Category: Watching

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green possesses evidence that some Chinese migrants that crossed the southern border illegally and were released into the U.S. under the Biden administration are connected to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), he told the Daily Caller News Foundation during a press conference Wednesday.

The intelligence came directly from a Border Patrol sector chief, Green told the DCNF. Border Patrol has seen a roughly 393% increase in illegal Chinese migrants at the southern border, with 9,711 Chinese migrant encounters recorded between October 2022 and April.

“In terms of the verification that the individuals released into the United States have ties to the PLA came from a sector chief and I’ll leave it with that at this point. We have a classified briefing coming up in the very near future,” Green said.

China expert Gordon Chang recently expressed concerns of sabotage among Chinese migrants crossing the southern border in an interview with the DCNF.

“When I first saw that the surge in Chinese migrants, that’s the thought that came to my mind that these are either Ministry of State Security agents or Chinese military, who are coming to this country to commit acts of sabotage against the US,” Chang said at the time.

Green announced the revelation while presenting his evidence suggesting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is guilty of “dereliction of duty” in his handling of the crisis at the southern border. Green’s committee released a report on Wednesday about its initial findings on a five-phase investigation into Mayorkas’ tenure, saying the probe will conclude in roughly 12 weeks.

“I believe that the major fault falls with Secretary Mayorkas,” Green said.

Read more at: dailycaller.com

Zionism is the legacy of Cyrus the Great and the national inheritance of the Iranians. The Islamic Republic’s anti-Zionism is not a historical norm, but a radical break from history by a radical regime. The Iranian revolution seeks to return to its historical origins, and Zionists must rejoice if it succeeds.

The former crown prince of Iran and the most prominent opposition figure, Reza Pahlavi, became the most prominent Iranian to have ever visited Israel this week. He made history by taking the first step to restore it. Pahlavi’s cautious approach to leadership, out of the fear of alienating Iranians from different camps, has been a point of criticism over the decades. His trip doesn’t suggest that he has overnight become more risk-taking, but that he understands that anti-Zionism is no longer a political force among his audience inside his country. This is an early sign that a free Iran will cease hostilities with Israel and end the region’s most destabilizing conflict, caused by one of the most destabilizing regimes in the world. Only a few years after Abraham Accords, we can now envision the potential for the future Cyrus Accords.

Pahlavi’s trip was as much about symbolic gestures as it was political business, evident by his decision to visit during Holocaust Remembrance Day and participate in the ceremonies. He posted a picture of himself wearing a kippah and his wife praying at the Western Wall. His post’s caption cited the Book of Ezra and Cyrus the Great’s edict to rebuild the Second Temple. On Farsi social media, Cyrus Accords immediately began to trend, with more than 100,000 tweets in 24 hours.

The Iranian opposition leader also met with Israeli government officials, likely to seek their assistance for the protest movement that has been roiling Iran for the last seven months. Minister of Intelligence Gila Gamliel hosted the crown prince, and the itinerary included meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. Given Israel’s covert assets in Iran, Pahlavi’s following there, and the two parties’ mutual interest in regime change, it is a reasonable guess that they discussed avenues of cooperation to effect change. He had also mentioned that, given Iran’s water crisis and Israel’s expertise in desalination, he intended to meet with Israeli water experts, so Gamliel gave him a tour of the water desalination facility in Shurk.

As seen by their reactions to Pahlavi’s visit, for many Iranians, Israel has transformed from an enemy to an ally against the Islamic Republic. Masih Alinejad, another opposition leader, tweeted that “the nation of Iran has no enmity with Israel. It is the Islamic Republic that has conquered the borders of hostility against Jews, not just in Iran, but also in the region and the world.” Hichkas, the first professional Iranian rapper, humorously tweeted his wish that the trip would result in countless Qassem Soleimani-like assassinations. Former national soccer team captain Ali Karimi, the opposition leader most in tune with the Iranian street, posted a picture of the Pahlavis and Gamliel with Iranian-flag-colored hearts.

The regime’s response, on the other hand, has been official silence. The spokesperson for the ministry of foreign affairs dismissed a question on the topic for it concerned “an irrelevant individual to an irrelevant destination country.” Unofficial and semi-official media tried to downplay it by mentioning Israel’s domestic political turmoil and the Pahlavi dynasty’s historically warm views of Israel. The combination of the regime’s dismissiveness and the opposition’s embrace is a hint that both sides are aware that Israel has ceased being a bogeyman in Iran.

Read more at: providencemag.com

Three Christian organizations will host a prayer vigil on the west steps of the California state Capitol in Sacramento on Monday as a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is honored inside by elected officials.

The California Family Council (CFC), the American Council, and the California Catholic Conference are hosting the vigil in response to Sen. Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) decision to recognize “Sister Roma,” a member of the drag performers accused of mocking Christianity and Catholicism, on the Senate floor.

“It’s disheartening to see the California Legislature honor a group characterized by its mockery of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular,” CFC President Jonathan Keller remarked in a press release. “By promoting the profane ‘Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,’ these elected leaders are endorsing mockery, hatred, and blasphemy. This ceremony is deeply offensive towards millions of Californians across the Golden State.”

“The vigil is not a political protest but a time of solemn prayer and worship,” it continues.

Wiener’s invitation was met with condemnation by California Senate Republicans, who drafted a letter in opposition.

The letter said the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “is well known for their public denigration of the Catholic faith,” adding, “We respectfully request the withdrawal of this invitation, as it sends a troubling message to Californians of all faiths.”

“While the California State Senate serves as a symbol for many values, it should not be associated with disrespect or hatred towards those with differing religious ideologies.”

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Kansas to hide life-saving information from pregnant women and basically force them to kill their unborn babies even if they have a change of heart.

The lawsuit challenges a new state law that requires abortion providers to inform women about the abortion pill reversal treatment, a safe and effective method of reversing the abortion drug mifepristone that can save an unborn baby’s life.

Responding to the case, Danielle Underwood, director of communications at Kansans for Life, said the abortion industry is “aggressively working to speed up the decision-making process, seemingly forcing women into abortion without discussion of alternatives.”

Underwood said women have the right to be informed about abortion risks and alternatives before going through with ending their unborn baby’s life.

For many years, Kansas has required abortion facilities to provide informed consent to women at least 24 hours prior to their abortion. This year, the Kansas Legislature amended the Woman’s Right to Know Act to include information about the abortion pill reversal treatment, which has saved more than 4,500 unborn babies to-date.

The law ensures that women:

– receive information about the medical risks of abortion

– have the chance to see the ultrasound and hear the heartbeat of her unborn baby

– learn the gestational age of her unborn baby

– be informed of any disciplinary actions against the abortionist

– receive information about the abortion pill reversal treatment

In its lawsuit, the Planned Parenthood abortion chain argued that the law “undermines the principles of bodily integrity and decisional autonomy that underlie the doctrine of informed consent” and violates doctors’ freedom of speech, according to Reuters.

Read more at: www.lifenews.com

“VUMC would be absolutely crazy to proceed with these treatments on the basis of an injunction,” lawyer says.

The State of Tennessee is vowing to defend its law against child sex changes from a Biden administration challenge, floating an aggressive legal theory that could hold medical providers to account even if a federal judge imposes the injunction sought by the White House.

The law, S.B. 1, was triggered in part by The Daily Wire’s September 2022 exposes on Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC) genital mutilation of children, which top doctors acknowledged were “big money makers” and were done “with little evidence, but a lot of love.” The state law is scheduled to take effect July 1, but the Biden administration joined the ACLU and several teenage plaintiffs suing to stop it and is now seeking the injunction in order to block its enforcement until a judge rules on the case.

Adam Mortara, an outside attorney hired to argue the case for Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, said in a May 19 brief that even if a judge imposes an injunction, VUMC should resume treatments at its own peril because if the injunction is later overturned, the state may retroactively prosecute it.

“A preliminary injunction is, by definition, preliminary,” Mortara said. “It will disappear if this Court rules for Defendants at trial, and it could be stayed or reversed on interlocutory appeal. If either occurs, VUMC can be held liable for its violations of the Act while the preliminary injunction was in place,” he wrote.

The gist of the theory, which cites a 1982 case called Edgar v. Mite Corp, is that an injunction doesn’t actually strike down the law, it merely prohibits the defendant — the Attorney General — from initiating enforcement action while it’s in place. If the injunction is eventually lifted — whether through a ruling by District Court Judge Eli Richardson, the Sixth Circuit, or ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, then Tennessee can resume enforcement, including retroactive prosecution for the period in which the law was in place but the injunction was in effect.

The result is that an injunction could have little effect, because VUMC and others who might perform gender surgeries likely believe conservative appeals courts will ultimately side with Tennessee, and may be afraid of costly litigation and punishment after the fact.

The maneuver, which could provide a blueprint for other states that ban gender surgery but then face an injunction, takes a cue from the Texas Heartbeat Act, which largely succeeded in banning abortion in Texas even before the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade. The Texas bill was written by Jonathan Mitchell, an unorthodox conservative attorney who is close friends with Mortara. Mitchell wrote an academic paper laying out the case that injunctions are not as powerful as they have traditionally been regarded.

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro challenged a member of the Biden administration to publicly read from a sexually graphic book found in school libraries across the country as the administration appoints a coordinator to challenge so-called “book bans.”

Shapiro said that someone from Biden’s team should publicly read the book “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe if they think that it is appropriate for young children. The book contains graphic descriptions of masturbation and oral sex alongside explicit illustrations.

“I challenge somebody from the Biden administration to get up and read out loud on camera while showing the pictures ‘Gender Queer,’ and explain why that should be available to 9-year-olds or 15-year-olds, for that matter, at public expense,” Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, said on his Friday podcast.

Shapiro’s challenge comes as the Biden administration announced that it would be creating a position in the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to fight against local and state laws intended to shield children from graphic books like “Gender Queer” in schools.

One scene in “Gender Queer,” found in school libraries across the country, involves a teenager having a sexual fantasy about an adult male.

“What [Biden] really wants is for your local second grader to be able to walk into a school library and see graphic cartoon depictions of anal sex. That’s really what Joe Biden wants. I notice that everybody on the Left who constantly talks about these book bannings is unwilling to actually read out loud the books that they think should not be prevented from being disseminated,” Shapiro said.

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

Scientists have determined there is no measured data to “indicate thicker than present ice after 4ka” at a West Antarctic study site near the Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier. Any ice melt observed today is thus “reversible”… and natural.

The Thwaites, Pine Island, and Pope Glaciers in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica are all situated on a hotbed of active geothermal heat flux, which has led to anomalously high regional melt rates. Indeed, “there is a conspicuously large amount of heat from Earth’s interior beneath the ice” in the very locations where the ice melt is most pronounced.

While the Earth’s crust has an average thickness of about 40 km, in the Thwaites-Pine Island-Pope Glacier region the anomalously thinner crust (10 to 18 km) more readily exposes the base of the ice to 580°C tectonic trenches. The “elevated geothermal heat flow band is interpreted as caused by an anomalously thin crust underlain by a hot mantle,” which is exerting a “profound influence on the flow dynamics of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet” (Dziadek et al., 2021).

Despite the established natural causes of ice melt this region (see also Schroeder et al., 2014, Loose et al., 2018), it has nonetheless become commonplace for those who believe human behaviors are the climate’s “control knob” to claim the melting of the Thwaites Glacier – dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier” by alarmists – is caused by humans driving gasoline-powered trucks or using natural gas for energy.

But a new study categorically undermines claims that the ice melt occurring in the Thwaites-Pine Island-Pope Glacier region is unusual, unprecedented, or unnatural.

The thickness of the ice sheet at this Amundsen Sea region site averages about 40 m today.

Scientists (Balco et al., 2023) have used cosmogenic-nuclide concentrations and bedrock cores to determine the ice sheet is presently around 8 times thicker than it was for most of the last 8,000 years of the Holocene, when the ice thickness ranged between 2 m and 7 m.

“…the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) at a site between Thwaites and Pope glaciers was at least 35m thinner than present in the past several thousand years”

Read more at: www.sott.net

Twitter owner Elon Musk took a shot at Target on Friday morning after JP Morgan downgraded the retailer’s stock, saying that it was only a matter of time before the company faced lawsuits for its controversial actions that have led to the company losing billions of dollars in market value.

Target made “emergency” calls in mid-May to managers and senior directors after the company faced backlash for its Pride collection, which included “tuck-friendly” female swimwear.

“We were given 36 hours, told to take all of our Pride stuff, the entire section, and move it into a section that’s a third the size. From the front of the store to the back of the store, you can’t have anything on mannequins and no large signage,” a Target insider told Fox News.

The woke company has since faced boycotts, lost more than $12 billion in market value, and faced its longest losing streak in years.

JP Morgan said that it was downgrading Target’s stock because of the “recent company controversies.”

Musk responded to the news by tweeting: “Won’t be long before there are class-action lawsuits by shareholders against the company and board of directors for destruction of shareholder value.”

Daily Wire host Candance Owens responded in agreement with Musk’s disapproval of Target, praising the CEO for his commitment to free speech and the safety of children.

Target has been perceived as “woke” by many online since at least 2014 when the company announced it would no longer divide certain products by gender.

Read more at: www.dailywire.com

The latest estimates of the staggering losses suffered by Anheuser-Busch since April 1, the day the Dylan Mulvaney controversy exploded, put their loss in market value at about $27 billion by the end of May.

The company had a $134.55 billion value as of March 31 before it plunged to $107.44 billion by the end of May, according to Dow Jones Market Data Group. The company’s stock plummeted 19.98% from its high in March. That 20% drop enters the zone of a bear market. Bud Light sales revenues have dropped 25.7% for the week ending May 20 compared to the same week in 2022, Bump Williams Consulting estimated.

On April 1, Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a woman, posted a video to his 1.8 million followers on Instagram promoting his partnership with Bud Light. “This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it,” Mulvaney said.

By May 24, a report had estimated Anheuser-Busch InBev’s market value plunging $15.7. That estimate came from Investor’s Business Daily, which used a conversion to U.S. dollars using data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“We believe there is a subset of American consumers who will not drink a Bud Light for the foreseeable future,” Jared Dinges, beverage analyst at JPMorgan Chase, said on May 23. “We believe a 12% to 13% volume decline on an annualized basis would be a reasonable assumption.”

“Shares [of Anheuser-Busch] have underperformed EU Beer peers by 15% since the start of April,” Dinges continued. “We believe this is due to U.S. uncertainty, as investor focus has shifted squarely to the potential impact from the Bud Light controversy. … We do not expect the lost sales to be recovered in fiscal year 2024.”

Read more at: www.dailywire.com