Amber Duke

Joe Biden may be the leader of the free world, but that hasn't stopped him from taking retirement. The President seems to hardly do much of anything, between frequent press lids before 3 p.m., outsourcing the most serious domestic challenge of his presidency to Vice President Kamala Harris and trips nearly every weekend to his home in Delaware (Joe is less confused upon waking when he gets to sleep in his own bed, you see). Occasionally playing hooky is no big deal when you're in a dead-end 9 to 5, but Biden has decided to take a random weekday off being commander-in-chief to celebrate his wife's birthday. The pair flew to their shore home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Wednesday night and will stay through Thursday.

Patrisse Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter on faux victimhood. In her Thursday announcement that she would be resigning from the organization, she once again demonstrated what she does best. For those unfamiliar, Cullors has been the subject of negative headlines for the past few months. Her Marxist street cred first came under fire when reports surfaced in April that she had gone on a luxury home-buying spree totaling $3.2 million. Further investigations into Cullors's finances revealed stunning extravagance and corruption. In 2019, Cullors was earning close to $20,000 a month as the chairwoman of a Los Angeles jail reform group, while dropping the organization's money on $26,000 on 'meetings' at a Malibu beach resort.

Miami  Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation on Monday to penalize Big Tech for de-platforming private citizens and political candidates. The bill, which was passed last month by the Florida legislature, would allow Floridians who are banned from platforms to sue for damages and imposes hefty fines — up to $250,000 each day — on tech companies that boot political candidates. DeSantis signed the bill during an event at Florida International University that featured remarks from local citizens, political activists and elected officials, most of whom were of Latin American descent. Cubans and Venezuelans warned that Big Tech's crackdown on free speech was reminiscent of their home countries' slide into socialism and thanked DeSantis for pushing back on online censorship.

Who is the head of state? As president, Joe Biden has the sole and unlimited authority to determine US foreign policy. He's flexed this power in pulling troops from Afghanistan and negotiating behind-the-scenes for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Interestingly, though, Vice President Kamala Harris has taken an outsized role in handling much of the administration's diplomacy. Take Friday morning, for example. Harris was the first administration official to greet South Korean president Moon Jae-in on his official working visit to the White House. The pair sat down for a bilateral meeting. The South Korean entourage included the foreign minister and director of national security — but the US side featured no similarly ranked diplomats.

President Joe Biden insulted a class of Coast Guard Academy graduates during his commencement address on Wednesday, declaring to the group of cadets that they are 'a really dull class'. The President seemed to get increasingly frustrated throughout his speech as the cadets rarely clapped at his applause lines or laughed at his jokes. He urged them on several occasions to 'stand up' and 'clap', insisting that it was 'okay' to do so, bringing to mind former Florida governor Jeb Bush's infamous plea to his audience to 'please clap.' The lack of enthusiasm came to a head less than 10 minutes into Biden's address.

The Republican establishment played a dirty trick on voters this week. With the ouster of Wyoming representative Liz Cheney from leadership, and her subsequent replacement by New York representative Elise Stefanik, the GOP pretended to value its base. It was, however, a fake virtue signal. The mainstream media has tried to frame Cheney's removal as House Republican Conference chair as a consequence of not being sufficiently loyal to former president Donald Trump, who is still extremely popular with GOP voters. The timeline of her removal makes it quite clear that is not the case. Remember, Cheney survived a vote to oust her from leadership in February after she voted to impeach Trump.

The Biden administration has twice extended the deadline for federal employees to volunteer for months-long deployments at the US-Mexico border, undermining the White House's attempts to downplay the recent severity of the migrant crisis. In a Department of Defense bulletin sent Friday and obtained exclusively by The Spectator, staff were informed that the deadline to apply to the Health and Human Services (HHS) volunteer program to assist with the influx of unaccompanied migrant children had been extended from May 7 to May 21. The deadline had previously extended from April 26 to May 7.

Vice President Kamala Harris is not historically very popular. Her approval rating rarely topped 40 percent during her campaign in the Democratic presidential primary. Her poll numbers sagged in her home state of California. It wasn't until Biden chose her as his running mate that Harris enjoyed consistently higher approval ratings, but even as of April of this year, her unfavorability ratings were just about as high. Despite being pretty unlikable (and as that nervous laugh suggests, awfully inauthentic), Harris has managed to maneuver herself into arguably the most powerful position in the country. If she does eventually run for president, who would be her base? Who actually likes Kamala Harris?

The Biden administration is asking US Department of Agriculture employees to abandon their day jobs and volunteer for months-long stints at the US-Mexico border, despite repeatedly insisting that the influx of unaccompanied minors has not reached 'crisis' levels. The USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offered employees an 'informational unaccompanied minors' session last week 'to learn more about volunteer detail opportunities for employees', according to an email obtained by The Spectator. Volunteers would be responsible for working directly with migrant children to interview them for their legal cases and help connect them with adult sponsors residing in the United States.

President Biden made an outrageous error on Tuesday when he decided to opine on the pending verdict in the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd. 'I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict. Which is — I think it’s overwhelming in my view,' Biden told reporters. 'I wouldn't say that but the jury has been sequestered now and cannot hear me say that.' Unlike Rep. Maxine Waters, who riled up protesters on Saturday, Biden's statement came after the jury started deliberations and thus likely cannot be considered tampering. That does not mean it is not still deeply irresponsible. In the US justice system, it is the jury's responsibility to determine if someone is 'guilty' or 'not guilty' based on their findings of fact in the case.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2021 World edition.  As I walk toward Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office, I notice a large flag and sign opposing one another across the hall. Greene’s neighbor, Democratic Rep. Marie Newman, has recently planted a transgender pride flag to protest Greene’s opinion that biological men should not be playing women’s sports. Greene responded by posting a sign that says, ‘There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. “Trust The Science.”’ I’m expecting a rather tense atmosphere inside Greene’s office, given how often the congresswoman from Georgia finds herself at odds with her colleagues.

President Joe Biden announced this week that he was pulling all remaining American troops out of Afghanistan by September 11 — and the media rushed to frame the decision positively. They are technically correct — it makes zero sense to continue to put American lives at risk and spend taxpayer dollars on a decades-long 'war' with no foreseeable end nor desire to 'win'. But as you can guess, when former president Donald Trump announced he would withdraw troops from Afghanistan just last year, the media hysterically warned that he was emboldening the Taliban and making America less safe. 'Trump administration to cut troop levels in Afghanistan despite Pentagon warnings,' the Washington Post reported.

Big Tech really doesn't want people to talk about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. I warned that this would happen shortly after the Capitol storming on January 6: 'Because some pro-Trump demonstrators resorted to violence in order to have their concerns heard, politicians will refuse to ever again discuss any voting irregularities. Big Tech companies will likely crack down on anyone who dares talk about it on social media.' The day that article was published, President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter. The reason? The social media company was concerned that letting Trump state that he did not believe in the legitimacy of the election results could incite further violence among his supporters.

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson came under fire early this week for vetoing a bill that would prohibit doctors from providing children suffering from gender dysphoria with hormones, puberty blockers, surgeries, or other treatments that would 'affirm' their 'identity'. The governor's response to this criticism was to pour gasoline all over himself and light a match. There are few good long-term studies on the use of hormone and puberty-blocking treatments for transgender youth, primarily because such drugs have only been used in the past on a short-term basis to treat conditions like precocious puberty. They were not intended to suppress puberty indefinitely. Research suggests, however, these treatments can lead to an increase in suicidal thoughts or depression.

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Snyder, currently polling second in the primary, is campaigning as an 'absolute' Trump supporter and has snagged high-profile endorsements from Ken Cuccinelli, Mark Morgan, Sarah Sanders and Kay Coles James. One of his top campaign issues is protecting the Second Amendment, reassuring Virginians that he 'believes that the Second Amendment is NOT optional'. But according to meeting minutes from Snyder's time serving on the College of William and Mary's Board of Visitors, he once voted for a weapons ban on campus. Then he tried to cover it up. Snyder was appointed to the W&M Board of Visitors (BOV) in 2011 by Republican governor Bob McDonnell.

What makes a tragic death a major news story? The races of the perpetrators and the victims, of course. As the media goes all in on critical race theory, many journalists have decided to only provide obsessive coverage of horrific crimes when they can be used to advance the idea — as so eloquently explained by NBA star LeBron James — that minorities are being 'literally hunted' by evil white people. Proof of this phenomenon has never been so clear as in the past several weeks. It all started when a white man was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at three different massage parlors in the Atlanta area.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Tuesday that President Joe Biden will hold his first solo press conference on March 25, over two months after taking office. The administration scheduled the conference after weeks of journalists pointing out that Biden was the first president in 100 years to not hold formal court with the media within his first 33 days on the job. But sadly, unless the White House opens up the press conference to a wider array of journalists, this is just theater. The Biden administration has been responsible for an unprecedented crackdown on media access to the White House, which it has largely blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.