The ISIS leader behind the 2017 Niger attack that led to the deaths of four U.S. troops, was killed in an August drone strike, according to the French military.
Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, had been killed in a French drone strike. Sahrawi was killed near the border between Mali and Niger.
French President Emmanuel Macron first announced Sahrawi’s death in a Wednesday tweet. “Adnan Abou Walid al Sahrawi, leader of the terrorist group Islamic State in the Greater Sahara was neutralized by French forces. This is another major success in our fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel.”
French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly discussed the strike further in a Thursday press conference.
“His death deals a decisive blow to the leadership of the Islamic State in the Sahel,” Parly said.
Parly said the strike mission, which took place between Aug. 17 to Aug. 20, involved cooperation between France and local forces, as well as European U.S. military counterparts.
The Washington Post reported Gen. Thierry Burkhard, the French army’s chief of staff, described the attack in detail. French special forces chose their targets based on information from two captured Islamic State members who were close to Sahrawi. Drones and fighter jets killed around a dozen militants, while 20 soldiers stormed a hideout in a forest near the Mali-Niger border.
Reviewing the battlefield, French forces determined Sahrawi had been one of two people on the back of a motorcycle fleeing the site of the attack, who had been hit by a drone strike.
Sahrawi had previously associated with Al Qaeda affiliates in Africa but later changed loyalties to the Islamic State terrorist group. According to the Washington Post, Sahrawi founded the branch of ISIS in the Sahel region of West Africa, known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, or ISGS.
ISGS is primarily located in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and has targeted U.S. and French troops in those countries.
In October 2017, a U.S. Special Forces team was carrying out reconnaissance in Niger when ISGS militants launched an ambush attack, resulting in the deaths of four U.S. service members. At least four more Nigerien troops were also killed and two more U.S. troops were injured. The U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million bounty for information leading to Sahrawi’s capture.
In addition to the 2017 ambush on U.S. troops, Sahrawi was also linked to the 2020 murder of six French aid workers and their local guides in a nature reserve in Niger. France has attributed the deaths of around 2,000 to 3,000 civilians in the region to Sahrawi’s militants since 2013.
The Biden administration is flouting the law to push through a massive financial favor to the powerful and lucrative abortion industry that backed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy with tens of millions of dollars.
A new leaked document shows the Biden administration flouting the regulatory process in order to push through a massive financial favor to the powerful and lucrative abortion industry that backed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy with tens of millions of dollars.
Less than two weeks after an already abbreviated period of time for the public to review and comment on the proposed regulatory change, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services circulated a draft final rule that violates the clear language of Obamacare in order to benefit Planned Parenthood and other corporate abortion interests. The leaked document, dated August 10 and more than 300 pages long, was then sent to the Office of Management and Budget for final approval, according to multiple sources familiar with the federal rule making process. OMB posted confirmation of receipt August 19, a mere 50 days after the major rule change was first proposed to the public.
“In their rush to finalize the rule, HHS and [Secretary Xavier] Becerra are making a mockery of the rule making process. Their efforts to minimize public input and provide only cursory review shows the rule was predetermined,” said Rachel Morrison, a policy analyst at the Ethics & Public Policy Center who submitted comments opposing the rule.
In order to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in 2010 on a mostly party-line vote, Democrats included a provision to placate pro-life members of the party reluctant to vote for it. Section 1303 of the bill requires separate billing for medical procedures that end unborn human lives. Pro-life Democrats said this would ensure no federal funds were spent on abortions. Plan users would write one check for their premium, and another for an abortion rider.
However, the Obama administration ignored the statutory language and made it harder for plan users to know if they were funding abortion by allowing insurers to bury the abortion surcharges deep in plan documents. Before the end of the Trump administration, the regulation governing such payments for abortion was updated to make it compliant with the law as written. Planned Parenthood and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued to block the rule. Becerra was rewarded by Biden, who regularly emphasizes his devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, with an appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services.
On July 1, the Biden administration proposed to eliminate and replace the Trump administration’s separate billing requirement.
Normally, such an important and economically significant rule change would require giving the public months of opportunity to comment, followed by months more of rigorous review of and response to the comments, before finalizing the rule. In a stunning move, the Biden administration provided only 28 days for public comment, thereby receiving only 341 comments.
By contrast, President Donald Trump gave the public a full two months to comment on his administration’s rule governing the billing for abortion services, receiving more than 75,000 public comments. This was consistent with Executive Order 12866, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, which provides that rules should generally have at least 60 days for public comment. The Administrative Procedure Act says that unless it’s a national security crisis or other urgent situation, less than 30 days of review is not advisable.
What makes the abnormally short public comment period even more surprising is that HHS admitted in its final draft this rule “is expected to be a ‘major rule’ … because it is likely to result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more.”
One of the most difficult and time-consuming portions of the regulatory process is the period in which an agency reviews and responds to public comments, which they are required to do by law. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires any rule that has force or effect of law to be open to public inspection and comment before finalized. Agencies must take comments into account.
That means an agency must read and respond to them in the preamble to the final rule. If they don’t, agency has violated the APA and the regulation can be blocked. Limiting the public comment period to less than a month truncated the number of public comments drastically, but regulatory experts say less than two weeks was way too little time to review several hundred comments, some of which were dozens of pages long and dealt with comprehensive legal and regulatory arguments. The draft final rule indicated no changes from the July 1 proposed rule in response to the substantive public comments on the controversial portions of the proposed rule.
“To me this signals that unfortunately [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] has already made up its mind about all of these complicated issues and is rushing to finalize the rule without really considering the public comments and frankly without giving the public enough opportunity to weigh in on a number of controversial provisions,” said Randy Pate, former director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS. He noted that the rule change not only covered the separate billing for abortion issue, but also raised premiums on users, and removed flexibility for states in how they operate their insurance exchanges.
The rushed rule change covers one of the most important legislative battles Democrats waged in order to pass Obamacare, which legislated a massive regulatory overhaul of the health insurance marketplace. Sen. Ben Nelson, a pro-life Democrat from Nebraska, authored the section requiring separate payment for abortion services. The bill would not have passed without the provision.
Nelson explained during the debate over Section 1303 that separate payment meant separate billing and separate transactions: “[I]f you are receiving Federal assistance to buy insurance, and if that plan has any abortion coverage, the insurance company must bill you separately, and you must pay separately from your own personal funds—perhaps a credit card transaction, your separate personal check, or automatic withdrawal from your bank account— for that abortion coverage. Now, let me say that again. You have to write two checks: one for the basic policy and one for the additional coverage for abortion. The latter has to be entirely from personal funds.”
Planned Parenthood said in a lawsuit that following Obamacare’s requirement of separate billing for abortion services, as also required by the Trump regulation, would have a “devastating” financial impact on the abortion corporation. They said the Trump rule would result in less profitable abortions than insurance-covered abortions as well as fewer abortions overall due to insurers and patients dropping coverage.
“Planned Parenthood is desperate to hide abortion surcharges from consumers because they know transparency and truth is bad for business,” said Roger Severino, former director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights.
‘Post-vaccine, what we are seeing is a drop in your killer T-cells, in your CD8 cells,” said Dr. Ryan Cole.
A doctor has found an increase in cancers since the COVID-19 inoculation rollout.
On March 18, Dr. Ryan Cole, a board-certified pathologist and owner and operator of a diagnostics lab, reported to the public in a video produced by Idaho state government’s “Capitol Clarity” project, that he is seeing a massive ‘uptick’ in various autoimmune diseases and cancers in patients who have been vaccinated.
This doctor trained at the Mayo Clinic and runs the largest independent testing laboratory in Idaho.
“Since January 1, in the laboratory, I’m seeing a 20 times increase of endometrial cancers over what I see on an annual basis,” reported Dr. Cole in the video clip shared on Twitter.
“I’m not exaggerating at all because I look at my numbers year over year, I’m like ‘Gosh, I’ve never seen this many endometrial cancers before’,” he continued.
Explaining his findings at the March 18 event, Cole told Idahoans that the vaccines seem to be causing serious autoimmune issues, in a way he described as a “reverse HIV” response.
Cole explained that two types of cells are required for adequate immune system function: “Helper T-cells,” also called “CD4 cells,” and “killer T-cells,” often known as “CD8 cells.”
According to Cole, in patients with HIV, there is a massive suppression of “helper T-cells” which cause immune system functions to plummet, and leave the patient susceptible to a variety of illnesses.
Similarly, Cole describes, “post-vaccine, what we are seeing is a drop in your killer T-cells, in your CD8 cells,”
“And what do CD8 cells do? They keep all other viruses in check,” he continued.
Much like HIV causes immune system disruption by suppressing CD4 “helper” cells, the same thing happens when CD8 “killer” cells are suppressed. In Dr. Cole’s expert view, this is what seems to be the case with the COVID-19 jabs.
Cole goes on to state that as a result of this vaccine-induced “killer T-cell” suppression, he is seeing an “uptick” of not only endometrial cancer, but also melanomas, as well as herpes, shingles, mono, and a “huge uptick” in HPV when “looking at the cervical biopsies of women.”
This is not the first time the COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to serious issues regarding women’s health.
According to a German research study, polyethylene glycol, an ingredient found in the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, has been found to pose a “potential toxicity risk” to women’s ovaries.
Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former vice president at Pfizer, has cited the German study as a possible explanation for the large number of menstrual irregularities and miscarriages being reported by vaccinated women.
Yeadon warns young women to avoid the vaccine for, in his expert opinion as a toxicologist, the shots will likely impede a woman’s ability to get pregnant and carry a baby to term.
Dr. Cole states in his video that, not only are melanomas showing up more frequently, like endometrial cancers, the melanomas are also developing more rapidly, and are more severe in younger people, than he has ever previously witnessed.
“Most concerning of all, there is a pattern of these types of immune cells in the body keeping cancer in check,” stated the doctor.
“I’m seeing invasive melanomas in younger patients; normally we catch those early, and they are thin melanomas, [but] I’m seeing thick melanomas skyrocketing in the last month or two,” he added.
Cole came into prominence in January of 2021 when the Idaho government put in place an effort called “Capitol Clarity,” with the stated goal of keeping Idahoans informed about the facts surrounding COVID-19.
Capitol Clarity has since hosted Dr. Ryan Cole multiple times to provide information to the public about vaccine safety and COVID-19 measures more broadly.
The videos of Dr. Cole at these events, which were originally posted on YouTube, have since been deleted by the Google owned video platform in a continual effort of censorship by Big Tech.
“You’re not being told the truth,” said Yeadon “Thinking about this, I try to imagine that I was speaking to my own young adult daughters, for whom I would be very concerned if they got these vaccines.”
Last night on CNN 351,000 “Yes” votes disappeared in an instant during live coverage of the Newsom Recall Election in California.
This happened live on CNN last night.
This happened during the 2020 presidential election too. Notice, it ALWAYS only affects Trump supporters and Republicans. Must be a coincidence, right?
A federal appeals court judge voted with his colleagues Friday in overturning a Tennessee heartbeat abortion ban, but in the process also lambasted the U.S. Supreme Court for legalizing abortion “without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text.”
U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amul Thapar voted with two other judges in a 3-0 decision overturning a section of a Tennessee law that would prohibit abortion when a heartbeat is detected. Thapar dissented from a 2-1 majority opinion that reversed a section of the law that prohibits abortion based on a baby’s race, sex or Down syndrome status.
Thapar, though, made clear he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s two historic abortion decisions: Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He also urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.
Thapar said he was bound by Supreme Court precedent.
“Only the Supreme Court can tow our jurisprudence back to the safe harbor of democratic legitimacy,” he wrote. “… The Constitution leaves decisions like this to the states. The state legislatures can do what we can’t: listen to the community, create fact-specific rules with appropriate exceptions, gather more evidence, and update their laws if things don’t work properly. And if the public is unhappy, it can fight back at the ballot box. The courts should return this choice to the American people – where it belongs.”
He was nominated to the court by President Trump after being placed on the district court by President George W. Bush.
“Roe and Casey are wrong as a matter of constitutional text, structure, and history,” Thapar wrote. “As Justice [Clarence] Thomas recently reminded us, these cases ‘created the right to abortion out of whole cloth, without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text.’
“… By manufacturing a right to abortion, Roe and Casey have denied the American people a voice on an important political issue,” Thapar wrote.
Thapar then quoted a 1992 opinion by former Justice Antonin Scalia, “‘The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.'”
Roe and Casey, Thapar wrote, “are wrong.”
“The Roe/Casey framework doesn’t just conflict with the original understanding of the Constitution – it cannot be justified under any modern approach to constitutional interpretation,” he wrote.
Further, Thapar noted that the United States has some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the entire world.
“In recent years, dozens of legislatures elected by tens of millions of voters have passed hundreds of laws to protect life. And public polling shows that most Americans support significant limitations on abortion. That shouldn’t surprise us,” he wrote. “… [But] only seven countries join us in permitting abortions after twenty weeks. And this list includes China and North Korea. That alone should give us pause.”
Medical experts across the country say the mental health of children deteriorated during the pandemic — with a large number of children taking up beds in emergency rooms due to a shortage of placements, providers and resources to combat the crisis.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Children’s hospitals throughout the country have seen a “meteoric” rise in the number of children who need mental health help.
To make matters worse, hospitals that struggled to meet the demand for mental health services before the pandemic are now dealing with even fewer resources — like hospital beds, providers, therapists and counseling — thanks to COVID.
Mental health among young people deteriorated during the pandemic when cabin fever increased family conflicts and closed schools left children isolated from activities and their peers.
According to The Washington Post, from June of last year to late spring 2021, an average of five children each week were admitted to the medical school’s teaching hospital at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, for overdoses of acetaminophen, opiates, antidepressants and Ritalin.
Normally, the hospital sees only five kids a month.
In May, Children’s Hospital in Colorado declared a “state of emergency” as kids being treated for anxiety doubled, depression numbers tripled and substance abuse and eating disorders increased compared to pre-pandemic levels.
“We really have never seen anything like this rapid growth in kids presenting with mental health problems and the severity of those problems,” said Jenna Glover, director of psychology training at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “I’ve never seen this in my entire career.”
Other hospitals saw even bigger increases. In January, Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, saw a 300% increase in the number of behavioral health emergency admissions since April 2020.
In January through April 2021, behavioral health emergency department visits were up 72% over the same time period two years ago, the hospital said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts during February and March of 2021 were more than 50% higher for teen girls compared to 2019, and more than 4% higher for boys.
“In the last year, there’s been an avalanche of very severely depressed and anxious children and adolescents,” said San Francisco child psychiatrist Michelle Guchereau. It’s “heartbreaking” and “overwhelming” to have to turn some away, she said.
From April to October 2020, U.S. hospitals saw a 31% increase in 12- to 17-year-old kids seeking help for their mental health, and a 24% increase for kids ages 5 to 11.
In March of this year, Seattle Children’s Hospital reported seeing one or two patients every night for attempted suicide. The hospital boarded kids in the emergency department because there were no pediatric psychiatric beds available.
A Massachusetts state report showed 39% of pediatric patients who came to the ER for mental health issues in 2020 took up beds in the emergency department due to unavailability of pediatric beds.
During the pandemic, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago reached what Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, an emergency medicine physician, called a “crisis point.” There were so many mental health-related emergency room visits it activated a response usually reserved for disaster management.
“It allows for coordination at the highest level of leadership in order to address the mental health crisis among children,” said Hoffmann.
Hoffmann’s hospital also had to board kids in the emergency department or admit them to medical beds, where they sometimes waited for days until a psychiatric inpatient bed opened up.
What’s known as emergency room boarding of psych patients has risen between 200% + 400% monthly in MA during the pandemic. CDC says emergency room visits after suicide attempts among teen girls were up 51% earlier this year as compared w/ 2019 #TheDefenderhttps://t.co/esbwnpCAZ3
— Children's Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) June 30, 2021
Colleague Dr. John Walkup, chair of the Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the hospital, said the pandemic exacerbated access problems that have been around for a while.
“We’ve never had an adequate mental health system in the United States for kids — never — and so you take an inadequate system to begin with, and then all of a sudden, you put kids who are at elevated risk … in a very difficult living and life situation. And you now have a crisis of access,” Walkup said.
Many of the kids Walkup’s hospital treated in the ER had a mental health problem that was never diagnosed, or was inadequately treated before the pandemic. Now, when they seek help, they can’t get a regular appointment with a therapist. Even before the pandemic, studies showed it can sometimes take months to get a first appointment.
“Those kids, when you take away school, family support, income support, food support, housing support or they lose a relative — those kids really become symptomatic in a big way,” Walkup said.
Zach Zaslow, senior director of government affairs at Children’s Hospital Colorado said his hospital ends up boarding kids in the emergency department or inpatient unit, not because it’s what’s best for the children, but because “there’s literally nowhere else for them to go.”
“Sometimes they get transferred to out-of-state residential facilities to get the care they need, which splits up families,” Zaslow said. “And that can be traumatizing for kids as well.”
UK experiencing similar crisis
The UK is experiencing a similar pediatric mental health crisis, with a third of acute hospital beds in parts of England now occupied by vulnerable children who do not need acute medical care but have nowhere else to go, safeguarding experts warned.
Doctors say they feel like expensive “babysitters” for vulnerable children — many of whom are in care but whose placements have broken down because of their violent and self-harming behavior.
Others have severe neurodevelopmental or eating disorders and need specialist treatment not available on ordinary children’s wards, where they get “stuck,” sometimes for months at a time.
Police are increasingly called to help restrain the children, or to bring them back when they run away, and pediatricians deal with vulnerable children who were not physically ill but displayed such challenging behavior they could not be looked after in other placements.
More than two-thirds of U.S. counties don’t have psychiatrist
An article in the Academic Pediatrics Journal examined barriers to management of psychosocial problems from 2004 to 2013, and found even before the pandemic, pediatricians were overwhelmed with caring for children with mental health problems.
Psychologists have reported a 30% increase in demand for services for children under 13, and a 16% increase for adolescents. At one hospital in Michigan, admissions of adolescents with eating disorders more than doubled during the pandemic.
As of Sept. 9, more than 124 million Americans live in mental health “professional shortage areas,” according to federal data, and the country needs at least 6,500 more practitioners to fill the gaps.
Currently, there are on average only 9.75 U.S. child psychiatrists per 100,000 children under age 19. Poor access to child and adolescent psychiatrists has long been a concern raised by pediatricians and families. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said we need more than four times as many as are available.
Wait times for new appointments can be many months, and families may be required to pay out-of-pocket or travel long distances as psychiatrists congregate in big cities. More than two-thirds of U.S. counties don’t have a psychiatrist at all.
According to The Guardian, facilities that provide mental health services for children have been systematically undermined and underfunded by successive local and national governments — even though successful outcomes lead to a reduced demand for adult services, which could save the UK’s National Health Service considerable expenditures.
Those with power to overhaul and expand the mental health system are simply not doing it.
Senate Democrats are poised to blow past their Wednesday deadline to finish the $3.5 trillion social welfare bill, raising fresh doubts about the party’s ability to hold together and put the bill onto President Biden’s desk.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer set the deadline to pressure lawmakers to use their August recess to draft the legislation. While talks took place over the monthlong break, the Senate made only minor progress as rifts emerged over the bill’s size and how to divvy up the taxpayer-financed windfall.
Mr. Schumer on Tuesday pleaded with his Democratic senators to pull together behind the spending plan that is the core of Mr. Biden’s agenda.
“Everyone, everyone is going to have input into this legislation. But, of course, our unity is our strength and if we’re not unified with 50 votes, we can’t get anything done. So, we all must come together now,” Mr. Schumer said in a Senate floor speech.
At the moment, the intraparty kerfuffle results from a cadre of moderate Democrats, including Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who refuse to back the large price tag. Mr. Manchin has said repeatedly stressed that he will only support a bill within the $1 trillion-to-$1.5 trillion range that is paid for by repealing Trump-era tax cuts.
“I don’t think there should be a ceiling or a floor, I really don’t,” Mr. Manchin said. “We should look at what’s a competitive tax code.”
The majority of the Democratic conference is opposed to any reconfiguration of the top-line numbers. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders, a self-described socialist from Vermont, is holding firm on the need for $3.5 trillion for a historic expansion of the social safety net.
“This is an unprecedented moment in American history for a variety of reasons, dealing with COVID, dealing with climate [change] and dealing with all kinds of problems,” Mr. Sanders said. “We have to act in an unprecedented way.”
The impasse over the price tag, along with strong disagreement over how robust the climate and health care provisions will be, has hindered the Senate’s progress in drafting the bill.
“You can’t write a package if you don’t know how much you can spend,” a Senate Democratic aide said privately. “Until we know for sure what everyone is comfortable voting for, it will be difficult to finalize the bill.”
In recent days the disarray has only grown among Democrats. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana joined Mr. Manchin this week with demands that the package doesn’t add to the deficit.
“There’s plenty of things that we can be spending far more than $3.5 trillion on that will do this country a lot of good,” said Mr. Tester, who is generally considered a safe vote for Democratic leadership. “But if the money’s not spent correctly, then we got a problem. So I’m going to be looking at a couple of things — where the money is coming from, how it’s being raised and then how it’s being utilized.”
Democrats are pitching the spending bill to voters as “human infrastructure.” They suggest the package complements the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that focuses on roads, bridges, railway and airport projects.
The Senate passed the infrastructure bill last month. The bigger bill amounts to a wish list of liberal priorities such as proposals for climate change, amnesty for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, tuition-free community college and expanded health care programs.
Given Republicans’ solid opposition, Democrats plan to pass the $3.5 trillion package via a special process known as budget reconciliation. It allows some spending and tax measures to avoid the Senate‘s 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass with a simple majority of 51 votes.
Since the Senate is evenly split between both parties, any single lawmaker can exert significant influence over its crafting. Mr. Manchin and other moderates appear to be doing exactly that at the moment.
The tactic could imperil not only the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill but also the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
The infrastructure deal, which passed the Senate in August, is awaiting action on the other side of the Capitol. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, pledged not to move the bill until the Senate passes a reconciliation measure.
“The success of each bill contributes to the success of the other,” said Mrs. Pelosi, arguing that the bipartisan infrastructure bill is inextricably linked to the social welfare bill.
The stand-off is likely to come to a head on Sept. 27, the day Mrs. Pelosi has agreed to hold a vote on the infrastructure measure. If the Senate does not pass a reconciliation bill by then, she will be caught between her caucuses moderates and progressives.
Some progressives appear eager to put the moderates in their place.
“Nothing would give me more pleasure than to tank a billionaire, dark money, fossil fuel, Exxon lobbyist-drafted ‘energy’ infrastructure bill if they come after our child care and climate priorities,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and member of the far-left “Squad.”
Over the last eight months of Joe Biden’s tenure, everyone from public health officials, White House spokespeople, and cabinet secretaries have insisted that the federal government would not and could not mandate a vaccine for private citizens. Yet that’s exactly what Biden announced he would direct the government to do.
As the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) works on how it will mandate the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine for tens of millions of American workers, the rest of the Biden administration is scrambling to explain how and why such a mandate will take effect after spending the first half of Biden’s new administration assuring Americans a federal mandate would not materialize.
As president-elect, Joe Biden said in a December 2020 press conference in Delaware that “I don’t think it should be mandatory,” when talking about Wuhan coronavirus vaccines. “I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory,” he promised. “Just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked in a May press briefing whether the Biden administration would mandate vaccines for private companies, to which she responded “I wouldn’t anticipate that we would be putting requirements on private sector companies. I would expect that we would allow the space for them to put those requirements in place themselves or decide what is best for their workforces,” she explained.
Also in May, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said on Meet the Press that the Biden administration was “not counting on vaccine mandates at all.” Instead, she explained, “it may very well be that local businesses, local jurisdictions will work toward vaccine mandates [but] that is going to be locally driven and not federally driven.”
In July, Psaki was asked again if Biden would enact a federal vaccine mandate, something she explained was “not a decision that we are making” and “that is not our intention from the federal government.”
Just a few days later, Psaki again said “I think the context of the question, which I think is important here, is: Can we mandate vaccines across the country? No, that’s not a role that the federal government, I think, even has the power to make.”
Walensky again in July tweeted to clarify her statements about vaccine requirements that “there will be no nationwide mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and portions of the federal government. There will be no federal mandate.”
.@BerkeleyJr To clarify: There will be no nationwide mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and portions of the federal government. There will be no federal mandate.
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) July 30, 2021
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said what “you won’t see is a requirement from the federal government to have people get vaccinated” in a July interview with The Washington Post. “This is a decision that historically has not come from the federal government around vaccine mandates,” he added. “It has come from private institutions and from local government.”
On CNN later in July, White House COVID-19 Response Director Jeff Zients was asked by Wolf Blitzer if President Biden was exploring mandating vaccines. Zients said “No.” “That’s not an authority that we’re exploring at all,” he added.
As students began returning to classrooms and college campuses across the country, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told CBS in August that “at the federal level I don’t have the authority to mask mandate or vaccine mandate, that’s not what we do at the federal level.”
In August, Dr. Fauci said that “you’re not going to see a central mandate coming from the federal government” for vaccines because businesses and private entities could handle such requirements for themselves. A few days later, Fauci told Bloomberg that he feels “we should not have central mandates from the federal government” on vaccines or masks.
Much like Biden did with the eviction moratorium, his administration knew and said that they lacked the authority to mandate vaccines and would not take such a step even if they did. And again, Biden threw all of that out the window to make another power grab that is now set to impact up to 100 million Americans.
The expected welcoming of 65,000 Afghan refugees by the Biden administration is likely to hit local welfare agencies hard if the current use of Medicaid and food stamps by those already here is any indication.
In a thorough review of the 133,000 Afghan migrants already in the United States, the Center for Immigration Studies found that they are nearly three times more likely to tap into welfare than native-born Americans.
What’s more, the share of those in poverty is about twice as high as native-born Americans, according to census data used in the new report.
But unlike some other immigrant groups, notably those from Central and South America, more have arrived in the U.S. at an older age, most have jobs, and 1 out of 9 earned at least $100,000 a year in 2019, higher than native-born Americans.
“The Census Bureau data analyzed in this report indicates that a large share of Afghans in this country have modest levels of education, with many living in or near poverty and dependent on the welfare system. It seems likely that a large share of Afghans allowed into the United States in the future will also struggle in a similar manner,” said the report’s authors Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler.
So far, following the bungled military withdrawal from Afghanistan, about 24,000 refugees have arrived in the U.S., and about another 45,000 are set to enter, according to the State Department.
The Center for Immigration Studies and others have reviewed the current population to get an idea about where the new immigrants will go and what programs they will tap. The group is hosting a panel discussion on Tuesday to discuss the issue.
Most Afghans in the U.S. reside in California, Texas, and Virginia — states the government is sending the newcomers to.
Unclear is how many additional Afghans will come to the U.S. But the report said, “Given the oppressive nature of the new Taliban regime, the Biden administration will also be under political pressure to admit more Afghans on humanitarian grounds as refugees, asylees, parolees, and on Special Immigrant Visas.”
Highlights of the census data in the report:
The number of Afghan immigrants (also referred to as the foreign-born) was 133,000 in 2019, more than triple the 44,000 Afghans in 2000 and nearly 2.5 times the 55,000 Afghans in 2010.
The states with the largest Afghan-immigrant populations are California (54,000), Virginia (24,000), and Texas (10,000). The metropolitan areas with the largest Afghan populations are Washington, D.C. (26,000), San Francisco, and Sacramento, both with 16,000.
Since 1980, 79% of Afghan immigrants have been admitted for humanitarian reasons — as refugees, asylees, or, since 2008, on Special Immigrant Visas.
The educational level of Afghan immigrants has fallen both in absolute terms and relative to the native-born. The share of Afghans (25-64) with at least a bachelor’s degree fell from 30% in 2000 to 26% in 2019, while increasing from 27% to 35% for natives.
In 2019, the share of all Afghans (18 to 64) employed was only 64%, compared to 75% for the native-born. This reflects low rates of work among Afghan women. Among Afghan men, 84% were employed, higher than the 78% for native-born men.
Many Afghans have low incomes. Of persons in households headed by Afghan immigrants, 25% live in poverty — more than twice the rate of 12% for people in households headed by native-born Americans.
Although the share of Afghans with low incomes has not worsened in recent years, their use of welfare has increased significantly. In 2019, 65% of Afghan households used at least one major program (cash, food stamps, or Medicaid), while the usage rate in native-born households was 24%.
Food stamp use by Afghan households increased the most, from 19% to 35%, between 2010 and 2019.
The share of Afghan households with one or more persons on Medicaid increased from 47% to 62% over this time period.
The high rates of welfare use reflect the large share of Afghans who live in or near poverty and the success of refugee resettlement organizations in signing them up for programs, helping many assimilate into the welfare system.
Senator Rand Paul is saying General Mark Milley should be “court martialed” if the claims made in Bob Woodward’s book are true.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said that General Mark Milley should be “court martialed” if Bob Woodward’s claims that the General made secret calls to Communist Chinese general Li Zuocheng on October 30 and January 8 are true.
If General Mark Milley is proven to have secretly called Communist Chinese general Li Zuocheng behind President Donald Trump’s back just four days before the election and once more on January 8, assuring the Chinese Communist Party that China would be warned before any potential incoming attack by the US beforehand, then he must be court martialed, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul told Fox News on Wednesday.
“It should be investigated immediately, today, he should be questioned under oath, if not with a polygraph test, on whether it happened. If it happened, he should be immediately relieved of his duties and court-martialed,” said Senator Paul. “You have to find out if it’s true. This is innuendo and rumor and propaganda perhaps. But, if it is true he absolutely immediately needs to be removed.”
Couple that with his inept handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and it is clear General Milley is no longer fit to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and should be removed immediately.
President Donald Trump told Newsmax that he had no plans to attack China and called Milley’s claims “the most ridiculous thing” he’s “ever heard, and everybody knows it,” adding that if Milley truly did secretly call the CCP, it would amount to treason. “So first of all if it is actually true, which is hard to believe, that he would have called China and done these things and was willing to advise them of an attack or in advance of an attack, that’s treason. I’ve had so many calls today saying, ‘That’s treason,’ said President Trump.
In addition to his comments on television, President Trump issued a blistering statement condemning “weak and ineffective” Milley over the reports of his alleged secret calls and meetings with the Chinese General, Nancy Pelosi, and high level military intelligence officials at the Pentagon at the time of the November election and shortly after January 6. President Trump had also raised questions about Woodward’s credibility.
Rand Paul, without a shred of irony: "We have elections. We can't have generals overturning elections." pic.twitter.com/6IrvbUHlgE
“If the story of ‘Dumbass’ General Mark Milley, the same failed leader who engineered the worst withdrawal from a country, Afghanistan, in U.S. history, leaving behind many dead and wounded soldiers, many American citizens, and $85 Billion worth of the newest and most sophisticated Military equipment in the world, and our Country’s reputation, is true, then I assume he would be tried for TREASON in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the President’s back and telling China that he would be giving them notification ‘of an attack,’” Trump declared. “Can’t do that!”
President Trump continued, “The good news is that the story is Fake News concocted by a weak and ineffective General together with two authors who I refused to give an interview to because they write fiction, not fact. Actions should be taken immediately against Milley, and better generals in our Military, of which we have many, should get involved so that another Afghanistan disaster never happens again. Remember, I was the one who took out 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. Milley said it couldn’t be done!”
“For the record, I never even thought of attacking China—and China knows that,” President Trump concluded. “The people that fabricated the story are sick and demented, and the people who print it are just as bad. In fact, I’m the only President in decades who didn’t get the U.S. into a war—a well known fact that is seldom reported.”
Leaked Document Shows Biden Sidelining Public To Take Orders From Planned Parenthood
The Biden administration is flouting the law to push through a massive financial favor to the powerful and lucrative abortion industry that backed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy with tens of millions of dollars.
A new leaked document shows the Biden administration flouting the regulatory process in order to push through a massive financial favor to the powerful and lucrative abortion industry that backed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy with tens of millions of dollars.
Less than two weeks after an already abbreviated period of time for the public to review and comment on the proposed regulatory change, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services circulated a draft final rule that violates the clear language of Obamacare in order to benefit Planned Parenthood and other corporate abortion interests. The leaked document, dated August 10 and more than 300 pages long, was then sent to the Office of Management and Budget for final approval, according to multiple sources familiar with the federal rule making process. OMB posted confirmation of receipt August 19, a mere 50 days after the major rule change was first proposed to the public.
“In their rush to finalize the rule, HHS and [Secretary Xavier] Becerra are making a mockery of the rule making process. Their efforts to minimize public input and provide only cursory review shows the rule was predetermined,” said Rachel Morrison, a policy analyst at the Ethics & Public Policy Center who submitted comments opposing the rule.
In order to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in 2010 on a mostly party-line vote, Democrats included a provision to placate pro-life members of the party reluctant to vote for it. Section 1303 of the bill requires separate billing for medical procedures that end unborn human lives. Pro-life Democrats said this would ensure no federal funds were spent on abortions. Plan users would write one check for their premium, and another for an abortion rider.
However, the Obama administration ignored the statutory language and made it harder for plan users to know if they were funding abortion by allowing insurers to bury the abortion surcharges deep in plan documents. Before the end of the Trump administration, the regulation governing such payments for abortion was updated to make it compliant with the law as written. Planned Parenthood and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued to block the rule. Becerra was rewarded by Biden, who regularly emphasizes his devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, with an appointment as secretary of Health and Human Services.
On July 1, the Biden administration proposed to eliminate and replace the Trump administration’s separate billing requirement.
Normally, such an important and economically significant rule change would require giving the public months of opportunity to comment, followed by months more of rigorous review of and response to the comments, before finalizing the rule. In a stunning move, the Biden administration provided only 28 days for public comment, thereby receiving only 341 comments.
By contrast, President Donald Trump gave the public a full two months to comment on his administration’s rule governing the billing for abortion services, receiving more than 75,000 public comments. This was consistent with Executive Order 12866, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, which provides that rules should generally have at least 60 days for public comment. The Administrative Procedure Act says that unless it’s a national security crisis or other urgent situation, less than 30 days of review is not advisable.
What makes the abnormally short public comment period even more surprising is that HHS admitted in its final draft this rule “is expected to be a ‘major rule’ … because it is likely to result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more.”
One of the most difficult and time-consuming portions of the regulatory process is the period in which an agency reviews and responds to public comments, which they are required to do by law. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires any rule that has force or effect of law to be open to public inspection and comment before finalized. Agencies must take comments into account.
That means an agency must read and respond to them in the preamble to the final rule. If they don’t, agency has violated the APA and the regulation can be blocked. Limiting the public comment period to less than a month truncated the number of public comments drastically, but regulatory experts say less than two weeks was way too little time to review several hundred comments, some of which were dozens of pages long and dealt with comprehensive legal and regulatory arguments. The draft final rule indicated no changes from the July 1 proposed rule in response to the substantive public comments on the controversial portions of the proposed rule.
“To me this signals that unfortunately [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] has already made up its mind about all of these complicated issues and is rushing to finalize the rule without really considering the public comments and frankly without giving the public enough opportunity to weigh in on a number of controversial provisions,” said Randy Pate, former director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at HHS. He noted that the rule change not only covered the separate billing for abortion issue, but also raised premiums on users, and removed flexibility for states in how they operate their insurance exchanges.
The rushed rule change covers one of the most important legislative battles Democrats waged in order to pass Obamacare, which legislated a massive regulatory overhaul of the health insurance marketplace. Sen. Ben Nelson, a pro-life Democrat from Nebraska, authored the section requiring separate payment for abortion services. The bill would not have passed without the provision.
Nelson explained during the debate over Section 1303 that separate payment meant separate billing and separate transactions: “[I]f you are receiving Federal assistance to buy insurance, and if that plan has any abortion coverage, the insurance company must bill you separately, and you must pay separately from your own personal funds—perhaps a credit card transaction, your separate personal check, or automatic withdrawal from your bank account— for that abortion coverage. Now, let me say that again. You have to write two checks: one for the basic policy and one for the additional coverage for abortion. The latter has to be entirely from personal funds.”
Planned Parenthood said in a lawsuit that following Obamacare’s requirement of separate billing for abortion services, as also required by the Trump regulation, would have a “devastating” financial impact on the abortion corporation. They said the Trump rule would result in less profitable abortions than insurance-covered abortions as well as fewer abortions overall due to insurers and patients dropping coverage.
“Planned Parenthood is desperate to hide abortion surcharges from consumers because they know transparency and truth is bad for business,” said Roger Severino, former director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights.