An anti-Israel reverend who preached at President Joe Biden’s inaugural prayer service is demanding a White House meeting to push the administration to abolish the filibuster.
Rev. William Barber, who was arrested alongside Jesse Jackson during an anti-filibuster protest earlier this year, is asking the White House for a sit-down meeting with Biden, according to a letter first reported by the Religion News Service. Barber, who leads the radical George Soros-funded Poor People’s Campaign, says in the letter he wants to help Biden pass the $3.5 trillion spending package being debated in Congress.
“For 140 million poor and low-income people in this country, it is incredibly disheartening to hear Democrats who ran on the platform you are advocating say publicly that they do not see the need or the urgency for more investment,” Barber wrote in the letter. “We know that need intimately, and we are prepared to bring people to the White House to demonstrate the need.”
“We cannot allow the filibuster, which has been used to stall even a conversation about so much important legislation, to block the action that is so desperately needed in this moment,” Barber wrote.
The massive spending bill supported by both Barber and the White House does not have the votes needed to pass through the Senate, even if the filibuster was abolished, as Democrats only have 48 members of the Senate behind the bill.
Barber, who Biden has compared to Martin Luther King Jr., has a long record of controversial statements attacking the Jewish state. In 2018, he called Israel an “apartheid state” and said the notion that Israel was created as a response to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust was a lie.
“It was never just purely about righting the terrible wrongs of the Holocaust,” Barber said, arguing instead that it was about “expanding a global empire.”
During the same speech, Barber said the 2016 presidential election was rigged. He claimed that Donald Trump was “selected, not elected” and that Republicans “hijacked” the Supreme Court because Trump was only president due to a racist Electoral College.
Barber, a black minister, has emerged as a popular surrogate for Democrats as they work to pass H.R. 4, a massive overhaul of how elections are run in America. He appeared alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in August to argue that the U.S. election system is racist.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, says the discrepancies found in the audit of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 general election must now be further investigated to determine if illegal and/or result-changing conduct occurred.
“This audit is just the start of what needs to be done in Maricopa County,” von Spakovsky, now an election law expert with The Heritage Foundation, told Newsmax the day the audit’s findings were released last month.
Newsmax host Heather Childers highlighted some of the potentially problematic issues reportedly uncovered by auditors, including 23,344 mail-in ballots sent from a prior address, 10,342 potential voters who voted in multiple counties, and 9,041 more ballots returned by voters than received. Then the host asked what stuck out to him.
“What this shows is frankly great sloppiness in Maricopa County in election officials not properly doing their job,” von Spakovsky responded.
He argued that Arizona officials need to investigate whether these findings are accurate and whether they involve mistakes or intentional wrongful conduct.
“If they find, for example, that there were individuals who were registered in more than one county and voted twice, those people need to be referred to law enforcement for investigation and possible prosecution,” von Spakovsky said.
“The county needs to go in and find out: ‘Are these two different people or are they the same person?’” he added. “Because that’s the only way to figure out whether there were enough votes there, enough fraudulent votes to actually make a difference if not in the presidential election, in other elections.”
Childers followed up asking how officials can distinguish between sloppiness and fraud.
Von Spakovsky replied it would depend on the circumstances, but pointed to the instance of individuals being found to have voted in two different counties.
“It’s hard to put that down as anything other than intentional, if they voted twice,” he said.
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an expert hired by the Arizona Senate to audit the mail-in ballot envelope images from November’s election, testified to Senate leadership last month that his team’s review found thousands of duplicate ballots, suggesting people voted more than once.
Ayyadurai, who holds a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there were 34,448 ballot envelopes from just 17,126 unique voters.
By the official count, President Joe Biden won Arizona over former President Donald Trump by 10,457 votes, or 0.03 percent.
Last week, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office sent a letter to Maricopa County officials directing them to preserve all relevant information related to the 2020 general election.
The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright, came just days after the release of draft reports of the Maricopa audit, which was commissioned by the Arizona state Senate.
“The Arizona Senate’s report that was released on Friday raises some serious questions regarding the 2020 election,” Brnovich said in a news release following the letter’s delivery. “Arizonans can be assured our office will conduct a thorough review of the information we receive.”
In a separate letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, the attorney general requested unredacted copies of all reports created by the auditors, including supporting evidence of Ayyadurai’s findings.
In a statement last week, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers promised to “provide factual responses” to the issues raised by the auditors.
“The opinions that came out of Friday’s hearing were conjecture without proof and were twisted to fit the narrative that something went wrong,” Sellers said.
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) September 29, 2021
He added, “The fact is, the elections department ran accurate, secure and transparent elections in 2020.”
In January 2019, The Arizona Republic reported that the board, which is Republican-controlled, voted unanimously to look at taking greater responsibility for election oversight following what the paper described as a “chaotic” 2018 midterms.
That election cycle, as well as 2020, was overseen directly by then-County Recorder Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who narrowly lost his re-election bid in November.
The signs of trouble for President Joe Biden keep on building.
But he won’t accept what they mean.
The 46th president proved as much on his trip Tuesday to Howell, Michigan, where his barnstorming for his party’s hideous monstrosity of a spending bill was the target of hundreds of demonstrators who turned out to greet him — and were promptly dismissed by a man who’s clearly convinced of his own popularity.
Biden’s motorcade was greeted by protesters lining both sides of a highway, carrying Donald Trump signs from the 2020 election, Trump signs for the 2024 election, and signs with the obscenity-punctuated message that’s become a virtual staple of large sporting events lately.
But the unifying president — the one whose party holds only a paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives and power in the Senate by virtue of a tie-breaking vote from the vice president — still bragged about his support in the November election.
“I took this agenda to the country,” he said, according to a White House transcript. “They said it was time to build an economy that looks out from Scranton, Pennsylvania — where I grew up as a kid — instead of looking down from Wall Street. An economy that looks out from Howell, Michigan, and towns like it all over America, that brings people from every race, background, religion into the game.
“That’s what — and notwithstanding some of the signs that I saw com- — that’s why 81 million Americans voted for me. The largest number of votes in American history. A clear majority who supported when they supported me.”
The round of applause that greeted that line wouldn’t have compared to the noise after a decent drive off the tee at Augusta, but for a Democrat who spent the 2020 election speaking to crowds that numbered in the handfuls — compared to throngs that turned out for his opponent — it probably came off as a roar.
Social media users saw it differently.
Yet like 6 people clapped for you when you said this …. With a total attendance of 11
For Biden, there’s nothing like the power of belief — or pretending to believe.
Despite an agenda that’s in serious trouble from members of his own party at home, despite humiliating his country with a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite inflation that’s already hitting American workers in their wallets, Biden either believes he has a mandate, or is just comfortable playing on the pretense.
That’s why he can dismiss hundreds of furious protesters with a condescending “notwithstanding some of the signs” comment.
Of course, Trump faced huge crowds of protesters too, but he was also facing a monolithic mainstream media that was attacking his every move.
He was facing a celebrity and entertainment field bent on poisoning the culture against him — not to mention an opposing political party manufacturing hoaxes in an attempt to remove him from office.
Biden has none of these. Even with slavish support from supposed journalists, the backing of leftists in New York and Hollywood, and a political party in control of both houses of Congress, he’s still facing headwind from an American public that, polling shows, is getting increasingly uneasy with where he and his party are taking the country.
Biden saw the signs on Tuesday. Maybe one of his team members will explain them to him.
If not, the results on Nov. 8, 2022, will be unmistakable.
President Joe Biden traveled to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his Build Back Better agenda.
He is scheduled to appear with Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, at a union training center in Howell, according to Click on Detroit.
To say that Michiganders were not happy to see the president would be a gross understatement.
The videos below will provide you with a good idea of what Biden faced upon his arrival in the state. Both sides of the highway were lined with protesters who’d come out in droves to express their dissatisfaction with the president.
A bright green John Deere bucket loader came rolling down the main road. It was decorated with a large American flag and a sign, which read, “No Biden.”
The protesters carried Trump 2020 flags, Trump 2024 flags, American flags emblazoned with “Trump,” signs that said “Trump won” and, of course, signs with the familiar chant we’ve heard in football stadiums across America for five straight weekends, “F*** Joe Biden.”
Hundreds of protesters lining M-59 ahead of Joe Biden’s visit to Howell today. pic.twitter.com/SPzeCuLqkw
Biden won the state of Michigan by 154,188 votes in November, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at these videos.
Perhaps, this is what the president expected. Ever since his disastrous exit from Afghanistan, he seems to be greeted by protesters wherever he goes.
Two weeks ago, large billboards began appearing along the thruway in central Pennsylvania. The signs depicted a smiling Biden dressed in Taliban military garb, holding a rocket launcher, with the caption: “Making the Taliban Great Again!”
His approval numbers have dived over the past six weeks although they are currently off their lows. As of Tuesday, Rasmussen Reports shows Biden’s approval at 43 percent and his disapproval at 55 percent.
RealClearPolitics average of approval polls on Tuesday shows him with approval at 45.3 percent and disapproval at 47.9 percent.
Powerline Blog has a weekly cartoon feature. On Saturday, they showed a photo of Biden and former President Barack Obama sitting in the Oval Office. Obama’s eyes are closed, and his hands are in a prayer pose in front of his face. Biden is smiling ear to ear as he tells Obama, “Isn’t it neat how they’re all chanting my name at all the football games!”
The first black woman to be elected mayor of Rochester, New York, on Monday completed her journey from groundbreaker to lawbreaker in a plea deal that requires her to resign by Dec. 1.
Lovely Warren cut a plea deal that resolves election law charges against her as well as pending weapons and child endangerment charges that were not related to her job as mayor, according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.
The deal allowed Warren to escape with a misdemeanor conviction for knowingly violating campaign contribution limits in 2017. She could have faced a felony conviction if her election law case went to trial.
Mayor Warren is now at the podium. She is admitting to “knowingly and willingly accepting excess campaign funds in violation of election law” – when asked how does she plead, she says “guilty, your honor” @news10nbc
Two co-defendants — Albert Jones Jr., Warren’s campaign treasurer, and Rosiland Brooks-Harris, the current city finance director and the treasurer of Warren’s 2017 political action committee — also pleaded guilty to the same charges as Warren, according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
Warren and her estranged husband, Timothy Granison, had also been facing a charge of criminal possession of a firearm and two counts each of endangering the welfare of a child and failure to properly secure firearms.
Granison still faces charges in connection with what police said was a drug trafficking network, but Warren is now cleared of those allegations, the report said.
Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Jacob Ark said she will face an attorney grievance committee that will weigh the future of her law license.
Warren also faces a child protective investigation over allegations her daughter was in the home with unsecured guns.
The mayor said on Monday that the plea deal was in her interest and “her daughter’s best interest,” according to the Democrat & Chronicle.
Lovely Warren, the embattled Democratic mayor of Rochester, New York, agreed to resign on Monday after accepting a plea deal on multiple state charges stemming from campaign finance violations, as well as child endangerment and gun charges. https://t.co/jBPmSL1oHS
The irony, or privilege, of the Lovely Warren story is that she was shown infinitely more mercy than she has ever shown. She started destroying careers and livelihoods for spite as soon as she became mayor, and has done so right up to the present.
“Our democracy depends on fair elections,” Monroe County Legislator Rachel Barnhart, a Democrat who lost to Warren in a 2017 Democratic primary, said in a statement, according to WHEC-TV. “Public corruption cannot be tolerated, and we have a lot of work to do at the state and local level to ensure ethical conduct.”
“Lovely was able to raise well over $100,000 more than she was allowed from these donors because almost all of them had interests before the city,” she said.
“This is an important step in our larger efforts in promoting ethical elections in our state,” Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said in a statement, according to The New York Times.
“The ramifications of the Mayor’s conduct spans beyond the criminal justice system,” the district attorney said.
Although Warren is forced to leave office, she will take something with her.
Because she pleaded to a misdemeanor, she gets to keep her public employee pension, according to a spokeswoman for the state comptroller’s office.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed several GOP voting bills Sunday she says aimed to suppress the right to vote. Republicans backing the bills assert the legislation would have protected election integrity.
Republicans say the bills aimed to solidify election day training, protect machines from being hacked, and would have created more voting locations.
“This is just the latest example of Gretchen Whitmer’s politics getting in the way of actually governing,” Executive Director for Michigan Rising Action Eric Ventimiglia said in a statement. “This veto shows that Whitmer is more concerned with politics than the people they represent. If this package had four Democrat sponsors, she would hold a press conference calling it an achievement in voters rights.”
Tori Sachs, Michigan Freedom Fund executive director, concurred with Ventimiglia.
“Gretchen Whitmer vetoed common sense bills that would have made it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” Sachs said in a statement. “She blocked reforms that would have helped senior citizens cast their ballots, and legislation that would have protected both the state’s voter file and voters’ ballots on Election Day. Whitmer’s vetoes are a chilling attack on election integrity in Michigan.”
The Michigan Bureau of Elections released its report on the 250 post-election audits conducted across the state, affirming the accuracy and integrity of Michigan’s November 2020 election. Officials also conducted a statewide audit exercise, by hand-counting votes cast for president on more than 18,000 ballots randomly selected across the state, which affirmed the outcome of the presidential election. And judges appointed by both Republicans and Democrats rejected more than 60 lawsuits challenging the outcome.
Whitmer’s veto letter says House Bill (HB) 4492 would have complicated locating polling locations in senior living facilities and large apartment complexes. The letter said HB 4837 incorrectly implies that third parties have access to the Qualified Voter File (QVF), while HB 4838 claims to prohibit the electronic poll book at each election precinct or absent voter (AV) counting board from internet connection after the polls open on election day and until the results have been tabulated for that precinct and transmitted to the appropriate clerk.
Some people, including former Sen. Patrick Colbeck, have claimed the electronic poll book was connected to the internet in some Michigan precincts in the 2020 presidential election. Whitmer says no such defect exists and the bills address a non-existent problem.
Whitmer vetoed HB 4528 about election challenger training. She said it is worth further consideration but was an unfunded mandate.
“I will always protect our civil rights and stand up for our democracy that countless Americans have fought to preserve,” Whitmer said in a statement. “That’s why I vetoed legislation that would have perpetuated the ‘Big Lie’ or made it harder for Michiganders to vote. Right now, Michigan Republicans are participating in a coordinated, national attack on voting rights that is designed to undermine confidence in our election system and systematically disenfranchise Black voters, communities of color, older voters, and college students. I will have no part in any effort that grants an ounce of credence to this deception, so harmful to our democracy.”
David Brock uses liberal media outlet to target voters, skirting campaign finance law
Democratic dark money kingpin David Brock is using his “pseudo-news outlet” to send Virginia voters unsolicited mailers that falsely attack Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin.
Brock in September bombarded voters in the state’s northern suburbs with an unsolicited “Virginia edition” of his liberal media outlet, The American Independent, photos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The 11-page mailer—which is designed to look like a local newspaper—includes misleading content that echoes Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe’s campaign messaging.
One page, for example, falsely says Youngkin’s plan to “eliminate the state’s income tax” would cut funding for public schools. Just days before Brock sent the mailer, McAuliffe made the same false claim during a debate against the Republican nominee. McAuliffe’s campaign followed up with a press release, which said Youngkin’s “plan to eliminate the state income tax would usher in massive cuts to funding for Virginia’s schools.” Brock Called “misinformation” an “existential threat to democracy” in a 2016 interview with former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, whose career ended after he used fake documents to claim then-candidate George W. Bush went AWOL while serving in the Texas National Guard.
The mailers mark the latest attempt by a well-funded liberal group to influence elections with fake news. Liberal activist Tara McGowan launched Courier Newsroom in 2019 through her dark money group, ACRONYM. The media company aims to “build nimble communications infrastructure for Dems in critical states,” an internal memo obtained by Vice states. The Center for Responsive Politics admonished both Courier and The American Independent in a 2020 article, which referred to the sites as “pseudo-news outlets” that are “pouring millions of ‘dark money’ dollars into ads and digital content masquerading as news to influence” elections.
Brock’s mailers sparked concern among ethics experts. Traditional political groups are required to “disclose who they are and where their funding comes from” when they spend “more than $1,000 to influence an election,” Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust executive director Kendra Arnold told the Free Beacon. But that law does not apply to a “progressive news” outlet such as The American Independent, which has received millions of dollars from dark money sources.
“This is a new legal issue, and there is some gray area on what precisely constitutes a legitimate media outlet in the context of political spending, but in this particular case it does appear to be pushing the limits,” Arnold said.
Brock founded The American Independent—which did not return a request for comment—as the Blue Nation Review in 2014. Brock started the outlet to help elect failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, he told the New York Times in 2016. According to its website, The American Independent receives charitable donations from groups in Brock’s vast political network, including the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation and The American Independent Foundation, two tax-exempt nonprofits that do not disclose their donors. American Bridge, which Brock launched in 2010, funneled nearly $2.7 million to The American Independent‘s parent company from 2017 to 2018, tax filings show.
Those transactions prompted an ethics complaint, with Patriots Foundation cofounder Craig Robinson alleging Brock “circumvented rules and exploited the tax-exempt status of the organizations for personal benefit and partisan political purposes.”
One Virginia voter who got The American Independent‘s “Virginia edition” told the Free Beacon she “never signed up to receive these mailers.”
“At first glance, it looked like a normal neighborhood newsletter, but once you start reading it the bias was very clear,” the voter said. “It’s pretty sad McAuliffe’s allies are resorting to literal fake news to try and con voters.”
Brock’s mailers came as McAuliffe struggled to maintain a strong lead against Youngkin in a state President Joe Biden won by double digits. A September Fox News poll showed McAuliffe leading Youngkin by just 4 points. Voters have until Oct. 12 to register to vote in the election, which will take place on Nov. 2.
Absentee ballot voting has existed for decades. The practice of absentee ballot voting first started as a practice for the military members away from home and other individuals who were legitimately unable to vote in person on Election Day because of disability or travel. The intent of these ballots, however, was always to be administered judiciously, and most states continue to require individuals to apply for their absentee ballot and show identification. Over time, some states moved to use them for “convenience voting,” allowing people to choose absentee ballot voting instead of going in person to the polls. Unsatisfied with that approach, some states took further steps and implemented a voting system whereby mail-in ballots became the standard means of voting, overtaking traditional methods by which people vote in person.
Oregon was the first state to implement a no-excuse absentee ballot system when its legislature passed a measure in 2000. Since then, Washington, Hawaii, Utah, and Colorado have followed suit to implement mass mail-in voting systems. Twenty-nine other states and Washington, D.C. now allow no-excuse absentee voting. More states adopted these measures during the 2020 Election Cycle, and now only Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Indiana require an excuse to request a mail-in ballot. Shockingly, there is now a widespread effort to make no-excuse absentee ballot measures permanent across all elections.
There is a critical difference to remember while thinking about the various types of mailed ballots. An absentee ballot requires that individuals request the ballot and receive one only after state and local officials determine their eligibility. Moreover, in some states, one now can apply to be on the voter rolls as a “permanent absentee voter,” which means one automatically gets an absentee ballot application every election.
The key action here is application. Whether through registration or a specific request, voters can easily receive an absentee ballot application, which they must fill out according to state laws and return within a certain period. After a process of verification by the clerk’s office is complete, an individual can receive a live ballot with the option of either mailing it back or returning it in person at a designated polling location.
Many states have placed safeguards around absentee voting, such as determinations of eligibility, due to recognizing the potential pitfalls of the lack of oversight. For instance, reliance solely on mail-in voting may lead to the disenfranchisement of America’s eligible citizen class and could also lead to fraud through ballot trafficking. Many of the most disadvantaged and those with disabilities rely on in-person voting through the use of special equipment voting machines and sending unsolicited, difficult-to-track ballots with no clear chain of custody serves as a recipe for fraud. At the same time, this voting method is vital to millions of American citizens, and it should be protected as such. Still, it requires a specific solicitation of a ballot through an application supported by a proof of identity using a government ID.
The America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity recognizes that the system instituted by many states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan in 2020 under the guise of COVID-19 disregarded the sanctity of the vote. Newly implemented systems saw every person on a voter roll, regardless of whether they requested a ballot or not, receive a live ballot through the United States Postal Service. Moreover, this system permitted ballots to be dropped off in a drop box in pre-select locations, oftentimes with no security or chain of custody to show their security. This removed any obstacles from ballots being illegally trafficked. Indeed, the security of these ballots was so negligent that ballot drop boxes were sometimes vandalized and torched.
One must not forget, dirty and inaccurate voter rolls allowed thousands of ballots to be erroneously sent to individuals who had already received a ballot, thus enabling many illegally to vote more than once. A system was negligently created that actively violated the fundamental American fairness principle of one person one vote.
All of this has already occurred without the passage of H.R. 1/S. 1, or S. 2093, though widespread efforts to pursue mass mail-in balloting across federal elections are likely to continue. Colorado’s architect of mail-in voting, Amber McReynolds, now serves as a politically appointed member of the U.S. Postal Board following a tenure at the National Vote at Home Institute, a non-profit organization with funding from organizations such as Democracy Alliance.
In the wake of the pandemic in 2020, the National Vote at Home Institute advocated for states and localities to adjust quickly to the surge in mass mail-in ballots by installing drop boxes for people to place completed ballots. However, with the quick adoption of measures like these, states negligently opened themselves up to violations of written law and fraud, which unsurprisingly led to lawsuits.
One lawsuit in Wisconsin, filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, alleged that the use of drop boxes illegally allowed ballot trafficking to occur, thus jeopardizing the security and enfranchisement of legally cast ballots. Beyond this, the lawsuit claimed that the use of drop boxes was illegal under Wisconsin state law. According to the state, all absentee ballots must be returned by the voter to a municipal clerk. Thus, the use of drop boxes—sometimes maintained by independent non-profit organizations with no supervision and vulnerable to vandalism as we saw in several states—violated these laws and represented a derelict of duty by the Wisconsin Elections Commission as alleged by the lawsuit.
While mass mail-in voting puts significant pressure on municipal clerks and the U.S. Postal system, causing demand for drop boxes, further issues are beyond legality. Most states allow non-profit organizations to register voters. The permittance of drop boxes to be patrolled by these same organizations invites oversight issues and disenfranchise rural voters who do not have the same access to these drop boxes as urban and suburban voters. According to a report by the Amistad Project, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a traditionally liberal district, there was a drop box for every 4,000 voters. It noted, however, that “in the 59 counties carried by Trump in 2016, there was one drop box for every…72,000 voters.” This discrimination based on geography should not be tolerated by anyone who supports a fair and equal voting system.
Mass mail-in voting presents vulnerabilities with the chain of custody of a ballot and increases the prevalence of error in states that do not maintain clean voter rolls. Despite the need for clean voter rolls, states oftentimes keep error-filled voter rolls. In large states like California and New York, we saw what happens when the state sends out ballots to every address listed on a voter roll that includes deceased, illegitimate, or relocated voters. If all of these ballots were to be returned, it would make it incredibly difficult for state elections officials to recognize early on that these ballots were cast illegally. Coupled with diminished oversight in the custody of the ballot, it becomes an overwhelming burden on localities to verify that the ballot was indeed cast legally and only once.
Proponents of mass mail-in voting systems argue that it is vital to inclusiveness and that all voters should easily have access to cast a ballot. Thus, mass mail-in voting is needed and should, in theory, expand to increase voter turnout. However, studies have shown this not to be the case. One study performed a statistical analysis of voter turnout data from the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections found that early voting is associated with lower voter turnout because it dilutes the “stimulation” effects of election day. This study is consistent with previous analyses that found no evidence of a lasting increase in turnout from early voting. However, although the research is mixed as some demographic groups showed more significant gains in turnout.
Given the increased efforts to turn America’s election day into a drawn-out process by which people merely complete a form letter and ship it at their convenience, there must be standards set in place to instill greater security in the process.
First: Ballot counting before election day is fraught with the potential for fraud; however, states need to begin verifying the validity of these ballots beforehand. To avoid delays on election day, there should be a set of procedures in place to ensure that legal ballots are secured and counted quickly. The longer this process is drawn out, the greater the chance for error to be introduced into it as ineligible ballots may be counted. At the same time, states and jurisdictions should ensure and safeguard beforehand that there are only legally cast ballots. Importantly, mailed ballots should be matched to their envelopes after being opened to secure future authentication procedures and audits.
Second: As the U.S. Postal Service sets no set delivery system, it is not uncommon for ballots to be lost in the mail and go uncounted. To prevent this from occurring, states should institute voter oversight through ballot tracking applications like California and Colorado. If a ballot is lost, states should allow voters to complete provisional ballots so that voters are not deprived of their ability to cast a legal vote. Moreover, states should work more closely with the U.S. Postal Service and only allow ballot applications to be sent via First Class mail, which allows state elections officials to use their Address Correction Services to match registrations with more updated address lists, thus providing additional security measures in ensuring only legally registered voters receive a ballot.
Third: In all cases, sending out live ballots without a voter asking for one should be avoided. Only when a voter asks for a mail-in ballot and complies with the proper state laws in filling out the application and verifying their identity should a ballot ever be mailed to the voter. Voters should hold elected officials in charge of elections accountable always. However, with the use of mass mail-in voting, loss of credibility occurs when elections officials shrug their duties to privately funded non-profit organizations and lose oversight into this cherished process.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday regarding the duty of Democratic leadership to address the nation’s debt limit that could lead to a “sleepwalk toward an unavoidable catastrophe.”
“For many years, our working relationship has been defined not only by our strong disagreements, but also by mutual transparency and respectful candor,” McConnell wrote to Biden.
“I write in that spirit to express concern that our nation is sleepwalking toward significant and avoidable danger because of confusion and inaction from the Speaker of the House and the Senate Democratic Leader concerning basic governing duties.”
“Since mid-July, Republicans have clearly stated that Democrats will need to raise the debt limit on their own … For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well,” McConnell said.
My letter to President Biden this morning on congressional Democrats’ duty to handle the debt limit: pic.twitter.com/U3G9QMPJwY
“My concern for our country is that Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have done nothing,” he continued. “Either the Democratic leaders simply cannot govern or they would rather play chicken with the U.S. economy than accept reality.”
McConnell also addressed the issue of Democrats pushing “staggering” taxes and spending without Republican input.
“Even now, with Americans already facing painful inflation, Democrats are preparing another staggering taxing and spending spree without any Republican input or support,” he said.
“Mr. President, I respectfully submit that it is time for you to engage directly with congressional Democrats on this matter,” McConnell concluded his letter. “Your lieutenants in Congress must understand that you do not want your unified Democratic government to sleepwalk toward an avoidable catastrophe when they have had nearly three months’ notice to do their job.”
On Saturday, McConnell tweeted that Democrats support spending that would “hurt families and help China.”
“Democrats have taken our roads, bridges, ports, airports, and waterways hostage to ram through an historically reckless taxing and spending spree that would hurt families and help China,” McConnell tweeted. “The far left is running Congress and the American people are hurting.”
Democrats have taken our roads, bridges, ports, airports, and waterways hostage to ram through an historically reckless taxing and spending spree that would hurt families and help China. The far left is running Congress and the American people are hurting. pic.twitter.com/uyBOIGwKs2
Last week, the Senate avoided a government shutdown as both parties agreed to a last-minute plan.
“Now they will need to do the same thing on the debt limit,” McConnell tweeted Thursday.
This week in the Senate proved that clumsy partisan jams will not work. We were able to avoid a shutdown because the Democratic majority accepted reality and listened to what Republicans have consistently said for months. Now they will need to do the same thing on the debt limit. pic.twitter.com/a1GYqvFnMc
McConnell also mocked the claim that the Democratic Party’s proposed $3.5 trillion spending plan was free.
“Fact-checkers have already debunked this loony liberal math. Democrats’ reckless plans are totally disconnected from reality,” he tweeted.
Democrats’ new claim: Spending trillions of dollars on socialism is actually free, as long as they slam Americans with tax hikes at the same time!
Fact-checkers have already debunked this loony liberal math. Democrats’ reckless plans are totally disconnected from reality. pic.twitter.com/WeNtjYTmGt
On Sept. 22, McConnell announced during a news conference that Democrats “should not play Russian roulette” with the nation’s economy.
“We all agree America must not default. We have a Democratic President, House, and Senate. They have decided to operate on a partisan basis,” the senator tweeted.
We all agree America must not default. We have a Democratic President, House, and Senate. They have decided to operate on a partisan basis. So Democrats should not play Russian roulette with our economy. They have an obligation to raise the debt ceiling and they will do it. pic.twitter.com/7RsExpcFJU
I told everyone I wouldn’t be holding back this year . . . and my newest ad is just the start.
My Do-Nothing opponent, Daniel Webster, WOULD NEVER air an ad like this, or even speak out about the threat Radical Islam poses to our Constitutional values and our education system.
As a matter of fact, on the 20th anniversary of 911, Webster blamed the Taliban for attacking us that day . . . which is just mind-boggling dumb.
It’s dumb, because as a sitting member of Congress with voting power, Webster should know al-Qaeda, NOT the Taliban, killed 2,981 people on September 11th.
And twenty years later, as part of the Democrats’ growing Critical Race Theory agenda, Joe Biden wants to teach our school children about the “Islamic faith” while ignoring the ongoing war that Jihadis have been waging against the West for decades!
And sadly, Democrats and Do-Nothing Republicans go right along with the Biden Regime’s agenda to normalize Sharia Law and Islamic “traditions” that include religious bigotry, violence, spousal abuse, sexism, racism and homophobia.
Do you want a member of Congress who speaks the truth about Islam or hides their head in the sand?
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Former President Donald Trump on Friday asked a federal court to reinstate his Twitter account, saying in an injunction request that the social media company was “coerced” by lawmakers into banning him.
“[Twitter] exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,” the legal filing said in part, according to Reuters.
Trump also pointed out in the filing that leaders of the Taliban are currently allowed on Twitter.
The request was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
In July, Trump sued Twitter, Facebook and Google, accusing the Big Tech giants of unfairly censoring conservatives.
The former president was banned from Twitter on Jan. 8 amid a gauntlet of criticism over the riot at the U.S. Capitol by some of his supporters a few days earlier.
Twitter issued a blog post on the day of the ban describing the then-sitting president as a threat to society.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said.
One tweet cited for Trump’s ban read, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Twitter called that tweet dangerous, claiming it was “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
In the weeks leading up to the ban, Twitter had turned to censoring and flagging Trump’s tweets regularly.
While Twitter said Trump’s ban was to prevent violence, no one was censored or kicked off the platform for supporting the riots following the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Additionally, prominent establishment media personalities who condoned the violence on Twitter, such as CNN host Don Lemon, were allowed to keep their accounts.
The official “Don Lemon Tonight” account tweeted a clip of Lemon applauding the often violent and destructive riots.
“When we see these riots around this country, I say, like King said, it’s the language, it’s the voice of the unheard.” – CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers on protests over the death of George Floyd https://t.co/efs7RA6KRvpic.twitter.com/NEEabFVTDU
— Don Lemon Tonight (@DonLemonTonight) May 29, 2020
Not only did Twitter allow high-profile Democrats to glorify violence on its platform, but the company seemingly purged thousands of conservative accounts in the days after the Capitol incursion.
A bit more information has emerged from the John Durham investigation into Russiagate (or “Spygate,”as it is known hereabouts).
This is due to what is likely a leak from one or more of the targets to their loyal propagandists at CNN. (In the article, the reporters do their best to downgrade the scandal they fanned for years as no more than a trivial “dirty trick” that all campaigns do. There’s a well-known word for that adapted into the English language.)
The import of these leaks is usually to soften the impact on the target(s), but it also gives us another indication Durham is still active.
In this instance, more subpoenas have been issued, including some to Perkins Coie. That’s the Democratic National Committee’s and Hillary Clinton’s law firm that only a few weeks ago defenestrated—for reasons unspecified, but we can guess— one of Hillary’s principal lawyers, Mark Elias.
The other Clinton campaign lawyer, Michael Sussman, has already been charged with lying to the FBI on the matter of alleged Trump links to the Russian Alpha Bank, ties that turned out to be non-existent.
This time, however, we learned that “Tech Executive-1” in the Sussman indictment is Rodney Joffe, a rather distinguished cybersecurity expert, but not in this case because he was apparently involved with the same attempted deception.
Mr. Joffe was evidently no fan of Donald Trump. How far he took his enmity we shall see as this plays out.
Or we won’t. Therein lies the problem. Many are worried that Durham will only take the investigation so far and then peter out.
A real Russiagate investigation has myriad possible targets with very famous names, some of the most famous, in fact. Yet negativism about the results is everywhere in conservative circles with some justification.
When then AG William Barr gave Durham his brief, he was quoted in The Hill (March 2020) as follows:
“Attorney General William Barr said Monday that he does not expect a criminal investigation of former President Obama or former Vice President Joe Biden to result from the probe undertaken by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
“Based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man,” Barr told reporters at the Justice Department. ‘Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.’”
Sounds pretty weak, doesn’t it, with some people, too big to be investigated, surrounded by a cordon sanitaire.
Yet rumor has it already that Jake Sullivan is under suspicion in the Alpha Bank matter, at the least. That’s remarkably close to Biden as Sullivan is his National Security Advisor, one of the most powerful positions in the country (cf. Henry Kissinger), as we have seen, to our national misfortune, during the Afghanistan debacle.
How justified is that suspicion of Sullivan? Paul Sperry wrote in Real Clear Investigations: “The indictment states that Sussmann, as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation, ‘coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.’ One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained.”
Biden himself was said to have recommended the ancient and hardly-used Logan Act—how he would even have known about it is worth finding out, but anyway…—in an attempt to punish Gen. Michael Flynn during an oft-discussed, but never fully revealed, Oval Office meeting at the tail end (Jan. 5, 2017) of the Obama administration.
That meeting itself, emailed about by Susan Rice weeks after it took place seemingly to provide Obama presidential deniability, is even more worthy of exploration—or is it off limits as per William Barr? We don’t know.
Yes, there is plenty of reason to be skeptical. The Sullivan matter has barely been discussed in the mainstream media, even though the possible miscreant is the National Security Advisor.
Is everything being sent down the memory hole? Who exactly is to blame in all this? We don’t know that either, though we have guesses about that too.
But it is imperative we must ultimately know. Durham must carry his investigation through to the end, because Russiagate quite clearly marked the beginning of the end of our democratic republic as we knew it.
All the malfeasances that have occurred since from the endless COVID lockdowns to Afghanistan to the open border to the violence in our streets and the relentless propaganda and bizarre arrests surrounding Jan. 6, not to mention the 2020 election itself, point back to it, relate to it, in one way or another.
None of these events would have happened the way they did without it. Some would not have happened at all.
Russiagate was a crime whose extent and import dwarfed Watergate and made that supposed scandal, subject of a Hollywood movie though it is, barely as important, by comparison, as shoplifting at a 7-11.
Yet Nixon and the others paid, badly. Hardly anyone has been punished here so far beyond what has amounted to slaps on the wrists.
So what do we do? Do we sit back passively, maybe adding a few snipes here and there, and let Durham do his job, hoping for the best?
I say no. We all have a role to play. Durham is a man like the rest of us. Consciously or unconsciously, if he knows we’re watching, he’s going to behave in a different manner than if he thinks we’re lulled to sleep.
Be as active as possible in talking and lobbying about this. You don’t have to be a so-called “elite” to do this or be an anchorman on ABC. You just have to be a concerned citizen, an honest man or woman. Keep talking about it to friend and foe. Show up with a sign at an inconvenient (for them) place. Put it on the internet, text to everyone you know or can think of. Discuss it on Signal and Telegraph. Never let Russiagate be forgotten. Put it out there in the zeitgeist and keep it there.
The mainstream/legacy media isn’t going to do it. They will obfuscate as much as possible. We have to do it. It’s up to us. If we don’t, we have no grounds for complaint when it goes down the memory hole—and with it our country.
Two things are of paramount importance to us going forward if we want to save our republic, this full explication of what happened during the Trump-Russia affair, including everyone responsible being properly punished, so we are sure as we can be it will never happen again, and genuine integrity for our broken elections.
Work on that too. Many already are. The two go hand in hand.
A new poll has found that a majority of voters who chose former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election are in favor of a national divorce, while roughly four in ten voters for President Joe Biden are in favor of the same idea.
One would of course have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the cultural and political divide in the country. Have you ever seen such partisan division?
Still, when polled about the idea of separating into two distinct countries, a stunning number of Americans are in favor of splitting up, according to a new poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities,” the poll noted.
“Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a ‘President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts,’ and roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union,” the poll added.
While the idea of states, both red and blue, seceding from the union is nothing new, UVA’s poll found that support for the idea is popular among both Republicans and Democrats nationwide.
Apparently, Republicans don’t want socialism forced down their throats. Meanwhile, Democrats can’t stand the idea of being able to think and act for themselves. That isn’t the least bit surprising.
The last 18 months or so have definitely exposed the partisan divide in the country. More than half of the people who told UVA they voted for Trump are willing to walk away from the United States and carve their own path.
Despite seeing their party in power in Washington and in control of entertainment, academia and sports, people who chose Biden in the 2020 election would be content with seeing their states seceded. Power is never enough.
UVA Center for Politics director Larry Sabato commented on the release of both the poll and its findings.
“The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous,” Sabato said. “The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed.”
Voters seemed more divided when asked more specific questions, according to the poll. A vast majority of both Trump and Biden voters said they view their political opponents as dangerous.
Asked if they view the elected officials from the opposing party as a “clear and present danger to democracy,” 80 percent of Biden voters either somewhat or strongly agreed. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Trump voters answered the same way.
Asked if their counterparts “no longer believe in the ideas that make America great,” the divide was also apparent. Seventy-two percent of people who said they voted for Biden told the pollster they believe their opponents’ views are counter to what might make the country great.
Eighty-seven percent of Republicans told UVA that Biden voters hold views that can’t make the country prosper.
When paying attention to current events and conversations about politics and policy, it’s impossible to imagine a time when the country was more divided. Still, seeing so many Americans willing to call it quits and go their own way is a tragedy — considering all the country has been through across two-and-a-half centuries.
UVA’s Center for Politics polled 1,001 Trump voters and 1,011 Biden voters from July 22 to Aug. 4 and reported a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.
Last week a mom read aloud to the Fairfax County School Board excerpts from library books found in an FCPS library.
Shocking sexually explicit material was included in these books. Fortunately, parents are more aware than ever of what students are learning and the resources that are available to them. But this is not a new fight in Virginia. Not by a longshot.
The final debate in Virginia’s gubernatorial campaign gave us a glimpse into the heart of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and a brief history lesson about parental rights in Virginia is now in order.
Does McAuliffe really believe it’s his responsibility to “not … let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions”?
Does he really believe what he said at the debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”? We know that he does, because he proved it at least twice in his previous stint as governor.
In 2016 and 2017, two separate bills (nicknamed the “Beloved” bills after the Toni Morrison novel) that provided notice to parents and students about sexually explicit material in assigned books were introduced in the Virginia General Assembly. Unknown to parents or students, within various assigned books (especially in AP courses) were instances of pedophilia, rape and even bestiality.
Since presumably, the teacher assigning the books would know about their content, simply notifying parents of that content is not much to ask. The education lobby maintained that parents should have to read all the assigned books to find out which ones had explicit sexual content. But if schools are truly partnering with parents, why the secrecy?
Why not disclose to the parents what is going to be read by their children, which the teachers well know is in the material? What about the rape victim in class who will be assigned a book that will depict the heinous crime committed against her? Does she have the right to know?
Both bills passed with bipartisan support as Republicans and Democrats agreed that parents should be informed when their child is assigned books containing graphic sexually explicit content. Remember when Republicans and Democrats could agree on things?
To be clear, both bills continued to give teachers complete autonomy in the book selection process. What both bills simply provided was a notice to both students and parents of potentially graphic sexually explicit content within the assigned material.
Students then had the ability to request an alternative book. Requesting an alternative assignment is not unusual or unprecedented. Some students have religious objections to animal dissection assignments in biology classes, for example. Those students are allowed an alternative assignment. Students who do not attend field trips for whatever reason are given alternate work.
Bowing to pressure from education lobbyists for teachers unions and publishers, in 2016, then-Gov. McAuliffe vetoed the first of the bills. Undeterred, parents continued to press for this modest request — simple notification that their child might be confronted with literature containing salacious descriptions of sexual acts.
Seeking to accommodate (overblown) concerns about “censorship” ginned up by groups like the ACLU and Pen America, the 2017 bill was more specific. While still ensuring teacher control over the book selection process, the bill required notifying parents of books that include acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Again, the books could still be assigned. The only requirement was parental notification about content considered a sex crime in the state where that material would be read by minors.
This allowed for the ability to distinguish between books like “Romeo and Juliet” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” and gratuitously explicit or age-inappropriate books containing acts that constitute felony sex crimes in most states.
The second bill narrowed the scope of notifying parents to those acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This way books like “Romeo and Juliet” would not be flagged, but books containing graphic depictions of rape, incest, pedophilia and bestiality would.
While there was unity between Democrats and Republicans as to this commonsense measure, McAuliffe decided to veto both bills. With a disdain for parents that was on full display at the final debate of this campaign, then-Gov. McAuliffe did the bidding of education lobbyists rather than honor the role that parents play in our children’s lives.
We don’t have to wonder who he will listen to if he wins again. It won’t be parents.
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, has consistently trailed his well-known opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally and one-time governor of the state. If Youngkin is able to pull out a win in November, he may owe it to McAuliffe’s rather telling blunder on the topic of critical race theory during their Tuesday night debate.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe told his opponent.
Glenn Youngkin: “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”
On Wednesday, the leftist National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Joe Biden pleading with him to treat parents who oppose the teaching of critical race theory and mask mandates as domestic terrorists.
The NSBA began by asking “for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”
“Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our children and educators, to protect interstate commerce, and to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.”
The group said it has already called on local and state law enforcement agencies to “prevent further disruptions to educational services and school district operations.” This is insufficient because “these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent.”
What is really needed to address these threats, the NSBA wrote, is assistance from federal law enforcement agencies — specifically the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service.
The group also “request[s] the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.”
And here is the clincher: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
“NSBA requests that such review examine appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, an Executive Order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.”
NSBA presents school board members as victims. The group made the claim that “extremist hate organizations” are showing up at school board meetings and “inciting chaos.” Parents are also “spreading misinformation.”
“These threats and acts of violence are affecting our nation’s democracy at the very foundational levels, causing school board members — many who are not paid — to resign immediately and/or discontinue their service after their respective terms.”
If only they would.
The letter cited examples of the pushback school boards have encountered from fed-up parents. The NSBA detailed several threats of violence and thuggish acts against the teachers and board members who truly care about the children.
Let’s get this straight. The left insists on presenting a controversial and poisonous Marxist theory as the truth to their children and parents are supposed to accept it. Because like McAuliffe, they “don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Critical race theory is, by definition, a theory. A theory is someone’s opinion. In this case, it’s the opinion of Karl Marx, the author of The Communist Manifesto. He advanced the idea of pitting one class against another as a means of achieving and maintaining control over the masses. There was a reason Karl Marx was reviled by so many in his day and ultimately exiled.
Why would anyone in America think this extremism is something to aspire to? Does the left really understand what they’re fighting for? It sure doesn’t look like it.
By imposing this radical ideology on American children against the will of their parents, progressives have migrated into very dangerous territory. And they should not be surprised by the consequences.
Consider how this would be handled in nature. An incensed mother bear catching an animal trying to harm her cub would tear the perpetrator to pieces.
These parents are not domestic terrorists. They are rightly concerned when they discover their children are being indoctrinated by anti-American propaganda. Rather than being taught an accurate version of history, their children are learning to view the world through the lens of race.
Unfortunately, NSBA’s letter will likely be taken seriously by Team Biden, an administration that has slowly revealed itself to be corrupt, power-hungry, shameless, and I would go so far as to say evil.
In a discussion about his then-newly released book, “American Marxism,” Fox News host Mark Levin told viewers, “We are not looking into the abyss … We are IN the abyss.”
The U.S. Senate approved the nomination of accused eco-terrorist Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Bureau of Land Management, overcoming Republican opposition by invoking cloture to end debate.
The Senate voted for cloture 50-48 along party lines. Senators Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) and Jon Cornyn (R.-Texas) did not vote.
Her nomination was approved by a 50-45 vote.
The extent of Stone-Manning’s involvement in eco-terrorism has been a matter of significant dispute.
In written testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Stone-Manning maintained she “had no involvement in the spiking of trees” as a graduate student at the University of Montana, claiming she merely retyped and sent a written warning to the U.S. Forest Service from fellow activist John Blount about an act of tree spiking in Idaho’s Post Office Timber Sale, after which she worked with her attorney to gain immunity for testifying in the trial of Blount and others.
But the USDA Forest Service agent who investigated that tree-spiking incident, Michael Merkley, disagrees.
In a letter to that same committee, he claimed that Blount’s one-time girlfriend, Guenevere Lilburn, told Merkley that Stone-Manning had helped plan the tree spiking, even deliberating whether to use metal or ceramic spikes. Merkley further stated that “Ms. Stone-Manning only came forward only after her attorney struck the immunity deal, and not before she was caught.”
A woman who appears to be Lilburn has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
Merkley has also argued that Stone-Manning violated several federal laws, including by downplaying her involvement during nomination hearings before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
“By typing the threatening letter to the Forest Service, she was aiding and abetting those who committed an offense against the United States. When she hid her knowledge of the crime for three years and was intentionally obstructive while under investigation, she made herself an accessory after the fact,” Merkley wrote in a Sept. 30 Fox News op-ed.
“By not immediately reporting the crime or divulging what she knew about who was involved, she concealed a felony. When she planned to mail the threatening letter to the Forest Service she involved herself in a conspiracy against the United States. It was also a felony to send the letter through the U.S. Postal Service.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R.-Wyo.), ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources, voiced his strong opposition to Stone-Manning’s nomination in remarks before the full Senate, citing statements from Stone-Manning beyond her remarks on eco-terrorism.
“She has written articles and a graduate thesis supporting the idea of human population control,” said Barrasso.
“And one year ago, she tweeted an article her husband had written calling for homes built in the forest—allowing them to burn during fires.”
“Tracy Stone-Manning is a dangerous choice to be put in charge of America’s public lands, and each and every senator who votes to confirm her will be held personally responsible for that vote,” Barrasso later added.
Democrats voiced their support for Stone-Manning on the floor, including Sen. Jon Tester (D.-Mont.), who said that “Tracy Stone-Manning did nothing wrong” before responding directly to Barrasso’s comments.
“Character assassination isn’t something we should put up with in this body,” said Tester. “God only knows if we looked into the past of everyone who serves here, what we might find.”
“But I’m here to tell you, to listen to the senator from Wyoming and say, ‘We’re going to hold every Democrat accountable’—you’re damn right. Hold me accountable for Tracy Stone-Manning.”
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd blasted the Biden administration’s response to the border crisis during a Friday interview, as 85,000 migrants reportedly approach the nation’s southern border.
Panama has warned that up to 85,000 migrants are traveling to the border of the U.S. Responding to Vice President Kamala Harris and her role to address the root causes of migration, Judd offered strong words against her lack of leadership.
“She’s pandering to her open border base,” Judd said during the “Fox & Friends First” interview on Friday, regarding Harris. “That’s what this administration does.”
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd slams the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis, as 85,000 migrants approach the U.S.https://t.co/QmoTKIxIFc
Judd added that the response has more to do with Democratic supporters than border security and enforcing immigration laws.
“They look at what does their base want and they go out and they give it to them. When we look at 65,000 people coming up to our borders — and this is just one group. It’s not like these are the only people coming up to the borders.”
Judd also addressed the recent Del Rio, Texas, migrant movement that saw up to 15,000 people living under a bridge along the southern border in September.
“This administration wasn’t prepared. They knew they were coming. They weren’t prepared. Now you have 65,000 in the month of October. Next month, we’re probably going to have 150,000.Should Biden close the southern 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.
“This administration doesn’t really care about enforcement at the border. And as this group is coming up, they just made this announcement, that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] now can’t deport people just because they’re here in the United States illegally.”
Judd believes the ICE judgment will be legally challenged and overturned but warns we should expect to continue to see large groups coming up to the southern border.
“Again, this administration — when you look at enforcement at the border — this administration is a complete dumpster fire. It really doesn’t care what’s coming across our borders.”
The Border Patrol leader also published an Op-Ed on Sept. 22 for Fox News that addressed the driving forces behind the large caravans headed toward the U.S.
“Catch-and-release is the single biggest driver of illegal immigration right now. If we reward people for crossing our borders illegally, they will continue to come,” Judd wrote.
“More than 40 years of evidence proves this. And the staggering catch-and-release figures this year show why more people than ever are crossing our borders illegally.”
During an interview on “Mornings with Maria” earlier this week, Judd also addressed the concern of COVID-19 among illegal immigrants.
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd: “We are absolutely not testing migrants nor are we giving vaccines to migrants.”
“And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree.”
Sen. Rand Paul grilled Biden regime HHS secretary Xavier Becerra during a Congressional hearing this week, pointing out that the latter has been making sweeping and grandiose claims about unvaccinated people despite having no scientific background or medical degree.
“Are you familiar with an Israeli study that had 2.5 million patients and found that the vaccinated group was actually seven times more likely to get infected with COVID than the people who had gotten COVID naturally?” Paul asked.
Becerra responded, “Senator, I have to get back to you on that one, I’m not familiar with that study.”
“Well, you think you might wanna be if you’re gonna travel the country insulting the millions of Americans, including NBA star Jonathan Isaac, who have had COVID, recovered, look at a study with 2.5 million study and say ‘Well, you know what, it looks like my immunity is as good as the vaccine or not,’ and maybe in a free country you oughta be able to make that decision,” Paul replied. “Instead you’ve chosen to travel the country calling people like Jonathan Isaac and other, myself included, ‘flat earthers.’ We find that very insulting, it goes against the science. Are you a doctor or a medical doctor?”
Senator Rand Paul tears into HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra:
“Are you a doctor?…You ignore history & science to shame the ‘flat-earthers,’ as you call them. You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.” pic.twitter.com/yDt3hX4DsS
A visibly nervous Becerra leaned in and said, “I’ve worked over thirty years on health policy.”
“You’re not a medical doctor, do you have a science degree?” Paul continued, unfazed, later noting “And you presume to tell somehow, over a hundred million Americans who have survived COVID,, that we have no right to determine our own medical care. You alone are on high high, and you’ve made these decisions, a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly, and un-American. You ignore history & science to shame the ‘flat-earthers,’ as you call them. You sir, are the one ignoring the science.”
Paul noted, “You should be ashamed of yourself & apologize to the American people for being dishonest about naturally acquired immunity.”
Newsweek recently ran an article calling for the 27 year Navy vet to be banned
Jarome Bell, a 2022 candidate for U.S. House in Virginia’s 2nd district, was suspended from Twitter Thursday following the publication of a Newsweek article that called on the platform to censor him over a tweet advocating for those tried and found guilty of election fraud to face the death penalty. The suspension follows a similar incident just one month ago when Twitter locked Bell’s Twitter account after determining that he had violated the Taliban’s “right to privacy.”
“Audit all 50 states. Arrest all involved. Try all involved. Convict all involved. Execute all involved. #MaricopaCountyFraud,” Bell, posted to Twitter on September 24th, following the explosive release of findings in the Maricopa County election audit. Bell has been a staunch supporter of election integrity efforts and has called for election audits in all 50 states. His efforts towards election integrity have helped net him the endorsements of General Michael Flynn and Arizona audit champion, State Senator Wendy Rogers.
Quoting heavily from responses to the Tweet by anti-Trump ex-GOP Congressman Denver Riggleman, as well Fred Wellman of the disgraced Lincoln Project, Newsweek published an article three days after the tweet was posted titled “Twitter Won’t Remove Pro-Trump Candidate’s Call to ‘Execute’ Election Fraudsters.” The article highlighted left-wing outrage over Bell’s call to investigate and try those suspected of stealing a presidential election in the United States of America and claimed that the Arizona audit had “upheld President Joe Biden’s win.”
“The tweet prompted outrage, and many questioned why Twitter had not removed it under its policy prohibiting the glorification of violence,” Newsweek reported. “On Monday, a Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek: “The tweet you referenced is not in violation of the Twitter Rules.”
Now, two days following the publication of Newsweek’s article calling for Bell to be censored, Twitter has suspended the congressional candidate from the platform. Additionally, it appears that Bell’s massive collection of followers has been erased from his profile, as well as his former tweets, and his account no longer appears in Twitter search results.
In a statement to National File, Bell blasted China-tied big tech and their censorship policies, accusing them of election meddling and questioning why a black patriot would be kicked off the Twitter platform when open pedophiles, as well as Taliban terrorists, operate on the site with impunity.
“This is what happens when you are over the target and shooting missiles at bunkers and busting everyone,” Bell said. “The Taliban and pedophile accounts are still active but a black conservative trying to save Virginia and this country gets silenced by the big tech communists that are allowed to run wild in what we used to know as the land of the free and the home of the brave,” he continued. “China-controlled Twitter and Facebook have been given free rein to meddle in U.S. elections.
As previously reported by National File, just one month ago, Twitter locked Bell’s account after he posted a video exposing a barbaric Taliban execution because the big tech corporation determined he had violated the Taliban’s “recognized right to privacy.” Additionally, Bell’s Twitter account was suspended in 2020 when he was seeking the GOP nomination to Congress in Virginia’s 2nd District for the first time. His account was only brought back online after the nomination process, and he had to start from scratch with no followers as if it were a new account.
“These tyrants want to keep the internet under lock and key so as to prevent the rise of Donald Trump’s America First populism,” Bell said in a press release at the time his suit was filed. “And I’m here to stop it.”
Donation could run afoul of federal law that prohibits taking money from foreign nationals
Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign in July raked in $350,000 from a mysterious, New Jersey-based telecom company owned by a Sri Lankan-British national, a donation that could run afoul of federal laws that prohibit candidates from taking money from foreign nationals.
LycaTel, a discount calling card provider, boasts a complicated web of offshore businesses and has been the subject of tax-fraud and money-laundering allegations overseas. The company is owned by Sri Lankan-born British national Allirajah Subaskaran, who holds 99 percent of the company’s shares through his London-based company, WWW Holding Company Ltd., according to U.K. corporate records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. In a Federal Communications Commission filing in August, Subaskaran describes himself as “a natural person and Citizen of the United Kingdom” and lists his U.S. business office as the same address and phone number as LycaTel.
The company does not appear to have contributed to previous Virginia campaigns or federal races. LycaTel in July retained D.C.-based Thompson International Group to lobby on “Telecom” issues, according to disclosure records. Before that, the Thompson International Group had registered as a foreign agent that represented Subaskaran as part of a “business expansion within the U.S.A.,” according to records filed with the Department of Justice.
LycaTel’s contribution is one of the largest received by McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign this election cycle. Ethics experts say the donation raises foreign-influence red flags. It’s also reigniting questions about McAuliffe’s previous foreign-donor controversies. The FBI in 2016 reportedly opened an investigation into a $120,000 donation McAuliffe received from a company owned by Wang Wenliang, a Chinese citizen and U.S. green card holder who served as a delegate to China’s parliament.
LycaTel did not respond to emailed questions. When reached by phone on Thursday, LycaTel’s general counsel said the company had no comment and was “waiting to hear back from management as to what they want to disclose and what they don’t.” A lawyer for Subaskaran did not respond to a request for comment. McAuliffe’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal law prohibits campaigns from accepting money from foreign nationals and entities, directly or indirectly, in local, state, and federal elections. While U.S.-based subsidiaries of foreign corporations can contribute, the donation can’t be made under the direction of the company’s foreign leadership—which legal experts said can be a murky legal distinction.
“This is effectively a really easy way to launder foreign money into the U.S. political process and to avoid the FEC prohibition on foreign nationals making contributions in U.S. elections,” said Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.
Freeman said the McAuliffe campaign’s decision to accept such a large donation from a foreign-linked source was also troubling from an ethics perspective.
“Three-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars to Terry McAuliffe, that’s a huge sum of money, even by campaign finance standards,” said Freeman. “If I was a part of that campaign, or if I was any way connected to that, I’m not going to accept that money because I don’t want even the semblance that we have foreign influence on my campaign. If I was them, I’d give the money back.”
Tom Anderson, the director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, said his organization was concerned about the size and source of the donation.
“McAuliffe probably has one of the most prolific dark money machines in politics but brazenly soliciting and accepting $350,000 from a foreign source is crossing a very bright red line in our opinion,” said Anderson.
Subaskaran, through his WWW Holding Company and other entities, owns a globe-spanning web of companies in the technology, media, and gaming sectors, many of them with the word “Lyca” in the names. The Lyca network is so complicated that its accounting firm, KPMG, acknowledged in a corporate filing that it was unable to account for $134 million on the balance sheet due to the “complex nature of the related party structure the company operates within,” according to the Guardian.
The Lyca group has also come under scrutiny for its financial activities overseas. LycaMobile is one of the largest donors to the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party but has clashed with British authorities over allegations of unpaid taxes. French authorities in 2016 raided LycaMobile’s Paris headquarters and arrested “19 people suspected of being involved in a money-laundering system implicating Lycamobile and Lycamobile Services,” according to a statement from French prosecutors.
LycaMobile couriers in 2015 were photographed transporting tote bags of cash—reportedly as much as $1 million per week—to various post offices around the United Kingdom, according to a series of articles by BuzzFeed. LycaMobile denied any wrongdoing related to the deposits and noted that it operates a cash-heavy business.
LycaTel’s operations in the United States have come under scrutiny as well. The Federal Communications Commission in 2011 fined the company $5 million for “deceptively marketing prepaid calling cards” to largely immigrant buyers. The company reportedly claimed the low-cost cards could be used to make “hundreds of minutes of calls” overseas, but buyers were only able to use “a fraction of those minutes for calls, because LycaTel applies a variety of fees and surcharges that quickly deplete the card,” said the FCC.
Biden national security adviser pushed collusion claims after they were debunked
An attorney for the Clinton campaign exchanged emails with Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan regarding a discredited theory of Trump-Russia collusion at the center of an ongoing special counsel investigation, the New York Times reports.
Attorney Marc Elias exchanged emails with Sullivan and other Clinton campaign officials on Sept. 15, 2016, regarding a purported link between the computer servers of Donald Trump’s real estate company and the Russian oligarch-owned Alfa Bank, the Timesreported. Elias and Michael Sussmann, partners at the firm Perkins Coie, shared the data with the FBI and journalists as part of an effort to publicize allegations that the Trump campaign was working with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Sullivan’s knowledge of the lawyers’ activities raises questions about what else he knew of the effort to push the now-debunked collusion theory. His involvement in peddling the theory is also opening him up to allegations that he pushed election disinformation.
Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI’s general counsel during a meeting on Sept. 19, 2016, regarding the purported Alfa-Trump link. Special Counsel John Durham accused Sussmann of lying when he allegedly claimed he was not sharing the data with the FBI on behalf of a client. In reality, he was representing the Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and a tech executive who hoped to land a position in a future Clinton administration. The executive and a group of computer scientists claimed to have stumbled across computer records showing suspicious activity between Alfa and Trump’s company.
Alfa Bank has vehemently denied the allegations and claims that someone fabricated data linking the company to Trump.
The Sussmann indictment describes a series of interactions between Sussmann, Elias, journalists, and the computer researchers. Elias and the researchers have not been charged in the investigation. CNN reported on Thursday that Durham recently subpoenaed Perkins Coie. The National Security Council has not responded to questions about whether Sullivan has been contacted by Durham.
Sullivan publicly touted the Alfa-Trump allegation days before the 2016 election. He issued a statement on Oct. 31, 2016, citing a story in Slate that laid out the evidence for an Alfa-Trump link. Sullivan said the “secret hotline” between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank “may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia.” It was later revealed that Sussmann was a key source for the Slate article. It is unclear if Sullivan or others on the Clinton campaign helped with the story.
Though the FBI had determined by February 2017 that there was not a secret link between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization, Sullivan repeatedly alleged a nefarious connection. In an interview on March 17, 2017, he told CNN that “very serious computer science experts” had uncovered “a secret hotline” between the Russian bank and Trump’s company.
LANSING, Mich.—On Monday, the State Board of Canvassers approved petition language for a citizens’ initiative, which, supporters say, will help stamp out election fraud in this important swing-state.
The initiative requires all voters to present a valid Michigan driver’s license, passport, or state ID card when voting in person. A signed affidavit by a person not having a photo ID will no longer suffice.
It also forbids governmental units from mass-mailing unsolicited absentee ballot applications, and prohibits the funding of any portion of the election process by non-governmental entities.
“We are happy the petition drive is off and rolling,” said Jamie Roe, a spokesperson for SecureMIVote, the grassroots organization that filed the language.
Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer has repeatedly vowed to veto any bill that she believes would restrict the right of Michigan residents from voting.
But the SecureMIVote proposal is not a bill, nor does it originate in the state legislature. It is voter-initiated legislation.
That means, if the petition drive garners more than 340,000 valid signatures within six months, under Michigan law, the Republican-controlled state legislature could vote to accept the proposal as the will of the people and it would become law, or they could place it on the ballot as a referendum in the next general election.
A recent public opinion poll commissioned by the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce showed 79.7 percent of the 600 Michigan registered voters surveyed support requiring a government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
“Either way,” said Roe, “ Michigan law says our proposal would not be subject to a veto by the governor.”
Just hours after the Board of Canvassers announced their decision to approve the language of the SecureMIVote initiative, Michigan’s Democrat Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist issued a blistering statement urging Michiganders to join the Governor’s Office in opposing the plan, which he labeled “anti-democracy and anti-American.”
“Every Michigan voter … should be offended and angered by this deceitful effort to change the rules just because some people did not like the results of the 2020 election,” said Gilchrist.
“This is a dishonest effort that is wrong for Michigan. Its purpose is to make voting harder…” he said.
In response, Roe told The Epoch Times, “The Democrats just want to keep the options for voter fraud open.”
Before an election, photo ID cards would be provided at state expense to any qualified Michigan resident desiring one, under the proposed plan.
Under the proposal, if a person shows up to vote without a photo ID, the current option to sign an affidavit attesting, under penalty of perjury, that he is who he says he is, will be done away with.
Instead, the person will be given a provisional ballot, which will be counted only if the person comes back with a valid photo ID within six days of the election.
In the 2020 presidential election, 11,400 individuals signed such affidavits.
Mindful that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016 by just 10,704 votes, Roe and his fellow reformers are taking a zero-tolerance approach to any potential for election fraud.
The proposal would also stiffen Michigan’s present voter ID requirements by eliminating what Roe calls “the subjective process” of election workers matching the signatures on returned absentee ballot envelopes with voter signatures on file with the election officials.
The new plan would require all absentee voters to write their Michigan driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number along with their signature on the sleeve containing their sealed ballot.
The names and numbers would not be connectable to the ballot, which would remain secret.
“Because of the pandemic, in 2020, state government mailed out absentee ballot applications to the address of every name on the registered voter list. Many applications went out to people who had not lived at that address for years, or who had died,” said Roe.
Political parties or other advocacy groups may continue to mail out unsolicited absentee ballot applications under the new plan.
The proposal’s provision barring election officials from accepting outside assistance, consisting of cash or in-kind contributions, for any aspect of conducting an election is important to preserving the American system, said Roe.
“Conducting and administering elections is inherently a government function. No outside entities should be funding our elections,” he said.
A week before the Nov. 3 election in 2020, two foundations connected with the National Basketball Association donated a combined $10,000 to help the city put up absentee ballot drop boxes in heavily Democrat Flint, Michigan.
Over 470 Michigan municipalities received grants in 2020 from the Center for Tech & Civic Life, a non-profit organization generously financed by other foundations and corporations, including tech giants Facebook and Google. A large share of the so-called “COVID-19 Relief” grants helped local governments pay for election-related expenses in both Democrat and Republican areas of Michigan.
Roe said he expects vehement opposition to his group’s petition drive financed largely by out-of-state money.
“Some of the organizations opposed to us are openly telling media outlets that they will be out in force to disrupt our signature gatherers as they work in our collection booths,” he said.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office is carrying out a forensic audit of 2020 election results in four large counties, including Dallas and Harris counties.
The office announced the audit last week but declined to provide more details until Sept. 28.
Phase one of the review is already underway, the office says. This phase involves verifying the accuracy of voting machines, assessing cybersecurity, and pinpointing and removing from voter rolls any people who cast votes illegally in 2020.
State officials have received reports from the Electronic Registration Information Center regarding voters who may have voted twice or who illegally voted in Texas despite living in another state. In addition, officials have identified votes they say were potentially cast by non-U.S. citizens and alerted counties to review each case. Once that’s done, any instances of possible illegal voting will be referred to the state Attorney General’s Office for investigation.
Phase two of the audit, estimated to take place in the spring of next year, is centered on examining the election records from various counties, including Tarrant and Collins counties.
The Secretary of State’s office plans to examine all chain-of-custody forms concerning equipment and all logic and accuracy-testing records for voting machines.
Depending on the results of the examination, there could be a full manual recount in the affected precincts or polling locations.
“The purpose of this audit is to ensure all Texas voters can have confidence in the elections systems in our state, and to address any outstanding issues county election officials may face that undermines the integrity of our elections,” the office said in a statement.
A spokesman said in an email that the office won’t be hiring or contracting with any outside firms to conduct the audits. The position of Texas secretary of state is currently vacant.
Election offices in the four counties didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, told reporters last week that “the sensational announcement of an audit by the state is nothing more than a political ploy by a former president and someone who’s trying to curry favor.”
“I’m working to do everything in my power to stop this not only because complying with a sham audit will take us away from serious work we have to do but also, and most importantly, because it will take trust away from our election systems here in Harris County and here in Texas,” she said.
Trump won Texas in the 2020 election by about 630,000 votes but said in a letter to Abbott that he heard Texans want an audit.
“Your citizens don’t trust the election system,” he wrote. “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”
Abbott defended the audit over the weekend.
“There are audits of every aspect of government. We have a state auditor. There’s a federal auditor for the way that government operations work. Businesses that are public companies are subject to an annual audit,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Why do we audit everything in this world, but people raise their hands in concern when we audit elections, which is fundamental to our democracy?”
He also said the audit began months ago, although that hadn’t been previously disclosed.
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.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin should rally Virginia parents over Terry McAuliffe’s statement that teachers’ unions – not parents — have the final say on children’s education.
I think Terry McAuliffe made a huge error in last night’s debate when he asserted that parents really should have no influence on what is taught to their children. This race can break wide open if Glenn Youngkin can focus, in a disciplined way, on rallying every parent and grandparent in the state who believes that parents should have a role in their children’s education. Employing this tactic will drive home the point that the teachers’ unions own McAuliffe. For the Democrats, it is about control and power, not freedom and personal choice.
Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Perry, Georgia, over the weekend, continuing his claims challenging the 2020 presidential election results and hinting at a potential run for 2024.
Trump called on his supporters to “save America” which he says begins with an “earth-shattering” victory in 2022 “to be followed by an even more glorious victory in November of 2024.”
Trump also used the roughly hour-and-a-half speech at the Georgia National Fairgrounds to talk statewide politics, voicing support for his three picks in the upcoming Georgia elections. Trump is backing U.S. Senate candidate and football icon Herschel Walker, who’s running against Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock; Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who’s running for Georgia secretary of state; and state Sen. Burt Jones running for lieutenant governor.
Trump had disparaging words for the state’s incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and Gov. Brian Kemp—all Republicans who have been vocal in opposing Trump’s claims of a fraudulent 2020 presidential election which declared President Joe Biden the winner.
Trump told the crowd he would have rather seen Democrat Stacey Abrams win the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018.
“Stacey, would you like to take his place?” he said. “It’s OK with me.”
Trump also referenced a recently released forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County, Arizona, which he says backs his claims of widespread election fraud.
The final, certified election results have Biden winning that county, which includes Phoenix, by 45,000 votes—key to Biden’s 10,500-vote win in the state. The audit, which was backed by state Republicans and conducted by the cyber security firm Cyber Ninjas, included a hand count of votes tallying 360 more votes for Biden than the official results.
“It confirmed what we have all known for some time,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki following its release Friday.
But the report also questions the legality of about 50,000 of the ballots cast. It claims 23,344 mail-in ballots were voted from an individual’s former address, 9,041 mail-in ballots were returned than were mailed out to voters, and 5,295 voters that potentially voted in multiple counties. It also questions the validity of thousands of more votes saying they did not match who voted, were duplicate ballots, or were cast by voters who moved out of Maricopa County.
Trump sees this as evidence of his victory in the county and more broadly the national election, urging further investigation into the matter.
“If we don’t think about the past you’ll never win again in the future because it’s all rigged,” he said at the rally.
The report’s findings have been contested by local officials. Members of the Republican-led Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, wrote on Twitter: “The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win.”
And again: “Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election.”
Trump also brought up the recent indictment of a cyber security lawyer involved in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The indictment alleges Michael Sussmann lied to the FBI about his involvement with the campaign when he provided the agency with data alleging a mysterious computer backchannel between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank. An FBI investigation later found no evidence of a secret backchannel.
“They made up a hoax and we had to live with it for three years,” said Trump at the rally.
Trump also slammed Biden for his management of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the recent flood of illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border calling it “the worst border situation in history of the world.”
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.
There have been two constants in Gallup’s polling on President Joe Biden: Democrats are enamored, Republicans are appalled. Independents, meanwhile, are where the president’s fortunes will rise and fall.
And fall they have.
For the first time in Biden’s administration, the president’s disapproval rating is higher than his approval — and by a 10-point margin, at that.
The poll, taken Sept. 1-17 via a phone panel of 1,005 U.S. adults and released Wednesday, found 43 percent approved of the job Biden was doing compared with 53 percent who disapproved. Vice President Kamala Harris was even at 49-49 approval/disapproval.
The September poll was the first conducted since the fall of Afghanistan, with over 120,000 people airlifted out of the country. America has also seen increased COVID-19 infection rates and virus-related restrictions after Biden promised to “shut down the virus.”
Perhaps the most onerous restriction was the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, introduced on Sept. 9, while the poll was being conducted.
During the August poll, conducted between Aug. 2-17, Biden held a slight approval surplus, with 49 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval. His high point was in January, when 57 percent approved and 37 percent disapproved — a 20-point margin.
The poll didn’t even take the full brunt of the Haitian migrant crisis at the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas into account. That portion of the border crisis didn’t begin to manifest fully until Sept. 15, and it wasn’t until Sept. 16 when Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported the numbers in the camp had doubled nearly overnight from over 4,000 to over 8,000 individuals.
BREAKING: Our drone is currently over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, where Border Patrol & law enforcement sources tell us over 4,200 migrants are waiting to be apprehended after crossing into US. Local BP holding facilities are overwhelmed and over capacity. @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/h62omhK1Xq
BREAKING: Our drone is back over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX. Per source, the number of migrants waiting to be processed has now swelled to approx 8,200. It was 4,000 yesterday AM. Doubled in one day. BP overwhelmed, & I’m told situation is “out of control” @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/ThJJJ0JWCT
All of which is to say that September’s poll could have been a lot worse — and October’s could end up feeling the hangover from this month.
Biden’s approval is at an all-time low in all three categories — Democrat, Republican and independent — since the first poll was taken in January. Among Democrats and Republicans, however, that drop was modest.
In January, 98 percent of Democrats approved of the president compared to 90 in September. Eleven percent of Republicans thought Biden was doing a good job in January; only 6 percent did in the September poll.
Where Biden is hemorrhaging support is among independents.
“Independents have shown the greatest variation in their opinions of how Biden is doing. Biden’s current 37% approval rating among independents is his lowest to date and 24 points below his personal high of 61%,” Gallup said.
“Two-thirds of Biden’s slide among independents since he took office has occurred in the past three months.”
That’s not a good look, particularly given the fact the Biden administration was supposed to be bridging the gap to the middle. Remember, the current president is the kind of guy who could reach out to Americans in the middle or those fed up with politics. He’d make Washington work. He’d beat that virus, spend tons of money on good ol’ grade-A U.S. infrastructure and bring America back to the world table.
He’s done none of that. He’s alienated all but his base. He’s created numerous crises, not the least of which was the fall of Afghanistan. The border is a mess. The Democrats don’t seem to have the votes at the moment to pass a debt ceiling hike the way they want to, get their $3.5 trillion spending plan through Congress and also enact the bipartisan infrastructure bill they negotiated.
As Gallup pointed out, all presidents enjoy honeymoon periods before things sink back to reality. The difference is that Biden’s honeymoon period should have lasted longer. He was handed vaccines to the COVID crisis that had paralyzed our nation’s economy. He was left with a small troop imprint in Afghanistan that still seemed to be providing enough protection to keep the ruling government in power. If he managed all that correctly, which shouldn’t have been difficult, the honeymoon period could have gone on indefinitely.
And now we’re here with a deeply divided electorate where independents can’t trust a radical administration. It’s not just that Biden is down 24 points among independents in nine months. It’s that the 37 percent number is likely to go even lower, and at a breakneck pace at that. He’s well on his way to being a one-term president — and Democrats are doubtlessly despairing at the ineptitude.
Democrats are opening their bag of dirty tricks in a desperate effort to torpedo the candidacy of the Republican running for governor of Virginia, according to a new report.
Axios reported that a group that appears to be attacking Republican Glenn Youngkin from the right is actually bankrolled by Democrats.
Recent ads targeting conservative sections of the western part of the state claim that Youngkin is not a true champion of the Second Amendment.
Although ads from Democrat Terry McAuliffe portray Youngkin as too pro-gun, the ads taken out by the Accountability Virginia PAC use the fact that the National Rifle Association did not endorse Youngkin as fodder for criticism.
Axios found that ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, actually hosts Accountability Virginia’s donation page.
From its bank to the company that makes its advertising buys, Axios found the common thread was that all parts of the PAC have Democratic connections.
The ads are “an attempt to undermine Youngkin’s support in western rural areas, where gun ownership is sacred and the Republican has a big lead — as all Republicans do these days,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Currently, the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows McAuliffe with a 2.9 percentage point lead over Youngkin.
A month ago, however, McAuliffe had a 6 percentage point lead, according to the polling average.
Youngkin was endorsed by former President Donald Trump but has soft-pedaled that support in a state where he will need moderate votes to win.
Trump has said that Youngkin must stop walking that tightrope if he wants to win, according to The Washington Post.
“The only guys that win are the guys that embrace the MAGA movement,” Trump said on the “John Fredericks Radio Show” when speaking of Youngkin.
“When they try to go down a railroad track, you know, ‘Hey, oh yeah, sure, love it, love it. Oh, yeah, love Trump. Love Trump. OK, let’s go, next subject.’ When they do that, nobody, they don’t — they never win. They never win. They have to embrace it,” he said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the end of his magisterial book “How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower,” Adrian Goldsworthy compares the fate of imperial Rome with contemporary America.
The dominance of a civilization, he notes, depends not only on resources and military prowess but also on “culture,” that hard-to-define yet palpable mixture of confidence, savoir-faire, and commitment to foundational principles beyond the calculus of individual profit or aggrandizement.
Beginning in the third century, Goldsworthy writes, Rome began to turn away from that cultural compact and decline wove itself into the sinews of Roman society.
“The rot,” Goldsworth observes, “began at the top, and in time a similar attitude pervaded the entire government and army high command.”
I predict that future historians, seeking to understand the decline of the United States, will settle on the annus horribilis of 2021 as the terminus a quo.
Immersed in the moment, it is often hard to disentangle the main story from the cacophony and chatter of mere events.
But can anyone who is not Jen Psaki contemplate America’s leadership and not discern the rot at the top?
Goldsworthy mentions the army high command. Take a look at the American high command, beginning with SecDef Lloyd “stand down” Austin and Mark “White Rage” Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to assess them both, their surrender to identity politics and to the corrosive sentimentality of political correctness.
General Milley’s treacherous effort to circumvent the chain of command and pretend that America’s military answered first of all to him, not the President, has attracted some measure of the obloquy it deserves, but he continues on in his position instead of being courtmartialed.
I doubt that he will be able to remain for long in the army—public sentiment against him is strong and growing—but I also doubt that he will be disciplined.
The rot that he himself embodies is too widespread to require it.
Indeed, “rot at the top” describes our situation to a T.
At the pinnacle we have an erratic practitioner of glossolalia whom everyone, friend and foe alike, understands is well on the road to senility.
Then cast your eye down the line of succession: Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellin, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
A depressing cavalcade, isn’t it?
But the rot is not confined to political figures.
What Robert Frost called “the slow smokeless burning of decay” has installed itself in the heart of many of our most cherished institutions.
I already mentioned the military. What about our intelligence and crime fighting institutions?
It must be dismantled, and not just the leadership “but the whole organization and everyone in it.”
With every passing week, its role in concocting and disseminating the whole “Russia Collusion” narrative against Donald Trump becomes more obvious and more disgusting.
And note well that its activities on that front are not done and over with.
Christopher Wray, the Director of the Bureau, is assiduously pursuing the successor to the Russia Collusion Narrative: the Jan. 6 insurrection hoax, according to which American citizens exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech are branded as “domestic extremists” and hunted down.
The closer you look at that institution, the worse it looks.
Even the mild mannered Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, argues that the Bureau “should be scrapped and something new built to replace it.”
And what about other institutions, higher education, for example? It speaks volumes, I think, that Harvard’s new chaplain, Greg Epstein, is a self-professed atheist.
Reflecting on the experience of Rome, Adrian Goldsworthy notes that when “governments or agencies forget what they are really for, then decline will occur.”
Moreover, he writes, “bureaucracies are stubborn” and “tend to expand on their own and develop their own agendas.”
The rot that was likely yesterday becomes inexorable tomorrow.
Can the trend be reversed? Maybe. But Goldsworthy is right. “If the trend is to be reversed, then this process needs to start at the very top.”
What do you suppose the prospects of that are?
Perhaps it is an illustration of Franz Kafka’s mordant observation that “there is hope, but not for us.”
California is a mess. But it doesn’t use the word “alien” in official state codes anymore.
The state is in the midst of a homelessness crisis. It has the highest gas prices in America. Its COVID lockdowns and mask restrictions have decimated small businesses. Its leaders don’t feel bound by it — least of all Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose infamous dinner at the French Laundry has become emblematic of how our ruling class doesn’t play by their own rules.
But at least it doesn’t use the word “alien” in state code anymore.
Last week, U.S. Labor Department data revealed unemployment claims in California had skyrocketed, reaching their highest level since April. The state is dealing with an epidemic of shoplifting thanks to a 2014 law that turned theft into a misdemeanor provided under $950 of items were stolen. The state is currently in the midst of a spate of wildfires which are threatening its sequoias.
But, thank heavens, they’re not using the word “alien” in state code anymore. I was getting worried there.
Proving that neither he nor the rest of California’s Democrats learned anything from the recall election other than he won by a sizable margin, Newsom signed legislation Friday which, yes, struck the word “alien” from the state’s code.
The bill, AB 1096, “removes the derogatory term ‘alien’ used to describe foreign-born individuals,” according to a media release from Newsom’s office.
“As the nation’s most diverse state, we are stronger and more vibrant because of our immigrant communities,” Newsom said in the statement.
“This important legislation removes the word ‘alien,’ which is not only an offensive term for a human being, but for far too long has fueled a divisive and hurtful narrative. By changing this term, we are ensuring California’s laws reflect our state’s values.”
Wait, how is widely accepted legal terminology “an offensive term for a human being”? Let Newsom’s office explain.
“The term ‘alien’ has been used to identify individuals who were not born in the United States by the federal government since 1798 and in California since 1937,” the statement read.
“In the 1990s, the word ‘alien’ began to be used as a political dog whistle to express bigotry and hatred without using traditionally racist language. By 2015, the term was officially replaced with ‘noncitizen,’ however ‘alien’ is still widely used in many aspects of California law.”
Ah, yes, the old “dog-whistle” feint. In case you haven’t encountered this liberal tactic, if the left wants to declare certain language off-limits, one easy way to do it is to call it a dog-whistle.
For instance, “undocumented migrant” sounds a lot nicer than “illegal alien.” The latter gets to the heart of the matter: It’s a foreign-born individual who’s not legally in this country. The former sounds almost like someone who lost a few immigration papers.Related:
Ergo, “alien” is a dog-whistle. No evidence needs to be presented. Just stop using it.
Even the media release demonstrated Newsom’s misplaced priorities. In addition to AB 1096, his office announced, he’d “signed a series of bills to protect the health and safety of immigrants, including legislation to clarify safety standards at detention facilities, ensure rights and protections for unaccompanied undocumented minors, and cement protection for immigrants under hate crime legislation.”
Each one of those is more substantive than removing the word “alien” from California’s state code. Whether or not you agree with those things is beside the point — they have a tangible effect.
What did Newsom’s office tout right at the top of the release? Extirpating a “dog-whistle” word from the books because it’s “fueled a divisive and hurtful narrative.”
Newsom may have won the recall election by a reasonable margin, but he still fails to understand why there was a recall in the first place — and why the polls were reasonably close until his campaign started raising and spending huge amounts of cash on the race.
California’s COVID policies paralyzed the state’s economy. The state remains as unaffordable as ever. Homelessness is rampant. Its leaders are hypocrites. The state is going to pot.
What needed fixing? That word, apparently.
California had its chance to stop this madness in 2021. It has another chance in 2022. If its citizens don’t avail themselves of the opportunity, they have only themselves to blame for their problems.
The national divide has gotten so deep that even the brilliant Roger Simon has broached the subject of succession: “I never thought I’d be writing about secession or anything close. Not in a million years,” he wrote.
After reciting his love of country, Simon continues,
“But the times being what they are and the man occupying the presidency being who he is, not to mention those surrounding him being who they are, plus the issues that divide us … I feel compelled to discuss secession or division as if they were a real possibility worth considering.”
Simon has picked up on the secession talk I’ve heard bubbling through the grassroots:
“… I know I’m not alone in thinking about what was once unthinkable. Indeed, from what I’ve heard, even in the halls of Congress there are those so concerned with the inability of the red and blue to speak or reason together, who see a gulf between both sides so wide it will never be bridged, that some of our politicians are beginning to whisper about secession or the like as well.”
Secession movements are responses to national policies imposed over strong objections from particular regions of the country. The first major secession movement arose in the New England states during the War of 1812. The federal government, then dominated by officials from other states, had declared war on Great Britain. The war destroyed the New England fishing and commercial economy.
The second major secession movement was, of course, the exodus of Southern states in 1860 and 1861. The South resented federal tariffs and feared the central government would act against slavery. The immediate trigger was the election of a president whose party had pledged to end slavery in the federal territories. If that happened, the slave states would be hemmed in and their “peculiar institution” potentially doomed to extinction.
Like previous secession movements, modern secession sentiment derives from regional dissatisfaction with national policy. However, the current sentiment differs from previous movements in at least four ways:
First: In previous movements, the national policies causing dissatisfaction were few in number. Today there is much more to complain about: The central government has been forcing all states and citizens (except those with political pull) to bend the neck to arbitrary and stupid diktats governing health care, immigration, education, marriage, social policy, land use, and many other subjects.
Second: During the War of 1812, New England contained only five of the 18 states. (Maine was still part of Massachusetts.) In 1860–61, only 11 of 34 states—containing just 27 percent of the population—seceded.
Modern dissatisfaction is more geographically widespread. In recent years, a majority of states have sued to upend Obamacare, vaccination mandates, and other federal policies. In 2020, half the states voted for Donald Trump. Sixty percent of the states have Republican legislatures and a majority have Republican governors.
Third: It was awkward to make a moral case for New England commerce and particularly difficult to do so for slavery—although some people tried. By contrast, many of the policies now issuing from Washington are deeply offensive to traditional morality.
Fourth: The centralized policies of 1814 and 1861, wise or not, were constitutionally legitimate: The Constitution grants Congress power to declare war and (despite the absurd ruling in the Dred Scott case) power to govern the federal territories. By contrast, many current national policies are, under any honest reading of the Constitution, far outside federal authority. Some of them, such as the Biden administration’s failure to enforce immigration statutes, actually defy federal law.
One might argue that these four differences make secession more practical than in 1814 or 1861. But a better way of looking at it is that those differences give the dissenting states certain advantages, and more viable options, than merely submitting or seceding. The best option—and the key to saving the country—is decentralization.
The Founders understood the advantages of decentralization. That’s why they created a federal, rather than a unitary, government. History had shown that free republics endured only if they govern small territories. Republics occupying large areas degenerated into despotism, because holding together regions with disparate interests and cultures required a strong man or military oligarchy. An obvious example was the Roman Republic, which could not adapt to territorial expansion, and therefore degenerated into autocracy. Another example is Russia today.
John Dickinson in his “Fabius” essays and Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist” No. 9, pointed out that the Constitution met the challenge by creating a decentralized system. The overwhelming majority of policy issues would be resolved at the state or local level; divisive national controversies would be limited to tariffs, foreign affairs, the post office, and a few other subjects.
We have ignored this wisdom and the Constitution that enshrined it. Federal functionaries and their media/special interest allies have nationalized every issue. That is the leading cause of our bitter divisions: We fight over everything because the feds try to control everything.
How do we restore decentralization? The Constitution gives us a tool for the purpose. Article V of the Constitution permits two-thirds (34) of the state legislatures to force Congress to call a convention for proposing amendments. At a convention for proposing amendments, each state has an equal voice: It is one species in a larger class of assemblies called “conventions of states.” State lawmakers can direct this assembly to propose amendments limiting federal power, after which the states then decide whether to ratify them.
This is the procedure the Founders recommended for correcting central overreach. George Mason, Constitutional Convention delegate from Virginia, insisted on it as a remedy in case the central government became “oppressive.” Samuel Rose, a leading New York ratifier, noted that the procedure “prescribed for the states a mode of restraining the powers of government, if upon trial it should be found that they had given too much.” Tench Coxe, the author of some of the most-widely read essays in support of the Constitution, explained:
“The sovereign power of altering and amending the constitution … is vested in the several legislatures and [ratifying] conventions of the states, chosen by the people respectively within them. The foederal government cannot alter the constitution, the people at large by their own agency cannot alter the constitution, but the representative bodies of the states, that is their legislatures and conventions, only can execute these acts of sovereign power.
“… [A]s the foederal legislature cannot effect dangerous alterations which they might desire, so they cannot prevent such wholesome alterations and amendments as are now desired, or which experience may hereafter suggest. … If two thirds of those legislatures require it, Congress must call a general convention, even though they dislike the proposed amendments, and if three fourths of the state legislatures or conventions approve such proposed amendments, they become an actual and binding part of the constitution, without any possible interference of Congress.”
The number of states with Republican legislatures (governors have no role in the process) already approaches the necessary two thirds. Because the Biden administration’s power lust is matched only by its incompetence, after the 2022 election, the tally of GOP legislatures may soon be higher. Surely a convention dominated by conservative state legislatures can draft amendments popular enough to be ratified by 38 states. There are, after all, sensible liberals appalled by federal excess and the danger of national breakup.
We have everything to gain from a convention of states and nothing to lose. (Claims that an amendments convention is uncontrollable or could be controlled by Congress are myths without historical or legal basis.) We have, accordingly, a moral and legal obligation to employ that constitutional tool before splitting up the country.
The FBI had an informant on the ground on Jan. 6 before the incursion into the U.S. Capitol, according to a report, which is leading to questions about how involved the bureau was in the building breach.
The New York Times reported on Saturday it had obtained records which showed that an FBI handler had been in contact with a man reported to be affiliated with the group the Proud Boys before the building was entered by protesters.
As the Proud Boys marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6, a member of the far-right group was texting real-time updates — to his FBI handler.
The informer gave the bureau an inside view that day, according to confidential records obtained by The New York Times. https://t.co/QkBptydk2Z
Per the report, the unnamed informant was constantly texting his FBI contact throughout the morning and afternoon of Jan. 6. Those messages were to keep the agent up to date about what was happening. The informant, per the Times, was affiliated with a midwest chapter of the Proud Boys.
He said he met with other members hours before the building was entered at the nearby Washington Monument at 10 a.m. that day. The FBI’s reported mole recounted that Proud Boys members did not organize an attempt to enter the Capitol. He said, rather, that they went in when others did so as doors were opened.
The Times reported the alleged informant and others with the Proud Boys became “consumed by a herd mentality,” but had no intention to commit any violence before traveling to Washington, or once they entered the building with others.
The informant reportedly said there was a prolonged conversation among Proud Boys members about whether entering the building was even a good idea.
Ultimately, he and others did enter. The informant said he later exited the building after he was told someone had been shot.
The shooting was an apparent reference to the shooting death of protester and military veteran Ashli Babbitt. The woman was shot by U.S. Capitol Police officer Lt. Michael Byrd.
The news outlet concluded that the informant’s testimony from the day is evidence that federal officials were actively monitoring the events, and had a good understanding of what was unfolding, which is a narrative the FBI has not embraced publicly.
“Federal law enforcement had a far greater visibility into the assault on the Capitol, even as it was taking place, than was previously known,” the Times reported.
People who viewed the Times report online speculated about the FBI’s involvement in the incursion, with many concluding that Jan. 6 might have been avoided had it not been steered by the bureau.
This is smelling like the Michigan gov kidnapping case. How much was the FBI just observing vs actively encouraging and directing?
To date not a single charge of insurrection or sedition.
So the feds had people in the crowd the whole time? Surely they could have prevented any scary “insurrection” that was happening? Unless they wanted some drama obviously, then they did a great job. God bless America, eh?
The Times reported that 15 members of the Proud Boys have been charged over the events of Jan. 6. They are among hundreds of others who have been charged or jailed for alleged acts related to being in or near the Capitol.
The Times report comes as the FBI is already under fire for allegedly not acting to protect children from sexual abuse after having information that Larry Nassar, the former team doctor of the United States women’s national gymnastics team, was a sexual predator.
The bureau is also facing scrutiny over its role in an alleged plot last year to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
On Friday, the findings of the audit conducted by the Arizona state Senate investigating the results of the 2020 presidential election were revealed.
CEO Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas, the cybersecurity firm commissioned by Senate Republicans to assist in conducting the audit, noted that 23,344 mail-in ballots were reportedly sent to the wrong person in his presentation during the Livestream of the Arizona election audit results.
The slideshow detailed that those ballots sent to a different address in Maricopa County revealed “no one with the same last name shows as living at the address.”
In addition, Cyber Ninjas alleged, “2,382 voters voted in person even though they show … as having moved out of Maricopa County.”
The group’s data also showed that another 2,081 voters who moved out of state in the month prior to the election were given a “full ballot” with local and state level races as opposed to just the option to vote in the presidential election.
The months-long contentious audit has left Americans curious about the results, although the overall results presented by Cyber Ninjas confirmed that President Joe Biden won the state of Arizona.
However, the audit reportedly revealed numerous disparities and security issues in the election system. Arizona Republicans will likely continue to push for election integrity measures following the results of the audit being announced.
Many Americans across the country have had their suspicions regarding the level of election integrity present during last November’s election. Some think there were vast issues with the way voting was handled, while others say the problems were minuscule.
However, when it comes to Maricopa County, auditors of the 2020 election in the state of Arizona presented an eye-opening finding during a Friday Livestream: There were hundreds of potential dead voters.
Doug Logan, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, a group commissioned by the Arizona state Senate, reported that 282 “potentially deceased people” were discovered as having voted in the November election.
But according to the auditors, that’s not all.
The Cyber Ninjas team also reportedly found that up to 5,047 people voted in more than one county in Arizona, with approximately 5,295 compromised or doubled instances of voting.
The auditors noted 198 individuals registered to vote after the Oct. 15 registration deadline and went on to vote in the election.
Even when voter ID was used for protection, Logan noted, mistakes were made — 186 people who potentially had duplicate voter IDs submitted a vote in the election.
Maricopa County is one of the largest voting districts in Arizona. Millions of people cast their ballots.
While these reported mistakes may be in the hundreds, or even the thousands, all of the errors presented are inexcusable.
If these audit findings are indeed accurate, someone needs to answer for the discrepancies — America deserves election integrity.
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an expert hired by the Arizona Senate to audit the mail-in ballot envelope images from November’s general election, told Senate leadership on Friday that his team’s review found thousands of duplicate ballots, as well as over 1,700 with no signatures.
Ayyadurai, who holds a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there were 34,448 duplicate ballot envelopes from 17,126 unique voters.
Dr. Shiva On The Case Reporting That There Was Duplicate Ballots Found In The Maricopa Audit pic.twitter.com/cOhW0eukpj
The above graphic was shared by Logan during the hearing.
Throughout the entire audit, The Western Journal has provided extensive, sometimes exclusive, coverage of the Maricopa County election audit.
In July, The Western Journal conducted an exclusive interview with Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, which included a number of exclusive revelations.
In the months following the tense 2020 presidential election, Americans have been keeping an eye on the Arizona state Senate-conducted election audit.
On Friday afternoon, the findings presented by auditors during a Livestream event showed just how messy the election reportedly got in Maricopa County.
According to the audit team, the county initially sent 26,965 ballots to duplication. Cyber Ninjas, the digital security company which took part in conducting the audit, found that ballots seemingly appeared out of thin air.
The forensic audit counted 29,557 duplicate ballots, according to a presentation submitted by auditors. However, the county’s self-reported numbers were a few thousand below that number.
Maricopa County only reported 27,896 of these duplicate ballots.
How were there reportedly thousands of ballots worth of discrepancies?
Maricopa County, and the rest of the nation, are waiting anxiously to see what these alleged discrepancies mean for voter integrity across the country.
There were many shocking revelations forwarded on Friday during the Arizona Senate Republicans’ hearing on the Maricopa County 2020 election audit results.
Among the findings were that a number of the ballots appear to be digitally altered or “photoshopped,” although investigators have yet to officially confirm this.
The allegedly digitally altered ballots were highlighted by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an expert in pattern recognition enlisted in the audit investigation by the Arizona Senate.
Ayyadurai revealed that, during the audit, election officials discovered a number of ballots were given “verified and approved” stamps despite signatures not being present on the ballots.
Curiously, in some instances, these “verified and approved” stamps were found behind graphics that were initially printed on the ballots, according to a presentation displayed by Ayyadurai.
This has led the auditors to believe that the ballots were “photoshopped.”
Also, Ayyadurai revealed that only 10 percent of the total ballots — roughly 1.8 million — even received a “verified and approved” stamp.
Most of those votes that did get the aforementioned stamp were actually received after election day, the auditors reported.
The Western Journal is following the Arizona audit findings closely as they are revealed during Friday’s hearing.
If you would like to know more, be sure to stay tuned in to The Western Journal’s coverage.
On Friday, Arizona state Republicans announced the findings of the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County.
Among the audit’s many findings was that over 17,000 total duplicate ballots — meaning ballots submitted by individuals who voted more than once in the election — were found.
Dr. Shiva’s team identified 17,322 duplicate ballots — this finding is NOT in the audit report
As much was revealed by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an expert in pattern recognition and classification of diverse signals and signatures who has four degrees from M.I.T.
The Arizona Republicans conducting the audit enlisted Ayyadurai and his team of experts to aid in the audit by investigating mail-in ballot envelopes used in the election.
The team reported it found 17,322 duplicate ballots in the election.
As noted by Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake on Twitter, Maricopa County itself had reported no duplicate ballots.
The penalty for lying to Congress is up to five years in prison.
And, according to a recent report, President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was guilty of as much in December 2017.
This revelation came out thanks to the indictment of Michael A. Sussmann, a partner at the law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
As The Washington Post reported, special counsel John Durham indicted Sussmann on the charge of making false statements to the FBI regarding the motives of his clients when they planted the rumor that the Trump campaign had a secret server it was using to communicate with Russia’s Alfa Bank.
These claims were later investigated as part of the long-running Trump-Russia investigation that ended with the ruling that there had been no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
This initial rumor involving Alfa Bank originated with the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. It was then obtained by the Clinton campaign, who sent the false allegations forward to the FBI.
Here’s where the story ties back to Sullivan.
In December 2017, Sullivan told Congress that he had no idea that Fusion was involved in the Alfa Bank opposition research and “denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign,” according to Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations.
However, in Sussmann’s indictment, it was revealed that he, along with the cyber experts recruited to prove the Trump-Russia connection, “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign.”
Sperry further alleged that “sources close to the case confirmed” that Sullivan was among those campaign officials.
“They say [Sullivan] was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank, and was aware of the participants in the project,” he wrote.
In other words, Sullivan was a key player in the plot to spread a wild conspiracy theory involving Trump and Alfa Bank, a conspiracy theory he knew to be forwarded by an opposition research firm.
The very same conspiracy theory, in fact, that the Clinton campaign later fed to the FBI.
According to the report, Sullivan knew about the biased source of this information, despite telling Congress otherwise.
A member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona is resigning after leaked audiotapes revealed him criticizing both the integrity of the 2020 election and some of his fellow supervisors for their stances on the highly controversial state-ordered audit of the 2020 election.
Supervisor Steve Chucri said he will resign from his position in November, citing “toxicity” and the impact of leaked recordings published by conservative news outlet The Gateway Pundit.
The leaked audiotapes, recorded in January and in March, make Chucri appear highly critical of what was done in the county, which has been sparring with state-level Republicans for months over an audit of the 2020 election. In general, the county has fought the state’s efforts to obtain machines and data.
Chucri, however, appeared on the tape to be siding with the state Senate against his fellow county officials.
“I don’t feel comfortable with Dominion [Voting Systems],” he said in one snippet, referring to the company whose voting machines were under a cloud during a spate of allegations that followed the 2020 election.
The Gateway Pundit said it obtained audio of a March conversation in which Chucri said opposition to the Arizona state audit was centered around other supervisors’ fears for their margins of victory and referred to the county’s audit of its results as “pretty bull****.”
Chucri was taped in January saying, “I think it was done through dead people voting. I think it was multifaceted,” according to The Gateway Pundit.
He later reportedly threw around the words “ballot harvesting.”
In his resignation statement, he neither confirmed nor denied the specifics of the comments, but acknowledged the damage the leaked recordings have done.
“In recent days it has come to light that I was secretly recorded in conversations regarding differences with some of my colleagues about an audit of the 2020 election. The comments I made were during a very turbulent time,” he said.
“My colleagues have every right to be both angry and disappointed with me. I should not have made such statements and offer my colleagues heartfelt apologies,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the political landscape changed for the worst this year. The environment is wrought with toxicity — and all civility and decorum no longer seem to have a place. The fixation with the 2020 election results and aftermath have gotten out of control,” he said.
“I do not want to perpetuate the very problem I ran to eliminate several years ago. While I have had my differences with my colleagues, I have known them to be good, honorable and ethical men. The picture some individuals are trying to paint about a cover up, scam and other nonsense about my colleagues and myself is simply false,” he said.
Chucri’s statement then sought to put distance between himself and the leaked audio.
“There was no cover-up, the election was not stolen. [President Joe] Biden won,” he said.
The Western Journal has reached out to Chucri for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
rance’s summer was marred by the rollout of a national vaccine passport and the ensuing protests which continue to take place every Saturday across the country. In the midst of this social tension, a politically significant event was given little note.
In July, the French Interior Ministry – responsible for organizing national elections – presented the official dates for the upcoming and much anticipated 2022 Presidential election. While every French Presidential election runoff has occurred in early May since 1974, the government, with the approval of the nation’s council of Ministers, opted to advance the dates of the election to April 10th for the first round and April 24th for the runoff vote.
This change is significant because it conflicts with national public holidays.
French families typically align their vacations with the public school holidays. In fact, employers frequently require their employees to take their vacations during these breaks as a way of managing workflow.
School holiday dates are staggered depending on the different administrative regions of the country to avoid overcrowding of the domestic transportation system, and French workers often make use of their time off by traveling outside their home town to visit family and friends. During holiday seasons, certain regions experience an outflow of residents.
As a consequence, if a vote is scheduled during one of these periods, turnout is lower in regions where employees are on holiday because there is no early voting in France.
By scheduling the runoff election in early May when the workforce isn’t on break, the government was able to avoid conflicts with national holidays. Alternatively, when the dates did create a conflict, the government selected weeks when all regions’ vacations overlapped so as not to create regional discrepancies. This Presidential election will be different however because only a third of the country will be on holiday at the time of the vote. It’s the makeup of the regions which are on break during the runoff that gives rise to concern among the French opposition.
On April 24th 2022, the date of the runoff election, the northern region of France called “Hauts-de-France” and the southeastern region of “Provence-Alpes-Côte D’Azur” will be on holiday. Significantly, these are the two most unfavorable regions for the incumbent President Macron.
On the one hand, the north of France is very blue-collar, a consequence of the dying heavy industry and mining sectors of the country. The electorate is very sympathetic to the populist political platforms advocated for by Marine Le Pen as well as the national left-wing opposition to Macron. The southeast on the other hand is a conservative bastion and favors the traditional right wing parties and Marine Le Pen over the incumbent President.
In France’s regional elections this past June, President Macron’s party did not make it into the runoff round in the north of France. His party achieved a meager nine percent of the vote despite even the French Attorney General campaigning on behalf of the President. In the southeast, Macron’s party decided not to field a candidate at all because the polls were so unfavorable.
During the 2017 French Presidential election, these two regions were the areas where Marine Le Pen performed the most favorably against Macron. Polls concerning the 2022 election suggest the runoff will once again pit these candidates against one another.
If Le Pen is to stand a chance of defeating the incumbent, she needs very high turnout in both the north and southeast of the country. It is unsurprising, therefore, that she has expressed concern about the election date and has called for the schedule to be modified.
Over the past two decades, voter turnout has been on the decline in France. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, elections have seen the lowest participation levels in the country’s history.
According to political commentators and public officials, it is critical that the 2022 Presidential election see high voter turnout. The health of the country’s democracy depends on the perceived legitimacy of this election because of its central importance under the current constitution. The incumbent French administration’s decision to advance the runoff vote date coincides with talks of allowing for mail-in ballots which have been banned in the country since the 1970s because of the risk of fraud.
These moves by Macron’s government open the door to allegations of voter suppression and manipulation by the opposition which further polarizes and already tense French political landscape.
Politico has reported that a new book finds evidence that at least some of the contents of Hunter Biden’s purportedly abandoned laptop are genuine almost a year after they were first released by the New York Post.
The Post was briefly banned from Twitter in October for reporting on the contents of a laptop that was said to have been left at a Delaware computer repair shop by President Joe Biden’s son in 2019.
Emails on the laptop appeared to show that Joe Biden was involved in shady overseas business deals, while Hunter Biden ran point for family business in Ukraine and China.
The report was written off by most of the establishment media in the weeks before the 2020 election. Facebook and Twitter worked to limit the spread of the Post’s article. Many have speculated that the coordinated blackout of the story affected the election.
On Tuesday, over 11 months after the story broke, Politico reported that some of the files on the laptop had been verified.
A new book by Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy,” the outlet reported.
“A person who had independent access to Hunter Biden’s emails confirmed he did receive a 2015 email from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden,” according to Politico.
“The same goes for a 2017 email in which a proposed equity breakdown of a venture with Chinese energy executives includes the line, ’10 held by H for the big guy?’ (This person recalled seeing both emails, but was not in a position to compare the leaked emails word-for-word to the originals.)”
The outlet added that “emails released by a Swedish government agency also match emails in the leaked cache, and two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden confirmed emails from the cache were genuine.”
Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, said last year the 2017 email was genuine, according to Politico.
“While the leak contains genuine files, it remains possible that fake material has been slipped in,” the outlet disclaimed.
Readers of right-leaning media outlets know Bobulinski and his story well. The former Biden insider sat down with Fox News host Tucker Carlson before the 2020 election for a primetime chat.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/2zLfBRgeFFo The New York Post responded to Politico’s reporting with some predictable snark, its editorial board publishing an Op-Ed on Tuesday headlined, “The Hunter Biden laptop is confirmed?! Color us shocked!”
“While we appreciate the support, the truth is The Post’s reports always have been true, and it’s only because the media wants to protect Joe Biden that they keep referring to the laptop as ‘unsubstantiated,’” the Post’s editorial board wrote.
“Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski already said those emails were authentic — the media just ignored him.”
“The laptop is ‘unsubstantiated’ because the media doesn’t want it substantiated. We figure that won’t change, but thanks, Mr. Schreckinger, for at least bucking the trend,” the Op-Ed concluded.
BOSTON—A former Massachusetts mayor, once a rising Democratic star after being elected at just 23-years-old, was sentenced to six years in prison on Tuesday after being convicted of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from marijuana businesses that wanted to operate in his city.
Former Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia showed no emotion as the judge handed down his punishment after tossing several convictions stemming from allegations that the now 29-year-old swindled investors who backed a smartphone app he created.
U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock assailed Correia’s actions as old-style corruption that eviscerates a community. Under Correia’s watch, ”City Hall was for sale,” said the judge, who also criticized his “absolute lack of remorse.”
“If we can’t trust each other, if we can’t trust our government, where are we?” the judge asked.
Former Fall River, Mass. Mayor Jasiel Correia and his wife Jenny Fernandes, left, leave a court appearance at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, in Boston, on Sept. 20, 2021. (Josh Reynolds/AP Photo)
Correia, who has insisted that he’s innocent and that the “real truth” will eventually come out, did not make a statement during the hearing in Boston federal court because he’s still challenging his remaining convictions.
The defense had sought three years, telling the judge that while there’s no “sugarcoating” the case, Correia also did much good for Fall River.
“None of that excuses what happened here, but I think it’s required to have a fuller picture of the man and to understand how somebody might get derailed but still have hope to contribute in a future chapter of life,” Attorney William Fick said.
Correia is expected to report to prison at a later date that has yet to be decided.
Correia was convicted in May of a slew of charges including fraud and extortion after a trial that shone a light on his meteoric rise to become mayor as a recent college graduate. Correia portrayed himself to voters as a successful entrepreneur who could breathe new life into the struggling, old mill city.
Prosecutors told jurors that in reality Corriea funded his lavish lifestyle with money he stole from investors who pumped cash into his app called “SnoOwl,” which was designed to help businesses connect with consumers. Prosecutors said Correia took nearly two-thirds of the almost $400,000 he got from investors and spent it on things like fancy hotels and a Mercedes and to pay down his student loans.
After becoming mayor in 2016, prosecutors say Correia started a pay-to-play scheme involving bribes from marijuana vendors in exchange for letters of approval from the city they needed in order to get a license. Prosecutors have called the corruption scheme particularly galling because much of it occurred when the former mayor knew he was already under investigation for the allegations of investor fraud.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Hafer—who asked for 11 years behind bars—questioned how anything other than greed and hubris could explain Correia’s actions, noting that the former politician had a supportive family and was making good money as mayor.
“The cash in clipboards and in envelopes and sheds … Fall River under Jasiel Correia was like Atlantic City during Prohibition in terms of the crudeness of the corruption,” Hafer said.
Correia told reporters outside the courthouse after his conviction that “the justice system failed us” and that he had turned down a plea deal because, he said: “I’m not guilty.” Both the prosecutor and Correia’s trial attorney said Tuesday that Correia was never offered a plea agreement.
Correia was supposed to have been sentenced Monday, but the judge instead agreed with new lawyers hired by Correia after the trial to overturn the jury’s guilty verdict on several counts they said the government failed to prove.
The judge agreed to toss six counts of wire fraud because of what he described as a lack of evidence about how the checks were processed. He also tossed two tax fraud counts because he said prosecutors didn’t prove that Correia willfully filed false returns.
Correia remains convicted of several counts of wire fraud, extortion, and extortion conspiracy. The jury acquitted him on three counts, including accusations that he forced his chief of staff to give him half of her salary in order to keep her city job.
For months after his arrest, Correia resisted calls to leave office and survived a bizarre election in March 2019 during which he was recalled by voters and reelected the same night. But after federal agents arrested him a second time—this time for the extortion scheme—he agreed in October 2019 to take a leave of absence. He was ousted by voters the next month.
There is no overlooking Milley’s gross disregard for the law when he directly contacted a foreign military chief without informing his boss, the president.
Modern U.S. history tells us that above all else, politics, not merit, makes the difference between an employed and unemployed military officer.
Bob Woodward’s and Robert Costa’s upcoming book, Peril, serves as a follow up to New York Times Best Seller, Rage, and seems to be yet another hatchet job on the Trump presidency.
In this latest installment, Woodward brings to light the atmosphere within the executive branch surrounding the 2020 presidential election. As the Washington Postreports, the book takes particular aim at Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff first appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018.
According to the authors, Gen. Milley seemingly disregarded the chain of command and made numerous discrete phone calls to his Chinese counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army throughout the waning hours of the Trump presidency.
In one conservation from Oct. 30, 2020, it is believed that Milley assured Gen. Li Zuocheng, a member of China’s Central Military Commission, that:“you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Unfortunately, Gen. Milley’s conversations, which the Joint Chiefs confirm took place, are not unexpected.
In, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, released July 20, 2021, Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker alleged that after the election, Gen. Milley conveyed to those around him that, “This is a Reichstag moment.” Drawing a comparison between Trump’s claims of election fraud and, “the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship.”
Following the Capitol Riot on Jan. 6, 2021, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs sought to become a wannabe, modern-day Col. Stauffenberg.
Washington Post reporter Isaac Stanely-Becker wrote:
“Believing that China could lash out if it felt at risk from an unpredictable and vengeful American president, Milley took action. The same day [Jan. 8, 2021], he called the admiral overseeing the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the military unit responsible for Asia and the Pacific region, and recommended postponing the military exercises, according to the book. The admiral complied.”
China expert Gordon Chang argued that there was no reason to believe at the time that the People’s Republic of China feared an attack from the U.S. was imminent.
A savvy lawyer could argue that Gen. Milley’s later actions were within the bounds of the National Security Act. However, as some have argued, there is no overlooking Milley’s gross disregard for the law when he directly contacted a foreign military chief without informing his boss, the president.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is, at the forefront, the president’s “principal military advisor.” The chairman is not a general or diplomat but an advisor who analyzes data, formulates opinions, and submits findings and recommendations to the commander-in-chief and subordinates.
White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki brushed aside any criticism of Gen. Milley’s actions at last Wednesday’s press briefing, reiterating, “I think it’s important to remember the context…The outgoing President of the United States, during this period of time, fomented unrest, leading to an insurrection and attack on our nation’s capital…One of the darkest days in our nation’s history.”
Trump derangement syndrome is pervasive and long-lasting.
In the past two months alone, the White House has had its fair share of opportunities to let the heads roll. Above all else, the Afghanistan debacle was one episode that should have resulted in a shake-up, and, as Newt argues, “It’s troubling how unphased many of our leaders appear to be, especially the principals of the Biden administration.”
However, this is not the first time Biden, and his ilk, have put petty politics above sensible, goal-oriented mission objectives.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, former commander of Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan, entered the Obama-Biden world at its inception. Campaigning on a promise to withdraw from Iraq, Barack Obama planned to refocus U.S. war efforts on Afghanistan, the original war. Although unfamiliar with him personally, President Obama appointed Gen. McChyrstal to lead NATO forces in Afghanistan after dismissing his predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan.
President Obama cast aside the previous administration’s attempts at nation building. Instead, the newly elected president favored a counterinsurgency strategy (COIN).
Professor James Lebovic wrote in, Planning to Fail: The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, that, “when in March 2009 Obama announced his initial strategy… the White House statement noted that the primary goal was to ‘disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens.’” By crafting such a narrow set of objects, Lebovic finds that the president’s plan came almost immediately into conflict with the Pentagon’s, “wide-ranging –and costly –upgrading of the U.S.mission in Afghanistan.”
McChrystal was ultimately in favor of COIN, believing the strategy was more effective than the purely counterterrorism-based approach supported by then-Vice President Joseph Biden. As Lebovic argued, Biden found that, “a counterinsurgency strategy was unworkable, prohibitively costly and misdirected… it conflated the two goals of defeating the Taliban and keeping Afghanistan free of al-Qaeda. Achieving the first goal was unnecessary… because the Taliban was not a direct threat to the United States or its global interests.”
An ideal counterterrorism strategy, in Biden’s view, Lebovic wrote, would entail, “A small, residual U.S. special operations force, paired with drone aircraft.” This was nowhere near the Pentagon’s vision to deploy a large contingency of U.S. troops to population centers to protect and “win over the hearts and minds” of the Afghans.
In December 2009, President Obama went with a counterinsurgency-lite strategy based around costs, not strategic goals. As stated in a presidential memo, Obama’s “cost-driven policy,” “is not fully resourced counter insurgency or nation-building, but a narrower approach tied more tightly to the core goal of disrupting, dismantling and eventually defeating al Qaeda and preventing al Qaeda’s return to safe havens in Afghanistan or Pakistan.”
Gen. McChrystal lobbied the president for an additional 40,000 troops, of which he only received 30,000. Lebovic argued that, “the president’s ultimate figure did not come with a strong sense of which goals would be met, or how. Obama offered his number instead seemingly as a compromise… the halfway point between McChrystal’s request for forty thousand and Biden’s proposal for twenty thousand.”
The president’s grand “surge” came with its own set of strings attached. Of those 30,000 troops sent to Afghanistan, most would begin withdrawing starting July 2011. This surge-to-exit strategy was unfavorable amongst those charged with executing the administration’s vision.
Dealt a losing hand, Gen. McChrystal’s career was brought to an abrupt end following a less-than-flattering exposé in Rolling Stone. In “The Run Away General,” during a trip to Paris in Summer 2010, Michael Hastings allegedly witnessed the general and his aides badmouthing the number two, Biden:
“Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond…. unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner. ‘Are you asking about Vice President Biden?’ McChrystal says with a laugh. ‘Who’s that?’”
This, along with a litany of other hot mic comments prompted President Obama to recall McChrystal, fire him and appoint a replacement, Gen. David Petraeus.
Did Milley and McChrystal both disagree with the commander-in-chief from time to time? Of course. But of the two, which one viewed their boss as the modern-day embodiment of Hitler and took unilateral action to subvert his constitutional authority?
If McChrystal can get cut loose after expressing his frustration towards the president and his aides while being charged with the seemingly impossible task of stabilizing Afghanistan, then why does Gen. Milley still have a job?
These days, almost all of us are inundated by text messages soliciting money for political candidates and parties. Sometimes it seems we’re getting one every three minutes—and maybe we are. It’s a form of internet pollution—there are many—that could drive a good man or woman to drink.
I even got several in one day, putatively from Donald Trump Jr., saying his father just personally asked what had happened to me, was I still a supporter? They hadn’t heard from me. Had I switched parties?
Who writes these things? (Not DTJr., I would wager.)
Years ago, I wrote a screenplay for Paul Mazursky about a screenwriter so down on his luck he was forced to write fortune cookie messages for the local Chinese restaurant. This may beat it.
Yes, to my everlasting regret, someone once constructed one of these text ads so that I gave something, making me a target for life, but I promised myself I’d never do it again, and I haven’t. (Of course, that hasn’t stopped them.)
Nevertheless, I am politically engaged and I do, occasionally, back up my beliefs with a donation to a candidate or incumbent I like, but never via an online solicitation and, more importantly, never to a political party.
Donating to a political party is one of the more obvious areas of misspent money in our culture today because, like it or not, in our “big tent” world, some of that cash is going straight in the hands of people with whom you partially, even wholly, disagree.
Often, you are paying for policies you hate and officials you could even despise. (I won’t go into names here, but fill in your blanks.)
This goes for Republicans and Democrats both, although I haven’t donated to the latter since the last century, so that one’s pretty much academic in my case.
Donate only to individuals or, at best, small groups of individuals you know well.
And make sure you really do know them well. Do your research, because a lot of masquerading goes on. Also, be careful about your method because it can happen that when you think you are making an individual donation, you are actually giving to the party.
Recent national Republican Party solicitations did a lot of piggy-backing on Donald Trump’s popularity when many of those receiving the largesse were anything but Trumpists. (Trump has started his own PAC in response.)
Furthermore, if you wish to shape your favorite political party in a certain direction, you have all the more reason to select individuals that you prefer rather than the party itself, because by choosing the right individuals you are, in actuality, shaping that party. General donations just preserve the status quo.
In that sense, this method resembles the approach of a website I admire and have been meaning to write about for some time—2ndVote.
2ndVote also advises you to “vote with your wallet”—in its case to direct your purchases away from “corporations and organizations that are funding liberal advocacy.”
As most readers are aware, these days, those that do not fund “liberal advocacy” are increasingly few and far between. 2ndVote has researched how to deal with this, scores many companies for their levels of advocacy and, in a number of instances, shows you alternatives to the most egregious ones, educating and thus empowering the consumer.
They are enabling change. Have a look. You may even be able to undertake that most difficult of tasks—weaning yourself from Amazon.
In both cases, where you give your political support and where you buy soap, be selective.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Addresses world leaders as ‘Japanese boy,’ ‘that fellow down under’
President Joe Biden last week forgot the name of another world leader. During a virtual event with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia and his U.K. counterpart Boris Johnson, the president addressed the British prime minister by name before he referred to Morrison as “that fellow down under.”
It’s hardly the first time Biden has flubbed a prominent official’s name. In fact, since he launched his presidential campaign in 2019, the former vice president has consistently struggled to speak words in a coherent fashion and has often failed to convince observers that he understands where he is and what is happening at any given moment.
Surgeon Joseph Sakran said Trump could use politics to compromise vaccine’s approval process
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe employed a left-wing doctor who questioned the efficacy of the vaccine during the Trump presidency to portray his GOP opponent as anti-science.
In an ad released Friday, McAuliffe trotted out trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran to argue Youngkin “won’t listen to doctors and scientists.” While the ad presents Sakran as an unbiased expert who merely cites “the science,” Sakran himself sowed doubt about the vaccine during its development and has a long history as a liberal activist and donor.
Sakran in May 2020 questioned a Moderna announcement that touted “promising vaccine results,” suggesting that the company only did so to manipulate its stock price.
“Moderna announced promising vaccine results…..and the executives then sell 30 million in stocks,” Sakran wrote. “Something smells funny!” Months later, he contended that the Trump administration could use “political pressure” to “circumvent” health experts and create “an expedited vaccine making healthy people sick.”
Prominent liberals echoed Sakran’s rhetoric at the time. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for example, asked in September if “anyone at all” will “ever fully trust the CDC again” as “Trumpist nonsense has infected everything.”
“And who on God’s earth would trust a vaccine approved by the FDA?” Reid added. She has since claimed “anybody rational was hesitant” to take the vaccine because “Donald Trump was out there controlling the CDC and controlling the FDA and manipulating them and making them put out falsehoods.” Reid now regularly criticizes those who express vaccine hesitancy.
Sakran, meanwhile, called the vaccine “promising” just weeks after he warned that Trump could use politics to compromise its approval process—and just days after Biden won the November election. In December, he praised the Food and Drug Administration for recommending authorization of the Pfizer vaccine and declared himself “ready to get vaccinated.”
Sakran told the Washington Free Beacon he has “always been clear that vaccines work and ha[s] always encouraged their use” but declined to answer questions about his vaccine rhetoric during the Trump presidency. McAuliffe did not return a request for comment.
In his McAuliffe campaign ad, Sakran also made questionable claims to criticize Youngkin’s positions on coronavirus-related measures. Sakran, for example, said Youngkin “is against requiring masks in schools, even though the science has made clear that’s how we prevent outbreaks in schools.”
That science, however, is far from clear. Many American allies in Europe have exempted children from wearing masks in schools, and the World Health Organization advises against requiring masks for children ages 5 and under.
“Scientists have an obligation to strive for honesty,” hematologist and oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in September. “And on the question of whether kids should wear masks in schools—particularly preschools and elementary schools—here is what I conclude: The potential educational harms of mandatory-masking policies are much more firmly established, at least at this point, than their possible benefits in stopping the spread of COVID-19 in schools.”
McAuliffe’s embrace of Sakran could also undermine the Democrat’s position as a supporter of Israel. Sakran, a self-identified “Palestinian American,” has referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state and condemned former president Donald Trump’s “reckless” decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. As governor, McAuliffe notably denounced the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but has since welcomed an endorsement from an activist group that staunchly defends the anti-Israel campaign. Sakran did not respond to a request for comment about his past Israel rhetoric.
Sakran has long supported liberal causes and politicians. He created “Doctors for Hillary” in 2016 and gave nearly $7,000 to support failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He went on to launch gun control advocacy groups that caught the attention of Democratic officials—Sakran attended the 2019 State of the Union address with Rep. Mike Thompson (D., Calif.). In addition to his Clinton contributions, Sakran has donated nearly $9,000 to Democrats since 2016, including a $2,800 offering to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
With Election Day quickly approaching, McAuliffe leads Youngkin by just 3 points, according to a September Washington Postpoll. The pair will square off at the polls on Nov. 2.
On Sept. 17, former Perkins Coie partner and Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was arraigned on a single-count charge of lying to the FBI. The charge stems from special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe that plagued the presidency of Donald Trump.
The indictment of Sussmann, a cybersecurity specialist, makes clear that a group of individuals worked with him to devise allegations regarding a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The Durham indictment takes pains to note that Sussmann assisted in the drafting and dissemination of materials that were provided to the FBI and media.
Special counsel John Durham. (U.S. Department of Justice via AP)
The allegations were passed by Sussmann to the FBI in a successful attempt to instigate an FBI investigation of Trump under false pretenses. The Alfa allegations also were used to lend weight to the allegations made in the Steele dossier, which up to this point, had failed to gain material traction within the FBI and the media.
Sussmann is charged with lying to former FBI General Counsel James Baker during a Sep. 19, 2016, meeting that had been initiated by Sussmann. At this meeting, in which Sussmann informed Baker of the Alfa allegations, he allegedly told Baker that he was there only in his capacity as a private citizen. Sussmann would later repeat his claim that he was acting in a personal capacity when he reported the Alfa allegations to another undisclosed government agency.
Although Sussmann told Baker that he wasn’t delivering the information on behalf of any client, the indictment details that Sussmann billed his meeting with Baker to the Clinton campaign.
As a result of the allegations that Sussmann provided to Baker, the FBI opened an investigation examining if Alfa Bank was used as a conduit between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. According to Durham, the FBI wouldn’t have opened an investigation without the manufactured information that had been provided by Sussmann.
Michael Sussman. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)
Notably, Durham’s indictment, which included only the single-count charge of lying to the FBI, could have been presented to the court in just a few paragraphs. However, Durham chose to submit a 27-page indictment that included many specific details which aren’t immediately relevant to the false statement charge.
The level of details in the Sussmann indictment gives potential insight into the direction Durham’s investigation may have taken.
Why Indictment Reads Like Conspiracy Indictment
Although the indictment is nominally about Sussmann’s false statement, in reality, it’s more akin to a conspiracy charge, specifically a conspiracy to use false pretenses to trigger an FBI investigation of Trump.
Durham never mentions the word conspiracy, but almost the entirety of his indictment is dedicated to detailing the coordinated actions of the parties involved.
The Sussmann indictment begins by stating that in October 2016, “multiple media outlets reported that U.S. government authorities had received and were investigating allegations concerning a purported secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization, owned by Donald J. Trump, and a particular Russian bank.”
The unwritten allegation expressed in Durham’s opening is that a group of Clinton campaign operatives conspired to provide the FBI with false information in the hope that this would trigger an FBI investigation that would damage Trump’s chances in the Nov. 2016 presidential election. By focusing on October 2016 news reports about the FBI’s investigation of Trump, Durham established at the outset that the object of the conspiracy was achieved.
The New York Times building in New York City on Aug. 31, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
By their own admission, the purported conspirators understood that anyone with the requisite technical knowledge would ultimately dismiss the data that Sussmann gave the FBI. Durham’s indictment noted that one of the participants in Sussmann’s group privately called the secret communications channel allegation “a red herring.”
Another participant admitted that they would need “to expose every trick we have in our bag to even make a very weak association,” adding “The only thing that drive[s] us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”
But the leaders of the purported conspiracy weren’t particularly concerned if the allegations would stand up to scrutiny. Nor did they expect that Trump or any of his associates would actually be prosecuted. The desired outcome was media reporting that the FBI was looking into the Trump–Russia allegations–which is precisely what transpired.
As the indictment emphasizes, the purported conspiracy was about shaping a narrative about secret communications between Trump and the Kremlin. That narrative would then be amplified by media reports of an FBI investigation which, in turn, would reinforce the Clinton campaign’s messaging.
Why the Sussmann Indictment Matters
Other than Sussmann himself, none of the individuals involved in the purported conspiracy are named in the indictment but their generalized description provides some insight into their identities. The main parties are described by Durham as “Tech Executive-1,” a long-standing client of Sussmann’s who is alleged to have provided Sussmann with data about alleged contacts between the Trump and Alfa servers, and “Originator-1,” the person who allegedly compiled the data.
Previous media reports on the Trump–Alfa server connection had used the name “Max” to describe Tech Executive-1, while Originator-1 was known as “Tea Leaves.”
The scheme allegedly also involved three internet companies that had access to vast amounts of non-public data over which Tech Executive-1 had control, as well as two researchers from a university that also had access to non-public data and with whom Tech Executive-1 had business relations.
According to Durham’s indictment, Tech Executive-1 later claimed that he had been tentatively offered the top cybersecurity position in a Hillary Clinton administration. Durham also noted that “Tech Executive-1’s goal was to support an ‘inference’ and ‘narrative’ regarding Trump that would please certain ‘VIPs.’”
It isn’t immediately apparent from the indictment who these VIPs are or how Durham came into possession of Tech Executive-1’s emails.
All of the participants described in Durham’s indictment have now been tentatively identified by online researchers using clues from a separate case in which Alfa Bank is seeking damages resulting from the allegations that Sussmann brought to the FBI. However, to date, there has been no official confirmation from the parties concerned.
Durham Names Biden’s National Security Adviser
The efforts of Sussmann and the unnamed tech executive’s team appear to have begun sometime in April 2016. Durham’s indictment specifically notes that Originator-1’s data had already been aggregated between “on or about May 4, 2016, through on or about July 29, 2016.”
But there may have also been some earlier coordination in the leadup to their efforts. On Feb. 26, 2016, Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign was asked in an email by former Bill Clinton adviser Joel Johnson, “who was in charge of the Trump swift boat project?”—a reference to smear campaigns initiated against political opponents.
Palmieri’s name also appears in Durham’s indictment in reference to an email exchange regarding the Alfa Bank allegations that involved three Clinton campaign officials. Durham identified these officials by title: communications director Palmieri, Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook, and Jake Sullivan, who at the time was the senior foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, and now serves as Biden’s national security adviser.
That exchange took place on Sep. 15, 2016, only four days before Sussmann took the Alfa information to the FBI.
The inclusion of these individuals and their email exchange by Durham could be a tactic designed to help insulate Durham’s probe from interference by the Biden DOJ. In particular, the reference to Sullivan, a current member of Biden’s administration, highlights the need to maintain an independent special counsel investigation.
Notably, in 2016, Sullivan and Palmieri took the lead in briefing the media on the Trump–Russia collusion story.
Events Leading to Sussmann’s Meeting With FBI
On March 21, 2016, then-presidential candidate Trump announced his foreign policy team. Among those named by Trump was Carter Page, who would later be targeted by the FBI in an Oct. 2016 FISA warrant, as well as three subsequent renewals.
Around this same time, on March 25, 2016, Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa, who had been researching the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, shared her concerns with the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. Chalupa would later tell Politico that the Ukrainian embassy “worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort, and Russia to point them in the right directions.”
Carter Page, petroleum industry consultant and former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign, in Washington on May 28, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Chalupa gave a briefing of her investigation of the Trump campaign to DNC communication staff on March 29, 2016. Chalupa had previously told a senior DNC official on Jan. 6, 2016, that she felt there “was a Russian connection” to the Trump campaign.
A leaked email dated May 3, 2016, later showed that Chalupa had been working with Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff for several weeks. Isikoff would later become known for first reporting on Page’s alleged Kremlin connections.
Around this same time, Fusion GPS was hired by Perkins Coie in April 2016, specifically to “continue research” into Trump. Sometime in late April or May 2016, Fusion would formally employ the services of former British spy Christopher Steele.
After Trump won the May 3, 2016, Indiana primary, he became the presumptive nominee of the Republican party.
The next day, Sussmann’s group began compiling the data that would later be given to the FBI as part of their Alfa allegations. According to Durham, the data compilation was completed on July 29, 2016—the same day that Sussmann met with Steele in the offices of Perkins Coie. Also in attendance at that meeting were officials from Fusion GPS and Perkins partner Marc Elias, a well-known Democratic election lawyer.
Steele would later tell a British Court that Sussmann informed him at this meeting of the Alfa Bank allegations, stating that “I’m very clear is that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussman [sic].” Steele also testified that he was instructed by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson to include this information in one of his own dossier reports.
Former FBI General Counsel James Baker.
Steele would later reference Alfa Bank—misspelled as Alpha—in one of three memos that he wrote on Sep. 14, 2016, directly before Sussmann’s Sep. 19, 2016, meeting with the FBI’s Baker.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign began to set the stage for the public rollout of the Trump–Russia collusion allegations.
On July 24, 2016, Clinton campaign manager Mook publicly suggested that the Russian government was behind the release of DNC emails showing that senior DNC officials were undermining Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Mook refused to address the allegations, instead telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that “experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.”
Mook claimed that “this isn’t my assertion. There are a number of experts that are asserting this … that is what experts are telling us.”
Two days later, on July 26, 2016, according to documents released by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Hillary Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from “one of her foreign policy advisors” to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security forces”—the Trump–Russia collusion plan.
Following the alleged approval from Clinton, Steele hastily produced undated Steele Memo 95—written on or about July 27, 2016—which alleged “a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Steele’s memo also claimed that a Trump associate admitted that the Kremlin was behind the recent release of DNC emails.
Sussmann Shares Alfa Allegations
On Sept. 7, 2016, 12 days before Sussmann would approach the FBI with his allegations that a Russian bank was secretly communicating with the Trump organization, then-FBI Director James Comey and the deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division, Peter Strzok, were informed of Clinton’s alleged plan to vilify Trump.
Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe at the Justice Department in Washington, on July 13, 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, on Sep. 15, 2016, in possible preparation for Sussmann’s meeting with Baker, Elias corresponded by email with three Clinton campaign officials, Palmieri, Mook, and Sullivan, about the Alfa allegations. Sussmann had already shared these allegations with a reporter for The New York Times. FBI officials would later request that the newspaper hold off on publishing its story until they had finished their investigation.
According to Durham’s indictment, Sussmann began to more fully share the Alfa Bank allegations with the media in the three days directly preceding his meeting with Baker.
At the same time, Steele released his Alfa memo, which he had been commissioned to write a few weeks earlier.
During his Sept. 19, 2016, meeting with Baker, Sussmann said that he had been approached by “multiple cyber experts” concerning the Alfa Bank allegations and he had “provided the names of three cyber experts” but Sussmann didn’t “name or mention Tech Executive-1, the Clinton campaign, or any other person” noted in Durham’s indictment.
Sussmann gave Baker two thumb drives and a file of hard copy papers, including the white paper that Sussmann and Tech Executive-1 appear to have drafted together.
FBI agent Peter Strzok arrives at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on June 27, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Following his meeting with Sussmann, Baker met with several FBI officials and would later testify that Comey, Strzok, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and the FBI counterintelligence division’s assistant director, Bill Priestap, were all involved and informed of Sussmann’s allegations.
The FBI would open an investigation into Sussmann’s claims on Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, 2016. Two days later, on Sept. 23, Strzok was provided with expert analysis that proved that Sussmann’s Alfa server allegations were false.
During this same period, Steele was meeting with members of the media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, at the direction of Simpson.
Steele would also meet with Yahoo News’ Isikoff, leading to Isikoff’s Sept. 23, 2016, article on Page, which would later be used by the FBI to corroborate the Steele dossier in its FISA application on Page.
Publication of the Alfa Bank Allegations
In addition to Steele’s meetings with various media organizations, Steele was also promoting the manufactured Alfa Bank allegations to various government officials, including Bruce Ohr, then an associate deputy attorney general, and Kathleen Kavalec, then-deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs.
Immediately upon the publication of Isikoff’s Sep. 23, 2016, article, the Clinton campaign released a statement touting Isikoff’s “bombshell report” with Isikoff’s full article attached.
On the same day as Isikoff’s article, Politico published an article about Carter Page written by Julia Ioffe, who referenced the efforts of Fusion GPS, noting that “there were these corporate investigators who drew a dark and complex web of Page’s connections.” Ioffe’s article also mentioned “rumors regarding Alfa Bank.”
The allegations regarding Alfa Bank would gain national attention on Oct. 31, 2016, when three separate articles were published. The first was an article in Slate by Franklin Foer that detailed many of Sussmann’s allegations to Baker. Foer was one of the journalists with whom Sussmann had been in contact.
The FBI logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington, on July 5, 2016. (Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images)
Immediately following Foer’s article, Clinton sent a tweet stating that “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” Her tweet included a statement from Jake Sullivan.
Mother Jones reporter David Corn published an article that provided the first public reporting on the existence of the Steele dossier. Corn’s article also mentioned Alfa Bank.
Lastly, The New York Times published what appeared to be an updated version of the article it had intended to publish before the FBI asked them to delay the reporting. The article noted that there “could be an innocuous explanation,” but this nuance was lost in the uproar generated by the Clinton campaign.
The Trump–Russia collusion narrative was now firmly established and would dominate media reporting for the next several years.
Why Did Durham Issue Sussmann Indictment Now?
It appears that Durham strategically charged Sussmann now because false statement charges are subject to a five-year statute of limitations. Sussmann spoke to Baker on Sep. 19, 2016, and Durham likely didn’t want to lose leverage potentially gained from the Sussmann charge.
The argument that Durham is creating pressure on Sussmann is backed by additional information in the indictment. Most notably, Durham stated that, on Feb. 9, 2017, Sussmann told two federal agents the same lie that he told Baker. Durham was careful to note that Sussmann’s later lie took place “at a location outside the District of Columbia.”
The inclusion by Durham of this later statement by Sussmann has important ramifications. The five-year statute of limitations also applies to this alleged second lie, meaning that Sussmann could be charged again at any time before Feb. 9, 2022.
Crucially, the alleged second lie was told outside the District of Columbia. This means that Durham can still bring a second case against Sussmann in another state, where he wouldn’t be constrained by the inherent problems of a Democratic-leaning District of Columbia jury pool.
While it’s possible that Durham doesn’t plan to bring additional cases, the wealth of information included in Durham’s indictment suggests that his work isn’t yet complete.
Jeff Carlson
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He is a CFA® Charterholder and worked for 20 years as an analyst and portfolio manager in the high-yield bond market. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork. Hans Mahncke
Hans Mahncke is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He holds LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. degrees in law. He is the author of numerous law books and his research has been published in a range of international journals. Hans can be followed on Twitter @hansmahncke.
The humongous bill that Democrats in Washington, D.C. are assembling this week is a slap in the face to Americans who work, pay taxes and support their families.
The bill demeans work ethic and glorifies government handouts. It sends a message that work and self-sufficiency are for suckers. Better to climb on Uncle Sam’s gravy train that will now provide cradle-to-grave benefits.
The social spending bill will give monthly payments to almost all parents based on how many children they have, regardless if anyone in the family works. Democrats are also promising virtually free child care until kids reach age 5, free community college and, near the end of life, new Medicare and elder care benefits. The bill also includes 12 weeks paid leave each year for anyone who claims a family member needs care.
These freebies are rolled into one massive bill that is allegedly expected to run about 10,000 pages and, of course, will likely go unread by anyone, including your state’s representative.
Why are Democrats rushing? Under the U.S. Senate rules, they have only one shot to pass a bill before the end of the year with their slim majority. Democrats don’t have a mandate to transform America into a European-style welfare state, but they’re determined to ram the bill through anyway.
Democrats are also eyeing the 2022 midterm elections, which is when they could lose power. “Many of us feel that this is the biggest opportunity we will have,” explained Rep. Don Beyer, D-V.A. It’s vote buying on a grand scale.
This bill pours money down a rathole. It allocates a whopping $45 billion to make community college free. Students won’t have to spend even $1 on tuition or fees, or pursue a course of study that prepares them for work.
Most students don’t finish community college within two years. Currently, 42% of community college students graduate within four years. A big reason is a lack of academic skills when they enter. Nothing in this program will change that.
One of the bill’s costliest items is paid family leave, with an estimated price tag of $225 billion over 10 years. It’s the mother of all family leave plans. Benefits are paid by the federal government based entirely on an employee’s word that a family member needs care. No doctor’s note or medical records required. Even the self-employed are eligible. It’s an invitation to big-time fraud, and a nightmare for small businesses that would have to hire a replacement on short notice and yet still keep the job open for the employee on leave.
The overall bill is being touted as a way to reduce poverty. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brags that extending the monthly payments to parents will “cut child poverty in half.” Nonsense. Government entitlements don’t cut poverty or improve mobility for poor children — a working parent does.
This bill lacks incentives to work. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., is urging a work requirement for parents to receive their monthly payments. His party should listen.
House and Senate committees are racing to finish drafting this gigantic bill, but what’s needed is public input. Most Americans don’t want to swap the American ideal of success through hard work for government paternalism, but that’s what the bill does.
The U.S. already has a generous social safety net, including federal programs to subsidize housing, food, child care, college, medical care and even cellphones for the poor. Democrats are also trying to get green cards for 8 million illegal immigrants and make them eligible for the benefits of the bill.
Europe demonstrates the dismal results of a declining work ethic and ever-expanding government entitlements. Europeans have a lower gross domestic product per capita because they work fewer hours. They have to settle for smaller homes, fewer household appliances and conveniences, and a lower material standard of living.
Everything Europeans manage to buy is laden with hidden taxes to support their “caring” governments. Working-class Europeans are heavily burdened by these taxes.
That is the choice Americans face: Adopt European-style entitlements and the suffocating taxes to pay for them, as socialist Bernie Sanders wants to do, or work hard and have more spending money to buy what you and your family want.
The ‘criminal first’ policies of the radical left are getting innocent Americans killed in the streets. For example, a Kamala Harris/BLM-backed slush fund bailed domestic abuser George Howard out of jail in August, and he allegedly shot and killed a man in cold blood on the highway just a few weeks later!
Howard is just one of the thousands of criminals that have been released back onto our streets by progressive politicians and activists who are fighting to defund the police in Washington and across the country.
This is part of the left’s all-out assault on our criminal justice system – from defunding the police in Congress to BLM organizations across the country bailing criminals out of jail to Soros-funded prosecutors refusing the put bad guys behind bars.
I patrolled some of the toughest neighborhoods in Dallas for 22 years as a cop, and I’m ready to fight back against the far-left and their reckless policies in Congress
During last Summer’s riots across America supported by Antifa, BLM, and leftist politicians, Kamala Harris drove thousands of left-wing activists to contribute to the “Minnesota Freedom Fund,” which used more than $35 million raised from BLM and ‘Defund the Police’ activists to pay thousands of dollars to release George Howard from jail last month, and dozens of others just like him.
Kamala Harris, Pro-Crime
Their crime-spree slush fund freed registered sex offenders, murderers, and child rapists. And for two months, MFF helped free six men accused of domestic violence. The list goes on and on…
The “activism” side of BLM and ‘Defund the Police goes hand-in-hand with the disastrous policies that Harris, Joe Biden, BLM, and the Progressive Democrats in Congress are pushing. Squad-member Cori Bush went on a hypocritical tirade on national television calling for defunding the police while funneling thousands of dollars in campaign cash to hire private security. As a veteran law enforcement officer, I’m taking a stand, and I want you by my side!
If the Biden administration had hoped that media coverage of its disastrous exit from Afghanistan would fade anytime soon, new billboards gracing the highways in central Pennsylvania say otherwise.
According to USA Today, Scott Wagner, a Republican former Pennsylvania state senator and 2018 gubernatorial candidate paid for the signs, which show a smiling President Joe Biden dressed in Taliban military garb holding a rocket launcher with the caption: “Making the Taliban Great Again!”
According to the York Daily Record, Wagner purchased the signs for $15,000 through Trone Outdoor Advertising.
Wagner told the media outlet he blames Biden for the situation in Afghanistan which he sees as “an absolute mess and a tragedy.”
He was especially concerned about $85 billion of U.S. military vehicles and equipment left behind. He said, “I was watching an evening news show one night and saw the Taliban in American personnel carriers.”
“It’s like Vietnam, even worse,” he added.
Asked for a comment by WHTM News 27 in Harrisburg — the Pennsylvania capital — Wagner replied: “I saw the image [of Joe Biden]. I got it from a friend a few weeks ago. The picture tells the story.
“We pulled out of Afghanistan too quickly, and we left so much of American equipment. Joe Biden has made us look like a fool. I feel so bad, words can’t describe what I would say to someone who was wounded or someone’s family who had a soldier pass away in the country after all this happened.”
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Fritzi Schreffler responded to a WHTM inquiry in a statement that read: “The Department permits such outdoor advertising to private entities through an application process, bound by law and regulation. Specifically, the Outdoor Advertising Control Act of 1971 (Federal Law) and Title 67, PA Code, Chapter 445 (PA Commonwealth Regulation) do not regulate or control billboard advertising content. Generally, advertising content is protected by the First Amendment under the US Constitution.
“Therefore, if the advertising message is legal per State or Federal laws and regulations, recourse is not warranted. While we understand the message on the Interstate 83 billboard may be unpleasant to some, it is our understanding that the message is legal. As such, the Department has no basis to require this message be changed.”
According to PennLive, the billboards have been placed along “the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Interstate 83, and Routes 322, 11-15, and 15.”
They’ve have created quite a stir in the Keystone State, which was one of the keys to Biden’s still-questionable victory in the 2020 election.
Americans are angry about the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This sorry episode should not and will not be forgotten. To use Biden’s famous remark to former President Barack Obama after the passage of Obamacare in 2010, “This is a big f***ing deal.”
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban was a tipping point in U.S. history. In a rare moment of responsibility (with some exceptions), the mainstream media actually committed journalism. There really was no choice.
I would go so far as to say it altered the balance of power in the world. The biggest winners are the Taliban and China. The biggest loser, obviously, is the United States, the country Biden is supposed to be leading.
In addition to our nation’s diminished status on the world stage, the Biden administration’s many missteps left 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans dead. The Biden Pentagon’s “retaliation strike” against the terrorist group ISIS-K ended in the deaths of 10 innocent Afghan civilians including seven children.
I hope to see more billboards highlighting our current president’s profound stupidity pop up across the nation. Biden and his entire administration deserve to be humiliated.
Republicans must continue this messaging as the country moves closer to the 2022 midterms and into the 2024 presidential race.
I suppose the silver lining to the Afghanistan crisis and all of this administration’s other destructive policies is that it will (at least it should) deliver a blow to the progressive cause for years to come.
According to Fox News host Mark Levin, the Democrats are going to keep supporting Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley because they don’t want any backlash for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Friday night, Levin said Pelosi played “a key role in” undermining civilian control of the military under former President Donald Trump via a call she made to Milley in the days after the Capitol incursion.
While the details of the call were disclosed for the first time in excerpts from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s forthcoming book “Peril,” Pelosi had announced the conversation shortly after it happened on Jan. 8, saying in a letter to House Democrats she’d discussed “precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.”
CNN reported Woodward and Costa obtained a transcript of the call.
“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do?” Pelosi, who is second in line for the presidency behind Vice President Kamala Harris, said during the call, according to the book. “And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?
“You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time,” she added.
Milley reportedly responded, “Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.”
That’s why, Levin said, “the Democrat Party will do everything they can to run interference for Milley” when the Joint Chiefs head appears on Capitol Hill on Sept. 28.
“They’re running interference for Milley because they’re running interference for Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi has a key role in this,” he continued.
“There’s a telephone conversation between Nancy Pelosi and General Milley in which she — who is absolutely nuts — accuses the president of the time. Trump, of being crazy, talks about nuclear weapons, and Milley says he agrees with her completely.
“He goes back to the Pentagon, he calls in his subordinates and they talk about ‘what is our process?’ and ‘let’s go over it’ for using nuclear weapons,” Levin continued.
“President Trump never hinted ever about using nuclear weapons, there’s no basis for this whatsoever.
“I might add, in a footnote, I don’t know who’s more loathsome, Milley, who is loathsome, or Woodward and Costa,” he continued.
“They sat on it for months and months when the American people should have known, when Congress should have known, and, of course, the people in the military should have known that we have a rogue general.”
While the exact order of events on Jan. 8 isn’t made explicit in reporting on the book, “Peril” reportedly makes it clear that Jan. 8 was a busy day for Gen. Milley and that much was precipitated by two conversations he had that day. One was with Pelosi and the other was with Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, Milley’s counterpart in China.
The most damning allegation from “Peril” is from a previous, Oct. 30, 2020 conversation Milley reportedly had with Li in which he promised that if the United States was “going to attack [China], I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” according to The Washington Post.
That flirted dangerously with the Constitution’s definition textbook definition of “treason” and has ballooned into an undeniable scandal. And even if there is a snowball’s chance in Hades that Milley would ever be charged with actual treason, it should be enough to precipitate his resignation.
In the Jan. 8 call, Woodward and Costa reportedly wrote that Milley told Li that despite the events of Jan. 6, “We are 100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”
Li was still concerned, however — and, on the same day, Milley talked with Pelosi. It’s unclear which came first — but Milley took action on the conversations.
“Milley … summoned senior officers to review the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, saying the president alone could give the order — but, crucially, that he, Milley, also had to be involved. Looking each in the eye, Milley asked the officers to affirm that they had understood, the authors write, in what he considered an ‘oath.’”
In other words, Pelosi had talked to Milley about undermining civilian control of the military — a key tenet of any democracy — and Milley had acted to undermine civilian control of the military. While “Peril” isn’t released until Tuesday, you can draw your own conclusions as to the level of influence this had upon the head of the Joint Chiefs.
Whatever the case, the White House is running interference for Milley, too.
According to CNN, President Joe Biden said Wednesday, “I have great confidence in General Milley.” Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “has complete confidence in his leadership, his patriotism and his fidelity to our Constitution,” calling him a “man of honor.”
When one imagines their reaction if it came out that Milley had tried to undermine civilian control of the military to prevent elements of the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, one doesn’t see the same rhetoric being used.
If it turned out that this happened after a call from congressional leaders, no matter what their party but especially if it were the opposition, the whirlwind of opprobrium he would reap would be even more brutal — and those leaders would be reaping it, too.
And yet, because of their party affiliation, no one seems to acknowledge the dangerous precedent this sets, particularly if Milley’s actions were precipitated by Pelosi’s call.
If this happened as the book laid out and the House speaker played a “key role” in it, she needs to face scrutiny for her actions, as well.
With advisers like Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Mark Milley, former President Donald Trump hardly needed enemies — at least, if Bob Woodward and Robert Costa are to be believed.
Woodward and Costa’s new book “Peril,” about the events surrounding the 2020 election and unprecedented instability encompassing it, isn’t even out yet and the allegations contained therein have led to calls for Milley’s resignation.
In one excerpt from the book, Milley is alleged to have talked to the Chinese twice to assure them the United States wouldn’t launch an attack — and if they did, he would give Beijing a heads-up. Milley also reportedly told senior officers that if there was any move toward a nuclear launch, while a president could give the order, he needed to be consulted.
That whole series of episodes, if true, skirts with treason when you consider he would be warning an enemy of an attack. Perhaps more crucially, it undermined the bedrock principle of civilian leadership of the military, one of the principles that separates us from an authoritarian state.
When it came to domestic threats, however, Woodward and Costa say Milley was considerably less concerned — so much less that he called the George Floyd riots “penny packet protests.”
According to an excerpt from the book obtained by Fox News, Milley pooh-poohed White House fears that the riots were insurrectionary and “burning America down” during the summer months last year.
“Mr. President, they are not burning it down,” Milley reportedly said. “They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection.”
According to the book, the conversation took place near the end of May. The date isn’t given, but the protests had spread well beyond Minneapolis by May 27, according to a timeline of events from The New York Times. That’s just two days after Floyd’s death.
A May 30 timeline from Fox News mentions protests or riots in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix and St. Louis, among many others.
“More than a dozen cities instituted curfews and thousands were arrested, while thousands of National Guard members were deployed in at least 15 states,” Fox News noted.
“When Milley spoke to Trump, however, he reportedly cited data at that time that said there had only been two cities with major protests, while elsewhere it was 20-300 protesters.”
According to Woodward and Costa, Milley then pointed to a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln and said the protests and riots couldn’t be compared to the attack on Fort Sumter which started the Civil War in 1861.
“We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests,” Milley said, adding that it couldn’t be compared to the riots which engulfed the country in 1968, according to the book.
Milley also reportedly blamed systematic racism for the protests and said anger had “pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality.”
Milley was, if nothing else, a bad prognosticator.
The George Floyd riots would go on to cost America up to $2 billion in insurance claims, according to estimates obtained by Axios in September of last year. That would likely make them the most costly riots of all time, surpassing the Los Angeles riot of 1992; that cost $775 million in insurance claims at the time, which would be $1.42 billion in 2020 dollars.
The three most costly riots of 1968, meanwhile, barely topped $300 million in damage when adjusted for 2020 dollars.
More importantly, the George Floyd riots would rend our national fabric more than any domestic event in recent memory. It would enable the worst elements in the Black Lives Matter and antifa movements.
The protests — and the so-called anti-racist movement they supercharged — also became an avenue for expressing explicitly anti-American sentiments. How many times, for example, did we witness scenes like this?
Those weren’t the riots that Milley was worried about, though. According to the book, he was more concerned with the Capitol incursion, which the book alleges he perceived as being “indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason.’”
The book goes on to say Milley was afraid Trump wanted a “Reichstag moment” — referring to the Reichstag fire, a relatively minor incident in 1933 which Adolf Hitler used as an excuse to consolidate power in Nazi Germany — and that the attack was “so unimagined and savage, could be a dress rehearsal for something larger” for Trump supporters.
It’s not that Milley was the only man expressing these overheated sentiments about the Capitol incursion — but if these reports are true, at some point during the past year, Milley became one of America’s wokest generals, if not the wokest. There’s a clear throughline from his remarks about the George Floyd riots to his testimony before Congress defending his inclusion of critical race theory in military education, and it’s one that doesn’t bode well for the future.
Everything in the report comes with a huge asterisk, of course, given Bob Woodward’s history of problematic investigative journalism. If true, however, it’s more evidence Milley needs to resign posthaste.
Calling the George Floyd riots nothing more than graffiti artists and “penny packet protests” doesn’t rise to the level of treason, but it’s more evidence that this isn’t the man who should be one of the president’s top military advisers.
Apple and Google removed a tactical voting app from its online store on Friday that was linked to Kremlin critic and jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny as polls opened across Russia for three days of voting in a parliamentary election.
The move was prompted after Russian authorities put pressure on the U.S. tech giants to remove the app from their stores, saying a refusal to do so would be treated as meddling in its parliamentary election while also threatening the companies with fines.
The app is part of the “Smart Voting” project, which was created by a team of Navalny supporters. It was designed to organize a tactical voting campaign to channel opposition votes to United Russia—President Vladimir Putin’s ruling political party.
Ivan Zhdanov, an ally of Navalny, said on social media that the move by Apple and Google to remove the app is “shameful” and amounts to “political censorship.”
“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” Zhdanov wrote on Twitter. “Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.”
Both companies have not immediately responded to a request for comment, although Zhdanov linked a statement on Friday that appears to be from Apple, saying the app was removed from its store because it is illegal in Russia.
Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship. Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.@google@Apple
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the presidential administration “definitely, of course” welcomes the companies’ decision to remove the app, as it comes in compliance with Russian laws. Peskov said that the app was “outside the law” in Russia.
The parliamentary election this weekend is widely seen as an important part of Putin’s efforts to cement his grip on power ahead of the 2024 presidential election, for which control of the parliament is key.
Earlier this month, Russian authorities also blocked access to the Smart Voting website, which aims to identify candidates who are in the strongest position in the Sept. 19 election in order to channel opposition votes, although some internet users can still access it.
In an Instagram post earlier this month, Navalny’s team said that the move to block the Smart Voting website shows that Russian authorities are “panicking” and “afraid.”
Navalny, meanwhile, published a step-by-step guide on his Instagram Stories, detailing how supporters could attempt to bypass the block.
Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny takes part in a rally to mark the 5th anniversary of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov’s murder and to protest against proposed amendments to the country’s constitution, in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 29, 2020. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)
In June, the Moscow City Court outlawed Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of his regional offices as extremist organizations. The ruling barred people associated with the groups from seeking public office and exposed them to lengthy prison terms.
Navalny, Putin’s most determined political challenger, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin—accusations that Russian officials reject. He was handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence in February for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that he denounced as politically driven.
Putin, 68, has been in power—either as president or prime minister—for more than two decades. He pushed through constitutional changes last year that enable him to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term ends. The changes would allow him to potentially hold onto power until 2036.
Putin earlier this year signed legislation barring members of groups deemed extremist, including allies of Navalny, from running for office. The move, critics say, was designed to stamp out opposition to United Russia. The Kremlin denies the crackdown is political.
Isabel van Brugen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
“That’s it. I’m outta here.” So a friend told me after the blowout recall loss Tuesday. This friend long has been wavering on whether to leave California for relief from taxes and the general “Crazifornia” atmosphere. If the recall had been close, with Gov. Gavin Newsom still winning, my friend might have stayed because there was hope of reform. But a 64 percent “No to Recall” vote decided the issue.
Several other friends also said they’re leaning more toward the “leave” option.
All these folks would be following the roughly 650,000 who are skedaddling every year. Of course, folks still come here: tech hotshots to Silicon Valley, wannabe movie stars to Hollywood, illegal aliens to everywhere. But as everyone now knows, in recent years more people, for the first time in history, are leaving than coming.
I provided details in my Aug. 25 Epoch Times article, “California Businesses Exiting Faster Than Ever.”
The Babylon Bee just ran a spoof, “Gavin Newsom Named U-Haul Salesperson of the Year.” It quoted the firm’s fictional Western Regional Director, Fennick Buggstein: “We are deeply grateful to Gavin for our success in 2021. The only problem now is that we’re all out of trucks. And no one is willing to drive a U-Haul back to California. And I’m leaving with my family as well. So I guess this is it! Bye everyone!”
Seriously, if that’s possible, with the recall now in the past, what issues now are facing the Golden State?
1. A $1 trillion public unfunded liabilities debt hanging over the state from pensions and retiree medical care. It currently costs $8 billion from the state general fund just to service that debt, not to mention billions more from local and school pensions. The amount only will grow, requiring tax increases.
2. A school system that perennially scores 48th on national tests. “Better than Mississippi” is not a great selling point. The powerful California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers continue to oppose school choice, merit pay for the best teachers and other reforms.
3. A record high tax burden. Income, sales and gas tax rates top those in any other state.
4. A crumbling infrastructure. The $5 billion yearly gas tax increase from 2017 only partly has filled potholes because there are so many of them. And the tax increase only was “needed” because of other foolish spending priorities. See No. 1, above. And see the High-Speed Rail boondoggle, still choo-chooing along despite Newsom’s promise in 2020 to get rid of it.
5. Punishingly high housing prices. What young couple can afford a home when the median housing price is $800,000 statewide, even higher in coastal areas? Efforts to reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other barriers to more construction never get far.
6. Environmental unrealism raises the price of everything. As I detailed in “California Wildfire Greenhouse Gases Dwarfed by China’s” from Aug. 12, the problem is not in CA, but the PRC. Yet our residents keep getting punished for something not our fault. Newsom banned selling gas-powered cars by 2035, just 14 years from now. He couldn’t totally ban older, gas-powered cars. So California increasingly will resemble Communist Cuba, where cars like ’57 Chevys just keep getting older, patched up more ingeniously each year.
7. Not just the teachers unions, but the other unions will keep getting stronger, devouring more of the state economy. These include AFCME, the SEIU, the Correctional Peace Officers Association (prison guards), the numerous sheriff and cop associations and the surprisingly powerful California Nurses Association.
After the Newsom victory, AFSCME Local 3299—University of California service workers—sent out this gloating email: “We rose to defend our state from the anti-union and anti-science extremism at the heart of this recall. Together, we united behind a Governor who has prioritized our health, the safety of essential workers and school children, and an economy that works for all of us because California deserves nothing less.”
And you can bet they’re going to expect big-time payback during next year’s pay negotiations.
8. Critical Race Theory and other schemes to continue to pit Americans against one another will be advanced. Shouldn’t we be coming together to provide opportunity for all, making the pie bigger instead of dividing it up into ever more divisive pieces?
Hope From Latinos
Finally, let me end on a hopeful note. Especially as we now already have begun the next cycle racing toward the November 8, 2022 election.
Latinos, although opposing the recall, voted more in the GOP direction than in recent elections. Some are calling it the “canary in the coal mine,” warning Democrats they ought to stop taking for granted that Latinos will keep backing a party that does nothing for them.
As Larry Elder brought up many times during his campaign, Latinos and blacks are being shafted by the horrible California schools system, which benefits the teachers’ unions at the expense of students.
In a July 18 ET column, I urged, “The Only Way Republicans Could Displace Gavin Newsom” was to emphasize education almost exclusively precisely to garner these Latino and black voters. I’m not blaming Elder. He ran a valiant campaign.
He’s hinting at a run next year. I hope he, or whomever the GOP ends up pushing past the senseless, anti-democratic Top Two system, adopts that strategy. Sure, there are so many other things one could address, and Elder did address—most listed above.
But for a Republican to have any chance, there should be one topic: education. Hammer it home.
My career has taken me around the world, including the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. These travels have helped me appreciate how fortunate I am to have been born in America—home of the free because of the brave.
On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people across our nation gathered in remembrance of the lives lost and the heroes who selflessly gave their lives to save others. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., and saw the hole in the Pentagon. Later, I traveled to New York City and saw the massive hole where the Twin Towers once stood. Those are images I will never forget.
In 2002, I was recruited into government service to lead necessary change and transformation in the intelligence community (IC), including better integrating our imagery and signals intelligence enterprises—America’s eyes and ears. I was sworn in as a senior executive in defense intelligence and was a civilian peer to general and flag officers. After the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established, I was sworn in as the first IC deputy chief information officer at ODNI. In that role, I worked across the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. IC and regularly met with the leadership of both the IC and the Department of Defense.
Through my 25 years of service in the national security community and study of history, I have become aware of the techniques, tactics, and procedures that our enemies use. Though the Cold War ended 30 years ago, our nation is still in a war that has been brewing for decades—a war for America’s soul.
Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, openly predicted the destruction of the United States and said that it would happen in the way that every society eventually collapses. He said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” Khrushchev was talking about an entire system of Marxist indoctrination and takeover that they had refined and executed in country after country during the 20th century.
Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, and high-level Russian propagandist, escaped to the West in 1970. He warned America about the KGB tactics used to subvert a nation that he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union. This is a planned process of altering the way people think for a particular purpose, which is to affect a regime change. It’s effectively the brainwashing of society—a slow, methodical transformation. Those who conduct this ideological subversion are very patient to employ the tactics over decades.
Ideological subversion has four stages and follows the Hegelian dialectic, a tactic long exploited by Marxists and Fascists to control people.
Stage 1: Demoralization. This is the destruction of faith in the government and society. Believing that society is broken, systems are failing, and patriotism is evil are three key beliefs that are promoted to create guilt. This leads to the acceptance of radical new ideas because the current structure is believed to be harmful. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality, classical education, and American patriotism are discarded.
Stage 2: Destabilization. With the decision-making ability of Americans negatively affected through demoralization, the next step takes a foothold—destabilization of the nation’s foundations. Destabilization causes citizens to believe the worst of what they hear about their nation and form of government. Supporters of traditional values and foundational structures in the nation are ostracized and even demonized.
Stage 3: Crisis. The altered values of Americans cut to the root of the current systems. Upheaval presents opportunities for change. Once a society is destabilized, it begins to collapse into chaos. At this point, citizens want the government to provide stability. We saw this recently as a demoralized and destabilized society responded with fear and panic when a “pandemic” faced our nation. Americans are willingly trading civil rights and freedoms for authoritarianism and overreach that they believe will keep them safe. Messaging in all of this is key. The mainstream media and their tell-a-vision programming play a key role in framing the prescribed narrative as truth.
Stage 4: Normalization. The “new normal” is a term we have heard constantly lately, and it’s an accurate description of what the normalization stage is all about. When the government and societal structures have changed to restrict liberty, citizens are told the radical transformation is “the way it has to be.” Ironically, it’s described as normal when it’s not normal at all. Normalization creates a new baseline for what a nation will accept, value, and promote. The cycle is complete.
These steps are repeated over and over, bringing a greater result with each cycle until there’s a controlled collapse. America could be on the verge of collapse right now unless we collectively wake up to reality and take a stand to stop tyranny.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding people’s thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead them to a predetermined solution. The enemies of America are using this tactic to create fear, turn citizen against citizen, and divide our nation. A house divided cannot stand. If people do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes their perceptions of the world, then they do not know how they are helping to implement the agenda, which ultimately is to advance humanity into a dictatorship—whether by the fascists, the communists, or the globalists and their New World Order. We must step outside the dialectic so that we can be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
The most important thing about America is liberty. America is what has stood between power-hungry people and their goals of world domination. The true enemies of America are trying to convince us that we are each other’s enemies and that big government and control of the lives of the many by a few is the solution to cure what ails us. We must all recognize that they are weaponizing the crisis and this narrative is a lie. Government bureaucrats are now labeling anyone who thinks they have overstepped their constitutional bounds as enemies of the state—“patriot terrorists.” What liberty-loving people are now combating is pure evil.
All it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. As we reflect back on Sept. 11, 2001, one thing that stands out about that time following the terrorist attacks is that we forgot the things that divide us. We united as Americans. There’s no better example than what we saw in New York City. We were united together in support of one another fighting a common enemy.
So many have sacrificed so much to secure our liberty and preserve it for future generations. Many of us have lost a loved one on a foreign battlefield or from a service-connected illness after they returned, or in the line of duty here at home. How do we honor their sacrifice and that of so many others in our nation’s 245-year history? We stand and fight to uphold liberty and our unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents. If liberty is to be lost, it won’t be on our watch.
A number of voters and a watchdog group have raised concerns about the integrity of elections since Californians began casting—or mailing in—their ballots earlier this month leading up to the Sept. 14 gubernatorial recall election.
Woodland Hills resident Emon Afshar and his wife, Tina, were told by poll workers they had already voted when they showed up to cast their ballots at the Disabled American Veterans Hall on Sept. 11.
But they hadn’t.
“Then the couple behind us comes to the table, gives their names, and the same thing. The system showed they had voted. So now, there is four of us. And one of the employees over there, or the volunteers, tells us that it’s been happening all day, and in multiple locations,” Afshar told The Epoch Times.
“So, all four of us go to speak to the supervisor,” he said. “We asked him, what is our recourse?”
Vincent McCormack, the supervisor, told the couples they could vote by provisional ballot.
“[He said] that over 70 percent of the people who came in that day experienced the same thing, that the system showed somebody had voted for them,” Afshar said.
The Afshars recorded the conversation on video and sent it to news media. Since then several nationally known political commentators have shared the video on social media.
Since the story broke, Afshar said he has been contacted by other people who also encountered the same problem at the same polling location.
Afshar and his wife then went to Los Angeles Pierce College, another voting location in Woodland Hills, later that day to vote. There, the system recognized their names as registered voters and they were able to each finally vote on a machine, rather than a provisional ballot, Afshar said.
He said the supervisor at the previous location, McCormack, appeared “flustered” and “worried.”
“I feel bad. He was a nice guy,” Afshar said.
But, he said, McCormack should have advised voters to try voting at a different location rather than giving everyone provisional ballots.
Los Angeles Registrar Responds
Afshar said that he received a phone call from Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan on Sept. 13.
“He apologized. He explained to me that it was only happening to a couple of machines [at] a couple of locations and that it was already resolved,” Afshar said.
In response to an inquiry, Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, told The Epoch Times via email, “The issue (on Saturday, Sept. 11) was quickly resolved and voting was continuous. Any affected voters did receive a Provisional Ballot to ensure no voter was turned away and had the opportunity to cast a ballot. The Provisional Ballots cast at that location were verified and included in the Election Night tally. Registrar Dean Logan did speak directly to the voter on the issue and explained the situation and the resolution to him.”
“The 70% reference is incorrect and was never substantiated—location specific or broadly,” Sanchez stated.
A statement from the Registrar was also released on Sept. 11:
The Registrar identified issues with the settings on some of the electronic poll book devices used at these locations to check-in voters prior to issuing ballots. The voters who experienced this issue were offered and provided a provisional ballot—the failsafe option to ensure no one is turned away from voting. Provisional ballots are regular ballots and once the eligibility of the voter is verified, they are processed and counted.
After troubleshooting the issue, the equipment at the locations was replaced and voting continued.
However, on Tuesday, Afshar saw news reports about more voters experiencing the same problem at the same location, he said.
Afshar said he would like to see an independent investigation into the matter.
“I want a third-party investigator to figure out what happened, not someone whose job is in jeopardy to come and tell us that everything is okay.”
In another incident, a video recorded on Sept. 14 at the Robbie Waters public library in Sacramento obtained by The Epoch Times showed voter Felise Nglam complaining about the same problem.
“Somebody already voted for me,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this is why I don’t trust the voting system anymore. It’s just a waste of time,” he said in the video.
Elder Campaign Requests Affidavits
On Monday, a number of mainstream media outlets accused Larry Elder, the top Republican contender in the recall election, of making false allegations of election fraud.
The controversy stemmed from Elder’s campaign website, which had included a link to another site called StopCAFraud.com.
Elder’s campaign told The Epoch Times via email that the StopCAFraud website is an “outside company” that is “collecting affidavits of voting fraud or irregularities.”
“The goal is to have the affidavits ready to go in case we need to take legal action,” campaign spokesperson Stephanie Marshall told The Epoch Times in an email on Sept. 14.
“We should all be concerned about election integrity and we all want every proper vote to be counted. We’ve provided a link to an outside website that is providing an avenue for voters to document irregularities they encounter in this election,” Ying Ma, Elder’s communications director, in a statement issued moments earlier the same day.
The StopCAFraud site, states that it was “Paid For By Larry Elder Ballot Measure Committee Recall Newsom Committee,” and lists its funding sources as Elder for Governor 2021, Geoff Palmer, and Saul Fox.
It asks Californians to “Report Election Fraud in CA,” and states: “Election integrity should be a universally accepted American ideal. Unfortunately, there are instances where such integrity is called into question.”
It then asks anyone who has “experienced any irregularities, interference, or intimidation while voting” to fill out a form to report these incidents.
Election Integrity
Possible problems with the integrity of elections in California, an almost solidly blue state, have been investigated and discussed for many years.
Ruth Weiss, of the Election Integrity Project, California (EIPCa) told The Epoch Times that the problem is much deeper than simple isolated glitches in the system, and that complaints should not be casually brushed off but be taken seriously.
“There are real issues where people have people vote in their name. There are other issues where people weren’t in the system,” Weiss said.
In many cases, mistakes are made because poll workers are not adequately trained, she said.
Rather than accept provisional ballots, Weiss advised voters to demand that poll supervisors call the Registrar of Voters hotline to report the problem and get the issue resolved.
Problems Reported
EIPCa said some vote-by-mail ballots in the recall election were flawed because a vendor apparently cut off the part of the code that was supposed to be printed on them. EIPCa received several reports, but said it’s still too early to tell exactly about how many defective ballots were sent out.
“I can’t give you numbers. I just know it’s serious, and it is not just one county,” Weiss said.
“The machines are rejecting these ballots because when the vendor cuts these ballots apart, they trimmed off part of the code and so now the machine can’t read it,” she said.
The legal rights of citizen poll observers to watch activities of the electoral process were also “limited or suspended so they could not engage in meaningful observation” in some counties, she said.
“Our observer rights in a lot of places across the state have been trampled. They’re not letting us in; they’re not letting us observe,” Weiss claimed. “The same thing that happened in 2020 is happening again. They’re ignoring California state law that allows us the right to observe.”
Many of the election integrity issues stem from the push by California lawmakers to create a “permanent” vote-by-mail system, Weiss claimed.
A number of problems “come from sending a vote-by-mail ballot out to everybody on the voter rolls when your voter rolls are not maintained,” she said.
In the 2020 election, Weiss said vote-by-mail ballots were sent to more than 440,000 ineligible voters, and she expects that number may be even higher in the recall election.
“Voters with a long history of voting in every election suddenly weren’t on the rolls,” she said. “People who never registered to vote are receiving ballots, and people in other states were receiving ballots and information for the California recall, and they don’t live in California,” she said. “We have a lot of that going on again in this election.”
Other voters reported getting multiple ballots, she said.
In December 2018, the State of California and Los Angeles County agreed to remove up to 1.5 million inactive voters from voter rolls in order to settle a federal lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch and EIPCa.
In January of this year, Election Integrity Project and 10 California Congressional candidates filed another lawsuit against California state officials and various registrars of voters over what they claim were unconstitutional practices and laws used in the November 2020 election.
Recommendations
EIPCa said they received criticism from both Democratic and Republican political parties for suggesting that people vote in person or take their vote-by-mail ballots to polling locations in person for the recall election.
“People on both sides of the issue in this particular election felt that our message was getting in the way of their get-out-to-vote message” to mail their ballots in early or take then to ballot drop box locations, she said.
However, EIPCa has long opposed ballot harvesting and wholesale vote-by-mail-ballot elections.
“We have always advocated for going back to a system where everybody votes in-person unless they can’t and then they ask for an absentee ballot, not a vote by mail ballot, as so many other states do,” Weiss said.
Ballot harvesting, she said “is a felony in some states,” while it is now legal in California.
To restore election integrity, EIPCa supports a return to the previous system of absentee ballots. Under that system, voters must apply for an absentee ballot, which must be delivered to a polling location by a close friend, relative, or someone living in the same household as the absentee voter to ensure proper chain of custody.
Under current law, paid ballot harvesters can go door to door gathering ballots.
EIPCa has asked any Californians who experienced issues voting in the recall election or any former Californian who received recall-election communications or a ballot to report these incidents. Weiss said EIPCa will release more details soon about alleged problems in the recall election.
Not only is General Mark Milley “woke,” he also apparently (https://on.rt.com/bgoh) conspired with the CIA, NSA, Nancy Pelosi and even China (!) to undermine President Donald Trump. This is according to a new book by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa – who, it needs to be noted, are sworn members of the anti-Trump #resistance – excerpts of which were leaked to the Media-Democrat Complex today.
Milley denies having done anything improper, mind you. But his actions, as detailed by Woodward and Costa, are pretty damning. While most Republicans are following the white rabbit of Milley calling his counterpart in China to say he’s give them advance warning of any US attack (not that any was in the cards, but consider the implications), far worse to my mind is the whole thing about telling the NSA and CIA to spy on Trump for signs of anything “crazy or illegal” (as defined by Pelosi, apparently). If this isn’t treason, then what is?
Ah, but Orange Man is Bad, which means anything goes. Milley is the Who, Trump is the Whom, and thus the “logic” of moral relativism is satisfied. The aforementioned MDC was marching in lockstep defending his reported actions all day.
Mind you, I think the Woodward/Costa book is spin – they’re reporting what happened, but imputing evil motivations to anything Trump did or may have thought of doing, while ascribing the purest noble motives to anyone working against him. Think of it as a sequel to that Time article about the “fortifiers” of 2020: they want to tell everyone what they did, because in their Narrative, they’re heroes, not villains.
Milley’s actions appear to corroborate my analysis from June 2020, when I found it odd that Biden was so confident the military would be on his side, right after Milley uncharacteristically offered a groveling apology to the woke scolds for doing his job. Today’s revelations also reinforced what I wrote back in January, when I argued that the Resistance and the MDC, in their obsession with ousting Trump, had thoroughly discredited what Darren Beattie would later label the Globalist American Empire (both links are in the piece linked above, don’t want to clutter this post).
You’d think I would be happy about that, but… that might also mean I was right about other things, other patterns I’ve observed and extrapolated from. About things that I think might be coming. Trouble is, they’re not pretty.
TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:35] [In reply to TheNebulator] Update on Milley: it’s worse than I thought. I had somehow missed that he made two phone calls to China, one on January 8 (amid conspiring with Pelosi) but the other four days prior to the election, suggesting even more strongly that he was part of the “fortification” already. Moreover, he apparently “suggested” PACOM cancel some exercises to reassure China, and they did so. This is according to the Washington Post, mind you.
The Pentagon’s response today was to double down and say Milley did nothing wrong, while the White House praised his commitment to Our Democracy. As I said, it doesn’t matter what is done, only Who is doing it to Whom. I actually went on News Views Hughes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoXB_dsN0-w&list=PLagVUKF7CUTTtjJqFw6JvO14pG6Z1RBmv&index=1&t=94s) today to discuss the whole situation. But it’s bad, folks, really bad.
TheNebulator, [15.09.21 22:43] You get two posts tonight, though, because I simply have to comment on the sheer irony of Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, far better known as Nicki Minaj, becoming the unlikely hero in the fight for common sense against the Branch Covidian cult (as Eric D. July so memorably calls it).
Everything about that story is just perfect: from the original tall tale of “her cousin’s friend in Trinidad” getting his wedding called off because his testicles swelled up ( the symptom is more commonly associated with some STDs, but that was obvious from the get-go) — to her point that people should make the decision for themselves instead of getting bullied into it, to the shrieking response of everyone from her fandom to pundits to Big Tech and the government of Trinidad…
Is there a better way to expose the sheer absurdity of the System, than a rapper with millions of social media followers not giving a damn? When facts and arguments don’t help, because people offering them get censored or smeared, it’s down to the jesters — and entertainers are the biggest jesters of all, aren’t they?
Years from now, when the Davos set has failed in their attempt at a neo-feudal Great Reset, we’ll look back and try to figure out the exact moment the tide turned. It’s entirely possible this will be it.
TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:07] So, special counsel John Durham finally indicts someone in his probe of the Trump-Russia probe… and it’s not a nobody, but a partner in the DNC law firm that was behind the Steele Dossier. Michael Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI, by telling them he wasn’t representing anyone — while in fact representing a tech executive coordinating with the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to spread the lie about Alfa Bank being a “secret conduit” for candidate Trump to Russia.
Normally this would be a very big deal, except the DOJ already leaked it to the New York Times earlier today, which pre-shaped the narrative to minimize Sussmann’s culpability… (to be continued)
TheNebulator, [16.09.21 23:26] (continued) What’s the big deal, you might say. Only in that for five years the weaponized FBI, DOJ and the intelligence community went after Trump for alleged “Russian collusion,” bankrupted his aides and allies with legal fees, jailed some for unrelated charges in hopes they’d agree to implicate him, and deterred decent people from taking jobs in his administration while letting neocons and various double agents infiltrate instead. Yet despite the proven, documented wrongdoing of the highest echelons of the FBI and DOJ, CIA and NSA, only one person involved was ever charged — and given a slap on the wrist.
Kevin Clinesmith, who literally falsified evidence to enable the FBI to spy on Trump via Carter Page (by altering a document that said Page was a CIA source to say he wasn’t) got… 12 months’ probation, some community service, and just got his DC bar license back. The regime protects its own, you see.
Earlier this week, we found out that JCS chairman General Mark Milley was back-channeling with China and conspiring with Democrats , CIA and NSA against Trump. But the entire media-political complex came to his defense, calling him a hero. Meanwhile, retired General Michael Flynn was illegally unmasked, charged with lying to the FBI on absolutely zero basis, and dragged through the courts for something like three years — even had his family threatened — before he was eventually pardoned, because the activist federal judge in DC refused to accept the DOJ dropping the case.
That judge, Emmett Sullivan, just ruled this evening that illegal immigrants can’t be sent back to Mexico under a rule intended to protect public health. Get that? Vaccine and muzzle mandates for you, but not for people just walking across. A Fox News crew in Del Rio, Texas has used a drone to film thousands of people (mainly from Haiti) crossing over from Mexico. The regime’s response? Judge Sullivan’s ruling — and a FAA ban on all drone activity. On grounds of “security,” you see.
Even so, some intelligent but apparently still clueless people are harping on the hypocrisy of the What, not realizing that the republic in which it mattered no longer exists. It has been replaced by Our Democracy, in which the only thing that matters is Who/Whom. Do you understand yet?
Joe Biden is barely hanging on by a thread. Most Americans are turning on him after one failure followed by another. With each passing day, he loses ground with his own supporters.
And it’s possible they won’t like him much after this news breaks.
Biden is only surviving because he’s shifted from being a moderate to a “woke” leftist. That is a culture built around “social justice” and punishing people for the sins of the past. To cast everything in terms of race and focusing on our history of slavery.
What will the left say, when they learn Biden’s family owned slaves?
From The Hill:
A genealogist who has conducted a sweeping look into President Biden’s lineage says records show some of the Scranton, Pa., native’s ancestors on his father’s side owned enslaved people…
According to Bannerman, the 1800 census showed that Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather, Jesse Robinett, owned two enslaved people in Allegany County, and another great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Randle, enslaved a 14-year-old boy in Baltimore County.
Ouch. I wonder how many leftists will turn on Joe Biden, after finding out his family owned people?
We’ve seen celebrities, politicians, and other figures taken down by cancel culture for much less. People’s entire lives have been ruined by a tweet some claimed was racist.
But two men have written an article claiming that Joe Biden’s family was part of the worst element of our nation’s history. Will the cancel culture mobs stay silent over this?
Let’s face the facts. Many Americans owned slaves. It was a part of our history. If you look back on many families, you might find the same. Was it Biden’s fault? Of course, not. He might be old, but he wasn’t alive back then.
Rational, reasonable people won’t blame Joe for something that happened a long time ago. But the left is not made up of reasonable people. They thrive off of destroying lives over political correctness and fear.
Make no mistake, the liberal establishment will either ignore this or try to protect old Joe. But the rabid leftists in the party might not. I can already hear AOC screaming about this on her Twitch feed.
It might get very ugly for Joe Biden.
Key Takeaways:
Two writers are claiming Joe Biden’s family owned slaves.
Census data suggests at least two of Biden’s ancestors owned people.
LOS ANGELES—With their original recall campaign falling short, organizers of an effort to oust Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced on Sept. 16 that they have formed a new political committee and will start again from scratch.
According to a statement from organizers, the original recall effort was hampered by COVID-19 pandemic health mandates, along with a “premature start.” Therefore, the effort will be restarted under a new campaign committee known as “Recall District Attorney George Gascón.”
“The reset will allow Recall District Attorney George Gascón to gather necessary financial resources prior to starting the 160-day period for signature collection, rather than play catch-up,” according to organizers.
“The committee will be filing an updated petition with the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters shortly.”
Despite the failure of the original effort, organizers said they remain committed to recalling Gascón, who has come under fire from critics for a progressive agenda that has included directives against seeking the death penalty and dropping sentence-enhancing allegations in criminal cases.
Gascón has repeatedly defended his policies, saying his stances were well known during his campaign and his election signified public support of his agenda.
In their statement, recall organizers said, “Make no mistake, this is not a white flag—it is a double-down on our efforts.”
A campaign spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that the original recall drive had collected about 200,000 signatures. The group needed about 580,000 signatures by Oct. 26 to force a recall election.
The head of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said Twitter did not violate campaign finance laws by blocking a report from the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s laptop and alleged overseas business dealings last year, although the social media platform may have been biased in favor of then-candidate Joe Biden.
FEC Commissioner Sean Cooksey, in a three-page document (pdf) released Wednesday, said Twitter may have had political motives by blocking the articles about the younger Biden, which the NY Post and others have decried as an act of censorship, but the social media site’s decision wasn’t a political contribution to Biden’s campaign against former President Donald Trump.
“The Commission’s approved Factual and Legal Analysis concludes that Twitter was simply enforcing preexisting, commercially reasonable policies to protect its product quality and business interests. According to the Commission, none of the behavior at issue was for the purpose of influencing the 2020 presidential election,” he wrote, adding: “I’m not so sure.”
“In my view, the record doesn’t establish whether Twitter was consistently enforcing a politically neutral business policy or using its platform to support one candidate over another. But I also think the answer to that question is ultimately irrelevant,” Cooksey also said, concluding that “Twitter is a publisher with a First Amendment right to control the content on its platform and to favor or disfavor certain speech and speakers.”
As a result, he argued, “Its conduct therefore falls under the FEC’s media exemption, doesn’t qualify as an expenditure or contribution, and doesn’t violate campaign-finance law.”
Documents released on Wednesday show that three Republican commissioners sided with the FEC’s two Democrats and one independent to reject a complaint from the Republican National Committee that Twitter violated campaign finance laws.
FEC Vice Chairman Allen Dickerson and Commissioner James Trainor III wrote (pdf) in their justification that while “Twitter vigorously maintains that its decision to throttle the sharing of the Post articles at issue… resulted from the evenhanded application of its content moderation policies.”
“Given Twitter’s clear denials and lacking any indications, other than pure conjecture, to the contrary, the Commission found that these allegations simply did not meet our evidentiary standard and voted accordingly,” they opined.
The decision not to penalize Twitter will likely trigger calls to reform or abolish Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that serves as a liability shield for major platforms. The law’s critics say that Big Tech companies should lose those protections if they operate akin to a publisher rather than a neutral platform, while some have said that social media websites now effectively operate as a “public square.”
Special prosecutor John Durham has charged Washington-based lawyer Michael Sussmann, who represented former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, with lying to the FBI during Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Sussmann works for the high-powered law firm Perkins Coie—which has long done legal work for the Democratic Party and top Democrats, including filing election-related lawsuits.
The lawyer was indicted (pdf) on a single felony count of making a false statement during a meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016. Prosecutors allege that Sussmann lied by denying he represented any client when he told the federal law enforcement agency about evidence that allegedly linked then-candidate Donald Trump’s Trump Tower to a bank in Russia.
Sussmann met with Baker to hand over papers and data files containing evidence of the alleged link between the Trump Organization and the Russian bank, which wasn’t disclosed. Unconfirmed media reports have stated that it was Alfa Bank.
The indictment is the second criminal case brought by Durham since he was named by former Attorney General William Barr in 2018 to investigate officials who investigated the Trump–Russia probe. Durham, a former U.S. attorney, was asked to stay as a special counsel and continue his investigation after President Joe Biden’s administration took office in January.
Sussmann, the indictment alleges, didn’t turn over the information as a “good citizen,” but rather as an attorney representing Clinton, a technology executive, and an internet company.
“Sussmann’s lie was material because, among other reasons, Sussmann’s false statement misled the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis,” the indictment reads.
A report from The Epoch Times in 2019 found that Sussmann had provided the information to Baker and at least one journalist ahead of the FBI’s application for a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Perkins Coie, on behalf of the Democratic National Committee, also hired Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Christopher Steele to produce the dossier that contained since-discredited claims against the former president.
About a month later, The New York Times and other large news outlets reported on the FBI investigation into the alleged Alfa Bank–Trump Organization connection. The FBI said it looked into the matter, but found no connections.
Trump and other former administration officials have long described the FBI investigation into his campaign as a witch hunt designed to politically wound his reelection chances.
Lawyers for Sussman, a former federal prosecutor, said on Sept. 16 that their client never made false statements to the FBI and that there’s no evidence that the alleged falsehood affected the agency’s work.
“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they said in a statement, according to The Associated Press. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.”
In 2017, Sussmann was asked by congressional investigators about his interview with Baker and testified that he passed along information on behalf of his client.
When trying to access Sussmann’s page on Perkins Coie’s website, a “page not found” message was displayed.
Representatives for Perkins Coie and Sussmann’s lawyers didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
Pennsylvania’s Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines on Sept. 15, following a heated debate, to issue subpoenas to Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, requiring her office to provide extensive information about the 2020 general and 2021 primary elections.
Democrats hope to block the subpoenas in court.
“It has been made plain that the Department of State and acting Secretary of State Degraffenreid are not willing to participate in this investigation into the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary election, and how the election code is working after the sweeping changes of act 77 of 2020,” Committee majority Chair Cris Dush, a Republican, said in the opening comments of the meeting.
Act 77, signed by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019, created a new option to vote by mail without providing a reason, which had previously been required for voters using absentee ballots. It also allowed for a 50-day mail-in voting period, the longest vote-by-mail period in the country; extended the deadline to register to vote to 30 days from 15 days before an election; and extended mail-in and absentee submission deadlines from the Friday before an election, to 8 p.m. on Election Day.
The Sept. 15 subpoenas call for the Department of State to provide the following information to the Senate Republican Caucus by Oct. 1:
All communications between the Department of State and any county election director and other election officials; a copy of every version of directives, guidance, policies, and procedures in effect during specified dates, relating to elections, election systems, mail-in ballot applications, ballots, polling places, or poll watchers; and all training material used to train election workers.
The subpoenas also seek a list of all changes made to voter records; a copy of the certified results for every race or ballot question for both elections; a copy of all audits or reviews of the voting system; and a copy of annual reports submitted to the Department of State in 2021.
Also requested by subpoena are detailed voter lists, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number, last four digits of Social Security number, address, and, in some cases, date of last voting activity. This information was requested for lists of all registered voters, those who voted in the 2020 general election or the May 2021 primary, in-person, by mail-in, absentee, or provisional ballot.
Democratic Opposition
Democratic committee members took issue with the request for driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers.
“You’re asking for a lot of information … for nearly 7 million people,” Democratic state Sen. Steven Santarsiero said. “What do you hope to do with that information?”
Dush said the documents are part of any audit that the auditor general would conduct, or anybody who is looking to verify the identity of individuals, their place of residence, and their eligibility to vote.
“There have been questions regarding the validity of people who voted—whether or not they exist. We’re not responding to proven allegations,” Dush said. “We’re investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are factual.”
If there are problems, Dush said, the legislature has a responsibility to create legislation that will prevent problems in future elections.
Santarsiero grilled Dush on the cost and the name of the vendor that would handle the investigation.
“We are still looking at vendors who will handle the information,” Dush said. “I’m not going to be hiring political activists to do the investigation.”
Democrats protested the subpoenas so vigorously that three times, Dush stopped the meeting as it was broadcast across Pennsylvania.
“This meeting is at ease! Cut the feed,” Dush said, when Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes complained about members of the Senate who were “involved in the insurrection” having access to investigation information.
He was referring to Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who has said he attended the Jan. 6 rally and march for President Donald Trump in Washington, and that he followed the law while there.
“We have a public that is concerned about how the last election was conducted,” Republican state Sen. Jake Corman said. “Credibility is important to all of us. When we look at the results of this investigation, one of two things will happen. Either it will give us action items to better our laws, or it will dispel the concerns that people have.”
Ultimately, the committee voted 7–4 to issue the subpoenas.
“I thought it was totally inappropriate,” Minority Chair Anthony Williams, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times. “I felt frustrated by the manner in which this was done and the substance. We don’t know the cost, we don’t know who the vendors will be, we don’t know what they will do with the information.”
The Senate’s Democratic Caucus was expected to file papers in the Commonwealth Court, seeking an injunction to stop the subpoenas, Williams said.
On Sept. 12, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s database of viral sequences was taken offline. The deleted database, which has never been publicly recovered, contained more than 22,000 unpublished samples and sequences of bat and rodent viruses.
Notably, the database contains crucial data and may hold the key to determining whether the lab in Wuhan, China, had COVID-19 or a progenitor virus in its possession.
The importance of having access to virus sequence data was illustrated earlier this year, when sequences from early COVID-19 cases were recovered from another dataset that had been deleted in June 2020 from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) database at the behest of a Chinese researcher. That data confirmed that the pandemic didn’t start at the Huanan Seafood Market as Chinese authorities had claimed.
Despite the potential importance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) data, there have been no known requests from public health officials to reinstate or examine the Institute’s database and none of the major health officials and experts involved in the pandemic response, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, British pharmaceutical trust Director Jeremy Farrar or NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, have publicly acknowledged the database’s existence.
In February 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent an investigative team to Wuhan. The team’s report states that as part of their analysis they “reviewed data collected through the China National Centre for Bioinformation integrated database on all available coronaviruses sequences.”
But the team failed to request an examination of the database of viruses collected, maintained, and later deleted by the WIV.
The P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China’s central Hubei Province, on May 13, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
The WHO’s failure to pursue what could have been its most promising investigative lead is notable as the Wuhan Institute of Virology is widely regarded as perhaps the most likely source of a viral lab leak.
Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group used by Fauci’s NIH to fund the Wuhan Institute lab, claimed that the WHO’s investigative team didn’t request to see the deleted Wuhan database because Daszak told them that the data didn’t contain relevant information on the pandemic’s origins.
It seems surprising that WHO officials would accept Daszak’s assertions at face value, rather than insisting upon examining the database for themselves. It’s also worth noting that Daszak was inherently conflicted as he had been enmeshed with the WIV’s activities for years.
When asked about the deleted database in January 2021, WIV Director Shi Zhengli claimed that she deleted the database because of alleged hacking attempts—despite the fact that this information was supposed to be publicly available, according to Daszak’s funding agreement with Fauci’s NIH.
The WHO’s failure to examine the Wuhan Institute’s database also is surprising in light of a September 2019 WHO report that specifically warned of the possibility for a global pandemic.
That report, which stated that “the world is not prepared for a fast-moving, virulent respiratory pathogen pandemic,” was published six days after the Wuhan Institute deleted its entire database of dangerous pathogens.
(L-R) Thea Fischer, Marion Koopmans, Peter Daszak and other members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, leave the Hilton Wuhan Optics Valley Hotel in Wuhan, on Jan. 29, 2021. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)
There’s no suggestion that the authors of the WHO report had foreknowledge of the pandemic outbreak, since it was based on a Sept. 10, 2019, John Hopkins study. But the fact that the WHO’s September report warned of the potential for a global viral outbreak at the same time that the Wuhan Institute deleted all its dangerous pathogen data should have caught WHO’s immediate attention.
The timing of the Institute’s decision to remove the database of virus sequences is notable in light of events that followed the database’s deletion.
According to a Harvard Medical School study, an increase in traffic at hospitals throughout Wuhan took place in October of 2019.
John Brownstein, the Harvard medical professor who led the research, told ABC that “Something was happening in October. . . clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”
The Harvard study appears to have been validated through the observations of the U.S. consul general in Wuhan, Russell Westergard, who is on record as stating that by mid-October 2019, the U.S. consulate in Wuhan “knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season.”
Westergard would later note that “the disease worsened in November.”
Westergard also stated that when Wuhan city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread of the disease, his team passed the information to the U.S.Embassy in Beijing while they continued to monitor the situation.
Around the same time that Westergard was raising his warnings, likely at some point in early November, three WIV lab workers were reportedly hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms.
The COVID-19 virus model is on display at a science exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on July 18, 2021. (Getty Images)
Additionally, Huang Yanling, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has been rumored to be patient zero, also appears to have disappeared during this time frame. Her profile was subsequently scrubbed from the Wuhan Institute’s website.
The annex to the WHO’s 2021 investigative report—which describes Huang as a former lab worker—notes that according to the Wuhan Institute of Virology staff, Huang was an alumnus who graduated in 2015 and was working in a different province. But Huang’s profile on the Institute’s website remained active until after the pandemic outbreak. And Huang can also be seen in a 2018 Wuhan Institute group photo.
In November 2019, warnings began to sound in Washington. According to an April 8, 2020, report by ABC News, U.S. intelligence officials were warning in late November that “a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region.”
ABC News also said that a November 2019 intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) had stated that the contagion in Wuhan “could be a cataclysmic event.”
Notably, NCMI would later be identified by French media as the agency that had concluded that the virus most likely leaked out of a Wuhan lab in the 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment on the virus’s origins.
Unsurprisingly, there has been significant debate and conflicting information as to when the COVIDoutbreak first began. One report, which cited Chinese government officials, noted that the first case could be traced back to Nov. 17, 2019.
A detailed academic report in The Lancet claimed that the first known COVID case occurred on Dec. 1, 2019, and noted that the patient had no known ties to the Huanan Seafood Market.
These earlier dates contrast with the WHO’s first officially stated date for an individual becoming ill with COVID on Dec. 8, 2019.
As the outbreak in Wuhan appeared to be reaching a critical juncture, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suddenly moved its lab’s location on Dec. 2, to a spot just a few hundred yards from the Huanan Seafood Market.
A child receives a COVID-19 test at a residential area in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, on Aug. 11, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
While this lab has received little, if any, media attention, the WHO’s lead investigator into the virus’s origins, Peter Ben Embarek, privately voiced his concerns about this facility to a Danish documentary crew.
The Wuhan CDC kept the sudden move of its lab quiet and away from media attention. Embarek claims he only became aware of the move after he noticed that as he was being shown around the Wuhan CDC lab’s facilities, everything appeared to be new.
The WHO’s report, which contained only a single reference to the Wuhan CDC lab, noted that “Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory” and stated that the lab “reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.”
However, the WHO’s statement regarding the Wuhan CDC’s activities is at odds with the activities of the lab’s resident coronavirus researcher, Tian Junhua.
NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci listens during a Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee hearing looking into the budget estimates for National Institute of Health and state of medical research on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 26, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Pool/Getty Images)
In 2017, Tian bragged to a Chinese newspaper that he personally captured 10,000 bats in remote caves in southern China before bringing them back to his Wuhan CDC lab.
Tian also is well-known in academic circles for his research on bat coronaviruses and has co-published at least14scientific articles with Edward Holmes, a WHO-affiliated scientist and natural-origins proponent with long-standing ties to China.
The deletion of the WIV’s database along with other evidence, including the observations of the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan, would seem to suggest that the outbreak in Wuhan began earlier than has been generally reported.
This raises questions as to why the WHO failed to give this information serious consideration in the preparation of its report on the origins and timing of the virus.
The WHO should have been aware of this information—and should have been on guard for misinformation. As WHO investigator Embarek later acknowledged, the WHO was well aware of China’s reluctance to cooperate in their investigation from the start.
Elizabeth Prelogar may have to recuse herself from landmark affirmative action case
President Joe Biden’s pick to represent his administration before the Supreme Court was given a pass during her Tuesday confirmation hearing on a $10,000 payment that may require her to recuse herself from a landmark challenge to Harvard’s affirmative action program.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in August that Harvard Law School paid solicitor general nominee Elizabeth Prelogar over $10,000 between 2019 and 2020 for teaching and unspecified consulting services, a transaction that seemingly necessitates her recusal from a landmark challenge to the university’s affirmative action program now pending before the High Court. Prelogar has yet to address the apparent conflict in public, but lawmakers didn’t press her about it Tuesday.
The High Court in June asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether it should hear an appeal from Asian students who allege Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices are biased against them. The solicitor general’s office will prepare that legal brief and is certain to participate in the case if the justices decide to hear it.
Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office that requires executive branch personnel to step back from matters involving former employers and clients for two years, effective the day of their appointment. According to a financial disclosure obtained by the Free Beacon, Prelogar taught and consulted at Harvard in 2019 and 2020, which means she is subject to the order’s requirements. White House officials can waive the cooling-off period if they determine the public interest requires it.
Apart from the Harvard case, Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) pressed Prelogar about her decision to flip positions in the criminal sentencing case, Terry v. United States. The question in that case was whether the First Step Act made low-level crack cocaine offenders eligible for reduced sentences.
The Trump Justice Department argued that it did not. Prelogar switched sides at the last minute and backed the offenders. In an opinion for eight justices, Justice Clarence Thomas said the offenders weren’t eligible for changed sentences, and he called the result a “straightforward” one. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately to say that the law required the outcome, though she urged Congress to amend the statute.
Prelogar told Cotton she was not ordered to flip positions, but she declined to say whether she consulted with top Justice Department officials about the case. Some speculated that the reversal was the result of political pressure from the White House.
“I was the acting solicitor general at that time and I was responsible for all of our litigation positions,” Prelogar said.
Cotton was one of just two Republicans who questioned Prelogar. Only a couple of senators stuck around for Prelogar’s appearance, which immediately followed a confirmation hearing for two circuit court nominees, Beth Robinson and Jennifer Sung. Most senators left the chamber after the Robinson-Sung hearing, which was significantly more contentious.
The Biden administration is off to an uneven start in the Supreme Court. At Prelogar’s direction, the Justice Department flipped its litigating position and blundered into a 9-0 defeat in a criminal sentencing case in June. And the Court in August rebuffed the department’s attempts to maintain a moratorium on evictions and repeal the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, though Prelogar had left the office by that time because of her nomination. She served as the acting solicitor general from January until early August, when she was officially nominated for the post. She’s now on leave from the Justice Department pending confirmation.
If confirmed, Prelogar will set the administration’s legal strategy for the coming Supreme Court term, which includes major cases on abortion, gun rights, and public funding for religious schools.
New Rasmussen data reveals a dark underbelly to the Biden regime.
Peaceful protesters caught in the maelstrom of the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol are being held as “political prisoners” and are being persecuted by law enforcement, says a plurality of American voters.
The data, from a new Rasmussen poll, reveals that 49 percent of American “likely voters” either strongly or somewhat agree with the concept that the U.S. government is holding political prisoners. Forty-two percent are in disagreement, with nine percent “unsure”.
This means more people than not believe the January 6th protesters are being unjustly held by their government. Recent reports suggest some of the individuals still awaiting trial are being mistreated, under-fed, and locked in solitary confinement without rationale.
When Members of Congress visited the Department of Corrections in Washington D.C., they were locked out of the building and unable to inspect the detention facilities.
Furthermore, Rasmussen reveals that 48 percent of Americans believe the Department of Justice and FBI have “targeted, imprisoned, and persecuted non-violent American patriots,” while 46 percent disagreed with the premise.
Just 52 percent say Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election “fairly,” with 40 percent claiming the opposite, and eight percent still unsure.
The news is bound to rankle White House staffers who have been unable to rescue President Biden from polling free-falls in recent weeks.
Corruption and crime is often an unfortunate part of the political sphere. Because candidates often require a lot of money to run a campaign, there are many chances to break the law.
One of the most common is stealing campaign funds and using them for personal gain. We’ve seen many examples of this over the years, and it usually results in arrests and major charges.
That’s what one Democrat is facing in Milwaukee — 4 felony charges.
Milwaukee City Councilwoman Chantia Lewis is facing some serious allegations, which are destined to damage her career.
In addition to being a Councilwoman, she’s also running for the Wisconsin Senate. The seat she wants to claim is currently held by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.
However, Johnson may not have to worry about a challenge from Lewis, who now has bigger problems. She’s not only accused of theft and embezzlement; she’s also accused of lying about it.
This is the sort of mistake that could end any political career, especially if convicted.
And right now, the evidence appears to be stacking up against Lewis, who apparently thought she could steal campaign funds and use them however she saw fit.
From Fox News:
A Democrat running for Senate in Wisconsin has been charged with four felonies for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from her campaign and then lying about it.
Lewis is alleged to have stolen $21,000 in campaign funds, which the complaint says the council member dropped into her personal bank account and used for personal expenses.
She allegedly filed false campaign finance reports related to her campaigns for Milwaukee City Council.
These felony charges for misconduct span four years between 2016 and 2020:
This includes embezzling over $10,000, filing a false campaign report, and illegally funneling funds from her campaign account. The false reports were to hide the latter action, evidently.
The penalty is pretty steep, too.
Lewis faces up to $10,000 in fines and 3.5 years in prison for three of the charges. The embezzlement charge is far more severe, and carries a maximum fine of $25,000 and up to 10 years in prison.
However, she claims she’s innocent.
Her campaign released a statement and claimed the charges were due to “accounting errors,” and she was “innocent of any criminal wrongdoing.”
Regarding the Wisconsin Senate race, Sen. Johnson may or may not run again in 2022, but there are plenty of Democrats looking to fill the seat, so Lewis has more competition there as well.
For the time being, Lewis will have to wait and see how the legal process plays out.
If she’s innocent, she’ll have a chance to prove it in a court of law. But if she’s guilty of stealing those funds, she might not have to worry about any political race.
Instead, she’ll have to worry about staying out of prison.
Key Takeaways:
Milwaukee City Councilwoman Chantia Lewis is accused of theft, embezzlement, and lying about it.
She allegedly stole $21,000 in campaign funds, and now faces up to $25,000 in fines and 10 years in prison.
Lewis maintains her innocence, stating the charges are due to “accounting errors.”
Bureaucratic ignorance fuels the public’s institutional distrust, particularly when it comes to elections.
Polls are open in California for voters to determine whether to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, and residents are eagerly casting their ballots.
But some voters are worried that their votes will not be counted — including two women who went to vote in Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Estelle Bender, who lives in nearby West Hills, told KTLA-TV that she and others at the polling place were informed that they had already voted even though that had not.
Asked how shocked she was, the 88-year-old responded, “Very. I went to El Camino High School to vote, got there at 10:30, gave her this and she scanned it and said, ‘You voted.’ And I said, ‘No I haven’t.’ And she said, ‘This has been happening all morning.’
“The man next to me was arguing the same thing. So as I left, I did the provisional ballot.”
Bender said she “saw two women walking toward me as I left and I said, ‘Don’t be surprised if they tell you how they voted.’ And she said, ‘They’ve already done that.’”
She said she was “really angry” and suspicious that this issue was targeting Republicans.
“I asked the couple, the young women that I talked to and I said, ‘Are you by any chance Republicans?’ She said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘Well so am I.’”
Another voter, Monica Almada, told KNBC-TV that she had the same issue when she tried to cast her ballot at the Disabled American Veterans 73 Vote Center in Woodland Hills.
“My confidence is not the same as it used to be about the voting system,” she told the outlet.
There is no empirical evidence to support that this technical error is targeted toward Republicans, but this incident certainly is raising alarm bells.
In response to the KTLA report, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder released a statement.
“The voters who experienced this issue were offered and provided a provisional ballot- the failsafe option to ensure no one is turned away from voting,” it said.
If people are running into issues at their polling places, they should discuss it with the staffers there and then get in touch with their county’s registrar office.
It’s clear that situations like the one in Woodland Hills will only create more distrust in the American electoral process and could result in voters deciding to stay home.
But these incidents should not deter anyone from casting their ballots in the California recall election.
President Joe Biden has a well-documented history of racially tinged incidents, but a new book suggests that his struggles with race relations started even earlier than many realized.
According to Fox News, Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger is set to release his new book, “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power,” next week. Fox News obtained a chapter of the book before its release, and it reportedly has some pretty damming details about Biden’s past.
The book says that when Biden moved into his parents’ Faulkland, Delaware, home during his first years in the Senate, the house had a covenant banning “any Negro or person of Negro extraction” from owning or living in it.
In 1986, Biden spoke out against the restrictions. He claimed his parents had disavowed the covenant and that the deed his father signed did not include the restrictions.
However, Biden’s Senate tenure began in 1973. This means it took him 13 years to speak out against a racist covenant directly connected to a home he occupied.
If Biden is truly the advocate for minorities he claims to be, why would he not speak out against the covenant as soon as he moved into the house? That would seem to be an issue worthy of addressing immediately, not one to ignore for 13 years.
One possible explanation is Biden did not address the covenant because it was not politically convenient for him. After all, history shows Biden has used race as a political weapon multiple times.
In 2006, Biden attempted to win support for his 2008 presidential campaign by praising his home state of Delaware as a “slave state,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Clearly, Biden has no issue invoking racism if he believes it could earn him votes. The fact that his initial reaction to the challenge of winning Southern voters was to tout the history of slavery in his home state makes his feelings pretty clear.
During his political career, Biden has associated himself with notorious racists. According to Fox, he delivered a eulogy for Democratic West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, a former KKK member.
If we fast-forward to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, you might remember he said black people who wouldn’t vote for him weren’t truly black.
“I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he told podcast host Charlamagne tha God in May 2020.
Since taking office, Biden has promoted critical race theory, which essentially argues that white people are inherently racist and black people should blame them for nearly every struggle they face. Despite claims that it is meant to fight racism, the theory is racist in and of itself.
So what do all of these otherwise-unrelated incidents have in common? They prove Biden is far more concerned about himself than he is about helping minorities.
If Biden wants to appeal to southern voters, he will talk about his childhood in a “slave state.” If he wants to appease the radical left wing of his base, he will push CRT and talk about how racist white men are.
And if he wants to live in a nice house his parents gifted him, he will conveniently ignore the restrictive covenant banning black people from living there.
For Biden, it is never really about fighting for the oppressed or ending actual racism. It’s just about what benefits him at a particular time and place.
During a Monday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accusations flew from partisans on both sides of the political aisle. Democrats, hoping to defend President Joe Biden’s unpopular handling of the withdrawal, blamed the Trump administration for the catastrophe. Republicans, riding the wave of increased apprehension toward Biden after the fiasco, went on the offensive, blaming Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for their handling of the situation.
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement that “disentangling ourselves from the war in Afghanistan was never going to be easy.”
He continued: “And for my friends who presume a clean solution for the withdrawal existed, I would welcome hearing what exactly a smooth withdrawal from a messy, chaotic, 20-year war looks like. In fact, I’ve yet to hear the clean withdrawal option, because I don’t believe one exists.”
Meeks accused Biden’s critics, who have come from both major parties since the fall of Afghanistan, of “inject[ing] domestic politics into foreign policy.”
Starting a trend continued throughout the meeting by his Democratic colleagues, Meeks shifted the blame to former President Donald Trump, referencing a 2020 deal that would have fulfilled one of the president’s campaign promises to get the country out of the war.
The former president has been heavily critical of Biden’s handling of the withdrawal. In discussions of the situation, Trump has been open about the deal that he and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made with the Taliban, but has remained insistent that this deal would have been reliant on the Taliban meeting several conditions and that his administration would have handled the situation much differently.
Afterward, ranking minority party member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) spoke for Republicans in his opening statement, shifting the blame to Biden’s handling of the situation.
He began, “This did not have to happen, but the president refused to listen to his own generals and the intelligence community who warned him what would happen if we withdrew.” The outcome of the situation, he said, was essentially “an unconditional surrender to the Taliban.”
He roasted Blinken and Biden for their “betrayal” of U.S. allies in the region after promising them that they would be evacuated safely. In the wake of this betrayal, McCaul said, “a dark veil of shariah covers Afghanistan,” leaving not only longtime allies to the Taliban’s retribution but also “stripp[ing] away in a matter of weeks” all efforts to bring rights to women and girls in the country.
McCaul said, “We’re here today to better understand how this administration got it so wrong.”
Blinken Defends Biden Administration Handling
In his own opening remarks, Blinken defended the efforts of the administration and downplayed critics’ accusations.
He began by saying that the United States had two main goals in going into Afghanistan in the first place: “bringing justice to Al Qaeda” for its role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and ensuring that the country could not be used as a launching point for another such terror attack. These goals, said Blinken, were “completed long ago.”
Still, Blinken indicated that the current administration felt forced into conforming with the deal made by Trump with the Taliban. Biden had two choices when he came into office and inherited this deal, Blinken said: “ending the war or escalating it.”
Blinken then pointed to the successes of the administration during the crisis.
He said that in March, just weeks after Biden took office, the State Department was telling Americans to leave the country and offering to help them do so. At the same time, he claimed, the administration worked to speed up the processing of special immigrant visas (SIVs), a usually long and arduous process under standing law; the Trump administration, he added, had done little on this front.
Repeating an often-stated refrain, Blinken said that the rapid decay of the country’s political and military situation defied all predictions. Blinken said that “even the most pessimistic prediction” did not indicate such a quick collapse.
Later, Blinken was asked whether the Trump administration left behind information on Americans in Afghanistan or on its plans for U.S. withdrawal.
Again pushing the blame to Trump, Blinken responded curtly that the administration “inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan.”
Democrats, Republicans Hurl Accusations
During a heated part of the debate, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) accused the president of lying about the situation since it began. Wilson cited claims by the president that there would not be a collapse of the country to the Taliban, that there would not be Vietnam-like scenes of evacuation, and that there would be significant air support for fleeing Americans and Afghans, among others; about each of these, Wilson claimed, Biden lied.
In an equally-heated retort to Wilson, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) snapped at him and other Republicans, accusing them of being “selective” in their concerns about terrorists, again pointing to the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban.
In another showdown, Blinken was asked a question about a phone call from Biden to the now-former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani obtained by Reuters. In the call, Biden is alleged to have told Ghani to lie about the severity of the situation. Blinken refused to comment, neither confirming nor denying the call’s veracity.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) defended the administration’s handling of the crisis. At the height of the evacuation, Sherman said, the Kabul airport was experiencing a constant “stampede.”
“There is simply no way the administration can have an orderly or successful stampede,” Sherman ruled.
Planning, according to the American author Alan Lakein, involves “bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” If you want to buy a new house in five years, it helps to start saving today. To have a thriving economy going forward, it helps to have well-trained, highly-skilled graduates. That’s good news for China.
Last month, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), a think tank based in Washington, published a rather telling report. When it comes to the production of STEM PhD graduates, as the authors note, China is fast outpacing the United States. For the uninitiated, STEM refers to the “integrated teaching and learning” of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In other words, it involves a deep understanding of the very subjects that make our lives possible, and the very subjects that are vital for the progression of humanity. Since the “mid-2000s,” as the report notes, “China has consistently graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in STEM fields.”
The gap between China and the United States, we’re told, “will likely grow wider in the next five years.” Chinese universities, once known for rampant plagiarism and questionable teaching practices, are most definitely improving. The authors findings “suggest the quality of doctoral education in China has risen in recent years, and that much of China’s current PhD growth comes from high-quality universities.” If current enrollment patterns continue on this current trajectory, the authors project that “by 2025 Chinese universities will produce more than 77,000 STEM PhD graduates per year compared to approximately 40,000 in the United States.” With more than “three-quarters of Chinese doctoral graduates” specializing in STEM fields, China’s “robust” education system threatens to undermine the “long-term economic and national security” of the United States.
Why is this report important, and why is it a must read for the Biden administration?
From cancer detecting software to virus protection software, drone strikes to drone deliveries, space travel to air travel, modern society is inextricably linked with STEM subjects. This is not good news for the United States, where a precipitous drop in educational standards can be seen in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and elite universities. A number of American educators consider math to be inherently racist. Some people argue that math needs to confront its “white, patriarchal past.” What does this even mean? Empiricism has become the bête noire of many a leftist. Science is not racist. Although science can be carried out by racists, it’s important to make the distinction. A car can be driven by a xenophobe, but we don’t call the car xenophobic. To continue this brief exercise in stating the obvious, math is not racist. Without math, nothing is possible. More importantly, no one gets paid. Regardless of a person’s skin color, we all benefit from math. In a recent piece for Quillette, the authors—three mathematicians “who came to the United States as young immigrants”—describe the ways in which “the nationwide effort to reduce racial disparities, however well-intentioned” only serve to weaken “the connection between merit and scholastic admission.” When everything, including math and science, is viewed through the prism of race, the country suffers.
Yuli Sun, a Chinese language immersion teacher (L) checks her students’ work during a second grade class at Broadway Elementary School in Venice, California on Jan. 31, 2013. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
The trio lament “the deplorable state” of the K-12 “math education system.” A pitiful number of American public-school children, they argue, are prepared for careers in STEM. Not surprisingly, this leaves the United States all too “dependent on a constant inflow of foreign talent, especially from mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India.” As “curricula increasingly shift from actual mathematics knowledge to courses about social justice and identity politics,” expect this trend to continue.
The United States is home to a number of outstanding universities. However, it’s little use having such extraordinary establishments if they’re not being used to breed extraordinary minds. If the United States is to have any chance of competing with China, serious changes are needed, and they’re needed fast.
Sadly, the only changes we’re seeing are harmful ones. If in doubt, let me point you to Oregon. Governor Kate Brown recently signed Senate Bill 744 into law. For the next five years, all Oregonian high school students who wish to graduate will be exempt from having to demonstrate proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics to graduate. The bill, according to reports, was introduced in order to help “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” One wonders how dumbing down graduation requirements helps anyone.
Many progressive-minded educators are determined to “reimagine” the way subjects like math and science are taught in schools. But they don’t need to be “reimagined.” They need to be left alone and they need to be taught properly. The United States is currently ranked 31st in math literacy out of 79 countries. China, meanwhile, ranks 1st in mathematical proficiency. Now, with the average IQ of American children continuing to fall, and the dumbing down of education in full swing, expect the proficiency gap to widen. Without enough STEM graduates, how is the United States expected to compete with China? This is an important question that requires immediate answers.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is taking his fight against what he calls the “patently unconstitutional practice” of proxy voting in the U.S. House of Representatives to the Supreme Court.
In the early days of the pandemic in May 2020, the House approved a resolution allowing members to cast votes on the House floor by proxy on the theory that it was advisable to limit attendance in Congress to combat the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said at the time the new absentee voting protocol was needed because the virus posed a “mortal danger.” House Democratic leadership said when the policy began that it would be temporary but it is still in effect today.
This “unprecedented” proxy voting resolution permits a single member to vote on behalf of up to 10 absent members, according to the petition for certiorari, or review, from McCarthy.
“Today, we are asking the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution by overturning Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s perpetual proxy voting power grab. Although the Constitution allows Congress to write its own rules, those rules cannot violate the Constitution itself, including the requirement to actually assemble in person,” McCarthy said in a statement.
“Since its adoption 14 months ago, proxy voting has shattered 231 years of legislative precedent and shielded the majority from substantive policy debates and questions, effectively silencing the voices of millions of Americans,” he said. “It was a raw abuse of power … [and its] continuation is an insult to hard-working taxpayers who are back at work safely while members of Congress get a pass to skip work but still get paid.”
“The Founders wisely rejected proxy voting because they knew Congress cannot adequately ‘do the business’ of our chambers without deliberating, and we cannot adequately deliberate without assembling in person. The Senate has managed through the whole pandemic without proxy voting because they know, as we do, that it is unconstitutional.”
The petition in the case of McCarthy v. Pelosi, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was reportedly filed with the Supreme Court on Sept. 9 but had not yet appeared in its online docket as of press time.
The appeals court held that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause states that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they [members] shall not be questioned in any other Place,” has the effect of preventing courts from reviewing the constitutionality of proxy voting.
“That decision takes a radically broad view of the Speech or Debate Clause,” McCarthy’s petition states. “The court concluded that any acts related to voting were privileged—including here, the Clerk’s collection of proxy letters from absent Members or declarations by the Speaker and Sergeant-at-Arms that proxy voting should continue. By that logic, there would be no stopping any voting rule adopted by the House.”
Post 2020 election information has revealed that Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Wendy Sartory Link, accepted a $6.8 million dollar grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg during the 2020 elections via the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) while Facebook actively censored the campaigns of Republican candidates, including Congressional candidate Laura Loomer and Presidential candidate Donald Trump, two Republican Palm Beach County candidates and residents who are permanently banned from Facebook.
Laura Loomer and President Donald J Trump at Mar a Lago
Under Sartory Link, Palm Beach County received the largest grant from Zuckerberg in the state of Florida out of the nearly $400 million in grants he and his wife Priscilla Chan gave to Supervisor of Elections offices in Democrat leaning counties throughout the country during the election season.
Most of the election equipment on Wendy Sartory’s wish list for the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office was purchased with Zuckerberg’s grant money, and according to Wendy Sartory Link, not all of the money was spent, and she has stated her plans to use it during the 2022 elections in Florida.
However, with the recent signing of Govenror Ron DeSantis’s Florida election integrity bill, which he first announced and signed in Palm Beach County, Wendy Sartory Link is in direct violation of the new law, which has established a “prohibition on the use of private funds for election-related expenses”, The new policy was created in direct response to the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others in Big Tech provided funding to some states and cities last year to help run elections. Zuckerberg’s donations of nearly $400 million dollars for election operations during 2020 has many crying foul, with accusations of campaign finance violations and election interference. Many Republicans have accused Zuckerberg of using the funding in targeted blue areas, favoring Democrats.
The legislation states, “No agency or state or local official responsible for conducting elections, including, but not limited to, a supervisor of elections, may solicit, accept, use, or dispose of any donation in the form of money, grants, property, or personal services from an individual or a nongovernmental entity for the purpose of funding election-related expenses or voter education, voter outreach, or registration programs.”
Despite the fact that Wendy Sartory Link is prohibited from using the leftover funds from Zuckerberg’s 2020 election grant in any future Florida elections, she told Fox News in April that she plans on using leftover funds from Zuckerberg, which are now being referred to as “Zuckerbucks”, for the 2022 election in Palm Beach County.
Wendy Sartory Link told Fox News,
“Our original understanding of the grant was that it had to be used for 2020, so we didn’t spend all of the money. We are now getting permission from CTCL to complete the purchases. So, to answer your question, some of it would be for 2021, 2022, because some of that equipment, we weren’t able to get in time — whether it’s equipment or the firewall, some of the security, or IT security programs, didn’t get implemented. We knew we weren’t going to have time to get them in as it turned out for 2020. So we didn’t purchase them because we wanted to make sure we stayed within the definition of the grant, which at the time was for 2020. We have since gotten permission for those now, so they are in that process for some of the equipment and some of the IT programs.”
Along with her admission to use Zuckerbucks for the 2022 election in direct violation of Florida’s new election integrity law, Wendy Sartory Link has committed an ethics violation by accepting funds from a partisan company that actively suppressed the campaign and was involved in litigation with Laura Loomer, who ran for Congress in Florida’s 21st Congressional District, located in Palm Beach County.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link met with Laura Loomer on October 13, 2020
Loomer’s campaign made history as the first deplatformed campaign in United States history, and it was the only general election campaign banned by Facebook during the 2020 election cycle. Following Loomer’s announcement that she was running for Congress, Facebook went as far as changing their terms of service in reaction to her campaign and established a new policy that denied canddiates access to Facebook accounts if they were banned prior to running for office. As a result, Laura Loomer for Congress was the only campaign in the nation that was denied Facebook access during the 2020 election cycle.
Despite meeting with Loomer on October 13, 2020 at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office and knowing this information about Facebook censoring Loomer’s campaign, Wendy Sartory Link never disclosed her acceptance of $6.8 million in grant money from Zuckerberg nearly one month after Loomer officially won the Republican primary to be on the ballot as the official Republican nominee for Congress in a Congressional District located in Palm Beach County.
The Palm Beach County grant from Zuckerberg was received on Sept. 30, more than one month before the November general election. Loomer won the Primary on August 18th. Equipment that was used in the 2020 elections in Palm Beach County, FL was purchased with the Zuckerberg grant money, which begs the question, why did Wendy Sartory Link refrain from disclosing this information to the voters, as well as the Laura Loomer for Congress campaign that was deliberately being silenced by Facebook in an election season?
Red flags should also be raised over the large discrepancy between grants received by different counties in South Florida.
While Palm Beach County received a Zuckerberg grant for $6.8 million in 2020, Miami Dade County received $2.4 million, and Broward County received $1.4 million.
In other words, Palm Beach County received nearly double the grant money that Miami Dade and Broward counties received from Zuckerberg, combined.
Could this be because the most anti-big tech platform in the nation was radiating out of Palm Beach County, FL through the Laura Loomer for Congress campaign? It certainly has people asking the question as to how this money was spent and why the Laura Loomer For Congress campaign was never notified of the egregious conflict of interest.
Zuckerberg’s money via the CTCL was dispersed in 49 states across 2,500 jurisdictions for election administration to pay for additional polling places, ballot drop boxes, and “voter education”.
Along with failing to be transparent about Zuckerberg’s financing of the election equipment in Palm Beach County for the 2020 elections, Wendy Sartory Link has also not provided a line item forensic accounting of the money that was spent, and what it was spent on.
Following the widespread corruption in both the Broward County and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office in both 2016 and 2018, in which a recount was issued between the elections of then candidate Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum, there were widespread calls for removal of corrupt Supervisors of Elections, including Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher. In January 2019, Susan Bucher was suspended by Govenror Ron DeSantis as the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections due to her role in election chaos during the 2018 midterm recount in Florida.
“An election that happened the week after Halloween, you ended up not having the recount done until after Christmas. Palm Beach County stands alone in that level of ineptitude,” Govenror DeSantis said of Bucher.
As her replacement, Governor DeSantis appointed Wendy Sartory Link, a West Palm Beach lawyer who pledged to serve the rest of Bucher’s term, but to not run for re-election in 2020. However, Wendy Sartory Link did end up running in the 2020 election, she won, and is now serving as the elected Supervisor of Elections of Palm Beach County.
It is worth noting that Wendy Sartory Link is a registered Democrat, and Political corruption within the Supervisor of Elections office in Palm Beach County seems to be a pattern.
Ahead of the 2022 elections, Wendy Sartory Link must be required to return all of the leftover Zuckerbucks she accepted in the form of a $6.8 million grant, or be held accountable in violation of Florida’s new election laws.
The Laura Loomer For Congress campaign will also be requesting that Governor DeSantis consider investigating Wendy Sartory Link’s acceptance of the Zuckerberg grant money as well as consider a total forensic investigation and analysis of every dollar of the grant money that was spent during the 2020 election in Palm Beach County. It is highly inappropriate for the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office to be taking money from a partisan tech CEO who actively censored candidates on the ballot in Palm Beach County in 2020, and has pledged to further do so in 2022 and 2024 through measures to censor Governor DeSantis’s re-election campaign, and President Trump if he decides to run for President again.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer issued a warning on Democrats wanting to remake the Supreme Court, including expanding the institution with justices, suggesting that Republicans will exploit Democrats’ agenda.
Breyer, in a wide-ranging interview with NPR, said he will not kowtow to calls from progressive lawmakers to retire due to his age.
“I’m only going to say that I’m not going to go beyond what I previously said on the subject, and that is that I do not believe I should stay on the Supreme Court, or want to stay on the Supreme Court, until I die,” the 83-year-old justice told the partially publicly funded broadcaster. “And when exactly I should retire, or will retire, has many complex parts to it. I think I’m aware of most of them, and I am, and will consider them.”
When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last year and Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the top court, left-wing Democrat lawmakers called for the expansion, or “packing,” of the Supreme Court with several more justices. In April, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that established an investigatory body to determine whether more seats should be added to the Supreme Court or whether term limits should be established for justices.
“There is no question that Justice Breyer, for whom I have great respect, should retire at the end of this term,” Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) told news website Cheddar in April, referring to Ginsburg’s death. “My goodness, have we not learned our lesson?” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has issued similar statements.
But Breyer, who dismissed such calls earlier this year, again said that such notions haven’t had an impact on the justices.
“What goes around comes around. And if the Democrats can do it, the Republicans can do it,” Breyer told NPR while promoting his upcoming book, “The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics.”
During the interview, Breyer also said that he welcomes in-person oral arguments after the court went virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think it’s better to be there where you can actually see the lawyer and see your colleagues, and you get more of a human interaction,” he said to NPR.
“We’re not automatons. We’re human beings,” Breyer also said. “And I believe when human beings discuss things face to face … there’s a better chance of working things out. That’s true with the lawyers in oral arguments, and it’s true with the nine of us when we’re talking.”
California once was run by conservatives and mostly centrist Democrats.
True paleo-liberal governors like Pat Brown greatly expanded the welfare state. But they also believed in pushing integration and building freeways, dams, aqueducts, and power plants, while preventing forest fires, directing the mentally ill into state hospitals, and ensuring that the state enhanced the housing, timber, oil and gas, nuclear and agricultural industries.
So, why would anyone deliberately destroy that heritage?
Why allow California to have the highest aggregate basket of income, sales, property, and capital gains taxes in the nation, the highest gas and power prices in the continental United States, and nearly the worst schools and infrastructure? California also has the country’s largest populations of homeless, welfare recipients, and undocumented immigrants.
Remember that the left wing of the Democratic Party became hyper-wealthy through globalization and the tech revolution. Coastal universities such as Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, and UCLA became global nexuses of millions who flocked to California to learn business, engineering, science, math, and the professions.
University endowments were no longer measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars but in the billions.
Hollywood and professional sports now had a lucrative worldwide audience of billions.
The market capitalization of Silicon Valley was to be measured in the trillions of dollars, as the world bought iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks to do Google searches, tweet, and use Facebook. The result was the greatest concentration of wealth in such a small space in the history of civilization.
Within 40 years, California had created a new plutocracy of Eloi, whose wealth exempted them from all worries about the mundane problems of the distant and despised Morlock others.
The wealthier the long thin line from San Diego to Berkeley grew, the more the overseers felt they were nearing Utopia, at least in their own lives.
The new Democratic Party liked to redistribute money for the poor and so obeyed the orders from the rich. But they ignored old-fashioned infrastructure that once had allowed the middle class to drive quickly and safely, ensured them water during droughts, curbed their forest fires, and allowed their children to leave school competitively educated.
Reaction, not prevention, was the new mantra. Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom failed to thin out forests, build water storage, and allow affordable housing.
When those problems exploded, they reacted by citing climate change or some other bogeyman as the culprit rather than government dereliction. They preferred utopian high-speed rail solutions to pragmatic problem solving. And they ensured that none of their crackpot ideas ever affected themselves.
Why worry about affordable housing and electricity for the masses when all the right people had the means to live in the right ZIP codes without much worry about turning on the air conditioning or heat, since there were rarely any scorching days or frigid nights in coastal paradise?
Why worry about immigration when labor became even cheaper?
Why worry that California public schools had sunk near the bottom of state ranks, when there were more prestigious prep schools than ever on the coast?
And why worry about producing lumber for houses, irrigated crops for food, or oil for gasoline, when the right Californians would always have the money to import their hardwood floors, arugula, and fuel from grubby others far away who would make or grow what was needed?
Yet ideas eventually have consequences. Soon, even the left-wing paradise on the coast would be infected by the anarchy the rich had created for less important people elsewhere.
The homeless did not just camp on the streets of Fresno, but in Venice Beach and on Market Street in San Francisco.
Fires began to smoke out not just the brush of the inland foothills, but near-saintly Lake Tahoe, home to the right skiers and the chosen shore owners.
Thieves even smashed the windows of Bay Area BMWs and Volvos.
The current California recall election is a choice between Gavin Newsom, who embodies the woke, old-boy privilege of the Bay Area, and an alternative direction. Newsom is the epitome of the virtue-signaling elite who patronize the poor and drive out the despised middle class.
Gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder did not give us the current California. Indeed, he spent most of his life warning us where Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, and the rarified society of the coastal corridor was taking the state.
A careening California is heading for a colossal train wreck. Voters will have to pick between the incompetent engineer snoring at the wheel or the private passenger who rushes into cab to get the engine back on track.
Critical race theory (CRT) aims to indoctrinate students and turn them into “Red Guards,” akin to those during the Cultural Revolution in China, warned Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese-American living in northern Virginia’s Loudoun County, at a “Rally to Save Our Schools” event on Sept. 8.
She called CRT “communist race tactics” with the goal of “indoctrinating our kids, dividing Americans, and controlling Americans.”
She added that she would talk to Chinese-language media to tell Chinese-Americans not to stay silent.
“If you still want to enjoy the prosperity and the freedom of this country, now it’s your turn—join the fight,” she said.
She said that upon taking over China in 1949, the first thing the CCP did was to indoctrinate teachers with Marxist ideology so they could teach it to students. Red Guards were the “full display” of what indoctrinated children could do, she said.
The Red Guards were communist youth led by then-CCP leader Mao Zedong to persecute those identified as the CCP’s “class enemies” during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. They beat up their teachers in public and tore down temples and statues.
“They became Mao’s bulldogs,” said Van Fleet, adding that she saw a similar phenomenon in America during the “so-called summer of unrest,” referring to the riots during Black Lives Matter protests.
Xi Van Fleet (C) speaks at the “Rally to Save Our Schools” event in Lansdowne Resort and Spa, Leesburg, Va., on Sept. 8, 2021. (Facebook/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
CRT adherents believe America is systemically racist, that racial oppression exists in every institution, and that an individual is either an oppressor or oppressed based on the color of their skin.
Monica Gill, a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) teacher who teaches Advanced Placement government, said that the LCPS was indoctrinating teachers with CRT tenets to trickle down the effect onto students. Though LCPS is not explicitly telling teachers to teach CRT to students, it is “imposing this very distorted lens of race on kids,” Gill said.
“Our kids are in this cultural battle with us … And we have been asleep at the wheel, just thinking that everything in public schools is okay with the majority of teachers—they are teaching our kids the right things—and that’s not the case,” Gill added.
LCPS Public Information Officer Wayde Byard stated in an email to The Epoch Times, “As LCPS has stated, repeatedly, Critical Race Theory is not part of its student curriculum.” He didn’t comment on Gill’s assertion of the LCPS indoctrinating teachers and students.
Political Action
Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin also attended the event. He accused his opponent, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, of introducing CRT in Virginia’s schools during his administration in 2015 and that McAuliffe called concerns of CRT a “right-wing conspiracy.” The Epoch Times contacted McAuliffe’s campaign for comments and didn’t receive them by press time.
On June 30, in front of the LCPS school administration building in Ashburn, Virginia, Youngkin promised to ban CRT if elected on day one of his administration. “He will end the use of divisive critical race theory in professional development and as an approach to education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on Sept. 9.
“I will preside over the largest education budget in the history of Virginia … to reestablish expectations of excellence in the school systems across Virginia that used to be known nationally for the best place to send your kids,” said Youngkin.
“Between the available surplus, remaining one-time federal funds, and expected future revenue growth, Glenn’s plan can provide significant tax relief to address the cost of living while making a significant investment in education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
Polls have shown a close race for the next Virginia governor. A new one by WPA Intelligence conducted for the Youngkin campaign shows him leading McAuliffe for the first time at 48 percent versus 46 percent. The poll, released on Sept. 8, surveyed 734 likely Virginia voters between Aug. 30 and Sept. 2. Its margin of error is 3.6 percent.
Interview with the Antichrist is a must-see film, especially for Christians. In the movie, the Antichrist interviewee made a warning that soon he would take all lukewarm Christians to Hell, instead of being saved by God. Who is this guy? And who are the lukewarm? Could this happen in the real world, and how to prevent it? You will get an answer to these questions after watching this feature.
Director Timothy A. Chey shared he was an atheist until in his 30s. Since then, he has become very spiritual and committed to making faith-based films. Chey does not think the movies he made are merely fictional or for entertainment. “My one and only goal is to bring people true salvation in Christ in these very last days,” Chey said, “the Lord is coming sooner than we think.” And what he is most interested to illustrate is the battle of Armageddon described in the book of Revelations—the destruction of humanity by the Antichrist before God returns and how mankind would go through this great tribulation.
“I believe the Antichrist is alive right now,” Chey stated, “so it intrigued me to show a live broadcast with the Antichrist to ask him every question under the sun.” That is why, in the film, the Antichrist is peppered with stark questions including media domination, the battle between pastor John MacArthur and the California governor, the ACLU, Netflix and couch potatoes, the 9/11 terrorist attack, mass shootings, radical left movements, communist China, the evils of political correctness, pandemic lockdowns, and other mandates.
In the movie, the Antichrist mocks Pope Francis’ Interfaith Unity movement and lukewarm Christians spending more hours watching food channels than reading the Bible. Is even the Pope lukewarm? Some churchgoers may be shocked.
Lukewarm is neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm Christians are people who claim they have faith in Lord, but in the real world, are on and off. Are you lukewarm? Maybe you’re thinking, “No, I’m a devout believer of God.” That is remarkable. But wait for a minute. Is this your resolution or actual daily practice?
When the apostles worried about their clothes and bread, and when frightened by the storm, they were called “ones of little faith.” Peter denied his identity three times, even though he was the first disciple to acknowledge the Messiah.
Like water being cooked, every molecule of water in the pot is lukewarm until it boils. So lukewarm might not be name-calling, but a description of certain status or phase in the spiritual journey. And a person’s spiritual level is not static throughout one’s life; shifts in both directions are possible.
Viewer Joan Enderman agrees this movie is a wake-up call because she has found herself “slipping,” “being a Christian and sealed by the Holy Spirit does not give us immunity from sin and slipping backward.” Another viewer Christine Kenyon notes, “it now becomes harder and more of a spiritual battle because our eyes and hearts have been opened.” The movie talked about people being deceived or attached to worldly desires. For example, the lure of pornography is everywhere, from movies to TV shows, from advertisements on the street to the internet.
The Antichrist in the film is an anthropomorphized character. Through the dialogue between host Alex Carter and the Antichrist, the film conveys that the Antichrist is alive and is everywhere, as many politicians and influential figures believe more in the power of man than in God. This is exactly the spirit of the Antichrist.
Undoubtedly, communism or Marxism has been a collective representation of the Antichrist for the last hundred years. Opposing capitalism and preaching common prosperity through violence are just the political slogans of communists. But anti-God and anti-humanity are their hidden intentions.
The communist regimes have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people simply because of their spiritual beliefs. Affirmed by the China Tribunal, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has committed forced organ harvesting for years on a significant scale, “an unprecedented evil on this planet.” The reason the communists denigrate and eliminate all traditional beliefs and values is that they want humans to worship them as god or savior.
If you were thinking the Antichrist would only appear in the Western world, that might be a mistake. Revelation 14:9 reads that the worshippers of the beast will receive “the mark on his forehead or on his hand.” Think about the communist posture of raising their hands to take the oath, and then you may understand the verses better.
Likewise, Revelation 17:1-2 says, “The great whore… With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Who better to be called the great whore than the CCP that has lured the leaders on earth with money and coaxed the inhabitants of the earth with poor quality and low-priced goods?
Stressed in the movie, the Antichrist and his secular agents are most adept at creating and exploiting various forms of crisis to panic people into ceding their rights to the government and totalitarians. Hence, many people fear that America might become like a communist country.
If you are someone who wants to take your faith seriously, or is concerned about the future of America, or cares about the health and well-being of yourself and your family, I suggest you watch this film. It is available on EpochTV, a streaming platform for exclusive programming that includes investigative news analysis, in-depth interviews, and award-winning documentaries and films.
A couple of weeks before the completion of the catastrophe of the American presence in Afghanistan—or, if you believe President Joe Biden, the “extraordinary success” of the American evacuation—a Russo-British comedian named Konstantin Kisin published a brilliantly funny thread on Twitter headed: “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”
The “let me help you” megathread, as he called it, consisted of example after example of so-called “expert” opinions that have turned out to be completely wrong—beginning with the British vote for Brexit and the American vote for President Donald Trump in 2016, both of which elections the top experts at the time confidently assured us would go the other way.
Actually, Kisin’s spiel could be considered as a belated gloss on one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Brexit referendum, that of the Brexiteer and veteran government minister Michael Gove who said: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”
I think that Trump was striking the same responsive chord with Americans when he disparaged what he called “political correctness”—still ravaging the county after four years of his administration—which was also the product of that breed of experts who call themselves “intellectuals.”
If people were fed up with experts in 2016, think how much more reason they have to be so five years later! Kisin does, and he goes ruthlessly through the whole catalog of errors from Russian collusion to “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” to “toxic masculinity” and the abolition of sex in favor of the nebulous idea of “gender.”
And of course we mustn’t leave out the conflicting and often mendacious pronunciamentos of “the Science” on the coronavirus, which have culminated in the distrust, not so much of the vaccines themselves, but of “the experts’” attempts to demonize those who remain skeptical about them.
And all this was before the collapse of the Afghan government and army under the onslaught of the Taliban gave us what may be the best reason ever for thinking that we, too, have had enough of experts in this country.
“Afghanistan: the graveyard of experts,” wrote Tim Black at Spiked Online.
“US ‘experts’ who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice,” wrote Rebekah Koffler for The New York Post—though of course they won’t be. They never are. They’re the experts.
A writer on Substack named Richard Hanania compared the galaxy of American Ph.D.’s (including the now-deposed president of Afghanistan himself, Ashraf Ghani, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia) who got us into Afghanistan with the madrassa-educated Taliban and wrote that, “It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.”
Unsurprisingly, there were a great many negative comments appended to Kisin’s bonfire of the experts, most of them to the effect that, just because some people have been wrong about some things it doesn’t mean that other people are going to be wrong about other things—especially when those things include vaccines which, as there are sound scientific reasons for believing, can be life-saving.
Nor should we neglect to consider that the lives saved are not only of those who receive the vaccines but also those of the immunosuppressed and other vulnerable people who come in contact with them.
They have a point. But so has Kisin. The latter is certainly right in thinking that the experts, particularly those who write for the partisan media, have taken too little care of their own credibility in the past, instead expecting to be trusted and believed as right, just because of who they are. When they then turn out to be wrong, they have no one but themselves to blame if people don’t believe them the next time.
Some people are always going to be wrong about almost everything, but the case is altered when the people who are wrong have set themselves up in the profession of being right. These are the people we call “experts” solely because they have the recognized credentials of experts—advanced degrees from top universities or awards for their expertise from other experts—whether or not they have any real-world experience or expertise.
Their authority is what the anthropologists call “positional”—like that of the parent who answers a child’s question of why? by replying: “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m your mother.”
The experts treat us all like those children—and then they wonder why they are resented and distrusted.
They are the people who identify themselves with their beliefs to the extent that they can never admit it—and so never learn from their mistakes—when those beliefs turn out to be wrong.
That’s how you get to Biden’s calling an obvious disaster of the first water an “extraordinary success”—with no more than an occasional raised eyebrow from the compliant media.
Much publicity in the last week or so was given to a Reuters report of a conversation between Biden and Ghani in the dying days of the latter’s government, as the Taliban were closing in. What he had to worry about, said the American president to the Afghan one, was the “perception” that he was losing the war, not the fact that he actually was losing it.
All he had to do to get American help, said Biden, was change this perception, “whether it is true or not.”
I think a lot of the criticism of this extraordinary conversation was misdirected. The problem wasn’t that Biden told Ghani to lie. Lying to the enemy has a long and honorable tradition in the history of warfare.
No, the problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could lie in that situation: that he (or Ghani) could get away with spinning the enemy as he himself was used to spinning the American media—as, of course, he would go on to do again with the claim of an “extraordinary success.”
A man whose self-assurance and self-absorption is such that he believes reality can make no claim against him that he can’t pay off with the experts’ counterfeit currency of interpretive ingenuity and rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a man who can only lead his country and himself into more disasters.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.
Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.
Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.
One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.
In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.
A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.
Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.
“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.
Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.
The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.
He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”
On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”
Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.
The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.
He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.
The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.
Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”
“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.
One anonymous 4Chan user suggested Afghan refugees might vote for Democrats
Refugees fleeing the Biden-induced human rights catastrophe in Afghanistan are streaming into Washington, D.C., and flowing into the area’s hospitals amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the district’s emergency management agency has issued a stern warning about the threat of online extremism.
The District of Columbia’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency warned law enforcement officials earlier this week that “extremist rhetoric has risen online following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.” According to an intelligence assessment obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the agency assessed that “the increase in extremist rhetoric may presage targeted violence against Afghan refugees.” The evidence cited to support that assessment, however, was rather scant—just a handful of examples from “known online forums,” such as 4Chan, Free Republic, BitChute, and the official QAnon Telegram channel.
The report, dated Sept. 7, quotes an anonymous 4Chan user who responded to a series of posts about the resettlement of Afghan refugees. “Hello…don’t yall [sic] see the democratic strategy here?” the anonymous poster posted. “[The refugees] arent [sic] going to strong blue states but the key electoral swing states.” It goes on to note that the deranged North Carolina man who precipitated a standoff with law enforcement outside the U.S. Capitol Building last month had “shared frustration with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan on Facebook.”
Additional evidence includes “open-source comments” on Free Republic containing “implied threats” against President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and a post suggesting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) wants to bring in “200,000 [evacuees], that is 4000 new terrorists…per state.” The assessment also cites two comments from “identified” BitChute users who referenced “replacement theory” and “white genocide” in response to posts about refugee resettlement, and another from the QAnon Telegram channel describing the resettlement of Afghan refugees as “an enemy invasion.”
There are a couple posts that could realistically be defined as vague threats against refugees, such as one from a QAnon Telegram user who urged Americans to “Arm yourself!…citizens should storm the airports and blow up the runways.”
The report did not elaborate as to whether any (or all) of the posts were written by law enforcement agents and informants, nor did it discuss the amount of taxpayer dollars and government manpower the agency devotes to perusing online forums.
The Taliban on Sept. 8 announced a ban on all slogans, demonstrations, and protests that don’t have official approval in yet another signal that the Islamic terrorist group is taking a hardline and repressive approach to government.
A decree was issued on Sept. 8 by the head of the Taliban’s new interior ministry, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is a member of the Haqqani network that has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. The department also has a $10 million bounty on Haqqani’s head, while the United Nations has Haqqani on a sanctions list.
Haqqani’s decree said that protesters without the Taliban’s permission to stage demonstrations in a stated time and location will face “severe legal consequences.”
Approval must also be given for any slogans that might be used during the protest.
The decree also accused Afghans protesting in Kabul and other provinces in recent days of “disrupting security, harassing people, and disrupting normal life,” telling citizens that “no one should protest and cause concern to the citizens” without permission from the Ministry of Justice.
It claimed, “The Islamic Emirate addresses the legitimate demands and rights of all citizens and must be given time to take the necessary steps to address other issues once security is restored.”
The announcement comes amid multiple protests in the country between Taliban fighters and demonstrators—including one protest led by local women in Kabul.
On Sept. 7, members of the terrorist group were seen firing shots into the air in an effort to disperse a large protest being held outside the Pakistan embassy in Kabul, while several reporters were arrested as they attempted to document the demonstration, according to reports.
Thousands of Afghan men and women took to the streets to protest against the Taliban and what they characterized as Pakistani intelligence’s interference in the affairs of the Middle Eastern nation and for allegedly being the guiding hand behind the Taliban’s return to power.
Demonstrators allege that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supported the Taliban’s latest offensive that routed resistance fighters in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul—the last area where anti-Taliban resistance fighters have held out against the terrorist group. Islamabad denies this.
Some of the protestors carried signs reading “ISI stay away.” Others shouted slogans such as “Azadi [freedom or liberty]” and “Death to Pakistan.”
On Sept. 7, the Taliban announced its new government for Afghanistan, challenging claims to rightful government by former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who says he is the “legitimate caretaker president,” according to the country’s constitution adopted in 2004. The Taliban’s cabinet notably doesn’t include any women or non-Taliban figures, despite the militant group vowing to form an “inclusive government” as part of the Doha Agreement.
The group named Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund as the country’s interim prime minister and co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as second in command, while Mullah Yaqoob will be the defense minister.
The international community has expressed concern over the lack of diversity within the Taliban’s so-called government, with the United States previously stating it wouldn’t recognize a Taliban-led government if it wasn’t inclusive.
“We note the announced list of names consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates and no women. We also are concerned by the affiliations and track records of some of the individuals,” a spokesperson for the State Department said in a statement following the Sept. 7 announcement.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s deputy leader and negotiator, and other delegation members attend the Afghan peace conference in Moscow, on March 18, 2021. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool via Reuters)
“We understand that the Taliban has presented this as a caretaker cabinet. However, we will judge the Taliban by its actions, not words.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson echoed U.S. concerns over the Taliban’s proposed government and the distinct lack of diversity.
“We would want to see, in any situation, a diverse group in leadership which seeks to address the pledges that the Taliban themselves have set out, and that’s not what we have seen,” a spokesman for Johnson said. “We will continue to judge the Taliban on their actions.”
EU spokesperson Peter Stano said the new government “does not look like the inclusive and representative formation in terms of the rich ethnic and religious diversity of Afghanistan we hoped to see and that the Taliban were promising over the past weeks,” in a statement to media outlets.
Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the exclusion of groups outside the Taliban, coupled with the violence perpetrated by Taliban terrorists against protesters and journalists in Kabul “are not signals that give cause for optimism.”
“It must be clear to the Taliban that international isolation is not in its interests, and especially not in those of Afghanistan’s people,” Maas said.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday returned to her home state of California to campaign for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall election in the country’s most populous state.
Harris appeared with Newsom in San Leandro and urged voters to vote against the recall effort. The area is not far from Oakland, where Harris was born.
Prior to her appointment as vice president, Harris was a U.S. senator representing California. Before that, she served as the state’s attorney general for six years.
She sought to portray the election as one where Democrat and Republican priorities clash, while echoing Newsom’s campaign message that the impact of the recall will not be limited to just California.
“What’s happening in Texas, what’s happening in Georgia, what’s happening around our country with these policies that are about attacking women’s rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, worker’s rights,” Harris, a Democrat, told a crowd of about 200 volunteers and labor union members in San Leandro, just six days ahead of the gubernatorial recall election day on Sept. 14.
“They think if they can win in California they can do this anywhere. Well, we will show them you are not going to get this done. Not here, ever.”
“California, let us send a message to the world that these are the things we stand for, these are the things we fight for, and we will not give up,” she added.
In her speech of just over 10 minutes, Harris praised the incumbent governor for his handling of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.
She said that Newsom, who won in a landslide in 2018, “led with courage” during the pandemic’s early days by issuing a statewide stay-at-home order in March 2020 ahead of other states to limit the CCP virus’s spread, reported The Sacramento Bee.
Harris also mentioned Newsom’s time as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, when he issued same-sex marriage licenses at a time when same-sex unions were not recognised as marriage in any state, saying that he “has had the courage to believe in and know what is possible,” according to KGO.
The vice president praised Newsom’s stance on abortion access, saying that those who oppose him “wouldn’t be trying to recall him but for the fact that he has always stood for reproductive rights.”
At the same time, Harris criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his comments earlier this week on a Texas law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
Abbott was asked why the law didn’t make exceptions for cases of rape and incest, to which he responded that the state “will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”
Harris accused Abbott of having “arrogantly dismissed concerns about rape survivors.” She attempted to draw a distinction between Abbott and Newsom, asserting that “to speak those words that were empty words, that were false words, that were fueled with not only arrogance but bravado—that is not who we want in our leaders. We want in our leaders someone like Gavin Newsom who always speaks the truth.”
Outside the outdoor venue, more than a dozen protesters loudly chanted “Free, free Afghanistan!” and “No deals for the Taliban,” reported the New York Post. Others held signs to push for Newsom’s recall, and to support Larry Elder, the leading Republican challenger in the recall election.
Elder is among 46 candidates seeking to replace Newsom if the governor is removed via the recall effort. The recall election will ask voters to decide whether Newsom should be recalled, and if so, who should replace him.
The recall election was made possible after a petition drive by a group called the Patriot Coalition. A total of 1,719,900 verified signatures in favor were gathered, which met the threshold needed to trigger the election.
Those seeking to oust Newsom from office are unhappy with a slew of issues and policies in the state, including Newsom’s handing the CCP virus pandemic. Business owners and parents have expressed disapproval over prolonged restrictions on businesses and shutdowns on in-person schooling. Others had been frustrated with mask and vaccination mandates, which Newsom has returned to embracing amid the spread of the more contagious Delta variant. Some also cite the time when Newsom attended a gathering at a Michelin-starred restaurant while telling Californians to stay home in late 2020.
Elder and other leading Republican candidates all say they would undo mask and vaccine mandates in favor of recommendations for communities to self-implement.
Residents have also expressed disapproval over Newsom’s handling of the economy. The state has some of the highest taxes in the nation and a homelessness problem that is spiraling out of control.
On June 23, an investigative report by CapRadio showed that Newsom had misled the public about his wildfire prevention efforts. The report concluded that Newsom had overstated by 690 percent the number of acres treated with firebreaks and prescribed burns. Newsom said fire prevention work was conducted on 90,000 acres, but the state’s own figures say the number was 11,399, according to the report.
Other prominent Democrats have also thrown their support behind Newsom against the recall, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) having campaigned with Newsom last weekend.
Former President Barack Obama released an ad on Wednesday that focused on Newsom’s actions amid the CCP virus pandemic. It urged residents to vote “no” on what it said was a partisan recall effort.
“Governor Newsom has spent the last year and a half protecting California communities. Now Republicans are trying to recall him from office and overturn common sense COVID safety measures for healthcare workers and school staff,” Obama said in the video.
An Emerson College poll in March found that 58 percent of Democrat and 55 percent of Independent voters would “be open to another Democratic candidate besides Newsom.”
President Joe Biden is also expected to campaign for the governor in California before the election.
Meanwhile, billionaire donor George Soros has given $1 million to a group called “Stop the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom.”
This is the second recall election in California’s history. The first recall election was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, was replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a Republican.
Ivan Pentchoukov and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.
Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.
Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.
One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.
In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.
A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.
Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.
“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.
Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.
The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.
He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”
On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”
Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.
The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.
He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.
The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.
Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”
“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.
Election fraud is re-emerging as a hot button issue after a member of the Compton City Council in California was charged with conspiring to rig votes to secure his own victory.
The Los Angeles Times reported that 34-year-old councilman Isaac Galvan, a Democrat, was arrested Friday on election fraud and bribery charges.
According to the report, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said a criminal complaint had been filed alleging that Galvan conspired with Jace Dawson, one of his opponents for the council seat in the April primary, to “direct voters from outside the council district to cast ballots for Galvan in a June runoff.”
Considering the narrow margin between Galvan and runner-up Andre Spicer, the conspiracy would have been decisive.
The Times reported that he defeated Spicer by one vote, 855-854.
It’s easy to see how any fraudulent practice could sway the results when the numbers are that close, right?
But Galvan’s narrow “victory” appears to only be an illusion, one that led to his arrest and the arrests of five others, including Dawson.
The report said that at least three “improper ballots” counted during the runoff election swayed the outcome in Galvan’s favor.
The district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation arrested Galvan and Dawson on Friday and charged four others — Kimberly Chaouch, Toni Morris, Barry Reed and Reginald Streeter — with two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, it said in a news release.
Morris, Reed, Chaouch and Streeter are accused of voting in the City Council elections despite living outside the district.
In court, both Galvin and Dawson pleaded not guilty and were released on their own recognizance, according to the Times.
They are set to reappear in court on Sept. 17.
The other four defendants were not arrested.
Though this is only a small-scale example of what can happen in America’s elections, it negates the claim that election fraud is a myth.
Since November, we’ve heard plenty of allegations of election fraud, including claims about several swing states in the presidential election and the January Georgia senatorial runoff vote that tipped the U.S. Senate blue (thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote).
Though there is no indisputable proof of widespread, decisive fraud in either of those races, it’s important to consider the possibility and hear the evidence.
In Galvan’s case, an “insignificant” three bogus votes made him the “victor” of his race, according to authorities.
“Elections are the cornerstone of our democratic nation. We must do everything in our power to protect the integrity of the electorate process and to ensure that elections are free and fair,” LA County District Attorney George Gascón said, according to the Times.Do you believe election fraud is a real threat?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.
Galvan now faces one charge of conspiracy to commit election fraud and another of bribery for allegedly trying “to bribe an employee of the registrar’s office with concert tickets” when both the employee and an election observer reported the incident.
The county’s top elections official, Dean Logan, said the arrests show that residents can trust in elections despite a plethora of questions surrounding the November presidential vote.
“[O]ur referral and the District Attorney’s subsequent investigation and charges demonstrate that attempts to perpetrate fraud on the voting process are trackable and will be prosecuted,” Logan said, according to the Times.
But perhaps knowing incidents like Galvan’s can occur anywhere isn’t too reassuring.
A Democrat running for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin is facing five felony charges after an investigation into her campaign finances.
Milwaukee Alderwoman Chantia Lewis, who announced her candidacy for Senate on July 21, was formally charged on Tuesday with embezzlement, theft by fraud, misconduct in public office and two campaign finance crimes (intentionally filing a false report and intentionally accepting unlawful disbursement), WTMJ-TV reported.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Lewis alleging that she had improperly taken over $20,000 from her campaign finances and city reimbursements for her personal use between April 2016 and June 2020, the outlet reported.
Milwaukee Alderwoman and U.S. Senate candidate Chantia Lewis charged with 4 felonies and 1 misdemeanor for campaign finance violations and misconduct in office. Here’s what prosecutors allege in the criminal complaint: pic.twitter.com/Cy1bg0zUqW
The complaint alleges that the alderwoman used the money to fund at least 13 different business and personal trips to several cities, including three trips to Las Vegas, before falsely requesting reimbursements through her campaign, known as “double-dipping,” according to WTMJ.
Lewis allegedly also deposited campaign donation checks into her personal account, after which the money was used to pay rent, car repairs and other bills, totaling over $16,000, the report said.
The complaint also flagged 22 ATM transactions that were never reported, totaling over $5,500.
“All of these behaviors were in excess of her authority and were done without consent,” the complaint concluded, adding that she had done these actions in “violation of trust” of the public.
JUST IN: Milwaukee Alderwoman and US Senate candidate Chantia Lewis faces felony charges for campaign finance violations. She’s accused of fraudulent reimbursements and using campaign funds for personal expenses. pic.twitter.com/FlPMoqQq9b
Following the charges, Milwaukee Common Council President Cavalier Johnson immediately removed Lewis from all of her committee assignments.
“Make no mistake that our judicial system presumes that every individual is considered innocent until proven guilty in court,” Johnson said in a news release. “However, until this matter is resolved, I am moving without hesitation to protect the institution of the Milwaukee Common Council, as well as the City of Milwaukee.”
Lewis released a statement to WTMJ saying she recently had been alerted to “potential campaign reporting errors” and “accounting errors.” However, she said, “[M]ake no mistake, I am innocent of any criminal wrongdoing.”
“As a public servant, faith leader, and 9/11 veteran who has served my country with pride, I have served, and will continue to serve, in elected office with transparency, integrity, and honor,” the statement read.
The Democrat said her campaign was mostly self-funded since she was a first-time candidate and that she and her team did their “very best” to run a positive campaign.
“I am confident that once this is over, I will be absolved,” Lewis said, adding that she would continue to focus on “every working-class person” in Milwaukee.
Chantia Lewis, Milwaukee Alderwoman and US Senate candidate, faces 5 criminal charges for embezzlement and misusing campaign finances, totaling over $21,000.
“We totally disagree with the position and conclusions the DA’s Office has come to as it relates to Ald. Lewis’ intent,” Lewis’ lawyer, Jason Luczak, told WTMJ. “There is strong evidence that she had no criminal intent which is necessary whenever you charge a crime like this.”
As Democrats ramped up efforts to shore up California Governor Gavin Newsom against a recall vote, an angry activist in a gorilla mask threw an egg at his Republican challenger Larry Elder and attacked his entourage.
Elder was visiting the Los Angeles neighborhood of Venice on Wednesday when an activist wearing a gorilla mask threw an egg, barely missing his head, and then punched a member of his entourage.
Breaking: A flying egg narrowly missed the back of recall candidate @larryelder‘s head after it was thrown by an activist wearing a gorilla mask in Venice. A scuffle broke out and the candidate was escorted into an SUV.Here’s the raw (pun intended)CW: f-bombs@SpecNews1SoCalpic.twitter.com/FeFx3wnuSD— Kate Cagle (@KateCagle) September 8, 2021
The black radio talk-show host has emerged as the most popular Republican candidate to replace Newsom if the motion to recall the governor passes in the September 14 vote. Mail-in ballots have been sent to the entire state and early in-person voting is already underway.
Democrats, who dominate California politics, have been so alarmed at the possibility of losing the governorship that they sent Vice President Kamala Harris back to her home state to campaign for Newsom. President Joe Biden is expected to do so later this week as well.
VP Harris says the California recall election if an effort by Republicans to attack rights in states across the country: “They think if they can win in California, they can do this anywhere. Well, we will show them — you’re not going to get this done. Not here, never.” pic.twitter.com/uasQHA5qBH— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 8, 2021
Elder has faced scathing criticism in mainstream media ahead of the vote. A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times went as far as accusing him of being “the black face of white supremacy,” ostensibly because he espoused conservative views. For instance, Elder was faulted for rejecting the notion that police are permeated by “systemic racism” and calling such thinking a “phony narrative.”
FREEZE FRAME: White rage-filled Democrat and @GavinNewsom supporter aims projectile directly at @larryelder‘s head. Media, here is the systemic hatred and racism in politics you have been looking for: pic.twitter.com/qQmsXXCS01— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 8, 2021
According to the video of the attack recorded by a local media outlet, the bicycle-riding woman in the gorilla mask punched and swore at a member of Elder’s entourage who was trying to keep her away. Another activist yelled at reporters that Elder “doesn’t even like his own people,” referring to African Americans.
While Newsom has been scrambling to enlist the help of big names to rally for him as the recall vote draws near, on Wednesday the LA Times seemed to be doing a victory dance, pointing at the number of mail-in ballots that have arrived so far.
With 6.6 million ballots submitted so far, Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one, according to Political Data Inc, which attributed the surge to $36 million the Democrats and their allies spent on advertising in August – triple the amount spent by pro-recall advocates.
When President Barack Obama struck a deal with the Taliban in 2014 to free several high-ranking terrorists being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, his defenders argued their release would do little to harm U.S. national security. Now, four of those terrorists are serving in senior roles in Afghanistan’s newly formed Taliban government.
The Obama-era deal’s prominent defenders include officials now serving in senior posts in the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House press secretary Jen Psaki. They claimed there was no indication these terrorists, known as the Taliban Five, would return to the battlefield, let alone rise to senior leadership positions in the Taliban government following the United States’ much-criticized evacuation from Afghanistan. The prisoners were swapped for Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was later charged with desertion.
Blinken, who was then serving as deputy national security adviser, told NBC that “any threat they would pose to the United States [and] to Americans has been sufficiently mitigated.” Blinken also claimed the terrorists would be “very carefully monitored” by Qatar, which helped facilitate the trade and provided safe haven to the five detainees after their release. “There will be restrictions on their travel, on their activities,” Blinken said.
Jen Psaki, who served as the State Department spokeswoman at the time of the deal, hailed it as a signature achievement by the Obama administration. “Was it worth it? Absolutely,” Psaki said in 2015.
Biden himself, who was vice president at the time, also celebrated Berghdahl’s release on Twitter.
The ascension of these former prisoners is a sign the Taliban has no interest in moderating its behavior since the United States fled Afghanistan and allowed it to reclaim control of the war-torn country. With Americans and vulnerable Afghans still stranded in the country, these prisoners-turned-leaders could play a central part in the Taliban’s efforts to arrest, detain, and kill those they accuse of aiding America during its 20-year presence in Afghanistan.
After Kabul fell to the Taliban last month, the former prisoners flew to Afghanistan to join the new government.
Former detainee Khairullah Khairkhwa is now the acting minister for information and culture, according to national security expert and Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Thomas Joscelyn. Norullah Noori now serves as acting minister of borders and tribal affairs, while Abdul Haq Wasiq is the acting director of intelligence and Mohammad Fazl is the deputy defense minister.
Haq Wasiq was a senior intelligence official for the Taliban prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and worked with al Qaeda as it plotted the strike that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
Fazl was the Taliban’s deputy defense minister in 2001 and now resumes that role. He also worked with al Qaeda and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant.
Before he was arrested, Khairkhwa inked an agreement with Iran to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan post-9/11.
An estimated 27,000 mail-in ballots in Georgia were returned as undeliverable by the post office during the 2020 election, according to a research brief by a good-government group. The number is more than double the margin of victory—12,000 votes—by which President Joe Biden won the state.
The new report from the Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) raises questions about the efficacy of voting-by-mail policies that were hurriedly adopted across the nation in the early days of the pandemic last year, purportedly to arrest the spread of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19.
PILF describes itself as “the nation’s only public interest law firm dedicated wholly to election integrity,” existing “to assist states and others to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections.”
“Now you see why Georgia lawmakers passed mail ballot integrity laws,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement, referring to the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law March 25 over vocal opposition by Democrats.
The Biden administration is challenging the Georgia electoral reforms, including the state’s new voter identification requirements, in the courts. If the administration is successful, “the problems experienced in 2020 can only get worse if the current volume of absentee ballots holds in future contests,” the brief stated.
“You can’t ‘vote from home’ with confidence when you learn how many mail ballots failed. The fact that the Biden Justice Department is committed to interrupting Georgia’s integrity law demonstrates the level to which Washington bureaucrats will sink to preserve system weaknesses.”
In official 2020 results for Georgia, Biden received 2,473,633 votes, besting Trump’s 2,461,854 votes by a margin of 11,779, according to Ballotpedia. The figures provided a dramatic contrast with the official 2016 results for the state in which Trump garnered 2,089,104 votes, compared to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 1,877,963, for a margin of victory of 211,141.
In the 2020 election, 1.7 million ballots were mailed to voters and 27,287 mail-in ballots were returned as undeliverable, which is more than double Biden’s margin of victory. At the same time, 4,804 ballot returned by voters were rejected by election officials, and 217,677 ballots were classified as “unknown,” meaning election officials don’t know what happened to them.
In the 2016 election, 236,925 ballots were mailed to voters and 1,622 of those ballots were returned as undeliverable. At the same time, 13,677 ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials, and 21,976 were placed in the “unknown” category.
When the U.S. Election Assistance Commission gathers election data, it asks local officials how many ballots were not returned as voted, were returned as undeliverable, or were otherwise “unable to be tracked,” according to the PILF brief.
The U.S. Postal Service Inspector General previously reported that only 13 percent of mail ballots in the 2018 general election took advantage of the official tracking system.
“This means [there is] a wide variety of things that can happen to a ballot in the ‘unknown’ column,” the brief stated.
“A ballot can be misdelivered. It can be thrown out with your unpaid bills. It can be left on the floor of apartment mail rooms (like seen in Nevada in 2020). Election officials simply do not know what happened.
“Unknown ballots are one of the greatest weaknesses in the American electoral system. The unknown ballots that fail to reach their intended destinations are naturally susceptible to mischief if voter identification safeguards are not present.”
In the chaotic November 2020 general election, almost 15 million mail-in ballots went unaccounted for nationwide according to PILF, as The Epoch Times reported last month.
“These figures detail how the 2020 push to mail voting needs to be a one-year experiment,” Adams told The Epoch Times last month.
Bills pending in Congress such as the proposed “For The People Act,” “risk inflating these numbers even further, pushing our election system toward error, disenfranchisement, and ultimately widespread doubt about election outcomes,” Adams said.
“Some of the counties with the least experience in administering mail voting rejected the most ballots nationwide. If continued, 2020-style chaos will become the norm.”
Sirajuddin Haqqani has $5 million bounty for killing a U.S. citizen in 2008
A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday announced the appointment of a terrorist on the FBI’s most-wanted list to a cabinet-level position in its new government.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is a senior leader in the al Qaeda-aligned Haqqani network of terror groups, will serve in the Taliban’s government as minister of the interior. He is wanted by federal authorities for his involvement in a 2008 bombing in Kabul that killed Thor Hesla, a U.S. citizen. The State Department is offering up to $5 million for information leading to Haqqani’s arrest.
Haqqani authored an op-ed in the New York Times in February 2020, which expressed the demands of the Taliban ahead of talks with U.S. officials in Qatar.
The Taliban leader said his organization would work to protect human rights for all Afghans and work toward “mutual respect” with foreign powers. The claims run counter to reports of atrocities the Taliban have committed against Afghans, many of whom assisted the United States during its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Haqqani’s op-ed ran four months before a now-infamous New York Times editorial by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that argued federal forces should be deployed to quell violence and restore order in America’s cities during the summer’s riots. Whereas some employees said Cotton’s views put black journalists at the newspaper “in danger,” no Times employees said publishing a known terrorist’s words in their opinion pages put any subgroup of U.S. citizens at risk.
United Nations-sanctioned terrorist Mohammad Hasan Akhund will lead the newly installed Taliban government. A 2020 report from the United Nations Security Council said the Taliban’s senior council of 20 members—including Akhund—maintained close ties with al Qaeda during negotiations with the West.
Both pieces of legislation are packed with new environmental programs. For example, the IIJ would direct millions towards research and development of low-emission school buses and ferries and millions more towards expanding electric car charging locations.
After the Senate’s passage of the legislation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a press conference that the IIJ had some good provisions for addressing climate change, but that it didn’t go far enough.
Sanders’ budget resolution would indeed do much more. In total, the proposal would devote a total of $265 billion toward what Sanders called an “extremely aggressive [transformation] away from fossil fuels in the U.S.”
Sanders also proposed that with the funding in the proposal Democrats would create a “Civilian Climate Corps,” which he said would give young people the opportunity “to get decent pay and to roll up their sleeves … in order to combat climate change.” Sanders implied that this “Climate Corps” would help in the “extremely aggressive” transformation away from fossil fuels, but he did not elaborate on the way that the group would help achieve that.
Initially, Pelosi planned on bringing both pieces of legislation through the House for a vote at the same time as part of what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called a “two-track approach.”
This approach has met with far more challenges than Democrat leadership originally expected. While the IIJ, passed by all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans in the Senate, has faced comparatively few challenges, this expansive budget resolution has proved far more controversial.
Throughout the August recess, the White House and Democrat House leaders were in drawn-out negotiations with a group of moderates who threatened to derail the process. They refused to vote for the budget resolution before passing the infrastructure bill, recoiling at the thought of making what they saw as a “bipartisan victory for our nation” linked to the much more partisan budget. Pelosi originally brushed off these efforts as “amateur.”
The moderates refused to relent, however, and Pelosi was forced to make an eleventh-hour deal with the moderates the morning of the House vote to advance the resolution. This deal satiated the moderates, who voted unanimously with their party to advance the resolution on the evening of Aug. 24.
But trials are not over for President Biden nor congressional leadership. Because of the deal that Pelosi made with the moderates, House Democrats now need to work at a breakneck, unheard of speed to draft legislation before Sept. 27, when Pelosi promised a vote on the IIJ. Moderates in the House still pose a challenge, as they likely will not vote for the resolution before the IIJ is passed.
Beyond this, the quickly-crafted bill must satisfy moderate members of the Senate. This will be difficult, as both Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have emphatically rejected the huge spending package.
So Democrats are turning to a new excuse to get these new moderate holdouts on board: Hurricane Ida.
Chuck Schumer said in a press conference: “Global warming is upon us, and it’s going to get worse, and worse, and worse unless we do something about it. That’s why it’s so imperative to pass the two bills.”
On Twitter, President Biden expressed the same sentiment. Biden wrote: “The past few days of Hurricane Ida, wildfires in the West, and unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey are another reminder that the climate crisis is here. We need to be better prepared. That’s why I’m urging Congress to act and pass my Build Back Better plan.”
Tuesday morning, President Biden met briefly with reporters outside the south portico of the White House on his way for a visit to New York and New Jersey.
When asked what he hopes to see on the trip, Biden said, “I’m hoping to see the things we’re going to be able to fix permanently with the bill that we have for infrastructure.”
Asked how he’s going to convince hesitant Democrats to vote for his broad policy agenda, Biden expressed optimism that both bills would pass, saying, “The sun is going to come out tomorrow.”
In spite of the president’s optimism, the challenges facing his party in Congress are great. Over the next month, Democrats will need to draft the spending and tax bill, deal with a brewing battle with Republicans over the debt ceiling, and get moderate holdouts on board. This last will be the most difficult challenge, as Manchin and Sinema have expressed opposition to the price of the bill rather than its contents. On the other hand, progressives are unlikely to support any lower than $3.5 trillion—Sanders’ original proposal was a veritable progressive wishlist, with almost $6 trillion in spending; for these progressives, accepting the lower limits of the final cut of the resolution was already a significant compromise.
It is unclear whether Manchin and Sinema will be swayed by these efforts to link the budget resolution to the ongoing disaster in the gulf coast states, but because of their expressed opposition to the price tag, the effort is unlikely to be successful.
Rather, it is likely that moderates in both chambers will join with Republicans to call for a pause on the spending bill in order to craft hurricane relief legislation. For many, especially in affected areas, immediate relief will likely seem far more pressing than efforts at long-term prevention.
Some of us are old enough to recall a time when freedom of speech was regarded as essential to the maintenance of a functional democracy.
In democratic nations like Canada and the United States, we once understood that in contests of cultural or political will, all citizens, especially candidates for political office and other leadership positions, should be permitted to have their say and test their ideas against the arguments of others.
Throughout our national history, government censorship was generally limited to preventing the disclosure of sensitive military secrets or forbidding the publication of pornographic material that violated customary moral standards and had no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
In schools, universities, and public forums, we once sought to examine all sides of civic issues. We regarded it as unfair and counter-productive to collude with some in order to exclude the opinion of others.
As free citizens, we were at liberty to form judgements regardless of the dictates of the conventional wisdom. We actually valued debate and taught the art of debating in our schools.
The Temptation to Censor
Today, the disposition toward freedom of expression appears to have been reversed. Pornography is ubiquitous and readily available to anyone of any age with access to a computer or cellphone.
On the other hand, advocates of free speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom are generally relegated to the margins civil discourse. This is especially true when speakers are regarded to be on the conservative side of the political spectrum.
In Canada, the state-funded media agency sets the tone for almost all network news and opinion programming, while cosmopolitan newspapers dominate the print media, and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook act as surrogate censors for progressive policymakers.
Canada’s prestige media often depicts the very idea of free speech and full truth-telling as tenants of the extreme-right. News outlets inclined to take conservative editorial positions are portrayed as unworthy of attention and frequently denied access to public figures or important political events.
More than ever, Canada’s prestige media flies on a single wing. Opinions on the right have been jettisoned. Balance is no longer required. The craft is kept aloft by a powerful re-centred cultural engine fuelled by plenty of public money, government regulatory advantage, and a proclivity for censorship.
Free Debate and the Election Campaign
In our present cultural straitjacket there was never much hope that freedom of speech and the spirit of open-ended debate would regain traction in the 2021 federal election.
Last week, TVA, a media group that boasts of having the capacity to reach every household in the country, broadcast the first French-language leaders’ debate of the campaign. TVA’s designated “main party” leaders were Justin Trudeau (Liberal), Erin O’Toole (Conservative), Jagmeet Singh (NDP), and Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois, a party that fields federal candidates only in one province.
Almost all of the debate revolved around the ever-increasing role of government in the lives of ordinary Canadians.
The first half of the event was dominated by talk of government policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Other matters raised throughout the evening, like government childcare, medical assistance in dying, gun control, and climate change, framed the discourse almost entirely around progressive talking points.
Trudeau presented himself as the nation’s vaccine champion, pushing mandatory shots for public servants and the travelling public.
As Canadians pour into city streets in opposition to mandatory vaccination passports and lockdowns, O’Toole parried with an alternative “federal government plan” for rapid testing of Canadian travellers.
Regarding the longstanding debate over re-introducing for-profit medical services in Canada, Trudeau pointed accusingly at O’Toole’s past support for private care options. When Trudeau pressed O’Toole to say whether or not he favoured introducing a so-called “two-tiered” system into the country, the Conservative leader declined to take up the debate or give a direct answer. Mr. O’Toole could only say that he wanted to see more private “innovation” in health care, but supports the system we have.
With regard to the left’s signature issue, climate change, it was business as usual. The imagined environmental horrors connected with Harper-era oil and gas development were invoked against present Conservative proposals to modestly roll back carbon emission regulations. At the same time, Singh, the socialist New Democratic Party leader, noted that over recent years Canada has had the worst results on emissions of all G7 countries and even accused the country’s climate warrior-in-chief, Justin Trudeau, of not delivering on his environmental promises.
No one on the debate stage dared to challenge the orthodox progressive assertion that “climate change” is the most critical issue of our times.
Silenced by Omission
At the outset of the 2021 campaign, the Leaders Debates Commission selected five parties to participate in the official election debates. Unsurprisingly, they were the Trudeau Liberals, O’Toole Conservatives, Singh New Democrats, Paul Greens, and Blanchet Bloc Québécois.
The most notable candidate to be left out was former Harper government cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. Bernier’s more recently formed People’s Party of Canada is a committed coalition of former Harper conservatives, libertarians, and populists who describe their founding principles as “Freedom, Responsibility, Fairness, and Respect.”
Reviewing the PPC platform, one is struck by elements which have deep roots in classical liberal traditions as well as populist elements similar to the American MAGA movement. The PPC takes clear and unequivocal positions on controversial issues like freedom of speech, immigration, trade, supply management, and national health care.
Bernier himself is a trained economist in the tradition of Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, and Friedrich Hayek. Like them, he believes that the prosperity of society is driven by creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which are possible only in a society with free markets and limited government.
Open-minded citizens seeking to cast an informed vote might be well-served by debates that include Bernier’s point of view. But according to the rules of the Leaders Debates Commission, at the outset of the campaign the PPC fell short of a 4 percent threshold of public polling required to qualify for a place on the stage.
In mid-campaign, the PPC is actually polling above 4 percent and ahead of the Green Party. But for Canada’s Woke Laurentian establishment, “rules are rules”—especially when they support the silencing of an articulate political opponent.
These days, one is inclined to conclude that a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which supposedly guarantees “freedom of expression,” is worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on.
Liberal partisans hold at least 40 percent of ‘independent’ slots on body that will redraw Michigan’s political map
A self-described “independent” commissioner tasked with redrawing Michigan’s political districts donated to left-wing causes and spoke at a local “progressive Democratic” group’s general meeting.
Attorney Rebecca Szetela, who applied in Oct. 2019 to serve on the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission as an independent, has contributed at least $225 to EMILY’s List, a powerful pro-abortion group that spends millions of dollars to elect Democratic candidates. Szetela also contributed to liberal candidates and causes at the state level, including multiple donations to the Southwestern Wayne Democratic Club and one to former Washington governor Christine Gregoire (D.).
Szetela in May also addressed the Progressive Democratic Women’s Caucus of Muskegon County, a group that works to “ensure that Progressive Democrats are elected to county, state, and federal offices in the upcoming elections.” While Szetela stated on her application that she does not “affiliate with either the Republican or Democratic Party,” she declined to answer a follow-up question asking “why you don’t affiliate with either” party.
Independents are supposed to serve the largest single bloc on Michigan’s redistricting body, holding 5 of its 13 seats; 40 percent of those coveted positions, however, may be held by partisans. Like Szetela, 29-year-old medical student Anthony Eid publicly backed Democrats and liberal causes before applying to the board as an independent. He said he was “proud to live in a state that voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary” in 2016 and endorsed then-Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison for Democratic National Committee chairman, the Washington Free Beaconreported in August.
Both Szetela and Eid now play a crucial role in Michigan’s redistricting process, which will reshape the state’s political landscape for the next decade. To enact a new map, two independent members must vote for it, meaning Szetela and Eid could align with their Democratic colleagues to fulfill the quota. Eid in May acknowledged that commission applicants merely had to “self-identify” their partisan affiliation but said he did “not think anyone who was selected misrepresented themselves.”
Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission spokesman Edward Woods said the commission “respects the process that enables all 13 commissioners to designate their affiliate status as a Democrat, Republican, or neither a Democrat nor Republican, regardless of their past political donations or endorsements.”
“The Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission focuses on its mission to lead Michigan’s redistricting process to assure Michigan’s Congressional, State Senate, and State House district lines are drawn fairly in a citizen-led, transparent process, meeting Constitutional mandates,” Woods said.
In addition to Szetela’s political contributions, which were made under her maiden name, Szetela’s husband donated to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I., Vt.) Democratic presidential campaign on three occasions in 2016 and again in 2019. Szetela’s husband also ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 Democratic primary for a local supervisor role. Prospective commissioners are deemed ineligible if their spouses ran “for partisan election office in federal, state, or local office” at any time since Aug. 15, 2014.
Michigan voters transferred redistricting powers from the state legislature to the commission through a 2018 ballot initiative, which came as Republicans held control of both chambers of the state legislature.
More than 9,300 Michiganders applied to serve on the commission, which consists of four Democrats, four Republicans, and five independents. The state then hired an outside firm to randomly select 200 semifinalists. Leaders in the state legislature were allowed to remove just 20 applicants. The commission’s final 13 members were also randomly selected.
While the Michigan group behind the ballot initiative, Voters Not Politicians, calls itself a “nonpartisan grassroots organization,” it received $250,000 from the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a direct affiliate of the Democratic Party that is chaired by former Obama administration attorney general Eric Holder.
Voters Not Politicians executive director Nancy Wang defended the group’s decision to accept the contribution, saying, “We were pleased to accept funding from any group that supported our nonpartisan solution to end gerrymandering.” Wang also said, “The fact that you are asking about certain commissioners’ backgrounds is a testament to the transparency of the voter-approved redistricting process.”
“We believe the commission is doing a far better job already, just by meeting in public and accepting public input on communities of interest, than the past practice of politicians gerrymandering lines in secret to give themselves an unfair partisan advantage,” Wang said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor the commission closely to see that it lives up to the amendment’s words and spirit.”
Update 7:45 a.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from the Michigan Independent Redistricting Commission.
Patriots are mobilizing all over the country to defeat Joe Biden and reverse his failed policies.
As America’s Sheriff, I’m supporting Create Change Now’s nationwide effort to stop the oncoming socialism train in its tracks by educating, motivating, and mobilizing American conservative patriots.
There’s too much at stake in 2022 and beyond for us to leave anything to chance. The professional progressive left spends millions of dollars organizing, training, and mobilizing their socialist foot soldiers, and we must beat them at their own game.
The integrity of our elections is in question. Radical leftist politicians are loosening reasonable voter protections, and unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats are changing the rules of elections while voters are casting ballots.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have blown open the gates at our Southern Border as waves of unvetted illegal aliens stream into our country.And Joe Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan further destabilizes the Middle East and sends a poor message to our allies while emboldening our enemies. A little more than a week before the 20th Anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
All while far-left politicians are demoralizing and defunding law enforcement in Congress and State Capitols across the nation.
Failed progressive “leadership” is an absolute nightmare!
Create Change Now is slamming the brakes on the far-left’s radical agenda by empowering and equipping patriots like you and me with the tools to fight and win.
The radical left has an army of Saul Alinsky-inspired professional activists who mobilize voters in their communities. All too often, that organizational capacity gives them an edge over patriots like you and me.
While we don’t have an army of paid, professional agitators to get out the votes of the Silent Majority, we do have an influential organization called Create Change Now that’s working overtime to stem the tide of progressivism on our shores.
To save the greatest nation in the history of mankind from the clutches of radical progressives, we must organize millions of patriots and stop the left at the ballot box.
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Contributions or gifts to Create Change Now PAC are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes and will be used in connection with federal elections. Contributions from foreign nationals or entities are prohibited. The use of the name and/or likeness of any candidate, officeholder, or other individual is for the purpose of CCN’s political communication only and does not indicate any authorization by, affiliation with, direction from, or endorsement by that person.
When President Joe Biden was elected in November under hotly contested circumstances, he was supposed to be the most popular presidential candidate in our nation’s history, receiving more than 81 million votes.
The magic of this remarkable achievement wore off pretty quickly once he took up the post of commander-in-chief, however.
In less than a year, his administration has overseen crippling inflation, a horrific humanitarian crisis at the border and a return to pre-9/11 conditions in Afghanistan as the Taliban retook the nation with ease before our troops — and our civilians — had withdrawn.
It’s been a mess and a disaster. And now, the people who voted for and against the most popular presidential candidate in U.S. history want answers.
It’s not just Republicans, although they’re certainly making the most noise. Last week, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton was joined by over two dozen of his colleagues who demanded answers on what went wrong in Afghanistan.
Yes, Biden is turning out to be quite the historical president — although more so for his administration’s quickly-earned notoriety than succusses at this rate.
A Rasmussen Reports survey released last week found that while less than one-third of likely voters believed the Afghanistan withdrawal was a success (those are some optimistic likely voters), nearly two-thirds believed that the handling of the withdrawal should be investigated.
The national online and phone survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Aug. 30-31, as the last of the U.S. troops were pulling out of the nation and Americans, including schoolchildren, were left stranded in the Taliban-controlled nation.
The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
Sixty-two percent of those surveyed responded affirmatively to the question, “Should Congress investigate how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled?”
Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed opposed a congressional investigation (imagine opposing government accountability at a time like this), while 10 percent were not sure.
Here’s the thing: the refrain from the Democrats over the last month has been that what happened in Afghanistan was the fault of former President Donald Trump, who negotiated a peace treaty with the Taliban and set a withdrawal date for May of this year before leaving office.
Yet it was under the command of Biden’s military leaders that the United States appeared to completely abandon the Afghan national army to the mercy of the Taliban and left billions of dollars worth of equipment in their hands.
It is these same military officials — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley — on whom over 100 retired military officers have called to resign.
It is Biden who appeared to advise the now-deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to give the public impression that the Taliban wasn’t winning in July if he wanted to receive more U.S. aid, according to Reuters.
It is Biden who was running things when thousands of Americans were scrambling to evacuate and when hundreds were abandoned in the country after we withdrew.
It is the Biden administration that was facilitating the chaotic evacuation and that gave the Taliban the names of Americans and U.S.-allied Afghans as the terror group appeared to control the entrance to the Kabul airport in the final days of the withdrawal.
And it was Biden who was commander-in-chief when Islamic State group terrorists detonated a suicide vest and opened fire upon the crush of desperate civilians trying to flee Afghanistan in an attack that killed 13 U.S. service members, the worst single-day casualty event our forces had seen in 11 years.
The American people are right to want answers — and it is from President Joe Biden that they must be demanded.
Jeff Carlson
Hans Mahncke
