Boston Used $4M of Fed Funds on College Tuition for Illegals

Wire Editor
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Boston Used $4M of Fed Funds on College Tuition for Illegals

(By Adam Andrzejewski, RealClear Wire) Boston Mayor Michelle Wu recently announced a new initiative providing $4 million in funding for a community college tuition assistance program that will be available to all residents, including undocumented immigrants — all using federal dollars.

In a recent press release, Wu touted the expansion of an existing program called the Tuition-Free Community College Plan, which, “covers the balance owed after financial aid and other funding has been applied and provides students with a stipend at six partner community colleges.” It also provides students a $250 stipend per semester for up to three years.

The expanded program will now pay off up to $2,500 of student loan debt if that debt is preventing a student from continuing their education at a Boston community college. It’s also being expanded to include students of all income levels, graduation years and immigration statuses.

Of the $4 million, $3 million comes from the federal American Rescue Plan Act and $1 million comes from federal Community Project Funding, secured by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.

The TFCC Plan has served over 1,000 students since 2016, or a little over 100 students per year.

If Boston really wanted to help students attend college, it would work with partner institutions to lower their tuition prices, ensuring students are getting a good value for their tuition. Instead, by selectively subsidizing students with government funds, it’s increasing the cost of education for everyone as bloated institutions reap the rewards.

Climate Envoy John Kerry’s Jet-Set Spending Is Getting Plenty of Cloud Cover

Wire Editor
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Climate Envoy John Kerry’s Jet-Set Spending Is Getting Plenty of Cloud Cover

(By James Varney, RealClear Wire) John Kerry leads an international jet-set life that might exhaust a runway model. If President Biden’s special envoy for climate was not in Washington or relaxing at his mansion near Nantucket Harbor, he could be found in Brazil, Panama, the Bahamas, or Germany. And that’s just in February and March.

While Kerry trumpets his meetings and appearances around the world, the State Department wraps the rest of his efforts in a cloak of secrecy usually reserved for CIA black box operations. It has refused to specify lists of people he is meeting with and who is advising him as he circles the globe. His office has stonewalled requests for budget and staffing information from legislators and government watchdog groups.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year by RealClearInvestigations for a breakdown on how the climate envoy’s roughly $16.5 million 2022 budget was spent, the State Department said it could not comply with the request until April 2025, months after both the 2024 election and the expiration of President Biden’s current term.

The secrecy surrounding Kerry’s work is reaching a boiling point with the threat of a congressional subpoena.

Frustrated that Kerry’s office ignored two previous requests for detailed information about its budget when his party was in the minority, Republican Rep. James Comer, who now heads the House Oversight Committee, sent what he labeled a final courtesy letter on April 25 and added that a subpoena would accompany the next request if Kerry’s “powerful, unchecked position” continued to hide the information.

“The State Department has not provided any meaningful updates to Committee staff inquiries on the status of producing these documents,” Comer wrote. “Envoy Kerry is engaging in activities that skirt congressional authority, threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy, and could undermine economic health. Yet, Envoy Kerry and his office are refusing to be transparent about their activities, spending, and staffing with the Committee – and the American people.”

Biden, who has identified climate change as the single greatest threat facing the United States, named Kerry the nation’s first “special envoy for climate” on his first day in office in 2021.

His precise job description is difficult to determine, although Kerry has been given a seat on the White House national security team, and it is commonly referred to as a “cabinet level” position – even though it did not require Senate confirmation.

Since taking office, Kerry has been indefatigable in attending conferences and meetings in far-flung posts and glittering capitals. His office has sent out his pronouncements to the press and copies of his public remarks from places such as Hanoi, Dhaka, London, Cairo (twice) and, last month, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. But almost nothing is known about discussions and potential agreements made at his private meetings.

Given the Biden administration’s penchant for issuing sweeping executive orders, especially regarding the climate, Republicans worry that Kerry’s undefined position could translate into unchecked power to commit the United States to binding agreements with foreign powers. Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to questions about the precise nature of Kerry’s work, and whether he was authorized to negotiate treaties on behalf of the United States.

“John Kerry continues to negotiate deals with foreign governments, including the Chinese Communist Party, that potentially undermine the United States’ interests,” Comer wrote, without the envoy’s providing any detail about the nature or scope of those deals or whether any have been approved.

In his speeches and other public appearances, Kerry warns that humanity has just a few years left to avert the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

“It is an existential issue; it is an issue where people today are dying,” he told MSNBC in late April. He has called for a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and endorsed the goal of zero emissions by 2050.

In his effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Kerry has flown hundreds of thousands of miles – sometimes commercially, sometimes on his own private jet – leaving a gigantic carbon footprint in his wake. In just nine months last year he logged more than 180,000 miles, emitting some 9.5 million pounds of carbon, according to an analysis of his official travel announcements by the Washington Free Beacon.

The global travel and speeches to combat global warming have enjoyed glowing coverage from media outlets including The New Yorker, which praised his effort to “save the climate.” But thus far it has unfolded behind a cloak of invisibility beyond the press releases.

RCI reached out to the Washington office of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development and the liberal Common Cause, which trumpets the need for “transparency and accountability” in government. Neither group responded to questions about the special climate envoy’s refusal to make his spending public.

In the House, it’s unclear how much support there may be for the efforts of Comer and others to shine a light on Kerry’s black budget. RCI reached out to more than 80 representatives, including every Republican member of the Freedom Caucus and the Appropriations Committee – which is ultimately responsible for directing federal funding – and asked if they possessed any information about Kerry’s budget and spending and whether they believed government bodies should hide their financial activities.

Only six responded, and there was no response from a dozen Democrats on the Appropriations Committee, including ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

Those who did respond were united in saying they thought Kerry’s office should allow public review of its work. Republican Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry, of Texas and Pennsylvania respectively, sent a letter in March to DeLauro and others asking them to defund Kerry’s office, citing what they fear is his willingness to partner with left-wing environmental agencies and alleged free market meddling.

“The U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, is actively undermining U.S. energy production and independence in the name of climate hysteria,” Roy and Perry wrote. “Despite skyrocketing energy prices and an increasingly unreliable electrical grid, Kerry has said ‘we have to push back hard’ on efforts to increase oil production and expand fossil fuel infrastructure. Kerry has also reportedly pressured banks and other financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels. Finally, Kerry actively jeopardizes U.S. sovereignty by making dangerous commitments at international climate conferences without the backing of Congress.”

Congress and RCI are not alone in being stonewalled by Kerry’s office. Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, also filed a FOIA request for information on Kerry’s spending and staff, and they followed that up with a lawsuit last October.

“They’ve gone and created this new position, but they don’t want to tell us anything about what he’s been doing,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told RCI. “The resting state of the deep state is secrecy, and unfortunately it’s not unusual to get this obstruction and contempt for the FOIA law.”

Since February, Kerry’s office has provided Judicial Watch with small batches of documents, such as a vague organizational chart, trying to slow-walk compliance with the law, Fitton said.

The notion that such a government agency’s work and spending should be beyond public purview is preposterous, said Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks, which works to make government spending public. (His work appears in RealClearInvestigations.)

“Kerry can’t operate according to his own accord and spend tens of millions of dollars in his budget as the special envoy without transparency,” Andrzejewski said. “The people, the press and politicians in Congress need to hold him accountable for his spending as they do with all unelected bureaucrats.”

Epstein Victim Demands FBI to Investigate Why it Gave Predator ‘Hall Pass’ to Rape Children

Ken Silva
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Epstein Victim Demands FBI to Investigate Why it Gave Predator ‘Hall Pass’ to Rape Children

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Maria Farmer was the first person to file a complaint with the FBI against billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, alleging in 1996 that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had sexually abused her.

The FBI failed to act, allowing countless children to be sexually abused over the next two decades until Epstein was finally arrested in July 2019—reportedly dying in his prison cell under mysterious circumstances about a month later.

Farmer wants to know why the FBI failed to act.

Her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, sent an open letter Tuesday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz—demanding an investigation into why the bureau allowed Epstein to run amok.

“Epstein’s and Maxwell’s victims, and the public at large, are owed a full accounting of the FBI many failures and missed opportunities. The American people, the victims, and the survivors deserve the truth,” Freeman said. “We hereby request that a full and fair investigation be promptly launched into the FBI’s seriously bungled examination and mismanagement of the crimes committed by Epstein and others.”

Freeman’s letter includes a likely reason for why Epstein’s crimes went unchecked: The lawyer noted that he may have been an FBI informant.

“The FBI closed a forfeiture proceeding against Epstein, noting ‘Epstein… has provided information to the FBI as agreed upon,’” she said, quoting an FBI report.

“There is strong circumstantial evidence in the public domain that Epstein’s special relationship with the government explains the FBI’s failure to investigate or prosecute Epstein in 1996, the special treatment he received from 2005 to2008, and the failure to investigate the possible wrongdoing of important public officials and powerful businessmen.”

Freeman’s letter follows new evidence that Epstein was indeed a government asset. Newly released Epstein documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal this week reportedly show that the sex trafficker had several meetings with current CIA director William Burns in 2014.

Epstein isn’t the only sex criminal the FBI allowed to slide for years, as noted in Freeman’s letter. The bureau also failed to investigate Larry Nassar, the former team doctor of the U.S. women’s national gymnastics team, for his sexual abuse of gymnasts.

Other instances of FBI failures included in Freeman’s letter were the Parkland and Charleston mass shootings, as the bureau had ignored credible intelligence warning about those events.

“Much like the Parkland, Nassar, and Charleston Church cases, government agencies have a responsibility to investigate and explain why the FBI failed—for a quarter of a century—to properly investigate Ms. Farmer’s and others’ repeated allegations of Epstein’s abuse,” Freeman said.

“Those failures allowed his sex trafficking to continue unabated for decades. It is imperative that the Epstein allegations similarly be accorded the ‘utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required’ and that the Epstein victims are also brought ‘some modicum of justice.’”

The FBI has declined to comment on Freeman’s letter.

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

Congressional Republicans Float Impeachment, Firing of the ‘Spies Who Lied’

Contributing Author
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Congressional Republicans Float Impeachment, Firing of the ‘Spies Who Lied’

(Headline USA) Congressional Republicans said this week that they want the intelligence officials who signed the infamous letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation to be fired or impeached.

“Exposing the truth is certainly the first step in accountability, pretty powerful accountability,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Just the News. “But the House can impeach those individuals who are currently serving in government. And a number of those individuals … are now serving in the Biden administration. They also ought to either resign or be impeached.”

Other actions Republicans are considering taking against the intelligence officials include security clearance revocations and the loss of government contracts, according to Johnson.

“[W]e should do everything we can to revoke security clearances of every one of those individuals that sign that letter,” he said. “All of them should be barred from either current or future employment with the federal government.” 

The letter, published by Politico weeks before the November 2020 presidential election, was signed by a number of high-ranking current and former intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA directors Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., agreed with Johnson that the officials ought to face consequences for trying to “sway the 2020 election.”

“If we don’t like the way people have been doing their job, we can fire them in Appropriations — we can completely wipe out their salaries. And that’s what I would like to see done,” Greene said.

“We had 51 members of the intelligence community lie, sign their name to a lie, saying that the Hunter Biden laptop was not real and that it was pure Russian propaganda. We know exactly why they did that, and that was to sway the 2020 election.”

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, revealed last month that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then an adviser on President Joe Biden’s campaign, played an instrumental role in organizing the letter. Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell admitted to Jordan that Blinken approached him and several others and raised the idea of the letter.

Judge Slams Trans Lawmaker’s Attempted Dodge of Montana House Censure

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji Bello
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Judge Slams Trans Lawmaker’s Attempted Dodge of Montana House Censure

(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) A Helena district judge rejected Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s motion to return to the state legislature’s House floor, following a censure after the transgender lawmaker assailed colleagues over a bill to ban transgender surgeries for minors. 

According to the Montana Free Press, District Court Judge Mike Menahan said the “requested relief would require this Court to interfere with legislative authority in a manner that exceeds this Court’s authority. Plaintiffs also seek injunctive relief which far outpaces the facts at issue here,” in a Tuesday ruling.

Menahan added that even if the court finds that the defendants “acted unlawfully under the facts of this case, it does not have the authority to issue a broad permanent injunction to effectively remove all legislative authority under Article V Section 10 [of the Montana Constitution] in relation to a single member.”

Zephyr, who sued with Missoula County constituents, then took to Twitter to give her opinion on the court’s ruling, declaring that “The court’s decision not to reinstate me undermines the democratic principles our country was founded on,” the trans lawmaker wrote.

“I vow to continue standing for my constituents & community to fight for our democratic institutions. If we can’t get justice in the courts, we will get it in the ballot box,” she added, suggesting a re-election bid. 

The lawsuit filed on Monday came after the GOP-led House voted to bar Zephyr from attending or speaking at floor sessions after Zephyr held up a microphone for disruptors during a proceeding. 

The Daily Wire noted that this disruption occurred as GOP leadership refused to let Zephyr speak following several violations of decorum rules after Zephyr assailed lawmakers who support legislation to ban trans surgeries for minors. 

“I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” Zephyr said, referring to the opening prayer. “If you use decorum to silence people who hold you accountable, all you are doing is using decorum as a tool of oppression.”

Though the censure still allowed Zephyr to vote remotely, it banned the disruptive lawmaker from returning to the Montana House floor for the rest of the legislative session.

SELLERS: In Defense of ‘White Trash’

Ben Sellers
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SELLERS: In Defense of ‘White Trash’

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) “White trash” has been getting a bad rap lately.

Last week, the term resurfaced in headlines after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., accused the president’s son of engaging in classless behavior over his corrupt influence-peddling schemes.

“Hunter Biden is the biggest piece of white trash in America,” Greene said during an apparent speech for the Hancock County Republican Party in Ohio, which she later posted on Twitter.

The unflattering comparison to the Biden family was but the latest affront to an oft-misunderstood demographic, born into the lowliest of circumstances, that has long withstood the slings and arrows of, basically, everybody else.

Ironically, Greene herself was accused by Bill Clinton’s former campaign manager, James Carville, of dressing like “white trash” after she wore a white fur coat to the Feb. 7 State of the Union address, where she subsequently heckled President Joe Biden.

“I have a degree in white trashology,” Carville said. “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s definitely white trash. The level of white trash in the GOP is astounding.”

In a column Wednesday, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr reiterated Greene’s charge, noting that Hunter Biden’s attempts to duck child-support payments for 4-year-old Navy Biden—his lovechild with Arkansas ex-stripper Lunden Roberts—constituted more evidence to support the “white trash” claim.

“That’s one of the definitions of white trash—you don’t pay child support,” Carr argued. “You deny paternity, you hide income, you cry poor mouth, you lie on the F.I.D. forms, you lose your gun, you have sex with your sister-in-law, you leave your ID in a rented car along with your crack pipe, when you get jammed up you go into rehab, over and over and over again.”

All of this, however, seems inherently unfair to those who actually qualify as “white trash.”

By definition, the term refers to Caucasian families living below the poverty line, typically in the rural South.

That criteria applies to neither Hunter Biden nor Marjorie Taylor Greene, both of whom enjoyed affluent and privileged upbringings. Greene is co-owner of a construction business started by her father; Hunter Biden’s father somehow became wealthy as a public servant.

But apart from its pejorative use, there is no firm definition about what socioeconomic bracket or behaviors “white trash” refers to specifically.

“The use of the term provides middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the poverty and powerlessness of poor whites, who cannot enjoy those privileges, as well as a way to disown their perceived behavior,” notes Wikipedia’s article on the subject.

Even leftist media like NPR seem to acknowledge, with some surprise, that it is still socially acceptable to scorn and mock so-called white trash, which puts the group in a unique category among the likes of pedophiles—although the latter is fast becoming one of the Left’s latest pet causes.

Yet, if white trash is defined by its contemptible and gauche behavior rather than its extrinsic circumstances, it still seems inherently unfair to lump in those who don’t know any better with those who choose to act accordingly.

Moreover, there is at least one important function that white trash serves in our modern society, which is currently under siege from every angle by Marxist-trained social-justice warriors.

It offers the ultimate exculpatory evidence against accusations of “white privilege” and systemic racism. Those concepts—promoted by Critical Race Theory—stem from the perversion of Karl Marx’s original notion of a class struggle that ultimately leads lower-class proletariat masses to topple the existing power structure.

Because such a prospect had little appeal for the CRT-peddlers in elite academic institutions and limousine liberals on Capitol Hill, it was necessary to bring at least some of those oppressed masses—the minorities—into their own camp.

Leftists promise to right the wrongs of social injustice, but only for certain marginalized identities (including some voluntary, lifestyle-based ones) that check the right boxes. Doing so helps ensure that those currently in power can, more or less, remain that way while avoiding bloody revolution.

As for the rest, lower-class whites who have nobody left to ally with or advocate for them make a convenient scapegoat on whom to pin all of the failings of the ruling class.

But so long as there is a category of whites who are universally reviled—on equal or lower footing than the lowest of any minority sub-strata—there can be no convincing case made that skin tone carries with it any underlying benefit.

If the pillars of American democracy are somehow able to withstand this vicious onslaught, then we can thank our sturdy foundation of white trash for continuing to prop us up.

Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.

Latest Batch of Epstein Files Implicates LinkedIn Co-Founder, Ex-Treasury Sec., Woody Allen

Robert Jonathan
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Latest Batch of Epstein Files Implicates LinkedIn Co-Founder, Ex-Treasury Sec., Woody Allen

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) More details have emerged about the extent to which pedophile pimp Jeffery Epstein mingled with the 1-percenters of American society, several of whom are now regretful over their association with the now-deceased Epstein, a convicted sex-offender at the time.

The latest trove of documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal indicated that “the disgraced financier kept a busy schedule, filling his days with meetings with politicians, executives and celebrities, including at his New York townhouse and his residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

According to the latest revelations published by the news outlet, this included ex-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who was U.S. treasury secretary in the Bill Clinton administration and later an Obama economic advisor; billionaire Linked-In co-founder Reid Hoffman, who is a big Democrat donor; and movie director Woody Allen.

Prior documents that the WSJ reported on earlier this week suggested that Epstein met with CIA director William Burns; Noam Chomsky, a left-wing activist academic; Leon Botstein, the longtime president of Bard College; and Kathryn Ruemmler, White House counsel under Obama.

Bill Clinton himself allegedly was pals with Epstein.

Summers reportedly sought Epstein’s advice when he was trying to raise $1 million for his wife’s online poetry project. Summers’s wife, Elisa New, is a Harvard professor as is Summers.

Epstein donated millions to Harvard itself while Summers was president in the 2001-2006 time frame.

The Ivy League bastion rejected subsequent donations from Epstein after he pled guilty in June 2008 to state charges in Florida.

“In 2016, a nonprofit linked to Epstein donated $110,000 to Ms. New’s nonprofit,” the WSJ reported.

Through a spokesperson, Summer expressed deep regret about being in contact with Epstein after the Florida conviction.

New’s nonprofit similarly was regretful over accepting the Epstein cash, which was later donated to a group fighting sex-trafficking.

Hoffman said he contacted Epstein in connection with raising funds for MIT “and that he regrets interacting with Epstein after his conviction.”

The billionaire—who is currently said to be underwriting E. Jean Carroll’s rape lawsuit against former President Donald Trump—has admitted to visiting Epstein’s private island, colloquially known as “Pedophile Island,” while on a fundraising trip.

“While I relied on MIT’s endorsement, ultimately I made the mistake, and I am sorry for my personal misjudgment,” Hoffman said.

According to the WSJ, Allen “attended dozens of dinners with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, at Epstein’s mansion”—which an Allen rep described as “group social events.”

The once-celebrated Annie Hall director, himself a casualty of the #MeToo movement, also “invited Epstein to film screenings.”

In addition to America’s movers and shakers, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was a regular visitor to Epstein’s New York City townhouse, where they chatted about politics.

“In retrospect, [Epstein] seems to be a terrible version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but at the time seemed to be an intelligent person, socially well connected and of wide areas of interest, from science to geopolitics,” Barak said.

According to the WSJ, the leader of Israel’s leftist Labor Party said he never participated in any parties or activities with girls or women.

Summers’s spokesperson said his meetups with Epstein after the latter’s conviction—and after Harvard stopped accepting his checks—“primarily focused on global economic issues.”

Epstein supposedly committed suicide on Aug. 10, 2019, in a Manhattan lockup while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

“The documents reviewed by the Journal, which include thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017, provide new details about the nature and frequency of Epstein’s contacts with an array of powerful people long after he was a registered sex offender,” the WSJ summarized.

GOP Lawmakers: FBI Has Record of Biden Engaged in Criminal Bribery w/ Foreign National

Mark Pellin
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GOP Lawmakers: FBI Has Record of Biden Engaged in Criminal Bribery w/ Foreign National

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Republican lawmakers from two powerful Congressional oversight committees demanded that the FBI produce an unclassified record of a reported criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national that impacted U.S. policy decisions.

“We have received legally protected and highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures,” wrote Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the budget committee, and Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“Based on those disclosures, it has come to our attention that the Department of Justice (DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possess an unclassified FD-1023 form that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions,” the lawmakers wrote in their May 3 letter. “It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose.”

While details of the reported record in the FBI’s possession aren’t referenced, speculation ran rampant that it could have involved Biden’s interactions with Ukrainian operatives and officials, during the former vice president’s tenure in the Obama administration.

Indeed, the report echos myriad investigations of Biden’s dealings, including allegations made last month from a former Obama-administration official, who said he had proof that Biden “knew” his son Hunter was on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma and was involved in a “kickback scheme” while pushing for natural gas in the country.

Others speculated that the new record alleging a bribery scheme with a foreign national was tied to the Biden family’s notorious interactions with CCP officials and Chinese operatives, including Biden’s dealings as both president and former vice-president.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”

Comer on Wednesday issued a subpoena to FBI Director Wray, following “legally protected disclosures to Grassley’s office.” The subpoena requires the FBI to produce in unredacted form all FD-1023s that contain the word “Biden” and all accompanying attachments and documents.

“The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national,” Comer said. “The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself. Senator Grassley and I will seek the truth to ensure accountability for the American people.”

REPORT: IRS Has Spent $10M on Ammo, Guns, Tactical Gear Since 2020

Contributing Author
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REPORT: IRS Has Spent $10M on Ammo, Guns, Tactical Gear Since 2020

(Headline USA) A new government watchdog report revealed the Internal Revenue Service has spent $10 million on weapons, ammunition and combat gear since 2020.

The findings, published by OpenTheBooks, show that in 2021 alone the newly militarized IRS spent more than $5 million on its weapons arsenal.

Since 2020, the agency has spent $2.3 million on ammunition, $1.2 million on ballistic shields, $474,000 on Smith & Wesson rifles, $463,000 on Beretta 1301 tactical shotguns, and $243,000 on body armor vests.

Another $1.3 million went toward “various other gear for criminal investigation agents,” according to the report.

The agency’s spending on weaponry has increased significantly since the start of the pandemic. Before 2020, the IRS had stockpiled 5 million rounds of ammunition for its 2,159 special agents, and owned 4,500 firearms, including 621 pump action and semi-automatic shotguns, 539 semi-automatic rifles, and 15 submachine guns.

The IRS is also currently hiring hundreds of new criminal investigators. According to the agency’s recruitment ads and other hiring materials, applicants must be able to “carry a firearm; must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations; must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force.”

President Joe Biden is also pushing for millions of dollars in additional funding for the IRS so that it can hire an additional 80,000 agents.

Republicans have slammed Biden’s attempt to make an “army” out of IRS agents. Just this week, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. introduced a bill that would redirect all of the money Biden requested for the IRS to border security.

“Americans need more border agents keeping them safe—not thousands more IRS agents looking over their shoulder,” Scott said. “While President Biden continues to drop the ball, I’m introducing legislation to fund border infrastructure and give our Border Patrol agents the tools they need to help stop the unaddressed flows of illicit goods and persons into this country.”

35 People Test Positive for COVID after CDC Superspreader Conference

Jacob Bruns
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35 People Test Positive for COVID after CDC Superspreader Conference

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opened an investigation after it hosted a superspreader conference in Georgia that led to at least 35 coronavirus infections, the Washington Post reported.

“We’re letting you know that several people who attended the [Epidemic Intelligence Service] Conference have tested positive for COVID-19,” a CDC branch chief wrote on Friday.

The CDC’s Kristen Nordlund noted that the CDC is already tracking the potentially-infected.

“CDC is working with the Georgia Department of Health to conduct a rapid epidemiological assessment of confirmed COVID-19 cases that appear to be connected to the 2023 EIS Conference to determine transmission patterns,” Nordlund said.

She also tried to excuse the superspreader organization, blaming the larger circumstances for the CDC’s failure to slow the spread.

“These cases are reflective of general spread in the community,” she said. “It’s not news that public health employees can get COVID-19.”

Norlund said the investigation “will help understand transmission that occurred” and “assist in refining future public health guidance as we move out of the public health emergency and to the next phase of COVID-19 surveillance and response.”

Wherever people gather, she added, “there is the possibility of COVID-19 spread.”

Jay Varma, an infectious-disease expert at Weill Cornell Medicine, also said that the CDC should not be blamed.

“This is, unfortunately, the new normal,” he said. “While it is unsettling to see widespread COVID-19 transmission at CDC’s premier public health conference, it’s probably the clearest example yet” of the larger situation.

For Varma, however, the CDC and other large conference organizers should make masks more available and take other precautions into the foreseeable future.

“I hope that organizers of large conferences, especially for health professionals, should, at a minimum, make high-quality masks as abundant and available as toilet paper and ensure that there is adequate ventilation and/or disinfection of air,” he added.

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