More Blue State welfare fraud uncovered, some of which gets shipped overseas, more Russian oil refineries knocked out of action, a CIA operative with a fortune in gold, and trouble at a Texas dam. Plus: Puppies!
Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.
What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.
The scheme works like this. Residents in cities like Lawrence, Massachusetts collect food through two channels: purchasing it at local markets using EBT cards, and picking it up for free from food banks and churches. That food is then packed into large blue barrels, dropped off at shipping companies, and sent by container ship to the Dominican Republic. Once it arrives, it is sold for profit in local stores. The people doing this see nothing wrong with it. In many cases, they do it openly.
According to a local that assisted us with this story, this fraud has been happening for over a decade.
Over the course of several weeks, Muckraker Foundation traced the full pipeline from food pantry lines in Lawrence, Massachusetts, through shipping warehouses in New York, to store shelves in Santo Domingo. This is what we found.
Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.
John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.
“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”
“California Assembly passes “Stop Nick Shirley Act” to prevent people from uncovering fraud.”
If the bill passes the state senate, “it would become criminal to film and reveal information on taxpayer-funded immigration services like healthcare, which would include daycare, and hospices; it also covers counseling services, translation services, and immigration legal services.”
How is this not prima facia evidence that collecting fraud and graft is the highest priority of the Democrat Party?
And speaking of Democrats protecting fraud: “Seattle socialist mayor will NOT investigate fraud at Somali-run daycare centers, calls it attack on immigrants.”
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said the city has no intention of investigating fraud claims in taxpayer-funded social programs, claiming the concerns are an effort to target immigrant communities rather than address legitimate financial irregularities.
In an interview with KOMO News, Wilson was asked if she had authorized the Seattle Police Department or the city’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to investigate fraud charges involving daycare providers, particularly those in Somali and other immigrant communities. The mayor responded: “No.”
“This whole issue is not really about fraud,” said Wilson. “It’s about dividing and conquering.”
Translation: We can’t let people investigate fraud as long as Democrats are the ones raking off the graft. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
During a Wednesday cabinet meeting, Small Business Administration Chief Kelly Loeffler accused the Biden administration of concealing a staggering amount of fraud tied to the federal government’s pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program. She claimed that rather than aggressively working to recover the funds, officials tried “to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug” roughly $200 billion in “fraudulent PPP loans.” The explosive allegation, if substantiated, would represent one of the largest fraud scandals in government history.
Loeffler told colleagues that small business owners are “hit particularly hard by fraud because they’re some of our biggest taxpayers in the country.” She continued:
Think about it. At the SBA, we found $200 billion in fraudulent PPP loans that the Biden administration tried to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug.
We’ve turned the first $22 billion of that over to Treasury for collection and to DOJ for prosecution. Our inspector general is already announcing that people are going to jail.
…
We’ve announced that 140,000 people have been barred from ever getting SBA loans again — defrauding the government of about $9 billion. So we are going to continue our work under the great leadership of Vice President Vance and appreciate the partnership because it’s really accelerated our ability to get the job done.
She later posted a video of her remarks on X along with the following statement: “During the Biden Admin, PPP and EIDL [the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program] became some of THE MOST defrauded federal programs in U.S. history – robbing honest small business owners and taxpayers of vital pandemic relief, to the tune of $200 billion. … Under the leadership of @POTUS, the SBA is delivering long-awaited accountability for every criminal fraudster that the last Administration tried to forgive or sweep under the rug.”
If you subtracted fraud, madness and spite from social justice and the Democrat Party, you’d have almost nothing left.
Three oil tanks hit which were in between the units. Then hits on the connecting pipelines and the loading cranes as well surrounding the unit. Additionally, two additional oil tanks here were hit as well. So this was a pretty massive strike. As a result of this, it’s been estimated that between 90 to even 100% of the refinery’s processing capacity is out.
A war that looked like it was a grinding stalemate being fought to the last Russian or Ukrainian is looking increasingly like one that Ukraine is actually winning.
Ukraine’s tactical victories on the battlefield, as impressive as they are, won’t ensure victory. And as fascinating and gruesome as the videos of first-person drones on the battlefield are, those only explain why Ukraine is able to hold Russian advances back, and the modest gains on the battlefield Ukraine has made in retaking small bits of occupied territory.
Ukraine has mastered drone warfare on the battlefield, and even more importantly, has built an incredibly resilient and innovative system that adjusts hardware, software, and tactics at a blistering pace that Russia could not hope to achieve with its clunky and corrupt procurement and training systems. That explains Ukraine’s increasingly solid tactical position; unpredictably, Ukraine is now its own most important weapons supplier, and is now teaching the rest of the world how modern warfare is conducted on the ground.
But Russia can take a punch in the same way that Andre the Giant could. Ukraine needs strategic victories, and until, ironically, Trump weaned them off the teat of the West to the extent they were dependent completely on the West, all Ukraine could do was fight at the tactical level, guaranteeing a stalemate.
At the same time that Trump reduced American aid, he also allowed Ukraine to take the gloves off and to put Russian assets in Russia at risk, and the results are stunning. Not only have the tactical battle lines extended into Russia, making logistics infinitely harder, but Ukraine is now systematically dismantling key parts of Russia’s economic engine and weapons production facilities.
Virtually all major oil refineries in central Russia have been forced to halt or scale back fuel output following Ukrainian drone attacks in recent days, according to official data and sources.
The combined capacity of refineries that have fully or partially halted operations exceeds 83 million metric tons per year, or around 238,000 tons per day. That accounts for around one quarter of Russia’s total refining capacity, according to data and sources who spoke on condition of anonymity…
One of Russia’s largest refineries, Kirishi, with capacity of 20 million metric tons per year, has been fully shut since May 5, according to the sources.”
If you regularly read the LinkSwarm, most of this will be familiar to you. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Here’s a strange story with some disturbing implications: “FBI arrests former CIA official over $40 million worth of gold bars stashed at Virginia home.”
The FBI arrested a former CIA official last week after investigators discovered hundreds of gold bars hidden at his home in Virginia, according to court documents reported by NBC News on Wednesday.
The official, identified as David Rush, was charged with criminal theft of public money in a complaint filed last week in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has also been accused of lying to employers about his background for nearly two decades.
The CIA and FBI confirmed Rush’s arrest to the outlet in a joint statement and said CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred Rush for a criminal investigation.
“After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation,” the statement said. “The FBI is working closely with our partners at the CIA and the Department of Justice as we continue to investigate this matter fully. We are committed to following the facts, ensuring accountability, and pursuing justice in accordance with the law.”
The arrest comes after the FBI raided Rush’s home in Virginia on May 18, where law enforcement officers found more than 300 gold bars, which are estimated to be worth more than $40 million combined, according to the New York Times.
The court papers do not indicate why Rush kept so much gold, but it comes after he requested and received “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses,” which the CIA was later unable to locate.
“Work-related expenses.” What sort of “work-related expenses” involve tens of millions of dollars in gold bars? Bribing officials? Buying cocaine?
Faster, please. “US Probe of Embattled UN Gaza Relief Agency Expands to 1,500 Staffers Suspected of Hamas Ties: UNRWA Could Soon Be Labeled a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.'” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Texas’ Supreme Court has ordered a Travis County judge to quit avoiding a critical question in the fight over Austin’s troubled rail construction plan, known as Project Connect.
In a May 22 ruling, the Court said trial courts can’t simply refuse to rule on jurisdictional challenges to avoid triggering appeals. Chief Justice James Blacklock didn’t mince words, writing that “nothing about this scenario is as it should be.”
The ruling clarifies that courts may not ignore jurisdictional challenges while proceeding to trial, something that will be relevant to a similar case in which the City of McKinney is suing its own citizens to expeditiously validate its airport expansion bonds.
In 2020, Austin voters approved Proposition A, which authorized a property tax increase to fund Project Connect. The original plan promised 20.2 miles of light rail, subway, rapid bus routes, and connections to the airport.
The City of Austin formed a corporation called Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to implement the project and issue the bonds.
However, the project was significantly scaled back by 2022.
What remained was a 9.8-mile surface line with no subway and no airport link. Community members argued the new plan constituted a “bait and switch,” since voters never approved the scaled-down version.
This led a group of taxpayers to file a lawsuit in 2023 to stop ATP’s bond issuance.
In response, the City of Austin and ATP filed a lawsuit against its own citizens under the Texas Expedited Declaratory Judgement Act (EDJA), seeking to validate the bonds and throw out any legal challenges they may face—including the pending taxpayer lawsuit.
This little-known law allows bond issuers—including cities—to file an expedited declaratory bond-validation lawsuit against a very broad group of defendants, including all taxpayers, property owners, or residents whose rights might be affected by the bonds.
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is automatically served in EDJA cases and is tasked with informing the court whether the bonds comply with Texas law.
“Issuing authority” details snipped.
Last week, Texas’ Supreme Court ruled in the OAG’s favor, finding that a jurisdictional challenge must always be addressed before proceeding to the merits.
“Proceeding to trial without first resolving the State’s challenge to the court’s authority to do so was an abuse of the district court’s otherwise broad discretion to manage the progress of the case,” reads the opinion.
Chief Justice James Blacklock did not hold back in writing the opinion of the Court.
“Nothing about this scenario is as it should be,” wrote Blacklock. “A court may not withhold a ruling on the government’s properly presented plea to the jurisdiction in order to prevent the government from appealing. And the government may not appeal from an interlocutory order that does not exist.”
The Court therefore construed the OAG’s petition for review as a petition for writ of mandamus that would order the lower court to issue a ruling on the jurisdictional challenge.
“The writ will issue only if the court does not do so. The judgment of the court of appeals is undisturbed,” wrote Blacklock.
Now, the trial court must rule on the OAG’s jurisdictional challenge. If the court denies the plea, the OAG gets an automatic appeal that pauses everything. If the court grants it, ATP’s bond validation suit gets tossed.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution outlining the locations of drop boxes for the upcoming early-voting period without consulting Recorder Justin Heap.
The board approved the resolution while it continues to deal with an ongoing lawsuit with Heap about who runs specific election functions.
In April, a judge ruled in favor of Heap, saying the board members need to hand over control of specific election functions to his office.
The board sought a stay of the motion, but the Arizona Superior Court denied it. The board then announced it was appealing the lower court’s decision.
Snip.
Heap said he was not consulted before the board approved the resolution Wednesday on drop-box locations.
“The law is not optional,” he said. “The court has already ruled that the Board does not possess unlimited authority over election administration, yet the Board continues attempting to exercise powers Arizona law assigns to the recorder.”
He also said: “Voters deserve lawful, professional election administration, not political gamesmanship and last-minute public ambushes.”
How are they supposed to manufacture votes for Democrats at the last minute without controlling the boxes?
“MSNOW Senior Washington Correspondent [Eugene Daniels] Thinks Abortion and Trans Kids Are ‘Kitchen Table Issues.’ ‘When you talk about whether or not people can have access to healthy abortions—safe abortions, that is a kitchen table issue, right?'”
Shelby Campbell…is a candidate in Michigan’s Democratic primary for the 13th Congressional District, which includes portions of Detroit and some of its suburbs.
She has built her campaign around provocation — relying on edgy rhetoric, inflammatory stunts, and degrading online content to attract attention. Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, she released a new video urging voters to “quit thanking the troops for sacrificing their lives” for their country.
Snip.
I don’t want to thank these men and women who join the military because they had no other option. Like, they didn’t want to go to school. They didn’t have the resources. They don’t have the knowledge. They don’t have people to like, love them. And, [yawning] they go into the military. Military preys on more rural populations.
She evidently learned nothing from John Kerry’s presidential campaign…
Did Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey honor America’s fallen warriors on Memorial Day? No. He honored George Floyd.
“Come meet the all Native American ICE troop ‘The Shadow Wolves.'” “ICE apparently has an all American Indian squadron who patrol the Mexican border in the Sonoran Desert. Their job is primarily to use native tactics to track down and stop narcos and human traffickers on the southern border.”
“Texas woman says she was arrested for making Facebook posts about town’s water quality.” “Jennifer Combs says she would complain on Facebook about the brown water coming out of her faucet in Trinidad, Texas, and then every time the police would show up afterwards. Eventually, she says, she was arrested.” Sounds like a clear First Amendment violation.
Chicago: “39 people shot, 5 cops seriously injured at black teen ‘takeovers’ during Memorial Day weekend.”
“26-year-old man arrested over bomb and death threats targeting Erika Kirk.” “Jacob Wenske, 26, was arrested Wednesday night in San Antonio…Wenske was charged with two third-degree felony counts of making a terroristic threat with the intent to impair public service, create public fear of serious bodily injury and influence government conduct, legal filings revealed.”
Livingston Dam in Texas, where Houston gets most of its drinking water, is deteriorating.
A food emergency: “Some of Texas’s oldest barbecue joints close as meat prices skyrocket Even the state’s most celebrated restaurants are struggling to remain open as costs climb, with no relief in sight.”
The Trump Administration guts two lefty slop buckets of graft, Israel lights up the Houthis big time, crazy tranny shooter might have been in satanic cult too crazy for the Church of Satan, Ukraine bombs the snot out of Russia’s oil infrastructure (again), Scotland and Germany continue to favor unassimilated Muslim immigrants over their own citizens, a secret Spinal Tap concert, and the full weight of Plano ISD comes down on a nefarious…a choir booster club?
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Another court win for Trump47. “Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That Trump Can Slash $783 Million In DEI Research Funding.”
The Trump administration is free to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funding on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) following last week’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal court judge in Boston that blocked $783 million in cuts made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on health research grants that were being used to advance DEI efforts as well as “gender ideology extremism.”
The Supreme Court was split on the 5-4 decision which marks another win for President Trump and clears the way for his administration to move forward with canceling hundreds of grants after U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the health-related grants restored in June.
Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters in the high court’s decision and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with conservative majority to let the administration stop the grant funding.
Roberts and Barrett did land on the side of the dissent and allowed to stand a portion of the lower judge’s order that voided a number of NIH policies that targeted DEI programs at the direction of the White House.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post.
The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center.
“Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford.
Four days before Biden left office on Jan. 20, Lutnick noted, the Commerce Department agreed to set aside $7.4 billion in “advance payments” to Natcast after spending nearly two years setting it up and tapping administration officials, advisers and allies to fill out positions.
That arrangement both effectively removed the incoming Trump administration from being involved in the process and provided “virtually all” of Natcast’s funding — prompting incoming Departments of Justice and Commerce officials to take another look at the Sunnyvale, Calif., nonprofit.
“These actions do not just give the appearance of impropriety; they flout federal law,” Lutnick told Hanford, pointing out that no provisions in the CHIPS Act authorized an outside entity like Natcast to distribute semiconductor research funds.
“The GCCA [Government Corporation Control Act] plainly prohibits agencies from establishing a corporation to act as an agency without specific authorization, and the January 16, 2025, agreement does nothing other than set forth the terms of the Biden Administration’s attempt to do just that.”
Natcast’s selection committee included Biden White House alums like Jason Matheny, former deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Kendra Wilkerson, the CEO of a nonprofit that “promotes greater equality for women and nonbinary professionals in technology fields,” according to the Biden Commerce Department.
Donna Dubinsky, another Natcast executive, worked as senior counselor to former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and signed off on the nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status.
Susan Feindt, the Biden Commerce Department’s vice chair of its CHIPS Act advisory committee, is now the senior vice president of ecosystem development at Natcast.
Jeremy Licht, the former chief counsel on semiconductor incentives at the Biden Commerce Department, is now the general counsel at Natcast.
They weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, they were robbing you to line their own pockets. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told reporters Monday that the Trump administration has uncovered a “massive scandal” in Washington D.C. involving the doctoring of crime statistics.
He said the alleged corruption is currently under investigation and said details of the corruption will soon be brought to light.
“The results will stun you,” he said.
Miller made the remarks in the Oval Office after President Trump signed a slew of new executive orders to end cashless bail throughout the United States and in the District of Columbia, prosecute the burning of the American flag, and additional measures to address crime in Washington D.C.
Miller said D.C. already had the worst crime statistics in the United States when “honestly measured,” but those stats “dramatically understated how bad it was.”
The White House advisor told reporters that murders and homicides were allegedly being reported as accidents instead of murders.
“This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in the city and it will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light,” he said.
For the past two weeks—since the D.C. crime crackdown began—the city has not seen a single murder or homicide.
“No police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there has been no murders,” Miller asserted.
He said police officers have told him that members of the public have been thanking them for making D.C safe again.
“For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets, you have people who can walk freely at night without worrying about being ribbed or mugged,” he said. “They’re wearing their watch again, they’re wearing jewelry again, they’re carrying purses again.”
Miller explained that D.C. residents had been forced to “change their who lives for fear of being murdered, mugged or carjacked.”
He added that Trump had freed the 700,000 residents of the city from “the rule of criminals and thugs.”
Miller credited Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole with discovering that street criminals in Washington D.C. have been “doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels,” which are foreign terrorist organizations.
“So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city,” he explained.
Israel’s military conducted airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, targeting high-profile sites in a significant escalation of hostilities.
The strikes hit areas near the presidential palace, the Asar and Hizaz power plants, and Houthi facilities suspected of housing artillery, including ballistic missiles, according to regional reports.
The operation was a direct response to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, including projectile launches on Friday, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. While Israel has previously targeted Houthi infrastructure, its strikes have largely focused on the strategic port city of Hodeida, a critical economic and military hub. The shift to Sanaa signals a broader and more aggressive approach to the conflict.
At least two people were killed and five others injured, Al Masirah, a Houthi-affiliated media outlet reported, according to Al Jazeera.
“The attacks were carried out in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the state of Israel and its citizens, including the launch of surface-to-surface missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles towards the country’s territory,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
There’s video:
The exact moment Israel vaporized the entire leadership of Yemeni Houthis 👇
“Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, may only suggest he used ‘very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764.'” I reached out to a “left-hand path” guy I knew from science fiction for background, and he offered the following:
Many years ago Dr. Anton LaVey asked Micheal Aquino to write two “Lovecraftain Pieces” for the _Satanic Rituals — “Th Cermony of the Nine Angles”and “The Call to Cthulhu”.
Then back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo_Nazy stuff — “Kill a Jew for Satan” The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running –my favorite was the “lesbian: Order of the Sapphic Satanists. He tried to join Islam and run an atisemetic Islamic Runic brotherhood that worshipped Azathoth. It did not go well. The ONA shows occasionally with anti-Jewish slogans.
According to this piece last year, 764 is a global Satanic child predator network.
The likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is, as President Donald Trump put it, a “100% Communist lunatic,” and so you won’t exactly be dumbfounded to learn that his advisors are a rogue’s gallery of political hacks and psychopaths the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao sat down for a tete-a-tete with his fellow cultural revolutionaries. It’s clear that one way or another, once this clown moves into Gracie Mansion, New York City is in for it: skyrocketing crime, an inundation of illegal migrants, bankruptcy, the destruction of the city’s economic base — all that and more is on the table.
Fox News reported Thursday Mamdani’s “growing circle of influence is littered with activists who have espoused anti-Israel views and socialist principles as he attempts to dispel the narrative that he is too ‘radical’ to run the nation’s largest city.” Yeah, these advisors show that he is indeed far too radical to be mayor of New York, but that’s not likely to keep him from being elected.
Among those advisors is Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which advocates ending “state support for detention, deportation, and mass incarceration.” Awawdeh insists that illegal migrants “deserve” healthcare, presumably at the expense of the American taxpayer. He has also ranted: “NO LISTEN… SEEKING ASYLUM AT THE BORDER IS A LEGAL RIGHT. ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM VIOLENCE, PERSECUTION, & IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE REFUGE. #WelcomeWithDignity”
A legal obligation to provide refuge for anyone fleeing any kind of difficulty? Do tell. Anyway, NYIC has “taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network,” and if that connection of Soros to Mamdani is too tenuous for you, there is plenty more. Fox News reported on Aug. 14 that “A former top executive for liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) between 2017 and 2020 is back in the spotlight amid reports highlighting his involvement with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign and connecting Obama world to the campaign.”
The Soros exec in question is Patrick Gaspard, an old political hand on the left; the first campaign he worked on was Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential run. Gaspard “has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and being tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.”
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is set to face the rest of his life behind bars as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to dismantle cartels.
Zambada, 75, confessed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom Monday that he had coordinated with Mexican officials to smuggle drugs into the U.S. for decades — and ultimately pleaded guilty to serving as principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.
The Trump administration has pledged to take down the cartels — and experts predict Zambada’s guilty plea paves the way for the Justice Department to launch more indictments against high-profile cartel members moving forward and exerts additional pressure on Mexico to comply with U.S. requests.
Russia may not have an oil industry at all when this war is over. Ukraine just hit two more oil refineries, Kuybyshevskiy in Samara and Afipsky in Krasnodar. “Multiple swarms hit this refinery, which makes Russia’s air defense look even more incompetent than usual.” It was also 1,000km away.
They also hit the Ust-Luga gas processing terminal near St. Petersburg with ten drones. “This terminal is responsible for processing stable gas condenscent in naphtha jet fuel fuel oil and distillates.” The location makes me wonder if a goodly portion was intended for the export market.
The map of Russian refineries reveals a key strategic problem. The main processing capabilities are in the European part of the country, whilst fuel consumption is rising in the far east. Fuel logistic chains for eastern regions span thousands of kilometers, creating additional costs and risks. Kilometer-long queues in cities are a direct result of the imbalance between western production and eastern consumption.
Harris County’s District Attorney Sean Teare has charged Yunhai Li, a 35-year-old former MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher, with attempting to steal and take proprietary cancer-related research back to China. This comes after multiple warnings about research security in Texas higher education.
While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.
Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.
“Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker.” She was defending her 12-year old sister from unassimilated would-be Muslim statutory rapists, so of course the police had to arrest her…
Last week, a Houston resident foiled a home invasion attempt by a couple criminals trying to impersonate the police. According to the news article:
“Police said the men told the homeowner they were serving a warrant. They were wearing bullet-proof vests, had badges around their necks and were wearing ski masks.”
The homeowner ended up shooting and killing both offenders.
There are many more tips in the article, but police don’t wear ski masks while serving a warrant…
“Texas Teacher Arrested on Federal Child Porn Charge…Robert Jerome Custer, 56, was arrested on a federal charge of accessing child sexual abuse material, commonly called child pornography. Custer previously worked as an educator and counselor in Palestine, Barksdale, Kingsville, and Abilene, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.
The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).
In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”
Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.
Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.
Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.
Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.
German elites will do anything to support its welfare state…except stop importing unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Just like all the rest of Europe’s elites. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
A decade after the radical left first started shoving tranny bathrooms down the public’s throat without debate, Texas is finally limiting bathrooms to biological sex.
“Mark Teixeira, Longtime Major League Baseball Player, Launches Texas Congressional Bid.” He’s running as a Republican for the 21st Texas Congressional District, where incumbent Chip Roy is running for Attorney General.
Having a meth habit is going to be disqualifying for a lot of jobs. Like District Attorney for Mariposa County. Thus it’s no surprise that DA Mike McAfee resigned…
Another electric bus company goes bankrupt. “Quebec-based Lion Electric, which the Biden administration awarded $159 million ‘to manufacture 435 school buses between 2022 and 2024,’ has fallen into bankruptcy.” (Previously.)
This is a weird story. “Moms Arrested for Running North Texas Choir Booster Club. Cleared of charges, moms still lost choir booster club money to the school district.”
Local authorities in Collin County, including a school district, have harassed three moms in a quest to control a school booster club and its funds, even going so far as to arrest them.
Plano Independent School District targeted the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club for control of its bank account after the mothers charged with running the independent organization insisted that the district pay for Jasper High School’s stage—as was the district’s responsibility.
The district had the Plano police arrest the booster club’s founders—Laura Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria Luisa King. Yet, after a Collin County grand jury failed to find enough evidence to prosecute these moms, a Plano municipal judge recently awarded the club’s bank funds to Plano ISD.
Also this: “Oral arguments were held on May 30 before Judge Paul McNulty, chief judge for the Municipal Court of Plano. Texas Scorecard was in attendance. Recording devices were banned from the trial and the booster club was denied its request to bring a court reporter.” Also, another judge involved in the case, Lisa Bronchetti, evidently wrote a bad check to the club but still failed to excuse herself.
Like I said, weird…
Newark Airport sucks. Objectively. One major culprit? God.
The Supreme Court lands on both sides of the same case, more fraud uncovered by DOGE, the Russo-Ukrainian War continues despite the White House dustup, Mark Steyn catches a break, and strange cell(block) fellows.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The Supreme Court giveth: “Supreme Court pumps brakes on order forcing Trump to shell out $2B in foreign aid.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts pumped the brakes on a lower court order that gave the Trump administration a midnight deadline Wednesday into Thursday to unfreeze $2 billion worth of foreign aid.
Roberts paused the order Wednesday until further notice and gave plaintiffs suing the Trump administration until noon Friday to respond, marking the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a case involving the president’s push to overhaul the federal government.
The question at hand is the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on US Agency for International Development spending amid a review to ensure the outlays were aligned with the president’s policies.
District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, temporarily mandated that the funds continue flowing while considering the case.
Plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration did not properly unfreeze all of the money, which led to Ali giving the Trump administration a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to fully comply.
And the Supreme Court taketh away. “The Supreme Court has *upheld* a lower court’s order forcing USAID/State to immediately pay ~$2 billion owed to contractors for work they’ve already performed….The court in a 5-4 decision upheld Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order that had called on the administration to promptly release funding to contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department for their past work.”
The US Justice Department revealed Thursday evening that Mexico has begun extraditing dozens of high-level cartel leaders to the US, as President Trump reiterated that 25% tariffs on Mexican goods will take effect next Tuesday.
“The defendants taken into US custody today include leaders and managers of drug cartels recently designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists,” the DoJ wrote in a statement, adding these terrorists are facing charges including racketeering, drug-trafficking, murder, illegal use of firearms, money laundering, and other crimes.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office and Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection released this statement: “This morning, 29 people who were deprived of their liberty in different penitentiary centers in the country were transferred to the United States of America, which were required due to their links with criminal organizations for drug trafficking, among other crimes.”
The tariffs are currently on hold. CNN has a list of who was exchanged, including Rafael Caro Quintero, Alder Marin-Sotelo, Andrew Clark, José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza, Norberto Valencia González, José Alberto García Vilano, Evaristo Cruz Sánchez, Miguel and Omar Treviño Morales.
We touched on this in a previous LinkSwarm, but here’s more details on Stacey Abrams EPA-backed multi-billion dollar slush fund.
Three short weeks ago, a newly confirmed Lee Zeldin got to his office at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and hit the broom closet to start sweeping.
Thanks to the previous braggadocious occupants and their already well-documented pre-exit shoveling of cash and grants out the door, he had an inkling there might be plenty of questionable transactions to uncover that hadn’t exactly been notated ‘on the books’ or done ‘by the book’ either.
I mean, what were the odds?
It didn’t take long for Zeldin to find himself a whopper of a honeypot hidden away that made quite a splash when he announced it, particularly as it was tied to an infamous Project Veritas video from December boasting about its very surreptitious creation.
David covered the reveal.
Project Veritas dropped a shocker of a video back in December, in which an EPA manager was bragging that the Biden administration was metaphorically ‘dropping gold bars off the Titanic.’ They were shoving every dime they could out to their NGO buddies so they could harass the Trump administration and continue to suck off the taxpayers’ teat for years to come.
We all know such things happen, but to have it so vividly described was revealing.
Well, Lee Zeldin is retrieving those gold bars, and it turns out to be a lot of them. $20 billion, all sitting in the equivalent of a bank vault.
The massive scale of this scam–which as with so many things is SOP at government agencies–blows your mind. Pushing $20 billion out the door to friends of the administration with little to no financial controls, zero accountability, and lots of malice aforethought is only different in scale and not in kind.
Snip.
…It’s a green slush fund. $20B parked at an outside bank towards the end of the Biden administration, given to just eight NGOs…These NGOs were created for the first time, many of them just to get this money. And their pass-throughs…So the EPA entered into this account control agreement with these entities, Treasury enters into a financial agent agreement with the bank, and they design it to tie the EPA’s hands behind their back -to tie the federal government’s hands behind its back. So when the money goes through the NGOs to subgrantees, many of them also pass-throughs, we don’t know where it’s going. We don’t have the proper amount of oversight. And, as you pointed out, it’s going to people in the Obama and Biden administrations, it’s going to donors. It’s not going directly…to remediate that environmental issue…deliver that clean air…’
This is just some stunning stuff. As Zeldin told the NY Post:
…As Zeldin told The Post: “Of the eight pass-through entities that received funding from the pot of $20 billion in tax dollars, various recipients have shown very little qualification to handle a single dollar, let alone several billions of dollars.”
He’s called for the EPA’s inspector general to investigate; who knows what other rank misuse that might turn up.
Bondi and Patel are already on the case, and I hope someone from Scott Bessent’s Treasury IG thinks they should be as well.
Crawl up their collective butts, the lot of them.
No wonder Democrats continued to treat Abrams like a rock star despite high profile electoral flameouts. She’s evidently a vitally important nexus in their graft distribution schemes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
At some point, some president was going to have to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing.
To have any country left, some president would eventually have had to restore a nonexistent border and stop the influx of 3 million illegal aliens a year.
Some commander-in-chief finally would have to try to stop the theater wars abroad.
But any president who dared to do any of that would be damned for curbing the madness that his predecessors fueled.
And so none did—until now.
Not since Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid and mass implementation of the New Deal administrative state have Americans seen such radical changes so quickly as now in Trump’s first month of governance.
Americans are watching a long-awaited counter-revolution to bring the country out of its madness by restoring the common sense of the recent past.
It is easy to run up massive debts and hard to pay them back. Politicians profit by handing out grants and hiring thousands with someone else’s money or creating new programs by growing the debt.
Yet it is unpopular and considered “mean” to spend only what you have and to create a lean, competent workforce.
1776, not 1619, is the foundational date of America.
Biological men should not manipulate their greater size and strength to undermine the hard-won accomplishment of women athletes.
Affordable fossil fuels, when used wisely, are still essential to modern prosperity.
American education must remain empirical and inductive, not regress into indoctrination and deduction. If college campuses no longer abide by the Bill of Rights, then perhaps they should pay taxes on income from their endowments and guarantee their own student loans.
If American citizens are arrested and arraigned for violent assaults, destroying property, and resisting arrest, then surely foreign students who break the laws of their hosts should be held to the same account—and if guilty, go home.
Tribalism and racialism, and government spoils allotted by superficial appearances, are the marks of a pre-civilized society. Such racialism leads only to endless factions and discord.
It is easy to destroy a border, and hard to reconstruct it. And it was not Trump who invited in 12 million unaudited illegal aliens, a half million of them criminals.
Who is the real culprit in the Defense Department—the new secretary with the hard task of restoring the idea among depleted ranks that our race, religion, and gender are incidental, not essential, to defeating the enemy and ensuring our national security?
Is it really wise to divert money from needed combat units and weapons to indoctrinate recruits with social and cultural agendas that do not enhance, but likely undermine, our national defenses?
Who is the real callous actor—Elon Musk, who is trying to prevent the country from insolvency by eliminating fraud and waste, or those who bloated the bureaucracy in the first place with jobs and subsidies for their constituents, friends, clients, and fellow ideologues?
No one likes to fire FBI agents.
That certainly is an unpleasant job for the new FBI Director, Kash Patel.
But again, who are the true culprits who so cavalierly turned a hallowed agenda into a weaponized tool to warp elections, harass political enemies, lie under oath, surveil parents at school board meetings, doctor court documents, and protect insider friends?
Massive borrowing is an opiate addiction that needs shock treatment, not more deficits to break the habit. An unchecked administrative state becomes an organic organism that exists only to grow larger, more powerful, and more resistant to any who seek to curb it.
“DOGE reveals most savings at Dept. of Education with nearly $1B cut. DOGE claims to have saved the most money at the U.S. Department of Education out of any government agency through cuts in wasteful spending. DOGE launched an ‘Agency Efficiency Leaderboard’ that ranks government agencies based on how much wasteful funding has been cut, and the Dept. of Education is ranked in first place.”
Campus Reform reported that DOGE has canceled nearly $900 million in contracts and training grants at the Department of Education.
This includes “over $600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” such as critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), according to a press release from the department.
“Diversity” had already been around for many years, its hustler scratching at the university door. Not actual diversity, mind you, but the skin-deep diversity of noxious racialism tarted-up with fake Enlightenment discourse. This concept of “diversity, equity, inclusion” quickly metastasized until it was everywhere, and this was no accident. It was a bureaucratic initiative designed to anchor a new raft of social justice programs as an inescapable presence on the campus.
It was no accident that it was violence and the threat of violence that opened the door for this effervescence of DEI. It sounded absurd. I knew it was absurd; I knew it was a con. Most people likely knew it was a con but then most people on the campuses also knew to keep their mouths shut in a time of hair-trigger tempers and performative chaos unleashed by well-funded activist groups. No college administration wanted the summer violence of 2020 overflowing onto the campuses. And so they opened the university to barbarian ideas rather than the barbarians themselves.
This was the madness of crowds brought en masse onto the campuses, and it was wildly successful. It achieved this success with a superb combination of psychological factors—relentless hustling, a primitive ideology suffused with mysticism and “indigenous knowledges,” and the barely concealed violent urges of quasi-communist and terroristic revolutionaries. All of this shielded from criticism and even the mildest of questioning.
You knew something was terribly wrong with it.
Anyone on a college campus subjected to the mediocrity of a DEI hustler knew there was something wrong with it.
It was not noble. It was not idealistic. It was not the many wonderful things its proponents said. It was one thing to the public, and it was another altogether when enacted on the campuses. It was weird and alien and hateful at its core, but the public is rarely exposed to any of this. It was the classic Potemkin village offering, with a façade masking a brute, racialist substance.
In other words, it was a con. In fact, it was the biggest Con Story of the 21st century, with America’s universities the biggest suckers imaginable. And the crowning achievement of Western civilization—the modern university—tottered under the assault of mediocrity, racialism, and pseudoscience.
I suppose that folks duped by the big cons will eventually retreat in their embarrassment at having been fooled by one of the shadiest Con Stories ever deployed. Even now, DEI is in retreat. As it plays out in its final act, I assure you that it will dissipate in a flurry of new acronyms and new labels designed to hide its failure.
Its proponents will roll out new slogans to replace the vapid “Diversity is our strength.” Already, “inclusive excellence” is supplanting DEI as this trusty acronym becomes freighted with failure. The Con Story will morph and adapt. Reluctantly. Buzzwords will change, new slogans will be coined, but the underlying ideology will remain the same as it always has. It must serve yeoman’s duty for the Big Con.
A bill came up in the senate to block men from women’s sports and every Democrat voted against it. The social justice hive mind is still controlling the Democrat party.
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, however, has broke ranks on men playing women’s sports. Sort of. Kinda. “Notice that at no point does Newsom add, ‘And thus, I will be pushing to repeal the 2013 law that gave students the right to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities based on their self-identification and regardless of their birth gender.’ He feels that those born male participating in women’s sports is unfair, but not quite strongly enough to do anything about it.”
Guaranteed Income scheme once again fails to improve lives of recipients. “Receiving guaranteed income had no impact on the labor supply of full-time workers, but part-time workers had a lower labor market participation by 13 percentage points.” And recipients smoked more. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
The first and most important question is whether Russia has lost the war. Wars are fought with an intent formed by an imperative. A prudent leader has to take steps to avoid the worst possible outcome, and Putin, as a prudent leader, prepared for the possibility that NATO would choose to attack Russia. He expressed this fear publicly so the only question was how to block an attack if it occurred. He needed a buffer zone to significantly impede a possible assault.
That buffer was Ukraine, and he on several occasions expressed regret that Ukraine had separated from Russia. The distance from the Ukraine border to Moscow, on highway M3, is only about 300 miles (480 kilometers). Russia’s nightmare was that Germany could surge its way to Moscow. Three hundred miles by a massive force staging a surprise attack is not a huge distance. He rationally needed Ukraine to widen the gap.
I predicted years before the war that Russia would invade Ukraine to regain its buffers. That Russia wanted to take the whole of Ukraine is confirmed in its first forays into the country. The initial assault was a four-pronged attack, one thrust from the east, two from the north and one from the south via Crimea. The two northern prongs were directed at the center of Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv.
Details of the failure of that plan snipped since I covered that as it was happening.
It is clear that the Russians intended to take all of Ukraine. They made minor gains in the east, but their northern penetration failed, as did any attempts to turn westward. It is true that they have gained territory in Ukraine, but it is far from what their initial war plan was designed for. Now their argument is that they never wanted more territory in other parts of the country.
To call this a Russian success is false, and to call a failed war plan a defeat is reasonable. The war was meant to gain a buffer against NATO, and in that, Moscow failed. But it was also intended to be a demonstration that Russia was still a great power. After three years, a major commitment and, by most reports, close to a million dead Russian soldiers, Russia has little more than 20 percent of Ukraine. It also failed to demonstrate the power of the Russian army. Therefore, except for its nuclear capabilities, it is not a military threat or a great power.
The issue now is whether Russia, assuming it agrees to some kind of negotiated settlement, can launch another war. Here it’s important to note that while Putin is powerful, he is not an absolute ruler. He cannot govern Russia the way, say, Stalin did. Under Stalin, Moscow ruled Russia down to the smallest homes in the smallest villages. He ruled not only through military and law enforcement but also through the rank-and-file members of the Communist Party who drew benefits from their membership in return for vigilance. They reported misdeeds, real and imagined, to the internal police, which was controlled by the party, which was controlled by the Politburo, which was controlled by Stalin. Later iterations would be slightly less deadly, but the instruments of oppression were always there.
The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the collapse of the Communist Party. The structure of terror no longer functioned.
Putin’s goal was to resurrect Russia. But with the Communist Party gone, the state structure was also gone. Putin had to find a new base. He had only one source of power: the oligarchs. Between Mikhail Gorbachev and Putin, the party’s assets were sold off to private citizens on the basis of their relationship with the government. The agreement was simple: Putin and his subordinates distributed vast industries and other things of value to the new oligarchs, who pledged to support the regime with money and deference, as well as a network of political and economic relationships that gave them significant influence.
Putin handled the politics — and apparently was well paid. The oligarchs became fabulously wealthy, and for most Russians life improved, as the new arrangement ended the terror and created employment. Disagreement was no longer a capital offense, and the media was comparatively independent and reliable. It was not long before the new private enterprises started entering the global market.
Putin was in charge at first, but in short order power was transferred to the oligarchs who underwrote the regime. They depended on access to European markets for their revenue, and many lived outside of Russia and expected Putin to facilitate trade. But when Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 failed, many of the most lucrative markets closed their doors to the oligarchs and Western investment cratered. Putin ordered the oligarchs to return to Russia, which many did. However, some of the oligarchs were not happy with their former patron and left Russia permanently, or until the political and economic environment would shift. That this has gone on for three years has created serious problems for them. They wanted the war over and a settlement reached long ago.
Snip.
Putin must end the war and hope for the best. The best way to end a failed war is to declare victory and go home. Putin is declaring victory by saying he got all he wanted. But only Americans believe that. The Russians know they lost. The question is not how Putin will suppress dissent. It is how he will deal with the devils he created, and how the country responds if he doesn’t. A reign of terror might help, but there is no mechanism to carry it out now, and later is too late.
U.S. President Donald Trump knows the game that is playing out. The one who blinks loses. It won’t be Trump. He will take every bit of power and every cent he can from Putin’s weakness. Like a good hedge fund manager, one moment he says he is Putin’s friend, the next moment he will walk away from the deal. Then, after the borrower really starts sweating, he will come back. Trump holds the cards in this business. And he wants some of Putin’s economic and geopolitical power.
What SpaceX is building is more than just a rocket. Starship is a strategic weapon, not as a one-off but as a fleet. A fully reusable heavy-lift system capable of hauling 200 tons per launch per rocket is not just an engineering marvel: it’s a military revolution.
Why? Because a fleet of Starships could land an entire armored division anywhere on Earth in under an hour and keep it supplied in the field.
Just as the speed of tanks revolutionized warfare between the World Wars, this development changes everything. Forget C-17s and cargo ships: you might as well use horses and wagons. A fleet of Starships is not just an incremental improvement in logistics: it’s a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare. The ability to almost instantaneously create and reinforce a whole combat theater anywhere on Earth will give the United States overwhelming power, unlike anything heretofore seen outside of science fiction.
And let me stress: we’re not just talking about the initial deployment. The bigger deal is the resupply. It took six months in 1990-91 for the United States to get its forces in position to invade Kuwait. Maintaining them in the field required a constant stream of slow-moving cargo ships from U.S. ports halfway around the world. A decade later, and for 20 years thereafter, a similar supply chain ran through Karachi, Pakistan, up a rail line, then on truck convoys over the Khyber Pass. Since that was often impractical (there were these pesky Taliban guys about), the military frequently had to rely on the only available alternative, a grueling 36 hours on a C-17 (including layovers). All of this depended on deals with shady, unfriendly countries, subsidies (bribes), and endless risk of attacks on our personnel.
What if you could ship everything you wanted anywhere in the world straight from Texas? Or Florida? Or anywhere else? In under an hour?
Wars are often won by those who can move the fastest, supply the best, and sustain their forces longest. A conflict in Taiwan or the Baltics could see adversaries complete their objectives before the U.S. military can even begin meaningful counter-operations.
Starship negates all these timelines. Instead of waiting days or weeks for military assets to arrive by conventional means, forces could be on the ground on the same day as an invasion. No need for prepositioned stockpiles, forward operating bases, or painfully slow sealift capabilities. Those days are over.
In a Taiwan crisis, Starship could land American armor and mechanized infantry before the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) finishes crossing the Strait. It would change the strategic calculus entirely. Every U.S. war game predicting Taiwan’s fall under a rapid Chinese assault assumes conventional response times. Starship forces a complete rethink, for both sides. It will allow American forces to arrive in time to fight the decisive battle, not the delayed counter-offensive.
I think the Starship assembly timeline is a bit optimistic, but point-to-point global logistics really is a game-changer. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
California is getting the energy policy it deserves, good and hard.
Back when I served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010, California ranked 7th or 8th in the nation for electricity costs. At the time, the Democratic majority in Sacramento was pushing bill after bill mandating greater reliance on renewable energy, assuring everyone that these policies would make us look like “geniuses” when the price of fossil fuels inevitably soared.
I warned that these laws, regulations and subsidies would instead drive up electricity costs for Californians, making the grid less reliable and California’s economy less competitive.
Now, two decades later, the results are in. In 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that California had the second-highest electricity prices in the nation for the second year running, behind only Hawaii. The Golden State’s misguided energy policies have steadily increased the price of electricity as green energy mandates, grid instability and regulatory burdens have taken their toll. Meanwhile, states with more balanced energy policies — natural gas, coal and nuclear power — have fared far better.
What’s worse, California’s natural advantage in AI will be lost to Texas and other low-cost energy states. California’s industrial electricity prices averaged 21.98 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2023 vs. 6.26 in Texas, a whopping 251% price premium that no electricity-hungry AI installation or server farm operator is going to pay.
The core issue is simple: California’s policymakers prioritized renewable energy mandates over affordability and reliability. Over the years, they have forced utilities to integrate ever-growing amounts of wind and solar power while discouraging natural gas, nuclear and large-scale hydroelectric projects. These decisions ignored the reality that intermittent renewables require extensive grid upgrades, costly backup power sources and expensive storage solutions — all of which drive up costs for consumers and industry.
California’s high electricity prices are not an accident; they are a direct consequence of these policies. The state’s cap-and-trade system, restrictive permitting laws and mandates like the Renewable Portfolio Standard (which requires utilities to generate 60% of their electricity from renewables by 2030) have all contributed to rising rates.
At the same time, bureaucratic obstacles have made it nearly impossible to build new natural gas plants or modernize existing infrastructure. From 2014 to 2024, California approved or built only five natural gas plants, four of which replaced older facilities for a total output of up to 4 gigawatts. By comparison, in the prior 10 years, California commissioned dozens of plants totaling more than 20 gigawatts of nameplate capacity.
Follow-up: Remember the guy who opened fire at a band competition before being tackled by four band parents? He died in the hospital.
“Honors student sues Connecticut school district for not teaching her to read and write. Meet Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated with honors from Hartford Public High School in Connecticut. It would seem congratulations are in order … except she says she’s functionally illiterate.”
I wanted to compile a list of the Trump Administration’s pluses and minuses (and, indeed, still might). One source I was going to draw from was the WhiteHouse.gov list of Trump Accomplishments. However, the Biden Administration took that down. As a service, and for the Historical Record, I’ve fished that list out of the Wayback Machine and am posting it below. (Plus you never know when the Biden Administration might ask the Wayback Machine to remove it from their records.) I’ve even tried to replicate the formatting.
As of January 2021
Trump Administration Accomplishments
━━━━━━━━ ★ ★ ★ ━━━━━━━━
Unprecedented Economic Boom
Before the China Virus invaded our shores, we built the world’s most prosperous economy.
America gained 7 million new jobs – more than three times government experts’ projections.
Middle-Class family income increased nearly $6,000 – more than five times the gains during the entire previous administration.
The unemployment rate reached 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century.
Achieved 40 months in a row with more job openings than job-hirings.
More Americans reported being employed than ever before – nearly 160 million.
Jobless claims hit a nearly 50-year low.
The number of people claiming unemployment insurance as a share of the population hit its lowest on record.
Incomes rose in every single metro area in the United States for the first time in nearly 3 decades.
Delivered a future of greater promise and opportunity for citizens of all backgrounds.
Unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those without a high school diploma all reached record lows.
Unemployment for women hit its lowest rate in nearly 70 years.
Lifted nearly 7 million people off of food stamps.
Poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans reached record lows.
Income inequality fell for two straight years, and by the largest amount in over a decade.
The bottom 50 percent of American households saw a 40 percent increase in net worth.
Wages rose fastest for low-income and blue collar workers – a 16 percent pay increase.
African American homeownership increased from 41.7 percent to 46.4 percent.
Brought jobs, factories, and industries back to the USA.
Created more than 1.2 million manufacturing and construction jobs.
Put in place policies to bring back supply chains from overseas.
Small business optimism broke a 35-year old record in 2018.
Hit record stock market numbers and record 401ks.
The DOW closed above 20,000 for the first time in 2017 and topped 30,000 in 2020.
The S&P 500 and NASDAQ have repeatedly notched record highs.
Rebuilding and investing in rural America.
Signed an Executive Order on Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology Products, which is bringing innovative new technologies to market in American farming and agriculture.
Strengthened America’s rural economy by investing over $1.3 billion through the Agriculture Department’s ReConnect Program to bring high-speed broadband infrastructure to rural America.
Achieved a record-setting economic comeback by rejecting blanket lockdowns.
An October 2020 Gallup survey found 56 percent of Americans said they were better off during a pandemic than four years prior.
During the third quarter of 2020, the economy grew at a rate of 33.1 percent – the most rapid GDP growth ever recorded.
Since coronavirus lockdowns ended, the economy has added back over 12 million jobs, more than half the jobs lost.
Jobs have been recovered 23 times faster than the previous administration’s recovery.
Unemployment fell to 6.7 percent in December, from a pandemic peak of 14.7 percent in April – beating expectations of well over 10 percent unemployment through the end of 2020.
Under the previous administration, it took 49 months for the unemployment rate to fall from 10 percent to under 7 percent compared to just 3 months for the Trump Administration.
Since April, the Hispanic unemployment rate has fallen by 9.6 percent, Asian-American unemployment by 8.6 percent, and Black American unemployment by 6.8 percent.
80 percent of small businesses are now open, up from just 53 percent in April.
Small business confidence hit a new high.
Homebuilder confidence reached an all-time high, and home sales hit their highest reading since December 2006.
Manufacturing optimism nearly doubled.
Household net worth rose $7.4 trillion in Q2 2020 to $112 trillion, an all-time high.
Home prices hit an all-time record high.
The United States rejected crippling lockdowns that crush the economy and inflict countless public health harms and instead safely reopened its economy.
Business confidence is higher in America than in any other G7 or European Union country.
Stabilized America’s financial markets with the establishment of a number of Treasury Department supported facilities at the Federal Reserve.
━━━━━━━━ ★ ★ ★ ━━━━━━━━
Tax Relief for the Middle Class
Passed $3.2 trillion in historic tax relief and reformed the tax code.
Signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – the largest tax reform package in history.
More than 6 million American workers received wage increases, bonuses, and increased benefits thanks to the tax cuts.
A typical family of four earning $75,000 received an income tax cut of more than $2,000 – slashing their tax bill in half.
Doubled the standard deduction – making the first $24,000 earned by a married couple completely tax-free.
Doubled the child tax credit.
Virtually eliminated the unfair Estate Tax, or Death Tax.
Cut the business tax rate from 35 percent – the highest in the developed world – all the way down to 21 percent.
Small businesses can now deduct 20 percent of their business income.
Businesses can now deduct 100 percent of the cost of their capital investments in the year the investment is made.
Since the passage of tax cuts, the share of total wealth held by the bottom half of households has increased, while the share held by the top 1 percent has decreased.
Over 400 companies have announced bonuses, wage increases, new hires, or new investments in the United States.
Over $1.5 trillion was repatriated into the United States from overseas.
Lower investment cost and higher capital returns led to faster growth in the middle class, real wages, and international competitiveness.
Jobs and investments are pouring into Opportunity Zones.
Created nearly 9,000 Opportunity Zones where capital gains on long-term investments are taxed at zero.
Opportunity Zone designations have increased property values within them by 1.1 percent, creating an estimated $11 billion in wealth for the nearly half of Opportunity Zone residents who own their own home.
Opportunity Zones have attracted $75 billion in funds and driven $52 billion of new investment in economically distressed communities, creating at least 500,000 new jobs.
Approximately 1 million Americans will be lifted from poverty as a result of these new investments.
Private equity investments into businesses in Opportunity Zones were nearly 30 percent higher than investments into businesses in similar areas that were not designated Opportunity Zones.
━━━━━━━━ ★ ★ ★ ━━━━━━━━
Massive Deregulation
Ended the regulatory assault on American Businesses and Workers.
Instead of 2-for-1, we eliminated 8 old regulations for every 1 new regulation adopted.
Provided the average American household an extra $3,100 every year.
Reduced the direct cost of regulatory compliance by $50 billion, and will reduce costs by an additional $50 billion in FY 2020 alone.
Removed nearly 25,000 pages from the Federal Register – more than any other president. The previous administration added over 16,000 pages.
Established the Governors’ Initiative on Regulatory Innovation to reduce outdated regulations at the state, local, and tribal levels.
Signed an executive order to make it easier for businesses to offer retirement plans.
Signed two executive orders to increase transparency in Federal agencies and protect Americans and their small businesses from administrative abuse.
Modernized the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for the first time in over 40 years.
Reduced approval times for major infrastructure projects from 10 or more years down to 2 years or less.
Helped community banks by signing legislation that rolled back costly provisions of Dodd-Frank.
Established the White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing to bring down housing costs.
Removed regulations that threatened the development of a strong and stable internet.
Eased and simplified restrictions on rocket launches, helping to spur commercial investment in space projects.
Published a whole-of-government strategy focused on ensuring American leadership in automated vehicle technology.
Streamlined energy efficiency regulations for American families and businesses, including preserving affordable lightbulbs, enhancing the utility of showerheads, and enabling greater time savings with dishwashers.
Removed unnecessary regulations that restrict the seafood industry and impede job creation.
Modernized the Department of Agriculture’s biotechnology regulations to put America in the lead to develop new technologies.
Took action to suspend regulations that would have slowed our response to COVID-19, including lifting restrictions on manufacturers to more quickly produce ventilators.
Successfully rolled back burdensome regulatory overreach.
Rescinded the previous administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which would have abolished zoning for single-family housing to build low-income, federally subsidized apartments.
Issued a final rule on the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard.
Eliminated the Waters of the United States Rule and replaced it with the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, providing relief and certainty for farmers and property owners.
Repealed the previous administration’s costly fuel economy regulations by finalizing the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule, which will make cars more affordable, and lower the price of new vehicles by an estimated $2,200.
Americans now have more money in their pockets.
Deregulation had an especially beneficial impact on low-income Americans who pay a much higher share of their incomes for overregulation.
Cut red tape in the healthcare industry, providing Americans with more affordable healthcare and saving Americans nearly 10 percent on prescription drugs.
Deregulatory efforts yielded savings to the medical community an estimated $6.6 billion – with a reduction of 42 million hours of regulatory compliance work through 2021.
Removed government barriers to personal freedom and consumer choice in healthcare.
Once fully in effect, 20 major deregulatory actions undertaken by the Trump Administration are expected to save American consumers and businesses over $220 billion per year.
Signed 16 pieces of deregulatory legislation that will result in a $40 billion increase in annual real incomes.
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Fair and Reciprocal Trade
Secured historic trade deals to defend American workers.
Immediately withdrew from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Ended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and replaced it with the brand new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
The USMCA contains powerful new protections for American manufacturers, auto-makers, farmers, dairy producers, and workers.
The USMCA is expected to generate over $68 billion in economic activity and potentially create over 550,000 new jobs over ten years.
Signed an executive order making it government policy to Buy American and Hire American, and took action to stop the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
Negotiated with Japan to slash tariffs and open its market to $7 billion in American agricultural products and ended its ban on potatoes and lamb.
Over 90 percent of American agricultural exports to Japan now receive preferential treatment, and most are duty-free.
Negotiated another deal with Japan to boost $40 billion worth of digital trade.
Renegotiated the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement, doubling the cap on imports of American vehicles and extending the American light truck tariff.
Reached a written, fully-enforceable Phase One trade agreement with China on confronting pirated and counterfeit goods, and the protection of American ideas, trade secrets, patents, and trademarks.
China agreed to purchase an additional $200 billion worth of United States exports and opened market access for over 4,000 American facilities to exports while all tariffs remained in effect.
Achieved a mutual agreement with the European Union (EU) that addresses unfair trade practices and increases duty-free exports by 180 percent to $420 million.
Secured a pledge from the EU to eliminate tariffs on American lobster – the first United States-European Union negotiated tariff reduction in over 20 years.
Scored a historic victory by overhauling the Universal Postal Union, whose outdated policies were undermining American workers and interests.
Engaged extensively with trade partners like the EU and Japan to advance reforms to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Issued a first-ever comprehensive report on the WTO Appellate Body’s failures to comply with WTO rules and interpret WTO agreements as written.
Blocked nominees to the WTO’s Appellate Body until WTO Members recognize and address longstanding issues with Appellate Body activism.
Submitted 5 papers to the WTO Committee on Agriculture to improve Members’ understanding of how trade policies are implemented, highlight areas for improved transparency, and encourage members to maintain up-to-date notifications on market access and domestic support.
Took strong actions to confront unfair trade practices and put America First.
Imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions worth of Chinese goods to protect American jobs and stop China’s abuses under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.
Directed an all-of-government effort to halt and punish efforts by the Communist Party of China to steal and profit from American innovations and intellectual property.
Imposed tariffs on foreign aluminum and foreign steel to protect our vital industries and support our national security.
Approved tariffs on $1.8 billion in imports of washing machines and $8.5 billion in imports of solar panels.
Blocked illegal timber imports from Peru.
Took action against France for its digital services tax that unfairly targets American technology companies.
`Launched investigations into digital services taxes that have been proposed or adopted by 10 other countries.
Historic support for American farmers.
Successfully negotiated more than 50 agreements with countries around the world to increase foreign market access and boost exports of American agriculture products, supporting more than 1 million American jobs.
Authorized $28 billion in aid for farmers who have been subjected to unfair trade practices – fully funded by the tariffs paid by China.
China lifted its ban on poultry, opened its market to beef, and agreed to purchase at least $80 billion of American agricultural products in the next two years.
The European Union agreed to increase beef imports by 180 percent and opened up its market to more imports of soybeans.
South Korea lifted its ban on American poultry and eggs, and agreed to provide market access for record exports of American rice.
Argentina lifted its ban on American pork.
Brazil agreed to increase wheat imports by $180 million a year and raised its quotas for purchases of United States ethanol.
Guatemala and Tunisia opened up their markets to American eggs.
Won tariff exemptions in Ecuador for wheat and soybeans.
Suspended $817 million in trade preferences for Thailand under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program due to its failure to adequately provide reasonable market access for American pork products.
The amount of food stamps redeemed at farmers markets increased from $1.4 million in May 2020 to $1.75 million in September 2020 – a 50 percent increase over last year.
Rapidly deployed the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which provided $30 billion in support to farmers and ranchers facing decreased prices and market disruption when COVID-19 impacted the food supply chain.
Authorized more than $6 billion for the Farmers to Families Food Box program, which delivered over 128 million boxes of locally sourced, produce, meat, and dairy products to charity and faith-based organizations nationwide.
Delegated authorities via the Defense Production Act to protect breaks in the American food supply chain as a result of COVID-19.
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American Energy Independence
Unleashed America’s oil and natural gas potential.
For the first time in nearly 70 years, the United States has become a net energy exporter.
The United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world.
Natural gas production reached a record-high of 34.9 quads in 2019, following record high production in 2018 and in 2017.
The United States has been a net natural gas exporter for three consecutive years and has an export capacity of nearly 10 billion cubic feet per day.
Withdrew from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Agreement.
Canceled the previous administration’s Clean Power Plan, and replaced it with the new Affordable Clean Energy rule.
Approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
Opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas leasing.
Repealed the last administration’s Federal Coal Leasing Moratorium, which prohibited coal leasing on Federal lands.
Reformed permitting rules to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and speed approval for mines.
Fixed the New Source Review permitting program, which punished companies for upgrading or repairing coal power plants.
Fixed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) steam electric and coal ash rules.
The average American family saved $2,500 a year in lower electric bills and lower prices at the gas pump.
Signed legislation repealing the harmful Stream Protection Rule.
Reduced the time to approve drilling permits on public lands by half, increasing permit applications to drill on public lands by 300 percent.
Expedited approval of the NuStar’s New Burgos pipeline to export American gasoline to Mexico.
Streamlined Liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal permitting and allowed long-term LNG export authorizations to be extended through 2050.
The United States is now among the top three LNG exporters in the world.
Increased LNG exports five-fold since January 2017, reaching an all-time high in January 2020.
LNG exports are expected to reduce the American trade deficit by over $10 billion.
Granted more than 20 new long-term approvals for LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries.
The development of natural gas and LNG infrastructure in the United States is providing tens of thousands of jobs, and has led to the investment of tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure.
There are now 6 LNG export facilities operating in the United States, with 2 additional export projects under construction.
The amount of nuclear energy production in 2019 was the highest on record, through a combination of increased capacity from power plant upgrades and shorter refueling and maintenance cycles.
Prevented Russian energy coercion across Europe through various lines of effort, including the Partnership for Transatlantic Energy Cooperation, civil nuclear deals with Romania and Poland, and opposition to Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Issued the Presidential Permit for the A2A railroad between Canada and Alaska, providing energy resources to emerging markets.
Increased access to our country’s abundant natural resources in order to achieve energy independence.
Renewable energy production and consumption both reached record highs in 2019.
Enacted policies that helped double the amount of electricity generated by solar and helped increase the amount of wind generation by 32 percent from 2016 through 2019.
Accelerated construction of energy infrastructure to ensure American energy producers can deliver their products to the market.
Cut red tape holding back the construction of new energy infrastructure.
Authorized ethanol producers to sell E15 year-round and allowed higher-ethanol gasoline to be distributed from existing pumps at filling stations.
Ensured greater transparency and certainty in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program.
Negotiated leasing capacity in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Australia, providing American taxpayers a return on this infrastructure investment.
Signed an executive order directing Federal agencies to work together to diminish the capability of foreign adversaries to target our critical electric infrastructure.
Reformed Section 401 of the Clean Water Act regulation to allow for the curation of interstate infrastructure.
Resolved the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil crisis during COVID-19 by getting OPEC, Russia, and others to cut nearly 10 million barrels of production a day, stabilizing world oil prices.
Directed the Department of Energy to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate market volatility caused by COVID-19.
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Investing in America’s Workers and Families
Affordable and high-quality Child Care for American workers and their families.
Doubled the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child and expanded the eligibility for receiving the credit.
Nearly 40 million families benefitted from the child tax credit (CTC), receiving an average benefit of $2,200 – totaling credits of approximately $88 billion.
Signed the largest-ever increase in Child Care and Development Block Grants – expanding access to quality, affordable child care for more than 800,000 low-income families.
Secured an additional $3.5 billion in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to help families and first responders with child care needs.
Created the first-ever paid family leave tax credit for employees earning $72,000 or less.
Signed into law 12-weeks of paid parental leave for Federal workers.
Signed into law a provision that enables new parents to withdraw up to $5,000 from their retirement accounts without penalty when they give birth to or adopt a child.
Advanced apprenticeship career pathways to good-paying jobs.
Expanded apprenticeships to more than 850,000 and established the new Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship programs in new and emerging fields.
Established the National Council for the American Worker and the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.
Over 460 companies have signed the Pledge to America’s Workers, committing to provide more than 16 million job and training opportunities.
Signed an executive order that directs the Federal government to replace outdated degree-based hiring with skills-based hiring.
Advanced women’s economic empowerment.
Included women’s empowerment for the first time in the President’s 2017 National Security Strategy.
Signed into law key pieces of legislation, including the Women, Peace, and Security Act and the Women Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act.
Launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative – the first-ever whole-of-government approach to women’s economic empowerment that has reached 24 million women worldwide.
Established an innovative new W-GDP Fund at USAID.
Launched the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi) with 13 other nations.
Announced a $50 million donation on behalf of the United States to We-Fi providing more capital to women-owned businesses around the world.
Released the first-ever Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security, which focused on increasing women’s participation to prevent and resolve conflicts.
Launched the W-GDP 2x Global Women’s Initiative with the Development Finance Corporation, which has mobilized more than $3 billion in private sector investments over three years.
Ensured American leadership in technology and innovation.
First administration to name artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and 5G communications as national research and development priorities.
Launched the American Broadband Initiative to promote the rapid deployment of broadband internet across rural America.
Made 100 megahertz of crucial mid-band spectrum available for commercial operations, a key factor to driving widespread 5G access across rural America.
Launched the American AI Initiative to ensure American leadership in artificial intelligence (AI), and established the National AI Initiative Office at the White House.
Established the first-ever principles for Federal agency adoption of AI to improve services for the American people.
Signed the National Quantum Initiative Act establishing the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House to drive breakthroughs in quantum information science.
Signed the Secure 5G and Beyond Act to ensure America leads the world in 5G.
Launched a groundbreaking program to test safe and innovative commercial drone operations nationwide.
Issued new rulemaking to accelerate the return of American civil supersonic aviation.
Committed to doubling investments in AI and quantum information science (QIS) research and development.
Announced the establishment of $1 billion AI and quantum research institutes across America.
Established the largest dual-use 5G test sites in the world to advance 5G commercial and military innovation.
Signed landmark Prague Principles with America’s allies to advance the deployment of secure 5G telecommunications networks.
Signed first-ever bilateral AI cooperation agreement with the United Kingdom.
Built collation among allies to ban Chinese Telecom Company Huawei from their 5G infrastructure.
Preserved American jobs for American workers and rejected the importation of cheap foreign labor.
Pressured the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to reverse their decision to lay off over 200 American workers and replace them with cheaper foreign workers.
Removed the TVA Chairman of the Board and a TVA Board Member.
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Life-Saving Response to the China Virus
Restricted travel to the United States from infected regions of the world.
Suspended all travel from China, saving thousands of lives.
Required all American citizens returning home from designated outbreak countries to return through designated airports with enhanced screening measures, and to undergo a self-quarantine.
Announced further travel restrictions on Iran, the Schengen Area of Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Brazil.
Issued travel advisory warnings recommending that American citizens avoid all international travel.
Reached bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada to suspend non-essential travel and expeditiously return illegal aliens.
Repatriated over 100,000 American citizens stranded abroad on more than 1,140 flights from 136 countries and territories.
Safely transported, evacuated, treated, and returned home trapped passengers on cruise ships.
Took action to authorize visa sanctions on foreign governments who impede our efforts to protect American citizens by refusing or unreasonably delaying the return of their own citizens, subjects, or residents from the United States.
Acted early to combat the China Virus in the United States.
Established the White House Coronavirus Task Force, with leading experts on infectious diseases, to manage the Administration’s efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and to keep workplaces safe.
Pledged in the State of the Union address to “take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from the Virus,” while the Democrats’ response made not a single mention of COVID-19 or even the threat of China.
Declared COVID-19 a National Emergency under the Stafford Act.
Established the 24/7 FEMA National Response Coordination Center.
Released guidance recommending containment measures critical to slowing the spread of the Virus, decompressing peak burden on hospitals and infrastructure, and diminishing health impacts.
Implemented strong community mitigation strategies to sharply reduce the number of lives lost in the United States down from experts’ projection of up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States without mitigation.
Halted American funding to the World Health Organization to counter its egregious bias towards China that jeopardized the safety of Americans.
Announced plans for withdrawal from the World Health Organization and redirected contribution funds to help meet global public health needs.
Called on the United Nations to hold China accountable for their handling of the virus, including refusing to be transparent and failing to contain the virus before it spread.
Re-purposed domestic manufacturing facilities to ensure frontline workers had critical supplies.
Distributed billions of pieces of Personal Protective Equipment, including gloves, masks, gowns, and face shields.
Invoked the Defense Production Act over 100 times to accelerate the development and manufacturing of essential material in the USA.
Made historic investments of more than $3 billion into the industrial base.
Contracted with companies such as Ford, General Motors, Philips, and General Electric to produce ventilators.
Contracted with Honeywell, 3M, O&M Halyard, Moldex, and Lydall to increase our Nation’s production of N-95 masks.
The Army Corps of Engineers built 11,000 beds, distributed 10,000 ventilators, and surged personnel to hospitals.
Converted the Javits Center in New York into a 3,000-bed hospital, and opened medical facilities in Seattle and New Orleans.
Dispatched the USNS Comfort to New York City, and the USNS Mercy to Los Angeles.
Deployed thousands of FEMA employees, National Guard members, and military forces to help in the response.
Provided support to states facing new emergences of the virus, including surging testing sites, deploying medical personnel, and advising on mitigation strategies.
Announced Federal support to governors for use of the National Guard with 100 percent cost-share.
Established the Supply Chain Task Force as a “control tower” to strategically allocate high-demand medical supplies and PPE to areas of greatest need.
Requested critical data elements from states about the status of hospital capacity, ventilators, and PPE.
Executed nearly 250 flights through Project Air Bridge to transport hundreds of millions of surgical masks, N95 respirators, gloves, and gowns from around the world to hospitals and facilities throughout the United States.
Signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to ensure that Americans have a reliable supply of products like beef, pork, and poultry.
Stabilized the food supply chain restoring the Nation’s protein processing capacity through a collaborative approach with Federal, state, and local officials and industry partners.
The continued movement of food and other critical items of daily life distributed to stores and to American homes went unaffected.
Replenished the depleted Strategic National Stockpile.
Increased the number of ventilators nearly ten-fold to more than 153,000.
Despite the grim projections from the media and governors, no American who has needed a ventilator has been denied a ventilator.
Increased the number of N95 masks fourteen-fold to more than 176 million.
Issued an executive order ensuring critical medical supplies are produced in the United States.
Created the largest, most advanced, and most innovative testing system in the world.
Built the world’s leading testing system from scratch, conducting over 200 million tests – more than all of the European Union combined.
Engaged more than 400 test developers to increase testing capacity from less than 100 tests per day to more than 2 million tests per day.
Slashed red tape and approved Emergency Use Authorizations for more than 300 different tests, including 235 molecular tests, 63 antibody tests, and 11 antigen tests.
Delivered state-of-the-art testing devices and millions of tests to every certified nursing home in the country.
Announced more flexibility to Medicare Advantage and Part D plans to waive cost-sharing for tests.
Over 2,000 retail pharmacy stores, including CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens, are providing testing using new regulatory and reimbursement options.
Deployed tens of millions of tests to nursing homes, assisted living facilities, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), tribes, disaster relief operations, Home Health/Hospice organizations, and the Veterans Health Administration.
Began shipping 150 million BinaxNOW rapid tests to states, long-term care facilities, the IHS, HBCUs, and other key partners.
Pioneered groundbreaking treatments and therapies that reduced the mortality rate by 85 percent, saving over 2 million lives.
The United States has among the lowest case fatality rates in the entire world.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched the Coronavirus Treatment Acceleration Program to expedite the regulatory review process for therapeutics in clinical trials, accelerate the development and publication of industry guidance on developing treatments, and utilize regulatory flexibility to help facilitate the scaling-up of manufacturing capacity.
More than 370 therapies are in clinical trials and another 560 are in the planning stages.
Announced $450 million in available funds to support the manufacturing of Regeneron’s antibody cocktail.
Shipped tens of thousands of doses of the Regeneron drug.
Authorized an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for convalescent plasma.
Treated around 100,000 patients with convalescent plasma, which may reduce mortality by 50 percent.
Provided $48 million to fund the Mayo Clinic study that tested the efficacy of convalescent plasma for patients with COVID-19.
Made an agreement to support the large-scale manufacturing of AstraZeneca’s cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies.
Approved Remdesivir as the first COVID-19 treatment, which could reduce hospitalization time by nearly a third.
Secured more than 90 percent of the world’s supply of Remdesivir, enough to treat over 850,000 high-risk patients.
Granted an EUA to Eli Lilly for its anti-body treatments.
Finalized an agreement with Eli Lilly to purchase the first doses of the company’s investigational antibody therapeutic.
Provided up to $270 million to the American Red Cross and America’s Blood Centers to support the collection of up to 360,000 units of plasma.
Launched a nationwide campaign to ask patients who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate plasma.
Announced Phase 3 clinical trials for varying types of blood thinners to treat adults diagnosed with COVID-19.
Issued an EUA for the monoclonal antibody therapy bamlanivimab.
FDA issued an EUA for casirivimab and imdevimab to be administered together.
Launched the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium with private sector and academic leaders unleashing America’s supercomputers to accelerate coronavirus research.
Brought the full power of American medicine and government to produce a safe and effective vaccine in record time.
Launched Operation Warp Speed to initiate an unprecedented drive to develop and make available an effective vaccine by January 2021.
Pfizer and Moderna developed two vaccines in just nine months, five times faster than the fastest prior vaccine development in American history.
Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines are approximately 95 effective – far exceeding all expectations.
AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson also both have promising candidates in the final stage of clinical trials.
The vaccines will be administered within 24 hours of FDA-approval.
Made millions of vaccine doses available before the end of 2020, with hundreds of millions more to quickly follow.
FedEx and UPS will ship doses from warehouses directly to local pharmacies, hospitals, and healthcare providers.
Finalized a partnership with CVS and Walgreens to deliver vaccines directly to residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities as soon as a state requests it, at no cost to America’s seniors.
Signed an executive order to ensure that the United States government prioritizes getting the vaccine to American citizens before sending it to other nations.
Provided approximately $13 billion to accelerate vaccine development and to manufacture all of the top candidates in advance.
Provided critical investments of $4.1 billion to Moderna to support the development, manufacturing, and distribution of their vaccines.
Moderna announced its vaccine is 95 percent effective and is pending FDA approval.
Provided Pfizer up to $1.95 billion to support the mass-manufacturing and nationwide distribution of their vaccine candidate.
Pfizer announced its vaccine is 95 percent effective and is pending FDA approval.
Provided approximately $1 billion to support the manufacturing and distribution of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine candidate reached the final stage of clinical trials.
Made up to $1.2 billion available to support AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate.
AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate reached the final stage of clinical trials.
Made an agreement to support the large-scale manufacturing of Novavax’s vaccine candidate with 100 million doses expected.
Partnered with Sanofi and GSK to support large-scale manufacturing of a COVID-19 investigational vaccine.
Awarded $200 million in funding to support vaccine preparedness and plans for the immediate distribution and administration of vaccines.
Provided $31 million to Cytvia for vaccine-related consumable products.
Under the PREP Act, issued guidance authorizing qualified pharmacy technicians to administer vaccines.
Announced that McKesson Corporation will produce store, and distribute vaccine ancillary supply kits on behalf of the Strategic National Stockpile to help healthcare workers who will administer vaccines.
Announced partnership with large-chain, independent, and regional pharmacies to deliver vaccines.
Prioritized resources for the most vulnerable Americans, including nursing home residents.
Quickly established guidelines for nursing homes and expanded telehealth opportunities to protect vulnerable seniors.
Increased surveillance, oversight, and transparency of all 15,417 Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes by requiring them to report cases of COVID-19 to all residents, their families, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Required that all nursing homes test staff regularly.
Launched an unprecedented national nursing home training curriculum to equip nursing home staff with the knowledge they need to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Delivered $81 million for increased inspections and funded 35,000 members of the Nation Guard to deliver critical supplies to every Medicare-certified nursing homes.
Deployed Federal Task Force Strike Teams to provide onsite technical assistance and education to nursing homes experiencing outbreaks.
Distributed tens of billions of dollars in Provider Relief Funds to protect nursing homes, long-term care facilities, safety-net hospitals, rural hospitals, and communities hardest hit by the virus.
Released 1.5 million N95 respirators from the Strategic National Stockpile for distribution to over 3,000 nursing home facilities.
Directed the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council to refocus on underserved communities impacted by the coronavirus.
Required that testing results reported include data on race, gender, ethnicity, and ZIP code, to ensure that resources were directed to communities disproportionately harmed by the virus.
Ensured testing was offered at 95 percent of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), which serve over 29 million patients in 12,000 communities across the Nation.
Invested an unprecedented $8 billion in tribal communities.
Maintained safe access for Veterans to VA healthcare throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic and supported non-VA hospital systems and private and state-run nursing homes with VA clinical teams.
Signed legislation ensuring no reduction of VA education benefits under the GI Bill for online distance learning.
Supported Americans as they safely return to school and work.
Issued the Guidelines for Opening Up America Again, a detailed blueprint to help governors as they began reopening the country. Focused on protecting the most vulnerable and mitigating the risk of any resurgence, while restarting the economy and allowing Americans to safely return to their jobs.
Helped Americans return to work by providing extensive guidance on workplace-safety measures to protect against COVID-19, and investigating over 10,000 coronavirus-related complaints and referrals.
Provided over $31 billion to support elementary and secondary schools.
Distributed 125 million face masks to school districts.
Provided comprehensive guidelines to schools on how to protect and identify high-risk individuals, prevent the spread of COVID-19, and conduct safe in-person teaching.
Brought back the safe return of college athletics, including Big Ten and Pac-12 football.
Rescued the American economy with nearly $3.4 trillion in relief, the largest financial aid package in history.
Secured an initial $8.3 billion Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Act, supporting the development of treatments and vaccines, and to procure critical medical supplies and equipment.
Signed the $100 billion Families First Coronavirus Relief Act, guaranteeing free coronavirus testing, emergency paid sick leave and family leave, Medicaid funding, and food assistance.
Signed the $2.3 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, providing unprecedented and immediate relief to American families, workers, and businesses.
Signed additional legislation providing nearly $900 billion in support for coronavirus emergency response and relief, including critically needed funds to continue the Paycheck Protection Program.
Signed the Paycheck Protection Program and Healthcare Enhancement Act, adding an additional $310 billion to replenish the program.
Delivered approximately 160 million relief payments to hardworking Americans.
Through the Paycheck Protection Program, approved over $525 billion in forgivable loans to more than 5.2 million small businesses, supporting more than 51 million American jobs.
The Treasury Department approved the establishment of the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility to provide liquidity to the financial system.
The Treasury Department, working with the Federal Reserve, was able to leverage approximately $4 trillion in emergency lending facilities.
Signed an executive order extending expanded unemployment benefits.
Signed an executive order to temporarily suspend student loan payments, evictions, and collection of payroll taxes.
Small Business Administration expanded access to emergency economic assistance for small businesses, faith-based, and religious entities.
Protected jobs for American workers impacted by COVID-19 by temporarily suspending several job-related nonimmigrant visas, including H-1B’s, H-2B’s without a nexus to the food-supply chain, certain H-4’s, as well as L’s and certain J’s.
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Great Healthcare for Americans
Empowered American patients by greatly expanding healthcare choice, transparency, and affordability.
Eliminated the Obamacare individual mandate – a financial relief to low and middle-income households that made up nearly 80 percent of the families who paid the penalty for not wanting to purchase health insurance.
Increased choice for consumers by promoting competition in the individual health insurance market leading to lower premiums for three years in a row.
Under the Trump Administration, more than 90 percent of the counties have multiple options on the individual insurance market to choose from.
Offered Association Health Plans, which allow employers to pool together and offer more affordable, quality health coverage to their employees at up to 30 percent lower cost.
Increased availability of short-term, limited-duration health plans, which can cost up to 60 percent less than traditional plans, giving Americans more flexibility to choose plans that suit their needs.
Expanded Health Reimbursement Arrangements, allowing millions of Americans to be able to shop for a plan of their choice on the individual market, and then have their employer cover the cost.
Added 2,100 new Medicare Advantage plan options since 2017, a 76 percent increase.
Lowered Medicare Advantage premiums by 34 percent nationwide to the lowest level in 14 years. Medicare health plan premium savings for beneficiaries have totaled $nearly 1.5 billion since 2017.
Improved access to tax-free health savings accounts for individuals with chronic conditions.
Eliminated costly Obamacare taxes, including the health insurance tax, the medical device tax, and the “Cadillac tax.”
Worked with states to create more flexibility and relief from oppressive Obamacare regulations, including reinsurance waivers to help lower premiums.
Released legislative principles to end surprise medical billing.
Finalized requirements for unprecedented price transparency from hospitals and insurance companies so patients know what the cost is before they receive care.
Took action to require that hospitals make the prices they negotiate with insurers publicly available and easily accessible online.
Improved patients access to their health data by penalizing hospitals and causing clinicians to lose their incentive payments if they do not comply.
Expanded access to telehealth, especially in rural and underserved communities.
Increased Medicare payments to rural hospitals to stem a decade of rising closures and deliver enhanced access to care in rural areas.
Issued unprecedented reforms that dramatically lowered the price of prescription drugs.
Lowered drug prices for the first time in 51 years.
Launched an initiative to stop global freeloading in the drug market.
Finalized a rule to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada.
Finalized the Most Favored Nation Rule to ensure that pharmaceutical companies offer the same discounts to the United States as they do to other nations, resulting in an estimated $85 billion in savings over seven years and $30 billion in out-of-pocket costs alone.
Proposed a rule requiring federally funded health centers to pass drug company discounts on insulin and Epi-Pens directly to patients.
Ended the gag clauses that prevented pharmacists from informing patients about the best prices for the medications they need.
Ended the costly kickbacks to middlemen and ensured that patients directly benefit from available discounts at the pharmacy counter, saving Americans up to 30 percent on brand name pharmaceuticals.
Enhanced Part D plans to provide many seniors with Medicare access to a broad set of insulins at a maximum $35 copay for a month’s supply of each type of insulin.
Reduced Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums, saving beneficiaries nearly $2 billion in premium costs since 2017.
Ended the Unapproved Drugs Initiative, which provided market exclusivity to generic drugs.
Promoted research and innovation in healthcare to ensure that American patients have access to the best treatment in the world.
Signed first-ever executive order to affirm that it is the official policy of the United States Government to protect patients with pre-existing conditions.
Passed Right To Try to give terminally ill patients access to lifesaving cures.
Signed an executive order to fight kidney disease with more transplants and better treatment.
Signed into law a $1 billion increase in funding for critical Alzheimer’s research.
Accelerated medical breakthroughs in genetic treatments for Sickle Cell disease.
Finalized the interoperability rules that will give American patients access to their electronic health records on their phones.
Initiated an effort to provide $500 million over the next decade to improve pediatric cancer research.
Launched a campaign to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America in the next decade.
Started a program to provide the HIV prevention drug PrEP to uninsured patients for free.
Signed an executive order and awarded new development contracts to modernize the influenza vaccine.
Protected our Nation’s seniors by safeguarding and strengthening Medicare.
Updated the way Medicare pays for innovative medical products to ensure beneficiaries have access to the latest innovation and treatment.
Reduced improper payments for Medicare an estimated $15 billion since 2016 protecting taxpayer dollars and leading to less fraud, waste, and abuse.
Took rapid action to combat antimicrobial resistance and secure access to life-saving new antibiotic drugs for American seniors, by removing several financial disincentives and setting policies to reduce inappropriate use.
Launched new online tools, including eMedicare, Blue Button 2.0, and Care Compare, to help seniors see what is covered, compare costs, streamline data, and compare tools available on Medicare.gov.
Provided new Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits, including modifications to help keep seniors safe in their homes, respite care for caregivers, non-opioid pain management alternatives like therapeutic massages, transportation, and more in-home support services and assistance.
Protected Medicare beneficiaries by removing Social Security numbers from all Medicare cards, a project completed ahead of schedule.
Unleashed unprecedented transparency in Medicare and Medicaid data to spur research and innovation.
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Remaking the Federal Judiciary
Appointed a historic number of Federal judges who will interpret the Constitution as written.
Nominated and confirmed over 230 Federal judges.
Confirmed 54 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, making up nearly a third of the entire appellate bench.
Filled all Court of Appeals vacancies for the first time in four decades.
Flipped the Second, Third, and Eleventh Circuits from Democrat-appointed majorities to Republican-appointed majorities. And dramatically reshaped the long-liberal Ninth Circuit.
Appointed three Supreme Court justices, expanding its conservative-appointed majority to 6-3.
Appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.
Appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
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Achieving a Secure Border
Secured the Southern Border of the United States.
Built over 400 miles of the world’s most robust and advanced border wall.
Illegal crossings have plummeted over 87 percent where the wall has been constructed.
Deployed nearly 5,000 troops to the Southern border. In addition, Mexico deployed tens of thousands of their own soldiers and national guardsmen to secure their side of the US-Mexico border.
Ended the dangerous practice of Catch-and-Release, which means that instead of aliens getting released into the United States pending future hearings never to be seen again, they are detained pending removal, and then ultimately returned to their home countries.
Entered into three historic asylum cooperation agreements with Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to stop asylum fraud and resettle illegal migrants in third-party nations pending their asylum applications.
Entered into a historic partnership with Mexico, referred to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” to safely return asylum-seekers to Mexico while awaiting hearings in the United States.
Fully enforced the immigration laws of the United States.
Signed an executive order to strip discretionary Federal grant funding from deadly sanctuary cities.
Fully enforced and implemented statutorily authorized “expedited removal” of illegal aliens.
The Department of Justice prosecuted a record-breaking number of immigration-related crimes.
Used Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to reduce the number of aliens coming from countries whose governments refuse to accept their nationals who were ordered removed from the United States.
Ended asylum fraud, shut down human smuggling traffickers, and solved the humanitarian crisis across the Western Hemisphere.
Suspended, via regulation, asylum for aliens who had skipped previous countries where they were eligible for asylum but opted to “forum shop” and continue to the United States.
Safeguarded migrant families, and protected migrant safety, by promulgating new regulations under the Flores Settlement Agreement.
Proposed regulations to end the practice of giving free work permits to illegal aliens lodging meritless asylum claims.
Issued “internal relocation” guidance.
Cross-trained United States Border Patrol agents to conduct credible fear screenings alongside USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) adjudication personnel to reduce massive backlogs.
Streamlined and expedited the asylum hearing process through both the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP).
Launched the Family Fraud Initiative to identify hundreds of individuals who were fraudulently presenting themselves as family units at the border, oftentimes with trafficking children, in order to ensure child welfare.
Improved screening in countries with high overstay rates and reduced visa overstay rates in many of these countries.
Removed bureaucratic constraints on United States consular officers that reduced their ability to appropriately vet visa applicants.
Worked with Mexico and other regional partners to dismantle the human smuggling networks in our hemisphere that profit from human misery and fuel the border crisis by exploiting vulnerable populations.
Secured our Nation’s immigration system against criminals and terrorists.
Instituted national security travel bans to keep out terrorists, jihadists, and violent extremists, and implemented a uniform security and information-sharing baseline all nations must meet in order for their nationals to be able to travel to, and emigrate to, the United States.
Suspended refugee resettlement from the world’s most dangerous and terror-afflicted regions.
Rebalanced refugee assistance to focus on overseas resettlement and burden-sharing.
Required the Department of State to consult with states and localities as part of the Federal government’s refugee resettlement process.
Issued strict sanctions on countries that have failed to take back their own nationals.
Established the National Vetting Center, which is the most advanced and comprehensive visa screening system anywhere in the world.
Protected American workers and taxpayers.
Issued a comprehensive “public charge” regulation to ensure newcomers to the United States are financially self-sufficient and not reliant on welfare.
Created an enforcement mechanism for sponsor repayment and deeming, to ensure that people who are presenting themselves as sponsors are actually responsible for sponsor obligations.
Issued regulations to combat the horrendous practice of “birth tourism.”
Issued a rule with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to make illegal aliens ineligible for public housing.
Issued directives requiring Federal agencies to hire United States workers first and prioritizing the hiring of United States workers wherever possible.
Suspended the entry of low-wage workers that threaten American jobs.
Finalized new H-1B regulations to permanently end the displacement of United States workers and modify the administrative tools that are required for H-1B visa issuance.
Defended United States sovereignty by withdrawing from the United Nations’ Global Compact on Migration.
Suspended Employment Authorization Documents for aliens who arrive illegally between ports of entry and are ordered removed from the United States.
Restored integrity to the use of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) by strictly adhering to the statutory conditions required for TPS.
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Restoring American Leadership Abroad
Restored America’s leadership in the world and successfully negotiated to ensure our allies pay their fair share for our military protection.
Secured a $400 billion increase in defense spending from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies by 2024, and the number of members meeting their minimum obligations more than doubled.
Credited by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for strengthening NATO.
Worked to reform and streamline the United Nations (UN) and reduced spending by $1.3 billion.
Allies, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, committed to increase burden-sharing.
Protected our Second Amendment rights by announcing the United States will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
Returned 56 hostages and detainees from more than 24 countries.
Worked to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific region, promoting new investments and expanding American partnerships.
Advanced peace through strength.
Withdrew from the horrible, one-sided Iran Nuclear Deal and imposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian Regime.
Conducted vigorous enforcement on all sanctions to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero and deny the regime its principal source of revenue.
First president to meet with a leader of North Korea and the first sitting president to cross the demilitarized zone into North Korea.
Maintained a maximum pressure campaign and enforced tough sanctions on North Korea while negotiating de-nuclearization, the release of American hostages, and the return of the remains of American heroes.
Brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, bolstering peace in the Balkans.
Signed the Honk Kong Autonomy Act and ended the United States’ preferential treatment with Hong Kong to hold China accountable for its infringement on the autonomy of Hong Kong.
Led allied efforts to defeat the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to control the international telecommunications system.
Renewed our cherished friendship and alliance with Israel and took historic action to promote peace in the Middle East.
Recognized Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel and quickly moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Acknowledged Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and declared that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not inconsistent with international law.
Removed the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council due to the group’s blatant anti-Israel bias.
Brokered historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab-Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and Sudan.
In addition, the United States negotiated a normalization agreement between Israel and Morocco, and recognized Moroccan Sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara, a position with long standing bipartisan support.
Brokered a deal for Kosovo to normalize ties and establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
Announced that Serbia would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
First American president to address an assembly of leaders from more than 50 Muslim nations, and reach an agreement to fight terrorism in all its forms.
Established the Etidal Center to combat terrorism in the Middle East in conjunction with the Saudi Arabian Government.
Announced the Vision for Peace Political Plan – a two-state solution that resolves the risks of Palestinian statehood to Israel’s security, and the first time Israel has agreed to a map and a Palestinian state.
Released an economic plan to empower the Palestinian people and enhance Palestinian governance through historic private investment.
Stood up against Communism and Socialism in the Western Hemisphere.
Reversed the previous Administration’s disastrous Cuba policy, canceling the sellout deal with the Communist Castro dictatorship.
Pledged not to lift sanctions until all political prisoners are freed; freedoms of assembly and expression are respected; all political parties are legalized; and free elections are scheduled.
Enacted a new policy aimed at preventing American dollars from funding the Cuban regime, including stricter travel restrictions and restrictions on the importation of Cuban alcohol and tobacco.
Implemented a cap on remittances to Cuba.
Enabled Americans to file lawsuits against persons and entities that traffic in property confiscated by the Cuban regime.
First world leader to recognize Juan Guaido as the Interim President of Venezuela and led a diplomatic coalition against the Socialist Dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
Blocked all property of the Venezuelan Government in the jurisdiction of the United States.
Cut off the financial resources of the Maduro regime and sanctioned key sectors of the Venezuelan economy exploited by the regime.
Brought criminal charges against Nicolas Maduro for his narco-terrorism.
Imposed stiff sanctions on the Ortega regime in Nicaragua.
Joined together with Mexico and Canada in a successful bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with 60 matches to be held in the United States.
Won bid to host the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
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Colossal Rebuilding of the Military
Rebuilt the military and created the Sixth Branch, the United States Space Force.
Completely rebuilt the United States military with over $2.2 trillion in defense spending, including $738 billion for 2020.
Secured three pay raises for our service members and their families, including the largest raise in a decade.
Established the Space Force, the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.
Modernized and recapitalized our nuclear forces and missile defenses to ensure they continue to serve as a strong deterrent.
Upgraded our cyber defenses by elevating the Cyber Command into a major warfighting command and by reducing burdensome procedural restrictions on cyber operations.
Vetoed the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act, which failed to protect our national security, disrespected the history of our veterans and military, and contradicted our efforts to put America first.
Defeated terrorists, held leaders accountable for malign actions, and bolstered peace around the world.
Defeated 100 percent of ISIS’ territorial caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Freed nearly 8 million civilians from ISIS’ bloodthirsty control, and liberated Mosul, Raqqa, and the final ISIS foothold of Baghuz.
Killed the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and eliminated the world’s top terrorist, Qasem Soleimani.
Created the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC) in partnership between the United States and its Gulf partners to combat extremist ideology and threats, and target terrorist financial networks, including over 60 terrorist individuals and entities spanning the globe.
Twice took decisive military action against the Assad regime in Syria for the barbaric use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, including a successful 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles strike.
Authorized sanctions against bad actors tied to Syria’s chemical weapons program.
Negotiated an extended ceasefire with Turkey in northeast Syria.
Addressed gaps in American’s defense-industrial base, providing much-needed updates to improve the safety of our country.
Protected America’s defense-industrial base, directing the first whole-of-government assessment of our manufacturing and defense supply chains since the 1950s.
Took decisive steps to secure our information and communications technology and services supply chain, including unsafe mobile applications.
Completed several multi-year nuclear material removal campaigns, securing over 1,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and significantly reducing global nuclear threats.
Signed an executive order directing Federal agencies to work together to diminish the capability of foreign adversaries to target our critical electric infrastructure.
Established a whole-of-government strategy addressing the threat posed by China’s malign efforts targeting the United States taxpayer-funded research and development ecosystem.
Advanced missile defense capabilities and regional alliances.
Bolstered the ability of our allies and partners to defend themselves through the sale of aid and military equipment.
Signed the largest arms deal ever, worth nearly $110 billion, with Saudi Arabia.
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Serving and Protecting Our Veterans
Reformed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to improve care, choice, and employee accountability.
Signed and implemented the VA Mission Act, which made permanent Veterans CHOICE, revolutionized the VA community care system, and delivered quality care closer to home for Veterans.
The number of Veterans who say they trust VA services has increased 19 percent to a record 91 percent, an all-time high.
Offered same-day emergency mental health care at every VA medical facility, and secured $9.5 billion for mental health services in 2020.
Signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017, which ensured that veterans could continue to see the doctor of their choice and wouldn’t have to wait for care.
During the Trump Administration, millions of veterans have been able to choose a private doctor in their communities.
Expanded Veterans’ ability to access telehealth services, including through the “Anywhere to Anywhere” VA healthcare initiative leading to a 1000 percent increase in usage during COVID-19.
Signed the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act and removed thousands of VA workers who failed to give our Vets the care they have so richly deserve.
Signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 and improved the efficiency of the VA, setting record numbers of appeals decisions.
Modernized medical records to begin a seamless transition from the Department of Defense to the VA.
Launched a new tool that provides Veterans with online access to average wait times and quality-of-care data.
The promised White House VA Hotline has fielded hundreds of thousands of calls.
Formed the PREVENTS Task Force to fight the tragedy of Veteran suicide.
Signed and implemented the Forever GI Bill, allowing Veterans to use their benefits to get an education at any point in their lives.
Eliminated every penny of Federal student loan debt owed by American veterans who are completely and permanently disabled.
Compared to 2009, 49 percent fewer veterans experienced homelessness nationwide during 2019.
Signed and implemented the HAVEN Act to ensure that Veterans who’ve declared bankruptcy don’t lose their disability payments.
Helped hundreds of thousands of military service members make the transition from the military to the civilian workforce, and developed programs to support the employment of military spouses.
Placed nearly 40,000 homeless veterans into employment through the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program.
Placed over 600,000 veterans into employment through American Job Center services.
Enrolled over 500,000 transitioning service members in over 20,000 Department of Labor employment workshops.
Signed an executive order to help Veterans transition seamlessly into the United States Merchant Marine.
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Making Communities Safer
Signed into law landmark criminal justice reform.
Signed the bipartisan First Step Act into law, the first landmark criminal justice reform legislation ever passed to reduce recidivism and help former inmates successfully rejoin society.
Promoted second chance hiring to give former inmates the opportunity to live crime-free lives and find meaningful employment.
Launched a new “Ready to Work” initiative to help connect employers directly with former prisoners.
Awarded $2.2 million to states to expand the use of fidelity bonds, which underwrite companies that hire former prisoners.
Reversed decades-old ban on Second Chance Pell programs to provide postsecondary education to individuals who are incarcerated expand their skills and better succeed in the workforce upon re-entry.
Awarded over $333 million in Department of Labor grants to nonprofits and local and state governments for reentry projects focused on career development services for justice-involved youth and adults who were formerly incarcerated.
Unprecedented support for law-enforcement.
In 2019, violent crime fell for the third consecutive year.
Since 2016, the violent crime rate has declined over 5 percent and the murder rate has decreased by over 7 percent.
Launched Operation Legend to combat a surge of violent crime in cities, resulting in more than 5,500 arrests.
Deployed the National Guard and Federal law enforcement to Kenosha to stop violence and restore public safety.
Provided $1 million to Kenosha law enforcement, nearly $4 million to support small businesses in Kenosha, and provided over $41 million to support law enforcement to the state of Wisconsin.
Deployed Federal agents to save the courthouse in Portland from rioters.
Signed an executive order outlining ten-year prison sentences for destroying Federal property and monuments.
Directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate and prosecute Federal offenses related to ongoing violence.
DOJ provided nearly $400 million for new law enforcement hiring.
Endorsed by the 355,000 members of the Fraternal Order of Police.
Revitalized Project Safe Neighborhoods, which brings together Federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials to develop solutions to violent crime.
Improved first-responder communications by deploying the FirstNet National Public Safety Broadband Network, which serves more than 12,000 public safety agencies across the Nation.
Established a new commission to evaluate best practices for recruiting, training, and supporting law enforcement officers.
Signed the Safe Policing for Safe Communities executive order to incentive local police department reforms in line with law and order.
Made hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of surplus military equipment available to local law enforcement.
Signed an executive order to help prevent violence against law enforcement officers.
Secured permanent funding for the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund for first responders.
Implemented strong measures to stem hate crimes, gun violence, and human trafficking.
Signed an executive order making clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism.
Launched a centralized website to educate the public about hate crimes and encourage reporting.
Signed the Fix NICS Act to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.
Signed the STOP School Violence Act and created a Commission on School Safety to examine ways to make our schools safer.
Launched the Foster Youth to Independence initiative to prevent and end homelessness among young adults under the age of 25 who are in, or have recently left, the foster care system.
Signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which tightened criteria for whether countries are meeting standards for eliminating trafficking.
Established a task force to help combat the tragedy of missing or murdered Native American women and girls.
Prioritized fighting for the voiceless and ending the scourge of human trafficking across the Nation, through a whole of government back by legislation, executive action, and engagement with key industries.
Created the first-ever White House position focused solely on combating human trafficking.
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Cherishing Life and Religious Liberty
Steadfastly supported the sanctity of every human life and worked tirelessly to prevent government funding of abortion.
Reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, ensuring that taxpayer money is not used to fund abortion globally.
Issued a rule preventing Title X taxpayer funding from subsiding the abortion industry.
Supported legislation to end late-term abortions.
Cut all funding to the United Nations population fund due to the fund’s support for coercive abortion and forced sterilization.
Signed legislation overturning the previous administration’s regulation that prohibited states from defunding abortion facilities as part of their family planning programs.
Fully enforced the requirement that taxpayer dollars do not support abortion coverage in Obamacare exchange plans.
Stopped the Federal funding of fetal tissue research.
Worked to protect healthcare entities and individuals’ conscience rights – ensuring that no medical professional is forced to participate in an abortion in violation of their beliefs.
Issued an executive order reinforcing requirement that all hospitals in the United States provide medical treatment or an emergency transfer for infants who are in need of emergency medical care—regardless of prematurity or disability.
Led a coalition of countries to sign the Geneva Consensus Declaration, declaring that there is no international right to abortion and committing to protecting women’s health.
First president in history to attend the March for Life.
Stood up for religious liberty in the United States and around the world.
Protected the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, teachers, and groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor.
First president to convene a meeting at the United Nations to end religious persecution.
Established the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
Stopped the Johnson Amendment from interfering with pastors’ right to speak their minds.
Reversed the previous administration’s policy that prevented the government from providing disaster relief to religious organizations.
Protected faith-based adoption and foster care providers, ensuring they can continue to serve their communities while following the teachings of their faith.
Reduced burdensome barriers to ensure Native Americans are free to keep spiritually and culturally significant eagle feathers found on their tribal lands.
Took action to ensure Federal employees can take paid time off work to observe religious holy days.
Signed legislation to assist religious and ethnic groups targeted by ISIS for mass murder and genocide in Syria and Iraq.
Directed American assistance toward persecuted communities, including through faith-based programs.
Launched the International Religious Freedom Alliance – the first-ever alliance devoted to confronting religious persecution around the world.
Appointed a Special Envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism.
Imposed restrictions on certain Chinese officials, internal security units, and companies for their complicity in the persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Issued an executive order to protect and promote religious freedom around the world.
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Safeguarding the Environment
Took strong action to protect the environment and ensure clean air and clean water.
Took action to protect vulnerable Americans from being exposed to lead and copper in drinking water and finalized a rule protecting children from lead-based paint hazards.
Invested over $38 billion in clean water infrastructure.
In 2019, America achieved the largest decline in carbon emissions of any country on earth. Since withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, the United States has reduced carbon emissions more than any nation.
American levels of particulate matter – one of the main measures of air pollution – are approximately five times lower than the global average.
Between 2017 and 2019, the air became 7 percent cleaner – indicated by a steep drop in the combined emissions of criteria pollutants.
Led the world in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, having cut energy-related CO2 emissions by 12 percent from 2005 to 2018 while the rest of the world increased emissions by 24 percent.
In FY 2019 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleaned up more major pollution sites than any year in nearly two decades.
The EPA delivered $300 million in Brownfields grants directly to communities most in need including investment in 118 Opportunity Zones.
Placed a moratorium on offshore drilling off the coasts of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.
Restored public access to Federal land at Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Recovered more endangered or threatened species than any other administration in its first term.
Secured agreements and signed legislation to protect the environment and preserve our Nation’s abundant national resources.
The USMCA guarantees the strongest environmental protections of any trade agreement in history.
Signed the Save Our Seas Act to protect our environment from foreign nations that litter our oceans with debris and developed the first-ever Federal strategic plan to address marine litter.
Signed the Great American Outdoors Act, securing the single largest investment in America’s National Parks and public lands in history.
Signed the largest public lands legislation in a decade, designating 1.3 million new acres of wilderness.
Signed a historic executive order promoting much more active forest management to prevent catastrophic wildfires.
Opened and expanded access to over 4 million acres of public lands for hunting and fishing.
Joined the One Trillion Trees Initiative to plant, conserve, and restore trees in America and around the world.
Delivered infrastructure upgrades and investments for numerous projects, including over half a billion dollars to fix the Herbert Hoover Dike and expanding funding for Everglades restoration by 55 percent.
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Expanding Educational Opportunity
Fought tirelessly to give every American access to the best possible education.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expanded School Choice, allowing parents to use up to $10,000 from a 529 education savings account to cover K-12 tuition costs at the public, private, or religious school of their choice.
Launched a new pro-American lesson plan for students called the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education.
Prohibited the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the Federal government.
Established the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.
Called on Congress to pass the Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act to expand education options for 1 million students of all economic backgrounds.
Signed legislation reauthorizing the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program.
Issued updated guidance making clear that the First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion does not end at the door to a public school.
Took action to promote technical education.
Signed into law the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, which provides over 13 million students with high-quality vocational education and extends more than $1.3 billion each year to states for critical workforce development programs.
Signed the INSPIRE Act which encouraged NASA to have more women and girls participate in STEM and seek careers in aerospace.
Allocated no less than $200 million each year in grants to prioritize women and minorities in STEM and computer science education.
Drastically reformed and modernized our educational system to restore local control and promote fairness.
Restored state and local control of education by faithfully implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Signed an executive order that ensures public universities protect First Amendment rights or they will risk losing funding, addresses student debt by requiring colleges to share a portion of the financial risk, and increases transparency by requiring universities to disclose information about the value of potential educational programs.
Issued a rule strengthening Title IX protections for survivors of sexual misconduct in schools, and that – for the first time in history – codifies that sexual harassment is prohibited under Title IX.
Negotiated historic bipartisan agreement on new higher education rules to increase innovation and lower costs by reforming accreditation, state authorization, distance education, competency-based education, credit hour, religious liberty, and TEACH Grants.
Prioritized support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Moved the Federal Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative back to the White House.
Signed into law the FUTURE Act, making permanent $255 million in annual funding for HBCUs and increasing funding for the Federal Pell Grant program.
Signed legislation that included more than $100 million for scholarships, research, and centers of excellence at HBCU land-grant institutions.
Fully forgave $322 million in disaster loans to four HBCUs in 2018, so they could fully focus on educating their students.
Enabled faith-based HBCUs to enjoy equal access to Federal support.
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Combatting the Opioid Crisis
Brought unprecedented attention and support to combat the opioid crisis.
Declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency.
Secured a record $6 billion in new funding to combat the opioid epidemic.
Signed the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, the largest-ever legislative effort to address a drug crisis in our Nation’s history.
Launched the Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand in order to confront the many causes fueling the drug crisis.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded a record $9 billion in grants to expand access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services to States and local communities.
Passed the CRIB Act, allowing Medicaid to help mothers and their babies who are born physically dependent on opioids by covering their care in residential pediatric recovery facilities.
Distributed $1 billion in grants for addiction prevention and treatment.
Announced a Safer Prescriber Plan that seeks to decrease the amount of opioids prescriptions filled in America by one third within three years.
Reduced the total amount of opioids prescriptions filled in America.
Expanded access to medication-assisted treatment and life-saving Naloxone.
Launched FindTreatment.gov, a tool to find help for substance abuse.
Drug overdose deaths fell nationwide in 2018 for the first time in nearly three decades.
Launched the Drug-Impaired Driving Initiative to work with local law enforcement and the driving public at large to increase awareness.
Launched a nationwide public ad campaign on youth opioid abuse that reached 58 percent of young adults in America.
Since 2016, there has been a nearly 40 percent increase in the number of Americans receiving medication-assisted treatment.
Approved 29 state Medicaid demonstrations to improve access to opioid use disorder treatment, including new flexibility to cover inpatient and residential treatment.
Approved nearly $200 million in grants to address the opioid crisis in severely affected communities and to reintegrate workers in recovery back into the workforce.
Took action to seize illegal drugs and punish those preying on innocent Americans.
In FY 2019, ICE HSI seized 12,466 pounds of opioids including 3,688 pounds of fentanyl, an increase of 35 percent from FY 2018.
Seized tens of thousands of kilograms of heroin and thousands of kilograms of fentanyl since 2017.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted more fentanyl traffickers than ever before, dismantled 3,000 drug trafficking organizations, and seized enough fentanyl to kill 105,000 Americans.
DOJ charged more than 65 defendants collectively responsible for distributing over 45 million opioid pills.
Brought kingpin designations against traffickers operating in China, India, Mexico, and more who have played a role in the epidemic in America.
Indicted major Chinese drug traffickers for distributing fentanyl in the U.S for the first time ever, and convinced China to enact strict regulations to control the production and sale of fentanyl.
If I have time, I’d like to go through this list to touch on the highlights of what the Trump Administration got right or wrong, what he accomplished that a Democratic Administration wou8ldn’t have, and what he accomplished that another Republican presidential admistration would or wouldn’t have.
The third and final presidential debate is in the books, Trump breaks 50% approval, and the hard left plans another riot and arson spree if they lose. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
That appeared to be one lesson from a Zoom focus group conducted after the debate by messaging expert Frank Luntz. Speaking to 15 undecided voters — and yes, they appeared to be really undecided — Luntz asked for a one- or two-word description of the candidates’ debate demeanor. For Biden, the words were mostly bad: among them were “vague,” “very vague,” “non-specific,” “cognitively impaired,” “old,” “uncomfortable,” “elusive,” “grandfatherly,” and “defensive.”
For Trump, they were mostly much better: among them were “controlled,” “composed,” “constrained,” “reserved,” “poised,” “con artist,” “surprisingly presidential,” “calmer,” and “restrained.”
There will be more coverage of the debate, of Biden’s promise to end the oil industry and, indeed, more about Mr. Luntz, in Monday’s BidenWatch.
President Trump just hit the “Holy Grail” of breaking the 50% approval rating, hitting 52% approval in Rasmussen polling. All the usual poll caveats apply.
The left is currently planning on how to peacefully protest if President Donald Trump wins. Ha, just kidding! They’re going to burn everything down:
An activist group is planning large-scale and widespread ‘disruptive activity’ starting on the night of the election, in an attempt to stop what it predicts will be an “attempted coup” by President Trump in the form of a refusal to accept the election results.
“Shut Down D.C.” is setting the stage for mass gatherings in D.C., noting that the “resistance” must begin during the “muddied” legal and political debate over the election outcome.
“We need to show that we’re ungovernable under a continued Trump administration…That can mean blocking traffic at major intersections and bridges, shutting down government office buildings (why should ICE or the FBI be able to keep doing Trump’s bidding when he’s leading with a coup?!?), or blockading the White House.”
The document bases its action plan upon the scenarios projected by the establishment leftist “Transition Integrity Project” for election night and sketches these activists’ response to each, explicitly rejecting the possibility that Trump could legitimately win. It continues:
We’ll keep it going until Trump concedes. We could be in the streets throughout the fall and into the winter– maybe as lots of rolling waves of action or possibly as a few major tsunamis! In other parts of the country, as vote counts conclude, our focus will turn from protecting the vote counts to themselves being ungovernable.
As it becomes clear that Trump’s coup is failing, institutions and the elites will start to abandon him – or we will approach them as part of the problem. Either Amazon will shut down AWS for the Trump loyalists in the government or we’ll shut down their fulfillment centers. Either governors will tell their national guards to stand down or we’ll shut down their state capitals as well. Over time, Trump will grow increasingly isolated and his empire will crumble down around him.
The new-old leftist aim is not to operate within either the existing parameters of the Constitution as written or the customs and traditions of America—a 150-year-long nine-justice Supreme Court, the Electoral College, a 50-state nation, a Senate filibuster, two senators per state, and a secure border. All are obstructions to the drive for power.
Given its redistributionist creed, socialism cannot afford to be patent and honest. If socialism were transparent, it never would gain majority support. Joe Biden cannot talk about the Electoral College or court packing, unequivocally condemn the violence in our urban centers, discuss the Green New Deal, name his likely Supreme Court appointments, be honest about his plans for fracking, or explain his views on the borders, because he is now owned lock, stock and barrel by the hard Left whose agendas were rejected even in his own Democratic primaries.
The Left seeks to transform America into something never envisioned by the founders, a huge all-encompassing, panopticon state, one run by anointed Platonic guardians. Our elite watchmen will use their unlimited power to force upon us an equality of result society—with themselves properly exempted.
The hard Left’s defense is that its mission is so critical, so morally superior, that all means can be justified to achieve its noble ends. And so almost every institution that the Left has in its line of vision is now petrifying.
Large swaths of the downtowns of America’s large cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland—are becoming unhygienic, unsafe, and uninhabitable. Substantial corridors swarm with the homeless. Crime is increasing but commensurately redefined as a sort of cry of the heart, no-bail social activism. The cities are broke and yet demand more bailouts to spend more money that will ensure things get worse.
Back in 2018, I wrote about the phenomenon of Great Southern Democratic Hopes — candidates with not-so-great chances of success running in a Republican-learning state who receive wildly optimistic coverage from national media organizations and reporters desperate to discover a Democrat who can win statewide races in the South and someday end up on a presidential ticket.
Prime past specimens of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes include Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, and Michelle Nunn and Jon Ossoff in Georgia. But 2018 brought the modern king of the Great Southern Democratic Hopes, Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke.
You notice none of those candidates actually won, although O’Rourke deserves some credit for performing better than any other Democrat in decades. Still, next spring, Ted Cruz will be in the third year of his second term, and O’Rourke, having completed a presidential bid that also didn’t live up to the initial hype, will be teaching at Texas State University.
This cycle: Amy McGrath.
after McGrath won the primary, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin declared, “Democrats serious about winning chose Amy McGrath.” The Frankfort State Journal concluded, “McGrath has the name recognition and financial backing to give McConnell, well, a run for his money.” Fueled by Democrats across the country who are itching to see McConnell defeated, McGrath’s fundraising has been off the charts — $37 million in the last quarter, more than $82 million overall.
And yet it is mid October, and McConnell does not appear to be running for his money. The newest Mason-Dixon poll puts the Republican ahead, 51 percent to 42 percent. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives McConnell a 96 percent chance of winning. In a year when Democrats are finding themselves in surprisingly strong shape from Maine to Colorado and from Montana to Arizona, McGrath is an afterthought and on pace to turn out like the last Democrat who took on McConnell. In 2013, Politico wrote of Grimes, “The fresh Democratic face could give the Senate minority leader the fight of his political life.” Mitch McConnell won reelection in 2014, 56 percent to 40 percent, in what was not the fight of his political life.
China is one of the most censorious societies on Earth. So what better place for Facebook to recruit social media censors?
There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’”
The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.
When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”
Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.
To illustrate the mechanics, the insider took me as his typical Facebook user: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”
Facebook engineers test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to shape an optimal outcome — and root out what bosses call “borderline content.”
It all makes for perhaps the most chillingly sophisticated censorship mechanism in human history. “What they don’t do is ban a specific pro-Trump hashtag,” says the ex-insider. Instead, “content that is a little too conservative, they will down-rank. You can’t tell it’s censored.”
In a joint press release issued early this morning, SK Hynix and Intel have announced that Intel will be selling the entirety of its NAND memory business to SK Hynix. The deal, which values Intel’s NAND holdings at $9 billion, will see the company transfer over the NAND business in two parts, with SK Hynix eventually acquiring all IP, facilities, and personnel related to Intel’s NAND efforts. Notably, however, Intel is not selling their overarching Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group; instead the company will be holding on to their Optane memory technology as they continue to develop and sell that technology.
Per the terms of the unusual agreement, SK Hynix will be acquiring Intel’s NAND memory business in two parts, with the deal not expected to completely close until March of 2025. Under the first phase, which will take place in 2021 once all relevant regulatory bodies have approved the seal, SK Hynix will pay Intel the first $7 billion for their SSD business and Intel’s sole NAND fab in Dalian, China. This will see Intel’s consumer and enterprise SSD businesses transferred to SK Hynix, along with the relevant IP and employees for the SSD business, but not any NAND IP or employees. Similarly, while SK Hynix will get the Dalian fab, the first phase does not come with the employees that operate it.
Following the first phase, Intel will continue to develop and manufacture NAND out of the Dalian fab for roughly the next four years. This period is set to last until the rest of the deal fully closes in March of 2025. At that point, SK Hynix will pay Intel $2 billion for the rest of their NAND business. This will finally transfer all of Intel’s NAND IP and related employees over to SK Hynix, along with the Dalian fab employees.
NAND = Flash memory, and it’s a very profitable business to be in most times, but not part of Intel’s core microprocessor business. In Intel’s case, NAND is what you run once your fab is too old to crank out Microprocessors, and Fab 68 in Dalian was built in 2010 as a 65 nanometer fab. With Intel’s cutting edge currently at 7nm, you can see how it would be easy for them to part with, especially since the flash division was losing money despite record revenue in 2019. What Hynix gets out of the deal is harder to fathom. They’re buying a revenue stream in a sector that should be profitable, add another fab to their stable, and maintain parity with DRAM rivals Samsung and Micron. But that’s an awful lot to pay for a small revenue stream bump, a ten year old fab and no NAND IP until 2024.
“U.S. Sanctions Have Caused ‘Serious’ Damage to Iran, Tehran Says.” Good. Maybe they could stop being jihadist scumbags who oppress your people with a brutal theocracy? Just a thought…
Armenia-Azerbaijan truce breaks down within hours.
Chairman of the Georgetown County (South Carolina) Board of Voter Registration and Elections resignes after stealing Trump signs. Note: Repeatedly stealing the signs of political opponents isn’t a “lapse of judgement.”
The Nate Paul scandal has, at its heart, allegations that federal and state law enforcement officials abused the rights of an American citizen. The facts from all sides seem to indicate an unwillingness by the OAG staff to investigate Paul’s complaint; their unwillingness to do so must be explored.
If the 2019 raid was properly conducted, why has that not been confirmed? Why delay an investigation into the raid? If the raids were legitimate, why, after more than 13 months, has Nate Paul not been charged with a crime?
On the other hand, Nate Paul might—indeed—be a notorious villain. But in the current environment, shouldn’t state investigators be willing to double-check that the actions of law enforcement officials are conducted properly? Even accused criminals have constitutional rights.
Just as important, what if Mr. Paul is not a villain and merely a businessman targeted for less than honorable reasons? Is it merely a coincidence that U.S. Attorney Bash resigned from office three days after Mateer tendered his own resignation?
Likewise, it is possible—as the seven OAG employees allege—that Paxton was acting “under duress” in pushing for this investigation into the complaint made by his friend Mr. Paul. Whether or not Nate Paul’s allegations have merit, Texans need to be certain their elected officials are not acting improperly or unethically in the course of their jobs. Was Mr. Paxton simply pursuing justice for a Texan, or was he acting under undue influence?
Bret Weinstein kicked off Facebook, presumably for daring to voice anti-Social Justice Warrior thoughts.
I have been evicted from Facebook. No explanation. No appeal. I have downloaded "my information" and see nothing that explains it.
We are governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no process. Disaster is inevitable. We are living it. pic.twitter.com/JBTFH2devl
I don't care who you are, but seeing your dog dressed as Chuckie, running towards you with his wig and little knife arm, is just funny….. pic.twitter.com/vwaX0as0qW
I couldn’t post to Twitter yesterday, and briefly thought they’d finally banned me for spreading Disapproved Hunter Biden News. Sadly, it was down for everyone, not just me.
Perhaps the selective enforcement of content which is politically harmful to Democrats can be explained by recent hires by the Biden transition team.
According to Breitbart, Twitter Public Policy Director Carlos Monje left the social media giant to join Biden’s transition team in September. He will reportedly serve as co-chair of Biden’s infrastructure policy committee, and helped organize a fundraiser for the former VP this week, according to an invitation from Politico.
Meanwhile in October, Biden’s transition team hired Facebook executive Jessica Hertz to its general counsel to deal with ‘ethics’ issues. Notably, Facebook was the first platform to ban the Post article – with former Democrat staffer and Facebook communications team member Andy Stone tweeting that the company would be ‘reducing its distribution.’
Trump is back and this is a real race. I think we will win it.
Except all the polls are telling us Grandpa Badfinger is up +37, right? Weird how four years ago right now, we were hearing the exact same thing. Ignore the spinners who are solemnly informing you that your lying eyes are lying again and the 2016 polls were akshually very accurate. Baloney. A key component of effective gaslighting is plausibility, and I was there. You were there. All we heard in 2016 was how Trump was going down to a landslide defeat. Instead, everyone in the smart set got blindsided by the Trump Train.
And it can happen again.
Now, it doesn’t have to happen again. Nothing is written, and we have to fight for our victory. There are a lot of stupid people around – my district regularly re-e-elects Ted Lieu – and Oldfinger could build a Coalition of the Drooling to put him in the White House. But I think the Trump lightning will strike again.
Remember, the polls are the only data point in Biden’s favor. The only one. And as we have seen they screwed up last time and their proponents have an interest in them being bad for Trump.
But Kurt, the libs say, “You must hate science because the science of polling cannot be wrong! It’s science.” Yeah, but so is phrenology. The fact is that not only do the polls have a track record of failure with regard to populists like Trump – remember that they also missed a number of Senate seats that were supposed to spin down the drain with The Donald – but many of the pollsters are retained by media outlets with an anti-Trump agenda. If these very fine people in the media lie about everything, like the “very fine people” quote, why would you buy the notion that there’s some line they won’t cross when it comes to faking polls?
Am I saying they will push bullSchiff poll results to try to demoralize patriots? Yes, yes I am. You don’t have to just make up numbers – though I would not put it past them. You just tweak the turnout model and fiddle with the cross-tabs and voila! – CNN has its narrative. After all, it’s not like in the editorial offices they are saying “Sure, we’ll lie about Trump/ Russia, Trump/COVID, and Trump/Nickelback, and hey, there’s no way we’ll fake a poll! We have scruples.” They would sacrifice their babies to Baal if A) they hadn’t hit Planned Parenthood, and B) they thought it would ensure Trump loses.
Also: “Biden rallies look like the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead, which is apt since the guy handling his media events is apparently George Romero. Only the flesh-eating zombies had more pep than the Delaware Dementite’s fans.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Democrats Were Awful Filth Questioning ACB.” Kamala Harris looked sad, but Mazie Hirono of Hawaii was probably the biggest loon.
Why do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to give a straightforward yes or no answer when asked whether they intend to “pack the Court” and expand it to a number larger than the nine justices that have been on the Court for the past 150 years?
Because a considerable portion of the Democratic Party wants to expand the Court beyond nine. In a recent YouGov survey, 47 percent of registered voters opposed expanding the size of the Supreme Court, 34 percent supported it, and 19 percent responded they didn’t know how they felt. But self-identified Democrats were much more supportive: 60 percent wanted to expand the Court, 18 percent opposed the idea, and 22 percent didn’t know.
It quickly became clear that in their attempts to strangle the Hunter Biden story, two social media giants left themselves gasping for air.
Twitter and Facebook took major steps to squelch the New York Post piece, but wound up giving it far more attention than if they had done nothing and let their millions of users share it freely.
For Twitter in particular, if you had to come up with a plan to reinforce conservative complaints about its liberal bias, you could hardly do better than for the tech giant to lock the Trump campaign’s account. Not to mention that of press secretary Kayleigh McEnany as well.
Hashtag: #Fail
In fact, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey admitted in a tweet that the company’s conduct–censoring stories and locking accounts with little public explanation–was “unacceptable.” You got that right, Jack. But then he didn’t do anything to fix it, apparently viewing the self-inflicted wound as just a PR problem. Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans plan to subpoena Dorsey next week.
After a few years of shoeing horses, briefly interrupted by a temporary job mining silver, I ran a brush-clearing and landscaping company as a side hustle. During this scramble for meaningful independence, the leftist tendencies I’d absorbed at college dropped off bit by bit. Life as a capitalist entrepreneur brought out the best in me, even when I was flirting with homelessness. Moreover, being in the real working world pushed me into contact with people, ideas, and situations that challenged me in all sorts of ways. After a few near-fatal incidents with horses (one of which left my skull and jaw shattered), I began pursuing my own business full time in 2016.
Now in my early 20s, I still had a soft spot for socialist ideas, including a lingering resentment toward the wealthy. And so, from a progressive politician’s perspective, I was hardly a lost cause. But I also was becoming aware that the Left didn’t really have much interest in the challenges I was facing, being far more concerned with issues of race and gender identity. As a straight white male, I was supposedly luxuriating in a life of privilege—a stereotype that had nothing to do with my experience as a blue-collar worker who’d faced debilitating family traumas.
Speaking of crazy leftwing city councils, thanks to the SUPERgenius police defunding policies of Mayor Adler and the Austin City Council, some 911 calls have waits of between 2-6 hours.
(1) If he wins, Biden will almost certainly sign off on ending the filibuster to pack the courts and add two new states for a permanent Democrat majority that will leave the Constitution behind.
(2) Trump may have announced that he’s about to reveal that the Democrats, from Obama on down, engaged in a coup against an American president.
France has accused Turkey of sending Syrian jihadists there to fight for Muslim Azerbaijan. Remember that Turkey killed over 1.5 million Armenians during the rise of the Young Turks as part of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, so the bad blood there goes back a long ways.
Quick conclusion: Relative to the number of infections fewer people have died in the US than in Australia. So for all the talk about not letting us have a US style health system, it has performed relatively better than ours did. True, Australian base levels of health are higher than US levels. Relatively fewer people got infected here than in the US. (We can argue about why that happened in the comments – probably policy errors in themselves at the State level in the US). Once infected, however, it looks like the chances of survival was higher in the US.
“Clare Bronfman Becomes First NXIVM Sex-Slave Trafficker to Get Jail Time.” Namely six years and nine months. You know it’s a crazy year when you don’t have time to pay attention rich, powerful weirdos being tried for running a sex cult…
Coinbase SJW babies: We have to be woke! Coinbase CEO: There’s the door.
The Texas House District 148 battle features a fight between a Hispanic Republican against a Democratic candidate with even more ties than usual to communism. “During a July 2018 presentation, “The Art and Science of Building the Communist Party,” Chairman of the Houston chapter of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Bernard Sampson boasted that his club had placed four communist party members on the Texas ballot, including Morales-Shaw who he specifically identified as a member of his group.”
I think the explanation for plummeting viewership is fairly obvious, even if Strauss would rather not talk about it. Conservative America is disgusted with the NBA, and therefore is tuning it out. We’re disgusted with the way the league kowtows to China and even more disgusted with the embrace of the radical BLM movement by the league and its players.
I didn’t watch a minute of the playoffs this year and rarely even checked the scores. Not because of what many of the players think about the police and about America, in general, as slanderous as those views are. And not even because players made pro-BLM gestures before the games began.
My problem was what was allowed, indeed encouraged, during the games. I will not watch any sports event during which the preaching of politics or ideology occurs.
I guess I’m not alone.
Conservative America’s divorce from the NBA is a sign, I think, of things to come. Unless corporate America steps back from its embrace of woke leftism, we are going to have to divorce ourselves from large swathes of it. To the extent feasible, we may have to divorce ourselves from many of America’s public schools. And so forth.
New South Korean mini nuclear reactor that can’t melt down approved for use in the United States. First plant is scheduled to come online in Utah, but not until 2029. Faster, please.
And here’s the post I was tempted to write: “Fuck You WordPress, Yet Again (Block Editor).”
Ireland’s Supreme Court rules that Subway bread isn’t. You would think that if it used that much sugar it would taste better. Then again, I’m not sure I’ve bought a Subway sandwich since the heyday of the $5 Footlong era…
“Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court. She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials, and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution, Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” Trump said at a press conference at the White House announcing Barrett’s nomination.
Barrett has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since she was appointed by Trump in 2017. The 48-year-old Notre Dame law professor clerked for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and is a conservative Catholic mother of seven, including two adopted children from Haiti.
When she was nominated to be a judge on the Seventh Circuit, three Democratic senators supported Barrett’s confirmation, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and former senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Over the past week, Senate Democrats have expressed vehement opposition to her nomination to the Supreme Court.
You don’t say.
Here’s the video of the announcement.
Here’s the transcript. Barrett: “I love the United States and I love the United States constitution. I am truly humbled by the prospect of serving on the supreme court.”
I was lucky enough to clerk for Justice Scalia and given his incalculable influence on my life. I am very moved to have members of the Scalia family here today, including his dear wife, Maureen. I clerked for justice Scalia more 20 years ago, but the lessons I learned still resonate.
His judicial philosophy is mine too, a judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers and they must be resolute and setting aside any policy views they might hold.
Democrats are already melting down, now that their desperate attempts to somehow guilt-trip Trump into not nominating a Supreme Court justice have failed. (And this is why we have Trump: it’s very easy to imagine McCain or Romney caving. As Abraham Lincoln said of Ulysses S. Grant, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”) The fact that Barrett is a believing Catholic woman, thus threatening the Democratic Party’s central holy sacrament of abortion, is driving them extra crazy. Democratic senators are already announcing that they won’t even meet with Barrett.
If you talk to people with adopted children of another race, you'll learn to your horror that there is, in fact, a significant left-wing movement opposing & denouncing mixed-race adoption & working to turn adoptees against white parents. This stuff does not come out of nowhere.
For many left-wing feminists, ACB’s nomination is personal. She embodies the rebuttal to the feminist lies they’ve built their life on: that in order to be accomplished and fulfilled, you must sacrifice faith, marriage and children. It’s gotta be hard to watch.
Seeing a few politicos who for years championed a conservative court go on the attack against Amy Coney Barrett in personal terms because OrangeManBad™️ suggests they either never really believed what they said or Trump has truly broken them.
My eight-year-old son said, “Amy Coney Barrett created climate change by having 7 children, and it’s racist to rescue black kids from Haiti, and she will take my right to have an abortion if/when I choose to become a woman!”
Greetings, and welcome to the first LinkSwarm of fall! Strangely enough, we’re already getting some fall in our fall in Texas, as opposed to our usual Ever So Slightly Less Hot Late Summer. This week: Still more riots, Supreme Court pick news, more ugly truths about Crossfire Hurricane, and Lebanon goes boom again. Plus a bit of news that goes to eleven.
Yet another rash of Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots, this one ostensibly over the return of a single non-murder charge in the Breonna Taylor killing case.
Amy represents an opportunity to showcase a generationally brilliant, special intellect — who also is a mom,” says O. Carter Snead, Barrett’s longtime faculty colleague at the Notre Dame law school, where Barrett also received her law degree.
Her rare combination of hyper-intelligence and humility is a matter of bipartisan consensus. “The smartest person in the room and also the most humble” was how Snead and two other sources intimately familiar with Barrett described her, echoing each other almost verbatim.
Harvard Law School prof Noah Feldman — a liberal who testified before Congress in favor of impeaching the president — hailed her as “a truly brilliant lawyer” in a 2018 column. Feldman should know. He and Barrett were members of the same class of Supreme Court clerks in 1998.
“She was one of the two best lawyers” of the 40 clerks “and arguably the single best.” Feldman concluded: “She was legally prepared enough to go on the court 20 years ago.”
When Trump nominated Barrett to the Seventh Circuit, every single one of those 40 fellow clerks endorsed her as a “first-rate” thinker, including such vehemently anti-Trump figures as Neal Katyal, solicitor general under Team Obama. The entire Notre Dame law faculty likewise endorsed her, “and that includes people who identify as liberal,” as Snead was quick to note.
She is recognized as an expert on how judges are supposed to interpret statutes — a crucial role, as demonstrated by Justice Neil Gorsuch’s bizarre recent reading of “gender identity” into a civil rights statute enacted in the 1960s. She has also thought deeply about the relationship among the branches of government, a gnarly and seriously important area of law.
To these achievements Barrett marries a vibrant Christian faith. For the evangelicals and Catholics the president needs to turn out in November, her pro-life bona fides are on display not just in her activities and statements, but also in her own family: She is a mother of seven, including one biological child with intellectual disabilities and two adopted from Haiti.
Yes, Democrats and their media allies will attack and demonize her — viciously. But that’s no reason to nominate other candidates who have no record on life issues. As one conservative activist told me, “the left is going to burn everything down no matter whom we pick, so we might as well get the right person on the court.”
Democrats worry that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is too old and senile to handle a Supreme Court nomination fight. Of course, they put it in slightly more delicate terms:
Feinstein sometimes gets confused by reporters’ questions, or will offer different answers to the same question depending on where or when she’s asked. Her appearance is frail. And Feinstein’s genteel demeanor, which seems like it belongs to a bygone Senate era, can lead to trouble with an increasingly hard-line Democratic base uninterested in collegiality or bipartisan platitudes.
Just this week, Feinstein infuriated progressives after declaring her opposition to ending the Senate’s legislative filibuster — a top goal of party activists if Democrats win full control of the Congress and White House in November. Some on the left called on her to resign over the comments, although other Democratic moderates have expressed similar views.
It’s hard to pick which is the more interesting angle here: The hard-left planning to push for their suicidal court-packing/filibuster ending agenda, or the old guard of elderly Democrats hanging on to power ghastly Ringwraiths. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Democrats: “We have the following list of demands for this Suprem-” Republicans: “Sorry, we remember your outrageous smear job on Kavanaugh. Suck it!” Also, remember this:
There were electoral consequences, with every “incumbent Senate Democrat in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination” losing his or her re-election bid. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Bill Nelson of Florida were all replaced by their Republican opponents, while Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia saved his seat by backing Kavanaugh. That fall-out handed Republicans the votes they now need to push through a new nominee to the Supreme Court before Nov. 3, 2020.
“The ‘primary sub-source’ for the Steele dossier was suspected of being a possible Russian agent and a ‘threat to national security,’ according to newly declassified FBI documents.”
The goal of the Michael Flynn investigation wasn’t enhancing national security, but to get Flynn fired. “The explosive new documents support Flynn’s latest claims that Obama-era Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials had conspired to set him up from the beginning and that they never had any legitimate basis for investigating him.”
“Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency’s potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show.”
More on the same subject. I get the impression that there’s so much information coming out about malfeasance during Crossfire Hurricane/FISAgate that I can’t keep up with it all…
“‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Creators Reach Settlement On Long-Running Court Battle Over Rights And Income.” Good. Studios shouldn’t screw creators out of rightfully owed money, even if it is Meathead.
Today’s market to be hit by crazy high valuations is…(spins wheel)…rare plants? Now if only it would hit science fiction first editions I would be set!
