Republican Texas Rep. Troy Nehls sent a letter Thursday to President Joe Biden, calling on him to invoke the Guarantee Clause that would require the Executive Branch to protect the states from a foreign invasion.
The Daily Caller first obtained the letter that was signed by 32 other Republicans. In the letter, the GOP lawmakers mention 2.6 million encounters with migrants, reports of cartel members shooting at border enforcement and the over 100,000 Americans who have died from drug overdoses in a 12-month period.
“The Constitution clearly states that the President must guarantee states protection from invasion,” Nehls told the Daily Caller before sending the letter.
“With 2.6 million encounters at our border since President Biden took office, over 100,000 fatal fentanyl overdoses at the hands of the drug-traffickers, and numerous violent attacks on our brave border enforcement, it is clear the United States is facing invasion from the South. President Biden has turned his back on his constitutional duty to stop this border invasion — if he does not act, Republicans will when we take back Congress in November,” he added.
READ THE LETTER HERE:
Border agents encountered a record two million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021. In fiscal 2021, they seized $3.31 billion in counterfeit goods, over 319,000 pounds of marijuana, over 190,000 pounds of methamphetamine and over 97,000 pounds of cocaine.
The letter also received support from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Citizens for Renewing America.
“For the past year, we have encouraged border state governors to acknowledge an invasion is occurring on our southern border due to the intentional non-enforcement of our laws and a total failure of the Federal government to uphold Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution. What is transpiring on our border constitutes an invasion, and to date, the actions taken by governors has not alleviated or remedied the problem. Cartels maintain operational control of our unsecured order, facilitating an ongoing invasion that harms American communities. However, if these governors would use their authority to invoke the Self Defense Clause, it would be a gamechanger and stop the flow of devastation ruining our country,” Wade Miller, the executive director of Citizens for Renewing for America, told the Daily Caller.
Dan Stein, president of FAIR, also shared his support for Nehls’ letter.
“There is no question that border states are still in the middle of a historic crisis with no end sight, and sadly, Texas is the epicenter. Dangerous drugs and unknown individuals flood across our southern border every single day. Congressman Nehls outlines a persuasive case for why the federal government has abandoned its duties under the Constitution to protect the states from invasion, and FAIR supports his reasoning wholeheartedly,” Stein said.
The Daily Caller contacted the White House about the letter, to which White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred the Caller to the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC did immediately not provide a comment about the letter.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-20 11:45:252022-05-20 11:45:25‘Total Failure’ — House Republicans Call On Biden To Invoke Clause That Would Provide Protection Against Foreign Invasion From Mexican Cartels
President Joe Biden’s administration is planning to roll back current Title IX regulations, which experts argue will revoke protections for both the accuser and the accused in sexual assault cases and threaten freedom of speech at federally funded schools.
“It ultimately returns Title IX back to a guilty until proven innocent standard,” Sarah Perry, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation said.
“Any changes could put students’ free speech rights at risk and will only exacerbate the problem of self-censorship that has been plaguing our campuses,” Speech First executive director Cherise Trump said.
President Joe Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) is planning to roll back Title IX due process regulations implemented by former President Donald Trump’s administration, which experts argue will revoke protections for both the accuser and the accused in sexual assault cases and threaten freedom of speech.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is planning to rewrite the rules outlined in Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments that set sexual harassment standards at federally funded schools. The Biden administration’s changes would reverse 2020 due process protections that require federal K-12 and higher education schools to investigate Title IX violations in a fair and unbiased manner, which includes the right to be represented by counsel, the presumption of innocence, the ability to cross examine and to introduce witnesses, experts told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Proponents of the current standards argue they fixed problems created by former President Barack Obama’s Education Department; before the 2020 changes, instances of sexual assault and harassment were only recognized as instances of unlawful sex discrimination through regulations that were not legally binding. However, under the current standards, school districts, colleges and universities have a legal obligation to respond to such cases in a fair and unbiased manner.
Under the Trump administration’s standards, instances of sexual assault at federal schools are handled more like “quasi-judicial proceedings,” Sarah Perry, a senior legal fellow for the Heritage Foundation, told TheDCNF.
“It ultimately returns Title IX back to a guilty until proven innocent standard … as opposed to leaving it to one Title IX investigator to determine who was right and who was wrong, in a ‘he said, she said’ proceeding,” Perry said.
Speech First executive director Cherise Trump told TheDCNF that the rules changes will likely be weaponized against constitutionally protected speech, which could make students subject to “harassment” for their personal or political stances.
The current Title IX regulations that were implemented in 2020 are consistent with a Supreme Court precedent known as the Davis Standard, which concluded that “student-on-student harassment must be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it can be said to deprive its victims of access to a school’s educational programs or activities,” Trump explained.
“This is a pretty high threshold that protects students from being accused of harassment for simply voicing their opinions and possibly offending someone with their ideas,” Trump said. In response, universities frequently manipulate Title IX language to fit a more “broad-sweeping definition” such as “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive…” to “severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive,” she explained.
The small change in wording allows school administrators to restrict and punish speech they believe is “offensive,” “unwanted” or “problematic,” but would not be considered harassment under current Title IX rules, she said.
“Previously, the process for adjudicating serious harassment allegations on campus had been plagued by bias, vagueness, and overreach,” Trump added. “Any changes could put students’ free speech rights at risk and will only exacerbate the problem of self-censorship that has been plaguing our campuses.”
A Republican coalition of 15 state attorneys general have expressed legal concern about the DOE’s plans to roll back the “historic” move that codified sexual harassment regulations under Title IX into law, arguing the previous standards were unworkable and unfair.
“Hundreds of successful lawsuits against schools for denying basic due process and widespread criticism from across the ideological spectrum arose from the Obama-era rules“ the statement said. “The rules also resulted in a disproportionate number of expulsions and scholarship losses for Black male students.”
The Department of Education did not respond to The DCNF’s request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-18 06:49:322022-05-18 06:49:32Biden Admin Plans To Roll Back Trump-Era Free Speech Protections In Education
Is it really America’s job to solve all the world’s problems? What difference can fewer than 500 troops make, anyway? With America suffering from so very many problems at home, is this really the best use of the nation’s resources? Or is it all just to make sure that the military-industrial complex continues to show a profit for all concerned?
(CNN)President Joe Biden has approved a request by the Pentagon to redeploy US troops to Somalia in an effort to counter the terrorist group al-Shabaab, a senior administration official said on Monday.
The US will reposition US forces in east Africa and move to restore a US military presence in Somalia in consultation with the Somali government, the official told reporters on Monday. The official said “under 500” troops will be sent back into the country but declined to provide a precise number. He emphasized, however, that the Pentagon “will not be restoring the full contingent of operators present in Somalia before” the previous administration’s withdrawal, which was about 750 military personnel.
The official described the Trump administration’s withdrawal as “abrupt and sudden,” and said that al-Shabaab “has unfortunately only grown stronger” since then.
“We have seen, regrettably, clear evidence that al Shabaab has the intent and capability to target Americans,” the official said, noting that the group had killed over a dozen Americans in east Africa in recent years, including three at a US military base in Kenya in early 2020….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-05-17 04:58:552022-05-17 04:59:56Biden reverses Trump withdrawal, sends U.S. troops back to Somalia
Just as the Biden administration was gearing up to announce the head of its new “Disinformation Governance Board,” Special Counsel John Durham was busily working toward one of many clear conclusions: the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign was central to the spread of harmful disinformation throughout the media.
To truly gauge the level of harm the Clinton disinformation factory caused would be a difficult task, but it did contribute in some ways to locking the FBI up in a costly and lengthy investigation that ultimately found no Trump/Russia conspiracy. It also resulted in a series of corrections and reckonings at media outlets already struggling with national trust.
As it happens, the new head of Biden’s disinfo board – dedicated to tackling misinformation and disinformation as the 2022 midterm elections loom – Nina Jankowicz herself promoted a piece of disinformation Durham recently concluded to be an outright fabrication by Clinton-hired researchers. Jankowicz, a self-styled “globally recognized” expert on disinformation, also propped up former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that one former CIA Moscow station chief described as likely “a part of a Russian espionage disinformation plot.”
“Listened to this last night — Chris Steele (yes THAT Chris Steele) provides some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo. Worth a listen,” Jankowicz wrote in one 2020 tweet.
Russian-born Igor Danchenko – allegedly Steele’s top source for the dossier, according to the Washington Examiner – was charged in 2021 as part of Durham’s inquiry for “making false statements to the FBI.”
On other occasions, Jankowicz pushed misleading claims surrounding the dossier. In one instance, she claimed that the Republican Party “funded the dossier first.” Her tweet was in response to Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s question of whether there was “collusion between DOJ and Fusion GPS to use Democratic funding dossier for political and legal purposes.”
“You’re probably aware that [the Steele dossier] began as a Republican opposition research project,” Jankowicz wrote in a separate tweet in 2020, according to The Washington Examiner.
Jankowicz talks a lot about "disinformation laundering." Well this is about the best example you could find.
She touted a statement from the Clinton campaign about a since-debunked news story about Carter Page that was planted by Clinton operatives Fusion GPS and Chris Steele pic.twitter.com/CxlLNCKQys
And this same Jankowicz fawned over disgraced dossier author Christopher Steele and repeatedly pushed the conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinfo. https://t.co/wrPehE1fCmpic.twitter.com/FJnoxXsYiB
The conservative Washington Free Beacon, which initially hired Fusion GPS, said in 2017 it “had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier.”
“The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele,” the Beacon’s editor-in-chief Matthew Continetti and chairman Michael Goldfarb wrote in a statement at the time, according to NPR.
In fact, the Steele dossier came about after he was hired by an opposition firm in 2016. That firm, Fusion GPS, was hired in part by the general counsel for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Examiner noted.
With Jankowicz prepping to lead the administration’s “disinformation” board, Durham’s court filings have served as insight into another apparent disinformation push.
Durham noted in one April 2022 court filing that the CIA determined data from former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann surrounding Russia-Trump organization links was “user created” and not “technically plausible.”
Sussmann was charged by Durham last year with lying to the FBI during a 2016 meeting.
Durham more recently alleged that Fusion GPS sent hundreds of unverified claims regarding Trump to journalists, The Washington Times reported. The hundreds of emails, according to Durham, resulted in various news articles tying together Trump and Russia.
Individuals tied to Clinton’s presidential campaign have argued that research from Fusion GPS should be protected, citing attorney-client privilege. They’ve also claimed the opposition firm’s work was to supply legal services, The Washington Times reported.
Durham responded in court filings by noting that, if true, Fusion GPS would have taken more care with its unverified allegations prior to spreading them around to journalists.
“If rendering such advice was truly the intended purpose of Fusion GPS’s retention, one would also expect the investigative firm to seek permission and/or guidance from [the Clinton campaign] or its counsel before sharing such derogatory materials with the media or otherwise placing them into the public domain,” Durham wrote, according to The Washington Times.
On Wednesday, Durham saw his latest small win when the judge presiding over Sussmann’s case agreed to do a review of records being withheld by Clintons’ presidential campaign, the Washington Examiner reported.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-07 04:58:012022-05-07 04:59:53Durham Builds Case On Clinton Disinformation Factory As Biden Launches ‘Disinformation Governance Board’
Republican Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson will introduce legislation Tuesday that would defund the Department of Homeland Security’s new “Disinformation Governance Board,” which is set to be led by Nina Jankowicz.
The Daily Caller first obtained the legislation spearheaded by Johnson, which has 50 cosponsors. The bill would completely bar federal funding for the DHS’ “Disinformation Governance Board,” something Johnson said the Republicans will do if President Joe Biden does not get rid of the board.
“The Biden Administration’s decision to stand up a ‘Ministry of Truth,’ is dystopian in design, almost certainly unconstitutional, and clearly doomed from the start,” Johnson told the Daily Caller before introducing the legislation. “The government has no role whatsoever in determining what constitutes truth or acceptable speech. President Biden should dissolve this board immediately and entirely. If he won’t then Republicans will.”
Jankowicz attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story in the past and is now in charge of the DHS disinformation board. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson sent a letter April 27 to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying Jankowicz is a “beacon of misinformation online” and mentioned that she has published multiple tweets “furthering the false media narrative” about the Hunter Biden laptop.
Both The Washington Post and The New York Times noted the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop in March 2022, more than a year after the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) first verified it on Oct. 29, 2020. The DCNF obtained a full copy of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2020 and had the emails forensically verified as real.
Just days before the DCNF verified the authenticity of the laptop, Jankowicz tweeted about the laptop, saying it “is a Russian influence op.”
During the second presidential debate, Jankowicz sent out a tweet which said that Biden cited “50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op.”
In a tweet from December 2017, Jankowicz also claimed the Steele dossier, which has been totally discredited, was funded by Republicans. Christopher Steele, the dossier’s author, was never funded by Republicans. The Washington Post reported in October 2017 that Marc E. Elias, a lawyer for the Clinton campaign and DNC, and his law firm, Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS last April to investigate Donald Trump — something Jankowicz failed to mention.
Jankowicz is currently a fellow at the Wilson Center. On her website, she calls herself an “internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization.”
President Joe Biden’s decision to reverse a series of Trump administration energy policies have harmed American consumers amid the Ukraine crisis, former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said.
Bernhardt, who led the Department of Interior (DOI) between 2019-2021, said Biden’s energy policies reflect activism rather than a coherent strategy to ensure low prices and sufficient supply for Americans. Fossil fuel industry groups and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for rising energy prices slamming consumers in recent weeks.
The average price of gasoline ticked up to $4.19 a gallon on Monday, remaining near its all-time high of more than $4.30 per gallon set in April, according to Energy Information Administration data.
“As a candidate, President Biden was very, very clear that he had a different energy vision than the vision of energy independence — even energy dominance — that Trump had,” Bernhardt told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
“President Biden campaigned with a very different vision,” he continued. “His vision, I think to say fairly, would be a vision of climate activism over energy independence or energy dominance.”
Bernhardt added that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has filled the DOI with “some of the most activist folks that could have possibly been chosen.” He said the agency is largely crafting energy policies based upon Biden’s directives.
Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Biden issued a series of climate-related executive orders, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline permit and issuing a moratorium on new federal oil and gas leasing, following up on a campaign promise to “get rid of fossil fuels.” The Biden administration has yet to hold an onshore lease sale even after a federal court ruled the moratorium was illegal.
Haaland revoked a dozen key Trump administration energy policies in compliance with Biden’s executive orders in an April 2021 secretarial order. The DOI’s “American Energy Independence,” “Supporting and Improving the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Program and Federal Solid Mineral Leasing Program” and “Executive Committee for Expedited Permitting” were among the policies reversed.
“I’m hopeful that these steps will help make clear that we, as a Department, have a mandate to act,” Haaland said at the time.
But Bernhardt pointed to both the lack of drilling and decline in applications for permit to drill (APD) issued by the Biden administration.
“If you look at the number of APDs issued in December 2020 and then compare that to December of 2021, you will see a nearly 80% reduction in APDs issued even though over 4,000 APD requests,” Bernhardt told the DCNF. “And if you look at the length of time it currently takes to do the processing of APDs and let’s say you looked at it between fiscal year 20 and fiscal year 21, you will see a lengthening.”
The U.S. increased domestic oil production during the Trump administration from 8.9 million barrels of oil per day to nearly 13 million barrels of oil per day between 2016-2019, according to Energy Information Administration data. The nation became a net exporter of total energy in 2019 — factoring in oil, coal and natural gas trade — for the first time in nearly eight decades.
The U.S., though, is projected to return to net oil importer status under the Biden administration in 2022. Production has decreased since November to about 11.3 million barrels a day.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-03 05:33:322022-05-03 05:33:32Biden Revoked Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Agenda. Now It’s Coming Back To Haunt Him
Imagine where we would be if Biden’s handlers had spent the last fifteen months trying to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, instead of bending over backwards to appease the mullahs.
The White House is worried Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in weeks, press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted earlier in the day the country has accelerated its nuclear program.
“Yes it definitely worries us,” Psaki said.
The White House clarified on Wednesday that although Psaki responded to a question about nuclear weapons, she was referring to the breakout time, which is the time it would take to obtain sufficient fissile material for one nuclear bomb, and was not referring to the production of an actual nuclear weapon.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-04-30 06:28:022022-04-30 06:28:02White House worried that Iran could obtain sufficient fissile material for a nuclear bomb in weeks
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to fight the Biden administration’s proposed Disinformation Governance Board Friday, which he said was an attempt to censor ordinary people and impose narrative control.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the formation of the board Wednesday, which will be run by Nina Jankowicz, a self-described “disinformation expert” who previously attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story. DeSantis promised to fight the board in a Friday press conference.
The Biden Administration’s creation of a “disinformation” bureau within DHS is effectively a Ministry of Truth that is alien to our constitutional tradition.
Florida rejects Biden’s attempt to enforce regime-approved narratives and to stifle dissent. pic.twitter.com/fSnU2gk97x
“You cannot have a Ministry of Truth in this country. And so let’s get real here,” DeSantis said. “We’re not gonna let Biden get away with this one, so we will be fighting back.”
Critics including DeSantis have compared the board to the “Ministry of Truth” in the novel “1984,” an agency that produces government propaganda and decides what citizens are allowed to say and believe.
“They now have an idea – and I honestly thought this was a belated April Fool’s joke – but they are actually going to create in the Department of Homeland Security a Bureau of Disinformation. It’s basically a Ministry of Truth,” DeSantis said. “And what they want to do is, they want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able to speak out and fight back.”
“They want to be able to say things like ‘Russia collusion’ and perpetuate hoaxes and then have people like us be silenced. They want to be able to advocate for COVID lockdowns, they want to be able to advocate for school closures, things that are not supported by the evidence. But then when you speak out, they want to stifle dissent,” he added. “And so we reject this bureau in the state of Florida.”
The board announced Wednesday that it would begin by focusing on Russian disinformation in the lead-up to midterm elections and misinformation aimed at migrants at the southern border, according to the Associated Press.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it sounded “like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country” during a Thursday press conference, but declined to comment on Kankowicz’ appointment, claiming she had no information about her.
It’s long past time for a Special Counsel to investigate Clinton email scandal, Uranium One, role of Fusion GPS, and FBI and DOJ bias during 2016 campaign.
Kankowicz said “We should view it [Hunter Biden’s laptop] as a Trump campaign product” on ABC News in October 2020 and claimed Republicans had funded the claimed the now-discredited Steele dossier in a 2017 tweet.
Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson demanded answers from the DHS about the board in a Thursday letter which focused on potential biases Jankowics could bring into the position and called her a “beacon of misinformation online.”
DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-04-29 15:43:262022-04-29 15:49:00‘They Want To Stifle Dissent’: DeSantis Declares War Against Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ At DHS
This. Is. Happening. Our universities, colleges, public schools, intel agencies (all government agencies, for that matter) – every sphere is being subsumed by this 21st century quasi-Nazism.
Woke Pentagon rolls out ‘equity’ plan | Fox News
The Department of Defense issued an equity report, aiming to equalize outcomes of employees and partners across racial, sexual and gender lines.
On April 14, the Biden administration unleashed a “total transformation of government” — as described by the Department of Energy — arguably based on principles of Critical Race Theory.
Toward that end, more than 90 federal agencies announced “equity action plans” to supposedly address inequality in American society — but critics say that the plans will create a coercive bureaucracy intent on punishing certain Americans based on racial marxism and other progressive ideas that champion victimhood.
The White House recently noted that on his first day in office, President Joe Biden “signed Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government” which “directed the whole of the federal government to advance an ambitious equity and racial justice agenda” focused on creating “prosperity, dignity, and equality” for underserved communities.
Ryan Girdusky, founder of 1776 Project PAC, a non-profit focused on electing school board members opposed to Critical Race Theory-inspired curriculum, told The Daily Wire that Biden administration’s “plan towards equity is race-based Marxism with a different word.”
“The entire program is set to lower standards, dilute meritocracy, and have the first large-scale government-supported laws that discriminate against people based on their race since before Eisenhower was President,” Girdusky added.
Indeed, the Department of Energy explained in its equity action plan released last week that it has already started considering factors other than technical merit when doling out financial assistance via a pilot program through its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) office.
Starting back in March 2021, applicants seeking research and development funding from EERE have had to issue diversity, equity, and inclusion statements for their projects on their applications.
The purpose of such statements are to explain how their project would help and include “underserved communities” — which is taken to mean minority, non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male groups — in order to be considered for the taxpayer-funded grants……
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Top Biden Pollster Warns ‘Most Americans Are Pissed,’ Says Democrats Are Facing ‘Really Sour Environment’
President Joe Biden’s chief pollster John Anzalone warned Democrats about major electoral problems going into the 2022 midterms in an interview released Friday, although he believes that they can still avoid major losses.
Anzalone, who also worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has previously warned of Biden’s low approval rating overall and among Hispanic voters in particular. He told Politico’s Ryan Lizza that voters are unhappy with the Democrats’ lack of action on key issues such as inflation and health care.
“Voters are very much in ‘What have you done for me lately?’ They always are. And they don’t feel Democrats can get their shit together and get things done,” Anzalone said.
“So if we’re able to do something — a skinny BBB or whatever — on health insurance costs, prescription drug costs, elderly care, childcare, that’s a big deal because it will give Democrats a competitive advantage on what they’re doing for working families. And it’ll cut through the inflation narrative, the Ukraine narrative, the Afghan narrative, the border narrative, etc.,” he continued.
Biden's campaign pollster John Anzalone thinks Ds are blowing it on their economic messaging by not highlighting inequality enough:
"We’re scared of our own shadow on taxes, and it fucking makes no sense"
Anzalone also pushed back on the perception that Hispanic voters primarily care about immigration.
“There’s this narrative in D.C. among Democrats that you only talk to Latinos about immigration. Like, immigration is the twelfth issue that they’re concerned about. It’s always about the economy or inflation or healthcare or schools,” he said.
Republicans are pinpointing a July special election in South Texas as a test of their newfound gains among Hispanic voters. Republican Mayra Flores, who will also seek a full term in November, is hoping that concerns about immigration and inflation will be decisive in flipping a seat formerly held by Democrat Filemon Vela.
Anzalone also argued that Democrats should push tax increases on wealthier Americans, adding that Democrats are too “scared of their own shadow” to do so.
“Biden’s proposal of making those making over $400,000 pay a little bit more taxes and big corporations pay a little bit more taxes so they pay their fair share to make investments in healthcare and education and childcare is really important,” he claimed. “Most Americans are pissed at the fact that they pay their fair share in taxes as middle-class people. They work hard. They want to see the benefits of the economy.”
Election forecasters believe that Republicans could pick up as many as 35 seats in the midterms, which would create the party’s largest majority since the Great Depression. Anzalone believes that such losses could be in the cards for Democrats if they do not act quickly.
“No one’s going to sit there as a Democratic consultant and try to bullshit you that this is anything but a really sour environment for Democrats,” he said.
Like Obama, Biden has dragged us through international humiliations to weaken us.
Putin invaded Ukraine under Obama in Feb 2014 and Biden in Feb 2022.
The invasions eight years apart to the month are not a coincidence. Both times Vladimir Putin was facing a lame duck Democrat who had just flinched away from a military engagement.
Each time Putin smelled weakness and he struck.
Obama, after declaring a red line in Syria, had panicked and backed away in 2013. He then cheered on Ukrainian protests against a pro-Russian regime in Kiev and Moscow responded by calling his bluff and seizing Crimea. Afterward, Obama called Putin to warn him that Russia’s actions were in “violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty” and that “in coordination with our European partners, we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions.”
Those “sanctions” consisted of buying twice as much Russian oil in Jan 2015 as in Feb 2014.
The latest Russian invasion followed the Fall of Kabul and the pathetic spectacle of American forces abandoning their own citizens to Taliban terror which helped make Biden a lame duck.
Would we be watching a war in Ukraine if not for Biden’s disgrace in Afghanistan?
Apart from the questions of what we should have done in Afghanistan or Syria is the issue of basic national credibility. Nations can do smart or stupid things abroad, but the one thing they can’t afford is not to be taken seriously. When the president of the United States says something, the world should sit up and take notice, instead of yawn and change the channel.
Putin is, despite the claims from the administration and its media, a rational actor. Like every tyrant he sees no value in rhetoric except as assertions of strength or admissions of weakness.
Biden, like his former boss, keeps insulting and threatening Putin not from a position of strength, but as an admission of weakness. Biden calls for regime change and war crimes trials for Putin, and then slow walks shipments of weapons and refuses to transfer planes to Ukraine.
The message is the same as when Obama condemned Putin’s invasion of Crimea and then refused to provide meaningful armaments to Ukraine while slow walking shipments of boots.
Putin understands the message the same way a big dog understands when a little dog yaps.
Moscow isn’t paying attention to what Washington D.C. says, but what it does. And the real message from Biden is that he’s afraid of Putin, but looking to cover it up with tough talk.
Biden wants all the political benefits of siding with Ukraine, with none of the military risks. Like Obama, he’s trying to prop up an international order centered around the United States while pretending that it can be done through diplomacy and sanctions without the use of force.
The real world doesn’t work that way.
The false choice between globalism and isolationism is just that. Foreign policy is not an ideology, it’s a balance. When nations embrace ideological foreign policies, they court disaster. Putin’s disaster in Ukraine put ideology ahead of strategy, embracing wishful thinking that ignored the realities of the battlefield and the cost of war. That’s something we know about.
But whatever damage Putin inflicts on Russia in Ukraine, Biden has inflicted more on us.
Beyond the economic pain, Biden has once again wrecked America’s credibility, making public commitments and private disavowals, putting our honor on the line for a war he has no intention of winning or even getting involved in. Putin understands that even a partial victory in Ukraine means not just a defeat for that country, but for the United States and Europe as paper tigers.
And Moscow may be willing to sacrifice ten or twenty thousand men for that strategic objective.
Biden has put America in the terrible position of having committed to a war that only a third party can win. And he has no intention of properly arming that third party to win on the battlefield.
What that really means is that Biden and his administration have set up America to lose.
Like Obama, the Biden administration has dragged us through a series of international humiliations that appear calculated to weaken us as a world power and wipe out our credibility.
Biden has clumsily deployed sanctions and weapons shipments behind Putin’s strategic schedule, playing catch up with the pace of events while letting Russia take the lead. That hasn’t made the war any better or safer, instead it’s become more agonizing for everyone.
If Russia is defeated after all, Biden will claim all the credit and deserve none of it.
The administration’s fearful dithering gave Putin the impression that he could quickly take Ukraine and win. After giving Putin permission for a “minor incursion” as his version of Obama’s red line, Biden was confronted with a full invasion and after a month still hasn’t made it clear to either Russia or Ukraine, or any of our allies, what they can expect America to do about it.
These mixed signals convinced both sides that they can still win and have prolonged the war.
If Biden believes that it’s in our national interest that Russia be defeated, then he should say it and act like it, instead of empty babble about who should run Moscow, something he has no say in, or even more hollow threats of war crimes trials. If he wants to arm Ukraine, then he should do it properly or stop altogether because a halfway approach will just kill more people.
Washington D.C. can reduce Ukraine, like Boko Haram and ISIS, to a hashtag war, but China and Iran are watching and drawing their lessons from what is happening. And if we treat Taiwan and the Middle East, our tech and energy regional lifelines, as disposable, there will come a war that we will have to fight. And heaven help us if we try to fight it with hashtags and sanctions.
Strong nations make it clear what they will and won’t fight for. And they don’t send mixed signals that only communicate weakness. Nor do they talk about how fearful they are of a fight.
That doesn’t mean that foreign wars are a good idea or should be embraced as a policy.
But the best way to avoid foreign wars is by having meaningful red lines and doctrines that clearly lay out national interests, and by viewing war as a choice made from a position of strength, not the catastrophic conclusion to a series of inept entanglements that alternately convince our enemies we won’t fight and that they have nothing to worry about even if we do.
Instead Biden has continued the failed policy of ambiguous global commitments under the guise of international law and the even more implausible values of the international community that have no clear red lines for engagement or disengagement. In Ukraine, Biden, like Obama, is hiding behind the Europeans, who are hiding behind us, for a global show of cowardice.
Vladimir Putin understands that wars are something you win, while the D.C. establishment doesn’t fight wars, but commits American forces to implementing multilateral values.
That’s why we never win. If you don’t fight a war, how can you possibly win one?
Putin understands why he’s in Ukraine. Do we? What are our national interests there or anywhere? How does our employment of military force make us safer, stronger, or wealthier? Are we involved to keep energy and bread prices low, or to avoid a future war on worse terms?
These are basic questions and the failure to answer them sets us up for defeat every time.
Two Democrat administrations have sent a message to our allies, enemies, and countries wondering which of these they might want to be that the American era has come to an end.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-04-09 16:44:182022-04-09 16:44:18Biden’s Weakness on the Ukraine-Russia War is a Threat to America
U.S. pump prices have surged throughout President Joe Biden’s tenure in office, even as Democrats continue to blame the spike on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Big Oil companies.
The average price of gasoline nationwide increased a whopping 48.4% between Biden’s January 2021 inauguration and Feb. 21, three days before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
“We haven’t had a federal lease sale in North Dakota in over a year,” Republican North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “These are real things — that you are sending signals, not just to energy companies, but also to Wall Street.”
President Joe Biden and Democrats have blamed the continued gasoline price surge on Big Oil and Russia’s invasion, but pump prices have climbed throughout his tenure.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destabilized global energy markets, causing an historic supply crunch, high gasoline prices have been the norm throughout Biden’s first 14 months, federal data showed. Experts have blamed the high prices on the administration’s energy and climate policies disincentivizing domestic fossil fuel production.
Since Russia’s invasion, gasoline prices have increased more than 20%, from $3.53 per gallon to $4.24 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. However, pump prices increased a whopping 48.4% between Biden’s January 2021 inauguration and Feb. 21, three days before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.
Democrats and the White House initially blamed Russia for the entirety of the price increases, calling it “Putin’s gas price hike,” before also accusing oil companies of profiteering off the crisis.
“While there is no denying that Putin’s war has led to instability on global energy markets, I remain concerned that the oil industry is not doing enough to protect American consumers from rising gas prices,” House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva wrote to Big Oil executives on March 18.
However, fossil fuel industry groups and Republicans have slammed the Biden administration for its long string of policies dating back to the president’s first day in office. They accused Biden of waging a war on fossil fuels, causing decreased capital flows to domestic projects.
“The United States has shown its global energy dominance over the past decade,” Independent Petroleum Association of America COO Jeff Eshelman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in February. “Unfortunately, this has been threatened by the current Administration’s policies against domestic natural gas and oil production.”
“Make no mistake, natural gas and oil production here at home benefits not only our nation, but also our worldwide allies,” he added. “For America, it means less reliance on oil imports from unfriendly countries.”
Among Biden’s first actions as president was to revoke the Keystone XL pipeline’s federal permit, which would have transported more crude oil into the U.S. from Canada. The administration also abandoned the Willow Project, a significant oil and gas project in Alaska approved by the Trump administration that would have produced 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
After a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to halt its attempted ban on new federal land drilling leases, the Department of the Interior has dragged its feet and defied multiple court-ordered deadlines to restart the program. The Interior Department also chose not to appeal a recent ruling that prohibited an offshore drilling lease in the Gulf of Mexico the agency facilitated in the fall.
Further, the administration hasn’t developed a new five-year federal leasing program — which is needed to plan future lease sales — to replace the current one which expires in late June 2022, according to a Congressional Research Service report from December. The most recent offshore lease sale occurred in 2020 during the Trump administration.
Overall, there are just 601 oil and gas drilling rigs active in the U.S., the latest government data showed. The number of rigs peaked under the Trump administration in 2018 when there were 1,032 active.
The U.S. is also on track to again become a net importer of oil in 2022 after briefly reaching net exporter status in 2020. The U.S. became a net exporter of total energy in 2019, factoring in oil, coal and natural gas trade, for the first time in 75 years.
“We haven’t had a federal lease sale in North Dakota in over a year,” Republican North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee, told the DCNF in an interview. “These are real things — that you are sending signals, not just to energy companies, but also to Wall Street.”
“(Drilling projects) take several years to do and a ton of capital the raise,” he continued. “How are you going to do that when you have an administration basically signaling that they want nothing to do with oil and gas?”
North Dakota produced 1.1 million barrels of oil per day in 2021, the third-largest statewide output, according to federal data.
BIDEN: "A typical driver will save about $80 a month from not having to pay gas at the pump" if they just buy an electric car. pic.twitter.com/Rjjtj7poeJ
Watch Robert Spencer on One American News’ Tipping Point discussing the ongoing Biden and Mayorkas DHS policy of giving Afghan refugees ‘amnesty lite’:
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-03-24 06:41:592022-03-24 06:52:51VIDEO: Robert Spencer OAN interview on Afghan refugees given ‘amnesty lite’
No White House Democrat, certainly not Carter or Clinton, probably not even Obama, unambiguously pursued a radical leftist agenda with as much fervor as Biden.
While Biden may have seemed like an unlikely radical ruler, his shaky mental state allowed his staffers to run things and the growing radicalization of his party, combined with the infamous deal with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, essentially outsourced the administration to the radical Left.
Lefties insist that their agenda is enormously popular and would connect with the concerns of the average American. The average American disagrees.
Overall, 26% say that Biden’s first year agenda has focused a lot on issues important to average Americans, 38% say it has focused a little on these issues, and 35% say it has not focused at all on the concerns of average Americans. Trump did somewhat better on this metric (37% a lot, 34% a little, and 26% not at all in January 2018).
A basic difference was that Trump talked about items that had clear benefits for Americans. Biden’s agenda is vast and diffuse and mired in lefty talking points. What percentage of the country cares about the green agenda? Worse still, Biden kicked off his early time in office pushing national election rigging election legislation, a topic that engaged GOPers and Dems care a lot about, but most independents are much less interested in.
The difference here is pretty obvious.
Just 38% of Americans feel optimistic about the policies Biden will pursue over the next few years, which is down significantly from 61% who felt optimistic as he took office last year.
Trump was successfully selling a popular agenda. Biden? Not so much. Ask the average independent who isn’t politically opinionated what Biden stands for and they haven’t the faintest idea.
The Biden administration has effectively unrolled a vast policy agenda that has had limited legislative success, but a lot of changes on the ground at the administrative level. But there’s so much of it that people are vague on what’s happening and don’t like what little is gone.
Lee Smith, writing in Tablet Magazine, describes the situation that Biden finds himself in since Russia invaded Ukraine. Given his weakness, Israel is now at the front and center of Russian-Ukraine war negotiations. Biden is putting Israel in the line of fire, as Smith points out.
At the end of last month, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called upon the Israeli government to “be quiet on Russia” and focus on Iran, the archenemy of Israel. While Israel has indeed been focusing on its interests, since it shares with Russia the common goal of wanting to oust Iran from Syria, Israel now finds itself with an albatross of a responsibility in the middle of a war.
Biden is the most disrespected president globally in the history of the United States. He is mentally deficient and highly dishonest. He oversaw a fiasco in Afghanistan, as well as with his immigration policy, and is now on the brink of another with the new Iran nuke deal, for which he gave all negotiating power over to Russia. He is completely lost regarding the war, after making a fool of himself by talking big about standing up to the “bully” Putin and threatening that Putin’s “days of tyranny” would be over once he became president.
Now Biden is on the defensive and will throw anyone under the bus. The State of Israel is a prime target. I wrote on March 16:
Israel is faced with a bigger risk than any other country would be taking on, by undertaking the role of mediating the two sides: the constant historic threat of antisemitism, which frequently manifests itself in the Jewish state being unreasonably blamed for every problem that goes wrong.
The historic scourge of antisemitism has escalated globally in recent years. We see it blatantly every time the Palestinians launch rocket attacks on Israel. The world expects Israel to do nothing, to allow itself to be annihilated in accordance with the Palestinian National Charter, the Hamas Charter, and the ambition of every jihadist in the world.
Israel is busy enough as is without taking on the role of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. It is resettling many Jewish refugees, and going far beyond that as well: fully 90% of the refugees arriving in Israel are ineligible to immigrate according to Israel’s Law of Return. And Israel has already made it abundantly clear that it is not about to abandon its own interests, given the ever-present existential threat to its Jewish nation. As reported previously on the Left Column: Israel’s “strategic interests in the Russia-Ukraine crisis cannot be ignored. Four months ago, Israel and Russia were collaborating on the common goal of ousting Iran from Syria, and established a ‘deconfliction hotline to keep the sides from getting tangled up and accidentally clashing over Syria.’”
The saving grace for Israel is if Bennett manages to strike a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. But the longer the war drags on with Israel remaining central to negotiations, the more the Jewish State risks being scapegoated by Joe Biden (and others). Israel’s enemies will be all too happy to join in Jew-bashing.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was precipitated by assurances from China, Germany, and the United States that each of Russia’s major trading partners either backed his position or had zero interest in getting in his way. President Joe Biden’s invitations to Putin to bite off more chunks of Ukraine made it clear that America was not interested in a fight with the Russian dictator in his own backyard. Surely, the mighty Putin would make quick work of the Ukrainians. After all, he helped put down the Syrian rebellion to preserve Iran’s stake in Syria, and thereby sealed Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with the clerical regime in Tehran. So why make a big fuss, especially since at the same time Putin is intent on breaking Ukraine, he is also brokering the new Iran deal with U.S. negotiators in Vienna?
The problem for Biden is that Putin is not winning his war in anything like the quick and easy fashion that the White House and other world powers apparently expected. Moreover, the prospect of a dictator murdering thousands of Ukrainians in Europe in a prolonged war may be a tougher pill to swallow for so-called Western elites than the same dictator helping to murder half a million Syrians.
Biden’s position has thus become difficult, even with a captive media eager to read from a script in which the president of the United States bravely rallies NATO to do something, while in fact doing as close to nothing as politically possible. Luckily, the White House has a playbook for situations in which the contradictions between appearance and reality threaten to overwhelm the ever-changing storylines about who is responsible for, say, $6 per gallon gas. The playbook, like the Iran deal, is a legacy of the Obama administration, and a variation on an age-old incantation: “Blame the Jews.”
In the case of Ukraine, blaming the Jews might seem like a stretch—the Jewish state is a regional power in a region far from Ukraine. But senior Capitol Hill sources told Tablet that the Biden administration is trying to put Israel in the line of fire by pushing Jerusalem to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow. The point is to position Israel to catch the blame if Putin doesn’t relent, or the stubborn Ukrainians prove unwilling to surrender enough territory to end the war on terms that the Russian president finds acceptable.
Sources explain that the Israelis have reluctantly relayed messages between the two states but don’t want to get further involved, for two reasons: First, with Russian forces on their Syrian border, the Israelis don’t want trouble with Putin; second, they see that the White House is setting them up for failure by forcing them into taking a stand against Putin.
Team Biden’s PR offensive blaming Israel for the failure of two-faced U.S. policy has included Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland’s warnings to Jerusalem not to help hide “dirty money” belonging to Putin-allied oligarchs. Nuland also said that Israel should join the international sanctions regime targeting Russian assets—a regime that notably does not include world powers like China and India, which Nuland failed to mention.
The administration’s misdirection campaign also relied on Biden validators from the foreign policy establishment. Richard Haass and Aaron David Miller tweeted to the effect that if Israel wants to be an American ally, it should stand with America’s values, embodied by its moral stance toward Russia, which includes impoverishing ordinary Russians by crashing the ruble.
The coordinated operation to embroil Israel culminated in a story last week pushed out by the White House’s communications infrastructure inside Israel, whose lead publicist, Axios reporter Barak Ravid, proved his value during the Obama years. The story, which quickly went global, claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms of surrender. A “senior Ukrainian official claimed Bennett initiated the call,” according to an account sourced to an anonymous Ukrainian official and given to Ravid. The source claimed that Bennett “recommended Zelensky take the offer.”
Was the story true? The Ukrainian government said it was false, and moved to correct the record the next day. Zelensky adviser Mikhail Podolyak wrote on Twitter that Israel did not push the Ukrainians to accept the concessions Putin demanded to end the invasion. Zelensky’s adviser tweeted that Bennett, “just as other conditional intermediary countries, does NOT offer Ukraine to agree to any demands of the Russian Federation.” Instead, he wrote, “Israel urges Russia to assess the events more adequately.” He also pointed out that the source could not have been on the call, which was private, and was probably not in Ukraine.
But whether the surrender story is true or not, shouldn’t the Israelis be openly and proudly pro-Zelensky? Ukraine’s president has won the affection of decent—and smart—people the world over, who have festooned their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds with the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag. And he’s Jewish! Why doesn’t Israel join in?
The reality is that Israel has frequently stood up for Ukraine against Russia, and with little to show for it. But the issue in this case is simple: The Russian military is on Israel’s border, kind of like it was on Ukraine’s border before it invaded. The difference is that the Russian-Ukrainian border is a geographical fact. Russia is only on Israel’s border due to a geostrategic power play that Moscow implemented with the acquiescence of the U.S. political faction now trying to drive Israel toward conflict with Putin.
The purpose of the Biden team’s anti-Israel smear campaign is not just to make the Israelis look like they sympathize with a tyrant while offering to hide the blood money of their Russian co-religionists……..
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-03-19 05:40:382022-03-19 05:42:50Joe Biden’s Policy: Set up and blame the Jews for his own failure
