“Crime went down under Biden, and crime went up under Trump,” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg claimed on Fox News Sunday. “Why would America want to go back to the higher crime we experienced under Donald Trump?”
“It’s no accident that violent crime is near a record 50-year low,” President Biden similarly claimed. And fact-checkers, at places like Politifact, rate Biden’s statement as “true.”
Read More
Just over half of Americans now say they would support the mass deportation of illegal migrants, a poll released Thursday found.
The 51 percent who approve of the action includes 42 percent of Democrats, as well as 68 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independents, according to the Axios Vibes/The Harris Poll survey. Approximately two-thirds of respondents believe illegal immigration is a legitimate crisis as President Joe Biden’s administration has seen record numbers of border crossings.
Read More
While we have been extensively reporting on former President Donald Trump’s significant increase in support compared to 2020 among working class voters, minorities, and young people, one group of Americans appears to be shifting away from Trump at the margins – seniors. Voters over age 65 have shown a shift away from Trump in recent polls that amounts to as much as ten percentage points compared to 2020.
Trump’s highest level of success in 2020 was among voters over 65, with the former President winning seniors by five points, 52 percent to 47 percent. However, several recent polls show Trump losing seniors to Biden by around ten points. The March New York Times/Siena College poll shows President Joe Biden leading with seniors 51 percent to 42 percent.
Read More
House Republicans are demanding answers from the Biden administration after newly surfaced documents show that about 320,000 illegal immigrants from Latin America were flown into cities across the United States amid already record-high numbers of migrant encounters at the southern Border.
Read More
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Taking a different position than his old boss on a key foreign policy issue, former Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of Iowans Saturday that the U.S. must continue to help provision Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression. While he repeatedly trumpeted “Trump-Pence” successes, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate definitely differs with potential top presidential race rivals, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, on U.S. involvement in the war-torn European country.
Read More
A Democratic California congressman this week weighed in on President Joe Biden’s classified-document scandal, characterizing the president’s housing of restricted records in his University of Pennsylvania office and his Delaware home as indefensible. A member of the House Oversight and Armed Services committees, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) told Fox News that Biden warrants scrutiny for keeping numerous records he obtained during his earlier service as a U.S. senator and later as vice president. Khanna noted that the law requires classified federal documents to be kept in “sensitive compartmented information facilities” (SCIFs). While presidents can sometimes temporarily designate rooms within their personal properties as SCIFs, Biden has never suggested any spaces in his home or office were deemed to be such areas.
Read More
A right-leaning election reform outfit on Wednesday denounced the current version of legislation to reform the Electoral Count Act, particularly a provision urged by Democratic election attorney Marc Elias.
The original act was enacted in 1887 to prevent presidential election crises such as that of 1876, during which three states submitted competing groups of electors, forcing Congress to determine how to resolve the count. Ultimately Republican Rutherford B. Hayes emerged victorious over Democrat Samuel Tilden.
Read More
Almost exactly 76 years ago, on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, the former prime minister of Great Britain, delivered one of the most important speeches of the century. Surveying the increasing despotic rule by the Soviet Russians over Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of World War Two, Churchill declared, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
That phrase, “iron curtain,” stuck, helping to define the Cold War for the next five decades. In such a chilled environment, significant trade and normal exchange of any kind between the Free World and the Communist Bloc was unthinkable.
So now today, we can see that an iron curtain is once again descending; only time will tell if brave Ukraine will be held, once again, as a captive nation on the wrong side of this terrible barrier.
Read More
Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Joe Biden’s pick for a key Federal Reserve position, withdrew her nomination Tuesday after receiving bipartisan pushback.
Raskin’s nomination faced fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers and industry groups that argued her previous positions on a range of topics including climate policy disqualified her for the job. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee led by Ranking Member Pat Toomey have boycotted a vote to pass her nomination and four other nominations to the Senate for a floor vote since February.
“Unfortunately, Senate Republicans are more focused on amplifying these false claims and protecting special interests than taking important steps toward addressing inflation and lowering costs for the American people,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday. “I am grateful for Sarah’s service to our country and for her willingness to serve again, and I look forward to her future contributions to our country.”
Read More
What did Barack Obama and Joe Biden know about the Russiagate collusion hoax their fellow Democrats ginned up to kneecap Donald Trump – and when did they know it? How much did their chicanery contribute to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade the Ukraine?
Those questions are coming into sharp relief following a definitive report by my RealClearInvestigations colleague Paul Sperry last week that places the worst political scandal in our nation’s history and Putin’s brutal war directly inside the White House.
Drawing on a wide range of documents, many never previously reported, Sperry details how the Obama administration worked closely with the Clinton campaign and a foreign government – Ukraine – in a “sweeping and systematic effort” to interfere in the 2016 election. It turns out Democrats were guilty of every false charge they lodged against Trump.
Read More
As Joe Biden’s approval numbers sink further into the sewer, the only thing he’s building back better is 1970s-style inflation. Up until Biden, most polls usually named Jimmy Carter as one of the weakest and most inept presidents we’ve ever had. That was until Biden showed up and said, “Hold my beer!” Which you have to know has brought so much joy to Carter. Heck, he probably has a set of “Let’s go Brandon!” PJs that he wears every night as he thanks God for the gift of Biden.
Fact is, this country is now being “led” by a man who absolutely will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history. In just over a year, Biden has brought inflation roaring back to levels not seen in 40 years, has destroyed our southern border as millions of illegal aliens, along with Chinese fentanyl, flood the country, and now we have been involved in two major international debacles with Afghanistan and Ukraine. The list could go on, but perhaps that’s too depressing.
Rest assured, however, it’s not going to get better. Biden is like the anti-Midas, turning everything he touches into crap.
Read More
Sometimes we need time to pass and distance to extend to gain fuller perspective on what we did not see contemporaneously from too close. Indeed, G-d tells Moses that no person can see His face (which I teach as meaning an up-close encounter) and live, but people can see the back of G-d’s head (which I teach as meaning a more distant previous encounter, growing ever more distant). See Exodus 33:18-23.
In their October 22, 2012, debate, Obama mocked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for expressing concern about Russia and Vladimir Putin:
Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
Read More
President Joe Biden has continuously stated that “climate change” is the highest priority of his administration, fueled by Build Back Better spending. We are witnessing the disastrous impacts that establishing the wrong priorities can have.
On the day Biden became President, America was energy independent, our borders were secure, and the world was relatively peaceful.
Biden has done everything possible to shut down, curtail, and undermine American energy production. First, he shut down the permitted Keystone Pipeline. Then he eliminated fracking on federal lands, and slowed permits for new oil fields.
Read More
Joe Biden announced on Thursday that an additional 7,000 U.S. troops will be deployed to Germany, bringing the total of U.S. troops sent to Europe this month to 12,000. On February 2, 1,700 troops were ordered to Poland, and 300 to Germany. Another 3,000 troops were added to Poland on Feb. 11, as the crisis loomed.
The U.S. forces are being deployed to bolster NATO’s defenses as Russia continues its military incursion into Ukraine.
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Biden stressed that U.S. soldiers will not be going to Ukraine and will not be fighting Russian troops.
Read More
President Biden announced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jackson, who donated to and worked with former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, has a record of rulings that seemingly favor Democrats.
In a 2015 ruling, for example, she declined to force former Hillary Clinton aide Philipe Reines to explain why he used a private account for work-related emails, according to Politico.
Read More
Attorney General Merrick Garland has undercut his own promise to restore trust in the Justice Department by “doing the bidding of the radical left,” such as suing to block voter ID laws and launching FBI probes of school parents, a former top agency lawyer says.
Gene Hamilton, who served as counselor to Trump-era Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, told Just the News he hoped Garland would focus the department on core law enforcement priorities and away from ideological agendas but has been sorely disappointed.
“For all of his rhetoric, and for all of his talk about returning the Department of Justice to norms and all of those other such things, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has betrayed the trust of the American people,” Hamilton said during an interview Friday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Read More
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s “National Roadway Safety Strategy” includes promoting the use of speed cameras in cities and towns as a “proven safety countermeasure.”
DOT received $6 billion to issue grants to “help cities and towns” with road safety, which was part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress passed.
“That law creates a new Safe Streets and Roads for All program, providing $6 billion to help cities and towns deliver new, comprehensive safety strategies, as well as accelerate existing, successful safety initiatives,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during a speech on Thursday about the launch of DOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy.
Read More
Wednesday’s announcement by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that he would be retiring at the end of the court’s current session has raised the obvious question of how contentious the battle over his replacement will be.
One thing is almost certain to be true: No matter who is nominated by President Joe Biden, there will be no 87-9 favorable vote – the tally when Breyer was nominated by Bill Clinton in 1994. Though there were occasional exceptions in the decade prior to Breyer, his vote totals were not unusual in that era. Antonin Scalia was approved 98-0, Anthony Kennedy 97-0, and Ruther Bader Ginsburg 96-3. However, no Supreme Court nomination since Breyer’s has received fewer than 22 negative votes, the number against Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005.
That was the year Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (now majority leader) urged that senators should vote explicitly on the basis of candidates’ ideology rather than simply their qualifications. In reality, ideology had been the primary driving factor behind the rejection of Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987 and the tough, though ultimately successful, fight over Clarence Thomas’ nomination in 1991, but most opposing senators had attempted to preserve the fiction that judicial temperament or scandals were behind their “no” votes. Schumer opened the door to unabashed ideological and partisan warfare, and subsequent votes on Supreme Court nominations have shown it.
Read More
Paul Hodgkins, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, is a domestic terrorist.
A working-class man from Tampa, Hodgkins committed what Democrats and the media consider a murderous crime comparable to flying a packed jetliner into a skyscraper or detonating a truck filled with explosives under a crowded federal building.
Paul Hodgkins entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
Read More
As Washington, D.C., prepares for its second winter storm in as many weeks, Democrats in Congress are all-in on their bid to pass their voting legislation and, if it fails, to abolish the Senate filibuster to advance it.
Their strategy has almost zero chance of success. Though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has brought his party’s voting bills to the floor throughout 2021, they have faced insurmountable opposition from Senate Republicans every time, who have relied on the filibuster to tank the legislation that they describe as a federal takeover of elections that could invite voter fraud.
In response, Schumer and most Senate Democrats have endorsed scrapping the 60-vote threshold, but in their way stand Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. The two centrist Democrats have said time and time again that they will not support abolishing the filibuster, denying Democrats the unanimous support they need to adopt the change even though they support their party’s voting legislation.
Read More
A majority Americans begin 2022 full of worry and dread. During President Biden’s first year in the White House, societal anxiety surged, including among voters who identify as independents and Democrats. In the newest Axios/Momentive year-end survey, 2021 saw a 50% increase in fear about what 2022 will bring among independents. Democrats weren’t much more sanguine. They began last year with refreshing optimism as their party took control of the White House and Congress, with only 19% of Democratic voters declaring themselves fearful about 2021. By year’s end, that number had surged to 45%.
Reflecting this dour assessment, the RealClearPolitics polling average of Joe Biden’s approve/disapprove ratio also receded sharply for the last year, from a stellar 20-percentage-point surplus in his favor on Inauguration Day, to a minus- 10-point rating.
Given this environment, Republicans naturally grow more confident about the midterm elections. But taking nominal control of Capitol Hill won’t be enough. Will Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and their lieutenants be content with stopping the woke and socialist-inspired agenda of progressives? Or will they boldly implement a full-throttle populist nationalist “America First” agenda?
Read More
Do you ever wonder why Democratic politicians frequently resort to name calling when challenging Republicans? Why do the so-called mainstream media always seem to have the same anti-Republican talking points? Why are Republican judges consistently portrayed as evil? Why do progressive commentators and democratic policy makers always seem to “talk down” to their conservative opponents?
Alternatively, does it seem odd that most Republican politicians and conservative speakers often try to portray their arguments as policy disagreements and their opponents as “good people” with “differing views”? Republicans and most mainstream conservative pundits generally answer policy questions directly. They try to show respect and yield to opposing points when they make sense. Republicans in general just want to argue for practical solutions to problems.
The reason for this is simple: the Democratic Party over time has embraced an all-encompassing ideology that governs the way their politics and quest for power are shaped. All Democratic politicians and their pundits embrace at least some key aspects of this ideology. This fact is not readily apparent to everyone because Americans are not inclined to over-intellectualize politics. Most Americans view government and politics as a means of enacting the best common-sense policies to govern their daily lives. Each issue is viewed on its merits and Americans often split policy allegiance between Republican and Democratic ideas. Republican politicians subscribe to this concept as well, frequently supporting individual Democratic policies or at least trying for a compromise if the Democratic policies appear to have some stand-alone merit. Unfortunately, this is increasingly a losing proposition because they are fighting against a unified ideology bent on reshaping our constitution and imposing a totalitarian worldview. Democrats and the Left believe that the future is the collective and the collective is guided by an intellectual ruling class.
Read More
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says that skyrocketing inflation and long lines at gas stations are a result of President Joe Biden’s policies and are returning the U.S. to the days of high inflation, high cost of living and gas lines under President Jimmy Carter.
Eleven months into Biden’s term, inflation reached a 31-year high and gas prices surpassed a seven-year high.
“I’ve got to tell you the trillions that are being spent, the trillions in debt that’s being racked up, it is historic and not in a good way,” Cruz told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Read More
President Joe Biden on Friday announced the nomination of Robert Califf to head up the Food and Drug Administration again, urging the Senate to quickly confirm him a second time.
Califf, who served in the same role near the end of then-President Barack Obama’s second term, is “one of the most experienced clinical trialists in the country, and has the experience and expertise to lead the Food and Drug Administration during a critical time in our nation’s fight to put an end to the coronavirus pandemic,” Biden said in a statement announcing the pick.
“I am confident Dr. Califf will ensure that the FDA continues its science and data driven decision-making,” the president added, pointing out that Califf enjoyed “strong bipartisan support in the Senate in 2016.”
Read More
Senate Commerce Republicans are whipping opposition to the nomination of Gigi Sohn, one of President Joe Biden’s picks for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Biden nominated Sohn, former FCC counsel under Tom Wheeler and Ford Foundation alum, to an empty spot on the commission in late October, along with current acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to the permanent position.
While Republicans have been quiet in their response to the nomination of Rosenworcel, many are pointing to Sohn’s public statements on conservatives as reasons to oppose her confirmation.
Read More
The final $1.2 trillion INVEST in America Act passed the Democrat-led House in a late night vote on Friday. Tucked away inside the infrastructure bill are some controversial policies, including these five:
1. The cryptocurrency tax provision in the Senate version of the bill was the subject of scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans. The language was not amended in the final bill that passed the House. The legislation includes an IRS reporting requirement for brokers of cryptocurrency transactions.
2. Under the “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot” section of the bill, there is a pilot program to create a vehicle miles traveled system for taxing drivers based on their annual vehicle mileage. During his confirmation process, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg floated the idea of taxing motorists based on the number of miles they travel each year as a way to partly fund the legislation. The Biden administration backed off of full-scale development of the controversial proposal, settling instead for a pilot program.
Read More
In just one year, the Biden Administration has collected records of over 54 million legal gun-owners in the United States, for the purpose of increased surveillance of such citizens by the federal government, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
As shown in internal documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the ATF processed approximately 54.7 million records in fiscal year 2021. These documents were obtained by the gun rights advocacy group Gun Owners of America (GOA). The records in question are “out-of-business” documents, which consist of all firearms-related transactions made by a particular gun store after the store has gone out of business, at which point those records become property of the ATF.
In the year 2021, the ATF used this method to collect 53.8 million paper records, and roughly 887,000 electronic records. Gun stores are currently allowed to destroy records that are 20 years old or older; the Biden Administration is actively pursuing avenues to ensure that such records are made permanent and cannot be destroyed.
Read More
While all the media and talking heads were atwitter over the statewide contests in Virginia last week, the real story and the real threat was on the local level. When the dust settled, the GOP had gained 7 net seats in the Virginia Assembly, enough in theory to give them control of the House. With control of the Virginia House of Delegates and through that the Committee Chairmen — coupled with the Governor and a very closely divided Senate and the tiebreaker being newly elected Republican Lt Governor Sears – the hope of repealing the radical agenda of the Democrats from the last two years would appear very possible.
But conservatives should not count their chickens before they are hatched. You see, the vote in the Congress on Friday is a warning that all of us who want to see liberty installed in the Commonwealth need to heed. While the Democrats were unable to push through their wasteful “infrastructure bill,” 13 RINOs came to their rescue. Yes, 13 so-called Republicans voted with Nancy Pelosi and saved the Biden agenda item.
And, unless there is a mobilization now, this week, in Virginia, that same rotten, despicable tactic will be used to steal our majority in Virginia.
Read More
Having been in the D.C. area for over 20 years now, I’ve come to live by the maxim, “Always bank on the GOP snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” I was proved right again this last week when 13 Republicans in the House helped pass the $1.2 trillion “Gateway to the Green New Deal” otherwise masquerading as an infrastructure bill.
As I wrote back in August, only 23 percent of this bill is really for infrastructure. The other 77 percent is for things like the $213 billion “allocated for retrofitting two million homes and buildings to make them more “sustainable,” whatever that means. Or the $20 billion for racial equity and environmental justice. Or the mileage tax, as in yes, they want to explore taxing you for every mile you drive in your car.
In the wake of an absolutely stunning clean sweep for Republicans in Virginia from governor to House of Delegates—in a state Republicans hadn’t won statewide in a dozen years and where they’ve lost the last four presidentials—Republicans in D.C. just couldn’t find the nerve to simply say “No.” They couldn’t “Just say no,” kids. It is one of the most beautiful and underused words in the English language, but Republicans appear simply incapable of using it.
Read More
As the supply chain crisis continues to worsen, Americans can expect to pay higher energy costs in order to maintain heating in the coming winter, says Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, Granholm said “this is going to happen…it will be more expensive this year than last year.”
While Granholm claimed that “we are in a slightly beneficial position…relative to Europe,” she nonetheless admitted that the United States has “the same problem in fuels that the supply chains have, which is that the oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires.”
Read More
Tens of thousands of migrants from other countries are making their way north to the southern border, an open border activist and government officials warn.
Irineo Mujica, Director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an NGO that provides “shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit” and accompanies them “in their journey,” says a new Haitian caravan is making its way to the U.S. border from Tapachula, Mexico.
He also says 800 Haitians and Central Americans are crossing the Guatemalan border every day making their way north.
Read More
Though still undeclared, former President Donald Trump used his latest rally to shape a potential 2024 platform with sharp attacks on Joe Biden’s border policies, congressional Democrats’ socialist spending plans and Republican weakness on the debt ceiling.
In vintage campaign form, Trump electrified a capacity crowd at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Saturday night, putting on display his continued high popularity in America’s first voting state while imploring Republicans to do more to fight the Biden-Democrat agenda.
“We must declare with one united voice that we cannot allow America to ever become a socialist country,” he said in urging defeat of $4.5 trillion in spending plans pending in Congress.
Read More
As President Joe Biden vacationed at Rehoboth Beach, the disaster at the U.S. southern border continued to metastasize.
Anyone who has seen pictures of thousands of people crossing the Rio Grande en masse knows the administration has achieved complete failure.
Anyone who has seen the overhead drone footage of more than 12,000 people gathered under one bridge in South Texas knows that massive, historic incompetence is being allowed to flourish.
Read More
A White House senior advisor said Thursday that Joe Biden is prepared to “run over” Republican governors who “stand in his way” on vaccine mandates.
Following Biden’s shocking, widely-panned authoritarian speech Thursday afternoon, multiple Republican-led states announced plans to sue the Regime over its “unconstitutional” mandate forcing businesses with more than 100 employees compel vaccinations.
Read More
If you watched HBO’s recent docudrama about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, you may have been struck by the historic connection to the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan. The epilogue posited the theory that the need for helicopters to mitigate the nuclear disaster caused the Russians to pull the attack helicopters from Afghanistan, making the already pointless war impossible to continue. So in 1988, the Soviets cut their losses and withdrew from Afghanistan.
The Afghan rebels did not seize control of Afghanistan until 1992. But the 1988 withdrawal also played a huge role in the loss of legitimacy for the Soviet system itself. The apparent juggernaut wielded terrifying power at its borders but remained frail and vulnerable to collapse from within. The very idea that the great Soviet evil empire could fail set off a series of dominoes that led to its collapse. The Afghan war, the struggling economy, and the Chernobyl disaster all combined to reveal the wise and powerful leaders in Moscow as incompetent despots.
More than 30 years later, American planners may have felt they had years or at least months during which residual civilians could make an orderly departure from Afghanistan as needed. The Soviet puppet government lasted almost four years (ironically, longer than the Soviet Union continued to exist), so why wouldn’t an American-sponsored government be able to hold on at least that long? The American planners probably believed that they were prolonging the longevity of the puppet regime by leaving nearly $80 billion in military equipment in the hands of the American-aligned Afghan government.
Read More
As I’ve watched the events of the past few weeks – and thought about the nature of Joe Biden’s young presidency – I began to ask myself: How much more of this can we take?
In just seven months, President Biden has overseen a remarkable number of complete blunders. To make sense of them all and consider how to overcome them, I decided to make a list of them. Of course, it would take months of time and writing to list all the errors Biden has made in his 48 years in politics, so I decided to start at his inauguration in January. These are roughly in chronological order. It seemed impossible to rank them as so many of them could have lasting, unforeseeable consequences.
1 – Bipartisan Baloney
As I write in my upcoming book, Beyond Biden, which will be released on Nov. 2, the first major mistake Biden made was immediately failing to live up to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. In his inaugural address, Biden said: “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation.”
Read More
Much fanfare surrounding infrastructure legislation in Congress focuses on road and bridge improvements, but the bill’s implications for relatively costly rail transit in northeastern Pennsylvania and elsewhere have gotten far less attention.
The current proposal to spend $66 billion on Amtrak would be the largest federal expenditure on passenger rail since the creation of the transit agency.
Read More
The State Department said it will “no longer” charge Americans thousands of dollars to board evacuation flights out of Afghanistan, but it did say if it will reimburse those that have already been charged.
State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a statement to the press Thursday afternoon saying the Biden administration has “no intention of seeking any reimbursement from those fleeing Afghanistan.” But as of late Friday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after Price issued his statement, Americans seeking to secure evacuation out of Kabul continue to be told in a required government form that they’ll need to reimburse the U.S. government upwards of $2,000 or more for their evacuation.
“Repatriation flights are not free,” question 14 of the Repatriation Assistance form stated late Friday afternoon. “A promissory note for the full cost of the flight, which may exceed $2,000 per person, must be signed by each adult passenger before boarding.”
Read More
The United States federal government is coming to Virginians’ doorsteps to ask for their personal medical information and vaccination status. Vaccination efforts in the western Tidewater counties of Franklin, Suffolk, Isle of Wight County, and Southampton County are ramping up to include door-to-door operations.
Read More
President Joe Biden’s competition and antitrust executive order will harm American consumers, groups representing both large and small businesses said.
The leading groups — including the Chamber of Commerce, Job Creators Network (JCN) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) — slammed Biden’s executive order, arguing that it will harm competition and present a host of challenges to small businesses. The business groups said the order is an example of big government attempting to exert control over the free market via onerous rules and regulations.
“This executive order amounts to a bizarre declaration against American businesses, from the largest to the smallest,” Small Business and Entrepreneurship (SBE) Council Chief Economist Raymond Keating said in a statement. “It’s hard to understand why a White House would go down such a path, especially as the economy is digging out from the COVID-19 disaster.”
Read More
Since the Biden Administration assumed power in January, many Americans could be forgiven for feeling like they’re being held hostage, tied up in the trunk of a car, and driven to a place they do not want to go. Nowhere is this more evident than on the immigration problem, where Biden has reversed numerous policies that kept American safe, and it seems he has done so for no other reason than because Donald Trump is the one who put them in place.
Because he is beholden to the radical Left for his ascension to the White House, Biden predictably has adopted the usual anti-borders agenda including catch-and-release, demoralizing ICE, and defunding border wall construction. His expected next move, the reversal of Trump-era rules to prevent the spread of COVID-19 into the United States, is nothing short of political sabotage.
While COVID-19 may be on the decline in the United States, thanks in large part to the Trump Administration’s work on Operation Warp Speed, the same cannot be said for many of the poverty-stricken, underdeveloped countries from which those who most often show up at our doorstep originate. Just as our nation is turning the corner on a deadly global pandemic, it makes absolutely no sense at this moment to ease up on health restrictions on foreign nationals seeking entry. Only someone with Machiavellian political motives would propose such lunacy.
Read More
The Biden administration will admit more than 7,000 migrant refugees into the U.S. monthly as part of negotiations in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over a Trump-era rule prohibiting migrants from obtaining asylum during the pandemic, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump implemented public health order Title 42 which allowed border officials to rapidly expel migrants from the U.S. and prevented them from applying for asylum due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the AP reported. The Biden administration’s concessions would change how border officials rely on Title 42 and potentially allow more migrants to seek asylum in the U.S.
The Biden administration and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) agreed to “a streamlined process for assessing and addressing exemption requests brought by particular vulnerable families and other individuals,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said, according to the AP.
Read More
A gas shortage is expected this summer not because there won’t be enough fuel but because there aren’t enough highly trained and licensed tanker drivers to transport it.
Many tanker drivers retired last year after demand for oil and gas plummeted because fewer people were traveling during the height of the pandemic. And most driving schools where new drivers could have received their training were closed due to state-mandated shutdowns. The two factors combined is resulting in a shortage of roughly 25% of tanker truck drivers needed to transport fuel, says the National Tank Truck Carriers, the trade association representing the tanker truck industry.
Read More
Along with a working vaccine, Joe Biden inherited a V-shaped economic recovery, but he is now planting the seeds of its destruction. Inflation, federal deficits, high taxes, incentives for workers to stay home, and incentives to avoid investment – they’re all coming back. Together, these elements create the perfect brew for a Lyndon Johnson-style stagflation. If Biden and the Democrats so quickly wreck the good economic path they were given, it will be one of the worst examples of government malpractice in U.S. economic history.
In the first, dark days of the COVID-19 national economic shutdown last spring, there was a clear need for major stimulus. Both parties united to pass an effective and much-needed response.
The U.S. gross domestic product saw a 33.4% surge in the July-September third quarter of 2020, after plunging 31.4% in the April-June second quarter. The economy continued to grow at a 4% rate in the fourth quarter, and the stock market (despite COVID) ended 2020 with the S&P 500 index up 16% for the year as a whole.
Read More
President Joe Biden touted a key part of his education initiative Monday, pushing for two years of free community college nationwide, but some critics question the long-term efficacy of his plan.
Biden spoke at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia, to promote his proposal, which would provide, among other things, $109 billion for two years of tuition-free community college.
“Do we want to give the wealthiest people in America another tax cut, or do you want to give every high school graduate the ability to earn a community college degree?” Biden asked during his speech, arguing that 12 years of schooling is not long enough in the modern economy. “That’s why the American Families Plan guarantees four additional years of public education for every person in America – two years of universal, high-quality pre-school and two years of free community college.”
Former Trump administration immigration officials criticized President Joe Biden on Thursday for proposing mass amnesty for illegal immigrants living in the U.S.
Biden told Congress to pass his American Dream and Promise Act if they believe in securing the southern border or a pathway to citizenship for around 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally. Former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials and Heritage Foundation experts said Biden’s proposal would worsen the migrant crisis at the southern border, according to a press release.
“This is a crisis of his own making,” former DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement. “Instead of returning to commonsense enforcement, the Biden administration is pushing forward with a massive amnesty proposal that will exacerbate the crisis and undermine the rule of law.”
Read More
Joe Biden is either an historical illiterate or a shameless liar. Perhaps he is both.
Desperate to keep the disintegrating narrative about the events of January 6 alive, Biden, in his first sparsely attended speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, declared the January 6 protest was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Marked safe from Washington Post fact-checkers, Biden continued to lie. “As we gather here tonight, the images of a violent mob assaulting this Capitol, desecrating our democracy, remain vivid in our minds,” he lamented. “Lives were put at risk. Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned. The insurrection was an existential crisis, a test of whether our democracy could survive. It did.”
Read More
Wednesday night was a tale of two speeches. We had President Biden droning to a nearly empty House Chamber. Then, we had Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) give the best follow-up to a presidential address to a joint session of Congress that I have ever seen.
The difference between the two speeches was made vivid by Frank Luntz’s experience with a class of 15 University of Southern California students. In describing his discussion with the students on an Inner Circle webinar with me the next day, the students clearly favored Biden’s liberalism over Scott’s conservatism. Yet, when the speeches finished, the students were totally and deeply disappointed by the President’s speech. They were instead impressed by Scott’s sincerity, the power of his life story, and even his references to religion. While the students weren’t necessarily religious themselves, they thought a more spiritual approach to our current political mess would be helpful.
Watching the President, Vice President, and Speaker of the House all wearing masks even though they have been vaccinated was just painful. Far from following science, Biden, Harris, and Pelosi were clearly virtue signaling. To add to this, the absurdity of having 200 members present for a speech that usually has 1,600 people in attendance made for a very sad and depressing picture.
Read More
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called China the “most sophisticated” actor of foreign countries subverting our biomedical research in last week’s Senate hearing on the topic. This follows the release of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community earlier this month. That assessment, cited by Sen. Burr, noted that “China will remain the top threat to US technological competitiveness as the CCP targets key technology sectors and proprietary commercial and military technology from US and allied companies and research institutions associated with defense, energy, finance, and other sectors.”
In the Senate hearing, panelists disclosed several disturbing cases of research theft by the CCP and its agents. Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified that Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, fired its CEO and five other senior people for connections to the Thousand Talents Program. Gary Cantrell, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the Office of Investigations of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services, provided in written testimony examples of two researchers who had been compromised with China ties as found by OIG fraud investigations.
Cantrell’s first example was a professor of internal medicine who led a team conducting autoimmune research at The Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University. This professor pled guilty in late 2020 to making false statements to federal authorities to get $4.1 million in NIH grants and failing to disclose “his participation in a Chinese Talent Plan and his affiliation and collaboration with a Chinese university controlled by the Chinese government.”
Read More
The Biden administration has rejected a petition to define sex in biological terms as it reviews the Trump administration’s Title IX policies on women’s sports and sexual misconduct proceedings.
The rejection came a day after the Department of Education announced it was soliciting public input on implementing President Biden’s March 8 executive order on sex discrimination.
The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), a self-described radical feminist group that opposes transgender policies, said it was pleased that the department did not reject its legal arguments out of hand.
Read More