U.S. Police Face Hiring Crisis: ‘I’m Drowning in This Politically-Charged Atmosphere’

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Since the George Floyd riots of 2020, law enforcement in the U.S. has taken a hit, with resignations at an all-time high, and recruitment at a dangerous low.

In New York City, over 2,500 officers have turned in their badge this year. According to NYPD pension data, this year marks the fourth highest number of police officers who have resigned in the last 10 years. “The number of cops quitting before they reach the 20 years required to receive their full pensions also skyrocketed from 509 in 2020 to 1,040 so far this year — an alarming 104% increase,” The New York Post reported.

Additionally, NYPD plans to cancel the next five Police Academy classes. Cuts such as these are projected to bring the NYPD department down to “29,000 cops by the end of fiscal year 2025 — the lowest level since the mid-90s,” the Post added. A glance at the last couple of years, however, could very well explain this crisis.

Not only does law enforcement put their lives on the line in the fight against crime, but many police officers and sheriff deputies sacrifice time with their families and loved ones as well. What most people have heard from law enforcers in the past is that helping the community makes the risks and sacrifices worth it. But the increased resignations and decreased recruitments suggest that thousands of men and women don’t believe it’s worth it anymore. And it’s no wonder, because they are demoralized at every turn.

In a matter of years, police officers have gone from heroes to the targets of utter hatred in many circles. Especially after Floyd’s death, a movement to “defund the police” went from spark to blaze. According to The New York Times’s Mariame Kaba, police are “set up” or even designed for violence. Her view of law enforcement is that the world is better without it. While I really couldn’t disagree more with Ms. Kaba’s article, she has provided a clear example of the kind of criticism thrown at police quite often these days.

According to a report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, lack of recruitment can be attributed to a number of influences, but it’s mostly due to the public image of law enforcement. They found, “Scrutiny of the police, cellphone recordings of interactions between the police and public, media coverage, and popular entertainment portrayals of police have led many young people to view police differently than their parents may have. Overall, a majority of police officers feel their jobs have gotten more difficult since high-profile use-of-force incidents have dominated the national conversation.”

In June of 2021, Officer Lindsay Rose faced chastisement as riots broke out in Asheville, North Carolina. She said she was spit on and yelled at. Even after she took several months off to recover, once she came back to the field, she was still met with backlash. After she came back she decided to quit, ending seven years of service. “I’m drowning in this politically-charged atmosphere of hate and destruction,” she said. What Rose shared reflects the experience of many in law enforcement.

In addition to the political backlash, crime is on the rise. Violent crime in Washington, D.C. has skyrocketed, thanks in part to lax local laws. Complicating the issue, the District also has about 400 less officers than three years ago. And of course, even when the city’s police do succeed at catching criminals, little to no prosecutions follow the arrests, which puts dangerous people back on the street to commit even more offenses.

While D.C. becomes a hive of crime, local officials have decided that the priority is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars — not on public safety — but on anti-police messaging. Just this week, the District blew approximately $270,000 worth of tax dollars “touching up its ‘Black Lives Matter’ street painting,” Fox News reported. In response, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, “D.C. crime is out of control but local leaders continue to waste … tax money promoting the extremist Black Lives Matter movement in the heart of Washington, D.C. that is racist, anti-police, anti-American, and often violent.” And D.C. is just one example of the rampant crime spreading across the country.

Stores continue to get ransacked, and at least nine Targets throughout four states, four Walmarts in Chicago, five Walgreens in San Francisco, and other retailers have closed or will be closing as a result. Across the board, an MPD report revealed violent crime in total is up 40% from last year.

We are clearly in need of law enforcement, but the lack of support (or rather the abundance of opposition mixed with displaced priorities) has caused the protective ranks to dwindle.

Jacob Kersey, who is currently FRC Action’s operations coordinator, formerly served as a police officer. He shared with The Washington Stand, “Law enforcement officers head to work every day knowing the risks associated with the profession.” For Kersey, there are many reasons why someone may enter law enforcement, but often “one of the most rewarding, although challenging, aspects of the job is the opportunity to give of yourself and protect your community.”

He continued, “Rarely do officers get dispatched to a scene where those present are overflowing with gratitude that the officers are there because they often encounter citizens during the worst day of their lives — which is why support from the people you serve goes a long way in making all the sacrifice feel worth it.” He concluded that with “recent high-profile incidents leading to mass negative public image of police across the nation, veterans and recruits alike struggle with justifying the risks of donning a badge and gun.”

So the question remains: What do we do about it?

Ken Blackwell, former Cincinnati mayor and senior fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at Family Research Council, told TWS, “There is a real downside to that ‘romantic’ view of defunding the police or repurposing the police. But the pressure is on because … people are not safe in their homes, in their communities. Their kids are not safe in their schools.” For Blackwell, what we are seeing on the streets “underscores this whole embrace of lawlessness.”

It boils down to “if you turn a blind eye to bad behavior, you can’t be surprised that you get more of it,” Blackwell stated.

As for what can be done, Blackwell concluded that it’s going to take time and better leadership. Now that some cities see the consequences of their actions, changes may be in sight.

Considering the country’s police hiring woes and crime crisis authorities must deal with now, “They’ve dug themselves a hole that they’re not going to be able to climb out of quickly,” Blackwell concluded.

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DHS Secretary Mayorkas Reveals Amnesty Plot While Aiding Catastrophic Border Invasion

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The DHS Secretary Mayorkas is Intentionally Distorting the Interpretation of US Immigration Laws to Conduct Planned Border Invasion with a Recently Revealed Partisan Agenda to Push for Biden’s Amnesty Law!

Bidens ‘The U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021’ Amnesty Bill Includes:

  • Blanket Amnesty for All Illegals Currently in the US
  • Increased Dreamer-DACA provisions
  • Increased Chain Migration
  • Enhanced Systems to Better Facilitate Future Illegal Immigration
  • No Added Border Security or Counterterrorism Funding
  • No Consideration for America’s Displaced ‘Unskilled’ Workers
  • 80% of Current Illegal Population Living on 100% Government Subsidies

In the tumultuous landscape of U.S. immigration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently laid out his designs for an outrageous amnesty plan, setting the stage for the potential legalization of 12-30 million undocumented individuals currently residing in the United States. This revelation comes against the backdrop of a staggering 10-12 million illegal border crossings during the initial three years of President Joe Biden’s administration, with millions more poised to follow suit.

Click Here to Stop the Biden-Mayorkas Amnesty Plot!

Mayorkas, who has faced scrutiny for allegedly misrepresenting border security to Congress, now advocates for “comprehensive immigration reform” which is nothing short of a legal, Marxist open border policy. Despite pushback from Republican lawmakers who recently opted against impeaching Mayorkas, the DHS Secretary remains steadfast in his call for a revamp of a system deemed “fundamentally broken” for over three decades.

Comparatively, President Trump led 4 years of tightly controlled borders under the SAME “broken” immigration policy that Mayorkas and the Biden Administration argue is the cause for record illegal immigration. We would argue that Mayorkas and the Biden Administration has intentionally suspended immigration law, acting more as a welcome party for illegal immigration from over 120 nations, including many that are hostile to the United States.

Southwest Border Encounters

From 2013 to 2018, 68 out of 72 Months Reported Less Than 60K Illegal Southwest Border Encounters

The Biden-Mayorkas Administration has averaged 183K Monthly:  

  • 145K in 2021 (+282% over 2020)
  • 198K+ in 2022 (+37% over 2021)
  • 267K in 2023 (+35% over 2022)

The Trump-Wolf Administration averaged 51K Monthly:

  • 33K in 2018 (-7% over 2017)
  • 81K in 2019 (+146% over 2018) *Remain in Mexico Began
  • 38K in 2020 (-53% over 2019)

The Trump Administration understood that even monthly numbers as low as 25K in a month were too many. New York City is on the brink of bankruptcy with 10K arriving monthly since the Spring of 2022.

Biden has TRIPLED Illegal entries, with 12 million illegals crossing our southern border compared to 1,832,086 under Trump for the same period; This is the result of POLICY DECISIONS, not an organic migration pattern.

In Mayorkas’s passionate appeal, he emphasized the need for congressional action citing Biden’s Amnesty Bill and highlighting the 12 million undocumented individuals as integral contributors to the nation’s well-being—neighbors, friends, and front-line workers. President Biden, on his inaugural day, presented Congress with an immigration proposal, signaling a commitment to reshape the nation’s approach to immigration. Mayorkas failed to mention any concern for the 1.5 million American workers who were displaced by 900K+ illegal aliens earlier this year, likely at much lower wages, and the finite number of unskilled jobs at risk in this country.

Critics argue that the proposed legislation lacks any provisions for heightened border security, a concern magnified by executive actions undoing significant measures like the effective ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. The bill’s eight-year ‘path to citizenship,’ coupled with exemptions for ‘Dreamers’ and others, raises questions about its impact on American workers, particularly the vulnerable unskilled labor force reliant on government subsidies. Moreover, skeptics express apprehensions about potential compromises to national security, including counterterrorism efforts, during a time of unprecedented illegal entries and unknown millions of ‘gotaways’, due to the lack of real border security.

Wouldn’t you run to a nation that guarantees you housing, food, necessities, education, and a pathway to citizenship, securing your government subsidies for life if you lived in a 3rd world country?

©2023. ACT For America! All rights reserved.

NEW YORK CITY: Videos of pro-Hamas Riot at the Christmas Tree Lighting

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Islam and leftists are really capitalizing on the Gaza war now. Remember George Soros’ tactic of “reflexivity”. They know how organizations and peoples will react to a stimulus. So they do the stimulus with full preparedness to use the predictable response to work towards their own goals. A kind of mass-Judo tactic. Use the enemy’s inertia collectively against them.

The most obvious example would be how terrorists will use half their resources to launch an attack, and then use the other half to go after the first responders. This makes the attack for more effective both from a damage and fear inducing point of view.

The October 7th attack on Israel could be seen as a scaled up example of the same. the left and Islamic nations funded the most barbaric attack on Israel they could think of, knowing they would not achieve a strategic goal in the traditional sense, but they would achieve one in the reaction to the reaction.

They knew Israel would wage war on Gaza, which is why they took hostages. The hostages in their estimate means Israel won’t do any significant damage to Hamas because Israel values the life of its hostages. Meanwhile, Hamas can play victim to the return fire on Gaza and the left and Islamic nations can fund massive demonstrations all over the world, all appearing to be about justice in Palestine, which of course is the last thing Islamic nations or Leftist groups want. Using the word “justice” in the usual sense that is. Once you look at the word in a communist or Islamic sense, its another matter.

Remember, the overall goal is the global communist revolution. And they are using imputed and manufactured victim narratives of the Palestinians based on the Israeli response to their attacks to give them the breathing room they need to attack everything Western. Like the tree lighting ceremony in NYC.

Anyone who has ever watched a Col. Kemp video knows that Israel has done more to protect the civilians in target zones than any army in the history of the world. They would also know that Hamas, who the Palestinians voted for at something like 70%, puts civilians in harms way on purpose for the dual win of either preventing an Israeli strike on military assets, which often works, or a lot of dead women and children, which makes for great PR while Hamas leadership yuks it up in world-leading luxury.

1. Could this LARPER, this COSPLAY Commie not have found a larger cross?

2. A patriot faces off with the protestors as they grab his flag, while he asks them why they are in America if they hate it so much. Why not move to Iran or Iraq?

3. Multiple videos of the scene

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EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Brace Yourself For What’s Coming in 2024

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Watch this clip of Victor Davis Hanson warning about what will happen during the 2024 election.

Transcript by Real Clear Politics:

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: They look at Trump as a vampire and they put a stake in his heart but they’re afraid that that stake could come out any time. That he’s undying and they’re afraid of him. They are terrified of him.

They are terrified of him because they think he’s smarter this time and he has just cause to really get angry because of what they did to him. They can write all of The Atlantic Monthly and New Yorker clever, glib little essays about “Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” and their little Molly Ball in Time Magazine essays how clever and brilliant they were with their cabals and conspiracies to get rid of him.

But deep down inside they know that if the right ever did that to Barack Obama or Joe Biden, they could have really made something out of the fact that Barack Obama had a hot mic expose where he told the president of Russia, “You tell Vladimir that I will be flexible on missile defense.” That’s the security of the United States of America. “If he gives me space in my last election.” Putin did do that. That’s an impeachable offense if a phone call to Ukraine is. So they understand that, the right could have done that to them, and they understand now the right probably will do that to them for their own survival, and they are scared.

They’re saying that if a MAGA candidate wins, and they win the House and Senate, they’re cooked because they’re going to get special prosecutors and go after the Biden family like they’ve never gone after anybody. And they’re going to find stuff because we know Joe is crooked. And then they’re going to go after [Attorney General] Merrick Garland and [Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro ] Mayorkas. And they’re not going to stop. And that’s why they’re scared.

Everybody thinks the danger passed, they got what they wanted. No, no, no, you’re never going to see anything like what they’re going to do in 2024. All of this could have been reconciled, all they had to do was say Donald Trump should not be president if that’s what they believe, and we’re not going to do any lawfare or try to change the voting laws or pack the court, we’re not going to let in two states, we’re not going to try to abolish the Senate filibuster, we’re not going to try to change the voting ID laws, we’re just going to play under the rules we have, we don’t need $419 million by Mark Zuckerberg infused, we don’t need Sam Bankman-Fried, the crook, giving us $100 million, we’re not going to go under the radar with George Soros, we’re just going to show you, the American people how we think Donald Trump should not be president and we’ll have a fair election. They can’t do that, and they don’t trust themselves.

They think anybody in his right mind would close that border right now. Anybody in his right mind would recall all of those DAs that have destroyed these major cities. Anybody in his right mind would not beg the Saudis or the Venezuelans or the Russians or the Iranians to pump oil on the eve of a midterm, or pump the strategic petroleum reserve when you have so much natural gas in the U.S. Nobody in their right mind would do that. Nobody in their right mind would ever just pull out of Afghanistan without warning just so Joe Biden can say that on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 or the original October invasion of Afghanistan, “I am the president that got us out.” Nobody would do that. And nobody would print $6 trillion when there’s pent-up demand post-Covid lockdown and there’s a supply chain disruption, and all that money without an audit or examination of who got it and why and how it was spent, but to inflate the economy and ruin it. Nobody would do that! So they know that and they know that they cant take that record to the American people.

They have a deductive mind because their ideologues, so they start with a premise that we’re for social justice and equity of result, so we’re morally superior and smarter than anybody else. And therefore we’re entitled to do things other people don’t do. So if, under the cover of Covid, and frightening people about Covid, we can change all the voting laws so that 30%, instead of voting absentee and early voting shall become 70% in most states, with very little audit of the level necessary to authenticate most ballots.

They just do all this stuff because they start with the deductive principle that, “We are better, this is the vision and thereof the following must happen.” And if things don’t fit the narrative, they go after the person, they censor. That’s how they work. And if you keep that in mind, than everybody makes sense.

What I’m saying is they go on from one lie to the next.

So everybody now knows that Donald Trump was impeached for things that Joe Biden got away with. OK. Everybody knows the laptop was authentic. Everybody knows that now. Everybody knows it would have made a big difference in that debate when Donald Trump said it was and Joe Biden said, “Oh, no, no, 51 authorities.” Everybody knows that Christopher Steele was a fraud, and especially Glenn Simpson. And that Hillary Clinton took over an old Never-Trump file and inflated it with a million bucks, got the FBI on it to hire Christopher Steele as a consultant-informant, hid her so-called legal expenses when she was fined and cited for that violation, through Perkins-Coie, Fusion GPS, and the DNC, and that file was fraudulent. It was made up! I said that the first time I saw it, everything in it was false. And yet we wasted 22 months and $40 million to know what was obvious. No apology, not only no apology but they got Pulitzer Prizes, some of these reporters.

Every time they give these monstrous lies, there’s no apology, and why should they? They’re just narratives, the’re post-modern Foucauldian, Lacan, Derrida narratives. They were useful. That’s what they look at. They were useful at the time, because when we went through the Mueller investigation, we crippled Donald Trump and therefore we were able to stop him. We had Anonymous, he was burrowed deep into the Homeland Security. He was a minor official, but we said he was one of the major operatives in the Trump administration, we lied. And then we printed his op-ed because it did what it was supposed to do, it weakened the right-wing agenda, so they think. And we got Admiral McRaven to come in and write an op-ed and said Trump should leave, the sooner the better. And then we got all of the four-star generals, McCaffrey, McCrystal, all of them, to say that Trump was Hitler, that he was Mussolini, that he was a liar, he was dangerous. We got Mark Milley to call the Chinese. We did all of this.

Yes, we do not want this to be done to us. If right now, a retired four-star general said Joe Biden is senile or dangerous of the Afghan thing is a disaster and he should be removed sooner or later, or his weaponization of the DOJ or FBI is Mussolini-like, or his hounding of individual people at school boards, or the way he conducted the Mar-a-Lago raid is Nazi-like — and I’m just quoting from what they’ve said — you know what’s going to happen to those people? You’re going to get [Attorney General] Merrick Garland to call up the Pentagon and they’re all going to be slapped with a Code 88, uniform code of military justice and court-martialed for disparaging the commander-in-chief. Trust me, they would in two seconds. And that’s not going to happen. They’re not going to say anything because they’re not equally going to apply their standards of correct behavior. And second, they’re going to say things about Donald Trump because they know the media and the Pentagon are not going to do anything to them. Now? They would destroy them if they ever criticized the commander-in-chief. They would go after them like you would not believe. And they know that.

We’re talking about, to sum up and end this, they understand deterrence. They are saying to the American people, “We are SOBs, we’re capable of everything and anything. Which side do you want to be on? Because if you’re on our side, you can do what Hunter Biden is, there are no consequences. If you want to say the voting machines are crooked like Jill Stein, go ahead, she said that in 2016. If you want to be Barbara Boxer and 32 Democrats and say you’re not going to certify the Ohio count and hold up the whole election, don’t worry, they did it in 2004. If you’re Al Gore and the attorney general says the votes have been counted and certified in Florida. Oh no, we’re going to sue and hold up the entire election for a month. And so, you can do all of that — as long as you’re on our side. But if you don’t do that, and you want to go on the other side, you’re in big trouble.”

That’s the message they’re trying to send, that’s what we’re really getting down to. Join the winning side. It’s sort of like in the Soviet Union, if you’re part of the nomenclature and you join the party, you’re exempt; if you’re not, well, you’re on your own.

People say to me: “You’re an academic and you spent your whole life, how did you deal with the 94% of all academics who are left-wing? … Why are they so left-wing? Do they have tenure? They’re exempt from worrying about losing their job? … Are they idealistic because they deal with words?”

I say, “No, they understand that if you want to get tenure and be promoted and liked, you parrot the majority. If it paid better, they’d be fascists.”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Muslim American Society, Linked to Hamas, Flooded Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting

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“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.”

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” — CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad

And where better to kick off that agenda than in New York City?

The Muslim American Society, Samidoun, designated as a terrorist group, and other pro-terror hate groups have put out flyers threatening to “Flood the Tree Lightning for Gaza”.

The “flood” reference is to Al Aqsa Flood: the Hamas name for the atrocities of Oct 7.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting is a great New York tradition. But those are not things that Islam will tolerate.

The Muslim American Society, as Discover the Networks reveals, has as its mission to promote “Islam as a total way of life”

In May 2005, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross reported in The Weekly Standard that MAS is a U.S. front group for the Muslim Brotherhood — a claim supported by a September 19, 2004 Chicago Tribune story that stated: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.”  This Tribune article was later reproduced on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.

The Muslim Brotherhood is also the parent organization of Hamas.

MAS, like the Muslim Brotherhood, wishes to see the United States governed by sharia, or Islamic law. “The message that all countries should be ruled by Islamic law,” writes Gartenstein-Ross, “is echoed throughout MAS’s membership curriculum. For example, MAS requires all its adjunct members to read Fathi Yakun’s book To Be a Muslim. In that volume,

spells out his expansive agenda: ‘Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.’”

MAS’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood were confirmed on August 14, 2007, as The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported: “As the terror-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) continued today, FBI agent Lara Burns testified that a phonebook found at the home of Ismail Elbarrasse — un-indicted co-conspirator and former assistant to HAMAS leader Musa Abu Marzook — listed the names and numbers of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in the United States.

So we’ve got a Hamas-linked group threatening the Christmas tree lighting ceremony while New York politicians continue to tolerate this state of terror.

Finally, if there’s any doubt as what we’re dealing with, here’s a Muslim Society of America event from 2019. (That’s where the screenshot is from.)

Disturbing footage of Muslim kids saying they would sacrifice themselves and kill for the “army of Allah” surfaced from an Islamic center in Philadelphia.

The Muslim American Society (MAS) Islamic Center in Philadelphia posted the video to its Facebook page celebrating “Ummah Day” in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang and read poetry about killing for Allah and the mosque in Jerusalem.

“We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation,” a second girl says. “We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture.”

Hamas is here. Al Qaeda is here. ISIS is here. And yes, they don’t intend to allow Christmas trees or menorahs.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Guess Who’s Still Running the Show

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The policies of the Obama and Biden administrations have been frequently compared due to their shared history. As Vice President under Obama and now President through a stolen election, Joe Biden’s policies often seem to mirror his predecessor. This article aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of critical comparisons between the two administrations, specifically regarding border control, economic performance, Middle Eastern policy, relations with Russia, the Department of Justice, and American national pride.

Border Control

Under the Obama administration, there was no border control with an “open border” policy, which let in droves of illegal immigrants across the US-Mexico border—Ditto under the Biden administration.

The Biden administration even went several steps ahead with plans to boost refugee admissions, preserve deportation relief for unauthorized immigrants, and not enforce the “public charge” rule that denies green cards to immigrants who might use public benefits like Medicaid.

Economic Performance

Both the Obama and Biden administrations created a stagnant economy. Period.

Middle Eastern Policy with Terrorist Organizations

Under both administrations, Iran’s regime was covertly and overtly empowered. The Obama-era policy of engagement with Iran (the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) continues under the Biden administration. However, seemingly on paper, Biden recently vowed to “hold Iran accountable” for its alliance with Russia and its support of anti-Israeli militants such as Hamas, creating a mirage of a change in policy direction.

Both administrations failed in their handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with groups like Hamas getting well-funded under their watch.

Relations with Russia and Ukraine

Under both the Obama and Biden administrations, Russia has taken aggressive actions, including the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine. Both administrations failed to deter Russian aggression adequately. Biden, who was in charge of Ukraine policy under Obama, bears a heavy responsibility for Washington’s inaction and its consequences.

Department of Justice

The Obama and Biden administrations weaponized the Department of Justice (DOJ). They were also guilty of various DOJ actions, such as handling the Fast and Furious operation and issues related to whistleblowers. The DOJ remains a critical institution in upholding the rule of law. The Biden administration has faced its share of dubious decisions about investigations and prosecutions.

American Pride

Finally, both administrations have attacked American pride through various factors, including political, economic, and social dynamics.

Therefore, it is evident that Obama is “still running the show” without any doubt.

The scariest thing is that Biden’s story is being blocked on social media and is nowhere in the NY Times, the L.A. Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS, and is minimally covered in the WSJ.

Let us keep in mind that there are not many differences between the D.C. Beltway elitist class politicians of either party.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

Social Security Overpays Billions Under Leadership of Racial Equity Activist

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Under the leadership of a noted racial equity activist the Social Security Administration (SSA) has mistakenly overpaid beneficiaries tens of billions of dollars, including a 65% spike in overpayments in one year. In 2023 the agency with a stated mission of ensuring equity and accessibility by addressing systemic barriers to participation and a commitment to providing services to underserved communities made a whopping $23 billion in overpayments, according to its latest Agency Financial Report. The figure is a marked increase over the already stunning $11.1 billion in overpayments that SSA erroneously made in 2022.

SSA’s dreadful habit of overpaying billions in benefits goes back years as American taxpayers get stuck with the hefty price because most of the money is never recovered. In the last few years, the agency has doled out between $6 billion and $7 billion in new overpayments annually, the new report reveals. It shows that most of the 2022 overpayments, around $6.5 billion, occurred within the Old-Age Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs which provide monthly benefits to qualified retired and disabled workers and their dependents and to survivors of insured workers. Eligibility and benefit amounts are determined by the worker’s contributions to Social Security. In prior years the problem was mainly in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program which helps low-income elderly and disabled adults as well as children. In 2022 SSI distributed north of $4.6 billion in overpayments.

At a congressional hearing earlier this year SSA Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi told federal lawmakers that her agency is trying to recover the money by sending out millions of “overpayment notices” to those who erroneously got extra cash. Kijakazi said 1,028,389 people got the notices in 2022 and 986,912 in fiscal 2023, which ended in September. Kijakazi is a renowned racial equity proponent with a storied career of researching—and tackling—structural racism and the racial wealth gap in both government and high-profile nonprofits. She has served as co-chair of the National Advisory Council on Eliminating the Black-White Wealth Gap at the leftist Center for American Progress and on the Washington, D.C. Equitable Recovery Advisory Group. In mid-2021 President Joe Biden named Kijakazi acting SSA Commissioner after previously appointing her to a lower-level position of deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy.

In the new agency financial report Kijakazi reveals that in 2023 she began to rebuild the SSA workforce by adding nearly 4,000 employees, yet problems persist. “We made progress toward eliminating our hearings backlog,” the commissioner writes in the report’s opening message, adding that “we ended FY 2023 with 321,819 cases pending, the lowest level since 2000.” The commissioner proceeds to highlight all the great things her agency has accomplished, including working to eliminate a backlog, reducing wait times for claims and improving organizational efficiency. “As good stewards of our programs, we strive to reduce improper payments and combat waste, fraud and abuse through our quality reviews, cost-effective program integrity work, and payment accuracy efforts.” Kijakazi ends her opening message by writing that there are “no material weaknesses in our internal controls.”

Nevertheless, buried deep in the exhaustive 216-page report the agency discloses the billions it has overpaid in the last few years despite establishing a special Improper Payment Prevention Team in 2019 tasked with developing strategies to determine the underlying cause of payment errors and developing corrective action plans. SSA issues over $1 trillion in benefit payments annually and preventing overpayments can be as simple as providing employees with a “comprehensive tool” when calculating benefits manually. In fact, SSA found that it could have avoided approximately 73,000 overpayments totaling more than $368 million in 2022 if it had furnished a “comprehensive tool” for employees to do their job correctly. “Preventing improper payments is more advantageous than recovering them after they are made because SSA does not have to expend additional resources to recover the overpayments…” the report states.

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Morano to attend UN climate summit in Dubai – Warns of Great Reset summit where ‘Democracy goes to die’

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Morano: “COP 28 is shaping up to be a doubling down on the green agenda despite the massive failure on a grand global scale. We will report on the energy rationing, blackouts, and economic disruption from the failed UN-pushed policies globally. This UN climate summit is planning nothing short of a Great Food Reset for USA. See: COP28 UN climate summit to officially target meat eating! ‘Nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat’ to enforce UN plan for ‘food’s climate transition’Morano: “Make no mistake, this UN climate summit will continue the push for the collapse of our once plentiful energy, food supply, and transportation. COP 28 aims to force a ‘climate transition’ for our meat and food supply. All the usual suspects will be gathering once again: Bill Gates, King Charles, John Kerry, and the World Economic Forum. The UN’s COP 28 is nothing short of a climate/Great Reset summit in Dubai, where public health bureaucracy and climate merge & Democracy goes to die.”  

By Marc Morano – November 29, 2023

Climate Depot publisher Marc Morano will attend the UN’s COP 28 climate summit in Dubai, joining a rogue team of climate skeptics from CFACT to expose the climate agenda.

COP 28, to be held from November 30 to December 12 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Morano and CFACT’s President Craig Rucker of (The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow) will be fully credentialed and registered at COP 28 and will be doing daily reports on the dangers facing America and the West from the UN confab. Morano has faced great peril at previous UN climate summits, with armed UN climate cops targeting and removing him from the summit. See: 2016 – UN Armed Security Shuts Down Skeptics After SHREDDING UN Climate Treaty at Summit Next To Trump Cut-out

‘Saving the planet, one COP (UN climate summit) at a time’ – Next stop Dubai! – ‘Climate is now a full-scale industry, with fortunes & careers to be made’

Roger Pielke Jr.: “Global Climate Policy Hasn’t Made Much Difference on Energy Transitions” … “COP28 is expecting 70,000 participants, more than double those of COP27. Climate is now a full-scale industry, with fortunes and careers to be made, and perhaps lost.”

 

Background on COP 28: 

Washington Post: ‘He won a Nobel Prize. Then he started denying climate change.’ John Clauser shared the Nobel in physics last year. Now he’s a self-described ‘denier’ of the overwhelming scientific consensus on a warming planet.

The UN COP 28 website explains: “COP28 UAE will take place at Expo City Dubai from November 30-December 12, 2023. The Conference is expected to convene over 70,000 participants.”

Scientists declare meat should have cigarette-style climate warning labels: Proposed label: ‘Warning: Eating meat contributes to climate change’

 

In the lead-up to COP 28, the UN is pushing for a ‘global tax on fossil fuels.” See: African Climate Summit issues unanimous call for world leaders to support global tax on fossil fuels

COP 28 will seek to solidify the UN’s 2030 Agenda and their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN explains they are seeking “a strong outcome at COP28 Is Crucial for Climate Action and the SDGs.”

Widespread Shoplifting in America

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I urge the Governor of New York,  Kathy Hochul, to take action to address this issue of rampant shoplifting and organized theft. I have heard the governor vetoed a proposed bill to establish a task force to combat organized theft. This decision has left the Retail Council of New York State, which represents retailers in the state, thoroughly disappointed.

The New York Police Department reported that 327 individuals were responsible for over a third of the retail thefts in 2022. These individuals were arrested a total of 6,000 times! What does this mean? They are arrested after the crime and then let off so they can return to their merry ways again! Isn’t it pedestrian common sense to ensure that repeat criminals are held accountable?

The National Retail Federation also reported national shrinkage losses of $112 billion in 2022, indicating a widespread problem across the retail industry.

Retailers are now taking preventative measures to combat this issue. For example, Dollar Tree has said it plans to remove goods from its stores like men’s underwear, an item most prone to retail theft. Retailers are also ramping up prevention methods, with 34% of respondents increasing internal payroll to support risks related to retail crime and 46% increasing the use of third-party security personnel, among other methods.

Since there is no other go, I suggest that they also take these measures to prevent shoplifting and organized theft:

Surveillance and Security Measures: Increase their surveillance capabilities to monitor their stores and deter shoplifters. This includes installing security cameras throughout the store and parking lot to detect and prevent criminal activity. They should also consider using electronic locks and other technologies to secure their stores.

Inventory Management: Retailers need to optimize their inventory management to identify discrepancies that may indicate high-theft items. This involves completing frequent physical counts to verify the information.

Policy Collaboration: Retailers also need to extensively collaborate with policing and government bodies to tackle the rise in shoplifting. This should include sharing intelligence with policing, understanding the tactics used by organized retail crime gangs, and identifying more offenders.

Customer Engagement: This is a must. Increase the visibility of high-theft items and acknowledge all customers to deter potential theft. It is better to create a single entry point and exit for the self-check area and staff it with a customer service monitor to enhance transaction monitoring.

Technological Solutions: The cost will be ultimately justified, so the retailers need to start using digital signage to display real-time video of customers as they shop, acting as a deterrent. They should also consider using cloud-based digital signage to mount small profile Smart TV screens adjacent to high ticket items and electronics.

Staffing and Training: This is the core of all preventive measures. Staff self-checkout areas with customer service monitors to indicate to potential thieves that they are being watched. Train your employees to handle self-checkout areas and monitor transactions.

One might also consider using low-tech measures, such as public-facing video monitors, giving front-end staff walkie-talkies, and installing a mirror on the kiosk to curb shoplifting at self-checkout lanes. Rather than stand-alone, this would help to complement more expensive high-tech ones to reduce inventory losses. Resource-rich companies like Walmart already use AI-powered cameras to recognize items and human behavior. The system alerts nearby employees of accidentally missed or intentionally skipped merchandise scans.

Given the apathy of our lawmakers, retailers should go for a multi-faceted approach to tackle the rise in shoplifting and organized theft. No single measure can eliminate theft; only a combination of strategies can effectively deter potential thieves.

The overall results might be somewhat mixed, but taking measures to safeguard your business is better than doing nothing and letting your stores get looted in broad daylight.

However, I understand that the effectiveness of these measures can vary depending on the specific context and implementation. Therefore, it should be the number one priority for the voters to urge the governor to take immediate action!

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

Progressive Public High School Offers Race-Segregated Classes

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have grown so diverse that they now include policies reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. A Chicago-area school district is attempting to boost academic achievement among black and Latino students by offering blacks-only and Latino-only classes. The segregated classes are called “affinity” classes, and they aim to reduce the so-called “academic achievement gap” by making black and Latino students feel more comfortable in class.

As Evanston, Ill. School Board Vice President Monique Parsons described the problem this month, “Our black students are, for lack of a better word … at the bottom, consistently still. And they are being outperformed consistently.” Evanston could have offered extra tutoring, parent engagement programs, or similar interventions. Instead, they offered special black-only classes taught by black teachers, on the theory that black students would learn better without white peers around.

Evanston is not the only community to offer race-segregated classrooms. Woke strongholds such as Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Oakland have been offering race-specific high school electives focusing on subjects like African-American history since at least 2015. Evanston’s innovation was to expand the concept of race-segregated classrooms to math and English classes, such as Algebra 2 and AP Calculus.

Of course, federal non-discrimination laws forbid school districts from separating students on the basis of race, but the Evanston school district attempts to sidestep these laws by making the classes voluntary. Is that acceptable? To answer that question, consider what would have happened if Arkansas high schools in the 1950s had offered voluntary, whites-only classes to make white students feel more comfortable.

“In this example, the school system is failing to educate a portion of students. Rather than blame themselves for failing to prepare students to advance academically, this school system asks students to segregate themselves based on race,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, told The Washington Stand. “The students must do it themselves so the school doesn’t violate civil rights laws that protect them from racial segregation.”

Fortunately, Evanston’s racial segregation scheme has not encountered universal participation. Approximately 200 of the high school’s 3,600 students (a little more than 5%) are attending race-segregated classes. About 25% of the student population is black, and about 20% is Latino, which comes out to about one in nine black students and one in seven Latino students attending the segregated classes. While not universal, these numbers still represent a sizable percentage of the school’s minority populations.

Regardless, the problem lies in the principle, not the implementation.

“We would all agree that it would be wrong if white people were looking to create spaces where everyone was white, but somehow the calculation is supposed to be different if black or brown people want to create spaces where no one is white,” Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement Joseph Backholm told TWS.

In August 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) informed educators in a “Dear Colleague” letter, “OCR generally will open an investigation under Title VI [a civil rights non-discrimination law] where there are allegations that the use of a curriculum or program separates students or otherwise treats them differently based on their race” (emphasis added). That is precisely what Evanston’s program does, even if it is voluntary.

“This is a great example of how wokeness changes our moral evaluations,” Backholm explained. “In wokelandia, a person labeled an oppressor can do exactly the same thing as one of the oppressed, but it is wrong for one and right for the other. It’s very bad moral reasoning.”

Evanston has distinguished itself in recent years for its zeal to address past discrimination through present discrimination. The city became the first in America to approve reparations payments for black Americans in 2021. In 2019, the city council passed a resolution declaring Evanston “an anti-racist city” and “acknowledg[ing] that the trauma inflicted on people of color by persistent white supremacist ideology results in psychological harm affecting educational, economic, and social outcomes; and conjures painful memories of our City’s past …”

Such self-abasement might be understandable if the city had been the site of some notorious lynching or a KKK hotbed. Instead, Evanston was founded by Methodists — the backbone of the abolition movement — and incorporated in 1863 — the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. The city’s zeal to apologize for racism seems to outpace its actual record of racial discrimination.

Countering racism infuses Evanston’s current policy of racially-segregated classes, too. “Equity guides many of the district’s decisions,” reported The Wall Street Journal, “embodied in a stated board goal: ‘Recognizing that racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished achievement of students, ETHS will strive to eliminate the predictability of academic achievement based upon race.’”

Kilgannon said this “deeply troubling” goal “summarizes quite precisely the problem with ‘equity’ as a worldview-guiding policy.” She explained, “Student achievement has many factors. ‘Centering’ racism as the most devastating factor will not produce better academic outcomes and is likely to produce an even more toxic environment for children of every race.”

Indeed, students who choose to participate in the racially-segregated classes may have already bought into that woke indoctrination. By segregating themselves, they will miss out on the opportunity to learn and grow from interacting with people who are different from them. They will encounter expectations that don’t prepare them for the real world. They will accept the false premise that their skin color arbitrarily limits their potential academic success. Meanwhile, the students — white, black, and Latino — who stay behind in the mixed classes also miss out on interactions with their peers.

“In athletics, all play together. They don’t have a white team, a black team, and a Latino team,” argued Jay Sabatino, a former high school teacher, principal, and superintendent in Illinois public schools, who retired after 30 years in education. “They have one Evanston team. All contribute, and all make mistakes. If a student in class or on the basketball court feels unsafe because he made a mistake, the teacher should address that. A safe environment (physically and emotionally) is the result of an excellent school.”

“What I fear is happening is that these students are being given the impression that their skin color is the most important thing about them,” Backholm agreed, “and that they need protection from people who don’t look like them. If that’s the case, these segregated classrooms will end up giving them a much greater handicap in life than whatever math deficiencies they may have.”

“As long as the program is voluntary, I can accept it more than if it is ‘the way we do things,’” Sabatino told TWS. But he expressed concerns about the process, based upon the WSJ’s reporting that the school district was dodging media inquiries and had not published data on the program’s success over the past four years. “Transparency in these decisions (at a district or school level) should be paramount. That Evanston would not respond to questions should throw up a red flag to the community.” Additionally, “Any district that does not look at the data critically and report out on them is not operating optimally. This isn’t an administrator’s school; it’s the community’s.”

“This example is one of the many reasons we encourage Christians to run for school board, and why we support in prayer Christians serving in schools as teachers and staff,” said Kilgannon. “Only a system devoid of God can produce this kind of situation. Christians are needed now more than ever in education of every kind.”

America’s educational establishment — such as national teachers’ unions and education training programs — are pushing schools to embed godless, toxic ideologies based on Marxism into curriculums, instruction, and every aspect of school life. They instruct students to classify everyone as either oppressor or oppressed, based not upon their individual behavior but upon their belonging to groups. Many of these groups, which determine someone’s moral standing according to woke ideology, are based upon unchangeable physical characteristics, such as a person’s skin color or ethnicity.

Creating special classes for certain “oppressed” groups (blacks and Latinos) to escape from the supposed “oppressors” (whites), as Evanston school district has done, is just another method for subtly advancing this radical indoctrination agenda. But will it actually help students learn better in AP calculus class? The case to make for it is not very persuasive.

Instead of imbibing untested racial ideology, there are time-tested methods for academic improvement which Evanston could try. Based on his 30 years of experience, Sabatino said, “I’ll always endorse this: Hard work and perseverance lead to success.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden is the primary obstacle to Israeli victory

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The time has come to discuss the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel. With each passing day, two things become obvious. First, Israel cannot fight the war without U.S. resupply of the Israel Defense Forces. As a consequence, Israel is beholden to the administration’s directives. And second, if Israel follows the Biden administration’s directives, it will lose the war.

Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Brick went on to explain that President Joe Biden’s demand that Israel permit “humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza means that he is demanding that Israel keep Hamas fully supplied with food, water and fuel.

His demand that Israel minimize Palestinian civilian casualties endangers IDF soldiers and renders the expansion of the ground offensive into central and southern Gaza, where the bulk of Hamas’s force is now located, almost impossible to carry out. Brick suggested various forms of long-term tunnel warfare and other suggestions for how the IDF may be able to defeat Hamas over time while operating within the constraints that Biden and his top advisors are dictating.

It is hard to judge whether Brick’s suggestions are workable without access to situational intelligence about conditions on the ground in southern Gaza. At a minimum, it is clear that Biden’s preference for the lives of civilians in Gaza over the lives of IDF soldiers on the ground ensures that far more soldiers will be killed in the fighting than would otherwise. Three weeks ago, the administration began demanding that Israel limit (or cancel entirely) its pre-ground battle aerial bombings. Consequently, in the week that preceded this week’s “humanitarian pause,” the IDF’s battle losses were overwhelmingly the consequence of sniper fire from Hamas terrorists hiding in buildings that the air force did not destroy before the battles, due to U.S. pressure.

Then there is the issue of the hostages. Israel is duty-bound to the hostages, their families and Israeli society as a whole to rescue them. There are two ways to do this. Israel can bow to Hamas’s demands, as it is presently doing by suspending its offensive, and endangering Israel’s soldiers and civilians by permitting Hamas to rebuild and reorganize its forces, and by releasing terrorists from its prisons and retuning them to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Or it can renew its military operation, locate the hostages and rescue them itself. Clearly, the second option is preferable.

Securing aid from America

Until Monday, it appeared the reason that Israel had accepted the deal it is currently operating under owed to its inability to locate the hostages. The London-based Daily Express reported on Monday that the real reason Israel is not rescuing the hostages—and instead agreed to the current deal with all of its tactical and strategic costs—is related to the Biden administration’s directive not to harm Palestinian civilians.

Based on Israeli sources, the British Daily Express reported that Israel knows where many of the hostages are located. It has opted not to rescue them because Hamas is holding the hostages among civilians. Rescuing them would involve collateral damage to those Palestinians and risk U.S. resupply, which Israel cannot fight without.

Here it is important to note that the number of actual civilians that have died as a result of Israel’s bombings remains unknown. On Oct. 25, Biden acknowledged that the Gaza Health Ministry’s data on civilian casualties lacks credibility in light of the fact that the Health Ministry is simply an organ of Hamas and reports the numbers it is told to report by Hamas’s terror masters. That data counts every dead terrorist as a dead civilian.

Israelis were thrilled with Biden’s statement. But the next day, he apologized for it. According to Fox News, in a meeting with Muslim American leaders on Oct. 26, Biden apologized for telling the truth.

“I’m sorry. I’m disappointed with myself,” he said.

Since Oct. 26, the administration has embraced as fact Hamas’s casualty counts and uses them as the basis for its demand that Israel minimize Palestinian casualties. The administration’s willingness to ignore the fallacies at the heart of those data indicates that its policy is based on something other than concern for Palestinian civilians, and therefore is not a tactical challenge that Israel may be capable of contending with and still win.

To be sure, Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have all expressed their solidarity with Israel, as well as their revulsion at Hamas’s actions and desire to see the genocidal jihadist terror group defeated. And to be sure, Biden has taken steps to resupply Israel—requesting $14.3 billion in military supplies to Israel (although the assistance has yet to be approved by Congress or signed into law by Biden). These positions and at least partial actions lend credence to Brick’s assessment, shared by the IDF and the government, that the challenge the Biden administration’s position on civilian casualties in Gaza is an operational or tactical challenge and not a strategic conundrum.

Dealing with Fatah and the P.A.<

But there are additional indications that Biden doesn’t want Israel to win. First, there is the issue of Egypt. Due to the U.S. decision to support Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s determination to prevent Gazans from fleeing to Egypt or to a third country through Egypt, the million or so Gazans who evacuated the northern end of the Strip during the fighting are now concentrated in the south. Among them are the bulk of Hamas’s forces, which Israel must destroy to win the war. Facing the U.S.-backed Egyptian refusal to permit these civilians to leave Gaza on the one hand and the U.S. directive to keep civilian casualties close to zero on the other, Israel is facing an impossible operational challenge. Brick may be right that a low-key, slow offensive would be capable of achieving the goal. But he may be wrong. Certainly, a more conventional operation would have a much higher chance of succeeding.

To this must be added the Biden administration’s demands for a post-war settlement. Israel’s goal is not only to defeat Hamas now but to prevent it from rebuilding and to prevent other terror groups from emerging in a post-war Gaza. To this end, at a minimum, Israel will be required to take two actions. First, it must retain permanent military control over all of Gaza. Second, Israel must seize a buffer zone several kilometers wide on the Gaza side of the border to protect civilian communities and military bases from a repeat of Oct. 7.

Biden and his advisers oppose both of these goals. Not only do they completely oppose Israeli military control over Gaza and the establishment of buffer zones inside Gaza, they demand that in a post-war settlement, Israel end its maritime blockade of the Gaza coast, and permit everything and anything to enter Gaza from the sea. In other words, the U.S. position is to permit terrorist forces whether they call themselves Hamas or anything else—to rebuild their capabilities unfettered in post-war Gaza.

Even worse, the administration’s position is that Gaza must be ruled by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority after the war has ended, and that Gaza be united with Judea and Samaria in a post-war era, and together receive full sovereignty. In other words, the administration’s war goal is to establish a Fatah-dominated Palestinian state in these areas. On its own, this position is antithetical not only to an Israeli victory in the war. It represents an existential threat to Israel’s continued existence. Fatah—and the P.A. it runs—is a terrorist organization and regime. The P.A.’s U.S.-armed and funded security forces are Hamas’s junior partners in terror. As Eugene Kontorovich and Itamar Marcus reported in The Wall Street Journal this week, P.A.-controlled Fatah terrorists from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group posted videos of its members in Gaza participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter. Fatah terrorists killed, tortured and kidnapped Israelis, and took videos of their actions.

Unlike Gaza, Judea and Samaria are a stone’s throw from all of Israel’s major population centers, and half a million Israelis live in cities and villages throughout Judea and Samaria. Last Friday night, the threat posed by Palestinian terrorist and paramilitary forces in Judea and Samaria to the lives of millions of Israelis came into sharp relief with the public lynching in the city of Tulkarm of two Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israeli counter-terror operations. To the roars of a crowd of thousands—secured by P.A. security forces—Hamas publicly hanged the two men from an electricity tower. The two men’s bodies showed signs of brutal torture that preceded their execution. Tulkarm is controlled by the P.A. It is located less than a kilometer from the Cross Israel Highway and a few minutes’ drive to Kfar Yona and Netanya.

Israel’s dependence on U.S. weapons makes it impossible for the Netanyahu government to publicly air the strategic threat the administration’s policies pose to its war effort and its long-term ability to survive in the post-Oct. 7 Middle East. Israel cannot risk additional stress to its position vis-à-vis the Biden administration and wants to avoid exposing the rift to its enemies already emboldened from Gaza to Lebanon, Yemen to Iran.

Congressional lawmakers face no such constraints, however. Moreover, they have an interest in exposing the truth and working to compel a change in the administration’s Hamas-enabling policies. Polling data shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in this war and want it to destroy Hamas. The overwhelming majority of lawmakers from both parties share their views. To date, the Republican majority in the House has made no effort to exercise oversight over the Biden administration’s policies in relation to Israel’s war with Hamas, largely due to the Israeli government’s unwillingness to air the actual state of relations.

As the humanitarian pause is extended to secure the release of additional hostages and before the Christmas recess, House Republicans and like-minded Democrats should open hearings to compel the administration to explain its policies. Specifically, it should be asked to explain how Israel can defeat Hamas given the constraints the administration is placing on IDF operations. The administration should also be asked why it supports the P.A., given the P.A.’s involvement, support and defense of Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and the slaughter of its civilians on Oct. 7. Congress should also ensure that the aid package, when passed, contains no conditions on Israel’s use of the weapons it will receive.

Lawmakers must understand the source of the Israeli government’s fulsome praise for Biden. They should then take action to prevent the administration from maintaining its policy of paying lip service to an Israeli victory while preventing Israel from achieving one.

Originally published by Jewish News Syndicate

AUTHOR

Caroline Glick

Senior Fellow.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

United Nation’s COP 28: Shocking Extreme Demands as Climate Campaigners Descend on Dubai

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UPDATE: 12/01/2023 — COP28 Countries Vote On Climate Disaster Fund

The biggest and most dangerous UN climate conference of the year kicks off at the end of the month in the Arab Emirate of Dubai.

CFACT will be there!

CFACT has been actively participating in UN climate summits since day one.  We assure you these UN summits are not about changing the weather but transferring money and power.

Read for yourself what the UN is up to in their own words.  The UN climate “synthesis report” has just been released, and we posted it in its entirety to CFACT.org.

The UN is also just completing what it calls its “first global stocktake.”  Here’s a surprise: their computer simulations conclude that you are not sacrificing enough to keep the global temperature from rising above their arbitrary 1.5 degree Celsius target.  Apparently, the free world must throttle down our economies while China and the rest of the world’s autocracies power up.  Meanwhile, “China emits more CO2 than the U.S. and EU combined”  and manages to exempt itself from emissions reduction schemes by classifying itself as a “developing nation.”  This is clearly absurd.

A major issue to be on your guard about is “loss and damage.”  Last year, at the end of COP 27 in Egypt, the UN agreed to find a funding mechanism for a “loss and damage” scheme.  Basically, we would accept liability when bad weather strikes poor countries.  This is a blatant, open-ended financial demand on the free world that CFACT has warned about for years.  Will Dubai be the place where President Biden and his climate ambassador, John Kerry cave in to this outrageous demand?

The UN’s new Climate boss, Simon Stiel predicts that UN “climate action” mandates are about to shift from “linear to an exponential” expansion.

What does that mean for you?

Unprecedented wealth transfer, wind turbines saturating our coasts and hillsides, and meadows and forests transformed into solar deserts.  Does anyone truly believe we should permit so-called renewables to sterilize our natural world in order to protect it?

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres previously served as President of the Socialist International.  This summer, Guterres shamelessly hyped hot summer days by proclaiming, “the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived”.  Surely, the era of unhinged rhetoric is what truly arrived.COP 28 President-Designate Dr. Sultan Al Jaber responded by calling for a “massive expansion of renewable energy” and even Pope Francis joined in  and warned of a “point of no return.”

It appears that President Biden will give the UN climate summit a miss and send John Kerry in his place.  The Pope, however, plans to spend three days at the UN climate conference in Dubai and will be joined by King Charles.

Since 1989, CFACT has warned America and the world that the Left, having lost the political and economic arguments for their failed ideologies, has turned to climate and the environment to rationalize their quest for power.

CFACT’s team of policy experts will be on the job in Dubai, exposing the real agendas lurking behind climate extremism and the danger they represent to our hard-won freedom and prosperity.

For nature and people too.

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EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden regime DoJ ordered sweep of Twitter data for everyone who liked, followed or retweeted Trump

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I warned you this was a fascist regime. And it is.

DOJ Ordered Sweep of Trump’s Twitter Data for Everyone Who ‘Liked, Followed or Retweeted’ Trump

by Steve Brown, Trending Politico, November 29, 2023:

Attorneys for the Justice Department have revealed documents connected to their search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account, indicating that prosecutors collected a massive collection of data about the former President’s social media activity—including information on every account that liked, followed, or retweeted him.

The extensively redacted search warrant was revealed as a result of a judge’s ruling on November 17, which came after a consortium of media organizations filed an application in August for the warrant and other data to be made public.

Twitter appears to have provided the DOJ with vast volumes of material under compulsion.

Indeed, Special Counsel Jack Smith sought, and appears to have gotten, information on all users Trump followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, as well as all users who followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked Trump.

Smith also requested that Twitter provide information on “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by [Trump], as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e., ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).”

The DOJ’s request also wanted information on Trump’s geolocation, private messages, search history, and contact information. More outrageously, prosecutors allegedly wanted to know his pronouns, as reported by Headline USA in August, when court transcripts relating to the Twitter-DOJ battle became available.

The warrant’s release comes after Twitter objected to the search warrant as well as an accompanying gag order, claiming that the gag order violated the company’s First Amendment right to communicate with Trump and that Trump may have legal standing to use executive privilege to block the warrant.

Twitter’s challenge to the DOJ was eventually unsuccessful, with Obama-appointed District Judge Beryl Howell fining the firm $350,000 in February for failing to fulfill a deadline for complying with the order.

All of Howell’s rulings were upheld by an appeals court.

Justice Department attorneys have since released records related to their search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account, revealing that prosecutors obtained a vast trove of data about the former President’s social media activity—including info on every account to like, follow or retweet him.

The heavily redacted search warrant was released Monday pursuant to a Nov. 17 judge’s order, which was made after a coalition of media groups filed an application in August for the warrant and other records to be made public.

From the looks of it, Twitter forked over massive amounts of information to the DOJ.

Indeed, Special Counsel Jack Smith sought, and apparently ultimately received, all users Trump followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked—as well as all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked or unblocked Trump.

Additionally, Smith demanded Twitter data on “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by [Trump], as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e., ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).”…

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Israel Is Prepared To Act Alone in Gaza, as a Rift Opens Between It and America

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Israel still hasn’t learned that America under the Democrats only respects countries that betray, mock and work feverishly against us like Iran (Death to America!) and the Palestinians terror groups  The more you oppose us, the more billions come your way. If you respect and admire America (like Israel does), the Biden regime is going to stab you hard in the back.

Israel must go it alone and end this infernal ceasefire.

Israel Is Prepared To Act Alone in Gaza, as a Rift Opens Between It and America, Which Seeks To Micromanage the War

Jewish state will do what it has to in an existential struggle, even if it is abandoned by its most important

By: Benny Avni, NY Sun, November 28, 2023:

A rift is growing between America and Israel over how to proceed the day after the current pause in Gaza fighting ends, as Washington attempts to micromanage the war conduct.

With a two-day extension of the original ceasefire that was scheduled to end Tuesday, intelligence chiefs from America, Israel, Egypt, and Qatar are meeting at Doha to contemplate further hostage releases. Israel has initially agreed to a maximum of a 10-day war pause if at least 10 hostages are released daily.

Ten Israeli women and two Thais were released Tuesday. At least eight children remain in Gaza, including 10-months-old Kfir Bibas, who has become a symbol of Hamas’s cruelty. Also, at least nine Americans are yet to be freed.

Meanwhile the Israel Defense Force is readying an invasion of southern Gaza, to where Hamas elite leaders escaped after the IDF captured Gaza City and most of the north. Washington, though, is urging a change in war tactics. Pressured by the Democratic left, President Biden increasingly seems more concerned about the humanitarian plight in Gaza than eliminating Hamas.

Meanwhile, Hamas is already violating the ceasefire. On Tuesday, three explosive devices were detonated next to IDF positions in northern Gaza, followed by gunshots. Three soldiers were lightly wounded. “The response needs to be disproportional, so we don’t play by Hamas rules,” a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Zvi Hauser, told Israel Channel 11 television.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government, though, seemed to be in full diplomatic mode. The Mossad chief, David Barnea, and his American counterpart, William Burns of the Central Intelligence Agency, were at Doha Tuesday to negotiate further military pauses for hostage releases. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Burns is seeking a “longer, multi-day pause,” beyond even the Israeli 10-day cap.

Israel seems willing to let negotiations play out as long as hostages are freed. “To date, we got 74 abductees released, including 50 children and women that were included in the first phase of the agreement,” Mr. Netanyahu said Tuesday. “We will complete this phase when all women and children are released — and then everyone else.”

Qatar, which serves as a Hamas proxy in the talks, is reportedly seeking an agreement to release all hostages held in Gaza in return for top Hamas terrorists held in Israeli prisons, including those who have committed deadly acts. Most importantly for Hamas, such a pact would entail a durable ceasefire and end of war.

Such a deal is opposed by the Israeli government. “Gaza would not remain what it was before, and would no longer threaten Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. A senior cabinet member, Benny Gantz, told reporters Tuesday that once the current ceasefire ends, “fire will resume. We are ready for the next stages in the war all over Gaza. There would be no place of refuge for terrorists and Hamas leaders.”

Washington, though, is warning Israel to avoid “significant further displacement” of civilians in the south, senior officials told reporters this week.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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“INHUMANE:” Reports of Palestinians Torturing Israeli Mothers and Children Emerge

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If This Pause in the Conflict in Gaza Is Allowed To Turn Into a Durable Ceasefire, It Would Be a Decisive Defeat for Israel

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Belgian MP from Iran: ‘More and more people are trying to silence people who criticize Islam’

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“When I was detained in Tehran in 1999 in the ayatollahs’ prison, I could never have imagined that one could also be imprisoned in the West for the same reason. The day before yesterday, it was announced in the United States that they have a comprehensive plan to fight Islamophobia. What might this national plan entail? Criminalizing “Islamophobia” and making it punishable?” — Darya Safai MP  Belgian Parliament.

“The day before yesterday, it was announced in the United States that they have a comprehensive plan to fight Islamophobia. What might this national plan entail? Criminalizing ‘Islamophobia’ and making it punishable?”

That’s likely the plan. And it won’t be limited to criminalizing vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, which are already illegal. It will criminalize any criticism of Islam, including honest analysis of the motive and goals of Islamic jihadis.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.