Climate-Change Agenda Enabling China to Usurp America’s Global Leadership

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Just two years or so into the Biden presidency, America seemingly has lost or forfeited its status as the world’s primary superpower.

Climate-change propaganda spread by gullible globalists—and an oblivious (or perhaps complicit) corporate media—is facilitating an ascendant communist dictatorship across the Pacific.

Global warming mitigation “is a coordinated effort by the government of China to hobble the U.S. and the West and take its place as the leader of the world—which, of course, is exactly what’s going on,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in his opening monologue Wednesday night. “We’re going to wake up one day and realize we’re not in charge, and this is part of the reason.”

As a potential preview, authoritarian China already has crushed the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and eliminated freedom of speech there.

It is now growing increasingly bold and agressive in Taiwan and the South China Sea, two regions that the U.S. has long declared to be red lines in diplomatic relations with the Asian rival.

And it is spreading its influence throughout the globe through anti-American partnerships such as the BRICS alliance—which may soon represent up to three-quarters of the world population and all of its major oil-producing countries.

America, meanwhile, has taken significant steps to reduce carbon emissions, even as the United Nations continues to push doom-and-gloom scenarios that have never materialized.

“This time, the plan is much more explicit: Make the West—the United States primarily, but also western Europe—blow up its own economy, while China—the fastest growing economy in the world—doesn’t have to do anything,” Carlson asserted, adding that China is building two coal plants every week.

Already, according to the Washington Post, China is the “biggest annual emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases.”

Climate-change activists, who have blocked traffic and vandalized museums in Europe, have apparently shown no willingness, so far, to stage protests in Beijing.

Instead, U.S. activists organizations, some of which are taxpayer-funded through government grants, have funneled billions directly to China as part of a never-ending cycle of corruption.

Earlier this week in a Moscow meet-up, China’s President Xi Jinping boasted that he and his Kremlin counterpart, Russian President Vladimir Putin, were driving changes “the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years.”

Against this backdrop, allegations have surfaced that CCP cash may have compromised the Biden family.

Rather than trying to negotiate a cease-fire in the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Biden administration continues to send massive resources to the Ukrainian government.

In addition to arguably prolonging the tragic suffering, the stubborn U.S. policy seems to have encouraged Russia and China to form a potent strategic partnership.

‘Squad’ Rep. Jamaal Bowman Shills on Behalf of TikTok, Despite Evidence of Espionage

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., declared he doesn’t consider the Chinese-owned video app TikTok a threat to America’s security, even though the FBI has warned about—and the company itself has admitted to—spying on American users, many of whom are vulnerable teenagers.

“I haven’t seen any hard evidence that TikTok is committing some form of espionage,” he said in a phone interview with NBC News on Monday. “What I’ve heard is speculation, and what I’ve heard is innuendo.”

TikTok is accused of harvesting private user data to benefit the Chinese Communist Party—and evidence of a potentially dubious relationship between the two is stacking up.

But Bowman, whether for political or financial reasons, has rushed to its defense.

During a press conference Tuesday outside of Capitol Hill, the second-generation “Squad” member pressed lawmakers to avoid expressing “our xenophobia when it comes to TikTok” and to stop the “fearmongering.”

He also claimed that Republicans opposed the company simply because they had no “swag.”

The app’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., has been under increasing scrutiny since the Trump administration tried to stop its ownership of TikTok.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the Canadian-based cybersecurity company Feroot Security found at least 27 state-government websites have web-tracking code placed by ByteDance.

The House and the Senate are looking to ban the social media app, and President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill to ban the app on government devices last year. 

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was expected to appear before Congress on Thursday to address longstanding concerns that the app may be collecting information to spy on Americans.

Nonetheless, Bowman remained adamant that the primary goal of the platform was to give creators the ability to express their views.

“There are many apps on our phones right now that are Chinese apps,” rationalized the 46-year-old lawmaker, who has around 159,700 followers on TikTok. “And so the idea that, ‘Oh, TikTok is the boogeyman’—it’s just part of a political fearmongering that’s happening.”

Bowman added that privacy concerns should extend beyond the TikTok platform.

“We need conversation and regulation about all social media platforms because of the issue of data mining, data sharing,” he said in his interview with NBC News.

“And why do we want to take that away?” he continued. “Why do we need to ban a platform that 150 million Americans now use?”

Hunter Biden Tipped Off to China Probes by FBI Mole Named ‘One Eye’

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Hunter Biden allegedly had help from an FBI mole—going by the name “One-Eye”—who tipped off his Chinese business partners that they were under investigation, according to a Wednesday column from New York Post writer Miranda Devine.

Devine said the scoop came from Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, who was arrested in Cyprus last month on gun-running charges.

According to Luft, he was arrested because of his knowledge of the inner workings of the deep state.

“I’ve been arrested in Cyprus on a politically motivated extradition request by the U.S,” he wrote. “The U.S., claiming I’m an arms dealer. It would be funny if it weren’t tragic. I’ve never been an arms dealer.”

Luft—who runs a Washington, D.C., think tank, the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, with former CIA Director James Woolsey and former national security adviser Robert McFarlane—also suggested that some big dominoes would fall if the information he knew got out into the public.

“DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden,” he wrote.

“Shall I name names?” he added.

Luft learned about “One-Eye” through his own connections with Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partners, Patrick Ho and Ye Jianming—chairman of the CEFC China Energy, which funneled millions of dollars to Hunter Biden to gain influence and access to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

According to the Post, government records indicate that the CEFC “paid a further $4.9 million to Hunter and Jim Biden in monthly installments for 14 months from August 2017.”

Recent revelations from a House Oversight investigation also indicate that additional members of the Biden family—including Hunter’s then-mistress, Hallie Biden, who was also his brother’s widow; and another mystery family member, identified on records only by the name “Biden”—also received kickbacks linked to CEFC.

Ye allegedly told Luft that his informant was in the FBI “or formerly of the bureau, extremely well placed, who they paid lots of money to [provide] sealed law enforcement information.”

And, according to the report, the connection paid off.

“One-Eye” allegedly told Ye that the FBI office from the Southern District of New York was investigating him and Ho.

After hearing that news, Ye and Ho may have offered Hunter $1 million to be their “private counsel” in the matter.

Ye left the country soon thereafter, leaving Ho to take the fall.

“Ho was the patsy … the fall guy,” Luft’s lawyer said, noting that, while the DOJ has dragged its feet on the investigation, he hopes to give Congress grounds to investigate the Biden family’s corruption further.

“The DOJ had this information in March 2019 and did nothing,” he said.

“Congress has the Biden bank records but it doesn’t know the reason for the payments. Now it does,” he added. “The information that the whistleblower Dr. Luft gave the DOJ four years ago is the missing link for the reason behind the China–Biden money transfers. Clearly, this is explosive stuff.”

Cruz Re-Introduces Constitutional Amendment to Prevent Court-Packing

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reintroduced a constitutional amendment to prevent court-packing by permanently cementing the Supreme Court at nine justices, his campaign website reported.

The amendment, which Cruz previously introduced in 2021 as Democrats threatened to pack the Supreme Court in order to get their way, would have to be approved in Congress before going to the various states for ratification.

It comes as radical leftists—led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is seeking to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein—have recently renewed those calls, complaining that a conservative majority on the court is unfair to them.

Unlike Cruz, leftists are hoping to achieve this goal through executive fiat if possible, openly flouting the U.S. Constitution and 250 years of precedent.

 

Cruz’s legislation is particularly relevant in the wake of President Joe Biden’s controversial Court-Packing Commission. But even the commission remained skeptical—at least in its initial report—about the idea of adding justices to effect a particular political outcome, while being more open to the idea of 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices instead of lifetime appointments

Cruz noted that the power-play that Democrats have publicly talked about enacting would undermine respect for the law itself in America.

“The Democrats’ answer to a Supreme Court that is dedicated to upholding the rule of law and the Constitution is to pack it with liberals who will rule the way they want,” he said. “The Supreme Court should be independent, not inflated by every new administration.”

Cruz’s amendment is co-sponsored by a plethora of Republican senators, including Roger Marshall, R-Kansas; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; John Kennedy, R-La.; Cindy Hyde–Smith, R-Miss.; Mike Braun, R-Ind.; and Todd Young, R-Ind.

Hawley noted that, since “the left has been desperate to pack the court to promote their radical agenda,” it falls to Republicans to “ensure that we stay true to the court’s founding principles” rather than rigging the system to benefit a particular party.

Cotton added that “the progressive left will do anything to gain power, including packing and expanding the Supreme Court with judges that share their radical ideology.”

FBI Accused of Planting Informant in Proud Boys’ J6 Legal Defense Team

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Members of the right-wing, anti-socialist group known as the Proud Boys accused the federal government of planting a spy on their legal team as they fend off charges related to the Jan. 6 uprising.

Former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and members Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola are all in the midst of federal trials after being accused last June of attempting to “to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.”

The Justice Department has admitted that at least one witness scheduled to appear in defense of members of the Proud Boys at their hearing was an FBI informant, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

But Rehl’s legal team revealed on Wednesday that one of the witnesses scheduled to appear as a witness in his may have been an FBI informant beginning in April of 2021.

According to the report, Rehl and his lawyer asked the federal government to disclose information regarding “Confidential Human Sources and any other witnesses that the FBI communicated with regarding the possibility of any recordings or reports that it may have regarding the defense team.”

They also requested “interview reports or FBI memos relating to the recording or reporting of the defense team,” suggesting that the informants may have had extensive contact with the defense’s counsel and also other defendants.

Rehl’s lawyer, Carmen Hernandez, also previously noted that there are “reasons to doubt the veracity of the government’s explanation and justification for withholding information about the (confidential human sources) who have been involved in the case.”

The FBI and DOJ already have come under fire for having withheld potentially exculpatory video evidence from defendants in the more than 1,000 pending cases against J6 political dissidents.

The department announced last week that up to 1,200 more could face charges, even as footage aired by Fox News host Tucker Carlson confirmed that the events inside the U.S. Capitol were largely peaceful and executed in cooperation with Capitol Police.

Nonetheless, the accusation of FBI interference with the defendants’ due process rights should come as no surprise, considering the Proud Boys were previously known to have been infiltrated by FBI informants.

Even the New York Times has admitted in the past that up to eight FBI informants had infiltrated the Proud Boys leading up the J6 rally.

The FBI did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

SCOOP: GAO to Investigate Dubious FBI Surveillance Practice

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Government Accountability Office has informed Headline USA that it will soon begin reviewing the FBI’s use of “assessments”—a constitutionally dubious practice that allows the bureau to target groups and individuals without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

FBI assessments have come under recent scrutiny in relation to the DOJ’s targeting of parents who hotly protested COVID-19 restrictions and other issues at school board meetings. A report published Tuesday by the House Weaponization Subcommittee revealed that the FBI conducted at least 25 assessments of school board threats—only one of which resulted in a full investigation, and none of which resulted in federal prosecutions.

However, the impending GAO audit stems from a request more than a year ago from Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Jamie Raskin, D-N.Y.

“We ask that GAO examine whether assessments result in the improper monitoring of protected First Amendment activity—including by political, racial, or religious organizations—and whether the FBI has sufficient controls in place to ensure that they do not run afoul of constitutional protections,” Mace and Raskin wrote to the GAO last March.

Headline USA asked the GAO about the status of this request on Wednesday, and was told that work will begin soon.

“We accepted [Mace and Raskin’s] request and the work will likely begin next month. Our relevant team had to complete some legislative mandates first,” Chuck Young, the managing director of GAO’s public affairs, said in an email.

The FBI treats assessments as precursors to full investigations, but Reps. Mace and Raskin have warned of their rampant abuse.

“We are concerned that FBI assessments operate as de facto investigations that can be launched without a factual predicate of criminal wrongdoing,” they said in their letter last March.

According to the Mace and Raskin, the FBI opened 11,667 assessments of individuals and groups between December 2008 and March 2009; only 427 developed into full investigations based on information collected. By 2011, the FBI had opened 82,235 similar assessments with fewer than 4,000 yielding any factual predicate to proceed with more intensive inquiries, they said.

“The FBI has opened investigations into people without any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, undermining our right to free speech and due process under the First Amendment,” Mace wrote last March.

“Under the FBI’s 2008 guidelines, the Agency is free to use ‘intrusive investigative techniques,’ including informants and unlimited physical surveillance, on individuals and groups without any link to criminality. This is scary, and it is a violation of the Constitution, plain and simple.”

Specific examples of improper assessments cited by Mace and Raskin include a two-year assessment into a group opposed to the Keystone XL Pipeline, and multiple assessments on “black identity extremists” between 2015 and 2018, despite the lack of any known connection between the targets and violent activity.

The FBI also targeted the First Amendment-protected public protests and educational activities, including a University of Oregon coordinated “kayak field trip,” organized by groups opposing the Jordan Cove liquified natural gas terminal project in Coos Bay, Oregon, according to Mace and Raskin.

In relation to the school board protests, the recent Weaponization Subcommittee report said its findings supplement FBI whistleblower allegations that the FBI investigated a mom because she belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group” and a dad because “he rails against the government.”

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

Kari Lake Lands Big Win, Ariz. Supreme Court OKs Signature Verification Review

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Arizona Supreme Court jolted new life into Republican Kari Lake’s election integrity lawsuit on Wednesday, ruling that lower courts wrongly dismissed her challenge to the signature verification process in the grossly flawed 2022 midterm election.

While the court rejected six of Lake’s appeal claims, it accepted her claim that “a material number of early ballots cast in the November 8, 2022 general election were transmitted in envelopes containing an affidavit signature that the Maricopa County Recorder or his designee determined did not match the signature in the putative voter’s ‘registration record.’ The Maricopa County Recorder nevertheless accepted a material number of these early ballots for processing and tabulation,” according to the court’s order.

The Supreme Court ruled that “Contrary to the ruling of the trial court and the Court of Appeals Opinion, this signature verification challenge is to the application of the policies, not to the policies themselves. Therefore, it was erroneous to dismiss this claim…because Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election,” and sent the claim back to the lower court to reconsider.

“I am thrilled that the Supreme Court has agreed to give our signature verification evidence the appropriate forum for the evaluation it deserves. For years signatures have been a third rail for Maricopa County,” Lake said in a statement. “The process of verifying these signatures is the only security measure on mail-in ballots. The amount of time allotted to check these signatures was only 8 seconds, which is not humanly possible. The system is completely broken. That’s why they are absolutely terrified of letting anyone take a look at their signatures.”

Lake allegedly lost the Arizona’s governor race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes. In the tumult of flaws that erupted on Election Day, Lake contested the results and argued that thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised when voting machines malfunctioned wholesale in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of the state’s voters.

Writing in the Supreme Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Robert Brutinel said Lake will need to “establish that votes [were] affected ‘in sufficient numbers to alter the outcome of the election'” based on a “competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

Lake sounded up to the task, calling the Supreme Court’s ruling “huge,” and promising supporters that, “We’re just getting started.”

“Every judge took the defendants argument hook, line and sinker to avoid having to actually peel back the curtain on signature verification,” tweeted UncoverDC’s Tracy Beanz. “It’s EVERYTHING. The fact that the Supreme Court ruled in @KariLake favor on this is an absolute GAME CHANGER.”

Bombshell Revelation Explodes DA Bragg’s Porn Star Hush-Money Case

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump took a shine to a newly-revealed bombshell letter that he said blew a huge hole in the hush-money witch hunt being pursued by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

“Wow, look what was just found—A Letter from Cohen’s Lawyer to the Federal Election Commission,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The letter in question, which surfaced Wednesday, was a 2018 missive that reportedly showed Michael Cohen had lied to investigators and had actually claimed that the former president did not reimburse him for quiet-cash funneled to porn star Stormy Daniels.

“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford [Daniels], and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly,” Cohen lawyer Stephen Ryan said in the Feb. 2018 letter. 

In the 2018 letter to the Federal Election Commission, Cohen said that he “used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford.”

The latest twist to the unfolding saga came as Bragg on Wednesday scratched a planned session of the grand jury investigating the case, even as law enforcement braced for what has been widely reported as a looming Trump indictment. The grand jury is expected to reconvene on Thursday.

Trump wielded the Cohen letter like a jackhammer Wednesday on Truth Social, excoriating Bragg.

“This is totally exculpatory, and must end the Manhattan District Attorney’s Witch Hunt, immediately. Cohen admits that he did it himself,” Trump wrote. “The D.A. should get on with prosecuting violent criminals, so people can walk down the sidewalks of New York without being murdered!”

Legal minds conceded that the letter might prove problematic for Bragg’s case.

“I think it’s just going to open the door to additional questions of [Cohen’s] credibility and give more opportunity for further cross-examination — as though they didn’t have enough,” former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman told the New York Post.

Cohen was already under fire as the prosecution’s star witness, with his former legal advisor questioning his credibility.

“Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” Robert Costello told NewsNation. “This guy, by any prosecutor’s standard, and I used to be deputy chief of the criminal division in the Southern District in New York, I wouldn’t have touched a guy like Michael Cohen.”

The Cohen letter was the latest setback for Bragg, who earlier this week was accused of withholding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence. Costello claimed that the grand jury had received only “six cherry-picked documents” of the reams he had given to Bragg.

Indoctrinated College Grads’ IQs Take Nosedive: New Study

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Decades of woke ideology, lowered academic standards and leftist doctrines weaving their way into educational institutions have reportedly contributed to lower IQ scores.

For the first time in nearly a century the measured intelligence of young Americans, including a focus on college graduates, is dropping, according to a new psychology study from Northwestern University.

The so-called “reverse Flynn effect,” stalling a decades-old trend of increasing IQs, was found in a large sample of every IQ-tested category except one. The study found consistent declines in three out of four cognitive domains, reported Science Daily.

The declines spanned all age groups and gender, but the drops were more severe for younger participants, including college graduates. The “greatest differences in annual scores were observed for 18- to 22-year-olds,” the authors wrote.

Researchers found “Ability scores of verbal reasoning (logic, vocabulary), matrix reasoning (visual problem solving, analogies), and letter and number series (computational/mathematical) dropped during the study period, but scores of 3D rotation (spatial reasoning) generally increased.”

The study, which was published in the May-June 2023 issue of Intelligence, measured intelligence tests completed by people of both sexes in their 20s to 60s. Even though the study didn’t examine any underlining reasons for the declining scores, including those from college graduates, report co-author Elizabeth Dworak said the results were telling.

“If you’re thinking about what society cares about and what it’s emphasizing and reinforcing every day, there’s a possibility of that being reflected in performance on an ability test,” said Dworak, hedging that the results don’t necessarily mean people are getting dumber.

“As scores were lower for more recent participants [younger people] across all levels of education, this might suggest that either the caliber of education has decreased … or that there has been a shift in the perceived value of certain cognitive skills,” the researchers’ report stated.

“It could be the case that our results indicate a change of quality or content of education and test-taking skills within this large United States sample,” Dworak said.

The bombardment of leftist indoctrination that has pummeled universities is a likely contributing factor, according to Nicholas Giordano, a Higher Education Fellow and professor at Suffolk Community College. Diversity, equity and inclusion have replaced reading, writing and arithmetic as standards of academic excellence.

“They made a mockery of higher education by offering useless courses focusing on topics like Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, and the Whiteness of Barbie. No matter how useless a topic may be, there is probably a college course for it,” Giordano wrote at Campus Reform.

“Colleges and universities also damaged their credibility by imposing censorship on campus, rather than promoting the free flow of ideas, which is fundamental to critical thinking and essential for professional success.”