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Thursday, January 18, 2024

President Biden Labels Houthi Rebels as "Specially Designated Global Terrorist"

Katie Pavlich: After President Joe Biden rushed to remove the Iranian backed Houthis as a designated Islamic terrorist organization in early 2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced Wednesday the group has been officially redesignated. While attacks on the U.S. military and commercial shipping continues each day, the redesignation won’t be implemented until late February (Townhall). Rep. Pat Fallon: So we’re clear: 1- Trump designates Houthis as Foreign Terror Org. 2- Biden ends designation once in office. 3- Houthi attacks in Red Sea reduce shipping 50%. 4- Biden responds w/weak half-measures, designates Houthis as “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” = not as harsh as FTO (X). Libs of TikTok: So it turns out the Biden admin reversing a Trump policy and removing the Houthis from the terror list was a bad idea. They’re now backtracking. A story in 3 parts (X)!

Biden’s DOJ Admits Hunter Biden’s Laptop is Authentic

Daily Caller: The Department of Justice (DOJ) has acknowledged the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop data for the first time in a new court filing. In a Tuesday court filing from DOJ prosecutors, which came in response to Biden’s request to have his federal firearm charges dismissed, investigators acknowledge the legitimacy of data found on Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election. The court filings described how IRS and FBI investigators had obtained a search warrant for tax violations on Biden, leading them to “various” backup data accounts (Daily Caller). Rep. Jim Jordan: Joe Biden’s DOJ now admits that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate. Will House Democrats finally stop calling it a conspiracy (X)?

Democrat Introduces Censure Resolution Against GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY)

Messenger: Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., will introduce a resolution to censure fellow Empire State Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, slamming her for comments referring to January 6 insurrectionists as “hostages” and accusing her of peddling voter fraud conspiracies. Goldman claims that Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference, has been a “congressional cheerleader” for former President Donald Trump, putting her “personal ambitions over her integrity.” Democrats have widely condemned Stefanik for her rhetoric referring to individuals who were found guilty of crimes related to the assault on the Capitol as hostages (Messenger). Reporter Jake Sherman: JOHNSON made a rare hallway statement on this. “I just heard about Goldman’s censure resolution against Elise Stefanik. I think It’s patently absurd. She’s one of the best leaders and best communicators in Congress. She is doing an exceptional job and the idea that he would use censure to attack a political opponent is just ridiculous” (X).

Interest Payments on Our National Debt Reveal the Issue with “Tax the Rich”

Daily Wire: The combined net worth of the most prominent billionaires in the United States would not be enough to pay a single year’s interest payment on America’s ballooning national debt, which currently stands at an astonishing $34 trillion. The combined net worth of some of America’s most prominent billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and George Soros, adds up to approximately $726 billion. Meanwhile, the net interest on our national debt is currently at $730.8 billion, dwarfing the sum for previous years. The comparison signifies that increased taxation suggested by Democrats isn’t a viable path towards erasing the national debt, especially as interest payments pile up. The United States collected $4.4 trillion in federal taxes in fiscal year 2023, up from $4.19 trillion in fiscal year 2022, yet the debt increased by more than $2 trillion. The national debt itself is also set to reach new highs in coming years, currently on a trajectory to reach over $46 trillion by 2028 at a ratio of over $300,000 in debt for every American taxpayer (Daily Wire).

Judge in Maine Stalls Decision on Keeping Trump on Ballot Until Supreme Court Gives Decision

Hill: A Maine judge deferred a decision on whether former President Trump is disqualified from the state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment on Wednesday, allowing the Supreme Court to first weigh in on the extraordinary dispute. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) ruled last month that Trump was disqualified, making Maine the second state to do so and leading the former president to appeal the decision in court. Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy, who was assigned the appeal, declined to weigh in on the merits in a ruling issued Wednesday. Instead, Murphy slammed the brakes until the Supreme Court resolves a similar case challenging Trump’s ballot eligibility that arose from Colorado. In the meantime, Trump’s name will remain on the ballot (Hill).

GOP House Committee Uncovers China Mapped Out Covid Virus Two Weeks Before Telling the World

National Review: Chinese researcher in Beijing uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the Covid virus structure to a U.S. database run by the National Institute of Health on December 28, 2019, two weeks before Beijing shared the viral sequence with the rest of the world, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services documents recently obtained by a House committee reveal. When Beijing shared the SARS-CoV-2 sequence with the World Health Organization on January 11, 2020, two full weeks had elapsed since the virus was sequenced by a researcher at the Institute of Pathogen Biology in Beijing, an arm of the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences which has ties to the CCP. Those two weeks represent a crucial period in the evolution of the pandemic, as the international health community scrambled to assess and respond to the burgeoning viral threat. In late 2019, scientists across the globe were racing to understand the viral disease that would eventually kill millions. During that period, Chinese officials still described the disease outbreak in Wuhan, China, as a viral pneumonia “of unknown cause” to the greater public (National Review). Wall Street Journal: The discovery that a researcher in the state-affiliated Chinese lab had isolated and mapped the virus well before Beijing revealed publicly that it had done so shows the U.S. “cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” McMorris Rodgers said in a statement (Wall Street Journal).

CNN, ABC Cancel Debates in New Hampshire After Only Governor DeSantis Accepts Invitation

Politico: GOP presidential candidates will not go head-to-head on a debate stage in New Hampshire before the primary next week, now that CNN and ABC News have both canceled their scheduled debates. A CNN spokesperson said Wednesday that the network is canceling the debate scheduled for Sunday “as only one qualifying candidate accepted our invitation to take the stage.” The change comes a day after ABC News canceled its Thursday debate after former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley said she would step foot on the debate stage again only if Donald Trump or Joe Biden was there (Politico).

Majority of Americans Support Banning Affirmative Action Practices in College Admissions

Townhall: In October, a poll found that more than six in 10 Americans support banning the consideration of race in college admissions. Broken down, 63 percent of all U.S. adults surveyed said they would support the Supreme Court banning colleges and universities from considering a student’s race and ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions. Now, a new poll is showing that “two in three Americans (68%) say the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling to end the use of race and ethnicity in university admission decisions is ‘mostly a good thing’” (Townhall). Reporter Steve McGuire: According to Gallup, even a slight majority of black Americans think the Supreme Court’s decision to “end the use of race” in college admissions was a good thing (X). Gallup News: Diverse reactions in the Black community to the Supreme Court’s 2023 higher-education ruling: Older Black adults largely view it negatively, while younger Black adults are split on its impact (X).

Chinese Birthrates Decline by Over 500,000

Wall Street Journal: Births in China dropped by more than 500,000 last year to just over nine million in total, accelerating the decline in the country’s population as women shrugged off the government’s exhortations to reproduce. Official figures released Wednesday showed that China had fewer than half the number of births in 2023 than the country did in 2016, after China abolished the one-child policy. The worsening demographic gloom has taken on increasing urgency for Beijing. The country hit a historic turning point in 2022, marking the first year the population shrank since the starvation years in the early 1960s. Over the past year, China’s population dropped by 2.08 million, more than twice the drop in 2022. China ended 2023 with 1.410 billion people, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday, down from 1.412 billion in 2022 (Wall Street Journal). HotAir: But it turns out young women aren’t interested in having babies, especially when youth unemployment is over 21 percent and many young people feel the future for them won’t be nearly so bright as it was for their parents, many of whom got rich during the decades of China’s property boom (HotAir).

10.

Financial Institutions Worked with Government, Flagged Purchases of Bibles

Katie Pavlich: According to the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which falls under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee, federal law enforcement agencies partnered with a number of financial institutions to flag transactions with the terms “MAGA,” “Trump” and more. They also monitored transactions at stores like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shop. Other purchases linked to religious texts, like Christian bibles, were flagged under the guise of “preventing extremism” (Townhall). Rep. Jim Jordan: We now know the federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP,” to financial institutions if Americans completed transactions using those terms. What was also flagged? If you bought a religious text, like a BIBLE, or shopped at Bass Pro Shop (X).