The House Republican Conference has drafted a bill that would provide military aid to Israel funded by redistributed funds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
On Oct. 19, President Joe Biden delivered a speech from the Oval Office calling on Americans to support his administration’s proposed legislation that sends $100 billion of military aid to both Ukraine in its war against Russia and Israel in its conflict against Hamas, with some money being appropriated for border security and immigration processing. Amid widespread opposition among Republicans regarding aid to Ukraine, the House Republican Conference unveiled a bill that would allocate $14.3 billion for military aid only to Israel, offsetting the cost with repurposed funds from a portion of the $80 billion to the IRS enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act. (RELATED: ‘The Worst Thing For Israel’: House Republicans Quickly Dismiss Biden’s Latest Aid Package For Israel And Ukraine)
The bill, known as the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, calls for the spending of money to procure weapons, ammunition and missiles, according to its text. It also allocates $1.2 billion to support Israel’s efforts to develop a laser-based missile defense system against rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza, known as the “Iron Dome” program, which is also a priority that the administration’s proposed legislation would fund.
The bill was reportedly introduced by Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas’ 12th District, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, according to the New York Post. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and J.D. Vance of Ohio.
The bill would also allocate $100 million to increase security for U.S. diplomatic missions in Israel and the surrounding region that have faced threats following the United States’ declaration of support for Israel after the attacks. It would further allocate $5o million to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country during hostilities.
The demand for a single bill regarding Israel, aid to which enjoys bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, has been a refrain of Republican members of Congress since Biden announced his package. However, the reduction of funds from the IRS, which has been a target of House Republicans during the 118th Congress, is likely to be opposed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The White House and the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Biden administration to stop cutting razor wire on fences along the southern border in Texas meant to stop illegal migrant crossings.
Judge Alia Moses of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on Monday ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to stop “disassembling, degrading, tampering” miles of razor wire running along the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass. The temporary order is a result of a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing that federal officials said they had the authority to destroy state property “to allow [illegal] aliens to enter & be processed.”
Paxton asked the court for an immediate injunction last week, noting in his request to the court that “federal agents escalated matters, trading bolt cutters for an industrial-strength telehandler forklift to dismantle [Texas’] border fence.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in the lawsuit that “federal agents used hydraulic-powered pallet forks to rip [Texas’] fence … out of the ground, holding it suspended in the air in order to wave more than 300 migrants illegally into Texas.” (Benjamin Lowy for Fox News Digital)
“Federal agents used hydraulic-powered pallet forks to rip [Texas’] fence – concertina wire, fencing posts, clamps, and all – out of the ground, holding it suspended in the air in order to wave more than 300 migrants illegally into Texas,” the motion for a temporary injunction reads.
Last week, DHS released a statement that said border agents “have a responsibility under federal law” to protect migrants from being injured regardless of their legal status.
A federal judge on Monday ordered the Biden administration to stop cutting razor wire on fences along the southern border in Texas meant to stop illegal migrant crossings. (Benjamin Lowy for Fox News Digital)
In an 11-page document filed in with the federal court in Del Rio, Moses found that the state of Texas had met the required four-part test needed to be granted a temporary halt to the federal government’s action, but the judge noted one exception.
Federal agents used a forklift to lift Texas’ razor wire fence. (The State of Texas v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security)
“The Court shall grant the temporary relief requested, with one important exception for any medical emergency that mostly likely results in serious bodily injury or death to a person, absent any boats or other life-saving apparatus available to avoid such medical emergencies prior to reaching the concertina wire barrier,” the judge wrote in the court filing.
The temporary restraining order will remain in place until the parties have an opportunity to present evidence at a preliminary injunction hearing before the court, which is scheduled for Nov. 7.
The Department of Justice, which is handling the litigation, declined to comment.
Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted in a September report that foreign terrorists are exploiting the Biden-manufactured border crisis to illegally enter the United States.
Released last month by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the “Homeland Threat Assessment” for fiscal year 2024 includes an admission by the agency that international terrorists are looking to capitalize on the Biden administration’s open border policies and the resulting influx of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the American homeland. Under the section titled, “Border and Immigration Security,” the report specifically noted how “[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”
The agency further acknowledged “individuals with potential terrorism connections” are actively attempting to enter the U.S. thanks to the ongoing crisis. Months before the 2023 fiscal year ended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had already encountered approximately 160 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS), or “watchlist” — more than the 100 or so encountered in the entirety of the 2022 fiscal year. According to the report, “Inclusion in the TSDS ranges from known associates of watchlisted individuals, such as family members, to individuals directly engaged in terrorist activity.”
Despite proclaiming support for a “secure” border, President Joe Biden and his administration have routinely dismantled policies that helped stymie the ongoing crisis. In addition to auctioning off border wall construction materials, Biden moved to gut the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy shortly after taking office. That policy required illegal border crossers seeking asylum to stay in the Latin American country until their court hearing.
It’s estimated that nearly 7 million illegal immigrants have been “encountered” at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office, according to the New York Post. And that doesn’t even include the potentially millions of “gotaways” who evaded capture by CBP agents.
Last month’s DHS assessment was issued weeks before Hamas — an Iranian-backed terrorist organization operating out of Gaza — launched a series of unprovoked and barbaric attacks against Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The attacks have since prompted concerns that foreign-based terrorist organizations could exploit America’s open border to illegally enter the U.S. and launch similar operations.
In response to possible threats, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s public safety division to coordinate with local and federal law enforcement on “heightened public safety measures,” with a particular focus on raising awareness of possible threats against the state’s Jewish community by Iranian-backed terrorist groups.
In its new threat assessment, DHS specifically highlighted Iran — the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism — and its “intent to plot attacks against current and former US government officials.”
“Iran relies on individuals with pre-existing access to the United States for surveillance and lethal plotting—using dual nationals, members of criminal networks, and private investigators,” the report reads, adding that Tehran has even attempted to carry out plots “that do not require international travel for operatives.”
The report also listed Hezbollah — another Iranian-backed terrorist group operating out of Lebanon — as another source of potential foreign terror threats.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in support of the Palestinian people during a rally for Gaza at the Consulate General of Israel on Sunday in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
A national pro-Palestine student organization is calling for a “day of resistance” on college campuses Thursday in support of brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, emphasizing that they are not only in solidarity with Palestine, they are “PART of this movement.”
A toolkit released by the national Students for Justice in Palestine calls for the student movement for “Palestine liberation” to organize a national day of resistance on college campuses across the U.S. and Canada. The organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement,” the toolkit messaging says in bold. “This is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”
At least six chapters have already announced such events for Oct. 12, according to the Anti-Defamation League: Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Butler Universityin Indiana, University of Louisville in Kentucky, University of Binghamton in New York and the University of Virginia.
“We must continue to resist directly, through dismantling Zionism and wielding the political power that our organizations hold on our campuses and in our communities,” the Students for Justice in Palestine toolkit says. “We are asking chapters to host demonstrations on campus/in their community in support of our resistance in Palestine and the national liberation struggle—one which they play a critical role in actualizing.”
Israeli soldiers on Monday remove the body of a civilian killed days earlier in an attack by Palestinian terroists on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)
If a protest is not possible, the national Students for Justice in Palestine encourages other forms of engagement, such as a sit-in, “disruption” or “educational event.”
The Anti-Defamation League expressed concerns about such tactics: “Although these are all nonviolent tactics, they raise the real possibility of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and the confrontational spirit that permeates the toolkit raises the concern that these actions could lead to acts of harassment or vandalism targeting Jewish students and organizations.”
Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday that “the corrosive antisemitism that infects American higher education today has been on ugly display since the terrorist attacks against Israel over the weekend.”
“Instead of denouncing the genocidal Hamas terrorists who hunted, tortured, murdered and took Jews hostage, all too many in academia have come out in favor of their depraved and savage rampage as if it were somehow legitimate because the victims were Jews,” Coates said. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
She added: “This bigoted response stands in stark contrast with the wave of support for Ukraine after [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022, when the same campuses that will host these anti-Israel rallies flew Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the victims of Putin’s attack.”
The calls for demonstrations come after the terrorist group Hamas infiltrated Israel over the weekend, firing more than 4,500 rockets and slaughtering more than 1,000 people, including many women, children, and babies.
Media reports continue to describe unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas. An Israeli Defense Forces spokesman said Tuesday that Israeli soldiers had found beheaded corpses of babies in a town near Gaza.
“It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them,” IDF Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv said as reported by Fox News. “It’s a massacre.”
But the national Students for Justice in Palestine messaging states that “when people are occupied, resistance is justified.”
“Normalize the resistance,” the messaging says, urging students to describe the current events as a “struggle for national liberation,” rather than a war or a conflict.
The invasion shows that “Israel is fragile,” the messaging continues. “The Zionist entity is fragile, and Palestinian resistance is alive.”
George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine weigh in on the devastation in Israel: "WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER."
Meanwhile, pro-Palestine groups at universities such as George Washington University in Washington, D.C., are expressing support for Palestine without acknowledging the atrocities that the terrorists have committed in Israel.
“This past weekend we witnessed them break free, tearing down the prison walls, and making it known to the world: WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER,” says a statement from GW Students for Justice in Palestine. That statement praises the invasion as “history in the making” and “the beginning of a new era in our struggle.”
“GW Students for Justice in Palestine maintains unwavering support for our people’s resistance, in all its forms,” the statement says. “Every single act of resistance moves us closer to the liberation of our homeland. We will never capitulate to the colonizer or his sympathizers, and we stand firm and steadfast in support of our people’s right to resist. We call upon all our people and those in solidarity with us to join us in this struggle.”
Jewish Insider editor-in-chief Josh Kraushaar reacted to the student statement by calling it a “look at the intellectual/moral climate on top college campuses.”
Lawyer and commentator Erielle Davidson tweeted: “My skin is crawling at the thought that American universities allow bloodthirsty freaks to carry their degrees. GW has a high Jewish population. Despicable.”
And Israeli television anchor Lidar Grave-Lazi said in a social media post that “the world is finally opening its eyes to see the true face of the ‘Pro-Palestinian’ movement.”
“It is not about human rights,” she said. “It is about brutality, barbarism, hatred and the annihilation of Israel. Unfortunately, they have infiltrated college campuses across the U.S. and not enough is being done to counter their hatred. Just look to @Harvard’s deafening silence. Anyone who is civilized and has a shred of humanity should condemn such statements and call them out for what they truly are.”
George Washington University did not immediately respond to requests for comment as to what steps it is taking to ensure the safety of its Jewish students.
Biden’s Energy Department is banning cheaper, less-efficient furnaces based on the premise of conserving energy, yet with America’s energy abundance, the new standards can’t be justified. Pictured: Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on June 22, 2022. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
In an attempt to force Americans to conserve energy, the Department of Energy is banning a whole class of popular furnaces, eventually raising heating costs and reducing product choices for families and businesses alike. And it is using an outdated law to give itself the authority to do so.
While the DOE did recognize many of the comments that I submitted arguing against its attempt to regulate gas furnaces, it did little more than brush them off. Unfortunately, higher costs and less choice won’t be so easy for American families and businesses to ignore.
Furthermore, the DOE relied on outdated congressional authority to devise its final rule, and the law itself doesn’t require the department to tighten standards for gas furnaces when there is no good reason for it to do so (and there isn’t).
The new rule does not simply alter standards; it would effectively remove a technology from the marketplace and reduce competition. This is antithetical to Congress’ wishes expressed in the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which makes clear that maintaining a competitive market for products the law covers is an essential element of the cost-benefit calculation. Yet ultimately, the rule would have a tremendous effect on the furnace market by eliminating an entire technology, namely noncondensing gas furnaces.
While the DOE determined that noncondensing furnaces do not constitute a separate marketplace offering relative to condensing models, which it prefers, its conclusion is based on an overly narrow definition of separate product categories. Essentially, the department concluded that because both technologies are used to heat homes, they are not competitors and thus should not be considered separate product categories for regulatory purposes.
While both condensing and noncondensing furnaces heat homes, they have different costs, perform differently, and have different installation requirements. Condensing furnaces cost more and entail installation expenses that can be significant.
These differences matter to consumers, and this is why both technologies are sold in the marketplace. Indeed, the DOE estimated that noncondensing furnaces would represent 42% of furnace shipments in 2029, prior to its proposed rule taking effect, demonstrating the enduring value that American consumers find in noncondensing furnaces.
Congress, right or wrong, sought to improve consumer product efficiency when it passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act nearly 50 years ago, but it was not seeking to empower the DOE to in effect ban a product that, according to the department’s own estimate, represents 42% of the market.
Congress also expressed a deep concern with ensuring that any conservation measure be supported by an underlying need for energy conservation. In fact, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking specified when the “DOE may not prescribe a standard.” Among other factors that the notice stated the secretary must consider is “the need for energy and water conservation.”
Indeed, the value, if not the underlying legitimacy, of government imposing its will on the American consumer when considering this conservation factor could only be relevant when there is a current and pressing problem concerning conservation. Such a scenario does not exist now, and, in fact, there is energy abundance, even though much remains untapped largely due to government constraints.
According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2020, the United States held over 373 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude oil reserves, which would provide the U.S. with over 50 years of supply. The same is true for natural gas. The agency also estimated in 2020 that the U.S. held more than 2,925 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas. At current consumption levels, that equates to nearly 100 years of supply.
Of course, new discoveries are always occurring that would expand this supply over time, which is demonstrated by the growing availability of unconventional sources like oil shale. According to the Energy Information Agency, the U.S. currently holds an additional 195.5 billion barrels of crude oil and 1,712 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in unconventional reserves. According to the Institute for Energy Research, conventional and unconventional reserves combine to provide nearly 300 years of energy supply at current consumption levels.
These energy resources do not even account for uranium deposits, which are widely spread throughout the U.S., nor for advancements in other energy-generating technologies.
This era of energy abundance is different from the early 1970s when the Energy Policy and Conservation Act was passed.
Given that the relevant context of any imposed energy efficiency mandate is, at a minimum, some demonstrable condition of energy scarcity and that the U.S. obviously does not meet that condition, the justification for this or nearly any other efficiency rule is clearly weakened.
Further, within the context of establishing the need for energy conservation, the DOE’s underlying analysis for the rule attempted to justify it based on alleged emissions benefits.
But according to the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. air quality has been improving for decades. The EPA reports that nationally, air pollutant concentration levels have declined significantly since 1990, including levels of carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur, and particulate matter.
By almost any measure, America’s air quality is clean and getting cleaner. Thus, to argue that this regulatory action’s alleged air quality benefits outweigh the substantial costs to American consumers is weak.
The legitimacy of any policy, especially those that restrict Americans’ ability to pursue their own happiness, requires policymakers to balance all of the costs and benefits of a particular action. Thus, a reasonable assessment of the impact on consumer choice, family finances, and broad inconvenience weighed against the alleged air quality benefits should have provided the secretary of Energy adequate information to stop this regulation in its tracks.
The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act was borne out of time of perceived energy scarcity. In justifying the policies that the act ultimately set in place, President Gerald Ford laid out three broad policy objectives. These included reducing oil imports, ending American vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers, and developing energy technology and resources to supply a significant share of the free world’s energy needs.
In each case, the United States has achieved Ford’s objectives. In 1975, net imports of crude oil exceeded 5 million barrels per day. By 2020, the United States had become a net exporter. Additionally, American technologies like fracking and commercial nuclear reactors are helping to power modern economies around the world.
Geopolitical shocks and cartels, specifically the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, which produces about 40% of the world’s crude oil, can still have a near-term impact on American energy prices. But due to the large amount of energy produced in America and traded on global markets, energy disruptions do not present the sort of systemic threat that policymakers feared in the 1970s. The extent to which the United States economy remains vulnerable is purely a function of energy restriction policies created by our own government and have nothing to do with energy efficiency.
Thus, while efficiency certainly remains an important piece of the energy calculation for American consumers, it is no longer something that needs to be imposed at the systemic level.
Though the 1975 act clearly authorizes the DOE to place restrictions on industry and consumer choice at the behest of the secretary of Energy, the department should recognize that the environment that gave rise to the act has changed drastically, given advances in technology and energy discovery. While this does not diminish the authority of the secretary to impose standards, it does dramatically diminish the impact of those standards relative to the overall purpose of the act, which is to secure adequate energy resources for the American economy.
In other words, saving a slice of a small pie has much more impact than saving the same size slice of a much larger pie. As detailed above, the United States has hundreds of years of known energy reserves, and new technology is allowing for new discoveries and more efficient use of existing reserves all the time.
Further, appliances of all sorts, including furnaces, are becoming more efficient. While the consuming public considers many attributes of the purchases they make, including capability and upfront cost, efficiency is clearly something the American consumer values. Indeed, as energy becomes more expensive, the value of the efficiency in a free market will most assuredly increase.
Put succinctly, the value proposition for energy efficiency has shifted dramatically since 1975 due the broad availability of energy. Thus, forcing Americans to purchase certain products based on efficiency within an environment of energy abundance no longer has the same impact on energy availability as it did during times of perceived energy scarcity. The new standards do not meaningfully advance the intent of Energy Policy and Conservation Act and do not justify the restrictions the rule will impose on American consumers’ choices.
In a speech last week in Washington, U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman—seen here leaving the weekly Cabinet meeting on May 9 in London—warned of the existential danger of unchecked immigration. (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The phrase “Climate change denier” has wormed its way into the modern lexicon to shame those who have a different view of the science supporting—or not—the idea that the world is in danger of burning up in weeks, months, or years. (They can’t seem to decide on the timing.)
There is another form of denial that one can clearly see.
It is a denial that the southern border is “secure.” With pictures showing—and Border Patrol agents confirming—that tens of thousands of migrants are crossing into the U.S. every day without authorization, it is a lie to say the border is secure.
Sometimes it takes a person from outside the country to wake us up to threats we face. Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn did that in a 1978 Harvard commencement speech, in which he warned that the West suffered from “a decline in courage.”
The left hated the speech, but he was right in his indictment.
Last week, U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman delivered remarks at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. She warned of the dangers of uncontrolled immigration without assimilation that now threatens America, Britain and other prosperous nations.
She called it “an existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the West,” adding, “it’s a basic rule of history that nations which cannot defend their borders will not long survive.”
Braverman noted the majority of migrants are motivated by economic incentives, not persecution in their home countries. That, she said, does not fit the international definition of “refugee.”
“A nation-state,” she said, “is one of humanity’s great civilizing forces. It creates a shared identity and a shared purpose. And that does not need to have a racial component. Typically, it binds people of different racial backgrounds together.” She also said that a spirit of togetherness and unity produces patriotism, heroism and kindness: “It is the belief that we have specific obligations to others, precisely because they are our fellow countrymen.”
Then came a statement that should be obvious to all but the deniers: “Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the past few decades.” She referenced a 2010 speech by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel in which Merkel admitted German multiculturalism had utterly failed.
Failure is never a reason for some to change their ideologies.
Noting she is a child of immigrants, Braverman said: ” … there has been more migration to the UK and Europe in the last 25 years than in all the time that went before. It has been too much, too quick, with too little thought given to integration and the impact on social cohesion.”
The costs are staggering in the U.K. and U.S. and cannot be sustained as even more come.
“Seeking asylum and seeking better economic prospects are not the same thing,” Braverman said. “Seeking refuge in the first country you reach, or shopping around for your preferred destination, are not the same thing. Most are simply economic migrants, gaming the asylum system to their advantage.”
As with uncontrolled crime, an uncontrolled border is an invitation for more of the same. The solution is not difficult: Finish the border wall and deport all but legitimate asylum seekers who fled their nations under political or religious persecution.
The latest stopgap government funding bill, passed late Saturday night, contains no money for border security. What does that tell you?
Our constitutional republic is fragile and must be renewed by each generation. We are unlikely to get a second chance.
Those who deny there is a problem and are fine with an open border likely have motives beyond compassion. These might include a visceral hatred of the U.S. and a desire to see our nation, in the words of former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, “fundamentally transformed.”
Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist, author, and broadcaster. He has authored several books, including “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States.” Readers can email him at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.
At stake in this strike is the financial power of the United Auto Workers union and the future of the Democratic Party as a representative of blue-collar workers. Pictured: Presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks Sept. 9, 2020, in a parking lot outside United Auto Workers offices in Warren, Michigan. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The big economic news at the end of last week was the start of a strike by the United Auto Workers union against all three major U.S. automakers. This is the first strike against President Joe Biden’s green agenda, pitting two parts of the traditional Democratic coalition against each other—the environmentalists against the blue-collar workers. Or simply the greens against the blues.
At stake is the financial power of the UAW and the future of the Democratic Party as a representative of blue-collar workers. The greens and the blues generally have come together to elect a series of Democratic presidents.
Yes, there was a split over the Keystone XL pipeline, which the blues wanted for the jobs and the greens rejected because of the heavy crude that would be coming in from Canada. No matter that Biden then begged the Venezuelans to sell America a similar heavy crude, this time coming to U.S. refineries by tanker rather than pipeline.
This time, however, the green energy agenda is driving the UAW to strike—because banning the internal combustion engine is equivalent to banning auto jobs.
The UAW is singing the blues because of the greens. UAW President Shawn Fain has refused to endorse Biden for another term because of the president’s insistence on following California’s lead by ending sales of new vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035.
The blue-collar workers want their jobs, but the greens care more about trees. It doesn’t help that inflation is up for the second month in a row, and American Airlines employees, West Coast dockworkers, and United Parcel Service employees all have gained pay raises of 30% to 40% over the next four years.
The UAW is demanding a 35% hike in pay and benefits over four years, moderating its initial request for a 45% hike. The union is asking for automatic cost-of-living adjustments just as in the 1970s and a four-day work week rather than a five-day one. The inflationary 1970s are calling Biden, and they want their benefits back—with a post-pandemic four-day twist.
Ford Motor Co. President Bob Farley estimates that the industry will need 40% fewer workers to produce electric vehicles rather than gas-powered cars and light trucks. That’s 200,000 fewer jobs in 2030 and 400,000 fewer jobs in the long run.
Dwindling jobs lead to dwindling income. Many of the new jobs in EVs and batteries with Inflation Reduction Act funding are being created in right-to-work states, where wages are lower and workers don’t have to join a union as a condition of employment.
Other jobs are being created in China, which has a lock on a substantial share of minerals required for EV batteries, such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt. Mindful of the world’s concerns about China’s dominance in this area, Beijing is setting up factories in Indonesia to take advantage of minerals there, and the Chinese-built, high-speed rail across the country from Jakarta to Bandung opened this month.
This is why switching to electric vehicles is not only a major threat to the UAW and ithe union’s ability to negotiate higher wages for auto workers, but a mortal danger to the paycheck for Fain, as well as to the finances and political clout of the UAW.
Fain was elected UAW president in March. Financial disclosure forms showing his salary aren’t currently available, but the union’s former president, Ray Curry, was paid $273,000 in 2021, according to UnionFacts.com, a nonprofit which compiles data from required Labor Department disclosure forms.
The United Auto Workers has $1.2 billion in assets and 372,000 members, according to UnionFacts.com. The UAW Political Action Committee has donated $50 million to Democrats and $2 million to Republicans.
And that’s the rub—despite the spending, the blue UAW can’t protect its members against the green government that it elected. Electrification is leading not only to shrinking worker incomes but to a fundamental fracturing of the Democratic Party coalition.
That might be the most damaging part of the UAW strike.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Updated Sept. 19, 2023. Two hundred and fifty lies and counting.
More than two and a half years into President Joe Biden’s White House tenure, his fabulism is on repeat. He’s told more lies than anyone could ever quantify, but we’ve done our best to document his serial falsehoods. Here is part four of The Federalist’s rigorous coverage designed to hold Biden and his administration accountable with substantive fact-checking throughout the rest of his presidency.
250. Self-Professed Catholic President Claims He Was Raised In Synagogues
In a call with Jewish faith leaders on Sept. 14, 2023, Joe Biden claimed he was “raised in the synagogues” in Delaware.
“I — you might say raised in the synagogues in my state. You think I’m kidding. I’m not,” Biden said during his greeting.
Biden, on a call with rabbis before the Jewish High Holy Days: "I was, you might say, raised in the synagogues of my state. You think I'm kidding — I'm not" pic.twitter.com/qGM1MkQGgX
“I’m as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic. My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. It’s not so much the Bible, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. It’s the culture. The nuns are one of the reasons I’m still a practicing Catholic,” Biden wrote in the first chapter of his biography “Promises To Keep.”
Two women react to the scene as they pass illegal immigrants gathered outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Aug. 2. (Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
The meltdown in blue cities over the busing of illegal immigrants continues, and it’s causing Democrats serious problems. That’s good, because it’s their fault this is happening. What the media inaccurately call the “migrant crisis” (these are people who have unlawfully crossed the U.S. border, not migrants) is battering so-called sanctuary cities, such as New York and Los Angeles.
Texas sent a 12th bus full of illegal immigrants to Los Angeles on Monday. According to KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles, the bus carried “23 men, 20 women, [and] 21 children.”
“The migrants were from Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Russia, and Venezuela,” it said.
Fox News reported that the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to consider the possibility of a lawsuit and “criminal probe” against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Wait a minute. Why are they suing and not celebrating? I thought all are welcome, no exceptions? Surely, they can find some houses in their city with signs declaring that they believe “no human is illegal” and all that.
Just a few months ago, this same City Council declared Los Angeles a sanctuary city and prohibited city resources from being used in immigration enforcement. One of the City Council members, Hugo Soto-Martínez, said that there’s been a great deal of “hateful rhetoric” coming out of places like Texas.
“What this [motion] means is a clear message to the community that we’re not like them, that the city should be looked [at] as an entity that you can trust, that you can come to and that you can look to for help,” he said when Los Angeles became a sanctuary city.
Be careful what you wish for. Texas just gave them what they said they wanted.
Monday’s busload might just be the beginning for Los Angeles. So far, Abbott has sent just 480 illegal immigrants there. But given that there have been millions who have come to America since this crisis began at the start of President Joe Biden’s administration, there’s likely more to come.
Texas has bused over 35,000 migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities.
Over 11,300 to DC Over 13,300 to NYC Over 6,700 to Chicago Over 2,600 to Philadelphia Over 1,000 to Denver Over 480 to LA
The left-wing radicals on the Los Angeles City Council, who insist on giving no aid for border enforcement, will almost undoubtedly be begging the federal government for aid now that they are seriously dealing with the consequences.
I can’t stress enough that the busing isn’t a victory. The problem remains: Our southern border is effectively open, millions of people are violating our laws, evil drug cartels are empowered, and America more and more becomes an economic zone rather than a self-governing country.
But putting the border chaos ball more firmly in the Democratic Party’s court remains one of the bigger successes for the GOP in recent years. Typically, Democrats can marshal their considerable media, cultural, and institutional power to deflect blame away from their failures. When one of their policies has immediate and predictable catastrophic results—such as defunding the police—they first attach the predictable chaos to one of their favorite narratives: “Systemic racism, inequality!”
When all else fails, they attribute the obviously terrible idea to Republicans and conservatives: “Republicans are defunding the police!” The busing solution has made this strategy nearly impossible, as residents are seeing firsthand the consequences of left-wing virtue-signaling.
“I realize it’s a sanctuary city, but there has to be a limit to our compassion,” said Michele Rubin on Tuesday, who was protesting on Staten Island, WNYW-TV Channel 5 in New York reported. “We don’t have the infrastructure. We are not vetting anybody. We don’t know if anybody has a criminal background or what they did in their country of origin.”
Of the more than 100,000 illegal immigrants who have arrived in the city since the crisis exploded a few years ago, 59,000 are being housed on Staten Island. Residents are starting to get testy, and so are politicians, who are looking for someone to blame.
“Tensions between the Biden administration and local Democrats are coming to a head as shelters around the country overflow and thousands of immigrants arrive in major cities,” Axios reported, noting that the Biden administration has offered few answers.
Many Democrats have concluded that the issue is that work permits haven’t been distributed fast enough, which is both amusing and infuriating. It’s amusing to think that handing out more work permits will make the crisis go away, rather than exacerbate it. It’s infuriating, because they are basically saying that the law should specifically cater to people who have intentionally broken the law.
As Nicole Galinas wrote for The New York Post, the work permits “solution” will make the problem worse beyond just the increased incentive to break the law.
“Another problem with issuing work permits to new migrants is: What about the old migrants? If you’ve been toiling for years as a dishwasher or housekeeper, shouldn’t you get a work permit, too?” Galinas asked, rhetorically. “Claims of asylum notwithstanding, most people who came here 10 or 20 years ago came for the same reason people came a month ago: job opportunities.”
It’s easy to see why there’s been increased local unrest. And deservedly so.
The answer to the problem is straightforward. It’s on the Biden administration to get control of the border, prioritize enforcement over appeasement, and stop signaling to the world that America’s borders are merely a suggestion.
Until now, Democrat politicians mostly haven’t been willing to criticize the Biden White House on the border security issue, or even suggest that the Biden administration originated the crisis. Pictured: Protesters rally in opposition to a proposed tent shelter for asylum-seekers July 29 on the campus of the state-owned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in New York City’s Queens borough. (Photo: Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images)
Republican border-state strategy to send illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities and states is paying off. On Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to President Joe Biden begging for federal aid. Importantly, she finally acknowledged where the problem is coming from.
“This is a financial burden the city and state are shouldering on behalf of the federal government,” Hochul, a fellow Democrat, said of the illegal immigrants pouring into New York.
“I cannot ask New Yorkers to pay for what is fundamentally a federal responsibility,” the governor wrote. “And I urge the federal government to take prompt and significant action today to meet its obligation to New York State.”
In a press conference following release of the letter, Hochul further complained about illegal immigrants released into the country by the Biden administration.
NY Gov. Hochul complains the state has "shouldered the burden" of processed and released migrants coming from the southern border for "far too long," pointing to the billions of dollars they have spent to take care of the daily arrivals. pic.twitter.com/KUBSHwtKtM
This is an interesting pivot from the New York governor. Until now, Democrat politicians mostly have been unwilling to criticize the White House in any way on the border security issue, or even suggest that the Biden administration is where the problem originates. If you want to know the reason for the sudden pivot, a new poll sheds light. The Siena College poll released Tuesday shows that New Yorkers are deeply discontented about the surge of illegal immigrants in their state and mostly blame Democrat leaders.
“New Yorkers—including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters—overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said.
Now, this may seem meaningless in the sense that New York is unlikely to become a red state any time soon. But keep in mind that the crime issue didn’t just swing seats from Democrat to Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, it likely also gave the GOP overall control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Discontent over lawless Democrat policies is much worse now, and New York voters are heaping the blame on Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and, most of all, Biden.
Open borders and the idea that all immigration—whether legal or illegal—is a positive good is a matter of faith for Democrat Party activists. That’s less likely to be true with rank-and-file voters and independents.
“There is no question in my mind that the politics of this is a disaster to Democrats,” said Howard Wolfson, a former deputy and political adviser to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with The New York Times.
“This issue alone has the potential to cost Democrats the House, because it is such a huge issue in New York City and the coverage of it is clearly heard and seen by voters in all of these swing districts in the suburbs,” Wolfson said.
He described the issue as a “ticking time bomb” for Democrats.
Since Biden entered the White House in January 2021, a historic stream of illegal immigrants has poured across the U.S. southern border. This has had catastrophic consequences for many swamped communities in Texas and Arizona especially. They’ve shouldered the burden of the border crisis for years, so it’s a little rich for New York to be throwing a pity party.
It obviously would be better if the federal government was doing its job and enforcing our laws, but until that time there’s little border states can do to “fix” the situation. All they can do is mitigate the damage. The Biden administration has done all it can to make sure that the border remains nice and open, er, “secure.”
The administration’s actions have made it clear that Biden and his top officials want to flood the country with illegal immigrants.
This is completely insane.
Biden's DOJ is suing @elonmusk's SpaceX because they only hired American citizens instead of refugees and asylum seekers and wants to force them to give full back pay to non-citizens that they choose to not hire. pic.twitter.com/IzB3GVj252
Instead of carrying the entire burden of the Biden-led border disaster, Republican governors such as Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Doug Ducey in Arizona decided to ship illegal immigrants to places such as Chicago, New York, the District of Columbia, and, most amusingly, Martha’s Vineyard. This is hardly ideal. But if the federal government is going to foist open borders on the country, why not at least force the people who voted for this nonsense to pay more of the price for it?
Of course, Democrats in those destinations pointed fingers at the Republican governors for their newfound troubles, and some left-wing political commentators tried to say that shipping illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a posh, liberal vacation destination—was akin to Nazism.
Biden’s trusty allies in the legacy media have done all they can to “contextualize” the immigration issue to protect the president from criticism. However, much like with the crime surge, it’s hard to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people forever when they literally see the consequences of bad policies in their neighborhoods. Thanks to Biden, the bill for once low-cost, sanctuary-city virtue signaling has come due.
I suggest that if Democrat politicians want federal aid to care for illegal immigrants, they should demand that the White House work to restore the policies of the previous administration and actually attempt to get control of the border. The excuses have run out, the border crisis has become a national crisis, and blame for this mess falls on the “big guy” in the Oval Office.
Democrats’ demands for more money should be met with a resounding “no” until the actual problem is fixed at its source.
“At this point, parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school if their child makes a gender identity declaration to a teacher or counselor at school,” Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon says. Pictured: Books are on offer at a school board candidate’s event Oct. 16, 2022, in Vero Beach, Florida, from Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty. (Photo: Giorgio Viera /AFP/Getty Images)
A new report sounds the alarm on the growing number of schools embracing transgender ideology and keeping parents in the dark. According to Parents Defending Education, at least 1,040 U.S. school districts have adopted policies instructing or encouraging faculty and staff to keep students’ gender identities a secret from parents.
Those districts include over 18,000 schools responsible for nearly 11 million students. The vast majority of those school districts (593) are in California.
“I am grateful to Parents Defending Education for their attempt to quantify this problem,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “It is important to support with evidence what many parents know by instinct or experience: Our educational system that is supposed to work with parents will often work around parents instead.”
“At this point, parents need to assume they will be deceived by their school if their child makes a gender identity declaration to a teacher or counselor at school,” Kilgannon said.
Commonly called “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies,” such dictums have been the subject of controversy and even protest across the nation, with parental rights organizations such as Moms for Liberty and Mama Grizzly forming to combat the policies and others like them.
“[I]f we have the ability to do so, we must engage with people and systems that view this parental deception as good for children,” Kilgannon said of the role of parental rights groups. “Obviously, something is very wrong if some people can believe the answer is government first, parents second or never.”
A recent example of the controversy may be found in New Jersey, where a state judge last week blocked a trio of school districts from enforcing a policy requiring faculty and staff to inform parents of students’ gender identities at school, effectively forcing the school districts to keep parents in the dark.
Those policies would require teachers, coaches, and other school staff to inform a student’s parents if that student used a bathroom that didn’t correspond to his or her biological sex, requested different pronouns be used in addressing him or her, or asked to play on a sports team that didn’t correspond to his or her biological sex.
The controversy over “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies” comes as debate continues on why an increasing number of children are identifying as transgender or nonbinary.
One study from earlier this year, for example, classified the increase as part of “a socially contagious syndrome,” stating that it’s likely that “common cultural beliefs, values, and preoccupations cause some adolescents (especially female adolescents) to attribute their social problems, feelings, and mental health issues to gender dysphoria. That is, youth[s] … falsely believe that they are transgender.”
Some theorize that standard peer pressure, coupled with the social popularity of transgenderism, largely is responsible for the increase in children identifying as transgender. However, others—such as Mama Grizzly founder Stacy Langton—argue that it’s largely rooted in the sexual grooming of children by teachers.
“[T]his is where our own action as parents are so important,” Kilgannon said. “We must be present to our children, engaged with them, being the most important person in their lives. … [L]ike everything in life, it starts with ourselves and our relationships to the people God has put in our lives, especially the children we are blessed with and responsible for.”
An Air Force colonel nominated by President Joe Biden once claimed that “white colonels” are the “biggest barriers” to addressing so-called “racial injustice” in the U.S. military, according to a new report.
On Thursday, The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey reported that Col. Benjamin Jonsson, who is “currently awaiting promotion to brigadier general,” penned an article in the Air Force Times weeks after George Floyd’s death lamenting his fellow white airmen don’t go along with leftist talking points about so-called “racial injustice” in the U.S. armed forces.
“As white colonels, you and I are the biggest barriers to change if we do not personally address racial injustice in our Air Force. Defensiveness is a predictable response by white people to any discussion of racial injustice. White colonels are no exception,” Jonsson wrote. “We are largely blind to institutional racism, and we take offense to any suggestion that our system advantaged us at the expense of others.”
Jonsson went on claim he “drew attention” to the notion that “racial tension remains an important issue to address” while speaking with two white colonels. According to Jonsson, his “introduction of race into the conversation created social discomfort,” allegedly causing both service members to “ameliorate” the situation “with humor.” He furthermore admonished a fellow white colonel who purportedly expressed the meritocratic sentiment that “when anyone joins the Air Force, they need to adopt the culture of the Air Force [and] that [the branch] should not make cultural accommodations.”
“By obscuring any cultural differences in the Air Force, he excused himself from the need to dig into the underlying issue of racial disparity,” Jonsson regurgitated the leftist talking points.
But Jonsson wasn’t quite finished demanding his fellow service members view the world through a racial lens. At the end of his article, the Air Force colonel recommended airmen develop a “game plan” to break so-called “invisible barriers” in the military by reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, a book that promotes divisive ideologies such as critical race theory (CRT).
“Dear white colonel, it is time to give a damn. Aim High,” he added.
The Air Force Times article is hardly the only incident in which Jonsson has pushed the military to adopt ideas saturated in so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), a poisonous left-wing framework that dismisses merit and instead discriminates based on characteristics such as skin color and sex.
In a December 2020 video commemorating the service of a Tuskegee Airman, Jonsson said the celebration gives the Air Force a chance to “acknowledge that there’s still progress that we need to make as a service.”
“There’s still barriers, more invisible barriers, that some of our airmen from underrepresented groups … still feel in their service,” Jonsson claimed. “We’re aggressively knocking down those barriers.”
According to a September 2022 Fox News report, the Air Force Academy — where Jonsson had apparently begun serving as vice superintendent in August 2022 — has regularly forced cadets to undergo DEI instruction. In one slideshow titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do,” cadets are told to utilize words that “include all genders” and avoid using terms such as “mom,” “dad,” and “colorblind.”
An Air Force cadet writing under a pseudonym detailed in the Washington Examiner earlier this summer his experiences with the academy’s embrace of “leftist ideologies.” The cadet specifically noted how “critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings [are] being forced upon us by academy leadership” and that in doing so, the school has “divided the cadet wing from within, in a profession where unity is essential.”
Jonsson’s apparent infatuation with CRT and DEI ideologies further highlights the importance of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing bid to force individual votes on Biden’s military appointees. Using his role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuberville has been slowing down military personnel moves that require Senate confirmation to protest the Pentagon’s use of taxpayer money to cover service members’ travel expenses to get abortions.
To be clear, Tuberville is not blocking votes, but is forcing the Armed Services Committee to vote on each nomination individually rather than voting “en masse on large numbers of nominations.” The Alabama senator has since faced numerous attacks from Democrats and establishment Republicans, many of whom have baselessly claimed his protest is harming “military readiness.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The Biden administration has lost contact with 85,000 unaccompanied alien children within the U.S. Pictured: A Venezuelan migrant girl holds a doll while walking on the banks of the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on Dec. 27, 2022. (Photo: Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images)
Congressman Chris Smith is preparing to introduce legislation that will require the federal government to locate the 85,000 migrant children it has lost contact with within the U.S.
“This is all about accountability and effective interventions for these kids,” Smith, R-N.J., told The Daily Signal.
The draft legislation is focused on “locating, establishing contact with, [conducting] wellness checks, and [investigating] trafficking” of the 85,000 migrant children, Smith said.
In February, The New York Times reported that even though the Department of Health and Human Services checks on all unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally “by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors,” data obtained by the newspaper “showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children.”
“Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children,” the Times reported.
Smith expressed concern that the individuals who agree to act as sponsors for the children within the U.S. could take advantage of the lack of accountability and exploit the children. Unaccompanied migrant children remain in the custody of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement until they are placed with a parent or sponsor, but the agency “does not monitor or track the whereabouts of children after they are released from our care,” Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the office, told members of Congress during a hearing in April.
The children with whom the Biden administration has lost contact “need to be protected from… these terrible traffickers who will exploit them, rape them, put them into forced labor of some kind,” Smith said. “And so, it’s a very real problem that’s happening all over the world, [and] happening right here in our backyard.”
Smith explained the importance of the forthcoming legislation during a July 25 screening of the anti-human tracking film “Sound of Freedom” on Capitol Hill. The bill aims to “investigate any suspicion of human trafficking related to the approximately 85,000 unaccompanied minors who were released from federal government custody and with whom subsequent contact has been lost,” he told the crowd at the film screening.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., sponsored the screening of the film that drew lawmakers and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Smith says McCarthy has received a copy of the draft legislation and is confident the speaker will bring the bill to the floor of the House for a vote after it is formally introduced.
Smith worked to craft the legislation with Eduardo Verastegui, producer of and actor in the “Sound of Freedom,” and Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) Severino previously served as the director of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights.
Among the 85,000 children, a “percentage of those kids, we have reason to believe, were already being trafficked for labor and sex trafficking purposes,” Severino told The Daily Signal, adding that it is a “national scandal” that the people HHS handed these children over to are “unwilling to account for where those kids are now.”
“It says that [the Department of Homeland Security], HHS and FBI must report to Congress as to the whereabouts of these children… who they are with, and whether or not the people who are taking care of them are criminals,” he said. “And third, how many of those kids have been trafficked.”
The New Jersey congressman plans to introduce the legislation soon after he ensures all lawmakers who wish to co-sponsor the legislation have the opportunity to do so, and says he hopes it will gain bipartisan support.
Smith has been a member of Congress since 1981 and says he has been working on combatting human trafficking since 1995. In 2000, Smith authored the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which provided the federal government with tools to combat human trafficking.
America has “good laws,” to combat human trafficking, Smith said, but the “problem is we have not had a faithful implementation [of the laws] and the kind of aggressive work by the executive branch that it warrants.”
Customs and Border Protection reports encountering more than 423,000 unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office.
It “may be embarrassing to the Biden administration that lost the [85,000] children to shed light on that fact, but tough luck,” Severino said. “They lost the kids. They should be responsible for finding them.”
After so many Americans have watched “Sound of Freedom,” which has now grossed $155 million at the box office in one month, the “American people are demanding action,” Severino said. “This bill is the start of saving children from the clutches of some of the worst evil devised by man.”
The First Amendment’s mandate that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech” is a guarantee that, no matter how inconvenient to those temporarily holding high office, the people have an absolute right to express their thoughts and opinions. Despite this constitutional requirement, over 200 years ago, President John Adams and the Federalists in Congress used the threat of war with France as a pretext to enact into law the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime for Americans to “print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government.
The debate surrounding the Sedition Act was about the nature of freedom of speech. One supporter of the law, Alexander Addison, believed that some opinions were so dangerous that it was in the public interest to suppress them, stating, “Truth has but one side: and listening to error and falsehood is indeed a strange way to discover truth.”
An opponent, Thomas Cooper, presciently argued that the purpose of the Sedition Act was to empower one party to “suppress the opinions of those who differ from them.” Unsurprisingly, all the defendants prosecuted under the Sedition Act would be Republicans.
Sound familiar?
On Independence Day this year, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction restricting the Biden Administration from collaborating with social media companies to censor and suppress constitutionally protected speech. In his opinion, Judge Terry Doughty stated that the Biden Administration’s efforts to suppress opinions it opposes “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in the United States’ history.” It is difficult to disagree with Judge Doughty’s description.
For years, the Biden Administration demanded social media suppress and censor conservatives who dared question the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of masks and lockdowns, and election integrity, among other issues. The Biden Administration was so zealous in its enforcement of censorship, even parody content did not escape its anti-free speech campaign.
And the Biden administration didn’t ask nicely. When then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki publicly called on social media companies to censor speech relating to Covid, she mentioned Biden’s support for a “robust anti-trust program,” all but threatening to break up tech giants if they failed to adopt the administration’s censorship policies. Later, the White House announced that it was reviewing policies relating to whether social media should be held legally liable for spreading so-called misinformation. In other words, the Biden administration effectively told social media “Do our bidding, or else.”
The White House was so aggressive that a Twitter representative stated the site was “bombarded” with censorship requests from the executive branch. But that bombardment was not really directed at Twitter — it was a monstrous attack on the free speech rights guaranteed to every American by the First Amendment.
In addition to countless numbers of Americans, I was targeted by the censorship regime. When I posted a video on YouTube to educate the public on the potentially harmful consequences of relying on ineffective cloth masks to prevent transmission of Covid, YouTube took my video down and suspended me for a week.
Americans are a free people and we do not take infringements upon our liberties lightly. The time has come for resistance and to reclaim our God-given right to free expression. Permit me, as a member of the resistance, to present a solution that that restores and protects the First Amendment.
I introduced legislation called the Free Speech Protection Act, which will prohibit federal employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment. My legislation will impose penalties for those that violate this rule, as well as empower private citizens to sue the government and executive branch officials for violating their First Amendment rights. Additionally, the bill will mandate frequent publicly accessible reports detailing the communications between an executive branch agency and media organizations, ensure that federal grant money is not used to label media organizations as sources of misinformation or disinformation, and terminates authorities that threaten free speech.
Under my Free Speech Protection Act, the government will no longer be able to cloak itself in secrecy to undermine the First Amendment rights of conservatives, libertarians, liberals, socialists, and all others who wish to exercise their right to free speech and engage in public discourse.
My legislation will make it difficult to hide efforts to censor constitutionally protected speech. Those officials who censor Americans are on notice: if you infringe upon First Amendment rights, under my bill, you will face severe penalties, such as potential debarment from employment by the United States, a civil penalty of no less than $10,000, and revocation of a security clearance. Any administration employee who prizes his livelihood would not dare threaten free speech after my bill becomes law.
Looking back upon his defeat of John Adams for the presidency, Thomas Jefferson wrote, the “revolution of 1800 . . . was a real revolution in the principles of our government as that of [17]76.” Jefferson’s victory was a vindication of the First Amendment as he allowed the Sedition Act to expire and pardoned those convicted for expressing their views.
Once again, the American people are called upon to defend the founding principles over which our forebears fought a revolution. To protect free speech, Congress must prohibit the government’s collusion with Big Tech and other media organizations. Congress must pass the Free Speech Protection Act.
Tim Ballard is the former Department of Homeland Security agent whose dogged pursuit of child traffickers across the globe is the subject of the massively successful new film “Sound of Freedom.” In a recent interview, Ballard accounted for some of the reasons the radical left might appear so desperate to attack and denigrate the movie: It illustrates the consequences of the left’s thinking and policies.
Ballard, joined by Jim Caviezel who plays him in the film, explained to the Daily Signal that wittingly or not, transgender activists and the Biden administration are both dressing the sacrificial altar whereon children may be victimized as a consequence of the policies they pursue.
When elaborating on a mission to save children in Ukraine from sex traffickers after the country’s invasion by Russia, Ballard noted that his team locked into “this pedophile ring. Now, it’s a frightening ring because it’s a political party that was out of Holland. … They were trying to legalize sex with children. They thought that a 3-year-old could consent to sex.”
Ballard said that some members of PNVD fled Holland after law enforcement finally came down on them but were ultimately arrested in Ecuador.
Thanks to the efforts of O.U.R., @freeagirl and local authorities, suspected child predators Marthijn Uittenbogaard and Lesley Luijs were arrested in Ecuador on June 22. They were a part of the recently dissolved pedophile association, Vereniging Martijn. https://t.co/GIOOgnTjJTpic.twitter.com/MAVcV8ngxM
— Operation Underground Railroad (@OURrescue) June 27, 2022
In advance of the Dutch politicians’ arrest, Ballard noted that he had to “study their literature. This was a political platform. This was a political party. And what I started recognizing is, I named them the … ‘pedophile network doctrines.'”
According to Ballard, the so-called pedophile network doctrines — not strictly specific to the PNVD — are:
“Children can consent to anything — at 12-years-old they should be able to vote, they should do anything.”
“Now, what am I seeing here?” said Ballard. “My stomach is getting sick as I’m reading this. I read this every day. It’s the woke left agenda.”
The child liberator clarified that he wasn’t alleging that trans activists and the PNVD or other such pedophiles were “colluding or talking,” but that “it doesn’t matter. It’s the same dark source. … Pedophiles are sitting back right now, going, ‘We’ve been pushing this agenda for decades and now we don’t have to push any more because the left are taking care of it for us in America.’ In America!”
For instance, Democrats in Washington state recently passed a law that reportedly enables individuals or youth/homeless shelters to avoid informing a child’s parents or law enforcement of their whereabouts if a child is seeking — without parental consent — a sex change, a tracheal shave, a mastectomy, breast implants, an abortion, puberty blockers, or “assisted reproduction” services.
In another instance where the left has ostensibly advanced the cause of those “sitting back right now,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who claimed that “the word groomer is categorically an anti-LGBTQ hate word,” successfully pushed a law enabling judges to keep men who prey on grade-schoolers 10 years their junior, between the ages of 14 and 17, off sex-offender registries.
Ballard stressed that both transgender activists and pedophiles argue that children can consent to destructive and sexualizing acts.
This mentality, granted legitimacy by policy decisions and laws that enable children to “consent to having their bodies filled with a chemical that will destroy their reproductive system” and “ripping apart their genitalia,” will lead to “what the pedophiles have been asking for for,” said Ballard. “If you can consent to that, guess what: What’s more fluid than gender? Age.”
'PEDOPHILE NETWORK DOCTRINES': Tim Ballard, who rescued kids from sex slavery, issues dire warning about transgender ideology. Jim Caviezel, who plays him in 'Sound of Freedom,' explains the evil mentality behind child exploitation and "pedophile laws."https://t.co/GcVfIZEM8Gpic.twitter.com/UuyFk5arS9
Extra to the left’s pursuit of greater social deregulation, Ballard suggested that its support for open borders has similarly fed the “economy of pedophilia.”
The Daily Signal highlighted how, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 150,000 unaccompanied minors were encountered crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last fiscal year and over 91,000 have been intercepted crossing the border so far this fiscal year.
“Thousands of them … are under 5 years old,” said Ballard. “Why is a 3-year-old showing up at the border? … Well, I can tell you why, because they show up with a name — the name of the sponsor that they’re given by the trafficker.”
“[The Department of Health and Human Services] gets the kids and they by law have to call the number. ‘Hi, we have Jose Gonzalez, Mr. George Smith.’ ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s my kid, whatever.’ ‘Okay,'” said Ballard, dramatizing a hypothetical conversation between a prospective predator and an unwitting facilitator at the HHS.
“They used to actually fly down and have to pick the kid up. Not anymore. Our taxpayer dollars will then send the kid by plane or bus to this George, the sponsor; no background check, no DNA, nothing. And they deliver the kids. Our taxpayer dollars are literally — for the first time in American history — our taxpayer dollars are going to facilitate the last leg of a child-trafficking event,” said Ballard.
“$14 million a day are landing in the pocket of smugglers and traffickers, thanks to the Biden-Harris border policy,” continued Ballard. “The only compassionate policy is border enforcement — barriers, walls. Why? And the ‘Sound of Freedom’ talks about this. Because the walls and the barriers lead the children who are being hurt into that funnel of rescue. Trained women and men in uniform are there. Those kids want to go through the port of entry. … Those kids pray for a wall. The wall will save their lives.”
The child liberator noted that the Biden administration tore “it all down.”
Rolling Stone ran a hit piece entitled, “‘Sound of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms,” with the sub-headline, “The QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.”
Miles Klee, the Los Angeles-based culture writer responsible for the Rolling Stone article, accused the movie of “fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated ‘epidemic’ of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities.”
Variety reported Sunday that the film had generated roughly $40 million after six days of release, ranking third on domestic box office charts despite playing at far fewer theaters than “Insidious” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which occupy the top two spots.
Transgender Movement and Biden Border Policy Aid and Abet Child Sex Slavery, Tim Ballard Warns youtu.be
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A preliminary injunction issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty explicitly prohibits the White House and several federal agencies from violating the First Amendment by directing social media companies to censor Americans.
Up to and even after the injunction’s release, Democrats have insisted that any suggestion the federal government is colluding with Big Tech to censor conservatives (or pretty much any information inconvenient to the current administration) is a “conspiracy” theory. However, in his injunction, Judge Doughty cited shocking evidence that the deep state’s collusion with Big Tech is very much real. Here are 12 of the dozens of damning instances cited by the judge that demonstrate the severity of our government’s illegal partnership with Big Tech.
1. White House Orders RFK Tweet Removal ‘ASAP’
On Jan. 23, 2021, the White House requested Twitter remove a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was critical of Covid-19 vaccines. “Hey folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP,” wrote a Biden official. The White House also expressed a desire to “keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.”
2. White House Requests ‘Immediate’ Ban On Biden Family Member Parody Account
On Feb. 6, 2021, the White House asked Twitter to ban a “parody account linked to Finnegan Biden, Hunter Biden’s daughter and President Biden’s granddaughter.”
“Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately,” the official wrote to Twitter. “Please remove this account immediately.” The account was banned within 45 minutes, Doughty noted.
3. Twitter Streamlines White House Censorship Requests
On Feb. 7, 2021, Twitter provided the White House with a “Twitter’s Partner Support Portal” that, according to the injunction, “expedited review of flagging content for censorship.” The portal was created because Twitter felt overwhelmed by the large volume of censorship requests coming from the White House and wanted to both prioritize and expedite the administration’s requests.
4. Twitter Promises White House It Will Boost Censorship
On March 1, 2021, after a meeting with White House officials about “misinformation,” Twitter sent a follow-up email promising that it would do more to suppress “misleading information.”
“Thanks again for meeting with us today. As we discussed, we are building on ‘our’ continued efforts to remove the most harmful COVID-19 ‘misleading information’ from the service,” Twitter wrote.
5. Facebook Fulfills White House’s Covid Censorship Requests
Sometime between May and July, a “senior Meta executive” sent emails to White House officials, letting them know that Meta was fulfilling White House “requests” to censor alleged Covid-19 misinformation. The email also said Meta was “expand[ing] penalties” for “Facebook accounts that share misinformation.”
“We think there is considerably more we can do in ‘partnership’ with you and your team to drive behavior,” Meta wrote.
6. Facebook Agrees to More Sweeping White House Covid Vaccine Censorship Demands
On March 21, 2021, Facebook sent an email to the White House recapping a March 19 in-person meeting during which the Biden administration apparently “demanded a consistent point of contact with Facebook, additional data from Facebook, ‘Levers for Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy Content,’ and censorship policies for Meta’s platform WhatsApp.” In response, according to Doughty, Facebook said it was “censoring, removing, and reducing the virality of” anti-vaccine content “that does not contain actionable misinformation.”
7. Facebook Shadowbans Vaccine Content on WhatsApp at Behest of White House
In the same aforementioned email, Facebook also agreed to shadowban anti-Covid vaccine content on Meta-owned WhatsApp. “As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that do not contain actionable misinformation,” the Big Tech company explained.
8. Facebook Boosts White House’s Vaccine Propaganda
On April 13, 2021, the White House asked Facebook multiple times to “amplify” pro-vaccine messaging in the wake of a “temporary halt” of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “Re the J & J news, we’re keen to amplify any messaging you want us to project about what this means for people,” Facebook wrote back.
9. White House Demands Censorship of Tucker Carlson Post
On April 14, 2021, a White House official emailed a Facebook executive inquiring into why a Tucker Carlson post with an “anti-vax message” had not been censored. Facebook responded, stating that while the post did not violate community guidelines, it was being “demoted.” Another White House official, unsatisfied with the shadowbanning since Carlson’s post had garnered 40,000 shares, wrote an email demanding an explanation from Facebook. The official also apparently directly called a Facebook executive. Facebook subsequently assured the White House that the video was given a “50% demotion for seven days and stated that it would continue to demote the video.”
10. Twitter Deplatforms Alex Berenson After White House Calls Him ‘Epicenter of Disinfo’
On April 21, officials from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services met with Twitter for a “Twitter Vaccine Misinfo Briefing.” During the meeting, White House officials “wanted to know” why journalist Alex Berenson had not been “kicked off” Twitter, calling him “the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.” Berenson was later suspended and eventually deplatformed.
11. Facebook Appeases White House Censorship Demands to Get Back in Biden’s ‘Good Graces’
In July 2021, after intense public and internal pressure from White House officials, including Press Secretary Jen Psaki and President Joe Biden himself, Facebook waged a mass censorship campaign against the “Disinformation Dozen” and anyone connected to them. The “Disinformation Dozen” are 12 users (one of whom is RFK Jr.) who were apparently responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content. Around that same time, a Facebook official asked one of Biden’s senior advisers for ways to “get back into the White House’s good graces,” adding that Facebook and the White House were “100% on the same team here in fighting this.”
12. White House Successfully Pressures Twitter to Remove Jill Biden Parody Video
On Nov. 30, 2021, the White House emailed Twitter to flag an edited video of First Lady Jill Biden “profanely heckling children while reading to them,” according to the injunction. In response, Twitter slapped a label on the video, warning that it had been “edited for comedic effect.” However, that wasn’t enough for the White House. After several back and forths that included the first lady’s press secretary, Twitter removed the video in December 2021.
The above list is only the tip of the iceberg. The Biden administration’s colossal war on the First Amendment includes an even wider range of targets, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lab-leak theory, anyone who questions the integrity of the 2020 election, anyone who questions the security of voting by mail, anyone who questions climate change, pro-lifers, people who believe in the sex binary, negative posts about the economy, and general criticism of the president. “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote Judge Doughty.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
Several leading Republican election officials are sounding the alarm about the federal government’s persistent interference in U.S. elections.
Jay Ashcroft and Mac Warner, the secretaries of state of Missouri and West Virginia, respectively, recently told The Federalist they are increasingly worried about the mounting evidence documenting federal agencies’ interference in prior elections to the benefit of the Democrat Party.
Ashcroft pointed to the long-awaited report from U.S. Attorney John Durham that confirmed what The Federalist has been reporting for years: The FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election. The political investigation — which was “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” — would continue throughout the 2016 election and well into Trump’s presidency.
This type of behavior from government agencies “is what you expect out of a banana republic,” Ashcroft said. “It is a direct attack on a foundational aspect of our country, that being fair, free elections.” As it turns out, he noted, “the largest purveyor of misinformation and disinformation with regard to elections [over the course of] the last several years has been the federal government.”
Warner echoed similar sentiments, calling the report’s findings “extraordinary” and adding that he can’t recall an instance in U.S. history where “our own federal agencies have gotten involved in an election to the point of lying to the American people to sway the outcome … for one candidate and one party.”
The 2016 election wasn’t the only one in which U.S. intel agencies decided to intervene to boost Democrats’ electoral prospects. Last month, a report released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated the CIA “both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot.” The letter — which was signed by more than 50 former intel officials — was used as a pretext by Big Tech companies and legacy media to censor and ignore the New York Post’s reporting on the Bidens’ shady business dealings ahead of the 2020 election.
During his Oct. 2020 debate with Trump, Biden even cited the letter to dismiss Trump’s mention of the Post report, accusing the then-Republican president of partaking in a “Russian plan.” It’s also worth noting that during an August interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted Facebook algorithmically suppressed stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election after being primed to do so by the FBI. According to Zuckerberg, the FBI warned Facebook about forthcoming “Russian propaganda” just before reports of the laptop dropped.
Polls taken since the 2020 election have shown that the coordinated efforts between U.S. intelligence agencies, America’s regime media, and social media companies to censor and ignore the Post’s reporting may have tipped the election to Biden. As Federalist CEO Sean Davis reported, a 2022 poll by TIPP Insights “found that 47 percent of those polled, including 45 percent of independents, said knowing the laptop contents were real and not Russian disinformation likely would have changed their votes in the 2020 election.”
In his remarks to The Federalist, Warner took specific aim at then-Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who, according to testimony from ex-CIA official Michael Morell, played a role in the creation of the debunked letter. During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Morell said Blinken reached out to him to discuss the laptop story several days after it dropped and that the call “absolutely” pushed him to write the infamous letter. Morell additionally confirmed one of the main reasons he released the letter was because he “wanted [Biden] to win the election.”
“Using the word treason is not out of context. It’s treasonous when you betray your own, and this [was] a betrayal by our own people,” Warner said. “These agencies are supposed to protect us, and [yet] they are the ones who are perpetrating this fraud on the American people. You just can’t get any more insidious or dangerous than that.”
While discussing the integrity of future elections, Ashcroft and Warner both emphasized that failure to hold America’s intel agencies accountable for their previous shenanigans will only result in continued interference in future elections.
“Unless there is real punishment for the people involved, it will continue in future elections,” Ashcroft said. “They are violating federal law by being involved in elections in a political way that they are not allowed to be and they are using that to change the outcome. They are using … not just their office, but their clearance and their job titles, and using that to change the outcome of our elections. I don’t know what’s more severe than that.”
It’s worth mentioning that Missouri and West Virginia have implemented several election integrity reforms in recent years. Last year, Missouri passedlegislation requiring voters to “provide a form of personal photo identification that is consistent” with state law in order to vote. Meanwhile, West Virginia, according to Warner, has successfully removed more than 400,000 ineligible voters from its voter registration lists since 2016. Both states were also among those to withdraw from ERIC — a leftist-controlled voter-roll management group — earlier this year.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Bureaucrats in President Joe Biden’s Department of Education just put their thumb on the scale of a book dispute in Georgia by not only smearing parents’ concerns about sexually explicit books in schools but also leveraging their federal power to intimidate districts that have successfully purged porn from campuses. In the Biden administration’s latest attempt to weaponize an arm of the federal government against parents, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) wrote a letter to Forsyth County Schools Superintendent Jeff Bearden on May 19 outlining everything it deemed wrong with the district’s decision to pull several inappropriate books from school bookshelves.
Not only did the federal agency demand that the district offer “supportive measures to students who may have been impacted by the book removal process,” but the OCR also ordered the Georgia school district to administer a “climate survey” to middle and high school students so bureaucrats can “assess whether additional steps need to be taken.”
The OCR predicated its probe into Forsyth schools on allegations from an unnamed complainant that the administration, at the bidding of parents, “created a hostile environment for students”based on race, color, or national origin. Using the Supreme Court’s expanded definition of “sex” as determined in the 5-4 Bostock v. Clayton County decision in 2020, the OCR also claimed it was investigating whether Forsyth County schools “created a hostile environment for students” based on sexual orientation and identity.
The Bostock ruling specifically pertained to sex differences in employment, not education. Still, after reviewing district documents, emails from parents to school staff, and school board meetings as well as interviewing several district staff, the Biden administration attempted to justify its involvement in this local education dispute by claiming it is a top enforcer of the 1972 Title IX and the 1964 Title VI laws.
“In my opinion, this is not about books,” Cindy Martin, an FCS mother, told The Federalist. “This is about the federal government using bully tactics against our school system to indoctrinate our children into their LGBTQ ideology.”
District and Parents Agree: Porn Shouldn’t Be in Schools
Clamor over inappropriate content in Forsyth schools first surfaced in 2021 when parents discovered several titles including sexually explicit material were made available by schools to their children. One parent told The Federalist that despite several attempts to contact the district, she never heard back until January 2022. After months of ignoring parents’ calls for change, the district called a District Media Committee meeting to independently discuss how to address ongoing concerns about unsuitable content in the classroom. By Jan. 21, 2022, FCS Superintendent Dr. Jeff Bearden asked the chief technology and information officer (CTIO) to “pull from school libraries books that were obviously sexually explicit or pornographic.”
“…how to address ongoing concerns about unsuitable content in the classroom”? Simple really. If you are uncomfortable reading the material Sunday Morning in Church Service, then should our children be READING IT?
“For us, it’s not about censorship because, obviously, students and parents have the right to choose to read whatever they want outside of the school,” FCS Chief Communications Officer Jennifer Caracciolo told one local media outlet at the time of the decision. “They can purchase it or they can go to the public library. But we have a responsibility whenever it comes to sexually explicit content in the walls of our buildings.”
Following a review, the CTIO asked Forsyth County Principals to indefinitely pull nine books from “all school libraries” and restrict another six books to high schools only.
“The content in them was what we would consider pervasively vulgar, and it’s not about whether or not a parent or guardian liked or disliked the ideas contained in the book or liked or disliked the author or the author’s identity, we focused on content that was pervasively vulgar,” Caracciolo clarified.
For a while, it seemed like the schools and the parents were beginning to get on the same page. But the fight wasn’t over yet.
“The conservative parents in our community were grateful that the school chose to stop providing children with this harmful, low-quality material. It fantasizes sex and leads to negative consequences such as sexual harassment, teen pregnancy, disease, and poverty,” Martin said. “However, we had done intense research and knew that eight books did not even come close to the amount of sexual explicit books that needed to be removed. This is how and why the Mama Bears of Forsyth County formed. We expected the school to make the libraries a safe place for all children. A school system should never provide sexual reading material to children.”
Twisted Tales
During its investigation, the OCR was quick to overlook the role parents and taxpayers have the right to play in the education of children, instead complaining that “the District did not make an announcement to, or have other communication with, students about the removal of the books.”
The OCR admitted in its findings letter that the school administration made it clear that the books in question “had not been reviewed for LGBTQI+ content or moral dilemma issues, just sexual explicitness.” Yet, OCR accused FCS parents of making what it characterized as “negative comments about diversity and inclusion or critical race theory.”
“Many parents called for the removal of additional books, with most of their comments focused on sexually explicit content; however, some comments focused on removing books for reasons related to gender identity or sexual orientation,” the letter stated.
The OCR additionally accused the district of giving the “impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.”
Several local media outlets also expressed outrage at the district’s decision and spread the lie that FCS leadership was “banning” books at the bidding of parents. The OCR, in turn, cited the media’s rage as proof that parents and the district somehow overstepped their bounds by protecting minors from sexually explicit content.
One Atlanta Journal-Constitution article lamented that “Juliet Takes a Breath,” a book known for, as Common Sense Media put it, “detailed scenes of kissing and lovemaking between two women, sexual fantasies, masturbation, and periods, as well as extensive discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity,” would no longer be available to students. Another book called “Monday’s Not Coming,” one reviewer noted, is filled with “homosexuality, promiscuity, intercourse, and prostitution” as well as child abuse. That book was sent “to local media center review committees for further analysis” by the school district.
Similar coverage dominated corporate media pages after the OCR’s letter was published in May.
Shortly after the school district pulled the handful of explicit books, parents gathered at a Feb. 15, 2022 Forsyth County Board of Education meeting to express their concern that children were being exposed to even more explicit books via the school system.
One attendee, Alison Hair, only got a few words into reading an excerpt from one of the other explicit library books that still sat on FCS shelves before she was cut off by the board for allegedly violating meeting rules.
“If you continue with your statement just please, we have other people that are younger in this [room],” one board member told Hair.
“If it is inappropriate to read in this building, then it is inappropriate, inappropriate to be in a library,” Hair said. “How dare you say ‘Oh, well, there’s minors in here.’ Wait, what is it? My son’s a minor and this book that you all have copies is in my son’s middle school.”
Hair’s frustrations were echoed by more than a dozen other parents.
“I have an 11-year-old and this is not allowed in our house nor would I allow him to pick this book up at Barnes and Noble or your school library that you provide for my children,” Ann Christopher, a mother to a Forsyth County middle schooler, said. “Also, you say respect the rules. You’re telling Alison to respect the rules. Excuse me. This is in my child’s face if he chose to check it out. What rules are you respecting for my child who can’t speak for [himself]? I’m the one here to protect my child, nobody else is. That’s why we parents are here.”
In a complaint filed in July 2022, Mama Bears of Forsyth members Hair, who was barred from school board meetings after attempting to read from another explicit passage in March, and Martin alleged that the Forsyth County Board of Education violated their First Amendment rights as parents to speak up about what kind of reading materials their children are exposed to.
“This lawsuit does not try to resolve the question of which books should be available in school libraries, but instead addresses unlawful attempts to sanitize how parents speak about those books in the presence of elected officials and other adults,” the lawsuit states.
In February 2023, a judge ruled that the FCS board violated Hair and Martin’s constitutional rights and must pay $100,000 in legal fees.
Despite these particular books’ inappropriate content, parents’ ongoing pleas for the taxpayer-funded district to stop supplying pornographic material to children, and the district’s expensive legal defeat, multiple problematic books were eventually approved to return to school shelves, along with more than half a dozen other titles for high schools, after review by a committee.
The Biden administration’s OCR investigation and demand for a mea culpa from FCS over its decision to pull bad books is likely only going to deter the district from taking any further drastic action when it comes to porn and inappropriate content in schools.
FCS parents, Martin reassured The Federalist, are not deterred.
“Wake up parents,” Martin said.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
The U.S. government has given Chinese and Russian entities at least $1.3 billion for various research programs over the past five years, according to an analysis released Wednesday by Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and watchdog group Open the Books.
The analysis revealed that millions of taxpayer dollars have been given to, among others, a Chinese software developer for military tech support, a Russian health insurance provider that has since been sanctioned and Chinese agriculture companies. And it showed the federal government gave $2 million, more than previously reported, to the Chinese state-run Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.
“Washington’s continued spending is so out of hand, it is losing track of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars, but I am creating accountability for every penny,” Ernst said in a statement after releasing the report.
“It is gravely concerning that no one in Washington can actually account for millions sent to Russia and China for pointless projects,” the Iowa Republican continued. “But I have the receipts. I’m shining a light on this reckless spending, so bureaucrats can no longer cover up their tracks and taxpayers can know exactly what their hard-earned dollars are funding.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said she released the report Wednesday “so bureaucrats can no longer cover up their tracks.” (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
In addition to releasing the analysis, Ernst introduced the Tracking Receipts to Adversarial Countries for Knowledge of Spending (TRACKS) Act that would require all federal funding for organizations in China and Russia to be tracked and disclosed. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., who chairs the China Select Committee, introduced companion legislation in the House.
Overall, using data obtained from the Congressional Research Service, Ernst and Open the Books tracked $490 million in U.S. grants and contracts paid to Chinese entities and another $870 million paid to Russian entities. The Government Accountability Office previously estimated the U.S. funneled just $48 million to Chinese entities over the five-year period ending in 2021.
According to Ernst’s analysis, one program, a $58.7 million State Department grant, included giving a Chinese organization, Beijing-based Crossroads Cultural Communication, $96,875 for “gender equality” through the exhibition of New Yorker magazine cartoons.” To increase awareness on gender equality and women empowerment through an exhibition of works by women cartoonists of the New Yorker Magazine in China,” the 2021 grant description states.
President Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia on Nov. 14, 2022. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
Another, a $51.6 million grant from the Department of Defense, resulted in $6 million in funding for Chinese tech firm Beijing Juehua Trading Co. to provide “deployment and distribution command” software for the U.S. military. And Chinese food producers were awarded $1.6 million under the Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program, which was designed to assist domestic producers.
The $2 million in research funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the Chinese lab some experts have blamed for leaking coronavirus, sparking the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 — included $1.1 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development and $600,000 from the National Institutes of Health. The funding was indirectly transferred through EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. non-governmental organization.
In addition, a $4.2 million Health and Human Services program granted $770,466 to the Pavlov Institute, a state-run lab located in St. Petersburg, Russia, to experiment on cats running on treadmills. The Biden administration ultimately cut off funding for the program after criticism from groups like White Coat Waste and Republican lawmakers.
Ernst’s analysis also showed that the federal government wired $4.7 million to Russian company PAO Rosgosstrakh for health insurance. That same company was sanctioned by the Treasury Department amid the Ukraine invasion in 2022.
Also, $1.45 million was granted to entities in Russia for COVID-19 pandemic virus tracking.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Senate Republicans are demanding President Joe Biden hand over documents related to his March 2021 executive order directing federal agencies to interfere in state and local elections.
On Wednesday, 13 Senate Republicans sent a letter to Biden requesting his administration forfeit documents related to Executive Order 14019, which required hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in the electoral process by using taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. As The Federalist previously reported, voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture and often involve left-wing groups that abuse their nonprofit status to target likely-Democrat voters.
“First, while we all agree that increased voter participation is a good thing, the job of federal agencies is to perform their defined missions in a nonpartisan way, not use their taxpayer funds for clandestine voter mobilization and election-turnout operations,” the senators wrote. “Second, it seems doubtful that Congress approved all federal agencies to use appropriated funds for the purpose of voter mobilization.”
Under Executive Order 14019, the heads of each agency were required to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how his or her department intends to fulfill Biden’s directive. Despite attempts by good government groups to acquire these plans, the Biden administration has routinely stonewalled such efforts by slow-walking its response to federal court orders and heavily redacting any related documents it has released.
In their letter, Senate Republicans are demanding the White House provide them with copies of these strategic plans, as well as a “full accounting of all federal funding used to-date” to comply with the order, by May 23.
“Therefore, reviewing the agency plans is critical to understanding the degree to which implementation of this order has resulted in improper uses of federal resources,” the senators wrote.
Signatories of the letter include Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Lee of Utah, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Katie Britt of Alabama.
Most recently, Budd, along with New York GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, introduced the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act, which, in addition to requiring federal agencies to disclose their strategic plans to Congress, would prohibit federal agencies from using federal funds to “solicit or enter into an agreement with a nongovernmental organization to conduct voter registration or voter mobilization activities.”
The bill would furthermore amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to bar public universities from using taxpayer-funded Federal Work Study programs to pay college students to engage in voter registration campaigns. In April 2022, the Biden administration told colleges they could use work-study funds to partake in such activities. Having taxpayers fund get-out-the-vote efforts in this way had previously not been allowed.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The White House blocked the New York Post from covering a Monday public event with President Joe Biden, according to the paper, a sign the president’s team is increasingly sensitive to coverage of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and could be cracking down on media access after the launch of his reelection campaign.
The Post, which first revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in October of 2020, said the White House rejected its request to attend Biden’s press event discussing airline policies with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The decision comes as federal prosecutors are wrapping up a tax investigation into Hunter Biden, which could result in criminal charges in the coming days.
Photos from the event show there were about 20 empty media seats, undermining the explanation from the White House press office for the decision to block the Post.
“We are unable to accommodate your credential request to attend the Investing in Airline Accountability Remarks on 5/8,” the White House press office told the Post. “The remarks will be live-streamed and can be viewed at WH.gov. Thank you for understanding. We will let you know if a credential becomes available.”
Biden—who has held the fewest press availabilities of any president in two decades—in February blew up at a Post reporter after the reporter asked during a similar media event about the first family’s financial dealings with China. “Give me a break, man,” Biden said, ignoring the question. “You can come to my office and ask a question when you have more polite people with you.”
Steven Nelson, the Post reporter who was denied access, told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s staff are “setting an anti-press freedom precedent by prescreening journalists allowed to attend large indoor events. These spaces were open to all reporters on White House grounds in the past.”
He noted that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promised last July to end a much-criticized COVID-era screening process that gave Biden’s press office control over which reporters were allowed to attend presidential remarks. Reporters accused the White House of arbitrarily enforcing the policy, saying it was “done without any transparent process into how reporters are selected to cover these events” in a letter last June.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association also has called on the administration to restore large indoor spaces to their historical status as open to all,” added Nelson. “If the Biden White House continues to discriminate against large outlets such as the New York Post, future administrations can do the same to other newspapers. It should end now.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House Correspondents’ Association also did not respond to a request for comment.
Update 5:34 p.m.: This piece has been updated since publication.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is demanding transparency from an agency with no interest in transparency.
On Thursday, the Iowa lawmaker went to the Senate floor to demand FBI compliance with a congressional subpoena compelling documents related to a criminal scheme involving the president and a “foreign national.” Grassley joined House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in issuing the subpoena Wednesday.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley wrote. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”
In his Thursday floor speech, Grassley spoke about his tenure conducting constitutional oversight of federal law enforcement agencies.
“In many of those floor speeches, I’ve discussed legally protected and unclassified whistleblower disclosures made to my office relating to the Hunter Biden criminal investigation,” Grassley said. “Those disclosures have a very common theme: the Justice Department and FBI have allowed political infection to take root within each agency’s decision-making process. Such an infection is an existential threat to any government agency.”
The latest whistleblower cited in Republican lawmakers’ demands to the FBI on Wednesday alleges President Biden engaged in bribery while serving in the Obama administration.
“The allegations my office has received are very precise, very direct, and very consistent. Accordingly, they’re highly credible,” Grassley said Thursday. “Not once – let me emphasize that again – not once has the Justice Department or FBI substantively disputed the whistleblower allegations that I’ve made public.”
“Simply put, did the Justice Department and FBI treat this information like they would if we, the people, were implicated, or did they sweep it under the rug to protect then-candidate Biden and President Biden now?” Grassley added. “If the Justice Department and FBI have any hope of redeeming their once-trusted position with the American people, Attorney General Garland and Director Wray must answer. Their credibility is on the line.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Following revelations that he allegedly lied under oath to Congress, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing calls from Senate Republicans to turn over communication records related to Hunter Biden and his shady business engagements.
On Monday, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to Blinken demanding that he turn over any and all records “referring or relating to Hunter Biden, his business dealings, or his family’s business dealings” by May 15. The request comes as part of Senate Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.
In the letter, Johnson and Grassley document a series of emails revealing how Blinken seemingly lied under oath about his prior communications with Hunter. While testifying before Congress on Dec. 22, 2020, Blinken was asked if he had any means of correspondence —including phone calls, emails, or texts — with Hunter Biden during his time as President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, to which Blinken replied, “No.”
Emails from Hunter’s laptop, however, appear to contradict Blinken’s December 2020 testimony. As documented in the Johnson-Grassley letter, Hunter emailed Blinken at his personal email address on May 22, 2015, asking if the then-deputy secretary of state was available to meet.
“I know you are impossibly busy but would like to get your advice on a couple of things,” Hunter wrote, to which Blinken replied, “Absolutely.”
Blinken sent another email to Hunter a few months later on July 22, indicating the two met in person.
“Great to… see you and catch up,” Blinken wrote. “You will love this: after you left, Marjorie, the wonderful african american woman who sits in my outer office (and used to be Colin Powell’s assistant) said to me :’He sure is pleasant on the eyes.’ Tell you wife.”
The Johnson-Grassley letter also raises questions regarding Blinken’s knowledge of Hunter’s role as a Burisma Holdings board member. Burisma Holdings is a Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter $50,000 a month despite the president’s son having no prior energy experience. Joe Biden has claimed that while vice president, he threatened to withdraw U.S. aid if then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “didn’t fire state prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma at the time.”
Despite Blinken claiming to have no knowledge of Hunter’s Burisma ties during his December 2020 testimony, emails from Hunter’s laptop reveal that Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, “corresponded directly with Hunter Biden (from her personal email address) in an apparent attempt to connect [Blinken] with representatives of Burisma’s U.S. lobbying firm, Blue Star Strategies.”
In what appears to be an email chain dated July 14, 2016, Hunter informed Ryan that “S” and “K” — who appear to be Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, Blue Star Strategies’ Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer — told him “they called the State Department and left a message.” In her email to Hunter, Ryan appeared to reference Blinken, writing “He didn’t get the msg” and “He said if we can get him their numbers he can call them late afternoon DC time tmrw.”
While this specific email exchange doesn’t name Blinken, Johnson and Grassley noted that State Department documents obtained during their inquiry “make it clear that [Blinken was] concurrently trying to connect with representatives from Blue Star Strategies.”
“It seems highly unlikely that you had no idea of Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma while your wife was apparently coordinating with Hunter Biden to potentially connect you with Burisma’s U.S. representatives,” Johnson and Grassley wrote. “Because your testimony is inaccurate, Congress and the public must rely on your records as the source for information about your dealings with Hunter Biden.”
These revelations follow testimony from an ex-CIA official, who claimed that Blinken, during his time as a Biden campaign adviser, was the catalyst for the creation of a debunked letter from former intelligence officials that falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Several Republican female lawmakers assembled to promote the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023″ on Capitol Hill Thursday ahead of its passage in the House of Representatives.
The legislation, introduced by Rep. Greg Steube R-Fla., aims to prevent biological males from participating in women’s sports. Educational institutions that receive Title IX funding from the federal government would not be allowed to “permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designed for women or girls.” The bill passed the House in a 219-203 vote, with all the “no” votes coming from Democrats. President Biden has pledged to veto the bill should it reach his desk, blasting it as “discrimination” against transgender student athletes.
“The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 734,” the White House said in a statement. “For students nationwide, participating in sports and being part of a team is an important part of growing up, staying engaged in school, and learning leadership and life skills. H.R. 734 would deny access to sports for many families by establishing an absolute ban on transgender students—even those as young as elementary schoolers—playing on a team consistent with their gender identity.”
“This is not discrimination against anyone,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital in response. “That is the most ridiculous thing to be saying… All we’re saying is, biological women should be competing against biological women. And biological men should be competing against biological men. The bill is very short. It has nothing in it about discriminating against anyone. That’s a red herring if there ever was a red herring.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., pushes back on President Biden calling the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 “discrimination.” (Fox News Digital)
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., accused Democrats of spearheading a “radical gender fluidity agenda,” while reflecting on her own career as a student athlete.
“The 118th Congress, we are so proud to be in a House Republican Majority, but I am personally proud that America elected the highest number of Republican women ever,” Stefanik said at Thursday’s press conference. “They are strong leaders in our Conference and, particularly on important days like today, we are so grateful for their effective advocacy to get this bill across the finish line. Today, we will pass this historic legislation to protect women and girls in sports. Thank you so much to the incredible work.”
“I know that there are so many personal stories, and in addition to these wonderful women members of Congress, we have tremendous women athletes who are here with us today, who have talked about the unfairness when it comes to biological males competing in women’s sports,” she added. “If you talk to women leaders today, so many had opportunities when it came to sports growing up. I myself played varsity lacrosse, I also rowed crew in high school. To have that opportunity to learn leadership, to learn discipline, to learn teamwork is so, so important. This is about protecting women’s sports, now and into the future. We anticipate this will be passed today. It is a winning issue across America — standing up for the future of women and girls.”
Several GOP members blasted the administration’s agenda to allow transgender females to compete against biological women as backwards.
“Who would have thought all these years later, we would have our Democratic women colleagues, join with a male president, who is fighting against women’s rights?” Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., said at Thursday’s press conference. “This is outrageous. This is crazy. This is dangerous. This needs to stop.”
At a recent hearing for the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Foxx garnered some attention for declaring there’s “no way” to change one’s biological sex.
Foxx: "[HR 734] says that if you're a biological male, you cannot participate against biological females. It's as simple as that."
— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) April 17, 2023
“There’s not a good definition of what a transgender girl is,” Foxx expanded to Fox Digital. “One cannot change one’s gender. It’s not possible to do. Certainly people can change what they say about who they identify as, but they cannot change their gender. So the term ‘transgender’ is ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. You can’t go from one gender to another.”
Foxx mused why the idea of there being two biological genders now seems out of the mainstream.
“The Democrats pretend to be the party of science,” she added. “But to just completely dismiss science makes no sense. Why is it a farfetched idea? Partly because the media keeps using the term and acting like it means something.”
Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee business meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., also highlighted the dangers of letting biological males compete against women, sharing how she was raped multiple times as a teenager.
“Before a woman even sets foot in a locker room,” she said. “Before she even sets foot on the court, before she ever dives from the first swim meet, she’s already in a vulnerable position. And we need to protect our women and girls in sports because of these vulnerabilities.”
Mace said she’d be “remiss” if she didn’t drop some expletives.
“We’ve worked too damn hard to put up with the bulls— of the left that wants to take our achievements away from us,” she said.
“I’m a girl mom also, my girl is an athlete,” Mace added. “I cannot imagine her having to be put in that position where there is a biological male in her locker room. Or if she’s trying to compete for a college scholarship where it gets taken away by a man who’s much stronger and much greater physical capabilities than she does. It’s complete and total bulls—. It’s cruel.”
The office of Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., scolded a reporter who insisted the Republican lawmaker’s rhetoric “makes political violence more likely” in the wake of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Democrats, meanwhile, have blasted the Republican-led bill as “bullying.”
“This bill is about bullying children,” Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, said. “Stop bullying children.“
“House Republicans are choosing to bully and belittle trans children,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif added. “This is about attacking a small group of children, and it is shameful.“
Fox News Digital’s Brandon Gillespie and Peter Kasperowicz contributed to this report.
Cortney O’Brien is an Editor at Fox News. Twitter: @obrienc2
The Biden administration involved itself in the raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home despite reports that its officials were “stunned” to find out about the news on social media, according to the group America First Legal, which obtained internal government documents related to the raid through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“The evidence further suggests that Biden officials in the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice unlawfully abused their power and then lied about it to the American people,” said Reed D. Rubinstein, America First Legal senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations, in a post on social media Tuesday. “This government, it seems, acknowledges no limits on its power to harass, intimidate, and silence its political opponents.”
Rubinstein’s comments come after a Freedom of Information Act request by America First Legal found the FBI initially obtained access to Trump records through a “special access request” from the Biden White House.
The new information confirms Fox News reporting from August, when NARA acting head Debra Wall wrote a letter to Trump’s attorney alluding to the administration’s involvement.
Records show that John Laster, “the Archives’ official responsible for administering all access requests for Presidential records,” was involved in the request despite the Archives’ previously claiming it had “not been involved in the DOJ investigation.”
“On October 25, 2022, Acting Archivist Wall wrote to then-Ranking Members James Comer and Jim Jordan, claiming ‘NARA received the 15 boxes from President Trump on January 18, 2022, and then discovered that they contained classified national security information. Shortly after the discovery, NARA consulted with its Office of Inspector General (OIG), which operates independently of NARA. As DOJ has disclosed publicly in court filings, NARA’s OIG subsequently referred the matter to DOJ on February 9, 2022,’” America First Legal wrote.
“If the OIG acted independently in making a referral to the FBI, then Mr. Laster would not have involved himself in the FBI’s review of the 15 boxes in his capacity as the Director of the White House Liaison Division ‘responsible for all access requests for Presidential records.’”
Former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
According to America First Legal, the special access statute “authorizes special access requests to an incumbent president only when the records in question are needed for ‘the conduct of current business’ of the White House.”
“Providing documents to the DOJ for purposes of a criminal investigation is not the ‘current business’ of the White House,” the organization said.
The August letter from Wall to Trump attorney Evan Corcoran also seemingly hinted at President Biden’s involvement.
Local law enforcement officers are seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
“NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them,” Wall wrote. “The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege.”
The Biden administration was heavily criticized Thursday after it made a series of announcements on various hot-button topics ahead of the holiday weekend.
On Thursday afternoon, the White House released a long-awaited after-action report on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal overseen by President Biden in August 2021. Then, hours later, the Department of Education rolled out new Title IX rules expanding the definition of sexual discrimination in an effort to prevent schools from banning transgender athletes.
Also on Thursday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published a 150-page plan on how it would deploy new resources from the Inflation Reduction Act. Buried in the document, which the Treasury Department originally said would come no later than Feb. 17, the IRS acknowledged that it would spend a staggering $45.6 billion on increased enforcement and tax audits.
“I think I speak on behalf of my colleagues in this room when we want the record to reflect that this was sent to us about 10 minutes before the briefing began with little notice, and it’s the very definition of a modern major holiday news dump,” CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe said to White House spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday in a question about the Afghanistan report.
White House spokesperson John Kirby defended the timing of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan report on Thursday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“You’re releasing this at the beginning of the High Holidays [sic] and after months of requests from Republicans and the broader public,” O’Keefe continued.
Kirby responded that the White House believed the report, which is a summary of classified reports assembled by individual defense agencies, was timed in a “responsible” fashion, adding that it was the “culmination of an awful lot of work.”
The White House was later criticized for the contents of the report, which largely cast the blame of the 2021 withdrawal on the Trump administration. During the operation, 13 American service members were killed in a suicide bombing while manning the perimeter of the airport where evacuations were taking place.
“John Kirby’s comments during today’s White House press briefing were disgraceful and insulting. President Biden made the decision to withdraw and even picked the exact date; he is responsible for the massive failures in planning and execution,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement.
The Department of Education moved to review federal funding for schools that implement “sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female athletic team consistent with their gender identity.” (Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The administration was also blasted for its subsequent Title IX revisions opening the door to force schools and colleges that receive federal funds to allow transgender students to play on sports teams.
Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem threatened to sue the administration over the rule, saying “only girls will play girls’ sports.”
“What an Easter weekend news dump by the Biden Administration,” Noem’s spokesperson Ian Fury tweeted. “One wonders why they wanted to hide this? Probably because they know that public sentiment is not on their side.”
And the IRS was similarly criticized for announcing its massive $45.6 billion tax and audit enforcement funding. The Inflation Reduction Act bolstered the IRS’ budget by $80 billion, allowing the agency to hire tens of thousands of new agents. The House passed legislation in early January to rescind $70 billion of that funding.
“New IRS spending plan allocates $45.6 billion on ramping up audits, more than 14x the spending for improving taxpayer services,” tweeted Mike Palicz, the federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform. “Nice Easter news dump.”
A White House official noted that the White House took more than 90 minutes of questions, including some about the Afghanistan report, from reporters Thursday. The press briefing also occurred after the IRS announcement.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
On Wednesday, Speaker McCarthy and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. The meeting made McCarthy the most senior U.S. official to meet with the leader of Taiwan on U.S. soil in decades, according to Newsweek.
During the historic summit, McCarthy reaffirmed Congress’s commitment to strengthening relations with the island nation and support for Taiwan’s aim to remain democratic in the wake of increasing Chinese aggression.
“I felt our meeting today provided a greater peace and stability for the world. America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan,” McCarthy said. Tsai echoed similar sentiments, saying, “To preserve peace, we must be strong” and “we are stronger when we are together.”
“I am the Speaker of the House. There is no place that China’s going to tell me where to go and who I can speak to — I’m not the general manager of @HoustonRockets.”
— Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (@committeeonccp) April 6, 2023
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — which claims Taiwan is Chinese territory — issued remarks on Thursday threatening to “take resolute measures” in response to Tsai and McCarthy’s alleged promotion of Taiwanese independence. Taiwan News reported the island’s national defense ministry tracked a People’s Liberation Army helicopter and two naval vessels in the waters surrounding Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday.
Most egregiously, however, is the CCP’s attempt to “inspect” ships traveling through the Taiwan Strait. According to Reuters, “China’s Fujian maritime safety administration launched a three-day special joint patrol and inspection operation in the central and northern parts of the Taiwan Strait” on Wednesday that includes “moves to board ships.” Fujian is a southeastern Chinese province bordering the Taiwan Strait.
“The maritime safety authority in the southeastern Chinese province said … the operation included ‘on-site inspections’ on direct cargo ships and construction vessels on both sides of the Taiwan Strait ‘to ensure the safety of vessel navigation and ensure the safe and orderly operation of key projects on water,’” the report reads. Taiwan indicated it would not cooperate with the inspections.
Biden Helps China by Undercutting America
In the background of McCarthy’s bid to reaffirm U.S. support for Taiwanese sovereignty is the flailing presidency of Joe Biden, whose administration’s seemingly intentional bid to cripple America’s national security and economic stability is giving China leeway to expand its influence across the globe.
On Monday, NBC News reported the infamous Chinese spy balloon the Biden administration let drift across the continental United States earlier this year “was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites.” Among the intelligence transmitted back to the CCP was “mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel.”
On the economic front, Biden’s monetary policy — which includes spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on useless Democrat pet projects — has resulted in decades-high inflation, causing everyday Americans to struggle to afford basic necessities such as gas and groceries. The administration’s ongoing war against the U.S. fossil fuel industry has only exacerbated the country’s economic pains.
Under Biden, the hegemony of the U.S. dollar is also in jeopardy. Countries such as Brazil and Malaysia have announced within the past week plans to work with China to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar when conducting trade with Beijing. Most recently, the Chinese yuan surpassed the U.S. dollar as the most traded currency in Russia, signifying growing ties between Beijing and Moscow.
As noted by The Daily Caller, “[i]f foreigners no longer want [U.S. dollars] for trade, central bank reserves, private wealth funds, and the official currency of about a dozen countries, all those dollars have nowhere to go but back to us in a flood like our country has never seen.” Such a scenario would likely lead to hyperinflation and further suffering among the American people.
The U.S. is haunted by self-inflicted domestic problems, so the CCP likely sees an opportunity not just to take control of Taiwan but to recalibrate the politics of the Indo-Pacific in its favor. The longer Biden cripples the U.S., the closer China gets to creating a new world order devoid of U.S. influence.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
If Americans are concerned about our enemies getting bolder in their bid to disrupt the U.S.-led world order, they should thank President Joe Biden. Last week, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the meeting, the leaders outlined plans to enhance bilateral ties on issues such as trade, energy, and military cooperation. Xi and Putin furthermore agreed to support one another’s “fundamental interests,” specifically on matters concerning “sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and development.”
Most notable in the joint statement released by Beijing and Moscow, however, is the expressed goal of creating a “multipolar world order.” “The Parties confirm a willingness to … oppose all forms [of] hegemony, unilateralism and power politics, against cold war thinking, bloc confrontation and the creation of narrow formats against certain countries,” a joint statement released after the meeting reads.
The move signifies a stark challenge to the U.S., which, since the end of the Cold War, has been the world’s sole superpower. Under this unipolar system, the U.S. has utilized its economic, military, and cultural power to fashion a global community centered around Western values.
The three-day meeting between Xi and Putin comes amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Last month, Beijing made headlines after calling for a cease-fire between the two nations. As part of its 12-point peace plan, China has called for all parties involved to abandon “the Cold War mentality” and “stopping unilateral sanctions.” As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials “routinely” use such language “to criticize the U.S. and other Western powers for their response to Russia’s invasion — including the supply of arms to Ukraine and the use of wide-ranging economic tools to pressure Moscow.”
But it’s not just eastern Europe where the Chinese government is looking to play dealmaker. Two weeks ago, Beijing brokered a peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two Middle Eastern nations with a historically antagonistic relationship. According to a separate Journal report, Tehran and Riyadh have agreed to “re-establish diplomatic relations” after seven years of estrangement, which includes commitments to “reopen their embassies and missions on each other’s soil within two months.” The deal comes amid a breakdown in U.S.-Saudi relations — for which Biden bears the blame.
Beijing’s growing global influence is also apparent in Latin America. On Sunday, Honduras — a long-time ally of Taiwan — switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. As a prerequisite for establishing ties with its government, China has mandated nations to sever formal ties with Taiwan. Such a requirement is part of the CCP’s strategy to politically isolate Taiwan on the world stage.
Biden Cripples America
Red China’s bid to establish itself as a global power isn’t surprising. Since Xi’s ascension to party leader in 2012, he has sought to further China’s economic and military prowess as a means of expanding its influence throughout the world.
Biden’s presidency has ushered in an era of American weakness Beijing seeks to exploit. His administration threw the U.S.’ longstanding record as a buffer against the CCP’s global ambitions into the garbage. Rather than pursue policies strengthening America’s economic security and military readiness, Biden and his administration have implemented measures achieving the exact opposite.
On the economic front, Biden’s monetary policy — which includes spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on useless Democrat pet projects — resulted in decades-high inflation, causing everyday Americans to struggle to afford basic necessities such as gas and groceries. Rather than curb federal spending or increase domestic energy production, the Biden administration spends its time championing expensive electric vehicles made with Chinese batteries.
The situation isn’t any better on the national security front, either. Up until January, the administration depleted U.S. military ranks by removing servicemembers who didn’t receive the experimental Covid jab. Despite the shot’s inability to stop viral transmission and its significant risks, the Defense Department denied the vast majority of religious and medical exemptions filed by un-jabbed soldiers. Combined with forcing servicemembers to undergo racist DEI training, it’s no surprise the military is facing major recruiting problems.
Biden’s open border policies are also exacerbating national security concerns at the U.S.-Mexico border, where Border Patrol officials are facing unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. From Jan. 2021 to Oct. 2022, an estimated 5.5 million illegal aliens were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection. These figures don’t even include the millions of “gotaways” who evaded capture.
Don’t worry, though. When it comes to foreign policy, Biden’s team of “experts” surely has “confront the growing threat of the CCP” at the top of their to-do list. Right?
If the U.S. had a mentally-sound president who prioritized the success of his country, it’s not crazy to imagine that the CCP would be more hesitant in pursuing its global ambitions. Under Biden’s empty-suit presidency, however, Xi smells opportunity.
With Biden crippling the U.S.’ economic and military readiness from within, China is able to methodically expand its influence throughout the world nearly unchallenged. Whether it’s securing peace agreements between rivaling powers or fostering ties with strategically important countries, the CCP isn’t slowing down in its aim to usher in a world order devoid of American hegemony.
If Biden and co. had any interest in stymying Red China’s growing influence and maintaining U.S. global dominance, they’d reverse course and implement policies that further American success. Doing so would greatly benefit the American people.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The Biden administration announced its latest home appliance regulations this week, targeting air conditioners in an action it said would reduce the nation’s carbon emissions.
The regulations, unveiled Thursday by the Department of Energy (DOE), finalize energy efficiency standards for home air conditioning units, or window air conditioners, and portable air cleaners. The DOE said the move would cut air pollution and push consumer costs down by billions of dollars via energy savings.
“Today’s announcement builds on the historic actions President Biden took last year to strengthen outdated energy efficiency standards, which will help save on people’s energy bills and reduce our nation’s carbon footprint,”Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
“DOE will continue to engage with our public and private sector partners to finalize additional proposals like today’s that lower household energy costs and deliver the safer, healthier communities that every American deserves,” she continued.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks during a press briefing in May 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
According to the DOE, the new energy efficiency standards will save Americans about $1.5 billion annually and curb carbon dioxide emissions by 106 million metric tons over three decades. The agency added that the regulations were part of President Biden’s efforts to promote innovation and lower costs for families “while tackling the climate crisis.”
The rules for air cleaners are scheduled to be implemented in 2024 and the rules for room air conditioners are slated for 2026.
Over the last several months, meanwhile, the DOE has introduced a series of energy efficiency regulations impacting various home appliances including gas stoves, ovens, clothes washers and refrigerators. Critics have blasted the rules as federal overreach and unnecessary given that the industry has improved technology without government intervention.
“What these mandates, what these standards, do is enforce a level of efficiency that doesn’t make sense,” Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital in an interview last week. “And they compromise product quality. We’ve already seen this to an extent with cost of clothes washer standards.”
“That’s another problem — this is a regulatory program that’s very long in the tooth and you’re getting to the point where clothes washers — this might be the fifth time they’ve been regulated,” he continued. “So we’re really chasing after diminishing or nonexistent marginal returns.”
A former senior DOE official previously told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration’s actions would inevitably result in higher costs for consumers.
“Their philosophy is energy efficiency at all costs or energy efficiency no matter the cost,” the official said. “That means we are going to see, as a result of their efficiency standards, higher-priced appliances. It’s that simple.”
“The reality is that we are not talking about saving huge amounts of energy from these new regulations.”
And the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), the leading U.S. trade group representing appliance makers and suppliers, has warned that the actions would particularly harm low-income households and decrease overall product quality.
Jill Notini, a spokesperson for AHAM, recently told Fox News Digital that, taking into account the higher costs of appliances, the estimated savings from the energy efficiency rules “don’t add up right now during this time of high inflation.” However, she said Friday that the group supports the air cleaner rule announced this week, but remained concerned about other actions.
“Our industry puts innovative and energy efficient appliances into every home,” Notini told Fox News Digital. “We worked to advance the air cleaner rule within DOE, but we remain concerned that DOE is going too far on other products without any real savings to consumers, at a time when people are looking for relief.”
On his first day in office in January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order requiring the DOE to make “major revisions” to current appliance regulation standards and standards set by the Trump administration. A month later, the agency began moving forward on more than a dozen energy efficiency rules, impacting a wide range of appliances.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Are you angry yet? You should be. Our economy is slowing, banks are reeling, inflation remains scorching-high, real incomes are dropping, home prices are falling and Americans everywhere are becoming poorer by the minute. On top of everything else, now we have the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, infuriating bailouts and the resulting panic over banks. As with nearly everything that has gone wrong on their watch, including the inexcusable border chaos, the catastrophic pullout from Afghanistan and harmful inflation, the go-to response by the White House has been to blame President Trump.
Specifically, to blame Trump for signing legislation that loosened regulations on regional banks in 2018.That was Joe Biden’s message in the pitiful 5-minute address in which he tried but utterly failed to reassure the nation that our banking system is sound.
Here’s what Biden didn’t say: they knew. Regulators knew that Silicon Valley Bank was on the brink of failure. Supervisors spotted fatal weaknesses at the tech lender last summer, including some deemed “matters requiring immediate attention”; they told SVB management last fall that its model was flawed and could result in a run on deposits.
Despite the grave warning, the New York Times reports, management failed to change course and supervisors failed to act. By early this spring, SVB was in yet another review, this one on its risk management practices. Bottom line: there were none.
In other words, there were plenty of regulations and processes in place to prevent the catastrophe that occurred at SVB. Critics have assailed the San Francisco Fed, the supervisory authority, and its chief Mary Daly, for negligence. Some have rightly said that having SVB CEO Greg Becker on the overseer Fed board posed an obvious and dangerous conflict of interest.
It is hard to dismiss those who assert that the eagerness with which the Fed, the Treasury and the White House stepped in to bail out SVB and Signature Bank, caught in SVB’s backdraft, stemmed from the cozy relationships and giant political donations that Democrats receive from the tech community. It is, indeed, one big Happy Valley.
After all, the bailouts (which must not be called bailouts) infuriated our European allies, and are a great embarrassment to our globalist Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who surely resisted the rescue. Yellen has spent much of her tenure atop our financial edifice working to cede U.S. tax policy to international organizations. To that end she has lobbied financial regulators around the world promising, among other things, that the U.S. would never again bail out banks.
The Financial Times reports that Europe’s “top policymakers are seething” over the decision to cover all SVB’s depositors, “fearing it will undermine a globally agreed regime.” Those critics are reportedly shocked at the “total and utter incompetence” of U.S. authorities.
It did not have to be this way. Do not forget who brought us to this sorry state. Do not be fooled. There is one and only one reason that Americans are struggling, that we are heading into a recession, and our banks are on thin ice.
President Biden, Democrats in Congress, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jay Powell have orchestrated a reckless trashing of our economy. In a shameless bid to buy votes, Biden and the Democrat majority in Congress spent trillions of unneeded dollars, mainly aimed at politically favored groups like the teachers’ unions and the climate lobby, driving the economy into warp speed and igniting inflation.
Jay Powell, hoping to be reappointed Fed Chair, ignored rising prices for months, continuing to buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of bonds and mortgage-backed securities even as inflation topped 6%, aware that his only competition for the job was Lael Brainard, an avowed “dove.” Moving faster to tackle inflation might have cost Powell his job.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Yellen became a cheerleader for blowing up the country’s deficits, all the while dismissing inflation as “small” and “manageable”; it wasn’t until the end of 2021 that she admitted it was not, after all, “transitory”. Once a respected economist, Yellen has become a political hack.
Joe Biden and Janet Yellen lie when they say the economy was “reeling” when he became president; it was actually growing at 6% and recovering nicely from the once-in-a-lifetime shutdown caused by COVID-19. Thanks to bipartisan efforts to prop up stalled businesses and consumers who had lost their jobs, the slump occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic was sharp but mercifully short-lived. The government expanded relief programs, the Fed lowered interest rates; the system was working as planned.
Jobs were coming back, inflation was only 1.4%, and consumer sentiment, key to spending, had rebounded sharply from the low of 72 on April 2020 to 79. (Last month, even before the bank problems, it stood at 67; in February 2020, before COVID hit, it stood at 101. Bravo Biden!)
Joe Biden took office and within weeks rushed to pass the American Rescue Act, throwing $1.9 trillion onto an economy plagued with supply chain problems. The bill passed with Democrat-only support, in part because Republicans recognized that it could prove inflationary (as even Democrat Larry Summers predicted.) Inflation indeed began to climb, to 4.2% in April 2021, and to a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.
The banking sector will likely calm, and inflation has dropped, but we are not out of the woods. There are recession signs aplenty and Biden has offered up a ludicrous and wasteful budget that Republicans must oppose. There will be a fight over raising the debt ceiling as the GOP pushes for needed spending restraint, which could get ugly.
But voters need to remember as the next election nears: it did not have to be this way. This was not an act of God; this was a reckless hijacking of our economy that put the entire country at risk. Voters must fire those responsible.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
It’s painful for me to watch so many smart pundits and politicians on both the right and the left buy into a media narrative that seeks to blame “wealthy speculators” or “tech bros” or venture capitalists for a banking crisis that ultimately started in Washington. Let me explain.
If you want to understand the context for the crisis, look at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair’s March 6 testimony — a week before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse — where he explains that banks were sitting on $620 billion of unrealized losses from long-dated bonds. This provided the tinder for the crisis.
The match was lit when SVB announced on Wednesday, March 9, that it had effectively sold all of its available-for-sale securities and needed to raise fresh capital because of large unrealized losses from its mortgage bond portfolio.
Screenshot: Wall Street Journal
On Thursday morning, the financial press widely reported SVB’s need for new capital, and short sellers were all over the stock. The CEO’s disastrous “don’t panic” call later that morning only heightened fears and undermined confidence in the bank.
The idea that one needed “non-public information” to understand that SVB was at risk is drivel being peddled by populist demagogues. Any depositor who could read The Wall Street Journal or watch the stock ticker could understand there was no upside in waiting to see what would happen next.
By Friday, the run on other banks had begun. This became abundantly clear when regulators placed Signature Bank in receivership, announced a backstop facility for First Republic, and temporarily halted trading of regional bank stocks on Monday. Even trading of Schwab was halted.
Some unscrupulous reporters and political types have even claimed that I somehow caused this through my tweeting. Dang, they must think I’m Superman! Or maybe E.F. Hutton. But the timing doesn’t line up at all, as I already explained.
In the never-ending quest for scapegoats, some reporters and political types are asking if @theallinpod could have influenced the bank run. We didn't publish until Saturday morning when banks were already closed! I also never tweeted about SVB until it was already in receivership…
Once the run on the bank started, decisive action by the Fed was imperative. This meant protecting deposits (uninsured are 50 percent) and backstopping regional banks. No matter how distasteful you may find those things to be, preventing a greater economic calamity was necessary.
But back to SVB: Its collapse was first and foremost a result of its own poor risk management and communications. It should have hedged its interest rate risk. And it should have raised the necessary capital months ago through an offering that didn’t spook the street.
SVB doesn’t deserve a bailout and isn’t getting one. SVB’s stockholders, bondholders, and stock options are getting wiped out. The executives will spend years in litigation and may have stock sales clawed back. Anyone who thinks there’s a “moral hazard” isn’t paying attention.
But it’s important to understand that SVB’s failure didn’t arise from risky startups doing risky startup things. It arose from SVB’s over-exposure to boring old mortgage bonds, which were considered safe at the time SVB bought them. Perhaps this is why SVB had an “A” rating from Moody’s and had passed all of its regulatory exams.
What turned the mortgage bonds toxic? The most rapid rate-tightening cycle we’ve seen in decades. You can see the connection here between rapid rate hikes and unrealized losses in the banking system.
So, what caused the rapid rate hikes? The worst inflation in 40 years. And what caused that? Profligate spending and money printing coming out of Washington — all while Joe Biden, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell assured us inflation was “transitory.”
I warned two years ago that pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into an already hot economy was an unprecedented and likely dangerous experiment. But this was Bidenomics.
Bidenomics = pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into a rip-roaring economy. I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen next. AFAIK we’ve never tried this before.
So, when Joe Biden says he’s going to hold those responsible for this mess fully accountable, he ought to start by looking in the mirror. But I’m sure that’s not going to happen, just as I’m sure the hunt for scapegoats is just beginning.
David Sacks is an entrepreneur and author who specializes in digital technology firms. He is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund Craft Ventures and was the founding COO of PayPal.
Texas rancher Debi Douglas spoke out Thursday about the escalating danger at the border after four Americans were kidnapped, and two killed, by a cartel in Mexico. Douglas’ ranch is located in Brownsville, a city that sits along the Mexico border adjacent to Matamoros, where the kidnapping took place. Douglas said on “Fox & Friends First” that living conditions in her area are only getting worse, and she doesn’t believe anything will improve even if the cartel members are arrested.
“The Mexican government is afraid of the cartel,” she reasoned. “If Biden does not do something, this is going to come more into our country.”
Douglas said the community is largely unaware of the severity of the danger, and she believes the two individuals killed in Mexico didn’t take the threat “to heart” when they traveled across the border. Douglas said she believes it’s only a “matter of time” before cartels attempt to take over border towns in her state.
Mexican National Guard prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen at Matamoros, Mexico, on Monday. (AP)
“And unless we do something, everybody had better get ready,” she told co-hosts Todd Piro and Ashley Strohmier.
The Biden administration has called the death of Americans “unacceptable” and said U.S. officials will work with the Mexican government to pursue justice. Douglas, however, said the Democratic administration’s plan to address the problem is a “joke.”
“The Mexican government is either partially paid off by the cartels or they fear the cartels. So the fact that Biden is saying he’s going to work with them is absolutely a joke and an insult to the American people,” she said.
“Our administration is never going to wake up,” Douglas said, arguing that Biden does not care about the American people. “He’s a puppet, and he has been protected in this country. And with him not in turn protecting the people of this country, he basically is a traitor.”
She called Biden a “weak” individual and said she believes he wants “all these illegals” to enter the country. Douglas claimed Democrats want to allow illegal immigrants to vote to keep the party in power.
“If the border was even shut down today, we have an extreme problem with the illegals that are already in this country,” she said. “They are a lot of criminals, that’s been proven. There’s child molesters. There’s murderers.”
“It’s going to take the FBI, the CIA, ICE, everybody. Number one, shut the borders and then let’s get on this. Let’s deport them all,” Douglas said.
Douglas said she’s “more vigilant” now in protecting herself following the kidnapping of Americans.
“I’ve always been vigilant since the illegals have been pouring in,” she said.
FIRST ON FOX: The Biden administration acknowledged in a memo, accidentally leaked on Friday, that charging fossil fuel companies less to drill would provide “greater energy security” despite its plans to hike royalty fees.
Former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Amanda Lefton recommended late last year that, as part of its climate agenda, the Department of the Interior (DOI) move forward with higher royalty fees for an oil and gas lease sale spanning 958,202 acres in the Cook Inlet off the coast of Alaska, according to the memo obtained by Fox News Digital. DOI Assistant Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis ultimately signed off on the recommendation.
“If a Cook Inlet prospect would be developed, there would be additional government revenues and greater energy security for the State of Alaska, especially if development of natural gas resources in the Cook Inlet ameliorated the long-term supply challenges facing the Anchorage area,” Lefton wrote in the memo.
“Nevertheless, because of the serious challenges facing the Nation from climate change and the impact of [greenhouse gasses] from fossil fuels, BOEM is not recommending this option since it would not include an appropriate surcharge to account for those impacts,” she continued.
The internal Biden administration memo noted that charging fossil fuel drilling companies less would increase energy security, but said climate considerations were more important. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Lefton’s specifically recommended the federal government charge drillers with a royalty fee of 18.75% as opposed to an alternative of 16.67% which she said would attract more bids and “be more likely to facilitate expeditious and orderly development of [offshore] resources.”
Daniel-Davis stated in her record of decision — published in November after she signed off on Lefton’s recommendation — that she selected a fee of 18.75% “because this rate constitutes the most reasonable balancing of environmental and economic factors for the American public.” She didn’t mention the alternative would produce greater energy security as highlighted in the memo.
BOEM ultimately held the auction, known as Lease Sale 258, on Dec. 30. The sale garnered just one bid worth $63,983 for a single 2,304-acre tract, according to federal records.
In May, the White House canceled Lease Sale 258, which had been proposed under the Trump administration, in an unexpected decision that was promptly criticized by the fossil fuel industry and Republican lawmakers. However, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) mandated that the administration reverse the decision and hold the sale by the end of 2022.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., speaks during a hearing on May 4, 2022. Manchin blasted the Biden administration after the oil and gas document was leaked Friday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“The Department of the Interior mistakenly posted an internal memo making recommendations to Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, Laura Daniel Davis, on the Cook Inlet Oil and Gas Lease Sale 258 mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who helped author the IRA, said in a statement Friday.
“I am appalled by its contents, which make crystal clear that this administration is literally putting their radical climate agenda ahead of the needs of the people of Alaska and the United States,” he continued.
Manchin blasted the administration for ignoring Congress’ intent and seemingly pandering to environmental groups “at the expense of shoring up American energy security and keeping Americans safe.”
“The contents of this memo speak volumes – if this is what this Administration truly believes and is how they are going to make decisions, it is unacceptable,” the West Virginia senator continued. “It’s a clear and intentional threat to energy security and the all-of-the above energy policy Congress has consistently reinforced.”
“I will not support anyone who agrees with this type of misguided reasoning.”
BOEM didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Environmental activist Erin Brockovich torched the “frustrating” response by the Biden administration to the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. Brockovich appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Friday, where she accused the government of hiding ominous details from the American people following the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine.
Tucker Carlson asked Brockovich if government officials are hiding information about the environmental impacts of the train derailment.
“Yeah, there is. And I mean, it’s like, Oh my gosh, come on,” Brockovich replied, according to Mediaite. “Oh, we’re out here. What, 44,000 fish are dead? We’ve seen them. We’ve seen them out here today aerating the creeks. They’re removing stuff. That, the wellheads are locked. What’s up?”
Brockovich compared dead animals in East Palestine to miners bringing canaries into coal mines to detect dangerous and toxic conditions.
“Look, you don’t have to go any further, in my opinion, than a hundred-year study that we all know the miners did for us,” she explained. “It’s called the canary in the mine shaft. Send the canary down there, it dies: Might not be good for humans.”
“You have dead fish: might not be good for humans. You have dead animals: might not be good for humans,” Brockovich continued. “You’ve sent a horrible mixed message to this community. Drink the water. Don’t drink the water. Safe. Not safe.”
Brockovich said the mixed messaging has been “horribly confusing and extremely frustrating” to the residents of East Palestine.
“And something actually has gone wrong here,” she added. “And there’s information that has yet to come forward, and the story will continue to unfold.”
Brockovich told Carlson that schools have shut off drinking fountains and some private wells have locks on them.
“So, in the schools, so the children can’t drink the fountains, and then on private wells around here, they’ve got locks on them,” Brockovich revealed. “So they obviously — aw, come on. Wha– if there’s no problem, you don’t need to lock up a drinking fountain. You don’t need to be aerating the system. And you can explain away all day long to me that nothing’s wrong. But I, I see what’s going on here.”
Brockovich declared, “You’re not gonna gaslight me.”
Erin Brockovich demands government officials stop ‘gaslighting’ East Palestine, Ohio
President Joe Biden has not visited East Palestine.
On Friday, Biden was asked by a reporter if he would visit East Palestine.
Biden replied, “This time, I’m not. I was — I did a whole video — I mean — you know, the — what the hell — on…”
A reporter chimed in and suggested the word Biden was looking for was “Zoom.”
Biden said, “Zoom! Zoom.”
Biden then went off on a tangent, “All I can hear every time I think of Zoom is that song of my generation, ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?'”
“The answer is that I — I had a long meeting with my team as to what they’re doing,” Biden said. “You know, we were there two hours after the train went down. Two hours. I’ve spoken with every single major figure in both the Uni- — in both Pennsylvania and in O- — and in Ohio.”
"Are you planning on traveling to East Palestine?"
BIDEN: "At this moment not. I was, I did a whole video, I mean, uh, you know, the uh, what the hell? On…"
"Zoom?"
BIDEN: "Zoom. All I can hear every time I think of Zoom is that song of my generation, 'Who's Zoomin' Who?'" pic.twitter.com/fBWAVar7Gm
The nation is worried about serious national security threats, including Chinese spy aircraft, but the U.S. Department of Defense seems pre-occupied with misplaced priorities. “Woke” policies are taking leftist ideologies to extremes with enforced compliance, even if it hurts the institution.
As in the Obama years, the Biden/Austin policy fully embraces the idea that individuals can change their “sex assigned at birth to a different gender role.” Department of Defense Instruction 1300.28, updated on Dec. 20, 2022, has changed the official vocabulary of this pseudo-science, using the phrase “self-identified gender” instead of “preferred gender” throughout.
WHY? Why is this SO important to the wacky Left? “Gender Dysphoria” is a condition of someone who is CONFUSED about their gender. Do we really need more CONFUSED people in our military? As a Vietnam Vet, I can testify that such people cannot be trusted in the trenches of war. Your confused about your gender? You have NO business in any aspect of military service.
The DOD Instruction stipulates that if a person “self-identifies” as a person of the opposite sex, and if the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) changes a person’s bureaucratic “gender marker,” a man claiming to be a woman must be treated as a woman, and vice versa.
Military commanders, doctors and nurses, chaplains, and military men and women at all levels must endorse and act on this ideological belief or suffer career penalties if they don’t. Alleged “biases against transgender individuals,” which are prohibited, could include anything from “misgendering” people with the wrong pronouns to expressions of concern about medically questionable hormone treatments or surgeries for adults or military-dependent children.
Individuals who are confused about gender identity deserve compassionate counseling, competent medical care, and complete information about the serious risks and irreversible consequences of “gender-affirming” treatments that do not change biological sex. Instead, a self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria permits only one course of treatment, pushing the service member toward life-changing, often-irreversible transgender “transition,” without an independent “second opinion.”
Commanders are directed to consult with designated “experts,” called Service Central Coordination Cells. The SCCCs have no responsibility for military operations or any obligation to put the needs of the patient first.
Biden’s regulations do not protect or even mention rights of religious liberty for chaplains and people of faith. Nor do they provide options for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who object to transgender ideology on moral or ethical grounds.
Once a military doctor approves, transgender transition can be deemed “complete” with or without surgical alteration of healthy body parts. At that point, as the DOD Instruction states several times: “[S]ervice members will use those berthing, bathroom, and shower facilities associated with their gender marker in DEERS.”
This policy denies human biological realities and violates minimal expectations of personal privacy and modesty between men and women. Human dilemmas are discussed in PowerPoint training slide “vignettes,” such as a “female to male” soldier announcing a pregnancy.
Vignette 8 portrays a soldier who transitioned from male to female, without “sex-reassignment surgery,” who wants to use female-designated showers. Another scenario describes a female soldier who is experiencing tension with a “transgender female” roommate.
This is a trick question, since both the discomforted female soldier and a commander who tries to find a solution likely would be accused of “biases against transgender individuals.” Why should a tank commander at Fort Hood have to deal with pronoun etiquette and sticky scenarios instead of training his troops to fight an enemy force?
The latest DOD Instruction admits that some service members who have “completed a gender transition” may not have “resolved the gender dysphoria.” Without any estimate of costs or consequences, additional medical procedures are authorized “If a return to their previous gender is medically required.”
Biden/Austin directives specifically involve the military service academies and Reserve Officer Training Corps (contract) programs, inviting controversies like those affecting civilian female athletes who have lost competitions against biological men.
Revised rules also permit cross-dressing and other “transitioning” behaviors while in “on-duty status.” Previously, time off for “real life experience” (RLE) living as a person of the opposite sex could only occur off-base and off-duty, often for weeks or months. Whether intended or not, the revised policy’s approval of on-base cross-dressing likely will increase “LGBT Pride” celebrations featuring drag queen performances and “family-friendly” story hours for children at military bases worldwide.
When problems ensue, how will we know? In 2018, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified that problems with transgender policies were not being reported up the chain of command because they were considered “personal and private.” Doubling down in December 2022, the DOD released a new instruction, DODI 6400.11, which restricts (without high-level permission) the release of information about “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “transgender-related information,” and “incidents of harmful behaviors.”
Every year, the Pentagon releases non-personal statistics on sexual assaults, in excruciating detail. Why are officials restricting access to data on “incidents of harmful behaviors” and “transgender-related information”? Congress needs to find out.
A recent independent, high-tech survey on the politicization of the military done by the Heritage Foundation found that among active-duty respondents, 80 percent said the “changing of policy to allow unrestricted service by transgender individuals” has decreased their trust in the military. Sixty-eight percent of active-duty responses reported seeing a “growing politicization,” which is affecting their decision to encourage their children to join the military.
In view of current recruiting problems, the 118th Congress should renewprevious demands for information on woke policies. Congress also should consider mandating that all Defense Department agencies and educational institutions return to recognizing scientific realities of biological sex, not “self-identified gender.” That idea and more are incorporated in legislation just proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. James Banks, R-Ind., called the Ensuring Military Readiness Act of 2023.
Servicemen and women deserve reality-based health care programs, with protection for the rights of doctors and nurses whose medical ethics or religious convictions differ from transgender ideology. Women also deserve separate-sex athletic teams and reasonable privacy in female-only living facilities.
White House and Pentagon leaders who try to deny, dissemble, or withhold information on the existence or results of woke policies in the military are undermining their own credibility. Americans are awake and aware, and they will hold lawmakers accountable for woke-ism that weakens our military in an increasingly dangerous world.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense.
Elaine Donnelly is President of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy organization that reports on and analyzes military and social issues.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary report on the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Thursday morning, providing more information on how the disaster developed.
“On February 3, 2023, about 8:54 p.m. local time, eastbound Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) general merchandise freight train 32N derailed 38 railcars on main track 1 of the NS Fort Wayne Line of the Keystone Division in East Palestine, Ohio,” the NTSB report reiterated. “The derailed equipment included 11 tank cars carrying hazardous materials that subsequently ignited, fueling fires that damaged an additional 12 non-derailed railcars.”
The train was composed of two head-end locomotives, 149 railcars, and one distributed power locomotive located between railcars 109 and 110. Of the 149 railcars, 20 were “placarded hazardous materials tank cars transporting combustible liquids, flammable liquids, and flammable gas, including vinyl chloride,” the preliminary report explained. The train was traveling roughly 47 miles per hour when it derailed, less than the maximum authorized speed of 50 miles per hour, and the positive train control system was enabled an in operating order when the accident took place, according to the NTSB.
Here’s how things literally went off the rails:
Train 32N was operating with a dynamic brake application as the train passed a wayside defect detector on the east side of Palestine, Ohio, at milepost (MP) 49.81. The wayside defect detector, or hot bearing detector (HBD), transmitted a critical audible alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle. The train engineer increased the dynamic brake application to further slow and stop the train. During this deceleration, an automatic emergency brake application initiated, and train 32N came to a stop.
After the train stopped, the crew observed fire and smoke and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment. With dispatcher authorization, the crew applied handbrakes to the two railcars at the head of the train, uncoupled the head-end locomotives, and moved the locomotives about 1 mile from the uncoupled railcars. Responders arrived at the derailment site and began response efforts.
It took until February 5 for responders to mitigate the fires, at which point “five derailed DOT-105 specification tank cars (railcars 28–31 and 55) carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride continued to concern authorities because the temperature inside one tank car was still rising.”
According to the NTSB, this “increase in temperature suggested that the vinyl chloride was undergoing a polymerization reaction, which could pose an explosion hazard.” So, “[r]esponders scheduled a controlled venting of the five vinyl chloride tank cars to release and burn the vinyl chloride, expanded the evacuation zone to a 1-mile by 2- mile area, and dug ditches to contain released vinyl chloride liquid while it vaporized and burned. The controlled venting began about 4:40 p.m. on February 6 and continued for several hours,” the NTSB reported.
Since the derailment, the NTSB said it has collected the “wheel bearing and affected wheelset” as well as the “vinyl chloride tank car top fittings, including the relief valves.”
The ongoing NTSB probe will “focus on the wheelset and bearing; tank car design and derailment damage; a review of the accident response, including the venting and burning of the vinyl chloride; railcar design and maintenance procedures and practices; NS use of wayside defect detectors; and NS railcar inspection practices,” according to the investigators.
In a newly signed executive order designed to use federal agencies to forcibly guarantee equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity for Americans, President Joe Biden tacitly admitted his administration is collaborating with a prominent leftist group to advance neo-Marxism throughout the U.S. government.
A prime example of “equity” in action can be seen in Virginia, where several high schools in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties admitted to withholding National Merit awards from deserving students in order to avoid hurting the feelings of those not awarded. As The Federalist reported, “Asian American students are highly represented among the recipients, and some believe withholding the awards to be an act of racially motivated biases against Asian students.”
Under Biden’s new executive order, federal departments are instructed to embrace such ideology to construct a so-called “fair” and “inclusive” economy, which would include investing in areas where the administration claims federal policies have “historically impeded equal opportunity … in ways that mitigate economic displacement.”
Buried within the order, however, is a directive for federal agencies to implement what’s called the “Justice40 Initiative.” While the document doesn’t specify what the mission of Justice40 is, a quick trip to the group’s website reveals it to be nothing more than an effort by left-wing activists to advance neo-Marxist policies under the guise of “environmental justice.”
“The Justice40 promise seeks to create an equitable recovery for Americans facing challenges created by aging infrastructure, a frayed social safety net, natural disasters, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization’s website reads. “Justice40 must address inequities that hinder a sustainable, just society, and that disproportionately harm low-income and communities of color across America.”
What are they really?
They’re another neo-Marxist organization directing policy in the Biden Administration.
Plenty of clenched fists on their website to go around, but their leaders are more blatant in their commie sensibilities. 2 of them have a telling social media history. pic.twitter.com/BjvHKAQ1Ih
Back in July 2021, Biden officially adopted Justice40’s stated goal of providing at least 40 percent of federal investments “in climate and clean energy” to these so-called “disadvantaged communities.” In other words, the administration is distributing taxpayer money to certain jurisdictions based on racial demographics.
The policy is eerily similar to Covid-related guidance the administration released in December 2021, in which health-care providers were advised to prioritize racial and ethnic minorities in the dissemination of Covid treatments such as monoclonal antibodies.
But it’s not just Justice40’s mission that’s tied to neo-Marixst ideology. Several of the group’s listed “movement leaders” have pushed policies and ideas embraced by radical leftist organizations such as Black Lives Matter. On her Twitter profile, Justice40 leader Cassia Herron proclaims she is a “lover” of “revolutions,” and has several posts calling to defund the police.
“We want to defund the police and distribution of wealth,” a July 7, 2020 tweet reads.
Also listed as a Justice40 “movement leader” is Jacqueline Patterson, who during Trump’s presidency in December 2020 seemingly compared the Covid jab rollout to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which the U.S. government secretly conducted experiments on black American men for decades without informing them of viable treatment options. Over a year later, when Biden was in office, Patterson tweeted she was fully vaccinated “from the black batch” and boosted, adding that the risk of Covid “seemed worse with not getting vaccinated.”
The collaboration between the administration and Justice40 represents the latest nail in the coffin of legacy media’s narrative that Biden is some sort of unifying moderate who advances centrist policies. Shortly after his inauguration, for instance, Biden signed an executive order reversing the “Mexico City Policy,” which prevented nongovernmental entities receiving U.S. taxpayer money from using such funds to promote or perform abortions.
Moreover, America’s commander-in-chief has consistently issued racially divisive statements, such as comparing Republicans opposed to his party’s proposed takeover of U.S. elections to segregationists.
“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” Biden asked during a January 2022 speech. “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
After several executive agencies in the Biden administration were sued for refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests from conservative advocacy group Citizens United over the White House’s attempt to federalize elections, the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs finally turned over its first batch of requested documents. There’s one problem: More than half of the 54-page document is completely redacted.
“The Biden administration is the least transparent in history, and these absurd redactions are just the latest example. What are they trying to hide from the American people?” Citizens United President David Bossie told The Federalist.
As The Federalist previously reported, in March 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing hundreds of federal agencies to engage in a federal takeover of election administration. It also permitted federal agencies to work with “nonpartisan” third-party entities to get voters registered, yet left-wing dark money group Demos publicly admitted it’s worked with federal agencies, “in close partnership with the ACLU and other allies,” to advance the aims of Biden’s directive.
Such an order set off alarm bells among Republicans and good government groups, reminiscent of the widespread takeover of government election offices by Democratic activists and donors in the blue counties of key swing states during the 2020 presidential election. Through their infiltration of state and local offices, Democrats were able to conduct partisan get-out-the-vote operations and swing the election in then-candidate Biden’s favor. This order is a taxpayer-funded version of that effort, turning federal agencies — including those that dole out federal benefits — into voter registration hubs and partisan get-out-the-vote centers.
Citizens United wanted to find out more about it, which is why last June, it filed FOIA requests with the DOI and State Department seeking email and text messages that mentioned both the executive order and the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in election activities. When the agencies failed to comply, Citizens United sued. On Jan. 31, DOI sent its first round of documents per Citizens United’s request.
But the 54-page PDF sent to Citizens United is mostly redacted, save for logistical emails between White House staff and agency department heads. The plan and implementation scheme for the “Promoting Access to Voting” executive order itself are completely redacted.
In a cover letter sent with the documents, the Biden administration defended the redactions under U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), which allows agencies to withhold information under the “Presidential Communications Privilege” (exists to ensure “the President’s ability to obtain candid and informed opinions from his advisors and to make decisions confidentially”) and the “Deliberative Process Privilege” (“protects the decision-making process of government agencies and encourages the frank exchange of ideas on legal or policy matters”).
But according to Jason Foster, president and founder of Empower Oversight, a transparency and government accountability group that frequently files FOIA requests, these redactions are a prime example of the federal government’s blatant over-redacting and censorship.
“Federal bureaucrats do everything in their power to conceal information from the public,” Foster told The Federalist. “Whether it’s over-classification or improper redactions and stonewalling Freedom of Information Act requests, they instinctively err on the side of hiding information to avoid embarrassment, conceal misconduct, or cover up corruption. It’s up to Congress to reform the FOIA process, and in the meantime, it’s up to independent organizations to sue aggressively to force the federal government to comply with transparency laws.”
While good government groups can sue over improper redactions, this process can usually take about a year to uncover just one document from a series of files, those familiar with the matter said. Now that Republicans control the House of Representatives, however, they have the power to compel the federal government to produce non-redacted versions of requested documents, a Citizens United official told The Federalist.
During the 117th Congress, nine House Republicans wrote a letter to the White House raising concerns about the executive order, specifically regarding the fact that the order supplants the authority of the states to set election law and administer elections under the Constitution. When asked about the Biden administration’s secrecy over its election’s directive, Freshman Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., who chairs the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, echoed her colleague’s sentiments.
“Everyone should have concerns about this executive order and the involvement of any federal agency in our election process,” Hageman told The Federalist. “First and foremost, elections are the constitutional responsibility of the states, not our federal bureaucracy. This is yet another example of the federal government overstepping its authority and infringing upon states’ rights. Even if this order was well intended — and I have serious doubts that it was — it is unconstitutional.”
Hageman emphasized that the White House cannot get away with such extensive redactions of election-related processes.
“Large-scale redactions are not in the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act,” Hageman added. “This is one of the few tools we have to hold our government accountable. Are we to accept that the information is classified to such an extent that the document is unable to be coherently interpreted? Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and the federal government cannot be allowed to continue to obscure and obstruct.”
Of particular interest in the 54-page document is a draft letter on page 32 from Indian Affairs Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland to White House Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice, formerly President Obama’s national security advisor and “right-hand woman” who is known for her involvement in spying on the Trump campaign in 2015 and lying about it. In that role, she also spread lies about the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, helped Obama staffers target Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and turned a blind eye to the Biden family’s foreign business affairs.
One line in the draft letter reads: “The plan promotes voter registration and voter participation (REDACTED) and the Department’s agency action to achieve these objectives.” The redacted portion might point to a Hatch Act violation, a Citizens United official told The Federalist.
“These documents relating to the Biden White House’s efforts to turn the federal workforce into a partisan voter registration committee must be released to the public in their entirety,” Bossie said. “Congress must investigate this executive order to see if the Biden Administration is violating the Hatch Act on a massive scale.”
When asked why the Interior Department isn’t being transparent with the public about Biden’s federal takeover of elections, the Bureau of Indian Affairs referred The Federalist to the U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) exemptions in the cover letter sent to Citizens United.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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Two CBS News anchors called out White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday for refusing to answer basic questions about the discovery of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s private office and residence. Over the past two days, Jean-Pierre has faced a barrage of intense questions about the documents. She has frustrated reporters, however, by repeatedly dodging the questions.
CBS anchors Errol Barnett and Lana Zak slammed Jean-Pierre for having “not answered a single question” about the discovery of the documents.
“For a second straight day now, the White House struggling to answer any questions related to classified documents discovered at locations associated with President Biden, citing Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary, simply reading a statement, where she says the president was surprised by the discovery, takes this matter very seriously, the documents were inadvertently misplaced, and he doesn’t know what’s in them,” Barnett began.
“She has not answered a single question outside of a prewritten statement by the president’s lawyers,” he said.
“Exactly,” Zak agreed. “And continuing then to say the same thing again and again. Even in response to very simple questions about the timeline, about the specific location, clarifying questions, and continuing to use the word ‘transparent’ and saying that they did things in a transparent manner.”
“You heard our own CBS’ Ed O’Keefe really trying to pin her down on what she means by transparency when she’s saying that she has been transparent. Does that mean legal transparency? Governmental transparency as required by law? Or public transparency?” Zak asked.
Reporters are now directly questioning the Biden administration’s narrative that officials have been “transparent” and forthcoming about the classified documents. At one point in Thursday’s White House briefing, Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked what the Biden administration is trying to “hide.”
“Nothing,” Jean-Pierre claimed.
But that is almost implausible. Not only did the White House not tell the American public about the first discovery of classified documents until two months after the midterm elections, but when officials admitted to the first batch, they neglected to say anything about the second batch that had already been discovered.
Dozens of House Democrats joined Republicans on Thursday to pass legislation that would prevent the Biden administration from selling any more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China or Chinese-owned companies. The House easily passed the bill in an 331-97 vote. Every Republican voted for it, and 113 Democrats — more than half of the House Democratic Caucus — joined the GOP.
It was the second vote this week that saw large numbers of Democrats help House Republicans pass legislation. Two days earlier, more than two-thirds of House Democrats voted with Republicans to create a committee to address U.S. strategic competition with China.
The bill was brought up by Republicans after the Biden administration’s decision last year to sell nearly 1 million barrels of oil from the SPR to Unipec America, a U.S.-based company owned by China. The Department of Energy announced that sale in April, and Republicans warned on the House floor that it makes no sense to deliver vast energy resources to entities controlled by America’s largest competitor.
“America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is meant for true energy supply disruptions, like those caused by hurricanes and natural disasters, not to help China,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who will chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the new Congress.
House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, passed legislation on Thursday that would prevent Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Draining our strategic reserves for political purposes and selling portions of it to China is a significant threat to our national security,” she said. “The administration is not just hurting our own ability to respond to emergencies and national security events, they are actively bolstering the oil reserves of our most dangerous geopolitical adversary: the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Biden administration has released more than 200 million barrels from the SPR to ease rising energy prices in the U.S. over the last year, and McMorris Rodgers said those releases were designed to “cover up his failed policies driving our energy and inflation crises.”
She added that some of the oil that was not sold directly to Chinese-owned entities ended up in China’s hands.
“As we know, much of that oil went to China because our refineries and pipelines are full. It now has nowhere to go here,” McMorris Rodgers said. “Millions more barrels went to overseas traders who eventually sent it to China. We also know that China is ramping up its purchases of crude oil from Russia and the U.S. to boost its own reserves.”
President Biden has overseen a historic reduction of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
The bill says the energy secretary shall not sell SPR reserves to any entity under the control of the Chinese government, “except on the condition that such petroleum products will not be exports to the People’s Republic of China.”
While most Democrats voted for the bill, the debate featured only Democrats who tried to dismiss it by saying sales to China are the GOP’s fault because congressional Republicans in 2015 lifted the long-standing ban on crude oil.
“As a result, our exports of crude oil to China surged, averaging a half billion every day during the last year of the Trump administration,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Republicans countered that this policy change happened under the Obama administration, when Republicans were working with that administration to “unleash American energy” and export it around the world. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said that plan continued under President Donald Trump, under which “record production” of energy took place.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., will chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the new Congress, and urged lawmakers to pass her bill to stop Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
However, Guthrie said this has changed under the Biden administration and during the last two years of the Democratic Congress, which have been pushing to reduce energy production even as they support record withdrawals from the SPR.
“The problem we’re facing today is because of President Biden and the Democrats’ in Congress war on American oil,” Guthrie said. “That’s the problem we’re here to address.”
SPR reserves have remained well above 600 million barrels since the turn of the century, but fell below that level in early 2022 as the Biden administration began selling off reserves. The reserve level fell below 400 million barrels late last year.
Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.
President Biden has finally found a solution to address the surge in illegal crossings at the southern border: tell the tens of thousands of aliens unlawfully entering the United States from Mexico that they can come to America “legally” if they instead fly to a port-of-entry in the interior of the country.
Seriously, for all the Biden administration’s spin, that’s his plan — and it is illegal.
Of course, when Biden announced his administration’s newest policy on Thursday in advance of his midterm inaugural trip to the southern border on Sunday, the press release heralded the plan as a “new border enforcement action.” But as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy exposed in his weekend column, it’s a scam.
The scam, though, is layers thick, both legally and politically. And to reach the core truth — that Biden refuses to faithfully execute his duties as the president of the United States by defending our sovereign border — one must first unpeel the specifics of the newest plan buried in the Department of Homeland Security’s official notice of the changes, while also analyzing the relevant immigration law.
The Plan
Today’s edition of the Federal Register, which serves as “the Daily Journal of the United States Government,” contains the details of DHS’s supposed “new border enforcement action,” in four separate “notices,” titled respectively: “Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Haitians,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Nicaraguans,” and “Implementation of Changes to the Parole Process for Venezuelans.”
Each notice summarizes the Biden administration’s supposed “solution” to the flooding of the southern border, which in short consists of allowing, on a monthly basis, a total of 30,000 aliens to enter the United States “legally” if they are Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan nationals. To qualify, aliens must have a “U.S.-based supporter,” which could be “non-governmental entities or community-based organizations,” and must “provide for their own commercial travel to an air [port-of-entry] and final U.S. destination.” National security and public safety vetting are also required, as well as any additional public health requirements, such as vaccinations.
But how is it that illegal-alien border crossers can become lawful noncitizens by just jumping through a few hoops and flying to the interior of the country, rather than sneaking over the southern border? They can’t. And in crafting its latest immigration plan, the Biden administration is again acting lawlessly.
Biden’s Lawlessness
The Biden administration maintains it has the authority to allow aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States legally under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA. That section provides the secretary of homeland security the authority to “parole” noncitizens “into the United States temporarily under such reasonable conditions as [the secretary] may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
“parole” for purposes of the INA is a “legal fiction” in which “a paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country,” but the alien maintains the same legal status as if he or she were held at the border waiting for an application for admission to be granted or denied. But besides obtaining the legal right to be present in the United States, an alien paroled into the United States may obtain employment authorization to work here lawfully.
As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “Parole began as an administrative invention that allowed aliens in certain circumstances to remain on U.S. soil without formal admission, with Congress codifying the practice when it initially enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act (the ‘INA’) in 1952.” At that time, Congress gave the attorney general “discretion to parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe … any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
However, “throughout the mid-twentieth century, the executive branch on multiple occasions purported to use the parole power to bring in large groups of immigrants,” prompting Congress twice to amend the INA “to limit the scope of the parole power and prevent the executive branch from using it as a programmatic policy tool.” First, as the Fifth Circuit explained, in 1980, Congress added a requirement that the executive branch only parole refugees where “compelling reasons in the public interest with respect to that particular alien,” exist. Then, in 1996, Congress amended the INA to provide “parole may be granted ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’”
While the DHS’s just-announced parole plans claim the department is making parole decisions on a case-by-case basis, the qualifications set forth by the DHS establish that the Biden administration is illegally using parole power “as a programmatic policy tool,” rather than as designed by Congress, for example, by “paroling aliens who do not qualify for an admission category but have an urgent need for medical care in the United States and paroling aliens who qualify for a visa but are waiting for it to become available.”
The Biden administration’s lawless use of its parole power should come as no surprise, though, as since November of 2021, the president’s team has relied on Section 212(d)(5)(A) to release “family units” at the border to supposedly deal with “capacity constraints.” Florida has challenged the Biden administration’s granting of such carte blanche parole, as well as the president’s failure to detain illegal aliens as mandated under the INA, and trial is set to begin on both those claims later today in a federal court in Florida.
The ‘Standing’ Problem
A similar legal challenge to the Biden administration’s recent parole plan seems likely, although by requiring applicants to secure a vetted “supporter” who will commit to providing for the parolees’ financial needs while they are present in the United States, it will be challenging for anyone to show “standing” to challenge DHS’s plan.
For instance, in the Florida case, while the Biden administration argued the state lacked “standing,” or the right to sue, the court rejected that argument, reasoning Florida “plausibly alleged that the challenged policies already have and will continue to cost it millions of dollars, including the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens and the cost of providing a variety of public benefits, including unemployment benefits, free public education, and emergency services to aliens who settle in Florida after being ‘paroled’ into the country.”
But other than providing “free public education,” the same types of monetary harms are lacking in the case of the Biden administration’s latest parole proposal. And it is questionable whether a court will find that providing free public education to children paroled under DHS’s plans will be enough to establish standing.
Absent a plaintiff with standing to challenge DHS’s plan to parole some 30,000 aliens into the United States every month, the only way to fight the Biden administration’s latest lawless move will be politically. Here, those seeking to secure the southern border have ample ammunition, including highlighting the fact that the Biden administration’s plan does nothing to address that portion of the 200,000-some individuals crossing the southern border every month that herald from countries other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Further, while converting 30,000 illegal border crossers into parolees at ports of entry in the interior of the country may provide a reduction to the problem on paper, it does not secure the border nor promise any reduction in the number of individuals attempting to enter via Mexico.
The parole plan presumes, though, that there will be an even greater reduction in illegal border crossings than the 30,000 who enter as part of the parole process. The parole plan, according to the Biden administration, creates a disincentive for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter illegally at the southern border because the DHS’s new policy also provides that aliens who bypass the parole process and enter the United States without authorization will be subject to an expedited removal to Mexico or their country of origin.
If so, then why not just institute a policy of expediting the removal of individuals who enter illegally at the southern border?
Biden’s Border Disaster
According to the figures included in last week’s DHS notices, prior to the surge at the southern border that followed the Biden administration’s change in enforcement policies, there weren’t even 30,000 aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the border illegally on an annual basis.
For instance, the notice reported that for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 respectively, DHS encountered only 3,039 and 4,431 Haitian nationals at the southwest border, but by 2021 the number exploded to 43,484.
From 2014 to 2019, DHS encountered 589 Cubans on average every month, but by 2022, the average monthly encounter at the land border totaled 17,809, and in October and November of 2022, some 62,000-plus Cuban nationals attempted to cross the border.
From fiscal 2014 through 2019, border agents encountered a monthly average of 127 Venezuelan nationals, but by fiscal year 2022, the average number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally on a monthly basis totaled 15,494 and rose to more than 33,000 in September of that year.
For Nicaraguan nationals, in 2022, DHS encountered an estimated 157,400 aliens, or an average of 13,113 per month, compared to an average of 316 per month from fiscal years 2014-2019.
These figures show the Biden administration does not need a parole policy: It needs an enforcement policy.
No End in Sight
There is a telling admission hidden in the DHS notice from last week that announced changes to the parole plan established for Venezuela in October of 2022. As originally established, the Venezuela plan capped the number of “parolees” at a total of 24,000 beneficiaries. But, as the DHS acknowledged in its notice modifying that plan, just two months in, “demand for the Venezuela process has far exceeded the 24,000 limit.”
“Absent immediate action,” the DHS notice explained, “there is a risk that DHS meets the 24,000 cap, which would in turn cause the [government of Mexico] to no longer accept the return of Venezuelan nationals and end the success of the parole process to date at reducing the number of Venezuelan nationals encountered at the border.” Further, should it reach the 24,000 limit, thereby making prospective migrants no longer eligible for parole, the “DHS anticipates that we would then see increased irregular migration of Venezuelans.”
In other words, the Biden administration is allowing aliens to come to America “legally” because if it doesn’t, foreign nationals will just start crossing the border illegally again.
Further, while the Biden administration’s current plan caps the number of parolees at 30,000 per month, the DHS notices indicate it may revisit that figure if necessary. What then, is there to stop the Biden administration from increasing the 30,000 cap two-fold or ten-fold? Or what is there to prevent the administration from expanding parole to aliens from countries beyond the four — maybe 14, or even 40?
While the intricacies of immigration law are detailed and often convoluted, the bottom line of the Biden administration’s parole plan should be clear to all Americans: Joe Biden has no intention of securing our border or faithfully executing his duties as the president of the United States.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
As the year winds down, the border is about to break wide open. In less than a week, the Biden administration’s last remaining tool to control illegal immigration, left over from the Trump administration, will be taken away.
Title 42, the public-health order invoked by President Trump during the pandemic that allowed immigration officials to quickly expel most migrants caught crossing the border illegally, will end on Dec. 21 by order of a federal judge. Once Title 42 is gone, federal agencies at the border will have no choice but to process and release nearly every illegal border-crosser. It will represent a full return to the Obama-era “catch-and-release” policy. Border Patrol estimates they could see as many as 14,000 arrests per day in the coming weeks, which would totally overwhelm the border.
For migrants, there is now every incentive to do just that. Word of Title 42’s demise has almost certainly reached migrants in Mexico already, who now know that if they cross the Rio Grande, they will be allowed to remain in the United States, with work authorization, for years while they await the outcome of an asylum hearing.
Biden, who repealed or severely curtailed nearly every one of Trump’s border policies upon taking office in January 2021, has no plan for what to do now. Axios reported this week on a vague plan circulating among Biden officials for a temporary (five-month) moratorium on asylum, but the plan hasn’t been approved. It’s unclear how it would even be implemented with less than a week to go before Title 42 ends.
Many of them are from Nicaragua, which means they can’t be deported to Nicaragua (the U.S. has no deportation agreement with the authoritarian dictatorship of Nicaragua’s president-for-life Daniel Ortega), and they can’t be expelled to Mexico, which refuses to take back Nicaraguans. So, the U.S. is just letting them in, giving them a court date for an asylum hearing years from now, and releasing them. Never mind that many of these migrants, by their own admission to reporters, are economic migrants who have no valid asylum claims.
Back in August, my colleague Emily Jashinsky and I reported on the migrant encampments and shelters in the Mexican border towns of Matamoros and Reynosa across the Rio Grande from Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, respectively. Most of those migrants were Haitian, although they had been living in various South American countries for years, with legal status. They came to the border for a chance to get into the U.S. and pursue what one of them told us was “the American dream, a dream for all Haitian people.”
The reason so many had been waiting in Mexican shelters was that they feared being deported back to Haiti, where they hadn’t lived in many years, or because they had already tried to cross and been expelled back to Mexico under Title 42. They could not afford to pay the cartels for multiple river crossings, and so they were waiting, they told us, for U.S. policy to change.
Their wait is almost over. Once the threat of expulsion under Title 42 is gone, there will be little to hold them back. The border will become a chaotic, ungovernable disaster. We will likely see the appearance of tent-like refugee camps on the U.S. side of the border, as we saw in Del Rio, Texas, in the fall of 2021. To put the figure of 14,000 arrests per day into context, three years ago, during the 2019 border surge, President Obama’s DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson, said that 1,000 apprehensions a day “overwhelms” the system and that he “cannot imagine” what 4,000 arrests per day would look like.
2022 was the worst year for illegal immigration in U.S. history. 2023 will be worse yet. As long as the Biden administration maintains its open-border policies, illegal immigration will increase, the cartels that profit from migrant smuggling will get rich, and the border will descend into chaos.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Nov. 22 after it failed to complete a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into communication records regarding alleged online censorship during the 2020 presidential election.
The watchdog group was seeking communications between the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA), a DHS subdivision, and the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an “information exchange” between researchers, election officials and government agencies established in 2020 to identify and research online misinformation leading up to elections that flagged social media posts for platforms to address. Judicial Watch demanded that the Washington D.C. District Court order the DHS to acknowledge the Oct. 5 FOIA request and “produce… non-exempt records responsive to the requests,” according to the lawsuit.
“We’ve had these disclosures essentially over the last year that federal agencies, especially DHS, hav been working to censor Americans… either directly or indirectly,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Through the EIP, multiple groups, including CISA and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee and the NAACP, could file “tickets” reporting potential election misinformation, which EIP would then forward on to social media platforms after an investigation into the claims. The EIP released a 2021 report detailing its efforts to address misinformation in the 2020 election in which it acknowledged it had shared hundreds of posts with online platforms, with “35% of the URLs we shared with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube […] either labeled, removed, or soft blocked.”
“This lawsuit’s designed to get into that. There’s these federal frauds that colluded to come up with a system of censorship for social media, and it looks like this [Department of Homeland Security] agency participated in it and we want to figure out what was going on,” Fitton said.
BREAKING: Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the DHS for all records of comms between the CISA, a division of DHS, and the EIP, which was created to flag online election content for censorship and suppression (1/3). https://t.co/xlJLtr8llL
Judicial Watch also requested records between CISA and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and the Stanford Internet Observatory, both of which were part of the EIP. The request specifically asked for communication about the 2020 election and “online misinformation and disinformation.” However, DHS allegedly failed to adhere to the Nov. 3 FOIA deadline, according to the lawsuit.
“When an agency unlawfully refuses to comply with FOIA, we have the option of suing the federal court, which is what we did,” Fitton told the DCNF.
House Republicans also launched an investigation into Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook about their role in online censorship. Amazon, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft are also under investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, The Washington Times reported.
Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina reportedly made a request for all communication between the Biden administration and social media corporations pertaining to “digital censorship.”
“This is a threat to the first Amendment like we’ve never seen in modern history,” Fitton said.
The White House, DHS, CISA, the EIP, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public and the Stanford Internet Observatory did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The U.S. government needs to “pressure” countries to shut down the flow of illegal migrants from outside of Central America who are making their way to the southern border, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview from his presidential palace.
Guatemala is deploying its special forces to the southern border with Honduras to stop the flow of illegal migrants previously given free passage on their journeys.
“We believe that it is necessary for the United States to exercise political pressure to prevent this from happening. Otherwise, they are becoming facilitators of traffickers, a very, very lucrative business for traffickers,” Giammattei told the DCNF.
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei criticized the U.S. government, saying it “should be taking action” and “pressuring other countries” to prevent migrants from outside of Central America without IDs or passports from making their way to the southern border.
If the U.S. took such action to pressure other countries, it would help combat the lucrative business of human trafficking. Guatemala faces many issues with countries like Honduras, which allows illegal migrants without identification from across the globe to traverse before they reach Guatemala, one of the last countries they’ll travel through before they enter Mexico and then the U.S., Giammattei explained. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: ‘We Lost Everything’: Afghan Migrants Stuck In Guatemala Have A Message For Biden)
Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua have an agreement, called CA-4, which allows the free movement of people with passports from those countries throughout Central America.
“We believe that it is necessary for the United States to exercise political pressure to prevent this from happening. Otherwise, they [the U.S. government] are becoming facilitators of traffickers, a very, very lucrative business for traffickers,” Giammattei said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation at his presidential palace.
Illegal immigration to the U.S. has surged since President Joe Biden took office and repealed several Trump administration policies used to discourage and deport migrants. U.S. authorities have seen a record of nearly 2.3 million migrants cross the southern border between October 2021 and September 2022.
During fiscal year 2022, there were over 800,000 encounters of migrants from outside Mexico and Central America.
Daily Caller News Foundation
Guatemala has deployed 200 to 300 special forces to push illegal migrants crossing the country’s southern border to Honduras, Giammattei explained. Migrants who don’t have citizenship in Central America and are present without the required documents are considered to be illegal entrants.
“The problem is that Honduras doesn’t want them back. And they are letting them through without a passport. And that is not right. That is violating international laws, because I cannot give free passage to people wanting to cross my country to travel north,” Giammattei said.
“This time, you have the nationals from Haiti, Angola, Afghanistan, Syria, all of them crossing into Guatemala without proper documentation. We in Guatemala cannot issue visas for all of these people. So Honduras is clearly violating international agreements and diplomatic principles. And if this is not a result, we are going to have to take drastic measures,” he added.
One Venezuelan migrant told the DCNF along the Honduran-Guatemalan border that countries take advantage of them for money.
“All of the countries want to charge us,” she said. “They abuse us, simply because we are immigrants. They take away from us what we don’t have.”
“Sadly, we are made to pay because of that. We have to give everything we have. They steal from us, they rape women and others get killed simply for not paying to go through,” she said.
The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Jennie Taer speaks with a Venezuelan migrant who crossed the Honduran border into Guatemala
Giammattei condemned the process, saying that countries along the way are allowing traffickers to enrich themselves because of their policies.
“Behind all of this that you see, there’s human trafficking at play,” Giammattei explained. “These people have to pay governments, they have to pay traffickers to get that passage to come through. And, so, we allow people to go through just as has been happening. We are allowing human trafficking. And that is a very lucrative business for these traffickers.”
Guatemala passed a law in February to target traffickers with stronger penalties of up to 30 years in prison. Giammattei said in order to prevent risks to U.S. national security, the Biden administration must take similar action.
The U.S. law penalizes smugglers with decades in prison and sometimes up to life behind bars.
“If we let them go through, we ourselves would be violating our own provisions, which is something that we are not going to allow,” Giammattei said. “We have absolute clarity about what our role is here. And, in fact, we are the only country in Central America that is preventing that safe passage for these illegal immigrants. Other countries are just giving them a pass or just facilitating their crossing without requiring any form of identity. And that represents a serious security problem for the United States.”
“If we let those people cross Mexico and the United States are at risk of getting people without those IDs, so it is our obligation not to allow this to happen. And for that reason we see that the problem is the United States is not taking action and should be taking action and should be pressuring other countries to take some measures to prevent this,” he said.
The White House didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
On “The News & Why It Matters,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Jason Buttrill and Matt Kibbe discuss a bombshell report about ABC News producer and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist James Gordon Meek, who has not been seen in public since the FBI raided his Washington, D.C., home in April.
According to reports, heavily armed federal agents seized classified information from Meek’s laptop during a raid on his Virginia home on April 27. Colleagues at ABC News told Rolling Stone that Meek “fell off the face of the Earth” following the raid.
“He resigned very abruptly and hasn’t worked for us for months,” said another colleague.
Neighbors reported that they have not seen Meek since the raid and that his home appears to be vacant.
Meek won several awards for his investigative work on extremely sensitive topics, including exposing a U.S. military cover-up of the deaths of four American Green Berets in Niger, which he made into the acclaimed Hulu documentary “3212 Un-Redacted.”
Meek’s attorney told Rolling Stone that Meek was “unaware of what allegations anonymous sources are making about his possession of classified documents. If such documents exist as claimed, this would be within the scope of his long career as an investigative journalist covering government wrongdoing.”
Meek was working on a book that was critical of the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I just find it really strange that [Meek] was criticizing the Biden administration and the FBI raided his home, and now nobody has seen him,” Sara commented.
“Yeah, this sounds almost to the letter like exactly what happened under Obama during the James Rosen affair. There were multiple AP reporters, same thing,” Jason added.
Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of “The News & Why It Matters” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
Despite passing an executive order mandating that military members be treated according to their gender identity and not their biological sex, the Biden administration still requires biological men who identify as women to register for the military draft, while those who are “born female and have changed their gender to male” are off the hook.
The Selective Service tweeted a reminder recently telling parents that even “if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS.”
Parents, if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS. Learn more about who needs to register at https://t.co/GYbRK99c09. pic.twitter.com/tzW6uKkyl5
However, according to a chart provided by the Selective Service System, almost “all male U.S. citizens and male immigrants residing in the United States who are 18 through 25 years of age” are required to register, and individuals “who are born male and have changed their gender to female” are expressly included.
When they need you to go to war, the US government acknowledges that a person can NOT change sex. pic.twitter.com/rWzwT9SnWV
They actually say if you were born a male but identify as female, you still have to register. But if you were born a female and identify or transitioned into male, you don’t have to register.
Since the media likes to tout that illegal immigrants pay taxes and have drivers licenses, I'm assuming they also qualify for the draft also? Or are they exempt?
On “The News & Why It Matters,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests Alex Stein and Chad Prather wondered when the Biden administration remembered that there’s actually a biological difference between men and women.
Watch the video clip below to catch the conversation or find full episodes of “The News & Why It Matters” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
(Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for March For Our Lives)
Teachers unions are helping school districts implement Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender identity through different initiatives such as LGBTQ badges, summer reading lists and advertisements.
The more recent push by the unions comes from the backing of the Biden administration, whose beliefs align with the teachers unions.
“Teachers unions are certainly embracing ‘wokeness’ and showing their true self: their actions show they don’t care about the academic success of our kids, they only care about money and furthering their own political ambitions,” Parents Defending Education Director of Community Engagement Mailyn Salabarria told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Teachers’ unions have a long history of political action, but now teachers unions are advocating for gender identity and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to be taught in schools. This recent push has come because of the support of the Biden administration, experts tell the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Teachers unions have been notorious for entering political races; in the 2021-2022 school year, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, poured millions into political funding. The belief that gender ideology and CRT should be in classrooms has long been present, but the Biden administration has empowered the beliefs to be embraced, experts told the DCNF. (RELATED: Major Teachers Union Goes On Strike, Delaying The First Day Of School For Thousands)
“I was a former school board member from 2016 and 2020 and we did not see this stuff like we’re seeing now,” Laura Zorc, director of education reform for Building Education for Students Together, a parental rights in education organization, told the DCNF. “I was not a school board member under the Biden administration. I’ve seen a radical change starting to take place in January 2021 when he took office. Underneath the school districts, you had people that had those beliefs in those feelings that we should be embracing this, but there was never that support and this is really where we see all this coming from, the Biden administration.”
As a part of a summer reading list in August, the National Education Association recommended students read “Why We Fly” by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal, a book that describes two girls who kneel for the national anthem. The book explicitly talks about marijuana use and is paired with discussion questions on activism.
In September, an Ohio chapter of the National Education Association provided Hilliard City Schools in Columbus, Ohio, with LGBTQ ally badges that featured a flag with the words “I’m Here.” The badges were for educators to wear in order to show their support for the LGBTQ community.
The badges featured a QR code that took students to the National Education Association’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer+ Caucus website which provides adult resources on sexual education. An Ohio parental rights in education group called the website “age-inappropriate” and said it “crosses the line.”
“The way that they’re bringing this in is through an inclusive, safe environment, you know, the mental health aspect,” Zorc told the DCNF. “‘If our kids don’t feel safe, then they’re not going to be able to learn so we have to fix that because that helps us improve the quality of academics if our kids are feeling more safe at school.’ When I look at this, it’s hard to separate. It’s not one group of LGBTQ teachers. It’s not one group that’s wanting the Critical Race Theory ideologies. It’s really coming from that Democratic teacher union leadership like these Randi Weingartens and people like that.”
Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
The New Jersey National Education Association ran an ad ahead of the 2022-2023 school year that depicted parents who speak out against gender identity and CRT as “extremists.” The ad cites two articles, one describing groups working to remove books featuring LGBTQ and CRT imagery from school libraries and the other discussing a New Jersey state senator’s bill which prohibits lessons on gender identity for kindergarten through sixth grade.
About a year ago, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the Biden administration comparing parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.” Attorney General Merrick Garland called on the FBI to “use its authority” on the parents who disrupt school board meetings and pose a threat.
“The current administration actions also show they are on board with making politics and ideologies the priority in the classrooms,” Parents Defending Education Director of Community Engagement Mailyn Salabarria told the DCNF, “instead of addressing the historically low proficiency scores of our students and the learning loss they’ll suffer for generations to come. And this has emboldened teachers unions and activist teachers to push for even more ideology instead of the basics of academic instruction.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaks during a protest near the office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to ask him to work on gun-safety legislation on June 03, 2022 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Ahead of the 2022-2023 school year, the Department of Education (DOE) called for action to address a nationwide teacher shortage. The DOE announced partnerships with schools across the country to address the problem they say was brought on during the pandemic.
“They’re saying that we have a teacher shortage,” Zorc told the DCNF. “We do not have a teacher shortage. Teachers are moving to other environments where they’re not forced to teach this stuff. So when it comes to Critical Race Theory, when it comes to this gender ideology, it is really being spearheaded from the top down. That’s why we’re seeing this massive exodus of our public school teachers, because they were waiting on retirement, but a lot of them are like, ‘I cannot even I can’t do this anymore.’”
The push from the teachers unions for CRT and gender identity curricula comes as students across the nation post record learning losses; K-12 reading levels have dropped to where they were in 1990, the largest ever drop in the scores, while math levels saw their first ever decline.
“Teachers unions are certainly embracing ‘wokeness’ and showing their true self: their actions show they don’t care about the academic success of our kids, they only care about money and furthering their own political ambitions,” Salabarria told the DCNF.
The National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and the DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos
The massive news coverage of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “political stunt” of sending 50 illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard reminds me of the media’s “political stunt” of referring to illegals as “legal asylum-seekers.”
Number one: They broke into our country. They’re illegal aliens. Number two: All asylum claims are frauds. Every single one.
Asylum is nothing but a conveyer belt to bring the worst people on Earth to our shores. You say you turned your own country into a hellhole? Fantastic! Come right in!
No one gets asylum from a well-run country. Why would we want to admit people who have demonstrated the wisdom, foresight and diligence to produce a functioning society? Rewards await only those who’ve participated in the creation of complete disaster zones. (Just think of what these great thinkers could do for our country!)
Take the Venezuelan illegal aliens whom DeSantis sent to Martha’s Vineyard. Biden’s press secretary and human kewpie doll, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly referred to the briefly loved illegals as “people who are fleeing communism, who are fleeing hardship … desperate people — people who are trying to come here because they’re fleeing communism themselves.”
How did Venezuela become communist again?
As The Martha’s Vineyard Times explained (once the illegals were safely expelled and the island fumigated), Venezuela’s “humanitarian crisis” resulted from that country’s “complicated political and socioeconomic history.”
Actually, it’s not that complicated. Poor people in Venezuela voted for it. Oh boy, did they vote for it.
The ridiculous peasant Hugo Chavez promised Venezuela’s poor that he would take vengeance on the rich — “the squalid ones” — and give their stuff to the poor. Millions of poor people responded: YESSSSS!!!
Beginning in 1998, and five times after that, the poor came out in droves to support this clown. Fist pumping! Dancing in the streets! Red shirts as far as the eye could see!
As The New York Times described it, “To the adoring, impoverished masses who catapulted him to power, Hugo Chavez Frias is El Comandante, their protector and benefactor, the bold leader who will wipe out 40 years of inequality and corruption and redirect this country’s enormous oil wealth to better their lives.”
Chavez basically promised to deliver the Ta-Nehisi Coates “equity” agenda that’s so popular with the Democratic Party right now. The poor believed the rich were rich because they had stolen from the poor. Chavez vowed to take it back. It was sort of a 1619 Project for Venezuela.
As promised, Chavez proceeded to seize private businesses, farms (by 2011, he’d expropriated 6 million acres of farmland) and golf resorts, telling poor people to move onto the club greens.
Anybody want asylum yet? Nope!
Between 1998 and Chavez’s death in 2013 — whereupon he was promptly replaced with his handpicked successor, President Nicolas Maduro — Venezuela’s poor voted for him over and over and over again: in 1998 (80% public approval rating his first year in office), in 2000 (winning 60% of the vote), in 2004 (59% against recalling him), in 2006 (winning 63% of the vote), in 2009 (54% voted to make him president for life) and finally in 2012 (winning 55% of the vote).
Never has any public been polled more often and returned the same resounding answer.
Well, they’re not fist-pumping anymore. Instead, Venezuela’s poor are claiming they “deserve” to access America’s generous welfare state.
Twenty years of Chavez’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE!) produced this: “a country whose economy has collapsed … malnutrition and disease are soaring [and m]illions have emigrated to escape the grind of finding enough to eat, of living without reliable electricity or tap water,” as Bloomberg News put it in 2019.
Venezuela is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, and the communists still couldn’t get it to work.
Who could have seen that coming??? Oh, anyone with two functioning brain cells. There were little hints, like Chavez promising his very first year in office “to follow the path of Fidel,” and describing Cuba as “a sea of happiness, social justice and true peace.”
Millions of Venezuela’s poor thought that sounded just peachy, and the rest did nothing. They act as if this 100% predictable catastrophe was a natural disaster for which they bear no responsibility.
Yeah, I definitely want these people as my fellow citizens. They’ve shown solid judgment.
Now that their own choices have wrecked their country, they demand free admission into ours. Unless they’re professional baseball players, I’m not seeing what’s in it for us.
In the kewpie doll’s press conference proclaiming that these innocent little lambs “deserve better” (than being sent to a fabulous beach resort), she cheerfully listed the great heaping portions of welfare being ladled out to Hispanics:
“[O]ur administration has delivered billions of dollars in loans to Hispanic small businesses, expanded the child tax credit to provide help to millions of families and reduce Hispanic child poverty by more than 40%, expanded access to quality healthcare to thousands of Latino families … And thanks to President Biden’s student loan debt relief program, almost half of Latino students with federal loans will see their debts forgiven.”
The Democratic Party is cribbing Chavez’s lines. And it will work, because the same people who fell for it last time will be voting for it here.
To be sure, the Venezuelan “asylum-seekers” aren’t any worse than other members of that illustrious group. If (when) they are granted asylum, these poor decision-makers will join:
— Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers (sometimes, they’re persecuted for a reason);
— Ibragim Todashev, who, along with Tamerlan, slit the throats of three Jewish men in Boston;
— Beatrice Munyenyezi, a genocidal Rwandan, who won asylum by lying about being a victim of the genocide, rather than a perpetrator.
Those are just a few of our standout asylum grantees. To be fair, the illegal Venezuelans haven’t killed anybody yet, as far as we know. They’re more like a homeless guy who shows up on your doorstep after a lifetime of bad choices and demands that you give him your house.
Perhaps, just this once, we should defer to the wisdom of our moral betters on Martha’s Vineyard and tell the Venezuelans: We love you! Now get the hell out.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Saturday it is launching a new environmental justice office to distribute taxpayer dollars to minority communities that the agency claims are disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution.
The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which will employ a Senate-confirmed director and more than 200 staffers, will be in charge of allocating the $3 billion in environmental justice grants mandated by the recent passage of the Democrats’ $370 billion climate spending bill, according to an EPA press release. The new office will work with other EPA offices to make sure the concerns of minority and low-income communities are being incorporated into the agency’s programs and policies as well as ensuring that recipients of EPA comply with civil rights laws. (RELATED: A ‘Moral Obligation’: California Looks To Ban Diesel-Powered Trucks To Rectify ‘Decades Of Racist’ Practices)
“With the launch of a new national program office, we are embedding environmental justice and civil rights into the DNA of EPA and ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.
WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 23: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a Democratic National Committee event at the headquarters of the National Education Association on September 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
The office will combine the three smaller, preexisting offices of environmental justice, civil rights and conflict prevention into one larger national office. The move will further attempt to implement President Joe Biden’s aggressive climate agenda in minority and low-income areas by utilizing the “highest levels of the government” to implement environmental policies, according to the press release.
The Democrats’ climate bill, dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” was signed into law by Biden in August and will spend $60 billion on implementing environmental justice, including the $3 billion investment in the climate and environmental justice block grant program that the new office will oversee. The Democrats claimed the provision was the largest amount of money that the federal government has ever allocated on climate-focused spending in minority communities and low-income areas, according to Politico.
“From day one, President Biden and EPA have been committed to delivering progress on environmental justice and civil rights and ensuring that underserved and overburdened communities are at the forefront of our work,” Regan stated.
Biden signed an executive order during his first week in office that launched a series of federal programs aimed at addressing “current and historic environmental injustice.”
The EPA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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