Tag: joe biden

Tensions in the Red Sea Setting the Stage for WWIII

In recent weeks, there have been 15 attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea as the Houthis of northern Yemen threatened to attack any vessel heading to the Israeli port city of Eilat.

These attacks caused imports to the port to drop 85% and prompted the formation of a 10-nation coalition led by the US to secure maritime trade. News reports surfaced that Spain and France pulled out of the naval task force, stating they would protect their ships and only accept orders from NATO, not CENTCOM.

On December 23, an Indian-flagged cargo ship was struck in the Arabian Sea 200 nautical miles from the Indian port city of Veraval, and less than an hour later, the Israeli and US governments were claiming they had intelligence the drone was fired from Iran.

The US, EU, and Israel have all accused Iran of having a command ship disguised as a cargo vessel anchored in the Red Sea off Yemen’s northwest coast named the MV Saviz that is identifying ships linked to Israel and handing that information off to the Houthis. In 2021, it was reported that Israeli commandos bombed the Saviz using limpet mines. Iran claims the Saviz is a logistical ship to help protect the region from piracy.

The USS Laboon, a guided missile Destroyer, patrolled the waters around Yemen as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian over the weekend. Meanwhile, the country exploded in a planned protest to show support for Gaza, where an estimated 2.2 million Yemenis marched through Sanaa.

Many people waved Palestinian flags and banners that read, “Your coalition does not intimidate us!” The Supreme Leader of the Sanaa government, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, addressed the crowd via a large screen and loudspeakers, stating that if the US or the UK interrupted their operations on Israeli-linked ships, they would directly target “American and British ships in the region.”

Hours later, CENTCOM announced that the USS Laboon shot down four drones fired from Houthi-controlled northern Yemen that were “inbound to the USS Laboon.” The USS Laboon reported no damage or injuries and continued its mission, guiding a US cargo ship through the Bel el Mandeb Strait to the Suez Canal. Reports then began to surface about a secret plan between the US and the UK to attack Houthi missile sites in northern Yemen with Reaper drones from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.

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How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk

Last month, a reporter asked President Joe Biden about the chances for a ceasefire in Gaza. More than 10,000 people had already been killed there, most of them women and children. Food, water, and medical supplies were scarce. Still, the president did not hesitate in assessing the odds of a ceasefire that he had more power than almost anyone in the world to help bring about.

“None,” Biden replied. “No possibility.” Biden’s unconditional support for Israel as it waged one of the most devastating bombing campaigns in modern history was already at odds with most of the world and significant parts of his own political base. The president showed no sign of backing down.

It would take another month and nearly 8,000 more Palestinian deaths for Biden to criticize Israel in any meaningful way. At a closed-door fundraiser last week, he warned that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing the country international support. But Biden’s own support for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained largely intact. After saying he favored the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, he reiterated his unwavering backing for the Jewish nation. “We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel,” Biden said. “Not a single thing.”

Much of Biden’s deference to Israel is deeply personal. As his supporters have put it, he identifies with the nation in his kishkes—his guts. That can be seen in the highly emotional and graphic way in which he has talked about victims of the Hamas attack being massacred, sexually assaulted, and taken hostage.

Both before and after October 7, the empathy Biden is known for has rarely extended to Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, said such statements are missing “to the degree that I don’t really think he sees the Palestinians at all.” In contrast, Khalidi added, Biden sees Israelis “as they are very carefully presented by their government and their massive information apparatus.”

A former Biden administration official shared a similar perspective with me. “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict,” this person said. “He has described Israeli suffering in great detail, while Palestinian suffering is left vague if mentioned at all.”

This article is based on conversations with former members of the Obama and Biden administrations, interviews with leading experts on Israel and Palestine, and a review of hundreds of mostly forgotten congressional hearings, speeches, and articles in which the president has explained how he sees the conflict. Together, they reveal instinctive sympathy for Israel contrasted by incuriosity about Palestinians; an increasingly outdated view of the domestic politics on the issue; and a deep commitment to a repeatedly disproven belief that peace will only come from there being “no daylight” between Israel and the United States. (The National Security Council did not make any officials available for an interview for this story.)

The result is that Biden has prioritized providing Israel largely unconditional support and the space to continue fighting in the face of intense international opposition. This approach is predictable in some respects. Israel has gotten almost whatever it wants from the United States for decades, and any American president would have supported Israel in the wake of a Hamas attack that took the lives of 1,200 people. 

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Why fears about Biden’s marijuana moves are overblown

President Joe Biden’s administration is poised to make the biggest shift in federal drug policy in decades by loosening marijuana restrictions, but the move is sparking blowback from an unlikely constituency: legalization advocates.

They argue that moving marijuana to a lower classification would do nothing to address the federal-state divide in marijuana laws, fail to address the impacts of criminalization, disrupt existing state-regulated cannabis markets, lead multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies to dominate the medical cannabis industry and spur a potential federal crackdown.

Howard Sklamberg, an attorney and former top official at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, argues those fears are alarmist and misguided. He doesn’t believe the cannabis industry needs to worry about a crackdown if the drug is moved from Schedule I to III under the Controlled Substances Act, as recommended by the Food and Drug Administration after a review of the scientific evidence.

“If you’re going to launch an enforcement initiative against cannabis, why would you start off with saying, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s less of a risk than we thought,’” Sklamberg said in an interview with POLITICO. “You would use your power under Schedule I and go after it.”

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How Biden Hobbled His Own Infrastructure Push

With President Joe Biden’s poll numbers continuing to sag and most Americans still dour about the state of the economy, the White House is understandably trying to change both narratives by pointing to the supposedly transformational benefits of Biden’s 2021 infrastructure spending package.

There’s just one little problem with that plan: finding actual evidence.

Biden is frustrated about how long it is taking to turn that $1 trillion into new construction sites that would serve as convenient backdrops for reelection campaign press conferences, according to CNN. “There’s immense frustration” in the fact that it could be years before some communities see real benefits from the tranche of spending that Biden and Congress authorized two years ago, one unnamed White House official tells CNN.

“He wants this stuff now,” says another.

Impatient children have only another few days to wait for Christmas, but Biden will likely be waiting quite a bit longer to see any significant benefits from the infrastructure bill. Too long, perhaps, given that the clock is ticking rapidly toward the 2024 presidential election.

Some of the reasons are beyond the president’s control, of course. The government is simply not very efficient at doing much of anything, and major infrastructure projects take time to plan, organize, and execute. You can’t actually fix anything by simply dumping money on it, no matter how many times that approach is tried.

However, Biden does bear significant culpability for at least some of the delays that are now frustrating his White House and campaign teams. From the tightening of “Buy American” rules for federal procurement to mandates that limit the ability of nonunion construction shops to bid on these projects, the infrastructure bill Biden signed in November 2021 is loaded with provisions that were always going to slow its implementation and limit its effectiveness.

The outcome was predictable from the start. “Making waivers for Buy America provisions harder to obtain reveals the contradictory aims of Biden’s infrastructure policy,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi wrote in April 2022. “The president wants to make ‘historic’ investments in infrastructure, but he’s also deeply committed to regulations that ensure those investments will buy as little infrastructure as possible.”

Rules requiring contractors to use American-made stuff in federally funded projects have been on the books for decades. That’s one of the reasons why American mass transit projects are much more expensive than similar projects built in other parts of the world. The infrastructure bill doubled down on those problems by expanding those requirements to cover even basic materials like copper wiring, drywall, and lumber.

“The quick implementation of Buy America requirements for such a broad range of materials will cause delays in project delivery while states, contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers continue working to determine how best to track and verify these materials,” Washington state Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar warned federal officials in a letter last year.

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The Biden administration once again bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel

For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.

The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.

“Given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer,” the department said.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” it said.

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Supreme Court Wipes Out Three Rulings Rejecting Federal COVID Vaccine Mandate

The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the rulings in three lower court cases that had challenged the Biden administration’s federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal agency employees and military service personnel. The decision by the nation’s highest court to grant the Biden administration’s request to set aside the previous judicial rulings rejecting a federal COVID vaccine mandate erases the legal precedent set by the lower courts.

The Appellate courts were split in their decisions about the COVID vaccine mandate with those challenging the federal vaccine mandate succeeding in some cases and the Biden administration prevailing in other cases.

The Supreme Court majority instructed the lower court to dismiss the cases as moot after the vaccine mandates were rescinded. By wiping out the historical record, the Supreme Court has ensured that any legal challenges to future vaccine mandates will be cases of first impression without precedent.1 2

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Joe Biden’s DHS Confirms Illegal Aliens Freed into U.S. Will Get Photo ID Cards in 2024

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed that the agency is developing a program that will provide border crossers and illegal aliens released into the United States with photo ID cards.

For more than a year, Breitbart News has chronicled how DHS is planning to roll out a pilot program that will give border crossers and illegal aliens photo ID cards, similar to a driver’s license, upon their release into the United States interior from the southern border.

Now, DHS officials are seemingly confirming their plan to issue photo IDs to such border crossers and illegal aliens.

Buried in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) annual report, officials confirmed that they are planning to begin issuing the photo ID cards to border crossers and illegal aliens sometime this fiscal year.

“[The Office of Immigration Program Evaluation] is leading the ICE Secure Docket Card (SDC) project, which offers a uniform, durable card provided to noncitizens upon release, and facilitates reliable access to commonly lost or damaged immigration-related paperwork,” the ICE report details:

The SDC will be integrated with the Unified Immigration Portal that ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] officers and agents use in the field and the ICE Portal to allow noncitizens access to commonly used documents and services. ICE expects the project to ease ICE personnel workload when encountering noncitizens with the card and decrease the burden on noncitizens when interacting with ICE, including the facilitation of remote reporting for certain low-risk populations. ICE anticipates a limited release in two [Enforcement and Removal Operations] field offices in FY 2024. [Emphasis added]

In September, John Fabbricatore, a former ICE official and advisory board member at the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE), told Breitbart News that the ultimate goal of the Biden administration is to limit illegal aliens’ face-to-face contact with DHS as much as possible.

“It’s a normalization of illegal immigration,” Fabbricatore said.

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Biden Complains About Provision That Bans Pentagon From Contracting With Censorship Groups, “Fact-Checkers”

There are few things as jarring as a sitting US administration evoking the First Amendment (constitutional free speech protections) – while the purpose to all intents and purposes seems to be to actually undermine them.

In such cases, the hypocrisy doesn’t simply whisper. Here, it screams. And there have been many such instances over the years.

This is a new example: the Biden administration late last week approved the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the upcoming year.

One – for an “authoritative democracy,” provisions was that the US Defense Department would not be allowed to contractually work with certain groups, such as by now-infamous NewsGuard, and the free-speech-trampling Global Disinformation Index (GDI) – effectively out there working hard to silence opposition-leaning press in the US.

But then, as soon as the 2024 NDAA was signed by Biden late last week, the somewhat erratic president – or whoever is… advising him – pushed a different story to the public.

“While I am pleased to support the critical objectives of the NDAA, I note that certain provisions of the Act raise concerns,” reads a subsequent statement, signed by Biden.

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US Announces $250 Million Arms Package for Ukraine

The Biden administration announced a new $250 million weapons package for Ukraine that the White House said will be the last until Congress approves new spending for the proxy war.

The arms package uses the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the US to ship weapons straight from US military stockpiles. The Pentagon still has over $4.1 billion in PDA funds for Ukraine but lacks the funds to replenish the arms as US stockpiles have been significantly depleted.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last week that once the new arms package was announced, “We will have no more replenishment authority available to us, and we’re going to need Congress to act without delay.”

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Biden Tells Congress He Launched Airstrikes in Iraq to ‘Deter’ Future Attacks

In a letter to Congress, President Biden said he launched Christmas Day airstrikes in Iraq to deter future attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, but the attacks have continued since then.

The Pentagon said the airstrikes targeted three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, and came in response to an attack on a US base in Erbil that wounded three US troops. The Iraqi government slammed the US for carrying out the airstrikes, saying the bombings killed one serviceman and wounded 18 people, including civilians.

“On the night of December 25, 2023, at my direction, United States forces conducted discrete strikes against three facilities in Iraq used by Iran-affiliated groups for training, logistics support, and other purposes,” Biden said in his letter to Congress. “The strikes were taken to deter future attacks and were conducted in a manner designed to limit the risk of escalation and minimize civilian casualties.”

Al Mayadeen reported that since the US airstrikes were launched, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Shia militias, has claimed five more attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria. An attack on Wednesday again targeted US troops based in Erbil, Iraq.

Biden said the approximately 2,500 US troops based in Iraq are there under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which was passed in the wake of 9/11. On paper, US troops are stationed in Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS, a group that did not exist when the 2001 AUMF became law. Biden also claimed that he could bomb Iraq using authorities granted to him by the Constitution.

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