POTUS Snubs SCOTUS: Biden Cancels $39B in Student Loans

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POTUS Snubs SCOTUS: Biden Cancels $39B in Student Loans

(By Casey Harper, The Center Square) The Department of Education announced Friday that $39 billion in federal student loan debt for about 800,000 borrowers will be “discharged,” or canceled, in the coming weeks.

The move comes just weeks after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s effort to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars through the HEROES Act. That plan would have forgiven $10,000 per qualifying borrower and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

The DOE plan announced this week would change how monthly payments are counted for those under the Income Driven Repayment plans. Those paying for more than two decades with lower monthly payments because of their income would qualify to potentially be impacted by this announcement.

“The Biden administration is trampling the rule of law, hurting borrowers and abusing taxpayers to chase headlines,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who chairs the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, said in a statement. “Biden’s student loan scam is far from over. From day one, this administration has encouraged borrowers not to repay their loans and has expected taxpayers to foot the bill.”

The Biden administration said the administrative changes to cancel old debts made the loan balances more accurate, but Republicans quickly blasted Biden’s latest loan forgiveness plan as a blatant attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In particular, Republicans blasted the part of Biden’s plan that allowed months where borrowers missed payments under a wide variety of circumstances to still count toward their total number of monthly payments made.

“Taxpayers should be enraged but not surprised. Don’t forget, this is the same agency that was called out for using cost estimates that weren’t grounded in reality,” she added.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the move was about fairness for disadvantaged borrowers and helping those “cheated” by colleges.

“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,” Cardona said in a statement announcing the decision.

GAO Identifies $47 Billion in Duplicated Services

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GAO Identifies $47 Billion in Duplicated Services

(By Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) The Government Accountability Office found $47 billion in potential savings in its recently released report that showed overlapped and duplicated services.

This annual report has resulted in about $600 billion in financial benefits since 2011, but there is plenty of waste in it that Congress continues to ignore. The most wasteful programs it identified, reforming Medicare payments by place of service, is estimated to save $141 billion over 10 years.

All Congress would have to do to save this money is to direct the Health and Human Services Secretary to equalize payment rates between settings for evaluation and management office visits and other services that the Secretary deems appropriate.

Another easy reform is in the realm of Nuclear Waste Disposal, with GAO estimating adopting alternative approaches to treating a portion of its low-activity radioactive waste could save tens of billions of dollars.

Improving naval acquisition practices, tweaking the Medicare Advantage program and enhancing IRS enforcement efforts are each expected to save billions of dollars. Numerous other programs have potential savings of multiple millions, making efforts to address these issues well worthwhile given their high dollar amounts.

Unfortunately, Congress has not been eager to solve these problems. Since 2011, GAO has flagged 132 matters for Congress to fix, but only 52 have been addressed. Ten have been closed without being addressed, while 70 remain open.

GAO has done the difficult work of identifying where waste is occurring and how to fix it. Now, it’s up to Congress to step up and do the work of legislating these solutions into law to save taxpayers tens of billions.

Rep. Gallagher: China’s Xi Trying To Replace God

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Rep. Gallagher: China’s Xi Trying To Replace God

(By Susan Crabtree, RealClear Wire) China is not only carrying out genocide against a religious minority, the Uyghur Muslims, but President Xi Jinping views all people of faith as a direct threat and is trying to insert himself in the “role of God” over all people of faith in China, a top House Republican has asserted.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, criticized Xi and his government for rewriting versions of the Bible distributed in certain areas of China and replacing the 10 Commandments with Xi quotes warning against the “infiltration of Western ideology” in government-sanctioned Christian churches.

“[Xi] has no problem with the First Commandment ‘to have no other gods before me’ as long as he and the CCP are playing God,” Gallagher said during a Wednesday roundtable on religious persecution in China. “[China’s] constitution states that citizens enjoy the freedom of religious belief, but of course, in the CCP definition, it’s a much closer resemblance to what we would call oppression.”

Gallagher organized the forum, attended by religious leaders from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths, and several church leaders who fled persecution in China. His stated aim is to shine a spotlight on China’s religious crackdown on people of all religious beliefs, which he says is not getting the attention it deserves in the U.S. and other countries around the world.

Other religious freedom and human rights experts said the Chinese government is stepping up its religious oppression, reprising the CCP’s long history of trying to control every aspect of its citizens’ behavior, down to their most intimate spiritual beliefs.

“China’s repressive actions do not discriminate,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council and a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom, or USCIRF. “All religious groups are viewed as a threat to the Chinese regime – whether it’s Christians who are monitored through artificial intelligence … or the Falun Gong who have been subjected to unbelievably brutal treatment.”

The Falun Gong and Uyghurs have been forced into labor camps and hundreds of thousands have been killed for their organs in what has become a billion-dollar involuntary organ-transplant industry in China.

For decades, U.S. policymakers more concerned with trade than human rights turned a blind eye to evidence of China’s gruesome human rights abuses, Perkins said, adding that this has proved naïve. In September 2000, the U.S. Senate voted to grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations status, a decision that paved the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization.

Free-trade advocates, including President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and leading members of Congress, insisted that greater trade between the U.S. and China would help China become more democratic and vastly improve its human rights record.

Instead the opposite dynamic occurred. The values of U.S. businesses changed, not those of China’s government, Perkins said. “China is more repressive today than it was decades ago” because it can more easily ignore critics after becoming a global economic power.

Pastor Pan Yongguang fled China with more than 60 members of his Protestant church in 2019 and was eventually granted asylum in the United States in April. Pan told the House Select Committee on China that he and other pastors are routinely threatened with jail time, forced to relocate and close.

“The CCP is staunchly atheistic and against all religious beliefs,” he told the panel. “There’s no freedom of religious in China under CCP rule.”

Pastor Pan founded the Holy Reformed Church in Shenzhen in 2012 and has served as its pastor for the last 11 years. During that time, he said Chinese national security agents continuously threatened him with arrest and imprisonment. His theological training at the Philadelphia Bible Reformed Church of the Presbyterian Church in America, the second-largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, made him a top target for harassment.

The training and ordination in the U.S., he said, were viewed as “colluding with anti-Chinese forces overseas in the eyes of the CCP.” To add to the American connection, Pastor Pan and his flock are referred to by some advocates as the “Mayflower Church,” inspired by the Pilgrims who left their homeland for the New World four centuries ago. The pastor and his congregation spent several years in legal limbo living on an island in South Korea and then in Thailand before the U.S. government granted them asylum.

While the Mayflower Church members managed to escape, millions of other Chinese citizens are forced to worship in secret, hide their beliefs or face jail time. Bhuchung Tsering of the International Campaign for Tibet described China’s decades of persecution in Tibet against its unique form of Buddhism as an all-out suppression of Tibetans’ culture and spiritual beliefs.

Following China’s occupation of Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India, and the Chinese government destroyed several thousand monasteries and temples.

“In recent years, particularly following the assumption of office by President Xi, the Chinese government’s policy on the Tibetan religion has become one of insidious control of religious institutions and systems in an attempt to serve its own objectives … including the right to determine Tibetan Buddhists’ own leaders and modes or practice,” Tsering said.

Roughly 1 million Tibetan children in China have been separated from their families and placed in government-run boarding schools, where they are indoctrinated into Chinese Communist beliefs, taught Mandarin, and forced to abandon their Tibetan language and culture, a United Nations panel of experts determined earlier this year.

Bhuchung urged the Select Committee to endorse and Congress to pass the Tibet-China Conflict Act, which would pressure the Chinese government to resume negotiations with the Dalai Lama’s envoys without any preconditions and ensure U.S. support for Tibet will continue.

The U.S. and leading nations must take bold, decisive action if it wants to change China from within, Perkins argued. Congress should revoke Beijing’s trade status, and consumers should stop buying any goods made in China.

A Uyghur Muslim refugee identified as Imam Hajim testified that most Muslim nations in the Middle East and Africa are unaware of China’s genocide against the Uyghur Muslims, even though they share the same faith. Hajim urged U.S. leaders to do more to educate these populations in countries that are strengthening their ties to Beijing because of Chinese investment in their infrastructure.

Other prominent religious freedom advocates agreed, calling on churches, synagogues, and mosques worldwide to speak out about China’s religious persecution and human rights atrocities. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who chairs USCIRF, called on the State Department to designate China as a country of particular concern, adding it to the U.S. government’s blacklist of the worst religious freedom offenders around the world.

“This is also a call to action to all religious groups represented in the United States,” he said. “It’s time to awaken the sleeping giant that is all people of faith.”

Republicans Rip White House, Secret Service for Sham Cocaine Probe

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Republicans Rip White House, Secret Service for Sham Cocaine Probe

(By Brett Rowland, The Center Square) Republicans raised questions about the security of the White House on Thursday after a U.S. Secret Service probe failed to find out how cocaine ended up in the White House.

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said he expected better from the Secret Service.

“The White House is supposed to be the most secure residence in the world, but today Secret Service officials failed to answer basic questions or provide any meaningful information related to security failures and cocaine being found at the White House,” he said in a statement.

Comer said the Secret Service must “reassess their security operations to prevent illegal substances from entering the White House.”

The U.S. Secret Service said Thursday it closed its investigation into cocaine found at the White House because of a “lack of physical evidence” 11 days after the illegal drug was found in one of the nation’s most secure buildings.

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the U.S. Secret Service said in a statement.

“Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”

Officers from the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division discovered what later turned out to be cocaine July 2 inside a vestibule leading to the lobby area of the West Executive Avenue entrance to the White House. The stash was located inside a receptacle used to store electronic and personal devices before entering the West Wing. After finding what was then an unknown white powder, the Secret Service temporarily evacuated the White House as a precaution.

Last week, the White House declined to provide additional information about the matter, but said the cocaine was found in a “heavily traveled area.”

“We have confidence that the Secret Service will get to the bottom of this,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the time.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the White House is supposed to be the “most secure location on the planet.”

“You better damn well believe that if [the Biden administration] wanted to go figure out where that cocaine came from, the Secret Service of the United States in the White House could figure it out,” Roy said during an interview with Fox News.

Analysis: Chinese Debt Overlords Could Exploit America’s Volatile Interest Rates

Ken Silva
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Analysis: Chinese Debt Overlords Could Exploit America’s Volatile Interest Rates

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took heat for bowing to China Vice Premier He Lifeng in her trip to Beijing last week.

But Yellen has good reason to pay deference to the Chinese. Rising interest rates are straining the federal budget at an alarming rate, which means that Yellen could soon be begging one of the U.S. government’s largest creditors for money.

Indeed, the U.S. national debt increased by $1 trillion in a mere month since the borrowing ceiling was raised by Congress, and it now stands at $32.5 trillion and climbing.

The Treasury Department reportedly said Thursday that the budget deficit from October through June was nearly $1.4 trillion—a 170% increase from the same period a year earlier.

The spiraling debt problem is driven in large part by rising interest rates. The non-profit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget published a shocking analysis the same week as Yellen’s China trip, showing that U.S. spending on interest payments is set to outpace all other federal programs.

Interest payments already hit a record $475 billion in 2022, CFRB noted. With the Federal Reserve continuing to raise interest rates in its attempt to curtail inflation, that record is set to be shattered this year and every year after that for the foreseeable future.

Interest payments over the last nine months were reportedly $652 billion. And according to the CFRB, interest payments are set to grow to $1.4 trillion by 2033, then to $2.7 trillion by 2043 and $5.4 trillion by 2053.

“By 2051, spending on interest will be the single largest line item in the federal budget, surpassing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all other mandatory and discretionary spending programs,” the fiscal watchdog warned.

“By the end of the next three decades, interest will consume 6.7% of GDP and 35% of federal revenues annually.”

Despite the skyrocketing interest payments, spending cuts don’t seem to be on the agenda for the Biden administration or Congress.

The combination of rising interest rates and a spend-happy government has many economists predicting fiscal doom.

“How this will play out remains unclear. But we can say this with confidence: the spending will continue,” wrote Michael Maharrey, the managing editor for the SchiffGold blog. “The debt will continue to rise. And if the Fed keeps rates elevated, paying the interest on the national debt will become a big problem for Uncle Sam.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Biden Authorizes 3,000 U.S. Boots on the Ground to Support Ukraine Operations

Corine Gatti
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Biden Authorizes 3,000 U.S. Boots on the Ground to Support Ukraine Operations

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) President Joe Biden on Thursday authorized the deployment of up to 3,000 U.S. military reservists to Europe as part of a response to Russian actions against Ukraine, the Gateway Pundit reported.

“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America … I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation Atlantic Resolve in and around the United States European Command’s area of responsibility,” the 80-year-old president said in a statement released by the White House.

Biden made the move after his two-day stint at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, and amid Ukraine’s continued push to join NATO.

The deployment—including up to 450 members of the Individual Ready Reserve for Operation Atlantic Resolve—marked yet another departure from the president’s early promises that the U.S. would not get involved in a ground war protecting the former Soviet nation, with which there is no formal defense treaty.

Since then, he has progressively ratchted up the level of weaponry and U.S. military committment in the region, even at the expense of America’s own national security.

Despite the waning public support for operations there, Biden—whose family has long conducted private business with Ukrainian oligarchs—has doubled down, expending untold U.S. billions on the war effort and support for Ukrainian pensions and salaries.

Democrats have rejected calls for an inspector general or oversight office to track the funding, while the Pentagon has announced several clerical errors that have remitted to Ukraine billions more in funding than the amount authorized by Congress.

Ostensibly, the U.S. troops will be part of a broader NATO mission supporting military readiness in the event that the Western alliance gets drawn into World War III.

Operation Atlantic Resolve was launched in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. It involved the deployment of combat-credible forces to Europe in order to demonstrate NATO’s commitment, enhance ally and partner military bonds and build readiness.

The Individual Ready Reserve has not been used for nearly 20 years, but the new order has given them the authority to be called to service if required.

The IRR will consist of former active duty and reserve members who are no longer required to participate in military activities until ordered by the president. Essentially, junior enlisted officers who have an obligation after leaving their service once their contract has expired, the Gateway Pundit reported.

The Washington Examiner noted the U.S. provided over $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion 18 months ago.

Last year, the administration increased troop presence in Europe by 20,000 soldiers as a response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. force on the continent to about 100,000 troops and growing.

Meanwhile, nearly 600,000 migrants crossed the U.S. border since Biden entered office.

Carlson’s Plans for New Media Company, Including Business Partner, Revealed

Robert Jonathan
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Carlson’s Plans for New Media Company, Including Business Partner, Revealed

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Tucker Carlson’s plans to launch a new media company are reportedly taking shape in a seriously big way.

For the contemplated video channel, Carlson and close friend/business partner Neil Patel potentially intend to use, or continue to use, “Twitter as its backbone,” the Wall Street Journal reported, relying in its story on information from unnamed insiders.

The college buddies apparently aren’t doing it on the cheap, by any means.

To make this happen, the duo who were roommates at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., are attempting to fundraise to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars” and “have lined up financiers, lawyers and media strategists to work on the new company.”

Carlson and Patel already have a joint-venture track record in that they co-founded the Daily Caller website.

According to the WSJ, “Carlson’s team met with a Twitter team in recent weeks to discuss the endeavor, people familiar with the matter said.

It added that “Carlson and Patel’s new company would also have its own website and mobile app, and is exploring other homes beyond Twitter for its content as well, some of the people said.”

The news outlet outlined the presumed trajectory of the Carlson company, which seems likely to be made available on a paid subscription basis.

“Users of Twitter and other platforms would still be able to watch free, shorter versions of his show, interviews and documentaries, but would need to subscribe to watch them in their entirety, the people said. The company would eventually add shows from additional hosts, they said.”

Twitter previously enabled content creators to post live streams on a popular internal app called Periscope, which was eventually shut down for whatever reason by the platform’s previous management.

It’s unclear if Elon Musk and Co. are contemplating bringing back Periscope, although the WSJ piece asserted that “Musk has said that expanding Twitter’s video features is part of his vision for the platform.”

The WSJ further explained that “[Carlson’s] new company’s potential partnership with Twitter would expand the relationship between the platform and one of its highest-profile video creators, and serve as a test case for the social media network’s video ambitions under Elon Musk.”

Carlson’s budding media empire appears to be coming into focus even as the legal wrangling with Fox News, his former TV home, over his contract status is yet to be resolved.

Fox has suffered significant viewership erosion since Tucker Carlson Tonight got abruptly cancelled, a development among many that continues to call in question the future viability of cable news, if not linear television generally.

He anchored the top-rated FNC show from remote studios near his Maine and Florida homes.

The WSJ article also mentioned that Carlson and Patel are “wary” of posting their content on YouTube over censorship concerns.

This is perhaps why various YouTubers from different genres with massive followings post some of their live streams and pre-recorded videos there and then encourage followers to go to, e.g., Rumble or Locals for additional, censorship-free content.

So far, Tucker on Twitter has posted nine installments, eight of which consisted of his signature monologues.

For number nine, Carlson flew to Romania for a long-form interview with controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate.

Carlson and Patel have not yet responded to media inquiries about the WSJ scoop.

Tucker Carlson is set to host a GOP presidential candidate forum Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.

Tucker’s ex-Fox News colleague Megyn Kelly, who launched a politics- and culture-related podcast after a failed attempt at becoming an NBC Today show daytime diva, currently has one-million-plus YouTube subscribers.

Cruz: AG Garland Likely ‘Committed Multiple Felonies’ if IRS Whistleblowers Are Legit

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Cruz: AG Garland Likely ‘Committed Multiple Felonies’ if IRS Whistleblowers Are Legit

(By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) If two FBI whistleblowers who’ve come forward are telling the truth, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland may have committed at least two felonies, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said. Cruz called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate Garland.

“[Attorney General] Merrick Garland may have lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obstructed justice in the Hunter Biden investigation,” Cruz said. “There needs to be a special prosecutor appointed to find out if Attorney General Garland has committed multiple felonies.”

The Texas senator told Fox News, “I questioned Merrick Garland in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he told the Judiciary Committee under oath that the U.S. Attorney investigating Hunter Biden had complete authority to investigate and there was zero political interference. His statement is directly contrary to what the whistleblowers said.

“The House needs to have a hearing. They need to have both whistleblowers under oath. They need to have David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney, under oath. They need to have Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, under oath. Somebody’s lying.”

“And if Merrick Garland is lying,” Cruz said, he committed two felonies: lying under oath before Congress and obstruction of justice.

Because Garland can’t investigate himself, Cruz argues, he “should be recused from the entire matter” and a special counsel should be appointed “to determine whether or not the Attorney General of the United States has committed multiple felonies.”

This is unlikely to happen given the fact that the Department of Justice would appoint a special prosecutor and that the Biden administration has denied any wrongdoing.

Two FBI whistleblowers have come forward alleging an FBI coverup of alleged crimes committed by Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. They will appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability next week.

One FBI whistleblower, Gary Shapley, and an unnamed colleague, previously testified before the House Ways and Means Committee. They said their years-long investigation into Hunter Biden was hamstrung by Biden-appointed superiors. The committee also published a 200-page transcript of its interview with Shapley, who said his superiors sought to protect Hunter Biden by blocking search warrants and preventing him from doing his job. After he told Congress what happened, he was removed from the case and said he received retaliatory treatment.

On Wednesday, the Oversight Committee announced it was holding a hearing next week, titled “Hearing with IRS Whistleblowers About the Biden Criminal Investigation.” At the hearing, the American people will hear from IRS whistleblowers “who possess critical information related to the committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s influence peddling schemes.”

Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky, said, “Since taking the gavel in January, the Committee on Oversight and Accountability has made rapid progress in our investigation into the Biden family’s domestic and international business dealings to determine whether these activities compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality. From the thousands of financial records we’ve obtained, we know the Biden family set up over a 20 shell companies, engaged in intentionally complicated financial transactions with foreign adversaries, and made a concerted effort to hide the payments and avoid scrutiny.”

Comer also said the whistleblowers’ testimony supported concerns Republican senators and many Americans have raised: a “two-tiered system of justice that seemingly allows the Biden family to operate above the law.”

Cruz also said he met with Comer to discuss the whistleblower allegations, adding that while the House is trying to hold the FBI accountable, “Senate Democrats don’t want to know the truth. They’re not interested.”

Climate Alarmist Shill John Kerry Grovels for China, Refuses to Call CCP Ruler a Dictator

Mark Pellin
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Climate Alarmist Shill John Kerry Grovels for China, Refuses to Call CCP Ruler a Dictator

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Unlike kowtowing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was blasted for her overseas bowing and pandering to China officials, President Joe Biden’s “climate envoy,” John Kerry, started his own obsequious groveling ahead of his trip to Beijing slated for next week.

When he wasn’t lying about his jet-setting travel habits, Kerry refused multiple times during a Congressional hearing Thursday to call CCP ruler Xi Jinping a “dictator.” Kerry even chided Biden for using the term in a self-aggrandizing boast last month about shooting down China’s spy balloon after letting it fly across the U.S and several major military sites. 

“There’s no question at all that President Xi is the major decider of the direction and of the policies of China,” Kerry dodged when asked by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., if he agreed that the brutal communist dictator was a dictator.

“Is he in fact, effectively a dictator?” asked Issa. When pressed, Kerry again refused to state the obvious.

“No, I don’t even, I don’t, I just frankly all of that is water off the duck’s back and you know I don’t think we ought to get tangled up in, you know, labels and names and whatever,” Kerry blustered. “What we ought to do is look at the heart of what we’re trying to do.”

Kerry’s mission on behalf of the Biden administration is to continue turning a blind eye to China’s atrocious human rights abuses, argued Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s oversight and responsibility subcommittee. They also ripped the administration for allowing China to call itself a “developing nation” to skirt climate emissions standards.

“How in the world can the second largest economy maintain to you and the rest of the world, with a straight face, that they’re a developing nation, giving them preferential treatment?” demanded Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Kerry whiffed on a reply, conceding that his trip won’t make any difference convincing China to drop its phony developing nation sham.

“That’s not going to happen in this visit,” he said. “It’s just not going to happen.”

The president’s climate envoy made clear, as he has in the past, that China’s human rights abuses would take a back seat to his obsession with climate alarmism.

“The last time you were here, I asked you the impact [the Uyghur] genocide would have on your climate agenda,” McCaul reminded Kerry. “And you said, ‘well, life is full of tough choices.’ Well, when it comes to ending genocide, there are no tough choices.”

Kerry indicated on Thursday that as long as those “tough choices” didn’t make him look bad in headlines, he was likely willing to once again overlook China’s human rights abuses with little more than lip service.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about them, but it means that they’re not going to become showstoppers,” Kerry said Thursday. 

Ex-Trump Adviser Challenges Chris Christie to Wrestling Match

Ezekiel Loseke
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Ex-Trump Adviser Challenges Chris Christie to Wrestling Match

(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Former White House foreign policy advisor Peter Navarro challenged Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie to a wrestling match–debate hybrid on Thursday after Christie called former President Donald Trump a coward.

“Donny, you got so much to say, why don’t you say it directly to my face on the debate stage?” Christie wrote.

Christie, once a Trump ally himself who led the former president’s first White House transition team, soured on Trump after he was passed over for the attorney general post.

The one-time New Jersey governor has since become an outspoken Trump attack dog, routinely making appearances on leftist cable networks to lodge stink bombs at the current GOP frontrunner.

However, Trump’s team was not about to take the latest attack lying down, with Navarro invoking Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday from the 1993 film Tombstone to offer himself as an alternative sparring partner.

“I challenge your fat ass and loud mouth to a presidential debate on the network of your choice,” Navarro told the heavyset RINO before making reference to another supposed cage match between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Several Twitter users followed Navarro’s lead, poking fun at Christie’s girth and questioning his ability to fight.

One user suggested an alternative competition befitting Christie’s unique strengths, perhaps referring to Christie’s hot dog bill of over $80,000 in 2015.

Of course, in 2023, someone had to play the role of the schoolmarm and ruin the fun.

Licking his wounds, while attempting to get back on message by further goading Trump instead of engaging his surrogates, Christie, 60, told Piers Morgan that he was confident he could beat the 77-year-old ex-president in a UFC-style cage match, the New York Post reported.

“Talking of fighting, if you and Trump got in the ring—he loves his UFC and stuff like that, right?—if you got in the octagon, you and him, who would win?” Morgan asked.

“Come on,” Christie replied. “Guy is 78 years old [sic]. I’d kick his ass.”

Christie is currently polling in seventh place but said he had met the donor requirements to participate in an Aug. 23 debate sponsored by the Republican National Committee.

“I’ll fight Donald Trump anywhere he wants, in any arena he wants—whether it’s on a debate stage, or in the octagon,” Christie said.

Trump, who has a considerable lead over the other candidates, is not expected to participate in the first RNC debate, citing the hostile attitudes of the two Fox News moderators and a lack of incentive.

“When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the “questions,” why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?” he asked in an April Truth Social post.

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