Tracking the Biden Presidency: 2021

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Biden’s First Day in Office: 19 Executive Actions — Contradicting His Recent Assertion That Only “a Dictator” Governs by Means of Executive Orders

During an October 15, 2020 town hall, moderator George Stephanopoulos had asked Biden, in response to Biden’s emphasis on the urgent need for tax hikes: “So, there’s not going to be any delay on the tax increases?” In a grammatically awkward and incoherent reply, Biden said that governance by means of executive orders is something that only “a dictator” would do: “No, well, I’ve got to get the votes. I got to get the votes. That’s why — you know, the one thing that I — I have this strange notion. We are a democracy. Some of my Republican friends and some of my Democratic friends even occasionally say, ‘Well, if you can’t get the votes by executive order, you’re going to do something.’ Things you can’t do by executive order unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy. We need consensus.”

Notwithstanding his recent assertion that executive orders are the tools of “a dictator,” President Biden, on his first official day in office — January 20, 2021 — signed 19 executive actions. These included 10 executive orders along with 4 memoranda, 2 requests, 1 proclamation, 1 instrument signing, and 1 additional action. Below is a list of these 19 items:

(1) Requiring Mask-Wearing for Federal Workers (executive order): “[O]n-duty or on-site Federal employees, on-site Federal contractors, and other individuals in Federal buildings and on Federal lands should all wear masks, maintain physical distance, and adhere to other public health measures, as provided in CDC guidelines.”  This executive order is supplemented by a so-called “100 Days Masking Challenge” asking people to wear face masks for 100 days to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.

• Biden Immediately Violates His Own Decree: On the evening of Biden’s first day in office — January 20, 2021 — Biden went maskless for a photo shoot with his family at the Lincoln Memorial, despite having issued a mask mandate for all people on federal property just a few hours earlier. On January 21, 2021, Biden again appeared on federal property without a mask, this time at the White House.

(2) Rejoin the WHO (ending a withdrawal process): Resume engagement with the World Health Organization, reversing the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the WHO.

(3) Create the Positions of COVID-19 Response Coordinator & Deputy Coordinator (executive order): These two individuals will “advise and assist the President and executive departments and agencies in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

(4) Moratorium on Evictions & Foreclosures (request): Extend the federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures which was enacted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

(5) Pause on Student Loan Payments (request): Extend the pause on student loans, asking the Department of Education to consider extending the pause on interest and principal payments for direct federal loans until at least September 30.

(6) Rejoin Paris Climate Agreement (signing of an instrument): Rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, an agreement from which President Trump had withdrawn the U.S.

(7) Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis (executive order):

• “It is… the policy of my Administration to listen to the science; to improve public health and protect our environment; to ensure access to clean air and water; to limit exposure to dangerous chemicals and pesticides; to hold polluters accountable, including those who disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities; to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; to bolster resilience to the impacts of climate change; to restore and expand our national treasures and monuments; and to prioritize both environmental justice and the creation of the well-paying union jobs necessary to deliver on these goals.”
• “[P]lace a temporary moratorium on all activities of the Federal Government relating to the implementation of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program … in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [… pending] a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program.”
• “There is hereby established an Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.”
• “The heads of all agencies shall immediately review all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions … adopted [during the Trump administration] that are or may be inconsistent with … the policy set forth in section 1 of this order.  For any such actions identified by the agencies, the heads of agencies shall … consider suspending, revising, or rescinding the agency actions … [in areas like] Reducing Methane Emissions in the Oil and Gas Sector,… Establishing Ambitious, Job-Creating Fuel Economy Standards,… [adopt] Job-Creating Appliance- and Building-Efficiency Standards,… [and] Protecting Our Air from Harmful Pollution.”  This could cause government agencies to reverse more than 100 environment-related actions by the Trump administration.
• “On March 29, 2019, [President Trump] granted to TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. a Presidential permit (the ‘Permit’) to construct, connect, operate, and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada (the ‘Keystone XL pipeline’) … The Permit is hereby revoked….  In 2015, following an exhaustive review, the Department of State and the President determined that approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the U.S. national interest. That analysis, in addition to concluding that the significance of the proposed pipeline for our energy security and economy is limited, stressed that the United States must prioritize the development of a clean energy economy, which will in turn create good jobs. The analysis further concluded that approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States in urging other countries to take ambitious climate action…. The Keystone XL pipeline disserves the U.S. national interest. The United States and the world face a climate crisis. That crisis must be met with action on a scale and at a speed commensurate with the need to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate trajectory.”

The Daily Signal explained that Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone pipeline was in fact likely to have a negative impact on the environment:

“[B]locking the pipeline achieves nothing more tangible than demonstrating [Biden’s] moral correctness to the green crowd, while very possibly causing greater harm to the environment. About 70% of petroleum products in the United States are already transported by pipelines, with truck and train shipping combining for a mere 7%. One would then naturally expect that most accidents occur with pipelines, but one would be wrong. Though responsible for a tiny fraction of petroleum product transportation, road and rail methods are where a majority of mishaps occur. From 2005 to 2009, roadway transmission averaged 19.95 incidents per billion ton-miles each year, while railway accidents occurred at the rate of 2.08 accidents per year. In contrast, liquid pipelines produced only 0.58 incidents annually. The environmentalist specter of the pipeline as a leaking, polluting menace just does not hold up to the barest scrutiny.

“It would be a different argument if Biden’s actions were going to actually halt the flow of oil from Alberta into the United States, but that clearly is not going to happen. Canada depends on the economic benefits of the oil sands, as its negative reaction to Biden’s decision demonstrated, so into tanker trucks and railway cars the crude will go. Biden has forced the oil out of the safer pipeline and onto the more hazardous roads and railways.

“But even if the oil meant for the pipeline was blocked completely, the impact on the global climate would be almost nonexistent, clocking in at a meager four ten-thousandths of a degree (Celsius) in temperature change over the next 79 years.

“With the attention this particular pipeline has received, it would be easy to be deceived into thinking that it was some monumental project never before undertaken in North America. This is hardly the case. There are nearly 200,000 miles of existing liquid petroleum pipelines in this country today, crisscrossing the nation so densely that a graphic representation looks like an interstate highway map of the United States. Knocking down 1,200 additional miles is hardly the great triumph Biden is beating his chest about.

“In fact, the language that Biden used in his executive order may offer the most proof that the entire gesture is nothing but political posturing. He wrote, ‘Approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States in urging other countries to take ambitious climate action.’  This revealed that a prime motivator in revoking the permit was to give the appearance that America is doing something, regardless of the actual impact.

“The 11,000 American workers who would have been employed through the Keystone XL pipeline are unlikely to offer Biden pats on the back for his preening for his environmental audience. About a thousand people were immediately laid off when the permit was pulled, 10,000 more jobs will now never exist, and $3.4 billion will never be added to the gross domestic product.”

(8) Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities (executive order):

• “[F]or too many, the American Dream remains out of reach. Entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions, have often denied that equal opportunity to individuals and communities.”
• The federal government will “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all…. The term ‘equity’ means the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
• “The Federal Government should … allocate resources to address the historic failure to invest sufficiently, justly, and equally in underserved communities, as well as individuals from those communities.”
• “Affirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.”
• “Many Federal datasets are not disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, or other key demographic variables.  This lack of data has cascading effects and impedes efforts to measure and advance equity.  A first step to promoting equity in Government action is to gather the data necessary to inform that effort…. There is hereby established an Interagency Working Group on Equitable Data (Data Working Group).”
• Former President Trump’s 1776 Commission — which President Biden described as “offensive,” “counter-factual,” and rooted in “ignorance and lies” — was revoked as a result of this executive order.
• The Trump administration’s “harmful ban on diversity and sensitivity training,” as Biden described it, was likewise rescinded as a result of the principles in this executive order.

(9) Count Non-Citizens for Census Apportionment in Congress (executive order): “We have long guaranteed all of the Nation’s inhabitants representation in the House of Representatives. This tradition … respects the dignity and humanity of every person. Accordingly, the executive branch has always determined the population of each State, for purposes of congressional representation, without regard to whether its residents are in lawful immigration status…. At no point since our Nation’s Founding has a person’s immigration status alone served as a basis for excluding that person from the total population count used in apportionment…. During the 2020 Census, the President [Trump] announced a policy that broke from this long tradition. It aimed to produce a different apportionment base — one that would, to the maximum extent feasible, exclude persons who are not in a lawful immigration status…. Both the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and section 2a(a) of title 2, United States Code, require that the apportionment base of each State, for the purpose of the reapportionment of Representatives following the decennial census, include all persons whose usual place of residence was in that State as of the designated census date, regardless of their immigration status…. Executive Order 13880 of July 11, 2019 (Collecting Information About Citizenship Status in Connection With the Decennial Census), and the Presidential Memorandum of July 21, 2020 (Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census), are hereby revoked.”

(10) Preserve & Fortify DACA (memorandum): “In 2012, during the Obama-Biden Administration, the Secretary of Homeland Security issued a memorandum outlining how, in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the Department of Homeland Security should enforce the Nation’s immigration laws against certain young people.  This memorandum, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) guidance, deferred the removal of certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, have obeyed the law, and stayed in school or enlisted in the military. DACA and associated regulations permit eligible individuals who pass a background check to request temporary relief from removal and to apply for temporary work permits.  DACA reflects a judgment that these immigrants should not be a priority for removal based on humanitarian concerns and other considerations, and that work authorization will enable them to support themselves and their families, and to contribute to our economy, while they remain…. The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall take all actions he deems appropriate, consistent with applicable law, to preserve and fortify DACA.”

(11) End the “Muslim Ban” of President Trump (executive order): Trump’s so-called “Muslim Ban” had barred entry into the United States from primarily Muslim and African countries that were hotbeds of terrorism and extremism, and instruct the State Department to restart visa processing for those affected. But President Biden’s executive order says the following:

“The United States was built on a foundation of religious freedom and tolerance, a principle enshrined in the United States Constitution.  Nevertheless, the previous administration enacted a number of Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States — first from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from largely African countries.  Those actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.

“Beyond contravening our values, these Executive Orders and Proclamations have undermined our national security.  They have jeopardized our global network of alliances and partnerships and are a moral blight that has dulled the power of our example the world over.  And they have separated loved ones, inflicting pain that will ripple for years to come. They are just plain wrong. […] Our national security will be enhanced by revoking the Executive Order and Proclamations.”

This executive order also seeks “to ensure that individuals whose immigrant visa applications were denied on the basis of the suspension and restriction on entry imposed by [the Trump policies] may have their applications reconsidered.”

(12) Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities (executive order): “We must … adhere to due process of law as we safeguard the dignity and well-being of all families and communities. My Administration will reset the policies and practices for enforcing civil immigration laws to align enforcement with these values and priorities. [Thus,] Executive Order 13768 of January 25, 2017 (Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States), is hereby revoked.”

• Executive Order 13768, signed by former President Trump, had prioritized aliens for removal who:
  • “Have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense”;
  • “Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency” (e.g., placing fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers on I-9 forms and falsely claiming to be legally authorized to work in the United States); or
  • “Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits” (e.g., welfare and food stamps)

(13) Extend the Deferred Enforced Departure Designation for Liberians in the U.S. (memorandum): “Since 1991, the United States has provided safe haven for Liberians who were forced to flee their country as a result of armed conflict and widespread civil strife, in part through the grant of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). The armed conflict ended in 2003, and TPS for affected Liberian nationals ended effective October 1, 2007.  President Bush then deferred the enforced departure of those Liberians originally granted TPS.  President Obama, in successive memoranda, extended that grant of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to March 31, 2018.  President Trump then determined that conditions in Liberia did not warrant a further extension of DED, but that the foreign policy interests of the United States warranted affording an orderly transition period for Liberian DED beneficiaries.  President Trump later extended that DED transition period through March 30, 2020…. I have determined that it is in the foreign policy interests of the United States to defer through June 30, 2022, the removal of any Liberian national, or person without nationality who last habitually resided in Liberia, who is present in the United States and who was under a grant of DED as of January 10, 2021.  I have also determined that any Liberian national, or person without nationality who last habitually resided in Liberia, who is present in the United States and who was under a grant of DED as of January 10, 2021, should have continued employment authorization through June 30, 2022.”

(14) Prohibit Workplace Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity (executive order): “Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes. People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.”

• Biden’s mention of the ability to “access healthcare” access was a veiled, deceptive reference to a Trump policy that simply sought to protect religiously affiliated employers, organizations, and medical groups from being forced to pay the enormous costs associated with transgender surgery – a procedure that is morally unacceptable to them.
• Biden’s reference to people being able to “secure a roof over their heads” was an allusion to a Trump policy that allowed federally funded homeless shelters to turn away transgender people. But as Tyler O’Neil explains in PJ Media: “[M]any homeless shelters and adoption agencies are run as religious charities. Mandating that homeless shelters must house biological men who claim to identify as female with vulnerable women is a recipe for disaster, and it violates the religious freedom of faith-based shelters that do not accept transgender ideology.” Requiring such entities to violate their moral and religious values would force many of them to shut down their operations rather than continue to violate their own dearly held principles, and this, in turn, would cause vital services for the needy to be in far shorter supply.

(15) Require Ethics Pledge from All Executive Branch Personnel (executive order): This executive order requires employees appointed to jobs in the Executive Branch to sign an ethics pledge with the goal of restoring and maintaining public trust in government. Signatories must agree to abide by such restrictions as a “Lobbyist Gift Ban,” a “Revolving Door Ban,” and a “Golden Parachute Ban.”

(16) End the Trump Administration’s Regulatory Approval Process (memorandum): This executive order directs the Office of Management & Budget to develop “recommendations for improving and modernizing regulatory review” and, by extension, terminating the Trump administration’s regulatory approval process. It also calls on government agencies to evaluate whether Trump-era regulations were in any way harmful to “public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.”

• This executive order seeks to undo the Trump administration’s unprecedented measures to cut the size and power of government. In January 2017, for example, Trump signed an executive order that called for the cutting of two regulations for every new regulation proposed.

(17) Freeze any New or Pending Regulations (memorandum): “This memorandum places a freeze on all new regulations that were either drawn up or put into motion by the Trump administration: “With respect to rules that have been sent to the OFR [Office of the Federal Register] but not published in the Federal Register, immediately withdraw them from the OFR for review and approval…. With respect to rules that have been published in the Federal Register, or rules that have been issued in any manner, but have not taken effect, consider postponing the rules’ effective dates for 60 days from the date of this memorandum,… for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy the rules may raise.”

(18) Revoke Certain Executive Orders Regarding Federal Regulation (executive order):

“It is the policy of my Administration to use available tools to confront the urgent challenges facing the Nation, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, economic recovery, racial justice, and climate change. To tackle these challenges effectively, executive departments and agencies … must be equipped with the flexibility to use robust regulatory action to address national priorities. This order revokes harmful policies and directives that threaten to frustrate the Federal Government’s ability to confront these problems, and empowers agencies to use appropriate regulatory tools to achieve these goals….

“Executive Order 13771 of January 30, 2017 (Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs), Executive Order 13777 of February 24, 2017 (Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda), Executive Order 13875 of June 14, 2019 (Evaluating and Improving the Utility of Federal Advisory Committees), Executive Order 13891 of October 9, 2019 (Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents), Executive Order 13892 of October 9, 2019 (Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication), and Executive Order 13893 of October 10, 2019 (Increasing Government Accountability for Administrative Actions by Reinvigorating Administrative PAYGO), are hereby revoked….

“In addition, any personnel positions, committees, task forces, or other entities established pursuant to the Executive Orders identified in section 2 of this order … shall be abolished.”

(19) Terminate Border Wall Construction (proclamation): In this proclamation, President Biden states that “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border [between the U.S. and Mexico] is not a serious policy solution,” but rather, “is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.” Adds Biden: “I have determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border in [President Trump’s] Proclamation 9844 of February 15, 2019 (Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States), was unwarranted.  It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall.”

• Biden Had Previously Supported a Border Barrier: Biden’s call for an end to the construction of a border wall was a stark contrast to the position he had articulated on this matter in November 2006, when, in a speech to a South Carolina rotary club, he had touted his own support for the Secure Fence Act – a bill that authorized $1 billion to fund the installation of 700 miles of double-layered fence along the border. Said Biden in 2006: “Folks, I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats – and some of you won’t like it – I voted for 700 miles of fence…. And the reason why … I believe the fence is needed does not have anything to do with immigration as much as drugs. And let me tell you something folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin and it’s all coming up through corrupt Mexico.”

Biden Rescinds Trump Order Banning Chinese Involvement in the U.S. Power Grid

The aforementioned Biden executive order that revoked the international permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, also placed a 90-day suspension on former President Trump’s Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System). The Trump order “prohibited any acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation of bulk power system electric equipment by any person or with respect to any property to which a foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that poses an undue risk to the bulk power system, the security or resiliency of U.S. critical infrastructure or the U.S. economy, or U.S. national security or the security and safety of U.S. persons.”

The Biden executive order entrusts Biden’s Secretary of Energy and his Director of the Office of Management and Budget to jointly decide upon the ultimate fate of Trump’s executive order.

In an analysis of the Biden policy, the Institute for Energy Research says:

“China has become the world’s leading supplier of transformers, which presents significant challenges to U.S. grid security. In his May 1, 2020 order, President Trump stated that the United States should no longer purchase transformers and other electric grid equipment manufactured in China. He signaled that it is important to end relationships that U.S. utilities have directly with Chinese businesses and multi-national companies manufacturing transformers in China, which are later plugged into the electric grid in the United States. Chinese power equipment can be embedded with software and hardware that can be remotely accessed, enhancing China’s ability to commit cyberattacks. Because power transformers are huge and weigh between 100 and 400 tons, it is not easy to identify embedded software or hardware. There is also a potential hardware risk since counterfeit items can be easily put into large power transformers.”

Biden Administration Announces It Will Permanently Codify Roe v. Wade Abortion Rights

On January 22, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that it would seek to codify the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision as permanent law, a move that would allow for legal abortions even if the Court were to someday reverse its ’73 ruling. In a press statement emphasizing its commitment to “codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe,” the Administration said: “In the past four years, reproductive health, including the right to choose, has been under relentless and extreme attack. We are deeply committed to making sure everyone has access to care—including reproductive health care—regardless of income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status.”

Biden Sends Immigration/Amnesty Bill to Congress on His First Day in Office

On January 20, 2021 — his first day in office as U.S. President — Joe Biden sent to Congress a comprehensive immigration bill — the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 –proposing major overhauls to America’s immigration system. The changes included proposals to:

• create a path to citizenship for the many millions of illegal aliens residing in the United States, allowing them to first apply for temporary legal status, and to then apply for green cards after five years if they pass criminal and national-security background checks and pay their taxes
• allow “Dreamers,” Temporary Protected Status holders, and immigrant farmworkers who are physically present in the United States as of January 1, 2021, to be eligible for green cards immediately, and to apply for citizenship after three years if they pass additional background checks and demonstrate knowledge of English and U.S. civics
• empower the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to waive the presence requirement for anyone who was deported during the Trump administration, if they had been physically present in the U.S. for at least three years prior to removal
• reduce the length of time that family members of legal resident aliens must wait outside the U.S. for green cards.
• eliminate the per-country cap on the issuance of visas and employment-based green cards
• increase access to green cards for workers in lower-wage sectors
• change the word “alien” to “noncitizen” in the immigration laws.

Biden’s Second Day in Office: 11 Executive Actions Related to Coronavirus, Including One That Depicts America As a Racist Nation

On his second day in office, President Biden issued 11 executive actions related to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. This included 8 executive orders, 2 directives, and 1 memorandum. These items dealt with such matters as preventing shortages of supplies necessary for fighting COVID; making the National Guard available to assist states’ efforts to battle the pandemic; expanding testing, clinical care, and vaccinations related to COVID; improving COVID-related data collection; providing guidance on safely reopening schools; providing guidance for keeping workers safe from COVID; requiring face masks at airports and for other modes of transportation; and supporting international efforts to fight the pandemic.

Particularly noteworthy was an order calling for the creation of a Covid-19 Health Equity Task Force (HETF) to “ensure an equitable pandemic response.” This executive order was founded on the premises that: “people of color experience systemic and structural racism in many facets of our society and are more likely to become sick and die from COVID-19”; “other communities … are also disproportionately affected by COVID-19, including sexual and gender minority groups, those living with disabilities, and those living at the margins of our economy”; and “COVID-19’s disparate impact on communities of color and other underserved populations remains unrelenting.”

To address these concerns, the HETF would be tasked with making: (a) “recommendations for how agencies and State, local, Tribal, and territorial officials can best allocate COVID-19 resources, in light of disproportionately high rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality in certain communities and disparities in COVID-19 outcomes by race, ethnicity, and other factors”; (b) “recommendations for agencies with responsibility for disbursing COVID-19 relief funding regarding how to disburse funds in a manner that advances equity”; and (c) “recommendations for agencies regarding effective, culturally aligned communication, messaging, and outreach to communities of color and other underserved populations.”

All Deportations of Illegal Aliens Are Stopped, Regardless of Their Criminal Record

In accordance with President Biden’s stated policy on immigration — which suspended all land and air deportations of illegal aliens, regardless of their criminal record, for at least 100 days — an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo dated January 21, 2021, instructed ICE agents to “stop all removals.” The memo also informed ICE agents that in “all cases” — even where the detainees had no one in the U.S. who could serve as their sponsor — the agents should assume that there would be “no significant likelihood of removal in [the] foreseeable future” and thus should “[r]elease them all, immediately.” At the time the memo was written, ICE had 14,195 detainees in its custody at approximately 138 detention facilities across the United States. More than 71 percent of those detainees were convicted criminals or had criminal charges pending against them.

Regarding a Texas federal judge’s January 26 ruling against the Biden administration’s 100-day moratorium on deportations, former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan said on February 10, 2021, that the administration was “circumventing the judge’s order” by instructing ICE officers to stop arresting illegals, and by releasing those illegals into local communities. “What kind of message does that send to the rest of the world?” Homan asked. “If you come to the country illegally, if you can get past the border patrol, don’t commit an aggravated felony, and you’re home free. You get to stay because ICE is not looking for you. It’s no longer illegal to be here illegally.” Describing the Biden policy as “the most anti-law enforcement, pro-criminal policy that I could ever imagine in my worst nightmare,” Homan said it “is sending a message to the rest of the world” and, as a result, “the border is surging.” “Be clear what’s happening here,” Homan added. “President Biden has declared the entire country a sanctuary jurisdiction, which means more tragedy is going to come. Mark my words. People will die. People will be raped. People will be victimized by criminals that shouldn’t even be here. This is — it’s coming.”

Biden Suddenly Admits That He Cannot Change the Trajectory of the Coronavirus Pandemic

On October 30, 2020 — a few days before Election Day — Biden had tweeted: “I’m not going to shut down the country. I’m not going to shut down the economy. I’m going to shut down the virus.” On his third day in office as President, he stated: “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Biden’s Third Day in Office: 2 More Executive Actions

On January 22, 2021, President Biden signed two more executive orders.

• Increased Funding for Food Stamps: This order: (a) asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — i.e., food stamps — by 15%; (b) called for approximately a 15% increase in the Pandemic-EBT, an electronic debit card program for students who qualified for free or reduced-price meals at school; and (c) called for a reassessment of the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for quantifying SNAP benefits, on grounds that the plan was “out of date with the economic realities most struggling households face when trying to buy and prepare healthy food.”
• Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce: This order called for increased unionization and collecting bargaining power for federal workers, and directed the Office of Personnel Management to develop recommendations for increasing the minimum wage for federal employees to $15 per hour.

(1) Addressing the Causes of Migration & Processing Asylum Seekers at the U.S. Border (executive order): Some key excerpts:

• “We cannot solve the humanitarian crisis at our border without addressing the violence, instability, and lack of opportunity that compel so many people to flee their homes.  Nor is the United States safer when resources that should be invested in policies targeting actual threats, such as drug cartels and human traffickers, are squandered on efforts to stymie legitimate asylum seekers.” (NOTE: For details about America’s asylum laws during the Trump administration, click here.)
• “[T]he United States will enhance lawful pathways for migration to this country and will restore and strengthen our own asylum system, which has been badly damaged by policies enacted over the last 4 years that contravened our values and caused needless human suffering.” (NOTE: For details about America’s asylum laws during the Trump administration, click here.)
• “The Root Causes Strategy shall … include proposals to … coordinate place-based efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (the ‘Northern Triangle’) to address the root causes of migration, including by:  (A) combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law; (B) promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and a free press; (C) countering and preventing violence, extortion, and other crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs, trafficking networks, and other organized criminal organizations; (D) combating sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence; and (E) addressing economic insecurity and inequality.”
• “The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly review mechanisms for better identifying and processing individuals from the Northern Triangle who are eligible for refugee resettlement to the United States.”
• The Secretary of Homeland Security shall “consider taking all appropriate actions to reverse the 2017 decision rescinding the Central American Minors (CAM) parole policy and terminating the CAM Parole Program.” (NOTE: The CAM Program was an immigration policy established by the Obama administration in November 2014, allowing lawfully present parents in the United States the opportunity to request a refugee or parole status for their children residing in the Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In January 2017, President Trump issued his Executive Order 13769, which placed a 120-day moratorium on the entry of refugees, including CAM Program participants. The Trump administration formally terminated the parole portion of the CAM Program in August 2017, and new applications for the refugee portion of the program were no longer accepted as of November 9, 2017.)
• The Secretary of Homeland Security shall “consider promoting family unity by exercising the Secretary’s discretionary parole authority to permit certain nationals of the Northern Triangle who are the beneficiaries of approved family-sponsored immigrant visa petitions to join their family members in the United States, on a case-by-case basis.”
• “The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly evaluate and implement measures to enhance access for individuals from the Northern Triangle to visa programs.”
• “The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Director of CDC, shall promptly begin taking steps to reinstate the safe and orderly reception and processing of arriving asylum seekers.”
• “The Secretary of HHS and the Director of CDC, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall promptly review and determine whether termination, rescission, or modification of the following actions is necessary and appropriate:  ‘Order Suspending the Right To Introduce Certain Persons From Countries Where a Quarantinable Communicable Disease Exists‘ [and] Foreign Quarantine: Suspension of the Right to Introduce and Prohibition of Introduction of Persons into United States from Designated Foreign Countries or Places for Public Health Purposes‘.”
• “The Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly review and determine whether to terminate or modify the program known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), including by considering whether to rescind the Memorandum of the Secretary of Homeland Security titled ‘Policy Guidance for Implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols’ (January 25, 2019), and any implementing guidance.  In coordination with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Director of CDC, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly consider a phased strategy for the safe and orderly entry into the United States, consistent with public health and safety and capacity constraints, of those individuals who have been subjected to MPP for further processing of their asylum claims.” (NOTE: The Center for Immigration Studies explains that under MPP, which was implemented by the Trump administration in January 2019 and was known colloquially as the “Remain in Mexico” policy: “DHS could return certain foreign individuals who were caught by [Customs and Border Patrol] entering illegally or without proper documentation back to Mexico to await their removal hearings, if they were not Mexican nationals. The Mexican government agreed to provide those foreign nationals with protection for the duration of their stays.”)
• “The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly review and determine whether to rescind the interim final rule titled ‘Aliens Subject to a Bar on Entry Under Certain Presidential Proclamations; Procedures for Protection Claims,’ 83 Fed. Reg. 55,934 (November 9, 2018), and the final rule titled ‘Asylum Eligibility and Procedural Modifications,’ 85 Fed. Reg. 82,260 (December 17, 2020), as well as any agency memoranda or guidance that were issued in reliance on those rules.”
• “The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall promptly review and determine whether to rescind the interim final rule titled ‘Implementing Bilateral and Multilateral Asylum Cooperative Agreements Under the Immigration and Nationality Act,’ 84 Fed. Reg. 63,994 (November 19, 2019).”
• “[T]he Secretary of State shall promptly consider whether to notify the governments of the Northern Triangle that, as efforts to establish a cooperative, mutually respectful approach to managing migration across the region begin, the United States intends to suspend and terminate the following agreements: (1) ‘Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Guatemala on Cooperation Regarding the Examination of Protection Claims,’ 84 Fed. Reg. 64,095 (July 26, 2019); (2) ‘Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of El Salvador for Cooperation in the Examination of Protection Claims,’ 85 Fed. Reg. 83,597 (September 20, 2019); (3) ‘Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Honduras for Cooperation in the Examination of Protection Claims,’ 85 Fed. Reg. 25,462 (September 25, 2019).”
• “The following Presidential documents are revoked: (1) Executive Order 13767 of January 25, 2017 (Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements); (2) Proclamation 9880 of May 8, 2019 (Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States); (3) Presidential Memorandum of April 29, 2019 (Additional Measures to Enhance Border Security and Restore Integrity to Our Immigration System); (4) Presidential Memorandum of April 6, 2018 (Ending ‘Catch and Release’ at the Border of the United States and Directing Other Enhancements to Immigration Enforcement); (5) Presidential Memorandum of April 4, 2018 (Securing the Southern Border of the United States).”
• “The Secretary of Homeland Security, with support from the United States Digital Service within the Office of Management and Budget, shall promptly begin a review of procedures for individuals placed in expedited removal proceedings at the United States border.”
• “The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, within 180 days of the date of this order, conduct a comprehensive examination of current rules, regulations, precedential decisions, and internal guidelines governing the adjudication of asylum claims and determinations of refugee status to evaluate whether the United States provides protection for those fleeing domestic or gang violence in a manner consistent with international standards.”
• “The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, within 270 days of the date of this order, promulgate joint regulations … addressing the circumstances in which a person should be considered a member of a ‘particular social group’ … relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.”

(2) Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans (executive order): Some key excerpts:

• “[T]he DPC [Domestic Policy Council] shall convene a Task Force on New Americans, which shall include members of agencies that implement policies that impact immigrant communities.”
• “The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall … identify barriers that impede access to immigration benefits and fair, efficient adjudications of these benefits and make recommendations on how to remove these barriers, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law; and identify any agency actions that fail to promote access to the legal immigration system — such as the final rule entitled, “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements,” 85 Fed. Reg. 46788 (Aug. 3, 2020) … — and recommend steps …. to revise or rescind those agency actions.”
• “The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the heads of other relevant agencies, as appropriate, shall review all agency actions related to implementation of the public charge ground of inadmissibility … and the related ground of deportability.”
• “The Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, within 60 days of the date of this order, develop a plan describing any agency actions, in furtherance of the policy set forth in section 1 of this order, that they will take to: (i) eliminate barriers in and otherwise improve the existing naturalization process, including by conducting a comprehensive review of that process with particular emphasis on the N-400 application, fingerprinting, background and security checks, interviews, civics and English language tests, and the oath of allegiance; (ii) substantially reduce current naturalization processing times; (iii) make the naturalization process more accessible to all eligible individuals, including through a potential reduction of the naturalization fee and restoration of the fee waiver process; […] (v) review policies and practices regarding denaturalization and passport revocation to ensure that these authorities are not used excessively or inappropriately.”

(3) Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families (executive order): Key excerpts:

• “My Administration condemns the human tragedy that occurred when our immigration laws were used to intentionally separate children from their parents or legal guardians (families), including through the use of the Zero-Tolerance Policy. My Administration will protect family unity and ensure that children entering the United States are not separated from their families, except in the most extreme circumstances where a separation is clearly necessary for the safety and well-being of the child or is required by law.”
• “There is hereby established an Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families […] There is hereby established an Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families … [which] shall, consistent with applicable law, perform the following functions: (a) Identifying all children who were separated from their families at the United States-Mexico border between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021, in connection with the operation of the Zero-Tolerance Policy; [and] (b) To the greatest extent possible, facilitating and enabling the reunification of each of the identified children with their families.”

(4) Maximizing Assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (memorandum): Key excerpt:

• “[I]t is the policy of my Administration to combat and respond to COVID-19 with the full capacity and capability of the Federal Government to protect and support our families, schools, and businesses, and to assist State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments to do the same, including through emergency and disaster assistance available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).”

Biden Ends Support for Saudi-Led Military Operations in Yemen, and Removes “Foreign Terrorist Organization” Designation from Iranian-Backed Houthi Rebels

In its final days, the Trump administration formally designated the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO). As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it: “The Houthi forces are terrorists, underwritten by the theocracy, the kleptocracy that runs the Islamic Republic of Iran. That regime is funding a missile program, funding capabilities inside of Yemen that put Europe at risk, put the Middle East at risk.” A January 2021 United Nations report concurred that a “growing body” of evidence showed that Iran was sending weapons and weapon components — including anti-tank guided missiles, sniper rifles, and RPB launchers — to the Houthis. Those Iranian arms shipments were intended to affect a protracted conflict that had begun in 2014 when the Houthis seized territory in Yemen, including the capital city of Sana’a, and thereby prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene militarily in 2015. By January 2021, Yemen had suffered approximately 112,000 deaths and the collapse of its infrastructure.

On February 4, 2021, President Biden announced that the U.S. would end its support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen against the Houthi rebels. “This war has to end, and to underscore our commitment we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales,” he said.

The next day — February 5, 2021 — the Biden administration, further signaling a desire to warm U.S. relations with Iran, announced that it was removing FTO designation from the Houthis.

Releasing Illegal Aliens without Testing Them for COVID

On February 8, 2021, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported:

“Last month, the CDC issued the following statement: ‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expanding the requirement for a negative COVID-19 test to all air passengers entering the United States. Testing before and after travel is a critical layer to slow the introduction and spread of COVID-19. This strategy is consistent with the current phase of the pandemic and more efficiently protects the health of Americans.”

“In layman’s terms, every human being who enters this country by air must first present a negative test for the coronavirus. That includes American citizens, no exceptions. Corona infection, in fact, is the one universal reality of the human condition. We are all potential incubators of this deadly virus.

“But it doesn’t end there. Travelers who test negative for COVID must still wear masks at all times, including while on board the airplane or walking through the airport. If you don’t have a mask on, you had better be actively chewing. Otherwise, prepare for a steep fine and the possibility of never flying again. […]

[However,] Tucker Carlson Tonight has learned that the Biden administration is releasing thousands of foreign nationals living here illegally into American neighborhoods without bothering to test them for the coronavirus. People from countries with high infection rates, living in crowded conditions, have been sent forth into the American population like COVID isn’t real. That’s happening. It is the official policy of the U.S. government. […]

“‘We do not test the illegal aliens we release,’ Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Tucker Carlson Tonight. “So, we’re releasing people without knowing, which obviously puts the public at risk.’

“Yuma County, Ariz. Sheriff Leon Wilmot wrote a letter last week to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., in which he called the Biden administration’s new policy ‘a particularly dangerous approach.’

“‘[T]here is currently no protocol for testing any of these people for the Covid-19 [sic] virus,’ Wilmot wrote. ‘Nor is there any support being offered by the federal government to house, feed, medically treat or transport these immigrants.’”

On March 2, 2021, NBC News reported the following story of COVID-positive migrants in Brownsville, Texas, who were being released into the American interior:

“Miriam Izaguirre, a 35-year-old asylum-seeker from Honduras, crossed the Rio Grande at dawn Monday with her young son and turned herself in to the authorities. A few hours later she was released, and the first thing she did was take a rapid test for Covid-19 at the Brownsville bus station. They told her her test came out positive. ‘Right now we were tested for Covid and they separated about eight of us because we were positive,’ she told Noticias Telemundo Investiga. ‘We are waiting right now.’ She was waiting to catch a bus to Houston. Other migrant families who also said they had tested positive were waiting to go to other destinations: North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey.

“The city of Brownsville administers these rapid tests at the bus station, after migrant families are released by the Border Patrol. A spokesperson for Brownsville confirmed that, since they began doing these tests Jan. 25, 108 migrants have tested positive for Covid-19, which is 6.3 percent of those who took the test.”

Criminal Illegal Aliens Will No Longer Be Prioritized for Deportation

On February 8, 2021, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “There’s new reporting that ICE is gonna get some new guidance to no longer focus on deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of DUIs, simple assaults, solicitation, drug-based crimes, among other things. And, I’m curious how that is in the interest of public safety?”

Psaki replied: “Well, uh, first, it’s guidelines that would be put out by the Department of Homeland Security…. But, uh, the priority for the enforcement of immigration laws will be on those who are posing a national security threat, of course, a public safety threat, and on recent arrivals. Nobody is saying that DUI’s or assault are acceptable behavior, and those arrested for such activities should be tried and sentenced as appropriate by local law enforcement. But we’re talking about the prioritization of who is going to be deported from the country.”

Biden Puts U.S. Back on UN Human Rights Council

On February 8, 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would soon be rejoining the U.N. Human Rights Council. Former President Trump had withdrawn the U.S. from the Council in 2018 because of: (a) its disproportionately harsh treatment of Israel; (b) the fact that a number of its members were authoritarian countries infamous for their human-rights abuses (e.g., China, Cuba, Eritrea, Russia and Venezuela); and (c) the Council’s failure to implement an extensive list of reforms demanded by Nikki Haley, America’s then-Ambassador to the United Nations.

A senior U.S. official said that the Biden administration saw the Council as a potentially “important forum for those fighting tyranny and injustice around the world.”

Biden Is Open to Changing Trump Position on Recognizing the Golan Heights As Part of Israel

During a CNN interview on February 8, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken chose not to endorse President Trump’s 2019 decision to recognize Israel’s claims of sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the territory Israel had seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967. Asserting that Israel’s control of the territory was “of real importance, to [its] security,” Blinken said: “Legal questions are something else….. And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we would look at.”

Democrats’ Plan to Lift Work Requirement for Welfare Recipients

On February 8, 2021, Politico.com reported:

“Democrats’ bid to expand a popular tax break for children is stirring up ghosts of Clinton-era battles over welfare, which threatens to take the bipartisan sheen off their effort. Buried in their proposal is a plan to scrap decades-old rules pegging whether someone can take the credit, as well as how much they can receive, to how much they earn. Democrats want to expand the credit to as much as $3,600 per child, from the current $2,000, and allow the needy to claim the entire break regardless of how much they make. It’s designed to be a guaranteed minimum income for people with kids, and it’s projected to slash childhood poverty.

“But critics say it amounts to no-strings-attached welfare. And they say that would be tantamount to undoing a landmark welfare agreement from the Clinton administration when lawmakers agreed to require people to work in order to receive federal assistance.”

Biden Drops Plan to Monitor Chinese Communist Influence in American Schools

On February 9, 2021, it was reported that President Biden had canceled a Trump administration plan to track the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the America’s education system. “Around 500 K-12 schools and 65 colleges in the U.S. have partnerships with the Confucius Institute U.S. Center, a U.S.-based affiliate of the Beijing-based Confucius Institute Headquarters,” according to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The institute, also known as Hanban, is affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Education. Many of Hanban’s directors are members of the Chinese Communist Party or have close ties to the organization.”

At the end of 2020, the Trump administration had submitted a rule titled: “Establishing Requirement for Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certified Schools to Disclose Agreements with Confucius Institutes and Classrooms.” “The rule would require colleges and K-12 schools that are certified to have foreign exchange programs to disclose any contracts, partnerships or financial transactions from Confucius Institutes or Classrooms,” Axios reported in January 2021. A report from the Senate’s Permanent Select Committee on Investigations noted that China’s influence in U.S. classrooms through Confucius Institutes was alarming because those Institutes “are funded and staffed by the Chinese Ministry of Education, and in numerous cases they have censored curricula and events.” But just a few days into his presidency, Biden withdrew the proposed rule.

Biden Supports Athletes Who Protest the National Anthem at Sporting Events

On February 10, 2021, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters that President Biden supported players who chose to protest the national anthem at sporting events, characterizing Biden’s position as follows: “[P]art of the pride in our country means recognizing moments where we as a country haven’t lived up to our highest ideals. It means respecting the right of people granted to them in the constitution to peacefully protest. That’s why he ran for president in the first place and that’s what he’s focused on doing every day.”

Biden State Dept. Schedules Event on “Racism As a National Security Threat”

On February 10, 2021, the Biden State Department scheduled an online video conference to discuss ”Racism Being a Threat to National Security and Democracy” with representatives of several leftist organizations. Among the scheduled speakers were Tom Perriello, executive director for George Soros‘ Open Society Foundations; Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center; and attorney Diala Shamas of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Biden’s Executive Order Regarding Myanmar

On February 11, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order on “Blocking Property with Respect to the Situation in Burma.” Key excerpt:

• “I, Joseph R. Biden … find that the situation in, and in relation to, Burma, and in particular the February 1, 2021, coup, in which the military overthrew the democratically elected civilian government of Burma and unjustly arrested and detained government leaders, politicians, human rights defenders, journalists, and religious leaders, thereby rejecting the will of the people of Burma as expressed in elections held in November 2020 and undermining the country’s democratic transition and rule of law, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

To address the situation, Biden imposed new sanctions on those responsible for the coup in Myanmar — specifically, on 10 influential Burmese individuals and 3 businesses.

Biden Is First U.S. President in 40 Years to Not Contact Israeli Leaders Early in His Term

On February 12, 2021, the Washington Free Beacon reported: “President Joe Biden is the first American leader in 40 years not to contact Israel’s leaders as one of his first actions in the White House, setting up what could be four years of chilly relations between America and its top Middle East ally. Biden has already phoned multiple world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping, but during his 23 days in office has yet to speak with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—making Biden the first president in modern history to punt on bolstering U.S.-Israel relations during his initial days in office. Every president going back to at least Ronald Reagan in 1981 made contact with their Israeli counterpart within a week of assuming office.”

Biden Begins Dismantling Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” Asylum Policy

On February 12, 2021, the Biden administration announced that asylum seekers who, under the Trump administration’s 2019 “Remain in Mexico” program, had been forced to wait in Mexico for their cases to be resolved in the United States, would begin being admitted into the U.S. within the next few days. According to Newsmax.com, the Trump program “saw tens of thousands [at least 70,000] of non-Mexican asylum seekers — mostly from Central America — sent back over the border pending the outcome of their asylum applications.”

Biden Urges Congress to Restrict Gun Ownership & to Make Gun Manufacturers Vulnerable to Lawsuits

On February 14, 2021 — the third anniversary of a mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school — Biden exhorted Congress to strengthen existing laws restricting gun ownership. Said Biden: “This Administration will not wait for the next mass shooting to heed that call. We will take action to end our epidemic of gun violence and make our schools and communities safer. Today, I am calling on Congress to enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.”

Biden’s Executive Order on Faith-Based Partnerships

On February 14, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order on the Establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Some key excerpts:

• “Faith-based and other community-serving organizations are vital to our Nation’s ability to address the needs of, and lift up, low-income and other underserved persons and communities, notably including persons of color…. It is important that the Federal Government strengthen the ability of such organizations and other nonprofit providers in our communities to deliver services effectively in partnership with Federal, State, and local governments and with other private organizations.”

Biden Says That Former Military & Police Are Fueling the “Growth of White Supremacy” Organizations

During a February 16, 2021 town hall televised by CNN, Biden said:

“I got involved in politics, to begin with, because of civil rights and opposition to white supremacist, the Ku Klux Klan and the most dangerous people in America continue to exist. That is the greatest threat to [sic] terror in America, domestic terror. And so, I would make sure that my Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division is focused heavily on those very folks. And I would make sure we in fact focus on how to deal with the rise of white supremacy. And you see what’s happening, the studies that are beginning to be done, maybe at your university as well, about the impact of former military, former police officers, on the growth of white supremacy in some of these groups.”

Biden Falsely Says That There Were No COVID Vaccines Available When He First Took Office

During a CNN town hall on February 16, 2021, Biden — who received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine on December 21, 2020, and the second dose on January 11, 2021 — initially said that there were “only 50 million doses” of vaccine available when he first assumed office. But he also said, during the same event, that “we got into office and found out…there was nothing in the refrigerator, figuratively and literally speaking.” “It’s one thing to have the vaccine, which we didn’t have when we came into office,” said Biden.

Biden’s Executive Order Revoking a Trump Executive Order That Expanded Apprenticeships

On February 17, 2021, Biden issued an executive order revoking former President Trump’s Executive Order 13801 of June 15, 2017 (Expanding Apprenticeships in America).

Congressional Democrats Introduce Immigration Bill Backed by Biden

On February 18, 2021, Democrats Robert Menendez and Linda Sanchez introduced — in the Senate and House, respectively — the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 , a sweeping immigration-reform bill supported by President Biden. The legislation sought to:

• establish an 8-year path to citizenship for illegal aliens in the United States
• provide an expedited path to citizenship for farm workers and young illegals who had arrived in the U.S. as minors protected by DACA
• replace the word “alien” with “non-citizen” in immigration law documents
• raise the per-country caps on family and employment-based legal immigration numbers
• repeal the penalty that barred illegals from returning to the U.S. for between 3 and 10 years

Biden Takes Major Steps to Re-Enter Iran Nuclear Deal

On February 18, 2021, the Biden administration announced that it would be willing to hold talks with Iran vis-a-vis America’s re-engagement in the 2015 nuclear deal along with the five other participants: France, the UK, China, Russia, and Germany. “The United States would accept an invitation from the European Union High Representative to attend a meeting of the P5+1 and Iran to discuss a diplomatic way forward on Iran’s nuclear program,” said State Department spokesman Ned price, referring to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the U.S., France, the UK, China, and Russia) and Germany.

Moreover, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration would rescind the Trump administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions against Iran. In response to this announcement, Iran’s leading diplomat, Javad Zarif, tweeted that his country would not negotiate until the U.S. “unconditionally & effectively lift[ed] all sanctions imposed, re-imposed or re-labeled by Trump.”

Biden Announces the End of “America First” Policies in G-7 Speech

On February 19, 2021, the New York Post reported:

“President Biden made his international debut Friday with a speech at the G-7 summit declaring the end of former President Donald Trump’s “America first” era. Administration officials previewed Biden’s virtual speech, which was closed to the press, saying he would touch on the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis, and unveil his plans to dramatically reshape the US foreign policy agenda. ‘Now he will get the opportunity as president of the United States early in his term to declare that America is back and the trans-Atlantic alliance is back,’ one official said [on February 18]. ‘He will look forward to driving home the core proposition that the trans-Atlantic alliance is a cornerstone for American engagement in the world in the 21st century, just as it was in the 20th.’

“Biden has swiftly dismantled Trump’s foreign policy agenda, which saw the US withdraw from the World Health Organization, the Paris Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump believed were against the nation’s interests.”

Biden Administration Works with U.N. to Bring Back Previously Deported Asylum-Seekers

In response to the Biden administration’s termination of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (i.e., the “Remain in Mexico” policy), the United Nations sought to help the administration: (a) track down the many asylum-seeking migrants who, under the Trump policy, had been removed to Mexico or Central America to await asylum processing, and (b) bring them back to the United States so they could await their asylum processing there. On February 19, 2021, Reuters reported that “hundreds of migrants signed up [that day] within hours of the launch of a U.N. website that allows migrants with active [asylum] cases to register remotely to be processed at the U.S.-Mexico border.” “The United States and the United Nations are evaluating the locations of migrants and costs associated with possible flights and land transportation within Mexico,” added Reuters.

Biden Cancels Program Aimed at Deporting Convicted Illegal-Alien Sex Offenders

In February 2021, the Biden administration cancelled Operation Talon, a Trump administration program designed to deport convicted sex offenders residing illegally in the United States. Objecting to Biden’s decision, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson joined a coalition of 18 state attorneys general in composing a letter that exhorted the president — as well as DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson — to reverse the cancellation. Said the letter:

“The United States’ population of illegal immigrants includes disturbingly large numbers of criminals with prior convictions for sexual crimes. According to data collected by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, during the period from October 2014 to May 2018 ICE arrested 19,572 illegal aliens with criminal convictions for whom the most serious prior conviction was a conviction for a sex-related offense.

“Meanwhile, an increasing number of illegal aliens are entering the United States after having been previously convicted of sexual offenses. The cancellation of [Operation Talon] effectively broadcasts to the world that the United States is now a sanctuary jurisdiction for sexual predators. This message creates a perverse incentive for foreign sexual predators to seek to enter the United States illegally and assault more victims, both in the process of unlawful migration and after they arrive. It will also broadcast the message to other criminal aliens who have committed other offenses that any kind of robust enforcement against them is unlikely…. If the United States will not remove even convicted sex offenders, whom will it remove?”

“We’re working hard to fight human trafficking and sex crimes in South Carolina and allowing convicted sex offenders who are here illegally to remain in our country makes absolutely no sense,” said Wilson. “These trafficking and sex crimes are repugnant to human decency generally and to children specifically.”

Massive Surge of Illegal Border Crossers

On February 24, 2021, the Washington Post reported that during the four calendar months since Biden’s presidential election victory, the U.S. Border Patrol had taken into custody more than 70,000 illegal border-crossers per month—the largest number for the November-to-February period in a decade. This included many young people, as the number of minors in federal custody had tripled to 7,000 after the Biden administration’s announcement that it would no longer expel unaccompanied minors and teenagers apprehended at the border. As one Department of Health and Human Services official put it, “We’re seeing the highest February numbers than we’ve ever seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program.” This sudden influx of illegals was due to: (a) the Biden administration’s very public pledge to revoke Trump-era immigration restrictions; (b) President Biden’s signing of numerous executive orders promoting amnesty and open borders; and (c) the Democrats’ introduction of an amnesty bill which conveyed the message that anyone who could make their way across the border would be permitted to stay in the U.S.  According to The Federalist: “To cope with the surge, the administration has had to re-open an emergency shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, that was last used during the 2019 border crisis. Back then, the Trump administration was condemned by Democrats and the corporate press for keeping ‘kids in cages.’”

Airstrike Against Syria

On February 25, 2021 — just weeks after President Biden had promised that “diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy” — he ordered, on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a U.S.-led airstrike targeting a Syrian building that had been used by Iranian-backed militant groups. Defense officials stated that the strike was intended to: (a) serve as a response to recent attacks against American assets in Iraq, and (b) incapacitate the Iran-supported militias and render them less capable of carrying out out future attacks.

Biden and his officials had been highly critical of former President Trump whenever he took military action against any target. For example, in 2017 Jen Psaki, President Biden’s White House press secretary, had condemned Trump’s airstrike response to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons — claiming that Trump lacked the “legal authority” to carry out such measures. Similarly, Joe Biden himself had criticized Trump numerous times for killing the terrorist Quds force Iranian leader Qasem Soleimani. “Let’s be clear,” Biden tweeted after Soleimani’s death in January 2020, “Donald Trump does not have the authority to take us into war with Iran without Congressional approval. A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.” Biden also called Trump’s action against Soleimani “a hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region” and warned: “We could be on the brink of a major conflict across the Middle East.”

Biden Issues 3 More Executive Actions, with a Focus on Revoking Trump Executive Orders & Proclamations

On February 24, 2021, Biden issued 3 more executive actions — including 2 executive orders and a proclamation — bring his total number of executive actions to 57.

(1) Review America’s supply chains for semiconductors and other “critical goods” (executive order).

(2) Revoke Trump proclamations that aimed to suspend the entry of immigrants during the coronavirus crisis (proclamation): “The suspension of entry imposed in Proclamation 10014 of April 22, 2020 (Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Present a Risk to the United States Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak) [which was subsequently extended by additional Trump proclamations on June 22 and December 31, 2020] … does not advance the interests of the United States.  To the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here.  It also harms industries in the United States that utilize talent from around the world.  And it harms individuals who were selected to receive the opportunity to apply for, and those who have likewise received, immigrant visas through the Fiscal Year 2020 Diversity Visa Lottery…. I therefore hereby proclaim the following: […] Proclamation 10014 [and its two aforementioned extensions] … are revoked.”

(3) Revoke a range of Trump orders, such as one targeting “anarchist” cities (executive order): This executive order revokes, among others, the following presidential actions by former President Trump:

(a) Executive Order 13772 of February 3, 2017 (Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System): This Trump executive order aimed to:

• “empower Americans to make independent financial decisions and informed choices in the marketplace, save for retirement, and build individual wealth”;
• “prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts”;
• “foster economic growth and vibrant financial markets through more rigorous regulatory impact analysis that addresses systemic risk and market failures, such as moral hazard and information asymmetry”;
• “enable American companies to be competitive with foreign firms in domestic and foreign markets”;
• “advance American interests in international financial regulatory negotiations and meetings”;
• “make regulation efficient, effective, and appropriately tailored”; and
• “restore public accountability within Federal financial regulatory agencies and rationalize the Federal financial regulatory framework.”

(b) Executive Order 13828 of April 10, 2018 (Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility): This Trump executive order contained the following statements and provisions:

• “Unfortunately, many of the programs designed to help families have instead delayed economic independence, perpetuated poverty, and weakened family bonds. While bipartisan welfare reform enacted in 1996 was a step toward eliminating the economic stagnation and social harm that can result from long-term Government dependence, the welfare system still traps many recipients, especially children, in poverty …”
• “In 2017, the Federal Government spent more than $700 billion on low-income assistance. Since its inception, the welfare system has grown into a large bureaucracy that might be susceptible to measuring success by how many people are enrolled in a program rather than by how many have moved from poverty into financial independence. This is not the type of system that was envisioned when welfare programs were instituted in this country. The Federal Government’s role is to clear paths to self-sufficiency, reserving public assistance programs for those who are truly in need.”
• “It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to … [i]mprove employment outcomes and economic independence (including by strengthening existing work requirements for work-capable people and introducing new work requirements when legally permissible).”
• “Promote strong social networks as a way of sustainably escaping poverty (including through work and marriage).”
• “Address the challenges of populations that may particularly struggle to find and maintain employment (including single parents, formerly incarcerated individuals, the homeless, substance abusers, individuals with disabilities, and disconnected youth.”
• “Reduce the size of bureaucracy and streamline services to promote the effective use of resources.”
• “Reserve benefits for people with low incomes and limited assets.”
• “Reduce wasteful spending by consolidating or eliminating Federal programs that are duplicative or ineffective.”
• “Empower the private sector, as well as local communities, to develop and apply locally based solutions to poverty.”
• “[T]he Federal Government must first enforce work requirements that are required by law. It must also strengthen requirements that promote obtaining and maintaining employment in order to move people to independence.”
• “The Federal Government owes it to Americans to use taxpayer dollars for their intended purposes. Relevant agencies should establish clear metrics that measure outcomes so that agencies administering public assistance programs can be held accountable. These metrics should include assessments of whether programs help individuals and families find employment, increase earnings, escape poverty, and avoid long-term dependence.”
• “Technology and innovation should drive initiatives that increase program integrity and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the current system.”

(c) Executive Order 13924 of May 19, 2020 (Regulatory Relief To Support Economic Recovery): This Trump executive order “calls on agencies to address the economic emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by rescinding, modifying, waiving, or providing exemptions from regulations and other requirements that may inhibit economic recovery, consistent with applicable law and with protection of the public health and safety, with national and homeland security, and with budgetary priorities and operational feasibility.” It also explains how a loosening of regulations was vital to the production of vaccines and therapeutics related to COVID-19:

• “In February 2020, [HHS] Secretary Azar declared that circumstances justified the authorization [by the FDA] of emergency use for tests to detect and diagnose COVID-19.”
• “Operation Warp Speed is a partnership among components of HHS, the Department of Defense, and industry and academic partners with a goal to produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines, with the initial doses available by January 2021, as part of a broader strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics.”

(d) Memorandum of September 2, 2020 (Reviewing Funding to State and Local Government Recipients of Federal Funds That Are Permitting Anarchy, Violence, and Destruction in American Cities): This Trump memorandum, regarding the violent Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots that had ravaged scores of American cities throughout the spring and summer of 2020, contained the following key statements and provisions:

• “Without law and order, democracy cannot function. Americans cannot exercise their rights, including their rights to peaceful expression, assembly, and protest. Property is destroyed, and innocent citizens are injured or killed. Unfortunately, anarchy has recently beset some of our States and cities. For the past few months, several State and local governments have contributed to the violence and destruction in their jurisdictions by failing to enforce the law, disempowering and significantly defunding their police departments, and refusing to accept offers of Federal law enforcement assistance. As a result of these State and local government policies, persistent and outrageous acts of violence and destruction have continued unabated in many of America’s cities, such as Portland, Seattle, and New York.
• “The Federal Government provides States and localities with hundreds of billions of dollars every year, which fund a wide array of programs, such as housing, public transportation, job training, and social services. These funds have been collected from American taxpayers who entrusted their money to the Federal Government to serve our communities and our citizens. My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones. To ensure that Federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our Government’s promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities.”
• “Within 30 days of the date of this memorandum, the Director of OMB shall issue guidance to the heads of agencies on restricting eligibility of or otherwise disfavoring, to the maximum extent permitted by law, anarchist jurisdictions in the receipt of Federal grants that the agency has sufficient lawful discretion to restrict or otherwise disfavor anarchist jurisdictions from receiving.”

Pledge to Reunite Illegal-Alien Family Members Who Were Previously Separated

At a March 1, 2021 press conference at the White House, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas emphasized his intent to deal with the many Central American migrants who in 2018 had brought their children to the United States in an effort to exploit the so-called Flores loophole in American immigration law — a loophole that required U.S. immigration authorities to release—within 20 days—all children apprehended while crossing the border illegally, whether or not they were accompanied by an adult. Breitbart.com explains how that requirement eventually led to the long-term “separation” of the adult migrants from their children: “Trump temporarily blocked the migrant pathway by charging thousands of migrants with illegal migration while keeping their children sheltered elsewhere. However, Trump dropped the tactic when Democrats, immigration lawyers, and media outlets portrayed the successful enforcement project as a ‘kids in cages’ scandal, so generating a massive emotional reaction from Democrat voters. After Trump dropped the tactic, a few hundred of the foreign families left their children with relatives in the United States — and then refused contact with the U.S. government.” At the press conference, Mayorkas said that in an effort to “reunite” the adult migrants with their children:

“We are working closely with counsel for the separated family members. We are doing it along with the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. I spoke with the foreign minister of each of those countries this past Friday. We are doing it with nongovernmental organizations, and we intend to and will shortly harness the capabilities, resources, and desire of the private sector, This is not only an all-of-government, but an all-of-society effort to do what is right. We are hoping to reunite the [several hundred] families, either here or in the country of origin. We hope to be in a position to give them [the choice]. And if, in fact, they seek to reunite here in the United States, we will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the United States, and to address the family needs, so we are acting as restoratively as possible …”

Jackson County, Texas Sheriff A.J. Louderback warned that Americans would have to “pay a price” for the Biden administration’s immigration policies. “This is the first time in U.S. history where the federal government has gone back on rejected asylee applicants, in the last year or so, and they’re reaching out to them to bring them back into the United States,” he said, adding that Biden had essentially “dismantled every piece of the Immigration Naturalization Act.”

Biden Announces Support for the “For The People Act of 2021”

On March 1, 2021, the Biden White House announced the President’s support for H.R. 1, the “The For the People Act of 2021.” Said the Administration in a statement of policy: “The Administration supports House passage of H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2021. In the wake of an unprecedented assault on our democracy, a never before seen effort to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the people, and a newly aggressive attack on voting rights taking place right now all across the country, this landmark legislation is urgently needed to protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections and to repair and strengthen American democracy.”

The Heritage Foundation, in an overview that can be found here, laid bare the provisions and agendas of the For The People Act, which would encourage and facilitate massive amounts of fraud and chaos in political elections.

On March 3, 2021, the House of Representatives voted 220-210 along party lines to pass the bill. Every Republican opposed the bill, and only one Democrat, Bennie Thompson, opposed it.

Biden’s Plan to Bring a Record 117,000 Migrant Youths to the U.S. in 2021

On March 2, 2021, Axios.com reported:

“A briefing scheduled for President Biden this afternoon outlines the need for 20,000 beds to shelter an expected crush of child migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border…. The rapid influx of unaccompanied children is becoming the administration’s first new crisis…. Today, the president will be told the number of migrant kids is on pace to exceed the all-time record by 45% — and the administration doesn’t have enough beds.

“Facing the growing numbers, the Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the network of child migrant shelters — is planning to change its coronavirus protocols to make room for an additional 2,000 kids and teens, according to a source with direct knowledge of the presentation and a second congressional source. Even with new shelters and loosened COVID-19 restrictions, the administration projects it will fall short of its needs by a couple thousand….

“DHS currently projects there will be 117,000 unaccompanied child migrants crossing the border this year…. A large number of them are teenagers…. HHS is expected to reach its shelter capacity later this month….

“The administration is looking at ways to reduce the shelter populations by accelerating the release of children to sponsors already in the U.S…. They plan to end a Trump-era agreement between DHS and HHS that included strict sponsor vetting requirements — a practice some advocates say had a chilling effect on sponsors’ willingness to offer their homes.

“HHS has already said it would pay for transportation for children when sponsors cannot, and it has proposed removing a request for Social Security numbers from the form filled out by the potential caretakers for unaccompanied minors, as Reuters reported.”

“This is exactly their intention — getting alien minors into the country,” said Rob Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. “They’re encouraging the trafficking of these children … and have no respect or compassion for Americans who lose economic opportunities because of their policies on legal and illegal immigration.” Law also noted the apparently growing cooperation between the federal government and the coyotes and cartels who, under contracts from the illegal-migrant parents in the U.S., were delivering so many youths to America: “With the level of coordination that seems to be going on right now, it’s hard to know where [one] stops and the other one begins. The language coming out of the Biden administration is no different than the seductive terminology that the cartels and the coyotes use to get people to fork over money they don’t have to take the dangerous journey north to a place that they have no lawful basis to be.”

Migrants Wearing Biden T-Shirts at Border Say “Please Let Us In”

On March 2, 2021, a large group of migrants held a protest at the U.S.-Mexico border near California wearing T-shirts and carrying signs that bore the Biden campaign logo as well as the message, “Please let us in!” As TheBlaze.com reported, this demonstration came “amid an ongoing crisis at the U.S. southern border, as unprecedented numbers of migrants surge into the country with the expectation that the new administration will be more lax on immigration enforcement than the previous one.”

Biden DOJ Dismisses More Than 1/3 of Cases Against Portland Rioters

On March 4, 2021, the Daily Wire reported the following:

“Since President Joe Biden took office in January, the Department of Justice has been quietly dismissing federal cases against Portland, Oregon rioters, according to local media. ‘Federal prosecutors have dismissed more than one-third of cases stemming from last summer’s violent protests in downtown Portland when protesters clashed with federal agents,’ KGW reported [on March 3]. The network ‘reviewed federal court records and found 31 of the 90 protest cases have been dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including a mix of misdemeanor and felony charges.’  Some of the most serious charges dropped include four defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. More than half of the dropped charges were ‘dismissed with prejudice’ [meaning they cannot be brought back to court], which several former federal prosecutors described as extremely rare.

“The charges all stem from confrontations between ‘anti-Fascist’ protesters and special agents of the federal government brought in to protect and defend the city’s federal courthouse over the summer.”

Supreme Court Dismisses “Sanctuary City” Cases at Request of Biden’s DOJ

On March 4, 2021, the Biden administration’s Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to dismiss three pending cert petitions (requests to hear a case) regarding the Trump administration’s effort to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. The following day, the Court agreed to dismiss the petitions. The three cases involved New York City, San Francisco, and a number of states including California and New York.

Biden Immigration Policy Allows Illegal Aliens to Challenge Their Arrest & Detainment

On March 4, 2021, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency told Congress that it would open an “ICE Case Review” process allowing illegal aliens to challenge their arrest and detainment if they believe they do not meet the Biden administration’s new standard, which only allows for the arrest, detainment, or deportation of convicted aggravated felons, terrorists, gang members, or national security threats.

Biden Signs Election Executive Order to Increase Voting by Criminals

On March 7, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order for “Promoting Access to Voting,” which lamented:

“[M]any Americans, especially people of color, confront significant obstacles to exercising that fundamental right [to vote]. These obstacles include difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.  For generations, Black voters and other voters of color have faced discriminatory policies and other obstacles that disproportionally affect their communities.  These voters remain more likely to face long lines at the polls and are disproportionately burdened by voter identification laws and limited opportunities to vote by mail.  Limited access to language assistance remains a barrier for many voters.”

Biden’s order called for:

• increasing the range of multilingual services and documents available to potential voters;
• “distributing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms”;
• “assisting applicants in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms”;
• “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on [federal] agency premises”;
• “ensuring that Vote.gov is translated into languages spoken by any of the language groups covered under section 203 of the Voting Rights Act anywhere in the United States”;
• establishing “procedures to provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting, and to the extent practicable, to facilitate voter registration, for all eligible individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons”;
• helping former prisoners obtain identification documents that might be necessary to meet voting requirements in certain states;
• instructing federal agencies to take steps to become formal voter-registration agencies under the National Voting Registration Act (NVRA) — a status similar to that of state-level Departments of Motor Vehicles; and
• “establishing a Native American voting rights steering group.”

Biden Signs Executive Order Establishing a White House Gender Policy Council

On March 8, 2021 — International Women’s Day — President Biden signed an executive order establishing a White House Gender Policy Council within the Executive Office of the President. This Council would seek to:

• “combat systemic biases and discrimination, including sexual harassment, and to support women’s human rights”;
• “increase economic security and opportunity by addressing the structural barriers to women’s participation in the labor force and by decreasing wage and wealth gaps”;
• “support gender equity and combat gender stereotypes in education, including promoting participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields”;
• “promote gender equity in leadership”;
• “increase access to comprehensive health care, address health disparities, and promote sexual and reproductive health and rights”;
• “empower girls”;
• “prevent and respond to all forms of gender‑based violence”;
• “address responses to the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on women and girls, especially those related to health, gender‑based violence, educational access and attainment, and economic status”; and
• “advance gender equality globally through diplomacy, development, trade, and defense.”

Biden Signs Executive Order on Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity

Also on March 8, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order on Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free from Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity, which stated that:

“It is the policy of my Administration that all students should be guaranteed an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex, including discrimination in the form of sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence, and including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  For students attending schools and other educational institutions that receive Federal financial assistance, this guarantee is codified, in part, in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq., which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving Federal financial assistance.”

The order also stated that:

“The Secretary of Education shall consider taking additional enforcement actions, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to enforce the policy set forth in section 1 of this order as well as legal prohibitions on sex discrimination in the form of sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence, to the fullest extent permissible under law; to account for intersecting forms of prohibited discrimination that can affect the availability of resources and support for students who have experienced sex discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race, disability, and national origin; to account for the significant rates at which students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) are subject to sexual harassment, which encompasses sexual violence; to ensure that educational institutions are providing appropriate support for students who have experienced sex discrimination; and to ensure that their school procedures are fair and equitable for all.”

The Border Crisis Caused by Biden’s Immigration Policy Worsens

On March 11, 2021, TheBlaze.com reported:

“While the Biden administration continues to publicly deny that there is a ‘crisis’ at the U.S. southern border, new information continues to surface every day demonstrating just how grave the situation is. Unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants are surging into the country in anticipation of more lenient treatment under President Biden, but the administration is woefully unprepared to manage the rapid influx.

“In a shocking report published Wednesday, the Washington Post didn’t shy away from characterizing the situation as a ‘crisis,’ noting its ‘magnitude came into clearer focus [on March 10] as the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters.’

“‘More than 8,500 migrant teens and children who crossed the border without their parents are being housed in Department of Health and Human Services shelters as they wait to be placed with relatives or vetted sponsors. Nearly 3,500 more are stuck at Border Patrol stations waiting for beds in those shelters to open up, the highest figure ever,’ the Post noted in the report. The news outlet went on to say that the migrant children are being held in ‘grim steel-and-concrete cells built for adults,’ known as Border Patrol surge facilities, for ‘an average of 107 hours’ while they await transfer to an HHS-run shelter. That time period is well over the 72-hour legal limit.

“When similar surge facilities were briefly opened during former President Trump’s tenure, Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists alike lashed out at the administration for carelessly stuffing ‘kids in cages.’ On the campaign trail, Biden decried the practice as representative of his Republican opponent’s tough stance on illegal immigration, and vowed to adopt a more welcoming approach. But the situation is far worse under Biden than it ever was under Trump….  ‘Young people are waiting in cramped, austere holding cells with concrete floors and benches. Lights remain on 24 hours a day, agents say, and there are few places to play,” the Post report continued. The outlet noted that the largest number of children held in surge facilities under Trump was about 2,600 in June 2019.”

Biden Signs $1.9 Trillion COVID Relief Bill

On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), commonly known as “the COVID-19 relief bill.” But as The Daily Signal‘s Matthew Dickerson noted, this bill was “stuffed with a wish list of progressive policies [having] nothing to do with the pandemic.” Some noteworthy facts, as enumerated by Dickerson on March 11:

• “[L]ess than 10% of the bill’s spending will be dedicated to public health. The vast majority will go to special interest payoffs and other wasteful spending that will do little to reduce the spread of COVID-19 or help the economy recover.”
• “[N]early $90 billion is earmarked for a taxpayer-funded bailout of union pension plans that were massively underfunded long before COVID-19. This union bailout gets about twice as much funding as COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.”
• “The bill would provide $126 billion for K-12 schools around the country. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that only $6.2 billion of that—just 5%—would actually be spent by October. More of this funding will be spent in 2026 than in 2021.”
• “The bill will send another $350 billion to state and local governments, on top of the hundreds of billions already provided. This spending is completely unwarranted, as last year’s coronavirus relief measures have already given states windfall funding well in excess of their projected revenue shortfalls. Worse, this round of bailouts will reward those states that enacted especially draconian lockdowns that wrecked their economies, closing businesses and pushing workers onto unemployment.”
• “According to the Committee for a Responsible Budget’s COVID Money Tracker, of the $4.1 trillion in federal “coronavirus response funding” previously signed into law, about $1 trillion still remains unspent.”

Forbes and Breitbart enumerated a number of additional ARP expenditures that had nothing to do with the fight against COVID:

• $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York to Canada
• $50 million for “family planning” services by organizations like Planned Parenthood
• $852 million for civic volunteer agencies like AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps Vista, and the National Senior Service Corps – the Corporation for National and Community
• $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, whose entire FY2019 budget was only $230 million
• $350 billion to bail out the 50 States and the District of Columbia (As Forbes explains: “The allocation formula uses the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2020. Therefore, states like New York and California –who had strict economic lockdown policies and high unemployment – will get bailout money. States like Florida and South Dakota – who were open for business – will get less.”)
• $128.5 billion to fund K-12 education (According to the CBO, most of this money will be distributed during 2022-28, when the pandemic is over.)
• $86 billion to save nearly 200 badly managed pension plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, many of which are co-managed by labor unions
• $50 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
• $39.6 billion to higher education — three times more than the $12.5 billion allocated to colleges and universities by the massive CARES Act of March 2020
• $1.5 billion for Amtrak, which, during the three years prior to the COVID pandemic (FY2017-FY2019), lost $392 million – even after a $5 billion taxpayer subsidy
• $1,400 checks for state and federal inmates
• $645 million for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Institute for Library and Museum Services
• $570 million for paid leave benefits, to help federal employees — and no one else — keep their children home when public schools refuse to reopen

Border Patrol Agents Say Biden’s Border Policies Are Enriching Drug Cartels and Allowing Criminals to Enter America

During a March 14, 2021 interview with Fox News, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott stated that Border Patrol agents had told him that the Biden administration’s border policies would result in a “massive surge” in illegal immigration that would only get “far worse in the coming months.” Abbott elaborated: “Border Patrol officers told me that the Biden administration policies, they are enriching and they are empowering the drug cartels in Mexico, who make money off of the people that they assist in smuggling them into the state of Texas. The cartels make money off of these migrants that you and your viewers see on TV. They also told me about the escalating numbers of the people coming across the border. In the Rio Grande Valley sector alone, all of last year, they made 90,000 apprehensions. Already this year, in the first two-and-a-half months of this year, they have made about 110,000 apprehensions. Included in those apprehensions are 800 criminal aliens who have previously been arrested and exported from the United States, 78 sex offenders, and 62 gang members, which include MS-13 gangs.”

DHS Secretary Says U.S. “Will Not Expel” Children Who Cross Border Illegally

On March 19, 2021, TheBlaze.com reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had spoken, during an interview on CBS This Morning, about a Biden administration program that would allow parents lawfully residing in the U.S. to request refugee status for their children in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Mayorkas noted that despite the enactment of this program — which was originally an Obama initiative that President Trump subsequently discontinued — some minors might attempt to enter the United States illegally. Said Mayorkas: “We well understand that out of desperation, some children might not wait. Some loving parents might send their child to traverse Mexico alone to reach the southern border — our southern border. I hope they don’t undertake that perilous journey. But if they do, we will not expel that young child. We will care for that young child and unite that child with a responsible parent. That is who we are as a nation and we can do it.”

Regarding the growing border crisis, TheBlaze reported the following:

“Mayorkas admitted this week that the U.S. government is ‘on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,’ a statement that was echoed by a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Earlier this month, Mayorkas reportedly sent an email to DHS staff requesting volunteers to assist in the ‘overwhelming’ number of migrants at the U.S. border….

“President Joe Biden and his administration have been criticized for the handling of the border crisis, which has seen migrant facilities swell by as much as 729% capacity, where children reportedly take turns sleeping on floors and are allowed one shower per week. A Washington Post report revealed that ‘the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters.’”

Up to Half of Illegal Border-Crossers May Have COVID-19

On March 17, 2021, The Epoch Times reported that, according to the National Sheriffs Association (NSA), as many as 50% of all people illegally crossing the southern U.S. border were possibly infected with COVID-19. Said the NSA in a statement:

“We are already seeing strains to the public health system of border communities. The suspension of deportations has led to the release of undocumented persons into border communities. We then have an affirmative responsibility to provide medical care for them if they are infected with COVID. This at a time when our communities are already grappling with this public health emergency and desperately trying to roll out the vaccines. We now face a serious potential public health crisis along the border.”

The situation was particularly dire in light of the fact that in February, Border Patrol agents had apprehended more than 100,000 illegal migrants at the southern border, while approximately 26,000 evaded capture.

Biden Condemns America’s Racism

On March 19, 2021, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Atlanta to show solidarity with the city’s Asian American community, in the aftermath of an incident where a white man had shot and killed six local Asian women as well as two white people. In a speech at Emory University, Biden, though there was no evidence that the killings were racially motivated, called racism “the ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation.” He then spoke of the alleged spike in anti-Asian hate crimes that had occurred in the U.S. during 2020:

“Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning the past year feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake.  They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, and harassed.  They’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.

“Documented incidents against — of hate against Asian Americans have seen a skyrocketing spike over the last year, let alone the ones that happened and never get reported.  It’s been a year of living in fear for their lives just to walk down the street.  Grandparents leave — to leave — afraid to leave their homes.  Small-business owners targeted and gunned down.  Attacks on some of the most vulnerable people in our nation — the elderly, low-wage workers, and women. In fact, Asian American women suffer twice as many incidents of harassment and violence as Asian American men.”

Suggesting that a great deal of anti-Asian animus had been sparked by former President Trump’s insistence on referring to the coronavirus pandemic, which began in China, as the “China virus,” Biden added: “We’re learning again what we’ve always known: Words have consequences. It’s the coro- — it’s the coronavirus.”

Migrant Says He Came to U.S. Border Because Biden Was Elected

On March 21, 2021, A South American migrant who had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally with his wife and their three children, told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that he had done so only because Joe Biden was president, and would never have attempted such a thing during a Trump presidency. An excerpt from his exchange with Raddatz:

RADDATZ: Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?

MIGRANT: Definitely not. Definitely. We had the chance, you know, the same violence that’s going on today was there last year. We used to watch the news, and I definitely wouldn’t do this.

RADDATZ: So did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?

MIGRANT: Basically. Basically. The main thing was the violence in my country. And the second thing I think was Joe Biden. You know, it’s like it lightened up my hope, you know what I mean?

Releasing Illegal Border-Crossers Without Even Scheduling a Court Date

On March 22, 2021, the New York Post reported that because of the massive influx of illegal border-crossers swarming into the United States, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley were now releasing asylum-seeking migrants into the American interior without going through the hours-long paperwork process of giving the them a “Notice To Appear” (NTA) for an asylum court hearing at some future date. Instead, the migrants were registered — with descriptions of identifying physical characteristics that they possessed — into a digital system and were told that they themselves would be responsible to schedule their own asylum hearing sometime thereafter, either with the help of legal assistance or through the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. As a Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) source told Fox News, the migrant crisis had “become so dire that BP [Border Patrol] has no choice but to release people nearly immediately after apprehension because there is no space to hold people even to do necessary NTA paperwork.”

Said another CBP official with knowledge of the Biden plan: “This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us. We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released.”

As writer Randy Clark, citing information provided by a senior-level CBP source, explained in Breitbart.com: “Without a Notice to Appear, the migrants are free to travel about the country and are not officially placed into the immigration court system. The court cannot order the removal of a migrant in absentia for failing to appear for a future court date…. [T]he existence of a removal in absentia order from the court allows immigration officials to remove the alien without appeal if they are later encountered. Under this new process, the migrants will not have a removal in absentia order for failure to appear.”

Illegal Aliens Will Receive COVID Relief Payments from U.S. Government

On March 22, 2021, The Epoch Times reported: “As Americans start to receive the latest round of [COVID-19 relief] stimulus checks, a new analysis reveals that about $4.38 billion will also go to illegal immigrants.”

The Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 2.65 million illegal “aliens temporarily present without status” had Social Security Numbers that would qualify them to receive stimulus checks. Among them were: (a) beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA); (b) beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS); and (c) asylum applicants and people applying for adjustment-of-status and suspension-of-deportation, who were given Social security Numbers by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “These individuals are in the country illegally and could be required to leave,” said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies. “Yet, under the current system, they are still given work authorization and Social Security numbers.” “There is simply no question that millions of illegal immigrants will receive billions of dollars in COVID relief checks,” added Camarota. “This highlights an even more disturbing fact—illegal immigrants are being issued Social Security numbers in large numbers. This is a clear indication that America is simply not serious about enforcing its immigration laws.”

Said The Epoch Times: “Not included in the numbers are the 1.8 million illegal immigrants that the Social Security Administration has estimated use Social Security numbers that don’t match their names, according to Camarota. Another 600,000 have Social Security numbers from when they were legally in the country but overstayed their visa.”

Horrific Conditions on the Border

On March 23, 2021, The Epoch Times reported:

“The family-unit holding cells smell like urine and vomit. Fights break out in the unaccompanied-minor cells. Scabies, lice, the flu, and COVID-19 run rampant. Up to 80 individuals are squeezed into each 24- by 30-foot cell, and there aren’t enough mattresses for everyone. Sheets of plastic divide the rooms.

“’Any diseases that are in there, it’s being kept in there, like a petri dish. The smell is overwhelming,’ a Border Patrol agent said, describing the conditions in a facility in south Texas. The agent, Carlos (not his real name), spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, for fear of repercussions. Border Patrol agents on the front lines are getting so frustrated that they’re now risking their livelihoods to reveal what’s really going on in the illegal immigrant processing facilities.

“One or two agents are left to control 300 to 500 people during a shift. No agent wants to report physical or sexual assaults between the aliens because they’ll get blamed for ‘letting it happen.’ They’re also forced to separate a child from an extended family member because he or she is not a biological parent.

“The number of unaccompanied minors—children under 18 who arrive without a parent—is buckling the system. The law requires Border Patrol to prioritize unaccompanied minors and transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.

“Two-thirds of migrants traveling through Mexico report experiencing violence during the journey, including abduction, theft, extortion, torture, and rape, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has been providing medical and mental health care for migrants and refugees in Mexico since 2012. Almost 1 in 3 women surveyed by MSF said they had been sexually abused during their journey—60 percent through rape.”

The aforementioned Border Patrol agent, using the pseudonym “Carlos,” issued the following quotes when describing the situation:

• “We’re getting them [unaccompanied minors mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador] out of here as quickly as possible, but we are so overwhelmed right now. It used to be easy to get them out in 72 hours. Not anymore. They’re staying here for 10, 12 days. It’s horrible.”
• “Everybody that shows up here—even if it’s a 3-year-old kid with no one around—they all have an address on them. And they’ll give it to you: ‘Here’s my address; this is where you are sending me.’  And that’s what we do. This is the way we are being played.”
• “We’re dealing with a different culture who’s not afraid to send all their kids under the age of five, knowing they’re going to get raped, knowing they’re going to get killed. You talk to the adults or the teenagers and they’ll tell you, ‘They raped three or four girls, and they kicked them off the trains.’ They’re going to die.”
• “There’s no repercussions. I’m not even going to give you a court date. You don’t even have to show up at court if you don’t want to. It’d be nice, but you don’t have to. That word gets out immediately. And I mean overnight.”
• “Our manpower is being depleted because we need to go babysit these people, move them as fast as possible to release them into the country,” Carlos said. “It’s ridiculous. We have no backup. We’re losing more than we’re catching. And it’s no secret. Our defenses are down. So if there’s anybody that we should be worried about, they know this is the time to come in. They know it.”
• “There’s no end in sight. The people that we’re apprehending are warning us of the larger caravans that are on their way.”
• Explaining that it was common knowledge among the migrants that anyone bringing a child with them would be quickly released and transported, at taxpayer expense, to various locations across the united States, Carlos said: “They’ll put them in a hotel for a couple of days until their flight is ready to fly them to where they are going. That’s tax dollars.”
• Stating that the migrant surge was a direct result of President Biden’s rollback of the Trump administration’s border policies, Carlos said: “One hundred and ten percent. They were already ready before Biden was even in office. They knew that the doors were going to be open. And now we’ve got a point where we cannot stop it.”
• Another Border Patrol agent said: “[W]e’ve been instructed to move all the traffic onto [private] ranches [for processing] to make sure there’s no public eye. Biden’s strict on that. Trump was a different story. This administration is a no-go on media, I’m guessing because they don’t want to let the word out on what’s going on here on the border—to make him look good.” Carlos, in turn, affirmed that Carlos said the Border Patrol agency had stopped dropping illegal migrants off directly at bus stations: “We were given strict orders from Washington, D.C., that that ceases—it’s drawing too much attention.”
• Asserting that morale among Border Patrol agents had reached an all-time low, Carlos said: “The attrition rate right now is ridiculous. We don’t want to work for the Border Patrol anymore. It’s not the Border Patrol…. [E]verything was working just fine [under Trump]. Now we’ve got this trash.”

Biden Condemns Georgia Election-Reform Laws Recently Passed by Republicans

The Vast Majority of Families Crossing Border Are Released into U.S.

On March 29, 2021, The Epoch Times reported:

“The Biden administration has moved away from sending families back across the border using the COVID-19 emergency measure called Title 42. Now the vast majority (upwards of 85 percent) of family units who are apprehended by Border Patrol after crossing the border illegally are quickly released into the United States.

“On March 25, a total of 6,000 people were apprehended by Border Patrol along the southwest border, according to a senior Border Patrol official during a March 26 press call. Of the 2,200 individuals within family units who were apprehended, 1,900 were released, while 300 were processed under Title 42 to be expelled, the official said. […] Most of the single adults being apprehended are still expelled under Title 42. The families being released are either given a notice to appear containing a court date to begin their immigration proceedings, or given nothing and released ‘on their own recognizance,” the official said.”

Biden Aims to Sign $2.25 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

On March 31, 2021, the Biden administration unveiled a comprehensive proposal to spend $2.25 trillion on “infrastructure” over an 8-year period. But in fact, a mere $650 billion of that total was slated to be spent on roads, bridges, tunnels, and ports — i.e., projects generally associated with the term “infrastructure.” A White House “Fact Sheet” spelled out the details of the bill and its allocation of resources. It contained numerous elements of the highly unpopular Green New Deal, but under a different name. Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education identified what he called “9 of the most suspect items” from that Fact Sheet. Wrote Polumbo:

1. $10 Billion to Create a ‘Civilian Climate Corp’

The Biden administration proposes spending $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp.” The White House claims that “This $10 billion investment will put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice through a new Civilian Climate Corps.”

2. $20 Billion to ‘Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice’

The proposal sets aside a whopping $20 billion—more than the latest COVID package spent on vaccines—for “a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”

3. $175 Billion in Subsidies for Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles: A technological novelty so good it won’t catch on without hundreds of billions in subsidies. At least, that’s apparently what the Biden administration thinks, as its infrastructure proposal earmarks a “$174 billion investment to win the electric vehicle market.”

The spending will take the form of manufacturing subsidies and consumer tax credits, which historically have benefitted wealthy families most. For comparison, the proposal carves out more for green energy goodies than it does on the total $115 billion to “modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair.”

4. $213 Billion to Build/Retrofit 2 Million Houses & Buildings

When most people hear “infrastructure,” they think of roads, bridges, tunnels, and so on. But the Biden administration’s definition of the term is Olympian-gymnastics-level flexible. Apparently, the president considers it “infrastructure spending” to allocate $213 billion to build or retrofit 2 million “sustainable” houses and buildings. They also slip in $40 billion for public housing, stating this will “disproportionately benefit women, people of color, and people with disabilities.”

5. $100 Billion for New Public Schools and Making School Lunches ‘Greener’

You might remember that the last “COVID” legislation had $128.5 billion in taxpayer dole-outs for public schools; much of the money will be spent years after the pandemic and there was no requirement that schools actually open. Yet this was, evidently, just the beginning. The Biden “infrastructure” plan includes another “$100 billion to upgrade and build new public schools.”

“Funds also will be provided to improve our school kitchens, so they can be used to better prepare nutritious meals for our students and go green by reducing or eliminating the use of paper plates and other disposable materials,” the proposal reads. (Emphasis by Polumbo).

6. $12 Billion for Community Colleges

One generally thinks of infrastructure and higher education as separate, distinct sectors. Yet the Biden “infrastructure” plan slips in $12 billion for states to spend on community colleges.

7. Billions to Eliminate ‘Racial and Gender Inequities’ in STEM

The proposal includes several billion dollars allocated to reduce supposed “racial and gender inequities” in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) research and development.

What this has to do with interstate infrastructure is not adequately explained.

8. $100 Billion to Expand Broadband Internet (And Government Control of It)

Loosely lumped under the broad term “digital infrastructure,” the plan allocates $100 billion to “bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American.” Interestingly, the proposal openly states that it wishes to promote government and NGO control of broadband and push out private sector providers: It “prioritizes support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and co-operatives—providers with less pressure to turn profits.”

9. $25 Billion for Government Childcare Programs

The plan includes $25 billion “to help upgrade child care facilities and increase the supply of child care in areas that need it most.” According to the White House, “funding would be provided through a Child Care Growth and Innovation Fund for states to build a supply of infant and toddler care in high-need areas.”

Biden Begins Assault on Suburban Single-Family Housing

In the 2020 presidential campaign, Democrats vowed to “vigorously enforce the … Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing [AFFH] rule.” Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explains that AFFH aims to empower cities “to annex their surrounding suburbs.” When Obama-Biden first began to implement the policy in 2015, Kurtz wrote:

“AFFH obligates any local jurisdiction that receives HUD funding to conduct a detailed analysis of its housing occupancy by race [and] ethnicity…. [If certain suburbs’ diversity is less than that of their neighboring cities], those suburbs could be obligated to nullify their zoning ordinances and build high-density, low-income housing at their own expense. [They] would have to direct advertising to potential minority occupants in the [neighboring urban] region…. Suburbs will literally be forced to import population from elsewhere, at their own expense and in violation of their own laws…. In effect, they will become more like the cities their residents chose to leave in the first place.”

This policy would tend to shift people who are mostly Democrats, from the cities to the suburbs. This would increase the number of majority-Democrat suburbs and Congressional Districts.

In April 2021, Stanley Kurtz explained how the newly signed Biden infrastructure bill would set the country on the path toward the elimination of single-family-zoned suburbs:

“With the introduction of his massive, $2.3 trillion ‘infrastructure’ bill, President Biden’s campaign to end suburban single-family zoning has begun…. Biden’s infrastructure bill openly includes programs designed to ‘eliminate’ single-family zoning (which Biden calls ‘exclusionary zoning’).

“How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, ‘Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [exclusionary zoning].’ In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.

“The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.

“Are federal carrots enough, however? Prosperous suburbs may forgo the grants in an effort to secure their independence. The success of Biden’s initiative depends in part on exactly how much money gets allocated to grants tied to zoning reform. The details of that ask haven’t yet been released, but the $213 billion allocated to Biden’s total affordable housing initiative leave room for an awfully big pot for the anti-zoning portion.”

Border Patrol Apprehends 172,000 Illegal Aliens in March 2021

During the month of March 2021, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 172,000 illegal aliens — a huge increase over the already-enormous total of 101,000 in February — according to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. “I would argue that it’s the biggest surge that we’ve ever seen in the history of the Border Patrol,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, emphasizing that “this surge is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.” As The Epoch Times noted: “Family units and unaccompanied minors require a huge amount of resources, including housing, food, transport, and health care while being processed and subsequently transferred or released. Additionally, most of the family members and unaccompanied minors end up staying in the United States, regardless of whether they have a meritorious asylum claim.” Said Judd: “I personally have apprehended groups from China, from Bangladesh, from Russia, from Poland, from Brazil. And these criminal organizations are allowed to go into these countries, and they’re allowed to advertise their services and make billions of dollars off of human misery. And it’s based upon our policies That’s wrong. That is inhumane.”

Aside from the 172,000 individuals who were apprehended in March, an additional 1,000 per day evaded capture and snuck into the United States.

Biden Claims That Georgia Election-Integrity Law Is “Jim Crow on Steroids”

In March 2021, the Georgia state legislature passed a law (SB 202) that contained a number of provisions designed to eliminate voter fraud and election corruption — most notably, by increasing requirements for voter ID. Biden, however, characterized the law as racist, saying that it was “Jim Crow on steroids.” On another occasion, he said that “these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are.” “It is the most pernicious thing,” Biden also said. “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” In addition, Biden claimed to have spoken to Republican voters who “find this Georgia law] despicable.” He pledged to do “everything in my power, along with my friends in the House and the Senate,” to prevent the enactment of other, similar laws.

Executive Order Revoking a Trump Executive Order That Authorized Sanctions on International Criminal Court Officials

On April 1, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order revoking a Trump executive order that authorized sanctions on officials of the International Criminal Court.

Plans to Resurrect the Iran Nuclear Deal

On April 2, 2021, the State Department confirmed that on April 6 in Vienna, the Biden administration would take its first major step toward rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — popularly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. According to State Department spokesman Ned Price, the U.S. planned to discuss possible courses of action with representatives of its JCPOA partners: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia. Diplomats from Iran were scheduled to attend the meetings as well. Though it was not expected that direct talks between the representatives of Washington and Tehran would take place in Vienna, Price stated that the U.S. was “open” to such discussions.

CBP Deletes Press Release Regarding Arrest of Yemeni Border Crossers on Terror Watch List

On April 6, 2021, Fox News reported that the Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agency had deleted a press release detailing the arrest, at U.S. southern border, of two Yemeni illegal aliens whose names appeared on a terror watch list. The first had been arrested on January 29, and the second on March 30. A spokesperson for CBP said that the news release “was not properly reviewed and contained certain disclosure and policy information related to national security that required CBP to remove it from our website.”

Biden Announces 6 Executive Actions on Gun Control

On April 7, 2021, President Biden on Thursday announced six executive actions designed to address what his administration described as the “gun violence public health epidemic” confronting America. “The recent high-profile mass shootings in Boulder — taking the lives of 10 individuals — and Atlanta — taking the lives of eight individuals, including six Asian American women — underscored the relentlessness of this epidemic,” said a news release issued by the White House. “…  [C]ities across the country are in the midst of a historic spike in homicides, violence that disproportionately impacts Black and brown Americans.”

Notably, the press release said nothing about the enormous role that leftist agitator organizations, like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, had played in fomenting and encouraging the violence.

• The first action directed the Justice Department of Justice to issue a rule to help stop the proliferation of “ghost guns.”
• The second action commissioned the DOJ to issue a rule that would “make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act.”
• The third action directed the DOJ to publish model “red flag” legislation “temporarily barring people in crisis from accessing firearms if they present a danger to themselves or others.”
• The fourth action outlined public expenditures for “community violence interventions” in forms “other than incarceration,” such as “job training and job opportunities.”
• The fifth action directed the DOJ to publish an annual report on firearms trafficking.
• The sixth action was Biden’s announcement of his intent to nominate announced his intention to nominate gun-control advocate David Chipman to serve as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

On April 8, 2021, Biden, from the White House Rose Garden, issued some remarks about the foregoing executive actions. Some key excerpts:

• “Nothing — nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment.  They’re phony, arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake from what we’re talking about. But no amendment — no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.  You can’t yell crowd — you can’t tell [yell] “fire” in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech. From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own.  From the very beginning that the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons.  So the idea is just bizarre to suggest that some of the things we’re recommending are contrary to the Constitution.”
• “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.  Let me say it again: Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment.”
• “Every day in this country, 316 people are shot.  Every single day.  A hundred and six of them die every day.” (NOTE: 60 percent of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides.)
• “We want to treat pistols modified with stabilizing braces with the seriousness they deserve.  A stabilizing brace — you’re going to (inaudible) — essentially, it makes that pistol a hell of a lot more accurate and a mini-rifle.  As a result, it’s more lethal, effectively turning into a short-barreled rifle.” (NOTE: Biden seems to believe that the accuracy of a pistol is inherently negative, despite the fact that enhanced accuracy on a gun used in self-defense could mean the difference between the life and death of a potential victim. Biden’s remark also ignores the fact that a pistol’s inaccuracy could mean that an intended victim who tries to use a pistol in self-defense could miss the assailant and instead strike another innocent person.)
• “[W]e recognize that cities across the country are experiencing historic spikes in homicides, as the law enforcement can tell you.  The violence is hitting Black and brown communities the hardest.” (NOTE: As previously noted vis-a-vis the White House press release of April 7, Biden said nothing about the enormous role that leftist agitator organizations, like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, had played in fomenting and encouraging the violence.)
• “Today, I’m proud to nominate David Chipman to serve as the Director of the AFT.  David knows the AFT well.  He served there for 25 years.” (NOTE: Biden mistakenly referred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) as the “AFT.”)
• “Most people don’t know: If you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check.  But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check.”
• “We should also ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country…. There’s no reason someone needs a weapon of war with 100 rounds, 100 bullets that can be fired from that weapon.  Nobody needs that.  Nobody needs that.”
• “The only industry in America — a billion-dollar industry — that can’t be sued — has exempt from being sued — are gun manufacturers. Imagine how different it would be had that same exemption been available to tobacco companies who knew — who knew and lied about the danger they were causing — the cancer caused and the like.  Imagine where we’d be.
  But this is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued. If I get one thing on my list — the Lord came down and said, ‘Joe, you get one of these’ — give me that one. Because I tell you what, there would be a ‘come to the Lord’ moment these folks would have real quickly.  But they’re not.  They’re not. They’re exempt.”

Biden Restores Funding to Palestinians

On April 7, 2021, the Biden administration announced that in an effort to “restore credible engagement” by the Palestinians in their stalled peace talks with Israel, the U.S. would supply the Palestinians with $235 million in aid, thereby restoring part of the assistance that had been cut by former President Trump. Two-thirds of the restored aid would go to the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA), which had lost $360 million of American funding in 2018. “U.S. foreign assistance for the Palestinian people serves important U.S. interests and values,” said American Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “It provides critical relief to those in great need, fosters economic development, and supports Israeli-Palestinian understanding, security co-ordination and stability. It also aligns with the values and interests of our allies and partners. The United States is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians in tangible ways in the immediate term, which is important in its own right, but also as a means to advance towards a negotiated two-state solution.”

Biden Signs Executive Order Creating a Commission To Study Packing The Supreme Court

On April 9, 2021, President Biden announced that he had signed an executive order creating a commission to study the possibility of packing the Supreme Court with additional Justices — i.e., leftist ideologues who would vote reliably in favor of leftist agenda items. To co-chair the commission, Biden appointed two left-wing partisans who had previously served in the Obama administration: (a) former White House Counsel Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the New York University School of Law, and (b) Yale Law School Professor Cristina Rodriguez, who previously had served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Biden Prepares to Radically Transform American Housing Policies

On April 13, 2021, Bloomberg.com published an article titled “Trump Scrapped Two Fair Housing Rules; Biden Is Bringing Them Back.” Some key excerpts:

“A week after taking office, President Joe Biden pledged to eliminate barriers at the federal level to equitable housing, ordering his housing secretary to review those decisions. Now the Biden administration is making good on this promise by restoring the rules scrapped by Trump.

“On [April 12, 2021], the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development submitted two fair housing rules for review. One is the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires local governments that accept federal housing dollars to review their policies and actively work toward reversing segregation. The other is the discriminatory effects standard, better known as the disparate impact rule, which bars seemingly neutral policies in lending, renting and selling that result in discrimination.

“Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, or AFFH, is a longstanding mandate under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which Congress signed into law one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. But it was rarely enforced, and in 2015, under former President Barack Obama, HUD drew up formal guidance for how state and local governments could begin weeding out systemic discrimination using fair housing assessments.

“After chipping away at AFFH for years, Housing Secretary Ben Carson repealed the Obama-era rule entirely in July 2020, as Trump’s rhetoric about the ‘suburban lifestyle dream‘ reached its zenith. Instead, a new rule allowed localities to self-certify that they are in compliance with fair housing law. Biden’s AFFH rule would appear to restore the 2015 standard without making major changes: HUD is filing an interim final rule, which under federal administrative procedure means it will take effect immediately once published in the Federal Register. […]

“The new disparate impact regulation … is a proposed rule, which gives the public the opportunity to weigh in before it takes effect. Disparate impact refers to the legal principle that policies that negatively impact minorities may be discriminatory even if they do not appear to have that explicit intent.”

Commission to Study Reparations

On April 14, 2021, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to designate a 15-member commission to study the payment of reparations for black Americans over slavery and the “systemic” discrimination that grew out of it.

The Push for D.C. Statehood Begins

On April 14, 2021, the House Oversight Committee advanced — by a vote of 25 to 19 — Bill H.R. 51, the D.C. Admission Act, advocating statehood for Washington, D.C.

Democrats Propose Legislation to Expand Supreme Court from 9 to 13 Justices

At an April 15, 2021 news conference in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, Democrat Rep. Ed Markey unveiled the Judiciary Act Of 2021, which called for the expansion of the Court from 9 to to 13 Justices. Co-sponsoring the bill along with Markey were fellow Democratic Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Hank Johnson, and Mondaire Jones. “We are here today because the United States Supreme Court is broken,” said Markey. “It is out of balance, and it needs to be fixed. Too many Americans view our highest court in the land as a partisan, political institution, not our impartial, judicial branch of government. Too many Americans have lost faith in the court as a neutral arbiter of the most important constitutional and legal questions that arise in our judicial system, and I’m disappointed to say too many Americans question the court’s legitimacy.”

“We are not packing the Supreme Court, we are unpacking it,” said Jerrold Nadler, claiming that the bill would “restore balance to the nation’s highest court after four years of norm-breaking actions by Republicans led to its current composition.” NPR placed Nadler’s comments in context as follows: “Progressive groups remain enraged at what they see as Republican manipulation of the Supreme Court nomination process to give former President Donald Trump two appointments to the court: first, by blocking former President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, and then by rushing through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination just over a month after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Trump also appointed Brett Kavanaugh following the retirement in 2018 of Anthony Kennedy.”

Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (NY) warned that this Democrat bill bore a striking resemblance to a measure enacted in 2004 by the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Said Malliotakis: “The reason I’m standing here is because I want to talk to you about what the Democrats have done today. The scariest bill that has been introduced since I’ve become a member of the House of Representatives is the bill they introduced today to stack the Supreme Court and change the number of judges from 9 to 13…. Well, in 2004, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela did the exact same thing. This is a play right out of the Socialist handbook. It should concern you that Hugo Chavez took the wealthiest country in South American, a very prosperous nation, and destroyed it.”

A Human Rights Watch report from December 13, 2004 confirms that Chavez did indeed pack his country’s Supreme Court:

“The Venezuelan Congress dealt a severe blow to judicial independence by packing the country’s Supreme Court with 12 new justices, Human Rights Watch said today. A majority of the ruling coalition, dominated by President Hugo Chávez’s party, named the justices late yesterday, filling seats created by a law passed in May that expanded the court’s size by more than half…. The law passed in May expanded the court from 20 to 32 members. In addition to the justices named to the 12 new seats, five justices were named to fill vacancies that had opened in recent months, and 32 more were named as reserve justices for the court. […]

“In 1999 a constituent assembly convoked by President Chávez drafted a constitution that guarantees the independence of the judicial branch and the autonomy of the Supreme Court. The Constitution specifically seeks to guarantee the independence of Supreme Court justices by establishing an impeachment process according to which justices may only be removed for ‘serious offenses’ by a two-thirds majority vote by Congress.

“But in May, President Chávez signed a court-packing law that allowed his governing coalition in the legislature to obtain an overwhelming majority of seats on the country’s highest court. The 17 new justices (and 32 reserves) were selected yesterday by a simply majority vote of the governing coalition, which did not reveal the names of the nominees to the opposition members of Congress until the time of the vote.

“The court-packing law signed in May also gave the governing coalition the power to remove judges from the Court without the two-thirds majority vote required under the constitution. […]

“Chávez supporters have justified the court-packing effort largely as a response to pro-opposition rulings in a deeply divided court, such as a highly questionable decision that absolved military officers who participated in the 2002 coup.”

Executive Order Imposing Sanctions on Russia

On April 15, 2021, the Biden administration targeted Russia with sanctions and diplomatic expulsions to punish Moscow for its interference in the 2020 US election, its SolarWinds cyberattack, and its continuing occupation of, and “severe human rights abuses” in, Crimea.

Iran Announces Uranium Enrichment of 60 Percent

On Friday, April 16, 2021, the New York Post reported:

“Iran has begun enriching uranium to 60 percent purity, its highest level ever, a top official there revealed Friday. The move … comes on the final day of talks in Vienna between countries involved in the 2015 nuclear deal…. The talks had been taking place since Tuesday among all entities involved in the original Iran agreement — China, France, Russia, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union — as member countries worked to return the US to the deal.

“Despite the talks, which were described as ‘constructive’ by both sides, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran was considering enriching uranium further in response to an attack carried out by Israel on a key nuclear plant the day before…. While 60 percent enriched uranium falls short of the 90 percent purity level needed for viable nuclear weapons, it represents a step toward armament.”

Biden Speeds Admission Process for Refugees to U.S. and Pledges to Raise Number of Admissions

On April 16, 2021, President Biden signed an emergency determination designed to speed up the admissions process for refugees to the U.S., but he did not immediately raise the annual admissions cap of 15,000 which had been put in place by President Trump. Under Biden’s plan, those 15,000 slots would be allocated as follows: 7,000 for refugees from Africa; 1,000 for refugees from East Asia; 1,500 for refugees from Europe and Central Asia; 3,000 for refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean; 1,500 for refugees from the Near East and South Asia; and 1,000 slots to be used as needed. The Biden plan also lifted Trump’s restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

More than two months earlier, Biden had pledged to raise the refugee cap for the next fiscal year to 125,000. His failure to do so with the April 16 directive sparked criticism from leftwing open-borders advocates. In response to that criticism, Biden announced, just a few hours later, that by May 15 he would increase the cap above the current 15,000 level, though he did not indicate how high the new cap would be.

Biden Supports Passing Amnesty Through Budget Reconciliation with Simple Majority

On April 20, 2021, President Biden told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he supported the idea of using the budget reconciliation process in order to pass an immigration amnesty/pathway-to-citizenship bill with a simple Democrat majority. CHC members Darren Soto and Raul Ruiz both reported that Biden had articulated that position in his meeting with them.

But just hours later, White House press secretary Jen Psaki walked back that message and said: “His view is that right now, this should not be… that the conversation should not be about a reconciliation process. It should be about moving forward in a bipartisan manner.”

Unprecedented Biden Policy Requires ICE Officers to Censor Arrest Reports

On April 21, 2021, Breitbart.com reported that a recent email from the Acting Assistant Director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations had instructed ICE officers to redact, from their reports, information listing particular facts vis-a-vis the incarceration of criminal aliens. The email read, in part: “As information related to enforcement priority determinations may not be final at the time a case is processed and may further develop over time, please do not include this information in the I-213 narrative. When this information is included in the I-213 please be aware of the need to redact that information when it is filed with EOIR/Immigration Judges or turned over in FOIA requests.”

According to Breitbart: “The request to remove information from an arrest report is unprecedented. The arrest report is a historical document that allows the officer to record circumstances of an arrest and the detention of the arrestee. Any attempts to dissuade an officer from documenting all facts at the time of an arrest, such as policy impacts on decision making at the time, place the officer in legal jeopardy at a later date if asked to testify why a decision or conclusion is reached.”

The source for the story about the ICE directive said it was likely that the policy was intended to hide the truth when aliens with criminal records went on to commit additional crimes after being released rather than deported.

Biden Administration Outlaws the Term “Illegal Alien”

On April 19, 2021, President Biden’s acting directors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) distributed memoranda prohibiting officers from using the phrase “illegal alien,” and requiring them to replace it with the phrase “undocumented migrant.” Political writer Kris W. Kobach wrote an article placing the term “illegal alien” in its proper context:

“The term ‘illegal alien’ is not a derogatory term invented by those of us who favor border enforcement.It is a legal phrase that has long been found in federal law.You can find examples at 8 U.S.C. § 1356(r)(3)(ii) (‘expenses associated with the detention of illegal aliens’);8 U.S.C. § 1366(1) (‘the number of illegal aliens incarcerated’); and 8 U.S.C. § ‘1252c (‘to arrest and detain certain illegal aliens’).

“In contrast, the politically-correct phrase that the Biden Administration is ordering officers to use— ‘undocumented migrant’ —is found nowhere in federal law.Moreover, ‘undocumented migrant’ is a contradiction in terms. Calling an illegal alien an undocumented migrant is like calling a thief an undocumented owner.There is no missing document, and there cannot be one.

“Let’s break it down further.The language patrol of the Left doesn’t like the term ‘illegal’ or the term ‘alien.’But neither term is derogatory.They are descriptive, and they are accurate.

“Consider the term ‘illegal.’An illegal alien has broken the law, usually in multiple ways.At a minimum, he has broken the law in some way to become an illegal alien.It is a violation of federal law to cross the border illegally, under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A); and it is a violation of the law to overstay a temporary visa, under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(B)(ii).Indeed, the former is also a criminal offense, under 8 U.S. § 1325(a).

“But most illegal aliens violate a host of additional laws while remaining unlawfully in the United States.It’s a federal crime to use someone else’s Social Security number, under 42 U.S.C. § 408(a).And it’s a federal crime to present a fake identity document in various circumstances, under 18 U.S.C. § 1028.And the list goes on.Being an illegal alien means breaking the law, usually breaking lots of laws.If law enforcement officers are forbidden to use the term ‘illegal,’ then they are forbidden to tell the truth.

“Similarly, there is nothing derogatory about the term ‘alien.’We are all aliens when we are outside our country of citizenship.If you are a U.S. citizen on vacation in Europe, you’re an alien…. It’s just a descriptive term that international and domestic law has used for centuries to distinguish between a country’s citizens and other people inside the country.”

Biden Moves To Force Doctors & Hospitals to Perform Transgender Surgeries Even if They Object on Moral/Religious Grounds

On April 20, 2021, President Biden filed an appeal seeking to force doctors and hospitals to perform transgender-related procedures and surgeries even if they objected on moral or religious grounds. The appeal was made in response to a January court ruling that had struck down a Biden administration effort to punish doctors for “sex discrimination” violations if they refused to perform transgender procedures requested by a patient. Religious freedom attorney Luke Goodrich of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty said that the Biden policy would harm “religious doctors, hospitals, and clinics” who:  (a) “joyfully serve ALL patients regardless of sex or gender identity”; (b) “routinely provide top-notch care to transgender patients for everything from cancer to the common cold”; and (c) “provide millions of dollars in free and low-cost care to the elderly, poor, and underserved–care that is jeopardized by the government’s attempt to punish them with multi-million dollar penalties.” Added Goodrich: “The government’s own doctors during the Obama Admin agreed: ‘Based on a thorough review of the clinical evidence…there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for [patients] with gender dysphoria.’” 

Notably, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, had a long history of publicly advocating in favor of the use of puberty blockers and the medical transition of minors. As The Daily Wire had reported on February 23, 2021:

Psaki Says Biden Believes That Social Media Platforms Should Block More “Untrustworthy Content”

On May 5, 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that President Biden was in favor of social media companies banning more content deemed “untrustworthy” on their platforms. “His view is that there is more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation, disinformation, damaging, sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public,” she said, specifically citing content that questioned the results of political elections or the efficacy of coronavirus vaccinations. “The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans, to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections,” added Psaki.

Biden Gives De-Facto Amnesty to Illegal Aliens Ordered Deported

In early May, 2021, the Biden administration reversed a proposed rule change by former President Trump that would have prevented the federal government from continuing to issue work permits to illegal aliens who had received final deportation orders from federal immigration judges. In its announcement, the Biden administration claimed that the Trump proposal, if enacted, “would impose exorbitant costs and burdens on U.S. employers related to labor turnover.” In response to the Biden action, Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies said:

“This is yet another common sense Trump reform that is being reversed. Most Americans would be astounded to hear that in 2019 the government issued more than 25,000 work permits to people who have been ordered removed by an immigration judge. These are often criminals who can’t be deported because their home country refuses to take them back. So we just let them stay, with benefits like a work permit…. We can expect the Biden administration to use the work permit authority to the maximum extent possible, because it’s a de facto amnesty that is easier than trying to get an amnesty bill through Congress.”

After Hamas Rocket Barrage Against Israel, Biden State Department Draws Moral Equivalence Between Israel & Palestinians

On May 11, 2021, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that he had seen photos of Palestinian children killed amid an armed conflict between Hamas, which had recently launched some 130 rockets toward Tel Aviv, and Israel, which then responded with military strikes targeting Hamas weapons and terrorist strongholds in the Gaza Strip. Noting that it was “hard not to look at those pictures and feel a sense of the suffering,” Price called for both sides to show “restraint and de-escalation in an effort to preserve life.” “Reports of civilian deaths are something that we regret and would like to come to a stop. We don’t want to see provocations,” Price added. “The provocations we have seen have resulted in a deeply lamentable loss of life. We call for restraint and for calm. Israel has the right to defend itself and to respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security, just as Israelis do.”

Biden Administration Announces It Will Repair 13.4 Miles Stretch of Border Levee

On May 12, 2021, the Biden administration — in response to pressure from border-area residents and politicians demanding an end to the recent surge of illegal migration from Mexico to the U.S. — announced that the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) would soon begin making repairs to a 13.4 mile stretch of levee in the Rio Grande Valley. Fox News reported: “Priority repairs are set to begin in six weeks to prevent flooding, followed by the establishment of a concrete levee wall fit with safety barriers in six to nine months. The USACE clarified that the wall will not be expanded on and will only repair the Rio Grande flood levee for the time being.” The USACE said on Twitter: “Wall construction remains paused to extent permitted by law. Per DHS [Department of Homeland Security], we’ve started critical work to repair the Rio Grande Valley’s flood levee, which was excavated to make way for border wall. This remediation work will not involve expanding border barrier.” The DHS issued a statement saying that the planned repairs would “protect border communities from physical dangers” such as “catastrophic flooding” that could possibly result from the “large holes” that had been blown into the Valley’s flood barrier system to clear a path for the border wall during the Trump administration.

Democrat Mayor Condemns the Border Crisis

On May 12, 2021, Bruno Lozano, the Democrat mayor of Del Rio, Texas, condemned the Biden administration’s failure to protect America’s southern border. “They keep telling us that the border is under control, and I simply do not understand how with a 392% increase this fiscal year alone. Last year, we had 19,724 captures at this point. And right now we’re at 97,398. I simply do not understand how that’s under control.”

Biden Scraps Several of Trump’s Executive Orders

On May 14, 2021, President Biden revoked a number of former President Trump’s executive orders. As American Military News reported:

“The rollback blitz was announced by the White House without much fanfare in a statement saying Biden had used the ‘authority vested’ in him to scrap former President Donald Trump’s orders….

“The first order Biden rescinded was one Trump signed in May 2020 instructing federal agencies to find ways to peel back Section 230, a portion of internet law providing legal protections for social media companies….

“Moving on, Biden erased a Trump order from June 2020 that instructed the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of defendants accused of vandalizing monuments. That order came in response to protesters tearing down statues and monuments of Confederate generals and other figures from American history as part of a wave of racial justice demonstrations in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.

“Next, Biden axed the Trump order — issued on Jan. 18 ^[2021] — that would have required the federal government to build a garden featuring sculptures of a dizzying 244 figures from history that the former president considered ‘American Heroes.’ […]

“The other three executive orders Biden squashed related to Trump’s controversial bid to limit U.S. foreign aid for certain countries; his push to exclude illegal immigrants who couldn’t prove they had health insurance, and an effort to redefine certain categories of white-collar crimes to prevent ‘overcriminalization.’”

Biden Reverses Himself & Calls for Israeli Ceasefire

Under pressure from a number of leftist Democrats, President Biden — who on May 15, 2021 had voiced support for Israel’s right to defend itself militarily against Hamas’s recent rocket attacks — called for an Israeli ceasefire on May 17. Biden indicated his changed position during a May 17 conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The President expressed his support for a ceasefire,” the White House subsequently announced in a summary of the call with Netanyahu. “Our approach is to quiet, intensive diplomacy, and that’s where we feel we can be most effective,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said repeatedly to reporters.

Biden Waives Sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream Pipeline

On May 18, 2021, it was reported that the Biden administration, citing U.S. national interests, would waive sanctions against the company and CEO in charge of building Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. In a report to Congress, the State Department listed a number of entities involved in construction of the pipeline that deserved to be sanctioned, but said that it would only seek to sanction a few Russian ships.

In a Washington Examiner piece, national security expert Tom Rogan wrote that Biden’s move “damages NATO” and would have 4 major repercussions:

“First, Nord Stream 2 will give Putin the means of Europe’s long-term energy dependence on Russia. That will allow Putin to leverage European political appeasement in return for Russia’s provision of cold winter energy supplies. It will thus weaken the American-led international order. It is an order centered on democratic sovereignty, free trade, and the advancement of basic human rights. It will be of particular concern to NATO allies on Russia’s border — notably Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania….

“Second, Nord Stream 2 will deny Ukraine access to billions of dollars in annual energy transit funds by displacing energy supplies from Ukrainian pipelines. For a country under escalating Russian military pressure, Biden’s action represents a clear betrayal….

“Third, Biden’s decision fits with other recent actions, which reflect obvious weakness toward Putin. Notable, here, include Biden’s begging of Putin for a summit and his pathetic abandonment last week of a U.S. company to pay $5 million ransom to hackers. Hackers, it should be said, who are almost certainly operating under the supervision of Russia’s FSB intelligence service.

“Finally, there’s the point that Germany has done nothing to deserve this gift. Biden should have sanctioned Nord Stream 2 in the hope of Merkel’s replacement by the impressive Annalena Baerbock in Germany’s September elections. The facts of Merkel’s record toward critical U.S. interests are clear.”

Biden’s move contradicted what Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said during his confirmation hearing Republican Senator Ted Cruz asked him about his position on the pipeline:

CRUZ: And so when it comes to congressional opposition to Nord Stream 2, congressional commitment to stopping that pipeline from ever being complete, it is virtually universal and it is bipartisan. Can you commit to this committee today that the Biden administration will hold the line, will keep the sanctions, and will prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being completed?

BLINKEN: Two things, if I may, Senator. First of all, the president-elect strongly agrees with you that Nord Stream 2 is a bad idea and he has been very clear about that. I need to look at the actual legislation. I am determined to do whatever we can to prevent that completion…

Biden to Expand Taxpayer-Funded Attorneys for Migrant Children in U.S.

In a May 18, 2021 presidential memorandum, Biden expanded the ability of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) who had come to the U.S. by illegally breaching the nation’s southern border, to secure legal representation. Toward that end, Biden asked Congress to approve $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds to help local and state agencies cover the costs of additional public defenders. Biden also re-established the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable to “prioritize civil legal aid and expand access to federal programs,” according to a White House press release on the memorandum.

Biden Rolls Back Border COVID Protections

Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, President Trump invoked Title 42 of the United States Code Section 265, thereby authorizing border control officials to expel people who had recently been in a nation with significant levels of communicable disease. That policy allowed the Border Patrol to turn away most single adults who crossed the border illegally, without needing to bring their cases to the immigration court system. But in May 2021, the Biden administration decided to grant a broad exemption from Title 42 restrictions. As the Washington Free Beacon reported:

“A May memo … authored by senior staff at CBP, emphasizes the ability of ‘customs officers [to] determine [who] should be allowed into the United States.’ Customs and Border Protection officials say the Biden administration is looking to liberally interpret that provision, which was initially meant for migrants with extenuating circumstances related to humanitarian concerns or political repression. Broadening the humanitarian exemption would constitute a de facto reversal of the Trump administration’s guidance on limiting migration into the country. The shift in policy would come as border patrol agents encountered 178,622 migrants in April, among the highest-trafficked months on record. ‘They’re keeping in place Trump’s order while broadening it enough to please left-wing activists,’ a senior Customs and Border Protection official told the Free Beacon. ‘If they rescind Title 42, they can’t deport single men.’”

This policy change was enacted by Biden despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control still rated Mexico as a “Level 4” country vis-a-vis its COVID-19 infection numbers, the highest danger level on the CDC’s scale. Indeed, the CDC was advising at that time: “Travelers should avoid all travel to Mexico.”

Biden Gives ‘Temporary’ 18-Month Amnesty to Over 100,000 Haitians in U.S.

On May 22, 2021, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced an 18-month extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of more than 100,000 Haitians in the United States, thereby enabling them to remain in the country and take jobs. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Haiti extension was due to “social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Biden had previously granted 18-month TPS extensions to approximately 320,000 Venezuelans and 1,600 Burma nationals.

Biden Terminates Trump-Era Investigation That Sought to Determine if COVID-19 Originated in Wuhan Bio Lab

On May 26, 2021, TheBlaze.com reported that President Biden, early in his administration, had shut down an active State Department investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, a probe that was initiated in 2020 under the leadership then-President Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. The Trump/Pompeo investigation sought to determine whether the coronavirus had originally leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and whether it may have been part of a Chinese bio-weapons program. “News of the Biden administration’s actions [is] significant,” said The Blaze, “because the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — which the media once denounced as a conspiracy theory — has gained considerable traction in recent weeks.” A spokesman for the Biden State Department told CNN that Biden administration officials had decided to end the investigation because they viewed it as a waste of resources. “Even though this discrete project has concluded, the State Department continues to work with the interagency to look into the COVID origins issue,” the spokesperson added.

Biden Frees Three Al Qaeda Allies, Including One Who Plotted to Smuggle Nukes into U.S.

On May 24, 2021, the Biden administration notified Saifullah Paracha, a 73-year-old Pakistani who was the oldest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, that he had been approved for release after more than 16 years in custody. The Guantanamo dossier for Paracha included the following facts about him:

• Paracha had detailed a plan to use his “textile business to smuggle explosives into the U.S.” by hiding them inside shipping containers ostensibly filled with “women and children’s clothing.”
• Paracha had told Ammar al-Baluchi — who allegedly had helped the 9/11 hijackers obtain flight simulators and manuals and had chatted with 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta — that he (Paracha) “believed he could obtain unspecified chemicals from Chinese sources.”
• Paracha had discussed with al-Baluchi “how to smuggle explosives and chemicals into England.”
• Paracha had reportedly advised Al Qaeda that “one should look for a similar looking chemical and put it in between the good chemicals and it would be very easy to get [through] customs.” With his business experience, he could offer Al Qaeda tips on smuggling, such as warning them about the “radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the U.S.” that would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country.”
• Paracha had spoken “several times” with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed about the need for Al Qaeda to acquire some “radiological or nuclear items” — because Paracha wanted “to help al-Qaida ‘do something big against the U.S.’”
• Paracha had “also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants,” and he had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant.”
• Paracha had allegedly “stated that nuclear weapons should be used against U.S. troops, as thousands of the troops would be killed at once.”
• Paracha’s diary had “references to military chemical warfare agents,” including Sarin nerve gas, “and their effects on humans.”
• Paracha had met Usama bin Laden on a trip to Afghanistan and “offered to let UBL and al-Qaida use his media broadcasting business to film and distribute propaganda and training films” that would include “depicting UBL quoting Koranic verses.”

The Biden administration also announced its plan to release two additional long-term Guantanamo detainees: (a) Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, an alleged bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, and (b) Abdul Rabbani, allegedly a member of an Al Qaeda cell known for plotting car-bomb attacks against Americans.

Biden Proposes $6 Trillion Budget for 2022

On May 27, 2021, President Biden proposed a $6 trillion spending budget for fiscal year 2022, which was approximately $2 trillion more than the pre-COVID pandemic budget of 2019. The Wall Street Journal reported: “Then spending will keep rising and remain a little under 25% of GDP for the rest of the decade. That level has never been reached in a single year since World War II, and the postwar pre-Covid average was 19.4%. Even this [25%] level of spending is surely understated since much of it will finance Mr. Biden’s new cradle-to-grave federal entitlements for child care, paid family leave, community college and more. These are mandatory programs that don’t require an annual Congressional appropriation…. Mr. Biden proposes to finance all this with some $3 trillion in tax increases, the largest tax hike as a share of the economy since 1968.”

Biden’s Speech on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa Race Riot

On June 1, 2021 — the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre on in Tulsa, Oklahoma — Biden delivered a speech in which he portrayed America as a nation infested with white racism. Among his remarks were the following:

• “For much too long the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent, it doesn’t mean that it did not take place. And while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing, it erases nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous they can’t be buried no matter how hard people try.”
• “100 years ago, at this hour, on this first day of June, smoke dark in the Tulsa sky, rising from 35 blocks of Greenwood [a district in Tulsa], that were left in ash and ember, razed in rubble. Less than 24 hours, in less than 24 hours, 1,100 Black homes and business were lost…. [N]o arrest of the mob were made, none. No proper accounting of the dead. The death toll records by local officials said there were 36 people. That’s all, 36 people. Based on studies records and accounts, the likely number is much more than the multiple of hundreds. Untold bodies dumped into mass graves, families who at a time waited for hours and days to know the fate of their loved ones, are now descendants, who’ve gone 100 years without closure.”
• “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot. This was a massacre, among the worst in our history, but not the only one. And for too long, forgotten by our history. As soon as it happened, there was a clear effort to erase it from our memory, our collective memories, from the news and everyday conversations. For a long time schools in Tulsa didn’t even teach it, let alone schools elsewhere. And most people didn’t realize that a century ago, the second Klu Klux Klan had been founded…. And one of the reasons why it was founded was because of guys like me who are Catholic. It wasn’t about African-Americans then. It was about making sure that all those Polish, and Irish, and Italian, and Eastern European Catholics, who came to the United States after World War I would not pollute Christianity. The flames from those burning crosses torched every region of the country. Millions of white Americans belonged to the Klan, and they weren’t even embarrassed by it. They were proud of it. And that hate became embedded systematically and systemically in our laws and our culture. We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened or doesn’t impact us today, because it does still impact us today. We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know.”
• “Chronic underinvestment from state and federal governments denied Greenwood even just a chance of rebuilding. We must find the courage to change the things we know we can change. That’s what Vice President Harris and I are focused on, along with our entire administration, including our Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Marcia Fudge, who is here today. Because today, we’re announcing two expanded efforts targeted toward Black wealth creation that will also help the entire community. The first is my administration has launched an aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing. That includes everything from redlining to the cruel fact that a home owned by a Black family is too often appraised at lower value than a similar home owned by a white family…. Shockingly, the percentage of Black American home ownership is lower today in America than when the Fair Housing Act was passed more than 50 years ago. Lower today, that’s wrong, and we’re committing to changing that.”
• “Just imagine if instead of denying millions of Americans the ability to own their own home and build generational wealth, we made it possible for them to buy a home and build equity into that home and provide for their families.”
• “Just imagine, if instead of denying millions of entrepreneurs the ability to access capital and contracting, we made it possible to take their dreams to the marketplace to create jobs and invest in our communities. The data shows young Black entrepreneurs are just as capable of succeeding given the chance as White entrepreneurs are, but they don’t have lawyers. They don’t have accountants, but they have great ideas. Does anyone doubt this whole nation would be better off from the investments those people make?”
• “Early this year, the House of Representatives passed For the People Act to protect our democracy. The Senate will take it up later this month, and I’m going to fight like heck with every tool in my disposal for its passage.”
• “And finally, we must address what remains the stain on the soul of America. What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism with a through line that exists today still. Just close your eyes, remember what you saw in Charlottesville four years ago on television. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK coming out of those fields at night with lighted torches, the veins bulging as they were screaming. Remember? Just close your eyes and picture what it was. Well, Mother Fletcher said, when she saw the insurrection at the capital on January 9th [sic], it broke her heart. A mob of violent white extremists, thugs, said reminded her of what happened in Greenwood 100 years ago. Look around at the various hate crimes against Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. Hate that never goes away. Hate only hides…. Given a little bit of oxygen, just a little bit of oxygen by its leaders, it comes out of there from under the rock like it was happening again, as if it never went away. So folks, we can’t. We must not give hate a safe harbor. As I said in my address to the joint session of Congress, according to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today, not Isis, not Al-Qaeda, white supremacists. That’s not me. That’s the intelligence community under both Trump and under my administration.”

Democrat Congressman Admits That Biden’s ‘Infrastructure’ Plan Is Very Much About Climate Change

During a June 4, 2021 “Congress in Your Kitchen” virtual town hall, Democrat Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey admitted that President Biden’s massive infrastructure plan focused heavily on climate change, and not just on elements of the the built environment generally associated with infrastructure — e.g., roads, tunnels, bridges, and airports. Said Malinowski: “President Biden … proposed a bill that defines infrastructure more broadly… and, on top of that, included some things that probably most people would not think of as infrastructure but that many of us think are really important for the country.” “[W]hat I’m really pushing hard for is an investment that will help America lead the world in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy,” Malinowski added. He was referring to such things as investments in electric cars, electric-car charging stations, and various clean-energy provisions.

A.G. Merrick Garland Says DOJ Will Scrutinize Post-Election Vote Audits

On June 11, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice was “applying scrutiny” to various battleground states’ post-election audits of the hotly disputed 2020 races and was offering “guidance” vis-a-vis those audits. That is, the DOJ might consider placing roadblocks in the way of the audits if the Department felt that they ran afoul of federal laws meant to protect voting records and prevent voter intimidation. Added Garland: “We are scrutinizing new laws that seek to curb voter access and where we see violations we will not hesitate to act. We are also scrutinizing current laws and practices in order to determine whether they discredit against black voters and other voters of color. Particularly concerning with in this regard are several studies showing that in some jurisdictions nonwhite voters must wait in line substantially longer than white voters to cast their ballots.”

Referencing a recount effort of millions of votes which was in-progress in Maricopa County, Arizona, Garland stated further: “Some jurisdictions, based on disinformation, have utilized abnormal post-election audit methodologies that may put the integrity of the voting process at risk and may undermine public confidence in our democracy. The Justice Department will do everything its power to prevent election fraud and to vigorously prosecute it. But many of the justifications proffered in support of these post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relied on assertions on material vote fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies … [M]any of the changes are not even calibrated to address the kinds of voter fraud that are alleged as justification.”

Garland also announced that within the next 30 days, the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division would double the number of staff members whom it assigned to voting-rights enforcement.

Biden’s Racist Farm Reparations

As of mid-June 2021, the Biden-Harris administration was promising to press on with a $4 billion farm relief program that deliberately excluded white people, even after a federal judge ruled that it was racially discriminatory and temporarily blocked it.

Twelve plaintiffs in nine states sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a case called Faust v. Vilsack to enjoin officials from implementing a loan-forgiveness program for farmers and ranchers under Section 1005 of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), a piece of legislation ostensibly crafted to provide economic stimulus for black farmers who had been harmed economically by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiffs claimed that Section 1005 of the bill denied them equal protection of the law because eligibility to participate in the program was based solely on racial classifications.

“The Court recognized that the federal government’s plan to condition and allocate benefits on the basis of race raises grave constitutional concerns and threatens our clients with irreparable harm,” said Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL). “The Biden administration is radically undermining bedrock principles of equality under the law. We look forward to continuing this litigation but urge the administration to change course now.”

WILL represented the 12 farmers and ranchers from Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas, Oregon, and Kentucky. Each plaintiff would have been eligible for the federal loan forgiveness program, but for their race.

U.S. District Judge William Griesbach of Green Bay, Wisconsin, issued a temporary restraining order against the program June 10. “Plaintiffs are excluded from the program based on their race and are thus experiencing discrimination at the hands of their government,” Griesbach wrote.

Only someone who was a member of a “socially disadvantaged group,” meaning “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities,” was eligible for loan relief. “In other words, the loan forgiveness program is based entirely on the race of the farmer or rancher,” the judge wrote. Only individuals “who are one or more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian, Alaskan native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander,” are eligible under the ARPA program.

“Congress can implement race-neutral programs to help farmers and ranchers in need of financial assistance, such as requiring individual determinations of disadvantaged status or giving priority to loans of farmers and ranchers that were left out of the previous pandemic relief funding,” the judge wrote. “It can also provide better outreach, education, and other resources. But it cannot discriminate on the basis of race.”

Matt Herrick, USDA director of communications, justified the program and told the Washington Post that his agency would continue to discriminate against whites. “We respectfully disagree with this temporary order and USDA will continue to forcefully defend our ability to carry out this act of Congress and deliver debt relief to socially disadvantaged borrowers,” Herrick said. “When the temporary order is lifted, USDA will be prepared to provide the debt relief authorized by Congress,” he predicted. Ignoring Judge Griesbach’s order, USDA officials, who said that 17,000 farmers of color qualified for taxpayer-provided relief, urged borrowers to keep filing.

The Washington Post article claimed that the farmer giveaway “sought to correct long-standing disadvantages faced by Black, Latino, and other minority farmers in getting loans from banks and the government.” The Biden administration asserted that people in communities of color “had a more difficult time accessing relief programs due to systemic racism and other issues.” “Over the last 100 years, policies were implemented that specifically twisted in a way that disadvantaged socially disadvantaged producers,” said Tom Vilsack, the U.S. agriculture secretary, invoking critical race theory-based precepts. “There’s no better example of that than the COVID relief efforts. Billions of dollars went to White farmers, because the system is structured in a way that gives them significant advantages.”

As Matthew Vadum wrote in an article published by Front Page Magazine on June 16, 2021:

“The Section 1005 program brings to mind an earlier program administered by the USDA that led to a class-action lawsuit known as Pigford v. Glickman, which was settled in 1999. Black farmers claimed they were discriminated against by the agency’s allocation of farm loans and assistance. The government agreed to pay $50,000 to black claimants who said USDA loan administrators discriminated against them. The proof required was minimal, critics said, which led to fraud. In 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for claims that were filed late, in addition to the estimated $1 billion already paid out. Critics said the Obama administration dispensed settlement funds using even looser evidentiary standards than those that applied in the original settlement.

“’Conservative crusader Andrew Breitbart was correct when he exposed a multibillion-dollar redistribution scheme to African-American farmers based on largely dubious claims of discrimination,” Investor’s Business Daily editorialized in April 2013. The New York Times concluded years after the scandal broke ‘that Breitbart was right, that Pigford became not a redress of legitimate grievances but ‘a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees.’”

In late June 2021, Federal Judge Marcia Morales Howard (in Florida) issued a preliminary injunction against Biden’s loan-forgiveness plan, on grounds that it discriminated illegally on the basis of race. Wrote the judge:

“Although the government argues that (the section) is narrowly tailored to reach small farmers or farmers on the brink of foreclosure, it is not. Regardless of farm size, an SDFR (socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher) receives up to 120 percent debt relief. And regardless of whether an SDFR is having the most profitable year ever and not remotely in danger of foreclosure, that SDFR receives up to 120 percent debt relief. Yet a small white farmer who is on the brink of foreclosure can do nothing to qualify for debt relief. Race or ethnicity is the sole, inflexible factor that determines the availability of relief provided by the government.”

• Judge Issues Injunction Against Biden’s USDA Over Race-Based Loan Forgiveness Program

On July 8, 2021, U.S. District Judge S. Thomas Anderson for the Western District of Tennessee granted an injunction against the Biden administration’s loan-forgiveness program (known as Section 1005) for nonwhite farmers and ranchers, ruling in favor of  Tennessee farmer Robert Holman, whose lawsuit argued that the program was unconstitutional. Instructing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to stop distributing funds through the program until the case was fully resolved, Anderson wrote:  “However important the goal of eliminating the vestiges of prior race discrimination, and it is important, the government’s efforts cannot withstand strict scrutiny. Therefore, Plaintiff has shown a likeliness of success on the merits at trial,” Moreover, Anderson wrote that the “Plaintiff will suffer the irreparable harm of being excluded from that program solely on the basis of his race.”

Biden Repeatedly Confuses Syria with Libya in Press Conference Ahead of Meeting with Putin

During a June 14, 2021 press conference at the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, Biden discussed ways in which he might possibly be able to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Biden was slated to meet in a summit a few days later. In the course of his remarks, Biden repeatedly confused Syria with Libya. Said Biden:

“And so, there’s a lot going on where we could work together with Russia. For example, in uh, Libya, we should be opening up the passes to be able to go through and provide — provide food assistance and economic — I mean, vital assistance to a population that’s in real trouble.

“I think I’m going to try very much — hard to — it is — and, by the way, there’s places where — I shouldn’t be starting off on negotiating in public here. But let me say it this way: Russia has engaged in activities which are — we believe are contrary to international norms, but they have also bitten off some real problems they’re going to have trouble chewing on.

“And, for example, the rebuilding of — of uh, Syria, of uh, Libya, of — you know, this is — they’re there. And as long as they’re there without the ability to bring about some order in the — in the region, and you can’t do that very well without providing for the basic economic needs of people.

“So I’m hopeful that we can find an accommodation that –where we can save the lives of people in — for example, in — in uh, in Libya, that — consistent with the interest of — maybe for different reasons — but reached it for the same reason — the same result.”

“First National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism”

On June 15, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the unveiling of the Biden administration’s new “First National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” an initiative designed to combat what Garland viewed as one of America’s most serious problems: “domestic terrorism” carried out mostly by conservative adherents to a doctrine of “white supremacism.” Below are some of Garland’s remarks from that day, remarks in which he: (a) cast the Trump supporters who had breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6 as uniquely evil; (b) warned of the allegedly enormous threat posed by violent white supremacists; (c) likened such people to genocidal Islamic terrorists; and (d) gave anecdotal examples of past terrorist incidents that had been perpetrated exclusively by whites:

• “Our current effort comes on the heels of another large and heinous attack, this time the January 6th assault on our nation’s capital…. Over the 160 days since the attack, we have arrested over 480 individuals and brought hundreds of charges against those who attacked law enforcement officers and obstructed justice and used deadly and dangerous weapons to those ends.”
• “In March, [America’s intelligence and law-enforcement agencies] concluded that domestic violent extremists posed an elevated threat to the homeland in 2021. Our experience on the ground confirms this; the number of open FBI domestic terrorism investigations this year has increased significantly. According to an unclassified summary of the March Intelligence Assessment, the two most lethal elements of the domestic violence extremist threat are racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and militia violent extremists. In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
• “[E]ven as we augment our efforts against domestic terrorism, we remain relentless in our focus on international terrorism perpetrated by foreign terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS.”
• “I’m personally struck by three events that occurred not far from each other at different points in the last 100 years. When I visited the Greenwood District in April of this year, where Black Wall Street once thrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I was struck by the failure to do justice after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre…. Almost seventy-five years later, just over a hundred miles Southwest of Tulsa in Oklahoma City, after an attack that resulted in the deaths of 168 people, the Justice Department successfully apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted the men responsible for the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. And five years ago across Oklahoma’s Northern border, in Kansas, federal authorities disrupted a plot to bomb an apartment complex and its mosque and to kill its residents, immigrants from Somalia, working with joint terrorism, task force partners, the government prevented the bombing, no one died, and those who sought to commit it were convicted of their crimes.”

Biden Criticizes Trump & Republicans at NATO Meeting in Brussels

At a press conference following a NATO summit meeting in Brussels on June 14, 2021, a reporter asked President Biden to reveal what he may have said to allies who may have been wary of trusting the United States after four years of a Trump presidency — the implication being that Trump had squandered the trust of other nations’ leaders. Replied Biden: “It is a shock and surprise that what’s happened in terms of the consequence of President Trump’s phony populism has happened. It is disappointing that so many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate, who I know know better, have been reluctant to take on, for example, an investigation [into the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021] because they’re worried about being primaried. That’s why it’s so important that I succeed in my agenda.”

Remarks by President Biden at Signing of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act

On June 17, 2021, President Biden proclaimed June 19 to be a new federal holiday in the United States, commemorating the emancipation of African-American slaves in the 19th century. In the course of his remarks, he emphasized the allegedly enduring and widespread racism in virtually every aspect of American society:

• “Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power. A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called ‘America’s original sin.’”
• “You know, I said a few weeks ago, marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. They don’t ignore those moments of the past. They embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.”
• The truth is, it’s not — simply not enough just to commemorate Juneteenth. After all, the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans didn’t mark the end of America’s work to deliver on the promise of equality; it only marked the beginning. To honor the true meaning of Juneteenth, we have to continue toward that promise because we’ve not gotten there yet.”
• “That’s why we’ve launched an aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing — finally address the cruel fact that a home owned, to this day, by a Black American family is usually appraised at a lower rate for a similar home owned by a white family in a similar area. That’s why we committed to increasing Black homeownership, one of the biggest drivers of generational wealth. That’s why we’re making it possible for more Black entrepreneurs to access — to access capital, because their ideas are as good; they lack the capital to get their fair — and get their fair share of federal contracts so they can begin to build wealth. That’s why we’re working to give each and every child, three and four years of age, not daycare, but school — in a school…. Folks, the promise of equality is not going to be fulfilled until we become real — it becomes real in our schools and on our Main Streets and in our neighborhoods — our healthcare system and ensuring that equity is at the heart of our fight against the pandemic; in the water that comes out of our faucets and the air that we breathe in our communities; in our justice system — so that we can fulfill the promise of America for all people. All of our people. And it’s not going to be fulfilled so long as the sacred right to vote remains under attack. We see this assault from restrictive laws, threats of intimidation, voter purges, and more — an assault that offends the very democracy — our very democracy.”
• “Today also marks the sixth anniversary of the tragic deaths of — at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A [white] killer motivated by hate, intending to start a race war in South Carolina. He joined his [black] victims in a Bible study class, then he took their lives in the house of worship. It’s a reminder that our work to root out hate never ends — because hate only hides, it never fully goes away. It hides. And when you breathe oxygen under that rock, it comes out. And that’s why we must understand that Juneteenth represents not only the commemoration of the end of slavery in America more than 150 years ago, but the ongoing work to have to bring true equity and racial justice into American society, which we can do.”

Biden Says Hispanic & Black People Are Reluctant to Get Vaccinated Because They Fear Deportation & Exploitation, Respectively

On June 24, 2021, President Biden said it was difficult to persuade Hispanics in America to get vaccinated for the coronavirus, because they feared that if they were to present themselves in public, they might be deported. “It’s awful hard to get Latinx vaccinated as well,” asserted the president. “Why? They’re worried that they’ll be vaccinated and deported.”

Regarding blacks, Biden said: “There’s a reason why it’s been harder to get African Americans initially to get vaccinated, because they’re used to being experimented on.” In the course of his remarks, the president mistakenly referred to the “Tuskegee Airmen” (a group of primarily black military pilots and airmen who fought in World War II) as an example of unethical medical experimentation by the government, instead of the Tuskegee Study on syphilis, which focused on black males starting in 1932. “People have memories. People have long memories,” Biden explained.

Biden Mocks Supporters of the Second Amendment

Speaking at the White House on June 23, 2021, President Biden commented on the Second Amendment as he: (a) unveiled a “zero tolerance” policy with regard to firearms dealers guilty of violating federal laws, and (b) blamed guns for the rising homicide and violent crime rates across the United States. Said Biden:

“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon. Those who say the ‘blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been, if you want to, think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons. The point is that there has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it. We’re not changing the Constitution. We’re enforcing it.”

Biden had said something very similar in February 2020: “Those who say, ‘The tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ – a great line. Well, guess what: The fact is if you’re going to take on the government, you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”

Biden Administration Sues Georgia Regarding Republican Voting-Rights Law in That State

On June 22, 2021, Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill the For The People Act, a radical “election reform” bill supported by nearly every Democrat in both the House and Senate. Three days after that, on June 25, President Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, announced that the Justice Department was suing Georgia over the state’s Election Integrity Act of 2001 (SB 202), which had been signed into law in late March. The aim of Garland and the Democrats was to use the DOJ lawsuit to achieve the same objectives as they had sought, but failed, to gain via the legislative process with the For The People Act. Said Garland in his announcement:

“Today, the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Garland said. “Our complaint alleges that recent changes to Georgia’s election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Several studies show that Georgia experienced record voter turnout and participation rates in the 2020 election cycle. Approximately 2/3 of eligible voters in the state cast a ballot in the November election, just over the national average. This is cause for celebration. But then, in March of 2021, Georgia’s legislature passed SB202. Many of that law’s provisions make it harder for people to vote. The complaint alleges that the state enacted those restrictions with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”

Contrary to Garland’s assertion, however, SB 202 simply sought to restore some of the same election-integrity measures — e.g., voter ID requirements — that had been in place prior to the changes that were made to the state’s election laws as a result of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the provisions of SB 202 actually made it easier to vote in Georgia, than had been the case prior to 2020.

Biden’s NSA Spies on Tucker Carlson

On June 28, 2021, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson alleged that the National Security Agency (NSA) had been “monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” He claimed that a whistleblower had informed him about the surveillance and provided details about a program topic that could have only have come from someone able to access Carlson’s emails.

The next day, the NSA issued a written statement that said: “This allegation is untrue. Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take this program off the air. NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.”

Later that evening, Carlson called the NSA statement “infuriatingly dishonest” and said that it was carefully worded in a way that was designed to deceive his audience. Said Carlson: “[L]ast night on the show, we made a very straightforward claim: NSA read my private emails without my permission. Period. That’s what we said. Tonight’s statement from the NSA does not deny that. Instead it comes with this non-sequitur, in part, ‘Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the agency.’ OK, glad to know. But the question remains, did the Biden administration read my personal emails?!”

Carlson further reported that when his show directly asked NSA officials if they read his emails, they were evasive in their replies. The experience was like “living in China,” said Carlson.

On July 7, 2021, Carlson said that he had been attempting to schedule an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin just prior to his June 28 announcement that the NSA was spying on him. Meanwhile, Axios.com published a report indicating that Carlson indeed had been communicating with Kremlin intermediaries in the U.S. regarding a possible sit-down with Putin.

On July 7 as well, Carlson appeared on Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria” program and said: “Yesterday, I learned that — and this is going to come out soon — that the NSA leaked the contents of my emails to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know because I got a call from one of them saying, ‘Oh, this is what your email was about.’  So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It’s confirmed.” “It’s true,” he continued, asserting that the Biden administration was trying to gain “leverage” in order to threaten “opposition journalists.”

Later on July 7, Carlson told his viewers that he had learned that the NSA was planning to leak the contents of his emails to the news media. Said Carlson: “Why would they do that? Well the point, of course, was to paint me as a disloyal American. A Russian operative, been called that before. A stooge of the Kremlin, a traitor doing the bidding of a foreign adversary.”

Biden Announces Campaign to Make it Easier for Millions of Immigrants to Become Citizens

On July 2, 2021, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the Biden administration, in fulfillment of a February 2 executive order by which Biden had established a federal inter-agency Naturalization Working Group (NWG), was formally launching an initiative to help millions of immigrants living in the United States to become citizens. The agencies involved were the U.S. Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of State, Department of Labor, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, and the Social Security Administration.

Specifically, the NWG would recruit immigrants at various stages of the immigration process — from relative newcomers to lawful permanent residents — and target them with what Biden called “welcoming strategies that promote integration, inclusion, and citizenship.” The objective, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas put it, was to “promot[e] naturalization to all who are eligible.”

Biden Nominates the President of UPenn, a School with Massive Financial Ties to China, As U.S. Ambassador to Germany

In early July 2021, President Biden nominated Amy Gutmann, who had been president of the University of Pennsylvania since 2004, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Germany. According to the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative-leaning public ethics organization, UPenn had received tens of millions of dollars in undisclosed donations from China between 2013 and 2020. Moreover, the dollar value of those donations had increased dramatically after the school opened its Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in March 2017.

In 2020 the NLPC filed a complaint against UPenn, alleging $70 million in total donations from China that included $22 million in “anonymous” contributions specifically for the Biden Center. According to Breitbart.com: “The complaint charge[d] that in 2017, out of a total of $7.7 million in donations from China, $500,000 came from anonymous donors. After Biden launched his [presidential] campaign in 2018, the total jumped to $27.1 million, with anonymous donors giving $15.8 million. And in 2019, Chinese donors gave $26.9 million to the center, $6 million anonymously.”

Said NLPC Chairman Peter Flaherty on July 3, 2021: “The University of Pennsylvania has stonewalled all inquiries into the identities of the Chinese donors who made $22 million anonymous donations to the university. We think it’s time for her [Gutmann] to answer the question and identify the donors.” “Academia is awash in Chinese cash,” Flaherty added. “It’s time for administrators to start answering questions about it.”

Tom Anderson, director of the NLPC’s public integrity project, had predicted in November 2020 that “every person” at the Biden Center had the potential to be named as a Biden administration member. “This center was an incubation for Biden’s foreign policy team and it’s a natural place for his choice of secretary of state [Antony Blinken],” said Anderson, adding: “Every operator, spy, foreign agent in the world immediately set their sights and their wallets on the university the day they used Biden’s name. Corruption isn’t always about money — sometimes it’s about access.”

Biden Condemns Republican Efforts to Pass Voter-Integrity Laws

During a July 13, 2021 speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, President Biden mocked Republicans for their attempts to pass voter-integrity legislation in a number of states. Some key excerpts:

[S]ome things in America should be simple and straightforward. Perhaps the most important of those things — the most fundamental of those things — is the right to vote. The right to vote freely. The right to vote freely, the right — the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted. […] Just think about the past election. […] America and Americans of every background voted. They voted for good jobs and higher wages. They voted for racial equity and justice. They voted to make healthcare a right, not a privilege. […]

[I]n 2020, more people voted in America than ever — ever in the history of America, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. […] They voted early. They voted absentee. They voted in person. They voted by mail. They voted by drop box. And then they got their families and friends to go out and vote. […] With recount after recount after recount, court case after court case, the 2020 election was the most scrutinized election ever in American history. Challenge after challenge brought to local, state, and election officials; state legislatures; state and federal courts — even to the United States Supreme Court not once, but twice. More than 80 judges, including those appointed by my predecessor, heard the arguments. In every case, neither cause nor evidence was found to undermine the national achievement of administering this historic election in the face of such extraordinary challenges. […]

No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny and such high standards. The Big Lie is just that: a big lie. The 2020 election — it’s not hyperbole to suggest — the most examined and the fullest expression of the will of the people in the history of this nation. This should be celebrated — the example of America at its best. But instead, we continue to see an example of human nature at its worst — something darker and more sinister.

In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You follow the Constitution. You try again. You don’t call facts “fake” and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you’re unhappy. That’s not statesmanship. That’s not statesmanship; that’s selfishness. That’s not democracy; it’s the denial of the right to vote. It suppresses. It subjugates.

The denial of full and free and fair elections is the most un-American thing that any of us can imagine, the most undemocratic, the most unpatriotic, and yet, sadly, not unprecedented. From denying enslaved people fu- — full citizenship until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments after the Civil War; to denying women the right to vote until the 19th Amendment 100 years ago; to poll taxes and literacy tests, and the Ku Klux Klan campaigns of violence and terror that lasted into the ’50s and ’60s; to the Supreme Court decision in 2013 and then again just two weeks ago –- a decision that weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act; to the willful attacks — election attacks in 2020; and then to a whole other level of threat — the violence and the deadly insurrection on the Capitol on January 6th. […]

Vice President Harris and I have spent our careers doing this work. And I’ve asked her to lead, to bring people together to protect the right to vote and our democracy. And it starts with continuing the fight to pass H.R.1, the For the People Act. That bill — that bill would help end voter suppression in the states, get dark money out of politics, give voice to the people at the grassroots level, create a fairer district maps, and end partisan political gerrymandering.

Last month, Republicans opposed even debating, even considering For the People Act. Senate Democrats stood united to protect our democracy and the sanctity of the vote. We must pass the For the People Act. It’s a national imperative. […]

Just weeks ago, the Supreme Court yet again weakened the Voting Rights Act and upheld what Justice Kagan called, quote, “a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities.” […] As soon as Congress passes the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, I will sign it and let the whole world see it. (Applause.) That will be an important moment. […]

For example, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the United States Department of Justice is going to be using its authorities to challenge the onslaught of state laws undermining voting rights in old and new ways. The focus — the focus will be on dismantling racially discriminatory laws, like the recent challenge to Georgia’s vicious anti-voting law.

The Department of Justice will do so with a voting rights division that — at my request — is doubling its size in enforcement staff. Civil rights groups — civil rights groups and other organizations have announced their plans to stay vigilant and challenge these odious laws in the courts.

In Texas, for example, Republican-led state legislature wants to allow partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters and imperil impartial poll workers. They want voters to dive [drive] farther and be able to be in a position where they wonder who’s watching them and intimidating them; to wait longer to vote. To drive a hell of lot lo- — excuse me — a long way — to get to vote. They want to make it so hard and inconvenient that they hope people don’t vote at all. That’s what this is about.

This year alone, 17 states have enacted — not just proposed, but enacted — 28 new laws to make it harder for Americans to vote, not to mention — and catch this — nearly 400 additional bills Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass.

The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. It’s unrelenting, and we’re going to challenge it vigorously.

While this broad assault against voting rights is not unprecedented, it’s taking on a new and, literally, pernicious forms.

It’s no longer just about who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible voters to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote — who gets to count whether or not your vote counted at all. It’s about moving from independent election administrators who work for the people to polarized state legislatures and partisan actors who work for political parties.

To me, this is simple: This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history. Never before have they decided who gets to count — count — what votes count. Some — some legi- — state legislatures want to make it harder for you to vote. And if you vote, they want to be able to tell you your vote doesn’t count for any reason they make up. They want the ability to reject the final count and ignore the will of the people if their preferred candidate loses.

And they’re trying — not only targeting people of color, they’re targeting voters of all races and backgrounds. It’s with a simple target: who did not vote for them. That’s the target. It’s unconscionable. I mean, really, I — it’s hard to — it’s hard to declare just how critical this is. It’s simply unconscionable.

We’ve got to shore up our election system and address the threats of election subversion, not just from abroad — which I spent time with Putin talking about — but from home. From home.

We must ask those who represent us at the federal, state, and local levels: Will you deny the will of the people? Will you ignore their voices? We have to ask: Are you on the side of truth or lies; fact or fiction; justice or injustice; democracy or autocracy? That’s what it’s coming down to. […]

In 2020, democracy was put to a test — first by the pandemic; then by a desperate attempt to deny the reality and the results of the election; and then by a violent and deadly insurrection on the Capitol, the citadel of our democracy. I’ve been around a long time in public life. I thought I’ve seen it all or most of it all. But I never thought I’d see that, for real. And in spite of what you see on television — and you saw it — you have senators saying it was just a day at the Capitol, just people visiting the Capitol. […]

We’re going to face another test in 2022: a new wave of unprecedented voter suppression, and raw and sustained election subversion. We have to prepare now. […] We will be asking my Republican friends — in Congress, in states, in cities, in counties — to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote. (Applause.) Have you no shame? (Applause.)

Whether it’s stopping foreign interference in our elections or the spread of disinformation from within, we have to work together. […]

So hear me clearly: There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today — an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are — who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country. […]

I’ve said it before: We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. […]

My fellow Americans, it requires fair-mindedness; devotion to justice; corny as it sounds, a love of country. It requires us to unite in common purpose, to declare here and now: We, the people, will never give up. (Applause.) We will not give in. We will overcome. We will do it together. And guaranteeing the right to vote, ensuring every vote is counted has always been the most patriotic thing we can do. (Applause.)

Just remember, our late friend John Lewis said, “Freedom is not a state; it is an act.” “Freedom is not a state; it is an act.” And we must act, and we will act. For our cause is just, our vision is clear, and our hearts are full. (Applause.) For “We the People,” for our democracy, for America itself, we must act. (Applause.)

DHS Secretary Mayorkas Says Cuban Refugees Will Be Turned Away

During a July 13, 2021 press conference at the U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that the Biden administration was taking a hard line against Cubans who might seek to come to the United States seeking asylum. Said Mayorkas: “The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.” (Notably, Cubans in the U.S. have a history of supporting Republicans politically, whereas people from Mexico and Central America have traditionally been heavy supporters of Democrats.)

Mayorkas’ message to Cubans was a stark contrast to what he had said just two months earlier during a March 19, 2021 interview on CBS This Morning, when he spoke about a Biden administration program that would allow parents lawfully residing in the U.S. to request refugee status for their children in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Mayorkas noted that despite the enactment of this program — which was originally an Obama initiative that President Trump subsequently discontinued — some minors might attempt to enter the United States illegally. Said Mayorkas: “We well understand that out of desperation, some children might not wait. Some loving parents might send their child to traverse Mexico alone to reach the southern border — our southern border. I hope they don’t undertake that perilous journey. But if they do, we will not expel that young child. We will care for that young child and unite that child with a responsible parent. That is who we are as a nation and we can do it.”

Jen Psaki Chooses Not to Condemn Communism & Says That Cubans Seeking Asylum in the U.S. Will Be Turned Away

In a July 14, 2021 press conference, White House press secretary Jen Paski was asked: “Do you think that people are leaving Cuba because they don’t like communism?” In her reply, she carefully avoided saying the word “communism” or criticizing communism explicitly. Moreover, she said that any Cubans seeking to illegally enter the U.S. would be returned to their homeland or resettled elsewhere:

“I think we’ve been pretty clear that we think people are leaving Cuba — or not — leaving Cuba or protesting in the streets, as well, because they are opposed to the oppression, to the mismanagement of the government in the country.  And we certainly support their right to protest.  We support their efforts to speak out against their treatment in Cuba. […] [M]igrants interdicted in the Caribbean, who manifested in fear, are referred to USCIS for protection screening.  That’s what happens.  Those who do not manifest in fear or who are not found to have a credible fear following the screening are repatriated to their country of origin.  Those found to have a well-founded fear of persecution or torture are not brought to the United States; they are referred to a third country for resettlement. ” […] We stand with the Cuban people in their call for pre- — freedom from both the pandemic and from decades of oppression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

Biden Administration Plans to go after Conservatives & Influencers on Social Media for Radicalizing the January 6 Capitol Rioters

In July 2021, Human Events senior reporter Jack Posobiec wrote on Twitter:

• “The Biden Admin is now planning to release a list of conservative social media influencers that were followed by J6 defendants that questioned the integrity of the 2020 election. The list also includes members of Congress, per WH official. The database they are reportedly building partly consists of Pepe, Soy Boy & Carpe Donktum Memes.”
• “WH Comment: “They’re using any bit of material they can online or otherwise to use as ‘proof of radicalization.’ Printed pages of Telegram & Discord conversations numbering in the thousands, YouTube comments…whatever, look for this in early Sept.”
• “Wray is pushing it. Garland wants to focus on guns and hate crime, but Ron K, Jill, Chuck, and Nancy want him to take care of ‘Trump Terrorists’ behind J6. Biden going along with it for now.”

U.S. Eases Crippling Venezuela Sanction

On July 12, 2021, the Associated Press reported:

“The U.S. government on [July 12] moved to ease a crippling sanction imposed by the Trump administration on Venezuela by allowing companies to export propane to the troubled South American country, a step that could mitigate a shortage that has pushed people to cook on charcoal or wood grills. The Biden administration’s policy decision of wide impact in Venezuela comes as the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro has begun to allow foreign aid into the country and taken other steps to signal it is willing to engage with Washington. The license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury authorizes non-U.S. companies to export liquefied petroleum gas to Venezuela without risking sanctions. The authorization is valid for one year. […] Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. government imposed crippling sanctions seeking to isolate Maduro. Those restrictions have made it difficult for Venezuela to develop, sell or transport its oil — the backbone of its economy.

Biden Lifts Some Iranian Oil Sanctions

On July 13, 2021, The Washington Free Beacon reported: “The State Department informed Congress late Tuesday that it would waive sanctions on Iran’s illicit oil trade so that the country can access frozen funds from South Korea and Japan, the same day the Department of Justice announced charges on an Iranian spy network that sought to kidnap an American. The waiver, signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, allows the ‘transfer of Iranian funds in restricted accounts to exporters in Japan and the Republic of Korea,’ according to a notification sent to Congress by the State Department. The waiver allows Iranian money that had been frozen as a result of American sanctions to be freed up without violating the law.”

Biden Prepares to End More Sanctions on Iran

On July 14, 2021, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The Biden administration is prepared to lift American sanctions on Iran, including on its oil trade and banks, providing the hardline regime with a lifeline as its economy teeters on the brink of collapse, according to an Iranian government report outlining the status of negotiations with the United States. […] Iran says it has extracted guarantees from the United States that a full range of sanctions will be lifted, including those impacting Iran’s illicit oil trade, financial sector, state-controlled banks, automotive industry, aviation sector, and mining industry. Iran also claims the United States will suspend the implementation of several laws that have targeted Iran’s regional support for terrorist groups, including those in Syria. Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif disclosed these concessions in a 264-page report sent to the country’s parliament this week, portions of which were translated from Farsi for the Washington Free Beacon. […]

If the report is accurate, the number of new concessions goes even further than the original nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. […] Many of the sanctions Iran claims will be lifted were imposed by the Trump administration through executive orders. These can easily be canceled by the Biden administration and include sanctions on Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East and businesses tied to the country’s nuclear program, according to the Iranian report. […]

The report further claims that the United States is willing to suspend the implementation of several congressionally mandated laws, including the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act, the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act, and the Iran Sanctions Act. Each of these laws applied wide-ranging sanctions on Iranian officials and businesses. The Biden administration has the power to suspend their implementation under national security carveouts included in the bills.

Sanctions also will be lifted on Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and those affiliated with his office, the report claims. Most Iranian banks, including the Central Bank of Iran, also will be removed from the U.S. sanctions list.

The Biden Administration Uses the American Military to Resettle Illegal Aliens in the U.S. & Change the Nation’s Demographics As Well As the Electoral College Map

On July 14, 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson issued a blockbuster report in which he stated:

“This show has confirmed that the Biden administration has enlisted the U.S. military to move illegal immigrants secretly around our country. That is happening at Laughlin Air Force base in Texas. We know it’s happening there because a man called Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Burrows sent his subordinates an e-mail spelling it out very clearly, quote: ‘Over the next few days, weeks, or months,’ the note began, ‘… you may see passenger aircraft on our ramp transporting undocumented non-citizens. Please review the attached Public Affairs guidance on the issue.’ Burrows’ e-mail then instructed uniformed military personnel to hide what was happening on the base from the country they are sworn to serve. Quote: ‘Do not take photographs and refrain from posting anything on social media.’ […]

“Now, we got his e-mail from a whistleblower and at first, we doubted it could be real. During the last administration, you’ll remember, The Pentagon firmly refused to protect America’s southern border. ‘That’s not our job,’ they said. ‘It’s too political. Send us to Syria.’ And yet, according to this document, here was the very same U.S. military leadership at The Pentagon helping the Biden administration with maximum enforced stealth, with secrecy to subvert this country’s core immigration laws. It was hard to believe that could be happening, but it is happening. The Pentagon has confirmed it to us.

“Spokesman Chris Mitchell described the flights from Laughlin as noncitizen movement, part of what he called the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s mission. He told us then to direct any further questions to I.C.E., so we did. We called I.C.E. multiple times. I.C.E. did not deny they were using Laughlin Air Force base to relocate large numbers of foreign nationals into the interior of our country and do it secretly.”

Carlson’s report then showed a video segment of Center for Immigration Studies senior national fellow Todd Bensman providing details about the places to which the illegals were being transported. Said Bensman: “What’s happening most of the time is that they are boarding buses and heading into America’s heartland. A conveyor belt of commercial and charter buses just like this one in Del Rio, Texas are carrying tens of thousands, sight unseen, from Texas, Arizona, and California borderlands northward, and they are dropping their Haitian, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Central American family units in Florida and New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and to large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.”

Carlson then noted the obvious: that the Biden Administration was secretly using the U.S. military to assist in the task of “changing the electoral map” of the United States and enacting “demographic transformation in our country, without our consent, and in violation of our laws.”

The segment concluded with former Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller telling Carlson: “[W]hat I want to get across to your audience to really advance this story is to understand that what is happening now is unprecedented, and the whole conversation about border security up to this point in time has been wrong. This is not about an administration that is unable to protect the border. This is about an administration that in a very purposeful, planned, deliberate, painstaking fashion has turned our Border Patrol and I.C.E. agencies into resettlement agencies. That is the word that everyone needs to know and repeat. This is a planned resettlement. The largest of its kind, I would suggest perhaps in the history of the world in terms of the number of illegal border crossers being resettled into the interior of our country in violation of plain law.”

The Biden Administration Admits Its Collaboration with Facebook & Social Media Giants, Meaning That They Are Government Actors

At a July 15, 2021 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the Biden administration was actively identifying “problematic” posts for Facebook to censor or purge because they contained “misinformation” about COVID-19. “We are in regular touch with the social media platforms,” she stated, “and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team — given [that] this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.” “We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s Office,” Psaki added. “We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” “Facebook,” in turn, “needs to move more quickly to remove harmful violative posts,” said Psaki.

At the same press briefing, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said “we’re asking [social media companies] to consistently take action against misinformation superspreaders on their platforms.” “Misinformation takes away our freedom to make informed decisions about our health and the health of our loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. “Health misinformation has led people to resist wearing masks in high-risk settings. It’s led them to turn down proven treatments and to choose not to get vaccinated. This has led to avoidable illnesses and deaths.”

The New York Post noted that Psaki’s and Murthy’s professed concern about “misinformation” could be used — by the government and its social-media allies — as a pretext for censoring free speech and silencing all dissent — even if the dissidents were in fact correct in what they were saying:

“The demand for censorship — and Psaki’s admission of government involvement — follows a series of flip-flops from health officials who contradicted themselves throughout the pandemic on issues such as mask efficacy, as well as censorship of claims that later gained credibility, such as the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab…. Facebook this year stopped censoring posts that claimed COVID-19 may have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China due to “evolving” information that bolstered the theory. Social media networks have censored other posts before backtracking — notably including Facebook and Twitter censoring The Post’s reporting in October ^[2020] on documents from a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden that appeared to link his father to business pursuits in China and Ukraine.

John Coale, the attorney who was in the midst of filing lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and Google on behalf of Donald Trump, said that the Trump lawsuits would ultimately prove that the tech companies “are government actors” and that “therefore, the First Amendment does apply” — i.e., it requires them to permit freedom of speech without censorship that is supposedly rooted in a desire to stop “misinformation.”

On July 16, 2021, Psaki said that anyone who is banned from one social media platform for sharing misinformation — such as claims that COVID-19 vaccines could lead to infertility — should be banned from all of them. “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation,” she stated.

Four Major Stories That Were “Disinformation” — and Then Were Not

On July 22, 2021, DailyCaller.com published an article explaining the inherent danger of having a government that colludes with Big Tech to be the self-declared arbiters of what should, and what should not, qualify as “misinformation” or “disinformation.” In some cases, for example, stories that are widely disparaged and dismissed as false eventually turn out to be true, and vice versa. Some excerpts from the Daily Caller piece:

The White House announced a plan to partner with Facebook to flag problematic posts that it believed contained “disinformation” about novel coronavirus vaccines. But there were many stories labeled disinformation that turned out to be legitimate.

The Lab Leak Theory

For months after the coronavirus began its spread, Democrats and media talking heads alike dismissed the possibility that the virus could have leaked from a research laboratory like the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They scoffed at Republicans like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former President Donald Trump for saying they believed the virus had originated in a lab, and labeled it as a fringe conspiracy theory. But over a year into the pandemic, the lab leak theory has gained stronger ground.

Russian Bounties on American Soldiers

Just a few months before the 2020 presidential election, the media began to circulate a report suggesting Russian officials secretly placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers — effectively paying the Taliban to execute Americans. Everyone from The New York Times to now White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed the narrative. The Washington Post even gave Trump “four Pinocchios” for calling the story “fake news.” But some six months after the election, the story changed dramatically. A new statement from Biden’s White House said what former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said from the beginning: that the intelligence community did not have high confidence in the information.

Hunter Biden’s LaptopThe New York Post — and a number of people who shared the Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden — found themselves at least temporarily suspended from Twitter. The reason, according to Twitter, was that the story revealed personal information and was considered to be the product of “hacked materials” — in spite of the fact that the Post did not appear to have published anything resulting from a hack. The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a forensic analysis of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop — the source of the Post’s story — and determined the “smoking gun” email implicating his father in his overseas business dealings to be 100% authentic. Just after the election, however, outlets like NPR that had dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as “not really a story,” suddenly reversed course. […] 

Russian Collusion

Democrats and the media spent the better part of Trump’s first three years in office trying to make the Russian collusion narrative stick — and Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell claimed to have direct evidence of that collusion. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation came to an end with no indictment for Trump, Schiff doubled down, attacking then-Attorney General William Barr for summarizing Mueller’s report in a way that didn’t implicate Trump.

And the list doesn’t end there.

Claims that Trump snubbed veterans during a trip to France were rebutted by several close associates — including national security adviser-turned-Trump critic John Bolton.

Media outlets accused Trump of lying when he claimed senior members of former President Obama’s administration spied on his campaign — but those concerns turned out to be legitimate.

The question is obvious: with a record like that, should the White House — or anyone else, for that matter — have the authority to universally determine for Big Tech what qualifies as “disinformation”?

Biden Calls for a Ban on Handguns

During a televised CNN town hall on July 21, 2021, President Biden said: “The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon, whether it’s a 9mm pistol or whether it’s a rifle, is ridiculous. I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things.”

Biden Allows 600,000 Migrants into U.S. During His First 6 Months As President

On July 23, 2021, Breitbart.com reported:

President Joe Biden and his deputies have allowed more than 600,000 migrants to come across the porous southern border in just six months since his January inauguration. The huge inflow adds up to one migrant for every three children born in the United States during the same period in 2020.

The post-January 20 southern 600,000 inflow includes the 327,501 migrants allowed through the border into the United States under Title 8 of the nation’s immigration laws, plus the roughly 300,000 “got-away” migrants who evaded the U.S. border patrol. The inflow total does not include the migrants blocked at the border, nor the usual inflow of one million legal immigrants per year into a nation where roughly 3.7 million babies are born each year. […]

The Title 8 inflow includes roughly 235,000 adults and related children, plus 75,000 left-behind children and job-seeking youths who were accompanied to the border by coyotes. […]

The combined number is large because DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas is carefully opening many side doors in the border for migrants. For example, he has gradually raised the number of migrants who get through the Title 42 health barrier, from 14,000 in January up to 83,922 in June. That number is 25 times as many as the 3,320 migrants allowed through Trump’s Title 42 barrier in June 2020.

Mayorkas is also making it easier for economic migrants to sneak past the border.

In 2020, only about 69,000 migrants successfully got past Trump’s border, at a rate of roughly 5,750 migrants per month. However, under Mayorkas’ lenient policies, the rising inflow brought 50,000 illegal migrants across from mid-June to mid-July, an agency source told Breitbart News.

Under Trump, the detained migrants were often flown a thousand miles back to their countries for free. But Mayorkas instead directs his officers to shuttle the detained migrants back to a jumping-off point on the Mexican side of the border, where they rest up for another attempt.

Also, Mayorkas has largely abolished deportations and worksite actions by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the migrants who do sneak past the border. And his fellow Democrats are promising to amnesty all migrants who can persuade Democrat-overseen clerks that they arrived before January 2021.

Biden Keeps Title 42 in Place Temporarily

On July 26, 2021, the Biden administration — which was receiving considerable criticism for the chaos on the border amid a recent surge in the highly transmissible “delta variant” of the coronavirus that had caused the COVID-19 pandemic — announced that it would temporarily keep in place the Trump-era public health order known as Title 42, which authorized border control officials to expel people who had recently been in a nation with significant levels of communicable disease. “It will remain in place as long as that is the guidance from our health and medical experts,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

Very Few Released Migrants Report to ICE Offices As Required

On July 28, 2021, it was reported that just 6,700 of the roughly 55,000 illegal migrants who, during the preceding three months, had been released into the U.S. without a court date and directed to report to ICE within the next 60 days, had actually contacted ICE in compliance with those terms.  At the time of their release, the migrants were given a list of addresses and contacts for ICE offices nationwide and were instructed to report to one of them after reaching their desired destination.

The Biden-Harris “Root Causes” Approach to Immigration Reform

On July 29, 2021, the office of Vice President Harris released an 18-page report detailing how the Biden administration was taking a “root causes” approach to addressing the flood of illegal migrants flowing across America’s southern border. Some excerpts:

• It is in the national security interest of the United States to promote a democratic, prosperous, and secure Central America, a region closely connected to the United States by culture, geography, and trade.
• The Root Causes Strategy, directed by the President in Executive Order 14010, focuses on a coordinated, place-based approach to improve the underlying causes that push Central Americans to migrate …
• Weak investment in infrastructure and education and poor rule of law leaves Central America at a competitive disadvantage for external investments, economic growth, and talent retention. Weather
  shocks due to climate change contribute to growing poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity. Corruption and other government actions to undermine transparency and democratic governance limit
  confidence of the public in their governments and discourage domestic and foreign investment. Threats such as gang violence, criminal activity, and illicit drug flows challenge the security environment in
  Central America. Nevertheless, opportunities for change exist. A growing number of stakeholders, including from civil society and the private sector, are interested in pushing governments toward reforms that foster greater transparency and address climate change. Likeminded government actors, as well as multilateral banks, private companies, foundations, civil society organizations, and international organizations, are interested in partnering on efforts to address the root causes of migration.
• It is often a combination of multiple factors, resulting in a lack of hope that their country will improve, that marginalizes large populations within the region and pushes some people to migrate. As such, we must work across all pillars to create economic opportunities, empower women and youth, support responsive and transparent governments, and build communities where people feel safe.
• The strategy is organized under five pillars: • Pillar I: Addressing economic insecurity and inequality; Pillar II: Combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of
  law; Pillar III: Promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and a free press; Pillar IV: Countering and preventing violence, extortion, and other crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs, trafficking networks, and other organized criminal organizations; Pillar V: Combating sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence.
• Key to growth will be structural reforms to address impediments to investment, economic diversification, increased judicial transparency, improved governance and transparency, expanded access to financial capital for businesses, streamlining of government procedures to start businesses and pay taxes, investment in workers, and formalization of the economy. Inclusive growth, that reaches women and marginalized populations, and includes decent work, will be critical to creating hope among citizens in the region.
• The United States will work with governments to streamline regulatory processes and services, including via digitalization of government services such as records, databases, permitting, and tax collection. This will include efforts to address structural impediments to investment; support business incubation and acceleration to strengthen value chains by helping businesses produce highervalue goods in the agricultural and emerging sectors, and ensure all populations are incorporated into economic development policies.
• Governance challenges, including widespread corruption, undercut progress on economic opportunity, protection of human rights, and civilian security. Private companies cite corruption as an impediment to
  investment. Weak democratic institutions, coupled with rampant impunity, have lowered citizens’ trust in their governments and the independence of judicial systems. Contested elections and opaque government
  decision-making have led to violence.
• The United States will work with countries to promote reform agendas across all branches of government so government better serves all citizens. This will include a focus on adequately resourcing judicial and oversight institutions, ensuring their independence, and promoting reform of personnel selection and retention processes.
• Strengthen the independence of the justice sector: The United States will promote a merit-based, independent process for nomination and selection of justice and oversight officials, and establish anti-corruption norms limiting immunity of officials from prosecution and banning candidates for office with disqualifying criminal records. We will promote adequate funding of justice institutions so they have the resources to serve the country.
• Promote transparency: The United States will work with partners to promote transparency in electoral systems through reform and enforcement of electoral campaign finance rules and open list systems to allow for direct representation. We will empower independent audit and oversight institutions to monitor use of public funds, and promote transparency in government processes, including open government mechanisms and the promotion of open data.
• Improve efficacy of legislative branches: The United States will work with partners to root out corruption in legislative branches and improve the transparent and efficient functioning of those bodies.
• Marginalized populations, including women and girls, indigenous, Afrodescendent, and LGBTQI+ populations often suffer discrimination and may be victims of hate crimes. Victims of violence at the hand of the state or criminal organizations suffer from systemic violations of their rights under the law (including redress, protection, and recognition), and IDPs are particularly at risk. Labor rights activists, human rights and environmental defenders, and independent journalists face violence and intimidation. Authorities often do not hold perpetrators of these crimes accountable and labor law enforcement is weak. We will work with partners in the region, including civil society, to promote respect for human rights for all citizens.
• The United States will work with governments and civil society to strengthen legal frameworks, promote the enforcement of laws that protect citizens’ rights, support regional and domestic early warning systems to track risks for violations, and build institutional capacity to protect citizens’ rights.
• Promote a free press: The United States will work with governments and civil society to ensure citizens have access to information from independent sources to inform their choices.
• Strengthen independent media: The United States will support a regulatory environment that ensures independent media can operate without fear of reprisal or intimidation, and will support development of media that can serve as an effective oversight tool to those in power.
• Increasing security within communities is key to generating hope for citizens in the region so they can move safely to school and work, but also to attract investment. We will work with partner governments and community organizations to build professional security forces and focus on violence prevention and intervention to build a more secure region.
• The United States will support the development of well-trained civilian law enforcement and other security forces that can provide effective, accountable services with respect for the rule of law and human rights.
• The United States will work with governments to increase capacity of law enforcement and other security forces to address the unique transnational and national threats to the region, such as drug trafficking, gangs, extortion, smuggling, corruption, and money laundering, including through vetted and specialized units, regional cooperation, and legislative reform to increase penalties for organized crime.
• The United States will promote coordination and information sharing among countries in the region to address transnational crime, including to combat narcotics and other illicit trafficking.
• Build safe communities: The United States will work with governments, law enforcement, community organizations, and others to build trust between the community and government, prevent crime, and provide alternatives to youth considering a life of crime.
• Create safe spaces: The United States will work with municipalities and community organizations to increase the availability of safe spaces, such as parks and youth centers, and improve the safety of public transportation, so that citizens can engage in economic and social life without fear.
• The United States will work with a diverse range of stakeholders from government, civil society, and the private sector to prevent youth from joining gangs, including through opportunities to play, learn, work,
  and feel connected with their families and communities.
• Reintegrate offenders: The United States will work with governments and civil society to support offenders’ efforts to disengage from gangs and reintegrate into communities by addressing trauma, community resiliency, education and economic opportunity, and case management services.
• The United States will work with governments and civil society to prevent, address, and support victims of sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence.
• Build Partnerships: We will build a coalition of people, organizations, and businesses committed to creating economic opportunity and fostering political will for structural reforms in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
• Mobilize Investment: We will work with the private sector to mobilize investment in the region to create economic opportunity.
• Address Acute Causes: We will address humanitarian needs from the fall 2020 hurricanes, provide training and finance to jump start the economies after COVID-19 and hurricane devastation, and provide critical support to those in need of food assistance. We will focus on education and training for youth.
• Promote Reforms: We will focus our efforts on deepening implementation of initiatives that promote reforms fundamental to addressing root causes of migration, employing the full range of U.S. government tools to combat corruption and promote political will where necessary.
• Create Economic Opportunity: We will expand our partnership with foundations, civil society, and the private sector to deliver new economic opportunities to citizens in the region, and mobilize appropriate technological solutions.
• Fight Corruption: We will launch a regional anti-corruption initiative and work closely with partners to prosecute corruption and transnational criminal operations, including illicit political finance, migrant smuggling and trafficking cases, that will help improve governance in Central America.
• Address Climate Change and Improve Disaster Preparedness: We will work with partners to reinforce national and regional preparedness and disaster response capabilities and implement programs to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

On July 31, 2021, John Daniel Davidson of TheFederalist.com published a powerful critique laying bare the absurdity of the Biden-Harris “root causes” approach. Some excerpts:

“In just five months, it seems Vice President Kamala Harris has managed to crack the code on illegal immigration. All we have to do to ensure that Central Americans stop illegally crossing our border is to transform the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador into stable, prosperous democracies. That’s it! That’s the answer!

“Harris’s office on Thursday released what it calls a ‘Root Causes Strategy’ that lays out, in just 18 pages, what decades of policymakers and successive administrations have apparently missed: the reason so many Central Americans come to the United States illegally, it turns out, is because their countries are plagued by poverty, crime, corruption, and violence. Solve those problems and bang! — you solve illegal immigration. […]

“It’s hard to overstate the Biden administration’s fundamental unseriousness about all this, whether it be root causes of migration or the border itself. Every step of the way, Harris has shown a mixture of dismissiveness and incuriosity in her role as Biden’s ‘border czar.’ After a quick jaunt to Mexico and Guatemala last month, and an even more superficial stopover in El Paso (which lasted a few hours and didn’t include a visit to the physical border), Harris has now released what amounts to a list of warmed-over platitudes about creating opportunity and fighting corruption in Central America.

“The ‘five pillars’ Harris puts forward as the administration’s core strategy are exactly the kind of inept, unfocused, and often meaningless efforts that have come to nothing over the past two decades in the region: addressing poverty, fighting corruption, promoting human rights, fighting crime, and combating violence. There’s nothing wrong with these as overarching goals, but one must be realistic about the enormity of the task at hand, and cognizant of what’s been tried before — and failed. If this strategy document is any indication, no one in the Biden administration is being the least bit realistic here.

“For example, how will the United States accomplish these lofty goals? Take it away, team Harris: “Effecting systemic change and achieving the desired end state of a democratic, prosperous, and safe region will require the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to govern in a transparent, professional and inclusive manner that favors the public interest over narrow private interests.’

“That’s great, but does Harris know that the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, is almost certainly a drug-trafficker, whose brother was sentenced to life in prison back in March by a U.S. judge? Is Harris aware that President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, whom she met in June, is right now facing mass civil unrest and demands for his resignation over the firing of a special prosecutor who was investigating corruption cases linked to Giammattei?

“But please, let’s hear more about how we’ll never solve illegal immigration unless we can get Honduras and Guatemala to govern ‘in a transparent, professional and inclusive manner.’

“That of course is the whole point of this charade. If you begin with the assumption that the only way to stop illegal immigration is to transform Central America into a model of good governance and economic prosperity, then you’ll never stop illegal immigration. And it appears this is exactly the approach the Biden administration is taking.”

Biden’s DOJ Orders Treasury Department to Deliver Trump’s Taxes to Congress

In a letter dated July 30, 2021 and written by Acting Assistant Attorney General Dawn Johnsen, Biden’s Department of Justice ordered the U.S. Treasury to deliver former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress. Wrote Johnsen: “The statute at issue here is unambiguous: ‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee. Applying the proper degree of deference due the Committee, we believe that there is ample basis to conclude that its June 2021 Request for former President Trump’s tax information would further the Committee’s principal stated objective of assessing the IRS’s presidential audit program—a plainly legitimate area for congressional inquiry and possible legislation.” As the Daily Caller noted: “The Ways and Means Committee originally requested Trump’s returns in mid-June. Democrats in Congress have long tried to obtain Trump’s tax returns by force, subpoenaing Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and his IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, to deliver the returns to Congress in 2019. Mnuchin held up the process, however, and Trump’s DOJ at the time released a memo arguing that ‘the Constitution requires the Committee to demonstrate a legitimate legislative purpose,’” according to The Hill.

Biden Administration Sues Texas & Governor Greg Abbott Over Executive Order Restricting The Transportation Of Migrants

On July 30, 2021, the Biden administration’s DOJ filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas, as a challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that — in an effort to prevent any further spread of the coronavirus pandemic — restricted the ground transportation of illegal migrants, most of whom were unvaccinated, to various locations across the state.  The Biden lawsuit argued that:  “The executive order violates the Supremacy Clause and causes injury to the United States and to individuals whom the United States is charged to protect, jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody, risking the safety of federal law enforcement personnel and their families, and exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.” Further, the suit claimed that the governor’s order obstructed Congress from performing its duty to craft and enforce immigration laws. The lawsuit also warned: “If CBP (Customs and Border Protection) is unable to transfer noncitizens out of CBP facilities, CBP detention numbers and the average time individuals are in custody will rise, conditions will deteriorate, and there will be a greater risk of COVID-19 transmission to noncitizens and staff.”

Biden Extends Residential Evictions Moratorium, in Contravention of Supreme Court Ruling

On his first official day in office — January 20, 2021 — President Biden signed 19 separate executive actions. One of them was a request to extend the CARES Act, a federal moratorium on evictions which was enacted in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was in its early days. The CARES Act prevented — for a period of 120 days — landlords from evicting anyone from their residential apartments for nonpayment of rent — if those rental properties had federally backed mortgages or participated in any federal housing subsidy programs, and the tenants earned no more than $99,000 per year as individuals, or $198,000 per year as couples. At the end of that period, the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services issued a second eviction moratorium through the CDC that, unlike the CARES Act, applied to all rental properties in the United States. President Biden subsequently renewed that order several times, also through the CDC.

In March 2021, for instance, the CDC extended the suggested moratorium on evictions through the end of June. Then, once June arrived, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided to permit the moratorium to continue until the end of July but no further. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority, wrote in his opinion that “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [had] exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium.” Moreover, he declared that “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”

In compliance with the Court ruling, the CDC announced in June 2021 that its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, had “signed an extension [until July 31] to the eviction moratorium further preventing the eviction of tenants who are unable to make rental payments,” with the stipulation that “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”

The Biden administration was unhappy with the Court ruling and the CDC announcement. As White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: “Given the recent spread of the delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”

“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Psaki added, “the president calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” She claimed that the evictions ban was “a critical backstop to prevent hard-pressed renters and their families who lost jobs or income due to the COVID-19 pandemic from being evicted for nonpayment of rent.”

House Democratic leaders hoped to rally enough support in Congress to extend the moratorium through the end of the year. In a joint statement, Democratic U.S. Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Jimmy Gomez of California, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said: “This pandemic is not behind us, and our federal housing policies should reflect that stark reality. With the United States facing the most severe eviction crisis in its history, our local and state governments still need more time to distribute critical rental assistance to help keep a roof over the heads of our constituents.”

On July 30, House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters drafted an emergency bill calling for an extension of the moratorium until December 31, but several moderate Democrats were opposed to the idea.

On July 30 as well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the CDC should, in defiance of the Supreme Court decision, extend the eviction moratorium until October 18 without congressional action. “The CDC has the power to extend the eviction moratorium,” she tweeted on August 1. “As they double down on masks, why wouldn’t they extend the moratorium in light of delta variant?”

On August 1, the Biden administration asked the CDC to “consider once again” extending the moratorium by means of executive action. In response, the CDC said it lacked the legal authority to do so.

On August 2, two days after the federal moratorium on evictions had expired, the Biden administration urged landlords to refrain for 30 days from evicting tenants and to seek compensation in the form of federal emergency rental assistance. The administration also exhorted states and cities to enact their own policies to help renters stay in their homes.

On August 3, the Biden administration — in response to pressure from Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others in the Democratic Party’s far-left wing — announced that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling, a short-term fix had been arranged to prevent millions of renters from being evicted through at least early October. The fix came in the form of a new 60-day CDC moratorium on residential evictions that would apply wherever there was a “substantial” or “high” COVID-19 community transmission rate – i.e., approximately 80% of all U.S. counties, where 88% of all Americans lived. “The emergence of the Delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are unvaccinated,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”

In light of Biden’s disregard for the Supreme Court ruling, the constitutionality of the fix was questioned. On August 4, the Alabama Association of Realtors (AAR), which is a coalition of housing groups, filed an emergency legal challenge accusing the CDC of issuing its latest ban on evictions “for nakedly political reasons — to ease the political pressure, shift the blame to the courts for ending the moratorium, and use litigation delays to achieve a policy objective.” Added the AAR lawsuit: “[T]he CDC caved to the political pressure by extending the moratorium, without providing any legal basis. In substance and effect, the CDC’s latest action is an extension of the same unlawful ban on evictions that has been in effect since September 2020.”

On August 5, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich gave Biden’s Department of Justice a 9 a.m. Eastern Time deadline by which to respond to the AAR lawsuit.

In late August 2021, the Supreme Court issued a majority opinion striking down the CDC’s extension of the eviction moratorium. Said the decision: “We expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of ‘vast economic and political significance.’” Adding that the Constitution “does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends,” the decision further stated that “if a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

Biden Asks OPEC & Its Allies to Increase Oil Output While He Limits U.S. Energy Production, They Say No

Between August 2020 and August 2021, U.S. oil production declined from more than 13 million barrels per day to approximately 11.2 million barrels per day.

On August 11, 2021, the Biden Administration — signaling its alarm vis-a-vis America’s rapidly rising fuel prices and its sudden loss of energy independence under President Biden — called on OPEC and its allies to increase their oil production. As a New York Post piece by Jeff Mordock noted: “Domestic producers, said Mr. Biden should have looked to them to bolster the nation’s oil supply. Instead, Mr. Biden turned to OPEC, a cartel of 13 of the world’s largest oil producers and a handful of nonmember allies, including Russia. Mr. Biden has limited U.S. oil production by issuing a slew of executive orders prioritizing climate change over the American energy industry.”

Texas Alliance of Energy Producers president Jason Mogdin said of the Biden policies: “It only stings more when the president calls on Russia and Saudi Arabia to increase their energy production when we could do it right here in the United States. His first call should have been to the American producers to meet the needs of the American consumer.”

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said: “Begging the Saudis to increase production while the White House ties one hand behind the backs of American energy companies is pathetic and embarrassing.”

A few days later, OPEC and its allies, including Russia, rejected Biden’s request. As Forbes senior contributor David Blackmon wrote: “This one was easy to see coming, as President Joe Biden’s request for the OPEC+ countries to pour more of their own oil onto the global market in order to ease crude oil prices made no real economic sense from the beginning…. Biden was basically asking these other countries to damage their own economies in an effort to ease inflation in the United States. Thus it was that yesterday [August 16], the OPEC+ participating countries, including Russia, let it be known that they have no intention of responding positively to the Biden request…. As reported by Reuters, ‘OPEC and its allies, including Russia, believe oil markets do not need more oil than they plan to release in the coming months, despite U.S. pressure to add supplies to check an oil price rise.’”

Federal Judge Orders Biden Administration to Resume “Remain in Mexico” Policy

On August 13, 2021, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — ruling on a lawsuit that had been brought jointly by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the state of Missouri — ordered the Biden administration to resume the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy vis-a-vis asylum seekers. In accord with President Biden’s wishes, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had terminated the Trump policy — formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — with a June 1, 2021 memorandum.

Wrote Judge Kacsmaryk in his decision: “At the very least, the Secretary was required to show a reasoned decision for discounting the benefits of MPP. Instead, the June 1 Memorandum does not address the problems created by false claims of asylum or how MPP addressed those problems. Likewise, it does not address the fact that DHS previously found that ‘approximately 9 out of 10 asylum claims from Northern Triangle countries are ultimately found non-meritorious by federal immigration judges,’ and that MPP discouraged such aliens from traveling and attempting to cross the border in the first place.”

Kacsmaryk stayed his order for seven days in order to allow the federal government to seek relief at an appeals court.

On September 9, 2021, a Biden administration official told CBS News that the DHS would comply with Judge Kacsmaryk’s court order.

Biden Approves Largest-Ever Permanent Increase to Food Stamp Program

On August 16, 2021, the Biden administration announced the largest-ever permanent increase — $20 billion — to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The increase did not require congressional approval, was meant to be permanent, and raised food-stamp stipends by more than 20% above their pre-COVID-19 pandemic level.

The Afghanistan Debacle

In February 2020, the Trump administration negotiated an agreement with the Taliban. The accord, which excluded the Afghan government, called for the U.S. to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan from 13,000 to 8,600 by July 2020, followed eventually by a full U.S. withdrawal by May 1, 2021. That withdrawal, however, was contingent upon the Taliban meeting a series of clearly articulated non-aggression requirements.

​But Chris Miller, the Trump administration’s final secretary of defense, said in August 2021 that Trump’s deal with the Taliban was in fact nothing more than a “play” intended to pressure Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to either resign or agree to a power-sharing agreement with the Taliban that would allow the U.S. to keep approximately 800 to 850 troops in Afghanistan for counterterrorism purposes. Said Miller: “The whole policy strategy going forward was ‘Ghani is going to have to deal with the Taliban.’ And it wasn’t going to be a 50-50 split between the Afghan government and Taliban. We knew that. It was going to be 75-25, and then you flip this thing into an interim government. It wasn’t an unconditional surrender: ‘We’re leaving, heading for the door.​’ We weren’t just going to head for the door. We were going to jam Ghani hard and make him cut a deal with the Taliban. It would have been ugly. It wouldn’t have been great. But there was no plan to just leave.”

In the spring and summer of 2021, the Biden administration decided to withdraw the U.S. entirely from Afghanistan, but it did so in a manner that was catastrophic for America, its NATO allies, and the world at large.

• For Details of the Disastrous Biden Policy in Afghanistan, Click Here.

Biden Misstates U.S. Position on Defense of Taiwan, Angers China

In an August 19, 2021 interview aired by ABC News, President Biden was asked to comment on the fact that Chinese state media were reporting that America’s chaotic military and civilian withdrawal from Afghanistan proved that Washington could not be relied on to defend Taiwan in the event of aggression by China. Biden replied that Taiwan, as well as South Korea and NATO, were situations that bore no parallel to Afghanistan, and he wrongly lumped Taiwan together with countries to which the U.S. has made explicit defense commitments — i.e., NATO nations and South Korea:

“They are…entities we’ve made agreements with based on not a civil war they’re having on that island or in South Korea, but on an agreement where they have a unity government that, in fact, is trying to keep bad guys from doing bad things to them. We have made (and) kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about that.”

After the interview, a senior Biden administration official said that America’s “policy with regard to Taiwan has not changed,” causing analysts to conclude that Biden had misspoken.

The next day, August 20, China’s Global Times denounced Biden in an editorial:

“No matter the reasons why Biden made such a remark, it’s empty talk without any real strategic determination and actual military preparation. If the Biden administration insists on the president’s claims, breaking the status quo of the Taiwan Strait by shifting from ‘strategic ambiguity’ to making a clear statement of its defence of Taiwan, then it will have to prepare for much greater storms in the Strait. The mainland will certainly make according adjustments to its Taiwan Strait strategy. The Strait will enter a new era which will see intensifying games…. If the Taiwan authorities lose their mind to cross the red line of the Anti-Secession Law at the instigation of the US, they will surely be sacrificed for US strategic interests.”

According to The Straits Times:

“While Washington is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, it has long followed a policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on whether it would intervene militarily to protect Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

“Article 5 is a Nato agreement that states that an attack on one member of the alliance is viewed as an attack on all. South Korea is also a US treaty ally with a mutual defence agreement, but US relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan have been unofficial since Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979.

“Some prominent US academics and others have argued that Washington should give Taiwan a more explicit security guarantee in the light of increasing military pressure from Beijing, but Mr Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator Kurt Campbell has appeared to reject this, saying in May there were “significant downsides” to such an approach.

“Ms Bonnie Glaser, a Taiwan expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, called Mr Biden’s apparent mischaracterisation unfortunate.”

Troubling Inflation Rates

On August 27, 2021, The Epoch Times reported:

“The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the so-called core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, vaulted in the 12 months through July to levels not seen in 30 years. The Commerce Department said in a release Friday [August 27] that core PCE rose 3.6 percent over the year in July, matching last month’s level, which was an increase from 3.5 percent in May and 3.1 percent in April. The last time the core PCE inflation gauge saw a similar year-over-year vault was in July 1991, while the highest level the measure has hit is 10.2 percent in February 1975, when the economy was gripped in a troubling upwards wage-price spiral fueled by rising inflation expectations on the part of consumers.”

Biden Refers to Black Adviser Cedric Richmond As a “Boy”

While briefing state governors and local officials on August 30, 2021 about his administration’s response to Hurricane Ida’s destruction of New Orleans, President Biden referred to a black adviser, former Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, as a “boy.” “I’m here with my senior adviser and boy who knows Louisiana very, very well, man, and, and New Orleans: Cedric Richmond,” said Biden.

Resettling Many Thousands of Afghanis into U.S. Swing States

On August 30, 2021, Breitbart.com reported:

“President Joe Biden’s federal agencies, with the help of refugee contractors, plan to resettle Afghans across a multitude of swing states…. [T]housands of Afghans are being flown to Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, where they are then dispersed throughout the United States. Many thousands are heading to swing states. Just this past week, 11 flights of Afghans were taken to Wisconsin while hundreds of others are being resettled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More are going to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition, Afghans are being resettled throughout West Texas, areas of Arizona, the suburbs of Virginia, as well as Akron, Ohio, and Jacksonville, Florida, while refugee contractors in North Carolina hope to resettle Afghans in the state. While the Biden administration has been unclear about the total number of Afghans it is seeking to resettle across the U.S., refugee contractors are expecting tens of thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands when the operation is completed.

“Afghans with Special Immigrant Visa (SIVs), a minority of the Afghans arriving, have green cards and can apply for naturalized American citizenship after living in the U.S. for five years. Afghans arriving on refugee status can apply for a green card after living in the U.S. for a year. After obtaining their green card, they can then apply for naturalized American citizenship after five years of living in the U.S. For the tens of thousands of Afghans that the Biden administration is giving humanitarian parole to come to the U.S., they must adjust status to secure green cards after two years. Later, they too could eventually get naturalized American citizenship.”

Biden Falsely Claims He Visited the Tree of Life Synagogue after 2018 Massacre There

On September 2, 2021, during a virtual address in advance of the Jewish holidays Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Biden claimed that he had visited the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after an October 2018 mass shooting in which a lone gunman had murdered 11 Jewish worshippers in the synagogue during Shabbat morning services. “I remember spending time at the, you know, going to the, you know, the Tree of Life synagogue, speaking with them,” said Biden. But in a phone interview shortly after Biden had made that claim, Tree of Life Executive Director Barb Feige said it was untrue. As the New York Post reported, Feige “said firmly that ‘no’ Biden didn’t visit, even before taking office when he had a lower public profile as a former vice president and then-Democratic presidential candidate.” On September 3, 2021, the White House: (a) confirmed to the New York Post that the president had never visited the synagogue, and (b) stated that Biden was instead referring “to a call he had with the Tree of Life rabbi in 2019.” The latter claim contradicted Biden’s assertion the he remembered “spending time at” the synagogue.

Vowing to Fight Texas Pro-Life Law

On September 6, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland released a statement on how the Department of Justice would respond to the state of Texas’ recently passed “Heartbeat Act,” which placed restrictions on the performance of abortions after a baby’s heartbeat could be detected, generally around six weeks after conception. The law did not authorize law-enforcement to enforce the statute, but instead permitted individual citizens to report on those who chose to facilitate or perform abortions after the six-week period. When the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, declined a request that it issue an emergency order to stop the bill, Garland said the DOJ would “provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack.” “We have reached out to US attorneys’ offices and FBI field offices in Texas and across the country to discuss our enforcement authorities,” he added. “We will not tolerate violence against those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services, physical obstruction or property damage in violation of the FACE Act.” (He was referring to the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibited anyone from “intentionally injuring, intimidating, or interfering with” any person in order to prevent them from “obtaining or providing reproductive health services.”) The Supreme Court was asked to issue an emergency order to stop the bill, but in a 5-4 vote, the Court declined to do so. President Biden, for his part, said in a statement:

• “This extreme Texas law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century.”
• “The Texas law will significantly impair women’s access to the health care they need, particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes. And, outrageously, it deputizes private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who they believe has helped another person get an abortion, which might even include family members, health care workers, front desk staff at a health care clinic, or strangers with no connection to the individual.”

When asked his opinion on when human life begins, Biden said: “I respect … those who believe life begins at the moment of conception. And I respect that. I don’t agree, but I respect that.”

Biden Administration Sues Texas Over Pro-Life Law

On September 8, 2021, Merrick Garland announced that the Biden administration was suing Texas over the Heartbeat Act. “The Department of Justice has a duty to defend the constitution of the United States and to uphold the rule of law,” said Garland. “Today we fulfill that duty by filing the lawsuit I have just described.”

COVID Vaccine & Testing Mandates for Private Sector and Government Employees & Contractors

On September 9, 2021, The Epoch Times reported:

“President Joe Biden will direct the Department of Labor to develop a rule that companies with more than 100 employees will require vaccinations or once-per-week testing for their workers,… according to a White House fact sheet. The administration’s rule will require that ‘all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work,’ which will impact more than 80 million workers [at some 50,000 locations] in the private sector.

“The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard to implement the requirement, the document said. It did not make any mention regarding religious exemption or individuals whose doctors have recommended against getting COVID-19 shots.

“Biden will further sign an executive order requiring most federal employees and contractors to get a COVID-19 vaccine without the option of getting regular testing, according to the document.”

Private businesses failing to comply with the vaccine mandate would face fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

In his September 9 speech announcing the COVID vaccine mandates, Biden said the following:

“Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated, even though the vaccine is safe, effective, and free…. When I became president, about 2 million Americans were fully vaccinated. Today, over 175 million Americans have that protection. Before I took office, we hadn’t ordered enough vaccine for every American. Just weeks in office, we did. The week before I took office on January 20th of this year, over 25,000 Americans died that week from COVID-19. Last week, that grim weekly toll was down 70%. …

“Highly contagious Delta variant that I began to warn America about back in July spread late summer, like it did in other countries before us. While the vaccines provide strong protection for the vaccinated, we read about and hear about and we see the stories of hospitalized people, people on their deathbeds among the unvaccinated over the past few weeks. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and it’s caused by the fact that despite America having unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months free vaccines have been available in 80,000 different locations, we still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot.

“And to make matters worse, there are elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19. Instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated and mask up, they’re ordering mobile morgues for the unvaccinated dying from COVID in their communities. This is totally unacceptable. …

“The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing. Nearly three quarters of the eligible have gotten at least one shot, but one quarter has not gotten any. That’s nearly 80 million Americans not vaccinated. In a country as large as ours, that’s 25% minority. That 25% can cause a lot of damage, and they are. The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, are overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or pancreatitis or cancer. …

“I want to emphasize that the vaccines provide very strong protection from severe illness from COVID-19. I know there’s a lot of confusion and misinformation, but the world’s leading scientists confirm that if you’re fully vaccinated, your risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is very low. In fact, based on available data from the summer, only one out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day. These are the facts. So here’s where we stand. The path ahead, even with the Delta variant, is not nearly as bad as last winter. But what makes it incredibly more frustrating is that we have the tools to combat COVID-19, and a distinct minority of Americans supported by a distinct minority of elected officials are keeping us from turning the corner.

“These pandemic politics [inaudible] are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die. We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal. As your president, I’m announcing tonight a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated to combat those blocking public health. …

“First, we must increase vaccinations among the unvaccinated with new vaccination requirements. With nearly 80 million eligible Americans who have not gotten vaccinated, many said they were waiting for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA. Last month, the FDA granted that approval, so the time for waiting is over. … [S]o tonight, I’m announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated, or show a negative test at least once a week. …

“We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers. We’re going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America. My plan will extend the vaccination requirements that I previously issued in the healthcare field. Already, I’ve announced we’ll be requiring vaccinations at all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid, because I had that federal authority. Tonight, I’m using that same authority to expand that to cover those who work in hospitals, home healthcare facilities, and our other medical facilities, a total of 17 million healthcare workers. If you’re seeking care at a health facility, you should be able to know that the people treating you are vaccinated, simple, straightforward, period. Next, I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated, all.

“I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated. If you want to do business with the federal government, vaccinate your workforce. And tonight, I’m removing one of the last remaining obstacles that make it difficult for you to get vaccinated. The Department of Labor will require employers with 100 or more workers to give those workers paid time off to get vaccinated. No one should lose pay in order to get vaccinated or take a loved one to get vaccinated. Today, in total, the vaccine requirements in my plan will affect about 100 million Americans, two thirds of all workers. And for other sectors, I issue this appeal: to those of you running large entertainment venues, from sports arenas to concert venues to movie theaters, please require folks to get vaccinated or show a negative test as a condition of entry. …

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us. … So please do the right thing…. Second piece of my plan is continuing to protect the vaccinated. For the vast majority of you who’ve gotten vaccinated, I understand your anger at those who haven’t gotten vaccinated. I understand the anxiety about getting a breakthrough case, but as the science makes clear, if you’re fully vaccinated, you’re highly protected from severe illness, even if you get COVID-19. In fact, recent data indicates there is only one confirmed positive case per 5,000 fully vaccinated Americans per day. You’re as safe as possible, and we’re doing everything we can to keep it that way, keep you safe. …

“Now, to the schools. We know that if schools follow the science and implement the safety measures like testing, masking, adequate ventilation systems which we provided the money for, social distancing, and vaccinations, then children can be safe from COVID-19 in schools. Today, about 90% of school staffs and teachers are vaccinated. We should get that to 100%. My administration has already required teachers at the school that’s run by the Defense Department, because I have the authority as president in the federal system, the Defense Department and the Interior Department to get vaccinated. That’s authority I possess. Tonight, I’m announcing that we’ll require all of nearly 300,000 educators in the federal paid Head Start Program must be vaccinated as well to protect your youngest, our youngest, most precious Americans, and give parents the comfort.

“And tonight, I’m calling on all governors to require vaccination for all teachers and staff. Some already have done so. We need more to step up. Vaccination requirements in schools are nothing new. They work. They’re overwhelmingly supported by educators and their unions. And all school officials trying to do the right thing by our children, I’ll always be on your side. Let me be blunt. My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions. Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them, and even threatens their salaries or their jobs. Talk about bullying in schools.

“If they’ll not help, if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way. The Department of Education has already begun to take legal action against states undermining protection that local school officials have ordered. …

“In addition to testing, we know masking helps stop the spread of COVID-19. That’s why when I came into office, I required masks for all federal buildings, on federal lands, on airlines, and other modes of transportation. Today, tonight, I’m announcing that the Transportation Safety Administration, the TSA, will double the fines on travelers that refuse to mask. If you break the rules, be prepared to pay. And by the way, show some respect. The anger you see on television toward flight attendants and others doing their job is wrong. It’s ugly.”

Psaki Had Recently Said That It Was “Not the Role of the Federal Government” to Issue Vaccine Mandates

On July 23, 2021, a reporter asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki if “perhaps the federal government should step in and issue mandates” requiring people to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Psaki replied: “Well, I think the question here — one, that’s not the role of the federal government; that is the role that institutions, private-sector entities, and others may take.  That certainly is appropriate.  Also, local communities are going to take steps they need to take in order to protect people in their communities.”

Biden’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Does Not Apply to Illegal Aliens

On September 10, 2021, Fox News reported: “Biden stopped short of mandating the vaccine for illegal immigrants attempting to cross America’s border, even though about 30% of immigrants held at federal detention facilities are refusing to be vaccinated — and they have the option to refuse. Meanwhile, more than 18% of migrant families who recently crossed the border tested positive for COVID before being released by Border Patrol. Another 20% of unaccompanied minors tested positive for the virus.”

No Exemption from Vaccine Mandate for Those with Natural Antibodies

Biden’s vaccine mandate provided no exemption for people who had previously contracted COVID and thereby developed natural antibodies.

Vaccine Mandate Is Unconstitutional

On September 10, 2021, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy explained that Biden’s vaccine mandate was unconstitutional. Some excerpts from McCarthy:

“The administration is … well aware that the national vaccine mandate that the president is poised to issue is unlawful. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain made the obvious explicit by retweeting a progressive commentator’s observation that the ploy of imposing the vaccine requirement as a workplace-safety rule under OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is the ‘ultimate work-around.’ Translation: The president knows that an executive order mandating COVID vaccination would be shot down instantly, so he’s trying to camouflage it in a maze of Labor Department regulation.

“Even on that score, the gambit cannot be justified. OSHA is trying to evade the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement of a regulatory commentary period by slamming the vaccine dictate through as an ‘Emergency Testing Standard.’ It has been nearly 40 years since OSHA tried that trick, mainly because the courts struck it down, on an asbestos regulation, in 1983.

“In a sensible world, where the originalist interpretation of the Constitution governed, Biden’s move would be patently unconstitutional. Congress has no overarching public-health authority. OSHA relies for its regulations on Congress’ power under the commerce clause. But a vaccine isn’t even commerce, let alone interstate commerce.

“In our federalist system as originally designed, the states were to be sovereign in governing their internal affairs. In that tradition, it is the states, not the federal government, that have imposed vaccination requirements, particularly in schools. […]

“[I]f Congress had authorized OSHA to issue such a regulation, OSHA would not be scheming to dodge administrative-procedure requirements. The president and his administration know they are in the wrong.”

Following the announcement of President Biden’s vaccine mandate, the prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz said:

* “Number 1, is this something the federal government can do as compared to the states? The states have police power. The federal government doesn’t have police power. The federal government’s powers have to derive from the text of the Constitution.”

* “I think the courts will say the federal government does have the power because this is a national issue across the state lines. It’s not limited to states. It’s contagious. I think they will say that in the event that science supports it, there can be mandated vaccinations with exceptions. [But such mandates are] generally relegated to the legislature in our system of government, so I think the courts will focus on that issue first and say that the president may not have the authority to do this without congressional authorization.”

* “You can’t say it’s an emergency. This problem has existed since the first day of the Biden administration, and it will continue to exist on the last day of the Biden administration because we’re not going to see an end of COVID. We’re going to see COVID become like the flu. Seasonal different variations, different vaccinations, so it shouldn’t be done under the rubric of emergency. It should be done under the rubric of ordinary congressional power.”

* “There will be individuals who will be fired, and they’ll sue immediately. There will be companies—and I know there are some already who said we refuse to obey this mandate—and we’ve had companies and states indicate they’re going to file suit.”

Biden Had Previously Said He Would Not Make Vaccines Mandatory

On December 4, 2020, President-elect Biden told a reporter that he would not make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory. “No – I don’t think it should be mandatory,” said Biden. “I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory. But I will do everything in my power as President of the United States to encourage people to do the right thing and when they do it, demonstrate that it matters.”

Nancy Pelosi Likewise Had Recently Said That Vaccine Mandates Were Impermissible

During an April 29, 2021 press conference, a reporter had asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “Why not consider something like requiring that everyone be fully vaccinated?  Why require masks at a time when public health officials want the message to be about vaccination?”

Pelosi replied: “So – so here is the thing.  We are – we cannot require someone to be vaccinated. That’s just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn’t. I can’t go to the Capitol Physician and say, ‘Give me the names of people who aren’t vaccinated, so I can go encourage them or make it known to others to encourage them to be vaccinated.’  So we can’t – we can’t do that…. So, if we could, but we can’t require vaccinations for the Members [of Congress], much less for the American people.”

Producer Prices Soar

On September 10, 2021, Breitbart.com reported: “Prices charged by U.S. businesses jumped higher than expected in August, data from the Department of Labor said [on September 10]. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Producer Price Index rose 0.7 percent compared with July. Compared with a year ago, the index is up 8.3 percent,  the fastest pace of price increases in data going back to 2010.”

Members of Congress & Staffers Exempt from Vaccine Mandate

Biden’s vaccine mandate exempted members of Congress, their staffs, and any person employed by Congress.

Cedric Richmond & Joe Biden Vow to “Run Over” Republicans Who Oppose Vaccine Mandates & “Get Them Out of the Way”

On September 9, 2021, White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond stated that President Biden would “run over” any Republican governors who might try to resist the new federal vaccine mandates. “The one thing I admire about this president,”  said Richmond, “is the fact that we are always going to put people above politics. And those governors that stand in the way, I think, it was very clear from the president’s tone [in his speech] today that he will run over them.”

In his September 9, 2021 speech announcing new federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Biden said: “And tonight, I’m calling on all governors to require vaccination for all teachers and staff…. Let me be blunt. My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you [teachers] and these lifesaving actions. Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them, and even threatens their salaries or their jobs. Talk about bullying in schools. If they’ll not help, if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”

Biden Says “Our Patience is Wearing Thin” with the Unvaccinated

In a September 9, 2021 speech announcing his COVID vaccine mandates, President Biden said: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your [the unvaccinated’s] refusal has cost all of us.”

Biden Cuts Shipments of Monoclonal Antibodies to Florida

In September 2021, President Biden decided to restrict the federal government’s shipments of monoclonal antibody treatments for the coronavirus to Southern Republican states — most notably Florida and Texas, where COVID vaccination rates lagged behind the national average, and where demand for the antibodies was therefore high. As Breitbart.com reported on September 16, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided fewer than 31,000 doses to Florida for that particular week – less than half of the 70,000 doses requested by the state.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida condemned the president’s decision. Asserting that that the Biden administration was “punishing Florida” for electing not to impose vaccine mandates on its business establishments and other entities across the state, Rubio said: “Now they have decided they’re going to ration the antibody treatments…. These people are bordering now on tyranny and its outrageous. It has to stop.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the actions of Biden’s HHS by noting that just seven states were responsible for 70 percent of the antibody orders filled by the federal government. Claiming that the governors of those seven states had failed to protect their residents by not imposing vaccine mandates – or penalties against those failing to get vaccinated – she said: “Clearly the way to protect people and save more lives is to get them vaccinated, so that they don’t get the COVID to begin with.”

A few days earlier, President Biden had announced his plan to increase shipments of the antibody treatments to states by 50 percent, and Psaki confirmed that those shipments had indeed grown from 100,000 doses per week to 150,000. But she nonetheless defended the decision to restrict shipments to the particular states in question, because the government’s supply of the antibody treatment doses was “not unlimited.”

Contrary to Psaki’s implication, however, manufacturers of the treatment had already indicated their willingness to ramp up production. Along those lines, a reporter asked Psaki: “But there have been no reports of a lack of supply, so why cut them to those states only if there’s no reports of a lack of supply?” Psaki replied: “I think our role as the — as the government overseeing the entire country is to be equitable in how we distribute. We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma, nor do I think are you suggesting that. I think we have to move on [to another questioner].”

“I’m Running To Change The Dynamic Of How The Economy Grows”

Speaking about the Democrats’ proposed $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill, Biden said on September 24, 2021: “We talk about price tags.  The [bill] — it is zero price tag on the debt.  We’re paying — we’re going to pay for everything we spend.  So they say it’s not — you know, people, understandably — “Well, you know, it started off at $6 trillion, now it’s $3.5 trillion.  Now it’s — is it going to be $2.9?  Is it? It’s going to be zero — zero.  Because in the — in that plan that I put forward — and I said from the outset — I said, ‘I’m running to change the dynamic of how the economy grows.’ I’m tired of trickle-down.  The trillionaires and billionaires are doing very, very well — you all know it; you’ve all reported it — and in the middle of this crisis.  But hardworking people and middle-class people are getting hurt.”

Biden Vows To “Fundamentally Change the Structure and the Nature of the Economy”

On September 25, 2021, President Biden said the following about the $1.9 trillion infrastructure bill he was promoting: “My first piece of economic legislation will “fundamentally change the structure and the nature of the economy in this country.”

False Claims That Border Patrol Agents Are Whipping Illegal Haitian Migrants

During the week of September 19, 2021 – by which time more than 14,000 Haitians had recently gathered under the Del Rio International Bridge on the banks of the Rio Grande in hopes of gaining approval for asylum in the U.S. — the media were abuzz with accusations claiming that Border Patrol agents were using whips to prevent those Haitians from illegally entering the United States. Specifically, the controversy was sparked by photographs of agents mounted on horseback attempting to corral incoming migrants. Some photos showed the agents twirling their reins to coax the horses in certain directions. Many critics misidentified the reins as whips that were being used to harm and degrade the migrants.

Paul Ratje, the photographer responsible for the images in question, said that neither he nor any of his colleagues had seen Border Patrol agents whipping anyone. “Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses, and that’s when the whole thing happened,” Ratje explained. “I never saw them whip anyone. The agent was swinging the reins that to some can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the pictures.”

Rowdy Ballard — who, prior to retiring, had spent 17 years on horseback for the Border Patrol and had served 6 years as the horse coordinator for Del Rio, Texas — told Fox News: “We all have the same message: we don’t carry whips.” Explaining that the Border Patrol does not train its agents to whip illegal migrants, and that those agents hardly ever place their hands on people “unless they’re not compliant,” Ballard said on America’s Newsroom: “It was a tense situation. The horses were a little reluctant to do the job that the agents were asking… twirling the reins was just another tool they used to get the horses to do what they’re asking.”

Notwithstanding the fact that the “whipping” claims were entirely false, the Biden Administration quickly announced that: (a) horse patrols at the border would be immediately suspended pending further investigation of the charges, and (b) the specific agents in the aforementioned photos would remain on administrative duty while the probe was being conducted. Biden’s announcement prompted Rowdy Ballard to say: “The horse is a great tool we’ve used [at the Border Patrol] for almost 100 years now. And with that going, it’s going to be harder to patrol that area.”

President Biden said in response to the (false) reports: “It was horrible [what] you saw. To see people treated like they did [sic]. Horses nearly running people over and people being strapped.” “It’s outrageous,” he added. “I promise you those people will pay. They will be investigated. There will be consequences.”

Border Patrol agents reacted angrily to Biden’s remarks. One agent, for instance, told Fox News that Biden had “just started a war with Border Patrol,” adding: “I see the administration wants to fry our agents.” Another agent said: “Would you go to work and do your best knowing that if you do your boss is going to ‘make you pay?’ I’m dumbfounded and don’t know what to say. Is the president threatening to throw us in prison?” National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd called Biden’s comments “completely and totally outrageous” and accused the president of “playing politics with Border Patrol agents’ lives.” “Nobody was struck by a rein, not one person was struck by a rein, not one person was run over by those horses,” said Judd. “They used the tactics they were trained to use, to do the job [Biden] sent them out to do — these are executive branch employees. He sent them out there to do the job, and now he’s criticizing them because his base wants them to.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that President Biden and his entire Administration were “horrified by the photos of the Border Patrol officers and that behavior.” “We feel those images are horrible and horrific,” she added.

Vice President Kamala Harris said she was “outraged” by the “horrible and deeply troubling” images shown in the photos. “Human beings should not be treated that way,” she elaborated, “and as we all know, it also evoked images of some of the worst moments of our history where that kind of behavior has been used against the indigenous people of our country, has been used against African Americans during times of slavery.”

Rep. Maxine Waters said at a press conference on September 22: “We’re saying to the president and everybody else: You’ve got to stop this madness. And I want to know, in the first place, who’s paying these [Border Patrol] cowboys to do this work? They’ve got to be gotten rid of. They’ve gotten to be stopped. It cannot go on.” Waters then told the reporters in attendance: “Write the story. Tell the story about what is going on. Let people know that they’re trying to take us back to slavery days – and worse than that.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley described the “whip” controversy as “egregious and white supremacist behavior.” “Haitian lives are black lives,” she said. “They’re lives, and they’re black lives. And if we really believe that black lives matter around the globe, this is the moment to stand up.”

DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that a full investigation was warranted. “One cannot weaponize a horse to aggressively attack a child,” he stated. “That is unacceptable. That is not what our policies and our training require. Please understand, let me be quite clear, that is not acceptable. We will not tolerate mistreatment, and we will address it with full force based on the facts that we learn.”

More Than 12,000 Haitian Illegal Migrants Are Released into American Interior

All told, roughly 30,000 migrants passed through the Del Rio International Bridge area between September 9 and 24. Approximately 12,400 of them were released into the U.S. interior with instructions to report for immigration court hearings sometime in the future. Aside from those, about 2,000 were removed via 17 plane flights to Haiti under Title 42 provisions. Another 8,000 decided to return to Mexico voluntarily. Another 5,000 were processed by the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether they would be sent back to Haiti or permitted to pursue their immigration/asylum cases. And some 3,000 were in detention.

20,000 More Haitians Heading Toward U.S. Border

On September 25, 2021, PJ Media reported that, based on numbers provided by the Panamanian government, an additional 20,000+ Haitians were trekking northward through the Darien Gap — the roadless, dangerous, 66-mile sliver of jungle and swamp connecting Colombia and Panama — with their sights set on America’s southern border.

Large Permanent Increase in Food Stamp Benefits
On October 1, 2021, it was reported that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was instituting a major and permanent increase in average monthly benefits for all of its 42 million beneficiaries. Going forward, average benefits would be about 25 percent above those of the pre-pandemic period. The increase coincides with the end of a 15% boost in SNAP benefits that was ordered as a COVID-19 pandemic protection measure, which expired on Sept. 30,” said Fox News. “In practical terms, the average monthly per-person benefits for qualified recipients will rise from $121 to $157 — or $36 per person, per month,” Fox added.

Pelosi Inadvertently Suggests That Obama, Not Biden, Is America’s Real President

In late September 2021, Pelosi inadvertently articulated her belief that Barack Obama, and not President Joe Biden, was in fact the man setting the Democrats’ national agenda behind the scenes, when she exhorted Congress to pass “the full Obama agenda of building back better.”

Biden Askd Saudi Arabia to Increase Its Oil Production

In late September 2021, the Biden administration asked Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production as a means of stabilizing the rapidly rising cost of oil as well as the overall high rate of inflation. But the defacto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), rejected Biden’s request. As Breitbart.com noted: “(MBS) remembered the Biden administration treating him like a pariah this year. Joe Biden [had] literally called MBS a ‘pariah’ and slammed him for human rights abuses ten months before Biden went to MBS with hat in hand and pleaded for more oil.”

Limits on Deportations

In a September 30, 2021 memo, Mayorkas announced a new set of Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law. Some key excerpts:

• “It is estimated that there are more than 11 million undocumented or otherwise removable noncitizens in the United States. We do not have the resources to apprehend and seek the removal of every one of these noncitizens. Therefore, we need to exercise our discretion and determine whom to prioritize for immigration enforcement action.”
• “A noncitizen who engaged in or is suspected of terrorism or espionage, or terrorism-related or espionage-related activities, or who otherwise poses a danger to national security, is a priority for
  apprehension and removal.”
• “A noncitizen who poses a current threat to public safety, typically because of serious criminal conduct, is a priority for apprehension and removal.”
• “Conversely, there can be mitigating factors that militate in favor of declining enforcement action. Such factors can include, for example: advanced or tender age; lengthy presence in the United States; a mental condition that may have contributed to the criminal conduct, or a physical or mental condition requiring care or treatment; status as a victim of crime or victim, witness, or party in legal proceedings; the impact of removal on family in the United States, such as loss of provider or caregiver; whether the noncitizen may be eligible for humanitarian protection or other immigration relief; military or other public service of the noncitizen or their immediate family; time since an offense and evidence of rehabilitation; conviction was vacated or expunged.”

Biden Reverses Trump-Era Ban on Federal Funding for Clinics That Refer Patients for Abortion

On October 4, 2021, the Biden administration rescinded a 2018 Trump-era regulation that blocked federal funding for family planning clinics that referred patients for abortion. The new rule, slated to take effect on November 8, would once again permit the flow of Title X money to such clinics. “Today more than ever, we are making clear that access to quality family planning care includes accurate information and referrals — based on a patient’s needs and direction,” Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said regarding the new Biden policy.

Justice Department Addresses Alleged “Threats of Violence” Against School Officials and Teachers

The summer of 2021 saw many school board meetings where parents and community members vocally challenged local school officials over the inclusion of Critical Race Theory and other controversial topics — such as sexually explicit content and coronavirus mask mandates — in school curricula. On September 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), a leftist organization representing local school boards, sent a letter to President Biden saying that the federal government should investigate reports of violence and threats against school board members to see if they violate federal laws against domestic terrorism and hate crimes. Statutes like the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the USA PATRIOT Act, said NSBA, should be used to thwart crimes and violence targeting K-12 officials, on the premise that such acts could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Citing anger about Critical Race Theory as a major factor fueling disruptions and antipathy toward educators, the letter stated: “These threats or actual acts of violence against our school districts are impacting the delivery of educational services to students and families.” “These incidents are beyond random acts,” said NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven in an email. “What we are now seeing is a pattern of threats and violence occurring across state lines and via online platforms, which is why we need the federal government’s assistance.”

During a September 30 press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, addressing the subject of the NSBA letter, characterized the targeting of school board officials as “horrible,” adding: “We’d encourage individuals to report any threats they face to local and state law enforcement agencies.”

On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Garland, in an effort to federalize local school boards nationwide, ordered the FBI to begin investigating what he described as a recent spike in “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school administrators. In a memo, Garland directed U.S. attorneys and the FBI to collaborate with local officials to identify and prosecute any perceived threats to such administrators. Said the memo: “In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, the protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views. Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

Notably, Garland did not provide any type of operational definition of what would constitute “harassment” and “intimidation.”

Parents Defending Education, a conservative organization, said of Garland’s memo: “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education—and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.”

Biden Appoints Opponent of Border Security to Head the ICE Office Tasked with Prosecuting Illegal Aliens Facing Deportation

In late September 2021, President Biden appointed Boston-based immigration attorney Kerry E. Doyle to lead the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), whose duty is to prosecute illegal aliens facing deportation. A strong opponent of border security, Doyle in 2017 had co-filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s temporary suspension of immigration to the U.S. from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Venezuela.

“Doyle’s record extends also to initiating sanctuary legislation in local communities and [being] a critic of ICE as an enforcer of federal immigration law,” reported Breitbart.com. Former ICE senior advisor Jon Feere described Doyle as “a strong advocate of sanctuary policies” and a supporter of legislation that would bar local law enforcement from even inquiring about a suspect’s immigration status. “Disturbingly,” wrote Feere, “by opposing the 287(g) program Doyle is supporting the release of illegal aliens arrested for a litany of crimes in Massachusetts including manslaughter, armed carjacking, armed robbery, aggravated assault and battery, child rape, strangulation of a pregnant woman, assault and battery of a 60+/disabled person, kidnapping, home invasion, burglary, fentanyl trafficking, cocaine trafficking, carrying an unlicensed firearm, credit card and identity fraud, and drunk driving, to name a few crimes.”

Biden Says Republicans Should “Just Get Out of the Way” and “Let Us Do Our Job”

On October 4, 2021, President Biden – citing the October 18 deadline by which time the Democrat-controlled Congress sought to raise the federal debt limit above the existing $28.4 trillion level in order to allow for more government borrowing – accused Senate Republicans of harming the nation by using the filibuster to block the debt limit’s suspension. “They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said at the White House. “Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”

On October 5, Biden said there was a “real possibility” that Democrats might use their razor-thin majority to suspend the Senate’s filibuster rule so they could forcibly raise the debt ceiling with no Republican support.

In a similar vein, New York Senator Charles Schumer said on October 4: “We only ask that they get out of the way, let Democrats pass it on our own …”

A.G. Garland Colludes with the NSBA & Orders the FBI to Investigate Parents Who Protest the Teaching of Critical Race Theory in Schools

The summer of 2021 saw many school board meetings where parents and community members vocally challenged local school officials over the inclusion of Critical Race Theory and other controversial topics — such as sexually explicit content, radical transgender ideology, and coronavirus mask mandates — in school curricula. On September 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), a leftist organization representing local school boards, sent a letter to President Biden saying that the federal government should investigate reports of violence and threats against school board members to see if they violate federal laws against domestic terrorism and hate crimes. Statutes like the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the USA PATRIOT Act, said NSBA, should be used to thwart crimes and violence targeting K-12 officials, on the premise that such acts could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Citing anger about Critical Race Theory as a major factor fueling disruptions and antipathy toward educators, the letter stated: “These threats or actual acts of violence against our school districts are impacting the delivery of educational services to students and families.” “These incidents are beyond random acts,” said NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven in an email. “What we are now seeing is a pattern of threats and violence occurring across state lines and via online platforms, which is why we need the federal government’s assistance.”

During a September 30 press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, addressing the subject of the NSBA letter, characterized the targeting of school board officials as “horrible,” adding: “We’d encourage individuals to report any threats they face to local and state law enforcement agencies.”

On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Garland, in an effort to federalize local school boards nationwide, ordered the FBI to begin investigating what he described as a recent spike in “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school administrators. In a memo, Garland directed U.S. attorneys and the FBI to collaborate with local officials to identify and prosecute any perceived threats to such administrators. Said the memo: “In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, the protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views. Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

Notably, Garland did not provide any type of operational definition of what would constitute “harassment” and “intimidation.”

Parents Defending Education, a conservative organization, said of Garland’s memo: “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education—and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.”

Conservative broadcaster and legal scholar Mark Levin, who served as chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Reagan Administration, said the following about Garland’s memo on October 5, 2021:

“American Marxism is on the rise. Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, is now using the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Community Relations Service, and Office of Justice Programs. He’s using all of them to unleash against parents and taxpayers and local communities who are protesting local school boards. I challenge anyone that tell us the federal authority that this attorney general and the rest of his band of reprobates has, to interfere in local school boards, to nationalize school board meetings, local police officers, and school board security officers are in charge of keeping the peace in township and community school board meetings. […] They have decided, ladies and gentlemen, that those of you who protest are domestic terrorists. […]

“The letter from the National School Board Association, in my view, was an inside job. They wrote this letter to the president of the United States, Joe Biden, on September 29, and five days later, including the weekend, we get a memo from the attorney general of the United States, dated yesterday, to the the director of the FBI, the director of the executive office of U.S. Attorneys, the assistant attorney general, criminal division.

“It states, ‘In recent months, there’s been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views to intimidate individuals based on their views.’

“What does that mean? It means nothing. There’s no federal law that says, quote unquote, you can’t intimidate individuals based on their views. It’s done all the time. […] If there are threats of violence, state and local law is what addresses it, not federal law. […]

“So, in other words, if any school board member, any educational bureaucrat, any teacher, anybody, any staff member thinks they’re being, quote unquote threatened, there’s going to be a hotline. And so they’ll send the FBI out to interview the parents, they’ll send the FBI out. You know what, this reminds me of the East German Stasi. […] The purpose of this is clear. It is to send fear through our communities all over the country, fear through parents, fear through taxpayers. To suppress your First Amendment right of free speech and assembly, to suppress your right to question your elected representatives. It is undermining your right to protest. And you can even yell at protests. That’s legal, too. […] The federal government has absolutely no legal authority, none, to be monitoring any of this, to be involved in any of this, period. This is totalitarianism. That is exactly what it is.”

On October 7, 2021, the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) — which describes itself as “a national, nonprofit organization working to promote the rule of law, prevent executive overreach, [and] ensure due process and equal protection for all Americans — sent a letter to Michael E. Horowitz, Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice. AFL’s letter exposed the fact that the Biden Administration (through Merrick Garland and the DOJ) had secretly colluded with the National School Boards Association to create a false pretext for the unconstitutional suppression of parents’ free-speech rights regarding the education of their children — all for purely political reasons related to the effect that parental protests against leftist indoctrination in the schools might have on the 2022 midterm elections. Some key excerpts:

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized American parents’ fundamental liberty interest in and Constitutional right to control and direct the education of their own children. On this basis alone, the nationwide protests by parents against public school policies and practices—regarding Critical Race Theory indoctrination; antireligious and anti-family gender ideology; and/or forced online education and mask mandates—are entitled to the most robust federal constitutional protection. Instead, in light of the Attorney General’s Memorandum of October 4, 2021, it appears the Department of Justice is committing the full weight of its federal law enforcement resources to prevent parents from exercising constitutionally-protected rights and privileges, for inappropriate partisan purposes.

Our understanding of the facts is as follows:

• Parents nationwide have protested public school policies and practices associated with, inter alia, the teaching or indoctrination of K-12 students in certain principles of Critical Race Theory and gender-related ideology.
• Key Biden Administration stakeholders, including the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and others, have combined to oppress, threaten, and intimidate parents to chill and prevent them from exercising the rights or privileges secured by the Constitution. To date these efforts, though extensive, have generally proven ineffectual.
• In early September, Biden Administration stakeholders held discussions regarding avenues for potential federal action against parents with a key Biden Domestic Policy Council official (Jane Doe #1) and White House staff (John Doe #1). Stakeholders also held discussions with senior department officials, including at least one political appointee in the department’s Civil Rights Division (Jane Doe #2). Jane Doe #1, John Doe #1, and others in the White House separately expressed concern regarding the potential partisan political impact of parent mobilization and organization around school issues
  in the upcoming midterm elections.
• Upon information and belief, at the express direction of or with the express consent of Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2 and other Biden Administration officials developed a plan to use a letter from an outside group (“not the usual suspects”) as pretext for federal action to chill, deter, and discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights and privileges.

Upon information and belief, in or about mid-September work began on development of what became the Attorney General’s Memorandum. Concerns expressed by department staff included (1) the absence of federal law enforcement nexus and authority, and (2) the constitutionally protected nature of parent protests. However, Jane Doe #2 made it clear this was a White House priority and a deliverable would be created.

• On or about September 29, citing legal authorities including the Patriot Act, the “National School Boards Association” made public a letter demanding federal action against parents citing authorities including the Patriot Act. The justification for federal action included, inter alia, parents were “posting watchlists against school boards and spreading misinformation (sic) that boards are adopting critical race theory curriculum and working to maintain online learning by haphazardly attributing it to COVID-19.” It is not yet clear whether and to what extent drafts of this letter were shared with Biden Administration officials, including Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, and whether changes were suggested or made by them, prior to the ostensible public release date.
• On October 4, the Attorney General’s Memorandum was made public. The short time frame between the September 29 letter and the Attorney General’s Memorandum suggests that either the entire matter was precoordinated and the September 29 but pretext, or that the normal clearance process and standard order both within the department (including legal sufficiency review by the Office of Legal Counsel, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Office of Legal Policy, and other components), and between the department and the White House Counsel’s Office and the Office of Management and Budget, were bypassed or corrupted.
• On October 5, there was a follow up call involving, inter alia, the White House Counsel’s Office, Jane Doe # 2, and many other Biden Administration political and career officials. The briefing included how to talk about “equity” initiatives, avoid liability for violating discrimination laws, and hide “equity” measures, initiatives, and action from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

Accordingly, we request your Office investigate whether the Attorney General’s Memorandum was formulated and issued based on improper considerations. At this point, the dangers inherent in the undue politicization of the department’s criminal and civil law enforcement authorities, and in the corruption of the department’s standard order and process, should be evident.”

Biden Lifts Sanctions on 2 Iranian Missile Producers

On October 8, 2021, the Biden administration lifted Trump-imposed sanctions on the Mammut Industrial Group (Mammut Industries) and its subsidiary Mammut Diesel, two Iranian entities identified by the Treasury Department in 2020 as “key producers and suppliers of military-grade, dual-use goods for Iran’s missile programs.” Said State Department spokesperson Ned Price in an October 8 press briefing: “We would like [nuclear] negotiations [with Iran] to resume in Vienna as soon as possible. We have been saying this not for weeks now, but for months now.”

Condemning America on Columbus Day

On October 11, 2021, which was Columbus Day, President Biden issued a “A Proclamation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” in which he said:

“On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, our Nation celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.

“Our country was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people — a promise that, despite the extraordinary progress we have made through the years, we have never fully lived up to.  That is especially true when it comes to upholding the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long before colonization of the Americas began.  For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures.  Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society. […]

“The contributions that Indigenous peoples have made throughout history — in public service, entrepreneurship, scholarship, the arts, and countless other fields — are integral to our Nation, our culture, and our society. […]

“We must never forget the centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror wrought upon Native communities and Tribal Nations throughout our country.”

No More Immigration Raids at “Protected Areas” & “Sensitive Locations”

In an October 12, 2021 memo issued to the Citizenship & Immigration Services (CIS) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agencies, Mayorkas announced that the DHS would now end all mass immigration-enforcement operations at worksites in the United States. Asserting that such operations should target employers of illegal migrants, rather than the migrants themselves, Mayorkas wrote: “The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers. These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations.”

In an October 27, 2021 memo, Mayorkas ordered immigration officers to likewise refrain from arresting any illegal aliens at additional “protected areas” and “sensitive locations” like food banks, homeless shelters, churches, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, childcare centers, school bus stops, and places where disaster or emergency relief is provided. “When we conduct an enforcement action—whether it is an arrest, search, service of a subpoena, or other action—we need to consider many factors, including the location in which we are conducting the action and its impact on other people and broader societal interests,” Mayorkas told immigration officers in the memo. “For example, if we take an action at an emergency shelter, it is possible that noncitizens, including children, will be hesitant to visit the shelter and receive needed food and water, urgent medical attention, or other humanitarian care.”

In response to Mayorkas’ memo, Federation for American Immigration Reform president Dan Stein said in a statement: “The [ICE] agency still exists, but it has been stripped of all of its functions with regard to the enforcement of immigration laws. Nearly all illegal aliens are already off-limits to enforcement due to a Sep. 30 memo, and as a result of Mayorkas’ ‘expanded and non-exhaustive list of protected areas,’ where ICE agents are [not] permitted to do their work, the secretary has essentially nullified an entire body of constitutionally enacted laws.”

Biden Praises Chris Dodd, Who Allegedly Was a Party to Sexual Assault of a Waitress, As A Man Who’d Treat Waitstaff Well

Speaking at the dedication of the Dodd Center for Human Rights at the University of Connecticut on October 15, 2021, President Biden praised the character of former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, for whom the new facility was being named. Asserting that the manner in which a person treats restaurant waitstaff is a reliable barometer of one’s character, Biden said: “People who tell me they care about people and then disrespect the waitress or a waiter. People who tell me they care about how, in fact, people are entitled to be treated with dignity and walk by someone at a shoe side stand and doesn’t say hello. People who do not do just simply decent things for ordinary people. That’s the real measure. I’ve never seen Chris, figuratively speaking, walk by anybody.”

But according to a 1990 profile of Ted Kennedy in GQ magazine, an inebriated Dodd had allegedly joined Kennedy in sexually assaulting a waitress named Carla Gaviglio at the La Brasserie restaurant on Capitol Hill one day in 1985. “As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table,” GQ reported. “She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair.” The GQ article said that Gaviglio then ran out of the room “bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault.” Gaviglio’s account of the story was corroborated by the restaurant’s owner as well as another waitress and two busboys who were employed there.

Joe & Jill Biden Violate the D.C. Mask Mandate

In a video posted to social media on the evening of October 16, 2021, President Biden and his wife were both seen walking maskless through the high-priced D.C. Italian restaurant Fiola Mare as they were escorted by fully-masked Secret Service agents. The D.C. health guidelines at that time required both vaccinated and unvaccinated people to wear masks at all indoor venues in the city. “This includes any business or establishment open to members of the public (including but not limited to: grocery stores, restaurants and bars [when not eating or drinking], places of worship, gyms, office buildings, libraries, indoor entertainment venues, and common areas of apartment or condominium complexes),” said the D.C. health guidelines.

Biden Administration Denounces Bill to Prevent Biological Boys from Playing on Girls’ Sports Teams

On October 19, 2021, the Biden administration denounced the Texas legislature’s recent passage of a bill designed to ban biological boys from playing on girls’ sports teams. “This hateful bill in Texas is just the latest example of Republican state lawmakers using legislation to target transgender kids — whom the president believes are some of the bravest Americans — in order to score political points,” said White House spokesman Ike Hajinazarian. “These anti-transgender bills are nothing more than bullying disguised as legislation and undermine our nation’s core values.” In a similar vein, Matt Hill, senior associate communications director for the White House, tweeted: “Our message to young transgender people in Texas and across the country: these hateful bills are bullying disguised as legislation, and @POTUS and our Administration will always keep fighting for the full equality LGBTQ+ folks deserve.”

Biden Says Police & First Responders Should Be Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine, & He Mocks “Freedom” vis-a-vis the Matter 

During a CNN town hall event on October 21, 2021, moderator Anderson Cooper addressed the fact that as many as one-third of all emergency responders in cities nationwide were opposed to vaccine mandates in their cities. Asked Cooper: “I’m wondering where you stand on that. Should police officers, emergency responders be mandated to get vaccines? And if not, should they be, stay at home, let go?”

Biden responded, “Yes and yes,” adding: “I waited until July to talk about mandating because I tried everything else possible. The mandates are working. All the stuff about people leaving and people getting it, you have everyone from United Airlines to Spirit — all these airlines, we’re not gonna get … Ninety-six, 97% of the people have gotten the vaccine. All the talk about all these folks who are gonna leave the military if they are mandated, not true. You got about a 90-some percent vaccination rate. I mean, so the idea is that, look. The two things that concern me. One, are those who just try to make this a political issue.”

Biden then mocked people who opposed COVID vaccine mandates as affronts to their personal freedom of choice. “‘Freedom! ‘I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID,’” Biden joked, “No, I mean, come on, freedom. Number two, the second one is that the gross misinformation out there.”

China Calls Biden’s Bluff vis-a-vis U.S. Defense of Taiwan

During an October 21, 2021 televised town hall, President Biden was asked if America would come to Taiwan’s defense were China — which had recently sent a swarm of more than 50 warplanes into the island country’s airspace — to launch an actual military assault against Taiwan. “Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” Biden replied. Less than 24 hours later, The Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece with close ties to the Chinese government, accused Biden of suddenly initiating “a major shift in the cross-Straits situation” that was “bound to trigger fierce confrontation” with the Chinese military. The publication also stated defiantly: “Biden won’t make good on ‘defend Taiwan’ claim.”

A White House spokesman quickly tried to walk back Biden’s remarks of the previous day, saying: “The president was not announcing any change in our policy [regarding Taiwan], and there is no change in our policy.” But the Global Times was unmoved by that attempted clarification. “Whether it is a slip of the tongue [by Biden], such a statement will not influence the Chinese mainland’s determination and will over its stance on cross-Straits ties,” said the paper. “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has an overwhelming advantage over the military on Taiwan island, with full capacity to cause unbearable results to US troops if they dare ‘defend’ the island, and even to wipe them out.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Discusses a Possible Wealth Tax

On October 24, 2021, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, in response to a question by CNN’s Jake Tapper asking whether congressional Democrats might seek to enact a wealth tax in order to pay for President Biden’s proposed ten-year, $3.5 trillion social spending, replied that they were indeed contemplating the possibility of taxing the unrealized capital gains of the wealthiest Americans. “Well, I think what’s under consideration is a proposal that [Democrat] Senator [Ron] Wyden and the Senate Finance Committee have been looking at that would impose a tax on unrealized capital gains, on liquid assets held by extremely wealthy individuals, billionaires,” she explained. “I wouldn’t call that a wealth tax. But it would help get at capital gains, which are an extraordinarily large part of the incomes of the wealthiest individuals, and right now escape taxation, until they’re realized, and often they’re unrealized in the death benefit from a so- called step up of basis. So, it’s not a wealth tax, but a tax on unrealized capital gains of exceptionally wealthy individuals.”

The Associated Press explained how a wealth tax would work:

“Essentially, billionaires earn the bulk of their money off their wealth. This might be from the stock market. It could include, once sold, beachfront mansions or the ownership of rare art and antiquities…. This new tax would apply solely to people with at least $1 billion in assets or $100 million in income for three straight years. These standards mean that just 700 taxpayers would face the additional tax on increases to their wealth [each and every year], according to … the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.  On tradeable items such as stocks, billionaires would still pay a tax even if they held on to the asset. They would be taxed on any increases in value and take deductions on losses. Under current law, those assets get taxed only when they are sold.

“Billionaires would also face an additional tax on nontradeable assets such as real estate and business interests once those assets are sold. During the first year of the proposed tax, the billionaires would also owe taxes on any built-in gains that predate the tax.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi … estimated on CNN … that the tax would raise $200 billion to $250 billion. This is a meaningful sum, but it’s well shy of the nearly $2 trillion in proposed additional spending over 10 years being negotiated right now. This means that additional levies such as the global minimum tax and increased enforcement dollars for the IRS would still be needed to help close the gap. […]

“If a wealth tax were to become law, it probably would be challenged in court. The likely case comes from Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. It states that ‘direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.’  What does that mean? It means that revenues from ‘direct’ taxes must reflect the population of the states, which is a problem because billionaires tend to cluster in places such as California and New York.”

The Tax Foundation explains that a seemingly low-percentage wealth tax is actually massive, when we examine exactly how it affects a person’s after-tax return-on-investment:

“Compared to income taxes, wealth tax rates seem much lower, but this rate can be deceptive. The best way to interpret wealth tax rates is to translate them into an equivalent income tax rate. For example, consider an investor who owns a long-term bond with a fixed rate of return at 5 percent each year. A 3 percent annual wealth tax would imply that 60 percent of the capital income from owning the long-term bond would be remitted as tax—the 3 percent wealth tax translates to a 60 percent income tax rate in this example. A 5 percent annual wealth tax would equal a 100 percent income tax rate, because the wealth tax would take all this taxpayer’s capital income. A 10 percent wealth tax, calculated in the same manner, implies that all capital income earned in this year plus part of the stock would have to be turned over as taxes, which means a 200 percent income tax.

“The after-tax rates of return for these scenarios are presented in Table 1. Under the assumption of a fixed pretax return of 5 percent, an annual wealth tax of 10 percent results in a negative rate of return at -5 percent.

Table 1. Wealth Tax Rates vs. Equivalent Income Tax Rates

	Pretax return	Annual wealth tax rate	Implied income tax rate	After-tax return
Scenario A	5%	2%	40%	3%
Scenario B	5%	3%	60%	2%
Scenario C	5%	5%	100%	0%
Scenario D	5%	10%	200%	-5%

“Seemingly low 2 percent and 3 percent wealth tax rates imply much higher income tax rates; in this example, 40 percent and 60 percent, respectively. For safe investments like bonds or bank deposits, a wealth tax of 2 or 3 percent may confiscate all interest earnings, leaving no increase in savings over time.”

On October 25, 2021, Yellen announced the appointment of Janis Bowdler, former president of the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Foundation, as the Treasury Department’s first “Counselor for Racial Equity.” A Treasury Department press release stated thatBowdler “will be charged with coordinating Treasury’s efforts to advance racial equity including engaging with diverse communities throughout the country and to identify and mitigate barriers to accessing benefits and opportunities with the Department.” Said Yellen: “The American economy has historically not worked fairly for communities of color. The pandemic threw a spotlight on this inequity; people of color were often the first to lose their jobs and businesses. Treasury must play a central role in ensuring that as our economy recovers from the pandemic, it recovers in a way that addresses the inequalities that existed long before anyone was infected with COVID-19. I’m excited that Janis will join us and devote her efforts to that mission.” Bowdler, for her part, said the following upon her appointment: “I could not be more humbled by the historic opportunity to serve as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s first Counselor for Racial Equity. I have spent my entire career working in solidarity with Black, Latinx, AAPI, Native communities, and other communities of color to dismantle the structural and institutional racism that perpetuates the racial wealth divide.. Addressing racial and gender disparities and giving underserved communities greater access to opportunities creates more broadly shared prosperity for all.”

Biden Considers Paying $450,000 Apiece to Illegal Aliens Whose Members Had Been Separated  at the Border by Trump Immigration Authorities

On October 28, 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden Administration was contemplating the possibility of issuing massive compensatory payments to illegal-migrant families whose members had been separated from one another for extended periods — i.e., parents separated from children — when apprehended by immigration authorities at America’s southern border under the Trump Administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance policy,” which was in effect from April to June of 2018. According to people familiar with the matter, the average payment was expected to to be approximately $450,000 per person — for a grand total of about $1 billion in taxpayer funds. Said the Journal report: “[T]he U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services are weighing the payments as they work to resolve lawsuits claiming that the government subjected parents and children to lasting psychological trauma. […] The [zero-tolerance] policy made it so all adults who illegally entered the U.S., including those with children, were referred for prosecution. Children who entered with those adults were separated from them and placed into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.” Lawyers for the migrant families and the U.S. government had told courts that they were hopeful of reaching a final agreement by the end of November.

On November 3, 2020, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Biden about the Wall Street Journal report: “As you were leaving for your overseas trip, there were reports that were surfacing that your administration’s planning to pay illegal immigrants who were separated from their families at the border up to $450,000 each, possibly $1 million per family. Do you think that that might incentivize more people to come over illegally?” The president responded angrily, “If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah. But it’s not true. […] That’s not going to happen.”

The ACLU, which had filed a 2019 class action lawsuit representing the migrants in their case against the Trump Administration and was involved in negotiating some of the settlements, condemned Biden’s denial. Said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero: “President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy. But if he follows through on what he said [about not paying the migrants], the president is abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families. We respectfully remind President Biden that he called these actions ‘criminal’ in a debate with then-President Trump and campaigned on remedying and rectifying the lawlessness of the Trump administration. We call on President Biden to right the wrongs of this national tragedy.”

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project and a lead negotiator on one of the lawsuits, said: “President Biden has agreed that the family separation policy is a historic moral stain on our nation that must be fully remedied. That remedy must include not only meaningful monetary compensation, but a pathway to remain in the country.”

Meanwhile, a number of media outlets confirmed the veracity of The Wall Street Journal‘s original report.

On November 4, 2021, Deputy White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to walk back Biden’s assertion that the payments were “not going to happen,” saying: “If it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us, the president is perfectly comfortable with the Department of Justice settling with the individuals and families who are currently in litigation with the U.S. government.”

On November 6, 2021, Fox News reporter David Spunt, in an effort to get Biden to clarify what would in fact happen with the migrants in question, said to the president: “You said last week that this report about migrant families at the border getting payments was garbage.” At that point, Biden interrupted  Spunt to say, “No, I didn’t say that. Let’s get it straight. You said everybody coming across the border gets 450,000 dollars.” Spunt then asked, “So the number is what you had the problem with?” Raising his voice and pointing his finger, Biden replied: “If in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border — whether it was legal or illegal — and you lost your child. You lost your child, he’s gone, you deserve some kind of compensation no matter what the circumstances.” The president then added that he had “no idea” what the final settlement figure would be.

Biden’s 85-Car Motorcade in Advance of Climate Summit

On October 29, 2021 — just two days before his scheduled appearance at a global warming summit in Glasgow, Scotland — President Biden was driven through Rome in a car that was part of a motorcade consisting of approximately 85 vehicles.

At an October 30, 2021 press conference after the G20 Summit in Europe, Biden — despite his own administration’s efforts to reduce America’s domestic oil production — complained that Russia and Saudi Arabia were not producing enough oil to help lower fuel prices in the United States. “I do think the idea that Russia and Saudi Arabia, and other major producers are not going to pump more oil so people can have gasoline to get to and from work, for example, is not right,” he said.

Biden Makes Mussolini Reference at G-20 Summit

While in Rome for the G20 Summit on October 31, 2021, President Biden made a “makes the trains run on time” reference while discussing Sec. Tony Blinken’s role in helping to solve the supply-chain crisis, saying: “Now I’m going to turn it over to Secretary Blinken, to make sure that the trains actually run on time here.”

Biden’s Nominee for Comptroller of the Currency Wants the Oil, Coal, & Gas Industries to Collapse

President Biden nominated Saule Omarova for the position of Comptroller of the Currency on November 2, 2021.

• Omarova used a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship to attend Moscow State University, where she wrote a thesis titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in Das Kapital.”
• On March 31, 2019, Omarova tweeted: “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”
• Omarova says that her 2020 paper titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy” offers “a blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.” She wishes to subject the Federal Reserve to a “series of structural reforms that would radically redefine the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People’s Ledger.”
• In order to make America’s financial system “less complex” than it is today, Omarova has called for a “comprehensive qualitative restructuring of the Fed’s investment portfolio, which would maximize its capacity to channel credit to productive uses in the nation’s economy.”
• In a March 2021 lecture, Omarova stated that she wants “the coal and oil and gas industry… to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.” She said this in spite of the fact that in 2019: (a) fully 80% of America’s domestic energy production and consumption was based on fossil fuels, and (b) more than 1,148,000 Americans were employed in the fossil fuels industry.

Federal Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Mandate, but Biden Tells Businesses to Enforce the Mandate Anyway

On November 6, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit blocked a Biden vaccine mandate that was slated to take effect on January 4, 2022, and would have forced private companies with more than 100 employees to get workers vaccinated, submit to weekly tests, or face steep fines. In its decision, the court cited “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”

During a November 8, 2021 press briefing, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that private businesses should nevertheless proceed with the implementation of President Biden’s vaccine and testing requirements. “People should not wait,” she said. “They should continue to move forward and make sure they’re getting their workplace vaccinated.”

Biden Administration Offers Parole & Possible Work Permits for Some Migrants

On November 8, 2021, Breitbart.com reported that according to a November 2 policy document authored by Raul L. Ortiz, Chief of U.S. Border Patrol, the Biden Administration was enacting a new release policy known as Parole + ATD (Alternatives to Detention). This policy would grant parole status to migrants in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio, the two busiest sectors for the southwest Border Patrol, allowing Border Patrol agents to quickly release migrants rather than confine them in detention centers. Whereas parole in the past had been reserved mostly for migrants who were either experiencing severe hardship or were serving as informants in criminal cases, the new policy would involve the issuance of a Notice to Appear (NTA) and the scheduling of an immigration hearing which would allow the migrants to avoid formal removal proceedings for a number of additional reasons. Explained the Breitbart report:

“The new policy allows migrants to be granted Parole + ATD when certain thresholds are met. Specifically, when the seven-day average of migrant encounters is greater than the sector’s Fiscal Year 2019 May daily average, and when certain custody levels are reached. In sectors other than Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley, Parole + ATD must be approved by the Chief of the Border Patrol and the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, according to the document. […] The Parole + ATD policy does not address if migrants must submit financial information or if they are required to identify a sponsor.”

It was also possible that Parole + ATD would allow the released migrants to apply for temporary work authorization in accordance with a DHS policy guidance that stated: “If not inconsistent with the purpose and duration of parole, we may, in our discretion, grant a parolee temporary employment authorization. The parolee may request employment authorization after being paroled into the United States by filing Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization.”

Biden Considers Shutting Down Another Oil Pipeline

After Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated on November 7, 2021, that heating costs for Americans were certain to be higher during the upcoming winter than during the previous winter, it was reported on November 8 that the Biden administration was weighing the potential market consequences of shutting down Line 5, an oil pipeline in Michigan. According to Fox News: “Line 5 is part of a network that moves crude oil and other petroleum products from western Canada, transporting about 540,000 barrels per day. Petroleum is taken from the pipeline in Escanaba, Michigan.”

Iran’s Cash Reserves Skyrocket Under Biden

On November 9, 2021, The Washington Free Beacon reported:

“Iran’s stockpile of hard currency has skyrocketed during the Biden administration, rising from just $4 billion at the end of 2020 when sanctions were at their height, to more than $31 billion by the end of 2021, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund.

“The Biden administration’s decision to pursue diplomacy with Iran and unwind the Trump administration’s sanctions has helped the country recover from its cash shortage, according to the IMF’s projections. The group says Iran’s cash reserves will top $31 billion by the end of the year and increase up to $42.9 billion by the end of 2022. This number could be even higher if the United States reenters the 2015 nuclear deal and removes all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

“Iran had $122 billion in cash reserves in 2018, when the Trump administration began to tighten the economic noose on Iran. That number dropped to $4 billion by the end of 2020, during the height of the former administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign.

“Iran’s access to cash has been bolstered by the Biden administration’s lax enforcement of sanctions on the country’s illicit oil trade, which has increased to record levels amid a buying spree from China, the number-one importer of illegal Iranian crude oil. While Tehran’s oil sector is still sanctioned by the United States, experts told the Washington Free Beacon last week that the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to Tehran’s exports, enabling countries such as China, Russia, and Syria to provide the hardline regime a financial lifeline.”

In Response to Soaring Inflation, Biden Orders Economic Council to “Reduce Energy Costs,” and He Asks FTC to Address “Market Manipulation or Price Gouging”

Biden Names Radical Leftist Who Seeks to Censor Conservative Talk Radio & Fox News, to the FCC

In November 2021, President Biden nominated Gigi Sohn, a radical leftist Democrat, to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). If confirmed, Sohn would shift the balance of power in the FCC —  which at the time was headed by two Democrats and two Republicans — toward the Democrats. Acording to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece:

“[Sohn] favors deploying the agency’s regulatory power to shackle broadband providers and silence conservative voices. [She] founded the leftwing group Public Knowledge that has long sought more government control of the internet and media. She was a counselor to Obama FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and was a driving force behind the ‘net neutrality’ regulation that classified broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. The Wheeler rule banned broadband carriers from charging heavy-bandwidth consuming websites like Netflix and Facebook more to carry their content. The enormous regulatory uncertainty caused broadband investment to decline, though it picked up after the Trump FCC scrapped the rule. Ms. Sohn supports making the Wheeler rule even more burdensome. […] Progressives want the government to regulate broadband rates like electricity prices, and Ms. Sohn’s musings suggest she’d be on board.

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Additional Resources:

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Joe Biden’s History with Israel & Jews
By Discover The Networks

Racists & Racialists in the Biden Presidential Administration (2021-)
By Discover The Networks

Anti-Semites & Israel-Haters in the Biden Presidential Administration (2021-)
By Discover The Networks

Biden & Kamala Harris’ War on Religious Freedom
By Discover The Networks

Biden Administration Appointments
By Discover The Networks

Video & Audio Resources

Mark Krikorian on Biden Administration Immigration Policies
C-SPAN interviews Mark Krikorian
February 16, 2021

President Biden’s First 100 Days: Parsing Immigration Policy
Mark Krikorian interviews Robert Law
By The Center for Immigration Studies
April 29, 2021