,487 individuals in a family unit (up 3,086% from 2020),” Cruz added.
Kimberly Jenkins, a critical care nurse at Banner Health Center in Phoenix, Arizona, knows she could be out of a job soon—unless she complies with her employer’s COVID-19 vaccine program by Nov 1.
That’s just not going to happen, said Jenkins, who is pinning her hopes on a religious exemption to the shot.
“If it’s denied, I won’t be working for Banner any more,” she told The Epoch Times.
Dressed in hospital scrubs, Jenkins and several other nurses in hospital garb stood outside Arizona’s Senate Building on Sept. 24 to protest against the mandatory vaccines.
“I don’t care how I get a paycheck [but] I have to take a step back for my own mental health,” said Jenkins, holding a sign with a drawing of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.
“It Appears To Be Mutating Into A Dictatorship,” the sign’s caption read.
Across the street from the Arizona Capitol, more than 1,000 people had gathered at a medical freedom rally sponsored by more than a dozen anti-COVID-19 vaccine organizations.
Among the sponsors were the Arizona Coalition for Medical Freedom, America’s Frontline Doctors, America’s Healthcare Workers for Medical Freedom, the Patriot Party of Arizona, and Arizona for Medical Freedom.
Jenkins, 41, shrugged when asked what she will do for work if and when she gets fired from her job. “Other organizations are hiring in Arizona. The biggest problem is staff, and having to deal with the fact that we will lose a lot of nurses” over the vaccine mandates, Jenkins said.
“So, you now have new graduates working in high-security areas [in place of seasoned nurses]. We don’t have the staff to train new nurses.”
Since the Biden Administration announced vaccine mandates for federal employees and companies with 100 employees or more, health-care facilities across the country have suffered losses.
Earlier this month, Novant Health Inc. announced 375 staffers had been suspended for their noncompliance with the company’s COVID-19 program.
Meanwhile, Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, New York, this month shut down its maternity ward when dozens of employees chose to quit their jobs rather than take the injection.
And at Indiana University Health, 125 staffers resigned this month after they refused to get vaccinated.
While Jenkins said she isn’t sure how many nursing jobs are on the chopping block at her facility, “it’s enough to make a huge dent to do proper care.”
She said the standard of care in ICUs is three skilled nurses per patient. Now, it’s common to see two nurses for every critical care patient, she said.
“I don’t like it when science is ignored,” said another unvaccinated nurse at the Sep. 24 rally, who works at Common Spirit Health in Phoenix. “I’ve seen adverse [side effects] happen to co-workers of mine,” after they received the vaccine.
“The vaccine was completely rushed through. It was being rushed through even when we were in a pandemic state,” she told The Epoch Times.
The irony, she said, is that during the pandemic in 2020 “we were heroes. Now, we’re zeroes.” Regardless, she said, “I’m not quitting. I’m not worried about their timeline.”
Another registered nurse at the rally who also works at Common Spirit Health told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, “I wouldn’t say I’m fearful [about losing my job]. I would say it’s wrong what they’re doing.”
President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday unveiled a new rule aimed at protecting an Obama-era program that has shielded over 600,000 illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children.
The proposed rule (pdf) would “preserve and fortify” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, by trying to respond to a court ruling that the program was illegally created.
Then-President Barack Obama ordered the deferred action policy through an executive order but Congress never provided the Executive Branch authorization to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, a George W. Bush nominee, ruled in July.
Hanen halted the acceptance of any new applications made under the program and remanded to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the memorandum that actually established the program for further consideration. That memo, filed in 2012 by Obama’s attorney general, Janet Napolitano, did not under proper notice and comment rulemaking, which violated federal law, according to the judge.
The new DHS proposal, which will formally be published on Tuesday, is a response to the ruling. It includes many of the same provisions as Napolitano’s memo, including eligibility requirements like living continuously in the United States since June 15, 200.
It would also make additions to the program—among them, letting applicants apply for deferred action from deportation without submitting forms for employment authorization.
People will have 60 days from Tuesday to comment on the proposed rule.
“The Biden-Harris administration continues to take action to protect dreamers and recognize their contributions to this country,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “This notice of proposed rulemaking is an important step to achieve that goal. However, only Congress can provide permanent protection. I support the inclusion of immigration reform in the reconciliation bill and urge Congress to act swiftly to provide dreamers the legal status they need and deserve.”
Immigration activists refer to the illegal immigrants brought to the United States when they were children as dreamers.
In response to the rule, NumbersUSA, a group that seeks to educate policymakers and other Americans on immigration legislation and policies and pushes for lower immigration levels, said on Twitter, “DACA is illegal and unconstitutional.”
Congress has considered but failed to pass legislation for years that would address the approximately 616,030 DACA recipients in the country. Democrats wanted to include a pathway to citizenship in their budget, which they’re seeking to ram through using a reconciliation process, but the Senate’s top rules expert said last week it could not be part of the process.
Let Muslim terrorists at Gitmo pray, but not American residents. “Democracy” [US Patriot]
A Colorado web site designer is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept her appeal of a lower court decision depriving her of the right to conduct her business according to her religious beliefs.
Attorneys for Lorie Smith, the owner and sole employee of 303 Creative, submitted a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court on Sept. 24, asking the justices to overturn a decision of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that held Colorado officials can “force [Lorie] to create custom websites that [she] otherwise would not.”
The ADF has won 13 Supreme Court victories in recent years, including Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018, which upheld the right of another Colorado artist, Jack Phillips, to practice his faith in his business of making wedding cakes.
The writ described Smith as “a website designer who creates original, online content consistent with her faith. She plans to (1) design wedding websites promoting her understanding of marriage, and (2) post a statement explaining that she can only speak messages consistent with her faith.
“But the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) requires her to create custom websites celebrating same-sex marriage and prohibits her statement—even though Colorado stipulates that she ‘work[s] with all people regardless of … sexual orientation.’ App.53a, 184a,” the writ continued.
“The Tenth Circuit applied strict scrutiny and astonishingly concluded that the government may, based on content and viewpoint, force Lorie to convey messages that violate her religious beliefs and restrict her from explaining her faith.”
The writ said two key questions are raised by the case, including “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent, contrary to the artist’s sincerely held religious beliefs, violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment,” and “whether a public-accommodation law that authorizes secular but not religious exemptions is generally applicable under Smith, and if so, whether this Court should overrule Smith.”
Smith refers to the 1990 Supreme Court decision of Employment Division v. Smith that, according to the writ, Colorado officials cited as supporting the CADA, even though that state law “creates a ‘gerrymander’ where secular artists can decline to speak but religious artists cannot, meaning the government can compel its approved messages.”
Lorie Smith’s case challenges Aubrey Elenis, Director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD), as well as each of the individual members, including Sergio Raudel Cordova, Charles Garcia, Richard Lee Lewis Jr., Ajay Menon, Cherylin Peniston, and Meremy Ross. Also challenged is Colorado’s Attorney General, Phil Weiser.
If the high court accepts the case, it would hear oral arguments next spring and could issue a decision as early as July 2022.
Given the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, the Lorie Smith case could be viewed as a straight-forward opportunity for the Justices to remind lower courts and state officials that the First Amendment guarantees every individual American the right to practice and express their religion, or lack thereof, according to ADF General Counsel Kristen Waggoner.
“The government shouldn’t weaponize the law to force a web designer to speak messages that violate her beliefs. This case involves quintessential free speech and artistic freedom, which the 10th Circuit dangerously cast aside,” said Waggoner, who argued before the 10th Circuit on behalf of Smith.
“Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips has been harassed for years, and now Lorie Smith is being told that she must speak views she opposes and can’t post about her beliefs on her own business website. The 10th Circuit’s reasoning turns free-speech protections on their head by saying that the more ‘unique’ speech is, the more the government can compel it. That kind of dangerous, unconstitutional reasoning is why we have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take Lorie’s case.”
Waggoner was referring to actions taken by the CCRD against Phillips in the aftermath of the Masterpiece decision, including new charges of CADA violations that effectively forced him to retrace the same costly litigation path that resulted in the landmark 2018 decision.
The High Court could also be inclined to accept the Smith case because, according to the writ, the 10th Circuit’s decision “cements a three-way split over conflicts between free speech and laws like CADA, pitting the Tenth Circuit and several state courts of last resort against the Eighth and Eleventh Circuits and the Arizona Supreme Court.
“At the same time, the opinion contradicts this Court’s free-speech precedents, which have repeatedly declared as anathemas to the First Amendment all government attempts to compel speech, to regulate speech based on content, and to stamp out disfavored speech.”
Director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division Elenis has been emailed asking for comment.
A U.S. military veteran who was charged in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach has died.
John Anderson, 61, died at a hospital on Sept. 21 in Jacksonville, Florida, according to family members and his lawyer. His cause of death has not been disclosed.
“My sweet, handsome husband went home to be with the Lord,” Anderson’s wife said, according to his lawyer, Marina Medvin.
Anderson’s wife is asking for prayers and privacy as she mourns the loss.
Anderson, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was charged with seven counts, including civil disorder, interfering with law enforcement, and stealing government property.
Anderson was arrested in late February in St. Augustine and released pending trial about a week later.
Authorities said he was part of the crowd that tried entering the Capitol through a tunnel, clashing with officers in the process. But his lawyers said he did nothing wrong and was trapped by people pressing behind him.
Screenshots from surveillance video in the tunnel show Anderson was struck with a chemical substance let loose by a male in the crowd. Police officers later sprayed pepper spray, which also hit Anderson. He was assisted by officers through the tunnel after several minutes. Anderson said the officers saved his life.
John Anderson is seen outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (FBI)John Anderson is seen being pulled by police officers after being pepper sprayed near the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Marina Medvin)
But he also protested against the charges, which his lawyer says were not backed by evidence.
“John Anderson never hurt or touched a single police officer. The video evidence proves this,” Medvin said in an emailed statement. “John Anderson died an innocent man wrongfully accused.”
Before Anderson’s death, he and Medvin were preparing to reject a plea offer.
The government is preparing to dismiss the case against Anderson, according to his lawyer. That’s common practice, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in a separate case this month.
Lamberth cited United States v. Pogue as he granted a motion for abatement from the government and dismissed the indictment against Joseph Barnes, a Texas resident, who died after getting into a vehicular accident. Barnes had also been charged in the Jan. 6 breach.
The government prosecutor leading prosecution against Anderson did not respond to a request for comment.
The court was informed Friday of Anderson’s death. Parties were ordered to file a joint status report by Nov. 8.
The Epoch Times sits down with Elbridge A. Colby, author of the new book “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict,” to discuss America’s strategy for defeating China in a war over Taiwan.
China aims to replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia, and it is rapidly acquiring the means to achieve this goal. As a result, Beijing will soon be able to make a bid for regional military dominance, starting with an invasion of Taiwan. Absent an effective American response, Beijing could certainly achieve its aims.
This is the premise of a watershed new book, “The Strategy of Denial: America’s Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict,” by Elbridge A. Colby, the top Pentagon official who authored America’s 2018 National Security Strategy (NSS).
The 2018 NSS explicitly moved America away from terrorism and towards China and great power competition, a complex shift in mindset for many in the U.S. defence establishment.
“I absolutely experienced a lot of institutional pushbacks on it,” Colby told The Epoch Times in an interview. “And we’re still not there, there has been an enormous amount of foot-dragging, but there’s been a lot of progress too.”
Colby noted that it was not widely appreciated that China posed the greatest threat to U.S. security interests.
“That is one of the reasons I wrote this book, not just as a statement, but to lay out in a pretty clear and rigorous way why China is the primary threat and how do we deal with it in a military context,” he said.
The stakes could not be higher. Asia comprises 40 percent of global GDP and around two-thirds of global growth. Chinese dominance over Asia would, Colby observes in his book, give Beijing the power “to exclude the United States from reasonably free trade and access to these wealthy regions.”
Not only would China be a true peer competitor of the United States, but its advantageous position would also gravely weaken America. Eventually, China could consolidate to “project violent force elsewhere, including into North America.”
Colby clearly has no time in his book to discuss America’s destiny as the most powerful nation. While others continue to speak of the U.S. strategic objectives, Colby cuts to the chase stating clearly: “Denying China hegemony over Asia is the cardinal objective of U.S. grand strategy.”
Colby is also candid in his writing that America’s unipolar moment has passed.
The United States does not have the power to do everything everywhere and must make hard choices about aligning means to the ends. The sacrifices America must make in other parts of the world are real, and Colby does not shy away from these, calling them out by name.
Colby notes that the United States has made far-reaching pledges in Europe and the Middle East without appreciating China’s rise as a potential great power. Many fear that failing to follow through on these commitments will fatally weaken Washington’s credibility with allies in Asia.
Yet Colby presents a compelling counter-argument—that means and actions speak far louder than stated intentions. If the United States doubles down on rhetoric without responding to changing realities, then this undermines rather than supports America’s credibility.
This “differentiated credibility,” as Colby persuasively puts it, means jettisoning pledges that are of lesser importance, so that America may focus on its core interest in Asia. He argues it is this willingness to focus effort that will really determine whether Asian partners have confidence in their American ally.
Colby analysis of America’s comparative strengths and weaknesses, the optimal pathways available to each actor, combined with his ruthless honesty, is what makes this book a must-read for anyone with an interest in strategy or the post-pandemic world.
It’s also what gives his framework for U.S. success its own “credibility”—that to prevent Beijing’s dominance in Asia, an anti-hegemonic coalition must be able and willing to defeat China in a war over Taiwan. By carefully walking the reader through all the alternatives, the consequences for failure, and the means required for success, Colby demonstrates the inescapable truth through rationalised reason.
Colby observes that ordinary Americans seem to have a far greater appreciation for the true threat China poses than the political and foreign policy elite in Washington.
Asked by The Epoch Times why he thinks that is, he explains that the speed of China’s rise has escaped an enormous number of people, especially outside the economic sphere.
“In the military sphere, there hasn’t obviously been a major war so it hasn’t been put to the test, so lagging like this is not uncommon,” he said. “It doesn’t make it excusable or good, but it isn’t uncommon.”
Colby notes that those in the Midwest understand the China challenge in a more visceral and real way than others.
“I think we still are failing to appreciate the magnitude the China challenge,” he said
The framework Colby lays down for defeating China is one he knows, from first-hand experience in the Pentagon, will help policy-makers make sensible resource decisions.
“If you are to make intelligent decisions, you have to have a framework, and that framework should allow your military, your defence establishment, to understand what’s most important, how you deal with it and in what way,” he said. “My aspiration is to make it clear on what basis we need to focus our effort and what kind of military strategy we need…How many F35s do we have, how many ships we have in the navy, what kinds of things we do with different allies etcetera.”
Defeating China in a war over Taiwan requires robust preparation, and not only by the United States.
“Japan and Taiwan both need to dramatically increase defence spending,” says Colby, pointing to the fact Japan only spends 1 percent of GDP on defence.
“Japan needs to at least double its defence spending at a minimum. Taiwan needs to invest in the right kind of stuff to resist an invasion and be resilient to a blockade.”
Many American foreign policy experts speak in overtly ideological or universalist language, and the contrast with Colby’s realist tone is striking, yet he considers this a matter of approach.
“I am motivated by American values and my motivation is to preserve and promote them,” Colby tells The Epoch Times. “I think the way to do that is in a realistic fashion.”
Recently the world commemorated 20 years since 9/11. Reading through the book one cannot escape the sense that this level of analysis–rigorous, methodical, and serious-minded–has been sorely missing from American strategic policy during these past two decades.
Asked to rate American performance since 2001 Colby is scornful: “Quite poorly, honestly. Very poorly, especially until about 5 years ago.”
“We allowed China to more than steal a march. I mean, we allowed China to grow without being challenged, and not just grow but get closer to a position where it could bid for regional dominance, so we really need to do better,” Colby said.
While America experienced political paralysis over the so-called Russian influence at home, those in Asia have witnessed China’s expansionist ambition with increasing unease. Beijing is exerting dominance over the South China Sea, cracking down in Hong Kong, and deploying ever more numerous and advanced capabilities for seizing Taiwan.
Missing has been any plan from America to thwart Beijing’s goal of dominance.
Colby’s book arrests this danger in a direct way, laying down a believable framework for victory that will galvanise support, concentrate action and help decision-makers make correct choices in a hegemonic rivalry that will play out for decades to come.
Elbridge A. Colby’s “The Strategy for Denial: America’s Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict” is a must-read for every person who is concerned about China’s growing threat and how the world—and more importantly, America—should counter it.
Despite a federal judge’s ruling that the Deferred Action in Childhood Arrivals program was outside the law, the Biden administration is moving forward with its plan to make it permanent.
According to a report Monday in The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Homeland Security will publish a proposed regulation that will allow the illegal immigrants protected by DACA — known as “Dreamers” — to continue to be part of the program.
The proposal is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.
DACA allows illegal immigrants who entered the country as children to remain, as long as they meet certain conditions. The program was started through an executive order of then-President Barack Obama.
In July, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the program could not accept new applications but could continue for those already enrolled until the case eventually makes its way through the court system, according to CNN.
The description of the rule says, “On January 20, 2021, President Biden signed a Presidential Memorandum, Preserving and Fortifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), requiring DHS, in consultation with the Attorney General, to take all appropriate action to preserve and fortify DACA, consistent with applicable law. Consistent with the Presidential Memorandum, DHS intends to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking to preserve and fortify DACA.”
The regulation was crafted, in part, to address concerns of the judge who put the brakes on DACA that there was no sound administrative rationale for the program Obama created with the stroke of a pen in 2012.Do you think DACA should continue?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Legislative efforts to make DACA part of federal law have failed. Last week, an attempt by Senate Democrats to create a path to citizenship for DACA recipients through the $3.5 trillion spending bill they hope to pass was dashed when the Senate’s parliamentarian said the proposal could not be part of the massive package.
After the DACA regulation is published, there will be a 60-day comment period for the public to weigh in.
As noted in the document, mail comments are not being accepted.
“You may submit comments on the entirety of this proposed rulemaking package, identified by DHS Docket No. 2021-0006, through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at https://www.regulations.gov. Follow the website instructions for submitting comments,” the document says.
As envisaged by the new rule, illegal immigrants covered by DACA would pay $495 for a two-year work permit and could come and go from the country as they pleased.
DACA recipients not interested in working could stay if they pay an $85 fee, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The DHS analysis of its DACA proposal says costs to local communities from the illegal immigrants it protects are “unlikely to be significant, and it may well have a positive net effect,” according to the report.
The rule says that “it is not generally the best use of those limited resources to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived since early childhood and whose languages they may not even speak.
“It recognizes that, as a general matter, DACA recipients, who came to this country many years ago as children, lacked the intent to violate the law, have not been convicted of any serious crimes, and remain valued members of our communities.
“It reflects the conclusion that, while they are in the United States, they should have access to a process that, operating on a case-by-case basis, may allow them to work to support themselves and their families, and to contribute to our economy in multiple ways.
“This proposed rule also accounts for the momentous decisions DACA recipients have made in ordering their lives in reliance on and as a result of this policy, and it seeks to continue the benefits that have accrued to DACA recipients, their families, their communities, and to the Department itself that have been made possible by the policy.”
The rule estimates that through this regulation, the DACA population will grow, reaching 956,863 by 2031.
