Federal policies must focus on strengthening American energy independence, the American Petroleum Institute emphasized Wednesday at its annual State of the American Energy conference.
API CEO Mike Sommers and Senior Vice President of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs Dustin Meyer blasted the Biden administration over what they called its “short-sighted” energy policies.
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Federal policies must focus on strengthening American energy independence, the American Petroleum Institute emphasized Wednesday at its annual State of the American Energy conference.
API CEO Mike Sommers and Senior Vice President of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs Dustin Meyer blasted the Biden administration over what they called its “short-sighted” energy policies.
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Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee have launched an investigation of the Biden Administration’s proposal to open public lands to private ownership, which includes the possibility of foreigners buying such land.
According to Fox News, the effort is being led by Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), who informed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the investigation’s launch. The proposed rule change from the SEC would allow for a new type of public company, referred to as Natural Asset Companies (NACs), to trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
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The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals pushed back on a Biden administration effort to tighten regulations on dishwashers and washing machines.
In 2022, President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office that led to the Department of Energy replacing a less strict Trump-era rule on those appliances with a more stringent rule for energy and water use.
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The Biden administration spent millions on diversity trainings for federal agencies, including some for the armed forces, in 2023.
Taxpayers were on the hook for the more than $16.3 million the federal government spent on diversity trainings taking place in 2023, according to a government spending database. Past government diversity trainings have instructed federal workers that asking an Asian colleague for help with a math problem could be racist, that men can become pregnant and that “social pain” can be the same as physical pain.
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The Biden administration is suing Texas to prevent the state from arresting migrants who flout U.S. immigration law to enter the state illegally, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.
The DOJ is making good on its threat to sue Texas over enforcing S.B. 4, a new law signed in December 2023 that would permit local and state authorities to arrest and prosecute individuals suspected of entering the U.S. illegally, according to the DOJ and NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas Illegal immigration has surged to record levels under the Biden administration, with Texas seeing a massive influx of migrants arriving at its border with Mexico.
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As another Republican congressional delegation arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas, Wednesday to hold another news conference and meet local residents, many Texans living at the border say they are fed up and want Congress to shut down the border.
If Congress continues to use taxpayer dollars to fund policies that facilitate the border crisis, they argue, Congress is complicit in creating it and a national security threat.
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday sided with a coalition of Christian medical professionals who had objected to guidance from the Biden administration requiring that emergency room doctors perform abortions.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, as well as the state of Texas, had challenged the Department of Health and Human Services guidance and secured an initial win at the lower court, blocking the guidance.
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The Biden administration has removed comparatively low numbers of Chinese nationals in recent years despite record levels of migrants from China crossing the southern border illegally, according to federal data.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recorded 288 removals of Chinese nationals in fiscal year 2023, 127 in fiscal year 2022 and 138 in fiscal year 2021, according to the data. All the while, Border Patrol recorded 24,000 encounters of Chinese migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2023, 1,970 in fiscal year 2022 and 323 in fiscal year 2021, according to CBP data.
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The Biden administration drastically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023, according to an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The April 2023 email, which was sent by a CBP supervisor to a “master list” of about 500 Border Patrol agents, instructs CBP officials to radically reduce the number of interview questions for Chinese migrants apprehended after illegally crossing into the country from roughly 40 to just five. The “headquarters guidance” came as border agents were overwhelmed with near-record numbers of illegal crossings.
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The Biden administration faced several major problems on the international stage throughout 2023, some of which will bleed into the new year.
President Joe Biden and his administration have tried to manage major threats and circumvent obstacles from several foreign nations in 2023, including from those in East Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America. Many international problems the Biden administration dealt with in 2023 have not been solved and have continued to metastasize going into 2024.
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A new report shows that the Biden Administration handed out over 65 million condoms to countries around the world as part of alleged “climate change solutions,” directly implying that population control through “family planning” is a necessary response to fears of so-called “global warming.”
According to the Daily Caller, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the fiscal year 2022 distributed approximately 65.5 million condoms, 9.8 million injectable birth control products, and 334,000 IUDs to foreign countries around the world. An internal agency report documenting the distribution efforts even admits that the intention is to “mitigate the impact of population dynamics on natural resources and state stability.” A separate document in 2023 claimed that “climate vulnerability, population growth and unmet need for family planning often occur together.”
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New York City’s effort in the 1990s to regulate toilets and shower heads to cut down water usage ignited consumer outrage, even inspiring a 1996 Seinfeld television episode in which the character Kramer was so fed up with his apartment’s low-flow shower head that he purchased a high-flow head on the black market.
Three decades later, the Biden administration is leaving few appliances in the home untouched in its quest to regulate the amount of water and energy Americans use for their household chores.
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American public pension funds have invested tens of billions into Chinese companies over the last three years, according to a new study.
As reported by Axios, the study from the trade advocacy group Future Union shows that a total of $68 billion has been invested in various private Chinese entities in the last three years as of June 30th. There has been at least one public pension fund with investments in China in 42 different states.
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The Homeland Security Department agency entrusted with removing illegal immigrants is providing a staggering portrait of America’s border crisis, revealing the backlog of aliens inside the United States awaiting decisions has nearly doubled under President Joe Biden to more than 6 million while arrests of suspected terrorists and violent offenders have also exploded.
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The Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking aim at the largest Christian university in the U.S. in a new lawsuit.
Grand Canyon University (GCU) is the largest Christian university in the U.S. with over 100,000 students enrolled and over 85,000 online students as of fall 2022, according to their website. The FTC alleges that GCU engaged in deceptive business practices with its doctoral programs and that it also engaged in illegal telemarketing practices, according to the federal complaint filed in the District of Arizona.
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With hundreds of thousands of veterans’ healthcare claims on backlog at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), top Republicans in the House and Senate are hoping to prevent VA resources from being used to process claims for medical care of illegal immigrants.
According to a July report from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency contracts with the VA to process medical claims reimbursements involving illegal immigrants even though they did not serve in the U.S. military. Medical professionals treat illegal immigrants detained by ICE on site, but when specialized or emergency care is required, they are transported to private providers, according to Fox News. The arrangement between ICE and the VA was outlined in a 2020 memo during the Trump administration, Fox News reported.
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Successful public health campaigns and medical advances have enabled the United States to conquer a range of disfiguring and damaging diseases. Polio, which paralyzed thousands of Americans annually, was wiped out by widespread vaccinations. In 1999 the nation’s last hospital for lepers closed its doors in Louisiana. A global campaign eradicated smallpox, while lethal tuberculosis, the “consumption” that stalked characters in decades of literature, seemed beaten by antibiotics. Measles outbreaks still occur from time to time, but they are small, local, and easily contained.
Recently, however, some of these forgotten but still formidable infectious diseases have begun to reappear in the U.S. For two years running, polio has been detected in some New York water samples, and this fall, leprosy re-emerged in Florida, where cases of malaria have also been recorded.
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Readers are familiar with the moniker “third rail.” In political discourse, it refers to those preciously few issues that are so untouchable that the mere talk of change, alteration or revision carries with it what amounts to a political death penalty.
There is general agreement in Washington, D.C., that reform of federal entitlements leads the brief list. The most recent example being the 2011 temporary coalition of former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon intended to secure a more sustainable Medicare program. Here, all was good and fine for a fast minute before the Democratic Party realized its number one nuclear weapon was in the process of being compromised. And that was that. Suffice to say that that now twelve-year-old effort was the last semi-serious, bipartisan attempt to control entitlement spending we will see for the foreseeable future.
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A coalition of small businesses, U.S. senators and representatives sent a letter to the Biden administration calling for a one-year delay in a new rule requiring businesses with as few as 20 employees to report financial information about the business’ beneficial owners.
Under the rule, small businesses will be required to report personal information about their owners, board members, senior management and legal representation and could face civil or even criminal penalties for failure to do so.
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More than two years after the Biden administration called on all federal agencies to create plans to bring employees who teleworked during the COVID pandemic back to the office, the vast majority of Washington, D.C.’s federal buildings are still sprawling expanses of empty, echoing hallways and offices.
In fact, 17 of 24 federal agencies use an estimated 25% or less of their headquarters’ office capacity, according to an updated survey by the General Accounting Office, a government agency that provides auditing and investigative services for Congress.
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The Biden administration is shelling out $600 million in taxpayer funds to grantmaking organizations to distribute for “environmental justice” projects all across the country, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Wednesday.
The funds will go to 11 different organizations, which include universities and left-wing groups that focus on advancing social justice causes in addition to their environmental advocacy, according to the EPA’s announcement. Each of the recipients will in turn use the money to provide sub-grants to local organizations to pursue thousands of “environmental justice” projects like environmental jobs training programs and “healthy homes” initiatives.
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The Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on some Chinese products related to his green agenda, like electric vehicles (EV), in an effort to boost poor market demand and protect domestic industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Officials are considering setting higher rates on the already existing tariffs originally placed under the Trump administration, covering around $300 billion in Chinese goods, with Chinese EVs already having a 25% import tax, according to the WSJ. New tariffs could help domestic EV manufacturing, which has struggled with stagnant market demand, only rising from 3% in January to 4% in September of total vehicles sold in the U.S., while the share of EVs produced out of all vehicles has risen from 3% to 6% in that same time frame.
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President Joe Biden’s administration has set another record.
A total of 14,509 illegal aliens were encountered at the southern border Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Washington Examiner reported, a record for total daily encounters.
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The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday announced roughly $1 billion in penalty relief to those owing back taxes from 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The U.S. natural gas industry is pushing back against the Biden administration’s regulations targeting gas-powered residential furnaces.
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One agency in the Biden Administration has actively, albeit subtly, been turning to multiple groups funded by far-left billionaire George Soros in order to serve crucial roles in policy and enforcement.
According to Fox News, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been pulling individuals from the same network of progressive advocacy groups for various positions, with these groups all being funded by Soros and a handful of other left-wing billionaires. One such group is Governing for Impact (GFI), which has been bankrolled by Soros’ notorious Open Society Foundation, and with which the administration has been working behind the scenes on key agenda items.
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The GOP-led House’s passage of the impeachment inquiry resolution against President Biden ramps up their investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings and prepares them for a court challenge, according to top Republicans.
Lawmakers voted 221-212 along party lines on Wednesday to approve the resolution authorizing the inquiry.
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Inventors figure out how to create something that is better than what existed before, and then protect their rights to the idea/creation with a patent. This is a fundamental principle of private property, one which our nation’s entire economic system is based.
The U.S. Constitution enshrines this basic idea into the DNA of our nation as Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 known as the Patent and Copyright Clause plainly states, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
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Senator Dick Durbin said the quiet part out loud on the Senate floor yesterday in opposing Republican efforts to do something about Joe Biden’s wide open borders. He noted that the U.S. military – which Team Biden has also been wrecking with its purges of patriots, forced jabs with illegal, unsafe vaccines and Marxist policies and leaders – needs to tap what he described as “undocumented” persons who “want to serve and risk their lives for this country.”
In other words, the senior Senator from Illinois believes that we should encourage enlistment by not only U.S. citizens and those immigrants who have come here legally. He wants the ranks to be open to those whose first act in this country has been criminally trespassing to get here.
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The total number of government employees in the U.S. is edging close to a new record, only being outdone by one other month in the country’s history, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The U.S. added 49,000 government jobs in November, with 32,000 of those being local and 17,000 of those being federal, bringing the total number of government employees to 22,967,000, according to the BLS. The number of total government employees in November is only outdone by one other month, with 22,996,000 people being employed by the government in May 2010 as a result of temporary hiring used to perform the census that year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED).
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The Biden administration continues removing safety measures for the distribution of do-it-yourself abortion pills, turning local pharmacies into abortion clinics. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is being sued for approving these dangerous drugs in the first place.
After the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization struck down Roe v. Wade, many states have passed protective pro-life laws. But unless state and federal policymakers take action, mail-order abortion pills will continue freely flowing across state lines. These drugs undermine pro-life progress and kill unborn children and hurt women and girls in the process.
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The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill that would repeal the student loan plan issued by the Biden administration after its original plan was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.
The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan was issued by the Department of Education on July 10, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s plan to forgive $10,000 of student debt held by all borrowers making less than $125,000 a year. House Republicans, who have opposed all student debt forgiveness plans by the administration, passed a bill that would repeal the SAVE plan on Thursday, by a vote of 210 yeas to 189 nays.
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The House passed a bill Wednesday that would neutralize one of the key policies underlying the Biden administration’s electric vehicle (EV) push.
The Choice in Automobile Retail Sales (CARS) Act passed by a bipartisan vote in the legislature’s lower chamber, and it will now head to the Senate. The bill would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from imposing new vehicle emissions rules that either mandate the use of a specific technology or reduce the availability of new cars based on the type of engine.
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Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday ended his nearly 10-month hold on most military promotions over the Department of Defense’s abortion policies.
Tuberville made his stand in response to Pentagon policy using taxpayers’ money to give service members time off and pay to travel to other states for abortions. The policy from the Biden administration was enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
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If you were the owner of a professional football team, and you had just finished in last place for the third year in a row, one would expect management to implement serious personnel changes before the following season—that is if the team actually cared about winning.
Maybe the team needs a new coach that the players respect and trust to make the right play calls. Maybe they need a quarterback that doesn’t lead the league in interceptions and can run outside the pocket. Maybe they need an offensive line that will actually protect the quarterback from hitting the deck on every third and long. Maybe they need a kicker who doesn’t choke under pressure. Or maybe they just need their star wide receiver to stay healthy.
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The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation to permanently freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds that the Biden administration had agreed to release as part of a hostage exchange with Tehran earlier this year.
The measure passed in a 307-119 vote, with almost all Republicans supporting it, The Hill reported. Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie was the sole GOP dissident and sided with 118 Democrats.
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The 2024 Presidential election is rapidly approaching. In many ways it can’t come soon enough. Americans have now spent nearly three painful years waking up every day astonished to learn that the Biden administration has outdone its previous act of insanity.
The shocking revelation, for example, that the Biden Administration is covertly flying illegals into the interior of the U.S. is quickly forgotten when new revelations emerge that the same Administration is sabotaging Texas’ efforts to secure the border—ordering federal agents to cut through the wire barriers erected by the state of Texas.
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The Biden administration has pledged millions of dollars to a de facto international “climate reparations” fund at the United Nations (UN) climate summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The fund, referred to by its proponents as a “loss and damage fund,” is intended to have developed countries transfer money to the developing world as compensation for the impacts of climate change. The U.S. promised more than $17 million to the fund on Thursday, according to Axios.
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The Biden administration has outpaced other recent presidents in issuing significant regulations that place a financial burden on taxpayers, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Under President Joe Biden, the federal government completed 89 economically significant rules in 2022, defined as those with at least a $100 million economic impact, which is higher than any point in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations when deregulation is accounted for, according to CEI’s “Ten Thousand Commandments Report.” Regulations as a whole resulted in $1.939 trillion in added costs for the average American in 2022, exceeding every form of tax except income tax, which it rivals at $2.263 trillion.
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The Biden Administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) awarded a loan of $3 billion to a solar company that has been accused of scamming elderly customers, including customers with dementia.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the scam by the company Sunnova Energy involved forcing elderly and dementia-afflicted customers into signing five-figure, multi-decade solar panel leases on their deathbeds. One such account was given by Texas resident Terry Blythe, who said that her 86-year-old father had been convinced by a door-to-door salesman for the company to sign a 25-year solar panel lease back in 2020. Upon her father’s death earlier this year, Blythe was stuck with the $34,000 contract herself.
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The Biden administration is gearing up to finalize a host of emissions rules and regulations in the coming months, E&E News reported Wednesday.
The rules and regulations are all focused on methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent, but dissipates more quickly, than carbon dioxide, and align with the administration’s commitment to attacking climate change with a “whole-of-government” response. The Biden administration is aiming to finalize the slew of methane regulations in the coming months ahead of the 2024 election, which would make the rules more difficult for a potential Republican administration to scrap should President Joe Biden lose, according to E&E News.
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The Biden administration is set to back a plan that would crush the coal industry at the upcoming United Nations (UN) climate summit, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The U.S. will reportedly support a French plan to get the countries of the world to ban private financing of coal-fired power plants during the upcoming UN conference, known as COP28, according to Reuters. The plan is likely to drive a rift between countries like the U.S. and France and those like China and India, which are reliant on coal to feed their economies cheap and reliable electricity.
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The State Department has granted tens of thousands of visas to Afghans who aided the U.S. government following the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, according to a Thursday report from the lead inspector general to the United States Congress.
The Biden administration withdrew all American forces from Afghanistan in 2021, leading to a widespread takeover of the region by the Taliban and the displacement of millions of Afghans, according to the Wilson Center. As part of the U.S. effort to bring in refugees escaping Afghanistan, the State Department has issued approximately 34,000 special immigrant visas (SIV) to Afghans and their immediate family members, according to the Inspector General report released Thursday.
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Forty-five U.S. House Republicans voted with Democrats against an amendment to remove an agency head at the center of ongoing allegations of child abuse and neglect.
After debate on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, filed an amendment on Wednesday using the Holman Rule to remove Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under the Biden administration, Marcos oversees ORR’s scandal-plagued Unaccompanied Children Program, which has funneled an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors (UAC) into the U.S., arriving at the southern and northern borders. ORR is responsible for vetting sponsors and placing UACs in homes and facilities nationwide.
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The Biden administration announced new resources on Tuesday to counter antisemitism and Islamophobia at schools across the U.S. following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, according to a White House press release.
College students signed letters blaming Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks and multiple student groups led pro-Palestinian protests with imagery associated with violence against Israel. The White House released a series of guides and resources to “help protect students, engage school and university leaders, and foster safe and supportive learning environments.”
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The Biden administration continues to shield from the public its plans for federal agencies to turn out the vote, citing “presidential communications and deliberative process privilege.”
Newly released emails, however, demonstrate the focus of the White House and various government departments on registering voters and getting them out.
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President Joe Biden’s administration has recently taken unprecedented action to exert influence over Americans’ digital lives, including broadband internet, net neutrality, social media and artificial intelligence (AI).
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Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Thursday blasted the Biden administration’s handling of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters selection process and called for an General Services Administration (GSA) Inspector General probe of the matter.
FBI Director Chris Wray also said on Thursday that he has “concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan.”
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A federal judge on Thursday extended her initial temporary restraining order by another two weeks, blocking the Biden administration from destroying Texas’ concertina wire barrier along the Rio Grande River.
U.S. District Judge Alia Moses in Del Rio, Texas, extended her original Oct. 30th Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) beyond the initial Nov. 13 deadline. The extension is for another 14 days “to allow the court more time to fully consider the parties’ arguments and evidence.”
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