Biden Blocks Bipartisan Waterway Protections in 2nd Veto

Molly Bruns
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Biden Blocks Bipartisan Waterway Protections in 2nd Veto

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) President Joe Biden issued a veto—the second in his administration—on a bipartisan bill limiting federal control of waterways of the United States, or WOTUS.

In doing so, the Biden administration asserted its unchecked authority to regulate “hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands, and other waterways,” essentially granting the federal government power to control both the water and surrounding areas, even on private property, according to Breitbart.

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., reacted to the veto in a Twitter post, slamming Biden for having “turned his back on Montana farmers and ranchers.”

“In his latest veto, Biden rejected the bipartisan effort to repeal his disastrous WOTUS rule and end federal overreach into our dry creek beds and mud puddles,” Rosendale said.

In order to gain further control of WOTUS, the Biden administration rolled back deregulation measures taken by the Trump administration.

The new regulations, announced in December by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, require private businesses and citizens to apply for federal permits for efforts like “construction or mining.”

The congressional bill—originally introduced by Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo.—had attempted to override the new administrative fiat.

Republicans and center-left Democrats such as Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., argued that Biden officials had exceeded the bounds of executive power.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind. pointed out that the regulations were “unfair, confusing, and costly,” and “create red tape for Hoosier farmers and builders.”

Despite Biden’s veto, the WOTUS regulations may still be reined in using a favorite Trump-era tactic of the Left: judicial injuctions.

Judge Jeffrey Brown issued an injunction on the regulation for the Southern District of Texas, ruling that the regulations “pose irreparable harm.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded the injunction.

“The unlawful rule would have saddled Texans across the state with crushing new regulations, slowing our state’s economic development and limiting our job growth,” he said, per Fox News.

The Biden administration’s latest land grab arrived not long after a controversial move to designate more than 500,000 acres in Nevada as a “national monument” under federal government control.

It also followed alarming comments from JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, in a recent shareholder letter, that called on the government to use eminent domain property seizures as a way to facilitate the Left’s green-energy agenda, including solar and wind projects.

After the veto, President Biden posted a tweet claiming the federal government was “protecting” waterways “from destruction and pollution.”

His declaration affirming the need for clean water came despite the administration’s apparent indifference for the Ohio River watershed following a recent toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio.

Residents had to wait several weeks for federal assistance and still rely on bottled water, as many of the natural waterways feeding into the river remain contaminated. Over 10 million gallons of contaminated wastewater had to be removed from the city.

Facing a new, GOP-controlled House and narrowly split Senate, Biden deployed his first veto last month to block a bipartisan bill that would have prevented government funds from being invested in woke ESG initiatives.

Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Judge OKs Defamation Suit against SPLC for Smear of Immigration Watchdog

Jacob Bruns
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Judge OKs Defamation Suit against SPLC for Smear of Immigration Watchdog

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Leftist activist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are coming under legal fire for tarnishing the reputations of conservative organizations, specifically the labeling of them as “hate groups.”

The SPLC designated the Dustin Inman Society, a conservative group that promotes “legal, sustainable and reduced immigration,” as an “anti-immigration hate group,” adding it to their “hate map,” which, as of 2021, monitored 733 “hate groups” across the country, Just the News reported. The Society, in turn, filed a defamation lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins refused to dismiss the Dustin Inman Society’s case against the SPLC, though he did not provide his reasoning.

What Watkins did note, however, is that calling the Dustin Inman Society an “anti-immigration” group is factually incorrect, contrary to the SPLC’s prior claims.

The decision could have serious implications for the SPLC, which relies on the cooperation of the legal profession to uphold its protected status as a group that, under the First Amendment, expresses its “non-actionable opinion.”

D.A. King, founder and president of the Dustin Inman Society, said that the SPLC is one of the greatest obstacles that Americans face in retaking their country.

“We’ve overcome what I am told is the biggest and most often interjected hurdle when people try to fight back against the well-funded Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Despite the ongoing case, the SPLC website still lists the Dustin Inman Society as a “Georgia-based anti-immigrant hate group founded and led by activist D.A. King” which “focuses on vilifying all immigrants.”

According to the SPLC, King regularly demonizes immigrants while working with the Georgia state legislature, playing a “significant role” in “passing anti-immigration legislation in Georgia.”

They also accuse King of “working with some of the most hardcore elements of the anti-immigrant movement, including white nationalists.”

The SPLC, however, has made waves recently with the announcement in March that one of its lawyers, Thomas Jurgens, may be charged with domestic terrorism following his participation in the violent protesting in Atlanta.

Biden Admin Spending $350K to Translate Obscene Gay-Slang Dictionary to Spanish

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Biden Admin Spending $350K to Translate Obscene Gay-Slang Dictionary to Spanish

Editor’s note: Article contains vulgarities that may be unsuitable for some audiences.

The Biden administration is reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to translate a gay dictionary into Spanish.

The dictionary, called the Homosaurus, a self-described “vocabulary of LGBTQ+ terms,” was taken up by the Biden administration’s National Endowment for the Humanities in January, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The center announced it was awarding a $350,000 grant to the University of Washington to create a “Spanish-language version of the Homosaurus,” which includes crude terms such as “anal fisting” and “jizz.”

Other entries included in the dictionary are:

  • bear—a slang term used to “describe hairy and large or muscular gay men”
  • Fag stags—“heterosexual men who enjoy the company of gay men”
  • anal beads—a sex toy that consist of “multiple attached spheres (or balls) that are continuously inserted through the anus into the rectum and then removed with varying speeds”
  • Indigiqueer—a “term used to describe the identity of people who are both Indigenous and queer and view those identities as inherently related and interconnected”

Homosaurus also sells children’s apparel bearing its logo and includes pedophilic references such as the term “pederasts,” which means “adult men who have sexual and mentor/protege relationships with adolescent boys.” 

The University of Washington’s Marika Cifor, a feminist studies professor, will reportedly oversee the dictionary’s translation and said it could take years to finish.

“Direct translation seems simple on its surface, but it won’t be culturally adequate to the kind of vocabulary we want to build,” Cifor said.

Edu. Dept. Tries to Circumvent Red States’ Trans-Athlete Bans via Title IX Rewrite

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Edu. Dept. Tries to Circumvent Red States’ Trans-Athlete Bans via Title IX Rewrite

(Headline USA) The corrupt Education Department, fresh off its failed attempt at student-loan amnesty, is planning yet again to circumvent the law through administrative acrobatics, using Title IX regulations to force federally funded schools to allow transgender athletes, even in states that ban them.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, in a statement.

Schools and colleges across the U.S. would be forbidden from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes under the proposal released Thursday by the Biden administration, which claimed teams could create some limits in certain cases to ensure fairness.

The proposed rule sends a political counterpunch toward a wave of Republican-led states that have sought to ban trans athletes from competing in school sports that align with their non-biological gender identities. If finalized, the proposal would become enshrined as a provision of Title IX, the landmark gender-equity legislation enacted by the Richard Nixon administration in 1972.

But critics say it does the exact opposite of what Title IX intended by giving those who are, for all intents and purposes, male an unfair advantage over biological females.

“The Biden administration’s rewriting Title IX degrades women and tells them that their athletic goals and placements do not matter,” said Christiana Kiefer, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom.

Kiefer, who represented Connecticut runners in a lawsuit over the participation of two transgender girls in track and field events, described the Title IX change as “a slap in the face to female athletes who deserve equal opportunity to compete in their sports.”

The policy change must now undergo a lengthy approval process, and it’s almost certain to face challenges.

All told, at least 16 states now have bans in effect covering at least high school interscholastic sports. Some also extend to intramural, club or college sports. Enforcement of bans in at least three other states has been put on hold by courts, and one more has adopted a ban that doesn’t take effect until July.

Under the Education Department’s proposed rule, no school or college that receives federal funding would be allowed to impose a “one-size-fits-all” policy that categorically bans trans students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Still, the proposal leaves room for schools to develop team eligibility rules that could ultimately result in restrictions around trans athletes’ participation.

That would be allowed only if it serves “important educational objectives,” such as fairness in competition and reduction of injury risks.

Any limits would have to consider the sport, the level of competition and the age of students. Elementary school students would generally be allowed to participate on any teams consistent with their gender identity, for example. More competitive teams at high schools and colleges could add limits, but those would be discouraged in teams that don’t have tryouts or cuts.

Biden’s administration used “fairness of competition” as criteria, which has been part of the debate both in the U.S. and globally. But officials offered no specifics on how this could be done.

Of the tens of millions of high school students in the U.S., about 300,000 youth between the ages of 13 to 17 identify as transgender, according to a 2022 study from the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA focused on LGBT issues. The number of athletes within that group is much smaller; a 2017 survey by Human Rights Campaign suggested fewer than 15% of all transgender youth play sports.

Asked about the state bans now in place, a senior Education Department official briefing reporters on condition of anonymity said Title IX is the law of the land and officials would work to ensure it’s being followed in all the states.

Elsewhere, Republican lawmakers insisted they had the right to set policies in their states. The Biden administration’s announcement came a day after Kansas lawmakers succeeded in overriding Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s third veto in three years of a bill to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

“At what point does the federal government not understand the U.S. Constitution that says we have states’ rights?” said Republican state Rep. Brenda Landwehr, of Wichita. “We can make decisions on our own.”

Critics argue transgender athletes have an advantage over cisgender women in competition. Last year, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. College sports’ governing body, however, adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athletes in January 2002, though recently the NCAA’s board decided it won’t be fully implemented until 2023-24.

The NCAA released a statement Thursday night saying: “The NCAA’s current transgender student-athlete participation policy aligns with the Olympic movement and balances fairness, inclusion and safety for all student-athletes. That policy remains in place while the lengthy Title IX regulatory process plays out.”

At the same time, international sports-governing bodies are instituting policies that ban all trans athletes from competing in track and field and effectively ban trans athletes from women’s  swimming events.

Donna de Varona, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and a member of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, said her hope is to find a “nuanced approach” to finding space for transgender athletes while allowing for Title IX to make sure girls and women have “fairness, opportunity and safety.”

“There’s plenty of room. … Why does it have to be in the women’s category? We’re already being compromised in our reproductive rights and now we have the other spectrum with sports,” de Varona said in a phone interview.

President Joe Biden’s administration proposed a separate federal rule last year that for the first time would extend Title IX rights to LGBT students.

That rule—which drew more than 240,000 comments from the public and sharp opposition from conservatives—is expected to be finalized as soon as next month.

The new proposal doesn’t offer examples of acceptable limits that could be placed on school sports, but it clarifies that restrictions couldn’t be directed at trans students only. Schools would be left to navigate that tricky legal terrain, with the knowledge that any violation could bring a federal civil rights investigation or lawsuits.

Schools that choose to impose limits must “minimize harms” to students who lose out on athletics opportunities, the proposal says. If a school can achieve objectives like fairness in ways that cause less harm, then the school could be deemed to be violating Title IX.

“Preventing students from participating on a sports team consistent with their gender identity can stigmatize and isolate them,” according to background information provided by the administration. “This is different from the experience of a student who is not selected for a team based on their skills.”

Schools that violate Title IX can face penalties up to a complete loss of federal funding, although no school has ever been dealt that punishment.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Biden Report Shifts Blame for Afghanistan onto Trump Admin.

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Biden Report Shifts Blame for Afghanistan onto Trump Admin.

(Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday sought to lay the blame on his predecessor, President Donald Trump, for the deadly and chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that brought about some of the darkest moments of a Biden presidency that has seen many low points.

The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the so-called “ hotwash ” of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation’s longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.

It does acknowledge that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but blames the delays on the Afghan government and military, and on U.S. military and intelligence community assessments.

The brief document was drafted by the National Security Council, rather than by an independent entity, with input from Biden himself. The administration said detailed reviews conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, which the White House said would be transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and would not be released publicly.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House summary states, noting that when Biden entered office, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”

Trump responded by accusing the Biden administration of playing “a new disinformation game” to distract from “their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan.” On his social media site, he said, “Biden is responsible, no one else!”

The report does fault overly optimistic intelligence community assessments about the Afghan army’s willingness to fight, and says Biden followed military commanders’ recommendations for the pacing of the drawdown of U.S. forces.

“Clearly we didn’t get it right,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, but sidestepped questions about whether Biden has any regrets for his decisions and actions leading up to the withdrawal.

Kirby said of the report that “the purpose of it is not accountability,” but rather ”understanding” what happened to inform future decisions.

The White House asserts the mistakes of Afghanistan informed its handling of Ukraine, where the Biden administration has been credited for supporting Kyiv’s defense against Russia’s invasion. The White House says it simulated worst-case scenarios prior to the February 2022 invasion and moved to release intelligence about Moscow’s intentions months beforehand.

“We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” the White House said.

In an apparent attempt to defend its national security decision-making, the Biden administration also notes that it released pre-war warnings over “strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government.”

Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal, focusing on the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport, which also killed more than 100 Afghans.

Shawn Vandiver, a Navy veteran and founder of #AfghanEvac, an effort to resettle Afghans fleeing the country, called the NSC report an “important next step.”

“We are glad to see acknowledgement of lessons learned and are laser focused on continuing relocation and resettlement operations,” Vandiver said in a statement.

But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted Thursday that the withdrawal was “an unmitigated fiasco,” adding, “Passing the buck in a blame-shifting report won’t change that.”

The administration’s report appears to shift any blame in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, saying it was the U.S. military that made one possibly key decision.

“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the President repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA,” the report said, adding, “Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats.”

Kirby credited U.S. forces for their actions in running the largest airborne evacuation of noncombatants in history during the chaos of Kabul’s fall.

“They ended our nation’s longest war,” he told reporters. “That was never going to be an easy thing to do. And as the president himself has said, it was never going to be low grade or low risk or low cost.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal, Biden has blamed the February 2020 agreement Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying it boxed the U.S. into leaving the country. The agreement has been blamed by analysts for undercutting the U.S.-backed government, which collapsed the following year.

Under the U.S.-Taliban Doha agreement, roughly 5,000 Taliban prisoners were released as a condition for what were supposed to be separate future peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban. Kirby noted that release and other examples of what he said was a “general sense of degradation and neglect” inherited by Biden.

But the agreement also left an opening for the U.S. to call off its withdrawal deal with the Taliban if the promised Taliban-Afghan peace talks failed — which they did under Biden, as the U.S. military was pulling out and Taliban fighters advancing.

The U.S. was to remove all forces by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed a full withdrawal to September but declined to delay further, saying it would prolong a war that had long needed to end.

Since the withdrawal, the U.S. carried out a successful operation to kill al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri — the group’s No. 2 leader during the Sept. 11 attacks — which the White House has argued is proof it can still deter terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

But the images of disorder and violence during the fall of Kabul still reverberate, including scenes of Afghans falling from the undercarriages of American planes, Afghan families handing infants over airport gates to save them from the crush and violence of the crowd, and the devastation after the suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate.

A February report by the U.S. government’s special inspector general for Afghanistan placed the most immediate blame for the Afghan military’s collapse on both the Trump and Biden administrations: “Due to the (Afghan security force’s) dependency on U.S. military forces, the decision to withdraw all U.S. military personnel and dramatically reduce U.S. support to the (Afghan security forces) destroyed the morale of Afghan soldiers and police.”

Pressed by reporters Thursday afternoon, Kirby repeatedly defended the U.S. response and effort to evacuate American citizens and argued with reporters who referred to the withdrawal as chaotic. At one point, he paused in what appeared to be an effort to gather his emotions.

“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it, not from my perch,” said Kirby, who was the Pentagon spokesman during the withdrawal. “At one point during the evacuation, there was an aircraft taking off full of people, Americans and Afghans alike, every 48 minutes, and not one single mission was missed. So I’m sorry, I just won’t buy the whole argument of chaos.”

The release of the NSC review comes as the State Department and House Republicans battle over documents for classified cables related to the Afghanistan withdrawal. Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Kirby’s comments “disgraceful and insulting.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

House Judiciary Subpoenas Anti-Trump Ex-Manhattan Prosecutor

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House Judiciary Subpoenas Anti-Trump Ex-Manhattan Prosecutor

(Headline USA) House Republicans on Thursday subpoenaed one of the former Manhattan prosecutors who had been leading a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump before quitting last year in a clash over the direction of the probe.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, ordered Mark Pomerantz to testify before the committee by April 30 as the committee probes possible prosecutorial abuse by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, days after Trump was charged in a 34-count felony indictment in connection with an alleged hush-money scheme.

Pomerantz refused to voluntarily cooperate with the committee’s request last month at the instruction of Bragg’s office, citing the ongoing investigation.

The Manhattan D.A.’s office has accused Jordan’s committee of overstepping its legal authority and infringing on New York state sovereignty, despite the fact that Bragg is attempting to use federal law to beef up the misdemeanor charges, which already have passed New York’s statute of limitations otherwise.

It is unclear that Bragg has the authority to do so, making it likely that Trump would have charges dismissed on appeal, even if convicted in the deeply biased Manhattan district.

However, Bragg is one of a wave of George Soros-backed district attorneys who have exploited the so-called prosecutorial discretion loophole to pursue an overtly partisan political agenda while ignoring basic criminal justice, with troubling implications for the entire American justice system.

Jordan has now written in a letter to Pomerantz, “Based on your unique role as a special assistant district attorney leading the investigation into President Trump’s finances, you are uniquely situated to provide information that is relevant and necessary to inform the Committee’s oversight and potential legislative reforms.”

A request for comment from Pomerantz was not immediately returned.

Republicans had rallied around Trump in the leadup to his indictment Tuesday, labeling Bragg’s investigation a “political persecution.”

Jordan and other senior GOP lawmakers see Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, who were top deputies tasked with running the investigation on a day-to-day basis, as catalysts for Bragg’s decision to move ahead with the hush money case.

Both men started on the probe under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg asked them to stay when he took office in January.

Pomerantz released a book earlier this year titled People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account. In the book, he said that Vance authorized him in December 2021 to seek Trump’s indictment. He has portrayed the probe as perhaps the most challenging and legally fraught of the potential cases against the former president.

Jordan wrote Thursday that Pomerantz should be allowed to cooperate since he has “already discussed many of the topics relevant to our oversight” in the book he published and promoted. He went on to say that Pomerantz’s own book details how the case looking into “Trump appears to have been politically motivated.”

“Specifically, you describe your eagerness to investigate President Trump, writing that you were ‘delighted’ to join an unpaid group of lawyers advising on the Trump investigations, and joking that salary negotiations had gone ‘great’ because you would have paid to join the investigation,” the Jordan letter continued.

Bragg called the subpoena another example of a Republican “attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case.”

“Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law,” Bragg wrote in a tweet.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Leftists Play Race Card, Call for Arson after Tenn. House Ousts Transurrectionist Dems

Mark Pellin
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Leftists Play Race Card, Call for Arson after Tenn. House Ousts Transurrectionist Dems

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Democrats and leftists who for years have fomented the criminal prosecution and social persecution of peaceful J6 political protesters changed their tune Thursday, howling injustice and peddling racism after Tennessee Republicans booted two insurrectionist lawmakers from the state Legislature, while radical activists called for “arson attacks across the state.”

The Tennessee House voted to expel Democrat representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for “disorderly conduct” stemming from their role in using a bullhorn and aggressively agitating protesters from the House floor. A mob of radical activists hijacked the mass shooting tragedy at Nashville’s Covenant School, where a transgender triggerman killed six Christians, by storming the state Capitol to demand gun confiscation instead of assistance for the mentally ill or improvements to school safety.

Rep. Gloria Johnson, who had joined the two lawmakers but reportedly didn’t use a bullhorn, escaped expulsion, much to her disappointment.

Johnson, who is white, told reporters after the vote that she “couldn’t feel good about her survival” while her two black colleagues were expelled, claiming they were targeted because of their race. Others were equally quick to play the race card.

With actions proving intent, the so-called Tennessee Three showed that their leading last week’s storming of the state Capitol had more to do with trans-insurrection and gun confiscation than with school safety. All three lawmakers voted Thursday against a bill that passed with bi-partisan support to enhance security and safety measures at public and private schools, the Tennessean reported.

Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton said race had nothing to do with the expulsion decision, which he said was focused on preserving the rule of law and democracy.

“Their actions and beliefs that they could be arrested on the House floor were an effort, unfortunately, to make themselves the victims,” Sexton wrote. “In effect, those actions took away the voices of the protestors, the focus on the six victims who lost their lives, and the families who lost their loved ones.”

The Tennessee Republican lawmakers drew wide praise for their actions to hold accountable Democrat activist lawmakers leading a trans mob that used a mass shooting tragedy to advance their own radical agenda.

Collin Rugg applauded Jones’s expulsion “for leading an anti-2nd Amendment insurrection last week,” calling it “a great day for democracy.”

Democrats and leftist radicals responded to the expulsions with shocked outrage at the ouster of their insurrectionist champions by hurling insults, dropping f-bombs, disrupting legislative business and reportedly calling for “arson attacks across the state.”

“Congrats to the Tennessee House for voting out 2 of 3 Democrat insurrectionists who stormed the state Capitol last week,” tweeted Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk. “Now they’re free to move to California. I’m told U-Hall is begging for drivers to make the return trip back west.”

Critics Slam Bill to Ban TikTok as Patriot Act 2.0

Ken Silva
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Critics Slam Bill to Ban TikTok as Patriot Act 2.0

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced legislation last month that would ban social media app TikTok from the country, but critics of all ideological stripes have criticized the bill as an ill-advised effort that would end the remaining internet freedom and privacy that still exists.

When they introduced their bill March 9, Senators Mark Warner, D-Va., and John Thune, R-S.D., touted it as a needed measure to protect Americans.

Their “Restrict Act,” among other things, would empower the Secretary of Commerce to “identify and mitigate foreign threats to information and communications technology products and services.” In practice, this would give the White House power to ban foreign products it deems a threat.

But retired Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul pointed out that the Restrict Act would also allow the Secretary of Commerce to ban American companies that are allegedly assisting a foreign power’s malign efforts.

“If the RESTRICT Act becomes the RESTRICT law, any site that refuses to cooperate with future efforts by the US government to suppress certain stories and individuals on social media could find itself accused of working to advance the ‘strategic objectives of a foreign adversary,’” the good doctor said.

“Like the PATRIOT Act, the RESTRICT Act plays on people’s fears to make them silent while Congress takes away more of their liberty.”

Along with libertarians like Paul, liberal- and centrist-leaning tech policy organizations also oppose the bill.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said on Tuesday that the bill is a poor version of comprehensive data privacy legislation. EFF further noted that the RESTRICT Act may not even ban TikTok because it doesn’t restrict personal use.

However, the bill does contain troubling language that could be interpreted as criminalizing the use of VPNs—software that allows users to browse the internet under a proxy IP address, which helps keep users anonymous.

“The bill authorizes the Department of Commerce to impose ‘mitigation measures’ without any restrictions on what those measures might be,” EFF warned.

“Couple that with a vague enforcement provision that grants the power to broadly punish any person who ‘evades’ these undefined ‘mitigation measures,’ and the result is a law that can be read as criminalizing common practices like using a VPN to get a prohibited app, side-loaded installations, or using an app that was lawfully downloaded somewhere else.”

The Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability made similar statements.

“The Restrict Act could easily be interpreted as criminalizing virtual private networks, which enable Americans’ privacy,” the organization said Wednesday. “Thus, teenagers who use VPNs to watch burping contests on TikTok could face a $1 million fine and 20 years in prison.”

The bill has been tabled before Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation. A hearing has yet to be scheduled.

REPORT: Don Lemon Has Long History of Sexist, ‘Diva-Like’ Behavior in the Workplace

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REPORT: Don Lemon Has Long History of Sexist, ‘Diva-Like’ Behavior in the Workplace

(Headline USA) CNN’s Don Lemon has a history of misogynistic and diva-like behavior in the workplace, according to a bombshell expose published by Variety this week.

Lemon came under fire last month for sexist comments he made about GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, whom he described as “not in her prime.” But according to Variety, this is far from the only example of Lemon making inappropriate comments about women. He has allegedly called a female producer fat to her face, accused colleague Soledad O’Brien of not being black and sent colleague Kyra Phillips a menacing text threatening her, the report said.

“There was a time when it appeared that black people were most often the subject of his ire. Now, it seems to me that when he says something offensive, there’s almost always a woman on the other side,” Goldie Taylor, a former CNN consultant, told Variety. “I’m never surprised when Don gets in trouble.”

In one example, Lemon reportedly grew frustrated with Phillips after she was given an assignment to cover the aftermath of the Iraq invasion in 2008. He was so jealous of Phillips’s assignment that he ripped up pictures of her and left them on her desk, two sources said. She later received a threatening text message that CNN executives allegedly later traced back to Lemon.

“Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it,” the text message said.

CNN conducted an investigation into the text and removed Lemon from his co-anchoring duties alongside Phillips and demoted him to weekends.

Around the same time, Lemon allegedly mocked former CNN anchor Nancy Grace by mimicking her on air.

“That was the beginning of when you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say good things about women,” one person who reportedly witnessed the incident said.

Lemon also went after O’Brien after she landed a gig hosting CNN’s Black in America docu-series in 2008. During an editorial call with dozens of staffers, Lemon suggested that O’Brien is not actually black, two witnesses said.

“Don has long had a habit of saying idiotic and inaccurate things, so it sounds pretty on brand for him,” O’Brien said, noting that she herself was not on the call.

Lemon has denied all of the allegations in Variety’s report.

Business Layoffs Up Nearly 400% in Biden Economy

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Business Layoffs Up Nearly 400% in Biden Economy

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Layoffs among United States employers increased by nearly 400% between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, as a result of Joe Biden‘s economy.

According to a Thursday report from executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, economic disruptions and increased overheads, coupled with increased cost efficiencies, are primary causes for employers dismissing large shares of their employees. As a result, layoffs have risen 396% between the first three months of last year and this year.

“We know companies are approaching 2023 with caution, though the economy is still creating jobs,” Challenger, Gray & Christmas Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said. “With rate hikes continuing and companies’ reigning in costs, the large-scale layoffs we are seeing will likely continue.”

The Daily Wire reported that technology companies are responsible for 102,000 of the 270,000 positions nixed by employers. Those numbers mark the most severe layoffs in the sector since 168,000 workers were dismissed in the 2001 dot-com bubble and collapse.

Financial companies dismissed nearly 31,000 employees in the first quarter of 2023. Hospitals and manufacturers announced a combined 23,000 position cuts. Media companies eliminated more than 10,000 positions.

Technology firms — including Meta, Google and Amazon — started to fire their employees because the elevated consumer demand which followed the lockdown-induced recession began to slow. Crunchbase layoff tracker estimated that 130,000 workers have been dismissed from technology firms thus far in 2023, even after companies nixed about 93,000 positions last year.

The Daily Wire reported that “the layoffs were also prompted by entreaties from investors who have noted that inflated payrolls and diminished consumer demand are preeminent factors behind lackluster profits.”

For instance, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cited the “uncertain economy” as a motivating factor behind his company’s newly downsized payrolls.

“The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” he wrote in a recent memo.

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