RUTHFULLY YOURS

Two weeks before Presidents’ Day and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, a conservative outlet exposed perhaps the most singularly idiotic decision since the Constitution mandated the Executive Branch.

On Feb. 7, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services made $29.25 million in grants available to government agencies and community groups to purchase syringes, fentanyl strips and “smoking kits” — also known as crack pipes — for drug prevention programs. HHS’s stated goal was to reduce the addicts’ risk of contracting substance abuse disorders or sexually transmitted diseases.

In other words, the virtual president’s “administration” wants to enable illicit drug use for the sake of public health.

“Unsafe smoking practices can lead to open sores, burns and cuts on the lips, and can increase the risk of infection among people who smoke drugs,” HHS spokesman Chris Garrett told the Free Beacon. “Safe smoking kits have been identified to reduce the spread of disease.”

Public outcry forced the HHS to reverse its course on crack pipes Feb. 9. Yet this play from the theater of the absurd contains a second act.

As the grant application stated, “priority populations for this program are underserved communities that are greatly impacted by” substance abuse disorders. “Underserved communities” include “Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons,” among others, stated an executive order Biden signed on his first day in office.

In other words, furnishing drug paraphernalia to members of “underserved communities” is the new “anti-racism.”

But the grant goes beyond “woke” propaganda or the virtual president’s incompetence. It raises a frightening possibility that undergirds the turbulence engulfing this nation.

Illustrating that possibility is this question: Who actually benefits? Consider that question in the context of two of the biggest stories of the past year: Biden’s refusal to control the border with Mexico and the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The open border provides an open invitation for drug traffickers. More than three months into Biden’s term, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported seizing 6,494 pounds of fentanyl during the first seven months of fiscal year 2021. By comparison, agents confiscated 4,791 pounds in all of fiscal year 2020.

“When you talk about that amount, how many communities and people that will affect and how many deaths that will be associated with it, you can’t even comprehend it just because it’s not fathomable,” said Dr. Darien Sutton, who prescribes fentanyl in micrograms as an emergency-room doctor. Two milligrams of fentanyl are fatal.

When fiscal 2021 ended, CBP had confiscated 11,201 pounds of fentanyl, 94.5 percent of it at the southern border. In just the first three months of fiscal 2022, which ended Dec. 31, agents seized 2,707 pounds, 90.5 percent at the border with Mexico.

Not surprisingly, China plays a paramount role in the problem.

China leads the world in fentanyl production. Chinese laboratories manufacture raw fentanyl and its components, then ship them to Mexico, where cartels engage in production and distribution. With 75 percent of customs seizures taking place at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, cartels use human couriers called “mules” to bring fentanyl and other illegal drugs across rural areas of the unprotected southern border.

Investigative reporter Ben Westhoff travelled to China to learn how fentanyl was made. Posing undercover as a drug dealer, Westhoff visited two drug labs and made a breathtaking discovery.

“What I learned was that these companies making fentanyl and other dangerous drugs are subsidized by the government,” Westhoff said. “So when they work in these suburban office parks, for example, the building, the costs for research and development, they have these development zones, they get export tax breaks.” (Emphasis added)

Biden’s immigration “policy” enables the collusion between China and the cartels. On his first day in office, Biden ended construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall and rescinded Trump’s expansion of domestic immigration enforcement.

Of the 64 executive actions Biden signed in his first 100 days in office, 12 concerned immigration, more than any other subject outside of COVID-19. Of those 12, 10 reversed Trump’s policies.

Claire Gute from the Asia Pacific Media Center at Loyola Marymount University criticized Biden’s failure to solve the problem.

“While Biden has promised to do something about the epidemic, his rhetoric is contradictory to his border policy decisions,” Gute wrote. “The administration must control and monitor the borders to a much greater extent, which will reduce the amount of illegal drugs pouring into the Southern border from China.

“Securing the border is essential in protecting both Americans’ and immigrants’ lives from the illicit drugs that are ravaging communities. It should be a top priority for the Biden Administration to uphold its promise of ending the opioid crisis. Wasn’t that a major part of his campaign?”

China also might have played a pivotal role in Biden’s demand for American troops to leave Afghanistan.

In August, FrontPage Magazine examined in detail the possibility that by ordering such an abrupt withdrawal, Biden deliberately helped China. His stubborn insistence disregarded warnings from Congress, the State Department and the military.

So how would China benefit? One way would be acquiring the sophisticated military equipment the Americans abandoned. The Chinese could study it to reverse engineer it or develop countermeasures.

More importantly, the Chinese would have unrestrained access to Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. The country contains such raw materials as iron ore, gold, uranium, copper and rare earths, which are essential for consumer and military electronics. Before the Taliban filled the political void after the withdrawal, China had spent $62 billion on energy, communications and transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan through the Belt and Road Initiative.

Behind those two major news stories lie the suspicious activities involving Biden and his son, Hunter.

Those activities go beyond the financial arrangements with Chinese firms that benefited both men, with the elder Biden, known as “the big guy” in e-mails, getting a 10 percent kickback, as the New York Post reported in depth.

As FrontPage Magazine’s Jamie Glazov explored, Peter Schweizer asserts that the Bidens received $31 million from Chinese business associates affiliated with the upper echelons of China’s intelligence agencies.

The Chinese government also made massive contributions to the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. In addition, numerous administration officials have links to China’s government and Communist Party. They include Press Secretary Jen Psaki, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s lust for drugs and sex make him vulnerable. As FrontPage Magazine reported in May, a young Chinese operative, JiaQi Bao, used her role as his secretary, confidant and likely sexual liaison to influence and entrap him. Bao even used Biden to convince his father to run for President by providing opposition research against Trump.

Perhaps nothing describes the family’s grifting better than the elder Biden’s appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he bragged with breathless arrogance about successfully intimidating a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.

Combining those factors leads to even more disturbing questions.

Are members of the federal government being bribed or blackmailed by foreign parties and drug cartels? If so, how many? By whom? How often? For what?

If the assumptions behind those questions are true, they generate the most alarming question of all.

Are elected officials and unelected bureaucrats — men and women who have sworn to uphold the Constitution — willing to sacrifice every American on the altar of graft?

Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.