Is the US Pretending That Iran’s IRGC, “Mother of All Terrorist Groups”, Is Not a Terrorist Group? thumbnail

Is the US Pretending That Iran’s IRGC, “Mother of All Terrorist Groups”, Is Not a Terrorist Group?

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By Majid Rafizadeh

The Biden Administration’s Never-ending Appeasement of the Mullahs

“It [the IRGC] is also a chief supporter and enabler of other FTOs and insurgent groups in the region. These organizations include, but are not limited to: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi insurgency. The IRGC’s actions have led to decades of instability and conflict across the Middle East and the group is responsible for countless deaths, including more than 600 U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq.” — Letter from 80 Republicans to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Fox News, March 23, 2022.

“In Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran’s agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (‘IRGC’), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (‘MOIS’), and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11.” — PR Newswire, December 23, 2011.

One of the IRGC’s elite branches, the Quds Force, deploys its proxies and militia groups to attack the interests and assets of the US and its allies in the Middle East, as well as the soft underbelly of the US, Latin America. The Quds Force exerts significant influence, direct or indirect, through a conglomerate of more than 40 militia groups….

“The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs weapons, ammunition, and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and puts them on Mahan Air flights…. these planes fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah.” — Amb. Danny Danon, then Israeli Ambassador to the UN, from a 2016 letter to UN Security Council members.

The IRGC “continues transferring weapons and drones to terrorist proxies.

The mission of Jihad for the IRGC is unmistakably clear in Iran’s Constitution. Its Preamble states: “the Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad… the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are to be organized in conformity with this goal, and they will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of (Shiite) jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s (Shiite) law throughout the world in the hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.” 

“These assessments, combined with the IRGC’s lengthy history of killing hundreds of Americans… make it clear: The IRGC is a terrorist organization and should remain labeled as such…. The pursuit of an ill-conceived ‘deal’ should not compel American leaders to acquiesce to the demands of a terrorist regime to deny the truth. American lives are at stake, and this is a time to project strength, not weakness.” — Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, joint statement, Axios, March 22, 2022.

If the Biden administration removes Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terrorist list, it will be enabling this terrorist organization to gain legitimacy, do more business, obtain more funds, kill and harm more innocent civilians, pursue more aggressively its mission of Jihad, anti-Semitism and the elimination of countries in the region, crackdown more forcefully on the Iranian people, and carry out more terrorist plots throughout the world. Pictured: IRGC members on parade, marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, on September 22, 2018, in Tehran. (Photo by Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

To appease the ruling mullahs of Iran, the Biden administration in January 2021 first suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group. Since then, the Houthis have been attacking their neighbors, as recently as this week.

Now, the Biden administration is considering also removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), called the “Mother of All Terrorist Groups,” from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The Biden administration, then, wants to preserve — by sparing it from the terrorist list — an organization that has killed hundreds, no thousands of Americans “before and after 9/11”:

“In Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran’s agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (‘IRGC’), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (‘MOIS’), and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11.”

Judge Daniels stated that Iran was liable because its support for Al-Qaeda had allowed the terrorist attacks to occur.

The Biden administration’s move to take the IRGC off the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) has raised serious concerns. According to Fox News:

“More than 80 Republicans wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to express opposition ‘to any move to legitimize the IRGC’s reckless, destabilizing, and antisemitic actions throughout the Middle East.’”

The letter continues:

“The IRGC continues to actively participate in acts of terror and destabilizing actions in the region—particularly against one of our closest allies, Israel. It is also a chief supporter and enabler of other FTOs and insurgent groups in the region. These organizations include, but are not limited to: Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthi insurgency. The IRGC’s actions have led to decades of instability and conflict across the Middle East and the group is responsible for countless deaths, including more than 600 U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq.”

One of the IRGC’s elite branches, the Quds Force, deploys its proxies and militia groups to attack the interests and assets of the US and its allies in the Middle East, as well as the soft underbelly of the US, Latin America. The Quds Force exerts significant influence, direct or indirect, through a conglomerate of 40 militia groups, which operate under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

The Quds Force is in charge of Iran’s extraterritorial operations, which include organizing, supporting, training, arming and financing Iran’s predominantly Shiite militia groups in foreign countries; launching wars directly or indirectly via these proxies; fomenting unrest in other nations to advance Iran’s ideological and hegemonic interests; attacking and invading cities and countries, and assassinating foreign political figures and prominent Iranian dissidents worldwide.

The IRGC’s Quds Force has additionally been implicated in failed plans to bomb Saudi and Israeli embassies, including a failed attempt in 2011 to assassinate then-Saudi Ambassador to the US Adel Al-Jubeir. An investigation revealed that the group was also behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The IRGC has been smuggling advanced weaponry to its militias and proxies, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, including kits that can convert unguided rockets into precision-guided missiles. According to Danny Danon, then Israeli Ambassador to the UN, from a 2016 letter to UN Security Council members:

“The Iranian Al-Quds Force packs weapons, ammunition, and missile technology to Hezbollah in suitcases and puts them on Mahan Air flights…. these planes fly directly to the airport in Lebanon or Damascus and from there the weapons are transferred on the ground to Hezbollah.”

The IRGC continues transferring weapons and drones to terrorist proxies.

The mission of Jihad for the IRGC is unmistakably clear in Iran’s Constitution. Its Preamble states: “the Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad.” The document goes on to say:

“[T]he Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are to be organized in conformity with this goal, and they will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of (Shiite) jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s (Shiite) law throughout the world in the hope that this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.” [Emphasis added.]

Former US officials have been pleading with the Biden administration not to remove the IRGC from the terrorist list. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe recently pointed out in a joint statement that the Iranian regime is a direct and indirect threat to U.S. persons and “previously attempted to conduct lethal operations in the United States”. They added:

“These assessments, combined with the IRGC’s lengthy history of killing hundreds of Americans… make it clear: The IRGC is a terrorist organization and should remain labeled as such…. The pursuit of an ill-conceived ‘deal’ should not compel American leaders to acquiesce to the demands of a terrorist regime to deny the truth. American lives are at stake, and this is a time to project strength, not weakness.”

If the Biden administration removes the IRGC from the terrorist list, it will be enabling this terrorist organization to gain legitimacy, do more business, obtain more funds, kill and harm more innocent civilians, pursue more aggressively its mission of Jihad, anti-Semitism, and the elimination of countries in the region, crackdown more forcefully on the Iranian people, and carry out more terrorist plots throughout the world. Does Biden really need this to add to his increasingly notable legacy?

*****

This article was published by the Gatestone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

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Debunking the Myth That Minimum Wage Laws Are ‘Progressive’

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By Walter Block

Minimum wage laws are a malicious attack on the least of us.

The minimum wage is a sort of litmus test. And not only for economists. For social justice advocates, too.

Forget, for a moment, the economics of it. In essence, minimum wage legislation imposes compulsory unemployment on the poor, the unskilled, racial minorities, the young, the physically and even more so the mentally handicapped—the very people all men of good will most want to help. Before the advent of this law, the unemployment rate for white middle-aged people and black teens was just about the same. Now, the latter are unemployed at quadruple the rate of the former.

For the moment let’s just discuss the ethics and logic of the minimum wage. I now make you an offer: come work for me: you can wash my car, clean my house, etc. I’ll pay you $3 per hour. If I were serious about this offer, I could go to jail for making it. If you accepted it, you would also be breaking the law, but you would not get more than a slap on the wrist, since the judge would think I was exploiting you. Did I violate anyone’s rights? Did I violate your rights by making you this offer? Hardly.

As we should know from pure logic alone that an offer of employment such as I am now making to you, theoretically (I do not welcome being arrested), cannot help but improve your economic welfare. It is a proposal of an option you simply did not have before I made it. If you reject it, you are no worse off than you otherwise would have been. If you accept it, this job necessarily benefits you, at least ex ante (looking ahead), since, presumably, you had no better alternative than this one. I am your benefactor, not your exploiter.

Now for the economics of it. Some people believe the minimum wage is like a floor; raise it, and pay scales rise, particularly those at the lower end of the economic pyramid. If this were so, why be so modest as to want to raise it, only, to $15 per hour. Why not $1,500 hourly? Then, we would all be rich! We could stop all foreign aid to poor countries. We might just tell them, instead, to install a minimum wage decree at a high level.

No, the minimum wage is more like a barrier over which you have to jump in order to get a job in the first place and then keep it. The higher this hurdle, the harder it is for you to jump over it. Let us return to my offer to you at $3 per hour. Suppose you are very unskilled. Your productivity, the amount of revenue you can add to my bottom line, is only $3 per hour. If I hire you at $15, I’ll lose $12 per hour. Thus, I won’t hire you if I want to maximize profits. If I do so anyway, I will risk bankruptcy. Which is better for you: no wage at all, zero, nada, with this law in place? Or $3 per hour, with no such enactment? Clearly, $3 per hour is better than nothing.

Here are three objections to the foregoing. First, if you were totally unemployed, you might be eligible for welfare; if employed at a low wage, likely not. So the minimum wage, at least with a welfare program, is a benefit to the poor. True enough. But, here, we are not holding fast to ceteris paribus (all else equal) conditions. If we want to clearly see the economic effects of this regulation, we have to hold all else constant. Assume, either, no welfare at all, or, an equal amount of such payments whether on the job or not. Then, we can see clearly that something is better than nothing, and, also, that something plus a welfare payment is greater than nothing plus the same welfare payment.

Second, there is the claim of monopsony, which is a single buyer of labor, or, oligopsony, a situation in which there are only a few employers. This is a divisive concept within the dismal science (economics), which we need not discuss here. But one thing is clear: this applies, if it does at all, only to firms which employ highly skilled workers. For example, the NBA, the NFL, MLB and other such sports teams; to doctors, engineers, lawyers, computer experts, with very narrow specialized skills which can be utilized only by one or a very few companies. But these people earn vast multiples of the $15 per hour many are pushing for. Thus, this objection is not even relevant to our present discussion.

Third, several economists have not been able to find the unemployment effects implied by this directive in their econometric studies. Response: they should look a little harder, probe a bit deeper. They have not done their full homework.

The minimum wage law should not be raised, it should not remain constant, it should not be lowered. It should be ended, forthwith, and salt sowed where once it stood. Its proponents may have good intentions, but in practice it is a malicious attack on the least of us.

*****

The article was published by the Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

Weekend Read: Remembering Walter E. Williams thumbnail

Weekend Read: Remembering Walter E. Williams

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By Jack Trotter

The Enemy of the Nanny State

Addressing a Boston anti-slavery audience in 1865, abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked, “What shall we do with the Negro?” The answer he provided was a favorite of the conservative economist Walter E. Williams, though if Douglass were to utter it today he would probably be condemned by Black Lives Matter and deplatformed from social media:

Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!

Douglass was a great advocate of “self-made men,” and was willing to place the destiny of the freedmen in their own hands. So, it is not surprising that Walter Williams was fond of quoting Douglass on this theme. Both men believed that genuine liberty must mean not only the liberty to strive and succeed, but the liberty to fail, too.

Williams, who died in December 2020, deeply valued the whole spectrum of American freedoms, but his perennial concern was economic liberty. For 40 years, in a number of scholarly works and hundreds of syndicated columns, Williams was an unflagging critic of government interference in American lives. He is often known as a libertarian, but in the second half of his career, he increasingly allied himself with paleoconservatives on social and cultural issues—an association that occasionally exposed unresolved tensions in his work.

Image: Walter E. Williams as a child, photographed with his father, mother, and sister (Walter Williams / via Twitter)

Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Williams was himself a self-made man, yet in reading his autobiography, Up from the Projects (2010), one recognizes the powerful influence of his mother, Catherine. She single-handedly kept Williams and his sister out of serious poverty after their father abandoned the family not long after Williams’ birth. In 1941 Catherine moved her family to the Richard Allen Homes, a housing project in North Philadelphia, which Williams described as a black “lower middle-class” neighborhood. The Richard Allen project was a very different sort of place than the slums that would emerge in minority neighborhoods in many American cities after the 1960s. There was little serious crime; gangs and unwed mothers were rare; and teenage unemployment rates were lower on average than in many white communities.

Williams laments the fact that children growing up in North Philly today, attending “rotten” schools and dwelling in fatherless homes, have greatly diminished opportunities to work. Such opportunities, he writes, “not only provide the pride and self-confidence that comes from financial semi-independence,” but also teach young people how to achieve success in their adult years.

After high school, Williams drifted back and forth between Philadelphia and Los Angeles—where his father had settled and remarried—making two abortive attempts to start college. Eventually settling on Philadelphia, he drifted from one job to another. This rudderless period in his life found its nadir when he was charged in 1958 by the Philadelphia police for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. The assault charges were false, by Williams’ account, though he was found guilty and given a lenient sentence. The bright spot in that year was that he was introduced to his future wife and lifelong companion, Connie Taylor, who would prove to be the rudder he needed.

In 1959 Williams began two years of service in the Army, about which he was fond of saying that serving in the military is a “million-dollar experience that you wouldn’t do again for a million dollars.” His rebellious tendencies were very much on display during this period, especially after discovering that segregation among the ranks was still the reality, despite the Army’s claims to the contrary. Blacks, by his observation, were rarely promoted into administrative positions but were usually relegated to maintenance jobs.

Until the day he was discharged in 1961, Williams made it his business to disrupt the racial status quo, usually by way of pranks. In one instance at Fort Stewart, where he had been assigned to the motor pool, he was ordered by his sergeant to paint a two-and-a-half-ton truck. “The whole thing?” he asked, playing the role of a half-wit. “Yes!” said the sergeant. So Williams proceeded to paint every inch of the truck, including the windshield, the windows, and the tires. Naturally, he was transferred out of the motor pool, as had been his intent.

After his Army stint, Williams returned to school and finished his bachelor’s degree in economics at California State College in 1965, then entered graduate school at UCLA. He was at that time an admirer of Malcolm X and an LBJ liberal, voting against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. Yet he was also attracted by libertarianism and began to read widely among great libertarian thinkers like Frédéric Bastiat and Friedrich Hayek. Among the professors who influenced Williams was Thomas Sowell, an economist who would thereafter become a lifelong friend and collaborator.

In 1972 Williams was hired as the director of the Urban Institute, in Washington D.C., where he completed his dissertation and began the research that would result 10 years later in The State Against Blacks (1982), in which he painstakingly examined the many ways that government stifles the economic activity of minorities, oftentimes despite good intentions to the contrary.

One example is minimum wage laws, a form of “economic malpractice” that he railed against frequently over the years. Although study after study confirms that minimum wage mandates contribute directly to rising rates of unemployment among poor and unskilled workers, some prominent economists routinely call for minimum wage hikes. However, as Williams wrote, employers themselves recognize that the cost of employing low-skilled workers is greater than the return those workers bring to their businesses. So they look for ways to eliminate the need for such workers, through automation, for instance. Moreover, the oft-made claim that minimum wage laws combat poverty is ludicrous. Prominent economists who make such claims do so not out of ignorance, Williams asserted, but to ensure that their “compassionate” stance will secure them a place on the “brie, tofu and champagne circuit.”

Many of the arguments in The State Against Blacks are reprised in Williams’ 2011 book, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? But this later work is a more sweeping indictment of the regulatory state, and it reflects the debates that followed the Great Recession of 2007-2009. What motivated the banks to engage in reckless subprime lending? Williams argued that although there is no single answer to that question, for years the banks had been accused of systematic mortgage discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Already in 1977, with the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, and then via a host of further legislative initiatives in the 1990s, lenders found themselves under constant surveillance by the Federal Reserve Banks, which had become, in effect, instruments of egalitarian redistribution.

In a 2009 review of Sowell’s The Housing Boom and Bust, Williams emphasized that such initiatives were not just a Democrat hobby horse but were also pushed by the Bush administration, which pressured Congress to enact legislation requiring the Federal Housing Administration to “make zero-down-payment loans at low-interest rates to low-income Americans.” In his review, Williams pointed out that during the last years of the Bush presidency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had accumulated roughly $1 trillion in subprime loans and had guaranteed at least twice that much in mortgages.

Promoters of all this risky lending, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), later blamed the crisis on a lack of sufficient regulation in the private sector. Williams disposed of this claim easily: Between 1980 and 2007, “regulatory spending … almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion.”

For years, both Williams and Sowell had been among those crying out against the recklessness of subprime lending, to no avail. Their essential argument was simply that government interference in the free market economy, at any level, can only lead to economic loss for everyone concerned—except, of course, the politicians and bureaucrats who feast on the fatted calf of regulatory spending.

By 1974 Williams began teaching at Temple University, a stint that lasted six years, though it was interrupted by a year-long fellowship at the Hoover Institution. In 1980 Williams joined the Economics faculty at George Mason University, where he would remain for the rest of his teaching career. Among his scholarly endeavors in the 1980s was the book, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (1989), which challenges the standard view that the apartheid system was driven fundamentally by racism. While he did not deny that racism was a major factor in the regime, he demonstrated that apartheid was maintained in practice only by extensive government interference in the market, forcing employers in many sectors of the South African economy to submit to “whites only” hiring practices even when they went against their economic interests.

Image: Walter E. Williams as a professor at Temple University (Temple University)

In the late 1970s, Williams began writing a weekly newspaper column for the Philadelphia Tribune, then in 1980 for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. By 1991 he joined the Creators Syndicate, which began publishing his columns nationwide, allowing him eventually to reach an enormous audience in over 140 newspapers and magazines. In fact, most of his American readers first encountered Williams’ ideas through his columns, many of which were also republished in his books, beginning with America: A Minority Viewpoint (1982) and concluding with American Contempt for Liberty (2015).

In his weekly columns reflecting on current events, often humorous and always pithy, he ranged well beyond economics and race to explore education, democracy, the cult of rights, even health and environmental controversies—just to name a few. While the demands of these weekly columns regrettably brought an end to his more scholarly work, it is also true that their popularity made him a powerful force in shaping American opinion for the better—that is, in a more conservative direction.

But to what extent do the views of the libertarian Williams align with those of more traditionally minded conservatives? The answer is that, especially in the last 25 years of his writing life, most of his positions were reliably conservative. Indeed, at times, he sounded like a man of the Old Right in his defense of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty or in his provocative stance on nullification. In a 2009 column, “Parting Company,” he quoted a number of state ratification documents between 1788 and 1790 to show that the people believed that the Union was a creation of the states and that those states had every right to nullify unconstitutional laws passed at the federal level. He acknowledged that most Americans today “say to hell with the Tenth Amendment limits on the federal government.” But what, he asked, might be a “more peaceful solution” to an irresolvable conflict between state and federal powers? “[O]ne group of Americans seeking to impose their vision on others or simply parting company?”

In one of the last columns he penned, “Historical Ignorance and Confederate Generals” (July 2020), Williams eloquently refuted the claims of Gen. Mark Milley that the secession of the Confederate states was an act of “treason.” Perhaps it was Williams’ steadfast refusal over the years to demonize the South and her military heroes that led the editors of Southern Partisan to memorialize his death by publishing a eulogy penned by his old ally, Sowell.

Image: Walter E. Williams (Creators Syndicate)

On the other hand, Williams’ libertarianism is sometimes uncomfortably extreme, veering at moments toward an atomistic, neo-Lockean notion of the individual as an entity undetermined by social bonds. This is perhaps best illustrated by his position on whether one has the right to sell one’s organs on the open market. In a 1999 interview with the Independent Institute, and then in a 2002 column, “My Organs Are for Sale,” he argued that the controversy is essentially a question of ownership. The body, he said, is one’s private property. If people can sell their used cars or their refrigerators, why not their body parts?

In the U.S., the sale of bodily organs—by the “owner” or by anyone else—was then and is still illegal. One can donate but not traffic in hearts or livers. The problem, said Williams, is a matter of market scarcity. Donors are too few, and demand is high. By the rational calculus of the free market, the solution is to create an incentive for individuals (or their families) to profit by the sale of their organs. If on your deathbed, the argument goes, you instruct a family member to sell your still-functioning organs (after all, it would be a waste to consign them to the tomb) and reap a healthy monetary gain, then you are doing a good deed for your family as well as benefiting society. If someone objects that to do so would be to desecrate your body by reducing its parts to commodities, that would be mere sentiment.

Needless to say, many conservatives, especially those adhering to traditional religious faiths, would reject such a rational calculus. Even if in some limited sense my body is my property, it is certainly not the same sort of property as my automobile. The body, even after death, is not merely an object; it is also a “subject”—that is, the repository of my soul (to put it in religious terms) or the locus of my will, my imagination, and my familial associations. The Western tradition, dating back at least as far as the Iliad, testifies to this deep-seated intuition. After Achilles repeatedly desecrates the body of the fallen Hector, he is finally brought to his senses and shamed by Priam, Hector’s grieving old father, who reminds Achilles of his own dear father. Thus Achilles relents and allows a proper burial.

While Williams admired Frederick Douglass, he was in many ways closer in spirit to the great libertarian novelist and essayist Zora Neale Hurston. He never cited her work, though both he and Hurston were honored in a round table discussion in 2021 on “Race and Liberty in America,” hosted by the Independent Institute, a libertarian think tank. Like Hurston, Williams was an unflagging proponent of individual liberty as well as a trenchant critic of black leaders who robbed African Americans of the spirit of independence by fostering in them a culture of resentment against white oppression.

Hurston, in a brief auto-biographical essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” vigorously rejected what she famously called the “sobbing school of negrohood”—that is, the school of victimology championed by the likes of W.E.B. DuBois. She believed that the philosophy of “racial pride” peddled by the Harlem “Nigeratti” was little more than a form of tribalism that allowed blacks to evade any responsibility for their own failures. While Williams, like Hurston, never denied the historical reality of discrimination against blacks, he never succumbed to the temptation to don the robes of the perpetually aggrieved.

*****

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Border Crisis Is About to Get a Lot Worse

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By Jarrett Stepman

In 2021, the migrant surge at the southern border hit its highest point in two decades.

But as bad as things are currently, the situation at the border may get even worse.

President Donald Trump’s administration created the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order Title 42 to allow immediate deportation of illegal immigrants coming from countries where there was a widespread communicable disease.

It was a commonsense measure to protect public health during a time of pandemic. Even the Biden administration kept the rule in place.

That could soon change.

Pressure from activists and the reduction of COVID-19 restrictions has, according to multiple reports, led the administration to reconsider Title 42.

It’s noteworthy that the same activist groups and politicians that insisted on the most restrictive COVID-19 policies at home have been most vocal about ending a rule that would allow border officials to do the bare minimum to preserve the health and safety of Americans during a pandemic.

Ending Title 42 could have serious consequences at a time when the overall picture at the border is grim.

Even before President Joe Biden took office it was clear that he would take a different approach to the border than his predecessor. Once in office, he worked quickly to ensure it would be more difficult to arrest, detain, and deport illegal immigrants.

In the months after Biden became president, illegal border crossings soared.

The administration and its media allies initially dismissed this as a temporary, “seasonal” problem.

It wasn’t.

The number of July border arrests, in a hot month that typically sees lower border crossing numbers, went over 200,000. This is the highest number seen in any single month in over 21 years.

The trend hasn’t abated in 2022. In February, there were 164,973 encounters between Border Patrol and illegal immigrants at the southern border. This is a threefold increase from February 2020 and marks a yearlong streak of over 150,000 border apprehensions per month.

As the New York Post noted, there have been over 2 million border encounters since Biden became president and an estimated half-million additional illegal border crossers who’ve avoided Border Patrol.

What we have at the border is already an epic crisis that requires a serious rethinking of policies and rhetoric coming from the White House. Biden, you may remember, maligned Border Patrol in September by accusing agents of abusing migrants.

The story of agents “whipping” migrants was debunked, but Biden never apologized. It is now six months into the official investigation and no report has been released.

So not only is Border Patrol besieged by the very serious task of dealing with a historic migrant surge, it’s also been thrown under the bus from the top.

It’s in the context of this environment that the administration is set to make the border control problem significantly more challenging.

Even two Democratic senators from Arizona, a border state at the forefront of the crisis, insisted that Title 42 remain in place.

Democratic Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly sent a letter to Biden expressing their concern. They wrote:

Given the impacts that changes to Title 42 could have on border communities, border security, and migrants, we urge your administration not to make any changes to Title 42 implementation until you are completely ready to execute and coordinate a comprehensive plan that ensures a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border.

Former acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan blasted the idea of removing Title 42 as one that “defies logic and common sense.”

In an interview with The National Desk, he explained how it would overload an already taxed system.

“The facilities are already dangerously overcrowded,” Morgan said. “And when we start seeing those numbers, which we’ve already started to see flow in, it’s going to be crushing. There’s going to be nothing for them to be able to do except release individuals as fast as possible. Many of these individuals we’re not going to know anything about. We are not going to know who they are. It’s simply going to endanger America, and it’s going to cost lives.”

The border crisis is getting worse, not better. One of the primary jobs of the federal government is to maintain the border and uphold the laws that the American people have put in place to do so.

What we have now is a border that in a short amount of time has become a sieve and an administration apparently unwilling to change course or stand up to the most extreme left-wing activists.

It’s the same tack we’ve seen from Democrats and the “defund the police” movement. Again and again, they cave to the most extreme voices on the left and the country pays the consequences.

*****

This article was published in The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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GOP report: Teachers Unions Got ‘Unprecedented Access’ After Donating Tens of Millions to Democrats

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By Casey Harper

A newly released report from Republican lawmakers on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis alleges that teachers’ unions had “unprecedented access” in determining school COVID-19 guidelines after giving millions of dollars to Democratic candidates in 2020.

The report confirmed what The Center Square reported last year, including that teachers’ unions such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) gave tens of millions of dollars to Democrats before heavily influencing school re-opening guidance.

“Teachers’ unions, including AFT, donated more than $43 million to liberal groups and candidates during the 2020 election cycle,” the report said. “The two largest unions – which both endorsed then-candidate Biden for President – have approximately 4.7 million members. [CDC scientist] Dr. [Henry] Walke’s testimony to the Select Subcommittee shows the Biden Administration rewarded their support with unprecedented access to the policymaking process for guidance on re-opening schools.”

The report said that “the Biden Administration rewarded [teachers unions] support with unprecedented access to the policymaking process for guidance on re-opening schools.”

“The Operational Strategy that was developed jointly by the CDC and AFT reflects the fact that the Biden Administration prioritized its political allies over the health and welfare of school-aged children,” the report said. “Director [Rochelle] Walensky downplayed the degree to which the CDC gave AFT access to the policymaking process. In fact, the CDC shared a draft with the AFT at least two weeks before finalizing the document and solicited the union’s feedback.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten has defended her union’s work with the CDC, saying she has an obligation to advocate for her teachers. Teachers’ unions largely pushed for delaying school re-openings, calling for stringent vaccination and masking requirements.

Those school closures led to some students falling behind academically and struggling with mental health.

“Research also shows that school closures affected students in other ways,” the report said. “According to McKinsey, parents whose children have fallen significantly behind academically are one-third more likely to say they are ‘very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health. Black and Hispanic parents are seven to nine percentage points more likely than white parents to report higher levels of concern.”

The report comes after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came under major fire for removing 24% of pediatric COVID-19 deaths it initially had recorded, saying it made an error. Those inflated death totals were used to justify school masking and shutdown policies around the country.

According to the report, minority children were hit hardest by the lockdowns.

“The effects of the Biden Administration’s politicization of the CDC have been felt most acutely by students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, including those attending majority-Black or low-income schools, according to a July 2021 report by McKinsey and Co,” the report said. “At the end of the 2020-21 school year, most students were about four to five months behind in math and reading levels.”

The Republicans behind the report called for an investigation.

“Because lawyers for the Biden Administration prevented a key witness from explaining why the CDC allowed AFT to write key portions of its guidance for re-opening schools, there are still several unanswered questions,” the report said. “This matter should be investigated further. America’s children are suffering, academically and mentally, because of the choices of liberal local and state officials. Republicans will not rest until we have rectified the harms perpetrated against children in America.”

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This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

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A Defining Moment

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By Bruce Bialosky

We are coming off two years of lockdowns that were countered with government programs spending billions and billions of dollars to offset the effects of those government-imposed restrictions. We are then hit with a burst of inflation at levels not seen in America for forty years. Additionally, one of the world’s largest energy suppliers decided to attack its neighbor without provocation. This has all brought to the forefront the failed philosophies of a political party and a lesson to be learned.

With the soaring cost of energy and the abandonment of sourcing that energy from America and Russia, there is a logical and pragmatic solution. Restore our own production to the levels we had prior to the Democrats taking over our government. Unfortunately, the party is so driven by their blind allegiance to their green energy policy that has caused this crisis that an adjustment is not even a consideration.

First, Washington proposed a release of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. One might think that the reserve is for legitimate national emergencies and not just politically embarrassing price increases. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced an agreement among 30 countries to release some 60 million barrels from reserves. The U.S. Has made a commitment to release 30 million barrels.  To understand the significance of that, know it equals roughly 1.5 days of U.S. usage.

Then the government wonks in DC suggested a gas tax holiday. At 18.4 cents per gallon, that would barely dent the price of gas at your local station. California then started throwing around their own gas tax holiday. Governor Newsom suggested he wanted the holiday. At 53.3 cents per gallon (second-highest state tax in the nation), that would be a significant decrease. Newsom also suggested eliminating an automatic tax increase that went into effect on July 1, 2022, but the legislature balked.

Before we go further, the gas tax is a use tax. It is supposedly dedicated to the repair of roads and bridges. Drive in California and one might think how the funds are not being spent in a highly effective manner in maintaining roads and highways.

The state currently has a projected surplus of $46 billion so expending some of that to alleviate significant financial pain for residents would be a shot in the arm — especially for middle-class workers.

It would be too easy a solution to let the people who use gas get a direct benefit by reducing the price of the product they are taxing – gasoline. The legislators in Sacramento have a better idea. They want to send every taxpayer a $400 check. They even said it would cover a once-a-week fill-up for a year. The problem is the check goes to every taxpayer whether they have a car or not or whether they use gasoline in their vehicle. 

This is a quintessentially Democrat solution. Instead of letting people make their own decisions on their money, they will make their decisions for them. They will run the money through their hands, processed by the government union employees who are the Democrats’ principal campaign contributors, and then give us back the residue (at their discretion of course). We will never know the cost of this program which would be zero if they simply suspended the gas tax.

This rebate program comes on the heels of the Secretary in charge of the unemployment program in California stating that $11.4 billion of benefits were given out fraudulently. She believes it could be an additional $20 billion. Did Ms. Su get fired in disgrace? No, she was hired by the Biden Administration to be the Deputy Secretary of Labor.

With this recent history, one might think sending out random checks for $9 billion might give one pause. Not these Sacramento Democrats.

The latest proposals have Newsom recommending $400 debit cards (that worked so well with unemployment benefits why not bring it back for an encore – they never learn). The good thing is that the cards would be limited to two per person if you happen to own two vehicles. The members of the legislature proposed $200 rebates per family member (six-year-olds need gas tax rebates), but income restrictive up to $250,000 (whatever that means except we know it is punishing people for being successful but does not recognize the cost of living in California has been driven ridiculously high by government policies.) Of course, these silly ideas do not recognize EVs owners who will also get the money.

There are a combined one million EVs and hybrids in California. They pay either no gasoline tax or a severely reduced amount. They will likewise be getting $400 debit cards along with all the criminals who got the unemployment debit cards and went on a buying spree on Rodeo Drive. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Virtually every time there is a problem that is created by a Democrat-induced program, their solution is to create another program instead of either correcting the existing program or dismantling it. No wonder California has 25% of the country’s state government unionized employees.

The lesson to be learned here is this is what happens when you have one-party control of all the levers of a state. The last time a Republican was elected statewide in California was 2006 and that was Arnold – enough said. With the Democrats having control of every statewide constitutional office, supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and almost every judge appointed by their team, controls on them simply do not exist. 

Ask the Russians or the Chinese if one party government works well. That is how simple problems end up with complicated solutions. This could be your future.

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This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Study Raises New Questions About 2020 Election Results in 6 States

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By Fred Lucas

At least 255,000 excess votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election across six battleground states, according to a new study that examined individual voting precincts.

Economist John Lott, president of the Crime Research Prevention Center, is the author of the peer-reviewed study, which looked at precincts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The study, set to be published in the academic journal Public Choice, compares precincts where there were allegations of voter fraud to similar precincts in neighboring counties that had no fraud allegations. In each comparison, the two precincts examined fall on opposite sides of a county line—in some cases across the street.

Precincts are county-level election subdivisions, usually with fewer than 1,000 voters. Precincts in counties with fraud allegations had significantly higher voter participation than adjacent precincts in counties without alleged fraud, the study found.

“Precincts are generally small, homogeneous areas, and when two areas are adjacent and similar to each other, why would one precinct have far many more votes?” Lott asked The Daily Signal in an interview. “If you have a get-out-the-vote campaign, you care about winning the state, [and are] not focused on the precinct.”

Lott’s study found that at least 255,000 excess votes were cast—and possibly as many as 368,000—for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Biden beat then-President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, by a total of 313,253 votes in the six states.

Calculating Possible Fraudulent Votes

The study compares Trump’s share of absentee votes in adjacent precincts and accounts for differences in Trump’s share of in-person votes.

The study also notes that in-person votes are counted at the precinct level, while absentee votes are counted at a county’s central election office.

The potential number of fraudulent votes is reached by comparing the number of votes cast in bordering precincts on opposite sides of a county line. In some cases, Lott said, voters could be neighbors who live across the street from one another.

“To isolate the impact of a county’s vote-counting process and potential fraud on candidates’ vote margins, I first compare voting precincts in a county with alleged fraud to adjacent precincts in neighboring counties with no allegations of fraud,” Lott’s study says, according to a published abstract. He continues:

I compute the differences in President Trump’s vote shares on absentee ballots in those adjacent precincts, controlling for the differences in his vote shares on ballots cast in person. I also control for registered voters’ demographics and compare data for the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The study doesn’t question the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 election, writes Lott, who has held teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Rice University.

Rather, he writes, the analysis indicates that concerns about voter fraud are legitimate and undermine confidence in elections.

‘Have to Be Careful’

Many statements from Trump allies criticizing the 2020 election lacked evidence, which discredited concerns about fraud, Lott told The Daily Signal.

“There were people, perhaps well-meaning, who didn’t check out information before going public with it,” Lott said. “You have to be careful with these things.”

Lott said he waited to talk about his research until it was fully peer-reviewed. He said that process took more than a year, a longer review than usual.

Lott is a former senior adviser for research and statistics at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, where he dealt with issues of voter fraud, among other matters.

He has been among the most-cited economists in the world, according to an analysis by the Free University of Brussels, or Université libre de Bruxelles.

“John Lott is a serious scholar who does very good, in-depth research,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal.

“I am very interested in reading his study when it comes out, in particular, to see what lessons it provides for how states can improve the integrity of their election process,” von Spakovsky, who manages Heritage’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said.

Heritage’s Election Fraud Database has documented 1,349 adjudicated cases of voter fraud since 1982.

6,700 Extra Votes for Biden

The Brennan Center for Justice, a left-wing think tank at New York University School of Law, contends that voter fraud in the United States is a “myth.” The center did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.

Lott’s study compared precincts in Georgia’s Fulton County to neighboring precincts in border counties. The comparisons show what Lott describes as an unexplained 17,000 votes from Fulton County. That’s 32% more than Biden’s official 12,000-vote margin over Trump in the entire state.

Similarly, the study looked at provisional ballots in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, where voters allegedly were allowed to correct defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. This practice violated state law, Lott said.

Biden carried Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes.

“When I examine Georgia and Pennsylvania separately, weak evidence of vote fraud on absentee ballots is found,” Lott’s abstract of the study says. “However, combining the samples produces significant results and implies at least 10,000 additional votes for Biden in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny and Georgia’s Fulton counties.”

His abstract continues:

I then apply the same method to provisional ballots in Allegheny County, where, contrary to state law, voters were allowed to correct alleged defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on Election Day. My analysis finds that such permission contributed to a statistically significant additional 6,700 votes for Biden.

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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Democrats Look To Sustainable Investing Craze As Means For Pushing Climate Agenda

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By Thomas Catenacci

  • Democrats have increasingly pushed their expansive climate agenda through the financial sector and legal system as Congress has failed to implement Green New Deal reforms.
  • “Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”
  • The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance, the latest example of the sustainable investing movement.
  • “This is just an attempt by the left to use the business community, the finance sector, companies … to accomplish with other people’s money, what they can’t accomplish at the ballot box,” Andy Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF in an interview

Democrats, banks, regulators, and activists have increasingly set their sights on the financial sector and legal system, not Congress, for pushing their aggressive climate agenda.

Employing so-called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, financial institutions and government agencies have quietly implemented policies prioritizing a focus on factors unrelated to a company’s bottom line, experts said. The ESG movement has swept across the corporate world, leading to individual pledges from companies promising to become more sustainable and improve internal diversity.

In the latest example of the ESG and sustainable investing movement, the Democratic-majority U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a sweeping set of rules Monday that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their carbon emissions and how they were planning to transition away from fossil fuel reliance. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey was one of many lawmakers to immediately slam the proposal, saying it “hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC.”

“Congress is really unwilling to impose much in the way of costs and to address climate change,” David Kreutzer, the senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Frustrated by that, people in Washington want to use non-legislative ways to impose these costs and raise the price of energy-intensive goods and energy in general.”

“One of the ways that they’re doing it — it’s like an all fronts attack — is under the guise of environmental, social, and governance investments,” he added. (RELATED: New York To Divest Pensions From Fossil Fuel Companies)

‘Priorities Are A Little Misplaced’

Regulators have also targeted Americans’ pensions. In October, the Department of Labor (DOL), which is tasked with regulating private sector pensions under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act, reversed a Trump-era rule that placed barriers to fiduciaries’ ability to consider ESG factors when selecting investments.

Similar to the SEC proposal Monday, the DOL rule stated that “climate change and other ESG factors can be financially material” for investors. (RELATED: Biden’s Green Transition May Usher In More Energy Insecurity. Here’s How)

“The primary purpose of fiduciaries is to look out for the wellbeing of the pensioners who contribute to these funds,” Pat Pizzella, the former deputy secretary of labor during the Trump administration, told the DCNF. “Not to speculate on risky or trendy, expensive ESG products. I think their priorities are a little misplaced.”

He added that the Trump administration’s view was to look at ESG investing from a legal point of view. Pizzella predicted that individuals with pensions managed by fiduciaries that invest in risky ESG-focused companies or funds would eventually take the institutions to court….

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Continue reading this article at Daily Caller and is reprinted with permission.

Conservative News Sites Are Pushing Misleading Activist Phrase ‘Don’t Say Gay’ thumbnail

Conservative News Sites Are Pushing Misleading Activist Phrase ‘Don’t Say Gay’

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By Laurel Duggan

Editors’ Note: The use, or abuse, of language is now an integral part of the culture war. The attack on Florida by activists, the press, and corporations, is for the most part caused by deliberate verbal distortions of what the legislation actually says. But activists believe a higher cause is served by repeating a lie over and over again, hoping the uninformed will be duped into believing the legislation discriminates against homosexuals. Conservatives always need to be cautious about adopting the terms developed by the Left. It is not too much to say that if you control the language of the debate, you control the debate.

Conservative-leaning news outlets parroted liberal activist language in headlines to describe a Florida bill banning lessons on sexuality and gender ideology for young children.

The phrase “Don’t Say Gay,” which was used by LGBT activists since at least 2012, was mainstreamed by corporate media in February and eventually picked up by conservative outlets to describe Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill.

The legislation, which does not ban the word gay in schools or anywhere else, bars teachers from discussing sexuality and gender identity with children in kindergarten through third grade and requires parental consent for health services offered in schools. Students in fourth grade and higher will still be able to have age-appropriate lessons on gender and sexuality.

It also blocks schools from imposing rules that prevent teachers from notifying parents about services offered to children that impact their physical, mental, or emotional health, with exceptions in place for instances of potential child abuse.

Newsmax published “WH Denounces Florida GOP Over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill” Feb. 8, and the Daily Caller published “SNL Rips Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill” March 6.

The Washington Examiner, Fox Business and the New York Post also used “Don’t Say Gay” uncritically in their headlines.

Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the importance of language in shaping public opinion in comments to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It is always important to look at how a question is worded when evaluating a public opinion survey,” she said. “I rarely comment on polls on a news story until I have been able to compare several polls with different question wordings.”

The legislation was signed into law by DeSantis Monday.

Newsmax, the Washington Examiner, Fox Business, and the New York Post did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

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This article was published by the Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

Exclusive: Zuckerberg-Connected Nonprofit Helped Shift Michigan’s 2020 Voting Rules thumbnail

Exclusive: Zuckerberg-Connected Nonprofit Helped Shift Michigan’s 2020 Voting Rules

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By Logan Washburn

This private organization, with ties to Zuckerberg’s CTCL, gained access to absentee ballots and edged public officials out of the election process.

A nonprofit connected to Mark Zuckerberg-funded groups worked with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to influence state elections ahead of 2020. The changes include getting the state to alter how it used absentee ballots without an act of the state legislature.

Documents exclusively obtained by The Federalist through an open records request show National Vote at Home Institute CEO Amber McReynolds working with Benson to change Michigan elections policy. NVAHI shares leadership ties with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a group that shuttled money from Zuckerberg to government election agencies ahead of the 2020 election, as The Federalist previously reported. In several instances, NVAHI and CTCL worked together to influence the 2020 election.

The documents also show that the private organization funded by Facebook tycoon Zuckerberg exists to push states to adopt mass mail-in balloting of the kind that made chaos of the 2020 election.

Mail-in ballots are proven to be significantly more susceptible to fraud, as a bipartisan federal election integrity commission chaired by former President Jimmy Carter concluded in 2005. That’s because mail-in ballots provide more opportunities to influence, obtain, and traffic in ballots.

In one recent example, during a 2017 city council election in Dallas, Texas, investigators found one person had fraudulently signed 700 mail-in ballots—more than the total vote difference between competing candidates at the time. During the 2020 election in Wisconsin, officials took part in ballot trafficking and used drop-boxes for mail-in ballots, which a judge later ruled violated state law.

Private Groups Telling Public Employees What To Do

In Michigan, this highly partisan organization directly affected voting rules, the new documents show. In the emails, McReynolds suggested that Benson use administrative rulemaking to implement a permanent absentee voting option in the state. Administrative rulemaking means making regulations based on an interpretation of the law, often yielding regulations that differ from the law’s original intent and sometimes its explicit text.

“I was thinking that you may have rule-making authority,” McReynolds wrote in an email on Feb. 5, 2019. “The language below indicates that voters have a right to vote without giving a reason, which to me has left open the possibility of permanent or election specific absentee requests. To me, this means you do not likely need a legislative change.”

“Thanks Amber,” Benson replied, “Looping in Jonathan Brater and Mike Brady from our legal and policy team to explore.”

Brater served as Benson’s legal policy director in 2019, and Brady began working as her chief legal director in February 2019, according to LinkedIn. Benson named Brater director of elections in November 2019.

Benson spokesman Jake Rollow said Benson’s actions conformed to state law.

“Michigan’s voters enshrined the right to vote absentee in our state constitution in 2018, and upon being sworn into office Secretary Benson went to work implementing the will of the voters,” Rollow said.

Private, Zuckerberg-Connected Group Affects Election Policy

The National Vote At Home Institute focused its 2020 work in Michigan on its top goal of increasing mass mail-in balloting. By January 2020, NVAHI had “hired a lobbyist to quietly push for an administrative fix that would speed up the ballot processing and counting in Michigan,” according to a 2020 presentation obtained through The Federalist’s open records request. NVAHI detailed a five-step plan to push universal absentee ballots, according to meeting material from 2019.

The states that receive one star from NVAHI’s rating system are those that require a valid excuse to vote outside a private booth on election day. States with five stars, its highest rating, had achieved NVAHI’s end goal of “Full Vote at Home.”

NVAHI developed four strategies to push 100 percent mail-in balloting policy in all 50 states, according to 2019 meeting material. The materials say the organization uses the first strategy to eliminate state safeguards on mail-in ballots: “Strategy 1: Reduce the number of Step 1 and Step 2 (excuse required) States to zero. We can achieve this through federal legislation or state by state (legislature or where possible– ballot initiatives),” meeting material reads.

The group’s second strategy is to increase the number of states with a permanent absentee ballot option: “Strategy 2: Increase the number of states that are Step 4 (permanent absentee). So, move current no-excuse states (IL, FL, MN, OH, MI, NM, and others) to Step 4,” the meeting material reads.

NVAHI’s third strategy is to increase the number of mail-in-only states: “Strategy 3: Increase the number of states that are Step 5 (full VAH). CA and UT are in process. We anticipate other states will move in this direction,” say the meeting materials.

The group’s final strategy is to affect how government election offices process absentee ballots: “Strategy 4: Work with states to improve their current procedures with regards to processing mail ballots. This includes a variety of reforms that improve the current process,” meeting material reads.

In 2020, NVAHI’s Circle of Advisors provided an update on the group’s national policy efforts, according to the Federalist-obtained public documents. A map in this update claimed progress in Michigan during 2018/2019 with “no-excuse absentee,” but even more was planned for 2020, including “fixes to allow for earlier processing of ballots.”

According to the emails obtained by The Federalist’s records request, McReynolds met with Benson about Michigan elections multiple times in 2019.

“I would like to connect with you about some follow-up items from my visit,” McReynolds wrote in an email on Jan. 26, 2019. “Perhaps a quick chat at some point while you are at NASS [National Association of Secretaries of State].”

After a previous visit, the emails show, McReynolds planned to meet with Benson and several other secretaries of state at the NASS conference in Washington, D.C.

“I wanted to see if we could connect in DC [sic] during NASS,” McReynolds wrote in a Jan. 28, 2019 email. “I was hoping to spend an hour discussing a few topics.”

McReynolds also asked to meet with Benson privately in D.C. to discuss Michigan elections, and Benson agreed, the emails show.

“Perhaps you and I can chat about Michigan specifically on our own,” McReynolds said in an email on Jan. 30, 2019. “Sounds good!” Benson replied.

In February 2019, Benson took advice about absentee ballot applications from both McReynolds and Stephen Silberstein. Silberstein is a left-leaning donor connected with Democracy Alliance and National Popular Vote, according to InfluenceWatch.

“This is very helpful,” Benson said. “We will be implementing many of your suggestions.”

Shortly after their January 2019 meeting in D.C., McReynolds offered Benson and former Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R-Wash.) the position of co-chairs of NVAHI’s new Circle of Advisors, the emails show.

“I am happy to serve,” Benson replied on Feb. 19, 2019. Wyman, however, is not currently listed as a member of the group.

Benson’s Spokesman Denies Private Influence

Rollow claimed McReynolds had “limited and minimal” interactions with McReynolds.

“She was asked to join NVAHI’s circle of advisors, but her direct interactions with McReynolds have been limited and minimal,” Rollow said.

Benson joined Tiana Epps-Johnson, the founder and director of the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, on NVAHI’s Circle of Advisors. In 2020, CTCL funneled approximately half a billion dollars from Zuckerberg to public election agencies in 2020, as The Federalist previously reported.

Partisan Employees Running Public Elections

After officials accepted CTCL grants, NVAHI “grant mentors” sometimes gained access to absentee ballots and edged public officials out of the election process. In Wisconsin, NVAHI’s State Lead Michael-Spitzer Rubenstein—who previously worked for Democrat political campaigns—personally accessed absentee ballots, over Green Bay City Clerk Kris Teske’s objections.

Teske later resigned due to frustration over election intervention by third-party groups like CTCL and NVAHI.

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I am trying to explain the process but it isn’t heard,” Teske said. “I don’t understand how people who don’t have knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election.”

The Federalist reached out to McReynolds for comment but did not receive a response.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reprinted with permission.

Arizona Legislature Approves Bill Vetting All Voters for Citizenship Before They Can Cast a Ballot thumbnail

Arizona Legislature Approves Bill Vetting All Voters for Citizenship Before They Can Cast a Ballot

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By Cole Lauterbach

Arizona lawmakers approved new voter safeguards that supporters said will ensure only U.S. citizens can cast ballots.

A unanimous Republican caucus approved House Bill 2492 in the Senate, sending the legislation to Gov. Doug Ducey for consideration.

While Arizona is one of the few states that already require proof of citizenship before registering to vote, residents can bypass that by registering for a federal-only ballot under the National Voter Registration Act and can vote in federal contests.

HB 2492 would require counties to check those individuals for citizenship against multiple databases. Counties must reject any federal applications if they find the individual is not a U.S. citizen. Any official knowingly ignoring the requirement could be charged with a Class 6 felony.

Democrats accused Republicans of seeking to purge the voter rolls as revenge for the 2020 general election, where President Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump.

“This is absurd, illogical and discriminatory,” Sen. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, said.

Constitutional analysts told GOP lawmakers in another hearing the bill presents some issues that could face a legal challenge. Opponents were quick to note that in debate.

“We are voting on a bill that is unconstitutional and has a tremendous impact on the voters of the state of Arizona,” Sen. Martín Quezada, D-Phoenix, said. “There are many provisions in this bill that are offensive, and that will have a negative impact on some communities more than others.”

Republicans said their legislation simply ensures U.S. citizens are the only ones voting in U.S. elections.

“The issue is making sure the citizens of this country are voting,” state Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, said. “If you’re not a citizen of this country, you’re not allowed to vote. We have over 35,000 people registered to vote where we are not certain whether they’re citizens or not.”

The bill passed along partisan lines. Democrats gathered in Phoenix on Thursday to pressure Ducey to veto the legislation.

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This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Sweden—Once Mocked for Its COVID Strategy—Now Has One of the Lowest COVID Mortality Rates in Europe

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By Jon Miltimore

Sweden, which avoided strict lockdowns, now has a lower COVID mortality rate than 29 countries in Europe alone.

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, I asked a simple question. Could Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus actually work?

Unlike its European neighbors and virtually all US states, the Swedes had opted to not shut down the economy. The country of 10 million people took what was at first described as “a lighter touch.”

While other countries closed schools and businesses, life in Sweden stayed pretty normal. Kids went to public pools and libraries, while adults sipped wine and had lunch in local bistros. Though mass gatherings were prohibited, children kept going to school, though students older than 16 were encouraged to attend classes remotely. The Swedish government also encouraged people to work remotely and asked people over 70 to isolate themselves, if possible.

For taking this approach, Sweden—and the architect of its public health policies, Anders Tegnell—was widely condemned. Consider just a sampling of headlines:

“The Inside Story of How Sweden Botched Its Coronavirus Response”

Foreign Policy, Dec. 22, 2020

“Sweden Stayed Open And More People Died Of Covid-19, But The Real Reason May Be Something Darker”

Forbes, July 7, 2020

“Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy has caused an ‘amplification of the epidemic”

France 24, May 17, 2020

“Sweden’s Unconventional Approach to Covid-19: What went wrong”

Chicago Policy Review, Dec. 14, 2021

“Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale”

The New York Times, July 7, 2020

These are just a few examples of the avalanche of criticism Sweden received for not locking down its economy like other governments around the world. A quick Google search will turn up dozens more.

I spent a great deal of time in 2020 and 2021 arguing that the media was getting the narrative wrong on Sweden, pointing out that Sweden’s response had resulted in exponentially fewer deaths than modelers had predicted and lower mortality overall than most of Europe.

The BBC also noted Sweden’s economy had not suffered nearly as much as the economies of other European nations, and, more importantly, as other countries were implementing more lockdown measures in 2021, daily COVID deaths in Sweden had reached zero.

That was nearly 9 months ago, however. How does Sweden rank compared to other European countries today?

Like many countries, Sweden saw cases spike with the arrival of Omicron, which resulted in a new wave of COVID deaths. However, the wave was much smaller than in other countries. In fact, Sweden’s overall COVID-19 mortality rate throughout the pandemic is one of the lower rates you’ll find in all of Europe.

The point in sharing this information is not to take a victory lap. The point is to learn from the mistakes made during the pandemic.

In March of 2020, when public health officials realized COVID-19 was more deadly than they previously believed, they panicked. Instead of pursuing similar courses humans had pursued in previous pandemics, public health authorities decided to copy the strategy of China—one of the most totalitarian regimes on the planet—and use the government to force entire sectors of the economy to shutdown. (Americans were told this was just for 15 days to “flatten the curve,” something that was quickly proven to be untrue.)

The strategy failed miserably. Study after study after study has shown the lockdowns failed to adequately protect populations, which is why non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been scrapped by countries around the world.

Shutting down society, however, came with serious and deadly consequences. The World Bank reported last year that global poverty surged during the pandemic, with 97 million more people living on less than $1.90 per day. In the United States, 8 million more people fell into poverty in 2020, tens of millions lost jobs, and hundreds of thousands of businesses went under. To mitigate these harms, the government “flooded the system with money,” which has resulted in surging inflation. The losses went beyond financial costs, of course. Cancer screenings plunged and drug overdoses reached record highs, resulting in an untold number of deaths.

And on Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the latest unintended consequence of the government’s lockdown experiment: a new study shows alcohol-related deaths spiked in 2020, increasing 25 percent from the previous year.

“The assumption is that there were lots of people who were in recovery and had reduced access to support that spring and relapsed,” said Aaron White, one the report’s authors and a senior scientific adviser at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Public officials made two serious mistakes above all others in their response to the virus. The first was assuming they possessed the knowledge and ability to contain a highly contagious respiratory virus through lockdowns and other NPIs.

Many world-leading epidemiologists at the time, like Tegnell, saw the futility of such an approach.

“In early March 2020, when Italy and Iran started to report many COVID deaths as the first countries outside China, it was clear to any knowledgeable infectious disease epidemiologist that the virus would eventually spread to all parts of the world,” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2015 to 2021, told me. “At the time, we only knew a small proportion of the actual cases, so it was clear that it had already spread elsewhere and that it would be futile to try and eliminate the disease with contact tracing and lockdowns.”

The second mistake public officials made was not considering the unintended consequences of their actions. The writer and economist Henry Hazlitt once pointed out this is one of the perennial flaws in policymaking.

“[There’s a] persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy,” Hazlitt wrote in Economics in One Lesson, “and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups.”

Hazlitt described this as “the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”

Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s strategy who recently joined the World Health Organization, was one of the only public health officials in the world who acknowledged these secondary consequences,predicting that “the consequences of shutting down the economy [would] far outweigh the benefits.”

Tegnell was right, the data show. And the critics of Sweden’s policy should acknowledge that.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries – A Commentary on SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson thumbnail

Law Schools Fall To Revolutionaries – A Commentary on SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson

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By Rod Dreher

Here’s a very, very powerful addition to my danger of conservative complacency post.

Writing on Bari Weiss’s invaluable Substack, Aaron Sibarium details the corruption of the American legal profession by wokeness. Y’all, this is a five-alarm situation. Excerpts:

Read it all. Seriously, every word. As scholar Eric Kaufmann said over the weekend (see my link in the first graf), conservative voters and politicians have to make fighting wokeness in the culture war their No. 1 priority. If they don’t, we are going to lose our freedom. It really is that simple.

The people who lived under totalitarianism in the Soviet bloc were the first to understand the true nature of the changes sweeping over America in this last decade. I tell their story in Live Not By Lies, and share their advice on how to resist it. If you have previously thought the idea of “soft totalitarianism” was unduly alarmist, I invite you to read Sibarium’s report and reconsider. If you are the kind of person who thinks that wokeness is a fad among the young, and that they’ll grow out of it, you are not only wrong, you are dangerously wrong.

This [past] week,   is appearing before the Senate in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Two years ago, in a law school lecture, she discussed Critical Race theorists who were influential in shaping her thinking. Here is a link to the text of the lecture. She also praised the fraudulent 1619 Project. Well, Critical Race Theory came up yesterday in questioning:

But it was a question about whether or not infants were racist that drew the first detectable sign of exasperation from Judge Jackson, who sits on the board of trustees at Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington where the city’s elite — both conservative and liberal — send their children.

Wielding a stack of children’s books, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, had an aide display several large color photos from a children’s book called “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi.

“This is a book that is taught at Georgetown Day School to students in pre-K through second grade,” Mr. Cruz said from the dais. “Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

Judge Jackson audibly sighed before leaning into the microphone.

“Senator,” she said, “I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist, or though they are not valued, or though they are less than, that they are victims, that they are oppressors. I do not believe in any of that.”

During his 30 minutes of questioning, Mr. Cruz questioned Judge Jackson on her views of race, racism, and critical race theory. Critical race theory is a field of study in law schools that argues that laws and institutions can incorporate structural racial bias, but Republicans have used the term as a way to criticize educational materials that describe ideas of racism, racial privilege, or inequality.

After he was done with “Antiracist Baby,” Mr. Cruz asked Judge Jackson about whether or not she had read any of the children’s books. And she continued to tell the senator that she was not sure how the children’s books related to her work as a judge.

“I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas,” Judge Jackson said. “They don’t come up as my work as a judge, which I am respectfully here to address.”

Earlier in his questioning process, Mr. Cruz quoted Judge Jackson’s praise of Georgetown Day’s “rigorous progressive education that is dedicated to fostering critical thinking, independence and social justice.” Judge Jackson replied that the school was private, and every “parent who joins the community does so willingly, with an understanding that they are joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued.”

It’s a fair line of questioning. Someone who was against the principles of Critical Race Theory ought to have been eager to criticize the school’s racist policies. Moreover, it ought to have been easy for the judge to give to Sen. Marsha Blackburn the definition she asked for:

“Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of men and women as male and female?” Blackburn pressed. Jackson did not comment on the matter.

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’” the senator asked.

“Can I provide a definition? No,” Jackson responded. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Blackburn asked.

“Not in this context, I’m not a biologist,” the judge replied.

“Do you believe the meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial that you can’t give me a definition?” Blackburn pressed.

“Senator, in my work as a judge, what I do is I address disputes. If there’s a dispute about a definition, people make arguments, and I look at the law, and I decide,” Jackson said.

This is completely disingenuous. Judge Brown knows well that judges like her are required to make these decisions in cases involving transgender civil rights claims. Her refusal to answer the question straightforwardly tells us what we need to know.

Judge Jackson is both a radical and a mainstream 2022 liberal, in the sense that Aaron Sibarium means in his piece. That is, it’s clear that she would be a reliable vector to Supreme Court deliberations of the kind of culture-war radicalism that has consumed law schools. I have a relatively expansive view of SCOTUS nominations, thinking that presidents should generally get their nominees confirmed absent some grave reason not to. In these times, though, and with the serious threat that gender ideology and CRT pose to the fundamental social and constitutional order, I would not vote to confirm any judicial nominee who was not explicitly opposed to both. This is too important to the country’s present and future.

This is morally insane. You don’t need to be a biologist to answer this question. The fact the Judge Jackson can’t do it — or rather, will not do it — tells us everything we need to know about her. I would vote against her nomination for this reason alone. A potential Supreme Court justice who declines to define “woman” is not fit for the office.

*****

This article was published in The American Conservative and reproduced with permission.

SpyGate 101: A Primer On The Russia Collusion Hoax’s Years-long Plot To Take Down Trump thumbnail

SpyGate 101: A Primer On The Russia Collusion Hoax’s Years-long Plot To Take Down Trump

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By Margot Cleveland

For those who care about our country’s future but don’t want to be buried in the minutia of the Russia collusion hoax scandal, here is your big-picture primer.

As Special Counsel John Durham continues to expose more details of the “SpyGate” or “Russia collusion” scandal, it can be difficult for any apolitical, non-news-junkie member of the public to grasp the ongoing developments.

After all, for more than five years, the corrupt legacy media has refused to report on scandal or done so with a slanted portrayal of the facts. So most Americans remain unaware of the Democrats’ years-long duplicity that sought to destroy first candidate and then President Donald Trump. Add to that reality the overlapping conspiracies and sprawling cast of characters involved, and it can be difficult to follow the story.

That the scandal is dense, however, does not mean it should be ignored. To the contrary, the duplicity must not be disregarded because what Trump’s political enemies tried to accomplish over the course of five years represents the biggest threat our constitutional republic has seen in the last century.

So for those who care about our country and her future but don’t want to be buried in the minutia of the scandal, here is your big-picture primer.

DNC Emails Are Hacked

While every thread of SpyGate could be unraveled more, April 30, 2016, marks the cleanest point to pin the start of the intrigue. It was then, amid the contested presidential primaries, that the Democratic National Committee learned that its computer network had been breached. The DNC then hired a company called CrowdStrike to investigate the hack, and by mid-May, CrowdStrike concluded that Russian actors were responsible for the hack, which the DNC then reported to the FBI.

The public first learned about the DNC server hack on June 14, 2016, when The Washington Post broke the story. Then, on July 22, 2016, after Trump and Hillary Clinton had been declared the presidential nominees, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents, purportedly obtained through the DNC hack.

These documents included emails in which then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other party officials disparaged Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. The behind-the-scenes communiques also revealed that the DNC, which should maintain neutrality between primary candidates, favored Clinton, with top officials plotting ways to harm the Sanders campaign.

Clinton Campaign Plots to Convert DNC Scandal into Trump Scandal

The timing of WikiLeaks’ release of the DNC emails couldn’t have been worse, with delegates poised in Pennsylvania to officially nominate Clinton the Democratic candidate for president. But by Sunday evening, the Clinton campaign had devised a strategy to respond to the scandal: blame it on Trump.

“I’m Jake Tapper at the Democratic Convention in beautiful Philadelphia, where the state of our union is exposed emails just published by WikiLeaks showing Democratic Party officials actively discussing possible ways to sabotage Bernie Sanders, even as they were insisting publicly that they were staying neutral during the primaries,” the CNN host opened the video segment that launched the Russia collusion hoax.

Tapper introduced Clinton’s then-campaign manager Robby Mook, asking him the campaign’s reaction to the leaked emails. After responding that the DNC needed to “look into this and take appropriate action,” Mook pivoted to Trump, premiering the Russia conspiracy theory that would consume the country for the next five years.

“What’s disturbing to us,” Mook began, is that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.”

Mook continued:

“I don’t think it’s coincidental that these emails were released on the eve of our convention here, and that’s disturbing. And I think we need to be concerned about that. I think we need to be concerned that we also saw last week at the Republican Convention that Trump and his allies made changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian. And we saw him talking about how NATO shouldn’t intervene to defend — necessarily should intervene to defend our Eastern European allies if they are attacked by Russia. So I think, when you put all this together, it’s a disturbing picture. And I think voters need to reflect on that.”

When Tapper asked Mook for evidence to support his claims, Mook cited unnamed experts and press reports “that the hackers that got into the DNC are very likely by to be working in coordination with Russia.”

“If the Russians in fact had these emails, again, I don’t think it’s very coincidental that they are being released at this time to create maximum damage on Hillary Clinton and to help Donald Trump,” Mook reiterated.

“It is a very, very strong charge that you’re leveling here,” Tapper interjected. “You’re basically suggesting that Russians hacked into the DNC and now are releasing these files through WikiLeaks to help elect Donald Trump.”

Again, Mook deflected to “a number of experts,” saying, “Experts have said that it is the Russians that, in fact, went in and took these emails. And then, if they are the ones who took them, we have to infer that they are the ones then releasing them.”

Clinton Campaign Co-Opts the Russia Collusion Hoax

While the Clinton campaign introduced the Russia collusion hoax on the eve of the DNC convention to convert the Sanders’ scandal into one about Trump, the strategy also proved a perfect response to the second Clinton scandal — this one involving Clinton’s illegal use of a private server during her time as secretary of state.

The New York Times first broke the news on March 2, 2015, that Clinton had used a private email server to communicate as secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Two days later, the Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed any Benghazi-related emails contained on the private server. Upon learning of the document request, a technician for Clinton’s computer service provider deleted approximately 30,000 of Clinton’s emails, which she claimed were personal emails.

By May of 2016, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General had released an 83-page report condemning Clinton’s use of the server. Coverage of this report stressed that the State Department had “deemed more than 2,000 of Clinton’s messages as classified, including 22 that were upgraded to the most sensitive national security classification, ‘top secret.’” At the time, the media also noted that “the FBI is still probing whether any laws were broken laws by putting classified information at risk — or whether her staff improperly sent sensitive information knowing it wasn’t on a classified system.”

The Clinton campaign tried to downplay the FBI’s involvement in the private-server scandal by framing it as “a security inquiry,” but in response to questions about that characterization, then-FBI Director James Comey said he was “not familiar with the term ‘security inquiry,’” stressing “the word investigation” is “in our name.”

“We’re conducting an investigation. … That’s what we do. That’s probably all I can say about it,” Comey concluded.

At a press conference two months later, on July 5, 2016, Comey announced that the FBI had completed its investigation and that while Clinton’s handling of classified information was “extremely careless,” he had referred the matter to the Department of Justice with a recommendation that no charges be filed. Comey took this same position when he testified before Congress, there calling Clinton’s conduct related to the server “sloppy.”

Although Comey publicly declared the investigation into Clinton’s private server closed, when Democrats gathered for their convention in Philadelphia, her campaign continued to face questions about the scandal, with Tapper drilling Mook about Comey’s conclusion that Clinton’s use of the private server had been “sloppy.” Mook quickly changed the conversation to “this election” and what “voters are looking for and asking about in this election.”

Two days later, though, the media took Mook’s lead and converted the Clinton server scandal into a scandal about Trump. A July 26, 2016, opinion article for USA Today, titled “Putin for President 2016,” opened with an acknowledgment that Clinton’s “secret private-server emails are almost certainly already in the hands of Russian intelligence,” and concluded, “Putin can embarrass Hillary — or worse — whenever he wants.”

“We’re getting a small foretaste of that in the release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails,” the piece continued, speaking of the DNC officials engaged in “dirty tricks aimed at Bernie Sanders” and “getting awfully chummy with some allegedly professional journalists.” And with that, the media converted Clinton’s use of a private server to a story about Trump and Russia’s supposed backing of his candidacy.

From then on, the Clinton campaign and a complicit media framed any concern over her use of a home-brew server and any questions about the details buried in the DNC emails not as a scandal about Clinton but as a conspiracy between Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Clinton Campaign Pays for and Peddles Fake Trump-Russia Evidence

By the last week of July 2016, the Russia collusion diversion controlled the narrative, and Democrats repurposed every question about the DNC hack or the sever scandal as an opportunity to peddle it.

Similarly, Clinton’s team converted every comment by Trump, even tangentially related to Russia, as further evidence of a conspiracy. Likewise, her campaign framed every Russia connection, past or present, between Trump, his business, his family, or members of his campaign as concrete proof of collusion.

While the Clinton campaign had not gone public with the Russia-collusion angle until July 24, 2016, when Mook marketed that theme on CNN, it had been collecting supposed intel on Trump’s connections to Russia for some time.

In the first half of 2016, Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign, had hired private investigation firm Fusion GPS to collect opposition research on Trump. In turn, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele in May or June of 2016 to focus on Trump’s connections to Russia, and by June 20, 2016, Steele had drafted the first of some 17 memoranda that would eventually compose what is now known colloquially as the Steele dossier.

Steele shared his initial memorandum — which contained claims that the Kremlin had blackmail material on Trump, including the salacious and false “golden showers” accusation — with an FBI contact on July 5, 2016. Over the next six months, Steele continued to craft the dossier, relying primarily on an unnamed “Primary Sub-Source,” now known to be Russian national Igor Danchenko.

Danchenko, who has since been indicted for lying to the FBI, is also alleged to have invented some of the supposed intel contained in the dossier. Danchenko also fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented and then passed on to Danchenko.

The bottom line some five-plus years later is that the dossier consisted of a few publicly known accurate facts and a litany of false claims concocted by Danchenko and others and then sold by Steele and the Clinton campaign as the work of a former MI6 Russian expert.

The Steele dossier represented but one aspect of the invented evidence of collusion. The Clinton campaign also paid Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann for his work in crafting, with the assistance of various tech experts, a report purporting to show that the Trump organization had established a secret-communication network with the powerful Russian Alfa Bank.

Additionally, computer scientists who had worked with the Clinton campaign’s attorney “surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to intelligence agencies hoping to frame Trump as a Russia-connected stooge.”

As Steele, Fusion GPS, and other Clinton backers created fraudulent reports, they, along with the Clinton campaign and her lawyers, exploited their relationships with reporters and government officials.

Steele and/or Fusion GPS’s founder Glenn Simpson shared Steele’s memoranda with various news outlets. They also fed the supposed intel to members of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, including representatives in the Departments of Justice and State. After the FBI fired Steele as a source because he had spoken with the media, it arranged for him to continue providing his reports to the FBI by having him meet with a Justice Department attorney instead.

This dual-prong approach resulted in a public saturated with circular confirmation of Trump-Russia collusion. Outlets parroted the false details fed to reporters by Steele and then referenced the FBI’s investigations into the same matters to create the appearance that the investigations confirmed the validity of the leaks. Simultaneously, the FBI used media reports as a basis to confirm Steele’s supposed intel.

Obama Admin Spies on Trump Campaign Under Knowingly False Pretenses

On July 31, 2016, the Obama administration and the FBI launched an investigation into the Trump campaign, branded “Crossfire Hurricane.” While to this day, the FBI maintains it opened Crossfire Hurricane after U.S. officials learned from an Australian diplomat that young Trump adviser George Papadopoulos had bragged “that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton,” former Attorney General William Barr and Special Counsel John Durham have both questioned that account.

The Obama administration’s targeting of the opposition party’s presidential campaign came just as the Clinton campaign began publicly pushing the narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And the opening of Crossfire Hurricane came three days after then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama and other senior national security officials on intelligence alleging “that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

Brennan’s briefing also noted that intelligence agencies had obtained intel indicating that on July 26, 2016, Clinton approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” In early September 2016, a U.S. intelligence official would forward an investigative referral to the FBI regarding “Clinton’s approval of a plan” about “Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.”

Even with this foreknowledge of the Clinton campaign’s plot to frame Trump, and even while watching the execution of the plan in real-time, the FBI moved forward with Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI would also later use Steele’s fraudulent reporting to obtain four court orders from the secret FISA court to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer named Carter Page.

While Page was no longer connected to the campaign when the FBI obtained the FISA surveillance orders, the warrant allowed the FBI to access prior correspondence between Page and the Trump campaign, as well as any communications Page continued to have with individual campaign members. Further, while FISA proceedings are secret, media leaks about the targeting of Page gave the press more material to further the Russia-collusion spin.

Accessing private campaign emails, however, represented but one aspect of the spying that took place under the auspices of Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI also tasked a Confidential Human Source (CHS) with questioning Page, and that CHS “sought specific details from Page related to the Trump campaign, and fed Page unsolicited (and potentially illegal) advice concerning campaign strategy.”

The FBI used the same CHS to question Sam Clovis, a senior member of the Trump campaign. In a recorded conversation, the CHS posed several questions about sensitive campaign strategies and concerns.

The spying on Trump’s campaign also included the FBI using a private Trump security briefing as a possible opportunity to collect information for the investigation.

Investigation into Trump Continues During His Administration

Significantly, Crossfire Hurricane did not end with the 2016 election. Instead, after Trump defeated Clinton, the investigation continued and so did the leaks, with Comey giving Trump a briefing on the Steele dossier — a fact then leaked to give CNN a pretext to report on the Steele dossier.

After Trump’s inauguration, the FBI hatched a plot to oust the president’s national security adviser, again with the help of the media. Comey also began writing secret memoranda of conversations he had with now-President Trump. And after Trump fired Comey, the latter leaked those memoranda to the media through a law professor friend, triggering the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller continued Crossfire Hurricane, retaining many of the original FBI agents. The country would later learn that many of those investigating the Trump campaign held rabid anti-Trump sentiments when text messages exchanged by members of the Crossfire Hurricane team were made public. Other text messages went missing when several agents wiped their cell phones.

The public learned of even more malfeasance by the Crossfire Hurricane team when the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General released a 400-plus-page report concluding that the DOJ included 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the FISA application and renewals related to Carter Page.

These problems and others led then-AG William Barr to appoint U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead an investigation into Crossfire Hurricane, later naming him a special prosecutor.

As part of his investigation, Durham revealed additional misconduct in Crossfire Hurricane when he obtained a guilty plea from a former FBI attorney for altering an email related to the FISA case against Page.

Durham’s team also obtained a statement from another FBI agent involved in the investigation named William Barnett. Barnett told DOJ investigators that there was never any basis for the bizarre “collusion” theory and that Mueller’s office pushed prosecutions with a “get Trump” mentality. But even then, Mueller found no evidence of Trump colluding with Russia.

There are thousands more details already known and many more players involved — and that’s before whatever else Durham may reveal. But just these basics provide all the information you need to understand SpyGate — and to see why it far surpasses the Watergate scandal. 

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Climate Change Poses No Existential Threat. Nada. Not Any. thumbnail

Climate Change Poses No Existential Threat. Nada. Not Any.

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By H. Sterling Burnett

A refreshing article in the Washington Examiner demonstrates what I have repeatedly said for more than a decade: climate change does not pose an “existential threat.” In fact, that’s the title of the article: “Climate change is not an ‘existential threat.’” In discussing the energy crisis that has arisen during Joe Biden’s brief tenure as president of the United States—primarily because of Biden’s climate policies—David Simon writes,

The Biden administration’s climate change policies have sharply increased oil prices, damaging the domestic economy and increasing the cost of nearly everything consumers buy. By increasing revenues for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, they also made Russia stronger and more dangerous at a critical time, thus damaging national security. …

But worst of all, the Biden administration’s basis for these policies, the claim that global warming presents an “existential threat,” is fraudulent. It is not based on any scientific consensus, and in fact, it ignores evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm. 

In this article, chock full of data, Simon schools so-called journalists in the corporate media on how to examine claims that humans are causing a climate catastrophe. Simon presents data and research that conclusively demonstrate temperature and climate-related deaths have significantly declined during the period of modern warming. Climate Realism has also pointed this out on numerous occasions, refuting alarmists’ claims to the contrary.

For example, arguably the largest study ever to examine excess mortality associated with temperature was published in the July 1 edition of The Lancet, one of the world’s most prominent health journals. The study’s authors, 68 scientists representing universities and research institutes in 33 countries spanning all regions of the world, came to two clear conclusions: cold temperatures contribute to far more deaths each year than warmer temperatures, and deaths associated with extreme temperatures, hot or cold, are declining. The researchers found nearly 10 times more people die due to cold temperatures than hot temperatures. Moreover, as global temperatures modestly increase, the number of people dying because of suboptimal temperatures is decreasing.

“Importantly, cold-related death decreased 0.51 per cent from 2000 to 2019, while heat-related death increased 0.21 per cent, leading to a reduction in net mortality due to cold and hot temperatures,” the study reports.

Considering that 10 times more people were dying from cold than from heat, the study indicates the warming between 2000 and 2019 saved 3.1 million lives from cold-related deaths, at the expense of just 130,000 extra deaths caused by heat. As a result, global warming saved a net of nearly three million lives during the past 20 years.

This study confirms what previous research has consistently shown. In 2015, for example, The Lancet published the results of another large-scale temperature/mortality study, in which the researchers found cold weather directly or indirectly killed 1,700 percent more people than warm or hot weather. The scientists examined health data from 384 locations in 13 countries, accounting for more than 74 million deaths. The authors of this study wrote,

[N]on-optimum ambient temperature is responsible for substantial excess in mortality, with important differences between countries. Although most previous research has focused on heat-related effects, most of the attributable deaths were caused by cold temperatures. Despite the attention given to extreme weather events, most of the effect happened on moderately hot and moderately cold days, especially moderately cold days.

Even The New York Times acknowledged the importance of that study, with Jane Brody writing, “Over time, as global temperatures rise, milder winter temperatures are likely to result in fewer cold-related deaths, a benefit that could outweigh a smaller rise in heat-caused mortality.”

In addition to correcting the record on heat-related deaths, Simon dismantles various climate fictions about worsening natural disasters, using readily available data:

The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century. Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.

Since 1920, Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.12 degrees and the world population has quadrupled from less than two billion to almost eight billion. Even so, the number of people killed each year by natural disasters has declined by about 90 percent. That statistic, more than any other, puts the lie to claims of an existential crisis due to climate.

There is also the global air pollution death rate, which has declined by about 45 percent over the last three decades. Again, no “existential threat” here.

Simon is correct. Research published at Climate Realism has refuted assertions about worsening wildfires and hurricanes on multiple occasions.

Simon also discusses research showing the positive side of climate change: “global warming has increased both agricultural yields and growth of forests, grasslands, and tree leaves.”

Climate Change Weekly and Climate Realism have refuted claims climate change is a threat to crop production more than 100 times. We have cited research and hard data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showing regional and global crop production and crop yields have regularly, almost yearly, set new records during the recent period of modern warming.

Basic agronomy explains why crop production is booming under current climate conditions. As detailed by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in Climate Change Reconsidered: Biological Impacts and Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the carbon dioxide humans have been pumping into the air since the middle of the twentieth century has enriched plant growth and improved plants’ water-use efficiency, thereby contributing to record crop yields.

Laboratory experiments and real-world field research show as carbon dioxide increases, plant fitness, and flower pollination improve, plants develop more-extensive root systems to extract greater amounts of nutrients from even poor-quality soil, plants use water more efficiently by reducing the number and openness of stomata through which they lose moisture during transpiration, and plants produce greater amounts of natural substances that repel insects and fight off competing weeds.

All of this has helped bring about the largest decline in hunger, malnutrition, and starvation in human history.

Simon’s conclusion is spot-on and speaks for itself:

Biden administration climate change policies are sensationalizing the threats while ignoring all the benefits. They rely on speculative “models” that supposedly project global temperatures and predict disasters. But these models are highly unreliable, … unable even to reproduce the temperature changes of the 20th century.

The Biden administration’s campaign against U.S. oil production and pipelines is not just harmful—it is an environmental fraud.

To quote longtime radio host Paul Harvey, that’s “the rest of the story”: the very good news the mainstream media and various scientific and political shills aren’t telling you about climate change.

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans thumbnail

Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans

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By Philip Lenczycki

The FBI charged five individuals with crimes related to “transnational repression schemes” for allegedly serving Communist China’s secret police on Wednesday.

The FBI defines “transnational repression” as “when foreign governments stalk, intimidate, or assault people in the United States.”

Among the five charged is Matthew Ziburis, a former correctional officer for the state of Florida, according to an FBI press release.

Former Tiananmen Square pro-democracy leader and current Democratic party New York congressional candidate, Yan Xiong, has been identified as one of the secret police’s targets, according to a New York Times report.

The FBI charged alleged agents of China’s secret police on Wednesday with crimes related to the repression of Americans by foreign governments.

In three separate cases, the FBI revealed it had charged five individuals in the Eastern District of New York with perpetrating “transnational repression schemes” on targets within the U.S., according to a Wednesday press release.

‘Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’

Qiming Lin, 59, a citizen and resident of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is alleged to be an agent of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) by the FBI, which characterized the foreign agency as “a civilian intelligence and secret police agency responsible for counterintelligence and political security” in the press release.

Charged with “conspiracy to commit interstate harassment” and related crimes, Lin is alleged to have hired a New York private investigator to harass and even physically attack a “student leader of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square” now “currently running for U.S. Congress.”

The FBI stated that Lin also told the private investigator “we will have a lot more-more of this [work] in the future … Including right now [a] New York State legislator.”

The New York Times identified Lin’s alleged victim as Yan Xiong, a Democratic party congressional candidate in New York.

After allegedly asking the private investigator to find the target’s address and phone number, Lin then instructed the private investigator to “manufacture” a disqualifying scandal, the press release said.

“Go find a girl,” the FBI claims Lin told the private investigator. “Or see how he goes for prostitution, take some photos, something of that nature.”

Lin later suggested for the private investigator to “consider physically attacking” Yan in order to “prevent his candidacy,” according to the press release.

“In the end, violence would be fine too,” Lin allegedly said. “Beat him until he cannot run for election .. You-you think about it. Car accident, [he] will be completely wrecked [chuckles], right?”

Yan told the Daily Caller News Foundation he was unaware he was being targeted by Chinese secret police.

“I’m a U.S. Army chaplain, retired,” Yan said. “I served the country for 27 years. I’ve left China for 30 years. I have nothing to do with them.”

Although Yan said he was unaware of Lin’s alleged plot, he told the DCNF he understood why the Chinese government might target him.

“Let me put it this way: because I was a Tiananmen Square student leader,” said Yan. “If I was elected as a congressman, maybe all over the world they’d say that guy is a former Tiananmen Square student leader and maybe that would have more influence on the Chinese.”

“I carried a lot of bodies during the June 4th massacre,” Yan said while reflecting on his role during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy movements. “I really witnessed that tragedy.”

Undaunted by the FBI’s report, Yan says he will continue his candidacy.

“Number one, I have no fear in my heart. I have love in my heart. As a pastor in the clergy, you could say god is with me, that’s the spiritual thing and that’s for sure for me,” Yan told the DCNF. “Number two, I will be cautious, drive safely, do the right thing, be in the right place, talk the right thing, and love the people, all of the people. That’s what I want to do.”

The other individuals charged by the FBI are Shujun Wang, Fan “Frank” Liu, Matthew Ziburis and Qiang “Jason” Sun, according to the release.

Wang is charged with “acting as an agent of the PRC government, criminal use of means of identification, and making materially false statements, in connection with his participation in a transnational repression scheme orchestrated by the MSS,” the release said.

The FBI claims Wang started a pro-democracy organization in Queens in order to infiltrate New York’s Chinese community, later leveraging his dissident status to report sensitive information on “prominent activists, dissidents, and human rights leaders” back to Beijing.

Wang allegedly kept tabs on a “prominent human rights activist,” and his victims included “individuals and groups located in New York City and elsewhere that the PRC considers subversive, such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists,” the press release stated.

*****

This article was published by Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

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Middle Kingdom Rising

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By Srdja Trifkovic

In 1935 the Nazi regime was two years old, fully consolidated at home, and increasingly assertive abroad. It enacted the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws and announced that Germany would start a massive rearmament program, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Meanwhile, Britain and France were focused on condemning Mussolini’s intervention in Ethiopia and on punishing Italy in the League of Nations for its colonial adventure. The obsession of Britain and France with a peripheral issue, which did not affect their security calculus, allowed Hitler to act with impunity during the next three years. He reoccupied the Rhineland in March 1936, effected the Anschluss in March 1938, and scored a bloodless diplomatic acquisition of the Sudetenland in Munich, in September 1938. The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Historical analogies are useful, providing they are not carried too far. Putin is not Mussolini, Ukraine is not Ethiopia, Xi Jinping is not Hitler, and China in 2022 is not the Reich. There is a salutary warning, however. The crisis in relations with Russia—conjured by the Beltway alliance of neoliberal and neoconservative globalists—pleases Russophobic obsessions, but the only real winner in this minus-sumgame is China. Her remarkable economic and political COVID-era performance has immense implications. The magnitude of her recent rise vis-à-vis the United States is dangerously underestimated by geopolitical analysts. To wit, during the thick of the Ukraine crisis, the March-April 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs published an insanely optimistic manifesto for containing China in the years to come.

The journal’s lead column, “Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order,” by Michael Beckley, a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, asserts that, “Through a surge of repression and aggression China has frightened countries near and far.” Beijing is acting belligerently in East Asia, trying to carve out exclusive economic zones in the global economy, and promoting authoritarian governance abroad. “For the first time since the Cold War, a critical mass of countries face serious threats to their security, welfare, and ways of life—all emanating from a single source,” he writes.

Beckley’s assertions and his reference to “a single source” obliquely deviate from the party line of the journal’s publisher, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which insists that “Putin’s Russia” is a serious threat. Beckley’s conclusion, however, expresses solid CFR orthodoxy: the only source of hope in our time can be provided by “a renewed commitment to democratic values.… an international order based on democratic principles and enshrined in international agreements and laws.”

The core of such an order is being forged in the crucible of competition with China and could be built out into the most enlightened order the world has ever seen—a genuine free world. But to get there, the United States and its allies will have to embrace competition with China and march forward together through another long twilight struggle.

Marching forward together to create the most enlightened order the world has ever seen, a genuine free world, does not sound like a viable strategy for containing China—to put it charitably. Such utopian kitsch may have been taken seriously by a misguided few when the Berlin Wall fell more than three decades ago. Today, however, the CFR “vision” is beyond absurd.

The reality is that over the past two years, largely thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, China has greatly strengthened its overall position in the world. Its stringent measures in response to the virus appealed to its collectivist-minded populace. From now on—regardless of when the pandemic ends—if a major crisis or war were to break out, the comprehensive militarization of the Chinese can be completed more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

On the foreign front, China has deployed “vaccine diplomacy” to strengthen relations with the developing world. It has delivered over two billion doses of vaccines and antiviral medicines to a hundred countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Most of those countries are now reluctant to join an American led “march forward” to contain and confront China.

The perception of a faltering U.S. will strengthen the tacit consensus of the Han nation that their loyalty to the community, from the family upwards, trumps individualism. The notion that the future belongs to China is pleasing even to the ruling elite in Taiwan, which is loath to submit to Bejing’s political control but, for the most part, does not perceive its destiny as separate from that of China as a whole.

An early sign of Beijing’s self-confidence was on display a year ago at the failed Anchorage summit, where an attempt by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to lecture his Chinese guests on China’s human rights record prompted an unprecedentedly stern response. The same spirit was on full display on Feb. 20, as Beijing wrapped up the Winter Olympics with an impressive closing ceremony.

On the economic front, China is doing better than predicted by most specialists. Its factories returned to production faster than those of its main rivals or of the two developing aspirants, India and Vietnam. It is the only major global player whose economy is stronger now than it was two years ago, having grown by 2.3 percent in 2020—the first year of the pandemic—when the rest of the world was losing economic ground. Its 8.1 percent growth rate in 2021 was well ahead of America’s better-than-expected 5.7 percent.

As we enter the third year of COVID-induced uncertainty, it is clear that foreign investors are not fleeing China: its status as the world’s workshop seems safe. On Jan. 14, Beijing announced that its December 2021 exports increased by almost 21 percent over the prior November, and the annual value of its foreign trade surpassed $6 trillion for the first time. Current attempts by some Western conglomerates to reduce their dependence on Chinese supply chains, notably in the pharmaceutical sector, are unsurprising, but there is no sign of a stampede by major multinationals to get out.

Of course, China has every reason to be pleased by the events in Ukraine. It is supportive of Russia in the cost-free realm of public diplomacy, but Beijing is not rushing to give Moscow any meaningful help. That much was obvious when Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The encounter resulted in a joint statement asserting that the friendship between the two nations “has no limits.” This rhetoric implies that their relationship can also expand further in the military and technological fields, where the two nations have been collaborating closely for years. It does not hint at the possibility of a formal security alliance, however, which makes the endeavor disappointing from Russia’s vantage point. The Bear needs the Dragon here and now, but the latter beast remains cold-blooded.

The reference to a “new era” in international relations is the standard Chinese slogan to mark the advance of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to superpower status. Meanwhile, Putin was goaded into a no-win situation in Ukraine. Subjected to intense Western pressure, Moscow has no choice but to seek support in Beijing. Their would-be alliance carries the threat of Russia’s increasingly subordinate position, however, with an economy and a population one-tenth that of China. Longterm consequences would be detrimental to the entire European-derived civilization, from Vancouver to Vienna to Vladivostok.

China’s ambivalent position on Russia’s recognition of the two separatist republics and the entry of its regular forces into the Donbass on Feb. 21 is illustrative of Beijing’s calculus. China sees Ukraine as a welcome distraction that draws the U.S. away from the Indo-Pacific. In global-strategic terms, Russia is not America’s enemy, and it is not a threat to vital American interests. In a realist-run Washington, Russia would be seen as a natural partner—perhaps a possible ally—in a multipolar balancing act aimed at preventing China’s hegemony over the Eurasian heartland. The Biden administration is manifestly unable to make such a bold reassessment, however.

Its lack of long-term vision was evident in an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” released by the White House on Feb. 11, which fails to articulate specific U.S. objectives, much less the methods of their attainment. It declares that China “is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power.” In order to counter China’s “harmful behavior,” however, the document offers nothing new. The U.S. objective, it says, is “not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.” It’s conclusion is just as vague:

We will not have the luxury of choosing between power politics and combatting transnational threats; we will rise to our leadership charge on diplomacy, security, economics, climate, pandemic response, and technology … the United States can lead with others toward an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient for generations to come.

Such platitudes call into question the existence of a balanced U.S. strategy to deal with China as a rising power. China is not necessarily an enemy, unless America continues to treat every square inch of the globe as its rightful turf. It is in the American interest for China to be accepted as a great power among great powers in a multipolar world. At the same time, it is legitimate for the U.S. to try to contain China’s eventual bid for Eurasian hegemony, which it may entertain now or in the future. In either time frame, America needs Russia as a partner, not an enemy. Grasping this simple fact and acting accordingly is the greatest security challenge of our time.

*****

This article was published by Chronicles and is reproduced with permission.

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If You Don’t Know What a Woman Is, You Are Disqualified

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By Neland Nobel

Under questioning from Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson said she could not define what a woman is because she (Ketanji Jackson) is not a biologist. This was among the most revealing of some of her muddled answers.

This was obvious pandering to the Transgender Lobby and is disqualifying on a number of levels.

She will have cases pertaining to this social controversy and she already is prejudiced herself. We cannot afford to have such a confused brain sitting on the Supreme Court.

Likewise disqualifying is the cowardice displayed, in that she could have answered the question as a reasonable person would, but chose to be evasive because she either thinks the question is very complicated or she is more a politician with her finger in the wind than a judge. Both positions are disqualifying.

She also pandered to the credentialed crowd and the idiotic notion that one has to have a degree to think. We have to possess a degree in biology now to know the difference between a man and a woman? Good grief, humans had that figured out long before universities were formed and degrees granted. They had to have known the difference or all of us wouldn’t be here!

So now a stallion has to have a degree in biology to recognize a mare? A degree as a veterinarian is necessary to recognize a dog? A degree in geology is necessary to identify a rock? A degree in law is necessary to know this candidate is not worthy of a seat on the Supreme Court?

What condescending drivel!

Since the case of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who “identified” as being black and became the head of the Seattle area NAACP a few years back, some felt a person’s race can be changed by mere declaration or affirmation. Interestingly, the NAACP was not among those that felt that way as they fired her promptly.

Senator Elizabeth Warren at least did not “identify” as a Native American, she simply lied about her family background in order to advance her academic and political career. She may have actually believed her family stories about the origins of high cheekbones.

Those positions are less breathtaking than the idea that sex can be “changed” by a simple declaration. Progressives seem to believe this can be done, while Conservatives generally believe that one’s sex is biological and genetic makeup, is not a function of self-declaration.

The genetic difference between one white female and one black female is very slight.  But the difference between a man and a woman is much greater.  But in neither case can one’s internal identification and later public declaration change the facts of sexual organs, the hormones they produce, and DNA.

But thanks to “Gender Studies” at universities, we find ourselves as a society questioning our own sanity.

If I declare that I now identify as Peter Pan, does that mean I can fly? Does it mean I can remain a child for the rest of my life? This is fairy tale stuff, not reality. Need proof?  Let our newly identified Peter Pan jump off a building and see if gravity cares one wit about personal identification.

Thus, if a person’s self-declaration of what they are determines their sex, how would being a biologist help? If anything, a biologist would be confused because the physical evidence and DNA could conflict with the declaration of the person being examined. As a biologist, you are not trained to weigh psychotic statements any better than the rest of us. So, why does Judge Brown even make that argument?

Joe Biden says he wants to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court. This should not be the criteria for such an important appointment, but Biden has made his political calculations and made his choice based on the idea that he can find a black female for the job. How can that be done if the President is unable to define what both a black and a woman are? Moreover, if he is able to determine what a black woman is, but his candidate for the Supreme Court cannot, what does that tell you about the process? Perhaps the President is a biologist?

Either the President is terribly wrong or the judicial nominee is mistaken. You can’t have it both ways.

It is time, well past time, for both women and men to stand up and say to the transgendered advocates that your declarations or affirmations do not change reality. It is not prejudiced in any form to resist being sucked into another person’s mental illness. Delusional behavior is bad enough on the individual level, without elevating it to the societal level. None of us are under any moral or ethical requirement to join in this dangerous fiction. Rather, we have a moral and ethical obligation to resist it.

Our position should be as follows: We are sorry for your sexual confusion and we hope you get help. But your psychosis is damaging to the rest of us, our families, our children, and we will not accept as fact your emotional outbursts, no matter how sincerely felt.  You may do what you wish with your own life, but we will not change our laws, customs, and manners, just to accommodate your psychosis.

The transgendered have the rights to be treated as a human beings and be free of violence and coercion. But we also have the right not to share their mental illness. We also have the right to be free of violence and coercion from the transgendered. Seen any videos lately of campus behavior among this crowd?

If one cannot determine what a woman is even for the purposes of sport, how is this inability going to influence the functioning of the law?

We have Title 9 and other laws creating opportunities for women in sport and education. But if women cannot be identified, then how do these benefits get allocated?

What the heck does “women’s rights” even mean, if there is no ready way to know what a woman is?

Equal pay for men and women?  How could you possibly know how to apply such a concept if you cannot determine who is male and who is female?

Sexual harassment of women? How can one harass something that does not exist, except in the mind of whomever? Only biologists can know it would seem and thus be guilty or not.

Generally, women get benefits from marriage and justified or not, get additional economic support in divorce, and usually child custody. Well, how can that be accomplished if you don’t know the difference between the man and the woman?

If a Federal judge cannot define what is a man or a woman, how are the rest of us supposed to enforce those employment and family laws that apply particularly to either men or women?

So, do today’s feminists have any idea how damaging this embracing of transgenderism is to their cause?

On an even more prosaic level, if a Federal judge cannot define what is a man or a woman, how are we supposed to describe a criminal to the police if we cannot either determine their sex or race? Kind of hard to provide a description, would it not? We could not know unless we interviewed the perp and got to know how they identified.

If it is impossible to know the difference between a man and a woman, who will be eligible for the draft, should that be needed again?

Besides her inability to answer a simple question, it would appear the candidate selected by President Biden is very soft on crime, particularly sexual crimes involving children, and very much has bought into the sexual insanity in vogue at universities. On other matters, she seems to side with criminals embracing the fashionable left-wing notions that society is at fault and thus, no one is really a criminal.

Our Senators should vote NO on her nomination.

Republicans will no doubt waver, afraid as always, they might in any way confirm the racist calumny Democrats have hung on them.

This really has nothing to do with the race of the candidate. This is a clear-cut case of poor judicial judgment, activism, and temperament.

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American Elites Have Deep Ties To A New Chinese Spy Chief

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By Philip Lenczycki

The new deputy head of a propaganda and espionage agency in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has documented ties with business tycoons, university heads, and other elite members of American society.

Chen Xu, former party secretary of one of the PRC’s most prestigious universities, Tsinghua, was promoted to deputy head of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), according to an updated leadership roster on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) portal, which was first reported in Chinese media on Feb. 28.

The United Front Work Department

The Department of State described the operations of the UFWD as including “the use or threat of physical violence, theft and release of private information, espionage, sabotage, or malicious interference in domestic political affairs, academic freedom, personal privacy, or business activity” in a 2020 press statement.

The general secretary of the CCP, Xi Jinping, labeled the UFWD a “magic weapon” for “realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in a 2014 speech celebrating the 65th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a state organ which oversees the UFWD.

Recently, Beijing’s espionage operations have garnered increased scrutiny in the U.S. following the FBI’s charging of five individuals with “transnational repression schemes” on Mar. 16, crimes which allegedly included the targeting of a Congressional candidate.

The Justice Department’s announcement comes just two months after MI5 named a London solicitor, Christine Ching Kui Lee, as an alleged UFWD operative acting to financially influence British politicians in a January “security service interference alert” issued to the House of Commons.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who is the lead of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and chair of the group’s China Task Force, spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation about the dangers of associating with CCP, UFWD, and CPPCC members.

“The Justice Department’s indictments this week are yet another wakeup call that the CCP is actively reaching into American society and trying to limit our freedoms,” McCaul said, making reference to the FBI’s Wednesday press conference as evidence of the looming espionage threat. “Years of law enforcement activity, including this week, clearly show that this transnational repression can raise to the level of criminal activity, and Americans should be aware when they are dealing with entities who carry out the CCP’s objectives abroad.” (RELATED: DOJ Kills The China Initiative, Kowtowing To A Chinese-American Group With Documented CCP Ties)

CEO of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman, has met with Chen Xu on a number of occasions. [YouTube/Screenshot/SchwarzmanScholars]

Blackstone’s Chinese Communist Party-Backed IPO

The UFWD’s new deputy, Chen, has spent years cultivating relationships with U.S. politicians, leaders in the Chinese-American community, student associations, and other high-profile individuals, such as the billionaire CEO of The Blackstone Group, Stephen Schwarzman.

Schwarzman’s connections to individuals tied to the CCP began years before meeting Chen at Tsinghua University.

Schwarzman began traveling to China in 1990, but by 2007, when his global investment business, Blackstone, opened its second Asia-Pacific office in Hong Kong, Schwarzman had already begun keeping regular company with figures directly and indirectly associated with the CCP, such as Antony Leung.

Before heading up Blackstone’s Hong Kong office, Leung was employed as the financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In that capacity, Leung reported to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, a man linked to PRC influence operations across America and someone the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reports is “clearly associated with the United Front.”

Mao Zedong’s right-hand man, Zhou Enlai, was the first person appointed to the position of vice-chairman of the CPPCC, a title Tung now holds.

Schwarzman credits Tung’s subordinate, Leung, with the lion’s share of Blackstone’s success in the PRC.

Schwarzman said it was Leung who was by his side when he first met with Xi Jinping during the future president’s short stint as party secretary of Shanghai in 2007, and it was Leung who helped arrange for $3 billion in funding for Blackstone’s June 2007 IPO from China Investment Corp (CIC), a sovereign wealth fund created by the CCP.

“When we were going public in 2007, we were planning a $4 billion IPO, and the government of China came in and asked can we buy $3 billion of the $4 billion IPO?” Schwarzman told The Economic Times in 2020. “This was sort of a shock because I have not been to China since 1990 and nobody buys three-quarters of an IPO.”

“So, what we did is, we just increased it to $7 billion and we became the world’s second-largest IPO of the decade after Google,” Schwarzman told The Economic Times. “As a result of this, it was for the first time China had bought an equity interest in a public company outside of China since modern China was established in 1949.”

After going public, Blackstone’s first earnings report arrived in August 2007, showing the firm’s profits had tripled over a year.

Today, Blackstone’s revenue sits north of $22 billion a year, up from just over $3 billion in 2007, according to their annual report, with the company now proclaiming itself the “largest owner of commercial real estate globally.” (RELATED: ‘Beat Him Until He Cannot Run For Election’: Chinese Secret Police Target Congressional Candidate And Other Americans)

A figure linked to many malign PRC influence operations across the United States, Tung Chee-hwa is the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which controls the United Front Work Department (UFWD) to which Chen Xu has been promoted. [YouTube/Screenshot/CGTN]

The Tsinghua Clique

Schwarzman also credits Leung with helping him set up the 2013 deal for Schwarzman Scholars, a one-year English-language international program at Tsinghua University which required $300 million in fundraising. 

As a one-party government, the political power to control the PRC has historically been fought over by competing intra-party “cliques,” of which there are known to be at least three: the Shanghai Clique, the Communist Youth League Clique and the Tsinghua Clique, which Xi is said to lead.

Chen Xu was promoted to party secretary of Tsinghua University in December 2013 and thereafter became an important and frequent point of contact for Schwarzman time and time and time again.

As Tsinghua’s party secretary, Chen held an important position for both the university and the CCP, with Tsinghua serving as both a fertile training ground for domestic and international talent, as well as a capable vehicle for projecting the PRC’s soft power.

According to her station, Chen was expected to promote the interests of both her university, as well as the CCP, which more often than not were indistinguishable.

When Xi arranged for President Vladimir Putin to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Tsinghua University in 2019, it was Chen who “presided over the ceremony and read out the address of honor,” welcoming the Russian dictator into the “Tsinghua family,” according to a Chinese state-run media Global Times report. (RELATED: Below Their Lines: American Corporations Cancel Russia But Remain Silent On Uyghur Genocide)

The vice premier of the PRC and head of the United Front Work Department, Liu Yandong, gave a speech at the annual opening ceremony for Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua University in 2016. [YouTube/Screenshot/SchwarzmanScholars]

Schwarzman Scholars

When the opening convocation for Schwarzman Scholars was held, the Great Hall of the People — Beijing’s prime CCP venue for “state affairs and diplomatic activities” — was selected to host the event in April 2013.

From its inception, Schwarzman Scholars attracted high-level CPPCC and UFWD attention.

David Daokui Li, a member of the CPPCC of which Tung was the vice chairman, was appointed in 2013 as the dean of Schwarzman Scholars. Among other things, Li would chair a seminar for the program’s admissions attended by CCP cadre from the UFWD, Communist Youth League and central committee, while Tung himself sat on the advisory board for the program.

Schwarzman sat beside the CCP’s highest-ranking female, Liu Yandong — the vice premier and former head of both the UFWD and Confucius Institute project — during the program’s opening convocation in April, then again in November 2013 when Liu visited Washington D.C., and again in 2016 when the program began its first semester.

“The Schwarzman Scholars program is extremely fortunate to have the support from China’s top leadership, exemplified by the gracious congratulatory letter from President Xi Jinping and by the unwavering support of Vice Premier Liu Yandong,” said Tsinghua University President Chen Jining in April 2014.

Liu reappeared in Schwarzman’s life again and again, with Schwarzman labeling Liu a “special friend” in the acknowledgment section of his 2019 book “What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence.”

Schwarzman also thanked many other “friends and colleagues in the Chinese government” in his book, such as “President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, Vice President Wang Qishan” and high-ranking influence operatives, such as Sun Chunlan, another vice premier and former head of the UFWD, with whom Schwarzman Scholars engaged at least once or twice.

Chen was also thanked in the acknowledgment section of Schwarzman’s book.

“Party Secretary Madame Chen Xu at Tsinghua has also been an essential part of the senior leadership who created the opportunity for Schwarzman Scholars to occupy a unique position at the university,” reads Schwarzman’s acknowledgment. “She and President Qiu have helped create broad support for the program within the Chinese government. I always enjoy meeting with her and President Qiu on my frequent visits to Beijing.”

While Chen and Tung worked off and on together over the years, Schwarzman and Tung also continued to stay in touch.

As honorary chairman of the China General Chamber of Commerce (CGCC) — characterized as a type of UFWD front organization in a 2018 Jamestown Foundation report — Tung often appeared at the body’s annual galas in New York, including with Schwarzman in 2017 and the following year.

On stage during the 2018 gala, Tung praised Schwarzman for “his remarkable and impactful contributions to a constructive and cooperative China-U.S. relationship,” before personally presenting the billionaire with the “Goodwill Ambassador for China-U.S. Exchange” award.

While Schwarzman Scholars did not immediately respond to request for comment, a spokesperson for Blackstone told the DCNF: “The insinuations are false and misleading. Schwarzman Scholars is an internationally recognized program designed to foster dialogue between nations.” (RELATED: Congress Urges Amazon CEO To Aid Tortured Chinese Whistleblower)

Stephen Schwarzman stands at the podium while Tung Chee-hwa waves to the audience around him during the 2018 China General Chamber of Commerce New Year gala. [YouTube/Screenshot/ChinaGeneralChamberOfCommerceUSA]

‘The UFWD And CPPCC Are Not Benign Entities’

Not long after helping establish Schwarzman Scholars, Schwarzman’s partner, Leung, left Blackstone in November 2013.

Today, the senior managing director of greater China for Blackstone is a man named Liping Zhang, another member of the CPPCC.

The addition of Schwarzman Scholars to Tsinghua was no less than a watershed moment for the university, coinciding with a sharp spike in the institution’s international prestige, an event which also dovetailed with Xi Jinping’s rise, offering Chen unprecedented access to a surplus of global elite and ample opportunity to advance her personal, professional, and political interests.

“The UFWD and CPPCC are not benign entities,” Rep. McCaul told the DCNF. “They are elements of the CCP charged with carrying out political subversion. Americans should be aware of their own exposure to the CCP, which is distinct from ordinary foreign ties.”

“Whether it’s spreading CCP propaganda, exporting sensitive technology to China, or lobbying for United Front groups, there are many activities that benefit the CCP that are legal in the United States — at least for now,” said McCaul. “As we saw with the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned the importation of Uyghur slave labor goods, things can change fast as the CCP threat comes into focus. Even in areas where federal intervention isn’t appropriate, cooperation with the CCP is carrying increasing reputational, financial, and moral costs as Americans better understand our adversary.”

Blackstone and Schwarzman Scholars are just two of countless entities that became acquainted with Chen before she was elevated to deputy head of the UFWD, and this article is just the first in a series investigating the ties Chen cultivated with America’s elite. (RELATED: Congress Urges Amazon CEO To Aid Tortured Chinese Whistleblower)

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

Did You Ever in Your Wildest Dreams Think They Could Mess Up Things This Much This Fast? thumbnail

Did You Ever in Your Wildest Dreams Think They Could Mess Up Things This Much This Fast?

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By Bruce Bialosky

Whenever I have lunch or dinner with someone – especially with recent events — I ask a very straightforward question. “In your wildest dreams did you ever believe they would muck things up this bad, this fast?” I use more vivid language, but I am against using such language in a public forum so I will leave it to your imagination. Sit back and think about the question yourself and derive your own answer.

In a little over a year, the Biden Administration has opened our border to an estimated two million illegal aliens who have been spread throughout the country with very little hope of ever tracking them; shut down a significant amount of our home grown energy production by killing a major pipeline deal costing 3,900 full-time equivalent jobs and pausing oil production on all federal government land which is 25% of national production; taken sanctions off Nordstream 2 to continue the flow of Russian gas to Europe; had a radical withdrawal from Afghanistan that is roundly considered a disaster for the United States; engineered policies that lead to inflation levels not seen in over 40 years which caused a severe depression; and has the world involved in a war in Europe which is destroying a sovereign nation and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. In addition, there is an explosion of crime throughout the country that Biden has not caused, but his party has, and he has done little to combat it.

But Biden has solutions. Real solutions.

One of the countermeasures to pressure the Russians to stop their war on Ukraine is to stop the import of Russian oil. Over the last seven months in 2021, we imported 670,000 barrels of oil daily from Russia. Though 73% of that was in process products, we could have easily replaced this production with one policy decision. Had Biden not stopped the Keystone pipeline, we would have a flow of 850,000 barrels a day from friendly neighbor Canada. Biden decided to tell our Canadian neighbor’s “tough luck” and we now have our adversarial supplier – Putin.

Telling the world that America is going to turn on the spigot, produce oil, and gas that will supply us and our allies what we need for energy independence would be a logical and effective solution. We are down an estimated million-plus barrel a day. A simple announcement clearing the regulations for that to occur would crash the price of oil as pricing is based on future expectations.

Uncle Joe has a better idea. Why don’t we engage the Venezuelans and the Iranians to replace the oil and gas from Russia? Nothing like replacing supplies from one murderous despot with two murderous despots. Biden tried to engage the Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, but they will not even talk to Biden because he is negotiating with the Iranians – who are hated by the Arab countries of the Middle East.

Biden reopened negotiations with Iran even while it was on the verge of collapse because American imposed sanctions decimated its cash supplies leaving it on the edge of bankruptcy. Not only is Biden at the table with Iran, but part of the negotiations is – you guessed it — the Russians. Do you think the Russians believe we really want to crush their invasion over here while negotiating with them over there? The Saudis are looking at turning to the Chinese since this American administration antagonizes them at every turn.

You just cannot make this stuff up. If your head is spinning, it is completely expected at this point.

Makes you thankful for small things. Thank God North Korea has a completely dysfunctional economy or Biden would be asking them for some help.

Biden also has a solution for inflation.

President Biden, the very definition of a career politician, tries to find others to blame for his own failings. He angrily states “I am sick of this stuff. We have to talk about it. The American people think the reason for inflation is the government spending more money. That is simply not true. Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin. Democrats did not cause this problem. Vladimir Putin did.”

Uncle Joe is right. Adding more than $3 trillion into the economy with made-up money had nothing to do with inflation. Biden missed the class where supply and demand were explained. When there are more dollars chasing fewer products, that does not cause inflation – it is Putin. When people get free money and produce nothing that does not cause inflation – it is Putin. When the federal reserve injects additional money into the economy and holds interest at historically low rates, that does not cause inflation – it is Putin.

We have not even touched on the ridiculously lax border. That would take a whole other column.

Fourteen months into the Biden presidency and you come to your own conclusion. Did you ever in your wildest dreams think that he could muck this up so badly so quickly? We thought it might be bad. We can only pray for the next 34 months.

*****

This article was published in Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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