
Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of *[Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom](http://www.amazon.com/Global-Deception-Stealth-Assault-Americas/dp/0974670146)* and _[Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam](http://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Engagement-Joseph-Klein/dp/1617392251)_.


Joseph Klein

Considering crime rates under Soros DA Gascon, I didn't think any special motive was needed to explain the attempted assault on Dave Chappelle. There are any number of crazies wandering around Los Angeles and the internet. And as&nbsp;attack plots go, this one didn't seem too well thought out.


	But it looks like the motive <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10843403/Dave-Chappelles-attacker-speaks-time-says-triggered-comedians-jokes.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailus">was political after all</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		The Los Angeles man&nbsp;accused of attacking Dave Chappelle&nbsp;said he was “triggered” by the comedian’s jokes about the LGBTQ community and homelessness — as he insisted he never wanted to harm the funnyman.

	
		In an exclusive jailhouse interview, Isaiah Lee told The Post that Chappelle should be more “sensitive” when it comes to the jokes he cracks.

	
		“I identify as bisexual … and I wanted him to know what he said was triggering,” Lee said Saturday at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles, dressed in brown jail garb and sporting a sling on his broken right arm.

	
		“I wanted him to know that next time, he should consider first running his material by people it could affect.”
</blockquote>


	I'm sure that next time Chappelle will run his bits past random assailants before taking it on stage.


	Obviously the story would be very different if Lee had been a white male conservative offended by jokes. We would be having a loud, vocal, and very different conversaion. Instead it took the New York Post to find out his motive. Not because he was holding it back, but because the media didn't want to know.

Dave Chappelle Attacker Was Triggered By Him

Considering crime rates under Soros DA Gascon, I didn't think any special motive was needed to explain the attempted assault on Dave Chappelle. There are any

Dave Chappelle Attacker Was Triggered By Him

This is why his own people keep <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2022/05/22/bidens-logistical-man-extraordinaire-00034257">cutting off </a>his microphone.

<blockquote>
	
		CNN’s&nbsp;KAITLAN COLLINS&nbsp;asked Biden a follow-up question Sunday about if he had a message to North Korean leader&nbsp;KIM JONG-UN. “Hello,” Biden said, before pausing a bit and adding: “Period.”

	
		While reporters were able to hear the president, clear audio and video were almost lost because the U.S. government cut off Biden’s microphone feed prematurely. Some of the mics still caught the response in a way that was usable with subtitles. But the government cutting off the audio early has been a frequent source of frustration for reporters.
</blockquote>


	Apparently, they didn't cut it off <a href="https://thehill.com/news/administration/3497693-biden-us-would-defend-taiwan-militarily-if-china-invaded/">soon enough</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		President&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;on Monday said the U.S. would be willing to defend Taiwan militarily if China were to try and take it by force.

	
		“Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” Biden was asked at a press conference in Tokyo alongside the Japanese prime minsiter.

	
		“Yes,” Biden responded. “That’s the commitment we made. That’s the commitment we made.

	
		“Look, here’s the situation. We agree with the one China policy… but the idea that to be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate,” Biden continued. “It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.”
</blockquote>


	I don't necessarily object to the content of the answer so much as the fact that this is the latest in a series of <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/08/biden-commits-defending-taiwan-quickly-takes-it-daniel-greenfield/">back and forths on Taiwan</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		A senior Biden administration official said on Thursday (Aug 19) that US policy on Taiwan had not changed after President Joe Biden appeared to suggest that the United States would defend the island if it were attacked, a deviation from a long-held US position of "strategic ambiguity"...

	
		"They are...entities we've made agreements with based on not a civil war they're having on that island or in South Korea, but on an agreement where they have a unity government that, in fact, is trying to keep bad guys from doing bad things to them," Mr Biden said.

	
		"We have made (and) kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It's not even comparable to talk about that."

	
		A senior Biden administration official said US "policy with regard to Taiwan has not changed" and analysts said it appeared that Mr Biden had misspoken.
</blockquote>


	Article 5 obviously <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/10/biden-says-dont-worry-about-taiwan-based-daniel-greenfield/">does not</a> apply to Taiwan.


	Biden asserting that the United States would fight in defense of Taiwan is a pretty aggressive position. If you take that kind of position, you have to be willing to back it up. Putting all that credibility on the line and then having a staffer pull it back again makes it obvious that Biden is not mentally functioning and that American military deterrence has no credibility.

Biden is Back to Flip-Flopping on Taiwan

This is why his own people keep cutting off his microphone.


	
		CNN’s&nbsp;KAITLAN COLLINS&nbsp;asked Biden a follow-up question Sunday about if he had a

Biden is Back to Flip-Flopping on Taiwan

There's good reason for being suspicious about this Washington Post poll because it has black people echoing woke lefty talking points even when they clearly contradict previous polls, for example having black people dismiss more police in favor of lefty holistic solutions to crime.


	But let's zero in on this <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3496738-75-percent-of-black-americans-fear-physical-attack-based-on-their-race-poll/">absurd and racist</a> result.

<blockquote>
	
		A new&nbsp;Washington Post-Ipsos poll&nbsp;found that 75 percent of Black Americans polled are worried that they or someone they care about will be physically harmed because they are black...
</blockquote>


	How often does that happen?


	We're not talking about staged white supremacist terror attacks like Buffalo or Charleston.

<blockquote>
	
		Seventy percent of Black Americans polled said they believed half or more white Americans hold white supremacist beliefs compared to 19 percent who believed fewer than half white Americans do.
</blockquote>


	That would be a widespread conviction that most white people are not only racist but white supremacists.


	In the breakdown, 35% believe that most white people hold white supremacist views, while another 27% say that half of white people do.


	Only 8% say very few.


	That's not a survey of racism, it's a racist survey.

A Very Racist Poll About Racism

There's good reason for being suspicious about this Washington Post poll because it has black people echoing woke lefty talking points even when they clearly

A Very Racist Poll About Racism

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has one shtick and it's touting the future of warfare. And while considering the influence of tech on the battlefield is important, the two key military events of the last few years have a common lesson.


	1. Afghanistan


	2. Ukraine


	The lesson is that a determined insurgency can overcome less motivated forces despite wide discrepancies in technology and numbers.


	Putin's regime has been obsessed with touting high-tech future weapons. Some of those have been deployed in Ukraine with few results. The U.S. meanwhile gave the Afghan government the technological edge with little to show for it.


	Technology counts. The Ukrainians were apparently able to effectively make use of Javelins and similar weapons (though considering the propaganda coming out of the region, it's hard to know what's true). But both wars have been fought in fairly familiar ways. A general from WW2 or the 70s would be able to take a look at both Ukraine and Afghanistan and have a fairly good idea of what happened and what's going on.


	With that in mind here's&nbsp;Gen. Mark Milley&nbsp;with more of the same <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/gen-milley-warns-west-point-graduates-of-increasing-risk-of-global-war-robotic-tanks/ar-AAXzERK?ocid=BingNews">old military retrofuturism</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Weapons technology will also change dramatically in future decades, Milley said, and the shift will be as radical as the change from musket to the rifle, the rifle to the machine gun or from sailing to steam ships. And the technological edge is no longer automatically in America's favor.

	
		"You'll be fighting with&nbsp;robotic tanks&nbsp;and ships and airplanes," Milley said. "We've witnessed a revolution in lethality and precision munitions. What was once the exclusive province of the United States military is now available to most nation states with the money will to acquire them."

	
		Artificial intelligence is "resulting in that profound change, the most profound change ever in human history," Milley said. "Whatever overmatch we the United States enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly. And the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain of warfare in space and cyber, maritime air and, of course, land."
</blockquote>


	This is the same sort of thing that Milley has been saying forever, but he doesn't seem to have thought the metaphors through.


	What would the shift from muskets to rifles or sails to steam really be like in the modern context? And what does that have to do with obsessing over AI, a concept that I&nbsp;suspect Milley doesn't grasp, let alone robot tanks, which we could build and deploy no, if there were some actual use for them in anything except a major land war in which we wanted to reduce casualties while spending a lot of money for worse battlefield performance.


	The future of war may yet arrive, but for now it looks a whole lot like somewhat better tools and a few remote options.

Gen. Mark Milley Informs West Point Grads That He's Learned Nothing

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has one shtick and it's touting the future of warfare. And while considering the influence of tech on the battlefield is

Gen. Mark Milley Informs West Point Grads That He's Learned Nothing

Georgia's voter suppression bill is an assault on our democracy - Brookings, Apr 2021


	Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad - Vox, Apr 2021


	Voting is surging in Georgia despite controversial new election law -&nbsp;Washington Post:&nbsp;May 2022


	It's a little awkward when reality inconveniently fails <a href="https://sos.ga.gov/news/record-early-voting-turnout-continues-4">to match up</a> with your political narrative.

<blockquote>
	
		Through Wednesday, May 19th, over 565,000 people have early voted in Georgia—a 189% increase from the same point in the early voting period in the 2018 primary election and a 153% increase in the same point in the early voting period in the 2020 primary election. Georgia has had record early voting turnout since the first day of early voting this year, surging to nearly three times the number on the first day of primary voting in 2018 and double that of 2020, and has continued on that path since.
</blockquote>


	So much<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/georgia-early-voting-shatters-records-213543834.html"> for Jim Crow</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		But the law was widely panned by critics, with&nbsp;President Biden calling the legislation&nbsp;the return to the days of "Jim Crow."

	
		"At a time when parts of our country are backsliding,"&nbsp;Biden said at the time.&nbsp;"The days of Jim Crow, passing laws that harken back to the era of poll taxes, when Black people were made to guess how many beans&nbsp;—&nbsp;how many jelly beans in a jar,&nbsp;or count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap before they could cast their ballot."

	
		The new law caught the attention of Major League Baseball, which pulled the 2021&nbsp;All-Star Game from Atlanta&nbsp;in response to the law, arguing that it restricted access to voting.

	
		"I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft," MLB Commissioner&nbsp;Rob Manfred said in a statement at the time.
</blockquote>


	There might <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/turnout-surges-in-georgia-primary-led-by-resurgent-republicans/AWMAIU2PFVHR5OKMZWZ55GOJB4/">even be signs</a> of Democrats going Republican.

<blockquote>
	
		About&nbsp;7% of Republican ballots&nbsp;so far have come from voters who cast Democratic ballots in the 2020 primary. Georgia is an open primary state, meaning voters can choose which party’s ballot they want.
</blockquote>


	Clearly, voter suppression at its finest.

Media Claimed Georgia's Voting Law Would Suppress Vote. It's Up 189%.

Georgia's voter suppression bill is an assault on our democracy - Brookings, Apr 2021


	Yes, the Georgia election law is that bad - Vox, Apr 2021

Media Claimed Georgia's Voting Law Would Suppress Vote. It's Up 189%.

Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-American correspondent Shirin Abu Akleh, 51, was shot to death on May 11th during clashes between armed Palestinians and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the West Bank city of Jenin. Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and their enablers have exploited the journalist’s tragic death as fodder for a malicious propaganda campaign against Israel. They have charged, without a shred of evidence, that Israel deliberately targeted Ms. Akleh for assassination.


	The Qatar-owned <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2022%2F5%2F11%2Fal-jazeera-condemns-israels-killing-of-shireen-abu-akleh&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=5gPPfeXNykXwwdhy%2F5w08oaZVoF0gImiGps8xjdn14M%3D&amp;reserved=0">Al Jazeera itself blamed Israeli forces</a> for its correspondent’s killing, labeling it "a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms." Al Jazeera accused Israeli soldiers of assassinating Ms. Akleh in “cold blood” and “targeting her with live fire,” prior to the completion of any credible, transparent investigation.


	It is one thing for the media outlet to mourn the loss of one its own and demand such an investigation. It is quite another for Al Jazeera, which claims in its Code of Ethics that it endeavors “to get to the truth,” to immediately convict Israeli soldiers in the court of public opinion with no established basis in fact.


	Israeli authorities want to get to the truth of what happened during Israel’s counter-terrorism operation. They are considering the possibility that one of IDF’s own soldiers could have accidentally shot Ms. Akleh while trying to target one of the Palestinian gunmen who were firing barrages of bullets at the Israel Defense Forces. But Israeli authorities are also considering the alternative possibility that one of the Palestinian shooters might have killed Ms. Akleh, who was nearby and caught in the crossfire.


	IDF soldiers were in Benin in the first place to root out dangerous Palestinian terrorists from their home bases. Palestinian terrorists have murdered multiple Israeli civilians in recent weeks. It defies common sense to suppose that the IDF would have diverted their attention for even a second to deliberately target an unarmed journalist when the Israeli soldiers were under constant attack by armed Palestinian militants.


	Israel offered to conduct a joint investigation with Palestinian authorities in the presence of impartial observers. However, the Palestinians refused the offer and are also withholding key evidence such as the bullet recovered from Ms. Akleh’s body.


	Avichai Edrei, the Arabic-speaking spokesman for the IDF, said, "We call on the Palestinians to investigate the issue in a joint pathological investigation. The State of Israel is in favor of the truth. Until now, they are refusing, perhaps in order to hide the truth. We express regret over the journalist's death."


	A spokesman of the Palestinian Authority, Ibrahim Milhim, was dismissive of Israel’s offer of cooperation in trying to find out what truly happened. “Let me ask, when does the criminal have the right to take part in the investigation against his victim?” he said sarcastically.


	Palestinian leaders are not interested in finding out the truth. They are weaponizing the death of Ms. Akleh in their never-ending battle to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State of Israel.


	The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, for example, issued the following incendiary statement: “We condemn the execution of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and hold the extremist Israeli Prime Minister [Naftali] Bennett fully and directly responsible for this heinous crime.”


	Hamas added its own fuel to the fire: “The assassination of the occupation media, Shireen Abu Akleh, is premeditated murder and is condemned in the strongest terms. It will not obscure the reality of the occupation’s terrorism and brutality.”


	The latter statement comes from the same terrorist organization that has committed brutal crimes against journalists who deviated from Hamas’s party line.


	For example, <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifj.org%2Fmedia-centre%2Fnews%2Fdetail%2Farticle%2Fpalestinian-journalist-tortured-by-hamas.html&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=NtqemnGzSFIrV%2B58FPqRzvCReSB63ynWFqhNXjpd3Bk%3D&amp;reserved=0">Hamas detained and tortured Palestinian journalist Hani Al-Agha</a>, according to the International Federation of Journalists. He was ultimately released only after suffering what has been described as life-threatening injuries.


	Even the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said that it “considered the brutal torture of Al Agha a crime against him and the right to freedom of information and an attempt to intimidate journalists in Gaza Strip, who are subject to repressive police authority.”


	Hamas is the repressive police authority in Gaza intimidating journalists there.


	The <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.madacenter.org%2Fprint.php%3Fid%3D10fa5ey1112670Y10fa5e&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=OyGbZk2f9Uold5ECLHWwNv4hlf3oDrMlAD7FKN3vj0I%3D&amp;reserved=0">Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) reported</a> that Hani Al-Agha was among 19 journalists and media workers detained during just a three day period in 2019, most of whom were assaulted. Hamas security forces assaulted other journalists as well.


	Iranian Government Spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi used the unsolved killing of Abu Akleh to shamelessly accuse Israel of attacking the freedom of the media.


	Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, brazenly declared: “The Israeli propaganda machine and its affiliated media outlets, contrary to the ongoing false claims, are afraid of dissemination of truth and accurate news reports and they go as far as to even kill journalists.”


	This is a perfect case of the pot calling the kettle black.


	The <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcpj.org%2Fdata%2Fpeople%2Froohollah-zam%2F&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=dDBJC4kjzZsLvW6AmizLYjd2gLJMeAjQAqciDLXG8r8%3D&amp;reserved=0">Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported</a> a fairly recent example of how the Iranian regime kidnapped and killed a journalist who was critical of the regime and its leaders.


	“Iranian authorities executed journalist Roohollah Zam by hanging on December 12, 2020 after sentencing him to death on anti-state charges for his coverage of protests in 2017,” according to CPJ. “Intelligence agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) lured Zam to Iraq, where he was abducted on October 14, 2019, and taken to Iran, according to news reports.”


	The Iranian regime’s terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, joined the chorus condemning Israel with no evidence for allegedly murdering Ms. Akleh. Hezbollah described Ms. Akleh as a “resistance journalist who had been pioneer in covering the Zionist crimes against her people throughout twenty years.”


	Hezbollah has done everything it can to cover up its own crimes against the Lebanese people, including journalists.


	In early 2021, for example, a prominent Lebanese publisher and fierce critic of Hezbollah, Lokman Slim, was found shot dead in his car in southern Lebanon. Members of Hezbollah had threatened Mr. Slim’s life on multiple occasions for months prior to his murder.


	Despite Hezbollah’s denial of involvement in Mr. Slim’s murder and its call for an “investigation,” Hezbollah is almost certainly the culprit, according to most Lebanese media outlets that are not Hezbollah affiliates or boosters.


	Jawad Nasrallah, the son of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, tweeted the following right after Mr. Slim’s murder was confirmed, as reported by <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2021%2Ffeb%2F04%2Fhezbollah-critic-lokman-slim-found-dead-in-lebanon&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=5jJMWwtIMjhs5J9htZQ8zC0%2FohQXG%2F93F2%2F9JEN8LCY%3D&amp;reserved=0">The Guardian</a>: “The loss of some people is in fact an unplanned gain #notsorry.” He later deleted the tweet and denied that he had meant to refer to Mr. Slim.


	Hezbollah does not have to worry about any serious investigation by the Lebanese government into Hezbollah’s likely involvement in the murder of Mr. Slim, as well as murders, assaults and intimidation of other journalists who have dared to challenge Hezbollah. The well-armed terrorist organization, whose claws reach into Lebanon’s governmental, military, and security institutions, can count on continued impunity from accountability for its crimes.


	The anti-Israel contingent in the U.S. House of Representatives has also exploited the killing of Shirin Abu Akleh.


	On the day that the shooting occurred, prior to any investigation and with no evidence, Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the progressive House Democrat Squad leaders, posted an <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FRashidaTlaib%2Fstatus%2F1524380880399130624%3Fcxt%3DHHwWgICz6bGV2KcqAAAA&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=aNpIqpgjY8UuWkBnj%2FCIc3fh%2FPzT%2Fn0i%2FSi6xPcp%2FAI%3D&amp;reserved=0">outrageous accusatory tweet</a>. Dripping with her hatred of Israel, the tweet was so typical of Tlaib:


	&nbsp;"When will the world and those who stand by Apartheid Israel that continues to murder, torture and commit war crimes finally say: 'Enough'?&nbsp; Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by a government that receives unconditional funding by our country with zero accountability."


	Kudos to Aviva Klompas for her pointed reply to Tlaib, which should apply to all those haters so eager to engage in blood-libels against the Jewish State of Israel.


	Ms. Klompas, a former director of speech writing for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of the nonprofit think-action tank known as Boundless, noted that Tlaib had made her accusation before any investigation was even underway.


	<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FAvivaKlompas%2Fstatus%2F1524381447091539969%3Fcxt%3DHHwWgsCygbC22KcqAAAA&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7C8e8f25468a464c7f9a9108da3778baab%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637883288909596695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=zPZIY04sEQSHYElHwTeecP8rd9cQnbIgoCHYQdrULUg%3D&amp;reserved=0">Ms. Klompas tweeted</a>:


	“There is ZERO evidence that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli bullet. Verify before you vilify. Demand an investigation instead of demonizing Israel.”


	So true!

The Rush to Demonize Israel After Fatal Shooting of Al Jazeera Journalist

Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-American correspondent Shirin Abu Akleh, 51, was shot to death on May 11th during clashes between armed Palestinians and Israel

On May 10th, President Joe Biden delivered a&nbsp;speech on inflation&nbsp;in an effort to get ahead of the expected bad news the next day concerning the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The president said that fighting inflation was now his “top domestic priority” even though it was not that long ago when he dismissed the steep price increases Americans were experiencing as merely “transitory.”


	President Biden is calling inflation “a real tough problem to solve.” Too bad that the president has no clue on how to solve the “real tough problem” that he had a big hand in creating.


	President Biden’s speech was long on passing the buck to others and short on offering real solutions. The president refused to accept any responsibility for the inflation that began surging early in his term.


	Instead of following the advice from the sign on President Harry Truman's desk in his White House office, "The Buck Stops Here," Biden took to heart President Truman’s quip: “If you can't convince them, confuse them.”


	Indeed, President Biden tried to spin his own disastrous economic policies into something positive. He shamelessly boasted, “I think our policies help, not hurt.”


	At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser on May 11th, Biden said that “until we got elected and we changed presidents, I think people started to lose faith in the capacity of the American government to deliver — to deliver, to make life better for people.”


	The American people are not fooled. A majority has lost faith in President Biden’s capacity to perform his job and make life better for the American people. About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way President Biden is handling the economy, according to a&nbsp;poll reported by CNN&nbsp;earlier this month.


	Sure enough, the latest CPI inflation news was bad. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on May 11th&nbsp;an overall CPI increase of 8.3 percent from April 2021 through April 2022. This was slightly smaller than the 8.5 percent increase for the 12-month period ending in March 2022, but still a very alarming number for everyday Americans trying to make ends meet. This latest annual CPI increase is nearly six times the annual increase of just 1.4 percent when President Biden took office.


	The core CPI index (excluding food and energy) rose 6.2 percent over the 12 months between April 2021 and April 2022, with the month-to-month core CPI increase doubling between March and April 2022 versus between February and March.


	On May 12th, BLS announced more bad inflation news. The Producer Price Index for final demand rose 11 percent for the 12 months ended in April 2022. For the 12 months ended in April, the Producer Price Index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services rose 6.9 percent.


	Sellers’ production cost increases will usually end up being pushed through to retailers and ultimately to consumers, which will further fuel the surging inflation that the American people are experiencing every day.


	In short, the Bidenflation continues to destroy Americans’ purchasing power. And Americans will still be dealing with unaffordable prices for a long time, even if year-to-year CPI increases begin to slow gradually in comparison to the months starting in April 2021 when Bidenflation began to take hold.


	Democrats control both the White House and the two chambers of Congress – although not “all three branches of government” as the president mistakenly said. Fortunately, the Democrats do not control the Supreme Court but would like to change that as soon as they can by packing the Court with ultra-progressives.


	Although admitting that “we’re in power,” President Biden continues to look for scapegoats.


	“There are two leading causes of inflation we’re seeing today. The first cause of inflation is a once-in-a-century pandemic,” President Biden said during his prepared remarks on May 10th. “And this year we have a second cause — a second cause: Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine.”


	Many Americans are not buying these tiresome excuses.


	So, President Biden added his favorite bogeyman to deflect blame from himself -&nbsp;&nbsp;“Ultra-MAGA” Republicans. The president came up with the phrase “Ultra-MAGA” all by himself, according to his out-going press secretary Jen Psaki.


	President Biden aimed his partisan fire at Florida’s Republican Senator Rick Scott, whom the president mistakenly said was from Wisconsin.


	President Biden repeated the lie for which he had already earned&nbsp;three Pinocchios from the Washington Post&nbsp;when he first started spreading it in April. He falsely claimed that Senator Scott’s own individual ‘11-point plan to rescue America’ constituted the “Ultra-MAGA” agenda of the congressional Republicans.


	What caught the White House’s eye in particular was Senator Scott’s personal idea of having all Americans pay even a small amount of income taxes to “have skin in the game.” President Biden and his team continued to characterize this suggestion of Senator Scott’s as the official congressional Republican position even after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had unequivocally rejected it the month before.


	“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda:” Senate Minority Leader McConnell said, in commenting on Senator Scott’s proposal in the event that the Republicans take back the Senate in the midterm elections. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”


	In case anyone missed his rejection of Senator Scott’s plan, Senator McConnell added, “That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda. We will focus instead on what the American people are concerned about: inflation, energy, defense, the border, and crime."


	House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also said that Senator Scott’s plan would not be part of the House Republicans’ midterm agenda.


	In awarding the three Pinocchios, the Washington Post article explained that Senator Scott’s “snippet of an idea, such as it is, cannot be labeled a ‘congressional Republican’ plan. No legislation has been crafted, and no other Republican lawmakers have announced their support.”


	Nevertheless, President Biden trotted out the same disinformation during his May 10th remarks. He tried again to mislabel Senator Scott’s own ideas, which the senator has since revised in any event, as the “congressional Republican agenda.” Biden doubled down further on this lie during his remarks to the Democratic National Committee fundraiser on May 11th.


	On May 12th, the Washington Post fact-checker stated: “We reaffirm our rating of Three — nearly Four — Pinocchios.”


	When not lying outright, President Biden tends to mislead the American people with half-truths.


	For example, President Biden boasted that “the deficit has gone down both years I’ve been here." What the president left out was the fact that the national federal debt as a whole has climbed sharply on his watch due to the spendthrift policies of the Biden administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.


	Deficit is defined as the shortfall between what the government spends and what the government takes in as revenue during some measurable period of time. The federal public debt of the United States means the total amount of money that the federal government owes.


	President Biden was either confused or was deliberately trying to mislead the American people when he conflated cutting the deficit with cutting the current amount of the total federal public debt.


	“The bottom line,” President Biden said, “is: How much does America owe?&nbsp;&nbsp;How much in the hole are we going? We’re reducing that.”


	No, Mr. President, you are not reducing how much America owes overall. The federal public debt is still growing at an unhealthy pace even with some periodic deficit reductions.


	“In April 2022, the public debt of the United States was around 30.37 trillion U.S. dollars,”&nbsp;Statista reported,&nbsp;“around 2.2 trillion more than a year earlier, when it was around 28.2 trillion U.S. dollars.”&nbsp;&nbsp;(Emphasis added)


	April 2021 was the month after President Biden signed into law the partisan $1.9 trillion so-called American Rescue Plan Act.


	Between November 2021 and April 2022 alone, the U.S. public debt rose nearly $1.5 trillion.


	With interest rates beginning to rise sharply as the Federal Reserve tries to tame Bidenflation, federal spending on interest will increase too and add even more to the national public debt.


	President Biden conveniently left out that part of the story in his boast about cutting the deficit.


	The president also told a half-truth when he criticized oil companies for simply sitting on 9,000 unused oil leases on federal property and supposedly pocketing their profits instead.&nbsp;The president neglected to mention the barriers to drilling, production, and building out of infrastructure such as port facilities and pipelines, which his administration’s anti-fossil fuel policies have created.


	These barriers include onerous regulatory burdens and policies designed to discourage capital investments in fossil fuel production and infrastructure. On top of that, President Biden’s budget includes multiple tax increases on the oil and gas industry and increases in other corporate taxes, some of which will end up being passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.


	President Biden has no plan to solve the mounting inflation problem. All he does is to shift blame from himself, lie to the American people, and build back on his already failed economic and anti-fossil fuel policies.

The Ultra-Buck Passer and Liar in the White House

On May 10th, President Joe Biden delivered a&nbsp;speech on inflation&nbsp;in an effort to get ahead of the expected bad news the next day concerning the

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				President Joe Biden’s outgoing press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked by reporters last week to explain the president’s use of the words “abort a child” when commenting about who should make that judgment. Psaki ducked the question. She responded only that “the President’s view on a woman’s right to make choices about her own healthcare is well known, well documented, well stated.”
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						President Biden also said that certain basic rights, such as the right to privacy, are inherent rights. They do not come from the government, President Biden said, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://this%2520MAGA%2520crowd%2520is%2520really%2520the%2520most%2520extreme%2520political%2520organization%2520that%E2%80%99s%2520existed%2520in%2520American%2520history%2520%E2%80%94%2520in%2520recent%2520American%2520history&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw39HrxL7eZ3ut36lqojIOpV" target="_blank">“but because I’m just a child of God ; I exist.”</a> &nbsp;He would recognize, of course, that a pregnant woman too is a “child of God” who also has an inherent right of privacy.

					
						However, in the pregnant woman’s case, according to the expansive concept of privacy adopted in Roe v. Wade, her inherent right of privacy means that she can make the choice, in President Biden’s own words, to “abort a child.” Conversely, in this way of thinking, the aborted child does not exist as a “child of God” with the inherent right to life but is considered instead to be a throw-away body part.

					
						Indeed, Jen Psaki refused to answer whether the president supports an unlimited right of abortion, even up until the moment of birth. “He supports the right of a woman to make choices about her own body with her doctor,” Psaki insisted.

					
						The Declaration of Independence recognized that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

					
						During the course of the nation’s history and Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution over time, these basic rights have been extended to all “persons” and given deeper meaning as they are applied to new circumstances.

					
						However, it is one thing to interpret the fundamental principle of “liberty,” as that word is used in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, to include a notion of privacy in someone’s intimate personal relationships that is protected from undue governmental interference. It is quite another thing to say that the protection of one’s privacy intrinsic to one’s own liberty extends to extinguishing another living being created in the image of God.

					
						Abortion presents complex policy issues that are better left to be sorted out by the political process in which the people have a say through their elected representatives. Creating a completely new constitutional right to “abort a child” does violence to the true meaning of unalienable, God-given rights that are considered so fundamental to ordered liberty that they are beyond lawmakers’ discretion to deny.

					
						President Biden and his press secretary have no problem referring to the right of a “woman” to make choices about her own body, evidently assuming that everyone knows what a “woman” is. Well, not everyone, as we saw during the Senate confirmation hearing of President Biden’s choice for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.

					
						"Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman?’" Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked the Supreme Court justice in waiting. "Can I provide a definition? No," Ms. Jackson responded. "I can't."

					
						Thus, after Justice Stephen G. Breyer formally steps down as an associate justice this summer, he will be replaced by a justice who could not, or would not, even provide a definition of the word “woman.” Will she refer to "pregnant people" or "birthing people” instead as the class of individuals with the right to make choices about their own bodies and "abort a child," in order not to offend transgender men?

					
						The Biden White House is so angry about the potential overruling of&nbsp;Roe v. Wade&nbsp;that the president and his spokesperson did not speak out for days against plans by pro-abortion extremists to carry their militant protests to where conservative Supreme Court justices live and where Catholics worship.

					
						“I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,”&nbsp;&nbsp;White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, referring to the leaked draft opinion overruling&nbsp;Roe v. Wade&nbsp;written by Justice Samuel Alito.

					
						A radical pop-up group known as Ruth Sent Us, named after the late Justice Ruth Bader&nbsp;Ginsburg, is one of the extreme leftist organizations behind an effort to intimidate Supreme Court justices by invading their privacy at home.

					
						Another radical group involved with coordinating protests to pressure the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade is Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. Its <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://riseup4abortionrights.org/we-refuse-to-let-the-u-s-supreme-court-deny-womens-humanity-and-decimate-their-rights/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1-pvg9mUN82G6DFpNcJfPA" href="https://riseup4abortionrights.org/we-refuse-to-let-the-u-s-supreme-court-deny-womens-humanity-and-decimate-their-rights/" target="_blank">website</a> calls for people opposed to “patriarchal domination” and “female enslavement” to “resist” and “fill the streets with our fury.”

					
						Is a replay of the disruptive anti-police protests of the summer of 2020, which led to violence in the streets, in the offing?

					
						The Ruth Sent Us group published the residential locations of six conservative justices and urged its followers to “rise up” in protest against them “to force accountability.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

					
						Some radical pro-abortion activists gathered outside the homes of targeted Supreme Court justices on Saturday, in one case loudly chanting “No uterus, no opinion” outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home.

					
						A <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.foxnews.com/media/justice-kavanaugh-home-protests-abortion-roe-wade-blair&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2k6XR5V_dwTEWPakga7NEI" href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/justice-kavanaugh-home-protests-abortion-roe-wade-blair" target="_blank">reporter described the pro-abortion protest scene</a> outside of Justice Kavanaugh’s home as "one of the scariest things" he had ever witnessed. He characterized the protests as an "attempt at intimidation."

					
						Justice Alito and his family reportedly have been moved to an undisclosed location out of concern for their personal safety.

					
						The radicals’ raucous protests outside the justices’ homes may have violated a&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1507&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0W3P7I0w1eWkRTFNcee71f" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1507" rel="noopener" target="_blank">federal law</a>&nbsp;prohibiting pickets, parades, or demonstrations “near a building or residence occupied or used by” a judge “with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge…”

					
						But don’t expect the Biden Justice Department to take any action to enforce the law. Attorney General Merrick Garland is too busy monitoring parents’ behavior at school board meetings.

					
						On May 9th, following the protests at two justices’ homes over the weekend, with more planned for this week, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1523649143951962115?cxt%3DHHwWhsCtudy0i6UqAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3lCPDZZ2wRrwm1pzhMajNz" href="https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1523649143951962115?cxt=HHwWhsCtudy0i6UqAAAA" target="_blank">Jen Psaki finally tweeted</a> the following statement:

					
						“@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.”

					
						The White House also put out a statement on May 9th declaring that President Biden “strongly condemns” a Molotov cocktail attack on a Wisconsin pro-life group’s office over this past weekend.

					
						Too little too late. President Biden himself should have gotten ahead of the mounting danger to the Supreme Court justices’ safety and the risk of violence. He should have addressed pro-abortion supporters directly with an urgent message for them to stand down from taking actions intended to intimidate any justices.

					
						President Biden failed to do so.

					
						Instead, President Biden managed to find time last week to insult the many millions of law-abiding Americans who believe in former President Donald Trump’s America First agenda. The president degraded his office by outlandishly claiming that the “MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history — in recent American history.”

					
						That distinction belongs to Antifa and other far-left groups prone to violence.&nbsp;

					
						Pro-abortion radicals not only hate the Supreme Court justices who may overrule Roe v. Wade, as well as the institution of the Supreme Court itself. They also hate the Catholic Church.

					
						Pro-abortion radicals have no compunctions about defacing churches with pro-abortion graffiti, which they did last week to a Catholic Church in Boulder, Colorado.

					
						Pro-abortion radicals also have no compunctions about interfering with Catholics’ freedom of worship, as they did last Saturday when they blocked the entrance to a New York City church.

					
						And that is not all.&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/RuthSentUs/status/1522942814895546370&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1652235314448000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Zw5acu9X60Cfbp93q1sMN" href="https://twitter.com/RuthSentUs/status/1522942814895546370" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Ruth Sent Us also tweeted</a>&nbsp;the following threat on May 7th: “Stuff your rosaries and your weaponized prayer. We will remain outraged after this weekend, so keep praying. We’ll be burning the Eucharist to show our disgust for the abuse Catholic Churches have condoned for centuries.”

					
						Where is the self-declared devout Catholic Joe Biden’s outrage over a threat to burn the Eucharist? President Biden found time recently to condemn Islamophobia, but he has given hatred directed at Catholics by members of the Democrats’ progressive Left base a free pass.

					
						Leftists have a habit of demanding rights for themselves and their own causes, including freedom of speech and privacy, while having no problem denying these same rights to their declared “enemies.”

					
						The Democrats' far-left base believes in mob rule rather than the rule of law. It is past time for President Biden to repudiate them.&nbsp;
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Biden Administration Winks at Mob Rule on Abortion

President Joe Biden’s outgoing press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked by reporters last week to explain the president’s use of the words “abort a child” when

Politico set off a firestorm on the Left after it published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade if it ends up as the Court’s final ruling. Roe v. Wade was the highly controversial 1973 Supreme Court decision that created out of whole cloth a constitutional right for women to have an abortion within certain parameters. Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed the Roe v. Wade decision in 1992.


	The draft opinion, which was written by Justice Samuel Alito Jr. in February, is far from representing the Court’s final word or even the final positions of the justices who supported what Justice Alito wrote. Nevertheless, pro-abortion demagogues are exploiting the outrageous leak of a preliminary draft opinion to stir up anger in the streets against the Supreme Court with outright lies.&nbsp;


	The draft decision would not ban all abortions, contrary to the false narrative of pro-abortion activists. It would return the Supreme Court to a neutral position on the contentious issue of abortion, leaving it up to the voters in state and federal elections to sort it out through the democratic electoral process. The elected branches of government would then be able to make policy decisions on all aspects of the abortion issue with their constituents’ views in mind. These policy decisions may vary state by state unless Roe v. Wade is codified into federal law.


	“Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito wrote, “and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”


	Leftists do not trust the democratic process. Indeed, they want to perpetuate a manufactured judicially legislated “right” that appears nowhere in the Constitution, as Justice Alito pointed out, rather than let the people resolve the complex policy issue of abortion through their elected representatives. At the same time, leftists are doing their best to strip away the enumerated constitutional right of free speech set forth in the First Amendment.


	The Left is also using the draft opinion in a campaign to delegitimize the Supreme Court because leftists detest the checks and balances of an independent judiciary whenever a court decision interferes with their progressive agenda.


	“The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy, and is now one of the chief architects of America’s democratic decline,” the radical group known as <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/WeDemandJustice/status/1521675896566042625?ref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Etweet&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651824541801000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2k_hvjfAR4kF1P9i02R7LK" href="https://twitter.com/WeDemandJustice/status/1521675896566042625?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet" target="_blank">Demand Justice tweeted</a>. &nbsp;Demand Justice was quoting from Vox, which AllSides rates as having a “Left bias.”


	Evidently, the leftists running Demand Justice and Vox have forgotten a couple of key historical facts. It was the Republican Party which fought to bring an end to slavery and the Confederacy, and it was the Democratic Party which served historically as the “midwife of Jim Crow.” But that is a history discussion for another time.


	What is important today is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with their Democrat caucuses, are participating in their radical base’s strategy to intimidate certain Supreme Court justices and undermine judicial independence.


	Senator Schumer is no stranger when it comes to threatening Supreme Court justices by name. In March 2020, Schumer spoke at an abortion rights rally in front of the Supreme Court, warning Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh of dire consequences if they vote what Schumer considered to be the wrong way on abortion cases before the Court.


	“I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,” Schumer said that day.


	Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked Senator Schumer for making a “threatening” and “dangerous” statement from the highest level of government.


	But Senator Schumer remains unrepentant.


	This time, Schumer joined Pelosi in issuing a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/5222-2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651824541801000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1ZrgtJ-e1f1Z1LxuztocIz" href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/5222-2" target="_blank">statement</a> maligning conservative justices who are fulfilling their constitutional duty to interpret the Constitution as they see it. These Democrat congressional leaders charged that the justices who reportedly supported overturning Roe v. Wade during the Supreme Court’s early deliberations “ripped up the Constitution.” If Schumer, Pelosi, and their pro-abortion activist friends do not get their way with their desired judicial outcome, they accuse justices on the other side who won't do their bidding of ripping up the Constitution.


	Pelosi and Schumer should look in the mirror. They have ripped up the Constitution by launching an ad hominem attack out of spite against members of the third branch of the federal government, an independent judiciary, because they do not agree with the justices’ constitutional interpretations.


	Pro-abortion demagogues are spreading lies about what the draft opinion would mean if it were to end up reflecting the final ruling of the Supreme Court.


	President Joe Biden is no exception today, as he embraces the pro-abortion activist agenda. However, back in 2006 then-Senator Biden was singing a different tune, saying at that time that he did not view abortion as “a choice and a right.” In 1982, then-Senator Biden voted for a constitutional amendment that would have allowed individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade.


	Now President Biden has declared in his<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/us/politics/alito-supreme-court-roe-wade.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651824541801000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1MI5nP0WhqR-p012WlFv71" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/us/politics/alito-supreme-court-roe-wade.html" target="_blank">&nbsp;remarks to the press</a> on May 3rd that the draft opinion by Justice Alito, which would return the regulation of abortion to the states if it becomes the final ruling, is a “radical decision.” Biden claimed that “every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question.” In addition to the right to abortion itself, the president warned that “who you marry, whether or not you decide to conceive a child or not” and “how you raise your child” could also be on the chopping block.


	As an aside, it is rather ironic that the president is worried about what could happen to parents’ right to decide how they raise their child when he so vehemently opposed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation.


	But more to the point here, President Biden is spreading disinformation about the reach of Justice Alito’s draft opinion.


	“To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized,” Justice Alito wrote, “we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”


	Justice Alito could not be clearer on the limited scope of his draft majority opinion, which was confined solely to adjudicating whether there is a constitutional right to abortion. That is because abortion, unlike gay marriage, for example, involves the life of a third party.


	President Biden and his fellow Democrats are misleading the American people by stoking fears with their blatant misrepresentation of what Justice Alito actually wrote.


	Where is the Biden administration’s new Disinformation Governance Board when we need it to correct the president’s and his administration’s own disinformation?


	President Biden also told reporters that he did not think issues involving privacy like abortion should be left to “the whims” of the public. Whims? The president insulted the American people with that condescending remark.


	President Biden did get something right in his remarks to the media, however, even if it was probably unintended. He referred to the “judgment to choose to abort a child.” (Emphasis added) At least, President Biden acknowledged that the life of “a child” is at stake when it comes to abortion, rather than using the dehumanizing language of pro-abortion activists. That is worth noting, even though the president mentioned aborting “a child” in the context of falsely claiming that the draft majority opinion would ban such judgments.


	Where do things go from here, given the fact that the Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling on the abortion issue and may not do so until late June or early July?


	The House of Representatives voted last year to codify the right to an abortion at the federal level. The Democrat-controlled Senate will try to follow suit shortly, although at least for now a filibuster blocking the legislation from moving forward is expected.


	Progressives such as Democratic-Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders are demanding an end to the filibuster. However, that is unlikely to happen with the Democrats’ razor-thin majority since Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema plan to continue supporting the filibuster.


	Expect more street protests, some of which could turn violent like the one in Los Angeles on May 3rd. Abortion rights protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers, injuring one officer.


	Both parties will use the re-ignited abortion issue as red meat to rev up the turn-out of their respective bases in this year’s mid-term elections. But the Democrats may have only a slim chance for the abortion issue to move the dial significantly in their favor this fall. Surging inflation, the open border, and the rising crime wave across the country would have to fall far down the list of issues on voters’ minds from the top positions they occupy now.


	Moreover, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which is by no means certain, women will still be able to obtain legal abortions in many states, which will vary in terms of any restrictions that are involved.


	People also move from state to state for a variety of reasons. Some New York and California residents decided to move to other states to get away from high taxes, crime, and over-regulation. Likewise, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, women living in states that ban or severely restrict abortions are free to move to New York, California, and other blue states where legal abortions will be easily accessible.


	Democrats like to point to polls showing there is an overwhelming majority of Americans who want Roe v. Wade to remain intact, as opposed to far fewer Americans who want to see the decision completely overruled. But Americans do not view the right to abortion as a black and white issue.


	Indeed, most Americans, according to some polls, believe that abortions should be outlawed in most cases during the second and third trimesters. The second trimester begins around week thirteen. This is far earlier than when viability begins somewhere around the 24th week, which the Supreme Court has used to date as its litmus test in determining when the states may start imposing significant restrictions on legal access to abortion.


	President Biden does not want to let voters have the opportunity to elect accountable representatives to make policy decisions regarding abortion on their behalf. He is afraid of where the “whims” of the public may lead. Such arrogance demonstrates the elitist attitude of the Left.

Pro-Abortion Dems Disrespect the Democratic Process

Politico set off a firestorm on the Left after it published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade if it ends up as the

The New York Times has been running a three-part hit piece, entitled “American Nationalist,” which smears Tucker Carlson, the host of Fox News’ top rated cable prime time show Tucker Carlson Tonight. The author is Nick Confessore, a New York Times “reporter” who has also contributed to such leftist outlets as MSNBC and The American Prospect.


	The title of the first installment is “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html?action%3Dclick%26module%3DRelatedLinks%26pgtype%3DArticle&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651655910706000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3QC7sXwKPigAj_Bqh5BIrL" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html?action=click&amp;module=RelatedLinks&amp;pgtype=Article" target="_blank">How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable</a>.” The New York Times’ May 1st print edition featured this diatribe on its front page, which spilled over to fill six more pages inside its first section. So much for the Times’ vaunted motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”


	Confessore claims that Tucker Carlson’s weeknight show "may be the most racist program in the history of cable news.” Citing interviews with anonymous sources and using what he claims was “our content analysis of 1,150 episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight," Confessore is hiding behind his “reporter” façade to insist that he is not offering “an opinion or a take. It’s a fact.”


	Confessore has written anything but a factual account. The New York Times “reporter” has committed journalistic malpractice by using cherry-picked Carlson quotes taken out of context and omitting statements by Carlson altogether that contradict Confessore’s false premise.


	Indeed, Nick Confessore has played the race card, superimposing his own left-wing biases in trying to explain why Carlson has moved, in Confessore’s words, “toward the summit of cable news.”


	If Confessore were an honest reporter, he might have at least acknowledged that the left-wing cable station for which he himself is a contributor, MSNBC, has a racism problem of its own. That would include the anti-white racist comments by Joy Reid, Confessore’s colleague at MSNBC.


	Also, while Confessore insinuates that Fox News has deliberately pitched programming with racist dog whistles to appeal to a predominantly white audience, he neglects to mention that his MSNBC cable news network is not far behind Fox News in white viewership. According to data reported by Public Opinion Strategies, white Americans accounted for 74% of Fox News’ total viewership based on 2020 data while MSNBC was not far behind at 70%. Evidently, Confessore wants his readers to believe that Fox News' white audience are racists while MSNBC's white audience must be totally virtuous and bias-free.&nbsp;&nbsp;


	Confessore has lived in the elite media bubble for so long that he simply does not get why Tucker Carlson’s audience has grown so rapidly - or he knows but dares not say. The truth is that Carlson’s viewers are tired of being falsely branded as “racists,” “bigots,” “transphobes,” etc. for taking exception to radical left-wing dogmas that defy their core values and common sense. Carlson has been able to successfully tap into that angst.&nbsp;


	If Carlson is a “racist,” as Confessore alleges, then the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., whom Carlson has frequently quoted, was also a racist by today’s upside-down standards.


	Commenting on the racist accusation against him, Carlson said: “Our view of race is really simple. We believe Martin Luther King. We don’t think your skin color is the most important thing about you. We think all people were created by God and should therefore be judged by what they do, not by how they look. We say that a lot and we mean it. Most Americans strongly agree with that.”


	Tucker Carlson has referenced Martin Luther King Jr. many times on his show. In particular, he has quoted from Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, which the civil rights leader delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.


	“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Dr. King declared that day.


	In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King also warned against “a distrust of all white people.” He said, “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”


	Dr. King criticized the United States for not living up so far to the promise of its founding ideal of equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence, but he never gave up on his country.


	Today’s so-called “anti-racists,” who complain about “white privilege” and promote Critical Race Theory, believe that white people are inherently racist. These “anti-racists” also believe that America is irredeemably evil because, they claim, it is built and continues to thrive upon the foundation of slavery. The divisive rhetoric in which these merchants of racial hatred regularly traffic is antithetical to Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings.


	The self-anointed “anti-racists” of today, and those who support them in progressive circles, are the real racial supremacists, not Tucker Carlson.


	“Some white people are privileged, some aren't,” Carlson said. “Some black people are, some aren't. It's strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it's making a generalization - a negative one - based on skin color.”


	That is not the sentiment of a white supremacist. Most Americans, not just Tucker Carlson’s audience, would agree that making a generalization – stereotyping - based on skin color is racist. But evidently not Nick Confessore and the editors at the New York Times who decided to run his series on Carlson, accusing him of hosting what “may be the most racist program in the history of cable news.”


	Nick Confessore has also written about what he claims are Carlson’s white nationalist anti-immigrant views. Again, Confessore has heavily slanted his articles in an effort to portray Carlson and Fox News in general in the worst possible light.


	Fox News has not buried the truth about illegal immigrants flooding across the U.S.-Mexican border in record numbers, as CNN, MSNBC, and other left-wing media outlets have done. Nor has it made excuses for the Biden administration’s colossal failure in managing the worsening crisis at the border.


	Telling the truth is not anti-immigrant.


	Confessore thinks it is racist for Carlson and other Fox News commentators to express their concerns about the impact that so many unvetted illegal immigrants may have on the communities across the country where they go to live after their release. It may be years before their immigration hearings are conducted, assuming they show up at all.


	Is it racist to question how these communities will be able to deal with more crimes committed by some illegal immigrants, on top of already rising crime rates? Is it racist to wonder at loud how these communities will cope with the deadly overdoses caused by fentanyl smuggled across the border? Do only white nationalists speak about the increased burdens placed on the communities’ public education and health systems that in some cases are already teetering on the edge?


	Even the <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/border-grievance-politics.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651655910706000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0rot0boPYdnu_1QOMcsUyv" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/border-grievance-politics.html" target="_blank">New York Times reported</a> earlier this year that Hispanic voters in Democrat strongholds along the border are moving towards the Republican Party because they resent all the attention being paid to illegal immigrants at their expense.


	“Our parents came in a certain way — they came in and worked, they became citizens and didn’t ask for anything,” the Times article quoted Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a 48-year-old rancher from a town on the northern edge of the Rio Grande Valley, as saying. “We were raised hard-core Democrats, but today Democrats want to give everything away.”


	“The people coming now seem to be less willing to work and are more dangerous compared to how it used to be,” said Pastor Luis Cabrera, whose parents fled real persecution they were facing in their home country of Nicaragua, according to the New York Times article. “I’m not saying all of them, but trust me, there’s a lot of people who are crossing this border and they don’t care about this country. They want to just commit crime. They want to just come make money the wrong way. They don’t want the American dream.”


	Another Hispanic American said, “I worry about where we’re headed, about what will and won’t be allowed. I worry about our values.”


	These quotes did not come out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. They were not the utterances of anti-immigrant white nationalists. Hispanic Americans said them.


	Did Nick Confessore even bother to read this New York Times article or research what is bothering some Hispanic Americans about illegal immigration? Obviously not. It would have interfered with his narrative that extremist white nationalists, egged on by Carlson and other Fox News commentators, are the main forces opposing the Biden administration's open border immigration policies.


	The author of the New York Times hit piece on Tucker Carlson has no interest in reporting facts. His articles are certainly not genuine, unbiased news stories that are anywhere near being “fit to print.” But the New York Times chose to run them anyway.

NY Times' Hit Piece on Tucker: Journalistic Malpractice

The New York Times has been running a three-part hit piece, entitled “American Nationalist,” which smears Tucker Carlson, the host of Fox News’ top rated cable

Title 42 has allowed Border Patrol agents to deny entry to illegal border-crossers because of COVID-19 health concerns without having to conduct any kind of hearing first, even on an asylum claim. The Biden administration is still planning to lift the Title 42 entry restriction on May 23rd. However, that may be on hold for a while following a federal district judge’s issuance of a temporary restraining order on April 25th requiring the administration to keep Title 42 in place for now.


	Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), admitted in an April 26th&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21747240-dhs-plan-for-southwest-border-security-and-preparedness&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651274065881000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2nbibvV-bcpR33lhGDKT32" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21747240-dhs-plan-for-southwest-border-security-and-preparedness" rel="noopener" shape="rect" target="_blank">memo</a>&nbsp;that when “the Title 42 public health Order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants.”


	Not to worry, according to Secretary Mayorkas, who says that DHS has a new plan to deal with that.&nbsp;


	The DHS Secretary’s April 26th memo is entitled “DHS Plan for Southwest Border Security and Preparedness,” which discusses various measures the Biden administration intends to implement once the Title 42 termination goes into effect.


	Secretary Mayorkas uses benign sounding terms in his memo like “vulnerable migrants” and “noncitizens” to obscure who they really are – illegal immigrants.


	News flash. Even with Title 42 in force, once President Joe Biden opened the border to a flood of illegal immigrants, the migration surge turned into a disaster, with smugglers making lots of money in the process.


	If past is prologue, we can expect a total catastrophe if and when Title 42 is lifted.


	Secretary Mayorkas put on a public show of confidence during congressional testimony he provided on April 27th, claiming that everything was under control at the border. This lie flies in the face of what Mayorkas was told in person earlier this year by frustrated Border Patrol agents, who felt overwhelmed by the historically high illegal immigrant surges at various border locations.


	Secretary Mayorkas shamelessly told the members of the House Homeland Security Committee that “we have effectively managed an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the United States and interdicted more drugs and disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before."


	Secretary Mayorkas spread this glaring bit of disinformation on the same day he confirmed during his congressional testimony that DHS is setting up a new board with the Orwellian title "Disinformation Governance Board.” It will be directed by Nina Jankowicz, who demonstrated her leftwing bias when she dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation. The DHS Disinformation Governance Board director also tweeted in January 2021 that “the ‘free speech vs. censorship’ framing is a false dichotomy.”


	Talk about the fox guarding the hen house!


	The sad truth is that the Biden administration turned a relatively stable border with Mexico that it inherited from the Trump administration into a complete disaster.


	U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported nearly 210,000 encounters with migrants who entered the U.S. illegally during March 2022 alone, the highest number since March 2000. The Biden administration itself has estimated that the number of daily encounters could more than double to 18,000 once Title 42 is lifted.


	As bad as these historically high numbers of illegal immigrants are, with worse numbers to come if Title 42 is lifted, they tell only part of the story.


	The Biden administration’s reckless open border policies have created a humanitarian crisis, not to mention that they are jeopardizing national security.


	“Forty-two people on the U.S. government’s terror watch list have been arrested attempting to enter the United States illegally since President Joe Biden took office,” the&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/42-arrested-at-border-under-biden-on-terror-watch-list-dhs-data&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651274065881000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0fkIREy9BxYyMLov4bFtXd" href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/42-arrested-at-border-under-biden-on-terror-watch-list-dhs-data" rel="noopener" shape="rect" target="_blank">Washington Examiner reported</a>, based on federal data that it had obtained.


	“The 42 arrests do not include those who are on the terror watch list but evaded law enforcement at the border and made it into the country without being detected,” the Washington Examiner article added. “Large numbers of migrants successfully elude authorities — the Border Patrol is aware of instances in March in which 62,000 noncitizens were observed illegally entering the country, but agents were unable to apprehend them.”


	The “got-aways,” as the elusive illegal immigrants are called, may not only include suspected terrorists. They may well also include murderers, pedophiles, rapists, drug dealers, and gang members who have successfully re-entered the country after previous deportations. The Biden administration has sent a strong signal that it does not really care. It has allowed illegal immigrants already in the country who have been convicted of serious crimes to remain in the United States upon their release from state custody, instead of detaining and removing them as federal law requires.


	The humanitarian crisis that has exploded on President Biden’s watch is dire. Some immigrants have died in transit. Others have been beaten, kidnapped, robbed, and sexually exploited. Smugglers have dumped little children and left them alone in the desert to fend for themselves.


	The Biden administration continues to turn a blind eye to all the human suffering that its reckless border policies have brought about. Instead, it ludicrously describes its policies as “humane” and “smart,” while dismantling the Trump administration’s law enforcement measures that worked in curbing the flow of illegal immigrants.


	For example, the Biden administration tried to defend its position that calls&nbsp;for doing away with the Trump-era Remain-in-Mexico policy&nbsp;in an appeal before the Supreme Court. This policy has required would-be asylum seekers traveling by land from their home countries through Mexico to wait in Mexico pending their asylum hearings. The Biden administration would prefer to admit many of these illegal immigrants into the United States and release them. The illegal immigrants would then be allowed to remain in the country for years until their hearings are conducted, with little effective monitoring in the meantime. It would not be long before the pro-illegal immigrant advocates demand that they be given a path to citizenship.


	White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki derided former President Donald Trump’s border wall construction, which she claimed, during&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/04/25/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-april-25-2022/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1651274065881000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1meMw7WucS3t2fhpZhT8a5" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/04/25/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-april-25-2022/" rel="noopener" shape="rect" target="_blank">her April 25th&nbsp;press briefing</a>, “was never going to work or be effective.”


	The border wall certainly&nbsp;would have helped stem the influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border if the Biden administration had not abandoned the border wall construction in midstream. This administration even refused to sell the leftover construction materials to the state of Texas, which had wanted to use those materials to continue building the wall itself.


	President Biden would rather let the steel panels rust and waste taxpayers’ money already invested in starting to build the wall. His administration is wasting even more money by having to pay contractors fees associated with the project’s termination.


	Psaki also tried to deflect any responsibility on the part of the Biden administration for the tragic drowning of Texas National Guard member Spc. Bishop E. Evans. He died while trying to save the lives of two illegal immigrants struggling to cross the Rio Grande, who turned out to be drug smugglers.


	In one of her most callous statements as White House Press Secretary to date, Psaki said, “I would note that the National Guard worked for the states, and so he is an employee of the Tex- — Texas National Guard, and his efforts and his operation were directed by there, not by the federal government, in this — in this effort, in this apparatus.”


	Maybe Psaki was rehearsing for a future gig at MSNBC. In any event, her crass cop-out does not stand up to even a cursory review of the Biden administration’s dismal record on immigration.


	President Biden created the border crisis in the first place. Then his administration refused requests from Texas Governor Gregg Abbot for additional federal assistance to cope with the crossing of thousands of illegal immigrants into Texas from Mexico, which has imposed heavy burdens on border communities. Governor Abbot felt that he had no alternative but to enlist the assistance of the Texas National Guard, which included Spc. Bishop E. Evans.


	The Biden administration needs to take at least some responsibility for the loss of life from border crossings since President Biden took office, including the death of Spc. Evans.


	After all the chaos surrounding the Biden administration’s handling of illegal immigration even while Title 42 has remained in effect, DHS Secretary Mayorkas now expects Americans to trust that the Biden administration has a workable post-Title 42 plan. It is little more than old wine in new bottles.


	Promising to add more border agents on the ground, for example, will not deter more caravans of immigrants from crossing the border illegally if these agents, like those already at the border, are prevented from fully enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.


	In the absence of quick deportations and adequate detention facilities, the DHS’s plan to move personnel from other federal government agencies to perform “migrant processing” duties at the border will simply facilitate the paperwork for more catch-and-release. With no more Title 42 to worry about and catch-and-release in full swing, many thousands of immigrants will most likely journey to the United States and use an asylum claim as an excuse to enter the country illegally.


	Secretary Mayorkas’s memo lauds non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as “partners who play a critical role in helping noncitizens who are released from DHS custody for the pendency of their removal proceedings.”


	In fact, part of the DHS’s new plan is devoted to “bolstering NGO capacity.”&nbsp;&nbsp;The reason is simple. The NGOs will take the illegal immigrants off DHS’s hands and arrange for them to be covertly transported to destinations across the country.


	As Secretary Mayorkas’s memo puts it: “NGOs play a critical role in providing care and support with onward travel to noncitizens who are entered into immigration removal proceedings, not subject to detention, and released from CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] custody.”


	In plain English, expect more and more planeloads and busloads of such “noncitizens” arriving under the cover of darkness at airports and bus stops across the United States with the helping hands of NGOs.


	Secretary Mayorkas promises to target and disrupt the transnational criminal organizations and smugglers engaged in human and drug trafficking into the United States. But the Biden administration’s record to date has been a colossal failure.


	Despite the seizures of substantial amounts of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico border, for example, smugglers have still managed to flood fentanyl across the border on President Biden’s watch, leading to an overdose epidemic that has killed thousands of Americans.


	All that we get from the Biden administration are hollow assurances that everything will be copacetic. But as Albert Einstein once said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Biden Administration’s Post-Title 42 Border Plan: More of the Same

Title 42 has allowed Border Patrol agents to deny entry to illegal border-crossers because of COVID-19 health concerns without having to conduct any kind of

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is definitely an improvement over his predecessor Bill de Blasio. But that is not saying much at all. De Blasio’s policies made New York City a more dangerous place in which to live and work, as well as to visit, than it had been for decades. Indeed, Bill de Blasio’s toxic combination of leftwing progressivism, incompetence, corruption, and arrogance came close to transforming the Big Apple into a hopelessly rotten apple.


	Mayor Adams is off to a slow start in terms of achieving concrete results that increase public safety. But at least he is addressing the problem and trying to turn things around.


	Bill de Blasio pursued a radical anti-police agenda during his time in office. The former mayor presided over the defunding of the New York Police Department (NYPD) by a billion dollars. He blessed his police commissioner’s decision to disband the NYPD’s elite anti-crime unit.


	Consistent with his hostility towards the police and his obsession with promoting the cause of “racial justice and equity” at the expense of public safety, Bill de Blasio championed the Black Lives Matter movement.


	During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, for example, the leftist mayor allowed Black Lives Matter’s disruptive protest marches to proceed with no social distancing or masks required. Meanwhile, he shut down the city’s customary summertime cultural parades altogether.


	“I’ve said many times — the protests, this is a particular moment in history where 400 years of oppression, 400 years of racism are being addressed in a very powerful way,” Bill de Blasio said back in July of 2020. “That can’t compare to anything else.”


	Thankfully, Mayor Adams has taken office with a very different set of priorities that puts public safety at the top of his agenda as the mayor promised to do during his campaign. Unlike his predecessor, this mayor is not placating leftwing progressives who exploit the tiny number of police shootings of blacks who turned out to be unarmed. These leftwing progressives are the same race-baiters who neglect the fates of many more innocent black victims, including young children, shot by other blacks during gang shootouts or otherwise.


	Indeed, Mayor Adams has singled out the Black Lives Matter movement for criticism. This mayor had his own Sister Souljah moment when he rebuked Black Lives Matter movement leaders for their hypocrisy.


	“If Black lives matter, then the thousands of people I saw on the street when [George] Floyd was murdered should be on the streets right now stating that the lives of these Black children that are dying every night matter,” Mayor Adams said. “We can’t be hypocrites,” he added. “Where are all those who stated Black lives matter? Then go do an analysis of who was killed or shot last night. I was up all night speaking to my commanders in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The victims were Black. Many of the shooters were Black. Why are 16, 17, 18-year-olds out on our streets armed with guns at 12:00 or 1:00 a.m.?”


	Hawk Newsome, the co-founder of &nbsp;Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, responded to Mayor Adams’ criticism by calling New York City’s second black mayor a “white man in blackface, and a very conservative-minded white man at that.” Last year, Newsome had threatened “riots,” “fire” and “bloodshed” if Mayor Adams cracked down on crime once in office, but he is now blaming the mayor for allowing the city to turn into a “war zone.”


	Merchants of racial division like Newsome are making things worse in New York City with their hate-filled rhetoric.


	Mayor Adams’ message needs to be heard loud and clear, particularly by the black community. But actions speak louder than words. The actions that Mayor Adams has taken so far can only be described as small steps in the right direction.


	For example, Mayor Adams is starting to deal with the menace of mentally ill and addicted homeless people on the streets and in the subways, some of whom have been attacking innocent people randomly. His administration has begun removing makeshift homeless encampments from streets and parks. The mayor said that he wants these people placed in “healthy living conditions with wraparound services.” Some homeless people using subway cars and stations as their shelters are also being removed. Mayor Adams needs to stand firm in the face of intense opposition from leftist advocates for the homeless.


	Mayor Adams has relaunched the anti-crime police unit that his predecessor’s administration had disbanded. The unit’s name was changed to focus on its mission to remove illegal guns from the streets and its police officers are now wearing modified uniforms rather than plain clothes. So far, the unit has made only a minor number of arrests.


	“We have to stop the flow of guns, but we also must do the jobs of getting the guns off the streets that’s on there now,” Mayor Adams said, “and my anti-gun unit, they’re doing that.”


	Getting illegal guns off the streets is fine. But it is more important to get the violent gun-toting criminals off the streets. These thugs can always replace the guns confiscated by the police with other guns they acquire from the underground market and then use those guns to murder more people.


	The NYPD has increased its police presence on the streets and in the subways. That’s also good as far as it goes. The problem is that dangerous criminals will continue to be released from custody because of New York State’s lax bail reform law and they will continue to prey on innocent people. There’s not much that Mayor Adams can do about that himself except continue to lobby Albany for meaningful changes to this disastrous law.


	New York Governor Kathy Hochul managed to negotiate some minor improvements to the progressive bail reform legislation as part of a deal with the state legislature on the state budget. However, judges will still not have adequate discretion to keep newly arrested defendants who pose a significant risk to the public in jail and off the streets.


	Mayor Adams has tried to assure New Yorkers that he is doing all he can to ensure that their city is safe, including the subways, and said that the city is still much safer than it was in the 1980’s and 1990’s.


	“I was in the city when it spiraled out of control,”&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/217-22/transcript-mayor-eric-adams-appears-msnbc-s-the-sunday-show-jonathan-capehart-&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650927589379000&amp;usg=AOvVaw04_R3IEmmtld0T2qj2BBOh" href="https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/217-22/transcript-mayor-eric-adams-appears-msnbc-s-the-sunday-show-jonathan-capehart-" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mayor Adams said during a recent MSNBC interview</a>. “That is not what we’re facing at this time…This city is far from spiraling out of control, and we hope to get crime under control and also deal with those pathways that lead to criminal behavior in our city.”


	People walking on New York City’s streets and riding its subways take little comfort from the fact that conditions today are not as dire as they were thirty years ago. They are concerned with their personal safety in the here and now. And for good reason.


	Just look at the bloodbath that occurred April 12th&nbsp;during the early-morning rush hour on a Brooklyn subway. No police were present to stop an individual dressed like a construction worker from setting off smoke bombs and then shooting at random, wounding twenty-nine people. The suspect was captured only after he called to turn himself in. This horrific crime followed on the heels of a number of horrendous murders in the city. New Yorkers are understandably alarmed.


	Not to worry, Mayor Adams said during his MSNBC interview.


	“The transit system is the lifeblood of our city, and we have put in place what I believe are the foundational parts of having a real public-safety apparatus,” the mayor declared. “Everything from deploying police correctly, to dealing with the mental-health and homelessness crisis in our system, to ensuring that officers are receiving specific information on what we expect from them,” he added. “The omnipresence, making sure that passengers are seeing those officers going after those violent offenders.”


	Unfortunately, the mayor’s soothing words, good intentions, and mostly symbolic actions to date have not yet translated into a real reduction in major crimes committed in New York City, according to&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650927589379000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3pdSiWmDJTaTNB-DSBPgEh" href="https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">statistics compiled by the NYPD</a>. In fact, major crimes have risen since Mayor Adams took office, except for murders.


	For the year 2022 through April 17th&nbsp;compared to the same period last year, murders in New York City have declined 8.2 percent. But rapes have increased 15.8 percent. Robberies have increased 48 percent. Felonious assaults have risen 21.2 percent. Transit crimes have risen 66.8 percent.


	The rampant crime wave plaguing New York City three decades ago was brought under control after then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani came into office. He adopted an aggressive law enforcement and deterrence strategy, using what was known as the broken windows approach that cracked down on relatively minor offenses to send a strong law-and-order message to more serious would-be criminals. Mike Bloomberg succeeded Giuliani as mayor and was similarly tough on crime. Mr. Bloomberg expanded the NYPD’s stop and frisk program, which Bill de Blasio then cut back considerably after he became mayor in 2014.


	Mayor Eric Adams has his work cut out for him. He will not succeed in making people in New York City feel truly safe unless he returns to the tried-and-true anti-crime programs of the past, which were in place before Bill de Blasio came into office and nearly ruined the city.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ Mixed Record on Fighting Crime

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is definitely an improvement over his predecessor Bill de Blasio. But that is not saying much at all. De Blasio’s policies made

Former President Barack Obama offered his definition of a “disinformation campaign” during <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/barack-obama-interview-disinformation-ukraine/629496/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2NYvYQNT1-rbyNUAiFjdwR" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/barack-obama-interview-disinformation-ukraine/629496/" target="_blank">his recent appearance at a conference sponsored by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics on "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy."</a> Obama explained that it is "a systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information, for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don't like."


	Obama’s musings about what he considered to be such “toxic information” on social media that needed to be regulated posed a potential threat of a&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/barack-obama-comes-out-against-first-amendment-robert-spencer/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1q_XFeNqm2ZRtZp4LRxPfL" href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/barack-obama-comes-out-against-first-amendment-robert-spencer/" target="_blank">direct assault on the First Amendment</a>. Moreover, by his own definition, Barack Obama’s presidency was an all-out, eight-year “disinformation campaign.”


	While hard to believe, the Biden administration is turning out to be even worse in the “disinformation” department.


	Turning first to the days of the Obama presidency, here are just three examples of outrageous disinformation that the former president and his administration were spreading:


	1. Obamacare


	In <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-annual-conference-american-medical-association&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Iw-ih8JTVm3ZG06bo-FRX" href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-annual-conference-american-medical-association" target="_blank">remarks that then-President Obama delivered at the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009</a>, he promised the American people: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."


	It was a complete lie that Obama and his senior administration officials spread about Obamacare scores of times.


	Many Americans were shocked after they received notices cancelling their individual plans that did not meet Obamacare’s new mandatory standards for what all health insurance policies must provide. This forced the Obama administration to scramble to cushion the blow. In late 2013, Obama even issued an apology to those facing the loss of their individual health insurance due to Obamacare regulations.


	During the recent "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" at which Barack Obama spoke, he glided over that history. He tried to explain away his past disinformation about Obamacare with even more disinformation. The former president claimed that he had been referring only to health insurance offered by employers, which was not the qualifier he used at the time when he assured Americans who liked their heath care insurance plans that they could keep them.


	In any case, Obamacare’s new minimum standards that applied to employer-based health insurance policies, including requiring employers to offer coverage to dependents up to age 26, made these policies more expensive for employers and employees.


	Some businesses dropped their health insurance coverage for employees altogether. Some employees with employer-based health insurance policies found themselves having to pay higher premiums, deductibles, and copayments since the passage of Obamacare. Yet Obamacare did not permit some people enrolled in employer-based coverage to pay lower premiums by allowing them to buy subsidized Marketplace coverage.


	All of this did not comport with the Obama administration’s representations about Obamacare that Americans who liked their health care insurance plans would still be able to keep them.


	Yet Obama had the audacity to say during his remarks at the "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" conference that “I actually, to this day, believe that what I said was accurate.”


	Barack Obama continues to deserve four Pinocchios for his own disinformation on Obamacare.


	2. The Benghazi Terrorist Attack


	The Obama administration initially spread disinformation regarding the assault that commenced on September 11, 2012 against the U.S. consulate and nearby annex in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed during that assault.


	The evidence clearly established early-on that the assault was a premeditated Islamic jihadist attack. Yet, Obama’s White House spokesman Jay Carney falsely claimed during a press briefing on September 14th that the assault was “in response to a video, a film… that is offensive to Muslims." Obama’s then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice continued the disinformation campaign on national television during five Sunday news shows. It took more than a week after the Benghazi assault for Obama administration officials to finally admit publicly that it was a premeditated terrorist attack.


	3. The Iran Nuclear Deal


	Then-President Obama and other senior Obama administration officials lied about the terms of the disastrous nuclear deal that the Obama administration agreed to with Iran, in order to sell it to the American people. They falsely claimed, for example, that the nuclear deal would include “anytime, anywhere” inspections. Instead, what the Obama administration actually agreed to were neither “anytime” nor “anywhere” inspections. The Iranian regime remained firmly in control of access and barred inspections of its military sites altogether.


	A <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0XVe2zs3m9vrkVVbXQCyat" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html" target="_blank">New York Times Magazine profile of Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes</a> used words like “false” and “largely manufactured” to describe so-called “information” that Obama himself had dished out to Americans about the deal.


	Rhodes explained the Obama administration’s information manipulation strategy vis a vis the press. “We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes said. The administration rounded up so-called “experts” who “were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”


	Turning to President Joe Biden, he and his administration have followed in the footsteps of his former boss in spreading disinformation and have even taken their disinformation campaign further.


	President Biden’s self-righteous White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who is reportedly negotiating to join MSNBC while still briefing reporters from her White House podium, is one of the Biden administration’s biggest purveyor of disinformation besides President Biden himself. No wonder Psaki hates being challenged with probing questions from outlets such as Fox News, which confront the Biden administration with its misleading and contradictory statements.


	Psaki <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/15/psaki-fox-news-feeds-doocy-questions-that-makes-him-look-like-a-stupid-son-of-a-00025547&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2HPe4DMwNrhOEKFWDm7uUP" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/15/psaki-fox-news-feeds-doocy-questions-that-makes-him-look-like-a-stupid-son-of-a-00025547" target="_blank">recently displayed her unprofessionalism</a> during an on-stage interview with “Pod Save America.” Without a shred of evidence, Psaki accused Fox News of feeding its reporters, including White House correspondent Peter Doocy, questions that “might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.” Psaki’s insult echoed President Biden’s own hot-mic epithet that he uttered earlier this year about Doocy.


	Fox News anchor and former White House correspondent John Roberts put Jen Psaki in her place with this <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://mobile.twitter.com/johnrobertsFox/status/1514970871567466496&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650431473319000&amp;usg=AOvVaw19H0yLT6_QeBs82vcCo_LJ" href="https://mobile.twitter.com/johnrobertsFox/status/1514970871567466496" target="_blank">tweet</a>: “Note to @PressSec. @pdoocy makes the decisions on what topics he wants to quiz you on, and develops the questions himself. His philosophy is a basic tenet of journalism. Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. If that makes all of us "stupid s.o.b.s", so be it.”


	It is becoming virtually impossible to separate the truth from the disinformation spread by the Biden administration.


	One of President Biden’s most outrageous examples of promoting disinformation to the American people was the claim that his disastrous withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan was an "extraordinary success." The American people were not fooled, however. Thirteen U.S. service members dead, Americans and Afghan allies left behind to fend for themselves, and billions of dollars of sophisticated military equipment abandoned in Afghanistan to the Taliban are not the ingredients of “an extraordinary success.”


	Then there is the Biden administration’s immigration fiasco. According to President Biden and senior members of his administration, the record-setting flood of illegal immigrants surging across the U.S.-Mexico border that began shortly after President Biden took office was just a “seasonal” phenomenon. They reluctantly admitted it was a “challenge,” but they told the American people repeatedly that the huge and growing influx of illegal immigrants into the country was certainly not a crisis.


	The administration continues to play fast and loose with the truth about the horrendous conditions at the border and how illegal immigrants are being transported secretly to various parts of the United States after their release.


	President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris falsely accused Border Patrol agents on horseback of using their reins to whip Haitians as they were trying to cross the Rio Grande. The photographer who took the photo of the encounter that Biden and Harris exploited said that his images had been “misconstrued” and that he had not seen the Border Agents ever “whip anybody.”


	Despite this eyewitness account from the photographer who took the photos of the incident in question, Biden and Harris did not retract their accusation. President Biden and his so-called “Border Czar” were willing to throw overworked law enforcement officers who were simply doing their job under the bus with disinformation. It was all part of the Biden administration’s effort to divert the American people's attention from its disastrous open-border immigration policies.


	The accused Border Patrol agents have since been cleared of wrongdoing. But President Biden and Vice President Harris have still not publicly apologized for their disinformation that smeared the reputations of the wrongly accused agents.


	The Biden administration’s disinformation campaign has extended to the economy. President Biden and his senior administration officials first tried to downplay the inflation that has skyrocketed on President Biden’s watch as “transitory.” Then the pandemic and supply chain issues were blamed for the inflation until it became “Putin’s inflation.” Anything to shift blame from the reckless spendthrift legislation that President Biden and his Democrat colleagues pushed through Congress, as well as their war on fossil fuels, which were mostly responsible for triggering the inflation spike.


	President Biden has also spread disinformation about laws passed in red states that he did not like, such as Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 and Florida’s Protect Parental Rights in Education law.


	President Biden condemned Georgia’s election law, which protects the sanctity of the vote with common sense procedural safeguards, as “Jim Crow on steroids" and “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” Biden sank to a new demagogic low when he resorted to conjuring up disturbing images of the South’s real Jim Crow segregationist past in an effort to link such images to Georgia’s 2021 election law. The president then followed up with a speech in Atlanta during which he despicably likened the senators opposed to a broad federal takeover of the voting process to notorious racists of the past such as George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis.


	The truth is that in some respects Georgia’s law provides more voting rights, such as the right to cast no-excuse absentee ballots, than does Biden’s home state of Delaware or New York for that matter.


	Reasonable people can disagree on policy issues such as how to protect fairly both voting access rights and election integrity. They should debate their positions on the merits. But President Biden decided instead to embark on his usual disinformation campaign to smear whomever and whatever he opposes.


	The Biden White House has also spread disinformation about Florida’s Protect Parental Rights in Education law by falsely claiming that it is “designed to attack LGBTQI+ kids.” President Biden called the law “hateful.”


	Florida’s law is neither hateful nor anti-LGBTQI+. What the law actually does is to protect children in kindergarten through third grade from becoming a captive audience for school instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity before they are ready to comprehend what they would be hearing. And it guarantees parents more rights in deciding how to handle such sensitive subjects with their impressionable children. The Biden administration and its leftwing base are trying to incite an emotional response with a false narrative of identity victimhood.


	There are plenty more examples of the Biden administration ‘s spread of disinformation. Its lies and evasions about the president’s knowledge of his son Hunter’s business dealings and the president’s possible involvement come to mind, for example.


	Suffice it to say that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have their own explaining to do when it comes to their abuse of the presidency in spreading disinformation to the American people.

The Obama-Biden Disinformation Campaigns

Former President Barack Obama offered his definition of a “disinformation campaign” during his recent appearance at a conference sponsored by The Atlantic and

The news on the Bidenflation front continues to worsen. Not surprisingly, President Biden and his senior administration officials are in full spin mode.


	On April 12th, the <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3rb4bc7iODduTqvRP1TBTm" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm" target="_blank">Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that the Consumer Price Index (CPI)</a> rose 8.5% annually between March 2021 and March 2022 – the steepest increase since December 1981.


	The index for all items less food and energy - what is known as the core index – rose a hefty 6.5 percent during this same period, the largest 12-month change since the period ending August 1982. The shelter index alone rose 5.0 percent over the last 12 months, which the BLS said was the largest 12-month increase since May 1991.


	We only had to wait twenty-four hours for the other inflation shoe to fall. On April 13th, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2haoVhp2etL7Ci0yxil_yq" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm" target="_blank">the BLS announced that the Producer Price Index</a> (PPI), the measure of prices paid by wholesalers, rose a whopping 11.2% from March 2021 to March 2022. This was the biggest PPI increase on record.


	These enormous price increases are further eroding any advances in real wages since President Biden took office. Workers are behind the eight ball thanks to President Biden’s reckless spending and energy policies. Adjusting for inflation, average real pay was down in March. The 5.6 nominal increase in hourly wages, as calculated without taking account of the increase in the cost of living, means little to workers trying to make ends meet.


	During a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/04/12/remarks-by-president-biden-on-lowering-energy-costs-for-working-families/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw364pphPyGqCs5vXnvIX7Q6" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/04/12/remarks-by-president-biden-on-lowering-energy-costs-for-working-families/" target="_blank">speech that President Biden delivered in Iowa</a> on April 12th, the president boasted “We’re back.”


	Yes, we are back – back to the disastrous hyperinflation days of the Jimmy Carter presidency.


	President Biden continued to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the inflation surge, particularly for the dramatic rise in prices for food and gas.


	“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world,” Biden said.


	Let’s start with food prices. For the twelve-month period ending in March 2022, the CPI increase for food overall rose 8.8 percent. During the same period, the food at home price index rose 10 percent. But the increases in both these price indexes were rising well before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.


	For example, from February to March 2022 the food at home index rose 1.5 percent. The price index for food at home from January 2022 to February 2022 rose 1.4 percent. This means that the total price increase for food at home for the two months of February and March 2022 combined, which were the months most impacted by Putin’s invasion to date, was slightly less than thirty percent of the twelve-month increase between March 2021 and March 2022.


	In short, the responsibility for the food inflation over the last year following President Biden’s signing of the Democrats’ partisan $1.9 trillion so-called “COVID relief” legislation lies mostly with President Biden himself and his spendthrift Democrat congressional colleagues.


	Turning to the rise in retail gasoline prices, President Biden told his Iowa audience that “Seventy percent of the increase in prices in March came from Putin’s price hike in gasoline.”


	Gasoline prices did rise dramatically this past February and March – 6.6 percent and 18.1 percent, respectively. But the president seems to think Americans will forget that the prices they were paying for gas at the pump were rising steeply months before Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The American people are not that gullible.


	By midway through 2021 – months before Putin had gathered 150,000 troops on the Ukrainian border – Americans were already paying on average 32 percent more for gasoline to fill their tanks than they had just six months earlier before President Biden took office. By the end of 2021 - nearly two months before Putin’s invasion - &nbsp;Americans were paying on average 45 percent more for a gallon of gas than they had been paying at the start of 2021.


	President Biden’s war on fossil fuels was largely responsible for those pre-Ukraine invasion gasoline price spikes. Biden set his anti-fossil fuel agenda in motion right away by cancelling the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office. The Biden administration froze leases for drilling on federal lands and waters, imposed numerous regulatory roadblocks that impeded more drilling and production, and discouraged financial institutions from investing capital in the fossil fuel industry.


	The inevitable result of all these actions, taken in the name of the radical Green New Deal, was the end of the Trump era’s U.S. energy independence and an insufficient domestic energy supply to meet demand. The surge in gasoline prices followed like night follows day.


	Out of sheer desperation, President Biden has authorized the release of many millions of gallons of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He has gone begging to OPEC nations to increase their oil production with no success to speak of.


	President Biden has also taken a step that will add smog to the atmosphere this summer. Biden announced during his Iowa speech that his “Environmental Protection Agency is planning to issue an emergency waiver to allow E15 gasoline that uses more ethanol from homegrown crops to be sold across the United States this summer in order to increase fuel supply.”


	E15 gasoline is gasoline that uses a 15 percent ethanol blend.


	The Biden administration is projecting that the E15 gasoline waiver will result in a 10 cent reduction in the price of a gallon of gas at the pump. But there is less here than meets the eye.


	Aside from the fact that only a few thousand pumps today dispense E15 gasoline, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3S5tydU9SgZLJ686WWYEE8" href="https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml" target="_blank">vehicles will typically go 4% to 5% &nbsp;fewer miles per gallon on E15 gasoline than on 100% gasoline</a>. Vehicles using E15 gasoline will also be able to travel fewer miles per gallon than the more standard E10 blend (ten percent ethanol and ninety percent gasoline). Thus, whatever money consumers may save at the pump in purchasing E15 gasoline for their vehicles, they will have to refill their tanks at the pump more often.


	The most disturbing consequence of President Biden's politically expedient decision to waive the ban on E15 gasoline sales this summer is that Americans will be breathing dirtier air. The reason for the Environmental Protection Agency’s ban on summer sales of E15 gasoline in the first place was the concern that emissions produced from higher ethanol content would form ozone in reaction to summer sunlight, thus adding&nbsp;more smog in the atmosphere.


	President Biden’s Iowa speech skipped over the core price index, which strips out food and energy prices from its calculation. Even Biden would have a tough time blaming the 6.5 annual increase in the core price index on Putin. If the president or his senior administration officials try to do so, they will have to explain why core prices in the United States have risen more sharply than elsewhere in the world such as Europe.


	The <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/core-inflation-rate%23:~:text%3DCore%2520Inflation%2520Rate%2520in%2520the%2520Euro%2520Area%2520averaged%25201.38%2520percent,percent%2520in%2520September%2520of%25202020.&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K5hZu-G5lv-v6bcT7GXVo" href="https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/core-inflation-rate#:~:text=Core%20Inflation%20Rate%20in%20the%20Euro%20Area%20averaged%201.38%20percent,percent%20in%20September%20of%202020." target="_blank">annual core inflation rate in the Euro Area</a> increased 3% in March of 2022 – less than half of the annual increase in the United States. Europeans are hurting to be sure, but not as much as the American people are hurting on President Biden’s watch.


	President Biden’s dismal performance on the economy is taking its toll on him politically. His overall approval rating has slipped further to 38 percent, according to <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/bidens-approval-falls-to-new-low-amid-economic-pessimism-cnbc-survey-finds.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1650067062277000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3ac5VoAphX6ViGJ8huZEfo" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/bidens-approval-falls-to-new-low-amid-economic-pessimism-cnbc-survey-finds.html" target="_blank">CNBC’s All-America Survey</a>. Biden’s approval rating on the economy dropped to a dismal 35 percent. The cost of living is the top priority issue for 48 percent of those surveyed.


	Clearly, the American people are not buying President Biden’s lame excuses for the consequences of his own disastrous economic policies.

Bidenflation Bears Down on Americans

The news on the Bidenflation front continues to worsen. Not surprisingly, President Biden and his senior administration officials are in full spin mode.

The flood of illegal immigrants crossing over the southern border with Mexico into the United States is about to become a tsunami of illegal immigrants and a potential COVID-19 super spreader. That is because the Biden administration, buckling to pressure from leftwing pro-illegal immigration activists, has announced plans to lift the Title 42 entry restrictions that have been in effect since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.


	The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky did President Joe Biden’s dirty work by issuing a Title 42 termination notice in which she wrote that “I find there is no longer a public health justification” for continuing to keep the Title 42 authorization order in effect.


	Yet curiously there seems to be “a public health justification” for the Biden administration to request $22.5 billion in additional funding from Congress for “immediate needs to avoid disruption to ongoing COVID response efforts over the next few months.”


	The Biden administration will be recklessly increasing those “immediate needs” by lifting Title 42 entry restrictions and allowing many thousands of potentially infected illegal immigrants into the United States.


	The COVID-19 epidemic is not over, as government officials in Washington, D.C., including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have found out the hard way when they recently tested positive for the coronavirus.


	White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki criticized opponents, which includes some Democrats, of increased spending for COVID-19 relief without also requiring that Title 42 continue to be applied.


	“If we do not have treatments, vaccines, or tests that the American people need, Americans will die from COVID,” Psaki said during her April 7th&nbsp;press briefing. If that is so, then why is the Biden administration willing to play Russian roulette with the lives of&nbsp; the American people by lifting the protections afforded by Title 42 while the COVID-19 pandemic rages on?


	Title 42 was invoked to protect the health of the American people from illegal immigrant carriers of the coronavirus. It is still vitally needed.


	Title 42 has allowed Border Patrol agents&nbsp;on public health grounds&nbsp;to immediately expel migrants who attempt to enter the country without giving them the opportunity first to claim asylum. More than a million migrants have been expelled under this program. The Biden administration continued invoking Title 42 authority, although it has trimmed back the number of expulsions since taking office. In less than a month and a half, Title 42 expulsions will be no more, unless a court puts the brakes on the Biden administration’s reckless termination decision.


	Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/states-sue-to-block-end-of-title-42-asylum-limits/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649709457663000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3B4fVYis10Au8EBoIR1DlU" href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/states-sue-to-block-end-of-title-42-asylum-limits/" target="_blank">have sued the Biden administration</a>&nbsp;to prevent the termination of the Title 42 authorization order. The lawsuit describes the use of Title 42 as “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s disastrous border policies from devolving into an unmitigated chaos and catastrophe.” It expressed concern that the “unlawful termination of the Title 42 policy will induce a significant increase of illegal immigration into the United States with many migrants asserting non-meritorious asylum claims.”


	Even with Title 42 in place, as many as 7000 illegal immigrants a day are now being apprehended by border officials, many of whom are processed and then released into communities across the United States. Once Title 42 authorization is terminated, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has conceded that as many as 18,000 migrants could be apprehended daily after crossing the border illegally. And that startling number does not count the illegal immigrants who cross the border and manage to successfully elude apprehension.


	“There are a significant number of individuals who were unable to access the asylum system for the past two years, and who may decide that now is the time to come,” said Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus.


	No kidding! Word of the planned termination of Title 42 entry restrictions has spread widely among migrants seeking to enter the United States. There is already a huge backlog of so-called asylum seekers expelled under Title 42 who are waiting in Mexico to return to the United States when Title 42 is lifted. Many thousands more will be incentivized to make the trek to the U.S. from their home countries.


	Human trafficking networks throughout Mexico, Central America, and elsewhere are no doubt gearing up for the huge anticipated uptick in business.


	The Biden administration’s unconvincing answer is that the Department of Homeland Security will be ready to manage the increased surges of illegal immigrants resulting from the end of the use of Title 42 to restrict entry.


	Border Patrol agents on the ground would beg to differ, given the administration's horrendous record so far. Some agents have already complained that the current numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border every day are out of control. It defies any shred of common sense to believe that border agents will be able to cope with more than double the current number of daily arrivals when Title 42 entry restrictions go away.


	“We’re already in a position where things are as bad as they have ever been,” said one Border Patrol agent. “To think they’re going to get worse, it’s hard to quantify that.”


	The CDC has already declared that it plans to scale up a program to vaccinate the new arrivals against COVID-19. But what does this mean in practical terms?


	Consider, as an example, the Pfizer vaccine, which must be taken in two doses about three weeks apart and reportedly costs $19.50 per dose. Assuming that 18,000 new illegal immigrants are apprehended each day after Title 42 is lifted, the cost to vaccinate that many individuals with just the initial dose will come to $351,000 daily, which translates to more than $128 million annually. In addition, there is the question of whether the illegal immigrants given their first dose upon apprehension will be detained until they receive their second dose three weeks later. Will they instead be released after they receive their first dose on a wing and a prayer that they will get their second dose on their own?


	As for those migrants who refuse to take the vaccine, some of them may be temporarily detained while others who are immediately released will be strictly “monitored,” according to the Biden administration. Immediate expulsion will no longer be on the table for even the most strident illegal immigrant vaccine resisters!


	How will the released illegal immigrants be monitored? They will receive free cell phones, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.


	You cannot make this stuff up. Naïve does not begin to describe a policy that trusts released illegal immigrants to keep the cell phones on their persons at all times rather than dispose of the phones at their convenience to elude tracking. Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants will be getting free phones at the same time that American taxpayers who foot the bill will have to continue paying for their own phones.


	Texas Governor Greg Abbott has the right idea. He is getting buses ready to transport volunteer illegal immigrants released into border communities to Washington D.C. after Title 42 is lifted.


	“Joe Biden has refused to come to the border to see the chaos that he has created by his open border policies,” Governor Abbott said. “So we are going to take the border to him by transporting the people that he is dropping off in these local communities in the state of Texas, and sending them to Washington by plane or by bus.”


	Vice President Kamala Harris’s official 33-room residence on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory should be one of the key Washington D.C. destinations for these illegal immigrants.


	The Biden administration’s “Border Czar” has still not visited the southern border communities where the crisis precipitated by the Biden administration’s open border policies is getting worse by the day. Her short visit to El Paso, many miles away from where the crisis is taking place, was nothing more than a photo op. The photo op did nothing to educate the “Border Czar” about the “root causes” for masses of men, women, and children to take dangerous voyages from their home countries to cross into the United States illegally.


	The answer should already be clear from past interviews with migrants from Central and South America. Many migrants are seeking a better life in the United States and have counted on President Biden to welcome them into the country despite their illegal entry. More migrants will be anxious to come to the United States with the Biden administration’s lifting of Title 42. The crisis at the hardest hit border communities will spin even further out of control.


	If Vice President Harris still decides that it is not worth her time to visit these besieged communities, then the illegal immigrants boarding the D.C.-bound buses from those communities need to visit her and bring truth to power. Harris’s visitors can explain to her in person their real “root causes” for leaving their home countries and making the long dangerous trek to the United States.

Biden Administration Prepares to Lift Title 42 Restrictions

The flood of illegal immigrants crossing over the southern border with Mexico into the United States is about to become a tsunami of illegal immigrants and a

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the UN Security Council on April 5th&nbsp;to kick off the Security Council’s meeting on Ukraine. He took Russia to task for what he condemned as “the full-fledged invasion, on several fronts, of one Member State of the United Nations, Ukraine, by another, the Russian Federation – a Permanent Member of the Security Council – in violation of the United Nations Charter, and with several aims, including redrawing the internationally-recognized borders between the two countries.”


	The Secretary General said that he would “never forget the horrifying images of civilians killed in Bucha.” Those images included scenes of civilian bodies, some with their hands bound, lying in the streets of Bucha. Russia’s military forces had occupied Bucha before withdrawing and leaving their killing field behind.


	Secretary General Guterres then pulled his punches. He called for “an independent investigation to guarantee effective accountability” and left it at that.


	Calling for an independent investigation is fine for the longer term. An impartial judicial body should determine, based on careful gathering and assessment of evidence, the legal responsibility of specific individuals who are accused of ordering and committing acts of carnage in Bucha and other parts of Ukraine. The International Criminal Court has already announced the launching of an investigation&nbsp;into charges of war crimes in Ukraine.


	However, the Secretary General’s call for an independent investigation is not mutually exclusive with his calling out the Russian regime&nbsp;now&nbsp;for its egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is not enough for Mr. Guterres to rely on the statement of his High Commissioner for Human Rights who has spoken of “possible&nbsp;war crimes.” (Emphasis added) It is the moral duty of the Secretary General, as the leader of the United Nations, to speak truth to power and denounce the Russian regime, ruled by its brutal autocrat, for systematically massacring innocent Ukrainian civilians.


	Russia's military has engaged in indiscriminate bombardments and missile attacks on hospitals, residential buildings, and schools. Russia’s military has laid siege to Mariupol, cutting off the supply of food and vital medical supplies to civilians trapped in that city. Russian soldiers have stopped humanitarian shipments from reaching the people in dire need still in Mariupol and blocked civilians from escaping the devastation that the Russian regime has wrought.


	As the expression goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Following the moving speech that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered virtually to the Security Council, Ukraine’s delegation presented a video showing close-up images of dead civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities.


	President Zelenskyy told the Security Council that more than 300 Ukrainians were tortured and killed in Bucha alone. He recited Russia’s multiple war crimes. “They shot and killed women outside their houses,” President Zelenskyy said. “They killed entire families, adults and children, and they tried to burn the bodies.”


	“The civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road,” Ukraine’s president added in listing the charges of atrocities committed by Russia's military. “They cut off limbs, cut their throats, slashed their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”


	The Russian regime has the blood of the murdered civilians in Bucha and of many other Ukrainians on its hands as a result of its unprovoked war of aggression.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;


	The attempt by Russia’s UN Ambassador&nbsp;Vassily Nebenzia to place the blame on Ukraine for these killings and to accuse Ukraine of “criminally” staging the photographed bodies in Bucha is laughable. So is the Russian ambassador’s claim that not one civilian was killed by Russian forces during Russia’s occupation of Bucha. Ambassador Nebenzia’s assertion that Russia came into Ukraine “not to claim land but to bring peace to Donetsk and remove the Nazi tumor” is beneath contempt.


	Ukraine’s UN ambassador threw Nebenzia’s lies back in his face and said that it was the Russian regime that has committed acts reminiscent of the Nazi era. Other members of the Security Council also pushed back at Russia’s actions and falsehoods. Nevertheless, it is time for the UN Secretary General himself to use his global platform to finally issue his own unambiguous condemnation of Russia’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, and its web of lies.


	On April 4th, the day before the Security Council meeting, I asked Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary General, whether the Secretary General had any doubt that Russia is responsible for the atrocities committed while Russia occupied Bucha. Mr. Haq ducked the question.


	“It's not a question of doubting one side or doubting what the visual evidence we have at hand is,” Mr. Haq replied, “but we do believe, as always, that these need to be thoroughly investigated. And we will make our evaluations based on the results of what those investigations entail.”


	I then followed up with this question regarding how far the Secretary General is willing to go in condemning Russia:


	“Why is he not prepared to go as far as many world leaders, including President Biden, and acknowledge the elephant in the room that Russia is, by all accounts, largely responsible for these atrocities in Ukraine, including the ones in the images we've seen in Bucha? Why can't he take that additional step as a moral conscience of the United Nations?”


	Here was Mr. Haq’s response:


	“Speaking as the moral conscience of the United Nations, the Secretary‑General has said some very strong things, including about Russia's actions, and I would just turn you over to look at what he said in the past weeks. They're very clear. They're very strong.


	At the same time, like I said, we, as an organization, believe in waiting for the evidence to be thoroughly investigated, and we do that as a point of principle. It's not a question of doubting any side. It's that we need to make sure that the facts verify what the visual evidence seems to show.”


	Later during the April 4th press briefing, Mr. Haq was asked to clarify whether or not Secretary General Guterres supported suspending Russia from its membership on the UN Human Rights Council as the U.S. delegation to the UN has suggested. After saying that this was a matter for the Member States to decide, Mr. Haq expressed the UN Secretariat’s concern about the “precedent” that would be set if such an action were taken.


	After a UN correspondent pointed out that there was already such a precedent – Libya’s suspension from the Human Rights Council in 2011 – Mr. Haq replied, “I think you and I both know what the difference is.”


	The difference is that the United Nations bureaucracy, right up to its highest level, is afraid to go too far in antagonizing Russia.


	In any case, suspending Russia from the dysfunctional Human Rights Council, whose membership includes China, Cuba, Venezuela, and Sudan, would end up being a feel-good, symbolic gesture at best.


	While Articles 5 and 6 of the UN Charter allow for the suspension and expulsion of a Member State from the UN in certain circumstances upon the recommendation of the Security Council, that is a non-starter in light of Russia’s veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council.


	Ukraine’s president challenged the United Nations to live up to the principles of the UN Charter and take action against Russia's aggression or dissolve itself. “Where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee? It’s not there,” he said. “Where is the peace?”


	President Zelenskyy called for fundamental reform of the UN’s global security system. Referring to Russia’s ability to block any binding action by the Security Council to address Russia’s aggression, he said that “The U.N. system must be reformed immediately so the veto isn’t the right to die. There can be no more exceptions or privileges.”


	Will Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the free world heed this demand from the leader of a country under brutal attack by Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council? We will have to wait and see.

Zelensky Addresses UN Security Council

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the UN Security Council on April 5th&nbsp;to kick off the Security Council’s meeting on Ukraine. He

<div>
	Governor Ron DeSantis last week signed a common-sense law that protects school children from having to undergo sexualized classroom instruction at an impressionable age. The law also protects parents’ rights in deciding how their children are raised and educated. But the progressive Left believes that it is imperative to brainwash children early in LGBTQI+ dogma at school even if it means running roughshod over parental prerogatives.</div>

<div>
	
		“They support injecting woke gender ideology into second-grade classrooms,” Governor DeSantis said. “They support enabling schools to ‘transition’ students to a ‘different gender’ without the knowledge of the parent.”

	
		<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://askflagler.com/whats-really-in-the-parental-rights-in-education-bill/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3w43m8bDv9iIuOJ9jc-4hL" href="https://askflagler.com/whats-really-in-the-parental-rights-in-education-bill/" target="_blank">The&nbsp;Parental Rights in Education law&nbsp;</a>states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

	
		The law also requires, among other protections for parents, “school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.”

	
		Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law was passed against a background of rising attempts by left-wing activists to encourage Florida’s school administrators and educators to introduce sexual orientation and gender identity indoctrination into their classrooms.

	
		<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.eqfl.org/Safe_Schools&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3RBR6e5nRGilmweuMXAKKA" href="https://www.eqfl.org/Safe_Schools" target="_blank">Equality Florida</a>, a left-wing activist group, has set out to “shift the culture so that each of Florida’s 67 school districts will adopt comprehensive, nationally recognized best practices for meeting the needs of LGBTQ+ students and in doing so build a model that can be replicated nationwide.” The organization claims that over 30,000 individuals have already been “trained” in almost all of Florida school districts.

	
		Among the “best practices” that Equality Florida recommends is to throw traditional gender classifications that children are accustomed to identifying with at home by the wayside on school grounds.

	
		“Group students in ways that do not rely on gender,” their “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZS1HN3zKPgoN2z2AHolxKLDb7dtBnxu/view&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2KCtYaWLmKqubOXWIJel8w" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZS1HN3zKPgoN2z2AHolxKLDb7dtBnxu/view" target="_blank">Safe School Equality Index</a>” advises. “Avoid situations that force children to make gendered choices, such as ‘boys line up here,’ and ‘girls line up there.’”

	
		Dress code/appearance policies, according to Equity Florida's Safe School Equality Index, should be gender neutral, “allowing students to wear attire that corresponds with the students’ gender identity or gender expression.” Media specialists in the schools are urged to promote LGBTQ characters and literature for use even with elementary school students. And so on.

	
		The Safe School Equality Index document makes no mention of first notifying parents, much less obtaining their consent, regarding what would be spoon fed even to their elementary school-age children about such sensitive subjects.

	
		Opponents of the Parental Rights in Education law have falsely branded it as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. This mislabeling has spread widely in progressive circles and at sympathetic mainstream media outlets.

	
		The hosts of the Oscar awards ceremonies - Amy Schumer, Regina Hall, and Wanda Sykes - reveled in the “Don’t Say Gay” propaganda campaign aimed at the Florida law when they delivered the following message to Floridians: “And for you people in Florida, we’re going to have a gay night.” Then they chanted the word “gay” over and over again. The Hollywood elites in the auditorium responded with enthusiastic applause.

	
		President Joe Biden added more fuel to the fire after the Oscar telecast. “Our LGBTQI+ youth deserve to be affirmed and accepted just as they are,” the&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1508533470091522059&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1Km-4EmEDucLoeMuYvwwRx" href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1508533470091522059" target="_blank">president’s March 28th&nbsp;tweet</a>&nbsp;on the subject stated. “My Administration will continue to fight for dignity and opportunity for every student and family — in Florida and around the country.”

	
		In a video message to commemorate&nbsp;Transgender Day of Visibility President&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3D8wCjz2SIYVo&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3HPdszTBreaKLoxzBT79JJ" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCjz2SIYVo" target="_blank">Biden said</a>&nbsp;that the “onslaught of anti-transgender state laws attacking you and your families is simply wrong, This administration is standing up for you against all these hateful bills.”

	
		Biden is engaging in crass political shadowboxing that demeans his office.

	
		Nothing in the Florida law attacks LGBTQI+ youth in any way. There is not a word in the legislation that could conceivably be interpreted as anti-gay or anti-transgender by any reasonable person.

	
		Moreover, the law does not ban government funding of schools that include age-appropriate education about sexual orientation or gender identity in their curriculums. That’s a far cry from the bill that&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1032/vote_103_2_00250.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3cpVkl9LVWPIf8cAhR88tf" href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1032/vote_103_2_00250.htm" target="_blank">Biden voted for as a senator</a>&nbsp;in support of prohibiting “Federal funds for instructional materials, instruction, counseling, or other services on school grounds, from being used for the promotion of homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative.”

	
		White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to answer a reporter’s question asking for an explanation of President Biden’s 180-degree turn. The most obvious reason is that the president is an opportunist catering to his radical base.

	
		Senior Biden administration officials are following suit.

	
		Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, for example, accused Governor DeSantis of targeting “some of Florida’s most vulnerable students and families, all while under the guise of 'parents' rights.'” Cardona said that his department will be monitoring the implementation of the law.

	
		"Instead of telling some students or families it’s not okay to be who they are, our Department is fighting for dignity and opportunity for every student and family," Cardona added.

	
		Cardona either did not read the text of the actual Florida law or is participating in an outrageous misinformation campaign. Nothing in the law tells students or their families that it is not okay to be who they are. The law simply seeks to protect young students from agenda-driven “teaching” by non-family adults that may produce self-doubt in kids at an age when they are most susceptible to questionable external influences.

	
		House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added her two cents to the made-up controversy created by the progressive Left’s deliberate mischaracterization of the Florida law.&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1508497775083851787?cxt%3DHHwWlsC4xf2uoe8pAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw15t1lPlHG8kW_bo63nvPFn" href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1508497775083851787?cxt=HHwWlsC4xf2uoe8pAAAA" target="_blank">She tweeted</a>, “This cruel legislation is an affront to our Nation’s cherished values and sends a harmful message to our children. @GovRonDeSantis and Florida Republicans have chosen to needlessly bully, isolate and demean LGBTQ students.”

	
		Pelosi has it backwards. Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law upholds the core belief of most Americans that families should play the primary role in shaping the emotional development and socialization of their children. The law protects parents from being bullied by overly aggressive teachers and school administrators who want to block the parents from having any real say in their children’s education.

	
		Disney executives joined the opposition bandwagon after buckling to progressives’ pressure. The Magic “Woke” Kingdom issued a&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/statement-from-the-walt-disney-company-on-signing-of-florida-legislation/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Zj2tgBQdwqmGvbA1kXuNh" href="https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/statement-from-the-walt-disney-company-on-signing-of-florida-legislation/" target="_blank">statement</a>&nbsp;denouncing the law and calling for it to be “repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.”

	
		Disney’s stance against what it mislabeled the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill reeks of hypocrisy. Disney does business in China, for example, even though the Chinese Communist regime tortures and forcibly detains Uyghurs. Disney has even filmed in areas around where the Chinese government’s concentration camps are located. Gay and transgender people have been censored, mocked, and marginalized since China’s President Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012. But Disney executives keep their mouths shut and submit their films to Chinese government censorship as they rake in profits from their China operations.

	
		Disney’s streaming service&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://dmedmedia.disney.com/news/disney-plus-sets-dates-for-summer-2022-launches&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0BnUznMrDgjqmkBu01QTrz" href="https://dmedmedia.disney.com/news/disney-plus-sets-dates-for-summer-2022-launches" target="_blank">Disney+ has announced</a>&nbsp;the launching of its service in 42 countries this year, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia on June 8th. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have outlawed same-sex relationships and have even made them punishable by the death penalty. Gays and transgender people do not fare well in other Middle East markets outside of Israel that Disney+ is also targeting for expansion.

	
		Governor DeSantis pointed to Disney’s hypocrisy in “lining their pockets” from “Disney cruises to the nation of Dominica, which criminalizes homosexuality.”

	
		Disney’s interference in a matter duly decided by Florida's elected representatives has angered some Florida legislators and the governor to the point that they are considering stripping Disney of its special status as a self-governing entity.

	
		Social justice warrior activists, including Equality Florida, have joined in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law. Their complaint alleges that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by discriminatorily censoring classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in Florida’s public schools.

	
		Roberta Kaplan, the founding partner of the New York-based law firm that filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee, claimed that it is “hard to imagine anything more offensive to our constitutional system than treating one group of school kids as second class based solely on who they are or who their parents are.”

	
		Ms. Kaplan was once the chairwoman of Time’s Up, an organization established to fight sexual abuse and promote gender equality, and she is the co-founder of its legal defense fund. Ironically, this same New York lawyer who filed the lawsuit in Florida challenging the Parental Rights in Education law resigned months earlier from Time’s Up as the sexual harassment scandal engulfing former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unraveled. It seems that&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/nyregion/roberta-kaplan-times-up-cuomo.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1649108698913000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Me8k5GpkBvWxzzbO6iGnd" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/nyregion/roberta-kaplan-times-up-cuomo.html" target="_blank">Ms. Kaplan had participated in an effort to discredit</a>&nbsp;one of Cuomo’s female accusers.

	
		Evidently, Ms. Kaplan is trying to make a comeback with the bogus Florida lawsuit.

	
		The complaint is based on the false premise that public school administrators and educators should have a superior right to act in the parents’ stead when it comes to looking after the health, socialization, and moral upbringing of the parents’ children.

	
		The Supreme Court has concluded in a line of cases stretching back nearly a century that the "liberty'' specially protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes the right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

	
		“The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations,” the Supreme Court declared in one of its earliest opinions on the subject.

	
		In a case decided in 2000, the Supreme Court majority reaffirmed that “the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children…is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.”

	
		Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law vindicates this fundamental constitutional right of parents to remain in charge of their own children’s upbringing, including their education in such emotionally sensitive subjects as sexual orientation and gender identity.
</div>

The Left Attacks Florida’s New Parental Rights in Education Law

Governor Ron DeSantis last week signed a common-sense law that protects school children from having to undergo sexualized classroom instruction at an

Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) issued an ultimatum on March 29th to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. AOC declared that Justice Thomas must either resign his Supreme Court seat because of his wife Virginia’s communications seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election or face a congressional investigation and possible impeachment.


	AOC was responding to reports by <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ginni-thomas-clarence-wife-mark-meadows-texts-2020-election-overturn/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1648803871969000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0JjdhQlF_1MPbLVabv9iQm" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ginni-thomas-clarence-wife-mark-meadows-texts-2020-election-overturn/" target="_blank">CBS</a> and the Washington Post that Virginia (Ginni) Thomas had exchanged 29 text messages with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The text messages expressed her doubts about the validity of the 2020 election and called for action to make things right in her view.


	&nbsp;


	Ms. Thomas’s texts included election fraud claims that mirrored claims by former President Donald Trump himself and his most ardent supporters. For example, she wrote, “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” She declared that President Joe Biden’s win meant “the end of Liberty.”


	&nbsp;


	“Do not concede,” Ms. Thomas urged Meadows in another one of her texts.


	There were no references to either Justice Thomas himself or to the Supreme Court in Ms. Thomas’s text messages. There have been no reports that Justice Thomas sent any text messages to Meadows or anyone else echoing his wife’s opinions about the 2020 election. There have also been no reports that Justice Thomas helped Ginni Thomas write her text messages or that she was acting on the justice's behalf.


	Ms. Thomas did attend former President Trump’s peaceful rally on January 6, 2021. She was exercising her constitutional right to peaceably assemble with other like-minded Trump supporters. However, Ginni Thomas has denied any involvement in the riot that erupted at the Capitol later that day, and there has been no credible evidence presented that rebuts her denial.


	Nevertheless, AOC and other leftist progressives demand that Justice Thomas be punished for his wife’s expression of her own opinions that they denounce as false conspiracy theories.


	Justice Thomas’s wife Ginni is an outspoken conservative activist. She is also a private citizen who does not forfeit her constitutional right to express her opinions about the 2020 election or any other matter of public interest just because her husband is currently a Supreme Court justice.


	Whatever happened to the feminist role model of the independent woman who should not have to be afraid to speak her own mind and pursue her own career, whether married or not? Apparently, Ms. Thomas was expected to keep her opinions to herself lest they be automatically attributed to her husband through guilt by marriage. How retrograde the Left can be when their target is a conservative woman married to a conservative Supreme Court justice they detest!


	“Clarence Thomas should resign,” <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1508789261730041859?cxt%3DHHwWhsC-pd71pfApAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1648803871969000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2tOK2Pfjq6aQ5fSGt_9iT0" href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1508789261730041859?cxt=HHwWhsC-pd71pfApAAAA" target="_blank">AOC tweeted</a>. “If not, his failure to disclose income from right-wing organizations, recuse himself from matters involving his wife, and his vote to block the Jan 6th commission from key information must be investigated and could serve as grounds for impeachment.”


	AOC then dragged the names of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett into her tirade. She claimed that “a failure to hold Clarence Thomas accountable sends a loud, dangerous signal to the full Court - Kavanaugh, Barrett, &amp; the rest - that his acts are fair game.”


	“Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached,” AOC’s Squad comrade <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1507178853650812928?cxt%3DHHwWgMCyjdPLyeopAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1648803871969000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Sv262OQJ80nW9YcKnSJO1" href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1507178853650812928?cxt=HHwWgMCyjdPLyeopAAAA" target="_blank">Ilhan Omar tweeted</a>.


	Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones, the chair of a House subcommittee overseeing federal courts, threatened to conduct a “robust investigation” of the matter. Rep. Jones added ominously, “All options have to be on the table.”


	Democrat Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon released a statement charging without any basis that "Justice Thomas' conduct on the Supreme Court looks increasingly corrupt."


	This all looks like a lame attempt by the Left to use the First Amendment-protected expressions of opinion by Justice Thomas’s wife as an excuse to boot Justice Thomas from the Supreme Court. If that gambit fails, which is likely, then Justice Thomas’s enemies are demanding that he recuse himself from participating in any future cases involving the events of January 6th and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.


	Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission J. Kenneth Blackwell wrote a <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/02/24/meese-and-blackwell-mr-and-mrs-clarence-thomas-integrity-service/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1648803871969000&amp;usg=AOvVaw00eN_J6ZlZWl6rtqK3PuDu" href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/02/24/meese-and-blackwell-mr-and-mrs-clarence-thomas-integrity-service/" target="_blank">prescient article</a> before the latest bruhaha erupted over Ms. Thomas’s text messages. Their February 24th article posted on Breitbart pointed out how the Left had already been smearing her to take down Justice Thomas. It is just the latest tactic to destroy Justice Thomas, going back to what he famously characterized as “a high-tech lynching” during his Senate confirmation hearing.


	“What began years ago as the politics of personal destruction,” Meese and Blackwell wrote, “has metastasized into attempts to delegitimize a distinguished and senior member of the best-functioning branch of the federal government by smearing his wife for making a private-sector career out of her principles and patriotism, and doing it in a manner that avoids an appearance of impropriety by not engaging in her husband’s realm of responsibility.”


	Some leftists are too impatient for the smears to work. They were hoping that Justice Thomas would not survive the infection that sent him to the hospital recently. UCLA’s Director of Race and Equity, Jonathan Perkins, tweeted, for example: "No one wants to openly admit [we all] hope Clarence Thomas dies. Whatever you need to tell yourselves." Perkins then launched into a despicable personal attack on Justice Thomas: “Uncle Thomas is a sexist token who’s committed himself to making us all share in he and his treasonous wife’s misery.”


	Ironically, the target of Perkins’ hate speech would vigorously support Perkins’ First Amendment right to express his vile opinions. Fortunately, Justice Thomas is out of the hospital and back working on the Supreme Court to protect Americans’ fundamental liberties.

The Left Smears Virginia Thomas to Delegitimize Justice Thomas

Democrat Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) issued an ultimatum on March 29th to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. AOC declared that Justice

President Joe Biden made several major gaffes during his trip to Europe last week. The president’s most notable gaffe occurred during a speech he delivered in Poland when he said that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” The White House had to clean up this potentially dangerous unforced error suggesting possible regime change. Biden made other slip ups as well, such as telling U.S. troops stationed in Poland what they will see when they arrive in Ukraine. But President Biden’s attempt to equate the influx of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s killing field in Ukraine, during his exchange with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, with the illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. Southern border was no error.


	“The fact that you have so many — so many Ukrainians seeking refuge in the — in this country of Poland, we understand that,” <a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fbriefing-room%2Fspeeches-remarks%2F2022%2F03%2F26%2Fremarks-by-president-biden-and-president-andrzej-duda-of-poland-before-expanded-bilateral-meeting%2F&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7Ca35cb162f0f947722cf808da1102c331%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637841000805185103%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=APxeAbpgeyNufdAWNZcrIQl7XjPCWU7yyqgwmi3Ztx0%3D&amp;reserved=0">President Biden said</a>, “because we have, in our southern border, thousands of people a day — literally, not figuratively — trying to get into the United States.”


	More than 2.2 million Ukrainians are estimated to have crossed into Poland since the Russian invasion began. President Biden has committed to accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees into the United States, although reportedly only a trickle have been formally admitted so far. But even if Biden fulfills his commitment, 100,000 Ukrainians pale in comparison with the number of illegal immigrants from Latin America and other parts of the world whom his administration has allowed into the country.


	As far as the Biden administration is concerned, pretend “refugees” and “asylum-seekers” leaving their home countries to seek a better life in the United States deserve no less of a welcome than real refugees escaping the ruthless Russian invaders of their country.


	Thousands of illegal immigrants a day have not simply tried to get into the United States. They have successfully entered and remained in the United States in droves since President Biden took office, as a result of his administration’s lax enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws and open border executive actions. Immigrants who have entered the country illegally have benefited from the expansion of the number of individuals rendered eligible for protections such as deferred action, parole, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum, or refugee status.


	Nearly two million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the border in 2021, which is a record. More than 458,000 have been permitted to stay and seek asylum. Thousands more who entered the U.S. illegally without being caught are roaming around the country.


	The illegal immigrant surge at the U.S.-Mexican border is not letting up. In February of this year alone, 164,973 encounters with border officials took place. We are on track for 200,000 encounters in March.


	With the Biden administration’s imminent lifting of the public health rule known as Title 42 expected before the beginning of April, the grounds for immediately expelling illegal immigrants from the country because of COVID-19 concerns will disappear. Even more chaos at the border is predicted as hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who were expelled under Title 42 seek to return.


	Leftist progressives, who represent the core of the Democrat base today, are seeking to racialize what are legitimate moral distinctions between bona fide asylum claims made by Ukrainians versus mostly spurious asylum claims made by individuals emigrating from Latin America and other parts of the world. As usual, they view the world through the lens of identity politics.


	For example, Oscar Chacón, executive director of Alianza Americas, said that “we cannot help but see a contrast between the way we are treating war-displaced people in Europe to the way we are treating those who are fleeing to our southern border. It is more important than ever to have policies that welcome and protect asylum seekers and migrants, and a key part of that is ending immigration detention.”


	Many immigrants who have left Central America in vast migrant caravans wanted to start their lives anew in the United States. The “root causes” for their long treks were bad economic conditions and corruption in their home countries, together with the pull of Biden administration open border policies luring them to the United States. Vice President Kamala Harris’s short-lived search for “root causes” failed to turn up anything else of consequence.


	Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have not been invaded. No aerial attacks have been unleashed on their civilian populations. There have been no systematic government persecutions of civilians. Nothing forced Central Americans to choose between leaving their home countries or staying behind to face possible death from bombardments and sieges cutting off food and vital medical supplies.


	Ukrainians have faced a radically different situation than the migrants from Central America or other parts of Latin America. Indeed, most Ukrainians were content with their lives in their own country before Russia invaded. They were not seeking better economic prospects for themselves and their families outside of Ukraine. Russia’s brutal invasion and unrelenting attacks on Ukrainian civilian population centers turned the lives of the Ukrainian people upside down.


	Ukrainian civilians are being slaughtered in their own country by Putin’s war machine. Putin and his military commanders have unleashed artillery, bombs, and missiles upon hospitals, schools, residential buildings, and shelters. Putin’s henchmen fired at women and children trying to flee by bus or foot to safety. Functioning cities and towns have been reduced to rubble.


	Most Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 to 60 have remained behind in Ukraine to fight the Russian invaders. Women and children have separated from their husbands and fathers, seeking at least temporary refuge outside of Ukraine. Many of these women and children desperately want to return to their homeland and resume their lives with their families intact, if and when conditions permit.


	The Left loves to indulge in moral equivalency. However, there is no such equivalency when it comes to comparing the Ukrainian refugees fleeing Putin’s invasion and the illegal immigrants crossing the Southern border into the United States. The Ukrainians have legitimate moral and legal grounds for protection as refugees. The illegal immigrants who repeat what they are instructed to say in order to hide their true economic motives for migration with false asylum claims deserve no such protection on moral or legal grounds.

Equating Illegal Immigrants at Our Southern Border with Ukrainian Refugees

President Joe Biden made several major gaffes during his trip to Europe last week. The president’s most notable gaffe occurred during a speech he delivered in

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, spent two days during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing ducking questions posed by Senate Republican members of the committee. The Republicans were not probing into Judge Jackson’s personal life, as Democratic senators had done so disgracefully in trying to take down Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh during their confirmation circuses. The Republican members of the Judiciary Committee asked Judge Jackson questions relevant to where she would be coming from as a Supreme Court justice.


	The fact that Judge Jackson is the first black woman nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court does not immunize her from being asked tough questions about her judicial record and the cases she worked on as a defense attorney. Yet Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and other Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were labeled racists for doing just that.


	Republicans asked perfectly legitimate questions to better understand Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy, the rationale behind the lenient criminal sentences she handed down as a federal district court judge, and her work as a defense attorney for Guantanamo Bay detainees. They also wanted to hear Judge Jackson’s views on a key issue that affects the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court – progressive proposals to pack the Court.


	Judge Jackson refused several times to provide her views on court packing. Whether to increase the number of Supreme Court justices from the present nine members is a policy question, as Judge Jackson said. However, packing the Court at the whim of the partisan majority du jour is also a question that goes to the heart of preserving the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an independent judiciary. Even the liberals Justice Breyer, for whom Judge Jackson clerked, and Justice Ginsberg said that increasing the number of justices was a bad idea, an opinion they expressed while they were serving on the Supreme Court.


	Judge Jackson did not want to offend her progressive left supporters by going on record opposing one of the progressive left’s key agenda items.


	Judge Jackson also did not want to alienate her transgender activist supporters by answering Senator Marsha Blackburn’s question on whether she could define the word “woman.” The judge did not want to touch that hot potato.


	“I can’t,” Jackson replied. “You can’t?” Senator Blackburn asked. “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist,” Judge Jackson said.


	At least, Judge Jackson was willing to acknowledge that there is a possible biological component in defining what constitutes a “woman.” &nbsp;But as Senator Blackburn later tweeted, “It’s a major red flag that a Supreme Court nominee backed by the far-left refuses to define the word ‘woman.’”


	Judge Jackson tried to portray herself as approaching the cases she decides with “impartiality” and by “staying in my lane.” Judge Jackson even sounded like the late Justice Antonin Scalia when she said at one point that her decisional methodology requires her to examine the text of the Constitution and of statutes as written. She claimed that it’s “appropriate to look at the original intent, the original public meaning of the words when one is trying to assess” cases. But Judge Jackson’s judicial record belies her words. She is the poster child for judicial activism - legislating from the bench.


	For example, Judge Jackson ignored Congress’s plain words granting the Homeland Security Secretary with “sole and unreviewable discretion” to expeditiously deport illegal immigrants who were in the United States for less than two years. She decided that the Trump administration had acted arbitrarily with “no evident consideration of the considerable downsides of adopting a policy that, in many respects, could significantly impact people’s everyday lives in many substantial, tangible, and foreseeable ways.” &nbsp;


	Judge Jackson stepped way out of her judicial lane. She substituted her policy preference for the clear policy decision of Congress. Judge Jackson felt that it was important for the Homeland Security Secretary to take into account the impact of potential deportations on the everyday lives of the affected illegal immigrants. But that was not what Congress decided. It had vested sole and unreviewable authority for certain expedited removals of illegal immigrants with an executive branch agency.


	Judge Jackson brushed aside the applicable statutory language. She then extended the reach of her judicial activism far beyond her own district court’s jurisdiction by issuing a nationwide injunction against enforcing the Trump administration’s “expedited removal” procedure.


	Judge Jackson bowed to the wishes of the progressive plaintiffs that included the American Civil Liberties Union. Her ruling was overruled by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, including judges appointed by former Presidents Obama and Carter.


	Judge Jackson also pleased the ‘soft on criminals’ crowd with her light sentences, especially for child pornographers. In tense exchanges with Senators Cruz, Lindsey, and Hawley, the judge was pressed on why she issued for more lenient sentences for child pornographers than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines or even the case prosecutors.


	In one egregious case, a 19-year-old man had pleaded guilty to downloading and trading images and movies of child sexual abuse, including of boys under the age of 13. The prosecutor recommended a sentence of two years. The probation officer recommended 18 months. Judge Jackson decided to sentence the man to only 3 months in prison, followed by supervised release. &nbsp;


	Judge Jackson tried to explain away her failure to follow Congress’s clear policy choice to have judges impose harsher sentences for child pornographers based on the number of images found in the possession of a defendant. She said that Congress’s legislative policy on enhanced sentences was outdated in the age of the Internet. The Internet, she declared, had made it much easier for individuals to amass vast troves of child pornography images than in the days when snail mail was the main channel for distributing and receiving such images.


	Judge Jackson expressed concern that defendants caught with thousands of child pornography images on their computers could be subject to harsher sentences based on their online possession of large numbers of images. “You can be doing this for 15 minutes, and all of a sudden you are looking at 30, 40, 50 years in prison,” Judge Jackson said. “Good, absolutely good,” Senator Lindsey replied.


	In any event, once again Judge Jackson stepped way out of her judicial lane. If Congress’s law dealing with enhanced sentencing for individuals caught with large numbers of child pornography images is outdated in the computer and Internet era, it is up to Congress – not a judicial activist like Judge Jackson – to change the law.


	It’s worth noting that Justice Breyer, who Judge Jackson would be replacing, has sometimes been relatively tough on criminal justice matters. He sided at times, for example, with government authorities on search and seizure and sentencing.


	If Judge Jackson is confirmed, as expected, leftists will have a far more reliable ally in their fights against law enforcement and incarceration. She foreshadowed during a speech back in 2015 that she thought critical race theory was relevant to sentencing, a perspective she tried to play down during her confirmation hearing.


	During her days as a public defender and in private practice, Jackson defended Guantanamo detainees. She explained that it is a "core constitutional value" for even those accused of the most heinous crimes to have legal representation. But Jackson’s defense of the Guantanamo defenders is not the issue. What’s troubling is that Jackson chose to align herself with radical Left opponents of the war on terror in the rhetoric she used in a legal brief challenging the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists deemed enemy combatants.


	The brief accused former President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of engaging in acts in their official capacity that "constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity" in violation of the Geneva Conventions. That is music to the ears of the far Left. &nbsp;


	Judge Jackson made no major gaffes during her confirmation hearing and appears to be on her way to Senate confirmation. The leftist groups that have supported her nomination such as Demand Justice, MoveOn, Indivisible, Justice Democrats, and Demos could not be happier.

Judge Jackson: A Big Win for the Radical Left

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, spent two days during her Senate Judiciary

The clock is ticking for the Ukrainian people as war criminal Vladimir Putin’s military forces brutalize the civilian population with unrelenting bombings and missile attacks. But President Joe Biden is still dragging his feet in providing the Ukrainians the help they need in time to save their country. His administration has other priorities. The Biden team is using Russia as its intermediary to negotiate a revival of the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran and is using TikTok “influencers” to spread the Biden administration’s propaganda.


	Every step of the way, President Biden has allowed his fear of Putin to dictate what he is willing to do to help save Ukraine.


	Thus, despite the gathering of over 150,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s border in the weeks leading up to the invasion, President Biden did nothing but issue idle warnings. Biden held off from imposing any sanctions to give Putin a taste of what to expect if he followed through on his threats to invade Ukraine.


	Biden slow walked authorizing the delivery of sufficient stockpiles of lethal defensive weapons beforehand to give the Ukrainians time to be fully prepared for the worst.


	After the invasion, the Biden administration moved slower than its European counterparts in rolling out sanctions against Putin himself and against key Russian financial institutions. The cutoff of some Russian financial institutions from SWIFT was full of loopholes.


	President Biden only cut off U.S. purchases of Russian oil after coming under significant bipartisan pressure. He still has not sanctioned the main source of revenue financing Putin’s war machine - Russia’s oil and gas industry.


	Biden personally torpedoed the transfer of Polish MIG aircraft to Ukraine because he considered it an “escalatory” step. The ostensible reason, according to senior Biden administration officials, is that MIG aircraft are supposedly “offensive” weapons.


	Ukraine did not start this war. Russia did. The Ukrainians don’t want the MIG planes to bomb targets inside Russia. The Ukrainian government wants the planes to enable trained Ukrainian pilots to defend the Ukrainian civilian population more effectively from Russia’s savage aerial bombardments.


	It took about three weeks following Putin’s invasion for President Biden to call the ruthless dictator a war criminal, and Biden did so only in response to a question from a Fox News reporter. But branding Putin as war criminal has not stopped Biden from turning to this same war criminal’s regime to bring the nuclear deal with Iran back to life.


	The Biden propaganda mill meanwhile is busy trying to convince young people through social media platforms that Putin is a villain but not for the obvious reason that he is a war criminal with the blood of innocent women and children on his hands. The Biden administration has enlisted prominent TikTok “influencers” to spread the word to their rapt audiences that Putin is the villain behind the rise in gasoline prices that Americans are dealing with every day at the pump. The message that the administration wants the TikTok stars to convey to their followers is not to blame the Biden administration at all for the price surge. It’s Putin’s fault.


	On March 10th&nbsp;White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and National Security Council staffers conducted a&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-tok-ukraine-white-house/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1647905824429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1qY-lUgGxsIT44pxbE_eHD" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/11/tik-tok-ukraine-white-house/" target="_blank">Zoom call with about 30 invited TikTok star “influencers”</a>&nbsp;to provide them with a Biden administration briefing on the war in Ukraine.


	“We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” said the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, referring to TikTok, “so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.”


	The so-called “authoritative source” is the White House’s spin factory. Their propagandists want to use the popular social media platform TikTok to mislead its millions of rising generation users into thinking only positively about President Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis and his handling of the U.S. economy.&nbsp;&nbsp;


	The administration’s social media manipulation strategy appears to have gained some traction. One of the star “influencers” tapped by the Biden administration to spread its misinformation was the 18-year-old celebrity Ellie Zeiler, who is better known for displaying her dancing talents online than opining on economic issues. Ms. Zeiler fell for the Biden propaganda mill’s talking points hook, line, and sinker.


	Following the White House briefing that she participated in, Ms. Zeiler put out a video where the dancer passed on to her millions of followers the indoctrination that she had been spoon fed by Jen Psaki and her colleagues. After asking why gas is so expensive today, the TikTok star blamed Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.


	Even Saturday Night Live spoofed the White House TikTok initiative. In response to the backlash that Ms. Zeiler received for parroting the Biden administration’s party line, the TikTok star blamed sexism. Ms. Zeiler claimed that she had been singled out for ridicule because she was a “young woman interested in politics on social media.” No, the reason that Ms. Zeiler received criticism and mockery for her TikTok performance was that she allowed herself to be used by the Biden administration.


	Sadly, the Biden administration is focusing on how to shape the message it wants its designated messengers to deliver to the American people rather than actually working to solve their real life problems.

The TikTok Commander in Chief

The clock is ticking for the Ukrainian people as war criminal Vladimir Putin’s military forces brutalize the civilian population with unrelenting bombings and

Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for massacring innocent Ukrainians. Putin’s war machine is destroying civilian facilities and infrastructure in Ukraine, including schools and hospitals. And Putin’s military forces are laying siege to Ukrainian cities in order to force the people in those cities into submission. All these war crimes and crimes against humanity are on the evil Russian tyrant’s blood-thirsty hands. However, President Joe Biden’s attempt to shift the blame from his own reckless policies to Vladimir Putin for the soaring inflation that troubles Americans the most in their daily lives is pure spin.


	<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm%23:~:text%3DPressOffice%2540bls.gov%2520CONSUMER%2520PRICE,of%2520Labor%2520Statistics%2520reported%2520today.&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1647303903481000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ti5lNAd6v_MzdFKhg_OkD" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm#:~:text=PressOffice%40bls.gov%20CONSUMER%20PRICE,of%20Labor%20Statistics%20reported%20today." target="_blank">The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on March 10th</a>&nbsp;that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 7.9 percent year-over-year between February 2021 and February 2022, continuing a long string of monthly CPI increases on President Biden’s watch.


	The CPI increase for February 2022 alone was 0.8 percent from the month before, meaning that 7.1 percent of the year-to-year CPI increase between February 2021 and February 2022 occurred during the months prior to the month that Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th.&nbsp;


	Yet during remarks that President Biden delivered to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Philadelphia on March 11th, Biden did all he could to shirk any responsibility for the inflation disaster that has plagued Americans for nearly a year.&nbsp;&nbsp;President Biden is using disinformation to try and convince Americans that “<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/11/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-house-democratic-caucus-issues-conference/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1647303903481000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0foXDDcjBi-LaGvb9DYIT3" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/11/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-house-democratic-caucus-issues-conference/" target="_blank">inflation is largely the fault of Putin</a>.”


	Last year, Biden and his team offered other excuses for the soaring inflation that began within three months after he took office. When trying to assure Americans that rising prices were only “transitory” did not work, Biden and his team proceeded to blame the COVID-19 pandemic, corporate greed, and supply chain bottlenecks.


	Biden again brought up COVID-19, corporate greed, and supply chain problems during his March 11th&nbsp;remarks as causes for inflation. But now he is blaming Putin most of all.


	Not so, Joe. You and your fellow Democrats in Congress have brought about the out-of-control spike in prices all by yourselves as a result of your spend-and-borrow policies and your war on fossil fuels.


	Even the former head of the Obama Auto Task Force and Obama-Biden administration economic adviser, Steven Rattner, sought to remind President Biden that the inflation buck stops with him. “Well, no,”&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/SteveRattner/status/1501950599339802633?cxt%3DHHwWkoCs_ZiHgNgpAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1647303903481000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1O-jhnm7IJPcxhaMQSajPS" href="https://twitter.com/SteveRattner/status/1501950599339802633?cxt=HHwWkoCs_ZiHgNgpAAAA" target="_blank">Rattner tweeted</a>. “These are Feb #'s and only include small Russia effect. This is Biden's inflation and he needs to own it."


	Putin’s war is making things worse now than they would have been if the Russian dictator had not invaded Ukraine, but Bidenflation was already in full swing well before the invasion.


	“The 12-month increase has been&nbsp;steadily&nbsp;rising and is now the largest since the period ending January 1982,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted. (Emphasis added)


	Indeed, the consumer price index rose 4.2 percent from April 2020&nbsp; (the month after the passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion so-called “COVID relief” spending package) to April 2021. The CPI continued its steep climb thereafter. For example, it rose 5.4 percent for the year ending in September 2021. The CPI spiked further to 6.8 percent from November 2020 to November 2021, 7 percent from December 2020 to December 2021, and 7.5% from January 2021 to January 2022.


	President Biden was especially emphatic during his March 11th&nbsp;remarks to the House Democratic caucus conference that he had absolutely nothing to do with the rise in gasoline prices. “It wasn’t anything we did,” Biden exclaimed.&nbsp;&nbsp;He cited the leftwing New York Times and Washington Post to support his denial of any responsibility for the shockingly high gasoline prices at the pump.


	The gasoline price index did rise 6.6 percent in February 2022, according to the BLS. But the price index for gasoline rose 38.0 percent over the last year from February 2021 to February 2022. This means that more than 80 percent of the surge in retail gasoline prices during the last year occurred prior to February 2022 - the month when Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th.


	Looking back at 2021, the average U.S. retail gasoline price began the year at $2.25 per gallon. By midway through 2021 – months before Putin had gathered 150,000 troops on the Ukrainian border - the retail price for a gallon of gas had risen to $2.97 a gallon. Americans were already paying on average 32 percent more for gasoline to fill their tanks than they had just six months earlier before President Biden took office.


	The average U.S. retail gasoline price per gallon was $3.28 by the end of 2021 -&nbsp;&nbsp;nearly two months before Putin invaded Ukraine. Americans were paying on average $1.03 more for a gallon of gas at the end of 2021 than they had been paying at the start of 2021 - a whopping 45 percent increase.&nbsp;


	A large reason for this increase, according to the U.S. energy Information Agency, was the steep rise in the price of crude oil.&nbsp;&nbsp;The average price of one barrel of Brent crude oil in January 2021 was $54.77. By the end of 2021, the average price for one barrel of Brent crude oil was $74.17 – a 35 percent increase overall for the year.


	As tensions began to mount over the Ukraine crisis in January 2022, the average price of one barrel of Brent crude oil rose to $86.51, and then to $97 per barrel in February 2022. The retail price for a gallon of gas in turn rose to about $3.46 on January 31, 2022, and to about $3.70 on February 28, 2022.


	Putin’s military buildup and subsequent invasion of Ukraine have undoubtedly helped to accelerate the rise in crude oil and retail gasoline prices since the start of 2022. However, the Biden administration’s simplistic “#PutinPriceHike” hashtag is meant to divert attention from the significant Biden price hikes that have already been baked into oil and gas prices due to the U.S. president’s own policy failures.


	President Biden’s other culprit for the high price of gasoline besides Putin is the domestic oil and gas industry. He claimed that there is nothing stopping them from producing more fossil fuel but their own inaction and greed.


	Biden claimed that “the oil companies and executives, they don’t want to pump more oil, although they have every capacity to do so.&nbsp;&nbsp;Nothing is slowing them up from doing it if they want to.”


	Then President Biden accused U.S. oil producers of deliberately holding back from producing more oil in order to wring more profits from high gasoline prices. He said that instead of using their profits from the increased prices to invest in pumping new oil in the United States “they would rather take those profits and buy back stock…&nbsp;So don’t tell me gas prices rose because I’ve slowed down the American energy production.”


	That is exactly what many Americans are telling you, Mr. President. You have done everything that you can, by word and by deed, to disincentivize the fossil fuel industry from drilling for and producing more oil.


	“We are going to get rid of fossil fuels,” Biden said back in February 2020, for example, while he was trying to demonstrate his progressive credentials during the Democratic presidential primary campaign.


	Here is what Biden told his campaign supporters in New Hampshire what he thought should happen to fossil fuel executives for polluting the environment: “We should put them in jail. I'm not joking about this.”


	On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order cancelling the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels per day of oil from Canada to the United States. Biden’s move eliminated more than 10,000 jobs and stranded over $1 billion dollars of investment. No big deal, according to Biden’s climate czar John Kerry. The laid-off workers “can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels,” Kerry said.


	President Biden claimed that the Keystone XL Pipeline was two years away from being competed when he cancelled the permit, arguing that his decision had no effect on current gasoline prices. But oil investors saw what Biden had done and bet correctly on future oil shortages and increasing fuel prices, which became self-fulfilling prophecies. The same was true with Biden’s freezing of leases for drilling on federal lands and waters.


	President Biden said that oil executives already have over 7000 permits to drill oil if their companies wish to do so. His Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed there are about 9,000 unused oil drilling permits. But with the Biden administration’s open hostility to the fossil fuel industry, including its stifling regulations and lease suspensions, potential investors are nervous. High prices today are not enough to attract the amount of forward-looking capital investments necessary to finance expensive exploration, drilling, transport, and refinement of oil even from lands for which federal permits have been issued.


	Moreover, the Biden administration is discouraging financial institutions from investing capital in the fossil fuel industry. The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), led by President Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, issued a report last October that "[v]iews climate-related financial risks as an emerging threat to the financial stability of the United States." A White House report also released last October concluded that "U.S. financial markets and institutions face systemic risks from climate change."


	The Biden administration is aiming to phase out the production and use of fossil fuels as soon as possible and switch over to renewable energy. Labeling climate change as a “systemic risk” to financial institutions is the pretext for imposing more stringent regulations on financial institutions’ investments in any industries connected to fossil fuels.&nbsp;The regulations could range anywhere from requiring detailed calculations and disclosures of all adverse effects the investments might possibly have on climate change to outright curtailments of such investments.&nbsp;


	Energy Workforce and Technology Council CEO Leslie Beyer summed up the plight that the Biden administration’s hostility has created for the energy industry. "The moratorium on leasing certainly adds an additional… block to American energy production, so that is the opposite of what we need to be doing right now," she said. "We need to stop the rhetoric that's anti-fossil fuel and we need some clarity just in the regulatory sense that this administration is behind domestic energy production."


	President Biden should stop using Putin, COVID-19, supply chain problems, and fossil fuel executives as red herrings. He should stop disseminating disinformation to divert attention from his&nbsp;&nbsp;administration’s own failed policies that are largely responsible for&nbsp;the months-old soaring inflation wreaking havoc on the lives of everyday Americans. It is about time that President Biden and his senior administration officials focused on trying to solve the real life problems of the American people, not making them worse.

Biden Blames Putin for Soaring Prices

Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for massacring innocent Ukrainians. Putin’s war machine is destroying civilian facilities and infrastructure in

President Joe Biden is on the verge of making another colossal foreign policy blunder. He wants to restore the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that the Obama-Biden administration had concluded in 2015, along with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China. Some of the same Obama-Biden administration players involved in the original negotiations, who strongly denounced former President Donald Trump’s wise decision to withdraw from their fatally flawed handiwork, are determined to bring it back to life.


	President Biden appears ready to make major concessions to Iran. For example, as reported by the&nbsp;<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fu-n-report-shows-iran-has-almost-enough-highly-enriched-uranium-for-a-nuclear-bomb-11646316141&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7C99e66f602b77467e643208da01492810%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637823710979539751%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=Tchn2amMa%2FpjfJFrsWk404FyUdqafQrqkLFVmmb%2F4X0%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a>, “Iran’s 'breakout time'—the duration needed to amass enough nuclear fuel [f]or a bomb—could be as little as six months,” under a restored deal as opposed to the JCPOA’s original twelve-month breakout time. As of mid-February, Iran had already amassed 33.2 kilograms of uranium material enriched to the 60 percent level, nearly double the amount it had in early November of last year.


	“Iran would need around 40 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium to produce enough weapons-grade nuclear fuel for a weapon,” the Wall Street Journal reported. This means that Iran already has about three-quarters of what it would require to advance quickly to weapon-grade 90% fuel for a nuclear bomb.


	Iran has put itself in the driver’s seat by plowing ahead to reach an incredibly short breakout time, enabling the regime to extort more concessions from the Biden administration. The war in Ukraine, which is destabilizing the global energy market, also provides the Iranian regime with a stronger bargaining position to achieve the maximum lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of Iran’s assets. The regime is counting on the West’s need for Iranian oil to make up for shortfalls from other oil producing countries.


	President Biden finally announced the cut-off of U.S. oil and gas imports from Russia on March 8th. But instead of reversing his war on fossil fuels policies that have stymied more drilling and production of oil in the energy-rich United States, the Biden administration already has its hand out to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for their oil to make up for the resulting shortfall. And the Biden administration has its eyes on Iran.


	Out of sheer desperation, the Biden administration appears ready to turn to Iran to add its own oil to the global oil supply. This means agreeing to a nuclear deal on Iran’s terms. It is a quick fix to show the American people that the Biden administration is taking action to reduce the price of gasoline that they are paying at the pump. Anything to avoid offending the climate change activists at home, which would happen if the administration were to do the sensible thing and remove barriers it has imposed against more domestic production of oil and gas.


	While trying to isolate Russia economically and diplomatically for its invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is negotiating alongside Russia (and China) to restore the JCPOA. Even worse, since Iran has refused to negotiate face-to-face with U.S. representatives, the Biden administration has outsourced the principal intermediary role to Russia.


	&nbsp;“Russia has been instrumental in shaping a compromise,”&nbsp;<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fworld%2Ffoes-over-ukraine-russia-western-unity-tested-iran-talks-2022-03-01%2F&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7C99e66f602b77467e643208da01492810%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637823710979539751%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=zOTbLq2007i4mO8G%2BqxhO8yBWajhHkWRm%2FYePhefdYU%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">Reuters has reported, based on information from diplomats.</a>


	If there is a deal, Iran will most likely ship its excess uranium over the agreed upon cap to none other than Russia as it did the last time around. Only this time, Iran would be doing so in concert with a country that has just brought the world perilously close to a nuclear catastrophe.


	When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on January 19th, Putin noted that the two regimes “closely cooperate in the international arena.”


	Raisi agreed. “We…have no restrictions on developing and expanding ties with friendly Russia and these ties will become strategic,” Raisi said.


	It did not take long for the Iranian regime to prove how strongly it continues to stand by Russia after Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine.


	A February 25th editorial in Keyhan, which serves as a mouthpiece for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,&nbsp;<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjcpa.org%2Farticle%2Firanian-regime-supports-putins-special-operation-in-ukraine%2F&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7C99e66f602b77467e643208da01492810%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637823710979695987%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=1a7hg94nX%2BWVReeNWXovZU8CMMcesCwT9qzeKyyekDU%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">stated, as quoted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs</a>:


	“Moscow had no other choice but to ensure the security of the people of Ukraine and prevent it being swallowed up by a dangerous (NATO) military bloc, and to send its troops across the border. With his blitzkrieg, President Putin delivered, in a brilliant diplomatic move, the message to the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, a Jewish comedian.”


	Khamenei said that the “mafia regime” of the U.S. has created multiple crises around the globe, including in Ukraine. He took the words right out of Putin’s mouth.


	Despite the close international cooperation between the Iranian and Russian regimes, the Biden administration does not seem too worried about the consequences of Russia’s leadership role in negotiating and implementing a restored JCPOA with the Iranian regime. A senior U.S. State Department official claimed that Russia and the United States share a common interest in reviving the JCPOA and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. The Biden administration believes that it can separate this common interest from the Ukrainian crisis where Russia and the West are at loggerheads.


	Not so.


	Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has parroted Putin’s outrageous claim that Russia is denazifying Ukraine, linked the sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine with the JCPOA negotiations.


	“We requested that our US colleagues… give us written guarantees at the minimum level of Secretary of State that the current [sanctions] process launched by the US will not in any way harm our right to free, fully-fledged trade and economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with Iran,” Lavrov said on Saturday.


	Russia is asking the United States to guarantee that the Ukraine-related sanctions will not get in the way of its “military-technical” cooperation with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism that is developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.


	The White House has been mum on exactly what concessions it is willing to offer to bring the JCPOA back to life. However, the Biden administration has already signaled it was prepared to lift sanctions across Iran’s economy, including its banking and energy sectors, and to unfreeze billions of dollars’ worth of oil revenues.


	Iranian leaders have demanded complete sanctions relief, including a huge portion upfront.


	"Our negotiators... do their best to ensure the nation's interests, and know that the final point is the lifting of all sanctions, especially on banking and trade," Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said at Friday prayers in Tehran. "If these sanctions are not lifted, it is as if there were no talks."


	What token gestures might Iran make in return at the outset of the revived deal? The regime may agree to permit the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to resume implementing a limited set of on-site inspection and verification mechanisms that will not include inspections of Iran’s military facilities.


	The regime may also agree to suspend right away its enrichment of uranium to the 60% level. It may “commit” to reduce its enrichment level further after all sanctions are lifted and Iran’s economy is back on track.


	As noted previously, Iran would most likely ship any excess uranium above a negotiated volume limit to its Russian friends. With Iran in Russia’s corner supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, does anybody seriously think that Russia will not help Iran cheat during this process and keep Iran’s stockpile in reserve to return to Iran upon its request? The Biden administration is so desperate for a deal that it may well look the other way and rely on the word of the butcher of Moscow who is massacring the Ukrainian people in the name of “liberating” them.


	The original JCPOA enrichment cap of 3.67% will probably not survive the current negotiations. Even when sanctions are lifted, and the JCPOA snaps back to life, Iran’s nuclear chief said that the regime intends to exceed the original 3.67% cap.


	"(Uranium) enrichment ... continues with a maximum ceiling of 60%, which led Westerners to rush to negotiations, and it will continue with the lifting of sanctions by both 20% and 5%," the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization,&nbsp;<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Fworld%2Fmiddle-east%2Fsenior-iran-cleric-demands-removal-banking-oil-sanctions-2022-02-25%2F&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7C99e66f602b77467e643208da01492810%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637823710979695987%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=6I5luF9SPxfguIapSiU6oLa99AqlaXcjb53RVBlyuU8%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">Mohammad Eslami, said</a>&nbsp;according to the semi-official news agency Fars.


	The sanctions relief concessions that the Biden administration ends up agreeing to may well extend beyond just the sanctions imposed on Iran relating to its nuclear activities. “Iran is demanding complete sanctions removal, including the elimination of human-rights or ballistic-missile-related sanctions that were exempted from the 2015 deal,” the&nbsp;<a href="https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Firan-nuclear-deal-explained-11610564572&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7C99e66f602b77467e643208da01492810%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637823710979695987%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=ssdyYXBN5UvxEMf42dAovWLh0EcjWlZxFwDgtybd%2Bkk%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank">Wall Street Journal</a>&nbsp;has reported.


	Iran is also demanding the lifting of sanctions directed at Iranian entities involved in the financing of terrorism. In fact, the Iranian regime is insisting on the removal of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliates, which have American blood on their hands, from the sanctions list.


	And let us not forget about the JCPOA’s “sunset” provisions. Unless there is a change to these provisions to push the “sunsets” further out in time, major restrictions on Iran’s nuclear-related activities will soon go away, starting in 2025. This means that the Iranian regime will have a clear path to develop and produce nuclear weapons suitable for mounting on its ballistic missiles.


	If an agreement is reached with Iran to restore the nuclear deal, there is no reason to expect the Biden administration to level with the American people about the concessions it had to make to close the deal. President Biden and his senior administration officials have a habit of making false statements to spin their disastrous policies.


	For example, during his announcement that the United States would no longer be importing any oil and gas from Russia, President Biden tried to give the impression that nothing was stopping the U.S. oil and gas companies from producing more fossil fuels except their own business decisions. He conveniently ignored all of the roadblocks and disincentives that his administration’s obsession with pushing the Green New Deal agenda have put in the way of more domestic drilling and production.


	Biden also claimed that U.S. oil production is now at an all-time high. This is totally false. The real annual all-time high was set in 2019 on former President Trump’s watch - 12.3 million barrels a day. By comparison, U.S. oil production averaged 11.19 million barrels a day in 2021.


	President Biden is willing to spread misinformation to the American people even on something that can be easily fact-checked. Why should anyone believe what he and his senior officials say to justify a revised JCPOA negotiated in desperation with the Iranian regime?


	The original nuclear deal with the Iranian regime was bad enough. The revived version is likely to be far worse, further cementing the close cooperation between two of the most repugnant regimes on the face of the earth that are enemies of the free world.

The Likely Return of the Disastrous Nuclear Deal with Iran

President Joe Biden is on the verge of making another colossal foreign policy blunder. He wants to restore the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran known as the

President Joe Biden delivered his first <a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fbriefing-room%2Fspeeches-remarks%2F2022%2F03%2F01%2Fremarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-as-delivered%2F&amp;data=04%7C01%7C%7Cac9060130b80471ff53408d9fca325d0%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637818599925806019%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=fYhgGh%2F5Rwhctb7f70iKjkLw5QYgzbuthyjqXVeZ0uI%3D&amp;reserved=0">State of the Union address</a> on March 1st.&nbsp; The president’s speech was filled with sound bites that could have been taken from focus groups and polls. Biden squandered a primetime opportunity to level with the American people about the abysmal state of the union that his progressive policies have brought about. He could have presented pragmatic proposals to turn things around. Instead, aside from sound bites presumably intended for the ears of Independents and Republicans, Biden praised his failed policies and offered a repackaging of more of the same.


	For example, President Biden said that “we need to secure the border and fix the immigration system.” Even Texas’s Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who was seen nodding off from boredom during the speech, stood up for that line. But Biden failed to acknowledge how his open border policies have blown a huge hole in border security. The president offered no real fixes that would reverse the record flood of illegal immigrants into the United States on his watch.


	President Biden tried rhetorically to distance himself from his radical base’s defund the police movement. “The answer is not to defund the police," he said. "The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.”


	This was a nice applause line except that the president did not dial back on his administration’s hostility to law enforcement. In fact, Biden’s Justice Department is hamstringing effective law enforcement with renewed investigations into a number of police agencies. It is seeking to force police departments to adopt self-defeating restrictions on how the police can keep people safe. Biden boasted about his Justice Department’s efforts to “hold law enforcement accountable.”


	Biden also had a chance to repudiate the Left’s no cash bail policies in Democrat-run cities across the country that have let loose violent criminals to terrorize innocent people on the streets. But he failed to do so.


	The president seemed to channel former President Donald Trump’s America First policies when he promoted “Made In America” products. Yet he failed to reverse his Green New Deal agenda that has returned America to energy dependence on oil imports from other countries, including Russia.


	Every single day that Biden has refused to cut off U.S. imports of oil from Russia has been another day in which Biden has helped to fund Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and his slaughter of Ukrainian civilians.


	Canada has announced an end to its imports of Russian oil. But not Biden.


	The president could have ordered the immediate permitting of leases to drill for oil and gas on federal lands with a stroke of the pen. This would unleash American energy reserves. But Biden hasn’t done so.


	The only measure that Biden announced during his State of the Union address to increase the U.S. oil supply is the release of 30 million barrels from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is in addition to another 30 million barrels of oil being released from other countries’ oil reserves. Oil prices rose further after Biden’s announcement.


	The release of more oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve could take at least 13 days to accomplish following a presidential order. Once this oil is released, it is estimated that it will meet Americans’ oil demands for just two or three days. Biden could have at least announced a federal gasoline tax holiday. But he did not.


	The president also could have ordered his Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to immediately cancel its recent climate change regulation. This regulation crimps the ability to build new American energy infrastructure facilities such as more ports for the export of liquefied natural gas to European countries that are still dependent on Russian natural gas. Biden didn’t do so.


	The president told the American people during his State of the Union address that “[I]nflation is robbing them of the gains they might otherwise feel.” But Biden's answer in his speech was to propose more wasteful government spending on top of the spend-and-borrow “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.”


	Biden is still pushing many elements of his stalled Build Back Better legislation without using the “Build Back Better” title. “I call it building a better America,” the president declared. More old wine in new bottles.


	Biden’s continuing war on fossil fuel has been a major contributor to the runaway inflation plaguing Americans today. He refuses to reverse course except to release enough barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to satisfy just a few days of Americans’ demands for oil. Last November, after Biden released 50 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve, the price of gasoline at the pump declined for just a short time before climbing again to its highest level in more than seven years in early February 2022. That was three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.


	Biden spent the first portion of his State of the Union address discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Six days ago, Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the foundations of the free world thinking he could make it bend to his menacing ways,” the president said. “But he badly miscalculated. He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead he met a wall of strength he never imagined. He met the Ukrainian people.”


	Biden praised Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and every Ukrainian for inspiring the world with “their fearlessness, their courage, their determination.”


	True enough. President Zelensky has demonstrated courageous leadership to the entire free world. But the man who is supposed to be the leader of the free world, the president of the United States, has failed to lead or to inspire with bold actions.


	The president has followed Europe’s leadership in sanctioning Putin and his family directly. He hesitated for too long to impose stringent sanctions on Russia’s banking system and to cut Russia’s financial institutions from the global SWIFT messaging system, which is still not a complete cut-off. The Biden administration has not yet imposed sanctions directly on Russia’s energy industry, which would choke off the Russian war machine’s main source of funding.


	Moreover, the Biden administration is reportedly not sharing real time battlefield intelligence and targeting information that the Ukrainian military could use to strike Russian forces in the air and on the ground in time to stop Russian offensive operations.


	On Wednesday, Biden told reporters that it was still too early to conclude that Putin’s regime has committed war crimes. Where has Biden been for the last 48 hours as Putin’s military dropped cluster bombs and fired rockets indiscriminately at civilian populations and infrastructure? Scores of Ukrainian civilians have been reportedly killed so far.&nbsp;


	The president concluded his State of the Union address with the standard invocation: “May God protect our troops.” But Biden tellingly omitted any salute to the 13 service members killed during his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, when he left behind American civilians, Afghan allies, and billions of dollars’ worth of sophisticated military equipment.


	There is a compelling explanation for this glaring omission. The Biden administration might have feared that any mention of Afghanistan in President Biden’s State of the Union address would remind Americans of how his administration’s reckless handling of the pullout from Afghanistan signaled weakness to America’s adversaries. In all likelihood this helped to set the stage for Putin’s decision to launch his invasion of Ukraine.


	The state of the union and the state of the world have gotten much worse since President Biden took office.

Sound Bites From a Failed State of the Union Address

President Joe Biden delivered his first State of the Union address on March 1st.&nbsp; The president’s speech was filled with sound bites that could have been

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday placed his military's <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-invasion-war-putin-nuclear-forces-high-alert/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024854000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0YiKI8hOczKV4RJlq8t3kb" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-invasion-war-putin-nuclear-forces-high-alert/" target="_blank">nuclear forces on high alert</a> - as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its fourth day.


	"Western countries aren't only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country," the Russian president said in a televised broadcast as he explained his rationale for the nuclear alert order.


	Meanwhile, President Joe Biden remained at his private residence in Delaware during the weekend. The U.S. president did not comment directly on Putin’s nuclear forces high alert order as of Sunday afternoon. He left it to White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other senior administration officials to respond. Psaki said that Putin was “manufacturing threats that don't exist in order to justify further aggression -- and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism."


	Russia’s military has stepped up its air bombardments across Ukraine this past weekend. The attacks included missile strikes against a burial point of radioactive waste, an oil depot, and a residential complex. Putin has also reportedly deployed at least two-thirds of the estimated 150,000 Russian troops, who had been assembled near the Ukrainian border, to invade Ukraine from multiple directions. In order to take control of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russia is massing more troops to lay siege to the city in preparation for a major assault inside Kyiv. Russia has also reportedly reinforced its military offensive capabilities with heavy weaponry capable of inflicting enormous casualties, including to civilians.


	As of Sunday evening, Russia had not yet achieved complete control over Ukraine's air space. The Ukrainians have continued to repel Russia’s persistent attempts to take over Kyiv, while bracing for a more massive attack, and have managed to hold on to other key cities as well. The longer it takes the Russian military to achieve Putin’s objectives, the more strain is being placed on Russia’s logistics supply lines.


	Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1497803817877913601?cxt%3DHHwWgoCyvd-ooskpAAAA&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0gjb1KfL-zkmxG-1ADIaAu" href="https://twitter.com/oleksiireznikov/status/1497803817877913601?cxt=HHwWgoCyvd-ooskpAAAA" target="_blank">tweeted</a> on Sunday how Ukrainians have resisted the Russian invasion and “confidently continue to fight with russian (sic) occupant!”


	The Russians have reportedly suffered thousands of casualties and the loss of multiple tanks and aircraft. Meanwhile, rather than sow disunity within NATO as Putin had most probably hoped, the Russian president's aggression has done the opposite. It has solidified the NATO alliance’s resolve to beef up its military presence in the East European member states neighboring Ukraine and to provide more military aid to Ukraine. Germany has announced that it will finally increase its defense spending to more than 2% of its economic output.


	Finland and Sweden have dismissed the Russian Foreign Ministry’s warning of “serious military-political consequences” if they were to join NATO.


	<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.axios.com/russian-troops-invade-ukraine-encircle-kyiv-9b4acc6a-1bb1-4862-8280-11b09471608e.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Ukm_9leyYJg5Ge6CkLaD7" href="https://www.axios.com/russian-troops-invade-ukraine-encircle-kyiv-9b4acc6a-1bb1-4862-8280-11b09471608e.html" target="_blank">Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to stay in Kyiv</a> with his people and turned down the Biden administration’s offer to help him evacuate Kyiv to avoid being killed or taken prisoner by the Russian invaders. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/UkrEmbLondon/status/1497506134692970499&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3xICKQF1BjlkCXQJ9Yqk9z" href="https://twitter.com/UkrEmbLondon/status/1497506134692970499" target="_blank">President Zelensky said</a>, as quoted by the Ukrainian embassy to the United Kingdom.


	While inspiring his people to continue their resistance, President Zelensky also said that he is still willing to pursue a diplomatic path. He agreed to a meeting between his delegation and a Russian delegation on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border “without preconditions” on Monday.


	More than two dozen countries, including the United States and other NATO members, announced that they planned to send military aid, including ammunition, anti-tank weapons and anti-air weapons, to the embattled Ukrainians, as well as medical supplies. Presumably, these materials will be transported by ground into the western portion of Ukraine from neighboring NATO countries, primarily Poland.


	Germany is finally reversing its long-standing position against the export of lethal weapons. The German government has decided to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger anti-aircraft defense systems to Ukraine and to authorize the Dutch to send Ukraine 400 German-made rocket-propelled grenade launchers.&nbsp;


	For its part, the Biden administration <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.state.gov/additional-military-assistance-for-ukraine/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0bgoRvQNHjueQLvUvDVShF" href="https://www.state.gov/additional-military-assistance-for-ukraine/" target="_blank">announced an additional allotment of $350 million</a> for “immediate support to Ukraine’s defense.” This package will include “further lethal defensive assistance to help Ukraine address the armored, airborne, and other threats it is now facing.” The Biden administration has also decided to seek $6.4 billion from Congress in additional funding to aid Ukraine as it tries to hang on. Such aid could well come far too late.


	The Biden administration continues to be reactive. Take the sanctions that President Biden has announced so far, for example.


	As <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/kremlin-invades-ukraine-joseph-klein/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw11XosnhgVwzrvnFQb1LGss" href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/kremlin-invades-ukraine-joseph-klein/" target="_blank">noted last week</a>, President Biden failed to include at least one of Russia’s largest banks in his first tranche of sanctions. Nor did his first tranche include export controls to cut off Russia from sophisticated technologies. These additional measures were not imposed until February 24th, when Biden <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/02/24/remarks-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0t1Ig0_KU5BXBHrsPObfvh" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/02/24/remarks-by-president-biden-on-russias-unprovoked-and-unjustified-attack-on-ukraine/" target="_blank">told reporters</a>: “They are profound sanctions. Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”


	Ukraine cannot afford the luxury of waiting a month or even a week to see whether the sanctions are working.


	Only after the European Union and the United Kingdom announced on February 25th that they were imposing sanctions directly on Putin and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did the Biden administration once again follow suit from behind.


	A day later, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada decided to <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/26/joint-statement-on-further-restrictive-economic-measures/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1Wr-s18BP9xlEK83A8ydgx" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/26/joint-statement-on-further-restrictive-economic-measures/" target="_blank">remove selected major Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT)</a> global bank messaging system. They are also “imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.”


	The impact on Russia and the global financial markets remains to be seen.


	China is straddling the fence, although leaning towards the Russian position. Chinese government leaders have not publicly condemned Putin’s invasion of a sovereign country, despite China’s long-standing policy of promoting national sovereignty and territorial integrity above all else. They blame the United States for provoking Russia.


	China abstained on a draft United Nations Security Council resolution relating to Ukraine presented by the United States on February 25th at an emergency session of the Security Council. The draft resolution condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called on Russia to withdraw its forces from the entire territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. Russia of course vetoed the resolution.


	On Sunday, the UN Security Council met again to consider a resolution calling for an Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly to address Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This resolution was approved. Russia voted against the resolution, but this time UN procedures precluded Russia from exercising its veto power to stop the Security Council's referral of the invasion to the General Assembly for discussion. China again abstained, along with India and the United Arab Emirates.


	China and Russia are joined at the hip economically, with China backing up the Russian economy with purchases of Russian oil at favorable prices. Nevertheless, there have been reports that China’s leadership behind the scenes is growing increasingly uneasy about how the invasion is going and has been privately urging Putin to seek a diplomatic solution.


	Putin decided to invade Ukraine with the knowledge that he had a stranglehold on energy resources needed by Western Europe and the United States. His grip would have been loosened considerably if President Biden had not proceeded to recklessly destroy America’s energy independence in service to the radical Left’s climate activist agenda. Instead, Putin felt he was holding a very strong hand because of U.S. and European dependence on his oil and natural gas. Moreover, the rising price of oil as a result of constricted supplies has enriched Putin and his war machine.


	The facts speak for themselves.


	Net crude oil imports rose by 19% in 2021. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) expects that net crude oil imports will increase again this year, making the United States a net importer of petroleum in 2022. U.S. oil imports from Russia have increased on average from 76,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2020 to 209,000 bpd in 2021.


	On his first day in office, President Biden canceled the XL Keystone Pipeline, which would have been capable of carrying 830,000 barrels of oil each day alone. But President Biden said no and has remained stubborn in his resistance to common sense, squandering some leverage to counter the ruthless Russian dictator.


	President Biden has also cut off oil and gas leases and exploration on federal lands and waters. As reported by the <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://New%2520York%2520Times&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3spBsTWWNx_iVH5Kqbtt3v" target="_blank">New York Times</a>, the Biden administration has frozen decisions about new federal oil and gas drilling. To date, Biden has not reversed this reckless decision in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on the global energy market.


	Moreover, the Biden administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has just recently issued sweeping new regulations, <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.eenews.net/articles/ferc-issues-historic-overhaul-of-pipeline-approvals/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1646107024855000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2K6Egs5DW0ibY9XVewuk9C" href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/ferc-issues-historic-overhaul-of-pipeline-approvals/" target="_blank">E&amp;E News reported</a>, “including a first-ever climate change threshold, upending decades of precedent for how major energy infrastructure is approved.”


	Green energy activists are ecstatic. But Americans paying higher prices for energy will suffer. So will Europeans who are highly dependent on Russian natural gas and need uninterrupted U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas more than ever if Putin decides to cut off Europe’s natural gas supply.


	President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry epitomizes the twisted priorities of an administration driven by the Green New Deal ideology. Just days before Russia had launched its invasion of Ukraine, Kerry expressed his concern that such an invasion would produce "massive emissions" with dangerous consequences for the world’s environment. Kerry was more worried about a blow to his radical green environmental agenda from a Russian invasion of Ukraine than the loss of life and possible destruction of a free people’s sovereign nation.


	Kerry worried that launching a war against Ukraine would draw Putin’s attention away from the impact of climate change on his own country. “And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate," Kerry said.&nbsp;


	In Kerry’s mind, there is hope that an evil bloodthirsty dictator willing to trample on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another country and murder civilians might be counted on to cooperate in fighting global warning.


	President Biden is still letting the progressive Left’s war on fossil fuel take precedence over releasing America’s vast energy supply to blunt the Russian dictator’s escalating war on Ukraine, which threatens to bleed beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Putin Places Russia’s Nuclear Forces on High Alert

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday placed his military's nuclear forces on high alert - as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its fourth day.


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