Opinion

Home Opinion Page 39

Did Trump Threaten to Execute Gen. Mark Milley for Treason?

4
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

ANALYSIS – Words matter. In a post on his Truth Social platform last Friday, former President Donald Trump suggested that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed after speaking with China’s top general during Trump’s final months in office. 

Trump said Milley’s “treasonous act” was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Clearly, Trump wasn’t threatening to do so but saying that Milley’s actions could have been punished by death in a prior era.

I condemned Milley’s actions at the time because they seemed to give the Chinese Communist regime a promise that they would be given a warning prior to any attack under Trump.

While Milley claims his actions were a normal part of his duties, I disagree. 

They appeared to be more a normal part of the mission that he took upon himself, which was to counter Trump when Milley believed the president had crossed some line only Milley could see.

Some argue that Milley’s actions were not only disloyal to the president but also borderline ‘treasonous.’

Milley contends that he was behaving appropriately to avert an accidental war. He responded to Trump’s comments on CBS:

He also assured viewers that he had adequate safety measures for himself and his family.

The two backchannel calls to China’s top general, Li Zuocheng, that Milley made, and at the center of all this, were revealed in the 2021 book “Peril.”  

As CNN reported:

In October 2020, as intelligence suggested China believed the US was going to attack them, Milley sought to calm Li by reassuring him that the US was not considering a strike, according to the book. Milley called again two days after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol to tell Li that the US is “100 percent steady” even though “things may look unsteady.”

How much of this reporting in the book was accurate, is hard to say. But Trump sees things very differently. 

Trump said that Milley “turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.”

And Trump may be right. For Milley to do that could be seen as highly inappropriate, if not exactly ‘treasonous.’

Still, Trump, a former president, and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, is way out of line. No American political leader should be using that kind of language against any American military official or political leader.

In today’s volatile climate, it is extremely dangerous.

Yet few in the GOP will condemn Trump’s statements. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is one of those willing to take aim at the Republican frontrunner. Politico quoted Hutchinson as saying:

To suggest that Gen. Milley should be executed is inexcusable and dangerous. While some will excuse this latest outrage as Trump just being Trump, the fact is that his statement endangers people and is an insult to those who serve in the military.

Perennial Trump critic, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had stronger words, calling Trump an “absolute child” for the “reprehensible” remarks. 

But it is part of a disturbing pattern by both sides to use dangerously inflammatory rhetoric at the highest levels against the other side.

Democrats raised the political temperature considerably against Trump, calling for, or at least condoning the calls for, his beheading and death on many occasions. 

The demonization of Trump by the left and Democrat Party was more than I had ever seen in over thirty years in and around U.S. politics. 

It was, and still is, outrageous.

But Trump isn’t helping things with his own dangerous rhetoric.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Families of Marines Killed During Afghan Retreat Blast Biden and Milley

1
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

ANALYSIS – ‘Gold Star’ families of U.S. troops killed in the August 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, are blasting Team Biden excuses over the disastrous retreat. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attack during Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.

At least 183 people were killed in the attack, including the 13 U.S. service members (12 Marines and a sailor).

Shamefully, Biden allowed the Taliban to retake the country almost 20 years to the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City.

AND HERE, TWO YEARS AFTER THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE, WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANSWERS, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

As I wrote about earlier, senior Biden defense officials spent the days before and after the deadly 2021 attack in Kabul obsessing on getting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to sign off on their Climate Change plan rather than focus on the chaos and death in Afghanistan.

Now, several of these Gold Star families spoke at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable where they expressed their anger at the Biden administration, including Chairman of the Chiefs Mark Milley, who they blame, in part, for the bombing that killed 13 service members.

As the hearing was about to commence, Milley released a statement in which he said the U.S. owes Gold Star families “everything.”

“We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” Milley said.

But the families didn’t appear impressed. Instead, they were angry about the “excuses” and misinformation they received.

Fox News reported on their justified anger and venting. Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, said “I don’t want to hear lies, I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”

Hoover’s father, Darin Hoover, called on top Pentagon brass to resign. 

He poignantly noted: “Today is the date, two years ago, that we received our kids home at Dover. Two years ago today, where we were disrespected with stories of Biden’s son and him looking at his watch. And today, here we sit as their families, begging you two years later, to find these answers.”

Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was pictured prominently with an Afghan baby in her arms prior to her death, asked why credible warnings were ignored in the days leading up to the attack.

Some even accused the Pentagon of giving them ‘made-up stories’ about their loved ones in the aftermath of the attack.

As Breitbart News reported:

…[in a Fox interview] Cheryl Rex, whose son, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021 reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he believes military briefers gave all the information to the families of those killed in the bombing all the information they could by stating that the briefing on her son was completely inaccurate…

…[When Rex was asked] “Do you believe that all the information was there, or do you agree with other families that it wasn’t about the information, it was about the warnings that were ignored?”

Rex answered, “Me personally, he did not — the brief report was not correct. They changed my son’s location a couple of times. They were trying to accommodate his wounds that were not even in the right spots of his body according to his autopsy report. He did not — the brief report is nothing [like] what we were actually told… I feel it was made-up stories that they were trying to cover up the wounds.”

These Gold Star families deserve answers and accountability. And so do the American people.

GOP Congress to Focus on Border, Crime, Inflation, and Investigating Bidens

3
Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – We are just one day away from a major electoral shift with the Republicans expected to retake the House and possibly the Senate too. 

That will put a hard brake on Joe Biden and the left’s radical agenda and make Biden more of a lame duck than he already is.

It may even put an impeachment target on his back.

So, what can we expect from a GOP-led Congress in January?

According to current Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the top priority of a Republican-led House would be addressing the horrible migrant crisis at the southern border.

CNN reports: “The first thing you’ll see is a bill to control the border first,” McCarthy told CNN, when asked for specifics about his party’s immigration plans. 

“You’ve got to get control over the border. You’ve had almost 2 million people just this year alone coming across.”

Newsmax reported McCarthy as saying:

“There’s a number of different ways” Republicans could tackle the migrant crisis, McCarthy added that party lawmakers would not present a bill to fix the broken immigration system until the border is secure — something that would help stem the flow of fentanyl.

“I think ‘Stay in Mexico’ you have to have right off the bat,” said McCarthy, referring to the Trump administration’s policy that forced migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting their immigration proceedings in the U.S.

In fiscal year 2022, U.S. border encounters with illegal migrants topped 2 million, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

Most recently we saw a clash between flag-wielding and rock-throwing Venezuelan migrants attacking U.S. Border Patrol agents who in-turn fired pepper balls at the charging crowd.

But tackling Biden’s border fiasco is just one of several GOP priorities. 

The GOP to-do list also includes tackling Democrat-enabled, out-of-control crime and runaway inflation, 

Republicans will also be investigating the hell out of Team Biden.

And there is so much that needs investigating

Newsmax added that “McCarthy said Republicans also would perform oversight and conduct investigations into administration behavior concerning the disastrous troop pullout from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in dealing with parents and school board meetings.”

I would also hope FBI and DHS politicization gets a top spot for oversight as well. Much needs to be done in that highly concerning area.

And then they should dig into the increasingly ‘Woke Pentagon,’ and the extreme ‘Trans’ agenda.

So, expect investigations galore, and Hunter Biden’s laptop and shady international business dealings will also take center stage.

But what about impeaching Joe?

While McCarthy insisted, “We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” he left the door open to launching eventual impeachment proceedings, when he added: “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

Biden should walk on eggshells for the next two years, if he makes it that far without having the 25th Amendment invoked to remove him for senility.

The political power pendulum is about to swing back to the right, and karma is a b*tch.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Judge Again Blocks Biden From Violating 1st Amendment

0
Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

ANALYSIS – Even when presented with overwhelming evidence that Team Biden colluded intimately with Big Tech social media companies to censor conservative Americans, the White House doubled down on violating the 1st Amendment. 

As I wrote last week, on July 4th a federal judge blocked “federal agencies from communicating with Big Tech firms to censor posts.”

This, after a lawsuit against the Biden administration by three Republican state Attorney Generals (AGs).

According to the judge, Terry A. Doughty, the AGs “have produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.” 

“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” Doughty wrote in his preliminary injunction against more than 40 administration officials. 

“In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

Please note – ‘disinformation’ is any information the left and Team Biden don’t like.

This is serious constitutional stuff. One would think the White House might say, “ok, we overstepped a bit.”

But not Team Biden.

Using the Orwellian doublespeak, the left always uses to hide the truth, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “We are going to continue to promote responsible actions.” 

She added: “That is something that we’re going to continue to do to make sure we protect public health and make sure there is safety and security.”

Using similar verbiage, the Department of Justice announced later that same day that it would appeal the decision, to protect public health, safety, and security.

Basically, Team Biden said, we don’t care, we want to keep violating the Constitution and censoring our opponents. And we are going to request an emergency order from the judge to do it.

The Daily Caller reported:

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry opposed the Biden administration’s attempt to stop the injunction in a court filing Sunday, writing the administration was essentially asking to “continue violating the First Amendment.”

“In essence, Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint,” they wrote in the court filing. “In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.”

Thankfully, on Monday the same federal judge blocked Biden again, denying the administration’s attempt to pause the injunction. 

The Washington Post reported that Judge Doughty noted again that the plaintiffs (the state AGs) would likely succeed in proving the government colluded with social media companies “to engage in viewpoint-based suppression of protected free speech.”

Responding to the hysteria surrounding his initial injunction, Doughty also wrote:

Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. 

Rejecting the administration’s argument that the order could chill law enforcement activity to protect national security, the judge added that It also contains numerous exceptions for communications related to criminal activity, explicit dangers to national security, and foreign election interference.

Meanwhile, this important battle will continue as the AGs’ lawsuit works its way through the legal system.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Emails Reveal FBI Tried To Shut Off Trump Security Cameras During Documents Raid

2
Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

A flurry of emails between Justice Department figures reveal the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked former President Donald Trump’s attorneys to shut off Mar-A-Lago’s security cameras to prevent any recording of agents searching for classified documents, fearful that Trump would release the footage to his supporters.

The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch reports it received 477 pages of records pages from the Justice Department revealing top officials within the National Security Division “discussing the political implications of Trump allowing CNN to use closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage of the raid on his Mar-a-Lago home. The documents confirm that the Justice Department had asked that Mar-a-Lago CCTV be turned off before the raid.”

The records were released to Judicial Watch in response to a September 2022 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to an August 2022 request for records about the August 8, 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.

An August 17, 2022, email exchange, with the subject “CNN – Mar-a-Lago CCTV Footage,” reveals officials discussing efforts to shut off Trump’s security cameras to prevent him releasing footage of any searches.

“I just received a call from our case agents at FBI, and apparently the Bureau has been given a heads-up by CNN that CNN has CCTV [closed circuit television] footage from Mar-a-Lago (presumably of agents executing the search) that they may air as soon as tonight [Redacted],” writes an attorney, whose name is redacted, with the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division.

“I have no further info on what, specifically, CNN has. But [redacted],” he or she adds.

“CNN is saying FPOTUS [former president] is still weighing whether to release the footage,” Jay Bratt, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section adds.

“Got a call from Evan [likely then-Trump attorney Evan Corcoran]. As Jay says, Trump team is still weighing the release. Per Evan, some say it will energize base, others say not a good look for FPOTUS to have it out there” writes Communications Advisor Luis Rossello.

“CNN is working on a story that Jay requested Trump team to turn off the cameras and they refused,” Rossello continues.

Justice Department official George Toscas replies, “We’re waiting to hear back from FBIHQ on their recommended approach.” 

Bratt writes, “We did. This was in the call [redacted] and I had with Evan Corcoran before the search. It is standard for [redacted].” 

At one point, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Marshall Miller forwards the email exchange to a personal email account of Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

It is generally not recommended for government officials to use personal email addresses, which can evade public disclosure.

Miller’s comment is entirely redacted, Judicial Watch reports, “to which a Justice Department National Security Division official, whose name is redacted, responds, ‘Kelsey/Luis: Will we also plan to communicate to CNN the law enforcement safety need to blur agent faces if footage ends up being released?’” 

Anthony Coley, Director of the DOJ Public Affairs Office, replies, “Done.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Hugh Jackman Goes Insanely Woke

0

Another Hollywood hero has gone woke!

“X-Men” Actor and Broadway performer Hugh Jackman says that gender-specific awards are a thing of the past!

Watch Amanda explain the newest controversy below:

Credible US Officials Testify to Congress About Real UFO Threat

1

ANALYSIS – Decades after the infamous Roswell incident captivated Americans, the House of Representatives has convened a landmark panel on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), also known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In what would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, the hearing is the most serious acknowledgment yet that the mysterious sightings require scrutiny at the highest levels of government.

The debate about UAP has become a hot topic in recent years following multiple leaked photographs and video recordings from the U.S. Navy showing UAP craft operating at high speed over American airspace, often with no visible propulsion and maneuvering in ways that baffle aeronautics experts.

A leaked navy video, captured in July 2019, for example, shows a sphere-shaped unidentified object flying over water near San Diego before apparently disappearing into the ocean.

At the hearing, three witnesses testified under oath about their experiences with UFOs. Significantly, former military and intelligence officials testified to the panel Wednesday that they have seen UFOs and said they could pose risks to national security. 

All three witnesses said the UAP may be probing for weakness in the U.S. military system.

The highly credible former officials called for the U.S. government to share what it knows about the phenomena.

But the Pentagon’s UAP task force, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, says it hasn’t been able to substantiate claims that any federal programs have possessed or reverse-engineered extraterrestrial materials.

Still, during two hours of testimony on July 26, three witnesses shared their encounters with flying objects that they say defy explanation:

1) David Grusch, an ex-Air Force intelligence officer, claims the U.S. has been running a secret program to retrieve and reverse engineer UAPs for decades, and has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

Grusch said he believes the U.S. government is in possession of UAP based on interviewing 40 witnesses over four years with direct knowledge of the program. 

Perhaps more sensationally, in response to a question regarding aliens, he replied “biologics [life forms] came with some of these [UAP] recoveries.”

2) Ryan Graves, a former navy fighter pilot, testified his squadron repeatedly encountered mysterious flying objects which could remain stationary despite hurricane-level winds – claiming he saw them off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on one sighting:

Graves said his aircrew saw UAP during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. Two jets encountered “a dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere” and the object came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft, he said. It was estimated to be 5 to 15 feet in diameter, he said.

3) Retired U.S. Navy commander David Fravor recounted a 2004 encounter with a “Tic Tac” shaped UAP that moved in a way that baffled aviators. Fravor said it had no visible rotors or wings. 

It was “moving very abruptly over the white water, like a ping-pong ball,” he added, noting that he flew his aircraft closer to get a better view of the UAP, but “it rapidly accelerated and disappeared.”

But this is only the latest and most significant public inquiry into the UFO threat.

In 2021 the U.S. intelligence agencies were called to deliver a report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) to Congress.

The first unclassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) made public what the Pentagon reportedly knows about UAP, renewing interest in the mysterious objects which have grown into a modern myth in American society.

ODNI produced a second UAP report in 2022.

Whether UAP is the result of advanced foreign technology or from a more otherworldly source, government officials are now demanding to know more about them. And so is the public.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Feds Admit Dozens of Undercover Agents Joined Protesters at Capitol on Jan 6

6
Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Federal and local law enforcement reportedly had at least 40 confidential informants, or CIs, (also known by federal agencies as Confidential Human Source – CHS) embedded with protestors and rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This, according to the attorney for one of the Jan 6 defendants, Dominic Pezzola.

A member of the nationalist Proud Boys group, Pezzola is facing charges in federal court for allegedly conspiring to oppose the Jan. 2021 transfer of presidential power and related charges by interfering with Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote.

His attorney says federal prosecutors kept this critical evidence secret and belatedly admitted this bombshell just recently.

I wrote about this issue in March when a video was released that showed undercover DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers inciting the rioters to storm the Capitol. Many more videos are still sealed by the courts and kept from the public.

As the attorney’s filing noted:

Some of these undercover Metro officers marched with the Proud Boy[s] march. And some appear to have played roles of instigators, in that they are seen on body-worn videos chanting “Go! Go!,” “Stop the Steal!,” and “Whose house? Our house!” on Jan. 6.  Others generally followed demonstrators toward the Capitol.

 
While that video, part of which was posted on Rumble, shows three members of the MPD’s Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) acting as protesters and inciting the crowd, new information reveals that MPD and the feds may have had dozens of undercover informants there that day.

The Daily Caller reports that Pezzola’s lawyer, Roger Roots, said that federal prosecutors admitted Tuesday that eight FBI confidential human sources were embedded among the Proud Boys on Jan. 6. In his Wednesday court filing, Root said that Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) , part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), appears to have had some 19 informants active at the time.

That means that the largest number of federal CHSs on Jan. 6 didn’t even belong to the FBI, but instead were from DHS.

Roots added that, in addition to all these federal CIs, at least 13 undercover plain-clothes DC Metro Police agents worked among Jan. 6 defendants that day (one more than originally revealed). 

That’s a lot of local police undercover officers and federal confidential informants for one protest. And who knows how many more there may have been in other capacities.

In his filing, Roots argues that:

Pezzola submits that the entire defense in this trial, including opening,cross, and defense cases, would have been different, and much more aggressive, if defense counsel had known of the scope and scale of undercover government operations on Jan. 6. Prosecutors made arguments contrary to information they possessed and withheld; and defense counsel could have lodged different cross-examination and direct examination questions if they had known of these materials.

Roots concludes by noting that the “United States is refusing to provide information which obviously has a high likelihood of being exculpatory.”

He adds that defendants are entitled to this information. “ACCORDINGLY, Pezzola asks for an order compelling the United States to provide the names, identities, and reports of all HSI confidential informants operating at or near the Capitol or around the Proud Boys on January 6, 2021.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

GOP House Must Impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas for Dereliction of Duty Over Border

4
NEW YORK CITY (September 11, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lays flowers for USSS Master Special Officer Craig Miller and participates in the September 11th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, NY. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)

ANALYSIS – During Joe Biden’s two-year term in office, the number of illegal migrants swarming into the U.S. has swelled to its highest number in decades. 

Many of these illegals have serious criminal records and Team Biden can’t confirm how many or who they are.

So, what does the administration do?

Rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Joe Biden’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus was forced to resign over the weekend by Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas.

While Magnus, an incompetent leftist ideologue, failed miserably as CPB chief, his firing was purely political, making him a scapegoat for Team Biden’s broader border and immigration disaster.

Analysts believe Magnus was forced to resign to avoid him testifying at future GOP-led House committee hearings.

The real villain here is Mayorkas who really needs to go. 

As a Senate-confirmed cabinet official, he has been derelict in his constitutional duties to protect the U.S. homeland.

He needs to resign or be impeached by the GOP House next year.

As Senator Ted Cruz,( R-Tx.), told Fox News Digital: 

The Biden administration found their fall guy for the chaos at the border. Responsibility for the border crisis lies with Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and real accountability starts with Mayorkas being impeached. Every moment the border continues to remain open only heightens the present humanitarian and national security crisis.

Other GOP lawmakers echoed Cruz’s remarks. Fox News reported:

“The Biden administration has completely failed to protect our borders, and now it’s trying to find a scapegoat,” Burchett said. “Mayorkas should be the one to resign.”

“When Republicans take over the House, we’re gonna bring some rational thought back to our border security operations,” he continued.

Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger also called on Mayorkas to hit the road, telling Fox News Digital the DHS secretary tried to use Magnus’ departure as a cover-up of his own “failures.”

And Texas congressman Lance Gooden tweeted about Magnus’s resignation: “Accountability would be DHS Secretary Mayorkas joining him.”

Now, GOP lawmakers with the House Homeland Security Committee confirmed that Mayorkas cannot guarantee that no convicted criminals are among the roughly two million border crossers and illegal aliens who have entered the U.S. since Joe Biden took office.

Breitbart News reported:

During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) grilled Mayorkas over the roughly 1.4 million border crossers and illegal aliens that have been released into American communities since February 2021, as well as the 600,000 illegal aliens who are known to have successfully crossed the southern border in Fiscal Year 2022.

“Now can you answer definitively … that none of the 600,000 individuals who are now in the United States amongst our communities that got away are gang members or criminals?” Cammack.

“Your question highlights precisely why we have sought to prioritize national security and public safety threats in our Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehension and removal efforts,” Mayorkas said, evading the question.

Breitbart continued:

Mayorkas also did not provide data on how many of the nearly 30,000 convicted criminal illegal aliens apprehended in Fiscal Year 2022 went on to claim asylum after arriving at the southern border.

Cammack pressed Mayorkas on whether criminal records exist for those released into the U.S. under the Biden administration thus far.

“In Fiscal Year 2022, you have now released 1.4 million into the United States and my question to you now is can you guarantee that none of those people have criminal records?” Cammack said, to which Mayorkas did not answer directly.

This failure to respond by Mayorkas, and failure to account for, and confirm the identity and whereabouts of a large number of criminal illegal aliens in the U.S. under his watch, is cause for impeachment.

As Breitbart noted: “In April, Mayorkas failed to guarantee to lawmakers that none of the illegal aliens on the FBI Terrorism Watch List or No-Fly List, apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, had been released into American communities.”

For all these reasons, and many more, Mayorkas has failed in his constitutional duties and he should be the first Biden cabinet official to go when the GOP takes over Congress in January.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Should the Government Regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Less is Best

6
Image via Pixabay free images.

ANALYSIS – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is basically self-learning software (algorithms) that grows smarter over time using the entire world’s ever-growing library of data as its teacher. It can learn to do myriad complex tasks in a fraction of the time humans could.

It will revolutionize and upend entire economies, and dominate future warfare. It is also developing at an unprecedented rate. 

Many are concerned AI will take away entire career fields and tens of millions of American jobs. AI advancements could eliminate up to 300 million jobs globally, according to Goldman Sachs.

Fox News reported: “Up to 30% of hours currently worked across the U.S. economy could become automated by 2030, creating the possibility of around 12 million occupational transitions in the coming years, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study.”

Others worry that it will make a few corporations extremely rich and powerful. 

And then, many worry that Al may supersede human intelligence in just a few years and eventually make humans redundant.

Few would deny that whoever dominates AI may dominate the world. China certainly believes this and is forging ahead to become the world leader in AI.

The Pentagon is also looking closely at how it can use AI to more quickly make strategic or battlefield assessments and technologically leapfrog over our enemies.

But what about our government? Should it regulate AI?

Democrats tend to favor regulating everything. And they have shown the danger of doing so with social media. I recently wrote on how Joe Biden is already using executive power to weaponize Artificial Intelligence to be woke.

I noted that: “The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a government watchdog group, recently warned that Team Biden is actively using the federal government’s vast power to regulate AI to promote a “woke” ideology in the basic architecture of this revolutionary, powerful, and dangerous new technology.”

“That ‘woke’ ideology promotes affirmative action under the guise of ‘anti-racism,’ and transgenderism as gender ‘equity.’”

And that is a huge concern.

Republicans tend to be more skeptical of regulation in general, especially in a dynamic, fast-moving technology that few lawmakers understand.

“Let a bunch of guys up here that are wearing JCPenney leisure suits that still have 8-track tape players in their ’72 Vegas start talking about technology, then you got some problems,” Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told Fox News when asked about regulation keeping pace with the AI sector.

“The problem with AI is that it’s advancing so fast,” Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina said. “It’s very difficult to regulate because you don’t know what the next thing is going to be.”

Republicans, like Burchett and Mace, also worry government regulation will stifle AI innovation and put the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage, especially vis a vis China.

“I don’t know that we need regulation,” Burchett said. “You want to stifle growth; you start putting laws on it.”

“If you overregulate, like the government often does, you stifle innovation,” Mace told Fox News. “And if we just stop AI, nothing is stopping China. We want to make sure that we are No. 1 in AI technology in the world and that it stays that way.”

But we may be losing that race. As Time reported:

“The country that is able to most rapidly and effectively integrate new technology into war-fighting wins,” Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, told lawmakers on a House Armed Services subcommittee. China is spending three times more than the U.S. on developing AI tools, Wang noted. “The Chinese Communist Party deeply understands the potential for AI to disrupt warfare, and is investing heavily to capitalize,” he said. “AI is China’s Apollo project.”

But Republicans in Congress aren’t doing anything to take away Biden’s power to regulate AI himself. And time is of the essence.

As a former Democrat Senator, Kent Conrad, and ex-Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss wrote recently in Fox News:

This comes at a pivotal moment. We are on the precipice of a new tech revolution—one in which a collection of next-generation capabilities—such as AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology—promise to fundamentally upend every facet of society.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.