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Thursday, October 3, 2024

Iran’s Attack on Israel Is a Result of Democrat Appeasement

National Review: As we await the Israeli reaction and its implications for the region, it’s worth emphasizing that Tuesday’s attack is the latest example of the failed policy of appeasing Iran that has been a fixture of Democratic administrations dating back to Barack Obama. When President Obama took office in 2009, he pursued a strategy that attempted to reorient United States policy in the Middle East. The U.S. was too reflexively pro-Israel, he argued, and only by showing more “daylight” could America earn the respect of the Arab states. At the same time, he wanted to move away from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and pursue warmer relations with Iran, deluded into thinking that doing so would usher in more moderation despite the fact that the regime was founded on Islamic fanaticism, has one of the worst human-rights records in the world, and is the leading sponsor of state terrorism. To grease the wheels of diplomacy, Obama turned a blind eye to the malign behavior of Iran and its terrorist proxies. Its efforts to downplay Iran’s destabilizing effect on the region culminated in a disastrous nuclear deal that provided tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief to the regime, allowed it to pursue ballistic-missile development, and left it on a long-term glide path toward nuclear weapons (National Review).

President Biden Urges Israel Not to Strike Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

Times of Israel: US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he opposes Israel striking Iran’s nuclear facilities in retaliation for Iran’s ballistic missile attack, telling reporters that Jerusalem has a right to respond but that it should do so “proportionally.” Biden did say that sanctions would be imposed against Iran and that he discussed the idea with the leaders of the G7 countries in a joint call earlier Wednesday (Times of Israel). Jerusalem Post: Netanyahu promised that Iran would pay a stiff price for its launching of over 180 ballistic missiles on Tuesday. Some analysts said Israel’s response would likely be sharper this time, suggesting it could target Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities… The United States has warned Iran it will face consequences for that attack but has remained focused on diplomacy while Israel has doubled down military resolutions to ensure the security of its situation (Jerusalem Post).

FEMA Broke in the Face of Hurricane: Spent $650 Million on Illegal Immigrants

Federalist: The Biden-Harris administration took more than a billion tax dollars that had been allocated to the agency responsible for American disaster relief and used it to offer services for illegal immigrants. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allocated nearly $364 million in the fiscal year 2023 and $650 million for the 2024 fiscal year to the “Shelter and Services Program” “to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” according to the government’s website (Federalist). Mollie Hemingway: In a sane country, this would end the party in power (X). Reporter Park MacDougald: FEMA spent SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION DOLLARS on illegal immigrants this year and now it has no money for disaster relief (X). America First Legal: MAYORKAS: “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season” (X).

Hurricane Helene Death Toll Reaches 180

Daily Wire: The death toll from Hurricane Helene has risen to at least 180 people across the southeast U.S. as emergency workers continue to conduct search and rescue operations for hundreds of missing people. Deaths from Helene have been reported across six states, including Florida (17), Georgia (25), South Carolina (36), Virginia (2), Tennessee (9), and North Carolina (91). Surpassed only by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Helene is one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the mainland United States in the last 55 years (Daily Wire). USA Today: Since 1950, only eight hurricanes have claimed more than 100 lives in the contiguous 48 states. Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Houston and the surrounding region in 2017, killed 103 (USA Today).

Judge Releases Document Containing Jack Smith’s New Grievances Against Donald Trump

Katie Pavlich: U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan released a 165-page court document Wednesday afternoon filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith. In it, Smith claims former President Donald Trump committed a number of crimes as a candidate on January 6, 2021 to stay in power after the 2020 presidential election. The new language and framing is an effort by federal prosecutors to get around the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling in June. “Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted—a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.” The filing is a rewrite of Smith’s original January 6 case against Trump, which was forced by the Supreme Court decision on immunity (Townhall). Charlie Kirk: The lawfare as election interference continues (X). Benny Johnson: Donald Trump responds to Jack Smith (X).

The VP Debate Matters

Washington Examiner: Vice presidential debates don’t matter, we have been assured over and over. No one votes for vice president or a presidential nominee for her or his choice of running mate. You can go back and look at snap polls taken after past vice presidential debates and find basically zero correlation with the final election results. All that said, the debate between Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) may turn out to matter. There’s no question, certainly, about who came out ahead… Vance was disciplined, returning again and again to charge that Vice President Kamala Harris, as an incumbent, is responsible for high inflation and record illegal immigration. In contrast, Walz seemed nervous, failed to make his arguments convincingly, and evidently misspoke when he said, puzzlingly, “I’ve become friends with school shooters…” It will take about 10 days for post-debate poll results to come in and more than a month for the final election results, which can differ, in either party’s direction, from preelection polls. But I can see two reasons why this debate may have some significant effect. One is that it may damage the morale of Democratic voters. Since the issues voters consider most important, inflation and immigration, favor Republicans, Harris’s national lead and her equal standing in target states owe much to “vibes,” the relief of the Democratic Party’s core group of upscale college graduates that Harris’s sudden elevation prevented the party’s certain defeat if Biden had stayed in… The second possible upshot of the vice presidential debate was the elevation of the censorship matter — “big technology companies silencing their fellow citizens,” as Vance said near the close of the debate. He was referring to Team Biden’s pressures successfully exerted on social media companies to suppress “misinformation,” at least some of which, such as the New York Post stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop, turned out to be true (Washington Examiner).

Judge Rules University of Maryland Must Allow Anti-Israel Student Group to Hold Demonstration on Anniversary of October 7

Jewish Insider: The University of Maryland chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine can proceed with a campus demonstration on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, after a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the group “has demonstrated a substantial likelihood that it will prevail in its lawsuit on the merits of its freedom of speech claim.” The ruling from U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte came after the university, which had initially OK’d the rally, reversed course last month and canceled it, prompting the SJP lawsuit stating that its First Amendment rights had been violated (Jewish Insider). Washington Post: The fight between U-Md. officials and the student group over the Oct. 7 vigil highlights the ongoing tensions at colleges across the country as the conflict in the Middle East intensifies. College administrators and students have clashed often in the past year as officials try to balance the rights of students to express their views and concerns about campus safety (Washington Post).

Conservative College Students Successfully Sue School After University Attempted to Charge Large Sum of Money for Guest Speaker

Bizpac Review: Conservatives marked a “major win” in the culture war after an attempt at silencing voices on a college campus was met with a temporary injunction. As the halls of higher education more openly embraced roles as leftist indoctrination facilities, claims of inclusion and diversity regularly disregarded those with opposing viewpoints. However, one bureaucratic effort to hinder conservative outreach at the University of New Mexico lost an initial challenge in court after a judge put a stop to adding a considerable fee for students to hear Riley Gaines speak… UNM’s TPUSA co-president, student Jonathan Gonzales indicated that there had been an initial $10,000 fee to the event that had been reduced prompting him to call out the “double standard” after “previously allowing a drag show to take place on campus with no security fee at all” (Bizpac Review). Fox News: “This is a major win in the battle to protect the First Amendment rights of college students, regardless of the viewpoint they express,” Southern Legal Foundation (SLF) Executive Director Kimberly Hermann announced on Friday in a press release… The university will not be able to penalize TPUSA for inaction in paying the fee while the case is being litigated. Hermann said that UNM’s policy surrounding speaking events is “so vague that the university can impose whatever fees it wants for any event” and that their lawsuit seeks to prevent them from doing that (Fox News).

Israel Prohibits United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres From Entering Country

National Review: Israel declared United Nations secretary-general António Guterres persona non grata on Wednesday, barring him from setting foot in the country because of the deep-seated anti-Israel bias he displayed after Iran attacked the Jewish state. Guterres responded to the Iranian barrage of 181 ballistic missiles on Tuesday by vaguely condemning the “broadening of the Middle East conflict” without mentioning Iran by name. “Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said in a statement (National Review). Politico: Barring the U.N. boss from Israel marks a major escalation of the long-running feud between Israel and Guterres. Guterres prompted an angry reaction from Israel when he said that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack “did not happen in a vacuum,” and has repeatedly denounced the Israeli military’s killings of civilians in Gaza (Politico).

10.

Northern Border Encounters More Illegal Immigrants in 2024 Than Last 17 Years Combined

Daily Wire: A Border Patrol sector on the United State’s northern border with Canada recorded more illegal alien apprehensions in the 2024 fiscal year than in the last 17 years combined. Agents in the Swanton Border Patrol sector, which covers Vermont, New Hampshire, and part of New York (Daily Wire). Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia: Border Patrol Agents in Swanton Sector have apprehended more than 19,222 subjects from 97 different countries since October 1, 2023, which is more than its last 17 fiscal years combined (X).