President Biden Signs Executive Order to Fund the Global Abortion Industry

by Stefano Gennarini, J.D.: WASHINGTON D.C., January 28 (C-Fam) President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to fund the global abortion industry.

President Biden signed an executive order rescinding the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy of his predecessor Donald J. Trump this afternoon, also known as the Mexico City Policy. The policy prevented foreign abortion industry groups from receiving U.S. global health and family planning assistance.

The order also directs the U.S. Secretary of State to “withdraw co-sponsorship and signature from the Geneva Consensus Declaration,” a declaration of 35 countries that abortion is not an international human right signed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in October 2020. And it restores funding to the UN Population Fund, an agency that promotes abortion and partners with China’s coercive family planning bureaucracy.

Biden’s order effectively forces U.S. taxpayers to fund abortion giants International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International and hundreds of foreign groups that perform and promote abortion across the developing world, including by lobbying to repeal protections for the unborn.

“These abortion industry giants shamefully push their radical agenda on deeply pro-life nations and cultures,” SBA-List Vice President for Communications Mallory Quigley told the Friday Fax.

Anu Kumar, the head of abortion industry leader IPAS called it “a major step to expanding access to abortion services overseas” in an Op-Ed in Ms., an online feminist magazine. IPAS specializes in providing abortion equipment and designing health systems to deliver abortion.

In a press release this morning, the White House announced that the order would protect and expand access to “comprehensive reproductive health care” and promote “sexual and reproductive health and rights” in the United States and globally. Both these terms are commonly used by the abortion industry in UN policies and programming to promote abortion.

Upon taking office, President Trump renamed, reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy to all global health including funding for HIV/AIDs.

The policy, first announced in 1984 by President Donald Reagan, forbids any group that performs or promotes abortion in family planning programs from receiving U.S. foreign assistance. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barak Obama rescinded the policy upon taking office.

President Donald J. Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy in his first full day in office. He also expanded the policy to cover all the roughly $9 billion in annual U.S. foreign assistance for health, in recognition of how abortion industry groups had diversified their sources of funding. Previously, the policy only covered $600 million of U.S. foreign assistance for family planning programs abroad.

President Trump’s policy was popular with the American people. According to a Marist Poll published yesterday, 77% of Americans either “oppose” or “strongly oppose” using tax dollars to support international abortion.

Trump’s policy was also overwhelmingly accepted by family planning and global health groups. Despite accusations that the policy disrupts access to family planning and global health, only eight of 1,340 prime grant recipients and 47 sub-recipients rejected the policy and declined U.S. funding according to official reviews of the policy carried out by the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. These included abortion giants International Planned Parenthood Federation, Marie Stopes International, and their affiliates.

Even without the Mexico City Policy, a federal law, known as the Helms Amendment, prohibits the use of U.S. funds to perform or promote abortion. But the law does not prevent abortion groups from receiving U.S. funds to provide health care and family planning.

The Executive Order signed today also directs the Secretary for Health and Human Services to review any pro-life regulation put in place by the Trump administration for Title X programs with a view to rescinding it.

*This article has been edited since publication to reflect the full contents of the executive order as published on the White House website.
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Stefano Gennarini is the Vice President for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam). He represents C-Fam at UN headquarters in New York and researches and writes on international law and policy for C-Fam, advising UN delegations and liaising with pro-family organization around the world. He also oversees the Edmund Burke Fellowship.

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Biden's Pro-Abortion Extremism

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Biden's Pro-Abortion Extremism
President Biden signed more executive orders today, this time rolling back a number of President Trump's pro-life policies. Biden is taking steps to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, and he is reversing the Mexico City Policy, which was one of the first pro-life actions taken by President Trump.

That means Joe Biden is committing your tax dollars to pay for abortions overseas, a radical position that very few Americans actually support.

According to a new Marist poll conducted for the Knights of Columbus, 77% of Americans, including 55% of Democrats, oppose U.S. tax dollars subsidizing abortions performed in other countries.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Biden's pro-abortion extremism this morning on the Senate floor, saying, "An administration that wanted to pursue unity might observe that 77% of Americans — including a majority of Democrats and 85% of independents — don't want taxpayer dollars to fund foreign abortions."

Biden's actions today are bad enough, but they are even more insulting coming just hours before the annual March for Life, which is tomorrow. This year's march was delayed because of the inauguration.

Knowing how important abortion is to the left-wing base, it is surprising that Biden didn't issue these orders sooner, unless the timing was deliberate. It hardly seems coincidental.

The Purge Continues
The San Francisco School Board voted this week to rename 44 schools that were named after famous Americans, including several founding fathers.

The names being purged from the schools include: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, Paul Revere and Roosevelt. Apparently the board isn't sure whether it's Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, but better to be safe than sorry, I suppose.

Never mind that the schools are still closed and there aren't any children in them to be offended (if they ever were). This decision is another sad example of the left's absurd priorities.

It's also outrageous. In its own way, it is in the same category as tearing down monuments to our founders. But it is also a symptom of a much bigger problem.

The erasing of Lincoln's name and Washington's name is a reflection of how they have been erased from textbooks. The school board is just doing the cleanup of the final stages of the left's dirty work.

They have already erased Washington, Lincoln and Revere from our children's hearts and turned them into villains. So it's only natural that they would then remove their names from our schools.

There's a reason young Americans today are the least patriotic generation in history. There's a reason why a young lady on the U.S. Women's Soccer team who did not kneel during the national anthem was attacked and shamed while the kneelers were praised.

By the way, Joe Biden made it clear that he stands (or kneels) with the left in this debate. What he said this week about America having never lived up to our ideals is exactly what the San Francisco School Board members said when they voted to purge Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln from school names.

And think about the incredible hubris here. No one will ever remember the names of these school board members who dare to pass judgment on the legacies of the truly incredible men who created this nation and contributed so much to its greatness.

But this didn't happen in a vacuum. The values that were in our schools for decades had to be purged first. So, the left kicked prayer out of the schools, and the Pledge of Allegiance soon followed.

When you remove the values of God and love of country, another set of values will replace it. Dr. James Dobson and I warned years ago that no society can have valueless schools. Something would fill the void.

Biden's War On American Energy
I want to briefly take you back a couple of months to the final presidential debate. Joe Biden insisted that he wouldn't ban fracking, even though he had in the past.

But President Trump kept pressing Biden, warning that he would destroy the American oil industry. To which Biden said, "I would transition from the oil industry, yes." That was an important and revealing moment, which takes us to where we are now.

Yesterday Biden signed another slew of executive orders to combat climate change. And what we're seeing now can only be described as an attack on the successful American energy industry.

Politico concluded that Biden is pushing "a much vaster climate plan than Obama ever attempted." His executive orders yesterday are a huge gift to Russia, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. And it will cost you more pain at the pump.

More Taxes Coming
Think gas prices are too low? Do you really want to pay more at the pump? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, you're in luck!

President Biden is taking immediate action to guarantee higher oil and gas prices by killing the Keystone pipeline and banning new oil leases.

But wait . . . There's more!

Pete Buttigieg, Biden's nominee to be secretary of transportation, wants to tax you for every mile you drive.

Go to grocery store, pay a mileage tax.

Drop your kids off at school (if their school is open), pay a mileage tax.

Commute to work (I hope it's a short one!), pay a mileage tax.

Travel several states for a vacation, pay a big mileage tax!

In all seriousness, folks, who voted for that?

Cheney's Challenge
Rep. Liz Cheney is facing a serious challenge back home. A new poll finds that 73% of Wyoming Republicans have an unfavorable view of Cheney after she joined Nancy Pelosi in voting to impeach President Trump.

In a head-to-head matchup against state Senator Anthony Bouchard, Cheney loses by more than 30 points.

The poll is a warning to the other nine House Republicans who joined Cheney in her betrayal.

With your support, we will do everything we can to make sure they are replaced with solid, unapologetic conservatives!
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Killing Jobs and Raising Energy Prices

by Arnold Ahlert: The Biden administration has plans for your gas tank, and you're not going to like it.

New Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has a dilemma: He can’t decide which method he prefers to use to take more of Americans’ hard-earned money and transfer it to government coffers.

One one hand, it seems the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, prefers a good old-fashioned tax increase on gasoline. “I think all options need to be on the table. The gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and it’s never been paid to inflation,” he stated during his Senate confirmation hearing last week. “And that’s one of the reasons why the current state of the Highway Trust Fund is there’s more going out than coming in. Up until now, that’s been addressed with general funding transfers. I don’t know whether Congress would want to continue doing that.”

Buttigieg also sees electric vehicles as a problem in that regard. “In the near term, we need a solution that can provide some predictability and sustainability,” he added. “In the long term, we need to bear in mind also that as vehicles become more efficient and as we pursue electrification, sooner or later there will be questions about whether the gas tax can be effective at all.”

Right now, the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, and the average of total state taxes is 29.8 cents per gallon. State gas taxes range from a high of 62.47 cents per gallon in California to a low of 13.77 cents per gallon in Alaska. The revenue goes into the Highway Trust Fund and pays for most of the government’s highway and mass transit spending.

Nonetheless, if the dynamic addressed by Buttigieg sounds familiar, it’s because increased taxes on cigarette smoking ultimately precipitated declines in smoking — and the revenue such taxes were supposed to generate. Thus, Buttigieg is on firm ground when he assumes greater electrification of vehicles will lead to declining gas tax revenues.

And that goes double if Americans are forbidden to drive fossil fuel-powered vehicles, period. Wholly irrespective of reality, many progressives believe technological progress can simply be mandated into existence by a specific date. Moreover, they’re willing to ignore the uncomfortable reality that mass production of electric vehicles may produce an ecological “cure” worse than the disease it is supposed to eradicate.

In short, “going green” may simply be imposed by hammering Americans into submission. Automotive expert Eric Peters warns that “by 2030 not much else that isn’t electric will be built,” and the few cars that aren’t “will have been driven off the roads entirely by regulatory fiat and extortionate/punitive gas and registration fees” by 2040.

Weirdly, a Buttigieg spokesman later walked the gas tax statement back, telling reporters a “variety of options need to be on the table to ensure we can invest in our highways and create jobs, but increasing the gas tax is not among them.”

So what’s the other alternative? Buttigieg is toying with the idea of taxing Americans for the number of miles they drive. “A lot has been suggested recently about the idea of vehicle-miles-traveled-based, so if we’re committed to the idea of user-pays, then part of how you might do that would be based on vehicle miles traveled [VMT],” he said. “But that raises, of course, concerns about privacy and there remains some technological questions too. These are examples of some of the things that could be part of the solution, but I know that’s going to have to be a conversation, not only in the administration, but with Congress too.”

Columnist Nicholas Ballasy explains what a VMT system is really all about: “To implement a VMT system, the federal government would likely have to establish a uniform in-car system for tracking the number of miles a driver travels similar to the EZ-Pass transponder that drivers put in their vehicles to pay tolls.”

In other words, under the auspices of “going green,” government would gain the power to track every vehicle in the nation in real time. And if Americans believe the data collected will be used solely to determine miles driven, they are incredibly naive. Data from electronic toll-collection systems have already been used in divorce and child-custody cases, and police have used data from car computers to solve crimes. Another layer of surveillance would be just the ticket for a Biden administration, a Democrat-controlled Congress, and an American Left in general with a demonstrated appetite for defining those who fail to fully embrace progressive dogma as “problematic” — at best — and potential domestic terrorists at worst.

Whatever revenues are generated, they are being touted as one of the streams used to fund the Biden administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Yet one suspects that, much like the Obama administration’s self-admitted sham known as the “shovel-ready” stimulus package, the funds generated here will be used to bail out blue-state budget profligacy, even in areas wholly unrelated to infrastructure.

The big picture? Under the banner of “zero emissions,” by a fixed date, wholly irrespective of whether or not viable alternatives exist, Americans should be prepared to endure all the costly permutations associated with the Democrats’ determination to wean the nation off fossil fuels. Via executive orders, Biden has already placed a 60-day moratorium on new oil and gas leases on public lands that will likely become permanent, reversed the rollbacks on vehicle emissions standards, canceled the Keystone pipeline project, and reestablished a working group to calculate the “social costs” associated with greenhouse gasses.

Maybe it would be a better idea to calculate the job losses such policies will engender. Canceling Keystone eliminated 11,000 jobs directly and as many as 60,000 more indirectly. If the moratorium on oil and gas leases becomes permanent, another one million jobs will be vaporized.

And it all comes courtesy of an administration whose campaign slogan was “Build Back Better.”

Reality check: “We’ve got guys that haven’t worked in months, and in some cases years, and to have a project of this magnitude canceled, it’s going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of communities,” stated welding foreman Neal Crabtree, in reference to Keystone’s cancellation.

Buttigieg insists people like Crabtree will “continue to be employed in good-paying union jobs, even if they might be different ones.”

And climate czar John Kerry says these folks can “go to work to make the solar panels.”

Crabtree wasn’t buying it. “I don’t consider this a job, I consider it a career,” he said in response. “You spend a lifetime fine-tuning your skills and if you go start another job you’re starting at the bottom. I doubt that these politicians would like it if someone told them to go start over and find a different job.”

In reality, members of our political class don’t give a damn. As far as they’re concerned, everyone laid off as a result of their environmental extremism can “learn to code.”

Higher gas and energy prices? Suck it up to save the planet — serfs.
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Arnold Ahlert writes for The Patriot Post.

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More Trump-declassified docs show a dark FBI

Mike Huckabee: Yesterday, we played “remember when” with the FBI’s opening of their investigation into Trump, supposedly on allegations of “obstruction justice” for firing Director James Comey. As newly declassified documents show, the FBI knew when they opened that investigation that top officials at the DOJ had already been talking about firing Comey for months. (Who DIDN’T want to fire Comey?) And this had nothing to do with “Russia Russia Russia.”

Here's another installment from the documents declassified by Trump, this time about Michael Flynn. As you'll see, the Flynn story is quite consistent with what the FBI and other government agencies appear to have in store for anyone who dares to criticize the Biden administration or pose any challenge to its power. Let’s take a look at what Chuck Ross at the DAILY CALLER has found.

Remember when Michael Flynn was plagued with rumors that he'd been having an affair with a Russian woman named Svetlana Lokhova, a researcher at the University of Cambridge? Reports started surfacing in March of 2017, in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and THE GUARDIAN, and Christopher Steele spread the rumor as well, telling David Kramer, a former State Department official, who, as it happens, was also the person who later passed a copy of Steele’s “dossier” to BUZZFEED, where it was published in full with no verification.

Flynn, it was said, left with Lokhova from a dinner both had been invited to at Cambridge when he was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in 2015. That dinner, hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of British spy organization MI-6 and associate of “confidential human source” Stefan Halper, may very well have been set up to place Flynn and Lokhova together. Recall that Obama opposed Flynn and his ideas on how to run military intel and wanted him gone.

Lokhova has vehemently denied that she left the dinner with Flynn, saying her husband picked her up at the end of the evening and that there was nothing between her and Flynn. (Though Ross’s piece doesn’t mention this, I believe she also sued those who were perpetuating the rumor.)

We talked about this many months ago as part of what Lee Smith reported in his outstanding book THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT. One might also say this was the plot against Michael Flynn, too.

The newly declassified summary notes of Flynn’s meeting with the special counsel’s office show for the first time that Flynn was asked about this and cooperated fully, saying the allegations he’d read in the media were “ridiculous.” (There has never been any evidence of a relationship between Flynn and Lokhova.) Two days after this interview, he struck his unfortunate plea deal with the special counsel’s office.

William Barnett, the FBI agent investigating Flynn as part of Crossfire Hurricane, had already said in a January 2017 memo that a tip the Bureau received from an FBI informant about Flynn leaving that event with a Russian national was likely inaccurate. And in September 2020, he told a federal prosecutor that he’d found the allegation of Flynn leaving the event with Lokhova to be “not plausible.”

So, who put the fake story out there? It’s like an Agatha Christie murder mystery --- without the murder, except to the reputations of a couple of people. Was it Sir Richard Dearlove? Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew? One of the few Cambridge students in attendance? Or was it Stefan Halper, a close associate of Dearlove who was not at the dinner but who had been a CHS (“confidential human source”) for the FBI since 2008 and whom we know provided information to the FBI as part of their investigation of the Trump campaign?

Recall that Halper met with George Papadopoulos, Carter Page and Sam Clovis of the Trump campaign and secretly recorded them all.

If I were a betting man, my money would be on Halper. Sure enough, we now know it was Halper who invited Lokhova to that dinner. Also, according to other documents that have just been declassified, Halper told his FBI handler Steven Somma about Flynn and “someone he deemed to be suspicious.” Here’s a little refresher on Somma, also known as “Case Agent 1.”

Flynn was definitely caught in the crossfire of Crossfire Hurricane. According to the DOJ inspector general’s report dated December 19, 2019, FBI agents who met with Christopher Steele on October 3, 2916, offered to pay him “significantly” to dig up dirt on several Trump associates, including Flynn. What a deal for Steele --- he got to go after Trump, whom he couldn’t stand, help Hillary beat him, and get paid “significantly” in the process. Here’s a refresher .

No, we still don’t know what U.S. Attorney John Durham is going to do with any of this. And we’re now stuck with a Biden Justice Department, so justice seems unlikely. But thanks to Trump finally getting this stuff out, we’re filling in the holes and confirming what we knew was done to the President and fine people like Michael Flynn. Sorry to say, the intel community really does have “six ways from Sunday” of getting back at you.

And as part of the new Biden administration, it’ll be on steroids. Look at what the FBI has done already, drumming up phony concern about a small group of extremists called QAnon, which most Republicans (including us) had never even heard of, and also throwing the book at social media influencer and “meme”-creator Doug Mackey (a.k.a. Ricky Vaughn) on charges of INTERFERING WITH THE 2020 ELECTION. (He faces 10 years; check out his story elsewhere in today’s newsletter.) The irony of the FBI going after anyone for “election interference” after what they did both before and after the 2016 election is beyond calculation.

The Department of Homeland Security has focused on Trump supporters, too, offering this warning: "Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence."

Not that they have evidence of this actually happening THAT THEY HAVE REVEALED. But, as we've seen with the case of Michael Flynn, they're perfectly capable of creating their own "false narratives."
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Mike Huckabee was a governor of Arkansas and a signatory to the Right on Crime Statement of Principles. He is a popular commentator and entertainer. You can reach Governor Huckabee through MikeHuckabee.com

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Biden Stiffs The Pope

by Bill Donohue: On November 12, Pope Francis called President-elect Joe Biden to congratulate him on his electoral victory. He surely thought that the incoming president would make Catholics proud to have one of their own in the White House. One wonders what the Holy Father now thinks of Biden.

On January 28, the White House announced that Biden will issue an executive order that rescinds the Mexico City Policy, the rule that bars U.S. foreign aid to international non-profit organizations that provide for abortion or abortion counseling. This policy was first implemented by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been revoked or reinstated by Democratic and Republican administrations, respectively, since that time.

Biden will also ask the Department of Health and Human Services to begin the process of rescinding the Trump administration’s Title X family planning rule; among other things, it denies funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortion mills.

This is not the first time that Biden has departed from Church teachings on life. On January 22, the 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris heralded the ruling, saying they were “committed to codifying Roe v. Wade.”

In response, Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee (USCCB) on Pro-Life Activities, said, “It is deeply disturbing and tragic that any President would praise and commit to codifying a Supreme Court ruling that denies unborn children their most basic human and civil right, the right to life, under the euphemistic disguise of health services.”

Biden has a real problem with the most basic moral teachings of his professed religion.

On January 20th, his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order allowing males who claim to be female the right to compete with females in high school and college sports; they can also use the same shower facilities.

The chairman of five bishops’ committees, led by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Religious Liberty, responded by saying this decision “threatens to infringe the rights of people who recognize the truth of sexual differences or who uphold the institution of lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.”

A few days later, Biden issued an executive order repealing President Trump’s ban on transgender persons from serving in the military. He provided no evidence that women who claim to be male will have no effect on real men in their living arrangements and daily operations.

According to Pope Francis, Biden’s policies on transgender persons are not simply in violation of Church teachings—they are the work of Satan. “Gender ideology is demonic!” The pope made that remark to emphasize that gender theory fails to recognize “the order of creation.” Indeed, he even went so far as to say that “gender ideology” was reminiscent of “the educational policies of Hitler.”

Biden’s choice of January 28 to announce his pro-abortion executive orders makes him look like a rogue Catholic. This day marks the National Prayer Vigil for Life. This USCCB event will take place at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.

On Biden’s first day in office, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked by a reporter for EWTN about the president’s plans to overturn the pro-life policies of his predecessor. “I will take the opportunity to remind all of you that he is a devout Catholic.”

Looks like this “devout Catholic” has no problem stiffing the pope.
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Bill Donohue writes for Catholic League.

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What A Knockout

Biden’s executive order on transgender athletic rights threatens women’s athletics in general.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Front Guy

Biden is nothing but a mouthpiece for the radical left. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in America anymore.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony Branco

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Boozman, Cotton Join Effort to Defend Rule Protecting Arkansas Farmers and Landowners

Trump Administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule Needs to Stay, Senators Say WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators John Boozman (R-AR) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) joined a Senate resolution expressing the need for the U.S. Senate to stand with farmers, ranchers, landowners and businesses by upholding the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection rule, which replaced the controversial and burdensome Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.

“I fought the Obama administration’s overreaching WOTUS rule and worked to overturn it. It gave the federal government the authority to control virtually every ditch, pond and puddle on private land in Arkansas, creating uncertainty and raising concerns about inconsistent implementation among family farms, homeowners and small businesses. Arkansans have a vested interest in preserving our land and ensuring clean water, so the Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection rule was welcome relief given that it follows the Congressional intent of the Clean Water Act and trusts states and local governments to protect waters within their jurisdiction. I’ve joined my colleagues to tell the Biden administration to maintain this rule, in this form, to give confidence to Arkansans and all Americans that another federal power-grab is not forthcoming,” Boozman said.

“The Navigable Water Protection rule preserves our waterways while respecting the livelihoods of farmers and the rights of private landowners. They can’t afford a return to the heavy-handed WOTUS rule of the Obama-era—and we won’t allow it. If the Biden administration wants to protect clean water and America’s agriculture producers, it should let the Navigable Water Protection Rule stand,” Cotton said.

Boozman and Cotton joined 23 of their colleagues in this resolution, led by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA), including Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), John Hoeven (R-ND), Mike Rounds (R-SD), James Risch (R-ID), John Barasso (R-WY), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve Daines (R-MT), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Mike Braun (R-IN) and Ron Johnson (R-WI).

Background:
In 2015, the Obama administration finalized a rule that expanded the definition of the Waters of the United States—giving the federal government authority to regulate almost all of the water in Arkansas—and created confusion and burdensome red tape for Arkansas’s agriculture industry, private landowners and businesses. Before the rule was even finalized, Boozman called on the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to abandon the rule and introduced legislation to halt it. He also led efforts to nullify the rule through the Congressional Review Act.

Boozman praised the Trump administration upon its announcement that it was dismantling WOTUS and would work to fashion a new regulation that clearly defines the difference between federally protected and state protected wetlands by creating four clear categories of waters that are federally regulated under the Clean Water Act. The new Navigable Waters Protection rule was finalized last year.

Last week, on day one of his administration, President Biden signed an executive order that would roll back the Trump administration’s executive order which began the process of replacing Obama’s WOTUS rule.

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Senator John Boozman (R-AR) and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) shared this article.

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No More Hard Questions: Biden Team Considers Banning Conservative Media from Press Briefings

by Jim Hoft: In January 2017 the Gateway Pundit announced we would be represented in the Trump White House with a reporter at the daily briefings.

The liberals did not take the news well and our reporter Lucian Wintrich was attacked nearly every day he set his foot into the press room. Lucian was even accosted and harassed at one point by the vicious reporter-activists in the room.

It was clear during the Trump years that the media’s goal was to smear President Trump and ignore his successes. They were threatened by any real news outlet. It is not a surprise that today the media is not trusted and despised by a significant segment of the population.

Maybe it’s all the lying?

Via Big League Politics:President Joe Biden’s press team may move to restrict the briefings held at the White House to liberal mainstream media outlets, if language from the new President’s deputy press secretary if more than just talk.

“Organizations or individuals who traffic in conspiracy theories, propaganda and lies to spread disinformation will not be tolerated,” TJ Ducklo, Biden’s deputy press secretary, said in a statement to Politico, “and we’ll work with the WHCA to decide how to handle those instances moving forward.”

Given liberal media figures’ extremely wide-ranging definition of “disinformation,” it appears possible to likely that any journalist or reporter who is critical of Biden policies “will not be tolerated” at the White House.Of course, it should be noted that anything to the right of Joseph Stalin is considered “conspiracy” by today’s far-left gatekeepers.

Questioning climate science, reporting on election fraud, or exposing flawed COVID science will get you banned and silenced by the elites.
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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit.

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Diners’ Rebellion

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Italy was hit hard by COVID-19, and harder by the lockdowns.

The lockdown idea — with which we are more than familiar in America — rests upon the notion that the best way to fight a new contagion is to rob it of hosts, and the best way to do that is to enforce anti-social edicts, forbidding normal human interaction thereby (the rationale goes) limiting spread of the disease.

But Italians are not, say, Scandinavians. While folks up north (and in much of America) tend to maintain a more extensive baseline social distance, by custom enforcing a fairly wide personal space, in Italy folks tend to be much more hands-on, requiring close human contact for everyday happiness. So even had lockdowns worked, they would have been traumatic. But lockdown results have been dubious at best.

So Italians are rebelling.

Specifically, restaurateurs.

And their patrons.

“Thousands of restaurants have opened in Italy in defiance of the country’s strict Chinese coronavirus lockdown regulations,” we read at Breitbart. “The mass civil disobedience campaign — launched under the hashtag #IoApro (#IOpen) — has seen as many as 50,000 restaurants opening despite evening curfew restrictions.”

My favorite video has diners in Bologna shouting police out of an illegally open restaurant with chants of “Libertà!”

News outfits in America do not appear to be giving much attention to the anti-lockdown movement in Italy — or elsewhere in Europe. It is almost as if the story does not fit The Narrative, which (do I have this right?) has Europeans more accepting of government paternalism, leaving Americans as the more uncooperative, unruly individualists to be controlled by a browbeating press.

But lockdown protests here are nothing like that in Europe.

Makes me a bit sad for America, actually.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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Biden Signals Pivot Back To China With Controversial National Security Council Pick

by Robert Romano: President Joe Biden is signaling a pivot back to China with his most recent choice to sit on the National Security Council, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell.

Campbell wrote the book, “The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia,” where he argued, “While the Asian Century detoured to the Middle East in the years following the September 11 attacks… the United States has led a ‘Pivot’ (or ‘rebalancing,’ as many prefer) of American diplomacy toward the nuanced yet demanding tasks of engaging a rising Asia. The Pivot is premised on the idea that the Asia-Pacific region not only increasingly defines global power and commerce, but also welcomes U.S. leadership and rewards U.S. engagement with positive returns on political, economic, and military investments.”

In it, Campbell advanced two arguments: “First, that Asia should be placed more centrally in the formulation and execution of American foreign policy” because it often “played a secondary role behind more pressing global or regional concerns in Europe during the Cold War and the Middle East during the war on terror.” And: “the United States should pursue a comprehensive and flexible strategy in Asia… [that] will require that we move away from the kind of ‘China first’ or ‘G-2’ approach that has often dominated U.S. policy toward Asia and will instead involve embedding China strategy in a larger regional framework, one that advances relations with countries across the region, including China.”

Remarkably, Campbell downplayed the possibility of Chinese hegemony in Asia: “Although China stands tallest in Asia as the region’s largest economy, its growth is slowing even as other major powers, such as India, are surging forward. Looking out into the period ahead, it seems premature to conclude that Asia will fall under inevitable Chinese dominance…” instead arguing for an “unsteady balance of power” in the region as an objective and likely outcome.

He wrote that in 2016. And so, let’s see how things played out. China is once again growing faster than India, according to World Bank data. It has broken the 1984 Sino-British Declaration treaty to keep Hong Kong autonomous until 2047 with its new national security law. It still has not been fully transparent about the origins of the Covid pandemic that was unleashed upon the world in 2020. And it just repeatedly breached Taiwanese airspace to test the new American President Biden.

In his book, Campbell also argued in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and more broadly in favor of trade liberalization, which as a part of economic ties he called a “significant component of the Pivot”. And so, immediately, Campbell will be one of the leaders in a host of advisors who will be urging Biden to finish what former President Barack Obama started with the TPP.

In November, Campbell delivered a speech at the China Development Forum calling for “on China, more directly, there is recognition about rebuilding the bilateral institutions… [and a] need to focus on mechanisms that can prevent and deal with unintended crises or escalation”.

Campbell pointed to trade as a missing element of the Biden plan: “The key here, the missing piece, is what is going to be the trade strategy. There is a need — a desire — across the region to see a coherent approach. And I believe that the Biden administration will place that out more generally.”

While Campbell’s interest and renewing American attention toward Asia is certainly welcome, building on former President Trump’s focus on the region, downplaying the threat posed by China is not the situation we find ourselves in, nor is reopening the TPP appear to even be on the same page with President Biden.

On Dec. 2, 2020, Biden told Thomas Friedman in an interview, “I’m not going to enter any new trade agreement with anybody until we have made major investments here at home and in our workers,” an apparent reference to restoring the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

And on the 25 percent tariff on $250 billion of goods and 7.5 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion of goods that was levied by former President Donald Trump, Biden said: “I’m not going to make any immediate moves, and the same applies to the tariffs. I’m not going to prejudice my options.”

Finally, Campbell was until Aug. 2020 vice chairman of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation that partnered with Chinese government-led Confucius Institutes at American universities for ostensible cultural exchanges. It also led efforts under the Obama administration to send U.S. students abroad to China and to study Mandarin.

The same month Campbell left the foundation, the State Department labeled the Confucius Institutes to be a foreign mission of the Chinese government: “Today, the Department of State designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission of the PRC, recognizing CIUS for what it is: an entity advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign on U.S. campuses and K-12 classrooms. Confucius Institutes are funded by the PRC and part of the Chinese Communist Party’s global influence and propaganda apparatus.”

Under 22 USC § 4302(a)(3), a foreign mission is “any mission to or agency or entity in the United States which is involved in the diplomatic, consular, or other activities of, or which is substantially owned or effectively controlled by… a foreign government…”

Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, told the Washington Free Beacon that the U.S.-China Strong Foundation could be a Chinese Communist Party front group: “The indicators suggest that the U.S.-China Strong Foundation could be a [Chinese Communist Party] front group, or so heavily influenced by the CCP as to be tantamount to a front group,” said Anders Corr, an intelligence analyst and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk.”

As reported by the Beacon, “In August 2017, the U.S.-China Strong Foundation appeared to celebrate the founding of the People’s Liberation Army on its Twitter account, writing, ‘Today is the 90th anniversary of the founding of China’s PLA!’ and urging followers to read about a commemorating address by President Xi. The group also posted multiple favorable Twitter messages about China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure program that U.S. officials have decried as a national security risk.”

So, one of President Biden’s top advisors on Asia and China, reporting to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, appears to be a China dove whose organization was partnering with what turns out was a Chinese foreign mission and who thinks it is unlikely for Beijing to seek regional hegemony in Asia despite all evidence to the contrary. Does President Biden agree? ------------------------
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

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A Stolen Country - Part 2

John Velisek

by John Velisek: The country is under a once distant threat that is bullying its way through our culture. Big Government, Big Tech, academia, and entertainment are the four pillars that are destroying our countries foundations. Hell-bent on the destruction of our basic liberties, the progressive socialists, are following the blueprints of the one-time Soviet Union, Venezuela, and other regimes of the past.

Part of this blueprint is the canceling of our fundamental liberties. The Chinese virus is but the start of this tyranny. Following the rigged election of China Joe Biden, we are now hearing for the leftists a call for revenge. In academia, professors of public policy at Duke Bill Adair, also the founder of the far-leftist Politifact, and Philip Napoli have argued that there is a need for the government to decide what speech will be permitted. In their ivory tower, the poor snowflakes can not accept that there may be someone with ideas different from what they believe. They can' handle disagreement but opt for the censorship of those they feel are below the.

In their world, the citizens cannot decide because they have believed all the lies fed to them by the opposition. They do not understand that facts matter and millions of people have decided to stop drinking the progressive socialist Kool-Aid and have started to think for themselves. Lied to by the leftist political officials within our midst and talking heads of television, the American people have seen the truth and will resist the temptation to allow our government officials to continue their run to the control of every aspect of our lives.

Big Tech and media's crushing censorship will not change the facts and will not distort the truth. The American people will see through the lies and misinformation. The next step, which is just beginning, is the cancel culture of destroying the livelihoods and families of those who disagree. Big government is taking a more active role in the misinformation campaign and the politics of personal destruction. Moving at breakneck speed to further totalitarianism, the leftists call for a government-run by leftists and anarchists to further dictate what is or is not allowable speech.

Coupled with the liberal programs to revise our culture and history is persecution directed at the American liberty loving patriots. They are attempting to coerce the American patriots into bowing down and declaring our great country's history is evil. Tearing down our monuments and revising our history have taken hold because we have let our educational system flounder on the shoals of progressive socialism that had its start under FDR and Woodrow Wilson.

We are being told that if you believe in individual rights as enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, you must be a racist. The anarchists in the streets' sole purpose are the creative chaos and attempt to cause the patriots within our country, the majority. The progressive socialists hope that the disorder will cause behavioral changes in the psyche of the American patriots causing patriots to bend in their beliefs to the point where they give up and submit to the globalists' demands.

And make no mistake, the globalists, along with the factions within such as teachers unions and community activist groups that work to cause racial disharmony. Those in our government will never understand that the individual citizen is who built this country. Personal responsibility and rugged individualism are what this country was built on. Without personal responsibility, the anarchists and the enablers behind them cannot be held accountable. And without rugged individualism, how can the people stand up to the sorts of things we see today in the circus of politics that threatens to bring this country down.

It may take some time, but the American people will stand up to the intimidation and force used by Marxist forces such as BLM and the Democrat Party. Andrew Cuomo, New York Governor and nursing home murdered, even stated on air that nowhere does it say that protests should be peaceful. But Cuomo can't explain how riots, looting, and burning a citizen's business taking away their livelihood can lead to a fearful police department that runs over someone in a mob surrounding the police car. Even our fake vice-president Kamala Harris has said that riots should continue; she even helped the few arrested to make bail. But she can’t explain that the riots will find everyone, including those in the Capitol who rules the supposed little people from on high. Where the progressive socialists have gained a foothold, threats, violence, censorship, and chaos follow. What will these socialists say when the populace has had enough and start fighting back. They have nothing they can do but declare it an "insurrection.” It will be civil disobedience and the American people's triumph over the authoritarianism they, the progressive socialists, are trying to force upon us. Leading with the devices at their command in social engineering, political repression, and destroying the best economy before the pandemic will lead to the ultimate collapse that is part of the plan the progressive socialism. By the end of the Biden/Harris regime, our constitutional separation of power and fealty to freedom and fundamental equality will be gone. The replacement of the necessary foundation of our country will be tribalism and identity politics. The truth will be supplanted by the ideology of socialism, including mass censorship. Socialism will maintain the status quo of corporate oligarchies. It has been shown that even during the past socialist takeovers of democratic countries, the movement has been nothing more than a funded operation for the benefits of the elites in positions of power.

The mainstream media and the leftists are doing their best to make the "insurrection" a pivot point in the nation's psyche because of a national election that will not admit it was stolen. The mountains of evidence were not investigated or ruled on by ANY court. The challenges that did make it to the courts were dismissed on technicalities and procedural issues. The evidence has never been examined, and in the few cases that made it courts, was dismissed out of hand without any investigation. The MSM and leftists won't tell you this and refuse to allow anyone to question the election results. Why would they not let the citizens of a supposedly free country see the evidence and will enable us to decide for ourselves?

Is it because in the world of journalism of today, there can be actions to question or investigate any information that is not committed to "the Cause." The globalist elites who have decided that the peasants need to be led without their consent and forced to agree to limits on their liberty. They claim this suppression is a constitutional norm and that the lower class must comply. The globalists see themselves as figureheads meant to make declarations that the peasants will bow down to and follow unquestioningly. They have badly misinterpreted the American people's pulse and are ill-prepared to tamp down the citizen interaction.

The Biden administration is a coup, an open attack on our country to usurp our republic and culture.

In the word of George Washington:“The time is now near at hand which must properly determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves: whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to pillaged and destroyed; and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness.”What more can be done to the middle class? Caught between the globalists and the progressive socialists in our Congress and the radicalized mobs such as Antifa and BLM below them, what is left open to the middle class? And it appears that the mobs destroying our cities and attempting to intimidate our citizens do not understand that what they are doing is becoming an ally to the socialist left. It doesn’t matter that socialism has never worked; these thugs don't understand socialism. They have been brainwashed since earl yon through the leftists that indoctrinate them in our schools. Being told that in socialism, "the people" run everything and share equally, it will be a rude awakening when these mobs discover that the Insider elites in total control of consolidating and controlling the wealth.

Add to this the censorship, and cancel culture taken from the likes of the Soviet Union and understand that the anti-America cabal has plans to separate and chase the middle class hard working patriots from the forum of American politics.
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John C. Velisek, retired Navy, is a California conservative and contributing author to the ARRA News Service. You can follow John's work on @sjspecialist on Twitter, One Patriots Opinion on Facebook.

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Biden Appoints Anti-Israel BDS Activist to Head NSC Intel

by Daniel Greenfield: "Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?" an op-ed in the Washington Post had asked.

The group was the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a BDS anti-Israel hate group whose conferences had a history of antisemitism, supporting Hamas and the murder of Jews.

Maher Bitar, one of the executive board members of Students for Justice in Palestine, was one of the principal organizers of the 2006 conference which was being hosted by Georgetown University's SJP hate group. A photo appears to show him dancing in a keffiyah in front of a banner reading, “Divest from Israel Apartheid”.

Despite protests from Jewish groups, the Georgetown BDS conference went ahead

Now, Biden has picked Maher Bitar as the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC.

In 2006, the American Jewish Committee was pleading with Georgetown to distance itself from the anti-Israel hate of PSM and SJP. Now the anti-Israel hate occupies the top of the foreign policy establishment and is set to define the foreign policy of the Biden administration.

In his new position, the former anti-Israel activist will coordinate intelligence between the White House and the intelligence community, receiving material from intelligence agencies, informing the intelligence community of White House policy, and deciding who gets access to secret information. The office also contains some of the most classified information around.

The job of Senior Director for Intelligence at the National Security Council is supposed to go to an intelligence professional. How did an anti-Israel activist go from helping host a conference for an organization whose speakers have supported Islamic terrorism to a top intelligence job?

At the PSM conference in Georgetown, Bitar had run a session describing how to best demonize Israel. Next year, he facilitated a Palestinian Student Society summit addressed by Joseph Massad who had called Israel a "Jewish supremacist state" and praised terrorism.

Massad had also argued that the idea that "any manifestation of hatred against Jews in any geographic location on Earth and in any historical period is 'anti-Semitism' smacks of a gross misunderstanding of the European history of anti-Semitism."

A few years later, Bitar could be found presenting at a Sabeel conference featuring some of the worst bigots like Rebecca Vilkomerson of JVP ,who had invited a terrorist to address the BDS hate group, and Richard Falk, who had endorsed a book which wondered whether “Hitler might have been right after all”.

Maher Bitar went to work for UNRWA, interned at the misnamed and militantly anti-Israel

Foundation for Middle East Peace, and and studied at Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre, writing papers on the so-called 'Nakba' and on 'Palestinian' activism. He appeared to describe Israel’s security barrier as a “segregation wall”

Israel's "political existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian dispossession and statelessness," Bitar wrote in one paper. “Israel’s rejection of their right to return remains the main obstacle to finding a durable solution.”

The so-called ‘right to return’ would mean the destruction of Israel.

He helped assemble a BADIL publication: a BDS hate group which seeks to eliminate Israel through the ‘right of return’ and which has opposed bans on working with terrorists.

The issue in question denounced “Jewish colonization”

And yet before long, Bitar could be found working for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. From there he went on to serve as the NSC’s Director for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs and as Samantha Power’s Deputy at the UN. In under a decade, Bitar had gone from anti-Israel activism through the private network of BDS organizations to key positions shaping American intelligence and foreign policy at the National Security Council and the UN.

Even while Bitar was engaged in anti-Israel activism, he was also volunteering for the Obama campaign, and working for the UN. He started working for the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace as an extern while studying for his JD at Georgetown.

In 2016, Bitar came back to Georgetown to tell students that "those of you who might feel conflicted about or even disagree with American policy and want to change it" could do it.

When President Trump was elected, Bitar became the general counsel to House Intelligence Committee Democrats, serving as the top legal adviser to Rep. Adam Schiff and playing a key role in the first Democrat attempt to impeach President Trump. Now he’s back at the NSC.

Bitar’s rise through the ranks speaks to the abandonment of Israel by the Democrats and the ineptitude of pro-Israel advocates at fighting the personnel battles that define the government.

During the Obama administration, organizations that claimed to be advocating for Israel would come out to D.C. and take pride in receiving a personal briefing from Bitar about Israel’s security without having a clue about who Bitar was or how hard he must have been laughing at them.

Policy battles aren’t won at the executive level, but at the personnel level. The Left keeps winning policy battles even when moderates and conservatives win elections because it understands that having its people in a position to make policy matters more than elections.

Obama had put the author of "Ethnic Cleansing and the Falling Apart of Palestinian Society" in charge of the NSC desk on Israel. Biden put him in charge of NSC intelligence.

Israel will accordingly return to its old Obama understanding that it can no longer share the truly sensitive intelligence with its American counterparts because the NSC is once again tainted.

But the tainting of the NSC has larger implications that go far beyond Israel.

The Obama administration initially began spying on members of Congress who were speaking to Prime Minister Netanyahu after monitoring any effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program.

Pro-Israel legislators should once again expect to be spied on by the Biden administration.

The NSC was a key gateway for Obama’s surveillance of opposition politicians. Putting the right people in place at the NSC will be crucial to protecting the next wave of illegal surveillance.

And any effort by Israel to take out Iran’s nuclear program with its new Arab allies will be closely monitored and sabotaged by the Obama veterans who are back in charge of the NSC.

At the 2006 Georgetown anti-Israel conference, Bitar was advising attendees on how to infiltrate and blend in. Now that he has reached a career pinnacle at the NSC, he had the honor of being profiled by Politico as a “Palestinian”. But earlier versions of Bitar's story had him being "of Palestinian and Egyptian descent" and claiming "family roots [that] trace back to Palestine".

Bitar claimed that his family were “refugees”.

At the PSS summit, he described the group as those "who actively identify as Palestinian because of a shared national, historical, and cultural experience".

The dirty little secret of the ‘Palestinian’ myth is that its identity is imaginary.

The radicalism of the Democrats and their abandonment of the Jewish State however are all too real. That’s how Maher Bitar went from anti-Israel activism, from calling for the destruction of Israel, to the Israel desk at the NSC, and then the top policy intelligence position at the NSC.

"Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?” a Washington Post op-ed had asked in 2006. The question now is why are Joe Biden and the Democrats?

And what do pro-Israel groups intend to do about it?
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. This article first appeared exclusively at Front Page Magazine.

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Federal Ban on New Oil and Gas Development Hurts Most Vulnerable, Economy

by Americans for Prosperity (AFP): Following President Biden’s executive order that halts new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) urged the Biden Administration to reject attempts to constrain choice and replace consumer preferences with politically preferred technology and fuels that hurt the most vulnerable citizens.

A strong economic recovery will depend on all sectors of the economy, and government picking winners and losers will only make economic recovery harder to achieve for all Americans. AFP believes a better energy policy recognizes and embraces bottom-up innovations, removes barriers to voluntary efficiency and environmental progress, reorients programs away from restrictions on new market entrants, and streamlines permitting and licensing requirements for all types of energy innovation.

AFP Regulations Policy Fellow Clint Woods issued the following statement:
“Killing tens of thousands of jobs, raising Americans’ energy costs, and hindering economic recovery through banning new energy development of oil and gas hurts our most vulnerable communities and puts further strain on Americans at a time they can least afford it. This move does nothing to build back better and only serves to increase energy poverty and put even more Americans out of work. The US leads the world in reducing energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, without top-down mandates and while continuing to provide affordable and accessible energy to Americans across the country.”

Background:
Americans spend over $1.27 trillion per year on energy. More than 30 million American households face high energy burdens and pay a substantial portion of their take home pay for electricity, heating, and fuel. The lowest income households devote more than 20 percent of their after-tax income on residential utilities and motor fuel. COVID-19 has exacerbated energy poverty in the U.S.
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AFP Press Release

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The ‘After Trump’ Era Begins

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson: The new AT age—“After Trump”—began on either Election Day, Nov. 3, or on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. But either way, reality as we had known it for four years has been abruptly reinvented.

Pfizer had hinted that a vaccine could be ready in late October. Then, mysteriously, it wasn’t. Then, stranger still, it appeared—a few days after Election Day.

Suddenly, after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Illinois, Michigan, and other blue states eased some of their lockdown restrictions to get their economies back on track despite little change in COVID-19 rates.

During the Trump Age, the president was supposedly responsible for every death from COVID-19. Now, the media reports that career scientists and health administrators in the federal government, especially at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were largely to blame for past slow testing, and were tardy and lax in apprising the nation of the infectious threat.

The Biden campaign’s widely reported promises of a new, superior COVID-19 plan turned out to be more of the same old, same old from the Trump Age.

Biden did mandate the wearing of masks on all federal property. But he then immediately undermined his own order during the first few hours on the job by going mask-less during a photo op at the Lincoln Memorial.

Stranger still, Biden announced during his first few hours in office: “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

For the first time, we now learn that there is “nothing” Biden can do about COVID-19?

Despite millions of vaccine doses being produced when he entered office, Biden went on to warn that many more Americans will die in the next few months—more than 600,000 COVID-19 fatalities in total. The watchdog media just shrugged.

Coincidentally, after weeks of disastrous state incompetence in getting residents vaccinated, Amazon has told the new administration that it will lend its infrastructure and organization to speed up vaccinations. If Amazon could announce that in late January, why not weeks earlier?

Speaking of Amazon, it is opposing mail-in ballots for its own employees voting on whether to unionize a warehouse in Alabama. Amazon says it’s worried about fraud. Yet Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, which ridiculed those who were concerned about massive mail-in voting in the 2020 election.

Coincidently, with the inauguration of a new president, “nonpartisan” COVID-19 czar Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, now suddenly accuses his former boss, Donald Trump, of ignoring his wise counsel.

But for all of 2020, Fauci had been a master of the “noble lie”—the platonic idea that government elites should deliberately misinform the supposedly less intelligent people for their own good.

Fauci gave conflicting assessments on mask-wearing, on the percentages needed to achieve herd immunity, and on the impossibility of the virus having originated in a Wuhan laboratory. He claimed that he offered false or unproven narratives to avoid panic, or to encourage Americans to follow his correct policies.

In the new age, expect the media and government to suddenly resent any mention of pushback against a sitting president. Questions about the Biden family’s past multimillion-dollar influence peddling overseas or Biden’s cognitive ability can no longer be asked.

If the Republicans win the House of Representatives in 2022 and follow the new Democratic model of impeaching a first-term president without a special counsel report, it will be called a national disgrace.

Even worse, we will be told, would be the reckless mention of the 25th Amendment. The very suggestion of removing an elected president due to supposed cognitive challenges will become abhorrent.

For that matter, so too would be the appointment of any special counsel. Why waste two years, $35 million, and dozens of lawyers to harass a sitting president with unfounded charges of Ukrainian or Chinese “collusion”?

In our brave new world, we will hear no more retired military officers weighing in on the “fascism” of the commander in chief.

None will compare the recurring violence of Antifa or Black Lives Matter to that of Islamic terrorists. None will compare Biden, who dismissed Antifa as a mere “idea,” to Mussolini or the Nazis. Any retired officer who smears the president, we will be reminded, would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, top retired military brass, corporate America, universities, and professional sports are all recalibrating the truth for our Year One.

In about a month, they will have it down. And soon, we won’t even be able to tell the old reality from the new.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T The Daily Signal.

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