Biden administration

What did Kamala actually do to address the ‘root causes’ of migration?

Nearly two decades ago, District Attorney Kamala Harris of San Francisco launched a criminal justice reform program called “Back on Track” that attempted to keep low-level drug dealers out of prison. San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer learned the hard way that the program was open to illegal aliens: she suffered a fractured skull during a purse theft by a man released from lock-up under Harris’s program. Kiefer describes herself as a liberal turned Trump supporter: “When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” she told ABC News in July. Harris claimed in 2009 that the inclusion of illegal aliens in the “Back on Track” program was a “flaw in the design.” She has not commented on it since.

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The US is unwise to lift restrictions on the sale of bombs to Saudi Arabia

To the extent Joe Biden had anything to say about Saudi Arabia during the 2020 presidential campaign, it largely centered on shaming the oil-rich monarchy into changing its ways. Coming off the 2018 state-sponsored murder of Washington Post columnist and former royal court insider Jamal Khashoggi in a Turkish consulate, Biden aired numerous complaints about Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. He pledged to make the kingdom a pariah state during a Democratic presidential debate, accused the Saudi air force of killing children in Yemen — it wasn’t as much an accusation as a fact — and committed himself to reassessing US arms sales to Riyadh. The Saudis didn’t like what they saw during the Biden administration’s opening months.

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Biden declares war on… plastic

Hurricane Debby is barreling through Florida, America's economy is crashing, US troops were injured in Iraq Monday and conflict in the Middle East is on the brink of a dangerous escalation — sounds like the perfect time to ban the use of plastic cutlery, right?!  Instead of addressing the multiple crises the nation is currently grappling with, the Biden administration decided it was time federal government workers stopped using plastic forks. The Biden administration announced it is launching a plan to "phase out" the "procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035," according to the White House.

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We should be grateful that Biden is going nowhere… for now

The question going into Joe Biden’s address to the national from the Oval Office tonight was: will he, having announced that he is dropping out of the race to be president, will he also resign the presidency now? Or would he announce that he was sticking it out till 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2025? Given the perks of the office, and the appetites of Dr. Jill Biden, I thought it likely that he would choose to stick it out. I am often wrong in my political predictions, but about this I was right. In his sad, at times maudlin, painfully mendacious eleven-minute speech, Joe Biden told the American people that he wasn’t going anywhere. Circumstances may intervene to change that. All of us are subject to the sudden intervention of fate.

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Kamala prepares for power… with wince-inducing BET Awards skit

If you thought the Democrats couldn’t humiliate themselves any more, well, think again. In a cringeworthy pre-recorded skit played during the Black Entertainment Television Awards on Sunday night, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a phone call with host Taraji P. Henson where they both expressed their concern about the upcoming presidential election. https://twitter.com/MeghanEMurphy/status/1807896843738927469 The skit was done as a parody rap song, quoting Kendrick Lamar’s song "Not Like Us," part of the Drake-Kendrick rivalry. The song specifically mocked Drake for dating younger women, accusing him of being a pedophile. “Madam VP Harris,” Henson starts off, “I’m worried about the election.

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Hunter Biden guilty of federal gun charges

Hunter Biden was found guilty of all three counts of federal firearm charges Tuesday, concluding a six-year investigation into whether the first son had lied on a federal form for a background check and illegally possessed a firearm while under the influence of illicit drugs. Hunter was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine in 2018 and had at least one stay in a rehab facility during the summer. However, as multiple witnesses testified during the trial, he had quickly relapsed by October 2018, the month that he purchased a gun. His ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, painted a picture of a deeply troubled man whose constant drug abuse led to the dissolution of their marriage.

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Joe Biden’s D-Day performance is evidence of his mental unfitness

President Joe Biden spoke in Normandy on the eightieth anniversary of D-Day Thursday — and only slightly made a fool of himself. As he entered the event, it looked as if he entirely missed where he was supposed to sit, but played it off with a nice salute to a veteran. In the middle of a rousing speech, he talked about how many Russians died in Ukraine... for mysterious reasons. He did a bit of a squat in an invisible chair as the speaker Lloyd J. Austin III was introduced. The debacle ended with Dr. Jill Biden leading Joe away as the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, nimbly ran to greet D-Day veterans. And we can’t forget Biden’s subtle double fist pump after the jets flew over the ceremony.

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Will gas prices determine the election?

Ideally, responsible citizens would think big when deciding on a presidential candidate. But the election outcome may just be determined by one factor: gas prices.  In a CNN article this week, economist Mark Zandi asserted that gas prices were likely to determine election results. On Tuesday, Biden announced his release of a million barrels of reserve gasoline. Even with the many factors that affect oil prices, it may be possible to predict where prices will be come November and if that can tell us who will win the presidency. Zandi and his colleagues from Moody’s Analytics (Brendan Lacerda and Justin Begley) published a nineteen-page econometric analysis in January.

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The Biden admin is socially engineering your workplace

Do you currently enjoy a workplace environment that is free of violent criminals? Is your work bathroom reserved for members of the same sex as you? You might not enjoy those commonsense benefits for much longer. The Biden administration is flexing the bureaucratic state’s muscle to force businesses to comply with its progressive worldview. Last month, the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it was suing Sheetz, a popular gas station and convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic, for alleged racially discriminatory hiring practices. Sheetz is a great American success story. It was opened by Bob Sheetz in 1950 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and is still owned by the Sheetz family to this day.

Joe Biden’s failure is Bob Gates’s vindication

One of the most famous criticisms of Joe Biden over the years came from former Bush and Obama secretary of defense Robert Gates, who wrote in his 2014 memoir that "I think [Joe Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” The former SecDef has repeatedly been asked if he stands by the statement — and each time, he does. Of course, we're a decade removed from that memoir — and in that time, Gates has openly criticized Biden over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, his administration's approach to Putin and Russia and the slow walking of military aid to Ukraine. So it seems it's safe to say we're at five decades now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

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Biden’s pause of weapons shipments to Israel is another misstep

President Biden just made a strong move against Israel, ordering the US government to stop shipping weapons supplies to the Israeli Defense Forces. It was his fine strategic mind at work, once again.  Usually the public defers to the president and his advisors on foreign policy, unless the issues become very prominent or the president forfeits their trust. Those are the two problems now facing the Biden administration. The war in Gaza is a major issue — and the public has zero confidence in Joe’s strategic wisdom. He lost the public’s confidence on that score after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failed attempts to appease Iran. Now, they are unlikely to defer to his judgment in distancing himself from Israel, America’s greatest ally in the region.

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Should Biden change his Venezuela approach?

Venezuela has been leading the United States on, maintaining the pretense that they will ensure that the upcoming presidential elections are free and fair. That's despite the US relieving sanctions, releasing prisoners and months of “diplomacy.” The Nicolás Maduro regime has also gone on offense, threatening to take back the Esequibo, an area now under Guyana’s jurisdiction, where American oil companies have invested billions. This Wednesday, Maduro mocked the Biden administration once again, arresting two high-level officials from opposition candidate María Corina Machado’s team and issuing arrest warrants against several others.

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Want student loan forgiveness? Make universities pay

At the turn of the twentieth century, Saturday Evening Post editor and Yale dropout George Lorimer bitingly summed up academia when he said “colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.” On the heels of yet another multibillion-dollar Biden administration college bailout, it seems we haven’t learned the lesson: colleges might not make fools, but they’re certainly trying to make fools of us. The bailout projects come from a Biden campaign promise: “I will eliminate your student debt.” Half-slogan, half-bribe, this resonated with millions burdened by the unpayable debt brought on by liberal arts degrees that may barely be worth the paper they’re printed on.

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‘My kid’s name resonated in that body’: Steve Nikoui’s first interview after State of the Union outburst

Steve Nikoui’s son, Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, was killed alongside twelve other American service-members outside of Abbey Gate at the Kabul Airport during the Biden administration's hasty exit of Afghanistan in August 2021. That's why Nikoui's outburst, “Do you remember Abbey Gate,” interrupted the president’s State of the Union address on Thursday, roughly fifty-one minutes through the speech. Nikoui was escorted out, arrested, placed in handcuffs and charged with a misdemeanor that could see him in jail for up to ninety days. “I remember what set me off," Nikoui told The Spectator Friday night, in his first interview since his arrest. "When he was talking about kids, in one moment, they're glorifying these abortions...

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Inside the surprise effort to force TikTok’s divestiture

“I will kill you if you fucking shut down TikTok,” a teenage boy warned to a member of Congress in a voicemail reviewed by The Spectator. “I will really really fuck you up. So don’t shut down TikTok. Bye bye!”  This week, Capitol Hill was inundated with a series of unusual callers — children, some as young as six years old. They had been enlisted by TikTok to forcibly push back against a bill that’s on track to sail through the House next week which forces the divestiture of a series of companies owned by foreign adversaries, like China in the case of the globally popular video app.

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A make-or-break State of the Union for Biden

Tonight President Joe Biden is set to deliver one of what may be his final major speeches as president: the State of the Union. After a completely empty schedule today, the president will address both Houses of Congress — but rivals are speculating if he’ll even make it through the evening. “Will the president be juiced enough to appear to be coherent?” Representative Darrell Issa wonders. And, “how will he deal with immigration. Those are the two issues that I think are on everyone’s mind,” he said. Prior to the speech, the House Republican Conference hosted a media row where dozens of lawmakers spoke about their expectations heading into tonight’s speech. “Border, border, border,” is what some, such as Oklahoma’s Kevin Hern, want to hear from the president.

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Is ‘Dear White Staffers’ losing favor with the left?

“Dear White Staffers”, an Instagram account that blew up just a couple of years ago for reporting alleged mistreatment of staff on Capitol Hill, is now under fire from some members of the progressive left for allegedly engaging in performative activism. The account joined Instagram in 2020 and quickly built a reputation for being a place where congressional staffers could anonymously share horror stories about their offices and dissuade others from joining toxic work environments. The account has more than 100,000 followers and is closely watched by members of Congress — and now the Biden administration, as White House employees have started making their own submissions to the “Dear White Staffers” DMs.

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2024 and the invasion at the southern border

Donald Trump crushed the New Hampshire primary, as every poll in Alpha Centauri predicted he would. Nevertheless, his sole remaining opponent for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, “vowed to fight on.” Why? A cynical person might suggest the interaction of two volatile liquids: cash, on the one hand, and consultants, on the other. Haley is swimming in both. The cash is coming from two sources: brittle, establishment faux conservatives like the Kochs and wily Dem operatives like the billionaire Reid Hoffman who, in addition to shoveling gobs of money to Nikki Haley, is also funding such entrepreneurial activities as E. Jean Carroll’s bizarre lawsuit against Donald Trump. In a sane world, the support of a malignant figure like Hoffman would be disqualifying for Haley.

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biden ward

Who’s really behind the Biden administration’s foreign policy?

If you’re one of the many people worried that US foreign policy is in the hands of a visibly declining eighty-one year-old president, Alexander Ward’s account of the Biden administration’s first two years in office may — or may not — make you feel better, for he leaves readers with little doubt as to who is actually the executive branch’s most influential decision-maker: forty-seven year-old national security advisor Jake Sullivan. Ward might deny any such authorial intent, but time and again he shows his hand, as when he invokes “Sullivan’s first two years at the helm alongside Biden.

WATCH: Jon Stewart jabs at Biden and Trump’s age in Daily Show return

After more than eight years away from the anchor desk, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday night for its election 2024 coverage. The late-night host came out swinging with pointed jokes at both eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden and seventy-seven-year-old Donald Trump. "They are the oldest people ever to run for president, breaking, by only four years, the record that they set,” Stewart said.  https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1757253512625586177?s=46&t=KTzG0soGgiCKUdkuiUQOwA Cockburn can’t say that Stewart’s attacks on the elderly presidential candidates are all that original, but it’s a marked improvement on the hackneyed, partisan commentary of his successor Trevor Noah.

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