‘Isn’t It Almost Orwellian?’ White House Fumbles Trying to Explain Misleading Inflation Bill (VIDEO)

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fumbled Sunday when asked about the “Orwellian” nature of the Inflation Reduction Act by “This Week” host Jon Karl.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll from early August found only 37% of Americans approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, Karl explained to Jean-Pierre, and asked her why, if things are getting better with inflation, so many Americans disapprove of the president. Jean-Pierre argued that the White House is aware of what the American people are feeling. She then gave examples of how the president has “partly” helped in attempting to improve inflation issues, noting the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Let me ask you. It’s called the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ but the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], which is nonpartisan, said there would be a negligible impact on inflation this year and barely impact inflation at all next year,” Karl responded, “Isn’t it almost Orwellian? How can you call it the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ when nonpartisan experts say its not gonna —”

(Read more from “‘Isn’t It Almost Orwellian?’ White House Fumbles Trying to Explain Misleading Inflation Bill (VIDEO)” HERE)

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Afghanistan Chaos: Report Reveals New Details of Disastrous Withdrawal

It was the height of the chaotic U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan, and first lady Jill Biden’s office went outside the normal channels and begged veterans groups to help find a way to evacuate people having trouble navigating the process.

So did Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, top Defense Department officials and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, according to a report released Sunday by House Republicans that details the depths of the Biden administration’s failures during the last days of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

The fact that President Biden’s own circle had to go outside his process to get help underscores just how badly the administration planned and executed the U.S. retreat, concludes the report, released by Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“There was a complete lack and failure to plan,” Mr. McCaul told CBS’s “Face the Nation” as he revealed the report. “There were so many mistakes.”

Monday marks one year since Afghanistan’s Western-backed government was toppled by a resurgent Taliban. The Taliban moved on Kabul as U.S. troops were pulling out, rushing to meet Mr. Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline for ending a 20-year, $1 trillion commitment. (Read more from “Afghanistan Chaos: Report Reveals New Details of Disastrous Withdrawal” HERE)

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Warrant Shows DOJ, FBI Waited *Days* To Conduct Mar-A-Lago Raid After Judge Approved; Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid

By Breitbart. The warrant that authorized the search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago shows it was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Aug. 5, 2022, at 12:12 p.m.—nearly three full days before the Justice Department and FBI conducted a raid to execute it.

The raid did not occur until the morning of Aug. 8, 2022, when federal agents from the FBI arrived at Mar-a-Lago to execute the search warrant.

The document, obtained and reviewed by Breitbart News, shows that the DOJ and FBI waited several days after Reinhart approved the warrant to conduct the raid, something that severely undercuts the talking points issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland in a public statement on Thursday when he broke his silence to discuss the matter in televised remarks.

Why the authorities waited several days to execute service of the warrant if the matter rose to such a serious national security issue is unclear. If what federal agents intended to obtain from the raid was such a risk to national security, the fact they decided to linger and wait for several days before executing is likely to become a major point of contention as this debate plays out in front of the public. (Read more from “Warrant Shows DOJ, FBI Waited *Days* To Conduct Mar-A-Lago Raid After Judge Approved” HERE)

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid

By Townhall. . .Greene filed a motion to impeach Merrick Garland, which is symbolic but could be the first glimpse of the fight to come when the Republicans regain the majority in the House (via The Hill):

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.

Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.”

[…]

The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Republicans, including Greene, have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of going after Trump for political reasons.

(Read more from “Marjorie Taylor Greene Moves to Impeach AG Merrick Garland Over Trump Raid” HERE)

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DOJ Opens Sex Abuse Investigation Into Southern Baptists, Subpoenas Leaders

The Justice Department has started an investigation into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the executive committee of the United States’ largest Protestant denomination has received a federal subpoena in connection with the probe, the group said Friday.

A spokesman told The Washington Times the committee’s general counsel acknowledged “the [executive committee] has received a subpoena. No individuals have been subpoenaed at this point. This is an ongoing investigation and we are not commenting on our discussions with the [Justice Department].”

The Baptist group said in a statement Friday it “recently became aware” that the Department of Justice had begun an investigation into the 13.7-million-member church as well as “multiple SBC entities.” . . .

An independent investigation of sexual abuse charges in the Southern Baptist Convention led to the May release of a 400-page report documenting a decades-long coverup of the abuse and related misconduct. (Read more from “DOJ Opens Sex Abuse Investigation Into Southern Baptists, Subpoenas Leaders” HERE)

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Trump Warrant Suggests Espionage Act; Same Law Hillary Clinton Dodged

The search warrant for the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday suggests he is being investigated under the Espionage Act of 1917 — the same law that Hillary Clinton was suspected of violating in 2016.

Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted Thursday that he personally approved the warrant application, which seeks broad discretion to search Trump’s home based on three statutes: 18 U.S.C. section 793, on the mishandling of defense information; 18 U.S.C. section 1519, relating to the destruction of federal documents; and 18 U.S.C. section 2071, which punishes hiding, moving, or destroying federal documents. Section 793 is from the Espionage Act of 1917, passed during the First World War.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was suspected of violating the latter when she used an unsecured private email server in her own home to handle her communications, including emails with classified information, during her time in office.

The relevant part of section 793 punishes “gross negligence” in the handling of defense information, and failure to report the loss or destruction of that information. Clinton was accused of both; her staff even physically destroyed her mobile phones.

Then-FBI Director James Comey, who intervened in the case after then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch was caught meeting with former President Bill Clinton on the tarmac of an airport in Arizona, said that while Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information, she did not intend to violate the statute. The statute does not, however, include any requirement of intent, leading conservative critics to argue that Comey had been looking to exonerate her. (Read more from “Trump Warrant Suggests Espionage Act; Same Law Hillary Clinton Dodged” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Some Schools Won’t Tell Parents When Their Kids Express Gender Confusion. Experts Say That’s Illegal.

Public schools nationwide are telling students they can assume different pronouns, have access to another sex’s bathroom, and change their name without letting their parents know, a violation of federal law legal experts tell the Washington Free Beacon.

Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia bar teachers from “outing” transgender students to parents, as do Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. These increasingly common policies are meant to guard students against parents who, according to Fairfax County schools, “may not yet be supportive of their child’s transition.” But according to Vernadette Broyles, they also violate parents’ right to privacy as codified in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974.

“Privacy rights are held by the parents for the child, not by the child against their parents,” Broyles, president and founder of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, told the Free Beacon. Broyles says Fairfax and Montgomery school officials are “attempting to usurp parental authority,” which is protected by the 14th Amendment. She called the schools’ policies “intentional obfuscation, driving a wedge between children and parents at a time when children need their parents most.” Three other attorneys involved in similar cases cited the same violations of the Constitution and federal law in support of parents’ rights.

The news comes as parents nationwide are filing lawsuits against school districts over the issue. Parents Defending Education, a conservative grassroots group, announced last week it was suing an Iowa school district for refusing to disclose a child’s transgender status without their permission. The district keeps “temporary” files for students’ gender support plans, allowing them to skirt official records requests from parents. Similarly, the Maryland and Virginia school districts instruct their employees to refrain from mentioning a child’s chosen gender identity on school forms or in emails where it could become public. (Read more from “Some Schools Won’t Tell Parents When Their Kids Express Gender Confusion. Experts Say That’s Illegal.” HERE)

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Trump Claims ‘Standing Order’ Declassified Records as Soon as They Left Oval Office

Former President Donald Trump claims a “standing order” allowed him to declassify documents as soon as they left the Oval Office.

A statement from Trump’s office was read by journalist John Solomon on Fox News on Friday evening as the former president faces fallout from an FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this week in which agents reportedly seized all sorts of classified materials. The statement was met with intense skepticism from legal experts.

“As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare for work the next day, often took documents including classified documents from the Oval Office to the residence,” the statement read, according to Solomon’s Just the News website.

“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” the statement added. (Read more from “Trump Claims ‘Standing Order’ Declassified Records as Soon as They Left Oval Office” HERE)

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Has Inflation Peaked? Maybe, but It Could Be ‘Painfully Slow’ to Fall

The cooler-than-expected July inflation data fueled hopes that consumer prices peaked earlier this summer after a year of relentless increases that crushed Americans, created a political firestorm for President Biden and forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at the fastest pace in decades.

The consumer price index climbed 8.5% in July from the previous year, a bigger drop from the 9.1% recorded in June than economists projected. On a monthly basis, the index did not move at all as decreases in the cost of oil, gasoline and airfares offset increases in food and rent.

When excluding more volatile measurements of food and gasoline, prices jumped 5.9% in July, matching the previous month.

While the slowdown is likely a welcome respite for the Fed as it tries to wrestle inflation under control, experts cautioned that inflation remains painfully high and could be slow to return to pre-pandemic levels around 2%. (Read more from “Has Inflation Peaked? Maybe, but It Could Be ‘Painfully Slow’ to Fall” HERE)

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The Army Has Just 7 Weeks to Meet Its Recruitment Targets This Year. It’s Only 52% Of the Way There.

The U.S. Army is projected to fall well short of its annual recruitment goal this year, having met only a little more than half of its target for fiscal year 2022.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told NBC News Friday that the Army has recruited only 52% of its goal for FY 2022 and is expected be short by as many as 15,000 recruits.

“We are right now at about 52% of the mission that we had originally set for ourselves. So we’ve got a ways to go, and obviously we’ve only got about a month or so until the fiscal year ends,” Wormuth said. “I would say we’re [going to be] about 12,000 to 15,000 recruits short this year.”

The current fiscal year will end on September 30. The Army had initially sought to add 60,000 active-duty enlistments this year, but has since downsized that target amid dismal recruitment shortfalls.

NBC News reports that while the Army is authorized to have as many as 485,000 total troops, it recently lowered that number to 476,000. Wormuth warned that long-term recruitment shortages could impact military readiness. (Read more from “The Army Has Just 7 Weeks to Meet Its Recruitment Targets This Year. It’s Only 52% Of the Way There.” HERE)

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Arizona Begins Building Border Wall: ‘If the Federal Government Won’t Act, We Will’

Arizona is taking border security into its own hands since the Biden administration refuses to take responsibility for the crisis is created.

Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) announced that he issued an executive order directing the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs to fill in the gaps of the Yuma border wall.

“If the federal government won’t act, we will,” Ducey said in a tweet.

During a call with reporters, Ducey said the construction of the wall began “six minutes ago” to finish the Trump-era wall that President Joe Biden ordered to halt when he came into office in 2021.

(Read more from “Arizona Begins Building Border Wall: ‘If the Federal Government Won’t Act, We Will'” HERE)

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