(By Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) The U.S. National Park Service requires visitors to certain parks to obtain a vehicle pass, and charges a $2 reservation fee to book ahead of time. Unfortunately, the Park Service isn’t the one receiving most of this fee, thanks to their decision to outsource the system to a consulting firm.
Visitors reserve passes in advance on Recreation.gov, which isn’t run by the National Park Service, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Instead, government consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton runs it as part of a five-year contract the National Park Service agreed to in 2018. Because of this agreement, Booz Allen Hamilton receives a portion of all fees.
Since 2019, the firm has invoiced the federal government for more than $140 million, far exceeding the $87 million it was projected to make when it signed the contract. The contract is up for renewal next year, meaning it could continue to profit off of this agreement for another five years.
The government has defended this arrangement, claiming this structure shifts the risk on Booz Allen Hamilton, and not the government. While this may be true, it’s hard to ignore that these hundreds of millions of dollars could be going towards hiring more park rangers, maintaining trails, and improving facilities if Parks did this work in-house, or changed the agreement to be more favorable to taxpayers.
Instead, these fees are lining the pockets of a multi-billion dollar consulting firm. Hopefully, when considering renewal of this contract, the government will demand more favorable terms so that park visitors’ fees are going toward preservation.
(By Philip Wegmann, RealClear Wire) Nothing happened. Again.
Congressional leaders left the Oval Office after meeting with President Biden Tuesday evening, further entrenched in their original positions and without anything close to an agreement on how the federal government should pay its bills.
They bickered. They agreed to meet again Friday. They accused each other of lying about the situation.
The White House has called on Congress to increase the debt limit without conditions. Led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans did pass a bill to extend the federal borrowing authority but return spending to 2022 levels. The months-long game of “chicken” continues, and without some sort of compromise by either side, the country could default as soon as June 1.
That’s the date by which Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns the federal government may be unable to meet its financial obligations if Congress does not first raise the debt limit.
“Everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at,” McCarthy told reporters gathered in the White House driveway. “I didn’t see any new movement.”
Standing next to the California Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that the wrong kind of history was not about to be made. “Let me first make the point: The United States is not going to default,” he said. “It never has, and it never will.” To avoid that fate, McConnell continued, Biden and McCarthy had to come to terms.
“This can only be solved by the one person in America who can sign something into law and by the majority of the opposite party, in divided government,” McConnell said. “Hopefully that’s the direction in which we were headed now, because we’re running out of time.”
Both sides argued again that it was the other who was being irresponsible. This included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who dismissed the only legislation to increase the debt limit, the bill passed by House Republicans last month, as a non-starter.
“What’s really troubling about the speaker’s position is, it’s a partisan bill, and he says take it or leave it, or we could default,” Schumer told reporters after McCarthy left the White House. “By not taking default off the table, Speaker McCarthy is gravely endangering America and making it much harder to make progress on budget negotiations.”
The White House has said they are willing to discuss spending cuts but not in relation to the debt limit, though experts note that in recent decades Congress hasn’t managed to achieve major deficit reduction separate from negotiations over the debt limit. The administration’s explanation for their refusal to negotiate as default looms? Congress didn’t force former President Trump into concessions to raise the debt ceiling three times, and they are still haunted by what happened more than a decade ago.
There was a time when Biden was open to negotiations over the debt ceiling. As vice president, Biden helped hammer out a deal to avoid default, but that was at the last minute and isn’t something the administration has any appetite for now. “In 2011, the Obama-Biden administration negotiated in good faith,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in February, “but congressional Republicans’ recklessness caused a historic blow to our economy.”
And the White House claims, among other things, that the bill passed by House Republicans would eliminate tens of thousands of jobs at Veterans Affairs, allow for fewer Veterans Affairs outpatient visits, and increase the disability backlog for veterans.
The legislation does not target veteran services at all. It only would mandate that government spending in fiscal year 2024 return to the same level as 2022. After the meeting in the Oval Office, McCarthy told RealClearPolitics that the argument from the White House “is a lie.”
“That type of behavior is our political rhetoric,” he said. “So, if one side is going to sit back and say those types of things, all I’m asking is we spend the amount of money we spent five months ago.”
Biden offered his own rebuttal in the Roosevelt Room hours later, saying that the spending cuts had to come from somewhere. “He uses the ‘L’ word, the ‘lying’ word, but says I’m not telling the truth,” the president said during brief remarks.
“All I asked him inside was: If you’re not going to cut any of those programs and you’re saying the cut is 22% across the board, then you’re going to have to cut a hell of a lot more with the programs that are left,” he said. “‘No, we’re not going to do that either,’” he continued, predicting the GOP response. “I’m not sure. I don’t think they’re sure exactly what they’re proposing.”
But while there is no consensus on how to ensure the government doesn’t default, recent joint polling by RealClear Opinion Research and Emerson College suggests an advantage for McCarthy in the debate. “An issue for Democrats is that independents align with Republicans on not raising the debt ceiling,” pollster Spencer Kimball, associate professor at Emerson College, said, adding that their hesitation could stem from “their concern about inflation.”
According to that survey, more independent voters, 46%, believe that the debt ceiling should not be raised than those who say that it should be (29%) – a finding that may pique the interest of lawmakers as the borrowing debate rages on Capitol Hill, especially now as a record number of Americans identify not as Republican or Democrat but as independent of either party.
Biden held out the possibility that he may cancel upcoming travel to stay in Washington and reach a bill. He said that was “unlikely” but “possible.” He suggested that his meeting, his second with congressional leaders, was constructive even if not final. “Three of the four participants were very measured and low key,” the president said. “Occasionally there would be a little bit of an assertion that maybe was a little over the top from the speaker.”
The woke authorities were gifted with what appeared to be a clear-cut case of right-wing extremism in an Allen, Texas, mall attack that left at least eight innocent victims dead (including three children) and seven others critically injured.
Nonetheless, inconsistencies in the reported evidence have led skeptics to question the hastily reached conclusions that killer Mauricio Garcia was, as leftist pundits and officials promptly declared, a Latino “white supremacist.”
“[T]his has been the craziest media push after a mass shooting in a long while, and at this time this editor can honestly not say what is and isn’t the truth which is a sad reflection of what our mainstream media have become,” wrote Twitchy’s Sam Janney.
Like the media, the intel community has squandered its credibility in such matters, meaning any conflicting evidence that might once have been dismissed in good faith must now be given the benefit of the doubt.
However, while the killer’s exact motives remain inconclusive, the motives of a desperate deep state, increasingly threatened by Republican-led calls to rein in its excesses and abuses, can no longer be discounted.
Some now suspect that their desire to validate their own existence and confirm spurious, politically driven narratives about the threat of “domestic violent extremism” and “Russian disinformation” might compel agencies like the FBI to cherry-pick information that advances their own interests.
Then again, others wonder what’s to stop them from coordinating the plot themselves.
This appears to be a giant psyop with several purposes:
1. Get Tim Pool off air 2. Declare Twitter as national security threat 3. Get LibsOfTikTok banned from Twitter 4. Push AR-Ban 5. Bring white supremacy back to forefront 6. Distract from migrant invasion
A 1997 quotation from Oprah Winfrey (during a discussion with her friend Maya Angelou) has become popular on Twitter describing inadvertent moments of candor from figures on both side of the political spectrum.
It goes: “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
I, for one, do not believe that human nature is immutable or that individuals are incapable of changing and evolving in their views, as the two suggest.
Yet, there is some truth to the recognition that what we often dismiss as flukes, anomalies, accidents and coincidences are, in fact, the true nature of an individual or entity, flailing and screaming to reveal itself.
If the behavior is validated or even tolerated once with impunity, then the same pattern is that much more likely to repeat itself, and the window for accountability and/or behavior modification will narrow with every passing attempt thereafter.
This holds true not only for the deadbeat men whom Winfrey claimed to have encountered in her dating life, but also for the nation’s intelligence apparati—which are, at their very core, designed to sow dishonesty and disinformation for the purpose of mass manipulation in support of the institutional State.
Throughout the Trump presidency, the deep state faced a difficult choice:
Cede control over the swampy shadow-government they had become so accustomed to operating from within Washington, D.C.’s unelected administrative bureaucracy.
Come out from the shadows to challenge the president, while also confirming/exposing their own seditious playbook.
So great was their Trump Derangement Syndrome that many invariably chose the latter option. And when they succeeded in avoiding consequences for the original Russia-collusion hoax, they simply kept going.
But still, they have managed to dodge accountability for their actions—undoubtedly because any effort to do so on the part of elected lawmakers risks mutually assured destruction.
Chuck Schumer on Trump in 2017: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you” pic.twitter.com/gVUbUKTt0x
Although details on stories like the recent transgender attack on a Christian school in Nashville that left dead three adults and three children have been buried under a sea of red tape, some were astonished by the speed with which select journalists were able to confirm allegations that the Texas mall shooter had neo-Nazi sympathies by accessing his obscure social-media accounts.
Among those leading the way were the New York Times and the British outlet Bellingcat, which, as noted by the Gateway Pundit, “is the notorious go-to website for the British intelligence agencies.”
It also receives funding from far-left oligarch George Soros.
Bellingcat is recieves funding from @GeorgeSoros & the National Endowment for Democracy
The Gateway Pundit further pointed out that the information provided by a Bellingcat reporter named Aric Toler included sensitive data that had, in some cases, been redacted.
Toler was the same reporter who first “discovered” that the recent Pentagon files undermining the Ukrainian war effort had been leaked via Discord—suggesting that he, himself, may have been the recipient of privileged information selectively leaked via the investigating federal agencies.
“It is clear,” the Gateway Pundit noted, that the leftist outlets “… are getting near real-time access to highly sensitive details about an active murder investigation and were provided raw crime scene alleged evidence for the purpose of narrative engineering.”
A leftist journo magically manages to find the shooters alleged social media posts & goes on to spread it all over Twitter & elsewhere in order to promote the approved narrative. In the meantime, officials are refusing to release the manifesto of the Covenant School Shooter. 🤔
The question—or rather, the likelihood—of intelligence leaks notwithstanding, some went even farther in noting inconsistencies in the Texas shooting that pointed to a possible false-flag operation or disinformation campaign by the agencies themselves.
These questions are worth asking of the Allen, Texas shooter and the recent revelations about him. This is not a comprehensive list of questions, or points.
– Why was the shooter misidentified several times? – The shooter wasn't white. – How were his neo-Nazi affiliations…
That included details such as the fact that the supposed smoking-gun evidence used to link the killer to far-right extremism—the Nazi tattoos on his body—appeared to be fresh, and that photos of his body with the tattoos did not show his head.
Moreover, a Russian account traced back to Mauricio Garcia—as well as his engagement with U.S. conservative media figures like podcaster Tim Pool and Libs of TikTok—appeared to have been established relatively recently while showing few followers or interactions.
Posts are also recent, from last 3 weeks. Photos come from a 5 year old Reddit group mocking Mexican Hitler supporters. He had no friends on the social media site. No engagement at all. Posts have ridiculous write ups like "My sort of man" under a pic of Hitler, or "this post was…
Additionally, Garcia—whose recent posts were rife with misspellings and grammatical errors—had previously written a highly articulate and coherent defense of the transgender Nashville shooter.
Some also pointed to gang tattoos that suggested Garcia might be affiliated with Mexican drug cartels.
And, in what seemed to be a given in any possible scenario, Garcia’s fragile mental health presented another alternative that further diminished the case for ideological extremism being the prime culprit.
A DEFENSIVE STRATEGY
Although Toler did acknowledge his failure to confirm Garcia’s identity in one of the alleged photos he offered as evidence, those driving the media narrative seemed determined to forge ahead on their questionable conclusion that the killer was a Russia-linked domestic violent extremist who just happened to be a Latino with a troubled history that long predated his sudden interest in conservative politics.
But their certitude raises more questions than answers.
In particular, it comes as the FBI and other federal agencies fret that they could lose their spying powers under FISA Section 702 when the act next comes up for renewal.
“One thing that societies cannot sustain is when they feel they cannot trust their own law enforcement, their own intelligence agencies,” said Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, in a recent article by the Associated Press about allowing the provisions to sunset. “We have to implement reforms to regain some of that trust.”
While members of Congress may be reluctant to back drastic reform, the politicization of the intel community has led many conservative critics to question whether agencies like the FBI have lost sight of their core mission: protecting the interests of U.S. citizens.
“The notion that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is supposed to be the premier law enforcement agency in the country, has the time and the wherewithal and the bandwidth to be the flagging social media posts of American citizens as misinformation, … and collaborating to control speech in this country, is unfathomable,” said Gene Hamilton, vice president and general counsel of the America First Legal Foundation in a recent panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation’s Conservative Leadership Summit.
Bishop has voiced his support for decentralizing the intel community—despite Congress’s recent appropriation of funds for a new FBI facility close to the nation’s capital that would be twice the size of the Pentagon.
“Most of the skulduggery has its roots in the Washington nerve center,” Bishop said in an exclusive, in-person interview with Headline USA, a day after the FBI’s controversial Aug. 8, 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
He noted the catch-22 for lawmakers, who did not want to “decimate” the agencies so as to handicap their ability to perform their legitimate job functions.
Nonetheless, Bishop said, “It’s spiraling to where the only thing you can do to get their attention is something as reprehensible as they’ve been doing.”
Locked in a death spiral and amid such calls for action, it is not hard to imagine that an intelligence community that has shown its willingness to bring down multiple U.S. presidents would resort to even more desperate measures—including possible false-flag operations against American citizens—to prove its own worth.
For Bishop and us lowly pawns alike, that could mean only one thing: Checkmate.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Several Democrat state attorneys general issued approval of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s efforts to heavily regulate natural gas stoves.
The 11 attorneys general commented on the upcoming procedures, saying they support “voluntary standards or mandatory regulations that will reduce the emissions of harmful pollutants from gas stoves.”
According to the Daily Wire, the AGs cited a study that claimed gas stoves worsen indoor air quality and may cause asthma.
The AGs agreed that “informative warning labels and public education” regarding the effects of natural gas appliances should be made available to all citizens to protect themselves from ostensible disease, but also in the name of equity, as the letter claimed natural gas effect those in low-income communities the most.
“Pollution from gas stoves often has a disproportionate effect on households located in underserved communities, especially low-income households. In some instances, low-income housing conditions may contribute to a greater risk of exposure to pollutants from gas stoves,” the letter said. “Those conditions include smaller unit sizes in multifamily housing, poor ventilation, use of a gas stove as a source of heat, and maintenance deficiencies.”
Several of the states where the AGs presided already “recognized the health hazards posed by household gas appliances, including gas stoves, and have introduced policies and regulations that aim to mitigate those hazards.”
One of those mitigating tactics is “supporting home electrification” via city codes and laws prohibiting gas hookups in new buildings.
Nearly 40% of American households use gas stoves, with states like California and New Jersey approaching 70%. Studies revealed that families used their stoves an average of eight times per week.
The CPSC and the Biden administration worked in tandem to introduce emissions regulations on gas stoves despite public backlash.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who admitted to owning a gas stove, supported the regulations and denied that they would essentially ban the product.
CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. called gas stoves a “hidden hazard” and declared war against them, saying “any option is on the table” for banning the appliance.
The CPSC later walked back the comment in a public statement.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Earlier this month, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., floated a hair-brained proposal for what the U.S. should do if China invades Taiwan.
“The U.S. should make it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC,” Moulton said at a conference organized by the California-based think tank Milken Institute, referencing the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which owns the world’s largest semiconductor foundry.
“Of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea.”
At least on the latter point, Moulton was correct. Another speaker at the conference immediately told Moulton how bad his idea was.
“If you do that, you’d have a $2 trillion economic impact on the global economy within the first year, and you’d put manufacturing around the world at a standstill,” said U.S. defense policy advisor and former government official Michele Flournoy. “I mean, this is a terrible idea.”
Taiwan Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng also rebuked the idea on Monday, saying that Taiwan would not “tolerate” such a plan.
“The defense minister said that the armed forces are responsible for defending Taiwan and its people, materials, and strategic resources,” the Taiwan News reported Tuesday. “Therefore, ‘if they want to bomb this or that,” the armed forces will not tolerate this kind of situation, Chiu said.”
Still, some members of the U.S. military-industrial complex defended Moulton’s scheme.
“This is correct, TSMC is a strategic asset that cannot be allowed to fall into [Chinese] hands in the event of a hot war. Provision for the destruction of its physical assets and evacuation of personnel with sensitive knowledge/skill sets should be made,” said military analyst Patrick Fox.
“[Seth Moulton] may make some people uncomfortable here, but it’s the kind of realistic appraisal we seldom see from US elected officials.”
Luckily, rational adults jumped on Moulton’s supporters to reiterate what a bad idea it would be for America to bomb one of its own purported allies.
“This proposal is a classic case of strategy devoid of political wisdom. It sacrifices face in service of performative hawkishness, darkening US image on cusp vital Taiwanese election. In war all bets are moot. In peace threatening your ally/client is unethical. It’s also stupid,” said Jonathan R. Hunt, an assistant professor of strategy at the U.S. Air War College.
“You know what’s a more ‘strategic asset’ than TSMC in the event of a possible but not inevitable war? U.S. reputation as a non-sociopathic security partner,” Hunt added.
This proposal is a classic case of strategy devoid of political wisdom. It sacrifices face in service of performative hawkishness, darkening US image on cusp vital Taiwanese election. In war all bets are moot. In peace threatening your ally/client is unethical. It’s also stupid. https://t.co/DXEIhAaJ9r
Meanwhile, tensions between the U.S. and China continue to escalate over Taiwan, as some observers expect China to make a similar move as Russia did with Ukraine. The Biden administration has stepped up the arms sent to Taiwan since taking office, which critics say China treats as a threat—again, similar to how Russia viewed NATO expansion as a threat.
Earlier this week, Taiwan defense minister Chiu also said that Taiwan is in talks with the Pentagon on the US providing a $500 million weapons package that would come at no cost to Taipei, according to antiwar.com editor Dave DeCamp.
“The US has sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed relations with Taipei in 1979 but has not provided free military aid, making the support unprecedented and sure to anger Beijing. China’s People’s Liberation Army launched major drills around Taiwan in December 2022 in response to President Biden signing the NDAA into law,” DeCamp wrote Tuesday.
“When lawmakers in Congress were first discussing [increased arms sales to Taiwan], they said the idea was to arm Taiwan like Ukraine but before any potential invasion. China hawks say this must be done to deter a future war with China, but Beijing views such support as a major provocation.”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s Office of Refugee Resettlement failed to check children’s caretakers for sex offender status, adding to growing and grave concerns about the safety and health of immigrant children being abused under Biden’s watch.
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General announced the massive failure in a recent report titled “The Office of the Refugee Resettlement Needs to Improve its Practices for Background Checks During Influxes,” WND reported.
Specifically, the OIG failed to check fingerprints properly, not conducting or failing to document checks for 174 of 229 employees dealing with refugee children at Emergency Intake Sites.
Another 25 were “conducted but not in a timely manner.” A mere 30 were conducted in a “timely manner.”
Further, the OIG failed to check for child abuse and neglect in 200 of the 229 instances. Twenty of those were properly conducted, but not in an appropriately timely manner.
Only nine met the hiring standards.
The Emergency Intake Sites in question are described as a response to insufficient “standard bed space available to provide shelter and services for children during an influx or emergency.”
The OIG described the sites as “new type of care provider facility that ORR quickly opened during March and April of 2021 to reduce the number of children in DHS custody.”
They are meant to be “short-term facilities,” serving only in times of dire need.
The HHS Inspector General attributed the failure to conduct proper background checks to the rushed nature of the EIS construction.
“The issues we identified occurred primarily because the influx of unaccompanied children required ORR to rapidly set up new facilities in order to expand capacity as well as develop formal policies and procedures related to the EISs,” the report said.
The report also suggested that the Office of Refugee Resettlement should provide adequate safety checks, by going through and conducting background checks for all of the employees who were hired without the proper precautions being taken.
(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin intends to withhold support from any Biden administration nominee to the Environmental Protection Agency in anticipation of a fundamental disagreement with sweeping energy-related regulations set to be issued later this week.
“This Administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” the West Virginia Democrat said in a statement.
“I fear that this Administration’s commitment to their extreme ideology overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security and I will oppose all EPA nominees until they halt their government overreach.”
Senate confirmation could be problematic for EPA nominees, and nominees for other positions in the regime for that matter, without Manchin’s vote in the 51-49, Democrat-controlled upper chamber.
As part of Team Biden’s climate change mitigation policy, the upcoming standards reportedly impose onerous limitations on greenhouse gas emissions that could ultimately put power plants out of business.
“If the reports are true, the pending EPA proposal would impact nearly all fossil-fueled power plants in the United States, which generate about 60 percent of our electricity, without an adequate plan to replace the lost baseload generation,” Manchin also asserted in his statement.
Coal, in particular, is obviously very important to West Virginia’s economy.
“Neither the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or the [Inflation Reduction Act] gave new authority to regulate power plant emission standards,” Manchin told Fox News.
Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is up for reelection in 2024 but has not indicated whether he will seek a third term in the state that is trending red.
He has also hinted at a possible third-party presidential run instead.
Gov. Jim Justice and U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney are among the politicians who will compete in a GOP primary for the Senate seat that appears to be a likely Republican pickup.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing debate over raising the national debt ceiling, Manchin seems to be experiencing buyer’s remorse for, in the end, going along with the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats jammed through the previous Congress on a straight party-line vote.
In a March 29 Wall Street Journalop-ed, he accused radical White House operatives of distorting the plain language of the law.
“Yet instead of implementing the law as intended, unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees seem determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security,” Manchin wrote.
“Specifically, they are ignoring the law’s intent to support and expand fossil energy and are redefining ‘domestic energy’ to increase clean-energy spending to potentially deficit-breaking levels.”
He added that “Unless common-sense actions are taken now, America’s energy security will not only be jeopardized, but we will soon approach a debt-ceiling calamity that is completely avoidable.”
(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Randi Weingarten, a boss of a national teachers union who is known for her ridiculous tweets, was ridiculed on Twitter for promoting an app that scrubs social media profiles to protect users from cancel culture.
One example of Weingarten’s horrendous tweets came amid a fight with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“If America’s founders questioned slavery there would not have been the heinous ‘3/5 compromise ‘ in the US Constitution, which was drafted and enacted AFTER the American Revolution,” she erroneously wrote, according to Fox News.
With her habit of producing bad tweets, it was not surprising that Weingarten promoted a product that scrubs social media accounts.
“@AFTunion has partnered w/LifeBrand for a 25% discount off the cost of this powerful tool that scans your social media to catch forgotten posts that may not reflect who you are today,” she tweeted, and was roasted for trying to cover her tracks.
Holly Briden, an account that purports to be an influencer and a teacher, also slammed Weingarten.
“Yo, teachers! Remember that time you wore your Che shirt and did a TikTok saying you want conservative parents to die?” she tweeted. “Or when you tweeted that four year-olds love your OnlyFans? Fear not – Randi has a helpful tool for hiding the real you.”
Flux Creep, an anonymous account, commented on Weingarten advertising this product to teachers.
“Listen guys, we often lie, are enormously hypocritical, and demonize parents,” he tweeted, imitating the head of a teachers union. “People misunderstand we always *mean* well, but they’re to [sic] dumb to get it. That’s why we’re introducing ‘Erasitol’!”
This tweet reflected Weingarten’s repeated attacks on parents during the COVID lockdowns, according to Twitchy.
(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) In a letter sent to top Fox News officials on Tuesday, Tucker Carlson’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, accused the network of fraud and contract breach, making “material representations” and breaking them “intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth.”
The letter to Fox officials Viet Dinh and Irena Briganti was sent moments before Carlson announced a new version of his show on Twitter and two weeks after he was ousted from Fox.
The letter, sent amid growing frustration that Fox was holding Carlson to his contract and preventing him from working for a rival or launching his own outfit, claimed Fox employees, including “Rupert Murdoch himself,” broke promises to Carlson “intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth,” Axios reported.
Legal analysts said the letter positioned the ousted host to argue that the non-compete provision in his contract with the network is no longer valid, and he is free to launch his own competition.
Fox officials, the letter claimed, made “material representations” or promises to Carlson and broke them “intentionally and with reckless disregard for the truth.”
The letter reportedly added that one of the agreements Fox News broke included not leaking Carlson’s private communications to the press. Moreso, the network had agreed not to use his private messages to “take any adverse employment action against him.”
However, reports show that Carlson’s private messages were instrumental in his dismissal from the network.
Furthermore, the letter reportedly alleged that the network broke promises to not settle with Dominion Voting Systems “in a way which would indicate wrongdoing” on the part of Carlson and not to take any actions in a settlement that would harm his reputation.
The letter added, “These actions not only breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing in the Agreement, but give rise to claims for breach of contract, and intentional and negligent misrepresentation.”
Fox News denied the allegations and said it was “categorically false” that Carlson’s ouster was tied to the company’s $787.5-million Dominion settlement, while Carlson’s attorney made clear that future actions are in the works.
“Make no mistake, we intend to subpoena Ms. Briganti’s cell phone records and related documents, which evidence communications with her and all media, including, but not limited to The New York Times,” the letter said, referencing Fox’s PR chief.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Jason Poje, the acting assistant State’s Attorney and a longtime prosecutor from Chicago, resigned last week, calling out George Soros-backed State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for her lax approach to crime in Cook County in his exit email to colleagues.
The Chicago Contrarian blog received Poje’s email, which started off hopeful as he lauded his coworkers, including victim/witness advocates, investigators, support staff, police officers and detectives.
After thanking the staff, Poje explained his sudden departure from his position.
“The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster,” he wrote. “And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that has the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.”
He cited as one example the harmful changes to bond reform, resulting in criminals running rampant through the streets and handicapping law enforcement’s ability to effectively protect civilians.
Poje also explained how this personally affected his family after his once decent neighborhood rapidly began to decline.
“Many years ago, my family found a nice corner of the suburbs,” he said. “Now my son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park, and a drug dealer is open-air selling behind my house (the second one in two years).”
As a result, he said it had become necessary for him to flee the Windy City altogether.
“If it were just me to consider, I’d stick it out,” he said.
“I’ve been through enough stupid State’s Attorney policies before,” he added. “But this Office’s complete failure to even think for a moment before rushing into one popular political agenda after another has put my family directly in harm’s way.”
Poje denounced Foxx for refusing to do her job “ethically and evenhandedly” and summarized the collateral damage resulting from her partisan efforts.
“The unavoidable consequences are what we are witnessing in real time, an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families pulling up the stakes, and the bodies piling up; the whole time with a State’s Attorney who insists there is nothing to see here, and if there is, it must be someone else’s fault,” he wrote.
He concluded his letter by reiterating his concern for his family and dismay at the transformation of his his home state.
“I will not raise my son here,” he said. “I am fortunate to have the means to escape, so my entire family is leaving the State of Illinois.”
Nonetheless, he lamented the fact that he was being forced from his own hometown under such circumstances.
“I grew up here, my family and friends are here, and yet my own employer has turned it into a place from which I am no longer proud to be, and in which my son is not safe,” he said.
The city of Chicago’s chronic crime problem has expanded in recent years. Several major companies have started closing locations in the city due to profit losses from riots and looting.
