The Biden administration has initiated steps that undermine former President Donald Trump’s decision to establish the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, media reports suggest.

The Biden State Department has set up a separate diplomatic office for the Palestinians in Jerusalem. With this move, “Washington is reversing a Trump administration policy on U.S.-Palestinian relations ahead of President Joe Biden’s possible visit to Israel” set to take place in July, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

The Biden administration’s decision seeks to rollback President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel. The Washington Free Beacon, citing former U.S. diplomats, described the Biden administration’s move as “the first step to walking back the United States’ historic recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.” //

Senator Bill Hagerty
@SenatorHagerty
I unequivocally oppose this plan. It's inconsistent with the full & faithful implementation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 & suggests the Admin is again trying to undermine America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal & undivided capital.
dailymail.co.uk
Biden reverses Trump by beefing up diplomatic mission to Palestinians
6:05 PM · Jun 10, 2022

they’re looking for power, and they’re trying to get it all via Cloward-Piven:

The Cloward-Piven Strategy: Orchestrating A Crisis So Government Can “Solve” It
https://conduitforaction.org/the-cloward-piven-strategy-orchestrating-a-crisis-so-government-can-solve-it/

These absolute lunatics want Joe Biden to sign an executive order authorizing the use of federal buildings to perform abortions, not just in states where abortion is permitted, which is bad enough, but as a way to perform abortions in states that choose to outlaw most or all abortions.

Doing that would be outright dangerous. Do you want mass unrest? Because you get it by having the federal government, by decree of a single man, entering into red states to kill babies with taxpayer dollars. There’s a reason the Hyde Amendment exists, and it’s to diffuse stuff like this. Democrats don’t care, though. They are all in on hacking up kids in the womb, and they are obviously willing to do just about anything to ensure the practice continues.

It is hard for me to even write articles like this because the amount of murderous evil being perpetrated is almost too much to discuss without losing it. It’s impossible to conceive how anyone could be so obsessed with killing unborn babies that they’d actually propose illegally weaponizing the federal government and its agencies to override the will of the people in the states.

Besides, state laws are still laws. The federal government can not simply enter into a state and do whatever it wants contrary to the laws in those states. That includes killing people, unborn or otherwise. An executive order does not grant the power to ignore the Supreme Court and override laws that protect life. Any federal employees that try to follow such an order could be and should be arrested and charged.

Democrats are tearing this country apart. Something has to give because this kind of “anything goes to make sure I get what I want” attitude is destructive and treacherous.

President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

“Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” — meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the border.”

“There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelensky didn’t want to hear it.”

Well, that’s nice. The empathizer-in-chief maligning a guy whose country is being invaded by nuclear-armed Russia, in order to gain a few claps at a fundraiser. Biden doing that is so on-brand because nothing is ever his fault. Inflation isn’t his fault, the economy isn’t his fault, Afghanistan wasn’t his fault, the border crisis isn’t his fault, and of course, he bears zero responsibility for Russia invading Ukraine. Do you understand how all this works now? //

From the beginning, Biden has treated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some kind of grade-school dust-up, believing he can claim victory just by saying “I was right.” But as many of us, including Zelensky, pointed out at the time, there was never anything to be gained by pointing fingers or trying to be “right” in regards to calling an invasion happening. //

it’s highly unlikely that Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it.” Rather, he was clearly trying to put on a strong public front in the face of Putin’s threats, in the hope of deterring the invasion. Lastly, as I noted above, if Biden knew what was coming as he keeps bragging about, his lack of action, including preemptively preparing the US for the economic fallout, is even more inexcusable. In short, the president remains a pathetic, obfuscating leader who isn’t fit to hold his office. But what else is new?

The headline CBO numbers make for bracing reading, and illustrate the work our country needs to undertake—sooner rather than later—to get our fiscal house in order. //

The CBO analysis shows the cumulative effects of the federal government spending far too much:

Except for a shortfall of “only” $984 billion in 2023, federal deficits will exceed $1 trillion throughout the decade, and well into the future.
Deficits will rise from roughly 4 percent of GDP to more than 6 percent of GDP by the end of the decade—well in excess of any potential economic growth rate, creating an unsustainable fiscal scenario.
Net interest costs will more than triple, from $352 billion in 2021 to an estimated $1.2 trillion the federal government will spend just on interest in 2032.
Publicly held debt will rise to 110 percent of GDP by 2032—“higher than it has ever been.”
Lest anyone believe these budgetary woes stem primarily from “the rich” not “paying their fair share” in taxes, CBO also projected that in 2022, revenues will reach their highest share as a percentage of the economy since the dot-com boom of 2000. Moreover, the CBO report assumes that the President Trump tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of 2025.

In other words, this document assumes record revenue in the short term and a major tax increase in a few years’ time, and still results in massive debt and deficits over the coming decade. //

A mere ten months ago, in July 2021, CBO estimated the federal government would run deficits of $12.1 trillion over the coming decade. That number sounds bad enough, but the updated forecast now shows $14.5 trillion of red ink.

A Chevron station in the coastal village of Mendocino about 175 miles north of San Francisco was charging $9.60 a gallon for regular on Friday afternoon.

The Menocino station, Schlafer’s Auto Body & Repair, is the only one in the tourist haven — described on the county website as “an enchanted place filled with real, unspoiled California opportunities” — and is routinely considered the most expensive in the nation.

Owner Judy Schlafer told SFGate.com she paid $50,000 for an 8,880-gallon delivery this week, which she has 10 days to pay for. Three months ago, the same load would have been about $30,000.

Schlafer said that if she didn’t charge $9.60, she’d be out of business. //

Dorien Grey
14h ago

Why has the media remained silent even the Post here and Fox on the fact that Under Biden 5 refineries were shut down by the EPA which is part of the driving factor here? That pretty big news since there are not replacement refineries in the works!

The Biden administration’s proposal would generate a public health emergency industry that China will be well-positioned to exploit.

Joe Biden gave a fantastic and contemplative inauguration speech about “unifying our divided nation,” but from Day 1, with every word and deed, Biden has done the opposite. He has brought this country to the lowest point in many decades, on deficit spending, supply chain, economic policy, political animosity, and the rule of law.

It really did start on Day 1, with a rather un-“adult-like” sour grapes firing of every single Trump-era public health official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including those officials monitoring vaccine safety, despite being deep in the throes of a worsening pandemic. The result was an increased number of dead American as pandemic deaths have been immensely worse under Biden’s watch, despite having Trump’s vaccine. Next, Biden waited more than a year to finally replace the officials, and he started by choosing a very unpopular FDA commissioner, an uninspiring non-reformer and Obama-era re-tread, Dr. Robert Califf. //

The Real Responsibility Lies With Biden’s FDA and Commissioner Califf
So what happened? Long story short: no Abbott products were found to be contaminated. That’s not just my opinion — that’s the conclusion of the FDA and CDC following a thorough, months-long determination. Abbott had definite violations in its inspection, but none of them warranted an extended FDA shutdown leading to shortages for American infants.

Even after knowing that, the FDA is seemingly taking forever to allow the plant to re-open. As of this writing, it is still shut down. When pressed for answers at the House Committee hearing on May 19, Califf couldn’t project a date when store shelves would be restocked, admitting it could be months.

Will the commissioner or anyone else from the FDA be held accountable for the crisis of desperate mothers and their hungry babies over the last few months? Here is your answer: On May 19, the House passed a bill to give FDA employees an additional $28,000,000.00 taxpayer-funded pay raise. //

The natural business and economic consequences of the ineptitude of the Biden’s FDA is that baby formula manufacturers will be motivated to move their manufacturing facilities from the U.S. to foreign countries, where the FDA won’t be breathing down their necks and able to shut them down based on a whim. If Abbott and companies like it move manufacturing out of country it will result in yet another vacant American manufacturing plant plus lost property, corporate, and salary taxes, while unemployment will need to be paid to those losing their jobs. It’s not just desperate mothers and hungry babies who will lose in this crisis, but all Americans.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year, many observers believed China’s Xi might be motivated to attack Taiwan while the Russian military was keeping the West occupied. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, warned that “an invasion of Taiwan could happen within this decade.” He introduced a bill recently to “increase coordination between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries to ensure Taiwan is equipped to defend against an attack and invasion by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

The calls for the United States to abandon “strategic ambiguity” and offer Taiwan an explicit security guarantee have grown louder. Many pointed to China’s military buildup, the expansion in the South China Sea, the brutal crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, and its increasing military pressures on Taiwan as evidence that China’s aggression has become a threat to the peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, affecting the U.S. and its allies’ interests and security.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is one who has made this argument. He called on the Biden administration to abandon the U.S. government’s long-held “strategic ambiguity” position on Taiwan and clarify that the United States would intervene if China invaded the island. Abe argued that “strategic clarity” is the best deterrence strategy to prevent China from going to war with the United States and its allies over Taiwan. //

Yet the Biden administration so far has created more confusion domestically and internationally rather than presenting any strategic clarity. Since day one, the Biden administration has stated it would continue the “strategic ambiguity” policy toward Taiwan. But President Biden publicly declared several times that the U.S. military would help defend Taiwan in a Chinese invasion. Each time, senior administration officials immediately walked back Biden’s comments as if he never meant what he said.

There are three possible explanations. It could be that Biden’s comments were indeed blunders, and there is no change of U.S. policy on Taiwan. It could also be that he did mean what he said, but his staff simply undermined his authority publicly to avoid antagonizing China.

The third explanation is that the Biden administration has yet to formulate a clear China policy. It probably feels a bipartisan pressure to defend Taiwan but is war-weary and doesn’t want to actually go to war with China. All of these explanations are dangerous, for three reasons.

First, it signals to Beijing that U.S. political leadership is weak and has neither the ability nor the will to confront China. Second, it doesn’t build confidence among U.S. allies. The Biden administration’s policy confusion and perceived weakness may even convince some allies and partners to switch to China’s side.

Third, the Biden administration’s policy confusion and perceived weakness have increased the risk of a conflict with China rather than deterring China. China’s Xi may decide that the best time to invade Taiwan is when the United States is led by an aging politician who often appears confused. Xi can certainly strengthen his argument to his generals by pointing to America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

For decades, the Supreme Court’s decision to hijack the abortion question blunted the moral impetus for secular and religious leaders alike. It allowed for a dishonest debate, and for the left to claim our elected representatives alone have jurisdiction over matters of life and death, while rarely exercising this jurisdiction.

For decades, from both the church pulpit and the bully pulpit, it allowed for cowardice. Soon that may be ending. It might not make for a less contentious time in American life, but it will sure make for a more honest one.

K-12 schools must allow boys into girls’ private areas to obtain federal funds for lunches, breakfasts, and snacks, the Biden administration announced this month. A U.S. Department of Education spokesman told The Federalist the Biden administration’s press releases from several agencies announcing this policy will be followed by formal rulemaking in June. //

Before many schools shut down in response to Covid-19, the National School Lunch Program fed nearly 30 million kids every school day, in approximately 100,000 public and private schools and residential care facilities.

Under this new demand, establishments that accept any federal food funding, including food stamps, must also allow males who claim to be female to access female private spaces, such as showers, bathrooms, and sleeping areas. Such organizations must also follow protocols such as requiring staff to use inaccurate pronouns to describe transgender people and allowing male staff to dress as women while on the job.

Religious institutions, however, qualify for a waiver exempting them from these requirements, said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Greg Baylor in an interview Monday. According to the 1972 Title IX law, he said, religious institutions don’t have to file any paperwork to be exempt, although they can if they wish.

Baylor noted, however, that publicly affirming a commitment to sexual reality by seeking an exemption acknowledgment from federal agencies may assist extremist pressure campaigns. //

“The Biden administration is grossly extending the Bostock holding where it does not belong. Like many of the Biden administration’s power grabs, this imposition transgresses areas of proper state and local authority. As the principal guardians of federalism, state attorneys general have the ability to combat such overreach where it injures state functions,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, told The Federalist in a statement. //

While the majority opinion said Bostock only applied to Title VII, or employment law, it provided the rationale and excuse to extend this reasoning elsewhere. And the Biden administration’s press releases are ignoring the ruling’s claimed limits to apply it to other areas of federal code, particularly education’s Title IX, as many predicted.

Not only is the Biden administration’s use of federal food subsidies to impose sexual politics legally suspect in substance, it’s also legally suspect procedurally, Baylor said. That’s because press releases are not legally enforceable. Only federal regulations that have followed proper legal procedures are.

That hasn’t happened yet with this Biden administration demand, although the USED spokesman said the proposed regulation will be issued in June. Yet even after the regulation is issued, federal agencies are required to accept public comments for several months, then they must spend several more months reviewing all comments and responding, then writing and issuing a final regulation, which then can — and will be, Baylor said — challenged in court.

“When they do things some other way, just by some regulatory guidance or a press release or a memo, that in itself can be a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that’s precisely what we’ve argued in some of the cases we’ve filed on this issue,” Baylor said. “…We think they’re making shortcuts and we’ve challenged that in court.”

So it appears with this demand, just like with the Biden administration’s so-called vaccine mandate, the administration is slow-walking the legal procedures required. That delays inevitable lawsuits, which themselves take years to work out. This process effectively imposes unpopular, extremist gender policies extra-legally, through fiat and intimidation. Meanwhile, many elected officials can and do sit on their hands and claim it’s the courts’ job to solve what they can end immediately through legislative action. //

Remedies include withdrawing children from public schools, school boards refusing to follow regulations that are not legally binding until all court challenges are resolved, schools refusing to accept federal funding that comes at such a high cost, and state legislatures and Congress passing new laws to limit and undo the disastrous Bostock decision.

“The uncertainty is really unfortunate, and what we need are courageous parents who share their views with school administrators and school boards. We need courageous school administrators and school boards to do the right thing and push back on this interpretation of Title IX, because there are real harms to kids as a consequence,” Baylor said.

How can the Biden team claim that they are doing everything they can to bring down gas prices, if they continue on the path they have been on since Joe Biden came in — being anti-energy?

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), who comes from the oil-rich state of Alaska, blew the whistle on that by listing what the Biden Administration has done, just in the last three weeks that has impeded oil and gas production during his questioning of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. //

“There has been a comprehensive hostility to the energy sector by this Administration,” Sullivan declared. “I watch it every day.” Sullivan detailed how prolific Alaska is for oil. But the Biden Administration and Sec. Haaland has taken half the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) designated by Congress for oil and gas drilling “off the table.”

“That is not focused on increasing supply,” Sullivan said. Sullivan’s second example was Cook Inlet Basin. At the last minute, Biden canceled the lease sale,

Sullivan explained. “That is exactly the opposite of getting supply on the market.”

Finally, there was the new Council on Environmental Quality NEPA regulations that Sullivan said were meant “to kill the production of American energy.”

“That’s what you guys just did,” Sullivan concluded. “Do you have a response to any of this?” He said Biden, from day one, wanted to stop everything in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but he can’t do that because Congress has decided there should be two lease sales there. He can’t stop it.

Granholm had no real response. She couldn’t, since it was all true. Her response was basically, “It’s not my lane.” //

Sullivan then asked her another, surprising question: why — when so many of our allies want to buy LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) from us — would the climate czar be discouraging our Japanese allies from purchasing from us? //

These exchanges between members of Congress versus Biden team people show a big problem here. If it was just about doing what was best for the environment, they wouldn’t be reaching out to Venezuela; they’d want to produce the oil here because that would be better for the environment. So, it’s not just about the environment; it’s about cutting our production. That’s why they don’t want new leases and that’s why John Kerry would be sabotaging our LNG sales.

What began as a straightforward U.S. policy of arming the Ukrainians has expanded into a dangerous and rapid escalation. //

Now, instead of simply helping Ukraine stave off invasion and conquest, U.S. policy seems to have shifted into something else entirely: the permanent weakening of Russia at any cost. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said so explicitly after a clandestine visit to Ukraine with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last month. //

All of this amounts to a major policy shift on the part of the United States, writes Stevenson: “Whereas once the primary Western objective was to defend against the invasion, it has become the permanent strategic attrition of Russia.” This shift, he adds, has “coincided with the abandonment of diplomatic efforts.”

So what possible strategic gain does bleeding Russia in Ukraine hold for the United States? The risks of pursuing such a policy are immense, including the possibility of nuclear war between the world’s top two nuclear powers. If the Biden administration has some overarching goal in mind, it has not bothered to tell the American people. Instead, we are trundling along the road to war as if every decision we make is simply a reaction to Russian aggression.

But in fact, the war itself has shifted dramatically since late February, and conditions now are arguably more favorable to a cease-fire and a negotiated political settlement than they were even a month ago.

The decades-long honeymoon between Democrats and charter schools was too good to last.

Starting in the Reinventing Government era, Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama praised public charter schools for their innovations. Many “No Excuses” charters, in particular, succeed in teaching low-income African-American and Hispanic children when many traditional public schools fail, as decades of research demonstrate. //

But now, with Democrats going woke and a new president in town, the US Department of Education has declared war on charter schools, using obscure bureaucratic rulemaking to kill the federal charter-school program without having to explain why. //

The administration’s proposals clearly took months to prepare, and their publication not even 24 hours after the key funding vote cleared the Senate, and after important House and Senate votes gave charter supporters in both parties less clout to bargain for changes, was timed to get as little notice as possible.

The administration is also employing a truncated comment process. That may sound arcane, but here’s why it matters for democratic governance. In accord with the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act, to ensure transparency, proposed new regulations are published in the Federal Register, with lengthy public-comment periods before rules are finalized. This gives time for experts, interest groups and the public to offer input, making regulations both more legitimate and more realistic. //

For less-controversial proposals, a two-month public-comment process is the norm. Yet the Biden administration has allowed just one month for input on its proposed charter-school rules, from their publication March 11 to the closing of public comment April 13. For charter opponents, the fix is in, with devils in the details. //

As my own research shows, big charter networks such as the Knowledge Is Power Program schools have the lawyers and connections to survive more regulations, but regulations reduce the numbers of charters started by educators of color and disproportionately shutter schools that serve students of color. In practice, regulations purported to advance equity do exactly the opposite.

The sources of President Joe Biden’s large income after he left his post as vice president have never been detailed in his tax returns.

In the week prior to the presidential election, I wrote a piece that asked the question, “Where Is Hunter Biden’s Money?” It was an important question then, even more so now. Given the legacy media’s recent validation of Hunter’s laptop that discussed a slice of equity planned for the “Big Guy” in a deal that involved an entity controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), we should know if any money from it (or other foreign sources) ended up in Joe Biden’s pocket, but we don’t.

Recall that despite then-presidential candidate Biden having bragged that he had released his tax returns with what his team called “a historic level of transparency,” the truth is that he only released his individual returns. Those returns provided no detail regarding the source of most of his income, dollars that flowed to him and his wife Jill by way of S-corporations they set up shortly after his departure from the office of vice president. Those entities, CelticCapri Corp (his) and Giacoppa Corp (hers), contained more than $13 million of the $17 million the couple had reported in income after Biden left office, most of it in the first year (2017).

The same media that ignored Hunter’s laptop has shown a complete incuriosity about these entities, accepting the premise that Joe and Jill raked in $13 million from their book deal to generate their huge increase in income. We simply don’t know if that’s true, though. What we do know is that their book sales were dismal.

Seventeen months after The Post was the first to report on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, lefty media outlets are finally admitting it's real.

If there’s one thing Joe Biden doesn’t need, it’s more problems. With soaring inflation pushing household budgets into the red, crime rising everywhere, the southern border open to all comers and his agenda stalled in Congress, the 46th president is beyond beleaguered. //

The sudden about-face from media outlets that scandalously said The Post was spreading Russian disinformation in 2020 reflects the likelihood that the Justice Department is close to deciding whether to file criminal charges against Hunter. A federal grand jury in Delaware has been hearing from a flurry of witnesses, indicating the case is coming to a head.

If Hunter is indicted, it’s hard to see how his father’s presidency survives.

That’s because any indictment of the son, no matter how carefully drawn, will inevitably implicate the father. Assuming an indictment would follow the usual prosecutor pattern of connecting the dots to associates to show evidence of Hunter’s guilt, it’s possible the president could be referenced in charging papers.

That would directly contradict Joe Biden’s claims he had no involvement in his son’s business and never once discussed it with Hunter. //

The second escape hatch offers a far more likely scenario: Biden’s Justice Department, already up to its neck in politics, bends to pressure from Dems and refuses to indict Hunter to protect the president.

The Times, in its role as Deep State errand boy, seemed to be laying the groundwork recently when it cited an internal debate among prosecutors about whether civil charges would be more appropriate. The paper reported that Hunter borrowed about $1 million to cover back taxes in hopes he would not be criminally charged and said the payment might make it more difficult to gain conviction at trial.

Among the advantages for the family with a civil case is that Hunter could cut a deal to keep details of the investigation secret, and could keep his law license. The fallout on the president would be minimal.

That would leave the White House where it is now — still failing because of an incompetent president and his disastrous policies.

MULawPoll @MULawPoll
Since July 2021, Biden job approval among whites has gone from 50% to 40%. Among Blacks, it has gone from 88% to 56%. Among Hispanics, it’s gone from 56% to 51%. @pollsandvotes points to the decline among Blacks as particularly striking. #mulawpoll
10:24 AM · Mar 31, 2022

Abigail Shrier
@AbigailShrier
The Biden Administration has now determined that "gender affirming care" - including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries - is a right of trans youth and "appropriate" and "necessary" for their health.

The Biden Justice Department will come after states that disagree.

/1
9:15 PM · Mar 31, 2022

Abigail Shrier
@AbigailShrier
·
Mar 31, 2022
Replying to @AbigailShrier
The Administration now owns this absurd position at precisely the moment that many European countries (France, UK, Sweden and Finland) are backing away from these interventions, having examined a decade of evidence that failed to establish the purported benefits.

/2
Abigail Shrier
@AbigailShrier
Here's today's press release from the DOJ:

https://justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1489066/download //

Bernard Lane
@Bernard_Lane
·
Mar 31, 2022
The US administration has issued a series of statements endorsing medicalised gender change for minors, & claims that puberty blocker drugs & cross-sex hormones are "evidence-based".

In other countries, there's a shift to caution about these interventions. Who's got it right? 1/
Bernard Lane
@Bernard_Lane
Sweden: "The National Board of Health & Welfare in Sweden has urged 'restraint' in the use of hormonal drug treatments for medicalised gender change with minors, warning that the risks appear to outweigh the benefits."
genderclinicnews.substack.com
Sweden transitions to caution
10:53 PM · Mar 31, 2022

Bernard Lane
@Bernard_Lane
·
Mar 31, 2022
Replying to @Bernard_Lane
The UK: "The evidence for using puberty blocking drugs to treat young people struggling with their gender identity is 'very low", an official review has found ... existing studies of the drugs were small and 'subject to bias and confounding'.".
bbc.com
Evidence for puberty blockers use very low, says NICE
Bernard Lane
@Bernard_Lane
France: " 'Sterilisation risk' from gender medicine | The French National Academy of Medicine has sounded the alarm about an epidemic-like surge in young people seeking hormone drugs and surgery."
genderclinicnews.substack.com
'Sterilisation risk' from gender medicine
10:53 PM · Mar 31, 2022

Jennifer Jacobs
@JenniferJJacobs
Scoop: Biden admin is weighing a plan to release roughly A MILLION BARRELS OF OIL A DAY from U.S. reserves, for several months, to combat rising gasoline prices and supply shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sources tell @AlbertoNardelli @SalehaMohsin and me.
8:15 PM · Mar 30, 2022

For context, the US uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Releasing one million barrels a day would translate to a savings of about 18 cents a gallon off the national average if it translated directly to the price of gas. It won’t, though. Much of the oil held by the government is no longer useable domestically because of environmental regulations. Instead, any oil released would be dumped into countries like China and India. That could possibly make a small dent in the global price of oil, but when you consider that the world produces 76 million barrels of oil a day, that one million barrels suddenly becomes even more irrelevant.

In other words, Biden’s ploy is completely useless. It’s also dangerous in that the strategic reserves exist to supply years of oil to the United States in the event of some kind of isolating event. They also exist for military use if oil can’t be otherwise garnered while fighting a war. Again, we are talking preparation for apocalyptic-type events, not gas prices being too high because of the left’s self-defeating green agenda.

Further, the Defense Production Act is not at all designed to operate as a communism cheat code for presidents who are too stubborn to change their damaging energy policies. If it’s not profitable now for American companies to go gangbusters producing “green energy,” it won’t be just because Biden makes them. Such a move would also spur more inflation as the supply of the products those companies originally produced will be reduced in order to make things Americans don’t currently want to buy. //

So let’s drain our strategic oil reserves and go full USSR on American companies. What could possibly go wrong?

An urgent concern for the country is the continuing threat to our national security posed by a compromised President Biden. //

On Friday, The Daily Mail reported that emails recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop show he helped an infectious disease research company pursue projects in Ukraine. Those emails confirm portions of charges Russia made the previous day that an investment group run by the now-president’s son had funded a company conducting research at biological laboratories in Ukraine. //

Russia’s ability to point to the Hunter Biden emails as confirmation of its claims of a biolab in Ukraine raises a serious question with huge national security implications: How did Russia know the day before The Daily Mail’s exclusive that the Hunter Biden’s investment fund, Rosemont Seneca, had invested in Metabiota and been involved in Metabiota’s operations in Ukraine?

The timing of events last week suggests Russia has access to the same emails as The Daily Mail or that Vladimir Putin’s agents might well have obtained access to Hunter Biden’s first laptop—the one the president’s son believed Russians had stolen in 2018. In either case, the Biden family corruption documented on the laptops has gone from a potential national security risk to a real one—and in the midst of a war launched by Russia on a country bordering North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

Together, the Biden family, the intelligence agencies, and the corrupt media—social and legacy—hold full responsibility for the danger Americans now face. Biden knew full well how compromised his family was, and that there were two laptops, not one, with evidence of the corruption floating about. Yet Biden lied to the American public, with an assist from the former high-level members of the intelligence community who signed the letter suggesting the laptop scandal represented Russian disinformation.

Then there is the FBI which, by December 2019, had access to the abandoned laptop and thereby also knew that Hunter believed Russians had stolen his laptop in summer 2018. To date, there has been no indication that the FBI provided Joe Biden a defensive briefing on the national security risk posed by those laptops. Or if FBI agents did brief Biden on the risks in a timely manner, that means he nonetheless lied to the American public and ran for president knowing the propaganda at Putin’s fingertips.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seems largely unimpressed by President Biden’s foreign policy. //

EastMed was the planned 1,180-mile natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean Sea from Israel to southern Europe that the Biden administration killed in January. The pipeline, expected to cost $7 billion and to carry at least 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year, would ease Europe’s reliance on Russian oil. Sen. Menendez, who has long supported the project and co-sponsored the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act of 2019, wants the U.S. to rethink supporting the EastMed pipeline.

President Biden gave up on EastMed after approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would have increased Germany’s dependence on Russia. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany and other Europeans began to see the folly of relying on Russia.

One might have thought President Biden too would see that relying on one’s enemies is imprudent. One would have been wrong.

The Biden administration went hat in hand to Venezuela and is now trying to rush through a new bad deal with Iran, in order to increase supply and lower oil prices. Biden also reached out to the leaders of Saudi Arabia, a traditional ally whose leader Biden had previously spurned, and the United Arab Emirates, but neither would take his phone calls. Both are deeply worried about Iran and the administration’s eagerness for a rapprochement with it; or at least, about U.S. unwillingness to hold Iran to account.

Menendez favors relying on our friends rather than our enemies: “[W]ith the emergency of the moment, I’d rather not be looking at Venezuela, I’d rather not be looking at Iran, I’d rather not be looking at all these other countries when we have allies like Greece in the region, like Israel and others that can maybe be the source of that energy.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee
@SFRCdems
The democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people, like the resolve & courage of the people of Ukraine, are worth much more than a few barrels of oil. My statement on the Admin's reported talks with VZ breathing new life into Maduro's reign of torture:
foreign.senate.gov
Chairman Menendez Statement on Biden Administration Talks with the Maduro Regime | United States...
9:15 PM · Mar 7, 2022 //

And speaking of NATO and of EastMed, in killing the latter, Biden was reportedly motivated at least partly by a desire to please Turkey, which was trying to muscle its way into any pipeline project.

This is the same Turkey that bought a Russian S-400 air-defense system, although it’s part of NATO. The U.S. responded by barring Turkey from buying F-35 aircraft it wanted. (Per Reuters, the U.S. suggested Turkey solve the problem by shipping the S-400 system to Ukraine.)

It’s the same Turkey that illegally invaded and partitioned Cyprus in 1974, and now demands a cut of the pipeline planned from Israel to Cyprus, then Greece and beyond. As people said of France under De Gaulle, with friends like this, the U.S. sure doesn’t need enemies.