DeSantis Draws from Trump Policies, Reagan Rhetoric in Major Pre-Campaign Speech

Ben Sellers
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DeSantis Draws from Trump Policies, Reagan Rhetoric in Major Pre-Campaign Speech

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The murmured undertones in every corner of the Heritage Foundation’s leadership summit spoke to a Republican identity crisis as the party tries to reconcile two very different visions.

The summit brought together many policymakers with close ties to the Trump administration and even some who had been integral in the prior Reagan administration as it found itself in a similar spote in the shell-shocked aftermath of the Jimmy Carter presidency.

It was their burden to embrace the best part of both of these constrasting worldviews without seeming overly schizophrenic.

Helping them in that effort was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the event’s keynote speaker, who brough together some notably Trumpian policies on immigration, energy and other crucial issues—while also courting the conservative establishment by quoting Reagan twice and trying to capture his overall spirit of fearless optimism over grievance.

“Leaders get ahead of public opinion, chart the course, and then people follow,” DeSantis said.

He also said that America needed a “determined and disciplined chief executive to root out politicization and corruption in Washington, D.C.

Some Capitol Hill insiders speculated that he was likely to make his own entry into the GOP presidential primary promptly after the end of the Florida legislative session on May 5.

DeSantis avoided making direct references to Trump but did indirectly address the ex-president’s recent criticism of his standoff with Walt Disney World.

Addressing attacks earlier in the week from Trump and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, DeSantis said it was not conservative but rather “corporatist” to roll over to companies like the woke Disney leviathan.

But he came out strongly in favor of Trump’s signature 2016 policyto address the ongoing immigration crisis.

With immigration “you need to do a lot of things, but you do need to actually construct a wall along the southern border,” he said.

He quickly followed up by touting his experience getting construction projects done like rebuilding the Matlacha Bridge to Pine Island completed after it was destroyed by Hurricane Ian.

Despite projections that it would take weeks, DeSantis said he was able to get the construction done in three days.

“I just raised that because I’m willing to send those guys in Florida to the southern border to build a wall, so come on, Joe,” he said addressing President Joe Biden who has been hammered for ignoring the open-border problem altogether.

DeSantis also called for America to regain its energy independence as it succeeded in doing under Trump, and he waded into cultural issues such as fighting the corporate ESG movement that allows an “end-run around the Constitution” through corporate bullying and coercion.

Like Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who spoke the previous day, DeSantis openly channeled the spirit of Reagan and appeared determined to drive home the parallels by twice quoting the Gipper.

He made reference to Reagan’s famous joke that the most terrifying words someone can hear are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

On a more serious note, DeSantis recalled the words from Reagan’s 1967 inaugural address as governor of California that “freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.”

“I think Reagan was right,” DeSantis said. “Our freedom is fragile. Our freedom needs someone to stand up for it.”

Despite the bleak picture that the current political landscape has painted about the country’s future, “we need to reject the pessimisim that is in the air,” he said, because freedom is a choice.

DeSantis’s speech came as the Heritage Foundation released an 880-page treatise, Mandate for Leadership, that it hoped would be a road map for the next Republican president to enter the White House battle-ready.

The book drew expertise from more than 50 chapter authors and sought the consensus of roughly 300 experts.

Lead editor Paul Dans said that the book sought to be “candidate agnostic” and serve as a resource to any future leader, regardless of who prevails.

That, he said, would include Trump, even though the former president has rarely yielded to other opinions that don’t fall in step with his own instincts and values.

The book’s authors did “such a good job that you cant help but embrace [it],” Dans said. “You kind of ignore this a little bit at your peril.”

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

‘Forever Chemicals’ Linked to Making Dieting Harder, Higher Rates of Obesity

Molly Bruns
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‘Forever Chemicals’ Linked to Making Dieting Harder, Higher Rates of Obesity

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A recent study by the University of Rhode Island School of Pharmacy revealed that “forever chemicals” injected into drinking water contribute to obesity and difficulties in weight loss.

Author of the study, Dr. Philippe Grandjean, explained that higher concentrations of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a significant contributor to weight gain.

According to the Daily Wire, researchers suspected that PFAS could also play a larger role in weight loss struggles because of their widespread use.

“The pathogenesis of obesity may be affected by exposure to certain environmental toxicants, such as the perfluorinated alkylate substances (PFASs),” the study read. “Experimental toxicology studies have supported this notion, as PFASs can alter energy metabolism, glucose control, and thyroid hormone homeostasis. Prospective studies have shown that elevated PFAS exposures are associated with weight gain and obesity development in children, as well as in adults.”

Scientists on the study also looked into the effect of other chemicals, discovering that perfluorohexanesulfonic acid and perfluorooctanoic acid—common pollutants also found in drinking water—also cause weight gain.

While there are many other pollutants and chemicals connected to weight gain, PFAS are persistent and active.

“The ubiquity of PFASs is linked to their extensive use in industrial and consumer products, including food packaging, paper and textile coatings, nonstick cookware, and fire-extinguishing foams,” the researchers noted. “Because of differences in sources and in toxicokinetic fate, PFAS exposures seem not to correlate well with other potential obesogens, thus making confounding less likely.”

The Environmental Protection Agency reviewed appropriate levels of PFAS, reaching the conclusion that they are dangerous and should not be consumed in large quantities.

“We’ve actually poisoned the world with them,” Andria Ventura, legislative and policy director at Clean Water Action/Clean Water Fund, said.

PFAS are linked to several types of cancers, hypertension, lowering birth rates and immunity issues.

The EPA ruled that they are so dangerous that the organization lowered acceptable levels from 70 parts per trillion to as little as 0.004 parts per trillion—a drop of more than 99.9%.

Hawley Calls for GOP Overhaul to Combat Threats of China, New World Order

Ben Sellers
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Hawley Calls for GOP Overhaul to Combat Threats of China, New World Order

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) If the morning session of Thursday’s Heritage Foundation leadership summit struck a largely Reaganesque tone, the afternoon speakers—and, in particular, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore it down faster than the Berlin Wall after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Hawley and others tasked with addressing the imminent threat from China to American sovereignty said that the Republican Party must first look inward and cut bait with the neoconservative mindset that defined the era from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.

“The Republican party as we know it must be reformed,” Hawley said.

Other China experts later indicated that the threat of a war over China’s takeover of Taiwan may be exagerrated but that the trans-Pacific superpower may already be in a cold war with the U.S.—one that they had been decades in planning while the West slept.

America is now “30 years into this experiment,” Hawley said of the push to modernize China’s economy by designating it a “most favored nation” and bringing it into the World Trade Organization in 2001—one of the major foreign acts of then-President Bill Clinton, who benefited greatly from Chinese donors.

However, Hawley acknowledged that Republicans were equally bullish on the idea of China becoming a democratic trading partner, and that it was the globalist ex-CIA Director George H.W. Bush, during his presidency, who first brought the term “New World Order” into the public sphere during his 1991 State of the Union speech.

“The verdict is in: The politics of ‘New World Order’ capitalism has failed,” Hawley said.

In retrospect, he said that allowing and facilitating the rise of communist China will prove “one of the most colossal errors any global power has made in its history.”

In addition to empowering and emboldening China, Hawley noted that the globalist movement embraced by conservatives had undermined middle-class Americans, giving America’s radical Left the opportunity to ally itself with Washington, D.C.’s permanent administrative state.

“The cultural Marxists are now in power. …They run the Democratic Party,” Hawley said. “If we lose the middle class, we will lose… the country,” Hawley said.

His talk came shortly after the Heritage Foundation rolled out a policy paper titled “Winning the New Cold War: A Plan for Countering China.”

In a panel discussion following Hawley’s talk, several China experts—including one of the paper’s authors, Heritage fellow Michael Pillsbury—addressed a range of concerns about China.

Conservative journalist Peter Schweizer responded to a question about whether a war with China was imminent by saying there already was one in progress.

“My view is that China’s already at war with us,” he said.

“Their mindset is they don’t want a kinetic war with the United States,” he said, but instead “to paraphrase Churchill, they want the fruits of war.”

Also on the panel was Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who was reluctant to hype the prospect of a ware with China that would give the deep state and Pentagon officials further justification for demanding extra funding to feed their federal spending addictions.

In order to tackle China, the U.S. first needed to get its own house in order by ending its wasteful quagmire in Ukraine that had left the U.S. military hopelessly unprepared for another major conflict.

“They would love for us to just keep throwing out billions and billions of dollars,” Roy said. “… We’re not in a position to ratchet up the machine like we were in 1941 because we’ve spent ourselves into oblivion.

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

Sanctuary City Mayor Rips Biden over Illegals Crisis

Wire Editor
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Sanctuary City Mayor Rips Biden over Illegals Crisis

(Christian Wade, The Center Square) New York City Democrat Mayor Eric Adams is criticizing President Joe Biden amid an influx of tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the city, calling for more federal funds and allowing migrants to work legally.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, Adams ripped the Biden administration for inaction on the migrant crisis, saying the White House has “failed” New York City on the immigration issue.

“This is one of the largest humanitarian crises that this city has ever experienced. It will impact every service in the city,” Adams said. “Why isn’t every elected official in Washington, D.C., asking the national government, ‘why are you doing this to New York?’”

Over 52,000 migrants have traveled to New York City in the past year, which Adams said is affecting the city’s ability to provide basic services.

The city has set up more than 100 temporary “humanitarian” relief centers throughout the city, providing emergency housing for more than 35,000 asylum seekers. In March, Adams unveiled a new 24-hour “welcome center” in the city for migrants and a new city agency to help coordinate the arrival of asylum seekers.

Adams, who was expected to meet with federal officials in Washington on Thursday, urged the president to provide New York City with funding and allow migrants work authorizations, which he said the Biden administration could do “with the stroke of a pen.”

He blamed the city’s $4.2 million budget shortfall on the migrant crisis, which he said has forced him to direct city departments and agencies to slash their spending by 4% for the next fiscal year.

“This is impacting our schools, public safety, our ability to take care of those who were already in shelters,” Adams said. “This is impacting the entire city. And the numbers don’t lie.”

Adams said the city’s agricultural, food service, transportation and manufacturing fields are desperately looking for more workers, and those jobs could be filled by migrants if the federal government loosened the employment rules.

“We have an absence of employees in these fields. We have a willingness of a population that wants to fill these jobs. We need to bring that together,” he said.

Nationwide, more than 3.3 million people have been apprehended or reported evading law enforcement illegally entering the U.S. from over 150 countries in fiscal 2022, according to data obtained by The Center Square.

Few, roughly one out of seven, have been expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic-related rule that allowed the federal government to expel migrants seeking asylum at the border, the data shows.

But hundreds of thousands more migrants have been allowed to seek asylum and other protections, according to immigration officials.

Tibetan Police Mass-Collect DNA and Lawmakers Say U.S. Firm Is Helping

Mark Pellin
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Tibetan Police Mass-Collect DNA and Lawmakers Say U.S. Firm Is Helping

(Susan Crabtree, RealClear Wire) Legendary actor and humanitarian Richard Gere recently made a splash during a visit to Capitol Hill. Sporting a floppy, now pure-white mane of hair, the 73-year-old Gere flashed his still-boyish grin to members of Congress, staff, and visitors who flocked to see him, many snapping photos with the Golden Globe winner which they quickly shared on social media.

While Gere, who chairs the board of directors for the International Campaign for Tibet, graciously embraced the attention, he had a far more serious message and tone while testifying before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the reason for his Washington visit.

For more than four decades, the Officer and a Gentleman and Pretty Woman star has used his international fame to urge the global community to do more to help protect the people of Tibet from the Chinese government’s attempts to wipe out their language, culture, and religion.

Even though the Tibetans have long resisted Chinese repression, the CCP has recently instituted more systematic and sophisticated methods, utilizing finely tuned digital spying and tracking technology to monitor every citizen’s movements, phone calls, texts, and Internet habits, Gere said.

“China’s surveillance no longer halts at the Tibetan border,” Gere told the commission in late March. “The CCP’s techno-authoritarianism and fear tactics extend to Tibetan communities abroad. This oppression is being perpetrated behind a digital iron curtain to hide reality on the ground. The development of these systems of repression, reaching all the way around the world, reflects the lengths the CCP will go to dismantle the Tibetan civilization.”

China’s escalating repression in Tibet is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s increasingly harsh crackdown against all forms of religion. Over the last few years, news headlines have mainly focused on the more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims incarcerated in labor camps. Xi also has intensified the decades-long persecution of Tibetan Buddhists and practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditative spiritual discipline, and Chinese authorities are stepping up attacks and intimidation tactics against underground Christian churches, targeting both Protestants and Catholics.

Beijing’s assault on Tibetan Buddhism has evolved since its 1950 military invasion, the witnesses testified, transitioning from destroying religious institutions and banning gatherings and practices to one of tight control with the goal of eliminating core attributes of Buddhism and co-opting Tibetan Buddhists’ rights to determine their own leaders.

Testifying at the same hearing, Pnepa Tsering, the Sikyong, or head of the Tibetan government in exile, said Chinese authorities are trying to speed up the assimilation of the Tibetan people through large-scale forced relocations of Tibetans from their traditional homeland to Chinese territories and other parts of Tibet.

At the same time, the Chinese government is providing Han Chinese citizens incentives to move to Tibet and is either coercing or forcing children across Tibet into colonial-style boarding schools far away from their families or transferring them to areas in China.

Several witnesses, including Lhadon Tethong, director of the Tibet Action Institute, and Tenzin Dorjee, a senior researcher and strategist at the same group, cited their organization’s groundbreaking 2021 report, which found that 80% of Tibetan children are educated in a vast system of boarding schools run by the CCP, separated from their families and culture. Some as young as four years, Dorjee testified, are forced to take classes that include nursery rhymes and bedtime stories recited only in Mandarin in an all-Chinese environment that includes participating in war re-enactments dressed in Red Army suits.

During the hearing, Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and longtime human rights champion who chairs the commission, cited a 2022 State Department report finding that the CCP has effectively placed Tibetan Buddhism under central government control and subjected Tibetan women to “coerced abortion or forced sterilization.”

At the end of his testimony, Gere urged members of Congress to follow the money – and scrutinize U.S. and Chinese business interests and any ongoing role these ties have played in assisting the CCP’s persecution of Tibetans. “It’s all about the money,” Gere lamented at the end of the hearing.

The message was well received. The four members of Congress who co-chair the commission had already begun an investigation into an American company’s sale of DNA testing kits and replacement parts to Tibetan authorities despite warnings from the U.S. government that the sale of such technologies could be used to intensify human rights abuses in several regions of China.

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based firm that manufactures analytical and laboratory products, chemicals, and supplies including those used in COVID test kits and vaccines, had previously ceased the sale of similar supplies to police in Xinjiang. It only did so, however, after scientists and human rights groups raised concerns that the supplies were possibly being used in elaborate human tracking and surveillance databases and schemes – or worse, to identify ideal involuntary organ donors among persecuted ethnic and religious minorities across China. Xinjiang is where Chinese authorities have incarcerated a million or more residents, mostly Uyghur Muslims, placing them into labor camps.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations formally designated China’s systematic persecution of the Uyghur population as a genocide, specifically citing evidence that the Chinese government has slashed birth rates among Uyghurs and other minorities through forced sterilization and birth control.

In 2019, the Trump administration prohibited the sale of American goods to most law enforcement agencies in Xinjiang unless the companies received a license. In 2020, several U.S. federal agencies issued a joint warning that companies selling biometric technology and other products in Xinjiang should be aware of the “reputational, economic and legal risks.”

But in 2021, the New York Times discovered that DNA-collection tools made by two American companies, Thermo Fisher and Promega, were continuing to flow to the Xinjiang region, with sales occurring through Chinese companies that buy the products and resell them to the police in Xinjiang.

More recently, the Intercept last fall uncovered a deal between Thermo Fisher and Tibetan police to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of DNA profiling kits and other supplies. That news broke shortly after two human rights groups documented vast Chinese government campaigns to collect DNA from ethnic Tibetans.

In September, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab published a report by author Emile Dirks estimating that authorities have collected DNA from 919,000 to 1.2 million Tibetans, a fourth to a third of the region’s population.

Human Rights Watch, which uncovered the first findings about sales of DNA kits to Xinjiang police, found that the biometric collection includes blood samples from children in Tibet and the surrounding region.

In December, the bipartisan co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China sent a letter to Thermo Fisher President and CEO Marc Casper asking him why the DNA kits and DNA sequencer replacement parts were sold directly to Tibetan police. Those who signed the letter include Smith, along with Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, Sens. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, and Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat.

“As you may know, the bipartisan leadership of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China has taken a keen interest in the U.S. exports that facilitate the [People’s Republic of China’s] mass biometric collection and surveillance efforts,” the members wrote. “There are so few safeguards for how DNA is gathered and used in the PRC that we are alarmed that U.S. companies, including Thermo Fisher Scientific, may be wittingly or unwittingly aiding or abetting human rights abuses.”

The members demanded answers to several questions, including whether Thermo Fisher had conducted investigations into how its products were purchased by police in Tibet and why its DNA products were reportedly used in Xinjiang even after a company ban on selling to police there. More broadly, it asked whether the company would consider a blanket prohibition on selling to state and non-state entities in all of China “to assure its shareholders and the American public that its products cannot be used” to commit human rights abuses.

The answer they received was noncommittal and unresponsive to several of their questions, according to commission sources.

“Thermo Fisher’s failure to provide a substantive response to our bicameral letter raises serious concerns about the company’s commitment to human rights and their inability to condemn the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party,” a spokeswoman for Rubio told RealClearPolitics.

Smith went further and condemned the company for continuing to do business with CCP authorities despite U.S. government warnings that the sales likely assist in Chinese government surveillance of its citizens.

“Biometric data – DNA and iris scans – of over a million Tibetans have been harvested and stored by the CCP,” said Smith. “Blood samples were drawn even from children in kindergarten.”

“And you know what is even more shocking?” he continued. “It is the role of an American company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, in this genetic data collection and genetic surveillance program.”

In February 2019, Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling its DNA testing products to Xinjiang authorities “as consistent with Thermo Fisher’s values, ethics code, and policies.”

But in a January letter to CECC co-chairs, which RealClearPolitics obtained, Casper, Thermo Fisher’s president and CEO, vigorously defended his company’s sales in Tibet. The kits and parts it sold to authorities there in 2022 are “entirely consistent with a law enforcement entity engaging in routine forensics investigations in a locality with a population on part with the Tibet Autonomous Region.”

“Based on the throughput and capabilities of the products, orders of this size could not reasonably support the widespread sampling report in the media,” Casper argued, noting that the company hasn’t made “any other substantial deliveries in the region.”

“Thermo Fisher, therefore, is confident that the products that we or our distributors have provided are being used for their intended use in Tibet, namely police casework and forensics,” Casper wrote.

Concerning Xinjiang, Casper said there are no sales by Thermo Fisher or any authorized distributor to entities listed in the transaction data provided to the company by The New York Times. Thermo Fisher did not respond to multiple inquiries from RCP about the statements Casper made in the letter.

Dirks, who authored the Citizen Lab report on extensive DNA collection in Tibet, used open-source writings and social media postings referring to police DNA collection as the basis for his research. He also found that among strict pandemic lockdowns in 2020, government and local media posts mentioning mass DNA collection in the region tripled, with some local authorities combining DNA testing with what they described as COVID prevention.

“There is no indication that these people who had their DNA collected are suspected of or had any involvement in any criminal activity,” Dirks said in an interview.

Dirks also stressed that there were “broad references to social stability” in the social media posts from Tibetan police involved in conducting the DNA tests, although there was “no one particular reason” consistently provided for collecting the biometric data from so many people.

From his years of studying police activity in China, Dirks also took issue with Thermo Fisher’s rationale for continued sales to Tibetan law enforcement agencies because the company says it’s confident the products are being used in routine police casework and forensics.

“Remember in China, there really isn’t a firm line being drawn between what the Western World considers normal casework, and social control and repression,” he said. “Oftentimes the distinction between the two are quite blurred.”

The Chinese government has a long history in Tibet of failing to establish and enforce laws designed to prevent the most basic human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, imprisonment, and execution – laws standard for mainland Chinese citizens (although often broken to punish dissidents).

And the Chinese government has passed new laws, such as Hong Kong’s national security law, passed in 2020, to outlaw public protests and voicing dissent over the Internet — anything it deems subversive to the CCP’s authority. The government has used these expansive powers to oversee and manage schools and social organizations, shut-down media outlets and impose Internet blackouts. The Hong Kong courts used the law to convict Cardinal Zen, a 90-year-old Catholic cardinal, and five others for failing to register a fund that aimed to help people arrested in widespread protests four years ago.

The Chinese government has waged its longest campaign of repression against the Tibetan people. The brutal persecution began in the late 1940s under Chairman Mao Zedong’s regime. Some 6,000 monasteries were destroyed and thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns were arrested and killed. The Tibetan government was abolished entirely after the failure of the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. Another period of brutality came during the crackdown against any form of protest after the deadly Tiananmen Square massacre when then-President Jiang Zemin quashed violent rebellions against Chinese rule in Tibet. Hundreds of Tibetans were killed, and thousands were imprisoned.

The Dalai Lama has said that, all told, the Chinese government is responsible for the deaths of 1.2 million Tibetans, or a fifth of the population, while thousands of Tibetans still languish in prisons and labor camps. The Chinese government disputes the numbers and argues it has a right to the land, citing the Qing Dynasty’s 18th century rule.

The reasons behind China’s targeting of Tibet are manifold: The region is rich in oil, natural gas, and other minerals, and Tibet marks China’s western edge and is a vital link between China and South and Central Asia. Given its history of resisting China’s dominance, Tibetan advocates contend that the regime is threatened by Tibetan culture, its distinct language and religion.

“China is committing genocide in Tibet and has been working for decades to change history, to distort and obscure the present situation on the ground so as to erase Tibet from the world stage, both in the past and in the present,” Tethong said during the hearing.

Thermo Fisher’s intransigence in the face of blatant human rights transgressions throughout Tibet is a prime example of Washington’s ongoing struggle to prevent American technology from becoming tools of repression by authoritarian regimes around the world.

Sen. Rubio has authored legislation tightening export control laws aimed at preventing American firms from enabling human rights abuses. Last week, the U.S. China and Security Commission held a hearing on China’s pursuit of defense technologies and implications for U.S. and multilateral export control laws and regulations.

Several human rights experts argue that Washington needs to overhaul out-of-date U.S. laws governing American companies’ sales to China and other repressive regimes. In 1990, after Tiananmen Square, Congress passed laws prohibiting U.S. companies from selling fingerprinting devices, weapons, and ammunition to Chinese police. Rubio and others argue that the sanctions should be updated to include the latest technological advances in surveillance products, facial recognition software, and DNA equipment.

Now that China has grown more bellicose toward Taiwan and has imposed stricter control of Hong Kong while drawing closer to Russia, the U.S. needs to recognize that increased business and diplomatic ties with China have utterly failed to make it more cooperative with the U.S. or improve its human rights record, Tibetan activists argue.

“The U.S., and the West in general, has conceded so much ground to China in the last three decades and moved the equilibrium so far toward Beijing’s baseline,” said Tenzin Dorjee. “It is time to liberate ourselves from the tragically misguided notion that sweeping human rights under the rug would somehow make China more likely to cooperate on issues of geopolitical interest.”

Kaine Introduces Bill to Ban Stock Trading in Congress

Wire Editor
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Kaine Introduces Bill to Ban Stock Trading in Congress

(Sarah Roderick-Fitch, The Center Square) Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and 22 of his colleagues have introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

The legislation, Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks Act, or ETHICS Act for short, would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from owning or trading securities, commodities or futures.

Supporters of the bill argue members of Congress are at an advantage when it comes to forecasting the market. “Lawmakers often have advance notice of investigations, hearings, and legislation that can impact stock prices, or can move markets by supporting or enacting policy changes that affect companies or industries,” according to a news release from Kaine’s office.

Proponents of the bill applaud the legislation as the “strongest congressional stock trading ban bill that has been introduced to date,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of Project on Government Oversight. “The bill also covers spouses and dependent children, which was a glaring loophole in previous proposals.

Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, claims prior to the pandemic, several members of Congress “made over a thousand financial transactions after receiving closed-door briefings.”

A bipartisan companion piece of legislation has been introduced to the House of Representatives led by Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi D-IL and Michael Cloud R-TX. If the legislation becomes law, members would be given several options on what to do with covered assets they own. The legislation would allow members to divest or diversifying into “allowable assets – such as mutual funds – or placing assets into a Qualified Blind Trust.”

POGO told The Center Square in order for the assets to be “truly blind,” there would be a divestiture requirement to “ensure it is truly blind.” The group added, “trustees must sell original covered assets on behalf of the member within 120 days of the establishing of a QBT, or within 120 days of their new term following reelection for members with existing QBTs.”

The legislation includes penalties for members who continue to hold or trade assets in addition to breaking QBT communications rules. Members who continue holding or trading covered assets would be penalized at least the same amount of the members’ monthly pay or 10% of the value of each asset violation.

There would also be a penalty for members who break the QBT communications rules, which would be up to $10,000 per communication or 1% of the QBT value when the violation was committed, or whichever amount is higher.

Supporters of the bill, including Kaine, say the bill aligns with what voters want. “Even in a divided climate, polling consistently shows that 70% of voters support banning members of Congress from holding individual stocks,” according to a release from Kaine’s office.

“Americans deserve to know that their representative in Congress’ top priority is the well-being of their constituents—not their own personal bottom lines,” said Kaine. “I support this effort to put commonsense limits in place to help make sure that’s the case.”

POGO predicts success for the legislation, citing bipartisan support in the House and the support of Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in the Senate. “It has the backing of the person (Schumer) who ultimately controls what bills come to the Senate floor for a vote.” The group expressed “cautious optimism for the chance that the bill will at least pass the Senate.”

The Center Square reached out to the White House for comment on whether President Joe Biden plans to support the legislation if it lands on his desk but received no comment.

The CLC is urging Biden to keep his campaign promise. “He promised the American people that he would advocate for them by pushing Congress to free itself from the inherent conflict of interest stock trading presents, said Danielle Caputo, legal counsel for CLC. “Voters have a right to know that public officials are working in their best interests. It is time for President Biden to keep his promise to ensure that members are not influenced by their own financial holdings.”

Former WWE Pro Wrestler Indicted in Miss. Welfare Fraud Case

Wire Editor
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Former WWE Pro Wrestler Indicted in Miss. Welfare Fraud Case

(Steve Wilson, The Center Square) A Mississippi native and former professional wrestler, Ted DiBiase Jr., was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday with misappropriating millions of dollars in welfare funds intended for the poor.

The Madison native was indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to commit theft from programs receiving federal money; six counts of wire fraud; two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds; and four counts of money laundering.

The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that DiBiase and his alleged co-conspirators — former Mississippi Department of Human Services executive director John Davis, Christi Webb, Nancy New, and others — fraudulently directed funds from the Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for their own purposes.

Davis was accused by the government of ordering Webb and New to award sham contracts in 2017 to various individuals and entities for social services, including at least five sham contracts that were awarded to DiBiase’s companies, Priceless Ventures LLC and Familiae Orientem LLC.

The government says in the indictment that DiBiase didn’t provide the contracted services such as speaking engagements and a program for at-risk youth and instead used the funds to buy a boat, a vehicle, and provide a down payment on a house.

He could face penalties of five years for conspiracy, 20 years apiece for each count of wire fraud, and 10 years apiece on each theft count.

“Prosecutors decide whom to charge with a crime, and we’re grateful to see them continuing to advance this case,” said State Auditor Shad White in a statement. “We will continue to support their efforts with the evidence that our investigators and federal investigators have uncovered.”

Obama’s CIA Chief Directly Ties Biden, Antony Blinken to Hunter Laptop Coverup

Mark Pellin
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Obama’s CIA Chief Directly Ties Biden, Antony Blinken to Hunter Laptop Coverup

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) In bombshell testimony to Congress, former Obama-era CIA acting Chief Mike Morell told lawmakers that Secretary of State Antony Blinken “triggered” the creation of a bogus letter used to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story, in a coordinated effort with then-candidate Joe Biden’s campaign to beat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential tilt.

Morell’s testimony was disclosed Thursday night in a letter that the House Judiciary Committee sent to Blinken.

“We are examining the origins of the infamous public statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that falsely discredited a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop as supposed Russian disinformation,” the letter to Blinken informed. “As part of our oversight, we have learned that you played a role in the inception of this statement while serving as a Biden campaign advisor, and we therefore request your assistance with our oversight.”

In sworn testimony, Morell said that Blinken, who at the time was a senior Biden campaign advisor, had approached him in the wake of the Post publishing its damning story on information from the laptop suggesting Hunter had introduced his Ukrainian business partner to his father, then vice-president Biden.

Morell, in turn, helped pen the now debunked letter, recruited top intelligence officials to sign it and coordinated its release to fake news media, which blissfully ran with the story, and that Biden used for campaign fodder.

The letter claimed the laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” that was “trying to influence how Americans vote in this election,” declaring that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

“They lied to rig an election. Who will be held accountable???” asked Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk.

Morell, who said that he had no intention of crafting the letter until he was approached by Blinken, testified that there were “two intents” behind the disinformation campaign.

“One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue,” Morell said. “And, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.”

When House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked Morell, “You wanted to help the vice president why?” Morell replied, “Because I wanted him to win the election.”

“Based on Morell’s testimony, it is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election,” the committee’s letter read.

“Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association—which we do not dispute—their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.”

The House Judiciary Committee asked that Blinken provide various records and communications on the matter to them by May 4.

“This is the worst act of election interference in history,” tweeted Republican Kari Lake, who is currently litigating Arizona’s dubious midterm gubernatorial election that gave a win to her Democrat opponent, Katie Hobbs.

Dems Resurrect Green New Deal, Snub GOP-Passed Bill to Protect Women

Luis Cornelio
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Dems Resurrect Green New Deal, Snub GOP-Passed Bill to Protect Women

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) House Republicans on Thursday passed legislation protecting women’s sports from biological males, delivering a major blow to pro-transgender Democrats, who focused instead on resurrecting the leftist Green New Deal. 

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023, if passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden, would require schools to protect individuals from sex discrimination based on the person’s reproductive biology and birth sex. The bill would order the Department of Education to withhold funds from federal-funded schools if they were to violate Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete in competitions designed for the opposite sex. 

House Republicans championed the bill saying the legislation would assure fairness in sports.

“This is another team effort where House Republicans are standing up for people who believe in basic fairness and today’s vote should have been a unanimous vote,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., in a press conference. “Regardless of political games people play up here when people go back home and in schools and competing, they want to compete on a level playing field. The whole intention of Title IX was to create more opportunities for women to compete in sports.”

“The Democrats have gone to great lengths to call this bill extreme,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a speech before the bill’s passing. “It’s quite telling when the other party attempts to tear things down without offering an alternative vision. Democrats refuse to posit a reason for allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports that comports with principles of athletic competition.” 

 The bill comes two weeks after former 12-time All-American swimmer Riley Gaines was ambushed and physically assaulted by transgender hecklers at a San Fransisco State University event in defense of women’s sports. Gaines, who has since threatened to sue the university for allowing the activists to assault her, gained notoriety after speaking up against transgender athletes and losing to Lia Thomas, a biological male. 

“I feel grateful for the leadership of all the co-sponsors of this bill for standing up for women,” said Gaines in reaction to the bill’s passage in an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulker. 

The bill received no votes from House members of the Democrat Party, which chose instead to focus on the Green New Deal, a leftist legislation first drafted by self-proclaimed Democratic-socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., in 2018. 

“Today we reintroduced the Green New Deal in the Hous️e!” AOC tweeted championing the leftist bill.  “We’re also rolling out a new tool: an implementation guide to show communities and organizers how to get federal $$ for GND investments in your community.” 

The Green New Deal would cost American taxpayers $92.9 trillion (about $290,000 per person in the US) if passed, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum. 

President Joe Biden, who as a presential candidate said he did not support the Green New Deal, announced a whopping $1 billion of taxpayer money to assist developing countries “catalyze” climate change, according to a White House statement reviewed by Headline USA. The Biden White House is also requested $500 million for the Amazon Fund and “related activities.” 

The pro-women sports House bill will now head to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it is unlikely to pass.  

Both Senate Majority Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Biden have voiced support for allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, saying he thinks transgender students should have access to “sports, bathrooms and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity.” 

MTG Muzzled during Hearing for Calling Mayorkas a ‘Liar’ on Fentanyl Deaths, Border Crisis

Contributing Author
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MTG Muzzled during Hearing for Calling Mayorkas a ‘Liar’ on Fentanyl Deaths, Border Crisis

(Headline USA) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was prohibited from speaking during a committee hearing this week after she blasted Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas as a “liar.”

During the heated exchange between Greene and Mayorkas, Greene pointed to the number of fentanyl deaths in the U.S. and accused Mayorkas of enabling the fentanyl crisis by refusing to enforce immigration policies.

Mayorkas replied: “Congresswoman, let me assure you that we’re not letting it go on.”

“No, I reclaim my time,” Greene interrupted. “You are a liar. You are letting [the border crisis] go on. And the numbers prove it.”

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., then interjected and asked for Greene’s words to be struck from the record. Greene, however, refused to withdraw her remarks.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., then ruled that Greene could not speak the rest of the hearing.

“It’s pretty clear that the rules state you can’t impugn someone’s character. Identifying or calling someone a liar is unacceptable in this committee and I make the ruling that we strike those words,” he said.

Greene told CNN afterwards that she spoke with the chairman but that they disagreed with what happened during the hearing.

“He basically said that we have two different styles so we have a disagreement still about what took place yesterday, but, you know, I am still new to committees so I will make sure I am following the rules, which I do think is important, but at the same time I am still going to keep pushing,” she said.

Greene also said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., disapproved of the committee’s decision to silence her.

The chairman, however, disagreed.

“I had a conversation that was maybe a little different with [McCarthy],” Green said. Asked if the speaker agreed with his decision to silence Greene, the chairman said: “We didn’t really get into the details of it.”

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