Their latest stunt isn’t new to the woke ice cream brand…
On the Fourth of July Ben and Jerry’s ice cream released a statement bashing America’s heritage.
Watch Amanda explain the latest controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – ‘Red ripple.’ For at least the last several elections, pollsters have consistently oversampled Democrats and undercounted Republicans, wrongly skewing the polls in the Dems’ favor.
This is something I have written about before, and the pollster errors include the ‘shy Trump supporter’ effect where conservatives simply shun pollsters or avoid giving their true views out of fear of retribution or being ‘canceled.’
Frank Luntz, a political strategist said to The Hill: “We knew from 2016, 2018 and even 2020 that Trump voters tended not to respond to pollsters because they thought that the results would be used against them.”
This time around the pollsters seem to have screwed up in the opposite direction, overcompensating by overweighting Republican supporters and predicting a ‘Red Wave’ in the midterm elections that never materialized.
I must admit, I too assumed that the pollsters would continue to err in favor of Dems and hence believed the polling was still undercounting Republicans.
But as they say – you should never assume because then you make an ‘ass out of u and me.’
And as Luntz added, “past errors caused pollsters to over-index Republicans.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation just did a solid analysis on this latest pollster screw-up.
As the Daily Caller reports:
Weighting Republican respondents more heavily than Democratic respondents in polls led to an overestimation of GOP support, which created the mirage of a “red wave” this midterm season, polling experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In the House of Representatives, FiveThirtyEight, based on an aggregation of major polls, predicted a 228-seat GOP majority as the most likely outcome, while RealClearPolitics had projected at least 227 seats, with additions from 34 tossup races. In the Senate, FiveThirtyEight forecast 51 seats for the GOP, with 52 and 53 seats being as likely, while RealClearPolitics forecast 53 seats for Senate Republicans.
The results were significantly different from these projections. Though some races are yet to be called, Democrats retained control of the Senate, having won 50 seats as of writing, while Republicans, though projected to win the House, will have a narrow majority close to the 218 seats necessary for one.
The Daily Caller continues:
In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, former President Donald Trump significantly overperformed polling in several states that pegged him to lose, with his unexpected 2016 wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina giving him an Electoral College majority to win. Though Trump lost the 2020 election, he still won states like Florida and Ohio and came close to winning races in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, which polling firms had estimated would be easily won by Joe Biden.
In all, in 2020, polls underestimated the presidential popular vote, swing-state vote, Democratic House majority and the Democratic Senate majority. The American Academy of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) called it the “worst performance for polls since 1980.”
And this appears to have caused the severe pollster overcompensation we saw leading up to the midterms.
In artillery, you often fire beyond (long) and before (short of) a target to close in on it and ‘fire for effect.’ This is called ‘bracketing.’
The idea is that on the third salvo you should hit the target close to spot on.
Let’s see if these varied pollster results that undercounted GOP voters and then overcounted them were the ‘bracketing’ needed prior to their getting the 2024 polls right.
I’m not optimistic. GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Despite the still ongoing media-Big Tech-Democrat Party c*llusion to ignore, minimize or denigrate any calls to investigate H*nter B*den’s foreign business deals, Americans are increasingly supportive of the idea.
This is great news for the incoming Republican House Majority which plans to do just that.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey found that a whopping 62% of Americans want H*nter Bi*en’s business dealings investigated, especially those with C*mmunist China.
Similarly, about 63% told Rasmussen that the H*nter B*den l*ptop computer is an important story.
Of course, out of this nearly 2/3 majority, Republicans and independent voters are the most eager for a thorough H*nter probe, and Democrats less so.
But the numbers should still be highly concerning to the White House and its apologists.
The Washington Examiner noted that:
…a majority joined Republicans in raising questions about H*nter B*den’s computer files and advice the president gave his son prior to scoring big money payoffs from his overseas businesses
The survey found the public is gobbling up stories in the media about H*nter B**en and that they are especially interested in those about his computer.
Conservative media covered the computer stories heavily, but only recently have the liberal media joined in drawing attention to the controversy.
The Examiner added:
Frustrated with the liberal media’s slow wake-up to the computer and H*nter B*den controversy, the new House GOP has promised to make a big deal out of probing the president’s son, and the poll of likely voters showed support for that move.
However, let’s be clear. This isn’t just an investigation into the President’s w*yward son. It is a much-needed investigation into the entire B*den family enr*ching themselves un*thically, if not ill*gally.
And the real focus is on the ‘B*g Guy’ – J*e Bid*n.
As Spectrum News reported right before the GOP won control of the House:
GOP members of the Oversight and Reform Committee held a news conference Thursday in which they alleged, among other things, that Pre*ident B*den “personally participated in meetings and phone calls” regarding his s*n’s business exploits and that there was personal business conducted on Air Force Two while he was vice president.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who is poised to chair the panel beginning in January, called the president “chairman of the board” and a “partner with access to an office.”
Republicans, who released an interim report Thursday, said they identified more than 50 countries where the B*den family, often led by H*nter B*den, sought business transactions.
“To be clear, J*e Biden is the b*g g*y,” Comer said. “This evidence raises troubling questions about whether President Biden is a national security risk and about whether he is compromised by foreign governments.”
Comer made it clear the investigation will focus on the pr*sident, not his s*n.
“We’re not trying to prove H*nter B*den is a b*d actor,” he said. “He is. If anybody wants to disagree with that, there’s nothing we have to talk about. Our investigation is about J*e B*den. And we already have e*idence that would point that J*e B*den was inv*lved with Hu*ter Bi*en on this.”
…
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Even as the world obsesses over Donald Trump’s latest legal dangers, the walls are slowly closing in on the Biden crime family. And I don’t use the phrase ‘crime family’ often.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden used his time as Vice President as a golden opportunity to unlawfully enrich his entire family, often flying his son Hunter on Air Force Two abroad to seal deals.
In one well-known instance, VP Biden leveraged a billion dollars in U.S. aid to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the energy firm that employed Hunter.
In their ongoing investigation into alleged influence peddling involving Biden, members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have asked the National Archives and Records Administration for unrestricted access to Biden’s travel aboard the vice-presidential jet, known as Air Force Two, and the VP’s official helicopter, known as Marine Two.
They want to determine whether the trips aided his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.
House GOP investigators believe Biden, while vice president under Barack Obama, used his power and influence to help his family and a group of associates with foreign business deals involving China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries, worth tens of millions of dollars.
And there is more evidence to back up their beliefs. Last month, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, told House investigators the foreign deals were secured by selling the Biden “brand,” essentially, Joe Biden’s position as vice president of the United States.
“Then-Vice President Joe Biden abused Air Force Two by allowing his son to jet set around the world to sell ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” said House Oversight Chairman James Comer.
“This is yet another example of then-Vice President Biden abusing his public office for his family’s financial gain.”
More specifically, the Washington Times reported that:
Lawmakers on the Oversight panel said the president’s son Hunter Biden may have traveled to 15 countries with his father while he was vice president and that during that time, Mr. Biden met in Beijing with his son’s business associate, a Chinese national, while he was on official business.
“Then Vice-President Biden’s misuse of Air Force Two and Marine Two is indicative of yet another way in which the President has abused his various offices of public trust and wasted taxpayer money to benefit his family’s enterprise, which consisted of nothing more than access to Joe Biden himself,” Oversight lawmakers wrote to U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan.
House investigators also believe Biden used numerous aliases to hide his participation in his son’s shady deals. The Times added:
…Comer also is seeking more than 5,000 White House emails that used aliases for then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden. The National Archives said it is awaiting approval from Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama before handing them over to Mr. Comer, according to an aide to Mr. Comer.
White House records show that Mr. Biden used the name Robert L. Peters while serving as vice president. Mr. Biden also disguised his name on emails using the pseudonyms Robin Ware and JRB Ware, a play on his middle name and initials paired with his home state of Delaware.
Critically, investigators noted a May 26, 2016, White House scheduling email sent to VP Biden ahead of a call with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko that was also inexplicably sent to his ‘private citizen’ son, Hunter.
At the same time, the drug-addicted, unqualified Hunter was earning $100,000 a month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which was under investigation for corruption. The U.S. State Department had said Burisma engaged in bribery.
And in a typical moment of braggadocio, a clueless Biden senior bragged about it. The New York Post reported:
In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin.
The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Tough guy, that Biden.
Biden has claimed he demanded Ukraine fire its equivalent of Attorney General because he was corrupt, but we now know the State Department had found that Ukraine had made great strides in dealing with corruption, and Shokin, specifically, was praised in private correspondence.
The Post added that Devon Archer’s testimony revealed that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with their hired gun, Hunter.
Archer reportedly described how Burisma officials told Hunter of the importance of neutralizing Shokin, and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. The call was of course to Dad.
And that’s what House investigators are hoping to prove. The Obama-Biden White House call logs, emails, and flight schedules are all part of the mounting evidence against Joe Biden.
ANALYSIS – A spokesman for the Islamist terror group Islamic State, or ISIS, has announced that their latest leader has been killed “in action.”
His death has not yet been independently verified, and no one has claimed responsibility for the killing.
Asked in Washington about Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi‘s death, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told The Associated Press:
“We certainly welcome the news of the death of another ISIS leader. I don’t have any additional operational details to provide at this time.”
Qurashi refers to the tribe of Islam’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad, from whom ISIS leaders must claim descent.
If the latest leader’s death is true, he would be the second ISIS leader killed this year, about 10 months after the death of the previous leader killed in a U.S. raid in northwest Syria in March.
He would also be the third leader eliminated since the founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in Idlib, Syria in 2019.
Their deaths came after the meteoric rise of ISIS in 2013-2014 following Barack Obama’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011.
Obama famously called ISIS the “JV team.”
Meanwhile, some doubt the veracity of the claim that the latest ISIS leader has been killed.
According to the Mirror, Hassan Hassan, co-author of the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” urged caution about the news and says ISIS could have “easily” said “that person was killed and replaced with ‘Abu al-HussAIN al-Qurashi.’ Who could tell?”
The Mirror reported:
Writing on Twitter Mr Hassan continued: “Important to note that this is quite possibly a fake announcement.
“Scenario 1 is that the ISIS leader was killed ‘accidentally’ during a raid or fighting without him being known to whoever killed him (the US, Iraqis, Kurds) so those did not know they killed the leader. That’d be unprecedented, but possible.
“Also, jihadist groups have a long history of claiming leaders/commanders dead, just to get intelligence/security agencies off their back.”
ISIS has been mostly defeated in Iraq and Syria, under relentless attacks during Trump’s administration, but sleeper cells still carry out attacks on both countries
The ISIS threat has also been increasing recently, under Joe Biden, especially in Africa.
Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was reportedly replaced by Abu al-Hussain al-Hussaini al-Qurashi as the despicable terror group’s new caliph.
The Daily Mail reported:
The [ISIS] spokesman did not provide details on the new leader, but said he was a ‘veteran’ jihadist and called on all groups loyal to IS to pledge their allegiance.
Little else is known of the leader who is taking control of the beleaguered terror group whose influence over the Middle East has waned in recent years.
Apparently, being chosen the ISIS leader, or caliph, brings with it a very short life span.
Let’s see how long this new leader lasts before being sent to enjoy his 72 virgins.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – From the day cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the set of the movie Rust, on Oct. 21, 2021, there has been a flurry of speculation over whether anyone would be criminally charged.
Hutchins was killed when a live round was fired from a real ‘prop’ gun being held by liberal actor Alec Baldwin.
Well, now the speculation is over, and Baldwin will be charged.
He has always denied responsibility, saying the replica old west revolver should have had dummy bullets and that he never pulled the trigger.
On the first point, Baldwin is correct; on the second, he is less convincing.
The set armorer is responsible for ensuring gun safety. And there was no reason for live rounds to be on a movie set. Period.
Much less mixed in with dummy rounds.
The armorer certainly is responsible if not culpable. And a big question is why live rounds were on the set and mixed in with dummy rounds and who put them there.
But experts have shown that Baldwin’s claim of not firing the gun doesn’t wash.
It is physically impossible for this type of gun to fire without the trigger being pulled and/or the hammer dropped.
Beyond his immediate possible culpability as the man who ‘fired’ the gun, Baldwin was also a producer of the low-budget Western film.
After the shooting numerous current and former crew members from the film publicly claimed that safety was extremely lax, and formal complaints had been made and ignored about those safety concerns.
The shooting occurred while rehearsing a scene inside a wooden chapel on Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico.
This is a popular western location seen in the likes of Jimmy Stewart’s 1955 “The Man from Laramie” and Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s 1969 “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
As the crew worked out positions for the scene, Baldwin, playing a grizzled 1880s Kansas outlaw, fired a live round from an Italian-made Pietta Long Colt revolver replica – the bullet passed through Hutchins’ chest and lodged in director Joel Souza’s shoulder.
Hutchins died in a flight to the hospital in Albuquerque, while Souza was later discharged from the hospital.
In April 2022, the producers, including Baldwin, were fined $136,793 by the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, which said: “management knew that firearm safety procedures were not being followed on set and demonstrated plain indifference to employee safety.”
A wrongful death lawsuit was then filed against Alec Baldwin and other key members of the production in Feb. 2022.
The lawsuit named Baldwin and others who “are responsible for the safety on the set” and called out “reckless behavior and cost-cutting” that led to the death of Hutchins, according to the family’s lawyer.
The lawsuit also claimed that Baldwin and other “Rust” crew and cast committed “major breaches” of safety on the set.
That lawsuit was later settled.
But Baldwin’s legal woes continue as he is now being hit with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the shooting.
Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the film’s young and inexperienced armorer, will also be charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Meanwhile, assistant director Dave Halls who handed the gun to Baldwin prior to the shooting signed a plea agreement for a charge of the negligent use of a deadly weapon.
In return, he received a suspended sentence and six months of probation, according to the district attorney.
If Baldwin is convicted, he could be facing up to 18 months in prison.
“Involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico is a Class D felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Neama Rahmani explained to Fox News Digital. “If Baldwin is convicted, I can see him being sentenced at or near the max.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Much of the world watched with rapt attention as a massive, sophisticated, high-altitude Chinese surveillance airship slowly crossed the entire United States last week, and Team Biden did absolutely nothing.
Despite being detected days earlier over the Aleutian Islands and parts of Alaska, the ‘spy balloon,’ as it has been dubbed, was first reported publicly by the White House when it was spotted over sensitive nuclear missile sites in Montana.
Most of us with military or intelligence experience quickly saw the danger and risks of allowing this huge thing unfettered access to our national airspace.
The airship, reportedly 200ft tall and with a payload the size of a jetliner, was likely solar-powered and maneuverable, perhaps using AI technology for guidance.
But once the news was out, Team Biden’s spin machine kicked into high gear.
“The balloon is not a threat.”
“We have everything under control. The Chinese can’t gain any valuable intelligence from the airship that they couldn’t gather from satellites in low earth orbit.”
And the big one – “we don’t want to shoot it down because the military says that would pose a danger to people on the ground in sparsely populated Montana.
Of course, much of the establishment news media went along for the ride.
In a belated show of impotent machismo, Biden finally ordered the balloon destroyed after it had completed its 8-day mission and exited U.S. airspace near South Carolina.
One of our most expensive and sophisticated stealth fighters, an F-22 Raptor fired a short-range AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile at the balloon, quickly sending down the airship with its surveillance payload breaking off as it dropped.
New reports say the balloon contained explosives to self-destruct if needed.
Hopefully, no boaters, swimmers, or fish were hurt by the falling debris.
And then the second wave of Biden balloon spin began, with reports that President Trump had ignored multiple similar incursions by Chinese surveillance balloons under his tenure.
Team Trump pushed back saying no one at a senior level had ever been briefed on any similar Chinese balloon incursions.
And it turns out Team Trump was correct.
It appears Team Biden had only gathered information that Chinese balloons had briefly entered U.S. airspace on a few occasions after Trump left office.
They had either not been detected at the time by the Pentagon, or at least they never briefed Trump or his civilian defense or national security officials.
Trump did not ignore similar Chinese challenges, and none of the short-lived, undetected balloon forays during his term lasted anything close to eight days and traversed the entire continental U.S. spying on key military sites throughout.
So, what can we gather from this major test by Communist China?
Well, despite those who claim otherwise, the unprecedented, slow-moving Chinese surveillance platform that traveled across the entire U.S. gave China intelligence it could not otherwise get on nuclear, communications and other critical military and strategic targets.
It also tested U.S. surveillance and counter-surveillance abilities and reactions.
It most certainly served to test China’s own growing capabilities, as it pushed the envelope against the United States.
But most importantly it tested America’s political will.
And Biden’s willingness to let the behemoth balloon cross the U.S. before finally shooting it down failed that test.
It also had the added bonus of showing the world how vulnerable the U.S. is to Chinese power and technology. And how unwilling it is to effectively counter it.
These might be the biggest wins for China.
But beyond that, could this balloon be a precursor to a new type of weapons delivery system?
Some would balk at the idea of a balloon dropping bombs in the 21st century as being far-fetched. But China has tested hypersonic missiles launched from balloons in the past.
And as noted earlier, these aren’t everyday hot air balloons.
However, that isn’t a likely use for these airships.
The biggest threat is sending one or more of these high-altitude balloons over the U.S. with a small nuclear EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) device.
As the Washington Examiner reports:
In a 2015 report for the American Leadership & Policy Foundation, Air Force Maj. David Stuckenberg, one of the nation’s leading EMP experts, wrote extensively about the threat balloons carrying bombs pose to national security.
“Using a balloon as a WMD/WME platform could provide adversaries with a pallet of altitudes and payload options with which to maximize offensive effects against the U.S.,” he wrote in the report.
Detonated at extremely high altitudes (200 miles) these small nukes could knock out power and communications across the US, wreaking widespread havoc for a year or more without firing a shot on the ground.
It also wouldn’t kill anyone or cause kinetic physical damage to anything directly. The damage comes afterward.
The Examiner continues:
Stuckenberg cited the research of the late Peter Pry, who headed a congressional commission on EMP and reported on the potential of a balloon-launched attack.
He wrote in the report, “Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and member of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, stated, ‘Imagine the consequences of a balloon EMP attack that damages and destroys electronic systems at the speed of light within an EMP field with a radius of hundreds of kilometers. The Eastern Grid generates 75% of U.S. electricity and supports most of the population.” Pry also notes, “Virtually any nuke detonated anywhere over the Eastern Grid will collapse the entire Eastern Grid, not just the area within the EMP field, because of cascading failures that will ripple outward.”
This is now a viable threat that Biden’s weakness has made even more possible.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
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.
President Donald Trump may now have a chance to deliver on a key campaign promise – eliminating the United States Department of Education.
U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) has introduced the “Returning Education to Our States Act” which Rounds says “would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and redistribute all critical federal programs under other departments.”
“The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good,” said Rounds in a statement announcing the legislation.
“The Department was created in 1979 with the goal of collecting data and advising schools across the U.S. on best practices. In the 45 years since then, it has grown into an oversized bureaucracy with a budget that’s 449% larger than it was at its founding,” Rounds noted.
“Despite the Department spending $16,000 per student per year, standardized test scores have been dropping over the past ten years, further displaying the Department’s ineffectiveness on the quality of education for American students. Any grants or funding from the Department are only given to states and educational institutions in exchange for adopting the one-size-fits-all standards put forth by the Department,” Rounds continued.
“We all know local control is best when it comes to education. Everyone raised in South Dakota can think of a teacher who played a big part in their educational journey. Local school boards and state Departments of Education know best what their students need, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.,” said Rounds.
“For years, I’ve worked toward removing the federal Department of Education. I’m pleased that President-elect Trump shares this vision, and I’m excited to work with him and Republican majorities in the Senate and House to make this a reality. This legislation is a roadmap to eliminating the federal Department of Education by practically rehoming these federal programs in the departments where they belong, which will be critical as we move into next year,” Rounds concluded.
Rounds notes that “despite its inefficiencies, there are several important programs housed within the Department. Rounds’ legislation would redirect these to Departments of Interior, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Labor and State:”
Department of the Interior
Department of the Treasury
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Labor
Department of State
Members of Congress want to know if one of America’s most powerful liberal political groups is evading federal laws requiring them to report lobbying on behalf of foreign billionaires.
U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) want League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski to answer questions about LCV’s fundraising, lobbying, and political activities, and whether it is complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The League of Conservation Voters, a radical environmentalist group, is one of the nation’s most powerful political organizations.
OpenSecrets reports the LCV donated $15,129,989 to federal political candidates in 2020. They also spent $42,272,125 on ads supporting or opposing federal candidates in 2020, making them the nation’s 15th-biggest political spending.
But members of Congress want to know if the LCV is lobbying lawmakers at the behest of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a radical leftist who opposes American energy independence.
The members write:
“Following ‘intense lobbying’ from LCV and related groups that led to passage of the [Inflation Reduction Act,] you met then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who told you Democrats ‘passed what you wanted’ and asked whether LCV would ‘have our backs’ in the 2022 election. Following the election, in an end-of-year memo on December 19, 2022, LCV detailed how the ‘LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities invested more than $100 million’ to elect Democrat candidates that align with LCV’s eco-agenda agenda in the 2022 elections. Previously, in the 2018 cycle, LCV spent $80 million on candidates that support its eco-agenda.
“LCV has registered to lobby on several activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee, including issues like opposing offshore drilling plans, supporting a ‘pause and review of the federal oil and gas program,’ and supporting the restoration and expansion of a number of national monuments. The Committee is concerned that LCV’s relationship with foreign donors, such as Swiss national Mr. Wyss, who are prohibited from contributing, either directly or indirectly, to domestic political campaigns may impact LCV’s political and lobbying activities relating to America’s ability to achieve energy independence. As you are aware, such political and lobbying activities may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“The central purpose of FARA is to ‘promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the United States by ensuring that the United States government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy, and laws.’ Hence, FARA requires any person or entity, including non-profits, to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they act as an agent or at the request ‘of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.’ Registration under FARA is also required for any entity that attempts, on behalf of a foreign principal, to influence any section of the U.S. public or a U.S. government official in ‘formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States.'”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
