Month: August 2024

Consumers are quickly changing their spending habits as the pullback across the leisure and travel industry becomes more pronounced. We first asked this question in early May, “Is Consumer Travel Spending Easing?” – BofA Identifies New Trend As Travel Companies Miss Earnings.

With the Biden-Harris economy losing steam, recession risks are mounting as the labor market cools. Airlines, hotels, short-term rental platforms, and even theme parks are sounding the alarm bells about a consumer downturn.

Evidence of a consumer slowdown is widespread. 

Goldman’s Peter Callahan commented on this in a note to clients on Sunday, “Travel trends clearly deteriorating into July/2H (EXPE / ABNB 2H moderation, DIS Parks/Experiences saw a moderation of consumer demand, FOUR calling out restaurant weakness in July) – debate is if they are now ‘de-risked’ into 2H or if the market will need to wait to see if we go ‘below’ trend before normalizing (as many other categories impacted by COVID have done – e.g. e-commerce) ..” 

Discretionary downturn signs are everywhere.

• Earnings Call Mentions Of “Consumer Downturn” Soar To Highest Level Since Financial Crisis

• On Verge Of Credit Shock: Credit Card Debt Posts Biggest Drop Since Covid Crash As Rates Hit Record High

• “Suddenly Recession Is On The Tip Of Everyone’s Tongue… Wow, Did That Happen Fast!”

And in individual companies. 

• Airbnb Shares Plunge On Slowing US Demand As Consumer Downturn Worsens

• Disney CFO Admits Lower-Income Consumers Are “Stressed & Shaving Time Off At Parks”

What’s very clear is that pent-up demand for travel during the Covid era has evaporated as consumers struggle with elevated inflation and high interest rates, along with maxed-out credit cards and depleted personal savings in an economic environment that even VP Harris has admitted Bidenomics has failed.

Bloomberg cited new website tracking data from Similarweb, which shows consumer web searches for rooms, flights, and cruises have sharply declined in recent quarters.

From Airbnb to United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Spirit Airlines, Frontier, Walt Disney, and travel platform Expedia Group, management teams of these mega corps have all been warning about a consumer slowdown.

Just last week, Expedia slashed its annual outlook for the second time this year due to worsening consumer softness. 

Days ago, Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta told investors, “The lower sort of half of consumers, maybe even the lower three-quarters, have less disposable income available and less capacity to do anything, including travel.”

Although Bloomberg mentions that “demand for travel isn’t collapsing,” the fact that consumers have been pulling back for months is a very ominous signal that the economy is heading in the wrong direction.

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

H.L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

Last week in this space, I pointed out the irony of the Sudden Harris Ascendancy Syndrome. Here she was, one of the least popular figures on the American scene—someone, moreover, whom everyone, no matter their political coloration, regarded primarily as political life insurance for Joe Biden—and yet, Wham!, the very moment Biden resigns, her media reconstruction begins in earnest.

I almost wrote “media rehabilitation,” but that would not have been quite right. We say that someone is rehabilitated when he has fallen from a previous state of health, competence, or popularity.

Kamala Harris has never been competent or popular.  So what the media has done to or with her these last couple of weeks is more of an outright fabrication project. In part, as I wrote last week, it is a product of “magical thinking,” the belief, or at least the hope or pretense, that by saying something is so, you magically make it so.

The primary aim of this bit of theatrical slight-of-hand is positive.  It is to make people believe, for as long as they inhabit this theater of the absurd (the show runs, by the way, until November 5) that the person answering to the name “Kamala Harris” is not against fracking, though her doppelgänger, who existed until July 21 when Joe Biden dropped out of the race, was adamantly against fracking.

Similarly, Kamala 2.0 does not believe in open borders. But the original version, who was Biden’s “Border Czar,” did nothing to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants and spoke openly about a “path to citizenship” for them all eventually and Medicare and other benefits for them now.

Pick the issue: if it’s contentious, you will find that Kamala has had a sudden metanoia in the last couple of weeks. She is like the wolf who, addressing a flock of sheep, assures them that as soon as he is elected, he will become a vegetarian.

They are trying the same thing with Tim Walz, but what is uphill work for Kamala Harris is Mt. Everest for Walz.  He really did order that tampons be put into boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools. He allowed eight babies to be murdered after botched abortions left them alive. He sat back and watched Minneapolis burn when the St. George Floyd riots erupted in 2020. Just a day or two ago, NBC reported that Walz now says he “misspoke” in 2018 when describing his military experience.  But he did not “misspeak.”  He lied.

Walz is one of the many Democrats who seem to think that George Orwell’s 1984 was a how-to manual, not a sober warning about the dangers of totalitarianism.  Remember the COVID insanity? Walz was one of the worst governors during that made-up emergency.  Not only did he mandate vaccines, but he also set up a “snitch line” and encouraged Minnesotans to report their neighbors should they dare to venture outside without a mask.  Nevertheless, the media has been playing a clip over and over of Walz saying he wants people to “mind their own business.” As if.

The Democrats’ old friend, what the Freudians call “projection,” is evident everywhere in this entertainment. It boils down to accusing your opponents of the very things you are doing or are.  So, the memo went out that J. D. was henceforth to be described as “weird,” when in fact he radiates normality, competence, and healthy self-confidence.  Walz?  Despite the theatrical producers’ best effort, the fact that the man is one sick puppy cannot be obscured.

The strategy of the Biden-Harris—er, make that the “Harris-Walz” campaign depends on people being dazzled by their theater of the absurd.  Both candidates claim now to believe things they have spent the last decades attacking.  But their supposed conversion is not the result of any heavenly illumination.  It’s not like Saul falling to the ground on the road to Damascus. Rather, it is an abracadabra sort of conversion, i.e., no conversion at all, merely subterfuge.  It’s an elaborate show we are being treated to, replete with fake polls showing Harris-Walz ahead in some swing states.

Already, the façade is cracking as more and more devastating videos come to light about both candidates. The ridicule machine of Trump and his allies is only getting cranked up. More, much more, will be coming to an internet search near you.

As I say, this show is scheduled to run at least until November 5, maybe longer, depending on how much election fraud the Democrats are allowed to indulge in. But there will be occasional intermissions during which the deciding question will be pressed upon all of us theatergoers. Is this campaign about mood and emotion—is it, I mean, essentially a female campaign?  Or is it a matter of competing policies, of things like peace, prosperity, individual liberty, and economic competitiveness?

I am betting that, when the Chardonnay is gone and paper masks no longer fit, every robust voter will decide that he wants to live in the real world of common sense, not the hot-house world of woke theatrics and socialist nostrums. In other words, I predict that Mencken’s diminishing wager about the American public will, at least in this one instance, turn out to be dead wrong.

It has been a long ugly road for the trucking industry in the U.S. since Covid caused one of its deepest recessions in history.

But now, it is showing “signs of life” as demand ticks higher and prices remain suppressed, according to the Financial Times. Requests for U.S. shipments increased by an average of 9% year-over-year in Q2 2024, the financial news site says.

Tender rejections, indicating carriers’ willingness to accept loads, rose by 1.3% compared to the same period last year, suggesting that truckload capacity is gradually tightening, according to FreightWaves.

Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Associations told FT: “I do think the worst is behind us.”

After a pandemic-driven surge in consumer products led to a spike in trucking demand, the industry faced a “freight recession” in 2022 as inflation curbed consumer spending, reducing cargo volumes and rates.

Michael Castagnetto, president of North American surface transportation for logistics firm CH Robinson, confirmed that “rates went into freefall” in 2022. 

The FT reported that the excess trucks from the pandemic boom weren’t matched by demand, creating a capacity overhang still affecting companies.

For instance, US transporter JB Hunt missed earnings expectations for the fifth straight quarter on July 15, with a 24% drop in operating income compared to last year, citing underutilized assets and flat pricing as key factors for the low revenue.

On JB Hunt’s earnings call, its VP of Sales and Marketing said: “We still see oversupply across all modes with shippers having options on both mode and provider to move their freight. While capacity is not a top concern right now, there is an awareness that this will change at some point.”

Now, as consumer demand steadily rises, the trucking industry is optimistic about potential rate gains in 2025, especially if interest rates decrease, according to Avery Vise of FTR Transportation Intelligence. Vise predicts a more comfortable market for carriers by mid to late next year. 

However, trucking firms still face challenges, particularly with rising costs and competition. Marginal costs, excluding fuel, increased over 6% in 2023, with insurance and maintenance costs up by a third due to high interest rates, new technology, and more truck-related accidents, according to FreightWaves.

Despite these pressures, many small carriers have survived thanks to cash reserves from the pandemic freight surge, though over 25,000 firms have already exited. Small carriers, which make up over 85% of the market, have grown due to easier access to commercial licenses and digital platforms that allow drivers to find and take on freight independently.

As supply decreases and demand grows, rate improvements are expected to follow, the report concludes.  

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times,

Fifteen states have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), challenging a new rule that extends health coverage benefits under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to individuals granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Filed in the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota on Aug. 8, the lawsuit alleges that the new rule defies existing federal laws defining eligibility for public benefits.

The states, represented by their attorneys general, argue that the rule published by CMS in May unlawfully expands the definition of “lawfully present” to include DACA recipients, thus making them eligible for federally subsidized health insurance coverage.

“Illegal aliens shouldn’t get a free pass into our country,” Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who is leading the coalition of states, said in a statement.

“They shouldn’t receive taxpayer benefits when they arrive, and the Biden–Harris administration shouldn’t get a free pass to violate federal law.”

The plaintiffs contend that the CMS rule conflicts with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, which restricts federal public benefits to certain categories of “qualified aliens.”

According to court documents, “aliens who have been granted deferred action under DACA are not included in the definition of such qualified aliens.”

The plaintiffs argue that CMS’s inclusion of DACA recipients in the “lawfully present” category contradicts statutory definitions for public benefits eligibility.

The complaint states that the ACA mandates that only U.S. citizens, nationals, or aliens “lawfully present” are eligible to enroll in a qualified health plan through a subsidized exchange.

The plaintiffs assert that “DACA recipients are, by definition, unlawfully present in the United States,” and therefore should not be eligible for these benefits. They claim that CMS’s decision is “contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”

Furthermore, the plaintiffs argue that the rule places undue financial and administrative burdens on the states, particularly those with state-run ACA exchanges.

They claim that the expansion of coverage incentivizes unlawfully present individuals to remain in the United States, thereby increasing fiscal burdens on state resources.

CMS justified the rule, stating it aligns with the “broad aims of the ACA to increase access to health coverage.”

CMS also cited the economic importance of DACA recipients and their disproportionately high percentage of uninsured individuals.

The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, requesting the court to vacate the CMS rule and prevent its implementation. The states ask for the rule to be postponed pending judicial review and for the defendants to be enjoined from implementing it.

A CMS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

It’s one of the “biggest data breaches ever” and you might be exposed as a result. 

Background check company Jerico Pictures Inc., which does business under the name National Public Data was breached back hackers earlier this year, a new lawsuit alleges. 

The suit says that as a result, 2.9 billion people have had confidential data exposed and stolen, according to a new report from Mashable.

The worst part is that those impacted by this cyberattack may be unaware of their involvement since National Public Data allegedly collects data from non-public sources without consent.

The breach has exposed information on nearly 3 billion people, including full names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and personal details of both living and deceased relatives.

The Mashable report says that this previously unknown breach’s timing remains unclear.

Plaintiff Christopher Hofmann learned of it in July when an identity theft protection service alerted him that his data had been leaked on the dark web. The hackers posted the “National Public Data” database on a dark web forum in April, seeking $3.5 million from a buyer.

Last month, Mashable also reported on RockYou2024, a massive leak of nearly 10 billion users’ credentials, though it was an updated compilation of older breaches.

With billions of records exposed, the National Public Data breach could be one of the largest ever, comparable to Yahoo’s 2013 breach affecting 3 billion accounts.

Great news if you’re AT&T’s PR department though, we guess…

Via Off-Guardian.org,

The latest “Dude, eating insects is so hip and cool” article dropped this week, this time from The Guardian, and with a little twist thrown in.

It’s pushing the idea of “ento-veganism”, that is to say “vegans” who won’t eat animals…except insects.

Or, what we used to call non-vegans.

It’s just another step in the redefining of language as needs must, yet another front in the war on words.

They are shifting the meaning of veganism from saving animals to being “sustainable”. The philosophy of “ento-veganism” is apparently to “do the least harm possible”.

…except to crickets, I guess.

The greater point here is that, while the mainstream has been promoting veganism for years, that’s much more about stopping people from eating meat and dairy than it is about getting people to eat vegetables.

After all, a vegan could hypothetically be living on a small holding in the middle of nowhere and surviving entirely on their home-grown vegetables…and that’s the last thing the WEF-types want.

They’re not going to all the trouble of resetting society so we can eat organic cauliflower.

They want everyone eating GMO soy cubes dusted in cricket flour.

They want processed. They want artificial. Most importantly, they want to make it so no one can ever be self-sufficient.

And while that means promoting veganism for now, it also means slowly redefining what “veganism” actually means.

Last year, eating lab-grown meat became “vegan”…

Which, technically, you can argue from an ethical point of view.

But then this year, eating crickets is “vegan” too.

Who knows what “vegan” will mean next year?

Authored by ‘sundance’ via TheConservativeTreehouse.com,

This is the simple albeit massive question that even President Trump himself doesn’t spend time thinking about. 

Melania does.

• To stop him in 2016, the FBI and DOJ ran a comprehensive surveillance operation against his campaign.  The same people manufactured a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia. Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2017, the DOJ and Congress ran a comprehensive Special Counsel operation against his presidency.  The justification of the SC operation was to prove a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia.  The real reason for the SC operation was to cover up the FBI and DOJ completely fabricating the case of Trump colluding with Russia. Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2019, congress and the intelligence apparatus (Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson) manufactured an impeachment hoax using Ukraine, a fabricated DoD plant on the National Security Council (Vindman), the CIA (Ciaramella) and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (Attkinson).  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2020, the U.S. Intelligence Community, working through the U.S. CDC, seeded a global pandemic and quickly manufactured an election result using mail-in ballots to manufacture 81 million votes for a completely controlled candidate with dementia.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2022, Joe Biden (through AG Garland) appointed a special prosecutor (smith) to investigate, indict and convict him.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2023, the FBI and DOJ raided his home. Indicted him under claims of “national security,” then began to use Lawfare in the court system against him.  Have you forgotten?

• To stop him in 2024, the U.S. Secret Service permitted a 20-year-old with a backpack, range finder, drone and long rifle, to walk into a Trump rally, set up position on a rooftop next to the USSS operating team, and fire eight shots at less than 150 yards at President Trump’s head, wounding his ear.  Have you forgotten?

So, my question remains:

What will the Ukraine stakeholders, in congress, within NATO, within the State Dept, within the CIA and Intelligence Community and within the multinational banking and investment companies (Blackrock), do over the next few months to stop President Donald Trump from winning in November?

…She Knows!

With the 2024 election rapidly coming, it is worth revisiting the actual tariff outcome to American consumers in order to dispel the popular myths about tariffs raising prices here at home.

CPA – […] Since the Section 301 tariffs were imposed, the share of imports from China has steadily declined from 21.6% in 2017 the year prior to the tariffs to 16.5%, a decline of 5.1%. No other country has lost as much share of total U.S. import penetration over the past five years.

In terms of total import value, Mexico gained the most from the tariffs, adding $110.8 billion. Vietnam gained the second most in import value by $78.4 billion and by far gained the most of total share of U.S. imports. In 2017, Vietnam accounted for about 2% of U.S. imports at $46.5 billion. In 2022, the U.S. imported $127.5 billion in goods from Vietnam, and the share of the total nearly doubled to 3.9%. Other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia all saw significant increases in their value of imports by the U.S. (read more)

This might be the cited data you want to bookmark for later reference.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate.  The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent.   [See Below]  The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.

A couple of important points. 

First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers, and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation – 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened.

[BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release.

So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy.  We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality.  Yes folks, we have the receipts.

This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition.  No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.

America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.

That’s just the reality of the situation.  

They hate him for it… 

*  *  *

[Support CTH Research Here…

Here’s something to think about the next time you want to give someone ‘the finger’ in traffic.

An assistant Ohio prosecutor was fired from his job for allegedly biting off a man’s finger in a road rage incident last month, according to a report from the New York Post.

The man who lost a finger reportedly honked at the prosecutor, Christopher Murray, at a green light. 

The Riverside Police Department responded to reports of a fight on the US Route 35 overpass, about 210 miles from Cleveland, where one caller mentioned severe bloodshed and a bitten-off finger, according to the arrest report.

The Post report states that when law enforcement arrived, they found a 43-year-old man covered in blood standing outside his vehicle. Medical personnel confirmed that part of his middle finger had been bitten off. 

The victim’s finger was severed at the tip of the knuckle, and police later found it under his vehicle. He claimed he honked at the car in front of him when it didn’t move after the light turned green.

He “laid on his horn”, according to the Post. 

Police identified the driver as Murray, who allegedly approached the victim’s car, declared his intent to fight, and pulled open the driver’s door.

The two ended up on the ground, where the victim claimed Murray bit his finger. Murray then fled but dropped his phone, which police used to identify him. The victim was taken to the hospital for further treatment, and Murray now faces felonious assault charges.

Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David D. Hayes said he had been fired from his job as a result: “As Greene County Prosecuting Attorney, I became aware on July 8, 2024, of an ongoing criminal investigation in Montgomery County regarding my employee Christopher Murray.”

“After due consideration, I terminated Christopher Murray’s employment with the Greene County Prosecutor’s Office.”

Here is the report from WDTN:

Authored by Cara Ding via The Epoch Times,

A new audit by the New York City Comptroller’s Office found the city overpaid upstate hotels and other subcontractors by millions to shelter illegal immigrants last spring.

The audit also finds sizable undue commission payments to DocGo, a main city contractor responsible for running temporary shelters in the metro area at an annual cost of $432 million.

DocGo was one of a few city contractors tasked with developing upstate hotels-turned-shelters last May, a novel city practice that auditors deem “unusual,” and has met with strong opposition from several upstate counties, including Rockland and Orange.

Although the city’s DocGo contract has been running for over a year, the audit only looks at city payments for services rendered in the beginning months of May and June last year.

The audit covers more than 30 temporary hotels-turned-shelters managed by DocGo both inside and outside the city, including two in the town of Newburgh in Orange County.

It finds that as high as 80 percent of payments for that two-month period—at $11 million—either lack proof of services rendered or are unauthorized per the contract.

Of the questionable payments, $2.5 million were for unauthorized security, medical, and social services, $1.7 million for vacant rooms, and $230,000 for inflated food bills, according to the audit.

For example, a Newburgh hotel billed a total of $57,000 for hundreds of unoccupied rooms in early May, for which DocGo got an additional $40,000 in commissions.

At the same hotel, billed hours of security services for May 12 exceeded the contract limit by eight times—it was claimed over 20 guards were on different shifts that day to aid the hotel’s own force—and were paid without the city’s written approval.

The same Newburgh hotel also stood out as having the highest number of meals delivered during the two-month period. For example, it billed 1,288 meals for May 26, whereas only 388 meals and snacks would be needed that day based on the stated occupancy.

Hundreds of illegal immigrants or asylum seekers lined up outside of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City on June 6, 2023. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

All payments were made by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which has direct oversight of DocGo and its subcontractors.

In response to auditors, HPD said it had given undocumented verbal permission to payments beyond the scope of the contract, that it paid for vacant hotel rooms in preparation for a likely sudden influx, and that excess food was sometimes purchased and stored for future use.

The Epoch Times reached out to Mayor Eric Adams and DocGo for comment.

Upstate Hotel Visits

Auditors visited around two dozen hotels in the New York City metro area last December and found 530 rooms at eight upstate hotels housed illegal immigrants from the city.

These hotels were in the counties of Albany, Westchester, Dutchess, and Orange, where two Newburgh hotels had 122 rooms used as city shelters.

Orange County has had an effective court-ordered temporary ban against the city’s upstate hotel shelter practice since last May. Prior to the ban, the city had sent 186 illegal immigrants to the two Newburgh hotels, according to a court filing at the state supreme court.

County attorney Richard Golden told The Epoch Times in an Aug. 9 statement that he has no knowledge of new arrivals from the city to any county hotels after the ban.

The county also has an executive order in place barring New York City from establishing unlawful shelters inside the county, which withheld a legal challenge last month.

The largest portion—nearly half—of surveyed illegal immigrants during the hotel visits are from Venezuela, followed by Ecuador, Colombia, and Mauritania.

Most entered the country illegally via the southern border in Texas, with a relatively small number arriving via the states of California, Arizona, and New York, according to the audit.

During their visits to these hotels, auditors found deficiencies—such as missing microwaves and refrigerators, mold, and water damage—in 80 percent of the inspected rooms.

DocGo will manage upstate hotels for the city until December, although its shelter services inside NYC ended in May, according to the audit.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is challenging Adams in the Democratic primary for the mayoral race in the fall of 2025.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have previously discussed controversial sentences handed down in cases involving rioters on January 6th, including sentencing orders that, in my view, violate First Amendment rights. That included the case of Daniel Goodwyn, who pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. That crime would ordinarily not involve any jail time for a first offender.

However, Judge Reggie B. Walton  of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia decided that he would use the case to regulate what Goodwyn was reading and communicating with a chilling probation order. After the case was sent back by the D.C. Circuit, Walton doubled down on his extraordinary order. Now the D.C. Circuit has refused to hear an emergency appeal.

Judge Walton has attracted controversy and criticism over his public comments about former President Donald Trump and the other issues. He caused a stir in Washington after doing an interview with CNN in which he rebuked former President Donald Trump for his criticism of judges and their family members. Walton previously called Trump a “charlatan,”  and said that “I don’t think he cares about democracy, only power.”

Critics charged that Walton’s public statements ran afoul of Canon 3A(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which states:

“A judge should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.”

Walton then triggered criticism over his handling of the Goodwin case.

The case involved Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas, who pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. That is a relatively minor offense, but Walton imposed a 60-day jail sentence in June 2023 with these ongoing conditions on his online reading and speech.

Walton reportedly noted that Goodwyn spread “disinformation” during a broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on March 14, 2023 and ordered that Mr. Goodwyn’s computer be subject to “monitoring and inspection” by a probation agent to check if he spread Jan. 6 disinformation during the term of his supervised release.

After accepting the plea to a single misdemeanor, Walton expressed scorn for Goodwyn appearing “gleeful” on Jan. 6 and his “egging on” other rioters.

He asked his defense counsel “why I should feel that he doesn’t pose a risk to our democracy?”

As a condition for supervised release, DOJ pushed the monitoring conditions and found a judge who seemed eager to impose it.

The order reflects the utter impunity shown by the Justice Department in its pursuit of January 6th defendants.  Justice Department official Michael Sherwin  proudly declared in a television interview that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”

Sherwin was celebrated for his pledge to use such draconian means to send a message to others in the country. (Sherwin has left the Justice Department and is now a partner at Kobre & Kim).

Walton was rebuked by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a surveillance order of Goodwin to detect any spreading of “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discussed concerns over the cases like Goodwyn’s and their implications for free speech. I participated in the coverage on January 6th and criticized President Trump’s speech while he was giving it. I disagreed with the legal claims made to oppose certification. However, the “shock and awe” campaign of the Justice Department, in my view, has trampled on free speech rights in cases that range from Goodwyn to the prosecutions of Trump himself.

Many of us were relieved when appellate judges (Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Bradley Garcia) rebuked Walton and held that “[t]he district court plainly erred in imposing the computer-monitoring condition without considering whether it was ‘reasonably related’ to the relevant sentencing factors and involved ‘no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to achieve the purposes behind the sentencing.”

They sent the case back but, to the surprise of few, Judge Walton proceeded to double down on the monitoring while implausibly declaring “I don’t want to chill anyone’s First Amendment rights.”

For some reason, Walton believes that barring an individual from reviewing and engaging in political speech does not “chill” his First Amendment rights.

Most of us were appalled by the riot and the underlying views of figures like Goodwyn, who is a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys. He was rightfully arrested and should be punished for his conduct. The question is not the legitimacy of punishment, but the scope of that punishment.

Prosecutor Brian Brady detailed how the Justice Department has in place a new system using artificial intelligence to monitor the reading and statements of citizens like Goodwyn. The Justice Department brushed aside the free speech concerns since Goodwyn remains under court supervision, even though he pleaded guilty to only a single misdemeanor.

Brady described a virtual AI driven thought program. The justification was that Goodwyn refused to abandon his extreme political views:

“Throughout the pendency of Goodwyn’s case, he has made untruthful statements regarding his conduct and the events of the day, he has used websites and social media to place targets on police officers who defended the Capitol, and he has used these platforms to publish and view extremist media. Imposing the requested [monitoring] conditions would protect the public from further dissemination of misinformation… [and] provide specific deterrence from him committing similar crimes.”

So now federal courts can use a single misdemeanor for unlawful entry in a federal building for less than 40 seconds to “protect the public from … dissemination of misinformation” on the government.

That was all Walton needed to hear. Relying on a record supplied by the Justice Department, Walton said in the hearing that Goodwyn is still engaging “in the same type of rhetoric” that fomented the Jan. 6 violence. He added that he was concerned about Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”

Walton merely added the DOJ record to his renewed sentencing conditions.

Defense counsel then returned to the D.C. Circuit to seek an emergency stay but Judges Florence Pan and Bradley Garcia denied the motion, holding that “Appellant has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal” to prevent further “false narratives.”

That drew a pointed dissent from Judge Gregory Katsas who stated:

Daniel Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1). Goodwyn entered the Capitol and remained inside for a total of 36 seconds. He did not use force to enter, did not assault police officers, and neither took nor damaged any government property. When police instructed Goodwyn to leave the building, he did so.

…

On appeal, this Court vacated the condition … We further instructed the district court, if it wished to impose a new computer- monitoring condition on remand, to “explain its reasoning,” to “develop the record in support of its decision,” and to ensure that the condition complies with section 3583(d) and with the Constitution.

The district court reimposed the same condition on remand. In an oral hearing, the court said that Goodwyn had made statements on social media that “can be, it seems to me, construed as” urging a repeat of January 6, particularly “on the heels of another election.”  In its written order, the court elaborated on what it called Goodwyn’s “concerning online activity.”  This included posting exhortations to “#StopTheSteal!” and “#FightForTrump,” soliciting donations to fund his travel to Washington, posing for a livestream while inside the Capitol, confirming his presence there by text, and tweeting opinions such as: “They WANT a revolution. They’re proving our point. They don’t represent us. They hate us.” Id. at 3–4. In addressing what the court described as Goodwyn pushing “false narratives” about January 6 after-the-fact, the court, quoting from the government’s brief, led with the fact Goodwyn “sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel.” Id. at 4. Finally, in concluding that computer monitoring was reasonably related to Goodwyn’s offense, the court reasoned that monitoring would prevent Goodwyn from raising funds to support potential future crimes and would separate him “from extremist media, rehabilitating him.”

Judge Katsas stated that Goodwyn was likely to prevail on the merits and that his colleagues allowed the denial of First Amendment rights to continue in the interim.

The Walton order reflects the erosion of support for the First Amendment, even on our courts. It is reminiscent of our previous discussion of how courts have criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of the crackdown on free speech in the United Kingdom.

Here is the D.C. Circuit order: United States v. Goodwyn