Elvert Barnes, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – In what is again an egregious example of disparate treatment for rioters with different political views, New York City has agreed to pay violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) rioters $13.7 million after being sued over the mass arrests in 2020.
If approved by a judge, it would reportedly be one of the most expensive payouts ever over mass arrests.
Each BLM rioter can receive a payout of nearly $10,000 ($9,950 to be exact) as part of the settlement, whether they were arrested or not if their First Amendment rights were found to have been suppressed or infringed on by police.
The settlement applies to protestors at 18 marches or demonstrations in Brooklyn and Manhattan between May 28 and June 4 of 2020.
Meanwhile, many nonviolent Jan. 6 Capitol rioters are still in jail pending trial after a massive nationwide FBI manhunt. And others are receiving outrageous prison terms.
The message here is – if you are a left-wing rioter in a left-wing city you can expect to be rewarded, but if you are a conservative rioter in the ‘People’s Republic of DC,’ and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) oversees prosecutions, you will get fried.
Attorneys from the left-leaning National Lawyers Guild accused the NYPD of violating rioters’ First Amendment rights by being excessively violent and making illegal arrests.
However, the riots in NYC were far more violent, and damaging, and lasted far longer than the few hours-long Capitol riot in DC.
During the two years of litigation, NYC attorneys argued police tactics had been appropriate to the situation and noted that rioters had thrown projectiles at police and torched police cars.
In New York, police arrested just over 2,000 people between May 28, three days after Floyd’s death, and June 7, according to the New York State attorney general’s office.
Thousands of people protested in New York City, some violently. Rioters injured dozens of police officers, damaged dozens of police cars — setting some of them on fire and graffitiing them — and looted or damaged at least 450 businesses.
In one instance, two NYPD officers in Brooklyn were shot and one was stabbed in the neck as they tried to prevent looting during a protest. The mayor placed the city under a curfew for the first week of June, the city’s first curfew in 75 years, but the curfew was frequently violated by protesters.
Overall, at least 10,000 people were arrested across the country during the summer 2020 BLM riots. They caused nearly $2 billion in damages, the largest from riots in U.S. history.
According to court documents, the NYC did not admit fault in the lawsuit, but settled to avoid rehashing the events at trial and “resolve the issues raised in this litigation without further proceedings.”
On a positive note, violent BLM rioters who were arrested for trespassing, property destruction, assaulting police, arson, weapons charges, and perhaps those who blocked police from arresting other rioters, will not be eligible for a payout.
The settlement must still be approved by a judge.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Without a whisper, David Brock once again took his seat in that deep club chair, the one upholstered in battered oxblood leather and steeped in quiet menace. He reached for his tailor-crafted inner pocket, drawing from it a fresh Davidoff 702 Double R. The oily Ecuadorian leaf caught flame with practiced ease, releasing those same familiar notes of dark chocolate and café crema. Nearby, a Baccarat tumbler appeared in a silent ritual of service, filled just so with Pappy Van Winkle, as though it had always been there. This wasn’t just habit. It was stagecraft, and the man in the chair was directing a performance with constitutional consequences.
There was no need for preamble. Those in the room knew why they were there. Brock was about to reintroduce the legal profession to its own velvet-clad nightmare. His audience, a quiet circle of left-wing patrons and media barons, leaned in as he explained the next phase of his campaign, not against Donald Trump per se, but against anyone daring to offer him or his allies a legal defense. This wasn’t about winning court cases. This was about ensuring those cases were never filed at all.
The 65 Project, Brock explained, was not an electoral effort. It was not a messaging campaign. It was war. A war against the 6th Amendment, that slender but essential clause guaranteeing every American the right to legal counsel. Its aim? To deprive Republicans, particularly those challenging elections or government orthodoxy, of any capable legal defense.
Screenshot via X [Credit: @amuse]
Run through Brock’s network of nonprofits and housed under Law Works, the 65 Project deployed seasoned political operatives to file bar complaints, ethics charges, and sanctions motions against Trump-affiliated attorneys. The power of the model lay in its asymmetry. A single complaint, even meritless, could cost an attorney tens of thousands of dollars and a year or more in disciplinary review. And even if dismissed, the stain was permanent.
In 2025, this campaign has not slowed. In February, the 65 Project filed a high-profile complaint against Edward Martin, then the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia. His offense? Alleged conflicts of interest tied to representing January 6 defendants before his federal appointment. The complaint cited violations of Rule 4-1.7 of professional conduct, a detail blasted across the headlines of friendly media outlets. As of June, there is no word on whether the complaint succeeded, but that isn’t the point. The accusation is the punishment.
Incredibly, the 65 Project also targeted the sitting Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi. On June 5, 2025, a coalition including the 65 Project, Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Lawyers for the Rule of Law filed a 23-page ethics complaint with the Florida Bar, accusing Bondi of “serious professional misconduct.” The complaint alleged that Bondi threatened DOJ lawyers with discipline or termination for failing to pursue President Trump’s political objectives, particularly via a February 5 “zealous advocacy” memo. It claimed her actions led to resignations and firings in violation of DOJ norms and Florida Bar rules. Yet, on June 6, the Florida Bar summarily rejected the complaint, citing a policy against investigating sitting officers appointed under the US Constitution. It was the third such complaint against Bondi, and the third rejection. Critics like DOJ Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle called the filings “vexatious” and politically motivated. That the 65 Project would go after a sitting Attorney General at all illustrates the sheer audacity, and absurdity, of their campaign. They have announced they will be filing more complaints against Bondi.
Even more outrageous, the same coalition named two additional Trump administration officials in their June 5 complaint: Emil Bove, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General and Todd Blanche, Deputy Attorney General. The complaint accused them contributing to a culture of unethical conduct within the Justice Department by pressuring career lawyers to ignore professional responsibilities and instead pursue political objectives at the behest of President Trump. The goal was clear: not just to intimidate one leader, but to undermine the credibility of an entire legal team working within the bounds of the law.
This complaint, like so many others, underscores the project’s enduring mission: to ensure lawyers think twice before defending Trump or any of his associates. Public defenders and private litigators alike have been swept into the net. Whether you were in court for Giuliani, or simply filed an amicus brief on election integrity, the 65 Project likely has your name on a list.
This strategy, weaponizing legal ethics as a partisan bludgeon, would have made Boss Tweed grin from ear to ear. Backroom operators like Col. George Brinton McClellan Harvey would recognize it instantly. Harvey, managing editor of the Democratic Party’s press empire at the turn of the 20th century, orchestrated conventions from smoke-filled rooms in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel, where policies were written not in law books, but on cocktail napkins between puffs of Havana cigars. Brock, in many ways, is his spiritual heir, using legal bureaucracy the way Harvey used ink and influence.
The Biden-appointed judiciary has not resisted. In Michigan, Democratic activists succeeded in convincing a federal judge to sanction every lawyer who filed election-related litigation for Trump in 2020. Among them: Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and Stefanie Junttila. Each was ordered to pay legal fees to Democratic Party groups and attend re-education courses, under the euphemism of continuing legal education. The court referred them for possible disbarment, fulfilling Brock’s vision.
Michael Teter, managing director of the 65 Project, has filed complaints against more than 100 attorneys across 26 states. The targets include high-profile figures like Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Cleta Mitchell. And while many of these complaints were dismissed by mid-2023, the damage to reputations and client relationships lingers.
The project’s tactics have drawn sharp rebuke. Congressman Lance Gooden, in April 2025, called the 65 Project a “political hit squad” and demanded a Justice Department investigation. Others on social media have accused the group of colluding with establishment Republicans to kneecap Trump’s legal allies. Yet Brock’s defenders frame the group as guardians of democracy, protecting the legal profession from ethical collapse.
Such framing is dishonest. When Alan Dershowitz defended Al Gore in 2000, no one suggested he should be disbarred for challenging election results. But now, lawyers challenging questionable election conduct on behalf of Republicans face professional ruin. This is not accountability. It is ideological warfare.
Critics may point out that the 65 Project has not secured many disbarments. That may be true, but they have achieved some high-profile penalties. Jenna Ellis was publicly censured by a Colorado judge in March 2023. Rudy Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York and is facing permanent disbarment proceedings in Washington, DC. John Eastman was disbarred in California following a March 27, 2024, decision by State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland, who found him culpable of 10 out of 11 disciplinary charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. His license was placed on involuntary inactive status days later, rendering him ineligible to practice law in California. Eastman has appealed, but as of June 15, 2025, no reversal has been reported. He was also suspended from practicing law in Washington, DC, on May 3, 2024, pending resolution of the California case. Lin Wood surrendered his law license in Georgia under pressure from multiple complaints. These results are rare but not insignificant. Still, the goal was never just disbarment. It was deterrence. It was a public display of consequence, a digital scarlet letter. No need to win in court when you can win in LinkedIn’s HR department.
The project has inspired imitators including the Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Lawyers for the Rule of Law. The Lincoln Project also targets law firms, encouraging junior associates to pressure partners against accepting GOP clients. Shutdown DC and the Un-American Bar maintain lists of “insurrectionist” lawyers. Others push the American Bar Association to adopt rules banning election challenges altogether, cloaking censorship in the rhetoric of professionalism.
Marc Elias, the left’s court general, has taken the mission even further, seeking to disqualify GOP candidates under the 14th Amendment, resurrecting post-Civil War measures to bar Trump allies from holding office. Lawsuits against Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, and others reflect this broader ecosystem of lawfare. It is a constellation of coordinated attacks designed to render conservative legal advocacy untenable.
And what of the Constitution? The Sixth Amendment was never meant to be partisan. It exists not to protect the powerful, but the accused. In America, even pariahs have lawyers. Even the guilty deserve defense. The 65 Project’s perverse genius is to flip that premise, treating legal representation as complicity, and enforcing political loyalty through professional terror.
David Brock did not build this machinery alone. Melissa Moss, a Clinton veteran, helped architect the effort. She recruited Democratic grandees, Tom Daschle, ABA presidents, former state judges, to lend legitimacy. Their goal? To make conservative legal advocacy professionally radioactive.
And it may be working. Some lawyers are declining GOP clients outright. Others fear disciplinary complaints, X mobs, or worse. The chilling effect is real, and precisely what the architects intended. The War on the Sixth is a war on courage, a war on professional independence, a war on the idea that justice should be blind.
In the end, Brock’s smoke-filled rooms are not about cigars or cocktails. They are about control. They are about ensuring that when Republicans step into a courtroom, they do so alone.
ANALYSIS – Maybe the realistic threat of the U.S. taking some sort of limited military action against the Mexican drug cartels is having an effect on Mexico’s socialist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO).
Because Joe Biden’s administration is certainly not the reason — more likely though, this is just wishful thinking and AMLO, as the president is better known, is just pretending to play nice.
Still, AMLO now appears to be quietly meeting with American lawmakers on security and drug policy.
This, after several prominent GOP lawmakers recently called for the authority to use military force against the drug cartels, as part of the broader battle to protect our borders.
A massive wave of illegal Fentanyl is today killing thousands of young Americans each month (over 100,000 in a year) thanks to the Mexican drug cartels which control parts of the border.
The deadly drug is made in Mexico with precursor chemicals shipped from China.
And this week, AMLO sent his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, to Washington, D.C., to mobilize Mexico’s 52 consulates, the most foreign consulates in the U.S., to launch a nationwide information campaign “in defense of our country,” he said, following “unacceptable attacks” by GOP legislators.
In what I called foreign election interference, AMLO also called on Mexican Americans and U.S. Hispanics to vote against Republicans.
But now a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers met with AMLO over the weekend.
Six Republicans and five Democrats met with the Mexican president.
And they report he told them he would work with China to stop their shipments of fentanyl precursors that are brought into Mexico and processed before being smuggled into the United States.
According to their press release, Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Finance, Intelligence, and Judiciary Committees, led the congressional delegation (CODEL) which returned to the U.S. Monday afternoon.
In addition to their meeting with AMLO, the group also met with intelligence, drug enforcement and government officials in Mexico.
Senators Chris Coons, D-Del., Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., along with Representatives Tony Gonzales (TX-23), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Veronica Escobar (TX-16) and Maria Salazar (FL-27) rounded out the rest of the delegation.
Their press release stated that they received:
…briefings from U.S. intelligence officials, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on the United States’ security posture with regards to Mexico, recent killings of Americans in the country, efforts to stop drug trafficking, and illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The delegation shared their concerns with Mexico’s handling of these issues with President López Obrador and members of his administration.
“One of the interesting parts is he agreed to meet with China on how they could prevent getting some of the raw materials, the precursors, from China,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told The Hill.
“So that in itself acknowledges the fact that China is sending these things through, mainly through Manzanillo and some of the ports on that side of Mexico.”
However, the threats of U.S. military action from GOP lawmakers have also helped AMLO whip the country into a nationalistic frenzy. And I trust his actions more than his words.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
CBP Photography, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ALERT – “I’m sorry, you’re screwed.” It is long known among intelligence and border control officials that the powerful Mexican drug cartels use illegal migrant flows to smuggle drugs into the United States.
As the migrant numbers surge, so does the drug smuggling. And illegal immigration has exploded under Joe Biden to unprecedented levels.
Migrant encounters increased from 480,000 in 2020 to 2.3 million last year, according to CBP.
This is partly why we have a deadly fentanyl crisis in America right now.
The cartels have established effective — and lucrative — smuggling operations and use the migrant surge to bypass overwhelmed Border Patrol officials, according to Lines. Migrants can pay the cartels to help them cross the border, but if they can’t afford the cost, then they can traffic drugs or work off their debt in lieu of cash.
A George Mason University professor told The New York Times that cartel fees for migrants crossing the border range between $4,000 and $20,000.
This is why many migrants reportedly remain “indebted to the cartel” after crossing into the U.S., and are forced to work off their debts.
And now Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) has said that these Mexican narcos are preparing to overwhelm U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) by inundating the southern border with between 700,000 and one million illegal immigrants as soon as Title 42 is lifted.
This, Biggs says, is according to a county supervisor from his state, whose county sits right on the border.
The county official was just briefed by the CPB sector chiefs from San Diego through Yuma to Tucson. They warned that there are between 700,000 and one million migrants currently massing south of the border.
And as soon as Title 42 is lifted the cartels plan to “overwhelm the system.” Biggs said CBP officials are telling local officials: “I’m sorry. You’re screwed.”
Referring to the incoming tsunami of illegal migrants, Rep. Biggs said the CBP does not have the resources to “keep them in detention and processing facilities.”
“When those facilities get full…they’re going to just take pictures. They’re not even going to do full on processing. They’re going to take pictures. If we’re lucky fingerprints, [but] probably not even that,” Biggs warned. “And then they’re going to release them right into the local communities along the border.”
In January, Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines told Fox News that Mexican cartels control the southern border in his Arizona county and they endanger Americans as they smuggle drugs and violent criminals into the U.S.
“This is not a political discussion,” Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines warned. “This is a national security issue.”
“Unless this situation changes and we take back control from the cartels, forthe trafficking coming across our border, it will only get worse,” Lines said.
Not only that, but terrorists are coming through as well. According to CPB, nearly 100 known or suspected terrorists were arrested at the southern border last year. That is four times the number of 26 arrests over the previous five years.
How many terrorists can we expect to be hidden now among the one million migrants ready to swarm the border?
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
In the history of American bureaucracy, few ideas have carried the sting of satire and the force of reform as powerfully as Steve Davis’s $1 credit card limit. It is a solution so blunt, so absurd on its face, that only a government so accustomed to inertia could have missed it for decades. And yet, here it is, at the center of a sprawling audit by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that has, in just seven weeks, eliminated or disabled 470,000 federal charge cards across thirty agencies. The origin of this initiative reveals more than cleverness or thrift. It reflects a new attitude, one that insists the machinery of government need not be calcified. The federal workforce, long derided as passive and obstructionist, is now being challenged to solve problems, not explain why they cannot be solved. This, more than any tally of dollars saved, may be DOGE’s greatest achievement.
When Elon Musk assumed control of DOGE under President Trump’s second administration, he brought with him an instinct for disruption. But disruption, as many reformers have learned, is often easier said than done. Take federal credit cards. There were, as of early 2025, roughly 4.6 million active accounts across the federal government, while the civilian workforce comprised fewer than 3 million employees. Even the most charitable reading suggests gross redundancy. More cynical observers see potential for abuse. DOGE asked the obvious question: why so many cards? The initial impulse was to cancel them outright. But as is often the case in government, legality is not aligned with simplicity.
Enter Steve Davis. Known for his austere management style and history with Musk-led enterprises, Davis encountered legal counsel who informed him that mass cancellation would breach existing contracts, violate administrative rules, and risk judicial entanglement. Most would stop there. But Davis, adhering to Musk’s ethos of first-principles thinking, chose another route. If the cards could not be canceled, could they be rendered functionally useless? Yes. Set their limits to $1.
This workaround achieved in days what years of audits and Inspector General warnings had not. The cards remained technically active, sidestepping the legal landmines of cancellation, but were practically neutered. The act was swift, surgical, and reversible. It allowed agencies to petition for exemptions in cases of genuine operational need, but forced every cardholder and department head to justify the existence of each card. Waste thrives in opacity. The $1 cap turned on the lights.
Naturally, the immediate reaction inside many agencies was panic. At the National Park Service, staff could not process trash removal contracts. At the FDA, scientific research paused as laboratories found themselves unable to order reagents. At the Department of Defense, travel for civilian personnel ground to a halt. Critics likened it to a shutdown, albeit without furloughs. Others, more charitable, described it as a stress test. And indeed, that is precisely what it was: a large-scale audit conducted not by paper trails and desk reviews, but by rendering all purchases impossible and observing who protested, why, and with what justification.
This approach reflects a deeper philosophical question. What is government for? Is it a perpetuator of routine, or a servant of necessity? The DOGE initiative, in its credit card audit, insisted that nothing in government spending ought to be assumed sacred or automatic. Every purchase, every expense, must be rooted in mission-critical need. And for that to happen, a culture shift must occur, not merely in policy, but in mindset. The federal worker must no longer be an apologist for the status quo, but an agent of reform.
Remarkably, this message has found traction. Inside the agencies affected by the freeze, DOGE has reported a surge in what one official described as “constructive dissent.” Civil servants who once reflexively recited reasons for inaction are now offering alternative mechanisms, revised workflows, and digital solutions. One employee at the Department of Agriculture proposed consolidating regional office supply chains after realizing that over a dozen separate cardholders were purchasing duplicative items within the same week. A NOAA field team discovered it could pool resources for bulk procurement, saving money and reducing redundancy. These are not acts of whistleblowing or radical restructuring. They are small, localized acts of efficiency, and they matter.
Critics argue that these are marginal gains and that the real drivers of federal bloat lie elsewhere: entitlement spending, defense procurement, or healthcare subsidies. And they are not wrong. But they miss the point. DOGE’s $1 limit was not about accounting minutiae, it was about psychology. In a system where inertia reigns, a symbolic shock is often the necessary prelude to substantive reform. The act of asking why, why this card, why this purchase, why this employee, forces a reappraisal that scales. Culture, not just cost, was the target.
There is a danger here, of course. Symbolism can become performance, and austerity can become vanity. If agencies are deprived of necessary tools for the sake of headlines, then reform becomes sabotage. This is why the $1 policy included an appeals process, a mechanism for restoring functionality where needed. In a philosophical sense, this is the principle of proportionality applied to public finance: restrictions should be commensurate with the likelihood of abuse, and reversible upon demonstration of legitimate need.
DOGE’s broader audit, still underway, has now expanded to cover nearly thirty agencies. It is not simply cutting cards. It is classifying them, comparing issuance practices, flagging statistical anomalies, and building a federal dashboard of real-time usage. This is not glamorous work. There are no ribbon-cuttings, no legacy-defining achievements. But it is the marrow of good governance. As Aristotle noted, excellence is not an act, but a habit. The DOGE team has adopted a habit of scrutiny. And that habit, when instilled in the civil service, is a kind of virtue.
Here we arrive at the most profound implication. What if the federal workforce is not inherently wasteful or cynical, but simply trapped in a system that rewards compliance over creativity? What if, when given both the mandate and the moral permission to think, civil servants become problem solvers? The $1 limit policy is, in this light, less a budgetary tool than a pedagogical one. It teaches. It asks employees to imagine how their department might function if every dollar mattered, and to act accordingly.
In a bureaucratic culture where the phrase “we can’t do that” serves as both shield and apology, DOGE has introduced a new mantra: try. Try to find the workaround. Try to reimagine procurement. Try to do more with less. This shift may not register on a spreadsheet. It may not win an election. But it rehumanizes the federal workforce. It treats them not as drones executing policy, but as intelligent actors capable of judgment, reform, and even invention.
The future of DOGE will no doubt face resistance. Unions, entrenched bureaucrats, and political opponents will argue it oversteps or misunderstands the delicate machinery of governance. Some of that criticism will be valid. But what cannot be denied is that DOGE has already achieved something rare: it has made federal workers think differently. It has shown that even the most byzantine of systems contains levers for change—if one is willing to pull them.
The $1 card limit is not a policy; it is a parable. It tells us that in the face of complexity, simplicity is a virtue. That in the face of inertia, audacity has a place. And that in the face of sprawling bureaucracies, sometimes the best way to fix the machine is to unplug it and see who calls to complain. That is when the real work begins.
Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.
ANALYSIS – Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse with Joe Biden, he goes and has a chummy sideline meeting with China’s communist leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
While his partisan spinmeisters in the media dutifully reported the White House line that Biden was firm with Xi, the three-and-a-half-hour private meeting was muddled, absurdly naïve and dangerous.
At the summit, Biden stated that the U.S. aims to manage competition with China “responsibly” and that there is no need for a new Cold War.
Biden also strongly and foolishly reaffirmed China’s ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan, adding (against warnings from NATO and his own national security officials) that he didn’t foresee any Chinese military action against Taiwan any time soon.
Fox News reported Biden said during a press conference ahead of the G20 summit in Bali:
“[Xi] was clear and I was clear that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners…”
“We’re going to compete vigorously but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said. “And I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. We discussed that.”
Biden’s messaging was clear in one area though.
He believes climate change is more of a threat than a revisionist, expansionist, power-hungry, communist dictatorship with an economy almost the size of the U.S.
And Biden is willing to risk America’s sovereignty, independence, security and freedom to get China’s faux help with his extreme climate agenda.
GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was rightfully livid over Biden’s meeting and statements.
President Biden’s claim that ‘there need not be a new Cold War’ between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proves that this administration dangerously misunderstands the CCP, which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies…
Last week, while Xi appeared in a military uniform and called on the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to prepare for war, Biden’s Department of Defense pulled an entire squadron of American fighter jets out of the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the United States unprepared to defend Taiwan against a PLA invasion, President Biden is now downplaying its likelihood.
This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Rubio added: “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”
Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen told Fox News on Monday that Biden’s diplomacy with China is “strategic insanity” that may only help the autocratic communist state accumulate power and global influence.
Fox News adds that “Biden reportedly has been pressuring China to essentially join him in his Green New Deal-style vision of non-petroleum power sources, which Thiessen said is one of the key areas the United States can apply pressure to Beijing if they invade their peaceable neighbor Taiwan.”
“The last thing we want China to do, quite frankly, is to start weaning itself off of oil,” Thiessen said.
“If they follow Biden’s advice and wean themselves off of oil and start embracing clean energy, we lose that leverage,” Thiessen said.
“So, you know, it’s not only a sign of weakness, it’s strategic insanity.”
As I recently reported, Xi has been increasingly adamant that so-called ‘reunification’ with Taiwan can no longer wait and China will use force if necessary to control the independent democratic nation.
Top U.S. commanders and senior intelligence officials have warned that China could take forceful action against Taiwan as early as next year, and increasingly likely by 2025 or 2027, at the latest.
Meanwhile, Biden is playing footsies with Xi, hoping China will join his radical green global agenda.
Because that is all he, and his leftist puppeteers, care about. GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
In the wake of the tragic Covenant Christian Elementary School shooting there has been a renewed push to employ school safety officers throughout the country…
What do you think?
Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Congressional investigators are demanding additional documents and information from financial institutions nationwide amid revelations that a Biden administration operation to spy on millions of bank accounts to identify suspected January 6 rioters was even more widespread than previously reported.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to the Chief Executive Officers of Standard Chartered Bank USA, Truist, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Western Union, Charles Schwab, Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC Bank, JPMorgan Chase, MUFG Bank, PayPal, and Santander Bank requesting “documents and communications related to the Committee’s investigation of financial surveillance of American citizens, including the disclosure of private financial records to federal authorities without legal process.”
“Documents obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government show that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) circulated specific materials to these banks, and the Committee believes that these banking institutions possess information necessary for the investigation,” the Judiciary Committee reports.
“The Committee previously sent letters to Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and Truist for its probe into how the FBI worked together with banks to spy on Americans following the events of January 6, 2021, without a warrant,” the Committee reports.
“The Committee also sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding all Bank Secrecy Act filings, including Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), that included the tag created to group all SARs related to the events following January 6, 2021,” the Committee adds.
Excerpts of Jordan’s letter to Charles Schwab, for example, read:
“After receiving documents and information from several entities, the Committee and Select Subcommittee learned that the financial surveillance occurring in the United States is much broader than the FBI simply requesting, without any legal process, a list of customers’ transactions from Bank of America. On March 6, 2024, the Committee and Select Subcommittee released an interim staff report detailing its findings to date on how federal law enforcement is using private banks to pry into the private transactions of American customers. That report highlighted how, following January 6, 2021, federal law enforcement commandeered financial institutions’ databases, sought to treat sweeping classes of otherwise lawful transactions as potentially ‘suspicious,’ and profiled Americans using Merchant Category Codes (MCCs), ‘typologies,’ and ‘indicators’ that treated protected political and religious expression as indicative of domestic violent extremism.
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee remain concerned about how and to what extent federal law enforcement and financial institutions continue to spy on Americans by weaponizing backdoor information sharing and casting sprawling classes of transactions, purchase behavior, and protected political or religious expression as potentially ‘suspicious’ or indicative of ‘extremism.'”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Amid reports that Wall Street banks have been illicitly spying on customers and reporting gun buyers to the FBI, despite no probable cause or court-issued warrants.
In response, Congressman Rep. Alex X. Mooney (R-WV) has introduced H.R. 3021, The Protecting the Second Amendment in Financial Services Act to “expressly prohibit financial institutions and credit card companies from using a merchant category code that separately categorizes gun and ammunition transactions.”
The revelation and legislation come as the FBI finds itself under fire for widespread civil rights abuses and its role in making false claims about President Donald Trump in an apparent attempt to remove a legally-elected president.
Under the latest-revealed scheme, purchases made at gun dealers were flagged with a secret code and referred to the FBI for recording and possible investigation, despite the fact the purchases were legal and no criminal activity suspected.
Some believe the scheme was an effort to get around federal laws prohibiting the federal government from assembling its own national registry of gun owners by having banks record the data – after audits of the Justice Department revealed officials had been illicitly retaining records of gun sales reported to the federal government’s National Instant Check System.
“Leftist activists have been clear that they intend to use merchant category codes to further surveil the constitutional firearm purchases of law-abiding citizens,” said Mooney.
“The only rationale to implement a new merchant category code is to appease anti-Second Amendment activists. I am unwavering in my support of the Second Amendment, and I am proud to introduce this common-sense legislation to protect it,” said Mooney.
“Merchant category codes (MCCs) are four-digit codes that enable payment processors and banks to categorize, monitor, and collect data on various types of transactions,” a statement from Mooney explains.
“On September 9, 2022, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved a Merchant Category Code (MCC) for firearm retailers. Amalgamated Bank, a left-wing U.S. bank, led the charge in pressuring the ISO to adopt the new MCC. The ISO rejected Amalgamated Bank’s initial July 2021 application for the new MCC but approved it on the second application for reasons that remain unclear,” the statement reads.
“Amalgamated Bank and progressive Members of Congress have been open that they intend to use this new MCC to track and report lawful firearm transactions to law enforcement under the guise of ‘suspicious activity’. In other words, this MCC is the Left’s attempt to create a backdoor gun registry to further curtail the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.
While American Express, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover have announced a temporary pause in the implementation of this new MCC, there has been no formal request to withdraw the MCC. Legislation is needed to ensure this is never implemented,” the statement concludes.
This legislation is endorsed by the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America.
“GOA thanks Rep. Mooney for leading the fight to protect American gun owners from the anti-gun actions of the International Standards Organization. The U.S. government cannot sit idly by while a foreign entity pressures banks, payment card networks, and other American corporations to infringe on the Constitutional rights of the American people. This legislation empowers U.S. financial institutions to stand up to this foreign influence by categorically rejecting this anti-gun ‘merchant code,’” said Aidan Johnston, GOA’s Director of Federal Affairs
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
(Miami - Flórida, 09/03/2020) Presidente da República Jair Bolsonaro durante encontro com o Senador Marco Rubio..Foto: Alan Santos/PR
George Santos did not stretch the truth. He did not fudge numbers. He did not run afoul of technicalities in campaign finance law. He stole, lied, and exploited vulnerable people for personal and political gain. These were not victimless crimes, nor were they victimless lies. They were part of an elaborate scheme to build a fraudulent political career on a foundation of stolen funds, fictitious wealth, and unearned trust. It is time conservatives stop equivocating. If George Santos were not a thief, he might have been a talented, even promising political figure. But he is a thief, and a spectacularly cynical one at that. He stole from the old and the sick, he stole from donors, he stole from the US taxpayer. He is not a misunderstood maverick or a casualty of overzealous prosecution. He is a con man, and a criminal.
Let us begin, as the law did, with the false image he built. Santos, through deliberate lies to the Federal Election Commission and his own party, fabricated a story of fundraising success. In early 2022, he claimed to have raised over $250,000 in a single quarter from third-party donors, including a personal loan of $500,000 to his own campaign. These were lies. He did not have the money. He did not receive these donations. But this mirage of financial viability was just enough to secure his acceptance into the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “Young Guns” program, granting him financial, logistical, and strategic support. The GOP, believing they were backing a legitimate, self-sustaining candidate, diverted valuable resources to a fraud.
But Santos did not merely fake donor support. He invented donors. Using the identities and financial information of real people, Santos charged their credit cards repeatedly, funneling the proceeds into his campaign, other political committees, and even his own bank account. Nearly a dozen people were victimized, including individuals least capable of defending themselves. One woman, suffering from brain damage, had thousands of dollars withdrawn without her consent. Two elderly men in their eighties, each suffering from dementia, had their identities stolen and their cards charged. These were not passive accounting errors or clerical mistakes. These were acts of intimate, cold exploitation. Santos knew these people, spoke with them, thanked them for their support, and then used their vulnerability against them.
In one egregious instance, a donor who had already given the legal maximum found his credit card charged an additional $15,800 without authorization. Santos disguised this theft by attributing the funds to fabricated family members in his FEC reports, a maneuver that allowed him to continue the ruse while avoiding contribution limits. In another, he charged $12,000 to a donor’s account and deposited the majority into his personal bank. From there, it funded clothing, cosmetics, credit card bills, and gambling trips. The campaign, the candidacy, the public service, all were secondary to a lifestyle of luxury paid for by other people’s money.
Perhaps the most hypocritical of Santos’s frauds involved the pandemic. In 2020, he applied for and received over $24,000 in unemployment benefits from the state of New York. At the time, he was gainfully employed as a regional director at a Florida-based investment firm, earning over $120,000 a year. He did not miss a paycheck. He was not laid off. He did not qualify. And yet, each week, he falsely certified his jobless status, drawing taxpayer-funded aid designed for those hit hardest by COVID-19, the unemployed, the underemployed, the financially desperate. In an act of gall that would be laughable if it were not so despicable, Santos later sponsored legislation in Congress to crack down on pandemic unemployment fraud. The man who stole from the system claimed he would reform it.
Nor did the deception stop there. Santos lied on his congressional financial disclosures, the forms meant to ensure transparency for public officials. He claimed to have earned $750,000 in salary from a private company that paid him nothing. He reported receiving $1 to $5 million in dividends that never existed. He declared hundreds of thousands in bank holdings, when in fact his accounts were often in the low thousands, if not lower. In reality, his only actual income came from the investment firm and the unemployment checks he falsely obtained. The lies were not incidental. They were comprehensive, deliberate, and aimed at creating an illusion of wealth and competence.
Even more brazenly, Santos fabricated an independent expenditure group, a supposed political action committee called RedStone Strategies. He solicited two donors for $25,000 each, promising that the funds would be used for media buys and campaign efforts. They were not. Santos transferred the money into accounts he controlled and spent it on Ferragamo, Hermes, Botox, and credit card bills. This was not merely unethical. It was embezzlement. It was theft. It was a fraud perpetrated with full knowledge and intent.
In total, Santos stole or misappropriated approximately $578,750. The court ordered him to pay $373,749.97 in restitution and to forfeit an additional $205,002.97. These numbers were not speculative. They were calculated against real losses to real people, individuals whose credit was damaged, whose money was siphoned away, whose trust was obliterated. Santos’s 87-month sentence, or just over seven years, was not an outlier in the federal system. It was a typical penalty for this kind of sprawling, malicious financial fraud. Defendants with no political profile, who defrauded the government or private individuals out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, routinely receive similar sentences. That Santos was a congressman did not result in his being singled out. If anything, it spared him scrutiny longer than he deserved.
There is no serious argument for clemency here. Clemency is for excess, for injustice, for punishment that outstrips wrongdoing. Clemency is not for grifters who fake their way into office by stealing from pensioners and pandemic relief funds. One does not defend George Santos by invoking freedom, fairness, or limited government. To the contrary, every dollar Santos stole weakened the legitimacy of our electoral system, diverted support from legitimate candidates, and degraded the moral clarity conservatives must offer in a dishonest age. The true conservative position is to say plainly: this man is a crook.
Yes, Santos was charismatic. Yes, he had a knack for commanding attention. And yes, in another life, with honesty and principle, he might have served well. But we do not excuse embezzlement because the embezzler is clever. We do not overlook theft because the thief is funny. Our movement has spent decades insisting that character matters. If that is still true, then George Santos is not a man to be platformed or pitied. He is a cautionary tale.
Some will argue that Santos’s sentence was harsh. Perhaps. But that is not a reason to pardon him. It is a reason to scrutinize sentencing guidelines for all non-violent financial offenders. Santos should be treated like any other fraudster, no worse, no better. And by that measure, he has been.
Others say we should forgive him because the media was against him. But the media is against every Republican. What makes our side different, or should, is our insistence on personal responsibility. George Santos did what he did. He admitted it. He pled guilty. He is being punished in accordance with the law. He is not a martyr. He is a criminal.
Those who now seek to rebrand Santos as a political prisoner or conservative folk hero are doing damage not only to the movement, but to the truth. And that matters. For if we cannot call theft what it is, if we cannot call fraud what it is, if we cannot reject the normalization of criminality in our own ranks, then we are not a movement of principle. We are just another racket.
