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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Imposes His First Sanctions on Chinese Officials Ahead of Bilateral Meeting New sanctions are against 24 officials previously targeted by the Trump administration over Beijing’s suppression in Hong Kong Chun Han Wong

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-imposes-his-first-sanctions-on-chinese-officials-ahead-of-bilateral-meeting-11615976219?mod=world_major_2_pos6

HONG KONG—The Biden administration added new sanctions against two dozen Chinese officials it says have undermined Hong Kong’s partial autonomy from Beijing, signaling a continuing strong U.S. line on an issue that has contributed to fraying bilateral ties.

Announced Tuesday evening in Washington, the measures marked the first time the Biden administration imposed sanctions on Chinese officials. The move comes shortly before senior U.S. and Chinese officials are due to arrive in Alaska on Thursday to hold the first high-level in-person talks between the two countries since President Biden took office in January.

The measures extend the confrontation between the U.S. and China over the governance of Hong Kong, where Beijing has stepped up suppression of dissent in the face of Western criticism. U.S. objections to Chinese policies in the former British colony have fueled bilateral tensions, along with discord over issues such as trade, technology and global influence.

In a statement on the new sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited Beijing’s plans—approved by Chinese lawmakers last week—to revamp the electoral system in Hong Kong, a move meant to ensure that only people whom China’s Communist Party considers “patriots” will be allowed to govern the former British colony.

Mr. Blinken said the 24 officials targeted in Tuesday’s action were deemed to have “reduced Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.” All of these officials, who include senior Chinese lawmakers and Hong Kong-based security officials, had already been hit with sanctions by the Trump administration.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Russia Recalls Its Ambassador to the U.S. for Consultations Moscow’s move follows a critical U.S. intelligence report about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-recalls-its-ambassador-to-the-u-s-for-consultations-11616011568

By Jessica Donati and Ann M. Simmons

The Russian ambassador to the U.S. has been summoned to Moscow for consultations, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said, as the Kremlin determines the next steps in relations with the U.S. under the Biden administration.

The announcement that Anatoly Antonov had been summoned to Moscow came a day after a U.S. intelligence report for the first time directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering a wide-ranging influence operation to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, intending to hurt President Biden’s campaign.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously have said Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 election and that it was doing so again last year but hadn’t explicitly linked Mr. Putin to allegations of 2020 meddling. Russian officials have repeatedly denied any effort to influence the outcome of U.S. elections.

A statement by the Russian foreign ministry said the most important thing for Moscow was to identify ways to rectify the relationship, blaming Washington for bringing relations between the two countries to “a blind alley.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s ‘BackDoor’ Climate Plan Emails reveal the strategy behind the new regulation to come.

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-backdoor-climate-plan-11616020338?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“To sum up, Democratic AGs, green groups and a top Biden environmental regulator are colluding on a plan to impose the Green New Deal on states through a back regulatory door because they know they can’t pass it through the front in Congress.”

President Biden wants Congress to pass climate legislation, but that faces political obstacles. No worries—state Democratic Attorneys General are conspiring with green groups on a regulatory Plan B.

Climate activists have long sought to force CO2 emissions reductions under the Clean Air Act, but this has been tricky. The Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) ruled that the law’s general definition of “pollutant” covered greenhouse gases. But the Court didn’t tell the EPA how it should regulate CO2 under the law.

Massachusetts v. EPA set the ground for the Obama EPA’s “endangerment finding” in 2009 declaring that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and welfare. Green groups then petitioned the Obama EPA to list CO2 as a “criteria pollutant” and set National Air Ambient Quality Standards (NAAQS).

The EPA dictates air quality standards for six “criteria pollutants” known to directly harm human health: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, carbon monoxide, ozone and particulate matter. States must craft plans to meet the EPA standards if they are out of compliance.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Tributes pour in for black Jewish actor Yaphet Kotto who played Bond villain, Idi Amin By Paul Shindman

By on March 18th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/tributes-pour-in-for-black-jewish-actor-yaphet-kotto-wh

One of Hollywood’s few Black Jewish actors was proud of his Jewish heritage and African roots.

One of Hollywood’s few black Jewish actors, Yaphet Kotto, has passed away at the age of 81, after a career that spanned half a century and cast him in memorable rolls with stars like Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Roger Moore.

Kotto’s wife, Sinahon Thessa, posted on Facebook that her husband died in the Philippines.

“This is a very painful moment for me to inform you all fans, friends and family,” Thessa said. “You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero and to a lot of people also. A good man, a good father, a good husband and a decent human being, very rare to find.”

Yaphet Kotto’s father came to America from Cameroon in the 1920s and was an observant Jew who spoke Hebrew, the website MaNishtana documented. His mother, Gladys Marie, converted to Judaism and Kotto related that his father’s family originated from Israel and migrated to Egypt and then Cameroon, and had been African Jews for many generation.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Journalists, Illustrating How They Operate, Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter Glenn Greenwald

By on March 18th, 2021

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-illustrating-how-they?token=eyJ1c2VyX2

Eager to obtain vindication for the pre-election falsehood they spread about the Hunter Biden story, journalists falsely claim that the CIA blamed Russia for it.

Journalists with the largest and most influential media outlets disseminated an outright and quite significant lie on Tuesday to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, on Twitter. While some of them were shamed into acknowledging the falsity of their claim, many refused to, causing it to continue to spread up until this very moment. It is well worth examining how they function because this is how they deceive the public again and again, and it is why public trust in their pronouncements has justifiably plummeted.

The lie they told involved claims of Russian involvement in the procurement of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, The New York Post obtained that laptop and published a series of articles about the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere. In response, Twitter banned the posting of any links to that reporting and locked The Post out of its Twitter account for close to two weeks, while Facebook, through a long-time Democratic operative, announced that it would algorithmically suppress the reporting.

The excuse used by those social media companies for censoring this reporting was the same invoked by media outlets to justify their refusal to report the contents of these documents: namely, that the materials were “Russian disinformation.” That claim of “Russian disinformation” was concocted by a group of several dozen former CIA officials and other operatives of the intelligence community devoted to defeating Trump. Immediately after The Post published its first story about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine that traded on his influence with his father, these career spies and propagandists, led by Obama CIA Director and serial liar John Brennan, published a letter asserting that the appearance of these Biden documents “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Leon Pinsker: A bicentennial marking an early modern Zionist – opinion What was Pinsker’s movement really like and what did it stand for? By Moshe Phillips

By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/leon-pinsker-a-bicentennial-marking-an-early-modern-zionist-opinion-662228

 Not many Jews today know of the 19th-century Jewish leader who wrote a booklet that inspired young Jews to move to the Land of Israel. The man at first believed passionately in assimilation as an answer for Jews but later, due to what he saw as rising antisemitism, advocated a new idea that eventually became known as Zionism. He met with notables all over Europe to advance his plans. The booklet made an impact and led to his chairing a movement that convened a groundbreaking convention of Jews who came from all over Europe to speak about practical ways to spark a mass Return to Zion.

If you are thinking the man was Theodor Herzl, the book was The Jewish State (1896), the convention was the First Zionist Congress, and the movement was the World Zionist Organization, you are wrong.

This Jewish leader died five years before Herzl wrote The Jewish State, his name was Leon Pinsker, and this year is the bicentennial of his birth. Pinsker’s booklet was titled Auto-Emancipation: A Warning of a Russian Jews to His Brothers, and was published in 1882. The 1881 pogroms that followed the assassination of Czar Alexander II had caused Pinkser, a physician, to rethink his dedication to the idea that assimilation was the best hope for the Jews of Russia. He was recruited to the Hibat Zion (“Fondness For Zion”) movement and chaired its 1884 conference in Katowice, Poland, a result of which was that the various parts of the movement united as Hovevei Zion (“Lovers Of Zion”).

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Media’s Entire Georgia Narrative Is Fraudulent, Not Just The Fabricated Trump Quotes The fake quotes, bad as they were, are just one of many ways the media have done a horrible job of covering election disputes in the state.By Mollie Hemingway

By on March 18th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/17/medias-entire-georgia-narrative-is-fraudulent-not-just-the-fabricated-trump-quotes/

The Washington Post was busted for publishing fabricated quotes from an anonymous source, attributing them to a sitting president, and using those quotes as a basis to speculate the president committed a crime. The invented Donald Trump quotes, which related to a fight over election integrity in Georgia, were cited in Democrats’ impeachment brief and during the Senate impeachment trial.

But the fake quotes, bad as they were, are just one of many ways the media have done a horrible job of covering election disputes in the state.

According to the media narrative, the Georgia presidential election was as perfectly run as any election in history, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. To push that narrative, the media steadfastly downplayed, ignored, or prejudiciously dismissed legitimate concerns with how Georgia had run its November 2020 election and complaints about it.

That posture was the complete opposite of how they were reporting on Georgia elections prior to Democrats performing well in them. In the months prior to November, some media sounded a bit like Lin Wood when they wrote about Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Dominion Voting Systems, legal challenges in the state, and Georgia election integrity in general.

How Media Talked About Georgia Before Biden Won

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Guess Who’ll Pay Biden’s Tax Hikes On The ‘Rich’? Hint: It’s You

By on March 18th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/18/biden-tax-hikes-aim-at-the-rich-but-hit-the-poor-middle-class/

If you’re an American of average income, listen up. You’re about to become a lot poorer. President Joe Biden’s proposed soon-to-be-unveiled multi-trillion dollar tax hike, the first major increase in taxes since 1993, will ensure that.

With a massive wave of new spending on the way, it was only a matter of time before Biden and his far-left economic team came up with massive new tax increases to match. You might be happy with your $1,400 “stimulus check,” but you won’t be happy with the higher taxes you’ll be paying from now until you die.

That’s right, because no matter what the Democrats said during last year’s presidential campaign about “taxing the rich” and “big corporations” it’s the middle class and the poor who will really take a hit.

Though still in the discussion phase, the White House says only those earning more than $400,000 a year will feel the pain. They’ll face higher taxes on their estates and so-called pass-through businesses, including limited-liability companies and partnerships. Millionaires might get a double-whammy, with both higher income and capital gains taxes.

A tax-fairness win for the little guy? Don’t believe it. Biden also wants to raise the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 28%, a one-third increase. And that tax on “pass-through” businesses? That’s a tax-code euphemism for “small businesses.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Gov. DeSantis Proposes Plan to Bolster Florida’s Civics Curricula, Denounces Critical Race Theory By Brittany Bernstein

By on March 17th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gov-desantis-proposes-plan-to-bolster-floridas-civics-curricula-denounces-critical-race-theory/

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday proposed putting $106 million in pandemic-related federal funding toward the state’s civics curricula — $17 million of which would be earmarked for developing civics curricula with “foundational concepts” and not “unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory.”

“Our schools are supposed to give people a foundation of knowledge, not supposed to be indoctrination centers, where you’re trying to push specific ideologies,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Naples, Fla.

“There is no room in classrooms for things like critical race theory,” the Republican governor said.

Critical race theory “presupposes that racism is embedded within society and institutions.” The theory’s implementation in classrooms nationwide has drawn outcry from parents, some of whom have received emails from their children’s schools about “Decentering Whiteness at Home” or have elementary-school aged children who have been read “a book about whiteness” that suggests “color matters” and encourages them to dissect “the painful truth” about their “own family,” regarding potential racist behavior.

In September, former president Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund” critical race theory training programs which he called “divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

DeSantis suggested a civics education should turn down the heat in the U.S., which is increasingly divided by politics by giving everyone a common foundation of values.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

How Trump Got Control of the Border By Rich Lowry

By on March 17th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/how-trump-got-control-of-the-border/

And how Biden created a crisis by throwing it all away.

I n a few months, if it hasn’t already, President Trump’s legacy at the border is going to look much better even to skeptical observers.

As the Biden administration unwinds Trump policies, and a new migrant crisis builds, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Trump team arrived at an approach that, after fits and starts, worked.

Counter to the image of the administration taking a blunderbuss approach to everything related to immigration, the push at the border was a thoughtful, creative, and well-coordinated effort across government agencies and between sovereign countries.

It is worth revisiting because understanding how it came about and the reasons that it made such a difference underlines the mistakes that Biden is making now, no matter how much his officials and allies want to deny it and shift blame.

Many of Trump’s policy successes — tax cuts, deregulation, judges — came from adopting standard, off-the-shelf GOP policy. There is another category, though, of intractable issues or unexpected crises that were addressed by innovative problem-solving by officials unwilling to accept the conventional wisdom about what was possible.

The Abraham Accords and Operation Warp Speed, as well as other aspects of the pandemic response, fall into this category. So does the border, even if has been largely unappreciated.

Commentators who were willing to welcome Middle East peace and the rapid development of COVID vaccines, even if it meant giving credit to people they despised, were never going to find anything good to say about the Trump administration’s immigration hawks.

Obviously, department and agency heads such as Kevin McAleenan and Chad Wolf at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Mark Morgan at Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Ken Cuccinelli at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Mike Pompeo at State played a major part in the effort.

At the staff level, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who cut his teeth working for Senator Jeff Sessions, took a lead role. He mastered the intricacies of the law and the system and pushed relentlessly against bureaucratic and policy inertia.

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