Rep. Dan Bishop Investigating Secretive DHS Domestic Intelligence Program

Ken Silva
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Rep. Dan Bishop Investigating Secretive DHS Domestic Intelligence Program

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., announced Monday that he and two other members of Congress are investigating the Department of Homeland Security’s “Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program,” a secretive domestic operation that has raised internal concerns among DHS workers.

The DHS’s overt human intelligence collection program was largely unknown until Politico published an expose on it earlier this month, reporting from a trove of internal documents from the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

According to Politico, the DHS program allows officials to seek interviews with “just about anyone in the United States,” including people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails and federal prison.

“DHS’s intelligence professionals have to say they’re conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary,” Politico reported. “But the fact that they’re allowed to go directly to incarcerated people—circumventing their lawyers—raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts.”

One unnamed employee called the DHS program “shady” and said it “runs like a corrupt government,” Politico reported. Another document reportedly said some employees worried so much about the legality of their activities that they wanted the DHS to cover legal liability insurance.

“I don’t know any counsel in their right mind that would sign off on that, and any member of Congress that would say, ‘That’s OK,’” said a former DHS official interviewed by Politico. “If these people are out there interviewing folks that still have constitutional privileges, without their lawyer present, that’s immoral.”

Bishop, along with Reps. Mark Green, R-Tenn., and August Pfluger, R-Texas, demanded answers about the reports. They said the allegations are even more troubling when taken in context with other recent DHS programs, such as its now-scuttled disinformation governance board.

“There appears a patern of mission creep and overreach by the department emerging at the expense of Americans more than foreign actors who threaten the homeland,” Bishop, Green and Pfluger wrote.

The members of Congress seek numerous DHS documents about its program, including internal assessments of the legality of the program.

“This shady program violates Americans’ fundamental civil liberties and is flatly unacceptable,” said Bishop.

The DHS reportedly issued a statement in response to prior reporting, but Politico noted that the department did not address anything about its domestic intelligence program.

“The true measure of a government organization is its ability to persevere through challenging times, openly acknowledge and learn from those challenges, and move forward in service of the American people,” said DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Kenneth Wainstein. “The Office of Intelligence and Analysis has done just that over the past few years.”

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

NPR’s Atlanta Leftist Gunman Propaganda Piece Written by Antifa Supporter

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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NPR’s Atlanta Leftist Gunman Propaganda Piece Written by Antifa Supporter

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) NPR published another propaganda piece on the circumstances regarding the Atlanta police shooting of Antifa extremist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, where the author of the article happened to be a supporter of Antifa.

Kaity Radde, the one who is responsible for writing the article, claimed that the accused cop-shooter had his hands up when he was killed and repeated the leftist conspiracy theory that the officer shot by the gunman was supposedly hit by friendly fire, according to the Post Millennial.

“The Georgia Bureau of Investigation [GBI] says officers killed [Terán] in self-defense after they shot a state trooper, but the City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire,” Radde wrote.

She then continued to spread unverified claims based on the family’s second unofficial autopsy coming from Terán’s supporters.

“Both Manuel’s left and right hands show exit wounds in both palms. The autopsy further reveals that Manuel was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged when killed,” she wrote.

As was reported by Andy Ngo, the family of the slain Antifa-occupied autonomous zone radical has ordered “repeated private autopsies to get the results they want” after the GBI concluded he was killed in self-defense.

“The gunman seriously wounded a Georgia state trooper & forensic ballistics testing matched the bullet to his pistol. The family’s 2nd private autopsy has not been released but this is the misleading @NPR story by #Antifa supporter @kaityradde,” Ngo said.

Radde’s defense of an Antifa thug is not surprising, since she previously expressed her support of the fascist organization. In June 2020, she published an opinion piece on the Indiana Daily Student website where she argued that Antifa “isn’t a terrorist organization” because they act “mostly in self-defense and the defense of others” and publicly endorsed the results of the private autopsy.

In her propaganda piece, she also characterized the Antifa terrorist as innocent, writing that he “expressed a commitment to nonviolence” before his death.

Republicans Want Bill to Allow Americans to Sue China for COVID-19

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Republicans Want Bill to Allow Americans to Sue China for COVID-19

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Michael Burgess, R-Texas, unveiled a bill last week that would allow Americans to sue the Chinese Communist Party for damages after the country reportedly released the coronavirus into the world and caused irreversible damage, including deaths and health complications, for many people.

“With people finally recognizing that COVID-19 more than likely came from the Wuhan lab — something I raised from the very beginning — it is outrageous that no one has been held to account,” Smith, the chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said on Sunday, according to Breitbart.

“China’s communist leaders knew they had a deadly and highly contagious virus on their hands, and they attempted to hide its origins and imposed their malign influence on the World Health Organization to echo their false narrative.”

The bill would waive the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and allow Americans to sue the CCP for monetary damages, personal injury, death or damage to or loss of property because the communists tried to hide the virus outbreak from the international community.

Mounting evidence and official testimony indicates the COVID came from Wuhan, China, and killed over 1.1 million people across the U.S. and at least 6.8 million throughout the entire world.

Even though Donald Trump earlier this month demanded to force China to pay reparations to Americans, Smith said he was the one who came up with the idea. He first introduced the bill in April 2020, but it was blocked on a party-line vote by the then-Democrat-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s refusal to provide real-time information killed Americans. The American people lost loved ones and suffered a multitude of losses during the Coronavirus pandemic. They deserve the ability to get answers from the CCP,” Burgess said when the bill was introduced on Friday.

“We must finally get to the truth about what happened and who was involved in this deception in order to bring justice to those who suffered profoundly from COVID-19,” he added.

U.S. House Passes ‘Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act’

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U.S. House Passes ‘Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act’

(Tom Gantert, The Center Square) The GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that prohibits federal bureaucrats from using their influence to censor speech or pressure social media companies to censor speech.

The Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act passed on a 219-206 vote. It broke along party lines according to The Hill and is seen as unlikely to advance in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

Eastern Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers introduced the legislation with fellow Republicans James Comer (Kentucky) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).

“President Joe Biden and his administration have become the party of censorship,” charged McMorris Rodgers in a news release. “They’re actively silencing American voices in order to control the narrative to benefit their political agenda—we have the receipts.”

“House Energy and Commerce Republicans have condemned these censorship efforts again and again” said the congresswoman, who chairs that committee, “and I’m pleased to join Representatives Comer and Jordan in passing this legislation to protect Americans’ first amendment rights from federal employees seeking to abuse their power and control the battle of ideas. We will not allow this administration to be the arbiters of truth online.”

The bill was passed by the House after House Republicans sent a notice Dec. 23 to the FBI asking for records on the FBI’s efforts to influence social media sites to censor content such as the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

The so-called Twitter Files were released to selected journalists by Twitter owner Elon Musk in December that had documents showing the FBI’s involvement with Twitter.

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee December media release noted a nearly $3.5 million payment by the FBI to Twitter “for time spent process law enforcement requests around the 2020 election.”

“These documents show that the FBI maintained this relationship with Twitter apart from any particularized need for a specific investigation, but as a permanent and ongoing surveillance operation,” Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, stated in a December statement. “These revelations sadly reinforce our deep concerns about the FBI’s misconduct and its hostility to the First Amendment.”

Dems Peddle New Home Building Code to Push EV Vehicles

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Dems Peddle New Home Building Code to Push EV Vehicles

(Victor Skinner, The Center Square) North Carolina’s forced transition to electric vehicles helped boost registrations by 54% in 2022, and even still, the transportation mode is still less than 1% of total registrations.

The Old North State has a long road ahead to meet Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s goal of 1.25 million EVs by 2030. House Democrats nonetheless want to require new homes to accommodate the trend.

For context, North Carolina would need to add more than 170,000 electric vehicle registrations per year over the next seven years to meet the 1.25 million registration goal. Last year’s jump of 13,377 lifted the total to 38,374 on Dec. 31, according to North Carolina Department of Transportation data.

There are roughly 8 million gasoline and diesel vehicles registered for North Carolina’s roads.

Democrats on Monday introduced House Bill 318 to amend the state residential, energy and electrical codes to require all new one- and two-family dwellings to include at least one electric vehicle-ready parking space.

HB318 states the codes “shall provide that all new one- and two-family dwellings shall include at least one electric vehicle-ready parking space, except where no parking spaces are provided for the dwelling unit.”

“For the purposes of this act, an ‘electric vehicle-ready parking space’ means a designated parking space which is provided with one 40-ampere, 208/240-volt dedicated branch circuit for electric vehicle supply equipment,” the bill reads. “The circuit shall terminate in a suitable termination point such as a receptacle, junction box, or electric vehicle supply equipment and shall be in close proximity to the proposed location of the electric vehicle-ready parking space.”

HB318, which would change the codes effective Jan. 1, is sponsored by Democratic Reps. Deb Butler of New Hanover County, Terry Brown of Mecklenburg County, and Maria Cervania and Julie von Haefen, both of Wake County. The bill also has 11 Democrat co-sponsors.

Cooper in 2018 signed Executive Order No. 80 to set a goal of at least 80,000 registered zero emission vehicles in North Carolina by 2025, and to develop a Zero Emission Vehicle Plan for the state.

Cooper issued Executive Order No. 246 in January 2022 to add two other primary goals: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions no later than 2050; and to increase the total number of registered zero-emission vehicles to at least 1.25 million by 2030, with the goal of zero-emission vehicles comprising half of all in-state vehicle sales.

The latter order further tasked the state Department of Transportation with developing a Clean Transportation Plan within 15 months of the order. The Transportation Department published a draft report of the plan on March 1, and officials are now collecting public feedback on the plan through Wednesday.

The Cooper administration has offered at least $632.4 million in taxpayer-funded incentives to the electric vehicle industry in North Carolina over the last two years. Those incentives include a $316.1 million subsidy for the Vietnamese electric vehicle manufacturer VinFast; up to $315 million for a Toyota battery plant; and $1.3 million for the electric boat manufacturer Forza X1.

The VinFast deal has run into trouble. The Vietnamese company did a realignment of North American operations in February, resulting in about 80 layoffs, and the exit of the financial leader for VinFast U.S. Then on Friday, VinFast said production for the Chatham County plant is pushed back to 2025.

McConnell Heads to Rehab after Tripping at Waldorf Gala

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McConnell Heads to Rehab after Tripping at Waldorf Gala

(Headline USA) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. was released from the hospital Monday after treatment for a concussion and will continue to recover in an inpatient rehabilitation facility, a spokesman said.

McConnell’s office said his doctors discovered over the weekend that he had also suffered a “minor rib fracture” after he tripped and fell at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington on Wednesday evening.

“Leader McConnell’s concussion recovery is proceeding well and the Leader was discharged from the hospital today,” McConnell spokesman David Popp said in a statement. “At the advice of his physician, the next step will be a period of physical therapy at an inpatient rehabilitation facility before he returns home.”

The office did not give any additional detail on his condition or say how long McConnell will be out. Concussions can be serious injuries and take time for recovery, and even a single incident of concussion can limit a person’s abilities as they recover.

It is unclear how his extended absence will affect Senate proceedings. The Senate returns to Washington Tuesday evening after the weekend off and is scheduled to be in session for the rest of March.

The Kentucky senator, 81, was at a Wednesday evening dinner after a reception for the Senate Leadership Fund, a campaign committee aligned with him, when he tripped and fell.

McConnell is one of several senators who have been absent lately due to illness or hospitalization.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., 53, who suffered a stroke during his campaign last year, was expected to remain out for some weeks as he reportedly received care for clinical depression. However, no word has come from Fetterman, fueling speculation that he may, in fact, be brain-dead as his handlers attempt to outlast an August deadline that would require far-left Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to call for a special election in November.

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., 89, said earlier this month that she had been hospitalized to be treated for shingles.

But for McConnell’s injury, the hospitalization of the two might potentially have put the Senate back into an even split, forcing Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie. The loss of a third Democrat might then have allowed Republicans—temporarily—to regain control of the majority.

However, Democrats claim that the absent Fetterman has been drafting and cosponsoring legislation from his undisclosed rehab location.

McConnell’s head injury comes almost four years after he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture that required surgery. The Senate had just started a summer recess, and he worked from home for some weeks as he recovered.

At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, McConnell opened up about his early childhood experience fighting polio. He described how his mother insisted that he stay off his feet as a toddler and worked with him through a determined physical therapy regime. He has acknowledged some difficulty in adulthood climbing stairs.

First elected in 1984, McConnell in January became the longest-serving Senate leader when the new Congress convened, breaking the previous record of 16 years.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Kamala Won’t Answer Pocahontas’s Phone Calls after 2024 Snub

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Kamala Won’t Answer Pocahontas’s Phone Calls after 2024 Snub

(Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly refusing to talk to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., after Warren refused to endorse her as President Joe Biden’s vice president in 2024.

“I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team,” Warren said in January, reported the Washington Times. “I’ve known Kamala for a long time. I like Kamala. I knew her back when she was an attorney general and I was still teaching, and we worked on the housing crisis together, so we go way back. But they need — they have to be a team, and my sense is they are — I don’t mean that by suggesting I think there are any problems. I think they are.”

Warren has called Harris twice to apologize for her comments, according to CNN, but Harris is refusing to take her calls. 

Warren even released a public statement shortly after the interview, saying she fully supports a Biden-Harris ticket.

“I fully support the president’s and vice president’s reelection together and never intended to imply otherwise,” Warren said. “They’re a terrific team with a strong record of delivering for working families.”

But Harris’s team is also “infuriated,” the report said. 

“To them, it’s the latest in a long string of snubs to a vice president whom they say has never gotten the respect or support she deserves. Warren’s words sting even more, they say, because they came from a former rival who in 2020 hoped to be picked as Biden’s running mate instead,” CNN reported.

However, several prominent Democrats have come out against Harris, seeing her as a major liability for President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

“I can’t think of one thing she’s done except stay out of the way and stand beside him at certain ceremonies,” Democrat fundraiser John Morgan said earlier this year.

Psaki Admits Biden Normally ‘Does Nothing at 9 a.m.’

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Psaki Admits Biden Normally ‘Does Nothing at 9 a.m.’

(Headline USA) Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Monday that President Joe Biden is normally not even active at 9 a.m.

During a MSNBC panel on the Silicon Valley Bank failure, Psaki was asked about Biden’s speech on his administration’s decision to bail out the bank.

“It’s important to note, President Biden does nothing at 9 a.m.,” Psaki said. “He is a night owl, so the fact that he is doing this at 9 a.m. anyway speaks to how vital the White House recognizes it is for him to have his voice out there conveying that to the American public.”

Ironically, it seems others in the White House disagree with Psaki on how Biden manages his time. A CNN article from 2021 reported that Biden “is more of an early-to-bed type,” unlike “his most recent predecessors,” who were “night owls who spent the dark hours reading briefing materials.”

“He has established a regular schedule, including coffee in the mornings with the first lady, meetings and phone calls from the Oval Office starting just after 9 a.m. and a return to his residence by 7 p.m.,” CNN reported.

Biden’s lax schedule is sure to raise additional questions about his mental and physical fitness as he prepares for a 2024 run.

The doctor for former President Barack Obama recently predicted that the White House will downplay Biden’s fitness, or the lack thereof.

“You’re not going to learn anything. They sugarcoat these things,” Dr. David Scheiner said. “By the time he completes [a second term], he’ll be 86 years old; I don’t care if he’s in perfect health now — which, I can’t believe he’s in perfect health. He’s had too many things in his past history.”

He added, “It worries me that he is aging. If I look at him, he’s not a young 80.”

Whitmer Admits Draconian COVID-19 Restrictions Went Too Far

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Whitmer Admits Draconian COVID-19 Restrictions Went Too Far

(Headline USA) Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer admitted this week that some of the COVID-19 restrictions she imposed on residents during the pandemic were unnecessary.

When asked about some of her more controversial policies, like banning customers from buying gardening seeds during the lockdown, Whitmer told CNN: “We had to make some decisions that in retrospect don’t make a lot of sense, right? You could go to the hardware store, but we didn’t want people, you know, all congregating around the gardening supplies.”

“It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway,” Whitmer admitted. “But that being said, some of those policies I look back on and think that was maybe a little more than we needed to do.”

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon said Whitmer’s concession is part of her effort to rebrand herself ahead of 2024.

“Gretchen Whitmer is backpedaling as she plots her political future,” Dixon, who faced Whitmer during the 2022 midterms, said. “She once again attempts to gaslight the people of Michigan into thinking she bears no responsibility for the tyrannical, confusing and cruel lockdown policies she put in place.”

Even former Rep. Peter Meijer, who has been more willing to break with members of his own party than with Democrats like Whitmer, slammed the governor for “gaslighting.”

“The gaslighting here is simply breathtaking. The orders (multiple) were in late March/early April (NOT February) and were so unclear that some stores put caution tape around entire aisles to not risk noncompliance. A bit of humility would be nice,” he wrote.

Whitmer also downplayed the impact of her order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients and disputed data that shows Michigan’s death rate was much higher during the lockdown than Florida’s.

“I don’t know,” Whitmer said, “I’m not going to weigh in on their policies. I’m going to tell you: I listened to the best experts in the world.”

Trans Day-Care Worker Charged w/ Sex Abuse While Changing Diapers

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji Bello
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Trans Day-Care Worker Charged w/ Sex Abuse While Changing Diapers

Note: Headline USA’s policy is not to use pronouns in stories involving transgender individuals whose preferred pronouns differ from their biological ones.

(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) Maria Childers, a 25-year-old transgender daycare worker who identifies as a female, has been charged with sexually abusing a minor under 12, the Western Journal reported. 

The alleged assault occurred in November 2022 at Explore Learning Academy, Childers’ workplace, in Paducah, Ky. An anonymous person filed a complaint against Childers at the time.

The Paducah, police department arrested Childers on the Feb. 8, according to online records from the McCracken County Jail.

Childers, who was released on a $100,000 bond, was listed as a male, despite appearing as a female in the jail’s booking picture and other online photos, including one that showed Childers dressed as the titular character from Alice in Wonderland.

The citations from the police department noted that an eyewitness at the learning academy validated the details of the complaints. However, Childers’s account of the incident was entirely different when interviewed by the police.

Childers denied all the claims—including the allegation that Childers had changed a toddler’s underwear, touched the child inappropriately and made inappropriate comments—until after learning that the daycare’s director had testified otherwise.

Childers now faces charges of first-degree sexual assault of a minor and awaits arraignment, scheduled for March 23. 

The general public has shown interest in Childers’ case, especially on social media platforms.

One Twitter user commented that a man wearing women’s clothes should never have been hired as a daycare worker.

Another user raised questions about the director’s failure to report such an incident, despite being made aware. 

Another user lamented the erosion of American morals and values over the past quarter-century. 

“In 1990, a male daycare applicant calling himself Maria in a blue dress would have been immediately rejected by everyone as absurd and perverse,” wrote Twitter user Scipio Africanus. “Has Public acceptance of this behavior made society better in 2023?”

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