Pompeo Hits Biden Team for Reversing the Trump Admin’s Migration Diplomacy By Jimmy Quinn

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-hits-biden-team-for-reversing-the-trump-admins-migration-diplomacy/

As the White House contends with a growing crisis on the southern border, it has heaped blame on the previous administration because, as Press Secretary Jen Psaki put it during the daily press briefing on March 10, “they intentionally made it worse.”

But in a wide-ranging conversation with National Review on Thursday, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo argued that it is in fact the Biden administration, by unraveling the Trump team’s policies, that caused the current crisis. “It is patently obvious,” he said, defending the “enormous diplomatic achievement” that he played a role in crafting.

Pompeo has previously criticized the Biden administration’s border policy, including in recent appearances on Fox News. In a conversation with NR today, he elaborated on the diplomatic outreach that figured into the Trump administration’s work on border issues.

During that press briefing earlier this month, Psaki announced an end to the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), a complex set of agreements with Mexico and Central American countries, where individuals seeking asylum in the United States would be kept in Mexico or other countries as their claims were processed. According to Pompeo, ending these arrangements was a mistake.

“This policy, or what has been come to be known as Remain in Mexico, was really good work by me and my team to make the case to the Mexican government that the right thing for them — these are often El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, who are transiting their country — that this is deeply inhumane, and that we’re not going to permit them to stay in the United States while the asylum claim was processed,” he told NR.

Implementing the MPP, he continued, “with the cooperation of the Mexican government was to turn off the magnet,” and therefore to convince individuals without valid asylum claims not to make the trip to the U.S. border.

Alexi McCammond’s Firing from Teen Vogue Is Preposterous and Illiberal Charles Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alexi-mccammonds-firing-from-teen-vogue-is-preposterous-and-illiberal/

Alexi McCammond has been fired from her new position at Teen Vogue, a week before she was set to start:

Alexi McCammond, who made her name as a politics reporter at the Washington news site Axios, had planned to start as the editor in chief of Teen Vogue on March 24. Now, after Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned racist and homophobic tweets Ms. McCammond had posted a decade ago, she has resigned from the job.

Condé Nast, Teen Vogue’s publisher, announced the abrupt turn on Thursday in an internal email that was sent amid pressure from the publication’s staff, readers and at least two advertisers, just two weeks after the company had appointed her to the position.

“After speaking with Alexi this morning, we agreed that it was best to part ways, so as to not overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue,” Stan Duncan, the chief people officer at Condé Nast, said in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.

This is utterly preposterous — the latest flare-up in an ongoing cultural riot that leaves room for neither growth nor redemption, and does so in the name of an “accountability” that can be demanded by strangers and has no discernible expiry date. McCammond wrote the tweets in question when she was just 17 years old. Not only has she apologized for them profusely, she proactively brought them up while interviewing for the position and was told that they posed no obstacle. Now, as the result of “pressure from the publication’s staff, readers and at least two advertisers,” she’s out.

That pressure, I am sure, was real. But that it was real does not make it worthwhile, and it does not make it any less deserving of resistance from people who should know better. What, one must ask, is the standard that these “staff, readers and at least two advertisers” hoped to establish? That if one erred a decade ago, while a minor, one cannot hold a position of authority as an adult? That if one is expected to “lift up the stories and voices of our most vulnerable communities,” one is obliged to be without sin oneself?

That second question may sound hyperbolic, but I’m not so sure that it is. Condé Nast’s HR chief, Stan Duncan, wrote in a statement co-signed by the company’s “chief diversity and inclusion officer” (there are a couple of people begging to be fired with prejudice out of a cannon) that given McCammond’s “previous acknowledgement of these posts and her sincere apologies, in addition to her remarkable work in journalism elevating the voices of marginalized communities, we were looking forward to welcoming her into our community.” But then, after a few ill-adjusted people complained, they just . . . fired her, lest her being less pure than Jesus Christ himself “overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue.” And they did so — get this — in the name of being “equitable and inclusive.”

John Solomon: Months after Trump complaints, some courts are finding irregularities in 2020 elections Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia court actions show some absentee ballot procedures imposed by Democrats violated state laws.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/03/18/months_later_some_courts_are_finding_

Long after former President Donald Trump dropped his legal challenges to the 2020 election, some courts in battleground states are beginning to declare the way widespread absentee ballots were implemented or counted violated state laws.

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

Benson had instructed local election clerks a month before the Nov. 3 election to start with a “presumption” that all signatures on absentee ballots were valid and only reject those that had “multiple significant and obvious” inconsistencies. Republicans and one election clerk challenged her instructions in court.

Chief Court of Claims Judge Christopher M. Murray ruled March 9 that the state Legislature did not provide such guidance in its election laws, and therefore Benson needed to promulgate a formal rule – a timely process – before imposing such a requirement. Murray told election clerks they should disregard Benson’s instructions in future elections.

“An agency must utilize formal rule-making procedures when establishing policies that ‘do not merely interpret or explain the statute or rules from which the agency derives its authority,’ but rather ‘establish the substantive standards implementing the program,'” Murray ruled.

“The guidance issued by the Secretary of State on October 6, 2020, with respect to signature-matching standards was issued in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act,” he concluded.

Israel’s anti-vaxxers–a cautionary tale Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/why-israels-anti-vax-party-is-a-cautionary-tale-662507

Of the 39 parties running in Israel’s upcoming Knesset election, the one that least deserves a seat, which it has no chance of garnering in any case, is Rapeh (“Heal”).

Headed by Aryeh Avni, a physician whose license was recently revoked, the newly formed faction is waging war on the country’s coronavirus vaccination drive. More precisely, it is leading a movement against what it deems the government’s “coercion campaign” against the public.

Avni and his followers purport that the reason for his ouster from the medical profession is solely due to his warnings about the dangers of the COVID-19 and other vaccines. In fact, he’s been on the Health Ministry’s radar for years, and has had his license temporarily suspended on a number of occasions.

He has a history of condemning colleagues, particularly oncologists. Indeed, it’s not only vaccines that he opposes; he’s none too fond of chemotherapy and other accepted methods of treatment, either.

Since the onset of the pandemic, however, he’s been especially vociferous in his denunciation of any peer who takes the coronavirus seriously, continues to call on the populace to ignore all directives, and vilifies the vaccine.

In his decision to strip Avni of the right to practice medicine, retired judge Amnon Strashnov stated, “There is no doubt that his harsh and blatant statements in articles he published on his website, Facebook and recently also on YouTube against the coronavirus vaccination pose a real danger to public safety and health. Add to this his unbridled, blatant and baseless insults to the medical community and the heads of the Health Ministry, which go far beyond what is reasonable and permissible in the context of freedom of expression, and you have a clear view of the absolute anarchy that [he] is trying to create.”

Biden Admin’s High-Level China Meeting Shows Dangerous ‘Reset’ Already Underway Plus the media’s Trump-GA election call catastrophe Benjamin Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/bidens-reset-communist-china-beckons-opinion-157663

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are set to meet with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) counterparts Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi today in Anchorage, Alaska, in what some have speculated is an effort to “reset” relations between the two powers.

The Biden administration has played down this idea—having vacillated previously on its desire for a “reset”—while China has indicated that it welcomes bilateral relations, on its terms.

But the truth of the matter is that by dint of having any such meeting, Team Biden is signaling that a reset is already well underway.

That the administration seeks to engage China without preconditions—and, further, from a position of relative weakness when it has professed it will only do so from strength—validates the view that the executive branch is reverting from a posture of hostility to one of accommodation. This holds regardless of whatever “tough talk” administration officials will likely say they communicated in the aftermath of the meeting.

China has done nothing in the early days of the Biden administration to merit this powwow. Therefore, it is proper to view the Alaska exchange as a de facto reward for the CCP’s continued malign behavior. The CCP continues to persecute Xinjiang’s Uyhurs, crack down on Hong Kongers and threaten the Taiwanese. With respect to its dealings with the West, the CCP has continued its coronavirus cover-up by obstructing the efforts of those investigating the origins of the pandemic that it unleashed upon the world.

In spite of this malign behavior, while it has tsk-tsked China over its human rights abuses and expressed muted criticism over China’s stonewalling of the World Health Organization (WHO) in its pandemic “investigation,” among the Biden administration’s first acts was to rejoin the WHO.

Does the fact it legitimized this CCP-captured organization, becoming party to it again without it having made any discernible reforms, indicate the administration is engaging from a position of strength?

Opinion: Where’s the outrage? US Jewish groups mum on anti-Israel Pentagon pick By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-wheres-the-outrage-us-jewish-groups-mum-on-anti-israel-pentagon-pick/

“Pro-Israel groups launch blitz against Kahl nomination for top Pentagon job,” read the Jewish News Syndicate headline on March 15.

The headline isn’t untrue.

The problem is that there were just two groups, one of them Christian. How’s that line go again “If I am not for myself…”?

There should have been a chorus of protest from the American Jewish establishment at last week’s Senate hearings on Colin Kahl’s nomination for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

It’s an important job. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy — including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.”

Yet AIPAC was AWOL. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s excuse is it doesn’t take positions on presidential nominations.

If you’re the largest pro-Israel lobby in America and you can’t call out nominees espousing anti-Israel policies, what can you do? Kahl typifies such policies. It should be right in AIPAC’s bailiwick. As it likes to say, “policy over partisanship.”

Tucker Carlson-Military Spat Shows Left’s Long March Reaching Dangerous Apex Wokeism has been festering in the military for years–now it has been exposed for all to see Benjamin Weingarten

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/tucker-carlson-military-spat-shows?token=e

Is the military more focused on winning wars, or Wokeism?

Americans should not have to ask this question.

But on account of doings of the Biden-led Department of Defense (DoD), Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was rightly compelled to proffer it. That he received any DoD response—and no less an almost parodic scolding, rather than an assurance that the military is singularly focused on crushing our enemies—demonstrates an existential problem for our country.

It shows that the progressives’ Long March through our institutions is reaching its dangerous apex.

This is a dangerous apex because when it comes to matters of national security and foreign policy, politicization literally kills.

Our military must be impervious to politicization, and particularly political correctness and insubordination, or it will lack the will and capability necessary to deter and when necessary defeat our adversaries.

Absent a military insulated from these ills, our peace and prosperity will erode. People will die.

Yet for well over a decade now, perhaps the last trusted institution in this country, the military, has shown dangerous signs that it is succumbing to the maladies of all of our other institutions.

This is an indictment not of our cherished military itself, but of those who have tarnished it through repudiating its core principles, and the civilian leaders who have abided such conduct, if not endorsed it.

The Tucker Carlson-Department of Defense contretemps broke this reality right out into the open for all of America to see.

One Of The Lockdowns’ Greatest Casualties Could Be Science By Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/18/one-of-the-lockdowns-greatest-casualties-could-be-science/

Politicians, journalists, and scientists have transferred the disease burden onto the working class. They’ve also dangerously undermined scientific inquiry.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have not only been devastating for society, they have had a chilling effect on the scientific community. For science to thrive, opposing ideas must be openly and vigorously discussed, supported, or countered based on scientific merit.

Instead, some politicians, journalists, and (alas) scientists have engaged in vicious slander of dissident scientists, spreading damaging conspiracy theories, even with open calls for censorship in place of debate. In many cases, eminent scientific voices have been effectively silenced, often with gutter tactics. People who oppose lockdowns have been accused of having blood on their hands, their university positions threatened, with many of our colleagues choosing to stay quiet rather than face the mob.

We tell the story here of five prominent scientists who have faced the modern-day inquisition.

Dr. Scott Atlas

Dr. Scott Atlas served as a special advisor to the president on COVID policy between July and November 2020. This would be a difficult job in normal circumstances when the science is more mature.

With his background in public health policy, Atlas’s advice emphasized balancing risks imposed by viral spread against collateral public health harms from the lockdowns in a rapidly changing scientific and policy environment. Scientists who did not share his views had every opportunity to do so responsibly by reporting scientific facts and conjectures and engaging with his ideas.

Instead, the Journal of the American Medical Association—the flagship medical journal in the United States—published an opinion article defaming him without engaging his actual scientific views. The editors of the journal then refused to publish letters supporting Atlas.

H.R.1 – Is It Really “For the People”? by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

H.R.1 is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech — all dressed-up as being “for the people.”

Here are just a few of the more egregious federal power grabs in H.R.1 concocted against the 50 states that run elections under the U.S. Constitution: 1. Ban voter ID laws and allow ballot harvesting; 2. Expand Election Day to “election season” by mandating mail-in ballots be counted 10 days after the election would normally be over; and, 3. Automatic voter registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare, and college, or who are coming out of prison. There is a lot more, and it gets worse. Substantially worse. There are First Amendment restrictions on political speech.

What better way to design a worker’s paradise? Or — hypothetically, of course — to make sure that a stolen election stays stolen, is never audited, and lays the groundwork for reproducible results for the next century?

Please let everyone influential know, clearly and politely, exactly what you think.

A lot has been written about H.R.1 — the so-called “For the People Act of 2021.” Former Vice President Mike Pence has opined on the bill. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm back in January. The editors of National Review come right out and call it a “partisan assault on American democracy.”

H.R.1 purports to, “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.” The Bill is 791 pages long.

“Kill Them; Kill Them All”: The War against Police in France by Yves Mamou

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17105/france-war-against-police

In January, the statistical services of the Ministry of the Interior recorded 2,288 such “kill them all” incidents, based on information from police reports.

The media’s suspicion of the illegitimate use of violence by the police is so intense that officers under attack do not even feel permitted to use their weapon

The indictment of the police by the media and the entertainment industry — actors, singers and so on — is also fueled by academics.

Judicial cowards, of course, also side with the chic mob against the police.

If the police cannot investigate or protect the public because officers are afraid of being called racists, the security of the citizens is in danger.

On January 25 in Pantin, a suburb of Paris, on February 4 in Carcassonne in the south of France, and on February 13 in Poissy in Yvelines, organized groups of “young people” — according to the established media vocabulary to avoid any ethnic designation — lured police forces into their neighborhoods to ambush them. To the shouts of “Kill them; kill them all”, police patrols were attacked with explosives and pyrotechnic devices used as urban guerrilla weapons. Each time, videos of the attack were broadcast on social networks.

Between March 17 and May 5, 2020, French police were subjected to 79 ambushes, based on statistics from the Ministry of the Interior published by Le Figaro. In October 2020, Le Figaro counted at least ten attacks on police precincts since the beginning of the year, and more than 85 incidents of “violence against persons in positions of public authority” were recorded daily throughout the country by the national police, according to Le Monde. In January, the statistical services of the Ministry of the Interior recorded 2,288 such “kill them all” incidents, based on information from police reports.