The lead prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “hush money” case against former President Donald Trump received thousands of dollars from the Democratic National Committee in 2018, Federal Election Commission records show. Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general and spent two years in the current president’s Justice Department, joined the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as senior counsel in December 2022. The lawyer received $12,000 from the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting” in two payments of $6,000 on Jan. 31, 2018, FEC records show. Fox News Digital first reported the payments to Colangelo from the DNC. Reports say Matthew Colangelo received $12,000 from the DNC for "political consulting" in 2018.Colangelo delivered the opening statement for the prosecution in the Trump hush money case.Yet Trump can't talk about this due to his unconstitutional gag order.— Daniel Baldwin (@baldwin_daniel_) May 6, 2024 Trump is not supposed to speak about Colangelo because Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order that prevents the former president from speaking about prosecutors on the case besides Bragg. Colangelo was appointed in 2022, while Bragg was still investigating Trump in relation to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her silent regarding an alleged affair. Colangelo delivered opening statements for the prosecution in April, arguing that Trump falsified business documents about the payment as part of a broader initiative to “corrupt the 2016 election.” “It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo said. Trump consistently has characterized the case as “election interference,” referring to it as a “Biden witch hunt” and the “Biden case.” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding Colangelo, requesting documents and communications from his tenure at the Justice Department. Jordan demanded personnel files pertaining to Colangelo’s hiring, employment, and termination there, as well as records and correspondences related to Trump or his organization. “Bragg is engaged in one such politicized prosecution, which is being led in part by Matthew B. Colangelo, a former senior Justice Department official,” Jordan wrote. “Accordingly, given the perception that the Justice Department is assisting in Bragg’s politicized prosecution, we write to request information and documents related to Mr. Colangelo’s employment.” While at the New York State Attorney General’s Office before Biden became president, Colangelo led the probe into the Trump Foundation, which resulted in its dissolution. He also led the investigation that eventually became Trump’s civil fraud case, according to The New York Times. Neither Bragg nor the Democratic National Committee immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Former Biden DOJ Official Prosecuting Trump Received Thousands of Dollars From DNC appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Victor Davis Hanson is well known for his intelligent commentary and astute analysis of current events. But for his latest book, he tackles a topic related to his work on military history. It’s called “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation.” Hanson studied four historical examples of wartime extinction that he features in the book. Then he applies those lessons to contemporary society to examine our own vulnerabilities. The book is on sale today, and Hanson spoke with The Daily Signal to share his observations along with some advice about what’s at stake for the United States in the short term. Listen to the full interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read the transcript—edited for length and clarity—below. Rob Bluey: Could you share with our listeners your motivation for doing this book? Victor Davis Hanson: I’ve written a lot of books on military history and I’ve come across cases where the defeated didn’t just become occupied or surrender unconditionally or have change of governments or suffer grievous losses, but they were completely wiped out. And by that I mean, it wasn’t just their physical space, their populations—of course, in the ancient world, they enslaved anybody, they didn’t kill—but their language, their culture, their civilization, their religion disappeared within a generation. So, for today, we don’t know much about Punic culture in North Africa or the Aztecs in Mexico. It didn’t happen frequently, but what were the conditions under which it occurred? And then, I have a long epilogue trying to speculate if that could still happen given that the agents of annihilation—nuclear, bio, chemical, [artificial intelligence]—are much easier to use than muscular labor of the past. Bluey: In what ways are we today vulnerable to the threat of extinction? Hanson: I tried to look at a pattern—if there was a pattern. In all these cases, these societies did not realize they were in decline. They did not realize that, in the past, when they had wars, there were usually negotiations between the victor and the defeated, they had no idea who Cortés was, who Scipio was, who Mehmed II was, or Alexander, that these were killers, and they were different sorts than they had encountered before. They also had this kind of naive egocentric idea that allies would come to their rescue—the Spartans will come and save us, the Venetians will come to Constantinople, the Macedonians will attack the Romans from the rear. And they didn’t really understand that all allies are self-interested. And then, finally, they didn’t understand that these killers, the destroyers, were not like Genghis Khan or Tamerlane, they were men of education. Alexander was tutored by Aristotle. Scipio Aemilianus had Polybius, had his side, the great Roman historian, when he destroyed the city. Mehmed had the largest library in the Islamic world. Cortes was a man of letters. So, they didn’t realize that they had thought deeply about how to destroy. They didn’t just come in, kill, rape women, and leave. They really had an existential plan to erase these cities. And when you look at today, there’s the same idea that no one would ever do that, it couldn’t happen here, this is in the past. So, I went through in the epilogue and looked at all the threats of extinction that we have seen in, say, the last 15 years. I was shocked. It wasn’t just Kim Jong Un saying that he wanted to wipe out South Korea, and he would, but it was people like [Turkish President] Recep Erdogan, he has threatened, he said not too long ago, about eight months ago, that the Athenians, the modern Athenians, would wake up one morning and there would be a barrage of rockets to wipe them out. That was anger over his attempt to take back islands that are Greek off the coast of Turkey. He said to the Armenians at Nagorno-Karabakh—a year ago, they ethnically cleansed every Armenian out of Azerbaijan. And they had been there for a thousand years. And he said, “We are going to deal with Armenia itself in the way that our grandfathers did.” And that was, of course, the destruction of Armenian culture in Turkey. Victor Davis Hanson, a bestselling author, columnist, and scholar and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, speaks with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in April 2024. (Photo courtesy of The Heritage Foundation) We know what the Iranians have said. There was a very controversial statement by [Former Iran President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, about 20 years ago, but more, that’s been reiterated lately, in a variety of contexts, that the idea of Israel is the home of devout Jews is actually a gift to Iran because it concentrates devout Jews in one place. Half the world’s Jewry is now in Israel, but more importantly, these are the observant Jews, and they are at what Rafsanjani called a one-bomb state, that one nuclear weapon could erase Jewish civilization itself. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, of course, says that Ukraine is an aberration that doesn’t really exist, it was a province of the Soviet Union, and the language should be obliterated, it should be reincorporated into Russia. I’ve counted about 16 statements in the press that Russian generals, Russian media, or Russian government officials have said if the war were to continue, they would use nuclear weapons. In the case of China, they have threatened to wipe out Taiwan and destroy the bastard idea of a Taiwanese civilization, they say it doesn’t exist. And they’ve threatened to nuke, as well, Japan if it aids Taiwan. I only mentioned that because I’ve had pretty good luck with Chinese publishers buying books on military history. I wrote a book on World War II they purchased, but they sent a letter to my publisher and basically said if I didn’t take that sentence out of the book, then they were going to cancel the publication agreement. And, of course, I couldn’t take it out. Instead, I sent back, not just one threat of Taiwan, I found about 15 others, and I said, “This is ridiculous, you’ve done this more than—” And so, they’ve canceled the Chinese translation. But it’s pretty prevalent. And also, the denial. People on the walls of Constantinople said, “We can work with a sultan. He won’t kill everybody.” And people said, “Alexander the Great is a philosopher, he won’t obliterate us like Philip did,” … or something like that. And when you see the same denial, people get very angry when you mention Putin’s threats, they say, “Oh, he’s just bluster. He would never do that.” And, “Kim Jong Un would never do that.” And, “I’m not sure that’s true.” History says that the odds are they won’t, but it’s happened and there’s no second chances when that happens. Bluey: What role do you think technology is playing in either facilitating or even exasperating the potential for these actors to destroy other societies? Hanson: I think we learned with COVID gain-of-function research that the technology was accelerating much more rapidly than the social, political, economic, cultural analysis of how to handle it. And there were people who were freelancing, like EcoHealth, for example, that was giving expertise to the Wuhan lab. I think the same thing is true of AI. Unfortunately, I work at Stanford right next to Silicon Valley, so when I go out and eat dinner at night, I often listen to conversations of techies and I know people who give to Stanford, etc. I have very little confidence on their moral sense. I have a great deal of confidence that they’re very adept in high-tech research like AI. So my point is that when we see things like the FBI hiring Twitter contractors to suppress news about a laptop in the last election, these are the same people, the same mentalities that will be in charge of AI. And there was, I mentioned in the book, a Pentagon simulation in which they used a computer launch completely directed by an AI program. And so, they sent a missile on a computer and they programmed every defense mechanism in it possible. So as it went into the computer, they launched computer simulations of air attacks from aircraft, from anti-ballistic missile systems, weather problems, etc. And then, when it was almost over, they had the computer kill the launch because it was over. Well, the launch didn’t kill, it turned around and went back at the launch person because it had been programmed to think spontaneously about a threat. So the person who launched the missile had never thought that the missile would attack him. And so, they shut down the entire experiment because they realized that they didn’t have the capability in the real world of ensuring that an AI couldn’t reason or analyze a threat, including the person who launched the missile, which would be the greatest threat of all if he canceled the missile and aborted it. So things like that are pretty scary, just like the COVID and the biochemical, etc. And I think if you look at what these people said in the past, I was just shocked about the denial. Montezuma said, “We’re going to be here forever.” He had visions of the Cortes were some type of deities maybe, but he thought he could appease them. And the same thing was true of the Carthaginians, they said, “You know what? We will give up our elephant. We’ll do everything. The Romans won’t do this.” And they had no intention of doing anything else other than destroying them. So I do think there’s people—like the Chinese Communist government, like the government in North Korea, like the government in Turkey, like the government in Iran—who are in a whole different moral universe than what we think they’re in. Preorder THE END OF EVERYTHING for 20% off with code VDH20. On sale May 7 https://t.co/fr5QoPOK6a@BasicBooks pic.twitter.com/WvXWP7k9YF— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) March 21, 2024 Bluey: Do you think that some of that denial exists here in the United States today? Hanson: Absolutely. I don’t think the average American understands that the Chinese are producing four ships per year to our one ship. Or that if you took any of our $15 billion carriers and you put them in the straits between Taiwan and China, they wouldn’t last more than an hour given the Chinese have developed missile batteries where they could launch 5,000 or 6,000 small missiles that would go about 6 inches above the water and hit the waterline at night. And you couldn’t stop that. They are building nuclear weapons at a phenomenal rate. They’re working on anti-missile defense. They’re back up to probably 250,000 students in the United States, if 1% are engaged in espionage—and the FBI says it’s more than that—you’ve got thousands of people who are appropriating technology. I don’t think anybody understands that it’s going to take us six years to replenish Javelin stocks and maybe we can’t. North Korea is producing more 155 mm shells than we are. At least they sent 2 million of them to the Russians. So, we are not armed and yet, our strategic responsibilities, our strategic confidence, our arrogance has not lessened commensurately with our reduced defense capacity. We’re 40,000 recruits short now in the military, never happened before. And when you analyze who is not joining the military, it’s not blacks, it’s not Latinos, it’s not gays, it’s not women, it’s not trans people, all of those numbers are the same, it’s the largest group are white males from the lower and middle classes whose families fought in Vietnam, first Gulf War, Afghanistan, but this third and fourth generation are not joining up. And unfortunately, for the military, if you look at the casualty or the fatality rates in Afghanistan and Iraq, that demographic dies at twice their demographics—72% to 74% of all the dead in Afghanistan, in Iraq are white males from the middle and lower classes. And yet, this is the very demographic that [retired Gen.] Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and [Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin, in testimonies, have suggested suffer from white rage or white privilege. And the Pentagon was investigating just those kind of slanders about that demographic and they found, of course, in December, they quietly issued a report, there was no cabal of white supremacists. But the point is, you can’t really have a successful military when you’re 40,000 recruits short in just a year. pic.twitter.com/3g68SKeDHK— Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) May 2, 2024 Bluey: What do you suggest that societies today, including the United States, learn from those historical examples you gave us earlier in the interview to maybe mitigate some of the risks that we might find ourselves in in the future? Hanson: I would not put much confidence in international bodies or even in so-called close allies. The Spartans came all the way up to the Thebans and they heard the Macedonians, they turned right back. On the last day of the existence of Constantinople, they were looking out at the walls at the Hellespont thinking that Venetian galleys en masse would come up and save them. So don’t. I support NATO. I don’t really think the [United Nations] is of much value. The only thing that will say the United States is a deterrent military, and we don’t have that now, an overwhelmingly large, successful, smart military. And if we don’t have that, we’re going to see more of what we saw in Afghanistan, what we saw with the Chinese balloon, what we see in Gaza. And I think Americans don’t realize that we’re on a back of a tiger and we can’t get off because we set up the postwar world, and we had the pretensions of saying to the world, “You can go in the Red Sea, you can go in the Black Sea, you can go in the Strait of Hormuz, you can do all that and you won’t be injured.” That was a wonderful thing to do. But if you’re going to have those pretensions that you’re going to have a postwar order, you have to have a military that, from time to time, takes care of the Houthis or gets rid of Soleimani. And it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a neocon interventionist, but I think under [former President Donald] Trump and [former State Secretary Mike] Pompeo, they had a, I guess you would call it a Jacksonian idea that there would be no better friend than United States and no worse enemy. And we did not want to get involved in optional military adventures, but we would be very, very tough on our enemies. And then, the tougher we were, the less we would have to do it once we reestablished deterrence. So, we’ve lost deterrence, and that can be achieved militarily, economically, politically, but we’ve lost it in every category and it’s going to be very, very dangerous to reestablish it. Bluey: How much is at stake this year as it pertains to the future of this great country? Hanson: Everybody says each election is the most important, but I can tell you that this election is more important than 2016 and 2020 because, in my lifetime, we’ve never seen the Democratic Party—they always say the Republican Party was taken over MAGA, but you look at 90% of the MAGA agenda, and it’s traditionally low taxes, small government, strong defense, closed borders. But the Democratic Party, as we’re seeing with Columbia [University] and all these student protests, they are a revolutionary party. It’s not that they believe in a porous border, they believe in no border. It’s not that they believe in light sentencing, they don’t want to sentence anybody. They don’t want to have bail. They don’t believe that there is such a thing as deterrence, the way we got out of Afghanistan. They believe in radical climate change. You can show them data, you can show them all sorts, they don’t care, they want to ban combustible engines, they don’t want fossil. So, this is a group of people, as we’re seeing in this split screen with Donald Trump charged with these ridiculous misdemeanors bootstrapped onto felonies. At the same time, people are entering with violence into a Columbia building. And as one of them said the other night, “They will be out in 24 hours.” I don’t think they’re even in jail as we speak, they’re already out. I guess what I’m saying is we’re in a revolutionary Jacobin period, kind of a Reign of Terror. And I don’t see it stopping unless—I don’t think the election of Donald Trump will be enough. You’ll have to elect the Senate, Donald Trump, and enlarge the House majority. And then, they’re going to have to act very quickly to stop it, to restore the border, to restore deterrence, to restore deterrence against criminals, to get back our preeminent position economically, to stop this $1 trillion borrowing every 100 days. We’re in bad shape in every category. And I think, whether we like it, I know there’s a lot of Never-Trumpers out there, but whatever problem they have with Trump’s temperament, it just pales in comparison with the ideological revolutionaries that are in there now … . If [President Joe] Biden is reelected, what we saw the first term will be nothing, it’ll be enhanced to a magnitude, it’ll be so much greater. So, I’m really worried about this election, especially the integrity of the balloting and turnout and all of those other issues. The post Is the End Near? Victor Davis Hanson Ponders Threat of Annihilation appeared first on The Daily Signal.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued multiple crisis pregnancy centers Monday for saying they can reverse abortion pills. James, a Democrat, targeted 11 crisis pregnancy centers in New York, accusing them of “misleading” pregnant women about whether medication abortion may be reversed, according to the court filing. James claimed that the centers, along with the organization Heartbeat International, engaged in “deceptive acts or practices” and “false advertising.” “Abortions cannot be reversed. Any treatments that claim to do so are made without scientific evidence and could be unsafe,” James said in a press release Monday. “Heartbeat International and the other crisis pregnancy center defendants are spreading dangerous misinformation by advertising ‘abortion reversals’ without any medical and scientific proof.” Heartbeat International highlights on its website 17 cases from its Abortion Pill Rescue Network, which connects women who have taken an abortion pill with a medical provider to begin the reversal process. Heartbeat International, in conjunction with a collective of pregnancy help organizations, has taken legal action against the Office of New York Attorney General Leticia James. pic.twitter.com/vw0I0YsgI2— Heartbeat Int'l (@HeartbeatIntl) May 2, 2024 “Medication abortion is an essential component of reproductive health care and has been an important tool in expanding abortion access in New York, particularly in rural and underserved communities where procedural abortion may be unavailable or more difficult to obtain,” the New York Attorney General’s Office wrote in the court filing, adding: In light of the increased use of medication abortion over the last two decades and its increasing importance in the reproductive health landscape, this safe and effective regimen for terminating early pregnancies has become a primary target for opponents of abortion, who not only seek to deter pregnant people from choosing to have a medication abortion in the first place, but also increasingly seek to deter pregnant individuals who have begun the process of a medication abortion from completing that process. The filing seeks a court order requiring the pregnancy centers to remove any content that “violate[s] New York Executive Law § 63(12) and General Business Law Article 22-A, §§ 349 and 350” as well as bar them from “engaging in the fraudulent, deceptive, and illegal acts or practices.” In 2022, James demanded that Google censor search results showing crisis pregnancy centers. In February, she sued the U.S. division of JBS, a meatpacking company, claiming that it lied about the effects its operations had on climate change. James also promised to investigate then-President Donald Trump during her 2018 campaign for attorney general, labeling him an “illegitimate president.” She sued Trump in September 2022, alleging that he overstated the value of real estate holdings to obtain loans. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Letitia James Sues Pregnancy Centers Over Abortion Pill Reversal Claims appeared first on The Daily Signal.

By April 28, even House Democrats had had enough. A group of them demanded that Columbia University “act decisively” and evict the overtly pro-Hamas protesters who had been occupying the campuses, shutting down education at the close of the semester. Is this the watershed moment? The turn of the tide? Or did that come even earlier—when state legislatures (such as Texas’) moved to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs? Years from now, we could look back and see that as the moment when sanity began to retake its place on college campuses—and subsequently, throughout society. In particular, the DEI bans could be the key—and could loosen the stranglehold the Left has on colleges and universities, and all that stranglehold entails. Universities have acted as gatekeeping medieval guilds, with “wrongthink” punished and intellectual diversity all but banned. No more. Maybe it was the images of entitled American college students calling for genocide and religious retribution half a world away. Perhaps it was the protesters chanting “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!” and “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too!” Perhaps it was the increasing threat of violence against Jewish students. Whatever the cause, the American public has had it with the racialized radicals at our colleges and universities. And in an unexpected but welcome turn, those House Democrats, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., sent a letter to Columbia officials calling for the school to “disband the encampment and ensure the safety and security of all of its students.” They’re no longer pretending that the wave of antisemitic protests at America’s elite universities is simply the “Summer of Love” revisited. “[T]his encampment has been the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, including hate speech, harassment, intimidation, and even threats of violence,” they wrote. “[A] student held up a sign pointing to pro-Israel students that said ‘Al-Qassam’s next targets,’ referring to the military arm of Hamas, the foreign terrorist organization responsible for the atrocities of October 7, and for holding hostage innocent civilians—including Americans—in brutal captivity for nearly seven months.” But the Democrats are late to the party. Lawmakers in Texas, for example, correctly identified DEI as a campus cancer in their last legislative session and worked to end it. Senate Bill 17 was passed in the last session, much to the consternation of campus radicals. The left-leaning Texas Tribune warned: “Layoffs and upheaval at Texas universities spur fear as lawmakers continue DEI crackdown.” But here’s the truth: DEI doesn’t work. It doesn’t increase diversity, equity, or inclusion. Want proof? The University of Michigan has the largest DEI program in the country. But as my colleague Sherry Sylvester reports, “After a decade of DEI at [the University of] Michigan, the largest university in the state, Michigan still has a student population that is less than 4% black, even though African Americans make up 14% of the population.” And a 2021 study by The Heritage Foundation found that “large DEI bureaucracies appear to make little positive contribution to campus climate: Rather than being an effective tool for welcoming students from different backgrounds, DEI personnel may be better understood as a signal of adherence to ideological, political, and activist goals.” It’s not just the Right that has figured this out. At MIT (where math recently went woke), a debate was held over whether academic DEI programs should be abolished. Of course, there are the “bitter clingers”—these ones cling to protest signs or ideologies or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them. They don’t want to give up the power that DEI gives them. As The Federalist reported in January, “several higher education institutions [in Texas] have already committed to skirting the statute so they can keep promoting the preferential treatment of certain races, ethnicities, ‘gender identities,’ and sexual orientations.” So, states like Texas must force them to comply. SB 17’s author, Republican state Rep. Brandon Creighton, is warning colleges that there “will be no reauthorizing, renaming or relaunching the DEI efforts under other strategies.” And Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has named enforcement of SB 17 as an interim charge in the lead-up to the next legislative session. It’s too early to tell how successful Texas and other states will be in this battle. But we do know the stakes: Entire professions are captive to the flawed promises of DEI. This could be the moment when those promises are shown to be lies, and Americans return to our pursuit of a more perfect union. The post Defeating DEI and Rescuing Higher Education appeared first on The Daily Signal.

China is operating in a “predatory” manner to make America more reliant on complex supply chains arising from climate change initiatives that play into the hands of hostile foreign actors, according to energy, environmental, and foreign policy analysts at a panel discussion Monday. The event at The Heritage Foundation marked the launch of a new initiative, titled “Chinese Handcuffs,” that probes the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to dominate the “green energy” sector in cooperation with left-leaning environmental activists in the U.S. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) Although the U.S. has sufficient resources to maintain its energy dominance, the Biden administration’s climate policies could enable the Chinese to gain significant economic and strategic advantages over time, the panelists warned. “We are right now in the handcuffs of China, and this has been a multidecade agenda that they have led, but at the same time, our own liberal-left agenda has brought us to this point,” said Erin Walsh, a research fellow in international affairs for The Heritage Foundation. “… the United States is the No. 3 energy producer in the world, and China is the No. 1 energy importer in the world, and what they are trying to do is reverse this, so they become dominant in this new energy and renewable sector, and we become dependent on them.” Walsh is also the co-author of a just released report, “Chinese Handcuffs: How China Exploits America’s Climate Agenda,” that explores how Beijing has been working to exploit America’s climate agenda to the advantage of the communist regime. Walsh noted that China does not have the oil and gas resources needed to meet its needs, which means it must rely on imports. “For 1.4 billion people, they’ve got a lot they need to be dealing with,” she said. “Therefore, they knew they didn’t have the oil resources that the United States does, and nor did they have natural gas. So, what they wanted to do was to create these renewables.” Other speakers discussed how China’s efforts to capture the wind and solar industry have complicated supply chains, putting the U.S. at a disadvantage. The “ambitious climate benchmarks” the Biden administration set for renewables heading into the 2030s will have significant economic and political ramifications, said Landon Derentz, a global energy security analyst with the Atlantic Council. The council is a Washington-based group devoted to promoting U.S. international leadership.   Derentz said the Biden administration would “probably not” be able to achieve its “climate benchmarks” without turning toward China, since the Asian giant has achieved dominance over solar energy manufacturing, the production of lithium batteries, and the extraction of rare earth minerals. Meanwhile, China will continue to exploit the benefits of maintaining a “complex supply chain” while U.S. policymakers dither over how best to address Beijing’s grip on the renewable energy industry, Derentz said. Victoria Coates, vice president for national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation, served as the moderator for the discussion. She expressed concern the U.S. was “voluntarily” abdicating its energy security in the name of climate change even as China continues to operate in a “highly predatory, deliberate campaign” to overtake the U.S. in terms of energy and make the U.S. more dependent on China.  “The good news is, we can right this ship and reverse this if we take it seriously,” she added. With an eye toward the 2024 elections, Coates asked Jack Spencer, an energy and environmental policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, what to expect if a new administration were to take charge next year. “I think what we will see under a conservative administration is a reversion back to allowing energy markets to work as they should,” Spencer said. “That doesn’t mean we will produce more or less energy. It means we will produce the amount of energy we need to feed the economy. If it’s more, we will be able to export more, to produce more, and to get those molecules where they need to go.” Spencer criticized the Biden administration for curtailing natural gas exports and “taking massive swaths of federal land out of commission” from development. President Joe Biden’s hostility toward private industry has had the unfortunate effect of putting a “chill on investment” in meaningful energy initiatives, he said. There’s a “Catch-22” at work where climate policies are concerned, Spencer added. Either the U.S. will become more dependent on China or it will devote large sectors of its energy industry toward what amounts to political fantasies, he warned. The solution, he added, is “to get off the hamster wheel of the green energy farce.” The post Biden’s Climate Policies Playing Into Hands of China’s Energy Schemes, Experts Say  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If the FBI has time to spare after harassing mothers at school board meetings, it may want to look into the groups participating in, and funding, the pro-Hamas disturbances at universities across the country. Clearing out Columbia University on Tuesday night doesn’t mean the job is done. Yes, some protests have been peaceful, engaging in constitutionally protected speech. But, unlike the concerned parents who simply decided to get more involved in local politics, the groups behind the protests—violent and peaceful ones—want to dismantle society. And things could turn even more violent this summer. Authorities—not just the Federal Bureau of Investigations, but law enforcement at all levels—have presumably been keeping tabs on who’s taking part, who broke the law, who are the nonstudents sneaking into university property to agitate, etc. If they haven’t, Congress ought to weigh in. The arrests in New York and Los Angeles, where police entered UCLA early last Wednesday, will furnish the identities of many. Other technology, such as police drones that flew over the encampments, and the geofencing that tells authorities who used a phone within a space, should also help. Most importantly, law enforcement must investigate who is funding these well-organized and well-orchestrated protests. This is particularly the case if it is a foreign power such as Iran or its terrorist proxy Hamas (which, again, would mean Iran). And if the funders are domestic, aiding and abetting violence across state lines is a federal crime. We already know that some of the street protests have been organized by the ANSWER Coalition, which claims credit for a march in Washington, D.C., that it says brought out 400,000, many bused in from other states. (ANSWER stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.) The ANSWER Coalition is a fiscally sponsored project of Progress Unity Fund, a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization with a long history of promoting society’s most radical causes.  The Progress Unity Fund is closely tied with the Workers World Party, described by Discover the Networks as a “Marxist-Leninist vanguard” party. Capital Research Center notes that “ANSWER’s director is Brian Becker, who is also [a] key figure within the Party for Socialism and Liberation, yet another communist group that split from the Workers World Party in 2004.” This leftist party says U.S. democracy is a “façade.” Progress Unity Fund has received money from the far-left, deep-pocketed Tides Foundation, according to Influence Watch. ANSWER, according to Research Gate, also gets money from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which is also very far left and very wealthy. ANSWER organized the march in Washington, D.C., with American Muslims for Palestine, which gives guidance and financial support to Students for Justice in Palestine. According to Columbia professor Shai Davidai and many others, the Muslim group has strong links with Hamas. Students for Justice in Palestine, which also has supported Hamas and posts poisonously antisemitic tweets regularly, has organized and led many of the campus protests. In our recent book “NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It,” Katharine Cornell Gorka and I describe Students for Justice in Palestine as having been so vile in its support for Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and gang rapes of Jewish women in Israel that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “ordered the Florida universities to disband SJP chapters.” Students for Justice in Palestine receives funding from American Muslims for Palestine but is itself a fiscally sponsored project of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation, another far-left funder. When you visit WESPAC’s website, you find a photo of earnest activists holding up a sign that reads “Another World is Possible.” This is a well-known slogan used by organizations that despise capitalism but think they must cloak their communism. Ryan Mauro of Capital Research Center, whose work tracking these networks is invaluable, emailed me to say that the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation “funds various revolutionary far-left/anti-Western groups.” But because it acts as Students for Justice in Palestine’s fiscal sponsor, there’s no transparency. “All donations transit through WESPAC and they aren’t required to publicly reveal anything about that relationship,” Mauro said. But we can get a sense, from other disclosures, of who funds both WESPAC and American Muslims for Palestine. Mauro tells me that those who have given to the Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation include the Elias Foundation ($100,000); the Sparkplug Foundation (about $100,000); Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($80,000); George Soros’ Open Society ($40,000); and the Groundswell Foundation (about $32,000). The Zakat Foundation, meanwhile, has given $25,000 to AMP. How influential have these groups and their NextGen Marxist ideas on decolonization, the “oppressor vs. oppressed” paradigm, and anticapitalism been on protesters? We can get a sense from the three spokesmen who faced the media Tuesday at Columbia University before the NYPD dislodged them from Hamilton Hall. They have been much derided, but their background is instructive. The main spokesperson was Johannah King-Slutsky. According to Jordan Schachtel of The Dossier, King-Slutsky is a doctoral candidate at Columbia, where she studies “theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens.” She wrote in her now-deleted Columbia bio that her goal is to “write a prehistory of metabolic rift, Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism.” Another spokesperson was Cameron Jones, an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, a virulently antisemitic far-left group. It receives funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Open Society Foundation, among others.  The third spokesperson was Maryam Alwan, a leader at Students for Justice in Palestine. There has to be enough here for the FBI, Congress, and other leaders to investigate who has been organizing and funding these protests—before they metastasize and further endanger society. Published originally by the Washington Examiner The post FBI Should Uncover Who Organized, Funded Radical Student Encampments appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona declined to answer questions about whether he would let boys fight his daughter in sports or undress in front of her in bathrooms at a Tuesday hearing. President Joe Biden’s administration released a finalized rule in April that extends Title IX protection to encompass “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” but it does not address transgender athletes. Cardona refused to answer the questions from Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, saying he would not comment on rules related to athletics that his department has not yet proposed. “Would you force your daughter to undress in the bathroom with boys, who are also undressing?” Owens asked. “I am not going to be commenting on athletics rules that we haven’t proposed,” Cardona answered. Owens pressed Cardona for a “yes or no” answer but the secretary declined to provide one, saying he would “be happy” to discuss Title IX. “If your daughter was reported, she felt uncomfortable in a boy’s presence in a bathroom or locker room, would that be considered by your administration to be discrimination or bigotry?” Owens followed up. Cardona again declined to provide a “yes or no” answer as Owens pressed him. “Girls have now entered in contact sports of boxing and wrestling. Would you allow your daughter to physically fight and get beat up by a boy who called himself a girl?” Owens asked. “Yes or no.” “Be happy to, once we finalize our regulations on Title IX athletics, to come back and have a conversation with you,” Cardona said. The Biden administration is currently working on a rule that would restrict schools from imposing a “one-size-fits-all policy” that allegedly discriminates against transgender athletes. Nearly 25 states have enacted legislation prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in female sports. “The new Title IX regulations increase protections to all students, and increase protections for women,” Cardona said. “This is why American parents are really concerned about this administration. You cannot answer a basic question that makes common sense,” Owens retorted. “I’ll say this. I know how to protect my girls.” The education secretary has a daughter and a son. Cardona also repeatedly refused to answer questions on whether there are physical differences between men and women at an April hearing. “Would you agree that women are physically different from men?” Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris asked him. “I see where you’re going with this,” Cardona responded before the congressman interrupted him. Harris then asked the question again, to which Cardona repeated his answer, adding, “I would love to talk about how we can work together to support the students,” before Harris cut him off once more. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post Biden Education Secretary Refuses to Say If He Would Let Boys Fight His Daughter and Undress in Front of Her appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The New York Times has released a trove of raw government data on the unaccompanied alien children who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. Among over 10,000 pages of information is data on the number of children who crossed the border into America without an adult and then were handed over to someone other than a family member.  From January 2015 through May 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released tens of thousands of minors who crossed the border illegally to sponsors who weren’t an immediate or distant relative, raising concerns about human trafficking and forced labor.   “More children are crossing the border on their own than ever before, and thousands are ending up doing dangerous, illegal jobs,” New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier wrote on X in a thread sharing the numbers with the public.   The Times sued the government to gain access to the records, which reveal more than 550,000 minors crossed the border illegally between 2015, halfway through Barack Obama’s second term as president, through May 2023, about two years and four months into Joe Biden’s presidency. From 2017 through 2020, Donald Trump was president. The data includes when each child arrived in the U.S., each child’s sex and country of origin, date released to a sponsor, relationship to that sponsor, and the ZIP code where the sponsor lives.   The data reveals that 37,088 unaccompanied alien children were released to an “unrelated sponsor,” 24,253 of which were released during Biden’s presidency between Jan. 20, 2021, and May 25, 2023.   “Americans have the right to know that criminal cartels are bringing unaccompanied minors into our country as a result of President Biden’s failed border policies,” Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., told The Daily Signal. “The president must answer to the American people as to why he has failed to secure the border and been unable to protect these children from harm.” The minors have been released to sponsors across all 50 states and a map created by the Times shows where the children, at least initially, were sent.   A data map created by The New York Times shows where unaccompanied alien children have been released within the U.S., per 100,000 residents. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for placing unaccompanied alien children with a sponsor in America.   According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, it released children, in order of preference, to a “parent; legal guardian; an adult relative (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent or first cousin); an adult individual or entity designated by the parent or legal guardian (through a signed declaration or other document that ORR determines is sufficient to establish the signatory’s parental/guardian relationship); a licensed program willing to accept legal custody; or an adult individual or entity seeking custody when it appears that there is no other likely alternative to long term ORR care and custody.”  In 2023, the Times reported that although the Department of Health and Human Services checks on all unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally “by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors,” data obtained by the newspaper “showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children.”   In response to the data published by the Times, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., told The Daily Signal: “President Biden’s border invasion is not only endangering every American, but it is leaving illegal alien children subject to trafficking and forced labor at the hands of the Mexican cartels.” “Instead of passing phony, nonbinding resolutions about President Biden’s refusal to use his existing authority to close the border,” Good said, “Republicans should have insisted on HR 2 being included on a must-pass legislative vehicle.”   The House passed HR 2, the Secure the Border Act, in May 2023. The bill would reinstate Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, end the “catch and release” policy, and resume construction of the border wall begun by Trump and stopped by Biden. The Senate has yet to take up the bill.   The New York Times reported on much of the released data and stories of unaccompanied alien children in several reports from February to December 2023. Those stories and the raw data may be found here.   The post Where Are Unaccompanied Alien Children Going After Crossing Border? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As police finally clear the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University appeases its protesting occupiers, the Democratic National Convention set for August in the Windy City ticks ever closer.  Unsatiated protesters may have been cleared from some of their camps at college campuses, but the more lucrative target of national Democrats’ gathering to renominate President Joe Biden has many worried that the protests may only be getting started. Although the two Chicago universities caved weakly to the strange demands of the anti-Israel protesters, Biden has not been well-received by the pro-Hamas youth. The agitators’ slapping Biden with the nickname “Genocide Joe” and their joining pro-Israel protesters at UCLA and University of Alabama in chants of “F— Joe Biden” led many to suspect that stormy weather is in store for a left-wing political convention that is little more than three months away. Biden’s unpopularity with radical groups on the political and cultural Left has been largely attributed to his attempt to “split the baby” by backing Israel in its war against Hamas while criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s methods, placing conditions on aid to America’s biggest Middle Eastern ally, and sympathizing with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protesters. Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, slaughtering 1,200, torturing or raping many first, and taking over 200 hostages. Ever since, the Israeli military has targeted the adjacent Gaza Strip—where Hamas is the elected government and uses civilians as shields—with the goal of “eradicating” the terrorist group. The Biden administration has warned Israel not to invade Rafah, the southern region of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, where the last four regiments of Hamas are believed to hold dozens of hostages, including five American citizens. Anti-Israel protesters have set up encampments on public and private university campuses around the nation, often trespassing and vandalizing on campus as well as  intimidating, obstructing, and entrapping Jewish students.  Although the published rationale for these protests varies from encampment to encampment, most center on the rage of left-wing students that their university is doing business with businesses that do business with (or appear to do business with) Israel. Protesters at the University of Chicago and Northwestern demanded full-ride scholarships for Palestinian students, HIV tests, medical supplies for treating combat wounds, dental dams, Plan B, and other contraceptives. Northwestern reportedly “paid off” some protesters by agreeing to give scholarships to five Palestinian students and special pay to Palestinian staff for two years. School administrators also agreed to reestablish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility that would allow students and staff to shame the university officially for accepting “Israeli or Israel-adjacent endowments,” and to allow protesters to continue their encampment until at least June 1. Now Northwestern is facing a lawsuit and two civil rights complaints over concessions to the leaders of the  anti-Israel encampments. The plaintiffs claim that Northwestern failed to “fulfill a modest core promise” to students that all “student peers and faculty will be governed by rules” by looking the other way when certain groups participated in antisemitic harassment. Although the encampment at the University of Chicago was cleared by police Tuesday morning, students and faculty members have proclaimed their willingness to be arrested while “protesting for Palestine.” Given the inflammatory support for these anti-Israel protests from far-left House Democrats such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Andre Carson of Indiana, and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, it’s unlikely that organizers of the Democratic National Convention would be able to discourage these anti-Israel protesters from setting up camp outside United Center for the duration of the convention Aug. 19 to 22. One need not look back too far to recall the upheaval at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Vietnam War protesters tangled with police was upheaved by protesters against the Vietnam War.  At the time, 56 years ago, Illinois Gov. Samuel Shapiro, a Democrat, honored a request from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, also a Democrat, to deploy the Illinois National Guard to help provide convention security. It is unlikely that today’s mayor, Democrat Brandon Johnson, would ask for the Guard to be deployed. In a press conference Friday, Johnson told reporters that “individuals who wish to demonstrate … work within parameters.” But the mayor declined to outline what “parameters” meant, or whether he would request police or Guard assistance. If such a protest turned out to be as violent as the “Summer of Love” in 2020, in which entire city blocks were burned by Black Lives Matter-inspired rioters, then this Democratic National Convention could turn very nasty very quickly. Last month, representatives of 75 organizations gathered in Chicago to plan disruptions at August’s convention.Joe Iosbaker, a leader of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, told a screaming crowd: “This is Chicago, [expletive] it, we’ve got to give them a 1968 kind of welcome!” The post Nightmares at Chicago Universities Set Stage for Nuclear Democrat Convention appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Social Security trustees released their annual report on Monday, and the outlook is bleak. Social Security has morphed far beyond its original intent, and absent congressional action, everyone who is of Generation X or younger will not receive a single full benefit, and even those already in retirement will experience significant benefit cuts. To prevent benefit cuts for even the most elderly who rely on Social Security for their entire income, Congress will have to act. Determining the best pathway for reform, however, requires understanding some crucial facts about Social Security. Fact #1: Social Security’s retirement fund will run dry in nine years. The Social Security trustees project that the Old Age and Survivors Insurance, or retirement program, will be insolvent in 2033. At that point, Social Security benefits will be limited to the amount of Social Security payroll taxes that come into the program. Technically, insolvency means that the notional trust fund (which currently consists of IOUs that the federal government issued to the Social Security trust fund when it borrowed payroll-tax revenues to fund non-Social Security spending) will have no more money—or IOUs—left to be reclaimed. Fact #2: 21% automatic benefit cuts will ensue. Because Social Security is a self-financed program, it cannot spend more than it takes in. Consequently, unless Congress reforms Social Security, benefits will be reduced by 21% across the board beginning in 2033. That will equal a loss of about $4,600 for the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 per year from Social Security. Beyond 2033, payroll taxes will cover a declining share of scheduled benefits, and benefit reductions will rise to 31% by 2098. Fact #3: Social Security has $22.6 trillion in unfunded obligations. Social Security’s combined Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance programs have accumulated $22.6 trillion in unfunded obligations, which is effectively the additional amount required to maintain Social Security’s current benefit levels over the next 75 years. That amounts to $172,000 for every household in America. Fact #4: Large tax hikes would be required to prevent benefit reductions. To prevent any benefit reductions, the Social Security trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%. That estimate may be too conservative, however. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately to 17.5% to maintain current benefits. Those estimated tax hikes would add between $2,500 and $3,800 in annual Social Security taxes for a median household with about $75,000 of income. When Social Security was established, it started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised the program would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks. In addition to the basic facts presented in the trustees’ report, understanding some common misconceptions about Social Security can help Americans assess the best options for reform. Misconception #1: Social Security is a retirement savings program. Today, not a single dollar of workers’ Social Security payroll taxes is saved. Decades ago, a significant portion of workers’ payroll taxes were designated to the Social Security trust fund and earned interest (because the money was lent to the federal government to finance deficits in other, non-Social Security government spending). Since 2011, however, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has collected in tax revenues, and every dollar of workers’ payroll taxes has gone straight out the door to current retirees. Thus, Social Security is not a retirement savings program, but an intergenerational income-transfer program.    Misconception #2: Social Security is a good deal. Social Security was a good deal for early generations of beneficiaries who received far more than they paid into the system. Social Security continues to seem like a good deal to many people because a $2,000 monthly benefit check is very noticeable, whereas workers never see the 6.2% Social Security tax that employers pay on their behalf and with automatic deductions and direct deposit of paychecks, many workers don’t notice the 6.2% taken from those paychecks. Moreover, most workers have no idea what they could have received if their payroll taxes had instead been put into a personal retirement account. My colleagues and I at The Heritage Foundation estimated that the average worker could receive three times as much from a personal retirement account, compared to what Social Security provides. Even minimum-wage workers could receive 40% more from a personal retirement account. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) Misconception #3: Making everyone pay their “fair share” of Social Security taxes would fix the program’s shortfalls. To increase Social Security revenues, some lawmakers have called for subjecting all earnings (and potentially unearned income) to Social Security’s 12.4% tax. Currently, Social Security’s tax applies up to $168,600 of earnings in 2024. The current cap is already 2.5 times as large, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as the original earnings cap. Social Security’s tax cap also functions as a benefit cap. Since benefits are a function of the income on which workers paid taxes, the tax cap prevents very wealthy individuals from receiving very large Social Security benefits. Eliminating the Social Security tax cap entirely would only solve about half of Social Security’s shortfalls. Since eliminating Social Security’s tax cap would bring the top federal income tax rate to 51.8% and the top combined state and federal income tax rate to 65.8% (in 2026 and beyond), this would leave little room to raise taxes to cover the federal government’s regular deficits or Medicare’s more than $50 trillion in shortfalls. As Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute noted, “even 100% tax rates on million-dollar earners would not come close to balancing the budget, and seizing all $4.5 trillion of billionaire wealth—every home, car, business, and investment—would merely fund the federal government one time for nine months.” Social Security’s outlook is dismal, and the politics of reform are even worse. But the good news is that Social Security truly is solvable. By slowly shifting to a system of universal benefits, modernizing outdated features, and adding an ownership option, policymakers can preserve Social Security, improve benefits for those who need them most, and increase all Americans’ lifetime incomes.   The post 4 Cold, Hard Facts From Social Security Trustees’ Report—and 3 Common Misconceptions appeared first on The Daily Signal.