Month: January 2025

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

There has been a lot reported in recent days about the return of currency wars. With Trump 2.0 about to begin, let’s review his last term and what to expect in the second.

Trump badly bungled his transition after first being elected president in 2016. He was not ready with a long list of loyal appointees. Many of his senior appointments such as Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and John Kelly as Chief of Staff secretly disliked Trump but accepted their roles as so-called “adult supervision” around the supposedly reckless Trump.

They thwarted his agenda. That backstabbing came on top of the large number of Obama holdovers in the Deep State who saw themselves as a “resistance” movement.

Trump is doing a better job of preparing for a second term as president, but the resistance is not sitting still either. As reported in The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and other outlets, Trump is working on a secret plan to devalue the U.S. dollar. The goal would be to cheapen U.S. exports and thereby help the U.S. balance of trade and create exported-related jobs.

But critics say that this will only increase U.S. inflation as Americans have to pay more for their imported goods using cheaper dollars. The critics also say that other countries will retaliate against the U.S. by cheapening their own currencies (that’s the essence of a currency war) and no country will be any further ahead. In fact, the entire world will be worse off.

Rules of (Currency) War

Before looking more closely at what’s actually going on, some basics about a currency war should be explained.

The first rule is that the world is not always in a currency war. The periods from 1944 to 1971 (the original Bretton Woods era) and from 1987 to 2010 (the period of the Washington Consensus) were times of currency peace. This contrasts with 1921-1936 (Currency War I), 1967-1987 (Currency War II), and the current period since 2010 (Currency War III).

The second rule is that when we are in a currency war, they can last for fifteen years or longer. It comes as no surprise that the currency war that commenced in 2010 is still going strong 14 years later in 2024. And that points to another key aspect of this debate.

The currency war being written about today by the media is not a new currency war. It’s the same one that has been going on since 2010. We’re simply in a new phase or a new battle.

It is true that cheapening your currency can import inflation. Sometimes that’s a legitimate policy goal if your country has been suffering from deflation. That’s obviously not the case in the U.S. today.

It’s also true that cheapening your currency can export deflation as trading partners pay less for your goods. That’s what China was doing to the entire world from 1994 to 2010 and that’s why the U.S. launched a currency war in 2010 – to fight back against disinflation and borderline deflation caused by cheap Chinese goods.

Currency wars can also shift jobs overseas and destroy domestic manufacturing as the terms of trade shift based on changing currency values. Retaliation is always waiting right around the corner in any currency war. The U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in August 2011, which was consistent with the U.S. goal of trying to import inflation.

But Europe struck back, and the EUR/USD cross-rate crashed from $1.60 to $1.04 as a result. So, it is correct that no one wins a currency war, and everyone is damaged in the process due to volatility, uncertainty, and the costs of conducting the war.

Trump’s Plan: Currency Peace

So, are the critics right that Trump has a secret plan to devalue the dollar? And are they right that this new stage in the currency war will bring inflation and hurt the U.S. economy?

The critics are wrong and don’t understand what Trump is actually trying to do. Trump is not trying to start a currency war; he’s trying to end it once and for all.

In the first place, no president has the power to unilaterally devalue the dollar. That might have been possible under the gold standard or some standard of fixed exchange rates, but that has not been the state of the world since 1973.

Exchange rates fluctuate based on a number of factors including interest rates, industrial growth, exchange controls, central bank interventions, capital flows, tax rates and many other macroeconomic variables. But the idea that the president can just wave his hand and devalue the dollar is false.

Far from the reckless, inflationary process the media claim, Trump’s actual plan is based on the highly successful model developed by James Baker for Ronald Reagan and implemented in the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987.

After the severe economic recession of 1982 and Paul Volcker’s policy of moving interest rates to 20%, inflation in the U.S. was finally reigned in. Inflation dropped from 13.5% in 1980, to 6.1% in 1982, and then 3.2% in 1983. Investment in the U.S. went on a tear. U.S. real growth was 16% from 1983 to 1986. Everyone wanted dollars to invest in the U.S. and the dollar boomed reaching an all-time high in 1985.

Finally, the Reagan administration decided the U.S. dollar was too strong and was hurting U.S. exports and jobs. Treasury Secretary James Baker convened a meeting of the finance ministers of France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the U.S. at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The purpose was not to fight a currency war. The purpose was to create order in currency markets out of the chaos that had prevailed since 1973.

The parties reached a joint agreement that would devalue the U.S. dollar in an orderly fashion versus the French Franc, Japanese Yen, UK pounds sterling, and the German Deutschemark. Once the targeted level for the dollar was achieved, the parties would use their best efforts, including market intervention as needed to maintain those levels within narrow bands.

A separate meeting in Paris at the Louvre in 1987 agreed that the devaluation phase was over, and the dollar would be maintained at the new parities. This was not currency war; it was currency peace achieved by agreement and implemented in a cooperative fashion. The Louvre Accord (this time including the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Japan and Canada) ushered in a period of global prosperity that lasted twenty years until the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

Trump’s goal is to repeat the success of the Plaza and Louvre Accords. Trump’s advisor on this is Robert Lighthizer, who is one of the most brilliant financial minds around and was Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (2017-2021).

Lighthizer was also USTR for Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985 so he’s a veteran of prior currency wars and was in the administration around the time the Plaza Accord was being developed. Lighthizer is the perfect individual to help Trump achieve the kind of success that Reagan and Baker had in the 1980s.

The media are trying to portray Trump as reckless when in fact he’s proposing something highly beneficial for U.S. jobs and U.S. industry. Don’t be fooled by false claims of new currency wars. Trump is trying to achieve a new era of currency stability and lasting prosperity.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 3 issued an executive order directing state agencies to recommend actions to target ultra-processed foods and related health concerns in the state.

As Jane Yang reports for The Epoch Times, The governor’s office said that such foods are known to carry health risks and that Newsom’s actions are “designed to support affordable, healthy living and reduce the growing impact of chronic illnesses on Californians.”

“The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said in a statement.

“We’re going to work with the industry, consumers and experts to crack down on ultra-processed foods, and create a healthier future for every Californian.”

The executive order asks the California Department of Public Health to provide recommendations to the governor’s office “regarding potential action to limit the harms associated with ‘ultra-processed foods’ and food ingredients that pose a health risk to individuals” by April 1, 2025.

It suggested that one of the potential actions could include warning labels for certain foods.

The executive order also asks the California Department of Social Services to provide recommendations regarding “actions that the State can take to reduce the purchase of soda, candy, other ultra-processed foods and/or foods with synthetic food dye or other additives.”

The governor also asked the California Department of Health Care Services to report by April 1 on the feasibility of requiring or encouraging Medi-Cal managed care plans and California hospitals to use their certain funds to “enhance access to fresh, healthy foods,” and “otherwise promote public health at the local level.”

The executive order cited the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest updates to school nutrition standards and also asked the State Board of Education and the California Department of Education to identify by Oct. 1, “areas where California may adopt higher standards for healthy school meals.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for his upcoming administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long criticized ultra-processed foods.

A Nov. 22, 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service noted that there has been “increased attention by researchers and policymakers on the production, labeling, and marketing of ultra-processed foods.” However, there is no definition of what constitutes ultra-processed foods in U.S. laws or regulations.

According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 73 percent of adults 20 years old and older are overweight or obese, and 38 percent of children and youth between 12 and 19 years old are pre-diabetic.

“The widespread prevalence of nutrition-related chronic health conditions continues to be a major public health issue in the United States,” states the department in the report.

Last September, Newsom signed legislation, Assembly Bill 2316, that bans public schools from serving foods containing six synthetic food dyes: Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, and Green 3. The law will go into effect at the end of December 2027.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

2024 was definitely one of the wildest years that any of us have ever experienced.  During the past 12 months, Donald Trump was convicted by a New York jury, he was almost assassinated, he won the presidential election, and he was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.  Nobody has ever had a year quite like that.  Of course 2024 was also a year of war.  Israel battled Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, the government of Syria was overthrown by radical Islamists, long-range missiles provided by NATO started raining down on targets deep inside Russia, and Russian forces stormed even deeper into eastern Ukraine.  2024 also brought us Hurricane Helene, a “Great American eclipse”, and “the comet of the century”.  

Now here we are at the end of the year, and we are being told to brace ourselves for a bird flu pandemic.

I have a feeling that the year ahead is going to be absolutely nuts, but for a moment I wanted to look back at the crazy year that we just went through.  

The following are 44  statistics from 2024 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 Over 155 million votes were cast in the 2024 presidential election.  Donald Trump’s win in that election capped what many consider to be the greatest political comeback in U.S. history.

#2 Nearly 11 billion dollars was spent during the 2024 election cycle.  That is the most money ever spent on an election by a very wide margin.

#3 1.2 billion dollars was spent on political ads in the state of Pennsylvania alone.

#4 Prior to the election, one survey found that 79 percent of Americans believed that the nation was on the wrong track.

#5 The U.S. government is currently $36,144,183,375,647.43 in debt.

#6 If our politicians keep spending money at the current rate, the U.S. government will be 51 trillion dollars in debt four years from now.

#7 Total U.S. household debt is nearing 18 trillion dollars.

#8 The number of shoplifting incidents per year in the United States is up 93 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels.

#9 On a single day in December, Joe Biden announced that he was commuting the prison sentences of nearly 1,500 criminals and he issued full pardons to 39 others.

#10 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 37 percent of Americans are having trouble even paying their most basic bills.

#11 According to Bank of America, almost a third of all households “spend more than 95% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, groceries and utility bills”.

#12 The price of orange juice is up 327 percent over the last 3 years.

#13 The average household in Miami spends 327 dollars during a single trip to the grocery store.

#14 It now takes more than $100,000 a year for a typical U.S. household to live “the American Dream” in all 50 states, and in 29 U.S. states it takes more than $150,000 a year.

#15 For the average person, it now costs 4.4 million dollars to live “the American Dream” over the course of a lifetime.

#16 Thanks to rampant inflation, the average American now believes that it takes an income of $270,000 a year in order to be “financially successful”.

#17 Overall, U.S. home prices are up more than 1,000 percent since 1974.

#18 Only 10 percent of Americans believe that becoming a homeowner is “easy or somewhat easy”.

#19 37 percent of U.S. cardholders have already maxed out at least one credit card.

#20 The amount of money that Americans owe on their credit cards is twice as large as the GDP of the 100 poorest nations on the entire planet combined.

#21 30 percent of all student loan borrowers have “gone without food or medicine due to their monthly bills”.

#22 At one food bank in New Jersey, demand has actually quadrupled since the peak of the pandemic.

#23 An all-time record high 770,000 people are homeless in the United States, and that number grew by 18 percent in just one year which is also an all-time record high.

#24 We are being told that more than 3 million Americans are now living in their vehicles.

#25 The number of job openings in the United States has fallen by about 4 million since 2021.

#26 U.S. retailers have announced 7,100 store closures in 2024.

#27 For the 12 months ending June 30th, the number of business bankruptcy filings was up more than 40 percent compared to the previous 12 months.

#28 An office building in Manhattan that sold for 332 million dollars in 2006 sold for just  8.5 million dollars in 2024.

#29 Half of all workers in the U.S. make less than $43,222.81 a year.

#30 According to Bank of America, from 2019 to 2024 there was a 10 percent jump in those that are living paycheck to paycheck.

#31 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 29 percent of all U.S. households were one person households in 2024.

#32 40 percent of Americans report feeling lonely at least some of the time.

#33 30 percent of Americans have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives.

#34 The market capitalization of Fartcoin is currently 973 million dollars.  Meanwhile, the market capitalization of Office Depot is just 680 million dollars.

#35 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million people that were not born in the United States are now living here.

#36 The federal government has admitted that there are approximately “425,000 convicted criminals living in the U.S. illegally”.

#37 According to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, the total damage caused by Hurricane Helene in his state exceeds 50 billion dollars.

#38 According to the official website of the GAO, Congress had appropriated a total of 174 billion dollars for the war in Ukraine as of April.

#39 According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, there are 56 active military conflicts raging around the world right now.  That is the highest number that we have seen since World War II.

#40 According to the United Nations, there are over 2 billion people that eat insects as part of their normal diets right now.

#41 It is being projected that the market for insect protein in the United States will be valued at 274 billion dollars in 2031.

#42 Sperm counts have fallen by more than 50 percent since 1973.  If this trend continues, soon we will not be able to produce enough viable offspring and the human population of this planet will plummet dramatically.

#43 Our brains are slowly but surely filling up with plastic.  One team of scientists discovered that human brain samples from 2024 had concentrations of microplastics that were 50 percent higher than human brain samples from 2016.

#44 If the amount of plastic in our brains continues to rise at a rate of 50 percent every 8 years, 28 percent of our brains will be plastic 80 years from now and everyone will be dead.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The terrorist who killed 14 people and hurt 35 more in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day prepositioned bombs that used an extraordinarily rare explosive compound, senior law enforcement officials have told NBC News. The two devices didn’t detonate, but authorities are scrambling to learn how Shamsud-Din Jabbar was able to incorporate a type of explosive that has never before been used in a terror attack in America or Europe.   

At around 3 am on Wednesday, Texas-born Houston resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar used a pickup truck to plow a path of carnage through a crowd of New Year’s partiers on Bourbon Street, before police killed him in a shootout. The 42-year-old US Army veteran’s plan had another dimension of death that he failed to execute: The FBI and ATF say he’d built two bombs that were rigged to be detonated with a transmitter that was found in his rented Ford F-150 truck.

The improvised explosive devices were placed in recreational coolers that Jabbar placed on Bourbon Street; that action was recorded on security cameras. Neither bomb exploded, and investigators are still trying to determine whether that fortunate fact springs from a design flaw, a malfunction or Jabbar’s failing to attempt to trigger the devices. 

The officials who told NBC News about the rare explosive apparently stopped short of naming it, but emphasized that it was the first time it had been used in the United States, and had likewise never been used by terrorists anywhere in Europe. Investigators are now trying to determine how Jabbar learned about the extraordinary compound and how he was able to manufacture it. 

Given the particulars of his military service, it’s unlikely Jabbar’s novel bomb-making knowledge was gained during his time in uniform. “Jabbar was in the regular Army as a Human Resource Specialist (42A) and Information Technology (IT) Specialist (25B) from March 2007 until January 2015 and then in the Army Reserve as an IT Specialist (25B) from January 2015 until July 2020,” a Pentagon official told Task & Purpose. “He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. He held the rank of Staff Sergeant at the end of service.”

The pickup truck that Jabbar used to murder 14 people and wound dozens more was adorned with an ISIS flag. Law enforcement officials say that he posted videos to Facebook hours before his attack. Seemingly created for the benefit of his family, the videos showed him pledging allegiance to the Salafist terror group as he was driving. Remarkably, he said he’d considered attacking his family and friends, but rejected the idea out of concern that ensuing news coverage would fail to properly focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”  After he was killed, police found he’d been armed with an AR-15 and a handgun. 

Before launching his attack on innocent revelers, Jabbar set his short-term rental house ablaze, but “the fire burned to a point that it extinguished itself prior to spreading to other rooms,” federal investigators say. The arson stopped short despite Jabbar having apparently positioned accelerants throughout the house. The house on Mandeville Street in New Orleans held bomb-making materials and what police believe is a homemade rifle silencer.  Similar bomb materials were found at Jabbar’s house on Crescent Peak Drive in Houston, in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood on the city’s north side. 

In its Friday statement, the FBI said it had brought an additional 200 personnel to New Orleans to boost the investigation, noting the bureau had received nearly 1,000 tips and was evaluating “terabytes worth of video and other data collected by street cameras monitored by the New Orleans Real Time Crime Center.” 

While the FBI earlier suspected that Jabbar had accomplices, the bureau now says otherwise. “We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack other than Shamsud-Din Jabbar,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, on Thursday. 

Jabbar’s younger brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, told the New York Times that his older brother’s mass murder wasn’t an exemplification of Islam. “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”

Via Eurasianet.org

• Russia’s accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian airliner has caused tension between the two countries.

• Kazakhstan is overseeing the crash investigation and is trying to remain neutral despite pressure from both sides.

• The incident highlights Kazakhstan’s delicate balancing act as it tries to maintain good relations with both Russia and Azerbaijan, both key economic partners.

Kazakhstan is treading delicately as it strives to keep two feuding neighbors happy amid a row over Russia’s accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian airliner, which crashed outside the Kazakh city of Aktau. Kazakh officials have little to gain and a lot to lose as they oversee the crash investigation.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia remain fraught as Azerbaijani officials await the results of the official crash investigation. Kazakhstan’s vice minister of transportation, Talgat Lastayev, announced December 30 that preliminary findings are expected to be released in late January.

Azerbaijani-Russian tension revolves around the Kremlin’s reluctance to admit Russian air defenses brought the plane down on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 individuals on board. Kazakhstan got caught in the middle because the stricken jet, which had been bound for Grozny in the Russian region of Chechnya, crossed the Caspian Sea to make a crash landing in Aktau. That fact thrust Kazakhstan into a key role in an investigation in which the principal actors – Azerbaijan and Russia – have starkly differing agendas.

In the face of Russian silence over culpability for the crash, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev has pressed for a transparent probe. At the same time, he has accused Kremlin of trying to cover up its responsibility for the tragedy, pointing out that Russian officials initially offered several “absurd” alternate theories before evidence of the shoot-down came to light. Government-friendly news outlets in Baku even accused Russia of prompting the jet to attempt a landing in Aktau in the hope that it would crash into the Caspian, thus erasing all evidence of Russian involvement. Russia’s approach so far suggests the Kremlin is far from eager to see all the facts come out.

Ultimately, some of the 29 survivors have provided testimony substantiating a shoot-down, and the intact rear section of the plane shows signs of being hit by anti-aircraft flak. The black boxes have been recovered and sent to Brazil for analysis.

Despite their country’s central position in the investigation, Kazakh officials have tried to remain aloof from the festering controversy. In the first hours after the crash, Kazakh officials appeared to amplify alternative theories pushed by Russia to explain the tragedy, including the since discredited claim that an oxygen tank inside the aircraft exploded. Kazakh officials also initially backed a Russian proposal that a CIS commission handle the investigation, which would have given Moscow expanded influence over the probe’s scope and final report.

As evidence of a shoot-down, including survivor accounts, continued to mount, Kazakhstan has adopted a decidedly neutral tone. During the last days of December, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has had telephone conversations with both his Azerbaijani and Russian counterparts, Aliyev and Vladimir Putin, according to the presidential press service, which was notably silent on the substance of those discussions.

State-controlled media in Kazakhstan has largely refrained from reporting on what caused the crash. The leitmotif of official publications is that Kazakhstan is making every effort to find out what really happened. In recent days, Kazakh officials have been scrupulous in saying their actions are guided by international guidelines. For example, Transport Minister Marat Karabayev cited the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Chicago Convention in explaining why the crashed jet’s black boxes were sent to Brazil, action that seemed sure to rankle Russia, given the Kremlin’s apparent desire to suppress evidence of a shoot-down.

“Kazakhstan stands for objectivity in investigation of air disaster,” stated a December 30 commentary published by the government newspaper Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, quoting a Kazakh political scientist, Eduard Poletaev.

“The decision to send on-board recorders for decoding to Brazil is a manifestation of the independence, sovereignty and impartiality of Kazakhstan.”

Independent media outlets in Kazakhstan have covered the controversy over the crash’s cause. Accounts offered by Orda.kz, for example, have tended to highlight the assertions made by Aliyev and Western officials supporting the notion of Russian responsibility for the tragedy.

The reasons why Kazakh leaders are eager to avoid angering either Azerbaijan or Russia over their handling of the investigation are clear: both countries are key economic partners for Kazakhstan, and any hiccup in relations can have extensive financial repercussions for Astana.

One source of leverage for Russia is the pipeline that connects oil produced in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field to export markets via a pipeline and oil terminal at the Russian port of Novorossiysk under the auspices of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The pipeline handles about 80 percent of Tengiz oil exports.

Russia, as a means of either influencing Kazakh decision-making or expressing its displeasure with Astana’s actions, could disrupt pipeline operations. “Moscow can stop the transportation of Kazakh oil to Europe under some pretext such as the repair of the CPC infrastructure, as they did during the summer of 2022,” Talgat Ismagambetov, a political scientist at the Almaty Institute of Philosophy, Politics and Religion, said in an interview. In such an instance, “Kazakhstan could suffer big losses again, and this would be a warning [or] punishment from Russia.”

At this point, Kazakhstan may have even more to lose by alienating Azerbaijan. The two countries are key transit nodes for East-West trade via the Middle Corridor route. In addition, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are partners in a developing consortium to ship solar- and wind-generated power to Western markets. 

“For Astana, Baku is a very important partner, and in the future, an even more important partner, especially in terms of the joint development of the Trans-Caspian route,” Ismagambetov said.

While Russia maintains its silence about the investigation, Aliyev has voiced approval of Kazakhstan’s actions so far, describing the Kazakh emergency response to the crash and outpouring of public sympathy for the victims as “what true friendship and brotherhood look like.” 

Tokayev’s diplomatic background has proven beneficial in helping Kazakhstan negotiate a tricky situation so far, according to Ismagambetov. “Tokaev has acted subtly because he is a professional diplomat and this is his instinct,” he said.

 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Less than a year before the end of World War II, then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drew up a nightmarish plan to punish postwar Germany.

After the serial 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II — along with the failed Versailles peace treaty of 1919 — the Allies in World War II wanted to ensure there would never again be an aggressive Germany powerful enough to invade its neighbors.

When the so-called Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the press in September 1944, at first it was widely praised.

After all, it would supposedly render Germany incapable of ever starting another world war in Europe.

Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany.

Postwar Germany would have resembled something akin to the ancient, pre-civilized frontier that the first-century AD historian Tacitus wrote about in his Germania.

The plan would have ensured that within six months of Germany’s surrender, all of its industrial plants and equipment were to be dismantled.

The Ruhr, the renowned center of European industrial strength, was to be permanently neutered, starved of its energy, raw materials, and infrastructure.

After the war, the plan demanded virtual complete disarmament of Germany. Its once-feared armed forces were to be rendered nonexistent.

There were also promised massive reductions in Germany’s borders. Various countries, such as the Soviet Union, Poland, and France, were to be given large slices of the old Third Reich.

Future German security would hinge only on the power and goodwill of the victorious United States and its allies.

When the dying Nazi Party got wind of the plan, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, had a field day. He screamed to Germans that they were all doomed to oblivion if they lost the war, even growing opponents of the Nazi Party.

Even many Americans were aghast at the plan.

Gen. George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, warned that its mere mention had galvanized German troops to fight to the end, increasing American casualties as they closed in on the German homeland.

Ex-President Herbert Hoover blasted the plan as inhumane. He feared mass starvation of the German people if they were reduced to a premodern, rural peasantry.

But once the victorious allies occupied a devastated Germany, witnessed its moonscape ruined by massive bombing and house-to-house fighting, and discovered that their “ally,” Russia’s Joseph Stalin, was ruthless and hellbent on turning all of Europe communist, the Truman administration backed off the plan.

There is a tragic footnote to the aborted horrors of the Morgenthau Plan. Currently, Germany is doing to itself almost everything Morgenthau once dreamed of.

Its green delusions have shut down far too many of its nuclear, coal, and gas electrical generation plants.

Erratic solar and wind “sustainable energy” means that power costs are four times higher than on average in the United States.

Once-dominant European giants Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes are now bleeding customers and profits. Their own government’s green and electric vehicle mandates ensure they will become globally uncompetitive.

The German economy actually shrank in 2023. And the diminished Ruhr can no longer save the German economy from its own utopian politicians.

The German military is all but disarmed and short thousands of recruits.

German industries do not produce enough ammunition, tanks, ships, and aircraft to equip even its diminished army, navy, and air force.

Just a few hundred miles from Germany in Ukraine, more than a million Ukrainians and Russians are dead, wounded, or missing — in the costliest European battle since the horrors of Stalingrad.

Yet the once postwar German dynamo nation now lacks the manpower, munitions, and money to aid Ukraine in any meaningful way against an ascendant Russian invader.

More than 1 million immigrants have entered the country illegally, the vast majority of them from the Middle East. Many of them are hostile to European values and culture, as recent terrorist killings have shown. One-fifth of the population was not born in Germany.

The shrinking German people are growing angry, divided, and depressed. Their 1.4 percent fertility rate is one of the lowest in the Western world.

A tragic irony now abounds.

After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation.

But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan — as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders.

Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders — without a United States-led NATO.

Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing — and destroying — itself.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The European Union may establish asylum return centers outside its borders as soon as March, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson revealed on Thursday during a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Vienna.

The proposal, expected from the EU’s new migration commissioner, aims to stem the flow of irregular migrants who remain within the bloc despite having their asylum applications rejected.

Kristersson is promoting the idea of “return hubs,” which would house individuals whose asylum applications have been denied, while they await deportation. He believes the centers will deter people with slim chances of success from seeking asylum in the EU.

“It is a way of saying we do not accept that there is no difference between a refusal and a yes,” Kristersson told the TT news agency.

“It will also reduce the driving forces if you know you have very little chance.”

According to EU data, only around 20 percent of migrants who are denied asylum actually leave EU territory. Kristersson says this undermines the system and creates “completely different concerns” as many end up going underground, working in the gig economy with others resorting to a life of crime.

Kristersson cited Italy’s agreement with Albania as a model of how third-country processing could work. Under that pact, men from countries deemed “safe” by the Italian government have been transferred to Albania to await the outcome of their asylum applications, with certain exceptions for vulnerable individuals.

The Sweden Democrats are calling for the possible revocation of residence permits for Syrians following Bashar al-Assad’s fall, asserting that refugee status should be temporary. https://t.co/FAmKzGI8of

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 9, 2024

However, Italian courts have repeatedly blocked the measure, setting Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration on a collision course with what Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has called “left-wing activist judges.

The Italian judiciary cited EU law stipulating that entire countries must be deemed safe, not just parts of them. This legal snag has effectively halted transfers to Albania pending a judgment from the European Court of Justice.

A referral to the European Court of Justice on the Italian government’s ability to declare countries “safe” for the return of illegal migrants could see the Italy-Albania offshore processing deal delayed until next summer. https://t.co/iZghCnyX9S

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 12, 2024

At a press conference with Nehammer, Kristersson noted that Sweden is set to record its lowest number of asylum seekers since 1996. He attributed this drop partly to changing migration routes within Europe, as well as policy shifts.

“After an extensive restructuring of our policy, we have reduced the numbers,” Kristersson said.

During the migrant crisis of 2015, more than 162,000 refugees sought asylum in Sweden. By 2024, that figure is projected to hover around 10,000. Still, Kristersson acknowledged that the initial decline largely began in 2016, when the EU tightened its external borders, and that many of his government’s new laws have yet to take effect.

The Swedish government is tasking authorities with enhancing efforts to investigate and address cases of refugees vacationing in their home countries, aiming to protect the legitimacy of the asylum system. https://t.co/TyymnS7KHW

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 6, 2024

Several groups including Amnesty International have raised concerns that the proposed return hubs are incompatible with both EU and international law, with Kristersson conceding the plan presents “difficult questions” but stressing that doing nothing about the issue is not an option.

Read more here…

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

China has dramatically increased its cyberattacks against the United States since Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

From espionage to intellectual property theft to sabotage, here is a look at 20 of the largest Chinese cyberattacks against the United States in the last 10 years.

August 2014: Community Health Systems Hack 

A state-backed hacking group in China—referred to as APT18—launched an advanced malware attack against Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, one of the nation’s largest hospital health care services.

The group succeeded in exfiltrating the sensitive personal information of more than 4.5 million patients, including their Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, names, and birth dates.

(Left) FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell addresses the media from the National Hurricane Center in Miami on May 31, 2023. (Right) United States Postal Service trucks in Farmingdale, N.Y., on April 12, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images, Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

November 2014: NOAA and USPS Hacks

State-backed hackers in China launched malware and DDOS attacks against several government entities, including the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Office of Personnel Management.

The personal information of more than 800,000 employees at USPS, as well as that of customers who had called customer services, was exfiltrated. NOAA officials reported that they were immediately able to restore service to four affected websites but had not reported the incident for months, which was a violation of U.S. policy.

The entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building that houses the Office of Personnel Management headquarters in Washington on June 5, 2015. U.S. investigators have said that at least four million current and former federal employees might have had their personal information stolen by Chinese hackers. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

June 2015: Office of Personnel Management Hack

The federal government’s primary hiring agency was hacked by state-backed cyber actors in China. More than a million users’ personal information, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, were stolen.

Those affected included current and former federal employees and contractors, as well as applicants for federal jobs and individuals listed on background check forms.

The attack was the third and largest of its kind in a matter of weeks and appeared to have specifically targeted data and applications related to U.S. security clearances. As such, the data stolen also included the financial histories and family information of those undergoing federal background checks at the time.

A Belgian plant of the U.S. chemicals group DuPont de Nemours in Mechelenon on April 13, 2004. Herwig Vergult/AFP via Getty Images

January 2016: Dupont Chemical Hack 

Pangang Group, a Chinese state-owned steel manufacturer, was charged by the U.S. government for stealing trade secrets from DuPont, a major chemical corporation. The group had obtained access to information on the U.S. company’s computers.

Pangang worked with unidentified hackers to purchase trade secrets from a long-time DuPont employee, who stole the company’s method for manufacturing titanium dioxide, a white pigment used in many applications, including semiconductors and solar panel cells.

The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) logo is seen in during the International Paris Air Show in Le Bourget on June 25, 2017. Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

April 2017: FAA, NASA Spearfishing Campaign 

Song Wu, an employee for China’s state-owned aerospace and defense corporation AVIC, allegedly began a multiyear spearfishing campaign against targets in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Army.

Wu was later charged in 2024 for creating email accounts impersonating U.S.-based researchers and engineers to obtain restricted software used for aerospace engineering and computational fluid dynamics.

The U.S. government alleged that the software obtained could be used to develop advanced tactical missiles and aerodynamic designs for other weapons.

A sign depicting the four members of China’s military indicted on charges of hacking into Equifax Inc. and stealing data from millions of Americans is on display shortly after Attorney General William Barr held a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Feb. 10, 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

May 2017: Equifax Hack

Chinese military hackers breached the Equifax credit bureau in the largest-known theft of personal information.

More than 145 million Americans’ sensitive personal data, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers, were stolen. The hackers also obtained roughly 200,000 American credit card numbers.

The hackers routed traffic through approximately 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries to obfuscate their true location.

The United States later indicted four members of China’s military for the hack in 2020. As in most such cases, the hackers remain in China and have never been arrested.

January 2018: Navy Personnel, Technology Hacks

Chinese state-backed hackers allegedly compromised the computers of a U.S. Navy contractor and stole a large amount of highly sensitive data on undersea warfare, including U.S. plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile known as “Sea Dragon” for use on submarines, The Washington Post reported.

The hacked material also included signals and sensor data, information about submarine cryptographic systems, and electronic warfare documents from the Navy’s primary submarine development unit.

A sign depicting Chinese government hackers who allegedly targeted scores of companies in a dozen countries, at a press conference about Chinese hacking at the Justice Department in Washington on Dec. 20, 2018. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

June 2019: APT10 Utility Spearfishing Campaign 

APT10, a hacking group directed by China’s Ministry of State Security, began a massive spearfishing and hacking campaign targeting U.S. aerospace, engineering, and telecommunications firms.

By using stolen passwords and malware, the hackers were able to steal records related to 130,000 Navy personnel.

Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest builder of U.S. military ships and nuclear-powered submarines, acknowledged that it was targeted in the attack, and that computer systems owned by one of its subsidiaries were discovered connecting to a foreign server controlled by APT10.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael R. Sherwin speaks to the media about charges and arrests related to a computer intrusion campaign tied to the Chinese government by a group called APT 41, at the Department of Justice in Washington on Sept. 16, 2020. Tasos Katopodis-Pool/Getty Images

August 2019: APT41 Hacks Revealed 

China-based hacking group APT41 penetrated and spied on global tech, communications, and health care providers for China’s Ministry of State Security.

The group deployed rootkits, granting itself hard-to-detect control over computers, by compromising millions of copies of a utility called CCleaner. APT41 also hijacked a software update pushed by Asus to reach 1 million computers, targeting a small subset of those users.

A nurse prepares a dose of the Moderna vaccine against COVID-19, donated by the United States, at a vaccination center in San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala, on July 15, 2021. Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images

May 2020: Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Espionage 

Chinese regime-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna as it conducted research to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.

The effort involved conducting reconnaissance in order to steal proprietary research needed to develop a vaccine for the disease, which Moderna received nearly half a billion dollars to create from the U.S. government.

A U.S. indictment alleged that the China-based hackers probed public websites for vulnerabilities and scouted accounts of key personnel after gaining access to a network used by Moderna.

Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency, looks at a hearing with the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington on May 14, 2021. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

February 2021: Chinese Access to NSA Hacking Tools Revealed

Israeli researchers discovered that Chinese spies had stolen and deployed code first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to support their hacking operations.

The NSA hacking tools were leaked online in 2017. Still, cyber investigators found evidence that the Chinese communist-backed APT31 hacking group had deployed an identical tool as early as 2014. This suggests that China-based hackers had persistent access to the nation’s best national security cyber tools for years.

People walk by a Microsoft store in New York City on July 26, 2023. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

March 2021: Silk Typhoon 

A cyber-espionage group associated with China’s Ministry of State Security stole emails and passwords from more than 30,000 organizations by exploiting flaws in Microsoft Exchange Servers.

The group, dubbed Silk Typhoon by Microsoft, worked closely with China-back APT40, leveraging a flaw in Microsoft’s software to gain full access to emails hosted on more than 250,000 servers in the United States.

Among the organizations most affected by the hack were American pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and think tanks.

Attendees pass by an Alibaba.com display at a consumer technology trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas on Jan. 8, 2019. David Becker/Getty Images

December 2021: Log4j Hacks 

APT41 returned to action, leveraging a previously unknown vulnerability in commonly used open-source logging software Log4j. The group used the vulnerability to hack into at least six unspecified U.S. government agency networks over a nine-month period.

The vulnerability allowed APT41 to keep track of user chats and clicks and follow user link clicks to outside sites, allowing hackers to control a targeted server.

The hackers then used the hijacked networks to mine cryptocurrency, create botnets, send spam, and establish backdoors for future malware attacks.

Notably, the China-based company Alibaba first discovered the security flaw and privately reported it to Apache Software, which created the affected software. The Chinese Communist Party afterward punished Alibaba by revoking an information-sharing deal, as Chinese law requires security flaws to be reported to the regime.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) sets up a sign alongside a bipartisan group of Democrat and Republican members of Congress as they announce a proposal for a COVID-19 relief bill on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

December 2022: COVID-19 Relief Fund Theft 

APT41 stole millions of dollars worth of U.S. COVID-19 relief benefits, which were intended to help Americans who were negatively impacted by the government’s economic shutdowns during the 2020 pandemic.

The sum was part of a staggering estimated $280 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief, which was illicitly intercepted by foreign hackers and domestic fraudsters who used the Social Security numbers and personal information of deceased and incarcerated Americans to claim benefits illegally.

To date, the Justice Department has only successfully recovered about $1.5 billion of the stolen funds.

May 2023: Antique Typhoon 

Antique Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking outfit, forged digital authentication tokens to access the webmail accounts of 25 organizations, including numerous U.S. government agencies.

The hackers were able to obtain the emails of government officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and members of Congress, including Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). The hackers used persistent access to the email accounts only for exfiltrating data, suggesting that their purpose was primarily espionage.

Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te gives a speech at the CommonWealth Semiconductor Forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 16, 2023. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

August 2023: HiatusRAT 

China-backed hackers began targeting U.S. and Taiwanese military procurement systems, as well as semiconductor and chemical manufacturers.

The hackers leveraged a remote access tool to breach the system used to coordinate arms shipments from the United States to Taiwan. International open-source reporting suggests that the hackers’ goal was to gain intelligence on future defense contracts between the two powers.

September 2023: BlackTech Router Attack 

China-backed hacking group BlackTech began targeting major corporate headquarters throughout the United States. The group appeared to focus its attacks on gaining access to American and Japanese companies working in the defense sector.

U.S. and allied intelligence agencies announced that having penetrated the international subsidiaries of major companies, BlackTech was now using its access to grant itself entry to major corporate networks within the United States in order to exfiltrate data.

January 2024: Volt Typhoon 

U.S. intelligence agencies announced that Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking group, was pre-positioning malware in critical infrastructure throughout the United States, including water, gas, energy, rail, air, and port infrastructure.

Unlike most other Chinese hacking efforts that focus on espionage or intellectual property theft, Volt Typhoon sought to position malware in U.S. infrastructure in order to sabotage it in the event of a conflict between the two nations. Such sabotage would result in mass casualties among American citizens.

U.S. intelligence agencies said that they have removed Volt Typhoon malware from thousands of systems but that it remains embedded in some privately owned infrastructure and has been present since at least 2021.

(Left) A sign is posted in front of an AT&T retail store in San Rafael, Calif., on May 17, 2021. (Right) A man on his cell phone walks past a Verizon Wireless store in Washington on Dec. 30, 2014. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

November 2024: Salt Typhoon 

U.S. intelligence agencies acknowledged that Salt Typhoon, a Chinese state-backed hacking group, has compromised the infrastructure used by eight major telecommunications companies, including AT&T, CenturyLink, and Verizon.

Salt Typhoon appeared to have gained access to the backend infrastructure used to accommodate the U.S. government’s own wiretapping efforts and thus gained access to virtually all calls and texts made using the affected networks.

Despite the wide-ranging access, China-based hackers appeared to have used the persistent access to target high-profile individuals, including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Congressional leaders have described the hack, which likely began in 2022, as among the most significant breaches in history. It is unclear how Salt Typhoon will be evicted from the infrastructure. The group retained access to U.S. telecommunications until late December.

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen delivers remarks at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on April 20, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

January 2025: US Treasury Department Hack 

The Treasury Department revealed that Chinese state-backed hackers had breached the department’s networks, gaining access to the servers of an office responsible for administering international sanctions.

The hackers also gained access to the department’s networks by compromising third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust, stole an as-of-yet unknown number of unclassified documents, and targeted the accounts of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

Contrary to exaggerated, partisan rhetoric that frames the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot as a “deadly insurrection,” the truth is that only one homicide occurred that day. The victim, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot and killed by a police officer with a history of irresponsible handling of firearms, who opted against a nonlethal response to an act of trespassing, and who fired his weapon in the absence of any imminent threat of death or serious injury to himself or others in his vicinity.

US Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd’s killing of Ashli Babbitt came just six months after George Floyd’s death under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, an incident that sparked outrage, widespread calls for police reform, and nationwide rioting. In the case of Babbitt’s killing, however, the collective reaction from the American left and major media at best amounted to an indifferent shrug. Worse, many reflexively heralded Byrd as a hero and viewed Babbitt as a deserving recipient of the bullet that perforated her trachea and lung.

The contrast illustrates how partisan framing short-circuits people’s ability to uniformly and objectively apply principles to the facts before them. Put another way, an intellectually honest person can reject Babbitt’s politics, condemn her unlawful conduct on Jan. 6 and rightly conclude that she was the victim of an unjustified police shooting.

In 2021, the Department of Justice announced it had completed an investigation of the shooting and found “insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.” The DOJ did not, however, assert that Byrd’s use of deadly force was warranted. Last year, Babbitt’s husband filed a civil suit against the federal government, seeking $30 million in damages; the trial is slated to commence in July 2026.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego who operated a pool business with her husband, attended the “Save America” rally in Washington on Jan. 6 before joining others who proceeded to the Capitol grounds. After things escalated and rioters breached the Capitol building, she entered it, and a female police officer reportedly instructed her to walk toward the House side of the complex.

Here’s how the DOJ described what happened next; I’ve bolded three words I’ll address shortly:

Ms. Babbitt was among a mob of people that…gained access to a hallway outside “Speaker’s Lobby,” which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, the USCP was evacuating Members from the Chamber, which the mob was trying to enter from multiple doorways. USCP officers used furniture to barricade a set of glass doors separating the hallway and Speaker’s Lobby to try and stop the mob from entering the Speaker’s Lobby and the Chamber, and three officers positioned themselves between the doors and the mob.

Members of the mob attempted to break through the doors by striking them and breaking the glass with their hands, flagpoles, helmets, and other objects. Eventually, the three USCP officers positioned outside the doors were forced to evacuate. As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out. An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.

Though it’s not narrowly relevant to Byrd’s decision to pull the trigger, the DOJ’s passive-tense claim that the three officers on Babbitt’s side of the doors “were forced to evacuate” is important because it indicates an extreme inclination to put the best spin possible on officers’ decisions. Video shows those three officers failing to make any meaningful effort to stop those who were hammering the glass doors. After enduring mounting verbal abuse and violations of their personal space, they simply walked away from the doors, clearing the way for the rioters to remove the glass from a side window and for Babbitt to proceed through the opening.

According to the 32-page complaint filed in the civil suit, one of those three officers later told investigators, “I grapple with this, you know, if I should’ve stayed.” More pointedly, one of the members of the Containment and Emergency Response Team (CERT) who ascended the stairs from behind the mob told investigators, “I was thinking why, why the fuck did they leave?”

Some of the most damning information in the civil complaint comes from Byrd’s own mouth. In a 2021 NBC interview conducted by an excessively sympathetic Lester Holt, Byrd said:

• “I could not see exactly what was happening [on the other side of] the door…it’s impossible for me to see what’s on the other side because we had created such a barricade — it was high enough that the visibility was impossible.”

• “[Babbitt’s] failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

• “It was later [that] I found out that the subject did not have a weapon, but there was no way to know that at that time, and I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions [were].”

• “Of course we had our weapons drawn as part of our training. You had [false reports of] shots fired onto the House floor, you’re trained to take a tactical defensive position and prepare for the threat.”

There are many unsettling things about Byrd’s statements, chief among them his admission that he saw no weapon in Babbitt’s hands, and had “no way to know” if she was armed or what her intentions were. “Without additional information indicating that a person is likely armed, officers cannot conclude that someone has a weapon just because they cannot see definitively that the person does not have a weapon,” wrote Geoffrey Alpert, Jeff Noble, Seth Stoughton at Lawfare.

Among other incriminating elements of Byrd’s NBC interview:

• Byrd asserts that Babbitt’s mere failure to comply with orders not to proceed through the door justified the use of lethal force.

• He implies that (false) reports of shots fired somewhere else in the Capitol gave him a green light to start shooting noncompliant people in his vicinity; in other words, he seems to have made a blanket assessment that every trespasser in the building posed an imminent danger justifying deadly force.

“Officers cannot rely on generalized assumptions. They must base their conclusions on specific and individualized facts,” the Lawfare authors note.

Unsatisfied with merely defending his killing of Babbitt, Byrd used the NBC interview to declare himself as a hero, telling Holt, “I showed the utmost courage on January 6…I know that day I saved countless lives.” That latter boast is truly extraordinary, especially considering it was made with the benefit of hindsight. It would be one thing for Byrd to try attributing his deadly decision to a reliance on bad information amid the chaos of Jan. 6; it’s another to lionize himself with a baseless claim of rioters’ murderous intent.

Under USCP policy, lethal force is only authorized when “the officer perceives that the subject poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.” As Babbitt rose to awkwardly enter through the open window — where she would next have to awkwardly navigate a furniture barricade on the other side — there was no indication that she had the ability to seriously injure or kill anyone.

As seen in video of the shooting, Byrd’s positioning was problematic; the civil complaint characterizes it as an “ambush.” From the perspective of the rioters, Byrd was positioned on the far left, at an angle some 160 degrees from Babbitt, who was on the right side of the doors. Before stepping forward and killing Babbitt, Byrd was tucked inside another doorway, with only his pistol extending past the opening.

It’s very unlikely Babbitt saw his raised pistol and knew she was being threatened with death if she went through the window. Indeed, one of those three officers who inexplicably abandoned the doorway on Babbitt’s side told investigators, “I saw him . . . there was no way that woman would’ve seen that.” What’s more, Byrd told Holt that he repeatedly screamed “get back..stop…get back…no,” but made no claim that he verbally warned Babbitt that she was on the verge of being shot.

By all indications, Babbitt’s unarmed ascent to the window was a circumstance that called for the use of nonlethal force. That could have taken many forms — a firm shove back through the window, yanking her forward to the floor, or perhaps using pepper spray or a taser. While not clear how the various officers were equipped, note that police aren’t justified in resorting to deadly force just because it’s all they have available. It’s telling that, among multiple armed officers on that side of the doorway, Byrd was the only one who opened fire.

The civil complaint also credibly accuses Byrd of failing to handle his firearm in accordance with USCP policy, by:

• Unholstering it before any imminent threat had emerged to justify doing so

• Failing to hold his pistol at a “low ready” position and instead pointed it at people who posed no imminent threat

• Putting his finger inside the pistol’s trigger guard, “tapping it on and off the trigger for at least 14 seconds before he shot and killed Ashli.” Across law enforcement, the military and in civilian self-defense, it’s a universally-embraced principle that one’s finger shouldn’t be put inside the trigger guard until a decision to fire has been made.

After shooting Babbitt, Byrd took to his radio, his voice filled with panic — and a self-serving falsehood. “We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots, shots fired in the lobby of the House chamber. Shots are being fired at us and we’re sh… uhh, prepared to fire back at them,” he said, seemingly so desperate to justify his action that he falsely reported coming under fire himself.

In the aftermath of incidents involving excessive use of force, we often find the officer in question has a blemished service record. That’s the case with Byrd, whose checkered past includes irresponsible handling of firearms. In 2019, Byrd was suspended for 33 days after he left his loaded weapon in a Capitol Visitor Center complex bathroom for nearly an hour; it was discovered by another officer.

Even more concerning was a 2004 off-duty incident. Byrd fired his service weapon at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood — hitting it from behind. Investigators said Byrd’s claim that he fired at the car in self-defense as the driver attempted to hit him was “inaccurate.”

They also determined that Byrd put his innocent neighbor in the line of fire as he pulled the trigger. Stray rounds hit nearby homes, according to the Babbitt civil complaint. Foreshadowing Byrd’s decision-making on Jan. 6, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concluded he’d fired in a “careless and imprudent manner.” That finding was overruled, however, via an appeal to the Disciplinary Review Board.

In another off-duty incident, Byrd was given a seven-day suspension without pay in 2015 after accosting a police officer providing security at a high school football game, showering him with profanities and reportedly calling him “a piece of shit, asshole and racist” who was only concerned with policing the “black side” of the football field.

Further underscoring the double-standards at play in the Babbitt case, imagine the response from the left if there were a controversial shooting in which a white male police officer had demonstrated a similar, racially-charged loss of composure years before killing an unarmed black female trespasser.

“The ironies of Babbitt’s death abound—and not just because in this case the cop with the quick trigger finger was black and his victim was a white woman,” wrote Jonathan Tobin. “Both those who are supporting Byrd and those who consider the pass he got from his superiors an injustice have probably been on the opposite side of similar controversies in the past year. Some of those who think Babbitt was the victim of a police murder have defended officers accused of killing unarmed black persons. And many who are lauding Byrd as a defender of democracy were outraged by the same killings.”

Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com  

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

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Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

Private school choice advocates expect that 2025 will be the year that they finally bring the last big red state, Texas, into the fold. The likely victory would, in turn, pose the next big challenge for the controversial movement: Can it win in enemy territory — that is, blue states — too?

Inspired by free-market ideology and Christian faith, advocates aim to give families more educational choices by providing them with public funds that they mostly use for private instruction at religious schools. Although the movement now has a foothold in almost all red states, to become an influential force in education, it needs to make deeper inroads into densely populated blue states, where Democrats, teachers’ unions, and rural Republicans have built a formidable wall of opposition to protect public schools.

“Once we finish with the low-hanging fruit, Texas and a few other red states, this movement will go to a blue state strategy,” said Robert Enlow, CEO of the national advocacy group EdChoice. “It has to figure something out. Let’s be honest.” 

The political battles over school choice have been fierce, with critics such as American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten claiming that programs will “defund public schools.” In Nebraska, where voters killed a new program in November, an attack ad from choice opponents depicted supporters dressed in suits storming into a public school classroom and intimidating children, drawing protests from state senators who called it ridiculous and insulting.

Despite the warnings from opponents, most choice programs launched in the last three decades have been too small to significantly threaten enrollment-based school funding.

They have been restricted mainly to lower-income parents who may be dissatisfied with lax discipline and lackluster instruction – problems exacerbated by the pandemic – at their public schools. All told, private choice programs enroll only about 2% of all K-12 students.

The stakes are getting higher, however, as the movement – national advocacy groups, wealthy donors, and grassroots Christian activists – wins legislative battles for “universal” programs designed to expand enrollment. In universal programs now in 12 red states, all families, rich and poor, are typically eligible for public funds, even for children already in private school. 

Patrick Wolf, a prominent school choice researcher at the University of Arkansas, says universal programs are a smart strategy for the movement. Advocates hope they will improve upon the earlier programs for disadvantaged kids that produced mixed academic results and failed to build much political momentum even in some red states like Kentucky. 

Under universal eligibility, families that struggle financially to keep their kids in private school are joining the programs for tuition relief. And wealthier families that participate have added social and political capital to the movement, giving it stronger legs. 

“Strategically the advantage is clear,” Wolf said. “Universal eligibility creates a bigger tent of beneficiaries. That’s good for the programs and everyone in them.”

But universal programs are even more contentious with Democratic lawmakers because of the costs to pay for private education, essentially creating a second publicly funded school system. While the early restricted programs actually save money – since the cost of a choice scholarship is typically much less than a public-school education – universal programs create a new taxpayer expense: the funding of students already in private schools.

“School choice would subsidize some of the wealthiest families in my state who already send their kids to private schools,” Democratic Sen. Jeff Yarbro told RealClearInvestigations in explaining his opposition to a universal bill in his state of Tennessee. “It’s bad economics because we are not changing activity or improving outcomes. We are just pushing dollars from one group of people to another.”

In Arizona, the first state to adopt a universal program in 2022, the costs have ballooned. Almost half of the 80,000 students getting funding were already in private school, driving up the price tag of the program to $800 million last year, according to the Department of Education. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs wants to rein in the program that contributed to the state’s $1.3 billion budget deficit last year, forcing big cutbacks in funding water infrastructure projects to cope with droughts. 

“It’s just not possible for these states to fund two separate educational systems, the public and the private,” said Professor Josh Cowen, whose new book, “The Privateers,” is critical of school choice programs. “The scholarships are an interest group subsidy that states have to make hard choices to pay for.”

Hardball Politics in Texas 

In Texas, the cost of a universal program, a top priority of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, prompted a revolt among rural Republican lawmakers. The $500 million proposed program would escalate over time, they feared, forcing cutbacks in funding for public schools that also serve as community centers and major employers in rural areas.

To win over rural Republicans, the bill contained a large $7 billion increase in public school funding on top of an approved $6 billion boost earlier in 2023. Texas school districts stood to gain far more money than they might lose in per-pupil funding when students left for private schools, says Mandy Drogin, who focuses on school choice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

But rural Republican lawmakers turned down the $7 billion sweetener by voting to kill the universal program, spurring an unbending Abbott to play hardball, targeting his own party members for defeat in March primaries. To fund these efforts, Abbott received a $6 million donation from school choice advocate and billionaire donor Jeff Yass, an example of the big money behind the movement. 

Eleven of the challengers Abbott endorsed and funded won in the primaries on a school choice platform and then sailed to victory in November, providing the votes for a universal program this year. 

One of the newly elected legislators is Hillary Hickland, a stay-at-home mom and conservative Christian activist who, like several other challengers, had never run for public office. The victory of Hickland and the other 10 Republican candidates supported by Abbott underscored the potency of school choice in a state where a recent poll shows 69% of voters support it.

“A grassroots movement based on issues affecting families propelled several of us who are first-timers to victory,” Hickland told RCI. “We have the votes in the House to pass it and the overwhelming support of Texans who have been working to advance school choice for over three decades.” 

Shapiro’s ‘Unfinished Business’ 

Advocates say the stars are aligned to turn Pennsylvania into a blue state win. It already has a limited tax credit program to incentivize private donations for choice scholarships. What’s more, Gov. Josh Shapiro is one of the few Democratic state leaders who supports school choice, as do Pennsylvania voters by a wide margin.

The issue came to a head in 2023 when a Shapiro-backed non-universal voucher proposal targeting students in low-performing schools was met with stiff opposition from House Democrats and the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union. Shapiro was forced to line-item veto the voucher proposal to get the budget approved, calling school choice “unfinished business.”

In November, Pennsylvania swung to the right by backing President-elect Donald Trump and sending Republican challenger Dave McCormick to the U.S. Senate. The cheers of school choice advocates were muted because Democrats held on to a one-seat majority in the state House. 

The fate of another voucher bill expected in 2025 may depend on whether a few Democrats are willing to break with House leadership and risk political payback, according to a veteran of the Pennsylvania battles. Leaders reportedly threatened to take away committee assignments and staff from Democrat Amen Brown, a black representative who crossed the aisle to back the voucher bill. 

“Governor Shapiro has a chance to deliver on his promise to expand educational opportunity for underserved children,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of the advocacy group American Federation for Children. “It will require bold leadership to bring House leadership to the table and get it done.” 

EdChoice policy director Ed Tarnowski also sees Virginia as fertile blue state ground after a decade of defeated choice bills, including one in 2023, at the hands of Democrats. Since taking office in 2022, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been shaking up public education, introducing a system of accountability and higher academic standards lst year while also pushing school choice. 

Still, advocates will need the support of Democrats who control the General Assembly to create a state-funded program. Grassroots activists with the Virginia Education Opportunity Alliance are using a bottom-up strategy, educating low-income families throughout the state about school choice and encouraging them to pressure lawmakers into backing the program. It’s the type of campaign that led to the approval of vouchers in Washington, D.C., says Craig DiSesa, executive director of the alliance. “We plan to replicate that model.”

Illinois Backpedals 

Illinois shows how fragile school choice laws can be in blue states. Myles Mendoza, a liberal Democrat and former social worker, spearheaded a campaign for a program in Illinois after seeing the personal harm that failing Chicago Public Schools inflicted on students. 

As president of Empower Illinois, he built a coalition of Republicans, moderate Democrats, and trade unions to pass a $100 million tax credit scholarship program for disadvantaged kids in 2017. It was part of a deal that also boosted funding for high-poverty public schools.

The program was a hit, with three times more demand than supply of about 10,000 scholarships, many of them awarded to kids in Catholic schools. But the election of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, beating Republican Bruce Rauner with the help of an endorsement by the Illinois Federation of Teachers, shattered the bipartisan coalition behind the program. Pritzker let it sunset in 2023. 

For school choice to get a permanent foothold in blue states like Illinois, Mendoza says, advocates need to rally more blue-collar, Latino, and Jewish families that are troubled by public schools. “These groups could pressure Democrats to support private school choice over time,” Mendoza said. “But currently there are no votes in Illinois to pass school choice.”

Professor Wolf also sees external pressures forcing blue states like Illinois to get with the program. With school choice now in a majority of states, he says, Illinois will come under pressure to adopt it or risk losing residents to four of its neighbors with choice programs. Such peer pressure explains why public charter schools are now in 46 states.

“Illinois is losing population, so Democratic legislators might consider that they could hold on to more of their families if they return to offering at least the low-income ones support for private school enrollment,” Wolf said. 

No Choice of Good Private Schools 

Politics isn’t the only drag on the movement’s ambitions. Another is academic. Many higher quality private schools don’t accept school-choice students because of the state rules, such as reporting test scores, that come with participation in the programs.  

Catholic schools have enrolled most students in many of the programs, with other religiously affiliated schools taking students, too, according to researchers. A study of Washington D.C., Louisiana, and Indiana found that private schools that are smaller, less expensive, and more diverse – features associated with a less rigorous education – are more likely to participate in programs. An examination of the Milwaukee program underscored the instability of participating schools, particularly startups: 41% of all the schools failed over a 25-year period. 

It’s not surprising, then, that school-choice students are not typically posting stellar academic gains. Wolf says rigorous studies of the early small programs showed some positive academic results on standardized tests, while more recent examinations of bigger programs revealed some negative outcomes. Researchers did find more consistently positive effects for students with graduation rates and college entrance and completion. Wolf calls the results “mixed.”

Professor Cowen, who was optimistic about the programs early on, is now a critic. He says the negative academic results from the larger programs are significant, on par with the learning loss students recently suffered during the pandemic.

“Twenty years ago, there were only a small number of private schools participating in programs and they were pretty decent,” said Cowen. “But many more schools are involved now, some of them located in church basements, and many of them are not interested in academic outcomes. That’s not their main mission.” 

Advocates are putting their faith in the expansion of universal programs across the country to raise the academic bar. As more children from wealthier families get scholarships, the theory goes, it will encourage higher-quality private schools to participate in the programs, lifting the performance of all students, including low-income kids.

Will Congress Act?

Facing uphill battles in blue states, the movement has a Plan B. With Republicans taking control of Congress this year, John Schilling at Invest in Education says advocates are cautiously optimistic about the chances of a federal tax credit bill to privately fund school choice scholarships for students nationwide. Such an approach would provide a wedge into blue states where groups would collect donations to start scholarship programs that otherwise might not get off the ground. 

“We see this law as creating opportunity in blue states where there is entrenched opposition to school choice,” said Schilling. “The only way states like New York, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts can get school choice now is through a federal tax credit.”

The Educational Choice for Children Act, which has 180 Republican co-sponsors, is hardly a sure bet. Democrats are solidly opposed to it, and many rural Republicans don’t like it either. The bill probably won’t get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster, which means Republicans may try to push it through budget reconciliation, a difficult undertaking but one that requires only a majority to pass a bill. 

Cowen at Michigan State University sees hypocrisy in the movement’s turn to Washington. Republicans are banking on federal legislation while also calling for a reduction in Washington’s influence on education and even the dismantling of the Department of Education. But the chance to open up blue states to school choice is apparently too good an opportunity to pass up.