- Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 In Order To Get Confirmed As Director Of National Intelligence
Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 In Order To Get Confirmed As Director Of National Intelligence
Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,
As the story is told [SEE HERE], and it aligns with every scintilla of researched data on the darkest and deepest elements of the Deep State, DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard has reversed her position and will now support FISA-702, the warrantless searches of American communication and electronic metadata.
Apparently the FISA process and the 702 aspect (specific to American citizens) is the line in the sand the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has drawn. If Tulsi Gabbard does not support it, her confirmation is in doubt. As a result, she has reportedly reversed her position and now supports it.
This is absolutely par for the course.
It should be remembered, in the last reauthorization of FISA-702 congress exempted themselves from the warrantless search and surveillance system used by the U.S. Intelligence Apparatus. Congress forbids the FBI or any entity with access to the NSA database, from being allowed to use the process to search themselves or their staff. However, every other American does not enjoy this same protection.
After spending years asking every representative of consequence why they support the FISA-702 process, I can tell you every one of them says they believe it is needed because the IC tells them there are just too many domestic terror threats that need to be monitored.
It is impossible to find a person in DC who will forcefully try to stop FISA-702 reauthorization.
If you ask me why in hindsight, I now take the position that FISA-702 is the gateway to the massive surveillance system currently being put into place using Real ID and the AI facial recognition software provided by Palantir (CIA exploit). In essence, the gateway that allows the full-scale surveillance state, is opened by the prior authorization of FISA-702 that negates any 4th amendment protection.
Why? Because all of the surveillance mechanisms within the network being updated and enhanced by AI search and capture, comes from the IC being allowed to exploit the NSA database. That same database access allowance is the targeting mechanism for FISA-702. If warrantless searches of the NSA database were stopped, the Palantir/IC and Tech Bro collaboration could hit a brick wall.
Against this backdrop, the SSCI telling Tulsi Gabbard that her nomination approval is contingent upon her support for FISA-702, simply makes sense.
WASHINGTON DC – […] Multiple senators from both parties who met with the former Hawaii lawmaker in recent days told us they emerged from those sessions unsure about Gabbard’s position on the 702 program. During these meetings, senators have pressed Gabbard on her previous public statements on the issue, as well as her votes against 702 reauthorization throughout her eight years in Congress.
GOP national security hawks in particular viewed this as problematic, we’re told, fueling renewed doubts about her confirmation prospects. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested on a WSJ podcast Wednesday that Gabbard should disavow her previous opposition to the 702 program.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also sent us a statement Thursday night supporting Gabbard’s 702 stance — a key indicator of how the GOP leadership is thinking about her nomination.
“Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Cotton said.
That last part is important because, if confirmed as DNI, Gabbard would need to certify the statute annually in order for intelligence collection to continue under the 702 program. (read more)
This is also a big part of the reason why the DC Deep State will easily confirm Kash Patel to be Donald Trump’s FBI Director. Kash Patel is a big believer in the value of FISA-702.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 23:50 - Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans
Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Americans
Authored by Kenin Spivak via AmericanMind.org,
House investigations reveal that the Deep State and the Biden-Harris Administration are engaged in a massive repression of American freedoms…
Reports released by two House committees in December shine a harsh light on the deceptions and oppressive tactics utilized by numerous federal agencies, the Intelligence Community, and leaders of the Democratic Party. During the last year of the first Trump Administration, agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), State Department, and Justice Department (DOJ) initiated improper contacts with media in an effort to censor conservative views. These agencies also took steps to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden.
The Biden-Harris Administration supercharged the weaponization of the federal government against the American people. With the active participation of the media, the administration followed a whole-of-government effort to collude with, and coerce, the media to suppress and censor conservatives and others who opposed progressive goals. It threatened parents with terrorist “threat tagging” and visits from the FBI for speaking their minds, stretched statutory authority beyond recognition to prosecute Donald Trump and his supporters, harassed and penalized whistleblowers, invaded bank privacy, sent heavily armed federal agents into private homes, and brought an unprecedented barrage of litigation against states to force them into compliance with the administration’s unconstitutional goals.
On December 17, 2024, the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight (Administration Subcommittee) released its report on the events surrounding January 6, 2021 and the politicization of the Select Committee (January 6 Committee) established by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate those events. Three days later, the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Justice Subcommittee) released a 17,000-page final report detailing the administrative state’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s repressive censorship enterprise and other abuses.
Based on the evidence described in these reports, there are two inescapable conclusions:
(1) regardless of the administration in office, the Deep State in DHS, DoD, DOJ, IRS, the Intelligence Community, and other agencies have arrogated to themselves unconstitutional and unlawful powers to infringe individual liberties, expand rules, and use force to suppress conservatives’ goals, religion, and free speech; and
(2) the Biden-Harris Administration, Pelosi, and leading Democrats endorsed, supported, facilitated, and led the expansion of these efforts.
These reports are products of extensive investigations and include copious evidence. Though the Administration Subcommittee’s report can be faulted for its angry tone, a vainglorious pandering to its chairman, Barry Loudermilk, and sometimes hyperbolic conclusions, it provides compelling evidence of wrongdoing. Broader in scope and more thoroughly researched, the Justice Subcommittee’s report is the product of a detailed inquiry into a broad betrayal of trust. Justice Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan is to be commended for uncovering problems and taking steps that have already ameliorated some of these practices.
The findings in these reports show why the Trump Administration must clean house. That is why Trump has nominated sometimes controversial individuals such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, John Ratcliffe, Russell Vought, and Rick Grenell. It explains Trump’s impulsive, properly withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz and the creation of DOGE as an advisor outside of government. It is why so many of Trump’s appointees have expressed concern about the agencies they have been selected to lead.
Above all, the administration must not redirect targeting—it must eradicate these stains on the American soul.
An Illegitimate, Rigged Show Trial
I believe Donald Trump erred by holding his “Save America” rally in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, separating his call for a peaceful march by 8,500 words words from his peroration, in which he implored the crowd to “fight like hell,” and his dilatory public response to the ensuing violence. I condemn the demonstrators who entered the Capitol or resisted orders to disperse.
Nonetheless, the exaggerated, partisan accounts of that day, invective used by Democratic leaders and the media for political advantage, and the unjustifiable divergence between the fierce overcharging of those with even a scintilla of connection to the January 6 events and the near indifference to the violent left-wing rioters who, following George Floyd’s death, killed or injured hundreds of Americans, burned down billions of dollars of private property, destroyed police stations, occupied cities, and laid a sustained siege to the federal courthouse in Portland, is inexcusable.
The evidence shows that from the outset, the January 6 Committee was rigged to condemn President Trump and lay the foundation for Congress or the courts to reach a finding that he was guilty of insurrection, thereby triggering grounds for prohibiting him from again serving as president under the 14th Amendment. To achieve this result, the January 6 Committee was organized in violation of House rules, and was selective in pursuing its mandate, parsing its evidence, and writing its report. It stage-managed its public hearings and then covered up its wrongdoing by deleting, withholding, and encrypting its files.
On June 30, 2021, the House passed H.R. 503, establishing the January 6 Committee to investigate the “facts, circumstances, and causes” of January 6, and the “preparedness and response” of law enforcement. It included an exemption to House Rule 11 that gave the Committee’s chairman the power to greatly limit questions from the Republicans who would be appointed to the Committee.
Furthermore, House Rule 10, Clause 5 requires that the members of standing committees be elected “from nomination[s] submitted by the respective party caucus or conference.” Speaker Pelosi named seven Democrats and one Republican—Liz Cheney. Two of those Democrats, Jamie Raskin and Adam Schiff, previously served as impeachment managers against President Trump. Prior to being selected, Cheney pledged, “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy proposed five Republicans, but in an unprecedented violation of House rules, Pelosi rejected his nominees. She then named Republican Adam Kinzinger as the final member of the January 6 Committee.
Even with the exclusion of Rule 11, H.R. 503 still required Chairman Bennie Thompson to consult with the Republican ranking member before issuing subpoenas or ordering depositions. House rules require each of the party caucuses to select its ranking members. Because Pelosi excluded Republican nominees, there was no Republican ranking member (though the committee pretended that Cheney served that function). Some of those subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee challenged the subpoenas on this basis, but the courts deferred to Congress.
All committee chairs have the responsibility to archive committee records with the Clerk of the House, who subsequently stores those records with the National Archives and Records Administration. H.R. 503 further requires that all January 6 Committee records be transferred to any committee designated by the Speaker; Pelosi designated the Committee on House Administration.
The January 6 Committee failed to archive or provide the Administration Subcommittee with video recordings of witness interviews, as many as 900 interview summaries or transcripts, and more than one terabyte of digital data. The January 6 Committee also delivered more than 100 encrypted, password protected documents for which it never provided the passwords.
Once underway, the January 6 Committee focused on hyping the horrors of January 6 and assigning blame to Trump. It generally ignored its mandate to investigate preparedness and the response, because that would have established that Trump authorized and directed 10,000 National Guard soldiers to be available to ensure security and safety, and that Pelosi declined that assistance. Because there were no Republican-selected members on the January 6 Committee, there were no cross-examinations, witnesses called, or evidence reviewed at the behest of Republican-selected members.
Every investigatory committee hopes for its John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel who testified about his first-hand knowledge as a participant in the cover-up of the Watergate break in. The January 6 Committee’s pale substitute was Cassidy Hutchinson, the then-24-year-old Coordinator for Legislative Affairs for White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson testified about things she claims to have been told and about a letter she claims to have transcribed, but which the evidence suggests never happened.
Following her second uneventful interview with January 6 Committee staff, Hutchinson drastically switched her narrative and began testifying to a variety of unsubstantiated and uncorroborated claims. It is not clear why she did so, but the Administration Subcommittee uncovered evidence of secret conversations between Hutchinson, former White House employee Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host of ABC’s The View, and Liz Cheney. Cheney improperly influenced Hutchinson to fire her attorney and referred her to a number of new attorneys, including a lawyer from the multinational law firm Alston & Bird whom Hutchinson then retained.
Based on hearsay, Hutchinson claimed that Trump had lunged toward the Secret Service driver of his car after his request to go to the Capitol was denied. Trump, the individual Hutchinson claimed gave her the information, and the agents with Trump that day have denied her claim. But after her third interview and retaining the Alston lawyer, Hutchinson suddenly recalled that she heard White House employees saying that Trump had agreed that Pence should be hung. Though there is no corroboration of this allegation, the January 6 Committee featured it throughout its hearings and in its report.
Hutchinson also claimed that she transcribed a note from Meadows, and edited by White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, that conceded that anyone who entered the Capitol without authority had acted illegally. The Administration Subcommittee retained an independent certified handwriting expert who said that Hutchinson’s story is false. Herschmann denies the note is genuine.
The Administration Subcommittee refers to Cheney’s actions as “witness tampering” and recommends a criminal referral and, implicitly, bar discipline. That goes too far by criminalizing common misbehavior; it may be emotionally satisfying, but it will not improve American government.
In 2022, HBO released Pelosi in the House, a documentary directed and produced by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. It includes footage of Pelosi and members of House and Senate leadership after being evacuated from the Capitol on January 6. The January 6 Committee was in possession of the footage throughout is investigation, but did not publish or archive it.
In one clip, Pelosi admits to her Chief of Staff, Terri McCullough, that they bear responsibility for the lack of security at the Capitol. Discussing her failure to call up the National Guard, Pelosi states, “I take responsibility for not having them just prepare for more.”
The Administration Subcommittee also uncovered evidence that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials intentionally delayed deploying the National Guard to the Capitol, despite Trump’s contrary directions. According to interviews conducted by the DoD Inspector General, during a January 3, 2021 meeting that included Trump, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Trump warned about the large number of protestors expected on January 6 and authorized 10,000 soldiers or National Guard to “make sure it’s a safe event.” Miller promised that there was a plan to do so. Milley further testified to the Inspector General that Trump ordered DoD to use all assets necessary to guarantee the safety of everyone in Washington, D.C. on January 6.
The Administration Subcommittee concluded that in the course of the investigation by the January 6 Committee, DoD and the Biden-Harris Administration possessed information that the Secretary of the Army misled senior congressional leaders by stating that the D.C. National Guard was “on the way” at a time it was not.
It appears that the Biden-Harris Administration, including DoD and the January 6 Committee, colluded to omit from the investigation and its report exculpatory information that would have shown that President Trump attempted to work with DoD and the National Guard to ensure the security of the Capitol at the time of his planned rally on January 6.
Oddly unmentioned in the Subcommittee’s report is that Trump advisors Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were prosecuted and sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to testify before the January 6 committee—the first former White House official to be imprisoned for a contempt of Congress conviction and the first time in 65 years that anyone has been prosecuted for refusing to testify before a House committee. That last time, and each of the ten times before then, the individuals who were imprisoned refused to testify before the reviled, highly partisan House Un-American Activities Committee.
The Administration Subcommittee’s report shows that the events of January 6 were preventable, and that Trump’s speech that day would not have resulted in a riot, or at the least the riot would not have penetrated the Capitol, if Democratic leadership had accepted assistance offered by the president or if DoD had mobilized the National Guard sooner.
While Trump is not without blame for the events of January 6, the January 6 Committee was an undemocratic, rigged, partisan show trial akin to Soviet and Chinese trials that are staged to justify a result rather than find the truth.
The Biden-Harris Administration’s Censorship Complex
The Justice Subcommittee obtained internal communications from social media platforms, Amazon, and others in which executives of these companies attribute suppressing and censoring videos, posts, and other content to “pressure” from the Biden-Harris Administration. For example, on the administration’s third day, the White House emailed Twitter (now X) to demand that a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. be “removed ASAP.”
Previously unknown is that under intense pressure from the White House, Amazon also suppressed placement and promotion of certain books critical of the administration.
The Justice Subcommittee report concluded that:
(1) Big Tech changed its content moderation policies because of pressure from the Biden-Harris White House;
(2) the censorship campaign targeted not just falsehoods but also true information, satire, and other content, including Americans’ personal experiences;
(3) the censorship campaign had a chilling effect on other speech;
(4) the Biden-Harris White House had leverage because of its power over policies that affected media companies; and (5) the Biden-Harris White House pushed censorship of books, not just social media.
The Biden-Harris censorship enterprise had its origins in the Obama and Trump Administrations. Following the 2016 election, offices within the executive branch began efforts to covertly censor Americans’ free expression. The FBI formed the Foreign Influence Task Force in the fall of 2017. The Global Engagement Center (GEC), a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department established by President Obama in early 2016 to counter terrorism, expanded its mandate in 2017 to include countering foreign disinformation, and later also domestic speech (the GEC was closed down on December 23, 2024 when Congress refused to continue its funding). The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) formed the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force in 2018, which evolved under Biden into the “Mis, Dis, and Malinformation Team” (MDM) in 2021 to counter foreign and American speech.
Once the Biden-Harris Administration took office, these censorship efforts expanded. Senior members of the Biden-Harris White House immediately began a months-long pressure campaign on Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and other companies to censor views disfavored by the Biden-Harris Administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence created the Foreign Malign Influence Center in 2021. DHS created the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board in May 2022, soon disbanded following broad condemnation. CISA also built out and met with its MDM Advisory Subcommittee throughout 2022.
Even during the Trump Administration, key activities of this censorship complex involved “inoculating” the public against damaging stories about Biden family influence peddling and taking other steps to bolster Joe Biden’s candidacy against Trump.
Foreign Censorship
The Justice Subcommittee demonstrated that the threat to Americans’ free speech increasingly includes foreign governments, including Brazil, the European Union, and Australia, but that the Biden-Harris Administration failed to defend Americans’ rights. For example, the Justice Subcommittee determined that in 2022, the FBI facilitated censorship requests to American social media companies on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), a Ukrainian intelligence agency then infiltrated by Russian security services. The SBU transmitted to the FBI lists of social media accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI requested—and, in some cases, directed—the world’s largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online, including a verified State Department account and accounts belonging to American journalists.
The Biden-Harris Administration also failed to protect Americans confronting censorship outside the United Sates. In Brazil, Justice Alexandre de Moraes forced American companies such as X and Rumble to cease operations in Brazil after they refused to comply with his illegal censorship orders. A European bureaucrat threatened American companies with retaliation under European law for facilitating political discourse in the United States. Australia considered legislation that purported to censor online speech globally. The Justice Subcommittee report observed that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to take a leadership role opposing these efforts. Likely that is because multiple Biden-Harris officials, including Harris and former climate czar John Kerry, have characterized the First Amendment as an obstacle rather than an essential right (see here, here, and here).
Artificial Intelligence
The Justice Subcommittee also uncovered strong evidence that the Biden-Harris Administration covertly tried to coerce AI companies by pressuring developers to censor new models, funding the development of AI-powered censorship tools, and collaborating with censorious foreign nations on AI regulations. The Justice Subcommittee identified examples of the Biden-Harris Administration funding the development of both AI-powered censorship tools and pressing tech companies to selectively exclude disfavored information when training generative AI in order to bias or censor responses.
With regard to potential AI legislation, the Justice Subcommittee report recommends that Congress follow four principles to protect Americans’ right to free expression: (1) ensure the federal government is involved in private AI algorithm or dataset decisions; (2) ban funding of censorship related research; (3) end foreign collaboration on AI regulations involving the censorship of lawful speech; and (4) avoid AI regulation that gives the government coercive leverage.
Non-Governmental Proxies
The Justice Subcommittee described how the federal government colluded with private and academic institutions to target and censor Americans’ speech, including (1) how CISA used proxies and partners to target and censor Americans’ election-related speech; and (2) how the National Science Foundation funded and supported the development of AI-powered tools that would supercharge the government’s ability to censor disfavored speech.
The most notable effort to cover up government censorship efforts was CISA’s (and later GEC’s) partnership with Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which was launched in 2020 during the Trump Administration. Instead of focusing on legitimate cybersecurity threats, EIP focused on so-called misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and mutated into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance activities.
On November 10, 2021, CISA director Jen Easterly gave a speech in which she asserted that CISA is in the business of protecting infrastructure, and “the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure.” She went on to say that Americans should not be free to determine the truth.
Under Easterly’s tenure, CISA (1) worked with federal partners to mature a whole-of-government approach to curbing alleged misinformation and disinformation; (2) considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the country; (3) moved its censorship operation to the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), a CISA-funded non-profit, after Missouri and Louisiana, along with several other plaintiffs, sued CISA and the Biden-Harris Administration; and (4) used the same CISA-funded non-profit as its spokesperson to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.” Members of CISA’s advisory committee internally worried that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”
In a draft of its 2022 recommendations, a CISA subcommittee recommended that it step up the use of outside organizations in performing its functions, which increasingly focused on censoring Americans. Though correctly warned by CIA legal counsel that “the government cannot ask an outside party to do something the Intelligence Community cannot do,” CISA disregarded that advice to bypass the First Amendment and “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”
One method CISA used to censor Americans is called “Switchboarding.” This is the federal government’s practice of referring requests for the removal of content on social media from generally Democratic state and local election officials to the relevant platforms. For the 2022 election cycle, CISA transferred this function to EI-ISAC. The FBI was often copied or referenced in requests to suppress or remove content, signaling that it would take action if the request was not acted upon.
CISA claimed that its mission did not include censoring “content that is polarizing, biased, partisan or contains viewpoints expressed about elections or politics,” “inaccurate statements about an elected or appointed official, candidate, or political party,” or “broad, non-specific statements about the integrity of elections or civic processes that do not reference a specific current election administration activity.” But in practice, state and local election officials used the CISA-funded EI-ISAC to silence excluded criticism and political dissent.
For example, in August 2022 a Democratic government official in Loudoun County, Virginia, reported a Tweet featuring an unedited video of a county official, “because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of” that official regarding Loudon County’s on-going dispute about the use of Critical Race Theory in county schools. EI-ISAC sought to assist that county official, demonstrating that her “misinformation report” was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt.
Following increased public awareness of CISA’s role in government-induced censorship, and the Justice Subcommittee’s issuance of subpoenas to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta in February 2023, CISA scrubbed its website of references to domestic MDM. Prior to the cleansing, the domain “CISA.gov/mdm” was associated with a webpage titled “Mis, Dis, Malinformation,” which included an overview of CISA’s efforts to censor foreign and domestic actors.
The Biden Justice Department led efforts to stall compliance by CISA and its private partners with Justice Subcommittee subpoenas.
Election Interference Operations
The Justice Subcommittee found extensive evidence of a concerted campaign by the FBI to preemptively debunk—or “prebunk”—allegations about the Biden family’s influence peddling scheme in advance of the 2020 presidential election. Starting prior to the New York Post’s October 14, 2020 report about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, this campaign—during Trump’s first term—included warning social media platforms about a pre-election Russian influence operation relating to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma. As a result, many social media platforms adopted policies that suppressed or banned coverage of the Post’s story as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation.
The FBI had been in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop since late 2019, and used it in one or more investigations in 2020. It knew the laptop was real and that its contents were authentic, but did not correct the false justifications for censoring the Post’s story.
Even after social media companies stopped censoring the stories, 51 former intelligence community officials, using their official titles and citing their national security credentials, released a public statement suggesting that the story “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The Justice Subcommittee obtained communications among signers, however, that established that many doubted the laptop was in fact Russian disinformation. The Justice Subcommittee investigation revealed that the public statement was politically motivated from the start. As former CIA Director Michael Morell testified, it was designed to “help Vice President Biden” in his presidential campaign.
As the emails soliciting signatures made clear, “We think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate,” and “we want to give the [Vice President] a talking point to use in response.” The Justice Committee’s interim report detailed how Morell spearheaded the statement after receiving a call from then-campaign advisor, and later Biden Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. The Biden campaign coordinated the statement’s dissemination to the media.
Nonetheless, in their public statements, interviews, and communications, the signers did not correct Politico, MSNBC, or other media that reported the statement as establishing the laptop was Russian disinformation, or proactively seek to correct that perception. Rather, the Intelligence Community worked to diminish the reach of stories that could be seen as harmful to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
A report issued jointly by the Justice Subcommittee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence detailed previously nonpublic information that CIA officials, including Trump CIA Director Gina Haspel, were aware of the statement before its publication. In fact, some of the signatories, including Morell, were under contract with the CIA at or about the time of its publication and had access to confidential information that discredited the letter’s purpose.
In a debate with Trump on October 22, 2020, Biden referred to the statement as proof that the laptop was a Russian hoax, and that Trump’s attacks were “garbage.” Numerous signers lauded Biden’s use of their statement in their internal communications.
A book written by Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to Biden who was deeply involved in the censorship enterprise, criticized Americans who disagreed with the administration’s overriding the Constitution as an “obsession with individual liberties.”
Weaponizing Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Against Americans
The FBI leadership’s trend toward political partisanship in recent years has disturbed the ranks of front-line FBI agents. FBI whistleblowers disclosed examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the Bureau. They characterized the FBI leadership as “cancerous,” “enveloped in politicization and weaponization,” “rotted at its core,” and having a “systemic culture of unaccountability.”
According to the Justice Subcommittee, the FBI brutally retaliated against many of them for breaking ranks—suspending them without pay, preventing them from seeking outside employment, and purging suspected disloyal employees. The FBI also abused its security clearance adjudication process to target whistleblowers. Under pressure from the Justice Subcommittee, the FBI reinstated the clearance of at least one decorated FBI employee.
During the Biden-Harris Administration, the Justice Department and FBI advanced a two-tiered system of justice—investigating and prosecuting individuals or groups with disfavored views. Documents received pursuant to the Justice Subcommittee’s subpoenas show that the FBI singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists. It targeted its employees who hold conservative views, investigated parents at school board meetings, and sought to invade Catholic churches in the name of fighting “domestic terrorism.” The IRS, Treasury Department, and other Justice Department agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), misused federal funds to target Americans.
Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of the Justice Department leadership’s disdain for American people than a memorandum issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland on October 4, 2021 to the FBI director and all U.S. attorneys that instructed them to develop strategies to investigate parents who voiced objections at school board meetings. The Justice Department’s documents demonstrate that there was no compelling nationwide law-enforcement justification for the Attorney General’s directive. Rather, the administration’s goal was to silence critics of its radical education policies and neutralize an issue that was threatening Democratic Party prospects in the close gubernatorial race in Virginia.
In response to the Justice Subcommittee’s subpoena, the FBI acknowledged for the first time that, following Garland’s directive, it opened 25 “Guardian assessments” of school board threats, and that six of these investigations were run by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. According to the FBI, none of these investigations resulted in federal arrests or charges, highlighting the political motives behind the actions.
Under Biden and Garland, the ATF issued a rule to drastically expand the number of Americans who would require a license to deal in firearms. A federal district court judge issued temporary restraining orders prohibiting enforcement of that rule pending a decision in the case. To send a message, a large contingent of heavily armed ATF agents executed a pre-dawn raid of alleged dealer Bryan Malinowski that left him dead. The raid is reminiscent of the FBI’s similar raid against pro-life activist Mark Houk, who was later acquitted of all charges.
In 2022, Congress appropriated $78.9 billion in new funding to the IRS, including $45 billion to hire as many as 87,000 agents. Following approximately a nine month investigation, the Justice Subcommittee cited evidence that the IRS had weaponized unannounced visits against the administration’s political foes, including an unannounced field visit to the home of journalist Matt Taibbi the very day he testified before Congress about government abuse. Though neither Taibbi nor his accountant had ever received a notice from the IRS about an issue with his tax returns, the IRS had opened a case against Taibbi on Christmas Eve—a Saturday—three weeks after he began reporting on government censorship involving Twitter. Taibbi owed no taxes; in fact, the IRS owed Taibbi a substantial refund.
Pressure and oversight about abusive field visits led the IRS to prohibit unannounced field visits to taxpayers’ homes.
The Justice Subcommittee also found that the Justice Department attempted to access private communications from members of Congress and congressional staff involved in conducting oversight of the Department.
Weaponizing Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans
The Justice Subcommittee revealed and stopped the FBI’s effort to target Catholic Americans because of their religious views.
While the FBI claims it “does not categorize investigations as domestic terrorism based on the religious beliefs of the subject involved,” an FBI-wide memorandum originating from its Richmond Field Office did just that. Under the guise of tackling the threat of domestic terrorism, the memorandum painted certain “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as violent extremists and proposed opportunities for the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches as a form of “threat mitigation.”
The Justice Subcommittee’s investigation began in February 2023 after a whistleblower revealed the existence of an anti-Catholic memorandum in internal FBI systems. FBI employees could not define the meaning of “radical-traditionalist Catholic” when preparing, editing, or reviewing the memorandum. Nevertheless, this single investigation became the basis for an FBI-wide warning about the dangers of “radical” Catholics.
From witness testimony and FBI internal documents, the Justice Subcommittee learned that there were errors at every step of the memorandum’s drafting, review, approval, and removal process. For example, the two FBI employees who co-authored the memorandum told FBI internal investigators that they knew the sources cited in the memorandum, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Salon, and The Atlantic, had a political bias.
Coordinating with Financial Institutions to Surveil Americans
The Justice Subcommittee’s investigation revealed that federal law enforcement has virtually unchecked access to private financial data, is testing out new methods and technology to embed financial surveillance into the American financial framework, and has deputized the financial sector as an investigative arm (see here and here).
The Bank Secrecy Act authorizes the Treasury Department to impose reporting obligations on businesses and financial institutions, including Currency Transaction Reports for any individual involved in any transaction of over $10,000 and a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) when it identifies a “suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation.” Documents received by the Justice Subcommittee from at least 17 entities, including banks, crowdfunding sites, money service businesses, and the Treasury Department, show that the FBI has manipulated this process by encouraging banks to file SARs based on names and selectors provided by the FBI. The fact that a SAR has been filed is not disclosed to customers.
The FBI developed typologies that target Americans with conservative views, including gun owners, those concerned with illegal immigration, and those opposed to COVID mandates. Other criteria used for these warrantless searches of financial records include contributions to conservative organizations, including leading legal organizations that defend religious and conservative views such as Alliance Defending Freedom. The FBI also uses search terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” and has treated purchases of religious texts or firearms as indicators of “extremism.”
The Justice Subcommittee discovered that financial institutions confidentially report millions of Americans’ transactions to the federal government and that at least 25,000 government officials have access to search and download Americans’ financial information from government repositories without a warrant.
Weaponizing the FTC Against Elon Musk
The announcement of Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter generated an enormous backlash among elected officials and activists on the Left, some of whom called for the federal government to “block” the purchase.
On April 25, 2022, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer. Three days later, an attorney for Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan sent an email to the other commissioners requesting that they vote the following day to approve a previously negotiated consent decree with Twitter that included additional privacy and security protections. Prior to this email, Khan had not circulated a copy of the consent decree or FTC staff recommendations to the Republican commissioners—despite having substantially completed the decree a year earlier. In addition, despite repeated requests, FTC staff had not briefed the Republican commissioners about the proposal. In rushing to a vote, Khan ignored the traditional three-week notice period used by commissioners to study proposals.
Following the closing of the acquisition, Democrats in Washington stepped up their pressure campaign. Seven Democratic senators issued a joint press release calling for the FTC to investigate Musk’s so-called “alarming steps” at Twitter. They demanded that the FTC “vigorously oversee its consent decree” with Twitter, and outlined the different purported grounds on which Musk could have already violated the terms of the decree in his first few weeks of ownership. President Biden signaled support for government intervention, saying that “there’s a lot of ways” the government could review the transaction.
The FTC launched an aggressive campaign to harass Twitter, particularly after Musk took steps to reorient Twitter around free speech. Within three months, the FTC sent Twitter over a dozen letters that made more than 350 specific demands, including that Twitter provide, among other things: (1) information relating to journalists’ work protected by the First Amendment, including their work to expose censorship abuses by Big Tech and the federal government; (2) every internal communication “relating to Elon Musk”; (3) information about whether Twitter is “selling its office equipment”; (4) all reasons Twitter terminated Jim Baker, a former FBI lawyer; (5) information disaggregated by “each department, division, and/or team,” regardless of whether the work had anything to do with privacy or information security.
Khan refused to meet with Musk to discuss the situation until Twitter fully complied with all demands, many of which had nothing to do with the consent decree. Ultimately, after its extensive and expensive harassment, the FTC found no violations of the consent decree.
Democrats’ Target Political Opponents
The Justice Subcommittee also issued two reports (here and here) that summarize already known information about the Democrats’ unprecedented campaign of lawfare to keep Trump off of the campaign trail, drain him of resources, and attempt to prevent millions of Americans from being able to cast a ballot for their candidate of choice. My articles on this lawfare (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) also discuss its impact on Trump’s lawyers and supporters, whereas the Subcommittee’s reports focus on Trump.
* * *
Most conservatives believe in restraint. We try to win with integrity, logic, and tradition. That leaves us unprepared for asymmetrical attacks from the Left.
“Freedom is fragile thing,” Ronald Reagan warned in 1967, “it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 23:20 - Poilievre Claims US Benefits From 'Massive Price Discount' On Canadian Energy As Tariffs Loom
Poilievre Claims US Benefits From ‘Massive Price Discount’ On Canadian Energy As Tariffs Loom
As President-elect Donald Trump goes full throttle on his proposed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods until they fix their porous border – which America’s northern neighbor has already vowed to address – Conservative leader Pierre Poilievere says that Trump should remember that the US benefits from cheap Canadian oil, which they’ve been selling at a “massive price discount.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre holds a news conference in Ottawa on Dec. 20, 2024. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick According to Poilievre, this has allowed American refineries to have “profited” at Canada’s expense, adding that tariffs on Canadian energy would mean many Americans would lose their jobs – and that both countries are better off without them so that the US can continue to get “low-cost, totally reliable 100% ally” energy.
“I would remind our American friends that they benefit from our affordable, reliable energy, and the alternative is Venezuela, Iran, and other foreign dictatorships,” he said at a Jan. 9 press conference in Ottawa. “Why would we not want to have a North American energy market that enriches us both?”
The US is the largest consumer of Canadian oil and gas – receiving 97% of the country’s crude oil exports in 2023, with the majority (87%) coming from Alberta, the country’s largest oil producing region.
On Jan. 7, Trump doubled down on his threat to impose the 25% tariffs on Canada when he takes office, adding that he would consider using “economic force” to merge the two countries.
According to Trump, America is “subsidizing” Canada, and the US doesn’t actually need the northern neighbor for things like lumber, dairy and automobiles.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada amounted to US$67.9 billion (C$91.6 billion) in 2023. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada estimates Canada’s surplus with the U.S. last year was US$80.5 billion ($108.6 billion). Trade data reported by the two countries varies due to differences in assumptions.
In 2023, crude oil exports accounted for 16 percent of Canada’s total export value, estimated at $124 billion. –Epoch Times
Officials in Alberta say that the federal government’s cancellation of pipeline projects to deliver Canadian oil and gas to other markets has meant that Canada has to sell its energy at deeper discounts to the United States.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 22:45 - Coalition Of Women's Sports Groups Urge Trump To Help Reform NCAA Rules
Coalition Of Women’s Sports Groups Urge Trump To Help Reform NCAA Rules
Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times,
A coalition of female athletes and women’s advocacy groups has asked President-elect Donald Trump for his help in demanding that the NCAA “restore fairness and opportunity to collegiate sports.”
In a letter to Trump dated Jan. 9, the coalition requests the soon-to-be inaugurated president to use his “powerful voice to urge the NCAA to take action and clarify participation rules to protect the rights and opportunities of female athletes.”
The coalition alleged that the NCAA has “failed” to respond to female athletes “who have been forced to choose between forfeiting games or participating in competitions that are fundamentally unfair and even dangerous.”
The group said it is appealing to the NCAA “in the name of fairness and commonsense.”
The letter was sent on the day the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky struck down the proposed Title IX regulations created by the outgoing Biden Department of Education.
The proposed rules would have added the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the existing categories of male and female when defining sex discrimination.
The court decision applies to all educational institutions that receive federal funding.
Adopting the name “Our Bodies, Our Sports (OBOS),” the coalition is demanding that the NCAA establish and enforce the right of female athletes to participate in sports based on biological sex.
The coalition wants the NCAA to repeal all policies and rules that allow male athletes to take roster spots on women’s teams and compete in women’s events.
Beyond the Ruling
OBOS is demanding the NCAA revoke all records set by male athletes competing in female sports and restore the female NCAA sports archives by erasing championship wins by teams with male players and those of individual male competitors.
Single-sex locker rooms for female athletes are also among the OBOS demands, as is restoring the Title IX guarantee of equal opportunity for the sexes—a concept they say was “gutted” by the Biden administration.
Adriana McLamb is a former collegiate women’s volleyball player who is now coaching and serving as a recruiting coordinator in Florida.
McLamb, an activist with the Independent Women’s Forum, told The Epoch Times that the timing of the court ruling was good for her movement and that the election of Trump was “pivotal.”
“The two events mark the beginning of the change back to commonsense. A male is a male and a female is a female,” she said.
“Though the fight is not over, we can see the end of men playing in women’s sports and women getting their locker rooms back. Protecting women’s spaces is not anti-trans. It is pro-woman,” McLamb said.
McLamb stated that banning males from women’s sports, revoking the records men set, and stripping championships from trans-identifying individuals or teams with trans-identifying players, was all about “protecting future female athletes and righting the wrongs of the past.”
Rachel Crandall-Crocker, executive director of TransMichigan, an LGBT advocacy group, told The Epoch Times that the proposed actions would be “absolutely discriminatory.”
Crandall-Crocker expects there will be protests and hopes that the court’s decision will be overturned on appeal.
At the close of the letter to Trump, the coalition writes, “We the undersigned represent thousands of female athletes and women’s advocacy groups from across the political spectrum.
“We stand together in honor of the generations of women who came before us and in defense of all the women and girls who will come next.
“We ask for your help in demanding that the NCAA finally act to restore fairness and opportunity in collegiate sports,” the letter said.
Some of the eleven signatories to the letter include the Independent Women’s Forum, Young Women for America, and the Women’s Liberation Front.
The NCAA and the office of the president-elect did not provide comment by publication time.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 22:10 - Supreme Court Rules 200 Patent Judges' Appointment Unconstitutional
Supreme Court Rules 200 Patent Judges’ Appointment Unconstitutional
The Supreme Court has ruled that over 200 Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) judges were unconstitutionally appointed, however the problem may be ‘cured’ if the board’s director exercises greater supervision over them.
A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 1, 2021. Drew Angerer/Getty Images Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion in the split decision in the case of U.S. v. Arthrex Inc, a consolidation of three cases. The patent adjudication system is administered by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), which sits within the Department of Commerce. The PTO has a single director who is subject to Senate confirmation.
The PTAB was established by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011, and sits in panels of at least three members who are drawn from the Director, the Deputy Director, the Commissioners for Patents and Trademarks, and over 200 Administrative Patent Judges (APJs). Members of the PTAB and APJs are selected by the Secretary of Commerce.
As the Epoch Times notes further, Roberts explained that Arthrex Inc. develops medical devices and procedures for orthopedic surgery. In 2015, it received a patent on a surgical device it invented that reattaches soft tissue to bone without tying a knot. Arthrex soon claimed that two rival companies had infringed the patent. Three APJs on the PTAB panel concluded that a prior patent application “anticipated” the invention claimed by the patent, making Arthrex’s patent invalid.
On appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Arthrex raised for the first time an argument based on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, which provides that the president may appoint officers to assist him in carrying out his responsibilities. Principal officers must be appointed by the president and be confirmed by the Senate, while inferior officers may be appointed by the president alone, the head of an executive department, or a court.
Roberts noted that Arthrex argued that the APJs were principal officers and that meant their appointment by the Secretary of Commerce was unconstitutional. The Federal Circuit sided with Arthrex and invalidated the tenure protections for APJs.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that the authority the APJs possess runs afoul of the Appointments Clause because they are not nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The APJs’ “unreviewable authority” in patent proceedings is not consistent with their appointment by the secretary. Only principal officers who are constitutionally appointed may wield that level of authority, Roberts wrote. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett concurred.
But the court also ruled 7-2 on what should be done, finding that the constitutional infirmity could be cured by letting the director of the PTO have the ability to review and modify decisions made by the APJs. Four justices partially concurred and partially dissented in various parts of the court’s opinion.
Roberts quoted Alexander Hamilton who wrote in Federalist 77 that assigning the nomination power to the president guarantees accountability for the appointees’ actions because the “blame of a bad nomination would fall upon the president singly and absolutely.” The “sole and undivided responsibility of one man will naturally beget a livelier sense of duty and a more exact regard to reputation,” the founding father wrote.
Roberts cited a 1997 precedent, writing that the Appointments Clause “adds a degree of accountability in the Senate, which shares in the public blame ‘for both the making of a bad appointment and the rejection of a good one.’”
Justice Clarence Thomas penned a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
“For the very first time, this Court holds that Congress violated the Constitution by vesting the appointment of a federal officer in the head of a department,” Thomas wrote.
“Just who are these ‘principal’ officers that Congress unsuccessfully sought to smuggle into the Executive Branch without Senate confirmation? About 250 administrative patent judges who sit at the bottom of an organizational chart, nestled under at least two levels of authority. Neither our precedent nor the original understanding of the Appointments Clause requires Senate confirmation of officers inferior to not one, but two officers below the President.” (Italics in original.)
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 21:35 - Vance Says Trump Won't Issue Pardons For Violent Jan. 6 Defendants
Vance Says Trump Won’t Issue Pardons For Violent Jan. 6 Defendants
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Jan. 12 that individuals who were violent during the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, “obviously” should not be pardoned. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to use his clemency power for people who have been charged in connection to the incident over the past four years.
Those who “protested peacefully” on Jan. 6 should receive a pardon, Vance told Fox News. He added that there is also a “little bit of a gray area” in some of those cases.
“I think it’s very simple,” Vance elaborated.
“If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection to the Capitol breach, according to records from the Department of Justice. A number of people were charged with misdemeanor offenses for entering the Capitol in an unauthorized manner, while some were charged with felonies.
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys groups were convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as plots to use violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to then-President-elect Joe Biden.
Vance said on Jan. 12 that he believes that “a lot of people” have been “prosecuted unfairly” over the past several years.
“We need to rectify that,” Vance said. “We’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.”
Also on the morning of Jan. 12, Vance responded to critics on social media who said that his comments to Fox News didn’t go far enough, with some saying that all Jan. 6 defendants should be pardoned.
“I’ve been defending these guys for years,” Vance wrote on social media platform X.
“The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback … I assure you, we care about people unjustly locked up. Yes, that includes people provoked and it includes people who got a garbage trial.”
That comment came in response to a prominent conservative social media account’s statement on Jan. 12 that new footage has shown “cops shooting innocent J6 protesters and [Vance] goes on Fox News and tells the world that only non violent protesters should get pardoned … better rethink what you just said JD.”
Vance noted that he donated to a Jan. 6 “political prisoner fund” and was criticized over it during his run for Ohio’s Senate seat.
In a wide-ranging news conference last week at his Florida Mar-a-Lago residence, Trump suggested he would initiate “major pardons” for individuals arrested in the aftermath of Jan. 6.
A reporter asked him, “You said on your first day of office you were going to pardon Jan. 6 defendants. Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?”
“Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there,” Trump said, adding that “people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now.”
“We’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes,” he added.
The president-elect has said on multiple occasions that he would carry out the pardons quickly after he is sworn into office on Jan. 20.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 21:00 - US Lawmakers Call For Curbs On Clinical Trial Collaborations Linked To Chinese Military
US Lawmakers Call For Curbs On Clinical Trial Collaborations Linked To Chinese Military
Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has asked the U.S. government to consider new rules restricting U.S. biotech companies from conducting clinical trials with entities linked to the Chinese military.
Ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) (L), and Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) speak at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington on Sept. 25, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times In a Jan. 9 letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said the proposed restrictions will “help ensure U.S. biotechnology does not fall into the hands of the PRC,” referring to the acronym of communist China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
The letter, signed by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chair and ranking member of the committee, respectively, along with Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), said biotech competition between the United States and the PRC “will not only have implications for our national and economic security, but also for the future of healthcare and the security of American medical data.”
The letter cites Beijing’s 14th Five-Year Plan—which “identifies dominance in biotechnology as critical to ’strengthen the PRC’s science and technological power’ and calls to deepen military-civil science and technology collaboration in the sector”—and a publication by a former president of the Chinese military’s National Defense University, which discussed the potential to create new synthetic pathogens that are “more toxic, more contagious, and more resistant.”
The lawmakers praised the proposals issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security in July 2024 to expand export controls to military and intelligence end users as “a welcome update.” They suggested the measures could be further strengthened by requiring a license to conduct clinical trials with medical institutions linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
“Specifically, we recommend updating the definition of ‘Military End User’ to state medical infrastructure owned or operated by the national armed services of the PRC and other countries as appropriate constitutes a military end-use if a U.S. person is seeking to engage with the institution to conduct a clinical trial,” they added.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Commerce Department for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.
The letter is a sign of growing concern over China’s role in the biotechnology industry.
In August 2024, the same committee wrote to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to ensure that U.S. clinical trials are not contributing to human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region or aiding the transfer of U.S. critical intellectual property to the PLA.
Citing official data, the letter said U.S. biopharmaceutical companies over the past decade had run hundreds of clinical trials that had at least one Chinese military entity among the research partners and conducted trials in hospitals in Xinjiang, “where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is engaged in genocide of the Uyghur population.”
In a response letter to the lawmakers dated Jan. 2, the FDA Acting Associate Commissioner for Legislative Affairs Laura Paulos said protections are in place for trial participants.
“Given concerns regarding the human rights abuses occurring in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, FDA has publicly reiterated that (legislation) requires clinical trials to obtain the legally effective, informed consent of human subjects,” she wrote.
In response to concerns about intellectual property theft and technology transfer, Paulos referred the lawmakers to “appropriate U.S. federal agency partners.”
In addition to clinical trials, the committee has asked the Department of Defense (DOD) to add several Chinese biotech companies to its list of companies allegedly linked to the Chinese military. Two of these companies, Origincell and MGI Group, were added to the updated list on Jan. 7, along with dozens of others in sectors such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, drones, and shipping.
The DOD also included BGI Group, the parent company of MGI and BGI Genomics, which was previously designated as a Chinese military company, and another BGI subsidiary, Forensic Genomics International.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 19:50 - Biden Calls Meta's Decision To End Fact-Checking Program "Really Shameful"
Biden Calls Meta’s Decision To End Fact-Checking Program “Really Shameful”
Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,
President Joe Biden has shared his disapproval at Meta’s decision to do away with its current social media fact-checking program.
This week Meta, which owns the Facebook and Instagram social media platforms, announced it would stop using its third-party fact-checking program for U.S.-based content review purposes.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he made the decision because the existing fact-checking program has become “too politically biased,” resulting in censorship and a loss of trust.
“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said in a Jan. 7 video statement.
Asked for his opinion on the move at a Jan. 10 press conference, Biden said, “It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about.”
Up until this week, Meta had partnered with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to run its third-party fact-checking service. The IFCN is administered by the Poynter Institute, which also operates the PolitiFact fact-checking publication.
“The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say ‘by the way from this point on, we’re not going to fact-check anything’ and you know when you have millions of people reading, going online reading this stuff it’s—anyway, I think it’s really shameful,” Biden said.
Meta is not doing away with fact-checking outright. Rather, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms will move toward a “more comprehensive community notes” style system, similar to the one employed by social media platform X. He will start the new model in the United States.
Rather than relying on a fact-checking organization such as the IFCN to review content, X’s community notes feature allows users to weigh in directly. X users may suggest a fact-checking note on controversial posts on the platform, and then provide feedback on whether a suggested fact-checking note is itself accurate, and necessary for the particular post. Posts that have been flagged with sufficient community input display an attached fact-checking note explaining why the particular post is inaccurate or may be missing important context.
Zuckerberg also announced that Meta’s content moderation team will be moved out of California to Texas “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”
Zuckerberg and other Meta officers have defended the move as needed to restore free speech and expression to their platforms.
In a Jan. 7 blog post, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, said as well-intentioned as their prior fact-checking efforts had been, “they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users, and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,’ and we are often too slow to respond when they do,” Kaplan said.
Meta’s fact-checking and content moderation decisions had been a point of contention during the 2020 presidential election cycle.
In October 2020, the Meta platforms reduced the reach of posts linking to articles by The New York Post concerning a laptop that then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had reportedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. The New York Post’s articles detailed the contents of the laptop, including documents indicating the elder Biden had some level of interaction with his son’s foreign business partners.
In a Jan. 10 interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg alleged that officials in the Biden administration routinely contacted Meta, with demands that they remove or suppress certain content, including memes and satirical posts.
“Basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 19:15 - Inflation Expectations Will Keep Rising In 2025, And It Matters Most In Japan
Inflation Expectations Will Keep Rising In 2025, And It Matters Most In Japan
By Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research
Executive Summary
- In the developed economies excluding Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them further above the 2 percent target. This will limit the scope for further interest rate cuts.
- But in Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them up to the BoJ’s 2 percent target. This will remove the BoJ’s justification for its decades-long zero interest rate policy (ZIRP).
- The normalisation of Japan’s monetary policy poses a big risk to stocks because Japan has been the main source of financial market liquidity, and thereby, of rising stock market valuations.
- Hence, the biggest risk to US tech valuations comes from a rise in the Japanese real bond yield.
- On a structural (1-2 year) time horizon though, it is highly likely that Japanese real yields will rise, causing a meaningful setback in stocks versus bonds, and especially the US superstar stocks.
- But from a timing perspective, wait until the complexities of the price trends in USD/JPY and/or Nasdaq versus 30-year T-bond have reached the point of collapse that signalled previous reversals at the end of 2023 and the summer of 2024. You can monitor these indicators on our website.
- Go tactically long copper.
2024’s political Zeitgeist was encapsulated in what I have called the ‘3 I’s’: Incumbents punished for Inflation and Immigration.
Incumbent governments were given a kicking by furious electorates who had suffered a huge drop in their standard of living. And it made not the slightest difference whether the incumbents were left-of-centre Democrats in the US, centrist Macronists in France, or right-of-centre Conservatives in the UK.
In the case of excess immigration, the loss of well-being was feared. In the case of excess inflation, the loss of well-being was genuine. Yet since peaking in 2022 at close to 10 percent, inflation has plunged to the low-single digits. So, why is everybody still so angry?
It’s Cumulative Inflation That Matters
One of the main reasons that central banks target 2 percent inflation is that 2 percent is the highest rate of inflation that goes largely unnoticed. Going largely unnoticed, households and firms do not consciously factor sub-2 percent inflation into their price and wage setting processes. This prevents an ‘inflation spiral’ taking hold.
The reason that sub-2 percent inflation goes largely unnoticed is that economic productivity also tends to rise at 1-2 percent. And to the extent that wages rise in line with productivity, people will not suffer a loss of purchasing power when prices rise at 2 percent or below. So, the inflation goes unnoticed.
The thing that people notice and hate, is the cumulative loss of purchasing power when prices keep rising at above 2 percent.
Telling people that inflation is back down in the low-single digits will not make them feel any better when they have just suffered a cumulative loss of purchasing power of 25 percent!
It is this cumulative effect of past inflation that sets inflation expectations. As the charts in this report show, market expected 10-year inflation is nothing more than historic 10-year inflation (with a small tweak for the very recent inflation experience)
But what about survey-based inflation expectations? The answer is that survey-based inflation expectations like the University of Michigan consumer survey of 5–10-year US inflation expectations also track delivered long-run inflation (albeit, plus a constant).
Hence, to get cumulative inflation back to the 2 percent rate that is unnoticeable, inflation must fall below 2 percent to offset the post-pandemic period when inflation was running well above 2 percent. But as central banks are unlikely to take inflation much below 2 percent, inflation expectations – as a mathematical identity – will trend higher
Put more simply, inflation expectations will trend higher because the post-pandemic noticeable inflation era will become a greater part of our collective experience compared with the pre-pandemic unnoticeable inflation era.
Or, more precisely, inflation expectations will trend higher unless they cause a deflationary shock (or an exogenous deflationary shock arrives) that wrench them lower again. Such a shock might come from Japan.
Japanese Inflation Expectations Are Approaching Mission Accomplished
In the developed economies excluding Japan, rising inflation expectations will lift them further above the 2 percent target. This will limit the scope for further interest rate cuts, for two reasons. First, because it risks further un-anchoring those inflation expectations.
Second, because it is the real bond yield that matters for the economy. If inflation expectations rise, then nominal bond yields must also rise to achieve a given real stance of monetary policy. This means that bond yields will trend higher until the shock arrives that wrenches them lower. In Japan though, rising inflation expectations will lift them up to the BoJ’s 2 percent target.
Mission accomplished, it will remove the BoJ’s justification for its decades-long zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), especially with the real bond yield now deeply negative. It may sound perverse after decades of too low inflation, but once inflation is close to target, a deeply negative real bond yield risks taking Japanese inflation too high.
The Normalisation Of Japan’s Monetary Policy Poses A Big Risk To Stocks
The normalisation of Japan’s monetary policy poses a big risk to stocks because Japan has been the main source of financial market liquidity, and thereby, of rising stock market valuations.
Through 2019-2022, the Nasdaq’s valuation (earnings yield) moved in perfect lockstep with the US real bond yield, as might be expected. But in late-2022, the Nasdaq’s valuation detached from the US real yield and attached to the world’s last remaining negative real bond yield – in Japan.
Hence, through 2023-2024, the Nasdaq’s earnings yield has moved in near-perfect lockstep with the Japanese real bond yield. This means that the biggest risk to US tech valuations does not come from a rise in the US real bond yield. The biggest risk comes from a rise in the Japanese real bond yield. This also solves the seeming mystery as to why the US tech valuations have been largely unscathed by the recent surge in the US real bond yield. To reiterate, US tech valuations are not tracking the US real yield, they are tracking the Japanese real yield. US tech valuations have been largely unscathed because the Japanese real yield has not surged… yet.
On a structural (1-2 year) time horizon though, it is highly likely that Japanese real yields will rise. This will end the major source of financial market liquidity that is behind the powerful yet narrow 2023-24 surge in stock market valuations. On this structural (1-2 year) time horizon therefore, I expect a meaningful setback in stocks versus bonds, and especially the US superstar stocks.
But from a timing perspective, wait until the market has become too dovish on the BoJ and/or too bullish on the US superstar stocks. In other words, when the complexities of the price trends in USD/JPY and/or Nasdaq versus 30-year T-bond have reached the point of collapse that signalled previous reversals at the end of 2023 and the summer of 2024.
These excellent timing indicators are not yet flashing red. The good news is that you can monitor them updated daily on our website.
Go Tactically Long Copper
Finally, relating to trend changes among the major investments and sectors we monitor, there is a tactical buying opportunity for copper.
The recent sell-off in copper has reached the collapsed short-term complexity that has signaled stabilisations and rebounds through 2023-24.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 18:40 - Megyn Kelly Mocks Dems: "Hitler's Quite Charming When You Spend Time With Him
Megyn Kelly Mocks Dems: “Hitler’s Quite Charming When You Spend Time With Him
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly noted how once again the Democrat narrative that President Trump is a dangerous threat to Democracy doesn’t jive with the way they act around him, after Obama was seen chatting and laughing with Trump at Jimmy Carter’s funeral.
As we highlighted, the pair were seen sharing a cordial exchange after being seated together, with lip readers claiming that Trump asked Obama to meet somewhere quiet after the ceremony to discuss something important.
“I want people to remember what former President Obama was saying about Trump, literally, in October, okay, three months ago,” Kelly noted adding that Obama claimed Trump “wants Hitler’s generals to take over, and he’s genuinely dangerous.”
“Barack’s laughing, genuinely laughing, to where, like his body is shaking,” Kelly continued, commenting on the exchange between Obama and Trump.
“Hitler’s so funny. Hitler’s quite charming when you spend time with him, one on one,” Kelly further quipped.
Her guest Jesse Kelly commented, “Obama was the one who engineered the coup. He was the one who engineered the coup to get Joe Biden out of the White House. And not only did he engineer the coup to get Joe Biden out of the White House, he’s the one who vouched for Kamala Harris with his vast Donor Network, billionaire after billionaire after billionaire.”
“He knifed Joe Biden in the ribs, shoved him out the back of the White House and then picked up the phone and organised $1.5 billion to be given to Kamala Harris for her campaign, where she proceeded to not only embarrass herself the entire time, she embarrassed him.” Kelly further urged.
He further explained, “When you vouch for somebody with a bunch of billionaires and they flame out as badly as she flames out, well, he is not going to do that again. And without Barack Obama, without daddy Barack harrying her, Kamala Harris is never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to be able to launch a significant presidential run again in her life.”
Watch:
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 18:05 - Coffee Timing Linked To Health Outcomes
Coffee Timing Linked To Health Outcomes
Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
What time you drink your coffee may be just as important as how much you drink.
jkcDesign/Shutterstock According to new research, morning coffee drinkers had a significantly lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer compared to those who consumed coffee throughout the day.
Impact on Mortality Risk
The large-scale study, published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, tracked more than 40,000 adults for nearly a decade.
Researchers found that there were two types of coffee drinkers: those who drank coffee only in the morning (36 percent of participants) and those who drank coffee throughout the day (about 15 percent).
Premium coffee – full refund if not satisfied! Compared to people who did not drink coffee, morning coffee drinkers showed a 16 percent lower risk of death from all causes. The reduction in cardiovascular death risk was even more pronounced, with morning drinkers showing a 31 percent lower risk.
In contrast, people who drank coffee all day had no significant reduction in death risk.
Amount of Coffee We Drink Also Matters
Researchers also discovered that the timing of coffee consumption affected the relationship between the amount of coffee people drank and their mortality risk.
Among morning-type drinkers, both moderate (1 to 3 cups) and heavy (more than 3 cups) coffee drinkers had the highest reduction in mortality risk, with moderate drinkers benefitting slightly more.
However, this benefit was not seen in coffee drinkers who drank coffee throughout the day. This suggests drinking your coffee in the morning is more beneficial for cardiovascular health and overall longevity than having it later in the day.
Possible Mechanisms
While the exact mechanism of how drinking coffee in the morning reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease remains unclear, afternoon or evening coffee consumption might disrupt circadian rhythms and melatonin levels, Dr. Lu Qi, lead researcher and professor at Tulane’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, told The Epoch Times.
These disruptions could affect cardiovascular risk factors like inflammation and blood pressure.
“Previous studies have shown drinking coffee is related to lower risk of mortality and risk of chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers,” Qi said. “Our study for the first time indicates that the time of coffee drinking matters regarding its beneficial effects, and drinking coffee in the morning only may strengthen the benefits.”
Qi emphasized the importance of considering both the timing and amount of coffee intake when considering its effects on health outcomes.
He added that further studies are needed to validate these findings in other populations and test the impact of changing coffee consumption timing.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 17:30 - Residents Of Argentina's Crime-Ridden Cities Welcome Milei's Gun Reform
Residents Of Argentina’s Crime-Ridden Cities Welcome Milei’s Gun Reform
Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Argentine President Javier Milei’s decision to reduce the age of legal gun ownership from 21 to 18 has garnered support from the public. Many city residents say greater civilian access to firearms comes at a the right time for those living in crime-stricken streets and may signal a shift in the country’s attitude toward gun ownership.
Argentine President Javier Milei attends a ceremony celebrating the 214th anniversary of the May Revolution, which marked the beginning of the country’s independence from Spain, in Cordoba, Argentina, May 25, 2024. Nicolas Aguilera, File/AP Photo Since 2007, Argentina has focused on voluntary civilian disarmament—which many Argentinians say this has helped criminals more than anyone else.
Fabian Calle, a member of former President Mauricio Macri’s administration, told The Epoch Times Argentinians weren’t shocked when Milei lowered the age for legal firearms ownership. He said many people in Buenos Aires already carry guns due to high rates of violent crime.
“The people in Buenos Aires abide by the law of the strongest in the streets,” Calle said.
Local media reports in 2024 noted spikes in homicide, robbery, and petty theft in Buenos Aires.
This stands in contradiction to official figures released in August, which reported a 4.4 percent drop in the national homicide rates in the first half of 2024.
Soft on Crime
Some Argentinians don’t feel safe walking around Buenos Aires, a city that has witnessed a surge in poverty and homeless camps in recent years.
The link between poverty and crime has been studied at length, with recent evidence suggesting fewer economic resources may influence or trigger criminal behavior.
High unemployment, soaring inflation, and poverty were prevalent under the last administration of President Alberto Fernández, during which poverty levels surpassed 40 percent in some parts of the country.
It’s a situation that Milei’s administration is still working to address amid sweeping economic reforms that has already cut thousands of government jobs and state spending by 30 percent.
In December, Argentina’s Ministry of Human Capital stated that national poverty levels had been brought down to 49.9 percent from 54.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024. The agency attributed the high poverty rate to “the crisis left by the inflationary economic model of the previous administration.”
Poverty in Argentina has reached 40 percent and homeless camps are a common sight in Buenos Aires on Aug. 5, 2022. Autumn Spredemann/The Epoch Times “You need to look over your shoulder more often now, there are so many people camping in the streets,” Buenos Aires resident Lucilla Martinez told The Epoch Times. “Even in tourist areas, they [homeless people] can be aggressive or start yelling if you don’t give them money.”
Martinez believes public’s attitude toward firearms ownership is shifting away from the notion of less guns equals less gun crime, an ideology that was promoted by the previous administration.
Much of this shift has to do with residents feeling less safe outside their homes, according to Martinez. She said she used to walk the last few blocks from the metro stop to her job in Palermo, but now takes a taxi the rest of the way.
“It just doesn’t feel safe, even in some nicer places. I have a friend who was robbed outside a restaurant and it wasn’t even late [at night],” Martinez said.
She thinks more people will want to carry registered firearms now that there’s less of a stigma around the issue under Milei’s leadership.
“So many regular people already own guns. They don’t say anything or others are afraid to get one because for years, we were told by politicians that more guns will mean more crime,” she said.
Organized crime is another problem that’s on the rise in Argentina. This is exemplified in the city of Rosario in Santa Fe province, which has been a breeding ground for violent crime for years due to its position on the international narcotics smuggling route.
At the same time, Calle said a lot of judges in Argentina are “soft on criminals,” who don’t end up spending much time in jail due to loopholes in the legal system.
“We have a society that is unarmed and protected with nothing,” Calle said, “But we have criminals that are protected by judges.”
Part of this is due to the influence of organized crime on Argentina’s judicial system. The Global Organized Crime Index states that cartels hire professional killers to assassinate judges and some “operate from prisons and enjoy protection from politicians, judges, and deputies.”
Consequently, Calle said Argentina has a growing number of criminals who are protected by judges who find ways for them to spend little to no time in jail.
Another reason Argentinians support Milei’s move on lowering the age of gun ownership is the convoluted nature of the existing law, according to Calle. He pointed out that previously, you could go to war at age 18, but couldn’t purchase a legal firearm.
“In Argentina there are a lot the of laws about age that are confusing,“ he said. ”Argentinians can vote since they are 16 and they can go to war when they are 18. So you can vote, but can’t go to war. You can go to war, but you can’t own a gun.”
Gun reform is something Milei was passionate about during his election campaign, earning him much criticism among his opposition.
In a 2022 interview, Milei said, “I am in favor of the free carrying of weapons, definitely.” He added the prohibition of arms doesn’t stop criminals from using them and that the “expected profits” for criminals will only increase and result in more crime.
Mateo Gonzalez, a Cordoba native and university student in Argentina’s second largest city, agrees with this assessment. He told The Epoch Times that violent crime in his hometown has gotten worse since 2019.
“There are a lot of robberies here of businesses and homes. It got worse when inflation was over 100 percent,” Gonzalez said.
When asked how he feels about being able to purchase a legal firearm now at age 20, Gonzalez said he and his family are a lot more open to the idea of gun ownership these days.
“Criminals aren’t shy about using weapons against unarmed people. Having a gun may persuade bad people to go somewhere else,” he said.
Though he’s open to the idea of having a firearm, Gonzalez said he’ll likely keep it at home to protect his family, and only if they agree.
“That was a promise Milei made during his campaign. If criminals can get a gun very fast, then good people should also be able to get guns,” Calle said.
Voluntary Disarmament
Milei’s liberal approach to civilian gun ownership in Argentina stands in sharp contrast to previous initiatives established under former president and vice president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Kirchner was elected as Argentina’s first female president in 2007 after her husband, Nestor Kirchner, held the office since 2003.
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner waves from the balcony of her political party’s office also known as Instituto Patria in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Nov. 13, 2024. Fernandez de Kirchner has been convicted for corruption charges, the appeals court sentenced her to six years in prison while the former president of Argentina will not be elegible to hold public office. Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images The same year she was elected is when Congress passed law 26216, where legislators described the possession, purchase, and sale of firearms as a “national emergency.” Law 26216 also approved a voluntary civilian gun buyback program that earned high praise from the United Nations.
Between 2007 and 2012, the state purchased an estimated 160,531 firearms from residents who willingly surrendered their guns for cash, according to a United Nations report. The going rate for a gun was between $45 and $140, depending on the type of weapon.
Some researchers have pointed out that the timing of the celebrated gun buyback program came at a very convenient time for the Peronist party, which managed to concentrate power by 2007.
In a 2008 article published in the Journal of Democracy, the authors noted that while both Kirchners’ administrations remained “fully democratic,” two key problems plagued Argentina at the time: weak political opposition to the renewed strength of Peronism and equally shaky federal institutions.
Calle said ever since Milei began talking about the “free carrying” of weapons, left wing politicians and their supporters have painted an outcome of chaos and violence in the streets.
He clarified that only authorized arms dealers or “armarias” will be allowed to sell legal firearms and there are also background checks, personal information requirements, and other steps needed to purchase a legal gun in Argentina.
“Leftists are trying to sell that it’s going to be bad or evil, disorder and people running around with guns in the streets,” Calle said.
The last time the Peronist party modified Argentina’s gun laws to include more oversight and restrictions was in 1975. A military junta ousted the elected government and seized power the following year, enacting further controls on civilian firearms.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 16:20 - AP News Heavily Ratioed For Blaming Palisades Fire On Climate Change
AP News Heavily Ratioed For Blaming Palisades Fire On Climate Change
The Associated Press published an article titled “Climate Change Contributed to a Week of Wild Weather That Upended Life in the US,” which was heavily ratioed on X for blaming the Palisades Fire solely on “climate change.”
The journalist behind the article, Melina Walling, who uses the pronouns “she/her,” failed to mention arson reports and the alarming mismanagement of city fire resources by radical far-left Democrats in power, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Climate change laid the groundwork for California’s megafires,” Walling wrote.
Walling’s selective reporting, aimed at drumming up climate anxieties among the public to further the left’s climate change agenda, is extraordinarily misleading.
She failed to mention in her coverage that the Palisades Fire spread so quickly because the Pacific Palisades reservoir, which was supposed to provide water to extinguish the fire, was completely empty.
“This was supposed to be the water to put out the Palisades fire.”
The FP’s Austyn Jeffs visits the Santa Ynez Reservoir that has reportedly been empty since February 2024. pic.twitter.com/DwO5OrYhWk
— The Free Press (@TheFP) January 11, 2025
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🚨 JUST IN: The Pacific Palisades reservoir was EMPTY AND OFFLINE when the firestorm exploded, per LA Times
This is CRIMINAL.
The reservoir holds 117 million gallons of water, and would’ve given firefighters ample pressure to effectively fight the blaze.
Overpaid Dept. of… pic.twitter.com/afvRlbLJ73
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 10, 2025
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On top of this, she failed to mention the very existence of the countless arson reports.
On X, Walling’s article was pushed out by AP News’ account, where it was heavily ratioed on Saturday evening.
X users responded:
Arson and terrorism is NOT climate change.
— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) January 12, 2025
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“Climate change?” 🧐
Is that why they’re catching people setting fires all over the place on purpose, you disingenuous hacks?
— Mindy MF Robinson 🇺🇸 (@iheartmindy) January 12, 2025
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The face of climate change pic.twitter.com/rXKa7wU1rO
— PNW_Recondo (@PNW_Recondo) January 12, 2025
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Actually
Issues with the Santa Inez reservoir, which was supposed to provide water for fighting the Palisades fire, include:– The reservoir ran out of water very quickly, just 3 hours into firefighting efforts.
– The reservoir normally holds 117 million gallons of water, but… pic.twitter.com/3c26LJXcnc
— Crystal M Stanley (@4freedom1USA) January 12, 2025
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Why did you lie again? https://t.co/HpllOrfINx
— Courage Is A Habit (@CourageHabit) January 12, 2025
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Trust me bro climate change is real pic.twitter.com/KRTIfHUtM0
— World Hall Of Fun (@WorldHallOfFun) January 12, 2025
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Here’s some FACTS to think about (via Alex Epstein from his post ‘Bad Forest Management, and Not Climate Change, is the Root Cause of California Fires‘):
“The solution to dangerous, out-of-control wildfires in California is addressing the root cause: ‘excess fuel load’ from bad forest management. Focusing on climate change, a minor variable that we ‘have no near-term control over, is a craven political ploy…
[T]emperatures have risen 1 degree C in the last 150 years. Is it really possible that that amount of warming makes dangerous wildfires inevitable? No. … The negative effect of rising global temperatures on California wildfire susceptibility in particular is dubious because past centuries had far more fire-prone climates. The Palmer Drought Index shows only a slight increase in California drought since 1900.
“Historical evidence shows us that prior to man-made CO2 emissions CA experienced regular ‘megadroughts‘ that could last over a century. The modern era has been very lush by comparison. Even if CA could lower global CO2 levels we could easily suffer a regional drought…
“The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management. Policymakers have prevented controlled burns, debris clearing, and logging — jacking up the ‘fuel load’ to incredibly dangerous levels. … The path forward is simple: focus on the main cause, forest management, which is totally within our control. Stop pretending that lowering CO2 levels would bring about some fire-free paradise–and that it is possible near-term. Stop mandating ‘unreliables.’ Decriminalise nuclear.”
As Tom McClintock comments via The Wall Street Journal, bad forest and water management, misplaced priorities and price controls all played a role.
The left blames a changing climate.
But that doesn’t explain California’s long history with massive wildfires, or why fires became less threatening throughout most of the 20th century.
We can find a more likely culprit in the states’ recent extreme environmental and social policies.
…
Environmental leftists promised that laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act would protect and improve the environment. Fifty years later we’re entitled to ask: How’s it going? Between 2012 and 2021, we lost a quarter of California’s forestland to wildfires. A UCLA study estimated that California’s 2020 fires released twice as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as had been prevented by the previous 18 years of primarily government-enforced restrictions.
…
Fire is a condition of nature, but how we deal with it is a choice. The tragedy in Southern California is the result of decades of self-destructive policies made by foolish politicians. We can change the policies that got us into this mess by throwing out the politicians who made them. Let’s hope we do so before the next big fire.
Selective reporting by Walling to further a far-left climate agenda (and providing cover for Democrats in the state) is why trust in media has crashed to record lows.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 15:45 - How The 'Bridge That Couldn't Be Built' Was Built
How The ‘Bridge That Couldn’t Be Built’ Was Built
Authored by Dustin Bass via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
When John A. Roebling completed the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge in 1866, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Shortly after completing the bridge, which crossed the Ohio River, he was hired to design the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge would surpass the length of the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge by a third. Roebling, unfortunately, would die before he could witness the construction of the New York City-based structure; but his son Washington and daughter-in-law Emily would complete the project in his stead.
An October 1935 photo of the Golden Gate bridge, in the San Francisco Bay, during its construction. Construction began on Jan. 5, 1933 AFP/Getty Images Roebling’s influence was arguably most strongly felt by his immediate family and his legacy most attached to the Brooklyn Bridge. But approximately 25 years after his death, a young engineer would incidentally be influenced by Roebling and would directly extend the suspension bridge builder’s legacy to the other side of the country in San Francisco.
Before Joseph Strauss graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1892, he found himself in the hospital recovering from an illness. The 5-foot-3-inch class president and class poet had been placed in a hospital room with a view that would change the course of his life. Through the window, he could see the Covington-Cincinnati Bridge. The structure inspired him to pursue a career in bridge design.
The Roebling Suspension Bridge in 1907. Public Domain During his graduation ceremony at the university, he professed his goal to build a railroad that would stretch across the Bering Strait. His goals were lofty, if not impossible, but it was this drive that would place him in the position to create “the bridge that couldn’t be built.”
A Bridge Across the Strait
The idea of a bridge that stretched across the Golden Gate Strait had been discussed for decades. It was first broached in 1872 by Charles Crocker, the railroad magnate who had been part of the “Big Four” to found Central Pacific Railroad. (Joshua Norton, the Gold Rush speculator who went bankrupt and then insane, is also credited with making the first calls for the bridge in 1869, though he was hardly taken seriously.)
As the Bay Area population continued to grow exponentially over the final decades of the 19th century, a bridge across the strait seemed imperative. But the problems that faced engineers were many. The Pacific Ocean with its strong tides fed right into the strait, not to mention the consistent wind gusts that swept along the coast, and the city’s famous fog. Additionally, the San Andreas Fault lay seven miles off the city’s coastline, which could initiate devastating earthquakes, as citizens discovered in 1906.
Ten years after the earthquake, the topic of the bridge was again broached in earnest. James H. Wilkins, an editor and publisher of a local newspaper, as well as a former structural engineer, began a campaign to promote the necessity of building the bridge.
“In 1872,” he recalled, “I was present at a session of the Marin supervisors when Charles Crocker explained his plans, among which was a suspension bridge across the Golden Gate. Detailed plans and estimates for such a bridge were actually made by the Central Pacific engineers.”
But that was nearly 50 years prior, so new estimates were needed. Wilkins’s campaign caught the attention of Michael M. O‘Shaughnessy, the San Francisco city engineer. O’Shaughnessy began seeking the opinions of engineers. Their opinions were not positive. The price tag at $100 million was cost-prohibitive.
Sounding the Strait
Interest in the bridge remained, although it waned during World War I, as the country became involved shortly after Wilkins began his campaign. Toward the end of 1918, interest resumed. Richard Welch, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, issued a request that Congress authorize a federal survey of the strait: specifically between the Presidio, located on the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula, and the Marin Peninsula, on the northern side of the strait.
Congress acquiesced to the request, and the USS Natoma, of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, conducted soundings of the area by the end of May 1920 and submitted its report.
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ship Natoma. Public Domain The report was submitted to O’Shaughnessy, who then reached out to three prominent bridge builders: Francis McMath, Gustav Lindenthal, and Strauss. In his letter to them, he wrote, “Everybody says it cannot be done and that it would cost over $100,000,000 if it could be done.”
Lindenthal responded with a quote of $50 million to $60 million. McGrath did not respond. Strauss, after conversing with O’Shaughnessy, suggested it could be done for approximately $25 million.
Strauss, Counties, and the War Dept.
A statue of engineer Joseph B. Strauss, in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. Blanscape/Shutterstock By this time, Strauss had already become one of the country’s prominent bridge builders. He had begun his career as a draftsman for New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, then for Chicago’s Lassig Bridge and Iron Works Company. He worked with then arguably America’s greatest bridge builder, Ralph Modjeski. Strauss, however, wished to pursue the bascule bridge, which are drawbridges. In 1904, he founded Strauss Bascule Bridge Company and would go on to construct approximately 400 bridges.
Considering his reputation, it was apparent Strauss knew something the others didn’t. Strauss was hired, but the process had only just begun, and construction was still more than a decade away.
Entities were created, such as the Association of Bridging the Gate, which encompassed representatives from the surrounding counties. Their objective was to ensure that all counties were in favor of building the bridge and to gain permission from the state legislature to create a legal district, which would manage the entire process of building and maintaining the bridge and roadway. In May of 1923, the state congress passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act of California, permitting the Association to create the aforementioned district, which was created in December 1928.
The District was to have control over the project, but the Presidio was a U.S. Army outpost and was therefore under the jurisdiction of the U.S. War Department. In fact, both sides of the proposed locations for the bridge were under the Department’s jurisdiction, and for construction to be conducted, the District would need a federally issued permit. The concerns for the War Department was whether the bridge would hinder navigation and logistics, as well as whether the bridge could possibly become a blockade if it were ever destroyed. On Christmas Eve 1924, Secretary of War John Weeks issued a temporary permit.
The representatives from Del Norte, Marin, San Francisco, Sonoma, and parts of Mendocino and Napa Counties made up the new Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District with Strauss as chief engineer. Strauss was bent on building “the biggest thing of its kind that a man could build,” and, as the preliminary issues fell into place, he would soon get that chance.
Change of Plans
Strauss added Charles Ellis, professor of structural and bridge engineering at the University of Illinois, to his team to update design plans and ensure structural integrity. Eventually, that relationship would sour to the point that Strauss relieved Ellis of his position. Ellis also received no credit from Strauss for his contributions.
Before that relational fallout, however, Ellis played a pivotal role in developing the bridge and was relied upon heavily by Strauss. He, along with Leon Moisseiff, who had designed the Manhattan Bridge, provided reports on their concerns about Strauss’s proposed cantilever-suspension bridge. It seems it may have been as late as the summer of 1929 that Strauss decided to dispense with his cantilever-suspension bridge in favor of a suspension bridge.
It appeared as though the Golden Gate project would soon be underway, but another catastrophe looked to sideline the project. Reminiscent of past decades, like the 1906 Earthquake and World War I, the Stock Market crashed on Oct. 29, 1929, eventually plunging the country into the Great Depression. Permits and plans were one thing, but having the people’s support for such an expensive project was another. The District decided to have the people vote on it.
There had been opposition to the construction of the bridge for varying reasons from the likes of environmentalists and ferry operators, as well as engineers who believed the project unfeasible. The District put the $35 million bond issue before the voters. This bond required locals to use their business properties, farms, and homes as collateral. Despite the great personal risk required, on Nov. 4, 1930, the bond passed overwhelmingly: 145,057 to 46,954.
Mitigating Risks
During this period in major structure building history, there was the assumed risk of one fatality per $1 million. At $35 million, the District could expect approximately 35 job-related deaths. Strauss, however, desired to reverse this trend. Before construction began, he instituted new safety measures and gear, including glare-free goggles and mandatory hard hats, which were made similar to those worn by miners. Additionally, during the later stages of the bridge’s construction, he spent $130,000 to place a large net under the bridge to catch falling workers. In all, this net saved the lives of 19 men, who hailed themselves members of the “Halfway-to-Hell Club.” Eleven men died during the four-year project, 10 of whom died during a single accident when a 5-ton piece of scaffold fell through the net into the water.
With the Great Depression in full swing by the time construction got underway, there was no shortage of men looking to join the major project, especially with its union pay far exceeding what could be found elsewhere. On Dec. 22, 1932, workers began constructing a 1,700-foot access road toward the Marin anchorage of the bridge.
Photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge under construction, circa 1934, by Chas. M. Hiller. Library of Congress. Public Domain It was during this week in history, on Jan. 5, 1933, that construction began on the suspension bridge, which would famously become known as the Golden Gate Bridge. The first portion of the project was to remove 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the bridge’s two anchorages. Not including those anchorages, the bridge would weigh approximately 840 million pounds. Its highest peak above the water would reach 746 feet, and with its famous “International Orange” color, it proved visible even during foggy days. The bridge was suspended by 27,572 wires, altogether long enough to wrap around the globe more than three times. And, reminiscent of his initial Roebling inspiration and his personal determination, Strauss’s bridge held the title of the longest suspension bridge in the world for 27 years after its completion on May 27, 1937.
The Golden Gate Bridge. Trevor Piper/Epoch Times Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 15:10 - A Message To All Americans From Storm-Ravaged Western North Carolina
A Message To All Americans From Storm-Ravaged Western North Carolina
Jason Ward, with Valley Strong Relief—a non-profit organization focused on providing aid to thousands of residents displaced in Western North Carolina by Hurricane Helene—released a TikTok video discussing the horrors of the Palisades Fire raging in Los Angeles County. However, he asked one crucial question: “What about Appalachia?”
Ward cited President Joe Biden’s recent X post: “The federal government will cover 100% of the cost of measures to protect lives and property in Southern California for six months.” Referring to the X post, Ward said, “I hope that happens.”
Ward then segues to the topic of forgotten and devastated Western North Carolina, asking, “What about Appalachia?”
Snow covers areas of western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene. Some people there are still living in tents, and piles of debris remain.
🎥: @AaronRigsbyOSC pic.twitter.com/ZCAq6zVkfm
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) January 11, 2025
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“We are 105 days in since one of the most devastating storms known to mankind. We are still supplying our own campers, shelters, while paying mortgages on piles of rubble. We are still running our own supply hubs for many people that lost everything, including homes and jobs. We still have bridges out – only four percent of the debris has been picked up. Many businesses are bankrupt, with insurance denying their claim,” he explained.
Ward continued, “We have a polar vortex slamming Western North Carolina, while people going through ten gallons of propane a night – wonder when they will be getting their next tank.”
A message from Appalachia to California …#DontForgetAppalachia pic.twitter.com/JWsjyWpR0B
— Boone Cutler 🦅 🇺🇸 🦬 (@boonecutler) January 11, 2025
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While the nation’s eyes are on the Palisades Fire, thousands of families are homeless, either spending cold nights in makeshift shelters, campers, tents, or, if they’re lucky, hotels and motels paid for by FEMA.
However, Fox News reported, “FEMA began notifying some families checked into hotel or motel rooms that they are no longer eligible for the program due to one of the following reasons: an inspection indicated their home is now habitable, they declined an inspection or FEMA has been unable to contact them to update their housing needs.”
While the countries eyes are on CA, the situation in WNC deteriorates. Where is @FEMA!? We need to get some eyes on this! These are fellow Americans! https://t.co/WIGGIV1KUL
— Julie McBane (@julie_mcbane) January 11, 2025
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Local media outlet WLOS reported that more than 5,600 households were staying in hotel or motel rooms paid by FEMA (as of one week ago).
Appalachia deserves better than this.
Please don’t forget WNC. We aren’t rich and most of us aren’t movie stars- but our people deserve better than this. pic.twitter.com/0gZYdKDlcr
— RP (@RPinthehousenow) January 11, 2025
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“California is getting all the federal assistance it needs but meanwhile the people of North Carolina are waiting in long lines for propane just so they can have some warmth in the donated RV’s they’re currently living in . This isn’t right!” one X user said.
California is getting all the federal assistance it needs but meanwhile the people of North Carolina are waiting in long lines for propane just so they can have some warmth in the donated RV’s they’re currently living in . This isn’t right! pic.twitter.com/tVf4kDbyrI
— Washingtons ghost (@hartgoat) January 11, 2025
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Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (Ret.) provided more color on the private supply hubs, helping thousands of families across the storm-devastated region.
PLEASE REPOST AND TAG @realDonaldTrump and @JDVance
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER…NEVER FORGET THE PEOPLE OF APPALACHIA NORTH CAROLINA!!!
Pray and support them 🙏🏼🇺🇸
This video was back well over a month ago. See my pinned tweet above for even more current weather conditions.… pic.twitter.com/PmtvMSUhTm
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 11, 2025
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“Biden and Mayorkas bankrupted FEMA to pay for illegal immigrant housing, and now American citizens who lost their homes in Hurricane Helene are essentially being told to screw,” Trump spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.
Leavitt added: “This is unfair and arguably criminal. The good news is: President Trump will be back very soon to put Americans first again.“
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 14:35 - Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir Empty? It Gets Worse…
Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir Empty? It Gets Worse…
Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,
An empty reservoir and dry fire hydrants are now the symbols of California and local officials’ response to the horrific Pacific Palisades wildfire—one of six Santa Ana windblown firestorms still burning in Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation to demonstrate that he’s doing something, but the damage is being done right now.
The 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty and down for maintenance when the devastating fire was sparked, perhaps in the brush, between the homes and the Pacific Coast Highway. You can see a map of the area in my story Good Intentions Might Be the Cause of Devastating Palisades Fire.
Friday, officials confirmed that the reservoir had been down for nearly a year —closing in February 2024—for maintenance to the cover of the reservoir.
The New York Times reports that a contractor was hired in November to fix a crack in the cover. It is unclear why the reservoir had to be shut down for that extended period of time.
The ripple effect was beyond devastating.
This empty reservoir wasn’t caused by Climate Change. It was caused by Democrats. pic.twitter.com/WrLFHYOsBh
— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) January 10, 2025
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The fires broke out Tuesday, Jan. 7. By the next day, Janisse Quiñones, the head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said their system tanks went dry three times. You’ll want to remember that because the story is about to get worse.
We have three large water tanks, about a million gallons each. We ran out of water in the first tank at about 4:45 p.m. yesterday. We ran out of water in the second tank about 8:30 p.m. and the third tank about 3 a.m. this morning.
She never mentioned the empty reservoir, though former DWP Commissioner and mayoral candidate Rick Caruso did say that “the reservoir” hadn’t been filled. He was right and righteously angry.
Firefighters complained that there was no water coming out of the hydrants. The fires burned uncontrollably.
In addition to the “investigation” by Newsom, the New York Times reported that the Department of Water and Power, whose job it is to fill the reservoirs, is looking into whether the empty Santa Ynez reservoir in Pacific Palisades made a difference in their fire response. We are not kidding.
See if you can spot a problem for the DWP in the Times’ piece.
Water for the Pacific Palisades is fed by a 36-inch line that flows by gravity from the larger Stone Canyon Reservoir, said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. That water line also fills the Santa Ynez Reservoir.
Water from the two reservoirs then sustain the water system for the Pacific Palisades, and also pump systems that fill storage tanks that feed higher-elevation homes in the neighborhood. It was unclear whether officials could have brought the reservoir back online before the fire, after forecasters began warning of dangerous wildfire conditions.
Now, I’m no hydrologist or physicist, but wouldn’t water pressure be helped by having water in all the tanks and reservoirs? Am I missing something here?
But, what ho! We get an answer.
Mr. Adams said an operational reservoir would have been helpful initially to more fully feed the water system in the area. But he also said it appeared that that reservoir and the tanks would have eventually been drained in a fire that was consuming so many homes at once. Municipal water systems are generally designed to sustain water loads for much smaller fires than what consumed Pacific Palisades. [emphasis added]
Those are a lot of words to say that more water would have been helpful.
Speaking of not being a hydrologist, I looked up the latest state hydrology report because the global warming crowd desperately hopes to blame “climate change/catastrophe” for the fires. Yeah, well, that dog won’t hunt.
If you’re new here, from east to west Southern California, there’s desert, then mountains, then semi-arid land all the way to the ocean. While the media will tell you this is climate change, this is no change at all. This is the state of play in California all the time. However, California has received a surge in water in the last few years following a drought, but there have been no new reservoirs built to store water since the last one opened in 1979.
According the latest hydrologist report, “Major flood control reservoirs are either near their respective top of conservation levels or below.” Precipitation has been slow in the first couple of weeks of the year, but the “The statewide accumulated precipitation to end of November 2024 was 5.22 inches, which is 132% of average.” The snowpack, which is also where water is stored, and Gavin Newsom lets flow out to the Pacific Ocean to “save” a bait fish, is growing. “The statewide average snow water equivalent (SWE) was 5.1 inches for December 1, which is 168% percent of normal and 19% of April 1 average.”
In other words, there’s been precipitation — remember all those atmospheric rivers? — and if there were more storage there would be more water available for drinking and fighting fires.
I could go into the environmental rules that don’t allow much, if any, thinning in forests, road building, otherwise known as fire breaks, reservoir building, and preventative burning, which used to happen all the time to stop these conflagrations that the enviros like to blame on climate, but I do in my other stories.
Here’s Newsom touting full reservoirs in Southern California — though the one that counted was empty.
Southern California’s water supplies are well-equipped to support local communities fighting the wildfires. Many of the state’s largest reservoirs are currently at or above their historic average storage levels for this time of year. pic.twitter.com/A7KZRJKBNA
— Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 9, 2025
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And here’s Newsom excitedly patting himself on the back because he removed dams (and reservoirs) to help tribal fish flows, but what about having enough water to drink and put out fires?
🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
CA Governor Gavin Newsom brags about “the largest dam removal in U.S. history” because you gotta save the fish.
Meanwhile, there’s not water to fight fires.
— PNW Conservative (@UnderWashington) January 9, 2025
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In addition, California’s self-inflicted wounds continue as the state spends less money on necessities and more on the left’s luxury beliefs. If you’re paying some of your firefighters upwards of $700,000 then you can’t afford a lot of them, OK, L.A.? You’ll find the highest-paid public servants in L.A. here.
California’s profligacy has also caused homeless people to flock to the state. More than 50% of the fire responses are to homeless camps as I point out in my story What Started L.A.’s Firestorm? Hint: It’s Not ‘Climate Change.’
Instead of kicking people out of their encampments so they don’t start fires, the response has been to look the other way and/or find someone shelter where druggies don’t want to go.
Homeless campers setting a fire destroyed part of an I-10 Freeway overpass in 2023. A mile-long stretch of freeway was closed and Newsom declared a state of emergency for L.A. County.
Voters have taxed themselves billions to “solve the homelessness problem.” But there’s virtually no accountability, as I wrote in this story headlined: No Wonder Gavin Newsom Didn’t Want an Audit to Track $24 Billion in Homeless Spending.
In 2014, voters also taxed themselves billions to build more reservoirs. Environmentalists don’t want those either.
And the reservoir that counted this week was dry.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 14:00 - Jobs Report And AI: "Basically, It's Garbage In, Garbage Out"
Jobs Report And AI: “Basically, It’s Garbage In, Garbage Out”
By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities
Jobs and AI
This isn’t about jobs that will be displaced by AI, or jobs that will be created by AI. It is a look at the job market today, the data, and some questions regarding AI on that subject. On Friday, we did a quick post-NFP Report – Look Out Above on Yields. It focused on how the strong data (and the NFP report was quite strong), coupled with growing concerns about the inability to force inflation lower, will keep the Fed on hold. But, as the day went on, after multiple conversations on the market reaction, and while preparing for some presentations next week, I couldn’t get one thought out of my mind:
What if markets reacted so poorly because no one believes the data, but everyone believes that the Fed will need to react to the data?
It is a simplification. It likely overstates that sentiment, but I think that there is something to it, so we will explore. This will lead us to some questions, and maybe some answers, but definitely some questions about AI.
Geopolitical Outlook 2025
If you missed Geopolitical Risks & Opportunities from Tuesday, I highly recommend giving it a quick read. We focus as much on the opportunities as the risks. With geopolitical risk at or near the top of everyone’s list of concerns for 2025, it seemed appropriate to highlight the opportunities. Being too pessimistic about risks might cause you to miss them. Yes, there is an irony about the T-Report warning you about being too pessimistic, but there you have it.
We cover a range of topics beyond the usual suspects. Space and Cyber get some treatment through a national security lens. Shipping is an area where we were possibly at risk of being labeled “the boy who cried wolf,” but it is garnering longer conversations. “BRICS and Barter” is highly relevant as we expect to see some tariff and trade activity via executive order in the early days of Trump 2.0. Peace through Strength is an overriding theme, though not sure how Canada, Panama, Mexico, and Greenland feel about that.
Back to Jobs
After that brief geopolitical detour, let’s get back to the task at hand: understanding the jobs data.
Bloomberg had estimates from 75 economists. This is not just a “handful” of estimates. It is a pretty robust sample size. All the big-name firms were in with their estimates. Some of the best independent firms were included in the survey. Bloomberg even takes the time to tabulate who the top 10 are at estimating the number (presumably using track records from prior estimates).
This group of highly intelligent, motivated, and typically well-resourced survey respondents had an estimate of 165k for jobs. The top 10 did better (if better means getting closer to the published number) with an average of 186k. I often like to examine the most recent submissions (under the premise that they incorporate the latest data and therefore might be making more of an effort). 16 estimates were provided in the 2 days before the release and they averaged 174k, so a bit better (again, assuming coming closer to the published number is better), but still off.
There was exactly 1 estimate higher than the published number. The Bloomberg Economics estimate is ranked 6th and was submitted 2 days before the release. There is some method to the madness of trying to qualitatively analyze the estimates.
A whopping 98.7% of analysts had estimates below the official number.
Not only were 74 out of 75 below the official data, but also only 5% of the estimates were above 200k. Think what you will about the dismal science, but I find it incredibly difficult to believe that so many really smart, organized, well-resourced, and well-intentioned estimates were all so wrong.
It almost defies explanation that this many people could be so wrong – which gives rise, at least to me, that potentially the published number itself is inaccurate.
ADP, which presumably has some good, real-time, real-world data, had a miss with only 126k jobs. Far fewer economists bother to estimate ADP, but the distribution looks far more normal with some a little high, some a little low, and a couple of outliers. This is a distribution of estimates that does not indicate gross incompetence. This is one takeaway (a cruel takeaway, and clearly not one that I believe in) from the NFP estimates.
Some “Silly” T-Report Items
In Messy, But Manageable, we highlighted two recurring thoughts on jobs data:
1. Expect a strong Household Report because it was so bad recently relative to the Establishment Report (check the box on that one).
2. The seasonal adjustments are off and add too many jobs every winter (including data during COVID and due to missing the shift in where construction occurs). We don’t know if we were correct on this assumption, but if we get downward revisions later in the year, we might try taking a small victory lap.These were two basic reasons why we thought we could see better than expected data. In that report, we highlighted that the “whisper” number was even lower than the official estimates (which might also explain the market reaction).
We have written a lot about problems with the jobs reports over the years that go far beyond these simple issues. We’ve covered what we believe are flaws in how the Birth/Death model works in a “gig” economy, the low initial survey response rates, etc. Others are harping on these issues more and more.
Which brings us back to where we started today’s piece.
What if markets reacted so poorly because no one believes the data, but everyone believes that the Fed will need to react to the data?
While not today’s topic, we’ve had similar discussions about inflation. It was so clear (to anyone who actually had to buy anything) that the official inflation data wasn’t capturing the extent of inflation in the real world. The “owners’ equivalent rent” was so far behind anything remotely representing timely transactions in the rent market, that it would have been laughable if it didn’t seem to shape Fed policy.
The Fed is forced to rely on official data (hard not to given that it is an honest effort, and all that the mainstream media focuses on), but the data isn’t reflective of reality. Does that lead to policy mistakes?
I’m not saying that is occurring, but I am saying that when 99% of people get something “wrong” maybe we should rethink the number itself and not their estimates.
Instead of trying to evaluate if they did “better” in terms of guessing the actual number, we should be wondering if the number itself should be questioned. Ahhhh…now we can see where AI might come in handy.
One Jobs Chart
It would seem cruel to rant and rave about the “official” data possibly being wrong without providing at least one chart.
I’ve been arguing (I think rationally, some might say hysterically) that the JOLTS Job Openings report is another one where the official data hasn’t caught up to how jobs are really advertised. The number of jobs available “coincidentally” seems much higher since on-line sites are now the primary tool for job searches. I am confident that it is not a coincidence, and that we aren’t accounting for how those platforms are used, hence the overstatement of jobs. But enough on that, I do think that the Hire and Quit rates are at least somewhat useful, particularly the Quit rate.
We have argued that the QUIT rate is the closest thing that we have to “crowd sourced” data. People who decide to quit (or not quit) have a lot of information about their job prospects. They know themselves, their fields, and the current state of hiring in their fields. Presumably, they have a sense of geographic hot spots and their willingness to move there if necessary. A QUIT rate below 2% is something that we really only saw as we entered and slowly recovered from the GFC!
I’m aware of the issues with identifying a couple of pieces of data (in a slew of data that I generally think is off), but I’m willing to live with that paradox. Also, in a similar vein, it is impossible not to point out that the HIRE rate is pretty abysmal too.
AI and Jobs
Could AI help get better jobs data? Presumably having good information (accurate and timely) on the labor market would be good for policy makers and decision makers at every level.
As we ask that question, we probably need to assume that even if the BLS doesn’t use AI (and they might well use it), at least some of the survey respondents incorporate some amount of AI into their analysis.
Let’s just for a moment assume that someone develops an AI-based tool that accurately analyzes the job market. Whatever this AI-based model spits out is the reality of the job market. Would it help or hurt you if it didn’t match the official data?
From a trading perspective, over the short-term, I’m not sure how much help it would be to “know” the reality if everyone is going to trade off of the other number. Presumably over time, investors and corporations would benefit from having the actual data, even if policy is based on the potentially erroneous official data. Or would you just make “different” mistakes because policy doesn’t match what you prepared for? You would like to think that it has to help, but when we see downward revisions of a million jobs from the previous year, the market tends to shrug its proverbial shoulders. Is the dirty little secret that no one wants to go back and admit that decision after decision was made on bad data? Basically, admitting to garbage in, garbage out.
I have no idea what the answer really is, but now I feel justified in not trying to build an AI system to calculate the real state of the job market since it wouldn’t help me anyways. Clearly, somewhat tongue in cheek, but makes you think, I hope.
The corollary of this is if this jobs data is incorrect and will later be revised, but it is an input into your AI, are you getting useful answers?
Applying more AI to the BLS process might be good. But it doesn’t fix things like the survey response rate. It just would attempt to potentially use it differently. Presumably “better” but how would we really know?
If you thought this section on applying AI to jobs would be easy, you probably know more than I do about AI, but I cannot help but think it highlights two issues:
- If you get an “answer” that people in charge don’t agree with, what did you accomplish (this seems like a second order effect, that some, but not all, can overcome).
- If the “answer” is based on bad data, what good is it?
I’m nervous that all I’m doing is exposing my still very limited understanding of AI, especially since it doesn’t correlate well with the massive rush we’ve seen to apply it to more and more questions using more and more data. Maybe the data and questions are valid, but I cannot help but wonder.
Bottom Line
Messy remains a theme. On rates, the 10-year at 4.76% seems like a screaming buy in my head and in my gut, but I cannot get there. I remain nervous for now and think that we proceed towards 5%.
Equities will be choppy and will be negatively affected by higher yields, but the driving force will ultimately be understanding what policies Trump 2.0 prioritizes and how likely those policies are to get implemented.
Credit supply will remain heavy, but spreads will remain well behaved.
I started the report thinking that AI and Jobs were a perfect match, but now I’m less sure. Alternatively, I didn’t think that I’d agree as strongly with the view that the risk of making policy decisions on bad data is not only real, but it is also possibly starting to get priced into the market!
Per the Philadelphia Fed, average monthly jobs growth was 130K in 2023. Biden’s Dept of Labor reported that this number is 230K. That’s a 100K difference that led the Fed on to believe the economy is far stronger than it was.
Tomorrow the BLS will reveal its own revised data. pic.twitter.com/S9MkEH8oMI
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2024
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Alternatively, the official data might be accurate, and we might all be really bad at predicting it, and I’ve wasted your time with this report (though I highly suspect that is not the case).
With wildfires and devastation raging in California it is extremely difficult to find a positive way to sign off today’s missive.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 12:50 - JPMorgan Chase Freezes Employee Comments Amid Return-To-Office Backlash
JPMorgan Chase Freezes Employee Comments Amid Return-To-Office Backlash
On Friday, JPMorgan Chase informed its 300,000 employees that the firm is poised to eradicate almost all work-from-home arrangements. The employee response was apparently so voluminous and negative that JPMorgan quickly blocked the comment feature on an in-house article explaining the policy change, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to Friday’s memo from JPMorgan’s operating committee — Chairman/CEO Jamie Dimon and 14 other officers — hybrid schedules comprising a mix of days at home and days in the office will vanish in a matter of weeks:
“Developing effective teams and maintaining a vibrant, healthy culture are clearly key for our success — and we believe best achieved through working together in person. This is why starting in March, we’ll be asking most employees currently on a hybrid schedule to return to the office five days a week…We know that some of you prefer a hybrid schedule and respectfully understand that not everyone will agree with this decision. We think it is the best way to run the company.”
The executives said affected employees would be given 30 days notice before they’re expected to retire their workday pajamas and join their colleagues in JPMorgan offices. That wasn’t sufficient to head off a backlash, with employees venting via the article-comment feature on an in-house news site. In comments tied to their names, employees bemoaned the looming impact on their child-care and commuting expenses, or their work-life balance, according to the Wall Street Journal.
At least one employee of the country’s largest lender brainstormed that the solution was to form a union to resist returning to the office. JPMorgan quickly turned off the comment feature, but left many of the already-posted comments intact.
JPMorgan’s Friday announcement is the latest step in the firm’s gradual extrication from Covid-era work-from-home arrangements. JPMorgan started bringing employees back to offices — at least on a partial basis — in June 2021. “[Work-from-home] doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation,” Dimon told a conference in May of that year, throwing out a timeline that would prove inaccurate by more than three years: “By September it’ll look like just it did before. We are getting blowback about coming back internally, but that’s life.”
Jamie Dimon and his wife Judith Kent at a White House state dinner for then-Chinese President Hu Jintao (Bloomberg via Getty Images) It wasn’t until 2023 that JPMorgan compelled all managing directors to come in five days a week, but it sounds like close to half of all employees are still spending some working hours at home. “As it stands, more than half of our workforce already comes into the office full-time,” JPMorgan leaders wrote in Friday’s internal announcement, which extolled the advantages of office working environments:
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 12:15 - Hedge Fund CIO: Trump Has Blown The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible
Hedge Fund CIO: Trump Has Blown The Overton Window So Wide Open, Anything Seems Possible
By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“Wayne, would you like to be governor of Canada?” asked Trump, speaking with his buddy Gretsky, tugging at the Overton Window with all his might. “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN,” the President-Elect tweeted on Truth Social, sending his oldest son north with a box of red hats. He wouldn’t rule out taking the Panama Canal by force. And with each such suggestion, the window widened further.
The Overton Window is a concept in political science and sociology that refers to the range of policies or ideas considered acceptable in public discourse at a given time. Like most things in life, I learned about it rather late.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago, prying the window open so wide that nearly anything seems possible, plausible, probable.
Say such things enough times, amplify the words using our AI-enabled social media machines, and presto, nothing’s shocking. But not only that, AI will soon converge with quantum computing.
“The Willow processor performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse,” wrote Google, presenting its latest breakthrough, cracking our perception of reality.
As the window widens fully, not only is nothing impossible, but almost anything can seem reasonable. The right and left tails of every distribution lengthen and fatten. And we are left unanchored, adrift, in an endless sea of wild possibility, volatility.
“I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration, because I think it’s ridiculous that they’re not telling you about what’s going on with the drones,” pledged the President-Elect.
Windows
John Overton posited that ideas travel through stages, moving from being seen as extreme or unthinkable to becoming widely accepted and adopted as policy. Democracy was once considered unthinkable. Universal suffrage too. Emancipation. Most things that matter have traveled this path. Here are Overton’s six stages:
- Unthinkable – outside of acceptable thought.
- Radical – at the edge of discussion.
- Acceptable – starting to gain traction.
- Sensible – reasonable and widely discussed.
- Popular – widely supported.
- Policy – acted upon and implemented.
Overton introduced this framework to describe how the feasibility of a policy idea depends not on its inherent merits but on whether it falls within the range of public acceptance. He argued that public policy is constrained by this “window” of acceptable ideas and politicians tend to stay within the window to maintain public support. But what was yesterday’s unthinkable can become tomorrow’s policy as the window widens, shifts left, or right. And what moves the window is naturally tied into one of life’s great mysteries, the superorganism we call humanity.
Overton’s framework helps us make sense of society, markets too, risks, opportunities. I try to look at emerging investment themes through this lens. With each move of the window, power structures shift, capital flows adjust, new winners emerge, incumbents struggle or fail. The nimble survive, thrive. With such stakes, those with influence are desperate to guide the process. Politicians, propagandists, business leaders, religious leaders, union bosses, authors, artists, athletes, advocacy groups, lobbyists, social media influencers, and now AI.
There was a time, not so long ago when it was radical or even unthinkable to call network news fake. No longer. And now we openly joke about Canada becoming our 51st state. Where that leads is anyone’s guess, but the window has widened. Greenland’s Prime Minister announced today that he’s ready to speak with Trump. I started trading in 1989 and never in that time has the Overton Window shifted this rapidly across so many dimensions. There’s no precedent for it in modern history. And this dynamic is becoming a new market fundamental.
But it’s not just Trump. Javier Millei has thrown open an anti-statist libertarian window that had been nailed shut for as long as I’ve been alive. Argentina had the best performing stock market in the world last year. This is breathtaking change. And in roughly two short years, we went from the FTX apocalypse to serious talk of strategic sovereign Bitcoin reserves.
That window is wide open. Intertwined with both Millei and Bitcoin is radical talk of sovereign insolvency throughout the western world. Before it’s over, make no mistake, we’ll be talking about massive entitlement cuts. But for today, that idea is stuck in the unthinkable stage.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 01/12/2025 – 11:40
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