Today’s News 12th May 2023

Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Universities and colleges could face investigations over grade inflation, the head of England’s higher education watchdog has warned.

Lord Wharton, chairman of the Office for Students (OfS), said on Tuesday that the regulator is considering taking action over the “significant” grade inflation, which he said could devalue the degrees.

A report, released by the OfS in May last year, suggests that the proportion of first-class degrees handed out in England has more than doubled in the last decade—from 15.7 percent in 2010–2011 to 37.9 percent in 2020–2021.

Highlighting the figures, Lord Wharton told the Industry and Regulators Committee in the House of Lords: “This is a significant amount of grade inflation and more and more people are getting firsts.

“There may be very good reasons for that. We may have cohorts of much brighter students but there is also a risk that if everyone gets a first, no one gets a first. It could be seen to devalue the award in itself.

“Students quite like getting firsts, so in the short term individual students who are studying now might quite like their chances being enhanced. But it may well not be in their interest in the long term if it undermines the value of the thing they have earned and worked so hard for.”

The Conservative peer acknowledged that the OfS has “not taken sufficient action over a very long period of time,” but said the regulator is now looking at what actions can be taken to address the issue, including investigations.

Universities could be required to retain an “appropriate selection” of graded work from students as evidence for investigators to consider, he added.

The COVID Effect

There has been a rise in degree grade inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic following the introduction of measures to mitigate the impact of lockdown disruptions on students’ studies.

Universities in 2019–2020—the first year of the pandemic—adopted “no detriment” or safety net assessment policies, which tended to ensure students would not receive a final grade that was lower than the university’s most recent assessment of their work.

While “blanket ‘no detriment’” policies were not in place in 2020–2021, other assessment changes such as open-book exams remained.

Graduates queue on campus at the University of Bolton as they wait to receive their degree certificates in Bolton, northwest England, on July 9, 2021. (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

In July 2022, Universities UK (UUK) and GuildHE—which represent 197 UK universities—pledged to return the proportion of top degrees to pre-pandemic levels.

The two leading industry bodies said they recognised that grade inflation, which could not be explained by improvements in teaching and learning or more effort from students, risked undermining employers’ confidence in the degree grading process.

Universities said they will use 2019 as a benchmark for the proportion of upper second and first-class degrees awarded.

The UUK and GuildHE said in a joint statement: “In recent years, universities have been proactive and taken collective action to strengthen internal processes that impact on degree classification. The result was a levelling off by 2018–19 in the percentage of students achieving upper degree awards.”

“However, we cannot lose sight of the need to maintain the value of a degree and so must redouble our efforts to identify and address unexplained increases in firsts and 2.1s,” they added.

“As a sector, we commit to reviewing our classification levels against the pre-pandemic progress that had seen trends stabilising.”

Michelle Donelan, then higher and further education minister, welcomed the promise, saying, “Hardworking students deserve to know that earning a first or upper second really counts and that it carries weight with employers—who in turn should be able to trust in the high value and rigorous assessment of university courses.”

Regulator Calls for ‘Credible’ Grades

In September 2022, the OfS said it had launched an investigation into grade inflation after a “sharp increase” in the awarding of first and upper-second-class degrees at several universities.

It said the rates of students with top degrees at three universities and colleges, which were not named, raised “potential concerns that require further scrutiny.”

The regulator requires institutions to award qualifications that are “credible” compared with previous years, and based on “the knowledge and skills of students.”

Grade inflation, the practice of rewarding the same level of student achievement with increasingly higher degree classifications, is explicitly banned.

If the universities or colleges are found to have broken OfS rules, they could be fined up to £500,000 or 2 percent of their income.

In January, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) recorded a fall in the number of first-class degrees awarded for the first time since records began in 1993.

Nearly a third (32 percent) of undergraduate degrees were awarded a first-class honours classification in 2021–2022, a fall from 36 percent the year before, the agency said.

However, 46 percent of students were awarded upper second-class degrees in 2021–2022, the same proportion as in 2020–2021.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

In the Great Power competition, everything is connected: Uncertain negotiations between Russia and NATO over Ukraine may be impacted by Turkiye’s post-election pivot and Syria’s return to the Arab League…

West Asia is a region that is currently experiencing a great deal of geopolitical activity. Recent diplomatic efforts, initiated by Russia and overseen by China, secured a long-elusive Iranian and Saudi Arabian rapprochement, while Syria’s return to the Arab League has been welcomed with great fanfare. The diplomatic flurry signals a shift away from the Imperial “Divide and Rule” tactics that have been used for decades to create national, tribal, and sectarian rifts throughout this strategic region.

The proxy war in Syria, backed by the Empire and its terror outfits – including the occupation of resource-rich territories and mass theft of Syrian oil – continues to rage on despite Damascus having gained the upper hand. That advantage, weakened in recent years by a barrage of western economic killer sanctions, is now growing exponentially: the Syrian state was further bolstered by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s recent official visit – pledging to expand bilateral ties – on the eve of Syria’s return to the Arab League.

“Assad must go” – a meme straight out of collective western hubris – in the end, did not go. Imperial threats notwithstanding, those Arab states that had sought to isolate the Syrian president came back to praise him all over again, led by Moscow and Tehran.

Syria is extensively discussed in informed circles in Moscow. There’s a sort of consensus that Russia, now concentrated in the “all or nothing” proxy war against NATO, will not currently be able to impose a Syrian peace solution, but that doesn’t preclude the Saudis, Iranians, and Turks fronting a Russian-led deal.

Had it not been for the aggressive behavior of Straussian neo-cons in the Washington Beltway, a comprehensive multi-territorial peace could have been achieved, including everything from Syria’s sovereignty, to a demilitarized zone in the Russian western borderlands, stability in the Caucasus, and a degree of respect for international law.

However, such a deal is unlikely to materialize, and instead, the situation in West Asia is likely to worsen. This is due in part to the fact that the North Atlantic has already shifted its focus to the South China Sea.

An impossible ‘peace’

The collective west appears to lack a decisive leader, with the Hegemon currently being “led” by a senile president who is remote-controlled by a pack of polished-faced warmongers. The situation has devolved to the point where the much-hyped “Ukrainian counter-offensive” may actually be the prelude to a NATO humiliation that will make Afghanistan look like Disneyland in the Hindu Kush.

Arguably there may be some similarities between Russia-NATO now and Turkiye-Russia before March 2020: both sides are betting on some crucial military breakthrough on the battlefield before sitting at the negotiating table. The US is desperate for it: even the 20th century ‘Oracle’ Henry Kissinger is now saying that with China involved, there will be negotiations before the end of 2023.

Despite the urgency of the situation, Moscow does not appear to be in a hurry. Its key military strategy, as seen in Bakhmut/Artemyovsk, is to use a combination of the snail technique and the mincing machine. The ultimate goal is to demilitarize NATO as a whole rather than just Ukraine, and so far, it appears to be working brilliantly.

Russia is in it for the long haul, anticipating that one day the collective west will have an “Eureka!” moment and realize it is time to abandon the race.

Now let’s assume, by some divine intervention, that negotiations would start in a few months, with China involved. Moscow – and Beijing – both know they simply cannot trust anything the Hegemon says or signs.

Moreover, the crucial US tactical victory has already been conclusive: Russia sanctioned, demonized and separated from Europe, and the EU cemented as a de-industrialized, inconsequential lowly vassal.

Presupposing there is a negotiated peace, it will arguably resemble a Syria 2.0, with a massive “Idlib” equivalent right on Russia’s door, which is something entirely unacceptable to Moscow.

In practice, we will have Banderista terror outfits – the Slav version of ISIS – free to roam across the Russian Federation in car bombing and kamikaze drone sprees. The Hegemon will be able to switch the proxy war on and off at will, just as it continues to do in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan with its terror cells.

The Security Council in Moscow knows very well, based on the Minsk farce acknowledged even by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that this will be Minsk on steroids: the Kiev regime, or rather the post-Zelensky regime will continue to be weaponized to death with brand new NATO gimmicks.

But then the other option – where there is nothing to negotiate – is equally ominous: a Forever War.

Indivisibility of Security

The real deal to be negotiated is not “pawn in their game” Ukraine: it’s the indivisibility of security. Exactly what Moscow was sensibly trying to convince Washington via those letters sent in December 2021.

In practice, what Moscow is currently doing is realpolitik: pounding NATO on the battlefield until they are weakened enough to accept a Strategic Military Operation (SMO). The SMO would necessarily include a demilitarized zone between NATO and Russia, a neutral Ukraine, and no nuclear weapons stationed in Poland, the Baltics, or Finland.

However, given that the Hegemon is a declining superpower and “non-agreement capable,” it is uncertain whether any of this would hold, especially considering the Hegemon’s obsession with infinite NATO expansion. “Non-agreement capable” (недоговороспособны), incidentally, is a term Russian diplomats coined to describe their American counterparts’ inability to stick to any deal they sign – from Minsk to the Iran nuclear agreement.

This incandescent mix gets even more complex with the introduction of the Turkish vector.

Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu has already made it plain that if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan retains power in the 14 May presidential elections, Ankara will neither impose sanctions on Russia nor violate the Montreux Convention, which forbids the passage of warships to and from the Black Sea in wartime.

Risks of Ankara’s geopolitical shift

Erdogan’s chief security and foreign policy adviser, Ibrahim Kalyn, has aptly pointed out that there is no war between Russia and Ukraine; rather, it’s a war between Russia and the west with Ukraine serving as the proxy.

This is why the collective west is heavily invested in an “Erdogan must go” campaign, which is lavishly funded to propel an oddly-matched coalition into the presidential seat. In case the Turkish opposition wins – and their payment to the Hegemon begins – sanctions and violations of Montreux may be on the cards again.

Yet Washington may be in for a surprise. Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has implied there will be a more or less continued balanced posturing of Ankara’s foreign policy tilt, while some observers believe that even if Erdogan is ousted, there will be limits to Turkiye’s pivot back to the west.

Erdogan, profiting from the state apparatus and his immense network of patronage, is going no-holds-barred to secure re-election. Only then might he shift from hedging his bets continuously toward making a move to become a real player in Eurasian integration.

Ankara under Erdogan, as it stands, is not pro-Russian; essentially, it tries to profit from both sides. The Turks sell Bayraktar drones to Kiev, have clinched military deals, and at the same time, under the “Turkic States” mantle, invest in separatist tendencies in Crimea and in Kherson.

At the same time, Erdogan badly needs Russian military and energy cooperation. There are no illusions in Moscow about “the Sultan,” or about where Turkiye is leading. If Ankara’s geopolitical turn is hostile, it’s the Turks that will end up losing prime seats in the Eurasian high-speed train – from BRICS+ to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and all spaces in between.

After dishing out pointed criticism of the White House’s handling of the immigration crisis, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been given the heave-ho from Team Biden 2024, as he’s been dropped from the campaign’s list of official media and event surrogates.  

Overwhelmed by the number of migrants pouring into the city, Adams recently said New York City “is being destroyed by the migrant crisis.”

Mayor Eric Adams says NYC is being destroyed by illegal aliens pic.twitter.com/3nTcv0P9SV

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) April 21, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

He also singled out Biden as having “failed” the city. In a subsequent scolding crafted to achieve bipartisan balance, Adams said, “It is the irresponsibility of the Republican Party in Washington for refusing to do real immigration reform, and it’s the irresponsibility of the White House for not addressing this problem.“

In March, Adams appeared on a list of more than 20 Democrats tapped to serve on a Biden campaign national advisory board. When the campaign posted an updated list on Wednesday, the roster had grown to 50 — but Adams had vanished.  

“The message is: Don’t criticize an incumbent Democratic president and don’t criticize the first black female vice president,” Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the New York Post. “Any criticism from a Democrat heading into re-election is seen as a betrayal.”

On Wednesday, the Biden campaign posted a YouTube video featuring many of its updated roster of surrogates. As we draft this article, it’s only managed to rack up 13 likes. That rock-bottom enthusiasm is consistent with the latest ABC/Washington Post poll showing only 36% of Democrats want Biden nominated again.  

The Biden campaign isn’t commenting on the Adams disappearance. However, a Democratic aide to another member of the surrogate team told Politico that Adams’ departure was “almost certainly” due to his immigration criticism: “[He] made somewhere between in-artful to stupid comments that were kind of out of bounds.” 

“As the mayor has previously stated, he stands ready to help the president with reelection however he can,” said an Adams spokesman.  

As his bridges to Biden smolder, Adams isn’t winning friends in the New York suburbs either. Leaders of Rockland and Orange counties are fuming after the Adams administration tried an under-the-radar, Friday news-drop of a scheme to store the city’s excess migrants in hotels in the two Hudson Valley suburban counties. Both jurisdictions have declared states of emergency as they maneuver to block New York City from exporting its problems. 

Speaking bluntly in an interview with Politico, Republican Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus, said, “I think we’re going to have a standoff in the next 24 to 48 hours because I just got word that the city said, ‘screw Rockland and Orange, we’re sending these people up’.”  

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

MSM went “all-in” on a discredited COVID narrative.

Since the pandemic I’ve been saying that confidence in the mainstream, corporate press has been irreparably damaged. After four years of non-stop Trump Derangement Syndrome so intense that even some liberals were wondering if the press had gone overboard on editorializing – Covid hit, and a lot of normies now see the MSM for what it really is: agitprop and brainwashing.

Cancel culture and censorship reached such absurd levels that we started to see an exodus of high profile reporters (Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, et al) exiting corporate news outlets and setting up on their own, after they committed the sin of colouring outside the lines of establishment precepts.

The MSM went all-in in Covid, but every core tenet of the Covid narrative has since fallen apart:

• This thing came out of a lab

• Ecohealth and Fauci are up to their asses in it

• The lockdowns did more damage than anything else, and

• Everybody was forced to take a vaccine that not only doesn’t work but also seems to be the common denominator in an excess fatality rate that exceeds the pandemic itself.

Not good.

With the tempo being set by numerous media collapses, especially by overtly “woke” ones: Buzzfeed’s bankruptcy, Vice circling the drain – and television viewership plummeting, the stage was set for a few key moments that will be remembered as defining the extinction level event rolling through corporate media:

#1) The Rise of Dark Carlson

After Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, the number 1 pundit on television with the highest viewership today, he didn’t go to a rival network (Newsmax offered him $25 million), he decided to take his own show out on Twitter.

This is a defining moment in the extinction event hitting the corporate media these days. https://t.co/jyly9WROKp

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) May 9, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Apparently, on his own, not part of any deal with Elon Musk, Carlson is just letting it all hang out. In one of his first installments, he called into question the 9/11 narrative (Why did Building 7 just fall into its own footprint for no reason?). It prompted one observer to coin the term “Dark Carlson” for what is transpiring via this channel.

#2) The Schism of RFK Jr. coverage

RFK Jr, having thrown his hat into the ring to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, immediately drew fire from the MSM, having unilaterally decided that anything RFK says is automatically “misinformation” (see the closing remarks on “rhetorical circularity”, below).

RFK Jr, for his part, created an account on Nostr.  

Nothing epitomizes the Industrial
Age vs Network Era like these two images – screen capped back to back… pic.twitter.com/7q10zEST7z

— Mark Jeftovic, The ₿itcoin Capitalist (@StuntPope) May 11, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Nostr is a fast growing decentralized social media network, contrast with Twitter – which is governed by the vagaries and whims of whomever owns it – Nostr is decentralized at the server level to relays (which anybody can run) at the the account level to individual users. This protocol is spreading like wildfire and it’s beyond censorship.

The juxtoposition between a sclerotic,  industrial era, mediocre network clutching their pearls over RFK’s “misinformation” and RFK showing up on Nostr tells us a lot.

While this is not seen as much of a big deal yet, this is a signal worth paying attention to.

#3) CNN’s disastrous town-hall with Trump

I didn’t watch it, and when you look at the reporting on it, both left and right traditional outlets are declaring victory – but the reality is that CNN pulled the plug on it 20 minutes earlier than scheduled (ten key moments here).

Love him or hate him, Trump draws attention and viewers unlike any other personality – and the fact that CNN drew the curtain early signals one thing: it was a disaster for the network and probably didn’t hurt Trump. After deftly manipulating a hostile media and leveraging social media cunning to win the presidency in 2016, it doesn’t look like the MSM has learned much.

When the media falls, so does the system it supports

When the Soviet Empire fell in 1989 – 1990, anybody predicting it even months earlier would have been ridiculed. When it happened it took everybody by surprise (even the CIA) and unfolded at astonishing speed (Victor Sebestyen’s Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire covers it brilliantly).

Things move even quicker today – where we are in the early innings of what will possibly be the final financial crisis of the fiat money system.

In another great book about Late Stage Communism,  “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More“, Alexey Yurchak chronicles the hyper-normality that saturated the zeitgeist during “the last Soviet Generation”. The “Dead Irony” chapter outlines the ingenious forms of unauthorized humour.

A contemporary parallel is when you come across a Twitter account that exhibits such over-the-top support for All The Latest Things™ that you can’t tell if its satire or not. That is a type of performative dissidence called “Stiob” (unless it’s real).

(It’s parody)

Yurchak’s examination of “the hegemony over meta-discourse” and it’s disintegration ring eerily familiar to those keeping score today. One example is what he called “rhetorical circularity”: in our case it means that anything the MSM refuses to cover is “misinformation”, because there are no MSM citations to support it.

As I frequently comment, we’re in Late Stage Globalism. While many view Covid as the gateway to a “Great Reset” technocracy – it looks to me like it was instead, the a-c-c-e-l-e-r-a-t-i-o-n event of the millennia.

I’m not an accelerationist and the elites are certainly still pushing hard for that WEF-style authoritarianism.

But I’m just an observer and I’m here to tell you, that is what’s happening. Given the nature of technological compounding (“Future Shock”, as Alvin Toffler called way back in 1970), accelerationism is somewhat baked in and we just have to watch the implosion of corporate media (not to mention the self-destruction of Woke capitalism) to know it is happening.

*  *  *

My next ebook is The CBDC Survival Guide and I’m sending it free to Bombthrower subscribers when it’s done (early June). In the meantime, subscribe now and get The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto while you wait. Follow me on Nostr, or Twitter. 

The operations manager for the American Meteor Society, Mike Hankey, believes a metallic object that crashed through the roof of a Hopewell Township, New Jersey, home on Monday is a meteorite.

“This is most certainly a meteorite, and there are likely more meteorite fragments now scattered around the town,” Hankey said in a statement on the Hopewell Township’s Facebook page. 

Hopewell Township announced in a press release that the metallic object is 4 inches by 6 inches. 

“It penetrated the roof, the ceiling, and then impacted the hardwood floor before coming to a rest,” the town said. 

Hankey, the meteorite expert, said: 

“We still do not have a firm estimate for the time of the fall. If we can exactly identify the time of the fall we can more effectively find evidence of it on weather radars and also video camera systems recording the sky. Any residents with door bell cameras should check for events between 12-3 PM on May 8th. There could have been a flash in the sky and/or a boom sound recorded.”

Local law enforcement believes the object was part of a “current Meteor shower called the Eta Aquariids,” the town said, adding an investigation is ongoing. 

This isn’t the first occurrence of a possible meteorite causing damage to a residential structure within the US. About six months ago in November, a California man said, “I heard a big bang,” and then watched his home erupt in flames. He alleges a meteorite destroyed his home. 

And, in case you were wondering, the Insurance Information Institute noted on its website, “Falling objects—including satellites, asteroids, meteors and space debris—are covered under standard homeowners and business insurance policies.” 

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, will be charged for the death of 30-year-old homeless man Jordan Neely.

“We can confirm that Daniel Penny will be arrested on a charge of manslaughter in the second degree. We cannot provide any additional information until he has been arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court, which we expect to take place tomorrow,” a spokesperson for Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg told Politico.

As a brief reminder, in case you only watch NBC or CNN or have been hiding under a rock; on May 1, at the Broadway-Lafayette station, witnesses reported that Jordan Neely was acting aggressively toward other passengers on a train.

Neely allegedly screamed “in an aggressive manner” and told passengers he does not care if he goes to jail, before allegedly taking off his jacket and throwing it on the ground.

Multiple witnesses came forward to state that Neely had made repeated attempts to push people onto subway tracks.

Penny allegedly held Neely in a 15-minute chokehold on May 1 to protect himself and other passengers from Neely (along with two other individuals who attempted to restrain the deranged passenger).

Neely is a career criminal with over 40 prior arrests for various offenses, including drug-related charges, disorderly conduct, and fare evasion.

At the time of his death, Neely had an outstanding warrant for assaulting a 67-year-old woman.

The Marine was then taken into custody, questioned by detectives and released, according to ABC News.

NBC4 New York reports that Penny’s attorneys have said previously there was no way he “could have foreseen” that his bid to subdue an alleged perceived threat would turn deadly.

“Mr. Neely had a documented history of violent and erratic behavior, the apparent result of ongoing and untreated mental illness,” said the statement from law firm of Raiser and Kenniff.

“When Mr. Neely began aggressively threatening Daniel Penny and the other passengers, Daniel, with the help of others, acted to protect themselves, until help arrived. Daniel never intended to harm Mr. Neely and could not have foreseen his untimely death.”

Neely’s family says that amounts to a confession.

After word of the impending charge came out, Penny’s attorneys released a statement saying their client “stepped in to protect himself and his fellow New Yorkers” even though “his well-being was not assured.”

“He risked his own life and safety, for the good of his fellow passengers. The unfortunate result was the unintended and unforeseen death of Mr. Neely,” the statement from Steven Raiser read.

“We are confident that once all the facts and circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are brought to bear, Mr. Penny will be fully absolved of any wrongdoing.”

Finally, we ask – Who could have seen that coming?

Well, pretty much everyone after violent protests started erupting across New York City.

The politicization of the justice system (or rather the inevitable denouement to the mob’s rule) is being increasingly exposed to the daylight at so many levels… and yet nothing changes.

As Matt Margolis poignantly notes, under Bragg’s leadership, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office routinely downgrades felonies to misdemeanors. Yet sometimes, his decisions to pursue charges have seemingly been influenced by social or political factors. Earlier this year, Bragg also sought murder charges against Moussa Diarra, a parking garage attendant in Manhattan who had shot a thief in an act of self-defense. However, in response to public outrage, Bragg later decided not to pursue charges against Diarra.

 It is expected that Penny will turn himself in on Friday to face criminal charges.

Much like New York and DC, Chicago residents our in an uproar over the arrival of thousands of migrants arrive in their city after being bused north from Texas, a surge which is expected to accelerate as a pandemic-era measure, Title 42, is set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday.

According to city officials, there has been a 10-fold increase in migrant arrivals – putting a strain on Chicago’s financial resources, and leading concerned residents of the Democratic stronghold to voice their opposition at during a Thursday evening meeting with city leaders in South Shore.

“All of a sudden we have deep pockets for people who don’t pay taxes,” said one attendee. “I understand helping people, but you start with your own home.”

Photos captured from the event pic.twitter.com/mp3946xI3L

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 11, 2023

“I think it would be fair for every homeless immigrant that you bring in, that you scoop up a homeless here,” said another attendee, ABC7 Chicago reports.

A plan is also in place to move some of them into Park District fieldhouses, like one at Brands Park in the 3200-block of North Elston Avenue.

The problem is that the families that use fieldhouse services, like for daycare and summer programs, were not informed.

And what’s the first stop for new arrivals? Police stations and school buildings.

“The staff here was given virtually no notice. They were told at like 1 o’clock to clear your stuff, we are sending migrants to your facility,” said one pissed off parent, Michael Busking.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has taken the emergency measures to respond to a “surge of new arrivals since last month.”

Trouble all around

As Bloomberg notes, while El Paso, Texas has declared a state of emergency to open temporary shelters as hundreds of migrants sleep on the sidewalks, New York Mayor Eric Adams has slammed the Biden administration amid the arrival of migrants to the Big Apple – “putting pressure on his city’s already-strained budget.”

The New York mayor has urged the administration to better coordinate response efforts and speed up federal financial assistance and work permissions for migrants. He’s said the city is receiving around 500 migrants per day from border states, and his office expects those numbers could double with the end of Title 42. 

Adams was not included on a list of Biden campaign surrogates released Wednesday, even though the Washington Post reported in March he would be included. The omission was reported earlier by Politico. -Bloomberg

According to the report, the tensions with fellow Democrats come at a difficult time for President Biden, as he embarks on his reelection campaign.

“The Biden administration had two years to prepare for this and did not do so. And our state is going to bear the brunt,” said Dem-turned-independent Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

Late Wednesday, the Biden administration attempted to turn the tide with a set of new rules that would quickly reject asylum claims for most people crossing the border who hadn’t previously applied for asylum in another country first. What’s more, nearly 1,500 military personnel are being sent to the Southwest border to help local authorities deal with an expected influx of migrants.

Well this is interesting
Footage from the San Ysidro Port of Entry (located on the border San Diego/Mexico border) shows officers from the Department of Homeland Security in riot gear conducting a training exercise before
Title 42 is set to expire.

This comes as US officials in… pic.twitter.com/0rK3aY4W2M

— BowTiedPassport (@BowTiedPassport) May 11, 2023

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, says it will award $290 million to communities taking in migrants, on top of $135 million already allotted, Bloomberg reports.

On Wednesday afternoon, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the administration has been hamstrung by “outdated” and “broken” immigration laws (and totally not the open-door invitation virtually extended to migrants since Biden took office).

“I cannot overstate how much of a challenge it is going to be and how we all have to deal with it as one administration and one country. Fundamentally, we need Congress to act,” Mayorkas said on Thursday, effectively blaming Congress.

[A] fresh wave of migrants at the southern border could also renew pressure on small towns in the region. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs this week announced her own “preparedness plan” to help shelter and transport migrants. -Bloomberg

“Without much more robust action from the federal government, the current situation will only get worse,” said Hobbs. “As of today, we have not received an adequate response.”

Are Twitter’s days of encouraging free speech and independent thought numbered… or is Musk, just days after unveiling that Tucker is joining, playing 4D chess?

Just hours after Elon Musk announced he had picked a new female Twitter CEO candidate, the WSJ revealed the identity of the person in talks to become the next CEO of the world’s most important social network: it is Linda Yaccarino, who is currently NBCUniversal’s influential head of advertising.

Yaccarino, who is chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCU, has been with NBCU for more than a decade, where she has been an industry advocate for finding better ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising. As head of NBCU’s advertising sales, she was key in the launch of the company’s ad-supported Peacock streaming service.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, said in a tweet Thursday that he had hired a new CEO, but didn’t say who it was. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Mr. Musk said in the tweet.

In some ways, Musk’s pick of Yaccarino is not a surprise: as Chair of the Advertising Council’s Board of Directors and arguably NBCU’s top advertising exec, she is meant to fill a critical void at the new Twitter: that of advertising. After all, despite having massive traffic, Musk’s social network – which as a reminder cost him $44 billion – has been hemorhaging ad revenue as woke brands have abandoned the website.

Of the top 100 advertisers on Twitter before Mr. Musk bought the company, 37 spent nothing on Twitter advertising during the first quarter of this year, according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower, while an additional 24 brands reduced their average monthly Twitter ad spending by 80% or more.

As such, it will be Yaccarino’s job to convince advertisers to return: Yaccarino, who oversees roughly $13 billion in annual ad revenue, is well-known for her tight relationship with marketers and ad agencies. Yaccarino has a reputation for hard-nosed negotiating tactics, and media buyers have described her as the “velvet hammer.”

Musk’s announcement of the new CEO came days before one of the biggest events of the year for NBCU, the company’s annual pitch event for advertisers, known as the upfront, which is scheduled for Monday in New York. And according to the WSJ, an NBCU spokesman said Ms. Yaccarino is in back-to-back rehearsals for NBCU’s upfront.

On the other hand, the hiring of Yaccarino to head the social network which in recent months has become the bane of liberals and progressives through its encouragement of free speech and independent thought, both of which are despised and suppressed by the left, could be a problem.

For one, according to her LInkedIn profile, Yaccarino is the “Chairman of the WEF’s Taskforce on Future of Work and sits on the WEF’s Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee. She is also highly engaged with the Value in Media initiative.” Most recently, she delivered the following speech in Jan 2020: ‘World Economic Forum: Creating the Workplace of the Future by Focusing on People.”

Additionally, in 2014 Yaccarino joined the Ad Council Board of Directors and became a member of the Executive Committee in 2015. She first served as Vice Chair before her appointment to Board Chair from 2021-2022.

And then there’s this: in 2021-2022, as Ad Council Chair, “Yaccarino partnered with the business community, the White House, and government agencies to create a COVID-19 vaccination campaign, featuring Pope Francis and reaching over 200 million Americans.”

Know the facts! The @AdCouncil is working to inform Americans on why we must embrace an FDA-approved #Covid vaccine and how to go about it. We’re almost there, let’s cross the finish line. @lisaesherman https://t.co/AUv9tf9IFb

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) November 24, 2020

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And finally:

As an industry advocate, Yaccarino has called for a return to values-based, trusted partnerships, spotlighting the most important issues facing her colleagues and peers. As 2021-2022 Ad Council Chair, Yaccarino partnered with the business community, the White House, and government agencies to create a COVID-19 vaccination campaign, featuring Pope Francis and reaching over 200 million Americans. At NBCU, she uses the power of media to advance equity and helps to launch DEI-focused initiatives, including BOLD, a program for employing veterans; #ShesMy, a campaign to uplift women and girls; Scene in Color, a collaboration with Target to elevate emerging BIPOC film creatives; and a partnership with Telemundo to release a Latina-centric storytelling guide. 

Yes! It’s time for action and working towards a more inclusive society. https://t.co/IMQreJ1K9P

I nominate @laura_molen @MarkMarshallNBC @joefbenarroch @OsAnsari @kknorring

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) October 21, 2020

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Things get a little more complicated however, when one considers that in May 2018 Trump Named Yaccarino (alongside Bill Belichick and a bunch of other folks) to a two-year term on the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. It wasn’t immediately clear how long she lasted in this particular role.

Bottom line: despite that last rather odd detour, which can be attributed to Trump’s habitual lack of due diligence, Yaccarino appears to be the perfect establishment hire, one who will help Twitter recover most of its lost ad revenue… the trade-off may very well be that in the process twitter may just become the same company it was before its acqusition by Trump.

In response to the news of her hiring, the outcry has been – as one would imagine – extremely polarized.

The ostensible new Twitter CEO is a literal Cathedral propagandist who is an executive at NBC, the WEF, and the Ad Council creating vaccine propaganda pic.twitter.com/cngnBxSufO

— America’s Conscience (@saveusculture) May 11, 2023

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Please, @elonmusk, tell me you’re trolling us, Linda Yaccarino!
You may as well put Rachel Maddow in charge of Twitter pic.twitter.com/jy5jNS08sq

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) May 12, 2023

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This is reportedly the new Twitter CEO.

Pro- mask, pro-vaxx, and a participant in The World Economic Forum.

Under her Twitter, The #DiedSuddenly film would have never been allowed to see the light of day. @elonmusk if this is true- please reconsider this decision. pic.twitter.com/H9qqjdxH0f

— DiedSuddenly (@DiedSuddenly_) May 12, 2023

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In Linda Yaccarino, Elon Musk gets a CEO who is a seasoned ad executive who generally shares his political leanings.

But she’s also the Chairman of a World Economic Forum task force so she can comfortably liaise with Twitter’s current investors and advertisers around the world.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 11, 2023

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Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc), the woman who is reportedly the new CEO of Twitter, follows:

– Chaya Raichik
– Jesse Watters
– Michael Shellenberger
– Ron DeSantis
– The Babylon Bee
– Giorgia Meloni
– Maye Musk
– Catturd
– Vivek Ramaswamy
– Tulsi Gabbard
– Bari Weiss

— Max Berger (@maxberger) May 11, 2023

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BREAKING: It appears that the new CEO of Twitter will be Linda Yaccarino, if the Wall Street Journal’s reporting is correct.

People are already unfairly attacking her for her ties to different organizations and because she follows certain accounts here on Twitter.

The new CEO… pic.twitter.com/Cm6WKRAqEy

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) May 12, 2023

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JUST KIDDING!!

It looks like Trump ally Linda Yaccarino will be taking over.

So don’t expect the trolling, hate speech, disinformation or criminal acts committed on this site to stop anytime soon! https://t.co/B40PDiOtzW

— Whistleblower Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) May 12, 2023

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If true, Linda Yaccarino would be a great CEO of Twitter. She gets the ad business and understands the needs of advertisers, can talk their language (ROI/brand safety) and will speak her mind while being deferential. $TSLA @elonmusk https://t.co/qIh2ktrc4r

— Gary Black (@garyblack00) May 11, 2023

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Elon Musk is reportedly in talks to bring Linda Yaccarino, “Top World Economic Forum Official,” on board as his new CEO of Twitter.

Anyone else getting major Twitter 1.0 vibes or is it just me? pic.twitter.com/yTDrUWhNPr

— Jason Jones (@jonesville) May 12, 2023

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@elonmusk don’t Bud Light yourself

— Dom (@brutusbrandy) May 12, 2023

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Finally, the boss himself:

The commitment to open source transparency and accepting a wide range of viewpoints remains unchanged

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

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In conclusion, while it is certainly possible that Musk is playing 4D chess here, a prevailing sentiment among the replies is that “Twitter was fun for a few months. See you guys in the gulag.” One can only hope that it is wrong.

Almost exactly a year ago we covered Pakistan’s efforts to secure economic aid through the IMF in order to defuse its growing inflationary crisis.  In May 2022, Pakistan’s core inflation rate was around 13% – Today, their core inflation rate is at 19.5%.  The situation keeps getting uglier.

Pakistan has sought relief from foreign debt obligations and an IMF bailout deal. Initial arrangements for a three year deal with the IMF began in 2019, but Pakistan said that deal, originally for $6 billion USD, was ‘outdated due to the pandemic’ and new global financial pressures. The nation is in ‘dire need’ of at least $36 billion in order to stay afloat.  However, it appears that any chance of an agreement with the IMF is about to falter.

A spokesperson for the International Monetary Fund in an interview with Bloomberg states that they are in talks with Pakistan on a multi-billion loan program, which is going to conclude in June.  But, the spokesperson also said that the IMF “wants an assurance on a coordinated mechanism for debt recovery from Pakistan” as well as an assurance on implementation of the economic policy.  The IMF has reportedly rejected a recent Pakistan government claim that it has met all the conditions to reach an agreement with the global financial body to release funds.

Without IMF support Pakistan risks default in the near term, according to Moodys Investor Service.

“We consider that Pakistan will meet its external payments for the remainder of this fiscal year ending in June,” says Grace Lim, a sovereign analyst with Moodys in Singapore.  “However, Pakistan’s financing options beyond June are highly uncertain.  Without an IMF program, Pakistan could default given its very weak reserves.” 

The reason for the IMF pullback is obvious – Mass civil unrest has exploded in response to the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan on corruption charges.  Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ruled that Khan’s dramatic arrest this week was illegal and has ordered his immediate release. His lawyers had argued that his detention from court premises in Islamabad on Tuesday was unlawful.

Mr. Khan stood surrounded by his lawyers in front of the three Supreme Court judges as they told him that because of the way he had been arrested on Tuesday – inside a court complex, conducting biometric tests – the arrest was invalid.  This does not necessarily end the instability within Pakistan, though.  Charges are still being brought against Khan and the likelihood of continued riots is high.  

What does this mean?

Pakistan is a nuclear armed nation with over 165 warheads from short to medium range.  The country also has ongoing border disputes with India and strong military ties to China.  A destabilization of the region could lead to a much larger geopolitical crisis as well as send shockwaves through the global economy.  An IMF refusal at this time could trigger chaos that reverberates through the east and the west.     

The following is an email written by Cook County prosecutor Jason Poje, circulated to colleagues last week. Via RealClear Wire,

To my colleagues:

After 20 years, I always kind of figured an email like this would start with “It is with a heavy heart that I leave…” The truth is, I can’t get out of here fast enough.

Let me start with the positive. There is not a single day that has gone by that I have not felt truly honored to work with such an incredible group of people who spent every waking hour on behalf of victims. This opportunity has been a gift for which I have no words to explain the extent of my gratitude.

My partners, our Victim/Witness advocates, our Investigators, our support staff, the police officers and detectives, time after time I see each of you putting everything you have into helping people we encounter on the worst days of their lives. So often I see our personal lives, and indeed at times our own well-being, set aside just to do a little bit more on that last case for that last victim. It’s been nothing short of inspiring not as a lawyer, but as a person.

And yet, I’m leaving. Why could that be? The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.

Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of these so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation.

Many years ago my family found a nice quiet corner of the suburbs. Now my son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park, and a drug dealer is open-air selling behind my house (the second one in two years). If it were just me to consider, I’d stick it out. I’ve been through stupid State’s Attorney policies before. But this Office’s complete failure to even think for a moment before rushing into one popular political agenda after another has put my family directly in harm’s way.

The current people in charge of this state, including the [State’s Attorney’s Office] suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding…we live in a society with adversarial court and criminal justice processes. Defense attorneys, legal aid clinics, Public Defenders, defendant advocate groups…they fight like hell to protect the rights of criminal defendants. And they should. Their work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must be done ethically and evenhandedly. When both sides vigorously defend their positions, a balance is reached between protecting rights while preserving some sort of order and safety. Once we start doing too much of the defense’s job, once we pull our punches, once we decide that it’s worth risking citizens’ lives to have a little social experiment, that balance is lost. The unavoidable consequences are what we are witnessing in real time, an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families pulling up stakes, and the bodies piling up; the whole time with a State’s Attorney who insists that there is nothing to see here, and if there is it must be someone else’s fault. And then they wonder why they cannot retain experienced prosecutors or even hire new ones…it’s because any true prosecutor recognizes the importance of this balance, and that they will not be permitted to be a prosecutor under this administration.

I will not raise my son here. I am fortunate enough to have the means to escape, so my entire family is leaving the State of Illinois. I grew up here, my family and friends are here, and yet my own employer has turned it into a place from which I am no longer proud to be, and in which my son is not safe.

To everyone in the trenches in the State’s Attorney’s Office and in law enforcement, my one regret is that I cannot be at your side anymore as you continue to fight the good fight. I do not envy the task you have before you, but you have my utmost respect for carrying on. I hope one day you are successful at returning some kind of common sense and security to our communities.

Thank you all so much for this opportunity to serve. I will treasure every moment of this chapter in my life. Be safe, be well, fight hard.

Jason F. Poje
Assistant State’s Attorney

Two days ago we looked at how China’s diverging export (faster) and import (slower) growth rates signaled a two-speed recovery, with strong consumption (especially services), also evident in the Labor Day holiday data, but not-so-robust industrial activity, which still faces headwinds from external demand and a slow recovery in property investment.

Overnight we got another confirmation, this time in the form of China’s latest CPI and PPI when April inflation surprised the market to the downside.

China’s CPI eased notably from 0.7% in March to 0.1% in April, the lowest print since March 2021 and one tick away from deflation.

According to SocGen, the decline was mainly driven by food inflation (-0.4%) and energy inflation (-0.2%), while core CPI remained unchanged at 0.7%. The decline in food inflation was due to pork prices amid abundant supply, and vegetable prices thanks to the warm weather. Fuel inflation dropped from -6.4% to -10.4% due to weak international prices and base effects.

In contrast, services CPI picked up from 0.8% to 1.0%, supported by prices of air fares, hotels and tour packages, as the sector is the main beneficiary of reopening. Rental inflation also recovered from -0.5% to 0.3% with the mom rate stabilizing at 0%. However, core goods CPI declined. While clothing inflation rebounded slightly from 0.8% to 0.9%, that of transportation facilities dropped from -3.3% to -4.0% due to ongoing discounting, and that of household appliances eased from -0.2% to -1.2%, reflecting more tepid demand relative to services.

Moving to factory gate prices, PPI slipped further into deflation, from -2.5% to -3.6% due to base effects and weaker momentum, with a 0.5% mom decline. The main culprit was upstream prices, as the key commodities saw a broad-based decline in prices, reflecting weak demand for commodities (also evident in the latest imports data). That raises concerns over the strength of industrial activity, which likely lost momentum due to softer global demand, still subdued property investments and still high inventories. PPI of consumer goods also remained tepid, with a mom decline seen in durable goods.

In short, it is clear that the service sector is normalizing quickly since the beginning of the year, but at this stage the broadening of the reopening recovery remains to be seen with risks from slowing exports, a sluggish property recovery, still weak confidence. The service-driven nature of this recovery also means there are less inflation spillovers to the rest of the world this year

While it is true that inflation momentum has been modest, today’s numbers also overstate the weakness as they were mainly driven by food and upstream prices and base effects. The data points to more room for the PBoC to keep policy accommodative, especially coupled with today’s surprising plunge in new credit creation, but given its lagging nature, there is still a high bar for more headline easing.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The failure to recognize how post-infection immunity is similar or superior to that bestowed by vaccination led to prolonged school closures and other problems, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist told Congress on May 11.

U.S. health agencies “chose to disregard natural immunity,” leading to “lost jobs, staffing shortages, children kept out of school, and wasted vaccines,” said Margery Smelkinson, a research scientist at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Smelkinson was one of three experts testifying to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington on Capitol Hill, in a hearing on immunity during the pandemic.

Smelkinson, who said she was testifying in her personal capacity, is employed by the same agency headed for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who repeatedly downplayed natural immunity along with other top public health officials.

Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were among the officials to meet secretly in 2021 to decide whether post-infection immunity should count as one or more vaccine doses in the recommended COVID-19 vaccination schedule, according to documents obtained by The Epoch Times. The meeting resulted in no changes to the recommendations, which advise virtually all Americans to get a vaccine even if they’ve recovered from COVID-19.

The government’s position on natural immunity meant that COVID-19 vaccine mandates across the country featured no exceptions for the naturally immune, in contrast to some other countries.

The CDC has said that there is post-infection protection but that it varies by person, that it’s unclear how long it lasts, and that recovered people should still get vaccinated.

But evidence from before the vaccines were even available signaled natural immunity was robust, and later studies provided evidence that natural immunity was similar to or even better than vaccination, Smelkinson noted.

One study in July 2020, for instance, found a strong immune response in people who had recovered from COVID-19. Another in October 2020 provided similar findings. And a paper in November 2020 found that mild infections also triggered strong responses.

As early as April 2021, research suggested protection on par with that from vaccines. A CDC study found natural immunity was better than vaccination against the Delta variant, and a more recent CDC paper provided the same conclusions for the Omicron strain. An analysis of dozens of studies found that post-infection protection was similar to or better than vaccination, depending on the strain.

Smelkinson said the government’s position resulted in staffing shortages, including in the health care sector, and “caused needless loss of life as vaccines were given to essential workers with natural immunity instead of being prioritized for the elderly.”

“Additionally, the daily quarantine of thousands of students could have been significantly reduced if districts had, at least, made exceptions for students with natural immunity. At least,” she said. “Disregarding the wealth of evidence of natural immunity led to missed opportunities to implement policies that could have been more effective and efficient in controlling the pandemic and limiting collateral damage.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the panel, said that the government should not have mandated vaccination for the naturally immune.

Other Experts

Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told the panel that the stance against natural immunity adopted by Fauci and others didn’t make sense, pointing in part to Fauci saying previously that people who recovered from influenza didn’t need vaccination “because the most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself.”

Read more here…

The Biden administration is expected to repeal Title 42, a policy from the Trump era that makes it easier to reject migrants at the US-Mexico border. This change, expected to take effect at midnight on Thursday, could potentially lead to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants flooding the US. Far away from the chaotic southern border is New York City, which is experiencing its own migrant crisis. 

On Wednesday, NYC Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order that eases shelter requirements for homeless families. The order suspends city laws that regulate how, when, and where homeless families can be sheltered. It comes just one day before Title 42 ends. 

“With over 130 emergency sites and eight humanitarian relief centers already opened, we have reached our limit, and this last week we had to resort to temporarily housing recent arrivals in gyms.

“We will make every effort to get asylum seekers into shelter as quickly as possible as we have done since day one,” Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the Democratic mayor, said in a statement. 

Levy said the effort is to ensure asylum seekers find “shelter as quickly as possible” as Democrat-run metro areas across the country prepare for a surge in migrants in the coming days and weeks upon Title 42 expiration. 

Bloomberg said NYC is spending $8 million per day to house 40,000 asylum seekers. The spokesperson said more than 500 migrants per day have been entering the city in the last week. 

NYC’s migrant crisis has been so severe that the mayor plans to ship several hundred adult male migrants to hotels in Orange Lake and Orangeburg, in upstate Rockland County. In recent months, migrants from Texas and other border states have been bussed in, making Adams and fellow Democrats furious. 

Let’s not forget Biden administration officials largely ignored the border and began dismantling border security and immigration enforcement in the first two years of office. It was only until recently, after a flood of migrants could no longer be ignored, overrunning Democrat cities, as well as the imminent expiration of Title 42, and what could be an invasion of up to 150,000 migrants in the coming days, have Biden officials sent reinforcements to border states.

TX: Happening now: @GovAbbott orders deployment of #OperationLonestar @TXMilitary “Quick Reaction Force” made up of military police to close the gap migrants are currently coming through in Brownsville.

They are part of the 545 soldiers deployed this week under #OLS — They will… pic.twitter.com/15aIcrU8gT

— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) May 10, 2023

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🚨 BREAKING: Texas National Guard in full riot gear have arrived in Brownsville, TX near a major illegal crossing point.

This seems to be part of @GregAbbott_TX’s plan to repel an influx of illegal migrants in this area.
pic.twitter.com/6h6MC3Mxt9

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 10, 2023

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A little too late, we might say, and wonder if the Biden administration is intentionally sparking a border crisis. 

Are you sick and tired of the lies yet?

This needs to be treated like the invasion it is. The MINORITY of these migrants are families. The MAJORITY are military aged men.

Credit: ‘James Woods’ pic.twitter.com/rqBnR2VmjJ

— Lido Key Dude (@LidoDude) May 7, 2023

Ah yes… 

. . . 

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Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

During a Tuesday interview, Senator Ron Johnson asserted that Congressional Republicans have unequivocal proof that Hunter Biden paid tens of thousands of dollars to an international sex trafficking ring for prostitutes with money given to him by his father.

“Senator Grassley and I, in our September 2020 report, laid out as much evidence as anybody would need to lay out that the Biden family is corrupt,” Johnson told Fox News, adding that it was well known “that President Biden would be highly compromised, but the corrupt media ignored it and censored it.”

Johnson continued, “One thing we don’t talk enough about. I know President Biden is so proud of his son. We have the evidence that Hunter Biden paid for — paid tens of thousands of dollars for prostitutes that were sex trafficked through an international sex trafficking ring. Yes, ick.”

“And President Biden during a four or five month period offered to pay for $100,000 of Hunter Biden’s bills when he was spending tens of thousands of dollars on these women who are sex trafficked,” the Senator further asserted.

“Now, that is at a minimum morally reprehensible and wrong. And the president is defending that and the media isn’t even looking into it?” an exasperated Johnson urged.

“It is grotesque but the media doesn’t concentrate on it. We had that in our report. We had the financial transactions proving it. James Comer does the same thing. But it is so icky and reprehensible that people don’t want to talk about it,” Johnson emphasised.

“It is galling to hear the president talk about how proud he is of Hunter. He enables this. He enables it by propping up his son both in term of those types of words as well as financially. It is really pretty sick,” the Senator concluded.

Watch:

Everything Sen. Johnson is saying here is beyond dispute.

Hunter filmed his interactions with these prostitutes. Hunter filmed himself discussing payments with these prostitutes, just hours after receiving $$ from his father. https://t.co/hYpmikY6sh

— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) May 9, 2023

In a further interview on Fox Business, Johnson predicted the media will continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence of shady criminal dealings with foreign nationals.

Criminals try not to leave a paper trail of their crimes.

Investigations take time and often only find the tip of an iceberg of evidence. But that tip can be quite incriminating.

When criminals do email each other, they talk cryptically.

For example: 10% for the “Big Guy.” pic.twitter.com/wFaecWpewK

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) May 10, 2023

In an interview with The Washington Examiner, Johnson said that he fears the Department of Justice will allow Hunter Biden to engage in a plea agreement and have his case records sealed.

“The Justice Department will do whatever it can get away with doing in terms of covering up for Hunter Biden or minimizing any charges,” the Wisconsin senator said, adding “I’ve been concerned about this, almost predicting it, for quite some time.”

“Part of that plea agreement would be a seal of all records so that the American public will never know the full extent of what Hunter Biden and possibly Joe Biden did,” Johnson added.

On Wednesday, during a press conference by House GOP lawmakers, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan announced that GOP lawmakers have reviewed 170 suspicious activity reports linked to the Biden Family’s dealings.

Republicans revealed that they believe the Biden family attempted to conceal more than $10 Million in foreign payments, and that “Biden family members and business associates created a web of over 20 companies—most were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.”

Biden Family Tried To Hide Over $10 Million In Foreign Payments: House GOP

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