Tag: joe biden

White House Supply Chain Advisor Is a World Economic Forum Climate Change Activist Who Worked at Hunter Biden’s Think Tank.

Aleading advisor to President Joe Biden on supply chains is an alum of several World Economic Forum climate change initiatives, who additionally served as a former fellow at a think tank chaired by Hunter Biden.

Betty Cremmins, whose LinkedIn profile reveals she’s held the position of Director for Sustainable Supply Chains at the White House, since February 2022, has overseen the U.S. government’s ongoing supply chain issues, exacerbated by policies that mandated vaccines for many American workers and truckers.

Prior to taking over the White House’s supply chain initiative, Cremmins was a National Security Fellow and Climate Affiliate Group Co-Lead at the Truman National Security Project. The Washington, D.C.-based, left-leaning foreign policy network has featured Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board since 2011.

Archived versions of the organization’s website reveal that Biden ascended to the role of vice-chairman of the board, serving there until at least March 2019 and, therefore, overlapping with Cremmins’s fellowship.

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Biden calls 9mm ‘high-caliber weapons,’ suggests banning them

President Biden on Monday took aim at 9mm handguns, appearing to suggest that the “high-caliber weapons” ought to be banned. 

The president made the remarks outside the White House after returning from a visit to the site of a mass shooting in Texas where 21 people, including 19 elementary school children, were killed last week. 

Recounting a visit to a New York trauma hospital, Biden said doctors showed him X-rays of gunshot wounds. 

“They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” Biden said. 

“So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting,” Biden added. “Remember, the constitution was never absolute.” 

“You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” Biden said. “You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weaponry.” 

The president, however, ruled out the possibility of issuing an executive order on guns, saying: “I can’t dictate this stuff.” 

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Biden Plans To Cancel $10,000 In Student Debt Per Borrower Ahead Of Midterms 

As soon as this weekend, President Biden could announce a plan to cancel $10k in student debt per borrower, according to WaPo, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. 

Biden could make the announcement at the University of Delaware’s commencement ceremony on Saturday. The plan would apply to Americans who earned less than $150k in the previous year or less than 300k for married couples filing jointly. 

On April 6, the White House announced it would extend the pause of federal student loan repayments through August 31. It wasn’t clear if the administration would extend the moratorium beyond this. 

The decision to wipe out $10k of student debt per borrow who meets requirements comes as President Biden’s approval ratings collapse. 

Notice how the number of stories in the news of “student debt loan forgiveness” is soaring ahead of the midterms, but Biden’s polling numbers remain cratered. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, said canceling $10k of student debt per borrower would cost a whopping $230bln. 

WaPo said, “most of the nation’s 41 million student borrowers stand to benefit.” Though, who exactly benefits? 

Goldman Sachs’ Jan Hatzius found canceling the debt would mainly benefit middle- and upper-income households, contrary to the administration’s claims it would help the working poor. 

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How Biden’s Menthol Ban Endangers Black Bodies

President Joe Biden’s ban on menthol cigarettes will put black communities at risk of more violent interactions with police, according to myriad experts ranging from former law enforcement to left-wing constitutional attorneys.

The Biden administration has made no secret of the fact that targeting menthol cigarettes is meant to change the behavior of the black community, alleging that a ban will help reduce racial disparities in the health care system. Criminalizing black people’s behavior, according to the Biden administration, is the best course of action.

“Black smokers prefer menthol products, and the Biden administration’s decision to ban menthol cigarettes will inevitably fuel an already well-established, lucrative, and violent illicit market,” Richard Marianos, a former senior official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, told the Washington Free Beacon.  “This will criminalize the behavior of Black communities and lead to more interactions with law enforcement, not less.”

Data support Marianos’s assertion. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that nearly 85 percent of black smokers prefer mentholated cigarettes, compared with just under 30 percent of white smokers.

As the Food and Drug Administration moves forward with its policy to outlaw menthols, Biden this week released an outline of his executive order to “advance effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices.” The menthol ban stands in direct contradiction of the new policy, which has a stated goal of stamping out “systemic racism in our criminal justice system and in our institutions more broadly.”

“Why in this nation, why [do] so many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of just living their life today?” Biden said at a signing ceremony for his executive order. “Simply jogging, shopping, sleeping at home.”

Biden’s move to criminalize menthol cigarettes would violate his goals of eliminating disparate impact—supposedly neutral policies that disproportionately affect minority communities—in law enforcement. His executive order calls for disparate impact studies on the use of force by law enforcement and asserts that “fatal encounters with law enforcement have disproportionately involved Black and Brown people.”

Such disparate impact is why Biden’s menthol ban has earned criticism from left-wing civil liberty activists, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. An attorney for the organization in a letter last year highlighted the irony of such a ban in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd—only a few years removed from the killing of Eric Garner, a Black man killed by NYPD for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes—the racially disparate impact of the criminal legal system has captured the nation’s attention,” the attorney wrote. “It is now clear that such policies that amount to prohibition have serious racial justice implications.”

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Biden Admin Announces They Will STARVE Poor Children If Their School Doesn’t Let Boys In To Girl’s Bathrooms

In the middle of a food shortage crisis which has forced many schools to severely ration their lunches, the Biden Administration will require all schools receiving federal funding for school lunches to allow biological males into little girls’ bathrooms.

Remember when school bullies would take another kid’s lunch money? Well, Biden plans to more or less do exactly that–but for trans rights!

According to the Biden Admin, all state and local agencies receiving federal Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) funding–which includes schools–will have to fall in line with an Obama-era interpretation of Title IX. This newer interpretation expands gender discrimination prohibitions to include not allowing transgender students to use the locker rooms, showers, and restrooms of their preferred gender.

Or, in other words, it means that schools will be required to let biological boys into the girls’ locker rooms and restrooms if they claim to be transgender.

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Twenty-Two House Republicans Demand Accountability on Biden’s $40b War Spending

The House of Representatives, on May 10, approved President Biden’s $33 billion package for the war in Ukraine, and then, on its own initiative, added $7 billion on top of it. That brought the new war spending authorization to $40 billion, on top of the $14 billion already spent just 10 weeks into this war, which U.S. officials predict will last years, not months. The House vote in favor was 368-57. All 57 NO votes were from GOP House members. All House Democrats, including the Squad, voted YES.

A similar scene occurred when the Senate, “moving quickly and with little debate,” overwhelmingly approved the same war package. All eleven NO votes were from Senate Republicans. All Senate Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), voted in favor, seemingly in direct contradiction to Sanders’ February 8 op-ed in The Guardian warning of the severe dangers of bipartisan escalation of the war. Efforts by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to delay passage of the bill so that some safeguards and accountability measures could be included regarding where the money was going and for what purposes it would be used were met with scorn, particularly from Paul’s fellow Kentucky GOP Senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who condemned Paul as an “isolationist.” Following the Senate vote, a jet was used to fly the bill across the world to President Biden in South Korea, where he signed it into law.

But the lack of any safeguards over the destination of the money and weapons prompted close to two dozen House Republicans, led by Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-NM), to send a letter to the Biden White House on Monday demanding greater specificity and assurances about legal requirements on how weapons are used. The letter urges a public reckoning on the dangers of the U.S.’s bankrolling of the war in Ukraine: “We write today to express grave concern about the lack of oversight and accountability for the money and weapons recently approved by Congress for Ukraine,” it began.

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National School Boards Association Admits to Colluding with Biden Administration on ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Letter

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) admitted Friday to colluding with senior White House officials to develop a letter asking the federal government to investigate concerned parents speaking at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists.”

The admission comes after an internal review, which was prompted by significant backlash to the letter that led Attorney General Merrick Garland to sic the FBI on parents and use “counterterrorism tools” to investigate them.

Parents speaking at school board meetings across the country were primarily outraged by the revelations that their children were being indoctrinated with critical race and queer theories, as well as the draconian coronavirus policies that masked children and shut down schools, leading to significant learning loss and other developmental stunting.

NSBA investigators placed the blame for the letter — from their end — almost entirely on Chip Slaven, who at the time was the Interim CEO and Executive Director of the organization. Slaven worked closely with White House Senior Advisor to the President Mary C. Wall, who “had advanced knowledge of the planned Letter and its specific contents and interacted with Mr. Slaven regarding the Letter during its drafting,” according to the findings of the inquiry.

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World Bank to Receive $450 Million to Start Pandemic Preparedness Fund

Joe Biden announced that the US would give the World Bank $450 million to start a pandemic preparedness fund, which will be run in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).

“We’re increasing our support for [a] new pandemic preparedness and global health security fund that will be established at the World Bank this summer with $450 million in seed funding,” Joe Biden announced at the second Global COVID Summit.

Vice President Kamala Harris also said that the US would work to “shape new international norms” on pandemic-related issues.

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Biden Admin Places $119 Million Order for Vaccines After Single Case of Monkeypox Reported in US

The Biden administration has placed an order for millions of doses of a vaccine intended to protect against smallpox and monkeypox, after the first case of monkeypox in the United States this year was confirmed in Massachusetts on May 18.

Monkeypox, a viral disease typically limited to Africa, has been reported in several countries with more than 25 confirmed cases since the beginning of May.

Denmark-based biotech group Bavarian Nordic announced the order on May 18, which prompts the company to convert its bulk liquid smallpox vaccine into freeze-dried versions, which have an improved shelf life. The bulk vaccine has already been manufactured and invoiced under previous contracts with the U.S. government, the Bavarian Nordic stated. The vaccine is approved under the name “JYNNEOS” in the United States.

The order represents $119 million worth of the Jynneos vaccines, which would be manufactured and invoiced in 2023 and 2024.

Under the contract, the Biden administration has the option to place another order worth $180 million. That would allow for about 13 million freeze-dried doses of the Jynneos smallpox vaccine to be manufactured by around 2024 and 2025. The majority of the bulk vaccine for those doses has already been manufactured and invoiced, according to the company.

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Biden admin adds $100 million in arms for Ukraine on top of $40 billion aid package

The Biden administration has announced $100 million in arms funding to Ukraine on top of the newly approved $40 billion aid package.

On Thursday, the Senate approved $40 billion in aid for Ukraine as the nation continues to fight back against Russia’s invasion.

Just hours later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States would be sending an additional $100 million in arms.

In a statement, Blinken explained that Ukrainian forces have “remained firmly in the fight” against Russia, but are in need of assistance, namely arms and other equipment.

“Pursuant to a delegation from the President,” Blinken said, “I am authorizing our tenth drawdown of additional arms and equipment for Ukraine’s defense from US Department of Defense inventories, valued at up to $100 million.”

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