Eric Adams Calls Sanctuary City Policies a ‘Mistake,’ Says He Would Support Rollback

(Headline USA) New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday called the city’s sanctuary laws a mistake and said he’d support repealing them.

New York City Council members recently introduced a bill that would undo laws enacted by former Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio that largely prohibit New York City law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. Adams said he would sign the bill if it passes the council.

“I think the previous administration made a big mistake,” Adams said, referring to de Blasio. “I think we need to correct that aspect of it.”

Adams went on to admit that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into New York City has led to heightened safety concerns.

“New Yorkers have a right to be safe in their city. The same way anyone breaks the law or does something violent to New Yorkers, I’m going to voice my concern about that,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Adams has been critical of leftist sanctuary policies, though thus far he has declined to use his own executive authority to try and roll them back.

“I want to go back to the standards of the previous mayors who, I believe, subscribe to my belief that people who are suspected of committing serious crimes in this city should be held accountable,” Adams said earlier this year when asked about the policies.

New York City has seen a string of recent high-profile immigrant crimes, including a January attack on New York Police Department officers in Times Square, the shooting of a tourist in a Times Square store, and the rape of a 13-year-old girl in a Queens park last month.

Kenneth Genalo, ICE director for the New York City field office, said his agency could have helped prevent these crimes if city law enforcement had been willing to work with them.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the way that we have to do our intelligence in ICE is the same way that you find out about cases. It’s through the media,” Genalo said. “We’re no longer contacted. We’re no longer called.”

Report: Insurers Scam Medicare for Billions in Untreated Add-On Diagnoses

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) An analysis of billions of Medicare records showed private insurers connected to the federal government’s $450 billion-a-year Medicare program issued “hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments from 2018 to 2021.”

The program covers over half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare, the Wall Street Journal reported. The program said that insurers can add their diagnoses and the ones doctors submit for their patients.

“Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record. The Journal’s analysis, however, found many diagnoses were added for which patients received no treatment, or that contradicted their doctors’ views. The insurers make new diagnoses after reviewing medical charts, sometimes using artificial intelligence, and sending nurses to visit patients in their homes,” the news source wrote.

The Journal also stated that Medicare paid “doctors for access to patient records, and reward patients who agree to home visits with gift cards and other financial benefits.”

Medicare compensated insurers roughly $50 billion for diagnoses the insurers had added between 2018 and 2021.

“The government paid all Medicare Advantage insurers more than $700 million from 2019 to 2021 for diabetic cataracts. Most of the diagnoses were added by insurers,” the news source reported.

Even though they had previously received cataract surgery, over 66,000 Medicare Advantage patients were diagnosed with diabetic cataracts.

“It’s anatomically impossible. Once a lens is removed, the cataract never comes back,” Dr. Hogan Knox, an eye specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said.

However, UnitedHealth spokesman Matthew Wiggin said the Journal’s analysis was “inaccurate and biased,” adding that Medicare Advantage “provides better health outcomes and more affordable healthcare for millions of seniors” than traditional Medicare.

A spokesman for Humana also said that the Journal’s analysis of treatment rates “is flawed and misleading.”

The news source stated that more than a dozen experts said the Journal’s methodology was accurate.

Lawmakers Put Federal Agencies on Notice after End to ‘Chevron Deference’

(A coalition of lawmakers are putting federal agencies on notice after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned “Chevron deference” and as a result, significantly limited their power.

House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., has helped lead the effort, but the relevant committee chairs with oversight of the federal government, have signed on to similar letters.

“This long-needed reversal should stem the vast tide of federal agencies’ overreach,” Comer said in his letters to the federal government. “Given the Biden administration’s track record, however, I am compelled to underscore the implications of Loper Bright and remind you of the limitations it has set on your authority.”

The push comes on the heels of the Supreme Court overturning part of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and thereby putting an end to “Chevron deference,” a previous legal policy that gave broad license to federal bureaucrats to interpret and enforce laws passed by Congress as they saw fit.

In that vein, House lawmakers held a hearing Wednesday for oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency, the first in what is likely a new era of EPA oversight after the major Supreme Court ruling.

President Joe Biden’s EPA has pushed out a few particularly aggressive regulations that have drawn pushback.

Among those are WOTUS, an Obama-era rule that classified even tiny bodies of water as under federal jurisdiction.

More recently, the EPA’s tailpipe emissions standards are under fire, mainly because they will likely force a nationwide transition from gas to hybrid or electric vehicles in just a few years.

“EPA’s largest regulations, such as the tailpipe emissions rules for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, have been estimated to cost nearly $900 billion to implement,” Comer said at the hearing Wednesday.

“Those rules require automakers to completely redesign their operations to produce more electric vehicles – regardless of what consumers are demanding in the actual marketplace,” he added.

Now, that era has likely come to an end.

“The Supreme Court decision has put policy making back into the hands of the Congress where it belongs, and unelected bureaucrats can no longer weaponize their authority to enact their own personal agenda,” Daniel Turner, executive director of the energy workers advocacy group, Power the Future, told the Center Square.

“Industry for decades has been chocked by ever-changing regulations with penalties and fines and even criminal prosecution, all whims of the bureaucrat in charge,” Turner continued. “The American people are sick and tired of big government, and agencies like the EPA are back under the purview of the Congress and not some green billionaire whose think tank feeds the Administrator’s team with propaganda and lies.”

But the EPA is just one of many agencies facing a Congressional effort to undo years of federal rulemaking.

Comer noted that he has also joined lawmakers in sending letters to an array of agencies that face a similar review, including:

  • AmeriCorps
  • Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
  • Council on Environmental Quality
  • Department of Agriculture
  • Department of Commerce
  • Department of Education
  • Department of Energy
  • Department of the Interior
  • Department of Health and Human Services
  • Department of Homeland Security
  • Department of Labor
  • Department of State
  • Department of Transportation
  • Department of the Treasury
  • Department of Veterans Affairs
  • Environmental Protection Agency
  • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  • Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
  • National Credit Union Administration
  • National Labor Relations Board
  • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
  • Office of the United States Trade Representative
  • Securities and Exchange Commission
  • Small Business Administration
  • Social Security Administration

Chuck Todd Admits Cabinet Member Warned Him of Biden’s Mental Fitness 2 Years Ago

(Headline USA) NBC’s Chuck Todd admitted this week that a member of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet told him two years ago that the 81-year-old president was not fit to run for reelection.

During an episode on “The Chuck Toddcast” with Politico columnist Jonathan Martin, Todd and Martin blasted Democrats for refusing to publicly voice their concerns about Biden’s mental fitness. 

“I had a Cabinet secretary two years ago—two years ago—out of the blue asked me, ‘Do you really think he’s gonna? He can’t run again like this.’” Todd noted.

“And I said, ‘Well, you have more interaction with him than I do.’” he continued. “And they said, ‘I don’t have a lot of interaction with him.’ This is a pretty senior Cabinet secretary. This was two years ago.”

Todd went on to add that Biden’s age has been the “classic open secret, the nonversation. It’s the story everybody knows, and that everybody was afraid to talk about.”

Todd did not bother to explain why he, like the other Democrats, did not come forward with his own concerns about Biden’s mental capacity until after the first presidential debate. However, he has been a particularly vocal critic when it comes to denouncing what he perceives to be the “credibility issues” of his right-wing ideological counterparts, including former Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

Todd had an on-air meltdown when the ousted RINO chairwoman accepted a position as an NBC News correspondent in March. McDaniel was forced to depart the network shortly thereafter.

During his recent podcast, the former Meet the Press host went on to suggest that his view of Biden has changed significantly, especially as Biden continues to rebuff Democratic demands for him to abandon his reelection bid.

“Everything I’ve learned, it has made me rethink a lot of the Biden biography,” Todd said.

“I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018,” he continued, likely alluding to the drug issues that his son Hunter was facing at the time, which have since been confirmed by the laptop that mainstream media outlets claimed was “Russian disinformation” before the 2020 election.

“And now, looking at his behavior now, in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change,” Todd continued, referring to the “narrative” that has been carefully crafted by leftist media in collusion with Democrat party operatives.

With the president refusing to step out of the way and follow marching orders, the lapdog media’s new refrain about Biden, Todd continued, would be that “Everything’s been about his ambition, and his ambition comes first.”

Biden insisted in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopolous last week that he has no intention of dropping out of the 2024 race, and that the only way he would consider doing so is if the “Lord almighty” told him to.

An Old Reliable: US Officials Revive Dubious Claims of ‘Russian’ Interference

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) U.S. officials are cynically raising the alarm yet again, claiming that Russia is attempting to interfere in the 2024 presidential elections. 

Sounding like a broken record and citing no evidence, officials within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declared on Tuesday that Russia poses a “preeminent threat” to the election and is mimicking alleged past interference efforts. 

To many Americans, the assertion of Russian interference sounds familiar. The left raised similar allegations in 2016 and again in 2020.  

For years, Democrats peddled the demonstrably false claim that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win against disgraced Democrat Hillary Clinton. No evidence has ever been produced to back this claim, according to the Mueller Report.

In 2020, Democrats again cited “Russian” disinformation to block the spread of the politically damning New York Post report on the Biden family laptop.

Helping the Big Tech-led censorship of the laptop were 51 “spies who lied,” claiming that the laptop was part of a Russian campaign. Americans now know that the laptop proved Biden was aware of his son’s shady business dealings, contradicting years-long assertions otherwise. 

Fast forward to 2024, and U.S. intel officials are back at it again. 

“It’s all the tactics we’ve seen before, primarily through social media, efforts using influential U.S. voices to amplify their narratives and other tactics,” an official alleged, according to Fox News. 

“As far as who they’re targeting, what we can say today is, Russia is sophisticated enough to know that, targeting swing state voters is, particularly valuable to them,” the official added. 

According to the individual, Russia is particularly interested in changing public opinion about the presidential and Senate elections and is echoing past “preferences” in elections. 

“We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” the official concluded, according to The Wall Street Journal.

REPORT: Biden Campaign’s Donations Are Drying Up as Donors Flee

(Headline USA) The Biden campaign’s donations have dried up in the wake of the 81-year-old president’s disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump, according to NBC News.

“The money has absolutely shut off,” a person close to the Biden campaign said.

Though the Biden campaign initially claimed it had raised $14 million in funds on debate day, it has since struggled to keep attracting donations.

Some of Biden’s fundraisers have been canceled, and some top donors have even vowed not to contribute another cent unless Biden drops out of the 2024 race.

One such donor is Abigail Disney—granddaughter of Roy Disney, who co-founded the Walt Disney Co.

“I intend to stop any contributions to the party unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket,” she said last week.

“This is realism, not disrespect. Biden is a good man and has served his country admirably, but the stakes are far too high,” she claimed. “If Biden does not step down, the Democrats will lose—of that, I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”

Hollywood A-lister George Clooney, who helped raise some $30 million for Biden less than a month ago, also published an op-ed calling on Biden to withdraw.

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” he wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Biden has failed to alleviate concerns like Disney and Clooney’s that he won’t be able to win in November. On one recent fundraising call, for example, donors reportedly left with a “negative” impression of Biden’s chances.

“The call seemed so contrived to people; I don’t think they buy it,” a source said. “This is a massive, massive problem. Right now, we should be scaling up, doubling and tripling our goals as we head into the fall. But we’re cratering.”

Plague Wiped Out Over Third of Medieval Europe, It’s Now in U.S.

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The bubonic plague that swept through medieval Europe, killing between 30% to 50% of the population — up to an estimated 200 million people — was recently discovered in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, New Jersey and Florida.

Joe Biden’s pro-open border policies that allowed people from all over the world to come into the United States was a possible reason why the disease is currently on American soil, Blaze Media reported.

Even though the bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis, is found in rodents, it can be transmitted to humans through the bite of infected fleas. Humans can spread the plague among themselves through unprotected contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids or through inhalation of respiratory droplets expelled by someone stricken with the pneumonic plague.

In modern history, the plague had its outbreaks in countries such as Madagascar, Peru and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the World Health Organization.

On July 9, 2024, public health officials in Pueblo County, Colo., confirmed that one person was infected with the plague.

The Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment advised locals to eliminate places rodents can breed or hide (rock piles, brush and trash), avoid contact with dead animals, use insect repellent to avoid flea bites, treat pets for fleas, keep pets away from rodent-infested areas, including prairie dog colonies, and don’t sleep with pets, the news source reported.

“If you develop symptoms of plague, see a health care provider immediately. Plague can be treated successfully with antibiotics, but an infected person must be treated promptly to avoid serious complications or death,” Alice Solis, program manager of the county’s office of communicable disease and emergency preparedness, said.

Ramaswamy Warns of Growing Rift in GOP that May Explode after Trump Retires

(Elias Irizarry, Headline USA) With the Democrat Party imploding under the weight of its gerontocracy, led by 81-year-old presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, 38-year-old businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is on a mission to ensure that the GOP keeps its focus on the future, as well as the present.

The mood at the NatCon4 conference—sponsored by the Edmund Burke Foundation this week in Washington, D.C.—may have been on driven largely by anticipation and enthusiasm for the coming election after several years of dues-paying during the corrupt Biden administration.

Top conservative thought-leaders and policymakers led discussions on topics such as “revenge lawfare.”

Ramaswamy, on the other hand, declared in his keynote speech Tuesday that he came not to tell the crowd what they wanted to hear, but rather to challenge them.

He urged Republicans to start preparing for the future after Trump and explained what he saw as a growing rift in the GOP between what he described as “national protectionists” and “national libertarians.”

Although the two factions may be unified under a second Trump term due to the would-be leader’s unique charisma and cult of personality, the vaccuum that ensues in Trump’s eventual retirement might amplify the fundamental philosophical differences between them.

“Both reject the neoliberal consensus on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration, but for different reasons, and with very different implications for the future direction of America First policy,” Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy argued that national protectionists are too wary of international trade, and that the priority should be decoupling from China—which, he said, currently accounts for the export of 40% of the U.S. military semiconductor supply and could cut the plug in a time of war.

“If we’re really serious about reducing our economic dependence on China—not just talking about it, but actually serious about doing it—that necessarily means more, not less, trade with allies,” Ramaswamy said.

“But if your top priority is to protect American manufacturers from the effects of foreign competition, then that impedes our ability to decouple from China,” he added.

After speaking on foreign trade, he moved to the concerns of immigration by the two different wings. He said that there were three main priorities for national libertarians: “Protect national security, preserve national identity and promote economic growth—in that order.”

Neoliberals favor economic growth over everything, he pointed out. Meanwhile, national protectionists favor wage growth over the expense of other interests.

However, Ramaswamy argued that national identity should be just as important. He called for prioritization of quality over quantity when it comes to immigration policy.

“The overwhelming majority of immigrants will have to be turned away,” he said.

“But it won’t be because domestic labor unions are scared of foreign competition,” he added. “It’ll be because we have national boundaries, a national identity, and a rule of law to preserve in America. Immigration should not be labor policy.”

Ramaswamy went on to warn that “national protectionists” were turning toward big government to reach their goals—a trend that he felt needed to be nipped in the bud.

“We don’t believe in reshaping the American regulatory state. We believe in dismantling the American regulatory state,” he said. “I don’t care to replace a left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state.”

N.Y. Becomes ‘Battleground’ State; Leftists Panic

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Democrats in the state of New York started panicking after they found out that their historically deep blue state is now another swing state because recent polls put Donald Trump within single digits of Joe Biden.

Two polls conducted in a swing New York House district in September 2023 and March 2024 found that Trump was leading Biden by one point, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. Other public polling conducted in recent months found Biden’s lead over Trump shrunk to eight points.

In the 2020 election, Biden won the state by 23 points, but Democrats are now reportedly urging Biden’s team to reallocate resources to boost both his campaign and the candidates running in swing districts, the news source reported.

“We’re still acting like this is a one-party state, which for pretty much 20, 25 years it has been. I truly believe we’re a battleground state now,” Democratic Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said.

An anonymous high-level New York Democrat agreed with Levine.

“It’s never been more important for a Democratic House member to focus on building their own local brand and to run on that. Biden isn’t going to be handing out coattails no matter what. He’s only got anchors,” the Democrat said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., previously supported the idea of Biden being replaced during a July 7, 2024, conference call with other House Democrats.

The news source reported that a tight race in a once-far-left state would take time and money away from being spent in the nation’s other six battleground states.

“The money that needs to be spent here will be subtracted from other areas he’s going to lose,” former Gov. David Paterson, D-N.Y., said.

In the 2022 election, Republicans managed to flip four congressional seats in New York. The same year, Republican gubernatorial challenger Lee Zeldin lost by less than 6% compared to the double-digit losses Republicans experienced in previous years.

“If I’m a Democrat in some of these suburban races, I’d run the hell away from Joe Biden,” Laura Curran, former Nassau County executive, said.

Biden Introduces Zelenskyy as ‘President Putin’

(Elias Irizarry, Headline USA) At an event supporting Ukrainian relations in Washington D.C., President Joe Biden turned heads when he introduced President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as ‘President Putin‘—mistaking him for the leader of the Russian Federation who is currently invading Ukraine.

“And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he does determination,” President Biden stated, as he prepared to introduce the Ukrainian leader. “President Putin.”

When he began to walk off the stage, he quickly turned back to the podium, catching his error, and stating “He’s gonna beat President Putin. President Zelensky. I’m so focused on beating Putin, we gotta worry about it.”

Zelensky could be seen nervously laughing at the embarrassing mistake that suggested Putin is the President of Ukraine.

“I’m better.” the Ukrainian President declared, before smiling and shaking Biden’s hand and taking the podium.

The gaffe comes poorly timed, only one hour before his “big boy” press conference meant to restore the confidence of Democratic leaders who have been increasingly pressuring the elderly President to step down from the ticket after his poor debate performance.