(WALL STREET JOURNAL) -- Washington Post Chief Executive Officer William Lewis wanted the focus this past week to be on his plans to turn around the publication’s business. Instead, he is trying to quell a newsroom uproar.

Lewis is seeking to mend fences with staffers after a turbulent few days that included the abrupt departure of the publication’s top editor, a contentious town-hall meeting, and press reports suggesting he tried to quash stories that cast him in a negative light.

“I know trust has been lost because of scars from the past and the back-and-forth from this week,” Lewis wrote in a memo to employees Friday evening. “Let’s leave those behind and start presuming the best of intent.”

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

Native-born American workers are taking a beating in the job market from gains by foreign-born workers, according to the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday.

The number of foreign-born workers employed in the U.S. rose by 637,000 in the last year to nearly 30.9 million, while the number of employed native-born Americans has declined by 299,000, according to the BLS. As a consequence of foreign-born workers taking up job gains, the number of American-born workers with jobs is still below the number counted in July 2019.

Illegal immigration has surged under President Joe Biden following the administration’s relaxation of enforcement at the southern border, which has recently prompted the president to scramble to stem the flow by signing an executive order that he claims will limit the number of asylum seekers allowed in the country.

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The growth in foreign populations working in the U.S. under Biden, many of whom entered the country as the result of illegal immigration, has helped boost overall growth numbers and make the economy appear in better shape, despite native-born workers not seeing those benefits. The recent action by the Biden administration to stem the flow could depress topline job gains if it is successful.

The foreign-born population in the U.S. has surged 6.6 million since Biden took office in January 2021, with an estimated 58% being due to illegal immigration, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. The BLS does not specify the immigration status of workers it is documenting, but it does include illegal immigrants in its estimates for foreign-born workers.

All of the net job growth over the last year has gone to foreign-born workers, (a category which the Labor Dept. admits includes illegal aliens) while native-born Americans have lost a net 300k jobs: pic.twitter.com/00JM18A8Uf

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) June 7, 2024

Despite the lack of growth in native-born employment levels, the total number of people employed rose by 2.4 million in May compared to February 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of Americans holding jobs declined by 408,000 from April to May, according to the BLS.

“While today’s jobs report posted another impressive number of jobs created, unfortunately, the Biden administration record is weaker than the numbers would imply,” Michael Faulkender, chief economist at the America First Policy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Over the last three years, wages have not kept up with inflation, there’s been significant growth in part-time work, and most of the new job creation has gone to foreign-born workers. The American people deserve an economy that puts them first rather than the government centralizing evermore authority.”

The total number of people employed is in contrast to the 272,000 nonfarm jobs that were added in May, of which people could hold multiple, far higher than economists’ expectations of 190,000. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.0% in the month, the highest rate since January 2022.

The above-trend job growth was made up largely of part-time positions, with the number of people working jobs for less than 35 hours a week climbing 286,000, while the number of people holding full-time jobs declined 625,000 month-over-month.

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration has pushed for easier home financing for higher-risk borrowers amid surging housing costs, increasing the risk of a wave of defaults, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The government-sponsored corporations Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, regulated by the Federal Home Financing Administration (FHFA), have taken a number of steps to increase financing opportunities for higher-risk borrowers under the Biden administration, including subsidizing higher-risk borrowing by hiking rates on lower-risk borrowers. Many of these actions have led to Americans taking on an increasingly large amount of debt while lending facilitated by government entities has grown in size, creating a growing possibility that a wave of foreclosures and defaults could create a shock in the housing system, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“The new Fannie and Freddie mortgage pricing directive raised rates on low-risk borrowers and reduced them on high-risk borrowers,” Jason Sorens, senior research fellow at the American Institute of Economic Research, told the DCNF. “This is not really a free market to begin with, but the risk here is creating something like the subprime crisis, where high-risk borrowers are encouraged to take on debt they can’t repay. Again, this has the potential to hit the bottom line for Fannie and Freddie.”

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The guidance from the FHFA to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to essentially subsidize higher-risk borrowers took effect in May 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service. For example, under the new guidance, those with credit scores between 640 and 659 who put down a down payment between 15% and 20% would have a fee rate charged of 2.250% instead of 2.750%, while borrowers with a credit score between 760 and 779 with the same down payment would have their added rate hiked to 0.625% instead of 0.250%.

Rising housing costs have also led the entities to raise how much housing debt Americans can take on through the government entities, with the FHFA announcing near the end of 2023 that it was raising the mortgage limit for single-family homes to nearly $1.15 million in some areas, compared to the standard limit of $766,550, allowing Americans to take out even larger government-facilitated loans.

To fund its rising expenses and facilitate more loans to lower-income and higher-risk borrowers, the FHFA has proposed a new rule that would allow the government entities to purchase second mortgages.

“But the reality is that you have to look at Fannie, Freddie and FHA as one big entity, its government mortgage: it’s all run by the government, and as a single entity, it’s tilting towards higher-risk loans and higher debt ratios.” Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, told the DCNF. “So you may be able to handle that debt ratio for a period of time. It’s when economic stress increases that you find out; as Warren Buffett said, ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.’ It’s not until the economic stress increases that you find out who’s over their skis in debt.”

Total debt reached an all-time high for Americans in the first quarter of 2024, with consumers holding a collective $17.69 trillion. Around $190 billion of the increase in the first quarter was in mortgage debt.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set standards for private lending so that mortgages could not exceed 43% of a borrower’s income. The FHA, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae often try to meet these standards but are not required to due to their relationship with the government, meaning the entities can give riskier loans.

The Biden administration also issued a rule in 2023 seeking to prevent “racial bias” in home valuations, arguing that societal prejudice was effectively leading minorities’ properties to be valued less than their white counterparts. As a result, the price of some homes owned by minorities might be being boosted, with the left-leaning Brookings Institute findingthat the vast majority of homes in majority-black neighborhoods are already appraised at or above their contract price.

Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has also been buying mortgage-backed securities from government housing finance institutions, totaling over $2.3 trillion as of June 5, providing extra liquidity sponsored by the government to the industry.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were bailed out and placed in a conservatorship under the federal government after the 2008 financial crisis, where they played a key role in funding the housing bubble by buying up risky loans. As the risky loans began to inevitably default, the institutions took huge losses on the valuation of their assets, triggering the collapse of the housing market.

Full-Time Jobs Vanish While Americans Race To Take Up Part-Time Work

great piece from @willkessler12 https://t.co/0D9nn9DfHM via @dailycaller

— Rob (@RobMcGravytrain) June 7, 2024

Pinto argues that while there is less tension in the housing system compared to 2008, an increase in the unemployment rate to around 6% from its current rate of 4% would leave enough Americans without a way to pay their debts that it could trigger a wave of defaults due to the increased number of risky loans. Stress in the system could be building in part due to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) increasing the time frame in 2023 that mortgage holders can modify their payments, kicking the issue down the road.

“You can only do that so many times before you run out of the ability to do that and you spread that cost over everybody that has a mortgage so that those with good credits are paying for the risk of the poor credits, and what the federal government is doing through FHA, Fannie and Freddie is basically trying to eliminate risk,” Pinto told the DCNF. “You can’t have the housing finance system without foreclosure. Get the federal government through these forbearance programs, which are, in effect, eliminating the ability to foreclose.”

The cost of homes has increased rapidly under Biden amid high inflation, reaching an all-time high in March and rising 6.5% in just the last year. The average 30-year mortgage rate is also currently around 7% as of June 6, rising from under 3% when Biden first took office.

“The most dangerous FHFA proposal is a rule that would enshrine a ‘tenants’ bill of rights’ capping rents as a share of household income, providing free legal representation to tenants, and more, on any property financed by a Fannie or Freddie-backed mortgage,” Sorens told the DCNF. “This rule has not been finalized yet. If it were to go into effect, it would impose nationwide rent control on a large percentage of the multifamily market, which research has overwhelmingly shown will shrink the supply of rental housing and drive up rents for most tenants.”

The Biden administration has so far not announced concrete plans to cap rents, despite reports from the media citing unnamed administration officials in March saying that a plan to prohibit hikes of more than 10% a year on certain government-subsidized units was set to be released. The FHFA was charged at the behest of the Biden administration in January 2023 to examine putting “protections and limits on egregious rent increases for future investments.”

“It will also have the perverse consequence of driving business away from Fannie and Freddie and driving down the value of existing properties with government-insured mortgages,” Sorens told the DCNF. “As a result, the government mortgage guarantors could lose a lot of money. One major New York mortgage lender (NYCB) has already suffered credit downgrades and an investor bailout as a result of the tightening of rent control there.”

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By James Varney
Real Clear Wire

Like-minded members of Congress have created hundreds of caucuses to help them work on specific issues – including the Arthritis Caucus, the Freedom Caucus, the U.S.-Japan Caucus, the Special Operations Forces, and the Bipartisan Candy Caucus.

But two of them – the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus – stand out for the unparalleled fundraising they do through independent but closely aligned nonprofit arms. Filled with current members of Congress and representatives from some of America’s largest corporations, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute operate outside of normal campaign finance laws to raise millions of dollars each year.

Websites and tax returns for the two nonprofits say they are designed to provide scholarships and opportunities to minority students and promising businesses. But records show they spend a much smaller percentage of their revenue on those programs than they do on salaries, fundraising, and hosting conferences.

“What you have is a very cozy relationship that complies with the law, yet it’s elected officials and corporations working together and there’s lots of money involved,” said Joe Postell, a professor of politics at Hillsdale College. “It claims to be philanthropic but it’s obvious it’s just another avenue for special interest money.”

And it’s a lot of money.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation raked in more than $45 million between 2020 and 2022, the last full year for which figures are available, and that includes the down year in which the COVID pandemic shutdowns crippled the U.S. economy. During that stretch, Foundation revenues increased nearly 89%.

But only a fraction of that appears to be spent on the programs it trumpets. For example, in 2022, the foundation brought in $18.4 million, and of that total, it spent more than $16 million, or 86%, on staff salaries and benefits, management fees, fundraising, and conferences, records show. Its fundraising cost in 2022 – $5.4 million – was more than double the $2.5 million it reported spending on scholarships.

In April, the foundation received a $4 million donation that it says is earmarked for college scholarships.

Still, that amount is less than the foundation spends on salaries. In the COVID year of 2020, when fundraising reached $9.8 million, the foundation spent nearly $3 million on compensation and benefits for staff and just $525,000 on scholarships, according to tax returns. In 2022, it spent close to $5 million on salaries, records show.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute also raises large sums. Between 2020 and 2022,  it took in $30.5 million, tax records show, in many cases from the same Fortune 500 players that give to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Of its $12.5 million raised in 2022, the institute spent $7 million, or 56% of its revenue, paying staffers, holding an annual conference, and for travel, records show. The $4.4 million the institute paid its staff that year was more than it spent on fellowships and interns combined.

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute aren’t the only nonprofits linked to congressional caucuses, but others, like the Republican Main Street Partnership which raised less than $2 million in 2022, are nowhere near as big financially.

Both groups say their nonprofits are completely separate entities from their namesake caucuses. However, eight House Democrats serve on the board of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation – which is chaired by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama. Four House Democrats and one Democratic Senator, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, serve on the board of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. The advisory council for the institute includes an additional 38 officeholders – including one Republican delegate to the House, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon of Puerto Rico, and three Democratic senators, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Alex Padilla of California.

RealClearInvestigations reached out to all the lawmakers serving on the boards of the foundation and the institute, but only one of them responded to the request for comment.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York, who is deputy chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and chair of the institute, said the organization has a proud history and that it provides real opportunities for young Hispanics.

"Latinos are 65 million strong in the United States. Our mission at CHCI is to ensure they are empowered and informed," he said. "Our work lays the foundation for academic and educational achievement for our youth through programs like the congressional fellowship that provides young people the opportunity to gain invaluable experience interning in Congress and setting the foundation for careers in public service and beyond."

Those elected leaders serve on boards filled with executives from some of the nation’s biggest companies. The foundation’s board of directors includes executives with Walgreens, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Fidelity Investments. Its corporate advisory council has featured executives with Altria, Lyft, Amazon, Bank of America, and the Daschle Group. The foundation’s Vice Chair, Chaka Burgess, is president and C.E.O. of a D.C. lobbying firm, Nation Strategies.

The institute’s board includes figures from Altria, the American Federation of Teachers, TikTok, and Walmart. Its Vice Chair, Leo Muñoz, is the Executive Director of Federal Governmental Affairs for Comcast Corporation.

Many of these companies – most of which have a keen interest in laws and regulations coming out of Washington – also provide substantial funding to the nonprofits. Amazon and Truist Financial Corporation both gave between $1 million and $4 million to the foundation in 2022, according to the nonprofit’s annual report.

The report also says that Meta (Facebook), Johnson & Johnson, and State Farm Insurance each contributed between $300,000 and $500,000 to the foundation in 2022 and Airbnb, Bank of America, and Google, gave between $100,000 and $299,999. Altria, Dell, and Microsoft are among the dozens of companies listed as having given smaller sums.

It’s unclear how much many of those same companies and others donate to the institute because it does not publicize the amounts donors must give to belong to various “circles.” In 2020, however, the minimum donation to join the institute’s “1978 Circle,” the lowest rung, was $50,000.

RCI reached out to more than a dozen companies that contribute millions to the nonprofits. None of them responded to a request for comment.

Almost all elected officials receive money from and meet with representatives of interest groups. But, critics say, the foundation and institute break down the often-shaky wall separating legislators from outside interests by specifically bringing these parties together in a common endeavor.

“Both of these caucuses are heavily skewed toward liberal lawmakers who bemoan corporate greed and ‘dark money’ in politics, but a cursory look shows how closely tied they really are,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks, a group that seeks sunlight on government spending.

“This mutual backscratching is no doubt standard Beltway fare, but it is routinely met with outrage from lawmakers in these caucuses,” he told RCI. “Despite their rhetoric, it’s obvious both caucuses have nonprofit partners that routinely tap wealthy corporations for their own private interests.”

The nonprofits offer other avenues of access to powerful officials. The foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference in September, for instance, draws business executives, entertainment icons, and elected officials to the capital.

For days, Washington D.C.’s convention center is a maze of exhibits, sponsored by not only emerging African American companies but also the biggest names in tech, finance, insurance, and more. Last year, both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended the main dinner, and the opening seminar featured Sean “P Diddy” Combs speaking about black entrepreneurship as well as hip-hop. The keynote speech was delivered by Kristen Clark, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Beyond its marquee names, organizers of the annual conference boast of the opportunities it provides for face time with elected officials and top appointed figures in Washington’s sprawling and powerful bureaucracy who make legislative and regulatory decisions that impact markets and competition.

“There’s no other opportunity in the country for constituents to have this kind of front-facing, direct contact with elected officials,” CBCF president and CEO Nicole Austin-Hillery boasted to MSNBC last year.

But that’s far from the only event the foundation holds, suggesting there are other opportunities for black lawmakers to mingle with donor companies. Next month, a branch of the foundation will hold a conference in Atlanta and then a scholarship tournament at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Golf Resort in Maryland.

Putting on such spectacles isn’t cheap. The foundation spent more than $1.1 million putting on the 2022 annual conference, according to tax records.

The millions flowing to these nonprofits come from the Fortune 500, Big Tech, Big Pharma, emerging Internet businesses, white shoe law firms, unions, and other nonprofits. The foundation and institute were separated from the caucuses in 1976 and 1978 respectively, to comply with campaign finance regulations.

Yet hardly anyone – from the lawmakers and the corporations that bankroll their nonprofits; from the nonprofit groups themselves to the political advocacy groups that complain the loudest about money’s corrupting influence in American politics - wants to talk about it.

RCI also reached out repeatedly to both the foundation and the institute, asking to speak with officials there about the organization’s history, work, and fundraising. They did not respond.

Political advocacy groups, largely on the left, that bang the loudest drums over money’s potentially corrupting influence, also proved unwilling to comment on this nonprofit arrangement by which congress members and corporations are entwined.

People for the American Way, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Brennan Center for Justice did not respond to questions from RCI. The foundation’s current chief executive, Nicole Austin-Hillery, came to the foundation from the Brennan Center.

Not all those groups have always been so reticent to address the issue. When The New York Times looked at the foundation’s extraordinary fundraising among corporations in 2010, the Campaign Legal Center’s then-policy director offered a blistering take.

“The claim that this is a truly philanthropic motive is bogus; it’s beyond credulity,” Meredith McGehee said. “Members of Congress should not be allowed to have these links. They provide another pocket, and a very deep pocket, for special-interest money that is intended to benefit and influence officeholders.”

McGehee is now with Issue One, another group concerned about the influence of money in federal lawmaking and regulation, and Issue One views the setup with a jaundiced eye.

“Special interests look for every available avenue to gain access and influence with members of Congress, including contributions to nonprofits affiliated with lawmakers like the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, and Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies,” Issue One research director Michael Beckel told RCI. “Giving to these types of nonprofits allows deep-pocketed special interests to curry favor with members of Congress. Such contributions are yet another arrow in the quiver of the influence operations of special interest groups, along with traditional campaign contributions, lobbying expenditures, and bankrolling political ads.”

In some cases, corporations with an interest in specific issues are bankrolling people placed in the nonprofits. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation gave the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation between $300,000 and $500,000 in 2022, tax records show. Scotts, the fertilizer giant, sponsors two foundation fellows who are focused on “marijuana legislation.”

Scotts also did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has made its interest in marijuana legalization clear. While Scotts is currently prohibited from selling cannabis to consumers, it did invest $150 million in RIV Capital, a “leading cannabis consumer packaged goods platform.”

Such close cooperation between the caucus and big business can smack of crony capitalism, according to Postell.

“Even if you don’t have a smoking gun, of course, but you can see the money going into the caucus’ nonprofits and then see favorable legislation coming out,” he said. “Anybody would be concerned about that.”

Companies are much more willing to donate big bucks to black and Hispanic caucuses than they might be to outfits like Republican Main Street, Postell said.

“This also provides a way for Fortune 500 companies to show off their diversity intentions,” he said. “They are trying to promote their own interest, but whereas they don’t gain a lot of PR points giving to some other groups, they do gain points by giving to the identity groups.”

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Joe Biden visits small businesses along Main Street in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. (Official White House photo by Cameron Smith)

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Alfredo Ortiz
Real Clear Wire

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A farmer in Minnesota who took on the state government over an illegal agenda it embedded in one of its grant programs has won his fight.

And now that illegal sex and race discrimination is gone.

It is the Pacific Legal Foundation that praised farmer Lance Nistler for his dedication to fairness and equality.

"In the wake of a lawsuit brought by farmer Lance Nistler, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation on May 24 that rolls back an illegal policy that gave priority to 'emerging farmers' based on immutable characteristics such as race and sex," the legal team explained.

"Thanks to the courage of a small farmer, equality before the law has been restored in Minnesota. Because Lance Nistler stood up for his right to equal treatment, the state will no longer disadvantage farmers based on their race and sex," said PLF attorney Andrew Quinio.

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"We are thrilled that Governor Walz and the state legislature responded to Lance’s lawsuit by amending the Down Payment Assistance Grant Program so that it does not unlawfully discriminate against Minnesota’s hardworking small farmers. We encourage other states to follow Minnesota’s about-face and stop violating the Constitution’s guarantee of equality before the law."

Nistler filed a lawsuit in January charging the state with unequal treatment based on race and sex because, while he was picked ninth in a lottery for payment grants, he was put at the back of the list because of the state's claim to prioritize "emerging farmers."

The state defined those as "racial minorities, women, or young, urban, and LGBTQIA+ individuals."

When the case was filed his application for one of the $15,000 grants just had been rejected.

He not only was picked ninth of 176 applicants, but he also met all of the eligibility requirements – except that he wasn't urban, a minority, a woman or LGBT.

Nistler sought the grant to buy 40 acres of farmland in Beltrami County, Minnesota, to grow soybeans, oats and wheat.

Minnesota's lawmakers had allowed $500,000 in 2023 to create the grant program, and required that recipients be Minnesota residents earning less than $250,000 a year in gross agricultural sales, provide the day-to-day labor on their farms for five years and not have previously owned farmland.

And officials insisted on the race and sex preferences, until he filed suit.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

By Bridget Sielicki
Live Action News

Southwest Airlines was in federal court Monday seeking to reverse a court order to pay $800,000 to a flight attendant who was fired due to her pro-life beliefs. The airline was also challenging a judge’s contempt order requiring three of its attorneys to undertake “religious liberty training.”

In 2017, Charlene Carter filed a lawsuit against the airline in which she said she was unfairly fired from her job as a flight attendant due to her pro-life beliefs. She had been critical on social media of her union’s decision to participate in the 2017 Women’s March, due to its association with Planned Parenthood. A court agreed that she was unfairly terminated, and ordered Southwest to rehire her, as well as pay her compensation — an order it is still fighting.

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On Monday, the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals began hearing the appeal from the airline, which is challenging the order that it pay Carter, as well as the August 2023 religious liberty training mandate. According to ABC News, the airline continues to maintain that it was justified in firing Carter, saying she was fired not for her religious beliefs, but because she violated rules requiring civility in the workplace by sending “hostile and graphic” pro-life messages to the union leader. The airline is also arguing that the mandated religious liberty training violates First Amendment speech rights of the attorneys.

Carter is being represented in her lawsuit by the National Right to Work Foundation.

“Southwest and TWU union officials made Ms. Carter pay an unconscionable price just because she decided to speak out against the political activities of union officials in accordance with her deeply held religious beliefs,” stated National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Yet rather than comply with the jury’s decision and the District Court order, Southwest and TWU union bosses have decided to attempt to defend their ‘targeted assassinations’ against a vocal union critic. We are proud to defend Ms. Carter throughout this prolonged legal case to vindicate her rights.”

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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(Pixabay)

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

By Bridget Sielicki
Live Action News

Lawmakers from both the House and the Senate have sent a letter calling on the Biden administration to study the environmental impact of the abortion pill.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), U.S. Representative Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.), and colleagues sent a letter to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Michael Regan asking the EPA to look into the impact of the abortion pill drug mifepristone on the country’s water. The senders note that these considerations are vital, given the skyrocketing use of the abortion pill.

“Given the steadily increasing rate of at-home chemical abortions, it is vital that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ensure mifepristone, the drug’s active metabolites in blood and placenta tissue, and the fetal remains of unborn children — all of which are unbelievably being flushed into America’s wastewater system — do not pose a threat to the health and safety of humans and wildlife,” they wrote.

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The abortion pill regimen is a process in which a woman self-administers a chemical abortion using a two-step combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. The natural result of the process is that she delivers a dead baby – usually at home. In most cases, the baby’s remains are flushed down the toilet. To date, there have been no studies to determine what impact both the fetal tissue and the abortion drugs have on the environment once the child is flushed away. The authors of the letter are calling on the EPA to study these potential impacts.

“Environmental protection efforts are necessary to counter the potential harm that chemical abortion drugs are creating for our people, wildlife, and ecosystems. The American people deserve to know the negative effects caused by chemical abortion drugs,” the lawmakers wrote.

They also note that the environmental impact of the abortion pill “has never been sufficiently studied,” adding that when the drug was first approved in 2000, that approval was based on a 1996 environmental assessment that didn’t consider the impact of fetal remains on the environment.

“Any studies that have been conducted in the past should be repeated and updated to reflect the fact that the drug is far more prevalent today than it was three decades ago,” the lawmakers said. They have called on the EPA to respond as soon as possible.

In addition to Rubio and Breechen, signees include U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Representatives Matt Rosendale (R-Md.), Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Barry Moore (R-Ala.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), and Jim Banks (R-Ind.).

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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(FOX BUSINESS) – Major corporations are leaning on freelancers now more than ever before to help keep fixed costs down and avoid mass layoffs. That's according to Shannon Denton, co-founder of Wripple, a platform that matches companies with vetted freelancers in real time.

Denton's coined this period the "freelancer economy," a trend in which corporate America is embracing independent workers more than before to help with a variety of tasks like designing their website or plan events.

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Wripple partnered with independent research company MDRG to conduct two surveys. In total, it collected 200 surveys from freelancers and another 214 from marketing and human resource leaders at enterprise and mid-market companies who hire freelancers.

Read the full story ›

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Timothy M. Doyle & Robert G. Eccles
Real Clear Wire

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has several roles and one of them is to regulate certain aspects of the shareholder proposal process. This process occurs when shareholders of a company submit proposals to be included in a company’s proxy materials to be voted on at a company’s shareholder or annual meeting.

A recent dispute between ExxonMobil (Exxon) and Arjuna Capital, a small impact investor, has received national attention. What started out as a simple dispute has morphed into a legal battle after Exxon decided to continue a lawsuit even after the activist investors withdrew their controversial proposal from consideration. This is a risky move for the company in terms of its already challenged reputation. It’s also risky in terms of the implications of the court’s decision on shareholder rights. This extremely aggressive legal strategy was countered by an equally aggressive move by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and others. CalPERS claims that the lawsuit threatens all shareholders and was behind an effort to remove Exxon’s entire board.

Exxon’s annual meeting was held today. The preliminary voting results are in and range in support from 87% to 98% with an average of 95%. The 87% number is relatively low in a director vote and likely reflects negative investor sentiment. However, the 95% number shows broad support remains for Exxon’s board. In short, the vote simply illustrates the importance of the court’s ruling.

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The court’s ruling from this suit may well change the way shareholders proposals are handled at publicly traded companies throughout the U.S. The real issue here is who determines what type of shareholder proposals end up being voted on.

Historically, the SEC had an internal policy under Rule 14a-8 to handle this type of dispute. Unfortunately, and part of the problem, is that this policy has been reinterpreted with each successive administration and subsequent SEC Chair. This is but one example of tradition and precedent being disregarded because of increasing partisanship. We have written about how the Department of Labor’s ever changing amendments under ERISA are another example of this. Unfortunately, the current SEC is attempting to further the policy agenda of the current administration with a broad reading of its Congressional mandate. Add that to a divided Congress and it’s no wonder that a lawsuit was filed, and a retaliation occurred.

Under SEC Rule 14a-8 companies must include shareholder proposals unless they fall under one of thirteen exceptions. Historically, if a company reasonably believed that a submitted shareholder proposal could be excluded under one of the exceptions it must notify the SEC. Further, to avoid a potential enforcement action and lawsuit, a company typically also petitions the SEC for what is referred to as a “no action” letter or an agreement not to proceed with an enforcement action. Practically speaking, obtaining this letter is the difference between a proposal being included for a vote or not.

Traditionally, one of those exceptions, the “ordinary business exception,” allowed a company to withhold a proposal if it related to the company’s “operations” unless the proposal involved a “transcendent or significant policy” issue but could nonetheless not “micromanage” a company’s day-to-day operations. This ultimately became a case-by-case analysis and while it may not have been a perfect option and is currently the subject of potential Congressional reform and judicial review, at least there was a reasonable opportunity to make the case that an exception applied.

Unfortunately, and applicable to this case, the SEC decided to substantially restrict the ability of companies to make their case under the ordinary business exception. (There are other issues in the Exxon case, but we focused on this particular one given the impact). Back in 2021, in “Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14L (CF)” the SEC decided not to intervene in the shareholder proposal process if the proposal involved an issue that had a “broad societal impact” regardless if there was a “nexus between a policy issue and the company” or it “micromanaged” the day-to-day operations of the company. This eventually led to an historical number of shareholder proposals including the one filed with Exxon. We do not agree with the SEC’s decision to broaden the scope of Rule 14a-8.  A pivotal role of the SEC is to protect investors, not to facilitate those who want to use the shareholder proposal process to pursue policy objectives—even those we agree with like the need to address the challenge of climate change. Furthermore, proposals about broad social impact that are beyond the scope of a company’s business put real costs on the company that are ultimately borne by all of its shareholders.

In July 2023, Congress attempted to reform how the SEC handled these issues. Several 14a-8 reform bills were voted out of Committee. Unfortunately, they were all on party line votes, so no serious bipartisan debate or compromise occurred. These bills are unlikely to make it to the floor for debate in the current 118^th Congress. Given the SEC’s novel approach to the ordinary business exception analysis and reform bills seemingly stuck in Congress, it’s not surprising that a company who receives a disproportionate number of shareholder proposals, many of which are about broad social impact rather than shareholder value creation, would seek a judicial remedy.

While a legal decision would give some finality to the specific issue being litigated, there is real concern that an opinion may have unintended consequences by placing a chilling effect on the important relationship between shareholders and companies. Each plays an important role in ensuring that our robust capital markets remain the envy of the world. While outside the scope of this piece, some of these issues go to the fundamental role of a company in today’s society and the proper role of government oversight.

As for the specific issue at hand, is there a practical solution? The short answer is “Yes” and it’s a two-step one. Given the proclivities of Congress to act slowly, especially in a hyper-partisan political environment, the most prudent first step would be for the SEC to reevaluate how it interprets its role in the shareholder proposal process and clarify the rules used to exclude irrelevant shareholder proposals. This would give companies a reasonable opportunity to explain why they think a given proposal should be excluded, while protecting the rights of shareholders to engage with boards and management, as well as submit proposals when appropriate.

The second step is for Congress to act and at the very least clarify the SEC’s role and add some common-sense sustainable guardrails to ensure certainty in the shareholder proposal process. This would go a long way in preventing this issue from reoccurring every four years. The majority of shareholders and companies yearn for a return to normalcy where issues are resolved outside of lawsuits and vote against an entire boards of directors. These dynamics threaten both shareholder value creation and effectively addressing issues that have broad social impact.

Robert G. Eccles is at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. 

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(FOX BUSINESS) – A majority of middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect will continue for the rest of their lives, according to a new poll.

Findings published by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line – which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often considered middle class – said they are struggling financially. Respondents include those with high school diplomas and graduate degrees as well as blue- and white-collar workers who live in both rural and urban America.

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While many of these people said they are able to afford the most basic expenses, they expressed concern about their inability to save for the future. Tellingly, about 40% of Americans said they are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck, while another 46% said they do not have $500 saved for emergencies.

Read the full story ›

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

Topline: The IRS has never been the most popular government agency, but a new audit report says their customer service is so poor it could lead to tax returns being filed incorrectly or not at all.

Key facts: The IRS runs 363 in-person Taxpayer Assistance Centers to help people fill out their taxes or get legal advice.

But the process for changing or cancelling an appointment at one of the centers creates a “burden” for taxpayers because many IRS customer service agents don’t have access to the software that lets them view or change in-person appointments.

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There’s a baffling reason for that: the agency pays for 2,500 software licenses each year so agents can edit appointments, but auditors found 768 licenses not even being used.

Each license costs $56 annually, so that’s $43,000 spent last year on the unused licenses.

When customers call the IRS to edit or cancel an appointment, they are instructed to hang up and call a different “Appointment Telephone Line” number.

Agents were not allowed to transfer calls directly to the Appointment Telephone Line, though managers could not explain to auditors why this policy is in place. It was changed last December.

Even some agents working the Appointment Telephone Line don’t have access to the correct software. They’re forced to transfer calls to yet another IRS agent who can finally provide assistance. There were 144,005 transferred calls in fiscal year 2023, according to the audit report.

Last year 75,000 people did not show up to scheduled in-person appointments at Taxpayer Assistance Centers, which auditors said is likely because they got frustrated with customer service and gave up on canceling their appointment.

Critical quote: Auditors wrote that, “The lack of a streamlined appointment process can result in extended wait times … which can potentially delay taxpayer return filings and reduce the public’s trust in the IRS’s efficiency.”

Background: The IRS “Taxpayer Bill of Rights” says everyone is entitled to “prompt, courteous, and professional assistance” with their taxes.

But the IRS disconnected 6.1 million phone calls in fiscal year 2022 and 1.5 million calls in fiscal year 2023 because they didn’t have enough agents manning customer service lines, according to the audit report.

Meanwhile, the IRS paid six-figure salaries to 11,486 employees last year, according to OpenTheBooks.com. What are all those staffers doing if not assisting taxpayers?

Summary: The $43,000 the IRS spent on its unused software licenses is just a tiny fraction of the agency’s total budget, but it’s representative of much larger issues with tax simplicity and transparency.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

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(FOX NEWS) – The discovery of the potential for thousands of tons of lithium to be extracted annually from wastewater generated by fracking in the Marcellus Shale leaves proponents of a green energy future at a crossroads, Republicans said Thursday.

A University of Pittsburgh study suggested processing byproducts from natural gas production in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale basin could potentially meet nearly half of U.S. lithium needs. The typical electric vehicle (EV) requires nearly 18 pounds of lithium to power its battery. That figure grows exponentially for Teslas, according to reports.

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Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., who represents much of the Marcellus territory, told Fox News he wants to see those on the left change their tune. "Now nearly 40% of our nation’s domestic need for lithium can be found right here as a byproduct of fracking," he said. "I fully expect every single Democrat to join Republicans in supporting domestic natural gas development."

Read the full story ›

Nick Pope
Daily Caller News Foundation

A power grid system serving nearly 30 million Americans could again approach failure this summer, a local utility executive told the San Antonio Express-News.

Rudy Garza, CEO of the San Antonio-owned utility company CPS Energy, anticipates that Texans will elevate power demand on the state’s grid system above and beyond last year’s record numbers, according to the Express-News. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s power system manager, had to issue several energy rationing alerts last summer as the state’s grid nearly faltered, and those conservation appeals are likely to be made again over the course of this summer.

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“I have learned in this business that it’s hard to make guarantees on anything,” Garza told the outlet. “If we lose a big nuclear unit, for instance, in the middle of a peak season, that could be enough to throw the grid off into some level of emergency. All we can do is prepare and keep our plants going.”

Biden admin declared an energy emergency in Texashttps://t.co/rW3JSWx3Mq

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 8, 2023

Garza predicts that Texans will exceed 100,000 megawatts of demand this summer, a level of power use which would be more than 15,000 megawatts greater than last summer’s record-setting demand, according to the Express-News. Major factors driving demand in Texas include a growing population, a hot economy, cryptocurrency mining operations and new power-hungry data centers.

“We’re building houses in every direction,” Garza told the Express-News. “We’ve seen an influx of some really large users coming into Texas, but they’re not driving the entirety of it. The state just continues to grow.

Texas produces the most energy from wind and solar of any state in the country, according to Texas Monthly. This leaves the ERCOT grid vulnerable to supply shortfalls in specific circumstances, especially the late afternoon and early evening hours of hot summer days with little or no wind blowing, according to the Express-News.

In those circumstances, power generation tails off right when Texans are driving up demand by cranking up their air conditioners and other appliances to stay cool in their homes, according to the Express-News. To make up for lost wind capacity in those situations, operators turn to older coal- and natural-gas fired generation facilities to avoid blackouts.

A similar situation played out in the summer of 2023, when a prolonged heat wave pushed the grid to the brink and prompted ERCOT — which oversees the flow of power to approximately 27 million customers — to briefly issue an emergency notice on Sept. 6, according to the Express-News. ERCOT put out a record of 11 conservation appeals last summer in total, and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation (NERC) — an organization that monitors grid conditions in the U.S. — flagged ERCOT in a recently-published outlook report for facing “elevated” blackout risks this summer if weather conditions are stronger than normal.

“ERCOT continues a reliability-first approach to grid operations and will continue to operate the grid conservatively, bringing generating resources online early to mitigate sudden changes in generation or demand,” an ERCOT spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The ERCOT region is forecasted to experience tremendous electric demand growth in the next 5-7 years, which is driving the need for ERCOT to adapt and plan differently for the future … ERCOT has implemented many reforms and grid improvements since 2021, including weatherization inspections of electric generation units and transmission facilities, and additional ancillary services.”

ERCOT is also deploying a number of measures to shore up grid reliability, including improvements to backup options and communications systems, the spokesperson added.

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By Kate Anderson
Daily Caller News Foundation

Ahead of the impending implementation of President Joe Biden’s latest student loan forgiveness plan, a new report published Wednesday alleges that the program is illegal and defies congressional authority.

Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan is an income-driven repayment program that will cost an estimated $156 billion over the course of ten years and will go into full effect on July 1, according to Politico. A new report from DFI, a nonprofit focused on educational and labor policies, however, claims that the president’s plan is “illegal” and has “claimed legal authority far outside what Congress intended” when it approved the ability for the secretary of education to forgive limited amounts of student debt via income payments.

“Congress intended income-driven repayment to be a flexible repayment option with a last-resort loan forgiveness benefit that imposed negligible costs on taxpayers,” Jason Delisle, the report’s author, said in a press release. “The Biden administration’s SAVE plan runs roughshod over those intentions, and it may not survive pending legal challenges as a result.”

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The SAVE plan sets payments based on 5% of an undergraduate’s income and also eliminates unpaid interest each month, according to the report. Total loan forgiveness can occur as soon as ten years into the program for those with debt under $12,000, whereas previously the plans required 20 to 25 years of payments before loan forgiveness was approved.

The report argues that when Congress approved income-driven repayments for student loans it did not intend for participants to “have balances canceled after 10 to 20 years of repayment, including months when their payments were $0.”

“Lawmakers did not originally intend for loan forgiveness to be a major benefit of income-driven plans and intended borrowers to repay for 20 or 25 years before having debt canceled,” the report states.

Additionally, the report claims that the law was initially intended to apply only to “low-income students” but that the Biden administration has done away with this provision and allowed the forgiveness to extend to students well into the middle and upper-middle class.

The Supreme Court struck down the administration’s previous attempt to enact widespread student loan relief for 40 million Americans in June 2023, ruling that the secretary of education did not have emergency authority to cancel student debt through the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.

“It’s a pattern with this administration to stretch the law to the breaking point, and then hope both that Congress will be gridlocked and unable to respond and that no one will challenge them successfully in the courts,” Jim Blew, a co-founder of DFI, said in the press release. “We hope the courts, if not Congress, will let the administration know it cannot create a plan like SAVE and use federal student aid to buy votes and cater to special interests.”

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Taliban fighters

A federal watchdog report reveals that after America had been at war with the Taliban for two decades, the Joe Biden administration now has delivered at least $11 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to the terrorists. Probably much more.

A Center Square report posted at Just the News explains much of the cash has been delivered through various aide groups that get federal tax dollars.

And, the report warns, "experts" suggest the actual total Biden has delivered to the Taliban could be much higher.

The Taliban, previously in control in Afghanistan, took control again within days of Biden's abrupt decision to yank American troops out, a scheme that cost American lives and left behind tens of billions of dollars in American war machinery for the Taliban to use or sell.

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Further, Biden left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghanis who had worked with the American presence there for years – all in danger of death at the hands of the Taliban.

The report cited the conclusion of SIGAR, a federal watchdog, which found, "The U.S. government has continued to be the largest international donor supporting the Afghan people since the former Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban returned to power in August 2021."

The report continued, "Since then, the U.S. government has provided more than $2.8 billion in humanitarian and development assistance to help the people of Afghanistan."

The report also found "the $10.9 million paid by 38 U.S. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, and U.S. Agency for Global Media implementing partners is likely only a fraction of the total amount of U.S. assistance funds provided to the Taliban in taxes, fees, duties, and utilities because UN agencies receiving U.S. funds did not collect data or provide relevant information about their subawardees' payments."

SIGAR, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, explained, "To carry out their programs, U.S. agencies rely heavily on nongovernmental organizations and public international organizations, such as the UN, to implement humanitarian and development assistance. Both the former Ghani administration and the current Taliban-controlled government benefited from U.S. aid by imposing taxes, fees, duties and utilities on implementing partners as a condition of operating in Afghanistan."

The report noted that an independent government watchdog, Judicial Watch, previously documented how the Taliban created fake nongovernmental organizations to "siphon away" tax dollars.

That group reported, "Since the terrorist group returned to power in August 2021, Uncle Sam has continued to fund Afghanistan's education sector through six programs that cost $185.2 million even though the Taliban has issued decrees drastically limiting access to education for girls and women as well as restricting women's ability to work and other basic freedoms."

"SIGAR has reported on the importance of U.S. funds being spent on U.S. priorities and not in ways that benefit the Taliban, which represses women and girls, denies the human rights of the Afghan people and remains unrecognized as a legitimate government by the U.S. government and the international community," the watchdog said.

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By Nick Pope
Daily Caller News Foundation

A new study published by two green organizations stands at odds with the stated reasoning behind one of President Joe Biden’s most aggressive moves against the fossil fuel industry.

Ceres, a green consultancy, and an environmental group called Clean Air Task Force (CATF) recently released a study using Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data that found methane emissions from natural gas activity decreased while production increased between 2015 and 2022. The Biden administration paused approvals for new liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminals in January in large part because of its “evolving understanding” of “the perilous impacts of methane” and concerns that continuing as normal could inflict major damage on the climate.

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Notably, both Ceres and CATF support major government action to decarbonize the American economy, a goal that Biden has also pursued through his first term as president. Ceres is a leading force in the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing push, while CATF aims to “accelerate the development and deployment of zero-carbon fuels” and also to “catalyze deep, global reductions in methane emissions.”

Specifically, the study found that, between 2015 and 2022, U.S. natural gas production increased by 40% while methane emissions from that production fell by 37%, according to the study. The study and its results indicate that “when energy companies want to, they can effectively reduce emissions of methane,” according to Canary Media, an independent nonprofit news outlet launched by the Rocky Mountain Institute that focuses on green energy and climate change.

Could Joe Biden’s Natural Gas Pause Cost Dems The Senate In November?https://t.co/57P0eAOGYJ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 29, 2024

“The fact is that the major portion of greenhouse gas emissions in the western world for the last three decades has come about thanks to natural gas — made up mainly of the constantly demonized methane — displacing coal in power generation. All of the central planning efforts by the activists and their water carriers in the public policy realm pale in comparison,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas business who now writes and consults on the energy industry, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I’d like to send a personal word of thanks to Ceres and CATF for conducting this revealing study, even if they are reluctant to talk about its key results.”

The study’s authors used data from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) and calculations based on the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory to inform their findings, as opposed to a direct measure of emissions. The study concedes that GHGRP data is not perfect because it can be prone to underestimating emissions, but the program “currently represents the most robust and comprehensive inventory of company-level [greenhouse gas] emissions from the oil and gas industry.”

Notably, both Ceres and CATF support major government action to decarbonize the American economy, a goal that Biden has also pursued through his first term as president.

“From 2015 to 2022, U.S. natural gas production increased by 40 percent, while methane emissions from gas extraction declined by 37 percent,” Steve Everley, a senior managing director for FTI Consulting’s energy and natural resources practice, wrote in a post to X about the Ceres and CATF study. “Remember that the central justification for the LNG export pause was alleged uncertainty about the climate advantage of U.S. natural gas, with methane emissions being a key element.”

Biden’s Climate Czar Dodges When Asked Point Blank How Blocking Natural Gas Projects Will Lower Emissions https://t.co/lg2EFhowrS

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 29, 2024

One of the reasons for the decrease in emissions is technological advancement, which has allowed operators to more accurately monitor possible methane leaks, for example, according to ARUSI, an engineering firm based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Concerns about methane pollution and climate change factored into the administration’s decision to halt new LNG export terminal approvals in January, according to the White House. Numerous environmental groups have applauded the decision, with some specifically citing methane emissions as a key concern addressed by the decision.

However, Biden’s pause is unlikely to bring down global emissions because would-be buyers of natural gas will likely look to other countries who produce gas less cleanly to meet their needs, energy sector experts previously explained to the DCNF.

Two previous Department of Energy (DOE) analyses — conducted in 2014 and 2019, respectively — have found that American LNG exports are cleaner than coal that is mined and used domestically. While the Biden administration apparently is not swayed by those studies, White House officials were reportedly “influenced” by a questionable paper authored by an expressly anti-fossil fuel Ivy League professor that arrived at the exact opposite conclusion.

Robert Howarth of Cornell University, the paper’s author, released it into the public domain before passing through peer review specifically so that it could impact political discussions about gas exports, and the paper’s topline finding has been revised several times since its initial release. Howarth has battled against the fossil fuel industry for years while openly favoring a societal shift away from their use, and an anti-fracking environmental group partially funded the study.

Critics of the administration’s LNG pause have asserted that the decision was political rather than scientific, viewing the move as one meant to appease the younger, climate-focused voters and well-funded environmental organizations that Biden figures to lean on as he seeks a second term in November.

The White House, Ceres and CATF did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The U.S. added 272,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in May as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.0%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday.

Economists anticipated that the country would add 190,000 jobs in May compared to the 175,000 jobs that were added in initial estimates for April and that the unemployment rate would remain unchanged at 3.9%, according to U.S. News and World Report. The job gains follow predictions that the economy is slowing down, with an early estimate for second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) being revised down to 1.8% from 4.2% over the last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

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GDP growth was recently revised down in the first quarter of 2023 from 1.6% to just 1.3%, as new data showed that American consumers spent less in the period and businesses invested less in inventory. A poll in May showed that 67% of small business owners were worried that economic conditions could force them to close their doors amid harsh economic conditions, hurting hiring and growth.

Another week, another bizarrely consistent set of UI data – every explanation I’ve seen (or thought of myself) fails to fully explain how this can possibly be happening given all the other data available; something is clearly wrong, but the question is “precisely what is it?” pic.twitter.com/xLlzTNn9Id

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) June 6, 2024

Persistent inflation has also dragged on businesses’ ability to hire, measuring 3.4% year-over-year in April, far from the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Slow growth and high inflation have sparked fears that the economy is entering a period of stagflation, which severely hurt the finances of average Americans in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pushed back on stagflation speculation at the Fed’s May meeting, pointing to low unemployment and decelerating inflation.

Topline job growth could slow in the coming months if President Joe Biden reduces the number of illegal immigrants entering through the southern border, as he has recently pledged to do. Many of the jobs that have been created or recovered under Biden have gone to foreign-born populations.

The pace of job growth could influence the Fed’s decision on when to cut its federal funds rate, which currently sits in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, a 23-year high. Cutting the rate would reduce the cost of credit across the economy, giving businesses more leeway in their spending.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Dear Dave,

I'm trying hard to get control of my money and get out of debt, but I had a situation come up the other day, and I really don't know what to do. I'm one of four brothers, and our parents' 50th wedding anniversary is early next month. My two oldest brothers got together and made plans for a party without consulting the rest of us. They want everyone to chip in $1,000 to help pay for things. I love my mom and dad, but the only savings I have is $1,000 in my beginner emergency fund. Will you tell me how to address this situation?

Ronald

I'm going to be blunt here, OK? Since you weren't asked about any of this ahead of time, and had no say in anything, fair would be for you and your brother who weren't consulted to pay zero. Zilch.

Planning something that expensive without consulting everyone involved well ahead of time – and expecting them to lay out $1,000 without warning – is way out of line. And don't let your older brothers lay a guilt trip on you, either. This has nothing to do with how much you love your parents, being greedy or anything like that. It has everything to do with consideration and communication, or in this case, a lack of these on their part.

If I were you, I'd let your oldest brothers know exactly what your financial situation is like right now. Explain what you're doing and why you're doing it, then let them know in a nice, but firm, tone you'll give them whatever you can scrape up, but you won't be chipping in anything close to $1,000. Oh, and I'd tell them next time they hatch up a big, expensive plan like this, to check with all their brothers way ahead of time.

Best of luck, Ronald. I'm sorry you have to deal with this.

Dave

Steve Bannon

A federal judge has ordered longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon to report to jail July 1 for a four-month sentence for refusing to testify to ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's partisan Jan. 6 investigating committee.

That now-defunct group, partisan because only Pelosi was allowed to pick its members, orchestrated witnesses and testimony to try to portray President Donald Trump as guilty of something for the rioting that happened amid a protest Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol of Congress' decision to adopt the Joe Biden election victory.

Bannon was ordered by Democrats to testify about Trump, and he declined, based on Trump's decision to invoke executive privilege over the information – a move that Democrats refused to accept.

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The court in his case claimed he could not show that Trump indeed invoked that privilege.

Bannon noted that the lawfare orchestrated by Democrats from Joe Biden down against Trump and his associates will not succeed.

"They're not going to shut up Trump. They're not going to shut up Navarro. They're not going to shut up Bannon. And they're certainly not going to shut up MAGA."

The order for Bannon came from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who lifted his previous stay on Bannon's four-month sentence.

However, there still is time for Bannon to seek a review from the full appellate court, or the Supreme Court.

"My stay of Mr. Bannon’s obligation to self-surrender is revoked," the judge said. "I do not believe that the original basis for my stay of Mr. Bannon’s sentence exists anymore."

It's the result of a contempt citation from the then-Democrat controlled Congress.

Bannon hosts the popular War Room podcast that attracts tens of thousands of fans.

Earlier, another Trump adviser, Peter Navarro, began serving his four-month sentence for not responding the way the committee demanded.

Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, said outside the court that Bannon’s previous lawyer informed him that "when executive privilege has been invoked, you no longer have to comply with a subpoena."

A report at RVMNews said Democrats had demanded he provide documents and testify before the House committee, which was killed when Republicans took the majority in the House.

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(ZEROHEDGE) – Dollar Tree shares leaked lower in premarket trading after the company reported adjusted earnings per share for the first quarter, which missed the average analyst estimate tracked by Bloomberg. The company announced "strategic alternatives" for its troubled Dollar Family Business segment, an indication a potential sale or spinoff could be ahead.

It's worth noting that Wall Street analysts have highlighted the negative impact of the struggling Family Dollar unit on Dollar Tree's overall earnings. The unit was acquired during a fierce bidding war with Dollar General for $8 billion in 2015.

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Perhaps this is why Dollar Tree announced Wednesday that its "has initiated a formal review of strategic alternatives for the Company's Family Dollar business segment, which could include among others, a potential sale, spinoff or other disposition of the business."

Read the full story ›

Large numbers of schools across America, run by leftists trained in the LGBT agenda, have adopted schemes to promote those alternative lifestyle choices to children – and keep the details a secret from parents.

It's a campaign that Wisconsin parents now are challenging before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A report at The Federalist explains the fight is from the Eau Claire district.

The report describes the district's gender-identity policy as "a big middle finger to the basic principles of parental rights."

Thus, the fight by parents.

The petition to the Supreme Court was filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and America First Legal asking for intervention in the fight.

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It is in "Parents Protecting Our Children v. Eau Claire Area School District."

There, school officials are accused of facilitating "gender identity transitions at school" amid schemes to keep this hidden from parents."

Lower courts claimed parents weren't injured by the practice.

The report noted, however, "the parents are directly affected by the pro-transgender policy, WILL notes in the appeal to the Supreme Court. It’s a policy of secrecy that could keep them in the dark about a matter of urgent parental concern. And the erosion of parental rights through similar school policies is happening nationwide, the court filing asserts."

Luke Berg, deputy counsel for WILL, said, "Thousands of school districts across our country have these policies. If parents cannot challenge them until after their children are harmed, they have no way to protect their kids other than pulling them from public school."

The question facing the court is, "When a school district adopts an explicit policy to usurp parental decision-making authority over a major health-related decision — and to conceal this from the parents — do parents who are subject to such a policy have standing to challenge it?"

The filing charges that education industry officials in public schools now have made school "like Las Vegas: 'What happens at school stays at school.'"

The Eau Claire district boasts it wants to have "inclusive and welcoming environments that are free from discrimination, harassment, and bullying regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression."

To that end, the school has teachers ask students what they want to be called as well as what bathroom and locker room facilities the students wish to use.

They also are to ask about what "transition plan," involving social, medical and surgical components, the students adopt.

The report noted the issue exploded into the national conversation when a staff member at Eau Claire North High posted a sign, "If Your Parents Aren’t Accepting Of Your Identity I’m Your Mom Now."

Teachers had been instructed that parents "are not entitled" to know some details about their own children.

Board president Tim Nordin openly has doubled down on the campaign, that it is "within the rights of the students and families."

But the facts are that parents have primary rights in the lives of their children, and the legal teams point out that courts have decided over and over that parents have a "fundamental constitutional right to make decisions concerning the rearing" of their own children.

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Illegal migrants overwhelm Texas National Guard, storm border wall

By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

President Joe Biden’s latest immigration move expressed that he wants to stem illegal immigration, but his economic policies have relied on it to mask the true health of the economy, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Biden signed an executive order Tuesday that pauses new asylum requests at the southern border if the daily average over the span of a week exceeds 2,500, representing a stark departure from the president’s relaxed view on border enforcement amid a massive surge of arrivals. Foreign-born workers have boosted headline economic and job market growth numbers during the president’s tenure, masking the true state of the economy for native-born Americans and contributing to a disconnect between how Americans feel about the economy and what the data says, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“It’s unclear to me that Biden’s actions will do anything to toughen restrictions at the border. Instead, this may be an attempt to make the wide-open border more permanent,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “That being said, a decline in illegal immigration would have a significant impact on headline economic numbers, but that’s very different from saying the average American would be worse off.”

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The number of Americans employed as of April was over 161 million, higher than the pre-COVID-19 peak of around 159 million in February 2020. Despite the total increase, the number of native-born workers has only risen by 788,000 from February 2020 to April 2024, while the employment level of foreign-born workers has increased 2.7 million in that same time frame.

“Today, I’m announcing actions to bar migrants who cross our southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum,” Biden said Tuesday when announcing the executive order. “This action will help us to gain control of our border, restore order to the process. This ban will remain in place until the number of people trying to enter illegally is reduced to a level that our system can effectively manage.”

The foreign-born population in the U.S. has surged by 6.6 million since Biden took office, with an estimated 58% being due to illegal immigration, according to research from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which collects most of the government’s data on employment, does not differentiate in its counts whether workers are in the country legally or not, but explicitly states that it does count illegal immigrants.

“The presence of illegal immigrants certainly makes the overall GDP bigger,” Steven Camarota, director of research at CIS, told the DCNF. “Got more people; hundreds of millions of more people — even though they’re relatively poor — they’re still making the economy larger. So if a headline number is GDP growth, the economy is at least $300 billion larger because of the presence of illegal immigrants based on their labor incomes.”

The economy has defied recession predictions over the last year, recording 4.9% and 3.4% gross domestic product growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, respectively. The average number of jobs added each month in the last year, ending in April, was 242,000.

“Unfortunately, BLS completely avoids the topic of a worker’s legal status in both the survey of households and the survey of businesses,” Antoni told the DCNF. “That means the category of foreign-born workers contains an unknown number of illegals. Limiting the flow of those illegals into the country would stem the bleeding, but the damage has already been done. Reversing the negative effects of millions of illegals being in the country will require deportations.”

Camarota believes that foreign-born workers receiving a large portion of the economic benefits, like jobs, under Biden could be part of the explanation why voters are currently unsatisfied with the economy, despite the Biden administration and corporate media’s insistence that it is doing well. A poll in May found that 49% of voters believed that Biden’s policies had hurt the economy, and 71% thought that current economic conditions in the U.S. were negative.

President Biden believes we must secure our border in line with our laws and values.

He is announcing new executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum.

And, @POTUS continues to call on Congress to act on border security. pic.twitter.com/1YZD1CR8Yc

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 4, 2024

“The immigrants somewhat mask the situation because they make the labor force participation look better, but the real issue is the headline number of unemployment,” Camarota told the DCNF. “That headline number of the number of people working misses all of these working-age people not working.”

The labor force participation rate for all workers totaled 62.7% in April 2024, still below pre-COVID-19 levels, while the foreign-born participation rate totaled 66%.

“I think this probably makes the public sour on the economy in ways that those surveys show when they say, ‘Well, is the unemployment rate high?’ and it’s not; it’s very low, but people say it’s high,” Camarota told the DCNF. “And I think what they’re thinking is that all these people that they see are idle.”

Around 49% of Americans surveyed in a poll in May thought that the unemployment rate was at a 50-year high, despite the official rate remaining below 4%. Of those surveyed, 56% thought that the U.S. economy was in a recession.

Antoni also pointed to other contributing factors fueling Americans’ discontent with the economy, including a large share of jobs that have been created under Biden being part-time positions, with many Americans holding multiple jobs at once. Surging immigrant populations have also exacerbated an already several million housing unit shortage that has developed in the U.S., pushing up housing and rent costs across the country.

“From an economic perspective, legal immigration has been a tremendous asset to America,” Antoni told the DCNF. “It has historically attracted the best, brightest, and most industrious people from around the world. That has increased productivity, wages, wealth, income, and even life expectancy in America, all while reducing crime. Conversely, mass illegal immigration under Biden has produced exactly the opposite effects.”

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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By Rebeka Zeljko
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Illinois legislature recently passed a bill requiring nonprofits based in the state to report the demographic makeup of their board members —but the law may be unconstitutional.

Democratic state Sen. Adriane Johnson introduced Senate Bill 2930, which requires nonprofits that donate over $1,000,000 to charitable organizations to publicly disclose the “race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker also supports the bill, according to Politico.

“We are taking vital steps to support diversity and inclusion in the nonprofit sector,” Johnson told Politico. “We are creating these spaces where people can show up as their true, unassimilated and authentic selves.”

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Yet legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the bill is likely unconstitutional.

“This law is a prime example of the fundamental incoherence of leftist identity politics,” America First Legal Senior Vice President Reed D. Rubinstein told the DCNF. “Demanding that only non-profit corporations reporting grants of $1,000,000 or more to other charitable organizations post ‘demographic’ information on their directors and officers is almost certainly illegal and unconstitutional.”

GianCarlo Canaparo, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the bill raised major constitutional concerns.

“First, the state has no legitimate interest in forcing people to disclose this information,” Canaparo told DCNF. “As the Supreme Court recognized in Students for Fair Admissions, the racial and ethnic categories that we so often use in America are arbitrary—they tell you nothing meaningful about the persons they lump together.”

“Second, the bill likely violates the free speech or associational rights of organizations who believe that this sort of information is irrelevant and that collecting it is divisive,” Canaparo said. “Third, it likely violates the free speech rights of employees who will be forced to disclose this information even if they object in principle to classifying themselves.”

Canaparo said the underlying motivation for the bill is to enforce liberal ideology.

“Lurking behind the scenes, is the real reason that Illinois wants to do this: It wants liberal activists and lawyers to pressure nonprofits to ‘diversify’ their boards, which will mean explicit race, ethnic, and gender discrimination,” Canaparo told DCNF.

Illinois state Democrats have branded the bill as a measure to highlight “diversity and inclusion of nonprofits,” according to a press release.

“Illinois is extremely diverse and – in requiring this transparency of nonprofits – we further embrace that diversity,” said Democratic state Sen. Adriane Johnson in the press release. “This sets a positive example for other organizations, and hopefully encourages broader progress in the future.”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a similar, Senate Bill 54, into law in October 2023. Also known as the Fair Investment Practices by Investment Advisers law, the bill requires venture capital companies to disclose “specified demographic information for the founding teams,” including their race, sexuality and gender.

“This bill resonates deeply with my commitment to advance equity and provide for greater economic empowerment of historically underrepresented communities” Newsom wrote in a press release.

Johnson and Pritzker did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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By Nick Pope
Daily Caller News Foundation

Virginia is ditching rules that would have mandated 100% of new car sales to be electric vehicles (EVs) by 2035.

Under former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, the state enacted a law in 2021 that hitched it to California’s stringent vehicle emissions standards, the latest version of which will require the phase-out of internal combustion engine models by 2035. Current Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his administration announced Wednesday that Virginia will not be following California’s new regulations once the current set expires at the end of the year.

“Once again, Virginia is declaring independence – this time from a misguided electric vehicle mandate imposed by unelected leaders nearly 3,000 miles away from the Commonwealth,” Youngkin said in a statement. “The idea that government should tell people what kind of car they can or can’t purchase is fundamentally wrong. Virginians deserve the freedom to choose which vehicles best fit the needs of their families and businesses. The law is clear, and I am proud to announce Virginians will no longer be forced to live under this out-of-touch policy.” 

Once again, Virginia is declaring independence – this time from a misguided electric vehicle mandate imposed by unelected leaders nearly 3,000 miles away from the Commonwealth.

— Governor Glenn Youngkin (@GovernorVA) June 5, 2024

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Youngkin has opposed the policy because “California’s requirements for their citizens should not be a one size fits all solution for Virginia,” the governor’s staff previously told to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Previous efforts by state Republicans to repeal the law linking Virginia to California’s standards failed, and legislative avenues to get rid of the rules closed when Democrats cemented control of the state legislature in last fall’s elections.

The governor’s office cited a legal opinion by Republican Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares to substantiate its decision. Miyares’ opinion asserted that the state is not obligated to abide by the California Air Resource Board’s (CARB) Advanced Clean Cars II rules, which would have taken effect at the beginning of 2025 and required EVs to make up 35% of all new car sales starting in model year 2026 on the way to 100% by 2035.

“Given that EVs only amounted to 9% of vehicles sold in Virginia in 2023, application of the misguided mandates could have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties,” Youngkin’s office said in the official announcement. “Virginia auto consumers and dealers could be forced to bear these costs. Not only would this leave auto dealers with less money to pay staff, offer raises, and grow their businesses, it could force many small auto dealers to permanently close their doors.”

Numerous Democrat-leaning or blue states have adopted CARB’s auto emissions standards, which are more stringent than federal standards, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Neither CARB nor the office of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded immediately to requests for comment.

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(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

By Jason Cohen
Daily Caller News Foundation

Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy accused Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a Tuesday hearing of striving to boost the economy by borrowing short-term, higher-interest rate debt to help President Joe Biden secure reelection.

The national debt has surged to nearly $34.6 trillion under Biden, which is around $6.8 trillion more than when he took office. Kennedy criticized Yellen for her department borrowing shorter-term bonds with higher interest rates instead of longer-term bonds that have lower interest rates.

WATCH: 

“Today you can borrow for 10 years at 4.4%. Instead, you’re choosing to borrow at 5.4%,” Kennedy said. “That makes no sense!”

“Market participants believe that short-term interest rates will come down, and they will come down to a level substantially below the current 10-year,” Yellen responded.

The current ten-year borrowing rate for Treasury bonds is 4.35%, which is the lowest it has been in roughly three weeks, according to Trading Economics.

“You announced last November … that we have decided to start issuing an inordinately large amounts of short-term debt, didn’t you?” Kennedy asked, to which Yellen answered affirmatively.

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“Because of the inverted yield curve, that means that you’re gonna pay more in interest on short-term debt than say 10-year debt,” the senator said. “Now that’s a fact. You can go check the numbers of Treasuries yesterday. First, that costs taxpayers a lot more money in the interest. And number two, you’re working at cross purposes with the Federal Reserve because what you’re doing is stimulating the market. You’re pumping money into the economy and Jay Powell’s over here beavering away trying to reduce inflation. And you’re beavering away trying to increase it.”

Yellen appeared to begin to dispute Kennedy’s claims but he continued, talking over her.

“By paying an interest rate that is 100 basis points higher than you would have to pay,” he said. “And the only reason I can figure that y’all are doing that is, is to try to give the economy a sugar high five months before an election. Why else would anybody want to borrow at 5% when you can borrow at 4%?”

“Well, there is a good reason that investors are willing to accept just over 4% on a 10-year Treasury bond when they can earn 5.4% on a one-year Treasury bill,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy specified he’s concerned about taxpayers rather than investors, but Yellen said the principle is the same for both.

“You’re borrowing at 5% when you could borrow at 4% to deficit spend. And it makes absolutely no sense why you would do that other than to try and artificially stimulate the economy and help Joe Biden get reelected,” Kennedy said.

“We’re not trying to time the market. We have a policy that we wanna hold the issuance of short-term bills in line with recommendations of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee,” Yellen said.

Average interest rates on credit cards have also spiked recently, increasing from 14.56% in February 2022 to 21.47% as of November 2023. Americans’ credit card debt rose by $143 billion in 2023, reaching over $1 trillion in total.

“My mama didn’t raise a fool and if she did, it was one of my brothers,” Kennedy said, restating his assertion that Yellen is attempting to help Biden win, but the Treasury secretary denied that short-term debt borrowing gives the economy a “sugar high.”

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(FOX BUSINESS) -- Rubio’s Coastal Grill, a California Mexican restaurant chain, announced the closure of 48 restaurants in the Golden State amid rising business costs.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the chain decided to shutter nearly one-third of its restaurants following a "review of its operations and the current business climate."

"While painful, the store closures are a necessary step in our strategic long-term plan to position Rubio’s for success for years to come," the restaurant chain announced Monday.

Read the full story ›

A wrinkle suddenly has appeared in a federal case in Minnesota in which the federal government alleges seven defendants stole millions of dollars of COVID aid funds – intended for the federal Child Nutrition Program through the Feeding Our Future charity -- and bought cars, homes and vacations.

Delivered to the home of one juror hearing evidence was a bag containing $120,000 in cash.

Along with instructions to vote for acquittal.

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The result was that all seven of the defendants were re-arrested, the courthouse where the trial was taking place was locked down, and more.

A report in the Post-Millennial explains that the seven are "part of a larger case that has seen 70 charged with stealing a total of $250 million in COVID aid."

"They allegedly delivered few, if any, meals," the report said.

The wrinkle happened over the weekend when juror No. 52 arrived home "to find that someone had dropped off a gift bag containing $120,000 in cash with a promise of 'more' if she moved to find the defendants in the case not guilty."

The 23-year-old opted to call law enforcement immediately, the report said.

"As a result, all seven defendants accused of using a charity to steal $41 million in federal aid meant to go towards feeding children in need were re-arrested at the request of United States Assistant Attorney Joe Thompson," the report said.

The juror was released from the panel and the remaining members were sequestered to prevent further attempts to tamper with justice.

The report explained the juror got home, and was told by her father-in-law a woman "possibly Somali," with an accent gave him the gift bag for delivery to the juror, "whose real name she knew."

"An affidavit stated, 'The woman told the relative to tell Juror #52 to say not guilty tomorrow and there would be more of that present tomorrow,'" the report said.

The cash was turned over to the FBI, which was joined by the Spring Lake Park police department in its investigation.

The report said the defendants were arrested, had their phones confiscated and were ordered not to leave the courthouse, and the rest of Monday's proceedings continued.

The jurors then started deliberating.

"This is the stuff that happens in mob movies," attorney Joe Thompson said.

Commentator Charlie Kirk explained, "The defense, meanwhile, is hiring college professors to lecture that scamming the government and sending suitcases full of cash abroad is a part of Somali culture, and trying to stop them is of course 'racist.'"

During Covid, the federal government doled out money to provide free meals to children. It was Covid, so the government decided to abandon any pretense of preventing fraud — and plenty of people noticed immediately.

In Minnesota, members of the Somali community built one of the…

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 4, 2024

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President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump

(FOX BUSINESS) -- Investors are sounding the alarm about the U.S. economy following Trump's historic conviction.

Shark Tank investor and O'Leary Ventures Chair Kevin O'Leary reveals how he believes Trump's keystone trial will impact the U.S. economy during an appearance on "Fox & Friends Weekend," Sunday.

"I would ask everybody, regardless of your politics, to think about the big picture and what America means to the rest of the world. It's the largest economy on Earth. It has the best legal system, including the appellate system, which now Trump will go through. And if there's something wrong with his trial, it wasn't done properly, the appellate system will catch it. That's what people believe about the American legal system," O'Leary explained.

Read the full story ›

(CNBC) -- A technical issue on Monday caused the A-class shares of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to appear to be down nearly 100% on the New York Stock Exchange for most of the morning trading period.

Trading was halted in those shares, as well as in Barrick Gold and Nuscale Power, which had also seen dramatic falls. All three stocks have since resumed trading.

The NYSE said that the problems stemmed from the price-bands published by the Consolidated Tape Association, the organization used by major exchanges to jointly provide real-time stock quotes. The NYSE said at roughly 11:45 a.m. ET that the issues had been resolved and trading was back to normal. A spokesperson said the exchange is reviewing potentially impacted trades.

Read the full story ›

Moderna, one of the makers of those infamous mRNA COVID shots ordered by government and corporations onto tens of millions of Americans that now have proven to trigger fatal heart ailments, says the Food and Drug Administration now has officially approved another of its mRNA treatments.

The company, in an announcement, confirmed "the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved mRESVIA (mRNA-1345), an mRNA respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, to protect adults aged 60 years and older from lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV infection."

The report said, "The approval was granted under a breakthrough therapy designation."

The company's boast prompted Dr. Peter McCullough, M.D., to offer a warning to the American public.

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"Many have approached me at large events and have expressed concerns that the vaccine manufacturers were going to use mRNA on a non-emergency basis to make new and routine vaccinations for children and adults. Their concerns stem from the horrific safety profile of COVID-19 mRNA products and the complete lack of testing for genotoxicity, oncogenicity, and long-term side effects," he wrote online.

Dr. Peter McCullough

"Our great concern was that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines ushered in the context of an emergency would set a new precedent for more genetic vaccines that depart from all safety standards set forth previously by the U.S. FDA."

He said the new FDA approval was "done without the full dossier of safety information required for a routine approval including 2-3 years of observation for standard vaccines, and at least 5 to 15 years of observation for genetic transfer technology."

The FDA itself previously has called for researchers to "observe subjects for delayed adverse events for as long as 15 years following exposure to the investigational GT product, specifying that the LTFU observation should include a minimum of five years of annual examinations, followed by 10 years of annual queries of study subjects…"

McCullough's warning to the public was, "Moderna’s approval marks a clear inflection point for the U.S. FDA—synthetic mRNA will not have to meet safety standards previously put forth by the agency."

He explained, "The press release does not tell the public the absolute risk reduction for clinically significant outcomes was far below 1%, meaning this product will not have a significant clinical impact. Consumers should know that at the bare minimum, the following safety concerns exist for any pseudouridinated, synthetic mRNA product including mRESVIA(R):"

Myocarditis because mRNA of all types targets the heart.

Auto-immunity because of the generation of foreign RSV proteins and frameshifted peptides.

Genomic integration.

And oncogenicity.

He provided citations for studies confirming his concerns.

He said "uncontrolled production of stabilized RSV prefusion F glycoprotein" could be "more toxic" than the "Wuhan Spike protein" used against the Wuhan virus.

He said for RSV, an "antigen-based product" is preferable to an mRNA treatment.

Moderna chief Stephane Bancel was pushing the company's product in its announcement, saying, it is "the only RSV vaccine available in a pre-filled syringe designed to maximize ease of administration, saving vaccinators' time and reducing the risk of administrative errors. This approval is also the first time an mRNA vaccine has been approved for a disease other than COVID-19. With mRESVIA, we continue to deliver for patients by addressing global public health threats related to infectious diseases."

The company said a "Phase 3 clinical trial" reviewed 37,000 adults for about 3.7 months.

McCullough, in an interview with WND at the COVID pandemic was winding down, explained how he was under constant attack for his factual commentary on COVID, which shot promoters claim was misleading, including threats to his certification.

The world renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist – with 677 scientific publications to his credit – explained he was forced into a rigorous appeal process at great expense personally as well as professionally.

"I can tell you this is unprecedented. We've never had a federal board like this, recommend that a doctor become decertified because of political reasons," he told WND.

"There is no complaint regarding my critical care. No complaint regarding my board scores."

The American Board of Internal Medicine targeted statements McCullough made to the Texas Senate and wrote to accuse him of misinformation.

About the same time, McCullough was terminated from his editor-in-chief roles of two different journals, Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine and Cardiorenal Medicine.

In 2021, McCullough's scientific opinions on issues such as how the SARS-CoV-2 virus is spread, the case fatality rate, early treatments, masks, lockdowns and vaccines led to Baylor University Medical Center firing him. And three other academic institutions cut their ties with McCullough: Texas A&M College of Medicine, Texas Christian University and University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine.

See the WND interview with Dr. Peter McCullough:

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As Joe Biden appoints lesbians, homosexuals, transgenders and more who boast about their alternative lifestyle choices to key, influential – and lucrative – federal posts, it's taken a bar in Idaho to bring the issue back to reality.

It is the Old State Saloon in Eagle, Idaho, that has confirmed its celebration of the inaugural "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month."

"For without them, none of us would be here!" the company pointedly notes.

A bar in Idaho has declared June “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month”@oldstatesaloon in Eagle, ID will offer a free beer to heterosexual men on Mondays, and Wednesdays will be hetero couples day for 15% off. pic.twitter.com/MZPSMsRz8K

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) June 3, 2024

The company's announcement explains "June will be OSS's inaugural Heterosexual Awesomeness Month! Come join us all month to celebrate heterosexuals, for without them, none of us would be here! Each Monday will be Hetero Male Monday and any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer. Each Wednesday is Heterosexual couples day and each heterosexual couple will receive 15% off their bill. More events to be announced…"

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Joe Biden, in fact, has made the promotion of alternative sexual lifestyle choices one of his main term goals.

Joe Biden delivers remarks at a Pride celebration, Saturday, June 10, 2023, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House photo by Adam Schultz)

He's made homosexual Pete Buttigieg a federal transportation official, lesbian Karine Jean Pierre his spokeswoman and Rachel Levine, a man who calls himself a woman, a health official.

The Idaho bar, in fact, is trolling the nationally recognized "Pride Month" in June where leftists and progressives celebrate those lifestyle choices, according to a Gateway Pundit report.

The bar later added to its social media comments that its owners "love their LGBT patrons and will not be cancelling the celebrations."

Old State Saloon owner Mark Fitzpatrick (Photo by Kiira Turnbow)

On social media, the bar revealed, "Since we announced Hetero Awesomeness Month we’ve had some significant backlash: theft of our property, vendors refusing to fulfill our orders for ingredients, wedding catering cancelation, libel, slander – even the owner being falsely accused of being a sex offender!"

However, the bar reported, it's gotten "so much support from like-mined people who want to celebrate 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month' with us, and get the concept of it as being about freedom and being true to our personal values.'

The statement said, "Brave owner Mark Fitzpatrick said 'If the world wants to support 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month' by crowdfunding an even larger Hetero HQ, lets do it!' He and his team are passionate about building a Community Event Center where conservatism can be appreciated, including Hetero Awesomeness Month-style events every year."

After setting up a GoFundMe page, the bar announced, "Many have asked about sending financial support, so this platform is going to serve as the conduit for people who want to contribute to this vision and fund the construction of a physical location specifically for traditional and faith-based events, preserving Idaho’s amazing and conservative culture."

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

President Joe Biden’s latest policy proposals could jack up home prices even higher following high inflation and excessive government spending, economists told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Home prices surged to an all-time high in the latest data from March, up 6.5% across the country and 8.2% in the 10 largest cities in the U.S. compared to last year. Biden’s newest policy proposals of subsidizing housing would continue to fuel rapidly rising home prices that have been exacerbated by huge government spending under his administration, according to economists who spoke to the DCNF.

“Subsidies of every sort distort market prices, discourage private investment, and result in misallocated resources,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “On top of that, if the Biden housing assistance proposals go through without addressing the other sources of high prices — massive federal spending and crowding-out effects — it will result in little more than further price dislocations and misused resources — with a fresh layer of bureaucracy to boot.”

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Biden has attempted to create incentives for Americans to buy homes despite a shortage, reaffirming his call on Thursday for Congress to give a $5,000 annual tax credit for two years to first-time home buyers to offset mortgage costs. The White House claims that the subsidy would offset mortgage rates by “more than 1.5 percentage points” and increase the number of families buying homes by 3.5 million, according to a White House fact sheet.

The average rate for a 30-year mortgage has skyrocketed under Biden, sitting at just above 7% as of Thursday, up from the pandemic low of around 2.65% in January 2021. Mortgage rates peaked under Biden at 7.79% in October 2023.

The president’s plan to ease the housing shortage is to subsidize the construction or renovation of 2 million new homes, such as through expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit to build or preserve around 1.2 million subsidized rental units, according to the fact sheet.

“His plan to add 2 million homes is equally misguided because it would simply crowd out an equal amount of private sector construction by consuming the materials, labor, and equipment needed by homebuilders to supply the same quantity to the market,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF.

The Biden administration has also set its goal of reducing emissions produced from everyday household items like appliances, which already cost the average American family more than $9,000 in compliance efforts. In February, the Department of Energy finalized regulations that will limit Americans’ access to residential washers and dryers that produce too high of emissions

“The latest nonsensical, so-called green energy regulation will add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home and take about 90 years for the homeowner to recoup the additional cost,” Antoni told the DCNF. “Biden’s proposed subsidies to home buyers will only drive costs up further — this is Econ 101, for goodness’ sake! If you increase demand, prices will rise.”

Costs are still too high, but today’s report shows progress – with core inflation at its lowest since March 2021, and overall inflation down 60%.

I have a plan to lower housing and health care costs and will continue to call on corporations making record profits to lower prices.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 31, 2024

“Biden’s unprecedently large spending agenda has been the biggest culprit in driving up home prices,” Antoni told the DCNF. “He and his big-spender allies in Congress helped create 40-year-high inflation, which drove up home prices. The Fed’s accommodative monetary policy pushed interest rates so low that it further increased housing demand and home prices.”

Inflation surged under Biden to 9% in June 2022 following heightened government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has since decelerated to 3.4% as of April. The Federal Reserve began hiking its federal funds rates starting in March 2022 from near 0% to now over 5%, drastically increasing the cost of credit like mortgages.

“Another factor is the crowding-out effect of massive fiscal spending, such as is being undertaken under the Chips and Science Act,” Earle told the DCNF. “Building semiconductor foundries and other such facilities bids up the price of construction labor and building material in certain regions, drawing them away from homebuilders who would otherwise be adding supply to the market.”

The national debt totaled more than $34.6 trillion as of Wednesday, according to the Treasury Department. Under Biden, the debt has grown by around $6.87 trillion.

Biden has made large stimulus packages a key part of his broader agenda, passing the $280 billion Chips and Science Act in 2022 to subsidize research and construction in the semiconductor industry. The president also signed the American Rescue Plan in March 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, which authorized $1.9 trillion and $750 billion in new spending, respectively.

“Inflation then led to higher interest rates, and the shock of transitioning from near-zero rates completely froze over the housing market,” Antoni told the DCNF. “Homeowners have to sell at a steep premium today to make up for the loss of a low-interest rate mortgage. Similarly, homebuilders also have to sell at a premium because their costs are at an all-time high. Thus, the price of existing and new homes remains stubbornly high, and the supply remains low.”

Pending home sales declined 7.7% in April compared to last year in a major slowdown as the market continues to adjust to prohibitively high prices and elevated rates, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The U.S. currently has an estimated shortage of around 4 million to 7 million housing units due to developers being unable to keep up with and predict demand amid high interest rates, rising construction costs and restrictive building regulations. Additionally, a surge of illegal immigration under Biden, which has been exacerbated by his relaxed border policies, has also placed increased demand on shelter, further hampering the available supply of housing, particularly for rental units.

The price of shelter, which more closely tracks the price of rent, has increased 20.9% since January 2021, when Biden first took office, and is up 5.5% from just last year as of April.

The Biden administration has blamed the rising costs of housing on corporate greed, alleging that landlords are illegally colluding to fix prices higher, and the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission file a brief on the subject in November 2023. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released a report in May that showed that corporate markups were not the cause of the recent spike in inflation by comparing historical data from other economic recoveries.

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Pete McGinnis
Real Clear Wire

In June 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed a rule that would require stricter financial assurance standards for oil companies operating in the Outer Continental Shelf. This costly rule became final on April 15, 2024, but in the 10 months since its initial proposal, BOEM did nothing to alleviate concerns for smaller companies that comprise of 76 percent of oil and gas operators in the Gulf. As a result, many of these companies could be forced out of business by extreme and unnecessary costs from this rule. The situation threatens an estimated 36,000 jobs, more than $570 million in federal government royalties, and $9.9 billion from our GDP.

Records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show private meetings between Interior officials and representatives of the major oil companies as they cooperated on this rule. If you think that’s strange, you’re not alone. President Biden made clear in his campaign that he wanted to end oil and gas production on public lands. It’s baffling that Big Oil – among the administration’s most, if not the most, maligned businesses – would stand on the same side with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club who praised the rule. But needless government intervention makes strange bedfellows. Big Oil must think it won’t miss the small competitors the rule will drive from the market.

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The conditions for obtaining an oil and gas lease include meeting obligations for decommissioning. Leaseholders must provide “financial assurance” that they can bear the costs to cap wells and restore the site. If the financial strength of the company is insufficient, costly surety bonds can be purchased to satisfy the requirements. However, a quiet omission is the larger threat for smaller operators.

Historically, joint and several liability protected these small businesses from the financial demands of surety bonds. Most small businesses operating in the OCS have assumed a lease started by a bigger oil company. Typically, a large company drills the well and harvests a large amount of oil (and profits), and then sells the lease. Under this system, all companies who have ever held the lease are liable for decommissioning. Accordingly, if any company who could be liable for decommissioning can prove capable of paying for decommissioning, no company is required to buy surety bonds.

The new rule is largely silent on joint and several liability, causing some uncertainty. It appeared that all present leaseholders will have to prove their financial strength on their own. BOEM’s director Liz Klein cleared up some confusion – and confirmed fears about the rule – at the Energy and Minerals Subcommittee hearing on May 23. She said that BOEM “would be going to those financial assurance requirements before we went to predecessors” when asked by Rep. Garret Graves (La.) about this issue. In short, the rule's dysfunction appears quite intentional.

Mega oil companies will have little problem with the rule’s new credit rating requirement. Smaller companies, with fewer assets, may be unable to meet the new standards and need to purchase surety bonds. Small oil companies will now have to spend, conservatively, $379 million per year on surety bonds, but some estimates are closer to $800 million.

But all that assumes the market exists for those bonds. The Surety and Fidelity Association of America informed BOEM that the rule is either impossible or extremely cost-prohibitive for underwriting. The market supply of surety bonds in the OCS had already contracted before the rule. The problem is only going to get worse. Companies may not be able to acquire the needed financial assurances because the market likely will not even exist.

What makes matters worse is that all this cost covers a risk that is effectively a rounding error historically and in the context of the royalties flowing from the offshore oil and gas industry. According to BOEM, taxpayers have borne decommissioning liability totaling $58 million – from a single company that lacked predecessor owners of the platform to call on to cover unfunded cleanup costs. Against a conservative estimate of roughly $25 billion in decommissioning costs borne solely by private companies over the years, and the contribution of billions each year from all oil and gas royalties, the public is left to wonder whether this rule is a solution in search of a problem. The existing system of joint and several liability has protected the taxpayers and could continue to do so. The new costs to small oil businesses are for naught – unless the motivation is to make energy more expensive and drive out more companies.

That motivation makes sense for the radical environmental special interests, who have made clear they intend to shutter energy production at every opportunity. It doesn’t make sense for Big Oil companies, who stand to lose customers who buy their leases. Their support for the rule is short sighted.

Since BOEM knew this outlook and finalized the rule anyway, the motive must be something other than protecting taxpayers. Agency leadership at BOEM appears more concerned with penalizing responsible energy producers than protecting American families and businesses from out-of-control inflation stemming from their policies.

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George Washington on Mount Rushmore (Pixabay)

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Francis P. Sempa
Real Clear Wire

Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, has laid out in an essay in Foreign Affairs the key differences between what he rightly calls “American Globalism” and what has been called the “America First” approach to global affairs. Brands clearly is in the “American Globalist” camp, but unlike other supporters of the “liberal international order,” he does not label “America First” as isolationist. Instead, he lauds the global benefits to the post-1945 world order and worries that they will eventually disappear if Donald Trump regains the presidency. Brands doesn’t want the United States to be a “normal” country that only looks after its own national interests. What he fails to appreciate, however, is that the post-1945 world order he supports is already gone.

The geopolitics of 1945-1991 disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The war in Ukraine, despite the claims of many globalists, has not recreated the Soviet threat to Europe. If Ukraine, or parts of Ukraine, remain under Russian control, U.S. national security will not be endangered. Nor will Europe’s. NATO has doubled in size since 1991. Russia in relative power is considerably weaker than the Soviet Union was throughout the Cold War, and its ruling class no longer has a revolutionary ideology that legitimizes its continued rule and motivates international aggression. Of course, Russian imperialism has not disappeared from Russia’s foreign policy DNA, but the Russian empire of the Czars was never considered to be an existential threat to the United States (although the Monroe Doctrine included Russia in its restrictive warning), even when it occupied Alaska and parts of California in the 19^th century. And today’s Russia is having difficulty holding on to the eastern provinces of Ukraine, and has once again sent out feelers for a ceasefire to end the war.

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The architects of American foreign policy after the Second World War formed alliances and built-up U.S. military power to protect our national interests which were threatened by Stalin’s Soviet Union. They understood that American security depended on the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia. Our policymakers at the time had read their Mackinder, Spykman, and Burnham. Brands has read them, too, and has written insightfully about their geopolitical wisdom. The geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia continues to be important to U.S. security, but the primary threat has shifted from Europe to the Indo-Pacific--from Russia to China. Those who Brands labels as “America Firsters,” including Donald Trump, have recognized this. Indeed, it was in the Trump administration that the real “pivot” to Asia began to occur, led by key national security officials like Elbridge Colby, Matthew Pottinger, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. This shift was described in Josh Rogin’s magnificent book Chaos Under Heaven.

American Cold War foreign policy was not based on a selfless commitment to globalism. What Brands calls “American Globalism” was undertaken to protect U.S. national interests. Brands quotes Dean Acheson in 1952 to the effect that the post-World War II situation required the United States to broaden its view of our national interests. And so, it did. But the post-World War II world is gone. The Soviet threat that inspired our commitment to American Globalism is gone. It has been replaced by the Chinese threat which requires a shift in our commitments given the limits of American power.

The “American Globalism” supported by Brands fails to account for the limits of American power. Policymakers should continue to read Mackinder, Spykman and Burnham, but should also read Kennan and Lippmann who counseled prioritizing threats in the context of limited resources. Yet Brands still wants America to engage in democracy and human rights promotion and protect “intangible norms such as non-aggression.” He worries that a second Trump administration would “deglobalize” our defense, perhaps by withdrawing our nuclear umbrella from Europe and parts of Asia. He fears that Trump would no longer use American power to defend “distant states.” He expresses concern that Trump would not view our current alliances as “sacred.” He suggests that Trump would settle for a Western Hemispheric defense. He sides with the critics of “America First” who claim that a more restrained foreign policy “would be devastating to global stability.”

The “American Globalism” touted by Brands has not been an unvarnished success. It has made the nations of an entire continent content with resting their security on the United States and imposed an unnecessary burden on American taxpayers to provide for Europe’s common defense. It has led to an inconclusive war on the Korean peninsula that cost the lives of nearly 40,000 U.S. military personnel, a humiliating military defeat in Vietnam that cost the lives of nearly 60,000 U.S. military personnel, and more recent “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that resulted the deaths of more than 7,000 U.S. military personnel for no appreciable gain. It has led to the establishment of a national security state and what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” that impinges on the liberties of American citizens and profits from wars.

The American foreign policy tradition has much deeper roots that the post-Second World War order. It reaches back to George Washington and the wise counsel of his Farewell Address that warned against permanent alliances with, and passionate attachments to, other nations, while allowing for temporary alliances that serve our nation’s interests. Time and circumstances have not rendered the wisdom of Washington’s words obsolete.

Francis P. Sempa is the author of “Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century” and “America’s Global Role.”  Francis is also writes the montly Best Defense column for RealClearDefense.  Read his latest: Ukraine and the Pity of War.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

Topline: The U.S. government spent $17.2 billion to give “emergency” internet service to 23 million people during the pandemic. The lockdowns are long over, but Congress still wants to invest another $7 billion into the plan.

Key facts: The Affordable Connectivity Program started paying $30 monthly subsidies to 23 million families at the start of 2022 at a cost of $14 billion, following a similar one-year program that cost taxpayers $3.2 billion.

One-fifth of Americans currently qualify for the subsidies.

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The Wall Street Journal dubbed it the “Free Netflix Plan” and suggested that it actually increased internet prices because customers have less incentive to try and find the cheapest rate.

Full subsidies ended this April, but a bipartisan group of 230 House members has sponsored a bill that would pour even more money into the program.

That may be a needless expense. The Journal reports that many internet providers don’t expect to lose subscribers even if the subsidies run out because their customers will still be able to afford service.

A recent Federal Communications Commission survey is lacking in transparency about how many Americans actually require internet subsidies.

The FCC’s fact sheet boasts that 77% of subscribers say their internet service would be “disrupted” if the Affordable Connectivity Program ends. But reviewing the survey in more detail reveals that only 16% of subscribers say they’d be completely unable to afford internet service.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that over $3 billion of the federal funds went to just one company, Charter Communications. T-Mobile received the next most with $1.05 billion.

Background: In addition to the subsidies, the 2021 infrastructure law gave broadband providers $42.5 billion in federal money to improve their service and lower their prices to $30 a month — a price point that allowed the Affordable Connectivity Program to provide free internet.

It’s all part of the $90 billion that Congress allocated for President Joe Biden’s “Internet for All” plan, which spans 11 programs across four federal agencies.

These programs have gotten more expensive over time. Previous reporting from OpenTheBooks.com revealed that one initiative to provide internet to rural areas spent $4,700 per household in 2019 but jumped to $18,000 per household in 2023. The price increase meant only half as many families actually benefited from the program.

Summary: The federal government should focus on providing internet to those who absolutely can’t afford it, not those trying to binge their favorite TV show.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

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(ZEROHEDGE) – The International Cocoa Organization has admitted that the global cocoa shortage will be significantly larger than previously forecasted. Cocoa prices in New York have rebounded in recent weeks, inching above the $9,330 per ton mark to close the week.

First reported by Bloomberg, ICCO forecasted demand will exceed production by 439,000 tons, driven mainly by higher cocoa grinding in consuming countries. This is the second estimate for the current October-September year and is much larger than the February forecast for a deficit of 374,000 tons.

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After the 'great cocoa' run-up in New York in the first 3.5 months of the year, through the first half of April, from $4,000 a ton to over $12,000 (a record high), prices crashed into May, down 44%. But in the last nine trading sessions, prices have surged to $9,330, or about 39%.

Read the full story ›

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Newt Gingrich & Jim Frogue
Real Clear Wire

President Joe Biden’s full-frontal assault on Medicare is becoming visible to America’s seniors. It will result in fewer patient choices, reduced benefits, and ultimately worse health outcomes. Biden’s efforts, assisted by Congressional Democrats, are destroying Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Advantage was originally created as Medicare Part C in 1997 when I was Speaker of the House. It was introduced to create more comprehensive health plan options for seniors that included, for the first time, prescription drug coverage. The idea was to leverage consumer choice and market competition by insurers. Seniors can change plans annually for any reason.

More than 30 million seniors are in Medicare Advantage, which is more than half of all Medicare-eligible seniors. Enrollment has been on a “steady climb for the for past two decades,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. All MA enrollees have voluntarily chosen to join because it is better for their health.

A 2021 poll by Better Medicare Alliance showed seniors in MA have a 98 percent satisfaction rate. Ninety-five percent said it is important to have options beyond traditional Medicare. Ninety-three percent said a candidate’s position on MA would affect their vote. A bipartisan poll by the Healthcare Leadership Council in November, 2023 found more than 9-in-10 said they were pleased with their MA coverage.

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Last week, CVS Aetna Chief Financial Officer Tom Cowhey told investors that the company may shed up to 10 percent of their four million MA enrollees next year. Humana CFO Susan Diamond suggested 5 percent of their enrollees may be dropped. This translates into as many as 1.5 million seniors losing their coverage of choice. And this figure is dwarfed by the millions of MA beneficiaries who will see reduced coverage around prescription drugs, vision, dental, transportation, gym memberships, and many other popular benefits that are only offered in Medicare Advantage.

A new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation noted that most states offer Medicare Advantage plans to their state retirees. Twelve states, including key swing states Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, offer only Medicare Advantage plans. Senior voters in Philadelphia’s Main Line are unlikely to appreciate attacks on Medicare Advantage.

Biden’s war on Medicare doesn’t end with just Medicare Advantage. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act – passed in 2022 with exclusively Democratic votes and was signed into law by President Biden – is wrecking the popular Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage.

Medicare Part D was created by Congressional Republicans in 2003 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. For nearly two decades, Part D prescription drug-only plans were stable, affordable, competitive, and did something truly amazing for a health care program – stayed within original budget projections. To the surprise of even the bill’s authors, more than 1,000 plans signed up to participate within a year.

The Democrats promised that their Inflation Reduction Act would increase drug coverage for seniors and limit their out-of-pocket costs to $2,000 per year in 2025. It also allows seniors to pay their drug costs in installments. Sounds great. But seniors will be shocked on Oct. 1 when their Part D premiums skyrocket. Premiums were up 21percent last year and are likely to jump 50 percent this year. Awkward timing for Biden and fellow Democrats who are hoping to campaign on “lowering prescription drug costs.”

The Inflation Reduction Act is negatively impacting patient cost-sharing for prescription drugs in Medicare Part B as well. According to a new analysis in the trade publication Drug Channels, the inflation adjuster for most drugs is increasing instead of decreasing. Even instances where a drug price may be declining, it could still trigger big jumps in patient out-of-pocket costs.

IRA proponents boasted of their Medicare reforms saving $266 billion from 2023 to 2031. Even if that projection ends up holding true (and it doesn’t look likely), that amount is only a partial down payment on $670 billion for the IRA’s various green energy tax credits and new environmental spending.

How well is the Biden administration’s green energy spending going? The $7.5 billion in federal spending has resulted in only eight new charging stations for electric vehicles. And this at the same time consumer interest in electric cars is plummeting.

It is well known that the political left in America wants to move us toward government-run single payer health care. Imagine just one insurer and if you don’t like it you can’t leave. So, it is no surprise that Democrats would want to destroy the private sector’s involvement in Medicare, no matter how popular with seniors. But it is somewhat surprising that Democrats would be so politically obtuse to have smoking wreckage appear just before the presidential election. It remains to be seen if Republicans will capitalize.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of Gingrich 360. James Frogue was a senior health policy advisor to Trump for President in 2016. He is cofounder of FrogueClark .

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

Topline: The 2020 U.S. Census was the first to be conducted online, but not for a lack of trying — $810 million worth of trying, to be exact.

The Census Bureau spent five years trying to invent computers to use in the 2010 Census but ended up using paper and pencil once the project fell through.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.

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Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname "Dr. No" by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn't stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.

Coburn's Wastebook 2008 included 65 examples of outrageous spending, including the $810 million wasted preparing for the 2010 U.S. Census. The money would be worth $1.2 billion today.

Key facts: The Census Bureau awarded a $600 million contract to the Florida-based Harris Corporation in 2006 to invent handheld computers so census workers could take data electronically. It was meant to save money in the long run.

Coburn asked Census Director Louis Kincannon at a 2006 Senate hearing what would happen if the computers didn’t work.

He replied, “They will work. They have worked. You might as well ask me what happens if the Postal Service refuses to deliver the census form.”

Kincannon was wrong.

The Government Accountability Office later reported that the computers were over budget, behind schedule and were not properly tested. In 2008, Congress asked the Census Bureau to go back to using paper and pencil, even though the Harris Corporation contract had already been paid.

The decision forced Congress to transfer an emergency $210 million into the Census Bureau to help cover a shortfall in the cost of completing the census.

Critical quote: Congress and the Harris Corporation both laid most of the blame for the mishap on the Census Bureau.

Harris Corporation Vice President Cheryl Janey told the House Oversight Committee in 2008 that "It was just this past January, two years after the contract was first issued, that we received more than 400 new and altered contract modifications.”

Summary: If the Census Bureau is able to count every person living in the U.S., they should have no trouble counting all the money they wasted in the 2000s.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Terrence Keeley
Real Clear Wire

Laurel Collins – a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian House of Commons – has an odd habit of bringing her genitals into public policy debates. She felt so compelled on multiple occasions in response to testimony I responsibly delivered to Canada’s Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development in Ottawa last week. This was the line that led to her curious outburst:

“Business and finance have crucial roles to play in forging national and transnational outcomes – including greater social inclusivity and environmental sustainability – but their most appropriate roles have become increasingly maligned and misunderstood as climate hysterics have become more commonplace.”

This was her response:

“I am wildly emotional. {Climate} is the existential crisis of our time. To hear that asking for high ambition is climate hysteria makes me wildly emotional…. Climate emergencies are not gender neutral. When I think about my womb and the two children I bore from that womb and the future we are leaving them, I am wildly emotional…. We need to think about the intersection of gender and the climate crisis.”

Thank you, MP Collins, for vibrantly illustrating my point on hysterics.

The Environment and Sustainable Development Committee was dealing with a serious policy matter: whether to multiply ESG disclosures on Canadian businesses and/or impose ESG investment restrictions on Canadian pension plans in furtherance of global net zero goals. It’s unclear what these matters have to do with MP Collins’ womb. As a rational being who accepts the reality of climate change, I made several modest points. First, to decarbonize industries and energy grids, we need to invest rather than divest. Second, ESG investment strategies that fail to account for the decades-long tail of the energy transition have and will continue to underperform broader strategies that recognize oil and gas will be consumed in large quantities for the foreseeable future.

Cue the hysterics. To climate catastrophists like Laurel Collins, there is no price too big nor any sacrifice too great to endure in pursuit of Paris Accord targets – even when those costs and sacrifices would do nothing to alter current climate dynamics. After all, for Collins, climate change is a mortal threat to her two children and their generation. Shutting down Canada’s fossil fuel companies and foisting ever higher carbon taxes on the poorest Canadian citizens are but minor inconveniences to save the produce of her womb from extinction. In further disregard to Canadian pensioners, she also favors a permanent wealth tax on corporations. Canadian pensioners can go hungry and ill-housed for all she cares; after all, her children’s lives are at stake.

Hysterics, pure and simple. As we all know, the likelihood of Laurel Collin’s children dying from climate change is virtually zero. Suggesting that carbon neutrality by 2050 is a do-or-die, existential cliff for humanity is senseless, reminiscent of all the misguided hype we heard leading up to Y2K. “Most of us will wake up on January 1, 2050 to find the world is still miraculously bustling along, not collapsing into a ball of fire,” I stated later in my testimony. But why lose the chance to be hysterical in front of a camera when what’s really at stake are hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, hundreds of billions worth of Canadian pension savings, and energy security for every Canadian citizen – 42 million and growing – for centuries to come.

Climate change is real, as are climate risks. But so are other human needs. As I concluded in front of the Committee, “If the global economy does not continue to grow, or if pension savings do not continue to increase in value relative to inflation, it won’t much matter what the global temperature is: millions, if not billions, will be unable to feed, clothe and/or shelter themselves.” Trade off deniers are no better than climate deniers.

We should end genital-obsessed hysterics around climate and design lasting, multi-faceted solutions. As Pope Francis has said, “we must combat poverty, restore dignity to the excluded and protect nature all at the same time.”

Terrence R. Keeley is CEO of the Impact Evaluation Lab and author of Sustainable.

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(JUST THE NEWSs) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking to delay a healthcare worker minimum wage increase that will cost the state $4 billion this year alone as the state faces a budget crisis.

Among Newsom’s proposals to cut the deficit from $73 billion to $7 billion are tying the state’s healthcare minimum wage increases, which would hike the wage to $23 per hour this June cost the state $4 billion in just the first year, to the financial position of the state’s general fund and exempt state facilities. The state’s minimum wage is $16 per hour, which means the increase would raise base labor costs by 44%.

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“The Administration is … to add an annual 'trigger' to make the minimum wage increases subject to General Fund revenue availability, clarify the exemption for state facilities, and make other implementation clarifications,” wrote the governor in his January budget proposal.

Read the full story ›

One state has taken its regulation of abortion to a new level: Declaring that the chemicals used for abortions are controlled substances.

"Chemical abortions harm women and cruelly kill defenseless children in the womb. Abortion clinics have attempted to thwart the laws of the states by distributing abortion drugs that contravene the clear intent of the duly passed legislation. This is a commonsense law will protect women and children," explained Mat Staver, the chief of Liberty Counsel, which has fought abortion advocates in courts all across the nation.

The organization confirmed while abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood and Joe Biden appointees in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration claim chemical abortion is "safe," the evidence shows severe complications have been documented.

It is Gov. Jeff Landry who signed into law the law classifying Mifepristone and Misoprostol as "Schedule IV" drugs.

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Lawmakers had approved the law 27-9 in the state Senate and 63-29 in the state House.

"The law criminalizes possessing the two-drug regimen without a valid prescription adding it to the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances list. In addition, the measure also makes it a crime to coerce 'criminal abortion by means of fraud,' which is the act of giving Mifepristone to an unsuspecting pregnant woman to induce an abortion," Liberty Counsel reported.

The report explained the law exempts pregnant women from prosecution for possessing the drugs for their own use, but provides possible jail time and fines up to $5,000 for others to possess.

Using the drugs secretly on unsuspecting women can result in jail time of up to 10 years and up to $100,000 in fines.

The state of Louisiana already bans nearly all abortions, providing exceptions for the life of the mother and fatal fetal anomalies.

State Sen. Thomas Pressly, who sponsored the plan, said, he named it the "The Catherine and Josephine Herring Act" after his sister was given Mifepristone, without her knowledge, by her then-husband.

"He had obtained the drugs in Mexico. The drugs caused Catherine serious, lasting side effects and the premature birth of her daughter, Josephine, who survived. Pressly noted his sister discovered the 'poison' attempts and then took the abortion reversal pill to save Josephine’s life. Mason Herring later pleaded guilty to assaulting a pregnant person and injuring a child and was sentenced to 180 days in jail," the report said.

It's not the only potential move against the abortion drugs at hand.

Liberty Counsel noted the U.S. Supreme Court is to decide soon whether Mifepristone was improperly deregulated by the FDA. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already has taken that position.

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President Donald J. Trump gives a fist pump to the press Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, prior to boarding Marine One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, to begin his trip to Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Philip Wegmann
Real Clear Wire

Shortly after 5:00 p.m. Thursday, a New York jury brought the country to an unprecedented brink by finding Donald Trump guilty of financial fraud, making the former president a convicted felon for now (unless or until the conviction is overturned on appeal) and making the current presidential election a referendum, he now hopes, not just on his record against Joe Biden’s but the entire political system.

Republicans call it a miscarriage of justice. Democrats, proof that no one is above the law. History will remember it as a new chapter: Donald J. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.

“We didn’t do anything wrong. I am a very innocent man,” said Trump, dressed in his trademark blue suit and too-long tie. Then a familiar script as the former president embraced martyrdom arguing that his conviction was part of a larger war for the soul of a nation. “I'm fighting for our country. I'm fighting for our Constitution,” he said. “Our whole country is being rigged right now.”

Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Each count carries a maximum prison term of four years. Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just four days before Trump is slated to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive time.

Although questions abound about the fate of the former president and the nation, there is little to no chance Trump will end up behind bars before the end of the year. He is expected to remain free on bail pending appeal, a process that is not likely to be exhausted until well after Election Day. The case now shifts to the appellate courts – as well as the proverbial court of public opinion.

Democrats have been desperate to cast the election as a rematch of Biden v. Trump with an emphasis on character, not a judgment on President Biden’s first term in office. They may have gotten what they wanted. “Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter, and a threat to this country,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “He can now add one more title to his list – a felon.” Sources close to the former president prefer a different description.

A senior Trump campaign official predicted weeks before the decision that a conviction would “make him the Nelson Mandela of America,” comparing Biden to Russian President Vladimar Putin for his imprisonment of political rival and late dissident Alexei Navalny.

The framework suits Trump, who blasted out an email fundraiser shortly after his conviction calling himself “a political prisoner,” arguing both that “justice is dead in America” and “our country has fallen.”  This kind of rhetoric, complete with comparisons of the U.S. to the third world, is likely to accelerate in the weeks and months ahead. Both major presidential campaigns now argue that the other could end democracy.

“These people would do anything and everything to hold onto political power. They don’t care if they destroy our country in the process,” said the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

Martyrdom has been a central theme of Trump’s return to politics. After his New York indictment last year, the GOP nomination was practically a fait accompli, and his campaign nearly told RCP as much at the time. It is unclear whether that phenomenon will translate to a general election.

Court has not crippled Trump so far, however, and Biden has not surpassed his rival a single time this year in the RealClearPolitics Average. Well aware of those numbers, the Biden campaign attempted to tamp down jubilation on the left over the bad legal news consuming the right. They warned that Trump could still win. “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box,” said Biden-Harris communications director Michael Tyler.

Biden has yet to address the conviction. Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office reacted to the news only by saying, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.” By remaining silent, however, he ceded the spotlight to Trump, allowing his rival to shape the first 24 hours of the narrative.

Nothing bars Trump from running for president as a felon. It is unclear, however, if he will be able to cast a vote for himself while his case goes through the appeal process. A more immediate consequence of the trial ending: Trump’s schedule just opened up, and Trump can return to the campaign trail in earnest.

Sources in regular contact with the former president report that the prospect of prison has not cast a shadow over Trump personally. One told RCP that he “sincerely believes” that divine providence now guides his steps and “that he has been chosen for a time such as this.” He has six months to convince the country to return him to the White House, and in the most extreme circumstance, to preserve his freedom. Republicans were as bullish over those odds as they were angry.

“Today's verdict from this partisan, corrupt, and rigged trial just guaranteed Trump's landslide victory on November 5, 2024,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, told RCP.

Former Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump, echoed that sentiment, warning that a conviction would backfire on Democrats. “The chain reaction will cause infinitely more damage than whatever they think they are preventing,” he told RCP.

The conviction created a tidal wave of donations as Trump began fundraising almost immediately after leaving court. The Trump campaign buckled briefly at the surge. The fundraising website, WinRed, temporarily crashed under the strain of heavy traffic.

“I’ll lose friends for this,” wrote Shaun Maguire in a lengthy post on X announcing his $300,000 donation to Trump. A partner at Sequoia Capital and a former Democratic donor, Maguire said that “lawfare” in part inspired his donation: “Fairness is one of my guiding principles in life and simply, these cases haven't been fair for Trump.”

Following the conviction, there was a discernable shift on the right among conservatives who normally argue that the judicial system ought to remain apolitical. Some Trump allies described the guilty verdict as “the Rubicon.” Asked about the new Republican appetite to use the courts to go after political opponents, Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller told RCP that “the good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed.”

The field of potential vice-presidential candidates snapped to attention in their immediate condemnation of the conviction. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said the verdict was “a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.” Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance called it “election interference.” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, “absolute injustice” that “erodes our justice system.”

“From the start, the weaponized scales of justice were stacked against President Trump. Joe Biden, Far Left Democrats, and their stenographers in the mainstream media have made it clear they will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House,” said New York Rep. Elise Stefanik in a lengthy statement to reporters.

“This Lawfare should scare every American,” said a more succinct North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. “The American people will have their say in November.”

The safest thing for any Republican elected official anywhere Thursday night was to attack the judicial system. Defending that institution, meanwhile, was verboten. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent Trump critic now running for Senate, appeared to miss the memo when he shared a statement calling for GOP leaders to “reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”

Replied Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump advisor dispatched to oversee the Republican National Convention, “You just ended your campaign.”

The most common sentiment among Trump’s close circle of advisors and friends was that something had changed permanently, not in the former president personally but in the country.

“Today marks a turning point,” said Brooke Rollins, who led Trump’s Domestic Policy Council before launching the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank often described as a Trump White House in waiting. “I see it as a fire that has been lit. I see the sleeping giant of the American people awakened.”

On the second day of jury deliberations, Trump had kept up appearances with a smile. A verdict was not expected Thursday, and by the afternoon, Judge Juan Merchan was preparing to dismiss the jury for the day. The foreman replied instead that the jury had reached a verdict. He read each of the 34 charges and followed by a one-word pronouncement: “guilty."

A smile turned to a grimace, and Trump, surrounded by his defense team, stared forward stone-faced as he listened to the verdict and American history. He vowed in brief remarks to reporters afterwards that he would “fight till the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell.”

It was like so many of the pronouncements he has made after so many of the other controversies that have defined his political life. It was also different. A loss, if the conviction stands, could mean prison. Rollins predicted that Trump would persevere, like he has before. “From my perspective,” she said, “it is almost Biblical to see this sort of courage and leadership and unwillingness to back down even in the face of seemingly unsurmountable odds.”

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New York Attorney General Letitia James

A state bureaucrat orchestrating an attack on pro-life centers has taken a hit on her campaign in court.

Thomas More Society officials say a court has rejected a demand from New York Attorney General Letitia James to move litigation against her into her back yard.

Peter Breen, the head of litigation for the society, explained, "For the past month, Letitia James has tried to illegally frighten and harass New York’s pregnancy help organizations into silence, threatening them with lawsuits if they keep speaking their truthful message about Abortion Pill Reversal. We brought suit in Rochester, near to where most of the organizations are headquartered and work.

"Instead of agreeing to a convenient venue, James then sued these charitable organizations in Manhattan, despite the fact that not a single one of the organizations is located there. We are pleased that the court in Monroe County agreed that the cases should be consolidated together and heard in Rochester, the 'most fair, appropriate and logistically convenient venue,' and not in Manhattan, which has no connection to the case."

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He continued, "We look forward to defending Heartbeat International, CompassCare, and all of New York’s pregnancy help organizations targeted by James’ unconstitutional witch-hunt. New Yorkers deserve to know that Abortion Pill Reversal is not just possible but safe and effective, and our clients have the right to share that truth with women who are undergoing a chemical abortion that they do not want to continue."

A court order rejected James' demands that the litigation move to her back yard.

New York Supreme Court Justice Sam Valleriani earlier issued a consolidation order, combining a lawsuit brought by James against pregnancy help organizations with the previously filed case brought by the organizations in Rochester’s Monroe County Court. James had tried to relocate the lawsuit against her from its Rochester venue to New York County Court in Manhattan, hundreds of miles aways.

But her attempt failed.

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[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Adam Andrzejewski
Real Clear Wire

Topline: Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner claimed his city had a $420 million surplus before leaving office in December.

That’s not the case. In reality, the city is completely “broke” with a deficit of $160 million, according to Mayor John Whitmire.

Key facts: The Greater Houston Partnership called Turner’s dollar figure a “budgetary sleight of hand” because it did not include many of the huge liabilities on the city’s books.

Turner ignored $3 billion in deferred maintenance on roads, $3 billion in upcoming costs for water infrastructure and more, according to the Partnership.

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The city has avoided problems thus far by using $1 billion in federal COVID relief funds, but those will soon run dry.

The think tank Truth in Accounting gave Houston a letter grade of “D” in its annual “State of the Cities” report and estimated that it would take $9,000 from each taxpayer to pay off the city’s debt.

City Controller Chris Hollins said the city will likely ask voters to fund a bond in November to cover the deficit.

Whitmire proposed a 5% budget cut to all city agencies except the police and fire department.

Houston is already struggling to pay its current expenses. The city recently agreed to give its firefighters $650 million in backpay because they’ve been working without a contract for seven years and made less than their peers in other large Texas cities.

To pay for it, Houston is selling taxpayers a bond that won’t be paid off for 25 to 30 years and will be worth over $1 billion with interest.

Background: Houston’s situation might improve if it could cut down its $1.6 billion payroll.

For example, Houston paid out salaries of nearly $400,000 each to 12 different doctors last year, according to OpenTheBooks.com.

Mayor Turner made $236,000 — a hefty salary, and one of the largest in the country – even for a big city mayor.

Critical quote: Chuck Mahron, founder of the urban planning group Strong Towns, said Houston’s financial issues run too deep to be solved by simply raising taxes.

“Houston is the North American growth pattern on steroids, right; it is kind of the poster child of horizontal expansion – Houston has just outgrown itself,” Marohn told Texas Standard.

“It has built more roads, more pipes, more sidewalks, more infrastructure, more drainage areas, more parks than its tax base has the capacity to sustain … The things that Houston has done to generate growth and prosperity has actually made it insolvent. And that is the core problem they’re dealing with.”

Summary: It’s bad enough that major cities in America are millions of dollars in debt. It’s even worse when officials hide that fact from taxpayers.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

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Manhattan skyline

(THE GATEWAY PUNDIT) – Real estate investor Grant Cardone appeared on the Fox Business Network this week following the latest Trump verdict and said that it is going to have far reaching effects on the city’s economy.

He suggested that nobody (including him) wants to do business in New York City anymore because they no longer trust the political and legal system there. Cardone says that the people who are invested in his company wouldn’t even allow him to do business there.

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New York City is already struggling under the weight of crime, reduced revenue due to people leaving, and the border crisis. Now they are also going to deal with fewer investments from people just like Cardone.

Read the full story ›

Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The union representing flight attendants at American Airlines told members Friday night to prepare for a possible strike, which could affect Americans’ summer travel plans.

Stanford University

[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Ben Weingarten
Real Clear Wire

This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps "the most massive attack against free speech" ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech – characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information – on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.

The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development. Reporting by RCI and other outlets – including Racket News' new "Censorship Files" series, and continuing installments of the "Twitter Files" series to which it, Public, and others have contributed – and congressional probes continue to reveal the substantial breadth and depth of contemporary efforts to quell speech that authorities deem dangerous. But the roots of what some have dubbed the censorship industrial complex stretch back decades, born of an alliance between government, business, and academia that Democrat Sen. William Fulbright termed the "military-industrial-academic-complex" – building on President Eisenhower's formulation – in a 1967 speech.

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RCI reviewed public records and court documents and interviewed experts to trace the origins and evolution of the government's allegedly unconstitutional censorship efforts. It is a rich history that includes the battles to defeat America's adversaries in World War II and the Cold War; the development of Silicon Valley; the post-9/11 War on Terror; the Obama administration's transition to targeting domestic violent extremism broadly; and the rise of Donald Trump.

If there is one ever-present player in this saga, it is the storied institution of Stanford University. Its idyllic campus has served as the setting over the last 70-plus years for a pivotal public-private partnership linking academia, business, and the national security apparatus. Stanford's central place, particularly in developing technologies to thwart the Soviet Union during the Cold War, would persist and evolve through the decades, leading to the creation of an entity called the Stanford Internet Observatory that would serve as the chief cutout – in critics' eyes – for government-driven censorship in defense of "democracy" during the 2020 election and beyond.

Stanford's Rise to Military-Industrial-Academic Complex Powerhouse

Although it bears the name of the railroad magnate who founded the school in 1885, Leland Stanford, the powerhouse university we know of today, represents the vision of another man, Frederick Terman.

The son of a Stanford psychology professor, Terman began his tenure at the campus where he was reared teaching electrical engineering during the 1920s and 1930s. He also harbored ambitions to turn the university and its surrounding area into a major high-tech hub to rival that of MIT on the East Coast.

Like his MIT colleagues, Terman was also deeply connected to the government's budding national security apparatus. During World War II he was tabbed to head Harvard's Radio Research laboratory, established by the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development to develop countermeasures against enemy radars. Through its good work, the lab would save an estimated 800 Allied bomber aircrafts.

Returning to Stanford with the insights and contacts he had developed during the war, Terman took over as the dean of the engineering school in 1946 determined to implement an ambitious plan: to use government funding to erect "steeples of excellence" in critical disciplines that would continually attract new investments in a virtuous cycle that would raise Stanford to preeminence among research institutions.

Terman would win Pentagon contracts to help fund Stanford's Electronics Research Laboratory and the Applied Electronics Laboratory, which included work on classified military programs, bringing Stanford firmly into the military-industrial-academic complex fold. Additional labs – some engaged in basic or theoretical research, and others applied research – followed, deepening the school's ties to the national security state during the Cold War.

While reportedly advising every major branch of the military, Terman cultivated ties with private industry. He encouraged graduates to start firms in nearby communities that would come to be known as Silicon Valley, and urged professors to consult.

In 1951, Terman helped establish the Stanford Industrial Park, a high-tech cooperative on university land that would attract electronics firms and defense contractors – the first such university-owned industrial park in the world. Its tenants would include among others Hewlett-Packard, GE, Eastman Kodak, and a host of other notables, later including the likes of Facebook and Tesla. Lockheed Martin would relocate its Missiles Systems Division to Silicon Valley in 1956 and go on to serve as the largest industrial employer in Silicon Valley during the Cold War.

Under Terman's leadership, first as engineering school dean and then as provost, Stanford and the firms it helped incubate and attract generated advances in everything from microwave electronics and electronic warfare, to missiles and satellites, and semiconductors and computers – meeting the demands of military and civilian consumers alike.

Stuart Leslie, author of "The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial Complex at MIT and Stanford," wrote that "[b]y nearly every measure" Terman achieved his goal of challenging "MIT for leadership" in the sciences. The relationship Terman fostered between the feds and Silicon Valley companies would be responsible for producing "all of the United States Navy's intercontinental ballistic missiles, the bulk of its reconnaissance satellites and tracking systems, and a wide range of microelectronics that became integral components of high-tech weapons and weapons systems" during the Cold War, according to one study.

Leslie Berlin, formerly a historian of the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University, would write that "All of modern high tech has the US Department of Defense to thank at its core, because this is where the money came from" underwriting research and development.

One Stanford institution to which the money flowed with an indirect link to current controversies regarding social media censorship was the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Incorporated on campus as a nonprofit in 1946, it would pursue lucrative contracts for often-classified military R&D projects. By 1969, SRI ranked third among think tanks in total value of defense contracts garnered.

Anti-war activists helped force Stanford to divest from the outfit in 1970 – though it would continue to work with government on an array of initiatives. Among them was one building on a Pentagon-backed project to network computers, known as ARPANET. In 1977, an Institute van would transmit data in what is regarded as the first internet connection.

Stanford would open an Office of Technology Licensing in 1970 to manage the university's growing IP portfolio. The office would execute thousands of licenses covering many thousands more inventions – sometimes in tandem with the security state. For example, Google was built in part on National Science Foundation-supported research; its development has also been tied to work done under a joint NSA and CIA grant.

Terrorism Rejuvenates and Transforms the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex

The 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 would reinvigorate and fundamentally transform a military-industrial-academic complex that had demobilized to an extent following the Cold War, during which it had been largely foreign-facing. It would come to see not only foreign clandestine communications but public conversations between Americans promoting disfavored viewpoints as national security concerns.

To combat jihadists, Washington demanded sophisticated new surveillance tools and weapons. When combined with the explosion in communications technology, and the creation of massive new reams of digital data that could be collected and analyzed, Big Tech would prove a natural supplier.

The advent of social media – including Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006) – would significantly impact these efforts.

To the public, social media platforms comprised a digital public square that empowered citizens as journalists and enabled the free flow of ideas and information.

But governments and non-state actors, including terrorist groups, realized they could harness the power of such platforms, and use them for intelligence gathering, waging information warfare, and targeting foes.

Initially U.S. authorities focused almost exclusively on foreign jihadist organizations' exploitation of social media. That began to change when the Obama administration created a series of policies and associated entities – most of which worked closely with Big Tech and academia – targeting a broader array of adversaries.

In 2011, the Obama administration deployed its "Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States" strategy. While identifying Al-Qaeda as "our current priority," the policy broadened the national security apparatus focus to "all types of extremism that leads to violence, regardless of who inspires it."

That same year, the State Department stood up an entity aimed at "supporting agencies in Government-wide public communications activities targeted against violent extremism and terrorist organizations" that in 2016 would morph into the Global Engagement Center (GEC). It would serve as a broader "interagency entity" that would not only partner to build "a global network of positive messengers against violent extremism" including NGOs, but leverage data analytics "from both the public and private sectors to better understand radicalization dynamics online."

Also that year, the Defense Department announced its Social Media in Strategic Communication program, launched to "track ideas and concepts to analyze patterns and cultural narratives" as part of an effort "to develop tools to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information, reducing adversaries' ability to manipulate events." Millions of dollars flowed to both Big Tech and academic hubs in connection with the project.

In conjunction with these programs, the Obama administration also consulted with outside advisors to study how jihadist groups engaged in online disinformation campaigns. Included among the advisors was Renée DiResta, future technical research manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory – which would later play a key role in the government's effort to identify and quell speech disfavored by the government.

With terrorist organizations increasingly exploiting social media platforms to proliferate propaganda and in pursuit of other malign ends, Silicon Valley came to play an increasingly key role in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. As Kara Frederick wrote in a 2019 report for the Center for a New American Security, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies:

… hired talent to fill gaps in their counterterrorism expertise, created positions to coordinate and oversee global counterterrorism policy, convened relevant players in internal forums, and instituted a combination of technical measures and good old-fashioned analysis to root out offending users and content. Major and minor tech companies coordinated with each other and with law enforcement to share threat information, drafted policies around preventing terrorist abuse of their platforms, updated their community guidelines, and even supported counter-speech initiatives to offer alternative messaging to terrorist propaganda.

Frederick, now at the Heritage Foundation, would know. A counter-terrorism analyst at the Department of Defense from 2010-16, she departed for Facebook where she helped create and lead its Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program.

Facebook's chief security officer during Frederick's tenure, Alex Stamos – future founder of the Stanford Internet Observatory – would boast that "there are several terrorist attacks that you've never heard of because they didn't happen because we caught them ... some local law enforcement agency … took credit for it, but it was actually our team that found it and turned it over to them with a bow on it."

"Once clearly public sector responsibilities," Stamos would add, "are now private sector responsibilities."

Trump's Election Catalyzes the Creation of the Censorship Industrial Complex

With government broadening its focus to domestic violent extremism and its nexus to social media, and a revolving door opening between the national security apparatus and the platforms, Donald Trump's election would prove a catalyzing event in the creation of what critics would describe as the censorship industrial complex.

His victory, which followed Brexit, another populist uprising that stunned Western elites, sent shockwaves from Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley.

A narrative quickly arose that social media was to blame for Trump's unexpected win. It held that dark forces, especially Russia, had manipulated voters through dishonest posts, and that the platforms enabled Trump's victory through allowing supporters to advance corrosive conspiracy theories.

The national security apparatus sprang to action.

In January 2017, outgoing Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson made protecting election infrastructure part of his agency's mandate. Subsequently:

• DHS would develop a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force focusing on "election infrastructure disinformation."
• The State Department's Global Engagement Center would broaden its interagency mandate to counter foreign influence operations.
• The FBI would establish a Foreign Influence Task Force to "identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States," with an explicit focus on voting and elections.

These key components of what would come to be known as the censorship industrial complex – one that would ultimately target the speech of Trump's own supporters and the president himself – emerged at the very time he was fending off the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory that gave rise to them.

Government concerns over foreign meddling in domestic politics would drive demand for putatively private sector actors, often with extensive government ties and funding, to engage in what the NGOs cast as research and analysis of such malign operations on social media.

In 2018, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee would solicit research, including from DiResta, on Russia's social media meddling – research that would bolster something of a pressure campaign against social media companies to get them to quit dithering on content moderation.

The committee also commissioned Graphika, a social media analytics firm founded in 2013, to co-author a report on Russian social media meddling. Graphika lists DARPA and the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative, which funds "basic social science research," on a company website detailing its clients and research partners. It would serve as one of the four partners that would comprise the Stanford Internet Observatory-led Election Integrity Partnership – a key cog in government-driven speech policing during and after the 2020 election.

Another entity that would join the Stanford-led quartet is the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, established in 2016. Funded in part by the Departments of State – including through the Global Engagement Center – and Energy, the think-tank counts among its directors CIA chiefs and Defense secretaries. The lab's senior director is Graham Bookie, a former top aide to President Obama on cybersecurity, counterterrorism, intelligence, and homeland security issues. In 2018, Facebook announced an election partnership with the lab wherein the two parties would work on "emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world."

The third of four entities later to join the Election Integrity Partnership was the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, formed in 2019. Stanford grad and visiting professor Kate Starbird co-founded the Center. The National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research have provided funding for Dr. Starbird's social media work.

That same year, the Stanford Internet Observatory emerged. Founded by Alex Stamos, who had led substantial research on Russia's social media operations while Chief Security Officer at Facebook and routinely interfaced with national security agencies throughout his cybersecurity career, the Observatory would serve as a "cross-disciplinary initiative comprised of research, teaching and policy engagement addressing the abuse of today's information technologies, with a particular focus on social media … includ[ing] the spread of disinformation, cybersecurity breaches, and terrorist propaganda."

The Observatory is a program of Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, which counts former Obama National Security Council official and Russian Ambassador Michael McFaul, among other notables on the faculty list with backgrounds in or ties to the security state.

Stamos stood up the Observatory with a $5 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies – which also gave $1 million to Starbird's work. The Craigslist founder's charitable vehicle contributed some $170 million to "journalism, countering harassment against journalists, cybersecurity and election integrity," between 2016 and 2020, areas he argued constituted the "battle spaces" of information warfare – information warfare waged implicitly against President Trump and his supporters.

The National Science Foundation also provided large infusions of money to the sprawling network of academic entities, for-profit firms, and think tanks that would emerge in the "counter-disinformation space."

This network produced a mass of research and analysis redefining and expanding the perceived threat of free and open social media. It argued America was plagued by a pandemic of "misinformation," "disinformation," and "malinformation," with a nexus to domestic violent extremism that could be created and disseminated by almost anyone – thereby making everyone a potential target for surveillance and censorship.

Ideas authorities found troubling would come to be treated as tantamount to national security threats to be neutralized – as the future Biden administration would codify in the first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

DiResta described this paradigm shift in a 2018 article for Just Security – a publication incidentally also funded by Newmark.

"Disinformation, misinformation, and social media hoaxes have evolved from a nuisance into high-stakes information war," DiResta wrote.

She continued:

…Traditional analysis of propaganda and disinformation has focused fairly narrowly on understanding the perpetrators and trying to fact-check the narratives (fight narratives with counter-narratives, fight speech with more speech). Today's information operations, however, are … computational. They're driven by algorithms and are conducted with unprecedented scale and efficiency. … It's time to change our way of thinking about propaganda and disinformation: it's not a truth-in-narrative issue, it's an adversarial attack in the information space. Info ops are a cybersecurity issue.

This re-definition of what arguably amounts to speech policing of social media as security policy could be seen a year later when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged that "NATO must remain prepared for both conventional and hybrid threats: From tanks to tweets." (Emphasis RCI's)

The Censorship Industrial Complex Mobilizes for the 2020 Election

In the run-up to the 2020 election, DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which took as its mandate protecting election infrastructure, would expand its focus to include combatting misinformation and disinformation perceived as threatening the security of elections – regardless of its source. This would ultimately encompass the protected political speech of Americans, including speculation and even satire to the extent it called into question or undermined state-approved narratives about an unprecedented mass mail-in election.

Social media companies, chastened after having come under withering political and media attack for their content moderation policies during the 2016 election, would recruit dozens of ex-security state officials to fill their "Trust and Safety" teams dealing with policing speech to likewise combat this purported threat.

Frederick told RealClearInvestigations that Silicon Valley leaders believed the teams' past focus on Islamic terror, which receded under Trump, reflected a bias, requiring platforms to "reorient toward domestic extremism" – the new target of the political establishment.

Combining the platforms' political leanings with the tools they had developed to take on jihadists, in Frederick's words, would create a "powder keg" threatening to obliterate Americans' speech.

Still, the Constitution stood in the way to the extent the government wanted to police the platforms' speech. In the run-up to the 2020 election, both federal authorities and like-minded NGOs recognized a "gap:" No federal agency had "a focus on, or authority regarding, [identifying and targeting for suppression] election misinformation originating from domestic sources," as the Stanford Internet Observatory-led Election Integrity Partnership would put it. DiResta acknowledged any such project faced "very real First Amendment questions."

In response, the government helped create a workaround via that very Election Integrity Partnership – a government driven,  advised, and coordinated enterprise run by NGOs to surreptitiously surveil and seek to censor speech that did not comport with government-favored narratives on election administration and outcomes.

One hundred days from the 2020 election, the Stanford Internet Observatory, alongside Graphika, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, and University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public launched the EIP as a "model for whole-of-society collaboration," aimed at "defending the 2020 election against voting-related mis- and disinformation."

As RCI previously reported, the project had two main objectives:

First, EIP lobbied social media companies, with some success, to adopt more stringent moderation policies around "content intended to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters as to election processes, or delegitimize election results without evidence. …

Second, EIP surveilled hundreds of millions of social media posts for content that might violate the platforms' moderation policies. In addition to identifying this content internally, EIP also collected content forwarded to it by external "stakeholders," including government offices and civil society groups. EIP then flagged this mass of content to the platforms for potential suppression.

As many as 120 analysts, records show, created tickets identifying social media content they deemed objectionable. They forwarded many tickets to officials at platforms including Google, Twitter, and Facebook which "labeled, removed, or soft blocked" thousands of unique URLs – content shared millions of times.

An RCI review of the nearly 400 of those tickets produced to the House Homeland Security Committee found that government agencies – including entities within the FBI, DHS (CISA), and State Department (GEC) – involved themselves in nearly a quarter of the censorship tickets. Those tickets almost uniformly covered domestic speech, and from the political right; in dozens of instances, the project made "recommendations" to social media companies to take action.

The tickets RCI reviewed illustrated the project's efforts to push social media platforms to silence President Trump and other elected officials.

One EIP analyst would say of the effort that it "was probably the closest we've come to actually preempting misinformation before it goes viral."

In response to RCI's inquiries in connection with this story, CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales shared a statement reading in part: "CISA does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship. Such allegations are riddled with factual inaccuracies."

Given "concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure," Wales said, "CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation" – work he indicated is conducted while protecting Americans' liberties.

Dr. Starbird told RCI that:

Falsehoods about elections - whether accidental rumors about when and how to vote or intentional disinformation campaigns meant to sow distrust in election results - are issues that cut to the core of our democracy. Identifying and communicating about these issues isn't partisan and, despite an ongoing campaign to label this work as such, isn't 'censorship.'

The Censorship Industrial Complex Persists Despite Scrutiny

All had come full circle. Stanford had once again connected the security state to Silicon Valley for a project involving both basic and applied research aimed at perceived foes – studying how narratives emerged, and then seeking to get offending ones purged.

That project would again garner new funding from the security state in the form of a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation split between the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public for "rapid-response research to mitigate online disinformation." Their partners in the EIP would receive millions more from the federal government under the Biden administration.

The relationship between DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and EIP would only grow. As RCI reported:

In the days following Nov. 3, 2020, with President Trump challenging the integrity of the election results, CISA rebuked him in a statement, calling the election "the most secure in American history." The president would go on to fire CISA's director, Christopher Krebs, by tweet.

Almost immediately thereafter, Krebs and Stamos would form a consultancy, the Krebs Stamos Group. In March 2021, Krebs would participate in a "fireside chat" when EIP launched its 2020 report.

CISA's top 2020 election official, Matt Masterson, joined SIO as a fellow after leaving CISA in January 2021. Krebs' successor at CISA, Director Jen Easterly, would appoint Stamos to the sub-agency's Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, established in 2021, for a term set to expire this month.

Director Easterly would appoint Kate Starbird … to the committee. Starbird chaired the advisory committee's since-abolished MDM (Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-Information) Subcommittee, focusing on information threats to infrastructure beyond elections.

SIO's DiResta served as a subject matter expert for the now-defunct subcommittee. DHS scrapped the entity in the wake of the public furor over DHS' now-shelved "Disinformation Governance Board."

Starbird, her University of Washington colleagues, and a former student member of the Stanford Internet Observatory who had matriculated to the Krebs Stamos Group would publish a report in June 2022 building on their EIP efforts, titled "Repeat Spreaders and Election Delegitimization: A Comprehensive Dataset of Misinformation Tweets from the 2020 U.S. Election." Its publication coincided with, and seemed aimed at buttressing the partisan House January 6 Select Committee's second public hearing.

Documents obtained via FOIA from the University of Washington and recently published by Matt Taibbi's Racket News and Substacker UndeadFOIA, suggest the committee's chief data scientist met with Starbird and DiResta in January of that year to discuss the report the EIP produced following the 2020 election and its underlying data – a report that linked mis-, dis-, and mal-information regarding the 2020 election to the capitol riot.

In the interim, EIP would morph into the Virality Project, which would be used to target dissent from public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic – dissent those authorities argued could lead people to die, as dissenting views on the 2020 election spurred the capitol riot.

Among those targeted by the government for silencing, and who social media companies would censor, in part for his opposition to broad pandemic lockdowns, was Stanford's own Dr. Jay Bhattacharya – one plaintiff in Murthy v. Missouri (Dr. Bhattacharya and Taibbi were recipients of RealClear's first annual Samizdat Prize honoring those committed to truth and free speech). As he sees it, the Virality Project helped "launder" a "government … hit list for censorship," which he finds "absolutely shocking" and at odds with the Stanford's past commitments to academic freedom and general "sort of countercultural opposition to government overreach."

As chilling as these efforts were, a House Homeland Security Committee aide told RCI:

EIP and VP were largely comprised of college interns running basic Google searches. Imagine a similar effort leveraging artificial intelligence to sweep up and censor ever greater swaths of our online conversations. We are at the beginning of the problem, not the end, which is why it is so vital to get right today because without action, tomorrow could be far worse.

It is unclear whether such action is forthcoming. Oral arguments in Murthy, heard this past March, suggested the Supremes may diverge from the lower courts. A federal district court found, and an appellate court concurred in the view that in coordinating and colluding with third parties and social media companies to suppress disfavored speech, government agencies had likely violated the First Amendment. Those courts barred such contact between agencies and social media companies during the pendency of the case – an injunction the nation's highest court stayed over the objections of Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch.

At least one companion case targeting the likes of the Stanford Internet Observatory, and its Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project as co-conspirators with the federal government in violating Americans' speech, Hines v. Stamos, is pending.

GOP legislation to deter and/or defund the activities illustrated in these cases has languished in Congress, but oversight efforts have raised the cost for NGOs to continue partnering with the government.

When asked in June 2023 about the Stanford Internet Observatory's future plans, Stamos told the House Judiciary Committee, which has been probing alleged public-private censorship efforts, that "Since this investigation has cost the university now approaching seven figures legal fees, it's been pretty successful I think in discouraging us from making it worthwhile for us to do a study in 2024."

Bhattacharya responded in an interview with RCI, "Why is Stanford putting so much of its institutional energy into [defending] this [the Observatory]?"

"It seems like they are putting their thumbs on the scale partly because they're so closely connected with government entities."

Months later, according to his LinkedIn profile, Stamos would depart from the Observatory, while remaining a part-time Stanford Adjunct and Lecturer in Computer Science.

On the eve of oral arguments in the Murthy case, Stanford University and its observatory castigated critics for promoting "false, inaccurate, misleading, and manufactured claims" regarding its "role in researching and analyzing social media content about U.S. elections and the COVID-19 vaccine."

Stanford called on the Supreme Court to "affirm its right to share its research and views with the government and social media companies."

It vowed the Internet Observatory would continue its work on "influence operations."

Starbird has echoed Stanford. In response to a series of questions from Taibbi pertaining to the trove of FOIA'd documents Racket obtained, she said:

Our team has fielded dozens of public records requests, producing thousands of emails. Not one confirms the central claims of your thesis falsely alleging coordination with government and platforms to "censor" social media content. But, instead of acknowledging that fact, abuse continues of the Washington State public records law to smear and spread falsehoods based on willful misreadings of innocuous emails, ignorance about scientific research, and, in several instances, a lack of reading comprehension.

She too vowed that: "At the Center for an Informed Public, our research into online rumoring about election procedures and our work to rapidly identify and communicate about harmful election rumors will continue in 2024."

Stanford's Internet Observatory and the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public will not be spearheading the Election Integrity Partnership for 2024 or future election cycles however, per a link to the EIP's website to which a Stanford spokesperson referred RCI in sole response to our queries.

Some experts are doubtful alleged social media censorship is going away anytime soon. "I don't know how to ‘put the genie back in the bottle,'" said Frederick.

"There's a thing about intel analysts in general where you have a sense of superiority because you have access to things that the plebes don't. But, you know, these people have taken their G-d complexes to the next level and turned it against their neighbor."

Of the alleged speech police, she said "they're drunk with power obviously and they think they know what's best for us."

Amb. Alberto Fernandez, vice president at MEMRI and a former leader of the precursor to the State Department's GEC, an observatory stakeholder that had itself funded adjacent efforts, told RCI "there needs to be transparency and preferably, a ‘firewall' of some sort between the Feds and social media."

In May, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) – who had himself submitted an amicus brief siding with the agencies in the case, contra Republican colleagues led by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan – revealed that in the wake of the oral arguments in Murthy, federal agencies had resumed communications with social media companies.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who had originally brought the Murthy case as Missouri attorney general, replied: "It appears DHS, FBI and potentially other agencies are quietly ramping up their efforts to censor Constitutionally protected speech ahead of the 2024 election."

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U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, argues on the Senate floor for his amendment to the Respect for Marriage Act on Nov. 29, 2022

By Jim Hoft
The Gateway Pundit

Now, ten Republican senators announced on Friday that they are suspending all cooperative legislative efforts with Democrats, accusing the White House of engaging in actions that are “un-American” and making a “mockery” of the rule of law.

On Thursday, several Republican figures released strongly worded statements expressing their outrage and support for Trump following his guilty verdict.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene lambasted her colleagues for their inaction against the Democrats.

She wrote, “Republicans have done NOTHING to stop the Democrats from destroying our justice system and our freedoms. Many Republicans would just quote the Constitution as they are marched to the firing squad. When good men do nothing, evil prevails.”

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I agree with every single word here.

Republicans have done NOTHING to stop the Democrats from destroying our justice system and our freedoms.

Many Republicans would just quote the constitution as they are marched to the firing squad.

When good men do nothing, evil prevails. https://t.co/O2FSubZcZk

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) May 30, 2024

On Friday, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) echoed Greene’s sentiments, emphasizing the need for more than just verbal condemnation.

“Strongly worded statements are not enough,” Lee asserted on Friday. “Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable. We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand.”

The defiant stance was formalized in a letter initially signed by eight Senators, including Mike Lee (R-UT), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Roger Marshall (R-KS), JD Vance (R-OH), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

The letter lambasts the Biden administration for its profound disregard for American principles and the politicization of justice.

The senators have vowed to block any non-security related funding increases for the administration, oppose all political and judicial appointments, and refuse expedited consideration of Democrat-led legislation unless it directly pertains to national security.

The letter reads:

“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart.

To that end, we will not 1) allow any increase to non-security related funding for this administration, or any appropriations bill which funds partisan lawfare; 2) vote to confirm this administration’s political and judicial appointees; and 3) allow expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”

Strongly worded statements are not enough.

Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable.

We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand. pic.twitter.com/H0CzIjXgwC

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 31, 2024

In a statement, Sen. Rubio wrote, “Statements of outrage are no longer enough So I hope every Republican Senator who is sickened by what the deranged left is doing to our country will join us in taking action in the Senate.”

Sen. Schmitt wrote, “Democrats have destroyed the integrity of our justice system and made a mockery of the Constitution – all in the name of maintaining political power. My colleagues and I aren’t going to go along with the status quo. Enough is enough.”

Sen. Marshall wrote, “Joe Biden and his army of partisan hack judges have weaponized our judicial system against his political opponent. Words are not enough. Call on your Senator to join our fight – We will block every single Biden judicial nomination until America votes on November 5th.”

Sen. Blackburn wrote, “The White House’s weaponization of our government to target President Trump for political gain represents the pinnacle of two tiers of justice. We cannot allow this grave injustice to prevail in the United States of America. My Republican colleagues & I are taking a stand.”

Sen. Scott wrote, “100% agree. Our country is in real trouble. Republicans must stand together and end this madness.”

Senator Mike Lee urged his colleagues to join the boycott, stating, “I hope to have every Republican senator sign this. This is a call for unity within the Senate Republican Conference. Now is the time to choose: will we let the Republic fall, or will we take action to protect it?”

In a new update, Senators Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson have joined the pledge.

UPDATE: salute to @HawleyMO and @SenRonJohnson for joining our pledge! Democrats don’t get to wreck our judicial system and expect any cooperation on their legislative priorities. pic.twitter.com/tbGB7Oj5zu

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 31, 2024

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

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(ZEROHEDGE) – A more conventional supply shock is underway - nowhere near the nuclear-level hit by government-enforced lockdowns several years ago. The Israel-Hamas war has led to Iran-backed Houthis freezing the critical maritime chokepoint of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, attacking Western commercial vessels with missiles and drones (the latest incident on Tuesday), and forcing major shipping operators to reroute containerized freight around the Cape of Good Hope, which strains the world's containerized capacity and has just sent shipping costs surging once again.

Bloomberg reports new data from France-based CMA CGM SA, the world's third-largest carrier, indicating that the cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Asia to northern Europe jumped to $7k in the second half of June, up from $5k in the first half of the month. Rates ranged from $6k to $6.5k, with premium services approaching $10k.

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"With capacity stretched by more than five months of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, the container shipping industry is scrambling to meet demand that's picking up in the U.S. and Europe," Bloomberg said.

Read the full story ›

(FOX BUSINESS) – A global shortage of oranges that sent prices soaring has prompted some orange juice manufacturers to consider turning to alternative fruits to make the breakfast staple. Global prices for oranges hit $3.68 per pound in April, up about 33% from the $2.76 figure recorded one year ago, according to International Monetary Fund data. That also marks a stunning 210% increase from January 2021, shortly before the inflation crisis began.

"There are three main factors driving the soaring price of orange juice, and it's drought, disease and demand," Ted Jenkin, oXYGen Financial CEO and co-founder, told FOX Business.

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The spike stems from declining output in Florida, which is the primary U.S. producer, and disease and extreme weather events in Brazil, which accounts for about 70% of global production.

Read the full story ›

Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

Government pensions that invested in commercial real estate are being hit hard by the ongoing crisis in the sector, which is threatening average Americans’ retirement plans, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Large U.S. public pensions lost 6% in the last 12 months on real estate investments, the largest loss since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service acquired by the WSJ. The losses are part of a broader crisis hitting commercial real estate due to a lack of demand and prohibitively high interest rates brought on by measures used to combat stubbornly high inflation under President Joe Biden.

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“Folks are allocating less dollars, trying to understand what they have in their portfolio,” Shawn Quinn, managing director of Wilshire, told the WSJ. “Institutional investors are not quite sure if we’ve hit the bottom yet.”

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System lost around 9% on its $333 billion real estate portfolio in 2023 amid the downturn in commercial real estate, according to the WSJ. High rates spurred by the uptick in inflation under Biden have contributed largely to falling commercial property values.

Inflation peaked under Biden at 9% in June 2022, since decelerating to 3.4% as of April, far higher than the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2%. In response to high inflation, the Fed has raised its federal funds rate to a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, increasing the cost of credit on which developers rely.

EXCLUSIVE: Joni Ernst Demands Biden Admin Confirm Halt Of Federal Funding To Org Linked To COVID Lab https://t.co/NALmq0OCxR

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 31, 2024

Commercial real estate properties are also losing value due to a fall in demand for offices, which has failed to recover from the spike in work-from-home policies put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of office buildings facing default reached its highest point since the fourth quarter of 2012 in April, with around $38 billion worth of buildings in financial distress.

Privately managed funds have also taken a hit, losing 12% in 2023 on their commercial real estate properties, according to data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment acquired by the WSJ. Some funds are still holding on to properties in the hope that the crisis will ease, with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System not yet offloading an office tower in Manhattan worth $917 million, down 12% from when it was purchased in 2016.

The threat to Americans’ pensions comes at a time when retirement costs have skyrocketed due to inflation. Americans estimate that to comfortably retire, they will need $1.46 million saved, 15% more than they said in the previous year.

Featured image credit: (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

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There's a new political campaign agenda that exploded into existence in a manner of minutes on Thursday.

That's when a leftist jury in Manhattan convicted President Donald Trump of business reporting violations for calling his legal fees, legal fees.

The conviction was orchestrated by Joe Biden from the White House, Alvin Bragg from his prosecutor's office, and Juan Merchan, from the court bench. All of them are Democrats.

And the new agenda?

To jail Democrats.

John Hinderaker at Powerline Blog explained what happened. "A grotesquely biased jury of Trump-haters, led by a judge who put service to his party above his judicial responsibilities, has returned guilty verdicts against Donald Trump on all 34 counts with which he was – absurdly – charged."

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And then he offered solutions: "What to do now? First, it is now absolutely essential that Trump be elected president. The Democrats cannot be allowed to get away with this effort to turn America into a banana republic.

"Second, the Democrats understand nothing except the raw exercise of power. Therefore, Republican attorneys general and district attorneys should bring criminal charges against Democratic officeholders wherever possible. No Democratic officeholder should be allowed to retire, in any jurisdiction with Republican law enforcement, without facing criminal charges. There can’t be a single Democratic official in America against whom a criminal case can’t be brought that is better than this case against Trump. It should be open season on Democrats in the criminal courts."

And that campaign, he said, should go all the way to the top of the Democrat party.

"Third, the criminal prosecutions should begin with Joe Biden. Unlike Trump, Biden is actually a criminal. He is already known to be guilty under the federal bribery statute, to the tune of at least $20 million. If Trump wins in November, his Department of Justice should immediately indict Biden, and Biden should be hounded until the day he dies or goes to prison, whichever happens first."

His opinion largely was seconded by a commentary from John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist.

"The conviction of former President Donald Trump on manufactured charges in a Stalinist show trial this week marks a crossroads for the Republican Party. From now on, the civil war inside the GOP will be between those who understand they must do to Democrats what Democrats have done to Trump, and those who think they can trundle along with business as usual."

He said this situation now "means if you’re a GOP candidate or elected official, and especially if you’re a Republican district attorney or attorney general, and your response to Trump’s conviction isn’t to begin making plans to indict President Biden and other leading Democrats on criminal charges, then you have no idea what time it is and need to be primaried, sidelined, or otherwise run out of the party. "

He added, "Put bluntly, Republicans have to make Democrats play by their own rules. They have to inflict pain ruthlessly on Democrats with endless show trials and lawfare, just as Democrats have done to Trump. The leftist radicals who run the Democrat Party only understand power, and they will only stop when they are force-fed their own medicine over and over. "

He cited a campaign ad from Anthony Sabatini, a Florida Republican seeking an office in Congress.

I’m running for Congress to imprison as many Democrats as possible

Vote for me if you believe Democrats are the enemy and must be jailed & removed from public life https://t.co/c1JWTh1vVJ

— Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) May 30, 2024

And he added, "As my Federalist colleague Sean Davis said Thursday, 'If you’re a Republican running for office, you can just go ahead and throw away all of your elegant little policy proposals for this or that corporate exclusion or tax subsidy. Give me a list of which Democrat officials you’re going to put in prison, or get lost.'"

He even suggested a case to open the "lawfare," which Democrats have used against Trump extensively, against Democrats.

"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton should immediately indict President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland for the ongoing crisis at the border, which in every way is a criminal human-trafficking conspiracy that they have orchestrated and sustained by flouting federal immigration law."

He said, "If we’re going to start jailing political opponents in America, then it has to go both ways."

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(photo courtesy DonaldJTrump.com)

Donors are trashing the guilty verdict for President Donald Trump coming from a leftist Manhattan jury, whose members followed the instructions of a judge with multiple factors confirming a bias against Trump, in a case brought by a Democrat prosecutor who claimed, without evidence of a crime, he would "get" Trump if elected.

It earlier was reported that after the verdict Thursday on charges that reporting Trump's business legal fees as business legal fees was improper, his campaign website was overwhelmed by contributors, and crashed.

It came back shortly later.

And now the campaign has announced that donors contributed nearly $34.8 million, "nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform," in just a matter of hours.

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"Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats with their election interference political witch hunt have awakened the MAGA movement like never before," the campaign confirmed.

The Bragg case was just one part of the multi-prong lawfare scheme that Biden and other Democrats have orchestrated against Trump already. The allegations lay dormant for years, and were brought back from the dead only as Trump began campaigning for president. In the Bragg case, multiple prosecutors, even Bragg himself, had declined to pursue the case based on the weakness of the allegations. It was only when Trump announced he was a candidate in this year's presidential that the zombie counts were filed.

"From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million … from small dollar donors. Not only was the amount historic, but 29.7% of yesterday's donors were brand new donors to the WinRed platform.

"President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful from this outpouring of support from patriots across our country. President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict," said a statement delivered by campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

It was reported Thursday just after the verdict was delivered that the donation page crashed.

The page, for a time, displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong.”

Trump also received massive influxes of cash from major donors after the verdict, including from Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, a previous supporter of Hillary Clinton.

"The timing isn’t a coincidence,” Maguire wrote on X..

I just donated $300k to President Trump

The timing isn’t a coincidence https://t.co/LDU4nJ8FBx

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) May 30, 2024

WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE!https://t.co/KojPKxsxaD https://t.co/LylEZV7zJb

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 30, 2024

New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin also wrote on X after the verdict that he just “secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee.”

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024 amid a slowdown in consumer spending, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was revised down in the first quarter from 1.6% to 1.3% year-over-year in a sign that the economy is not as strong as initial estimates indicated, according to a release from the BEA. Economists originally expected growth in the first quarter to be around 2.2%, more in line with the above trend growth seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, which were 4.9% and 3.4%, respectively.

The revision was due to new information that shows that consumer spending, private inventory investment and federal government spending were lower than initial estimates, while state and local government spending, nonresidential and residential fixed investment and exports were slightly greater than original tallies, according to the BEA. Current-dollar GDP was also revised down to 4.3% from 4.8%, and real gross domestic income totaled just 1.5% in an initial estimate from the BEA.

Disappointing GDP reports have spurred fears that the economy is entering a period of stagflation marked by slow economic growth and high inflation. Inflation measured at 3.4% year-over-year in April, staying stubbornly above 3% since it peaked under President Joe Biden at 9% in June 2022.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pushed back against speculation that the economy is undergoing stagflation following the Fed’s May meeting, pointing to low unemployment and decelerating inflation. Biden has also tried to downplay the state of the economy, particularly inflation, blaming corporate greed on rising prices, prompting the Fed Bank of San Francisco to disprove that claim by comparing historical trends.

Gross domestic income continues to lag far behind gross domestic product, and the latter is below its pre-pandemic trend despite being fueled by a debt binge for the last several years; seems less likely that GDI catches up and more likely that GDP catches down… pic.twitter.com/mzyx2a76CC

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) May 30, 2024

In an attempt to bring inflation back down to around 2%, the Fed has placed its federal funds rate in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, a 23-year high, which has put pressure on consumers and businesses to slow spending. The hike in the federal funds rate has increased the cost of credit across the board, making it more expensive to take out debt, such as through credit cards.

The cumulative amount of debt held by Americans totaled $17.69 trillion in the first quarter, with $1.12 trillion of that being on credit cards. The share of people who were behind 90 days or more on their credit card payments in the quarter jumped to 10.7%, outdoing the pandemic high of 10% in the first quarter of 2021.

Job growth has also slowed as of late, with the U.S. adding just 175,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in April, far lower than the 242,000 that were expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.9%. In April, there were fewer gains in government jobs than in previous months, contributing largely to the slowdown, with March adding 303,000 new jobs.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Dear Dave,

We sold our rental property recently. When we bought it, we thought it would be a good source of passive income. But owning it wasn't passive at all. It got to the point where the work and hassle became too much. We have $240,000 from the sale, and we're debt-free except for our home. We owe $140,000 on our house, and could pay it off instantly, but part of me wants to invest the proceeds from the sale of the rental property. Is it better to become completely debt-free at this point, or should we invest it so we can have even more money for retirement?

Anthony

Dear Anthony,

You mean you had to actively manage your rental property? Listen, anyone who tells you real estate is passive income is full of crap. It's a natural extension of the garbage people spout about how it's OK to go into debt to buy real estate, because the renter is making your payments. No, it's your payment. And when the renter doesn't pay, or it sits empty, guess what? You have to pay it.

If you want passive income, buy an S&P 500 index fund. Set it and forget it. You won't have to fix a leaky roof, replace worn out appliances or try to collect from deadbeat tenants. Real estate is a great way to invest, if you do it the right way. I love it. It's anything but passive, though.

Let me ask you this about your situation. If you had a paid-for house, would you borrow $140,000 against it to invest? Of course not. It's pretty much the same thing, and that would be dumb. Pay off your home, brother. Just pay it off. You'll be debt-free, and you'll still have six figures to invest.

I love that you're thinking about the future, Anthony. And I know the compound interest you're visualizing down the road is really tempting. Your compound interest calculator will tell you some amazing things, but what it's leaving out is risk. It also can't tell you about the carefree way you'll walk, and how it'll feel like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders when you don't have a house payment. You'll be able to live life on your terms, and all the decisions you make will come from a completely different point of view – one that isn't burdened by the weight of bankers hovering around, waiting for you to give them what's theirs.

The borrower is always a slave to the lender. Think about it. Only one implication of slavery is mathematical. All the rest are spiritual, physical, relational, emotional and mental. Being debt-free changes your life from the inside out. Not only does it make your life better, but it allows you to give with incredibly generosity, and be an agent for positive change in the lives of others.

Pay off the house!

Dave

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Katelynn Richardson
Daily Caller News Foundation

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign donation page crashed Thursday within minutes of the jury returning a guilty verdict.

Shortly after the verdict, the page displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong.” Trump also received massive influxes of cash from major donors after the verdict, including $300,000 from Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.

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“The timing isn’t a coincidence,” Maguire wrote on X. In the past, Sequoia Capital employees have donated to both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, as well as the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, according to Open Secrets.

Trump’s campaign wrote on X that “the American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial.”

“So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the campaign said.

I just donated $300k to President Trump

The timing isn’t a coincidence https://t.co/LDU4nJ8FBx

— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) May 30, 2024

The jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in the indictment brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump is set to be sentenced on July 11.

WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE!https://t.co/KojPKxsxaD https://t.co/LylEZV7zJb

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 30, 2024

New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin also wrote on X after the verdict that he just “secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee.”

“Never experienced a massive ask that easy,” he wrote.

The Trump campaign and WinRed did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

The Biden administration has set in motion a wave of new regulations that have already cost the U.S. more than $1 trillion, which equates to thousands of dollars per family, according to a new report from the Job Creators Network.

There have been $1.6 trillion in costs imposed from a total of 923 new federal regulations that have been finalized under President Joe Biden, with $1.2 trillion of those being put in place in just the past few months, according to the JCN. In just the first two years of the Biden administration, new regulations are estimated to have led to an average of almost $10,000 in added future and present costs to American households, which could jump to $60,000 if the trend continues across a two-term presidency.

“Federal bureaucrats are pushing an unprecedented regulatory agenda that’s crushing American small businesses and families at a time of already high inflation,” Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of the Job Creators Network, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Not only are they exceeding their authority, but the economic strain is creating long-term problems for the folks that are the backbone of our economy.”

The most costly regulation is the recently finalized emission standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles, totaling around $870 billion, according to the report. The emission standards introduce increasingly steep requirements over time that vehicles be either hybrid or electric, which currently cost more than traditional cars, as a part of the president’s climate agenda.

ProChain Capital Co-Founder @DavidDTawill joined Main Street Matters to discuss investing, the Fed, and how government intervention is exacerbating the challenges faced by small businesses.

Full episode: https://t.co/E0DUpB5Q6O pic.twitter.com/n6fPsSHMgw

— Job Creators Network (@JobCreatorsUSA) May 23, 2024

The Biden administration has also instituted several regulations on appliances amid the president’s bid to lower household emissions. The new standards for washing machines are estimated to cost $200 per unit, the gas furnace efficiency standards will cost $494 on average, and the ban on select refrigerants for air conditioners will cost $1,000, according to the report.

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Despite the president’s outward support for the manufacturing sector, the industry has also suffered from the surge in regulation in recent years. In 2022, regulations cost American manufacturers $350 billion, up 26% from a decade earlier, equating to around $29,000 per employee in compliance efforts, according to the JCN.

Agencies within the Biden administration have rushed to finalize new regulations ahead of the 2024 presidential election in an effort to entrench them in case Biden does not win a second term. New regulations are subject to a “lookback period” of 60 days before the end of a session of Congress, where they can be more easily repealed due to the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

Since the Obama administration in 2009, federal agencies have finalized more than 5,300 regulations, for a total of $2.6 trillion in present and future costs, according to the JCN. Looking across similar timelines, the Trump administration reduced the cost of regulations by $159.4 billion compared to the Obama administration, which added $309 billion.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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(ARS TECHNICA) – Yesterday, Amazon failed to convince a US district court to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit targeting the tech giant's alleged history of tricking people into signing up for Prime.

The FTC has alleged that Amazon "tricked, coerced, and manipulated consumers into subscribing to Amazon Prime," a court order said, failing to get informed consent by designing a murky sign-up process. And to keep subscriptions high, Amazon also "did not provide simple mechanisms for these subscribers to cancel their Prime memberships," the FTC alleged. Instead, Amazon forced "consumers intending to cancel to navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process."

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In their motion to dismiss, Amazon outright disputed these characterizations of its business, insisting its enrollment process was clear, its cancellation process was simple, and none of its executives could be held responsible for failing to fix these processes when "accidental" sign-ups became widespread. Amazon defended its current practices, arguing that some of its Prime disclosures "align with practices that the FTC encourages in its guidance documents."

Read the full story ›

A Walmart sign in Portland, Oregon (Fox12 Oregon - Twitter)

(WGAC) – Walmart is promoting Pride merchandise now, just ahead of June Pride Month, while most Target stores are scaling back after a huge backlash and lower sales last year.

Walmart’s new “Pride Always” collection includes rainbow-adorned flags, clothing and accessories. Even products like a notebook that says “beyond gender,” a tote bag that says “totes gay,” a fanny pack with “I heart gay people” on it, and rainbow-colored products for the kitchen and even the pool.

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Some angry customers are encouraging consumers to boycott Walmart for placing Pride-themed merchandise in the toy section of its stores. Although Pride Month doesn’t begin until June, Walmart promoted its new Pride clothing on social media over the Memorial Day weekend, writing on Instagram, “Not just a slogan. #PrideAlways is a reminder to lead with love.”

Read the full story ›

(THE GATEWAY PUNDIT) – One of the top mortgage lenders in the United States is offering a new program that allows home buyers to put zero percent down on their mortgages.

United Whole Sale Mortgage is offering a new program that will allow first-time home buyers and people earning below or at 80% of an area’s average income to put zero down on their mortgages. In a statement to Market Watch, chief operating officer of UWM, Melinda Wilner shared, “Homeownership is something we’re very passionate about.” Previously, UWM offered buyers a rate of as little as 1% down.

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UWM isn’t the only one offering zero-down mortgages. As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Bank of America has offered zero-down mortgages for black and Hispanic borrowers.

Read the full story ›

A new streaming season of "The Chosen" is being launched after a delay that principals say was prompted by a dispute over a distribution agreement that now has been resolved.

A report at JulieRoys.com explains that it's Season Four that will appear starting June 2 after the months-long delay.

"The wait is finally over. The response from those who’ve seen Season 4 in theaters was that this is our best season, so I can’t wait to deliver these episodes free and easy to the world," said Dallas Jenkins, creator of the popular television series on Jesus.

He had revealed earlier the season was delayed for "legal reasons" as it premiered in theaters a few months ago.

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It's eight episodes now will be released through its app at the rate of two a week through June, on Sundays and Thursdays.

DVDs also are being shipped.

The disagreement was over The Chosen LLC, which has 65 employees, and the Utah-based Angle Studios, which was a partner and worked on distribution.

Jenkins said that no longer is the case.

He said the two organizations had "different ideas" about moving the project forward.

"Ultimately, he said, the pay-it-forward model that originated with Angel Studios wouldn’t allow 'The Chosen' to meet its goals of reaching a billion people — including those who can’t pay for it — while also financing future seasons," the report explained.

The distribution of those pay-it-forward funds was the key to the dispute.

The two sides had been operating under a 2022 agreement, but The Chosen alleged that Angel Studios breached the deal and an arbitrator eventually agreed.

"The contract is indeed terminated, and The Chosen’s relationship with Angel Studios is effectively over," Jenkins explained.

Angel Studios had disputed claims of a contract breach.

The report explained, "With over 200 million viewers, 'The Chosen' has far outpaced the reach of typical faith-based fare, receiving shoutouts from the likes of Kourtney Kardashian and country singer Blake Shelton. In addition to the Chosen app, viewers can currently watch Seasons One through Three on Amazon Prime, Hulu and Peacock and Season One on Netflix. Seven seasons are expected in total, and 'The Chosen' is currently filming Season Five."

The Hollywood Reporter said the new episodes include, "Clashing kingdoms. Rival rulers. The enemies of Jesus close in while His followers struggle to keep up, leaving Him to carry the burden alone. Threatened by the reality of Jesus' growing influence, religious leaders do the unthinkable — ally with their Roman oppressors. As the seeds of betrayal are planted and opposition to Jesus’ message turns violent, He’s left with no alternative but demand his followers rise up."

The three earlier seasons are available on Peacock, Prime Video and other streaming platforms.

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(JUST THE NEWS) – More than two million Americans aged 55 and older still have student loan debts as of 2022, according to a new survey released Wednesday.

The Federal Reserve Board’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances found that 2.2 million United States citizens aged 55 and above are struggling to pay off their debts, just as they head towards the retirement. The student loan debt is even impeding their ability to retire, the survey found, because roughly half of the respondents are making less than $54,600 a year, according to CBS News. But those borrowers, on average, owe approximately $58,000.

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“Three policies would help minimize the negative impacts of student debt on retirement savings: student loan forgiveness, income-based repayments – key components of the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan – and preventing garnishment of Social Security benefits to repay student loans,” an analysis of the data said. The report was published by The New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis.

Read the full story ›

Fani Willis

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is orchestrating one of the Democrats' lawfare cases against President Donald Trump – an organized crime case alleging his comments and plans to fight for victory in the 2020 presidential race rose to the level of conspiracy and such.

She charged Trump, and more than a dozen others, under a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute.

Now, a new report confirms, she's facing accusations she violated the same law.

A report in The Federalist documents the "explosive allegations" that have appeared in a RICO lawsuit filed by state Rep. Mesha Mainor.

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Her legal action targets Willis and Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., a lawyer.

"Mainor accuses Willis and Arrington of a bribery scheme, alleging that the commissioner — who helps oversee the budget of the DA's office — used his influence to get a cushy plea deal for a client who was accused of stalking Mainor and that Willis' office played along. Mainor accuses both defendants as well as the Fulton County Ethics Board of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in O.C.G.A. §16-14-4. She also accuses Willis and Arrington, in their individual and official capacities, of 'intentional infliction of emotional distress,'" the report outlines.

It's just the latest thundercloud on the horizon for Willis, who already is facing a state legislative investigation of her work, a possible contempt citation from Congress, a lawsuit over her response about her records, claims she illegally recorded a telephone call, and more.

She made headlines when a defendant in the Trump case found out, and revealed, she hired her paramour, at a cost of nearly $700,000 to taxpayers, to work on her case against Trump.

She's also facing an appellate court review of the trial court's ruling that allowed her to stay on the case, despite her "tremendous lapse in judgment" and the aura of "mendacity" around the case.

The Federalist reported the latest trouble for Willis developed when Mainor ran for a seat on the Atlanta City Council in 2019, before she was ultimately elected to Georgia’s House as the representative for District 56 in 2020.

The report explained a businessman, Corwin Monson, had acted as a volunteer for her campaign, but she had to terminate him for "unruly, belligerent behavior."

Then, the report said, Monson allegedly began talking Mainor, even leaving threatening voicemails. He even "showed up at her home" to propose marriage, even though they never had engaged in any kind of romantic relationship, the complaint charges.

Monson eventually was cited for trespass and Mainor filed a temporary protective order, which Monson allegedly violated, resulting in his arrest and later indictment for aggravated stalking.

That's when Monson hired Arrington as his defense counsel, the report said. That's when the complications started appearing as Arrington "unduly influenced the criminal proceedings" and "is said to have used his influence to broker a plea deal favorable to Monson," the report said.

Willis took office shortly later and when Mainor filed an ethics complaint against Arrington, a local station obtained jailhouse recordings in which Arrington "who knew he was being recorded, seems to boast about his relationship and influence with the DA’s office and is heard claiming, 'I can get the DA to agree to a misdemeanor plea, but she [Judge Ellerbe] might not accept it.'"

The RICO complaint charges that "Arrington commits bribery when he releases money to the district attorney’s office in exchange for preferential treatment when he is working as a criminal defense attorney" and that "Willis engaged in bribery when she gave Commissioner Arrington and Monson, his client, preferential treatment under the law."

Subsequent developments included Monson violating a bond, being held in the Fulton County jail, pleading "no contest" to felony stalking and being released on probation.

The report said Mainor reported he "went right back to stalking her."

Stunningly, Monson even was on the ballot against Mainor in a primary for her state legislative seat.

He lost.

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By Will Kessler
Daily Caller News Foundation

American oil and gas company ExxonMobil fended off a major push to unseat all of its board directors after suing two activist investors who sought to put emission standards on the company.

The attack was headed by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which has a $1 billion stake in Exxon, in protest of a suit launched by the oil giant in January against activist investors from Arjuna Capital and Follow This. The two activist investors submitted a proposal for the 2024 proxy statement calling for Exxon to reduce its direct and indirect emissions, prompting the company to file a suit in January in an attempt to stop shareholders from continually resubmitting failed proposals.

“CalPERS did not take this vote lightly, but the significance of what’s at stake can’t be understated,” CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost said in a statement Wednesday. “ExxonMobil’s lawsuit threatens to silence shareholders everywhere by stripping away their rights and role in improving a company’s bottom line.”

All of the board was elected with between 87% and 98% of the votes cast, compared to a range of 91% to 99% in 2023’s shareholder meeting, Exxon told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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“Today our investors sent a powerful message that rules and value-creation matter,” Exxon told the DCNF after the vote. “Their vote signals a belief that we are on the right track by overwhelmingly re-electing our directors and soundly defeating all four proposals that would have hampered our ability to create long-term value by providing the world with the energy and products it needs while investing billions to reduce carbon emissions in our own business and others. We expect the activist crowd will try and claim victory on today’s vote, but common sense should tell you otherwise in light of the large margin of the loss.”

CalPERS argues that the suit by Exxon sets a dangerous standard for future proposals since traditionally all shareholder issues are handled by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The public pension claims that its decision to vote against the board is not because of the subject of the activist investors’ proposal but because of the precedent that the lawsuit sets.

“Today’s annual meeting produced a major win for Exxon shareholders,” Matt Cole, CEO of Strive Asset Management, which was at the meeting, told the DCNF. “The approval rate for the Exxon board decreased only 1%, to 95% from 96% last year, despite CalPERS’ unprecedented PR campaign. To be clear, CalPERS, Follow This, and Arjuna Capital wished to shut down Exxon’s oil and gas business and investors rejected that overwhelmingly.”

BREAKING: ExxonMobil retains its board of directors, successfully fending off an attempt from pro-ESG activist investors to punish the company. Major win for @exxonmobil shareholders – corporate courage is how we get politics out of business and return to fiduciary duty.

— Isaac Willour (@IsaacWillour) May 29, 2024

A group of state treasurers and government fiscal officers from mostly blue states joined the push to vote against the board of directors, sending a letter last week to top asset managers, including JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, asking them to vote against Exxon’s board and CEO.

“Exxon’s actions continue to display disregard for shareowners and their right to have a say in the direction of the company,” California State Treasurer Fiona Ma said in the announcement. “I’m proud to join with my colleagues from around the country to help protect this fundamental governance principle and hope these asset managers do the same.”

A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled May 22 that Exxon can proceed with its lawsuit against Arjuna, even though the proposal had been rescinded months prior and would no longer be voted on at the shareholder meeting, according to Bloomberg.

CalPERS did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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By Jake Smith
Daily Caller News Foundation

A number of blacklisted Chinese companies have reportedly disguised themselves as American to operate inside the U.S. and evade penalties, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The U.S. government has taken several steps to crack down on Chinese firms that have been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and identified as potential threats to national security. But companies of concern, including Hesai Group, SZ DJI Technologies, BGI Group, Huawaei and ByteDance have operated or worked with American-based companies to sell products and services inside the U.S. without penalty, according to the WSJ.

“Chinese firms take a blow but then adjust business strategy and are able to move in another direction,” Derek Scissors, former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the WSJ.

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American Lidar, an auto technology company, registered in Michigan in December 2023 without declaring that its parent company was the Chinese-based Hesai Group, according to the WSJ. Hesai Group has prompted concerns from the intelligence community that its lidar technology — laser sensors that create a three-dimensional map of their environment — could be used to collect American data for Beijing.

One month after American Lidar registered to build a manufacturing plant in Michigan, the Department of Defense (DOD) blacklisted Hesai as a Chinese military entity operating in the U.S., immediately sending the company’s stock plummeting, according to the WSJ. Hesai blames its stock decline, which has never fully recovered, on the DOD’s decision to blacklist.

Hesai argues that its lidar technology cannot be used for surveillance purposes because it doesn’t save or transfer data, according to the WSJ. The plans to build a plant in Michigan have ground to a halt; a Hesai spokesperson told the WSJ that “American Lidar” was a proxy name to ensure consumers knew that its products were made solely in the U.S.

Hesai sued the DOD in May on claims that the department had no grounds to label it as a Chinese military entity or an affiliate of the CCP.

The DOD also added BGI Genomics, a healthcare subsidiary of the China-based BGI Group, to its Chinese military blacklist in 2022. Similar to Hesai, BGI Genomics claims that it does not have access to its American clients’ private data or ties with the Chinese military or government.

In 2023, one of BGI Genomics’ subsidiaries in Massachusetts — BGI Americas — rebranded itself as Innomics, according to the WSJ. Several federal lawmakers said in April that Innomics was attempting to “avoid regulatory scrutiny” in changing its name and urged the DOD to add the company to its blacklist, alongside BGI Genomics.

Congress is currently weighing new legislation to ban Chinese drone manufacturer DJI completely inside the U.S., warning that the company could be storing data and passing it off to Beijing, according to the WSJ. DJI denies the allegations, despite prior investigations pointing to the drone maker receiving funding from the CCP, and the company’s involvement in surveilling persecuted religious ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang province of China.

DJI made a deal in 2023 to continue selling its technology with Randall Warnas, an American citizen who previously worked for the company and Autel Robotics, a separate Chinese drone company, according to the WSJ. DJI granted technology licenses for at least two of its drone models to Warnas so that they could be sold in the U.S. through a startup company, Anzu Robotics.

Warnas told the WSJ that Anzu Robotics only stores data inside the U.S., not Beijing.

“The whole intention was to comply with the United States’ request to not have Chinese drones operating in the U.S.,” he told the WSJ.

Still, some lawmakers are concerned that DJI is leveraging the deal to stay inside the U.S., with Rep. Elise Stefanik, who helped spearhead the legislation to ban DJI, calling it a “desperate attempt” to evade sanctions, according to the WSJ.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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President Donald J. Trump disembarks Air Force One at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, to attend an event at the Gastonia Municipal Airport in nearby Gastonia, North Carolina (Official White House photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

By Jim Hoft
The Gateway Pundit

The Libertarian Party is facing internal conflict and public scrutiny after the recent selection of a controversial nominee for the upcoming election, with tensions escalating as the Party Chair appears to be insinuating support for Trump.

The Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee, Chase Oliver, is a far-left radical whose views are completely out of step with the party’s principles.

Oliver, a former Democrat who once supported Barack Obama, has called for an end to the “U.S. war machine” and the “genocide in Gaza.” He also supports the Marxist terror group Black Lives Matter, drag queen story hours, open borders, and Big Tech censorship.

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Critics have lambasted Oliver as being too progressive for the Libertarian ticket, pointing to his past support for movements and policies such as Black Lives Matter, drag queen story hours, and stringent Big Tech censorship.

Furthermore, his endorsement of controversial policies like open borders and mandatory vaccinations and masks solidifies his stance far from traditional libertarian values.

Oliver’s nomination has caused a major backlash within the Libertarian Party, with many members threatening to vote for Donald Trump instead.

Caryn Anne Harlos, the National Secretary for the Libertarian Party, has taken a hard stance against party members threatening to defect to Trump.

“If you are now alleging voting for Trump because you don’t like Oliver, you were not in the Party for thick and thin. And that’s fine but that’s not how third party movements survive. I am sticking around to carry on our legacy. I’m a Party person and never ever hid that. I remain so,” Harlos said.

If you are now alleging voting for Trump because you don’t like Oliver, you were not in the Party for thick and thin. And that’s fine but that’s not how third party movements survive. I am sticking around to carry on our legacy. I’m a Party person and never ever hid that. I…

— Caryn Ann Harlos (@carynannharlos) May 28, 2024

However, the most dramatic development comes from Angela McArdle, the Libertarian Party Chair, who appears to be opening the door for an alignment with former President Donald Trump amidst the growing internal backlash.

“Everyone is understandably flipping out right now. I will have more to say this weekend,” said McArdle.

“For now, I will say that I delivered an incredible convention, with the help of my amazing staff and volunteers. All of my critics were WRONG. I made the right call to invite Donald Trump and if libertarians can behave themselves, he will free Ross Ulbricht and put one of us in his cabinet. Ball’s in your court, libertarians. We are getting in that administration,” she said.

Everyone is understandably flipping out right now. I will have more to say this weekend. For now, I will say that I delivered an incredible convention, with the help of my amazing staff and volunteers. All of my critics were WRONG. I made the right call to invite Donald Trump and…

— Angela McArdle (@angela4LNCChair) May 28, 2024

On Saturday, President Donald Trump delivered a fiery speech that courted the Libertarian audience.

Despite his efforts to unify, not all attendees were swayed by Trump’s presence or proposals. A vocal segment of the crowd expressed their disapproval through boos and unruly behavior.

The president has had enough and said what needed to be said to the Libertarian Party.

“The Libertarian Party should nominate Trump for the President of the United States,” Trump announced, adding, “Only if you want to win. Maybe you don’t want to win,” he said. “Keep getting your 3% every four years.”

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com.

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(GLOBAL TIMES) – China will be a pioneer leading the world into a new and innovative financial and monetary system, as global calls for an overhaul of the Bretton Woods system - which has been in place for 80 years – gain traction due to the U.S. abuse of the dollar's hegemony and its irresponsible policy, as well as a fragmenting global economy, Chinese and foreign scholars said.

The new financial system is envisioned to be one based on a diversified set of currencies rather than a single currency, they noted. It will be an open, inclusive system where the voices of emerging market economies would be better represented, and it will enable countries to join hands to promote global economic growth and financial stability.

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The comments were made at the 2024 Tsinghua PBCSF Global Finance Forum in Hangzhou city in East China's Zhejiang Province. The two-day event concluded on Tuesday. This year, the forum was themed "80 Years after Bretton Woods: Building an International Monetary and Financial System For All."

Read the full story ›

(USA WATCHDOG) – Dr. Chris Martenson holds a PhD in pathology from Duke University, is a futurist and an economic researcher. Dr. Martenson was one of the very few scientists who called BS on the FDA’s approval of Pfizer’s CV19 vax back in August 2021. Dr. Martenson went on the record to say, “Comirnaty CV19 vax approval is actually fraudulent.”

Now, Dr. Martenson is out warning about a new kind of fraud that could leave you broke in the next financial disaster. Dr. Martenson thinks financial trouble of Biblical proportions could be coming sooner than most people think. Dr. Martenson is not worried about a brokerage going under, such as Lehman Brothers in the 2008. Martenson is worried about the entire system melting down and says, “When the system freezes up, they get really scared. If you are not a complete moron, you would make that system smaller because it scared you that much, but instead, they made it even bigger. ... We not only have to worry about a brokerage going down, but we now have to worry about these clearing parties. ... These are the houses that are supposed to be clearing all the trades with the derivatives and the loans. ... The law says the brokerages have to hold your shares and bonds you have in a proportional amount. They don’t hold them. A higher company does that . ... and you can’t peer into them. It you want to see what Fidelity or Schwab has . ... I found out you cannot see an audit trail.”

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In a new market meltdown, Dr. Martenson sees chaos and gives a hypothetical example: “China attacks Taiwan, and there is a 10 sigma move in the bond market. Oh no, all these derivatives have blown up. These people are supposed to be winners, and these people are supposed to be all losers. No, no, they don’t have any money for that stuff. It’s too complicated. I don’t think anybody understands how this works anymore. I could not find anybody who could tell me the whole thing. I could find people who knew bits and pieces, but they knew their slice. ... I am trying to stitch this thing all together. I get uncomfortable when I can’t answer the most basic questions, and that is how much risk is there in the system and where is it?

Read the full story ›

(ZEROHEDGE) – You're about to meet a group of New York University graduates with fresh degrees, likely burdened with a few hundred thousand dollars in debt unless their elite liberal parents footed the bill. Many companies are increasingly viewing woke degrees as liabilities rather than assets.

If these graduates are lucky – and don't end up as Starbucks baristas – they will have a bright and colorful future at some woke mega-corporation. There, they will be placed in non-productive managerial roles to advance destructive ESG and DEI movements.

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It all starts at NYU classrooms, where the kids are being uploaded the woke mind virus by activist professors. These kids are being brainwashed into not improving society but, in fact, being managers to spread wokesim to dismantle Western society.

Read the full story ›

(Photo by Joe Kovacs)

(NEW YORK POST) – Target is drastically shrinking the assortment of products in its LGBTQ-friendly Pride collection to just 75 items — down from more than 2,000 a year ago — following boycotts that dogged the chain last year, according to a report.

The Minnesota-based “cheap chic” discount retailer saw its bottom line take a hit last year after it became engulfed in a firestorm on social media over clothing and accessories that were being marketed for kids last year during Pride month. In addition to slashing its assortment by 96% to just 75 items, a recent report from Business Insider found that Target had also toned down the flamboyant nature of the products.

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Last year, angry customers seethed over “tuck-friendly” women’s swimsuits that allow trans customers who have not had gender-affirming operations to conceal their genitalia.

Read the full story ›

A new report at The Federalist is warning that an agency that "accredits" centers that "advocate" for children is joining the Joe Biden administration in a scheme to push kids into the transgender ideologies.

That's been one of Biden's main agenda points for his administration.

The report explains it is the National Children's Alliance that now is working to assemble a "gender-affirming" monopoly over official child abuse proceedings "in every state."

The report said a recent attempt in Virginia to give the NCA "sole statutory control over the accreditation" of those centers has brought to light similar schemes in other states.

At issue is so-called "gender-affirming" treatments that often include giving chemicals to children, then offering them body-mutilating surgeries under the guise of changing their gender from male to female or vice versa, a process that scientifically is impossible as being male or female is embedded in the body down to the DNA level.

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Britain recently has moved against the agenda with the Cass Review, which "comprehensively details the paucity of evidence and the risks of harm," the report said.

NCA chief Teresa Huizar, however, has made the extreme claim that "denying trans children the right to determine their own identity kills them."

The campaign aligns with Joe Biden's LGBT-promoting "certification" plan for the nation's foster care system, which until now has relied heavily on prospective foster and adoptive parents who frequently are on the reality-affirming side of the dispute, the report said. Biden's plan would exclude all of those who dedicate their time to helping needy children, but decline to adopt the transgender belief system.

"Both the NCA and the Biden 'accreditation' processes put vulnerable children at risk from misguided personnel convinced that 'misgendering' is abuse," the report charged. "Children have been wrongfully removed from loving families, while children already in state care have been denied foster and adoptive homes, facing harm from state-sanctioned medical transition instead."

The report noted that already children in Virginia, California, Indiana and Montana have been taken from their parents by "state systems whose mission to protect children has been hijacked by gender ideologues."

"Children have been taken from parents for medicalization and removed into state systems where the risk of actual abuse skyrockets," the report said.

Those biased processes, Democrats insist, must be institutionalized so that all child protection centers and agencies, all child care workers, all judicial proceedings involving child care, are pursuing the same political agenda.

The Federalist report said, "Child advocacy centers provide essential care to victims of child abuse through private-public, multi-disciplinary centers. Services range from 'forensic interviews' establishing abuse to case management and referrals for mental health and medical treatment. As the primary membership association for CACs, NCA offers accreditation, training, case management software, and other resources."

But in recent proposals, the fine print reveals that states were being asked to give NCA "sole control" over accreditation, which means child centers must comply with its ideologies or they would be deprived of official recognition in the industry, and not even permitted to help children.

NCA boasts that dozens of states already have adopted "defining" legislation and more plans are in the works, which, the report charged, "departs sharply from evidence."

Huizar actually recommends a "resource" that directs parents to "believe and validate" and "affirm" whatever "identities" are claimed by a child.

Actually, doing just that often triggers complex psychiatric comorbidities, trauma, gender dysphoria and the like, which makes problems for children worse, the report noted.

The report also cited the influence of World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which worked "in official collaboration with pedophilic eunuch fetishists" in developing its standards.

"WPATH legitimized 'eunuch' as an identity, justifying 'nullification' surgery (removal of genitals). One WPATH 'expert' curates sadistic child pornographic literature online and publishes 'research' on male fantasies of castrating, raping, and murdering boys" the report cited.

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